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It won't ever be enough to hear me recount our past. I want you to take in every last vivid, vicious detail of it. But if words and bygone favorites aren't enough to spark your memory, then...
[All hope is not lost. One potential springs to mind.]
...the Cube. Let me take you there. Let me show you.
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Are... Are you sure?
[... No. No, that sounds too much like he doesn't want to do this, and he just said otherwise.]
I-- O-Okay. Yeah, okay.
is it legal to just ... flash forward so suddenly. i cant do transitions
Before long, they slip away from their reality and into a near-perfect facsimile of the past. They stand before a white church, not far from the beach. A bright, sunny sky. The sounds of people in the distance and of gulls in the air. Not a trace of smoke clouds their eyes or burns their lungs.
Everything that transpired feels like a lifetime ago, now. It's so tranquil, Diavolo could almost be at peace here.
A version of himself was. He doesn't know how he feels about that. Bitter, maybe. Ashamed.
He tenses, hands balling into fists. He is himself in this place, his body smaller and weaker, and he feels naked without the cover of wing and light that should surround him. He can't feel the pulse of King Crimson beneath his skin; he only feels painfully, achingly helpless. To drown out the feeling, he turns to Doppio.]
Does it make you feel anything...? Anything at all?
[Because it's making him feel something. Regret — for coming here at all, for tearing old wounds open again.]
IT'S SO LEGAL i could have done it too....... thank u for doing the scary thing instead
He lets out a shuddering breath instead. As the scenery begins to take shape around them, he faintly wonders if he'd been holding it in since they went outside.
Some of this does look familiar; not for the reasons the Boss hopes to hear, he's fairly sure. The clear skies, the scent on the breeze... This is what was trying to follow him back when that heavy fog consumed Bavan, isn't it?
And he just kept moving.
It feels... about the same.]
... My head kind of hurts.
[Like the air itself wants to give him a migraine.]
But, um, it's not all bad. It feels kind of... I dunno how to put it...
[Unthinkingly, he rests his hand on his stomach.]
cw: uh. fantasizing about murder?
—no. Imitations of people are going about their rigidly simulated lives, and sometimes in their paths they fleetingly look in Diavolo's general direction. There is no one here but Doppio to truly see him; the rest are only fragmented memories of bygone routines haphazardly cobbled together.
Somehow, reframing it doesn't make Diavolo feel any less scrutinized.
A woman glances through them as she tends to some potted plants livening up the street. Elderly. Peaceful. She hums a tune to herself, and though he can't quite place it anymore, he knows he's heard it countless times before.
Dead, he recalls, in the fire. Too close to the source to escape. She hadn't done anything wrong, not really, except be a bit too nosy, always full of well-meaning but excruciating questions about his day, his schoolwork, his father's health. He never liked to answer any of them, preferring to shuffle back indoors as quickly and quietly as possible. She never really knew, of course, why some days the neighbor boy was oddly quiet, but he remembers her accepting the discrepancies in personality graciously enough.
An unfortunate casualty. He saw her name in the paper and it gave him a moment's pause years ago. He wonders what would happen if he struck her down here and now. Anything to ease the tension welling up within him. Anything to get her to stop looking.]
Hmm?
[—oh. Doppio. There, off to his side, exactly where he shouldn't be. It's hard to disguise the initial shock ... and the hint of disappointment that comes after.
This is already too much. He's getting caught up in the past. He wants to give up, but he won't, not until Doppio is every bit as desperate to leave.]
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There's an easy excuse; he's still trying to figure out what it is, exactly, that he's feeling. Then it hits him, and the excuse is gone, but he still doesn't want to look anywhere. He ends up looking at the Boss, and he does feel a pang of guilt when another realisation ensues: somehow, it's easier to look at the Boss than at anything else here, and that's...
Now that, he doesn't know what it makes him feel. Everything is different. Everything has GROWN different, and yet--]
W... Why are we here? Why'd you want me to see this?
[Why are they looking back this far?]
this tag is not landing where i wanted it to but i am sending it regardless
The memory of this place weighs heavily on me. Won't you bear it for me, for just a while? This world has a way of dragging the worst to the surface, and it has been incessant. For months, I haven't been able to stop thinking about... so much. [He falters there, struggling to phrase himself, at a loss for words. With a shake of his head, he moves past it.]
I despise the past for making me so weak, and I would give anything to see a fraction of that same hatred in your eyes. But I look at you, and I see nothing there. Emptiness. It can't hurt you; it has no hold over you. It drives me out of my mind, Doppio, to be so alone.
[He speaks as though being here is horrific, but, beneath the bright blue sky, it's nothing short of tranquil here, a picturesque seaside town. The only conflict rests firmly within him.]
WE ARE BOTH DOING OUR BEST!!!
Y-Y... I don't want you to be alone.
[It's unbearable - both being alone and the thought that the Boss has to endure such a feeling. So he tries again, and he looks. He lets himself linger: on the unfamiliar houses (doesn't something ring a bell about that little yellow house with the dog sleeping in front?), on the street they stand in (this - no, why does he-- no, no, the taxi took this street when they-- when he was going to Costa Smeralda, didn't it?), on the people...
The people. The faces of strangers who look at him with fondness or with disdain or even with only the faintest glimmer of recognition.
He's breathing too hard, too quickly. His hands squeeze at the sides of his skull.]
I-I'm trying. I'm trying, Boss. [It hurts.] What-- What am I looking for?
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[It brings a small smile to Diavolo's face and it drowns out the world around him, if only for a moment. Then Doppio winces and his heavy breathing breaks the reverie, and Diavolo can't help but to move in closer. He closes the gap between them, presses himself against Doppio's back, and curls his arms around him. It's easier to touch like this from behind. It's easier to exist at all here, where he can lean in close and study the world from behind Doppio's shoulder. Safer, warmer — not quite right, but nothing here ever is.]
And I will never be alone — as long as you stay with me.
[Doppio is tense, ragged and worn, and it strikes Diavolo that this may be too much too fast. Impulse after impulse led to this moment with no rationale in sight. What is his plan? What did he want so badly for Doppio to see?
He doesn't have an answer.
But he knows it isn't just one thing. There is no singular memory that will save him. The pain is the result of years of built-up frustration he wants to release at once, and plunging them both into the depths of it seemed as good a way as any to rid himself of it all.]
But to stay with me, you must persevere. This will all be meaningless if I guide you every step of the way. Think, Doppio. This town. Our dreams. Do you remember any of it...?
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In the Boss's arms, Doppio's breathing eases, but only a little and not for long. It's as if the effort of trying to remember makes his lungs forget how to do their job in turn. This town... He remembers the town he passed through, on his way to the Costa. If he tries harder...
Don't some things look out of place? Aren't some stores in spots where there should be houses, or vice versa? He can't be sure. But he has to, because otherwise--
Another stranger appears just down the road. Doppio forces himself not only to glance, but to look.]
Ah! T-That's...!
[Not a stranger. He knows it can't be. But he can't tell if he remembers the priest from the photograph, or if he remembers him the way he's suddenly supposed to, the way the Boss needs him to remember. Did that man have a name? He had to have had a name, but it isn't coming to Doppio's mind. Does he need to look deeper? How?
Doppio makes a small, whimpering noise before he even notices the priest coming their way.]
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The priest walks slowly but purposefully, a smile wrinkling his face as though nothing in the world is wrong. How old would he be if he was alive today? Eighties, nineties? But he looks exactly the same as he does in memory. Seeing him is like seeing a ghost, and it chills Diavolo. He tenses, his fingers digging at Doppio's skin as that small part of him expects hatred and retribution, imagining the rest of his years rotting away in prison or worse.
But, of course, none of this is real, and there is nothing to fear. Diavolo is not helpless, not weak, and nothing here can hurt him. If he wanted to, he could walk out right now. But he survived their last meeting and he will do it again — more than that, he thrived afterward, more than anyone in this small town ever thought he could, at least until the day everything fell to pieces in his hands.
—He's close, now, that gentle smile brightening at the sight of ... not him. Of course not him, not the way he looks now, so very different from the way he did as a teenager. He must stand out in this small town. No, it's Doppio the priest looks at.]
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Each step the priest takes offsets that comfort. He wants to back away, but the Boss is right behind him, and...
And something about this feels nauseatingly familiar.
The sensation is vague, so vague it's hardly there at all, but vague sensations and faint deja vus and distant familiarities compound, and all of them make him feel like he can't quite feel his limbs anymore. Now that he knows what he knows, he wonders if that's only wishful thinking.
The priest opens his mouth. He says, "I'm not angry with you."]
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If it was him alone, he could handle this. But it's painfully clear that something is wrong with Doppio. His breathing is erratic, his movements anxious, his words strained, and the sum of it makes Diavolo ache. He's getting exactly the result he wanted, but it doesn't feel like the victory he expected.
Instead, it feels a little like guilt.]
Enough. Leave.
[He doesn't quite know how the room operates, he didn't pay enough attention to understand. All he can do is growl out a command to the priest and hope he obeys. It doesn't feel like enough. If he could do something more—
He doesn't feel it happen the way he should, no warm and familiar surge of energy beneath his skin, but King Crimson manifests at his subconscious call all the same, shielding them both from the memory.]
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But then they're somewhere else.
And he doesn't quite get this either, but it feels easier to look around now. It looks like...]
... One of your barriers? [Then he sees it, standing right beside them.] Ah! King Crimson...!
[... Wow. He'd actually rather look at those horrid little faces than... do what they were doing before.]