Chapter Text
Desperado, why don't you come to your senses?
Come down from your fences; open the gate
It may be raining, but there's a rainbow above you
You better let somebody love you before it's too late.
"Desperado" by the Eagles
Hardly even one rider had so much as hopped off for a minute between the second and third stages, but their pace had slowed down considerably. They still had miles of desert ahead of them before entering the mountain range, and plenty of time to kill while their horses regained stamina.
Ordinarily Johnny would have been more than fine with riding in silence; he didn’t think of himself as much of a “conversationalist." But something was bugging him.
He looked at Gyro out of the corner of his eye. The Neapolitan, his new “teammate," wasn’t saying much either. His back was slightly hunched, his jaw slowly grinding in frustration. Johnny knew he was pissed off about the results of the second stage, but he swore up and down that he hadn’t meant to distract Gyro into getting 4th. He’d even told Gyro as much— not that Gyro believed him.
Gyro didn’t see that Johnny’s entire understanding of the race had changed during and after their fight with… uh… that kid, whatever his name was. Obviously he had promised to help Gyro win, which he would do— as long as it didn’t prevent him from collecting the corpse parts. And yes, he intended to come in second right after Gyro— unless he had to diverge to get the parts. The race had become secondary in nearly all respects to the corpse.
And why shouldn’t it? Gyro had said it himself: Johnny himself had already seen just one part produce two serious miracles. The left arm alone had given him a strange but incredible power, and it had momentarily brought movement back to his paralyzed legs.
Movement! To his legs! After two years of uselessness, he had moved his feet. Fifty million dollars meant as much to him as the dirt under Slow Dancer’s hooves compared to that.
He knew Gyro wasn’t in it for the money, of course. It was the amnesty that he was interested in. It was a noble cause, no doubt about it, but… it didn’t resonate with Johnny like the corpse did. The corpse had nothing to do with nationality, or laws, or even money. It had to do with miracles. It could accomplish things that no amount of money or earthly power could.
“You’re Catholic, right?” he blurted out.
To his credit, Gyro didn’t so much as blink at the random question. He only raised his eyebrows slightly.
“What makes you think that?” he asked.
When he spoke, his accent gave his words a certain quality that Johnny could only describe as curved, like each sound had a slight bend to it. His English was near perfect, though, probably even better than Johnny's.
Johnny shrugged. “Not sure,” he said. “I know the Pope’s Catholic, and he’s in Rome, and that’s in Italy. You’re from Italy, so…”
Gyro grinned, his obnoxious golden grills flashing. “Wonderful deduction, Johnny! You’re smarter than you look for sure.”
“Am I wrong?” Johnny challenged. “‘Cause I feel like you only have the right to be an asshole if I’m wrong.”
“Relax, I’m just joking,” Gyro said. “No, you’re not wrong. You’d be hard pressed to find anyone who isn’t a Catholic in Naples— which, by the way, is different from Italy. We retained our independence through the unification in 1870 as a sovereign kingdom.”
“How was I s’posed to know that?”
“Consider it a free extra lesson,” Gyro said. “Why are you asking, anyway? You want to talk religion?”
“No, no way,” Johnny said with a reflexive grimace.
He always hated church as a kid and his opinion of it hadn’t improved much now that he was older. After Nicholas died, God became little more to him than another disapproving father who wanted nothing to do with him. By the time he was paralyzed, it sure seemed to Johnny like God had stepped out of his life completely.
“But since you’re Catholic…" he went on. "You know about a bunch’a saints, then?”
“What’s being Catholic got to do with it?”
“For your information, other Christians don’t do it the same way!” Johnny said. “We don’t have statues of ‘em everywhere and shit. I can count all the saints I know on one hand!”
“As you’ve already demonstrated,” Gyro said. “What are you getting at?”
“Well, I mean, you must at least have a theory about who the corpse is,” Johnny said. “Which saint it was. Right?”
Gyro sighed, like he was unfortunately waiting for Johnny to bring this up. “Is that dusty old arm the only thing you can think about now? What about winning the damn race?”
He threw his hands up in the air, waving them around in his building frustration. He sure did gesticulate a lot. “What about not fucking me over, huh, Johnny? What about the promise you made?”
“I told you, that was an accident!”
“Well, it better not accidentally happen again! These damn corpse parts better not make you lose focus!”
“Wh— no,” Johnny said. “I’m focused on the race, I swear. And I know you’re not corpse hunting— whatever, that’s fine. But you know more about this shit than me, and right now we’re just staring at sand! So would it kill you to at least try and figure it out with me, since we’ve got nothing better to do?”
Gyro pursed his green-painted lips in mild annoyance, but then shook his head. “You know, I have to say— I really haven’t thought much about which saint it is.”
I don’t believe you, Johnny wanted to retort. How could Gyro not think about it? It was the only question that seemed to matter anymore! That, and the question of what it could do when it was fully reassembled.
Johnny had a feeling the two answers had to be linked, though. The more important the saint, the more powerful the full corpse, right? He wanted to know just how big of a pot he was playing for, in other words.
“Just help me out,” he said. “Did you notice anything when you saw the arm that could, y’know, mean something?”
Gyro didn’t say anything, but Johnny swore he could’ve heard him inhale sharply. He spurred Valkyrie on, pulling ahead just slightly.
“Gyro!” Johnny had Slow Dancer speed up too to match him. “You did see something!”
“No,” Gyro said firmly.
“But you think—“
“It doesn’t matter what I think,” Gyro snapped. “It still can’t be right.”
“I don’t understand! Why can’t it be right?”
“Because it’s heresy!”
At Gyro’s outburst, Valkyrie tossed her head, and Slow Dancer veered away slightly. Johnny had to tug on her reins to get her to line up again. But Gyro wasn’t having it.
“I don’t want to talk about this anymore, Johnny,” he said. “I’ll leave your ass in the dust, I swear it.”
“Fine, fine,” Johnny muttered. “But we’re still going to send that letter to the Vatican.”
“I’ll do anything to make you shut up,” Gyro said.
“You could always do this race by yourself, Zeppeli!”
“Oh, please,” Gyro said. “You wouldn’t even be on that horse if not for me, Joestar!”
It was… strange. By all accounts, they were mocking each other, and yet Johnny didn’t feel the least bit of spite. And when he looked over, he saw that Gyro was even smirking a bit. That made him smile in turn.
Johnny had heard stories about how men who went through battle together became bonded for life by the shared experience. He wasn’t about to make any declarations of lifelong friendship this early on, but he and Gyro had battled together. They’d fought and won together. Multiple times.
Already they had each refused to leave the other behind: Gyro didn’t leave Johnny at the mercy of Mrs. Robinson, and Johnny didn’t abandon him with Oyecomova. It wasn’t much, but it was something.
It’s gotta be worth more than empty platitudes from fame-chasers, Johnny thought. He had lots of experience with that sort of ‘bond’. This had to mean more… there would be no getting through this race if it wasn’t.