Ephemeral Eternity

Main Points:
Jojo's Bizarre Adventure drabble
Summary: THIS IS A LITTLE MORE BITTERSWEET THAN THE LAST ONE.  The Kujo family, in fleeting photographs of time.
Word Count: 540
Rating: Gen

            Kujo Jotaro knows that this won’t last.  Even with his wife brilliant, understanding, kind, he knows what’s coming.  The storm cloud on the horizon isn’t DIO anymore, but when he tried to explain the temporality of what might be, she refused to believe, refused to have anyone else, and he feels it’s fated in his bones.

            He loves her.  It’s not the fairytale romance his mother pictures it as, but it’s great.  He found a woman who doesn’t annoy him.  She’s funny, beautiful.  She doesn’t take his silences as dismissal but happily joins him, cup in hand, unafraid.  He can make her laugh.

            She’s already beginning to become unhappy.  The end is starting, and he can stop time, but not forever.  Sooner or later, it will resume, and he wouldn’t want the silent world of timestop, anyway.  That’s a museum of the dead, not a world to live in.

            She knows that he has to be away, but thinks it’s a life he chose, to always be studying things abroad, rather than settling down at a nice aquarium close to home on a permanent rather than semi-permanent basis.  The money helps, but it won’t fill the void of his absence.

            She doesn’t know that he’s off saving the world.  Kind of like a superhero from one of the old man’s comic books, really.  Even if she did know, it would only blunt the pain, and bring something new.  Fear for him, fear that he would die.  The Foundation would bring her news of his death, but the ocean, after all, is still a dangerous place.  Explanations are too easy to come by.

            He treasures every moment, even Jolyne tugging off his beloved hat and wearing it proudly.  He takes a picture and almost sends it to Josuke.  (He does send it, later, when Josuke’s filling up his voicemail with complaints of ‘I’ve never seen my grand-niece!’  It doesn’t shut his uncle up.  The next twelve messages are about how adorable she is.  Jotaro almost smiles.)

            He knows what’s coming, and because of that he locks the memories in his mind for later.  It’s not sentimentality, but practicality.  Enjoy it while you can, and keep what remains inside your heart, a source of strength.  He could try to stop, but even if he stopped going after rogue Stand Users, the secrecy, the things he never says, would still build up in time.  Eating away at what he has.  He knows it will be gone, eventually, but it’s all right.  In the meantime, he can lie in the living room floor, worn out from pretending to be a shark and chasing Jolyne around, and she can cuddle up next to him and tell him how he’s the best daddy ever, and for a little while, he can believe that’s true.

            He knows it’s not.  He is himself.  But he is definitely going to do the best job he can, and if that means practically abandoning them to keep them safe, that’s what he’ll do.  He hopes Jolyne, at least, will understand in time.  He doubts it.

            He falls asleep, only waking briefly as his wife brings in a blanket and covers them up, and for a while, they can be a family.