digiorno | ic inbox ( ruby city ) Ⅰ

I know. That's where suspicions come from, and hero worship, and fairy tales.

[It's what their lives are made of, that impossible reality.]

I have no idea how he lived that long. How he could've come back fine, after everything, but he did.

[He's never said this aloud, literally or figuratively, to anyone. It's so stupid, it's the sort of thing he's always kept to himself from the sheer inanity. And yet.]

I thought that. Wherever I saw him go to, it must've been where the others went. Everyone who died.

I made up this idea that they got so pissed off at him for showing up that they must've just picked him up and thrown him back down, the first opportunity they got.

[If that had happened, Narancia would still be alive, too.]

[Oh, well. That's not getting said, obviously.]

From what you told me, that sounds right. That they wouldn't let him get away with it, and he was too annoying to keep around.

Either way, any explanation is better than none. At least it seems like it sometimes.

...Bruno's the one you trapped. Right?

Yes.

...There's something I want to tell you, but I think if I do, you'll call me arrogant for it.

It's a little hard to imagine you being arrogant.

You can tell me, though.

...There are things I haven't told you about what I've done, because I know that you'll say it's your responsibility to hear them. What you won't say is that you think it's your responsibility to carry them, too.

I'm pretty sure there's more shit you're carrying than you ever let on. I have a lot of respect for you, for what you do shoulder.

But I know that if I'd let you, you'd try to do more than what you're actually responsible for, and that's why I don't let you.

I don't think that's arrogant at all.

It's basically saying I know better than you do. That's not arrogant?

It's not saying you know better than I do. It's saying that you perceive some things more clearly than I do, since you're looking in from the outside. It's the same as with Kakyoin - he sees me more clearly than I see myself when it comes to certain things, and vice versa.

It doesn't mean I don't want to know. But when you say it like that, I think you're right. There are things I carry that I shouldn't - or even that I don't have any right to.

When Abbacchio got here, and I told him what had happened to Bruno and Narancia, he was angry. I knew he was going to be angry and I told him deliberately so that he would be angry at me, not at Bruno. When he just kept getting angrier, I offered to meet him in person if that's what it would take to cool him off. He told me not to act like a martyr because I didn't have any right to. He was right, just like you're right.

...So you were protecting Bruno. Abbacchio was going to be angry at someone, and better you than him. Right?

That was part of it, yes. And it's easy for him to be angry with me anyway.

...You played it to try to advantage both of them.

So Bruno didn't have to have Abbacchio mad at him, and so Abbacchio didn't have to get mad at Bruno?

That's right. But I still played them.

[...He wasn't going to say it like that if he could help it, but...yeah.]

I want to ask you something, but when you answer it, I want you to do something first. If that's okay.

Don't answer right away, even if you know the answer. Take thirty seconds and then answer.

...

Does Bruno need to be protected from Abbacchio?

[Fuck you.]

[No. Not that. Not yet.]

[He takes thirty seconds, sitting in the quiet in his room above the cafe, with his fingers shaking in rage and a stark, almost superhuman awareness of Mista in the next room. If he raises his voice, Mista will wake up and come in here, and he won't be as angry as Giorno is, probably, but he'll know what Jotaro said, and that isn't the right way to do this.]

[So after thirty seconds, he turns on a voice channel, and he speaks calmly and quietly in tones of frozen steel, and fuck you isn't there anymore but how dare you sure is.]

Abbacchio is the only person in the world who can protect Bruno from himself in the long run. In turn, Bruno is the only person in the world who can protect Abbacchio from himself. They're partners. They understand each other. They each fill a need for the other that no one else could ever fill. I can't keep them safe. I certainly can't keep them happy. They're the only ones who can do that.

There's no one in the world, this world or any other world, that I trust Bruno with more than Leone Abbacchio. There never will be. Ever. And if you think for one second that I wouldn't have dealt with the situation already if I thought Abbacchio was a danger--

I just can't believe you'd think that little of me. I really can't.

[...Well. That sure happened, all right.

The sudden vitriol is unexpected, to be sure, and the fact that it comes spoken in Giorno's voice instead of over text goes a long way toward provoking his own silence, making his own tension rise. That much is just pure, deep-seated instinct; when someone gets aggro in your face, you harden into steel and stand your ground. They push, you don't give, and your faces just get closer and closer with teeth pulled back in a snarl until something snaps and suddenly someone's in the hospital.

What doesn't add up, though, is the way the reaction follows, and he has to sit there a minute and absorb it to root out the source, the sore spot that he'd driven a nail into without realizing it.

I can't believe you'd think that little of me — "of me"?

If I thought Abbacchio was a danger — "if I thought"?

...

Coming on the heels of "I manipulated both of them", that's...telling. Everything he says describes Bruno and Abbacchio as a unit, a team, perfect for each other —

I just can't believe you'd think that little of me.

Abbacchio and Bruno's problem. And Giorno, in the middle because he puts himself there, who can't keep them safe or happy.]

I never said "danger", Giorno.

[What the hell happened here...?]

...You did the same thing I did, right? When I pulled Kakyoin behind me. Bruno didn't need you to take that hit for him — a bond like the one you described isn't going to disappear from one fight, no matter how angry they are. But you saw it coming and you jumped in the way.

I asked because I thought it was a given that the answer was no. I thought you'd be pissed, but not like this. I thought it'd be because I was asking you to admit the obvious.

But you're acting like I accused you of failing some duty. You saw a problem coming and you took it on your shoulders, and now you're pissed because you think I'm implying you missed another one that you ought to be carrying and aren't?

If you knew they'd be fine, then why didn't you stay out of it?

You--!

[Yes you did!]

[. . .]

[No. No - he didn't.]

[His breath catches, and everything is very . . . very quiet, all of a sudden. His nerves are buzzing; he was ready for a fight, and now. Well.]

[Fuck you. I don't owe you shit, and I'm not going to help you play the martyr.]

[He deserves his place in Passione and I will not let his anger and his resentment--that same anger and resentment you provoked by taking ownership of something you have no right to--push him out.]

[They were . . . both right.]

[He knew they'd be fine. He knew that. And he knew they were both strong enough to withstand a fight anyway. And he . . . thinks he has some kind of claim to that, the guilt and the pain that should be between the two of them, all these things that aren't his, that were there before he ever showed up, largely unwelcome on their doorstep. Showed up and led people to die.]

[Bruno didn't need him to take that hit. So why the hell did he do it?]

I . . .

[Taking ownership of something he had no right to.]

[So is he just a conqueror after all?]

I don't . . . know.

...Giorno.

[...So that's what happened here.]

...It happens when you love someone so much you can't think straight.

And when you're so scared of something that you start seeing it in situations where it's not.

[He just breathes for a moment, letting space hang in the air, the distance between mouth and pocketwatch and all the city distance between the two of them right now.

Abbacchio had to come here to Spiral, and Bruno came with him.]

You were trying to be the fairy godmother for them. Right? At your pace. The way you want them to.

Ha . . .

[Breathing is hard. It's hard, and it hurts. He has to focus on it, in and out, before he can speak. Not that he knows what to say. Not that he knows anything right now, about himself or about what he's chosen to do. If it's right.]

[He wants Mista. He wants that safety, that security, to have someone close who believes in him no matter what. But he needs this.]

[In. Out.]

Yes. I.

I thought . . . Bruno wouldn't tell him. That he would wait. And it felt like a lie. And I was worried . . . I was scared that if he lied, that there wouldn't be any way to fix it. Because--

[Because Abbacchio has no love in his heart for anyone but Bruno. Certainly not for himself. If Bruno lied to him - logic says now that Abbacchio would try to understand, would trust that Bruno knew what he was doing. But in the moment, all he thought was that Abbacchio would pull away, and then he'd have no one.]

I just don't want him to be alone. I don't want either of them. To be alone. I was so happy to see him it hurt . . .

I overcorrected.

...That's your family.

[An observation that comes not altogether directed at anything Giorno has laid out, but at least in some way responding to it. Passione isn't his business, and these are someone else's internal affairs — but Giorno is distraught, and Giorno is his affair in a way that Abbacchio and even Bruno aren't.

Because Giorno is family. Because Giorno understands some things in a way that most people — maybe everyone — simply can't.

Because he'll never forget that he has moments like these, when Jonathan raises his voice or — he suspects, at least — Bruno is at odds with him, and Giorno sounds like he wants to crawl into a hole and never come out.

He really, really wishes he were one of those people who's good with words. That he were the kind of person who sets people at ease just by existing, the way Kakyoin describes his mother. Either one would be so useful right now.

He can't help but wonder how much of Giorno's agony right now is stemming from not wanting to be alone, either.]

...I'm sorry. I didn't call hoping to...

[...do this.]

...Even if you did make a mistake. It's not something that can't be fixed. A bond like the one you have with them isn't something that disappears just because of something like this, either.

I know you didn't.

[Somehow, the reassurance does help - well. It's not that much of a mystery, is it? When he's put in a position to make someone else feel safer, even if in the smallest way, it proves to him that he's capable. But this, all of this, is starting to make him wonder, the rest of the time.]

[It's not bad enough that he's ever going to doubt himself completely. His confidence is a double-backboned thing; it doesn't break under pressure, just bends. But there's still that part of him that was a sad dark-haired child with no friends and no reason to believe anyone would ever love him, and that part of him clings desperately and too tightly to what love the world chooses to push his way, for fear of it being ripped out of his hands.]

[He sighs, wishing he were closer to ready for bed so he could run his hands through his hair, some kind of fruitless self-soothing. Instead, he pulls the emerald ladybug out of his pocket and balances it between his fingers again. He really ought to get a chain for it, a setting, so he doesn't lose it. If he lost it, he'd be devastated.]

I'm so tired of feeling like this.

[It's so strange, hearing that same sentence — the exact words, even — coming out of someone else's mouth. Everything's been really terrible lately, and when someone puts it so bluntly and with such cavalier abandon, it's disguised in plain sight. It's there like it's nothing, and you just assume it must be fine despite its severity, because no one is treating it like it's a big deal so much as just a state of being.

Getting from that to I don't want to feel like this anymore is a transition that's infinitely harder alone. He knows that from personal experience, too.

But what the hell does he know about doing something about it?]

When I get like that, I usually go hit things until I feel something again.

[But what the hell does he know, even, his coping strategies are shit and if it weren't for Passione, if it weren't for Giorno, if it weren't for Bruno Buccellati he'd still be deep in that hole right now, too.]

If you want something like that, I can make it happen.

[The relief that blooms in his chest is instantaneous. He isn't allowed to do this at home, not really, not like what Jotaro's suggesting. He isn't allowed to lose control ever. And maybe that's part of the problem, that he doesn't have outlets for the anger that he keeps a tight grip on but is still very much there, or for the fear that threatens to strangle him some days, or the grief like lead in the pit of his stomach.]

[He almost asks really? but doesn't, in the end, because he doesn't want to give even the slightest chance for Jotaro to take it back.]

I'll meet you on the beach in half an hour.

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