The Train to the Afterlife

[ilovesockandroll]

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.

Comments

[mylegacy]

[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.

[starmark]

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.

[mylegacy]

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.

[starmark]

[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.

[mylegacy]

[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.]

[starmark]

...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.

[mylegacy]

[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.

[starmark]

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.

[mylegacy]

[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.

[starmark]

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.]