They say that in that brief moment between death and the realization that you are going to die, time slows almost to a halt. Your whole life may flash before your eyes, a split second stretched out to fit an entire lifetime. For Jotaro, it isn't enough.

He's no stranger to this in between state, the empty space between right now and what's to come. But this time, when time resumes, it will resume without him. This moment, stretched so thin, is all that he has. It isn't enough.

The old adage proves somewhat true, but his life doesn't exactly flash before his eyes like footage on a disc. (When was the last time he watched his old home movies? Some of them are probably still in one of the spare rooms of his mother's house, some of them with his wife, tucked away in a box in the corner of an attic where she wouldn't have to be reminded. Why didn't he take any with him?) It's more like a spider's web, this amalgamation of moments that all connect with one another in ways he hadn't considered before. There's a thread that ties the way his grandfather's booming laugh would fill a room with the largeness of him when Jotaro was seven to the way that it echoed through the empty desert air when he was seventeen. Another thread tying the sound of his father playing piano in the early hours of the morning to the quiet, tinny sound of Josuke listening to the walkman his old man had handed down to him at full volume. Another thread tying the taste of the ocean water now filling his lungs and burning his nose to the water gently lapping at his ankles as he sketched the outline of a starfish.

He realizes how few of these moments include Jolyne and his heart feels like it's withering.

She's so close to him now, mumbling something that he can't hear as blood leaks from the knife wound in her abdomen. If he could reach out his hand, maybe he could touch her. Hold her hand the way he did the day she was born, curled up in the hospital bed beside his wife, more afraid than he'd ever been in his life, and also more at peace. Back then, it felt like he could make that moment stretch into an eternity and just exist in that space forever, amongst the whirring of machinery and his wife's gentle cooing and his daughter's tiny hand clasped around his finger. But he doesn't have the time now even to reach out a hand.

A million words flood his brain and try to escape from his mouth in a frenzy, every word he'd never been able to find to make sense of this whole mess to her.

I thought it was for your own good.

I wanted to be there.

I don't know why it had to be like this.

I was so scared to lose you.

I love you more than anything.

But his mouth isn't working. Nothing is working. Jolyne's figure starts to fade away as an emptiness eats at the edges of his vision. His time is almost up. Why didn't he ever understand until now that he wouldn't have enough time?

For some reason, he looks away from his daughter. His gaze falls to his arm. Her name is still carved into his skin, where Star Platinum had shattered the glass in his hospital room. Even then, with no memory of himself or how to eat or speak, she was there. Imprinted upon his heart, branded into his very skin. Will she still be there when time runs out?

The moment begins to speed up. Time resumes. Jotaro's vision goes dark and he can no longer smell the ocean. The only thing he feels is a hand reaching out to brush the tips of his fingers, and something warm and suffocating fills his heart.

Time's up.