IC Inbox | ryslig

[starmark]

WELCOME TO YOUR PRIVATE CHANNEL, THIS IS JOTARO. FOR SECURE COMMUNICATION, USE 019.20.118.16 *** THIS IS JOTARO has joined 019.20.118.16 <THIS IS JOTARO> okay i'm typing now what <THIS IS JOTARO> delete what i just said <THIS IS JOTARO> delete what i just said <THIS IS JOTARO> delete everything i just said <THIS IS JOTARO> make this an automated messa <AUTOMATED REPLY, DO NOT RETURN> This is Jotaro. Whatever you want, hurry up and tell me already.

Comments

[starmark]

if it's not just about how she looks then what else is it about

i don't know shit about babies and apparently i need to hurry up and figure it out because at some point jolyne is going to be one

[And he's going to fuck it up. Don't forget that part. His very own stint at fatherhood to completely fail at.]

...listen just so you know

there are times when you definitely take after jiji but a lot of times you remind me of my mom too

not as a mom but like who she is as a person

[pomaded]

come on, man!! its her tiny little baby onesies and the way she holds your finger in her tiny little baby hands and her tiny little baby laugh and shit! it's CUTE.

yeah? feels kind of weird that we're brother and sister but i don't really know much about her but she sounds like a good person. i'm flattered, i guess.

mr joestar showed me some photos and all three of you are so alike you've all got the same eyes haha

[starmark]

...when babies laugh does it sound like what otters sound like when THEY laugh?

i know what otters sound like when they laugh and okay, that's cute

but they're otters


anyway it's weird i guess because ever since egypt it seems like every time i think about my mom i always think about how she got sick first

and then it's like i have to remember that there's more than just that

who she was before she got sick

my dad is gone a lot and i know she misses him but she never lets it bother her or tries to say something like "if you loved me you'd stop touring and come home"

i think that means she thinks that when you love somebody you don't make them choose like that

[pomaded]

you've heard an otter laugh but not a baby???

love's kind of weird like that, huh... my mom's still crazy about my old man even though she hasn't even seen him in sixteen years. maybe it's the same kind of thing. maybe they both feel like you have to make sacrifices because you love them even if it means waiting forever for something to change or accepting it or

i don't know if i could live like that

but what do i know i've never been in love

she got sick too? like when everything went down in egypt in 87?

[starmark]

i watched a tv special on otters once

i don't know if they make tv specials on babies

or if they do they probably don't air them on the channels i watch

...

what do you mean "too"

you got sick? at the end of 1987? in the winter, like december and january?

[pomaded]

you're such a nerd

yeah it was about then. it was snowing real heavily so we nearly didn't make it to the hospital in time... my mom still freaks out sometimes if i get a bad cold

shit if it's the same thing, i guess that's one more time you've saved my life

[Jotaro and the boy with the pomadour.]

1/2

[starmark]

she got sick at the end of november

fifty days worked out to the whole month of december and then sixteen days into january

i remember it was january sixteenth. about half past five, local time. the clock stopped...

[...]

[starmark]

i didn't know i was fighting for you too that day

but

...

right before it kicked off, right before i started fighting him, your dad tried to warn me. he told me not to get near him, to run and save myself.

thinking about it now, i realize what he meant.

he wanted me to get away because dio wouldn't chase after me at first. he would stop and waste time killing jiji, time that would give me a head start.

everyone i went to egypt with, they all would've died to give me the chance to live. three of them did. i don't know why they all thought i was the

i don't know why people would be fine with dying for me

but maybe they knew something i didn't because for some reason i was the same as dio. he had his kingdom of stopped time and i remember him calling me an invader. like i didn't belong there. like...how dare i share that with him.

i found out that night that my star platinum, my soul, was identical enough to his that we shared the same power.

so. that means i'm like him. it must, if it's true that your stand is a part of you, then there must be a part of me that's the twin to the guy who killed my friends and hurt my mom, hurt you, did...all that shit

...

i don't really know why i'm telling you all of this but i guess...what i wanted to say is, when i was fighting him, i didn't feel like a hero. it didn't feel like i was doing a good thing and i wasn't...really thinking about anything except that i was pissed off

but fighting him felt like dying, slowly, for hours and hours

he did shit to me that i still have nightmares about

i still hear his voice sometimes when i don't want to, when i'm alone and it's dark and i'm on my back

but i don't regret it

and i'd do it again

and if everything i did meant that you survived then i'd do it a hundred more times over again because the world needs more people like you and like my mom

i'll never be able to make sense of what happened that night but living with it is a little easier, because i can say "because i did this, josuke survived"

so

...i guess that's what i wanted to say

1/2

[pomaded]

[It's probably the most that he's ever seen Jotaro type in one go- hell, he can't even imagine him saying a third of that in person- and Josuke gives it the time it deserves as he reads it over, taking his time to fully parse everything he's written.

By the time he's done, his chest aches with not only sympathy but with pride and admiration and anger and all of that shit that comes with hearing a survivor lay out their soul. Every time he hears more from him, every time he exposes just a little more of what he went through, it leaves Josuke feeling oddly winded, as though he were the one on the receiving end of DIO's punches, not Jotaro. Having that on your shoulders all the time... fuck. He can't even imagine it. Shigechi's death had been hard enough to deal with but they're so different. Jotaro's fight against DIO sounds almost dreamlike, more like a nightmare than anything that really happened, but it did and whether he knew it before now or not, he's looking at the man it created. Someone tougher, yes, but tired and full of conflict and midnight sweats and still wondering why the people he lost were willing to do it. Why he was worthy of it. Even the Jotaro he knew at home must have been silently shouldering some of the responsibility of their own battles.

And he's right. Josuke knows without a flicker of doubt that he would die for him too, if he had to.

And yet, though still far from understanding it in its entirely, the separate pieces of his anxiety are familiar. That frightening possibility that you might not be so far removed from the person you're fighting. Similarities thrown into the light where you need to focus on the differences to keep your head.]

hold on a second

[pomaded]

[For a few minutes, he does nothing more than at his keyboard, willing the loose threads of his thoughts to knit together into something more coherent. They don't. In fact, trying to get how he feels down in words seems to confuse him even more; he doesn't like how trite it looks on paper. So, after some thought, he gives up trying altogether and switches to an audio message instead.

Better to be incoherent than patronising.]

... I... sometimes I wake up thinking about Kira. Here, I mean. About whether we're the same because the Fog god wanted to fuck with us or if there really is something to it because it can't just be coincidence. [He swallows.] I still don't really know. I get it, though. It's- it's scary to think that there might be something inside me that I don't even know about that's like whatever it is inside him. Or like with you and Dio. Maybe Dio worried about the same thing. Like, if the parts you had in common weren't his at all, or...

[Josuke pauses again, trying to remember where he was going with that point.]

... I guess what I want to say is that I'm grateful. I wouldn't even be here now if you hadn't gone through all of that and it means even more that you did all of it without even knowing how important it was. Anyway. You're a whole lot more like the old man than you think too- you should be more worried about that.

[starmark]

[He listens for a while, and it's good to hear Josuke's voice, even though it leaves him a little unsettled with the implicit social pressure to respond back in kind. He likes text because he doesn't have to make his voice produce the things that are in his head; he can just fit words to them and then look at them for a while to make sure he's really gotten down what it was he'd been thinking. He's never liked how speaking only gives you one chance to get it right. Too many things are too important to get wrong.

He never got to say goodbye to any of the three people who died for him. That thought torments him, sometimes.

But sometimes he wonders if he would've gotten it right, even if he had been given the opportunity. What would've come out of his mouth, if he'd had five seconds to offer last words to Abdul? Would he have been able to produce words that made him understand his gratitude and respect? Would he have thought to tell Iggy that for being a pain in the ass, he was really one of them in the end?

What would he have said to Kakyoin?

(It should've been something meaningful, something important, something to make his imminent death go a little easier. He thinks sometimes it would've ended up being the opposite of that, don't you dare, don't you fucking leave me, you bastard.)

Here he is again, this time with Josuke on the line, and all his words are up in his head instead of coming out of his mouth.

But he has to give it a try, anyway.]

I think sometimes it's hard to know what's worse. I think sometimes...I could live with being like Dio, if I had to. But I don't want him to be like me.

I guess...it feels like, I could handle there being a part of me that's that evil. But I don't want part of him to be good. He doesn't deserve to have any part of him be good.

[Monsters are easier to kill than human beings, don't you know. Which is funny logic in a place like Ryslig, but.]

You don't really think I'm like Jiji, do you?