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Jotaro was worried, to say the least, as he sat there, watching his kid in jail. Memories of his own adolescence flashed by him; he'd been so damn angry, so full of rage, and with no outlet for it, no way to parse through the complicated isolation-loneliness-depression he'd felt, he'd acted out. It's a pattern he'd been worried to see repeat, and as he stares at his child and those aquamarine eyes, so much like his own, stare back, he can't help but feel something in his stomach sink. Like he's failed as a parent.
"Jojo," he murmurs, softly. "I've seen the footage, kid. You had no need to rob a 7-11, none at all. Your allowance would've made it possible for you to buy everything you lifted, and more. Is this a cry for help?"
"Shut the fuck up, old man." God, it's like looking in a mirror sometimes. Jotaro wonders how Holly had the patience to deal with this attitude.
"No," Jotaro says evenly. "No, I don't think I will. I've never seen someone's behaviour do a 180 so fast unless something's bothering them. So. What's bothering you?"
Quiet. Dead silence. As a teenager, Jotaro used to be great at the glowering glare and not speaking a word while he sulked, but maybe he's been outmatched.
Or maybe not. "Dad..."
Hesitant. Tentative. Tone of voice like someone ready to be shot down.
"Yeah?" Jotaro tries to hold eye-contact, even though he can tell it's unwanted. Or maybe not unwanted, just - a moment of vulnerability that he's witnessing, perhaps not one intended to be shared with him. "What did you want to say? You can tell me anything."
"I wanted to ask.... if I had been born a girl. What would you have called me?"
Softly, but not with uncertainty. Softly, with something bordering on fear. Anxiety. But with conviction. Determination. And Jotaro remembers the same moment in his own childhood, remembers hacking off his waist length hair with the kitchen scissors and telling his mother that he was a boy. Jotaro had been nine, not fourteen, but he knows that his child knows who they are. Who she is?
He answers the question with certainty. "Jolyne," he says. "But spelt J-O-L-Y-N-E. Not with two Es."
"Jolyne..." there's a sense of quiet awe in the repetition.
"Would you like me to call you that from now on?" he asks. "Jolyne?"
"Yeah. And uh," Jolyne fidgets, hands shifting, "could you use different pronouns for me? I mean. She/her. Just... just those."
"Of course," Jotaro says. He wonders whether he should have come out to her earlier, wonders if coming out to her now will ruin her moment. Figures it can wait until a better time, when she asks on her own or when it won't take away from the discussion to tell her about it. She's always known life with a single father, but she doesn't know about the nine months he spent pregnant, or how it felt, holding her in his arms and knowing that his messy disastrous queer transmasculine body had birthed her. Had protected her prenatally. Had given him a daughter of his own - not that he knew that then.
As they walk out of jail, bail paid and everything handled, she murmurs quietly, "Do you actually see me as your daughter now?"
"You've been my daughter all along," Jotaro says. "Not just now. I'm glad you told me."
She hugs him, then and there, something she rarely does in public anymore (because it's "embarrassing.") He holds her back firmly but gently, pats her back awkwardly.
"You know, if you want to buy new clothes..." he thinks for a moment, "or make-up, let me know. We could make a trip out of it. If you want your old man to come along, that is."
Jolyne grins. "Oh my god, yes! Thank you, Dad!"
She's smiling on the walk back home - a proper smile. Jotaro can't remember the last time he saw her smile like that.
It makes him smile, too.