Chapter Text
Her recovery takes three months.
Volpe had, as he’d said, kept all the damage he’d done on the right side of fatal. Murolo had phoned the boss’s crew to be on the way before he himself had even arrived to the Temple of Apollo, so sure of their victory as he inexplicably was, so help wasn’t long—at least he’d been good for something. When the first person to visit her in the hospital was the boss, she’d figured he’d take care of it. But then, of course, he never manages to do things in the way that she expects.
“What might you gain if I help you here? Your wounds aren’t fatal. You will survive, with or without me. But if your recovery is instant, what lesson is left to take away? I wonder.” Giorno had said this the last time they’d spoken.
She wasn’t sure what he’d meant at the time. She’s not entirely sure she understands now. She’d been on the mission to prove her loyalty, to redeem herself after the mess with Diavolo and the execution squad; had she not learned her lesson when being sent in the first place? Had she not learned her lesson when her suspected betrayal led to her being beaten half to death by some runaway rich kid?
It’s been three months.
There’s someone there to pick her up the very moment she’s discharged from the hospital. They bring with them a change of clothes that is unexpectedly to her tastes. She waits to pull on her coat—big, white, puffy, soft—until she’s following them outside. The rest of the situation is all very vague. Follow me to the car. Get in the back seat. Don’t speak a word. You’ll be taken where you need to go. (She wonders if not talking is an actual requirement or if the driver just thinks she’ll be annoying.)
Such is life in the gutted remains of what was once the mafia. New humanitarian paint job, same old business practices. All very shady, and frankly, a pain in the ass to deal with. Expecting her to be perfectly fine fresh out of the hospital is unreasonable enough on its own; the least they could do is provide the courtesy of a polite driver. Or, better yet, just tell her what they want right away and skip the secret meetings and all the extraneous pleasantries they come with.
They pull up beside a café with some nice outdoor seating, all defunct for the winter. The sign on the inside of the glass door is flipped around to read CLOSED. Through the windows, she can already see the café is completely vacant but for one man sitting at a two-person corner table. It’s a nice enough place. Definitely should be busy around this time. Either this is one of their fronts, or they bought it out for the day.
“This is your stop,” the driver informs her.
She climbs out of the car. She doesn’t thank them. She shuts the door—slams it, really. She ignores the closed sign and walks into the café, eyeing the man in the corner table. He’s faced in the opposite direction from the entrance; doesn’t even look up at the chime of the glass bells announcing the arrival of a new customer.
His hair is short and curly, not exactly buzzed but definitely cropped as close as it is with clippers. He wears a red knitted winter cap with a blue pompom on top. His outfit is unremarkable; inconspicuous. The definition of blending in. A beige jacket over a white sweater. Plain blue fitted jeans. The sneakers are nice. Immaculately clean. Probably ran a high bill. Otherwise, nothing special.
She hesitates a moment. It’s a touch unnerving, being alone with some strange man, but she forces her feet forward, drags herself over to be seated across from him. To her relief—“Mista,” she says, the name coming out almost as a sigh. Without his usual flashy getup, he looks like a completely different person. She wonders what sparked the change. Then again, he seems to be changing a lot these days.
He tilts his head appraisingly, raising his eyebrows. “Sheila E.”
She sits up straighter. “What does the boss request of me?”
“Getting right into that, huh? No time for ‘hello, how are you?’” From his tone, she’s unable to discern whether this is supposed to be a joke or a threat.
She ignores it regardless. “I didn’t join the mafia to make friends,” she shrugs.
He remains quiet for a moment longer. “That would be pretty dumb, wouldn’t it?” He leans back in his seat, slouching.
“I just want to know what it is he wants me to do.”
“Christ. You say ‘he’ like it deserves a capital H. Giovanna ain’t any God,” he says. If she didn’t know better, she might say he’s complaining, but she does.
“Of course he’s not,” she says, tone unwavering but lacking any challenge. He is, after all, her superior.
He gives her a once over. Whether he’s satisfied with what he sees or not isn’t clear; he just shrugs and drops the subject. Abruptly, he stands, placing his palms flat on the table. “So! Breakfast? I guess you’re hungry after spending so long eating crap hospital food. You look pretty shit, if I’m honest.”
Sheila doesn’t protest. She knows what she looks like, and she knows that at the moment, it’s not good. She’s frail in a way she hasn’t been for a long time, her skin a few shades lighter than it ought to be from both lack of sun and lack of nutrition in equal measure.
“Whatever you order will be fine,” she says.
“You still have a lot of faith in your superiors, I see,” he remarks, tone unreadable. He clicks his tongue once. “Whatever you say, though.” He stands up and heads to the counter, empty as the rest of the place, and rings a bell, summoning a worker who rushes out of the back room quite immediately. He takes a moment to give some orders for coffee and pastries, and she stares at the back of his head.
It seems like every time Sheila talks to him, she’s speaking to a slightly different man than the last. Fugo visited her in the hospital a couple of times a week for reasons she’s still not entirely clear on (since I just wanted to check on you isn’t much of an answer in their line of work), and much of their time was eaten up discussing his past, given she has little else to say to him about her own. His accounts of the man Guido Mista once was are descriptions of a person she’s certain she’s never met.
Something in the lead-up to the boss’s reveal changed him. Losing your entire team to death or betrayal will do that, she supposes, but the way it eats at him around the edges is practically broadcasted in his every move, so long as you know what to look for. Every casual little quip has a hardened edge to it—the maintaining of a persona that he and everyone around him knows is no more. Every inconsiderate remark is made with clarity of purpose—an implied threat, or a provocation—rather than out of carelessness, yet with a cadence that might have you think it’s still the latter if you aren’t so attuned to what a conversation is actually about beneath the surface. Undoubtedly, this gradual shift towards a colder persona is fueled by the contempt he holds for the very person he acts as the right hand to—Giorno Giovanna.
Of all the people Giorno keeps close, Mista is one of the absolute closest, yet he also seems the most likely to pose a threat to the boss. It’s the kind of grudge she’ll never understand. The only person she’s ever hated so much was her sister’s murderer. Illuso. A man she had planned to kill, only to be beaten to the task. She can’t imagine what drives the man in front of her today to obey; what keeps him from making an attempt on the boss’s life and being done with it one way or another. He would kill for Giorno, and, she suspects, would die for him if the need ever arose; yet if there were some minor change in circumstance that she can’t quite grasp, he would be the first to put a gun to his head.
She will never wrap her head around Guido Mista. And ultimately, she doesn’t need to, nor does she care to. All that matters is that she takes the orders she’s given and carries them out.
He returns to the table with a tray in both hands and sets it down, dividing up a number of pastries without asking for any of her input and setting out a cup of coffee for each of them. Cappuccino, it looks like. He returns the tray to the counter (already abandoned again) and rejoins her at the table.
He takes a sip of the coffee without even waiting for it to cool. “Fuck, that’s hot,” he cringes.
She blinks at him.
“Flavor’s alright,” he says, even though Sheila didn’t ask. “No coffee in Italy will ever be as good as Buccellati’s, though. He had it down. Best cup you’ll ever have, I swear. Didn’t use a machine or anything. Real old-fashioned thing he had. French press, I think it’s called? Who knows.” He takes another sip and grimaces, biting into a bombolone that looks a little stale.
Sheila doesn’t have anything to say to that. She takes a tentative bite of a sfogliatella that looks a bit worse for wear, the excessive dryness seeming to be confirmation that they’re eating the day-olds, if they’re even that recent.
Mista grumbles a little, mouth still full, and to the untrained eye, it would likely seem his displeasure stemmed only from the unpleasant baked goods. He finishes chewing and takes a bite of a blueberry danish instead. “Man, this café is shit. Never coming here again,” he says around another mouthful. Despite his complaints, “You gonna eat that?” he asks. His hand is already halfway to taking the food from her plate.
“Go ahead,” she deadpans.
Mista finishes his meal and hers. He chugs the rest of his coffee in one go. The sight is a little nauseating. “Terrible. That was awful,” he says. “Anyhow. Down to business.”
She shifts in her seat.
“I assume you got your Stand from the arrow like most of us, yeah?”
“Sure.”
“Right, good. Then you know what it is. Here’s the deal: we got some jackass up north who got ahold of one somehow. We don’t know who, or how, but that’s where you come in. The only lead is Venice. Not a lot of identifiable new Stand users cropping up just yet, but there’ve been a couple incidents, so. You know. The boss wants it taken care of. Or whatever.” He looks bored. “Honestly, your new partner knows more about it than I do. You should go over it with him.”
She blinks. “So it’s another assassination mission, just like the last?”
“Assassination? No, no. Sending in two individuals to attack someone with an arrow head-on would be a mess. No offense, but without more help, and especially without knowing damn well what they can do, if you try and go it alone, you’re fucked. For now, you’re just gathering information. Consider yourself part of our intelligence and information analysis branch from here on out, eh?” Mista stands and claps her on the back. “Follow me.”
She holds back a groan. Information analysis. That about confirms her worst fears for this new partnership. With great restraint, she nods. “Understood.”
Privately, on the way to the back room, she grits her teeth, fists clenched. For as cold and straightforward as he is talking business, Mista can take his sweet goddamn time to get to the talking part.
—
There are only two other people in the kitchen. The first is the person who brought them their stale baked goods. Their expression is dubious. Not one of Passione’s own, then. Mista shoos them away, and they scurry off as quickly as they’re able, leaving through the door he and Sheila had come in from.
The second… Well. It’s not a surprise, at least.
In the far end of the kitchen, near the freezer, is a table with a single chair beside it, upon which sits a man—though he’s more perched than sitting, one lanky leg pulled up so his foot rests on the chair with the rest of him. He’s absorbed in what looks like an informational pamphlet about birds written in German, not even noticing their approach. The man is dressed, as the last time Sheila saw him, in the most gaudy, outdated way possible. His suit is black-and-white pinstriped—flashy, garish, evoking images of Michael Keaton in white face paint with dark eye circles and scraggly green hair. Conversely, he has a short orange bob, and instead of looking like a corpse because of stage makeup, his face is naturally ghastly-pale and gaunt. His hat is different; still a Borsalino, just like the last, but this one in an off-white color that clashes with his suit. He wears an ascot tie in a light apricot shade. His brown leather loafers might have been nice a decade ago, but not today. The only immaculate thing about him is the eyelash-shaped marking under his left eye, drawn on with a careful precision.
Cannolo Murolo.
“Yo. Your new subordinate is here,” Mista calls out.
“Ah!” Murolo pockets the pamphlet and stands, clapping his hands once and rubbing them together.
Subordinate. “You said partner before,” Sheila mutters, quietly enough that only Mista will hear.
“Did I? My bad.” Full volume.
Murolo turns to them and grins, but his face never quite smiles the right way, always with one corner of his mouth turned up higher than the other, the bags under his eyes and the overly sharp jut of his cheekbones making him look a bit eerie. Then he makes eye contact with Sheila, and his smile falls. “Oh. It’s you,” he says, evidently disappointed.
“It’s me,” Sheila says flatly.
He looks her over. “You look like shit.”
So she’s been told. “Who’s talking?”
His frown deepens, but he doesn’t try to argue.
“I am not doing what he says,” she says, plain and honest, turning to Mista.
“Hm. He’s good at covertly gathering information, but if we need to make someone talk by force, a Stand like yours is perfect, yeah? Your abilities compliment each other well. Stealth and strength. Think of it more as a bodyguard gig than as him being your boss if it helps,” Mista suggests. (Sheila wonders if that advice comes from first-hand experience.)
Murolo scoffs. “I can take care of myself,” he insists, and is ignored.
“I’ll be blunt. Don Giovanna knows you two aren’t the best of friends. He just doesn’t give a fuck. Whether you two play well together or not doesn’t mean shit so long as you work well together, got it? Get the job done and we’ll see where things go,” Mista says, then adds in a grumble, “Everything’s always a goddamn lesson with that guy.” He huffs and points to an exit on the back wall, turning to Sheila specifically. “You have a car waiting back there. We’re avoiding sending you on any public transportation for now. Trying to be as covert as possible while we’re making small moves. Besides, depending on the types of Stands the holder of the arrow has unleashed and whether they’re after us or not, which we don’t know yet, anything aside from private, on-the-low land travel could be putting you or the general public at risk. It should be a seven or eight hour drive. If you have any complaints, save them until you’re already on the road so I don’t have to hear them.”
Sheila sighs, and says nothing.
“Yes, sir,” Murolo says, tone fairly light.
They stand in silence for a moment.
Mista shoves his hands in his pockets and leans toward them. “Well? Get going.”
“Right. Come on, Sheila E.” Murolo sets off.
“I’m not doing what you say,” she asserts again.
He glances back at her. “Okay. You are right now, though. I told you to come, and you’re coming.”
“Just be quiet, old man.”
He fiddles with his ascot. “I’m only 32,” he says.
“You’re a fool and I don’t respect you.”
He ignores her.
The second they’re out of the building and into the alley behind it, he sighs, looking up at the sky. “Probably won’t snow. That’s good news,” he says, breath billowing out in an ephemeral fog. “But jeez, that Mista. Christ. You’d think the kid’s Stand lets him control the weather with the dark cloud that follows him around.”
“Generally, an adult would call that depression,” Sheila says.
Murolo ignores the jab. “No kidding. Let’s go.”
There’s only one car around. Murolo pulls the keys out of his jacket pocket, twirling the ring around one spidery finger, and starts to get in the driver’s side.
“I’m driving,” Sheila says, looming.
He looks up at her blankly from his seat.
“Get out of the way. I’m driving,” she repeats, Voodoo Child’s arms manifesting into balled fists at her side.
He raises his eyebrows, holding his hands up innocently. “Settle down, will you? You’re 15. I’m not letting you drive.”
“I’m 16 now. Do you even have a license?” She asks.
He narrows his eyes, then looks off to the side. “Well. I’m still twice your age. So,” he looks back, with more purpose this time, “I’m driving.” And he slams the door in her face.
She glares at him through the window for a moment, but he ignores her, starting the car and drumming his fingers along the steering wheel while he waits.
Starting a fight this early on would be a bad idea. She sighs to herself and gives up for now, going around to get into the passenger seat. Much as she hates this, completing the mission Giorno has given her takes precedence above all else.
“Buckle up,” he says.
She sighs again, the end trailing into a groan, loath to be forced to do what he says a second time by virtue of her already being about to do it.
He turns the radio on, messing with it a bit before coming to the conclusion that it’s broken, unable to play back anything but static. He clicks his tongue with annoyance. “Damn thing,” he says. “The day I’ve been having. You wouldn’t believe how long Mista kept me waiting. What the hell was he doing? Spelling out the mission to you letter by letter?”
“Eating breakfast.”
“Breakfast. Hmph, well. I’ll have you know he told me to be there at 9. Lot of nerve not bringing you in until nearly 10.”
She’s not exactly happy about being forced to wait around while he ate stale pastries either, but she doesn’t care to get into it. “Maybe he figured you’d be late.”
“I’m never late. Being late in my line of work means risking pissing off the wrong people, and pissing off the wrong people means death.”
Awfully paranoid of him, but she doesn’t have much of an argument against his point. “Just be quiet and drive.”
Murolo grumbles to himself for a moment, but doesn’t make any more attempts at conversation for the time being.
—
The journey is, while painfully boring, completely unimpeded. An hour in, Sheila digs around in the glove compartment and finds a couple of tapes—Aja by Steely Dan and Electric Ladyland by Jimi Hendrix, of all things—which end up cycled out on repeat for the remainder of the trip. If Murolo minds the repetition, he doesn’t say so.
They stop for gas once, but they don’t fill the tank; they can’t drive in Venice anyway, Murolo points out, so it would be a waste to get more than they might need. Just outside of Bologna, they stop to eat, just a small meal to make up for their missed lunch since they’ll be eating a proper dinner in Venice. They end up settling on Burger King, the cheapest option around.
“What do you want?” Murolo asks on the way to the counter.
“I can order food myself,” she gripes.
“No way. I don’t trust you to get my order right, and one of us needs to go get a seat. Just tell me what you want and I’ll order for you.”
“Do you think I trust you with that any more than you trust me?”
“Sheila. Tell me now or I won’t buy you anything at all,” he says, and she hates him. It’s insufferable, the way he’s holding this over her like he’s a parent reprimanding a small child. But what can she do?
She gives him the order and goes to claim seating. She liked him better when he was a coward, unwilling to put his foot down, and she didn’t like him at all then, so this is a new low.
...Although, privately, she sort of appreciates it. Sitting in the car has made her tired. She picks a booth near a window, the late afternoon light filtering into the room in bright, warm beams, only making her sleepier. She blinks slowly, feeling it sink into her hair, and is reminded of the summers of her childhood. She feels, very approximately, the same as she always did after a day of swimming with Clara in their hometown’s public lake. The following afternoons, she would always be left all loose and sleepy, and she’d sit in their sun room’s rocking chair, face to the windows, eyes closed, hair getting warmed and dried in the afternoon glow, a heaviness settling comfortably over her. Clara might come by to pet her hair, offer her some cubed watermelon or a popsicle, and they’d sit in silence together, soaking up the rays.
Sheila closes her eyes and rests her elbow on the table, leaning forward to lay her chin in her hand.
Murolo arrives with their food shortly thereafter, taking his place across from her. He hands her a straw. “You didn’t mention a drink preference, so I got you Coke.”
She grunts, unwrapping the straw and putting it in the cup, taking a sip as he divides out their food. She eats in a daze, finishing before he does.
Halfway through his Whopper Junior, he speaks up. “Sheila E.”
“What.”
“Listen. I don’t expect us to get along, and that’s fine. I don’t even expect you to listen to me. I know that’s asking too much from a person of your temperament.” She’s not really offended by the statement; she sees no reason to be when she knows what he means, and knows that he’s right. “Either way, you should know that I have your back, and I hope you’ll have mine. It’d look pretty bad to GioGio if either of us got the other killed, right?” He offers another of his eerie little smiles.
She grunts noncommittally.
He frowns a little. “I’m serious, you know. Before you and Fugo, the last person I worked with ended up dead because of me. I’d like to avoid a repeat of that, you know.”
Risotto Nero? “Since when do you care about that? You were just using him against Diavolo, and you got what you wanted,” she points out.
His face does something weird at that, but he doesn’t try to contest it. He smooths out his expression before he speaks again. “I’m trying to… well. Be better.” A pause. “…About how I treat the people I work with.”
She doesn’t really get where this almost-lecture is coming from, but figures it best to stop it in its tracks. It’s not like Murolo, constant impending disaster of a man that he is, will have any real wisdom to offer her. “I’m not here to absolve you of your guilt,” she says.
One corner of his mouth wrinkles with dissatisfaction, his eyebrows pinching together. “That isn’t what I’m trying to say, smartass. I just think we should put a little more attention into taking care of each other out there, alright? Jeez.”
“I can take care of myself,” she says.
He doesn’t say anything, and though the look on his face is mostly a vague, unreadable displeasure, she doesn’t like it, whatever it is.
She rolls her eyes and stands. “I’m going to wait in the car. Hurry up.”
—
On their second stop for gas that day, Murolo has Sheila wait in the car while he goes inside to pay, and she catches half a dozen or so stray cards hauling a couple of candy bars out of the store. No one else seems to notice them. She pictures him in there, inexplicably clapping right in front of the cashier, and grits her teeth with annoyance.
Back on the road, Murolo holds a Mars bar out to Sheila. “Here.”
She looks at it skeptically. “Why did you steal these? We have plenty of money.”
“Mista probably wouldn’t like me using the boss’s money to buy frivolous crap and it’s the only money I have,” Murolo explains, talking like his answer is perfectly logical.
“You could consider not getting frivolous crap at all,” she says, arching a brow.
“Take it or leave it,” he says, biting into his own candy bar.
She takes it.
—
They park in Piazzale Roma, one of the only places in the city that allows motor traffic. Little to none of the rest of it is accessible to cars; the canals and bridges of the city function as the main form of transportation to Venetians.
They step out of the car, and Sheila rubs her hands together to warm them, wishing she had a pair of gloves. “That suit looks freezing,” she says as judgmentally as possible, trying to drive home the fact that she thinks it’s hideous through tone alone.
“It’s got fleece on the inside,” Murolo informs her, very matter-of-fact, like that is completely normal and not terrible.
“That’s vile,” Sheila says.
“Who asked you.”
She rolls her eyes and opens the back door, dragging out what little luggage she has wrapped in a plastic bag. Likewise, Murolo retrieves his briefcase from the trunk (small enough that there can’t be more than a single change of clothes in there, if that, so it’s not like he’s much better off than her), and then they depart from the car, Sheila awkwardly trailing behind him, unsure of their destination.
“Where are we off to? What’s the plan?” she asks. He hadn’t been very forthcoming with information along the ride.
“Heading to Piazza San Marco.” No further explanation.
“That’s a pretty big target.”
“Only evidence we even have right now of an arrow user is the way the chain of crimes has panned out. Untraceable murders, unexplainable events, reports of supposed hauntings, you get the idea. The point of the job is gathering more information, pinning the user down. It’s not always exciting. Come on.” Seems a pretty flimsy lead, but she figures that’s more because he did a shit job of explaining than because Giorno is an idiot. As they set off, he lets out a great, dramatic huff. “Ah, I wish we could have a night to rest up before we got down to business. A place to put our luggage down for the evening, at least.”
“It’s one briefcase. You can’t handle one tiny briefcase?” she chides.
He hums a note of irritation, but says no more.