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One day, Dio started coughing.
This was, of course, nonsensical. Illness and disease were human maladies, curses that he'd overpowered a century ago. And yet he coughed, and kept coughing. It was impossible to avoid the aching memory of London winters spent in cold and squalor; of his weak human body wracked by sobs and the ever-present, looming threat of death. Ratty blankets over his shaking shoulders and freezing tears down his cheeks.
Being forcefully reminded of that frail child, a stranger he'd crushed into nothing… it filled Dio with an impotent rage he despised. And so, he pushed the thought from his mind.
No, this was nothing like that. Dio's body was magnificent and immortal, and the disgusting groping fingers of Pestilence couldn't touch it. And yet - it wasn't truly his body, not while it kept resisting Dio. Was that why? Was this a new way that rejection physically manifested? Leave it to Jojo to keep inconveniencing him, even from beyond the grave.
"It would be so much easier if you just accepted it," Dio told Jonathan, his tone lightly chastising, like he was helping him with his schoolwork. Jonathan's skull, resting before him on its lovely embroidered silk pillow, didn't respond. "You said we'd be together forever, didn't you? I made that possible, Jojo. Once your body stops resisting me, we'll truly be one."
What a perfect, glorious outcome that would be. Dio wanted to reach it so very badly, but he was stopped short. How unfair. There was no reason for Jonathan to be so damn stubborn. "But then again," Dio mused aloud, "you always were headstrong. I suppose it can't be helped." Such was the natural order of things - Dio pushed, and Jojo pushed back against him. Only up to a point, though. Jojo, the sentimental fool, was cursed with the burden of empathy. Always far too kind for his own good. And in the end, Dio knew he'd come around.
He traced his finger along one ivory-white cheekbone, gentle as a lover's caress. "It's alright, Jojo. You can take your time. I-" Dio's words dissolved into a new coughing fit, the worst so far, leaving him doubled over and struggling to recover. He brought a hand to his mouth to muffle the horrid sound of it, shoulders shaking as he finally managed to stop. What a demeaning, pathetic thing to go through. Even worse, when Dio looked at his hand, he noticed blood splattered across the skin, and his mouth twisted into a grimace.
And then his eyes widened as he took a closer look. Amongst the crimson droplets, delicately placed upon his palm, there were two soft pink petals.
Dio stared at them blankly for a full minute, before crushing them in his hand and letting the sad, mangled remains flutter to the floor.
The first instance had been easy to ignore, but the truth became undeniable in the next few days.
The petals kept coming. Two, three, four at a time, in different colors and shapes, until finally Dio opened his hand to reveal an entire flower. Readily recognizable as a marigold, bold bright orange lined in yellow. It was perfectly intact, in full bloom, lovely and fragrant as if he'd just picked off the stem. Only the blood tinging the delicate petals betrayed its actual origin.
(Idly, Dio recalled a language without words; one of the many he’d had to learn, to fit into Victorian society. A way to keep intentions and desires veiled under a layer of plausible deniability, using flowers as their vehicle of meaning. He’d always thought it laughably prudish. Beneath him.)
(Marigolds were the warmth of the sun. Marigolds were grief, mourning, and jealousy. )
He couldn't brush this aside anymore; spitting out flowers wasn't a symptom of the body's rebellion. Dio had a vague idea of what it could truly mean, though he found that possibility distasteful at best. An old, ridiculous folk tale - but the same could have been said of creatures like him, he supposed.
Asking Enyaba might have been quicker and easier, but Dio didn't want anyone knowing about his strange affliction, especially if his suspicions proved true. He spent the night combing through his extensive library instead, and found his answer in an old, dusty compendium of rare illnesses, bound in discoloured leather. Probably older than him, given the way the pages threatened to crumble under his careful touch.
The book spoke of his exact symptoms. Diagnosed him with a lifespan of a few months, a year at best, his condition worsening until it destroyed him from the inside. But the worst offence of all was the cause it presented, written in bold black letters upon the yellowing paper. Dio read the entry carefully, commiting each line to memory, and then burned the book to ash. As he held it over a candle, ignoring the bite of the flames licking at his fingers, a single sentence looped in his mind, like a merciless, inescapable accusation. Caused by an unrequited love.
The word felt foreign to him. Love was for hopeless, foolish romantics like Jonathan. He'd- he'd loved that plain country girl of his, hadn’t he? Pure nonsense, the way love made him act. The way his eyes would light up and he’d smile wide when he talked about her. All the wistful sighing and secretive whispers and giggles. It’d made Dio’s blood boil then, and it did now.
Was it love? How he wanted, more than anything else, to be forever bound to Jonathan? Craved him so very badly, like a piece of his own soul, to the point that he was unable to understand who he'd even be without his presence? He had wished for an unbreakable, tangible bond, tangling their bodies together along with their souls, and so he'd made Jonathan his - bone, flesh, and sinew, taken it all to himself so no one else could have him. Not her, and not his stupid spellstruck friend, who’d looked at Jonathan like he was the sun itself.
(But that didn’t change the fact that Jojo had never said his name like he said that girl’s. Never with that overpowering warmth; the soft, aching affection. Back then, Dio would imagine what that could have sounded like, and he would seethe in silence. Angry that he’d even entertain such a thought.)
(Jojo hadn't loved him.)
"She never deserved you," he growled at Jonathan's skull. It remained perfectly impassive. "She never even knew you. Not like I did."
The ugly, jagged scar that ran its way around his neck ached. Dio pulled down the collar hiding it to touch it gingerly, and his fingertips came away crimson red.
Dio was quite convinced the flower curse couldn't kill him. This disease, born of a wretched sentimentality, was purely human in its nature; it couldn't overpower his vampiric resilience.
That didn't mean it was painless, though. Oh, no, it hurt. It tore his throat to shreds, the wild plants filling his windpipe to bursting and breaking through to keep on growing. Dio choked on them constantly, silenced by their presence, words entangled in the vines that replaced his vocal chords. Nothing had hurt this much since he'd felt his body crumble away into dust, shattered by the righteous, white-hot power of Jojo's sunlight.
And even then, that pain had been mercifully quick, nerves burning away the moment after the agony of it registered in his mind. This was different. He felt every excruciating second of it, thanks to his superhuman perception, informing him of the blossoming growth inside him with cruel precision. He felt cartilage and lung tissue stitching themselves back together, his vampiric regeneration kicking in like clockwork to patch over the wounds, new strands of cells knitting lattices around and through the plants inside him.
He wondered what he'd find if he tore open his chest and looked inside. The lungs he didn't need, turned into a botanical garden. Bronchioles becoming branches and stems, and alveoles blossoming into flowers. Rich, crimson blood running through phloem sieve-tubes, or sap coursing through his veins - was there a difference anymore?
(He could never have loved like Jojo did. No, his love was an ugly, vicious thing, consuming him from the inside out. Destroying the both of them in the process. It always had been.)
(Would anything have changed, had Dio understood it back then? No - it would have disgusted his sweet, gentle Jonathan, who loved like the first rays of sunshine at daybreak. Such was fate, he supposed.)
He hadn't left the safety and privacy of his bedroom in weeks now. Perhaps there were rumours among those who served him, of why he might be hiding away from the world, but Dio couldn't spare the energy to care. Pet Shop guarded his door unwaveringly and Vanilla brought him bodies to feed on, and that was enough. These sacrifices were the only people ever privy to the state he was in - but the horror in their eyes as they noticed the vines and thorns breaking through his skin was short-lived, just like them. Those nameless victims fell dead at his feet, amidst the colourful tapestry of petals and leaves. Funerary flowers that weren't meant for them.
(It came as a shock to find that, in a way, the curse extended to his stand. He didn’t dare summon The World, couldn’t bear to face one more terrible truth, but he felt it all the same - the thorny vines of Jonathan’s latent stand wrapped all around it, tight around Dio’s very soul. The one thing that should remain untouched, safe from intrusion, and still it was consumed by him. It was almost funny - when Dio had proclaimed them entwined by destiny, he hadn’t known the half of it. Perhaps there really was someone above, pulling the strings, laughing and laughing at his predicament.)
His days passed in a haze. Mostly, he lay still on his bed, his gaze unfocused and glassy, dreaming without sleeping. Replaying his memories of Jonathan, Jonathan, Jonathan. Running around outdoors, nose buried in a history book, radiant after winning a sports match. So unbearably, incomprehensibly bright.
Jonathan, yelling in rage and grief; crackling energy in the air around him, brandishing his sword with fire in his eyes.
(Gladioli, flower of the warrior, littered around him. A sign of remembrance. Strength of character and moral integrity. The more Dio tried to sweep them away, the more they emerged from his traitorous body.)
When he had the strength, Dio felt the urge to arrange the flowers around Jonathan's skull, as if decorating a shrine. He wanted to weave them together, but he didn't know how to. As a kid, Jonathan had made flower crowns often. He'd even tried to teach Dio, but it'd always seemed like such a frivolous and silly activity to him. Why bother, when they would wilt and die so quickly?
Why does that matter?, Jojo would ask, his eyes crinkling with laughter. Not everything has to last forever, Dio. Just enjoy them while they're here.
Jojo didn't get it. He couldn't possibly understand. He'd always loved the little things, the fleeting moments - he himself had burned incandescent, only to be snuffed out so soon. But Dio loathed ephemerality. He wanted everything he had a right to and more, and he wanted to grasp it tight and keep it forever.
(To the best of his ability, Dio weaved pink camellias and yellow tulips, offering them like a silent plea. He hated how clumsy his hands felt, struggling with such a simple task.)
(Longing for one who is missed. Someone cheerful, someone with sunshine in their smile.)
(The yellow tulips mocked his hopeless, one-sided love, too. It was easier to pretend he didn’t remember that particular meaning.)
The truth, plain and simple, was that Dio missed him. He missed Jojo and it hurt more than the strangling roots twisting in his insides. Not the conflict or the fighting, just- him.
(In his mind, Jonathan's face had begun to blur and fade. Dio acutely remembered the striking blue of his eyes, but the rest of his features shifted around and refused to materialise into the correct image. Dio was forgetting, and that terrified him.)
(He sat before Jonathan's skull and mentally tried to reconstruct his face layer by layer. Skin stretched over muscle and fat and veins. It never worked, of course.)
I won, he thought, bitter and angry. Dio had won, so why should he have to feel this… this remorse? This didn’t feel like victory. Victory shouldn’t mean questioning himself, wondering over and over if things could have been different. It wasn’t fair.
"Jojo, answer me." Do you hate me?, he wanted to ask. "I did the right thing. You know I did. I couldn't let myself die. I couldn't let you die. Was I supposed to sit still and let us fade into oblivion?" Like you wanted? Should I have honored your last wish?
With trembling fingers, he touched the gaping, flowering wounds where there had once been haphazard stitches. This cycle would never stop. The flowers destroyed him every day, only for his body to heal and begin the process anew. On and on, for the rest of his immortal life. Dio was exhausted.
Yes, he could end it himself. It would be so simple to walk outside, greet the light he'd been hiding from for a century, and let it burn through him. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. Would he get to see Jonathan again? Would he forgive Dio once more, embrace him with that same heart-wrenching gentleness?
(How Dio longed for that embrace. The split-second of peace he’d felt in Jonathan’s arms, before being engulfed in an inferno of his own making.)
It was a terrible temptation. Dio was so tired. But it was a risk he couldn't take. If he died and simply never met with Jojo again - if he ended up somewhere else, or nowhere at all - then what? No, death wasn't an option, like it never had been.
(In his delirium, Dio thought himself buried alive in a sea of ruby petals. A coffin of red anemones. Appropriate, of course. They whispered of death and forsaken love.)
He hadn’t… he hadn’t survived this long just to give up now.
Death… was the one thing he refused to accept.
Better to lay there, and ache, and let the cycle begin anew.