![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
madimpossibledreamer~Dreamer~
Main Points:
Jojo's Bizarre Adventure/Buffy the Vampire Slayer AU
Chapter Summary: A visitor has revelations for Johan.
Word Count: 1475
Rating: Teen (Buffy|Jojo's level violence)
Note: HERE THERE PROBABLY BE BUFFY/JJBA SPOILERS
“Johan, damn you! Don’t you dare have drowned!”
The words are far away, muffled. Vaguely he feels the heat, hears Fitz splashing around, trying to find him. Run. Don’t let this become your tomb, too. Not everything’s on fire, not yet, but it’s a matter of time.
It’s probably not drowning that’s going to get him. He’s not fully under the alcoholic flood, and he hadn’t really thought about it at the time, but he’s not sure if the weird fish-genes ever really went away. (To be fair, he’d been trying not to think about that one.) He’s dazed and kind of pinned, and turning his head made something pop uncomfortably in his spine. Even then, his vision won’t quite focus. Breathing in a rhythm is hard because he keeps losing the beat, which probably says bad things about whatever hit him at the very start of all this. There’s something about the crackling sound and the heat slowly building that something in his brain says is a problem, but he can’t quite concentrate on what it means.
The scary part is, when his mind keeps drifting, sometimes he’s back home, cowering in the corner. At least Spike had been proud enough to assume he was the cause of the fear, because no matter how much he’d been trying to cover it up with bravado, it was probably easy enough to smell or whatever it was that vampires do. It’s a struggle wading through quicksand to remind himself he’s past that, past the boogeyman on the stairs. Enemy Stand Users and vampires and other things that go bump in the dark are so much easier than the horrors at home.
He didn’t think he could see, at first. Gradually a shape comes into view, one he thinks is Pretender at first, but then, he can’t quite tell. Can’t quite feel. Something’s wrong. When it speaks, though, that’s definitely not Pretender’s voice. It’s a woman, or at least it looks like one, from what he can make out. Maybe Pretender can take on different forms? It is a chameleon Stand, after all.
“I’m not Pretender.” That might be what Pretender would say, though. He wants to cough, but can’t, which is probably just as well, given this familiar feeling. A broken rib. Again. He needs to stop doing that, if he survives, that is. “Well, I suppose it doesn’t matter who you believe me to be, as long as you take my words to heart.” She crouches, putting a hand on his arm, and it’s a sudden warmth against the cold that’s been seeping in. “Did you wonder why you keep nearly drowning?”
He tries to put in the effort to speak, which seems surprisingly hard, even in his own head, but she shakes her head. Oh, right. She’d been reading his thoughts. Which might prove she’s Pretender. Or might prove the opposite. He’s really not sure. Thinking is hard. This is only the second time, unless you count the time when he was on the swim team, which he doesn’t because he didn’t nearly drown and also because it was way before any of this.
“Your near-death experiences, then,” she continues, undeterred. “This is all the ‘curse’ of that priest.” He shivers, absent eye aching. Caleb? He still has nightmares about his eye being poked out. “That priest tried to drown the bloodline in an ocean of stone.” Not Caleb, unless she’s speaking in really, really obscure metaphors. Generally, he’d consider himself a pretty strong student in the school of the metaphor, since lots of the writers of Giles’ various books don’t seem too interested in being clear to prevent future disasters, but he’s also working on reduced brain capacity, here. “He failed, obviously, but he had the will to end the world, and the will to try to restart it. That kind of will can live on after death. He sees the Joestar bloodline as an aberration to be destroyed, a star to be snuffed out. His ‘curse’ is that will, attempting to carry out his last desires.”
He tries to find any of the relevant memories, but there’s a distinct lack of anything relevant. Maybe he doesn’t have it currently downloaded. He’s currently unconscious, so he should be able to access Pretender, but there’s nothing. She smiles and pats his arm.
“Don’t worry, he’s merely tired himself out. You could easily have used your Stand, even unconscious, to save your own hide, but you’ve truly come to care for Fitz, haven’t you? You sought to protect a friend, even if that could potentially cost you your own life. You’re in the space between. You’ll have time to think about my words when you leave. In any case, I’m not sure Pretender will even be able to access those memories. That priest had the means to erase his crime more thoroughly than any bomb. Fortunately for your world and existence, one will is not alone enough to change the weave of fate entirely. He may have gained the power to try to carry out his will, but his ritual was interrupted and he was not the only one with will and power vying for the fate of the world—another held the key to fate in her hands.”
Key—Dawn? She doesn’t confirm or deny his guess, but it feels—it feels like a right answer, but incomplete. One from the old world and one from the new? That feels more correct, even though he’s just stringing words together with no faith in their truth. Instead, she just continues, and though she shows no sign of it in her tone or posture, he suddenly gets the idea that she knows she has a limited amount of time to tell her story and is determined to complete it.
“That priest believed in ‘gravity’. Not the cosmic sort of gravity described by Newton; a more intangible force, the kind that draws together Stand Users, that leads people to follow charismatic leaders. He believed this ‘gravity’ could allow him to rewrite the ending. He didn’t understand that Joestars have their own form of ‘gravity’, because his will allowed him to dismiss them as merely the ‘enemy’.” That’s certainly a slightly unpleasant side effect of Pretender he’s come to notice—déjà vu, over and over. Like now, the description of gravity sounds familiar, but he is certain it’s not him that heard that speech, and when he tries to place it, his head just hurts. Is that part of the ‘memories’ she’s not sure he can access?
Her gaze suddenly pierces his own even as he shivers from chill and fights to keep his eye open. “You’re worried that you are a Pretender, a cuckoo in another bird’s nest. You have no place in House Joestar, do not deserve that star on your neck.” She leans in, whispering the next words. “There’s nothing you can do to alter what has already been done. You have been set on this path. All you must do is walk it. And you worry for nothing about your new family. If he had chosen to alter his own path, even the young fosterling would have been cared for and allowed to grow, but he was taught nothing but hate and theft, thought he had to steal his place from another to have it. The ‘gravity’ of a Joestar is their heart. Joestars love, as vast and deep as the ocean. You think they will have no room for you?” Xander—no, Johan—swallows. He hasn’t dared to think—hasn’t dared to hope. The thought that they will reject him is terrifying, something he hasn’t even dared to admit to himself, but the thought that he will be accepted, that he will be loved—that’s something even more terrifying, because he can’t even quite bring himself to believe it and doesn’t know what to do with it even if he is. “Well, that is one part of their ‘gravity’. The other is their imagination. Joestars dare to dream the impossible, to reach for the stars. Go forth, with that compassion and clarity. Show your heart, without guard or reservation. See what you can be, and venture to become it. Spit in the face of this ‘curse’. Take care of Carter Fitz Speedwagon.” She grins suddenly, wicked and fierce. “And kick their asses.”
A sudden burst of clarity hits him, and a name hits the tip of his tongue, but before he can say anything she starts to fade, like the ghost she probably is. And then he’s interrupted.
The Cheese Man seems to be…cataloguing cheese, in the corner, just like Giles catalogues his books. No wonder he hadn’t seen him. “And eat more cheese.”
No one asked you, Xander manages to think, before he plunges back into the real world, stench and all.
