Ur average Jojo fan @jojoshitposter - Tumblr Blog

quick announcement!!

Okay guys so like, I wrote this in the comments of one of my fics (the WIP 2 of my La Squadra fic) but I want to make an official announcement that if you want to draw fanart from any of my fics, go right ahead! I also wanna see it so tag me (I forget if you can or can’t here, but I just really wanna see it so whatever you can do to let me know about the fanart would be appreciated!!) that is all!!! <3

#announcement #fanart #Please draw fanart of my fics I beg of you #art

eyyyy Whumpuary day three

The London fog always seemed thicker in Speedwagon’s mind than it ever did on Ogre Street. Even now, standing in the polished hallways of the Joestar mansion, he felt the phantom chill of the gutters clinging to his coat.

He watched Jonathan from the shadows of the library doorway. Jonathan was bent over a desk, the golden glow of the oil lamp catching the stray threads of his hair. He looked like a painting—no, he looked like the very concept of virtue. He was the sun, radiating a warmth so pure it felt like it should burn someone like Speedwagon.

Speedwagon looked down at his own hands. They weren't clean. They were calloused from knife fights and stained by the soot of a life spent clawing for scraps.

Jonathan spoke of honor as if it were breath; Speedwagon had treated it like a luxury he couldn't afford.

He had promised to be Jonathan's blade and shield, but standing next to a man of such blinding light only made his own shadows look longer.

"I’m a crow trying to fly with an eagle," he whispered to the empty hallway.

He remembered the way Jonathan had looked at him on Ogre Street—not with disgust, but with a terrifying, earnest kindness. That was the problem. Jonathan saw a "noble spirit," but Speedwagon only saw a thief who had gotten lucky enough to bask in a gentleman’s grace. Every time he stepped into the light of Jonathan’s smile, he felt like a fraud. He was waiting for the moment the sun would finally see the stains on his soul and realize he didn't belong in the sky.

Jonathan looked up then, his blue eyes finding Speedwagon in the dark. "Speedwagon? Why are you hovering in the cold? Come, sit by the fire."

Speedwagon hesitated. The fire was warm, but it was another light he felt he hadn't earned. He forced a smile, the practiced mask of a street tough, and stepped forward. He would stay, of course. He would follow the sun into the heart of a volcano if he had to. But he would always carry the quiet ache of knowing that while he would die for the light, he could never truly be a part of it.

The fire crackled in the hearth, throwing long, dancing shadows across the room. Jonathan set his book aside, his brow furrowed with a concern he’d been nursing for days. Speedwagon was wound tight as a clock spring, pacing the perimeter of the rug like a man waiting for a blow to land.

Jonathan had heard the whispers—muttered comments about "paying what’s owed" and "settling the score." To a man of Jonathan’s upbringing, these words meant only one thing.

"Speedwagon," Jonathan began softly, his voice thick with genuine worry. "I’ve noticed you’ve been... preoccupied. You mention debts often. Please, if you are in some sort of financial trouble—if there are men from your past coming to collect—you must tell me. I have the means to settle any sum."

Speedwagon froze. The air in his lungs felt like lead. Jonathan thought he was talking about money. It was so profoundly "Jonathan" to think a problem could be solved with a checkbook and a kind word.

"It ain't like that, Mr. Joestar," Speedwagon snapped, his voice sharper than he intended. He turned away, adjusting his hat to hide the shame burning in his eyes. "You don't understand the kind of debts I'm talkin' about. You can't just throw gold at 'em and make 'em go away."

"Then let me help you face them!" Jonathan stood, taking a step forward. "If it’s a matter of honor, or if someone is threatening you, I won't have you standing alone. We are allies, aren't we?"

To Speedwagon, every kindness Jonathan offered only added to the "debt." How could he explain that he felt he owed Jonathan his very life, his breath, and his soul? How could he explain that the "collection" he feared was the moment Jonathan realized Speedwagon was a deficit to his reputation?

"Just drop it, Joestar," Speedwagon growled, his shoulders hunched. "You’re too good to be worryin' about the ledgers of a street thug. Some things... some things stay in the dark where they belong."

Jonathan winced at the coldness in his friend’s tone. He saw the way Speedwagon’s hands shook, and it only confirmed his fears: Speedwagon was in deep, and he was too proud—or too scared—to let Jonathan save him.

The silence that followed was heavy. Jonathan saw a man in trouble; Speedwagon saw a man he wasn't worthy to stand beside.

The conflict within Speedwagon’s chest was a physical ache, sharper than any blade he’d faced on Ogre Street. He spent his nights staring at the ceiling of his guest room, calculating a balance sheet that would never zero out.

To Speedwagon, his life was a loan Jonathan Joestar had co-signed with his own blood at the Windknight’s Lot. Every meal he ate at the Joestar table, every clean shirt he pulled over his scarred back, felt like he was embezzling from a saint.

The closer he got to Jonathan, the more the "debt" weighed on him. It was a dizzying, painful paradox.

He wanted to be near that light. He wanted to hear Jonathan’s laugh and see the way the man truly believed in the goodness of the world. It was addictive—a warmth he’d never known in the freezing London rains.

But every time Jonathan touched his shoulder or called him a "true friend," Speedwagon felt like a thief. He felt that if he stayed, he was dragging the Sun down into the mud with him.

They walked the estate grounds as the sun began to dip below the horizon. Jonathan was talking about the future, about hope and rebuilding, but Speedwagon was barely listening. He was watching his own shadow—dark, jagged, and out of place against the manicured emerald lawn.

"You're quiet today, Robert," Jonathan said, using that name with a softness that made Speedwagon’s throat tighten.

"Just thinkin', Mr. Joestar," Speedwagon muttered. He purposely lagged a step behind, creating a physical gap. "Thinkin' that maybe I've overstayed my welcome. A man like me... I got debts to settle. Duties back in the city. I shouldn't be cluttering up your halls forever."

Jonathan stopped and turned, his face etched with a sudden, sharp hurt. "Overstayed? Speedwagon, this is your home for as long as you wish it to be. If it’s about those debts again—"

"It ain't about the money!" Speedwagon burst out, his voice cracking. He looked at Jonathan—truly looked at him—and felt the sheer weight of his own unworthiness. He wanted to kneel; he wanted to run. He wanted to grab Jonathan’s lapels and scream that he wasn't a "noble spirit," just a man who didn't know how to pay back a miracle.

He took a step back, his heart hammering against his ribs. To stay was to live a lie; to leave was to lose the only light he’d ever followed. He was trapped in the gravity of a star, terrified of the burn but unable to survive the cold.

The silence that followed Speedwagon’s outburst wasn't peaceful; it was a ringing, suffocating vacuum. He didn’t wait for Jonathan to find the words to bridge the gap. Instead, he turned on his heel, his heavy boots crunching rhythmically against the gravel as he retreated toward the manor.

Once inside the guest room—a room far too soft, far too white, far too clean—he slammed the door and dragged his worn leather bag from beneath the bed.

His movements were frantic, driven by a desperate need to flee the crushing weight of Jonathan’s kindness. He grabbed a spare shirt and shoved it into the bag, only to pull it out three seconds later.

“I’m leaving. I’ll go back to the soot. At least there, I know how to breathe. I won't have to look at his face and feel like a parasite.”

He stopped, staring at the empty space on the bed. If he left, who would watch Jonathan’s back? Who would handle the dirty work the gentleman was too good to even imagine?

He threw the shirt back in, followed by a whetstone and a spare flask. “No. I’m a stain on him. Every day I stay, I’m just a reminder of the gutter. He deserves better than a shadow for a best friend.”

He yanked the flask out, his hand trembling. He remembered the way Jonathan had looked at him after the fight with Dio—the sheer, unadulterated relief. To leave was to settle the debt of his presence, but it was also a betrayal of the only man who had ever looked at him like he was worth a damn.

He repeated the motion—socks in, socks out, hat on the bed, hat back in the bag—a frantic, mechanical loop that mirrored the chaos in his head.

Each time he folded a garment, he felt he was folding away a piece of his heart. The room felt like a cage, but the world outside felt like an exile. He was caught in the middle of a bridge, terrified of the destination but unable to turn back to the start.

He slumped onto the edge of the mattress, a half-packed bag sitting between his feet. He looked at the ornate gold trimmings of the room. It was a palace, and he was a rat who had climbed through the window.

He gripped the leather straps of the bag until his knuckles turned white. He just had to stand up. He just had to walk out the servant’s entrance and vanish into the London fog. But the thought of Jonathan waking up to an empty room, wondering what he’d done wrong, felt like a debt Speedwagon could never, ever repay.

The door didn't creak; the hinges were too well-oiled for that. It simply swung open, letting a sliver of hallway light cut across the room where Speedwagon sat amidst his half-folded chaos.

Speedwagon bolted upright, his hand instinctively flying to the bag as if to hide the evidence of his desertion. "Mr. Joestar, I—"

The words died in his throat.

Jonathan stood in the doorway, but the man Speedwagon saw wasn't the towering pillar of strength from the battlefield. He looked smaller. His shoulders, usually broad enough to carry the weight of the world, were hunched. The vibrant blue of his eyes, which Speedwagon had compared to a summer sky, was now clouded, dim, and wet.

He wasn't angry. He wasn't demanding an explanation. He looked like a man who had offered his heart on a silver platter only to watch it drop and shatter on the floor.

Jonathan’s gaze drifted from Speedwagon’s panicked face down to the bed. He saw the open leather bag, the spare shirt tossed haphazardly inside, and the flask he’d seen Speedwagon carry through the worst of their journey. To Jonathan, the "debt" was finally clear: Speedwagon felt trapped by a sense of obligation, and he was finally, desperately, trying to break free.

"I..." Jonathan’s voice was a fragile thread, barely holding together. He swallowed hard, his throat bobbing. "I spent the last hour wondering what I could say to make you stay. I thought perhaps I hadn't been clear enough about how much your presence means to me."

He took a half-step back into the shadows of the hallway, his face twisting with a grief that made Speedwagon’s own heart stop.

"But I see now," Jonathan whispered, his voice cracking on the final word. "I see... very well then. I won't be the one to keep you in a cage you never asked for."

Before Speedwagon could find his breath—before he could scream that it was his own unworthiness, not Jonathan’s company, that he was running from—Jonathan turned away.

"Forgive me, Robert," came the faint, hollow voice from the hall. "I should have known a spirit like yours was never meant to be tethered."

The door didn't slam. It clicked shut with a soft, final sound that echoed louder than any gunshot Speedwagon had ever heard. He was left alone in the room with his half-packed bag, the silence now screaming that he had finally "paid" his debt by breaking the only person who truly loved him.

The sound of that latch clicking into place was the most violent thing Speedwagon had ever experienced. It wasn't the roar of an explosion or the sting of a blade; it was the sound of a door closing on the only life he had ever truly wanted.

For a heartbeat, he stood frozen, his hand still hovering over the half-packed leather bag. Then, the realization of what he’d seen in Jonathan’s eyes—the hollow, shattered look of a man who thought he was a burden—hit him like a physical blow to the stomach.

"No," he gasped, the word catching in his throat. "No, no, no!"

He lunged at the bed. In a fit of frantic, clumsy desperation, he grabbed the bag by its base and flipped it over. The spare shirts, the flask, the whetstone—everything he had agonized over for the last hour—tumbled out in a messy heap. He didn't stop there. He began sweeping the items off the bed, throwing them toward the corner of the room with a wild, trembling strength.

Hurled toward the wardrobe.

Skidded across the floorboards.

Kicked under the bed frame, out of sight.

He wanted it gone. He wanted every sign of his cowardice, every piece of evidence that he had even considered leaving, to be erased from the room. He wasn't leaving. He couldn't leave. Not if it meant Jonathan had to live one more second thinking he was anything less than the light of the world.

Speedwagon didn't bother straightening his waistcoat or fixing his hat. He burst out of the room, his boots skidding on the polished wood of the hallway.

"Mr. Joestar!" he shouted, his voice echoing through the high-vaulted corridors. "Jonathan!"

He ran toward the main staircase, his heart thundering against his ribs like a trapped bird. He checked the library—empty. The dining hall was a cavern of shadows. The drawing room was silent, the fire dying down to embers.

Panic started to set in. Every second that passed was another second Jonathan spent believing he wasn't enough. Speedwagon’s mind raced through the estate—where would a man like Jonathan go when his heart was breaking? Not to the crowds, not to the servants. He’d seek the air. He’d seek the places where he could be alone with his grief.

Speedwagon pivoted, nearly losing his footing as he headed for the terrace doors. The cool night air hit him, but he didn't feel the chill. He only felt the desperate, burning need to find the man who had saved his soul and tell him the truth: that the only debt Speedwagon truly cared about was the one he could never repay—the debt of being loved by someone so much better than himself.

"Jonathan!" he cried out again into the darkness of the gardens, his voice raw with a devotion he could no longer hide.

In the solitude of his own chamber, Jonathan sat by the window, staring out at a moon that felt cold and indifferent. He didn't turn on the lamps. He felt he didn't deserve the light.

His hands, usually so steady, were clasped tightly in his lap to keep them from shaking. A single tear escaped, tracing a hot path down his cheek before he could brush it away.

Jonathan’s mind was a storm of self-reproach. He had always been told that his kindness was his greatest strength, but now, it felt like his greatest failing. He felt he had been arrogant—blindly assuming that a warm bed and a few kind words were enough to mend a soul as complex as Speedwagon’s.

He thought he was offering a home, but perhaps he had only been offering a gilded cage.

He realized now, with a sharp pang, that Speedwagon had seen worlds of violence and betrayal that Jonathan could barely imagine. Who was he to think he could understand that? To think he could just fix it?

"I was a fool," Jonathan whispered to the shadows. "I pushed him. I demanded his loyalty as if it were a common thing, never realizing the cost it took for him to give it."

He truly believed he had failed Speedwagon. He figured the "debts" Speedwagon spoke of were the scars of a life Jonathan was too sheltered to grasp. He thought his own presence—his relentless, sunny optimism—must have been exhausting for a man who had survived the grimy reality of Ogre Street. He felt he had been too heavy, too demanding, and too blind to the fact that Speedwagon didn't trust him because Jonathan hadn't earned that trust—he had simply expected it.

He closed his eyes, leaning his forehead against the cool glass of the window. He felt small. He felt like a boy playing at being a hero, failing the one person who had truly stood by him.

“I wasn't good enough,” he thought, the realization cutting deeper than any of Dio’s blades. “I wasn't the friend he needed. I was just another burden he had to carry.”

The silence of the mansion felt like a tomb, and Jonathan, for the first time in his life, felt completely and utterly alone in his own light.

The adrenaline that had carried Speedwagon through the hallways began to ebb, replaced by a hollow, shaking exhaustion. He had checked every room twice, his voice growing hoarse from calling Jonathan’s name, but the mansion felt like a labyrinth designed to keep them apart.

Driven by a frantic instinct that he couldn't breathe inside those suffocating stone walls anymore, Speedwagon stumbled out onto the stone veranda.

He slumped against the cold balustrade, his legs finally giving out. The London air was biting, a sharp contrast to the warmth he’d rejected inside. He felt every year of his life on the streets catching up to him at once—the nights spent on damp crates, the endless running, the weight of a heart that felt like it was made of lead.

"Just... just for a minute," he wheezed, sliding down until he was sitting on the hard stone.

He pulled his knees to his chest, tucking his chin over his coat. He was too tired to keep searching, too ashamed to go back to his room, and too broken to leave the grounds. He looked up at the darkened windows of the upper floor, praying one of them belonged to Jonathan.

The sky was a bruised, heavy purple. The air held that peculiar, metallic scent that preceded a storm.

"Please," he whispered into the crook of his arm, his eyes fluttering shut. "Don't let it snow. Not tonight."

He imagined Jonathan finding him there in the morning. He imagined the look of shock on that kind face, and the way Jonathan would surely scoop him up, regardless of the "debt" or the "past."

Speedwagon didn't want to be a gentleman anymore. He didn't want to be a hero. He just wanted to be found by the only person who made the world feel like it wasn't a battlefield.

Sleep claimed him quickly, a heavy and dreamless fog born of pure emotional burnout. He looked small against the grand architecture of the Joestar estate—a stray dog who had wandered into a garden and didn't know how to ask to stay.

The first few flakes of frost began to crystallize on the stone around him, glittering like tiny, cold diamonds in the moonlight. He shivered in his sleep, his fingers twitching as if reaching for a hand that wasn't there, waiting for the sun to rise and settle the score once and for all.

The silence in the Joestar mansion over the following week was absolute. Jonathan had retreated into a cocoon of grief, barely leaving his bed. He ate only when the servants insisted, his eyes fixed on the door as if expecting it to burst open, yet knowing it never would. He had convinced himself that Speedwagon was long gone, back to the grit of London, free from the "burden" of a gentleman's friendship.

It took seven days for the fog in Jonathan’s mind to clear enough for him to realize he couldn't let it end this way. He needed to apologize, even if he had to track Robert to the ends of the Earth.

When Jonathan finally stepped out onto the veranda to breathe the winter air, the world was a blinding, cruel white. A heavy snow had fallen days ago, blanketing the gardens in a deceptive peace.

He walked toward the balustrade, his gaze catching on a strange, uneven mound of white tucked against the stone. A flash of dark wool poked through the drift.

"No," Jonathan whispered, his heart stopping. "No, please..."

He threw himself into the snow, digging with frantic, desperate hands. Beneath the freezing crust, he found him. Speedwagon was curled into a tight ball, his skin a terrifying, translucent blue. His breathing was so shallow it was nearly non-existent, a faint rattle in a chest that had grown dangerously thin.

Jonathan gathered the shivering, half-dead man into his arms, pulling him against the warmth of his own chest. Speedwagon’s eyelashes were frosted with ice, and his fingers were stiff and white. He had stayed. He hadn't run to London; he had collapsed right at Jonathan’s doorstep, waiting for a dawn that had almost come too late.

"Robert! Robert, look at me!" Jonathan cried, his voice breaking the week-long silence of the estate.

Speedwagon’s eyes fluttered open—just a sliver of clouded hazel. He didn't see the mansion or the snow. He only saw the golden blur of the man he thought was a god.

"Paid..." Speedwagon rasped, his voice a ghost of a sound. "Stayed... like I... promised..."

"You owe me nothing," Jonathan sobbed, clutching him tighter as he scrambled to his feet to carry him inside. "Do you hear me? You never owed me a single breath! It is I who am lucky to even know you!"

As Jonathan rushed him toward the warmth of the fire, the "debt" finally evaporated. There were no ledgers, no thieves, and no saints—only two broken men holding onto each other in the cold, realizing that the only thing they truly owed one another was the chance to stay.

The master bedroom of the Joestar mansion was filled with the rhythmic crackle of the hearth and the heavy, medicinal scent of eucalyptus and heated blankets. Jonathan sat in a high-backed chair pulled flush against the side of the bed, his large hand gently covering Speedwagon’s pale, bruised-looking knuckles.

Speedwagon’s face was almost unrecognizable beneath the layers of wool and fur. The sharp, lively lines of his features had been smoothed out by a terrifying, deathly exhaustion. Every few minutes, his chest would hitch—a jagged, shallow breath that sounded like dry leaves skittering on stone—and Jonathan would lean forward, his heart stopping until the next breath finally came.

Jonathan didn't care about the soot staining the fine silk sheets or the fact that he hadn't slept in over twenty-four hours. He watched the flicker of the firelight play across Speedwagon’s closed eyelids, his mind a feverish blur of guilt and devotion.

“Please,” he thought, his head bowing until his forehead touched the edge of the mattress. “Don't let the last thing he felt be the cold. Don't let his final memory of me be that look of disappointment.”

He realized now that he didn't want a "noble spirit" or a "perfect ally." He just wanted Robert. He wanted the man who shouted too loud, who wore his hat at a rakish angle, and who had stood by him when the rest of the world felt like a nightmare.

Jonathan was a man of logic and strength, but as the clock chimed three in the morning, he found himself whispering into the silence. He wasn't praying for a hero’s recovery; he was praying for a friend’s forgiveness.

"You aren't a debt to be paid, Robert," Jonathan whispered, his voice thick with unshed tears. "You are the light I didn't know I was looking for. Please... just stay. Stay, and I will spend every day making sure you never feel the need to hide in the shadows again."

He watched the steady rise and fall of the blankets, counting the seconds between each breath. The snow continued to fall outside, muffled and silent against the glass, but inside, Jonathan held onto Speedwagon’s hand as if his own grip could tether the man’s soul to the earth. He stayed there, a silent sentinel in the dark, waiting for the sun to rise and for those hazel eyes to finally open and see that he was home.

The End <3

#i regret nothing #jjba #jjba fanfic #jjba part 1 #jonathan joestar #jonathan jojo #jonathan jjba #speedwagon #robert e.o. speedwagon #jjba fanart

hehheheheh day two hehehhe

this one’s actually not Jjba, it’s Heaven Official’s Blessing hehehehhe

!!MASIVE TW for mentions of suicide (Xie Lian’s parents) and self harm!!

The mud of Xianle didn’t feel like holy earth anymore; it felt like grasping hands, pulling at his boots, trying to drag him back into the temple of his own slaughter.

Xie Lian didn’t look back. He couldn't. If he looked back, he might see the temple where his people—his children—had taken turns driving cold iron through his heart. He might see the cold, white silk hanging from the rafters of the forest where his parents had left him behind.

Most of all, he was terrified that if he looked back, he would see a pale, crying-smiling mask watching him from the shadows of the trees.

He ran. His white cultivation robes, once the envy of the heavens, were now a cartography of ruin. The hem was shredded by brambles, the silk stained a deep, rusted crimson that refused to wash out. He didn't care. Let the silk snag on the thorns; let the sharp rocks cut his feet. Every sting of physical pain was a distraction from the howling void in his chest where his heart used to be.

“Run,” his mind screamed, a jagged loop of desperation. “Just run until the air burns your lungs. Just run until the world forgets the name Xie Lian.”

He felt a sudden, cold prickle on the back of his neck. It was a sensation he had come to associate with White No-Face—that stifling, paternal cruelty that had shadowed his every step since the fall.

He stumbled, his knee hitting a jagged stone with a sickening crack. He didn't cry out. He scrambled up, his fingers clawing at the dirt, his eyes wide and frantic. He didn't dare use his spiritual powers; a flare of light would be a beacon. He had to be small. He had to be nothing. He had to be a ghost among ghosts.

“Please,” he prayed, though he no longer knew to whom. “Please don’t let him see. Please let him be bored of me. Let me just be a piece of trash lost in the wind.”

He reached the edge of a rushing river, the water black and freezing under the moonlight. Without a second thought, Xie Lian plunged in. The cold was a mercy. It washed away the grime of the temple floor and the phantom heat of the 100 blades.

As he let the current sweep him away, his last conscious thought was a plea for invisibility. He didn't want a throne. He didn't want revenge. He just wanted a world where the laughter of a ghost couldn't reach him.

The water was a chaotic mercy, tumbling him over smooth stones and numbing the fire in his limbs. But as the current slowed into a wide, dark bend, the instinct for survival—honed by months of torment—kicked back in.

He couldn't stay in the water forever. Eventually, it would carry him to a bridge or a village where eyes might find him.

Xie Lian’s fingers, blue-tinged and trembling, hooked into the slick mud of the riverbank. His muscles screamed. Every one of the hundred puncture wounds in his torso seemed to pulse in time with his frantic heartbeat, but he forced himself upward. He dragged his body out of the silt, moving with the jagged, desperate grace of a wounded animal.

Once he was on solid ground, he didn't immediately bolt. He froze, head cocked, listening to the wind.

Was that the rustle of a white sleeve? Or just the reeds?

He looked down at himself. He was a walking disaster. The water was pouring off his robes, creating dark, heavy puddles in the soft earth.

“A trail,” he whispered, his voice a ghost of its former clarity. “He’ll follow the water.”

The thought of White No-Face standing over these wet footprints, tilting that mask in mock pity, sent a jolt of pure adrenaline through his veins. He couldn't use his spiritual energy to flash-dry the fabric—the flare would be too bright—so he used his hands. He wrung out the heavy hem of his robes with a frantic, bone-crushing strength, twisting the silk until the water sprayed out in a fine mist rather than a steady stream.

He squeezed his hair until his scalp ached.

He scraped the mud from his boots against a flat stone.

He tucked his tattered sleeves tightly into his waistband to stop them from dragging.

He looked like a shadow, thin and gaunt, his skin the color of salt. He was dry enough. He had to be.

He didn't pick a path; he picked a direction—away from the sun, away from the ruins of the imperial city, away from the smell of incense and blood.

He started to run again, but this time it was different. The first run had been blind panic; this was a calculated disappearance. He stayed in the high grass where the blades would spring back up behind him. He stepped only on stones and hard-packed roots, avoiding the soft patches of earth that might hold his weight.

His breath came in ragged, shallow hitches. His chest felt like it was filled with broken glass, but he didn't slow down. He couldn't afford a single moment of rest. In his mind’s eye, he could still see the "Crying-Smiling Mask" floating just behind his shoulder, whispering that there was no escape.

“I’m not there anymore,” Xie Lian told himself, his teeth chattering. “I’m not the Crown Prince. I’m not a god. I’m nothing. You can’t find nothing.”

He disappeared into the deep, unforgiving thicket of the mountain woods, a streak of tattered white lost in the shifting shadows of the trees.

The temple was silent, save for the sound of the wind whistling through the fresh holes in the masonry.

White No-Face stood in the center of the carnage, his pristine white sleeves undisturbed by the soot or the blood. He looked at the altar, then at the floor where the Crown Prince had been pinned just hours before. The sword—the one they had all used—lay discarded in the dirt.

The godling was gone.

The mask tilted. A soft, huffing sound escaped from behind the porcelain—a laugh, or perhaps a sigh of parental indulgence. "Oh, Xianle," he murmured, his voice like the shifting of dry bones. "Do you really think there is a 'somewhere else' for you?"

White No-Face did not run. He did not rush. To rush would imply that there was a chance his prize could actually escape, and he knew better. He knew the rhythm of Xie Lian’s panic; he knew the exact way the boy’s mind fractured under pressure.

He stepped out of the temple and onto the muddy path.

He walked with a terrifying, rhythmic slowness. He reached the riverbank where Xie Lian had plunged in. He didn't need to track the scent; he simply looked at the world and saw where Xie Lian wasn't. The absence of his light was like a tear in the fabric of the night.

When he reached the spot where Xie Lian had climbed out and meticulously wrung out his robes, the Calamity paused. He looked at the flattened grass and the scraped stone.

"Clever," the mask whispered to the empty trees. "You tried so hard to be neat. You always were a perfectionist, weren't you?"

He stepped over the stone, his stride long and effortless. He didn't care that Xie Lian was miles ahead. Every step the Prince took was a step toward exhaustion, while White No-Face was as tireless as a nightmare. He was walking the boy down, a hunter waiting for the prey's heart to burst from the sheer effort of beating.

Miles away, Xie Lian’s boots had finally fallen apart.

He was running on raw feet now, the skin flayed by the rough terrain, but he barely felt it. His entire world had shrunk to the size of the three feet of ground directly in front of him.

Step. Avoid the dry twig.

Step. Keep the breathing quiet.

Step. Don't look back.

He felt a strange, manic sense of hope rising in his throat. He had been running for hours. The air was getting thinner, the forest deeper. Surely, by now, he had put enough distance between them. Surely the Calamity was still back at the temple, satisfied with the blood he’d already drawn.

He reached a rocky ridge and collapsed against a tree, his chest heaving. His lungs felt like they were coated in acid. He looked down at his hands—shaking, filthy, and scarred—and let out a jagged, broken sob that he immediately choked back with a fist.

He thought he was safe because he couldn't hear footsteps. He didn't realize that White No-Face didn't need to be loud. He didn't realize that the distance between them wasn't growing; it was being measured out in the Calamity's calm, steady breaths.

Xie Lian pushed off the tree, his legs trembling like reeds in a storm, and forced himself to keep moving. He was running toward a horizon that didn't exist, while the ghost of his past followed behind him with the patience of a grave.

The silence of the forest had become absolute. The birds had stopped their chattering, and even the wind seemed to hold its breath. Xie Lian, blinded by his own sweat and the stinging salt of tears he refused to shed, believed the silence was his ally. He believed he was alone.

He reached a small clearing where the moonlight cut through the canopy in sharp, silver blades. He was staggering now, his gait uneven, his senses dulled by the rhythmic thud-thud-thud of his own frantic heart.

He didn't hear a footfall. He didn't feel a shift in the air.

Then, a hand—ice-cold and impossibly strong—snapped shut around his wrist.

The grip was precise. It caught him just below the joint of his wrist, pinning the delicate bones. It was a calculated hold; it was low enough that Xie Lian couldn't pull his arm back into his sleeve to slip away, and positioned so that his hand was turned outward, palms away from his body. He couldn't even reach out to grab his own tunic or claw at the hand holding him.

Xie Lian’s entire body jolted as if struck by lightning. The scream died in his throat, replaced by a wet, strangled gasp.

"Running so fast, Xianle," a voice purred directly into his ear. It was a soft, cultured sound that carried the weight of a mountain. "You'll trip and hurt yourself if you aren't careful."

Xie Lian didn't look. He couldn't look at that mask.

With a panicked, guttural cry, he threw his entire weight forward, trying to wrench his arm free. He kicked, his ruined boots sliding in the dirt, his body twisting with a violence that threatened to dislocate his own shoulder. He was like a bird beating its wings against a cage of iron.

"Let go! Let go of me!" he shrieked, the words cracking.

He lunged away, his free hand clawing at the empty air, his spine arching as he tried to create any inch of distance. But the grip didn't even flicker. It wasn't just a hand holding him; it felt like the very earth had reached up to claim its property.

The more he pulled, the more the cold fingers seemed to sink into his skin, marking him. Every time he jerked his arm, the white sleeve of his pursuer remained perfectly still, a terrifying contrast to Xie Lian’s thrashing, desperate form.

"Shhh," the voice whispered, the mask leaning closer until the cold porcelain almost touched Xie Lian's temple. "Why are you struggling? You've already seen that your people don't want you. Your parents didn't stay for you. Only I am left."

Xie Lian let out a broken, high-pitched sob, his feet slipping again as he tried to pull away with such force that his wrist turned purple under the pressure. He was a god, but in this grip, he felt like a child being dragged back to a nightmare he had almost forgotten how to survive.

The sudden, violent resistance finally snapped. It wasn’t that the grip loosened—it was that Xie Lian’s legs simply turned to water. The exhaustion, the blood loss from the hundred stabs, and the sheer, crushing weight of despair finally overthrew his will to stand.

He collapsed, his knees hitting the hard-packed earth with a sickening thud. Because White No-Face still held his wrist in that iron, low-slung grip, Xie Lian’s arm was pulled taut above him, pinning him in a pathetic, kneeling crouch.

"Let go! Let go! Let go!"

Xie Lian didn't just speak; he screamed. It was a raw, jagged sound that tore through the quiet woods, the voice of a man who had been pushed past the brink of Sanity. He thrashed on the ground, his free hand beating uselessly at the dirt, throwing clouds of dust and dead leaves into the air.

"Don't touch me! Don't look at me!" He jerked his pinned wrist so hard the joint popped, but the Calamity didn't move an inch. "I hate you! I hate everything! Just let me go!"

He was a Crown Prince, a God of Martial Arts, a beloved son—and now, he was a broken thing in the dirt, howling at a monster that claimed to love him. His yelling became incoherent, a string of refusals and curses that eventually began to lose their edge, blunted by the sheer agony of his situation.

Then, the anger drained out, leaving only the hollow, shivering shell of a boy who had lost his world. The screams turned into gasping hitches. His head dropped, his forehead pressing into the cold soil, and he began to sob.

These weren't the quiet, dignified tears of a prince. These were the heavy, snot-and-salt sobs of someone who had reached the absolute end of his endurance.

"Please," he choked out, his voice a pathetic, wet whisper. "Please... just leave me alone. I’m nothing. I’m nobody. You’ve taken everything. There’s nothing left to break."

He stayed there, curled in the dirt, his body shaking with such force that his teeth rattled. Every time he felt the cold pressure of those fingers on his wrist, a fresh wave of horror washed over him.

"I don't want to be a god," he sobbed into the dirt, the taste of copper and earth in his mouth. "I don't want to save anyone. I just want to be alone. Please... just go away. Why won't you just go away?"

Above him, White No-Face remained a silent, towering monolith of white silk. He didn't pull Xie Lian up, nor did he let him go. He simply watched the boy break, the crying-smiling mask reflecting the pale moonlight.

He didn't speak until the worst of the sobbing had turned into shaky, rhythmic gasps. Then, with a terrifying tenderness, he leaned down, his shadow swallowing Xie Lian whole.

"But Xianle," the voice purred, smooth and cold as a funeral shroud. "If I leave you alone... who will be left to witness your beautiful suffering?"

The cold fingers tightened, shifting from a restraint to a lever. With a sudden, jarring yank, White No-Face hauled Xie Lian upward.

"Stand up, Xianle," the Calamity commanded, his voice devoid of the earlier mock-softness. "A prince should not wallow in the dirt."

Xie Lian’s boots skidded on the loose gravel. For a flickering second, he was upright, his body swaying like a reed in a gale. His vision swam with white spots, the world tilting dangerously. He looked at the white sleeve holding him, then up at the mask—that horrific, frozen duality of joy and grief—and a final spark of defiance flared in his gut.

He didn't just stumble; he threw his weight downward. He let his muscles go limp, a dead weight designed to frustrate. He hit the ground again, harder this time, his shoulder jarring painfully against a root.

"No," Xie Lian rasped, his voice thick with phlegm and tears. "I won't... I won't go back."

There was a long, heavy silence. The forest seemed to grow colder, the shadows stretching out like reaching claws. White No-Face didn't sigh. He didn't argue. He simply turned his back toward the direction of the ruined Kingdom of Xianle, his grip on Xie Lian’s wrist never wavering.

Then, he began to walk.

He didn't pick Xie Lian up. He didn't wait for him to find his footing. He simply stepped forward, and Xie Lian was jerked across the forest floor.

"Stop! Stop it!" Xie Lian gasped as his hip collided with a stone.

The Calamity ignored him. He walked with a steady, rhythmic pace, dragging the God of Misfortune behind him as if he were nothing more than a discarded sack of grain.

The journey back was a blurred nightmare of textures and pain.

Brambles tore at Xie Lian’s legs, his already ruined robes shredding further, leaving strips of white silk caught on the bushes like funeral streamers.

His knuckles scraped against the dirt, and his free hand clawed at the grass, trying to find anything to anchor himself, but he only succeeded in uprooting fistfuls of weeds.

The only noise in the woods was the rhythmic thump-drag, thump-drag of Xie Lian’s body being pulled over the uneven terrain.

White No-Face moved effortlessly. He didn't care if Xie Lian’s head snapped back or if his skin was flayed by the rough path. He was returning his masterpiece to its pedestal of ash.

"You belong in the center of the storm, Xianle," the mask whispered, though he didn't turn around to look. "Did you think you could just run away and be a person? You are a tragedy. And a tragedy needs an audience."

Xie Lian stopped fighting eventually. He lay flat on his back, staring up at the canopy of trees passing overhead, his arm stretched painfully above his head, held by that unbreakable white specter. The tears had dried into salty crusts on his cheeks. He watched the moon through the branches and realized with a sickening, hollow clarity: no matter how far he ran, the shadow was always faster.

The sensation of being dragged was dehumanizing—a rhythmic, jarring reminder that his body was no longer his own. Every rock that bruised his spine and every root that caught his ribs felt like another person in the temple, another hand pushing a blade into his chest.

His eyes, glazed and stinging with dust, darted frantically to the side of the path. There, protruding from a thicket of dead, blackened wood, was a hooked bramble. It wasn't just a thorn; it was a gnarled, thick branch of wild rose that had died and hardened into a jagged, wooden claw.

It was a desperate, mad thought: “If I can’t break his grip, I’ll make the ground hold me instead.”

Xie Lian didn't hesitate. As they passed the thicket, he gathered the last of his strength and swung his free arm with violent force, slamming his forearm directly into the hooked wood.

The sound was sickening—a wet, sharp crunch as the hook tore through his remaining sleeve and buried itself deep into the meat of his arm. He let out a strangled, high-pitched cry of agony, his fingers curling into the dirt. The pain was white-hot, radiating up to his shoulder, but for one miraculous second, the dragging stopped. He was anchored. He was snagged. He was bleeding into the earth he had failed to save, and for that moment, he wasn't moving toward the ruins.

He panted, his forehead pressed to the dirt, blood blooming rapidly across the tattered silk of his sleeve. He squeezed his eyes shut, bracing for the branch to snap or his skin to tear.

Up ahead, the white-robed figure came to a halt.

White No-Face didn't turn his whole body. He merely tilted his head, the crying-smiling mask glancing back over a shoulder at the pathetic scene behind him. He looked at the blood dripping from the bramble; he looked at Xie Lian’s trembling, impaled arm.

He didn't scream in frustration. He didn't mock him. He didn't even lean down to unhook him.

"How dedicated you are to your own pain," the voice said, sounding almost bored. "If you wanted to bleed more, Xianle, you only had to ask."

The Calamity didn't loosen his grip on Xie Lian’s wrist. Instead, he simply adjusted his weight and took a long, deliberate step forward.

"No—!" Xie Lian’s warning was cut off by a scream.

White No-Face didn't slow down to accommodate the snag. He walked with the steady, crushing force of a landslide. The hooked bramble groaned, then snapped, but not before it had carved a jagged, crimson furrow through Xie Lian's arm.

The momentum yanked Xie Lian forward again, his body sliding back onto the rough path. The "anchor" had failed, leaving him with nothing but a fresh, pulsing wound and the realization that his defiance meant less than nothing.

The dragging continued. Thump-drag. Thump-drag. The scent of woodsmoke was growing stronger now. The trees were thinning, revealing the charred skeletons of the city gates in the distance. White No-Face continued his walk, silent and relentless, dragging a bleeding, broken god back to the altar of his own despair.

The charred remains of the imperial capital loomed like a graveyard of giants. White No-Face did not stop at the gates; he dragged Xie Lian through the ash-covered streets, past the skeletal remains of homes and the silent, judging ruins of the palace.

Finally, they reached the heart of the royal residence. The Calamity finally released Xie Lian’s wrist, letting him slump onto a cold, marble floor that had once been polished to a mirror shine.

Xie Lian expected more violence. He expected the swords. Instead, he felt the terrifyingly soft touch of silk as White No-Face knelt beside him.

"Look at you," the mask whispered, the tone dripping with a honeyed, parental pity that made Xie Lian’s stomach churn. "You’ve made such a mess of yourself, Xianle. All that running, and for what? A few more scars?"

With hands that were steady and maddeningly gentle, the Calamity began to tend to the gore. He produced a clean cloth, dipping it into a basin of cool water that appeared as if by dark magic.

He took Xie Lian’s arm—the one torn open by the bramble—and began to wash the dirt from the wound. He moved with the precision of a devoted healer, his fingers light as a feather. When Xie Lian flinched, his breath hitching in terror, White No-Face made a soft, "tsk-tsk" sound.

"Shh, be still," he murmured, patting the wound dry before applying a soothing salve that smelled of expensive herbs and death. "I am the only one left to care for you. Your people would have let you rot in that river. But I? I will always make sure you are whole again."

He bandaged the arm with perfect, neat loops of white linen. He even reached out to brush a stray, matted lock of hair from Xie Lian’s tear-stained face. The touch was so tender, so sweet, that it felt more violating than the hundred swords. It was the kindness of a taxidermist toward his favorite specimen.

Xie Lian lay there, paralyzed, his eyes wide and hollow. He looked like a doll that had been discarded and then painstakingly stitched back together by a madman.

"You have a very special place in this world, my Prince," White No-Face said, leaning down until the cold, porcelain mask was inches from Xie Lian’s ear.

"You can run until your feet bleed to the bone. You can hide in the deepest cave or the swiftest river. But you must understand the truth now." He ran a thumb over Xie Lian's jawline, a gesture of sickening affection.

"There is no 'away' for you to go to. I am the beginning of your story, and I am the end. You will never be free, because you belong to me. And I am very, very patient."

White No-Face stood up, his white robes billowing like a shroud in the drafty hall. He didn't lock a door; he didn't need to. He simply stepped into the shadows, leaving Xie Lian alone in the center of his ruined kingdom, perfectly bandaged, perfectly tended, and utterly destroyed.

The End <3

#tgcf #heaven official's blessing #xie lian #white no face #tgcf xie lian #tgcf fanfic #tgcf fanart #xie lian fanart

Whumpuary day one cuz apparently I’m just finding out about this 💔

made the fic in like five hours sorry if it’s ahh 💔

but first here’s the art

now for the fic

The sun over the Piazza del Duomo was blinding, the kind of heat that usually made Fugo irritable. But today, he felt strangely hollow—a quiet, drifting ghost in a city that moved too fast.

He was adjusting his sleeve when he heard it: a chorus of voices, sharp and familiar, cutting through the ambient noise of the crowd.

"Fugo!"

He turned. Three figures were approaching. One was dressed in a suit of regal gold, his blonde hair braided into iconic loops. Beside him was a girl with striking pink hair and a man in a red-and-white patterned sweater. They looked relieved, breathless, and—most unsettlingly—as if they had been searching for him for a lifetime.

"Finally," Mista exhaled, stepping forward with a wide, lopsided grin. "You’ve been making yourself real hard to find, man."

Fugo blinked, his brow furrowing. He looked at the man, then at the girl, then at the blonde youth who stood with a quiet, heavy authority.

"I'm sorry," Fugo said, his voice polite but guarded. "Do I know you?"

The air seemed to leave the group all at once. The smile on Mista’s face didn't drop; it just froze, turning into something brittle.

"Very funny," Mista said, though his eyes were darting nervously. "That’s not a funny joke, Fugo. Come on. We’ve had a long year. Just... come here."

Fugo didn't move. He took a half-step back, his hands rising instinctively in a defensive posture. "I’m... I’m not joking. Who are you people?"

Giorno stepped forward, his expression unreadable, though his voice carried a faint tremor. "Fugo. It’s me. Giorno Giovanna. We were... we were brothers-in-arms."

Fugo’s head tilted. He repeated the name internally, searching for a spark, a flicker of a memory, a flash of gold. Nothing. "Giorno... who?"

Trish pushed past Mista, her eyes glassy. "Fugo, look at me. You have to remember. What about Bruno? Or Narancia? Think about the plane, the boat... think about the music!"

Fugo stared at her. The names Bruno and Narancia sounded like beautiful words from a language he had never studied. "I’ve never heard those names before in my life," he whispered. A cold sweat began to break across his neck. "How do you know my name? Why are you looking at me like that?"

"Remember me!" Mista shouted, his voice cracking as he stepped into Fugo’s personal space. "Forget the new guys for a second—remember me? We did this for years! Before we ever met Giorno and Trish! You and me, the restaurant, the missions... you have to remember!"

Fugo remained frozen in place, his heart hammering against his ribs. He looked at Mista’s desperate face and felt a wave of profound, terrifying confusion. The world felt like it was tilting on its axis. He looked at these three strangers who spoke to him with the intimacy of family, and all he felt was the void where his past should have been.

"No...?" Fugo’s voice was barely a breath. "I don't... I don't know any of you."

He stood paralyzed in the center of the square, a man standing in the wreckage of a history he no longer owned.

The silence that followed Fugo’s denial was deafening. Giorno’s hand was still half-extended, reaching for a connection that simply wasn't there anymore.

"Fugo, please," Trish whispered, her voice trembling. "Just look at us. Really look at us."

Fugo didn’t look. Instead, his eyes darted around the piazza, looking for an exit. The intensity in their eyes—the grief, the longing, the sheer weight of their expectations—was becoming a physical pressure on his chest. He began to shuffle backward, his heels clicking rhythmically against the cobblestones.

"Look, I don't know what kind of game this is," Fugo said, his voice rising with a frantic edge. "But you’re... you’re really weirding me out. I think you have me confused with someone else. I’m just a student. I’m just going home."

He turned to bolt, but Giorno lunged forward. "Wait! Fugo, stay where you are!"

Giorno was fast, but Fugo’s panic gave him a head start. By the time Giorno reached out, Fugo was already several paces away, out of arm's reach. He looked like a cornered animal, his eyes wide and white-rimmed.

Mista, usually the most laid-back of the group, finally snapped. The frustration of losing so many friends only to find one who didn't even recognize him boiled over.

"Hey! You can’t just walk away!" Mista yelled, pointing a finger at Fugo’s retreating back. "That’s disrespectful to the Boss, Fugo! You’re talking to Giorno Giovanna! That’s right—he actually did it! He took over Passione! You’re looking at the head of the entire organization!"

Fugo stopped dead.

The word Passione hit him like a physical blow. Even if he didn't remember his life within it, everyone in Italy knew that name. It was the shadow that loomed over every street corner, the name whispered in fear behind closed doors.

He turned slowly, his face drained of all color. He wasn't stopping because he remembered; he was stopping because he was terrified. He looked at Giorno—the teenager in the gold suit—and then at the others. His mind raced, trying to find any moment where he might have crossed a mafia don, any debt his family might have owed, any reason for the "Boss" to be hunting him down in broad daylight.

"I... Passione?" Fugo stammered, his hands shaking so violently he had to tuck them into his pockets. "I-I don't want any trouble! I haven't done anything! Please!"

He looked at Giorno with pure, unadulterated fear, the kind of look one gives a monster.

"I don't know who you are, or what you think I did," Fugo pleaded, his voice breaking. "Please... just let me go. I won't tell anyone I saw you. I swear. Just... please don't hurt me!"

Giorno flinched as if he’d been slapped. Seeing Fugo—the man who once stood at their side with a fierce, prideful intellect—now reduced to begging for his life from them was a pain worse than any Stand attack.

The walk back to the hideout was agonizingly quiet. Fugo followed several paces behind, his head ducked and his shoulders hunched. He wasn't following them because he felt a bond; he was following them because he was convinced that if he ran, the "Boss" would have him erased.

When they arrived at the lavish villa Giorno now called home, Fugo stood by the door, trembling, waiting for the blow to fall. But it never did. Instead, they sat him down on a soft sofa and brought him water.

"We aren't going to hurt you, Fugo," Giorno said softly, though the pain in his eyes contradicted his calm voice.

Mista couldn't take the silence. He started pacing, his hands flying as he talked. He began from the very beginning—the days under Bucciarati’s leadership. He spoke about the restaurant, the missions, and the strange, invisible powers they all shared.

"It’s called a Stand, Fugo! Your soul’s energy!" Mista shouted, and with a familiar pop, the Sex Pistols appeared.

It was a mistake. As soon as the six little yellow spirits saw Fugo, they burst into high-pitched wailing.

"FUGOOOOO! YOU’RE BACK!"

"Number 3 hit me while you were gone!"

"WE MISSED YOU!"

The Pistols swarmed him, clinging to his hair and cheeks, sobbing uncontrollably. Fugo froze, his eyes bulging. "I... I can see them. These... little yellow things. I can see them."

"Of course you can," Mista wiped a stray tear from his own eye. "Because you have one too. You’re one of us."

Seeing that Fugo still possessed the "vision" was a relief, but the boy himself still looked lost. Giorno took over then, his voice a steady hum as he explained the betrayal of the Boss, the flight through Italy, and the ultimate sacrifice of the others. Trish chimed in, her voice softening as she described Narancia’s spirit and Bruno’s unwavering resolve.

Fugo sat in silence for a long time after they finished. He looked down at his hands, then at the empty air where the Pistols were finally calming down.

"I still don't remember," Fugo whispered, his voice cracking. "I don't see their faces when you say their names. I don't remember a single mission."

He paused, biting his lip until it nearly bled.

"But..." Fugo looked up at Giorno, a strange, hollow look in his eyes. "When you told me that those people—Bruno and Narancia—had died... it felt like someone kicked me in the chest. I’ve felt this... this heavy, black hole in my heart for months. I didn't know why. I thought I was just depressed."

He looked at his clothes—the strawberry-patterned suit—and then at the way he was meticulously adjusting his napkins.

"I have these habits," Fugo continued, his voice shaking. "I get so angry at nothing. I study until my fingers bleed because it feels like I'm trying to catch up to someone. I... I buy two chocolates sometimes at the store and then realize I have no one to give the second one to."

He looked at Mista, then Trish, then Giorno. "If what you're saying is true... then I’ve been mourning people I forgot existed."

The weight of the realization seemed to age Fugo a decade in a matter of seconds. He looked at the Sex Pistols—who were still whimpering and patting his shoulders—and then at Giorno’s face, which held a look of such profound, tragic hope.

"I... I need to be alone," Fugo whispered.

"Fugo, you don't have to—" Giorno started, reaching out, but Fugo was already standing.

He didn't run this time. He walked with a stiff, mechanical gait toward the hallway they had indicated was the guest wing. He found a room, stepped inside, and clicked the lock. The sound of the bolt sliding home felt like a finality—a barrier between the world of the living and the ghost he had become.

Inside the quiet room, Fugo slumped against the door and slid to the floor.

"How?" he hissed into the empty air, his voice thick with a sudden, violent loathing for himself. "How could I forget?"

It wasn't just the embarrassment of not recognizing the "Boss" or the fear of the unknown. It was the crushing guilt of the void. Mista had spoken of years of friendship; Trish had spoken of a shared destiny; Giorno had spoken of brotherhood. And Bruno and Narancia... they were dead. They had given everything, and Fugo had managed to lose even the memory of their sacrifice.

He clutched his head, his nails digging into his scalp. To forget the living was an insult, but to forget the dead felt like a second killing.

"They’re gone, and I wasn't even there to remember them," he choked out. A sob, jagged and raw, escaped his throat. He felt like a traitor twice over—once for staying on the boat, and once for letting their names slip through the cracks of his broken mind.

He looked at his reflection in the room’s darkened window. He saw a stranger in a strawberry suit. He felt the familiar, volatile heat of his temper rising—the "Purple Haze" of his soul—but it had nowhere to go. There was no enemy to fight, only the hollow silence of his own amnesia.

Outside the door, he could hear the faint, muffled sounds of Mista and Trish arguing in hushed, worried tones, and the heavy, regal silence of Giorno waiting. But Fugo stayed on the floor, curled into a ball, unable to face the people who loved a version of him that no longer existed.

The End <3

#jjba #jjba part 5 #jjba fanfic #jjba fanart #jjba fugo #pannacotta fugo #jojo fugo #whumpuary2026 #whumpuary day 1

WIP two of my La Squadra fic

heh… hehe… I may have prepared some bricks to throw at y'all with this one… heh… anyway it’s still not completed there’s a LOT more I want to do with this dw, I also put a beak that shows the end of the first WIP, and Happy new years!! (I posted this on new years if you don’t see this when this is first posted), what a great thing to start the new year, anyways enjoy!!!!

I also came up with a name for this fic:

When You Fall, Your Brothers Help You Up

——— fic start———

The air in the abandoned warehouse was a thick, greasy soup of damp concrete and cheap disinfectant. It clung to their threadbare clothes and tasted like the dust that perpetually coated the few, scrounged pieces of furniture. This was their "safe house," paid for with the same currency Diavolo used to buy their loyalty: contempt.

Ghiaccio was at the rickety, paint-peeled table, his Stand, White Album, shimmering slightly in a weak spotlight from a broken fixture. He wasn't practicing. He was just tracing the outline of a stain on the tabletop, his jaw working a frantic, silent argument.

"Three hundred thousand lire," he hissed, finally snapping the silence. "Three fucking hundred thousand. That's enough for three pizzas, or two kilos of pasta and some rancid sausage. For seven people. For three days."

Risotto, their leader, stood by a boarded-up window, a shadow carved from the deeper gloom. He didn't look at Ghiaccio. He didn't have to. The anger was a familiar, sharp scent in the air, but beneath it was something colder, something Risotto felt deep in his gut—the gnawing, constant ache of hunger.

"We take it," Risotto said, his voice a low rasp that allowed no argument. "We do the job, and we take it."

"But why?" Ghiaccio’s chair scraped back as he shot to his feet. "We're the best! We're the assassination squad! We deal with the dirtiest, most dangerous secrets of Passione! We deserve more than scraps! We deserve the respect!"

Risotto finally turned, and his eyes, visible only as pinpricks of light reflecting the distant streetlamps, held a terrifying emptiness. "Respect," he repeated, the word tasting like ash. "The Boss doesn't trade in respect, Ghiaccio. He trades in control. He knows we'll take it because we're not like the others. We don't have a safety net. We have nothing to go back to."

High above them, in the velvet silence of a palatial villa, Diavolo sat on a mahogany throne he’d commissioned, a fluted glass of the finest Amarone wine clutched in his hand. He wasn't seeing the dingy warehouse or the paltry sum of lire. He was seeing a microscope slide with tiny, desperate cells moving on it.

“The will to live,” the Boss mused, swirling the wine, the purple light of a nearby lamp catching the crimson liquid. “The human animal is never more fascinating than when it is starving. When the stomach screams louder than the conscience.”

He thought of the seven of them. Each one reacting differently to the constant, soul-crushing scarcity.

Risotto: He sees the fear in his men and uses the hunger as a catalyst. It sharpens his blade. He becomes more ruthlessly efficient, driven purely by the need to feed his family. Admirable.

Melone: He's the most resourceful. He finds a way to satisfy his twisted appetites—a little extra "fee" from a mark, a strange fixation on a wealthy target's expensive cologne. His depravity is enhanced. Amusing.

Illuso: He turns inward, becoming more paranoid, believing one of the others is stealing their portion. He is the first to break rank if the pressure mounts. Predictable.

Ghiaccio: The rage. Pure, unadulterated fury at the injustice of it all. He burns through his energy with the intensity of his protests, ironically making him hungrier. Pathetic, in a theatrical way.

Prosciutto & Pesci: A symbiotic unit. Prosciutto's paternal drive becomes almost animalistic; his sole focus is ensuring Pesci eats first. Pesci's cowardice makes him utterly obedient, even to the point of starving if Prosciutto tells him to. A delightful display of biological programming.

Formaggio: The realist. He's the only one who still tries to find a job outside the organization, a desperate, futile attempt at normalcy that keeps him grounded, but dangerously exposed. A flaw.

Diavolo took a long, slow sip. He wasn't starving them to kill them; he was starving them to see what survived. To isolate the essential, ugly truth of human will. And, yes, it was supremely funny.

Back in the warehouse, their meal was a single, meager pot of lenten soup—watery broth with a handful of cheap beans and one, sad potato, split seven ways.

Formaggio stirred his portion listlessly, his small frame looking even more frail than usual. "I don't mind the soup," he muttered, avoiding everyone's eyes. "It's the fact that we can't afford a cigarette after, not even a cheap one, that gets me."

Melone just gave a wet, unsettling chuckle. "Oh, my dear Formaggio. You're missing the point. The hunger is the seasoning! It makes the next indulgence all the more sweet." He winked, a cold, hungry glint in his eye, and began to devour his soup with frightening speed.

Prosciutto gently pushed half a bean from his own bowl into Pesci's. "Eat," he ordered, his voice flat. He was thinner now than when he'd joined Passione, but his discipline was absolute. His Stand, The Grateful Dead, hadn't even had to be activated in months; the constant low-grade stress and starvation were doing the aging work for it. He was decaying from the inside.

Pesci's eyes welled up, not from gratitude, but from the crushing weight of his indebtedness. He was being kept alive by a man who was slowly killing himself for him. "Aniki, stop it. You need it," he whispered.

"I said eat."

Illuso, leaning against a wall and away from the others, rubbed his temples. He was convinced Formaggio had siphoned off some of the beans. The paranoia was eating him alive. He looked at his own bowl, then at the others. Did they get a bigger potato slice? He knew the truth was in the mirror world of his Stand, Man in the Mirror. He knew he was one glance away from shattering the illusion of their unity.

Risotto took the last, lukewarm spoonful, the metallic taste of his own Iron Stand already beginning to coat his mouth as his reserves ran low. He was the anchor. He could not, would not, show weakness.

But as he placed the empty bowl down, he caught the reflection of his own gaunt, bearded face in the water-slick metal. And for the briefest moment, the emptiness in his eyes wasn't terrifying or cold. It was shame.

Shame that he was the leader. Shame that he had promised them a better life.

Shame that he was the only thing standing between these six desperate ghosts and the Boss who was laughing, high above, watching them gnaw their way through another day.

He clenched his fist, and a single, silent drop of blood—his own precious, wasted iron—fell onto the tabletop.

"Tomorrow," Risotto growled, his voice a promise and a threat rolled into one. "Tomorrow we work."

The exhaustion was a cold, constant companion to Risotto now, heavier than his own Stand, Metallica. He didn't just feel hunger; he felt a slow, systemic decay. His sleep was shallow and plagued by the taste of iron from his own blood, which he was using to fuel his most strenuous activities.

He was running on less than anyone else, and he had to work the hardest.

The truth was that Risotto had quietly taken on the bulk of the most dangerous, high-risk assignments—the ones with the meagerest reward but the quickest turnaround. He needed to ensure they always had work, and he needed to control the flow of the money.

When a payment of 600,000 lire came in, the others saw him divide it fairly: 75,000 per person. They didn't see the initial assignment that had nearly cost him his eye, or the extra 300,000 lire he had siphoned off before the division and used to buy disinfectant for the warehouse and the few stolen blankets they owned.

He was the leader, the accountant, the security guard, and the scapegoat.

His men, fueled by their own desperation, interpreted his actions through the lens of their own personalities.

Ghiaccio would scream about the pitiful amount, accusing the Boss of theft. "It’s a disgrace! We must demand an audit!" Risotto would just look at him, the silence quelling Ghiaccio's rage like cold steel. Ghiaccio mistook that look for shared, silent anger at the injustice.

Prosciutto was meticulous in ensuring Pesci got his share, assuming Risotto, as leader, simply managed the funds, trusting him to divide it evenly. Prosciutto’s focus was too singular—Pesci’s survival—to look closer at the books.

The only one who actually noticed something was off was, ironically, Illuso. Even his paranoid, self-obsessed mind couldn't ignore the empirical evidence:

Risotto always waited until every single other bowl was scraped clean before taking the final remnants of their communal meals. His already lean frame was wasting away the fastest. He was the only one who hadn't gained a single item of clothing or a small luxury in months. Illuso, however, interpreted this sacrifice as a shrewd political maneuver.

"He does it to keep us grateful," Illuso sneered one evening, polishing a broken hand mirror. "The great martyr. He eats less so he can have more of our respect and loyalty. That way, when we finally make our move, he’s the one we follow."

No one argued with Illuso. The lie of equal sacrifice was a comfortable blanket the squad wrapped themselves in. It was easier to believe that Diavolo was starving all of them equally than to face the truth: that Risotto was quietly dying for all of them.

Risotto stood by the payphone in a filthy alleyway, the humid air heavy with the smell of garbage and rain. His left hand, hidden in his pocket, was pressed hard against his abdomen, trying to suppress the knot of nausea that was his body’s protest.

He had just come from an exhausting job, retrieving some encrypted data from a paranoid, minor capo who fought like a rabid dog. He’d done it for less than enough to buy a dozen oranges.

He pulled the piece of paper out—the Boss’s direct, encrypted line—and stared at the numbers.

He had two options, both of which felt like shattering his most sacred vows:

Beg: Call Diavolo directly and shatter his pride. He could appeal to the Boss’s sense of efficiency or self-interest. “Boss, your best fighting unit is degrading. We need more resources to maintain operational readiness. I am asking for a slight increase in our monthly stipend.” The thought of asking—of showing vulnerability to the man who reveled in their misery—made his skin crawl. It felt like an irreversible surrender.

Plead for More Chains: Call the consigliere—who actually handled the assignments—and beg for more work. Not better-paying work, just more of the dangerous, low-reward assignments they’d been getting. Risotto didn't care about his own safety; he just needed a volume of blood money to keep the others fed. He would work himself into the ground, a single-man, perpetually bleeding iron mine.

He knew what he had to do. Begging Diavolo was a guaranteed execution; it would be the moment the Boss decided the experiment was over because the subject had given up.

He closed his eyes, inhaled the foul air, and dialed the secondary number for the consigliere. His voice was a flat, emotionless monotone, iron will overriding the body's protest.

"I need every assignment available," Risotto said, not bothering with pleasantries. "Anything the others don't want. The messy ones. The quick ones. We need to be booked solid for the next two weeks."

He would rather be worked to death than beg to live.

The only thing he allowed himself to think was: “They won't go hungry tomorrow.”

And as he hung up the phone, he leaned his head against the cold, damp wall of the alley, tasting the familiar, metallic tang of the blood he had just signed his life away for. The chains were tightening, but he was the one pulling them tighter.

The atmosphere in the warehouse had shifted. Not to relief, but to a strange, strained quiet.

The increase wasn't much—just a bump from 75,000 lire per man to maybe 110,000 lire per man, enough for a half-decent meal two days in a row, instead of one. It was a terrifying, almost insulting margin, yet it was more than they’d seen in months.

Ghiaccio was the first to realize the math didn't add up. He had spent his few spare hours—when he wasn't screaming about Venice—trying to calculate exactly how much money they’d need to live like human beings. He had a meticulous ledger, fueled by his white-hot rage, and he knew the typical payout for their level of job.

"Wait a minute," he muttered, frowning at the scattered bills on the table.

Formaggio, currently trying to figure out how to stretch his extra money into a pack of cigarettes and maybe a soda, didn't look up. "What is it now, Ghiaccio? You going to yell about the conversion rate again?"

"No! Look!" Ghiaccio stabbed a finger at the pile. "Our last job was a simple intimidation and extraction, right? We got a hundred thousand each. That’s seven hundred thousand total! But we haven't had a job since then that paid anywhere near that, yet this split is more."

Prosciutto, ever pragmatic, folded his share neatly. "Maybe the target had more on him than expected, or the consigliere padded the budget to shut us up for a while. Don't look a gift horse in the mouth, Ghiaccio."

"That's not how Passione works! They don't just give us money!" Ghiaccio slammed his fist down. The others shrugged him off, already distracted by the momentary, precious easing of the hunger.

The only person who remained still was Risotto. He sat in the darkest corner, watching them, his face a hollow mask. He was taking even less of the split than usual—a bare 50,000 lire—claiming he needed to save it to pay for warehouse maintenance.

It was the sight of Risotto that finally silenced Ghiaccio's tirade.

Ghiaccio's perpetual fury had made him blind to many things, but now that he was actively searching for the reason for the extra money, his eyes were opened to the true cost of the raise.

Risotto was always thin, but now he was unnervingly gaunt, his black clothes hanging off him like a scarecrow's rags. His skin, usually pale, was now an unsettling shade of gray beneath a heavy five o'clock shadow. The most alarming thing was the weariness carved into his face. His eyes, usually fierce and intimidating, looked heavy, rimmed with purple that wasn't shadow, but deep fatigue.

“He looks like he hasn’t slept in days,” Ghiaccio thought, a chill running down his spine that had nothing to do with White Album.

Then, Ghiaccio remembered the faint, metallic scent that had been lingering around their leader for the last few days—a smell he was used to, but which was now overwhelming. Iron. Risotto's Stand, Metallica, drew the iron from his own blood to function.

“If he's doing more work,” Ghiaccio’s mind raced, connecting the dots that his rage had previously obscured, “he's using his Stand more. And if he’s using his Stand more, he’s draining his body of the one thing we can’t afford to replace: nutrients.”

The realization was a punch to the gut. The extra pay wasn't a bonus; it was blood money.

"Risotto," Ghiaccio said, his voice flat, his typical volume muted by a sudden, terrifying clarity. "Where have you been the last two nights?"

Risotto didn't move. "Running errands for the Boss."

"That's a lie," Ghiaccio countered, his voice rising again, but this time with a frantic edge of dread, not anger. "The consigliere never calls us on back-to-back nights unless it's an emergency. You've been out doing the low-end, high-frequency jobs. The ones that pay a pittance but keep the numbers moving."

He pointed at the bills. "This is not a raise! This is just the combined total of the five or six extra shakedowns and retrieval jobs you did alone, and then you passed it off to us like it was one big score!"

The silence in the warehouse was absolute. Illuso squinted at Risotto, briefly wondering if Ghiaccio was right, but dismissed it—the martyr complex again. Prosciutto looked at Risotto with dawning alarm.

Risotto finally spoke, his voice a dry whisper that cracked the silence. "Shut up, Ghiaccio. It doesn't matter where the money comes from. It's here. Eat."

"You look like a skeleton!" Ghiaccio yelled, taking a step toward him. "You’re running on dust and pride! You're starving yourself to keep us alive, aren't you? Is that why you asked for more work? You begged for more chains so we could eat?"

Risotto lifted his gaze, and the profound, aching weariness in his eyes wasn't just physical exhaustion; it was the sheer weight of knowing the truth was out. He knew Ghiaccio wouldn't stop.

"It's my responsibility," Risotto said, a stark, simple statement of self-sacrifice.

Ghiaccio's fury boiled over one last time, but it wasn't aimed at the system or the Boss. It was aimed at the man who was bleeding himself dry for their sake.

"You idiot! What use is a well-fed squad if the leader collapses? You think Diavolo wants to see us fed? No! He wants to see you break! He's not doing this to you, you're doing it to yourself!"

The truth hung heavy in the air, a devastating realization that their pay—their very survival—was a direct result of their leader's quiet, self-imposed torture.

Ghiaccio’s yell had been pure, panicked anguish, the sound ripping through the silence of the warehouse like ice splitting rock. He stood hunched over Risotto, his body taut with furious dread, waiting for his leader to refute the accusation, to claim some level of control.

But Risotto just looked up at him, his dark eyes holding an expression Ghiaccio had never seen before: not anger, not weariness, but resignation.

"Stop," Risotto said, the single word barely audible.

"Stop what? Stop noticing you're killing yourself?" He yelled, hoping that wasn’t what Risotto was actually saying “We split this more evenly, now, and then we go to a real grocery store, and you eat a damn steak! You need iron, not pride!" Ghiaccio demanded, gesturing wildly at the paltry pile of money.

"The money is allocated," Risotto repeated, his voice firming up with effort. "And the arrangement is made. We will continue this way."

Ghiaccio took a shuddering breath, his own anger momentarily eclipsed by the horrific understanding that was clicking into place in his sharp mind. He looked at the extra money, then back at Risotto's skeletal frame.

If the Boss was an experimenter, and Risotto was the subject doing the opposite of what was expected—sacrificing himself instead of devolving into selfish chaos—Diavolo wouldn't let that go. He wouldn't just sit back and watch Risotto win.

Diavolo would simply increase the pressure.

The "slight increase" in pay wasn't a sustainable model. Risotto hadn't just begged for more chains; he had effectively offered himself up as a human punching bag to generate income. And Diavolo, amused by this display of "will," would be sure to make the price for that income increasingly steep.

Ghiaccio felt a cold dread settle in his stomach, far deeper than his chronic hunger. He realized that Risotto hadn't just done a few extra jobs last week.

Risotto was going to keep doing them.

His leader had promised the consigliere a constant stream of low-grade, deadly assignments. He had locked La Squadra into a brutal, one-sided contract of perpetual labor. Risotto would work until he physically collapsed, draining his blood to pay their rent, their utilities, and their meager food.

Ghiaccio’s shoulders slumped. The rage drained out of him, leaving him hollow. How could he argue for a fairer distribution of jobs when Risotto had already voluntarily enslaved himself to ensure their minimal survival?

He looked around at the others. Melone was already counting his new, small fortune. Formaggio was calculating his cigarette budget. Prosciutto was trying to soothe a visibly anxious Pesci. They all accepted the lie. They needed the lie to function.

Ghiaccio was the only one who had dared to look the grim truth in the eye, and now the truth was staring back, mocking him. He couldn't force Risotto to stop. If Risotto backed out of the arrangement he'd made, the entire, fragile supply line would snap, and they would all starve.

The argument died, strangled by the sheer, overwhelming logistics of their desperation. Ghiaccio slowly backed away, the furious light in his eyes dimming to a cold, impotent despair.

"Fine," Ghiaccio whispered, the word tasting like defeat and blood. "Fine, you idiot. But you get the next can of beans, and you're not splitting it."

Risotto didn't reply, but his chin dipped once, a silent acknowledgment that was more painful than any argument. He had won the battle to satisfy his team’s hunger, but it was a victory that ensured his own destruction.

In the velvet darkness of his villa, Diavolo smiled. The reports detailing the frantic, non-stop activity of Risotto Nero were delightful. The man was a machine fueled by altruistic folly. The Boss had merely added a couple more insignificant, demeaning tasks to the list this week, nothing that would justify the kind of money Risotto was now demanding.

“He's doing it,” Diavolo thought, swirling his wine. “He's volunteering to be the whip. He is willingly martyring himself for his subordinates. The human will is not merely resilient; it is tragically, spectacularly self-destructive.”

And the pay was still just barely enough to keep them alive. The experiment was proceeding beautifully.

The meager evening meal, a sad collection of boiled rice and a few diced vegetables, was served. Risotto distributed the portions with the cold precision of a surgeon, his exhaustion lending a mechanical stiffness to his movements. He took the smallest portion for himself, as usual, then slowly sat down in his dark corner, the low light emphasizing the hollows beneath his cheekbones.

The squad ate in silence. The small increase in pay hadn't brought relief; it had brought a crushing guilt, especially to Ghiaccio. He couldn't scream at the Boss, and he couldn't scream at Risotto without risking the entire, fragile structure. All that furious energy had nowhere to go but inward.

Ghiaccio stared down at his bowl. The rice was flavorless, the vegetables mushy, yet it represented his leader’s blood and iron. He couldn't eat it all. It felt like theft.

He lifted his fork, took a bite, and chewed slowly. Risotto, sitting opposite, was already eating, but his movements were sluggish. Every few bites, the leader’s eyes would drift shut, his head listing slightly as a wave of deep fatigue washed over him. He was barely present.

This was Ghiaccio's chance.

When Risotto’s eyes fluttered closed again, Ghiaccio quickly scooped half of his own remaining rice into Risotto's bowl. He did it with a practiced, jerky movement, using his fork to stir the pile of rice so the surface looked disturbed, but not obviously augmented.

He waited, heart hammering. Risotto’s eyes opened, blinked slowly, and he picked up his fork, oblivious.

Ghiaccio continued this desperate, quiet act. A bite for himself, a transfer for Risotto during the man’s involuntary micro-sleeps. He ate until his own bowl was noticeably lighter, then stirred the rest quickly, trying to make his half-eaten meal look like a finished one. He looked up to see Prosciutto watching him from across the room, but the older assassin just gave a nearly imperceptible nod—a shared, silent acknowledgment of the new, terrible truth.

Risotto ate slowly, painstakingly, trying to force the food past the constant nausea caused by his low blood-iron. He was so deeply exhausted that his brain was struggling to maintain focus.

He finished the portion he had served himself, but when he looked down at his bowl, he frowned. It seemed... fuller than it should be.

He ate a few more mouthfuls. His eyes closed briefly, his body demanding a micro-rest. When he opened them, he glanced down again. The rice appeared to have settled, perhaps even grown.

“It's the hunger,” he thought, the tired explanation a comfort. “I'm so deprived my brain is trying to trick me.”

He had read once that extreme caloric restriction could mess with the mind, causing hallucinations or tricks of perception. He reasoned that his weary consciousness was playing a cruel joke, trying to mentally satisfy his starving body by making the small quantity of food appear larger.

“My mind is starting to crack,” he told himself, finding a grim kind of validation in the perceived trick. “The Boss would be amused. I must maintain control.”

He forced himself to eat a few more bites, driven not by appetite, but by duty to his collapsing body. When he eventually pushed the bowl away, a small but significant amount of rice remained.

Ghiaccio watched him, his own stomach protesting the reduced portion, a cold satisfaction settling in his heart.

"You ate more than usual," Ghiaccio said, keeping his voice dangerously neutral.

Risotto closed his eyes, rubbing the bridge of his nose with a thin finger. "It felt like a feast," he mumbled, his voice thick with fatigue. "I suppose I was more hungry than I realized. I must be more careful with the portions tomorrow."

Ghiaccio didn't argue. He knew that tomorrow, the silent transfer would happen again. It was a secret, shared resistance—a tiny, almost meaningless act of defiance against a Boss who was trying to kill them with starvation. Risotto was determined to die for them, but Ghiaccio, in his own frantic way, was just as determined to force him to live.

Can the next part be Ghiaccio tries to continue this, but Risotto is too perceptive, and noticed that instead of gaining much needed weight like the others (Prosciutto putting on the least making sure that Pesci gained the most), he put nothing on, maybe a pound or two every week or so of Risotto taking on more jobs, and noticed that he was definitely putting stuff on, not needing to take as much iron from his blood to keep going. So, after getting decent sleep, he decided to catch Ghiaccio in the act of giving him more food. He closed his eyes and opened them just when Ghiaccio was giving Risotto half a roll of store bought sushi (they don’t have a fridge or freezer so they literally just bought it and cooked it the second they got back from shopping and getting some food, most on clearance or were paid with coupons Melone had found going through trash cans, as he usually goes through that stuff for anything that could be useful in anyway, he didn’t care how dirty of smelly the stuff was, no one did, it was stuff, free stuff to be exact) and when Risotto caught Ghiaccio, he grabbed the other man’s wrist and forced him to take back the half of a sushi roll, saying he needs it more as he can draw nutrients directly from his blood while Ghiaccio can’t?

The routine of quiet, desperate subterfuge had gone on for two weeks. The squad had settled into a new, tense stability. The pay was coming in more frequently, and while the meals were still meager, they were consistent.

Prosciutto, always the careful observer, noted that Pesci was looking significantly better—less twitchy, a bit fuller in the face. Even Formaggio and Melone seemed to have put on a noticeable pound or two of needed weight. The gamble was working.

The only man who hadn't changed was Ghiaccio.

Risotto, having finally managed to catch a few solid hours of real, unburdened sleep after a particularly brutal assignment, found his mind clearer than it had been in months. His innate perceptiveness sharpened, and he began running the numbers on his men, not just the money.

“Prosciutto and Pesci are stable. Melone is thriving on his disgusting resourcefulness. Formaggio is holding steady. Illuso is still paranoid, but fed.”

But Ghiaccio. Ghiaccio was still pale, still agitated, still carrying the thinness that had defined the worst of their starvation. He hadn't gained the weight the others had.

Risotto's suspicions clicked into place when he realized he hadn't needed to draw as much iron from his own blood lately. The constant metallic taste in his mouth was fading, and his physical collapse was slowing. He had attributed it to the better sleep, but the reason was simpler and more infuriating.

Someone was feeding him.

The next morning, the "feast" was a pair of rolls of cheap, store-bought sushi. It was heavily discounted, wrapped in cling film and smelling faintly of brine. They had no refrigerator, so the instant it was purchased—paid for with a mix of lire and a handful of crumpled coupons Melone had fished out of a public bin—it was brought back and immediately consumed.

Risotto took his smaller-than-average portion. Ghiaccio sat opposite, tense and ready for his covert operation.

Risotto closed his eyes, his head leaning back against the cold concrete of the wall, pretending to succumb to his usual, overwhelming exhaustion. He counted to ten, allowing Ghiaccio time to prepare for the transfer.

Ghiaccio, believing his leader was out cold, carefully unwrapped his remaining half-roll, which he'd been shielding with his body. He paused, looking around, then, with a quick, jerky motion, reached across the table to place the sticky half-roll on top of Risotto's portion.

The moment Ghiaccio’s fingers brushed the roll, Risotto’s eyes snapped open.

His hand shot out like a whip, metallic black against Ghiaccio's pale skin, and clamped around the younger man's wrist. The sudden, silent violence of the movement made every other person in the warehouse freeze.

"What do you think you're doing, Ghiaccio?" Risotto's voice was low, flat, and dangerously cold.

Ghiaccio’s eyes went wide with shock and guilt. He tried to pull his wrist away, but Risotto's grip was like iron—an ironic, terrible pun.

"Nothing! I was... I was just moving it! It was going to roll off!" Ghiaccio stammered, his usual furious eloquence deserting him entirely.

Risotto dragged Ghiaccio's hand back toward him, forcing the hand with the sushi roll in it to hover over Ghiaccio's own nearly empty bowl.

"Don't lie to me. You have been doing this for days. You are starving yourself to feed me," Risotto said, his eyes burning with a desperate, furious light. He didn't look like a martyr; he looked like a soldier betrayed. "I told you to eat."

"And I told you that the leader collapsing does us no good! You're draining yourself to pay for our food, I'm just balancing the books on the other end!" Ghiaccio hissed, finally finding his voice.

"You are not balancing the books. You are sabotaging the plan," Risotto countered, his voice rising, the tension in his grip intensifying. He forced Ghiaccio’s hand down until the half-roll of sushi was pressed into Ghiaccio’s rice.

"You will eat that. Now."

Risotto released Ghiaccio’s wrist. He leaned forward, his tired eyes intense and pleading.

"I need food less than you do. I can draw the minerals I need, the energy I need, directly from my blood. I can work on less. You cannot." Risotto paused, the next words laced with a desperate finality. "If you undermine my ability to generate income for this squad, you threaten all of us. You risk the entire unit. Eat your portion, or you will not be allowed to leave this warehouse until you do. Do you understand me?"

Ghiaccio stared at the half-roll of fish, then at Risotto's utterly exhausted, yet unyielding face. He couldn't fight the leader, not when the leader was willing to sacrifice every last drop of his own blood.

With a look of sheer, impotent fury, Ghiaccio picked up his fork and slowly, painfully, began to eat the stolen food. It tasted like ash, defeat, and his leader's terrible, overwhelming love.

The silent transfer of food had ended, replaced by an even heavier despair for Ghiaccio. Now, he had no outlet for his frantic need to help. He was forced into the role of a powerless observer, watching his leader, Risotto, slowly fade to protect them. The knowledge was a constant, freezing pressure on his mind.

He knew that Risotto’s recent work spree had to be taking a massive physical toll, but the leader was a master of suppression. Risotto’s dark clothes concealed the gauntness, and his silence swallowed the fatigue.

It was late, deep into the small hours of the morning, when Risotto returned from yet another solo assignment. The rest of the squad was asleep, sprawled out on thin mattresses across the warehouse floor. Ghiaccio, whose sleep was perpetually restless, heard the faint clink of the door and sat up.

He saw Risotto moving toward the washroom area, slower than usual, his gait uneven. When Risotto lifted a hand to steady himself against the wall, a dark stain on his coat shifted into the beam of a weak, flickering utility light.

Ghiaccio was instantly alert, scrambling to his feet. "What the hell is that?"

Risotto froze, turning slowly. He had a deep, jagged cut running along the outside of his forearm, clumsily covered by a piece of cloth torn from his shirt. The cloth was already soaked through, dripping slowly onto the dusty floor.

"It's nothing," Risotto rasped, his voice tight with fatigue. "A stray knife. Didn't even need Metallica for it. I'm fine."

"Fine? That needs stitches!" Ghiaccio hissed, rushing forward. "You need a hospital, or at least a clinic, Risotto!"

"And pay for it with our limited funds? Attract attention?" Risotto scoffed, pulling his arm away sharply. "I am the assassin leader; I can stitch a wound myself. It’ll heal. Just a few bandages will do the trick. Now go back to sleep."

His dismissal was absolute, but the lie was paper-thin. He was conserving every lire, even at the cost of his own health. He was willing to risk infection, willing to let the wound sap more of his precious iron, just to keep the food on their table.

Ghiaccio watched Risotto disappear behind the flimsy partition, the sound of water running and the hiss of pain suppressed quickly and violently. The dam of Ghiaccio's own repressed helplessness finally shattered.

He retreated to his corner, behind a stack of unused crates, and curled himself into a tight, miserable ball. He pressed his face into his knees, and for the first time in years, the usually explosive man let out a sound that was pure, anguished defeat: a quiet, desperate sob.

The sound was faint, choked by the cavernous space, but it was enough to pierce the light sleep of one particular man: Illuso.

Illuso was used to waking up paranoid, convinced that someone was watching him or planning to steal his share. But tonight, he felt strangely calm. The slight improvement in their diet had done more than just sustain his body; it had rationalized his mind. He wasn't consumed by the frantic, starving suspicion that made him hate everyone.

He heard the stifled, painful sounds coming from the corner and slowly, carefully sat up. He scanned the room. Risotto's stirring. Prosciutto and Pesci are out cold. The sounds were coming from the direction of Ghiaccio.

Illuso crept out of his mattress, moving like a shadow across the floor. He saw Ghiaccio—the furious, unyielding, explosive man—trembling, his body racked by silent tears.

Ghiaccio was humiliated enough being caught with his guard down. Illuso didn't dare wake the others; he knew the verbal lashings Ghiaccio would deliver tomorrow if this moment became public knowledge.

Thinking rationally for the first time in what felt like a lifetime, Illuso didn't speak. He simply reached the corner, dropped to his knees, and gently, hesitantly, pulled Ghiaccio's cold, shaking body into a tight hug.

He didn't know what to say. He was Illuso; he dealt in trickery and self-preservation, not comfort. So he just held the younger man, letting Ghiaccio bury his face in his shoulder.

"It's not fair," Ghiaccio finally managed to choke out, the words muffled. "It's not fair he's doing this to himself."

Illuso rubbed the back of Ghiaccio's head awkwardly. The feeling was strange—he felt exposed, but also oddly useful. "I know," he whispered back, the sincerity of the quiet response surprising even himself. "I know. Just... close your eyes. We'll figure it out when the sun comes up."

In the dim light of the ruined warehouse, under the shadow of a Boss who delighted in their pain, two assassins, one obsessed with rage and the other with vanity, found a moment of raw, empathetic connection. It was a tiny, fragile spark of human kindness in the brutal, cold experiment of their lives.

Illuso held Ghiaccio until the shaking finally subsided. The aggressive tension that usually radiated off the ice user slowly began to soften, replaced by the weight of genuine, exhausted sleep. Illuso felt the heavy, even breathing against his shoulder and knew he'd finally succeeded in helping Ghiaccio find true rest, not just the furious, shallow dozing they usually managed.

Carefully, Illuso eased Ghiaccio's head onto the corner of a crate, covering him with a threadbare blanket. He stood up, stretching his cramped limbs, his own mind running with a cold, clear logic that was a profound change from his usual paranoid self.

Risotto was breaking himself to feed them. He was treating the team like a child treats a pet—a precious thing to be sustained regardless of the owner’s pain. And Ghiaccio's breakdown had shown Illuso the horrifying truth: they were all just sitting by, passively accepting the leader's slow death.

Illuso walked to the washroom partition and glanced at the bloodied rag Risotto had tossed into the basin. He didn't care about the wound itself, but the principle of the wound.

“We are stronger than he thinks. We are assassins.” Illuso thought, looking at his own sharp, calculating eyes reflected in the stainless steel faucet. “We don't need his pity, and we don't need his blood. We need to show him he can rely on us.”

The solution, to his mind, was elegantly simple: work harder.

Illuso decided that he and Ghiaccio would secretly begin accepting solo assignments.

He visualized the cycle:

Work: They’d take on two or three extra, quick retrieval or shakedown jobs.

Pay: The increase in pay would be slipped into Risotto’s accounts, disguised as part of a larger payout from a legitimate, shared job.

Strength: The increased funds would buy them better food—protein, iron—which would give Illuso and Ghiaccio the strength to take on even more work.

Proof: Risotto would see the team surviving, and even thriving, and maybe, just maybe, he would finally let go of the burden.

It wasn’t just about the money. It was about understanding the price Risotto was paying. By working the same thankless, dangerous jobs, Illuso felt he could finally grasp the true measure of his leader's sacrifice. He would mirror the action, not for martyrdom, but for competence.

“We will carry him for a while,” Illuso concluded, feeling a flicker of powerful, unified purpose he hadn't felt since Gelato and Sorbet died. “We will show him that his life is not a solo debt.”

Unbeknownst to Illuso, he was not the only one stirred by the night's revelation.

Just a few feet away, Formaggio had been woken by Ghiaccio’s muffled sobs. The sight of Illuso, the most selfish of them, comforting the most volatile, had stunned him into silence. Lying flat on his back, Formaggio was now staring at the ceiling, thinking the exact same thoughts.

“Risotto is killing himself. The pay is better, so the work is doable. I can shrink down and take a few jobs the Boss throws to the lower ranks. It's safe. I can pass the money to Risotto as 'stolen' from a mark. He'll never know.”

Across the room, Prosciutto had also been awake, having seen Ghiaccio's breakdown and the quiet conversation. He looked at the gentle rise and fall of Pesci's chest, finally eased by a full stomach. His drive to protect his partner was absolute.

“Risotto has taken over my role as the guardian. I need to take that burden back.” Prosciutto’s plan was already formed: “Take the next, hardest job that comes through. The one the consigliere keeps advertising as "high risk, low reward." I’ll make the reward high, and bring the money straight back to the pot.”

Melone, of course, was asleep, dreaming of Di Molto ways to use his Stand for non-assassination purposes. But even he had noticed the new, frightening exhaustion in Risotto, and was already planning a few morally questionable but lucrative side schemes to "stabilize the team finances."

As the warehouse finally fell back into a deep, heavy silence, Illuso smiled, believing himself to be the sole architect of the new, secret resistance. He settled back down, eyes closed, unaware that, one by one, every conscious member of La Squadra had decided to lie to their boss to save their boss.

The experiment was still running, but Diavolo had failed to account for one key variable: the assassins' willingness to turn their collective will against the very system they served.

High above, in the sterile silence of his villa, Diavolo received the new financial reports. He tracked La Squadra’s accounts with an obsessive, detached focus. For the last few weeks, he had watched the total funds flowing into Risotto's account increase steadily, but the frequency and scale of the individual transactions were baffling. They were taking on dozens of micro-jobs—tasks so petty and numerous they wouldn’t normally merit his attention.

He looked at the squad’s caloric intake—which he monitored through various surveillance streams—and noted the undeniable, infuriating upturn. Risotto was still operating at a caloric deficit, but the rest of the squad was recovering. The experiment was being sabotaged by collective will.

"They are sharing the burden," Diavolo murmured, a slow, predatory smile crossing his lips. "They are protecting their martyr. They are denying me the ultimate breakdown."

The raw truth of the human spirit—that its resilience often manifests as selfless unity—was less entertaining than the chaos of starvation. The experiment was almost over. He had to make the ending spectacular.

Diavolo stood, reaching for the encrypted burner phone he reserved for his most personal, immediate commands. He wouldn't risk his consigliere messing up this final, perfect act of cruelty. He would target the weakest link, the one who had cracked first.

“The one who burns brightest with righteous fury,” he thought. “Ghiaccio.”

He didn't need to assign Ghiaccio a difficult, high-value target. He just needed a job that required sustained energy, high speed, and absolute focus—everything Ghiaccio's starved, tense body lacked.

The encrypted message arrived on Risotto's personal device, but it was addressed not to the leader, but specifically to Ghiaccio. It was a massive, fatal error for a direct Boss command—a deliberate slip-up that bypassed the chain of command entirely.

GHIACCIO. SOLO ASSIGNMENT. TARGET: A minor caporegime hiding on an oil freighter, 50 kilometers offshore. Must be eliminated and his digital assets secured before dawn. HIGH SPEED REQUIRED. NO STAND USE PERMITTED IN PROXIMITY TO WATER. IMMEDIATE DEPARTURE.

The order was an impossible death sentence. A boat job required stealth and endurance; a 50 km swim to the target was out of the question for anyone, let alone a man operating on half-rations and running on stress. Furthermore, the constraint of no Stand use near water crippled Ghiaccio, whose Stand was ice, essentially forcing him to rely on his physical, undernourished body.

Ghiaccio, now operating on a low simmer of exhaustion rather than his usual fire, stared at the text. He didn't question the error of the Boss contacting him; he only saw the word SOLO.

“This is it. My chance to prove to Risotto I can pull my weight.”

He was up before the others, pulling on his gear.

Risotto, who had only managed a few hours of uneasy sleep after bandaging his own arm with cheap, dirty gauze, woke the moment he heard Ghiaccio’s movements. He saw the cold fury in the younger man's eyes—the same look that had always terrified him—but now mixed with a frantic, desperate determination.

"Where are you going?" Risotto's voice was sharp with instant alarm.

"The Boss sent me a direct assignment," Ghiaccio said, strapping a diving knife to his thigh. "Solo. An oil freighter, fifty kilometers out. No Stand."

Risotto's exhausted mind instantly went cold and clear. "Fifty kilometers? No Stand? That's a death trap. That's not a mission, Ghiaccio, that's an execution."

Ghiaccio merely shrugged, pulling his mask down. "It's a high-speed job. I can do it. The pay will feed us for a month, Risotto. It’s my turn to contribute, and you're too weak for it right now."

He turned and slipped out the door, the cold night air rushing in briefly.

Risotto's body screamed in protest, but he was already scrambling for his coat. He knew Ghiaccio wouldn't last a fraction of the distance. The assignment was designed to push Ghiaccio past his physical breaking point, to ensure his failure, and to force Risotto to follow, creating a beautiful tragedy for Diavolo to witness.

"God damn it," Risotto cursed, slamming the door open and plunging into the cold, pre-dawn streets. He had to catch Ghiaccio before the younger man reached the port. His iron levels were dangerously low, his wound was throbbing, and his body was a wreck, but he had no choice.

“The experiment isn't over,” Risotto realized, panting as he ran. “He just found a new way to make me watch my family bleed.”

In his villa, Diavolo watched the two tracking icons move rapidly on his screen—the faster, desperate dot of Ghiaccio, and the slower, heavier, more exhausted dot of Risotto.

“Perfect,” he thought, sipping his wine. “The martyr will die trying to save the fool, and the fool will drown in exhaustion. A beautiful, tragic ending.”

Risotto's exhausted body moved on pure adrenaline and iron will. He caught up to Ghiaccio just before the docks, using the darkness and his innate stealth to close the distance. Ghiaccio, distracted by the furious determination to reach his impossible solo mission, never heard him coming.

In a move fueled by desperation, Risotto materialized Metallica’s iron blades near Ghiaccio's throat, then transitioned instantly into a physical attack. He wrapped a thick forearm around Ghiaccio’s neck, clamping down just enough to cut off air without causing permanent damage.

Ghiaccio immediately thrashed, fighting the suffocating grip. He was fueled by rage, shame, and the need to prove himself, but Risotto had a single, terrifying goal: preservation.

"Stop! The mission—" Ghiaccio choked out, his hands clawing uselessly at Risotto’s arm.

"It’s a lie! A trap!" Risotto rasped, dragging the younger man back toward the warehouse with inhuman strength. "He wants you to fail! He wants us to break!"

The fight was brutal, fueled by starvation and opposing duties. Risotto managed to drag Ghiaccio's struggling, flailing body all the way back to the warehouse. He kicked the door open and hurled Ghiaccio onto the concrete floor, maintaining the chokehold until the younger man was gasping, too stunned and winded to fight back.

The violent commotion—the splintering sound of the door and the desperate struggle on the floor—ripped the entire squad out of their sleep. They shot up, weapons instantly materialized, stands half-formed, thinking they were under attack.

Prosciutto was the first on his feet, The Grateful Dead forming menacingly around his hands. Formaggio was already shrinking down to a manageable size, prepared to hide.

"What is happening?" Prosciutto demanded, his eyes wide.

Risotto released Ghiaccio, stumbling back a step. His chest was heaving, his face pale and slick with sweat, and the torn cloth around his forearm had soaked through with fresh blood. He looked utterly broken.

He didn’t shout. He didn’t command. He just stood there, his exhaustion finally giving way to a raw, devastating emotion.

"He tried to leave," Risotto managed, his voice trembling and thin. "He took a solo assignment. Fifty kilometers offshore. No Stand allowed. It was a death sentence."

He gripped his injured arm, his eyes locked on his men, and the raw grief and fear of loss finally overwhelmed the stoic leader.

"Diavolo is trying to kill us one by one," Risotto confessed, his voice cracking, the words catching in his throat. "I can't lose any of you. You are all I have left."

The admission—the sight of their infallible leader, the man who had starved himself to save them, standing on the verge of tears—shattered the remaining silence.

The atmosphere shifted instantly from fear to a unifying, protective alarm. They all understood the unspoken horror: Diavolo had escalated the experiment.

Pesci was the first to react, rushing to Ghiaccio, not to attack, but to pull him away from the door he’d been crawling toward. "Ghiaccio, stop! You heard him! It's a trap!"

Melone grabbed Ghiaccio's legs, his face uncharacteristically serious. "The risk-reward calculation is completely against you, Ghiaccio! You can't take this!"

Illuso, however, moved with an unnerving, protective focus. He still felt the warmth of Ghiaccio's body from the night before, the silent trust they had shared. He saw Ghiaccio’s shame, his fury, and his self-destructive drive to complete the mission, even if it was suicide.

Illuso stepped over Melone and Pesci, hooking his arms under Ghiaccio’s armpits. He dragged Ghiaccio away from the door and into a headlock, a protective, non-lethal maneuver that immobilized the man’s furious struggle.

"You absolute idiot!" Illuso hissed, his voice filled with frustrated, genuine care. "You're ruining everything! We're all working in secret! You can't just throw yourself away for a fake mission! We need you here, you stubborn fool!"

Ghiaccio bucked and struggled, but he was pinned, not by anger, but by a sudden, overwhelming wall of love and unified purpose. The entire squad was focused on stopping him, protecting him, just as Risotto had protected them.

Risotto watched the scene, his raw, exposed heart finally easing, replaced by a deep, bone-weary certainty. The experiment was still running, but Diavolo had failed. He hadn't broken their will; he had forged it into a desperate, unbreakable shield.

The grip of Illuso finally loosened, but Ghiaccio didn't move. He stood pinned between his teammates and the door, his chest still heaving, his furious drive slowly being suffocated by the heavy, undeniable truth of the situation.

He was looking straight at Risotto, who was now leaning against the wall, one hand clamped over his bleeding forearm, his black clothes shimmering slightly with the moisture of tears that had never quite fallen. The sight of their leader—the immovable, stone-cold assassin—on the verge of weeping was more shocking than any Stand attack.

Risotto had just confessed that they were his family, his only anchor. That confession, combined with his shattered physical state, was the final, devastating blow to Ghiaccio's self-destructive pride.

Ghiaccio's sharp, calculating mind finally caught up to the emotional chaos.

The Wall of Unity: He looked around the room. Illuso still had an arm across his chest, breathing hard. Pesci was clinging to his waist, whimpering with relief. Melone was still crouched, his usual detached amusement replaced by grim concern. Every single person had woken up, not just to ask why he was leaving, but to physically stop him. It wasn't just Risotto’s paranoia; the entire squad recognized the deadly absurdity of the mission. The danger wasn't imaginary—it was real, and they were all willing to risk a fight with their leader to save him.

The Leader's Breakdown: Risotto didn't often show weakness; he was their iron shield. But moments ago, that shield had cracked. His eyes, usually fierce, had been wide with the agonizing fear of loss. Risotto had nearly cried, not over money, not over pain, but over the prospect of losing Ghiaccio. That depth of familial devotion was something Ghiaccio had been desperately craving, and now, seeing it laid bare, he couldn't walk away from it.

The Trap's Design: The logistics of the mission suddenly crystallized in his mind. 50km. No Stand use near water. It wasn't a mission designed for stealth; it was designed for maximum physical stress. Diavolo wasn't trying to see if Ghiaccio could succeed; he was trying to see how long it would take Ghiaccio to drown or succumb to exhaustion, and how long it would take Risotto to follow him into the trap. The Boss had used Ghiaccio's own greatest desire—to prove his worth and stop the bleeding—as bait.

The realization settled over Ghiaccio with the cold finality of deep water. He wasn't proving his worth; he was willingly accepting his execution and condemning Risotto to a frantic, futile rescue.

The struggle completely ceased. Ghiaccio’s body went limp.

"I..." he started, his voice rough and defeated. He lowered his head, his fury entirely spent. "I won't go."

The tension in the warehouse evaporated, replaced by a collective, shaky exhalation of relief. Illuso immediately withdrew his arm, looking slightly awkward now that the adrenaline was gone.

Risotto took a deep, shuddering breath, the tension leaving his body in a single, painful rush. He walked over to Ghiaccio, not with anger, but with a weary, protective authority, and placed a hand on his shoulder.

"Good," Risotto said, his voice quiet but firm. "Now, we get your gear off, and we find a way to patch this up." He glanced at his own arm, then at the exhausted faces of his men. "The Boss wanted us to break and scatter, but we won't. We stick together. We will find another way to end this experiment."

Ghiaccio finally met Risotto's gaze, seeing not just his leader, but the fragile, exhausted man who had nearly sacrificed everything for them. He knew now that the new fight wasn't against starvation or Diavolo's cruelty; it was against the Boss's intent. They had to survive, together, to prove their collective will was stronger than his desire to see them fall apart.

The report detailing Ghiaccio’s failed, last-minute departure, and Risotto’s desperate intervention, landed on Diavolo's desk. The accompanying surveillance footage showed the entire squad—even the usually selfish Illuso—banding together to physically restrain Ghiaccio.

Diavolo didn't rage; he simply grew cold. The sight of their unbroken unity was not pathetic, nor was it admirable—it was an insult. They were actively defying the premise of his experiment. They were finding strength in scarcity, not devolving into chaos.

"The martyr saves his foolish apostle," Diavolo murmured, the fine wine suddenly tasting like vinegar. "And the parasites cling tighter. Very well. If they insist on unity, let us see how long that bond lasts when their self-appointed provider has nothing left to offer."

His fun was ending, and the abrupt, anticlimactic conclusion to his spectacle was unacceptable. He needed one last, decisive twist of the knife.

Diavolo dismissed his consigliere and used his direct, encrypted network—the one that bypassed all subordinate management—to send a terrifyingly simple message to every single mid-level capo and assignment coordinator who dealt with contract work in Passione.

The message was brief, absolute, and came with the implicit threat of instantaneous erasure for disobedience:

NO WORK ASSIGNED TO LA SQUADRA ESECUZIONI FOR SEVEN DAYS. COMPLETE AND TOTAL BLACKOUT.

He was not cutting their pay; he was cutting their source of life. Risotto had built a delicate, high-frequency system of constant, small assignments to keep them afloat. By turning off the supply entirely, Diavolo was destroying Risotto's hard-won stability and forcing them back to zero, but with the added anxiety of knowing exactly why they had nothing.

He wasn't waiting for them to starve slowly. He was forcing them to stare at an empty calendar for a week, knowing that every tick of the clock was burning through their reserves, and that the blood their leader had spilled would be the only thing keeping them from collapsing.

“Let them sit in their pathetic brotherhood,” Diavolo thought, leaning back and watching the rain begin to fall on his pristine windowpane. “Let them watch their meager food reserves dwindle. Let the martyr realize that his sacrifice was ultimately worthless when I can simply turn off the world around him. That is entertainment.”

Back in the dirty, anxious safety of the safe house, the squad was recovering. Risotto had cleaned his wound, applying a tight bandage. Ghiaccio was sullen but compliant, the shame of his near-fatal recklessness heavy on his conscience.

The tension was still high, but the team had reached a consensus: they would work together, to build their reserves and protect Risotto.

However, the next morning, the silence was deafening.

Formaggio checked the internal assignment board first. "Nothing," he announced, puzzled. "The daily low-priority list is blank."

Melone frowned, checking his own back channels for the petty, desperate retrieval jobs he used to supplement their income. "Odd. My usual contact isn't responding. Seems like his whole division is offline."

Risotto didn't need to check his device. He just felt it—the sudden, terrifying void where the familiar, annoying pressure of constant work used to be. The encrypted work terminal, which usually pulsed with notifications, was dead.

He checked his master account. The balance was fine, stabilized by their recent, frantic efforts. But no new deposits were pending. No jobs were scheduled.

Risotto looked at his exhausted men, his fear from the night before returning with icy clarity. He understood instantly. Diavolo wasn't just mad; he was playing with them. He was using the absence of work as a weapon, proving he could snap their livelihood in half whenever he chose.

"There are no jobs," Risotto stated, his voice calm despite the tremor in his hands. "The Boss has put a stop to it. I don't know for how long."

The silence that followed was far heavier than any shouting match. It was the sound of seven men staring at a full supply line suddenly cut, realizing that every single calorie consumed now was one they couldn't replace. The unity forged in danger now faced its ultimate test: enforced idleness and inevitable, slow depletion.

Two days into the enforced silence, the tension in the warehouse was a palpable, suffocating force. The assassins moved with the careful, quiet economy of men trying to conserve every calorie. Every sigh, every shift in weight, every moment of inactivity was a glaring reminder of the ticking clock and the empty work board.

Risotto's exhaustion, which had been dangerously high, now tipped into the realm of the critical. He had been relying entirely on the constant, high-frequency work to justify the meager food intake and the necessary use of Metallica. Now, without work, he was still burning through his physical reserves just to maintain the constant pressure of his leadership and the healing of his arm.

He had drawn a significant amount of iron from his own blood during the frantic last week, and the lack of immediate, nourishing food to replenish it was taking a devastating toll.

On the second afternoon, Risotto was sitting at the dusty table, attempting to fix a tear in his coat with a piece of wire he'd borrowed from Melone. His movements were slow and clumsy, his fingers twitching slightly from lack of control.

He felt the symptoms like a cold, internal tide. The metallic taste in his mouth was pervasive—a reminder of the nutrient he was actively leaching from his own body. He felt a constant, dull throbbing ache behind his eyes, and the warehouse seemed to shift and warp slightly when he turned his head.

He knew what was happening: anemia, profound and sudden.

He tried to ignore it, to focus on the stitching. He leaned forward, trying to thread the wire through the thick fabric.

"Boss," Prosciutto murmured from across the room, his eyes sharp with concern. "You should lie down. You look..."

Risotto waved a dismissive hand, trying to project strength. "I'm fine. Just the lights."

He pressed the needle against the fabric, then the world dissolved into a blinding, white flash. The last thing he felt was a surge of Metallica's power, an automatic, desperate attempt to stabilize his own failing system by pulling every last scrap of iron to his brain.

He never finished the stitch. His forehead slammed onto the table with a dull, heavy thud.

Risotto hadn't just closed his eyes from fatigue; he had passed out.

The sound of their leader's collapse was a profound shock. The entire squad instantly materialized around the table, their fear overcoming their hunger-fueled lethargy.

Ghiaccio was the first to react, his cold rage immediately turning to terror. He grabbed Risotto’s shoulder and tried to pull him upright. "Risotto! Hey! Wake up!"

Risotto's skin was frighteningly cold and clammy, his breathing shallow. The exposed skin on his forearm was starkly white beneath the edge of the bandage.

"He's running on empty," Prosciutto said, his voice flat with grim certainty. "He’s been drawing on his own blood to keep his Stand active, and there's nothing left to put back. The lack of food has pushed him over the edge."

Melone knelt, his voice tight with an urgency he rarely displayed. "We have to get something into him now. Iron supplements. Something."

Illuso, his recent moment of empathy still fresh, felt a resurgence of the panic he'd seen in Ghiaccio the night before. "We have nothing! Our reserves were low because the delivery for the new month's supplies was delayed by the Boss! We're operating on a handful of rice!"

Formaggio slammed his fist onto the table. "Diavolo knew this! He waited until we had nothing left before he hit the kill switch! He's watching this! He's laughing!"

The realization hit them all simultaneously: they had survived the threat of a single, spectacular death, only to be subjected to the slow, miserable, staged death of their leader.

Ghiaccio looked from Risotto's unconscious, pale face to his own hand—the hand that had so foolishly tried to carry a burden it couldn't bear. He knew he had to do something, anything, but the silence of the blacked-out assignments was a prison with no key.

"We have to go out," Ghiaccio ground out, his voice shaking with renewed, cold fury. "We can't wait a week. We have to find a doctor, or an underground supplier. I don't care how much it costs, or if the Boss catches us. He won't die here."

The panic was immediate and absolute. The sight of Risotto’s unconscious body was the final straw. They had to move, and quickly, but the blackout meant no official resources.

Melone was the first to act. The others were arguing fiercely over who would risk going to a black-market clinic, but Melone was already halfway out the door, his long coat whipping around him.

"Stay here," he ordered, his voice sharp and uncharacteristically devoid of his usual playful inflection. "A clinic is a paper trail. We need sustenance, not stitches. Something immediate."

He knew what Risotto needed: iron, fast. He didn't head to a dingy alley; he went straight to the best, brightly lit supermarket he could find.

Melone was a thief of twisted appetites, but his current focus was purely practical. He walked into the store, weaving expertly through the narrow aisles. Baby Face materialized partially, its microscopic size allowing it to manipulate tiny objects and create a perfect, undetectable diversion around him.

He didn't need to be stealthy; he needed to be invisible.

He grabbed a pack of high-concentration iron-fortified powder, designed to be mixed into drinks—the fastest way to administer the nutrient. He then swept the shelf for the most iron-rich foods: a package of fresh spinach, a tin of expensive fortified beans, and a small, pre-cooked steak that was ridiculously priced.

He didn't bother with the checkout line. With a minute tremor of Baby Face, he disrupted the magnetic strip on the anti-theft gate and manipulated the sensory input of the nearest security camera, causing a harmless, fraction-of-a-second blur. No one noticed the man in the strange outfit walking out with a bulging bag. They were in the mafia; they were all criminals. The line between a paycheck and theft was meaningless when survival was the goal.

He sprinted back to the warehouse, the stolen goods clutched tightly to his chest.

The squad was still gathered around Risotto, who was barely responsive. Ghiaccio was desperately rubbing his leader's clammy hands.

Melone burst in, ignoring the chaos. He tore open the packet of iron powder, mixed a double dose into a bottle of water, and forced a small amount past Risotto's lips.

It took fifteen excruciating minutes. Then, with a slow, agonizing effort, Risotto's eyes flickered open. The immediate terror in the room evaporated, replaced by a collective, powerful wave of raw, unfiltered relief.

Ghiaccio was the first to react, collapsing over Risotto and pulling him into a tight, trembling hug. "You stupid idiot! Don't you ever do that again! You can't just fall over!"

Prosciutto gently pushed Ghiaccio aside, offering a firm, paternal squeeze to Risotto's shoulder. "We had it handled, Boss. Stay with us."

Even Illuso rushed forward, placing a hand on Risotto's back—a rare, public display of genuine concern from the narcissistic assassin. Pesci and Formaggio crowded around, their worried faces a circle of devotion.

Risotto, still dazed, felt the weight of their bodies, the warmth of their hands. This was their answer to Diavolo’s cruelty: unconditional love. He was their family, and he had nearly scared them to death.

He finally focused on the plastic bottle in Melone's hand and the packages scattered on the table. He took another, slow sip of the thick, metallic-tasting water.

"Where..." Risotto’s voice was a barely audible rasp. "Where did you get this? The iron. And the food."

Melone just stared at him, his expression closed off. He would not dignify the question with an answer. He was proud of his resourcefulness, but he wouldn't admit to the petty theft. It didn't matter.

Before Risotto could press the question, he was drowned in the sheer emotional outpouring of his men.

"I thought you were gone," Ghiaccio choked out, clinging to his arm.

"It doesn't matter, Boss. Just drink the rest," Illuso insisted, pushing the bottle gently toward him.

"We need you," Prosciutto added, his voice low and serious. "You can't do this to us."

Risotto looked at their faces—stained with sweat, fear, and relief. He saw the genuine, desperate love in their eyes. The simple survival of his men was more important than the origin of a few stolen goods. He swallowed the last of the iron solution and let the warmth of their devotion wash over him, accepting the single, unifying truth of their existence: they would commit any crime, endure any torment, and betray any code, including the Boss’s experiment, to keep their family intact.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

—————— WIP one end ———————

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The final days of the blackout were spent in a strange, enforced domesticity. Risotto, though his color was returning thanks to Melone’s "found" supplements, was under a state of collective house arrest. If he so much as stood up too quickly, Ghiaccio was there to shove him back down into a chair, and Prosciutto was there to ensure he actually swallowed his food.

They were still hungry, but the edge of desperation had been blunted by the fact that they were no longer suffering in isolation. They were a unit again.

On the eve of the blackout's end, Risotto sat the squad down. The flickering light of a single lantern cast long, sharp shadows against the warehouse walls. He looked less like a dying martyr and more like a grim general preparing for a new kind of war.

"The blackout ends at midnight," Risotto began, his voice raspy but steady. "Diavolo failed to break us, but he won’t stop. He will try to bait us again—solo missions, impossible parameters, fine print designed to kill."

He looked directly at Ghiaccio, who looked away, rubbing his neck where the bruises from Risotto's chokehold had finally faded to a faint yellow.

"From now on, the rules of engagement change," Risotto declared. "I am instituting a mandatory vetting process. No one—and I mean no one—leaves this warehouse for a mission until I have personally read every word of the briefing. I will scan for traps, for geographic anomalies, and for hidden constraints. If the risk outweighs the reward, we reject it. If the parameters are suicidal, we rewrite them or we walk away."

"You're going to micromanage us?" Illuso asked, though there was no real bite in his tone. He actually sounded relieved.

"I am going to ensure you return," Risotto corrected. "I won't have another 'freighter incident.' We operate as a squad, or we don't operate at all."

Ghiaccio chewed his lip, his brow furrowed behind his glasses. He understood the necessity, but his stubborn streak flared up one last time. "Fine. We report to you. You're the leader; it makes sense. But what about your missions, Risotto?"

Ghiaccio stood up, crossing his arms. "You’re the one who takes the shittiest, most draining jobs to cover our slack. You’re the one who hides your injuries. If we have to show you our papers, who watches you? Or are you just going to be a hypocrite and bleed out in a ditch while we’re at home eating soup?"

The room went silent. It was a fair point, and one that struck at the heart of Risotto's protective nature.

Risotto looked at the faces of his "children"—the men he had bled for, the men who had just spent a week stealing and sacrificing to keep him breathing. He realized that for his rule to hold, he had to surrender the one thing he guarded most: his autonomy.

"You're right," Risotto conceded, a small, tired smile ghosting his lips. "It would be hypocritical. So, the rule applies to me, too. If I receive a direct command or pick up a contract, I will present it to the squad. Specifically, I want at least three of you to vet my mission details before I step foot out that door."

He looked at Prosciutto, Ghiaccio, and Illuso. "You three. You’re the most cynical, the most observant, and the most protective. If you don't like the look of my assignment, you have the right to veto it or demand backup."

Prosciutto nodded solemnly. "Consider it done, Boss."

Ghiaccio slumped back into his seat, satisfied. The power dynamic had shifted. Risotto was still the leader, but he was no longer a solitary pillar carrying the roof until he snapped. He was part of the foundation.

As the clock ticked toward midnight, marking the end of Diavolo's cruel experiment in isolation, La Squadra didn't feel like a group of starving assassins. They felt like a fortress. They knew the Boss was watching, and they knew the jobs would be harder and the pay even stingier, but they had a new law now—a law written in blood and iron: No one goes alone, and no one is left behind.

The blackout lifted with a chilling chime from the terminal, but the air in the warehouse didn't lighten. It grew heavier with the weight of scrutiny. True to his word, Risotto sat at the head of the table, his red-and-black eyes narrowed as he combed through the data packets for the first six assignments offered to the squad.

The others crowded around, watching him work. They were eager—desperate to replenish the funds Melone had essentially "borrowed" from the local shops—but the silence from Risotto was foreboding.

"This one," Risotto said, tapping a finger on a retrieval mission in Naples assigned to Formaggio. "The pick-up point is a dead-end alley with three high-rise balconies overlooking the bin. It’s a funnel. If you shrink, you won't have the speed to clear the kill zone before a sniper takes the shot."

Formaggio’s face paled. He had looked at that map and only seen a quiet spot to hide. He hadn’t looked up at the sightlines. Trap one.

Five minutes later, Risotto moved to a high-profile hit assigned to Prosciutto and Pesci. "Read the fine print on the exit strategy. The boat is registered to a shell company owned by the target's brother. It’s not a getaway vehicle; it’s a floating coffin rigged to be reported to the coast guard the moment the engine starts."

Prosciutto’s jaw tightened. He had been so focused on the target’s habits that he hadn't audited the boat's registration. Trap two.

By the time they reached the third mission—a simple shakedown for Illuso—the mood had turned from professional concern to sheer, simmering horror.

"The atmospheric pressure in the designated 'mirror room' is artificially controlled," Risotto pointed out, showing a technical schematic hidden in a sub-file. "The moment you enter the mirror world, they’ll vent the oxygen from the physical room. You won't be able to breathe back in the real world to sustain your Stand. You’ll suffocate in your own reflection."

The warehouse was dead silent. Out of six missions, three were blatant, sophisticated execution orders disguised as "business as usual."

Ghiaccio slammed his fist into the wall, the frost from his knuckles cracking the plaster. "Three? Three of them?! They aren't even trying to hide it anymore! They’re just tossing us into the meat grinder to see which one of us screams first!"

Illuso stared at the screen, his hands trembling slightly. He prided himself on being the smartest man in the room, yet he had missed the oxygen vent detail entirely. The realization that he would have died a slow, agonizing death in his own mirror world made his stomach turn.

Prosciutto looked at Pesci, who was white as a sheet. The elder brother felt a wave of nausea. He was supposed to be the one who protected Pesci, yet he had almost walked them both onto a rigged boat.

"We missed them," Prosciutto whispered, his voice thick with self-loathing. "All of us. We were so hungry to get back to work that we stopped looking for the knife in the dark."

They all hated it. They hated that they were so easily baited. But mostly, they hated the look on Risotto’s face. He didn't look smug about being right; he looked terrified. His hands, still thin and slightly shaky from the anemia, were gripped tight on the edge of the table.

"He’s playing with our lives like they’re disposable," Risotto said, his voice a low, dangerous growl. "He wants to see if I can catch every trap. He wants to see how many of you I can save before I miss one."

"Well, you won't miss," Ghiaccio snapped, though his eyes were wet. "Because we're going to start looking twice as hard. We aren't children, Risotto. We're assassins. We’re going to learn to see the traps before you even have to point them out."

The squad stood in a circle around their leader, the three "death missions" glowing red on the screen like open wounds. They were no longer just a group of hungry men; they were a unit that had looked into the abyss and realized their Boss was the one pushing them toward the edge.

"Reject the three traps," Risotto ordered, closing the files. "We take the other three, but we go in pairs. No one goes solo. Not today. Not ever again."

The warehouse had never felt so vast, or so cold.

With the other six gone, the silence was no longer a reprieve; it was a weight. Risotto sat at the scarred wooden table, the glowing embers of the terminal screen the only light in the gloom. His body was still protesting the weeks of starvation, his heartbeat thumping a hollow, rhythmic reminder of how little fuel he had left in his veins.

He looked at the empty chairs. He could almost hear Ghiaccio’s frantic pacing, see the glint of Illuso’s pocket mirror, and feel the steady, quiet presence of Prosciutto.

Now, there was only the drip of a leaky pipe and the ghost of the iron-heavy scent that always clung to him.

He leaned his head back against the concrete wall, his eyes drifting shut. He wasn't sleeping; he didn't dare. Instead, he was doing something he hadn’t done since he was a boy in Sicily, before the blood of his cousin’s killer had stained his hands.

He was praying.

“Please,” he thought, his mind a frantic litany directed at whatever silent deity might still be listening to a murderer. “Just this once. Let them be faster than the knife. Let them see the shadow before it falls.”

He knew the "safe" missions weren't truly safe. In Passione, "safe" just meant the traps were harder to see. With their current conditions—their reflexes slowed by malnutrition, their stamina depleted, their nerves frayed to the breaking point—even a routine shakedown could turn lethal. A single misstep, a slightly slow reaction, a moment of lightheadedness... and the squad would be minus a soul they couldn't afford to lose.

They were a family of ghosts, haunting a world that wanted them erased.

"We can't take a hit," he whispered into the darkness, his voice cracking. "Not even the smallest one."

If Pesci tripped, if Formaggio lost focus for a second, if Melone's hands shook... the house of cards Risotto had bled himself dry to build would collapse. He felt the crushing guilt of a father who had sent his children into a storm because the pantry was bare.

He checked the GPS trackers on the terminal. Three pairs of dots, moving through the labyrinth of the city. He watched them with a predatory, desperate intensity. Every time a dot lingered too long in one spot, his breath hitched, his hand instinctively reaching for the iron in his pockets, ready to tear himself apart if it meant reaching them in time.

“Come back,” he pleaded silently. “Come back so I can feed you. Come back so I can worry about the next meal instead of the next funeral.”

He sat in the dark, a dying god of iron and sorrow, waiting for the sound of the door to creak open—waiting for the only thing in the world that still mattered to him to return from the cold.

The warehouse door groaned on its hinges, the sound cutting through the oppressive silence like a gunshot. Risotto was on his feet before the light from the hallway even hit the floor, his heart hammering against his ribs.

Prosciutto and Pesci stepped inside. They were winded, their clothes dusted with the grime of the city, and their faces were pale with the lingering adrenaline of the hunt—but they were walking upright.

Risotto’s eyes, sharp and frantic, did a lightning-fast sweep of their bodies. No limping. No cradled ribs. No dark, spreading stains on their coats.

For a man who lived his life as a shadow, Risotto moved with startling, desperate speed. He crossed the floor in a few strides and pulled both of them into a fierce, suffocating embrace.

It was a total departure from his usual cold composure. Pesci squeaked in surprise, nearly dropping the envelope of pay, but he quickly melted into the hold, burying his face in Risotto’s shoulder. To Pesci, this felt like being welcomed back by a god who had finally decided to show he cared.

But it was Prosciutto who felt the true depth of Risotto’s terror. Risotto’s grip on the elder brother was noticeably tighter, his fingers digging into the fabric of Prosciutto’s suit jacket. Prosciutto could feel the tremors in Risotto's hands—the lingering weakness from the anemia, yes, but also the raw, jagged fear of a leader who had almost lost his equal.

"We're back, Risotto," Prosciutto murmured, his voice low and steady, though he didn't try to pull away. He let the leader lean on him for a moment, grounding him. "Clean. Not even a scratch. We followed the vet. No boat, no detours."

Risotto didn't speak immediately. He just breathed in the scent of gunpowder and cheap cologne that clung to them—the scent of life. He held them until the frantic rhythm of his own heart slowed down, his head bowed between their shoulders.

"Don't," Risotto finally rasped, his voice muffled. "Don't ever make me wait like that again."

He stepped back, his hands lingering on Prosciutto’s shoulders for a fraction of a second longer before he regained his mask of stoicism. He looked at the envelope in Pesci’s hand, then back at their faces. They were safe. The first gamble had paid off.

But as he turned back to the terminal to check on the other four, the tight clench in his gut remained. Two were home, but the warehouse was still four souls short of being a family again.

The relief of seeing Illuso and Formaggio walk through the door was a physical blow to Risotto’s chest. They looked exhausted, Formaggio’s clothes were slightly singed at the edges, and Illuso was dusting off his sleeves with a look of profound annoyance, but they were whole.

Just as he had with the first pair, Risotto was across the room in a blur of black fabric. He pulled them both into a heavy, crushing hug. Formaggio let out a startled "Oof!" and Illuso stiffened for a second before awkwardly patting Risotto’s back, his vanity momentarily forgotten in the face of such raw, unshielded care.

Prosciutto stood by the table, his sharp eyes narrowing as he watched the interaction. He noticed the subtle difference immediately. Risotto was holding them with a desperate, protective warmth—the same way he had held Pesci. It was the hug of a guardian who was terrified for his dependents. It lacked that specific, bone-deep, equal-to-equal grip Risotto had shared with Prosciutto just moments before.

But as the seconds ticked by, Risotto’s posture didn't relax. Instead, it went rigid.

He pulled back, his hands still gripping Illuso’s shoulders, his eyes darting toward the digital clock on the terminal. The red numbers flickered, mocking him.

"Melone and Ghiaccio," Risotto whispered, his voice suddenly losing its warmth and turning into a jagged edge of ice. "Their route was shorter. Their target was closer to the hub. According to the mission parameters and the travel time... they should have been the second group. They should have been through that door ten minutes ago."

The atmospheric shift in the warehouse was instantaneous. The small spark of celebration died in everyone's throats.

Formaggio looked at Illuso, the color draining from his face. "We didn't see them on the way back. We thought they'd be here eating already."

Risotto turned back to the terminal, his fingers flying across the keys with a frantic, desperate precision. He had calculated every variable—the traffic, the Stand cooldowns, the physical exhaustion levels. Even with their weakened states, Ghiaccio’s speed and Melone’s efficiency should have brought them home by now.

"They aren't answering their pings," Risotto growled, his breath hitching.

The weight of the three "trap" missions he had rejected earlier came crashing back down on him. Had Diavolo hidden a fourth? Had he tucked a secondary kill-switch into a mission that looked perfectly routine?

Risotto stared at the door, his hand instinctively reaching for the iron in the air, his body trembling as the terrifying silence of the warehouse returned. Two pairs were home, but his family was still broken, and the two most volatile members were out there in the dark.

The silence following the realization was deafening. Risotto stood frozen at the terminal, the blue light of the monitor casting ghostly shadows over his gaunt features. Ten minutes. In their line of work, ten minutes was the difference between a clean exit and a body bag.

His breathing began to hitch—short, shallow gasps that didn't seem to reach his lungs. The iron in the air began to vibrate, small nails and loose staples in the warehouse walls rattling in sympathy with his escalating heartbeat.

"I missed something," Risotto whispered, his voice trembling. "The vetting... I missed a detail. I sent them to their deaths."

The guilt, compounded by weeks of starvation and the recent physical trauma of his collapse, hit him like a physical wave. He gripped the edge of the table so hard the wood groaned. His vision began to tunnel, the icons on the screen blurring into red smears that looked far too much like blood. He was the leader; he was the filter. If they didn't come back, the blood was on his hands.

"Risotto. Look at me."

Prosciutto’s voice was firm, cutting through the static in Risotto’s brain. He stepped into Risotto’s personal space, bypassing the usual boundaries of their hierarchy. He saw the way Risotto’s pupils were blown wide, the way his chest was heaving with the onset of a full-blown panic attack.

"They aren't dead," Prosciutto said, placing both hands firmly on Risotto’s shoulders. He applied a grounding pressure, forcing the taller man to focus on the physical sensation rather than the spiraling thoughts. "Ghiaccio is a hothead and Melone is a freak, but they are survivors. You know the city—traffic is a nightmare near the port. A bridge could be up. A tire could have blown."

"I... I can't feel their iron," Risotto gasped, his knees buckling slightly. "I should be able to feel them..."

"You're anemic, Risotto! You can barely feel your own feet right now!" Prosciutto snapped, not out of cruelty, but to shock Risotto back to reality. He guided Risotto down into a chair, kneeling in front of him so they were eye-to-level. "Breathe. In for four, out for four. If you spiral, the rest of the squad spirals. Look at Pesci. Look at Formaggio. They need you stable."

Risotto’s eyes darted to the others. They were huddled together, watching their stoic leader crumble with looks of pure heartbreak. The sight of their fear acted like a splash of cold water.

Slowly, painfully, Risotto mimicked Prosciutto’s steady breathing. The rattling of the metal in the room subsided. The tunnel vision began to clear.

"That's it," Prosciutto murmured, his grip softening but not releasing. "We wait five more minutes. If they aren't back, I will go out. You stay here. You’ve done your part. You gave them the best chance they’ve had in months."

Risotto leaned his forehead against Prosciutto’s shoulder for a brief second, a silent 'thank you' that he couldn't find the breath to speak. He was still terrified—every second felt like an hour—but the paralyzing panic had been pushed back into a cold, sharp alertness.

Then, the heavy outer door creaked.

The door groaned open, and for a heartbeat, the air in the warehouse seemed to freeze. Ghiaccio stepped in first, looking irritable and winded, followed by Melone, who was casually wrapping a handkerchief around a shallow gash on his palm—a clumsy nick from a jagged piece of scrap metal after the job was already done.

The second Risotto’s eyes landed on them, the high-tension wire of his panic snapped.

He didn't walk; he lunged. Risotto collided with them at the entrance, his long arms sweeping both Ghiaccio and Melone into a desperate, bone-crushing embrace. He held them with a terrifying intensity, his fingers digging into their coats as if he were trying to physically anchor them to the earth so they could never drift away again.

It was a grip born of the absolute, agonizing fear that he had sent them to their graves.

Prosciutto stood back, watching the scene with the sharp, analytical gaze that made him such a lethal assassin. He saw Risotto holding the "younger" members with a fierce, suffocating protection—tighter than the relief he'd shown Formaggio and Illuso, more desperate than the care he’d shown Pesci.

But Prosciutto’s mind kept drifting back to the sensation of Risotto’s hands on his own shoulders just minutes ago.

He compared the two. The way Risotto held the others was parental, a frantic guarding of his "children." But the grip Risotto had shared with Prosciutto... that had been different. It wasn't just the strength; it was the frequency of the vibration, the way Risotto had leaned his weight into him, the silent communication of two pillars holding up a falling sky.

Prosciutto’s brow furrowed. He couldn't quite name it. It wasn't the grip of a father, and it was far too heavy to be the simple touch of a friend or even an equal. It felt like something ancient and weighted—a silent, desperate admission that Prosciutto was the only person Risotto allowed himself to actually lean on.

Risotto finally pulled back from Ghiaccio and Melone, his face a mess of relief and lingering exhaustion. "You're late," he rasped, his voice thick.

"Car died three blocks away," Ghiaccio grumbled, though he didn't pull away from Risotto’s hand. "We had to run the rest of the way. Calm down, old man."

"Your hand, Melone," Risotto noted, his eyes scanning the minor injury with a focus that was almost obsessive.

"A souvenir from a dumpster, nothing more, Capo," Melone chirped, though he looked touched by the concern.

Risotto nodded, finally stepping back to let them fully enter. The squad was whole. The money was on the table. For the first time in weeks, the "experiment" had failed to claim a soul.

Prosciutto caught Risotto’s eye across the room. Risotto didn't say a word, but the look he gave the elder brother was a silent, lingering plea for Prosciutto to keep standing—to keep being the anchor that kept the leader himself from drifting away.

In the sterile, opulent silence of his hideout, Diavolo stared at the monitors until the screen seemed to burn with the heat of his rage. His experiment in psychological erosion was being dismantled by the very people he intended to break. The unity, the vetting, the hugging—it was a nauseating display of sentimentality that defied his logic of absolute selfishness.

"They think they have found a loophole," Diavolo hissed, his eyes narrowing. "They think they can pick and choose the terms of their survival."

He reached for the terminal. If they wouldn't walk into his traps willingly, he would make the alternative a slow, agonizing starvation.

He sent out a command that rippled through the hierarchy of Passione like a cold front. The directive was absolute: La Squadra was stripped of their right to refuse.

DIRECTIVE 0-99: Any attempt by La Squadra Esecuzioni to reject an assigned mission will result in an immediate 50% pay dock for the next five completed contracts. Furthermore, the frequency of work will be throttled. They will accept what is given, or they will starve in the silence of their own defiance.

"Update them," Diavolo commanded his shadow. "I want them to see the bars of the cage."

Back at the warehouse, the atmosphere had just begun to soften. Melone was cleaning his hand, Ghiaccio was complaining about the cold, and Risotto was finally sitting down, his breathing leveled.

Then, every single one of their devices chimed in a dissonant, synchronized chorus.

Risotto pulled his phone from his pocket. As he read the message, the color—what little had returned to his face—vanished instantly. He didn't move. He didn't even blink. He simply stared at the text until his hand began to shake with a cold, murderous tremor.

"What is it?" Prosciutto asked, his heart sinking.

Risotto turned the screen around.

The silence that followed was different from the others. It wasn't the silence of fear or grief; it was the silence of men realizing they were being hunted by a god who enjoyed the sport.

"He's taking away the vetting," Ghiaccio whispered, his voice cracking. "If we say no to a trap, he takes our food. If we say yes, we die. He’s... he’s just going to keep sending the 'death' missions until one of us doesn't come back."

Pesci looked like he was going to be sick. Illuso slammed his hand onto the table, his pride finally giving way to a raw, helpless frustration.

Risotto looked up, his eyes blood-red and hollow. He could feel the weight of his "children’s" lives pressing down on him. The "safe" missions today had been a fluke—a teaser. Now, the real game was beginning. Every notification on that terminal was now a potential execution order that they were legally, financially, and physically forced to sign.

Miles away, Diavolo leaned back in his leather chair, a glass of vintage wine in his hand. He watched the surveillance feed of the warehouse—the way Risotto’s shoulders slumped, the way Ghiaccio paced like a caged animal, the way Prosciutto gripped the table.

He let out a low, melodic chuckle that echoed through the empty room.

"There," Diavolo murmured, a predatory smile stretching across his face. "Now we shall see the true strength of your 'family.' How many of them will you sacrifice, Risotto, before you realize that your love is the very thing that will destroy them?"

He took a slow, celebratory sip. The experiment wasn't over. It had simply reached its most entertaining phase: The Choice of the Martyr.

The terminal chimed, but this time the notification felt different—heavy, like a physical weight dropping onto the desk. Risotto leaned forward, his eyes scanning the data with a grim, practiced focus.

The mission was a high-stakes hit on a rival syndicate’s moving transport. The risk was a perfect fifty-fifty. It wasn't an obvious execution trap like the previous ones, but the window for error was razor-thin. However, it was the reward that made the room go silent.

For the first time since the starvation began, the payout was... correct. It was the full, un-docked rate a top-tier squad should receive for a job of this magnitude. It was enough money to restock their medicine, fill their pantry for a month, and give Risotto’s body a genuine chance to recover from his anemia.

"He's dangling the carrot," Ghiaccio spat, though his eyes lingered on the number of zeroes in the payout. "He knows we can't say no to this. Not after the blackout."

Risotto scrolled to the bottom of the brief. His heart sank. The request was specific—it named the two operatives required for the job: The Leader and the Elder Brother.

"It's us," Risotto said, his voice low, looking at Prosciutto. "The brief requires a level of precision and seniority that only we can provide. If we send anyone else, it's a breach of contract. If we refuse, we lose half of our next five checks."

The squad looked at each other. They hated it. They hated that the two most vital pillars of their family were being called out together into a coin-flip of a mission. If both Risotto and Prosciutto fell, the squad would be effectively decapitated.

But they were starving. They were desperate. And this was the first time the Boss had played "fair" with the money.

"I'm going," Prosciutto said simply, adjusting his cufflinks with a chillingly calm resolve. He didn't look at Pesci, who was clutching his sleeve. "Risotto is right. This is the only way out of the hole. We take the hit, we take the money, and we survive."

Risotto stood up, his tall frame cast in shadow. He was still pale, and his hands still had a faint tremor, but the protective fire in his eyes had returned. He wouldn't let Prosciutto go alone, and he wouldn't let his "children" starve while a fortune sat on a digital screen.

"Prepare the equipment," Risotto ordered. "Prosciutto and I leave in twenty minutes."

He turned to the rest of the squad—Ghiaccio, Melone, Illuso, Formaggio, and Pesci. He looked at them not as subordinates, but as the reason he was willing to walk into the fire.

"Ghiaccio, you're in charge of the warehouse," Risotto stated. "If we aren't back by dawn, you take the remaining funds and you move. Do not look for us. Do you understand?"

Ghiaccio looked like he wanted to scream, to freeze the whole world in place just to stop them from leaving, but he saw the look in Risotto’s eyes—the same look from the night of the "almost tears." He simply nodded, his jaw set so tight it looked like it might snap.

Risotto turned to Prosciutto. There was a silent understanding between them—the grip from earlier, the mutual weight of their roles. They were the shield. They were the ones who had to gamble so the others didn't have to.

"Let's go," Risotto said.

As they stepped toward the door, the warehouse felt smaller than ever, the five remaining members standing in a tight, silent line, watching their two "parents" walk out into a fifty-fifty chance of never coming back.

The warehouse was a tomb of silent, suffocating tension. Ghiaccio, Melone, Illuso, Formaggio, and Pesci were huddled around the terminal, eyes locked on the two glowing icons moving steadily across the digital map.

Now, they understood the poison that had been running through Risotto’s veins while they were away. The helplessness was worse than the hunger. Seeing those two dots—the only two things standing between them and total collapse—made every second feel like a slow-motion car crash.

"They’re slowing down," Pesci whispered, his voice trembling as he gripped his own arms. "Why are they slowing down?"

"Traffic, or they're approaching the intercept point," Illuso muttered, though his usual cool confidence was nowhere to be found. He realized now that watching the tracker was like watching a heartbeat on a monitor; if it stopped, their world ended.

In the cramped, cold interior of the transport vehicle heading toward the syndicate's route, the atmosphere was equally heavy. Risotto sat in the passenger seat, his dark eyes fixed on the road ahead. Beside him, Prosciutto was a statue of professional focus, checking his weapon one last time.

The mission was a coin-flip. They both knew it. Diavolo had designed this perfectly—a payout they couldn't refuse for a job they might not survive.

Suddenly, Risotto reached out.

His hand, still pale and slightly cool from the lingering anemia, covered Prosciutto’s hand on the center console. He didn't just brush against him; he took Prosciutto’s hand in a firm, deliberate grip.

Prosciutto froze. His thumb stayed poised over the safety of his gun, his entire body going rigid. In all the years of blood and betrayal, Risotto had never initiated a touch that wasn't for protection or leadership.

"Risotto?" Prosciutto’s voice was a low, cautious warning. "We’re five minutes out from the target. Focus."

"I am focused," Risotto said, his voice a gravelly, hollow rasp. He didn't look over; he kept his eyes on the horizon, but his grip tightened. "We both know the statistics of this job. Fifty-fifty. One of us might stay on that road. Or both of us."

Prosciutto didn't pull away, but the tension in his arm was like a coiled spring. "Don't talk like that. We've survived worse."

"Perhaps. But the weight I’ve carried since the starvation began... it’s changed things," Risotto continued. He finally turned his head, his red-on-black eyes meeting Prosciutto’s sharp blue ones. There was a raw, naked honesty there that surpassed even the vulnerability of his earlier breakdown.

"I’ve spent every moment protecting my 'children,' but you... you were the only one I didn't have to hide from. You were the only one who held me up when I was failing." Risotto took a shallow breath, his thumb tracing a slow line over Prosciutto’s knuckles. "If this is to be our end, I refuse to go into the dark with this silence between us. I have feelings for you, Prosciutto. Not as a leader, and not as a father to this squad. Something more."

The interior of the car felt like it had lost all oxygen. Prosciutto stared at Risotto, his analytical mind struggling to process a variable he hadn't prepared for. The leader—the iron man of La Squadra—was confessing his soul on the edge of a suicide mission.

"You picked a hell of a time, Risotto," Prosciutto finally whispered, his voice cracking just slightly.

"What better time?" Risotto countered, a ghost of a sad smile touching his lips. "If we live, we handle it. If we die... at least you know."

Back at the warehouse, the five men watched the dots on the screen stop completely at the intercept point. They held their collective breath, unaware that the two men they relied on were currently navigating a hazard far more complex than a syndicate hit.

The digital clock on the warehouse wall ticked with a rhythmic cruelty that seemed to echo in the hollow chests of the five men left behind. On the monitor, the two dots representing Risotto and Prosciutto remained motionless at the intercept point.

Five minutes had passed. Then seven.

In their world, stillness was rarely a good sign. It meant a standoff, a trap, or worse—the silence that follows a disaster.

"Why aren't they moving?" Pesci asked, his voice climbing into a pitch of pure panic. He was gripping his own hair, his eyes darting between the screen and the dark corners of the warehouse. "They should have engaged by now. The transport was supposed to pass through three minutes ago! Why are they just sitting there?"

"Maybe they're waiting for a better opening," Formaggio suggested, though he was chewing his thumbnail so hard it was bleeding. "The traffic might be heavy. They're professionals, Pesci. They don't rush."

"Professionalism doesn't stop the car for seven minutes in a kill zone!" Ghiaccio barked, pacing a tight, frantic circle around the terminal. His breath was coming out in frosty puffs, the temperature in the room dropping as his anxiety spiked. "Something is wrong. Someone could have spotted them. Or maybe the 'fifty-fifty' just went south before it even started!"

Pesci couldn't take it anymore. The sight of those two static dots—representing the two people he loved and relied on most—felt like looking at two flatlining heartbeats. He squeezed his eyes shut and turned his head away, staring at the dirty concrete floor.

But looking away was worse.

In the darkness of his own mind, the "what ifs" became vivid, bloody images. He could see the car riddled with bullets; he could see the "trap" missions Risotto had warned them about finally catching up to them. Without the monitor to ground him in the reality of their location, his imagination turned every second of silence into a funeral.

He whipped his head back toward the screen, his breath hitching. "I can't... I have to know. If they move, I have to see it the second it happens."

Illuso put a hand on Pesci's shoulder, his grip uncharacteristically tight. "Focus, Pesci. They’re still there. The signal is strong. If they were... if something happened to the units, the icons would flicker or disappear. They’re just waiting."

"Waiting for what?" Melone asked softly, his eyes fixed on the map. He was the most analytical of the group, and even he couldn't find a tactical reason for such a long, silent pause before a high-stakes hit.

They didn't know that the stillness on the screen was a reflection of the stillness in the car—the frozen moment after Risotto’s confession, where time had simply ceased to exist for their leaders. To the five in the warehouse, it looked like the end of the world. To the two in the car, it was the first time they had truly seen each other in years.

Suddenly, the dots shifted. One began to pulse—the signal for Stand activation.

"They're moving!" Ghiaccio yelled, leaning so close to the monitor his glasses fogged up. "They’re engaging! Go, you bastards, move!"

The five of them surged toward the screen, a single, collective unit of desperate hope, watching the icons finally dive into the fray.

The transport truck thundered into the intercept zone, and the "fifty-fifty" gamble officially began. Risotto and Prosciutto moved with a synchronicity that had been honed through years of bloodshed, but there was a new, electric tension humming between them.

Risotto's confession hung in the recycled air of the cabin like a live wire. Prosciutto hadn't given a verbal answer—there was no time—but his response was written in the way he fought.

As the enemy syndicate’s security team opened fire, Prosciutto found his internal rhythm completely derailed. Usually, he was a machine of cold efficiency, focusing entirely on the target and his own positioning. But now, every time he ducked behind cover or lined up a shot with The Grateful Dead, his eyes instinctively darted to the side.

He wasn't just checking Risotto's tactical position. He was checking the color of Risotto's skin, the steadiness of his hands, and the way his chest rose and fell.

He’s too pale, Prosciutto thought, a flare of irritation and protectiveness rising in his chest as he took down a gunman. If he overuses Metallica now, his heart won't take it.

Even when they were separated by twenty feet of asphalt and crossfire, Prosciutto’s focus was split. He found himself moving closer to Risotto than the mission plan required—putting himself in the line of fire to draw attention away from the leader. It wasn't just because Risotto was weak from anemia; it was because the words "I have feelings for you" had transformed Risotto from a commander into something infinitely more precious and fragile.

At one point, a grenade detonated near the transport's rear axle. The shockwave sent a cloud of dust and shrapnel toward Risotto’s flank.

In any other mission, Prosciutto would have trusted Risotto to handle it. But today, Prosciutto’s heart lurched into his throat. He lunged forward, his Stand’s aging mist billowing out to wither the nearby attackers, his eyes wide as he searched for Risotto through the smoke.

"Risotto!" he shouted, the professional mask slipping for a fraction of a second.

Risotto emerged from the haze, several scalpels hovering protectively around him, his eyes glowing with a grim, focused intensity. He caught Prosciutto’s gaze. He saw the frantic look in the blonde man’s eyes—the look of a man who wasn't just worried about his partner, but was terrified of losing the person who had finally let him in.

Risotto gave a sharp, curt nod, silently telling him: I'm still here. Focus on the job.

Prosciutto gritted his teeth and turned back to the fight, but the glance lingered. He realized then that Risotto’s confession hadn't just changed the stakes—it had made the mission ten times more dangerous. He wasn't just fighting for the money or the squad anymore. He was fighting to make sure that the conversation they started in the car didn't end in a graveyard.

Back at the warehouse, the five men huddled around the monitor saw the dots moving in a erratic, violent dance.

"They're taking risks," Melone whispered, noting the proximity of Prosciutto’s icon to Risotto’s. "They're deviating from the standard flanking maneuver. Prosciutto is... he's crowding him."

Ghiaccio bit his lip, his hands shaking. "Just get it done. Just come home. I don't care how they do it, as long as they both walk through that door."

The mission ended in a crescendo of screaming metal and fading mist. The syndicate’s transport lay in ruins, the objective secured. As the dust settled, the "fifty-fifty" odds had leaned in their favor—they were alive, and the payout was theirs.

But the cost was yet to be tallied.

Prosciutto was moving with a manic, hyper-focused energy. He was already checking the perimeter, his movements sharp and decisive. The adrenaline was a roaring tide in his ears, masking everything else. He felt invincible, fueled by the terrifying rush of the fight and the lingering echo of Risotto's confession.

"Area clear," Prosciutto said, his voice clipped as he holstered his weapon. He turned to Risotto, a rare, breathless smirk beginning to form. "We did it. Let's get the hell out of here before the reinforcements show up. We have a family to feed."

Risotto didn't move. He was standing five feet away, his chest heaving, his eyes fixed on Prosciutto’s waist. The relief that had briefly softened his face was gone, replaced by a cold, sharp horror.

"Prosciutto," Risotto rasped, stepping forward with a stumble. "Stop moving."

"I'm fine, Risotto. Don't start with the mothering now, we need to—"

"Look at your side."

Prosciutto frowned, glancing down. He saw a tear in his pristine suit jacket, right at the ribs. He felt... warm. He reached back with a gloved hand, expecting to feel the heat of the exhaust or the sun. When he pulled his hand back, the glove was soaked in a dark, spreading crimson.

The second he saw the blood, the adrenaline wall crumbled.

The pain hit him like a physical blow—a jagged, white-hot searing across his flank where a stray bullet or a shard of shrapnel had torn through him in the final seconds of the ambush. His knees buckled instantly.

Risotto caught him before he hit the asphalt. He lowered Prosciutto to the ground, his large hands trembling as they pressed down on the wound.

"You took a hit," Risotto whispered, his voice cracking with a raw, agonizing guilt. "You were watching me... you weren't watching yourself."

"Shut up," Prosciutto hissed through gritted teeth, his face turning an ashen grey. He grabbed Risotto’s wrist, his grip surprisingly strong even as he bled. "I'm fine. It's a graze. Just... get me to the car."

Risotto didn't argue. He used Metallica to knit the edges of the suit fabric together, creating a temporary, makeshift pressure bandage with the iron in the thread, his own face pale from the effort. He lifted Prosciutto with a strength born of pure desperation, ignoring his own anemic lightheadedness.

Back at the warehouse, the five men saw the dots finally moving again, but they were moving slowly—too slowly.

"They're headed for the car," Melone analyzed, his voice tight. "But the movement is staggered. Someone is being carried."

Pesci let out a small, strangled sob, his eyes glued to the screen. Ghiaccio was already at the door, the floor beneath his feet turning to a sheet of jagged ice.

"If they aren't both standing when that door opens," Ghiaccio threatened the empty air, his voice shaking with a murderous sob, "I'm going to kill everyone in this city."

They waited, five hearts beating in a frantic, uneven rhythm, watching the tracker crawl back toward home.

The warehouse was a frantic scene of digital static and raw terror. On the monitor, the icon for Prosciutto began to flicker—a glitch in the signal that only happened when the wearer’s vitals spiked or dropped sharply.

"He’s hit! Prosciutto's signal is unstable!" Melone shouted, his hands flying across the keyboard to stabilize the telemetry.

"They've stopped again!" Pesci wailed, his face buried in his hands. "They’re only halfway back! Why would they stop there?!"

Ghiaccio kicked a crate, the wood shattering into frozen splinters. "Move! Just move the damn car!"

On a rain-slicked side street, the car sat idling. Risotto had pulled over, not because of Prosciutto’s bleeding—though the iron scent was filling the cabin—but because a figure was standing directly in the glow of their headlights.

It was a boy. Gold hair, a pink suit, and an aura of absolute, terrifying stillness.

Risotto’s hand hovered over the door handle, his lungs burning. He knew this face from the updated dossiers. Giorno Giovanna. A newcomer, a brat, but someone who had been climbing the ranks with a speed that defied logic. In their current state—one bleeding out and the other anemic—a fight with a fresh Stand user was a death sentence.

"Stay down," Risotto whispered to Prosciutto, who was huffing through the pain in the passenger seat.

Risotto stepped out of the car. He looked like a specter of death: pale, gaunt, and desperate. He raised a hand, palm open, signaling a temporary truce.

"I know who you are," Risotto’s voice was a low, dangerous rasp. "You’re in the organization. We are La Squadra. We have completed our objective and we are heading home. We have no quarrel with you, and we have no energy to waste on a civil war tonight."

Giorno didn't move. He stood ten feet away, his hands folded neatly in front of him. His expression was unreadable—not aggressive, but not yielding. The silence was heavy, thick with the smell of wet pavement and the metallic tang of the blood dripping from the car door.

Risotto’s heart hammered. He couldn't feel any iron moving in the boy’s pockets, which was a bad sign—it meant Giorno was either unarmed or, more likely, his Stand was already active and hidden in the shadows. Was a ladybug crawling toward the tires? Was the grass beneath the car about to turn into a predator?

"Did you hear me?" Risotto demanded, his eyes glowing red. "We aren't your targets. Let us pass."

Giorno remained silent, his golden eyes fixed on Risotto with an intensity that felt like a surgical probe. He seemed to be weighing the soul of the man in front of him, oblivious to the fact that back at the warehouse, five men were watching two dots on a screen and losing their minds.

Prosciutto let out a choked groan from inside the car, the sound of his pain cutting through the standoff.

Risotto flinched. The desperation finally broke through his mask. "Please," he whispered, the word tasting like ash. "He’s dying. Just let us through."

Giorno’s eyes flickered toward the car window, then back to Risotto. He finally shifted his weight, but he still hadn't spoken a single word.

The silence was shattered as Giorno took a step forward. He didn't summon a weapon, and his expression didn't shift into a snarl; he simply began to walk toward the passenger side of the car with a calm, terrifyingly deliberate pace.

"Stay back!" Risotto barked, his voice cracking with a mixture of exhaustion and protective fury.

Risotto lunged, his tall, gaunt frame interposing itself between the boy and the car door. He raised his arm, his fingers twitching as he prepared to manifest Metallica. The air around them began to vibrate with a low, hum, the iron in the very asphalt beneath Giorno’s boots threatening to turn into a forest of needles.

"I told you once," Risotto growled, his red eyes wide and bloodshot. "We aren't looking for a fight. But if you touch him, I will tear the iron from your very marrow."

Giorno didn't even flinch. He didn't reach for a weapon, and he didn't stop. He simply adjusted his path, trying to side-step Risotto to reach the door handle. It was as if Risotto’s threats were nothing more than a light breeze.

"Move," Giorno said. It was his first word, spoken with a quiet authority that sounded far too old for his face.

"No!" Risotto shoved at Giorno’s chest, but the boy was surprisingly solid.

Risotto’s vision swam—the anemia was catching up to him, the world tilting as he tried to maintain his guard. He was nearly blind with panic. In his mind, this boy was an agent of the Boss, sent to finish what the syndicate hit had started. He saw Giorno reach out again, his hand extending toward the blood-stained door where Prosciutto lay gasping.

Inside the car, Prosciutto’s head lolled against the window. He watched through a haze of pain as the golden-haired boy reached for the handle. Prosciutto tried to lift his gun, but his arm felt like it was made of lead.

"Risotto..." Prosciutto managed a choked warning, but it was weak.

Risotto grabbed Giorno’s wrist, his grip desperate. "I said no! You aren't taking him!"

Giorno finally looked Risotto in the eye, his gaze unwavering. He didn't fight back or strike out. He simply leaned into Risotto’s space, his voice a calm anchor in the middle of Risotto’s spiraling panic attack.

"He is bleeding out," Giorno stated matter-of-factly, his hand still straining toward the door. "Every second you spend 'protecting' him from me is a second closer to his heart stopping. Now, let go."

Risotto froze, his fingers trembling against Giorno’s sleeve. He looked from the boy’s cold, golden eyes to the dark, spreading stain on the car seat. The standoff was a nightmare, and for the five men watching the flickering dots back at the warehouse, the lack of movement was becoming a death knell.

The standoff shifted in a heartbeat. Giorno wasn't just looking at the car anymore; his gaze sharpened, fixed on the tremors in Risotto’s hands and the unnatural, porcelain paleness of his skin. He saw the way Risotto’s pupils struggled to focus—the clear, medical markers of a body running on empty.

Giorno’s free hand shot out, not to strike, but to grip Risotto’s shoulder with a strength that felt like iron itself.

"You are as broken as he is," Giorno murmured. "Your blood is hollow."

Risotto tried to pull away, but he felt a strange, surging warmth radiate from Giorno’s palm. Giorno was curious; he had replaced limbs and closed wounds, but could Gold Experience mend the very chemistry of a living body? Could he force life back into the microscopic level of the bloodstream?

He pushed a massive, concentrated burst of life energy directly into Risotto’s shoulder.

The effect was instantaneous and violent. The iron in Risotto's system didn't just replenish; it surged. It felt as though every vein in his body was suddenly being filled with liquid lead, the atoms expanding and vibrating as they crystallized into the nutrient his body had been starving for.

Because the deficit was so extreme, the "healing" was excruciating. It was a sensory overload of metallic heat.

Risotto’s head snapped back, and a raw, guttural scream tore from his throat. It was a sound of pure, unadulterated agony—louder and more jagged than any cry he had ever made in battle. It was the sound of a man being rebuilt from the inside out.

Back at the warehouse, the silence was shattered by a crackle of static from the terminal. The audio feed was notoriously unreliable—Risotto and Prosciutto usually moved too quietly for the sensors—but the sheer volume of that scream forced the speakers to peak.

"Risotto!" Pesci shrieked, falling back against the wall.

Ghiaccio froze, his hands trembling. "That was him. That was definitely him. He’s being tortured! Someone is killing him!"

The five of them were paralyzed, their hearts stopping at the sound of their leader's voice breaking. They were so consumed by the visceral horror of the scream that they completely failed to notice the diagnostic window on the side of the screen.

The telemetry bar for Risotto’s vitals, which had been a flat, flickering grey line for weeks, had suddenly turned a violent, neon green. The data was spiking off the charts. His hemoglobin levels weren't just "normal"—they were overflowing. To a medical professional, the monitor was screaming that a miracle had occurred, but to the five terrified assassins, the only data that mattered was the sound of their leader’s pain.

As the scream faded into a ragged gasp, Risotto slumped against the car, his chest heaving. The lightheadedness was gone, replaced by a terrifyingly sharp clarity and a sudden, overwhelming strength. He felt heavy—solid in a way he hadn't felt since before the starvation.

Giorno calmly pulled his hand away, his expression as neutral as ever. He looked at his palm, then at Risotto.

"It works," Giorno noted softly.

He didn't wait for Risotto to recover. He immediately turned back to the car door, his focus shifting to the man who was actually dying. "Now, I will deal with the one who is bleeding. Unless you would like to scream again?"

Risotto looked at Giorno, his vision no longer tunneling. He saw the boy not as a threat, but as a force of nature. He was too stunned, and his body too flooded with new, stinging life, to do anything but watch as Giorno reached for the door handle.

Inside the cramped car, Prosciutto was in a state of primal, defensive shock. He had heard Risotto’s guttural scream from just outside the door, and in his blood-loss-induced haze, he assumed the boy had just finished off his leader.

When the door clicked open, Prosciutto scrambled back against the driver’s seat, his hand groping blindly for a weapon he didn't have the strength to lift. "Stay away—!" he wheezed, his vision swimming with dark spots.

Giorno didn't hesitate. He moved with a clinical, terrifying efficiency, reaching into the car and catching Prosciutto’s shoulder to keep him from collapsing further. He ignored the blonde man’s weak attempts to shove him away.

"Don't waste the little breath you have left," Giorno commanded.

He pressed his hand firmly over the ragged wound in Prosciutto's side. Gold Experience surged.

The "healing" wasn't a gentle wave; it was a violent transformation. Flesh, muscle, and skin were being forced to knit together from inorganic matter at a supernatural speed. Prosciutto’s head snapped back against the headrest and he let out a jagged, high-pitched scream—the kind of sound a man makes when his body is being rewritten in real-time.

The audio feed in the warehouse peaked for the second time in minutes. The five men huddled around the terminal were nearly vibrating with terror.

"That was Prosciutto!" Pesci yelled, his voice cracking. He was on the verge of a total breakdown, his hands clutched over his ears as if he could drown out the sound of his brother’s agony. "First Risotto, now him! They’re being butchered! Ghiaccio, we have to go, we have to go NOW!"

Ghiaccio was already halfway out the door, his eyes bloodshot and frost creeping up the walls. "I’m going! I’m taking the bike! Melone, keep the tracker live!"

They were so blinded by the auditory horror that they still hadn't processed the visual data. On the monitor, the "flicker" in Prosciutto’s vitals had stabilized into a solid, healthy pulse. The two dots were no longer dying; they were the most "alive" they had been in weeks.

Back at the car, the screaming stopped. Prosciutto slumped forward, gasping, his hands trembling as he touched his side. The searing pain was gone, replaced by a strange, tingling fullness. He looked down and saw that his suit was still ruined and blood-stained, but the skin beneath was unmarred—perfect, new, and warm.

He looked up at Giorno, his eyes wide with a mixture of suspicion and awe. "You... what did you..."

Giorno didn't answer. He didn't even move. He stayed hunched over Prosciutto, his golden eyes scanning every inch of the man’s frame with an intense, unblinking focus. His hand remained inches from Prosciutto’s chest, hovering.

Risotto, now standing tall and feeling the heavy, buzzing strength of the iron in his own veins, watched them. "Why aren't you moving?" Risotto asked, his voice no longer a rasp but a deep, resonant bell.

"I am checking," Giorno said without looking back. "My Stand does not simply 'heal' a whole person. I must create the specific parts that are missing. If he has a nick on his lung I did not see, or a second graze on his back, he will still bleed out internally. I must be sure."

Giorno stood in that eerie, statuesque silence for a full minute, mentally auditing Prosciutto’s body for any other hidden "traps" of injury. He was a perfectionist of life, ensuring that when he walked away, the job was truly finished.

Prosciutto finally let out a long, shaky breath, the reality of his survival sinking in. He looked at Risotto, then at the boy. "He’s not with the Boss," Prosciutto whispered, his voice returning. "A hitman doesn't check for internal bleeding."

Just then, the roar of a high-powered engine and the screech of tires echoed down the street. Ghiaccio was screaming toward them on a frost-covered motorcycle, followed closely by the rest of the squad in a hijacked van, all of them prepared to die to save a leader they thought was currently being dismantled.

The screech of Ghiaccio’s tires on the wet pavement sounded like a dying animal. He was mid-scream, ready to unleash a blizzard of lethal intent, when a calm, authoritative voice cut through the engine roar.

"Giorno! We have to move. The window is closing."

Ghiaccio slammed his breaks so hard the bike fishtailed, the tires smoking against the asphalt. He wasn't just stopping—he was paralyzed. That was Bruno Bucciarati’s voice. In the underworld, Bucciarati was a legend for his "merciless but moral" code; he didn't just kill for sport, and he certainly didn't butcher people like the sounds Ghiaccio had heard on the monitor.

The bike skidded out, and Ghiaccio hit the ground hard. He scrambled to his feet, barely noticing the raw, stinging scrape on his right knee and palm. Blood began to bead on his skin, but his eyes were fixed on the scene under the streetlights.

He saw Risotto—standing tall, his shoulders broad and his skin no longer the color of ash. He looked like the man Ghiaccio had met years ago, powerful and terrifying. Risotto wasn't fighting; he was walking toward Bucciarati, who had emerged from the shadows with a look of stoic concern.

"Bucciarati," Risotto called out, his voice resonant and clear.

The rest of La Squadra piled out of the van behind Ghiaccio, weapons drawn, but they froze when they saw Risotto’s transformation. They watched as their leader reached Bucciarati, his expression dark but not hostile.

"Your boy just saved my life and the life of my brother," Risotto said, his voice dropping into a low, jagged growl of frustration. "But you need to know why we’re in this state. The Boss isn't just cutting our pay. He’s starving us. He’s sending us on execution traps disguised as work. He’s trying to see how many of my children I’ll watch die before I break."

Bucciarati’s posture shifted. His jaw tightened, and a flicker of genuine, white-hot anger flashed in his eyes. He looked at the bruised, gaunt faces of the rest of the squad—at Pesci’s tear-stained cheeks and Ghiaccio’s bleeding knee. To Bucciarati, the mistreatment of subordinates was the ultimate sin of a leader.

"He is using your loyalty as a weapon against you," Bucciarati said, his voice vibrating with a quiet, dangerous fury. "To treat his own elite guard like disposable livestock... it is an insult to the very concept of this organization."

He looked at Giorno, who stood silently by the car, then back to Risotto. The air between the two leaders wasn't one of rivalry, but of shared, mounting resentment against a common shadow.

"You cannot go back to that warehouse and wait for the next trap, Risotto," Bruno stated firmly. "If he is doing this to you, it is only a matter of time before he does it to all of us."

Ghiaccio finally looked down at his hand, seeing the blood for the first time. The adrenaline was fading, replaced by a surreal sense of hope. He looked at Risotto, who looked strong. He looked at Bucciarati, who looked pissed.

The game had changed. They weren't just assassins on a leash anymore; they were a group of wounded men who had just found an ally with a conscience.

Under the flickering streetlights, a seismic shift in the power structure of Naples was taking place. Bruno—who had insisted Risotto drop the formalities—stood with his arms crossed, his face a mask of cold fury as he listened to the extent of the Boss’s cruelty.

"An alliance is a start," Bruno said, his voice dropping to a conspiratorial low. "But if he is actively hunting you through these 'missions,' a merger might be the only way to mask your movements. My team has resources he hasn't choked off yet. We can fold your operations into ours. He won't know which hand is striking."

Risotto nodded, the color in his face making him look ten years younger, though his eyes remained weary. "If it keeps them alive, I will put my pride aside, Bruno."

While the leaders talked, Giorno moved toward the rest of the squad like a silent, golden reaper of health. He stopped in front of Ghiaccio, who was still swearing under his breath and trying to wipe the blood from his scraped knee with a dirty sleeve.

"You first," Giorno said. "You have open wounds and your cellular vitality is dangerously low."

"Hey! Get away from me, kid, I'm fine—" Ghiaccio’s protest was cut short as Giorno’s hand clamped onto his shoulder and another pressed against his bleeding knee.

Ghiaccio’s scream echoed through the street, a sharp, jagged sound that made the birds in the nearby trees scatter. The raw iron and nutrients flooded his system while his skin knit back together in a violent burst of growth.

As Giorno moved down the line—healing them in order of their physical decay—the warehouse audio feed finally made sense to the group. One by one, they experienced the "miracle" that felt like being hit by a freight train.

Pesci was the last, trembling as Giorno approached him. After the initial shock of the pain subsided and Pesci felt the incredible, sudden strength returning to his limbs, he looked at Giorno with wide, teary eyes.

"If... if you're saving us," Pesci wheezed, rubbing his chest where the heart palpitations had finally stopped, "why does it have to hurt so much? Why does it feel like being stabbed with a hot needle?"

Giorno paused, looking down at his own hands. He saw the faint golden glow fading from his fingertips. For a moment, the stoic, all-knowing mask slipped, revealing the teenager underneath.

"I don't know," Giorno admitted quietly. "To be honest... I only recently discovered I could do this at all. I am forcing life into places where it has been extinguished. Perhaps life itself is simply a violent process."

By the time Giorno was finished, La Squadra stood transformed. The gaunt, hollow-cheeked ghosts who had been hiding in a warehouse were gone. In their place stood seven of the most dangerous assassins in Italy, their bodies brimming with unnatural energy and their eyes burning with a newfound purpose.

Melone was checking his pulse, looking at Giorno with a mix of scientific curiosity and genuine fear. Illuso was smoothing his hair, his vanity returning along with his stamina.

Risotto looked at his team—his family—and then back to Bruno. They were no longer the "dying children" he had to mourn in advance.

"The Boss thinks he's thinning the herd," Risotto said, his voice like grinding stones. "He's about to find out he just fed the wolves."

"Then let's get you out of the cold," Bruno replied, gesturing toward the fleet of cars. "We have a lot to plan, and the Boss is surely wondering why his 'death mission' hasn't ended in silence."

As the convoy of cars cut through the Neapolitan night, the atmosphere inside the vehicles was surreal. La Squadra sat in the plush interiors of the cars provided by Bruno’s team, feeling the strange, buzzing vitality Giorno had forced into their veins.

But the physical healing wasn't the most disorienting part. It was Bruno himself.

Throughout the drive, Bruno moved between the groups, speaking to each assassin. They expected the cold, tactical interrogation of a high-ranking Capo. Instead, they got something that felt dangerously close to... sincerity.

"Ghiaccio," Bruno said, catching the younger man's eyes in the rearview mirror. Ghiaccio bristled, expecting a lecture on his temper or his reckless driving. Instead, Bruno smiled softly. "Your passion is your greatest asset. Most men in this business are hollow, but you care so deeply it burns. Don't let anyone tell you that your volume is a weakness; it’s the sound of someone who refuses to be ignored."

Ghiaccio opened his mouth to snap a retort, but the words died in his throat. He looked away, his face turning a shade of red that had nothing to do with his Stand.

Next, Bruno turned his attention to Pesci, who was still trembling slightly. "You have the keenest instincts for danger I’ve seen in a soldier, Pesci. You think you are a coward because you feel fear, but you are the bravest among us—because you keep moving even when your heart tells you to run. That sensitivity makes you a master of the hunt, not a burden."

Pesci stared at Bruno, his bottom lip quivering. No one had ever called his fear "bravery" before.

It continued like a targeted strike on their deepest insecurities. Bruno had a way of looking past the bloodstains and the "hitman" personas to the fractured people underneath.

To Melone, he complimented his meticulous mind, noting that his obsession with detail wasn't "freakish," but the mark of a man who sought perfection in a chaotic world.

To Illuso, he spoke of his ability to maintain a world of his own, telling him that his desire for control wasn't vanity, but a necessary shield for a soul that felt too much.

To Formaggio, he praised his patience and his ability to see the "small things," reminding him that the greatest moves are often made by those who don't need to take up space.

Finally, Bruno sat back, looking at Risotto and Prosciutto.

"And you two," Bruno murmured. "You carry the weight of six lives on your shoulders every day. You think you are cold, but you are the most burdened by love of anyone in Passione. That weight hasn't made you weak; it’s made you unbreakable."

The interior of the van fell into a stunned, uncomfortable silence. La Squadra was used to being treated like weapons—tools to be sharpened, used, and discarded. To have a man as lethal and legendary as Bucciarati look at their "flaws" and call them "strengths" was more jarring than Giorno’s healing.

"Is he... is he always like this?" Illuso whispered to Giorno, who was sitting nearby.

Giorno didn't look up from his hands, but a small, knowing smile touched his lips. "Bruno doesn't see soldiers. He sees people. He believes that if you give a man a reason to respect himself, he becomes more powerful than any Stand could ever make him."

Risotto watched Bruno from the shadows of his hood. He felt the iron in his blood, but for the first time in years, he felt a strange lightness in his chest. He realized that Bruno wasn't just merging their teams; he was rebuilding their spirits.

As the cars pulled up to the hidden entrance of the restaurant that served as Bruno’s headquarters, the "Wolves of Passione" stepped out. They were no longer just survivors. They were men who had been told, for the first time, that they were worth saving.

The heavy glass doors of the restaurant swung open, and the sensory shift was so violent it felt like a Stand attack.

"THEY’RE BACK! BRUNO AND GIORNO ARE BACK!" Narancia’s voice boomed through the dining room, sharp enough to make Ghiaccio flinch.

La Squadra stepped inside and froze. This wasn't a hideout. It was a bustling, high-end Italian restaurant. The air didn't smell like damp concrete and gun oil; it smelled of roasted garlic, expensive wine, and fresh linens. It was impeccably clean, glowing with warm amber light, and—most shockingly—the public was there. People were laughing and eating, oblivious to the fact that the most dangerous men in Naples were standing by the coat rack.

Before Risotto could even process the lack of security, a blur of orange and black collided with Bruno. Narancia hit his leader with such force that Bruno staggered back a step, but the Capo didn't reach for a weapon or snap a reprimand. He simply laughed, a genuine, melodic sound, and pulled the boy into a tight, grounding hug.

The members of La Squadra watched, paralyzed. They had forgotten that air conditioning could feel this soft, or that a room could hold a warmth that didn't come from a heater. It was the warmth of a home—something they had traded for survival a long time ago.

Mista stood up from a table in the corner, tossing a piece of bread into his mouth. He offered a confused, curious glance at the seven tall, intimidating men in the foyer, but his vibe remained remarkably chill. "Hey, welcome back. Giorno, you look like you’ve seen a ghost. Bruno... who are the new guys?"

Even Abbacchio, who was nursing a glass of wine with an expression that screamed 'don't talk to me', gave a curt, respectful nod to Bruno. Fugo looked up from a book, offering a brief "Welcome home" before his eyes drifted suspiciously toward the newcomers.

It was too much for Pesci.

The sheer contrast—the kindness, the safety, the light—finally shattered his remaining composure. A sob broke from his throat, and he began to cry. Not the quiet, sniveling cry of a coward, but the heavy, gasping release of a man who had been underwater for months and finally found air.

To everyone’s absolute shock, it wasn't Bruno or Risotto who moved first.

Narancia let go of Bruno and scrambled over, looking genuinely distressed. "Whoa, whoa! Hey, big guy, what’s wrong? Did Giorno heal you too hard? He does that sometimes, he's got no chill!"

"Easy there," Mista added, stepping up and clapping a friendly, heavy hand on Pesci’s shaking shoulder. "You’re safe now. If you're hungry, we’ve got the best carbonara in the city. Don't waste those tears on an empty stomach, alright?"

Pesci looked down at the two strangers—men who should have been his rivals or his enemies—and saw nothing but simple, unforced empathy. He didn't even know their names, yet they were treating his grief as something that deserved comfort rather than a bullet.

He started crying even harder, his shoulders heaving as he leaned into the unexpected kindness of people who didn't even know his story yet.

Risotto and Prosciutto exchanged a look of pure, unadulterated "culture shock." They had spent their lives expecting the knife in the dark. Now, they were standing in a sunlit room being offered pasta and hugs.

The shift from "assassin's warehouse" to "family restaurant" continued to rattle La Squadra's collective psyche. Bruno looked over the expanded group, his mind already calculating the sheer amount of ingredients needed to feed fourteen hungry men.

"Abbacchio, with me," Bruno commanded, rolling up his sleeves with practiced ease. "Mista, I might need you in the back too. We have a lot of plates to fill, and I want this meal to be perfect for our guests."

Mista let out a dramatic, soul-crushing groan, leaning back in his chair. "Aww, come on, Bruno! I want to hear more about the 'Great Magnet Man' and the 'Ice Rink' guy! I can't get the vibe of the new crew if I'm stuck peeling potatoes!"

"The potatoes won't peel themselves, Mista," Bruno said with a firm but playful wink. "And you’re the fastest prep cook I’ve got."

Ghiaccio, who had been watching this domestic exchange with a look of utter bewilderment, finally snapped. "Wait, wait, wait! Why is it just you three? You've got a whole table of people here! Why is the 'Kitchen Guard' so exclusive? Is there Stand security back there or something?"

Fugo didn't even look up from his book, his voice dry and academic. "It’s not about Stands, Ghiaccio. It’s about the labor laws of the Bucciarati household. Bruno, Abbacchio, and Mista are the only ones allowed in the kitchen because they are the 'adults.'"

He pointed a finger at Mista. "Mista is eighteen, so he’s just barely crossed the threshold of being allowed near the industrial stove. Meanwhile," he gestured to the others, "Narancia is seventeen, I am sixteen, and Giorno is only fifteen. Bruno has a strict 'no minors in the workspace' policy when he’s the one wearing the apron."

The silence that followed was absolute.

Risotto actually blinked, his red-on-black eyes widening as he looked from the energetic Narancia to the composed Giorno. Beside him, Prosciutto looked like he had been hit with a physical weight.

"You’re... fifteen?" Prosciutto asked, his voice unusually high. He looked at Giorno—the boy who had just surgically reconstructed his internal organs with the poise of a veteran—and realized he was looking at a child who shouldn't even have a driver’s license yet.

"Fifteen," Giorno confirmed with a polite nod.

"And you’re sixteen?" Illuso asked Fugo, who just gave a curt nod in return.

La Squadra stood there, a group of seasoned, hardened hitmen, feeling a sudden, sickening wave of protective clarity. They had been the "monsters" of Passione, but they had always assumed the rest of the organization was made of men like them. The realization that Bruno was leading a group of teenagers—and that the Boss had no qualms about putting children on the front lines—sent a fresh jolt of rage through Risotto.

"You’re literally children," Formaggio whispered, looking at Narancia, who was currently trying to balance a breadstick on his nose. "We’re in a mafia with middle-schoolers."

"I'm nearly an adult!" Narancia barked, though he ruined the effect by almost falling off his chair.

Risotto looked at Bruno, who was halfway to the kitchen. The respect he felt for the man deepened into something more complex. Bruno wasn't just a Capo; he was a sanctuary. He was keeping these kids fed, housed, and—as much as possible—away from the "hot stoves" of the world.

The heavy realization that they were essentially sitting across from middle and high schoolers shifted something fundamental in La Squadra. The predatory tension that usually defined a meeting between squads evaporated, replaced by an instinctive, "big brother" vigilance.

They moved from the foyer to the large circular table, and the "ice breakers" began. To La Squadra’s shock, the conversation didn't revolve around kill counts or tactical preferences.

"So, what do you guys do when you're not... working?" Formaggio asked, leaning in. "Any hobbies? Besides, you know, being the most dangerous kids in Italy?"

Fugo sighed, closing his book. "I study. Philosophy, law, higher mathematics. Bruno makes sure we don't fall behind."

"I like music!" Narancia chimed in, leaning over his chair. "Anything with a beat you can dance to. And food. Obviously. Have you tried the chocolate lava cake here? It’ll change your life."

The members of La Squadra looked at each other. This was normal. This was innocent. The familiarity they felt for one another—that deep, bone-deep bond of a found family—started to extend toward these kids. It wasn't just a merger of business; it was as if their family had suddenly doubled in size overnight.

The atmosphere hit a peak when Ghiaccio adjusted his glasses, his eyes narrowing as he looked at Narancia. "Alright, kid. Let’s get to the real questions. What’s your stance on aviation? Because if you think planes are just 'buses with wings,' we’re going to have a problem. Planes are the pinnacle of human engineering!"

Narancia’s face lit up like a firework. "Are you kidding? Planes are the coolest things ever! They’re fast, they’re loud, and they can go anywhere!"

He didn't just talk about it—he summoned Aerosmith. The tiny, red fighter plane materialized in the air, buzzing around the table with a high-pitched, mechanical drone.

"See this?" Narancia beamed, pointing at the spinning propeller. "This is my Stand. It’s got machine guns, radar, and it can drop bombs! I think it’s the best Stand in the world. Not because I’m the strongest or anything, but because look at it! It’s a plane! How can anything else be better than a literal fighter jet?"

He wasn't bragging about his power; he was geeking out like a kid with a favorite toy.

Ghiaccio stared at the tiny plane, his jaw dropping. Usually, seeing a Stand would put him on the defensive, but he looked like he had just seen a miracle. "It has... it has a functioning CO2 radar? And the engine sound is a 1:1 match for a piston-driven engine? Kid, you’re right. Your Stand is awesome. It’s the awesomest thing I’ve seen all week!"

Risotto watched from the head of the table, a faint, genuine smile touching his lips. He looked at Narancia and Ghiaccio bonding over the mechanics of Aerosmith, then at Pesci and Mista sharing breadsticks, and finally at Prosciutto, who was watching Giorno with a look of quiet, protective respect.

The starvation, the traps, the fear—it all felt a world away. For the first time, they weren't just a hit squad waiting for the next execution order. They were a family, sitting in the warmth of a real home, watching their younger brothers play.

la Squadra angst fic

Quick note: so this is still in the making… but here’s a ‘quick’ WIP of a fic I’m making