Chapter Text
The first thing he’s prepared for his grandfather to say when things have relatively calmed down isn’t quite what Jotaro expects.
“Do you still like National Geographic?”
He blinks slowly. Once and then twice again, still exhausted from all of the commotion at the police station earlier.
It’s shockingly mundane.
The taxi cab rattles precariously as it hits a bump on the road. Jotaro’s head turns to angle towards his grandfather, his mother seated to his left where he’s been squashed between them. Avdol is far luckier, resting in the passenger’s seat, having not yet said a word since they’ve gotten in.
There’s a weird glint in his grandfather’s eyes. His arms are folded over his chest, still considerably broad and filled out for his age. He really doesn’t look like he’s aged that much since the last time he’s seen him, and Jotaro frankly doesn’t even remember the last time that was.
He does still like National Geographic. Maybe even more now than he did when he was a kid. Jotaro doesn’t think that it’s important. He’s still kind of pissed off at him, anyways, and thinks that he sounds utterly insane. So he doesn’t answer, not at first.
His grandfather seems to take the eye contact as a yes, however, considering he awkwardly reaches into his coat and hands him a thin paperback issue a mere moment later. ‘Oldest Known Shipwreck’, it reads in English. ‘December 1987’.
“I found it at the airport,” Joseph explains, sounding a bit unsure. “I figured you might like it for Christmas.”
Holly peers over his shoulder to get a glance of it, all before clapping her hands together and making some sort of cheery exclamatory sound at the gift. “It’s perfect, Papa! Jotaro just loves magazines like this!”
Jotaro’s not sure if ‘loves’ is the right word. He doesn’t have this issue, though, if only on account of the fact that the only issues of the magazine he does have are because of the rare occasions he’d visited New York as a kid. He doesn’t mind it. It’s nice. Certainly doesn’t fix his mood any though, and Jotaro is still a bit pissed off at him for sic'ing Avdol onto him in the jail cell.
He grunts noncommittally in response instead. It’s the closest thing to a thanks that they’ll get from him right now, and all his grandfather does is laugh and scratch something fierce at the back of his head with his prosthetic hand.
–
The first time he actually reads the magazine is after his mother falls ill, splayed out on a dingy hotel bed in Singapore.
“Oh, you’re finally reading that?” His grandfather remarks once as he reenters the room with a first-aid kit, something Jotaro desperately needs after fighting that booger Stand from earlier. Thinking about it retroactively makes his skin crawl a bit. His hand still burns. “I best be glad that my money is going to use, then!”
He’s already exhausted by this point. The entire day has been nothing but a mess up to now, and having to calm the kid from the tram down and buy him a new ice cream after he watched his dog die in particular was. An event. God knows where Anne went, considering he doesn’t buy the whole ‘getting back to her father’ thing.
He likes kids. He does. Younger ones, at least. He certainly doesn’t think that he’s good with handling them, though. Jotaro tries not to think about it all too long. Embarrassing.
His focus shifts to his hand instead, still burnt, being taken gently into his grandfather’s prosthetic. He doesn’t fight it. He’s too tired to.
Jotaro thinks, just then, that it might end up scarring.
Huh.
–
The second time he reads the magazine is after a nightmare a day or two later. He’s not sure which at the time. He’s not keeping count.
He skims through it for about all of five minutes at maximum in the darkness of the room, tossing himself around on the bed in the hopes of getting himself tired enough to fall back asleep. He’s supposed to be grateful to be in a bed after being stuck in a car all day, after all. Doesn’t work.
It’s somewhere around the three minute mark when he realizes that Kakyoin isn’t in his bed, either. It takes Jotaro another minute to hear the shower running, giving away his location despite just how late it is. A cursory glance to the beat-up clock on the nightstand between their beds tells him that it’s sometime around two in the morning.
His hand burns. He silently prays that it’s not getting infected as he finally gets up and tosses the magazine atop his jacket haphazardly tossed onto the Everpresent Corner Chair, heading towards the bathroom and knocking twice.
There’s a short pause where there’s no hint of a response. And then a stilted, almost disbelieving “Jojo?”
“Yeah,” he rumbles more than really says, shocked at just how gravelly his voice is. Dry. He hadn’t noticed that, either. “Just want a cup of water.”
A few more beats of silence. The shower is still running, but he can hear the bathroom lock click shortly after. Hierophant, he guesses. He takes it as permission to enter anyway, opting to try and ignore the billowing steam and humidity that hits him the second he opens the door. It’s an understatement to say that he beelines for the sink, immediately unwrapping and dousing his stinging hand under the tap.
If I remembered how to heal with my Hamon, he vaguely recalls his grandfather saying as he’d doused his hand in alcohol, I could probably fix your hand right up! But, uh. I can’t quite recall how to.
What a pain.
The white noise of the shower water comes to a stop, and he registers something like a towel draped over the top curtain rung being snatched out of his peripheral view.
“So,” Kakyoin’s voice echoes slightly off of the tile, “what has you up this late?”
Jotaro could ask the same thing, the other way around. That’s even nearly what he bites back with before shortly deciding that he can refrain. It’s undeserved to jab at him like that, for one, and it’s simply too late at night to go trying to pick fights. He hurts. He’s tired, half-sure he’s sick; if only because he’s worrying about his mother. He tries not to think about how short fifty days actually is without a plane and a bunch of detours.
He’s considered leaving on his own, once, under the assumption that they could maybe get things done faster that way. But it didn’t really make any logical sense at the time. God knows he’d get himself killed– or, what his mother would say– ‘worse’.
Jotaro shrugs before realizing that Kakyoin can’t see him from across the curtain, lips parting and voice leaving him in a croak. “Hand hurt. ‘S all.”
It’s not a lie, but it’s not an entire truth either.
He turns the knob to the faucet, watching as the water slowly dissipates until it stops flowing altogether. He looks like sh*t when he glances up into the mirror for a moment. Not a shocker. Plainly, he reaches for the first-aid kit handily left hanging on a hook on the wall, cracking open the tin with his good hand.
“Ah.” Jotaro catches a glimpse of Hierophant in the corner of his eye, presumably scooping up Kakyoin’s pajamas to hand off to him. “Right.”
He grabs one of the plastic cups on the countertop, eying it wearily as he debates the safety of drinking tap water from some random hotel in the middle of a country that he’s never been to. It’s not like he isn’t going to be forced to stoop lower later, at this rate. One of Hierophant’s tendrils still pats around the floor before halting abruptly at a bag placed neatly at the odd shower-tub hybrid’s edge; only to resume again a few moments later, more frantic.
“Oh,” Kakyoin’s voice hisses from across the room, “sh*t.”
“...What?”
“I’m out of–” an abrupt halt. “Nothing. Nevermind. Forget it.”
Jotaro hesitates. There’s an unspoken sort of request to leave the subject in the air, that much he can tell, and he has half the mind to concede. He’s barely even debating it as he takes the roll of bandages from the first-aid kit and begins to wrap it around his palm.
He notices, then, that Kakyoin sounds abruptly still behind the curtain; as if he doesn’t want to move with him still in the room (that he understands), despite having the means to be. Decent.
His lips move before he tells them to, voice slightly less hoarse than before. “What are you out of.”
“That’s none of your–” a sharp inhale, something that feels like three seconds (probably Kakyoin counting to himself), and an even heavier exhale. “I’m sorry. I apologize.”
“I can go and get it,” he offers, suddenly feeling very awkward. “If you want.”
An extremely pointed absence of response meets him halfway.
“...I’m not gonna be able to fall back asleep anyways,” he tries.
There’s a few more beats of silence that feel like hesitation before there’s movement. Hierophant Green moves again from where he was on the floor before, still and hovering over the bag almost protectively; instead taking hold of a crumbled up cardboard box with some sort of flower-y logo on the front and dangling it out for him to take.
Hierophant winces and slinks away the instant he takes it into his hands. It’s empty, for certain. The logo on the front is something nonsensical in English, but the subtext underneath is in Japanese reading: ‘pads’.
Oh.
“Just find– something that looks like this,” Kakyoin hurries, leaving him a sum total of no time at all to process what he’s just been given. “I don’t care what kind. Just don’t say anything to the others.”
Okay.
He’s good at that.
Pursing his lips, he puts the plastic cup in his other hand back down and pads out of the bathroom. He eyes his discarded issue of National Geographic as he shrugs his coat on, grabbing the singular key to their room and closing the door behind him.
Hence how he ended up staring down a poor cashier at three in the morning with a pack of cigarettes, pads, and a bar of chocolate.
The latter had been a last-minute addition to the basket after going back and forth with himself, muscle memory from years of his mother’s cravings in the past. She wouldn’t typically get just chocolate– it was often a sort of cake with a sweet filling that came in varying flavours– but she always asked for him to get her something sweet. His mother wasn’t a particularly picky woman.
He almost feels bad for the cashier this time when they ring him up, furthered by the fact that they don’t even ask for his ID. He can’t tell if it’s because of the country they’re in or the fact that he’s six and a half feet tall staring them down with items that spell out the words ‘period’ and ‘cancer’ exclusively. Almost.
He drops all but the cigarettes onto Kakyoin’s bed when he finally gets back to the hotel room, stashing them into his right coat pocket instead.
It takes him nearly another entire minute to realize that Kakyoin still isn’t out of the bathroom and to backtrack, gently knocking his knuckles up against the door where Hierophant meets him; albeit properly humanoid this time.
The box of pads is snatched from him near instantly as the door slams in front of him, and he hears what he thinks is a very faint ‘thank you’ still from inside the shower.
He didn’t get his cup of water.
–
It’s hard not to notice Kakyoin being shifty around him for the next few days. It’s easier said than done to ignore it.
It does become more difficult, however, to gloss over the way he blanches when Polnareff brings up playing ‘Never Have I Ever’.
It’s sh*tty out, and they can’t go anywhere, and they were only able to get one room for all five of them for the night. It’s a horrible game, too, after all. He’d rather not participate.
The issue is that his grandfather is forcing him to.
“Come on, Jotaro!” Joseph slaps him on the back where he’s trying to coerce him off of his bed, the one he’d gotten from pulling a good straw when they were deciding who would end up sleeping on the floor. He nearly drops his issue of National Geographic™ in the process. “It’ll be lots of fun! Come on, entertain your old man a little.”
His lip draws up into what he thinks is an uninterested scowl, albeit unintentional. “Mh.”
Joseph seems to neglect him in favour of targeting Kakyoin instead, then. “You too, Kakyoin! Get on the floor. Group bonding time.”
Avdol just looks at them all disapprovingly from the bathroom doorway.
It takes a grand total of about six minutes to finally goad them all onto the floor into something of a circle in the cramped space that they have, along with Kakyoin saying something directed at Polnareff that he refuses to relay and translate when he ends up being pried about it. He mostly joins because he feels bad for him at that point.
It’s simple at first. There’s the average, normal and expected questions; ‘have you ever kissed a girl’ for one, which Polnareff and Joseph both put their fingers down for. He has to think for a solid minute or two before decisively putting one of his own down, momentarily remembering Saya in the nurse's office. Albeit very possessed. He’d rather not think about it.
Then, further: ‘shoplifted’. ‘Skinny dipped’, which his grandfather reluctantly puts a finger down for and Jotaro absolutely does not want to think about. ‘Dined and dashed’. ‘Gotten a piercing’, which Jotaro both has to put fingers down for. ‘Kissed a boy’.
His grandfather has too many fingers down for Jotaro’s own comfort at the rate they’re going. He laughs near-sheepishly at Polnareff as he hides another, Avdol eyeing the both of them suspiciously.
Jotaro glances over and Kakyoin is pale.
He’s already in the process of getting up and leaving when Jotaro turns fully, lips parting to ask ‘what’s wrong’ by the time he fully stands and turns from the circle. Polnareff says something that he thinks is a hey and his grandfather says something that he thinks is Kakyoin’s name, leaving them all in the dark.
Jotaro blinks. Stands up. Furrows his brows, swallows. He’s already following him out of the room before he even comes to himself, ignoring the eyes bearing into him and pausing only when he closes the door behind him and realizes that he’s already gone.
Unsure of where to go, he finds the stairs to the top floor of the building. It’s secluded. It only makes sense. The one downside is that he’s going to get goddamned soaked the second he steps out, and that sucks.
His worries dissipate when he opens the door and nearly crushes Kakyoin behind it before he realizes that he’s even there, who is currently squatting under the small coverage the structure above the door provides. Jotaro thinks that he looks terribly small like this, compacting all nearly six feet of his size in such a way that the rain doesn’t pour down on him.
He’s staring pointedly at him. Jotaro can’t tell if it’s anger or anxiety in his eyes with the small glimpse of him he gets before looking away.
He says nothing. Just pulls his pack of cigarettes out of his coat pocket (which are regrettably dwindling at a rapid rate) and cups a hand around one until he can get it to light. Kakyoin still stares, but he thinks he looks a bit softer now. Calmer around the edges. Jotaro can’t imagine why.
Kakyoin speaks in the same second he takes the first drag, heady and humid with the rain; short and stilted. “Can I tell you something?”
Jotaro glances back down at him. Not at his eyes, not again, because he’s never been much of a fan of eye contact. Or most social etiquette in general. His grandfather is a pain in the ass to be around, but the leniency in the English is something he appreciates. He doesn’t have to dance around implications like he does in Japan that way.
He looks away and breathes in the smoke until it burns his lungs.
“Sure.”
“...I don’t remember much about the fleshbud,” Kakyoin sighs, slow and tentative with something that vaguely reminds Jotaro of the caution that comes with an injured prey animal. “Just– certain things. It’s like those three months just didn’t happen, you know? But I don’t.”
He breathes slowly. Jotaro thinks he hears something like the air he takes in rattling his lungs.
“I don’t remember why I’m in this uniform,” he admits, finally. “I think I told my parents about me. I don’t remember it. I don’t know what I would have told them. I don’t even know how they took it.”
Jotaro’s frown deepens as he whisks his cigarette from his mouth to hang loosely at his side, not unthoughtful.
The proximity of mutual trust is odd in the sense that Kakyoin expects him not to tell anyone about this, that it’s a secret, and that he himself wants to listen. That he wanted to come up here at all, even. He can’t bring himself to think about why they’ve gotten so attached in the little time they’ve been on the road, let alone how the same applies for everyone else. Maybe it’s because they’ve been busy protecting each other?
Maybe, in regards to how he feels about Kakyoin, it’s because he’s the only friend(?) he’s ever really had; or talked to, really. For a long while, at least. He prefers not to remember how much his mother used to worry about the isolation that he grew into with age. Or to think about her right now at all.
Would he trust Kakyoin with being vulnerable, too? It’s not like he hasn’t had to be before, but emotional matters are. Well. They’re just plain different.
Jotaro works his jaw once he puts the cigarette back in his mouth. “Is that why you left?”
“I,” Kakyoin starts again, and then he unwinds with a sigh. “No. I think I was just overwhelmed. I suppose the point I'm trying to make is that I’m not used to being open about stuff like that. I didn’t expect it, I suppose.”
Stuff like that.
“I don’t think they were making fun of anyone. If that’s what you’re worrying about.” Jotaro hesitates. “I haven’t really thought about that sort of thing either. My old man likes to poke fun at me all the time about it.”
Kakyoin’s eyes narrow. “Mr. Joestar?”
Jotaro shakes his head. “No. My father.”
Kakyoin makes a soft ‘o’ noise, replicating the shape with his mouth.
...sh*t, he hadn’t even called his father to tell her that Mom was sick, had he?
Jotaro's teeth click audibly as they clash together. It’s… a bit late to call and tell him now. Maybe he’d already called home a few times by now, so maybe he and his mother would have talked in the fits she seemed to be awake. Maybe he even knows by now.
Maybe it’s best that he doesn’t if he’s still unaware.
“Do you like them?” Kakyoin asks, breaking him out of his reverie. Jotaro can't tell if he's testing the waters or trying to strike a conversation. “Boys, I mean. Since they mentioned it.”
Oh.
Maybe? He hasn’t really thought about it.
“Dunno.”
“Hm.” Kakyoin fiddles with the hem of his own coat. “I haven’t thought about it much either.”
It’s quiet like that for another long stretch of silence, leaving the question hanging in the air.
Does he like boys? Guys? He’s never really viewed himself as having limits in that regard, but he's never exactly been attracted to them before, either. Not for either, actually. Girls seem like a given, something that he just likes– but to hell if he cares about that right now. He tries not to think. He hasn't been particularly interested.
His cigarette eventually burns down and he stubs it out, crushing it beneath his heel and kicking the butt away from them where it soaks under the open rain.
“Jotaro?”
“Mm.”
“Can I ask you for another favour?”
He hesitates. “Depends.”
Kakyoin sighs.
“When we get to Dio,” he drags over every syllable, “I want you to stay out of it. For as long as you can.”
Jotaro’s face contorts into something bewildered. He feels it more than he does anything else. It’s slight, almost imperceivable.
“I want to kill him myself.”
–
The magazine goes all but forgotten for a while after Avdol is ‘killed’.
Just grazed with a bullet, really, but Polnareff doesn’t know that yet. Jotaro thinks something about not telling him is inherently cruel if anything, but that might be his trust in him talking. Everyone had agreed that if they were to tell him he’d probably end up accidentally spilling the secret of Avdol’s survival and recovery, after all, though Jotaro thinks that he might be a bit more capable of keeping secrets than the rest of them assume.
Whatever. Kakyoin had been the one to bring it up, and they’d all ended up going with it. So it’s not his problem.
The first time the trip begins to set in for him, however, is in some rundown town in the middle of nowhere after a fight.
The water pressure isn’t too bad considering how sh*tty the motel they’re staying in is. He thinks as much as he scrubs through his hair with the cheap soap that’s provided for him, something that he thinks smells more like the scent of rosewood rather than something particularly emasculating. He doesn’t find himself caring.
The water runs a bit red. He tries not to think about it.
The hot steam and humidity piling in the room is practically suffocating by the time he gets out, finally clean. It takes practically zero effort to towel off his hair into something just barely close to dry, to scrub at what little stains of coagulated blood are still on his body, and–
–and then he catches himself in the mirror.
He notices the scars fully for the first time.
Instantly, he knows that they’re permanent just from accumulated knowledge over the years.
He remembers being five years old and asking his grandfather about the scars on his own skin. He remembers being told that they were trophies.
They don’t.. feel like it.
His fingers are light as they graze over some of the raised skin on his arm, knitted over and flushed an even more vibrant red from the heat of the shower. He nearly flinches at the sudden sting that screams sensitive as he touches it. He can’t tell if it’s phantom pain or not.
Is it? Or has he not been treating them well enough?
He doesn’t remember where some of them come from. He doesn’t remember how he got them, or where he got them, but it had to have been recent. Had to have been. They weren’t there before.
Jotaro thinks that they’re the ugliest things he’s seen in his life.
Aren’t you supposed to be the most disgusting thing you’ve ever seen?
“Jotaro!” His grandfather calls, pounding heartily on the door and derailing him from his train of thought. “Are you alright?”
He blinks his eyes back into focus, reality reordering itself into something real and shapely around him past the overlaying blur he can’t discern the origins of. He doesn’t know how long his grandfather has been at the door for. It must have been a while, considering he sounds so worried. He can’t imagine why he does. Why would he care?
“Fine,” he grits, unsure of the tremble that he has to repress in his own voice. “I’m fine.”
The world feels startlingly quiet. Slow. He can feel more than logically deduce that Joseph is still at the door, something of a feeling that gives his skin rise to gooseflesh the longer he hones in on the sensation. His hand shifts to massage over his birthmark, slow and methodical and deep, as if trying to will it away entirely.
“I… went to the market while I was out,” his grandfather offers, clearly unsure of how to deal with the abrupt uneasiness in the atmosphere. “I got you some stuff that you might like.”
“Hm.”
It’s unnaturally silent. Uncomfortably so. Odd, considering that Jotaro has always preferred it over the noise of the people around him.
“I’ll leave you alone now,” is the final thing that his grandfather says before he hears his footsteps finally pad away unevenly from the door.
What a pain.
Jotaro shrugs his tank top back on. Puts on his boxers, folds up his pants. It’s a routine he’s developed over the past days–? Weeks? On the road.
He looks again into the mirror and wonders if he’ll be something worthy of coming back home to his mother at the end of this at all.
–
Everything is so bright.
How did you get in here? He thinks he hears something say, something, although he doesn’t know what and he swears that he hasn’t heard the voice before despite the fact that it sounds so familiar.
You aren’t supposed to be here. Not anymore.
And, Jotaro notices, he is swimming. It’s dark, all of a sudden. Quiet. He thinks he hears something like a laboured sigh in the instant he washes ashore, although the transition is so gentle that it doesn’t feel like he was ever even swimming in the first place. His feet land on the sand easily, stepping like he’d never even been drifting at all as he treds further up the dunes.
He thinks, momentarily, that he’s had enough of seeing sand recently.
But it’s as nice as it can be, really. He can’t remember the last time he’d been to the beach before this trip, cherishing the sand beneath his skin and listening to the water kiss up against the land in a monotonous loop.
He looks up and the sky is littered with stars, clear and so very perfectly visible. All a flickering assortment of blues, yellows, purples, and whites. Jotaro thinks that it’s something gorgeous, persuasive. He can’t remember the last time he’d taken the time to stargaze in a place with practically no pollution, either. He files the thought away for later.
There is a figure on the shore, shadowed out and small. Hunched.
On each side he looks, the shore seems to expand endlessly. A long dock is the only thing for miles to take note of, a tiny little boat tied to a thin rope against the last pole on the platform as it’s gently tossed about by the water.
I thought you would have given up by now, the voice seems to chastise, though with not much heat. None of this is your choice anymore. Just rest. Leave me be.
He feels something. He’s not sure what it is, entirely. Sorrow? Why would he be sad?
His legs are moving across the sand before he realizes that he has possession of them again. The sand still rings with warmth across his feet that must have come from a day that happened somewhere at some time, once, not distant enough to have let it cool entirely.
The figure shifts, and he has a better view of it with the closer proximity. It’s pale. It’s impossible to make out the details in the darkness. It turns to him, and Jotaro can see what are the whites of its eyes, impossibly bright.
Its mouth moves in a hiss.
You’re not him.
The sun burns bright.
Jotaro doesn’t have the time to question it before he stumbles with wide eyes, hands grappling for his head (hurts; sudden, sharp pain) as the figure stands. He thinks it’s smiling, or maybe it’s scowling, but he can’t quite discern the difference before everything is in a fiery haze. How did you get in here? How? How.
There is a tightening at his throat, and something that he thinks are claws. Claws like a lion’s, claws like the sizable beasts his father told him could gobble him up at the zoo. He hadn’t been scared of them then, considering they had been in their enclosure. They were trapped. They couldn’t hurt him. But the figure is in front of him now, close, too close, and he sees gold, and he sees red–
“You,” he strains, realization dawning over him cold like ice-water. “I’m going to f*cking kill you.”
Something prods at the back of his brain, something intrusive that says that’s not your job, you made a promise, and something else says to him I don’t care.
The figure laughs, deep and rich. Of course you would. Its head tilts, like it can read his thoughts.
And of course he would kill for a violent thing like you.
Jotaro doesn’t understand.
The world around him stutters violently, stopping and starting, until he’s being thrown into something molten and hot and frying. He screams, or at least he thinks that he does, clawing and grabbing violently at the water that’s all the wrong colour and all too thick as it takes him in further; lapping at his skin and filling his lungs.
Jotaro looks up at the sun, and it stares unwaveringly back down at him in turn. Molten gold, just like the water, beating against a violent blood-red sky.
What makes you so special, anyways?
This is not his dream.
–
He wakes up with the sound of something like a pistol still ringing in his ears.
“Jotaro!”
There are hands around him.
Tight.
He gets a glimpse of gold.
Too tight.
Before he even knows it, he’s lashing out. Or maybe he has been for a while? He looks over frantically and there’s a nightstand, albeit near-instantaneously shattered and splintered to pieces with a blistering crack still ghosting against his fingertips and further into his palms the second his eyes lay on it.
A weapon, he denotes with some violent relief. It’s a weapon.
“ I’m– going to kill you, ” he pants heavily, voice leaving him mechanical and hoarse. Not himself, something far quieter in his consciousness aids him. Gone ignored. “I’m going to f*cking kill you.”
The nightstand swings heartily and lifts by itself with something grabbing pointedly onto it, something, and he thinks that it’s himself. Which doesn’t make sense, because he can’t move, because he’s being grabbed by– by someone. Dio, he thinks. Who even is Dio, really? Why would he be here?
“Jotaro,” the voice grabbing him strains, aged and hissing at him. “Calm down. Knock it off!”
Why would he be here. Everyone is in danger if he is. He’s–
“You’re outside of Varanasi,” the voice says to him. “You’re safe. No one else is here. Look at me.”
There’s a sound like a dart piercing cork, stopped roughly midair in its aim. Jotaro tries to thrash. He can’t move.
He slows with realization.
Painfully, second by second, he feels something peel away from his fingers. A phantom sensation. The nightstand from before lands with a loud clatter and thunk against the floor as he watches it come down from above him.
Oh.
Oh, the back of his mind whispers again, oh, no.
You’ve done it again.
Jotaro’s eyes blink his awareness back into the room. It’s dark. The only light source comes from the window by the bed opposite his and the mesh of colours (purple, baby blue) above him and the body that holds him, the body that’s currently peeling away from his to stare with wide-eyed concern.
Hazel eyes. Hazel eyes like his mother’s. Not red.
He slowly lifts his head and he sees Hermit Purple, coiled snugly around Star Platinum like a vice. He looks– animalistic, maybe that’s the best word for it, eyes the same pure too-bright white he’d seen in his dream with a snarl pressed deep into his lips. Feral. That’s why he can’t move, he realizes.
Jotaro’s mouth tastes bitter.
His grandfather laughs, warm with an unsettled shake to his voice that’s hard to miss. “Are we alright now? All here?”
He slumps until they both land on the floor.
Joseph goes back-first with an uncomfortable ‘oomph’ sound the instant they make contact with a couple of pieces of chipped wood, arms wrapping tighter around him so he doesn’t knock his head against the opposite bed frame they end up pressed against.
He thinks that he feels Star Platinum dematerialize. There’s a weight in his being that returns with his absence, and the quiet, thunder-esque ambiance that normally indicates his presence has vanished entirely. Whether he’s done it subconsciously or his Stand decided to return on his own is beyond him.
There’s something like glass shattering off to his side as he does. Probably a lamp that he hadn’t noticed Star Platinum pick up. He hears his grandfather mutter something like ‘Jesus’, prosthetic hand petting soothingly over his back while the other cards through his hair. He’s too tired to complain about it.
He hears multiple pairs of footsteps. He hears the lock being picked, being opened. He hears a panicked “Mr. Joestar”, which he guesses is probably Polnareff. He’s too tired to look. His eyes stay closed. He hears his name at some point too, he thinks, which is presumably Kakyoin.
(Of course he would kill for a violent thing like you.)
He would rather not think about anything right now. Why should they care about whether he lives or dies, anyway. That’s his choice to make.
“Everyone get out,” his grandfather hisses, which he thinks is a new one for him. There’s a pause where there’s some shuffling, though Jotaro can’t quite see what anyone is doing. “You too, Kakyoin. I mean it.”
There’s a few more beats of silence before the door closes with a soft click. His grandfather tugs him closer. They don’t talk about it when they clean the mess up and try to go back to sleep.
–
Joseph is disconcertingly nice to him after what Jotaro mentally deems ‘the big Varanasi screw-up’ for a while. Maybe too much so.
He forces him to sit shotgun. Laughs and smiles at him more than what’s already usual for him, pats him on the back more, tries to hug him. It’s only the slightest bit annoying.
It’s needlessly exhausting. Kakyoin seems to be more on edge around him, too, like he’s tip-toeing around his very existence all of a sudden. It's not like he's avoiding him, or anything (quite the opposite), but he kind of wishes that they’d go back to trying to kill each other again like what’d happened in the school infirmary. Jotaro supposes that he’s always been that way, though, but he can catch him staring him down from the corner of his eye more often.
Polnareff, much to his relief, doesn’t act much differently. At least he has that much normalcy to cling to.
His grandfather, on the other hand, even seems adamant on pestering him when they retire for the day in their rooms.
“Have you ever watched Bo Derek’s Tarzan, The Ape Man?”
Oh, god.
Joseph’s eyes dig into him, intrusive and searching. Jotaro stares back at him shortly before looking away the instant the eye contact begins to get uncomfortable. He has not.
He probably shouldn’t engage him in this scenario.
…Despite knowing all of this, he can’t help but think of his mother.
He’s not entirely sure why. He remembers how he’d be avoidant miles away back in Japan, refusing to engage her whenever he was invited to watch her romcoms in the living room in favour of skulking around doing what was often practically nothing in his room instead. He remembers refusing to get close. If he would get close, then he would hurt her on accident. He would lash out. He’d do something.
But she’d always understood. Always tried. She would never argue, even though there would always be something like sadness in her voice when he turned her down that she barely managed to conceal.
He still thinks about it often. Thinks often about if he could ever try and be better to her if– when, he desperately tries to convince himself– they come home from Egypt. He’s well-aware of the fact that he’s never been the best son.
Jotaro thinks now of the issue of National Geographic that Joseph had given him all the way back in Japan before his mother had abruptly become ill, trying so desperately to adhere to Jotaro’s interest in hopes of– what, peacekeeping? Connecting with him? Was that what he was trying to do?
It’s odd, he decides. Joseph had visited them despite his distaste for his father semi-frequently, sure, but not terribly often. It’s odd that he’s trying to connect like this. He can tell that’s what he’s trying to do, as if he’s trying to make up for lost time that he really doesn’t have to.
Jotaro thinks of the night of the nightmare, vision– whatever it was, and he debates himself for a long moment. He thinks again of how desperately he’d tried to wake him up, tried to comfort him after, how he didn’t seem to hold any of it against him despite the fact that he’d nearly–
–hurt him.
“No,” he says. It comes out thoughtful. He’s shocked hearing the word leave his mouth at all.
His grandfather seems to beam.
“Well!” He starts proudly, pumping out his chest before reaching into an oddly inconspicuous brown paper bag. “You’re in luck. Remember the day I went off to the market?”
Jotaro thinks that it’s a bit hard to forget.
Joseph pulls out what looks like a VHS tape in a suspicious white sleeve, which Jotaro is ninety percent sure is bootlegged, and then a cassette tape that he doesn’t pay as much attention to. The latter doesn’t really shock him.
“I got it right here,” Joseph announces, lips quirking and pushing his wrinkles farther up onto his cheeks. “Likely not a very legal copy, sure, but who cares? Entertainment is damn-near impossible to find around here.”
“Hm.”
“And lo and behold,” Joseph’s grin deepens, voice slowing, “this hotel has a tape player.” Jotaro watches him hunch over by the television and slide the VHS in. “Right here.”
Jotaro’s brows raise, vaguely unimpressed. Should he appreciate the effort? He… sort of does. He doesn’t particularly understand why no one else got invited to watch with them, but whatever. It’s probably less annoying that way
Unsurprisingly, he decides after exactly one hour and fifty-five minutes, the movie sucks. Like, really badly.
Cosmically badly. Horrifically so. He’s almost surprised.
Maybe the watching experience got worsened by his grandfather feeling the apparent need to comment on absolutely everything every odd couple of seconds or so, but Jotaro really thinks that the movie was just That Bad. He is sure, however, that the loud caramel popcorn crunching in his ear did not help it whatsoever.
And then his grandfather opens his mouth and starts with a: “...so, what did you think?”
Jotaro holds his tongue for a solid thirty seconds. Contemplates lying or whatever else he could say at all, except that Holly Kujo regrettably did not raise a liar.
“sh*t,” he decides plainly.
And Joseph laughs.
And it’s not just a plain sort of awkward chuckle to soothe the mood, not really, it’s more a full-bodied hearty guffaw that has Joseph shaking and slapping at his knees (only to wince at metal colliding roughly with skin immediately after) that has Jotaro even tempting the urge to smile, just a little.
It has his grandfather wiping tears at his eyes and wheezing where Jotaro is finally unable to repress a snort.
“--Sorry, sorry,” Joseph rushes, waving a hand frantically in the air while the other scrubs at his eyes. “That’s what I thought, too!”
The credits finish as the music slows before the tape player spits the VHS back out, the television screen cutting to a bright blue that coats the entire room in its tint. It would be vaguely uneasing if the atmosphere weren’t as light as it was.
Jotaro remembers last summer where he’d spent nearly the entire time in his room, sitting and staring at his television on the floor late at night after it cut to blue. He prefers not to think about it.
But it is nice, really, to get his mind off of things for a while. Maybe that’s what his grandfather was trying to do.
“I was going to have you listen to, ah–” his grandfather continues, fishing around the floor for the cassette tape he’d bought earlier. “This. Eat It by Weird Al Yankovic– it’s a spoof on Michael Jackson’s Beat It, did you know that? But I guess that it’s a bit late for that now.”
Jotaro hums thoughtfully. “I like Michael Jackson.”
“Oh?”
Jotaro blinks, slow and a bit heavy with the ever-present exhaustion on them. Oh what? Does he want him to continue?
“...He’s not as good as Toshinobu Kubota,” he offers passively, unsure. “They do the same genres. Pop and R&B.”
Joseph’s brows furrow. “I don’t know who that is.”
Jotaro fidgets with his hands, picking absently at the callouses on them. He purposely avoids the healing one. “He sounds like Stevie Wonder.” A pause. “Kind of.”
Joseph makes a noise that sounds like recognition, soft and passive as he nods and turns his gaze back to the tape player. He takes it out, gently depositing it back in the case and putting it back in the slip as they fall back into silence. It’s not entirely uncomfortable.
Jotaro carefully steps off of where he was previously seated on his bed, padding about to pick up some of the garbage from the movie. Empty snack bags, mostly. Joseph breaks the silence again shortly after from where he sits still in front of the television set, although he sounds a bit more serious this time than before. Weirdly grave.
“Jotaro.”
Jotaro blinks slowly, standing steadily to attention as he turns to face his grandfather’s back. He looks oddly imposing like this, covered in the abrasive blue light and the darkness of the room only. He’s oddly still.
“I want you to promise me something.”
Jotaro’s brows furrow, lips quirking downwards into a deeper frown.
“Whatever you do,” his grandfather drawls, “whoever it’s for– don’t destroy yourself.”
He stills.
“When I saw you that night, you were ready to kill for your mother. You have killed for her.” A pause, and then some laughter that doesn’t sound entirely genuine. “I mean, that’s what you thought you were doing it for, weren’t you? And that’s not a bad thing, it’s good to have that kind of will. I think even your great-great grandfather had that. But.”
Jotaro’s lips purse. “You don’t know that.”
Joseph straightens. “I dream about him, too.”
Dio, his mind offers passively.
Jotaro bites at his lip until it comes up raw.
“I think the rest of them do too,” Joseph shrugs. “Not quite the same as we do, but sometimes. I don’t know if it’s the stress of the trip or some weird twist of destiny or what, but I just want you to promise me that you won’t let yourself become something that you despise looking at in the mirror by the end of this. Not all because you want us safe.”
What the hell is that even supposed to mean. Jotaro scoffs.
“Can’t promise something like that.”
“Try,” his grandfather says. Jotaro’s eyes narrow farther. “Don’t you dare ever make the same mistakes the rest of us have.”
Jotaro just wishes that he could make sense of why the hell everyone wants him to live so badly.
He’s getting awfully tired of making promises that he’s not sure if he can keep.
"...Old man," he mutters after a long moment, biting down on his lip. "What do you know about Jonathan Joestar?"
–
Of course, he thinks as he sees Kakyoin bleeding out on the desert sand, of course something like this would happen.
It’s even more hectic in the truck. Jotaro fumbles as he’s handed Kakyoin’s body to tend to, shivering and making weak, pathetic noises that near-inaudibly crawl out of his throat; the only thing indicating that he’s conscious at all. Something desperate in the back of Jotaro’s mind says ‘shock’.
He’s not sure how to respond when Polnareff asks how he’s doing. His hands aren’t used to being as careful as this, gently wiping away the blood from the incisions in Kakyoin's eyes despite the shake to them that he desperately tries to ignore. Kakyoin moans in protest and convulses when he tries to pry the lids open with his fingers.
“Bad,” he musters in response, just barely stifling the urge to laugh. He hates how nervous his voice leaves him. “He might lose his sight.”
Jotaro thinks that he says something else like doctor as his lips move. It’s hard to hear above the static. He waves Avdol’s hand away when he offers him alcohol to pour over the injuries. Won’t do them any good beyond hurt him. Water and soap would help, but the Stand attacking them is obviously water-based, so it's a no-go.
He tries his best to be gentle as his fingers card through Kakyoin’s hair– nearly just as red as the blood on his face, and he finds himself actually having trouble discerning the two– a sort of pathetic last-ditch attempt to comfort him given the circ*mstances. It’s the best he can muster to hold him more firmly against his chest when a small sliver of Hierophant reaches out to curl around his wrist, clinging weakly.
He’s not used to it. Being tender.
He’s far better suited for fighting.
“It’s okay,” he hushes uncertainly as Kakyoin shakes his head, “you’re gonna be alright. I’ve got you.”
It’s half a lie, considering the fact Jotaro isn’t sure if he’s going to be okay at all. The cuts, if anything, will definitely scar. He’s shocked that they hadn’t gone clean through entirely. He’s never been quite as good at comforting as his mother.
He just barely notices the dog jumping out of the truck before they all eventually go flying. The moments prior pass in a blur. Polnareff nearly drowning. Hearing himself yell at his grandfather to slow down the truck. Avdol using Magician’s Red underneath his fingertips.
He’s still holding Kakyoin by the time they end up on the sand. Jotaro feels guilty when he lowers him to rest his head on the ground, when he feels him protest, when he tries to reach and cling to his jacket before he goes.
(Whoever it’s for, don’t destroy yourself.)
(Of course he would kill for a violent thing like you.)
He feels guilty when he runs.
–
He’s still panting by the time that he finally realizes that N’Doul is dead.
Jotaro doesn’t find himself caring about where the dog is.
He’s not fully sure how long he stands there staring at the body, at the crimson spilled on the sand at his head. The quickly fading remnants of water.
Jotaro waits for him to start breathing again. He doesn’t.
He knows sort of objectively that he’s killed some of the people they’ve fought in the past. He tries not to when he can. Seeing the body itself is entirely different.
He remembers a gun and a jail cell and wanting to die. He remembers being prepared to. He hadn’t wanted to hurt anyone anymore. So why the hell had Star Platinum stopped him?
Maybe N’Doul’s Stand didn’t have enough sentience, he reasons. Maybe. Kakyoin acts like Hierophant is– sentient – and that opens an entirely different can of worms that Jotaro would rather not think about right now.
He feels nauseous. Bile burns at the back of his throat. He wheezes and comes up dry.
Bury him, his mind provides. You have to bury him. The sun’ll cook him up if you don’t. God knows what’ll happen then.
Maybe that’s the cost of dying for someone that you love, he realizes. Maybe that’s the cost of being prepared to kill for them. To die.
Maybe that’s what makes Dio so powerful. He makes people love him. And if they don’t, he makes them.
He forces back the bile that still crawls further up his throat.
Jotaro wonders how far away the others are.
He feels unsure of himself as he scoops N’Doul into his arms with his cane, carrying him and walking. He keeps walking. Keeps walking until he finds a nice pillar that looks like a good resting place where he can set him down, trying to ignore the awkward way he rolls about and rocks in his arms as an indicator of dead weight.
He ignores the blood from his head spilling onto the sand behind him. He ignores the blood that starts to stain his clothes.
He tosses a mixture of sand and dirt and blood over the body. He digs and he digs with his fingernails until they hurt and they burn, digs until they bleed at the cuticles, and only then does he start feeling Star Platinum’s hands ghost anxiously over his to toss larger chunks atop it for him.
He’s heaving raggedly by the time that he spears N’Doul’s cane into the heap. He ignores the fact that he’s trembling. He ignores the painful sensation in his exposed scalp that preludes a sunburn when he runs his fingers through his bangs, greasy and wet with sweat.
He looks up at the sky, the same striking red and gold from his dream. The sun stares back down at him again.
Jotaro really wishes that things had gone differently.
But now he has to wonder.
Just how powerful is Dio, anyway?
–
Kakyoin looks uncomfortably small and frail in a hospital gown. He hates thinking it because he knows Kakyoin would hate being viewed that way and he hates thinking it because he knows that it’s true.
Kakyoin’s lips purse at his silence. He clearly knows that Jotaro is there, considering Hierophant is (not roughly or aggressively, mind) slapping directly at his face with one of his tendrils. Touching, really, in lieu of sight. It’s a bit awkward. They haven’t said anything to each other yet and Jotaro doesn’t even really know what there is to say, let alone if there’s anything at all.
It’s an understatement to say that he feels guilty.
Avdol’s visit went more smoothly. He’ll be out within the day, probably. It was just a minor gash, nothing major to his vitals, so it’s nothing to worry about– but Kakyoin is an entirely different case.
Not to mention he has questions. But Jotaro has never seen himself as particularly intrusive, so he doesn’t plan on bothering to try. Kakyoin has already said before that he doesn’t remember anything from the fleshbud anyways, and he doubts that the ‘before’ would be helpful either. It shouldn't really be his problem anymore.
“So,” Kakyoin starts, “are we forgoing ‘hellos’ now? Not even a ‘hey’ or a slightly affirmative noise?”
Jotaro equally grunts in response.
He takes the acknowledgement as permission to pull up a chair, sighing heavily as he descends into the cushion. It’s a lot more comfortable than what they’ve been riding in over the past few days. His ass kind of hurts thinking about it.
Kakyoin’s hands fidget nervously. Hierophant has followed him to where he sits in the chair, instead deciding to drape over the back of it with occasional flicks of his tendrils.
Jotaro purses his lips. “Your eyes–”
“I would rather not talk about them,” he responds firmly. Jotaro doesn’t really blame him.
He decidedly grunts instead. Kakyoin scoffs out a laugh.
“Are the others coming?”
“In a bit.”
“Hm.”
Jotaro takes a look around the room. He hates hospitals, always has. It’s dry and it’s clean and it’s all far too sterile, blinding him white. It smells like cleaning chemicals. It smells half like death. It reminds him of the one that his mother volunteers at, though. He used to sit in the pediatrics ward as a kid with some of the patients and play. He shoves the thought into the back of his mind.
Kakyoin’s belongings are set neatly off to the side around the room, most of them within arm’s length of the bed.
“Here,” Kakyoin mutters, voice lowering suddenly into something hushed; as if he’s trusting Jotaro with a secret. “Hold your hand out.”
Jotaro frowns and exposes his palm, setting it on the edge atop the starchy sheets. Kakyoin doesn’t take it– he hadn’t expected him to– but Hierophant carefully pats off to the side as he reaches into a bag discarded by one of the nightstands. Slowly, he deposits something small, green, and metallic into his hand.
Jotaro’s brows furrow. His fingers curl around it. The words ‘baby Stand’ ring hollow in his head from the events of a few days ago, but he decides that it’s probably best not to bring it up at the moment. Maybe later.
He wonders what happened to the scars. He’d worried about that, too.
“That’s what I would typically call my ‘lucky pocket knife’,” Kakyoin hums with mirth and an edge of dripping sarcasm as Hierophant slinks away beneath the bed into hiding. “But I suppose that it’s not very lucky considering the circ*mstances. I want you to keep it until I get back.”
Jotaro chews at his bottom lip. “Why?”
Kakyoin shrugs his shoulders. “Think of it as a promise that I’ll come back before you all get to Dio.”
I sort of wish you wouldn’t.
Jotaro hums as he tucks it into his pocket for safe-keeping. Can his eyes even heal in that amount of time?
Maybe. Jotaro doesn’t put it past him. He’s reliable anyhow, and he trusts Kakyoin to keep his word.
I’d prefer you didn’t put yourself in harm’s way because of me or a grudge.
I’d sure as hell rather you try not to get yourself killed.
“I’ll hold you to that,” he hears himself say involuntarily, and he’s nearly shocked at how soft his own voice comes out.“Don’t push yourself. That’s the favour I want from you.”
Kakyoin’s lips quirk at the corners, weak and pallid. “No promises.”
Jotaro feels his eyes turn upwards with one smooth movement from his mouth.
It's weird. He doesn't remember the last time he smiled.
–
“No,” he breathes in the silence of the crisp winter air, watching in horror as shimmering emerald strands flutter downwards from somewhere indescript. “Oh, no.”
The motorbike nearly veers off the road when a small piece lands in his hands and wiggles to cling weakly around his palm.
He hears distant commotion. It sounds more like rushing water in his ears. There’s something like a clock tower chiming.
Kakyoin wasn’t supposed to come back. Not now. He was supposed to be safe in Aswan.
Jotaro wonders if he’d been planning to die like this all along, too.
He hates that it’s beautiful.
Jotaro thinks of the promise that he’d made to his grandfather outside of Varanasi and decides with a certain kind of sadness that despite not guaranteeing anything, he has to break it.
What would it matter. He’s dead, anyway.
Maybe even his mother already is by this point.
The only way that he could ever kill Dio is by becoming the same breed of monster that he is. He certainly thinks as much when Dio says that his anger isn’t enough.
–
He feels lightheaded inside of the ambulance.
It reminds him of the sterility of the hospital Kakyoin and Avdol had been in while recovering in Aswan. It reminds him of death. He sure as hell feels like it when it lurches around a turn and one of the paramedics screams at him and tells him that transfusing Dio’s blood alone won’t save Joseph Joestar. It could probably even do more harm than good, they say.
I don’t care, he thinks, and the words somehow puppet out of his mouth. I’m tired of being told what’s impossible. Just do it.
Another one of the paramedics try to block the blood flow from the knife gashes while the transfusion is set up. It seems like an equal enough trade, taking back what Dio owes them. Maybe the majority of his nausea is from the blood loss. He thinks some of it is internal when they press on his ribs and let out something that’s probably a curse in Arabic.
Comminuted fracture, he hears, and then surgery.
Of course, his grandfather is fine. A dick when he pranks him, sure, but fine. He watches the wounds on his body heal and he thinks.
He sways on his feet when he asks about Kakyoin Noriaki. Tears through the back ambulance doors with Star Platinum and soars and scales across buildings when his grandfather gives him a look that says ‘dead’-- because he would rather die than not try. He would rather die than let him get killed in part to protect him.
He ignores them when they scream his name and tell him to come back.
Jotaro promises himself that he will not be like him.
He refuses to be like him.
The water is tacky with blood when he finds him. Jotaro himself is calf-deep in it, wading through the muddied water as he stares at the hole in his stomach, neat and clean and nearly the size of Star Platinum’s own fist.
He feels like vomiting and comes up empty just like he had with N’Doul.
Kakyoin’s corpse practically split in half, he realizes, and he’s not even fully sure how he’s supposed to get his body back to the ambulance at all. Jotaro thinks he dry heaves when Star Platinum wrenches metal to get to his body and deposit him into his arms and something snaps that might be a bone or an entrail or something.
Just the same breed of monster, his mind echoes. That’s what you are.
“You’re going to be okay,” he whispers to nobody in particular, staunchly biting back the shake in his voice and the nausea knotting up in his throat. He rushes to shrug his jacket off of his shoulders, still tattered, swaddling it gently around his body and the hole in his stomach just to keep him all in one piece. “You’re gonna be alright. I’ve got you. You’ll be okay.”
Your fault. Yours.
He ignores how cold and pale he is when he has Star Platinum lift and rocket them off in the direction the ambulance originally was. He ignores the eyes that stare into his, devoid of all signs of life, because he’s always despised eye contact.
He collapses on the ambulance floor and doesn’t wake up for an entire day after the transfusions.
–
“You were carted into emergency surgery last night at the hospital,” some random doctor he doesn’t know the name of tells him– he’s seen too many within the past few hours to care– and Jotaro really can’t find himself thinking in the slightest about what their name is. “A few of your ribs had shattered beyond repair and we couldn’t salvage the bone, so we had to put a few metal plates in after you risked a lung collapse.”
Jotaro blinks slowly. He laves his tongue around his mouth, finding it dry. He thinks he still tastes a bit of Dio’s blood coagulated over his teeth. Maybe it's his own. The majority of his body hurts.
Must be the adrenaline wearing off.
He opens his mouth, hesitating for a few moments before any words finally leave him in a hoarse croak. “Is my mother alive.”
The doctor at the foot of his bed is quiet for a few long moments. Too long, Jotaro thinks, and he actually begins to worry that they might have run out of time after all.
“Mrs. Kujo is expected to make a full recovery,” they say, fidgeting. “But you– we’re not sure how you’re even alive. Or not in a coma, for that matter.”
Jotaro’s eyes slide over to make contact with the doctor’s. They falter in their stance, just noticeably.
“I think we had a new record for the number of stitches you got last night,” the doctors laughs nervously, waving a hand lackadaisical in the air. “There’s two sets in your legs and six everywhere else, not to mention all of the internal bleeding and– well, your shoulder fracture. We’re mostly just surprised that the blood loss or the blunt force trauma didn’t get to you.”
Hm. Explains a lot.
His head rolls to face the window, bright and beaming into his room. It kind of hurts to look at compared to the darkness and city lights alone from yesterday. It was… easier.
“...Muhammad Avdol is also alive,” they continue, and Jotaro’s focus returns to them. “He came in last night with extensive injuries to his arms from the elbow-down, but we stabilized him. He’s in the talks of obtaining prosthetics, I believe. Sadly, we don’t really have any new news about your dog.”
Jotaro lets his head fall back onto the bed with a sigh. Almost everyone is safe, then. Good.
He thinks that, if anything, this is probably the one of the best conceivable outcomes. It could have gone far worse.
He misses Japan. He misses his mother. He’s not entirely sure how he’s going to readjust when he gets home; half because he’s missed two months of school by this point (granted, around ten days of those were winter break and he usually always skips on his birthday anyways) and half because he doesn’t want to go back to being a horrible son.
He lets himself close his eyes for a while, tongue running over his lips as he purses them. Dry. Still kind of raw and metallic-tasting.
“Noriaki Kakyoin isn’t awake yet,” the doctor continues, and Jotaro’s eyes immediately slip back open. He gets a view full of ceiling. “He was up for a bit earlier, but I suppose he decided to go back to sleep for a little while. Your grandfather and Polnareff are currently out walking. I can run you over to his room, if you’d like.”
Jotaro hums a soft, affirmative noise. He feels himself nod. It’d be nice.
He practically blacks everything out as his medical equipment is prepared and set up so he can be mobilized, lets himself space out as he’s moved down the hall and into an unfamiliar room, albeit familiar in the sense that the dull repetitive beeps and buzzes of machinery are the same as the one he was in before.
The doctor helps him out of his bed and into a chair by Kakyoin’s bedside where Jotaro slumps; a tall IV pole at his side with some sort of liquid-adjacent in it that he can’t fully discern might be. It’s colder exposed out here than in the bed, legs and arms held bare to the air in nothing but a hospital gown and what he thinks are boxers. Probably his own only actual article of clothing that he has on him, really.
The doctor departs and tells him to say if he needs anything. He appreciates the accommodation, although the only thing he can muster at the moment is a nod and a sleepy assenting mumble as he crosses his arms over Kakyoin’s bedside where he buries his head.
He’s not fully sure how long he’s even out for by the time that he wakes up. He’s not even sure how long Kakyoin has been awake by the time that Jotaro finally notices that he is, forking through the pages of a book that Jotaro thinks Avdol gave him before they left Aswan.
Kakyoin seems to blink out of his stupor once he realizes that Jotaro is stirring, dog-earring his book as he closes it on his lap and presses his lips together. He notes that Kakyoin doesn’t look very happy.
But at least he’s alive. Jotaro thinks that’s all that matters regarding him right now.
“Ah,” Kakyoin starts, sounding unusually flat. “You look like sh*t.”
Jotaro squints.
“Speak for yourself,” he croaks in response. Kakyoin actually doesn’t look that bad. A bit tired and worn, maybe, but definitely better off than most of them.
Kakyoin snorts back at him.
“So,” he starts cooly, “a blood transfusion.”
And oh, Jotaro realizes. That’s what this is about.
Jotaro looks up at him, eyelids drooping. He feels weary– tired– something exhausted both bone and soul-deep shallow in his chest like something has been taken from him. He’s not sure what it is, what it would be. Maybe it’s just the jetlag of the trip setting in.
It’s over, after all. They’ll just go their separate ways and live normally again. Jotaro finds himself not being sure how he feels about it.
Jotaro swallows thick. He’s so tired. “I’m sorry.”
Kakyoin’s brows arch in something like shock before they furrow again, still clearly irritated. Jotaro doesn’t find himself blaming him. It was a ballsy move, and being resuscitated courtesy of the lifeforce of the man who had killed you in the first place isn't... favourable, per say.
“I never asked you to do anything for me,” he continues, tone just barely bordering on cold, “not like that.”
“Sorry.”
“Did you think that there would be any repercussions at the time? Any consequences? Did you think even once that it might do something even worse than death to us?”
“Sorry.”
“If you think that I owe you for…” Kakyoin says slowly, and then he halts altogether. Jotaro doesn’t bother lifting his head.
He stares at the wall. Feels more like he’s staring through it.
He hears Kakyoin sigh. Feels like static again.
“Mr. Joestar said something,” he hears, and then there are fingers tentatively carding over his hair. He hadn’t even noticed that his hat was gone in the first place. Jotaro blinks, and the world comes back into focus around him. “About letting Dio’s body burn. He said we'll drop it in the sun in a while.”
Jotaro doesn’t object to the touch.
He hums. Good. He’d like to watch it turn to dust. Maybe it’d be therapeutic at the rate they’re going.
“He mentioned something about it regenerating, but I guess that the Speedwagon Foundation is supposed to have that under control.” Kakyoin’s hand retreats back to his lap. “And a few of the nurses washed your clothes, I suppose. They mentioned them being in tatters, though.”
Figures. His coat had already been practically ruined between the blood and the holes that the knives tore into it, vice versa with his pants. He thinks that he lost the chain somewhere when Dio fractured his shoulder. Who even knows about his shirt.
He’ll probably be able to sew it all up. Maybe.
“...Jotaro,” Kakyoin continues, voice taking on an entirely different tone. Concerned, maybe. It derails his train of thought. “What the hell happened?”
–
Jotaro stares at the ground from the top floor of the hospital with an unlit cigarette in his mouth after the fact, and he considers.
His grandfather eventually comes up to bring him back down. They don’t talk about it.
–
He really only notices that he’d never given Kakyoin’s pocket knife back after they’ve already gotten back to Japan.
Funnily enough, it’s during a time that Kakyoin himself is actually visiting. Staying the night. His grandparents are still sticking around for a while, Joseph himself attempting to sort things out with their school to hopefully pull some strings about all the absences; something or other about a family emergency that the SPW also tries to vouch for. And bribe, probably.
It’s not… technically wrong.
Jotaro remembers the time that they bailed Polnareff out of jail by unknown means and finds it just a bit funny. What the hell that organization does at this point is beyond him.
“Oh,” Kakyoin mutters when Jotaro plucks it out of his coat pocket with knitted brows, not quite the lighter he was looking for. “I forgot I gave you that.”
Jotaro hums. “Do you want it back?”
Kakyoin shrugs, making an uncertain sort of noise as he turns back to his notes. Jotaro doesn’t really pay him any mind as Kakyoin takes a sip of his tea in the same moment he finally relinquishes his lighter, igniting it to life and holding it up to the tip of his cigarette where he stands on the engawa.
It’s peaceful. It’s weird, returning to the calm of home after Egypt.
It’s a bit anxiety-inducing. It’s odd not fighting for their lives everyday, especially when they’re all expecting a Stand to come out of any little hidden corner whenever they least anticipate it. Jotaro notices when Kakyoin checks crevices in his room multiple times a day on the occasion that Jotaro visits his family’s home in turn; checks doors, drawers. He’ll count under his breath in those moments, as if he has a sort of systematic approach as to the way he scans it over.
Jotaro thinks that it’s too easy.
They haven’t gone entirely unscathed from Egypt. None of them are that lucky. It’s simply something far more mental than physical, even if Jotaro still feels a searing ache in his ribs and shoulder every time the weather pours down rain that brings about nausea in his stomach.
Even his mother is still struggling to get back on her feet, just a little. While defeating Dio did resolve her fever, it still took a toll on her; and the fact that her Stand is still there and fully developed likely doesn’t help the matter.
Whatever. None of it is really something he wants to think about. Makes him feel a bit of dread whenever he remembers for too long.
“Hey,” Kakyoin starts, slow and methodical in a way that reminds Jotaro of a cat slinking up to sucker from affection from their owners. “Jotaro. Can I take a look at your biology notes?”
Jotaro’s face contorts weirdly in a way that he can only guess translates as confusion. So much for Kakyoin being an honours student. “Why?”
Kakyoin makes a small noise that sounds slightly like he’s being strangled, and then Jotaro thinks he laughs something like nervously. He’s well-aware that godawful at reading people. He’s not sure.
“You did them first, didn’t you?” Kakyoin asks, and Jotaro shrugs his shoulders in the middle of his drag. “I think I underestimated how much we would’ve missed.”
“How would you know that I did them first.”
Kakyoin’s pen taps at the surface of Jotaro’s shoddy desk as he hums; the desk itself pressed up snugly against the corner of his room parallel to his television. Jotaro really isn’t paying attention to whatever movie Kakyoin popped in earlier for background noise.
“...Well, you always read that one magazine, didn’t you?” He says after a long pause, and Jotaro finds him having a point. “On the trip. You seemed to like it a lot, so I skimmed over it once when you were out. I got bored.”
Jotaro huffs, stubbing out his cigarette on the railing. So much for his smoke break. He doesn’t want to get the smell stuck fully in his room; or the rest of the house for that matter, if only for his mother’s sake.
What happened to that magazine, anyway?
“...Alright,” he finally relents, back and ribs protesting something horrible as he bends by his futon. One of his arms being stuck in a sling doesn’t make grabbing for his notebook any easier. “I didn’t know I was that interesting.”
Kakyoin laughs at him. Again. Not a full-blown laugh; something stifled and soft and warm as he cups his hand over his mouth, but it makes Jotaro hesitate regardless.
“You are,” he affirms, “but the fishtank kind of gives it away, too.”
“Any normal person can have a fishtank in their room.”
“You named the koi in the lake outside. And–” Kakyoin holds up a finger as Jotaro stares him down, “--you complained three times over the trip about worrying that the Foundation’s people wouldn’t take care of your zebrafish properly. Not to mention the incident with Polnareff and the autopsy documentary–”
“Why were you keeping count?”
“You barely talk about yourself.” Jotaro opens his mouth, but Kakyoin beats him to it. “Are you planning on pursuing it? That sort of thing. You know, after we graduate?”
Jotaro pauses to think.
He hasn’t thought about it. Not much.
The thought makes him a bit nauseous once he realizes. He’s never seen himself graduating, not really. He prefers not to think about why. If he does– probably?
“Maybe,” he murmurs, suddenly feeling far smaller all of a sudden. He offers Kakyoin the notebook, holding it out plainly to be taken. “I haven’t… really thought of it before. Studying abroad would be nice.”
Something in Kakyoin’s demeanour changes.
It’s sudden. Jotaro isn’t fully sure what it is, but thinks he sees a change of expression on his face, and when Kakyoin finally shifts to grab the notebook–
–his cup falls.
Jotaro blinks out of his stupor just in time to hear Kakyoin hiss something that he thinks is a startled sh*t, unsure if it’s from the cup or the admission, though he’s not fully sure why the latter would matter. It’s– maybe. It’s a what-if.
He blinks again. It’s eerily quiet.
He looks around and the world looks like a worn down photo, dull and painted in outdated technicolour.
He looks again and sees the cup of tea, floating just an inch or two above the tatami, the muddy liquid displaced mid-air.
Oh. He hadn’t even noticed.
Jotaro doesn’t really think of anything as he collects the liquid back inside of the cup within the frozen time, gently placing it back atop the saucer and desk where it was before.
It’s a bit serene. It makes him feel a little bit sick, too, especially as time resumes and Kakyoin startles backwards with a loud gasp. He hasn’t stopped time since he’d found out that he could. Maybe it was instinct, maybe something like the first time Star Platinum had frozen it without him even being aware at all.
Oh, Jotaro realizes. The vertigo begins to set in, just a little.
He’s scared.
The notebook thuds dully to the floor as Kakyoin’s gaze fixates abruptly onto him, only momentarily flitting to the cup back on the desk where he seems to force himself to relax.
He lets out a nervous little laugh. Jotaro swallows. His throat feels tight.
“...Sorry,” he manages, voice just barely audible in the mumble it escapes through.
It’s not that Kakyoin hadn’t known that he could. He’d explained how he managed to kill Dio in the hospital, after all, albeit heavily condensed. He just hadn’t– seen it before. Jotaro hadn’t felt the need to use it since.
It’s a useful ability. It’s a shame that it reminds both of them, however fleeting.
It’s a shame that it makes Jotaro feel like him.
–
It’s painful to ignore how concerned his mother is after Egypt.
She knows something is wrong. Jotaro can tell, of course. She’s not stupid.
It’s her and his grandparents both, really. Joseph will ask if he’s okay a little too often, pats him on the shoulder once he musters (grunts, usually) the best affirmative answer that he can muster. But even the old man and Grandma Suzi leave to go back to New York eventually once everything is settled back into order, and it leaves him coming up empty.
He’s terribly tired of being fretted over, and he’s even more exhausted by everyone’s insistence on making sure that he’s alright. Why wouldn’t he be?
It culminates in his mother inviting him to a movie night, once. His father hasn’t come back from his tour yet. He shouldn’t for another week or two. He’d feel bad if he said no.
Curled up in his room, he just barely manages to croak out a small yes. He hasn’t been keeping much water down since he got back, if only because he’s not used to the availability of it. That must be it, all things considered.
Jotaro doesn’t know what the movie’s about. He doesn’t really pay attention. He catches glimpses here and there on the occasion his mother makes a comment, pedicured fingers digging into the flesh of his arm whenever something particularly dramatic happens. Something in his mind deciphers suspense movie. He thinks she chose it for him to enjoy, even though he’s always preferred non-fiction.
He blinks once, twice, and there’s a vast expanse of wasteland under a hot sun. On the screen. He thinks so. It’s hard to focus.
“...Sweetie,” his mother coos at him, suddenly looking up. “Are you alright?”
And that’s the root of it, Jotaro realizes. A movie night as a ploy to ask if he’s fine, if he’s doing okay, if he needs help. Maybe? He probably does. He hasn’t thought about that, either, and he doesn’t know what that entails, and the thought– the thought scares him. Just a bit.
He hadn’t seen himself getting this far, either.
He looks at his mother, and then back up at the screen. She has an expression on her face that Jotaro can’t fully decipher. It makes him feel uneasy.
“Yeah,” he murmurs in response, uncertain. “I’m fine, Mom.”
He eyes the movie. Smells the phantom scent of a burning corpse under the hot desert sun. Feels blood and sand searing his cuticles.
He feels nauseous. His mother shifts beside him with a contented hum, turning her focus back to the screen. He shifts. Stands mechanically in a body that doesn’t feel like his own, damaged and pulled like a tight-wire. Moves.
“I’m going to use the bathroom,” he manages, and he’s not even able to catch the hoarseness to his voice before it’s apparent.
He runs. Slides the door open. Star Platinum prickles under his skin, something in his subconscious aiding him with the vaguest concept nudging at'hair',but Jotaro forces him down.
He’s barely able to make it to the toilet before he vomits.
