Chapter Text
It was over.
Over.
The word hung heavy in Jotaro Kujo’s mind as he sat there, his heads resting in his hands, fingers entangled in dark raven locks. His body still felt like it was on fire, blood boiling to a degree unlike any other in a degree of adrenaline he had never felt before. At that same moment, he felt cold, like a cold hand was gripping his entire body, squeezing his heart, nails against his veins, frost over his skin. In the entire trip to Egypt, and nothing had felt like this, nothing compared to the last few hours of his life. He didn’t expect it to, in fact he had known it wouldn’t, but his brain had yet to catch up to his thought process, or maybe it was his body had yet to catch up with everything. Truthfully, he wasn’t sure.
In the matter of the last few hours, his hands never stopped shaking, and his breath only seemed to smell stronger of tobacco with each cigarette he shoved against his lips; the cigarettes seemed to never end. There was currently one, half ash, dripping from his lips, another hope to distract him as his fingers clawed at his scalp. Hidden past his hair, there were half crescent indents of where his nails pressed into flesh, red tracks where he ripped at his own skin; unhealthy but it let his nerves soothe themselves in their own way.
For the last few hours- hours, he had to remind himself it had not in fact been days- he had been waiting for word on everyone else. His grandfather he had known the status of immediately, but everyone else took time, to find, to pick up, for the word to travel. But that was perhaps why he had torn himself so far from sleep, so far from conversation, from food, from anything.
He sat, alone and waiting, quiet with only the thoughts from the last few hours gnawing at him.
Enough of the thoughts pulled him from how his body seemed to ache, each bandage pulled tight around his skin did nothing, and the medications he had been given did little more. Perhaps he wished to dwell more on the pain, it was more comforting thinking what he had gone through than what everyone else had. Considering what Dio had done with him, those ridiculous games, he could only imagine the rest. His grandfather he had seen firsthand, of course, but that had already been- more or less- fixed. The others…
Jotaro took a deep drag on the smoldering cigarette between his fingers, smoke swirling away from his lips seconds later.
He didn’t really want to think about it.
Time felt like a movie flickering between fast forward and being rewound, a broken VHS of memories that his brain build the entirety of. As he did not know the others’, or as he did not wish to think of it, perhaps that is why he kept going back to everything that had happened with Dio. Every cut, ever bruise, he could still feel his own blood slick against his skin even with it wiped clean and wrapped in gauze. He felt like patchwork, each knife had it’s piece of him and in his mind the logic screamed he had been sewn back together, yet the logic of the fight had gone so differently. Jotaro knew he had been hit, crushed, beaten, and yet there he sat. He had perhaps come out above so many others.
His fingers dug into his palm. He was focusing too much, he needed to not think about it, he needed to stop. Dio was gone, he was able to relax, his mother would be alright. Closing his eyes tight, he took a deep breath, pulling the unseen presence of his Stand around him as if he were a child with a security blanket. He did not move himself, but there were ams around his in that moment. For a moment, there was a calmness for him, and he felt like he had in the beginning of everything. Then the noise around him sank back in.
In his time, there were passing words he caught, his friends had been found, taken in. He wasn’t allowed to see them, no, not yet. He didn’t want to, he knew that, he convinced himself that. There were too many masses or people, too many rushed words spoken and ones he didn’t understand or didn’t catch. When he had asked questions, he was told he would be gotten back to, and then the person was gone, and he didn’t see them again for too long. Perhaps that was how it was meant to be for now, perhaps he was just meant to wait, to sit in this isolating silence.
For long stretches of silence he remained like that, hunched over, his body cramped, aching, people passing him by. People offered him whispered words, though many were filtered out and a response was never given. Somewhere along the stretching dawn, a blanket had been draped across his shoulders. Later than that, there had been a small tray set in the chair next to him, with a cup of water and a small plate of various helpings of food. He gave it not a glance, not a care. Another cigarette was lit, and no one asked him to leave. Even in their gestures of kindness, he was never offered an answer.
Was that why he didn’t care to focus still? Part of him said yes, part of him said if he asked another question it would just hurt all the more. If he asked one more question, it would spiral his thoughts even worse than they were. Answers would paint pictures of other fights, other wounds to recover from, and he wasn’t sure he could even deal with his own. Not yet.
Then there were words that caught his attention. Not words, but the voice tore his gaze from the spot on the floor he seemed to focus on for much too long.
“Quite the sad look you’re sporting, isn’t it?”
Jotaro only seemed to snort, as if that would fix his problems, as if that would put everything back to normal, a simple little response.
“Didn’t imagine seeing you up and about so soon, Polnareff.” In response to that, Jean on raised his hands, though he seemed to be missing a few fingers and his hands were bandaged heavily, he offered a cheeky grin. “Oh right, is that all?”
“They spoke of arranging some replacements for me, I’m not exactly...pressed for them.” there was a shrug with his words. “There are matters that are more important than a few fingers.” that was when there was flicker of something else across the Frenchman’s features, and while Jotaro barely caught it, he knew it was something of regret, something of a familiar grief he too had been feeling.
“Yeah,” leaning back, he sighed, his hands sliding from his knees back along his thighs. “Have you..heard anything?”
“Very little, I assume that you haven’t either then?” slipping into the free seat next to the younger, noticeably slow, Jean was careful with his own wounds. “I only know about Avdol’s condition as he...his...” the words were hard, but the way they came, Jotaro understood. It was a firsthand, close experience. Waving a hand, he ended the thought quickly, there was no need to extend the pain on anyone when they could help it. “Well, and the furball will make it, collapsed from exhaustion or something, I’d say,” there was the swing needed, a little open door for a tangent.
“Right, man’s best friend, isn’t it?” Jotaro snorted. There was a long moment of silence.
“Have you heard about Kakyoin, yet?”
More silence.
“No.”
Another stretch.
“He’ll be alright, you know that, right Jotaro? Whatever happened, whatever went on..” even he didn’t sound convinced, but the words were nice to hear. They were comforting, at least.
When the topic came up however, it led to so many other thoughts, too many of them. Many had been on Jotaro’s mind before that moment, many like that of a panicked teen nobody ever would have seen him to be- and yet there he was. He was too worried over things, too attached. That had been the problem, he had never really cared so much, never openly, and that is what changed on the trip. He had spent so long building walls to keep himself safe from the world, and now they were so torn down, and the one leading that, the one with the biggest shovel, standing amongst the wreckage, was Noriaki.
Damn him.
When they left for Egypt, it was to save his mother. By the end of it, there had been so many late nights, so many jokes and saving graces, that now Jotaro could admire much more about Noriaki. It started with his abilities in the fight, how he held himself, his capability to be reliable. Then it fell to quickly to the smaller things, the way his nose would crinkle up when he laughed, his ridiculous smile and how it always took up half his face when he was engrossed in a passion, how he ran his hand through his hair when he was nervous, the slope of his jaw and how tender just below it was. Every little thing, and there he was to fall for them all. No, there he was to adore them all.
And now, he was sitting there, waiting to see if he would ever witness a single one again. He didn’t know if he should have said goodbye, just in case. They had known how this could have ended for any of them, and if they made it out, there would be pure luck for them all. It was too late, of course. Now, there was simply so much regret. If he would have been there to help, if he could have even done anything, or would he be returning to Japan and informing Noriaki’s parents that…
That was not a thought he would even give a moment in his mind. No, that one he would forbid.
Tearing him from his thoughts, it was then that Jean slipped an arm around Jotaro’s shoulders, a bit of a half-way hug if he could manage, something soft as if not to hurt either of them, but something that was enough to be a grand enough gesture in the moment. “You’re zoning out, my friend. I think it might be time for some rest, what do you say? I’m sure Kakyoin would hate to see you with those hideous dark circles you’ve given yourself.”
“Those would be bruises,” a soft correction made him sigh, though he was unable to keep himself from smiling from the teasing that laced the words pointed at his face. Especially when they came with such a look of over exaggerated disgust as Jean was now giving him.
“You really should keep up on your beauty sleep then, my friend! Come then, your grandfather said the beds here were terrible, but managed to get a room secured. Think of it, our own little medical hotel. Quite fancy, don’t you think? Fanciest we may have had, and it’s all at the end. Lucky us!” even when he looked exhausted himself, to the point he didn’t quite look himself, he was still attempting to keep up the spirits of someone else. Another moment where perhaps, Jotaro couldn’t help a smile, the softest upturn of his lips at least.
“You win, I’ll sleep.” the words came with the obvious subtext to wake him if anything happened, to wake him immediately, which seemed understood without a word in response. It was with that, he stood, the blanket from before held around him with one hand before he reached for the tray, plucking off a processed fruit and popping it in between his lips.
Leaving Jean in the hallway, he was gone.