Erina blinked. When her eyes opened, the room had nearly emptied; the only person remaining was Dio— Dio, with his brows furrowed and his dead chest heaving in a breath. Frustration was knotted through his features. Someone hollered outside. A metal hand clanged against the back door, and he ignored it. Instead, he swept his thumb across his hairline. He wasn't quite capable of breaking a sweat, but the exertion of hauling everyone out during the stopped time still strained him, much to his own continued chagrin.

His glare settled on Erina. He did not want to glare at her, but the tension still tightened his features despite his efforts to collect himself. He opened his mouth, closed it. The corner of his lip twitched towards a snarl and then settled. Erina only continued to sit and stare at him, and he hated it.

What kind of woman, he thought, engages in polite conversation in a situation like this? There should be wailing and gnashing, surely. Tears shed. Visible upset. Fear, even. Something to soothe. He was good at the motions of soothing when he applied himself; he could act in any role. But he could not face a stone.

Finally, as if determined to say anything instead of nothing, he took a breath.

Not even a vowel had escaped him before she spoke up. "Don't apologize," she said, and though her hands were folded primly in her lap, Dio now noticed the bone-white clench of her knuckles. "That would be grotesque."

He went to speak again but was struck with the wisdom that saying "I wasn't going to" would be a horrible, horrible idea. Instead, he favored silence, hoping that the empty air between them would draw something more out of her. His stare burned against hers like an ember into ice, but when she turned her eyes away it did not feel like a victory. He watched as her gaze instead drifted towards her own hands. The tightness of her grip lessened.

"They're good boys," she said, and Dio could tell that she meant it. Some strange calm had again layered over her features, and again, Dio could not understand it, could not stand it; it felt too much like watching a woman placidly sweep up a broken bottle.

An irrational anger swelled up and pressed against his thoughts in insistent waves. "You're not upset?" he snarled.

Some equal mixture of heady vindication and gut-deep regret flooded him when she glared. "You want me to be?" she said, and then: "You think I'm not?"

Despite the World at his call, he felt cornered. He had the urge to curl his fists and pace. He refused to move.

"I am doing the best I can," she continued, and her shoulders shook. "Don't you know how easy it would be to hate them? But I won't. They don't deserve to have what you did hanging over their heads— and I don't deserve to have you here twisting the knife. Who is that, Dio?" she asked, and she pointed towards the back door.

"He isn't relevant."

"Who is it?"

"A Jonathan," he snapped in answer. "Significantly different from the one here, but— I know. I know that sense of recognition that you had. My advice is to pay it no mind. I am trying to get our Jonathan back, just as I've promised, but I've discovered that making such changes is an exceedingly delicate endeavor, and I was only recently given the opportunity to— to make a trial run, of sorts."

The confirmation did not calm her. When her grip shifted, Dio noticed the small red crescents left by her nails against her hands. But she took a deep breath, and the shaking in her shoulders lessened; when she spoke again, Dio wished she would have yelled.

"What happened to my son?"

The span of time that it took for him to begin formulating an answer was damning.

"I have no desire for details," she said, cutting him off once again as her gaze dropped to the floor. "Spare me this single mercy, would you?"

"I intend to bring him back, too," Dio insisted.

"You intend to."

"I will."

Her shoulders had stopped shaking, but only because she now held them stiffly. "And then?"

The question initially stumped him, so he gave it a hollow echo. "And then? And then I bring back Jonathan. I bring back whoever is needed to nullify my sins. I do this until I can surpass myself. And then, we are free."

"Even if you defeat me, history still has its reign; Erina needs to bury George, raise Joseph, teach several dozen schoolchildren, and have her own funeral. That's not the kind of gap that you know how to fill. You'll need to put her back at some point," his double said, and as he leaned over the back of Erina's seat and grinned, Dio hoped to any other available higher power that time had been stopped and she had not heard. The air did seem to have the right peculiar stillness to it, with each mote of dust stopped from lazy orbit, but there was the look in her eyes— and then? — that told Dio that his double's appearance had been redundant.

The double, upon seeing the realization mar Dio's expression, happily disappeared. Time began again.

"What happened?" Erina asked, because even now, she was perceptive enough to sense the judder of stopped time and see the new distress in Dio's posture.

"I don't know," Dio admitted through clenched teeth. "And then— I don't know. But if you know me, then you know that I'll find— something." He gave in to the desire to pace; Erina had to shift in her seat to watch him. "When I surpass him, when I really make the world mine, I can change things so that—" Another urge welled up in him and boiled over; his nails pierced the cloth of the couch and tore at the stuffing. It would be exquisitely satisfying to lift the whole thing and shatter it against the floorboards. His teeth were bared. The body in his peripheral vision tensed, and his head turned. The expression etched upon Erina's expression was now the unmistakeable and instinctive fear held by a human in the presence of something else.

Dio bit his tongue and pulled his hands away from the couch as he returned to merely pacing.

"You hardly know what to do," Erina eventually said, and despite his best efforts, Dio felt another muffled eruption of rage; the hint of sympathy in her tone was intolerable. "Was I selfish?"

He paused mid-step, confused. "Selfish?"

"I will not have a Stand," she said. "I never had one. I won't become a— a vampire. Joseph would certainly remember that. I asked you to bring me here because I wanted to do something, because I wanted my lot to be more than just waiting—"

Dio was adamant. "You need to be here. I know it."

"I can recognize that I am no more than a complication here," Erina replied. "I should have known that from the start."

"No, you have something, it's intrinsic, it's— something all you damned Joestars have, and I know that it will be the only margin I have over myself." He shifted his posture, suddenly uncomfortable; he crossed his arms and clutched at his elbows. "And, if we are to speak of selfishness, it isn't entirely self-centered of me— I'm trying to make things better for you, too. You're going to have Jojo back, you're meeting descendants you couldn't even have dreamt of—"

"That is why I cannot bear it," she said. "I love them all too much. If I am to say goodbye—" She stopped herself and drew a steadying inhale. She remained silent for a few long moments. Dio waited.

"Do you know why I avoided Jonathan after you kissed me?" she asked.

An odd and nearly painful sensation flared in his chest. It may have been an atrophied sense of shame. He considered nodding a yes in response, and then he considered shaking his head no. He settled on an incredulous and goading shrug.

"It actually had nothing to do with you," she said, and a short laugh escaped her; it was long-held. "It was because I couldn't bear explaining that my father and I would be leaving for India. I didn't want to say goodbye."

Is this meant to be a relief? Dio briefly wondered, but he had the sense not to speak.

"It was the same on the ship," she murmured. "I didn't want to say goodbye. I wonder if that is still my weakness. I cannot say goodbye to him. I have lived with him being gone for so long, and I have grieved, but I cannot say goodbye. One some days, I look at my doorway and imagine that George is about to walk through it. On other days, it's him. That is the hope that I cannot rid myself of, no matter how it hurts." When she looked up at him, her stare was piercing. "That hope is in your hands. I am more afraid than I have ever been because of it."

He found that he could only stand and stare at her. A snippet of that damnable song played insistently inside his head. We'll make heaven a—

"I know everyone has to say goodbye eventually," she said quietly, as if admonishing herself. "I know." She reflexively smoothed out the thighs of her jeans. "That does not make it any easier. But..."

She trailed off, leaving any further implication unknown.

"It's not a useless hope," Dio offered.

She sniffed and tucked a stray hair behind her ear. "But it is a dangerous one."

A thought happened upon him. He gave her a brief and fanged smile. "In all these worlds, full of all available possibilities, there must be one where it was you that controlled the stone mask," he said. "I'm beginning to think that I can imagine it."

Erina gave him a look. He was glad that it was not one of outright disgust, or of hatred. It was instead the sort of tired exasperation reserved for a particularly annoying child.

"I can respect it," he added, the humor gone. "I can respect anyone who wants that badly. You need only the tools to grasp your goals, as well as the will to use them. For me, it was masks and arrows. For you?" he said, and he made a grand yet vague gesture with his hand. "Who is to say?"

Though she still clearly held some doubts, the bravado seemed to brighten her; she shook her head at him, but the ghost of a smile flitted across her face. Though Dio responded with a grin, a cold pit deepened: he hadn't appeared in Erina's living room by choice. It had surely been his double's intention for Erina to be here, and Dio knew all too well the joy that could be sourced from her misery.

"Well, I will take my leave again," Dio said, and he made a pointed glance towards the back door. "I've been out and about for most of the day and it doesn't seem like it has gotten any easier for me to be here now."

"Oh, please," Erina retorted, but she was polite enough to restrain an eye-roll. "Joseph and I were just about to leave, as well. We have little Shizuka to think of."

"Of course. You can all stop eavesdropping now," Dio called out, and he approached the door. "I'm surprised none of them barged back in. Spawn! I'm serious. Clean up whatever tragedy took place in the kitchen. Okuyasu is well within his rights to put you all out on the street—"

The door swung open, and Dio looked out; the mud-patched lot of the backyard was empty. Prickling instinct crawled down his neck. Erina, who was about to stand up and peer outside herself, froze when he glared back at her.

Silently, Dio began to close the door. The latch clacked shut and he took a step back. "Don't move, and keep quiet. Either they were struck by a Stand attack, or we have been within one this whole time."

Erina went pale, but she nodded towards Dio and her hands curled into fists.