starmark | IC Inbox | rubycity_rp

[It doesn't. Not quickly enough, anyway. Even if he hadn't seen it, Giorno would have known it was there. Everything lately, anger and grief and despair, seems to come with tears.]

[Last April, he thought: I will never cry again. Not even silent tears. I will not be that weak. I will be the muscle and sinew and bone inside of everyone I love, so that they can be weak instead.]

[This has changed. He's cried lately, more than he's ever allowed himself to cry before. Never aloud, but still tears have come free-flowing. He misses Abbacchio. He misses Mista. He misses Trish and Polnareff. He's drowning when it comes to Fugo, he's worried for Narancia, and when is he ever not worried for Bruno? His family is falling apart. But which one, though? That's the question.]

[Maybe both.]

[He has to work very hard not to shutter his expression when Jotaro sees him, not to be Don Giovanna, who is not needed or wanted here. Nobody wants Don Giovanna anymore, really. They want Giorno, whoever that is, whatever good he does.]

Jotaro.

[Family is a circle of protection. But which family does he protect now, and against what?]

[Slowly, smoothly, he unfolds to standing, his expression soft and open, tired, listening.]

Will you tell me?

[He's tempted to say tell you what, but he doesn't, because he knows better. They don't seek each other out at times like this only to play dumb with each other; they hold off, sometimes, out of tact and patience, but there's no acting like they don't know exactly why they're here. It's nice, in a weird sort of way. There's just that subdued, unspoken respect there.

The thought makes him grit his teeth, half-tempted to look away even more than he already has. Backsliding isn't something that sits well with him, either, but he feels like he's standing atop the beginnings of a landslide just moments away from giving out from under him.]

She's telling him about me.

[That's a funny way of pronouncing I'm not safe anymore.]

[I know. I saw. That's what I expected it would be. I was watching.]

[These are things you say to enemies, he knows. To assure them that you are always watching - that they are never truly alone. It's still true here, but he isn't sure that saying it would help at all. Maybe it would hurt. Most of the time he can operate on pure instinct with Jotaro, but around this particular subject, everything is so complicated.]

[Everything is so complicated. And Jotaro doesn't feel safe anymore. What awful timing all around . . .]

Can I come over where you are?

[He has to ask, especially now.]

[Oh, he thinks distantly, he saw me fighting, and another pang of sadness follows close on its heels as it brings with it an irrational conclusion: does he think I'm going to hurt him?

That's not it. He knows better than that.

He's so sick of fighting. Is that why he's going looking for them now, so that at least he's not saddled with the raw nerves and anxiety that come with having to wait for one he knows is coming on top of it?]

Are you scared of me?

[Might as well get it out of the way. If it's true, though he doesn't think it is, then at least it's on the table and they're not dancing around it anymore. If it's not...then he'll hear it from someone else, so he can believe it a little more easily.

Because it's Giorno.]

Oh . . . Jotaro, no.

[He doesn't wait for permission, then; there is such a thing as too much delicacy, and he crosses the space between them in defiance of caution because that's what instinct tells him to do. That's the right thing, or at least the righter thing than standing over here with an echo chamber between him and his only blood brother.]

[So he demolishes it, steps over it, leans up on his toes and wraps his arms around Jotaro and holds him tightly, because no, no, never, not in a million years could he ever be.]

You would never hurt me. Not ever. I will never, ever be afraid of you.

[It'd be so much easier, maybe, if he could ever just admit to that. He doesn't know why it's so hard, why trying those simple, basic words feel like they're barbed on every edge, like he's got spines in his throat like a turtle to prevent them from ever escaping even when he almost wants them to. Wouldn't it be easier if he could just admit — what? I'm scared, I'm hurt, I'm betrayed, I'm a mess? He's supposed to be getting better about this but it feels like he's just had another hundred pounds of weight dropped onto his shoulders.

Giorno is the exception to that. Giorno's so short he just barely comes up to Jotaro's chin but he's holding on tight in support, and it feels like it, too. Giorno, who calls him fratello and reminds him at his worst moments that family is a circle of support. Yeah, okay. That's why he's here.

Yeah. He believes that. So that's one thing he can put his faith in.]

I told her I trusted her to handle it.

[His shoulders sag, very slightly.]

So much for that.

I know.

[That much he can admit to. That much is right and easy. Because he knows this feeling, like your heart has been carved out and handed to you, like you're going to shake apart in fear of what could be but you have to keep being the strong one.]

[He doesn't let go. He won't. Jotaro's hanging on a little too tight, but he doesn't care, not even a little bit.]

You're not alone. I'm not going to let you be alone. So don't run into yourself and away from me, okay? Don't hurt all by yourself.

[Well, that much — yes, that gets him to hesitate. He stays quiet, gradually becoming hyperaware of all the little stimuli he'd been ignoring before in his anger. It's cold outside; his eyes hurt. He can feel the first twinges of a headache beneath the brim of his hat. Star is vibrating somewhere inside him like a leaf in the wind, acutely attuned to his distress but with no means of protecting him from an injury with no external source. The sounds of the forest are loud, even though the monsters have gone silent.

He's so glad there's still noise. He's glad he can feel Giorno breathing. His own is a mess; he couldn't use Hamon right now even if he tried, and he remembers absently that he hasn't been practicing. He could use a drink. He still wishes Polnareff were here.]

...You know...you're not responsible for him. Right?

[He hesitates again.]

Because if I don't run away from you. ...You're going to hear about him.

I know.

[He knows both of these things. That's why he came here, after all; he came here for Jotaro, but for Dio too. Another thing he knows is that he can't keep this up, loving all these people who want different things, all these people who don't even know what they want. It's tearing him apart, but he won't stop until he's fully quartered.]

[His fingers twist in the hem of the gakuran; then, almost absently and without entangling himself hardly at all, he unwinds the scarf from around his neck and places it around Jotaro's.]

I'm not responsible for you, either. But I still want to hear what you have to say. I want that more than anything.

[Almost immediately, he burrows down into the scarf with his chin, trying to bury his face in it as best he can without using his hands.]

...Are you carrying a knife? Right now.

[The question makes him blink, but he barely hesitates before responding.]

I'm always carrying a knife. Do you want me to throw it away?

No. I want to borrow it.

[...Which, it occurs to him belatedly, is probably the last thing a sensible person would do or want to do, is give a knife to anyone who's currently in the kind of state he's in. So he stumbles over himself, a little, trying to amend.]

I'm going to throw it. Into...I don't know. That tree. Something. Not us. You'll get it back.

[Fortunately, Giorno isn't all that sensible. He comes from, and understands intimately, the school of thought that says beat your fears out. So he disentangles himself, somewhat reluctantly, and pulls a stiletto out of his boot. Like you do.]

Is this okay?

...Yeah.

[He looks around a bit, eventually settling on a tree, and likewise separates himself from where he and Giorno are standing long enough to walk over to it and examine the trunk. He moves up next to it, marks off his own height against it, and shifts his hand down slightly to find eye level, which seems to be a target he seals with one finger, like a promise.

That completed, he steps back a pace or two, so there's now a short span of distance between where he's standing and the tree, and this time he motions to the space in the open air at eye level height.]

Watch here. It'll be right here.

[And then he comes back, extending his hand in silent request for the stiletto.]

[He watches Jotaro go, but all that's in his eyes is curiosity. It's very strange, what's happening now, but what isn't strange, honestly? Their whole lives are insanity now, and he's used to it. At least Jotaro is moving; at least he's doing something, even if Giorno doesn't know what it is.]

[With Jotaro, it's easier not to worry about controlling every little detail.]

[When the instruction comes, he nods peaceably and hands over the knife.]

All right, Jotaro. I'll watch.

[He nods slowly, the breath he draws in audible in the chill air as he walks back a good ten or twenty paces and tests the balance of the knife in his hand. It's roiling in his stomach now, the thought that he's going to do this, but there's talking about it and there's trying to make it possible to understand, and maybe some of it is just that he needs to take this back for himself, too, bit by bit.

Giorno lost friends to the power of erased time. That's the reason why it ought to be him, Jotaro thinks. Not because Dio is his father, not because he yells muda muda muda without realizing it. Because they're alike, too, in nurture as well as nature, in the losses that have made them who they are.]

Don't take your eyes off of it.

[And he urges Star Platinum to stop time.

Of the five seconds he has allotted to him, he spends four just staring at the knife, at the tree. At Giorno, frozen in place. Four seconds of nothing but listening to his heart beating and feeling Star Platinum come whispering up next to him with undisguised concern, half-curling around him in silent response to his equally silent distress.

In the last second, he braces and throws, and watches the knife hurtle through the air and gradually slow to a stop, poised in the air a foot or so from the space that he'd indicated for Giorno to watch.

His power ticks away, sapping some of his strength with it, and time resumes.]

[He is dutiful. He stands. He watches. He doesn't take his eyes off of that spot. Even though he's beginning to get the sense of what's going to happen now - where else could this go? he knows enough that he understands the general shape of this fear - he does what he's asked.]

[Time stops. And time resumes.]

[There is the knife, hanging in midair. And there is the knife, slamming into the tree trunk. But Giorno does not take his eyes off of where it was.]

[He isn't shaking, but it's a close thing. He also isn't blinking.]

...That was my face.

[And he remembers, then, as the words fade away into the frigid air, that Giorno was there on the day his mother arrived, the day they'd told Jonathan, when Kakyoin had fixed the rip in the front of his hat that he'd never wanted to ask for assistance with before.

Giorno looks...petrified. He wonders when it'll be the right time to say that it wasn't one, but dozens. Probably never, because things like that should never happen to anyone.

Fighting his father was like dying slowly over the span of hours and hours. And there was no point in screaming for help because there was no one to come.

He sticks his hands in his pockets, and goes to retrieve the knife.]

I could see it by then. He knew I could see what he did.

. . . Mmhmm.

[It surprises him, that the first thing he feels after the fear is anger. What was it he had said to Kakyoin? Anger is something that people use to cover up embarrassment or grief or frustration. Or fear. Or guilt. Is that what he's doing now? Because he's not angry at Dio, even though he knows that was not in any way self-defense, it was sadism. He's angry with Jotaro.]

[Why are you showing me this? Did you think I didn't believe you that it was horrible? What do you have to prove to me!]

[He takes a moment to think, to pick his feelings apart. Like Bruno said - figure out which parts of it you can use and which parts you can't. Can he use any part of this? Does any of it do any good?]

[Maybe not right this moment. Maybe sometime soon, it will. For now, he puts it away and, at last, lifts his eyes to meet Jotaro's.]

This is what you think will happen now. Again.

This is what I remember, every time someone defends him. That whole night, everything he did. Who even thinks of something like that? How fucked up do you have to be?

[He scrubs at his eyes with the back of one hand, yanking the knife free of the wood with the other; it's in deep, and takes some effort to work it free.]

Jonathan came here thinking that bastard was dead and he wasn't, he waited a hundred damn years for us and then he came back, so I had to kill him and it was supposed to be done with, and now we're all here and he's back again, and I don't know why it won't just...

[But then he stops, seeming to realize he's said more than he might've intended to, in words raw and miserable and more emotional than rational by a long shot. And when he does, there's a moment where his expression just turns vulnerable and bewildered, like the fact that those feelings had come out at all is an astonishment and an uncertain miracle.]

If he's alive, he's a threat. I can't see it any other way, Giorno.

[Did you come here to get angry with him? No. No, you didn't. Because he has a right to be angry, and you know it, and you don't. So stand here and listen, and if it becomes too much, find something to do with your hands.]

[He watches Jotaro with quiet eyes, listens as attentively as anyone has ever listened to anything in the history of the world. The world, in fact, turns on his attention, as it always does.]

[The World. Does he feel guilty for passing that piece of information along? No. He should. But he doesn't. So many things he should, and doesn't. What can someone do with a name?]

[Everything. A name is everything.]

[He crosses over to the tree and tugs the stiletto out, frowning slightly at the blade as he ascertains its condition. Perfect, of course; he always keeps his knives perfect. Carefully, he wipes the edge off with his shirt until it's quite clean.]

And you see it as your job to take care of threats.

...Don't make it sound like I want it to be. What I want is for it to be done.

[Though he can't quite make himself go the extra step further, and complete the logic. So it has to stay implied, the concluding thought that it would be done if I just went and killed him.

Is he, in the end, the real monster lurking out in the shadows of these woods?]

Isn't that what it's going to take?

I'm not making it sound like anything, Jotaro. I'm trying to understand.

[It's easy to see that Jotaro wants to be done. It's just as easy to see that he doesn't understand how it can be. If he's being honest, Giorno can't blame him. If Diavolo were here, he'd kill him immediately. Even if he were a child.]

[Unless, of course, he were not precisely Diavolo at the time.]

[Everything is complicated.]

What is "done"? Is it "not afraid"? Is it "safe"? Because you'll still be afraid if he's dead. You'll be afraid of yourself on top of everything else. And in this city, you'll never be safe. So what part of the definition of "done" am I missing?

[That turn of phrase gives him pause. I'm trying to understand. That's...what he wants, right? Maybe not just what he wants, either, but what he craves. Always, because he knows his faults, whether it's in the terrible things that have happened to him or in the simple everyday flaws of wishing he could speak with actions instead of words, it's understanding at the end of the day that he needs.

Kakyoin understands him when he doesn't have words. Giorno understands him, and is trying to do it again.

Maybe he needs that so badly right now because he can't even understand himself, and so deep down something inside him is crying out for someone else to do it, and make it make sense to him.

So he absorbs the questions, asking them of himself as much as Giorno is asking of him. When is he done? He knows it's what he wants, but that doesn't mean he knows how to get there. Does that make it blind whim, a fantasy he really can't have?]

...I don't know. It's "not feeling like this". Done is when he's not just...out there where he can fuck up my life any more than he already has.

["Not feeling like this". That's a hard one. Some of it, maybe even most of it, has to come from the inside. But some of it has to come from the outside, too. No one can feel safe without safety existing. No one can move past the need for safety, on to other things in life, without safety being there enough to be taken for granted.]

[He tucks the stiletto back into his boot and runs his hand over the trunk of the tree. There's a gouge there. He never can feel anyone else's pain, he thinks he would die if he could, but sometimes he thinks he can imagine it, hurt bleeding like sap over his fingers and oozing under his skin.]

If you don't know, then maybe we can figure it out.

[His hand glows gold; he presses his palm flat to the wound in the tree.]

Have you seen how he talks to Jonathan lately?

[I have.]

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