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)
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.]