[That's that question answered, then — and another brought up. It's a difficult one, but all of the potential questions are difficult. Nothing about Dio is ever easy. Nothing about any of their lives is ever easy, except a few sparse details in the aftermath: coffee on the beach on Sundays with Trish, stolen moments with Mista, the feeling of the sun haloing his hair and beating warm on a turtle shell.]
[He doesn't look away. The hard questions are the ones that are most important to answer; this is something he knows.]
I didn't know him. I never met him. Even my mother only met him once.
[No, he doesn't look away, but he retreats, just a little, the light behind his eyes flickering into something more sedate and detached. He hates talking about Haruno, even now — except to Kakyoin, who understands, who was Haruno in his own way back when he was Tenmei.]
I don't really know what he did to her. She didn't love him, she wasn't devoted to him the way I know some people were. My mother is the sort of person who wanted what she wanted and didn't mind much about the consequences — so I suppose in that way they weren't so different, my mother and my father.
All I knew of him up until a certain point was what she told me. What he looked and acted like, and what he said she had to do. I still don't know why he did it. I wonder sometimes if it was a whim or if it was something about her that told him that any child of hers would . . .
[He pauses, and begins to unpin his curls, slowly and carefully.]
Would form in a crucible. Just like he did. If he wanted to see what would happen with his child, from that body, and this woman . . .
There's no way to know. But he told her to have the child, and keep it, and if she didn't he'd know.
I was her curse, standing in her way. No fun.
[It almost sounds like he's quoting someone. He shrugs.]
She didn't hate him or anything like that. But we never knew him. She wasn't interested in knowing him, or knowing any man like that, until later. So I grew up in Japan for a while until she met my stepfather, and then we moved to Italy and she changed my name, and she never talked to me about him again unless we were home together alone, which was hardly ever. Just because she got married didn't mean she wanted to be around me any more than before. She'd go out for days at a time . . . and my stepfather would be angry.
That's not the point.
[He clears his throat.]
I had a photograph, and I had stories. When I left home — I was just turning fourteen — I went looking for as many stories as I could find about him. There weren't many. But what I knew, I tried to sift out the truth as well as I could, and I treated most of it as a cautionary tale. The kind of leader I wanted not to be.
[And then he's quiet for a moment, and his gaze drifts past Polnareff's face to the far wall; his fingers come up to brush his ear, running along the torn cartilage. He licks his lips.]
But there was always a hope . . . when I was so young. Especially when I was sick, and I didn't know where she was. I thought, maybe he wanted me because he thought I could be something special. Maybe someday he'd come and find me, and take me away. Like in a fairy tale.
no subject
[He doesn't look away. The hard questions are the ones that are most important to answer; this is something he knows.]
I didn't know him. I never met him. Even my mother only met him once.
[No, he doesn't look away, but he retreats, just a little, the light behind his eyes flickering into something more sedate and detached. He hates talking about Haruno, even now — except to Kakyoin, who understands, who was Haruno in his own way back when he was Tenmei.]
I don't really know what he did to her. She didn't love him, she wasn't devoted to him the way I know some people were. My mother is the sort of person who wanted what she wanted and didn't mind much about the consequences — so I suppose in that way they weren't so different, my mother and my father.
All I knew of him up until a certain point was what she told me. What he looked and acted like, and what he said she had to do. I still don't know why he did it. I wonder sometimes if it was a whim or if it was something about her that told him that any child of hers would . . .
[He pauses, and begins to unpin his curls, slowly and carefully.]
Would form in a crucible. Just like he did. If he wanted to see what would happen with his child, from that body, and this woman . . .
There's no way to know. But he told her to have the child, and keep it, and if she didn't he'd know.
I was her curse, standing in her way. No fun.
[It almost sounds like he's quoting someone. He shrugs.]
She didn't hate him or anything like that. But we never knew him. She wasn't interested in knowing him, or knowing any man like that, until later. So I grew up in Japan for a while until she met my stepfather, and then we moved to Italy and she changed my name, and she never talked to me about him again unless we were home together alone, which was hardly ever. Just because she got married didn't mean she wanted to be around me any more than before. She'd go out for days at a time . . . and my stepfather would be angry.
That's not the point.
[He clears his throat.]
I had a photograph, and I had stories. When I left home — I was just turning fourteen — I went looking for as many stories as I could find about him. There weren't many. But what I knew, I tried to sift out the truth as well as I could, and I treated most of it as a cautionary tale. The kind of leader I wanted not to be.
[And then he's quiet for a moment, and his gaze drifts past Polnareff's face to the far wall; his fingers come up to brush his ear, running along the torn cartilage. He licks his lips.]
But there was always a hope . . . when I was so young. Especially when I was sick, and I didn't know where she was. I thought, maybe he wanted me because he thought I could be something special. Maybe someday he'd come and find me, and take me away. Like in a fairy tale.
. . . I got over it. Life isn't like that.
[Happy endings don't exist, after all.]