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“They’re a reflection of one’s fighting spirit, and to an extent, one’s soul.” Buccellati had told him after their fight.
Giorno hadn’t given much thought to the explanation at the time, too focused on the prospect of Polpo’s test.
Now, with one empty eye socket, half of a right foot, and more than one perfectly squared chunk of his throat missing, his mind went to his stand as he bled out on the grass.
The first time he had summoned Gold Experience, he was in his dorm room, a rare panicked expression settling between his brows as he stared back into his cracked mirror at long, blonde hair.
Giorno didn’t believe in ghosts or have any particular fear of the unknown, so he grabbed a pocket knife and approached the golden entity cautiously.
It made no attempt to move nor answer his questions, and only stared down at him with blank, purple eyes.
He fought back the tremors in his hand and brought the blade up to rest under its chin, earning an oddly robotic hum.
His voice raised to a shout when his questions were met with only glassy eyes and a neutral expression.
Giorno grit his teeth and pushed the knife to meet its golden skin, only for the blade to phase through it and send him tumbling forward with the momentum.
He gave a shout of surprise and whirled around with the pocket knife tightly clutched in his hand, coming face-to-face with the glowing figure as it reached for him.
His body tensed for a hit, a habit he could have sworn he broke, and his body betrayed him by screwing his eyes shut in fear.
After a long moment, he opened his eyes to find the knife in his hand slowly but surely being turned into a frog.
He could only watch in disbelief as the formerly metal object completed its transformation to an amphibian, and when he looked up the golden entity was gone.
He had established the figure as an ally after it made no moves to harm him after a week of popping up out of nowhere.
It hadn’t done much of anything when it appeared, besides randomly turning his school supplies into a variety of small animals and insects.
After three weeks of comparing and analyzing its behavior patterns, he figured out how to dismiss and summon it at will, finding it oddly complacent to follow his orders.
It helped him in the mornings with his decidedly complicated new hairstyle, made a less than decent conversational partner, and had become a sort of last resort when it came to fighting or stealing, as he was seemingly invisible to those around him.
At some point after he had established its usefulness, the unknown entity had gone from ‘the golden figure’ to Gold Experience, in honor of his favorite Prince album.
All in all, he should have been satisfied, or maybe even a bit more wary, but when Giorno looked into Gold Experience’s blank purple eyes all he could see was Haruno.
Granted, he could see the similarities between Gold Experience and himself, the obvious golden color that matched up with his newly acquired hair perfectly and the appreciation of ladybugs, but that was where their likeness ended.
After the fight with Buccellati, what might have been seen as a helmet resting on its head was all too reminiscent of the bowl cut he had abandoned once he left his mother and stepfather, from its very shape to the way it nearly hung over its eyes.
Following his encounter with Illuso and the appearance of Fugo’s stand, Gold Experience’s empty purple gaze was the same as the one that his stepfather would beat him for, analyzing everything in sight while maintaining a blank expression.
In the wake of almost dying due to rapid aging aboard the train to Florence, silver tear tracks forever etched into his stand’s face took him back to stifled cries and his own useless tears.
The kind that served no help to anyone, much less himself.
He had taken great care to leave those bits and pieces, the painful echoes of his past, behind. They were nothing but things that were meant to stay tucked into the ineffective hiding place under his old bed and left with the cold nights back in Japan.
Despite this, Gold Experience’s emergence seemed to show that they followed him still.
Beyond its outward looks, Giorno had received numerous offhanded glances and questions about his stand’s battle cry, to which he internally recoiled.
“It’s not Italian, is it? What does it mean?”
Both Narancia and Mista had asked more than once, but Giorno had brushed it off and gave the assumption of also being ignorant to the meaning of Gold Experience’s “ MUDA!” s.
From what little Japanese he remembered, the word for useless had always been carved into his memory.
Spat at him from his mother’s mouth when he had broken or spilled something, or a word to place to the feelings of loneliness he felt on cold nights.
With all these things in mind, Giorno wanted to hate his stand; the golden presence that was so alike to his younger self in ways that he would rather forget.
But when he used Gold Experience’s powers, sprouted plants from concrete or turned objects to reptiles or insects or fish, a warm feeling would always settle in his chest.
Gold Experience was something that could save and bring life to anyone and anything, that had saved Giorno countless times before, but Haruno was the type of person that couldn’t even save himself.
Being Haruno was an inherently weak and useless thing, and it had never saved anyone, couldn’t save anyone.
But… that wasn’t exactly true, was it?
Giorno remembered how he had helped that wounded and lonely gangster so long ago, a distant memory that had not faded in the slightest.
Except, it wasn’t Giorno, or Gold Experience, or anyone else who had helped that man.
It was Haruno, with black hair in a bowl cut and a blank calculative gaze, with slightly watering eyes and a thick Japanese accent.
The sound of a motorcycle revving up rang in his ears when it finally clicked.
Gold Experience flared up at his side, and his gaze lingered on his stand in that one moment.
His past that he had been trying so hard to leave behind, his Haruno, looked back at him.
He could not let it go, because it was a part of him.
Just as much as he was Giorno Giovanna, there was always some part of him, no matter how small, that was Haruno Shiobana through and through.
And maybe, that imperfect, frightened, flawed part wasn’t useless.
He stood with his reconstructed foot and Gold Experience’s power fusing with the holes in his throat, and looked at the enemy’s stand perched on the motorcycle, about to flee.
“Reconstructing humans into objects…”
He unhooked a brooch from his suit and placed it in Gold Experience’s waiting hand.
“Your ability gave me an excellent hint.”
As his new eye firmly attached to the previously empty socket, he continued.
“Due to the hint you gave me, and almost being killed, it would appear…”
He looked back at his stand, his past, his Haruno, as it moved to stand side-by-side with him.
“That I’ve grown a little.”
Gold Experience moved perfectly in sync with him, Haruno and Giorno merging to one, and he shined like the sun.