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[epitaffio]

WELCOME TO YOUR PRIVATE CHANNEL, PURPLEPIPER. FOR SECURE COMMUNICATION, USE 541.26.365.77 *** PURPLEPIPER has joined 541.26.365.77 <PURPLEPIPER> Am I doing this right? <PURPLEPIPER> Pretty weird to just leave a message like this is an answering machine or something <PURPLEPIPER> ME leaving a message I mean! <PURPLEPIPER> You can leave one if you want and I'll just get back to you whenever I can.

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between july 9 and july 12.

[digiorno]

[Doppio is being followed.]

[It starts subtly, but doesn't stay that way for long. Whatever's got its eye on him, it's impatient. So the first night, it trails him in short spurts, for a few minutes, maybe up to half an hour, and then leaves him be — but after that, it sticks on him for hours, especially at dawn and dusk when sunrises and sunsets are luminous and warm. While it takes care to stay out of sight at first, the physical presence is palpable and menacing, and as the days go by, it gets closer and closer.]

[More careless, too. By the end of the first day, Doppio will have heard at least one barely-audible noise, a sucking sound that ends in a pop that makes the ears hurt, followed by the complex scent of rotting vegetation. Not nearly distant enough for comfort, either. Just a few yards behind his shoulder — except when he turns around, there's nothing there.]

[By the second day, it's not even bothering to hide. It sits at the top of buildings more like an architectural gargoyle than anything, knelt on the edges of roofs, window ledges, and once or twice on the top of a streetlight. A warm pink and white, its eyes reflect gold tapetum lucidum in the growing or departing dark; or if night has already fallen, the backs of its eyes seem pink, like a white rabbit's.]

[By the third day, Doppio is starting to see things. Or maybe he isn't? Tongues of flame lash from nothing in his peripheral vision, far enough not to pose him any direct danger but close enough to register as deeply psychologically uncomfortable for a creature so flammable. He no sooner turns to look at them than they disappear as though they were never there. That smell stays, though.]

[And then—]

[Sometimes you're walking home to San Giorgio Maggiore by yourself, minding your own business, and the entire street in front of you is engulfed in flame, cutting off your path entirely. You, a desiccated deer husk, are forced to back up. But there's someone behind you.]

Buona sera, Doppio.

cw: little a dissociation

[epitaffio]

[It's been a weird few days.

First, Trish showed up. Then she stayed. Then...

Awakening. Unease, despite the freedom. Hope. And then the hunt, flesh and blood and soul unevenly split between the three of them. Nothing. More, even after the others were satisfied. Always more, always craving and attaining and rinse and repeat until Doppio returns, and it's never enough but it keeps him going until the next time.

Then he had a mission, and he had to remind himself of who he was doing it for when the Fog God got her creepy mitts on him. It's fine. He can do it, if it's for him.

And now he's pretty fucking sure he's being stalked. He's not sure by whom, or by what. But his ears pick up on it first - as they so often do these days - and then he swears he feels eyes on him, and then he sees more than just eyes, and the next thing he knows?

The next thing he knows, Doppio is just going home when everything is suddenly on fire. He freezes - no, he stumbles back, he has to, the sight stirring a part of him that runs deeper than most living things' reasonable fear of fire or even deeper than something else hidden away and forgotten, panic and adrenaline and everything up in flames--

And then, finally, he bumps into him.]

Giorno Giovanna...!

[That motherfucker.]