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There was something cruel in the reversal of roles Johnny was experiencing. He'd never really considered the idea of him being the one to carry Gyro; honestly, he hadn't even thought of it once. What sort of ridiculous concept was it, anyways? Johnny couldn't walk for the entirety of the race, but it had been fine, he'd had his Stand, he'd had the corpse, he'd had Gyro. When he needed to be carried, Gyro was there. He could rely on him, even though Johnny wouldn't admit that he did. But Johnny couldn't carry Gyro, no. He wasn't supposed to be the one lifting him up from the ground. Johnny wasn't able to do that. He wasn't capable. He couldn't believe he was.
Now, though, Johnny is carrying Gyro, and he is heavier than he thought he would be.
Stephen had brought back his limp, blue and grey corpse to New York early that morning.
Johnny had asked Stephen to do it, but he almost wishes he hadn't. He almost wishes that Gyro had been left at the bottom of the sea to rot and float away to Naples on his own, but that would be cruel. He wouldn't be able to live with himself if he let that happen.
So, Johnny carries Gyro's corpse to the morgue, takes the items off his body that he wouldn't need (he kept the man's clothes on. There was no want in his soul to desecrate the man's dignity now) and noticed the lack of a hat on his head. Johnny lets Gyro keep one of the green steel balls, keeping the other in his own pocket. Gyro didn't need both of them, especially considering he’d given the second to Johnny during their fight with Valentine. Johnny didn’t want to return it.
Gyro's curls are tangled in the padded wooden crate he laid in, matted with dried blood. Johnny asks the coroner for a cloth and a washbasin and is supplied with one.
Brushing Gyro's hair wasn't something Johnny had done before, but it had been something he'd thought about in the past, during the quiet moments at the campfire. He'd watch Gyro throw off his hat, only barely missing the flames, before he took his hairbrush out of his messy bag. The blond man would spend about five minutes brushing out his hair before giving up and throwing it into a ponytail and promptly falling asleep. That was about the extent of his night time routine. (Johnny didn't blame him, it was pretty difficult to have a semblance of any sort of routine on the road). Johnny had watched and wanted.
But now, he could take all he wanted to before. He only manages to brush Gyro's hair out for five minutes before his hands are shaking, and he feels like he's about to collapse onto the ground, even though he's sitting down. Johnny at least gets the blood out of his hair and face before allowing the cornor to embalm the body.
When the coroner is done, Johnny is allowed to fix up the corpse again. He ends up putting a wreath of lavenders, thyme, mint, and a few selfish roses in the casket around Gyro. The sensation of being about to vomit subsides, but by a minuscule margin.
They had a long journey across the sea ahead of them. Johnny wasn't sure if he wanted to be smelling the scent of a dead body the entire way there. (He’s aware that embalming takes away some of the scent, but he’s scared that he’d still smell it. He’d rather smell the flowers. They didn’t remind him of Gyro).
He spends too long standing above the casket, and only minutes after sunset, the coroner is back in the building and closing the wooden box with nails. Johnny stands there without much feeling in any of his limbs, eyes glazing over with something he hoped wasn't tears... he's vaguely aware that he'll never properly see Gyro's face again.
Johnny wishes they'd taken pictures together. He briefly wonders if Gyro's parents had pictures of him, or if he could find an old newspaper covering the race with an image of Gyro on it. He's sure he could find one from the first stage. No one would deny him that, right?
Johnny doesn't write any letters before he boards the ship to Naples. His father doesn't need to know where he's going (he might not even care, he hadn't spoken to Johnny after he failed to win the race), and Gyro's father wasn't one to care about niceties like that. Johnny wonders if Gregorio Zeppeli knows his son is dead yet. He wonders if he'll care.
Johnny says a prayer before he heads home, the feeling of the oceans wave bobbing him up and down as he stands. He hadn't been on a boat since he was young, sailing to and from Britain. He hopes it isn't difficult to get used to the sea. He'd only just started walking on his own.
Briefly, when he opens his eyes and watches the bay of New York disappear, he thinks he sees a hat floating in the water. He can't tell if it's the one he's searching for, but it's achingly familiar. It's gone as quickly as it came.
Johnny is going home.
(Gyro had called it home so many times on their trip, that Johnny hadn't been able to think of it as anything else. He thinks that if he'd asked, Gyro would have let him come with him, in another world. In a kinder, softer world).
He feels a hand touch his for a second, but the sensation is gone as quickly as the sight of the hat was
The trip home isn't as awful as Johnny had thought it would be. He meets Rina. He isn't sure what he feels about her, but he knows it isn't the same thing he felt about Gyro. Not exactly. He doesn't think he'll ever feel the same way about anyone the way he felt about Gyro. There isn't a single universe where he feels more strongly for someone else than he does for Gyro- he knows that at least.
But Rina is pleasant, and she brings him some relief in the way a companion should. She’s sweet, bright, and her laughs are nothing like the green-eyed cowboy he’d known. Johnny thinks he could grow to love her, if he learnt to let the grief settle in his heart.
Johnny stares out at the ocean for a long while during the voyage across it. When he's not below deck, he's up by the railing, leaning on it and watching the birds fly by towards safety, or glaring at the imminent rain clouds that sometimes harass them. Despite the threats of storms, the blues are rich and beautiful (Gyro had called Johnny's blue eyes beautiful once. Johnny had brushed off the comment before hitting Gyro's shoulder. The man had laughed).
The sun is bright in Naples, and the grass green, the breeze cool and soft, and nothing like the harsh winter winds or the blistering desert gales he'd endured during the race. The box tied to his shoulder gets heavier with every step he takes off the boat. He hails down a carriage taxi, using his limited knowledge of Neapolitan to speak to the driver, and manages to get to the country side estate he'd been told so much about.
The box behind him is nearly impossible to carry when he walks down the path to the old traditional style home of the Zeppeli's. It's exactly as Gyro had described it in his ramblings. (Johnny wishes he'd paid even more attention than he had- wishes he'd written down and recorded every single word Gyro had said, noted down every time he laughed and how it sounded, did everything in his power to remember).
Johnny soon learns that Gyro's family members are nothing like the deceased man. Where there was so much life and passion in Gyro, there is cold sternness and a practicality that borders on nihilism that inhabits their souls. He sees it most in Gregorio, and he wonders how Gyro had a father like this and came out the way he did. Bright, beaming, a beacon of meliorism that Johnny could not help but look to with reverence in the quiet of the night.
Johnny tells them about the race, tells them about what Gyro had done for him, and the world at large, all the while sitting on stiff and frankly horrible chairs in the living room painted a dark green. He'd rather be anywhere but here, under the stony and scrutinizing looks of Gyro's family members. (He doesn't tell them about the kiss they exchanged in the freezing weather after they defeated Sugar Mountain. He doesn't mention the hundreds of kisses they exchanged afterwards, or the warmth in his chest he felt when Gyro smiled at him with his stupid grills and his bright green eyes. Those are the things he keeps to himself, for only himself. Johnny knows he is selfish, and for once, he is okay with that.)
Gyro's family doesn't want to keep the body, and Johnny almost protests it when he hears the words come out of Gregorio's mouth. Why wouldn't they want to? Why would they let Johnny deal with it? Did they not love Gyro when he was alive? There was no real reason a family wouldn't want to keep their beloved son's corpse on a family plot, buried next to the rest of his dead relatives.
Well, unless they were Gyro's relatives, he supposed. The man had admitted to Johnny once that his family was not one for "sentimentalities" whatever that meant. Johnny hadn't been able to understand it at the time, but now he thinks he does. They simply existed around one another and fulfilled their duties. There was no emotion bringing them together. There wasn't any emotion allowed between them.
No wonder they hadn't cried, or asked to see Gyro's body, even after Johnny had explained everything.
Johnny is once again feeling selfish as he relishes possibly being the first person that Gyro allowed himself to attach a "sentiment" to. (He wants, for a moment, Gyro to haunt him in some way. A way that means he'll never forget the man, a way that ensures Gyro is forever kept close to him. Perhaps his death will be enough to haunt Johnny, but that can't be it. That can't be the only presence he gets to keep. He wants his arms around him again).
The family only has one picture of Gyro, and Johnny is allowed to take it without any protest. He'd seen it on the wall when he'd entered, and perhaps he'd stared at it too long, because Gyro's mother had taken it down, pulled it out of its frame, and handed it to Johnny.
The date on it reads August 17th 1889, the year Gyro turned 24. A year before Johnny had met him. He looked relatively the same in the faded photograph, long light hair, sparkling eyes, and a stupidly shaved beard. The only thing missing was Gyro's smile, his hat, and those golden grills he wore on his teeth. His outfit was different too, something he was explained to was his uniform he wore when doing execution business. The outfit was dumber than his regular one, and it makes Johnny smile, letting his guard down as he stares at the photograph in the doorway for just a little too long.
Johnny uses his personal savings and the money Stephen had given him for the trip (perhaps stolen from Valentine's unguarded vaults), to buy a small plot of land just outside of Naples' main city. There was no family grave site, after all, and Johnny didn’t care enough about religion or traditional rites to hire a priest to accompany him, so he goes alone. (Gyro hadn’t cared about those things either. One time he had told Johnny that if he was to die, he hoped it was dramatic in its fashion, and that no one would say stuffy prayers over his grave).
It's overlooking the sea, and the waves crash against the cliffs. The trees behind Johnny are full and beautiful, and leaves whirl around him as the wind brushes them down. There is nothing for him to worry about here, in the wilderness by himself on the land he'd impulsively bought.
Johnny spent the next hours digging, making sure he didn't spray himself with too much dirt, and didn't pass out from exhaustion. There isn't much to think about when one is digging a hole, so Johnny's mind admittedly wanders to things it shouldn't. Namely, Gyro.
It was always Gyro.
That stupid, stupid man.
Johnny dug a little faster as time ticked on. When he's gotten down to where he assumes is about six feet, he clambers out of the ground and onto the land. He notices the flowers growing quietly in the long grass, and questions how he hasn’t seen them before.
They're of no matter to him as he hauls the box into the grave, wincing as it jostles around a little too much. He mutters a quiet sorry to Gyro, hoping that his ghost didn't mind his body being thrown around a little. Maybe the flower cushioning inside would help his fall a little (Johnny pays no mind to the fact that they'd probably wilted by now).
It takes almost just as long for Johnny to convince himself to fill the hole with dirt than it did to dig the hole. He sits there, waiting for the sun to set behind him as he stares at the box. He stares, and wants to see what it would look like if he opened the box.
Surely, there would be nothing but a cold dead corpse, limbs stiff and rotting. But Johnny wants to delude himself into thinking it won't be like that- that Gyro is pulling some elaborate gag, and that he'll be smiling and laughing at Johnny when he opens it up. He'll scold him, and ask him why he'd taken so long to realize he'd just been joking. Then Johnny would punch Gyro in the face, and they'd kiss and make up, going home to the little house on the piece of land here.
(Johnny hadn't paid attention to the house when he'd bought the property. He'd just wanted a pretty place to bury Gyro. But now that he thinks about it, he lets himself ruminate on what it would be like to live there with Gyro. Would they wake up together every morning? Would Gyro say goodbye with a peck on the cheek before heading off to work? Would Johnny complain when there wasn't enough food to feed their horses, having to into town and speak shitty Italian to the locals just to buy some? Would Gyro attempt to make dinner as Johnny came in from the field, having to help put out the burning kitchen when he saw the failed concoction? Johnny can only wonder. He can only think. He can only guess, wish, hope, pray, and cry.)
Eventually, Johnny sucks it up and picks up the shovel. It's heavier than it should be. It hurts his arms to put the dirt on top of the box.
He wants to open the box. He wants it so badly. He wants Gyro back. He wants him back so badly it aches in every single place that it shouldn't. The aching is so horrific that Johnny wishes he were numb in all his limbs. Who cared if he barely existed, as long as he didn't have to feel this pain? This burning, this flaring of rage, anger, and grief. Nothing could stop the shaking of his hands as he poured the dirt back on the box, scoop by scoop.
Over and over again. He buries Gyro. Johnny buries Gyro, and by the end of it, when he's patted the dirt down, placed the flowers he's gathered, and placed a tombstone by the head of the grave, he can’t see. He would blame the rain if there was any- but there wasn't. He was the only witness to this burial, anyways. No one was here to judge him, or to scoff as he cried.
Johnny had always been one to cry easily. He couldn't help it. He'd stopped himself from crying as much as he could after the initial fight with Valentine. Here, it was different. On this cliffside, Johnny could let himself be. He could let himself exist, and cry.
He doesn't care that it's not safe for him to sleep out here, in the open. Johnny doesn't give a damn. He hadn't slept somewhere safe during those five months in the Steel Ball Run. He wasn't about to start caring now.
Not bothering to light a campfire, Johnny lays down next to the patted dirt, holding tight to the green sphere in his hand, as though keeping it close would keep him a little more secure.
He sleeps with his head next to the gravestone, flowers entangling in his blond hair.
For a minute, Johnny can pretend Gyro is just sleeping too, and that he isn't someplace he can't reach. Johnny can act as though they're still racing across America, inseparable, young, breathing, more alive and happy than either of them had ever been.
They aren't in Naples; they aren't in Europe.
They're in the United States, sleeping beneath the stars after counting constellations and telling jokes, bullying each other with a smile and teasing looks.
All he has his dreams, and quickly fading memories. (A photo resting in his pocket that looks nothing like Gyro should).
It will never be enough.