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Seventeen had been hard.
Twenty had hurt
Twenty-one had felt impossible.
But now, on the morning of his Twenty-second birthday, a strange realization settled over him.
He'd outlived them all.
Giorno watched swirls of pink sink down the drain as he washed last night's sins from his hands. He hadn't slept in almost 28 hours. Couldn't. He was haunted by the ticking clock, every second crawling closer to something he knew he didn't deserve.
He couldn't help but feel, even after all these years, that he'd stolen those moments. Grains of sand in the hourglass. The seconds, minutes, hours, days. Years that Narancia could have been happy. Years that Abbacchio could have spent with Bucciarati. Years that...
Oh. God.
Breathing labored, Giorno clutched the expensive marble sink. Gold filigree, painted angels on the ceiling, carved statues of biblical figures and Greek God's, this far too large bathroom was dripping with opulence. Far too much. Giorno was a simple man with simple taste, but he was a man with a role to play.
And play it well he did.
Until he didn't.
He shakily raised his head to stare at the stranger in the mirror. Black mascara ran under his eyes. The shadows under his lash line, either from smudged makeup or lack of sleep, reminded him of a skull. His cheeks were pale, hollow. He was missing meals again and it showed.
He raised a far too steady hand to flick a droplet of blood from his chin while his tongue darted out to catch the red at the corner of his mouth. Some of it was his, but not all. He lost track of which stains were which. It didn't matter. The red was all the same.
Slowly, he cupped his hands under the stream of water, collecting the droplets like jewels, watching them slide free from his fingers. Like sand through the glass. Seconds. Minutes. Hours. Days.
Years.
He flung the water at his face, let it slide down, melting his makeup away. He stared, let it drip, imagining his flesh falling off. The false face he wore, his mask, disintegrating.
He'd only been fifteen. Where was that fifteen year old now? Where was his dream?
"My fucking dream," he scoffed under his breath, angrily pulling the three curls free at the front of his forehead. He ran his manicured fingers through the strands, letting them hang messily over his eyes. It wasn't any better. No matter how long he stared, no matter where he looked, he couldn't find a single trace of Giorno Giovanna, the boy with a dream.
His breath hitched, eyes misted.
No.
He wouldn't cry. Crying was useless and he hated useless things. Like this bathroom, the hideous angels, the garish gold details.
Was this what you died for, Bucciarati? Did I sell Abbacchio out for some filthy money? Did I let Narancia die on that gate for my dream, or for a nice bank account?
Angrily, he shoved his curls back. From the corner of his eye, he saw the image of his father in the mirror. The older he got, the more he resembled the photo of him.
Appropriate, Giorno thought, glaring at his reflection in disgust. Turns out, I'm a monster too.
His eyes fell on the gold zipperpull he wore on his lapel. A reminder. Every day he would carry his sins. Keep him alive even after his body failed. A morbid reminder of what he'd done, forcing his Capo to occupy a corpse, to die in slow motion, aware but unable to even feel his body fall to pieces. It was a ghost that haunted his every waking moment.
But at night, in his nightmares, Bucciarati's decaying corpse watched him with maggot-filled eyes.
Giorno turned off the water and bent over the sink again, feeling his stomach leap. He wanted to be sick, but there wasn't anything in his stomach to force up this time. Instead, he dry heaved, imagining the decomposing bodies of his friends- no. Allies. He couldn't even call them friends. That was how little time he'd had.
But to Mista, to Fugo, they weren't just friends. They had been family.
And I took that.
They'd been stepping stones at the time to Giorno. Tools. Pieces on a chessboard. All for the sake of his noble dream.
And to this day, when he looked at Mista, he could see the void he had created within his soul. When he spoke to Fugo, there was a sorrow where there once had been rage.
And when Giorno looked at himself he saw...
Nothing.
He snatched a towel and wiped his face, scrubbing until his patchy foundation vanished, leaving his flesh red and raw.
Twenty-two for only thirty minutes and already he felt the weight of time on his shoulders.
How much more do I have? He couldn't help but wonder as he tilted his head this way and that, noting a crease on his forehead, the beginnings of worry lines. How many seconds? Minutes? Hours? Days? Years?
He threw the ruined towel onto the sink and touched the zipperpull lapel pin, carefully removing that first, as he did every night. He let the weight of it sit on his palm, wondering if Bucciarati would know he was sorry.
Giorno didn't know if there was a heaven, not in the way that Mista just knew there was a Heaven, but Giorno liked to imagine there was. He liked to imagine they were there. He liked to imagine they knew. Sometimes he liked to imagine they were proud of what he'd done, what he'd built.
"How many more birthdays do I have in me?" He wondered out loud, staring at the pin in his hand. "How much longer until I get to see you?"
He hoped it wouldn't be too many more. He was so tired. Maybe at the end, he would finally know if it was worth it.
As he closed his eyes for the night, he tried one more time to find a single trace of Giorno Giovanna. In the space between sleep and death, he heard himself whisper to the last bit of himself still in there. A child, shaking and alone in the darkness.
"Happy Birthday, Haruno."