Suddenly he was a young father again, his daughter in tears. Hurt and afraid, looking for comfort. For safety. But it wasn’t nightmares tonight. This wasn’t something a cuddle and a magic word could fix.
He thought, in the most honest depths of his heart, that he’d done the right things to protect her. Even though it hadn’t been easy or painless, Maria and Jolyne had been safer without him. That the monsters still plaguing this world who might chase any scent of Joestar blood wouldn’t find them first. If he could help control the arrows, keep his finger on the supernatural pulse of this world… If he could defeat any threat before it had had time to amass a following or power…
But he’d been so wrong. Misfortune had still found his daughter and she’d been pulled into a world he’d never prepared her for.
There were things here he could explain to Jolyne, about the fever, about what he had been doing to help. He was ready to admit he could have, and should have, acted differently. He should have been there for her. He should have been the father he never had. The father Joseph had expected him to be. The father he’d wanted to be.
Jotaro went cold, his jaw trembling. It was as if he’d been numb up until now and he could have screamed in agony if he were alone.
Why weren’t you there when I needed you the most?
Slow, heavy tears rolled down his face. His daughter had carried such pain for so many years. That her own father could feel anything but unconditional affection for her-
Jolyne was in his arms then, his shaking arms holding her tight to his chest. He let out one shuddered breath that scraped into a rough, choked sob. Jotaro wouldn’t let himself be the one to fall apart here, but he couldn’t help sounding pained. One hand staggered up Jolyne’s back to cup her head, fingers burrowing into her hair.
There weren’t words to be found for her now. Nothing he could think to say could ever hope to be enough.
He said nothing, then again, Jolyne knew that if she were him, and in his shoes, what could he say? She had just bitten into him so sharply, had just said what she had wanted to say for years, and yet there was still so much that she had to say.
So much of that anger, that hurt. So many thoughts swirled in her head, and she could only think back to those times as a child when she didn’t have a father there when all the other kids did. She knew what they said behind her back, knew what the adults said that he probably had another family. That perhaps she was such a problem child that he didn’t want anything to do with her. Then there were the parents that pitied her, that when she went to her friends houses, that they took extra special care of her. For what? To make up for whatever it was she lacked?
She always defended him, though. He had work to do, and that’s what she knew even so young, but it wasn’t until she grew older that resentment began to form. That she began to hate her father, even if she didn’t want to.
So many nights, she awoke with nightmares, so many nights that she would say that magic word that would allow just a glimpse of what she now knew was her fathers Stand to come help her through the nightmares when Jotaro was asleep. Then the nights that she would say it, only to be thrown into a panic when Star Platinum didn’t come help her, not that she knew that was the case those years ago. He never came when Jotaro was gone, and now she knew why.
Before she could stop it, the tears flowed freely, and the sound of something choked within him only made it worse. She shook harder, and as he pulled her in, it grew worse. Tears of anger, of sadness, her emotions were at their peak as her hands lifted to grasp onto Jotaros jacket.
The same way she had done as a scared child, or when he got home from work and she’d run to greet him with tears in her eyes.
She always was such a crybaby, wasn’t she?
Wanting to be just like her father, wanting to work with the marine life, only to change her mind when she saw just how often he was away from her. Those years ago when hatred for anything to do with the sea and that in it had started.
“I thought.. that you didn’t want me --” Her confession, that had plagued her for so many years, the thought that if even her own father couldn’t love her, or want her, how could she love herself, and how could anyone else love her?
“I thought that’s why you were always gone-- Because you couldn’t stand being around me.”
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