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[hierophany]

(I dreamed a fire pit and a funeral last I slept)

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for dolphinstan

[hierophany]

[ This wasn't supposed to happen again. He stopped talking about Hierophant. Perfected everything he could perfect. People stopped saying that something was wrong with him, because he stopped letting anyone see the parts that they thought were wrong. And maybe it was lonely, but it was always better to be alone and perfect than alone and mad.

And then he'd thought there might be another way. Maybe it involved hurting a few people, but that hardly mattered when it meant he could be seen as himself, as his whole and ugly self, and loved anyway. Perhaps not loved. But seen as useful, at the very least. Better than not seen at all.

It had been a mistake, but he knows why he made it. He knows how unbearable the alternative had always been. This was supposed to be the other way that he'd thought Dio was. People who could see him as he is, see the world as he sees it, know that he isn't just mad-

-Mr. Joestar's talking about how to send him home. They don't want him here anymore. He's not just weird or wrong or messed-up, no. He's so fucked up that he's a liability. That they think he might be a danger. He'd almost prefer they thought he was a traitor. Maybe he should tell them that he is.

Fuck, maybe they're right. Maybe he really is mad.

His arm hurts.

He should pull the cloth of his shirt away from it, wash it and dress it properly. He doesn't want to look at it again.

Mr. Joestar is talking to Polnareff again, over by the fire. Telling him not to worry. That they'll have the foundation pick him up at the next city. Have him taken and looked over by the best doctors they can find and send him home. He's hyperventilating. His hands are holding on to his hair so tightly that it feels like he's going to tear away bits of scalp. ]

[dolphinstan]

[ It doesn't make sense.

Well. The baby being a Stand user doesn't make sense in general. Dreams being infiltrated by a Stand doesn't make sense in general. But then, Jotaro had to fight a fucking orangutan smoking a pipe a few weeks ago. He's ready for impossible things. They all are.

But this...this is too far.

Kakyoin losing it? That's too far. Jotaro listens to his grandfather and Polnareff, annoyed and worried and tense. There's compassion breaking audibly between them, but they don't listen. Jotaro does. He's got plenty of time, since he doesn't offer up any opinions during the initial set of confrontations.

And holy shit, is it crazy to see the words carved into Kakyoin's skin. It's raised and irritated and sets the hair on the back of his neck standing straight up, and Kakyoin's always had a strange and slightly jarring intensity to him, but he's never not felt safe.

Maybe it's instinct. Maybe it's stubbornness. But Jotaro watches his grandfather and Polnareff half-whispering by the fire and Kakyoin sitting several yards away with his head in his hands, and he remembers Kakyoin telling him about living with DIO. Living with DIO. And he came out of that— well, not okay, not really whole, but himself. Or something like it.

Why would he crack partway towards getting revenge, if what he went through to want revenge so badly didn't do it?

Jotaro stands up, and his grandfather says something about 'give him space, he's probably too tired to think clearly' and Jotaro remembers Kakyoin's strangely toneless anger when he'd talked about having Hierophant since he was younger, and how no one else could see him.

'Shut up, jiji.'

Jotaro would sit across from him if that were physically possible, but of course Kakyoin has self-isolated on the only convenient log in that area. Jotaro sinks down next to him without asking if it's okay.

Which is when he sees how white his knuckles are. Hears his breathing. ]

Tell me you're sure.

tfln continuation

[hierophany]

I think the doctors would start crying if I did.

[ He rolls his eyes, because nowadays he interprets everyone doing things for him as a sign that they think that he can't do it himself. And he can, thank-you-very-much.

Jotaro knows that, he knows. So he doesn't do much more than roll his eyes. Just shrugs the folded wheelchair off his shoulder and stuffs it in to the footwell before climbing in. He doesn't need to prove anything. He releases Hierophant once he's seated, letting his legs fall uselessly limp. ]

So if I ever start, you'll know I found a doctor I hate.

[dolphinstan]

[ Jotaro grunts in a tone that's meant to convey 'that's good' but which is maybe lost to the sound of the hinged wheelchair getting shoved into the footwell. He wonders if he should bother adding 'yeah, I kind of stopped too', because Kakyoin doesn't actually have any other way of learning that since Jotaro always visits him inside, so it's not like he'd notice the sudden downturn in cigarette use.

...No, it's probably obvious anyway, he won't mention it. Jotaro's thinking of them now though, and his hand goes to his usual pocket before he remembers right, his only box is at home in his desk drawer right now so it's harder to get at. He sighs and puts his hands on the wheel instead. ]

Killing yourself to prove a point. [ Bold words from someone who started drinking and smoking almost a year prior to this conversation, but okay. He's mostly amused.

And then...doesn't say anything else. Not having anything to fiddle with is by far a worse side effect of quitting than the withdrawals. He's not naturally a fidgeter otherwise, and having nothing to do with his hands in his own self-caused awkward silence is...uniquely awful.

If Kakyoin goes to break the silence, Jotaro cuts in abruptly with, ] I got accepted at a university.

[ He's actually pretty easy to read right now, because he's feeling...conflicted about this. He doesn't look happy. ]

ftr this can exist independent of whatever happens in the other college-discussion thread, but,,

[dolphinstan]

[ It's a week into the semester and Jotaro knew he was going to hate the dorms the most already, but he overlooked some of the more obvious problems.

Maybe it's because the last time he spoke English this consistently, he was traveling to Egypt. Maybe it's because the last time he wasn't in his own bed at home this often, he was traveling to Egypt. Maybe it's because everyone who mattered to him and who was why he was traveling to Egypt are yet again far away from him.

Maybe it's as simple as the fact that Egypt and knives and hearts stopping are all he tends to dream about, even though it's been almost a fucking year since he met DIO just once and he should have moved on by now.

His roommate isn't sympathetic. Jotaro barely hears him grumbling about 'fucking shut up, again?' over his own heart beating in his ears. He can quiet down his breathing a lot, but not all of the way, and his ribs burn with the effort. Or maybe they just burn with breathing at all.

Jotaro throws off the covers and this time he just leaves the dorm. He forgets to grab a coat, which is annoying but not actually a problem because even at 3am it isn't that cold yet outside by the time he's walked down two flights of stairs and ignored the roaming RA and pushed through the doors to the outside.

It's only been a fucking week. He needs to get a grip.

He can't get a grip. He can't convince himself about his own memories. Which is real?

He dials the one number he wants to and the one number he probably shouldn't, and when the line's picked up he talks first. ] Kakyoin?

[ He's probably lucky Japan's thirteen hours ahead. ]

[hierophany]

[ Adapting has been strange, even over the week since he's been gone. He's not had a really, really bad day yet, the rare kind where he has to swallow his pride and demand that Jotaro come to the hospital so he's not alone if the painkillers make him see things that aren't there. Holly has visited a few times, despite the distance, and he's trying to be grateful for that.

Mostly, he's throwing himself into the physical therapy harder than ever. Harder than he would if Jotaro were here to know about it, in truth. The doctors are making those worried sort of sounds again. He's half expecting them to enlist Holly in their worrying, which would be unfair. Or to get a call from Joseph at some point, one of 'pace yourself or this isn't happening' ultimatums that start happening when the doctors get scared and go to the top for help, but he's going to push his luck as far as he can.

He instantly feels guilty when, in the middle of his post-exercise curling into the fetal position and trying to ignore the pain while half-watching some anime about a guy getting a girlfriend from space, he hears someone mention that there's a call coming in from the US. It must be some stupid hour of the morning there. Did he really worry Mr. Joestar that much? It's a relief for about three seconds when the nurse clarifies that it's Jotaro, before he remembers that there aren't many good reasons for Jotaro to be calling at what-the-fuck-o-clock in the morning either. ]

Still not- [ Fuck, talking hurts. Not unbearably, and not any more than any other aspect of existing hurts right now, but fuck. This hadn't been a problem before when just existing in the same space was an acceptable form of communication. ] - Still not sleeping much?

UTENA AU???

[hierophany]

[ The ring doesn’t fit quite right. He and Adrian both have long, thin fingers but his are more spidery, usually redder in the knuckles, and the ring is loose. It twists on his finger, until the rose is on the inside and tangled in Jotaro’s hair. Adrian won’t wake for maybe twenty minutes yet, and the castle isn’t far now. Adrian will wake to a new world. ]

I wondered why I was born like this, you know. For so long. Until I realised that I wasn’t.

[ He’s clever. He’s always been clever. The teachers like him for it, when it makes him a high achiever who blends conveniently into the background, making them feel good about their work but doing nothing more. They get antsy when it makes him ask questions they can’t answer. Too clever, they say sometimes, for his own good.

Except for Mr. Death, who thinks he is exactly as clever as he ought to be and answers all of his questions with questions of his own, the kind that force him to confront the answer himself. Who shows him which threads to pull to find new questions. Mr. Death, who took a puppet that looked like him from Terence on the day he arrived. Which should be horrifying, but isn’t. It’s just nice to see himself mattering enough to get a puppet.

He asked Mr. Death how to send letters from the school, so he could write his parents. Ask them how they’d fucked him up. What his mother had drunk while she was pregnant. If they’d dropped him or poisoned him or shaken him until some important part came loose. Why the fuck they thought they had the right to make him broken and how he could fix himself. Mr. Death asked him if he knew who to write to, and he couldn’t answer. ]

Someone made me like this. Useless. Someone made you precious. Someone made everyone here matter.

LEANS REAL HARD INTO THIS

[starmark]

[This isn't how things are supposed to work. This isn't how — anything — is supposed to work. It's one thing for Adrian to wander into his life, bending rules, twisting customs. Adrian hates the Rose Duels and dreams of setting him free from them, but at least he still participates in them. He still adheres to some semblance of how this world turns around and around on its axis.

Duels are supposed to end in a flurry of severed rose petals and a clanging of the school bells. Duels are supposed to involve two recognized participants, marked by virtue of the rose signets they wear on their fingers. Duels are how he's passed from hand to hand, how control over him shifts from one bridegroom to another.

None of that happened here. It's not a duel when Adrian is the only one wearing a ring, because Kakyoin was never supposed to be a part of this, never supposed to have anything to do with this. It's not a duel when the two participants didn't so much cross swords as only one participant even knew it was a duel to begin with, and cold-cocked the other upside the head and stole his ring and his Rose Bride. This isn't sanctioned, it isn't right, it isn't —

He's stumbling as he's dragged along, off-balance and left to keep pace somewhere between falling and crawling because he's so much taller than Kakyoin but Kakyoin has him by the hair, is pulling him by the iron grip in his curls. It hurts, but not as much as his words do. He's used to the pain that comes with being the Rose Bride. He's not used to the torture that comes with being on the wrong end of Kakyoin's malice.]

Don't...

[He's still, for all intents and purposes, Adrian's possession. Ownership of him can only pass through sanctioned duels, technically he's not Kakyoin's to use or to claim.

But that's what makes this so dangerous, because they're heading for the path that leads to the upside-down castle in the sky, and he doesn't know what happens when it opens because of a kidnapping instead of a victory.

And if anyone could unravel the power of the world, it's Kakyoin.]

Don't do this —

How to menace others by aggressively birdwatching

[hierophany]

[ It's been four weeks, if his measurements of time are correct. It's hard to tell if they are. His watch has been stopped for as long as he can remember. He crosses out a box on the calendar every morning, but it always seems to be the same box, a Monday, about halfway through the month. He's written 28 pages worth of entries in his homework diary.

If only he could remember what it's been four weeks since.

It's technically a punishment, his work as the Guidance Counsellor's assistant (what for? he doesn't know. He only knows that someone was discussing something and Mr. Death stepped in and said something about what a shame it would be to have a black mark on a perfect record), but it's hard to see it that way. He likes Mr. Death. He'd run errands for him without even being asked, and the tasks that he does have for him are hardly unpleasant.

For the last week, that task has been to identify a bird. A purple bird that Mr. Death would like to know the species of. It seemed like a simple job, at first. He made sketches, took notes, and went through every book he could find in the library and found nothing at all. Not a single creature fit even most of the criteria. Which Mr. Death was very understanding about, but Noriaki Kakyoin does not fail and hasn't been given any other tasks to complete and so it, naturally, has become a crusade.

He has a collection, now, of sketchbooks and notebooks and library books, all piled up on a blanket on the grass a little way away from where the offending bird is hopping about between branches of a magnolia tree. And he watches it through a pair of binoculars, taking note of every feature that could possibly identify it as a mutation of some sort of one of a bird that exists in the books. ]

[starmark]

[The thing about Star is that, for all that he's Jotaro's to direct and command, he still very much has a mind of his own. Star does what Jotaro wants him to, and goes where he tells him to, but left to his own devices, he has his own very definite breadth of opinions that sometimes even come into opposition of Jotaro's own. Star liked Adrian long before Jotaro had any reason to trust him; Star was the one who brought his weekly visits to the chairman's private chambers to Adrian's attention without Jotaro's permission to do it.

Star has a will and a purpose all his own, for all that he still obeys Jotaro's. Sometimes he even seems to have more than the Rose Bride is willing to display — lodging irritable animal protests with his master when Jotaro would otherwise stay passive and silent.

Right now, Star is hopping around in a magnolia tree, which Jotaro knows because he always knows where Star is and where he goes. What he doesn't know, however, is that Star is being watched by a distant voyeur with a stopped watch and an insatiable curiosity behind his binocular lenses.

Star, on the other hand, is fully aware. Cheeky thing that he is.

Which is why, after a little more hopping about just to put on a proper show of it, Star lifts his wings and shifts forms, melting instantly into the form of a fat squirrel before he resumes bouncing around the tree branches in a mammalian fashion now, instead of an avian one.]

Sometimes it's fun to just write bullshit and call it #aesthetic symbolism

[starmark]

[A week passes, before Jotaro's prediction ultimately comes true: the theater club, long-dormant and mostly forgotten as an afterthought in the idyllic school world of the Speedwagon Academy, abruptly comes down to stand in the footlights when it begins advertising a new production they've been developing for — well, who can really say how long. But the fliers begin popping up here and there, broadly proclaiming a theatrical event that will astonish and amaze, and as expected of a small club that consists of mostly girls and certainly no thrilling spectacles like the crossing of swords in the fencing club, pretty much no one pays attention to it.

No one, that is, except for someone looking for it to happen.

Abbacchio's sister is in this particular club, Jotaro remembers vaguely as he pauses to examine a poster that had been haphazardly slapped up against the glass doors of his rose garden and tries to determine how to get inside to the flowers without ripping it in half in the process. It feels like a natural fit for her, even though he's never once been introduced to her and probably couldn't pick her out of a crowd if he tried.

Well. That's fine. If it's the right place for her, then that's where she should go. That's how things are supposed to work at the Speedwagon Academy.

He regards the poster another moment, thinking, and then eventually begins to carefully peel back one corner, just to try to see whether he can get it loose far enough to slip through the other door unhindered.]

[hierophany]

[ He doesn't bring the staff back into himself. He doesn't know how, for a start. And it wouldn't fit. Not because it's almost as tall as he is and he is a great deal taller than his chest is broad, but because it feels like one it left him the door closed and locked behind it.

He's wary for the first few days. Afraid of looking foolish. Afraid of being caught. It's on the third day that he just shows up to class carrying it. Nobody ever questioned why people wear rings and fight. Nobody ever questioned why there is a Rose Bride and why he has to be owned. Nobody ever questioned the purple birds.

So he trusts that nobody will question this.

For the most part it works. A few people ask him about it, he tells them that it's a stick, and they seem to accept that answer. If nothing else, he's swiftly learning how far just pretending that all of this is normal will get him. ]

Why don't you just tear it?

[ It's unusual for him to come to the garden. It's unusual, as far as he understands, for many people at all to come here. A stupid place for a poster, really. But he's been doing unusual things lately.

He has the staff in both hands, looking exactly like he still hasn't figured out a way to carry it around that looks anywhere close to natural.

Even if it's torn, it'll still be legible when the doors are closed. A little lost in the middle, but nothing that would make a word unclear. There's a girl's face on the seam of the poster where it would rip if the doors were opened. But nothing important. ]

how not to talk to teens

[hierophany]

[ It isn't his first time back home since he first left for Egypt with his family so many years ago. He's been back since, awkwardly attempting to repair the damage that everything did to his relationship with his parents and then leaving again the second the Foundation has a half-decent excuse for him to do so, because it always gets too awkward quickly.

He's halfway through figuring out how to avoid causing offense while saying that actually, he'll stay at the hotel instead of at home. He can't exactly pretend to have left town. Morioh is a small enough place that people talk and he was always a good enough child that every one of his old neighbours still knows him. They'd find out within a week. ]

Nijimura, yes?

[ His own work here is mostly what Hierophant is best at. Watching. Gathering information. Unlike Jotaro's part in this, he isn't liable to encounter a direct threat. As such, the company of three children is a little pointless. He isn't going to need backup unless things go so drastically wrong that the situation is already hopeless, and they aren't going to learn anything from watching him sit still or scan through old newspapers while Hierophant wriggles off to work a few hundred metres away.

As such, he has neatly managed to avoid excess contact with Okuyasu since learning his family name until now. They've barely spoken since he came over on the boat with Joseph. Until now because Jotaro Kujo is the only person in the world who he even halfway listens to and the closest thing he has to a conscience. And Jotaro is invested in this boy's wellbeing. And Jotaro is pointedly not forcing him to discuss the fleshbuds, but he would be furious with him for dodging this conversation the way he has been.

And so he invited the boy to a cafe. There are seven little paper sugar sachets lying empty on the table next to his cup. He tears open an eighth, dumping it in. The coffee is mostly sugar by now. ]

Please, sit down. You can order a drink if you like, I don't mind paying.

[hundredmil]

[ Jotaro and Kakyoin are...definitely something. They're both cool-looking in a way that almost hides what enormous nerds they both apparently are, which Okuyasu both finds hilarious and personally identifies with in a way that maybe he doesn't deserve to. They also are clearly always talking to each other, because one of them always knows what the other does even if Josuke or Okuyasu or Koichi only spoke to one of them, and yet Okuyasu hasn't seen them actually hanging out all that much.

'Probably just 'cause they work together,' Josuke had suggested.

'You think that'll be us someday? Traveling to beat people up with our stands too?'

Josuke had made a face Okuyasu knew meant he didn't want to talk about it, but he was ready to keep pressing. It ended up turning into a small fight and he's only brought it up a couple times since.

Maybe Josuke's just got less reason to be desperate for a chance to do good shit with his stand, since that's most of what Crazy Diamond does anyway. Okuyasu can't stop thinking about it, even if he talks about it less (and definitely not with Jotaro or Kakyoin, neither of whom seem to like being alone with him).

Til Kakyoin invites him to a cafe, anyway. Okuyasu shows up, nervous while he's walking there but anticipation dissipating like it never happened once he finally sits down. ] Really? Hell yeah! I mean, uh, thanks, Kakyoin-san.

[ He's sitting on the edge of the chair, jittery energy obvious as he gives Kakyoin a visual sweep and his eyes widen at the sugar packet graveyard. ] So what'd you want to talk about?

Utena AU except also fleshbuds

[hierophany]

[ It was to draw the sword, the first time he touched Jotaro, and he had failed in a way that nobody else had before or since. It would not move. Nothing short of cutting it from the bride's heart would free it.

(He would have tried, if he could only stomach the thought of breaking something that wasn't truly his, just borrowed.)

He's touched Jotaro since, when he was his to touch. But only ever with purpose. To attend to damage left by a clumsy betrothed. To dress him and paint his face for events. Perhaps to let his fingertips linger a few seconds too long at his chest, at the pommel of a blade he can't reach, but nothing more useless than that. He keeps the bride in a room of his own, with leave to keep it as he wishes. Lets him do as he will so long as he doesn't cause trouble and does well in his classes. Occasionally leaves him books with the expectation that they'll be read, but only because the bride's academic performance under his care reflects upon his own. It's disinterest, rather than kindness. The bride is not Tenmei, the bride is not The World over Heaven and so the bride means very little. At best he is a borrowed possession, one to be maintained properly as any borrowed thing ought to be, and at worst he is just another of the students of the academy.

Still, the letter is unexpected. He had thought he was doing well. The bride is unhurt, safe and fed and clothed. The bride attends classes and does well. The roses are attended to. He certainly wasn't expecting so harsh a reprimand for failing in the duties of the betrothed.

(In the tower, in a voice so difficult to recall that it may never have really spoken, someone promised Jotaro a gift.)

He knocks on the door to Jotaro's room, the one next to his, empty when the bride isn't in his possession. It's a very distinct knock, quiet but clear, knuckles striking wood softly but at just the right angle to make the sound burrow under the skin and tug out again like barbs. ]

[starmark]

[The thing that people don't realize about the Rose Bride, about the way that he changes hands among the various duelists conscripted into this game by The World Over Heaven, is the fact that he himself changes and adapts in accordance with the character and demeanor of his owners. It's part survival instinct and part simply the nature of the game; the rules dictate what he is supposed to be, and he knows better than to play too freely with the rules. It's not that he doesn't have the right to change them; quite the contrary. It's that everything hangs in a delicate balance, arranged and poised perfectly as-is, and there's danger inherent in anything that might upset that equilibrium — from either direction.

Dan prefers a more active bride, a more focused devotion to his claim on the Rose Bride. When Dan owns him, he's expected to be available at precise times and in specific ways, to say the right things and adhere to the ideals demanded of him. Others care less about the performative things. N'Doul never owns him for long because they always go straight to the castle whenever he wins, and that cycle isn't conducive to what The World Over Heaven wants. Polnareff is almost friendly with him, really, and pours out his heart to him in the shadows when there's no one to overhear.

But then there's Kakyoin, the student council president. Kakyoin, who looks through and past him as though there's nothing to see in him at all. Kakyoin, who is always correct and exacting and abandons him otherwise. It's not even that he's a pet under Kakyoin's thumb; pets, at least, are cherished on some level as living things. He isn't. He might as well be a flower vase, for all the humanity Kakyoin attaches to him.

People think Dan's abuse is the worst — or would, hypothetically, if anyone thought about him or his situation to begin with. But he can handle Dan and his treatment. That's not the worst. That's not the ownership that's most difficult to endure, that's calculated to wear him down like a punishment.

He's on the bed in the room that's earmarked for him, reading a book that was abandoned for him, when the door knock sounds.

He ought to get up and go stand at attention like a dutiful housewife, but he's so tired and lethargic and empty, sick of this and sick because he knows on some level what's coming, and so today he just...doesn't.]

Yeah.

[He calls, through the door, because it'll get a reaction. Maybe.

Or maybe it won't.]

in which kakyoin and kokoro are PERFECTLY NORMAL STUDENTS at a PERFECTLY NORMAL SCHOOL

[hierophany]

[ Noriaki Kakyoin isn't in Kokoro's class. Partially because he's a third year. Partially because it's difficult to find anyone at all who seems to share a class with him. Once or twice, the rumours say, one of his admirers has followed him to see which classroom he goes to only for him to disappear into one of the darker corners of the school and lose them.

Still, he goes somewhere during class hours. His name is always there at the top whenever exam results are posted. As class president for whatever class he's actually in, he's diligent with bringing up the concerns of whatever classmates he has with the student council. He's pleasant. Friendly. Active in clubs. Has a fair amount of admirers. It's probably normal.

And a fair amount of admirers means he occasionally has to return gifts and letters and apologise for not returning feelings. Which is why he's knocking on the door of a dorm room on the girls' floor.

Except that he has the wrong room. This is Kokoro's room. ]

Excuse me, are you here right now?

[shutter_hime]

[ Kokoro was napping on the floor for a while, instead of doing her classwork. Kramer-sensei was a jerk and kept putting them in impossible situations. Who asks where a fire alarm is on a trip? Not Kokoro. The knocking woke her up. And something in her gut said to hurry and open the door as quickly as possible.

So, with a grunt, and a smoothing of her pink hair, Kokoro answered the door. Oh! It was that third-year everyone kept going gaga over. Though apparently he'd been out of school for two months of the school year. It was weird to think of an upperclassman just leaving Kikuryou for a while. But then he'd come back and it was whatever. Kind of like what he did now. She looked between him, and the returned gifts. She hadn't dated anyone since Ishida, the 2nd year on the basketball team, had been caught with another girl on the class trip.

Kokoro raised an eyebrow at him.]

Hi, Kakyoin-senpai. Is something the matter?

dramatically applies eyeshadow

[hierophany]

[ Letters arrive within a few days. A conversation with the school's chaplain inspires N'Doul into action. He loses, as he always does sooner or later, and the cycle continues. He packs Jotaro's things for him while he waits to see who takes possesion next. Tenmei's wrath strikes once things settle and it's safe for him to do so, but even that burns itself out quickly. It's a long time before he next comes to possess Jotaro. Once or twice, the letters tell him to issue challenges and fail. It's a strange thing to ask of him, but he doesn't question it.

(It's not for him to understand. It's a message, as much as the letters are. He's just the paper that it's written on. He is Dio's. Dio can tell him to fail, and he will do so without question. Dio can decide that Jotaro's blade will cut him, and it will.)

Jotaro is in Dan's possession when he next wins a duel.

Things have changed.

He's still distant. Still cold. Still keeps a thick layer of artificial pleasantness between himself and Jotaro. Jotaro still has a room of his own. But he invites him to his bed. When he sleeps, it's with fingers resting gently on Jotaro's wrist, over his pulse. Midnight passes like that. Friday becomes Saturday.

Saturday hasn't changed. He keeps his usual schedule until mid-afternoon, letting Jotaro do as he will. And then he collects his bride from the greenhouse and brings him back to the dormitory. Guides him to a chair, next to the collection of paints and powders he's set out on the desk. This is how Saturday goes, and the routine is only different in that they have to begin earlier. Dan causes these kinds of complications. His Lord doesn't want ugly things.

(If Dio didn't want Jotaro bruised, he wouldn't be. Dio wants this process to happen. Wants it to be inescapable, the knowledge that Kakyoin knows where Jotaro is going and what might happen there. The knowledge that he wants to take his place, wants it more desperately than he's ever wanted Jotaro himself. Before, it would be unavoidably connected to the only time that Kakyoin was willing to touch him. That's changed, but the process is the same. The knowledge is the same.) ]

How are the roses?

[ He knows. The roses are always the same. But it's Saturday. On Saturday they sit here, and he takes his brushes and softens the sharp angles of Jotaro's face. He hides the marks left by Dan or his brother or the other students. He asks about the roses, because the script calls for him to make conversation. ]

[starmark]

[He never tries to attach much logic or reason to the sequence of wins and losses that The World Over Heaven dictates. Maybe there isn't any reason to it, deep down; maybe the bastard in the tower only really knows what environment each of his duelists will create for the Rose Bride when they take possession of him, and uses that to pick and choose which variety of torment to inflict. Kakyoin is psychological warfare. Dan is physical abuse. Polnareff is death by a thousand empathetic cuts. N'Doul is — well, N'Doul is N'Doul, and always takes him immediately to the castle, so hungry to find his savior that he never manages to hold onto his prize for very long.

He doesn't think much of it. He doesn't assume that the changes come from any knowledge on Dio's part of the slow creeping victory he'd won while snuggled up in Kakyoin's marital bed. It's just that Dio is impulsive and relentless, pushing chess pieces around on the board with abandon in the hopes that someday he'll find a winning combination.

Eventually, he comes back to Kakyoin. This time, he doesn't altogether dread it.

Things have changed.

Kakyoin touches him, now. Sees him, a little more than he'd perceived him before. He's become something more than just a set decoration, he knows, even if it doesn't show outright in Kakyoin's demeanor. It's there in the little things, the glancing contact hidden away beneath sheets and comforter, the seeking out of warmth. He's warm, sometimes, when he's with Kakyoin. They're a perfect bride and his perfect groom, and sometimes it feels good.

But then comes Saturday, and Jotaro spends a while feeding his octopus in the greenhouse, watching its clever tentacles wrap around an obstinate clam and begin to pull. Starfish are relentless in the way they seek to pry open the impenetrable, too. It doesn't matter if it takes hours or days; eventually, the shells part just enough for the starfish to breach its defenses, and then it's all over.

Kakyoin comes for him in mid-afternoon. It's time to get ready for his evening out. Persephone and her pomegranate seeds staining her mouth red, off to serve her time in the underworld yet again.]

Perfect.

[Kakyoin will approve of that, because it follows the script and confirms perfection. Kakyoin likes both of those things. And for once, Jotaro's not resisting — he's offering it willingly, willing to please.]

I'm sorry for the trouble. I know the marks are unbecoming.

more utena au au. dammit jotaro stop picking fights

[hierophany]

[ Noriaki Kakyoin does not dread. He prepares, he steels himself and he does his work. His unending work, constantly interrupted by people trying to participate in a game that's only ever been smoke and mirrors. Sometimes, sometimes one of the more impulsive duelists will issue a challenge without goading. Troublesome but manageable. Never this much. And never the captain of the fencing squad.

It's wearing on him. He doesn't have time for this. He barely sleeps as it is, and the constant challenges leave so little time for the work his lord demands of him, for his school work, for every last thing. His performance yesterday was sloppy. He let Dan grab at his long fringe and pull him to the ground, and it was only that his first instinct was to express his superiority and kick at his ribs rather than aim for the rose and claim victory that kept him from winning. Polnareff doesn't think of himself as weak. Doesn't need to prove his superiority. Doesn't make mistakes. And once he believes he's protecting the bride, has that fucking sword in his hands, taking him back from him is like trying to fell a tree by pushing at its trunk.

He has been dreading this afternoon.

He wants to draw the sword. He can't. He wants to try, if only because the bride deserves it. He can't. Not with Polnareff as witness. So he's silent as they move to the arena for something like the fourth time this fucking week. He's not said anything to Jotaro in a few days, not concerned himself outwardly with the bride at all outside of the duels and from leaving food and schoolbooks for him.

He wins. It's exhausting. By the end of it Polnareff has forced him to fight less fairly than he would like to. He doesn't cheat, the rules of the duels are not the same as the rules of fencing or nobody would stand a chance against Polnareff. But he knows the rules that Polnareff is playing at and exploits them. Strikes outside of the zones that would be legal with a saber in fencing, where Polnareff only ever aims for the rose. Only wins because even desperate to save the bride Polnareff adheres to the rules of a different game. It makes him look bad. Even with only Polnareff and the bride there to witness it, he knows. He has to know that he didn't really win.

This must be how Dan feels all the time. How unfortunate.

They havn't left the duels together, these last few days, Jotaro gone by the time he catches his breath. ]

Kujo. [ He growls it out, almost doubled over as his lungs try desperately to find enough oxygen to pay their debts to the rest of his body. Even fighting unfairly, he's exhausted. ] We should walk back together.

[starmark]

[He's being petty and he knows it, and for once, he almost can't make himself care.

Jotaro's never wanted to be like Dio, for whatever given value of "like Dio" was currently up for debate. He's supposed to be the counterbalance; they're the same, but opposites. The fool on the tower, and his opposite, The World. But what he's doing now is a course of action straight out of Dio's playbook, using proxies to harass and confound, lashing out not because he thinks he'll even gain anything by it, but because it feels good to lash out in the first place.

It's a tantrum. He's a wounded animal, feral, and these are the results.

He doesn't hate Kakyoin, because he could never hate Kakyoin. He does hate that Kakyoin worships the World Over Heaven like a god when none of the other duelists do, save maybe N'Doul. He hates that Kakyoin is a part of this at all. He hates that even to this day it's still so easy to hurt him through Kakyoin, so deeply and so desperately that all it takes is one pointed sentence. He hates that he really let his guard down enough to be happy, even for a second, just one second of respite, and now even that has been torn away from him.

It's not Kakyoin's fault. But it's so easy to make Kakyoin suffer. If he's so determined to be Dio's proxy and his puppet, then he can be his scapegoat, too. It's not like he's hurting anyone real. The real Noriaki Kakyoin might as well be dead, because this monster wearing his face is nothing like him.

So he avoids Kakyoin and makes it look like coincidence. Plays keep-away. Seeks out the other duelists and plays to the weaknesses he's collected about them all this time. Whispers to Dan that he loves him, that it makes him sad when they're apart. Lets Polnareff see his bruises and the dark circles under his eyes, and lets him draw his own conclusions. Murmurs to N'Doul of the stars in the sky and how Kakyoin never takes him to the castle, how the potential he holds is being wasted just idling at the student council president's side.

He sends them after Kakyoin, one by one, and Kakyoin's not allowed to lose because the World Over Heaven hasn't told him to.

It scares him a little, alone in the dark, that he's acting like this. He's only ever this cruel to Dio. He only ever feels the fangs in his mouth when he's up in that golden tomb every weekend.

The president of the student council isn't Noriaki Kakyoin; he's just an extension of Dio. And it's his own suffering that keeps Dio locked in his tower, high and out of reach, but this malignant outgrowth of him panting and gasping for breath is much more accessible to sabotage.]

That would be proper, Nori-senpai. Since you've emerged victorious.

[He doesn't move. Should is an observation, not a command, and all he's required to do right now is smile beatifically, the fading bruise still visible on his marred cheek.]

tmw the starbucks employee gets your order wrong and so your boyfriend breaks reality

[hierophany]

[ Speedwagon Academy is a school off the shore of Venice, built in the skeleton of a facility donated to the Speedwagon Foundation by an Elizabeth Joestar and dedicated to furthering the Foundation's philanthropic mission by offering scholarships to students around the world. There is no castle there. There is no tower. There are no brides or bridegrooms. Its fencing team is known worldwide, but so are its teams for most other sports. Their matches are held in the sports hall. The chairman is an unremarkable man whose most noteworthy trait is a pet pigeon named Savage Garden.

Two months ago, he and Jotaro graduated.

His parents were rather hoping that he'd move back in. They don't really approve of him running off to live with a boy he met at school, mooching off that boy's rich family. But they're not mad. They're starting to get their heads around 'boyfriend' and not 'friend, a boy'. They say hello and goodbye to Tenmei every time they call. Maybe that's why they're struggling with the boyfriend thing. It must be pretty weird to think that you have twin sons and that both of them are dating the same boy.

He'll continue his studies eventually, probably. He's already starting to get restless without that structure. But. Well.

They've both had enough of school, for a little while. For now, what matters is everything else. What matters is lying on the couch watching documentaries about the tse tse fly. What matters is Polnareff's videocalls frantically figuring out what to do about this handsome Egyptian man he met working with the foundation. What matters is the moments at night when Jotaro wakes up and sees a skull on the pillow next to him instead of his face. There's nothing wrong with taking a year or so to figure out what they want to do next. To remember how to want.

Hierophant tethers them together when one of them leaves the apartment. He hasn't figured out how to make him stop, but he hasn't been trying very hard. It means they can only separate so far. But there's enough slack for the little things. He can go to the coffee shop. Pick up breakfast and bring it back.

Hierophant tugs on his string that keeps him attached to Jotaro that he is purposefully not thinking of as a leash as he makes his way back. Not urgently. Just so he knows that he's waking up. So he sets his spoils down on the kitchen counter as he comes in. Follows Hierophant to the bedroom and perches on the bed so he can lean over. Kiss Jotaro, who is not his bride, as he wakes. ]

He's mad at me again. For going out. [ The tether is a compromise. Hierophant doesn't like him separating from Jotaro at all. Hierophant doesn't like Jotaro waking up alone. Even though Star's there. Even though half of Hierophant is there. Even though neither of them could manage to be alone if they tried. ]

[starmark]

[Inertia is a property of matter by which it continues in its existing state of rest or uniform motion in a straight line, unless that state is changed by an external force.

That's how Jotaro feels, most of the time, in this new world where he's Jotaro Kujo first and everything else second. He's a basically unremarkable guy who just recently graduated from a completely normal academy where time actually passed, where the titles he wore around were the ones awarded to him by his diligence in academics. He has a mother whose fawning affection annoys him, even though he always accepts it without a single word of complaint. He has two boyfriends who are the same person and no one finds it strange because he doesn't want them to. Polnareff is happy. Everyone is happy.

Even Dio is happy, he assumes; he got what he asked for, after all. His own world to be god of, where everything in it belongs to him and bends to his will.

Dio lives in an empty, tiny world, and the only thing in it is himself.

He got what he asked for. He never was good at the little details.

And because Dio got his world, Jotaro got one too, and his is filled with everything else — all the refuse that Dio weeded out of his perfect barren kingdom. His world is filled with imperfections and contradictions. He doesn't rule it because it's too complex to be ruled. He just exists in it like one more fish in an ocean, playing his role, living his life.

But it's still his world. It's still his, and it still sometimes bends to his will. That part, he wasn't able to give up. Maybe he could've, if he'd really tried. Star could've taken it from him and put it...somewhere else, maybe. He could've been normal, and just like everyone else.

But inertia isn't just for objects at rest; it's also for objects in motion, and he's far too used to being able to affect the world around him on a whim to just surrender that now. What if it changed something about Dio's circumstances? He doesn't want that. He wants it all to be set, just as it is, so he doesn't have to worry about it anymore. Dio would never give up the ability to manipulate his world. Inertia says that means Jotaro can't give up his, either.

He's sleeping, when Kakyoin goes out. He doesn't have classes in the mornings or a garden in the afternoons anymore, so most of the time he just fills in the excess with sleeping. He always has a bed to sleep in and he never finds himself lying in the mud and the rain, and there are no letters in a box by the bedside telling Kakyoin to fuck him or else, so it's usually peaceful, too.

A kiss rouses him. He already knows it's Kakyoin because it wouldn't be anyone else. He already knows he'll wake to a kiss even before he goes to sleep, because Hierophant doesn't let him be alone anymore. That's just how it is.

That's just how it's going to be, forever.]

He'll get over it. Hi.

[Something smells good, he decides. Maybe it's hot coffee. Probably there's some for him, too.]

You went out?

'who could have guessed that constantly provoking the bitter insecure violent guy would end badly'

[hierophany]

[ He knew that Dan resented him. Dan resents everything. Dan could resent the mud off the path to the arena if he wanted to - at least Jotaro lay in the mud because he wanted to. That's more than could be said for any bed in the academy. What he didn't know was the intensity of that resentment. The length of the list of slights, only some of them imagined. Some of them not even deliberate. He hadn't imagined that allowing Dan a victory would be one of his greater sins. How the fuck was he supposed to know that the man had enough pride to be worth hurting it?

He can't pinpoint when the sky starts to seem too bright, when Dan melts into the shape of a despicable, eternally insecure thing, but Dan's voice mocks him for crying sometime after the two of them have both dropped their swords and before the second horrible crack. He brings his foot down for every item in the list of ways that he's wronged him, then moves on the the ways that the world has wronged him. He doesn't know how long it goes on for. Logically, it's probably minutes. It feels like days. He could end it. He could make it stop at any moment and all he has to do is forfeit.

It would be poetic, maybe, if he was holding on for Jotaro's sake. He isn't. He doesn't forfeit because he's too proud. He doesn't forfeit because Dan played his strongest card too early, because from the second the first finger broke he'd already lost everything he had to lose. Even if it heals perfectly, even if he can pick up a sword in the first place, he'll never be able to perform at the level the duels require.

(The liar-vines coil angrily in Jotaro's chest. They've been sprouting words, these days. Ones Jotaro can't say. No. No. One for every unforgivable thing, all filling up a space that used to be only for swords and pretend vines. A space that used to be for hearts, once upon a time.)

He wins. Of course he wins. Dan created rules that would only ever let him lose if he chose to, and he has no good reason to choose to. Dan leans down to grab him by the hair and lift him to eye level. He's trying to say something. To make a point on top of the several hundred points he's already tried to make. He lifts one of the swords (Dan's, he thinks) in his left hand and slices the rose from Dan's chest in the middle of his latest complaint. The head of the rose hits the floor. He hits the floor, too, in the next second when Dan drops him. ]

Pathetic. [ He says quietly, solemnly, like he isn't the one crumpled on the floor with a tear streaked face and a voice raw from screaming. ] Can't even win when you're handed it, can you?

[ The silence that follows is long. He can't quite make his body look up to see Dan's face twist. He can feel Dan's glare leave him, turn onto Jotaro. He can hear Dan spit. Something warm and wet hits his forehead. Disgusting. And then he watches as his feet turn. As he leaves.

Slowly, he brings his right hand up against his body. Curls up around it, like the heat and pressure will make it hurt less. Makes a noise that sounds more like it belongs to a very ugly baby bird than a human. It hurts. He won. He got what he wanted. There's no way that the duels can continue if the defending champion cannot fight. But it hurts. ]

[starmark]

[It's funny, almost. He's never hyperventilated during a duel before.

Normally he just stands still and waits, and absorbs the psychoanalysis the two duelists put each other through as they circle around and trade passes with their swords, until eventually someone strikes and one falls and the other prevails and he either has a new bridegroom now or he doesn't. Normally he just observes, as much the referee and mediation of the duel as he is the prize of it, impassive and objective even when his own heart would say otherwise.

This time he isn't any of those things. But this isn't a typical duel, is it. This time it's Kakyoin against Dan in a battle that ought to end easily and doesn't, and when Dan's rage boils over it turns violent against someone inappropriate because that someone isn't him.

Kakyoin is screaming. He wants to throw himself between Dan's boot and Kakyoin's fingers, and let the stomping break his cheekbones instead. He wants to lie and lie and lie so that Dan's ire will be appeased long enough for him to stop. He wants to kiss him if that'll fix it. Drop to his knees and suck him off right there in the middle of the arena if it means Kakyoin's bones stop breaking. He'd do anything if it meant not having to bear witness to this anymore.

He's the Rose Bride. He doesn't want things. He doesn't move.

It's only after Dan leaves, still radiating fury, that Jotaro runs over to where Kakyoin lies in a heap and skins his knees falling down onto them, hands hovering over him because he wants so desperately to help but doesn't know how or where or if it's even all right to touch.]

Why did you do that...

[The words spill from his mouth like the tears behind his eyes can't.]

It's broken — your fingers, they're —

it's been literally forever let the boys have the singapore date they deserve

[hierophany]

[ Everything is difficult. He tries to write out his answers for a single piece of homework four times, growing more and more frustrated with the illegible shit that his left hand smears across the paper until he finally allows Jotaro to transcribe for him. Polnareff makes copies of his own notes for him, and even though he knows that he's doing his best they're still woeful.

He doesn't know who it was who told the student body that it was Jotaro who hurt him. His brother would be the obvious suspect, but he seems as angry about it as he is. Dan, maybe. Perhaps they just came to that conclusion on their own, the way all things here seem to be weighted against the Rose Bride. It doesn't really matter. The results come as glares and whispers. People trying to intervene when Jotaro meets him after classes. It's irritating. Difficult to dispel, even when he makes a point of taking Jotaro's hand in his good one as they walk.

It's worth it, but that doesn't make it easy. And he's starting to find that every time he gets frustrated, that Jotaro he saw with the octopus moves a little further away. Is smothered by the Rose Bride.

Saturday comes, and he makes up his mind. The plan was to simply inform the chaplain that he needed his bride too desperately to lose him even for a night and accept whatever consequences came. But he can do better, can't he? He's never thought of chasing a wish, he's never wanted anything enough for it to matter, but-

-he could take Jotaro somewhere where the chaplain won't find him, couldn't he? If he wanted it. He could want it enough, perhaps, if he thought about the Jotaro he saw before in a place where nothing could turn him back into a game piece. He could want that enough. Even if he couldn't be there with him. He could want Jotaro to be somewhere far away, out of the reach of the chaplain, somewhere without towers surrounded by things with shells that aren't their own.

It's Saturday afternoon when he leads Jotaro to the castle, perfect and mudless. When he squeezes his hand tightly in his own and stares up at it and thinks of the Jotaro who isn't his and who loves octopuses instead of him and wants and wants and wants as desperately as he can. ]

I want to go somewhere close to the sea.

[starmark]

[Of course things get worse for him, once Kakyoin is injured so badly he can't serve as student council president in anything but name anymore. That's the way this world works; the Rose Bride is both coveted and reviled, the madonna and the whore all in one. He's supposed to be an other-thing; the game plays out better when he's as much an object as he is a person. So he's ready for it, when the student body hates him for what happened to their beloved Kakyoin. He's ready for them all to believe that it's Kakyoin who's been trapped with him, and not the other way around.

He does fine. He endures. He tends to Kakyoin's homework and curls up against him at night, and sometimes contends with threats from Tenmei at the midnight hour, and sometimes he just sleeps as one identical day melts away into the next and the next and the next.

Saturday comes, and he's been forbidden to go to his usual meeting. It makes him anxious, to say the least, but he knows better than to try to budge Kakyoin on that point. Come what may, for better or for worse, Kakyoin couldn't have been clearer in his orders — and so Jotaro's bound to follow them. The Rose Bride always obeys. Always.

But Saturday afternoon comes and they aren't hiding out in their room or in his greenhouse; Kakyoin tells him to follow and he follows and for a second he thinks that maybe he's going to The World Over Heaven after all, and can't even decide whether he's relieved or apprehensive about that. But Kakyoin takes them in the opposite direction from the chairman's quarters, guiding him to the arena, up the stairs, up and up but there's no duel today so there's really only one place they could be going.

He wonders what Kakyoin's wish will be. He always makes interesting ones, doesn't he?

But the doors open, and a beacon of light permits them inside, and when they step into the cool confines of his ever-faithful castle, it isn't long before the illusion takes hold of them.

Both of them.

Normally, Jotaro is left out of the reverie, content to spend a quiet night in the sanctuary of his domain while his bridegroom forgets the allure of the power to revolutionize the world in favor of fever dreams of their own deepest desires. But Kakyoin's desire is that he comes, too, and so his eyes close on the gloomy solace of stone and shadow, and reopen again to a cloudless blue sky.]

time for AN ACTUAL VICTORY

[hierophany]

[ He has to make a wish, every time. He has to want something more than anything else, or every defense Jotaro's put into place against exactly this will do exactly as he asked them to. Maybe they already have. Maybe there are times he fucked this up, and he just has no way of knowing what he saw while he slept and Jotaro kept vigil. Maybe he made prettier, more romantically worded wishes and they just failed.

He stands at Jotaro's side, good hand in his, puppet strings inside his bad one curled around the handle of a sword.

And he wants to know what's inside the castle.

It's hard to say how long it's been since then. It's not dawn, not yet, and that's all that really matters. Hierophant has long stretches himself out into every shape that he's missed for god knows how long and has settled on a single long ribbon, coiled loosely around him and draped over Jotaro. Jotaro's head is in his lap. It's been quiet for a while now, with just the soft mechanical white noise of Hierophant's presence. Maybe he's asleep. It would be nice, if it was. It might be the last chance for a while.

He combs his fingers through Jotaro's hair again, then looks up at the thing he wished for. The thing inside the castle, all worn and broken and free. ]

Come here. I've missed you.

[starmark]

[There's nowhere left to run from what's coming, not anymore.

He's known for a while now, deep down, that Kakyoin would be the one who finally found a way to bring this whole charade crashing down. And that's what it is, really, isn't it? This whole time, this whole school, it's all been a single grain of sand half-fallen through an hourglass, suspended there for eternity while he held on as tight as he could and refused to let it slip through his fingers. He's done unspeakable things to himself, to cause it to endure. He's ripped his soul out and pinioned it fast so that it couldn't come back to him even if it tried, knowing all the while that rejecting it was the only way to cut his enemy off from his own powers.

But now, that's all coming to an end. Inside this castle, his castle, the fetters have come free, and as soon as the morning breaks, so will the protective shell that surrounds them. The sand will fall; the enemy will escape and rush back home to its master, and they'll meet back at the top of the tower where this all began, to dictate the coming of the new world once and for all.

Even as he dozes, he's trembling, at times. He knows he has to win. He knows it must be possible, or he wouldn't have lasted this long as it is. Defeat can't be inevitable, or there would be no point.

He's scared, anyway. Scared that after making himself weak for so long, he'll have forgotten how to carry the burden of a universe on his shoulders. Scared that he'll falter when he can't falter. Scared that his will might have atrophied, when he's discarded it for so long in favor of mere survival. Scared of what DIO will do if he wins, of all the myriad of ways he'll rip out Jotaro's heart all over again.

But that's later. Later. Kakyoin is here now, and so is his Star, the whole one he's been separated from for so long.]

Ora.

[Even its once-mighty voice sounds hoarse with disuse, his shoulders sagging beneath their pauldrons, his stance tired. But it's Star, his Star, and at Kakyoin's direction he comes over and sinks down into a crouch within his reach, waiting and obedient and gentled.]

for Alex

[hierophany]

[ When he dreams, which isn't often, it's of places. Islands stolen back from the sea, grain by grain of sand from far away places. Cities half ancient and half impossibly new where something changes with every breath. Miles of perfectly symmetrical nothing in every direction. Never people, never as more than props that decorate those spaces.

Tonight is no different. He dreams of the desert at night. And he dreams of the Rose Bride, not of people. The Rose Bride is laughing, in his dreams. He does not often see the Rose Bride laugh. When he does, it doesn't look like that. The Rose Bride takes a long drag from the remains of a cigarette before he reaches out and takes his hand and pushes it into the sand to smother the burning end of it. Pushes the rest of him into the sand, too, until he's looming above him, clothing shoved out of the way-

-it's the laughing that he can't get out of his head when he wakes. It feels like blasphemy to think back upon it, and he can't keep himself from thinking back on it. It isn't pretty and scripted. It isn't cold and biting. It's something else. Something the Rose Bride shouldn't be.

He has a key to the room next to his. He has every right to enter it.

He just needs to look at him, he tells himself as he unlocks the door and enters as quietly as he can. To confirm to himself that it was his mind playing tricks on him. That the rose bride is a thing that looks pretty and does not laugh. That only smells of tobacco when the stink of a betrothed with that vice clings to his clothes. He just needs to walk silently to the Rose Bride's bed to confirm that this is all real. ]

[starmark]

[Kakyoin locks him into his room at night the way that ordinary people lock up their valuables. It doesn't bother him, when he hears the sound of the latch clicking shut in the lingering minutes (or hours) before he eventually drifts off to sleep; in a way, it's almost funny in how it doesn't even give him the dignity of being treated like a prisoner being confined to a cell, or a pet herded into a cage. Kakyoin puts him away like a thing, like replacing a statue behind glass in a museum and securing the cabinet shut to keep it separated from everything else around it.

That's really how it is, isn't it? It's not about keeping him in. It's about making sure that everything else — including himself — stays out.

It's nice to be left alone, honestly. It's nice when the alternative is the student council president of the Speedwagon Academy, the servant of The World Over Heaven who goes around wearing his once-best friend's face.

He doesn't dream, when he sleeps. It would be cruel to make him live through dreams at night and wander through a waking dream in daylight, and so he simply doesn't. This is his respite, to curl up in his bed and face away from the locked door, and spend the whole night dreaming of nothing at all.]

JUST FUCK HIM UP

[hierophany]

[ He observes.

And really he ought to be grateful for that. These sessions are for the eyes of only a privileged few. His Lord, the crone and her son, Vanilla or the Priest, sometimes. And him. Even Terence doesn't see that happens here. He's party to a secret, to knowledge about the capabilities of the stand his Lord and the prisoner share, and that makes him important to his Lord.

It's Enya, this time. Sometimes it's her, sometimes her son or Vanilla. Sometimes the Priest. And he should be grateful to be here to observe, but he still looks away when the she walks over to Jotaro and draws a knife over the palms of his hands. He only looks back once he hears her unchaining him. Once she releases him, it means that the fog gathered in the room is thick enough to obscure everything. He can't quite see the prisoner's face anymore, and somehow that makes observing easier.

He hears more than he sees. The unpleasant pop of something pulling out of place as she yanks the prisoner's arms in opposite directions, further than they ought to go. Her straining audibly as she tries to pull still further, tries to pull enough to rip muscle. Then something heavy crumpling on the ground. The fog must be deep enough in his body to control it in its entirety by now.

A crash confirms that that is the case. She has enough power over him to throw him into the wall at the other side of the room. Somewhere near Vanilla, by the sound of it. The next crash is closer. Then more distant again. His stand should have revealed itself by now. It should have stopped this. Then-

-it's a few feet to his side, and Hierophant is subtle enough and the fog thick enough that he can web out and catch him. Cushion the blow. And he can see Jotaro clearly, at this distance, for the fraction of a second it takes him to turn his head so he's staring determinedly into the blinding fog instead.

He doesn't want to be relieved when he hears Jotaro's body being dragged away again by the fog, and he can't quite place a finger on why that is. He doesn't want to be relieved because that means this is still going on, even if he can't see it through the fog. He doesn't want to be relieved because that means that he's squandering the chance to observe it so closely.

He's relieved. ]

[starmark]

[Jotaro Kujo is a man possessed by an evil spirit, and he doesn't altogether understand why these people want him to let it loose.

He's lost track of how long it's been since the day the redhead showed up outside his jail cell and did...something, a thing he couldn't quite see but that he knows knocked him unconscious before even the evil spirit could do anything about it. He knows he was moved during that period of time. Knows he's been taken somewhere hot and dry and sandy, and his mother probably doesn't know where he is.

Maybe she thinks he ran away from home. He can't really count on the notion that help is coming for him. Who would help? Who would even know or suspect where he's been taken? It's hard to get his bearings like this, but it's at least glaringly obvious that he's not even in Japan anymore.

No one's explaining what's going on. Just that they all seem to know about his evil spirit, and they all want him to use it, enough so that they're willing to hurt him to make it come out. He doesn't understand why, and there's a part of him that's tempted to just let them have it and give them what they want, but...

But he feels like he'll be different, if he sets it free. Something bad will happen to him, and he won't be able to take it back.

So his days go like this. One thing after another. Pain and torment and rest and pain. Sometimes they play nice and coax him with the promise of relief. In its way, it's not really that different than jail, just more dangerous.

He'll have bruises after today, and the evil spirit is simmering hatred inside his body, wanting to come out and hurt them, wanting to fight.

He doesn't let it. He won't. He can't. He'll keep holding on as long as he can, and stubbornness will carry him a long way.

He just wishes he knew why all this was happening to begin with.]

and then, suddenly, something completely different

[freshprints]

[The newly-opened escape room on Primavera is called Puzzle King K, and all of its employees have apparently been directed to instruct its patrons to "say it three times fast" with a wink and a knowing look. Truth be told, it's more of an escape dungeon than it is a proper escape room; it's set up as a network of puzzle rooms with locked doors and challenges interconnecting them, and the patrons have to attempt to navigate their way to the end by one means or another before time runs out. Also, the advertising isn't subtle; it's fairly obvious that the establishment is as much about placing its guests into suggestive situations as it is about actually solving the puzzles, but there are still facets and features about it that make it seem...interesting.

For one thing, there's a selection menu that takes place before entry, allowing a group to better customize its experience. There's a sliding bar for puzzle difficulty that seems to go from "so easy they're barely even a pretext for us being here in the first place" to "actually a legitimate escape room in its own right"; there are also other add-on penalties and...features, such as the option to bypass a door puzzle by substituting a "lair dare" in its place, which almost always seems to be sexually-charged in nature. There are options to tailor the nature of the puzzles, from the strictly intellectual to ones with a physical component added.

There's also the option to pipe an airborne aphrodisiac through the maze for the duration of the experience. They're really not altogether subtle about all this, are they.

But she is, actually, a little curious about the experience, and more importantly about the prospect of making Noriaki Kakyoin suffer in fun and interesting ways, which is why she's dragged him along for this without strictly telling him where they're going or what they're doing.]

Come on. They're waiting for us to make our selections.

[She says, as she shoves him at the menu panel.]

Pick some that look interesting.

[hierophany]

[ So it's possible he's regretting his advice about combatting vulnerability by forcing someone else to give you as much information as possible. Because that's what this is, isn't it? As soon as he picks or dismisses anything, she's going to be judging. Just the same as he would.

So it's not like he doesn't know exactly what kind of day he's signing up for when he hits 'accept all' for his preferences without looking over the list. But it does mean that he isn't going over the list one item at a time while she watches. ]

The one with the climbing wall. [ He says, selecting a picture of a room with a chair facing a wall with the colourful handholds of a rock climbing facility. It's rated moderately difficult. His finger hovers over another, featuring a room split by a dividing wall into two halves. That seems like a promising one as far as getting an actual escape room goes. ] This one, too.

Do you have any you'd like to try?

[ There, he made his selections, now he gets to pass the choice on to her under the guise of letting her have a turn to choose. ]

Starts a new thread because the last one got too long

[hierophany]

[ He doesn't bring food, the next day. It's Vanilla again, this time bearing the terse message that the redhead will return once Lord Dio knows him to be safe. That something will return, at any rate. He doesn't refer to Kakyoin by name, or 'he', or anything other than 'it'.

Vanilla also brings the first of the gifts, a set of clothes. Old-fashioned ones, overly formal but incredibly well-fitted.

And Dio is interested in him. Desperately interested. He asks so many questions that even Kakyoin can't answer them all, even when the topic of the questioning is himself. And he braces himself for Dio's anger when he fails to give answers but it ever comes, he just moves on to another question. Tries over and over to place some distant relative at a village in England, some hundred years ago. To connect him to any number of families that he's unconnected to. To dig out some reason that he might be able to awaken Jonathan Joestar when nobody else could. Combs his hair back with his fingers and holds blue garments up to his body, looking for something in him and never quite finding it.

Dio is fascinated by him, dedicating the same energy to studying him as he does the intricacies of the human soul or the path to heaven, and even if he doesn't sink his fingers beneath his skin, he's never felt so precious and beloved in his life. ]

It's 6:30 in the morning. The sun will rise soon.

[ He says it as he enters the TRUTH DOOR, a day later and a little better off for a day's rest. He's carrying a bag, this time. One that's almost certainly his own - it's very distinctly a school ​book bag. ]

I apologise for my absence earlier. My lord required time to think.

[starmark]

[He leaves the food outside the door, once the delivery-boy-who-isn't-Noriaki-Kakyoin has vacated the premises. It sucks, a little, because of course he's hungry and wants to eat, but his Stand knows where the kitchen is now, and it's more important to maintain the appearance of even that slightest silent protest. They'll figure it out eventually, that "Jonathan" won't eat unless Noriaki Kakyoin brings the food.

Make sure it's only you. Just you, who comes to see me. If it's not you —

Right. Let them see that there's a consequence, an identifiable consequence, to it all.

The truth is, he doesn't really know what he hopes to gain by this little game; he just knows that there's a foothold to be found in it. Kakyoin wants to be special to the golden bastard who brought him here, and he may not have much influence as a prisoner of this place, but he's figured out by now that he has something that Dio wants. Something he's desperate for. And that means, if he deliberately favors Kakyoin, it makes Kakyoin more special by comparison.

He gets what he wants. Jotaro gains an ally, maybe.

So he refuses the food, and waits. He ignores the clothes. He reads Jonathan Joestar's books, and learns. He thinks about what he's going to do next. He sleeps when he starts to get hungry, and wakes up in the middle of the night to a big purple finger tapping his shoulder and another pilfered sandwich for him to carefully eat and dispose of all traces of.

At 6:30 in the morning, Kakyoin returns. The sun will rise soon. He's already awake, and reading.]

Oh, yeah? Just to think, not to munch on you?

holy fucking mcshit is this a new comment or what

[starmark]

[Kakyoin comes home in the spring.

It's not any particular day in the spring; Jotaro knows better than to go out of his way to try to tie something like this to a significant date for significant reasons. It's not the sixteenth of anything. It's nobody's birthday. Actually — it might be Nonno Caesar's birthday but probably not, because Jotaro would remember something like that. It's just a day, just an ordinary day, and the only thing special about it is Kakyoin.

Spring temperatures in Florida are like summer temperatures in Japan. It'll get hotter as time goes on, and it'll be a wet and swampy heat instead of the dry ones of the Sahara desert, but for now it's still mostly dry, and just hot. They have air conditioning at the townhouse, and a refrigerator full of cold drinks and different flavors of ice cream. There's one tub of Adrian's favorite, discontinued, that never runs out no matter how often he scoops out of it. There's a six-pack of Cherry Coke cooling in there right now, because Jotaro bought it yesterday in anticipation.

The airport is crowded but the ride here was only a hassle, not a headache. He thought about coming alone, bringing his motorcycle, but didn't because Kakyoin will have luggage and even a single duffel bag would be a pain to try to balance on the back of a bike. He got the Speedwagon Foundation to drive him instead, because they're here in Florida, too. He and Kakyoin can ride in the backseat and it'll be just a little bit like the old times.

Inside his chest and limbs, he can feel Star thrumming like an excited puppy. He's not sure if the excitement is really Star's, or his own. Maybe it's both.

Kakyoin's plane will be landing soon. Any minute now, he'll be home.]

[hierophany]

[ It's a year ahead of schedule. Lucky, but not unthinkable - the doctors were overcautious in their estimates, when it came to how long before it would be safe for him to fly. His physical therapy has been as uncomfortable as one might expect, but never unbearably painful. Every surgery has gone perfectly well, with no complications or infections. He's never grown so acclimated to the pain medication that he has to have his dosage increased, even on the worst days. His body hasn't gone to war with itself the way the doctors feared it might, and so it's safe enough for him to be flying over to America a year ahead of schedule.

So here he is flying to one of the few places in the world that he has never been to, and he knows he's finally on his way home. ]

Going to be a while. Metal detector. Someone wants to talk to me about. You know. All the metal.

[ He doesn't mind that much. He'd expected it - Joseph has more than enough anecdotes about flying internationally with his metal hand. Of course there'll be questions about his whole damn spine. Hopefully they won't take too long, they won't be dicks about it, and he can just go see his boyfriend. ]

nm she just wanted to show me how it looks on the scanner. Apparently it's like a movie she likes.

[ Lucky. Plausible, but lucky. ]

This is now unfinished fic storage.

[hierophany]

It’s impossible, in the end, for Jotaro to remain in Kakyoin’s possession for so long without his brother having a presence in his life. It worked before, when he was pushed off to a side room. Now it doesn’t. At first, it’s simply a matter of necessity. Tenmei doesn’t wash his own clothes. Barely washes himself. If he scrapes himself he just lets it be. He eats nothing but plain rice porridge. Drinks nothing but warm water. Even when he’s not acting out deliberately, which he constantly is while Jotaro is stealing his brother’s attention, he seems to struggle with the concept of every little task involved with the maintenance of a human body.

He does a little better in Kakyoin’s presence. Lets his brother clean his clothes. Bathes when instructed to, if in some sort of horrifying manner that leaves Kakyoin having to mop water from the bathroom’s ceiling. Supplements his rice porridge with the vitamin gummies that his brother makes him take, emptying out the packet and picking out all of the red, cherry flavoured ones before hiding the rest amoung Jotaro’s things for no apparent reason beyond making everyone’s lives a little worse.

He likes taking photographs. Likes making a point of demanding that Jotaro gets out of the way of his photographs. Likes taking any piece of paper he can find and folding it into a little lantern. He likes twisting wire into the skeletons of figures fencing, like his brother does, but never cares enough to put clay onto them and finish the sculpture. And he likes destroying his own work. Likes pulling rolls of film into the sunlight and watching the figures burn out of them. Likes putting his paper lanterns over tealights so they glow prettily and then pushing on them with one finger, crumpling his work down into the flame until it catches. Likes carefully unwinding the wire until the only clue that something was there before are the little places where it’s bent so badly that it can’t be made to look right again, until the only evidence that anything beautiful was ever made of anything are ruined film and ashes and dented wire.

The first night that they all sleep in the same bed, Kakyoin lies between them. Wraps his arms around Jotaro while Tenmei burrows against his back like the irritating clothing tag or unpleasant insect bite that he is. And when Jotaro wakes, Tenmei is staring down at him with too-bright golden eyes. He sits up, slowly revealing the split geode that is his chest from behind the barrier of his brother’s sleeping body. A piece of the front of him broken off, revealing a cavern of green crystal behind it. Empty, otherwise. He stares at Jotaro as if it’s somehow his fault, which might be meaningful if he didn’t treat all things as if they’re somehow Jotaro’s fault.

---

A hundred thousand things could have caused it.

On Tuesday, Jotaro and Tenmei are the only ones in the dorm room. Jotaro has half-classes. Tenmei has full classes, but doesn’t always feel the need to attend them. It’s not like anyone notices if he’s gone. He busies himself taking photographs of the inside of the dorm room. Not the most interesting of subjects, but that’s not the point. The point is that it allows him to push Jotaro around. Assert dominance. Assert that his brother must love him more, because he gets to be in charge. He can tell Jotaro to get out of frame, that he’s ruining the photograph, and then the next photograph can be of whichever place Jotaro’s chosen to move to. He can chase him around the room in circles, force him to acknowledge that none of this is his. That he’s the invader. The thing that shouldn’t be here.

The letter arrives somewhere in the middle of this, and it complicates things. Jotaro’s always been forced off into a different room. He’s never been here before. Tenmei approaches the situation with all the grace that he’s ever approached any situation with, which is to say that he picks the letter up, staring at Jotaro the whole time that he breaks the seal and opens it.

“It’s mine.” He says, even though it clearly isn’t, and turns to leave.

He leaves the room of his door open.

“You can come in.” He says from behind the door. “I’ll say it’s your fault, if you tell him.”

Tenmei’s room is somewhere between a landfill and a poorly organised museum storage room. It’s hard to see the floor beneath the piles of things. There are snack wrappers, despite the fact that he doesn’t eat anything but his rice porridge. Bag charms and pens and notebooks with other people’s handwriting on the cover. Three out of four walls are hidden behind photographs and photographs and photographs of groups of students with Tenmei standing awkwardly among them, none of them quite taking notice of him.

And then letters, on the last wall. Hundreds of them, pinned there like butterflies. Consummate and Tell me you love me. Some Jotaro’s never seen before, never felt the effects of. Deliver me. Find me.

Take the sword and take the sword and take the sword and take the sword.

and take the sword and

on the last day.

“They’re ugly. I need them to match the handwriting.” Tenmei says, pinning The bride has neglected the roses in his absence. Reprimand him. to the wall. There are no textbooks on his desk. Instead, there are pens. Bottles of ink. A pot of that same gold pigment that Kakyoin so carefully mixed to be an exact match for the one used in the letters. A paper press, to recreate exactly the paper used by the World Over Heaven.

Writing is a slow process. He has to stand and look over the letters to find examples of each stroke of each letter he needs. He talks while he works. About how he still doesn’t have a lowercase ‘q’ and how much that pisses him off. How long it took to make a copy of the seal that the World Over Heaven uses. How he stole paper samples and ink from the chaplain’s office right under his nose because the asshole didn’t have the sense to see him do it.He talks like someone who isn’t here, because the person who is here is polished and perfect and desperate to be anything at all but human.

He makes Jotaro push the seal into the wax on All is well, continue as you will.

He takes a photograph when he does, just in case.

They’re conspirators, now.

--

It makes little difference. Kakyoin sets the letter in the drawer with the rest of them. Makes a comment about it being a waste of time to send letters just to tell him nothing’s changed. Useless.

It rains on Friday. Rain means managing Polnareff carefully, which means attending to the bride before he can take it upon himself to do it. Kakyoin makes a performance of it, because somehow Polnareff will know even without seeing. Of pulling a thick coat over Jotaro’s shoulders before he heads out, of fastening each button for him.

His fingers hover over Jotaro’s chest. Just for a moment. Just for a heartbeat too long. The snarl of vines curls around the sword protectively. It grows thicker and thicker, curling together tighter and tighter. Until there is no sword. Until the only thing he could possibly find is the vines. Them. Them. Choose them. They shed their glassy thorns to consume and create more of themselves and coil upon each other, grow and twist upwards, reach for the hand. Just a little closer and they could reach it.

He moves on to the next button.

Tenmei stares. He’s still staring, long after Kakyoin relents and puts a coat on him, too. He forgets to take it off, later. Tries to get into bed still wearing it.

The vines remain for a while, pulling taut enough to force Jotaro’s posture uncharacteristically proud. Never quite breaching the cage of Jotaro’s chest, growing upward with everything they have.

--

“You take to this better than he ever did when he was mine.”

It’s not the first time that he’s invoked ‘he’ in this way. He never uses a name. He doesn’t need to. Dio bites down on Jotaro’s ear as he whispers, bent over him, nails of one hand curling into the flesh of his back. He pulls with his teeth, tugs at it until any further pressure would either tear the cartilage of it or the skin holding it to his head. Releases it, chuckling in a breathy voice and lapping at the blood.

“He had enough shame left to cry, at least, when it bled.”

Perhaps it’s a bluff. Nobody but Dio can know. Perhaps even he doesn’t. Why would he have bothered to remember another warm meal? Another loaf of bread? What matters is that he can help Jotaro picture it. He spits, and red runs down the front of the skull acting as witness. And the vines draw tighter and tighter around the sword until they’re pulled perfectly taut. And then they pull tighter again, until something has to break.

And then he stops.

It must feel like he’s crying, at first. Heavy, warm drops of liquid fall onto the back of Jotaro’s neck. They trickle downward slowly. Too thick to be water.

He laughs.

“Jojo- I win.”

Dio draws away from Jotaro. Laughs. Waits for the world to end. When Jotaro turns around, two long lines of red split Dio’s face. He doesn’t bother to heal them. Let them stay there. Let them scar, as undeniable proof that he won. That he forced Jotaro into action. That Jotaro broke first. And all it really took, all he ever needed, was a few words about a useless novelty that he found and played with and threw away a lifetime ago.

Time passes. Enough of it for the blood to drip all the way down his body. For it to pool beneath his feet.

The world doesn’t end.

(The vines curl back, under Dio’s scrutiny. Hide. Their broken edges curl around the blade of the sword. The parts that snapped away float slowly to whatever passes as ground in the armoury of Jotaro’s ribcage and fall still.)

Bones break, in the hours before dawn. Dio screeches out every curse that he knows. He isn’t trying to break Jotaro anymore, not in the way he was before. He’s trying to tear his stolen victory out of his body. It isn’t there. There’s just flesh and bone and a sword held in place by something that learned how to tell lies from Dio himself, a lifetime ago, and no matter how much blood he takes those cuts don’t quite heal. How could they, when a god already decided to let them stay, as proof of victory?

A distant thumping noise travels up the elevator shaft. It grows louder as Jotaro returns to earth. A desperate scream of frustration, every now and then.

The doors open. This time, Tenmei’s fist strikes nothing at all and bounces off it just as surely as it bounced off the doors. His eyes are red. Wide. He looks more like shit and more alive both than he ever has before, and when Jotaro steps out into sunday morning in the academy, he wraps his arms around him so tightly that it feels like they might pop out of his shoulders from the strain. If the chaplain notices anything, he doesn’t say so. He just looks up from his book, acknowledges Jotaro’s presence with a pleasant smile as Tenmei grabs his arm and pulls him away from the doors of the elevator. Home, probably. Somewhere. It doesn’t matter. Just away. Away. Away.

“Until next week.”

--

“No.” Is what he finally manages to say, halfway back to the dorms. He drags Jotaro off the path onto the immaculate lawns of the school grounds and drags him to the earth and pushes him back down when he tries to sit up. Sits next to him, knees drawn up to his hollow chest.

“No. No. No.”

He continues like that for a while. Curls up tighter upon himself with each repetition. Trying to press himself into a different shape, but finding that no matter how hard he tries he still has arms and legs and a face and all of the other parts that he doesn’t want because they’re things that monsters can hit and break and open up to invade and drain and hurt. And each ‘no’ is slightly different, like he’s draining a new poison each time and he doesn’t stop. He doesn’t stop for a long time. He doesn’t stop until he’s said it once for every unforgivable thing, said a whole night’s worth of nos, because Jotaro didn’t. Because Jotaro can’t. Because someone has to hate it, someone has to say that it’s wrong, and Jotaro won’t.

He has too many limbs. Too few. No matter how he twists himself, he still has the wrong number in every direction of everything he could possibly have the wrong number of.

He tries to check Jotaro for every bone he felt breaking. Tries to check himself. Everything is whole and where it ought to be and the both of them are still the same shape of things that monsters eat and somehow he ends up pulling Jotaro over him like a blanket in a way that would undoubtedly look bizarre if either of them were worthy of notice, Jotaro hovering in the air, suspended by a thing that people won’t see, a magician whose tricks just happen to him without his say-so. His arms are squeezed around his chest, shaking from exertion, like maybe he can squeeze Jotaro into a different shape instead.

“I hate him.”

He says, and it’s always been true. He’s always hated the World Over Heaven. Always hated the thing that made his brother into a puppet. The thing that must have made him into a useless invisible boy with arms and legs and all the other parts that he’s learned now that it likes to break. But it feels different now. Not because he hates him more, because he could never hate him more than he already did. Because someone is here to listen. Because Jotaro has to hear it. Has to hear someone say that this is wrong. Not because he’s been hurt by someone with no right to do it, not because he’s been taken for a night from someone who rightfully earned him. But because it’s wrong.

“I hate him. And if you don’t hate him, then I hate him for you. I hate him and Nori will hate him and he won’t-”

And he stops.

Because his brother has been sending Jotaro to the tower for as long as he can remember. Painting him. Making him into a better shape for things to eat.

What if Nori doesn’t hate him?

What if Nori learns, and decides that none of this is wrong?

What if Nori already knew?

He goes quiet again.

--

He doesn’t tell Kakyoin about all of it. He leaves it at a few words. That there’s something in the tower that hurts Jojo. His brother smiles, after a few moments of trying to puzzle out what a Jojo is. Strokes his hair. And he knows that he’s failed.

He barely listens as his brother tells him that there are things here that hurt all of them. That that’s why they’re in school, to learn how to hurt properly. That it’s okay that he hasn’t worked that out yet, and that he’s glad that they’re finally getting along.

And he could say more. He could recount the entire night, second by second. He doesn’t. He couldn’t bear it, if his brother knew all of it and still didn’t choose to make it right. He attaches to Jotaro for the rest of the day. Tells him about all the places in the school that are good for hiding. Pushes a key to the photography dark room into his pocket. Follows him into the greenhouse even though he isn’t allowed to and sits on his heels in front of the fish rank there, trying to imitate the movement of the octopus - the second one, the purple one - with his fingers.

And he tells Jotaro that it’s okay, even though he didn’t ask and even though it isn’t. His brother will do something. That he’ll make him do something.

He doesn’t follow Jotaro to his brother’s room that evening. Kakyoin sighs and says something about how he’s mad about a conversation they had earlier.

He goes to his own writing desk. He takes the gold ink and folds a sheet of paper into a black envelope. And then, stroke by stroke, he writes a confession in a monster’s beautiful, carefully practiced handwriting. Addresses the envelope in gold and seals it.

For the eyes of Jean-Pierre Polnareff.

--

Re: This is now unfinished fic storage.

[hierophany]

The bride will not return to the tower.

He hadn’t been expecting Polnareff’s challenge. He’d thought he’d done a relatively good job of staying in his good graces. He’s been attentive, so far as he can be without questioning anything he shouldn’t. He’s kept the bride in his room and kissed him before bed and slept with his arms wrapped around him. But Polnareff challenges him on monday morning and they cross swords after classes end and when they do he’s so furious that he makes mistakes. Basic ones. Ons that he’s never made before. He doesn’t have to bend the rules to win. He doesn’t even have to try.

That’s terrifying. More terrifying that Polnareff fighting flawlessly and winning every time could ever be. He cuts the rose from his chest as if it were nothing, then kneels on the arena floor with him and waits and listens while he yells in frustration over being powerless to protect someone else.

He brings him home. Lets Tenmei entertain Jotaro while he lets Polnareff speak, and he listens. Polnareff tells him about the letter he received. A confession from their God. Tells him what Heaven is really like, on Saturday.

(Tenmei said something similar yesterday, didn’t he? Has he been sneaking glances at the other duelists’ letters? He should have told him.)

Polnareff yells. Refuses the tea that he offers him. Punches him, once, and then sits down in silence like he didn’t quite think what he would do after that. He digs his fingertips into his thighs until little red spots start to marr the pants of his uniform, and so Kakyoin makes the only offer that he can to return things to normal. Because he needs Polnareff to be predictable. An ally, in the same way that Dan and N’doul are allies that he can position exactly as he pleases, whether he knows it or not.

And so the bride will not return to the tower so long as he is in Kakyoin’s possession.

It has its own complications. Primary among them the fact that this is, unavoidably, a visible failure on his part. A visible failure means a demonstration of weakness, means that the other duelists will fall upon him. In a single match, Polnareff is the only one who has ever really worried him. But in a thousand matches on a thousand consecutive days, sooner or later luck will strike one way or another. He’ll fail eventually. He’ll fail and if the next duelist allows Jotaro to return to the tower then Polnareff will be a force of nature once again. More than that, it will become clear that he made his decision out of concern about Polnareff. An admission that he is the better of them. And so much of everything he has is built on a foundation of being the best of them. Even if Polnareff did nothing with that admission, someone else would.

The injury is a short term solution. If he becomes too injured to duel again for the near future but retains possession of the bride, the logical result of that would be a temporary ceasefire. It would give him a visible reason for Jotaro’s failure to return to the tower, as well. A dutiful bride attending to his injured bridegroom’s wellbeing at the cost of all else.

It will do. It will have to do.

Goading Dan into challenging him has always been easy. Easier still, now he doesn’t flinch away from touching his bride. As for goading him into injuring his opponent-

“-Let him attach it himself.” He says, as Jotaro pins the rose to his chest. He runs a hand down his back possessively. “I won’t have you touching filth.”

It works. Anything would work. Dan would be offended by a breeze going in the wrong direction. He yells as Kakyoin takes the second rose from Jotaro’s hand, throwing it in Dan’s general direction and then returning his attention to his bride. Kisses up his neck, brings his hand down further. Dan tries to make jabs of his own. Screams something about the sword. The one he can’t draw. The part of Jotaro that’s never going to be his. And he smiles in that way that’s never quite reached his eyes, letting his next kiss turn into a bite.

“He thinks he’s worth any part of you.”

The plan was to let Dan trip him - he always uses illegal moves, once he’s angry enough. To fall and injure his shoulder in the sort of way that’s difficult to quantify and easy to play up. Humiliate Dan by finishing the duel with his non-dominant hand and then retire from the games for a few weeks while he puts things into a new, sustainable order.

The thing about plans is they tend not to survive a blow to the head.

Dan kicks his feet out from under him and he lets himself fall. Braces himself to land on his shoulder in a way that he knows is going to be unpleasant. But Dan grabs at the rose on his chest while he’s falling. Another illegal move, and he has to twist to protect it. He lands wrong. His head sticks the floor first, and for a moment his body doesn’t quite move as he wants it to. The point of Dan’s sword hovers over the rose at his chest. Fuck. He’s lost.

It doesn’t come down.

“You want me to, don’t you?”

Dan chuckles as he says it, with the same casual cruelty he recognises from his own voice when he knows that he’s won. The sword draws back. He raises a foot, places it over his hand. Like he’s going to kick the sword out of his grip. Good. He can still win. Dan doesn’t want to end this before he’s demonstrated his superiority. He grips the sword more tightly to brace for it, starts to try to push himself up.

Dan doesn’t kick. He brings his foot down. Traps his hand beneath his boot, fingers still tightly wrapped around the hilt of the sword.

“You let me trip you, just then. You always let me win. Because you pity me. Because you decided somehow that it’s my turn. You can’t even give me a real victory. You’ve never really lost a thing in your life, have you? You just get off on it. On having us all fuck him and then taking him away. That’s why you don’t use that sword. You don’t want to win. You just want to pass him between us.”

His foot presses down harder, rolling his closed hand beneath it. He holds his breath.Grits his teeth. Tries to stare back impassively.

“You’re going to lose something today. Really lose something. But you’ve always taken pity on me, haven't you? So it’s only fair I let you choose how much.”

Dan’s sword comes down, but too far to the other side. It digs harmlessly through the cloth of his sleeve on the other arm. He uses the sword to lift his hand and drop it down on his chest, next to the rose.

“I’m not going to win. No. You’re going to lose. Forfeit. Pluck it. I’ll have to stop if you just admit defeat. If you do it now, maybe you’ll still be able to win him back.”

He lifts his foot and brings it down. Something cracks between the handle of his sword and the floor of the arena. Someone screams, and it takes Kakyoin a few seconds longer than it ought to to realise that it’s him.

“How much are you going to let me take away from you, Council President?”

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