And so I wake in the morning and I step outside
And I take a deep breath and I get real high
And I scream from the top of my lungs
What's going on?
4 Non Blondes - What's Up
If it was guilt Jotaro felt, he did not understand why.
He sat near the crashed plane on a rock smoothed flat by the sand listening to his grandfather and Polnareff doing their best to feed a screaming baby. The grating noise carried through the desert like a wave and every swell of it made him wince in pain. If he didn't know better, he would swear that those two were torturing the tiny thing with something unspeakable. In his mind, he promised himself never to have children.
He squinted in the blinding sun and stifled a yawn. The past couple of days had been long and eventful and even if he had slept like a rock, he had woken up feeling sore and tired like he had been running laps around the campsite during the night. He looked at Polnareff's hunched back and his grandfather's weary expression and wondered if they all felt the same way.
And then there was Kakyoin.
He looked over at the redhead, leaning against a feeble palm tree their crash landing had bent in half. He stood silent, his head buried in a tattered paperback though Jotaro had not seen him turn a page in the last ten minutes. Occasionally, his gaze would drift over to the noisy display in front of him and the faintest smile would tug at his lips before he went back to staring blankly at the pages through half-hooded eyes.
Jotaro frowned and peered down at a paper plate on his knees where the remains of a pancake and a few drops of sausage grease were drying out in the sun. They had all wolfed down their breakfast like it was their last meal on earth but he had barely seen Kakyoin eat anything. He had nibbled absentmindedly on a piece of bread, then gulped down half a bottle of water and gone over to the baby, whose dark, piglet eyes seemed to follow his every move. For a moment, Jotaro had feared that he would hurl Hierophant at the tiny helpless creature again but instead he had just gently stirred the food in his bowl and walked away with a subtle grin. Looking at him roll up his sleeping bag Jotaro wondered if any of the events from last night had been real. After all, the words on Kakyoin's arm that had disturbed them so much vanished this morning and he suspected they had never been there in the first place. Could it all have been a dream?
Except the crashed plane was still there and so was the nagging sensation that they had all missed something. Something important.
It took around an hour and a half for their rescuers to arrive in a giant helicopter. They somehow had managed to locate the baby's mother as well which sent it into another crying fit that lasted through their entire trip to the nearby town. His grandfather tried to calm it down but got nothing but a kick in the face for his efforts. Eventually, he gave up and settled back grumbling as Polnareff snickered quietly to himself.
Kakyoin seemed oblivious to everything by that point. He had walked to the helicopter with a shambling gait, his speech reduced to short monosyllabic answers. Jotaro watched him fight a losing battle with his eyelids and every time they fluttered closed, the baby in the basket stirred, his wailing replaced by intense staring. It was only when they left the whimpering bundle at the police station, parted ways with the pilots and rented a car that he finally seemed to succumb to exhaustion and went out like a light in the back. Polnareff turned around in the driver's seat and gave him a worried look.
"Is he okay, you think?" , he asked fiddling with the steering wheel nervously. "He's been acting really strange lately."
Jotaro shrugged and fastened the seat-belt over his limp shoulder. "He's tired. We all are. Let's just move on."
He still kept an eye on Kakyoin during the long, rough trip towards the next town, his suspicions growing stronger by the minute. Jotaro knew him as light sleeper from the couple of times they had roomed together and he would see his head snap up from the pillow at the sound of cars backfiring on the streets or laughter from somewhere in the next room. He looked dead to the world now, not stirring even when one of the wheels skipped over a rock and the vehicle shook so hard Jotaro's head nearly slammed against the window. Polnareff shot him a panicked look but Jotaro just rolled his eyes and readjusted his hat. The Frenchman was not exactly a careful driver on normal roads and the one they were currently on was littered with boulders, trash and the occasional sinkhole. The possibility of another crash clouded his thoughts for a long while as his eyes kept darting towards his classmate, tossed around by every bump on the road like a marionette without strings. At times like these he wished either of them could drive.
After several tortuous hours they finally decided to call it a day and look for a decent place to sleep. He let them wander off to ask the locals about it and stepped out to stretch his legs. The sun hanging in the middle of a bright blue sky ate away at his eyes, which had gotten used to the shade of the car roof. He squinted, rubbed the dust and sweat off his face and leaned against the trunk, watching the world bake in its own heat in the side mirror. Somewhere in the yellow haze, he saw a thin, brown pole rising crooked out of the ground next to a lone gas station. Once the dust cloud settled down, he could make out the general outline of what appeared to be an old, beat up payphone.
As if on cue, the nagging feeling came back like a particularly persistent fly, buzzing in circles around his head. He glanced over at Kakyoin, passed out in the backseat and felt dead tired himself. He vaguely recalled having a nightmare last night but the details evaded him every time he tried to concentrate on them. Whatever it had been about, it must have really messed with his head if he was still feeling the effects.
Come to think of it, Polnareff had mentioned something about bad dreams too. And Kakyoin had claimed it was a horrible nightmare that had made him thrash around so violently during their flight.
He looked at the battered payphone and raised a hand to block the blinding sun from his line of sight. There was a way to get his peace of mind but he could not bring himself to resort to it. It was supposed to be used only for emergencies and he wasn't sure he would get any answers at all. He knew, however, that the annoying voice at the back of his mind would not let him be until he tried.
He walked up to the rusted telephone, slid in a couple of coins and dialed a long list of digits. Several strident signals later the phone sputtered to life and a familiar deep voice asked, "Mr. Joestar?"
Jotaro held back a sigh of relief. He had little information about Abdul's whereabouts, only that he had been discharged from the hospital some time ago, so the possibility of him picking up were slim at best. He flicked away the cigarette from his mouth and answered, "It's me."
The voice of the other end of the line paused, then dropped to a low whisper as a door slammed shut somewhere in the background, "Jotaro? What's wrong? Are you guys all right?"
Jotaro's lips spread in a small smile at the man's concerned tone. Sometimes, Abdul seemed to be the only one aware of the danger they were in, but then again, a bullet to the head would have that effect on anyone. He rubbed his neck, stiff from the long trip and said, "Yeah, we're fine. I just need to ask you something."
He heard a muffled agreement against the roaring crackling of the wires but did not reply right away. The question hanging from his lips was what one might call a little peculiar and what Jotaro called astoundingly stupid but there was no other way of phrasing it so he felt he might as well just cut to the chase. He closed his eyes to avoid looking at his own reflection in the busted gas station window and asked, "Have you ever heard of a baby stand user?"
There was a long bout of silence on the line broken only by the gray hissing sound of the receiver in his ear. Jotaro winced, wishing desperately he could just hang up, walk away and never mention his momentary lapse in judgment to anybody. Instead he stood there like a statue, phone pressed firmly against his head, praying for this conversation to be over soon. He wondered how much had his image dropped in Abdul's eyes and whether he would keep the matter secret if he asked him. He probably would but it didn't matter. As far as Jotaro was concerned, one person knowing was more than enough.
His friend's next words, however, gave him little time to regret his decision. "I think I might have."
"What." Jotaro was pretty sure he had forgotten the question mark at the end but then again, it wasn't a real question, just a stunned acknowledgment that the words had indeed reached him. He waited for the man to elaborate but when he didn't, he blinked in the dizzying heat and asked, "Are you serious?"
Abdul let out a soft, dejected laugh. "Dead serious, believe me. There has been talk among my contacts about young stand users that had proven to be quite destructive with their powers. Of course, they were talking about five-year-olds." He paused as if collecting his thoughts before asking, "What is going on exactly?
Jotaro yanked his hat off, letting the hot wind blow the sand and dust away from it. "That's what I would like to know. Something really weird happened yesterday and I'm still trying to make sense of it. You think some of them might be under Dio's influence?"
Static filled his ears again. Somewhere on the other side of the line, he heard a loud thump and the rustling of paper.
"I don't know, none my contacts ever risked getting that close to him" Abdul replied eventually. "One of them mentioned something though," he quickly flipped through several pages and when he spoke again, his voice had acquired a slightly bewildered tone. "Tell me, did that weird thing happen to involve dreams?"
In the deafening silence that followed, Jotaro could almost hear the thumping of his own heart. He suppressed the curse rising in his throat and answered, "Yeah..."
Abdul's words came through muffled by a frenetic sound of turning pages. "There was this ridiculous story floating around about a young stand user in Dio's service that could attack through dreams. I thought it was just nonsense his followers spread to terrorize others into obedience. There were supposedly several attacks but none of the victims ever remembered a thing."
His voice petered out sinking into the crackling marsh that bogged down the signal. Jotaro swore under his breath. His mind flashed back to Kakyoin fighting to stay awake through the whole helicopter ride and for a second, the burning feeling of guilt from this morning washed over him again.
"If it's true, they never said it was a baby." Jotaro could hear Abdul trying to bend his answer into making sense as he went along and felt genuine sympathy for him. "It's probably possible; having a stand enhances your intelligence a bit but come on..."
He trailed off again, as if begging him to say something but Jotaro just let out a frustrated sigh and leaned against the payphone allowing his eyes to slip closed. He was really beginning to feel the bone-deep exhaustion from the trip setting in along with creeping shame. If their stands had the ability to make them smarter, they had all clearly missed the memo.
Abdul's voice crackled with impatience. "Jotaro? You still there? Are you seriously telling me that it's true?"
He heard himself utter a quiet reply and a few stumbled words of gratitude. Somewhere deep inside him, Star Platinum woke up from its slumber long enough to slam a hand over its face. Jotaro could not fault it, he felt like doing so himself the very moment he put the phone down.
He looked up at the dimming sun and muttered, "Give me a break already."
By the time he walked back to the car, it had started to rain.
It began as a light drizzle, floating, rather than falling from the gathering clouds overhead and immediately evaporating in the desert heat, filling the air with much needed moisture. For a few minutes he had stayed outside, enjoying the welcome change of scenery but after a while the raindrops grew larger and somewhere up ahead lightning cracked the rapidly graying sky. He looked at the empty street, wondering what was taking Polnareff and his grandfather so long and ducked into the backseat.
His eyes drifted towards his still sleeping companion as the last sentences of his phone conversation rang in his ears. His Egyptian friend had briefly mentioned theories about how stands were supposed to work and how those theories connected to the human subconscious but Jotaro had mostly forgotten them all, his brain still reeling from the whiplash of a baby almost taking them all out. As far as stupid deaths went, this one probably took the cake no matter what else might happen further down the road.
He closed his eyes furiously trying to recall something, anything about his dream but his mind was a black pit of nothingness. According to Abdul, it had been the same with the other victims, at least for the ones who survived. There a couple of them who had succumbed to sudden, inexplicable heart attacks later on but their deaths had been listed as natural and quickly forgotten about by the local press. Jotaro had jotted down their names grimly, trying to piece together the increasingly asinine puzzle unfolding before him. He remembered waking up with a sore throat as if his uniform's chain had wrapped around his neck in his sleep. He caught a glimpse of himself in the side mirror. The faint red strip was still there, marked firmly against his tanned skin.
Then again, there were those words, baby stand, carved with hell knows what, deeply and deliberately. If the marks on his neck remained, so should they.
He turned to Kakyoin and saw dried blood on one of his sleeves.
His eyes narrowed as he bent down to take a closer look. The dark crimson streak was barely visible against the green fabric and from what he could gather it had seeped from the inside out in large, irregular blotches. He cursed softly at the questions piling up in his mind. It was probably best to stop walking in circles and ask the only person who could give him answers.
He leaned closer and rested a hand on his classmate's shoulder. "Hey, wake up."
If not for the deep, even breathing, he might as well have tried to wake a dead man. He frowned and shook him slightly, speaking louder this time. "Kakyoin, can you hear me?"
He fell silent, waiting for an answer that did not come. There was a faint hint of movement behind the closed eyelids but his face remained still, unnaturally pale in the meek light of the storm-clouded sun. For the first time, Jotaro noticed the dark circles under his eyes and wondered about the last time he had gotten any sleep at all. Definitely not yesterday or the day before that, as Polnareff had jokingly related to him that Kakyoin had been tossing and turning the whole night before jolting awake with a scream. Jotaro had not paid much attention then; it wasn't until the accident that he had begun to worry about his friend's quickly deteriorating mental state. He had watched him sit away from the group, growing more and more agitated by the second but could not bring himself to say anything, not even when he saw the scratches caked with blood on his arm. He remembered being disappointed in him right before Polnareff's blow fell and, for a moment, felt his hand tighten on Kakyoin's shoulder.
I'm sorry.
If the words were ever to make it past his lips, there were interrupted by a loud knock on the window. Jotaro quickly withdrew his arm and turned around to find his grandfather drenched from head to toe, peering down with at him with a disheartened expression.
"Bad luck guys, there's only one hotel in the area and they have no more rooms left. I guess we just have to try in the next town over." He took off his hat, shook it vigorously, letting the rainwater run down the soaked brim and slipped into the driver's seat. "Is he still asleep?"
Jotaro nodded, keeping a close eye on Polnareff who was running towards them, a flaking newspaper over his head. Before he could think about it, he reached forward and turned down the music that blared through the speakers the moment the engine came alive.
"Let him be, he's earned it." He lowered his voice and beckoned his grandfather closer, as the Frenchman cursed at the weather in the background. "We need to talk."
The first thing Kakyoin saw when he stirred awake was the orange glow of the setting sun.
He lay blinking for a while, trying to figure out his surroundings through a mist of sleep still hanging over his eyes. He could hear the roaring of an engine somewhere nearby but it took some time for his groggy mind to translate the sound into a moving car. His friends' voices floated around him, mixed with the soft hum of the radio and the gentle patter of rain against the windows. The air was thick with the smell of dust and old leather.
He yawned and stretched his stiff neck muscles as the world slowly coalesced into existence. He didn't remember getting in the car; he couldn't remember much of anything that happened after morning except the hellish helicopter ride and the sinking feeling that overcame him once the baby's endless crying faded in the distance. For a moment, it occurred to him that all the harm the kid would cause in the future would be on his head but he didn't see what he could do to prevent that. At least it was being taken back to his family where it probably would be less likely to step out of line.
There was some shifting in the driver's seat, followed by subdued laughter. Joseph Joestar glanced at him through the rear view mirror and grinned. "Hey, look who's back with us. Here we thought you'd be out of commission till morning."
Kakyoin rubbed at his bleary eyes, squinting at the bright lights of the passing cars. "Sorry, I didn't even notice..." he muttered and paused as another yawn escaped him. "Damn it, how long have I slept?"
Next to him, Jotaro looked up from a ragged newspaper. "Most of the day", he replied as he reached down into a plastic bag tucked in a corner. "Here, eat up. We saved one for you just in case."
Kakyoin sighed and ran a hand through his matted hair. Something warm, wrapped in coarse brown paper landed on his lap and only then did he become aware of a thin blanket spread over him. He sat up clumsily, still pinned in place by the seatbelt and tore at the edge of the package to reveal a round piece of flat bread stuffed to the brim with shredded meat.
He gave Jotaro a brief thankful nod and sank his teeth into the sandwich, not realizing how hungry he was until he took the first bite. It tasted strongly of curry with a tinge of sweetness but the rest of the flavors barely registered with him as he scarfed it down. At the edge of his vision, he saw Joseph's staring at him intently with a hint of amusement and concern. The man was clearly dying to say something but he waited until the sandwich in his hands got significantly smaller before speaking again.
"Better?" Kakyoin nodded quietly, brushing stray crumbs away from his lips. There was a strange glint in Joseph's eyes as he exclaimed, "Okay, talk! What was the deal with the baby stand?"
The words almost made him choke on the last piece of bread. They sounded even more surreal in someone else's mouth, especially when he had been hoping never to hear them again. He blinked in confusion and turned to Jotaro, wondering for a moment if he was still dreaming. "Wait, you remember?"
"Not a thing, actually." Polnareff's carefree voice boomed from the passenger seat. "That's why we were waiting for you to wake up. You don't get to hear about almost getting killed by a baby every day."
Jotaro moved away Polnareff's line of sight and whispered Abdul's name meaningfully. Kakyoin gave him a brief understanding look and began to talk.
By the time he finished recounting the events of the previous night, the orange glow of the dusk had melted away into velvety darkness. Polnareff let out a curt disbelieving laugh and turned around, his face slightly red.
"I can't believe it." He paused in exasperation as the dark shade spread further over his face. "Sorry man, I seriously thought you had lost your mind. I mean, you had that look on your face."
Kakyoin watched the blue eyes do their best to avoid his as they roamed aimlessly around the car. He had an idea of what Polnareff was talking about and suddenly the scenario felt all too familiar. He remembered his mother's worried and slightly embarrassed reaction the first time he mentioned Hierophant around her and her utter contempt at her older sister who seemed all too excited by the idea that her four-year-old nephew could see spirits. She had taken him aside later, explaining that those stories were just made-up nonsense and he should not listen to his crazy aunt but at the time, Kakyoin had no words to explain anything to her. The same helpless sensation had grabbed hold of him after the plane crashed from the sky and he saw the same look reflected in his friends' eyes. Then again, who could possibly blame them? There had been a moment when he really thought he was going insane himself.
He looked up at Polnareff's defeated expression and shook his head reassuringly. "You already apologized, you all did, once was enough. Frankly, I would have done the same in your place. I still have a hard time believing it myself."
"Same here." Joseph echoed from the driver's seat, his fingers drumming restlessly on the steering wheel. "Shame about not using Hermit Purple back then. We could have read that kid's mind."
Polnareff nodded enthusiastically while Jotaro's mouth twitched into a sarcastic scowl. "Don't you think breaking a baby in half is a bit extreme, old man?"
Joseph grumbled something about respecting your elders under his breath but his grandson chose to bury his head in the rapidly disintegrating newspaper and ignore him. Polnareff threw another apologetic glance in his direction and turned away. Kakyoin listened to him hum softly to the song on the radio and wondered if his friend would be this forgiving with him once he found out about Abdul's recovery. They had all done what they had to do to protect their friend while he was healing but hopefully, they would not have to continue with their charade for much longer. Maybe in the end, getting knocked out by Silver Chariot was just karma for deceiving its master all this time.
If so, he was fine with that. Polnareff probably deserved some payback before the storm that would undoubtedly break out after the cat was out of the bag.
He leaned back in his seat and watched the world sink into the night, listening to David Bowie sing about starmen and cosmic jives.
I couldn't have been the only one who wanted to wrap a blanket around Kakyoin after the whole Death 13 debacle.
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