madimpossibledreamer: red and black comic-booky picture of an original Jojo's Stand. (jjba)
madimpossibledreamer ([personal profile] madimpossibledreamer) wrote2021-03-29 05:42 pm

Jojo's Bizarre Adventure: Shadowed Suspicion Chapter 193

it's finally here!  saying hi to all my stage crew friends.  ((man, fitz is such a tsundere))

Main Points:

Jojo's Bizarre Adventure/Buffy the Vampire Slayer AU
Chapter Summary: Robin saves Darling.
Word Count: 1525
Rating: Teen (Buffy|Jojo's level violence)
Note: HERE THERE PROBABLY BE BUFFY/JJBA SPOILERS
Warning: I'm very vague but some dark topics are alluded to (self-harm, possibly worse) so be warned.

            Robin tries not to approach silently.  Not too hard for most people; climbing all over the place probably is loud for your average citizen, but his strength is good enough he can do it without much effort, and oddly enough, it’s not the first time he’s scrambled over a theater set.  Not, technically, a theater, but, well, what’s a good spotter that can’t climb a two-story building, even if they can’t just hop the thing like Superman?  It’d be strangely nostalgic if the lights weren’t working, the place wasn’t flooded and a little broken, and—well, okay, no, a breakdown during the long, hard hours of actually putting on a play is pretty common.  That’s nostalgic, too.  And as the most approachable one, usually he’d get elected to take care of it, exhausted as he was, too.  Twenty hour days weren’t out of the ordinary, especially for the kids who cared about academics and any other extracurriculars they might’ve had.  Not that any of them had good sleep schedules to begin with.  He’d learned to make some noise, just a little, when he’d been stage crew, working late on the sets, and had to drag out dusty habits when working with his new partner.  Beefheart never says it, but she finds his natural light-footed approach very unnerving, and he doesn’t want to mess with any fragile nerves right now.  In his case, that mostly means being aware and purposefully less careful with his movements, rather than trying to actively make sound.  He doesn’t want to be too loud, either.  That wouldn’t help.
            He sees her shiver—no, wait, she’s just shaking.  From the crying, or from fear or whatever the Stand User had done to her.  It looks like she’d heard him, though, even if she doesn’t turn to look at him.
            She waits until he stops within arm’s reach before she speaks, voice hoarse with the crying and far too quiet, but it doesn’t sound like she has the energy to put any more volume into it.  “Make it stop,” Darling pleads, tears in her eyes, and Robin suppresses his natural urge to hug her.  She needs the comfort, yes, but he’d paid attention to how Jojo dealt with her.  His friend is either an older brother, unlike so many of his relatives, or he just has that brotherly demeanor.  He’d been aware, but not overbearing, and had tried to restrict his hugs or other comforting gestures to when she had initiated something rather than forcing any hugs or other contact on her.  Comparing to how he treats Speedwagon, it’s clear he’s a tactile person, but is restraining himself for Darling’s comfort.  Robin should do so as well.
            “How can I help, Darling?” he asks quietly, voice as comforting as he can make it.  He crouches next to her, and her shoulders un-tense, just a little.  Towering over her probably wasn’t helping.  “What’s wrong?”
            She shakes her head, putting her hands to her ears.  “I thought about it, how to escape.  When every day was hard to face…”  The pain on her face coincides with the sinking feeling in his gut.  “Running away wasn’t working.  They kept placing me again.”
            No judgment, only compassion.  “What did you decide?”
            She wrings her hands, guilty.  “Just…stop trying.  To be the good girl they wanted, to be the bad girl they feared.  Just…be.  Go to school, back to that house, sometimes.  But with Whisper, I could get where I wasn’t supposed to be.  I tried to choose people who could afford it.  Make myself a little nest, a place to call my own.”
            That’s…so much better than he’d thought.  All right, so maybe stealing’s not the best thing to be doing, but there’s also worse, and people get so judgmental, anyway.  Though he’s not going to be so naïve as to say the thought maybe didn’t cross her mind, as she was desperate enough to look for any and every possible escape route.
            “Are there voices telling you you’re a terrible person for doing that?”  His mind adds the amusing thought that he’s practically just acting as a therapist, but it’s not like it’s a role he hasn’t played before, however amateur his attempts.  At least they seemed to work.  He doesn’t let any of that show on his face, of course.
            “Pixie’s Stand, Miss Murder.  Those eyes…”  She shudders, and yeah, that makes sense.  He’s pretty sure he’s never been judged by a rabbit so hard, even if the verdict in his case was actually ‘innocent’, in the end.  And these, probably, are the ‘sins’ the Horror Girl—Pixie—was talking about.  It’s hard to tell whether the pronouncement had to do with the User’s own opinions, since apparently murder was fine under certain circumstances, or whether it had to do with the victim’s own conscience.  It could go either way, between what she’d said about people who thought about their sins and her not-so-impressed remarks about the company who had caused people to die here, before.  But he has to try.  A teenager, a child really, is asking for his help.  It’s not like he can just turn away.
            “For what it’s worth, I don’t think you’re a terrible person.”  Her loud crying has quieted, so she’s just doing it silently, now.  It’s not clear if he’s making a difference or not, but he’s not making it worse.  “No one’s perfect.  We’re all human and flawed, all trying to survive our circumstances.  Beefheart idolizes her grandmother, and while she’s aware of his problems she still has blind spots, where she doesn’t realize she’s hurting other people.”  She doesn’t realize when she’s hurting me, he doesn’t say, because he doesn’t have to.  She’s smart enough to catch on to the difference.  “I seriously thought about shooting a child first in self-defense, because hesitation can get you killed in a Stand battle, especially when I don’t have one.  Even Jojo—he’s kind and compassionate, but he can be oblivious, and a lot of this comes off as someone who’s learned from his mistakes.”  Her shaking seems to be calming down significantly, though she looks shocked and a little hurt at his talking about Jojo like that.  He’s the spotter.  He’s had loads of experience looking for flaws to exploit or cover, and while he’s aware she idolizes the guy, what better way to demonstrate that she doesn’t have to be perfect?  “And Fitz?  He comes off like an ex-con.  I’d argue learning when you’re hurting people and avoiding that in the future means more than anything you’ve done in the past.  Maybe we fail, maybe we make mistakes, but improving is the name of the game.”
            She smiles through her tears and reaches out to squeeze his hand in thanks.  “I tried to tell her that, and that a lot of bad people care more about what people say about them than dying, but.  She wasn’t listening, and it got hard to see.  Thanks.”
            He squeezes back.  “You’re very welcome.”
            The moment is shattered rather unceremoniously by a rather loud reminder that the world is more than extremely serious conversations.  “Hey, it’s the Hood!  You got an invitation too?” 
            They both jump, but at least Darling seems stable again.  They glance up to see Jojo supported by a blond who looks vaguely irritated.  Then again, that seems to be his default mode, particularly without his hat.  Again.
            “Jojo!” Darling calls out, concerned, scrambling to her feet.  He doesn’t look great.  Again.  You’d think he was cursed, or something.  Then again, none of them really made it out of the statue fight in one piece.
            He smiles, lopsided.  “Sorry, am I interrupting?”
            “Just our rescue team preparations.  We need to try to head for the roof if we can.”  From his little climbing expedition, he’s found that, structurally, it’s not as bad as he’d thought, mostly breaking a few columns and any and all weak points like doors.
            “I wouldn’t worry too much about him.  He simply had a wall dropped on him, but if you listen to him, he’s survived much worse.”  If you listen close, you can find the undercurrent of worry, but Fitz does seem like the type to complain.
            “It’s true.  Getting tossed into mausoleums is, like, a hobby of mine.  On that note, I have a question.  Can you drown in beer, or do you just get drunk?”  Fitz adjusts his grip just enough to cuff Jojo on the arm.  “I’m serious.  I feel a little off balance.”
            “It might be a concussion.  Fitz probably didn’t have enough time to heal you fully.  We’ll have a look at that when we get to the helicopter, okay?”  Stands make you overlook the most obvious solutions, Robin’s found.
            Jojo blinks.  “That makes sense.  I mean, it’s happened a lot, so I wouldn’t be surprised if I had brain damage.”
            “That would explain a lot,” the blond mutters darkly, adjusting his grip on Jojo’s arm to allow for Darling to help support the other side.  That leaves Robin in front to scout for the safest way.  It’s like this script is written for him, or something.