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maple-keenes · 1 month

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life's fucking long til it stops (and god's fucking fake til he's not)

>> READ IT ON AO3 HERE

summary: In the aftermath of their hostile takeover of Passione, Mista is maybe not coping super great with the death of three of the most important people in his life. But, like, he’s fine, right? Could have been four. (Mista struggles to navigate his new reality. He receives help from an unexpected source, and then two very expected ones.)

notes: it’s really impressive how much i’ve cried over jojo at this point. it’s, like, arguably way too much, but it apparently gives me a lot of inspiration, so here we are! giorno/mista are intended to be platonic but if you want to read them as romantic i'm not gonna stop you as always, my jojo fics are dedicated to @thesmalbox and @drawbucket. thank you for introducing me to these men and their problems as per usual. title of this fic is from ajr’s “god is really real”, since the song is unfortunately a very good fit for mista’s emotions about his family dying.

Mista’s life has not been going super well recently.

He can’t help but feel like he’s on his own now, a little bit. He’s got--he has people. He has Trish and Giorno, and he’s really fucking lucky that he has Trish and Giorno, and he’s like, Don Giovanna’s right-hand man! That’s really cool!

But when the dust settles on the rubble that is the old Passione, Mista is the one who lost his family.

Giorno and Trish are hurting too. They’ve lost a lot of good friends in the past few--weeks? Months? Everything’s been sort of blurry for a while. Time stopped making sense to Mista when Abbacchio died and he had to look Narancia in the eyes later that night and say I’m sorry, but there’s nothing we could have done. He’d never wished for a stand other than Sex Pistols before, but at that moment, Mista really, really wanted a stand that could fix the dull, sad look in Narancia’s eyes, in whatever way was easiest.

(He’d still take that heartbreak in his eyes over the lifelessness that came later. A sad Narancia is better than a dead Narancia.)

And it’s not like Giorno and Trish don’t get it, right? ‘Cause they lost all the same people Mista did. But they also knew them for less time, and they didn’t--it doesn’t hurt them. In the same way it hurts him.

Maybe it does. He’s being a little selfish with his grief. They all lost people, they all suffered, and they’re all recovering from the mission in equally questionable ways.

(They’re all dead, one way or another, at Diavolo’s hands.)

He hopes Narancia gets to see Abbacchio again. He hopes Bucciarati’s proud of him. He hopes it stops hurting, one of these days.

It hasn’t yet.

---

It’s been maybe a couple of months since their hostile takeover ended, and Mista’s still carrying around that same hollow grief he has been since the end of their mission. If Giorno and Trish are as distraught as Mista is, they’re doing a great job of hiding it. But Giorno was always good at hiding emotions. Mista can’t tell what the Boss is thinking for shit.

To be fair, Mista isn’t exactly flaunting his fraying mental state around either. He thinks he’s doing a pretty good job of keeping things under wraps.

He thinks so right up until Giorno drags him to a meeting with Polnareff (because not even being a spirit that lives in the magical room belonging to a turtle gets you out of meetings with Don Giovanna)--and the meeting is in the turtle room, of course. He then promptly gets a call from someone else and excuses himself to take it, leaving the other two alone in the room together. Polnareff takes one look at Mista and says, “You’re not doing too well, are you, Mista?”

“I’m doing just fine!” he protests, but he’s not sure he’s even convinced of that himself. “It’s cool. I’m coping.”

The Frenchman sighs, giving Mista a look that for some reason reminds him so much of Bucciarati (it’s the disappointed parent vibes) that he nearly bursts into tears on the spot. “You are not--you call it coping, yes? Telling yourself you are not alone in missing them is not coping.”

“I’m not just telling myself that…”

“You knew them better,” he continues, ignoring Mista’s half-hearted response, “but you do not want to dismiss Don Giovanna or Miss Una’s grief, so you are being quiet. And in doing so, you have not spoken about this to anyone. You are not well.”

“I don’t need to talk to a fuckin’ therapist or anything,” Mista grumbles, idly twirling a pencil through his fingers. “I’m not, like--I know it’s fine that I’m sad that they’re dead. It’s not like I didn’t know I loved ‘em, right? They were my family. And we were all real young, but we were gangsters, so we always knew it was a possibility.”

Polnareff scoffs at that. “Knowing that it may happen does not adequately prepare you for when it does happen.”

“What are you, the fuckin’--the fuckin’ expert on trauma, or whatever?” he all but growls, the hole in his chest welling up with something that is probably despair but feels like anger. “Just. Fuck off. I already said I was fine.”

“On trauma? Non. On losing people you loved?” His eyes get this weird faraway look in them that Mista doesn’t like. It’s too serious. The man lives in a turtle. “Do you think you are the only person who has lost their family?”

“It’s different--”

“It is not,” he snaps, and Mista’s eyes go wide. “You do not… how much do you know about me? Who I am?”

He shrugs, suddenly a little uncomfortable. “You work for that foundation that deals with stands, you’re French, and you were part of the team that killed Giorno’s vampire dad in 1988.”

“And do you think,” Polnareff asks, voice deceptively even, and Mista feels like he’s really missing something here, “that everyone who faced DIO survived the encounter?”

“Well, I kinda doubt it, but…” Realization dawns on him and he feels like he might actually be the world’s worst person. Ever. “Oh. I’m sorry.”

The older man looks exasperated, but there’s a hint of a smile on his face even though Mista has just directly implied that he doesn’t know jack shit about what Mista’s going through even though he really, definitely does. “Pas de souci, you did not know. You could have made an educated guess, but I do not necessarily expect that of you.”

“Hey!”

“I am joking. See, Mista, I am doubly the expert on this because I have lost people twice over. I once lost the same person twice, even,” he says, with the intonation implying that this is supposed to be some sort of joke but it just makes Mista feel really fucking bad, which was maybe the actual intention the whole time. “It is okay to be sad. To miss them. Giorno will not think less of you for it.”

They’re both silent for a while before Mista’s brain-to-mouth filter finally fails him and he blurts out, “Who was it?”

“Hm?”

“Who was it that died,” he repeats sheepishly. “I don’t know a lot about the mission to kill DIO. I don’t even--I still don’t one hundred percent believe that Giorno’s dad is a vampire from a hundred years ago.”

Polnareff huffs out a small laugh, folding his arms over his chest. “I admit that if I had not faced the man myself I would find it difficult to believe as well. As for who it was… well. We had called ourselves the Crusaders, because we thought our cause quite righteous, and because Jotaro did not find it very funny at all when we did so. There were… six of us, in the end. Five humans and one dog.

“And it is still difficult to talk about this, even though it has been nearly 25 years since I lost them. It has been even longer since I lost my sister. It gets easier to miss them, over time. But in the beginning, I did not think I would ever be able to say their names again,” he says quietly, and Mista finds himself leaning in. “There were six of us, yes. Myself, Joseph Joestar, Jotaro Kujo, Kakyoin Noriaki, Muhammed Avdol, and Iggy. Iggy was this horrible little bastard dog who ended up with a stand and got sent along with us when we reached Egypt.”

Mista has heard of Jotaro Kujo and Joseph Joestar--and obviously, he’s heard of Polnareff--though it’s very recent, and little information has been shared. They’re related to Giorno, technically, maybe, kind of. Kujo is the one who sent someone to find Giorno. The other three he’s never heard anyone mention.

The Frenchman continues, “I think I was luckier than you were. Luckier than Mr. Joestar, certainly. I only had to watch one of them die.” Mista lets out a soft gasp at that. “Well. I had watched one of those three die already, so maybe I was only spared the hardship of watching one of them.”

“You don’t have to tell me this--”

“Hush. I am proving a point. We went into Cairo knowing that we were not safe. Expecting that we were not going to survive, but our resolve to kill DIO was so strong that we were not afraid. We are all fearless in the face of death when you have watched your friend come back from it already, of course.” He sighs. “And we had just gotten Kakyoin back from the hospital, too. He had been gone for so long… but we entered the manor, and Avdol had said to me, ‘Polnareff, do not try to save me. I am not going to save you. One of us needs to make it out alive.’ I agreed because he was right. Saving me is what nearly got him killed the first time. And then we are exploring, and suddenly he yells my name, pushes me out of the way, and is gone.” Polnareff laughs somewhat bitterly. “My back was turned. I did not watch him die. It was so fast I would not have been able to. There was no body to bury, either. He was simply gone.

“And then the dog--the dog I despised, who had been nothing but awful to me the entire journey--he sacrifices himself to keep me alive. He uses the last of his energy to keep me from being killed by the man who killed Avdol, and I am thinking the whole time, do I even deserve this?”

Mista is taken aback by how raw the emotion is in Polnareff’s voice, something he never expected from the goofy older man who always seemed to take situations a little less seriously than he should. He also--he gets it. Being funny is easier than being honest with yourself. “That sucks,” he says, rather eloquently. “I can’t imagine someone just being there and then… not.”

“Mm. But Avdol and Iggy knew what they were getting into, to some extent. They were adults, as much as you can consider a dog an adult, I suppose. Kakyoin was not, for all he acted like one sometimes. He was barely seventeen.” Polnareff looks up from where he’s been staring at the wood grain in the table at those words as if he knows Mista is going to recoil at them. Barely seventeen. “I wasn’t there to watch him die. I didn’t even see the body. Jotaro never did either, and I think that hurt him very much, in the same way that Avdol vanishing hurt me. To not have anything left of them.” He clears his throat, eyes darting back down. “But Mr. Joestar was there. DIO had carved a hole straight through Kakyoin, but he used his last bit of strength to tell Mr. Joestar what DIO’s stand did.” Mista’s cheeks are wet with tears. He doesn’t know when that happened, but he does know that what Polnareff is describing sounds a lot like Abbacchio’s death, and also Narancia’s, and Bucciarati’s, and he just--he really fucking misses them. “Without his sacrifice… without Avdol’s, and Iggy’s… we would all be dead now. But that is little comfort when you are laying in a hospital bed and thinking about the fact that they are dead and you are not.”

“I really miss them,” Mista voices out loud this time, not expecting the choked way it comes out. “I really, really miss them. It doesn’t get better, does it? This. Feeling like this.”

Polnareff shrugs loosely. “I cannot say. But you know what makes it less painful, at least a little bit?”

“What?”

“Talking to someone.” He gestures above them. Mista’s gaze snaps up to where a shocked Giorno is standing, wide eyes transfixed on the tears rolling down Mista’s face. He’s standing next to Mista in the turtle before he knows it. Polnareff smiles a little before saying, “Don Giovanna, I apologize, but I don’t think I’ll be able to attend our meeting today. Something else came up.”

“That’s alright, Polnareff. We… we can reschedule.” Giorno inches toward Mista slowly, as if he’s not sure whether or not he’s allowed to get any closer. “Please let me know when would work best for you.”

He nods, still looking between Mista and Giorno. “I will.”

Giorno grabs Mista’s hand and yanks him back out of the turtle just before Mista closes the gap between them, crushing the young Don in a hug. “Dude, I know I’m supposed to be playing it real cool as your right-hand man, but I really fucking miss the rest of the team and is it okay if we’re just Giorno and Mista today? I kinda need my best friend right now,” he asks, voice still thick and cloudy with tears. They are best friends, at this point. Inexorably bonded by horrible experiences and a dream.

Giorno returns the hug just as tightly and buries his face in Mista’s sweater since that’s the height that he’s at. Christ, he’s so young. “Okay. I can do that. Do you want to talk?”

“Right now? No. Right now, this is okay,” he says, mostly into the top of Giorno’s head. “But. Later, maybe.”

“Later,” Giorno agrees. “I’m sorry I never--”

“Don’t,” Mista interrupts him firmly. “I also didn’t say shit. We’re all doing kinda bad right now.”

He hums into Mista’s chest, not moving. His familiar doughnut-shaped hair is weirdly comforting. “What did you and Polnareff talk about?”

“He… gave me some advice. Said that maybe keeping all this shit bottled up was a bad idea. Told me a story. That kinda stuff.”

“Must have been some story.”

Mista huffs. “Sure fucking was.”

They’re silent for a while, still hugging each other tight before Giorno speaks up from where his head is still buried in Mista’s sweater. “You know you can talk to me, right? I didn’t realize it was hurting you so badly.”

“Course it is. Probably gonna hurt me for the rest of my life, GioGio. But you know, it’s not so bad,” he says, resting his chin on top of Giorno’s head. “I’ve got you, don’t I?”

“What am I, chopped liver?” someone else asks from the doorway of the conference room they’d placed the turtle in. Mista looks up to see Trish leaning against the doorframe, hand on her hip. She’s traded out her pink and orange outfit for a black and white one, with gold accents, and. Well. There’s no question where her color scheme came from, and it makes Mista’s heart ache. “Got a call from the boss saying I might be needed today, but I wasn’t expecting this!”

“Wasn’t planned,” Giorno murmurs, finally disentangling himself from Mista. “I originally wanted you two here to investigate a new stand user that’s apparently cropped up in Sicily, but…” he trails off, glancing back up to Mista’s tear-streaked face. “I think the three of us should talk about what happened with Diavolo.”

Trish frowns, shutting the door behind her as she takes in the two of them. “Is there something wrong? Did he get out of the loop?”

“No! No, nothing like that,” he reassures her. “It has come to my attention that maybe we have not communicated about the effects of the battle as well as we could have and I would like to remedy that.”

“Is there some sort of lingering--”

“He wants to talk about our feelings, Trish,” Mista interrupts, because Giorno’s clearly not getting the point across. “Shit, man, I talked to turtle man and he made me realize that maybe I’ve not been doing so hot recently.”

Her face crumples and she reaches over to place a hand on his arm. “Oh, Mista .”

“It’s--okay, well, I was going to say it’s fine but it’s really not fine. Um. I just--” he starts and stops over and over again, unable to find the words to phrase this thing that’s been building up in his chest since he saw Abbacchio’s body on the beach. “I really fucking miss my family.”

Trish looks up at him with sad eyes--not pity, never pity, she has seen him through too much now to call it pity --and says, “Of course you do. It’s…” She sighs, then takes a seat on the floor right in front of him. “Come on. If we’re doing this, we’re doing this properly.”

Giorno looks at Mista, who shrugs and follows suit, then takes a seat on the ground himself. How ridiculous they must look, the Don and his right-hand man sitting on the floor alongside the former boss’s daughter, all in their nicest day clothes. Giorno’s wearing a fucking suit. Trish has three-inch heels on. Mista’s carrying a gun, for fuck’s sake, and here they are having a feelings circle on the floor of a conference room.

Goddamnit, he loves them so much.

“So,” Giorno says, all businesslike, “I wanted to apologize, first of all--”

“Gio, please .” Trish dismisses him with a wave of her hand. “I walked in here and you were crying all over Mista. Let’s skip the ‘I’m in charge here’ part, why don’t we?”

He looks a little cowed, which Mista personally thinks is the appropriate reaction to most of Trish’s requests, mafia boss or not. “Right. Sorry. I just wanted to say I’m sorry, Mista, because I’m sure there’s not been enough time to properly grieve and part of that is my fault for how many missions I’ve been assigning you. I…” Giorno huffs out a small puff of air, staring down at the floor in front of him. “I forget that it’s different for you. Abbacchio, Bucciarati, Narancia, even Fugo, because you lost him too, in a way… they were like your family, yes? And while I cared for them, I did not have the time with them that you did. I cannot imagine what it’s like to watch someone you felt like you owed your entire life to die.”

“And not even realize they had died,” Trish mutters under her breath. “I’m still a little mad about that, just so you know. I wish you had told us.”

“It didn’t feel like the time,” he responds, but his tone is apologetic. “Still, I am sorry. It was painful for me too, even if it wasn’t the same.”

Mista scoffs. “This isn’t a competition, Gio, we’re all allowed to be fucked up about it.” All three of them are quiet for a moment before he speaks up again and says, “Did you know Abbacchio and Bucciarati were gonna get married one day?”

“No, I had no idea!” Trish says in hushed tones while Giorno looks genuinely confused. “I thought something was going on there, but I didn’t think it was that serious.”

“I didn’t even know something was going on,” Giorno admits, rubbing the back of his neck.

“Well, I don’t know if it was really serious,” he can feel tears pricking at the corners of his eyes again, ‘cause they’ll never get the chance to actually get married, he’ll never get to tease the two of them again, call them Mom and Dad when their backs are turned, “and I don’t have a really good idea of what romance is, but they were in love, y’know? The rest of us used to give them shit for it constantly. And Narancia, we used to call him their kid, ‘cause Fugo and I, I was older and we were cooler but Narancia really latched on to them and--and I used to tease him for it so much and I wish I’d gotten a chance to tell him that I loved him because he was my fucking little brother and I never got to tell him that !”

He’s fully crying now, but Trish has moved from her seat on the floor to kneel next to him and put her arms around him and Giorno has followed suit, and the three of them are having a group hug on the floor of a conference room. Fucking hell.

“If it helps,” Trish says, her voice barely above a whisper, “I spent a lot of time with Narancia and Bucciarati in that turtle, and… they knew. They all knew, Mista, and they really loved you too. I wish I’d gotten a chance to be a part of that family for longer because you guys were so good to each other.”

Giorno makes a soft noise that Mista can't quite place. “I agree. I could tell you loved them. I’m sure they could too.”

“I just wish I’d gotten to say it one last time, you know?” He laughs wetly. “I spent all that time making fun of Narancia and teasing Abbacchio and Bucciarati--”

“But who’s to say that wasn’t just your way of saying you loved them?” Giorno counters. “Plenty of people like to tease each other in a familial way. You and Trish do it all the time.”

“And I do love you, Mista, even if you are kind of gross,” she says, which gets all of them laughing a little. “And I love Giorno too! But I promise, if we could tell you loved them, I’m certain they could too.”

He smiles a little, head resting against Trish’s hair. “Thanks, you two. And while I’m here… I love you guys too. You’re my fucking family now, like it or not.”

“I love you too,” Giorno says, much softer than anything he’d previously said. “Thank you. For being there.”

Trish pulls back, grinning wildly despite the fact that her eyes are shining with unshed tears. “Hey, Giorno, I know you have important mafia stuff to do, but as the former boss’s daughter and your best friend, Trish, I am hereby requesting that you cancel all of that and the three of us have a movie night tonight instead. I think we could use it.”

He cracks a smile at that. “Only if you’ll paint my nails for me,” he says, and the thick fog of sadness still lingering throughout the room is lightened just a little.

“I think I can make that work,” she responds as Mista laughs. “Don’t laugh, Mista! I’m doing yours too!”

“No, Giorno has to do mine, and I’ll do yours! It’s only fair!”

And the thing in Mista’s chest gets a little bit smaller.

“You’re going to be horrible at it!”

“I am not! ”

And maybe, just maybe, things will be okay for the three of them.

#jjba #my writing #fanfiction #jojo no kimyou na bouken #jojo's bizarre adventure #vento aureo #jojo part 5 #giorno giovanna #guido mista #trish una #jean pierre polnareff #that team as family type shit #one of these days i will let the part 5 gang be happy! not today tho #forgot to post this one when i posted the other one. whoops #jojo fanfic

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