hierophany | Inbox

I don't know.

[ There's a logical answer, of course, but Jotaro won't want to hear it. And he doesn't want to give it any thought, because that makes this all seem a little more alarming than he already is. ]

You weren't going to do it anyway, this is all irrelevant. I just- didn't want you to think that the problem was you.

Oh.

[He knows the sound of a figurative book closing when he hears one. As soon as this is all irrelevant came out, that was essentially it; it's not going to do any good to press any further. He'll just have to remember, and think, and maybe sometime later he'll figure it out.

But that's fine. There's something else he wants an answer to, anyway.]

...So...you must think I'm fucked up too, though. Because of what I said. Right?

Not because of what you said. It's- I don't know. It seems normal enough. Pain is sensory information, the same as anything else. I just don't know a lot about it.

[ This should probably be 'no, you're not fucked up'. But Jotaro will know if he's lying, and he'll decide what it is he's lying about and he'll settle on the worst one. ]

But you are- kind of fucked up. Just- not that.

Nobody would understand it anyway.

[He says, under his breath, before shaking it off and locking back in on the admission that — well, it's not wrong, it's just. Sort of ugly to hear it in someone else's voice instead of just in his own head.

Funny. Isn't that what he wanted, months ago? Fr someone to look at him and confirm all the things he told himself. That it was his fault. That it was him. Just for someone to agree with his feelings.

So this is what he kept grasping for, really. Not just anyone. Kakyoin.]

If not that, then what?

I made you do it alone, didn’t I?

[ He doesn’t know it for sure. He wasn’t there, and something happened to Mr. Joestar. Polnareff was there, probably. About 90% of Polnareff was there.

But he said ‘I got the message’, not ‘we’. ]

You thought I hated you. Because someone else hurt me. That’s not an assumption a not-fucked-up person would make. You were alone, and you shouldn’t have been. And somehow that ended up in you thinking I hated you.

[And that's it. Just like that, his eyes are on the sofa cushions, because he can't make himself look at Kakyoin anymore.]

...Jiji. Jiji wasn't the one who — told me. What had happened to you.

[There is a limited pool of suspects he could've gotten that information from. So limited, in fact, that it's probably down to about one.]

What would it take? To make you hate me. What would I have to have done? What would I have to be?

[ He doesn’t know why he reaches out, why he knocks Jotaro’s hat aside slightly to rest his hand on the back of his head. It just makes sense, like he’s put something in the correct box. Like that’s just where that hand belongs and he’s tidying it away. ]

Someone else, I think. You’d have to be someone else.

[When did this become about him and not Kakyoin? He doesn't know. He does know that being half-vampire right now probably isn't helping anything; feeling everything so much and so strongly is just amplifying emotions that already have the power to consume him all on their own.

Moonlacing begins once they start to touch. The glow of it is faint, but it's warm. It feels like he'll get lost if it goes away, like that sensation is the distant beacon of a lighthouse in the midst of a midnight storm.]

I'd have to be him. You hate him, right?

[He breathes, slow. In and out.]

I can show you how I beat him. If you want to know.

Yeah. I hate him. More than I thought I did.

[ It was Dio who told him. Who found a way to turn him into a weapon to hurt Jotaro one last, disgusting time. He ought to be furious. He is furious. But Dio isn't here, and Jotaro is, and somehow the parts of his body between his brain and his hand have turned into a machine for turning anger into something with softer edges, so it starts off as something that could weld steel and ends as fingertips pressing lightly against Jotaro's scalp.

His voice is soft, even talking about Dio. It has been since he stopped discussing himself. ]

If you're going to tell me that you punched him, I had already guessed.

[A decision hangs on a narrow point, capable of tipping one way or another. He could say something here. There's something that he wants to. He wants to, and it's so, so tempting.

But the thing is, Kakyoin is smart. Smart enough to figure out what Dio's Stand did, all on his own. Smart enough to turn over every stone and pick apart every last detail, smart enough to take the whole cobbled-together clockwork apart and only put it back together again once he's figured out how it ticks.

And Jotaro knows that. Because he knows Kakyoin.]

You think I punched him?

[He presses his lips together, then parts them again. It buys him one second.

Sometimes one second makes all the difference.]

How could I have punched him when he could stop time?

[For anyone else, it would be a dry, rhetorical question. Anyone else would hear it, take away something sardonic, and walk away.

But later — not now, but later, he knows it, he's sure of it — Kakyoin will lie awake in the dark, turning it over and over and over again, and eventually he'll think, that's not the same as a no, and eventually he'll ask:

How did Jotaro beat him when he could stop time?]

I don’t know.

[ And it should be a big deal. He is, after all, profoundly uncomfortable with not knowing things. And it is- maybe a little big deal. Just a deal.

Slowly, he moves his hand. Combs his fingers through Jotaro’s hair. It just feels correct, somehow. ]

There’s a trick to it. There always is, with you. Something I missed. Probably something that’s going to be frustratingly obvious in hindsight. Part of the bigger picture that I missed while I was staring at the details. I’ll figure it out, sooner or later. But there would have been punching.

[Almost absently, he flexes the fingers of his right hand, watching the skin stretch and recede over his knuckles. Star isn't there. He's a vampire anyway, he heals every injury he incurs, like this.

He can still feel it, anyway. How it felt when the knuckles split.]

They have these...pods, here. Virtual reality, they call it.

[Jotaro, you're such an 80s kid.]

They can play back memories. So when you want to know, we'll go.

They do?

[ Okay so he was trying to have A Moment but Jotaro just casually informed him that the coolest she he could ever imagine exists and it feels like it would be physically agonising to take his hand from Jotaro’s hair and it would takehim a good two minutes to figure out how to fit through the door and he can’t wear a shirt right but damn if he doesn’t want to go find these cool things right this second.

And then the next part sinks in. ]

Why would you want that?

[ He can’t quite place the emotion in his own voice. One part cautious affection to three parts concern, seasoned with confusion and disbelief. He’s heard a similar tone before. Once, in the desert, when Jotaro asked him if he’d sliced open his own skin. ]

...When it was January sixteenth, about six months ago now. I went in and...I did it over again. I had to do it again. All of it, the whole thing. That whole night.

[He closes his eyes, instinctively leaning into the hand in his hair, and listens past the sound of Kakyoin's voice to the beat of his blood, the pulse of his heartbeat.]

You want to see him die, don't you?

Not enough.

[ He sounds a little taken aback by his own words. Like he didn’t expect there to be a level of hatred he couldn’t reach. Like he never thought he’d so easily admit to being not enough of anything at all. His tone is still soft. Warmer, now, heated by anger after being chilled by worry. But the words taste metallic coming out and he can’t quite tell if that’s the taste of knives or blood. ]

He hurt you. I don’t hate him enough to let him do it again just to watch him suffer for it.

He doesn't need a simulation to do that.

[What a bittersweet admission to make. It's a shame about Kakyoin's wings, he thinks idly; if he were sitting normally on the couch, instead of sideways, it'd be much easier to lie down and curl up and rest his head up against Kakyoin's leg and just hold still for a while.

He's not supposed to want that, he reminds himself, but it doesn't matter. The vampire doesn't listen to the human's insistence.]

Anyway, like I said. When you want to know, we'll go. When you decide. I won't make you, otherwise.

And I don’t need to give him another tool. I don’t need to be another tool.

[ He wants - something. Something impossible. Wants to cut January the 16th out of Jotaro’s heart like the abdomen out of a stupid, stupid boy. Wants to make him forget. Wants to pull him close and collapse the world in around them until there are no shadows left for old monsters to hide in.

He just keeps stroking. ]

If you want to show me, I’ll go. But I won’t be made into something to hurt you. Not by him, and not by you.

[It's too late for that too, he thinks, but doesn't say it aloud because it won't solve anything. It won't solve anything and it'll only make Kakyoin frustrated and impotent, confirming that Dio used him against his will yet again.

So he doesn't. He just keeps his eyes closed and tries to remember how it feels, instead, to just lie still and happy in a small, narrow world hidden away from everything, where nothing hurts and no one dies.]

I think you need to know.

[His voice rumbles a little, low and faded.]

Whether I tell you or I show you. Either way.

When Star is back, then. And-

[ He has conditions. He knows he has conditions. He just doesn't know how to make them into reasonable things. He can't just demand that Jotaro not hurt. He can't demand that things be made right again. He can't ask Jotaro to let him protect him. ]

-Adrian. You tell him that you're doing this. [ He has no idea if Adrian is any better at navigating this than he is and fuck he hates relying on people but Jotaro's hurt and he can't fix it and maybe someone else can. ] He doesn't have to be there. But he has to know.

He was there the last time.

[But then his eyes open slowly, and he peers up at Kakyoin with a searching, inquisitive look — not accusatory, just caught off-guard and abruptly curious because of it.]

How did you find out his name? He only ever introduces himself as Alucard.

You- said that was his name. Didn’t you?

[...he did, didn’t he? He must have, because Kakyoin doesn’t fuck up like that. Not in such an easy, stupid way. Not even when angry. Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck. ]

...Only when we're alone.

[On one hand he should probably feel a little bad for what he's doing to Kakyoin right now, but on the other hand, the part of him that religiously watched Columbo every day is absolutely living.]

Did you read it somewhere?

[Note to self: perhaps hide his diary better??]

I don’t think so.

[ Fuck fuck fuck he fucked up. He should have gone with the stupid vampire name but also: why should he call someone backwards for Dracula it’s so on the nose it practically sounds vampire-racist. It’s stupid. ]

I must have just overheard. I’d thought that ‘Alucard’ must have been a nickname. It seemed- a little presumptuous. To call him by it.

[ Is it a nickname? It must be, right? A stupid cutesy vampire nickname and ugh, it’s not like he wants a bad nickname but STILL he wants to puff up with jealousy. ]

Hah. Actually, you've got it backwards.

[It is, actually, kind of funny. Both the way Kakyoin's reacting (did he forget that Jotaro can hear the pulse of his blood and the beat of his heart? Liar, liar, liar) and the fact that he remembers feeling exactly the same way about the same stupid name, way back when.]

It'd be like...you, letting someone off the street call you Nori. Your name, but not the one you tell people.

That’s not my name, Jotaro.

[ And he does, in fact, puff up. He doesn’t blush except at his ears, but his cheeks inflate like a chipmunk’s and his feathers stick out until he looks less like a majestic thing that doesn’t know how to use a shirt or a couch and more like a hedgehog made of feathers that still doesn’t know how to use a shirt or a couch. ]

It’s not even nearly my name.

[ Oh my god why are you giving him cutesy nicknames. ]

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