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For all that Jotaro Kujo found his uncle to be miraculous and kind, he found himself hating the boy’s stand.
On what grounds did it get to decide that his life was able to be saved and not his owner’s? Jotaro didn’t deserve to be saved any more than Josuke did to be in surgery for 2 hours. Yet it was Jotaro who sat in the hall with Josuke’s grieving mother, unharmed with his untouched friends, and Josuke was only barely clinging to life.
Jotaro had called it “kind” once, but now he retracted the statement. Crazy Diamond was cruel. Josuke’s anatomy was no different than anyone else’s, and he’d never heard of a stand coming with such a stupid exception before. It was as if the stand simply chose not to heal Josuke and the boy allowed it.
If, by chance, there was a God out there who allowed for this to happen, Jotaro swore them to Hell and back. Josuke, the damn sweetest most selfless kid that Jotaro had ever met, was cursed by whatever cruel deity gave him his stand and allowed him to suffer the consequences of having it relentlessly. The fact that the stand had almost killed the boy in 1989 as well only served to piss off his nephew more. Imagining the 4 year old barely clinging to life, with no advanced support from the Speedwagon Foundation because they didn’t know he existed , with Crazy Diamond standing over him inflicting the damage to its owner made Jotaro’s blood boil. Not only did it cruelly neglect its user, it actively hurt him in the past.
If not for the basic correlation between stand and user, Jotaro would beat Crazy Diamond to a pulp.
Koichi had left and returned with food and water from Tonio’s, and everyone continued to wait with baited breath for an update on the teenager. The crowd consisted of Jotaro, Okuyasu, Koichi, Tomoko, and Rohan. Hayato was with them for the first hour, but eventually pulled away by other SPW agents. Jotaro’s heart weighed heavy for the child, and he made a mental note to check up on him later. For now, his priority was to stay with Tomoko Higashikata.
It seemed cruel - there was that word again. “Cruel.” Was the life of a Joestar ever anything but? - to not let Tomoko know the truth about what happened to her son. Cruel to her and to Josuke. The gas explosion front was enough to describe the physical damage to the young boy, but the psychological damage to everybody involved couldn’t be explained away so easily. With Jotaro unable to stay in Morioh, how was Josuke supposed to receive the care he needed to ever feel safe again? Grimly, Jotaro realized that ever involving Josuke in this just to leave him to deal with the damages alone would forever haunt his conscience.
As the minutes ticked on, Jotaro’s anger dissolved as it dawned on him that his young uncle’s life, as cruel as it was, was more accurately described as “tragic” than anything else. Born from an affair and unfairly bestowed the Joestar curse, Josuke’s life was destined to be one of tragedy from the beginning. At age 4, his own soul had him on the brink of death for months, and his entire family structure was off thanks to the selfish decisions of his old man. At age 16, Josuke’s uncle was murdered violently just behind his back in the mere seconds it took for Josuke to look away. From that point on, it was one traumatic event after another, all within what was supposed to be the safety of his home.
The final fight against Yoshikage Kira was the last straw. From the little that he’d heard from Hayato and Okuyasu, Josuke watched Okuyasu get blown up in front of him, and Hayato temporarily sacrificed his own life to give Josuke the chance to heal his friend. Hayato was able to walk away. Okuyasu didn’t.
Unfortunately, Jotaro knew it wasn’t Josuke’s first encounter with the brutal ending of a life. Jotaro had witnessed the boy scream and beg for his grandfather, bleeding and bloated, to open his eyes. Hardly a month later, the death of Shigekiyo Yangu weighed heavily on his conscience. Josuke had confided in Jotaro one late night that “he was right there why didn’t I hear him he was there looking for me I could have done something I should have done anything-”. And finally, Aya Tsuji was swiftly murdered right in front of all of them, and Josuke hadn’t even gotten a chance to heal her because it was a damn trap to throw them off of the serial killer’s trail.
And even though both Hayato and Okuyasu were ok in the end, Jotaro knew that the damage inflicted just by watching what happened would never fully heal. Ten years ago, in Cairo, Jotaro had seen the toll that watching their allies get killed took on Polnareff and his grandfather. They’d never recovered, not really. Though Jotaro suspected that his grandfather had gone through something similar before. He never asked. He wasn’t brave enough to.
When a man finally emerged into the waiting area and asked for the relatives of Higashikata Josuke, Jotaro feared the worst. He guided Tomoko over, and didn’t breathe until he heard the words “he’s stable”.
“We had to surgically remove two wooden rods from his leg and lower abdomen, and there are third degree burns covering his right shoulder and the entirety of his left side. The skin has been mended, but the muscle damage could take anywhere from 6 months to a year to heal. We’d like to keep him in the hospital for another week to monitor his recovery before discharging him with a wheelchair.”
“But he’s alive?”
The young doctor smiled, and adjusted his SPW lanyearn. “Yes ma’am. Your son is alive.”
And fuck if Jotaro didn’t want to sink to his knees along with Tomoko and cry. Those 4 and a half hours of agony were finally over, and the dread and anxiety lifted itself off of Jotaro’s shoulders in an instant.
“Can we see him?” came a small voice, and Jotaro realized that the others had gathered around.
The doctor took in the size of the crowd before nodding. “He’s heavily sedated, so he’ll be sleeping for a few hours. Be gentle with his stitches too,” he warned before leading them all a bit down a hall to a door that was slightly ajar. Through the small opening, Jotaro was able to make out a small form under blankets and a doctor finished wrapping his head wound. He dimly remembered a concerning amount of blood pouring from Josuke’s temple when they found him.
Okuyasu wasted no time throwing the door open with a cry of the boy’s name, Tomoko hot on his heels and rushing to her son’s bedside. Taking in the sight, Jotaro’s utter devastation returned tenfold.
Josuke, even paler than he was the time after they had recovered Rohan from Highway Star, lay unconscious in the hospital bed. His hair was down, and dried blood still stuck to his unkempt hair in flakes. The bandage covering his forehead was massive and heavily padded. His eyes had dark bags under them, and his cheeks remained slightly flushed from crying despite how long it had been. Under the loose-fitting hospital gown, a large amount of gauze was visible over his right shoulder and on the right side of the neck. Aside from his arms, everything else was hidden under blankets and machinery wires. Jotaro doubted he could stomach much else anyway.
It amazed him, in a morbid way, how trifle burn wounds and being impaled seemed this summer. The mentality of Josuke’s safety net under him comforted Jotaro so that he feared little injury, so long as Jouke was able to fix it. But the fact that he had faced Kira alone meant he had no protection. He was only able to barely keep himself alive and protect the people around him, and the result was this sickly state the teenager was in now. Of course the only one injured was the one who could do nothing about it.
Tomoko held Josuke’s slack hand in her own, sobbing out apologies while thanking god that he was ok. Okuyasu stood a little behind her, Koichi by his side, and they just took in their best friend’s form in silent shock. Rohan stood to the side, unsure what to do with himself but refusing to leave anyway.
Jotaro, who was still frozen in the doorway, nodded his thanks to the doctor that dressed Josuke’s head wound as he passed her and gently took his cap off. Kneeling by his uncle’s side, the man gently took his other hand in his own and shut his eyes and lowered his forehead to the slack fingers.
Pausing time for a single second gave Jotaro the time to take a shaky breath.
“You’re gonna be alright, kid. We’re gonna be alright.”
As time resumed, looking at the crowd of people who cared enough to stay by Josuke’s bedside, Jotaro found himself believing it. He wouldn't be going through this alone.
He was gonna be ok.