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They live together in a house in the suburbs of Naples. It's a good sized home with two gates and a small courtyard that they always have breakfast in. It used to be yellow, but a few years ago they painted it blue and white, like Sticky Fingers. A kitchen and a bedroom and a spare room that Trish made into a closet for herself, and a bathroom with a door that doesn't lock. They park a car by the courtyard, and Bruno keeps a few small plants out there, to green the place up.
Fifteen minutes to the beach where she spreads out on a towel and soaks in the sun. Ten to the school, though hasn’t gone there since she graduated. Five to the restaurant, which is as good as Bruno promised it would be. They get their groceries from the market and their wine comes every two months with Giorno when he visits with Mista and Polnareff. They drink half of it on the nights the boys are here, and Giorno and Mista sleep in the spare bed in Trish's closet. Trish always sleeps with Bruno, like she has for the past two years. Polnareff sleeps in a box under the table, so Coco Jumbo can't wander off in the night as he sometimes does.
It's a good life. She's safe and loved. Sometimes, she wakes up and forgets that this isn't her first home, and that her mom isn't in the kitchen making bread in the mornings. The moment she remembers the way things are now and the things lost along the way always hurts. But that hurt doesn't last long. Trish picks herself up and does her make up and goes out to see Bruno.
The neighbours think they're a father and a daughter. Trish lets them. Bruno clearly feels uncomfortable every time he's reminded of it, his eyes always going to his hands to stare at the backs of them. Trish has gotten very good at taking his arm and smiling just right, telling them that she loves her papa. Everyone thinks it's sweet. Trish isn't even lying. Bruno isn't her father, but he's everything important to her. Well, to be honest, Bruno is technically her father, but that's the kind of story that's impossible to tell to anyone else. At least it makes their lives easier.
They eat pastries in the mornings and sit in the courtyard in their well-worn chairs. Trish nibbles at her breakfast. She's watching her waistline. Bruno always forgets to eat as much as he should and Trish has to nudge him into taking more. Things have changed. He needs more food for fuel, more energy to keep his bigger frame moving. She can tell when he hasn't been eating, because the colour goes out of his face. It's the same with her. When Trish feels badly, it's written all over her body. Bruno can’t hide his feelings any more than she could. She makes him eat half of her food, not giving up until he takes it. Trish likes to watch him while he eats. He's very careful with his bites, trying not to shower himself in crumbs.
Bruno isn't in Passione anymore, not officially anyway, but he still does what he always did before. Not a day goes by that someone doesn't stop by their home to talk to him. He always takes coffee in the courtyard. Trish likes to watch from inside the house, peering at him through the window as he listens so seriously to someone's concerns. Whatever the problem, he takes care of it. People walk the streets safely and nobody gets robbed, and Bruno is welcome in every restaurant he walks into. Trish is always given little free things when she goes shopping - lipsticks casually slipped into her bag, discounts taken off her dresses and hosiery, the right kind of mineral water always set away where it can't sell out and is only brought out when she walks in. Nobody ever says it, but they always ask her how her dad's doing.
It's kind of funny. There are times when she has to fight not to laugh as someone says something well-meaning but so terribly, inappropriately wrong. The lady in the corner store who stocks her favorite hosiery always says, "It's a good thing you look like him and not your mother. He'd miss her too much if you did." She always says it so kindly and Trish has to just nod and smile slightly, bottling up the laugh until she's partway down the street.
"Aren't you lucky you got your father's hair?" The man who runs the fruit cart says once, and she nearly chokes on the grapes in her mouth while Bruno dips his head down and looks so very serious. Later, when they get home, she kisses him again and again in the kitchen, leaving the groceries to sit on the counter as she stretches up to put her arms around his shoulders. His bob is growing out a little and his hair is long enough to touch her arms when she holds him.
"Aren't I lucky?" She says, and Bruno just puts an arm around her waist, sighing softly into her shoulder. It's a joke, but it's not. She's very lucky. They're all very lucky.
Bruno's real body lies in a grave a half an hour away, beside Narancia and Abbacchio. The latter's grave is empty, since they had to leave Abbacchio on that beach so long ago. Narancia's holds a body and so does Bruno's, and they were there the day they were buried. Trish had held onto Bruno's new hand, dwarfed by the size of it. Bruno had not been a short man, but Diavolo had been huge, and he towered over everyone at the grave site. She remembers looking down at their clasped hands, noting the slight difference in shades.
That afternoon, after the funeral was done, Bruno had sat in the bathroom with a pair of scissors and hacked off Diavolo's long locks, chunks of pink hair on the floor and in the sink. When he stepped out, she felt some tension she hadn't even known was there fade from her body. He looked like Bruno should. Maybe his body was bigger and maybe his face was different, but when she met his eyes, she could see Bruno looking back at her from them.
That's when she knew for certain that everything would be fine.
The first few years they lived together, she slept in the room that would one day become her closet and Bruno slept in the next bedroom over. She went to the school that was ten minutes away and finished high school. Bruno wanted so badly for her to be ordinary and normal. He always seemed so happy when she called to say she would be home late.
No matter how late she came home, he would be waiting for her. Bruno would sit there in the courtyard, reading a magazine and sipping his coffee. Trish sometimes liked to stand behind the gate and watch him for a minute or two. It should have been strange and unnerving to see Diavolo's body, but the honest truth was that she was already forgetting what Bruno had looked like before. He had dark hair in a bob, and he wore a white suit, and he had a soft smile. Now he has pink hair in a bob, and he wears a white suit, and he has a soft smile.
This was around the time when she realized that her crush wasn't going anywhere.
In her defense, she tried to shake it. Trish did her best to live with Bruno like a father and a daughter would, pushing aside the way her heart fluttered when he would reach out to hold her hand. When she lay in bed at night, she would press her ear to the wall and hope she could hear him breathing, and wonder if maybe he was doing more. If she knocked on the wall, would he put a zipper on it and open it wide? Would he hold her hand through the gap, and could the two of them sleep like that, their fingers entwined and their hearts beating in perfect time? She would like to pretend that the desire for it was platonic, but it wasn't.
She knew Bruno for four days before he passed from his body into this one. Trish never knew Diavolo, not for one second. There was just that last, desperate battle, and the ugly creeping sensation of the spirit that had piggybacked onto her, and the hateful menace she had felt from him in the moments when he grasped control of the body, forcing her to chase down the arrow. Then he had been destroyed, and he was gone, and there was just Bruno in a face that was both unfamiliar and familiar all at once.
Diavolo was never her father, not in the ways that would make a crush stall out and fade away. They share the same hair colour, and sometimes when Bruno lifts his head a little, she can see the outline of her own features. But they share nothing else. It's Bruno in the body and Bruno's mannerisms, the casual way he crosses his legs and the way he tips his head so his hair brushes along the side of his neck. It's Bruno when he speaks, kind but stern, and it's Bruno when he walks beside her. Sometimes, he walks too fast, still used to a body that had shorter legs. Sometimes, he bumps his head against doorways or the undersides of cupboards, and the look on his face is always the same surprise before his lips come flat and he realizes what he's done.
Trish had loved him for a long time, but she tried hard to ignore it. She dated a few boys from high school - nice boys, funny boys, fashionable boys. In another world, maybe-
No. That's not true. There's no world where they would have been suitable. They were nice boys, but she didn't just want someone who was nice. Trish wanted someone who was thoughtful and determined. She wanted someone stable. Trish wanted someone who would look out for more than himself.
Every Saturday morning, she and Bruno make their way down to the beach. He wears a light shirt and pants, and his low loafers, and carries a bag with him. She wears her bikini and a light wrap, and a bag with everything they need. They sit on a blanket and she suns herself, and Bruno watches the waves come in over the sand, and the waves of people come over the beach. And he watches her. His eyes slide over her body now and then. Trish only sees because she wears sunglasses that hide her line of sight, so he can't see when she's watching him watching her. They drink sodas and eat a light lunch, and Trish has Bruno rub sunscreen on her. His hands are always so careful in public. Bruno would never want to imply anything untoward, and Trish never pushes him in front of an audience. She might play sometimes with double entendres, but she would never go too far.
This is Bruno's home. She won't take it from him.
The first year, he split his time between the house and work. In some ways, this was more convenient. Though no one knew what Diavolo looked like, wearing his face made it easier to change things. Giorno would have been too young, and there would have been questions, ugly fights and violent confrontations. Bruno had easily dealt with the drug team and shifted them to manufacturing counterfeits instead, avoiding what might have been an ugly, brutal battle otherwise. From there, Giorno was handed the reins and Bruno had served as the figurehead and face until he could gracefully withdraw.
She still remembers coming home from school and finding him in the courtyard. His eyes had been closed and his hair was blowing in the breeze, and there was such a look of peace on his face... Trish had never seen him look so young before. Bruno wore the weight of the world on his shoulders. For the first time since she could remember, he looked truly happy. The sight had been so strange that she had retreated quietly from the gate and spent another hour down by the shops before she came back and intruded on his world.
It's funny now. Even then, she saw herself as an invader on his peace, but that's not true. Trish knows the truth now. She was his peace. Bruno had spent so long fighting that he needed a reason to leave it behind. She had been the one excuse necessary to turn his back on Passione and build a quiet life. He keeps himself busy of course, because someone like Bruno would always look out for any community he called his home. But now, he deals with the problems in quiet ways rather than the loud and violent ways of his past.
Bruno thinks she needed him to save her. Trish never did, even as lonely and scared as she was when they first met. She knows herself and there's an iron core there, a pillar that was always within herself, from the moment of her birth. Spice Girl is proof of that. Trish will be fine, no matter what life brings her. But Bruno needs a reason, and she's happy to be that person for him. It feels good to be loved like this, and to live so peacefully again.
Once, she dreamed about being famous. A pop star, maybe. Her voice is good and she's cute, and she has a few songs written that she knows are catchy. She could easily make that her career. Giorno would help her in a heartbeat. Some part of him already knows, because he gave her an electric keyboard out of the blue a few years ago. All she has to do is ask, and he could make that happen for her. But the more she thought about it as something real, instead of a dream, the more she worried about Bruno. Leaving him here alone in this quiet house, in this neighbourhood...
It wouldn't take long for him to go back to Passione, would it? He would need something to do, someone to care for, and he would slowly drift back to them. Giorno is a good friend of hers and she adores Mista, but they're both broken in their own ways. All gangsters are ruthless, though Giorno is more calculated while Mista relies entirely on fate to take care of him, and they both thrive under pressure. With each passing year, Giorno and Mista settle ever more firmly into their roles, happy and content to live that bloodthirsty life. They would take Bruno back in a heartbeat - even though it's bad for him, even though it would kill him in the end. It's not that they're malicious or cruel - it's just that they don't see how it was eating Bruno alive to live like that.
One day, she'll leave this place, bid goodbye to Naples’ suburbs and go. Maybe she'll leave Italy entirely and find out if there's anywhere else in Europe where she feels more at home. Maybe she can talk Bruno into coming with her, though she's not sure if he can ever make himself leave these people behind. For now, she'll stay here with Bruno by the sea, eating well and sleeping well, idly fiddling away her youth. She can write those songs and keep them for later.
And maybe she's being a little unfair when she thinks that Giorno and Mista wouldn't leave Bruno alone. On some level, they see it. She knows they do. They come out here and they spend a few days every few months, and all five of them drink and chat. They never ask Bruno to come back, even after Bruno offers to help in any way he can. Maybe Giorno understands even better than she likes to admit. After all, he's the one who bought Bruno the little fishing boat out in the marina.
Bruno likes to work on it on Sundays and Thursdays. Sometimes she goes with him and sometimes she might even lend a hand. Most of the time, she likes to watch him fix the boat. There's a little shop by the marina where they get cold sodas and sandwiches, and Trish sits under a beach umbrella when she's done her tanning for the day, watching Bruno as he repairs things. When he takes his shirt off, she likes to admire his body from behind her glasses. Sometimes, she still feels a soft pang of guilt for lusting for him when she knows she should feel repulsed.
The first year of her crush, she always held that in her mind. That's your father's body, she would think to herself. That's the man who fucked your mother. That's the man who gave you half of his DNA, who gave you pink hair and a stand. That's the man who tried to murder you - that's the thought she would hold firmest to, that he had tried and nearly succeeded. Nothing ever lasted long. It would fade the moment she saw Bruno in the courtyard, or standing on the boat with his shirt off, or sitting by her on the beach, and she felt her heart skip a beat. He was so handsome in that body.
When she had to face the truth of her feelings and her desires, Trish had sat down in her room and made a list of everything - the upsides, the downsides, everything she wanted, what Bruno might want, how it could go badly, how it might go well. At the end, she made two decisions. First, she would wait until she was eighteen before she made any move, so Bruno wouldn't be able to bring up her age as a reason why they couldn't. There were things he would say - and the fact that he was in what was technically her father's body would certainly be one of them - but at least she could prevent them from fighting about her age.
Second, she would test the waters to make sure he had even noticed her. If his feelings were purely platonic, or worse, purely filial, then she would let this go. If she had to move out, she would, and she would put space between them until her desires had cooled enough to give Bruno what he might want back. She loved him. Even more than she wanted Bruno, she loved him. If she was his hope, then he was the one person in this world that she knew placed no conditions or demands on her existence. He had held her hand in the elevator while her world fell apart. He had chased after her, betrayed his boss, thrown away his whole life for a girl he'd known for three days.
How couldn't she love him? How couldn't she want to give him happiness, no matter what that was for Bruno?
That spring, she had looked for signs. Trish was pretty and personable, so she was familiar with the soft way the boys and girls with crushes looked at her when they thought she couldn't see their faces. She looked in mirrors, in spoons, in the toaster's reflection and the ripples of the water when they worked on the boat. Mostly, she looked through Spice Girl, using her soft green eyes to watch Bruno when he thought he was unobserved.
There was something there, something tender in Bruno's eyes when he looked her way. Something soft and delicate and so fragile that the wrong word at the wrong time might shatter it. Trish listened to the usual jokes about how alike they looked, and how she took after her father, and she had watched from afar. She saw the pain that sometimes flashed through his eyes - or guilt, maybe.
They hadn't talked much about the Colosseum. Jean Pierre had described what he saw afterwards - two souls fighting for a single body, though by his account, Diavolo had looked like his stand. Only Bruno had looked like a person. Trish thinks about that - and about the soul left in Bruno's dying body, the one who had looked like Trish to his fading eyes. In another place and time, maybe Bruno would have lost. Would any of them have survived had Diavolo gotten his body back and had a chance to stick his own stand with the arrow? She didn't like lingering on it. Torturing yourself over an answer you can't ever know is pointless. You might as well spend that time doing anything else, even if it's just sunning yourself on the beach.
What mattered was this: they won, Bruno lived, and Trish would never be at the mercy of her bloodline ever again.
All those months, she watched and waited and looked for signs. There was no single moment when she knew for certain how he felt, just the little things that all added up. It was the way his gaze would flicker to her throat, her chest, her mouth, and then look away with creeping guilt in his eyes. It was those quiet nights spent together around the table, and Bruno offering a hand to hold whenever he thought she looked tired. It was the Sundays on the boat, when he always made sure to have sparkling water for her. It was the melancholy way he looked when someone reminded him of the body he was in, and its relation to Trish. Bruno loved her too. He was just afraid of crossing that gap. He probably wanted to give her a happy, normal life.
He had. He still could.
Trish was eighteen and two months the day she knocked on the wall between their rooms, her knuckles rapping against the thin plaster. When the zipper opened, just like she always knew it would, she reached through to take his hand, and to lace their fingers together. Bruno's face could just barely be seen in that dark room as she lifted their hands to her face, and she kissed his knuckles with her lips. His eyes had been wide and white, his face covered in shadows so thick that she could barely see it.
"I love you," she told him, and her mouth kissed his hand again. The noise Bruno made was barely a sound at all, something that might have been a gasp if he breathed in a little deeper. She could see him, and he could see her, and nothing separated them at that moment.
"Trish..." Bruno spoke and fell silent. He was struggling for words, drowning in his own mind in an avalanche of thoughts.
"I know," she assured him, and when he couldn't come to her, she came to him. The zipper widened and his arm came up to catch her as Trish crawled into Bruno's arms and his bed, knowing she would never sleep in her own again.
They live together in a house in the suburbs of Naples. When they moved in, it was yellow, but they repainted it blue and white a few years ago. It has a kitchen and a bedroom, and a spare room that doubles as her closet. The bathroom door doesn't lock, but they leave it open most days. The car sits in the courtyard and they walk most places. Boating on Sundays, beach on Saturdays, dinner out at the restaurants nearby. Twice a month, Trish cuts Bruno's hair to keep it short, usually just before Giorno, Mista and Polnareff visit and bring wine with them.
They drink out in the courtyard until it's late, Trish sitting in Bruno's lap most times once the sun sets. His chest is broad and warm and his arm easily sits around her waist, holding her close. They talk about many things, but never Passione's current business. And when the night fully sets and they're all too drunk to carry on, Giorno and Mista retire to the guest room, taking Polnareff with them to put in his box.
Trish and Bruno go to bed, and with wine on his lips, he likes to kiss her again and again, sweet in the way only Bruno can be. "Are you happy?" he always asks when he's drunk, "Are you really happy?"
The words always come easy to her, like the breeze drifting over the waters and bringing the sea's scent to her each morning. "Yes. Ecstatically."
Maybe one day they won't live in a house in Naples. But for now, it's a good life. She's safe and loved, and what else could a person need?