bakerstreet | The Train to the Afterlife

The Train to the Afterlife

Maybe you know how, maybe you don't. Perhaps the memory is fuzzy, or perhaps it's crystal clear down to the look in your comrades' eyes. Maybe it was your time; you've done all you wanted to. Or maybe you weren't at all ready to go, maybe you went out kicking and screaming - but none of it matters. You know you're dead, and the train is taking you to an afterlife. Perhaps an afterlife of your choice; you might've earned that heaven. Or perhaps you've earned something else entirely.

It'll be a bit of a journey, though, so you might as well take your time and talk to the other people in your coach. Death knows no place: most of them are strangers, even from faraway worlds. But death knows no time either, so who knows, some of them may be people you know, even if last you knew, they were alive - or long gone.

Oh look, here comes the snack cart.

All the usual:
•Post with your character's name and canon in the subject line.
•Said character is now dead for whatever reason - canon, AU, what have you. They are on a train with other dead people from many other times, places and worlds.
•Characters don't know for a fact where they're headed - just a general awareness that they're going to some kind of afterlife. Whatever they think it is is up to the player.
•This meme is built especially for cross-canon interaction, and potentially for threadjacking and group threading - if you're interested, may be a good idea to state as much in your subject line.
•Tag around and play nice!
•TRIGGER WARNING: Meme obviously deals with death and may deal with other unpleasant themes as a result. Please be cautious.

Shamelessly lifted and barely changed from this.

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[His poker face is good; that doesn't mean it's infallible. And this is one of those rare times when it does indeed fail him, because whatever name he'd been expecting to hear (it could've been anything, and if he'd survived this night and this battle he'd have done his level best to find that person, whoever they might be, even if finding a single person in the entire world was worse odds than a needle in a haystack, he'd have found a way because he's so tired of being told that some things are simply impossible), it hadn't been Joseph Joestar.

And that leaves him with a whole new flurry of nagging questions that he probably doesn't have time to satisfy, because now there's the pressing-in demands of who is this person and how does he know Joseph Joestar and could it be someone else and he's in for a rude awakening, isn't he.

"Don't die." That's the message he wants delivered to Joseph Joestar.

Way to fuck it up again, Jiji.]

...Joestar?

[No. He has to know, now.]

Your friend...has the same name as my grandfather.

[It's the little things, Caesar will realize in a moment, quiet little Joestar things that resonate even down the lines of generations - and when did he become an expert on Joestars, anyway? How is this knowledge that he left the world with, the set of Joseph's jaw, the minute shifts of expression when he's angry or uncomfortable or scared, the way he stands when he doesn't know if he's looking at a friend or an enemy. There are tiny echoes of him in this boy (boy, he thinks, as if there's really that much difference in their ages), and when the words hit him, really hit him, he'll be weak.]

[For the moment, though, his mouth just opens slightly in confusion.]

Grandfather?

[Grandfather, he says, and that can't be right, because--]

No, no, he's younger than me. [He holds his hand flat a couple of inches above his head.] Dark hair, blue eyes, stupid look on his face. You can't miss him. [No missing him.] He never stops talking. [Loud as hell.]

[And then he seems to run out of words, because - grandfather. Jotaro is - seventeen, eighteen? Plus twenty or thirty years, depending, and that could end up at almost fifty, if Joseph somehow, miraculously started having children right away. Almost fifty years. Grandfather.]

[He doesn't know what to do with this, and it shows, his expression distant. Did it work? Did it honestly work?]

...

[Dark hair, blue eyes, stupid look on his face. He wants to say, "Is he the sort of person who'd pretend he knew how to ride a camel just because he watched a movie once", but no, if there's one thing this conversation is doing, it's making his stomach twist into strange knots — his grandfather might be dead, gone forever, and he's standing here struggling to describe the man to someone who might've known him decades ago (how? how can a meeting like this even be possible?) and he's not sure if he even remembers enough to do it. Maybe this is the penalty he's earned for always treating the old man with contempt, claiming impatience and begging off from family matters because he couldn't be bothered...

So he racks his brain, trying to think of something that could make a connection, and eventually a memory from years ago resurfaces, a far-off distant thing from a family visit, back when he was only a child.]

He'd do this stupid trick.

[He closes his eyes beneath the brim of his hat, stance shifting almost imperceptibly as he grasps for the memory, only managing to drag it back at all because of how infuriating it'd been to experience it at the time.]

"Next you'll say...", and then he'd know. It really pissed me off.

[That stupid trick. Caesar actually laughs, even though he doesn't feel like laughing, because how many times has Joseph pulled that stupid trick? He's sure he hit him for it once or twice, although all of a sudden he doesn't remember quite so clearly, because he's imagining Joseph pulling the same stunt with his grandson (grandson), some tiny version of this man standing in front of him looking overwhelmed and a little uncomfortable.]

That's Jojo.

[His voice is quieter now than it's been, very nearly hesitant. It's true. It really is.]

He's such a show-off. Even showing off to his own family. I don't know why I'm surprised.

[He's not, not really, except that he hadn't allowed himself to imagine the way that Joseph's life would spread out before him if he managed to live. In those last few moments, he was zeroed in on the immediate objective: get him through these days, let him live to the end of the month, and then . . .]

[Then what? It didn't matter, not really, at least not in any sense that Caesar had anything to do with. He'd be long gone. So he hadn't let himself think about it. And now it's so insanely, tangibly real that he feels a little hysterical.]

[Jojo, I don't mean to be greedy, but —

Weird. Unsettling. It's sort of a dumb nickname, one he's never really tolerated from many people, but the way this stranger says it, it comes out sounding almost the same even though he's talking about someone completely different.]

Who are you?

[The question he keeps to himself is why don't I know you, but that's one he can figure out for himself, a deduction in two parts. One is that this person, this young man practically his own age, is on this train with a message for Joseph Joestar at all, and the other is that he'd never much given matters of family the time of day, never cared, never asked.

If his grandfather is dead, does that mean the world's memory of this young man is going to be lost forever? Is there anyone left who knows who he is?

Maybe there needs to be one more.

And silently, he hopes that Dio's going to be extra cautious today, and give Star Platinum the excuse to leave him here a little longer.]

How did you get here?

[It sounds a little accusatory, although Caesar's fairly sure it isn't meant to be. This is an impossible situation, laced with pain, and even if Jotaro wasn't obviously a blunt person to start with, the fact that he's being waylaid while trying to find his friends (his dead friends; why so many of them?) is enough to make anybody curt.]

[Still, it makes Caesar pause. Is he intruding? Maybe he should just - recede into the crowd in the next car, let this boy find the people he's looking for and then get back to his life. Maybe by the time Jotaro wakes up, he'll have forgotten this entirely, and maybe that's for the best.]

[But Joseph's grandson (grandson) is asking him a question. He doesn't think he has it in him not to answer.]

My name is Caesar. Caesar Zeppeli. He was my friend. It must have been . . . a long time ago.

[Such a long time. Fifty years - long enough to have children, for those children to have children, for those children to grow and change and develop a sense of duty. To inherit, quite obviously, the legacy of the Joestar family, to walk through the bodies of friends and family to defeat some great, unspeakable evil. Caesar was part of that legacy, although he didn't mean to be, not at first. He had wanted to be separate, to divide himself and his family from the Joestars altogether.]

[Now all he wants is to tell Joseph how proud he is of him, how good it is, what he's done with his life, to scream at him for letting himself die when he's got family left behind that needs him (hypocritical; he knows, he knows).]

[Jotaro asks that second question, and Caesar just shakes his head.]

It's a long story. I don't think you have the time.

He's an old man now. Was. My mom is his daughter. Maybe you knew Grandma Suzie too, I don't know.

[They're short phrases, blunt facts forced out because he hates the feeling that's starting to creep over him — it's uselessness, if he has to put a name to it, a guilty sinking uselessness that this friend of the family is dead and apparently was important to someone, and he has nothing to offer.

Any second now, he might be gone, too. Back to a fight he never asked for, but that he has to win anyway.

His is a long story, too.]

...If I vanish, it's because there's a bastard back there I have to beat. He thinks I'm dead...so for a little while, I have to be, or I'll lose my last shot at him.

[He's not sure why that was something he needed to say. But it's not until he says it that the magnitude of it really hits him — like saying it somehow makes it that much more real, that he's been pushed to such a brink in this fight that he's had to resort to this extreme just for the sake of standing a chance.

He's seventeen years old and never once asked for this.

He can't help but wonder if Caesar had, either.]

[He had a daughter. Joseph and Suzie had a daughter. They would be good with a daughter, he thinks, even if Joseph wouldn't know what he was doing at first. He'd figure it out quickly enough. Must have, fifty years ago, and Caesar can't help but smile at that, because Joseph lived, he survived, he beat them, and he must have found some measure of happiness; he was always better at doing that than Caesar was anyway.]

I know her. She lived with us while we were training. I don't know, maybe they told you that.

[But they hadn't told him about Caesar. That makes sense, though. It's always easier to talk about the living than the dead, he knows this, and so he tries not to feel too stung by it.]

[There are other things to pay attention to, anyway. He's learning the minute shifts of Jotaro's expressions, slowly but surely, and whatever changes in that moment after he says last shot is enough to make Caesar's stomach hurt.]

[Last shot. He had asked for this, sort of, obliquely, a sense of duty and vengeance and a lifetime of volatility and anger spurring him on to a fight that would leave him crushed and broken. He doesn't regret it - can't, because it would mean everything he's done since he watched his father die was a wretched waste - but some smothered part of him recognizes how much he's missed. More so now that Joseph's grandson is standing in front of him talking about dying in order to beat a monster.]

[Jotaro shouldn't be here. He should be looking for his friend, the one Caesar saw before, and not talking to someone who knew his grandfather once long before he was born. But it sounds like an invitation, and once again, he can't find it in himself to say no.]

We were fighting-- [Another small smile; he can't help himself, he likes the phrasing.] Bastards. The Pillar Men. One of them killed my father, so when we got close, I went after him alone. I wanted to kill him. [A minute, fluid shrug, a quick flash of regret passing over his face, immediately replaced by resolve.] I didn't.

There's more to it than that, of course. Your grandfather was . . . a very important man, in a thousand ways. [To me. Important to me.] But that's the short version of how I got here.

This guy's killing my mom.

[It's almost unsettling, how much of Caesar's brief version of events he can apply to his own immediate circumstances back there. He's alone, isn't he, with everyone else dead and Polnareff...probably about to be, frankly. He's really the only one left. If he fucks this up, there's nothing. There's no one else.

There hadn't been time to think of it like that, amidst the danger and the adrenaline. He sort of wishes it'd never crossed his mind at all, but there it is.

I didn't.

Not all that hard to guess what did happen, when you put it like that.

Not hard to guess that he might be back here for good soon, too. Hell, for all he knows something's already gone terribly wrong, Star Platinum wasn't able to wake him up in time or Dio figured out his ruse and put an end to it before it could ever begin, and now he's just here to stay.

Except he can't accept that. This has to work, because they didn't come all this way and sacrifice so much just for him to lose now.

But it still echoes at the corners of his mind, anyway.

I didn't.]

He's the one who always talked about destiny, not me. Like beating this guy was our family legacy. The bastard killed his grandfather, it's not surprising he took it personally.

[He casts his eyes to the side, gaze shot low, unable to resist the urge to avert them.]

It's my fault I don't know any of this. I'm the one who never wanted to bother with it. I guess...I should've listened. I probably should've done a lot of things differently, but I can't change that now.

Family is important.

[This a quiet response to - all of it, really, the obvious grief, the guilt, Caesar's own misplaced rage at the thought that someone would hurt Joseph's daughter. He doesn't have the right to feel this, he knows, it isn't his life that's being devastated, his life is over, but - all the same, it's what he wanted, whenever he thought past the immediate need for vengeance. A family, someone to protect. If he can't protect Joseph or his family and he doesn't have his own, what good is he?]

[He shakes his head abruptly at that - it's my fault - no.]

I don't mind.

[He does, a little, but it's clear that there's already too much on Jotaro's shoulders. He's so young, younger than Joseph was, he must be, and he shouldn't need to be bearing this weight. He's obviously strong, but any more might crush him.]

[There's got to be something more to say, something better. You didn't do anything wrong - but Caesar doesn't know that, and he won't offer false comfort. Instead, after a moment's hesitation, he gives up something else, his own gaze focused on a point just past Jotaro's shoulder.]

They were poisoning him, you know. The ones we were fighting. They gave him a month to get good enough to beat him, and then he would die. Like it was a game. [A stupid bluff, one of those classic Joseph moves that got him in more trouble than it got him out of. His lip twists, remembering it, and it's hard to tell if he's smiling or frowning.] When I knew . . . I was dying . . . I made sure to get the antidote, because it was important to me that he have the chance to live.

So it's . . . [He smiles, although it hurts, and refocuses on Jotaro, even though that hurts, too.] It's good to see you. Even though you didn't know, it's good that I know you exist.

[And that, it seems, is the straw that breaks the figurative camel's back, or at least what finally pushes Jotaro's ability to keep his composure beyond its not-inconsequential breaking point. It's not the tragedy of the story that does him in so much as it is the echoes of it, the way so much of it sounds so familiar despite apparently taking place decades in the past — as though no matter what they do, this bloody cycle will always repeat and someone will always die and it'll always be to give someone else the chance that they needed to live. Not even to win; just to live.

But in the lives they all tend to lead, sometimes those two things are one and the same, aren't they.

The secret of Dio's Stand is —

He reaches up, yanking the brim of his hat down over his eyes because it's just easier that way, not having to look and not having to know what to do with his face right then.]

You won't see me back here. Once I leave here, I'm putting an end to this once and for all.

[His free hand, the one not grasping his hat, has clenched into a fist and he doesn't even seem to realize it.]

So can I ask you to do one thing for me? ...Please.

[He won't see Jotaro again. And that, he finds, is all right. This isn't a place that anyone should stay before their time, and Jotaro has something to go back to. He should go. It's enough for Caesar to know that he exists, that life continues despite everything. There's a sort of peace in it.]

[So he nods - of course he does - and allows the agony in Jotaro's posture to pass without comment. There are plenty of things for him to hurt over and absolutely zero need to pick them apart.]

Whatever you need.

[Not because of the please, but because, once again, he has no choice but to say yes. Because this is one last, desperate way to feel close to Joseph, to ameliorate the guilt that's beginning to settle around his shoulders like a lead weight. Because Jotaro is in pain. Because it's the right thing to do.]

...My best friend is on this train.

[He died to give me a chance, too.]

I can't do it myself, so. Can you find him, and...tell him I got his message. Tell him I said he mattered. Can you do that?

Wherever this thing is going...I think the two of you are headed for the same place. So maybe you could...not go alone.

[He wonders as Jotaro speaks if it's worse to be on the other side of it, thinks abruptly that it must be. You have to keep going, live your life as though nothing's wrong, continue and do your best to thrive for their memory, no matter how much it hurts. Or refuse to do that, curl in on yourself in a ball of helpless anger and grief, lashing out however you can until you can give your life in service of that grief.]

[He hopes Jotaro doesn't choose to do what he did. Not because he regrets it, but because this does need to end, the endless cycle of pain and death that makes children into men too soon.]

[I got his message. He mattered. Caesar nods; of course he does.]

I can do that.

I need his name and yours. But I'll do it.

Red hair and a green school uniform.

[It's a softer echo of the request he'd made when this conversation began, now with more context and clarity behind where it's coming from, why he was the one listed first before the others.]

His name is Kakyoin Noriaki. And I'm...Jotaro. Kujo Jotaro.

[Caesar had introduced himself in the Western order, he's fully aware, so the choice of order for his own name is deliberate; he won't say it outright, he'll leave it to speak for itself, but it's there for anyone who's listening, and he's pretty sure that Caesar will be.

Jojo. That's my name, too.

One hand comes loose; the other withdraws from his hat, and his stance shifts to something just a little more open. With his left hand in his pocket, he offers his right with relaxed fingers and an open palm, silent invitation to be clasped or accepted to shake.]

Hey. It's nice to meet a friend of the family.

[Of course the best friend would be first on the list. He should have known - maybe part of him did. Was Joseph his best friend? Would he have listed Caesar first, if he came to this train for a brief moment? From his end, there would be no question. Joseph was his best friend, his only friend.]

[Seeing Jotaro in pain sends another flash of guilt through him, followed by almost a wince at the introduction - Kujo Jotaro. He papers over it with a smile, but still. There are so many ugly echoes here; he's glad to meet Jotaro, impossibly glad, but it hurts all the same.]

[The only thing to do, the only way to push away some of the pain, is to acknowledge what Jotaro is offering, the sacrifice of staying mentally present despite everything that he's been through, is still going through. The only thing to do is what Caesar does: reach out and clasp his hand, a little too tight, as if perhaps he's trying to hold on to life for just a little while longer.]

It's nice to meet you, too, Jotaro.

[I'm sorry I didn't get to watch you grow. I'm sorry you're doing this alone. There's no good or right way to say these things, so he doesn't - just lets his hand fall to his side and hangs onto his smile.]

I won't leave him alone. I promise.

You better not, or I'll kick your ass.

[And it's just about then, once he's touched this ghost of a man that he should've known for years and hasn't, once their hands have clasped and severed and they're left exchanging promises and smiles in a train car where neither of them belong, but one will stay — it's then that Jotaro feels the world go a little bit wrong, and abruptly knows exactly what Star Platinum must be doing topside at that precise moment.

It hits him like a punch to the gut, the recognition that his immediate thought is no.

No, not yet. Please, not yet, just a little longer, five seconds longer —

But he's the only one left, and his mother's life is still hanging in the balance. Family is important.

So he sets his shoulders, and puts his hands back in his pockets where they belong, and steels himself in preparation for what he knows is coming even if he doesn't know how it will come to pass (maybe he'll just disappear, maybe he'll blink and reopen his eyes to Cairo and not this, he doesn't know but it makes him not want to blink for as long as he can), and he reminds himself of a name that he's going to add to the list of the dead he's going to carry inside him from now on.

Caesar Zeppeli. My grandfather's friend.]

My time here's up...padrino.

[He does everything he can to make sure it comes out calm and steady, and not as desperate and urgent as he feels.

He doesn't succeed, but bless him, he tried.]

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The Train to the Afterlife

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