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It has been a decade since you dropped your life for that fateful journey to Egypt. Having lost everything while you were gone (including your only surviving family), Joseph Joestar took you in with the promise that you would never be left needing for as long as you lived. And for a while, you lived with the Joestars as if they were family, Jotaro being the closest friend(?) you never thought you'd have.
Despite your good fortune, memories of the past and the friends you've lost never truly leave you. On your 18th birthday you leave everything behind, determined to run and never look back. You take that full-ride scholarship for university abroad, graduate with honours, start working... separated by an ocean from everything that brought grief back to you. You reinvent yourself, in other words - if only to run from the guilt that constantly threatens to swallow you whole.
One day, certain rumours of powerful Stands in the unassuming town of Morioh compel you to return to Japan. For the first time in a decade you're back in your home country, looking for Stand users that could somehow reverse time, or death, anything to bring back those whose lives have been lost. Your initial investigations don't go far before running into Jotaro, who (as fate would have it, of course) seems to be investigating the sudden spike in Stand users himself. Suddenly, all those years of running catch up to you, in the form of the man you had not seen since the both of you were still young and coping with loss together.
And so, you're thrown into a series of investigations, obliged to track down Stand after Stand user as they appeared around town. It quickly becomes apparent with each new case that none of the Stand users here are what you had come to look for. You fold after a month, and decide to return to the life you had built for yourself until the next promising lead comes up.
This is the final conversation you have with Jotaro, as he sees you off on the night of your departure.
☆☆☆
“The old man wants to see you again.”
“Does he, now?” You say, keeping your attention onto the clothes that you stack neatly into your suitcase. You’re careful to keep your tone casual and non-committal, though you could hear the request coming long before Jotaro drops it.
“Come back to New York with me. The geezer’s getting old, and it’s all he asks about, sometimes.” He says. To this you glance up at him, your eyes meeting his stark blue ones as he reclines, legs crossed, on the expensive velvet sofa of your hotel room. His steady gaze bears no indication of urgency, no sign of reproach or condemnation. And yet, the statement is enough to cause a twinge of guilt in you – the same one you have run from ever since you left Japan for university.
You look down once more, when the feeling becomes a touch too uncomfortable to bear.
“Am I really still that important to him?”
“Tch. Don’t ask such stupid questions.” Jotaro says, turning to gaze out the window at the sunset-orange sky. “Joseph Joestar took you in without hesitation after returning from Egypt. He did everything he could to give you a life, in exchange for the one you lost for our sakes. Clearly, and as he should, he valued you as if you were his own daughter.”
“Ha…”
You blink away the tears that start to cloud your vision. They come heavy and unexpected, dangerously close to running down your cheeks. Knelt down on the carpeted floor, you’re glad that Jotaro can’t see your eyes from this angle.
So Mr. Joestar really did want to see you – even after you suddenly disappeared from the Joestars’ lives one day, without so much as a word of gratitude or explanation. Even after you decided to leave and never look back, from him and Jotaro and everyone who…
You really were a shitty person, weren’t you?
And yet, you could not bear of facing the past you had run from for so long.
“I’m afraid I can’t,” you say softly. Your voice comes out miraculously smooth, despite all the emotions that threaten to break you at this very moment. You snap your suitcase shut, the magnetic clasp clicking decisively.
“I’ve been away for too long,” you say, tugging the case onto its wheels. “There’s much work to be done in England. I’ve kept a lot of people waiting.”
Jotaro gets to his feet, and you nearly flinch from the way he towers over you. Even in your high heels, he’s still a head taller than you and then some. It’s enough to still your breath completely, when he stands close enough that you could almost feel the warmth of his skin.
“And what about us?” He asks. “How much longer are you going to run from the past?”
…
“It’s… difficult, Jotaro.” You finally say, being the first to break eye contact. “I’m afraid that, if I go back, that I won’t… won’t be able to…”
“Don’t think I don’t’ know why you were really here.” Jotaro says, stepping closer to you. It intimidates you enough that you step back, but that doesn’t faze him from closing the distance between you still.
“I know,” Jotaro says, “that you’ve been working for the Speedwagon Foundation under an alias ever since you graduated. You’d been hunting rogue Stand users for years, and yet you’ve been very selective about the jobs you’ve taken up. Haven’t you?”
“I-“
“Venice, 1995, when the Foundation tracked down a Stand user rumored to be able to turn back time. Then Angola, 1997, against another Stand user that had been jumping between alternate timelines. And now, you’re here in Morioh, when you were passed intel on Stand that can heal any wound, no matter how fatal.”
You’re now backed into a corner – literally. You jolt as your back hits the dresser, and you place your hands on the polished wood as you lean back for support. No amount of backing away has widened the space between you two; even now, Jotaro is still dangerously close, close enough that you could fully appreciate just how gracefully he’d grown over the years.
He looks so young, you find yourself thinking. Like he isn’t a day over twenty, and yet, he and you are fast approaching your thirties, over a decade since you’d travelled an entire continent as comrades against a common enemy.
“Wait,” you say, forcing yourself to stay tethered to the conversation on hand. Your brows furrow as you process Jotaro’s words. “How do you know all this?”
“Because I passed you that intel myself.” He says. His eyes are now steely as he plants both palms on either side of you, effectively caging you in place with his body. “I found out when I scoured the Foundation database. It’s been years since I’ve gone after Stand users, myself, and I needed people from the organization that were more experienced in these matters than I am.”
You don’t miss the way his knuckles whiten as he clenches the edge of the wooden dresser.
“Could you imagine how it felt?” He asks, a hint of wrinkles appearing around his eyes as he continues. “When I found out how long you’d been so close to us this whole time, throwing your life away for an impossible goal-“
“It’s not impossible-“
“It is,” Jotaro says, his voice turning a shade harder with every syllable. “He’s – they’re – never coming back, and no Stand ability in the world is ever going to change that.”
…
The silence that follows is so dense it threatens to suffocate you. Even in the worst of times, you’ve never seen Jotaro this angry. He’s never been one for strong emotion, and in all the time you’d known each other he had never once raised his voice against you. And yet, here you are, watching Jotaro unravel in a way you never thought possible, not from him.
You wanted so badly to deny it, and yet, Jotaro had known it all along. You weren’t here in Morioh for sentimental reasons. Your late grandmother was never raised here, nor did she leave any mementos for you to inherit in this little town. You were here because you had gotten a lead on a Stand user that might (and hard might, at that) be able to revive the dead. Yet it had been a false lead all along, designed to bring you back to the life you had left behind, all those years ago.
“So come back,” Jotaro says, his voice straining for just the tiniest fraction of a second. “Forget this stupid mission you’ve assigned yourself, and come back home.”
…
…
“I’m sorry.” You say. You bring your shaking hands to the sides of his face, fingers brushing over smooth skin and soft hair as you do. He doesn’t move away, and so you dare to plant a soft kiss on his lips – one he doesn’t return.
“Fighting,” you continue with a small smile, “is all I know how to do. I know we promised to get our degrees together, and I still have my biology degree, even if I did end up getting it in another university… but…”
You sigh. “I doubt it would be much use now, since I barely remember anything from back then. I do good work for the Foundation, and I don’t intend to give that up. And you…”
You remember yourself, and drop your hands where they rest on Jotaro’s face, clearing your throat in abashment.
“You have a family now. It’s time we accepted our lives had gone very different directions, is all.”
There’s another pregnant pause as Jotaro watches you straighten yourself. There’s nothing to do but hold his stare until he breaks it, turning instead to look out the window and at the fast-fading sky.
Like he can't bear to look at you anymore. Like he's too disgusted with your selfish response to even grace you with the courtesy of eye contact. You've done it this time. You know it. You've pushed him away enough that he would finally stop trying to pull you back and yet, oh how you wish he would just tell you out loud how brainless and spiteful you're being-
There’s the beep of a car horn heard outside the hotel – a sign that your cab had arrived.
"If that's your answer," Jotaro says eventually. His face is impassive once more as he takes the handle of your suitcase. "I’ll see you as far as the pier.”
The taxi ride is long and quiet. Jotaro makes no effort to talk, and neither do you. What could you say, really, when all is said and done? There's nothing left for you in Morioh – you've investigated all the Stand users you’ve cared to, and provided your assistance where you've been obliged. When there are no longer any rogue Stand users to bring down, nor any enemy Stands to subdue, what was left there between the two of you if not overwhelming silence?
Your decade long-history together, perhaps, and all the friends you've lost along the way. Though that probably doesn't qualify for pleasant departing small talk.
The cab halts to a stop in front of the pier, and you hand the driver his fare before Jotaro could pull out his wallet. The smell of the open sea mixes with the fumes of the taxi as it speeds off, and as the both of you head to the correct terminal the sound of seagulls and suitcase wheels on pavement fill the air between you, punctuated by the click of your heels.
The lone ferry rocking on the mild waves is not hard to spot. Your ride is far beyond punctual, it seems, docked and waiting for its only passenger.
You gently take the handle of your suitcase from Jotaro's hand, busying yourself with the handle length to avoid the burden of goodbyes. Maybe it's a small mercy to be boarding so quickly, really, if only to endure less of everything left unsaid.
"This is it, then." You say, when you've run out of personal affects (your luggage) to fuss over. You meet Jotaro's eyes for what will probably be the last time in a long while, feeling stiffness seize over you on contact.
You want so badly to offer a smile, yet it doesn’t feel right. So a hug, then? A false promise to stay in touch? Definitely not.
How does one say goodbye, if one truly means it?
"Tell me," Jotaro says. "Have we lost you forever?"
Your mouth opens like it'd say "No, of course not" – and like a fish out of water you try to find the words, failing and trying again to find something – anything – to say, yet nothing comes to mind that could be both honest and kind.
"... I don't know." You finally say. Your brow scrunches together and you look away, pain and anger wound inextricably as they bubble up in your gut. In the moment you wish you could rewind time, that you could just go back and do everything right, that fateful night in Cairo. Maybe you wouldn't be here then, tanking a goodbye to your oldest friend, held back by the hollow grief you let haunt you all these years.
Maybe you would have even married him, if only you had the strength to stay.
"Goodbye, Jotaro. Take care of yourself."
Without another word you turn to embark the boat, pointing your gaze away before Jotaro can reply. You don't dare look as your ship pulls away from port, fearing that your eyes would betray how you feel. By the time you chance a glance back, the Morioh pier is once again empty, the sleepy little town winding down after just another Tuesday.