Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

“Did you know, Jolyne, that a swarm of butterflies is called a kaleidoscope?”

Taking a sip of his morning coffee, Professor Kujo pointed to a puddle drying in the summer heat where tiny powder blue butterflies luxuriated in the muddy water. “What they're doing right now, that's called 'mud puddling'. The water is full of salt and minerals that the butterflies need.”

“How do you know so much?” Jolyne asked, drumming her hands on the steering wheel of her toy jeep. She apparently didn't sound as enthusiastic as Jotaro had hoped because the faint smile on his lips curled back into its usual frown.

“Lots and lots of studying,” Jotaro muttered into the lip of his coffee mug, emblazoned with the bright orange University of Florida logo. “One of my colleagues is actually doing research on the monarchs that live in Florida year-round...”

'Mom must have told him I like butterflies,' Jolyne thought, making a face like the alligator on Jotaro's mug from behind her chubby little arms. She had what her mother called 'a bad case of the grumps', and she didn't know why. Which, of course, only made her grumpier.

Everything about Jotaro's presence made her skin itch like a mild sunburn. She knew that he would be boarding a plane to somewhere in Africa tomorrow, and she wouldn't see him for months, maybe a whole year this time. He wouldn't hug her goodbye because of that one time she wouldn't let go and made a scene at the airport. He wouldn't kiss her mother because he never kissed her and wasn't going to start now. The year would be spent in limbo, with no phone calls or letters or postcards in the mail. And then he would step off the train and all of sudden, her father was a living, breathing man instead a photo on the mantle and an office she wasn't allowed in, and the whole cycle would start again.

Even at five years old, she was already sick of it.

“...She just donated several specimens to the Key West Butterfly Sanctuary...”

“What's a butterfly sanctuary?” Jolyne asked, stumbling over the last word a bit.

“It's a special house made of glass that's warm and sunny, where all sorts of butterfly species live.” The corners of Jotaro's mouth quirked as he caught her eye. “There's lots of flowers and birds, too.”

“Woah, that's so cool! Can we go?” Jolyne squeaked, bouncing up and down on the seat of the jeep, making her short pigtails wave in the air. “I wanna see the monarchs!”

Peering down at her from behind the steam of his coffee mug, Jotaro carefully arranged his features into a neutral expression. “Maybe someday.”

Jolyne sighed gustily, not fooled for a minute. She knew that meant no.

***

Hundreds of monarch butterflies were flying over Cape Canaveral, a stream of orange and black against the rapidly shifting sky, already inky black and spangled with stars. Jolyne tracked them as she felt what was left of her body hit the water; she didn't want to shut her eyes because she knew that she would never open them again.

As Emporio's frantic screams faded into the distance, her fingertips brushed against something hard, round, and sickeningly hollow. She was struck with the awful, gut-sinking realization that she was probably touching someone's skull. Whose? Anasui? Hermès? Jotaro? Bones floated in the same water that lapped at her face, bones that belonged to people that she loved, and something like madness began to percolate in her brain. As she lay there with stars and butterflies above her, floating in a sea of bones, Jolyne felt a scream clawing at the back of her throat. The tattered remains of her father's lurid purple coat floated in the distance, unraveling thread by thread at an impossible speed. She felt the ridiculous urge to cling to it, but it was too far away.

Stone Free's sunglasses splashed down beside her in a shower of blood, and the stand winked out of existence. There was nothing but her, the man who killed her, and the crash of waves. She could hear cursing and splashing somewhere to her right, and she was grateful that she was spared the sight of Enrico Pucci's cruelly handsome face curling into a contemptuous sneer one last time. She almost smiled to herself, imagining him still clutching his ruined eye.

'I hope it hurt, you son of a bitch.'

Despite everything, she kept her eyes carefully trained on the butterflies as they rushed past her, trying to count the stripes and black spots on each wing. It was calming, somehow, even when she could feel the sting of saltwater, her head threatening to sink beneath the waves. Wings fluttered in her ears as streams of scarlet clouded her vision. Are they flying to Mexico? She wished that she had paid more attention to her father's dry science lectures. As the field of stars was replaced by pure black, Jolyne realized that she had spent her entire life wishing. Wishing for a warmer father. Loyal friends. A boyfriend that loved her as much as she loved him. Her freedom. She should know better by now, she thought, but she couldn't help but wish for one last thing.

'Be safe, Emporio.'

Jolyne felt her back touch the soft sand at the bottom of the shoal, jarring at the sensation. Instinctively, her eyelids fluttered, adjusting to the dim light. She sat up, blinking, only to be greeted by pale green wallpaper and polished oak furniture.

“What...?”

She was sitting on a soft, springy mattress with her bare legs tangled around a plush blanket. As her vision cleared, she could make out the features of a young, dark-haired woman staring at her with wide green eyes. With a gasp, she scooted backward, only to crack her skull on the headboard. Groaning in pain, she cracked one eye open to see herself blinking stupidly at her own reflection. No knife wounds, no blood in her eyes. Aside from her head, nothing hurt. Across from the four-poster bed on which she was sitting was an antique dresser made of dark, beautifully veined wood, the large oval mirror partially obscured by stacks of old books. Obnoxiously bright light streamed from behind the drawn curtains, illuminating what looked like a spare room or possibly a studio of some sort, judging by the paint-stained easel in the corner.

Jolyne cautiously got to her feet, half expecting something beneath the bed to snatch at her ankles. After months of stand battles, she learned quickly that no amount of paranoia was ever unjustified. As if on cue, she heard a scrabbling, shuffling noise at her feet. She spun on her heel, ready to give whatever it was a good kick. Tucked in the corner of the room was a pet carrier occupied by a large black-and-white rabbit, pink nose twitching curiously at her. She felt a ghost of a smile form on her lips, nearly reaching out to stroke that thick, luxuriant fur before she caught herself.

There were so many odd things in the room she didn't know which to investigate first: a Tiffany lamp patterned with green dragonflies who seemed to wink at her with their jeweled eyes, blank canvases and bottles of paint of every shade, a present wrapped in blue paper, more books, a porcelain doll that looked at least a century old, and for some reason, a pair of antlers mounted to the wall. Her eyes were drawn to the tall abstract painting hanging below the antlers; if she unfocused her eyes, the broad swathes of royal blue and drops of reflective gold paint gave her the impression of a coral reef. God knows she had seen enough of them in her father's academic journals. The delicately inked characters in the bottom right corner looked like they might be Japanese.

As her mirror self turned to flip through the paintings stacked against the wall, she noticed for the first time that her clothes were just as unfamiliar as the room. Patting her own body in astonishment, she saw her reflection was dressed in a neat little skirt and blouse with black stockings. Most of her long black hair hung loose at her shoulders, save for the fringe framing her eyes and the usual buns. Her hands flew to them reflexively; Jolyne was born with odd, colorless streaks in her hair that she and her mother had taken to dipping in Koolaid and braiding into elaborate knots when she was five. They'd often joked that you could tell Jolyne's state of mind by the color of her hair, like a mood ring. Now the streaks were deep red-orange instead of green.

The change irritated her more than it should. She'd switched from gold to green so she would match Hermès and FF. Couldn't she have one thing to remember them by?

Something about the woman in the mirror was...off. The face staring into hers was slightly more rounded, and so was her body, wiry muscle replaced by curves and softness. No scars, no track marks. With a gasp, she tore at her clothes so violently that she ripped her bra strap and nearly sobbed in relief when she saw that the star-shaped birthmark on her neck was still there.

The heart and sword tattoo on her forearm was gone.

Waking up in a strange room was one thing, but waking up in a different body? Heart pounding, Jolyne breathed slowly into her cupped hands as she felt herself start to panic. Even her fucking nails were the wrong color! Every scenario that ran through her mind didn't make sense. Had she been kidnapped? Drugged? Under some sort of bizarre stand-induced hallucination?  Was she in a ghost room like the ones Emporio used to create?

She had to get out of here, and fast. Whipping around so fast she nearly stumbled over the pet carrier, Jolyne swiped up an orange sweater (which matched her new hair), a purse, a wallet, keys, and to her immense relief, a cellphone lying on the bedside table. Hands shaking, she started tapping frantically only to be met with a lock screen asking for a password. Jolyne sat down hard on the bed.

The purse was similarly useless, a tube of lipstick in her favorite shade rolling under the bed as she dumped out the contents. She had never seen the little handbag before in her life, but every inch smelled of her, of her preferred brand of lotion, her perfume, her candies and gum. It smelled like her life before Green Dolphin Street Prison. A pair of sunglasses a little too similar to Stone Free's clattered at her feet. Ready to tear her hair out in frustration, she upended the wallet next. Surely, that would tell her something, right? It was quite cute, bright purple and stenciled with silver butterflies, definitely something she would own. Inside the folds were a debit card, some bills, receipts, a library card, and her own face staring back at her from a Massachusetts driver's license and a student ID for Northeastern University. Except the name beside it wasn't hers.

Irene Kujo, it read.

***

Jolyne knew it was snowing before she even pulled back the curtains, the chill making her pull the sweater tighter around herself as she approached the window. Since when does it snow in fucking Florida, she wondered. Yet, somehow, snowflakes were swirling above a well-maintained garden with neatly trimmed bushes growing against a tall brick fence. As she watched, little hills of glittering snow formed atop a beautifully carved stone bench beside a small Japanese style man-made pond crusted with ice. A cardinal was feasting on sunflower seeds from a bird feeder, and she could see cars trundling down a snowy street. Squinting, she could just barely make out the letters on the sign.

'Winesap Lane'.

Should she jump out the window and make a run for it? Probably a bad idea considering she was looking out of a second story window, and she didn't even know where her shoes were. She had no idea where she was. The world beyond the glass looked like it belonged in a snow globe: tranquil, domestic, obviously well-loved. A scene she could look at but not touch. Jolyne felt tears prick her eyes and didn't try to stop them as they slid down her cold face.

There was no use waiting for someone to look for her because there was no one. Emporio's tear-streaked face flashed through her mind. Reaching for her, calling her name. Just like her, he was all alone. If he was ever still alive. What was her mother doing right now? She closed her eyes for a second, trying to remember the face she hadn't seen in half a year. 

A pale oval framed by chestnut brown hair. A smile. A laugh. The scent of magnolias. All the dainty picture book prettiness Jolyne lacked, slender and soft with wide, doe brown eyes. The neighbors always joked that her parents always looked like the bride and groom on top of a wedding cake. Had the news reached her already? It was always Marina's worst fear, being woken up in the middle of the night by a phone call telling her her husband was dead.

Everyone else, everyone she had ever loved was lying dead at the bottom of the godforsaken cape. Or left without a body to bury like FF.

If she escaped from this prison, or whatever it was, where would she go? The police were scouring the countryside for her. As far as everyone knew, she was a booze-swilling maniac who dumped the dying jogger she just ran over in a swamp. She would be on the run for the rest of her life. She couldn't even call home in case the wires were tapped.

In stark contrast to her mind, her body burned with the need to do something. Fists clenched, she began to pace, hiccuping a little as she angrily scrubbed at her face. She was starting to get a headache from crying, the body's way of telling her to suck it up, buttercup. Jolyne wiped off her ruined mascara with the makeup wipes from the purse, threw the strap around her shoulder because it felt right, and strode purposely toward the door.

As quietly as she could, Jolyne slipped out of the darkened hallway and crept down the stairs toward the light. She couldn't say exactly why she was terrified to make a sound. It felt wrong, somehow, in this strange, beautiful house with its plush carpets and oil paintings.

The air downstairs was pleasantly warm and smelled faintly of cedar. Soft pops and snaps drew her eyes toward a fire crackling merrily in a handsome white marble fireplace, bathing the room in soft amber light. Next to the fireplace was a Douglas fir in all its holiday glory, art glass ornaments painstakingly situated amidst the fiberglass needles. She was standing inside an artfully decorated but unremarkable living room, save for its furniture showroom neatness. Each well-polished accent table and the matching emerald green sofa and loveseat with its silk and velvet pillows looked like it was carefully picked out from an antique shop. Her captor had good taste, she decided, even if he was a neat freak who owned far too many potted plants and scented candles.

Magazines were strewn about the coffee table, mostly the sort of science journals she remembered from her father's office. Her eyes lit up in amusement when she spotted a copy of Batman: Arkham City next to a Playstation controller and a Hot Fuzz DVD. Her father had always loved that movie. She remembered sitting side by side with him in the living room on the night before she left for college, physically closer than they had been in years, close enough to hear that little snorting noise he always made when he was trying not to laugh.

She was just about to reach for what she thought might be a photo album before a spicy-sweet scent tickled her nose. Was someone baking a cake? Through the door to her left was a small but equally posh kitchen, complete with a wine rack and a fancy cappuccino maker. Sure enough, there was a spongy yellow cake rising in the oven, butter rum frosting ready to be spread. Her favorite, and Jotaro's too. Creamy soup simmered on the stove, the aroma mixing not unpleasantly with the fresh scent of pear salad with walnuts on the granite countertop. Despite the exhaustion, heartache, and confusion, her stomach rumbled. Near the refrigerator were a pair of little food and water bowls as well as a partially eviscerated toy mouse, but no cat. Curiosity overcame fear, and she yanked open the door, only to be greeted by a rather mundane selection of almond milk, way too many microgreens for a psychologically healthy person, a jug of beet juice, and a half-eaten vegetarian lasagna.

Whoever lived here was starting to seem less threatening by the minute. For all she knew, they were just some innocent bystander who dragged her out of the snow, and here she was snooping through their home. She felt even worse when she noticed a somber-looking card from a hospice next to all the cheery Christmas cards. Jolyne was starting to feel annoyed with herself when she spotted a hand-written note taped to the fridge.

'Irene, went out to pick up supplies for tonight. Food for Danny in the crisper drawer. Don't forget to take your medicine. - N'

She actually took a step back in surprise, clutching the kitchen table for support. It looked like someone had been in the middle of grading exams at the table, each question filled with anatomical diagrams of lizards and fish, ocean biomes and cloud formations. Next to them was a familiar briefcase. A very familiar briefcase.

Jolyne's heart raced, a dizzying welter of sadness and bewilderment rushing through her veins. It couldn't possibly be her father's, right? But peaking out it were the same caramels Jotaro started chewing after he quit smoking. The nearby bookcase suddenly made the room feel claustrophobic as if the heavy books were about to tumble down on top of her. At least a dozen textbooks that  seemed to have been plucked straight out of Jotaro's home office were stacked next to the same fossilized ammonites and shark teeth she had been told not to touch a hundred times when she was little.

The wine rack was stocked with Chenin Blanc from Paumanok, which Jotaro always carried under his arm when he came back from New York. The aquarium in the corner of the living room was a perfect match for the one in his apartment in Los Angeles, complete with the stupid Spongebob figurine her great uncle Josuke had given him ten years ago. She could even make out the little clay reindeer she had made for Jotaro in second grade dangling from the Christmas tree. The same reindeer she'd accidentally shattered in fourth grade, and she'd cried and cried as her mother tried frantically to glue it back together before sadly sweeping it into the trash.

The whole house smelled of him just like her purse had smelled of her. It was haunted by him, just like her childhood home was haunted by the lingering scent and echoes of conversation from a man who should have been there, but wasn't.

Jolyne couldn't breathe. All she could think of was that she had to get out. As she staggered toward the front door, she caught a flash of red out of the corner of her eye. A young man with a mane of auburn hair and a diploma in his hand was smiling at her from a gilt picture frame; standing next to him was a powerfully built older man with a neatly trimmed beard, a hand on the boy's shoulder. It was the same old man whose photo was on the hospice card. The red-haired man's face flashed past her as she ran: she caught glimpses of him standing next to what looked like shuttle wearing a hardhat and goggles, reading to a young boy with matching vibrant curls and freckles, eating shaved ice at a festival with a teenage girl in a kimono. What she saw in the photo beside the last made her gasp: here was the red-haired man again, slightly older with barely noticeable lines around his bright eyes, his arm draped around the shoulders of a ghost.

“Dad?” Jolyne whispered.

It was definitely him, absurdly tall and broad, green eyes glinting from beneath the shadow of his cap. Judging by the touches of gray around his temples, the photo must have been taken less than a year ago. His face was fuller than she remembered. But more than that, he was smiling. Jotaro's eyes crinkled as if his face naturally broke into such a jubilant expression every day of his life. Jolyne had never seen him smile like that, not in what few family photos they had, not when she graduated, not at the once-in-a-blue-moon appearance on her birthday. She wanted to hurl that smiling face into the fire and hug it to her chest, the duality of which made her want to scream. It hurt. It hurt to see him smiling and hugging someone else. It hurt to see him so whole and healthy, so alive, after watching his head split open, watching the man she thought was invincible shudder and bleed and die. She couldn't just tell herself he was sleeping, that he would wake up any second. He was dead. She had seen the flesh rot off his bones.

“Why can't you just leave me alone?!” she found herself shouting. “Who the fuck are you? Why did you bring me here? Come out already so I can kick your ass!”

She plucked an expensive-looking rococo clock out from under its glass case on the credenza and was just about to launch it into the nearest wall when she heard a key in the lock. Practically snorting with rage, she stomped toward the front door, clock still in her fist, ready to brain whoever was behind it.

Chapter Text

“Irene, what on earth are you shouting at? Is that my rococo clock? Will you put that back where you found it, please?” the man behind the frosted glass said mildly, shifting the groceries in his arms as he stepped past the heavy storm door so he could take off his shoes. Jolyne narrowed her eyes. There was no question about it: it was the man from the photographs: tall and slim with sharp, handsome features and a river of flame-colored hair spilling down his back, exactly how he had looked with her father's arm wrapped familiarly around his waist.

Just who the fuck was he? One of her father's faceless “friends” she could hear him whispering to late a night with the door to his office locked? One of the grim-faced men and women who watched over her and her mother whenever Jotaro disappeared for on a “business trip”? Or...some sort of secret lover? The last thought curdled in Jolyne's stomach, anger heating up her cheeks. The way the other man leaned into Jotaro's touch, both of them grinning as if nothing in the world mattered except each other...it was nothing like that pitiful excuse for a family portrait in the locket she wore around her neck.

Jolyne didn't lower her arm, but she did step back as the stranger hung up his coat. Next to his shoes were a pair of tall boots that looked like they could fit her feet. She felt tension build up in her muscles as she eyed his long, narrow back, so carelessly exposed, a faint tremor running through his limbs as he leaned on a cane made of polished wood. If she was going to fight his way past him, now would be the time to do it.

“Damned ice,” the man grumbled as he peeled off his gloves. “I'll be glad when this shit melts.” His eyes flicked toward hers, thin brows furrowing in concern. “Irene, are you feeling alright? You look pale.”

“Just who the hell are you?” she snarled, seizing a fistful of his cashmere scarf. The white material felt luxuriously soft beneath her now un-calloused fingertips, lightly scented with some chic cologne that probably had a long French name she couldn't pronounce. She was so sick of this gleaming, spotless house, this warm and comfortable life this over-privileged fuck was living while she lost four months of her own life in prison, fighting every day just to stay alive.

“Why did you bring me here? And how do you know my dad?”

“Irene...” the man began, swallowing a startled yelp. He made no move to pry her fingers off his scarf, but he didn't exactly let her shake him like a ragdoll, either, squaring his shoulders and widening his stance. So the smarmy bastard knew how to fight, she thought with grim satisfaction. Now she wouldn't feel bad about beating up a man who couldn't walk without a cane.

“Don't call me that!” Jolyne snapped. “You know my fucking name, asshole! What the hell kind of sick game are you playing?”

He took a deep breath, letting his chest rise and fall slowly. Gingerly letting his cane fall to the floor and roll out of striking distance, he raised his hands, palms up. “What would you like me to call you instead?”

That caught her off guard. “Jolyne. Jolyne Cujoh. And let me tell you something. Enrico Pucci is fucking dead, and I'm gonna send you straight to hell right behind him if you and you crazy Dio cultists don't fuck off back where you came from!”

“Dio? How did you--” the man sputtered before he promptly schooled his features. “Ire—Jolyne, I need you to calm down, right now.” His voice lost its soft, scholarly timbre, his curiously wide mouth pressed into a thin line. It was the look of a man who was used to being obeyed.

“So you do know him,” Jolyne said. “Don't try to play dumb. You absolute fucking prick. Telling me to calm down...after everything you monsters have done.” With a look of pure venom, she shoved him with all of her strength. This new body of hers was soft but strong; the bulge of her calves suggesting that its previous owner spent long hours at the gym. No half-healed broken bones from countless fights, no burns or bullet wounds. It was such a strange feeling, being whole and healthy again after months of beatings and trees growing out of her and eating mushrooms she found in prison cells. Her skin was no longer a roadmap of scars, but her vision narrowed until all she could see was a man standing between her and the door to her prison cell. She burned with the need to watch him bleed all over his thick Persian carpets, to make him feel just an ounce of the pain and despair she'd felt in her final moments.

To her frustration, he caught the doorframe in a surprisingly smooth gesture, wincing in pain as he twisted to break his fall. “Jolyne, I need to know something. Do you remember what happened back in March?” the man said slowly as he rose to his full height.

March 21^st. That was when it all happened. The day she died. Hermès, Anasui, her father. Murdered in an instant. They splashed down into the water in pieces, dead before they could even cry out.

“Of course, I do,” she whispered. The stench of rotting flesh lingered in her nostrils, blocking out the smell of pine needles and fresh baked cake. She blinked furiously at the tears pooling in her eyes. 'Don't think about it just think about the monarchs only remember the monarchs'

“He killed them. He killed everyone. They're all dead, and...and...”

Ding!

The fucking oven timer went off.

For a few seconds, both of them stared at each other.

The stranger cracked first. “Er, look, I understand if you're not in the mood for cake, but let's not have a stand battle in the living room with the stove on, okay?” With that, a ribbon of shining green slithered out from under one neatly manicured fingernail. Jolyne watched, half in awe, half in barely concealed fury as it undulated across the kitchen tiles with a sensuous grace Stone Free could never hope to match. There was something almost comforting about the way it moved, its soft flickering light, the way it returned almost doglike to its master once its task was done, squeezing his fingers lovingly before disappearing. It was like being wrapped up in Stone Free's threads after a hard battle or a cold night in solitary confinement.

“No, Jolyne, that is not what happened,” the man shook his head sadly. “No one was killed on that day. But you were very badly hurt. Last spring, you were in a very serious car accident. Over the past several months, you've been in physical and speech therapy, learning how to speak and walk again. The doctors said that you'd made a full recovery. Physically, anyway.”

“But your surgeon was worried about the possibility of long-term neurological damage,” he said quietly. His eyes softened, and he raised his hand as if he were about to place it on her shoulder before he apparently thought better of it. “It's never been this severe, but...this isn't the first time we've had this conversation.”

“What the hell are you saying?” Jolyne hissed, taking a step back. “I've never seen you before in my life!” But there was something achingly familiar about him, his thin-lipped mouth, the light dusting of freckles across his long bony nose, that trailing red curl resting on his shoulder.

'Your beauty is beyond compare...with flaming locks of auburn hair...'

'Jolyne...Jolyne...I'm beggin' of ya please don't take my man...'

Every time that song played on the radio, her mother had always switched it off.

“Feel around your hairline, just above your left eye,” the man said, gazing down at her with those strange, bright eyes. They weren't emerald green like in the Dolly Parton song, but now she was sure: she had definitely seen them somewhere before. Even as she glowered at him, her fingers automatically moved to her scalp. She felt the blood rush from her face, leaving her cheeks pale and cold when her fingertips brushed against something ridged. A thin line ran across her skull.

“That's a craniotomy scar,” he said solemnly before he managed a weak smile that didn't reach his eyes. “It's...it's not as bad as it feels. You've always had such beautiful hair, and we wanted to cut off as little as possible--”

“No no no!” Jolyne shouted, clutching her head. She felt her blood pressure drop as motes of light danced across her vision. This wasn't just exhaustion and stress. Something deep inside her skull just felt...wrong, like an animal trying to claw its way out. “There's no way...I'm not going to let you trick me...”

“Jolyne, please, you need to sit down before you fall,” the man begged, hands held out to catch her. She staggered backward before those arms could close around her, the gold patterns on the wallpaper shifting and flickering. “You didn't take your medicine, didn't you? Fuck, fuck, I should have been here.”

Before he could reach for her again, Jolyne snatched up the exquisite antique clock and heaved it straight into the fireplace, watching it explode in a shower of glass and gold leaf and tiny gears. Blood dripped on the gleaming hardwood floor as one of the shards sliced the back of her hand open. It almost felt comforting to see cuts on this smooth, flawless skin.

'That'll make him mad', she thought. And then he'll show his true colors. Even that demon of a priest couldn't hide forever behind his spotless robes and golden crosses.

“Jolyne, why did you do that?” he whispered. “You're bleeding. Let me see your hand.”

“What are you--” she stammered as he closed the distance between them.

“I don't care about that fucking clock,” he said. “I care about you. I don't know what you think is going on, but we can talk about it.”

It happened so quickly that Jolyne barely registered what was happening. Shimmering threads shot out from beneath his polished green nails once again, sewing the torn flesh back together. She could only stare at her own hand in astonishment, the stitches so fine she could barely see them. “W-what did you do to me?”

“You don't remember Hierophant, either?” the man asked, looking barely calmer than she felt. Sweat was beading on both of their foreheads. “This is...please just sit down, and I'll bring your medicine. We need to call your doctor.”

His next words were cut off by a rush of air, displaced by a tall figure hovering over Jolyne's shoulder with her fists clenched and ready to fight. A hand shot out, severing the green thread that tethered her and the red-haired man. “You must be out of your goddamn mind if you think I'm gonna let you shove pills down my throat!”

As the silver-green thread snapped, Jolyne caught a glimpse of the being behind her. Instead of the familiar pale blue, the leather-bound arm with its thick biceps was jet black and flecked with drops of white. Jolyne whirled around in shock, only to be met with a face as unfamiliar as her reflection in the mirror.

Stone Free stared back at her from behind neon orange shades, hand on her hip and jaw jutting out defiantly as if daring Jolyne to say something. She was clad in black save for the starburst pattern over her heart and her pure white face, her bodysuit studded with hundreds of glowing pinpoints of light. It was like staring into a star field wrapped around a dressmaker's dummy.

The pressure in her head was getting worse, pain blossoming behind her eyes as her vision darkened. Something behind her left eye seemed to pop, and a rushing sound echoed in her ears as her body pitched forward. She was only briefly aware of the man gathering her up in his arms and laying her down on the couch with an aching tenderness that made some childish part of her want to curl into his warmth.

Little pendants swung from his ears, black with golden bands around them. What was the planet with the rings, she thought drowsily. Oh, right. Saturn. Her father promised to take her to the planetarium, but he never did. Or maybe it was the butterfly sanctuary.

“You used to wear...different earrings,” she rasped. Her body sunk into the plush cushions, consciousness flickering in and out between blinks. “They were shaped like cherries...”

The man peered at her over his shoulder, phone pressed to his ear. Despite the edge of panic in his voice, he turned to her and smiled, a shimmer of tears in his eye as he squeezed her fingers.

She felt a hand smoothing her hair from her forehead as she smiled in her sleep, mirroring him. What Noriaki Kakyoin didn't yet know was that she hadn't remembered him or the nineteen years that he had been part of her life. All she remembered was a boy staring out at her from a photograph on her father's desk, a boy who had been dead now for almost twenty-four years.

***

The next time Jolyne opened her eyes, she almost wished that she was back in that strange dream room under the soft light of the tiffany lamp. Everything was far too bright, forcing her to hide behind her hands. She felt a dull ache in the inside of her arm and looked down to see an IV, clear plastic tubing leading to a bag of saline. She whipped her head around when she felt something squeeze her other arm and slumped back as a wave of dizziness nearly made her black out again.

“Don't worry, that's just the automatic blood pressure cuff,” said a voice, and a man was peeking out at her from behind a curtain. “Please don't touch your IV, you really need those fluids.”

“Please...it's so bright,” Jolyne croaked. She felt like she had swallowed a dump truck full of cement that turned to concrete in her stomach.

“Ah, yes, of course, of course,” the man obliged, and the lights dimmed. “Better? Good. Now that you're awake, I'd like to have a look at you and ask you a few questions. Let's start with your name.”

“J-Jolyne Cujoh,” she managed. She peered around, only to be met with yet another unfamiliar room, stacks of medical equipment she had only seen on television clustered around her head. She heard a snap of nitrile gloves as the man entered the little space, advancing on her with a stethoscope. “Is this...is this a hospital? What happened to me?”

“Breathe in nice and slow, and breathe out.” She shivered as cold metal glided across her chest and back, frowning as she noticed that her sweater was resting in the chair beside the narrow gurney on which she lay. She was beyond grateful that she still had all her clothes on, even if someone had lifted her blouse to attach a cardiac monitor. The thought of people she couldn't see or feel undressing her while she slept made her skin crawl.

For what felt like hours, the man, apparently some big-shot neurologist, tested every reflex she knew she had and more besides, reading numbers off the machines and collecting specimens she'd rather not think about. She groaned as he shined a light into her eyes and peered down her throat, then into her ears and even her nose. He even asked her to stand up and walk around her bed, circling her like a vulture as he helped her maneuver around her IV pole. The doctor seemed particularly interested in her head, making her blink and smile and rotate her neck, all the while peppering her with question after question. With each answer, his brow furrowed deeper and deeper.

More tests followed. Jolyne swallowed her rising irritation and complied numbly, gritting her teeth as the nurses made her take off her bra and jewelry, injected her with a chalky white dye, and stuffed her into a machine that looked like one of those iron lungs on the history channel. Then they trundled her off to an even louder, more claustrophobic machine that made her feel like she was inside a paint shaker.

Jolyne pushed herself up into a sitting position and tugged down her blouse, watching the doctor walk away with several syringes worth of cerebral spinal fluid. The doctor came and went, asking more questions. Were they the same questions? She couldn't remember anymore. She closed her eyes, trying to arrange herself into a more comfortable position, and the next time she opened them, she was surrounded by more strangers in navy blue scrubs. They measured her skull and glued electrodes to her scalp.

As the nurses silently filed out of the room, Jolyne racked her brain, trying to remember all the times she had been laid up in the medical ward at Green Dolphin Street Prison. Even when she took a bullet to the gut, she didn't remember lumbar punctures or EEG tests. This wasn't normal.

“Well, am I going to live?” Jolyne said when the doctor finally, finally ran out of things to prod and poke. She was hoping that would coax a smile out of him, but the man just scribbled onto his clipboard, not meeting her eyes.

“I can assure you, young lady, that every test we've done since you arrived here a few hours ago indicates that you are in excellent physical health,” the doctor said. She hated it when people called her 'young lady' and made a mental note to dislike him. “Your...stepfather insisted that we be extremely thorough.”

“My stepfather? What are you talking about? My mom didn't remarry,” Jolyne asked.

The doctor sighed. “Miss Cujoh, I'm going to tell you something that you might find difficult to hear. I need you to try to stay calm, okay?”

“Skip the lecture and just get to the point, okay?” Jolyne growled, shooting him a glare that nearly made him hide behind his clipboard. At this point, she had fewer fucks to give than Mui Mui had teeth in her head after Stone Free rearranged her face.

All the good manners her mother had drilled into her since girlhood just made the prison guards hit her harder.

“V-very well,” the doctor said warily, removing his spectacles and wiping them on the sleeve of his white lab coat. “Ahem. With a few exceptions, every single answer you've given me this evening has been incorrect.”

“What—all you did was ask me basic questions like where my school is and how old I am. How could that--”

“Please, let me finish,” the doctor said. “Today's date is Tuesday, December 15^th, 2012. Not March 21^st. And yes, this is a hospital, but we're over a thousand miles away from Cape Canaveral. We're in Massachusetts, specifically in a little town just outside of Salem called Sparrow Creek. And your father was very quick to assure me that he's been in his current marriage for the past eight years.”

“Wait, wait, wait!” Jolyne gasped. “My father?! You've spoken to my father? When? How?”

“I just spoke to him a few minutes ago, as a matter of fact,” the doctor said. “His, er, partner said that you hadn't been feeling well since he picked you up at the train station and went to go lie down for a bit in the guest bedroom. When he came back, you...weren't yourself.”

“WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT!” Jolyne roared. She was on her feet in an instant, blood oozing from her arm as she ripped out the IV. “Is this some kind of sick joke? Wait—you're with him, aren't you? That man with the red hair?”

“Miss Cujoh, please calm down,” the doctor begged. “That man...brought you here. He's your stepfather. Both of them told me you've known him all your life. He's very worried about you--”

“Shut up! Just shut up!” Jolyne snapped. The doctor backed away from her, clipboard shielding his vulnerable parts. For good reason, as she was now panting and snorting like a raging bull. “Now you listen to me, you pencil-necked prick. My father is dead. Dead, do you fucking hear me. It hasn't...it hasn't been a single goddamn day since he died, and you're already...”

Before she could decide which part of him she wanted to kick first, there came a tremendous thundering of footsteps, and the curtains parted like the Red Sea. Beyond them stood a man so tall he had to stoop so as not to hit his head on the curtain rod. Here was the same fashionably awful purple coat that she had reached for in her dying moments, watching helplessly as it was carried away on a current of salt water and blood, now billowing around his impossibly broad shoulders. And his eyes...the eyed staring back at her, so like her own, were now bright shimmering blue-green instead of dull and colorless, staring at nothing. She wished with every fiber of her being that she could have stopped herself from looking for him one last time at Cape Canaveral. The image of those black, hollow pits in his unfleshed face was burned into her brain.

He'd always had such beautiful eyes. It was the only part of her own face that she really liked, even if it made her mother sad to look at them. When she grew up, she wanted to give her child self a good shake, remembering how she used to give them to all the fairy tale princes she'd dreamed up when she was kneeling in front of her dollhouse.

He was supposed to come save her, and he never did.

“Dad?” Jolyne whispered.

Chapter Text

When Jolyne was nine years old, her maternal grandmother died.

Pearl Grady was a tall and beautiful older woman whose strawberry blonde curls had lasted well into her sixties. Even her classic Vargas girl figure hadn't been hurt much by the passage of time. Back in 1965, she made a delivery boy fall off his bicycle with one glance from what everyone called her "Scarlett O'Hara green eyes", or so her sisters told Jolyne at her funeral. One morning in mid December, she slipped off the step ladder while changing a light bulb and broke her hip, which never healed quite right. After that, her life had been nothing but constant pain. In less than a year, she overdosed on fentanyl and was found slumped over her beloved piano.

Jolyne remembered staring solemnly at Grandma Pearl's polished oak casket, hand in her mother's. The three of them had spent many a late summer evening sitting on her porch swing, sipping fresh brewed ice tea and admiring the pink roses curling around the arbor that led to her garden. Marina had always hoped Jolyne would grow up to be just like her: gracious and genteelly pretty, the archetypal Southern belle. Sometimes she would look at her daughter, overall pockets full of cicada husks and dirt on her knees from climbing the pecan tree out back, and sigh.

“You have her eyes,” Marina said at last. And she wept, longer and harder than Jolyne had ever seen her.

Marina cried and cried. She'd cried to the pastor and the funeral director and the nice church ladies who baked yule logs every Christmas, to her great-aunts, to her friends from college, and even the old man who played the pipe organ. When she ran out of neighbors and family and well-wishers, she cried to herself, sitting beside Jolyne in the family car.

Sometime in the middle of the night, Jolyne had found Marina in the kitchen with the phone in her hand, pleading with someone on the other line to answer as quietly as she could.

Jolyne didn't know why she even bothered trying to call her father anymore.

Jolyne learned a lot about death that day, and the following days. Sometimes she would start to run to the phone when it ran after Sunday school and then remember that her grandmother was lying in that beautiful oak casket and would never invite them to Sunday brunch again. In Sunday school, she learned that Jesus resurrected Jarius's sickly twelve-year-old daughter in Luke 8:40, but he wouldn't give Pearl Grady back no matter how much she begged. For the first few nights, she would dream that she was back in her grandmother's garden catching fireflies as the old woman smiled fondly from the porch, and when she woke, the camellia blossoms and frog song were gone, Pearl was still in her grave.

That was how Jolyne understood death. She didn't know where the spirit went once it left the body, but she knew the body moldered and turned to dust. Death was a one-way ticket. You got sympathy cards in the mail and the neighbors gave you a casserole, but the rocking chair on the porch remained empty and you cried and prayed and you moved on.

The loss had been too fresh for her to even grieve for him. She had been driven by pure rage and survival instincts, and when survival wasn't an option anymore, the only thought left in her mind was to protect Emporio. Now Emporio had vanished in the crash of waves, replaced by a man she had watched wither to the bone less than a few hours ago.

“Jolyne.”

Emporio's screams echoed through her mind. Eleven years old, covered in blood, screaming as he watched his friends die. The only reason he was still alive was because Hermès shielded him with her own body. She had died with a warcry on her lips. Father Pucci didn't even look at her as he cut her down.

“Jolyne.”

She thought about Anasui, the only one who had died with his eyes closed. Blood streamed from a gaping wound in his chest, and Jolyne knew in an instant that he had died for her. Had she been worth it?

“Jolyne.”

Jotaro Kujo's last words.

“Irene, look at me,” Jotaro was saying. “Tell me what happened. Noriaki said you suddenly collapsed and—why are you crying?”

“Crying? I'm not...” Jolyne started to argue. Reflexively, she touched her cheek, only for her fingers to come away wet.

“Why? Why would I cry for you, you stupid old man?” she found herself shouting. And then she drew back her fist and punched him squarely in the jaw.

It wasn't what she meant to do. It just sort of happened, just like the wallet in the parking lot five years ago. Jolyne had a good arm, and Jotaro actually staggered back several steps. Even as he clutched the angry red mark on his jaw, Jolyne could see there was no trace of the wound that had killed him.

“Mr. Kujo!” the doctor cried from behind his clipboard. “Are you--”

“It's some kind of trick,” Jolyne rasped. “It has to be. There's no way you could...you were..."

She was panting raggedly, chest heaving, throat too tight. She couldn't breathe, couldn't move, couldn't think. Her whole world was red.

"I saw you die.”

“Miss Cujoh, please try to remember what we talked about--”

To her fury, Jotaro instead rounded on the doctor. “You said that you ran every possible test on her.”

“We have!” the doctor squeaked. He wasn't short and certainly not thin, but everyone was small compared to Jotaro Kujo, and the poor man inched backward until he could go no further.

“X-rays, CT scan, MRI, ultrasounds, we've done all of them. We won't know the results of the cultures we collected for at least two days, but every scan and body fluid test has come back negative. Her vitals are perfect. Aside from her orientation, she passed the neurology tests with flying colors. To be perfectly frank, we don't know what is causing this.”

“What is 'this'? What the hell are you talking about? Stop talking about me like I'm not even here!” Jolyne roared, hating how petulant her voice sounded in her own ears. It was hard to project authority were everyone was acting like there was something wrong with your brain.

“Miss Cujoh, I need you to calm down. Please,” the doctor coaxed. “Your family is very concerned about you.”

“Do you want to talk to your mom?” Jotaro said quietly.

“It's...okay? I can talk to her?” Jolyne asked. All the anger seemed to drain out of her like blood pouring from bullet holes, leaving her shaky and light-headed. How many times over the last four months had she wished and wished she could hear her mother's voice, just for an instant?

“But my cellphone won't work. Stupid lock. It's broken or something.”

“Use mine.” Jotaro handed her a bulky black flip phone that looked at least five years out of date. Jolyne took it with trembling hands. Names flashed by as she scrolled through his contacts. She felt as if she should recognize them but couldn't.

Please, please pick up

“Honey, it's so early,” Marina's voice came through the receiver, soft and fuzzy from sleep. The clock read 6:15 am. “Is everything alright?”

“Sorry, didn't mean to wake you,” Jolyne said lamely. “G-guess I lost track of time.”

“You didn't stay up all night again, did you? Your winter holidays just started! Catch up on your sleep, for heaven's sake,” Marina said, stifling a yawn. “Did you try any of that pie yet? I know you don't like grapefruit, but it's your father's favorite. Oh, it's going to be so lonely with you all the way in Massachusetts for Christmas, but your big brother's coming over later today. I'll tell him and Frank that you said hi, okay?”

“Sure, Mom.” Jolyne felt as if she were watching grainy footage of herself from a security camera, nodding and answering robotically, a not-Jolyne casually chatting with a not-Marina. Her mother's frantic cries as the police dragged her away seemed to echo in her ears.

“I can't believe it took us this long to finish decorating! Hold on, let me send you a picture of the lights.” She heard her mother bustling about, probably still in her frilly pink dressing gown, and a less than a minute later, a photo appeared. The house she grew up in was staring back at her from Jotaro's cracked phone screen, warm white Christmas lights strung around the eves and the palm trees in the front yard. She could see the wide green yard where her swing set and sandbox used to be and the pool were Jotaro taught her her how to swim, the clear water glinting faintly in the early morning light.

“Mom, can I ask you a question? This is going to sound really dumb, but...” Jolyne began. “Do you have any photos of me?”

“You mean like a recent one? Oh, sure,” Marina replied airily. “Here's one your little brother took at Thanksgiving.”

Jolyne looked down at the borrowed cellphone and forgot how to breathe. All she could is stare at the image as Marina happily gossiped about her holiday plans. She felt herself start to sway and didn't protest when the doctor helped her lay back onto her hospital bed.

Sitting at the dining room table next to an 80 year old tureen full of Great-Aunt Melba's butter beans was a woman who wore her face, but wasn't her. Irene Kujo was smiling at her, wearing the same itchy powder blue cardigan another one of Grandma Pearl's sisters had knitted for her two Christmases ago. To her left was Frank, the lawyer who had asked her which parent she wanted to live with after Marina and Jotaro divorced. Marina's hand was gently cupped in his own, and a diamond ring Jolyne had never seen before shone from her finger. The boys Jolyne had remembered from the photos in his office were seated around the table, laughing carelessly and chatting with Jolyne's cousins.

It was the figure on Irene's right that made her gasp. Hermès Costello's arm was draped around Irene's shoulders. Her dreadlocks were a little longer, her makeup softer, but it was definitely her: warm brown skin, sharp cheekbones and strong jaw, breakneck curves and long limbs. Her full lips were curled into a cheeky grin, as if she hadn't been murdered in cold blood yesterday afternoon. A long, diagonal scar ran down her bare arm. Did she have it before? No, Jolyne didn't think she did.

“Before I go, just promise me you're going to take care off yourself,” Marina said. “I know what you're going to say, you're a grown woman and you don't need me prying into your business, but after your accident...I just worry, that's all. I know you're busy, but I wish you would call more often.”

“I'll be fine, Mom,” Jolyne heard herself saying. “You don't need to worry about me.”

***

Jolyne spent the rest of the day and the following night at the hospital. At the neurologist's request, a 'Do No Disturb' sign was placed outside her door. Even so, her arms were starting to bruise from a never-ending battery of blood tests, and every she closed her eyes for a few minutes of sleep, her automatic blood pressure cuff started to inflate.

Hours passed. Staff came and went, and Christmas specials played on the TV. As the shadows started to fall across the room, it was easier to imagine her old cell, brainless late night television fading into white noise just like Guess snoring in the bunk below her or cooing to her pet mice. What kind of reality had she woken up to, she wondered, where being trapped in a tiny room felt more comforting than her mother's voice?

Mid-morning found her picking at her food unenthusiastically, her nerves frayed after an hour long session with the hospital psychiatrist. The nurses, the whiteboard, the morning talk shows, even the newspaper told her she was wrong about everything that had happened in the last nine months of her life. She stuffed The Boston Globe under her breakfast tray in disgust.

Jolyne was studying the leaf-like patterns from last night's frost when she heard a knock at the door. It swung open cautiously after she grunted in response, and a massive shadow fell over her.

“Noriaki told me that you want to be called Jolyne,” Jotaro Kujo said cautiously. “Is that right?”

“Yeah,” Jolyne mumbled, not looking up.

“Your doctor just finished writing your discharge instructions. Once the nurse goes over your medications and your appointments, you're free to go” Jotaro said. To her surprise, he lowered himself ponderously into the visitor's chair, meeting her eyes from a respectful distance. The man sitting across from her had none of the gauntness she remembered from the last night she had seen him alive, the real last night, not any night this dream world from which she could not wake. He was powerfully built bordering on stocky with a bit of softness around his waist, his cheeks ruddier and less hollow than the man who died.

“I still haven't told Marina what happened. Yesterday, you seemed like you felt...more comfortable with her. Do you want to go back home? To Florida?”

“I don't know yet,” Jolyne murmured, even though she already knew the answer. Marina's cheery, orderly world was utterly incompatible with stand battles and mad priests with godlike power, and best kept that way.

“Do you remember Grandma Pearl's funeral?” Jolyne said suddenly. Jotaro blinked.

“Back when I was in fourth grade. Mom called and called, but you didn't pick up. You were off somewhere in Canada.” Her mother's quiet sobbing reverberated in her mind like an ever-ringing bell. But most of all, she remembered how Marina had held herself together for Jolyne's sake until she was face to face with her own mother's casket, and the reality sank in. Now Jolyne knew how Marina had felt.

“She was sitting on the kitchen floor, crying into the phone, begging you to answer. But you never did.”

Jotaro stared back at her. It was a look she knew well: a hard set to his jaw that contrasted with the strangest softness in his eyes. Back before she lost him, she'd never noticed how the corners of his mouth quirked, a ghost of a smile on his lips every time he saw her.

“It's really you, isn't it,” she whispered as if she were saying a prayer. Jolyne reached out, gently, tracing her fingers down his cheek. A gentle heat seemed to travel from his skin to her cold fingers, moving up her arm, circulating through her heart, warming it up. The longer she held his face, the more she wanted to cling to him with all her strength, cling to a childish dream, to her most frantic, aching, desperate wishes. Some part of her was terrified that the second she let go, he would crumple to dust once more.

“You don't remember what I remember, but that look in your eyes right now...it's the same.”

“The same?” he whispered back, eyes too bright. She felt stubble under her fingertips, and when he closed his eyes for a second, leaning into her touch, there were dark circles beneath them. Jotaro hadn't slept well last night, if he slept at all. 

“That's how you always looked whenever you came home from one of your business trips, and when you showed up at the prison, and when you woke up from a coma,” she breathed. “When you came back to me.”

For a few seconds, the only noise in the drab little room was a low, keening sound. Jolyne seemed to drift, a ghost just barely clinging to living flesh. The girl sitting on the bed couldn't be her. The cold white fingers against trembling lips weren't hers. That horrible keening noise didn't belong in her throat.

She felt a huge hand on her shoulder, firm and warm and alive. They were close, closer than they had been in decades, so close she could feel his pounding heart and his scent filled her nostrils. Sea salt always clung to his clothes even if he was hundreds of miles from the ocean. In her old life, he would always pull away for her touch until one day, she just stopped trying. Despite everything, for as long as she could remember, she always associated that smell with “safe”.

The world misted over as fresh tears washed down her face, and Jolyne let herself be held for the first time in four months.

***

“Ire—Jolyne,” Jotaro had said. “What happened when you got off the train? I just talked to you over the phone before you left the university. You weren't...you weren't like this. Did you see anything strange? Like a flash of light, or figure that no one else could see?”

“We shouldn't talk about this here,” Jolyne cut him off. “Let's go home.”

Jolyne hadn't fully considered what “home” meant until she caught a flash of red in her peripheral vision, and the strange man she had met a few nights ago stood with an awkward little wave as he caught her eye.

“What's he doing here?” she demanded, jerking so far out of his reach that she backed right into Jotaro, who caught her. The man's smile slid off his face, and his outstretched arm fell limp at his side.

“So you still don't remember me,” the stranger sighed.

Jotaro pinched the bridge of his nose, breathing in a deep sigh. “Jolyne, this is my husband, Noriaki Kakyoin. We've been married for eight years. You've known him your entire life.”

“Your husband?” Jolyne echoed incredulously. “You mean to tell me—you've been married this entire time?!”

Jolyne stole another glance at the arm wrapped around her shoulders, and sure enough, there was a startlingly delicate ring on his finger, shimmering silver and set with a small, square-cut green gem.

“Jotaro, it's alright, really,” Noriaki Kakyoin said. “Jolyne, I know you don't remember me, but we were...good friends, you and me. I watched you grow up.”

There was something achingly familiar about him, like a half-remembered dream. His voice, his smile, his scent, the pace of his steps. She had never seen him before last Friday, but her soul knew him, somehow.

“You and my dad...knew each other when you were kids,” Jolyne spoke, as if waking from a trance. “Somewhere...hot. Dry. There were five of you. Egypt. You went to Egypt.”

“That's right,” Kakyoin whispered, eyes lighting up. “I knew you'd...there's no way she would ever...”

“You died,” she said flatly.

***

“...So, since you and my son were about the same age, so we started thinking of the two of you as twins,” Kakyoin was saying. Whoever he was or whatever he was supposed to mean to her, Kakyoin was clearly used to Massachusetts winters, checking the chains on his tires and stepping gingerly around ice patches in study snow boots. Jolyne, however, was not. She hugged Jotaro's lurid purple coat tighter around herself, shivering.

“So now I have a twin,” Jolyne chuffed, hands pressed to a steaming cup full of bland hospital coffee. “Isn't that wonderful.”

“You don't remember Jouta, either, huh,” Kakyoin said. “Considering how much you used to fight, maybe that's a good thing. Well, he's supposed to be swinging by for a visit this week, so you two can get reacquainted.”

The car ride back to Jotaro's house was perhaps the most awkward event in Jolyne's entire life. They gave her space, letting her curl up in the backseat under a blanket while Kakyoin concentrated on the snowy road, but every turn seemed to make the thoughts slosh together in her head. She could feel Jotaro's eyes on her as he squeezed Kakyoin's hand, but he said nothing. She stared hard at the matching band on Kakyion's ring finger where a dark red stone sparkled. The Jotaro she knew never wore his wedding ring, not once. Her mother's was somewhere in the attic.

She hadn't just lost nine months of her life. She had lost nineteen years.

Irene Kujo's fathers were sitting just a foot away from where she lay. Irene Kujo's clothes were on her back. Irene Kujo's phone occasionally vibrated in her pocket, but she didn't know the password. They were driving back to the house which both Jotaro and Kakyoin swore Irene Kujo used to spend every summer. She was drowning in another woman's life, her lungs filled with photos she couldn't remember taking and friends and family she had never met.

“Looks like we're going to be snowed in for at least a day or two,” Kakyoin assured her over his shoulder as snowflakes swirled in the air. “Don't worry, we have all the supplies we need, and if the power goes out, we've still got the fireplace and plenty of firewood, plus the old kerosene heater. The food from the fridge will keep just fine out on the porch, and we can pile some extra quilts on the beds. Knowing my luck, the lab will be open bright and early tomorrow morning, so I'll probably be driving in about five feet of snow while you two sleep in."

"The lab?" Jolyne echoed. Despite her reservations, she had to admit she was curious about him.

"Boston University," she heard Kakyoin sigh. "I'm a senior research scientist at the observatory. I know you don't remember right now, but I've brought you to see the Perkins telescope loads of times. You used to love looking at the stars."

Of course, Dad would marry the biggest egghead he could find, Jolyne thought.

“Oh, fuck that noise. You can miss a day of work,” Jotaro snorted, speaking for the first time in fifteen minutes. “Have you seen that forecast? No one's going anywhere until at least Wednesday, so I'll make a big pot of soup. We've still got some winter squash left.”

“Since when do you cook?” Jolyne muttered. No one heard her.

The car rolled up to an old-fashioned but well-maintained Cape Cod style cottage, tall and narrow with dark gray bricks and white clapboard. Its shape was the first thing that would have come to a child's mind as they started to draw a house. Snow was piling up on the trees and several wooden planters carefully sheltered under burlap, and Jolyne spotted a wooden gate that looked like it lead to a garden. Jolyne didn't so much as blink at the pride flag fluttering from the porch. So Jotaro Never-Touches-his-Wife-in-Eleven-Years-of-Marriage Kujo turns out to be gay. What a twist.

A loud, scratchy meowing could be heard inside. This time Jolyne did blink. A bundle of fluff was staring at them from a green-shuttered window, blue eyes in a little brown face and pink toe beans against the glass. She remembered hearing a scrabble of much larger paws and the jingle of a collar before  the garage door shut behind them.

“Looks like Calliope and Blue missed us,” Kakyoin grinned. Jotaro handed him his cane and helped him to his feet.

“They're hungry, you mean,” Jotaro said. “So am I.”

And with that, the three of them went up the stairs and inside.

Chapter Text

“Somewhere in the tangled web of your city, there's a killer on the loose. A young woman has been brutally murdered. The weapon: a steel bludgeon...”

“Jolyne, pass me the can opener, would you?”

Jolyne looked up from the saucepan of curry paste and coconut milk she was supposed to be simmering, blinking moist heat from her eyes. In the past two hours, she had learned how to bake naan from scratch, press tofu, peel an onion without crying, and slice up a whole pineapple. As she stared numbly at the swirling snowflakes though the kitchen window, an episode of the original 1950s Dragnet radio show played softly on Jotaro's laptop. The man himself had his back to her, watching dough rise in the oven with an odd stiffness in his shoulders. The smell of cloves, cinnamon, grated lime, and fresh cut cilantro from the little plant growing in the window all wafted into her hot face, but she wrinkled her nose at the bubbling red sauce. They were warm, homey scents, and she felt like she ought to know them. She trawled through her memories again and again, but the nets always came back empty.

“I thought we were having soup?”

“The soup is so we have something we can heat up on the camp stove tomorrow if the power cuts out. You'll be glad you had it after a few hours of shoveling snow, trust me.”

“Seriously, since when do you cook?”

The question went unanswered, and Jotaro turned instead to the mess Jolyne had left of the countertop, clumsily chopped pineapple rinds and sticky fruit juice all over the gleaming granite. So many unanswered questions.

“Can we listen to something else?” Jolyne wheedled. “You know this show's bullshit, right? I never met a cop who could find his ass with both hands, let alone hunt down international diamond smugglers or whatever. They get their kicks beating the shit out of people who can't fight back.”

Judging by Jotaro's raised eyebrows she had spat the words with more venom than she intended. The fingers in her left hand dug into the wooden spoon, knuckles turning white. Two months. It had been two months since Johngalli A had blown the man's brains out of his ugly skull, but she could still those eyes on her bent back, moisture beading on his upper lip as he watched her. The guard who cracked her knuckles with a steel baton, hitting her again and again, even when she was curled up in a ball on the dirty prison floor. She could feel bones grinding together beneath her unbroken skin.

“There's a really cool nature documentary on Pallas's cats.” Out walked Noraki Kakyoin, a hamper full of neatly folded laundry in his arms and a sheepish grin on his face. “Never been a big fan of the cops myself, honestly.”

“Pallas what?”

“They're small wild cats with weird ears that live in the Caucasus and Mongolia. You'd like them, Jolyne. They're fuzzy little guys,” Kakyoin said pleasantly, trying to catch her eye.

Jolyne favored him with her most withering scowl yet. She couldn't exactly tell him to fuck off in his own house, could she? But that didn't mean she had to like him.

Jotaro looked up from the spoonful of homemade curry paste he was taste tasting with a sigh, wiping his hands on a tea towel. It was quite possibly the most un-Jotarolike thing she'd ever seen him do, right until he leaned down to give Kakyoin a peck on the cheek. Her scowl deepened. “You two go watch in the living room. I'll finish up in here.”

“But-”

“It's fine, Jolyne,” he said in a small, tight voice, steering her gently but firmly out the doorway despite her protests. When Jotaro Kujo wanted to move you, you got moved. “You enjoy your cats, I'll enjoy my Dragnet.”

As if on cue, a creature strongly resembling a dandelion seed that had spouted four paws started winding around Kakyoin's ankles, trilling sweetly and snubbing Jolyne entirely. None of the three cats the Kujo-Kakyoin household owned had warmed up to her, despite all of Kakyoin's insistence that they never acted like that before. Kakyoin scooped Calliope up, chucking her under the chin.

“Don't you have, like, laundry to put away or something?”

“That can wait,” Kakyoin countered, an hint of steel in his voice. “Just sit with me a bit, Jolyne. It won't kill you.”

Despite the twinkling lights from the Christmas tree and the fire crackling at their backs, it was hard to forget what had happened in this room just a few days ago. A big poofy black cat with a tail like a squirrel lept off of the sofa where she had collapsed on that terrible day, darting up the stairs toward what Kakyoin told her was her childhood bedroom. But what outright left her skin crawling was that weird stand that had appeared behind her. Had that really been Stone Free?

“Would you like to look at the photo album?” Kakyoin tried again. “It might help."

Help with what, exactly? she wondered. The more he tried, the more she felt like a creeping bit of gunk in an alchemist's lab. Kakyoin, her mother, the doctors, and even Jotaro were trying to transmute this stranger who had been left on their doorstep into the daughter they remembered. But what she said was:

“Hmph. Bet you're a real shutterbug.”

Kakyoin was, indeed, a shutterbug. The three photo albums he laid on the coffee table were each as thick as Jotaro's Encyclopedia of Marine Animals. Jolyne's fingers dug into her knees this time. It was becoming a habit.

“You've always liked this one.” Seating himself entirely too close for Jolyne's liking, Kakyoin began to leaf through the first album. “That's Jotaro and me back in 1996 at the McMurdo research station. We were stuck down in Antarctica for almost three months, working round the clock collecting ice cores, looking for meteorites, setting up the new telescope, that kind of thing. I used to bundle up under six blankets with the heat cranked up to 80 degrees just to get the ice out of my bones. But sometimes, when the wind died down and things got quiet, we'd put down our tools and go exploring. Hand in hand, just the two of us. It was such an alien and magical place, like being on another planet.”

“But then one day, Jotaro was helping me set up a weather balloon, and this huge flock of Adélie penguins waddled up and just sort of decided to hang out with us,” Kakyoin murmured, eyes warm and golden in the firelight. He and Jolyne were staring down at a field of endless white, broken up by two figures in puffy orange parkas zipped up past their chins. Only the breadth of Jotaro's massive shoulders told Jolyne which one was which. Clustered at their feet were at least a dozen squat little birds, waving their flippers and peering up curiously at the two men.

“One of them stole my camera, and Jotaro had to use Star Platinum to get it back.” Chuckling fondly, Kakyoin flipped the page to reveal more photos of a spectacular star-spangled sky, ribbons of otherworldly green light, mile after mile of ice crystals beneath the glow of a hazy yellow moon. In each photo, a pair of dark shapes could be seen, huddling together. “That was one of the last days before the polar twilight. It got so cold I used to wake up every morning with dried blood on my nose. Sometimes when I blinked, my eyelashes would freeze together. But we saw some incredible things. Incredible, unforgettable things.”

“He proposed to me down there.” Their eyes met quite suddenly, and it took everything in her power not to squirm under his gaze. “We were sitting in my cabin listening to ICE 105.4 on the radio and drinking some pumpkin soup Miss Holly had made when he took me by the hand. He had been waiting and waiting for the perfect time, or so he told me. He knew if he waited any longer, he might never get another chance. We stand users, we live dangerous lives. I don't need to tell you that, do I?”

Jolyne said nothing.

“So he kissed my hand and slid a ring onto my finger. We were in the coldest, most remote place on earth, but I never felt warmer. Waking up the next day, knowing I had a home and a family to go back to...it was indescribable," his whispered.

The gold light seemed to burn out behind Kakyoin's eyes, and he shook his head as if to clear it. "It's funny, isn't it? I must have told you this story a hundred times, and the look on your face...I can tell. This is the first time you're hearing it, isn't it?”

Jolyne felt the ghost of a smile that was forming on her face vanish. “Do you really think I'm in the mood to hear some sappy love story? I get it, you two get all goopy for each other.”

“I've got loads of pictures of you, too,” Kakyoin offered. “Here's you and your great grandpa Joseph Joestar last year.” He turned a few dozen pages, and there was another happy, smiling not-Jolyne, this time hugging a very old man in a faded hospital gown. Surrounded by flowers, balloons, and brightly wrapped presents, he was sitting as straight as he could, peering up at the camera with a toothless grin. Cupped in his withered hands was a little clock shaped like the Coca-Cola bear. She remembered the face and the clock from the hospice card on the refrigerator.

“He...he died, didn't he?” Jolyne whispered. “I think I've heard that name before, but I never...I never met him.”

“That was his last birthday,” Kakyoin nodded solemnly. “Ninety-three years old, still as dumb and perverted and wonderful as ever. I don't know if I ever told you this, but he loved your present the best.”

Jolyne found herself staring hard at the teddy bear sitting in the corner of what looked like Joseph Joestar's nursing home, wearing a purple t-shirt with a snarling bobcat logo.

'Someone at Northwestern University loves me,' it read.

Her eyes began to burn. She was so, so tired of crying, but something raw and aching clawed at her gut. It wasn't fair. Jotaro had taken great pains to scrub away every trace of his old life before he moved to Florida and married her mother. He never even gave her the chance to meet her great-grandfather, and now she never would.

Without a word, she took the photo album from Kakyoin. Faces flashed past her as she turned the pages. Below them were dates, names, and little notes written in the same thin, spidery handwriting as the artist's signature on the painting upstairs. Over and over she saw herself: opening Christmas presents, blowing out birthday candles, riding a tricycle with Jotaro's hands on her shoulders, posing in a brand new girl scout uniform next to a boy who looked suspiciously like Kakyoin. She almost felt like a voyeur, watching curious, bright-eyed little not-Jolyne set off for the first day of school and pick out pumpkins at the pumpkin patch.

Unsurprisingly, Kakyoin proved to be an excellent photographer. Each glossy Polaroid was shot with artist's eye for detail, crisp and brimming with color and life. If she were ever to sit down and write a book about Irene's life, well, she had plenty of research material. Thankfully, Kakyoin seemed to know better than to ask if she “remembered” anything and seemed content to chime in with the occasional nugget of information. There's your great-uncle Josuke right after he started his dental practice, he would say, gazing down fondly at a big, beefy young man with a frankly egregious pompadour, arm-in-arm with a stringy guy in a paint-stained shirt, thumbs stuck in his tool belt and a big grin on his scarred face. Oh, here's Polnareff, he was Jotaro's best man at our wedding. Good old Iggy, lived to be almost 23. Avdol, Ryoko, Giorno, Koichi, Jouta. None of these names meant anything to her.

The longer she looked, the more she found herself drifting further and further from the woman sitting stiffly on the couch and closer to the girl in the photographs. Jolyne watched her playing pirate in a tree house, chasing her “twin” with a dart gun, being hugged and kissed by her parents, watched as she grew and grew until she was almost identical to Jolyne down to the last dimple and the bright bottle green of her eyes.

She wondered if Irene knew how lucky she was.

***

If Jolyne was asked to describe the least likely event that could ever happen, she would have chosen Anasui shaving himself bald, followed by FF turning down a Big Gulp and Jotaro Kujo setting an excellent table. The supper they had cooked together was tasty bordering on scrumptious, creamier than cream itself and so peppery and piping hot it made her eyes water, just the thing for a cold, blistery day. Jolyne even smiled a little when a petite calico cat immediately hopped up on the table and began strutting around like a queen, nibbling on Kakyoin's beautiful winter centerpiece and leaving a pawprint on Jotaro's naan. The instant Kakyoin shooed her away, a second cat joined the first and a third started a fight with the dog. A red-faced Jotaro finally shut them all up in the laundry room.

“Why do they wanna steal our food, anyway? They all just ate five minutes ago!” Jolyne grumbled between bites of leftover pear and quinoa salad. After months of stale bread and mushy bananas from the prison cafeteria, she relished every bit of it. Jolyne was so busy eating she even forgot to scowl at Kakyoin for having the audacity to sit between her and her father.

“They know you don't want them to have it.” Kakyoin looked up from his wine glass, eyes sparkling. “That's all the incentive they need.”

They were just about to try some of the grapefruit meringue pie Jolyne's mother had tucked into her suitcase when the first several notes from some 1980s song Jolyne thought she remembered from a car commercial played on Kakyoin's cellphone. “Goddamn it, that had better not be the office...oh.”

“I wasn't expecting you to call so—just wait a second for Christ's sake, give me a chance to explain—yes, yes, I know.” Kakyoin was on his feet in an instant, surreptitiously inching toward the laundry room where the dog was whining pitifully. “Will you excuse me a minute, I need to talk to—fine, I'll put her on.”

Rubbing his ear, Kakyoin thrust the phone into Jolyne's hands so suddenly she nearly choked on her coffee and sat down with an undignified thump, clearly not in the mood for pie.

“Who the hell is—” she began.

“Sis, where the fuck have you been???”

“Sis?! What?” she sputtered. “Wait a minute, is this...Jouta?”

“Of course it's Jouta, dumbass,” the voice on the other line mumbled. “Everyone, me, Hermes, Lily, Cass, we've all tried to call you like a million times, but the phone just rings and rings. You left for Sparrow Creek and then just disappeared off the face of the earth for four days straight.”

“What's it to you, anyway?” Something about his voice made her feel like a cat getting its fur brushed the wrong way. She was warm, full, and comfortable for the first time in months and not at all pleased at being yelled at. “Just bug off. I'm fine.”

“Can't you go like, one day without being a total bitch? To think I was fucking worried about you,” Jouta mumbled again. Had no one ever taught him to enunciate? “After your accident and all...”

“Wait a minute!” Jolyne cried. “Did you say Hermes? You've talked to her? When?”

“Like yesterday? Why are you so—?”

“Have you talked to anyone else?” Jolyne asked. “Like...like...Anasui? Do you know anyone named FF? Emporio? Weather Report? Please, Jouta, I need to know.”

“'Do I know anyone named FF and Weather Report',” Jouta repeated incredulously. What, are these guys all in a comedy troupe or something? And fucking Anasui? That piece of shit who nearly got you killed?”

“Wanna know why I can't answer the phone? It's fucking broken, that's why,” Jolyne snapped. “Tell me you at least have Hermes' number. I really need to talk to her.”

“You're not telling me something,” Jouta said. “Don't fucking lie to me, Irene. You haven't been able to get one past me since we were four years old. Whatever. I'm coming over. Tell Dad to take his thumb out of his ass and set out another place mat.”

“Coming over? Are you crazy?” Jolyne was pacing around the room. God, she wanted to talk to Hermes so bad. If she could just see her face to face instead of staring at some photo she never remembered taking...“Have you looked outside? Maybe you're sacked out at some sunny beach in California or something, but snow's piling up to the eaves of the house!”

Click.

Kakyoin groaned, looking like he'd very much like to lie in the street and disappear beneath the fresh fallen snow. “Oh, for fuck's sake. Not now."

“Whatever happens, we'll deal with it.” Jotaro squeezed his husband's shoulder. “It won't be like last time.”

Jolyne was just about to ask what happened last time when the door to the hall closet burst open with the force of a shotgun blast. Canned cat food, rubber boots, a whole litany of cleaning supplies, and for some reason, an old-fashioned popcorn popper all fell with an almighty crash. Jotaro's prized clownfish dove for cover and the dog went into a barking frenzy. Kakyoin moaned in dismay as a clear plastic tub was upended next, scattering weird-looking dice and tiny figurines of dragons and people wearing funny hats under every piece of furniture in the house.

It was pure chaos. Glass baubles tumbled out of the windowsill and shattered. A piece of plaster fell out of the ceiling and splattered the pie. Jolyne was pretty sure she heard the Christmas tree fall over. Worst still, the latch to the laundry room had somehow popped open, and the cats, seeing the veritable glass menagerie all over the polished hardwood floor, promptly went berserk.

At last, a tall, lean figure emerged from the cloud of smoke and splintered wood, coughing and brushing soot-covered red hair out of a thin, handsome face. He looked out at the absolute wreck he had left of the formerly spotless kitchen, and smiled.

***

“Look, Dad, I found another orc,” Jouta said jauntily, pretending to wipe sweat out of his eyes as he swept up the sad remains of what looked to have been a very fine crystal votive. “Might be able to salvage this one. I don't think Blue chewed it up too badly.”

“Don't talk to me.” Kakyoin was standing over him with an armload of glass cleaner and paper towels, his cheeks as red as his and Jouta's hair. “Not until this mess is cleaned up. Of all the stupid—fuck, I need another brandy.”

“I never told you to put the damn thing in the closet of all places,” Jouta shrugged. Everyone else had been cleaning for the past several minutes while Jouta had been sneaking bits of what little pie had survived and teasing the cats. “It's almost like you don't want me to visit.”

“Of course, I wanted you over for the holidays.” Kakyoin snatched the broom out of Jouta's hands and elbowed him out of the way. “But the rule is, you call first! Not just barge in without so much as a knock.”

“So when were you going to tell me that Irene was in the hospital?” Jouta whirled around at him. Despite their matching eyes, hair, and freckles, he was taller than his father, who was by no means a short man. Kakyoin merely squared his shoulders, leveling him with a flat stare that would have sent Pucci scrambling for his crucifix. Whatever Jouta was about to do, he seemed to reconsider it.

“Would you knock that shit off already?” Jotaro entered the fray. “We don't know that much more than you do, and we were a little busy taking care of her to worry about keeping you in the loop. Your sister isn't feeling well, and if you just came here just to fuck up my house and start shit with my husband on Christmas, you can go back to Seattle. Got it?”

“Wait, you came here from Seattle? How?” Jolyne gaped. “Is this some kind of--”

“Stand power? That's my sister, real Mensa material over here,” Jouta laughed, a mischievous glint in his violet eyes. A tall, slender entity began to coalesces behind Jouta, flooding the room with flickering, electric blue light. Its body seemed to be composed of interlocking reflective chrome plates, and in between the groves, Jolyne could see purple arks of electricity. It had no legs or pelvis, just loops of coiled metal guts that slithered out from beneath its ribcage, probing at the air like the tongues of snakes.

“This is Midnight Train, your ticket to ride anywhere in the planet. All he has to do is touch any solid object and it turns into a portal that I can turn on and off like faucet. Pretty cool, huh?”

It was kind of cool, actually. Jouta, she wasn't so sure about. He grinned at her from his huge height, showing too many teeth, not to mention a lip ring shaped like an upside down cross. Between his ripped up jeans and Cannibal Corpse t-shirt lightly perfumed with purple kush, no amount of ginger curls and pale, freckled cheeks could convince her that he was related to Kakyoin.

“That's you, alright.” Kakyoin muttered. Between his stand's reach, Star Platinum's precision, and Jolyne's nervous energy, they had actually made decent progress restoring the kitchen to its former glory, but Kakyoin's temper hadn't improved. Anyone who was foolish enough to make eye contact with him was promptly glowered into submission, even his beloved Calliope. “Too cool for school. Literally.”

“Don't you start, now,” Jotaro whispered. “We agreed we weren't going to bring that up again.”

“So you really don't remember anything?” Jouta continued unabated, even though they had explained the situation several times over. “Not even the time you got white girl wasted at Lily's party and rolled around in the rose bushes? Ooh, what about that time you--”

“You know what?” Jotaro hadn't spoken for several minutes, but the look in his eye instantly shut up the other three up. “I've decided that we're all going to watch Nori's stupid cat documentary and go to bed. There's some leftover spiced rum cake in the fridge, and we've all had a long ass day. Jouta, if you're staying the night, you can sleep on the couch. And be prepared to shovel snow tomorrow.”

It wasn't exactly the best way to end the day, Jolyne thought. But as Jotaro handed her a mug of hot chocolate made just the way she liked it, she decided it wasn't a bad way, either.

Chapter Text

Jolyne stared at the ornithology magazines strewn across Gwess's desk, straining to read the blurry letters. 'Find something on the far side of the wall,' she told herself. Focus. Block out the pain. Whether she was at the doctor's office or the tattoo parlor, it always kept her from tensing up or flinching.

Anything was better than staring into the woman's eyes.

On and on she ran on the little matchstick exercise wheel. Sweat poured down her face. Her cheeks were scalding hot. Her lungs felt as if they had been cooked into useless pulp. She desperately needed a cool drink, and there was only one way to get it. She had to convince Gwess that it was worth the trouble of keeping her alive.

"Faster, faster!" came Gwess's voice, far above her head. Jolyne caught a flash of white teeth. That smile could only mean terrible things for her.

Jolyne ran and ran, and the longer she ran, the less she felt like herself. It started with her feet. With every step she took, the ratskin clung tighter and tighter, molding her to its shape. When she shifted her weight from her left foot to her right foot, she could feel long, slender toes instead of human feet: toes with blunt, dog-like nails and bristly short fur. Even as she struggled to catch her breath, the empty pelt latched onto her scalp, sealing itself to her skin. It was more like a tightly fitted mask than a hood. She saw through its beady black eyes and breathed through its mouth, the whiskers quivering in the hot, murky air. She felt her naked tail twinning around Gwess's fingers as she tried to balance herself on two legs instead of four. The hairs on her back rose when a blue-painted nail began stroking her fur.

“Very, very good!” Gwess gazed down at her, and any thought of rebellion flew out of her brain. She couldn't move. She couldn't breathe. All she could do was stare, frozen in the hawkish yellow gleam of her eyes. She knew Gwess could feel the frantic thudding of her bead-sized heart. The bitch's nostrils quivered as she sniffed out Jolyne's terror sweat, her grin widening. She was so close that Jolyne could count every lash underneath the caked-on mascara. She could smell her. And she reeked of death.

“No!” Jolyne cried out as the blue nails dug into her ribs. “It hurts! Let me go!”

A sleepy trill in her ear brought Jolyne back to her senses, and the weight on her chest vanished. She blinked. In the moonlight streaming through the curtains, she could make out something small and round gazing at her with lamplike green eyes, tilting its head quizzically. A tiny calico cat hopped back onto the mattress and trotted right up to the warm spot on which she had been dozing. As the cat snuggled into her side, she felt bones beneath the warm fur. The little creature thrilled again, a scratchy, warbling sound like a screen door with rusted hinges.

She's old, 'Jolyne thought. Goddamn it. What was she going to do, kick her? All she did was wake Jolyne out of a nightmare.

Everything above the ancient alpaca wool blanket bundled under her chin was cold, so cold her cheeks stung. As she stared out into the darkened street, she knew at once the power had gone out. Suddenly, she was grateful that the bed was piled high with old stuffed animals and patchwork quilts.

Her heart thudded painfully in her chest. Calm down. Look at the far side of the wall. Focus. the butterflies only remember the butterflies

The walls. The walls in Irene's childhood bedroom were pale green. Green as the luna moths that used to flutter around Grandma Pearl's rose trellis after sunset. Focus. Block out the bad thoughts.

It was a beautiful room. Flowers and long-tailed birds and trees with glittering silver leaves had been painted onto each wall, giving her the impression of walking through a sun-dappled forest. Jolyne's heartbeat began to slow as she stared at them. She didn't need to ask who put them there, who had stitched flowers and bees onto her curtains or carved for her shelves shaped like tree branches. It was all too easy to imagine little Irene losing herself for hours in here, playing make-believe in this little woodland kingdom Kakyoin had created for just her.

Kakyoin might be some dead teenager in a 25-year-old photo to Jolyne, but the man he had grown into in this strange new reality clearly loved her with all his heart.

The other her, that is.

Something fuzzy was tickling her ear, and she caught a flash of orange in her peripheral vision. The stuffed tiger that was sitting on the shelf above her head had toppled off. It was surprisingly detailed and realistically proportioned with bright shiny yellow eyes, just the sort of thing her father would have loved. Jotaro might have been a marine biologist, but he loved exotic felines of all kinds and could sermonize about all their evolutionary adaptations and conservation status until he was out of breath. He especially loved tigers. Had a kinship with them, he said. Jolyne huffed, trying to blow its whiskers out of her face.

It was then that she realized that she couldn't move.

***

Jolyne went from zero to wide-eyed frenzy in as many seconds, screaming and screaming in her mind for her muscles to wake up. This was it. She was going to die. The cat would roll over and smother her in her sleep. The kerosine heater in the basement would catch on fire. Some awful thing would crawl out from bed and rip out her innards. Or worse, she would sink into the darkness as water rushed into her lungs, back into that sea of bones.

But rather than sink, Jolyne felt herself floating, rising higher and higher until she was in danger of smacking her head on the canopy. A reflex tripped in her brain, telling her to grab onto something, protect her head, scrabble at the ceiling tiles like a trapped animal, anything. But not even survival instincts could wake her body from its torpor. She couldn't even tear her eyes away. But then...nothing. Nothing touched her, and she touched nothing in return. She could still feel the breath in the lungs, her racing heart, the snoozing bundle of fur nestled against her hip, the silvery glow of new-fallen snow in the moonlight fanning over her face. Her spirit seemed to twist and turn, drifting further and further away from her body.

She wafted through the air like rising steam, sifting out through the old-fashioned copper keyplate and beyond the white-painted door that led to her childhood bedroom. Wherever or whoever or whatever she was, she found herself poking at what looked to be an attic door before slipping through the floorboards. The usual cardboard boxes, spiderwebs, and traces of soot from the fireplace greeted her. It was probably the only place in the house Kakyoin had neglected to dust.

The latch to the attic window slid open effortlessly, and Jolyne soared through the night sky, light as a cloud. As she looked down, she realized the house on Winesap Lane wasn't as close to the neighboring town as she had thought. It sat near the top of a very tall hill, and past the street where Irene's fathers lived were rolling hills and woodlands cut by a winding river, now cast in shadow. The long, mournful notes of a train whistle played in the distance. Something about the tall, black shapes of the swaying pines made her uneasy.

Up and up she went, riding the wind until the cord tethering her to her body grew taut, and she drifted back to earth. Reality seemed to flicker, and she found herself back in the upstairs landing, slinking along the plush carpets. She couldn't have stopped herself if she wanted to. But then she felt herself slithering closer and closer to the space beneath the door across from the upstairs bathroom...the door to Jotaro and Kakyoin's bedroom. Jolyne made a truly heroic effort to drag her heels.

There was no looking away this time. There they lay, burrowed into each other's warmth and the combined weight of three comforters and the rest of the pets. Even the scrawny ginger kitten Kakyoin had been nursing back to health was nestled at their feet. Jolyne couldn't remember the last time she caught her father so much as catnapping. He was always so alert around her, so careful. The only time she ever saw him relax was when he was literally comatose. To see her father's face so relaxed in sleep almost made her forget about Kakyoin's jaw resting against his neck, red hair fluttering with Jotaro's soft snores. The framed photo on his bedside table looked like it had been taken on their wedding day.

As Jolyne's eyes adjusted to the darkness, whatever was piloting her began to poke about. The bedroom was just as obnoxiously tidy as the rest of the house: yet more elegant art deco-inspired furniture with 1920s style gold striped wallpaper to complete the look. A polished mahogany vanity topped with a pearl inlaid jewelry box sat beneath an exquisite crystal sconce, tortoiseshell combs and antique perfume vials glinting in the dim light. Hanging next to it was an emerald green silk dressing gown. It wasn't hard to picture its owner seated in front of the mirror every morning, his red hair in curlers.

Moonlight streamed through a narrow leaded glass door that opened to a small balcony, illuminating a windowside reading nook half-buried under cushions, blankets, and a memory foam back prop that could have come from a chiropractor's office. Most of the books seemed to be in Kakyoin's wheelhouse, as she didn't think Jotaro was fond of the works of H. R. Giger. A handsome brass telescope was pointed toward the sky.

Jolyne groaned. She felt Kakyoin's touch in every aspect of the house, but now she was standing in his lair.

The telescope creaked in the wind. She was standing on the tall side of the house; it had been built into a steep hillside, so the garage was level with the basement. Jotaro and Kakyoin's bedroom windows were well above the treeline, giving him an excellent view of the sky. Given his finicky nature, she was surprised he hadn't put his expensive-looking telescope away. Beside it was an open notebook, filled with more thin, spidery handwriting. What could he have--

The big black cat she had seen earlier lifted his chin from Kakyoin's lap and stared straight into Jolyne's eyes. Jolyne didn't mind cats, but there was something ever so slightly unnerving about him even in the daytime. He was the sort of cat that belonged at a witch's sabot, not curled up on a down-stuffed comforter beside two gay scientists. His lips peeled back into a snarl, amber eyes narrowing. The long, wild hairs on his back rose, dark as demon ichor.

His claws were unsheathed, six on each foot, tufts of long black hair sprouting between them. He curled and uncurled them, a low growl in his throat. That was all the warning she got before he sprang, a mass of darkness hurdling at her face. Jolyne's heart practically leaped out of her throat and with it came the scream that had been steadily building up.

“Jolyne!” Jotaro was awake in an instant. “What happened? Are you--?”

She was back in her body again, standing at the foot of Jotaro and Kakyoin's bed.

The black cat was sitting up on his hind legs, staring so intently at something behind Jolyne that she whirled around. Nothing but an old TV hooked up to a Gamecube. He settled back down on Kakyoin's knees as if nothing had happened.

“Bad dream?” Kakyoin offered. "I'm sorry if Tycho startled you, he's normally not like that..."

“I was somewhere...else. Floating. Couldn't move. I was outside, now I'm here, and...” Jolyne shook her head. She didn't realize how exhausted she was until the words tumbled out of her mouth. “Nothing makes sense.”

“I think I know what happened.” Kakyoin swung his legs over the side of the bed as if he expected her to sit next to him. When she stayed rooted in place, he continued with a polite cough. “Sometimes when you're having a really intense dream, your stand activates and starts to move around. Since you're tethered together, you saw through her eyes. Lucy sensed that you were afraid, so she went hunting for a threat.”

“Lucy?”

“Your stand? Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds.” Kakyoin raised an eyebrow. “This has never—are you saying you don't remember Lucy?”

“Her name is Stone Free! Stop talking about her as if you know her!” Jolyne bristled. Stone Free was hers, goddamn it. Stone Free was the one thing Gwess, Miraschon, Miu Miu, the prison industrial complex, the sons of Dio, and fucking Pucci couldn't take away from her. She'd been beaten, shot at point blank range, stabbed, set on fire, had her hand turned inside out, and nearly hit with a meteor, but Stone Free was that one little sliver of herself that no one could ever touch.

Kakyoin tried again. “Ahem. What we mean to say is that Irene's stand--”

“I DON'T CARE ABOUT IRENE! For the love of fuck. I'm. Not. Her. Why can't you get that through your thick skulls? You think I can't see what you've been doing? Ever since I woke up here, all you ever cared about was making me into her. Well, I've got news for you, 'Dad'.  She's fucking gone,” Jolyne snarled. Kakyoin drew back as if she had slapped him, bright eyes clouded over with unmistakable pain.

“She's gone,” Jolyne whispered. Goddamn him. Why did he have to look at her like that? “She's gone, somewhere far away where none of us can reach.”

“Jolyne.” Jotaro laid a hand on her shoulder and pointed to where Kakyoin's cat had been staring. “Look behind you.”

She knew. She knew whatever or whoever was behind her was going to make her scream. The tether that bound her to that...thing she saw in Kakyoin's living room before she passed out instead of Stone Free was pulling taught. She could feel the line vibrating, shivering in anticipation like the sticky strands of a spider's web warping and twisting around a trapped butterfly. It was close, so close Jolyne could smell it.

Everything about the thing inching toward her bare shoulder was wrong. A whiff of something spicy-sweet wafted through the air, curling around her in the darkness. Stone Free had smelled of clean citrus-scented soap, sun-warmed leather, petrichor, and the faintest hint of blackberries and hay, everything that smelled of home and freedom and safety. Flickering orange light filled the shadowy corners of the room, nothing like Stone Free's usual cool blue.

At last, the thing seemed to have lost its patience and seized Jolyne's chin, forcing their faces together. “Stop hiding like a child,” it hissed so only the two of them could hear. “We don't have time to play your little games.”

“Who the fuck are you?” Jolyne shoved uselessly at her. “Give Stone Free back! Give her back to me!”

“The other me?” the stand--Lucy--asked, cocking her head in pretend confusion. “Where else would she be? She's with you. The other you.”

“Take me to her, then!”

“That world is dead. There's no going back.”

“There has to be.” Jolyne's knees buckled under her, and she slid bonelessly to the floor before either man could catch her. It would almost have been easier for her if she was crying. All the tears had already been wrung out of her, leaving her eyes dry and burning with exhaustion. “There has to be a way.”

***

“You know what?” FF mused, sipping idly on a juice box. Big blue eyes stared down at Jolyne from the latter's bunk bed, where they sat kicking their bare feet in the air. They fanned out their toes as if they wanted Jolyne to get a good look at them. “I think we should give Stone Free a nickname.”

“Doesn't really roll off the tongue very well, does it?” Hermès added, kicking some of the random junk on Gwess's bed onto the floor. Jolyne took one look at the dark brown bottle of rat tonic and shuddered.

“Oh, shut up. It's a great name,” Jolyne sulked.

“Where did you say your roomie was again?” Hermès asked. The ladies (and FF) were taking advantage of Gwess's absence to get a little payback for any number of slights.

“She headbutted a skinhead in the cafeteria this morning over a corn muffin, so she's cooling her heels in solitary.”

“Huh. Third time this month.”

“I know!” FF said. “Let's call her Stony! Hey, Stony! Come out and play!” They tossed one of Gwess's bras into the air as if they expected Stone Free to catch it in her teeth like a golden retriever.

“Oh, like Foo Fighters is any better,” Jolyne huffed. “What does that even mean.”

“I dunno,” FF said airily, scratching their cheek. The scratching turned into poking, then pulling, until poor Atroe's mouth stretched beyond the boundaries of her face like taffy on a hot day. FF sort of reminded Jolyne of this video she'd seen of a kitten who looked into the mirror for the first time. It immediately started pawing and poking at its ears, as if it couldn't believe they were attached to its head.

“Atroe, you see, she liked planes. She read this book once about how the Allies would see strange lights in the sky during WWII, and they called them 'Foo Fighters'. See, there was this cartoonist named Bill Holman who wrote a comic strip for the Chicago Tribune in 1935 about a fireman named Smokey Stover, and he used to say 'where there's foo, there's fire'...”

FF was taking great pains to arrange Atroe's face into a solemn expression. Anyone else would have been out of breath.

“What's foo?” Jolyne and Hermès asked at once.

“I dunno,” said FF again.

“You remember all the books that she's read?” Jolyne said incredulously.

“I remember everything,” FF said. Something like sadness passed over their face. Real sadness, not some pantomime of human emotion from the perspective of sentient protozoa. “Her first day of school, her first date, the last time she had a good steak. They shaved her bald on her first day here, you know. It hurt. They grabbed her by the arms and squeezed—they twisted my arm until I thought it would break. Why did they do that? Why—?”

“Jeez, take a fucking powder already.” Scowling as only Hermès could, she sat up, casting an irritated glance around the room as if she were looking for more of Gwess's bubbles to smash. Instead, she reached up, laying a strong hand on FF's trembling leg. “They can't hurt you anymore.”

“Sometimes I see her, in my dreams,” FF was saying. “Isn't it funny? I never dreamed...before. And now I can't stop. Humans are so funny.”

Neither Jolyne nor Hermès knew quite what to say about that.

“Sometimes, when I look at her, I forget whose dream it is. I wonder if one day, I'll wake up, and Atroe will be Atroe, and I...I don't think I'll be anything. She'll be alive, and I'll be nothing,” FF said. “And that's the scariest thing of all.”

“But you have her memories,” Jolyne pressed. Hermès shot her a dirty look. “Isn't she sort of...part of you?”

“I'm walking around in her body,” FF replied stiffly. Their pearly white teeth were digging into their bottom lip. Jolyne wondered if it was some old habit of Atroe's. “I'm wearing her clothes and sleeping in her bed, but she's not me. I'm not her. I can never be her. She's...somewhere else. Far away.”

“Do you believe in Heaven?” they said suddenly. “When I die, I don't just want to disappear. I want to go to the place she's gone. When I see her again, I'll say sorry.”

Two months later, the two of them were standing were standing side by side, hand in hand. It should have been three. But FF was gone, somewhere they couldn't follow.

They had lost another friend. Anasui draped Jolyne's coat over Weather Report's face, a look of resignation on his own that Jolyne had never seen before. If she had never gotten into that car, would he still be alive?

“Stop thinking like that,” Hermès scolded, punching Jolyne on the arm. Jolyne could tell that she meant well because there was a ghost of a smile on her lips. Still, it hurt. “You'll drive yourself crazy.”

“How many more of us will die, before this is over?” Jolyne held Weather Report's stand disk close to her chest. She caught little glimpses of the stand on its reflective surface, shrouded in mist and staring back at her with red, unblinking eyes, but not the man himself. He was somewhere far away. “Who's going to be next? Anasui? Emporio? You? Me?”

“Who knows,” Hermès said, looking off somewhere in the distance. The tear tracks were drying on her face. “Maybe we're all part of something, something so big that we can't see it.”

She sighed. “I believe in Heaven. Not Pucci's heaven. The real thing. I got religion, you know? Maybe heaven's all pearly gates and angels playing golden harps and puffy white clouds. Maybe we sit in around in high school all day reading fashion magazines like in the Lovely Bones or some shit. But I think...that's where they are. Together.”

“I'd rather have them here,” Jolyne muttered. Weather's blood was soaking into the dull fabric of Jolyne's coat, dyeing the bold white letters that spelled “Green Dolphin Street Prison” on the back a deep scarlet.

“It's funny, isn't it,” Hermès said. “I used to say the same thing about my sister.”

Jolyne hugged the disk to her heart, sweat mingling with tears on her face. God, it was so fucking hot. What she would do for a breath of wind...

***

After an exceptionally unpleasant night for all involved, Jolyne found herself once again seated at the dinner table, and not even Jotaro's excellent cooking could salvage the mood. Her fingers clutched reflexively around where Weather's stand disk ought to be. At least she could see her friends in her dreams.

Jolyne looked up in annoyance as the syrup bottle was suddenly lifted off the little hand-painted lazy susan that sat between Kakyoin and herself and upended over the latter's flapjacks. Glittering green tentacles nosing about where they shouldn't seemed to be a fact of life in the Kujo-Kakyoin house.

“I would have passed it to you if you had asked,” she huffed.

“Or you might have lobbed it at my head,” Kakyoin said with a touch of irritation. “Look, I get that this is an adjustment, but I'd rather not have to clean up any more messes from either of you, okay?”

“Now there's something I haven't seen in a while,” Jouta smirked. “The golden child getting a lecture.”

“If you're telling me I have to spend the whole day cooped up in this house with the three of you bitching at each other, I'm grabbing my workboots and walking to the zoo myself,” Jotaro snapped. “We're all adults here, so act like it.”

“The zoo?” Jolyne asked.

“Oh, sure,” Jouta grinned around a mouthful of blueberry waffles, gesturing to Jotaro with a syrup-covered thumb. “The old man here's a big shot over at...well, pretty much every zoo and aquarium within a hundred miles of Boston. He's the reason Southwick's got all those snow leopards. If you don't think he'd drive out to Boston in a blizzard just so he could take the cheetahs for their morning walk, well. Maybe you really have forgotten everything.”

“Jolyne. After breakfast, we need to talk.” Kakyoin rose so suddenly that Jouta's jaw snapped shut. “About your stand. This whole time, she seems to be trying to tell us something. And I think I figured out what.”

Chapter Text

“You don’t have to do this alone. Remember what we talked about last night–”

“No, I think it’s better if she hears it from me. She trusts you, feels safe around you. I don’t want to ruin that.”

“She’ll come around, Nori. Just give her time.”

Jolyne’s shovel bounced off of something beneath the snow with a metallic clink. Probably chipped the flagstones again. The sound reverberated through her brain, grating and overloud in this quiet, muffled white world.

The Kujo-Kakyoin’s backyard was considerably larger than she had thought, lush and well-landscaped even in winter with bushes, planters, and huge, fat trees whose roots kept tangling around her boots. Jotaro and Kakyoin waved at Jolyne and Jouta from the kitchen window before they resumed the grilled cheese sandwiches that were supposed to be their reward for two hours of backbreaking unpaid labor.

“Damn, are you trying to piss the old man off, dumping snow all over his hydrangeas and fucking up the steps?” Jouta leaned casually on his own snow shovel, favoring her with a wry grin. “Either that, or you’ve never shoveled snow before in your life.”

“For the last time, shut your damn mouth, you obnoxious little troll,” she snapped. “I’m trying to listen.” If only she had Stone Free…

If Jolyne ever wrote down a list of the most aggravating people she had ever met, Jouta’s name would be highlighted, written in bold, and underlined, with drawings of stinger missiles pointed at it. When he wasn’t standing around smoking while she worked, he laughed at her every time she slipped on the ice or the branches above their heads spilled a load of snow down her collar. And THEN he had somehow tricked her into spraying herself in the face with the garden hose. How did he even turn the water back on from outside?!

Worse still, he picked at everything she didn’t know, the whole lifetime she had forgotten, as if the gaps in her memory were scabs.

“You know, I think I like you better this way. You’re so much easier to prank,” he whispered in her ear (when did he get behind her?!), tugging one of the braids that was sticking out from the knitted cap Jotaro insisted that she wear. “Seriously, I gotta know. Do you remember all the times I told you I was gonna chop one of these off and use it for a paintbrush?”

“That’s it!” Hurdling her shovel dangerously close to the bird feeder, she launched herself at him, sending him sprawling headfirst into the snow he was supposed to be shoveling. Cardinals scattered, seeds went everywhere, and she could hear the cats chattering excitedly from the kitchen window. She didn’t care that Jouta was nearly a head taller than her and he had only just stumbled into her life yesterday, she was going to stab him through the heart with an icicle.

“There she is! That psychotic little bitch I know and openly mock. Er, love," Jouta said.

Startled green eyes met vivid blue-violet, narrowed and regarding her with a distinctly Kakyoin-like stare. "The fuck are you--"

"I had to see for myself, you know. That you weren’t an imposer. I know nothing gets by Dad, but I had to see for myself," he grinned up at her. “Now, let me up, will you? I’m freezing my balls off down here.”

“I’m not your sister. How many times do I have to tell you, I never met you before yesterday!”

“Prove it, then.” Jouta's grin turned into a fullblown smirk, even as Jolyne was about ready to garrotte him with that stupid gold medallion he always wore around his neck. “Bring out your stand.”

“I…”

“Don’t think too hard about it. Just do it,” Jouta said. His wide mouth curved into the first genuine smile she had seen, none of that Chesire Cat bullshit. “And hurry up, Pop’s probably going to drag us in any second for hot cocoa.”

Jolyne had never had to think about summoning Stone Free before. She was always just...there, right when she needed her.

It was like her own stand was playing some demented game of cat and mouse.

Jolyne stood. Everywhere she looked, the world had been wrapped in a soft blanket of glittering snow. She remembered Kakyoin telling her on the drive here that the last patches of snow wouldn’t melt until May. A few years ago, he said, the state ran out of places to dump the snow, and the mayor suggested that it be tossed in the harbor like so much British tea.

She caught the ghostly shape of a beautiful weeping willow reaching down to touch the koi pond below with its frosted branches. Something about the dark, glossy, mirror-like surface seemed almost to call to her, but her knee collided with a three-foot wall of snow as she took a step toward it. She didn't know what to make of it, this strange tidal wave fear and fascination that washed over her whenever she looked in a mirror.

Her eyes drifted upward, toward the sky, a deep azure laced with wispy ribbons of clouds. Blue. Blue like that fancy cocktail she’d had in Hawaii on her spring break trip, like the chicory flowers growing along the train tracks near her house. Stone Free’s blue. Yet her outstretched hand closed around empty air.

“Try to think of a time when you were, like, royally fucking pissed, and you felt like you’d go crazy if you didn’t punch the shit out of whatever was in front of you,” Jouta suggested. “Or…fuck it. Think of a time when you were scared, and no one else was left to protect you but her.”

“Like that ever fucking happened to Irene. She had a perfect home, a perfect family, a perfect life.” Jolyne’s voice sounded caustic in her own ears, like battery acid that ate at the insides of her mouth. “What could she possibly have to be afraid of?”

“The two of us have been through more than you might think." The smile slid from Jouta's face. "Dad and Pop are two of the most badass stand users in the world, but they’ve got enemies. Real fucking bad hombres that didn’t care that we were just little kids, or that Dad couldn’t walk without a cane.”

His head jerked up. “Look, look! You’re doing it! She’s right there!”

“Wha–?” Jolyne whirled around so sharply that her braids nearly smacked her in the face, only to be met with flickering orange light. There she was in all her glory: tall, slim, glittering in the midmorning sun like a whole galaxy of stars. When Jolyne reached out to touch her, her skin, silky smooth and panther-black, was warm to the touch.

“This is kind of a weird thing to say about my sister’s soul made manifest or whatever, but I always thought she, er…smelled nice,” Jouta said lamely, not quite meeting her eyes. “You know what it always makes me think of? The cake Grandma Suzi baked for Dad and Pop’s wedding. The bottom layer had this filling made of blood oranges, and it was like, ungodly, life-ruiningly, orgasmically good.”

“Eww, Jouta!” Jolyne wrinkled her nose. “Really?”

“Sorry, sorry.” Jouta rubbed the back of his neck. “Anyway, that shit was awesome. Pop bakes one just like it every year for their anniversary in October, only he always adds figs from that Amish place where Dad likes to go plant shopping.” His eyes bored into hers, searching for something.

“What are you, a food critic?" Jolyne rolled her eyes. "I get it, they're the two shmoopsiest lovebirds in the universe."

"That day back in 1996…it was the day we first met,” Jouta murmured, his eyes soft and far away. “I bet Dad probably told you that he thought of the two of us as twins. But my life was nothing like yours before our dads got hitched. My biological mom was an addict, OD’d when I was four. Dad didn’t even know he had a son until he got a phone call from Japan. I had never even had cake before, let alone a three tier wedding cake with chocolate ganache.”

"Wait, you're telling me that 20 year ago, Kakyoin…" Jolyne boggled. "That Kakyoin?"

"Kakyoin Senior, you mean? Aka Doctor Professor I-have-two-PhDs Kakyoin? Former aerospace engineer for NASA Kakyoin? A guy like that banging some grungy drugged up chick he barely knew and dipping? It's more likely than you think." Jouta said. "Despite all the hell he gives me now, the old man got up to some crazy shit when he was our age." He cleared his throat. "Anyway…

“It was the day you met all of us. Great grandpa and grandma Joesph and Suzi, Grandma Holly and Grandpa Sadao, Iggy, Uncle Avdol and Polnareff, Jameela, Anne, Josuke and Ryoko...they had a bigass fucking guest list. Your mom was mostly out of the loop, but she figured out pretty quickly that Pop got mixed in some real bad shit back in Egypt. Then he started more shit in Japan, hunting down a serial killer with this crazy stand that made people explode. She couldn’t risk you getting mixed up in that.”

Jolyne took a step back. “Wait…it was Mom that kept me from meeting the rest of my family? I thought Dad…he stayed away to keep us safe…”

“Look, I’ve met June Cleaver from Gatorland like three times in my life, but I’m not getting into all that. The point I’m trying to make is, that memory was important to you. To her. Maybe you need to find out why.”

With a mischievous glint in his eyes that would have done Hermès proud, he began dragging the recycling bin into the driveway (which Jotaro and Kayoin had cleared earlier). He reached inside and set an empty bottle of fancy organic lavender-scented fabric softener on top. Jolyne cocked her head, wondering if she had missed something.

“....Which sucks, because you’re basically starting at zero. You don’t even know what your stand does, do you?” Before she could open her mouth to protest, Jouta sprinted down the asphalt and dove for cover (behind her) like he had just set off an M-80 firecracker.

“Time to let Lucy out to play!" Jouta jerked his thumb at the bottle. "I can’t stand that flowery-smelling stuff Dad always buys. Why don’t you do me a favor and send it straight to hell?”

“What? How? I don’t…”

“What, do you want me to paint a target on it or something? Shoot that shit!”

It happened so fast that Jolyne’s eyes couldn’t follow the motion. The poor bottle hurdled skyward and sailed through the basketball hoop above the garage door, burning everything in its wake. As it landed in a molten heap of melted plastic, Jolyne gasped. A glowing orange arrow was jutting out of the scorched remains, and in Lucy’s left hand was a bow made from a million tiny filaments of light.

***

Jolyne’s first thought as she entered Kakyoin’s office was that it would have made for a better art studio than her old childhood bedroom. The long, narrow space was dominated by floor-to-ceiling windows that afforded a perfect view of all the prettiest spots in the garden. A rainbow of tropical flowers and little potted fruit trees lined the polished wooden beams at the bottom. The plants had been bundled up in towels to save them from the cold, making them look like a row of green-faced children wearing puffy coats. 'Pretty on point for a man who kept a handheld vacuum at his desk and three different vials of Poo-Pourri in the downstairs bathroom,' Jolyne thought acidly.

(There had been a shadow box in the bathroom, filled with a delicate spring of dried blossoms tied with a green ribbon. It looked like it had once been part of a wedding bouquet.)

The wedding, the wedding…why was it so important to Irene? Jolyne pushed Calliope off the wicker chair across from Kakyoin’s work computer, feeling like she had been sent to the principal.

(Why couldn't she look at her own reflection?)

"Jouta tells me you're relearning how to use your stand," Kakyoin said mildly, giving the affronted puffball an apologetic stroke before she curled up in her cat bed. "Lucy is a powerful stand. I feel a lot better, knowing that she's there to protect you. Just don't start playing stand ball on the house."

"Stand ball?"

"That game you and Jouta used to play when you were…nevermind. Do you know why I was looking at the stars last night?”

“You couldn’t see to read your existential philosophy books and you needed something to occupy your huge genius brain?” Jolyne growled back, eyeing Kakyoin’s diplomas. PhDs in math and theoretical physics? What a dweeb.

“You’re under the influence of a stand," he answered flatly.

That much was obvious! "How could a telescope possibly tell you that?”

“There’s a lot you don’t know about me, Jolyne.” Kakyoin stared at her over steepled fingers. “It’s true that your father and I are both scientists. He studies the ocean, I study the stars. But that’s only my day job. I’ve been researching stands for decades.

"Stands operate outside the boundaries of conventional physics. When they interact with the physical world, objects and people made from atoms and bound by nuclear force, they leave physical evidence of their existence. Sort of like ripples in a pool. Physicists call it a ‘quantum entanglement’."

“Why do I think that’s a lot of words to say something really simple?” Jolyne scoffed. “And what do you mean, ‘physicists call it quantum whatever’? You’re a physicist! You probably named that damned thing!”

“Guilty as charged.” Kakyoin held up in his hands. Neither of them laughed. “As long as any of us are in the proximity of someone or something that’s been affected by a stand power, you can catch these barely perceptible glitches in reality if you know where to look. A shadow that seems out of place, ice that melts too quickly, that sort of thing.

"The most objective way to observe and quantify the effect is by measuring the parallax of the stars. The telescope I was using is actually an extremely precise instrument built for that specific purpose. When a stand power has been activated, stars appear to shift from a fixed position in unnatural ways before reverting back to their original position, even flickering in and out of observable space. The more they move, the stronger the effect.”

“Jolyne.” Kakyoin reached out, gently grasping her hands. “What I saw last night…I have never in twenty years seen something like this. This stand…it has to be the single most powerful ability we’ve ever encountered. The user has the ability to warp reality on a cosmic scale.”

“You’re worried,” Jolyne said.

“I am.” Kakyoin stroked the back of her hand with his thumb. She wondered if he realized he was doing it. “Not only that, you said something, the night you collapsed in the living room. You mentioned the name ‘Enrico Pucci’.”

“Wait, you know this guy??"

“Ever since we were 15 years old.” All the warmth drained from Kakyoin's voice. “We’ve had several encounters with him over the years, none of them pleasant. The last time was in 2006 when he…killed someone who was very important to us. We hoped he was gone for good, but if he’s resurfaced...”

***

“JOESTAR! I refuse to carry this feud into the future!"

“Jolyne, grab onto the rope…please, it’s not too late!”

“Emporior, I can’t join you. You have to face the path that lies ahead alone. Now...face me, Father Pucci!”

With a flash of sky-blue light, she cut the thread that bound her to Emporio. As the boy's screams faded, she turned, shedding every instinct that had kept her alive all those dark, miserable months and decided right then and there to die, punching death in the face.

***

That was how it all ended. How she ended.

But could she be sure about what happened next? What if some tiny vestige of Pucci survived? What if Emporio had failed?

“Jolyne, I need you to tell me everything about what you remember.” Kakyoin's voice echoed somewhere from behind her closed lids.

Jolyne opened her eyes. Focus. Block out the pain. She scanned Kakyoin’s desk. On it was a picture frame, showing a tiny, tiny girl with her hair in buns beneath a crown of fall flowers. She twirled as ocean waves crashed behind her, a sage green tulle skirt embroidered with more flowers whipping around her bare legs and feet, streaked with wet sand. A basket hung in the air, the just-bloomed pansies inside scattering to the winds. Her eyes shone with a pure, unbridled joy that was impossible to imagine on her own face.

“That was always my favorite picture of you,” Kakyoin smiled fondly. “We turned our backs on you for all of fifteen seconds, and you upended the flower basket you were supposed to be carrying down the aisle. I remember your great grandpa Joseph turning to me, said you were a little too excited to be a flower girl.” His eyes were lit with a odd, soft glow, as if he could see the past more clearly than the present. “Your father told me he had never seen you smile like that before.

Jolyne’s next words were as acrimonious as ever, like fruit that had grown hard and sour on the vine. Yet she couldn’t will herself to pull away. There was something so comforting about his lightly calloused hands, the faint scent of acrylics and coffee.“You know what? Fucking fine. What can it hurt. Better brew up some coffee on the camp stove, because this is going to be a doozy. After that, there’s someone we need to find. His name is Emporio Alniño.”

***

“Jolyne, Jolyne, Jolyne, Jooolyne~” Jouta sang. “I’m beggin’ of you, please don’t take my–hey!”

Jolyne swiped the last grilled cheese sandwich out of Jouta’s hand and dipped it in her mug of tomato soup. Right now, she was sorely tempted to raid the liquor cabinet instead and ask Kakyoin to show her how to mix up a Brandy Alexander.

In the end, she had chickened out. Kakyoin told her he understood, to take her time and talk to him and Jotaro when he was ready.

She just couldn’t look him in the eye and tell him the daughter he loved so much was gone.

“Christ on a pogo stick, would you cut that out?” Guess always sang the same thing, and then the other girls started joining in…

“Hopefully, the power will kick back on soon and we can drown him out with the television,” Jotaro said, a hurricane lamp swinging from his arm. Judging by the appraising look he was giving a cabinet full of puzzles and board games, he wasn’t terribly optimistic. Jolyne resigned herself to an evening of Jenga and Hungry Hungry Hippos by lamplight.

“So that’s the thanks I get,” he sulked. “And here I fixed your phone and everything.”

“You did?!” Jolyne sputtered. “But how–”

“I have my ways,” Jouta said. “I may not build rockets like Dad, but I’ve got a knack for electrical stuff. Your new password is ‘pigsinspace’”. You’re welcome, by the way, you little ditzbag.”

“See?” Jotaro gestured at Kakyoin. “This is exactly what I was talking about. Damn it, Jouta, if you’d just apply yourself…”

“It’s not too late to enroll in a technical college,” Kakyoin said, trying to catch Jouta’s eye. Jouta pulled down the brim of a hat not too dissimilar to the one Jotaro used to wear and kicked back in his chair. “The next semester doesn’t start till-”

The three of them faded into the background as Jolyne stared down at the screen, scarcely daring to hope. The phone unlocked to yet another photo that Jolyne didn’t remember taking, lit with scintillating neon lights. A concert, maybe? A pretty girl with green and purple festival braids woven through her hair had wrapped a slender brown arm around Irene’s neck. She looked just enough like Hermès that a little jolt shot through Jolyne’s heart, but the girl was slimmer, her skin darker, and a pair of gold wire spectacles was perched on her nose.

She had missed dozens of calls. Jameela, Cass, Marco…she didn’t recognize any of these names.

Wait…there it was! Hermès!

“C’mon, C’mon, please pick up!” Jolyne whispered frantically.

“Woah…Irene? That you? Where you been hidin’, girl?” came a voice from the other line. Jolyne rushed out the backdoor so fast she nearly upset the barbecue grill, cursing Kakyoin for his 'no shoes in the house' rule.

“Oh, fuck! Fuck…just…holy shit of God, you have no idea how much I wanted to…I can’t believe it’s really you.” Jolyne could already taste the saltiness of her own tears, but she didn’t care. “Keep talking. I need to hear your voice.”

“That’s kinda a lot of drama over a broken phone, isn’t it? Alright, fess up. What’s been going on?" Hermès said all of this very fast, like she always did when she was nervous.

Jolyne sank onto her knees, barely noticing the slush melting into her jeans. “Just talk to me. Say anything. I don’t care. Talk about your beauty routine, what you had for dinner last night. Shitty reality TV shows. A-anything.” The wooden grain of the deck blurred as hot tears rushed down her face. Her throat was so tight she could barely speak.

“Please.”

Chapter Text

“Er...so th-there's this guy I'm kinda seeing,” Hermès said after an uncomfortable pause, her voice heavy and rough as cast iron and prone to cracking just like Jolyne remembered. What was the last thing she said to Hermès? she wondered.

 “...Runs the projector at that old drive-in movie theater in El Paso. He helped me get a waitressing gig at Kiki's. Ain't much, but it keeps the bookies and loan sharks off my doorstep. Anyway, we went out to see 21 Jump Street...”

The longer Hermès talked, the more Jolyne felt herself drift. Away from the slush melting into her jeans, the sting of frozen tears on her face. Everything. Hermès' face flashed through her mind, bright yellow-green lipstick just like hers and FF's, the hard set of her jaw contrasted with the water blue softness of her eyes. The Hermès who wore men's shoes and kissed a string of wooden rosary beads every night before she went to sleep, the Hermès knew all the words to “Atzimba” and poured a drink out for FF when they died. The Hermès she remembered.

“This isn't like you,” Hermès was saying. “Since when do you just sit there like a bump on a log listening to me talk? You've gotten a little--I don't know what the proper medical term for it is--spacey? before, but not like this. Just what the hell's been happening at Sparrow Creek?”

“This is gonna sound crazy, but...do you remember the day we met?” Jolyne mumbled.

“You mean back in Florida?” Hermès asked. “Why bring that up?”

Oh, thank fuck. If there was even a sliver of a chance even one person besides her remembered... “March the 21st, Cape Canaveral. Do you remember? Tell me you remember what happened!”

“Okay, okay, Jesus,” Hermès stammered. “Fuck, man, you need to calm down already. I remember, okay? The accident--”

“IT WASN'T AN ACCIDENT!” Jolyne's nails dug so hard into the smooth wood of the deck that it hurt. Faces hovered in the windows, watching her anxiously, but she ignored them. “What happened that day wasn't some fucking accident . All those people dying all around us, our friends...when we fought Pucci on that damned beach...C'mon, c’mon, Hermès, you have to remember!”

“Pookie?” Hermès repeated incredulously. “Who the hell is Pookie? You mean, like, Garfield's teddybear?? Wait wait wait, what did you say about everybody dying ?”

“Damn it damn it damn it.” Jolyne buried her face in her hands. “Not you, too. I thought...”

“Isn't your stepdad some big-shot scientist who used to work for NASA? The hot red-headed, fancy suit-wearing dude with the cane?” Hermès asked. “Dr. Kakyoin, right? He’s supposed to be on a first-name basis with all these world-famous neurosurgeons and physicists and stand experts. Goddamn it, Irene, I thought you were getting better. Why isn't he helping you?!”

“Wait, did you just call Kakyoin hot?” Jolyne mumbled from beneath her fingers. “Fuck, I need that image scraped out of my brain.”

“I can't help it! You know I got a weak spot for DILFs.” Jolyne could hear muffled snickering on the other end of the line. “But don't change the subject! Goddamn it, you told me the doctors patched up your brain. You went back to school and everything. You…you aren't supposed to be like this.”

“You're not supposed to be like this, either!” Jolyne snapped. “So I was right. It's just me. I'm the only one in the world who remembers what happened. What the hell am I supposed to do now?”

Wait a minute....

“Hermès! You said Kakyoin knew stand experts. So you must know what a stand is! Bring yours out so I can see it.”

Her phone's screen lit up as a very nonplussed Hermès switched to video mode. There she was in all of her glory: lean and athletic with clouds of dark hair framing her sharp cheekbones, looking oddly regal even in a faded denim jacket and Ugly Betty t-shirt. Her full lips, prone to curling into a cheeky grin, were pressed into a thin line. Jolyne remembered how she used to daydream about pressing those lips to her own. (That was normal, right? To think about kissing your best friend?)

Behind her was a neon-lit theater with swooping geometric Googie architecture that would have been tacky in 1957. An ancient marquee advertising The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey flickered in the background. “Of course, I know what a stand is! Practically everyone both of us know are stand users,” Hermès replied. 

Even through the screen, Jolyne could see the hot, flat air of downtown El Paso rippling. With a pop of purple and gold glitter, Kiss winked into existence, tall and imposing, her face stern beneath her heavy crown despite her bright festival colors. Dozens of black marks in the shape of Hermès' lips littered her shimmering golden skin, exactly as Jolyne remembered her. Once, and only once, Jolyne had seen Kiss peel back the flesh of her face like a lacy bridal veil, revealing a grinning ivory skull. Even death couldn't protect you from the silent judgment in those empty eye sockets. Sports Maxx had found out the hard way.

Over on Jolyne's side of the world, 'Lucy' didn't even bother waiting for Jolyne to summon her. She just popped out like a stray cat stealing a hot dog off of the picnic table, bathing the Kujo-Kakyoin's deck in fiery orange light. To Jolyne's consternation, Hermès' flashed that grin she remembered so well, as if nothing was wrong. “Good to see the old girl again. It's been ages, ya know?”

“Are you kidding me?! I just--” Jolyne pinched the bridge of her nose. “She's not supposed to look like this. Everything about her—her colors, her voice, even her stand power—it's all wrong, can't you see?!”

“What do you mean she's not—whoa, Irene, this is serious. You've forgotten things before, but your own stand? Whatever this means it can't be good.” Hermès squeezed Kiss tight, her eyes wide and fearful. “Wait...what if...what if this is some kind of stand power? Some weird trick that can, I don't know, implant false memories or something? I know that's some serious sci-fi bullshit, but maybe that's why your head's all fuzzy.”

“What? There's no way that--”

“It's like your dad says. Stand users are drawn to other stand users. Call it fate or whatever, but maybe that's why we met in the first place.”

“Why we met? We met in prison,” Jolyne said. “We spent four months together. We saw each other almost every day. Are you saying that none of that is real? Did everything we went through, all the stand battles, almost dying over and over again, even fucking playing catch with FF and pranking Gwess...did none of it even matter?”

***

“You don't have to do this.”

“Are you kidding me? After all the bullshit we've both been through, it's the least I could do. Literally.”

Jolyne combed out another section of Hermès' thick, wavy hair, coaxing the wayward strands into a long, twisting braid and rolling it in her palm like Hermès had shown her. The finished lock bounced off of her shoulder, though Jolyne doubted she could even feel it under all the bandages. Despite the stark white dressings, the sling on her left arm, and the constant, eye-watering smell of antiseptic, she looked like herself again.

“Um, I was there, too, ya know!” FF whined, kicking their heels like a little kid where they sat next to Hermès on her infirmary bed. “I got my whole leg turned into zombie alligator chow! Taxidermied son of a bitch just ripped the damned thing off and chewed it up like a chicken bone!”

“Now, there's a sentence you don't hear every day,” Hermès smirked. She gave her new dreadlocks an experimental twirl, her face a look of instant regret as the half-healed wounds under her dressings protested violently. “But seriously, thanks. I feel about halfway human now.”

“Even after all that healing I did, you're still all wrapped up like a mummy,” FF observed, tilting their head quizzically. “How many times are you two gonna get yourselves all fucked up so I have to stuff all your holes full of algae?”

“Now you're just doing it on purpose,” Jolyne piped up. “Who wants to hear about getting their holes filled after watching a gangster get drowned in a septic tank? Fuck, I can still smell that Sports Maxx guy.”

“Gangster, murderer, rapist, all around miserable waste of flesh,” Hermès spat. “Fucker can spend the rest of eternity stinking up the sewers of Hell. Do me a favor, would you, Jolyne? FF? Next time you're walking by the chapel, light a candle, would you?”

“A candle? Why?” asked FF.

“I spent the last four years of my life hunting that bastard down. Every night since then, before I went to sleep, I said a prayer to Santa Muerte.” Hermès lowered her head, her gaze drifting toward something Jolyne could not see. With her face cast in shadow, it threw the scars on her chin and brow in sharp relief. Jagged, ugly things that contrasted oddly with her natural beauty. “If it hadn't been for you and Jolyne, it all would have been for nothing. I feel like....I don't know. You probably think it's stupid but, I think she answered my prayers. Through the two of you.”

Jolyne opened her mouth to speak, but FF beat her to it. “I don't think it's stupid at all.” They fastened a bright green clip to the lock of hair Jolyne had finished braiding.

Their nights went on like that for a time. They dipped Jolyne's pale, colorless forelocks in green apple Kool-Aid, and they figured out how to mix up eyeshadow with blue M&M and bright yellow lemonheads. Most of their experiments ended up either murky brown or an unwholesome nuclear waste green, and before long, the three of them started thinking of the latter as their signature color.

“Nothing like a little desperation to get your creative juices flowing,” Hermès said, using the edge of a shattered light bulb to trim and shape the tips of FF's dishwater blonde hair, which had started to grow back underneath their green swim cap.

“Look at that!” FF stared at themselves in the mirror, twisting this way and that. “We look...pretty. I've never been pretty before. I mean, Atroe has. Before all of...this happened. But not me.”

“I know what you mean,” Jolyne said. “I-I feel more like me again. Not just some number. The real me.”

“Those fucking numbers! I swear if I ever hear mine again, I'll go insane,” Hermès barked, hopping to her feet so suddenly FF nearly dropped the bottle of Pepsi they'd snuck out of the cafeteria (the ladies and FF had planned to mix it with cocoa powder and flour to make their own foundation). 

“'Prisoner number FE40533! Stop having fun! Prisoner FE40533! Go do something you hate! Being miserable builds character! Prisoner FE40533! Shut your stupid pie-hole! I've got my whole hand up Little Miss Charlotte's ass, and she's got some things to say about it!”

“Oh my God! Stop! Stop! My side!” Jolyne hooted with laughter as a pie-eyed Hermès let her mouth flap open and closed, waving her arms up and down in her best impression of Loccobarocco and his intensely hated alligator puppet. “Holy shit, I think my alligator wounds are leaking.”

“Now THAT'S a rare sentence.”

Jolyne couldn't remember laughing like this with any of her old 'friends', if they could even be called that. Not even with Romeo.

***

“I think...I think we need to talk about the accident,” Hermès said. “I know you're going to tell me it's just a bunch of Shutter Island bullshit, but you can rant at me later. Right now I need you to listen.”

“Just. Say whatever it is you're going to say,” Jolyne replied dully.

Hermès took a deep breath. “You took a semester off from college. No one knew why. To this day, as far as I know, you've never told anyone, not even your dads or your mom or your annoying ass twin brother. You spent about a week aimlessly fucking around in Florida with some guy you met at a cosplay convention called Anakiss. At least that's what you told me when you gave me a ride right outside of Tucson.

“You had two full sets of parents freaking out at you the whole time. I still remember sitting awkwardly in the backseat, listening to Dr. Kakyoin beg you to come home over the phone. Said you'd never done anything like this before. I didn't get it, either. You were a straight A student, their perfect little golden child, studying up in some fancy pants rich kid school to be an architect.”

“That's right!” Jolyne shouted. “I was studying architecture! My grades weren't perfect, but...God, it feels like so long ago.”

“Glad you and Irene have something in common, at least.” Hermès smiled, but it didn’t reach her eyes. A brief sadness passed over her face like a cloud. “Anyhow, the whole thing turned into a three and a half month long cross-country road trip. Turns out your great-grandpa was loaded, so we had cash to burn. I know you don't remember, Irene, but…we had so much fun, the four of us. Even on the nights when there wasn't a music festival or a crazy bar scene going on, and we were just chilling out under the stars...those were some of the best days of my life, if not the best. I mean it.”

Jolyne said nothing.

“Everything changed on the last day when we were heading out to your mom's place.” All the color drained out of Hermès face. “We were just outside of Cape Canaveral when it started raining. You know how Florida is, it was like the whole goddamn sky suddenly opened up. Anakiss was driving and—th-there was this kid, just standing in the middle of the road.”

“A kid?”

“Yeah, couldn't have been more than ten or eleven. Curly blond hair, really bright eyes. Woulda been a cute little shit under different circumstances. Here's the funniest thing: he was wearing a baseball uniform that looked like it came straight out of the 1930s!”

“Th-that’s…no, it can’t be–”

“Anakiss didn't see him until it was too late,” Hermès murmured, hugging herself. “He swerved at the last second, but the whole car hydroplaned. Telephone pole slammed into the passenger side like a meteor. You were in the passenger seat and—for fuck's sake, Irene, I thought you were dead. The whole right side was crumpled up. It looked more like wadded up tissue paper than something made out of metal.”

“The boy. Tell me the boy survived,” Jolyne begged. Please please please–

“Kid didn't get a scratch on him, believe it or not. Cops herded him off somewhere. We all figured he was lost or a runaway or something. I never found out what happened to him after that. He kept saying he was sorry, over and over again.”

“His name was Emporio. Emporio Alniño.” Jolyne felt her lips moving, but it was almost like the name didn’t belong in her throat. Or rather, Irene’s throat. No in Irene’s life, Irene's world. All around her, the sky had turned an impenetrable dreamlike gray, making the yard and the house and the people inside it seem as if they sealed inside a glass jar.

“Yeah, that's right!” Hermès said. “When the EMTs loaded you onto a stretcher, we all thought you’d slipped into a coma or something, but then you opened your eyes and you reached out to him. He said, 'My name is Emporio' in this little squeaky voice and he started crying so hard he just collapsed onto the ground. Th-they had to drag him away from you. How?? How did you know?? I thought you couldn't remember!”

“I'd never forget him, no matter what. I think...we need to find him. I think he's the key to all of this.”

***

Hermès and Jolyne talked, and talked, and talked. They talked until Jolyne's phone battery almost died and she had to beg Jouta to let her use his portable charger. She clung to the little square of plastic like the lifeline that it was as she curled up in the darkened living room, listening to the low rumble of the snow plow and the frantic thudding of her heart. Kakyoin, Jotaro, and even Jouta all drifted past the couch where she had fortified herself with a dozen pillows and every scrap of fleece or flannel fabric in the house. Jolyne ignored the fear and sadness in their eyes and burrowed deeper into her blanket nest.

“,Listen, girl, we'll figure it out. We always do,” Hermès was saying. “We'll find the kid if we have to drain every swamp in Florida. Oh, fuck, that sounded morbid. We'll find that kid if we have to shake every palm tree--”

“No, no, I get it, Hermès,” Jolyne whispered. “I'm just. Surprised, I guess. In a good way. No one else even bothered trying to listen to me--”

“I owe you a lot,” Hermès said. “I know, I know, you don't remember. But you stopped me from doing something real stupid, something that would have ruined my life. When you picked me up, I was on my way to rob a liquor store. Had this crazy idea of getting locked up in Green Dolphin Street Prison. I thought it was my one shot at getting back at the asshole who murdered my sister. You talked me out of it that night. And you know what? I found out two months later that he got shanked by a hooker because he was too cheap to pay up. I woulda wasted five more years of my life on that miserable sack of horseshit if you hadn't stopped me.”

“Looks like Santa Muerte works in mysterious ways.” Jolyne smiled. Really smiled, for the first time in what felt like months. “I'm glad things worked out, Hermès.”

Unsurprisingly, Jolyne wasn't in the mood for monopoly by the time the sun went down, plunging the house into gentle, flickering candlelight that reminded her of the tiny altar Hermès had built in her jail cell. Kakyoin's needle-sharp gaze followed her as she trudged upstairs, unsmiling and watchful as he blew into his Irish coffee. She heard a sigh of resignation as the door to Irene's childhood bedroom clicked shut.

A small black and white face peered curiously into hers, ears perked and pale blue eyes trained on her. She'd almost forgotten about Irene's pet rabbit. With a pang of guilt, she realized that someone (probably Kakyoin) must have been feeding him and keeping him warm. Was he lonely, she wondered? Did he miss Irene? She wasn't quite sure what made her do it, but carefully and quietly as she could, she knelt beside the cage and offered her hand, palm down, for a sniff. To her surprise, the little creature nuzzled at her fingers through the bars, and she felt an almost imperceptible vibration along his jaw and under his chin, almost like a cat's purr.

With the power off, the entire house was draped in a grave-like silence. Jolyne’s head was close to the floor, and if she listened very carefully, she could hear snatches of conversation from below. Kakyoin seemed to be trying to say something reassuring, but his voice was weak and faltering. Even Jouta sounded  uncharacteristically subdued. Jotaro was whispering hurriedly to someone on his cell phone. She thought she heard the name Josuke–

A sharp rap put an abrupt end to Jolyne’s snooping. Her eyes flicked toward the door–no, wait, the sound hadn't come from her right.

Crack! There it was again. Another rap came, then another, sharp and deliberate and just a few feet from where she knelt beside the foot of the bed. Jolyne blinked in the gloom as she rose shakily. The floorboards creaked beneath her bare feet, and she froze, listening, breath still and dead in her throat. This time her eyes settled on a tall armoire looming over her from the far side of the room, white paint glimmering dully in the moonlight.

Crack!

“W-who's there?” Jolyne cried, fumbling blindly for the light switch. It flicked up and down uselessly. “What the hell are you hiding for? Come out, already!”

Crack!

Over and over and over, a dull, reverberating thud sounded from deep inside the armoire, as if someone were drumming their fists against the door. The wood began to groan, straining from the effort of keeping whatever it was inside.

There was nothing else for it. “What's her name—Lucy! I could really use a light!” A now familiar orange glow lit up the far corners of the room like a Malibu sunset, and Jolyne felt a steady hand on her trembling shoulder.

“Open the door,” Lucy said simply. “What are you waiting for?”

With that, she prodded Jolyne forward, hand on her back. The armoire shook violently, and the closer she crept, the more she could hear what sounded horribly like fingernails scraping against the wood.

With a squeal of metal hinges, the door swung wide open before Jolyne's numb fingers could even find the handle. Despite herself, Jolyne leapt back, arms flung protectively over her face. Her hands, balled into fists, fell limb at her sides at what lay inside it.

At first, all she saw were a few old coats and blankets with big colorful childlike patterns, a smattering of dog-eared baby books and dusty toys. Her hands reflexively reached out to touch the dark, silvery surface of a tall mirror, set inside the door. But the fingers on the other side of the glass were not her own.

A young woman was peering into her face, narrowing her eyes as if she couldn't quite make out Jolyne's features in the darkened bedroom. A woman with bright bottle-green eyes and a pale, heart-shaped face, strands of green hair framing her cheeks. Dried blood matted her once glossy black hair, and it was clear that she had been crying for a long time. Her nails were broken and bloodied from pounding at the mirror for God knows how long, leaving dark red smears. Behind her, hundreds of stars shot over the horizon at impossible speed, the blue-black sky fading into purple dawn and then brilliant blue streaked with lacy white clouds, collapsing into dusk and night and day again as the sun rose and fell over and over and over. Jolyne heard the distant crash of waves, but beneath it was a hollow scraping sound, as if bones were floating in the water.

The lady in the mirror burst into fresh tears, clutching at her tattered clothes as teardrops splashed down onto the water’s surface. Green-painted nails dug into the heart-and-sword tattoo on her left forearm, leaving red crescents. Jolyne knew at once who she was.

“I-Irene?” she gasped.