Archive of Our Own

“Was your family Egyptian, Giovanna? Originally?”

Giorno glances up from his coffee, meeting Diavolo’s gaze across the table for several seconds before answering, because that always annoys him. That’s a risky, stupid, childish habit, but he’s not one hundred percent certain the coffee isn’t poisoned.

“No.” It’s not untrue. It’s not the whole truth, either, but Diavolo asking questions about the past is a new development and he doesn’t trust it.

“Hm.” Diavolo drops his gaze and takes a long swig of his own coffee, which doesn’t prove anything.

“Why do you ask?”

“I met a man there once. You remind me of him.”

“Oh?” Giorno raises an eyebrow. Diavolo volunteering information about the past is not only new; it’s downright troubling. He allows himself to wonder whether, finally, they might be making the slightest smidgeon of progress.

He nods. “The same air of superiority. The same arrogance.” He tilts his head slightly. “The same ruthless attitude.”

The problem with Diavolo (or at least one of the many problems with Diavolo) is that it is very difficult to tell when he is actually trying to be insulting, and Giorno has the horrible intuition that this may in fact be the closest thing to a compliment he has ever got out of the man. And, despite himself, he is curious. His mother did meet a man in Egypt. There are, presumably, a lot of men in Egypt. But he never trusts coincidences these days. “How did you come to meet this arrogant, ruthless man?”

Diavolo doesn’t look up. “He offered Doppio a job.”

“Did he take it?”

Ah, that gets those eyes to flash up to him again. Green eyes, like Giorno’s, in the same way that a poison dart frog and a cyanobacterium-infested lake might both be green.

“Doppio already has a job,” he snaps. “If he would be permitted to do it.” He downs the last of his coffee and stands, leaving the mug to add another ring to the surface of the table. Cleaning up after Diavolo is evidently another of Doppio’s jobs.

Giorno sighs. The coffee is probably not poisoned, and if it is he will either die quickly and be spared more awkward breakfasts, or die slowly and at least have an excuse to skip his own job for a few days.

He drinks it. It tastes stale. Diavolo keeps hideously unsociable hours.

“Your accent is better than his, at least.” Diavolo is rifling through the fridge, pulling out boxes of leftovers which Doppio has carefully labelled and dated. “His was far too public-schooled. Artificial. Abrasive. You could hear the overpaid tutor in every syllable. You sound almost native.”

That is undeniably a genuine insult and Giorno allows himself to relax, smiling. “Thank you. I worked very hard on it as a child.” Diavolo huffs, opening a box of meatballs and picking at them. Giorno is not quite the bigger person, so he adds, “Yours is very good, too. You must have spent a long time training it.”

Diavolo glares at him over his shoulder. “I was born here, Giovanna. I belong here.”

Another insult, though not the one it looks like. Giorno ignores it to smile again. “Oh, really? I’m sorry. I just didn’t know anyone actually spoke like that.”

“Like what?”

Diavolo has many problems. One of his saving graces is that he can never ignore bait. “Oh, you know. When I was learning Italian I listened to a lot of vocab tapes of people who talked like you do. Very crisp and clean and proper; too proper to be natural. It took quite a while living in Naples before I picked up the kind of accent a native speaker actually has. Oh, sorry, but you are a native speaker,” he corrects himself, raising his mug.

“I am. And you are a pretentious little whelp-”

Giorno continues smiling as he watches Diavolo notice, perhaps for the first time, that all his attempts to train out his original accent into that bland and sourceless cadence tend to slip when he loses his temper, Sardinia surfacing again between the syllables.

“Oh, well. I’d best be heading out.” Giorno rises, stretching and grabbing one of the containers Diavolo had dumped onto the counter. “Unless you have anything else for me this morning, besides the worst cup of coffee I have ever had in my entire life?”

“You- Wait!” Diavolo almost grabs his arm and clearly thinks better of it. Progress is always so granular. “Of course I do. Here.” He pulls a folded sheet of paper out of the pocket of his suit. The suit itself looks crumpled and slept-in. He is fairly certain it is the same one he was wearing yesterday.

Giorno takes the paper and unfolds it, making sure Diavolo can see him actually reading the list of demands and directions and sporadic ideological ramblings. Diavolo is easier to deal with when Giorno makes a show of these things. It’s important to demonstrate that he isn’t impotent, that this arrangement does benefit the both of them.

“Mista has the Capri situation under control. I don’t want to assign anyone else there until he’s done.”

“I saw the news reports. I don’t consider that to be ‘under control.’”

“...fair. But he claims it was necessary and I believe him.” Giorno moves his finger down the page. “On the subject of this one, I think we can offer our suppliers a little more than that. I’d prefer to keep the ones we still have left on good terms.”

Diavolo shakes his head. “No. They’re acting entitled and they know it. It’s a deliberate show of disrespect, intended to see how far we will grovel.” He scowls, the lipstick heightening the severity of the expression. “If you ignore it the others will be milking us to the bone by the end of the year. Lower the bid, then raise it back to this figure once they’ve shown suitable contrition.”

Giorno considers this and finds it irritatingly reasonable. These are not civil people and they can’t rely on civilised negotiation techniques and besides, it’s another good excuse to placate his roommate.

“Alright. I’ll see to it.”

“Be sure that you do. A single moment of weakness can be lethal, Giovanna. Never forget this.” Those toxic-green eyes flash at him again in a way that makes Gold Experience Requiem tense up in the pit of Giorno’s soul. “I certainly have not.”

At least he’s not asking about Sicily. Giorno can handle a lot today, if Diavolo just doesn’t ask about Sicily. He gives a tight nod, then points to the second line from the bottom. ”We’re not assassinating the new leader of Forza Italia.”

“The man is an ass.”

“I’m not denying that. I am saying that death-by-excess can only cover so much. At a certain point people are going to start suspecting foul play. We should give it at least five months.”

“Fine. The rest?”

“Acceptable.”

Diavolo gives a tight nod and Giorno relaxes, his stand retreating back under his skin. “Any demands of your own?”

“I’m happy for you to keep working on the team in Milan and the Brazilian deal.” Both projects that can be done remotely. Both being run by some of the people in Passione who still, inexplicably, maddeningly, consider Diavolo the lesser of two evils in the business of doing evil. “If something else comes up, I’ll report it.”

“Good. Try not to run my organisation into the ground today, Giovanna,” Diavolo grunts. He plucks up a tupperware full of garlic bread and exits the kitchen to disappear into one of the nooks and crannies of what Giorno, with no other options, is forced to call their home.

Giorno watches him go and reminds himself that there were worse options, even if some mornings he has to really struggle to remember what they might have been.

“I’ll try my best.”

On his way out he spots one of the guards watching the house. It’s not a quiet neighbourhood and it’s not the only parked car, but plugged into the cigarette lighter is a light strip that tips him off. Some sort of accessory for people who wanted to bring the rave wherever they went, he guesses, but as it cycles through its colours one of the passengers in the back recites them in a bored monotone. Green, blue, purple, pink, red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple, pink… He’s seen a few of them use similar pieces of equipment like tapes or clickers. Things that loop a regular, predictable series of events. A regular, predictable series of events that would make a time skip much more noticeable.

Diavolo isn’t forbidden from using King Crimson. That would have pushed everything too far, too fast. But if he does, one of those surveillance teams will alert Giorno and his own personal guard at once. It happens at least once or twice a week, usually. At first he was using it to test the limits of his cage, then to hide little objects and scribbled notes in Doppio’s shorthand that, for whatever reason (and it was often quite hard to follow his reasoning) he did not want Giorno to see. Diavolo has kept at least one corridor of the house heavily trapped and Giorno suspects he uses his stand to bypass that, but nowadays most of the occasions on which Diavolo erases time there seems to be no reason for it at all, no matter how thoroughly Giorno investigates. That worried him for a while, but now he suspects that he does it out of a sort of reflex, like the threats and the insults and the glowering looks and the notes. A need to remind himself of one of the few things he still has total control over.

Like a child locked in his room, kneading his blanket because it is the only thing he can reach.

So Giorno always investigates, but he makes no effort to ban him from using King Crimson. What Diavolo absolutely cannot do is leave that house without an escort (and he has never yet consented to any escort). That will also alert Giorno, and then for the second time in his life he will have to make a decision on how to move forward, but with far fewer options and all of them worse.

Giorno is allowed to leave. Diavolo was surprisingly amenable to that, either for practical necessities or because he likes the privacy; either would be consistent with his behaviour. So Giorno can leave for up to six hours a day, provided that he calls to check in every hour. He cannot leave the country. He can only leave Naples by mutual agreement. He cannot allow anyone else to enter the house or the grounds. Any decisions with regard to Passione also need to be mutual, or at least negotiated to a compromise elsewhere. Diavolo’s location, identity and personal details, such as he is aware of, cannot escape the walls of that house. Even the people assigned to guard it do not know what they are guarding. If he fails in any of these stipulations then Diavolo will no longer be obligated to hold up his half of their bargain, and unlike Giorno he has very explicit plans about what he will do next. Giorno knows this, because Diavolo has told him.

Giorno spotted these guards, but he does not know where any of the others are, or how many there might be, because they are watching him as much as Diavolo. Diavolo has his own people who trail him and report back just as religiously as the people assigned to watch the house. Even now someone will be texting to confirm that his departure is authorised, and eyes will be fixed on Giorno’s position from now until the moment he returns. Giorno is caged, too. He wonders if Diavolo has as much difficulty convincing himself that it is worth it.

It’s never difficult for long, though. That’s the problem. The little reminders are all around him.

“Hey, GioGio! Can you help me out with this?”

Giorno glances up from a troubling email chain and smiles when he sees Narancia darting around the restaurant tables to approach him. It’s the first genuine smile he’s managed all day. He pushes out a chair, brushing aside some of the papers strewn amongst the cutlery so that Narancia can slap his own onto the tablecloth.

“Just promise me it’s not about Capri. I’m going to be running damage control on that all day.”

“What? Oh, that.” Narancia shrugs, pouring himself a glass of water. “Yeah, I saw something about that. Fugo’s gonna blow a gasket.” At the mention of that name Giorno barely covers a wince, reminded that there are worse things he needs to deal with today. Narancia either does not notice or generously ignores it. “But nah, this isn’t work. It’s worse.”

Giorno frowns, glancing down at the papers and turning them to face him. He reads them for a minute, turning the pages a few times to be certain before he looks back up at the young man opposite him.

“‘The Anatomy of the Cell?’”

He nods with enough enthusiasm to freshly tousle his hair. “I got a test for it next week. I really wanna ace this one, GioGio. I’m doing way better on the mathematics since Trish started helping me, but I totally fucked up history last week. If I can just get a really good grade on this one before Fugo gets back, I can rub it right in his- Uh, really show my teachers I’m not a slacker, you know?”

Narancia is wincing sheepishly, but Giorno is smiling again. Narancia has a way of effortlessly putting people at ease, making the world seem at once more real and less troubling. “If they know anything about you, they should know that you’re a hard worker.” He studies the worksheet again, smile faltering.

“Ugh, you don’t know these teachers. More assholes in the schools than in the mob, I swear.” Narancia gets up and lopes around the table to lean over his shoulder. “Hey, uh, the test’s on Tuesday, so if there’s anything you need, maybe I could get it done in the evening-”

“Take the Tuesday off. And the Monday, so you can study.” Giorno reaches up to touch his arm, turning his head to glance up at him. “This is something you want to do well, and I can spare the manpower.” Not true, but it makes Narancia relax into a grateful grin, so he would sooner skin himself alive than say anything else.

“For real? That’d be great. Hey, that was pretty fast, though…” Narancia leans down, draping one arm over Giorno’s shoulder and flashing him a more nervous smile. “You don’t mean that like I’m… disposable, or whatever, right? You’re not gonna get some new guy in while I’m sweating over my academic career, right?”

Giorno smirks, leaning back against him a little. “Of course not. You’re utterly irreplaceable to me.”

“Yeah, yeah… Don’t come running to me when you’re swamped in work and I’m out there digging up dinosaur bones or discovering new kinds of dolphin or whatever.” Narancia moves closer, peering past his face to stare at the laptop still open in front of him. “Looks like you got enough on your plate already, though.”

Giorno sighs, closing his eyes. “Nothing I didn’t sign up for.”

“Yeah, but…” Narancia gives his shoulder a squeeze, jostling him companionably. “Y’know I can help out more, if you need me. All of us, if you need anything. You’re not in this alone, okay?”

Narancia is warm and alive and every time he is close enough for Giorno to feel that is worth a thousand awkward breakfasts. Which is often, because Narancia is, even now, more at ease with him than almost anyone. Sprawling over him whenever he sits on a couch or taking his hand to drag him towards some food or film or other simple, weightless indulgence. He has a knack for making Giorno feel like a human being. It’s a rare skill.

“I’m not alone.” Giorno opens his eyes and nudges him fondly. “But you might be.”

“Huh?”

Giorno prods the sheath of papers. “I can’t help you with this. Biology was one of my weaker subjects. I might actually make you worse.”

“What?” Narancia gawps at him in disbelief. “But it’s your whole thing! Nature and, and flowers and bodies and all that shit!”

“Exactly.” Giorno shrugs. “My stand can make life on its own. I don’t know how any of it works because I never had to know. You should see my attempts at gardening.”

“Are you being serious? Aw, fuck.” Narancia hangs his head over Giorno’s shoulder, slumping over him like some large and very heavy cape. “Fugo’s gonna tear me a new one. It’s gonna be brutal. He might even be sarcastic.”

Giorno pats his head, tangling his fingers in Narancia’s unruly hair and letting him nuzzle his neck while he laments his doomed future. Giorno has never been a naturally physical person, but with him it always seems to come easy. He puts it down to familiarity. He’s lived in that body, however briefly, and perhaps that confers a kind of connection that both of them grasp on an intuitive level. Something other people wouldn’t quite understand.

Most other people, he corrects himself.

Diavolo doesn’t answer the phone for Giorno’s first check-in, but the phone is answered nonetheless.

“Hello? This is Doppio.”

“Good morning, Doppio. This is-”

“Oh. You. I thought maybe…” He hears a sigh. “Can I… help you with something?”

Giorno switches the phone to the other side, toying with the edge of a sheet of paper. He can already feel the warmth that Narancia’s visit had stoked in his chest beginning to fade. “Just checking in. Di- Ah, he hasn’t called you today?”

“You mean the Boss, Other-Boss?” Doppio laughs, but it’s not a very humorous sound. “Nope. No calls. No jobs. Nothing for me today at all. Just like yesterday, and the day before. Just… sittin’ around, by myself.”

Giorno winces at the familiar bitterness, making sure to cover his own sigh. Of all the difficulties he now finds himself dealing with on a regular basis, this one is particularly frustrating. Diavolo is correct; Doppio has a job, and not being allowed to do it makes him irritable, and not understanding why he can’t do it makes him even worse. Giorno and Diavolo, at least, walked into their mutual cage of their own accord, with eyes open. Doppio simply woke up in a world that no longer made sense to him and Giorno is very limited in how much sense he can put back into it. It is not as if he is wedded to the concept of honesty as a virtue, but something about becoming a part of this particular theatre of lies irks him. “I’ll be back this evening. I’ll need your help with a few-”

“No you won’t.”

Giorno shuts his eyes and takes a deep breath, signalling a waiter to remove his plate and refill his drink. So, it’s going to be that bad today.

That might explain Diavolo’s irritable mood this morning, or vice versa. Diavolo claims that the two of them don’t overlap in feelings or temperament, but Giorno suspects that this is simply one of the lies that Diavolo tells himself as much as anyone else. He has seen emotions bleed between them often enough. He’s manipulated it where he can, trying to whip one of them into an infectious good mood when the other is being intransigent, or put a burst of aggression or agitation on ice with second-hand soothing.

If only it were just emotions. When they first started this little experiment in patience he had thought that Doppio would be the easier of the two to manage. Less powerful, less ambitious, less prone to getting drunk on his own pseudo-philosophical rambling. And all of these things are true, but none of them make him less dangerous. He shuts his laptop and steels himself for the worst.

“Yes, I will. You have the experience I need and I can’t be in two places at once. I have capos to coordinate and fires to put out- one of them literal, if you haven’t seen the news this morning. So when I’m finished with Mista I’ll meet you back there in the office, understood?”

“Yeah.” Doppio answers at once. That is a good sign, even if his voice is still a little low. “Yeah, okay, fine.”

Giorno pushes, trying to force some authority into his own voice. Doppio likes authority. Authority makes sense in the world he thinks he lives in. “Doppio. I can’t delegate this kind of work to anyone else, so I need you at your best. Understood?”

“Yeah. I get it, Boss.” This time he can almost hear Doppio standing straighter. “I’m not slacking off.”

“I know. Your work has been of a very high standard, even under… difficult circumstances.” Giorno allows his voice to mellow. Doppio also responds better to positive reinforcement. He’s seen that work often enough. It’s just difficult to give it with Diavolo’s particular… style. “You’re doing your best. I expect you to keep it up.”

“I will. Or… I’ll keep trying to, anyway. It’s not like I have anything better to do,” he adds in a low murmur that is not quite low enough.

“Good.” Giorno ought to do something, he knows. That’s a bad habit in a subordinate, that kind of snapping at him. He can’t understand why Diavolo tolerates it. If one of his own people spoke back to him like that, even Mista or Narancia-

He cuts that thought short with a glimmer of irritation. Doppio is one of his people. That was the whole point of any of this; that nobody needs to fight if they are all on the same side. But Doppio is Diavolo’s first and probably always will be, and he is dangerous even when he isn’t openly snapping. More than once Giorno has managed to talk Diavolo around on some point they’d been arguing over for days, only for him to flip back after one of his and Doppio’s late-night or early-morning “calls.” Giorno doesn’t think Doppio even means to do it. He just listens, opening up a comfortable space for his other half to talk himself into terrible things. They have a way of inching each other back into their old roles, one affectionate word at a time.

And if that’s what he can do without even trying, it is imperative that Giorno keep him on-side. Doppio’s natural tendency towards working, towards feeling useful, is a powerful tool. Giorno can be firm with him, authoritative, and he will respond as if instinctually. But none of this was ever going to work on obedience alone. The waiter returns to pour a fresh glass and Giorno takes a swig of it before speaking again.

“I’ll try to get back a little earlier than usual. We can warm up something for dinner while we work.” He relaxes against the sturdy restaurant chair, letting that soften his voice. He can’t get Diavolo’s affectionate intonation down, but he hadn’t made a lucrative hobby of pickpocketing and unlicensed taxi scams without a talent for being charming when he needed to. “You made the lasagne in the fridge, didn’t you? I had the cooks at the restaurant heat it up; it’s better than theirs.”

“Oh. Um, thanks.” Doppio always responds to praise from Giorno as if he is surprised to hear it. It confused him at first, given Diavolo’s own rapport with him, until he thought a little longer on it. Doppio has lived a life only barely less isolated than his master’s, unequipped for anything as extravagant as two sources of approval in his life. “I saw a new recipe on T.V. last weekend, so… I forgot most of it, though.”

It is a weak point Giorno is not above exploiting. “You did a good job improvising, then. Anyone can follow some instructions to the letter. Winging it successfully is a little more difficult. You underestimate yourself too often, Doppio.”

“I guess, I just-” Doppio pauses, then laughs again, a little restrained. “Sometimes you sound a lot like the Boss, Boss. I mean the… you know who I mean.”

Giorno realises he is holding the phone very tightly. He is suddenly very aware (and it should be impossible to forget this, but he does forget, often) that someone else is eavesdropping on the two of them. “Yes. I know who you mean.”

The next call is not answered by Doppio.

“Giovanna. I have received some interesting information about one of our operations.”

“Oh? Which one?”

“Sicily.”

Giorno winces, bracing himself. The rumbling of the car taxiing him to his next destination had been pleasant and soothing a moment ago. Now it makes him feel quite ill. A part of him wants to order the car back to the restaurant, call Narancia back and spend a little longer grieving over his schoolwork together. Something warm, something nice. Something to remind him why he does all of this. “I see.”

“A pity. All this work to remove the risk of traitors once and for all, only for it to come to this. But treachery is a weed that grows wherever you sow weakness.”

He sets his jaw, resisting the urge to grind his teeth. “Then we have nothing to worry about. I don’t have any patience for weakness, and I have dispatched people to deal with this situation.”

“They had better understand what is at stake. I believe I warned you at the time that your changes would lead to-”

“And I have told you before that I don’t like to repeat myself.” The driver flinches and Giorno lowers his voice. “If I tell you I am dealing with it, then you can trust it will be dealt with. If I tell you not to worry, then don’t worry.”

Too far, he thinks. But after several seconds of silence he hears a jarring sound down the line that he realises is a chuckle. It’s worse than the shouting he was expecting.

“Well, then I have no choice but to put myself in your hands once again, Giorno Giovanna, and in the end we will see who fortune favours.”

“It’s like playing a game.”

“Huh?” Mista glances up from his tuna, a lapse in attention that results in Two and Six stealing several bites.

“With him. All the time. A game I don’t know the rules to, that I can’t afford to lose or quit.” Giorno lets his gaze drift around the room, only Guido Mista’s for an hour and a half and already unmistakably drenched in him. There are clothes hanging reverently that between them could finance a coup in a small volatile nation and a stack of rented VHS tapes balanced on one dresser. The entire room smells like a cologne that must have been a gift from Trish.

“Sounds like a pain,” Mista says, in the tones of a man who has never let pain sit too long with him. It’s comforting, in a way. Mista can make himself at home anywhere, in any circumstances, no matter how absurd or obscene. He wishes it were more infectious.

“It is,” Giorno admits. “And worst of all, I’m the one who started it. What was I thinking?”

Mista smirks. “This is why I didn’t let you make me a capo. Too much responsibility makes you crazy.”

“Do you think so?” Giorno leans back, watching Mista’s stand begin to get to work on his salad with a little more reluctance than the fish. All of them are crowding the plate, threatening at any moment to burst into a scuffle, with the exception of Five, which has curled itself up in Giorno’s collar and gone to sleep. He tries not to dwell too long on the mental state of a man whose soul is one-sixth napping.

“Oh, for sure. Polpo was nuts. Pericolo was nuts, too. Normal guys don’t blow their brains out for work. Bucciarati was two bad days away from cracking. Old Boss, the guy in charge of all of them?” He makes a face, twirling his fork around next to his head. “Always figured he had to be god damned certifiable. No surprise that he turned out to be fucked in the head.”

“Well, I don’t know that he and Doppio are actually the product of-”

“Oh, I ain’t talking about that. I don’t know a damn thing about soul biology or split personalities or whatever. Email Polnareff if you wanna get technical about that shit. I just mean he’s fucking crazy.” He takes another bite, pondering. “Or they’re both crazy, whatever. But either way they ain’t right, y’know? Nobody could be, to stay in that job for that long.”

Giorno leans back in the hotel chair, raising an eyebrow. “And me? The man in that job right now?”

Mista pauses in another mouthful of salad, smiling slightly. “Well… crazy can be useful. He got you out of that thing with the, uh, racing car guys, though. Right?”

He blinks at him for a moment before it clicks. “The Speedwagon Foundation?”

Mista nods. “Yeah. Spooked them good.”

“I’m not sure that’s exactly what happened.” Giorno frowns, toying with his own food. That had been a trying and difficult issue for a number of months, with polite letters becoming terse phone calls at a rapid pace. The people came out of nowhere, but their demands were highly specific. They had to have been watching him for some time. Diavolo had disliked that immensely, but Giorno had not been particularly fond of it either. Increasingly irate requests for skin and blood samples, a full description of his stand, as well as all of Passione’s assets and plans…

He had agreed to meet with a representative in the end in the hopes of stemming the tide, though he had not been optimistic. As he had been leaving the house, Doppio had grabbed him and shoved an envelope into his palm.

“From the Boss! The rea- I mean, the other Boss.”

“Can’t it wait until I get back?” He’d been terse, he remembered, in no mood for more of Diavolo’s schemes on that particular day.

“It’s not for you! For whoever you’re gonna meet, he said.” He could still recall the way Doppio’s forehead had scrunched up with the effort of recitation. “And to tell them we have another one in our archives and to, uh, ‘Consider if their future endeavours are worth the price of exposing their past,’ or maybe that was the other way around, I’m not sure. Don’t tread on the thyme on your way out again, okay?”

Giorno had opened the letter on the way to the meeting to find a faded but official-looking document, but had been unable to read it. A quick call to Fugo confirmed that it was probably in German, but his own skills were too rusty (or Giorno’s recited pronunciation too poor) to make much of it. He did hand over it to the Foundation representative when he met her, however, and after a short moment where the colour drained out of her face so fast that he worried she might faint, she had told him they would have to reschedule their meeting. It was the last he ever heard from them.

Diavolo had refused to elaborate, beyond grumbling about people snooping into his business and compromising his assets. Giorno had felt very uncertain about his own life being filed under the latter.

He realises that Mista is still staring at him.

“He’s really getting to you, huh?”

Giorno sighs. Mista has no business being able to read him as well as he can. He can feel Five patting his shoulder, and reaches up to return the gesture with a fingertip, as delicately as he can. “He doesn’t like anything disturbing his everyday life, and he’s… possessive. And he thinks everyone on Earth thinks the same way he does, deep down. I’m sure that if I tried to interrogate him about his motives he would be insulted that I was pretending not to see how obvious and correct they were.”

“Yeah. Crazy, like I said.” Mista nods cheerfully. “So take good care of yourself, or you’ll be the one dialling calls into teapots and killing people for knowing your shoe size. We all like you exactly as weird as you are, okay?” He shooes his stand off his plate and passes the remains of his meal across the table, and does not continue until Giorno accepts them. When he has he tousles his hair, affectionately ruining half an hour’s worth of careful styling. “So, tell me about the game, New Boss. What d’you call it?”

“Hm?” Giorno shakes his head. “It doesn’t have a name. I don’t know. ‘Nobody has to die in their sleep tonight’, I think.”

“Sounds fun.”

Giorno ignores him, other than to reach up and tuck Five in when it threatens to slip out of his collar. “Nobody has to die in their sleep tonight. That’s what I keep telling myself, first thing in the morning and last thing at night. If I can keep Passione afloat, if I can find the right compromises, if I can keep everyone happy, if I can do everything right… then he won’t have any reason to turn on us and we won’t have any reason to turn on him. And nobody has to die in their sleep tonight.”

“Yeah.” Mista nods thoughtfully. “Sounds like the kind of games crazy people would play, for sure. Have another croquette. You’re too damn skinny for this kind of stress.”

“But the exhausting part,” Giorno continues, drumming his fingers on the table surface as he dices up food with his other hand, “is that I have to play both sides of the game at the same time. Do you understand?”

He shrugs, glaring at the Sex Pistols who are trying to sneak back towards the food. “I had two girls at the same time once. Didn’t end well. Not for me, anyway, I think they got together last year-”

“Because I have to be so careful about everything I say and do, but I can do that. I’ve always had to do that. But him- I have to be careful for him, too. I have to be so careful to steer him away from saying or doing something that will force me to act. To make sure I’m not giving him openings or provocations or ideas. I can’t be too strict or too lenient. I can’t trust him, but I can’t sleep with one eye open for the rest of my life. And sometimes I honestly can’t tell if he’s trying to work with me or sabotage me. It would be easier if he were insane, or at least stupid. I could work with…” Giorno realises that he is now leaning forward, one hand gesticulating over the table, and the Sex Pistols have abandoned the plate to cower behind their user. Even Five is whimpering, hiding under his shirt somewhere around his shoulder.

Mista puts his cutlery down and rakes his nails through his short hair. He stares at Giorno through half-lidded eyes for a few moments before taking a deep breath. “You know what I think?”

Giorno gingerly pets Five’s trembling form. “I’d like to.”

“I think that when Fugo gets back we should grab the others and take a night off. The whole old team, Trish too, like it used to be. You never really got a chance to let loose with us, huh? We’ll teach you how to get out of that head of yours and have a good time. Let us worry about taking care of you for once, okay?” He smiles, leaning forward to ruffle his hair again and make an absolute disaster of his buns before patting his cheek amicably. “Yeah. That’s what’ll set you right. Dump the ball and chain for an evening, turn your phone off and have some fun. What d’you say? Think he’ll let you go for an evening?”

“Yeah,” Giorno lies, but not without regret. “That would be nice.”

Giorno gets home. He spends a productive hour with Doppio and the many tasks in Passione that can be completed by phone or email and two unproductive but quite enjoyable hours eating his aubergine gratin and discussing how prolific the slugs are this season. There are only two oblique threats on Doppio’s part, and Giorno prides himself that his own are far more plausibly deniable.

He takes the plates back into the kitchen, and when he comes back Doppio is gone.

“You know, naturally, that my Epitaph’s vision is limited to only a few seconds into the future. So when I tell you that this outcome was entirely predictable, I want you to understand that I am not speaking of knowledge beyond what mere mortals are capable of.” Diavolo rises from his seat, unbuttoning some of the parts of Doppio’s shirt that are threatening to buckle. “The narcotics squad and the many people both within and without Passione who relied on their work were always going to object to some of your more… outlandish demands. I told you as much, and any human being in possession of common sense would have confirmed it.”

Giorno can’t equal Diavolo in height, so he doesn’t try to. He at least keeps his distance so that he doesn’t have to crane his neck to look up at him. “I don’t recall arguing with you about that. I never claimed that it would be easy.”

“No. But you did claim, Giorno Giovanna, that if I entered into this bargain of yours freely then I would no longer have to tolerate the threat of traitors in my organisation.” Diavolo tilts his chin up enough that he can look down at Giorno even at this distance. “You were very specific in your promises about my protection, if you recall.”

Giorno closes his eyes, takes a breath through his nose. “I did guarantee your safety, yes.” The only thing he could offer with any certainty. A gamble to see whether fear could outstrip pride.

“And yet now the traitors’ numbers only appear to have multiplied. You have not delivered on your end of our deal, Giovanna, while I have given everything I ever had to it and worked tirelessly to see it through. What am I to make of that?”

There’s real, genuine bitterness there, and the fear again, and for those reasons if nothing else Giorno should try to move gracefully. He really does need to play the game for both of them, and as much as he hates to admit it the moment Diavolo does something that can only be rectified with his death is the moment Giorno will lose. That is the heart of it, the only reason they keep playing: because whoever wins that fight will forfeit the entire game.

“Oh, is that what you think you’ve been doing?”

But sometimes Giorno thinks it might almost be worth it.

Diavolo glares at him. “Oh, you have more suggestions, do you?”

It is an effort to keep his voice calm and steady. Perhaps that’s Mista’s influence; a few hours in his company always makes recklessness feel a little more tempting. “I am trying to protect our organisation. I am trying to protect all of us, including you, but instead of cooperating you undermine me every chance you get.”

“And you breed more insurrections from within, as I always maintained that you would.” Diavolo paces around the coffee table where the remains of Doppio’s meal still lie. “You do not fight threats with compromise, Giovanna. You cannot afford to show weakness, even once, or it will infect all of us. How many times must I tell you?”

“It’s your own safety you’re concerned with.” Giorno scoffs. “You think I’ve made you weaker? You’re better-guarded here than most priceless art pieces, and I don’t waste that kind of time or resources on useless endeavours. You think the only threats to you are me and the narcotics squad? Half the continent would be trying to kill you if they could.”

“As they always have.” Diavolo shrugs, the movement not masking his tension in the slightest. “But now they can find me whenever they wish, trapped in this expensive, time-consuming cage of yours.”

Giorno spread his arms wide. “Another thing we have in common. If you can’t trust my tactics, you can trust my own sense of self-preservation. If you fall, I fall, and I have no intention of losing here.” That works sometimes. Diavolo is remarkably resistant to reason, but he believes in his own ideals and priorities. He responds well when spoken to in his own language; the language of rage and power and fear. “Now, if you would like to survive together a little longer, perhaps you could begin by keeping your underboss in line.”

“Oh, please, Giorno. Our underboss. That was another little stipulation, wasn’t it?” Diavolo’s teeth clack around an ugly smile as he stalks towards the nearest window, checking that it is still as tightly shuttered as it had been the first day they arrived.

“I don’t need an underboss who argues and snaps-”

“That is exactly the kind of underboss you need. Your closest partner must be a person unafraid to confront you, Giovanna, surely you can appreciate that much? Not one that crumbles at your feet when pressed, but one strong enough that you can sharpen your thoughts against them. Ah,” Diavolo pauses with a sickening look, “but I forget, you prefer your closest associates placid, yielding and simpering at your every move. Doppio doesn’t quite match your taste in a partner, does he? Not palatable enough for you.”

“What are you insinuating?” Giorno asks, very carefully.

Diavolo begins to speak, then appears to think better of it, which is a rare occurrence. “Only that I won’t snarl at him on your behalf; do it yourself. He is only frustrated at being denied his purpose, as all natural beings are. He was created to work and to serve, not to be a glorified house servant.”

He ought to back down. Diavolo is trying to, so he must look even angrier than he feels, but something about this man, of all people, trying to lecture him on interpersonal connection is more than he can stand. “Is it his nature to be kept perpetually ignorant, as well? I tend to find that my subordinates work better when I offer them trust and honesty. Perhaps if Doppio understood why he was functionally confined to house arrest-”

“You think these things are so simple. Ironic; you should know better than anyone else that nature is immutable. We have our roles. Doppio is at peace when he is able to fulfil his, and I am stronger for it. Do your own subordinates not strengthen you as much as they draw strength from you? None of you can function to your full potential if you coddle each other. You may rely on them, but are there any among them who can truly push you to greater heights? To force you to fulfil your own nature?”

Giorno makes himself breathe. “I don’t keep people close for my own personal use. They’re not animals I’ve tamed. I don’t expect you to understand.”

He scoffs, head tilting up as if beseeching the heavens. “You are the one struggling to understand. Passione, too, is only a larger kind of beast. A hive, a swarm, but with purpose and instincts.” Diavolo narrows his eyes at him over his shoulder. “Twist it against them and it will bite you, or you will kill it, but you cannot change it into something it is not. That is all I have ever tried to explain to you, and it is the one thing you will not hear.”

Giorno throws up his hands. “I have heard it. I just don’t think it’s true. Passione does not need the drug trade to survive.”

Diavolo sighs as if he is talking to a small, naive child. “Humanity needs it to survive. If we don’t supply their needs, someone else will. Our success would not be possible if we were not providing something vital.”

“People need food, water and shelter. They don’t need parasites emptying their wallets to hook them on-”

“You are talking about the needs of the body. I am talking about the needs of the soul. Look around you, Giovanna.” He waves towards the shuttered window as if it were open onto a vast vista. “The world is not kind. Not everyone can be gifted the power or ability to craft their own destiny or endure their own trials. They are born to struggle and suffer in obscurity, and you are denying them their only mercy because, as one of the few gifted chosen, you cannot conceive of what it is to be so lowly and pitiful. You are not helping them, Giorno. You are condemning them.” He peers through the blinds again. “And condemning us in the process. This is the cost of defying nature.”

Giorno shakes his head, collapsing into a nearby chair in an exasperated slump. “Don’t try to paint yourself as some kind of noble saviour in a bleak world. The world would be far less bleak in the first place, with fewer people like you in it.”

“I have never called myself anything of the sort. You are projecting, Giovanna.” Diavolo gives him another cruel smile. “You refuse to accept the world we live in and your own position in it; you think you can pervert it as easily as you force unnatural life into inanimate objects. The difference between us is that I do not run and hide from what I truly am.”

“And what is that?” Giorno sighs, because sometimes it is nice to pretend that he has any agency in these things. Diavolo is going to tell him either way.

“The same as you.” That does make Giorno glance up to glare at him, which is a mistake. Diavolo tilts his chin up again with a haughty smile. “You and I are more a pair than even myself and Doppio. Two men forced to arise from humble beginnings, raising ourselves up to attain the power and the glory that the world laid out for us, if we could only rise to it. Granted stands that mark us as exceptions even among the exceptional. Do you know what that makes us, to the common man?”

Giorno can feel Gold Experience Requiem under his skin like a hive, like a whole forest compressed into a single seed. “Monsters.”

“Kings. With a responsibility to lead and to build. Our power marks us as above others, so it is our duty to tend to the world we have been given. To build a kingdom that is a bastion of purpose in a world that weaker men have allowed to decay into chaos.” Diavolo stalks around towards him, never quite clearing that crucial two metre barrier between them. “I offered them more order than their nation’s police force could hope to, and they came on their knees begging for protection. I weeded out the true monsters, lowlifes and thugs, provided gainful employment and tossed funds to their little charities and noble causes to keep them content. And when this was not enough, yes, I provided the means by which they could escape reality and the burden of their lives for a few hours a night. I could have been a monster, Giorno. I could have stalked the streets, run rampant, killed freely, taken whatever I wished from people who had no hope of fighting back. King Crimson would have made it effortless, just as Gold Experience Requiem would make it effortless for you, now. You cannot deny this.”

Giorno stares up at him, trying not to grip the upholstery too hard. “I can’t.”

“I chose something greater. I chose to live up to the gifts I was given. You could have chosen to do the same and you can choose that still. We are the same, Giorno, if you could only match me in ambition.” He shakes his head, pacing back the way he came. “But you always quail at the final hurdle. Too afraid to appear too cruel and too brutal. Too afraid to risk the lives of those below you who would, rightly, give those lives to your cause if you would only let them. You would choose a stalemate over the final push for victory.” Diavolo pauses at the other end of the table before crouching down to stare eye-to-eye at him. “A better class of subordinate would have driven you forward, instead of holding you back at the crucial moment. You could be so much more than this.”

“Would you have preferred a checkmate? Only one king survives those, if I remember correctly.” Giorno laughs and regrets it at once; not because Diavolo sneers but because of the way it feels in his chest. “I don’t expect you to understand. You had far less to lose by a scorched earth, after all. I had many friends with lives to bargain with, people who care about me. People who I care about. You had nothing and no one. No life to throw away except your own.”

“I am never alone.”

This time the laugh is genuine. “You are the most alone person I have ever met. You’re alone in this very room. Do you understand that? You had your entire kingdom of subjects and I had six people, and when your back was to the wall we outnumbered you. Capos and guards and hitmen and not a single one to stand beside you. Yes, I could have pushed forward, because I had people to take the hits for me. You couldn’t have. The only reason we are standing here right now is because I valued their lives above your death.”

Diavolo stares into him, features twitching. “Then you made a poor choice.”

“I could choose again.” Diavolo flinches and Giorno regrets the threat at once, but he can’t make himself take it back. He sighs, tilting his head back against the headrest of the chair. “Do you know what the worst part is? You are right. We aren’t all that different. If you could take a page out of your daughter’s book and learn that flexibility isn’t the same as weakness, you could be so much more than a monster in a crown, dealing to children and siccing thugs on other thugs and calling it profound. But you’re right; there is one key, crucial difference between us.” Giorno stands up, turning on his heel towards the corridor and the stairs and, hopefully, his bed.

Diavolo does not move. “And what is that?”

“You said it yourself. In terms of ambition we are very far apart.” He pauses at the door, resting his fingers on the handle without turning it. “And I intend to see mine through, whether you make yourself useful to it, or not.”

They sleep in rooms almost on opposite sides of the house, or at least, Giorno does. Diavolo has a bedroom and sometimes when he has gone in there to fetch laundry Giorno has picked up the smell of Doppio’s middling cologne and cheap conditioner on the covers, but they have never looked genuinely slept-in. Once Doppio drifts off, evidently, Diavolo takes their shared body elsewhere and does not return to their shared bed. Giorno knows this, because more than once he has snuck in there to sleep in it, just to check. And because it feels like a small act of pettiness that he can afford.

The room itself is booby-trapped, even though, again, Diavolo does not seem to trust those traps enough to actually keep anything of value in it. Giorno can sidestep most of them by muscle-memory by now, but every so often he checks that no new ones have been added. Exactly where Diavolo does sleep is a mystery to him. He suspects it won’t be just one single place and he knows it is at least inside the house, because of his own traps. Little things that detect the proximity of movement or life and can flutter back to him to report it, mostly. Nothing designed to harm, lest it be set off in error and prompt an incident. A piece of planning and forethought that Diavolo does not appear to share.

It makes a sort of sense, by his standards. It would look like a tempting target, a designated room for him to be vulnerable in for eight hours a day (slightly less, in fact, because Diavolo rarely gets more than four-to-six hours sleep a night, by Giorno’s estimation) and he has learned that above all things Diavolo detests his own vulnerabilities.

Giorno sleeps in his own room, in his own bed. He has never been disturbed. Diavolo has, as far as he can tell, never even entered his room, and even Doppio leaves anything for him in their shared office.

It took him some time to figure out why. In the early days especially the risk of Diavolo spontaneously deciding to renege on their deal seemed high, and Giorno’s sleeping hours would appear to be the best time to act on such rash decisions. But even during their most aggressive spats, he never has. It was when he was stripping the barely-used bed, stuffing things into a linen basket, that Giorno was struck by inspiration.

Diavolo does not believe that Giorno sleeps in his own bed. Diavolo believes that Giorno’s room is a honeypot, rigged with traps waiting to snare a would-be assassin who thought he might be naive enough to actually reside there. He believes these things, fully and completely, because that is exactly what he would do.

And Diavolo believes that the two of them are the same.

Diavolo isn’t there in the morning. For a tense, unpleasant half-hour Giorno wonders whether he has done something very foolish, even though none of his failsafes have gone off, but a muffled string of cursing from the garden alleviates his fears.

Once he’s dressed and fed he strolls outside with as much composure as he can muster. He even manages a smile.

“The tomatoes again?”

“I swear, some fucker is spraying weedkiller in here when we’re not looking.” Doppio emerges with an armful of wilting plants, his knees muddy and his freckles obscured by more smears of earth. “I really thought these guys were doing okay. Maybe it’s the city?” He glances at the high walls around the property, not quite high enough to keep out the sounds of Naples. “All that shit in the environment, making it impossible to grow stuff. Do you think?”

Giorno glances down at the brittle tomato plants, then reaches out a hand. Gold Experience Requiem imparts a little more life into the stems that are still clinging to it, some of the green flooding back in and the leaves looking a little less limp.

“I don’t believe things are that unsalvageable. The environment might be poor, but we’ll just have to work to overcome it.”

“Heh, easy for you to say, Other-Boss.” Doppio grins down at the plants a little ruefully. “You can just make that stuff spring up outta nowhere.”

“The springing up is the easy part.” Giorno smiles again, watching him brush his bangs out of his face and smudge more dirt over it in the process. “There’s a reason I don’t work in this garden. The first spark isn’t enough on its own, and I never really had to learn… how to keep something alive. That’s…” He watches Doppio glance at him out of the corner of his eye as he returns the scraggly plants to the ground. “That’s your speciality.”

“I guess.” Doppio does not sound unconvinced so much as his voice has the ponderous tone it takes when he is chewing over a thought, looking for hidden insults. “Oh, hey! That reminds me.” He begins to delicately rummage through his pockets. “You said you lost one of the credit cards, right?”

“Ah, yes. The American account. Just my personal one; I can have it cancelled and-”

“Is this it?” Doppio shoves something shiny and dark blue into his face. On closer inspection, it appears to be a large, worried-looking beetle.

“Oh. Um, no. I think that one is… just a beetle.”

“Shit. I never know how to tell.” Doppio allows the thing to crawl onto the leaves of a fig tree. Giorno wonders if he knows that that casual kindness towards nature’s more reviled creatures has probably saved his other self’s life more than once; an ill-tempered swat or stamp would have been the quick and unpleasant death of a crueller man. Instead, more and more often the various stand-made creatures Giorno brings into life will gravitate towards Doppio, looking for the food and care he habitually offers to lowlier animals. Even brand new ones Giorno makes appear to do so as if by instinct, which raises questions Giorno does not yet feel equipped to answer. Doppio does most of the cooking for the human inhabitants of the house, too, after all.

“Don’t you ever…”

Doppio looks up at him, shooing the bug away. There’s no sign of Diavolo about his features, but that’s always misleading. They are a pair, symbiotic, and whatever else he might lie about, Giorno does not think he was lying about his beliefs about what makes a good partner. And the two of them have cross-contamination of feelings, perhaps even of ideas…

Giorno feels as if he has overstepped before he even begins, but makes himself continue. “You've been in this line of work longer than I have. Isn’t there a middle ground between maintaining things the way they always were, and radical, destructive change? Don’t you think…” When Doppio continues to stare at him with the same blank expression, he presses, “You and… the Boss, for example. After all this time, wouldn’t you at least like to know- to meet him?”

“He wouldn’t be happy about that,” Doppio answers at once.

“But you might be.”

“No. If he wasn’t happy about it then I wouldn’t be happy about it.”

“But that could change, couldn’t it?” he presses, “It’s not impossible for things to improve. I refuse to believe that it is. A bond doesn’t need to be static forever. Something as small as, as changing a feeling, at least…”

Giorno lets himself trail off. Doppio’s expression has gone beyond blank and into the flat, dull look he gets when he is not so much ignoring what is being said as shutting down his brain until the words stop happening. He knows from experience that pushing further will only force him deeper into it, and often when he comes back out of it again he comes back swinging. He has had enough conversations patiently questioning Doppio on how he thinks the Boss gets his food every day and why he never runs into him in the house end in a panicked, frantic scuffle, and even on the rare occasion that Doppio’s blows actually managed to make contact it was always clear who had come out of the situation worse off. Giorno isn’t above causing pain to make a point, but upsetting Doppio on this matter always feels particularly pointless.

“Don’t worry about it. I’m just thinking out-”

“I guess it doesn’t really bother me all that much these days. Not since all this.” He gestures towards the house with a muddy hand.

“Oh?” Giorno watches him fiddling with a leaf. He had not expected any response at all, nevermind a calm, coherent one. “Why is that?”

“Well… I still miss doing my real job, and I still don’t like all of this… new stuff you wanna do, but… I do get to see a Boss, I guess. It’s not, you know… the same, but… I don’t hate that part. Sometimes.” He sighs, releasing the bush. “If you’d just let me work for real I could- Boss always said I was so good at my job, you know? If you just let me show you that, all this other stuff might actually be… y’know. Nice, maybe. To hear all that face to face. But I can’t, ‘cause I’m not allowed, so the Boss can’t tell me that stuff anymore. Neither Boss, I guess. And it sucks, you know? I don’t really feel like myself here.”

“I’ll…” Giorno shuffles his bag from shoulder to shoulder, begins to continue, stops. “I’ll be back later. I’ll try to find something less… administrative for you to do while I work today.”

Doppio sighs. “In the house.”

“In the house.”

He makes his way to the gate and is almost out when Doppio calls, a little timidly, “Maybe take your time. Boss is in a funny mood today.”

“If Mista doesn’t want to be capo, I’ll take the job. Responsibility doesn’t frighten me.”

Giorno grins, a little nervously. “That might be a little premature. You’ve only been with the gang a few months, officially.”

“Longer than you’d been with it when you became the Boss,” Trish says, “so I don’t think you have much room to talk.” She pauses in their walk to turn towards him, staring him in the eyes. “I’m serious. You still haven’t filled Bucciarati’s old position, have you? Give it to me. I wouldn’t ask if I didn’t think I could handle it.”

Sometimes she looks so much like her father that it frightens him, but Giorno is at least smart enough not to admit it.

“Bucciarati wouldn’t want you to-”

“Bucciarati isn’t here. I’m asking you.”

Very frightening. “I… will consider it.”

Trish nods. “Then I’ll just have to keep proving myself. Did you see my results from last month?”

“A significant increase in revenue from the hotels and the docks, yes. Doppio couldn’t figure out how you’d done it.” And suspected quite openly that she must have been either falsifying the numbers or shaking someone down, but Giorno wasn’t stupid enough to say that, either.

“A little charm goes a long way sometimes.” Trish brushes a lock of hair over her shoulder. She has been growing it out in recent months; Giorno finds himself checking it for off-colour spots. “A lot of these people are stuck in their old ways, too. With a little modern innova-”

Trish whips around, Spice Girl bursting into existence as she grabs Giorno and yanks him towards her. Her arm lashes out with a shout, fist closing brutally around the wrist of the stand aiming a punch at the air where the back of Giorno’s head had been a second previously.

“I guess that’s good enough.” Leone Abbacchio steps out from a shadowed doorway just ahead of them, expression only slightly twitching despite the way Moody Blues’ fingers are convulsing under the force of Spice Girl’s grip. “When did I start following you?”

“Two corners back, when we passed the delivery van parked by the bakery,” Trish recites at once, not loosening her grip on Giorno. Or on the stand, he notes.

“Good guess.” Abbacchio’s matching hand is hanging at the sort of angle that would usually imply multiple catastrophic bone breakages.

“It’s not a guess,” Trish huffs. “You’re too big to be sneaky, old man, not in that outfit. But you might have grazed me if you hadn’t been aiming for Giorno.”

“Was I aiming for him? Huh. Must have forgotten which rookie I’m babysitting today.” Trish finally releases Moody Blues and Abbacchio almost manages to hide the wince as his arm returns to solidity. “She learns a lot faster than you did,” he adds, as he leans up against the wall, still rubbing that wrist.

Trish lets Giorno go, too, though not without a little reluctance and he doesn’t miss the way she glances over him as he steps away. That’s not a look her father ever makes, that kind of soft, automatic concern. “I’ve gathered. Some people are even suggesting she could make capo very soon.”

Abbacchio sizes his beaming protege up. “Eh. Don’t get too big for your overpriced boots just yet, kiddo. Takes more than a head for numbers and a grip like a car crusher to make it in this job. But,” he adds, with extravagant generosity, “I’ve seen worse. And apparently they let just anybody make it big in Passione nowadays.” He inclines his head towards Giorno. “Things going okay at the palace, your co-majesty?”

Giorno smiles, because Trish is there. “As well as they ever do.”

“Remember you’re playing with real grown-ups, now. Don’t let your head get too big.” It’s an insult, but Abbacchio is eyeing him up now, too, with a cursory kind of worry.

Giorno does his best to affect the look of a young man not worth worrying about. “Of course not. But if I feel a growth spurt coming on, I always know who to go to.”

“You couldn’t pay me enough to be your shrink, kid. But Mista said something about you having a pub crawl soon? That I would pay for. I wanna see how many rounds it takes to get you so pissed you actually start being fun.”

“I’ll bear that in mind.”

“Do. And send me the date when you’ve got one. I might need to check it against my long weekend in Sardinia.”

Giorno sighs. “You know you’re not allowed to go there. Or Egypt, before you ask. Polpo’s old job isn’t the only thing of his that needs filling; it was very difficult to talk my… roommate out of keeping you in his cell in perpetuity.”

“Couldn’t hurt. Might actually be able to get some peace and quiet from annoying brats in there.” Abbacchio sighs and hauls himself up off the wall. “Speaking of which…” He turns to Trish. “Right, I’m either going home or I’ll start tailing you again, which one I pick is up to you to figure out. Try to do it before Moody Blues gives one of your prissy hairstyles a fashionable red dye job, alright?” He gives them a wave that could not have been more sardonic if his wrist were still elasticised, then disappears down a side-street.

Giorno waves after him, then turns back to Trish with a grin. “Do you think we can head him off and go for coffee?”

“No,” she says, a slight frown on her face, “I don’t trust hot drinks around him after our first mission together.”

“Ah.” Giorno winces at a particularly unpleasant memory. “I didn’t realise that was one of his standard tricks. How did you get out of it? I had to do some very quick work with Gold Experience, and even then, the aftertaste was… unpleasant.”

“Oh, I just hit him.” Trish is still frowning, and when she looks up at Giorno her eyes are firm. “Hey, by the way… I’ve been thinking that… I’d like to see him. Them, whatever.”

He doesn’t ask for clarification and doesn’t need to. “You know he won’t let anyone but me into that house. And he wouldn’t even let me in there if he could get away with it.”

“I know,” Trish says, her voice very even, “but he is allowed to leave, right? Like you are, for short bursts and as long as someone is with him. It would only have to be a step outside the garden gates, just for a few minutes.”

Trish does not know her father well enough to know that she might as well have suggested he jump into an active volcano for just a few minutes, and it worries Giorno somewhat that he does. “I could ask him,” is all he can say without lying.

His face must be more honest than he is. Trish nods, but something heavy is passing behind her eyes. “I’d just like to see them. Just for a few minutes. Just to ask… a few things. That’s all.”

Giorno thinks about saying something, but then she is smiling again, grabbing his hand and tangling their fingers together as she drags him down the street. “And let them know that when I’m capo they won’t be able to keep ignoring me. Either they come to me or I come to them, and they’re running out of time to pick which it is.”

He doesn’t have anything much to report when he calls the house and he is not surprised when Doppio answers. He, too, has little to say, and Giorno suspects that Diavolo is still being cagey about his mood even with his better self. The work in Milan and Brazil is going well enough, though a few minor snags were causing more issues than they had any right to.

“Some of these guys just start freaking out at the smallest thing, it’s such a pain in the ass.”

Giorno makes a sympathetic noise around his cup of substandard coffee, carefully keeping his mind blank of some of Doppio’s preferred responses to small inconveniences in their work.

“You gotta have good leaders for stuff like this. People who can cool heads down, y’know? Boss always says that one good leader can cancel out a whole team of nervous wrecks. But these days everyone just gets jumpier and jumpier.” Doppio sighs, then hums thoughtfully. “Hey, whatever happened to that guy who used to be in charge of your team? Uh… Bucciarati, right?”

Giorno freezes, cup hovering near his mouth. “Bucciarati? He…” He straightens up, even though Doppio can’t possibly tell through the phone. “He was never fit for this kind of work. It was inevitable that in the end it would… overcome him. He had to be dealt with.”

“Oh.” Perhaps posture can be read through the phone, because Giorno is sure he can feel Doppio’s awkward shuffling. “That’s… a shame. He always seemed like a solid guy, before- Well. Before you, uh… We really didn’t expect… Obviously. Well, anyway. It’s a shame. Sorry?”

Giorno takes a sip of his bitter mocha. “Thank you. It was necessary, and perhaps… he’s in a better place now.”

An hour and a half later Giorno arrives at a better place. Bucciarati smiles when he lets him in. A broad, unworried smile that makes many things worth it at once. Bucciarati makes him leave his bag and coat at the door and all but insists on feeding him, even as Giorno insists in turn that he can’t stay long. To be fair, he does not insist particularly hard.

“You look well,” Giorno tells him, when they are sitting over some homemade pizza.

“Thank you.” Bucciarati tucks his hair back. “I’ve been feeling very… relaxed, lately.”

“I can tell. It’s a good look on you.”

Bucciarati smiles again. “You look exhausted. Have you been sleeping alright?”

“It’s not the sleeping I have an issue with. Just everything in between.” Giorno sighs. “Bucciarati, remind me why I did this. Any of this.”

“‘Bruno’, please. Not Bucciarati. I don’t outrank you anymore, remember, Don Giovanna?” Bruno cuts another slice for him and passes it across the little table, fingers brushing his. “Let’s not keep this professional. But, if I remember rightly, at the time you decided that it was better the devil you know.”

Giorno nudges a tomato seed from between his teeth with his tongue. “That was my mistake, then. It turns out that I like him less the more I know him.”

Bruno tilts his head, a look of concern marring his soft features. “Really? Has it got that bad?”

He regrets it immediately. He hates making him worry. But he hates lying to him more, whether he’s taste-testing or not. “Not in the way you’re thinking- Well, maybe in that way. I don’t know, it’s so hard to tell what’s bluster and what’s a threat. I’m not sure even he knows sometimes. He’s belligerent, yes, but more than that… Something about the way he thinks worries me more than the conclusions he comes to.”

Bucciarati pours himself a glass of strawberry juice, sipping it with that frown still etched onto his forehead. “I won’t mince words; there was a part of me that was almost… disappointed that you came to a truce. A man like that… He could ruin anything he touches. If it was anyone but you holding his leash-”

“I know, Buccia- Bruno.”

“I understand the risks of an all-out war. I would have been ready to die if it meant putting him down, without a moment of hesitation.”

“I know, Bruno,” Giorno says. “That’s… why I couldn’t let it come to that.”

Bucciarati pauses, lowering his slice back to the plate and letting his hands rest on the immaculate tablecloth. “I remember. But you know that if it goes wrong, if anything happens to you… I don’t think I could live with knowing that you did this for me. That you compromised your dream for me.”

“For all of you,” Giorno says, with no small amount of emphasis.

Bucciarati smiles again. “For all of us.”

“And for you.” He lets his own hand rest with the fingers barely brushing Bucciarati’s. “I didn’t compromise on my dream. The shape of it just… changed, that’s all. It has things in it that I never thought I could have, and… not all of them are so bad.” Bucciarati lets him keep touching his fingers, hand turning slightly so that they are resting more comfortably over them.

“Do you really think it can work? Can you bring a man like that to heel?”

“I don’t know. He’s so resentful, so… locked away from everyone else. He doesn’t understand how other people think, so he assumes they must all think like him. And he assumes that they would all destroy him if they could, just to prove that they were capable of it, because that’s what he would do. That’s how he got this far. And if they can’t destroy him, he thinks that they should…” Giorno trails off, staring into the weave of Bucciarati’s shirt.

“Giorno?” His hand shifts, so that Giorno is now the one being covered.

“If someone can’t destroy him, he thinks they should worship him. Acknowledge his power and give themselves over to him, help him. That’s how he believes everyone else thinks, and… he believes that everyone else thinks the way that he thinks.” The hand covering his own is squeezing him slightly, dragging him out of his thoughts. “I wonder if I’m not the only one who never anticipated my dream having room for other people.”

“I don’t know if a person like that can appreciate a little support the way you can, Giorno.”

“No,” he shakes his head, “he can't. He doesn't think it works like that. He thinks… that a good partner should push back, force you to be strong enough to overcome them, so that you can be strong enough to overcome anything. That’s what he…”

Bucciarati looks at him with another worried expression, but it’s more like the one he had before insisting on sharing his pizza with him. “Be careful, Giorno. Don’t let him change you more than you change him.”

“Of course.” Giorno smiles. “I’m rambling.” He waves his other hand as if he can disperse the thoughts lurking at the edge of his consciousness. “How are things here? Have you managed to find work?”

“Not that I need it on my generous pension, but I have been sniffing around at the docks lately. And there’s a little place near there that has a sign out for a job waiting tables. I’ve joined a book club. It’s all very boring and uneventful.”

His smile widens. “It sounds perfect.”

“It is. And I think…” Bruno looks around the room a little wistfully. “I don’t want to spoil it, for however long it lasts.”

Giorno stares over at his thoughtful expression. “Oh?”

“What I’m saying is that I don’t think I want any more Passione operatives in my house. I left that life behind, and if Don Giovanna keeps showing up on my doorstep I’m only going to be tempted to go back to it.” He meets Giorno’s gaze with those cool blue eyes that always seem to be seeing straight through him. “You understand.”

He can feel his face trying to fall and keeping the smile on it is a gargantuan effort. “Of course. I understand.” He begins to rise. “I won’t keep-”

The hand over his is now holding him very firmly in place. Giorno looks down to meet that worth-everything smile again.

“My dear friend Giorno, on the other hand, is welcome whenever he likes.”

Giorno almost misses his hourly call, barely making it when he finally leaves Bucciarati’s place and glances at his watch. It’s short and unhelpful, which is a blessing, Doppio’s answers and acknowledgements brief and absent-minded as he chops and hisses through something in the kitchen. The moment he hangs up it rings again, and Giorno’s heart skips a beat, wondering if the other half of that duo has finally surfaced to make his own smalltalk.

“Giovanna, is that you?”

His stomach drops. “Fugo? What is it? Did something happen?”

An indrawn breath. “Yeah, I think it’s safe to say that something has definitely happened.”

He’s already pulling out another phone and trying to find Mista’s number. “The narcotics squad? Are they making a move?”

“Well, yeah… It’s… It’s kind of hard to explain-”

“Do you need backup? Don’t move, I can send someone down within the-”

“Giovanna- Giorno. Stop whatever you’re doing and sit down, alright?” Fugo’s voice is fraught, but not the kind of fraught it becomes right before an explosion, and that alone is enough to give Giorno pause. “You’re going to want to hear all of this, and I might need a few passes to make any kind of sense out of it. And I think, when I’m done… You might have another job for me.”

He finds Doppio picking away at a laptop when he gets back, sprawled out on a couch in a position that must be doing serious damage to the long-term integrity of his spine. The man smiles up at him when he arrives, a lopsided look that rapidly deteriorates when Giorno takes his face in his hands and leans in close.

“Hey! Don’t-”

“I’m sorry. I need to talk to him.”

Doppio’s eyes glaze over, then stutter back to life. “You’re… My head-”

“Just for a few minutes. He knows why.”

Doppio shakes his head, but his eyes are rolling back and the skin under Giorno’s palms is trembling, and he sees the exact moment that someone else is looking back at him.

“A little more distance, please, Giovanna.” Diavolo shrugs his hands free and wriggles back on the couch, loosening the collar of Doppio’s shirt that is now a little too snug around his shoulders. “Unless a brawl is your intention?”

Giorno lets him make the space between them, straightening up but very firmly not taking so much as a half-step back. “What did you do?”

“You will have to be more specific. I am a busy man.”

He is a poor liar even by omission and Giorno does not mollify his tone in the slightest. “Fugo reported in today. The narcotics team have surrendered. They turned themselves over, every one, and they’re prepared to come back to Naples.”

Diavolo nods. “One less problem to deal with, and another that presents itself. Who to debrief, and who to make an example-”

“How long have they been in contact with you?”

He casts him a withering look. “Please, Giovanna. They sent a message the day they defected.”

Giorno tries to keep his hands from clenching, works on holding that gaze. “You didn’t mention it.”

“It provided no new information. They informed me that they had rebelled, that they objected to your plans - as I told you they would - and begged for some strategy or guidance I could provide.”

“Guidance?”

“In rectifying our current situation.” When Giorno only stares at him he gives him another disappointed look. “They wanted to know my location so that they could mount a rescue, and the names of any others still loyal primarily to me that they could contact to bolster their numbers.”

“A coup. They asked you to help them organise their coup.” If Giorno concentrates very hard he can stop his face from showing what he is feeling. The sweat beading on his brow, however, is beyond his control. “And what did you tell them?”

“Until today?” Diavolo shrugs. “Nothing.”

“Nothing?”

“Nothing. Not a single word, from myself or Doppio, before you ask.”

Giorno lets out a breath. “Why? Why didn’t you tell me?”

Diavolo does not meet his gaze, turning Doppio’s laptop towards himself and staring at it as if transfixed by the screen. “As I said, there was no new information in their message. Nothing you would not already have been aware of. And at the time I believed that if you could not squash this band of traitors alone, well…” He curls up on himself at the end of the couch, hair from Doppio’s unravelling braid falling over his face in a few strands. “It would not bode well for your future career in this industry.”

“Are you trying to say that you were testing me?” Giorno nearly spat the words out. “This… situation has put Passione at risk. It put the men I sent after them at risk.”

Diavolo flinches a little at his words, but his cold expression remains beneath it. “All of life is a test, Giovanna. You would do well to remember that.”

Giorno starts to snap back, something harsh and aggressive and altogether justified, and then stops. Diavolo’s reasoning is obscure and absurd, but it is internally consistent. If he has been sitting on this for all this time, doing nothing, then there is a reason he has acted now. That reason will not be kindness or pity, but something that makes perfect sense to Diavolo. Their last conversation is still fresh in his mind. He exhales slowly. “I see. A test I failed, evidently. So what happens now?”

Diavolo cocks his head. “Failed?”

“You had to call them off. You told them to surrender, yes? And because they were still loyal to you, they listened. I couldn’t stop them with days of effort and manpower, but you could make them give up with a few words. That’s the lesson, isn’t it?”

“Is it?” Diavolo continues not to meet his gaze. Giorno finds himself wondering if he will be like this on the day that Trish finally talks him out of the house or herself into it. Something there flipped, at some point, without any of them quite noticing, and it is no longer her safety that he worries about in that confrontation. He wonders if Diavolo has had the same thought.

“Or was there another test, underneath that one? A more important one?”

Diavolo shrugs, and if he thinks it is a believable gesture then he is further gone than Giorno has feared. “I gave them their orders, and because they were born to follow their betters they listened. All lesser creatures act in the service of their superiors, as I told you.”

“Yes, I remember. I’ve been giving it some thought, actually.” Giorno sits down on the opposite end of the couch, staring into the chain-link pattern of coffee mug stains.

Diavolo finally glances towards him. “Is that so?”

“About the roles that people have, and how they fill them. You’re right; all living things have a niche that they fill, but they can be flexible within that niche. So now I find myself wondering…” Giorno pulls his feet up and leans against the armrest so that he can stare at Diavolo head-on, which he knows he hates. “Who were you acting in the service of, when you finally told them to stand down?”

Diavolo looks back to the laptop, though from this angle Giorno can see that it’s only showing a screensaver. “What are you babbling about now, Giovanna?”

“You said yourself that they messaged you the moment they turned on us. You ignored that message all this time, only to send them their orders now. Why? There must be a reason. You never act without intention.” Inscrutable intentions, sometimes, yes, but intentions nonetheless. “Something changed your mind.”

Diavolo frowns, eyes shifting to the coffee stains. “They were… disruptive. They were a risk to Passione, as you say. And arrogant, to think that I would need rescuing, or rely on rescuers who were so weak. I grew tired of indulging their games, even passively.”

“Ah.” Giorno nods. “So Passione, in its new form, continues.”

“So it would seem.”

“I can continue my efforts to expand it into something greater. With the people at my side, with Gold Experience Requiem, and with… you. If we can protect what we have, I can drive it further forward.”

“Ah, your great ambition,” Diavolo says, with a hint of a sardonic grin.

“Yes,” Giorno answers. “Would you like to see it, one day?”

“I was not aware I was invited.”

Giorno shuffles closer to him. He only catches his eye for a moment before it flashes back to the table, but that’s enough. “It’s not a question of being invited, you know that. If I want to be more than a particularly effective street criminal then I need other people, people who can fulfil… roles. And you are right, I have plenty of people who will support me unconditionally, who I can lean on when I need to, and I will continue to value them. Without them, none of this would be possible.” And it is true. He needs them, his team, to ground him and keep him sane. To remind him of the person they think he is when more and more he worries if he is not the very kind of person he always hated. He needs them to make him eat and hold his hand and sprawl over him and be warm so that he can remember that he is still human. He needs them because some part of him will always be a child sitting and shaking alone in the dark. He needs them, yes, but that is not all that he needs. “But that’s not enough, is it? To become stronger- To be strong enough for this, I need someone who can push me. Someone who can force me to improve myself.”

Diavolo narrows his eyes at the stains. “I thought you didn’t appreciate disobedience.”

“I don’t. And when my back is against the wall, I won’t tolerate it.” Diavolo meets his gaze and Giorno inches closer, watching the way he fails to completely subdue a shudder. “But the bottom line is that I need to be strong enough to make my dream a reality, and facing you… made me stronger. That’s how I got this far. So I will keep getting stronger, and you are going to help me.” He leans forward, far too far into the two metre danger zone. Diavolo looks tense, but he doesn’t retreat and his attention is keen, and Giorno wonders if Doppio really is the only one of them who needs to be treated with a certain amount of authority. “And I don’t intend to stop here, because you’re right. I do have the power to make a better kingdom, so that is what I am going to do.”

Diavolo chuckles, low and dry. “Now that sounds like something worth seeing. If you can make all that talk reality.”

“And if I can, you’ll be at my side?”

Diavolo shrugs, lounging back into something closer to Doppio’s vertebrae-shattering position. “Why not? It seems a safer place to be than in your way. Or lagging behind.”

Giorno has seen that look before. Diavolo is more like Doppio than he’ll admit. He never did clarify why he had agreed to any of this. Giorno had assumed at first (and most of his teammates still believe, he is sure) that it was pure cowardice. If they fought, his risks were the same as theirs had been: victory, perhaps, but not without cost. Diavolo had fewer people to lose before he took that cost upon himself. It seemed intuitive enough.

But he had told him everything he needed to know all along, hadn’t he? And the two of them are far too similar.

“My mother didn’t think my father was Egyptian originally, but that was where she met him.” Giorno lets his gaze slip over Diavolo’s shoulder as he speaks. “She left him before I was born. The man who raised me was Italian. Not related to me by blood, but when I picture my ‘father’, he’s the one I see.”

Diavolo half-glances at him as he speaks, eyeing him carefully with a slow, thin smile passing over his face. “I see. What kind of man was he?”

“An unkind one. I was glad to leave my- I’m sorry, is that amusing?”

Diavolo stifles another chuckle with the back of his hand. “Yes, in a cosmic sense. My father was also so in name only. Perhaps those of us who are born with trials to overcome simply rise higher than the rest.”

Giorno relaxes, eyes on the past. “Perhaps. I would have preferred fewer trials, though.”

“How did you kill him?”

Giorno freezes.

“Mine was… rushed. Almost accidental. I hadn’t planned on it, at least. Things… came to a head a little faster than I had intended.” A small shadow passes over his features, then he shrugs. “A pickaxe to the skull- his own pickaxe, I might add. His own skull, as well.”

“I did not kill my father.”

Diavolo does not appear to have heard him. “I remember that the sound was quite dull. Not a sharp crack at all, and rather… moist. I did not have my stand, then.” He shakes his head. “I should have. King Crimson is a far more merciful being than any human. To leave a man bleeding and crawling about the floor like a half-crushed bug, that is… demeaning to all concerned. I will not debase myself in such a way again.”

“I didn’t…” Giorno feels his voice die in his throat. Diavolo looks at him, and he sighs. “I didn’t kill him. But he needed daily medication and I used to pick it up for him. Before I left home, that last delivery…” Giorno straightens himself up in the chair. “I may have been careless about which pills were in which bottle. But if he were paying attention and using his brain instead of his fists, then he would have noticed right away.”

“And did he?”

Giorno says nothing.

“Just as you knew he would not.”

Giorno says nothing.

“I was wrong about you, Giovanna… Giorno. For all that you hold your allies close, you have that streak of force and the nerve to use it. That is what the arrow recognised in you.” He nods, a wide, dark grin on his face. “We are of the same stock. Fate has drawn us together for a reason. You only need a little… sharpening.”

Giorno looks over at him and cannot decide if he likes the smile lighting up his face, or if it is the most worrying thing he has seen from him yet. Diavolo leans closer, and it does not make deciding any easier.

“Now… Show me that ambition, Giorno.”