JoJo's Bizarre Adventure
Bloody Sunday
Prologue: Before the Fall (Part 0)

Dio Brando was not always an evil person.

Once, he was a kind-hearted boy with good intentions. Once, he was a boy who paid attention to the difference between right and wrong. Once, he was someone who cared for others, even more than himself.

He tried his hardest to make those around him happy, those who he cared about deeper than anyone ever thought he was capable of. He did horrible things when he thought it was the only way to help those that he felt deeply for, and those people repaid him with the affection that his father never showed him.

Those who knew Dio well were few and far between.

Some say that there was only one person who ever truly knew the man who was once called Dio Brando - that person was Jonathan Joestar.

Those people would be wrong.

Jonathan Joestar's tumultuous relationship with Dio may have been one of the more well-known cases of Dio having any sort of working relationship with another person, but he certainly wasn't the only person.

After all, Jonathan only knew the man called "Dio Brando." He never knew the man that Dio would become a hundred years after Jonathan's death.

Others say that there was another man who knew Dio Brando, but not as Dio Brando. A Catholic priest named Enrico Pucci was a well-known friend and follower of the being eventually known as DIO, and was, perhaps, the only person to ever fully understand DIO as he was in those months, those years. He was the only person to ever empathize with DIO's great plans and large ambition, the things that swallowed the remainder of his humanity.

But still, he wasn't the only person to know DIO.

There was another person, one who has been lost to the history of the Joestar family, one whose story never coincided with the Joestar's, whose path never crossed with theirs. Because that person was only a small blip in the big story, the war against Dio Brando and the monster that he would eventually allow himself to become, their name and their story were lost to history, only remembered by those who knew them.

Her name was Ava Shelley, and she was the girl that Dio Brando sought to protect, even through his descent into madness.

Ava Shelley was never a powerful person.

She was poor and weak, unable to protect herself or anyone else. She was kind, sometimes too kind, and she was easily taken advantage of. She was a coward and a cry-baby, always resorting to flight when her other option was to fight.

But she was the one that always reminded Dio of the man he used to be, even if he was trying to reject that person.

There was nothing remarkable about her, but she was a person that was hard to forget.

It was no easy feat to tame the demon that was Dio.

Very little remains of her. The records that show that she existed have long been destroyed, burned down in a fire in London in 1988. Her grave site has been desecrated, her headstone missing and her name forgotten. Every official record that Ava Shelley ever existed has been destroyed.

Except for one.

Jotaro Kujo dug through his grandfather's photo albums, ones that the young marine biologist had inherited after the last Joestar had passed away the previous year, erasing the name from records permanently.

Each album was dated with a year.

Some were filled with photographs that helped the late Joseph Joestar remember the people he'd loved most in his final months. He'd had photos from their adventure to Egypt nearly twenty years prior, photos of those people from his time as a teenager in Italy and America, and photos of the people who'd raised him and the people he raised.

Jotaro remembered most of those people, even if he had never met them.

The pretty woman with long, black hair from the 1938 album was Elizabeth Joestar, Joseph's mother. There was a picture of Shizuka, who was now nineteen, in the 2005 album. There were photos of Suzie Q from 1938 until her death in 2003. Kakyoin, Avdol, and Iggy were all immortalized in the photographs from 1989.

But there were older albums, still, buried beneath the ones Joseph has used to remember.

One was from 1887, the year before Dio's supposed death.

The very first picture that Jotaro looked at was of three teenagers, all standing in front of an oversized London mansion.

One of them was a tall, muscular, blue-haired man with kind eyes and a small smile on his face. Jotaro knew him as Jonathan, his great-great grandfather, one who'd died far too young.

On the other side of the photograph was an even taller, but less muscular man, a smirk instead of a smile on his face, his blond hair striking against the dark, London sky. Even young and dressed in Victorian-era garb, even without the red eyes that painted him as a vampire, Jotaro could recognize Dio.

Between the two was a much smaller, more feminine figure. She looked like a waif compared to the two giant men next to her. Her soft, silver hair fell to her shoulders, and she wore a sweet smile that brightened the entire mood of the photo.

Jotaro knew that this woman was Ava.

The photo was from before everything had happened, before the storm that had hung over the Joestar family arrived. It was evident by how inexplicably happy the trio looked, even if Dio wasn't smiling.

He looks almost human in this picture, Jotaro thought to himself. He was human in this picture. It was before he became a monster.

He flipped the page of the album, only to blink in mild confusion as an old envelope, well-worn, but also well-preserved, fell from the pages and onto the floor of his apartment. Placing the album down, he gingerly picked up the fragile paper and opened it, removing the letter inside.

The handwriting was soft and loopy, small and neat. It looked like the handwriting of a woman. At the very top of the page was the number 1888, the year that the letter had been written and delivered.

Eyes wide, Jotaro began to read, digesting the words of the writer.

My Dearest Jonathan,

I know that this letter is probably pointless, but I wanted to explain things to you. I wanted you to know that what happened these past few weeks was no one's fault. And I also wanted you to know that Dio is not an evil person.

I remember reading a book a long time ago. It was one you loaned me when I first arrived at the mansion, saying that it seemed like something I would like to read. There was a quote in the book that I remember, even now, years later.

"No man chooses evil because it is evil; he only mistakes it for happiness, the good he seeks."

Dio is not evil, and I can promise you that.

He may not be a good person. He is not even a neutral person. All I can say is that he is not evil, because I have seen this Dio before. I have known him for years, and he has never been evil. He has always been righteous.

Dio and I have had a long history. Not all of it has been happy, unlike the years I spent in the company of you and your family, who have taken care of us. I will not pretend to understand why Dio chose to do what he did, and I will not excuse it.

I will, however, say that I can understand him.

Please, Jonathan, if you can, find it in your heart to forgive Dio. He has done wrong things, but you are the closest thing to a true family he has ever had.

I know it is not and will never be an excuse.

But Dio needs you. Even if he no longer needs me, he needs you. He needs you to show him what goodness lies within people. He has to learn that not everyone is out to destroy him and threaten what he does have. He has never had things for his own, at least not for very long. Everyone and everything he has ever been able to call his own has disappeared before his eyes within moments.

Dio has always believed that power is the only thing that will keep the things he wants with him for longer than a fleeting moment. He has always wanted to do whatever it took to gain that power.

It sounds improbable, but remind yourself that you and he have had such vastly different lives. You have never had anything taken from you until Dio came along. Blaming him would not be wrong, but I ask that you understand why he struck against you.

Dio is not evil. He is just greedy.

I'm sorry for my part in all of this. I hope you can forgive me, as well.

With my whole heart,

Ava.

Jotaro stared at the letter, amazed at how fiercely that Ava had defended Dio in her writing, her words so powerful that even he, with nothing but deep hatred for the man who nearly killed his mother and actually did kill three of his friends, felt as if perhaps there was more to the despicable creature than just what he had seen.

Placing the letter down, Jotaro looked at the photographs again.

On the page that the letter had fallen from was a photo of Dio and Ava, one that was so very uncharacteristic of the blond vampire.

It looked like it was a winter day, snow falling around the two. The colors were heavily saturated, and Ava, in her white dress and with her silver hair, nearly blended into the background. But Dio, who held Ava in his arms, his eyes trained on only her, stood out against the almost monochrome background, his red cloak draped over the two of them.

But it was the look on Dio's face that made Jotaro take a second look at the photo. His eyes were gentle, almost loving, as he held her left hand in his, his right arm wrapped around her waist as she held the cloak over her shoulders.

The expression Dio wore was one that Jotaro had never dreamed that the man could wear.

He wondered what else he never knew about Dio. He wondered what other faces Dio never showed to his enemies. If Jotaro wasn't looking at proof, staring it directly in the face, he would still refuse to believe it.

Unable to understand it, he replaced the letter in the pages of the album, carefully closing it.

Dio was gone, along with everything he ever was.

Photographs were just memories without meaning.

What he looked like in one moment to one person didn't matter in the end. He wouldn't be coming back any time soon.

Jotaro would never know what he was like in these moments.

And he didn't care to.

After all, a dead man couldn't feel anything.

Notes:

Welcome to Bloody Sunday, the first in my series of JJBA fanfiction. I'm really excited to start this series.
I don't want people to go into this thinking that I'm going to make Dio a good guy, or change his heart or whatever.
I just really disliked Phantom Blood's handling of cardboard characters, because I feel like going into more backstory is always a good idea,
especially with people like Dio. So I wanted to give him more of a backstory, and that includes making him a bit more human, I suppose?
Not sure how to explain it, but I also really wanted to keep it in the spirit of Part I, especially towards the end.

Anyways, I'll also be going through to Part III as well, and I'll probably cover the 100 years between Part I and Part III.
I hope that you enjoy this series!

Thanks,

Chiyuki