digiorno | ic inbox ( ruby city ) Ⅰ

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buongiorno! sorry i missed you; i'll happily get back to you as soon as i'm done with whatever business i'm on. leave a message!

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[The assessment isn't entirely wrong. Bruno was good at what he did, but it wasn't what he was made for, not really. Giorno doesn't know everything about Bruno's past, only bits and pieces, but what he does know makes it clear that he's always been a caretaker; it's an intrinsic part of his personality, one he could never entirely turn off, not when he was working for Polpo or Diavolo. It's a strength, but in the context of Passione, it was once a great weakness, too. He took a lot of chances on a lot of people who might have proven to be his undoing. Giorno, for just one example.]

[And the question is a good one, too. For a moment Giorno isn't sure if he should say exactly what Bruno said, which almost seems too incisive, too intimate, or what he himself gleaned from how Bruno said it, which might be too revealing of Bruno. It's a fine line he's walking here. His loyalty is to Bruno, of course, but . . . Jotaro is important to him already, someone he feels compelled to protect and someone who deserves - has earned - his honesty.]

[He takes a moment to sip his cooling cappuccino, lowering his eyes to consider his options. In the end, he goes with a blend, one that will hopefully reveal exactly the right amount about each of them.]

He likes you because you're a good person. Because you seemed honest and straightforward to him. Because you wanted to help him, even though you didn't have to. He was impressed with the way you made the connection between us, and the ways you did it that were different from Kakyoin's methods.

And . . .

[Shifting slightly in his seat, he crosses one leg over the other under the table, curling his fingers around his cup.]

Because he likes people he can see potential in. I think he saw potential in you.

[You're a good person, Giorno says as the messenger of Bruno Buccellati's thoughts, and he almost (almost) wants to answer that no, he's really not. There are people in the world who are good people; he's seen them, he's met them. A lot of times they've been put in danger, and occasionally they've even died. He catches himself thinking, again, of the Speedwagon Foundation, and how he doesn't understand what it is these people believe in, this entire organization full of people who come running at his grandfather's call and put their lives on the line for a fight they have no stake in except that they were asked to be a part of it.

Two young men piloting a helicopter into the desert to deliver Iggy to them, to take a picture and wish the Joestar party good luck. To give them an update on his mother. Just like that they died, and for what? Because they were in the wrong place at the wrong time? Because they tried to help, and that put them in harm's way.

It hurts, almost, trying to imagine himself lumped in with the people who deserve to be called good. A good person wouldn't have done a lot of the things he's done in his life. And it's so tempting to say that, to just say sorry, he's wrong, and not even because he wants to be convinced otherwise but for a second he thinks he almost just wants someone to agree and confirm it.

But in the end, he doesn't. What he does is listen quietly to what Giorno says, and tries to absorb it without dwelling too long on the complications raised by the fact that it's being said about him, and tries to scrape the look of almost vulnerable confusion off his face once he's done.]

He thinks I'd make a good gangster, or something?

[It's an obvious deflection; he doesn't try to pretend otherwise. But what it'll buy him either way is a few more seconds to try to sort things out, starting with why it is that something that's obviously praise feels wrong, and digs in under his skin so much.]

[Giorno is almost watching people as he talks to them. It's an occupational requirement, honestly; to be anything other than constantly vigilant is a good way to get yourself killed. Still, there's a difference between the way he watches most people and the way he's watching Jotaro now. Most people, he watches so he can identify their weak points and use those against them. He's watching Jotaro to see if he says something wrong, if he upsets him, the way he did so many times during their first meeting.]

[And it's clear that he has, although he can't really pinpoint what it was. Jotaro wouldn't be the first person he's met who didn't want to be perceived as a good person - but on this Giorno thinks that Bruno is very much correct. Jotaro is a good person. Sad, a little broken, but not irreparably, and absolutely not bad.]

[So he doesn't soften his words, and he doesn't take anything back. Just watches and waits for Jotaro to speak - and when he does, Giorno's perfectly content to let the subject shift, because this is important information, too.]

Sort of. The gang Bruno led within Passione was . . . effective, if not particularly strong, if that makes sense. The reason it was cohesive, the reason they were able to work together, is because Bruno had hand-picked all of them, pulled them out of unsafe or disadvantageous situations and given them something else to do with their lives.

[Admittedly, that something else was working for the mob. But Giorno knows for a fact none of them would go back.]

I think what he sees in you is potential to do whatever you want to do, honestly. [A short pause, and then he nods sharply.] I see that, too.

[It's somewhere around there that his urge to fiddle with something hits its limit; ultimately, he finds his solution in the napkin holder on the table, pulling one out to fold and twist for the sake of something to do with his hands while they talk. Probably a more appropriate solution would be to just go get something from the barista at the counter, and actually behave as though he's in a cafe for something other than just the conversation, but he's honestly not all that hungry and doesn't feel like wasting perfectly good food just for the sake of occupying his hands.

But it does come with the added effect of having him sit up more properly at the table rather than slouching against the back of his chair, which is probably indicative of progress as much as it is a shift in his mood.]

I don't really know what I'm supposed to be doing.

[The napkin twists under his fingers, curling in on itself to form a spiral as it winds idly tighter and tighter.]

Not just here. I don't have anything waiting back home for me the way you've got Passione. I ought to stop skipping school and make up what I've missed, I guess.

[He shrugs a little, deciding that he might as well elaborate on that as much in response to Bruno's method of handpicking his people as to where his unease with the compliment had stemmed from.]

I fought a lot, even before I got wrapped up in all the legacy bullshit. Kept to myself, took care of myself. Put people in the hospital when I felt like it.

[Walked out on the check when he didn't like the food.]

[It sounds, to Giorno, like a confession. Jotaro seems to him the sort of person who likes to present himself to the world as - not uncaring, but somewhat distant from concerns like what he's going to do next week, next month, next year. It reminds him of the other thing that Bruno had said - he's looking for something.]

[Jotaro is absolutely looking for something. Or looking for permission to carry on with his life, even after everything he's left behind, all the people and the innocence he's lost.]

[Giorno doesn't allow Jotaro the mercy of looking away. He does, however, change the subject slightly, for all that he wants to lay his hand over Jotaro's and tell him he can figure it out, that there's time, that he has a future no matter how guilty that makes him feel.]

One of my . . . [He wonders what the word is; finally settles on:] Brothers. He missed a lot of school, did a lot of fighting. He didn't have a lot of direction, either. I don't think he really wanted it.

He wanted support, though. I think everyone does; it's just a matter of allowing yourself to take it when it's offered. And Bruno offered it, freely and without judgment. So he was able to build a life out of the mess other people had made of his.

[Taking another sip, he lets his eyes fall to the tabletop briefly.]

Do you know what you want to do? [Because there is a difference between supposed to and want to.]

[It's a simple question he's being asked, and there's a simple answer to it in exchange, except that what makes answering it considerably more complicated is the fact that the simple answer isn't the only one by any means. The easy answer is a plain no; if he had any ideas, any direction to even begin to start from, this wouldn't be nearly so difficult a prospect to cope and contend with.

The ways he wants to answer yes are harder. He's starting to accept that no matter what he does, there will always be a part of him that wants to go back to the night of January 16th and stay with his grandfather and Kakyoin instead of doubling back to go find Polnareff. There's also a much vaguer, more frustrated I want to stop feeling like this, which is all well and good but still equally directionless.

And then there's, well. There's still, admittedly, the stupid whimsy things that don't quite seem to reconcile with everything else, the weird little flashes of fascination born of finding out that dolphins sleep with only half their brain at a time.

None of that adds up into much of anything, not really.]

...No.

[He settles on that, because it's just easiest.]

I can think of a few things I'll have to do. But they're not aspirations or anything.

. . . Have to do is a start.

[Not a great one, admittedly. But just because Giorno never knew what it was like to live without a dream doesn't mean he doesn't understand the concept. His job now, or at least a great part of it, is to inspire men. Admittedly most of them are a lot older and more hardened than Jotaro Kujo, but, well.]

[Maybe Bruno isn't the only one who thinks Jotaro would be a perfectly acceptable member of the family.]

And you have some of the important things. You have support.

[He looks up at Jotaro again, then, sharp and a little calculating.]

Do you let yourself take it when you need it?

[He twists the napkin in his hands a little tighter, looping it in on itself and working the ends over and through to make it into a knot; it's difficult to do, he muses silently, because the paper is wound so tight that it won't bend properly, it resists and threatens to tear if he pushes it too hard.

It's not like he's doing it on purpose, or out to find wise and cosmic lessons in everyday things. But it does strike him that it's the sort of comment that Avdol probably would've made, if he were around to see it, and he's not sure if he finds that knowledge comforting or not.

...Or knot, as the case may be.]

You fought someone who can erase time.

[He says it quietly, gaze drifting up to meet Giorno's steadily, without wavering.]

Is that something you could describe, to someone who wasn't there with you? Not just retelling what happened. Could you make someone like me understand what it was like, just with words?

I think that whatever it is you went through, you already know it's something you're going to carry for the rest of your life. Maybe it'll fade, maybe it'll be "that one day in the past" someday, but it's not going to disappear. I think you're the kind of person who wouldn't let it disappear even if you could make it.

It's not just about taking support. There are things I can't make my support understand. And I'm pretty sure that trying and failing is just going to hurt them worse, so it's not about shouldering some burden alone. It's about trying not to screw up people who've suffered enough as it is, with something that I'm going to have to bear either way, no matter what.

[Jotaro is, as usual, remarkably perceptive, not only in his dissection of the situation but in his estimation of Giorno. It's true: Giorno wouldn't let the memory of Diavolo and King Crimson disappear, not only because his revenge is immensely satisfying to him, but because it serves as a warning of what could happen if he doesn't take care of his people properly, or if he uses his Stand unwisely.]

[Giorno's expression doesn't waver; nor does his gaze. But he does nod, just slightly, to acknowledge the predicament presented here, that Jotaro isn't (or at least isn't completely) withdrawing in an effort to isolate himself.]

I think it's a little different for you and for me. I have a certain responsibility to carry this alone. There are certain burdens that someone in my position has to carry alone, no matter how much they hurt or how beneficial it might be to speak of them. It would be . . . [He considers his wording.] Showing throat, in certain contexts. So I don't.

[Although he does have Mista and Trish, back home, who understand, even if wordlessly. That isn't the point, though, not now. The point is Jotaro, who sits in front of him twisting a napkin as though he might like to strangle it.]

[He smiles slightly, a little wistfully. Has he suffered? Yes, he has. But he can shoulder plenty of burdens. Has, does, will continue to. It's his job. This is what he's always wanted.]

I know we don't know each other very well yet, Jotaro. But I want to remind you that I'm stronger than I look.

[There's an offer under there somewhere.]

Most of the time I feel like I don't really remember much about that night. I know what happened, but I don't remember doing a lot of it. There wasn't time to be anything but fast. Fast or dead.

[He pauses, drifting on that train of thought for a minute. There's a lot he can't say, he knows, without giving up too much on the nature of his Stand, on the grim and unsettling details of how so much of that fight really went. And he of all people knows with painful clarity how even a single word can open the floodgates that way, so there's a lot that he could try to explain, but won't.

Maybe he will someday, but as Giorno has said himself — there just hasn't been time to know each other very well yet. Giorno doesn't feel like a stranger, but a lot of this isn't something he'd have an easy time dropping on his closest friend, much less anyone more distant than that.

Especially not when the villain of the tale in question happens to be that person's estranged father. There's no way to soften that, and he thinks that even if Giorno wouldn't necessarily want him to soften it, that doesn't mean he shouldn't try. It's cruel in a way that sits badly with him, to do otherwise.]

I remember I stopped my heart. He thought I was dead, so if he'd heard my heart beating, it would've been over. So I stopped it. From beating.

[And that's the other facet of the difficulty he faces in remembering that night: when he says aloud the things he'd done, he sees them with clarity now, and has the space to really understand how wrong it is to recount them so matter-of-factly.]

It's hard to tell people something like that, isn't it?

[It's strange, maybe perverse, but when Jotaro talks about stopping his heart, all Giorno can think of is seeing his own dead body, impaled, the deja-vu-double-vision moment of it all, when he both knew that he was alive and saw that he was dead, and the moment just after when he knew without doubt that he had failed in protecting one of his own. His heart had, after all, stopped, technically; it just wasn't his soul in his body. It was Narancia's.]

[There's the slightest, most infinitesimal shiver of pain across his face; then he nods again, serious and solemn.]

It's hard in several ways. Hard to relate to someone who's never fought, because there's a high likelihood they won't understand why you had to make the choices you made. Hard to relate to anyone, in case of unwanted sympathy. Hard to explain decisions rationally that were made on the spur of the moment.

[The pause that comes then is more contemplative than hesitant. There are a lot of things he could tell Jotaro here. The first thing that comes to mind is Bruno - not one particular thing that Bruno did, but what Bruno is, the sacrifices he made, even in the face of Giorno's great blundering mistake, his other failure, Gold Experience's massive limitation.]

[But that - that's Bruno's to share or not, and Giorno knows it. And so he chooses to say something else, something he might not say to someone else - to Kakyoin, or even to Bruno, in the way he says it now.]

There's also difficulty sometimes in explaining why a choice was necessary. Why mercy wasn't an acceptable option.

I told you I killed Diavolo. But I didn't tell you that he's still dying. He's going to keep dying, over and over, until the end of time. It's hard to tell people something like that. Not the same, I know. But it's . . . something I think about.

[Although he never, ever regrets.]

...The hell can you do, that you managed to beat him like that.

[He says it softly, and under his breath, but not in the sort of tone that suggests he's saying it to himself, as though he didn't mean for Giorno to hear. It's rhetorical, certainly; it's not something he expects an answer to, undoubtedly. But it's confirmation of another way that they're alike, that they've hovered around enough that he can start to see at least the shape and perimeter of it, even if he doesn't know the entirety.

He has no idea what kind of Stand power could possibly give someone the capacity to ensure that a target will die like that, die and die and die forever. It makes him think, briefly, of Dio's thirst for immortality, and the strange irony of Giorno harnessing something very much like it — a death that perpetuates, that never ends.

A power like that has to be terrible to wield. Terrible and lonely, and maybe even a little horrifying to be made its custodian.]

You ever think about it and wonder who decided you should be trusted with something like that...?

[Giorno smiles, then, a little wistful. It's his least favorite of the powers that he's capable of, the things that Gold Experience can do. And yet it's what allowed him to win in the end. Maybe he should be more grateful. But he just isn't. Jotaro's right; it's a lot of responsibility to hold in your hands, and while he knows he can handle it, it's not something that he feels connected to.]

[Maybe that makes sense. It's artificial, after all, or at least more artificial than what he started with. The arrow created Requiem, pulled Gold Experience inside out and made it unbeatable. But it reminds him uncomfortably of Dio and makes him itch to put his fingers on life instead of death, for all that he would do it again (and again and again and again) if Diavolo ever dared to show up here.]

Sometimes I do. Sometimes I think . . .

[He hesitates here, unsure if he should continue. It's something he wouldn't say to anyone from home, not even Trish, who's usually exposed to his weaker side. But it's Jotaro.]

[That, somehow, is the only reason he needs. It's Jotaro.]

Gold Experience Requiem resets. Everything. It makes an action void. And so . . . sometimes I think it feels like a test. Will I abuse it or won't I?

[The implication is obvious. Will he do what Dio would have done with it, or will he keep his promises? So far, he's done the latter, hasn't even felt a temptation towards the former. But time changes people, he supposes, and nothing's impossible.]

Do you? Wonder, I mean.

...I've thought about what you told us, a little. About what Diavolo could do, what it was like. You can...take this however you want to, get pissed at the arrogance or find it reassuring, whatever. But. ...I think, if I had to, I could beat him.

[Little things, after all, do keep him up at night, and this was one he'd mulled over at length — the difference between stopping time and erasing it, the mechanics of a battle where both participants are manipulating time, whether the ability to erase could act on something that had already ceased to move.

Before he'd known what Gold Experience (Requiem) could do, he'd assumed that Giorno must've had time-related powers of his own. It was a logical conclusion, between his relationship to Dio and the enemy he'd had to defeat with them.

But now, he realizes, he's going to be back to wondering again — not out of apprehension, but because it's always the little things like this that preoccupy him: which would outdo the other, if they were to meet head to head? Could Giorno's Stand reset time that had stopped, and force it to move again?

He'll think about that more later, assuming he hasn't destroyed the relative peace they have going with his thoughts. But if Diavolo is their mutual benchmark for powerful, then professing confidence in defeating him speaks a lot about the nature of his own Stand, while saying very little in the realm of how.]

...Yeah. Pretty constantly, I wonder. Half the time I think it's got to be some kind of mistake.

[The smile isn't so wistful anymore. It's not exactly cunning, either, not the way it can be sometimes; it's not Dio's smile, that's for sure. It's the look of someone pleased, but not happy - because Giorno is, all things considered, very rarely happy.]

[It seems right to him, though, that Jotaro be this confident. At least something came out of everything he's been through - not something he asked for, sure, but something measurable.]

It's not arrogant. It just sounds like a fact to me. I hope you never have to.

[Like he hopes he never has to face Dio; but hopes are only hopes.]

[His fingers curl on the edge of the table then, almost a nervous gesture.]

It could be a mutation. Genetically, I mean. Incredibly improbable, but - a kind of mistake.

[And that was how it came down, wasn't it? Father to son.]

...I think you care too much about the things you want to achieve for yourself, to lose control when it comes to undoing other people's.

[He watches, quietly. Watches Giorno's fingers against the table like his own are twisting the napkin still. It's like turning over stones, this conversation, like stones that are dry and unassuming on the surface but damp underneath, hiding secrets.]

I think you care too much about the things people achieve in general, to ever run the risk of erasing them lightly.

. . . I think that's true. I hope that's true.

[He looks at Jotaro for a long moment, as if trying to ascertain if he's telling the truth; but there's nothing but honesty in him, and it occurs to Giorno in that moment that he doesn't think Jotaro's ever lied to him.]

I want to be an admirable person. Not for the sake of being admired, but . . . [So I can look myself in the mirror at the end of the day.] Because I want people to reach their dreams, like I did.

...You are. Admirable.

[And when he hesitates, it's not because of what he's just said, but because of what he's tempted to follow it with, the thing he knows that Giorno doesn't that makes him the most qualified person in the world to say that someone with every inherent bias toward turning out like Dio who still fights to rise above it and push back against it is admirable —

Yes. He has every reason to find that admirable. It's inspiration, if not to achieve his dreams, then at least to prevent his nightmares.]

I'll tell you why someday. But just trust me on it for now.

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