digiorno | ic inbox ( ruby city ) Ⅰ

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ic inbox ( ruby city ) Ⅰ

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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[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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