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It doesn't take Pucci long to realize that Whitesnake is not like other stands. In the walls of Dio's mansion, he sees firsthand the way most stands behave, how they manifest, the way they function. From the simplicity of Hol Horse's Emperor, to the eerie specificity of Tohth's predictions, to the might and majesty of Dio's World, he sees how varied they are. Some might be humanoid, while others are anything but. Some resemble items that exist, while others take the shapes of things that haven't ever existed. There are stands that speak for their users, parroting the words they think and say. Others remain mute, ready to strike when bidden to. Each of them is different in some way, from shape to function to power.
But all of them are without any personality of their own. They're tools, hammers and saws and sandpaper, meant to be wielded and directed at all moments. The sharpest can respond to the users thought. Others require direct and clear instructions to be delivered all time. All of them obey without question, no matter the order.
Whitesnake is not like any of them.
His second week at the mansion, Whitesnake summons himself. Pucci doesn't realize he's done it, not until he reaches for his water and finds it moved. When he looks, he spots Whitesnake standing a few feet away, holding the glass in his hands. It's such an unexpected sight that Pucci goes still, staring at his stand in mute surprise.
Whitesnake looks up at Pucci and puts the glass to his mouth. He drains it dry with three long gulps and hisses once done. The sound is ugly and unpleasant. His eyes stare at Pucci, as if challenging him to say something. When Pucci has no response at all, Whitesnake slams the glass down on the table and shatters it easily. He’s gone a second later, not so much fading away as melting, his body changing to white goo and then collapsing. The water sloshes out of the space he used to be in, falling onto the floor. The only sign he was here is in the puddle on the floor and the remains of Pucci’s water glass.
Three days later, Pucci wakes up and finds Whitesnake watching him while he sleeps. His stand is sitting in a chair across the room. He doesn't need to. Stands don't get tired. They're tied to their user's energy, but it's not the other way around. There's no reason for Whitesnake to need to sit, or to need to be out.
But there he is, sitting anyway, watching Pucci. His pupils drip and smear. There's something in the look he's leveling at Pucci that feels furious, as if Pucci is the one behaving inappropriately.
"What are you doing?" Pucci asks before he can think better. He rubs at his eyes and sits up. What's he talking to his stand for? It's just because he's half asleep and surprised by his presence. Pucci gives him a command, dismissing him verbally since his stand isn't responding to his mind's requests for Whitesnake to leave. "Go away."
Whitesnake hisses again and goes. This time, the goo lingers a moment longer than it should. It almost feels like it's testing it's limits. Or maybe it's reminding Pucci that he doesn't understand what it's all capable of, or what it can say no to.
The next time he sees Whitesnake, Pucci summons him deliberately. He's outside of the mansion, making his way past street vendors and stalls when he realizes he's being trailed. It's the first time anyone's followed him here. It's also the first time he's been this far away from the mansion, and entirely alone. The man must be a mugger who thinks he's found an easy mark.
Pucci slips into an alleyway, not wanting to draw attention to what's about to happen. He whispers his stand's name, "Whitesnake. Get ready." and makes his way to the end of it, all the while acting the part of the confused tourist. Pucci knows he must look it. He must also look rich in his tidy clothes and his nice shoes. He must look like the easiest mark this man has ever seen.
Whitesnake appears, sliding out from behind Pucci. He casts a dark look towards the mouth of the alley. The man hasn't followed Pucci in yet. But he will, and when he does-
"You'll be a murderer. Again." A voice hisses. Pucci startles, head turning to see who's said it.
Whitesnake looks at Pucci. This close, Pucci can see every line on his face, the repeating letters written on his skin. GACTGACTGACTGACT as far as his eyes can see. There's no one else here. But if there's no one else here, then who spoke? "Whitesnake-"
"You lost? Need help back to your hotel?" A man asks. His english is fairly good. Pucci turns, giving him the kind of smile tourists do when they've found someone friendly to help them. The man doesn't even question it as Pucci comes near, both his hands where they can be seen. His eyes are on the good clothes and the young boy, and not the creature that slips between them.
But Whitesnake doesn't strike, not until Pucci says, "Take his memory disc." Then he's like greased lightening, his hand striking through the skull and tearing the disc free. There's a wound for a moment, red and bare and raw, and then nothing as it closes up again. The man stops, his eyes going blank as he's left with no memory at all. He might recover in time, if his will is strong enough. That seems unlikely from .
He leaves the man to fall to his knees as he walks out. Beside him strolls Whitesnake. Again, that voice comes, soft and hateful. "You found it easy."
This time, he looks to Whitesnake. The voice came from him. Pucci didn't see his mouth move, but he knows that Whitesnake's the only one here who could speak. But can a stand even speak? You can talk through one, but Pucci isn't talking to himself right now. He would know it.
"What's going on?" He asks. Whitesnake says nothing. He melts, he dissipates. Pucci's left holding a CD in his hands, which he disposes of in the nearest trash bin. Behind him, the mugger sinks to the ground. He isn't dead yet, no matter what the voice might have said. But... he's right.
It was easy, in the end.
It happens again, though not regularly. He never catches Whitesnake talking. But he knows he must be. He must be. He's the only one who's always with Pucci. Whitesnake is the only one who's seen the things Pucci's seen.
There’s also the possibility that he’s wrong about that. Whitesnake might not be talking at all. Perhaps it’s Pucci imagining he can hear it. People who suffer a traumatic life event react in unpredictable ways. It was perhaps fair to say that Pucci had undergone one of those. He hadn’t exactly stuck around to go to counseling, other than a single talk with Father Aarons, and Pucci had known exactly what to say to him in order to leave without any further questions directed his way. He knew even then that Father Aarons had no answers for him. Only Dio did.
Dio does not have books on coping with trauma in his library. There are many stores in Cairo but most of them sell books written either in Arabic or in French, and the English books they have are classics rather than modern books. Pucci is forced to visit the airport and to browse the book shop there, filled with popular paperbacks and a handful of self-help guides. The one he finds says that sometimes people who have suffered a deep loss might find unconventional ways of coping. They may experience hallucinations. They may disassociate.
Whitesnake is behind him. He sees glimpses of his stand out of the corner of his eyes. He’s handling his own book. The stand presses it into Pucci’s hands, covering the self-help book. The cover is bland compared to others on the shelves, white text, black background.
“A brief history of time?” He asks Whitesnake. When he opens it up, he finds diagrams and a scientific but engaging way of writing. Science for the masses, meant to be understandable and entertaining for many rather than only a few.
“For Dio.” The voice sounds annoyed, as if angry that Pucci can’t figure this out on his own. “He’ll like this.”
It does look like the sort of thing Dio would enjoy. Pucci turns it in his hands and wonders, did he pick this up? Did he spot it and make Whitesnake hand it to him? He turns to look, to see, but Whitesnake is gone. Pucci buys it, and the self-help book on grief.
The voice is right - Dio does like the book. He promptly makes Pucci read it as well, though he doesn’t have to, not when Dio is constantly reading passages from it to Pucci and probing him with questions to make him think about the material. It reminds him a little of the few engaged teachers he’s had over the years, the ones who wanted more than just passing grades as proof of learning. He doesn’t say that to Dio, who he suspects would be somewhat irritated to be compared to a school teacher, but the comparison remains. Dio expands Pucci’s mind and broadens his horizons. He challenges him in a way that makes his time here in Egypt more valuable than anything else he could be doing with it.
Pucci reads the self-help book and remains no closer to understanding why a sneering arrogant voice would be what he chose to hallucinate. He throws the glossy hardcover away in the end. It doesn’t have anything valuable.
Instead of wasting his time on guesses and might-be’s, Pucci goes off of what he knows is true. The voice only speaks to him when Whitesnake is around. Sometimes, Whitesnake appears even when Pucci doesn’t call for him. Whitesnake looks at Pucci like he finds him disgusting. The voice sounds like it finds Pucci disgusting too.
So, the truth is that Whitesnake is talking to him. Talking through your stands is something he’s seen the others do, but a stand talking to someone?
“Do you think a stand could talk to their user?” He asks Dio one night while they sit outside in the courtyard together. Pet Shop keeps a close eye on them. It’s sort of like having a chaperone. He’s only seen glimpses of Pet Shop’s stand, as mute as its master. “Not use them to talk. But, to talk to the stand, as if it were it’s own person?”
“It’s rare, but it happens. A stand is a reflection of your inner self. It’s shaped by your desires, forged by personality, and restricted by your own limitations.” Dio’s eyes are a soft glowing red under the moonlight. When he looks at Pucci, it’s as if he can see straight through him, right to the core of his being. “To make a stand that is truly conscious, they would need cast out part of themselves to live permanently within the stand.”
Pucci’s teeth seize his lip and worry a little at it, his mind going to primes in an instant. He turns a handful over in his mind as he considers what Dio’s saying. Casting out a part of yourself. And what would you push away from yourself? What you find repulsive or disgusting or distasteful. He grasps onto something else Dio’s said, “It wouldn’t be talking to your stand then. Not really. It would just be yourself.”
“A reflection of you, shaped by rejection.” Dio’s hand falls to Pucci’s shoulder. It’s cold. He’s always very cold. Pucci tilts his head up towards the night sky, towards the vast fields of stars. They go on forever. The History of Time mentioned that the stars they see are dead and gone. They’re so far away that by the time their light travels to earth to be seen, centuries upon centuries have passed. When they look at the night sky, they’re really gazing into the past. For a moment, they’re able to travel through time together, moving into a past that happened long before even Dio was born. For just a moment, he can taste what it might be like to live within Dio’s world.
Dio’s hand gives Pucci’s shoulder a squeeze. He must know that Pucci’s trying not to think about what he’s said too deeply. But he’s nudged, prompted to reflect, and so he does.
What is it in Pucci that he hates so much that he would push away? Something hateful. Something evil. Whitesnake, undeserving of a tarot name. Whitesnake, always contemptuous. He thinks of the serpent in the garden, hissing sweet words to Eve and coaxing her to eat of the fruit. Whitesnake has no sweetness or charm in him, just venom and malice waiting to be spit indiscriminately.
Dio’s hand curls around the back of Pucci’s neck. The touch is casual, warm in meaning at least, even though it sends chills up and down his spine. It’s so cold out here. The primes still in his mind for a moment. He doesn’t need them when he has Dio by him, eternal and endless. Dio’s voice is whisper soft, like silk over a shape blade. “Does your stand speak to you?”
"Sometimes," a voice says. Pucci doesn't look back to see Whitesnake. He doesn't have to, not when Dio turns to look at him and he can see him reflected in the whites of Dio's eyes. Whitesnake looms behind them, white and purple and hateful.
“Will you speak to me?” Dio asks. Whitesnake says nothing, but his head tilts just slightly, and Dio smiles at the sight of it. Pucci finally follows Dio’s gaze, to see exactly what it is that Whitesnake has done to make him so pleased.
He just stands there, holding in place moment before he melts away with no further words and no sign he was there at all. Dio’s eyes fix on the empty space he inhabited, lingering there a while before it he turns back to look at Pucci. His hand remains on Pucci’s neck, those big fingers stroking over the knobs of his spine.
The next day, Dio introduces Pucci to the other thinking stands. Anubis is a stand bound to a sword, a great and terrible creature that’s long outlived its master. The jackal is cold and cruel, all sharp teeth and vicious eyes, looking for any reason to kill. Empress is mocking and snide, just as cruel as Anubis. Of the two stands, only one user is alive, and Nena’s a stranger entirely, a person who hides within the bodies of others rather than show herself. He can’t get a read on how much of her is there beneath someone else’s skin, and how much of her is the stand she uses.
It only raises further questions in him. And when he summons Whitesnake to show his stand to the others, he stands there silent, refusing to move on his own. Only his eyes reveal the slightest hint that there’s something more behind them, something intelligent that chooses not to speak rather than having no choice.
Only when they’re alone, only when Pucci isn’t looking at him, does he hear Whitesnake speak. His stand comes when it wants to and Pucci hates how helpless he feels, his stand in control of him rather than the other way around. It does as he tells it to, but there’s resistance there, as if constantly reminding Pucci that this isn’t the smooth, easy flow that every other stand user has.
He watches the others carefully from then on out. Hol summons the Emperor without a second of hesitation, just the slightest flex of his hand to make room as it appears. Mariah never strains at all, Bastet simply appears where she wants with the slightest of glances, and slipping away just as quickly when she tires of it. Atum and Cream come when called, both moving to anticipate their users requests without so much as a word from either Telence or Vanilla. Meanwhile Whitesnake is often reluctant to do anything without a direct order from Pucci, even though he knows that Whitesnake must hear his mind command him, same as Atum and Cream and the World hear their users.
Pucci’s not a hateful person. He’s not cruel. There’s no contempt in him. And it’s not as if it was all there before Whitesnake and only left with him. Pucci’s always been a good person. He was thoughtful and kind. He wanted to be a priest so he could help people. He was well-liked, and people always said how much they admired him.
When he thinks that, Whitesnake just looks at Pucci and bares his teeth in a cruel smile. “Tell yourself what you want. That doesn’t make it true.”
But it is true. It is. He’s a dutiful son. He’s a good student. He was a good brother to Perla. Except-
“Except when it mattered most.” His stand slouches in the corner of his room. Those blank pupils drip and ooze, staring at Pucci like he killed Perla with his own two hands.
“It was fate.” He says. His stand scoffs, sneers, melts back into thin air. Pucci repeats it, knowing his stand can hear him even when he’s gone. “It was inevitable. We’re all fixed to our tracks.”
There’s no answer this time.