JJBA ONESHOTS

(Diavolo-centric)Fracture Point

<Major spoilers for part 5 character deaths and villain>

Description: Gold Experience decides to weed out the problem by its root, and Diavolo gets tossed through time.

OR: Diavolo time loop/time travel fic

---Note: I haven't proofread for typos im so sorry ;-;

Diavolo's voice echoes and rings in his ears, and every action repeats on itself, and time moves all at once and not at all. Or maybe time doesn't matter here, in this space between realities.

Maybe time doesn't matter if he's going to die—but he won't die. Because he's Diavolo, the devil in the dark, the king of fate, and he can't lose here. He can't. But nothing is happening right, and Diavolo feels so terribly off-balance, so unsteady. Doppio isn't here, Doppio is gone, and every time he tries to lean back into his mind, detach himself from his skin, it doesn't work. And Requiem, Requiem—

"Hmm," Requiem says, voice all detached and echoing back on itself, sounds coming out in three tones and distinctly inhuman.

It's a chilling kind of voice, one that rattles Diavolo to his very core. This, he imagines, is what the voice of God would sound like. But Requiem is no God, and even if it were, it would have no right to pass judgment on him. It has no right to do this to him.

"What did you do?" Diavolo asks, loudly, angrily, but silence swallows the sounds as soon as they leave his lips. "What are you doing?" He tries again, but this time the sounds warp and distort until they're nothing. His skin goes cold, his hairs stand up.

Requiem tilts its lips into some kind of mock-smile. Its purple eyes glitter brighter than polished amethyst.

"You," it says, "are a weed."

Blood rushes behind his ears, beneath his skin; white hot and burning. What does that thing know? What right does it have? He's no weed. He's more gorgeous than that, he's more special than that.

"I'm a king," he snarls, but the words eat themselves right out of the air.

"My purpose it to fulfill my user's wish," Requiem says, sliding its eyes over the world of empty space. "To pull up this reality by its roots..."

Requiem curls its lips, looks him right in the eye. Its gaze is intense but uncaring, and Diavolo feels a bit like dust beneath it. Is this what the gaze of God would feel like? So scalding on his skin? Diavolo very carefully doesn't filch, doesn't cower back. He straightens, curls his lips, and tries, once again, to speak. But this time—

This time the world crumples in on itself, unwinds and rewinds and burgeons beneath his feet. Every bit of him sears, white-hot and hellish. He's being flayed, inside and out, dying and breathing and dying again and—

"Again," Requiem says, and the world blinks out.

I.

Diavolo comes in to the cold kiss of shadow, ache of damning fire clinging to his very bones. A fractured soul rests deep in his chest, warms up his very being, and Doppio's psyche presses soft and steady against his. Diavolo breathes sharply, the smell of old stone and incense, faintly lined with something musty clogs up all his senses. There's a girl in his arms, pressed against his chest, and her blood stains dark on his black suit.

He stands on the last step of an old stone staircase, and Diavolo has stood here before, knows this place, no matter how much has happened since then. He stops, freezes, and he must be wrong. He can't be here.