Overgrown

[saxophonic]

Series: CJC Week 2019
Title: Overgrown
Summary: From the moment he first meets Joseph, Caesar can't stop coughing up flowers.
Rating: Teen
Word Count: 16,440
Note: Fill for CJC Week 2019, Day 1: Sunflower/Flowers. Thank you to pretzelpepper for listening to my laments and encouraging me as I worked on this fic. X-posted to AO3 today in chapters, presented as a one-shot here.

Warnings: Major Character Death, Graphic Violence, Canon Compliant, Manga Colors, Canon-Typical Violence, Canonical Character Death, Blood, Unrequited Love, Hanahaki Disease


Caesar doesn’t understand what it means the first time he looks at Joseph and coughs up a flower petal. It’s soft as a lover’s caress as it rises in his throat, pale as butter as it sits in his palm. Caesar stares at it, utterly puzzled by its presence. No one else seems to have noticed, neither the waiter refilling his glass nor his young dining companion, who hasn’t stopped her story to ask him if anything is wrong.

Did he really produce this?

He lets it flutter to the ground beside him and watches it disintegrate from reality as it hits the floor. Odd. He pushes the sudden appearance of the petal from his mind, convincing himself it’s some bizarre daydream.

“I’m sorry for the atmosphere,” Caesar says. He raises his voice, louder than he needs to, loud enough that the man seated across the room can hear him with great clarity, as if they were sitting at the same table. “Getting a reservation at this restaurant used to mean something, but it looks like they’ll let anyone dine here these days.” The jibe hits its mark, Caesar notices with no small amount of satisfaction, and he turns his focus back to the attractive woman seated beside him.

Caesar reaches into his coat pocket for the necklace he’d brought along. He goes through the motions as he always does, suave and seductive, every last detail calculated to make his dame of the hour feel pampered.

But it isn’t the same today. Half of his mind devotes itself to the irritating overreactions from that beast of a man making a scene at his own table. Caesar’s eyes betray him to wander across the room.

A strange feeling awakens inside Caesar, a new consciousness coming to life with a sharp twist of discomfort behind his ribs, as though something planted itself in his chest. The physical sensation vanishes in an instant. He tries to drown the unusual feeling in the kiss of a woman, but the man’s presence lurks in his mind.

Admittedly, his inability to ignore Joseph becomes less of a nuisance when Caesar’s able to react to a Ripple-fueled squid ink spaghetti attack. He catches the weaponized pasta with his own tubini, cleverly lodged in the tines of his fork. With a twist of his fingers, he sends it back. His target ruins a perfectly good glass of wine to stop the pasta, the pierced goblet gushing dark red liquid from all its holes.

How dreadfully uninspired.

When the waitstaff come to announce a call from Speedwagon, his date accepts his apologies for cutting their time short. Caesar flips his hat to his head and stands. He feels a pair of violet eyes burning holes into his back and grins, smug in his lunchtime victory.

---

In the piazza where they are formally introduced, Caesar quickly understands what Joseph Joestar is: vacuous, brash, and reactionary. The blithering idiot can’t be bothered to keep his loud mouth shut. Caesar desperately wishes he could find some way to silence him, since Speedwagon seems to insist that they must work together.

Ha! Fat chance.

Caesar crosses his arms and spares Joseph a look over his shoulder. The brute sits cross-legged on the ground, surrounded by pigeons, cooing at them like the giant animal that he is. Caesar almost snaps at him to stand up. Doesn’t he know how dirty it is? But Caesar keeps his mouth shut and does his best to ignore Joseph. It’s the only way he knows how to keep the peace, for Speedwagon’s sake.

Joseph Joestar. The mind boggles. This lumbering moron managed to defeat one of the Pillar Men on his own. It must have been some fluke! How nice for him, Caesar thinks bitterly, to have happy coincidence on your side. But he’s lived long enough to know better than to depend on something as trifling as luck. Caesar prays he’ll see the day when Joseph’s runs out and ignores the twinge of pain in behind his heart from what he assumes is indigestion. A pity. Perhaps that restaurant really is losing its touch.

A breeze teases the hair of a single woman. She must be a tourist, judging by the gawking expression on her face and the camera clutched tightly in one hand. Perfect. “Hello, signorina,” Caesar calls out to her with a charming wave and an inviting smile. “Do you need some help finding your way around?”

“Oh! Hello!” The unmistakable shadow of attraction seeps into her smile as she faces him, all supple skin and slender limbs. “Do you know if this is the Tritone Fountain?”

Caesar moves to take her hand in his. “Yes, it is.” He raises it to his lips, pressing a kiss to the back of her hand. “Where might you be visiting from? Are you staying for long? I could show you around, if you want to enjoy your time in Rome.”

Before she can answer, someone’s irritating voice cuts through the noise of the piazza. “Hey Speedwagon, the birds here are friendly. A shame about the men, though. They’re all haughty and cock-brained, don’t you think?” Provocation sharpens the last word in a way that makes Caesar flinch with anger on principle.

“Knock it off, JoJo.” Speedwagon sounds irritated. Good, at least Caesar isn’t alone in this. “You know we didn’t come all this way for nothing.”

With a murmur of apology and a promise to minimize the brief interruption, Caesar turns away from the maiden. “There’s no chance we will ever be able to work together, not while he’s so ignorant of this world around him.” Caesar clenches his fist. “Fifty years ago, my grandfather sacrificed himself to save his. Then, my father took up the quest to track and destroy the stone mask. My family has dedicated their lives to break the curse that hangs over us all.” Caesar points an accusatory finger at Joseph. “He doesn’t know anything about the legacy of the mask, and worse still, he doesn’t care.”

Joseph scoffs and rolls his eyes. “Don’t be so melodramatic.”

“Pride in your family is something he will never understand,” Caesar says to Speedwagon. “It’s obvious he thinks only about himself.” Caesar sends a condescending sneer in Joseph’s direction. “If he thinks at all.”

That sends Joseph scrambling to his feet. “Try saying that to me again, asshole!”

Caesar ignores him and gives Speedwagon a pointed stare. “On the phone, you told me he found out about what happened to his grandfather within the past month. He didn’t care enough about to learn about his own family history before now. Explain to me again why I should agree to this?”

Whatever self-righteous protest Joseph tries to spout gets drowned out by Speedwagon’s desperate attempt to maintain some pretense of peace. “JoJo knew nothing because we wanted to keep that horrible past a secret from him.” Speedwagon spreads his hands apart in an earnest plea. “It isn’t his fault, Caesar.”

It’s flimsy at best and they both know it. Caesar adjusts the wrist strap on one of his gloves, feeling for the soap hidden inside. “That’s a nice excuse, but tell me, how did he know about Straizo?”

Neither Speedwagon nor Joseph offer a reply.

Caesar shakes his head. “I admit, I was impressed when I first heard someone took him down. And then you tell me that same person neutralized a Pillar Man on his own? I wanted to see for myself what kind of man inherited the Joestar name.” He points at Joseph. “But you? You’re nothing but a disappointment. Your Ripple skills are weak to the point of worthlessness. No form. No finesse. You’re just some nobody who has managed to bluff his way through two fights by riding on the coattails of more accomplished allies and an ugly streak of sheer, dumb luck.”

Joseph laughs, loud and fake. Speedwagon looks like he might be sick.

“You’re an imbecile, and I’m no babysitter,” Caesar says with an air of finality.

Rubbing his hands together, Joseph grins. “So, that’s how it’s going to be, huh?” He cracks his knuckles.

If the rich bastard wants a fight, Caesar will give him one he’ll never see coming. He reaches for the young tourist from earlier and brings her close. She acquiesces him with a faint noise of surprise as his hand slides around her waist. “JoJo, your Ripple is so weak, I know you couldn’t even find enough strength to beat this untrained tourist in a fight,” Caesar says. “As lovely as she is.” He tilts her chin up with a gentle hand.

“Oh yeah?” Joseph laughs nervously, eyes darting around the piazza. “Well, uh, you couldn’t even beat one of those pigeons!”

Caesar watches Joseph point at the unassuming birds from the corner of his eye. He chuckles at Joseph’s foolishness, then brings the tourist in for a kiss. Her lips are soft and pliant against his own, and it would be a pleasant exchange if he was performing for her alone. Perhaps Caesar lets the kiss go on longer than he intended once he hears Joseph’s strangled cries of protest. It allows Caesar to transfer more of his Ripple to her as he slips his tongue into her mouth.

When Joseph charges across the cobblestones, Caesar steps back and lets his Ripple work through the tourist. She stops Joseph in his tracks with a two-handed chokehold, a sight which gives Caesar great satisfaction.

“You gave her a Ripple kiss!” Joseph gasps as he struggles to pry her hands off his throat.

“I told you already. I saw you in that restaurant, judged you, and found you wanting. You’re useless, JoJo.”

The tourist punches Joseph square on the jaw, then hurls him into the fountain where he lands with a heavy splash.

With a clenched fist, Caesar drives his point home. “I refuse to accept your help to defeat the Pillar Men. Your grandfather failed mine fifty years ago, and it seems that same pathetic blood runs in your veins.”

Speedwagon snaps out of his trance as a quiet and nervous onlooker. His eyes flash with an uncharacteristic anger. “Mind your words, Caesar. You’ve crossed a line now.”

Spitting out a mouthful of dirty water, Joseph interjects, “Uncle, I’ve got this.” He gets to his feet. “Someone as arrogant and bitter as you can’t resist insulting my entire family, could you? You had to hurt Speedwagon, too. You couldn’t stop at me.”

“I don’t need you and I’ll prove it!” Caesar propels himself into the air with a powerful jump. “This is my technique that will beat the Pillar Men.” He claps his hands together and sends a forceful Ripple through his soap-lined gloves. “Bubble Launcher!!” Practice makes perfect, and the way one long bubble spreads between his palms and holds back dozens of smaller bubbles makes him grin. He’s trained hard in preparation to take down the stuff of nightmares.

Joseph should be easy.

Caesar sends the attack spiraling down until it pummels Joseph’s face and sends him flying. Joseph tries to use his Ripple against him, but he’s too weak. Obviously. Did he think his luck would last forever?

Bubbles surround Joseph from all sides until he’s trapped and gasping for breath. The Ripple and soap prison bears Joseph to the ground as Caesar lands on his feet. Inside, a still-conscious Joseph struggles to break free. How surprising.

“Well, I guess I’m impressed that you can take a hit like that and get back up for more. Maybe you’re a glutton for pain.” Caesar shrugs it off. “But I told you that your Ripple was too weak. And look at you.” He almost spits in derision. “Your breathing is all over the place. You can’t pop my bubble. You’ll stay trapped there until I decide to set you free. Consider it a favor to Speedwagon.” Caesar brings the tourist close once again.

“Your next line is…”

“I’ll lift my Ripple spell, signorina. Thank you.”

Before Caesar has a chance to kiss her again, the woman’s lips crackle with Ripple. A pigeon bursts from her mouth and wedges itself in Caesar’s, trilling and flapping its wings. It sends Caesar reeling backwards. He falls to the ground, catching himself on his hands, and spits the bird out. Disgusting!

It occurs to Caesar as he’s regaining control of his breathing and wiping the taste of live bird from his mouth that Joseph’s prattling on about something. “In the end, I was right!” Joseph sounds too smug for his own good. “You couldn’t beat one measly pigeon.”

By Caesar’s count, their little Ripple fight cum dick-measuring contest ends in a draw. If Speedwagon disagrees, he doesn’t say it.

---

Caesar coughs up another buttery petal later that evening while Joseph shuffles a deck of cards on the table. It goes unnoticed by others, just as before, and vanishes when he drops it, just as before. On reflex, Caesar reaches for his cigarettes and convinces himself this is his body’s way of demanding he get some sleep.

The quiet flash of tightness in his chest disappears with the first soothing drag of tobacco. How silly of him to worry about these strange things when all he needed was a spot of comfort. He should have lit up sooner.

“Hey,” Joseph says, wrinkling his nose. “Don’t smoke in a small room like this. It stinks.”

With a glare, Caesar extinguishes the cigarette on his calloused fingers. Maybe this acquiescence will earn him enough points with Speedwagon to cut this ridiculous venture short. It’s dragged on long enough already.

As Joseph tosses cards across the table, Caesar catches extra movement. He recognizes cheating instantly. “Deal the cards normally, JoJo,” he warns.

“What are you talking about?”

Caesar reaches across the table and grabs Joseph’s wrist. The pain blooms in his chest at the contact, sharper than before. “I said, deal them right!” He shakes Joseph’s arm until the extra cards up his sleeve tumble out. Exposing the cheating jerk for what he is…it feels good. It’s what he deserves. Besides, what kind of asshole would try to pull the wool over Caesar’s eyes like this?

One with a head as dense as a tree trunk, it would seem. “Oh, ho! So you saw that, did you?” Joseph sticks out his tongue, long and waggling. Ridiculous.

The pain subsides when Caesar releases his hand, another strange development in an already unusual day. It’s a useless thought. He pushes it aside. “It isn’t like you can beat me without cheating, anyway.” Caesar sits back in his chair with a grin.

He gets caught cheating himself, by that gadfly of a man no less, and jumps up into the promise of another fight.

---

Three petals appear in the car after he ruffles Joseph’s hair. "No one could ever love you, JoJo," he says, resettling in his seat with a laugh and a cough. The petals have changed since their first appearance. Where the earlier ones were pale and almost indistinguishable in phenotype, these long, golden petals he recognizes immediately as his favorite: sunflowers. Flowers of loyalty. One sports a few drops of blood spackle that leave crimson trace on his fingertips, even as the petals themselves disappear. The disappearance happens slow enough this time that Caesar’s certain they exist, but after a few short moments, they go.

He wonders why the type is changing. Why these petals appear at all. The blood on them was real. Had to be. It felt warm and sticky, a familiar sensation from his violent youth rendered in miniature.

Caesar glances to one side, checking the expressions of his companions. No reaction. No concern. Like it didn’t happen, or they didn’t see it. Or they did and they don’t care. He itches to relight and finish his cigarette from earlier. Instead, he tunes in and out of the conversation, watching Rome whiz by the window as they make their way to the Colosseum.

The ancient subterranean mausoleum becomes the setting for another bloodbath. Another loss to the Pillar Men before Caesar’s very eyes. But this time, he’s ready to avenge in the moments following a mercy killing.

The inhuman physique of the Pillar Man, Wham, wields a deadly wind manipulation power. Joints bending in grotesque angles whirl a storm to victory over his bubble launcher. His techniques needs more fine-tuning, he realizes, collapsed and bleeding on the ground in defeat. His master would be disappointed. He tries not to think of her inscrutable face in the den of the Pillar Men as his allies fall around him. They are cut down with nothing more than a breeze and a laugh.

Except Joseph. Joseph, that self-serving brat, fakes it. He fakes his skill with those ridiculous clacker volleys, he fakes his ability to manipulate Ripple, he fakes the severity of his wounds. And he escapes, clothing in tatters, body on the verge of breaking, setting himself up as bait in a dangerous trap that Caesar can only imagine ending one way.

Until, somehow, it doesn’t. The loquacious lies that Joseph tells so convincingly buy them enough time to retreat, to regroup. The Pillar Men vanish into the night. They survive, barely, and maybe it wasn’t just luck that saw Joseph through his first encounter with these creatures.

Maybe there is something here worth fighting for.

As Caesar cradles the exhausted form of his fated companion, something so twisted it could only have been written in the track of planets set in the sky long ago, he finally understands what the petals mean. Destiny sits his arms, body battered and losing consciousness, and Caesar has never felt more alive. The bud of a sunflower, pinched closed, rips at his chest as he coughs it up. It lands on Joseph with a wet plop, sitting over his recently poisoned heart.

He is falling in love, and he will die for it.

The flower dissolves into thin air when it rolls off Joseph, but its crimson stain remains vivid to Caesar’s eyes. He doesn’t want to touch it, doesn’t want to move. He wants only to keep clutching Joseph to his chest while he ignores the way his lungs burn beside his heart, wants to run his fingers through untidy hair while he holds back tears he isn’t sure are for Joseph or himself. Clinging tighter, the pain doesn’t sting so much, not with Joseph pressed against him like this. A bane, a blessing.

He finds the strength inside himself to lift Joseph and carry him back to where Speedwagon awaits them. Joseph’s hair, where not matted with his own blood, rests soft and warm like sunlight against the crook of Caesar’s arm.

They take X-Ray images of Joseph to check for the two rings, and panic flashes through Caesar when Speedwagon suggests he receive one, too.

“No,” Caesar says too quickly and with a tremor in his voice. If the machine can spot something as small as those little rings, what would it make of the flowers growing into Caesar’s lungs? They disappear after they leave his body, but what if they’re clear as day on the medical film? He doesn’t want to risk it, doesn’t need anyone worrying about him. He can trust himself to figure this out.

Speedwagon presses his lips into a thin line, so Caesar steels himself and tries again. “They didn’t notice me there.” He manages a calmer tone. “It’s fine. I don’t need it.” An acerbic grin. “I think I would know if I had any rings of my own.”

For a long moment, Speedwagon says nothing and studies Caesar. A shadow flickers across Speedwagon’s face, there and gone again like money changing hands in a bar’s back room. “I suppose you have a point,” Speedwagon says. Caesar allows himself to breathe an inward sigh of relief. It’s the end of that conversation.

---

The train ride from Rome to Venice stretches for what feels like an eternity. Caesar doesn’t cough up another bud, but the petals come more frequently. Joseph spends most of the time sulking. With his head turned out the window and watching the Italian landscape fly past him, it’s easier than Caesar expected to hide this affliction. It also helps that Joseph’s still a self-obsessed eighteen-year-old.

“It’s because you smoke,” Joseph says irritably. He doesn’t seem to notice the five sanguineous sunflower petals Caesar holds in his hand. “All the smokers I know have a horrible cough, like the one you’ve got.” At this, Joseph frowns and looks at him from the corner of his eye. “If Ripple is all about controlling your breathing, does that mean that your hacking makes you weaker?”

The thought strikes a chill into Caesar as the discomfort in his chest grows. What started as something no more significant than a butterfly kiss of pain between ribs has radiated to a fist-sized throb of something lodged beside his heart. Growing into his lungs.

“Shut up,” he says.

Joseph snorts and swivels his head back out the window. He grumbles something ungrateful and inelegant, which Caesar chooses to ignore in favor of turning his hand over to watch the petals fall and fade. The fact no one else seems to see the flowers doesn’t bother him the same way anymore. Funny, what time can do.

It’s been about a day since this all began, though it feels much longer now that he’s alone with Joseph in the swaying train car. Caesar’s dealt with worse physical ailments than strange, infrequent chest pains and coughing up weird things. Granted, it’s never been flowers, and the flowers have never vanished. But, all in all, nothing he can’t manage to reconcile with everything else that’s happened to them in the past twenty-four hours. What’s a premonition of death when he’s got an idiot to oversee?

Speaking of which, maybe it’s the insufferable exterior of his childish companion that’s causing this heartburn. Caesar studies the curve of Joseph’s dark eyelashes and feels another twinge in his chest.

Perhaps not.

It could be something else. Caesar’s heart flutters when he thinks about how ready Joseph was to die in order to save them. That steadfast devotion to Speedwagon, and if Caesar indulges, a fledgling extension of that dedication to Caesar himself, may be part of the reason why he agreed to join Joseph at Air Supplena Island for continued training. A very small part.

Righteous pride. Deep-seated vengeance. Filial piety. These are the things that make up most of his desire to jump right into the fray. Joseph Joestar is insignificant.

As soon as the thought enters his head, Caesar coughs up a few more sticky petals and could laugh at the irony. They’re mixed now, scarlet-speckled sunflowers with something different. These new ones remind him of small orecchiette with the way they puff and curl. Yellow as egg yolks, save for the droplets of blood Caesar has grown to expect, the acacia’s shape form an interesting contrast with the sunflowers. Not something Caesar would have chosen, but he hasn’t had much say in the matter. That may be the point, he thinks wryly, and dumps them on the floor of the traincar where they vanish with the others.

The blood remains on his hand. He wipes it absently on a handkerchief and tucks that away. He follows Joseph’s focus out the rocking window to the landscape outside. Crepuscular rays filter through enormous, puffy clouds that tower into the atmosphere. Rolling hills, deadened by winter’s grasp, sprawl beneath them. They pass by a vineyard, and Caesar wonders what, if anything, Joseph knows about varietals.

He looks surreptitiously at him across their private car. They both sway with the rhythm of the train. Joseph, being larger and less accustomed to these cars, sways more. He doesn’t seem particularly at ease, almost annoyed, and Caesar tries to reconcile the heroics and devotion from the showdown under the Colosseum with the overgrown manchild lounging on the seat. Is he really the same person?

Maybe there are two of them, like Joseph is a Janus among men. Focused attacks with incredible power one minute, a ridiculous court jester act the next. They’re so similar in appearance that you were never certain which face you were dealing with.

What a waste of a mind.

As though he could read Caesar’s thoughts, Joseph meets his eyes. They observe each other for a long moment, a quiet moment, one where Caesar allows himself to pretend that there is no superhuman guillotine hanging over their heads. That they are two men, alone on a train, gazing at one another.

At last, Joseph stands with a mumble about finding some food, and leaves Caesar to swallow back another threat of flowers.

---

He doesn’t know how he manages Hell Climb Pillar while vomiting sprigs of acacia and sunflower buds, but Caesar does it. The mix is more acacia than sunflower by the time he reaches the top. He doesn’t know why they’ve morphed from one type to another, what triggered the change, but he lets himself feel grateful that his body doesn’t force him into another coughing fit as he lies flat on his back after conquering the tower.

When Joseph loses his grip, Caesar moves without thinking, spurred on by the tight knot of feelings and flowers in his chest to save him. The Ripple-infused touch of their oil-slickened hands clasped together sends roots of pain into Caesar’s lungs. He gasps, choking on it, then overcomes to pull Joseph to safety.

If Lisa Lisa notices, she says nothing.

---

Training alongside Joseph is a far different experience than training by himself. With Joseph, there’s someone there to compare against. Someone to push him harder than he’d push himself to stay ahead of the curve. Someone to beat, more times than he is beaten, if Caesar could be so bold in his self-assessment.

It’s after one such training menu that they find themselves with a few hours of extra time. Having finished their schedule early, Loggins and Messina have left them lounging on the ground in one of the open-air practice gymnasiums for the remainder of the afternoon to contemplate strategic retreat on desperate ground. Caesar’s been in enough fights to know that the best way for the underdog to win is to have an ace in the hole. For him, it’s always been his Ripple.

Strategic retreat. Desperate ground. He thinks about what the masters could mean by that. Caesar brings his hand to his mouth, his thumb and forefinger forming a circle, and blows a stream of soap bubbles. It gives his hands something to do as much as it helps his mind to wander.

He does his best to ignore whatever the hell Joseph is doing somewhere behind him, at least until he hears the unmistakable sound of a body collapsing to the ground and the groan of pain that punctuates a fall. He gives Joseph a sidelong look, watching the way he unfolds himself out of the heap of his limbs, then tries to prop himself up into a handstand by using the wall as support. Again.

“We’re supposed to be thinking of strategy,” Caesar says, annoyed.

“That’s boring,” Joseph says, voice muffled a few decibels by the mask on his face. His breathing isn’t as ragged as it might have been a week ago. Hell, he sounds better than he did yesterday. Joseph makes progress in leaps and bounds without losing the same excitable air that lends itself well to competition.

It sounds too much like a compliment in Caesar’s head. He stops blowing bubbles to cough at a sudden tickle at the back of his mouth, and up his throat come a few more scraps of flowers. The number of puffy acacia sprigs has dwindled to half the debris in his palm. The other half are unmistakable in size and shape: rose petals. They’re as deeply crimson as the blood that accompanies these coughing fits more often than not, now.

Caesar flicks his hand and scatters the flowers to vanish on the mercurial February wind. “It’s important.”

Finding his balance, Joseph pushes away from the wall. He points his toes in his boots and keeps his long legs straight. Caesar watches as he remains perfectly still for one moment, the muscles in his sculpted arms and his broad back flexed tight through the narrowing of his waist. To the swell of his hips, and of his thighs.

Flowers threaten again. Caesar sputters and swallows them back like bile.

Joseph overcorrects, and though he walks on his hands to chase the point of equilibrium, his legs eventually flop down and he rolls to rest flat on his back. “Damn.” He wheezes mechanically through the mask, his eyes wrenched shut for a few seconds. When he opens them, Joseph stares at the ceiling and blinks those long lashes.

At least, Caesar thought he was staring at the ceiling.

“Hey, Caesar.” Joseph’s voice takes on a gentle and curious tone that makes Caesar’s stomach lurch. “Did you know your bubbles make rainbows?”

“They’re soap bubbles,” Caesar says. “Don’t tell me that you’ve never seen iridescence before, because I won’t believe you.”

Joseph makes a noise of irritation which brings a smile to Caesar’s face. “I don’t mean on them, Caesar.” Joseph points on the far wall. “I mean like that.” The bubbles cast shifting shadows on the far wall as the soap moves through the air. The Ripple-enforced bubbles don’t pop. Tiny rainbows blink in and out of existence as the bubbles float and catch the sunlight just right. Even if each configuration only lasts a moment before the pattern changes, it’s pretty to watch.

“I guess they’re kind of like prisms. Or ‘lenses’ might be the right word, I’m not sure,” Caesar says. “What does this have to do with our thought exercise, anyway?”

Dropping his hand, Joseph shrugs. “The rainbows. Think about it.” He turns his head toward Caesar and the sunlight makes his wide eyes sparkle before he squints against it. “Isn’t that kind of like, supercharged sunlight? What if you made a big bubble and burned away the Pillar Men with it? Seems easy enough.”

Caesar considers the question. A week ago, he might have snorted in derision. “One big bubble is too unwieldy.”

“Oh.” Joseph rolls his eyes as he looks away. “I guess you’re not good enough, huh?”

Asshole. “Of course I’m good enough!” Caesar gets to his feet. “Your idea is a bad one.”

Joseph turns his head again and wrinkles his nose, like he’s sticking out his tongue behind the mask.

Caesar accepts it as an invitation to rush over and kick him, but Joseph rolls out of his range, laughing all the while. The sound makes Caesar grin and his chest seize uncomfortably. “You try making one giant bubble and align it right to wipe out a bunch of bloodthirsty monsters bent on world domination. See how far that gets you! One of them uses wind, remember? He’d send away one bubble in an instant.”

“Yeah, well, I’m different.” He comes to a stop against the wall, resting on his back, and laughs freer than he should with his life hanging in the balance. As Joseph lays beneath the flurry of bubbles, Caesar wonders if maybe, just maybe, he could be onto something.

Standing in front of the sun, his shadow stretches towards Joseph and the dancing rainbows his bubbles throw on the wall. He spits up another handful of flora and casts it away. Caesar doesn’t watch them disappear.

That afternoon is the first time Caesar is willing to admit that, somewhere along the way, Joseph’s presence transformed into something else. He became someone else, as far as Caesar was concerned. Someone to tease. Someone to argue with. Someone to help him run errands back and forth from Venice. Someone to sneak out after curfew with, sitting close together on the roof of the tower and using their Ripple to launch bottle rockets toward the Adriatic Sea.

Someone to spend the night with.

The evening before their final trial they pass together like schoolboys on holiday, staying up late to count stars from Caesar’s bedroom window and spin stories with the shadows their hands cast from a kerosene lamp. Joseph is very good at telling entertaining lies, but so is Caesar by now. His are half-truths and that, at least, is worth something.

They end up shoulder to shoulder in Caesar’s creaking bed somehow. With the room’s lamps long extinguished, they lay on their backs and talk in hushed tones by the cold light of the February moon. Caesar has a thousand questions on the tip of his tongue, but Joseph falls asleep before he can ask the most important one. Caesar props himself up on one arm to watch Joseph’s chest rise and fall. The sound of his snoring has never irritated Caesar so much, nor has it ever felt so precious. He wants to sock Joseph on the arm to wake him up and complain about the noise.

Instead, a wave of pain and nausea overtakes him. Caesar rushes to the bathroom to vomit blood and small bits of shredded flesh and a solid red rosebud into the sink. He heaves as the pain radiates through his veins, creeping deeper into his lungs, snaring tighter around his heart.

He looks at his reflection. Blood stains his lips and runs a haunting trail down his chin. The hollows of his cheekbones and the dark bruises under his eyes give him the impression of skull pulled from a cask of cabernet, or a vampire who has recently drunk his fill for the night. Whatever he looks like, he doesn’t look human to his own mind.

The green in his red-rimmed eyes reminds him of angry, dying thorns. He casts them down and turns on the faucet.

By the time he’s washed away the puffiness from crying and the darkness of blood, the rose has vanished, like every other flower before it. The acacia’s long gone by now, wholly replaced by the dark red roses. Without the sound of water running, Caesar can hear Joseph snoring in the other room, sweetly oblivious to this gory ordeal. He would do anything to keep this secret from him.

When Caesar crawls back under the sheets alongside his only true friend, he takes great care not to touch him, in case it would set off another coughing attack that rips more fading flora from his chest. But an unconscious Joseph reaches for him with a contented murmur, his warm hands sleep-heavy and sliding over Caesar’s body with authority. The way Joseph’s palms fit against him, like the sea cupping the shore, sends Caesar on another desperate race for the ensuite bath.

He doesn’t sleep.

---

Under cover of darkness, they head to their respective arenas to face off against their Ripple drill sergeants. Joseph swaggers off with an easy grin as he stuffs a knit cap on his head, and Caesar watches him leave for a few paces. Does Joseph know that, while he slept last night, he had curled around Caesar like they needed to be touching at all times? Does Joseph know how it felt to be held like that, even for a scant few seconds, as though it was right they should find comfort in each other?

Sharp, throbbing chest pain forces Caesar’s eyes away. Such dangerous thoughts. He takes a rattling breath and focuses on the task ahead.

Messina waits for him at the base of a tower, and they begin the final trial after a climb. The change in location, dancing with death on a duo of cables, adds to the intensity of the test. Caesar wins again, of course. But Messina doesn’t make it easy for him. If anything, it’s a more complex fight than when Caesar first finished Lisa Lisa’s Ripple training.

He doesn’t spit up any petals, no flowers appear to distract him from his task. The focus demanded by the fight consumes every corner of his mind. Joseph’s face doesn’t float up amongst Caesar’s thoughts. At least, not until he turns on his heel to return to one of the towers. He kneels and pulls out a set of binoculars from his pack to check on Joseph’s progress. Flecks of spittle and blood spatter hit the palm of his hand when he coughs up rose petals in an attack that leaves him gasping almost as hard as Messina’s final trial for him.

Caesar feels Messina’s eyes boring holes into his back. “Interesting,” he says. From Messina’s amused tone of voice, Caesar can tell he’s in for a lecture. “You’ve had those in there the whole time? So confident that you would pass your test again?” Messina dismounts from the ropes and lands on the rooftop beside Caesar with a heavy thump. “Or maybe you care more about whether that loudmouth passes his trial than you care about passing yours.”

Pausing for a beat to consider his response, Caesar puts the binoculars down and turns to Messina. He regards his trainer with a careful look. “Don’t look so smug,” he says. “Competing against JoJo has improved my own training. I would never have made as much progress in these twenty days if I wasn’t focused on outpacing him. Our fates were bound to each other that night under the Colosseum.” The next words burst out of his mouth with a certainty Caesar stakes his dreams on. “Both JoJo and I will live through our battle with the Pillar Men.”

He doesn’t mention the flowers in his body that may almost certainly kill him first.

They threaten to tumble from his lips as Caesar finds the strength inside himself to continue. “I’ll say it. JoJo may be a huge fucking pain in the ass when he wants to be, but underneath his bullshit, there’s something real. Call it what you want. He’s got a heart of gold; I’ve seen it.”

Messina’s jaw slackens. Caesar returns his focus to his binoculars. He tunes out whatever the Ripple Master says next. It isn’t as important as the fight taking place on the far island, anyway.

The sight through the lenses makes his blood runs cold. “What the fuck is going on over there?” Blood splatter smokes on the spikes. Loggins is nowhere in sight, but there’s someone there fighting Joseph.

Some thing.

It’s one of the Pillar Men. Not the one who killed his father, Caesar would know that creature anywhere. This is one of the others. He lashes out against Joseph’s face with long strings that slither from his fingertips. Joseph’s mask takes the hit, catches fire. The Pillar Man sends Joseph flying through the air at an unnatural angle. For a terrible instant, it looks like he’s going to land badly, but Joseph manages to avoid being gored. The mask is run through and left hanging, useless, on a spike.

Caesar drops his hands. “Esidisi!”

Messina snaps to attention beside Caesar. “What did you say?”

“JoJo’s over there fighting Esidisi!” Caesar meets Messina’s eyes. “They’re here.” The binoculars start to slip through his fingers. “They’ve found us.” A wave of nausea threatens, and it has nothing to do with the plant slowly taking over Caesar’s chest.

“Now, wait a minute. It’s just the one.” Trust Messina to rationalize the situation. “Why would they only send one?”

Tightening his grip on the binoculars, Caesar watches, powerless to protect against the Pillar Men. Again. How many more times will he fail to save the people he loves from death? He finds himself narrating the fight, like he can’t believe it’s really happening. Like it’s one of those stupid stories Joseph was telling him last night, and maybe if Caesar keeps talking, he can force his way through to a happy ending.

He takes a calming breath. It’s Joseph fighting out there. Joseph. And he’s not beaten yet.

Until Caesar realizes Esidisi has cut Joseph’s batshit insane hat-string plan, and now…. “JoJo can’t use his Ripple!” He feels like he’s seeing without seeing, or falling with both feet on the ground. “This is it. He’s as good as dead.” Another failure to add to his ledger. Caesar should have been there, should have rushed to help. That sparks another thought.

There’s still time. If Caesar runs, then—

Messina smacks Caesar’s hands and sends the binoculars flying. “What good will come of watching?” he yells. “It’s too far a distance for us to help! If he killed Loggins—” Messina’s voice cracks. He closes his eyes and regroups himself. “If he takes down JoJo, we have to be ready to stop him next.”

Caesar doesn’t want to face it but the reasoning is sound. “Right.”

“There isn’t time to let our emotions get the best of us. We must protect Lisa Lisa and the Red Stone of Aja.” Messina descends down the ladder from the roof. “Let’s go. We need to inform Lisa Lisa and prepare for the fight.”

“Right,” Caesar says. He casts one last look at the island and feels the pain in his chest strangle his breath, tears stinging the corners of his eyes. He follows Messina with leaden feet.

---

Lisa Lisa listens to them, stony-faced, as Caesar recounts what he saw of Joseph’s battle against Esidisi. Messina chimes in from time to time, usually when Caesar finds himself struggling to stifle a cough. By the end of it, Caesar learns to hate the taste of roses and the feeling of petals pressed against the insides of his cheeks. Hidden against the roof of his mouth.

When they finish, Lisa Lisa makes no immediate reply. She turns her head to gaze across the island from her balcony. Wind tousles her hair. “JoJo is still alive,” she says.

“But for how much longer? We saw what Esidisi did to Loggins,” argues Messina. “Lisa Lisa, what should we do to protect the Red Stone?”

Caesar grinds his teeth. What is that damn Stone worth in comparison to Joseph’s life? He knows the necklace means more than a rare piece of jewelry, but all Caesar can think of are those heavily lashed eyes, that insolent mouth, the way Joseph makes living less of a nightmare. Current illness notwithstanding. Would he give up the world in exchange for a life?

Petals raise his gorge. He fights them back.

The sound of Lisa Lisa’s voice brings him back into the conversation. “We can’t give up hope, but I see your point.” Her eyes rest on Messina, then on Caesar. “Go. Pack as though we will need to flee in the morning.”

It takes a moment for Caesar to react, each word rolling through him before he moves like an automaton to obey. His legs bend and stretch, taking him down spiraling staircases into nothingness, leading him through hallway after hallway, until he reaches his room. Caesar lays a palm on the handle. Twenty-four hours ago had seen him here. He had hurt so much, gagging on his own gore, that the numbness he feels now should be a welcome reprieve. Should.

Pushing the door open, he coughs up a few buds and a mouthful of bloody petals that he doesn’t bother catching with his hands. They’re gone from this world before they touch the ground anyway.

The blood doesn’t faze him anymore.

He doesn’t look at his bed. Doesn’t use it. He kneels on the floor and packs his trunk with the few possessions he brought to this island. He thinks of his bachelor’s apartment in Rome, of the last time he saw the one-eyed black tomcat that patrols the alley behind the building. He wonders if the landlord still feeds it in a self-defeating attempt to keep the animal around so it might chase away the mice.

The thought makes him smile. Life was simpler in that apartment. Emptier, but simpler. He licks away a few drops of blood from his lips, drying there since his last coughing attack.

After he finishes packing, he takes the suitcase and leaves the room without a second glance.

He finds Messina later in the kitchen, where they hunt for travel-worthy provisions in the icebox and the larder. Hunks of hard cheese and cured sausage fill a few bags, along with loaves of bread they will need to eat in the coming days before air stales and hardens them into useless bricks. It takes longer than Caesar expected, long enough that the morning sun clears the horizon as they sift through storage, scouring for every feasible option.

They break for a quick meal when Suzie finds them sprawled over chairs beside the kitchen’s small eating table. “You can’t go about saving the world on an empty stomach,” she chides as she sets a platter of food on the table before them. “Eat up; Lisa Lisa may need you to move after her morning bath.” And with that, she flounces out the door with an excited giggle.

When she doesn’t return after an hour, Caesar goes looking for her in Lisa Lisa’s tower. He runs his knuckles over his sternum to quell a sharp burn of pain.

He doesn’t find Suzie at the top of the stairs, but a ghost in the flesh.

Disbelief bursts through the numbing static, growing into a bright happiness that shines through Caesar’s body. It intensifies into elation, like sunlight through a magnifying glass, and pours warmth into every limb. At this point, he would know that muscular back anywhere, be it here in these halls, or across some cobbled piazza in Rome, or wherever else on Earth their journey might take them. Caesar would recognize him even if the whole world were crashing down upon his shoulders.

“JoJo!”

Joseph’s head swivels at his nickname. His face captures the radiance of the morning sun. “Oh, Caesar.”

Caesar’s chest twists. He can’t stymie the cough this time, raising a fist that catches nothing but flecks of blood and spittle as petals fall and vanish. Pain and pleasure mix as the affliction forces a sprig of thorns tearing at Caesar’s throat, but Joseph is here, alive and well and whole, and that more than makes up for the blood upon Caesar’s fingers.

“There you are,” Joseph says, then considers him for a moment, lips pressing together. Caesar feels startlingly exposed under his brief but intense gaze. “Took you long enough.” He turns his attention back into Lisa Lisa’s penthouse.

The painful tendrils of the disease snare ever tighter around Caesar’s heart, the petals filling his lungs, the solid lump of a rosebud threatening to breach into his mouth. He coughs into his fist again, putting on a show as though he’s clearing his throat. And he is, really. Instead of vacating words unspoken, it’s another mouthful of bloody rose petals. Perhaps the words and the flowers are two sides of the same coin, two symptoms of the same sickness. There’s no time to think about that. He wipes blood from his mouth in a gesture becoming habit.

Caesar takes inventory of all the pain in his body, then twists it into bravado. “I guess you survived your fight against Esidisi, huh? There’s that Joestar luck for you.” It’s a mechanism he learned in his youth. Funny, to think it would come in handy now.

When Joseph whirls to argue, the intensity of his gaze has shifted to something more familiar, more manageable, and Caesar pretends the pressure in his lungs subsides a little.

---

If the train from Rome to Venice was insufferable, the car ride chasing the Red Stone to St. Moritz is torture. After defeating Esidisi’s living brain, Joseph seems incapable of keeping his hands to himself or of taking up a normal amount of space. He spreads in the backseat of the car, arms like vines, legs like roots, seeking contact that Caesar can’t give him without a jolt of pain through his heart.

First chance he gets, he strong-arms his way into the driver’s seat.

Ignoring requests to take a break, he drives for more hours than he should, until he can’t see straight and nearly veers off the road after he misjudges the angle of a turn. If Joseph realizes that Caesar’s avoiding him, he says nothing, which Caesar figures to mean that he hasn’t noticed anything’s changed at all.

That doesn’t hurt as much as every little thoughtless touch that provokes thorns to puncture his lungs.

Finally, they arrive. Joseph grows even more handsome in the crisp Swiss air, those frustratingly beautiful eyes glittering brighter when the cold wind whips color into his skin. Caesar’s renegade mind dares to reframe the sight: to imagine Joseph’s face tilting up beneath him, the pupils of those violet eyes dilated, those youthful cheeks rosy, his breathing coming deep and heavy through that sultry mouth, swollen and slickened by Caesar’s kiss.

His body punishes the transgression swiftly with another round of coughed-up bloody petals no one else can see. It leaves him doubled-over, weakened and struggling for breath. Pain radiates down to Caesar’s kneecaps. There’s more blood than ever before. When he tries to shield his coughing mouth with his hand, it splatters back on Caesar’s face. He leaves a shock of crimson behind when he wipes his gloves in the snow, then covers that with a fresh mound of powder and stamps it down under his boots.

Lisa Lisa catches his eye when he stands up straight. She frowns. “Caesar, what’s wrong?”

Caesar’s stomach plummets. He doesn’t know if he can lie to her.

He doesn’t have to. “Not used to the thin air up here in the mountains, are you?” Messina slaps him heartily on the back. “He’ll get used to it soon enough, as expected of our Caesar.”

“Yeah,” Caesar says, managing a smile. “Right.”

Joseph hauls the luggage out of the car. “Let’s get inside the hotel already. I’m freezing my ass off out here.” At his request, they trek inside. and Caesar finds it easier to keep a careful distance from Joseph when they’re not strapped in together.

It’s easier to deal with this quiet, violent strangulation when he doesn’t have the time to think about it. After being briefed on the situation, they lie in wait for Kars to approach. There’s enough tension to keep Caesar’s coughing fits to once every hour or so, something he notices with surprise. This disease only worsens when he touches Joseph, or thinks of Joseph. A stab behind his sternum drives the point home.

Caesar rubs his chest absently and focuses on his breathing. He can feel it when he inhales through his diaphragm. His once deep, powerful breaths now rattle with sickness. The pressure in his lungs feels like an omen, as foreboding as dry leaves and dead branches scraping against the windowpane during some lonesome midnight.

Eventually, the wet sound of death en masse announces their foe. The battle against Kars spills back out into the wilderness, taking them all the way to a steep cliffside standoff.

Joseph careens headlong over the edge. All the air leaves Caesar’s body at once.

He moves without thinking, tasting his own blood on his tongue. Ripping an icicle free from its home, he shoves his Ripple through it. Attraction, attachment, he pulls other icicles into a rickety formation, a shoddy ladder stretching down like a frozen lifeline.

Joseph had the same idea, of course. Their lines conjoin with the intense force of their Ripple, and Joseph hangs on by a long, haphazard thread of ice.

"Nice, my little Caesar!" Joseph calls out to him, and winks. Caesar feels it like a stab to the heart. "Very nice!"

"Of course," he finds himself saying with far too much affection, "I thought you might try something as hare-brained as this." Joseph laughs and Caesar allows relief to drape over him like a cloak. "Stop playing around and climb up. I’ll hold on for you as long as I can, but I don’t know if I will last before you reach me."

Joseph squawks some noise of protest. He starts the dead man climb and Caesar can’t look away. Sheer force of will allows him to swallow back another rosebud. Lord knows he’s had enough practice.

By the time Joseph reaches the summit, Caesar’s restored his tenuous control on himself. He wishes he could go back to the time before Joseph, when it wasn’t such an achievement to retain complete possession of his faculties, but it would be lonely. He’d feel the Joseph-shaped vacancy, would run his fingers against its rough outline, would feel the ache in the void. A different kind of plague than the flowers.

The two of them fall back from the others as they trudge through the snow to the hotel for the night. “Thanks,” Joseph says to him, quiet enough so only Caesar can hear.

A smile fights its way across Caesar’s face. “Only a fool would think of something like that. Icicles, really?”

“Really.” Joseph grins back. “You’re in my head now, Caesarino.”

Caesar exaggerates a false shudder. “What a horrible place to live.”

“I seem to manage just fine.”

“And stop calling me Caesarino.”

Joseph sticks out that long, pink tongue of his. “Make me.”

Caesar punches him without hesitation, using enough force to send Joseph stumbling off-balance. “You’re a menace and I should have let you fall.”

“You don’t mean that,” Joseph says with a laugh. Caesar doesn’t dignify it with a response.

---

The hotel scrambles to feed them so late at night. Caesar and Joseph raid the trunks for the provisions that managed to survive the drive through the mountains, supplementing the food from the kitchens. One by one, their companions leave for their rooms until only Lisa Lisa, Messina, and the boys remain.

Lisa Lisa rises, and Messina follows her lead. “Don’t stay up too late.” She looks at each of them in turn. “Tomorrow comes faster than we want it, and there’s something heavy on the horizon.” Her gaze lingers on Caesar. He tries not to shift with guilt as he thinks about the increased frequency of the rosebuds. That can’t be a good sign. “JoJo.” Beside him, Joseph sits up straight. “Caesar.” He meets her eyes with a brief exhale and wonders if she suspects anything. “Goodnight.” She turns on her heel, a curtain of silky dark hair swinging in her wake. Messina gives them an abrupt nod and follows her.

They sit alone in the quiet dining room, chewing. The last of their midnight meal they reduce to crumbs. Caesar watches the way the pad of Joseph’s fingers press against his lips as he fits the final slice of bread into his mouth. Oh, to be something as vital yet insignificant as the thin brown crust on the loaf that meets Joseph’s tongue, to be wholly consumed and washed down with a gulp of ice water, to be the errant drop of liquid that escapes the corner of Joseph’s mouth to run freely down his jaw.

Caesar coughs up a rosebud and a handful of petals which Joseph will never see. The flowers almost don’t hurt this time and there’s less blood than usual as they fade away. Hope flutters its unfamiliar wings in Caesar’s chest, struggling to break free.

Joseph looks at him and swallows. “What?”

“It’s nothing.” Caesar gets to his feet. “You finished?” He clears his plate from the table without waiting for Joseph. An end table in the corner of the room overflows with used dishes stacked high by Lisa Lisa and the others. Lisa Lisa had arranged for hotel staff to collect them all within the hour. Caesar adds his to the pile.

The sudden appearance of Joseph behind him sends Caesar for a start when he turns around.

“Let’s head back together,” Joseph says. His dishes clatter as he drops them unceremoniously on top of where Caesar set his.

Caesar raises a skeptical eyebrow and asks, “Are our rooms close?”

They set off together anyway. Joseph shoves his gloved hands in his pockets and shrugs. “Why wouldn’t they be? I figured we’d all be assigned to rooms in the same area.”

Their footsteps echo down empty halls as they wind their way from common areas to the sleeping rooms. They do end up being on the same floor, though Joseph’s room is at the far end of the hall and Caesar’s is tucked around the corner, facing east. It seems an exercise in irony, at least to Caesar’s mind, that they’d be set up in rooms so close together but not close enough to share an adjoining door.

The two of them pause at the point of separation, the easy conversation about nothing in particular dying away as Joseph gears himself up to speak. Caesar purses his lips, waiting for Joseph to spout off whatever dumb joke or wisecrack that’s rattling around the attic of his mind.

“Can we...share?” Joseph asks, hesitant and uncertain. Without his usual dogged conviction, he almost doesn’t sound like himself. “Like the last night on the island?”

Caesar stares at him. Unblinking. Unfeeling. Is he hearing Joseph correctly?

“I’ve never slept so well before. Maybe it was the mattress or something.” He offers a hollow laugh and rubs the back of his neck. Caesar furrows his brow as he turns over every syllable for hidden meaning. It sounds like an invitation. To what, Caesar will not allow himself to guess. Joseph must mistake the look on Caesar’s face, because he clears his throat and says, “Nevermind. See you in the morning.” He retreats down the hall.

Reaching a hand out, Caesar opens his mouth to call his name and bring Joseph back. Flowers and vines rise up instead, riding on a wave of nausea and pain as they drown the words and tear at Caesar’s throat. He covers his mouth. It does nothing to stem the flow of rose petals soiled with his own blood. Thorns rip at the tender flesh inside his neck, bringing up bits of pink gunk that pile in his palm like salt in a chef’s hand. They blip out of existence as quick as they come, but the dark stain on his glove remains.

The intense pain during these attacks has become a frequent friend, but it has never burned quite like Joseph’s single pitiful look back at Caesar. “After all this is over, you should get that cough looked at. It could be something serious.” He disappears into his hotel room.

Caesar wants to cry. Frustrated, he slams his fist against the wall. Though he doesn’t want to punch a hole through it, he still leaves a dent. Lisa Lisa will not be pleased with him. Right now, he couldn’t care less.

He takes off to his own room. Slamming the door behind him, the tears finally come. He doesn’t fight them as they roll fat and fast down his cheeks. He doesn’t fight the coughing between each sob. He’s so tired. He’s been fighting for so long. Caesar collapses back against the door and slides to the ground until his legs bend before him, and he can hang his head between his knees.

Thorns have scraped Caesar’s throat raw by the time he starts heaving. This episode feels particularly vicious as flora and gore erupt from his mouth. Tears blur away the clarity of his vision, obfuscating into a terrible red mass the pile of petals and flesh, of blood and thorns, pooling between his legs on the floor faster than the flowers can disappear. He doesn’t wipe his chin. He doesn’t wipe his face.

With a retch, he vomits another rosebud to the ground. It’s fatter than the others. It bounces once as it hits the floor before it rolls under Caesar’s legs to rest beside him. Caesar stares at it, blinking it into focus. It’s deep crimson petals have unfurled a fraction more than the others, almost in full bloom.

That terrifies him.

He smashes his fist through it with a scream, but it disappears before it gives him the satisfaction of exploding, and he’s left with a crunch in his knuckles and a fresh wave of pain shooting up through his wrist to show for it.

It takes a long time before the weeping stops.

---

Morning dawns as crisp and clear as the church bells that herald the day’s Mass. Caesar rouses himself from his lonesome bed to watch the rays of light break over the mountaintops and play hide-and-seek with the mauve shadows that wind around the cumulus clouds.

Exhaustion yawns from deep in his joints. Perhaps he should try to sleep longer before rejoining the others.

He glances at his bed, then at the hallway door. The lingering stain on the ground draws his attention and sends a shudder through him. Another attack looms. Caesar fights it back long enough to make it to the bathroom, where falls to his knees and spits up roses. Buds and petals drop into the toilet, reddened water splashing up the sides of the bowl. By the time he’s finished, four nearly-opened roses float amongst crimson petals that begin to wink out of existence the longer he stares at them. Draping an arm over the edge of the toilet seat, he rests his head against his forearm. He feels light-headed from heaving. From breathing.

Joseph’s face rises in his mind. Caesar wonders if he’s still sleeping. Still snoring. Pain tightens its grip around Caesar’s heart.

Someone raps three times at his door. “Caesar? Are you awake?” It’s Lisa Lisa. Shit. He pushes himself to his feet and wipes his mouth from his hand to his elbow. “We’ll be taking our meal in the northern dining room in an hour or so. Should I have them make anything special for you? Something to ward against the cold?”

Turning on the faucet, he splashes water into his mouth to rinse the blood away. He doesn’t feel like eating much at all, but if he ignored her request, Lisa Lisa would notice. “Yes, something hot and filling sounds nice.”

By the time he finishes cleaning himself up, both Lisa Lisa and the flowers are gone.

The hotel takes on a different character during the day. Sport-oriented tourists wander the halls, chatting excitedly and hoisting skis. Merrymakers on holiday cluster around fireplaces to laugh together. Caesar watches a bundled pair of ruddy-cheeked lovers exchange a quick kiss in a tight doorway. Petals rustle in his lungs as he exhales. Life flows freely around him, each person he passes a microcosm with their own anxieties and aspirations. All of them blissfully unaware of the threat against the world as they know it that has tucked itself into hiding somewhere nearby.

Lisa Lisa and Messina share quiet conversation over steaming mugs at one of the tables near the balcony. “Good morning,” Lisa Lisa greets him. She signals a hotel attendant with a nod.

“Nearly afternoon,” Messina says into his cup. “I hope you’re rested.”

Caesar takes his seat. The server exchanges a few brief words with Lisa Lisa before scuttling off. “What was that?”

“I asked them to bring your meal from the kitchen.” She produces her cigarette case, tucking one in the corner of her mouth before offering one to Caesar.

He declines. “Where’s JoJo?”

Lisa Lisa puts the case away. “Still sleeping.” She leans over to let Messina light the end for her. Closing her eyes to take the first drag, she exhales smoke past pursed lips. Once she flicks ash from her cigarette, she meets Caesar’s inquisitive gaze. “I may send one of you to wake him if he doesn’t come down soon.”

Crossing his arms, Caesar resettles himself in his seat as hotel staff deposit a plate of food before him. “Send Messina,” he says and ignores the pressure in his chest. At this point, there’s no guarantee a cigarette would have taken the edge off the pain. “I’m hungry.” He digs in.

Luckily for both Caesar and Messina, an irritated Joseph wanders into the dining room as Caesar finishes his warm, but otherwise tasteless, breakfast. The group moves to the balcony, and Joseph follows Caesar outside, his hands full with plates of food. He settles at an empty table near the door. How Joseph will be able to enjoy a meal on the balcony is beyond Caesar. The wind out here is unforgiving, as expected for February in the Alps. As Lisa Lisa and Messina beckon him to join them at the railing, Caesar tightens the scarf around his neck. Even with nausea in place of his appetite, he’s grateful for the warm lump of food in his belly.

In the distance, an enormous mansion rises out of the forest. It seems to be a half hour’s walk away, maybe longer depending on the terrain. From this angle, it’s impossible to tell what lies beneath the snow drifts.

“Do we have any new information?” Caesar asks Lisa Lisa in a low voice. “It seems quiet.”

“Dead,” Messina grunts.

The finality of it bothers Caesar. “Do we have the binoculars?” Messina hands him a bag. Caesar rifles through it and pulls them out. The last time he held these, he watched Esidisi fight Joseph. The last time he held these, he thought he had left Joseph to die.

From the corner of his eye, he watches Joseph bait a cat with a piece of smoked salmon. The plant inside him strangles his breath. Caesar presses the binoculars to his eyes tighter than he needs to, just to block Joseph from his sight, though it does nothing to ward against the sounds of his late morning babble. The discomfort against his face pales in comparison to what Caesar’s endured these past weeks, anyway.

He peers earnestly through the lenses to study the mansion. Pieces of stone are missing from the walls and the roof, the losses decorative in nature. Worn and weathered but structurally sound. The covered windows seem odd to Caesar’s eyes, like the glass is too dull or caked in mud.

“Here,” he says, handing the binoculars to Messina. “Have a look for yourself. What do you think?”

A cat yowls in pain. Three heads turn to Joseph.

“What are you doing?” Lisa Lisa may phrase it like a question, but the tone of her voice poses it as a sharp reprimand. She points at the mansion. “Come here and take a look at this.”

Joseph whines his reply before standing beside Caesar. With Joseph this close to him, it takes more strength than ever before to keep the flowers at bay. Caesar clenches his jaw to seal his mouth shut. “What am I looking at?” Joseph asks.

“That’s where the Red Stone was supposed to arrive.”

Messina uses the binoculars to study the mansion. “Looks like it’s closed and deserted. All the windows have been boarded up or something. None of the walls have fallen, no patches of roof have collapsed.” He drops his hands and returns the binoculars to the bag.

“No doubt Kars is waiting for his remaining allies: Wham’s arrival and nightfall,” Caesar says. The threat feels far more imminent than ever before, as close as the cold on the mountain wind.

Lisa Lisa nods. “So, what do you think we should do?”

Caesar’s eyes gravitate toward Joseph. In profile against the mountainous backdrop, Joseph’s features take on a new drama. His inky lashes curling above pink cheeks. The strong curve of that stubborn chin.

Roses threaten another attack, and Caesar raises a closed fist to cover the cough. He plays it off with a smirk. “It’s obvious!” Caesar jabs a finger toward the mansion. Everything they have worked to overcome waits for them in the dark recesses of that far-off building. “We rush them today. Right now.” There is no other option. After their synchronicity on the cliff last night, he’s confident that Joseph will agree with him.

“Caesar’s right!” Messina chimes in. “With the sun overhead, Kars is at a disadvantage!”

Lisa Lisa considers their answers before turning to Joseph. “How about you, JoJo?”

Caesar lets himself look again. The uncertain expression on Joseph’s face surprises him. It’s unusual, unfamiliar. “I…” Joseph sounds as hesitant as he did last night. The memory of that rescinded proposal sends a deep-rooted ache spreading through Caesar’s body, leeching strength from his bones and power from his muscles. Flower petals fill his lungs from the bottom up, and Caesar struggles for each breath like he’s drowning on dry land.

In the present, Joseph puts a hand to his mouth as he considers the imposing mansion, until he finally says, “We should wait.”

The answer stuns them into silence.

Joseph faces them, his eyes catching on Caesar’s for the briefest of moments. Is that a flash of concern? “It’s because the sun is out that I don’t think we should go! It’s even more risky to attack right now.” He swings his arms out, his hands open in explanation. “Look at it this way: Kars has been living for, what, hundreds of years? Thousands of years? It makes sense that he would plan for an attack in the daylight! Making our move with the sun still up is too obvious.”

Too obvious? Caesar grits his teeth in frustration. It definitely isn’t to repress another attack of petals that surge inside him as he admires how Joseph’s how passionate streak fires up his every move. Even in disagreement, he’s beautiful.

Despite the certainty in his actions, there’s still a tremble in Joseph’s voice that sounds out of place to Caesar’s ears. It laces its way through Joseph’s every syllable, even as he projects the picture of confidence. “Think about it. I bet he’s expecting us and had the whole place booby-trapped. Right now, there’s nothing more dangerous than attacking their lair.” Joseph points at the mansion. “I’m not going over there. We’d be leading ourselves to slaughter.” Caesar almost misses when Joseph adds, “I’m not risking us.”

Us. Caesar wants to cling to the quiet way Joseph says it, like it was meant for him alone, to wind his fingers around the last word and bind it to his skin like another birthmark. Pain blooms in Caesar’s chest. “Oh, come on,” Caesar says. Every breath he takes burns with the taste of blood, welling up alongside tender feelings. Unfortunate. Caesar clears his throat and settles a scowl on his face. “JoJo, you don’t sound like yourself. Why are you so afraid now?” He throws in his best derisive chuckle for good measure. Caesar wonders who he thinks he’s fooling.

There’s genuine fear in Joseph’s eyes when he looks at Caesar. It sends pain tearing at Caesar’s throat. “I’m not afraid! I only want to fight when I’m sure to win.” Joseph wrenches his eyes shut and tosses head in petulance. “I said I don’t want to go, so I’m not going!”

He sounds like a toddler throwing a tantrum. “For Christ’s sake.” Caesar grabs Joseph, both hands in a collar choke on his jacket, and rattles him as if he could shake some sense into him. “Listen to yourself! You’re always itching for a fight. What has gotten into you?”

Joseph’s eyes fly open. Without that mask on, their faces feel closer than they’ve ever been before. “What has gotten into me?” Joseph squawks. “What has gotten into you? It’s obvious that I’m the only one here thinking clearly. We’d all be better off if we wait until sundown before attacking!”

“Wait? You want us to wait?” Frustration starts to bubble into something akin to anger. “The sun is out. Kars is alone. And even if he wasn’t, we are four. Do the math! It comes out in our favor. How many more advantages do you need? We should attack right now!”

The silence from Lisa Lisa and Messina starts to shift into discomfort. Caesar can feel their eyes on him. On Joseph, too.

“Caesar, you’re not listening to me.” Joseph grabs his wrist, though he doesn’t try to dislodge Caesar’s hands from firmly clutching his coat. “Think about what will happen if we barge in there. Stop being so impatient and calm down!”

Calm down? Caesar gnashes his teeth against the urge to throttle Joseph. “Don’t tell me to calm down! I’m not being impatient. I’ve been waiting years for this moment.” Why can’t Joseph see that? “Our grandfathers, our families, have been cursed for generations because of the stone masks the Pillar Men made. We will break that curse.” Anger simmers and bursts to the surface, adding a growl of menace to Caesar’s voice. “We will kill them.”

“What the fuck are you talking about?” His eyes go wide under the thick slashes of his eyebrows. Joseph’s face twists in confusion and disgust, prompting the plant within Caesar to exercise another excruciating squeeze around his heart. “Break the curse? Why the hell are you bringing up our grandfathers at a time like this, you moron?”

Caesar releases his grip on Joseph’s coat. There’s no way he heard that right, no way that came through correctly over the blood pounding in his ears. Too focused on the petals in his mouth. “JoJo, what are you saying?”

“I’m saying,” Joseph winds himself up with a deep breath, “who gives a flying fuck about someone who died fifty years ago? What could you possibly stand to gain for killing yourself over something so useless? Shit like that doesn’t matter.” Joseph grabs Caesar’s jacket and jerks him closer. “Stop being an idiot and listen to me for once!”

It’s wrong. It’s all wrong. The person standing before Caesar is a stranger. He looks like Joseph, sounds like Joseph. Hell, he even feels like Joseph. But this isn’t him. This isn’t the devious maze of a mind Caesar thought he knew inside out.

Yesterday, they were in each other’s heads. Now, he’s almost unrecognizable. Something came in the night and replaced them with cheap imitations of themselves.

Whatever it was could have at least done him the courtesy of taking away the fucking flowers.

Of all the people in the world, Caesar thought Joseph would have been the only one to understand what it means to live your life under the shadow of those monsters, of those cursed stone masks. Joseph was the only one who needed no introduction to the nightmare of the Pillar Men, because he was supposed to have lived it, too.

He isn’t sure if he should laugh. If he should cry. He’s alone in his confidences again. Maybe he has been, this whole time, and Joseph’s betrayal is only now coming into the light. Foolish, again, to trust a Joestar.

Fury boils in Caesar’s body with the same white-hot intensity as the pain from the thorns that prick his throat. Caesar winds his fist back and socks Joseph square in the face. The usually gratifying crunch of cartilage offers Caesar no comfort this time. Blood gushes from Joseph’s nose. The force of the punch sends him flying. Joseph lands on his back, clutching his face and screaming, “What the fuck are you doing?”

A rosebud rises in Caesar’s throat, and he keeps it at the back of his mouth, gagging on it as he launches a kick that connects with Joseph’s hand. It makes another wet crunch that provokes a wave of nausea beneath Caesar’s anger. Rage, now that’s something he knows what to do with. Caesar gives himself over to the familiar emotion, letting it guide his fists and feet and elbows as he pummels Joseph.

Joseph, to his credit, takes every blow.

Someone pulls him away. Too soon. Caesar’s limbs keep swinging, keep reaching for Joseph. But now it’s Lisa Lisa in his face and Lisa Lisa shoving him back and Lisa Lisa’s voice in his ears demanding he stop this infighting.

He pushes himself out of her grasp.

“You fucking asshole!” Joseph snarls at him. “Are you going crazy?”

Yes, Caesar wants to say, why aren’t you? Instead, he looks Joseph in the eye. He tries not to feel like he’s been stripped naked as he says, “I thought you understood.”

“Understood what?”

Me.

Clicking his tongue, Caesar turns away from Joseph. He knows what he must do. “I’m going.”

“Caesar, stop!” Lisa Lisa’s voice rings out behind him, authoritative and afraid. “That’s an order.”

That gives him pause. Caesar turns his head over his shoulder. She watches him, mouth set in a grim line. At the periphery of Caesar’s vision, Joseph wipes blood from his face and looks angry. Confused. Hurt?

“I can’t obey,” Caesar says. “Not anymore. I won’t sit here and wait around for Kars to strike us down. I’ll avenge our families. My family.” He turns away. “Alone, if I must.”

Vaulting himself over the railing, Caesar thinks he hears Joseph call his name, but it could be his imagination toying with the wind in his ears. He lands in a crouch, stands, and begins his trek. He doesn’t look back.

Caesar wishes he could return to last night’s moment in the hallway. Maybe the morning would have turned out differently. He spits crimson from his mouth. Blood and petals, it’s all the same to him now. There never was much difference between them in the first place.

Snow crunches under his feet. The mansion in the distance looms ever closer with each step.

---

“JoJo, you jackass.” Caesar curses under his breath as he examines the fresh trail of footprints leading toward the building’s doors. The pain in his chest increases with each breath, stabbing at Caesar’s concentration. “What did he say about traps again?”

A burst of activity distracts him, a glimmer of light on a sudden gust of wind that throws the doors open. Caesar glances at the distant winter sun burning overhead and takes up a defensive stance. He scans the area, eyes tracking for unnatural movement. It’s harder to focus on the fight when every breath only gives him half as much oxygen as he needs. At this rate, the flowers will choke him to death before Kars ever gets the chance.

No. Now is not the time. Caesar bites the inside of his lip to focus on controllable pain instead of useless, morbid thoughts, reaching inside himself to stoke a fresh flare of anger.

Footsteps startle him. Whirling, Caesar raises his hands to attack.

“Oh, Messina!” He drops his hands to a neutral stance again. “Have you come to stop me? Because it’s too late for that.”

“Caesar.” Messina says his name like a warning. He opens his mouth to speak but a noise cuts him off. Another footstep punches down the snow, though neither of them have moved. “What the hell was that? I don’t see anything!”

Searching the sky for the same trick of the light he saw by the door, Caesar does his best to fill Messina in. “Something’s hiding here! It must have jumped!”

“What?!”

A patch of sky overhead distorts into the rough shape of a man. The outline of a familiar behemoth. Impossible!

“Wham is already here!” The words manage to escape Caesar’s mouth the instant before Wham swings his arm in attack. Caesar spreads his hands, breathing in and calling forth his Ripple to shield himself as he dodges.

But Messina doesn’t move fast enough.

With a scream and the stomach-churning sound of muscle and bone slicing into pieces, Messina’s forearm flies off his body. It lands, a sickening mess in the snow. Messina collapses beside it. Caesar blinks. That’s all the time it takes for Wham to grab an unmoving Messina by his ankles and drag him into the mansion. The doors shut behind them with a foreboding slam.

“What the fuck just happened?” Caesar wonders aloud. Pain slices its way across his arm a moment later, blood seeping through his clothing. He grabs his bicep and applies pressure to the wound. If he’d been one step closer to Messina, this injury would have been another clean-cut amputation. Caesar’s sure of it.

How could Wham appear in broad daylight like this? The invisibility, no, the transparency has to play a role. He casts his wary eyes toward the mansion. Kars and Wham lurk inside, and Caesar wonders what other traps and abilities they have in store.

Joseph was right, Caesar admits begrudgingly, there was more information to glean here.

But Messina’s injured inside. Maybe even dead already. There’s no chance Caesar can go back now. Whatever happens, it was decided the moment he jumped over that balcony. Maybe even further back. The moment he saved Joseph with those icicles. The moment he and Joseph separated for their final trial. The moment he agreed to train with Joseph. The moment he looked at Joseph and coughed up that first fateful petal.

Determined, invigorated, Caesar inhales deep and even for the first time in weeks. The lethal plant inside him doesn’t bother him as much now. Its petals don’t choke the air from his lungs. Its roots don’t squeeze his heart. Its thorns don’t claw at his throat. Oh, there’s plenty of discomfort, sure, but the intensity of it fades in comparison with Caesar’s desire to end this intergenerational horror story.

He’ll start by saving Messina. And then he’ll save them all.

The doors fly open again, and now that Caesar knows what to look for, he can make out Wham lurking just inside the shadowy threshold. As Caesar inches closer, he can hear Wham muttering to himself. He catches Joseph’s nickname several times. The winsome, grinning face at the forefront in his mind prompts another attack of buds and petals that send Caesar to his knees. Caesar spits them out and wipes his mouth. The aching lessens.

A gust of wind punches across the clearing, bringing Caesar’s focus back where it should be. The tubes coming out of Wham’s chest stop their jetstreams. Caesar squints and thinks he can see how Wham redirects his wind to create a suit like a second skin, which refracts sunlight away from himself. Incredible.

With a power like that, though, why does he linger near the door? To tempt Caesar closer? No, there are other ways to entice an enemy. Perhaps he can only maintain the suit for a few moments. Caesar grins. That must be it!

“No, JoJo isn’t here. I guess you must be Caesar, then,” Wham says, finally addressing him. “Your ability has increased since the last time we met.”

Caesar says nothing. He tucks his chin a little, preparing himself for the next attack.

Wham’s face spreads with an unsettling grin. “Very good! It will be so much more satisfying to kill you now!” The Pillar Man charges into the sunlight, his full-body wind-suit protecting him for a few deadly seconds.

As expected. These creatures see themselves as the pinnacle of creation, as the apex of all predators. Caesar knows when he’s being underestimated. “I’m not the same boy who watched your master trap and kill my father!” He fires himself up to strike. His intense training course with Joseph has only served to strengthen his existing attacks and develop new strategies. After all, this is a fight he’s been waiting to finish for years.

Dozens of soap bubbles fly through the air. They flatten into discs as they spin, taking on the appearance of little circular saws. Caesar uses his Ripple to guide them into Wham’s whirlwinds, where they quickly become caught in the almost-unseen vortex.

Wham realizes, too late, and lifts his arms to shield himself. The soap cutters slice into Wham’s flesh and send blood spurting from his body.

Caesar celebrates the small victory with a laugh. “You thought your wind suit would protect you, but it’s just a vacuum for my bubbles!” Caesar claps his gloved hands together, then flicks them away from his body. The motion sends more cutters into the air. He surprises himself with the sheer volume of the bubbles he’s produced and the power of his Ripple flowing through them.

This could work. He can win like this. Caesar grins. It will be so satisfying to see the look on Joseph’s face when Caesar returns to the hotel after beating Wham single-handedly. With Messina alive and in tow, of course.

He unleashes another wave of soap cutters. One of them slices through most of Wham’s ear. It dangles uselessly off the side of Wham’s head as blood gushes from the wound. More of Caesar’s bubbles slice into Wham’s humanesque face. He screams and writhes in the snow. Wham takes a step back toward the doorway, then another, yelling about Caesar’s power. Pride goes before a fall, Caesar thinks, and it’s been a pleasure to cut this thing down to size.

“I won’t let you retreat so easily!” Caesar runs a few paces before unleashing a slew of large bubbles. Gliding over the snow, they spin and flatten like their smaller brethren before biting into the back of Wham’s thighs. Caesar had been aiming for joints and tendons, and it looks like he got close enough to damage around the knees.

Wham cries out in pain, something familiar yet foreign in what Caesar assumes is the unknown tongue of the Pillar Men. He falls backward without much fanfare.

Now that Caesar’s cut the creature’s legs, he dashes forward to take advantage of Wham’s loss of balance. He leaps and aims his body to drive a Ripple kick into Wham’s knees. In midair, a voice at the back of his mind whispers this is a mistake.

Why isn’t Wham trying to break his own fall? It looks like he isn’t trying to reach the shelter of the mansion at all.

Wham plants his hands and executes a near-perfect backflip, turning the momentum of his fall to his favor. Caesar doesn’t react in time to stop Wham from kicking off of him in mid-air. Despite the Pillar Man’s injuries, Wham still has enough strength to launch himself across the clearing. He jackknifes through the stone wall of the mansion and disappears from Caesar’s sight.

Fuck!!

Caesar clutches his shoulder and rolls through his landing. Unbelievable that moments ago he honestly believed he had the upper hand in this fight. Maybe, for a moment, he did. But this maneuver has proved to Caesar he’s up against some kind of demigod who toys with fighting prowess. This game of survival…Caesar feels like he’s crudely stacking checkers while Wham moves elegant pieces around the chessboard with ease.

No. The situation isn’t so bleak. He gets to his feet, refusing to give up. “I can do this.” Caesar’s injured arm feels numb at his side, though the bleeding has stopped. He grits his teeth. “I have to do this.”

The wind blows from behind him, a natural gust this time, and Caesar can almost hear Joseph’s voice in the breeze. He writes it off as wishful thinking, but it sparks inspiration. A new plan of attack. His feet move beneath him and carry him toward the mansion. His idea feels fully-formed by the time he follows Wham through the hole in the wall.

The air inside of the mansion tastes stale even as natural currents circulate around the decorated foyer. Romanesque piers and elaborately carved balustrades feature heavily in the architecture. The structure remains in good condition; only a few walls have cracks and hardly any of the sculptures have been worn by time. Turn-of-the-century lounges and sofas sit untouched, the carpet beneath his feet sporting a healthy coating of dust.

Something stirs and moans from the corner of Caesar’s eye. Messina! He’s draped unceremoniously on one of the low tables near the front door. Caesar takes a step toward him, hopeful that he’s still alive, but stops himself from approaching any further.

He needs to find and defeat Wham first. Then, he’ll return for Messina and get them both to safety. Back to Lisa Lisa, and Joseph.

It’s an odd sensation to be filled from head to toe with resolve. He hasn’t felt this good in weeks, like someone grabbed some metaphysical tuning dial and turned it to the right frequency. He’s more connected to the world than ever before. Every rustle in the foyer reaches his ears with perfect clarity. Every mote of unsettled dust brushing across his skin, riding unseen air currents, enters his consciousness.

He coughs, though his breathing feels as powerful as ever. He can’t taste the petals, or the blood. Can’t feel the choking stems in his throat or roots in his chest. It’s like the plant in his body has receded, or maybe it’s engulfed him completely, and all that remains is a powerful Caesar-shaped bed of Ripple and roses and thorns. Well, if it’s some rare form of power that has been torturing him since he first met Joseph, then he’ll use it. He’ll use everything he can to take down Wham once and for all.

The emptiness echoes even the quiet footfalls of his carpet-dulled steps. His eyes adjust to the darkness inside the mansion as he strays further from the light.

There! On the landing!

“So, Wham,” Caesar says, arms akimbo. “You’ve shed your wind-suit and revealed yourself to me at last.” From this angle, even without the thin layer of air circulating over his body, Wham stands tall and ominous like an ancient obelisk at the top of the stairs. Yet Caesar feels no fear. His breaths calm him.

“I don’t need it to win this battle,” Wham says. His voice sounds eerie and wrong as it echoes about the foyer, like the mechanism moving in his throat is doing its best impression of a human voice but isn’t quite meant to function that way. Caesar hadn’t noticed it until now, chalking it up to a side-effect of his increased state of consciousness. “Nothing more than a pretty tactic in the day’s strategy. Ah, yes, it has been a thrilling fight against you, young member of the Ripple Clan. That means it will be all the more satisfying when I defeat you!”

Behind Wham, something casts a rainbow on the wall. Caesar recognizes it immediately and grins. “Fancy words for someone who is about to die.” He spreads his arms wide. “Look around you!”

Wham looks up.

All the bubbles Caesar created outside that became trapped in Wham’s wind-suit vortex drift above them, unpopped, filling the air between them and the old vaulted ceilings. Hundreds of them float, catching the light that now pours in through the hole Wham himself cut in the stone wall. It takes Caesar back, for a brief moment, to rainbows dancing on a rare afternoon and the rich sound of laughter from a friend.

Wham breathes a low sound of dread. “No.”

Using his Ripple, Caesar manipulates his weapons into position. “Yes! You’re not the only one who can redirect sunlight.” The bubble cutters bend to his will. “Every bubble you dragged into this mansion with your suit will be your undoing!”

As if on cue, the pattern of sunlight refracting through hundreds of bubbles lights up the foyer with an intense brightness. He could whoop for joy at how well the iridescent bubbles are working for him. Wham bellows out the mournful cry of a cornered beast nearing the end of a bloody hunt. He throws his arms up in a useless attempt to protect himself, sunlight cracking his skin and chipping away at his body as he begins to turn to stone.

Certain victory tastes as fresh as spring rain on the tip of his tongue. “I’ll finish you off with a direct Ripple kick!”

Time slows as he launches himself forward, brightness and color surrounding him. Encouraging him. Focused winter sunlight bathes him in its uncanny warmth, and he takes that energy in with his breath to feed the powerful Ripple attack growing in his body. Caesar moves into position, flying through the air, closing in on his target.

For an instant, he eclipses Wham. Their eyes meet in a silent exchange and Caesar understands the battle’s won.

But not by him.

Gale-force winds rip through him, slicing his skin, bouncing him around like a ragdoll. Debris ricochets as parts of the room collapse. Falling stone catches Caesar’s limbs as he shoots back on Wham’s sandstorm attack. Bones shatter when he slams against the far wall. Pain engulfs him almost to the point of blackout. He can’t scream. The whirlwind pulls a scarlet splash of flower petals from his lungs—or is it blood he’s coughing up?—and he’s left powerless, suffocating, and broken as he falls one full story down to the ground.

His vision swims. Caesar forces himself to his knees. His limbs obey him, sluggish and uncoordinated, but he falls flat on his face one again. The taste of life in his mouth, of dirt and flesh, spews from his lips to the floor as he sputters for breath.

Wham approaches Caesar and informs him, “You’re dead, Ripple Warrior.”

Not yet, Caesar thinks grimly. He pushes himself up again, this time getting to his feet and planting them firmly on the ground. The rest of his body sways like the spindly tendrils of a whispering willow. He blinks white-rimmed spots from his eyes with middling success, then takes a shaky step toward Wham.

Like a spinning top, Caesar must swivel his whole body just to swing his fist. The groan forced out of his gut sounds reedy and feeble. Caesar twists in the other direction, moving back and forth and choking with the effort, but he can’t land a hit.

“You have been defeated,” Wham insists, matter-of-fact. “Why do you keep fighting? Your death is honorable.”

Caesar thinks of only Joseph and spits up rose petals. “Something like you could never understand what it means to be human.” He doesn’t know where he finds the strength for words when he can barely breathe. Joseph’s bright smile flashes in his mind’s eye, as broad and wild as Joseph himself. “And honor in death means many things.” Caesar focuses on Wham, targeting the glint of gold at his lip that flashes in the lowlight as the monster turns to leave. “My father, and my grandfather before him, they both gave up their lives to save someone else.” He thinks of Joseph’s hands, so warm and strong, anchoring on his hips. Caesar manges another wobbling step, then another. “I can’t stop here.”

Despite the crimson flowing from his veins, there’s still life flickering inside him. Though Wham may see him as nothing more than a walking corpse, Caesar won’t rest until his work is done. He must ensure that Joseph, at least, will survive.

He leaps, somehow, through the air and over the stairs to touch down behind Wham on the landing. Caesar can see how badly he’s injured the Pillar Man. An even match, almost.

Wham turns around, startled by the sudden noise. Caesar reaches a shaky hand out to grip the antidote lip ring. Fate guides his aim. It takes more strength than Caesar realizes to rip a piercing from that inhuman face. Wham makes no move to stop him.

He falls, feet over head over feet, down the stairs with the grotesque crunching of broken bones splintering further apart. But there’s hope clutched tight in his fractured hand and what matters more than this? To lay down his life for Joseph? It is a small price, all things considered.

Caesar lands on his knees in the middle of the ruined foyer. His breath comes faster and shallower the more he bleeds. There’s no end to the stream running out of his wounds, hot and sticky and wrong as it trickles down his face. Is it blood? Is it roses? It could be neither. It could be both. He can’t see straight and it all feels the same. Bad. Nothing. Everything.

Joseph will survive.

Excruciating agony ignites and seizes his chest. Caesar hunches forward to vomit several almost-opened roses to the ground.

The antidote ring. Will it be enough? It has to be enough.

He can’t walk anymore. Can’t get to his feet. How will he give it to Joseph? He wipes his mouth on the back of his glove and keeps moving his hand until he’s untied his bandanna.

Joseph will know.

His lungs struggle for each rapid, shallow breath. His tongue is leaves, his teeth are thorns. Caesar threads the wedding ring through his bandanna. The flowers are here again and gone again. Everywhere and nowhere. The nightmare is almost over and Joseph never had to witness the depth of this suffering. Never knew how much he loved…

One last big fat rose rips up the roots in Caesar’s lungs, the vines wrapped around his heart, and he spits it into the air where it hangs before his eyes as his blood splatters to the ground. There’s so much red surrounding him already, red running into his vision and red staining his clothes and red pooling around his knees. He must be hallucinating now. Maybe he always was.

He reaches his hand out to touch it. It’s soft as a lover’s caress. Its sanguine petals have opened, a full and beautiful blossom. He isn’t sure if he’s crying or bleeding profusely. He can’t taste anything anymore. His skin feels clammy. His body, numb.

The ceiling cracks, dropping more wreckage to the floor around him.

Caesar weaves the bandanna around the bloody rose. It floats like an apparition between his palms. He encloses it in a soap bubble.

Joseph will remember.

“JoJo!” Caesar turns his head to Heaven and screams his final plea, voice cracking. His hands conduct Ripple into the flower. He shoves more and more of himself into the bubble until he’s used up the last of his power. There’s nothing left for his body to give.

He sits back, withered. The rose melts into the soap and stains the whole thing crimson. Flashes of Ripple pulse through it with all the rhythm and power of a heartbeat. The wedding ring winks gold when the sun hits it just right. All the important things are there. His offering for Joseph drifts on gentle currents, a shining badge of honor, a relic of love borne in secret until this moment.

Another rumble thunders overhead as the ceiling begins to buckle. Something sounds like his name in Joseph’s mouth. It came from outside. He smiles. Joseph must be nearby. It’s nice to hear his voice one last time. Caesar closes his eyes.

Debris comes crashing down.