Trish Una (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
figlia_morbida) wrote2022-08-08 05:05 pm
figlia_morbida) wrote2022-08-08 05:05 pm
Ryslig | IC inbox
Main Username: < Zigazigah >
Public Appearance UN: < Western_Horizon >
Anon: < sharpdistance > , < kidcharlemagne > (not actually anon now because of Hinata)
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She watches Giorno practically ooze through the door, like he's afraid to take up too much space as much as he is to make any for himself.
That comment earns a scoff as well.]
Believe me, there wouldn't be any doubts regardless.
[There are many ways to tell a gangstar to buzz off!
Trish peers at Giorno when he pauses after that, before realizing his conundrum. Which is an entirely silly one to have. She waves at him impatiently.]
Go ahead. I don't own anything here. You could even smash each and every one over your own head, if you were so inclined.
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[So he just sits. This time he doesn't hesitate or hedge or give himself time to think or overanalyze. He just says what he's thinking.]
You're angry with me. I don't know why, but I'd like to know, so that I can keep from being upsetting in the future.
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She's still watching him at any rate, waiting for him to say whatever comes to his fool mind.
And it comes, and she mulls on his words, lifting a hand to inspect her nails like they're perhaps more interesting.
Her gaze remains squarely on her pink nails, pinker than any piece of furniture here, when she asks:]
What does it matter to you?
[She could spit venom all day and night, but he's immune to it, surely. Abbacchio was a rougher personality than her by many strides, after all.]
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[Is this a trick.]
Because I don't want to hurt you?
[What other motivation could there be? He doesn't like that she's upset with him, of course, it's uncomfortable and a little frightening, but — that's secondary. He doesn't want to harm her because she matters to him. That's all.]
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Is this a trick? She wonders the same thing.
As if to mirror or mock him or both, she tilts her own head.]
You couldn't hurt me even if you tried.
[Giorno can't hurt her feelings because she doesn't have any...!]
Again, what does it matter to you whether I'm hurt or not, assuming such a thing were possible?
[Because it is not, clearly.]
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[Minutely, he shakes his head.] Whether it's hurt or frustration or anger or something else, I don't want to cause you to be upset in any way. I know that I've done something, even if I'm wrong about what I've caused you to feel, because you're acting very differently towards me than you were before — and it is only me, or else you're hiding being upset with everyone else very well.
It matters because—
[He hates this question, actually? The more she makes him look at it, the more it pisses him off. Again, he just doesn't let himself think before he speaks.]
You matter. You matter to me, whether you want to or not, and the only kind of person who doesn't care whether they upset people they care about is the kind of person I know you wouldn't put up with even for an instant. I feel horrible. I feel like I've done something to make all of this even more difficult for you, and that's the last thing I want to do. It's not right.
I don't understand why you think it wouldn't matter to me. I don't understand that at all.
[That — well. Hurts, as it happens. So.]
tenses are fake
Now, here's the clincher. Trish watched Giorno weather her storm without cracking at the edges, and it seemed clear then and there, that he would do just as he wanted. Just as she should expect, truthfully.
Trish is watching him here and now though, her expression increasingly baffled, and she starts shaking her head even before he's finished.]
Isn't it obvious? First of all, your mission matters to you more than anything I can say. I am very aware of this and I don't plan to change your mind.
[She squares her shoulders.]
...Second, you haven't made any sense since I've been here. You act like we're very good friends, and I was happy to play along, but you don't know me at all if you have to come here in the dead of night and ask me why I could possibly ever be mad at you.
[Not that she's going to repeat herself when she beat her head against his already. For someone who's not upset, she's starting to look it.]
You don't know me at all, but you pretend you do, and I hate that. I hate it.
[Okay, she's definitely upset.]
But I had the gall to pretend right back. So the problem is entirely with me and not you, okay? Stop fretting over a stupid fight that doesn't matter anymore.
[Go back to throwing yourself at the vengeance mission so she can pretend just as hard not to be worried, Giorno. Because she cares, and she doesn't hate that she does, which is perhaps the worst part. The feelings of wanting to be like these stupid, stupid boys never left her. Disgusting.]
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[It comes out automatically. The longer he lets himself speak without thinking the easier it gets. He's frowning now, but it's only half frustration. The rest is determination.]
I won't stop, because it isn't stupid and it does matter. You hate something I'm doing, so it matters.
I didn't ask why you could ever be mad at me. There are a hundred reasons you could be mad at me that would be entirely justified. There are plenty of things I'm shocked you don't hate me for. But what I came here to ask about was right now, this thing that's happening, and I came to ask about it so I could stop. Because I want to stop. I want to do better. Whatever that looks like. If you don't—
[Shoulders tensing slightly, he presses his lips together. Breathes. Doesn't smooth his expression out, because he's still here, he's still in it, he's not disappearing like he did at the casino — but he doesn't want to get angry. Not with her.]
We're not "very good friends". I knew you for a week. I've been here for almost a year. I don't know what it is that I'm doing that's so inappropriate, but you're under no obligation to have anything to do with me. If I'd known my behavior was such a problem, I would have made that clear earlier. However you want to deal with me or not is up to you.
But I'm not going to lie and say that your safety and feelings don't matter to me. I'm not going to lie and pretend I don't know you. You saved my life and you changed my life. There's not a very good shorthand for what happened to us that doesn't spill our respective business out onto the sidewalk for everyone to see, so friend is what's worked.
But you hate that. Tell me what you wouldn't hate. You're right, I don't know you, so tell me how to at the very least treat you with respect.
im sorry i GUESS SHE HAD A LOT TO SAY, AGAIN
It maybe, possibly hides the fact her own face is turning pink as he goes on, like the freckles across her nose are blooming with even more color to fill the spaces between.
Whether it's a blush from indignation, embarrassment, or anger is hard to tell, though.
She leans forward as she curls her legs to herself, her arms lopping around them, guarded, but she doesn't look away from him even if it's hard to face him after letting that mess spill out onto the sidewalk that is her room.]
...It would sound insane to anyone else, wouldn't it? I don't know this boy. [She gestures to Giorno like she's showing him off to someone else.] I don't know where he grew up, or even what his favorite color is. But I would do anything for him. Absolutely anything.
[Honestly, truly. She would do anything for him, just like he would for her, which is exactly the issue, isn't it?]
But you misunderstand me entirely if you think that and the problem you came to me about aren't related. So fine. I'll tell you exactly what the issue is in so many words, words you will listen to until I'm finished speaking. And if you still don't get it after that, I refuse to say anymore.
[She's not even going to wait for him to agree or disagree with those terms. Here she goes!]
Let's say you're me, and you haven't seen Giorno Giovanna in months. Let's say you're me, and this Giorno has been telling people you're both friends, even if you haven't spoken to each other in ages and hardly at all when you lived together for a week. Let's say this Giorno missed you despite all this, in his words and the words of others, and you're left to wonder what that means, considering the above. Because you know he's aware of this as well, but he only talks when it suits him and leaves you to wonder the rest.
Let's say you're me, and the Giorno you thought you knew was a crazy bastard who would do anything to succeed and somehow kept a level head while doing so. Let's say you're me, and you had to rescue this stupid boy's new arm after he chopped off his own. You've watched this boy wager on gambit after gambit, but not once did he ever truly lose his head.
Let's say you're me, and you think you understand how this boy works, and in fact you count on it because it's all you've had. Now, let's say you're me in the present situation, and you watch and listen as this boy completely falls apart. Do you remember the things I said? I said them because they were things that I believed, sure, but they were also things you should've said. I was content to come along and watch, you know. I didn't expect to say anything at all. I don't know you, but even if I don't...
[She lets out a shaky breath.]
Well, maybe I'm a little scared, Giorno. Because whether we are friends, or not, I want you to be okay.
[There, she said it. If he'll remember, she doesn't have the power to help him like she did before. If he lands in trouble this time, neither her nor Fugo can help him. It sucks!]
sends u an even longer tag apparently
[Because what is Trish to him? At the beginning she was nothing. A girl who might be an invaluable tool or might be an inconvenience. A girl he watched, forming an opinion about her in silence through observation just as he's always done, just as he's always been punished for. A girl he decided he admired, he identified with, from the firm way she held herself at a distance to the frustration at being left out of a series of events that was life or death for her.]
[He and Trish were never friends, but before he came here, she was the second closest thing he had.]
[So he listens, open ears and mind and heart. This has an unfortunate side effect, which is that he hears her. All of it — the parts that are easily digestible and the parts that aren't. It makes sense that she's worried about him. He didn't know, but he can understand it. It makes sense that seeing him imperfect, flawed, cracking is new to her. He hadn't considered it, but he can understand that, too. They don't really know each other. They don't.]
[He just hadn't considered the possibility that, presented with a lie that holds itself together and the real person he's been trying so hard to be, she'd prefer the former.]
[Maybe there's a part of him that's willing to entertain the possibility that it's more complicated than that, that she's letting her walls down in fits and starts, that it's as hard for her to explain these things as it is for him. But the inside of his skin is all fresh wounds, bleeding sap, new scar tissue cut open over and over again with every day that passes and Steve doesn't wake up and answers aren't found and he dreams of bodies and thinks of his failures and all the ways he fears he isn't fit anymore to be the person he so badly wants to be. Has always wanted to be.]
[Too soft.]
[He's angry, he notes. There are things he doesn't do when he's angry. For the people who matter to him, there is a special list. He will never raise his voice. He will never raise his hand. He will never stand in their space. He will never make this expression, or that one, or a third. He won't make anyone feel the things that he's felt. These resolutions are only half-conscious, but they're burned into him. Ever since he realized that people mattered to him — specific people, not the people, but those people who love him, who he wants to love — it's been the greatest cardinal sin, that kind of cruelty.]
[So he doesn't tell her any of the bitter ugly details about the body, even though they'd cut and he might feel vindicated for a moment, seeing it hurt her. He doesn't tell her that she's right and she doesn't know a damn thing about him, and maybe he should keep it that way. He doesn't get up and leave, leave, leave, go out to the tree where it feels safe and curl up tight and come down only to feed and rip out his pound of flesh.]
[There are a lot of things he doesn't do.]
[He doesn't hide his expression, neither the anger nor the hurt in it; mutes them, maybe, but doesn't pull the mask all the way up. He doesn't look away from her. After she's finished speaking, after he's digested it, the parts that make sense and the parts that go down his throat like nails, he nods.]
I see. You're right. I'm not the same here as I was when you knew me. At the very least, I don't act the same. I'm sorry that's been jarring. It's been a much more gradual process for me than for you. It's been—
[—a long year, of ice rink Christmas high school garden seaside Mista head splitting open bleeding vines down his throat ripped out and he's breathing and crying and remembering and held, and out of nowhere she's there, and he's trying, and it's not good enough, it's not good enough.]
[His voice wobbles, but doesn't stop, and he still hates it.]
—a process of adapting to this place and what it demands from me, and listening, and trying to do better. There have been side effects of this, obviously. When you arrived, I wanted to be a truer version of myself than I was before. I thought it would be better to be honest, to show what I was feeling as I felt it, because for that week you knew me I spent every second holding myself back. They tell me that's bad, you know? Maybe that was the wrong choice, I really don't know. It felt right at the time.
I can promise you that I'm not going to give up any more than I did then. It's not something I do. That much was true. I'm going to see this through to the end, and I'm going to come out in one piece on the other side. Any other option is unacceptable to me.
But I'm not okay, Trish. I'm sorry that doesn't fit the image you have of me, but I'm just not, and after all of this I won't sit in front of you and pretend that I am.
vores it
The time they spent together prior was a whiplash of death, everything happening so fast...and the stakes arguably higher since they betrayed an organization that held entire territories under its thumb. But Trish was only focused on herself during that, she knows this. She did what she had to survive, to find her past. Protecting the boys came after, but it was...hard.
It's unfortunate for them, she thought. But I can't do anything.
It's unfortunate for Steve, too. What happened to him was awful.
She can't do anything for him.
And the possibility is there that Giorno won't be able to either.
There's a part of her that worries what Giorno will do, then, when they just...don't find who did it. When that person disappears into the fog as quietly as they had come. This isn't like what it was with Passione, where the enemy nipped at their heels. Giorno never had to wait. He never had time to think and agonize and regret over his decisions for this long.
Trish turns these thoughts around in her head restlessly, comparing them to the words Giorno speaks. Would it be right to say she prefers the Giorno of Italy? Maybe. She is after all, a selfish person.
His gaze is as flinty as hers, but she's the one who curls in tighter on herself, like she wants to disappear, coward that she is.
Because he's not okay, and she knew this, and she wonders why he has to feel responsible for doing something when he's just not in the state of mind to do it. Because he was...clearly closer to Steve than she could ever understand, and maybe it's because she's watching Giorno actively mourning that this whole situation has carved a massive hole in her chest, a jagged thing right where her heart ought to be.
There is no ultimate goal at the end except revenge. Maybe that's what seems wrong about this all. Will Giorno be satisfied at the end? She doesn't think so. Not unless he sat on his pedestal in Napoli, christened as the new don of Passione, and didn't think about all the corpses lying at his feet.]
I wonder how strange it is for you to hear me talk this much.
[She murmurs, her expression tired as she withers under the anger and hurt in his own.
It must be jarring, she thinks. She never had much input before. She wonders how much else she'll be allowed to say, considering he's put up with a barrage already.]
Listen...I know, Giorno. You're not the same person I met. I realize that now more than ever. And you'll come out of this alive, but I don't think you're going to die or anything. You're too stubborn for that.
[That part she knows hasn't changed. And they...were slowly getting to know each other now that she's been here. She could make him laugh if she knew where to press her advantage. And he supported her without question when it mattered.
He's smiled more than she ever thought possible. He wanted to show something genuine, but she didn't realize that's what he was after, too confused and baffled by the suddenness of it. Too used to a Giorno that obfuscated where he could and used sleight of hand to turn entire situations on their heads. A Giorno that made measured decisions and placed immense trust in himself and the people around him to see things through.
She turns her head away, her eyes fluttering closed.]
But I worry you won't find the satisfaction you're looking for. A goal like revenge isn't something tangible. I'm not saying it's bad or wrong to want it, but it's too nebulous to stake so much in it. But I already told you I'm not here to change your mind.
[Even if this whole thing is eating him up from the inside out. She breathes a slow sigh.]
I'm just here to be the nagging voice to make you think twice. The fact you stopped here, I guess that's enough for me. It means you were thinking about what I've been trying to say, even if I can't make it make sense for you. Maybe because we're too different.
[Or she really doesn't make any sense, prattling on and worrying about things that don't involve her, or he's not in place where his mind will parse it right now. He's the boy wrapped in ambition, a boy who climbed to the top of a world, and what is she?
She doesn't know. She hasn't known since she woke up here.
She realizes she also never offered an alternative to what they should call themselves. Probably because she doesn't know that anymore either. She's doubtlessly gone and stamped out the burgeoning sprout of a good rapport between them, trying to slow him down.]
no subject
[He doesn't know how to explain to her how happy it's made him to hear more from her, to know more of her. How the little ways they're the same have brought him more joy than he could have imagined, and their differences have been fascinating and thought-provoking, giving him a way to look at the world through the lens of someone as articulate and opinionated as he is who is nonetheless not him. He's spent so long thinking that he would never have the opportunity to know Trish, and that that is fine and right, and that she's better off — but he's wanted to. She made it through with him. She understands, to the extent that anyone can, how painful it is.]
[He doesn't know how to tell her that he wanted her at that meeting in the first place so that she would be that nagging voice. That he didn't misunderstand to be obstinate and that he is grateful to her for persisting. That he needs that level of logic and rationality, because he is nowhere near as put together as he's always pretended he is, and he wants to be able to be vulnerable like that with her.]
[But he doesn't know how to tell her any of that, because Giorno as he has been towards her since her arrival has felt strange and unsafe and unreliable. They're not friends. It certainly seems possible that she doesn't want to be friends, if this is the person she would be friends with and not the Giorno she knew back home. Whoever that was, she can't see him and the Giorno in front of her as one person. At least not now.]
[So he just doesn't say it. Listens and stares at her with a faintly hunted look in his eyes, which have no iris and no pupil, only vast green sclera, but still somehow express more emotion than she'd ever seen from him in Italy.]
We're not that different, Trish, [is where he finally lands.] It makes sense. For the most part, I agree with it. I just don't have a tidy, reassuring answer for you.
[What he has is a truth that he only realizes is true as he says it, as the words are coming out, and the surprise doesn't show because really, when he thinks about it instead of looking away from it, maybe he's not that surprised at all.]
Revenge is secondary. If he comes back, then I'll be all right.
[If, then.]
[And doesn't that frame a few things differently.]
[If Steve comes back, then Giorno will be all right; he will be able to let revenge go. If Steve does not, Giorno will singlemindedly pursue revenge. If vengeance is not satisfied, solve for X.]
[She's right in thinking the waiting is part of what's crushing him. Their journey together was through a war zone, a very subtle one right up until it wasn't. This is not that. This was a single cat killing a single rat in a large city, and here they are now, sifting through every one of the cats. So what if they don't find it?]
[Their journey together was a war zone, and still he refused to let go. His body, his soul, his most intrinsic being could not tolerate loss. She doesn't know — he never told her — never told anyone — what he did. But he knows. He knows how far he went to reach out and refuse death. The composure she and Mista saw from him in the aftermath was shock. It will not go like that this time.]
[The last time someone killed people who mattered to him — the last time half of his love was carved out of his body in one fell swoop — he reached out automatically, too. Vengeance was automatic. He would not have done what he did to Diavolo if he hadn't been cursed by caring so much. If it had been just him, if Bruno Bucciarati had never existed, if Leone Abbacchio had never died for their mission, if Narancia Ghirga had gone back to school, Diavolo would simply have died. But he killed people that Giorno loved, so death was not good enough. It's still not good enough. It never will be good enough.]
[So what happens when "dead" means "gone forever" and revenge is unattainable? Where does that energy go? Because it isn't just grief, not for Giorno. It isn't just loss. There's a force in him that grabs on to people and doesn't let go, a new part of his heart that woke up the second it realized there were people in his periphery offering him something. This part beats too quickly and too haphazardly. It lives every moment unhealthy and on the edge of death, although he's tried so desperately to nurture it here. His heart can't lose love without putrefying. There's toxicity in it, which eats him from the inside out. He can change reality, or he can cause pain, or he can eat himself from the inside out.]
[There are no other options.]
gets punched in the face repeatedly by Anne
Eyes that are luminous with pain, and she meets them with her own green eyes, whose pupils and irises remain intact, as if to reflect what Giorno's used to be, though his were...no, his old eyes were green too.
Then...
Maybe he's right.
Maybe they really aren't that different.
But their similarities only punctuate the deep divides of the few differences they do have.
Trish doesn't know what Giorno has done in the face of death, not really. Bucciarati merely kept his body running on pure resolve alone. Her father eventually faded from her senses, so she assumed he had drowned in the canal he'd fallen into, after Giorno bested him with Gold Experience Requiem.
In her eyes, then, what had happened was as neat and tidy as it could be, even with the bodies they left every step of the way.
Giorno was someone she could admire, in that sense. Just as she had admired Bucciarati.
But here, she listens to Giorno essentially say that yes, he's listening. Yes, he understands.
And yet...he cannot oblige her. He won't.
And for that, she realizes they really are at an impasse, because she simply can't support it. So she rests her chin on her knees, still curled in on herself, eyes half-lidded as she studies Giorno.
Giorno, warped by this place, but Giorno all the same.]
No, I suppose we're more similar than either of us thought.
[Perhaps painfully so.]
What I would like for you and what you want for yourself, however, are two very different things. You're predicating your state of mind on a possibility I hear is very likely...
[Steve could pop up and simply put an end to all this, but...]
But until that happens, I will not accept your answer and reserve my right to be frustrated with you. And you'll simply have to accept that.
[As long as they understand each other, then maybe...he'll be satisfied. Maybe.
If there is anything to take from this, at least, it's something Giorno can take with him as just another thing he had the opportunity to experience with Trish Una. A weighty disagreement, the two of them peering over their respective walls, baring their weaknesses and seeing the other person's in turn.]