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She looks the same as she always has, his mother. Well, mostly. Her hair is the same shade of blonde and her nose wrinkles when she smiles at him. Her eyes though, they’re this shade of bottle green that’s cloudier, darker than he remembers. Caesar always thought they were more like his; He’d always been told he looked an awful lot like her.
She smiles again, serene, as he shifts on what feels like a couch. It’s soft, it gives under his weight easily and he can hear springs creak. Everything looks murky, however, going in and out of focus.
Except for her.
Caesar’s mouth opens and closes. He screws his eyes shut and rubs them, hoping to remedy his vision. As he opens them again, it’s all much clearer. He looks around, and tries to remember where he is. None of it is familiar, not the tall windows, not the faded wallpaper, the damask knotting into itself where the pattern remains intact.
His mother continues to smile, perched on an ottoman as though she’s always belonged on it. The light shifts, and he thinks he sees a few too many teeth in her mouth. Caesar is uneasy, and he’s trying to place why that is. It’s his mother after all. He knows she’s kind and that she likes milk in her coffee and that she sneaks his brothers and sisters sweets when they’ve been good.
He knows that she is thirty-four, and that she likes the color orange. She says it’s a happy color. She folds the sheets before anything else, and she laughs when he gets under them and pretends to be a ghost. She tells the best stories about the stars and draws little creatures on paper that she cuts out and tucks around the house for the children to find. She loves his father so much. She loves them so much, he knows. Caesar knows these things.
He knows she died in November.
Caesar remembered her funeral being the first and only time he’d seen his Father cry.
But here she was, hands resting in her lap and smile too wide, and Caesar feels his stomach drop through his gut and on to the floor. He swallows and tries to stand, but his limbs felt too heavy, his ankles too weak. She tilts her head.
“Where am I?”
Caesar is startled by his own voice, and jumps as much as his aching limbs will allow. He sounds raspy and hoarse, like he hasn’t talked in years. What looks like his mother isn’t smiling now, but they don’t look angry, only thoughtful.
“You’re where you need to be.”
Well, that’s just obtuse enough to make him want to throw something. Delightful. He notes how much it sounds like his mother, and it almost could be her if she was talking into a radio, echoing too much and pitch higher than in reality. He shifts on what he now knows for sure is a couch, sitting up straighter and catching a glimpse of the floor. There’s sand and dust all over the wood, and deep gouges where it looks like fingernails have dug in. He sets his jaw and decides he’s not going to look at it anymore.
The woman who is his mother but not really sways gently, their hair glowing like a halo in the light from the windows, golden and almost perfect.
“I really don’t remember needing to be anywhere like this.”
They smile. “You’ll remember everything you need to know very soon. You’re just waking up, so it might be a little hard to put it all together.”
Caesar moves an arm and winces. It stings and is as heavy as lead, but he knows they’re right. The more he’s awake, the more he remembers. The things he needs to do. He needs to train and get stronger, he needs to defeat the pillar men, protect Lisa Lisa and the Red Stone of Aja. He needs to protect-
“Joseph?”
Whatever is sitting in front of him is somehow no longer his mother. His Father’s eyes blink in the fading light, and he looks healthy and happy and whole. Mario Zepelli had never met Jojo.
Caesar is decidedly less sluggish and propels himself on to his feet, wobbling more than he would like to admit. He can’t find single a single door in this room, just walls lined with out of focus photographs and a disturbing number of clocks. His only viable exit seems to be the windows.
“Is busting through the window really that great of an idea?”
That’s not a man’s voice speaking. Caesar’s head jerks back towards the ottoman and Lisa Lisa’s hands are outstretched, holding a cigarette and a lighter.
“You are where you need to be.” It sounds more like an order out of Lisa Lisa’s mouth. “And Right now, you should be talking to me.”
He eyes the figure warily before taking the cigarette and lighter gingerly. He doesn’t light it. Instead, he plays with the lighter, tucking the cigarette into his pocket. It seems his getting out was dependent on his conversations with what could be his mother, his father, maybe even Lisa Lisa.
They move, leaning back on the ottoman, and Caesar watches as what looks like glass shift over and over under the skin of their arms, translucent and ticking in time with the clocks. Then whatever it is stops and seems to sink farther into them, disappearing.
He finally responds.
“What are we talking about?”
He still feels like there’s cotton in his mouth, but he has to figure out what’s happening, what exactly he’s supposed to do. He has to get out and help Jojo, he doesn’t have time to waste in this room with what he could only guess is a very proficient chameleon.
Lisa Lisa’s lips move easily, and they’re just as red as he always remembers them being. Like his mother’s, her voice is filtered and far away.
“Whatever is most important to you.”
Caesar didn’t want to talk about what was important to him, not with her. Because it wasn’t Lisa Lisa, he knew so. It had her mouth, her hair and nose, but it wasn’t his Master.
The light was almost gone now, and he’d gone nowhere. For some reason the dark was a scarier concept that it had ever been. He wanted to be out and on his way back to the people he cared about already. He wanted to defeat the pillar men already, live the rest of his life already.
She looked thoroughly unimpressed by his silence, crossing and uncrossing her legs as she waited for him to respond. The panels of glass were already starting to move again under her skin. Were her eyes always such a violent shade of orange?
“How about this?” They make a motion with their hand that could mean anything, really, and continues. “What were you doing until you woke up in here with me?”
What was he doing? Caesar looks at the lighter, and grips it as he looks back up and tries to put things back in place.
“We’d arrived in Switzerland, and we’d found that Kars and Wham were in an abandoned hotel. We were looking for a way in.”
They raise their eyebrows and leans forward, their forearms resting on their knees in a position that looked more like it belonged on Jojo than Lisa Lisa. She’d never slouch like that.
“And?”
Everything is a lot clearer to Caesar, and he knows what comes next, but he really doesn’t know if he wants to say.
“I argued with Jojo.”
“About what?”
Caesar chews his lip and looks at them, unmoving. Their eyes are still that unnerving shade of tangerine, and it’s almost dark in the room now, blue shadows moving in rapidly.
“Whether or not to go in then or later.” Caesar looks down at his boots and up again, “And about family, in a way.”
He watches this person who looks like Lisa Lisa blink slowly.
“Are you still angry at him? Do you hate him now? For fighting with you.”
The words aren’t even all of the way out of their mouth before he’s shaking his head vigorously, hand gripping the lighter so hard that it hurts.
“No! I could never do that.” He sighs. “Besides, at the time he didn’t know he’d hit such a sensitive nerve. Lisa Lisa- The woman whose face you wearing- probably told him about it after I clocked him across the jaw and ran off. He’s the kind of guy who says things like that, but once he finds out just how wrong he is, he’s sincerely sorry.” Caesar laughs and sits back down on the couch, “He never really seems to think about what comes out of his mouth, but somehow he’s a good person anyway.”
“What did you do after that?”
Caesar looks at her warily, but figures he should continue since he’s come this far with it.
“I fought with Wham. Messina died, I think. And,” He furrows his eyebrows and looks at his hands, still moving, still working and holding the lighter. “I thought I didn’t make it, either. But If I’m alive enough to walk and talk with you, whatever you are, I need to go back and make sure to support Jojo!”
“You do that, Lazarus.”
Caesar looks up, and it isn’t Lisa Lisa anymore. Even in the dimming light, it was still-
“Jojo.” Caesar swallows and for a second he forgets that it really isn’t Joseph sitting across from him, grinning with his hands resting in his lap. He’s wearing a bomber jacket, and his smile is just the same. They had done a good job replicating Joseph. His voice was a little louder, more like it was in the room. His eyes were the exact same shade of blue. The number of teeth was within normal parameters.
“Not quite, but I appreciate the compliment. I like to know I’ve done so well.”
Caesar leans back in the chair. Not-quite Joseph has tilted their head, grin easing into a soft smile. They’re almost looking at Caesar with fondness.
It makes his heart ache.
Caesar thinks back on what they had said before, rather than focus on it. “You said ‘Lazarus’. So I really did die.”
“Unfortunately. It was pretty gruesome, and there is a distinct lack of messiah to revive you.”
Caesar eyes them, eyebrows raised. “Are you seriously poking fun at the dead guy?”
“Technically speaking, we’re both dead. Well, I guess not me, I was never alive. But we’re both in the “Not – so – living category, so I can poke as much fun at you as I’d like,” And again, there’s Joseph’s grin. It is equal parts infuriating and endearing, like it’s always been.
“Who knew Death was such a joker.” Caesar snorts. “What are you anyway? Please don’t tell me you’re God, because if so I don’t think the church paints an appropriate picture.”
They laugh, and it’s Joseph’s. “You’re much more fun when you talk instead of glaring at me.” They tap their feet in a gesture that makes it seem like they have trouble sitting still. “But as for whatever deity or deities you worship, that’s not for me to say. Those matters are for beyond there.” They jerk Joseph’s head at what appears to be half of a door, split vertically and wedged where there was only blank wall before. “I’m just here to make sure you know what’s happened to you, and that you get a chance to say everything you need to say, Mr. Zepelli.”
Caesar can’t help it, he splutters and doubles over, laughing. His companion looks confused, eyes wide, eyebrows up.
“I can not believe that you just-you just-“ Caesar feel tears prick at his eyes and he’s dangerously close to hiccupping. He doesn’t really care. The ridiculousness of the whole situation warranted a laugh. Here he was, dead, too shell shocked to be mad about it, and someone with Joseph’s face just called him Mr. Zepelli. Fucking. Mr. Zepelli.
He sits back up, rubbing at his eyes. “I can’t believe you just called me Mr. Zeppeli.”
The expression on Joseph’s face is actually really uncomfortable, and they’re looking around the room like they need an exit. “Was I not supposed to?”
“The thing is, you have Jojo’s face. And,” Caesar snorts, burying his head in his hands. “There is absolutely no way he’d call me Mr. Zepelli. Just call me Caesar, that’s too strange.”
Now they look kind of amused, shrugging their shoulders. “What Can I say? Force of habit I suppose. But Caesar it is then.”
What looks like Joseph leans back as they had before, and they look more thoughtful. The room is almost completely dark now, save for the light from what is presumably the moon through the window. It catches Joseph’s eyes and makes them look like they glow.
“In all seriousness, Caesar,” They wear an expression that’s awfully sad, and it makes Caesar’s gut twist. “Is there anything you want to say to anyone? To Joseph, or your Teacher? That’s within my power to do. Hell, I could probably give Joseph another punch, too, if you’d like. You’d have to hit me first though so I now how hard to pop him.”
Caesar is struck by the sincerity. That’s the most like Jojo they’ve ever been. He looks in his lap. He’s still holding the lighter, and turns it over a few times. It has swallows engraved on it, and he can’t help but think that’s a little inappropriate, given the situation.
“I know Lisa Lisa deserves a Thank You. She’s been so good to me of the years, I couldn’t have asked for a better teacher. She’s truly a phenomenal woman.” He smiles and looks up, and Joseph’s face looks attentive. “If there’s a way to let Suzy Q know that it’s going to be alright, I’d really like that. She’s a great girl herself.”
He gets up, still talking.
“As for Jojo,” He crosses the room. They look up, head tilting.
“So you really want me to pass along that last punch?”
Caesar laughs, shaking his head. “No, no,” And he leans over and wraps this could be joseph in his arms, hugging him tightly, maybe for luck. Who knows. “I want Joseph to know it’s alright. And that I’m not angry. To be honest, I think I liked him a little too much, if you catch my drift.” Caesar draws back, hands still on their shoulders. “I want him to kick Kars’ ass, and save the world like he was always bragging he would. I want him to live. I want to love and be happy, and have all the time in the world to spoil his family. I know he’s going to want one. I want him to be so old and wrinkly when I see him next that he looks like a prune. That stupid ass had better live long enough to be dragged up by the Rapture. Above all that, I do want him to know I really am sorry. I did intend to make it through this with him. I wish I’d said goodbye better. Can you let him know all of that?”
What could be Joseph takes a minute to process, but then they smile, more gently than he thinks Joseph is capable of doing, and respond.
“Yes, I can do that, Caesar.”
“Thanks. You aren’t a bad guy. Girl. Entity. Whatever it may be.”
They laugh, and it’s bright and clear, and Caesar’s heart breaks a little because he knows it’s going to be a hell of a long time before he hears that again.
“I appreciate it. I’ll make sure to get the messages to them as soon as possible, anyway I can.” They reach out and touch his arms, and motion with their head to the door, now whole and open, with warm light pouring from inside, gentle voices and laughter coming from within. “Now, I think you’ve got some people to meet, and somewhere pretty nice to go. “
Caesar straightens up, and thinks he can see the shadow of a person with a top hat cast on the wall, next to someone about the same height as Jojo. They look like they’re talking.
He looks at the lighter in his hand, and hands it back to them. “I guess so.
I don’t think I’ll need that, where I ‘m going.”
Caesar stands there for a moment, and then finally moves towards the door. This is it. The big finale. It’s anticlimactic, really. He was expecting trumpets or some angry man with a big heavy book, not a door. He finally gets a proper look out of the window, and stops. The stars look almost pink, and there’s so many of them, like you could just reach out and take fistfuls. There’s water everywhere, the moon is huge, easily the size of an orange. It’s unnatural, but awfully pretty. He rests his hand on the doorframe and swallows.
“Caesar.”
He looks back over and could almost cry, with the why he’s being looked at. There’s a lot of affection in that look. “I don’t think Joseph could have asked for a better friend. I also think that if he didn’t already, he probably would have liked you a little too much too.” Caesar swallows and nods, and puts on his best smile, and walks through the door.
He thinks he hears a faint, “Goodbye, Caesar!” In his ear, like Joseph whispering to him, and he closes his eyes and whispers back.
“Goodbye, Jojo.”