Chapter Text
“Hey hey hey- Bruno, Bruno, Bruno! I got an A! On a math test! Ooh- Panna’s going to die .” Bruno looks up from the papers he’s looking at at the breakfast table in the kitchen. Giorno looks up from besides Narancia, smiling at him softly.
“Good job, Narancia” Bruno and Giorno say freakishly at the same time. Both of them let out a laugh while Narancia just slowly backs away.
“He needs that joy” Bruno sighs, yawning. “It’s Leone’s birthday. . .it would of been. He’d be twenty-three.” Thinking about Leone Abbacchio always makes Bruno sad. The grief just hit him after Giorno brought him “back to life” after the teen got Golden Experience Requiem. Narancia had just enough life in him for Giorno’s life to let it flourish, effectively bringing him back from the brink of death.
But Leone. . .his dearest Leone Abbacchio.
It was no secret but a speculation in his team about Bruno and Leone’s feelings towards each other. And after Giorno explained the corpse-state Bruno had been in for the latter part of their journey they were able to understand Bruno’s behavior after they docked at the port to deliver Trish.
The first thing they did was go to the beach, the beach where they left Leone’s body. It had already started getting eaten by birds, some of the skin on his face gone, the blood dried around him, his skin translucent and husky from the bloodloss. Dawn eyes held no pain.
Right there and there, Bruno had almost broke. But Mista, sweet Guido Mista who may not be the smartest of all of them but he’s definitely the most emotionally stable. He wraps his arms around Bruno, hugging him, their relationship of capo and soldato gone ever since they killed the Boss. What all of their status’s are going to be could wait.
“Wh-what should we do with his body?” Trish manages. Bruno’s tears are still leaking but he hasn’t cried in so long, there’s not a lot to shed. He pulls himself away from Mista. The idea of even going close to the husk that was once Leone Abbacchio, the man he fell in love with, the only man he’s ever loved that way.
“Call someone” Bruno says, voice and mind numb. “Bury him with honors. In something handsome. In the grave where our only righteous Dons were buried.” He pulls out his phone and steps to the side, but he can’t seem to make himself press the call button. His hand trembles on the small device.
He’s dead.
There’s no way to bring him back.
“Here.” Mista says and Bruno loves the boy even more now. He wordlessly gives it to Mista who presses the call button, shoves past the pleasantries, and just starts listing the location, specifications for the funeral. If there’s one thing Passione truly is, that’s efficient. You don’t need an in depth description of a lot of things because they aren’t picky like people who plan funerals for a living. They just. . .understand. Deaths happen everyday in Passione, be it the usual new soldato or a capo dying of old age. Or the Boss.
“Are you going to wish him a happy birthday?” Giorno asks, moving his papers into a single neat stack, gently bouncing them on the table a few times until they’re all straight. Bruno hesitates. He’s mostly moves on. Mista’s the most religious out of all of them but that’s reduced significantly since Abbacchio died. All of them have changed in their own way, even Fugo after they brought him back into the fold.
“Yes. I think so.” Bruno says. He likes to think that there is a heaven, an afterlife. That wherever Leone is, he can hear and see Bruno’s words. All of their words. That he can see how much Giorno has been accepted as a member of their famiglia, how much effort Narancia has put into school while being one of the Don’s of Passione, to tell him about the Frenchman they decided to adopt, a man who once seemed haunted by his past but after Giorno regrew his limbs he became an energetic and youthful man, an older version of Narancia but with knowledge of the world.
“I’ll come with you.” Giorno says, adjusting one of the ladybug brooches on his pink jacket. “I need to ask Fugo after this on what information he’s dug up on the Stone Mask. The Speedwagon Foundation is getting on my nerves.”
“The one with all of your relatives?” Bruno asks, getting up. He they begin their walk to the garage.
“Yes. Jotaro has been talking about bringing Josuke with him to Italy and having a sort of family meeting. He also knows Polnareff- they defeated Dio together.” Because, as Bruno has heard Giorno spat a thousand times before, Dio Brando was not his father. He didn’t hold any role in his life except give a little boy false hope in a better life. And then Jotaro mailed over some photographs of himself, of the pompadour boy Bruno would know as Josuke, Jotaro with a blond woman with the same eyes as him who could only be his mother, as well as older pictures which included a spiky haired man with a baby in his arms, a man in a fighter pilots uniform, and a multiple photographs and photographs of paintings of a kind looking man. Giorno’s father. The father who replaced Dio’s image in Giorno’s wallet.
“Hm. They’ll have to tell us the story, then” he says, grabbing his keys from the hook and walking into the garage.
“I think Narancia will get along splendidly with Josuke, from what I’ve heard” Giorno’s voice comes out soft. “This- this is my family, right here, Bruno. You, Narancia, Guido and Fugo and Trish and Polnareff and Abbacchio. It just happens to be that I have the chance to have a second family.” Bruno pats him on the head.
“That’s good” Bruno says, unlocking the car and opening the garage door. The sound of rain meets their ears. Good thing he keeps an umbrella in the car. “Ah. Rain. This will be a pleasant drive.”
When they arrive at the cemetery, the two of them can immediately tell that something is wrong. First of all, there’s always one guard at the only entrance to the cemetery of Don’s and those most important to Passione history, including the first Don, Consigliere, Underboss, and their three Capos. And that one guard? Bruno slows the car to a stop, looking to his side. There, on the ground, is what was once the guard except his throat is torn open and he’s as dry as a mummy, all of his blood gone .
“The Stone mask” Giorno gasps. “Jotaro sent me descriptions on their victims. There was a vampire or one of their zombies here.” The gate is wide open, a second sign that something is terribly wrong. Bruno doesn’t roll up the window, focused on observing his surroundings, wind blowing rain into the car and against his face.
There’s only two more people in the cemetery, and they’re both dead, the same death as the gateman. Bruno stops the car, stumbling out of the door, ignoring the umbrellas on the side of the door, because he can’t believe it . Giorno follows ensuite and they stop at the edge of the dug-up grave. Two meters below them is a coffin, a coffin lines his soft velvet, stray silver hairs, blood, and a few specks of dust. How do they know?
The coffin is open, in the coffin laying the husky bodie, both of them holding shovels in their skeletal hands, necks broken at awkward angles.
The tombstone is simply (in Bruno’s eyes), just like Bruno knew he’d want it to be like. His name, birthday, and an intricate design of wines and leafs. Bruno feels his veins go cold. He feels his heart freeze. He feels every nerve in his brain focus on transmitting a single name:
Leone .
“Bruno” Giorno says and there’s fear in his voice, a small sliver of it, as he takes a step back towards the car. “We need to go back to the manor.” He says, drenched in water. “We need to warn everyone. Bruno, I. . .I’m so sorry.” Because Leone was a monster now. Because Leone wasn’t the same Leone but some brainless creature instead, a mindless entity that stole the doy of the love of his life.
But Bruno Buccellati is a Don. He can overcome emotions like these. It’s been nearly a year since that day.
They sit back in the car, not even bothering with seatbelts. Bruno breaks all of the speed limits while Giorno calls Mista and warns him, telling him of what he just saw.
Bruno can at least keep the rest of his family alive.