Chapter Text
It was one thing to dread becoming Pope; it was another altogether to confront the sudden reality that it was never going to happen--that after years of being regarded as the heir apparent, your peers had looked you over and God had guided their choice elsewhere.
He knew it was absurd to be his age and feel so hopeless. There were plenty of people out there--other clergy, diplomats, theologians--who had to contemplate worse professional frustrations without a gratis apartment in the Vatican and a cardinal's prestige and, yes, income to fall back on. You're the Secretary of State for the Vatican, he told himself, not a lecturer updating his CV for the next cycle on the academic job market.
Of course, that was the crux of it. He wasn't Secretary of State, not anymore. His term had ended with the late pope's death. It was hard not to feel like the past decade had been a series of watching things end. His mentor's hopes for change, that the Curia could be persuaded or lectured or dragged into various reforms. His connections to his family, who might be distant in a geographic sense but who were theoretically supposed to always be there. Thomas's faith, which had been a rock to Aldo when he could not admit the depths of his feelings for Thomas himself. One by one, each faltered. No matter how hard he tried, he couldn't put them back together.
And now it felt like each new ballot was a reminder of how much he had failed. It occurred to him that he didn't have to go back, didn't have to face them all again if he didn't want to. He could stay in his suite, casting his ballots for Thomas Lawrence for as long as things dragged on and pretending to live in a world where he hadn't failed everything so completely. He hated how immature he sounded, even in his own head, like a child trying to get out of school. Some bullies were mean to me, the student government elections didn't go my way, and the friend I've had a secret crush on for years would rather spend time with the new transfer student. His actual teen years had contained less teenage drama than life in the highest echelons of the church.
Aldo had seen himself described by both admirers and detractors as implacable, emotionless, fearsome. Depending on their particular leanings, academics and activists wrote articles lauding his intellectual rigor, critiquing the incremental means by which his ideas found purchase in church policy even under a pope who claimed to agree with him, or deriding him as a relativist twisting theology and history to suit his needs. Those who worked with him personally pointed to his devotion to his work and ability to sustain an argument he believed in even when it would be easier to concede defeat. Tedesco might use him as a bogeyman amongst his supporters, but even the Patriarch of Venice had to acknowledge that he was capable.
Of course, that reputation was built by a name printed on a page in a theological journal, signed to emails sent at an unhealthy hour, cited in arguments made by others. It handily ignored the Aldo Bellini whose assistants not infrequently found him asleep on the couch in his office. Who had not been back to New York in years because there was always something requiring his immediate attention. Who poured his heart into expressing himself in the driest prose he could muster, because that was preferable to risking what he had gained.
At a conference years ago, a former priest who had very publicly left the church to marry his partner had asked Aldo how he could dare talk about the issue of gay clergy in such an impassive manner when the official doctrine was still doing so much harm now. How he could work with Joshua Adeyemi given the latter's widely known views. Aldo had nodded along with what he hoped was support, said something that sounded anodyne even to his own ears about the quiet steps toward individual and institutional change. Then he had cried in his hotel room and vowed to make things right. From that day on, he told himself, he would be more forthright about what and who he stood for. He would tell Thomas everything the next time he got the chance.
That was a decade ago. In that time, he had written a three-hundred page book on the nature of love and friendship as interpreted through ecclesiastical history and developments in canon law. It cited the work of one Thomas Lawrence fifty two times. Aldo had hoped it would make everything clear. When he received his copies from the publisher, he and Thomas had gone out to dinner to celebrate.
It had been so lovely for a while, despite everything. Maybe, he thought, he could at least have this without having to defend his position. He didn't know what had shattered his illusions more: when Thomas mentioned his plans for retirement or when Tremblay informed him that his mentor was dead and the media latched onto the idea that he could be papabile. The College of Cardinals could fill vacant seats, but Aldo's small world had rarely felt so empty.
Now, Giulio was going on about Tremblay and Thomas wasn't meeting his gaze. Paul Krasinski of all people was wandering around the cafeteria telling them all to "vote their conscience," by which he presumably meant "vote for Tedesco already in the next ballot, so we can all go home." At lunch after the disastrous third ballot, Aldo had overheard Krasinski joking to his table--Tedesco supporters to a man--about how everyone had finally realized the futility of voting for "Also Bellini."
It was the closest he had ever come to agreeing with the traditionalists about anything.
The Aldo Bellini whose profile had appeared in various media outlets in the weeks leading up to the conclave was fearless. That Aldo Bellini would make a good pope, would not have to hide his views in impenetrable footnotes and diplomatic excuses. How he wished that that man was here at the Conclave instead of him. If that Aldo Bellini existed, Aldo might even be persuaded to vote for him.