Chapter Text
“Kakyoin Noriaki is deceased. His body is being transferred by helicopter. Jean-Pierre Polnareff is unconscious. Car #1 is attending to him now. Roger.”
There was no pain at all, in death.
In truth, it hadn't even hurt right after Dio punched him – His mind had spared him the agony, or perhaps the wound was too deep for feeling at all, or maybe his spine had been so badly damaged there were simply no more nerves left to experience it. Why had he woken up? It didn't matter, the stillness surely meant he was dying or dead, and he was surprised to find how much death smelled like roses.
He can’t see, though. It’s stifling in here, wherever ‘here’ is. He can’t see – there’s something on his face. There’s something covering him completely, and he pushes at it, and it crinkles. He can’t feel it on his fingers. Everything is clammy, everything is sticky and wet. It’s hard to breathe –
He hears static beneath the deafening roar of what sounds like moving air.
“T-This is Car #2… It’s a miracle! Mr. Joestar has woken up! Mr. Joestar has come back to life! This is amazing!”
Whoever else is around him makes themselves known with the shocked, victorious clamor and applause, and Kakyoin feels a pang of relief.
Good. He thinks. Two of them lived. Jojo will be happy to have his grandfather, if he made it.
The ruckus hasn’t settled, but one voice in particular sticks out to him, and Kakyoin can hear that he’s close by. “…Hey, man… does – Does something look weird to you?”
“Hm?”
“… The body bag is – It’s moving …”
A door slams shut, and the crashing beat of wind resistance goes muffled.
“It’s the wind from outside, or it could be the body settling. It’s normal to think you see the bags moving at first – You’re pretty new around here and this isn’t the easiest on the mind, you know? Having to pick up teenagers who had their insides hollowed out would get to anyone.”
Are… Are they talking about me?
Kakyoin tests a leg. It’s heavy, like he’s still stuck in a space between sleeping and waking, and it takes every bit of focus he has just to twitch his toes. He inhales against the sterilized tarp, and panic grips him.
This … This, no. This isn't death. This is far too specific to be death –
He jerks an arm out, and there’s very little transition from deathly calm to every instinct in his body screaming to just be alive, you can be alive, you’re still here, fight for it.
He’s not dead, he knows that now, but if he doesn't get out of this bag he’s going to scream. He thrashes – distantly he wonders how his lower body can even be responding to him, but it takes a back seat to the need for stimuli. He can feel Hierophant trying to materialize, and he reaches out to him – But his presence is weak, still, and can only brush the edges of Kakyoin’s mind in reassurance.
“… It – It’s really moving, look at it –”
There’s silence on the part of the two assistants before the mad scramble begins. The sudden chorus of shouting fills the too-small space.
“Open the bag! Tell the pilot to change course! We gotta get him to a hospital ASAP!”
“I checked him! I swear, he was gone! I followed protocol!”
“Get the ground party on the line!”
The dull yellow light that fills the inside of the helicopter almost burns as the zipper of the bodybag is torn back, and Kakyoin stares up, stilling instantly at the system shock that is the retrieval of his vision. Two frightened medical personnel from the Speedwagon Foundation stare back, their eyes boring deeply into the gaping cavity Dio left behind. His chest heaves, and he can almost feel the sickly slosh of water and blood set in his perforated lungs. He tries to cough, but it won’t come out.
“Get the fucking radio.” One demands. A gun is pulled and pointed straight for Kakyoin’s head.
He doesn't want to look down. He doesn't want to see the blood or his spilled intestines, he might just throw up the globular remains of his stomach, but he can’t not look down, not with the assistant staring at him like he knew something he didn't –
The hole was gone.
He feels cold for an entirely different reason. Gingerly, he reaches to touch the edges of the hole in his gakuran – The only proof remaining he’d been hit at all.
“–Don’t move!” The gun-wielding medic shouts, jerking forward and keeping that gun leveled solidly between his eyes, but Kakyoin can hear the panic in his voice. “Put your hand down and stay right where you are!”
He doesn't have the presence to protest. He doesn't have the physical strength, either, so his hand drops and he just lays there, looking blankly into the barrel of the gun. Three months ago this situation would have frightened him, but all he feels towards his potential executioner is numbed apathy.
More medics come, now.
“… Ground party, come in. There’s – The body of Kakyoin Noriaki is moving – He… It – appears to be awake –”
“What?! Report!”
“The – The wound is just … gone – There’s scarring, but no one could heal that fast – And he’s awake – Dio might have done something to him before he died – We don’t have the proper equipment to deal with this –” The voice is cut by the loud clanging of footsteps and a vocal protest from the man on the line.
“Put him on.” In the background, Kakyoin can hear someone howling in English, and that someone is probably Joseph.
“Jojo,” Kakyoin mouths.
“Eh?! Who the hell is this?”
"Do it.” It’s not a tone looking to be disobeyed.
The pilot wraps some spare gauze to hold the call button down and he all but throws the radio at Kakyoin. The medics approach, slowly, hooking him up to wires, an IV, drawing blood, and he lets them. He can’t blame their hesitance, really, they’d likely been briefed to exercise extreme caution in bizarre cases like this. There had been enough bodies of innocents on the road to warrant that bit of protocol.
A strangely colored light is pointed at him – A UV light, he realizes– and everyone around him seems to exhale at once.
The slow beat of his heart comes up on the monitor.
“Incredible. No response to the UV light, sir. A-And We have a pulse! I don’t know what happened, but he really is alive!”
“I can hear it. You’re not vampiric, then.” Comes Jojo’s voice, as calm and collected as ever, but Kakyoin can hear the weariness, the edge. He sounds as though he’s aged 20 years in one night.
“Jojo,” Is all he can respond with, and it comes out a slur of a heavy tongue and spitting traces of sticky blood and bile. He says it a second, third time, until he’s sure Jotaro heard him.
“Yeah,” He agrees, a certain touch of fondness creeping in.
”… Dio?“ Kakyoin brings himself to ask.
"Dead. As good as, anyway.”
“Good.” He breathes, and he’s not sure Jotaro heard that one. There’s the unmistakable rustle of the communicator being wrestled into new hands from the other end, and Kakyoin cringes at the sudden volume spike.
“Kakyoin!” comes the bellowing of the elder Joestar. “I got your message! Damn, you had to go be all cool and play the hero like that, I can’t believe you figured out Dio’s stand –“ Jotaro swears at him in the background, and Joseph makes a remark about being polite to your grandfather who just came back from the dead that inevitably goes ignored.
“Rest, Kakyoin. I want you with us when we burn the body, if you can be.”
Kakyoin lets his eyes flick shut. "I will be.”
“I’m glad you’re alright.”
“You too.”
The noise of the radio ends there.
Kakyoin Noriaki is 17 years old. He came to Egypt to defeat fear, to conquer himself, to live without regret and to die whole, even if that meant dying young. But it wasn’t until then, strewn out in a bodybag, soaked to the bone and inexplicably alive, that he instead resolved tolive.
Sleep claims him, then. He doesn't know what his new mission in life will be, now that he’s decided to have one, but for now, it’s to wake up again, and that suits him just fine.
Somewhere, Kujo Jotaro is falling asleep.