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He'd been to so many funerals and yet, he didn’t think he’d ever get used to it.
Spongy earth squelched under his dress shoes. Grass covered in mildew left the bottoms of his pant legs wet. Early morning sunlight glinted off the rain around him.
The feeling that always settled over a graveyard, long after everyone else left, was strange. Emotion clung to his chest and made him hesitant to leave, but what right did he have to stay, imagining the sensation of arms ghosting around him in comfort, hearing whispers of voices he'd only heard again in his dreams?
Headstones stood before him like markers of failure. Fallen laid those who stayed by his side.
Holly Kujo. Wife, mother, gone but never forgotten.
It hadn't hit then. He'd said a few words, overseen the burial, and left flowers on the dirt. He looked over the daffodils with a bad taste in his mouth. Ripped from the earth and returned to her embrace all the same, what a waste of life. He averted his eyes once the red of the flowers reminded him of another red—one he'd desperately put out his mind for 13 years. Kakyoin would've had something to say to break the silence, an awkward mention of the scientific name for the flowers maybe (Narcissus, though the type he'd gotten with red in the center were the red devon type of the plant), or a hand on his shoulder. To show comfort, to show he was there, that someone was there, even though she wasn't.
He couldn't visit Kakyoin today. He already didn't deserve Jotaro’s shoes pressing on his grave but he especially didn't deserve him in this state.
Numbness always made him feel even more disgust towards himself, if that was possible. A diver lost in the ocean, searching for the feelings he was supposed to be showing rather than repressing. Should he be crying? He questioned as he left. Thinking over it again, the fact he'd needed to ask that was all the answer he needed.
Jotaro Kujo didn't deserve to weep, he reminded himself. Why should he deserve to show his pain when he lit the match?
Holly Kujo was just another victim in his fire.
All this taught him was that he'd been right to leave. All he could hope was that his daughter would learn the same lesson.
Rain fell down onto his shoulders and he let his head fall, eyes closed as rain pooled around his eyes. The closest he was allowed to come to crying. He couldn't dirty the soil with the tears of guilt. Holly deserved to rest in peace.
They said her death had been natural—old age, frail health, she'd had it coming. At least she'd died old and happy, surrounded by family, right?
He'd wanted to agree.
He'd lied by omission, nodding his head.
Sadao Kujo was loved and known by everybody. Except for his own family. He would remember to visit the graveyard a week after Jotaro had already left Japan.
Jotaro had wanted to agree back then, but for whom? How much did it hurt Holly to be there for him and him alone? He'd never asked, never thought to ask, never known how to verbalize the question. And now he'd never know.
No, he thought. The only person he was agreeing for was himself, how much it hurt him to see her like that. It was all he knew. A look of concern was the most he could think to offer. Yelling out of passion, acting aloof, all instead of resigning himself to wrenching apart and comprehending the strokes that made up that strange sounding kanji he’d never known how to express. Love. And what did it get him?
She'd been attacked once, and back then he'd saved her.
That was that.
They said her death had been natural.
The limpness of her arms, the pooling of blood under her skin, the way her face rested gently as though she were just asleep. He'd seen her like this before. He'd saved her before. What was different now, what did he do wrong? Why was this happening and how… how had he been so shortsighted that fate had struck twice and won.
Logic was nothing but a false lead in the face of trauma.
In his mind, she'd been attacked, and now he'd failed her.
He fumbled around in his pocket, fingers twitching out of habit, searching for stimulation, for comfort. He rubbed his thumb over a gold pin, one she'd given him back in highschool, one he'd never thrown away. He'd brought it in hopes of burying it with her, hiding his most treasured expression of her affection for someone who did not deserve it, where none would ever find it again. And yet, it remained in his pocket, and Holly remained in the ground. Why did he keep it? Useless, useless, useless.
The latch unclasped, and Holly's pin scratched his finger. He felt warm liquid run from his thumb, and he bit down on his trembling lip, willing himself not to cry. An eye for an eye, blood for blood. This was what he deserved.
Grief was living in an eternal monotony, waiting in the space between, for something that would not come.
He sighed, and crawled back inside the cab that’d brought him here, and leaned back into the leather seats, letting his still-bleeding finger stain the inside of his pocket. He sat still, feeling each breath reverberate through his body as the hum of the engine and the bumpiness of the road hid the gentle shake of his body.
He was shivering.
Holly would’ve noticed by now. She’d watch him trying to stifle the shaking of his body, and somehow see past it all the same. She’d lean close to him, wrapping her arm around his body and pull him close to her, warm, safe.
A pang went through his chest at the thought. The last time his mother had held him was years before, when he’d been a teenager. He pressed his thumb further into the sharpness of the pin. Now she would never hold him again. He bit harder on his lip, the taste of iron spilled over his tongue. Useless. Who was he to want for something? Especially that which he had failed to protect.
---
It was strange, feeling like an intruder in what'd once been your home.
One of his parents was in who-knows-what-country and would be back who-knows-when. The other… he knew she wouldn't be back. As hard as it was to believe.
He left his shoes by the door and sighed. He pulled his hand, which was crusted over with blood, out of his pocket and looked at what was begging to be left alone and sprout into infection. Pain, bacteria, disease spreading through his body caused by all he had of his mothers love. A death he deserved.
He retired to the kitchen, washing his hands in the empty basin. Useless, useless, useless .
There was nothing he knew that could kill a monster, other than another monster, one that was stronger, with more willpower.
And who was strong enough to destroy the strongest stand user?
He let his wet, pruned hands fall from their limp stature under the tap water and grip the cool metal of the sink. He stopped moving, listening to the drip of the faucet, the wind blowing outside. All that was missing was humming in the background. A soft melody to fill the house with warmth as his mother went about her day.
He would've bitten his lip again, but he knew he was too much of a coward to risk infecting himself.
Instead, he drummed his fingers against the sink, and opened his eyes, not noticing that they'd drifted shut.
His gaze lingered on the sink and its contents, and a realization settled in once his eyes fixed on a dirty spoon still resting in an unwashed bowl. Alone.
Growing up he'd never verbalized it (like everything else he felt strongly), how his mothers cooking was the food he enjoyed the most. He couldn't explain it. Maybe growing up eating food she'd always made the same way time and again had gotten him biased towards it. Maybe it just happened to fit the groove in his palate that bypassed his sensory issues. (Maybe, unbeknownst to him, because she too had neglected to verbalize it, Holly had intentionally cooked so as to not agitate her son and to accommodate him. A fact that she knew would hurt him more to know than to not.)
He hadn't eaten for the two days he'd been in Japan. He reached down with a shaky hand, and delicately lifted the spoon out of the sink. He stared at his warped reflection in the metal and shuddered out a breath.
How could he eat in peace, how could he swallow, when Holly could not. How could he eat knowing he'd never eat like he did as a kid again. How could he sit at the Kujo table without his mother right across from him pestering about his day, scolding him for getting into another fight, and remarking how he must've inherited her grandmother's genes.
His hand began to shake. He dropped the spoon back into the bowl, gently, before Star Platinum burst free. Before he could blink, or even think to stop time, a yell rang out, glass shattered, and his shirt was soaked. He stood still, processing the mess before him, before turning to face Star. They stared into each other's eyes, and without a word, Star faded from his vision. All traces of his emotional outburst gone, save for the busted sink and broken dishes.
He'd leave it up to his father to get the sink fixed.
---
Surprising to all but himself, death was what he feared the most.
All who had truly known him might've guessed that hurting who he loved was his biggest fear.
All who had truly known him had died.
Hurting those he loved was less a fear and more an inevitable curse. His stand had the power of The World--his soul incarnate was twins with a monster. To think himself anything but cruel, was to be more selfish than he inherently was.
Jotaro Kujo had to hurt people, what else could he do?
To know him was to hurt, to not was to live with peace of mind. The only comfort he found in Holly’s passing was that he hadn't been there when she died to sour her final moments. She'd been free from the weight of knowing him.
If only he'd saved her.
He did not fear death because of what waited for him post-mortem, but because of who waited for him.
Hell was real, he thought to himself as he drifted off, eyes shutting as he uttered the most selfish words he'd allowed himself to speak past his lips.
I have always,
cherished you.
Hell was real to any man who'd let every person he'd called a friend die before he did.
Were they waiting? He wondered. His lungs felt punctured, like a sea was filling where his breaths should be. No longer would he worry about speaking the ocean of words he’d wanted to say but never had the mouth for. Now he could instead worry about who would be angry with him. Who would be looking to seek their vengeance, to tell him all the things he should've been and never was?
He felt himself hit the ground with a thud, and his blood ran cold. His throat burned with salt water, punishment for one final evil he'd spewed onto this earth. He would burn. He would burn for all of it. At the hands of his friends, at the hands of his mother.
He shivered, whether it was from the sudden cold entering his body, turning him from an ocean into an iceberg, or from fear, he did not know. His limbs felt lead-filled. He could not move. Agony, anxiety, it all swirled in his chest. Despite everything, he smiled, content. Jolyne was alive, and he was heading for eternal torment at the hands of all he'd been too afraid to tell what he'd told her.
He wondered how much more they'd want to hurt him if he spoke the same words once he arrived.
His mind went silent before he could wonder if this was what he deserved.
---
Agony, anxiety.
It all swirled in his chest.
He gasped for air, a diver breaking through the darkness.
Why.
Why was he alive?
His limbs still felt lead-filled, his chest still felt full. He'd been drowning, and he'd been pulled out for air.
Who was it? Who was so full of contempt, who was so evil as to keep him of all people alive? Who dug him out of the ice and allowed life to keep breathing through him? Who did he have to fight for the right to reach all who he'd lost so he could finally face their anger?
A glance down to his arm dissipated every stirring of emotion in his chest. His heart beat, then paused, like it was holding its breath with him in shock. No sound but the whirs of machines filled his ringing ears as he looked down at the bloody mess of his own flesh, eerily similar to a sight he'd seen on a friend back near Egypt.
Salt in his wound, water on his lips. No evil had ever forced Jotaro to break his rules before. None had ever witnessed him cry. He'd already known the love he held for his daughter, it was all he'd allowed himself to know without denying it. Selfish, selfish, selfish. But he'd accepted his fate. He'd become everything he hated for her. But to see her break a monster like him without even trying...
He'd never known such good before.
Oh how he wished to go back, to take the place of every person he'd condemned to death so they could just witness all that was Jolyne. Who was he to be given the gift of her existence?
She was the soft blanket of sunlight he did not deserve to lay under.
She was more than the world could hope to be.