"tell me where he came from
then i'll know where to go
mama always says when we look hard
we'll find what we have lost"
It didn't bother her much when she was young ( — in retrospect, it should have).
She would stare at her feet as parents came to pick up their children in the elementary school parking lot — mothers and fathers alike. She waited for her own mother; she knew she would come.
In the meantime, she was forced to hear their conversations. Fathers asking their daughters how their days went; girls laughing and laughing. If daughters were stars, then their fathers were the moon.
Together, always together.
※
Subconsciously, Jolyne's mind clung to the few vague memories she had of him for dear life.
Through the thick fog of time, she could see them together. Her father, throwing her in the air, flashing a rare grin. Her hand gripping his thumb. Jumping in puddles, the familiar smell of ozone in the aftermath of a storm clinging to the air.
She could never identify with the girl in those visions. After her mother would kiss her forehead and tuck her in, she'd close her eyes and conjure the few recollections she did have in the hopes of reliving them. And yet, they seemed more like scenes from a movie — pages from a novel — than her own lived experiences.
She always wondered what happened between the highlight reel.
※
It was as though a switch had been flipped when she began middle school.
Anger circulated in her veins, latent yet potent, waiting for release. Even as a twelve-year-old, she could recognize the irrationality of it all. There was no reason to pick a fight with that girl in English class who had been giggling over Jolyne's hair — at the same time, there was no reason not to.
There were rumors, of course. She initially told herself that anybody who was anybody in middle school had rumors go around about them. It became a matter of pride; she was different, and considering the caliber of classmates around her, she was fine with that.
She was fine with that until the instant she heard "daddy issues."
It was the first time, but it wouldn't be the last. She recalls it vividly now, even more vividly than any memories of her father himself.
"—Oh my god, tell me about it. Jolyne is such a guy. Do you think she's gay?"
"Probably. Isn't her dad a deadbeat or something? I bet she's weird 'cause she's got daddy issues."
Their words reverberated against the brick walls of the claustrophobic locker room, and all she can remember now is the color red.
Red, red, red — and a flash of blue.
※
And now, many months later, her first year of high school brings good tidings in the form of subpoenas and affidavits.
It's bad enough that this is happening to begin with, but a vague hope had taken root in her mind as she waited for her mother to come to the police station. An unseen power would intervene — God, her father, both, she doesn't know.
The hope dies before it even begins to grow as she listens to her mother's words in the hallway, the hushed pleas and the acidic accusations.
She hangs up, defeated, and Jolyne grips the metal bench so tightly that her knuckles go white.
Her mother comes to collect her; the ride back to their house is silent.
When Jolyne gets home, she shields herself from her mother's words of concern and takes the stairs two at a time up to her room.
She doesn't make it to the bed before she collapses to the floor, sobs tearing through her body, a torrent of stowed feelings covered in dust making their way to the surface. She hadn't been prepared to feel everything all at once — the disappointment, the volcanic rage, the love and years of hunger — not now, not ever.
'Dad' disappears from her vocabulary, comfortably replaced by 'Jotaro.'
※
Years go by and she never gets over it. It eats at her. She thinks of it when she enters the gang, she blames him for every crime committed, every dollar stolen, every person deceived.
As far as she's concerned, his rap sheet is far longer than hers.
She thinks of him too when she drifts away from that life. How would he react?
Jolyne sits in the grass behind the school, near the track field, and plays with her lighter. She promised her mom that she'd quit the habit as part of her new lifestyle. The sky is so blue — so blue, it hurts her eyes.
She looks at that sky. He's out there somewhere, too.
(Her conclusion: he wouldn't react at all.)
※
For all of her transgressions and offenses, she never thought she'd be in a position like this.
Fifteen years. Fifteen years. It ricochets off the walls of her skull and penetrates her dura mater, settling deep into the core of her.
"There's got to be some mistake!" she shouts as the guards come to collect her. Eyes darting around like a cornered animal, she turns to her lawyer. "You bastard! You said one year!"
They escort her out and the lawyer's eyes are cold and clinical.
She thinks of the locket. Cold sweat lines her palms.
She unravels.
※
Jolyne shuffles her priorities around given her new circumstances, and she doesn't think of him as much anymore. It's a blessing and a curse. She has largely accepted her life now, although she hasn't given up on the idea of trying to get out.
When someone calls her name and declares that she has a visitor, she can't mask her surprise. She didn't think her mom would be ready to see her like this.
She comes out into the visitor area and her heart stops when she sees him again — a split-second reaction caused by the id hijacking the super-ego.
"You," Jolyne says lowly, clenching and unclenching her fists.
His gaze doesn't waver.
"I'm here to break you out."
She scoffs and turns away, arms akimbo, before striding over to the security guard and launching her fist towards his face.
"If I'm lucky, they'll put me in solitary confinement!" she yells as she continues beating the guard. The crunch of bone satisfies her in a way that it shouldn't — at least, not anymore. "Then I'll never have to see your fucking face again!"
He stands there, silent as he bears witness to her assault. Passive. Passive. Passive. As if he could be anything else.
Once she's had her fill, she spits on the guard and turns to face Jotaro again.
"I don't know what you were thinking, but are you really trying to redeem yourself now? Trying to play the part of the loving father?"
She manages to summon up the moxie to match his piercing stare. She sees nothing of herself in his face.
Silence. Stunning in how much it says with so little — it's utilitarian and safe.
"I don't think you understand," he says quietly. The gravity of his voice gives her pause.
He tells her exactly what's happened to her, and she doesn't know what to do. There's so much she could do.
So she does the only thing she knows how to do.
"Thanks for the tip, but I think I'll figure this one out on my own. You know, just like with everything else?" She laughs and it is hollow and biting. "I don't know what you expected, but there isn't a single piece of you in my heart. You've got to know that much."
He says nothing, and she can tell that it's none of his concern right now.
Some things don't change.
※
After the escalation of the visitor room incident and after Johngalli A. has been expelled as a threat, she grants him quiet clemency, both for the sake of a working relationship and for her own sanity. As it always goes, however, the mere act of forgiving him does not banish the smoldering embers of resentment that still linger in the back of her mind and heart.
There isn't enough room in her heart for a new emotion when he falls utterly unconscious before her eyes.
The panic that electrifies every dendrite in her body is foreign to her, unexpected, and she isn't prepared. This wasn't an emotion she ever thought she'd experience in relation to the man in front of her.
Fueled by adrenaline, she manages to drag him outside and wait for the Speedwagon Foundation to collect him. Each second stretches into an eternity, and her breaths are too shallow and quick to be substantial.
"Where's that fucking UUV?" she shouts into the sky, voice breaking as the words scatter into the ocean wind.
She looks back down at Jotaro as blood seeps out of him and drifts onto the surface of the water, swirling around like an oil spill. Her chest feels like it's on fire and breathing doesn't come easily.
Finally, just as her knees begin to buckle and she's about ready to concede defeat, she sees the shadow of something beneath the water near the horizon.
Jolyne has to take a chance, but she clings to his jacket just a little too long before letting go.
※
Trying to do this on her own is harder than she thought.
She's been self-sufficient her entire life, but after every battle, there's a recurring singular thought in the back of her mind:
Please come back.
Please come back.
Please come back.
※
After Pucci has been exterminated as a threat, Jolyne finds that she can't go back to her normal life even after her absolution and exoneration. That bastard lawyer proved useful for once.
She can't go back to school. Her mother's gentle suggestion that she do so made her go waxen. She can't work. She never knows exactly what to put on those applications; her record, while wiped clean of the manslaughter charge, was never expunged of the crimes from more jejune times.
She felt more hopeful in prison than she does now.
Her father made the sudden decision to move back to Florida. Curiously, Jolyne and her mother had been having talks (mostly in euphemisms) about potentially moving away from Florida to escape — her past, her mother's past, the present, the future — yet, these talks ended a mere two days after her father's arrival.
(It was, perhaps, mutual, Jolyne thinks as the rain beats against the window of the bus.)
※
What weighs on her mind more than school or work is the navigation of this newfound relationship with her father.
There is no solidified dynamic between them. Outside of the context of battle, he's as awkward and distant as he ever was. He's kept busy by professorship duties, and she's similarly occupied with trying to collect the fragments of her life and haphazardly piece them back together.
Nevertheless, she shows up on the doorstep of Jotaro's apartment complex every Friday night clad in a light jacket and short shorts, night bag in hand.
Jolyne doesn't gain much from these visits, but it provides some much needed routine and a semblance of normalcy in her life otherwise laden with trauma. She watches whatever movie that catches her eye on TV and he pores over lab results and codes data — his life can be measured in p-values and correlation coefficients, things that she decidedly has no interest in.
Yet, she finds herself captivated by him, from the way he moves to the way his hand tenses up when he's encountered something that doesn't add up in the data. She curls up in the corner of the living room loveseat and studies him as intently as he studies his fieldwork.
Jotaro occasionally peers over his shoulder to look at her, attempting to be as surreptitious as possible and failing. She pretends not to notice, instead observing this phenomenon out of the corner of her eye.
On one such occasion, she experimentally flashes a flirtatious smirk and he looks away in the blink of an eye.
She can't stop herself from tallying it as a victory.
※
"Are you feeling okay?"
The question, issued in signature matter-of-fact fashion, prompts her to look up from her phone.
"What? Yeah. Why?"
His back remains turned to her. "Your face has been flushed the past few times you've come here and it's cold season."
She scoffs. "I'm fine. Since when do you notice that kinda stuff anyway?"
Jolyne watches as he hooks a finger into the collar of his turtleneck and clears his throat.
She swallows. Hard.
※
Jolyne knows that whatever she's feeling towards him is childish at best. She tries to forgive herself for that; she never had a real model for how to have a relationship with a father who was absent for the vast majority of her life.
She tries to love him. Despite her best efforts, there's only one way she knows how.
※
She tosses and turns on the futon set up in the living room and checks the time on her phone for the fifth time that night.
3:08 AM. The numbers mock her.
Jolyne throws off the blanket and starts pacing. As is customary for Florida, it was warm enough for pajama shorts and a tank top when she first went under the sheets, but now it's far too cold. She grips her arms.
It's one of the nights where the nightmares have her weaving in and out of slumber. She meanders around the apartment — much too big for a single man with no social life, she ponders — and finds herself facing the door to his bedroom.
She bites her lip. Should she?
A part of her simply wants to know how far she can go. (Which, in reality, is likely not far at all.)
If he gets upset with her — well, that's his fault.
She delicately turns the knob and eases the door open, walking on the tips of her toes toward the bed. Jolyne moves closer to his side of the bed (why does he need a queen bed when he's practically on the edge of one side?) and observes him. She's only seen him in such a vulnerable state on one occasion other than this, and she'd prefer not to think of that.
He looks tranquil to such an extent that it's a bit jarring for someone like him.
She wants so badly to reach out and touch him, and she almost does before (temporarily) quelling the flames of desire in her mind and moving to the other side of the bed. She gingerly peels back the muted cerulean sheets and slips in, hoping that this will be the end of it and that she didn't rouse him from his slumber.
As soon as she shuts her eyes, she realizes it's too late for that as he makes a vague noise indicating consciousness.
"Jolyne," he murmurs, "what are you doing?"
What is she doing? She doesn't quite know, herself.
"Making...making up for lost time, I guess," she answers, matching his sotto voce volume. She retreats into the pillow. This all, quite suddenly, seems excessively juvenile.
Out of the corner of her eye, she can see Jotaro stealing an inscrutable glance at her before closing his eyes and making some kind of masculine grunt of approval. She rolls her eyes practically on instinct before closing them as well.
Several minutes pass before Jolyne acknowledges that she won't rest until she sees for herself how far she can go.
"Dad."
Silence.
"Dad...please."
An exasperated sigh. He doesn't open his eyes. "What is it?"
Jolyne moves closer to him, hovering a few inches above his broad chest. She feels like she's physically being pulled in two different directions. She swallows a scream.
It's already too late for her.
"You know, just because you let me stay in your house doesn't mean anything. Why are you still avoiding me after all this time?" she asks. "I thought you moved back here to make things right."
He's still silent, but he stiffens.
"I don't get it. I really don't." She bites her lip, disappointment and desperation brewing in her chest. She slides a hand up his bare torso and presses firmly against him. "You weren't there when I was little and you aren't here now."
Her face feels warm and wet, as do the fingers splayed across her father's chest, and it takes her a moment to realize that she's been crying.
"I was pissed at you that whole time, you know. You could've died and I wouldn't have cared."
He tenses up further. She can practically hear the unsaid "is now really the time for this?".
"But I was pissed at myself most of all...for not being the kind of daughter you could love. And I'm never going to be that person, am I?"
Jolyne weeps, tears staining her face and the sheets and tainting her father's skin. She grieves as the moonlight beams through the window - she mourns the image of her father she once had and its innocence. She mourns the death of the last chance at normalcy they had.
Jotaro's hand slowly curls around her own.
"You've always been that person," he mutters, so quiet that it hardly breaks through the veil of silence at all.
"Don't say shit like that if you don't mean it."
She knows he does and her façade has become a formality.
"If you love me, show me," she continues, and her muscles stiffen because those words have spelled the point of no return. A half-second passes, and one of two things could happen — she's not sure which one she's more afraid of.
Through the dreamy haze of fear and desire, she can feel herself press her lips against her father's. It's an act far removed from reality - it's a vision, a product of the night.
Her hands on his neck, his hands on her hips — a potent fusion of lust and panic courses through her veins.
He speaks first for once after breaking away from her.
"Jolyne," he says breathlessly. There's a tremendous pool of emotion beneath that single word, inaccessible and indecipherable to her.
His eyes are wide, but not with condemnation.
Jolyne can't bring herself to say anything to defend herself. Thankfully, he speaks up before she can even try to do so.
"If this is what you want."
She can read between the lines.
If this is the only way I can prove it to you...
His answer disappoints her, and she can't pinpoint a single reason as to why — there are simply too many.
She tries not to think about it as she tastes the salt of his skin and gives him the only thing she has left for him.
※
After the sin is said and done — well, the world keeps spinning, much to her surprise.
It's never quite at the same speed it used to be, though. The sky is off-blue; the person she sees when she looks in the mirror is a mere facsimile of who is actually there.
(Who is actually there now?)
※
Jolyne goes home to her mother's house later that day.
She walks through the front door, and the realization that she can't remember the walk home crashes down on her like a gelid wave. She shivers.
"Jojo?" her mother calls out from the living room.
She can't look, and she can't answer, for try as she might, her mouth has been sewn shut. Her mother seems to interpret her silence as characteristic brooding, however, and sighs.
"I guess your father was being his usual self?"
"Yeah. I guess so," she replies. "I'm kinda tired. I'm gonna nap."
"Okay, honey." Another pause — this time, she can feel her mother's concerned gaze burning into her. "If your father did anything that upset you, you can tell me, you know. I don't want you to keep it inside."
She'd rather say nothing than feed her mother a lie.
※
Her guilt does nothing to ease the overwhelming tide of dopamine that floods her brain when he touches her. It's a trained response despite her objective horror at her new reality.
Every time Jolyne goes out, she looks at others — girls her age, families of all kinds, little kids on the playground — and the dissonant sensation of abject anomie is enough to make her heart gallop and prompt her to retreat back inside to her house or her father's place.
She knew what she would be forfeiting for this. She knew the Faustian deal she signed up for.
A father's love in exchange for everything else.
(As he palms her breast and exhales in ecstasy, she thinks — is this better than nothing at all?)
※
Weekends at Jotaro's house begin to turn into weekdays and soon stretch into whole weeks. Her mother assumes that their relationship has improved and her worries are consequentially eased.
She isn't incorrect, in a manner of speaking.
Her father readily acquiesces to her demands now, both outside and inside of the bedroom, and she can't tell if it's out of true paternal love or if he's simply too tired to fight it.
(As she is.)
※
It's the same Friday night routine as always, with the only difference being that Jotaro has joined her on the loveseat as he grades papers.
(She wonders how he can show up to work every day and not feel like a fraud of a human.)
His hand grips her thigh absentmindedly. A fresh resentful thought comes to the forefront of her frontal lobe: Aren't good parents supposed to say no when their kids ask for things that are bad for them?
Jolyne scrutinizes him in her peripheral vision.
He's been by her side this entire time. He is there, flesh and bone, rippling muscle and stony expression; it's indisputable. Unmistakable.
And yet, after all these years, she still can't find him.