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Finding Diavolo staying up until the early hours working wasn’t a surprise, but today it was the last thing he wanted. For once he had bothered spending extra on a decent hotel, something that seemed fitting for a trip to Milan, and his body had the nerve to be fighting against him when all be wanted to do was sleep.
He shoved aside the jumble of papers that littered the bed; they fell to the floor unceremoniously, leaving a mess that he didn't care to clean up tonight. He stretched his legs out to lay on the bed and silently revelled in the satisfaction he felt as more papers fell off. When he had no other outlet for his frustration, the little things would do.
Something he had never felt before was pulling at him. A connection of sorts, and he didn't know what it was or why it was there. If there was anything he hated in the world, it was not understanding something that affected him. His life was completely planned, nothing escaped his gaze and everything was double checked, so there was no reason for this foreign calling.
“Trish!” A voice yelled. Despite her raised tone, there was softness and concern in her words. Diavolo’s eyes snapped open. Moments away from sleep, and it had been stolen from him. But then, the connection he felt suddenly deepened.
It didn't even feel like he was commanding his legs as he jumped up from his bed. His feet trampled over the papers that lay strewn across the floor; one stuck to his foot, and he briefly stopped to peel it off. He needed to shower at some point. The brief distraction left his mind and he rushed across the room to the door to peer through the spyhole. He couldn't see who the voices belonged to, but they were clearer.
“What were you thinking? It's too late to be running around the corridors.”
“Sorry,” the girl didn't sound very apologetic, frustrated if anything else, and she seemed to be trying to sound meek in order to avoid the woman’s ire. She paused for a moment before speaking again, “I thought there was something here…”
“There probably is. The poor person who must have been woken up by you barging down the hallway,” the woman tutted. Two pairs of slippers started to shuffle along the wooden floor. Through the spyhole he saw the woman first. She was short, with blonde hair cut at her shoulders that framed a face that had been weathered by years in the sun. The girl she had called Trish trudged slowly behind her, then came to a dead stop outside the door while her guardian obliviously continued onwards.
Her green eyes seemed to stare directly at Diavolo, like she could see through the spyhole and, by extension, see him. Her hair was pink, like his, and had been cut short, yet long enough to be kept in an elaborate style that must have been maddening to maintain.
The connection tugging at him started to burn, his heart beat faster without reason, something about this girl was causing a bond.
But that was impossible. Her mother looked nothing like Donatella, and surely the woman would have made an effort to contact him if she had a child. Perhaps she was a stand user? The thought ran through his mind and send possible, he had certainly heard that users were drawn to each other by fate. But even if this teenager had a stand, she couldn't have been stupid enough to challenge him. Not that she could know who he was.
In all the time he had been thinking, Trish had continued to stare at the door in puzzlement. Her hand slowly reached for the metal door handle, and Diavolo found himself following her movements without thinking. The handle moved downwards and clicked to move, but the lock prevented it from continuing further. At the same time, the berating woman realised that Trish hadn't been following her and stormed over.
“What do you think you're doing?” the bangles that decorated her wrist clicked together as her hand yanked Trish's hand away from the handle, “What's gotten into you?”
Trish blinked several times and her hand nervously tucked a strand of her hair behind her ear.
“We’re going back to the room. No doubt we'll get complaints for waking people up.”
The woman pulled Trish away by the wrist and disappeared from view. The oppressive feeling of that connection still remained, but Diavolo felt as if enough of his curiosity had been satiated to finally get to sleep. He switched the light off as he crossed the gap between the door and his bed. He passed out almost as soon as his head hit the pillow.
---
The emotion that plagued Trish throughout her evening at the hotel had disappeared by the morning. She awoke without even the memory of the previous night happening until her friend’s mother reminded her of how she had to chase Trish down three flights of stairs and a corridor because she had decided to have a midnight escapade. It felt strange that the pulling had suddenly disappeared in the morning.
It was all that weighed on her mind, but its disappearance made her feel terrible for having ran off for nothing but a bout of nausea. She was meant to be having a weekend away in Milan, and of course she felt sorry for causing such a hassle. The dozens of guests that bustled around the breakfast restaurant didn't have this to worry about. Was she going mad?
“Trish, could you get me some juice?” someone asked. Trish suddenly snapped out of her thoughts and looked up to see her friend leaning against the table. She pushed the empty glass towards Trish’s own and smiled, “I just need to go to the toilet."
The girl ran off. Trish collected both of their glasses and walked over to a table full of endless flavours. A disinterested employee stood to the side, not acknowledging Trish as his eyes stared ahead. Trish moved to place her glass underneath one of the taps, before another's hand suddenly crashed his glass into hers.
“Watch it!”
Trish followed the glass, her eyes scanning along the long, white sleeved shirt that covered the arms of the boy who yelled at her. His purple hair was in desperate need of brushing, she thought. His golden eyes switched from their angry expression to a softer one once their eyes met.
“I didn't see you,” Trish mumbled. She withdrew her glass, but the boy continued to look at her with curiosity. A single, endless inquisitive stare in her direction. Trish was a second away from telling him to get lost when he began to make a bizarre imitation of a telephone and hurried away with the glass pressed against his ear.
The boy disappeared from sight into the crowd that surrounded the continental breakfast stand and Trish continued with her job. The employee stood by the counter seemed unfazed by the brief confrontation, as if this was something that happened regularly.
Each hand gripped a glass that was filled with slightly too much juice. Trish struggled to keep the tops steady while she maneuvered around the crowds of people that filled the room. On the other end of the room she could see her friend waiting patiently and occasionally glancing to see where Trish was.
Suddenly she felt the same connection from the night before. She gasped and lurched forward in surprise; her hands released the glasses from the jolt that ran through her body and they smashed on the floor. The room fell silent, and everyone stared at the smashed glasses. Except the boy from the counter. He had suddenly appeared standing by a table several metres away from Trish and watched her with a curious expression. Somehow he looked older and more mature than he had mere moments ago.
The two looked at each other for a moment that passed like an eternity, both trying to figure out why they seemed to be drawn to each other. Trish wanted to walk towards him and ask him what was going on, but something told her that it would be unwise to do so. In their brief interaction he had certainly given her the impression that he was a lunatic.
Trish ignored him, and stepped over the shards scattered across the floor to return to her table.
“Are you alright?” her friend asked. Trish nodded with disinterest and turned to look for the boy again, but the other girl gripped her shoulder and forced her to look back at her, “Do you want to go home? I’m sorry that Donatella couldn’t come, but you don’t need a parent here, you know.”
Parent .
The word echoed around Trish’s head. She thought about it, and it seemed right. But the boy looked only a few years older than she was, it was impossible for him to be her father. Her mother had always said that Trish was a spitting image of her father, who she claimed was tall, with pink hair that he wore longer than was fashionable, and angular features that surrounded his green eyes.
The boy didn't match any of that description. There was a chance he may have been a distant relative. She had never met any of her mother's family after they disowned her for her premarital child, and she certainly hadn’t knowingly met any of her father's family.
Her friend’s hand waved rapidly in front of her face.
“Trish! Are you even listening?”
Trish sighed. The only thing she wanted to do at that very moment was vomit, and maybe cry too. Without a single utterance, the girl stood up and took her room key from the table. Her friend stared in shock as Trish pushed past two women that blocked the stairs to the corridor and stormed through the space leading to the elevators.
She didn't know what was going on. All that she knew was the deafening pounding filling her head that stole all of her concentration. The pounding in her head resonated with her heart, which was pulling towards something. Or someone .
She sensed the boy standing next to her before she saw him. He was scaring her, and she didn't want to be stuck in an enclosed elevator with him. But the connection pulling at her made her head feel like it was about to explode, and she wanted him to explain what was happening.
The elevator opened its doors and the two stepped inside. In the corner of her eye, Trish could see the boy indiscreetly looking at her through the mirror mounted onto the back wall.
“I can see you looking at me,” Trish folded her arms, “What do you want?”
“Nothing,” he moved only to switch from looking at her discreetly in the mirror to turning and looking directly at her. His voice sounded significantly deeper than it had at the breakfast counter, but Trish hadn’t noticed the inconsequential difference in amongst the endless throbbing.
“What’s going on? Who are you?!” Trish demanded. She attempted to straighten her back and make herself less small; he was easily half a foot taller than her, and she hated how he looked down at her.
The man turned his nose up, “I don’t know what you mean.”
“Then why won’t you leave me alone? I don’t know how to describe it, but being near you is making my head feel like it’s about to explode!”
The acknowledgement of this bond was the answer that Diavolo sought from her. He returned to looking down on her, but Trish felt relieved that he wasn’t going to taunt her. Talking to a stranger already scared her enough.
“Any ideas why?”
The old elevator ascended at an unbearably slow speed and the creaks of its wires echoed around the shaft and into the box. Trish wished that it would go faster so she could leave as quickly as possible. Still, she had chosen to engage with this boy, and he didn’t seem the type to leave her alone.
“No.”
“I think I have one,” he leant against the wooden handrails that lined the metal walls of the elevator. Oppressive silence pressed down on both of them in the eternity of a moment that elapsed.
Suddenly, Trish found herself facing the doors of the elevators with her fingers curled in an attempt to pry open the gaps. The girl gave pause; she couldn’t remember moving to face the doors. The thump of her heartbeat pounded in her ears as she turned around, only to see the boy standing where he had been, unfazed, as if nothing had happened.
But he wasn’t the boy anymore. Doppio could never control King Crimson fully. Diavolo knew why this girl shared a bond with him. He had never considered having a child, because a legacy did not matter to him. A child was a threat, something that wasn't planned in a life where he controlled everything. Yet when he looked at the girl, he felt something he had never experienced before. He looked at this girl, and saw himself.
Without thinking, Diavolo reached his arms across the elevator and took one of her hands in his own. Trish only jolted at the coldness of his palms, not at the sudden action. She was unfazed. She knew, too.
The elevator stuttered to a halt and a chime signified that one of them had reached their stop. Trish’s heart ached, it felt as if her heart was going to sink to her stomach. She didn’t want him to leave.
Diavolo didn’t want to leave. He hadn’t yet made his mind up over how to deal with Trish, was she a problem, a threat? He didn’t know. But she was his daughter, and something bizarre made him feel parental love for a girl that he had no idea existed until today.
With great reluctance he let go of her hands. Fate would dictate that they would one day meet again, he was certain.
As the man walked away, Trish tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. The action had always been her way of hiding her emotions from others. In the few times she had dwelled on it, she had always imagined screaming and yelling at her father for abandoning her, but her imagination couldn’t have been further from the truth. She wanted some reassurance from him.
Her father turned to face Trish as he stepped out of the elevator and into the lobby. His foot was wedged between the threshold between the elevator and the floor. For a moment, Trish wondered if he was going to enter the elevator again, but he never did. Silently, he turned and walked away, only glancing over his shoulder once to watch the doors close, and his daughter disappear.