Fic rec - Teach Your Children

[sakura_no_miko]

Title: Teach Your Children

Author: littlesneezes

Fandom: Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure (Part 1: Phantom Blood / Part 5: Golden Wind)

Rating: PG-13

Pairing: gen fic

Warnings: canon-typical violence, past child abuse

Other notes: crossover, time travel, alternate dimensions, family, parents & children, action-adventure, period piece, fix-it fic, canon divergence

Length: 116k

Summary: Giorno meets his dads and it goes about as well as you'd expect. The three of them encounter all sorts of dangers, general annoyances, and supernatural hum-buggery.

Meanwhile, those who remain in the present day have their own problems to attend to with eerily similar stakes.

 

I really like doing parallel fic recs. It’s probably not useful to anyone but me, but, hey, I think potentially someone out there might be interested in seeing how two people deal with a trope or a character or a plot in different ways.

So, anyway. I’m really re-thinking about Dio here. I still think canon Dio is an excellent example of a dude who is just villainous to be villainous, and that’s both fun and okay.

However, there is one drama trope that’s always fun: the two characters who could potentially destroy or save the entire world, if only they could get along. I’m talking Xavier and Magneto in X-Men. Lelouche and Suzaku in Code Geass. Light and L in Death Note.

…wait. Crud. Does that count as rival shipping and/or mortal enemy shipping? Ffff. To be technical, it’s more of a friends-to-enemies-to-frenemies dynamic.

I’m also really fond of stories where characters from different eras or story arcs meet up. As it happens, there seem to be a lot of stories involving Giorno (from part 5) and Jolyene (from part 6) getting introduced to their wider family. And — well, spoilers if you don’t know who Giorno is, or at least who his parents are. It’s kind of a big part of this fic. He’s both Dio and Jonathan’s kid, in a sense, since Dio went and body-snatched Jonathan. Actually, there’s another fun trope — the character who has one villainous parent and one heroic parent. Like Superboy/Connor Kent, the partially cloned child of Superman and Lex Luthor.

Anyway, this fic is pretty fun, because this takes place literally around episodes 2-3 of the first season, which are the episodes I just watched. I love the dynamic between Jonathan and Dio, right before everything goes to shit. Jonathan is still incredibly naive and trusting, while Dio is sitting there, rolling his eyes at every opportunity.

It’s also fascinating how the author gets us to see that Giorno is very much like both Jonathan and Dio, despite never having known either of them. The fact that both of them — still being teenagers, even — manage to guess that he’s, erm, their son, is fascinating.

Like this early scene:

“I was led to believe you were a ruthless and cruel man. Who I saw in that alley was neither of those things and I believe I can learn more about you up close like this. I’m going to wait until I’ve truly come to my own decision about you before leaving so feel free to try to chase me away, I promise you’ll find it very, very difficult.”

Déjà vu suddenly turned to something much more sinister for Dio. The look in this kid’s eyes were no longer what he, himself, had carefully cultivated to become an impenetrable wall between him and whatever weak-willed idiot was trying to face him down. This kid was now glowing with the bizarre strength he’d been honoured to see rolling off from Jonathan in waves those moments when he finally broke through the act of a gentleman. It was flame in his eyes, a halo around him like there was some mysterious and invisible light just behind him out of sight. A shiver ran up Dio’s spine. Things were making less and less sense to him.

“Then, will you chase me away?” Giorno asked, a ghost of a smile on his lips.

“No,” Dio said, “I think I’d much rather figure you out first myself.”

Dio’s got that thing going on where he’s simultaneously allured and repelled by meeting someone who’s so much like himself. He’s suspicious, of course, because he knows he uses his own charms to keep people off their guard, and he knows Giorno could be doing the same thing to him. He’s worried, because if someone else is as strong and as smart as he is, his own position is in danger. And then there are the parts of Giorno that remind him so much of Jonathan.

Poor Jonathan. Ah, he doesn’t get a lot of character growth, because we kind of already know he’s heroic. He gets introduced to a wider world of magic, and his basic personality remains the same — protect people. It’s just lucky in this universe that his journey starts with defeating a monster, rather than watching his brother become one.

But Dio and Giorno. God. I just really loved reading this fic after Until We Move On, because that’s a fic about stasis. It’s about how Dio is too proud or too stubborn or too — too simplistic, even — to ever change his mind and find a different path. Whereas this Dio, he’s still proud and stubborn, but he thinks, I could manage to stand being beside Jonathan. I don’t have to destroy him. We could, perhaps, find a new sort of strength together.

Giorno — Giorno is like, a year younger than his “dads” at this point. I gotta say, if I were a teenager and somehow my child from the future showed up, I would probably not take it so well. Actually, I think Sailor Moon handled that story arc really well, in that Chibiusa/Rini expects to find the mother she trusts and envies, but instead finds, well, basically another child. Sailor Moon has no idea how to deal with a child because she’s still a child herself. Dio and Jonathan handle the situation much better, haha.

What’s fun is watching Giorno get to, ah, regress a little bit? Granted, this is an anime, so a 16(?)-year-old kid planning to take over the Mafia is well within the bounds of anime plots, and we know Giorno comes from a background where he was neglected and abused. The whole story starts with him having a childish impulse, and as the story goes on, we get to see a bit of his cool, collected persona melt away. He finds himself lost without money or even a way to effectively communicate. He gets a moment of kindness from someone who turns out to be a crook. He mis-speaks and raises Dio’s suspicions, he lingers a little too long and too close to his parents when he knows he shouldn’t interfere.

And he gets this lovely scene:

Jonathan pulled him into his arms. Without a second thought. There was no question in it, it was what needed to be done. This child needed nothing else. And that was that.

Held in those arms, and gasping for breath, Giorno struggled to make sense of it. Warmth. And the sound of breathing. And a faint smell of freshly cut grass and tobacco. Pressure on his shoulders and back. A warmth. Sleepy warmth. It felt like falling asleep.

This was what it felt like, then.

Giorno closed his eyes and stretched the seconds into minutes. He then stretched those minutes out into years in his mind. Years grew, and he grew, held in those arms. He grew from those first few years, the ones you forget, held like the most precious thing on earth. He grew into a skittering shrieking child, held by the scruff from hurting himself. He then grew to hold those hands back, putting one tiny hand in his, walking across a road safely, watching the ducks eat. He grew and grew and the years got shorter and his words got longer and his voice less shrill until he was tall enough to wrap his arms around his father. He would wrap his arms around him like the vine grips the tree. He wouldn’t let go.

This is how it should have always felt, then.

It felt like love.

Where he just gets to be a child, being comforted by his father.

How do both Jonathan and Dio get those Dad instincts right? How. They’re still teenagers themselves.

Ah. I suppose Tuxedo Mask took to being a dad pretty easily too.

(I just…I really don’t think the me at 17 would handle this type of situation well.)

There’s that, and there’s the scene where Giorno goes to destroy the stone mask, even knowing it might wipe him out of existence, because he doesn’t want his dads to get hurt…

Just, agh. The feels, the feels. Killing my brain right now. I do legitimately think Until We Move On has excellent characterization for Dio and Jonathan, and I also think this fic has excellent characterization, and yet both fics go in completely opposite directions. And both of them sound perfectly good. Ah. Parallel fics, man. I love parallel fics.

Oh, I can’t comment too much on the modern day Italy plot, because I don’t know those characters quite as well. I’ll probably re-read this fic once I get to season 5. Oh, something to look forward too.

 

Further fic recs: I’m about halfway through An Ambivalent Fate, where Dio finds out Giorno is his kid and takes him in. And you know what, I’m hoping for a happy ending. Baby!Giorno in this fic is adorable, and I will be happy if Dio actually changes over a new leaf for him. I’m not sure he will, but I wouldn’t find it too OOC if he does. (Update: He didn’t. Boo :( But also sadly in character….)

As far as more family interaction fic, I enjoyed tell me we have not lived in vain with Jolyene meeting the family and This Is Not Your Legacy for more Giorno.

And now, shoot, here I am thinking about villain-and-hero team up fics but that is definitely a topic for a different month. Let’s get through the soulmate fics first.

 

(Looking for more fic recs?)
Crossposted to pillowfort