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Time resets.
Diavolo awoke to a pitcher of freezing water thrown in his face.
He spluttered and coughed out what got in his throat and squeezed his eyes shut. He heard what sounded like someone walking away.
After a moment, he attempted to scan his surroundings.
He realized he had been bound to a metal chair in a seemingly empty room lit only by a single light bulb above. His captor was nowhere to be seen.
Diavolo dropped his head low, he knew it was only a matter of time before his next death came, and he could only hope whatever this particular cycle had in store would be a quick one.
He wasn't sure what number this death would be, after the first hundred he had stopped keeping track.
The click of someone's footsteps echoed behind him.
"You should be awake by now".
That voice. He knew that voice.
"Trish..." He manages to croak out.
Diavolo lifted his head as he heard Trish move to stand in front of him.
"Trish, my daughter, please I-"
She cut him off with a hard slap to the face, knocking his head against the back of the chair.
"Don't you dare call me that" she hissed, "I ceased being your daughter the moment you decided to take my life".
Tears pricked the corners of his eyes. The pain was minimal, but Trish's words hurt more than being stabbed. In life Diavolo had never given any thought to murdering her. In his mind she was just another threat to his identity that needed to be snuffed out.
But through the countless deaths and endless pain, and the anger he felt towards Giorno started to dissipate, in its place he began to feel... remorse.
He began to wish he could have done it differently, wish he hadn't been so foolish as to want to kill his daughter for the sake of his own anonymity. He had known she didn't know anything about the organization, and he wished he could have had her sent away instead, given a new name and identity with no association to him.
Or even more, he sometimes wished he could have started everything over, he could have raised her and kept her safe with him. He might not have ever gotten involved with the mafia had he done that, and at this point that was all he wished for.
But he didn't, and now this was his punishment for his mistakes.
Trish turned and picked something up from a table. Diavolo hadn't noticed it's presence before. Trish seemed to be inspecting a large pair of scissors.
Diavolo knew what was coming now, and he accepted whatever torture his daughter had in store for him.
"Are you thinking I'm going to use these on you in some way?" Trish said, twirled the scissors around her finger. "I would, but I don't think that would have the effect I want."
Diavolo looked at her, confused. "W-what do you mean?"
Trish placed one blade under his chin, lifting it up. Her face was stone cold, but her eyes seemed filled with a deep sorrow. She spoke in a soft voice.
"When a child does something against their parents wishes, the parents can easily spank or beat their child as a 'lesson', but that will only make the child fear them. So what will truly show the child the consequences of their actions?"
Trish then placed the scissors back on the table and backed up to the wall a few paces away. She flipped a switch, illuminating the room in a cold, sterile light.
Diavolo squinted as his eyes adjusted to the light, and when he could see, his eyes widened in shock.
The room they were in was quite large, the ceiling probably reaching 30 feet. But to Diavolo's surprise, every inch of every surface of the room was completely covered in photographs.
The photos were crammed and overlapping, the corners of the room were littered with piles of photos, there were thousands. He didn't recognize a great deal of them, but there were a few faces he could place, Risotto Nero, Leone Abbacchio, Narancia Ghirga. Then the realization hit him.
Each and every person in the photos was someone he had murdered, directly or indirectly, as a result of Passione.
Had he seen this in life, he would have laughed at how many people tried and failed to get in his way, but things change when you've experienced death hundreds, or even thousands of times.
Diavolo couldn't speak, he could only stare in horror. Trish took a step forward.
"Another way of punishing a child is showing them the effect their wrongdoings had on others. When a person disconnects their crime from reality, it feels less wrong. But if they see...no, hear the people they hurt..."
A button appeared in the floor next to her.
She raised the toe of her boot, and pressed it.
Suddenly, as if there were massive speakers surrounding the room, loud wails erupted from the walls. It was as if each photo was crying out to him.
Diavolo screamed in pain as he writhed in his chair desperately trying to cover his ears, but the bindings were too strong.
"Stop! Please make it stop! I'm- I'm so sorry...!" He cried.
Trish watched with the same cold expression. Her voice somehow still reaching his ears clearly over the raucus.
"You can never apologize to the people you killed, or their families and friends. For each life you ended, the lives of a dozen others were forever changed".
Diavolo felt like his ears were bleeding, but he could do nothing but wish the torment would stop eventually.
Trish approached him once again. He could see now that tears were streaming down her face, despite her expression.
A thick rope descended from the ceiling in front of him, seemingly out of nowhere. Trish wrapped her hands around it, and without a word, she pulled.
Diavolo felt a drop on his leg and whipped his head up to see the roof splitting open, but no sun or rain could be seen.
He screamed as the split got wider, because the more it opened the more he could see that it was raining down bodies, the bodies of every deceased person in those photographs.
Trish looked down at him in silence as the two were buried in corpses, the deafening wails drowning out Diavolo's own voice.
Time resets.
Diavolo awoke screaming in a tangle of his own bedsheets.
But...this wasn't his bed? He had never been here before but it felt so familiar...
He struggled for a moment and ripped the blanket from his face, gasping for air.
The morning sun spilled in through patterned curtains and onto his bedspread. A songbird can be heard singing outside the window.
Diavolo's breath is shaking, he feels tears start to form again and he braces for what's to come.
"Papa, papa, you're awake!"
He heard a voice come from behind the door, before it burst open and a little pink haired blur rushes in and tackles him.
"I've been waiting for hooours for you to wake up!"
Diavolo freezes when the girl hugs him, he wasn't exactly expecting... this.
"Come make breakfast papa! Can we have pancakes? We bought those strawberries yesterday and I wanna eat some!"
The girl bounced on the bed excitedly. She looks to be only 6 or 7. "T...Trish?"
Diavolo can only stare, after what he just witnessed his brain felt like it was short circuiting now.
"I...a-alright, I'll make some... pancakes..."
"Yay! I'll go get the strawberries!" With that, Trish dashed off, presumably to the kitchen.
Diavolo just sat for a moment, dumbfounded. He wanted more than anything for this to be real, but he knew it would all go away soon, maybe he was about to be crushed in an earthquake, or an arrow would shoot through the window and pierce his skull.
He slowly, shakily got up and put on a robe hanging on the headboard, once again wondering why it felt so familiar despite never having seen it before.
He poked his head into the kitchen where Trish was quickly hiding a strawberry stem, she DEFINITELY didn't eat any while waiting for him. Nope.
There was a cake sitting on the opposite counter, it looked homemade, with sloppy pink and green frosting adorning it and 7 candles placed on top.
"Is that yours, Trish?" Diavolo asked, pointing to it.
"Of course it is! Did you forget it's my birthday? We're going to the zoo today!"
"Ah, um... I'm sorry, yes, I remember now..." he mumbled.
The morning went by suspiciously normal, Diavolo took awhile to find the recipe but he managed to make them without much difficulty, and once done the two went to their rooms to get dressed for their outing.
Diavolo clicked his door shut and leaned against the back, letting his eyes fall shut. Nothing felt off, which in and of itself made him feel uneasy. Without the ever present feeling of death looming over his shoulder, Diavolo felt even more lost and confused.
He sighed and went to the dresser to picked out a casual but decent looking suit.
While he was changing, he came to the conclusion that it didn't matter if he died today, or tomorrow, or in a week, he was going to, for the first time in his life, celebrate his daughters birthday today, and nothing would stop him.
He fixed his collar as he made his way to the front door. Behind him he heard a door swing open, followed by Trish running over to him. He turned to see she was wearing a frilly pastel green dress, probably bought specifically for today. She truly looked adorable.
"Are you ready to go?" Diavolo asked.
"Yea- oh wait, I forgot something" she ran back to her room. A few seconds later she emerged with a leopard plushie clutched tight to her chest.
"Now I'm ready!"
Diavolo smiled.
In exactly one year, Diavolo would be killed in a car accident, thus beginning a new cycle. But in the time he had, he finally was able to love Trish, and get a taste of a normal life.
He truly lived every day of that year like it was his last, this I can assure you.