Chapter Text
Whatever Gyro's done to him he's going to have to pay for someday. Johnny's hand reaches for his water as he continues sweating his entire body weight out in the blazing desert sun.
He hadn't really planned to ever come here again, but that damned Italian bastard managed to rewire his entire brain in the time they'd spent together during the race. He's got no idea how he'd done it, but now he's having thoughts and feelings and he doesn't like them. About people other than himself, even! Johnny snorts aloud; how novel.
When he'd suddenly gotten it in his head that no one had claimed Diego's remains yet, he felt a pang of - shudder - sympathy. He thought back to what he knew about Diego, and realized that he wasn't likely to be claimed at all. Diego had had no family, no close friends, no one to mourn him. The thought filled him with sadness, and he curses that horrible little empathetic voice Gyro had subliminally implanted into his brain once more.
I will kill him, I'll do it-
So here he is, sweating and miserable in the desert, following train tracks on the back of a new horse, still kind of trying to talk himself out of doing what he's already in the process of doing. He lets out a sigh and dumps some spare water over his head, then reaches down to pat the horse's flank.
"You doin' alright?"
The horse huffs in response, and he feels he can understand completely.
Eventually he spots a familiar cliffside, and internally braces himself for the inevitable. Hopefully his remains hadn't been picked off by wild animals or something and were actually still there, otherwise this whole trip would've been for nothing.
Scanning the tracks in the area, he sees a blob of white in the distance, and keeps his eyes on it as he approaches, Sure enough, it's a pile of human bones. Ignoring the building remorse he feels at the sight of them, he makes his way down to investigate them, landing on the sand with a flop and pulling himself along.
Remarkably, they're mostly intact, save for the obvious bisection and the absence of a skull. Although...looking closer, it appears he's missing one of his arms. He frowns. Diego hadn't lost an arm...had he? No, he was cut clean in half...maybe it was animals. But why would they leave the rest of the corpse alone?
Questions swirl around in his head, only making the heat dizziness worse. Reluctantly, he shakes them off for now, opting to start collecting the bones in the box he'd brought with him.
He gets quite a few bones in before he hears the sound of someone clearing their throat. "What are you doing with those?"
Johnny nearly drops his collection box, letting out a shriek. He spins his head in place, but sees nothing but the vastness of the desert and the tracks leading into the distance. He swallows hard, suddenly sweating for reasons not related to the sun; he'd know that voice anywhere. But he's...well, his bones are in a box right now. There's no way, it's just the heat getting to his head. Picking up the pace, he resumes his collection, trying to ignore the sense of dread washing over him.
"Hey. I'm talking to you."
This time Johnny does drop the box, instinctively readying his nails for an attack. "Who's there?!"
"Over here. In the shade."
Shade? Theres no shade in this- ohh. There’re a few rocks here and there, the closest one being only feet away from the spot he currently sits at. Cautiously, he pulls himself along the sand with one hand, not dropping his attack-ready hand. "...Where?"
"Down here."
Gulping, Johnny turns his gaze down toward the sand.
Diego Brando's head sits there, looking at him with that same unimpressed expression it always did. Johnny stares at it. It stares back.
"...Hi."
"Hello."
"...Dio."
"Joekid."
Okay, so, desert hallucination. Cool. Against his better judgment, Johnny decides to entertain it for a bit. "What, uh...what’re you doing here?"
"The same thing I've been doing for months: nothing. What are you doing here?"
"C-collecting your…your bones. "
"Why?"
"What do you mean, 'why'?" Johnny glares. "To bury them, obviously."
Diego's head blinks. "You're going to bury them?"
"That's what I said."
"...why?"
Johnny lowers his hand and rolls his eyes so hard it hurts. "Because no one deserves to die alone and forgotten, duh. Not even you."
Diego blinks at him, visibly conflicted. "You sure you're Johnny Joestar?"
"Not really. Are you sure you're Diego Brando?"
"...not really."
They stare at each other in contemplative silence. Johnny swallows. "I've got to get back to collecting your bones now."
Diego suddenly glares. "Don't you dare leave me here."
Johnny ignores his name being called to continue picking up bones. "You're a desert mirage. I, by definition, can't take you anywhere."
"A desert m-I am not a mirage, you utter imbecile!"
Johnny continues to ignore him until he's collected all the bones from the sand and secured them neatly in his box. He straps it to the pack he'd taken for the journey, and turns back to the hallucination. To his surprise, Diego's head still sits there, glaring hotter than the sun above. "Aren't you going to fade away?"
"Obviously not. Now come here and take me with you."
Johnny's nose scrunches. "I don't want to hold your severed head in my hands."
"Too bad. Get over here."
"No." He begins to pull himself up onto his horse when Diego's shout catches him off guard.
"Wait! Don't leave without me!"
He pauses, slowly turning back to face Diego again. The look of desperation on his face sends a pang through his heart - seriously, fuck you Gyro - and he finds his body on autopilot pulling itself back over to Diego's shade rock.
"I don't know how to pick up a mirage."
"I'm not a mirage, you dimwit, I'm real. Come on, pick me up."
Johnny feels a certain way about being bossed around by a head, but he hesitantly reaches his shaking hands out toward it. When he feels the touch of very real, very alive flesh, he recoils immediately, his eyes blown wide. Diego glares at him, and he suddenly feels faint.
"You're...you're real."
"Obviously."
"But, you...I saw you. I saw you die. And Lucy, she...she took your head and-"
Diego snorts. "She tried to take my head, you mean. Until she severed my neck and I started yelling at her."
"Then how did she-?"
"My arm. She took that instead. Any piece of my flesh would work. Honestly, I cannot figure out why my head was her first instinct. Corpse desecration, I tell you."
Johnny's head spins. "Buh..."
"We can talk more on the way back to...wherever you're going. Come on, take me."
Steeling himself, Johnny reaches out to pick Diego's head up again. Forcing down the shudder that runs through his body at the thought of holding a decapitated head in his hands, he holds it not too closely to himself as he drags himself along back to his horse with his free hand.
"Finally..." Diego breathes a sigh of relief, and Johnny suddenly doesn't understand how he's able to breathe at all without lungs and he's dead- "I've been laying like that for God knows how long. It's a miracle I haven't gone insane."
Johnny mindlessly nods as he pulls himself onto his horse, unknowingly displaying a remarkable amount of physical strength in lifting his body weight one-handed. He holds Diego's head in his hands, contemplating where to put him. His first instinct with something that size is to put it in his lap, but...well. There's a lot wrong about that. His next instinct is to secure it to his packs, but that just seems cruel in this heat. Eventually, he settles for just holding it in one arm like a baby, and ignoring the seething glare thrown his way.
The horse begins the journey back, and Johnny manages to talk around the lump in his throat.
"So, mind tellin' me what the hell's goin' on now?"
Letting out a dramatic sigh, Diego obliges. "As it turns out, my body functions quite a lot like a lizard's tail. You've heard how their tails will regrow when severed, correct?"
"Uh. Probably?"
"My body is like that, but on a much larger scale. I've discovered that any part of me will regrow the missing parts when severed - including a full bisection."
"So you weren't dead."
"Correct. It was more of a reparative stasis. My body was working to regrow my lower body from my upper body."
"I...sure. Okay," Johnny forces out, running his free hand along his face. "So, what happened with your head?"
Diego huffs. "That Steel girl. Chopped it off in one fell swoop and woke me from my stasis. I'm not sure which of us was screaming louder, me or her."
"I can imagine."
"She apologized quite profusely but I'm still angry. She didn't even come back for me after she took my arm, that little brat."
"She probably thought you were a hallucination like I did."
"Pathetic."
Ignoring the indirect barb, Johnny moves on. "So, you're just going to regrow your entire body?"
"Essentially. You can likely see the small amount of progress that has been made thus far."
Johnny peers around the wound to see what looks like a tiny, fleshy body budding from the stump. He shudders. "That's horrifying."
"You don't know the half of it," Diego replies, deathly serious. "I needed a source of sustenance for a task as gargantuan as this. Do you know what the only thing nearby was?"
Johnny blanches. "No."
"Yes. I would rather like to not experience something quite as harrowing as eating my own body again."
"I wouldn't either," is Johnny's response, horrified just thinking about it. "So just to clarify. This isn't some kind of horrible nightmare?"
"Unfortunately, no. This is quite real. And you're quite sweaty," Diego's nose scrunches. "You're taking a shower as soon as you get back, with your flowery fluttery soap as always."
"Hey, beggars can't be..." Johnny pauses, then narrows his eyes. "How do you know I use floral soap?"
Diego realizes his mistake, and averts his eyes. To no avail of course, as Johnny lifts his head up so he can't avoid his gaze. "It was kinda impossible to miss what with you stinking up the place everywhere you went. Honestly, Joekid, have you been stealing your fans' shampoos?"
It's weak and Johnny knows it. A grin makes its way across his face, toothy and mischievous. "You know what I smell like by heart. Even after months in the desert, you remember my scent clearly enough to tease me about it."
"Don't say it like that."
"You remember my scent, of all things!"
"Shut the fuck up. I changed my mind, go put me back by my rock."
Diego's face is red, and Johnny takes far too much glee in the sight of it. "Sorry, but you're stuck with me now. Finders keepers and all that."
They ride in silence for a few minutes. Johnny can feel Diego's contemplative gaze on him, but opts to wait until he speaks first.
"Joekid?"
"Hm?"
"...You don't hate me?"
"Not really, no." Johnny shrugs. "Maybe before, but...well. Gyro's softened me up like a slab of meat under a hammer. He says I'm 'all soft now, like a marshmallow'. The fucker."
"You are quite soft..." Diego mutters. Johnny gives him an amused little smile, and Diego snarls and turns away again. "Well, fine, then. I guess I don't hate you, either."
"From the sound of it, I don't think you ever did, didja?"
"I regret being picked up by you."
"Well, that's too bad, 'cause I don't regret picking you up. You're gonna come home with me and I'm gonna shower with that nice soap you remember by heart, and we're gonna get you cleaned up too and you'll be able to grow your whole body back in no time. Sound good?"
It takes Diego a few seconds to finally look back at him. "...Yes. That sounds good."
"Good! Now, you're gonna have to run me through a 'caring for my friend's severed head' guide 'cause I don't think that one's been written yet."
The rest of the journey is spent talking about this and that, when really, they should've been talking about how to get a severed head through several towns without people screaming so Johnny didn't panic and come up with a plan on the fly when someone looked his way.
In retrospect, shoving Diego's head into his shirt to pretend to be pregnant probably wasn't the best idea, if the angry bite mark on his stomach is anything to go by.