Ahahaha... "I really haven't had much opportunity to fall into that habit have I?" Jonathan jokes with a warm smile. "At the very least it will be something I try not to do for the future. Particularly since, as you both have noted, it was indeed a worrying amount of time."

Ah, but now it is a matter of Dio's motivations again. Jonathan can't help but be curious after all- while assuredly as bitter and spiteful in some regards as remembered, there is a difference there that cannot quite be described.

It of course goes out the window as the matter of 'outsiders' (really Dio...) comes up, but-

Jonathan's quiet exhasperation pales the minute Dio's quieter muttering catches his ears. To say the least of what came just before it.

He is stunned, just momentarily. It's an anniversary, a wedding anniversary, and he would dare to say-

Dare to imply?

Were Dio older, and more familiar in the sense of being the one he had known and fought, perhaps those thoughts would have been voiced. No, they absolutely would have been. He speaks of celebrating what they had, should have had, and then adds the notion of throwing it aside? As if to be alive for such steep cost is a gift as well? He would have had words, and without a doubt the response would have been either a smirk or an exhasperated sigh.

But instead of speaking, instead of even beginning to allow the anger to build under the implications of the words, Jonathan is simply struck by what Dio muttered under his breath.

'Why must I always say something insensitive to get your attention?'

"....Dio," he finally begins- no doubt after Speedwagon has already said his share, filling the air with more ire. "...I do not believe even you realize the gravity of what you said, just now."

It is a painfully accurate look at how his 'brother' has acted most of their lives.

And it is coming from someone who, chronologically speaking, had known him less than a year.