The Wild Youth

by thesketchytepe

To the Joestars, family means everything; it's what pushes them forward in their adventures. Between the journeys and the enemies, it's the little moments that make up who these unique characters are. From youth to adulthood, Joestars take these precious memories and forge them into something greater.

3. Heat Death

**Me: I think it would be really funny if Joseph called Dio "Dragula". When did that Rob Zombie song come out again?

Google: 1998.

Me: *fighting back tears* Dammit.

Yay, we can finally talk about 80s pop culture! My mom was a teenager in the 80s and sported the whole rocker chick look, so naturally, I grew up listening to Bon Jovi, Poison, and ACDC. Let the obnoxious music references begin!

Thank you all for your positive feedback! I wasn't really prepared to write the other JoJo parts but you guys asked and so you shall receive. Here's Jotaro's chapter, and the song "Heatdeath" is by Suave Punk. Very teenage angsty vibes. I remember being 17 years old and hating my parents for no reason too. Don't worry y'all—it really is just a phase.

Enjoy, you JoJo nerds**

Ever since I was young, my family has been the most important thing to me.

Visits from his grandparents were the highlights of his childhood. They'd come to Japan two or three times a year and would typically spend around two weeks at the house. Smiles and laughter filled their home whenever they were in his presence; Jotaro couldn't remember a time when he didn't look forward to their visits, even when he grew older, and the world seemed burdensome to him.

They were young grandparents when Jotaro entered the world—the wrinkles were minimal, and Suzie's hair was as bright as sunflowers and Joseph's as dark and rich as chocolate. They showered him with gifts and love, and Jotaro's existence seemed just as glorious as Holly's, their daughter, their only child.

Joseph tried his absolute hardest to charm his way into being Jotaro's favorite family member. His charisma was sky high, and he was more intelligent than he let on, but he was sometimes too loud or ridiculous for Jotaro's liking. That's not to say that Jotaro didn't think him any less from the rest of his family; when Joseph's health started weakening in his later years, Jotaro would come to cherish those memories they shared when he was still in grade school.

He hardly practiced his Hamon in front of him, but every once in a blue moon, sparks would emit from his body as though he were made of fire. Jotaro's eyes would widen at any small light that came from his fingertips, and Joseph would act as though nothing happened, his own big hazel eyes rolling around the room as he whistled out an aimless melody.

Jotaro remembered being fascinated with Joseph's mechanical hand for a while, maybe because he knew no one else with anything quite like it. He'd seen older folks strolling around with prosthetic limbs or burn marks on their faces from the war, but the little metal gears and Joseph's total control over his metal hand captured his eye every single time. He would let Jotaro pick apart his hand with screwdrivers and small wrenches while he read a magazine or ate dinner with his other hand.

One birthday, Joseph gave Jotaro a pair of massive water guns, about half as big as Jotaro himself (which isn't saying much; Jotaro was smaller than most during his youth). "Let's try these bad boys out," Joseph insisted and led him outside, filling them up with the garden hose. Jotaro went around and squirted at random patches of grass and watered some of his mother's lotus and orchid plants in the garden.

"C'mon, Squirt," Joseph stepped in with the other water gun. "That's not how you're supposed to use that. What kind of birthday parties have you been invited to?"

He then got on one knee and shot cold water at Jotaro's legs with a playful smile. Jotaro flinched a little at the suddenness and looked at Joseph, searching for some form of direction. He then pointed at his chest. "Aim right here. It'll be funny."

Jotaro gathered his bodily strength to hold up the gun. His finger twitched at the trigger and a splash of water hit Joseph's sternum. His grandfather performed a dramatic death scene, worthy of some Shakespearean tragedy. He cried out and squirmed around in the grass until Jotaro burst out laughing.

It was small moments like that that would stick with Jotaro forever. Joseph carried all the technicalities during their trip around the world, booking hotel rooms, purchasing different modes of transportation, making sure everyone ate and was well-rested like the father he was, but he always let slip his obvious favoritism for Jotaro. Making sure he ate first, keeping him within his field of vision (the amount of times Joseph grabbed Jotaro's forearm and drag him in front while muttering "Stop wandering off and stand where I can see you" was immeasurable), always plucking out cigarettes out of Jotaro's grasp (although he never physically threw away Polnareff's cigarettes, he would shame him into throwing them away—"get that fucking shit away from me, you lung-killer"). Sometimes it got on Jotaro's nerves just how overprotective he could be, but he also didn't know how to thank him for filling in roles Jotaro wasn't aware he needed.

During long modes of transportation (and they travelled every kind, it seemed, from wildly expensive submarine to their own two feet), to make the time pass by or just because he could, Joseph would hand his Walkman to Jotaro. "Knock yourself out," he'd say with a grin, "only the best shit is on there."

Sometimes Jotaro would ignore him, insisting on staring out the window while vaguely listening to whatever useless trivia Kakyoin learned in a book somewhere. Other times he'd silently plug in the earbuds and flip through his music choices (which were painfully similar to Holly's music taste). The Who, Creedence Clearwater Revival, Journey, Black Sabbath, Rush—Jotaro had been through his mother's vinals countless times and spotted every one in Joseph's own collection.

"Unbelievable," he muttered under his breath before eventually settling on something he'd listen to a million times before.

Nine times out of ten, Joseph would lean over and see what he'd chosen. He snorted. "Of course you picked 'Paint It Black.' It's a classic, ain't it? Better than 'Hey Jude', right?"

"Mom thinks the Beatles are better than the Stones."

A dramatic sigh. "I know. Where did I go wrong?" He then playfully punched his arm. "At least you turned out right."

Jotaro bit the inside of his cheek to keep from grinning at Joseph's dumb limited dancing within the train's tight seats.

Jotaro was a ball of anger during the height of his teenager years, and he didn't know how to best control these feelings. He would usually let Star Platinum take the chunks of fury and hurtle them against any enemies, but whenever it was just them, he let it boil and tremble inside himself until it overflowed in choked sobs and clenched fists.

Almost like he sensed it, almost like he saw it coming once Jotaro lowered his head in shame, Joseph would hop over in an instant. He'd steer him away from the rest of the group with his arm draped over his shoulder, declaring "Man, do I feel bad for the next sorry bastard that's gonna get in your way!" for the sake of Polnareff, Avdol, and Kakyoin. He'd ruffle his hair, squeeze his shoulder, give him one of those rough "manly" hugs that Jotaro kind of hated. He'd laugh and try to wave it off as nothing, and Jotaro would be incredibly uncomfortable at first, but he'd eventually cave in, borrowing his head into Joseph's shoulder and crying like he was seven years old again.

Despite being a little judgmental, Joseph showed no indignity toward Jotaro's occasional breakdowns. Maybe because he was scared too, maybe because he knew what it was like to be young and wild and have the entire world on your shoulders.

"I miss Mom," Jotaro would admit, chest aching, head dizzy.

"I know," Joseph replied as he rubbed his back. "I do too."

"I can't-I can't do this."

"Yes, you can. You're doing a great job, Squirt. You've got this, I got you."

Jotaro sniffed and Joseph pulled back, hands on his shoulders and a giant grin on his face. "You're a Joestar, you're my grandson. Of course you've got this."

The two couldn't have been more opposite from each other—Joseph was the loudspeaker of each room, winging every situation as they came while Jotaro could blend into the wallpaper if he wanted to, sulking and rolling his eyes at his grandfather's nonstop ridiculousness. Despite the countless arguments and annoyed huffs behind one another's back, despite how they would secretly throw the other one under the bus just to save his mother, his daughter, they were still tied together, by the unbreakable bonds of familial affection.

Maybe that's why Jotaro couldn't help but freeze in shock, in unexpected fear when Joseph fell at Dio's feet, blood spurting from his throat like a gutter. He hadn't felt terror so strongly until that point in their travels, the first time being when he learned of his mother's slow decline to the grave, the sole reason why he was there in the darkened streets of Egypt. Joseph's irritating habits didn't seem so troublesome anymore. Instead, he thought of water gun fights, American cookouts in his Japanese home, silly dances to all shades of rock music.

Fear turned to bittersweetness, and bittersweetness turned to rebellious rage. A rage so powerful that a century-old vampire with a Stand to halt time couldn't even prepare for him.

No one could ever lay a hand on his grandpa, his mother, his family. Not with Jotaro's unrelenting fire.

Although Jotaro loved Joseph more than he cared to admit out loud, he had always been close with Suzie from day one, mainly because she reminded him so much of his own mother.

One of his earliest memories was being in Grandma Suzie's arms. He was perhaps four years old, and she was speaking with his mother over something insignificant. Suzie had wide hips, strong and round. She was swaying from side to side, and drowsiness soon grew heavy on Jotaro's eyelids. Without really thinking, he wrapped his arms around Suzie's neck and then nestled his head into the crook of her neck, closing his eyes with a contented sigh.

Any form of physical affection was extremely rare from Jotaro, even during his youth, and Grandma Suzie knew this, but he knew she couldn't help herself. She gasped but didn't stop her slow, rhythmic movements like the gentle lapping waves at the shore. He did feel a small jolt from her leg and heard her harshly whisper, "Joseph, Joseph. Look!"

"Ow!" came his grandfather's low yet youthful voice. "What was that—"

"Look at Jotaro. Look at him!"

A short pause and then Joseph's annoyingly sarcastic, "Wow, a four-year-old sleeping wherever the hell he wants. You don't see that every day."

"You're just a jealous asshole," Suzie huffed before rubbing Jotaro's back, the feeling of sleepiness weighing him down like an anchor.

Just like Joseph and Holly, Suzie showed her affection through physical touch, but she also knew Jotaro wasn't a big fan of it, and he could tell she tried her best to respect his wishes. She couldn't help herself sometimes and would litter his face with kisses or just envelope him in her arms (she was a good hugger, so he didn't mind them too much).

She adored his curly black hair and would often run her hands through it. "I wonder where you got these gorgeous locks from," she would comment multiple times throughout his life, to which Joseph would always respond, "From my Granddad. I've never had to memorize every detail about a picture before in all my life."

He always had patience and time for Suzie. She never quite got the Japanese language or culture down during his life, but he always volunteered to explain or translate things for her when needed. He recalled all the shopping experiences with her as a kid, just Jotaro and Grandma. She would carry an Italian-to-Japanese dictionary with her whenever she got stuck and, although Jotaro wouldn't be fluent in Italian for many years, he offered the translations in English which he learned at the same pace as Japanese.

"You were always so helpful to me, mio amore," she said to him later in life, holding his big hands between her own crinkled, slightly trembling ones. "It always made me laugh a little to see you translate to the waiter at a restaurant or the cashier at a supermarket, and then see you turn to me with that expressionless face." She then cupped his cheek. "But you were always so cute, so it didn't matter."

He let slip a small smile. "Anything for you, Grandma Suzie."

There was never a dull moment with her. She found the fun in absolutely everything; she even enjoyed helping him with his homework (whenever she could read it). She celebrated every little achievement that Jotaro went through, any time he passed a big test or went up a grade or officially learned how to ride a bike. Even when she was noticeably upset in some way, she always put on a smile for his sake and asked him how his day went. Grandma Suzie was an older version of his mother, and there was never anything wrong about that.

Jotaro even learned the concept of love through his grandparents. Their bodies grew older, but their minds were forever young. Suzie would perk her lips like a pufferfish whenever she wanted to be kissed and, probably just to annoy her, Joseph would go around cleaning the dishes or flipping through channels on the TV until she made little pouting noises, causing him to either sigh theatrically as if kissing her was a chore or chuckle at her cute stubbornness before placing his lips upon hers. The list of nicknames they gave each other was infinite, and they hardly used their birth-given names: baby or babe, my love, sweetie or sweetheart, honey, cutie-pa-tootie, sugar, cupcake, darling, sexy. Joseph would sometimes walk by her and smack her ass with more strength than necessary and utter come snarky remark like "Did you guys hear that gunshot?" while cupping a hand around his ear and looking puzzledly in the other direction. Suzie would squeak in irritated shock and Holly laughed (she always laughed at whatever they did), and then Suzie would later walk by with a giant wooden spoon or a frying pan and slap Joseph's ass as hard as she could.

"What the fuck?" he would mutter in a husky laugh as he hopped around the kitchen, his hand covering the space where she hit him. Holly's eyes would be welling up with tears, she was laughing so hard. "You're not nineteen-years-old anymore," Suzie would say as she held up the pan to his face, "it's no longer cute."

"Don't act like you don't like it," he'd accuse, and Holly would wave her hands in the air, declaring through breathless laughs, "Okay, okay. This is getting weird. Your daughter and grandson are here…" And then she'd burst into more endless giggles while little Jotaro would cover his eyes in second-hand embarrassment.

Jotaro barely gave any thought of romance for himself in the future, but he was glad to have grandparents who loved one another dearly. Because he certainly didn't have parents who did.

He didn't possess any memories of his father, just the stories his mother told him. He apparently looked just like him, but Jotaro would tell those who asked that he strongly resembled Joseph or Jonathan. His parents met at a concert—his father was the saxophone player for the band who was opening for someone more successful. They talked all night about music and "sparks flew", according to his mother. Jotaro trusted his mother because he had nothing else to fall back on. Joseph said he always hated the guy, but that was probably because he took his only daughter and then broke her heart in two.

As Jotaro hit his growth spurt at age fifteen, as strange new feelings began eating at his insides the older he got, as what he thought about society suddenly began to matter, he became vaguely aware of how he was treating his mother. He didn't know why he easily got angry or why he chose to take it out on Holly (looking back on it now was embarrassing—his snobby attitude at the innocent, the unnecessary and haughty responses, even the useless urge to be different and dress in chains and all black was enough to make him hide under his hat in regret). But he knew she was a good mother and that he cared about what happened to her deeply, so it wasn't that much of a challenging choice when she fell ill at the hands of an undead phantom from distant lands and times.

The only reminiscence he had of his father was the aftereffects of his official absence. Jotaro had awakened in the middle of the night and was on his way to the bathroom when he caught his mother standing in the hall with the phone in her hands. She cupped it like she was holding a crying baby bird and her face was morphed into an expression of desperate misery, like she was losing a battle that she clearly had no chance winning, but still foolishly had hope that the tables would turn.

"Sadao, please," he heard her plead through broken tears, "can't we talk about this when you come home? Now-Now is not a good time." A pause. "But I don't understand. Why is—What about Jotaro? Doesn't he matter? Every father should care about his child." A sniff. "Please, Sadao. Don't do this." A short pause and then a hopeless "Sadao, please! Please, I—Hell-Hello? Sadao? Sadao?"

She just stood there, staring at the wallpaper like it just murdered that baby bird she was holding. Her head bowed, the phone curled into her chest, and soft yet heavy sobs shook her spine. Jotaro straightened up in alarm. He never saw his mother so upset; she normally hid all negative emotions from him, wearing a mask of forced positivity. What could've hurt her so badly?

Out of protection for his mother, he stepped out of the shadows, his eyes focused, his heart pumping. "Mommy?"

Holly jumped at his quiet voice which broke the heavy silence with the strength of a sledgehammer. "Oh! Jo-Jotaro, I didn't see you there." She put the phone back in its holder on the wall and then wiped her hands over her face, combing back her hair, rubbing at her eyes. "W-What's the matter, honey? What are you doing up so late?"

She walked over to him, but he didn't move. He stared at her hard. "Was that Daddy?"

Holly pinched her fingers in hesitation before clearing her throat and kneeling before him. "Um, yes. Yes, it was," she answered as she ran her hands down the lengths of his arms, squeezing his little hands.

When she failed to explain further, Jotaro prompted her. "What did he say?"

Holly's eyes began to water again as they fluttered like the broken wings of a butterfly, flying from their locked hands to the ceiling, to the darkened hallway behind, to his own solidified gaze. Her voice was just as unstable: "Um, that he…that he won't be home for quite…some time. You know he's busy with his tour and-and everything." She swallowed and then added very quietly, "I don't know when he's coming home, Jotaro."

Jotaro obviously didn't figure it out that very night, but after weeks went by without the typical phone call from his father, updating them on his world tour or asking how they were handling things back here at home, he eventually assumed that "quite some time" meant "not at all."

He lost respect for his father, along with the few memories he had of him. It wasn't worth keeping them if it was a struggle to remember. The only moments his father was involved in Jotaro's life was when he watched his mother cry and cry for days on end, desperately trying to reach him but to no avail. The sole connection he possessed with his father was heartbreak which might've been the seed of the ever-simmering heat inside him. The seed was a star, he realized, but not in the way it metaphorically represented the Joestar lineage for nearly a hundred years. Stars are filled with unbearable sums of heat that can destroy all around them when they exhaust themselves. In the wake of a heat death, all are susceptible to its dying embers.

Joseph suffered Jotaro's supernova when the family discovered his affair, and it took his grandfather years of rebuilding to gain his trust back.

Jotaro acted like he wasn't even there after learning that was the most effective way of breaking him. Perhaps that was why he was so animated all the time—look at me! you can't forget me even if you wanted to. there's no one else like me. Maybe it was cruel, aiming for the best way of bringing true hell to the man who often raised it for fun, but, in Jotaro's mind, he was too angry to care. The deliberate ignorance of his wife reminded him too much of his own father, and he only wanted to bring that same pain he knew his mother felt to Joseph. It was only fair.

But Grandma Suzie was wise and let her silent fury dwindle out before making any final decisions. While Joseph suffered alone in New York, Suzie travelled in order to think, staying at the Kujo household for a week or two before eventually moving onto Switzerland and Italy to "regain old memories". Jotaro tried telling her that she ought to sign some divorce papers and move on.

"Don't end up like my mother," he warned her, "who stills wears her wedding ring and truly thinks that one day my father might come back. Don't make yourself suffer like that."

She only smiled sadly and said, "You're quick to anger, mio amore. Yes, what he did was wrong and I'm very…upset about all of this, but doesn't his goodness outweigh the bad? I mean, look back at what you two did during your travels to Egypt. Thank you for looking out for me, Jotaro, but I think I got this."

Two months passed and Suzie decided to give Joseph another chance and keep their marriage intact. Jotaro gritted his teeth but didn't let Star Platinum send a flurry of blows down on the old man. There would always be a hairline of a fracture in their relationship after the infidelity, but Jotaro found himself needing him as life went on, from assisting a mass of teenagers with newly formed Stands in Morioh to his crumbling relationship with his own wife and daughter.

He met Marina while attending college in America. For a while, Jotaro wasn't aware of her wandering eyes (he learned to ignore the absurdly long stares of every female he ran into) until she had the guts to approach him and his intimidating aura. Whilst reaching for his marine biology degree, he took several trips to the local aquarium, both for academic purposes and his own personal enjoyment. Watching the various fish swim in the big blue tanks reminded him of that submarine trip on the way to Egypt.

She worked there, teaching children on how to properly pet the stingrays. He heard her soft voice reverberate around the room through the microphone taped to her chin, but he never actually listened to her nor purposefully looked at her. He never noticed anything about her until she one day asked him if the space beside him on the bench was taken.

He glanced her way. She sported the sky-blue T-shirt and brown capris employees wore. She wasn't particularly pretty but she wasn't unattractive either. Chestnut hair brushed to the side, dark kind eyes, thin mouth, European origin, round cheeks. She was honestly kind of plain-looking.

"No," he said plainly and went back to scribbling down notes.

She carefully sat next to him, keeping a little over a foot of space between them. Nothing was exchanged for some time before she spoke up again: "You're here often. I always see you wandering about."

Naturally he said nothing.

An awkward silence swam between them along with the petit seahorses caged in front of them. She tried again: "I'm Marina, by the way. Do you have a name, or is 'tall dark stranger' what you usually go by?" She giggled nervously at her own joke.

He glanced at her again. Her gaze was stuck somewhere in the fake cobblestone flooring. Once she felt his stare on her, she shyly looked up with pursed lips, waiting patiently.

"Not the talkative type, huh?" she smiled. "It's okay. Sitting in silence can be nice too."

She looked at the seahorses again and crossed her ankles, prepared to do just that. Another wave of silence endured until he sighed out, "Jotaro."

She smirked. "Jotaro. Good to know. Are you a student?"

"I go to Florida State."

"Oh, my mother went there for her degree too. She moved here from Colorado. Did you have to travel far?"

A slow blink. Now he was starting to get annoyed. "I moved here from Japan."

She perked in interest. "You're from Japan?"

"Born and raised."

"Oh, wow. Your American accent is so spot-on, I figured you'd be from somewhere in Indiana."

He sighed again as he tucked his pencil inside his notebook and closed it. "I have studying to do."

She looked at him, smiled, and then went back to the seahorses. "I understand. I appreciate the talk, though. If you don't mind, I'll just stay here until my break is over."

He didn't reply, so she stayed for another ten or so minutes until she gave him a shy wave goodbye and then headed back to the stingray pool.

It wasn't until he left that he realized that she had been flirting with him. And, after a few more one-sided conversations, he realized he didn't necessarily hate it.

Surprisingly but genuinely, Jotaro enjoyed the settling-down life. He liked not having to hunt down murderers with Stands or having to practice time-stopping with his own. He liked focusing on his work by the sea and then coming home to the little family he created.

"I can't believe we weren't prepared for this," Marina heaved through a heavy sigh. "We had everything else taken care of, but we never actually discussed picking a name."

In the small, silent hospital room, Jotaro stared at his newborn daughter in his wife's arms. Wrapped in a tight buddle, she somehow managed to wriggle her arms free and had them crossed beneath her chin, tiny hands grasping at the open world around her. Her eyes were shut, but she couldn't stop moving, bubbles of incoherent speech chirping from her shiny lips. So curious of her newfound home, so ready to take on the unknown.

He scratched his temple, honestly at a loss for words. "Yeah."

Marina smiled as she stroked back the black tuff of hair on the baby's head. "She deserves something as beautiful as she is. It has to mean something as profound as her." A little laugh and then "We can't keep calling her 'baby' and 'infant.'"

Jotaro pondered. As profound and beautiful as she. He thought of myths and stories and history where the woman was strong and stunning and something otherworldly. Athena, Freya, Diana, Jane, Catherine, Sif, Victoria. He also thought of women in music, having grown-up in that type of household: Janis, Stevie, Donna, Bennie, Nancy, Rosemary, Darlene.

"Jolyne," he then suggested, a little unaware of what he said.

Marina glanced at the inactive TV across the room, thinking. "Jolyne…that's a song, isn't it?"

"Uh, yeah. Dolly Parton."

She poked the air in recognition. "Yes, that's right. I know it." She then looked back down at their baby and nodded her head to the beat in her mind, skipping over some lyrics she couldn't recall at the moment.

"Jolyne, Jolyne, Jolyne. Your beauty is beyond compare with flaming locks of auburn hair…with eyes of emerald green…your smile is like a breath of spring…I cannot compete with you, Jolyne." She again caressed the baby's head. "Well, maybe not the auburn hair, but you get the idea." She then glanced at Jotaro. "I think we have a winner."

He blinked at her. "Really?"

"Well, yeah. Just look at her." She smiled down at the breath of spring in her arms. "Dolly is right: no one can compete with her."

Jotaro didn't stop his own smile from creeping up upon his face. He tucked a strand of Marina's hair behind her ear, scooted closer to the bed, and then continued staring at the newest family member.

But this nice, quiet life lasted no longer than a year. The more research he did on his own family history and the experience with Dio that continued to haunt the rest of his days made him realize that Joestars don't get to live happily ever after. Jonathan and nearly everyone around him died, and, even though Joseph was lucky to still be married and have regular meetings with his daughter and grandson, he still carried a heavy heart for others who died for him and would always be tied to some supernatural or life-threatening situation. Jotaro found himself being dragged into that lifestyle too; he would never get to live a normal life.

That's why he kept everything a secret from his wife and his daughter. They knew nothing about a vampire that preyed on his family for multiple generations, not about the ghostly gladiator that hovered behind his shoulder, not about the Speedwagon Foundation that saw through every disaster and followed him like a shadow. The trips around the world Jotaro often took? Marina truly believed it was his biology career that had skyrocketed, taking him to universities and laboratories and all parts of the sea. He was a workaholic, she usually joked, but then the joke became serious and then his "marine job" turned into the perfect excuse Jotaro used when issuing a divorce.

Before going to Marina about it, he found himself going to Joseph. Not for permission or for comfort (he would do it, no matter what), but to confirm. Joseph sat in silence for a while, chin in his palm, eyes locked on the tea in front of him. The silence made Jotaro a little uncomfortable, especially when it came from a man who never seemed to shut up.

He eventually sighed, blinked slowly, and then mumbled, "It makes sense. I hate that it makes sense."

Jotaro looked at him, really looked at him. The older Joseph got, the sadder his eyes became. This was very true when they were in Moriah together, Josuke's fatherless childhood constantly ringing like church bells in Joseph's mind. Jotaro tugged on the rim of his hat and braced himself for what had to come next.

"It does, which is why you must understand why I can't have Jolyne around you."

Joseph's stare flicked to Jotaro. He kept his gaze steady as his grandfather's rebellious youthfulness crawled back out of the sadness. "Uh, no, I don't understand. Enlighten me on that one, why don't you."

"You said it makes sense. You and Jonathan had family and friends who died simply because they were involved with you." A hesitant breather and then a quiet, "Kakyoin and Avdol—"

"If you keep on blaming yourself for their deaths, you'll only keep on dragging yourself down, Jotaro." Another tentative pause. "Speak from personal experience."

"Nevertheless, you're a Joestar and you're a magnet to danger. So am I."

"I still don't see how that explains why I can't see my own great-granddaughter."

"Because I don't want her involved. Marina knows nothing, Jolyne knows nothing, and I'm keeping it that way. If they know nothing, then nothing will come their way."

"You don't know that. Bad things happen to people all the time—"

"Not everyone has to travel across the world because their mother is dying of a soul manifestation that is tied to a vampire who should've died a hundred years ago."

Joseph rolled his eyes and Jotaro added, "Mom and Grandma Suzie can't see her either."

His jaw dropped open in complete offense. "You can't do that—!"

"Come on, old man. This isn't a request—"

"You'll ruin Jolyne's childhood if you—"

"I'm keeping her safe."

His frown deepened. "Look, I get it when it's just me, but Suzie? Your own mother? You know they'd treasure her like how they treasure you. I'm not telling them that."

You'll ruin Jolyne's childhood. It was probably true, but he figured he'd rather have a daughter who was alive and hated his guts rather than a dead one who didn't stand a chance. But when your entire family hates you for trying to protect them from your trailing danger, like a dog without its leash, it takes its toll on you. But he had to keep them safe; he wouldn't know what he would do if another Jonathan case happened.

He didn't want the divorce, obviously, but he hid his true intentions behind the emotionless stare he had since he was a kid. He concealed, and Marina broke apart.

"But what about Jolyne?" she argued, her voice filling the house at one in the morning, their backs hunched over the dimly lit kitchen table. "We can't do this to her. W-What will she—?"

"She'll stay with you. You can take full custody of her."

Marina just stared at him, silent as a cemetery. She stared unblinkingly for so long that he almost asked what the matter was. "You…can't be serious."

He said nothing, which angered her more, but she kept her voice dangerously low. It reminded him of a squeaky door, slowly opening to a bigger darkness.

"You aren't going to fight for your own daughter's life? You're going to just sit there and practically toss her at me like she's nothing? Not even 'I'll settle for weekends?' Jotaro…you-you can't be that inconsiderate."

He sighed and ignored the heavy weight in his chest. "You're the better parent, so you should take her."

Her eyes began to water, but no tears had slipped. She leaned forward in her seat, reached over the table, and clutched his fingers, almost desperately. "What aren't you telling me, Jotaro?"

"What do you mean?"

"Ever since we met, I've practically had to pry things out of you; it's like pulling teeth just to have basic conversations with you, especially lately. I know you keep secrets from me, and I know you're dealing with something much bigger than yourself, but you never tell me anything." She swallowed and blinked away the mist in her crystalline eyes. "I thought you were like a treasure chest that I stumbled upon in some deep cave. You're bolted with all sorts of locks and chains, but if I solved all the riddles and looked hard enough to find the right keys to the right locks, that you would finally open up to me, that I could finally see the treasure inside."

Her voice cracked and she paused to collect herself before sighing deeply and asking, "Why did you marry me, Jotaro, if you didn't plan on letting me in? I can help you with whatever's bothering you—I know something is, so don't try lying to me. All you have to do is talk to me."

He wanted to spill it all—crack open his ribs, intertwined with barbed wire and dock ropes, and fish out that rusty old thing called a heart that Marina was fighting hard for. He wished he didn't have to do this, but there was no alternative, no escape from the steady flow of death threats Joestars received every day. So, he had to keep those titanium locks secured, bury the keys a little deeper.

His eyes drifted to her hand atop of his. "I can't," he mumbled. He noticed the charm bracelet on her wrist that he gave her on an anniversary many years ago. She'd been adding various pieces of jewelry to it, collecting life's precious memories: a ring for their wedding day, a graduation cap for her college ceremony, a starfish for her dream job of working with marine life, a crane carrying a sack for her pregnancy.

He touched it lightly. "This has nothing to do with you. None of it is your fault."

"But you can't tell me why you want a divorce?"

"No."

She paused. "Is it Jolyne?"

"She has nothing to do with this either."

"Jotaro, please tell me. This is serious."

He sighed. "Marina, I can't. I'm sorry."

She then slipped her grasp from his and collapsed back in her seat. He suddenly felt cold, bare.

"I can't believe I'm putting up with this shit," she hissed under her breath.

Like a pendulum, she shook her head, an astonishingly furious look on her face. She growled through her teeth, "You're just like your own father—"

Something snapped in him. "I am not—"

He luckily caught himself before slipping into an unrecoverable fury. He swore he felt Star Platinum's presence behind him, and he bit the inside of his cheek in shock at himself. He was that close to tearing his wife apart; sickness swelled in his stomach as he cleared his throat and stiffened his spine.

He tried again: "I am not my father."

"Oh, really? Because you both left your lonely wife alone with a child who deserves better and refuse to take part in their lives." She threw her hands in the air and then dropped them on the table, bouncing empty mugs and stacks of bills around. "I can't believe this. I can't believe you."

She then got up and walked out of the room, where he could hear quiet sobs radiating. He blinked away his own tears before his mind could fathom that maybe Joseph was right: he was ruining their lives. But safety had to outweigh happiness, in unfair cases like this.

I was young when I learned that family isn't always necessarily blood related.

The Joestar lineage was very important to Jotaro (despite being stuck with the surname Kujo). Family had always been his number one priority and everyone else were just background characters with faces and names he hadn't bothered to memorize. Even during all of their journey to Egypt, he kept those priorities, the well-being of his mother and his grandfather constantly taking up space in his mind.

Jotaro remembered Joseph explaining where the avalanche of perils came from, in that small coffee shop with his mother and Avdol, who was just as interested and knowledgeable as Joseph when it came to Dio Brando. "He was born into a poverty-stricken family and stayed like that until he was adopted by my granddad. The walk to his apartment led through the slums of London—whorehouses everywhere, liquor stores in every other building, the homeless lying around wherever they could, all kinds of crime hidden around in every corner. Dio's father was an alcoholic and a gambler, and I've found tons of reports of him beating his wife on numerous occasions. Apparently, that would set Dio off the most and he would try pulling his father off his mother, which only made it worse for him. Dio usually walked around with a black eye or swollen lip, but no one ever said anything nor did he—"

Jotaro huffed and crossed his arms. "If you're trying to make me feel sorry for this guy, it's not gonna work."

Joseph looked up from his work, clear confusion scrunching up his facial features. "Huh?"

"Plenty of people are born into poverty or have abusive fathers or have shitty lives, and they don't cut people's heads off."

Joseph shook his head and said plainly, "Feeling bad about Dio's backstory is the number one thing on my Not-To-Do list. That fucker deserves to be rotting at the bottom of the ocean, not my granddad. I'm just laying down the groundwork, so we can attack him where it hurts, because no one messes with my family."

Although they didn't agree on much, Jotaro was glad to know that they shared this vital goal.

But Kakyoin, Polnareff, and Avdol, nothing more than strangers with similar ambitions, managed to be just as important.

What an odd group they were, all different in personalities and morals that it was hard to imagine how they got along. Jotaro, being stuck in the awkward yet angsty stage of young adulthood, and Joseph, his old man who jumped around just as much as he did when he was a teenager, were already a strange combo. Yet, in this way, the three additional men fit right in.

One thing all of them had in common was a love for music. Years later, Jotaro would grin to himself in memory of all those car rides they took, driving through rough terrain, radio on full blast. In one instance, Sweet's "Ballroom Blitz" began playing through the crappy speakers and Polnareff spun the volume wheel.

"Oh, I love this song! This is the peak of all music."

Joseph, who'd been the one driving, began tapping his finger against the steering wheel in line with the beat. "This one is decent."

Kakyoin's eyes brightened in recognition. "Oh yeah, this is good. My mom played this song all the time when I was a kid."

Avdol made a funny face. "Really? How old is this song? I thought this came out recently."

"Like seventy-four?" Joseph guessed. "Seventy-five?"

Avdol mashed his lips together. "I feel so much older now—"

"Shh, shut up," Polnareff interrupted, waving his hands. "This is the best part."

"It's not even the chorus yet. What are you—"

"Don't be too obnoxious, Polnareff," Joseph spoke at the same time as Avdol. "I'm trying to translate road signs here—"

The chorus picked up and Polnareff, unable to control himself, began singing along, loudly and horribly out of tune. He even rolled down his window and chanted to the open sky and wildlife around them. Joseph and Avdol tried singing along, but Polnareff's dramatic representation of the song had them laughing more than singing. He would mumble to the lyrics he didn't know and then blare out the ones he did, he would dance as much as he could in his seat, he would even try to drag the others in his typical foolishness by pointing at them or grabbing someone's wrist and try to force a duet on them. Kakyoin would bop his head and beat his knees to the beat but would also fall into fits of laughter. Jotaro would merely stare out the window, biting on the inside of his cheek to keep from smiling too widely.

It was moments like that, when they all forgot about the dangers that laid ahead of them and just enjoyed each other's company, that really stuck to Jotaro, stronger than most bonds he had.

Kakyoin was painfully awkward and quiet when Jotaro first met him (after he finally was set free of Dio's clutches that is). He seemed eager too, to be a part of something, for he listened carefully to Joseph's advice and hung on Avdol's every word, so much so that it sometimes annoyed Jotaro. It appeared like this little group of oddballs was Kakyoin's first collection of friends.

He had strange quirks, habits that he could conceal easily to appear normal and then throw Jotaro off. Like that abnormally long tongue of his—he would sometimes lick his food like how a snake would flick its tongue to detect new scents. His face didn't change expressions like he was purposefully trying to freak one of them out; he thought that was normal.

He would only stop when he noticed Jotaro glaring at him, visibly disgusted. "What?"

"What the hell is wrong with you?"

Puzzled, he knitted his eyebrows together as he looked down at the bowled ice cream in his hands. "Do you not like strawberry or something—?"

"What is wrong with your tongue?"

Even more confused now. "Nothing. I'm just eating my food."

"You should use that tongue on some lucky girl," Polnareff added unhelpfully. "Drive her absolutely crazy."

Kakyoin gave him an amused stare while Jotaro rolled his eyes and began poking at his own ice cream. "No wonder you're friendless," he muttered under his breath.

At that, Kakyoin snorted and grinned innocently at him. "I'm guessing you have lots of friends though, right? With that sparkling personality of yours?"

Polnareff barked out laughing and ended up choking on his sugary treat. Jotaro glowered at Kakyoin from beneath the rim of his hat. He continued smiling and then went to add, "I suppose girls are really into that 'I'll-behead-you-if-you-breathe-in-my-direction' mood—" before Jotaro growled "Shut up."

Kakyoin was also filled with useless facts like Joseph, and sometimes the two would go back and forth sharing what they knew. Although Joseph tended to know more about pop culture and different forms of media, Kakyoin knew just random, unusual things that he couldn't have gotten from a school textbook.

Spotting a family of geese waddling across the road, Kakyoin piped up, "Did you know that ducks will engage in cannibalism when bored?"

He was met with dead silence. Kakyoin then realized his own strangeness and fidgeted in place, messing with his hair so that it conveniently shielded his face. Out of politeness, Avdol added, "Well, cannibalism is still practiced in some cultures today, so humans are not too far off…" His face fell at his own statement. "…from-from ducks."

Joseph cackled and pointed at Avdol's face. "That is my favorite thing you've ever said." He then turned to Kakyoin. "What other weird shit do you know?"

Kakyoin blinked and pondered before mumbling, "Um, chainsaws were first invented as a tool to aid in childbirth."

"What!" Joseph yelled, eyes bulging. "My grandma didn't tell me that and she delivered Holly!" He then gripped his lower stomach in fake pain. "I'm not a woman but I felt that in my uterus."

Polnareff hollered out, "That's just further proof that you were a woman in your past life!" at the same time Avdol laughed, "Now that is my favorite thing you've said."

"Oh, Mr. Joestar, Polnareff," Kakyoin spoke up again, any traces of embarrassment replaced with enthusiasm, anxious to see their reactions after whatever it was that he would throw out his mouth. "You're both fans of horror films, right? Well, I heard that they used real corpses in the Poltergeist movie. Do you know that one scene—?"

"Ew, really?" Polnareff gasped. "But why? Why would you—ugh, that's disgusting!"

"Ah shit, I'm not telling Suzie that; she'd think that makes sense or makes it more 'authentic.'"

Jotaro narrowed his eyes. "Grandma likes horror movies?"

"Huge fan." Joseph looked at Kakyoin and explained, "My wife is filled with sunshine and lollipops, and she watched the Ted Bundy trials so intensely that it freaked me out." He turned to Jotaro. "She likes Italian horror movies the best, which are bloody as fuck. We watched Suspiria, and she's so calm and collected, so I asked her why, and she literally said 'What's the point of horror movies if you don't see the insides?' That woman is gonna be the death of me."

As Joseph rambled, Polnareff grabbed Kakyoin's shoulders and asked him "if he was now cursed for having watched that corpse-filled movie" while Avdol asked him what else he knew. Jotaro noticed the wide grin on Kakyoin's face as he rattled off lists of pointless yet amazing facts about the world.

Jotaro also thought it was a little strange how Kakyoin was determined to assist him and Joseph in tracking down Dio to save Holly from his lethal hands. Avdol was also doing it all for Holly, but he and Joseph had been good friends for a while and Kakyoin just stepped into it all at late notice, just as much as Polnareff had. Jotaro never saw him until the day they decided to embark on their journey; why was this lonely teenage boy so interested in saving a mother that was not his?

Along the way, Jotaro learned that Kakyoin was also raised by a single mother. Although he never asked him why he was there, Kakyoin told him anyway: "I just thought that if my own mother was dying and I knew that it was caused by a person, I would do the same thing you're doing, Jotaro. And I admire how close you are with your family, even if you get annoyed by your grandfather easily or try avoiding your mother's kisses." He shrugged and smiled toothlessly. "I would do anything for my mom too. I want to be as strong as she is."

Jotaro went with the Speedwagon Foundation to tell Kakyoin's mother what he said about her when the Egypt campaign ended. She smiled like how Kakyoin did—small, shy, but sincere—when Jotaro introduced himself as his friend, and then she cried like how the rain falls at a funeral.

Avdol was the only adult of the group. He spoke reason and logic in the eye of their hectic and haphazard storm. Not to say that he was boring or, in a sense, older than Joseph, for he knew when to have fun or make light of the situation. He was a splash of normalcy in a chaotic world, and it was a relief to have him there.

He was very informative about Stands; while Joseph carried the Joestar and Dio compilation of knowledge, Avdol led them in learning their Stands and using them to the best of their abilities. He even spent one-on-one time with Jotaro and the newly found Star Platinum.

When he asked Jotaro to summon his soul, he looked up and smirked. "He even looks like you. A little, you have to admit."

Jotaro glanced up. Excluding the purple flesh and extra weight on those biceps and thighs, Star did have a slight resemblance to him: the same curly black hair, straight nose, daggered blue eyes, sharp bone structure, and full lips. His hair and loose clothing rippled in the air as if caught underwater. His stare was locked ahead but then peeked down at Jotaro, awaiting his next command.

Jotaro squinted. Something, strangely enough, seemed familiar about Star like he was an old friend whom he hadn't seen in years. Or maybe someone he should've known but never actually met.

"So, your Stand is obviously the tank of the group," Avdol thought aloud, his necklace clanking together as he crossed his arms over his chest. "That's good; we'll need someone with strength and speed to take down Dio's army."

As he spoke, Magician's Red emerged from behind Avdol and swam through the air, approaching Star. The flaming bird peered curiously at Star, who backed up slightly. They were like cats meeting each other for the first time: Red circled Star, frequently poking and prodding at Star and Jotaro's Stand would glare or flex the muscles in his arms whenever he felt cornered.

Avdol chuckled and beckoned Red back to his side, who complied. "Your Stand is still a blank slate, which is normal, considering you just found out about him a couple days ago."

"You said that Stand's are the manifestations of one's soul." Jotaro looked at him. "I'm sure you've heard my old man call me that before."

"No one's a blank slate; everyone is full of emotions, including you. You just don't know who you are yet. That's what we need to figure out—what are your strengths, your weaknesses, your history, your goals, your morals. All those make up who you are, thus affecting your Stand and what it's capable of."

He patted Red's giant beak who cooed quietly in response. "For example, I know I'm a determined individual that will use all resources available to him in order to succeed and I possess a free spirit, hence the bird-like qualities of my Stand. But I know I can be deceitful, even to those close to me, and my anger sometimes gets the best of me, turning to merciless vengeance if I'm not careful. I have a long history in Egypt—my father and his father were tarot readers as well and my family thrived off of its powerful symbols for generations. That's why I want to defeat Dio: I see him as a plague on my homeland who is spreading hate and violence on a place that I have always loved. The tarots are me, my family is me, Egypt is me."

He smirked again. "So, who are you, Jotaro Kujo?"

Avdol helped him every step of the way, and Jotaro gained a better understanding of not only his Stand, but also himself. Star began acting differently: instead of standing straight up and gazing with a robotic look in his eye, he became looser, more curious, more observant. Though quiet, he would drift as far as he could from Jotaro, studying the different worlds around them. He liked watching people and animals, things that showed life (when Jotaro and the others sat in the lobby of a hotel, waiting for Joseph to make arrangements, Star subconsciously rippled into existence just to silently watch a little boy play with a stray cat).

It sometimes appeared to Jotaro that Star was reliving some long, lost memory when he watched people going about their day. Or maybe he wanted something like that, some degree of status quo.

Jotaro didn't need to relay these thoughts to Avdol because Avdol already knew what they were.

"I think you're a romantic, Jotaro," he said as he handed him a cup of tea.

He laughed when Jotaro shot him one of his infamous shut-the-fuck-up glares. "Sorry, I forgot you don't like jokes."

"Sure, I do," he mumbled as he took the mug and sipped gingerly at his drink. "Just not tasteless ones."

"Well, joke or not, I believe you—and Star—would like to live like one of these innocent bystanders, going about their day, seemingly not a care in the world. Star likes people-watching, I've observed, and I'm trying to see the connection there."

Jotaro shrugged. Avdol took a sip of his tea before adding, "But I do know that you care deeply about your family, Jotaro, and I think that plays a part in Star's actions."

"How so?"

He rubbed his chin in thought. "I'm not sure. Maybe it's like how my family speaks to me through my Stand. I know you're close with Mr. Joestar, but I don't see too much of his influence in Star's personality. Perhaps it's somewhere further down the family line and perhaps that is why it's taking you a bit longer to realize Star's potential—you never knew your great-grandfather or Mr. Jonathan Joestar, but Star may be showing characteristics of those two that we just don't know about."

"Or maybe you're thinking too deeply into it," Jotaro muttered into his tea, but Avdol either ignored him or didn't hear his comment.

Avdol pondered in silence for a while before eventually mumbling, "I wonder if time has anything to do with your Stand."

"What does that mean?"

"Family means history and history means time. I wonder if Star can manipulate it."

"I haven't noticed otherwise."

"Well." He put his cup down and slapped his knees. "We won't know for sure until we try. Come on, let's test it out."

And that son of a bitch turned out to be right. It only lasted a second or two, but that was more than enough. "Don't tell anyone about this," Avdol whispered to him, his face stern and serious. "This is an extremely powerful ability, and you need to practice on it, but if anyone else knows, it'll somehow travel to Dio and that's the last thing we want. But great job, Jotaro." He clamped his shoulder with a smile. "I think we're finally figuring out who exactly you are."

Time, that complicated concept, turned out to dominate Jotaro's life. Stuck between the past and the future, his present only came in quick spurts and, before he knew it, it'd be gone and his mind would be casted back to Joseph's mistakes and Jonathan's fall or Josuke's ignorance and Jolyne's misery. Either way, Jotaro wouldn't be able to overcome Dio's own time-stopping power if Avdol hadn't figured it out.

The man who always bit the bullet for someone else, the man who told you when you were both wrong and right, the man who had a soul as free as a bird and a vengeance as fiery as the pits of hell. He was so much in one being, yet they had nothing to bury in the end.

Polnareff was the goofball (to put it lightly) that had a big heart, much too big for his body. He, like Avdol, knew himself in and out, therefore had no trouble controlling his Stand's skills. He was the only one who wasn't fighting Dio for the sake of the Joestar family—he was fighting for himself.

Sometimes it was hard to tell if he was purposefully being funny or he honestly didn't know what he was doing. Just when he thought that small rat-thing they called Iggy was finally warming up to him, Iggy would turn around and nip at Polnareff (he was always littered with claw-marks and teeth indents). He was also incredibly casual and often had his guard down, considering they were on a very dangerous mission. It sometimes drove Joseph mad at how reckless he could be.

"There has to be a limit at how many times you're allowed to be a damsel in distress," he complained one day.

"I'm not trying to be one!" Polnareff fired back. "In fact, I've defeated plenty of Stand-users without your help, so you could be nicer, you know."

"Nice? It's like you don't know me at all."

"In my defense, I've only known you for a week—ow!" Polnareff massaged his jaw from where Joseph mindlessly slapped him with Hermit Purple.

Polnareff was like the little brother of the group: he had his moments of glory and usefulness, absolutely, but they could never leave him alone for too long or else people would literally die. To prove this point, there were plenty of times after a near-fatal battle where Kakyoin would grab Polnareff and ask "Are you alright?" and Polnareff would respond through a bloody nose or swollen lip "Y-Yeah, I think I'm good—" before Kakyoin punched him ruthlessly in the nose and have Avdol or Joseph scold him for leaving the group.

Jotaro often remembered the silly parts of him—watching him seat-dance to some Beatles song as they waited in hotel lobbies, listening to him hit on women with corny one-liners, hearing him shout "shit, shit, shit!" and French insults as they ran from one Stand-user to another. But sometimes his acts of bravery and loyalty went unnoticed. Like how he strove forward, never missing a beat after Avdol and Iggy easily gave up their lives for his sake. Or how he kept his sister's memory alive, long after his revenge was complete.

"Sherry would love this insufferable heat," he muttered once as they crossed the lonely deserts of Egypt, "but she would burn like a marshmallow. We went to the beach once as kids and she forgot to put on sunscreen and I swear, her skin was like the color of Kakyoin's hair." He chuckled to himself. "She looked like that for days."

It was remarks like that that would make seventeen-year-old Jotaro's opinion about him shift, constantly changing from "the bulky idiot who couldn't tell his right from his left" to "a guy just trying his best to shuffle the cards that clearly weren't in his favor". The latter opinion stuck to him after Egypt happened, and Polnareff volunteered to help in the hunt for the arrows.

"So how are your wounds?" Polnareff asked as they wandered from place to place. "You all healed up or is there still nicks in your head when Dio tried stabbing you to death?"

He tugged on his hat, studying the map in his hands. "I'm fine."

"I'm fine, I'm fine," he mocked back and then sighed. "Still your grumpy teenage self, huh? Well, my neck is killing me. To be honest, that night in Egypt is still kind of a blur to me, so I don't know where half of my injuries came from. Did you ever see Dio choking me? I felt like he choked me, and not in a good way."

"No, I didn't. I was kind of busy."

"Yeah, busy saving the planet." He laughed and clapped a hand on his back. "I never really got to tell you this because everything ended pretty quickly, but everything you did was incredible. Not just defeating Dio, but everything and everyone. You're like a weird version of Superman: just indestructible." He scratched the back of his ear, his long earrings knocking against his knuckles. "I do wish your grandpa could've joined us, though. Would've been like the old days—even though the old days were only a few months ago. Guess I'll be the adult in this scenario."

Jotaro couldn't help but snort. "The boat would catch on fire if you're left in charge. That's why I'm holding the map."

"I don't know, mon ami. I've been told that I'd be a great father one day."

"Who told you that heap of horse shit?"

"My mom, so shut the fuck up, Jotaro."

Great laughs followed them along the path of dark secrets and, the further they travelled, Polnareff never broke off. The business of golden arrows that determined your way of how you saw the world and the seemingly everlasting conquest of Dio Brando became hard, weighing their hearts down like a stone in the river. It no doubt had its effects on Polnareff, but he always tried to keep the mood as light and pleasant as possible. He proved himself to be a true and valuable friend each day—even though Jotaro never said any of this aloud, he hoped Polnareff already knew.

And then Jotaro left him once Jolyne came in the picture.

The three of them got dinner one night—Jotaro, Polnareff, and Joseph—and Jotaro basked in the old memories before informing them of the news. He listened to Polnareff and Joseph bounce off one another like not a day had passed between them, insulting each other relentlessly and then patting one another's backs in thanks and celebration. Eventually the topic of Marina came up.

"God, I still can't believe you're married," Polnareff commented, "and to a woman. All this coming from the same guy who once pushed over a flight attendant just to get to the cockpit."

Joseph burst out laughing and Jotaro glared at him. "You told him that? I did not push her over."

His old man, visibly growing a little older, pitched the bridge of his nose. "You kind of did," he snickered.

"You also withered like a little leaf whenever I talked to girls," Polnareff pointed out. "Just the mere mention of someone with breasts made you uncomfortable."

"You were always hitting on girls, and it was painful for everyone when you did that," Jotaro deadpanned. "And you talked about sex a lot, which is not something I wanted to talk about when I was trying to save my mother's life."

"Excuses, excuses," Polnareff said as he gulped his wine. "But I gotta meet this girl. I have to know who in this world can break down Jotaro Kujo's walls which are higher than the Effiel—"

"Marina's pregnant," he interrupted, sipping his own wine as he did so.

"Wha—" Polnareff's eyes, small and expressive, suddenly popped open, his mouth dropping to the floor as well. Incoherent stuttering noises came from his open mouth as his stare jumped between Jotaro and Joseph, who looked like he too was about to burst in a glory of fireworks.

He pointed at Joseph. "You knew about this?"

Joseph nodded as Jotaro added, "And you thought his bouncing leg was Parkinson's."

"What, that's amaz—, when did you, how, c-congratulations!" Polnareff finally managed out, a big smile spreading across his face. "Oh my gosh, I'm gonna be an uncle!"

"And I'm gonna be a great-granddad!" Joseph included. Both men cheered and applauded, drawing the attention of nearly everyone in the restaurant. Jotaro huffed and hid self-consciously behind his hat and hand.

Polnareff slapped Jotaro's shoulder and shook it. "See, Jotaro? All that talk about sex, and you finally got yourself some."

Jotaro snapped out of his grasp and growled, "Shut the fuck up."

"The baby is due in June and, for the first time in Joestar history, we can find out the baby's gender before birth," Joseph went on, a wide smile also on his face.

"You sound like a woman," Jotaro muttered under his breath.

But his comment went unobserved; Polnareff and Joseph chatted away about the "little Jotaro" and the roles they would hope to play in their life. Jotaro shifted uncomfortably in his seat and kept drinking his wine until he found a good pause in their rambles to say what they probably didn't want to hear.

"Because of this, Polnareff, I can't keep hunting down the pieces of those arrows. I…have a family to care for."

Polnareff looked at him, a little confused but still delighted. "Okay? I mean, I understand—as much as I can anyway, I'm not married or a father, but I get it. Ever since you met Marina and became serious with her, you've drifted from the missions. You still contribute, yes, but not as much as when you were single and lonely."

He twirled his glass on the table, staring at his half-eaten food. Joseph chimed in: "What I think Jotaro means is that he wants to stop. Completely. He doesn't want to find the arrows anymore."

Polnareff and Jotaro glimpsed at him. Joseph glanced at Jotaro with a thin smile. "He wants to settle down and live a normal life. I know this because I wanted to do the same thing when Holly was born, and so I did."

"Oh…" Polnareff looked around the room, now looking the way Jotaro thought he would. A few quiet moments passed before he bit his lip and asked, "What do you want me to do?"

Jotaro shook his head and shrugged. "Settle down? Live your life? You don't have to keep looking if you don't want to."

He watched him roll the thought around in his mind like a ball in a pinball machine. He eventually shook his head and declared, "But I can't do that. I'm so wrapped up in all this and to abandon everything we've done would seem…pointless. I can't just stop."

Jotaro bit the inside of his cheek and mumbled out an apology.

"No, no, you don't have to be sorry. Like I said, I get it."

The three of them stared at the table in silence for a while. Jotaro wished they could go back to snorting loudly and making fun of one another. He scratched the back of his neck, tapped his foot, observed the creases in his knuckles. He just wanted out of this situation; he wanted to leave the conversation and never come back.

Eventually Polnareff straightened up and curled his lips in a sure smile. "I'll keep looking. You enjoy yourself."

And Jotaro did that—for about a year. Once he held Jolyne in his arms for the first time, all the bad things he experienced in his life came rushing back like a flood. The screams, the bloodshed, the anarchy. He recalled the devilish look on Dio's face when he sucked the blood out of Joseph's lifeless body, and he would sometimes see it next to Jolyne's sleeping infant face.

I have to protect her from people like him.

So, he dove back into finding the arrows, tracking his family lineage, learning everything he could about Dio's legacy so he could wipe his existence off the face of the earth. He travelled, worked, fought, did all the things he did when he was seventeen and when he was alone with Polnareff. But this time, he really did it alone; he never saw Polnareff's face after that dinner, losing contact after they went their incredibly separate ways. He was now another ghost in a photograph, a pleasant memory in the back of his mind that he could never fully grasp.

So were the men of the Egypt expedition.

My father left when I was young, and I left him in return. Little did I know I would do the same thing with her and regret it every moment of my life.

Jotaro knew he was a bad father. He was nowhere near as amazing as Holly or Joseph or Suzie or Marina; his parenting skills were less spectacular than a weekend babysitter. He was always absent, consumed with all sorts of work, and hardly put any effort into developing a decent human being. So, he had no idea why Jolyne enjoyed spending every moment with him whenever he was around.

He'd be at his desk or at the kitchen table or on the floor, swallowed by work of some kind, and Jolyne would find a way to physically grab his attention, one way or another. Wearing plastic fairy wings and an old princess dress she wore for Halloween one year over her clothes, she would stumble into the room and loudly play by herself, babbling nonsense for her endless supply of Barbie dolls. When he failed to respond, she took matters into her own hands.

She'd waddle up and stare at him, shards of emerald focusing on his adverted face. She breathed heavily as a toddler, a way of expressing her frustration when she didn't get what she wanted. Huffing and puffing, she would sometimes climb over him like a baby squirrel scurrying up a looming oak tree. Tugging on his clothes and pulling on his hair all while grunting like she was climbing Mount Everest. He'd eventually grab her with one hand and pry her off him before setting her back on the ground.

Other times, she would get into his face, positioning herself between him and his book or computer screen, and let out a curious yet pleading, "Daddy!"

"Hm," he'd mumble absentmindedly as he tried finishing whatever he was working on.

"Daaaaaddy!" She'd take his face in her chubby hands and turn him toward her. Her little fingernails would dig into his skin and his lips would pucker in her grasp.

"Whad?" he asked, finally looking at her.

Her pink lips, glossy from her own drool and shaped like a blooming tulip, would pucker back at him as she placed a sloppy kiss on his mouth. She smiled a toothless grin and continued playing with his face: slapping his cheeks, poking the tip of his nose, pulling on his bottom lip, plucking the hair from his eyebrows. "Daddy! Daddy!" she'd say rhythmically like he was a toy she had to activate with a few magic words.

"What'ca doing, JoJo?" Marina asked as she watched Jolyne pull at Jotaro's shortened curls. "You having fun pulling out Daddy's hair?"

She let out a wild squeal of delight as she then scrambled over to her mother, lifting her arms in the air. Marina bent down and picked her up.

"Say 'Daddy needs to stop being a workaholic,'" she half-jokingly told Jolyne through pouty lips.

Jotaro fixed his hair through a subtle frown as Jolyne continued screaming and screeching happily.

He made sure to never use Star Platinum around his family, more so with Jolyne. He wasn't positive if she would be born with a Stand or not, but just to be sure and continue keeping her out of harm's way, he kept his soul's manifestation tucked away, not summoning him for months at a time.

There was one time, however, that he had no choice. Jolyne hadn't been older than two perhaps. She was playing by the stairs with a set of dolls, a blanket beneath them and plastic teacups all around. Jotaro heard her usual babbling as he rounded the hall with a laundry basket in his hands.

"Jolyne," he said as he opened the hall closet, "get away from the stairs."

She peeked over her shoulder and lifted a purple cup in the air. "I'm having a tea party!" she declared.

"Have it in your room or the living room, not by the stairs."

He heard her babble a bit more to her dolls as he put fresh towels in the closet. He then heard the echo of a hard thud on hardwood flooring and, without looking or thinking, Jotaro yelled something he hadn't since he was seventeen years old: "The World!"

A sort of panic he also hadn't felt in years shook his insides as he dropped the laundry basket (which ended up just floating in the air) and spun towards Jolyne. There she was, in mid-fall with her knee on the second step and her body tilting toward the other twenty.

Dio practiced the World for years just to stop time for almost ten seconds, and Jotaro barely defeated him with just a couple. But that was ten years ago; would he be able to do it again?

Those two seconds that Star could manage felt like ages, Jolyne looked further away than what she really was. But he grabbed her right before the sand in the hourglass began falling again. She hiccupped at the sudden impact when she fell into the crook of his arm and the sound of the laundry basket hitting the floor echoed down the hall.

"Jolyne!" he barked at her face. "What did I tell you?"

She looked up at him, down the stairs, and back up at him. He pursed his lips. Shit. Did she see anything?

As her big green eyes ogled at him, Marina swiftly appeared at the bottom of the stairs. "What? What happened?"

Jotaro huffed and shifted Jolyne in his grasp. "She almost fell—"

"Daddy is Superman!" Jolyne yelled at the same time Jotaro responded.

"Is she okay?" Marina asked, eyes alert.

He got up and lumbered downstairs. "Yeah, she's fine."

She exhaled a relieved "Thank God" as Jolyne squirmed in his arms, shouting, "Daddy is Superman!" over and over.

Jotaro double-checked that Star wasn't lingering somewhere behind him. He prayed that Jolyne would forget the experience, considering she was only two years old, and his prayers apparently had been answered, for she never spoke of the incident again.

As she grew, her love for her father never ceased and her curiosity to learn more about who he really was drove her onward. But she craved his attention more than anything, which is probably why she disobeyed him frequently.

She knew touching his stuff was off limits, but she'd purposefully grab one of his hats and walk around with her arms crossed over her chest and her lips pulled into an obnoxious frown.

"Look, Daddy!" she'd say. "I'm you." And then she'd grumble under her breath, pretending to be talking on the phone or working on a laptop. He honestly didn't know what to think of her impression but knew exactly what it said about him.

She wasn't exposed to his side of the family, as he wanted it, but there were times when it was hard to keep it from her. Once Joseph stopped by to talk about his possession of a piece of the arrow and about a certain boy living in Italy with a star on his shoulder. Again, Jolyne was told to stay in her room until Jotaro said it was okay to come back down.

But she never listened to him—as soon as his back was turned to his grandfather, he heard whispered voices and looked back to see Jolyne by Joseph's side at the kitchen table, both of them acting like students at the back of a classroom during lecture.

"Jolyne."

Joseph glanced up but Jolyne didn't, and Jotaro wondered if that too was purposeful, ignoring him just to really have him in the palm of her little hand. But she was four, and she was easily distracted—she was playing with Joseph's machinal hand, something Jotaro did when he was her age as well.

As Jotaro walked over, Joseph tried feebly to protest on Jolyne's behalf: "She's not doing anything this time. She's just curious—"

"Daddy, look," Jolyne said, tapping Joseph's metal knuckles. "This man has a robot hand."

He plucked his daughter out of Joseph's grasp. "I told you to stay in your room," he told Jolyne.

"Daddy, he has a robot hand."

As he curved into the stairwell, he noticed Joseph waving his fingers at Jolyne with a sad smile on his cracked lips. "It was very nice seeing you, sweet Jolyne," he called out in his ancient voice.

Jolyne asked Jotaro a few times after that incident if "the man with the robot hand" would be coming over again. He answered no each time and she eventually stopped prying. He wondered if she remembered him when she grew older, for she never mentioned Joseph again.

Why was she like that? Why was she so determined to be near him, despite being a shitty excuse of a father? He tried everything to keep them apart, but there she sat like the north star in the sky, kicking her little legs and shouting "Daddy!" through a toothless grin. She would never leave him; she was his everything.

Jotaro remembered it all. He cherished the few happy moments he had with her. Innocent nothings like holding her high in the air as she screamed in happiness, asking to go higher. Like feeling her snuggle deeper into his arms as she watched a Disney movie while he worked, eventually falling fast asleep, mouth opened wide, breathing in utter contentment. Like holding his hand as they walked down the sidewalk, jumping over every crack in the pavement as if she were hopping from an airplane.

But everyone tended to keep the painful times close for some reason. One of the more agonizing memories was after Marina officially signed the divorce papers. Jolyne, being barely five years old, was told that Jotaro was going away for a long time. It was the most comprehendible way they could've explained the concept to her, but she seemed to understand perfectly that Jotaro didn't intend to come back again because she exploded like a supernova, a heat death of another star.

She cried and screamed and punched and kicked. Big, wobbly tears slipped down her round cheeks, and her black silky hair became frizzled as she shook her head viciously from side to side, screeching "No, Daddy, no!" over and over again. She grabbed at his legs, fell to the ground, clutched at his clothes, did everything her little body could do to prevent from going into the car and driving far, far away.

"Jolyne, stop," Jotaro tried weakly as he reached down to wrench her off his leg.

"No!" she squealed. She latched herself onto him again, her arms wrapped firmly around his neck and her legs kicking at his stomach to try and fold around his sides. She stopped crying to cough loudly into his neck, choking on her own tears before falling into another ocean of heart-wrenching cries. "No, no! I don't wanna go! I wanna go with you, Daddy. Please don't go!"

Jotaro's jaw tightened. "Marina," he managed through a cracked voice, but his now ex-wife simply sat in the driver's seat, one hand covering her face, shoulders trembling. Her head shook slowly when he called her name and didn't bother looking up at him.

"Please, Daddy, please," Jolyne continued begging. Her arms were locked tightly and now her sandaled feet were pressing against his ribs. "I'll be good, I promise. I-I won't touch your stuff, I won't go in your office, I'll be good. Let me come with you."

Jotaro swallowed and then mumbled, "I have to go, Jolyne. Be good to your mother."

He forced her off again, but she fought back, scratching his arm, kicking his chest. Huffing madly under her breath, she wiggled like a worm fighting for its life under the boiling sun. Jotaro took no chances to properly say goodbye—a kiss on the forehead, a last pinch of her chubby cheeks—and ripped open the car door, threw her in, buckled her seatbelt as she threw blow after blow upon him, and then slammed the door shut.

"Daddy, no! Daddy!" she kept crying, the sound like tolling bells, signaling the start of something awful. "Daddy, don't leave me!"

Her cries, though still deafening, was now muffled behind the car door. Jotaro stood there, watching Marina reach back and stroke Jolyne's messy hair out of her snot-covered face. This is all for you, he wanted to tell her. I have to do this for your safety.

Jolyne struggled onto her knees and began pounding her fists against the window, still screaming bloody-murder. Each time she cried Daddy was like a knife in his gut. But he kept it together as they moved away, Jolyne's pigtails disappearing around the bend, and he kept it inside until he got to his half-packed apartment. He allowed himself to calmly sit down at the couch, glance at the few pictures he kept on the coffee table.

The picture of adolescent him in Egypt with the friends that meant as much to him as his family did. The picture of his young grandparents kissing both sides of his cheeks which he was clearly trying to resist. The picture of his joyful mother smiling beside him at his college graduation. The picture that Marina took of the three of them at the beach—Jotaro had his chin rested atop of Marina's head and she had Jolyne in her arms, who was sticking her tongue out and adorning sunglasses that were too big for her. And he couldn't forget the polaroid of him and Jolyne again at the beach, both of them holding shells to their ears like telephones, him with a small smirk on his face, her with her little mouth opened widely as if she were telling him off.

And then he dropped his face into his hands and let it go, there in his suddenly lonely apartment.

I can't let you come with me, Jolyne. I don't want to be like Jonathan and watch you die in my arms or force you to move on while leaving me in a burning grave. I don't want to be like my old man and be too late in saving you from a stupid decision or watch you wither away because of some murderous bastard who can't control his own feelings. You can't be in my life, Jolyne, because if you are, you won't be there for long.

This is what he told her mentally as the years dragged on and the numerous phone calls from Marina continued to fill up his voicemail. Of course, Jolyne disobeyed Jotaro's last request of her to be good to her mother just to grab his attention. It was always something rebellious—"Jotaro, Jolyne went and got a tattoo and her belly button pierced behind my back", "Jolyne is close to being suspended from school because she's skipped so many classes", "Jotaro, Jolyne is at the police station. She just stole a motorcycle!"

He pinched the bridge of his nose and sighed. "Is she okay?"

"Yeah, she's fine, and they said they'll let her go because she's a minor and this is her first offense."

"They aren't making her stay overnight?"

"No. She's lucky I came here so quickly, though."

"Good. Glad she's alright."

An annoyed sigh came from Marina's end. "Physically, yes, she's okay, but Jotaro, I think you really need to come over."

A long pause. "What do you need?"

"It's not what I need, it's what Jolyne needs. She needs a father, Jotaro. You know why she's doing all this stuff, right? It's to gain your attention. She knows I'm talking to you right now and she's hoping for some sort of reaction. She just wants to see you again, even hearing your voice over the phone might be sufficient enough."

Jotaro glanced down at the mess before him. Pictures of faces, lists of names and places, all pieces of evidence that kept on leading back to Dio Brando, a dead man that was still causing chaos. Josuke's personal information—phone number, student ID for college, address of the police station he was interning at, etc.—was written on a post-it atop a stack of notes all of his own. He sighed and started, "Marina, I seriously can't—"

"Dammit, Jotaro, what is it going to take? I know you don't love me anymore and I've moved on from that fact a long time ago but—"

"That's not what I—"

"Jolyne needs you! She keeps asking about you and this is one of her ways of doing so. I don't want to keep on lying and saying shit like 'maybe he'll come home for Christmas' or 'maybe he'll call one of these days'. You've always been like this too, secretive and isolated, but that won't fly with Jolyne. She cares too much to let you walk out of her life. Please, Jotaro, come and be a father to Jolyne because I can't do this by myself."

He wanted nothing more than to do just that; he wished he could drop it all, this hefty load of guilt and responsibility that grew heavier with each passing day. But he continued being the shadow of the family, a ghost that only appeared at the most inconvenient times.

And then the moment came when his work to erase all traces of Dio from the face of the earth collided with the well-being of his family.

Jolyne looked different from the last time he saw her (which had been a couple years) when he visited her in prison. More green was soaked in her midnight black hair (one of the few traits she inherited from him), she had more piercings, wore heavy eyeliner that made her look more sleep-deprived than he was, showed off more skin, carried a tough exterior when he knew perfectly well that she was very sensitive and fragile on the interior.

Sure, he'd been away most of her life, but he knew her more than she knew.

Her first reaction was disappointment when she realized he was her visitor. It was to be understandable, and he tried not to let it hurt him when she tried pushing him away. She made an effort to glare, roll her eyes, pull her lips down in a frown, pick her nails in fake boredom, huff and puff just like the teenager he used to be. Before he could sum up the past one hundred years to her, however, she growled at him, "Why did you divorce Mommy?"

One part of him felt just as dreadful as the night he talked with Marina about that fateful decision, another part of him felt amused that she still called Marina Mommy at sixteen years old. He was sure he called Holly that when he was still in high school, and he remembered Josuke crying "Mommy! Mommy!" when Tomoko got hurt from another Stand user, chocking back on his own tears.

Once again, he avoided the question and dove into why exactly he was there. Jolyne was listening but vaguely: her temple rested against her knuckles, and she looked like she would actually rather be back in her cell than in the room with him. There was a tear of emotions in Jotaro—he wanted her to listen and listen good because her life was on the line, good fucking grief, but he also saw flashes of her when she was four, wearing those plastic fairy wings and kicking her dangling feet in excitement, pleased that she finally had all his attention.

He slowly blinked his eyes in concentration. The fatherly part of him would, once more, be pushed aside for the sake of safety.

Jolyne proved herself to be just as strong, as resilient, as intelligent, as righteous as all the other Joestars Jotaro saw or studied on. Despite having tons of unexplained knowledge thrown at her like bricks and being left to use her newfound Stand with that information, she carried herself well, quite admirably, really. Jotaro learned her soul's work along with her and was glad to see it as more than capable to get the job done.

But he didn't tell her any of this, the things that mattered. He knew that in order for her to trust him and have her go with his plan, he'd have to say something. Not only that, but she deserved something, after all those years of him chasing ghosts and her sitting alone in the dark. And he wanted to; he did it his whole life, and he didn't like keeping his feelings in a tightly sealed jar on the top, dusty corner of his mind.

Among the dangers, he pondered and contemplated and reconsidered over and over until it was too late, until he stopped thinking entirely and lunged himself in front of Jolyne.

He didn't remember the physical pain of his memories and Star Platinum being stolen from him. He knew slices of himself were leaving like the feeling of your organs slipping through your grasp. As he struggled to catch his breath, his own hot blood staining the wall behind him, his vision blurring like a watercolor painting, he saw Jolyne, and a certain melody began playing in the back of his head, like a broken record player.

Your beauty is beyond compare with flaming locks of auburn hair, with ivory skin, and eyes of emerald green. Your smile is like a breath of spring, your voice is soft like summer rain…

And her voice was soft, at least to him, but he knew she screamed it. The veins in her throat bulged and her mouth was as wide as an apple.

"Daddy!"

He smirked to himself. Regardless of the empty years between them and the millions of regrets that sprouted because of it, she still cared. She loved, and wished, and dreamed for him probably as much as he did with her. She wasn't like Josuke in that sense, when he observed his young uncle's natural disfavor toward Joseph and admitted to never once having thought about him during his absence. And she wasn't like that Giorno kid that he studied from afar, who let his complicated past confuse his identity and then eventually dropping his genes and moving on build his own family.

Jotaro was deathly afraid that she would forget him or hate him (for she had every reason to), but the heart-stopping fear in her eyes and the way she rushed at him and banged helplessly against his chest told him everything he needed to know. He didn't catch what she was yelling at him, but he did hear her heavy breathing out of hopeless frustration.

Time travelled back in his mind, and he saw her three feet shorter, her cheeks chubbier, her eyes bigger. She huffed and puffed down at him, and her fat little hands grabbed at his shirt, but instead of her gentle tugs, his body felt her full strength at sixteen years old, shaking him like a rag doll.

"Daddy! Daddy!" Her voice was a mix of tones, from the innocent chirps of a child to the deep throaty cries of a young adult who was too aware. The plastic wings on her back were now over her heart, and he remembered the invisible ones she wore when she was born, struggling out of those hospital blankets like a butterfly emerging from a cocoon. She was born to be free, she was born a fighter, his little girl.

He tried telling her all of this in one fading whisper: "I've always cherished you."

And as his consciousness began receding, taking away his memories of his overly affectionate but down-to-earth mother, his silly but loveable grandmother, his smartass but powerful grandfather, his chaotic but amazing friends he made around the world, and his loudmouthed but joyful uncle, one more lyric fluttered across his mind like the wings of a butterfly.

I cannot compete with you, Jolyne.