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Dio always harbored a particular dislike for Shakespeare’s Cymbeline. Such sentimental rubbish compared to the great tragedies. And yet now after almost a century of imprisonment, he found himself involuntarily recalling two lines from the Bard’s tawdry problem play:
“Golden lads and girls all must
As chimney-sweepers come to dust.”
A nice, morbid bit of lyricism. Dio had to admit the lines had stuck with him ever since he’d first read the play on some sleepless night long ago. He didn’t know why those lines came to him now. Looking into his opened coffin, Jonathan Joestar’s long-severed head was more likely to evoke Hamlet’s Yorick than anything.
Ignoring the dead fishermen who had been his unwitting liberators, Dio stooped down and picked up his one-time brother’s head. Exposed to the air, it was quickly withering, the flesh having already long festered. Dio frowned, a bit puzzled by his lack of satisfaction at the sight. He’d seen that same rotting flesh red with embarrassment over his bad table manners, or pale green after a combination of a heavy lunch and a roller coaster ride, or pink with the flush of first love. He’d seen that face animated and alive, possessed by both childish histrionics and serene acceptance of a tragic fate. Even in the moments he’d most wanted to torment the Joestar fool, he could never truly imagine him dead.
Jonathan was foolish, true, but his strength and resourcefulness had been impressive. He’d even been able to withstand Dio’s attempts to sully his honor and steal his fortune. He was a worthy opponent, perhaps Dio’s only equal. Combined with that outrageous sense of nobility, Dio had to wonder if the modern world even had such as Jonathan. Somehow, he doubted it. Jonathan was a rare beast in his own day.
“The sun has set on your like, Jonathan Joestar,” said Dio, lowering the head back into the coffin. He closed the lid. “At the very least, your head can now rest properly.”
Heaven and hell knew, Jonathan’s body would be quite preoccupied in the meanwhile.