Jojo's Bizarre Adventure: Shadowed Suspicion Omake 13

[madimpossibledreamer]

Main Points:
Jojo's Bizarre Adventure/Buffy the Vampire Slayer AU
Chapter Summary: The former Boss is still having a bad time.
Word Count: 975
Note: HERE THERE PROBABLY BE BUFFY/JJBA SPOILERS 

        Permanence has been something out of reach for a long time. It has become an abstraction, like time, something that happens to other people. He had tried to keep track, at first, tried to remember his last death, but now it all blends together, and even his mind and memories lack continuity. He cannot remember if it is later or earlier, if he had since resigned himself to his fate or still rages, searches for a way out, or if he is even capable of making up his mind permanently on the matter anymore.
        He tries to remember whether he has been tortured before, on one of his deaths. It seems likely. A vague recollection stirs, but as he tries to recall the details they scatter away into the darkness like disturbed spiders. He cannot even be sure he has not, in fact, hallucinated the experience. Even if he attempted to create a record, he would never find it again, and even if he had he is fairly sure that like every other cause and effect, effect would merely disappear into smoke when he does, because no effect is allowed to remain permanent, not for him.
        He tries to remain strong, dignified, in the face of torture. It is utterly useless. No man can remain strong in the face of torture, and he has endured such long before this demon put his hands on instruments of pain. He will break, or has already broken. Time is fleeting and unknowable and still he must endure it. He tries anyway.
        Still, seeing impermanence outside of himself...hurts in some way. Not that towers and cities must fall; he has seen more than any mortal, the height of the Roman Empire and the inside of the maw of several dinosaurs and monsters from the future, sights that might be biblical if he were not a mere, constantly dying speck unable to comprehend anything beyond a limited window he is now contained within, the march of armies that he knows, too, must fall, no matter how magnificent their uniforms or mighty their power. But something more permanent, to know that his legacy is being unraveled to the point that once his executioner, too, finally dies, he will be gone...he was not prepared for that realization of his neverending demise. It’s mostly Giovanna’s fault. Still, it hurts to see the work that has been undone, deals hard-won just tossed aside by the usurper as if they were nothing.
        This time, Wolfram & Hart knows who he is. They know, and they do not care. It means they do not care for the work to break him from his prison, or cannot, and he does not know which is worse. He does not know if they knew previously or if it came out while they were torturing him, because he did come back to himself babbling utter nonsense, hair hanging ragged around blood-soaked shoulders.
        He does not tell them the only thing he could tell them of value. He would if he could, but has learned long ago that only his disembodied head can do so, and there is no point to talking to an empty lab. He does not know how Rush had managed that, to make a single version of himself with something resembling permanence in defiance of the fate granted to him by Giovanna’s Requiem Stand. It had something to do with vampire blood, he knew that, but had no idea of the specifics, partly because he’s pretty certain he had died somewhere during the process. In any case, he had not been conscious for all of it, and yet somehow when he had woken up once more in two places, though his awareness of both was incomplete.
        Not out of some misguided sense of honor, of partnership for those who would never offer him the same courtesy. No, and not even to save his own skin, since that is a complete impossibility. But if he can minimize his own agony, that is the absolute best that can be hoped for.
        They are a little more on edge than usual. Something happened. Perhaps it is the sort of information that Rush would find of value. Rush has some ability to tune in to which death he wishes to see, though it is imperfect. Diavolo would feel better about the knowledge that someone would remember him if he doesn’t sense the same sort of evil from Rush as he had from Cioccolata, if that interest wasn’t merely that of a scientist for a particularly interesting lab rat.
        As he starts to scream, he remembers something from the past, feeling suddenly vivid. Dear Doppio had read about a great many things, sometimes to have small talk in case of dealing with other members of the Organization. Diavolo took great care that he not remember too much of the priest, in case he would feel sorry for the man. It is unlikely, as he could be just as vicious as Diavolo, but Diavolo could take no chances with the most precious gangster.
        Still, Doppio had an interest in reading about religion, and as it seemed harmless, Diavolo had allowed it. And he had read of Buddhism.
        Diavolo cannot say for sure that anyone else experiences samsara, but he can say for certain that it describes his situation rather well—being reborn, experiencing pain and suffering and having anything pleasant transient and ripped from him, and then dying and being thrown back into the painful cycle of rebirth. The difference in his case is that he remembers a little of his previous lives—but then, people would claim that they also remembered past lives, as well. Who’s to say they were lying, given his own experiences? Though he is gone again before he can sluggishly remember how to escape this wheel of misfortune.