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He shouldn't have left her alone at a time like this, but he knew well that Erina was dead tired of having him around all the time. With nowhere else to aim his devotion, he had settled it all onto her – to say nothing of Jonathan’s future child, or the little one who was already there. Speedwagon the meddler she called him under her breath. Hah, if only she knew!
But two people both caught in their own webs of grief could only smother one another. Erina wasn't an unkind person, which is why Speedwagon took it upon himself to get out of her way before she was forced to tell him off.
Though without her and the child to focus on, what he did with his own grief was another matter altogether. Without really thinking about it, he found himself on a ship headed for America.
Maybe this one will sink too, the voice in the back of his mind lamented. He couldn’t even muster up enough shame to feel guilty for the other passengers aboard. There was another guilt he held that would always outweigh any other.
I should have been there. What he could have done, who knew, but the thought of Jonathan down there alone now…
No, with Dio.
That was even worse.
Erina hadn't the strength to tell him the full version of events yet, and for once he hadn't pressed. But that meant he was left on this ship with his imagination running wild, wondering over and over, is this the spot? Is he down there?
Whether from seasickness or heartsickness, Speedwagon found it better to pass the time wrapped in the scratchy sheets of his economy cabin. The thought that he should have been by Jonathan’s side filled up the nightmarish spaces in his head. He worried that if the spirit took him, he might throw himself to the waves in the hopes of finding...
But his years as a traveler had taught him that the waves held no such mercies, strong though their siren call might be. And so he kept away. Still, the thought of surviving a journey that Jonathan had not filled him with a guilt deeper and more treacherous than the ocean.
Over the course of that month-long voyage, it grew to invade every corner of his mind, seemed to fill the tiny cabin as though it had a physical form. Although he hadn’t consciously thought of it, by the time he disembarked in New York he’d gone from trying to avoid death to being all too eager to meet it. Speedwagon was still a young man, but in his life he had traveled to many places and knew many things – especially when it came to the New World. There were many places a person could go if they wanted to disappear. When he handed the last of his money to the booking agent and received his ticket, it was as though he had purchased the seal to his own fate. It was with this morbid thought in mind that he settled into brooding contemplation on the train. A third-class ticket did not afford one much privacy, but even in the crowded car he could hear scarce but the thoughts in his own head.
The miles passed over land that Jonathan would never set foot on. Through places that, if god had been willing, they might have travelled together. From the day they’d met, Speedwagon had seen the inexperience in the man he admired so much, and desired nothing but to share with him his knowledge of the world. The circumstances had dictated he teach Jonathan the things that hid in the darkness, but he had always hoped he could show him the wonders as well.
Those wonders fell by outside the windows of the train, as unseen by Speedwagon as they were by Jonathan who lay at the bottom of the sea. Crowded though it was, he was most acutely aware of the presence that was not by his side. He was headed about as far from the sea as a person could get.
A month and a half of travel had taken its toll, and when he finally stepped down off the train, he looked nearly as much the ghost his mind made him out to be. If the voyage at sea could be described as his own private hell, perhaps the train journey had been more of a crowded purgatory. By the time he’d arrived here in the desert heat, he felt like the afterlife was the next logical step. Ghost that he was, perhaps that’s why no one noticed as he slowly yet steadily disappeared into the desert brush at the edge of town. Years had passed since he’d last been here, but he remembered the heat well.
Speedwagon couldn't pretend that he had lived the life of an honest man. Growing up on the rough streets of London, the value of honesty was lost to him before he’d left his mother’s teat. It was the rule of Ogre Street that one would do whatever it took to survive. To get himself a little further ahead. He’d soon learned there was no use for tears, and that those who shed them were often belaying a greater weakness inside. He’d believed all that before meeting Mr. Joestar, whose simple honesty had moved even his heart of stone. Since he’d met the man, Speedwagon had shed his share of tears – and since he lost him, thought he might never stop shedding them.
But the long journey here had brought back a sense of who he had been not so long ago, someone who moved with only his own goals in mind and had no time for tears. He’d learned time and again that a man’s ambition moved just as swiftly for harm as it did for good. Perhaps more.
There was no point in counting the days that passed; with such a singular thing on his mind it didn’t seem to matter. The desert environment was harsh, with nothing but sun from above and nothing but rocks and sand for as far as the eye could see. At night the coyotes howled and the air glittered with frost, but despite the cold Speedwagon ended up in only his shirtsleeves – his coat and bowler hat discarded somewhere along the way.
Of course, he knew how to survive in such an environment – having spent time here in his youth – but there are things that could lead a man to toss away even that most basic of instincts. By the time his body began to beg for water, his mind had already strayed far past the point of putting his knowledge to use. Funny that in hoping to join Jonathan he’d brought himself to the furthest thing from the ocean one could think of. Perhaps it was a fitting punishment for a meddler who hadn’t been there at the one time he should have been. Speedwagon may have laughed, had his throat not felt dry as paper. Had he the strength left in his body.
After an untold number of days without water or food, and only fitful amounts of sleep, Speedwagon fell to his hands and knees beneath the desert sun. The sand burned against his skin and the shimmering horizon made him dizzy in the head. It was almost enough that he didn’t remember why it was he had come here. It might not be so bad an idea, to lie down and take a rest, and figure it all out later…
The whistling of the wind across the barren landscape had been so incessant that he’d scarcely acknowledged it after the first hour of his journey, but now it carried a different sound. Something so wholly unnatural that even his muddled thoughts could latch onto it and snap to attention. It felt untrue to call them bells, but what other words did he have for it? He turned his stinging eyes upward, squinting against the sun, to find that they met with a softer golden glow. After a few blinks, the glow materialized into a form that was so familiar to him that it hurt. He made a desperate sound in the back of his parched throat as the chimes stopped and the figure above him seemed to call out his name.
“Speedwagon… I’m so glad I found you.”
Jonathan’s voice was filled with such honest relief that it made Speedwagon shiver despite the heat. He found his voice unsteady as he replied, “Mr. Joestar I… I was looking for you.”
“I knew you would be. You always tried to be by my side, after all.”
Despite the softness in Jonathan’s brown eyes, Speedwagon felt a harshness well up inside of him, all the unkind words he’d lashed himself with over the past weeks. “A good job of that I did in the end. Relaxing with my mates in London while you were fighting for your life…” The words scratched in his throat, and so he kept going. “Should have been there… I know I never did any good for you, but I should’ve been there.” It wasn’t fair to admonish Jonathan for what had been his own failing, but quietly the words came out anyway, “I told you to call if you ever needed me, if there was anything… Why didn’t you call? Didn’t… didn’t you need…” His hoarse voice choked off, for the real questions were aimed inwardly. Why weren’t you there? Why couldn’t you protect him? After having promised him so much…
Jonathan smiled tenderly, and Speedwagon had to look away from something so comforting when he did not want comfort. “I did need you,” Jonathan said, “My family… our family, needs you.”
Speedwagon looked up at the man, his eyes awash with what little tears he had left. Those words left the breath hitched in his throat.
“But I needed you to be alive, to be around after…” Jonathan’s face took on a pained expression, one that sent jolts through Speedwagon’s whole body. “I didn’t know it at the time, but it’s all become clear to me since passing through. The Joestar family’s troubles will not end with me.”
Filled with an overwhelming desire to just do something, Speedwagon reached up and clasped the other man’s hands – and he was certain to god that he actually felt them. “Mr. Joestar…”
Jonathan’s eyes, as filled with determination as ever, were shining with the tears of frustration. The afterlife was meant to be a comfort, but if it brought knowledge like this when one was powerless to change it then what damned good could it be?
Or perhaps, not wholly powerless…
“Speedwagon, you’re the only one who can help them now. Follow my research… the stone mask, you have to put an end to it.”
His head was swimming. Although he ached to say yes without hesitation, how could he agree to something he didn’t understand? “Mr. Joestar, we already destroyed…”
Jonathan’s ethereal figure shook his head. “Its curse is not over, and it follows them still. Speedwagon, you couldn’t come with me for you were destined to be here today. So I could give you this gift as a chance to save our family.”
Speedwagon’s head was still reeling from the things Jonathan was saying, and more than half from the dehydration as well. But whatever this was, he wasn’t going to question it. He pressed the other man’s hands to his forehead and was sure tears would have streamed from his eyes if he’d had any to spare. “Having you here with me is more than gift enough. I wouldn’t ask anything more from you, Mr. Joestar.”
Jonathan’s form knelt closer. “I’m sorry, Robert, that I’ll have to leave you with something less than that.” Gently, his hands closed around Speedwagon’s and brought them down from his face. He ran his fingers over their rough and scarred surface. “You’ve done everything I could have needed from you, yet I’m asking for one more thing…”
Speedwagon looked up, and the sight was one that could have broken his already broken heart. Jonathan was trying to put on a brave face, but the lines around his tear-filled eyes gave him away all too easily. “You need to live, Speedwagon. This world needs you more than you yet know. You must trust when I say that. I…” here his breath caught in his throat, and Speedwagon wanted to embrace him, to take away what pained him. But he was still, transfixed. “I’ve always held you dear to my heart, Robert,” He said softly, his voice thick with emotion. Gently, he reached out to lay a hand upon Speedwagon’s heart. “You’ve a truer love than any I’ve known in here, and it’s still beating. There are those who will need this love more than the desert does. It’s a lot for me to ask of you but please, go home to them.”
Speedwagon would have preferred to stay like this forever, feeling Jonathan’s warmth against him. The ones at home be damned, if he could just get one more moment.
But no… Robert E. O. Speedwagon had never been one who could forsake those he cared for. And he’d never been one to refuse a request from one he so deeply loved. “Ah, Jonathan… you know that I’d do anything for you,” and as he said the words, he knew he would not regret them.
Jonathan moved his hand up to pull him in closer, and Speedwagon felt his smile as he kissed him softly on the top of his head. “Though it pales to the light of your own, please carry my love with you. You’ve got a family waiting for you to return from this dark business… don’t make them worry.” With these last words, Jonathan’s tears fell to splash upon the ground, and like that he was gone.
The whistling of the desert wind surrounded him on all sides, and swept with it a sense of the most profound loss. Only now, Speedwagon felt within himself something he wanted to hold onto. Not a man with nothing to lose, but a man who didn’t want to lose anything else. He spread his fingers on the dusty ground before him, gently framing the droplets of Jonathan’s tears.
The droplets…
Speedwagon remembered at once where he was, the dry cracks on his lips, the desperate thirst that wracked his body. He blinked again at the ground, felt another drop splash upon his fingertips. He looked up towards its source.
A low rock formation spread itself out before him where he hadn’t noticed it before. A work of nature’s art in its own right, but the true beauty was in the spring bubbling up from within its bosom. Like an animal survives without thought, he scrambled to the water’s edge and began to gulp great handfuls. A man in Speedwagon’s position did not stop to doubt miracles. A gift of water and of life, from his love at the bottom of the sea. As he splashed the cool water onto his parched face, he knew it wouldn’t be too long before tears were in his eyes once more. He might cry from sadness the rest of his life, but with this gift he knew as well there would be tears of happiness, tears of thanks. For his dearest friend and greatest love. A long lifetime’s worth of tears.
After the frenzy of thirst had left him and his wits began to return, Speedwagon was able to take a moment to really examine his surroundings. For a man to live, he needed to know in which direction he was headed. The sun was lowering in the sky, adding the relief of shadows to the open landscape. Smaller formations of rock scattered around the spring, and at their feet Speedwagon’s observant eye caught something else shining. Nature was rarely one of absolutes, and he knew that something so deep and black could only be one thing. Scrambling down from the spring’s vantage point, he crept to the edge of the bubbling black pool. In the desert, there was one thing just next to water in terms of its value. Speedwagon had the water. And all around him spread out that next best thing too – the black gold of natural oil.
The tears that came were of many things, though he had not expected them to mostly be of laughter. A gift to help his family? Leave it to Jonathan to never do anything lightly. Speedwagon knew the value of many things and he knew something like this could support the Joestars for as long as their name may live. Letting the last coughs of laughter leave his mouth, he wiped the tears from his eyes and got to his feet. Speedwagon the meddler would be coming home, bearing all of Jonathan’s gifts with him.