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madimpossibledreamerMain Points:
Jojo's Bizarre Adventure/Buffy the Vampire Slayer AU
Chapter Summary: Maybe there's more than one Joestar curse.
Word Count: 1294
Rating: Teen
Note: HERE THERE PROBABLY BE BUFFY/JJBA SPOILERS
Johan wakes, gasping with…it’s a weird feeling, like nostalgia and loss for something he never even knew. Not like that’s anything new. Half of his memories—nah, more than that—aren’t even his, but at least they’re separating properly in his head, now. He was on the verge of losing himself in the deluge, though he’d be the first to admit he’s still drawing on the Joestars before him to get through this, because it doesn’t feel like he’s got the strength to do this on his own.
No one’s come to tell him about Fitz. The uncertainty is choking him. It feels like he’s a curse, and the memories that most Joestars, actually, aren’t that lucky, that theirs is a lineage marked by adventure and great disease and heavy loss. He hates the thought because it makes it feel like an inevitability. He hates the thought because it’s almost as if he isn’t responsible.
His hands tremble. He slowly raises a hand in front of his face and then slowly, so slowly it almost hurts, opens his eyes—to a void. Complete and utter darkness.
From experience, that’s anything but a good sign. Okay, it’d been more of a headache, to begin with, as his brain tried to get used to the input from a single eye, offset by the industrial-strength (or, well, hospital-strength; he hadn’t been in much of a mood to ask questions, at the time) painkillers. If it’s not improving, at all? If he’s not getting even the slightest hint of light? He’s not healing.
Maybe, if he concentrated on his breathing, the healing capacity of hamon, that might help. None of him is feeling steady right now, though, much less enough to form a breathing rhythm.
From the feeling, this is one of the softer eyepatches he’d owned, but forgotten at headquarters because the straps tend to come unfastened. He can almost bet it was Willow who kept this. She can get sentimental about the strangest of things.
He’s useless like this. The eyepatch is just going to fall off the second he tries to do anything strenuous, and then where will he be? And then he snorts at his own ridiculousness. That’s generous, at best. He’s even more useless than that, because he can’t see. Maybe, maybe, eventually. He’d managed to learn how to navigate life with one eye. He could learn to do the same with none. But that would take time, time he’s not sure they have.
Pretender is reluctant to help him up. Apparently he can still see, the bastard. “That was an order,” he growls, and Pretender helps him up.
If he were in a better mood, he’d think about the fact that oh yeah, his Stand has had both eyes since the very beginning, how’s that work, but then, the same had been true of Silver Chariot, who had suffered none of Polnareff’s wounds, he remembers from Uncle Giorno’s memories.
As he stumbles around, supported by Pretender, he finds that if his breathing is calmer and he concentrates, he can actually vaguely sense life, moving around, but inanimate objects like walls might as well not exist. He does, barely, manage to navigate outside without running into anyone who might do something like, sensibly, protest his current decisions, though he has to admit to himself, bitterly, that it probably would have been impossible if he’d had a longer route to navigate.
He’s not alone. It’s the cigarette smoke, rather than his flickering sense of the presence of life, that alerts him to this fact. Part of Johan welcomes it, breathes in the toxic fog as calming, familiar. Some of him wants to just cough. Maybe cough out a lung or two, but he’s in kind of a morbid mood, and it feels unfair that he hurts so much but other than the eyesight thing there’s not a thing wrong with him physically. In the pounding of his heart, he hears Uncle Jotaro put the cigarette out without saying a word. The air’s still a little heavy. Johan stays somewhat awkwardly by the door, but Jotaro doesn’t mind. Not that he would.
“So you see her too, huh?” It’s not a question, despite what little inflection Dr. Kujo actually manages to put in these things.
“Who is she?” Questions like how do you always know these things aren’t likely to be answered anyway.
“A Joestar,” Jotaro snorts, amused as Xander huffs in frustration.
“I wouldn’t have figured that out on my own,” he replies sarcastically.
“Good thing you’ve got me around, then.” Uncle Jotaro might be mistaken for serious.
Jotaro isn’t usually a git on purpose, so...he doesn’t know, either, probably. “Still can’t see?” he asks abruptly.
That’s genuine concern.
“What do you think?” Johan fires back, because he’s tired and in pain and he just…
He can’t.
“Hmm.” It’s an acknowledgment. “Sorry to hear that.” And it’s stilted and impersonal and he absolutely means it. “Well, the Speedwagon Foundation wants to do some tests. All paid for. Josuke, too, and maybe your friend Brown, but if none of it’s worked before now, I don’t think it would have changed.”
“I’m not getting benched! I’m not—I’m not useless.” Johan yells, tears in his eye (he can feel them, he still can’t see)—and Jotaro just puts his hand on his shoulder.
“Stay here. Heal up. Practice. We’ll figure it out.” Which—Jotaro’s actually being ridiculously supportive, he knows this, but his brain still hears ‘you’re useless; you’re just a burden’, and he’s…
Damn.
He’s been nothing but a burden for his whole life, and then, finally, he starts to get a handle on all this, finally starts to become someone worthwhile, and then it’s all taken away again. And sure, it’s easy enough to realize he needs to stop this pity party, but what else can he do? He can’t do anything else right now, and most of the ways he’d se to distract himself if only for a few hours are out of reach, too, because seriously, he can’t read (generally comic books, although he might’ve been exaggerating the ratio he’d read because it’d been fun to tease the blond), he can’t watch TV, he can’t play video games...
His thoughts are interrupted, again. “I just...don’t want to get your hopes up.”
He wouldn’t just say that out of nowhere. Jotaro’s thinking of something. “But?”
“They didn’t find him. Looked pretty thoroughly. Even had those Mayan bastards take a look, and if he’d been used as a dead sacrifice, they would’ve rubbed it in our faces, and they didn’t. Which means they didn’t find a body, either.” Oh. This is about Fitz. Which, if that’s the case—yeah, that seems like good news, but also, where the hell is he? Never mind the lecture he’d imagined Fitz giving him when he woke up, he’s going to have one right back, because you just don’t do that. Hopefully not just kiss him out of the blue, but at this point he’s not sure how much self-control he still has.
“We’re going to get back the Mask and Arrow, destroy them if we can.” He doesn’t have to say how useless those efforts have been so far. Xander remembers. Or part of him does, anyway.
It still hurts. Being left behind, having missing friends, all of it. But he feels a little better despite himself. “Smack some of those Wolfram & Hart bastards in the face for me, okay?”
“Heh.” Johan can picture Jotaro’s smirk, sight or no sight. That’s as good as a promise.
Jojo's Bizarre Adventure/Buffy the Vampire Slayer AU
Chapter Summary: Maybe there's more than one Joestar curse.
Word Count: 1294
Rating: Teen
Note: HERE THERE PROBABLY BE BUFFY/JJBA SPOILERS
There’s a girl in the water. Floating. Jojo reaches out, but she’s too far away. There’s no way he can get there in time. She’s gone. He can’t touch her.
Johan wakes, gasping with…it’s a weird feeling, like nostalgia and loss for something he never even knew. Not like that’s anything new. Half of his memories—nah, more than that—aren’t even his, but at least they’re separating properly in his head, now. He was on the verge of losing himself in the deluge, though he’d be the first to admit he’s still drawing on the Joestars before him to get through this, because it doesn’t feel like he’s got the strength to do this on his own.
No one’s come to tell him about Fitz. The uncertainty is choking him. It feels like he’s a curse, and the memories that most Joestars, actually, aren’t that lucky, that theirs is a lineage marked by adventure and great disease and heavy loss. He hates the thought because it makes it feel like an inevitability. He hates the thought because it’s almost as if he isn’t responsible.
His hands tremble. He slowly raises a hand in front of his face and then slowly, so slowly it almost hurts, opens his eyes—to a void. Complete and utter darkness.
From experience, that’s anything but a good sign. Okay, it’d been more of a headache, to begin with, as his brain tried to get used to the input from a single eye, offset by the industrial-strength (or, well, hospital-strength; he hadn’t been in much of a mood to ask questions, at the time) painkillers. If it’s not improving, at all? If he’s not getting even the slightest hint of light? He’s not healing.
Maybe, if he concentrated on his breathing, the healing capacity of hamon, that might help. None of him is feeling steady right now, though, much less enough to form a breathing rhythm.
From the feeling, this is one of the softer eyepatches he’d owned, but forgotten at headquarters because the straps tend to come unfastened. He can almost bet it was Willow who kept this. She can get sentimental about the strangest of things.
He’s useless like this. The eyepatch is just going to fall off the second he tries to do anything strenuous, and then where will he be? And then he snorts at his own ridiculousness. That’s generous, at best. He’s even more useless than that, because he can’t see. Maybe, maybe, eventually. He’d managed to learn how to navigate life with one eye. He could learn to do the same with none. But that would take time, time he’s not sure they have.
Pretender is reluctant to help him up. Apparently he can still see, the bastard. “That was an order,” he growls, and Pretender helps him up.
If he were in a better mood, he’d think about the fact that oh yeah, his Stand has had both eyes since the very beginning, how’s that work, but then, the same had been true of Silver Chariot, who had suffered none of Polnareff’s wounds, he remembers from Uncle Giorno’s memories.
As he stumbles around, supported by Pretender, he finds that if his breathing is calmer and he concentrates, he can actually vaguely sense life, moving around, but inanimate objects like walls might as well not exist. He does, barely, manage to navigate outside without running into anyone who might do something like, sensibly, protest his current decisions, though he has to admit to himself, bitterly, that it probably would have been impossible if he’d had a longer route to navigate.
He’s not alone. It’s the cigarette smoke, rather than his flickering sense of the presence of life, that alerts him to this fact. Part of Johan welcomes it, breathes in the toxic fog as calming, familiar. Some of him wants to just cough. Maybe cough out a lung or two, but he’s in kind of a morbid mood, and it feels unfair that he hurts so much but other than the eyesight thing there’s not a thing wrong with him physically. In the pounding of his heart, he hears Uncle Jotaro put the cigarette out without saying a word. The air’s still a little heavy. Johan stays somewhat awkwardly by the door, but Jotaro doesn’t mind. Not that he would.
“So you see her too, huh?” It’s not a question, despite what little inflection Dr. Kujo actually manages to put in these things.
“Who is she?” Questions like how do you always know these things aren’t likely to be answered anyway.
“A Joestar,” Jotaro snorts, amused as Xander huffs in frustration.
“I wouldn’t have figured that out on my own,” he replies sarcastically.
“Good thing you’ve got me around, then.” Uncle Jotaro might be mistaken for serious.
Jotaro isn’t usually a git on purpose, so...he doesn’t know, either, probably. “Still can’t see?” he asks abruptly.
That’s genuine concern.
“What do you think?” Johan fires back, because he’s tired and in pain and he just…
He can’t.
“Hmm.” It’s an acknowledgment. “Sorry to hear that.” And it’s stilted and impersonal and he absolutely means it. “Well, the Speedwagon Foundation wants to do some tests. All paid for. Josuke, too, and maybe your friend Brown, but if none of it’s worked before now, I don’t think it would have changed.”
“I’m not getting benched! I’m not—I’m not useless.” Johan yells, tears in his eye (he can feel them, he still can’t see)—and Jotaro just puts his hand on his shoulder.
“Stay here. Heal up. Practice. We’ll figure it out.” Which—Jotaro’s actually being ridiculously supportive, he knows this, but his brain still hears ‘you’re useless; you’re just a burden’, and he’s…
Damn.
He’s been nothing but a burden for his whole life, and then, finally, he starts to get a handle on all this, finally starts to become someone worthwhile, and then it’s all taken away again. And sure, it’s easy enough to realize he needs to stop this pity party, but what else can he do? He can’t do anything else right now, and most of the ways he’d se to distract himself if only for a few hours are out of reach, too, because seriously, he can’t read (generally comic books, although he might’ve been exaggerating the ratio he’d read because it’d been fun to tease the blond), he can’t watch TV, he can’t play video games...
His thoughts are interrupted, again. “I just...don’t want to get your hopes up.”
He wouldn’t just say that out of nowhere. Jotaro’s thinking of something. “But?”
“They didn’t find him. Looked pretty thoroughly. Even had those Mayan bastards take a look, and if he’d been used as a dead sacrifice, they would’ve rubbed it in our faces, and they didn’t. Which means they didn’t find a body, either.” Oh. This is about Fitz. Which, if that’s the case—yeah, that seems like good news, but also, where the hell is he? Never mind the lecture he’d imagined Fitz giving him when he woke up, he’s going to have one right back, because you just don’t do that. Hopefully not just kiss him out of the blue, but at this point he’s not sure how much self-control he still has.
“We’re going to get back the Mask and Arrow, destroy them if we can.” He doesn’t have to say how useless those efforts have been so far. Xander remembers. Or part of him does, anyway.
It still hurts. Being left behind, having missing friends, all of it. But he feels a little better despite himself. “Smack some of those Wolfram & Hart bastards in the face for me, okay?”
“Heh.” Johan can picture Jotaro’s smirk, sight or no sight. That’s as good as a promise.
