Chapter Text
“Come on, open already-” Fugo’s hurried voice rang out from around the corner, flickering light spilling out of the elevator, illuminating his figure as he stood holding open the two stainless steel doors. Fugo hadn’t expected the elevator to still work, as the rest of the parking garage was completely abandoned, a few symbols graffitied on the occasional pillar the only sign that anyone had ever been there. Yet finally the doors had opened, and he sighed with relief to see Giorno was still there.
“What happened? Did you-” He stopped. Giorno was awake, sitting against the wall of the elevator, and staring directly at him. Both of his hands were clamped around his mouth, and chest heaving as he breathed through his nose.
“Thank god.” Mista slowed to a stop behind Fugo, eyes narrowing at Giorno. “Hey, what are you doing?” He caught his breath, frowning.
Giorno didn’t respond, he just quickly shook his head, a bead of sweat glistening on his forehead. His eyes darted over to Bucciarati, who shouldered past Fugo, gritting his teeth as he limped over. Despite needing attention from GE the most, he had told Fugo and Mista to go first and make sure they were alright first. The capo glanced over at the others. “What happened?”
Mista shrugged. “I don’t know, he won’t get up or talk or move his hands.”
Bruno, clearly giving up on the notion of being healed, turned back to Giorno worriedly. “Are you okay?” He asked softly, though it only seemed to make him back up against the elevator wall more.
Giorno nodded in response, but before any other comment could be made, his fingers tensed and a thin stream of blood began to seep through his hand, crawling down to his wrist and staining the cuffs of his suit.
“You don’t look okay-” Mista was cut off as Bruno held up his hand.
“What about Golden Experience?” Giorno took a deep breath and his stand appeared across from him in the elevator, shoulder resting against the wall and staring down into its hand. Bucciarati looked over to it, but it slowly lifted its hands, showing its palms to the others.
There were countless x’s torn all across them, the deep cuts dripping gold down their forearms and off their elbows. The stand lowered their arms.
“...Are those on your hands too?”
With another slow nod, Giorno recalled his stand, slowly trying to get up from the floor. Bruno held out his hand. Giorno didn’t take it, climbing to his feet on his own. “Alright. Are there any other injuries besides your hands that we should know about?”
Another nod.
“Are they on GE?”
He shook his head.
“Well, let’s… try to get back to the car. We found one of the stand users, but the other fled. Still, we should be safe enough to get home and figure out what… happened. Are you okay with that?” Giorno followed them shakily out of the elevator, still keeping his bloodied hands tight over his mouth. Abbacchio caught up with them at the car, pulling Bruno aside to ask what happened. Fugo dug through the trunk and unfolded an old rag for Giorno to keep over his face.
He took it gratefully with one hand, turning away from the car and leaning over the concrete to switch it out with his hands. Sure enough, the cuts they had seen on his stand were still present on his, and after being hastily bandaged one at a time by a panicked Narancia, he sank into the backseat of the car and stared up at the ceiling.
Fugo pulled out of the parking lot, listening to Trish and Narancia trying to get a response out of Giorno, whose shaking fingers clutched the rag over the bottom of his face.
“Do you think they specifically cut up your hands so you couldn’t heal yourself?” Giorno nodded from the seat next to Trish.
“I thought so too- wait, does that mean if you get enough paper cuts your stand will be useless?”
“Aw.”
“Wait, did they take out all your teeth?” Trish asked. “That could be it!”
Giorno shook his head. “Damn. I mean, I’m glad they didn’t, but you could just make new ones if that was the case?”
Narancia gasped. “Wait, teeth are alive? ”
“Yeah! They have nerves and shit in them, right?”
“ What?! So when you lose a tooth, it’s like- cutting off an organ? !”
“I guess? Not really?”
“If teeth are alive, can they die?”
“Yeah, when they fall out or if you die.”
“Trish, trish, wait.”
“Yeah.”
“ Are teeth afraid of death? ”
“I-”
“Giorno, when you can talk again, you better explain all of this.”
“I never thought I would find myself wishing Giorno would say something.” Abbacchio muttered, leaning back exhaustedly in the passenger seat.
Fugo just kept his eyes on the road until he finally turned into the driveway, the conversation abruptly ending as they climbed out of the car. Giorno was the last out, and Fugo saw that the blood had wept through the folded rag and marking the hands he held it so tightly with. He didn’t say anything, just locked the car and nervously followed Bruno inside.
__________________
“Right,” Bucciarati spoke up, hanging up his coat and leaning against the armchair to keep pressure off his leg. He turned to the boy who had kept the stained rag on his face. “Giorno, do you think you can try to heal your hands now? Then we can take on everything else.”
He wordlessly agreed and GE shakily took one of Giorno’s hands, pulling off the bandages, the torn up skin beneath turning white and slowly repairing itself. Giorno was holding his breath, watching the stand have to pause and build more energy to continue to the next. As they did, the matching wounds on their own palms slipped away, and the rest of the cuts healed faster. He moved to the rest of the group, carefully mending each wound until the only blood left in the room was that soaking the fabric to Giorno’s mouth.
“...Can we at least see what the damage is?”
Giorno didn’t move his hand. His gaze flickered over to the others, searching for someone to defend him, but Abbacchio stepped forward.
“There’s nothing we can do if we can’t even fucking see it.” The goth pressed a hand to his temple. “Stop being stubborn.”
“Giorno. Please show us.” Bruno tilted his head.
After a few more moments of silently pleading and hesitation, he did. Peeling the towel off his face, he stared directly into Bruno’s eyes, face contorted with pain and frustration. Bruno took a moment to realize it, thinking at first his mouth was just bloody or that his lips were cut up- Giorno’s mouth was stitched shut.
Thin cotton threads laced up and down his lips in wide intervals, soaked to a deep crimson with the blood from the tiny holes from a needle in his skin. There were two perfect rows of puncture marks above and below his mouth.
Fresh blood was spilling between the stitches, over the cracked brown marks on his face, dripping off his chin and into the cloth in his lap. There was a spot at the edge of his mouth where one of the threads was missing, though the needle marks remained. Even more blood, thick and red, gurgled out of the opening. He didn’t try to stop it from falling, keeping his eyes on Bruno.
Abbacchio’s voice was almost inaudible. “What do we do? ”
“I… we-” Bruno shut his mouth, clearly realizing that he couldn’t formulate any words.
Narancia looked terrified, tensing up and shielding his face from the sight of it, messy hair thrown over his face.
Trish’s gaze drifted over to the knife sitting on the kitchen counter and she ran her tongue along her teeth thoughtfully. There was a fearful silence. “...Who here has the steadiest hand?”
Narancia almost immediately shakily pointed to Mista, Abbacchio nodding and following.
Mista nearly jumped out of his chair. “Wait, what?” He held up his hands defensively. “What do you even…” The gears turning slowly in his head, it finally clicked and he stumbled back. “ What?! I can’t- I can’t do that!” He protested, but Bruno had already walked over and pressed the handle of the knife into his palm.
“What’s all that time practicing for?” Narancia replied.
“That’s for a gun, not a knife, and definitely not on my teammate’s face! ”
Abbacchio set a reassuring hand on Mista’s shoulder. “It’ll be fine, just don’t fucking mess it up.”
The gunslinger ignored him, walking over to Giorno with the knife clutched tight in his fingers. He glanced down, pausing. “Well, this is terrifying.”
Giorno’s eyes were wide but determined as he slowly set the fabric beside him, leaning back in the chair and setting his jaw.
“Okay, um-” Mista swallowed. “Yell at me if I start cutting your lip.” Giorno stared at him blankly. “Or, y’know, just make a noise, whatever you can.”
Giorno nodded, only for Mista to pull his hand away again, sucking the air in through his teeth. “Also don’t nod. It might mess me up.”
“...mhm.”
He took a deep breath. “Okay.” Grip tight on the knife, he took Giorno’s shoulder in the other hand, tilting the knife sideways, crosswise to the thread. He narrowed his eyes at it, trying to find a way to cut it without dragging it away from his mouth too far. The thread was thin but tough, pulled taught over the pale lips the blade hovered millimeters away from.
He looked up momentarily and met Giorno’s stare, cold determination in his eyes that begged, just get this over with. So, fixing his gaze once more on the knife, silver flashing off the end as he rotated it. “Go,” he whispered under his breath, trying to summon the courage to keep the knife moving as it met the thread, tugging on it for a split second before slicing through, staying on the same path, and cutting into the next. He drew his hand back, taking a step away. Giorno, as soon as he was allowed to move, had taken the towel from beside him and pressed it to the open side of his mouth. Mista’s eyes widened. “Did I cut your face?!”
Giorno quickly shook his head, holding up one of his hands.
“I didn’t? Thank god, how many did I get?”
He held up two fingers.
“How many more to go?”
He held up three.
“Three stitches. Fuck. Okay, stay still.”
His grip was even tighter this time, realizing that his nails were probably digging into Giorno’s shoulder blade as he held the don, and more importantly himself, in place. It was even more difficult to tell what to cut now, the remaining strings stained with red and almost invisible against the rest of his face. “Giorno, I can’t- I can’t see them.” Picking up the cloth, he wiped at his mouth, carefully removing the blood from around the stitches.
Leaning over again, Mista saw that the thin lines across the center of his face stood out. “Okay.” Mista took a deep breath, trying not to lose where they were. “Uhm… I- okay.”
“You can stop saying ‘okay’ now.” He heard Abbacchio’s annoyed voice from behind him.
He didn’t look over, just grit his teeth, trying to stay focused. “Shut up.”
Knuckles white and his heart pounding, he severed thread after thread, three short snips barely audible over his own breathing before he finally lowered his hand. “Giorno?”
Giorno was still breathing heavily through his nose, tears pricking at the corner of his eyes. He reached up to his face, wincing as he pulled out the remaining threads one by one. The strings fell into his hand and he wiped them off onto the rag.
“Can you talk?” With another sharp inhale, he shook his head, lips pressed shut.
“But- the string is gone, right? Then what is it?”
Giorno held up his hands, pointing one at his cheek and the other at the knife.
“So I did cut you?” Mista’s face was tight with confusion.
“Your tongue is bleeding,” Bruno said, Mista stepping out of the way. Giorno nodded, grip loosening with relief as they finally understood.
“Are your hands healed enough to fix it yourself?” Giorno nodded again, but slowly and uncertainly. Just as he summoned his stand, Fugo held up his hand.
“No, not yet.” Giorno looked over to him, almost pleadingly.
“Why?” Narancia asked.
“I thought I… Giorno, clean the blood off of it. I know it’ll keep bleeding, but I need to check something. Actually, we might want a mirror. Here.” He gestured for the don to follow him as he strode to the bathroom, chewing on his lip nervously.
____
Giorno was trying to avoid his reflection, eyes averted from the shape that leaned over the sink as he sponged off the inside of his mouth and shut his eyes.
“Bruno, look, they cut up his tongue intentionally.” I know that, I just can’t tell you, please, this hurts-
He imagined Bruno frowning. “Is that…”
“I- I guess we know who did it now.” Giorno furrowed his brow, feeling dizzy. Why would they…? He needed to talk, to ask them what it was. Summoning Golden Experience, he pointed to the stand with his thumb, hoping they would understand.
Bruno looked over to him and nodded, and Giorno finally commanded the figure to step forward, holding a hand up to his face and slowly repairing the puncture marks around his lips and the slices in his tongue.
As the glow faded, he slammed a forearm onto the counter and choked a cascade of blood into the sink, spattering the granite and leaving thin flecks on the mirror. Wiping the remaining blood off his mouth, he took a few deep breaths and lifted his head, catching Bruno's fearful gaze in the mirror. Then, voice hoarse and raspy, he spoke. "I'm okay now."
He didn’t want to move away from the sink in case something started bleeding again. He cleared his throat and cracked his jaw with his palm. “What was- what was it? That you saw…?”
Fugo swallowed his look of horror, blinking. “It was a backward sigma.”
He pressed his eyes shut. The symbol of the rival gang, Riassumere, that had been threatening Passione for a few weeks now, but he had been too busy to address it, if only he had rearranged his priorities- Giorno exhaled, cold air coppery and dry in his mouth. “Great…” he croaked. “I’m gonna- get some water.”
He didn’t trust himself to keep the glass from slipping out of his hand, keeping it over the counter with shaking fingers. He set it down with a soft clink, noticing all the concerned gazes in his direction. “I don’t know who they were. They were a stand user, though.” It still felt strange being able to speak, as his mouth was still sticky and made it a generally unpleasant experience. “The one who attacked me fought with what looked like a needle, but I never got to see exactly what it was.”
“Well, your mouth was sewed shut, I don’t really know what else it would be.” Trish was standing on the other side of the room, arms folded.
“Still…” Giorno found his face unfocused on the counter in front of him. “We need to find them. I was lucky you got me out, but this could only be the first attack of many.”
“What’s Riassumere doing in Naples?” Fugo asked, looking up.
Abbacchio shrugged. “They probably heard news of a new boss and aren’t happy about it. Guess they took all the original agreements as null and void now that you’re here.”
“So, what, we’ve just taken on an entire rival gang because of this?” Narancia asked, leaning over the edge of the armchair. “Won’t that be a lot to handle?”
“It may be.” Giorno agreed. “Still- Whatever it takes.”
“Not until you get more rest.” Bucciarati cut in.
Giorno shut his mouth.
“Come on, your stand can’t erase the fact that you haven’t slept in a week, can it?”
“Bucciarati, with all due respect-” The formality of his words were broken by the hoarseness of his voice. He inhaled, clearing his throat. “We may be running out of time.”
“We can leave earlier in the morning. If you’re really that unhappy with sleeping, then it shouldn’t be a problem for you to wake up earlier, should it?”
Giorno let his face fall, chewing on his lip. He knew Bucciarati would likely just let him sleep in as he usually did, and he would lose valuable time. But it was his time, which was infinitely less valuable than the rest of the team’s. He had been pondering the situation when he felt the capo’s hand on his shoulder. “Giorno. Please.”