Chapter Text
Jotaro was trying very hard, with his daughter. All of the distance he had put between them had meant nothing, after all; all of his family's magical bullshit still caught up with her and nearly got her killed. So now he was desperately, slowly, clumsily trying to close the nineteen – wait, shit, twenty year gap between them.
They had grown closer in the year since Cape Canaveral, but things were still raw. Jolyne still got suspicious if he didn't answer a call. Jotaro still found himself slipping into old lies and vagaries. But they were good, mostly.
Jolyne was currently living with her friends from prison, Hermes and F.F. and Emporio. Jolyne was waitressing at a vegan restaurant. Hermes, averse to restaurants, worked security at a sports stadium. One of them. Florida had too many. F.F. and Emporio (who had a brand new birth certificate courtesy of the SPW Foundation) were still figuring out how to live in the world.
“They spend most days at the library or the museum or whatever,” Jolyne was saying. “Which is, like, great, but Emporio already knows lots of stuff. And he learns really quick, I’m not so worried about his booksmarts.”
She was heating up some leftovers from work in a pan while Jotaro sat at the kitchen table, hat and coat firmly on. Everything in the apartment felt sticky, the fan in the corner wheezing as it pushed humidity around the room.
“Hmm,” said Jotaro.
“I’m more worried about him being able to talk to other kids, you know? I wanna get him to, like, play baseball, or, I dunno, whatever nerd kids do. A book club or something. He doesn’t really know how to talk to people.”
“Mmm,” said Jotaro.
“But I don’t wanna push him too hard, either. We, like, just got him to talk to a therapist.”
Jotaro blinked.
“You want some?” Jolyne tipped the pan in his direction.
Jotaro peered. The contents of the pan were indiscernible.
“No, thank you.”
Jolyne grabbed a fork from the drying rack by the sink and sat down across from Jotaro with the pan. She gave him a look like she thought he might reprimand her for not getting a plate.
“I’m not your mother, Jolyne,” he said. “I do not give a shit about the dishes.”
Jolyne snorted and took a bite of whatever brown shit she had just fried.
“Good,” she said. She paused. “I am now going to not make a joke about your parenting.”
Jotaro hid his face, just a little. Embarrassed at being reminded of her childhood, appreciative that she was attempting to not bring it up, embarrassed again that his daughter felt like she had to protect his feelings. The emotions came too quick and confusing for him to really process, so, the hat came down.
“Oh, don’t get all weird,” said Jolyne. She flicked the brim up a little and Jotaro tried not to get angry. Jolyne was allowed to touch the hat. Probably.
“Babes! Oh, hey Mr. Kujo!” F.F. barged through the door with Emporio behind them.
“Cuties! What’s up!” said Jolyne, smiling.
“We collected rocks today!” said F.F., volume not decreased whatsoever.
“We are going to try to identify them all,” said Emporio, much quieter.
Jotaro peered at the box of rocks and various debris that was tossed onto the kitchen table. F.F. kissed Jolyne on the cheek, then Jolyne turned to face them and kissed them on the mouth. Jotaro did not really understand his daughter’s relationships. But that didn’t really matter, he had decided, because the people she lived with made her happy, and there was no way he was going to say anything to push her away. She had a job, and her own place, a kind-of kid, and two roommates/friends/possible romantic partners/co-parents, all of whom she had met in prison. Better than getting married before you’ve even finished your undergrad. Or whatever.
Anyways.
“I’m pretty sure that’s a piece of stucco,” said Jotaro, who was still looking at the box of rocks. “But that one is probably some kind of limestone phosphorite.”
“How can you tell?” said Emporio. F.F. was distracted by eating Jolyne’s dinner. Emporio inched quietly closer to Jotaro.
“There’s tons of phosphorite in Florida,” he said. “It’s a non-detrital, cryptocrystalline sedimentary rock defined by the high phosphate content. It’s mined in central Florida.”
He handed the rock to Emporio, who examined it carefully. Jotaro turned back to the box.
“Oh, looks like this one might have a fossil in it,” said Jotaro. He picked up a sandy chunk and examined it a little closer.
“Really?” Emporio asked, with a note of awe in his voice.
“Mmm,” said Jotaro, angling the rock so Emporio could see the outline of the shell. “Fossils show up more often further south of Miami, that’s where the tertiary-quaternary fossiliferous sediments are. Lots of mollusks. But some end up here as well. Keep an eye out.”
“Awww,” said F.F. “Nerds being nerds.”
Jotaro looked up to see fond smiles from F.F. and Jolyne. He didn’t really know what to do with that look.
“So. I don’t know that much about geology. But if you have any questions I can probably point you in the right direction,” he said. Maybe it was weird to talk to a twelve-year-old like he was a colleague, but he never really knew how to talk to kids. He just treated them like adults for the most part.
“Let’s go cleaned up, Rock Boy,” said F.F. “I still have bird shit in my hair and algae under my nails.”
“Wouldn’t algae be like a friend?” asked Emporio.
“Hmm, I don’t think this algae can talk,” they said.
Jolyne watched them go and then turned back to Jotaro.
“I remember you being like that with me as a kid,” she said, still smiling a little.
“Like what, awkward?”
“No, like, just, explaining things to me in a grown-up way. Answering my questions.”
The not all my questions was silent. It had been said before.
“Like, I know you still treated – still, sometimes treat – me like I’m, like, your little girl or whatever. But you have this very, like, frank way of explaining things sometimes. It’s nice, I dunno.”
“Well, you are my little girl,” said Jotaro. His face did not betray the wave of emotion that crashed through him. Any affection from Jolyne felt like a gift. Something he didn’t deserve.
“Yeah, whatever old man,” she said, laughing. “Emporio’s a smart kid. I think he needs to be babied a little bit, he hasn’t gotten enough of it, but he doesn’t need to be condescended to. He likes you.”
Jotaro was baffled by the idea of a child liking him, but he would take it.
Jolyne scraped off the layer of whatever that was stuck to the pan, sucking the burned bits off her fork and savouring them. Jotaro sat with the sound of metal on metal for a minute. The shower turned on in the other room. The pipes in the apartment were loud, and the hiss of the water was accompanied with a banging in the wall behind Jotaro’s head.
“So, but, he’s in therapy? The kid?”
“Yeah,” said Jolyne. She got up, dropped the pan in the sink, and ran water over it for a second before returning to her seat. “It took some coaxing, like, a lot of coaxing, but he needs it. He’s been through too much shit. And we all love him to death, but we can’t begin to fix all of that. Two twentysomethings and a plankton can’t begin to address whatever the hell he has going on. Not to mention our own shit.”
“Are you in therapy?”
“Yeah, for like, uh, eight months now? Or something? It’s going okay.”
“Are the other two?”
“Yeah. Nobody really knows what to do with F.F., but they go too just for the hell of it.”
“F.F… and the therapist… knows that they are plankton?”
Jolyne nodded.
“The Speedwagon people gave us this list of Stand user therapists and counsellors and stuff. Some of them use their stands for like, psychological stuff, some of them just have random Stands. My counsellor’s name is Kendra. Her stand is called For The Roses, she grows these roses but they all smell like something nostalgic, they make you remember things. Like you smell it and you’re like, oh shit, I remember that bowling alley we went to when I was twelve and Mom’s friend’s kid was there and he threw up all over…”
Jolyne’s story faded to the background as Jotaro processed this information. He hadn’t really realized was an option. Like, a thing that people do, in real life. He had always assumed that he was not somebody who went to therapy. He wasn’t mentally ill or a writer, why would he go to therapy? And he had always assumed he would never be able to talk about Stands, so that would have been kind of difficult.
“Dad, are you listening?” Jolyne waved her hand in front of his face.
“Uh, yeah. No. No I wasn’t.”
Jolyne sighed.
“I didn’t know you went to therapy.”
“After all that? Dad, I went to prison. I got roped into a blood feud and got my body turned inside out. I think I needed some therapizing. Don’t look all guilty, I know it wasn’t your fault.”
Jotaro hadn’t realized he was making any facial expression at all.
“I’m assuming you have not been to therapy,” said Jolyne.
Jotaro shook his head.
“Hmm. Well. I know it’s scary and stuff, but I think it’s probably good in the long run. Hard work, definitely.” She shrugged. “It’s up to you, but if you want help picking one, I’m happy to help.”
“Hmm.”
Something inside of him resisted the idea like it was a threat to his life. But he looked at Jolyne and thought, maybe. She might deserve it.