He doesn't bother stopping time. Wasting his ability on this guy would be pointless.
It's almost a reflex. He breaks the man's wrist with Star Platinum, one sharp vicious twist, watches the knife spin away and clatter to the ground. He hits him three times, methodically, pounding his face through the glass counter.
And it doesn't feel enough, somehow. Part of him half-expects his attacker to rise from the floor, dripping broken glass and wreathed in flames. It's not over yet, or something to that effect. You thought you could kill me? Low laughter and a knifepoint smile.
But the man doesn't move.
"That's the thing about Stand users," Jotaro hears himself say.
Jolyne looks up at him, kicks absently at a shard of glass. "What?" They might as well be out for a walk in the park.
"They follow you."
He wakes covered in sweat, blankets clinging to his bare skin as he rolls over and sighs sharply.
The room is dark but for a slowly blinking blue light on their dresser. The alarm clock reads two in the morning.
He wishes his dreams were more subtle. But of course it doesn't mean anything—his daughter hasn't said that many words to him in days.
He finds Julia in the kitchen that morning, leaning against the doorframe in her worn silk bathrobe. Willowy, slender, long-limbed. Deep red hair. She still wears Love's Baby Soft perfume and believes that everything happens for a reason, and yet none of it ever quite reaches her eyes.
"Is your migraine any better?"
"Well," she says, pressing her fingers to her temples, "It isn't worse. I'm going to try and nap later. Parent-teacher meetings start at seven."
Fuck. He'd forgotten.
"I'll go," Jotaro says automatically, reaching above her to take a mug from the cupboard, slides it across the counter but doesn't touch her, doesn't reach around her waist or put his chin on her shoulder as he'd once done without thinking, a casual meaningless reflex. "Just lie down."
Before going back to bed, she leaves a slip of paper on his desk with the school's address, a room number, and the words 'grade five'.
It should sting, but it doesn't.
His own school must have been smaller than Jolyne's, he thinks, easier to navigate. Maybe this is an American thing. But he can't be sure. Those years have long since dissolved into each other.
Jotaro sees no traces of himself in his elementary school pictures, just a lanky, earnest kid with grass-stained knees and black suspenders and spit-shined uniform shoes. Are you ever in for it, he wants to say.
Jolyne's classroom door is emblazoned with a cartoon whale made from felt and tissue paper. He recognises her bold, even handwriting below it—"Whale Hello There—Welcome to Class 5F!"
He hopes that wasn't her idea.
"—now I just have to ask," the teacher is saying, "what do you think of our little display at the door? We've just started our unit on the water cycle—the whale was a bit of a stretch, you know, but I thought it was a nice touch."
Whales don't blush, he thinks wearily, and they don't wear baseball caps. He can't get the image out of his head.
Joyaro regrets mentioning his degree, but it can't be helped—it's that or mentioning the Speedwagon Foundation. The cover story they've supplied him with is so nebulous that he's stopped trying to explain it.
He stares her down from across the table as she tries to recover her train of thought. The meeting ends quickly.
He finds Jolyne awake when he comes home, sitting at the kitchen table and eating an orange.
"You're up late," he says simply.
She doesn't look up. "Mom said I could."
"Jojo—" her mother interjects from the hallway. "finish up and brush your teeth. You still have school tomorrow."
Jolyne shoves half of the orange in her mouth, slides her chair back and scampers off to her room.
Jotaro wonders how much she'll remember of him, when all is said and done.
Part of him never wants to know.