starmark | IC Inbox | prismatica

[ Polnareff stops shaking. Half of him, the half that hurts, stops thinking. Observes without the distraction of pain and fear. Almost impassively, so far as he can watch Jotaro struggle impassively. He couldn't observe this last time, not with his own recollection blocked by their hiding place and the stupid, desperate thoughts that come to you when you've lost more blood than most doctors would consider ideal.

Dio reaches for Jotaro's neck, already ripped open by thorns and fingers. It's hard to tell whether he means to break it or crush his windpipe or simply and artlessly rip his head from his body along the bloody, bruised seams he made earlier, not when he never makes it. In the silence of the frozen night, Dio's skull makes two satisfying cracking sounds, one on entry and one on exit, the second more wet than the first.

Time doesn't immediately restart. Kakyoin's broken body can't make the connection, couldn't even if he were standing and watching from his place outside Dio's realm. But the other him can. He observes, for all the use his observations are going to be. Time doesn't restart, and so Dio hasn't lost his ability to use his stand. One arm goes limp. He slowly topples to one side, sliding from Star's fingers - either he's lost his sense of balance of the leg on that same side has gone limp, too. Maybe both. He hits the ground and he's looking right through the broken windows of the destroyed car. Right at him and Polnareff, and his eyes don't change with recognition. Blinded - that one he knows from seeing what happens next. ]

Where-

[ His voice is desperate as time restarts. Rasping. Pained. the ingertips of his good arm scrabble against the asphalt as he tries to pull himself up. He feels at the empty air around him for Jotaro, then extends his tongue. Tastes the air. Begins to crawl.

It's horrifying to actually see. Before, he'd just known that Dio came crawling through the car toward Polnareff and him. He didn't realise that he was tasting the air, was flailing forward with his tongue flopping about. He catches his good hand on a peice of jagged metal on the ruined car. He slices off two fingers when he pulls it back and barely seems to notice. A limited sense of pain, then. He should be horrifying like this, all the pride stripped away to reveal something too pathetic to really even call a monster. He's just disgusting.

Blood. He's looking for blood, and Kakyoin and Jotaro both reek of the stuff, but Kakyoin's the one with a pool of it beneath him. It's not any kind of grand scheme. It's just an attempt to survive.

Polnareff stands, lifts him, moves away. Puts Chariot between both of them and the pathetic mess that is Dio now. He doesn't move closer. Just remains, half in the car and half out, tongue slapping at the pool of blood where the two of them had been, licking it up off the road. ]

[He moved. He was able to move while Dio's Stand was in effect. He moved and he struck and that means finally, now, finally they have a chance.

He stumbles back when time resumes, shaken from his wounds and his success both, and sort of watches a little stupidly as Dio starts to scrabble away. He realizes late what the significance of his enemy's fumbling is; whatever he'd pierced in the brain must've disrupted his motor control, maybe his vision. In one strike he's gone from an insurmountable terror to a pest crawling along the ground.

He should just end it, right now. He could even justify it as putting Dio out of his misery.

But there's something that rebels in him at the thought of attacking Dio while he's in a state like this — blinded, desperate, fumbling. It's too close to watching The World rip Hierophant apart in stopped time. The oppressor who attacks while the victim is helpless, defenseless. And this is one way where he and Dio will always be different.

It rebels, at least, until he sees what Dio is really scrambling for. It's not just anyone's blood he's chasing after; if it were, maybe Jotaro would've been able to stay calm, and perhaps even feel bad for him.

But that's Kakyoin's blood he's drinking. Kakyoin's strength he's drawing on to make himself strong again. And Kakyoin is better than dirt to be sucked up for nutrients, and Kakyoin is never going to be forced to help Dio Brando in any capacity again.

Before he quite realizes it, he's wobbled to the car himself; Star punches open the gas tank and causes what remains of it to spill out into a crumpled piece of wreckage that will serve as a makeshift bucket. At first he thinks maybe he'll just taint the blood with the gasoline, poison him or at the very least render it ineffective. But with Dio lying half in the pool as it is, there's no way to do that without dousing Dio himself in it — and so he does.

He has a lighter in his pocket. Dio is dangerous. And maybe if it were just him, if he were the only one left, he would stay his hand. But every second he wastes on Dio is another second that he's not helping get Kakyoin to safety, and he genuinely doesn't know how many seconds Kakyoin has left to begin with.

So he doesn't think. He just acts. Star hurls the gasoline to soak Dio through, and without giving Dio even a second to process what the implications of that might be, he sparks his lighter and tosses it, catching the accelerant in its flame and setting him ablaze.]

[ He screams.

Time stops. Dio tries to move away from the flames, inch by bloody inch. Dio is the flames, he can't leave them behind. Time starts again.

It isn't a vampiric hiss. It isn't the roar of a slighted god. It's human.

Time stops. He tries to pull himself free of the car. Tears himself open on the broken window. Pulls his hips free before flopping onto the ground again. Time starts.

Polnareff alters the way that he's holding him. Shifts so that he can offer an arm to Jotaro without moving him more than necessary. Joseph's bringing the doctors, he says. It's hard to hear it over Dio's screams. Chariot keeps his blade trained on Dio the whole time, not moving closer but always between Kakyoin and Dio.

Time stops. Dio rolls onto his back. Onto his front. Onto his back again. Layers of skin tear off on the road below him. He tries to put himself out. He can't. He's drawn the gasoline-tainted blood into himself. The fire is inside him bone-deep. Time starts.

The parts of his throat that can scream burn away.

He curls in upon himself.

The vines return. They coil around him. A cocoon. Protective. Loving. Completely immobilising. And once again he dies in flames, in the arms of Jonathan Joestar. ]

[This, half of Jotaro thinks forlornly, is Kakyoin's catharsis.

Once upon a time in a timeline that isn't anymore, Kakyoin died alone and disoriented and helpless, and then wound up on an alien planet somewhere halfway across the galaxy and tried to pretend that he was normal and okay but he wasn't and then when he'd had to face up to the reality that the boy he loved had a life and a future that he wasn't going to be a part of, he threw up. That Kakyoin isn't going to exist for long, anymore. Eventually he'll fade away into the one cradled in Polnareff's arms, watching this like Jotaro is right now.

This is for the Kakyoin who died. The Kakyoin who wanted to come here and see this for certain. This is his parting gift to that Kakyoin, the love confession he was never given the opportunity to profess.

Dio Brando is dying. Miserably. Pathetically. He is a thing, now — a chunk of meat burning from the inside out. The sight of it makes Jotaro sick, makes his skin crawl, but he doesn't look away.

After this, help will come. Kakyoin will be rushed to the hospital. So will he, as a matter of fact, as a consequence of the wounds from the car accident and the chokevines around his throat and the internal injuries he took while Star was dueling with the World. Fewer injuries than he'd had before, in the last timeline. Still significant enough to matter. More than significant enough to matter.

The fire is still burning when Joseph Joestar runs onto the scene, holding his hat and bellowing Jotaro, I'm here!, and it's exactly the kind of comedic moment that altogether doesn't belong in a memory like this.

But it's good punctuation for the end of the simulation, and slowly the vision begins to gray out as the machinery brings their experience tapering off to a quiet end.]

[ His own recollection ends as the vines curl away - as they curl away half the world away and release Holly - dying with Dio. As Joseph tries very hard to remain straight-faced and fails, expressing twisting through disgust and contempt as he kneels to lightly touch the burned corpse with his good hand. Then to concern as the corpse crumbles to dust at his touch and he stops looking at it and looks at the three of them instead. For the first time in fifty days. In half a year for him. In half a lifetime for Polnareff. For the first time in perhaps too long, they're children again. Hurt children in a strange place, and Joseph is the adult.

He'll get them home safely.

(He doesn't go home. He comes here. But he'll get there eventually. He knows, even if he doesn't remember.)

He takes a while to leave the pod, even after everything has faded away into the dark, boring interior of a piece of machinery. When he does leave it's with Hierophant, human-shaped, leading him by the hand. ]

He's gone. [ He says slowly, as Hierophant leads him to Jotaro. Pulls his hand into his. His voice is soft and flat. The palms of his hands are warm but the fingers are cold. ] He can be gone. We-

[ Before, in a time that's swiftly ceasing to be, time stopped for him in a world that still had Dio in it. And it kept him from ever being able to believe that he was truly in a place without him. He's seen a world without Dio, now. He knows that he'll spend the rest of his life in one.

He loved Dio, once. Even long after he should have ceased to. It's hard not to love someone a little when you live in a world where they define all things.

He doesn't have to love him anymore. ]

-we don't have to let him exist.

[He's waiting for Kakyoin by the time he climbs out of the pod, because Jotaro didn't hesitate once the world faded to black; he had no reason to, because he wasn't seeing or processing anything he didn't already remember anyway. He's leaning back against the sloping dome of it, outwardly casual and inwardly rattled, and when Hierophant finally brings Kakyoin over to him, he doesn't stop at just holding his hand.

He doesn't want to be a Jotaro who doesn't have his Kakyoin in his arms, right now.

It's not even that he's upset, or shaken. He's nowhere near as fucked up as he was for all of those months before this became their new reality. Even remembering the old one perfectly — which he still does, since after all he was the one who changed it to begin with — it's easier to lay it to rest because he has the satisfaction of setting it right.

It's just that this feels like an ending. Kakyoin's words feel like permission to finally put this behind them. Holding him is what Jotaro wants to be doing, when they take the first step into the new thing ahead of them, instead.]

I don't want to talk about things that don't matter anymore.

[Kakyoin will know, he knows, that he's not really trying to suggest that Dio won't still be a specter in their memories, even if he's not a monster overshadowing the rest of their lives. Things that don't matter is a phrase said in the same tone as the same type of Stand. Just another barb beneath Dio's skin. Just another reassertion of triumph.

But Jotaro's eyes are soft, and his hat is cocked back far enough that his curls are spilling over his forehead, and now for the first time there's a faint hairline scar that wraps around his throat like a white thread, and that's because he's finally allowing it to be there, now that they're finally putting that night behind them.

The last thing he wanted was for Kakyoin to see it as a collar keeping him chained to January sixteenth. Now it's just a reminder of the same vines that ensnared Dio as he burned to death in ignominy.]

Tell me again how you feel about me, Noriaki Kakyoin. Don't make me wait any longer, okay...?

You're a shitty driver.

[ It matters, as far as he's concerned. It matters because they're going to leave Japan. With Adrian. And that means less public transport, if Mr. Joestar is to be believed. More driving. It matters because they have a future.

And Dio doesn't.

He wants to fuss, even though there's no need. Everything Dio did to either of them healed long ago. But he lifts his hands to Jotaro's neck, runs a thumb over the oldnew scar there as if that'll zip it more closed than it already was. He wants to do more. But there's no more to do. The healing's done. The healing's waiting for them back home.

Jotaro's arms are warm and steady. And that's healing, too. ]

I love you. I loved you then. And I must have loved you before you changed things. And I love you now. Any possible iteration of me will love you. You couldn't change that if you wanted to.

[ They're not talking about things that don't matter. But any statement about Jotaro's capability to change things is inherently not just a statement about Jotaro. Dio couldn't change it, either. ]

I'll get better.

[Maybe. Probably. Maybe he's talking about his driving skills and maybe he's talking about something else, instead. Either way, it's a promise, isn't it.]

I always wanted you to love me back, you know.

I always did. I should have-

[ He should have done a lot of things. It wouldn't have made anything right if he'd confessed sooner. Wouldn't have made the journey any easier. But he could have combed his fingers through Jotaro's hair when things got difficult. Could have curled up with him in hotel rooms. ]

-There were at least fourteen occasions [ Yes, he was counting. ] when I could have kissed you without even trying, you know. When your face was right there.

So what I'm hearing is, you owe me fourteen missed kisses. Right? Because...my face is right here, now.

[Thank goodness for that awkward little addendum at the end, it saved Jotaro from using up his "able to have game exactly once per year" quota. But he's tugging Kakyoin closer now, leaning back so that he's less standing upright and more just sort of lazily draped over the shell of the pod behind him, which means that drawing Kakyoin near just sort of makes Kakyoin drape over him, while he's at it.

He always has liked it best that way, hasn't he. Kakyoin lying over top of him. Safe and visible and there.]

What else did you want to do to me?

With interest.

[ He doesn't care quite as much as he probably ought to that they're in public and that this looks weird, especially when he has to use Hierophant to lift himself a little in order to reach Jotaro's face with him leaning back like this. He doesn't lower himself back down after kiss 1 of 14. Jotaro's not hurt anymore. Everything they just watched happened months ago, more than a year ago for Jotaro, so he's more than capable of carrying his weight. ]

Didn't I tell you? [ Technically he didn't. Hierophant did. Over text message. About how he had come up with a series of very convincing arguments for why it was strategically important for him to suck Jotaro's dick, half because he wanted to and half because it seemed less emotionally fraught than any other option.

But there's another answer, equally true. ]

I wanted to protect you. To make it easier. It was the happiest I'd ever been, travelling with you. And it never seemed- it never seemed fair that I was only happy because you and Mr. Joestar and Miss Holly were suffering. I wanted to make it right.

I meant —

[He feigns exasperation, mostly teasing, largely just focused on holding Kakyoin in such a way that getting up to his mouth involves a certain element of having to climb him, because that's just fun and pleasant and he likes it. Nobody is going to look twice at them, even if they start carrying on like this; technically he could make that irrefutably true with the twitch of a thought and one of Star's fists, but really it's just logic. No one in Lunatia ever has an objection to spontaneous sharing of Chroma like this — it's practically interwoven into their culture. If anything, the only objection they'll get is a polite request that someone else needs this room, and this time of night, no one will.]

I was gonna say, I wanted to do things out of a movie with you. Hold your hand. Watch...y'know. Sunsets over the ocean.

[He grins, sheepish.]

You didn't have to go and one-up me again.

Of course I did.

[ Maybe he'd be less of a shit about it (unlikely), but Jotaro's making him put effort into kissing him. It's only fair. He pulls himself up to Jotaro's lips again (2/14). ]

I wanted all the stupid little things from when we were travelling. Sleeping on you in the car. Taking turns making breakfast. Sharing your coat when it was cold. Waking up and you being there to talk about stupid shit. I wanted that, but I wanted it all to happen because we'd decided it should. Not because we all got dragged into it.

...We're gonna have a house. Not one that's too big. One that's right for three people.

[That is a thing they already have, coincidentally, and it's up in Lyestellus, but that's not the point. There is a hard divider line between alien space fuckplanet things and home things, and they're talking about home things now. Future things. Things that they're going to make happen, not things that they already have.]

With paintings on all the walls. A big kitchen with a million cupboards for Hierophant to fuck around with all at once. A couple of cars that we know how to drive. One of them we can start with a screwdriver.

[He's really not trying to disrupt Kakyoin's efforts at making up his kiss tax, but he does break away for a minute just to bury his face in Kakyoin's hair. He wants to be surrounded by him for a minute, just to linger and let the smell of his shampoo color the fantasy he's crafting.]

A big yard for Adrian to run around in. A basement full of your video games. Rooms for each of us, and one for all three of us. We're all gonna go to university. We're gonna do homework and worry about exams and do dumb shit on the weekends. We're gonna get ice cream. I'm gonna let you steal the cherry right out of my mouth.

And when I fuck up you're gonna hit me with pillows and tell me it's okay, and I'm enough. And we're all alive. And I did enough.

I will.

[ He wants to look Jotaro in the eye when he says it. He can't, not when Jotaro's face is buried in his hair. But that's nice, too. He can rest his forehead against his collarbone. Feel for the pulsing of a heart that never stopped. Let Jotaro take up the whole of his vision as he listens. ]

You are. We are. You did.

[ And he almost says 'more than enough', but that's not true. More than enough is what he would do. Jotaro didn't do any more than was strictly necessary, because he was never trying to win. Never trying to make himself better off, even. Just to save people. He would have taken it all away. Made it mean nothing. Jotaro never stopped him from getting hurt. He just made sure he never had to endure it alone. And that was all he needed. Enough. ]

Exactly enough.

I need that, Nori. I need you to tell me when it's enough.

[They all need that, don't they? Adrian, ripping open portals between dimensions out of his terror of being left alone. Kakyoin, desperate to be useful so that his use defines his worth. And himself, now, saddled with an unfathomable responsibility that comes with an equally unchecked power, still so accustomed to carrying the weight of the world on his shoulders that he doesn't always know when it's okay to set it down again.

But they're good for each other. They check each other. They can each see the things that the others can't.]

So don't ever let me forget, okay...?

I'm going to be pissed with you, you know. For all kinds of reasons. [ He looks up again. Hierophant pushes Jotaro's head down so that he can manage kiss 3 without too much extra climbing and then holds it so that they don't break eye contact again. He's glad he chose not to wear the shades today, because he wants Jotaro to know that he's looking at him. It's important. ]

Because you keep making it a pain to kiss you. Or because you did something wrong in a videogame. Or because punching a puzzle solved isn't the right way of doing it. Or because I have a plan for getting around the grocery store expediently but Adrian wants to go to the freezers first even though everyone knows that you should go to the freezers last and you side with him because he's excited about the limited edition flavour and you think it's cute.

[ ...that last one hasn't happened but he can picture it far too well for comfort and it's actually making him angry on behalf of hypothetical-him. ]

Never because you didn't do enough. Never.

He is cute, though. And someone might get the last one if we don't go there first.

[It's sad that he's not even doing this to rile Kakyoin up so much as it is just his actual opinion. Kakyoin's got his number, oh no.

That said, maybe it's time to be helpful instead of smug, and so he runs his hands down Kakyoin's sides and over his hips and under his thighs, and lifts him up to take over for Hierophant because sometimes it's just nice to hold your boyfriend, too.]

Maybe you just want to do the produce first because that's where the bagged cherries are.

You get produce first because produce is at the front of the store. If you get frozen goods first, they'll have thawed by the time you get them home.

[ He'd raise his voice about this, except that his face is already up against Jotaro's now. He can wrap his arms over his shoulders comfortably. He can manage three kisses in quick succession.

...wait. ]

You're going to punch the ice cream frozen again, aren't you. [ That's just the sort of useless, stupid thing that's fair game for resolving with punching. Like fixing a leaky tap. Or cleaning a dress that would otherwise take forever to fix. It doesn't matter, except for the tiny ways in which it does. It doesn't save anyone's life. Just makes them better by single degrees. He sounds fond. Tired. Slightly exasperated with a hypothetical Jotaro from a future they havn't made yet for encouraging irresponsible grocery store pathfinding. ] I'll get pissed at you for that, too.

If I was going to do that, why wouldn't I just punch one left in the freezer, no matter when we walk past to pick it up? See, it could go either way.

[He grins a little, sideways, and pecks a kiss against the very tip of Kakyoin's nose.]

It's not even about the groceries. It's because he's cute when he's excited, and you're cute when you're mad. So when you're mad about something he's excited about, I win twice.

You could do it that way. But you won't. Because you'll want to go around the store in the wrong order. So you can piss me off. So Adrian'll be excited to get home and try the ice cream for longer.

[ He holds on tighter to Jotaro, burying his face in his neck in what looks suspiciously like an embarrassed reaction to that one tiny kiss. ]

You're impossible. I love you.

You make me sound like such a bastard.

[There was a time, once, not so long ago, when Kakyoin was dead and never coming back and he was never, ever in his life going to have this, it was just gone, Kakyoin clinging to him like a koala and hiding his blush in his neck and complaining about dumb inconsequential bullshit that doesn't matter and saying I love you like it's a fact — it was gone, he missed his chance, it wasn't coming back and he was going to spend the rest of his life living with that.

It wasn't so long ago that Dio took away the chance for all of this.

They're not thinking about Dio anymore. It doesn't make him choke up any less, in times like this when it really hits him that Kakyoin is alive and all right and so, so in love with him.]

Don't I always make it up to you?

You are such a bastard.

[ He's almost died twice, today. Watched Dio die twice, pathetic and coiled up in his own stolen stand. Watched, twice, as he encroaches on Jotaro. Slides his fingers under his skin. As he hurts him. Almost kills him. As that's part of the plan. He almost led Jotaro to his death, and Jotaro followed him. ]

You don't need to make it up. You could never piss me off so much I don't love you. You could never even scratch the fucking surface. You just think making it up is fun.

[ A bold accusation, then a long pause. And finally, he acknowledges the extra presence in that memory. ]

He saves me, doesn't he?

[ He doesn't remember that. He comes here before it happens. But he knows it does happen. Adrian puts him back together. The same way he put his eyes right. ]

Yeah.

[Kakyoin doesn't remember this part, either, and there wouldn't have been much point in playing it all out in the VR pods just to get there. Some things need to be seen. Other things, it's enough just to recount them in soft words while holding your heart close.]

Jiji makes us all go. You and me and Polnareff. That damn old man, he's the only one who gets out of that whole night unscathed, can you believe it? His crazy luck again.

[He hums under his breath, tugging Kakyoin a little closer.]

They put us in separate rooms and it pisses me off. You spend a long time in surgery, but when you get out I tell them to let me see you and they won't. Star stops time so I can go anyway. That's the first time I stop time myself, instead of just being able to move in someone else's — Star does it so that go see you without anybody stopping me.

[Sweet, faithful Star. He always does exactly what Jotaro needs him to.]

When I get there, he's in the room with you. Checking your charts and stuff. But then Hierophant — he starts weaving himself around the bed. Like a net or a canopy or something. I guess maybe you were falling asleep, and he wouldn't let you unless he was out. Maybe he was worried, I don't know.

I'm watching through the door and he reaches out and touches Hierophant. Runs his thumb along him. Like...like he knows you got hurt because Hierophant got hurt, and now he's checking on him, too.

That's when I remember. He tells Hierophant he's missed him, and then I remember.

He doesn't like it. If I sleep without him there. He hates that something might happen and he wouldn't be able to wake me. He tripped the janitor when I was under to get my eyes fixed. [ While Adrian sewed up his face stitch by tiny perfect stitch, still leaving scars but barely a shadow of the ones that had been there in a different time, and he didn't remember.

He could show Jotaro why Hierophant has that particular habit, here. Why he does it now every night when he never seemed to in hotel rooms before. But they've seen enough today. It doesn't matter anymore. It's enough to just say that Hierophant is protective. He'd make himself believe, if he knew, mess with his past self's head. Or he wouldn't, and it would just become one more thing to be not enough on a bad day. He could hold on to Jotaro instead, face still half buried in his neck, lips against that pale thin thorn-line.

Not kissing enough to count toward the total, but still kissing.

He could tell this Jotaro that the sky was green, and he'd at least look up to check before telling him he was full of shit. ]

Hierophant remembers him, then. [ This is after he comes here, but he doesn't need to remember to know. Hierophant encountering someone who sees stands while he's asleep and vulnerable and not immediately attacking means that he remembers. ] Of course he does. If any part of me would, it would be him.

IC Inbox | prismatica

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

(no subject)

(no subject)

(no subject)