Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

" And I wonder
While we count the cost
Which is sweeter
Love or its loss" 

It all started with the memory of two kids running in the green fields of England’s countryside. Those kids had been you and a boy named Diego, or Dio in short. He was one of the cornerstones of your existence, one of those pillars that had supported majority of your life and one of those individuals which role in it had been indisputable, in the best and worst shades of it.

Diego was no longer part of your life as currents events unfolded, but there was a time where both you and him had been friends, once. You had met him when you were anything but a child, blithe and carefree and he had been too, minus already being acquainted with the fact that the world you inhabited was not always so courteous as  he wished it could have been. You belonged to the Joestar family, a upper class dynasty tied to aristocracy and he was born in a lesser wealthy environment. His family was composed only of him and his mother and they lived in a farm, where his dear mother had found a job after being abandoned by his father. Even if it had been an settlement that couldn’t unfortunately provide so much, his childhood had never been loveless and his mother would work strenuously in order to guarantee he would never lack anything. Diego was a good natured child, extremely smart, observant and resourceful. What he hadn’t, he would create or find using his inventive skills. Moreover he was extremely talented with handling horses and he could coax them in such a impressive way that they would naturally eat from his hands or listen to him the first second he presented himself in front of them. But Life had not abandoned him: it might have not presented to him the exact amount of lucky features others already had at in their arsenal , but it had equipped him with the tools to acquire them on his own so he could construct himself and his projects. And these gifts were highly valuable as they would have allowed him to dwell in whichever contest he might have been inserted.

The relationship you had weaved with Diego was quite strange to begin with. How could you have defined it? You had been his best friend and his rival once, his best friend and rival again and his best friend and rival yet again. Many times before the lines that defined the quintessence of the bond you shared with Diego had been blurred and often had they  intersected and overlapped, dismantling and enlacing their natures in textures and nuances that skimmed between one demarcation or the other or a amalgamation of the two. The classification of this tie had morphed and rebirth in branches that tied you to him and still kept doing so even after years.

You lived in Kentucky but your family used to travel following your father’s occupation thus why you had spent long periods of time in England. It was in one of those time periods that you had met Diego. After leaving him and leaving England you had returned to Kentucky and there had remained till that day. You had lived getting news of Diego from time to time and sure enough, you had even learned that he had returned to the USA in order to participate to the first edition of the Steel Ball Run.  Now Diego had become England’s equestrian world’s flagship and was one of the most prominent figures and names in the horseracing  field. He was extremely rich and famous; he had success, fame, glory and great influence; he was hypnotizing in his mesmerizing beauty and extremely charismatic, not to forget popular with the ladies…

The list could go on forever: he was basically at the pinnacle of his life, in the grandest celebration of his self and of his accomplishments. He had everything his heart had longed to have for the longest time and he had swore to himself he would keep fighting tooth and nail in order to always conserve his status of the absolute victor, both in and outside equitation.

Once you had been a jockey like him and you had even raced against him, becoming his rival, and he used to race even against your older brother Nicholas. He had once one of the most prominent jockeys and ascending starts of the equestrian racing field, who had sadly passed away. This death had completely devastated the family life and your father had been extremely impacted from the loss, to the point he could not accept the sudden departure of his older son.

Truth to be told you had been pushed to take on career of the jockey by your father and after the death of Nicholas this tendency of his had only been enhanced, becoming borderline manic. In a sense, he had tried his mightiest to have you become what Nicholas was, almost like he could resurrect him though you. To be honest horses had always scared you immensely. They were elegant and majestic creatures, but it was precisely this grandiosity that used to scare you in a sense.  It was quite the comical juxtaposition being the daughter of a retired jockey and having a brother being one of the best jockeys that had appeared in the equestrian overview of the time and yet there you were, terrified, borderline aghast to even stay in their proximity in a radius of 10 km. And exceptionally enough, the one who had been able to unblock this fear had been Diego.

There were moments where your father would stop for a instant to look at you. Guilt would be written over his eyes for a second and then they would harden, almost as if Nicholas’ ghost had appeared beside you or you would remind him of the fact you were there instead of his favorite son. Of course, this desperate attempt to restore your brother’s achievements and figure trough you had always been fruitless because you were not your brother. Maybe that was one of the reasons why you had never seen Diego as a true rival. No, you two had always been rivals figuratively, but in your heart he had never been. He was extremely standoffish, both outside and inside the racing universe, but somehow you had been able to establish a bond with him.

So many years had passed since you had dismounted from the fame of the equestrian world, fame that people like Diego were much more fitted to be a part of. Even as a jockey you had never registered many achievements unlike Diego had. You had not been born with his natural tendency to coax horses, nor Nicholas’ gift to be synchronous with every time frame he had to his disposition. You still remembered his sense of time, a gift that not you nor your father in his youth had ever possessed. Nicholas had it and it was one of his characteristics that made him such a skilled jockey. Before his tragic death he had been the pride and joy of your family and there was not an occasion where your father wouldn’t compare him to you, both before and after his tragic departure from the world of the living.  In a way you had grown under his shadow and it was only natural for you to feel the weight of that comparison on your shoulders. Your father had always been rancorous for the fact you hadn’t been shaped  by Nicholas’s semblance, molded in his image and his likeness, almost like your character would never be enough to satisfy his pretentions. The times he had praised you could be counted on the fingers of a sole hand and he had always held your brother as a emblem of what you should have strived to become. Thankfully, when he had been still with you, Nicholas had never fed in this confrontation and always been very kind with you and never overbearing.

As for your present life, the only thing your father had agreed to was letting you live in a family cottage near the countryside, which was a little more comfortable than the estate in which your family lived. It had only a ground floor and you could move a little more comfortable than you would have done in a mansion full of stairs. You surmised he had done it more to not have to see you inside Joestar Manor more than he had done it in order to genuinely help you. He did come to see you in very rare occasions, but that too felt as if he was doing it more like he wanted to check if you still versed in a state of misery. It was extremely unsettling to ever think about the fact a father would feel such animosity towards his own progeny, but you were pushed to think such concepts by the way he had always poorly treated you. When you had been a kid he wasn't as strict as he was now, though that had unceremoniously changed when your brother Nicholas had passed.

At least you had your job to distract you a little, though. Your occupation was quite a peculiar one and it was linked to the unfortunate riding incident that you had endured when you had been a jockey. In the following years you had focused on trying to find a solution for the chronic pain you had to endure and in this search, you had encountered a doctor that had suggested for you to follow a rehabilitation itinerary focused on relieving your pain trough some techniques to reduce muscle strain and joint pain, which had really helped during your recover. These practices weren’t invasive like a surgery and had brought such a significant improvement to your case and the doctor had resorted to even directly teach how to perform some of them in case the pain would become too overbearing.

You had suffered from an incomplete spinal cord injury, concerning the lumbar region and partly the thoracic one. As such, your form of paraplegia was partial and its effect were long term, but being treated had helped fight muscle atrophy and retain some neuroplasticity. Through these technique you had been able to improve greatly the control of your left leg, which used to be almost completely unresponsive as the right one. The exercises you had performed had helped you improve greatly and now you could move the left leg without experiencing major pain in your best days.  The right one was almost completely disconnected from your control and most of the days it was the one to give you more hurdles: from days in which you endured spasms from those in which it hurt desperately, the only thing you could do was endure it and try to sate it maneuvering your muscles and joints with the exercises you had been taught to perform.  Upon improving you had switched from using crutches to just a cane and now, you could walk thanks to this support experiencing a extent of mobility much more enhanced than before.

As such, you had decided to develop this knowledge in order to assist patients that would go through periods of rehabilitation like the ones you had just endured.  The range of your knowledge resembled those of a physiotherapist of the sorts, and it even expanded on the range of knowledge that a modern chiropractor and massage therapist would possess.

The originality of your approach was using said techniques not only to help human individuals, but to help animals – horses included – in relieve the pains linked to fatigue and follow them through their path after sustaining an injury. There was not a focus on the healing process of horses at that time, so you pondered about applying the same set of knowledge to them. Mixing your knowledge with the previous acquired skills of your jockey career resulted in the formation of your occupation as a expert rehabilitation of the sorts. You had started to work on the field and soon, you had been able to carve out a little place in the equestrian world for yourself too, even if you had to resign the dreams to ever being a jockey again. Your main focus were horses, but you also sporadically worked in the clinic of the same doctor that had followed your healing itinerary. If you could now stand more comfortably was thanks to his teachings and inspired by his example, you had decided to pursue a medical background but there wasn’t a real technical name that could exactly define your role, so medical assistant was the closest thing you could define your job as.You helped assist all form of spinal injuries, from the gravest ones to the milder. Every injury had its peculiarities: they could be reversible according to the degree of nerve damage while some took months and others took years. Some did recover some of their lost functions partly, some more vastly.

Moreover, there was a very expensive surgery that you had wanted to go through since you were young, but you had never been able to afford. It was something of a mirage, that forever ambition, too close to give up yet too far to fully abandon. It was that impossible dream you had always hoped in your heart to see congealing in reality but that had eluded you and kept doing so. An unreachable star, the one which is too close to reach but, at the same time, the same one who is mutually too far be fully conquered. It kept mercilessly  teasing your hopes as it would offer them an hand, only to retract them afterwards in a endless waltz. It always appeared to be near the more you pushed your fingers forward, yet never fully in its proximity to clasp. And you felt like you had no chances, even if you had always conserved a tiniest particle of hope that refused to evanesce yet. Still, for how hopeful you could have been, you were realistic and knew that this dream was more of a pipedream, however hoping wouldn’t have hurt, no more than giving up would have.

Your father, with whom you had always have a strenuous relationship, certainly wouldn’t help you pay the surgery off and you had resorted to work in this field, hoping for the day you could scrape together enough money in order to pay it. It was a surgery based on the concept of epidural electrical stimulation: it basically consisted in a band of electrodes planted over the impaired areas of the spinal cord and targeting specific clusters of nerves responsible for movement, thus providing those impulses that otherwise wouldn’t be delivered from the brain to the nerves. Though, it was extremely experimental, invasive and most of all, expensive. It was no wonder so few people had had the chance to receive it.

This was your life and recently even a new friend had been added to your acquaintances: her name was Hot Pants. Hot Pants had also been one of the people who had participated in the first edition of the famous Steel Ball Run race, a transcontinental mad race across USA. After participating in the first edition of the race she had collected some money and had decided to stay in the United States and work in the world of horse riding, becoming a horse show manager. She basically cured all the aspects pertaining the organization of competitions and horse shows, from the publicity of the event to the recruitment of the judges and staff to ordering the supplies for the show. At the same time she had her own stud farm, which housed some horses she trained with and rode in her spare time. Like many horse traders or horse owners she had receive word of your amazing rehabilitative techniques and when some of her horses had sadly suffered injury, she had reached out and sent you a notice in order to request your assistance.  It could happen for you to travel from time to time since. She was a very straightforward person, whom went straight to the heart of the matter. Though apparently stoical and enrobed  with a forthright approach, there was also a considerate and mild tempered person under her unwavering resolve. You shared a formal bond with her but even if your friendship wasn’t a very deep one, you deemed her to be a trustworthy individual.

You had followed the recovery process of one of her horses before, therefore you had had the chance to interact with her. From that moment on, she would ask for you to do a bimestrial massage check up of her horses and when she would require your assistance, she would accommodate you in her own residence considered you two didn’t live exactly close. This time you weren’t there to follow any rehabilitation process, but to do one of your checkups. Hot Pants was a preventive individual and therefore she wanted to guarantee the best to her horses. The horses were always monitored and they always responded very relaxingly when you worked with them. If anything, Hot Pant was one of the most considerate horse owners, even though her aloof demeanor wouldn’t make her seem so at first.

After the debate mixed to the success of the first edition of the Steel Ball Run race, it had been decided for a anniversary edition to be hosted. Every previous participant could try and it was a race opened to everyone who would have liked to participate. Though, it would have lasted less than the original edition, which was a fact that you liked. This new edition had been recently published by the press and the world was already fleeting just as it had done the first time.

The news  had reached even you and Hot Pants that morning, as she was in the midst of learning the new dispositions of this anniversary edition on the newspaper. You knew she had joined the first edition because she had briefly mentioned it to you, but she had never expanded the discourse more than that.

“Are you going to participate to the anniversary edition?” you had inquired, reading the title from the newspaper she was reading. 

“I am still evaluating my options” she told you, still keeping her eyes on the page. The idea indeed sounded good to HP. Then, a light seemed to spark in her eyes as she fixed them on you.

“You used to be a jockey if I am not mistaken. Why don’t you participate, too?”

“Are you joking?” you asked dumbfounded. Why would she ask such a thing?

 She raised an eyebrow at your response, staring stoically without a ounce of humor whatsoever.

“Do I look like I am joking?” she responded, folding the newspaper and laying it on the table nearby. 

“But, Hp, look at me” you continued, gesturing vaguely towards your lower half “Walking is difficult for me and I can’t do it as I used to. How could I ever get back into the saddle again?”

 “I thank you for the encouragement, but I am just an old clunker” you then admitted, accompanying your statement with a defeated sigh and with shrug “I don’t think I could ever have a chance”

She seemed to ponder for a second, ascertaining how bitter your statements sounded.

“But you are a Joestar and you are very talented with horses. Maybe there could be a way for you to ride a horse without causing any strain on your joints” she stated with solemnity, staring at you intently “Why would you preclude this chance to yourself?”

“Because you are talking with the wrong Joestar. My brother Nicholas would have been far more suited for it, I am certain…” you trailed, a hint of sadness tightly sealed to your speech. This was a detail that Hot pants noticed instantly and as she gazed you with a more milder look.

Nicholas would have been quite at ease in similar scenarios. You felt as if he could have been the perfect match for occasions such as the Steel Ball Run and situations like these would only enhance the vacancy he had left and you missed even him more. Even though your father had always held him as a herald of the success of the Joestar family, fortunately your bond had not be affected to much by it.  You had always admired him and he had always been a kindhearted and altruistic brother.

“If anybody could have done it, that could have been him. But I am not…” you prosecuted, sounding even more crestfallen. There was a moment of silence and then you heard Hot Pants speak again, her tone of voice sounding a little more comforting than before.

“Talents and acquired skills come in many shapes and forms” she said, looking at you sympathetically “Your brother’s talent in a  certain field doesn’t undermine the value of yours. He might have been a prodigy as a jockey, but you are a prodigy in the art of healing and bonding”

“You don’t just tame horses, you befriend them and familiarize with them with patience and care, which is pretty remarkable. And you are clever, much more than you account for yourself” she concluded, honesty oozing from every word.

This comment made your head snap towards HP and you stared at her bewildered. It was so rare to hear her spend so many applauding words in regards of somebody, but specifically because you knew how seldom these moment were that their meaning held even more significance.  The uniqueness of that moment with Hot Pants made her words even more special and you felt appreciated, which was an emotion that was always pleasing to receive.

Besides the question of who was the racing talent between you and your brother, there was the problem of actually having to ride an horse after so much time, which was a task that – supposing you would have joined the race - you wouldn’t even know how to approach given your situation. Perhaps another vehicle could have been your choice but there was a issue there too: you didn’t have an automobile neither did you know how to drive it.

“Thank you so much, HP” you nodded to her with a small smile, only to grow a little more serious. “Your encouragement is revitalizing but I am afraid this chance is not for me. Racing on a horse would be the only possible choice left  and I don’t really want to race as a jockey anymore” you wondered, already putting your hands in front of you as if to signal to HP that you intended to not participate “the last time I did I almost lost my life and I still bear the consequences till this day”

Certainly, Hot Pants’ proposition had attracted your focus, specifically if you considered how plenteous the prizes were. Most of your salary was barely enough to make ends meet and you didn’t hope for a change to be in sight, considered the facility in which you worked was very old and often required construction interventions. Lately there had been even more seasonal infiltrations in the building and the earnings weren’t very high because most of them would be used to pay for the renovations.  Same story could have been said for your rehabilitation career in the equitation word: revenue wasn’t very high on that side either. The prizes of the race certainly offered  the chance to pay off those expenses  - and the first prize even much more than that - so not only you could have helped, but you could have finally have the chance to pay off your surgery and hopefully walk again without the assistance of the cane. Hot Pants’ proposition was very enticing the more you pondered about it, but you didn’t know if you could have effectively done it.

You had long hang up the boots and retired from the racing world, optioning to stay at a very far and safe distance from the sidelines. You had survived to an racing incident, which had been the event in which sadly you had suffered the impairment of your legs. When you had suffered such event you had been in such a low point that you had almost felt it as a liberation, but as the years had passed you had appreciated the fact Life had spared you and that you had been given a second chance. Or a third one, perhaps, if you believed the fact that “God had taken the wrong son” like your father used to say talking about the death of Nicholas, that had always been his favored.

As such it was a traumatic experience which shocked till that day, moreover if considered you feared it could unleash painful memories or even a panic attack. However you still had not renounced to work with horses, which, paradoxically, had really helped you in coming to terms with the event. You just avoided with all your might mounting on a one, but for the rest their sight did not stir fear.

When you had heard about the enormous sum of money as the prize of the first edition, the thought of it had certainly tantalized you. You had thought that this could have been the right stroke of luck in order to pay off the costs of the surgery, but when you had learnt how many months you would have had to stay on the saddle, you had paled and that little spark of feasibility that had been sparked had been quick to die out.  You really thought you had no hope.

That was the bundle of motivations for which you had opted to steer clear from the first edition of the Steel Ball Run. Moreover, when you had caught wind that Diego would have participated, you had felt even more inclined to prosecute in your path, almost like your eventual participation could represent a chance less for Diego to win. You didn’t do this because you felt like you could beat him –  if anything, you felt the opposite – nor had you ever been able to respectively achieve such result when you had raced together,  much more because you had been extremely supportive of all the dreams he had spoken of with you.

He had this way of deluge you with the way he so vividly had envisioned his future and the achievements he would have liked to transform in reality. With his indomitable drive to reach the peak of the highest mountain, he would drag you away with his ability to see far beyond the limits where every other pair of eyes would have settled. He had the visionary mind of a achiever and his dreams of glory where one of the things that really could display Diego’s determination, which burned aflame like the Sun he one day would have liked to touch. Subsequently you had became a little part of his dream too and you dreamed this dream along with him. In doing so, he had first started to weave dreams of him and him alone. But the more the years had passed, the more he had started to loosen the stringency of his self centered imperial plan and he had reserved a little place to you too.

It had went from “I am going to become the most famous jockey of all England! to “I am going to become the most famous jockey of all England and you will come with me and we’ll travel the world”. But now he reigned alone and you weren’t part of the lavish world in which he had found his success.

“ I see” HP simply stated “Regardless of whichever choice you’re going to come up with, I know you will make the right one”

And that was the statement that closed your conversation about the subject.

That evening you tended to some of HP’s horses and then prepared yourself for your meeting with Hot Pants. In fact you had agreed to go out with her when she had invited you to the city since the following day you would have to return home. When the time came for your meeting, she was quick to present herself outside of your door, politely knocking and asking if you were ready. But when you were in the midst of opening the door for her, you heard her raising her voice all of a sudden.

“The meeting!” she exclaimed out suddenly, reprimanding her thoughtfulness. What meeting was she talking referring to? Habitually HP was punctual and pristine as a clock, but with the organization of the race she had been running errands since morning and this rhythm had fatigued even someone with such steely stamina.

The she pointed her eyes at you, staring in thought for some seconds before having an idea.

 “Why don’t you tag along with me? I have to meet a friend regarding a matter concerning the organization of a show. It shouldn’t take long”

Seeing no danger in her offer, you accepted.

“A friend? Are you sure he won’t mind?” you inquired.

“I highly doubt he will. It will be just an informal meeting, nothing more than that”

You were on the verge of asking her who this friend was, but you noticed she was continuing her speech and as such, the matter of his identity rested in the background. Already sensing where her discourse was going, you were quick to stop her.

 “I suppose he should have some good connections in the horse trading field “ she told you, her mind starting to analyze meticulously  “and perhaps he could-“

 “Hp, I am not racing” you reminded her again.

“Yes, yes, I know” she waved you off, as if to prove her point she had understood your message loud and clear. The tone of your conversation was subtly jocose so you didn’t pay any mind to it.

“To be honest, I didn’t meant to upset you” she clarified, knowing how much her outspoken behavior could result almost brash “And it’s fine if you don’t want to have anything with it. I just wanted you to know because it could be a good opportunity. Just that”

“Thank you” you smiled “I will keep it in mind, then”

She nodded and together you proceeded to enter the carriage that would have taken you to the residence of this mysterious friend of HP.

The second time you attempted to inquire about the identity of this friend backfired too. Just when you had began to formulate your question, the carriage had stopped in front of the place of the visit and the matter had been eclipsed by the incredible stupor you had felt in witnessing just how majestic the estate of HP’s friend was. It looked like it belonged to an aristocrat or someone very important.

And when you were just bordering on asking Hot Pants who this person was, yet again you were prevented to. The door opened before you could speak and a butler invited you in. Hot Pants looked at you behind her shoulders and nodded to you, as if to extend the greeting word of the man to you. If your breath had hitched when you had first observed the exquisite exterior of the manor, it hitched even more once inside. It seemed to be inside a museum of palatial splendor and every feature of this place seemed to be inserted almost as if it was intended to mirror the eminence of whoever lived there. From the sparklingly polished pavements to the sumptuously decorated halls, from the rich embroideries to the high columns of algid ivory, from the intricate embellishments to the sophisticated furniture there was not a detail of this abode that didn’t seem to be the apotheosis of luxury.

As you prosecuted guided by the butler, you passed by a collection of paintings lined in a corridor that almost seemed to came alive for how realistically the sceneries they represented had been depicted. One of them stroke your attention the most and you stopped momentarily to gaze at it, enraptured by a nostalgic sense of déjà-vu. It was a scenery depicting a green field, very similar to the ones you could find in the English countryside. Those were the places in which the memories from your youth had taken place when you had stayed in England with your family. Those were the locations of part of your life. Yours… and of Diego’s too. Then you squinted your eyes and focused even more, feeling as if you had already saw this place, a place that the same Diego coincidentally used to be extremely fond of. It was really similar to meadow with shade trees, a place in which his mother used to bring him in those rare moments of free time they had. In the years following her death, Diego had kept visiting it and it had became a sort of safe Eden for him, a sanctuary in which he could seek consolation and perhaps feel a little bit more close to her memory.

He had  introduced you to this place and he had kept visiting it along with you from time to time. The depiction of this painting did really look similar and for a moment you stalled. A warning bell rang in your head: who exactly was this friend? Of course, the representation of the meadow could have been completely coincidental. There could have existed so many other meadows that could have looked like that place, after all.  It did look really similar, but the possibilities of it depicting that specific meadow in the English countryside were the same of it depicting another meadow in another place of the world that happened to look alike.

Before you could ponder further, Hot Pants called your name softly. She had noticed you had stopped and when she had, she had found you staring intensely at the painting. You reached her and together you were escorted by the butler to a beautiful sitting room.

The butler invited you both to take a seat near table and both you and HP complied.

“The master will be shortly with you” he said, excusing himself with a bow.

“This is such a beautiful mansion” you whispered to her, your eyes still shining from the incredible display of luxury you had seen  as you scanned your surrounding “It’s really impressive!”

“Do you think so? I personally think it mirrors the personality of the owner quite well” she commented sarcastically as a corner of her lips twitched up in amusement.  She then divert her attention towards the door and stood up, however you did not notice immediately because you were concentrated in looking around and taking in all the magnificent furniture that framed this scenery.

“About that matter…” you trailed off “I have been trying to ask you for all evening… “

You twisted your head towards her.

“But exactly who is this friend?”

And yet again the your question didn’t meet an answer. Instead you noticed that Hot Pants had turned her head away from you and in direction of the door just in the moment you had finished your speech, therefore you were quick to understand that the master of the house had arrived. You gingerly stood up, in order to greet them, keeping your eyes on the floor. But the  moment you twisted your head to greet them, your eyes grew the size of saucers and your cane fell from your hand, while the other remained pressed on the surface on the table. You couldn’t believe who was this friend that Hot Pants had to meet. And you couldn’t believe that of all the people she could ever befriend, it had happened for this person to be him. It couldn’t be possible, it couldn’t be…

“Diego?!”  you gasped loudly, completely taken aback by the sight of him.  Diego’s eyes widened a little, but he didn’t seem to lose his composure whatsoever.

“Joestar” he hissed flatly. Before Hot Pants could be the one to pick it, Diego bent a little and picked the cane that you had dropped, presenting it in front of your eyes to hold. He had moved with such swiftness that you hadn’t noticed him moving at all. In a moment he was standing near the door, the other his body had materialized in front of you without giving you the time to fully absorb the action. When had he become so fast? He had always had quick reflexes, nonetheless it looked like he had became even more agile in these years. He was there in front of you, scrutinizing you with chirurgic precision and you felt, like many time you had felt, swallowed by the intensity of his eyes. You had not crossed that stare in so many years, yet your sensed still recalled how it tasted to be branded by Diego Brando’s inquisitorial eyes.

“Thank you…” you mumbled, planting your eyes in every spot you could find in order to not have to match his stare.

“We meet again, it seems”

“Wait, you know each other…?” she then inquired, looking back and forth between you and Diego in search of an answer.

“Sadly” deadpanned Diego, his expression growing bitter the more he stared at you.

“We have been… “ you trailed off, not exactly sure how you could explain the complexity of your bond with Diego with just a quick  word.

“…acquainted in the past” you concluded awkwardly, not meeting the eyes of the man in question who did not enjoy your choice of vocabulary quite well. The word “acquaintance” was too simplistic, yet it didn’t completely disregard the  complementary mix of positive and negative connotations this bond held. Maybe “Enemy” would have been a much more fitting word now, but again there wasn’t solely a word that could be used in order to categorize who he had been to you. You had been his friend but now that friendship was hollow, you had been his rival but that feud too had been long expired too. When your bond had been curtailed it had never fully fallen down, it had remained suspended between realities and was poised between past and future. So you stayed in a limbo suspended in a equilibrium, not a friend, not a rival of him. Someone who he had known, someone he didn’t wish to see anymore. Still he felt like you were downscaling the nature of your bond and his figure, because Diego’s pride would have been much more satisfied had you labeled him as a foe rather than a mere acquaintance, for it was a classification holding much more significance than a generic term.  

“Yes, acquainted” Diego repeated after you indignantly “That is the right term to use, isn’t it?”

You gulped. He sounded very much defensive and the use of that word didn’t seem to meet his tastes quite well. From the outside point of view Hot Pants quickly understood that whichever event had occurred between him and you previously had left a stinging trail that persevered its existence in both your minds for quite some time. It was not a simple quarrel and the way your eyes were trying to evade from those of Diego who were rabidly on your trail bore witness to such impression. Though what she could discern was the intensity and the effect of this feud, not its longevity. She also felt as if it wasn’t anything that a proper conversation wouldn’t have fixed. Therefore Hot Pants shrugged and went straight to the point to discuss the matters she required to talk about with Diego.

“As I mentioned you by letter, I would need to contact the owner…”

She talked and yet she could see how utterly unfocused Diego was. She could sublimate such feeling by observing the way Diego kept  looking askance in your direction, boring holes in your skull. You, on the other hand, kept your eyes straight and grimaced a little, only hoping for the moment this meeting would be dismissed and you could finally escape from Diego’s eyes. It was immaterial and yet you could swear that you could feel the magnitude of his stare pressed down on your bones and his anger sinking inside your heart like a grapnel and squeezing its content out like a pincher.

Diego would glower with such morbidity and then, when he would notice he had been staring at you for too long, he would correct himself and look at Hot Pants in a sign of  rebound focus. It would last for a short window of time and then he would find himself back at the start, glaring at you. Then he would fix his eyes back on her, only to shift them towards your figure a second later and he kept doing so till the moment Hot Pants had enough of this rigmarole. It was painfully obvious that as long as you would have been present there, Diego would have not relented from basically trying to torch you alive with his eyes.

 “Look, this is not working” Hot Pants cut through the tension like a knife, bringing Diego to again stare at her.

“Whatever happened between you two clearly isn’t right and it would be better if you sorted  it out”

Diego grunted at that remark, rotating his eyes away like he hadn’t just been caught red handed in his session of torrid death staring.

“Everything has already been discussed between me and…” he stalled a little, waving his hand vaguely towards your direction. He seemed to ponder about how he could call you, almost like he had forgotten your name. Or almost like he wished to never repeat it again.

“…and Lady Joestar” he concluded, clear annoyance in his voice.

Hot Pants raised a brow at that, keeping a straight face and clearly not buying Diego’s attempt to dismiss the matter.

 “As if. You are literally chomping at the bit to argue, I can tell” she said matter-of-fact “I think you should discuss it out. And since it seems evident to me that you need some moments to settle it down, I will go out for a bit”

As she spoke, you were mentally praying to Hot Pants to rescind this choice and not leave you there alone, almost hoping your entreaties could somehow reach her telepathically. Your eyes widened and your mouth shut in a thin line and you started to shake your head a little, hoping your gesture would have delivered your message across and translated it in a non verbal plea to let the matter go. But Hot Pants, being someone who enjoyed cutting to the chase, had no clemency for your non verbal pleas and looked at you with such firmness that left no space for further complaints.

You followed Hot Pants with pleading eyes till the moment she opened the door and without affixed words, she withdrew towards the corridor and vanished from the room. With Hot Pants’ elopement from the scene,  you had to face the fact that you had to confront yourself with Diego and could only swallow a mouthful of anxiety in a gulp.

In your lips were immured all those years of silence in which you had been estranged and from him percolated the same aura. The silence between you too was as tense that you could almost feel its poignancy piercing your skin, accompanied by Diego’s merciless scowl which only added gasoline to this fire burning soundlessly. This tension was so orotund in its taciturnity that you felt compelled to break it or else, it would have crashed you.

 “I heard a whole lot about you” you started, unsure of what exactly you had to speak with him “that you won the Steel Ball Run race…?”

That was a awkward start of the conversation but you really didn’t know how else you could refer to him. You used to be friends but that friendship was there no more, therefore you really didn’t know how to approach him without feeling a bit conscious about it. For how the things had played out you didn’t expect him to be wanting to have anything to do with you and it might have been plausible for him to be out there wanting a revenge of some sorts against you. So you optioned to keep your guard up around him and answer him formally, no more than you would have towards a old friend. You couldn’t know exactly how he would feel now, but Diego was guaranteed to not be welcoming and want some type of revenge, which in fact he did want.

“Mh” he voiced amusedly, fully aware you were flailing inside this caldron of tension.

“What an extremely observant spirit you still display, Joestar”

Of course  he was just mocking you. The news had been everywhere worldwide, his name had traveled vastly and praised endlessly. He had succeeded in becoming the pride of England in the end.

“I suppose your intention was the one to ask me how I am doing” he said “Did I guess right?”

Indeed he had and it was no wonder because Diego was egregiously attentive when it came to read his surroundings. Right now his tone didn’t seem to be specifically inimical, but this still didn’t ease the tension. He seemed to be entertained by the way you were awkwardly standing here, tense like a violin cord.

“Better worded but yes… I was trying to ask you that” you responded.

“You know, I have achieved many things in these years. Power, fame and glory, only to name a few” he started and from his introduction, you guessed he intended for you to ear attentively ever single item he would have listed.

“As a genius jockey I have won innumerable prizes and the Steel Ball Run race, I  became an influential man with ties all over the royalty and the upper class overseas.  I have even bought this beautiful mansion” he gestured proudly, waving his hand around as if to highlight the fact that all of these were, indeed, manifestations of wealth he had achieved only by himself and thanks only to his talents “and this is only one of my many properties around the world, by the way”

“I plan to run for mayor of New York and  I have got a multitude of famous politicians and celebrities  visiting me “ he added, only to shift his tone to a much more provocative one “I am even graced with a crowd of adoring supporters who love me wholeheartedly. As such, I can certainly testify the company is no bad either”

Was he doing this in order to make you feel jealous? And if yes, of what exactly?  Of his belongings? Of his prestige? Of the fact he had plenty of affectionate company? Or maybe all of these options? Because by the way he had enhanced his last statement assuredly sounded like he was trying to invoke certain feelings within you, like you were supposed to feel it.  It sounded like an harping compound of all his achievement, with a particular focus on his relationship conquests. He was fully relishing in this declaration, positively proud of himself.

“Not bad for someone raised in the lower ranks of England, huh?” he concluded, even if it seemed much more of a jab.

In fact you weren’t surprised he had been behaving in such a standoffish way with you. If anything, you had seen this coming from him. it would have made sense for him to react in this way and it could have been expected. Why would he behave in any other way? Your rift had been quite tumultuous after all and it had been concluded with the most algid of the statements.

“Nothing more you will obtain from me if not hatred”

You didn’t see why he wouldn’t have remained faithful to such statement and knowing how strict in his views he was, it was extremely unlike he could have changed his point of view over time. It was set in his heart of stone that you were an enemy and the way he was tabulating his speeches told you his animosity had remained.

“That is certainly impressive” you remarked and you were indeed genuine as you expressed said statement. It didn’t came as a surprise for you to hear that Diego had achieved all these luxuries and had conquered all these jewels of lavish forging: he had always been an individual gifted by a brilliant mind and keen in analyzing every circumstantialities that the reality offered to his senses to perceive. He was a detector, an analyzer, a scrutinizer. All the data he collected were plucked from his sharply adroit eyes and every detail he detected  he would use to his gain, he dismantled all the planes of reality and dissected every nook and cranny of it, till reaching its core.

He was gifted with deductive precision and  this ability went hand in hand with his cleverness, his memory and his resourcefulness. His mind was a register in which he noted every minimal detail of the reality around him and his cognitive skills were so enhanced he could memorize a plethora of data and recall them when he needed their assistance. His ability of recognizing horses by the imprints left by their hooves, his ability to decipher every implicit detail of horses’ unspoken communication and behavior, his knowledge: those were all manifestations of his incredible nous.  Diego knew how to use every acquired information to his advantage and incorporated it in his conclusions, which were hermetically sealed with precision. Then, after having studied the situation, he would formulate his plan. He had figured out quite soon he had to use every weapon in his arsenal if he wished to fulfill his dreams of greatness. This was an ability he had finessed over time, thence why it had been growing the more he gained expertise outside and inside the equestrian world. His cleverness was instinctive and factual at the same time. He was basically a collector: of data he could exploit, of riches he could enjoy and of victories he could adorn his name with.

All of these collections he had showcased to you were, indeed, a proof of success. And he also thought that this list of materialistic belongings would have been the cement to fill the caldera that kept simmering inside his soul, too.

“I hope you will forgive me if I say it’s not a surprise. You have always been amazing, after all”

This statement came from deep inside your heart, from the most secluded area of it. You felt truly glad he had been able to transmute all his dream into a reality and that he was feeling satisfied with his achievements.  He only chuckled at this, more tauntingly than sincerely.

“And  you? Now you go by being called “The Magic Touch” or that’s what I have heard”

Diego changed the subject and his objective seemed to focus the compass needle of the conversation towards you and your occupation. You knew to what he was referring to and it was something of a sobriquet that the insiders of the equestrian world had associated to your job.

“Oh, that is an exaggeration” you shrugged, shaking your head a little “I just help people and animals in their rehabilitation process. Nothing more than that”

In the equestrian circles they would refer to you and call you “the magic touch”, because every horse you treated would reap the benefits of your treatment and their pain would dissolve under your care. 

 “And you still live in Kentucky with your family, I suppose?”

The way he closed his quote made a question mark arise over your head. Was he was subtly asking with whom you were living? Why would he be so keen in discovering this detail? Why was he inquiring about your status? Why did he… care to imply that? Moreover, was he really implying or was it just your impression?

“Yes, I live in the countryside” you responded with honesty, smiling faintly at the memory of your little  cottage “and I live by myself in my family property”

This was the maximum info you gave him. It was a very humble accommodation and if confronted with one of the rooms in Diego’s mansion, it would look more like a one of his closets than anything.

 “It’s a peaceful life. Not much, but I like in this way”

At that remark Diego’s lips curled in a way that told you he was fighting to not sneer in front of what you had just told him. Diego found the thought to be ridiculous. Of course you were saying that in order to camouflage the evident misery you must have lived in and to avoid the self consciousness that came if you compared your own results with his own. You were just pretending and why wouldn’t you, after all? It was only right for you to say you were content with it just to  not admit the fact you were miserable, he reasoned. So it was better to say you enjoyed living a peaceful life, instead of admitting you had failed and that you were internally gnawing in witnessing his accomplishments. And even if you were genuine, he did not care. He had long stopped doing so.

“So you live an exceptionally boring and miserable life. You have my sincerest solidarity, that must be tough” he concluded, smirking conceitedly.

Diego found it almost hilarious how the tables had turned. When he was a young boy, it used to be him the one to work in the stables while you were surrounded by wealth and the golden fruits of Life, now he wallowed in opulent luxury while you had to flounder against Life’s contingencies in order to keep the wolf from the door. Part of him had expected you would have married an aristocratic and retreat in some urban area to relish in your upper class life, but this has never happened. He had asked you even though he knew you hadn’t and perhaps the reason he had resided on the fact he wanted for you to confirm it. He had already noticed you wore no rings and there were any marks of their daily wearing on your skin, moreover he knew you were using still Joestar as your surname instead of one of a potential husband.

 It was true that many years had interposed between him and you, however he had never fully ejected you from his radar just as he had never entirely rescinded the bond that hooked your entity to his own. Just like it had happened to you he had heard something about you and it was not something unexplainable because, even if he had continued racing overseas, it could happen for news to travel and arrive from other countries. Therefore there could be the chance to hear news the one of the other considered  you were both part of the same world, even if you worked in the backstage and he was one of its more prominent stars. And you had even seen each other sporadically: he had traveled to USA time to time to attend other races and he had met you, but solely from afar and if directly, your interactions had been short, formal and never quite expanse.

 “My life is not miserable” you rebutted.

You knew to what he was alluding. With that sentence he meant to say that you hadn’t the same success as him and not having earned much money, your existence was automatically irrelevant.

“Money is not the only the parameter you should use to evaluate it”

“How it is not?” he pondered. “ Is there anything remotely more important than that?”

If there was something he had learned the hard way was that you were creatures of a society where the only mean one had to shine in order to not be devoured by the void was money. Money was the flesh, power was the blood of this body he had built and hoisted in order to reign and leave his imprint in the currents of existence.

Diego’s mind had learned to equate money and power with happiness and this was a paradigm that he imprinted in his reasoning and that marked his life quite profusely, plucked out directly from the treatment he had endured. The more money he would possess, the more his prestige would grow, therefore being automatically being and valued; consequently if you hadn’t been able to gather enough, you were automatically miserable. Money allowed him to have everything he had never had before – therefore resulting delightful for the luxuries it could provide – but most importantly it would drive him in the position he needed to quash society as a whole. The happiness he could have achieved from money could have been derived from it not only for the benefits  it could glean for him, but because it would become the scepter of his vengeance.

Yet by far he was too intelligent to know that money would have been the answer to every problem that may have tormented the heart of mankind: it was too simplistic, too idealized. Life was by far much more structured in labyrinthine mechanisms to be something so simple, a morass of broken pretences and equally broken pretenders.  He saw his own example as a tangible proof of the fact money and power were the only staircases that would have elevated his selfdom in elation.  And it to him it was plenty observable by everything  he had achieved: he had fulfilled his desire of revenge against anyone who had discarded him and his mother, a sweet martyr who had suffered the price of that despondent indifference on her guiltless skin. In her deathbed he had buried his promise to achieve vengeance in her name and now, he had. That society that had mauled, spat and stomached the cries of his younger self  he conquered and now occupied on its apogee. If once he had been ostracized and relegated at the border, now he had become the crux of  a structure that had once repudiated him, while now it had transformed him in a symbol  they worshipped.

Humans were a flock of pigeons and only a eagle like him could command them. Was there anything more he would have yenned to conquest? Maybe universal domination? He would have probably desired that at some point.

But the thing that most bothered with was the discontinuity of coherence with this statement of your present persona and a speech of your past persona.

“You weren’t of that advice when we were younger”

You jolted a little bit at his sudden implication, frowning. Of course he would call back the past. Of course he would try to recall the branching point of your relationship.

“Or have you forgotten about everything that happened between us?”

You gulped even more hardly. He was heading exactly towards the argument you wanted to avoid.

“Ah” he let out a mocking laugh, mixing with a sarcasm that had been rotten away by too much disappointment “It’s not a surprise…”

The question of this bond remained quite convoluted to him too. The consistence of the strings that had bound you had been something of ephemeral yet with effects manifesting till that day and they were nebulous, airy, fogged, obfuscate and intangible but very much real. This link existed between the world of reality and bypassed the realm of dreams and memories. Technically there was nothing more you two could have shared due to the fact that  he had went on his path and you on yours, nonetheless there was still something incorporeal and invisible to the eye to see that had never been fully eradicated from you both.

Another thing to address was just how expanded this bond was. Now he had no qualms in entertaining relationships and probably he had had many flirts as he had prizes, but when he was young, he had been a little bit awkward around the subject. As such there had never been a complete classification of what exactly you were to him and him to you. It had been never spoken officially – maybe because both of you had cut ties before it could have happened, maybe because you had never felt the direct need to, maybe because you knew in your heart to be already established - but the fact you both loved each other had always been implicit. Diego had flowed your way, you had flowed in his way and just like two polar magnets you had kept attracting the one the other. You two had made an oath and it was the same equivalent of a declaration of belonging. It was a promise to stay together, no matter how dire the vicissitudes you would have to endure would have become.

Someone may argue that such a behavior very different from the ones rivals should have displayed, but the fact was that you and Diego had never been ordinary rivals. And then, one day everything had fallen apart.

Thankfully, Diego had learnt what love meant thanks to his mother’s affection, so her example lived in his mind as a classification example of what love meant. He recalled how the same joy he had felt with her was something he had felt with you too. But now  how much time had passed since feeling that pleasant torpor of affection nor did he recall how it did feel being embraced by such warmth. Everything around him was phlegmatic, papery as the castle of money in which he was surrounded and frozen just as the earth under which his mother rested. His ability to feel love had once been chipper, now it was exiled to burn silently in the most secluded part of his heart and memories, entirely pushed back by his plans of vengeance and prostrated at the chantry of the brackish resentment he felt towards everyone and everything. But he could have the chance to learn again and to feel that warmth that eluded him, possibly?

Before in his life he had never met a more multifaceted persona as you were. In your figure condensed many contrasting feelings, in a structure that enmeshed both his resentment and his affection, both his past and his future, both his propensity to reach out to you and his unwillingness to trust you. He had known not to trust anyone if not himself and never again he would do. Maybe once he could have felt prone to make a distinction for you, but now you had equipped him with a proof of the fact he had been right all along. Only Diego was the one worthy of his own trust.

 “Certainly I was quite easy to forget for you, wasn’t I?”

Now he seemed he wanted to address your past with him and you caught a subtle sense of disappointment in his tone, like he wasn’t just merely angry with you.

“Dio” you breathed in, trying to calm your nerves “What use is there in us being inimical? At this point we split up long ago…”

Diego’s breath scraped against his throat and itched a little when he listened to you calling his name. Dio. How long had it been since he had heard you pronounce it? How many days had he spent without that syrupy reverb gracing his mind? Too many, perhaps. And hearing you pronounce it again, observing the way his name rolled from your lips was a sight. If it was soothing or if it was just a Trojan war that had been welcomed inside the fortifications of his soul just to make him reminiscence about the past he didn’t know.

It seemed he still considered you as a inimical entity and while he had your complete understanding over why he would, it was also true that you didn’t wish to be a subject of his anger either. You guessed he would try to provoke you or stir a conflict which was something that you would have preferred to not see happening, therefore you decided to not incite the confrontation.

 “You were the one to leave me” he sibilated, as your face twisted in a sorrowful expression. You sealed your eyes, only able to point them sideways and nowhere that would have happened to be near  him.

His hand twitched at little, like he wanted to effectively drawn you close to him while at the same time clashing with a barrier that had been erected between you both. Getting closer to you he had the opportunity to fully take in your image. He both wanted to know more, but at the same he didn’t want to have anything to do with you.  A external need to know pushed him forward yet the gash you had engrained in his heart begged for him to refrain to ever touch that flame that had burned  him. You were so close, yet so distant; a destination he continued to trot towards and that almost looked ready to be clasped by him only to wriggle out of his hand when he had almost reached it.

 “I would have given you the whole world had you asked” he seethed a little more softly, staying parallel to you yet still not facing you. You faced the opposite direction of him. There was a subtle wistfulness on his tongue, eyes laced with it too.

“But you chose to toss it away and toss me away in the process. And for this, forgiveness is not something you will ever receive from me” he continued.

Of course he wouldn’t give such element to you, it was not something he would grant to you after everything that happened. He was still bitter about it, it was a thorn in his eye and  this prong would be infixed deeper and further in his heart every second more he stared at you, revoking a malady he had never fully healed from. However he was accounting only for this party of the story.

 “I know that forgiveness is something you will never give me, nor I am asking for it”

This was all you could say before letting other words slip past your lips. Diego had been quite struck by the separation, therefore you didn’t expect for him to magically change his mind, moreover after observing that his anger was still intact . Nonetheless your wish was to at least keep a cordial conversation with him, which it was something that was being proven to be clearly difficult with him rowing against you.

“All I ask is for you to draw a line under and conduct our conversation in civil terms, if you could. I don’t wish to fight with you, Dio. And…”

You breathed in and out, almost as if the intensity of Diego’s gaze chafed against your words. You knew he would have not believed what you would have him next, he would not because he had lost faith in you.

 “I know you won’t believe me, but I am sorry for what happened in the past…”

To this he widened his eyes a little and stopped to analyze you. In that gaze you could collapse if you gave it the chance, therefore you opted to divert your eyes elsewhere, albeit avoiding to cross Diego’s inquisitorial eyes that were examining you thoroughly. He was scanning the contents of your words in order to read your spirit trough them, to evaluate if your words possessed that nuance of honesty they should have had to be even slightly credible to him. He stilled and contemplated, like he was calculating a percentage inside his mind.

What Diego captured of you was your bitter tone of voice and your eyes down-casted. In this image he read a sense of distress and grievance. Indeed, you seemed to be aware of your share of culpability and looked like you were seeking repentance, however he did not trust you in the slightest.

Moreover he had became quite good at detecting the mendacity hidden in the words of people. He understood that not only from the structure or details of their speeches, but even from the way they would silently communicate and conduct themselves.  He sound out every gesture and then filtered their credibility out:  change in heart frequency, breathing changes, shift in tone of voice, posture, restlessness or uncertainty, incongruence between speech and behavioral actions, habits, expressions, fidgeting, change in complexion, signs of discomfort or hesitation, signs of fear or anxiety, tendency to exchange a straight stare or evade from it, gesticulate, fastness of blinking or swallowing, licking lips or pursuing them in a thin line just to name a few.

The human body was basically a book for him that knew how to read the language of unspoken behavior. He could not retrace the shadow of falsehood in your words, so lying you weren’t. But the fact you weren’t lying didn’t automatically equaled you were telling the truth either. His gut feeling suggested to him that you were being sincere, but the years of experience he had collected suggested for him to mistrust and this hunch was by far stronger than your honesty . You had spoken, true, but there was no guarantee you were actually meaning it. You could have been saying that just for show, giving him what you thought he could have liked to hear or to placate his animosity. Or perhaps you could have been honest right now, only to change your idea after: be it with ill intent – stab him in the back for instance – or be it as a result of other causes, your lie could have been disguised as momentary truth. Volatile was the nature of mankind and there was no way to know if your words were carriers of truth or if they had been crafted just to breach his shields. He could not dash headfirst in the battlefield, not without having a clear reading of his surroundings or without even a hint of what would have awaited him. This discourse was valid to human relationships, too.

And perhaps you could have been truly honest,  but he wasn’t willing and didn’t care to take the chance: now his trust was a rare commodity and he would not grant it to you in any way.  However the taste of this analysis left a sour indentation in his mind’s tongue because he could read there was much more you were eclipsing, so much more that you were dodging to share, though. At this he glowered because this occultation was something he had always suspected could have been there, but he had never found the proofs to claim it as such.

 “If only you meant it” he then rumbled, cutting the silence sharp as a knife “You are just running away because you don’t want to face what you did”

“Even so, it’s the past and we shouldn’t dwell on it nor revive the pain we left behind, Dio…”

“Don’t give me these silly platitudes” he reprimanded “You know better than to hide yourself behind them when you know that my words reflect the truth”

The way he was talking was cryptically abstruse, like he was reprimanding you and at the same time inviting you to recognize how much you two had lost, both in a mocking “look at what you lost” way and a sullen “look at what we lost” one. It seemed he was both inviting you to mourn the past yet at the same time rubbing in your face the fact that you had lost someone as amazing as him. There was a strange communion between his boundless pride and the part of him that sincerely grieved what your bond had been and could have become.

Indeed he was trying to stir a sense of nostalgia in you by summoning the past. But why was he talking like this? Didn’t he hate you? Or did he intend to haunt you reminding you of the day you had left him? Was his genuine turmoil? Or was it just his sense of vengeance speaking?

“If you keep being belligerent with me, then this… this is my last word on the matter” you voiced, struggling against the fact he was so close to you.

He leaned down on your face, staring at you inches away. You could not evade completely from his stare and from only raised your eyes just a sliver, finding his stare deeply focused in scanning you. His eyes used to be crystal clear to read but now they were stormy and deciphering their contents wasn’t so simple anymore.

Now he could seize your face had he felt inclined to, he could hold you in that place he had wished to pin you in when he halted to think about how things could have developed in another scenery. You were there, real and very much concrete: no longer a ghost in his memories, no longer a image narrated by fleeting news in the racing world, no longer a distant and marginal appearance in those sporadic times in which you had see each other after the fall out.  And then he remembered all the suffering he had endured. The barbed wire he had wrapped his heart with constricted around it, numbing the resurgence of anything enjoyable he had lived along with you. His temporarily mellowed eyes hardened with it, his face twisted again in a scowl and he growled as he withdrew hastily from you.

 “Then this will be your last word between us, also” he spat, retracting himself and twisting his form away from you. He turned his back on you, leaving you to stare at the floor. He did not talk anymore and seemed to have sought out refuge in the momentary silence. He just stayed still, his shoulders tense acting as a barrier between you and him.

You threw a despondent gaze at his form, presuming that this might have the end of the argument.

“I will call HP for you” you simply stated.

“May you have a beautiful day. So long, Dio”

This was the last word you said and to this he seemed to react.

“Don’t use those words.  Those greetings are for those who mutually feel happiness in the chance of an upcoming reunion. We do not belong to that category”

This was what he barked at you, showing only half of his face from the position he was accommodated in. The only visible eye he left for you to witness gleamed infuriately.

“And just for further references, Joestar” he warned, while you were in the midst of closing the door “Keep an eye open.  You never know when the lying dog you’ve decided to disturb is going to bite”

What was this? A promise of further taunting on his part? A threat? Probably a warning. You saw the way he was glaring at you from behind the shoulder and his glare mixed with the one you sent him trough the crack of the door before effectively closing it, sealing it shut and make whichever other signal of Diego’s resentment he would have sent you reverb back to him.

Once closed, you pressed your shoulders to the surface of the door and exhaled a little. You could not believe you had meet him again. Him, your old friend Dio, your old rival Dio, the Dio with the eyes of the sky. Now they were chilling as the North windy, just as beautiful as they used to but not shining of the same brightness you recalled grazing his soul. And sweet was their memory, the memory of a time where this conflict was nothing but a simple word instead of reality.

The carriage ride  to return to Hot Pant’s dwelling was a rather taciturn one. You discretely kept looking out of the window hoping for your languishing mood to not be too visible, but the gloomy aura in which you were sulking in recalling your meeting with Diego was far much more noticeable. Hot Pants, looking at you sideways and extremely perceptive as always, wanted to try to confront you about it in attempt to break you out of this invisible shell in which you had sank. It seemed her attempt to make you reconcile had not been fruitful in the slightest: she had thought that whatever had invested both you and him could have been resolvable by talking it out, however it seemed like the matter had much problematic quality. She did feel like a bit of complicit of your sour mood, but for how brash and crude her methods were, they had been geared with only the most positive of wills behind them. Hers was tough love and she had acted because she had thought that by conversation you and Diego could have rekindled, therefore she had tried in her own way to give you the right push in order to improve a situation. She didn’t know exactly what to say because she wasn’t very good sharing words of comfort, she was more of a listener – that it is, when she was actually was interested to listen – and didn’t want to add insult to injury.

 “I never knew you were familiar with Diego” she started, trying to approach the question at a safe distance.

 “It’s a long story…” you trailed off.

“One that you wouldn’t like to recall right now, I imagine” she observed. You dreaded she could be a little irked by this but in her face there was not any trace of annoyance, instead you found  a little sympathetic smile to greet you, which was a rare sight since Hot Pants was usually stoic.

 “It’s alright. When you will feel comfortable enough to share, I will be glad to hear it”

You were grateful HP was able to read between the lines. You also pondered about her friendship with Diego. HP had briefly mentioned she had participated at the first edition before but you never had a proper conversation about the subject, nor had you the chance to ask her if had met Diego during the race. You had theorized she might have but you hadn’t expanded the thought more further than that general theory, even though now you wished you could have. And this detail resurged forth in your mind now that you knew about their correlation, therefore you guessed that Steel Ball Run could have been the theater of their first meeting.

“May I know how you meet him? Was it during the Steel Ball Run?”

“Exactly” she nodded “We happened to travel together in the last stages of the race”

 “And let me guess, he wasn’t very sociable”

“Rarely” Hot Paints said, frowning elegantly in focus as she recalled the events  “He did speak but he never shared any fact about him, he kept those to himself at most. Actually, I was quite surprised when he agreed to travel with me considered he was always traveling alone”

You couldn’t help but shake your head with a little smile. Typical of Diego, it seemed that some sides of him had remained integral.

 “He’s brilliant in every aspect but he’s not really as skilled at befriending people as he is in racing” she concluded, straightening her shoulders a little. You agreed with her, that seemed to be a loyal portrayal of Diego. Not by chance you had always been the more friendlier of the pair.

The rest of the ride was spent in mutual silence. When the carriage stopped in front of Hot Pants’ residence, you both descended and she bid you goodbye for the night.

The next morning was the last day of your staying and since you would be traveling by train in order to return home, you had to leave early. Hp, akin to a morning bird, was already waiting for you by the door when you stepped outside the corridor. It had came the moment of your farewell.

“Try to not pay too much mind to what happened yesterday, alright?” she said, already knowing you would gallop back to your memories of the previous meeting with Diego in the journey back home. You nodded to her words and even if you knew it would have been a hard task, you tried to welcome her invitation. She smiled a little to this and nodded back.

 “Then I will see you at the end of the week for the fair” she concluded “Have a safe journey back home”

At the mention of the event, your sourness sobered up. It would be Hot Pants’ turn to travel too the next time because the event she had mentioned and that you intended to visit with her was positioned halfway the itinerary from the place you live to hers. What would have taken place was one of the biggest county fairs and it was quite popular: it featured different joyrides, spectacles, entertainments and stalls that sold all type of merchandise, really. There would have been even some horse shows too and you were both looking to watch together.

After that conversation, you bid her goodbye and entered inside the carriage that would have taken you to the station and in which your suitcase had already been positioned aboard. You waved to HP as the carriage started to move and as you positioned your head backwards and finally relaxed a little, your mind instantly wandered to Diego. Even if you had told yourself to try to not think about what had happened between you two, it was an advice you didn’t seem very adamant in following.

How many years had passed… he had changed and at the same he hadn’t. You had not slowed down to observe him for how sudden your meeting had been, but now that you pondered about it more calmly  he did look just breathtaking . His beauty was heart wrecking but his eyes were cold, freezing even. They had always gleamed in a shade of cyan so crystalline that seemed to be made of the same supernal substance in which dreams were crafted: he had stolen the colors of the sky and it was extremely difficult not lose yourself inside them. Yet you recalled his eyes irradiate a certain semblance of comfortable warmth, while now they just pinned you in place scorching your skin with its icy bite. Now he sported these glacial thorns around his being, thorns that used to be much more nuanced in the past. You recalled how his personality had shifted after his mother’s death: he had become more standoffish but it wasn’t at the level he had displayed to you in that instance. There had been indeed a change. Somehow there was a very distant glimmer of kindness in his features, however it radiated such a cold aura while the more welcoming one had been long abandoned. Just how much had Diego changed?

With such thoughts in mind, you arrived at the station and boarded inside the cabin. The train ride would have taken some hours and since you had not slept many hours prior to your early awakening, you dozed off with your head next the window. You didn’t even register when you felt asleep.

You found yourself in a green field and you recognized which place you were seeing before your eyes. It was the same meadow in which Diego would take you sometimes, the one you had noticed that looked awfully familiar to the painting you had seen in Diego’s mansion. Now everything clicked in place like a puzzle: he had actually hung up a painting depicting one of the places that had been the scenery of par of his life and those memories he still conserved and not discarded. There it was even the old weeping willow where you and him used to sit to watch the stars in the summer nights where the skies were clear and transparent like Diego’s eyes.

Then you twisted your head and found a silhouette of a woman sitting near the roots of the tree, an individual who had not been before and that had materialized out of thin air. As you approached gingerly, you recognized her who she was instantly because she had met you before and your eyes widened when she pointed her eyes at you and waved at you.

“Hello,  dear (Y/N)” she simply stated, smiling towards you with a glow only a ethereal being could possess.

“Mrs… Mrs. Brando, is that you?” you responded, crouching down to her height I order to speak with her. You were flabbergasted to receive the visit of Diego’s mother in your dreams, you had never seen her appearing before. You had dreamed about Nicholas, Diego, the landscape of your youth… but this beautiful soul who kept burning you with her equally beautiful smile had never ventured in your dream world before.

She nodded at your comment, confirming her identity. Then she gestured towards the space in front of her, as if she was inviting to take you a seat beside her. Of course you obliged her without letting a second more.

“I am so glad to see you again”

“I am glad to see you, too” she nodded to you with a kind smile. It was so nostalgic yet at the same time transferred security. There were also so many things you wanted to ask her. And, after all, this was a dream so no matter how weird the situation was, it would exist only on the subconscious realm. But almost as she could read your intention to extend those questions to her, her expression changed in a light frown when she stated that her time with you was limited.

“I really would like to stay here and discuss all these years with you, but sadly we don’t have much time” she said, almost as she knew you would woke up anytime soon “I came here in your dreams because I would like to dispel your worries and possibly, even share a glimpse of the future with you”

“A glimpse of the future?” you repeated after her, quite baffled. So, was this a prophecy of the sorts? She was quick to provide an answer to your doubts.

“You have been pondering whether joining the race. And for the question you’re seeking I would like to unveil what the embroidery Fate has weaved is pointing towards to”

In hearing this statement, your attention was sharply on her as she illustrated the content of her speech.

“If you participate, you will reclaim a prize you lost from the past” she started, accompanying her words with articulate care.

“But in this journey you will not travel alone. My dear Dio… “ she whispered, a pang of utter dismay in her eyes as she closed them and then opened again “…he will be part of it and if you join the race you will be both extremely rich afterward”

The way she had pronounced her son’s name sounded like a melody of a lamentation, a  languishing dirge reminding her of her bereavement and of the furrow that sadly divided her from her own blood. Diego’s mother donned the eyes of sufferance and guilt would be opalescent in them, housing that  pool of chagrin in which she sank for the fact Diego had to walk alone that road that they would have had to walk together. You could visibly ascertain the fact she wished to see him again.

And why mention Diego totally out of the blue? It seemed also that Diego would have crossed paths with you again: this would have taken place at the race, therefore he could have been planning to join to this edition too. It was something that could have been highly plausible for him to do, taken note of the fact he could have wanted to try again. What remained to discover was to what degree this crossing point would have expanded: if Diego was to join just like you, he would have been no easy competition and you supposed he would have no qualms in labeling you as a foe.

Then she seemed to gather her thoughts again and continue her speech.

“But you have to stay cautious. Dio’s heart  has teeth and claws now. You will have to be careful to not be wounded by them” she continued, allowing her hands to move as he had just presented to you an intricate problem to resolve.

“This is what could happen if you decided to go forward. As you know Fate offer us opportunities and chances in our path but it is us who ultimately decide what to do with them”

Yes, she was not wrong. Fate might predispose the structure of our vessel of existence in which we travel, but it is us who ultimately decide whichever content in it it’s going to be filled with. It might happen for Fate to insert elements based on fortuity, and of these opportunities that are served we can distrust, ignore or seize. And you, what were you going to do with this chance Fate was proposing to you?

Diego’s mother looked up in that moment, almost like she knew that the time at her disposition had expired. Then she looked at you and smiled with a sweetness you would keep recalling even days after this dream.

 “The choice is yours, (Y/N). I know you will make the right one”

And this statement had shook you even more because it sounded extremely similar to what Hot Pants had said earlier. What exactly was happening?

You could only bow your head in a sign of confirmation before being yanked out from the world of dreams from a slight hard braking. You found yourself pressing your cheek toward the cold surface of the glass, realizing only a moment after that you had fallen asleep while leaning against it. Your head was still spinning from the dream, trying to conciliate the sensation of the cold glass with the dizziness left by your sudden awakening.

You tried to recall the words of mrs. Brando’s statements and started to inquire about them. So had it this been a premonitory dream?

And what it did this prophecy mean with the expression “extremely rich”? Were you going to win one of the prizes along with Dio? And what did mrs. Brando mean when she had said you would have acquired a prize from the past? You had lost many things in the past, so to which prize was she referring to? Was it a prize you had lost in one of your racing competitions? Did she mean your legs? Did she mean your career as a jockey? Or did she mean your bond with Dio? And since she had talked about the race, was it only the physical Stell Ball Run or was she referencing to a journey which held a even profounder meaning? Moreover, why had she mentioned Dio if your doubts had inquired only about a participation that concerned only you? What was his role in all of this? And the bit about you both being rich… So, would this race been beneficial for him only on the economical sense of was is there something more, too? Was there a cryptic veiled reason for which your joining could have been beneficial to him, if that had been the case? And if yes,  how come?

Then, to whom  exactly had been this dream addressed to? Was it only for yourself? For him?

Then, the train halted again and from your purse scattered a particular object that directly fell in your lap, almost as an answer to your question. It was your wallet and as it fell in your lap, it folded horizontally, showing the only memento you had left of your connection with Diego: it was a portrait that you had taken at the fair once and it belonged to a couple of portraits you two had gotten drawn. It was the only proof you had the one of the other and if this wasn’t for this pair of portraits hadn’t existed, one might have doubted your bond with Diego had ever existed at all. The portraits were anything elaborate or fancy, no overcomplicated design and your presentation was very linear, but accurate and graceful just the same. No, it was no more than a simple depiction of you both but it  did reason with the feeling of your bond with Diego at that time, which was something that now could have not been said now.  The one version he had requested was extremely serious, while yours was the goofiest version of it. The most incredible thing was that he had actually staid still in order for the artist to engrave that memory to the paper. You doubted he had kept his version, he had probably tossed it or even burned it to cinders by now.

Unlike Diego you did not ruminate resentfully on the past. You did not refute it, you just coexisted with it. You had folded the portrait and put in your wallet, along the other personal belongings you took with you when you moved around or traveled. Perhaps you shouldn’t have brought along with you if you wished to leave the past behind like you had resorted to do, but in the end it was one of the few good memories you had and seeing it did not bring forth negative feelings. It was not a caustic pain, it was the bittersweet, the perfect combination between the sweet pain of nostalgia and the sting inferred by the lamentation of the past.

So, for it was? For him? For you?

“It’s  for the both of us” you concluded as you gazed nostalgically at the portrait, silently tracing the lines engraved in it and sighing to yourself. 

Maybe it was an invitation to do it for yourself and for Diego both, for the memory of what had been and for the promise of what could have become. Finding that souvenir did feel quite coincidental, though, and now the actual possibility of you joining was painstakingly being welcomed even more on your mind. As the train started its course again, you wondered exactly which path you should have taken as you reclined back on the seat, trying to find some peace even though it was quite difficult. First Hot Pants’ proposition, the meeting with Diego, your strange dream and now this. Exactly, were did this trail of coincidence point to? If did feel like Fate was trying to communicate with you, nearly propelling towards the prospect of joining the race. But could you really have done it? And  with one of the most talented jockeys inveterate against you? This sounded like a challenge and surely your determination could have aided you quite well in tackling it, but would you have seized the opportunity?

At this point the thing that occupied your mind was no longer the duration or the intricateness embedded in the experience of the tournament.

What occupied your mind the most was Diego.

The next day, when you arrived at the fair, it was still quite early from the time you had agreed on with HP for the meeting. While waiting for her arrival you decided to explore the area a bit. The fair was full of colors and the happy chatter of the bystanders saturated the festive air, as you ventured inside the area between flamboyant booths, joyrides and music. It really felt like a cozy change of scenery in contrast to the one of the city and this is one of the details that you had grown to enjoy while living in the rural area. The peace and the quietude that came from being enclosed inside Nature’ embrace, the sunshine and the warmth of the fields. In a sense it sounded nostalgic, but living in the edge of the populate zone really did offer some sense of comfort.

As you explored, you notice a paddock which housed some horses. In a instant, the thoughts of the race resurged and as you went further, the curiosity to approach it went further with you also. Therefore you decided to glance a little towards the horses that were fenced in, just out of your curiosity. Your feelings towards the race were still quite confused, yet the prospect of joining didn’t sound so alien anymore. Perhaps you could have really found a way to ride comfortably, as Hot Pants had suggested? And perhaps there could be the chance of it being not so unrealistic as you had previously dreaded it could be?

As you wondered these questions you kept scanning the enclosure, till something caught your attention. There was a horse between the ones that were inside the paddock that had caught your focus: it was a horse who stayed relatively distant from the fence where other horses would gather from to time pushed by curiosity of observing the bystanders. You kept looking, studying how the horse in question kept leisurely ruminating his hay, uncaring about what his fellow horses engrossed themselves with. You found it to strangely funny and you neared the fence, interested in him.

“Here to buy a horse, madam?” said a voice close to you. It was the horse seller and it seemed he had caught up with the fact you had been glancing at the horses for quite some time.

“Oh no, for now I am just looking around” you told him with a small nod.

“If you have any question, feel free to ask right away. I have so many beautiful horses here on this paddock that I am certain could fit your tastes”

“Somebody like that horse, for instance” he said, pointing towards a horse that was near your position “He’s very mature and experience, collected and peaceful…”

And there he went proposing some of the horses he thought you could like, probably trying to see if you could be interested in a eventual purchase.

“What about her? She’s two years old, incredible stamina, wonderful endurance…” he kept listing the attributes of his horses “Or maybe you could be interest in this one? She’s extremely docile and kind in nature”

“Or maybe a more energetic horse? This one can run at an incredible speed!” He finished, patting one of the horse that had neared the fence near your position.

“They all sound lovely” you nodded to him with a smile. He still hadn’t mentioned the horse you had been eyeing before and this made you even more curious.

“But… May I know more about that horse? He seems different from the others”

“Which one, madam?” asked the man, glancing right and left in order to locate exactly the horse you were referring.

“Him” you said simply, moving your head in the direction of the horse “The one staying in the opposite side of the fence”

The seller followed the direction you were pointing to, but had to take a double take when he understood exactly to which horse you were referencing.

“All but not him!” he exclaimed, a vein of aggravation in his voice “He’s not  the ideal, madam. I know it goes against my own interest as a seller, but I wouldn’t recommend him even to my worst enemy! He has such a petty personality. He’s solitary and he’s a scamp , let alone he doesn’t listen to a word I say! He may be a horse but he’s as stubborn as a mule! ”

“Reminds me of someone” you reflected, chuckling a little.

As you listened the negative description of the horse, you tilted your head studying him. The more you stared the more you felt sympathy for this grumpy horse and a small smile blossomed in your lips.

“I like him” you declared.

“Are you serious, madam?!” the seller burst out, incredulous you would deem the horse interesting “Unless you like lost causes this horse will be extremely difficult to tame”

But you had no fear. Even the most stubborn or refractory of the horses could be befriended if you gave their right times, spaces and allowed them to see for who you were. This was a trait you had picked up from Diego and upon inspecting how naturally magical his ability to interact with horses was – treating them almost like they had always been friends - you had understood that a good ingredient to form a connection could be presenting yourself to the horses with gentility and being present in the moment. Diego did exactly that, he reserved extraordinary kindness to the treatment of horses, perhaps more than he would ever bother to reserve to a human. And in a way it did make sense because horses had never ignored his presence or rejected him like his fellow humans had. But even before his mother’s death Diego interacted and coaxed horses with such spontaneity that it was almost striking how pliable their interest was when he entered their field of vision. They would come on their own natural volition to him and his hands almost seemed to cast an incantation on them.

With this horse you didn’t know exactly what would have determined the cogency of your bond, but you wanted to try just the same. So you circumnavigated the fence till reaching a point where you could approach the horse diagonally from the side and towards his shoulder so he could see you effectively coming towards him. He had rose up and part of his muzzle was outside the fence. You spoke to him to get him acquainted with the fact you were approaching.

“Hello there” you greeted him with a smile. The horse moved his ears towards the direction of your voice and craned his neck in a way that would allow him to see you. He stalled a little taking you in and then, without even giving you the time to put an hand in front of you in order to wait for him to come investigate, he withdrew backwards and calmly turned away from you. It seemed he was not interested.

And then…

 “Well, well. Are my eyes deceiving me or it is really lady Joestar in the flesh? ” you heard beside you and that voice was enough to send your mind in a wild flurry of surprised thoughts “We haven’t seen each other for years upon years and now, all of a sudden, we met again. And twice in the same week. Isn’t that extremely surprising?”

He pondered, using that derisive tone that characterized every statement of his. Of all people you could meet in all the city, it had happened to be him yet again. It was Diego.

He sauntered confidently towards you, holding a subtle aura of menace and a self assured accent to his mannerism. He seemed too have descended directly from your thoughts about him and positioned himself near you, hovering a little over you. He seemed to have come to you with the purpose to not simply talk, but to provoke you and the way he kept  looking at you gave it away.

 “Dio” you acknowledged him tentatively, uncertain if he was there to cause a scene.

 “I didn’t know you would be present here today”

“You never asked” he said, flashing a smirk towards you. You eyed him suspiciously, pondering about what had he just said. He had strutted there all daring and intimidating and now he really wanted to joke?

“Oh, come on, don’t look at me like that” he rolled his eyes, waving you off  “I was just joking, nothing more”

You still looked at him a little uncertain about which real motivation was concealed behind his real intention to speak with you: had he came to you just to greet you civically or was he there to cause a scene? If the first scenario had been true it would have indeed strange considered he seemed still hell-bent on despising you, but very much more welcome than the latter.

“ Let me guess, you are wondering what I am doing here” he said, tilting his head a little and putting a hand on his hip.

As always, his power of analysis was uncanny. Yes, you were quite baffled. You didn’t expect someone as notorious or famous as him to randomly emerge from the crowd and come to see a county fair.

“I am here apparently for the same reason as you, I came to see the fair”

That was another start. You would have expected him to invest his leisure in other activities just as you would have expected for him to spend his time inside some aristocratic salons, therefore meeting him came as a unexpected surprise. It seemed he still authentically enjoyed the equestrian world and enjoyed having fun: this side of him still to seemed still intact too. Even when he had all of this power he hadn’t still stopped to race and this was ascribable to the fact equitation wasn’t just a mere tool to obtain fame. While it was true his magnificent aspiration was fueled by his personal revenge against society, it was also true that he did enjoy racing and horses genuinely.

It was one of those few things that managed to garnish his existence with happiness. When he was on the saddle his horse would become an extension of himself and he would feel as he was one and the same with the wind and with the sky. His existence was no more stranded on limits dictated by what he owned and what not, he just existed and he could fly everywhere he could want. He had been wingless once, but trough his horse he could have the wings to fly up above and become the eagle who soars in the sky, a symbol of dominance over other birds and a symbol of boundless freedom.  Through racing he reclaimed his visibility and his consciousness of existing in reality: it was his vessel of identity. It was extremely freeing to him and he wanted to make a point, to prove that he existed. It wasn’t a result exclusively imputable to his own desires of fame, but he truly wanted to be seen. He had passed so much time being invisible that now he hankered to reclaim his right to exist.

 “And while you were here snooping around, you grew curious about the possibility of buying a horse, is that correct?”

Another point to Diego. You stared bewildered as he put piece by piece together just with a mere glance. Then he surprised you where his tone changed and it became more serious.

“What do you plan to do with it?” He inquired “You wouldn’t certainly be planning to enter the anniversary edition of the Steel Ball Run, is it?”

“Yes, I have been pondering whether entering the competition” you confirmed, still uncertain about the reason why he was there interrogating you.

“And if I do, I  intend in fighting just as any other contestant” you concluded, as a result of witnessing his expression change from questioning to mocking after your previous comment.

“This is quite ludicrous” he smirked then, shaking his head and closing his eyes like you had told him the most humorous of the jokes “I’ll tell you what, I will give you a financial advice that will certainly play to your benefit. It’s better for you to not squander your money in a purchase that will prove itself to be completely useless”

 “What are you talking about?” you asked frowning, shaking your head.

“Isn’t it quite obvious? You are not going to win in the first place. As such participating and buying a horse is completely useless”

You grew irritated as what he was telling you. It was true that you were still pondering if joining or not still but the way he was framing his speeches seemed to point to the fact you had already to redesign even before trying.

“Don’t look at me like that. What were you thinking? That you would have actually stood a chance?”

 “I don’t see why I wouldn’t”  you bickered back “And I don’t understand your animosity either. Why there would be a problem with me being a competitor? Do you think  I would not  be capable to do it?” you inquired defensively.

Or better you knew why he would show hostility, but you weren’t doing anything wrong to him in that moment. Moreover it had been  him the one to come to you, not vice versa. You understood that seeing you could be frustrating, but at the same he couldn’t keep turn every meeting in a chance to argue. But you knew Diego and you guessed that if other interactions would have been likely to occur he would be aversive just the same.

“You completely misunderstand. I never doubted your capabilities and if anything, I respect and  look at them with caution and worry, to the point that even someone as great as me would feel concern” he seethed “I haven’t forgotten about how obnoxiously determinate you get when you are pursuing a goal, but not even your determination is going to be enough”

 “And this gives you permission to underestimate me?” you shot back and Diego stared at you for a second, a little puzzled by the backbone you were showing to him.

Then he just licked the corner of his lips, amused. He did enjoy challenges and you were providing him one just there. Some time had passed since one had dared to do what you were doing: he was used by now to anyone being amenable to his requests – more like orders -  that being so openly defied in his will brought a change of pace. He knew you could never defeat him – that much allowed him to actually enjoy the feeling of being challenged – and he could cut you enough slack just to fool you into thinking you could actually win.

“It might not but certainly it doesn’t give you one to overate yourself either, Joestar” he retorted, his smug grin following suit.

Then he was quick to add: “But I’ll have you know I would never underestimate you”

And that statement took you completely aback, striking you for how genuine it seemed to sound. Other people could have been fooled by the appearance but Diego could not be deceived, he was by far too observant and knew that there are no bounds to what anyone can achieve. The value and the potential of any one of us are endless and no one should have them preventively judged or presumed solely on the basis of appearances: to do it’s inconsiderate and unjust and Diego knew this. He had never underestimated you, never once in his life had he demoted you or doubted you couldn’t have achieved greatness. Perhaps someone could have assumed you couldn’t have done that because you struggled staying on the saddle due to your injury, but Diego knew the truth: a reminder to not judge a book by its cover and keep the mind open to all possibilities. Moreover he would not be injudicious and would always stay vigil around his potential opponents.

 “If there is someone that can win that’s undoubtedly you” he prosecuted “and it is appositely because I know that that I can’t underestimate you”

Diego was complimenting you in that moment and for how rare was to receive his eulogy, there was always the risk it of it being a blarney. Diego had aciculate claws to wallop his targets but also a silver tongue and  the ability to charm anyone around him wasn’t something he had ever lacked. For how high in the social chain he had been able to climb, it could have been plausible that he had to use this gift of eloquence quite often. You studied his expression meticulously and his words didn’t oscillate in the direction of something  concocted. His tone was genuine. So was he just trying to spite you?

“No, that’s not it” you rationalized as you pondered more about why he would try to stop you from participating.

“Diego Brando never loses” was something that had been grown to be labeled along his name. Therefore it was probably something linked with his need to see his control always guaranteed. The concept of seeing his crown besmirched by loss would have been seen as an heresy by him and the someone else effectively winning against him would be equalized as a sentence. Even coming second to him was not permitted. Yet Diego had already won the Steel Ball Run once and for how extremely prone you had always been to support his dreams, the way he was firing commands at you – like you owed obedience to him- didn’t quite meet your complete taste. Would have it hurt him if you tried your luck too? First, there was not guarantee you would have participated - let alone won - and second, you weren’t different from any other participant, so was he going to threaten others too? The Diego you recalled was one who took challenges as a stimulus to learn and grow, not like opportunities to crash opponents just for the sheer pleasure of it.

 You had always tried to support him at best to see his dreams becoming reality and if this situation would have taken anything away from him you wouldn’t have agreed with it, but he seemed to be wanting to participate not because he felt the true want in his heart or aspired to – as you recalled he did when he fantasized about becoming the best jockey ever known - but it seemed like he wanted to do it just for formality. There was no passion behind his claim, if not the one to assure himself with the warranty no one else would have succeed if not him and him alone.

You didn’t even know if you would have participated and yet, according to his words, you had to redesign before even trying beforehand. You decision hadn’t even been finalized yet and he was already mining it.  He wasn’t being very civil and his tone of voice resented levels of presumptuousness that you didn’t recall him grazing. Well, yes, he had always been haughty and autocratic even back in the day, but now it seemed like this side of him was much more prominent. How much of his personality remained and how much of it had ebbed after your farewell?

“No, you oppose me because you already won once. And now you plan to do so again in order to preserve your winning legacy, isn’t that right?”

“Mh” he scoffed “Even you can say something clever when you apply yourself”

“You guessed right. You won’t win because it’s clear as the light of the Sun that the victor is going to be I, Dio” he declared solemnly “ I won’t  allow the first place to be stolen from me, not from you, not from anyone”

Diego wanted to secure his winning legacy this time too: he was a symbol and while this position came with a gamma of perks, surely it had a fair share of responsibilities too.  What would happened if he was to lose and let someone waltz in steal his title? First, the thought was a heresy: Diego couldn’t lose because to lose was not an option. Second, he had to win. This time, however, there was not any flame of genuine care on his part. Sure, he loved to race but if in the first edition he had joined because he was propelled by positive feelings of wanting to prove his worth, this time he was joining merely to not lose his prizes and even to enjoy the sensation of people losing to him, if he had to be really earnest. He did enjoy quashing his adversaries and the sensation of being the first certainly pleased him. And then there was  the mild problem of rumors: he did not mind or dread them in the slightest, but he had to consider the fact they would have been produced if some interrogatives over his performance had arisen. If he wouldn’t have attended, people surely would have talked and asked themselves why he hadn’t shown up. And if he had lost, they would have started spreading whispers about the fact it was time for his to retire and that his jockey career was living in borrowed days, that he had mellowed and that his time had came to end up on the scrap heap of history, back to the oblivion from which he had fought tooth and nail to exit. He knew these rumors wouldn’t have major repercussions or that he wouldn’t have lost any of properties or power but this depiction was something he wouldn’t have wished to have branded to his persona. It was better to avoid this type of publicity and safeguard his image for what was possible.

“That it is, then. You are afraid to see your precious trophy being seized by someone else who isn’t Diego Brando” you fired back. Diego growled at this statement.

 “Tsk, don’t be such a blowhard” he seethed with a hint of mockery, getting a little bit closer to your face “Do you think you could ever faze me with these insolent insults of yours? Then think twice, Joestar. Your impudent words are nothing more but a mere source of entertainment to me”

Then his tone became even more stinging, as you maintained your frown in seeing how he was preparing for another verbal lunge.

“You better than anyone know that you are no competition for me. I won the race already one time and if we are talking about riding experience and endurance, it is obvious who wins the comparison. What makes you believe I will allow you to ever dream about winning?”

“Who said I dream on stealing your first place?” you shot back “If you think I was wondering about participating just to rain on your parade, I will let you know that’s not the case at all”

Once you may have felt inclined to renounce completely to the chance had you been an hindrance to him, but your partecipation in the competition could hardly have been deemed egoistical because  you wouldn't have joined with the intention to come first, which was what Diego wanted. It wasn’t as if your participation could be detrimental to him at this point, no more than the ones of the other competitors were. It was true that the first place was made only for one, but you had never said that you wanted to come first at all costs, even other positions would have been okay because the prizes were generous enough to allow you to collect enough money. You might not have acquired the total amount of money required for the operation and the expenses of the clinic, but even if it  would have been partial it was much better than anything and you would have been a little closer to your goal.

Diego could keep his precious first prize if that was all he cared about, you didn’t care about taking that away from him. Not only because you still felt connected to that selfless that you had always manifested in the respect of his dreams, but also because the first prize wasn’t your main aim in the slightest.  It was true that you were there primarily for the money, but you weren’t there to dethrone Diego of his status of winner. You would have tried your best and even if might not have been enough against opponents as mighty as Diego, but this was your artillery and with this you would have tried to climb the mountain. Therefore when he had forbidden you to participate beforehand, you had felt hurt by the prevarication. 

You weren’t asking much if not the chance to try. If anything, you should have been the one to be intimidated by the stature of your competitors and Diego was the first of that line. Had he forgotten who he was? He was Diego Brando, basically a living legend, by far one of the most skilled and fearsome jockeys out there and out of all the contestants he choose to focus on you?  It did not make any sense, moreover if you considered how long your hiatus as a jockey had been. Diego never feared anyone and that much was ascertained but the fact he would actually take part of his time to admonish you suggested that Diego wasn’t discarding your skills as you had first believed.

“Then you intend to join in order to gather money for the operation. It is for this reason?” he asked suddenly. He caught you off guard with that statement and you stilled, because of course that was one of the reasons why you wanted to join. The other one was collecting enough money to help the expenses of the clinic and perhaps there was even a third one: you could use the race as a personal chance and trial to see how far you could go.

You still walked aided by the cane so it was accessible that you hadn’t received the surgery  in the end. He knew about the surgery  and he could still remember how your yes had sparkled when you had told him that there was a sliver of hope you could return to walk again.

For a moment his eyes softened and you couldn’t read any trace of malice behind them. It was as if the part of him that had been your friend wanted to reach out, to connect back, to relieve you from the pain.

And then he remembered what his vocation was: vengeance. You weren’t different from any other individual belonging to the wretched crowd he had encountered and would eventually keep encountering since to him everyone was rotten.  And he wasn’t entitled to feel any type of mercy or compassion for anyone. You were no longer a friend of the past, you were a foe of the future. With the passing years it seemed only obvious to him that your core would have been more corrupted and your heart hardened as his had become. You were no longer his companion. No longer.

And why would he have liked to know, you wondered? Was it just to taunt you further? From the way he had been treating you it seemed that would have been his only motive. So you hesitated, but then decided to be vague in order to not give him more leverage to keep this mockery alive. 

“I have… I have my motivations” you simply stated.

“Regardless of what they might be, I don’t care about them”  he seethed, back to his vituperation “I am stating how it’s going to end to make sure you won’t get any funny ideas about winning. Don’t ever think about it, Joestar”

"If you wish to stop me, then you will have to use much more than your though guy vocabulary, Dio”

“Right” he nodded “Allow me to show you a proof, then”

He watched you with seriousness, as if he really intended to demonstrate his point. He shifted his eyes towards the horse you had been interest in and moved. As he extended his gloved hand toward the shoulder of the horse, he immediately turned his head towards his direction and twisted his snout away from you. Diego remained still, allowing the horse to inspect his hand and soon enough, he closed the distance and leaned his head on his touch, which was the kick off for Diego to gently pat him rhythmically on the neck. It escalated to the point the horse gently rested its head on his chest  as a sign of comfort and sighed quietly in content. He had achieved what you had been trying to achieve from almost a hour and there was no point in denying that Diego had almost a divine talent with horses.

“So beautiful” he whispered to him with such calmness his voice tasted like velvet. And you agreed, every element of that scene was beautiful. The contrast with the sharp attitude he had been using against you till that moment was unmistakable and his courteousness made the horse nuzzle against his face and Diego smile a little in front of this gesture. And it wasn’t a venomous smirk, it was a real, genuine little smile plastered in his face. It was infolded in such wonder that you couldn’t help but stare in a mix of gawking and admiration. All his previous cruelness seemed to evaporate in front of the horse and seeing him enjoying this moment was such a rare sight, one that you had almost forgotten. It was candid in the essence of his character and in every gesture he performed with doting attention, you could recognize a evanescent flick of warmth between the cracks of his sternness.

Part of you was unsettled in seeing the horse changing his focus in such a fast manner, however you weren’t surprised in the slightest he would do. The moniker “the magic touch” didn’t pertain to the ability to coax horses that Diego had, rather the ability to relieve them from their pain. So it could happen for them to be a little stubborn or wary as you approached for the first time, but with the due time they would grow comfortable with you. 

However the other part of you stared at him fascinated as he demonstrated his natural connection with the horse. The interaction flowed with a level of naturalness and spontaneity that you had never seen someone display and it was really a sight to see. Indeed you had missed seeing him demonstrate such gift and the way he looked so at ease squeezed your heart with memories of the past. The way his eyes gleamed enameled in appreciation was the same way his eyes would gleam when you two were younger: that side of him had remained untouched and had never changed.

“See?” he attracted your attention to him again, his eyes hardening again as he gazed at you “Nothing changed from the past”

“Indeed” you agreed with him. It was true, his talent had remained immaculate and too much evident to be negated.

 “But don’t forget that I was a jockey like you…” you told him, before a memory of pain flashed before your eyes “once”

“Yet you never won, you always came second. Always behind the likeness of me, always the sour loser”

“I was not a sour loser and you know it! It was you who always pulled one of those stunts and surpassed every racer at the last round”

“And that’s exactly what will happen this time, too. Abandon this fruitless delusion, you will not win this race. And if you are still too foolish to persist, be aware that I will make sure you won’t win” he seethed, adding a more threatening nuance to  his last phrase “with any feasible mean”

“Dio! Here you are! Look at what I’ve bought!”

A voice interrupted your confrontation and it belonged to a beautiful girl, whom waltzed in the scene running to his side and snaking an arm around his own. She must have been one of his many flirts or fangirls.

The girl showed to Diego what she had bought and asked him if he liked it.

“Of course, my darling. You have such exquisite taste” he responded, smiling with such lushness it made you perplex you how his tone changed so much. It went from the galling one he was using with you to a much more refined and coaxing. It was strange because when Diego searched for a true connection with someone, he would be a little awkward about it. In front of you there was a man who spoke with such suavity and if he was willing to immerse himself inside this metamorphosis, it spoke volumes on how willing he was to push his limits in order to become even something he had never been, other than showing how capable he was at transforming and adapting. Now, if there was something he had learned was the fact that in society is how important is to appear rather than be and someone who is affable is much more liked than someone who is surly.

Therefore, he would include these accolades and niceties only and if they could be beneficial to him.  He had a sacred mission and this mission was vindicate the injustice suffered at the expenses of his dearest mother and  all the pain this world had imprinted on her innocent flesh. He would not forget the oblivion in which both she and him had been condemned to fall by the workers of the farm and their indifferent insouciance, ensconcing themselves behind a curtain of apathy and eclipsing them from their view. They would rotate their head away while his mother bleed her heart for his wellbeing, sacrificing her pain for his joy. He would not forget how despicable the heart of mankind is in its core, spurious and rancid, just as the heart of the man who had hijacked the cups him and his mother used to eat from.

Everyone had had a role in the birth of this collective monstrosity that had culminated into the loss of the light his mother had brought to the external world and his life, which had become obscure right in the moment her tired eyes had closed and her life had slipped away like a whisper in the night. And now that she laid solid in the bare earth, eternally frozen in that chasm in which she had been tossed, her memory bleed trough Diego’s mind every day.

His attention focus seemed to enraptured quite steadily in what this girl was telling him, barring the fact he did not really care about christening relationships with people in the slightest. And why would he? Why would a lion care about befriending sheep? Because humans were exactly like a herd of them, where one would go the others would follow. But not him. Diego in the flock had never fared because he had always had the mind to see behind the horizon, the hazard to push the limit of where his eye could arrive. And he had discovered that there was no limit that could tame his imagination, therefore there was no limit that could dictate what he could achieve or not. It was a sole man world and it was him against everyone. The man who wanted that was the man that he behaved as in order to maintain a good image, but inside he did not care. He was consecrated to his vengeance plan in such a way that the only love he could feel was for the instruments that would have aided him in his revenge. This plan of vengeance had completely enveloped him, it was his life and his blood, it was in the frequency of his heartbeat and in every breath he exhaled. His plan was a part of his entity and he would have kept this veneration alive.

He did frequent people from time to time, but he did it just because he had to. These pleasantries were decors for that façade he had used to build his success, outside of that he remained keen in his distaste. He kept them around because he wasn’t genuinely interested in them, he kept them around because they would feed their ego. They were just ornaments bejeweling his persona, a status symbol and a proof that he was well appreciated. However this didn’t mean that his interest was unattainable, just that his will to surround himself with people was born mostly from a mere societal obligation, not from a true desire of the human heart to not sojourn in isolation or be alone. He had raised as a lone wolf and as such he had learnt to rely only on himself: he did not research for companionship as hazardously as other people would have done. He ultimately trusted the only one who had always stayed loyal to him: himself.

His true image was the one that gleamed when he was on the saddle of his adored Silver Bullet, only when he was racing Diego was free to be his true self.

Then the girl  noticed that they were effectively not alone and that you had been there with them all that time.

“Is this a friend? Did I interrupt something…?”she mumbled softly, looking back and forth between you and Diego.

“Worry not. This is just an old acquaintance”  Diego reassured her hurriedly, gesturing towards you as if to present you to the girl. The words he had used to describe you had been whispered – almost seethed – and they were a clear reference to the way you had referred to him when you had met at the mansion.

“ We have sorted out everything we had to discuss and were just about to bid each other goodbye. Isn’t that right?” he said, concluding his speech through clenched teeth. It was his signal to go along his discourse.

“Absolutely. I  can see you are rather occupied after all” you shot back, remarking your last speech with subtle sarcasm, which was something that Diego was quick to catch up to as he glared in front of the fact you were being impertinent with him.

“And this old acquaintance wouldn’t wish to take away any second more of your precious time” you said , but Diego could detect you were using so much sarcasm that he couldn’t help but frown in front of your provocations.

“Have a wonderful evening” you mumbled with a quick nod as a sign of dismissing, only to brush almost close to Diego. He side eyed you furiously  and suspiciously at the same time, because he was already envisioning that you would have ended your statement with some sarcastic remark. 

“Oh, and Dio, just for future references “ you lastly said, twisting your head subtly referencing the Steel Ball Run and whichever eventual meeting point you could have shared with him. In all honesty you didn’t even know if you would have participated, but this statement could have been true wherever you would have meet him much like he had intended.

“Keep an eye open. You never know when the lying dog you’ve decided to disturb is going to bite”

You said, nodding towards the couple as a sign of dismissal with a slight smile, which was a masterpiece of so many nuances: it appeared to be daring and jovial at the same time, facetious but sinuously witty.  It was a smile that hid shrewdness yet it wasn’t sardonic, the perfect gateway for you to send your implicitly brazen provocation to the king of kings to play with you on the court. Diego recognized instantly to whom those words belonged to and it was unmistakable that you were rattling his cage in sending back his previous statements to sender. His face progressively twisted in a jubilation of annoyance and anger. He had to remain composed and sulk only internally, but inside he was livid.

At the same time he registered a feeling that had not visited him in quite some time, which was the thrill of the challenge. Had you actually the gumption to entertain the thought? Diego certainly couldn’t have you gallop away with his victory, therefore you were guaranteed to meet his resistance had you participated. He had caught that slight sarcasm in which your words were tinted and he was already speculating over the fact that his attempt to dissuade you wouldn’t have been triumphant in the slightest. His words wouldn’t deter you if you were really willing to commit to the quest, consequently he was already analyzing the concrete prospect of having to actually confront himself with you and with you a part of his past. Meeting you was source of turmoil to him and yet, at the same time, the prospect of having to measure forces with someone with whom he used to race didn’t fully upset him.

Now, you were usually calm on the daily but interacting with Diego had been by far too aggravating to be the point he had literally extracted these exasperatedly snarky remarks from you. Just like him, as you swam in the crowd of people looking for Hot Pants, you wondered about the race and if you would have joined in the end. If yes, there would have many preparations to sort out: first and foremost you needed to buy a horse. It had passed so much since the last time you had rode one. You even didn’t know if and how you could have effectively mounted it, considered the fact you could rely only on one leg. Maybe if the horse was to sit obliquely and with your legs on only one side?

Then you would have to make a list of which supplies bring with you in order be the most swift as possible. And how would the people around you react? Hot Pants seemed to have pushed in favor of this route quite more than you would expect from a person of few words as her. There was the doctor who had followed your rehabilitation process and later employed you: he had always been a proactive man with a propositional attitude geared towards constructiveness, therefore you surmised he would have probably supported you in this new adventure, conceded that you didn’t strain your legs too much. And your father? Would have he even cared? And would he have celebrated you if, and only if, had you been even remotely able to effectively seize one of the prizes? Would he have been happy had you came back?

“As if that could happen“ you sighed bitterly in your thoughts “If anything, he would throw a celebration if the opposite was to occur”

And to cap it all remained Diego. He was by far the negative force that had openly opposed this possibility, reiterating his disapproval in a loop in which you did not want to be confined. Something about the way he had presented himself and the aura of your recent conversations did bring a haze of preoccupation over you. He had come to you with words of challenge and was already waging war, a sign that corroborated the fact and that he really saw you as an opponent and that he intended every singe syllabe when he had claimed he was not going to look down on you, just as he had told you. His words had not been a simple derision then, but a sign of the fact he wasn’t underestimating you in the slightest and that you were under his radar. Not to say you minded the attention but you had never won against him and you doubted you would have started now, therefore what he was the reason of his urgency? Since when a wolf had to worry about being eaten by a lamb?

The image he had painted  inside your mind using his contemptuous sentences as brushes and his brashness as tempera was one that retained some of his previous character traits while adding  a general varnishing of haughtiness. 

He had conserved a certain aplomb, but there was this coat of gelidity he wore that didn’t use to be so enhanced as it appeared to be. He was even more guarded and aloof, almost as if the only world he need to inhabit was the one that was entrenched in the foundations of his soul and of which gates you had been able to open sliver by sliver in the years in which both you and Diego had entangled your lives the one with the other. However that unreachable secluded area – his private garden, his secured soul – was now hermetical, omitted and occulted in the meanders of his entity and forever it would remain, shielded against the rabid fangs of a pitiless world that had ripped everything from him and ripped him too in the process. And against whichever hand that dared to even come close a sliver to his entity, he would retaliate by elevating palisades that would touch the sky of his cosmos,  guarding his once hopeful heart with vines of sharp thorns and keeping it sealed shut with lock and key. In this sanctuary you had been once allowed to wander but now the gates to Diego’s pith were was shielded and bulwarked.

You wondered exactly how much of the Diego you had known still remained and how much of him had dissolved. What remained of that beautiful bond you had shared with him, how much of it had completely decayed under the embers of a past mutually grieved and shared? Was it better to preserve its memory or integrate the new acquisition? And was it better if you buried it deep in the country field or if you packed it with you along the belongings you would have brought with you in the race?

And you thought about the green fields in England, sweet was the memory of you and Diego running freely on them, sweet was the melancholy their echo left in your memories.

Sweet was the enigma, the one you would have to find an answer to. So…

which is sweeter? Love or its loss?