Chapter Text
Someone is calling his name.
Despite how the lantern isn’t enough light, Giorno holds it up in front of him, straining to make out the shadows on the curves of the cave.
The cave is too symmetrical, he thinks, reminds him too much of a wasp’s nest, a massive thing that shouldn’t be bothered.
But there it is again, someone calling his name, though the worry and warmth in the voice comes familiar now.
“Trish?!” He calls and picks up speed towards her voice. The relief in her voice—
“Giorno?! Where are you?!”
“I’m here! Stay there! I’ll come to…”
He trails off when he sees her, not because there’s anything wrong with her—her beauty on full display in a floor-length dress violent in its midnight color, littered with stars—but he quiets at the sight of the cage bars.
Putting his hands on them, he shakes them to no avail, his voice tight as he says firmly, “It’s alright, I’ll get you out, Trish.”
Confusion furrows her gaze, and she glances down.
He follows and notices the metal under his feet––that in fact, the bars are keeping him in.
Grief splinters her, in that terrible way that makes her bite her lip as she moves closer, slipping a hand through the bars to settle on his cheek. Her skin impossibly warm and he thinks of fevers.
Trish murmurs to him, “You don’t have to be afraid.”
“I’m not, I just—“ he moves to grab higher at the bars but freezes when he sees his hands.
As he watches, his nails meld into the elongating bones of his fingertips, splitting skin. He takes a step back, clenching his teeth to stop the horrible stabbing that’s starting in them, but his jaw falls, grows. If he looks down, he can see his teeth leaving him, replaced by twisted sharp bones. His spine cracks left and right and he groans painfully at his body pushing itself around like pebbled concrete.
It doesn’t stop, the broiling in his gut and the burning in his eyes only strengthening when he looks up to see her watching him.
But not with fear. No, she’s not afraid. She looks sorry for him.
Giorno’s throat tightens, but it only serves to gargle a guttural yell that escapes him. His limbs moving on their own and he realizes too late that he lunges. The bars gone, his claws shove far past her ribs before he jolts awake in a cold sweat.
Nobody is allowed in the room. It’s stupid.
Hushed words scrape against the wood door like crooked branches at night.
The moment they got home, Giorno was whisked away behind closed doors by the lab coats. The house swarming with clean-cut chins and coke-bottle glasses that smelled of soap and metal— that told her she couldn’t follow him in and that she had to wait with the others while they ran blood tests.
On the car ride home, Mista told her they were coming. She’d huffed and held her arms tight. Decided it was pointless to be angry at Polnareff for calling them. Instead, she watched Giorno breathe shallowly from where he slept on her lap, brushed a lock behind his ear.
In the bigger parlor now, Mista’s boot taps on the floor at high speed like a rabbit’s.
“Hey, stop.” Fugo snips.
The gunman snaps back to reality and stops thumping, stands up instead to pace with a scrunched face. “Agh! I can’t stand just waiting! Why can’t we see him?!”
“Whining about it doesn’t make time go by any faster, Mista. Just sit down.”
“Time shouldn’t have to go by! What are they doing in there that we can’t see?! I’ve been around for Giorno getting blood taken before, it’s not like he’s uncomfortable with it or some shit! Trish, come on, you of all people should be in there, right?"
From her seat in the armchair against the wall, she just looks up at him. Blinks. Doesn’t expect him to understand.
With a thick huff, he throws himself back into his seat and swears, takes off his hat to run fingers through untamed curls.
She feels Fugo’s gaze shift to her, thinking and on the brink of asking, but she doesn’t meet it and instead studies the woven ivy patterns on the wool. Leaves and animals unaware that they’re roped by branches that could tighten at any moment, nooses hanging right outside of their view, around their necks.
She hates it. Whenever the Foundation shows up, it puts her on a different planet than Mista and Fugo. It’s what she can’t talk about— what Giorno made her promise she wouldn’t talk to them about a long time ago. And by the end of these visits, they resent her for it, think she’s shoving them away from herself and Giorno just to cut them out of a loop. It’s stupid. It’s every time. And for at least a week afterwards, she always finds it’s harder to talk to Giorno for more than five minutes without her blood pressure rising.
The others should know. Sure, it feels good to be the only one in on a one of Giorno’s most tightly kept secrets, but... it’s a matter of their own safety, and they should know they live in the same house as a—
The door snaps open for a lab coat with a wispy grey comb-over, “Signorina Una.”
She rises, fights the inevitable dread rising in her throat and walks. The other two watch her nod to the Foundation member and follow the man out.
They walk down the west hallway, Trish hating every step she has to take knowing she steps alongside an intruder, a wolf parading around in sheep’s skin and she has to play nice. Ugh.
“Ah, la signorina della casa! ”
It’s always a hot spike between her shoulders every time she hears that smoker's rock and grit voice. She turns to address the bastard, “You can go back to circling in the air, he’s not dead yet.”
Clint Warwick grumbles that laugh deep in his throat, strolls down the hall towards her, “You’ll find I’m not so eager as all that, carina .” From the shade of the hallway comes that long burgundy wool jacket with a small tear in the shoulders. Weathered by time that hasn’t been kind to him—and not like he’d been kind back. A scar trails from his ear to his lip that has always seemed stuck in an odd half-grin.
The first time he stepped on their doorstep was that night after the horse race, only two months ago—and already it felt like the man had been in their shadows for as long as Trish could remember glancing behind her.
“Glad to see you dyed your hair white,” Trish says across the hallway. “It was aging you to have it grey at the roots.”
“Oh, you think so? I appreciate the honesty.” Warwick nods to the lab coat awkwardly waiting beside her. “I’ll take her from here, Calvin.”
The coat, apparently named Calvin, scurries off like a good dog to leave them alone.
After a polite smile, Warwick resumes the walk with her, “I figure, with some good sleep tonight, your Don will be up and back to working by morning.”
“No thanks to you and your so called ‘research,’” Trish mutters.
“We’ve made great strides in understanding what’s happening to him,” Warwick assures, “all of which has greatly aided in keeping you kids safe.”
“What do you do here again?” Trish asks. “Observe and laugh? Like you did when the prime minister got killed on your watch and got your cop-ass fired?”
"Signorina." Warwick steps in front of her to stop, and she takes pleasure in how he growls like she hit a nerve, “I know you don’t want me here. I don’t want to be here either. To be frank, I’d rather be in Capri on my sailboat. But understand I was sent here for your protection.”
“By blackmailing a dying man to do your Foundation’s dirty work?”
Warwick gruffs a sigh, “Look—”
She whacks the hand about to land on her shoulder, “Don’t.”
Resigning his hands to his sides, Warwick starts again, “I’m just following orders to keep myself and the people I care about safe. Same as you.” He eyes her, “Or have you been staying by his side for more selfish reasons?”
She doesn’t understand why it stings so much but she hurries to smother salt in the wound to spit, “Just syphon out whatever blood is killing him and piss off then.”
Warwick nods like it was a great solution, “I’m sorry child, but I can’t. Although I wish it were that simple.”
A moment passes where she thinks she could melt him, where the thought flashes that maybe they would send a new toy soldier if this one went missing. But she restrains herself, once again, for fucking Giorno’s sake.
She shoves past Warwick, muttering that he’s a terrible escort.
As the man turns to follow, he calls to her back, “I would worry less about protecting him, signorina , when there’s other more alive people you can keep safe right now.”
Clenching her teeth, she forces herself to keep walking, the older man carrying on to follow a pace behind.
Warwick 'escorts’ her as far as the master suite, passes her off to another white coat with a tip of his hat.
Then she’s led through Giorno’s personal parlor, now draped in tubes like weeds and sterilized tables and microscopes and people that stop to look at her when she enters. Eyes following as they cross the room to the bedroom door.
When the lab coat turns the knob, dread drenches down her back at what’s coming. Though when the door opens, she sees Giorno standing by the window still in his forest green outfit, arms crossed and back hunched. Relief cools her nerves somewhat, not made better by when he turns to them.
His eyes are sunken in, heavy and needing a rest he can never get anymore, and he looks irritated by it, and by how he intermittently shivers.
“ Signorina Una, as requested.”
He probably got out of bed for her, since he knows she hates seeing him that sick. Reminds her too much of her mom in the hospital. She allows, “Nice seeing you up and about.” It’s as much of a ‘thank you’ as he’s getting.
Forcing his back alittle straighter, he crosses the room to greet them, “Well, I wanted to take a walk through the house, but they insisted I take someone with me.”
“So I’m your babysitter?”
“If you don’t mind. I won’t whine much.”
Warmth seeps in her chest at his lighter tone, and she huffs a small smile, “Fine by me then.”
The lab coat is still there waiting with the door open. So Trish asks, “Is he coming too?”
Giorno cuts off the lab coat’s answer, “No, he’s not.”
The man settles before giving a curt nod.
“Shall we?” Giorno motions and follows Trish as she walks out.
They take the west corridor, down to the side of the house hazed in the evenings with leftover sunlight, now glittering through the crystal vases and chandeliers, a soft purple tinting dark curtains and woven rugs.
The wool muffles her heels and his night shoes as they shuffle on quietly. As she shuffles in waiting.
Finally he says, “They didn’t bring me jello this time.”
“You always just throw away that hospital shit anyways.”
“I do. But I like seeing them try.”
They shuffle past a vase she remembers buying in Venice for how prettily the ivy strangles its slender neck.
“What did Warwick want this time?” Trish asks. “He looked too happy with himself when I bumped into him in the hallway.”
Giorno relays, “They still want Ugo Barone. I told them we already fulfilled that request to the best of our ability by burning his brothel and blocking off the remains from public eye so they could excavate what wasn’t ashes in the sewer. The official report surmises that he had abandoned the lab, taken the bulk of his research with him, and burned the remnants.”
Trish walks a few more steps, remembers Giorno’s flat lie to the Foundation––his need to hide what was down there from as many eyes as he could––before she re-buries the dried fact far back behind her eyes. She continues for him, “Then Ugo skipped the country before anyone could pin his location. Ran off to Croatia. We told them that soon as we found out.”
“Yes, and Warwick wasn’t pleased by that phone call. He told me he would discuss it with his superiors and get back to me.”
“So, Warwick got back to you today and... the Foundation wants what?”
Giorno purses his lips, “They want us to hunt Ugo down in Croatia.”
“Jesus.” Trish runs a hand through her hair. “ Lijeva Ruka hardly lets us run merchandise through their docks, much less set foot on their land.”
After another few steps, Giorno says, “We’re going to take over the whole Lijeva Ruka gang, and use their connections to find him.”
At this, Trish balks, resigning to a long sigh and mutter, “When are we going to tell them something’s impossible, Giorno? Or at least that it’s a terrible idea that’s going to get a lot of people killed?”
“Well,” Giorno allows, “after they’ve seen what we can do, especially the horse race in Siena–– Taking over a Croatian gang isn’t impossible or too risky for us in their eyes.”
‘Then maybe we shouldn’t’ve seized Cheisa’s territory so quickly,’ sits on her tongue, but she swallows it and asks instead, “I thought they were just going to be happy with what evidence and leads they found in the sewer?”
“There were only a few remnant pieces from Ugo’s research journals. They want the originals and the man himself alive to stand trial in their self-contained court.”
Trish nods, rubs the chill from her arms, “And what about what was in the sewer?”
At that, Giorno’s eyes skip around the hall a bit before he settles on a far-off corner, “The Foundation said they would take care of the people that were down there, when they find out where they’ve been moved.”
His shoulders tense up as obviously he’s struggling to swallow past how tight a collar he wears.
After a few more steps, Trish says quietly, “Is there really no way we can just... fight our way out of this one?”
“There’s always a way,” comes immediate, but then Giorno shakes his head, “Though, there are currently casualties we can’t afford.”
She thinks about what kind of threats were made behind those closed doors by Warwick, how Giorno’s gaze always seemed to darken and how much his eyes seemed to catch on her afterwards.
“Giorno,” she stops walking.
He comes to a stop a couple steps ahead, turning to look at her.
Collecting her thoughts does nothing but create a numbing whirlpool so she just sighs, “You have to tell the guys what you are.”
“No,” he shakes his head and takes a step towards her, “And I told you to not concern yourself with my––”
“In a situation like this, with your state, they need to know so they can help at the very least with the organization’s business matters . And you seriously think they’ll leave? Mista? Fugo?”
“Any sensible person would.”
“They’d die for you, Giorno. They’ve shown that a hundred times over. Believe it or not, they actually aren’t sensible people.”
At that he chuckles a bit, dryly. Lost in thought for a moment before saying, “And what about you?”
Trish eyes him, huffs, “Am I sensible, is that what you’re asking?”
And Giorno just watches her. Stares at her with that blank look she knows is his buried look of a child pleading for something he doesn’t deserve.
Trish relents with a sigh, “No, I’m not. I figured that was obvious.”
His smile afterwards is brief. He’s worried about it being too long, saying too much, giving too much away to her and so he turns to continue walking. It burns under her skin.
She doesn’t budge and calls, “How long?”
“How long what?” His back to her.
“How long do you have?”
Giorno stops walking, standing in the still air for a moment before allowing a long exhale. He tells her over his shoulder, “They don’t know for sure. But, they told me three weeks.”
Three weeks. Back when she first asked what would happen to him after... after everything ran its course—when there’d be no inkling of his humanity left—he hadn’t answered her. Only given a soft smile under the moon’s glow. A knowing, horrible thing that raked across her heart.
He treats it like death. His own shadow haunting his every step, growing larger as the moon wanes.
Her voice comes so quiet, even though it’s a question she’s asked before, “Will you die?”
Seconds pass where he doesn’t answer, before he gives her that gut-punch of a soft smile.
It twists her stomach and pulses behind her eyes and she stomps over to him and hisses harsh, “You want to, don’t you ?”
“Trish,” something pinches behind his cage-bar eyes, “of course I don’t.”
“But you do. You don’t want to be like your dad, so you’d rather die, right?”
He doesn’t answer. His expression tempered to flat lines.
So she smiles for him—without her eyes—shaking her head, “I can tell when you’re planning bullshit. And it makes perfect sense. You don’t trust yourself to follow through with it, do you? That’s why you won’t tell Mista and Fugo until the end, because you’re planning on having them pull the trigger?”
Despite how she expects a mask of knowing with just another calmly measured answer—when Giorno looks up to meet her eyes, his look is crushing. She thinks the moon just fell on her, she thinks she’ll throw up. She says, “You—You only told me because... You would actually ask me to kill you?”
Even as his expression shifts to delicate and careful—how she watches his lips part to try to talk her into it—her heart thuds heavy and fast, her lungs weighted as she takes a step back and spouts, “I can’t— I can’t fucking believe you. Y-You’re a sick horrible bastard a nd I––”
He closes the gap and kisses her.
Trish freezes, the fire in her veins now lightning but she struggles to feed it into movement, her mind’s wires all snapped by the warm breath he’s closed in her––how the pulling kiss tugs taut with desperation, restrained because it was only a taste. The shared touch smearing with the strawberry chapstick he hides in his desk. She remembers catching him in the act of applying it earlier, not saying anything to interrupt the way the soft of his lips pressed against it, enjoying the ache it put in hers.
Her eyes slide closed. God, how long had it been?
Too soon, Giorno carefully separates from her. His eyes not meeting hers, a slight red rising to his ears as he backs away, parting his lips to––
“Signore?”
They both jump. Down the hall behind Giorno, it’s one of the lab coats. Trish thinks she could tear her own hair out.
“Do you need something?” Giorno delivers with a perfectly polite tone–– the one that says he’s fuming too.
“N-Not urgently, signore. My apologies, it’s just time for your follow-up dose.”
Giorno nods just short of a tired sigh and dismisses, “Go wait in the parlor.”
As the man obeys, scurrying back down the hall, Trish watches the weight sink Giorno’s shoulders.
Endless doses and exams, and a part of her thinks to feel pity, but that’s the part that isn’t still simmering.
When he turns back to her, it’s with his eyes still on the rug. “Trish, I—“
“Why did you kiss me?”
Giorno’s eyes flicker over her, snagging on her lips before retreating back to the ground. “I... I didn’t know when the next time would be.”
Against the embers still burning in her throat— her lips— the steel under her eyes softens ever so slightly.
Giorno’s lips part for a moment before he straightens, “I apologize. It was wrong of me to impose on you like that, Trish. Thank you for accompanying me. I’ll see you in the morning.” And with that, he turns to leave her.
Despite how much of a dramatic ass he’s being, despite how much her patchwork bones groan from when he left her on the ground in pieces and she thinks that maybe he even deserves that hunch in his shoulders––she feels a traitorous pull in her ribs. And she grits a swear through her teeth.
Trish takes two quick steps to snatch his wrist, earning a surprised grunt out of him as she yanks him down the hall in the other direction.
Barely catching himself from falling, Giorno stumbles after her. “Trish, what are you––?”
“Come on,” Trish throws over her shoulder, “I need you to run an errand with me.”