Chapter Text
The others might have been worried about him, and he might have acknowledged that if either of them had the balls to express it in his presence. Mista shot nervous looks at him when he thinks he’s not looking, sometimes at Trish too if she’s in eyeshot. But she is more likely to speak up about it.
Once she did, as blunt as always.
“Hey, when was the last time you slept? And I mean in your room upstairs, not in here.” She had said, gestured to his office, all mahogany and marble-topped tables. Not comfortable to nap on.
Giorno had only replied, “There’s no need to worry. I’ve only been busy.”
“You’ve been ‘busy’ for weeks. You need to rest.”
“I can’t do anything about that, Trish.”
“You can at least act like a human for once! My god, what is y-!”
Mista pulled her back and took over, speaking quieter but no less firmly.
“You look like shit. Please Boss, before you get sick or something.”
Giorno laughed hollow, his face in a stiff grimace. “I don’t even think that’s possible anymore.”
All three fell quiet. Mista, who had been resting his hands on the desk, stood up slowly and glanced at Trish. She was dressed for a meeting with her agent and hadn’t even been expected for a visit to the Palazzo today, wrapped up in a long black felt coat and an ornate silver belt. Her delicate and expensive smelling perfume had begun to fill the room in place of their words. Before Giorno could begin to speak again Mista took Trish’s wrist.
“You should head out before you’re late. And,” he said to her, “I don’t want you to hear this.”
Trish’s face hardened. She didn’t like that. “I want to hear it,” She looked back over to Giorno, sat stiffly at his desk with a pen still in his hand. “It’s still my business.”
Giorno lifted the pen to wave at them both. “I’m no-one’s business. Neither of you should be concerned about my health if I tell you I’m fine.” He said. When Trish looked ready to spit at him again his eyes turned cold and he added, “And, I am perfectly fine.”
Neither looked convinced. That tone was one he used more commonly on those he was planning to coerce into some contract, or the poor souls he had crossed paths with the previous spring before taking the throne of Passione. It was no less effective on his allies and friends. It made Mista’s blood run cold, leaving him perhaps scared a little by a boy three years his junior. Trish had more of a resilience against it knowing they were the same age and coming from such similar circumstances before meeting earlier in the year. And after all, she had her own habits for getting what she wants from others.
“There are better ways to distract yourself.” She said.
Giorno said nothing.
“You’re doing a pretty terrible job at it actually.” She sighed. “It’s kinda pathetic if I’m being frank.”
Mista looked like he wanted to grin but nodded instead. “If you keep this up the others will think you’re not cut out for the job.”
Giorno looked down at the desk. He traced the edge of a document with one finger slowly. “I know.”
But what more can I do? Was what he was ready to say, but it wasn’t worth asking for their help. He was sure they had enough on their plate without him doubling their grief.
It was disgusting, grief.
A lonely childhood and an apathetic adolescence led Giorno to the unique position at the age of 15 where he felt the loss of a loved one, and for the first time, it hurt. Sure, he could imagine being affected by the death of his mother or step-father but surely not to the degree to which he had been shattered –
Was that the right word to use?
It was hard to tell. Grief might have been the singular most revolting sensation of them all. It turned his life from the carefully crafted slope up from the gutter to stardom into a fractured timeline now freshly split by the new and unexpected concepts of “before” and “after”. He almost wished someone had warned him that it would happen like that. Not only feeling that life in the past tense now existed in two different hues but also how it split him too.
“Giorno!”
Mista snapped fingers under his nose, bringing Giorno back to attention.
“Pardon?”
“If you’re ready to do your job again, I’d come all the way down here to give you some news.” Mista said, stuffing his hands deep into his pockets.
“Sorry. But,” he gestured to Trish, who didn’t seem ready to leave, “is it not rude to speak about business around someone it doesn’t concern?”
“Oh, no I guess so. But this- Well, I think she’d be pissed if we didn’t tell her about it at some point anyhow.”
Trish shifted her weight. “Yeah, I believe you.”
“Carry on then.” Giorno said.
“It’s the latest bit of news from the SPW Foundation, received at 09:23 from Washington. They’ve finally agreed to your request.” Mista said. He sounded anxious, although Giorno’s face cleared as he said it.
“Were there any details given?”
“Uhh. The message said this Thursday coming, no time given yet though. It’ll be at the reception house, not any of our…professional venues.”
“Ah, makes sense.” Trish said. “Looks waaaay less like a place the mafia would work. It might even pass for a four-star hotel if you squint.” She oozed sarcasm, but Giorno ignored her.
“Were there any details about who would be meeting me?”
Mista paused, wracking his brain to remember one of the many foreign names attached to the message. “A Signor Kujo? That might be wrong.”
“No. That’s right.”
“That someone important? I don’t think I’ve ever heard of him.”
“He might be.” Giorno had become suddenly engrossed in his documents again. “I guess I’m going to find out soon enough.”
He pushed some folders around and pulled out a small leather diary. The date was marked in with neat handwriting and some text in his own code underneath for more mysterious purposes. Both Trish and Mista felt that the conversation was coming to end; that they weren’t going to get much else out of him at this point. So Trish bit the bullet. She leant across the desk, her coat’s fabric dragging over neatly arranged piles of paper and card. A hand shot under Giorno’s chin and grasped his collar, pulling his face up to hers in one swift motion. Two pairs of blue eyes stared into each other, one steely and concerned, the other surprised and severely under-slept.
“You,” Trish said, talking loud enough for Mista to hear her clearly behind her, “are a child. No matter how many suits you wear or meetings you hold or times you’ve treated me like another of your greasy subordinates. There are people who put their lives in your hands and as much as you may hate it that means people are going to get hurt and you might choose to blame yourself for that, but it does not give you the right to act like you’re the only one hurting. You’re a child, Giorno we both are, so act like one.”
She let him go, her hand sliding from his silky collar to the surface of the desk.
“Try giving yourself a break. Start there.”
Mista closed the office door behind them. The room had become uncomfortably warm after that and neither wanted to give Giorno another opportunity to chastise them for poking into his business, so they left.
Trish sighed and pulled her coat around her tighter.
“Hey Trish?” Mista’s voice was tinged with hesitancy.
“Yeah?”
“Do you think that I’m greasy?”
*
Three days later a slick black car carried a group of immensely wealthy American officials from the Napoli City airport to the newly refurbished Passione reception building. It was smaller than most of the other sites owned by the organisation but represented a more hospitable side of the gang and so used every inch of space to accommodate its guests and provide a somewhat luxury experience for the evening.
Mista hated it.
Plush velvet seating and green marble felt cheap when it was regularly hosting those from overseas who were readily dealing in the same kind of business he’d reserved for the deepest and hottest parts of hell. Everyone has standards, and Mista was proud to know his weren’t the lowest.
Giorno fidgeted next to him. He’d never seen him nervous before, but then again this might not be nervousness per se. He might have just been very concerned by the alignment of his cufflinks. And the fold of his jacket’s breast. And his braid. There were a lot of component parts to his outfit this evening, Mista noted. More shiny than usual. It wasn’t a surprise to him after overhearing a rumour that one of the ambassadors from the SPW was a man the Boss suspected to be a relative. If that was what had kept Giorno up for the last few nights before today, he didn’t blame him.
They stood on a stripe of dark green carpet leading through the foyer from the closed front doors, shoulder to shoulder.
“I called Fugo in this morning. He’s on the east balcony with Sheila so they’ll see anything from up there before I can.” Mista said.
“That’s unnecessary.”
Mista didn’t turn to face Giorno and continued, “I’ve looked into these people we’re hosting, if you don’t mind me saying so. This Kujo guy sounds formidable.”
Giorno kicked the side of his carefully polished shoe into Mista’s. “I didn’t request for him to visit just to initiate a fight. This is purely-”
The doors opened, Trish pushing through with one arm, the other opening out to the foyer to lead in the guests. Half a dozen men and women in clean suits followed her into the hall from the evening air. Most looked tired from their flight and several were tugging at their collars, not used to the late August heat of Italy. Trish trotted over to Giorno and Mista and whispered something into Giorno’s ear before slipping behind them to find some drinks to offer the SPW assembly.
Despite the discomfort shown by the rest of the guests one of them stood out with unnerving composure. Mista easily found his eyes drawn to the man, for many reasons. First, he was the only one who did not seem to be fazed at all by the heat and wore a clean white trench coat reaching almost down to his ankles. Second, he was enormous, and the huge coat only added to the impression he was giving of a walking iceberg moving slowly towards Mista across the room. Third, the man was tickling Mista’s déjà vu, in an unnerving and entirely unpleasant way.
This man drew close enough for Mista to see his irises, a sharp green-blue, from under the shade of his hat-brim. As he tipped his head to greet the two it clicked for Mista. This was the same aura of reserved confidence Giorno had given off the day he’d first introduced himself in that restaurant.
“Mr Kujo, I presume.” Giorno said, stiffly. His hands were tight at his sides, possibly to keep them from tugging at his cuffs again, but his face was the usual mask of angelic calm.
Kujo didn’t respond to Giorno but glanced at Mista beside him, who was beginning to feel his insides clench up under his gaze. He really hoped that wasn’t showing on his face, but in all likelihood, it was. Crap. Is his whole family like this?
“If you’re ready now the room behind us is prepared to hold us for the duration of our…conversation. Your friend is waiting for you inside.” Giorno held an arm out behind him to one of the closed doors leading out of the reception hall, flanked by two small tables topped by tall vases of white lilies. Little details insisted upon by Trish. Mista now suspected the pomp was closer to insult than impression to Kujo.
He nodded and silently followed Giorno into the room with a flap of his coat and the soft click of the door’s lock.
Mista was left stunned in the hall. He wasn’t needed, that was no surprise in the end, but the air surrounding those two had been heavy enough to leave him out of breath once they’d left him alone again as if he’d been put through some sort of rigorous exam. Trish nudged his shoulder, appearing beside him without a sound.
“Did he not want a drink?” She asked. She was holding two empty glasses in one hand and a half full wine bottle in the other.
“No,” Mista replied, “We should leave them be.”
They retired to a corner of the reception area where several tables were set out to let guests or hosts rest beside the small tables set out with snacks and refreshments, once Mista had done his rounds greeting the others in the room. The representatives were much readier to talk to them than he had expected, to Trish’s surprise as well. Despite the fact she technically wasn’t affiliated with the gang the SPW workers and Kujo’s entourage had been happily chatting with her for the evening.
After almost an hour of leaving the two in the room in the back Mista had left Trish to entertain the entourage while he kept an eye of the locked door from a chair near the tables.
Polnareff had refused to give Giorno much more information about his family than cryptic glimmers of the truth, even less to Mista and the others. He’d claimed it wasn’t his place to tell “the poor boy”; that he had the right to hear the whole story from the mouth of his real family. That was an idea that really set Giorno off, even if he would have denied it. After hearing there was in fact a family to speak of a whole swarm of contacts to the Speedwagon Foundation had been sent across the Atlantic within days. All were requesting a formal greeting in Napoli. Relations with the foundation had been remote but benevolent before then, so it was a major step. Then some time later a couple more delicately worded and carefully addressed letters were sent asking for a representative of the Joestar family, by request of Giovanna himself.
The quiet frenzy Giorno had been sent into by the excitement might have made his condition worse for those last few days, perhaps dreaming up what his true family would be like, how they would treat him, or what they’d think of him and his work.
But that was just a fantasy Mista weaved as he aimlessly twisted his hat between his hands under the table. He doubted the Boss really had time for that kind of childish stuff when there were more important things to deal with along with the sudden introduction of blood relatives to the Don of Passione; considering that the last time something like this came to light for a Boss, there was no happy ending.
He glanced over to Trish. He really wished they talked more, her and Giorno. They had more in common than Giorno wanted to admit, and Trish liked to remind them both of it.
“Excuse me?” A small young man, Japanese and nervous, ducked into Mista’s view from behind a stack of buttered rolls. “Has Mr. Kujo returned yet?”
“No.” Mista replied. “They’re taking their time.”
“Oh.” The young man looked down at his shoes, then glanced hopefully at the empty chair next to Mista which Trish had left a while ago. “May I?”
“Yeah sure.” Mista waved him off, keeping an eye on the closed door.
The young man bowed and collapsed into the seat, exhausted from the long journey and Trish’s interrogation.
“You made the right decision, getting away from her I mean. If you weren’t careful she’d talk you into letting her use your jacket as a hand towel.”
The man seemed to think Mista was joking and waited for a follow-up, but he didn’t blink or even break eye contact with the door across the hall. He put out a hand. “Koichi Hirose. I’m a friend of Mr. Kujo. He asked me along to keep him company but I’m genuinely quite fond of Italy so I’m glad to back anyway.”
Mista took his hand and shook it, turning in his seat to face him properly. “Mista. Is it often that he asks for…company on business trips? He looked more like the type to take care of things himself.”
“Oh, well. I think this is a unique circumstance.” Koichi said.
“Because it’s Italy?”
“Because it’s family.”
Well, at least that’s cleared it up, Mista thought. It made sense in way, maybe Kujo was as nervous as the Boss was to finally meet a relative. It was almost endearing, if both didn’t scare the crap out of him.
“Oh,” Koichi paused, a glass of water halfway to his mouth, “I don’t think I was supposed to tell you that.”
“Don’t sweat it,” Mista said, “It’s not hard to guess. They look sorta similar, if you look real close. And if you ignore the huge height difference.”
Koichi laughed. “Yeah, I suppose. I thought that too the first time I met him.”
“You’ve met the Boss before?”
“Uh,” Koichi looked embarrassed again; he wasn’t used to these kinds of conversations. But he appeared to give up on scolding himself and carried on. “We met last Spring, before he was Don. That was on Mr. Kujo’s request as well so I couldn’t get to know him much before I had to head back home to Japan. But from what I did see of him I could tell he wasn’t a bad guy, even if he’s a little spooky sometimes.”
“Yeah I know what you mean.” Mista said. Something Koichi had said bugged him, and he frowned. “Did you say you were in Italy to find Giorno? On Kujo’s request?”
Koichi stuck his nose deep into his glass, not meeting Mista’s gaze.
“Did Kujo know he was a relative? And he didn’t even let us know?”
“He’s a complicated man.”
Mista sighed. “Yeah they’ve got that in common too. But really,” He rubbed the bridge of his nose. “he could have let Giorno know before now. That guy’s really hung up on the whole family thing right now.”
Koichi looked troubled.
“What do you know about their family?” Mista asked tentatively.
“A bit.” He didn’t look like the type to lie. “But it’s not my place to tell.”
“Yeah. I’ve heard that before.”
Mista decided to change the topic before the guy got any more anxious. He gave the impression of a small dog with an over-eager, yet gentle, temperament.
“Your Italian’s really good, by the way. So, how did you first meet Kujo?”
He laughed. “Thanks. That’s a funny story actually, it-”
The door behind Mista clicked open. The sound was quiet enough for Koichi to not notice above the noise of the guests about them but Mista shot up out of his seat with a clatter to face the opening door. Mr. Kujo immediately swept past the table and vanished into the crowd without a word. After a moment of awkward silence Koichi shuffled his feet then followed the man after a polite nod to Mista and to Giorno, who had just emerged from the room behind him.
Mista waited with his eyes trained on Giorno, waiting for a command to usher the other guests out for the evening, or to follow Kujo. But he said nothing so Mista edged closer.
“Boss?”
Giorno looked up at Mista, not giving anything away in his expression.
“Take me home.”
There was nothing ulterior behind those words. And the way he said it didn’t let Mista ask any further questions, Giorno knew.
Mista nodded and pointed to the side of the room where a door opened out to a parking space where the car they’d taken here was waiting. He then turned on his heel to find Trish before leaving but Giorno’s thin, but strong hand closed around his forearm.
“I’m leaving now.”
Then there was little he could do. “Alright.”
They left, weaving through the guests careful not to bump into wandering elbows and shoulders, an easier task for the short and nimble Giorno than Mista. As he slipped through the backdoor Mista caught Trish’s eyes and gave her a tight-lipped smile. She only nodded back and turned away to, assumedly, send the rest of the room to a hotel booked out by Giorno the previous day.
Outside the night had turned cold. Giorno silently waited in the car, the driver’s door held open beside him as he undid his collar and brusquely pulled a hair tie from the end of his braid.
That bad.
Mista was smart enough not to say a word to him as he took the driver’s seat, pulled out into the road and drove them back to the Palazzo in under ten minutes. With the car’s roof down the night air pulled Giorno’s hair entirely free of the neat and meticulously kept braid which, along with those strange little loops, had become as much a symbol of his position as the entourage of armed gangsters who followed him all hours of the day. Mista suspected most of the lower ranking affiliates of the gang wouldn’t even recognise the boy without his signature hairstyle.
Giorno leant back in the passenger’s seat, the blouse under his stiff jacket flapping after the top two buttons had been pulled out. He screwed his eyes shut.
It wasn’t a pretty sight. Seeing disappointment or heartbreak from the outside was common for Mista at this point in his life, he’d become used to it after all that he and his closest friends had experienced six months ago.
Only, it was new on this kid. New and not right.
He held back from asking about it, not wanting a mouthful of beetles or a spine-shattering stare for his troubles.
Once back at HQ, Mista insisted on preparing a hot drink for him before heading for bed. Giorno agreed but vanished as soon as Mista turned his back to turn on the kettle in the small kitchen next to the Boss’s quarters, possibly to his room next door. Mista got to work quickly; afraid Gio would fall asleep before he had the chance to ask about the events of the next day.
They still had the responsibility of hosting the SPW workers for the morning and afternoon of Friday, bringing them around the city then recounting the events of that spring in further detail than had been shared prior. But perhaps not the whole truth, even then. The only individuals who knew the whole truth of that week were the three who survived the experience, and the one who technically hadn’t. Giorno refused to share it with any other of his closest associates and advised Trish and Mista to do the same, as if they needed to know that.
In fact, Giorno had spoken little about the specifics of that time even to them. He had managed to circumnavigate the topic with expert charisma every time they came close to even joking about it. It might have pissed Mista off, acting as if even the less gruesome details were a delicate topic, if he had the balls to press the conversation.
Mista thought this over as he dropped another spoonful of something sickeningly sweet into the mug of steaming chocolate, just like it should be. The idea of this much sugar in one cup turned his stomach and made his teeth ache but it was how Giorno liked it, so he had no right to argue.
He came to a stop outside his door. It opened into a smaller corridor which then led to many rooms including a bedroom, a bathroom, an office slightly smaller than the one downstairs, and a room large enough to entertain half a dozen, if needed. The door was currently closed but not locked. Mista considered knocking but decided against it knowing that there was a high chance that Giorno had already fallen asleep from exhaustion. Weeks of unrest had to catch up on him sometime and this was as good a time as any. He pushed through into the anteroom and came to the bedroom door, resting his ear against it to listen for movement, or snoring.
He heard a crash.
Mista threw the door open and stumbled into the master bedroom, Pistols already buzzing around his head.
Giorno stood in the middle of the room, chest heaving and staring right back at Mista with wide eyes. Most of the furniture have been thrown across the room, all of it broken. A table lay in half by Mista’s feet, a broken vase next to it. Several drawers had been pulled right out of the dresser by the bed and mounds of clothing were scattered across the floor, over and under fragments of wood and plaster. The curtains remained drawn but had been slashed from the top to the floor and now let in a thin stream of moonlight to cut through the room and fall across Giorno’s shoulders.
He closed his eyes, still breathing heavily, and sunk to his knees among the wreckage. His head tilted back, it could have been beautiful. He felt sick.
“Should I g-” Mista began, then rephrased, “Do you want me to stay.”
*
Four hours later he was still awake. Mista had fallen asleep, curled up on the small sofa after he’d cleared away some splinters and a couple of stray shirts, and was now quietly snoring. Giorno sat with his back to the sofa, legs spread out towards the open window, head inches from Mista’s. A tray with two mugs of stone-cold chocolate sat on a table.
Curse it.
“Curse it.” he said, knowing he wouldn’t wake Mista up, a notoriously heavy sleeper. He wondered if Mista would be upset; waking up to find him still awake after all that. Pity, there was nothing left for him to dream about anyway.
There he was over-reacting. The rational, and larger portion of Giorno’s mind spoke up. Nothing had changed. It was the same as before, wasn’t it?
Giorno had blamed most of his troubles from earlier childhood on the lack of a positive father figure and it wasn’t much of a stretch to say it was true. The closest he had come to one was his brief but invigorating relationship with Buccellati, the lasting effects of which might have confirmed his suspicions in that department. Searching for a father wasn’t hard, he’d already created one for himself. One which had on countless occasions swept into his life and carried small, scared and hopelessly restless Haruno away from Napoli and his mother and her husband and Italy itself and out across the ocean and to a place where he could make a world for himself. A man with the same birthmark he had.
He had grown out of that soon after hitting his teenage years. And those dreams were quickly replaced, if not evolved, into the dream he was living out now. Yet he was still in want of a father, in a way, and the man in the photograph remained somewhat of a mystery at the back of his mind despite apparently growing out of it.
Maybe worse than hearing the truth was seeing the raw disgust in the eyes of the man who had met his father.
No wonder you didn’t want to see me.
He halfway wanted to apologise for dragging him across the world for it. Just to relive a battle from over a decade ago and to have to see what might as well have been that man’s face again. And to be received by nothing but childish denial and what must have been taken as a tantrum.
Giorno made a mental note to send flowers to Kujo Jotaro. Or something.
He eased himself up to his feet, wobbling a little when one of his legs had fallen asleep from sitting for so long. A splinter the size of a finger was kicked out of the way as he walked to where he’d thrown his jacket and pulled out a small leather wallet. Inside, still, was a folded photograph. But he didn’t take it out. He wouldn’t give that man the pleasure of being looked upon again, not just yet.
The wallet dropped to the dresser’s top, next to a scant few framed photographs of his mother, one borrowed from Mista of Buccellati and Abbaccio from ’99, and one of the Napoli skyline taken by himself the previous summer from his school dorm room window. He rarely spent time in his room outside of sleep, so they didn’t get looked at much. But he kept the room clean and dusted off the frames when he remembered, which was quite often. Mista once jokingly asked why there weren’t any of him – Giorno, he meant – but it was for the simple reason that there weren’t any taken of him. At least not recent ones; all that he had kept from his childhood were of a kid that very few would recognise as him anyway.
Trish had then offered to take a photo of them together but Giorno had declined. He couldn’t remember why.
As he rubbed some plaster dust off one photo frame a glint caught his eye. He turned to find where the light had bounced off, thinking that he could have broken a mirror or something but once he found what he was looking for his heart skipped a beat.
A wall had been partially cracked by the force with which a table had been shoved into it, Giorno would have blushed if he were the sort, and a small portion had come free from the brickwork to reveal a hole about the size of a shoebox. The hole itself was no surprise; Giorno was the one who put it there many months ago. He was only taken aback by the reappearance of what he had hidden inside.
The small, and highly polished despite its age, arrowhead leered at him from its hiding place at knee-height. Giorno crouched down and almost reached out to touch it again, before pulling back his hand and shoving it between his knees to stop himself. Of course, no-one else knew exactly where the arrow had ended up after Roma but most who knew about the arrow had assumed it was still embedded within his own body. That might have been half-true, and Giorno would have explained that to his friends if he understood it himself. He had put it in his wall the first night in the Passione HQ, and had woken up the next morning with it next to him in the bed. Some days he felt a pressure on his chest in its shape. Others it remained in the wall.
Once, on a memorable occasion, it had turned up in his laundry.
Despite its wandering habits it didn’t seem to want to leave him. Thankfully. And he had yet to have any need of it since Roma either, so he simply ignored it whenever it left the hole in the wall.
Giorno considered the devious little thing. On countless occasions he’d wondered exactly what the arrow was expecting him to do with it since it had hung around for so long out of use. The only time he had used it was nothing more than a blurred memory, a shimmering golden haze and the figure of Requiem standing some distance away and-
The memory made his head hurt to think about, so he left it at that. If it wasn’t something a human was meant to process, then there was no need to step out of his place. He already had enough experience stepping into the boundaries of gods and between life and death. He hated it. But he was always going to be drawn to it.
He felt his hand begin to rise towards the arrow again and he snapped out of his daydreams.
The realm of God was where his father had been striving for and it was what killed countless people and many of Kujo’s and Polnareff’s close friends and family. Even the similarities between his and his father’s childhoods were too much to ignore. Hearing the slivers of information about his life in England before taking the mask were tantalising, as if he were hearing the story of his own life from a different world, one where the boy with no true family and an insatiable hunger for control over the world he had been forced to live in chooses to become a monster rather than fight them.
The similarities ended there, as far as Giorno could tell. It sounded as if the man Kujo met in the eighties had little in common with the angry young boy from East London.
He stood, tearing his eyes away from the arrowhead and looking over to the table, wondering if he could possibly pull it over to cover the gaping hole in the wall until he had time to fix it again. The table had a mirror still propped up on it, one which had miraculously not been smashed. Giorno found himself angling it up to face him, the light through the window strong enough to see a clear reflection.
His hair had been mussed entirely by the ride home and his arrival, not resembling his usual craftmanship at all and a couple curls sticking out around his face at odd angles. A small down feather from the sofa clung to his wrecked fringe. He looked younger, maybe because he had ditched the suit jacket and was now covered in dust and dirt and might have passed as 16 for the first time in a long while. As he pushed dirty curls away from his eyes he began to compare his features with his father’s after years of being too old for that.
His eyes were the wrong colour, for one thing. His face was rounder, younger, his jawline not yet one of a grown man. With close inspection a small constellation of pale freckles ran over his nose and upper cheeks; something he hid well with a small amount of makeup when meeting associates. Too much of him was still a child but even more was far too much like that man. He imagined himself taller, broader and colder. Sharper features and even sharper eyes. His hands weren’t slim and graceful, they were large and strong and had held dozens of throats until they turned cold. They killed his only remaining relative and then half of his adoptive family. They were hands that might have held him as a child, if for only the briefest of moments. They also might have killed him, in another world.
Giorno ran a hand through his hair and hissed through clenched teeth. It was too much to think about and his body still begged to fall asleep, even standing up. The ground swung under him. A dull throb at the back of his skull was thrumming along to his heartbeat. It was too much. He was thinking about unnecessary things again. Unnecessary, useless things. Useless, useless and driving him up the walls.
When he looked at his hands again they were covered in blood. Blood of his brother. Then of his father. Then his brother again. Then he held Bruno, but not really. He was holding flowers. For a funeral he had arranged.
The flowers bled.
He loved flowers. They followed him everywhere. He took flowers wherever he went, in a way. He gave flowers to his friends like goodbyes.
His hands held nothing. His hands held the arrow. Giorno frowned. It was heavier than he remembered, then again, he hadn’t held it in months and he was apparently forgetting a lot of things.
“What do you want?”
Whether he or the arrow said it was not clear; the details of the room around him had begun to fade away since it came to be in his hands and things were getting harder to focus on, as if in a dream. Specks of light danced in the corner of his eyes and his fingertips were turning numb. It was just like the last time he’d taken it for himself, it didn’t feel real, but it sent pure electricity up his spine in anticipation.
Requiem had, as far as Giorno had understood, given its user whatever he wanted. Polnareff wanted a way to disable Diavolo by putting him inside his own dying body at the last moment. Giorno himself had only wanted some way to take Diavolo down outside of the reach of K. Crimson’s power. Both times the ability gifted to them was more than they had bargained for. Giorno feared giving the arrow the slightest hint of a wish without careful consideration would result in a disaster.
“What do I want?”
One very dangerous idea raised an ugly head in his mind.
Whatever Requiem chose to make of that wish Giorno had no plans to let it become a threat again to anyone but himself; since he was so determined to throw himself down the path of destruction once more without his friends’ permission it felt only fitting. He glanced over his shoulder at Mista still asleep, a mound on his sofa which rolled over with a quiet grunt. Trish must be fast asleep too right now elsewhere in the city, tucked away in one of her family’s flashy apartments. God knows where Fugo is.
Giorno turned his back on Mista after one last long look. Requiem faced him, waiting. A cascade of gold and pale opal, hard to look at directly and already giving him a dull headache from the effort. No one besides himself and the old Boss had seen it, thank God. The thing looked like a Lovecraftian-Klimt monstrosity.
It tilted its head, staring at him like a cat at a bird through glass.
Giorno shivered and dropped his arms to his sides, the metal of the arrow rubbing ice-cold against his thigh through thick cotton. It was going to hurt again, that was to be expected. It might even be something like what it had done to Diavolo, who knows.
Like pulling out a baby tooth it was better to get it over with than to stand around thinking about getting it over with. Even if it was an irrational, dangerous, and wholly unnecessary tooth he was pulling on.
“Take me to him.” he said.
Requiem was fast and silent, plunging an arm deep through his chest in one swift motion.
Giorno gasped and his room exploded into fragments of light and noise and it felt like water was rising above his toes then his feet and shins then it was gone then it was raining and then he couldn’t breathe at all and-
Letting oblivion pass right through you hurts.
It really really stings. Actually, Giorno decided, it was worse than anything else he’d ever experienced before then. And that included the feeling of pushing an arrowhead into his own chest. He would much rather have that again than be on the receiving end of Requiem’s tour through the fourth dimension.
As the last of his vision faded out into a dim grey buzz and a strong ache at the back of his head, Giorno wondered if he would have made such a rash decision if he’d just listened to Trish and Mista and taken his mind away from work. If he’d slept for more than three hours at a time for the past few months. If he’d maybe spoken to them about the dreams he would have whenever he did fall asleep.
And he wished he’d payed more attention in English lessons.