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Jolyne Kujo is many things, but dumb is certainly not one of them.
Her father hasn’t been the best in the world, in fact she reserves the right to hate him for the years of grief he put her and her mother through without explanation.
It always feels like a betrayal. Even when she gets older and understands the world he lives in, the world that separates him from the rest, it still feels like a betrayal. Because he hadn’t even tried. He believed that they wouldn’t understand, and knew anything else would just be a weak excuse, so he kept silent. Left without much of an explanation other than “this isn’t working and it’s not fair to you two”.
It’s always you and me with him, never us.
Just because he said nothing, didn’t mean there aren’t words. And Jolyne is smart, she reads them greedly at any given chance.
The fact is, Jotaro Kujo—Kujo Jotaro, he prefers; a reminder of his mother, Jolyne knows—is convinced there is no one else where he stands. The world is divided in two: people he shouldn’t burden with the heavy weight of his world, and him. Even after getting her Stand, after saving the world from Dio—Pucci, but he was a consequence of Dio, so, really, she is just another Joestar going against the family nemesis—with him, Jolyne is still a stranger in her father’s world.
“It’s rude to stare.”
“Shut up, look at yourself.”
Her father gives her a smile, almost nonexistent and tired. His eyes, though, his eyes are warm, as warm as the color of the sea can get. The sound of the waves crashing brings his attention back to the ocean.
Jolyne is not the biggest fan of beaches (a lie, really, she adores the sea almost as much as her dad), and she’s not the biggest fan of her father (another lie, though she wishes it was true if only to make things easier), yet here she is. AT this empty beach, watching the sun paint the sky many shades of orange and pink, the colors bleeding down to then tint the waters in a turbulent, breathtaking reflection.
At this empty beach, sitting on the sand together with her father. He had made a seat out of his coat, it being long enough for both of them to share and avoid sand in their pants. Without it, Jolyne can see the scars on his arms and neck, scars of multiple battles. She remembers her grandfather having scars of his own, and her uncle Josuke too. She has her own collection, a work in progress. She wonders if it’ll ever be finished, but judging by her father’s, it’s a safe bet to say it probably won’t, not while she’s alive and kicking.
“I don’t blame you for your world, but I wish you hadn’t been silent,” Jolyne says, finally, because she’s allergic to words much like her father, but not saying them would make her anger be hypocritical.
“... I’m glad you can say what I couldn’t.”
Ah, there it is.
Jolyne is many things, and dumb is not one of them. She had understood that her father couldn’t bring himself to truly love who’s outside his world. It’s be a fool’s quest, really, since there would always be a wall between them, an abyss dividing the borders of him and the rest.
But he had loved.
He still loves.
There was once a time someone had been able to jump to the other side, to break the wall and enter. Or perhaps they had even been invited, guided by the hand by Jotaro himself.
A time Jotaro had been truly alive.
He looks at her again, ocean eyes deep, heavy, tired, vast. Warm. Open. Reading her unsaid words, allowing her to read more of his. Looking at the world she created for herself, watching the borders collide with his.
“I don’t regret you, Jolyne.”
“Changes nothing, you still wish they were here instead.”
“You remind me of him.”
Jolyne Kujo is many things, and dumb is not one of them, but an idiot she might be.
Or maybe she was just in denial. Stubbornly clicking her tongue and stomping her feet and refusing to see how lost her father truly is. Because she’s angry at him, as she should be and as he taught her to be, and context matters not to anger. Jolyne can feel her own world, created with anger and loneliness and companionship and trials and tribulations and love she found for herself, brush against his, and she can’t resist taking a look and there is so much and so little. So much and only one person, standing there alone with the results of his actions, like a little prince in a tiny planet with an ephemeral rose.
She knows he’s alone. She knows now he’s lonely.
“What’s his name?”
“Noriaki.”
The rose. The ephemeral rose who was unique to the little prince, for she was his, and he had loved her like she was the only one. The rose the prince knew he would miss when she went away. The rose the prince still loved anyways, because she was his.
Jolyne doesn’t think the prince was ready to be so lost, though. He had been fine before, going on with his life without problem, why wouldn’t he think he’d be fine without his rose? Maybe he had not fully understood what enamouring would bring back when the fox taught him about it.
“Like you, he couldn’t sit down and enjoy the beach without thinking loudly.”
“Oh, shut up.”
Her father smiles again, a small smile that she can finally tell is real.
“You’re an idiot.”
“He would have liked you.”
“I know, I’m a delight.”
“Why do I attract the sassy ones?”
There is the start of a laugh in his eyes as he turns yet again to the waves crashing in front of them. It’s weird to see him smile so much, he doesn’t have enough lines in his face to make it seem natural, however it does not feel out of place.
Jolyne leans on his shoulder—arm, really, since her father is a damn behemoth of a human—, closing her eyes as their worlds come together. She might never be like the rose, the space left by Noriaki might never be filled, her father might never not feel lonely, but at least now he won’t be so lost. Not if Jolyne has any say in it.
(And maybe she sees a redhead dressed in green watching them fondly from beyond the horizon.)