Chapter Text
“You really do not have to come if it is too much of a hassle.”
Trish glanced up from her packing to roll her eyes at Giorno. A few months ago, maybe, she would’ve been offended that he kept giving her really obvious outs, but by now, she knew that this was how Giorno operated. More than that, she knew that the more he tried to talk Trish out of it, the more he actually wanted her to be there. She gave him a look, trying to convey her awareness of this through glare alone.
Giorno shifted uneasily. “You don’t even speak Japanese.”
“Didn’t Jotaro say that they had someone whose stand could circumvent language barriers?”
“Well, yes, but—”
“Jolyne asked for me. More importantly, you asked for me.”
Trish watched Giorno press his lips together in wariness. “I do not want to drag you into a family mess.”
Trish’s throat went tight, and the thought of her mother came to her, unbidden, unwanted, and she shoved it away, thinking of her father instead. “Didn’t I drag you into my family mess last year?”
“Well,” Giorno allowed, “that was extremely different.”
“Was it,” she said, flat, dry.
There was a single warning knock on the door before Abbacchio ducked into her room, and Trish and Giorno both stilled as he flicked a suspicious gaze between them. “You two look like you’re conspiring something.”
“No conspiring,” Trish said, holding up her hands.
He rolled his eyes. “Well, I was going to ask what you guys wanted to do for dinner.”
Trish shot Giorno a sickly-sweet smile, and he shook his head in a wordless rejection that Trish ignored. “What do you want for dinner, Abbacchio?” she asked in her sweetest and most innocent tone.
Abbacchio didn’t seem to notice. “I don’t give a shit.” He narrowed his eyes. “Why the fuck did I come to you guys first, anyway? You two don’t have opinions on anything. I’m going to ask Narancia.”
The second he left, Trish turned to Giorno and said, “If Abbacchio makes ice cream tonight, you owe me one of your suits.”
Giorno looked properly scandalized by this. “I will not.”
“Only if there’s no ice cream.” Trish tapped her chin, faux-thoughtful. “I think I’d look amazing in that pink suit you wore when we first met.”
That actually got Giorno to scowl, and Trish snickered. “We leave tomorrow at noon,” he said, changing the subject with the least tact Trish had ever seen from him. “Do you require any additional assistance in packing?”
Trish shook her head.
“Abbacchio will likely drive us to the airport.”
“Sweet.”
There was an awkward pause before Giorno added, “Will you be okay spending time with Fugo?”
Trish bit her lip to keep back a reflexive, rude response. It was nice that Giorno thought to ask, and it was nice that he knew she was wary of him, but she could take care of herself. She could conduct herself like a normal human being for four days. And it wasn’t as if she never spent time with Fugo. She forced herself to roll up her next T-shirt calmly, slowly, and said, “I’ll be fine. Now, go and rig the bet so that Abbacchio makes whatever you secretly want for dinner. I know you want to.”
“I do not. Any suggestion that I would do something so underhanded is absurd,” Giorno said, but he was already walking towards the room’s exit.
When he left, Trish balled up her nearest shirt and threw it in the suitcase.
Trish watched Sheila E struggle to jam their luggage into an overhead compartment, even though the stewards for the private jet had said it wasn’t necessary. Sheila E was like that. Once she got it in her head that something was supposed to be done, she did it.
“Do you need help?” Fugo asked, who was watching her from a slight distance, brows furrowed.
“What, just because you’re a lot taller than me?” Sheila E huffed, finally managing to shove Trish’s bulky suitcase all the way into the compartment. “I don’t need your help, stringbean.”
“Stringbean?” Fugo echoed, eyes widening in more surprise than anger, Trish thought.
“Skinny, tall, green,” Sheila E said, ticking off the adjectives on her fingers.
“I’m wearing purple.”
“I meant green, like, metaphorically.”
Fugo scowled, opening his mouth to probably deliver a flat insult, but then Giorno strolled onto the plane, looking for all the world like the ruler of a vast empire in this suit that had a one-shouldered shimmering cape built into it. God, Trish wanted a cape. Fugo said, “Hi, Giorno,” and Trish watched with as little cynicism as she could manage as Giorno’s cold expression softened just the slightest.
Trish glanced at Sheila E, who had turned to the rest of the luggage, which was thankfully much less awkwardly large than Trish’s. Sighing, she resigned herself to half-paying attention to Giorno and Fugo’s conversation—something about geckos being invasive species in Japan.
As the plane was getting ready to close its doors and take off, Abbacchio ducked inside for a moment. “You guys good?” he asked, sounding gruff.
Trish saw Giorno unsuccessfully try and hide an eye roll. “Yes.”
“Well,” Abbacchio visibly floundered for something to say, “See you in four days, I guess.”
“Perhaps.”
“Just text me when you land.”
Giorno gave him a bored nod. “I will call you.”
Trish watched the internal struggle of whether or not to offer them hugs play out on Abbacchio’s face, a little amused. In the end, hugs predictably won out, and then Abbacchio exited the plane with a grumpy little goodbye.
“He loves us,” Trish declared when the plane’s door sealed.
“He is stupid,” Giorno said, which was definitely an agreement, coming from him.
Trish sat down on the opposite end of the plane from Fugo and Giorno, and Sheila E joined her after a few minutes. “What are you reading?”
Trish angled her magazine so that Sheila E could see it.
“Cool,” Sheila E lied. “Do you mind if I sleep here?”
“Nope,” Trish said. “My shoulder is your pillow.” And then she cringed internally at how fucking lame that sounded out loud.
Sheila E just smiled and rolled her eyes, though. “You got it, princess.”
When Sheila E fell asleep, though, she kept her chin tucked against her chest, arms wrapped around her middle as if, even unconscious, she was afraid to touch Trish.
Jotaro and Jolyne were waiting for them when they arrived in Morioh, Jotaro just as stoic and blank-faced as Trish remembered. Jolyne ran across the parking lot to launch herself in a hug at Giorno, then at Trish, then at Sheila E. “I don’t know you!” she said to Fugo in English.
“This is my boyfriend, Fugo,” Giorno said.
“Oh, I remember.” Jolyne narrowed her eyes at a very-uncomfortable-looking Fugo and said, “Your suit’s dumb.”
Trish laughed, offering her hand for a high five.
“Nice to see you all again,” Jotaro said stiffly, like he’d been practicing politeness in the mirror and hadn’t been doing a very good job of it.
“You too,” Giorno said with parallel awkwardness that Trish knew was uncharacteristic. “We brought Polnareff.”
“Uncle Polnareff is here?” Jolyne demanded.
“He is a little bit—ah—dazed,” Fugo said, lifting the turtle where he’d been cradling it in his hands.
“Dad, I really really thought you were lying about the turtle,” Jolyne said, peering at it.
“Why would I lie.”
Polnareff didn’t pop out of the turtle. A side effect of him being a ghost was that he sometimes let massive chunks of time fly by without notice.
“Will we all fit in your car?” Giorno asked.
“Should be fine,” Jotaro said, turning on his heel and stalking away in these big long strides. Everyone scrambled to follow, except Jolyne, who seemed to be used to this sort of thing.
The car wasn’t the tiny Subaru that Trish remembered from Florida, which made sense. Instead, Jotaro climbed into the front seat of a minivan, and Giorno joined him in the passenger’s seat, the rest of them filing into the back.
“It’s about a half hour drive,” Jotaro said, starting the car. The radio hummed to life just as an upbeat song was ending, and Trish absently listened to a little jingle of the radio station play out.
There was the sound of a shrill bang and the scraping of metal, and all of them jumped to look at Giorno, who was staring at the hole in the dashboard in shock. Gold Experience Requiem had punched straight through the radio.
“Uh—” Giorno said, voice choked.
Jotaro sighed. “Good grief.”
“Giogio, are you alright?” Fugo said, switching to Italian.
Giorno followed the language shift, and Trish saw that his hands were shaking. “The radio. I’ve heard it before.”
“The arrows?”
“The arrows,” Giorno agreed. He closed his eyes, returning to English. “I apologize, Professor Kujo. I will pay for the damages.”
Jotaro shifted in discomfort. “Not a big deal.”
Trish’s heart was hammering in her chest, and she forced herself to relax back into her seat. Jolyne said, “We could’ve changed the station for you,” and Giorno laughed weakly in response.
Trish and Sheila E exchanged a glance. The thing with the arrows had ended ages ago, they’d thought. They’d thought that Giorno would stop hearing and seeing things from the other stand arrows after he’d fully united with the Requiem arrow, but every now and then, something would cast doubt on that certainty.
Jolyne started humming into the absence of sound in the car, and very slowly, everyone began to relax again.
In the midst of the confusing chaos of being introduced to Giorno’s entire family-and-friends at once, after some asshole with one of the weirder stands Trish had encountered opened her face like a book, Trish sat down in a dazed huff at a seat a little way’s away from the action, taking a minute to collect herself. She watched the ensemble of people loudly and energetically mingle, and she thought, There’s no way families can be this big. She remembered spending Rosh Hashana with just her and Donatella, trying to eat all the food they’d made by themselves and always failing.
She shook her head. She’d been at big events before. It was impossible not to have been at big events when she was a mildly famous singer, but this was different.
Fugo sat down at a chair at the empty table she was occupying, and she shot him a tired, wary look. “What do you think?” she said after Fugo awkwardly refused to initiate conversation.
Fugo looked a little bit frayed around the edges as well. “They’re nice,” he croaked.
“Did you talk to Josuke?”
He nodded a few times, rather robotically. “He was nice.”
Trish laughed without much humor. “Oh?”
“He and Giorno seem to be getting along.”
Trish followed his gaze to where Josuke had hooked his arm around Giorno’s shoulders and was gesturing wildly about something. Giorno ducked his head to hide a smile at whatever he was saying. “That’s good,” Trish said.
Fugo frowned at her, furrowing his brows. “You’re uncomfortable,” he observed.
“I am not,” she sputtered.
“Trish Una is uncomfortable,” Fugo continued, lips twitching into the approximation of a smile.
“Shove it. I’m not used to this many people who all know or want to know each other.”
“Oh? Is that not what any music event is?”
“It’s not.”
Fugo tilted his head in consideration. “I see.”
Trish didn’t really like the prospect of Fugo seeing anything about her, so she stood up. “I’m just going to take a walk around the building, if anyone asks.”
Fugo shrugged. “Fine.”
Trish tore through the crowd of people to reach the exit, and when she could finally breathe again, she sagged against the wall of the building’s exterior, blinking up at the darkening sky, pressing a hand to her sternum.
She stayed like that for a while. She wasn’t sure how long. Somebody else from the party stepped outside, a woman whose name Trish couldn’t remember. Trish watched her light a cigarette, cradling the flame against the cage of her hands, and the woman noticed her after inhaling.
“You okay?” she called in Japanese, and it was still weird that Trish could just understand, all of a sudden.
“Yeah,” she replied. “Your family is loud.”
The woman lifted a shoulder. “They get like that. I hope Josuke didn’t bother you.”
“No,” Trish said, and remembered that this was Josuke’s mother. “Trish,” she reintroduced herself.
“Tomoko. You’re one of Giorno’s friends, right?”
“Yes.”
Tomoko nodded. “He seems like a good kid. Still not quite sure how he’s related to Josuke, but,” she shrugged, “he seems alright.”
“He’s okay,” Trish agreed, allowing herself to be amused.
“Jotaro said not to fuck with him,” Tomoko said casually.
“Yeah, probably for the best.”
She hummed, putting out her cigarette after a little stretch of silence before approaching Trish. “I get it. The first Joestar reunion was pretty overwhelming for me, too.”
“There’s so many of them,” Trish agreed.
Tomoko gave her a sympathetic look, patting her on the shoulder, and Trish made herself not tense up. “I know.”
Trish forced a little laugh. “I should probably go back inside.”
“I’ll walk with you and properly introduce you to Josuke. I promise he’s a good kid.”
“Thanks.”
On their way back to the door, Sheila E pushed herself outside with some urgency, but she stopped in her tracks when she saw Trish and Tomoko. She looked at Trish and, in Italian (she’d refused to allow that guy to use his stand on her), she said, “Fugo said you went on a walk,” kind of accusatorily.
“I needed a second.”
Sheila E frowned. “Fine.” And then she ducked back inside.
“Everything okay?” Tomoko asked.
“Yeah,” Trish said, though she honestly wasn’t sure. A little bit bewildered by the exchange, she followed Tomoko inside and back into the throng of people.
They reached Josuke and Giorno, who were listening to another teenager talk about some restaurant with rapt attention.
“Oi, Josuke,” Tomoko said, voice somehow both sharp and soft at the same time. The three teenagers turned in their direction, and Trish forced herself not to react. “This is Trish. She’s cool.”
Trish watched Josuke’s eyes light up. “Hey, you’re a singer, right? Okuyasu loves your music.”
Trish followed Josuke’s gesture to the third teenager, who was looking at her with wide eyes. “Hello,” he said.
“Hi,” Trish offered, a little wary.
“Hey, I have an idea!” Josuke said, glancing between Giorno, Trish, Okuyasu, and his mother. “Let’s get out of here, we can show you guys around Morioh without Jotaro trying to tell you about starfish breeding habits or whatever.”
Giorno cracked a smile. “I would like that.”
“Go grab your boyfriend,” Josuke said, “and meet us outside.”
“Okay.” Trish watched him disappear into the crowd, leaving her alone with Josuke and Okuyasu. They were very tall.
“Rohan said you and Giorno have a soul bond friendship,” Josuke said to her. “Not that I trust anything that guy says.”
Trish bit her lip, uncomfortable. “We understand each other.”
“Yeah, I get that,” Josuke said. “Oku, stop being starstruck.”
“I’m not starstruck,” Okuyasu muttered, eyes still a little wide while he shuffled over to Josuke’s side.
“It’s okay if you are,” Trish said, smoothly switching to her popstar persona, flashing a smile.
“I see!” Okuyasu said, voice several octaves too high.
Tomoko shook her head. “Well, I’ll leave you guys to it. I’ll try and buy you some time before your dad notices you’ve all disappeared and sends Jotaro after you.”
“Thanks, ma,” Josuke said, looking relieved. Tomoko gave him a light, affectionate punch to the shoulder and ducked into the crowd. Trish felt something in her chest constrict and give way, and she blinked a few times, trying to clear it.
Giorno returned with Fugo and Sheila E in tow, and Josuke and Okuyasu navigated their way to lead them back outside. Trish fell into step with Sheila E. “Isn’t it alienating to not be able to understand them?” she nodded at Okuyasu and Josuke.
Sheila E frowned. “I don’t need to understand them to do my job. I’m here to protect Giorno, not make friends.”
Trish opened her mouth. Closed it. “Alright.”
“Plus, you can just tell me if anyone says something mean to Fugo later.”
She shook her head. “Good point, I guess.”
Josuke and Okuyasu kept up a light, steady stream of chatter mostly directed at Giorno and occasionally Fugo as they led the way down the streets.
Sheila E accidentally bumped their hands together, and Trish reflexively shoved hers in her pockets. She glanced at Sheila E to glean her reaction, but she was just staring forward, watching Giorno. Trish kept her hands in her pockets.
They got ice cream, where they met up with two of Josuke’s friends who hadn’t been at the reunion. Koichi seemed okay, if a little bit uptight and kind of whiny for Trish’s taste, and Yukako was…
Well.
“All I’m saying is that if you really cared about beating me in math, you’d try harder,” Yukako was saying to Josuke. Ice cream was dripping onto her hand.
“Hey, I care. And I beat you on the last test, didn’t I?”
“You lack discipline and self-control,” Yukako said with a stiff little sniff, glancing at Koichi. “Right?”
Koichi hummed noncommittally.
“Josuke’s plenty disciplined,” Okuyasu said.
“Thanks, bud.”
“Why are you guys fighting about math,” Fugo said in a monotone. Yukako and Josuke both turned to stare at him, Yukako in semi-enraged incredulity and Josuke in genuine befuddlement.
“It’s fun,” Josuke finally said, rather lamely.
They were walking along the shoulder of the road, and Trish thought that they were beginning to reach the outskirts of the city. The sky was absurdly pretty here.
“Hey, that reminds me, how was the reunion anyway?” Koichi asked.
Trish watched Josuke’s face twitch into disgruntlement with mild fascination. “You know…”
“I don’t,” Koichi said.
“Big parties don’t buy sixteen years back.”
They descended into a silence. Okuyasu wordlessly hooked his arm around Josuke’s neck, and Josuke’s expression softened a little bit.
Giorno wandered a little bit away from the group. Something weird was going on across his face—he seemed attentive but utterly absent, and his eyes were glazed over, darker and dimmer than usual. He was staring into the middle distance, somewhere off the road. Trish absently pushed her way to his side, reflexively reaching for him.
When she touched his wrist, he blinked, and the weirdness faded just enough to pacify her for a moment. “You good?” she asked.
Giorno frowned. He blinked, and she thought that the movement was at once too lethargic and too rapid, somehow. “I think I need to go that way,” he said, nodding in the direction he’d been looking.
“Alright. We’ll follow.”
Giorno shook his head, the weirdness returned in full force, and he took a marked step away.
“What’s going on?” Josuke asked. He’d noticed them starting to wander off the path.
“Don’t worry about it,” Trish said.
“Uh—”
Trish stayed a hesitant, slight distance behind Giorno as he walked a few steps into the grass. Fugo reached his side and touched the small of his back, but Giorno didn’t seem to notice. He knelt down, and Trish decided to approach.
“Fuck,” Fugo hissed, and Trish’s stomach plummeted while Giorno carefully sifted through the long grass to reveal a cracked arrowhead. “Fuck,” Fugo said again.
“What’re you—? Oh.”
They all stared at it for a second that stretched into an eternity.
Then, Giorno began to laugh. It was a soft, wrong sound that sent a grating chill down Trish’s spine. She clenched her teeth, hard.
Giorno reached forward, skimming a finger along the sharp edge of the arrow. “You orphan heirs of fixed destiny,” he whispered, lips pulling into an ironic, unhappy smile, “Attend your office and your quality.”
“Giogio,” Fugo whispered, and Trish watched the spasm of pain play across his face.
Giorno grabbed the arrow and stood up. He glanced around, taking note of how everyone was staring at him. “Well,” he said.
“Um,” Okuyasu said. “I thought the arrow got destroyed, Josuke.”
Josuke hunched his shoulders, shoving his hands into his pockets. “Me, too.”
Giorno shrugged. “If it is all the same to you, I think I should take it.”
“You’re, like, five,” Yukako snapped with narrowed eyes. “Why the hell would we let you take it?”
“I am sixteen.”
“Josuke, say something.”
“Look, I never wanted to see one of those again,” Josuke muttered. “If Giorno wants to take it, fine.”
“Thank you,” Giorno said, already starting to put it into his pocket.
“How did you know where it was?” Koichi asked.
Fugo and Trish exchanged a worried glance, but Giorno only said, “Lucky guess.” He dusted some imaginary dirt off his pants. “I believe we were headed towards the coastline?” He still had this horribly amused look on his face.
“Right,” Okuyasu said, slowly. “Uh. I guess we should. Start walking.”
They all hesitantly fell into step, and Trish listened as Giorno hummed a cheerful little tune that sounded so fucking familiar. It wasn’t until she could see the ocean that she realized it was the jingle that had made Giorno destroy Jotaro’s radio.
After a while of dicking around by the cliffs, most of the group had started to relax enough to lounge around, napping or talking quietly, watching the sunset paint the sky.
Trish sat down next to where Giorno was sitting alone, legs dangling off the cliff. He didn’t look at her.
“It wanted you to take it?” Trish finally asked.
Giorno hummed in agreement. “I can—It’s—happy. To have been found.”
“You can feel that.”
“Yes.”
Trish took a moment to digest that. “It wanted you?”
“Anyone. I was a means to an end.” He tilted his head. “It doesn’t want to stay with me.”
Trish figured that the stand arrows were like any other living organism: they wanted to survive and reproduce, and that was pretty much it. It probably wasn’t very helpful to be lying half-obscured in the grass, slowly succumbing an inevitable burial, and it probably didn’t want to be a seldom-used back-up to Giorno’s Requiem arrow.
She leaned back on her elbows. Giorno glanced at her, and then back at the sea.
“So, what are you going to do?”
Giorno smiled again, and it was wry and tortured all at once. “Would you hate me if I said that I have no idea?”
“No,” Trish said, voice too soft for her liking, so she cleared her throat and said, “No,” again, firmer.
“Perhaps, this was what had been drawing me here, all along. Perhaps, I never truly wanted to meet these people,” Giorno mused, mostly to himself.
“I thought you liked Jotaro and Jolyne. And Josuke,” Trish said.
Giorno shrugged. “Sometimes, I feel—” But he cut himself off, shooting her a dry, self-deprecating look. “Ah, but you do not need to hear this.”
Trish rolled her eyes, letting Giorno drop the subject. She’d already gotten a lot more out of him than she’d expected, frankly. “How’s Fugo dealing?” she made herself ask.
Giorno’s distant gaze faded into something a little bit gentler, and Trish’s gut clenched at the reflexive simplicity of it. “Mostly by quoting Shakespeare at me. He’ll probably try hugs, later.”
“Sounds like him.”
“Yes,” Giorno agreed, affectionate. “He is very easy to read.”
“Unlike you.”
“Or you.”
“Touché.”
Giorno shot a look over his shoulder, and Trish refused to follow his gaze with some effort. “I don’t think Sheila E likes this.”
“She doesn’t like many things,” Trish offered, frowning.
“I meant Morioh. Down-time.”
“Hate to break it to you, but I don’t think she considers this down-time, Giorno.”
“Well.”
Speak of the devil. Trish blinked up at the darkening sky, which was suddenly blocked by the looming visage of Sheila E. “It’s getting late,” she said. “Your great-nephew called you.” She passed Giorno his phone.
Trish took the opportunity to watch Sheila E in all her stoic grace. And she was graceful, even from this angle, in an effortless, subconscious way. Sheila E’s gaze flicked to meet hers, and Trish closed her eyes to avoid holding it.
They collectively decided to head back to their hotel after Giorno called Jotaro back, and before Trish could really register it, Sheila E was shutting the door behind her. They’d been alone before, so many times. Trish wasn’t sure why this time felt different. She carefully got into the bed that she’d claimed earlier and was debating pretending to be asleep before Sheila E emerged from the bathroom, but she didn’t get a chance to decide.
“You okay?” Sheila E asked warily, clambering into her own bed without coordination. Trish noticed that she’d relaxed significantly.
“I’m fine. Why wouldn’t I be okay?” Trish asked, not sure why she was so agitated.
Sheila E shrugged. “You’ve seemed wired most of the day. Is it ‘cause of the arrow? Because I get it. Really puts another big target on Giorno’s head.”
“Yeah,” Trish agreed with some relief. “That’s it.”
Sheila E rolled over, flicking off the lamp before she wriggled under the covers, casting them into darkness. Trish was still sitting cross-legged against the headboard. “I don’t know if I’m the best person to talk about it, but we can hit stuff about it if you want.”
“Thank you,” Trish said with an unbidden burst of warmth. She cleared her throat. “Sheila.”
Sheila E waited for her to finish, but when Trish said nothing after a while, she whispered, “What is it?”
Trish shook her head. “Ah, it’s nothing. Maybe we’ll hit some stuff together tomorrow. Good night,” she said, and she forced herself to lie down.
She stared wide-eyed at the ceiling for a very long time.
The following day was more relaxing. The main event of this day of the reunion was a much more chill picnic, and Trish took the opportunity to try and get a better handle on these people who were supposed to be Giorno’s family.
She found herself being invited into a conversation between Tomoko, Jotaro’s mother, and Tomoko’s friend, a woman named Shinobu.
“So, Trish, you’re Giorno’s friend, right?” Holly said, offering her a sandwich cut into triangles. “What’s he like? My Jotaro is so reticent about him.”
“He’s reticent about everything,” Tomoko said.
“Giorno’s cool,” Trish said, rather lamely. “Very, uh, competent.”
Holly nodded encouragingly.
“I like him,” she finished, voice weak.
“Tell him to come talk to us,” Tomoko said. “Josuke’s been stealing his attention away from everyone else. I’ve barely met the kid.”
“Sure.” Trish clambered to her feet, feeling a little bit dizzy. “Excuse me.”
The three women turned back towards each other, chatting about something or another, and Trish felt a cold gnawing hollow in her stomach. They wanted to see Giorno, she reminded herself. She forced away the image of Donatella and trudged off in pursuit of her friend. She didn’t need the approval or the affection of these women, these strangers. She was fine on her own.
It didn’t take long to find Giorno.
Josuke was showing off his stand, having Okuyasu break things so that they could smugly put them back together, and Giorno was watching in mild amusement and fascination, Fugo sitting in the grass a few steps away, warily eating an apple.
She didn’t know why she hesitated before drawing close to them, but she took a moment to observe unnoticed anyway.
“Anyway, that’s Crazy Diamond,” Josuke said, squaring his shoulders with a lazy little smile. “No big deal. What’s yours do?”
“Mine?” Giorno mused. “One moment. Allow me to make it more palatable.”
“Palatable?” Josuke echoed, arching an eyebrow. Okuyasu shrugged.
Giorno called forth Gold Experience Requiem and held out a hand expectantly. The stand hovered before him, and Trish, for one stunned moment, thought she recognized the dimness in its eyes, but it must have been a trick of the light. It stared at Giorno for a long time, and then it held out its hand with mirrored expectance.
“Stop that,” Giorno chided, and Trish couldn’t place his tone. His hand drifted to his pocket, and Gold Experience Requiem hovered closer, but Giorno just said, “Give it to me,” and it stopped, almost nose-to-nose with Giorno, unblinking. It very slowly extracted the arrow and handed it to Giorno with reluctance.
“Dude,” Okuyasu said, disturbed.
Giorno paid him no mind, though, as his stand changed. He turned back to Josuke and Okuyasu and had Gold Experience go over to a nearby tree, where it made the flowers blossom.
“Whoa,” Josuke breathed.
“Your stands are so cool,” Okuyasu sighed. “Mine just destroys.”
“Hey, cut that shit out,” Josuke said. “I love your stand.”
Giorno glanced at Fugo, who offered a halfhearted smile. While she watched, Gold Experience returned to Giorno’s side, reaching for the Requiem arrow. Giorno absently gave the arrow back to it. Gold Experience Requiem’s gaze was still locked on Giorno’s pocket when he called it away.
Feeling uneasy for some nameless reason, Trish finally approached all the way. Fugo noticed her first, and Giorno’s attention followed when she said, “The mothers want to talk to you.”
Giorno’s expression clouded. “Mothers?” he echoed.
“Tomoko, Holly, Shinobu,” she counted off on her fingers.
“Oh.”
“I’ll go with you!” Josuke announced, bounding over to Giorno’s side. They offered Trish little smiles before departing, Giorno absently reaching for his pocket as they walked.
Trish frowned after them, not sure why the whole thing had been so off-putting. “Are you proud of your stand?” she asked Fugo.
Fugo gave her an incredulous look. “No.”
“Me neither, I don’t think,” she admitted. Spice Girls had saved her on the plane, sure, and Trish had been awed by her from the start, but she was also a mark of her own cowardice, her own inability to realize her fear and turn it into something with teeth. “Josuke and Giorno are outliers in that.”
“I don’t know if Giorno is proud of his stand,” Fugo said idly. “He understands it, though, which I do think is the real outlier.”
Trish hummed. “You don’t understand yours?”
“That’s none of your business, actually.”
She definitely didn’t understand hers. She didn’t think she’d used Spice Girls once since last April. “Where’s Sheila E?”
“Caught that, did you,” Fugo muttered, dry. He jerked his chin up, and Trish followed the gesture to the tree Giorno had made bloom. After a moment of scrutiny, she located Sheila E, hidden, sitting on one of the branches and quietly watching Giorno.
“She takes her job very seriously.”
“Yeah.”
“Do you think her faith in Giorno is unhealthy?”
“Who are we to judge unhealthy behaviors?”
Trish scowled. “Whatever. Sometimes, I think she wouldn’t hesitate to die for him.”
Fugo blinked at her once, surprised. “You wouldn’t?”
She almost jerked back, affronted. “No.”
“Maybe that’s why he likes you so much,” Fugo mused, narrowing his eyes. “I think you’re the only person he knows who wouldn’t.”
Trish rolled that over in her mind, and as disturbing as it was, she didn’t find it surprising at all. Did it mean that something was wrong with her, somewhere deep and integral? Should she have wanted to have that kind of faith in someone else? “Do you think he’s alright?” she asked, nodding back at Giorno, who had sat down, cross-legged, in the spot that Trish had vacated. Trish felt scraped raw at the sudden wall of isolation she felt, watching the women smile at Giorno, feeling Fugo and Sheila E’s attention occupied with him even if they weren’t at his side.
“I don’t know,” Fugo confessed. He was chewing his lip. “He’s been distracted ever since we got here.”
“Maybe it’s his family,” Trish said doubtfully.
“Maybe,” Fugo said in clear non-agreement.
Moments like these, Trish felt like if she’d disappear into nothing, no one would notice. She tested the nebulous boundaries of her theory, taking a noticeable step away. Fugo didn’t even twitch.
Bitterness crawled from her stomach up her throat, through the gaps in her teeth, and for a moment, she really, really considered it: just walking away and not looking back until someone called after her.
But that was too petty, too childish. Instead, she wandered away from Fugo to the outskirts of the picnic, where she sat against a tree and ate her sandwich alone.
Trish woke up early the next day and snuck down to the hotel lobby to get breakfast. She was dismayed (and could only surmise that Jotaro was equally so) when she and Jotaro Kujo made eye contact in the near-empty hotel restaurant, and he waved her over to his table, almost pained by it. Trish joined him slowly, with reluctance.
“How are you doing,” he said flatly, sipping at his coffee. He put aside the honest-to-god textbook he’d been reading, two little highlighters neatly lined up next to his forks.
“Good,” Trish said. “Can I ask you something?”
“Sure.”
“Is there another arrow in Morioh?”
Jotaro faltered on his next sip of coffee. He blinked at her. “You found it.”
Trish shrugged because she knew Giorno would want room for doubt. “Things he’s said since we got here.”
Jotaro hummed lowly. “I suspect there may be. The Speedwagon Foundation believes it’s been destroyed.”
“You don’t.”
“I don’t.”
“Does this arrow do anything weird?”
Jotaro frowned. “How would I know?”
“Giorno’s does something weird.”
“Perhaps they all do something… weird.” He hesitated painfully upon use of the word. Trish sagged back into her seat.
They were saved from further attempts at conversation by the arrival of Jolyne, who sleepily dragged a chair to the table and immediately stole Jotaro’s coffee. “Aunt Laura called,” she mumbled.
“What did she say?”
“To call her back. Also that she likes me better than you.”
“Hah,” Jotaro said, and Jolyne smirked into the coffee cup.
After breakfast, Trish wandered around the hotel lobby and ended up stumbling into Jotaro’s grandfather slash Josuke’s dad slash Giorno’s nephew. It was all very confusing, and his half-senile nature did not help things.
“Italy, huh,” he was saying, trying to make small talk. “I spent some time there.”
“That’s nice,” Trish said warily.
Of all people, it was Fugo who saved her. He came down to the lobby, looking restless and sleep-deprived, and as soon as he saw Trish, he shoved his way over to reach her. “Hi,” he said. “We need to talk.”
“Excuse me, sir,” Trish said to Mister Joestar, and he let her go without a fuss.
“It’s Giorno,” Fugo said as he led her outside. He was still wearing his pajamas.
“Yeah, I figured that much.”
Fugo scowled at her, then took a moment to rub his eyes. “Okay, you know what? Okay. Fine.” She waited him out, crossing her arms. “Look, I’ve got a really bad feeling.”
“You usually do.”
Fugo inhaled and exhaled sharply, and Trish lifted her chin, almost welcoming the oncoming tantrum, but Fugo’s eye only twitched, and he said evenly, with effort, “I don’t think he should have more than one arrow at once.”
“Sure,” she agreed. “He told me it didn’t want to stay with him anyway.”
“Yes,” Fugo said slowly. “However, the situation has evolved.”
She arched an eyebrow. “How so?”
She watched Fugo wind his arms around himself, and the urgent, sleepless irritation in his expression hollowed out to something more haunted, more desperate. “He tried to give the new arrow to Gold Experience Requiem last night.”
Trish blinked. “Why?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know. He’s not making a lot of sense to me. He usually makes sense to me. I—I don’t know what to—”
“Calm down.”
Fugo’s pulse jumped visibly in his throat, and he snapped, “Do not fucking tell me to calm down.”
“Did you leave him alone?”
“With Sheila E.”
Trish took a moment to try and process, but all she could say was, “I think I need to see him.”
“Sure,” Fugo agreed, pained. “I’ll follow you up in a minute.”
Trish took the stairs. She never took elevators anymore.
During her ascent, she let the conversation wash over her. It was undeniable that the arrows had a certain gravity to them. She’d felt it in the battle against her father. Though Diavalo and Giorno had been the ones truly grappling for the arrow, she’d felt the compulsion as well. She’d wanted it just as badly. There was a certain unescapable hunger to that kind of power that always left her breathless and aching. She thought she could understand why Giorno would want more.
Though maybe that was just the residuals of Diavalo in her blood and in her mind.
Giorno wasn’t doing anything that would have indicated anything being wrong when she arrived at his room. He was sitting at the desk, and he appeared to be chatting with someone on the phone about mafia logistics—probably Abbacchio or Mista. Sheila E stood by the door, tense and just restless enough to put Trish on edge. Trish waited for Giorno to finish his call.
When he did, he turned to her. His expression was placid as ever. “Yes?” he said. He was always talking to people like he was there to interrogate them.
“I’m stealing the arrow,” she said. “It’s mine now.”
His face seemed to flicker, almost. One second, he was her friend, a pristine boss of an expansive criminal empire, a sixteen-year-old boy, and the next, he was a stranger, dangerous, antagonistic. He leaned back. “Excuse me?”
“Where is it?”
“Trish,” Giorno warned, “If you do this, you are going to make yourself my enemy.” His voice was gentle, like he was telling her a lullaby instead of delivering an ultimatum.
“Why do you want to keep it? You told me it doesn’t want you.”
Giorno stood. “Stop.”
“Where is it?”
“Trish—” Sheila E whispered, but Trish ignored her.
“Where are you keeping it? I know Fugo wouldn’t have let you hold it.”
Giorno said, “You can’t take it.”
She approached him until they were nearly chest-to-chest. She’d never realized that she was taller than him. “Where is it?”
“Trish,” Giorno said, dangerous.
“These arrows aren’t good for you, Giorno. They make you someone else,” Trish said, trying to soften her tone. “Give it to me. I’ll make it go away.”
Giorno was shaking, a fine tremor that went up each of his limbs, and Trish felt a lump form in her throat, unbidden. A note of feverish desperation clawed into his voice when he said, “Leaving it feels like being torn in half, Trish, you don’t understand.”
“I’m trying to help you.”
“I don’t know what I will do to you if you take it. I don’t—”
Trish put her hands on his shoulders. “Giorno. Look at me.”
He did, with effort. His eyes had cleared slightly from that unnatural dimness that had sent chills down her spine the other day. He wasn’t himself, not entirely, but he was enough to listen to her.
“It doesn’t belong to you.”
His jaw clenched around the pain of it. “It’s in Fugo’s toiletries bag.”
“Thank you.”
“Take it and run.”
“Giorno—”
“You’re not safe while you have it. I’ll know exactly where it is and what it’s doing unless you’re very careful.”
Trish took a step back. She let her hands drop from Giorno’s shoulders, and he stood, rooted rigidly to the spot. She took another step back towards the bathroom.
“Go,” Giorno snapped, and she turned, finding Fugo’s toiletries bag and rooting through it until she found the arrowhead. When she grabbed it, she heard Giorno let out an agonized, alien sort of hiss, and she forced herself not to think about it as she tore out of the room, to the stairwell.
Sheila E was at her heels. “What the hell are you doing?” Trish shouted. “Stay with Giorno!”
“He has Fugo,” Sheila E called back. “You have no one.”
It hit her in a wave of nausea. She had no one. In taking the arrow, she’d made an enemy of Giorno Giovanna, whether it was of his own free will or not. The thought knocked the breath out her, and she staggered, nearly missing the next step.
“Trish—”
“Keep going,” Trish managed, blinking away the involuntary tears. She’d sliced her palm open from gripping the arrow too tightly. She hissed at the shock of pain and forced herself to keep going, trying to take strength in the fact that Sheila E had caught up to her.
They tore through the lobby and found Fugo leaning against the wall outside. Sheila E skidded to a stop, explaining what had happened in frantic, half-coherent fragments, but Fugo seemed to understand impressively quickly. His eyes went wide. “Keep it safe!” he shouted, already turning to sprint for the door, towards Giorno. “Get rid of it!”
“Where the hell should we go?” Trish gasped, cradling the arrow and her hand to her chest. It was burning. “What do we do?”
“This was your idea,” Sheila E whispered, and it looked like the consequences of her decision to follow Trish were only beginning to catch up to her. “I’m not good at leading.”
“Fuck,” Trish managed. “Hell.”
“Hey!”
They whirled in the direction of Jolyne’s voice. She was leaning out of the rolled-down passenger’s seat of Jotaro’s car, waving. Unable to come up with an alternative, Trish led the way to the car, throwing herself into the backseat next to a nauseated-looking Josuke. Sheila E followed.
“Oh, great, the arrow,” Josuke whispered, voice rising several octaves. “Love to see that.”
“Drive. It’s not safe,” Trish shouted at Jotaro who, for his part, stepped on the gas without asking questions.
“What the hell’s going on?” Josuke demanded, looking a little frayed around the edges as Jotaro tore out of the parking lot. “Why isn’t it safe?”
Trish shook her head, unable to respond. Her throat was tight with grief and something greater, something stronger, something that had crawled its way from her throat to her extremities little by little until it was the only thing she was made of anymore.
Rage, she realized, dully.
She looked at the arrowhead in her hand. The blood on her palm was pooling and beginning to congeal, still burning, but it was the arrow that occupied her attention, the odd way that it was just a little bit broken, a little bit fragmented. She closed her fingers around it, aggravating the cut, but she almost didn’t feel it.
She glanced back at Sheila E, who had wound her arms around her torso, hunching her shoulders. They met eyes, and for once, Trish did not look away. Sheila E hesitated before nodding, sharply, and that was all Trish needed.
“Take us to the airport,” she said, and Jotaro complied.
Despising,
For you, the city, thus I turn my back;
There is a world elsewhere.