1...
Aaaaand here we have the third part.
Apocalyptica
Pairings: Josuke/Rohan, Mista/Giorno, Rohan/Giorno
Rating: light R
Summary: After the end of the world has been brought about by Pucci, two Stand users immune to the madness caused by Stairway to Heaven try to make sense of what happened.
Disclaimer: I don't own these guys. They belong to Araki-sensei.
As darkness fell and the odd, streaked stars appeared to light the night, Giorno, who had not forgotten the date at any point since the acceleration began, tricky though that was, realized that it was Christmas. He found himself staring up at the sky and wondering if Christmas still existed in this new world.
There had been many years where he didn’t celebrate it. His earliest memory was of a brightly-decorated tree with many presents underneath, but then his mother had married that man and childhood had turned into pain alternating with neglect, all the days that should have been happy instead becoming sad reminders of what children in happy families- other families- enjoyed.
But then, over a decade later, he had come back to the apartment he and Mista shared to find a tree, decorated haphazardly but with an exuberance that made it charming anyway, boxes underneath that looked as though they’d been wrapped by a gradeschooler, and Mista standing back and admiring his handiwork. There had been Christmas for the two of them every year since.
As they tended to do, things came full circle, and now Christmas would again be a monument erected to the memories of happiness, a landmark at the crossroad between the old, good life and the new, lonely one.
Rohan gave a quiet snore and burrowed deeper into the blankets he was using for a makeshift bed.
Giorno wrapped himself tighter in his own soft cocoon and shivered, not against the chilly night but against the cold he felt at his very core, the icy sensation that came from loneliness.
He walked over to Rohan and curled up against his side. This wouldn’t break their promise. This wasn’t love. It was just the two of them together, keeping each other from going mad from isolation after everyone else had gone.
***
Spring came, and with it warmer temperatures and longer days. Canned food was getting more and more scarce, but the plants that had disappeared over the winter returned and kept Rohan and Giorno from starving.
The pair maintained their distant companionship, neither imposing upon the other, mostly keeping to themselves but sharing their resources. The sounds from the ever-encroaching forest continued, but they seemed far enough away to not cause any anxiety. Perhaps it really was just some animal that had survived the acceleration (although if that was the case, Rohan didn’t feel like tangling with such a formidable creature unless he had no other choice).
One day, Rohan returned from scavenging in the ruins to find that Giorno was nowhere in sight. He’d been sleeping in their makeshift shelter in the middle of what had once been a major street, brow furrowed, murmuring against some nightmare or another, his breath raspy and occasionally fast, but continuous.
Dust.
That was the first thing that came to Rohan’s mind, and he set about looking frantically around their little ‘home’ for any telltale piles that would mean the worst had occurred. How could that have- He looked relatively healthy.
But there was no dust, and there were no clothes that had recently held a warm and living man. He had to be elsewhere, but where was there to go? They’d nearly picked this area clean as far as food and necessities went.
Why am I even worried? He can fend for himself. And if he wants to leave, he can do that too. We’re not bound to each other.
Though I would miss him.
Shaking that thought and all of its implications from his head, Rohan took a deep breath and then shouted with all the lung-power he could muster, “GIORNO!”
More quietly, but still shouted, a reply: “Here! I’m over here!” Giorno sounded out-of-breath and Rohan wondered if he’d gotten into some kind of trouble.
Rohan squinted in the direction of the voice but still couldn’t see the familiar bright clothes that Giorno favored. He was probably obscured by rubble or trees. “Where is ‘here’?”
“...Here!”
“Yes, but-”
“Just keep walking in the direction of my voice until you find me!”
Eventually he came upon Giorno sitting cross-legged in the dirt, a tree at his back. A young tree. An orange tree, laden with fruit.
“What...?” Rohan was confused. Although it was nothing unusual for trees to sprout up in the middle of a street literally overnight, fruit trees didn’t suddenly appear if there wasn’t an orchard within a reasonable distance. And there were no orchards nearby.
Half-smiling enigmatically, Giorno picked an orange. Held it. Peeled it. Waited.
It didn’t blacken or rot.
“How- What-?” They’d given up trying to pick fruit months ago. At the start of the acceleration, it had been possible to pick unripe fruits and vegetables and have them be only slightly overripe by the time they got into one’s mouth, but for the past few months even that hadn’t failed. The tiniest, greenest barely-even-a-grapefruit-yet putrefied and turned to foul-smelling liquid as soon as it left the tree.
But this orange still looked edible.
“I don’t know why this didn’t occur to me sooner,” Giorno said, “but it occurred to me this morning, and that’s the important thing. So I’ve been experimenting.” He stood up, and Rohan saw his legs shake as though he’d pushed himself too far very recently.
“Are you all ri-”
“I’m fine.” Giorno forced himself to stand without wavering. “Now, watch.”
Touching a steel girder that was hanging down into the street, he closed his eyes for a second. Rohan saw Gold Experience lay his hand over Giorno’s.
The brown started under the fingers of the human and his Stand and spread up the beam, which was warping and twisting and growing branches-turning-into-leaves as it changed color. The leaves parted to reveal fruit, round and ripe and richly purple.
Giorno opened his eyes. He’d gone pale in the face, the shadows around his eyes becoming more pronounced, and Rohan wondered how weak Giorno had become that using his Stand was so taxing. He doubted he’d fare much better himself if he tried to use Heaven’s Door too heavy-handedly.
Letting out the short, soft cough that had been escaping his lips since the winter, Giorno steadied himself against the new tree.
Rohan looked at him in concern. That cough again. In no manga I’ve drawn or read has that been a good sign.
His thoughts were interrupted by the weight of something smooth and firm being placed into his hand. Giorno had given him one of the fruits and was looking at him expectantly.
“It’s a plum. It’s not poisonous or anything.”
“I know that.” He took a bite.
Fruit. Fresh fruit. Had it already been nearly a year since he ate this kind of thing for breakfast every morning, taking its existence for granted? Had it only been a year that he and Giorno had survived on canned food, and then mostly wild plants after the canned food had become scarce? Some days it felt like they’d been living this life forever.
He looked over and saw that Giorno had his own plum. His eyes were closed reverently and he took small, careful bites. It was better than the wild garlic and ostrich ferns and mockernut that they’d been living on these past few months. So what if it had been metal just minutes ago? Some property of the fruit being created, not grown, had kept it from spoiling as soon as it was picked. This was infinitely better than grazing like an animal, ripping plants out of the ground with one’s teeth and chewing them up before they could rot.
What was alive, was safe. What was dead, was no longer sacred. Those were the only two rules left in this new world.
***
The next morning, Rohan opened his eyes to find that the dusty former main street he and Giorno had bedded down on had become completely overgrown. This was not the first time it had happened, but he could have sworn that the two of them had fallen asleep far enough from the forest that the chances of nature reclaiming the area had been fairly small.
The second thing he noticed was that the trees were attached to the ruins that barely-stood along each sidewalk, those old soldiers still trying to stand at attention but stooping, sloping inexorably down toward their demise.
Against one of the trees farthest from where Rohan lay, Giorno rested, pale and thin and looking utterly drained.
“You... It’s... It’s a garden. You made us a garden.”
“I did.”
Getting quickly to his feet, Rohan shook the remaining sleep-fog from his brain and went to stand next to Giorno. He looked up at the tree above them and wondered if what he was seeing was a dream.
“Is that an orange?”
“Those are oranges,” Giorno corrected. His voice was quiet, tired, and his breathing made an odd rustling noise in his throat. “Those are oranges. There are two grapefruit trees to your left, peaches to your right, plums behind you. Further down the block are the vegetables.”
A soft, reverent whisper: “You made us a garden.”
Aqua eyes that had gone big with shock met blue eyes that were drooping with exhaustion.
And again, barely audible this time: “...You made us a garden.”
“Well, now you just have to hope that I don’t die before you, so I can keep doing this forever.”
A smile.
Giorno had smiled, curved his full lips at the corners and really smiled. It looked...not out of place, but odd, private, as if he’d peeked into someone’s bedroom while they weren’t home. He thought to himself: Perhaps only Guido Mista has seen this.
This wasn’t love. This wasn’t the pushing and pulling, passionate sometimes-bordering-on-hate, totally involved love that he’d had with Josuke, at least. But it was a certain kind of intimacy that he hadn’t known before. Josuke had been loud and open. He’d had few secrets; if there were any, he’d share them willingly if asked.
No, this was a privilege, this was Giorno allowing him in behind the emotionless mask he wore. This was a special tour of the museum after-hours and being allowed behind the glass and the velvet ropes that kept everyone else at a safe distance.
“Why are you just standing around? Look. There are oranges.” Giorno picked one off the tree behind him and lobbed it in Rohan’s direction.
He caught it, peeled it, waited for two seconds holding his breath, still not trusting it not to blacken and liquify instantly- and it didn’t.
The two of them were...not quite safe, not quite fine, but getting there.
***
Rohan had lost count of the days they’d lived in their new little grove after thirty or forty had passed, though he knew months had gone by. He’d toyed briefly with marking a tally on the fruit trees, but what was the point? Calendars had fallen out of use when the world ended. Now it came down to simply waking up and living another day, or not.
It was night now. The sky was clear and full of stars, the air was warm enough to be comfortable but not as warm as it had been some weeks ago. Autumn had to be here, had been here for weeks by the feel of it. There were certainly fewer hour of sunlight.
“Do you remember how I told you about the weird sensation I’ve been getting? Like someone calling out to me?”
The only sign Rohan gave that he’d heard was a soft, “Mmhm.” That had been an odd conversation indeed, odd and frightening to Rohan because it had resurrected his fears that Giorno was losing his mind. If it was such a strong and constant feeling, why had he only spoken up about it now? To be fair, he is very closed-off, Rohan thought.
“I feel it again,” Giorno said quietly.
He was lying on the ground next to Rohan, a companion in insomnia.
“Ignore it.”
The next few minutes were silent but for breathing.
Then: “I’m going into the forest tomorrow.”
“Then I’m going with you.”
“It’s too dangerous.”
“Then I’m sure as hell not letting you go in there.”
Giorno sighed. “Look, I need to find out what this weird ‘pull’ I’ve been feeling since before...before all this...is. It’s like- I can’t really describe it very well even if I try- it’s like a magnet at the very center of what I ‘am’ is being pulled towards a much, much bigger magnet.”
“...And the bigger magnet’s in the forest.”
“Yes.”
Rohan suppressed a desire to roll his eyes. “Well, I’ve heard weirder. Hell, I’ve been through weirder.”
More silence. Minutes could have passed, or maybe hours. There were no more birds to herald the coming of morning an hour before the sun.
Rohan was sure Giorno had fallen asleep- he’d been quiet for long enough, at least- but he heard the younger man’s soft voice and knew he was still awake:
“It’s like...’gravity’.”
***
The trees were old, immeasurably old, some of the trunks as wide as houses Rohan had seen back home in Morioh. They seemed conscious somehow, so ancient that they had developed souls. There was a slight breeze that seemed to sigh through the branches. Almost a moan. A warning.
“We’re going back.”
“No.”
“There is something in here other than us, and I’m not taking a chance on this thing being stronger than Heaven’s Door.”
“I have a Stand too, you know.”
“Look at these trees.”
“I see the trees, Rohan.” Giorno rolled his eyes impatiently. They had been making good time through the overgrown woods and now they were stopped, losing precious seconds.
“This was a park before...before. Josuke and I ate lunch here our first afternoon in Florida. None of these trees were more than a couple of years old. Now they look like they’ve been here for thousands of years.”
“I see that too.” Giorno started walking again. “If you’re coming, come on. The pull is getting stronger but I have no idea how far we need to go to find the source.”
“You aren’t getting my point-”
“No, I can’t say I am.”
Rohan caught up with Giorno in several long strides and fell into step beside him. “You aren’t getting my point. The trees have developed thousands of years in a fraction of that time. Whatever is in here with us might have as well.”
“Gold Experience can take care of it if your Stand can’t.”
Rohan opened his mouth to say something cutting in reply, but decided not to. They didn’t need to fight, not here. That could wait until they were back in the grove.
There were no branches to whip in Rohan’s face like there had been when he’d gone hiking back in Japan; these trees were too old- or at least had grown too much- to have branches any lower than twenty feet above the ground. Rohan supposed he should be thankful for small mercies, considering what he and Giorno were currently dealing with on the forest floor.
Giorno had stopped walking again, the third time in the last ten minutes. Rohan was becoming used to this routine. He knelt, joining Giorno, who was crouched on the ground, and helped him untangle his feet from a particularly clingy vine.
When they started walking again, picking their way through knee-high grass, waist-high tree roots, and those treacherous green creepers. They’d been morning glories at some point, Rohan was fairly sure. There was still enough of a resemblance, and here or there a giant flower to act as a clue. Whatever they’d become now, they were bordering on sentient and seemed quite intent upon snaring Giorno.
Two minutes. Another vine (this one looked like it had once been honeysuckle).
Two minutes. Autumn ferns had wrapped themselves around Giorno’s legs and pulled him to the ground. He’d started sliding away before he snapped out of his frozen shock and turned them into ladybugs.
One minute. More ferns.
One minute. Honeysuckle again, winding up to his hip and twining around his hand, caressing it as though he were a long-lost lover.
One minute. Some devil’s walkingstick had Giorno in a tight embrace, the outgrown shrub shrouding him in leaves and thorny branches. It was turned into more ladybugs.
One minute. Devil’s walkingstick again. Giorno cursed; the vines and ferns had been annoying, but this was actually painful.
One minute. Ferns.
Thirty seconds. The devil’s walkingstick grabbed from one side, honeysuckle from the other, and both plants started to pull Giorno forward. Heaven’s Door couldn’t write in their minds to stop them because they had no minds to speak of. The plants became ladybugs.
A molasses-slow, high-pitched babbling came from far ahead in the woods. Rohan and Giorno shivered and looked at each other.
“Did you-”
“I heard it. We’re going back.”
“No. Damn, something has me ag-”
Rohan whirled around to look at where Giorno had been standing behind him a second before. There was nothing there.
“Giorno?”
Silence.
“GIORNO?”
That unnatural babbling again, followed by something that sounded like a slow, high, eerie laugh. A recording of a child’s laugh, slowed down until each individual component of the sound had stretched out. There was something wrong about it, and not just the fact that it was completely out of place in a deserted forest with no sign of animal life.
He looked around for any sign of Giorno, turned completely in a circle, looked skyward- This isn’t good. The sun’s going down. There is absolutely no way we can make it back to the grove before nightfall- looked down.
Blood.
Not much, but it was blood and it was probably Giorno’s and it was at least a clue. Something to follow.
Fifteen minutes later, the trail was still visible. Rohan hoped it would stay that way, then realized he was hoping for Giorno to be hurt badly enough that he bled all the way to...wherever he’d been taken.
Then he realized that he cared whether or not Giorno was hurt. He’d broken their unspoken rule not to worry about each other.
Oh well. Nothing to be done for it. He’d just better keep following the little red marks left here and there.
Something wrapped around his arm and he slapped at it.
Fingers.
Fingers?
Giorno emerged from between two house-thick tree trunks, looking much the worse for wear. His long blonde waves were tangled, filthy with blood and soil and plant matter. Any exposed skin bore many little cuts, he had a black eye, and he’d lost most of his shirt.
“What happened?”
“Well, about six meters behind me, there is now a plague of ladybugs and butterflies that used to be some very insistent brambles.”
“Everything here is trying to catch you. Why?”
“I don’t know. Let’s keep walking. We’re too far in to turn back now.”
“It’ll be night soon.”
“One of us will keep watch while the other sleeps, and we’ll switch off.”
“Fair enough.”
They trudged along silently for another hour, clouds of butterflies, ladybugs, and other nonstinging insects erupting from the plants beneath Giorno every few seconds. The greenery was getting more set upon catching him, and he was done trying to save the plants instead of turning them into bugs. As the sun went down, butterflies and ladybugs were replaced with moths and fireflies.
“This is as good a place to rest as any.” Giorno sat down on a bed of moss and leaned back against a massive tree.
Rohan sat down beside him. “I’ll take the first shift.”
“It’s fine. I can do it.”
“Don’t be stupid. You were attacked by...something. You’re cut up, you’ve been bleeding, you need to rest. Go to sleep.”
“Really. It’s fine. I’m fine.”
“Just sleep, damn it.”
The night passed uneventfully except for a few more attempts to capture Giorno by the surrounding plant life, which all ended in explosions of fireflies. As soon as the sun rose, Giorno made some rocks into peaches. As soon as he and Rohan had eaten breakfast and drank from a nearby stream, Giorno was ready to keep walking.
“Strong,” he muttered absently after they’d been on the move for a few hours. “It’s strong.”
“Hm?”
“This...this thing, this ‘gravity’. It’s been getting stronger and stronger as we’ve gone further into the forest. Something wants me to come to it. Don’t you feel it too?”
“No. No, I don’t feel anything.” Rohan shivered despite how surprisingly warm the day was.
There was that slow babbling laugh again. Louder. There was a shrieking note to it this time. Shrill. Triumphant.
“I think that thing is what- Damn.” Butterflies replaced some thick vine- probably a weed in its former incarnation- that had started pulling Giorno to the ground. Another came, and another, and another, as quickly as Gold Experience could turn them into insects.
“RUN!”
The two ran, the laugh ringing in their ears as they did, louder and louder and louder.
Apocalyptica
Pairings: Josuke/Rohan, Mista/Giorno, Rohan/Giorno
Rating: light R
Summary: After the end of the world has been brought about by Pucci, two Stand users immune to the madness caused by Stairway to Heaven try to make sense of what happened.
Disclaimer: I don't own these guys. They belong to Araki-sensei.
As darkness fell and the odd, streaked stars appeared to light the night, Giorno, who had not forgotten the date at any point since the acceleration began, tricky though that was, realized that it was Christmas. He found himself staring up at the sky and wondering if Christmas still existed in this new world.
There had been many years where he didn’t celebrate it. His earliest memory was of a brightly-decorated tree with many presents underneath, but then his mother had married that man and childhood had turned into pain alternating with neglect, all the days that should have been happy instead becoming sad reminders of what children in happy families- other families- enjoyed.
But then, over a decade later, he had come back to the apartment he and Mista shared to find a tree, decorated haphazardly but with an exuberance that made it charming anyway, boxes underneath that looked as though they’d been wrapped by a gradeschooler, and Mista standing back and admiring his handiwork. There had been Christmas for the two of them every year since.
As they tended to do, things came full circle, and now Christmas would again be a monument erected to the memories of happiness, a landmark at the crossroad between the old, good life and the new, lonely one.
Rohan gave a quiet snore and burrowed deeper into the blankets he was using for a makeshift bed.
Giorno wrapped himself tighter in his own soft cocoon and shivered, not against the chilly night but against the cold he felt at his very core, the icy sensation that came from loneliness.
He walked over to Rohan and curled up against his side. This wouldn’t break their promise. This wasn’t love. It was just the two of them together, keeping each other from going mad from isolation after everyone else had gone.
***
Spring came, and with it warmer temperatures and longer days. Canned food was getting more and more scarce, but the plants that had disappeared over the winter returned and kept Rohan and Giorno from starving.
The pair maintained their distant companionship, neither imposing upon the other, mostly keeping to themselves but sharing their resources. The sounds from the ever-encroaching forest continued, but they seemed far enough away to not cause any anxiety. Perhaps it really was just some animal that had survived the acceleration (although if that was the case, Rohan didn’t feel like tangling with such a formidable creature unless he had no other choice).
One day, Rohan returned from scavenging in the ruins to find that Giorno was nowhere in sight. He’d been sleeping in their makeshift shelter in the middle of what had once been a major street, brow furrowed, murmuring against some nightmare or another, his breath raspy and occasionally fast, but continuous.
Dust.
That was the first thing that came to Rohan’s mind, and he set about looking frantically around their little ‘home’ for any telltale piles that would mean the worst had occurred. How could that have- He looked relatively healthy.
But there was no dust, and there were no clothes that had recently held a warm and living man. He had to be elsewhere, but where was there to go? They’d nearly picked this area clean as far as food and necessities went.
Why am I even worried? He can fend for himself. And if he wants to leave, he can do that too. We’re not bound to each other.
Though I would miss him.
Shaking that thought and all of its implications from his head, Rohan took a deep breath and then shouted with all the lung-power he could muster, “GIORNO!”
More quietly, but still shouted, a reply: “Here! I’m over here!” Giorno sounded out-of-breath and Rohan wondered if he’d gotten into some kind of trouble.
Rohan squinted in the direction of the voice but still couldn’t see the familiar bright clothes that Giorno favored. He was probably obscured by rubble or trees. “Where is ‘here’?”
“...Here!”
“Yes, but-”
“Just keep walking in the direction of my voice until you find me!”
Eventually he came upon Giorno sitting cross-legged in the dirt, a tree at his back. A young tree. An orange tree, laden with fruit.
“What...?” Rohan was confused. Although it was nothing unusual for trees to sprout up in the middle of a street literally overnight, fruit trees didn’t suddenly appear if there wasn’t an orchard within a reasonable distance. And there were no orchards nearby.
Half-smiling enigmatically, Giorno picked an orange. Held it. Peeled it. Waited.
It didn’t blacken or rot.
“How- What-?” They’d given up trying to pick fruit months ago. At the start of the acceleration, it had been possible to pick unripe fruits and vegetables and have them be only slightly overripe by the time they got into one’s mouth, but for the past few months even that hadn’t failed. The tiniest, greenest barely-even-a-grapefruit-yet putrefied and turned to foul-smelling liquid as soon as it left the tree.
But this orange still looked edible.
“I don’t know why this didn’t occur to me sooner,” Giorno said, “but it occurred to me this morning, and that’s the important thing. So I’ve been experimenting.” He stood up, and Rohan saw his legs shake as though he’d pushed himself too far very recently.
“Are you all ri-”
“I’m fine.” Giorno forced himself to stand without wavering. “Now, watch.”
Touching a steel girder that was hanging down into the street, he closed his eyes for a second. Rohan saw Gold Experience lay his hand over Giorno’s.
The brown started under the fingers of the human and his Stand and spread up the beam, which was warping and twisting and growing branches-turning-into-leaves as it changed color. The leaves parted to reveal fruit, round and ripe and richly purple.
Giorno opened his eyes. He’d gone pale in the face, the shadows around his eyes becoming more pronounced, and Rohan wondered how weak Giorno had become that using his Stand was so taxing. He doubted he’d fare much better himself if he tried to use Heaven’s Door too heavy-handedly.
Letting out the short, soft cough that had been escaping his lips since the winter, Giorno steadied himself against the new tree.
Rohan looked at him in concern. That cough again. In no manga I’ve drawn or read has that been a good sign.
His thoughts were interrupted by the weight of something smooth and firm being placed into his hand. Giorno had given him one of the fruits and was looking at him expectantly.
“It’s a plum. It’s not poisonous or anything.”
“I know that.” He took a bite.
Fruit. Fresh fruit. Had it already been nearly a year since he ate this kind of thing for breakfast every morning, taking its existence for granted? Had it only been a year that he and Giorno had survived on canned food, and then mostly wild plants after the canned food had become scarce? Some days it felt like they’d been living this life forever.
He looked over and saw that Giorno had his own plum. His eyes were closed reverently and he took small, careful bites. It was better than the wild garlic and ostrich ferns and mockernut that they’d been living on these past few months. So what if it had been metal just minutes ago? Some property of the fruit being created, not grown, had kept it from spoiling as soon as it was picked. This was infinitely better than grazing like an animal, ripping plants out of the ground with one’s teeth and chewing them up before they could rot.
What was alive, was safe. What was dead, was no longer sacred. Those were the only two rules left in this new world.
***
The next morning, Rohan opened his eyes to find that the dusty former main street he and Giorno had bedded down on had become completely overgrown. This was not the first time it had happened, but he could have sworn that the two of them had fallen asleep far enough from the forest that the chances of nature reclaiming the area had been fairly small.
The second thing he noticed was that the trees were attached to the ruins that barely-stood along each sidewalk, those old soldiers still trying to stand at attention but stooping, sloping inexorably down toward their demise.
Against one of the trees farthest from where Rohan lay, Giorno rested, pale and thin and looking utterly drained.
“You... It’s... It’s a garden. You made us a garden.”
“I did.”
Getting quickly to his feet, Rohan shook the remaining sleep-fog from his brain and went to stand next to Giorno. He looked up at the tree above them and wondered if what he was seeing was a dream.
“Is that an orange?”
“Those are oranges,” Giorno corrected. His voice was quiet, tired, and his breathing made an odd rustling noise in his throat. “Those are oranges. There are two grapefruit trees to your left, peaches to your right, plums behind you. Further down the block are the vegetables.”
A soft, reverent whisper: “You made us a garden.”
Aqua eyes that had gone big with shock met blue eyes that were drooping with exhaustion.
And again, barely audible this time: “...You made us a garden.”
“Well, now you just have to hope that I don’t die before you, so I can keep doing this forever.”
A smile.
Giorno had smiled, curved his full lips at the corners and really smiled. It looked...not out of place, but odd, private, as if he’d peeked into someone’s bedroom while they weren’t home. He thought to himself: Perhaps only Guido Mista has seen this.
This wasn’t love. This wasn’t the pushing and pulling, passionate sometimes-bordering-on-hate, totally involved love that he’d had with Josuke, at least. But it was a certain kind of intimacy that he hadn’t known before. Josuke had been loud and open. He’d had few secrets; if there were any, he’d share them willingly if asked.
No, this was a privilege, this was Giorno allowing him in behind the emotionless mask he wore. This was a special tour of the museum after-hours and being allowed behind the glass and the velvet ropes that kept everyone else at a safe distance.
“Why are you just standing around? Look. There are oranges.” Giorno picked one off the tree behind him and lobbed it in Rohan’s direction.
He caught it, peeled it, waited for two seconds holding his breath, still not trusting it not to blacken and liquify instantly- and it didn’t.
The two of them were...not quite safe, not quite fine, but getting there.
***
Rohan had lost count of the days they’d lived in their new little grove after thirty or forty had passed, though he knew months had gone by. He’d toyed briefly with marking a tally on the fruit trees, but what was the point? Calendars had fallen out of use when the world ended. Now it came down to simply waking up and living another day, or not.
It was night now. The sky was clear and full of stars, the air was warm enough to be comfortable but not as warm as it had been some weeks ago. Autumn had to be here, had been here for weeks by the feel of it. There were certainly fewer hour of sunlight.
“Do you remember how I told you about the weird sensation I’ve been getting? Like someone calling out to me?”
The only sign Rohan gave that he’d heard was a soft, “Mmhm.” That had been an odd conversation indeed, odd and frightening to Rohan because it had resurrected his fears that Giorno was losing his mind. If it was such a strong and constant feeling, why had he only spoken up about it now? To be fair, he is very closed-off, Rohan thought.
“I feel it again,” Giorno said quietly.
He was lying on the ground next to Rohan, a companion in insomnia.
“Ignore it.”
The next few minutes were silent but for breathing.
Then: “I’m going into the forest tomorrow.”
“Then I’m going with you.”
“It’s too dangerous.”
“Then I’m sure as hell not letting you go in there.”
Giorno sighed. “Look, I need to find out what this weird ‘pull’ I’ve been feeling since before...before all this...is. It’s like- I can’t really describe it very well even if I try- it’s like a magnet at the very center of what I ‘am’ is being pulled towards a much, much bigger magnet.”
“...And the bigger magnet’s in the forest.”
“Yes.”
Rohan suppressed a desire to roll his eyes. “Well, I’ve heard weirder. Hell, I’ve been through weirder.”
More silence. Minutes could have passed, or maybe hours. There were no more birds to herald the coming of morning an hour before the sun.
Rohan was sure Giorno had fallen asleep- he’d been quiet for long enough, at least- but he heard the younger man’s soft voice and knew he was still awake:
“It’s like...’gravity’.”
***
The trees were old, immeasurably old, some of the trunks as wide as houses Rohan had seen back home in Morioh. They seemed conscious somehow, so ancient that they had developed souls. There was a slight breeze that seemed to sigh through the branches. Almost a moan. A warning.
“We’re going back.”
“No.”
“There is something in here other than us, and I’m not taking a chance on this thing being stronger than Heaven’s Door.”
“I have a Stand too, you know.”
“Look at these trees.”
“I see the trees, Rohan.” Giorno rolled his eyes impatiently. They had been making good time through the overgrown woods and now they were stopped, losing precious seconds.
“This was a park before...before. Josuke and I ate lunch here our first afternoon in Florida. None of these trees were more than a couple of years old. Now they look like they’ve been here for thousands of years.”
“I see that too.” Giorno started walking again. “If you’re coming, come on. The pull is getting stronger but I have no idea how far we need to go to find the source.”
“You aren’t getting my point-”
“No, I can’t say I am.”
Rohan caught up with Giorno in several long strides and fell into step beside him. “You aren’t getting my point. The trees have developed thousands of years in a fraction of that time. Whatever is in here with us might have as well.”
“Gold Experience can take care of it if your Stand can’t.”
Rohan opened his mouth to say something cutting in reply, but decided not to. They didn’t need to fight, not here. That could wait until they were back in the grove.
There were no branches to whip in Rohan’s face like there had been when he’d gone hiking back in Japan; these trees were too old- or at least had grown too much- to have branches any lower than twenty feet above the ground. Rohan supposed he should be thankful for small mercies, considering what he and Giorno were currently dealing with on the forest floor.
Giorno had stopped walking again, the third time in the last ten minutes. Rohan was becoming used to this routine. He knelt, joining Giorno, who was crouched on the ground, and helped him untangle his feet from a particularly clingy vine.
When they started walking again, picking their way through knee-high grass, waist-high tree roots, and those treacherous green creepers. They’d been morning glories at some point, Rohan was fairly sure. There was still enough of a resemblance, and here or there a giant flower to act as a clue. Whatever they’d become now, they were bordering on sentient and seemed quite intent upon snaring Giorno.
Two minutes. Another vine (this one looked like it had once been honeysuckle).
Two minutes. Autumn ferns had wrapped themselves around Giorno’s legs and pulled him to the ground. He’d started sliding away before he snapped out of his frozen shock and turned them into ladybugs.
One minute. More ferns.
One minute. Honeysuckle again, winding up to his hip and twining around his hand, caressing it as though he were a long-lost lover.
One minute. Some devil’s walkingstick had Giorno in a tight embrace, the outgrown shrub shrouding him in leaves and thorny branches. It was turned into more ladybugs.
One minute. Devil’s walkingstick again. Giorno cursed; the vines and ferns had been annoying, but this was actually painful.
One minute. Ferns.
Thirty seconds. The devil’s walkingstick grabbed from one side, honeysuckle from the other, and both plants started to pull Giorno forward. Heaven’s Door couldn’t write in their minds to stop them because they had no minds to speak of. The plants became ladybugs.
A molasses-slow, high-pitched babbling came from far ahead in the woods. Rohan and Giorno shivered and looked at each other.
“Did you-”
“I heard it. We’re going back.”
“No. Damn, something has me ag-”
Rohan whirled around to look at where Giorno had been standing behind him a second before. There was nothing there.
“Giorno?”
Silence.
“GIORNO?”
That unnatural babbling again, followed by something that sounded like a slow, high, eerie laugh. A recording of a child’s laugh, slowed down until each individual component of the sound had stretched out. There was something wrong about it, and not just the fact that it was completely out of place in a deserted forest with no sign of animal life.
He looked around for any sign of Giorno, turned completely in a circle, looked skyward- This isn’t good. The sun’s going down. There is absolutely no way we can make it back to the grove before nightfall- looked down.
Blood.
Not much, but it was blood and it was probably Giorno’s and it was at least a clue. Something to follow.
Fifteen minutes later, the trail was still visible. Rohan hoped it would stay that way, then realized he was hoping for Giorno to be hurt badly enough that he bled all the way to...wherever he’d been taken.
Then he realized that he cared whether or not Giorno was hurt. He’d broken their unspoken rule not to worry about each other.
Oh well. Nothing to be done for it. He’d just better keep following the little red marks left here and there.
Something wrapped around his arm and he slapped at it.
Fingers.
Fingers?
Giorno emerged from between two house-thick tree trunks, looking much the worse for wear. His long blonde waves were tangled, filthy with blood and soil and plant matter. Any exposed skin bore many little cuts, he had a black eye, and he’d lost most of his shirt.
“What happened?”
“Well, about six meters behind me, there is now a plague of ladybugs and butterflies that used to be some very insistent brambles.”
“Everything here is trying to catch you. Why?”
“I don’t know. Let’s keep walking. We’re too far in to turn back now.”
“It’ll be night soon.”
“One of us will keep watch while the other sleeps, and we’ll switch off.”
“Fair enough.”
They trudged along silently for another hour, clouds of butterflies, ladybugs, and other nonstinging insects erupting from the plants beneath Giorno every few seconds. The greenery was getting more set upon catching him, and he was done trying to save the plants instead of turning them into bugs. As the sun went down, butterflies and ladybugs were replaced with moths and fireflies.
“This is as good a place to rest as any.” Giorno sat down on a bed of moss and leaned back against a massive tree.
Rohan sat down beside him. “I’ll take the first shift.”
“It’s fine. I can do it.”
“Don’t be stupid. You were attacked by...something. You’re cut up, you’ve been bleeding, you need to rest. Go to sleep.”
“Really. It’s fine. I’m fine.”
“Just sleep, damn it.”
The night passed uneventfully except for a few more attempts to capture Giorno by the surrounding plant life, which all ended in explosions of fireflies. As soon as the sun rose, Giorno made some rocks into peaches. As soon as he and Rohan had eaten breakfast and drank from a nearby stream, Giorno was ready to keep walking.
“Strong,” he muttered absently after they’d been on the move for a few hours. “It’s strong.”
“Hm?”
“This...this thing, this ‘gravity’. It’s been getting stronger and stronger as we’ve gone further into the forest. Something wants me to come to it. Don’t you feel it too?”
“No. No, I don’t feel anything.” Rohan shivered despite how surprisingly warm the day was.
There was that slow babbling laugh again. Louder. There was a shrieking note to it this time. Shrill. Triumphant.
“I think that thing is what- Damn.” Butterflies replaced some thick vine- probably a weed in its former incarnation- that had started pulling Giorno to the ground. Another came, and another, and another, as quickly as Gold Experience could turn them into insects.
“RUN!”
The two ran, the laugh ringing in their ears as they did, louder and louder and louder.