Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Jojo and I had never really gotten along.

I think he privately resented me, at first, simply for arriving when I did and capturing his father’s attention.  I can’t really blame him for feeling that, though.  Jealousy is a very human emotion.

I can, however, blame him for the way he treated me.  I was just a street urchin who had turned up at the door scared and filthy, and by chance he had been the first to the door of the manor when I knocked, and after he had seen me waiting there on the step he moved to close the door in my face.  He was twelve, older than me by just a few months, but already had picked up how to be cruel to those ‘beneath’ him.

Can’t blame him for that either, really, given that I had my own experience with cruelty.

---

One incident in particular stands out, when I look back at my childhood with Jojo.

It was when I was fourteen.  He was fifteen, then, and at the age when boys would start falling in love with girls (supposedly, though I never found my eye lingering on girls, any more than it would on other boys).  He had taken a shine to a young Miss Pendelton, the sixteen-year-old daughter of a doctor who lived down the lane.  The two spent nearly all of their time together, and while I was a bit jealous of his talent for making friends, it was nice seeing them happy.

Or I thought it was, until the Pendelton girl confided in me that Jojo was treating her badly.  His abuse had left her small body with bruises.  I advised her as best I could, telling her to avoid him, to go nowhere alone, and I promised her that I would ward him off from her.

Confronting Jojo got me nowhere.  He beat me till I bled, lied to our father that I had started the fight, and told all of his friends I had assaulted miss Pendelton and forced myself on her.

I didn’t have very many friends after that.

---

In bits and pieces, eight years passed.  I grew up from a skinny and clumsy child to a more confident young adult.  Jojo grew up too, with emphasis on grew—at two meters he absolutely towered over nearly everyone else in our class, myself included.  I was studying law, while he had thrown himself into the uncharacteristic field of archeology.

Though we were something like rivals, I still considered him my friend, simply by virtue of living with him so long. We were able to bond over our shared love of boxing, and our mutual concern for our father’s health.  He was an old man, but his wellbeing had taken a sharp decline shortly after my seventeenth birthday, and despite the efforts of the finest doctors in the region, the future seemed grim after two years of no improvement.

It broke my heart, really, seeing him in a state like that.  After our winter semester had ended, I confided to Jojo my worry that perhaps the infection was a misaimed punishment from God directed at me.  His response chilled me.

“God’s got something else in mind for you, Dio.”  It was innocent enough, but he had a harsh look in his eye despite it.  “As do I.”

The thought crossed my mind that my brother might intend to do me harm.  I politely ended the conversation there and retreated.

---

Searching Jojo’s bedroom yielded nothing, as did his side of our shared study.  Unwilling to give up, I retreated to my own desk, determined to plot some kind of counter, and found there a locked drawer to which I had no key.

I pried open the drawer with a knife, and what I saw inside chilled my blood even as it confirmed my suspicions.

A bottle of white powder labelled in an Asian script that I could not decipher.

A small mound of medicine capsules- the same his father should have been taking for the cough that had since turned into a lasting inflammation.

Perhaps the most alarming was the journal.  He had near perfectly replicated my handwriting, and the pages bore a long and detailed plot to claim the Joestar inheritance by poisoning my foster father— ‘the same way I killed my real one’.

It made my blood run cold, reading that.  My ‘real’ father had been the worst piece of shit to walk the earth.  Cruel and spiteful.  I had killed him in impulse and desperation, pawning my mother’s wedding ring to buy arsenic, which I slipped into his bottle when he wasn’t looking.  He deserved to die quick and rot slow.

But Mr. Joestar?  The man who had taken me in, and treated me as his own son, if not better?

I saw now what Jojo was doing.  I had thought it meaningless for him to kill his own father, motivated only by spite.  But that was not what he intended.

His intention was to frame me for it.

---

“So you’ve seen it.”  A voice I had long come to dread came from behind me.

Jojo, the picture of noble beauty, was sat at his own desk with a dark look.  “Doesn’t change a thing, really.  Do you really think you can stop me now?”

My heartbeat quickened, seeing the smug shit sat before me.  My hand went to my knife almost as a reflex.  “Are you going to kill me?”

“Kill you?”  He laughed, and despite the harshness of the sound he looked so real, so human.  At least until his cold blue eyes opened again.  “Of course.  You’ve been plotting against me,” and he rose from the chair and crossed the room to take my wrist in his hand, “and worse still, poisoning our dear father!  Such a wicked and ungrateful man you are, Dio.  Prison would be too good for you.”

Jojo’s smile resembled nothing more than the bared teeth of a dog preparing to strike.  “Though, it may yet be too late for Father.  If only I could have discovered your wicked scheme sooner!” A theatrical sigh as he dropped my arm and shoved me back against the wall.  I felt something in my shoulder break, and bit down hard on my tongue to keep from screaming aloud.  “Oh, how heavy my heart will be… though being the sole inheritor of Father’s will might ease the parting.”

“Monster.”  The word was heavy with the blood that flooded my mouth.  “You’re a monster.”

“A monster?”  He laughed again, quick and bitter, but his expression had hardened.  “Like you’re one to talk, with what you did to your father.  What you’ve done to me.”

Before I’d had time to react, he threw a punch, then another.  I didn’t dare fight back, knowing how he would spin any of my actions to the police.  My head struck hard against the wall.  Dizzy from the impact, I could hardly see the man in front of me.  In my state, it was doubtful that my knife would do any lasting damage, but something could.

The mask.  That hideous stone construct that Jojo had spent so many long hours studying, when it didn’t hang from the wall above his desk like some obscene idol.  I had seen his notes, seen what that mask did, seen the pulverized models he had tested it on.

In a moment’s respite between blows, I drove my knee into his gut and ducked under his arm.  With my uninjured hand I took the mask from his desk, pushed it against his face as he turned, and spit a mouthful of blood onto it.

Light flashed.  Stone grinded against stone.  Someone screamed—perhaps we both screamed.  When my eyes cleared, I saw Jojo’s body all curled into itself like a dead spider, the mask’s long needles stabbing into his head from every side.

I fell to my knees.  Where before I had been crying from the pain, now I wept for a brother I could never love in his life but who I now pitied in his death.

I’ll have to show this to the police, I thought distantly, but it was drowned out by I can’t let anybody see this.  My brother dead on the floor, the poison in my desk drawer, the intricate plot in a script almost indistinguishable from my own, everything together made for a very incriminating scene.

I tried to steady my breathing, but it shook still from the force of my heart pounding against my ribs.  I could burn the journal, I thought, then people might believe me that it was Jojo’s doing.  Yes.  I took the lighter from Jojo’s desk and carried the journal to the fireplace.  The pages caught easily, and within a minute the book was entirely ablaze.  I watched the flames ruffle the pages for a moment, then turned back to my brother’s body—

--the body was gone.

The shock nearly knocked me over, and my hand went to my knife again for comfort more than anything.  The blood pooled on the carpet didn’t look to have been disturbed, even though its source had vanished.

My eyes swept the room once, twice, as I desperately tried to rationalize its disappearance (and I was already saying it, when not even five minutes prior that had been my brother), when movement caught my eye.

A drop of blood fell from the ceiling, followed closely by another.  My faith in God forsaking me, I looked up to the source.

There was Jojo, body painfully contorted, clinging to the ceiling like an unearthly spider and emitting some kind of grating hiss from behind the mask which still clung tight to his face.

He dropped to the floor almost without a sound, and the mask fell from his head.  I saw Jojo before me, looking just as he had before our fight—no, there was a difference, however slight.  His mouth, open and dragging rough breaths, bore a horrible set of wickedly sharp teeth, and he glared with an inhuman animosity in his now reddened eyes.

I clutched the knife closer to my chest.  “Jojo…”

“Dio,” and there it was again, with his face all twisted up like he was in pain it almost made him look human, “What did you do to me?”

Before I had time to react, he had crossed the space between us in an instant and had me by the throat.  “Your blood, Dio…” and something broke the skin at my neck.  There was little room for pain in my mind, between the fear and the confusion, but I could feel the heat of my blood as it ran down my collar.  “I need your blood…”

Urgently I maneuvered to push my knife against him, but even as the blade slipped into the meat of his chest he did not react, nor did he bleed.  He was pressed so closely against me that there was little room to move further.  “Jojo, what…” and my breath left me, along with my balance.  As he pulled back, I collapsed to the floor, raggedly gasping for air.  A hand went to my throat and came back crimson.  “How…” and he kicked my side.  I doubled over, and he kicked again, this time directly into my face.

“You really thought that would work?  Fate is on my side, shitstain, as is that mask.”  His shoe came down hard on my neck.  “I survived because I’m stronger.  Because I’m better than you’ll ever be.”

I had dropped the knife.  Flailing about for it, I felt my hand brush against the burning remnants of the journal.  I grabbed it and threw it into his face.

He screeched and stumbled back, and I took my chance to shove him to the floor and throw a curtain over him.  Something had to keep him down.  While he thrashed and howled, I dug through his desk for another weapon.  By the time he had torn the tangle of curtains away I had drawn out a bottle of turpentine and held it threateningly.

“Jojo,” I said, shaky, “don’t take even one step closer.”  His hair and clothes still smoldering, he moved toward me.  “I swear.  I’ll kill you.”

He took another step. 

“Stay back,”

And another.

“I’m warning you,”

He came all the way up to me.  I could feel his cold breath on my face.  I closed my eyes and waited for death.

“Say you’re sorry.”

My eyes flew open again.  “What?”

“You heard me.  Say you’re sorry for ruining my life.”

Ruining his life?  I had never done a single thing to him out of malice! 

Did he expect me to apologize for acting out in self-defense? For being a better son?  Getting better grades, having better manners, having a heart instead of just a black pit of selfishness?

Something inside me had snapped, then, and with a wordless cry I swung the bottle into his face.  Over the sound of glass shattering I heard the breaking of a few bones in my hand.  Jojo snarled and staggered backwards.  The room was filled with the stink of turpentine.  Unwilling to waste even a moment, I grabbed handful of hot ash and coals from the fireplace and pitched it at his head.

He went up like an oiled candle.  I yanked the bookshelf from the wall and threw it in his path on my way to the door.

I did not make it far down the hall before falling to the ground. Overwhelmed by pain and sudden exhaustion, I became unconscious listening to my brother’s wails overwhelmed by the sound of fire.

Chapter Text

I dreamed about him, so vividly that even in my moments awake I hardly remembered I had killed him.  Every part of my body hurt, whether it was bruises, burns, or just my mind lashing out against what little unmarred flesh I still had.  In the labyrinth of sleep a twisted simulacrum of my brother stalked me through the smoldering ruin of a now endless manor, calling out my name in a childlike singsong when he wasn’t screeching and howling in pain.

Even when awake I could only lie immobile, eyes fixed firmly on the ceiling and counting every breath to distract from the feeling of bandages against my raw and burned flesh.

Several days into this I became nebulously aware of someone tending my injuries.  I could barely see her face, but a young woman with golden hair had come in twice daily to rewrap my bandages and reset the splints on my arms and shoulders. 

Finally I gathered breath enough to speak.  There were so many things I could say, but the first to come to my lips was “Is my father okay?”

She started at that, as I had been lying very still.  “Oh! You’re awake,” she said quietly.  “I’m terribly sorry, but your father is…”  Her pause told me everything in her voice’s stead.

“Ah.”  Tears trickled down from the edges of my eyes and pooled in my ears.  “Damn.”

She set down my arm and moved to sit beside to my head.  “I’m sorry.  You were the only survivor.”  A delicate hand traced along the hollow of my collarbone.  “Bit of a miracle, really.  You were right in the heart of the blaze.”

“Everyone…” The wind left my lungs like frost melting in the sun.

 “Least we still got you, right?”

She smiled, and I finally remembered where I had seen her before.  “Miss Pendelton?”

“It’s nurse Pendelton, actually.” She ruffled my hair.  “Lots has changed, Dio.” 

---

Under Erina’s gentle care, my condition began to improve.  The bandages came off, as did a few of the splints, though I was still too delicate to stand for too long.  Though I could think of nothing better to do than simply lie down and sleep through the rest of winter, she insisted on visiting me daily, reminding me to eat and drink as if I were a child who couldn’t take care of myself.

Strangely enough, it didn’t bother me.

---

We were walking together on one of those sunny winter days, myself on crutches with Erina trailing just behind me.

“You’re all that’s left of the Joestars, aren’t you?”

“I…” Truth be told, I had avoided thinking about that.  “Could be.  I’m not sure if I want to be.”

“Your old dad’s family name was Brando, right?  You could take that.”

I affected a shudder.  “Absolutely not.  He was terrible.”

“Doesn’t have to be all him, though.  You could make it your own.”  I heard her chuckling behind me.  “Plus, think of the lucky Ms. Brando, if you find someone.”

“Are you offering yourself for the role?”  I could barely finish the sentence before she burst fully into laughter, and I followed suit.

---

I stayed at the hospital perhaps longer than necessary, but as every place I could think to call home had already burned to the ground, there was not really an option.  At least Erina remained at my side.

---

When an obviously foreign man came to my door asking if I was the young man who had seen the vampire, I nearly closed the door in his face.  It had been only days since I had lost my whole family, and here he was to reopen that wound.

Still, I obliged him.  There was enough space in the hospital room for two.  I sat on the bed, him on the chair, and I let him explain himself.

His name, I learned, was William Zeppeli, and he had dedicated the last thirty years of his life to tracking and destroying the mask that had transformed my brother.  I politely refrained from asking him why it had taken so damn long, instead asking what his penny dreadful had to do with me.  I wish I was prepared for what he said next.

“Your cursed brother is still at large.”

If you put an ear up to the side of my head when he said that, you might have heard shattering glass.  I had understood perfectly what he said, but the meaning was so shocking as to be impossible.

 “I don’t think that’s right.  The mansion burned to the ground.  There weren’t any survivors…”

“That you know of.  Surely you saw what your brother had become.  It’s terribly unlikely that a house fire would vanquish him for good.”  I turned that over in my head a few times.  Across the room, Mr. Zeppeli poured a glass of water.

If Jojo were really still alive, if he had somehow emerged from the flames unharmed, and with all the terrible power the mask had given him… “Can he be defeated?”  I finished the thought out loud.

Mr. Zeppeli responded with a good-natured grin.  “That’s why I’m here.”  With a bit of a flourish he set his hand against the side of the glass.  Almost immediately the room was filled with a ringing sound, and the surface of the water went from smooth to wild patterns.  “I practice an art called Sendo, which happens to be perfectly suited to defeating the undead.”

“Ah, of course.  Vampires react terribly to the sound of chiming—” I had barely enough time to register that the glass had stopped ringing before his fist impacted under my ribs.  “—FUCK.”

“If you’re ready to listen politely to an adult, I will continue.  Sendo practitioners use breathing patterns to generate different energies within their bodies.  One such energy, called Hamon, replicates the energy found in sunlight, which destroys vampires and their ilk on contact.”  He flexed his hand, producing an alarming crack.  “A similar energy greatly increases the living body’s capacity for healing.  That punch was not only to shut you up; you might find that you are no longer in any pain.”

Indeed, the damage he had dealt to my pride was more than enough.  “Are you going to teach me how to wield this power?”

“What? No.  You’re a child.”

“I’m nineteen.  Not to mention it’s my fault Jojo’s turned into that monster, I have to help you—”

“Out of the question.”

“Please.  He’s my brother.”

“Very well,” he sighed heavily.  “If you want so badly to risk your life, you can accompany me, and I’m willing to teach you a bit of Sendo.  But you aren’t responsible for cleaning up the mess you made of your brother.”

Chapter Text

It quickly became obvious the difference in ability between the two of us.  Baron Zeppeli could walk on water and split stones with ease, meanwhile I struggled even to produce a quarter of his energy standing still. 

Really, the tutoring was an excuse to learn more about the mask’s power.  Zeppeli was no expert, but he had experience, and between utter failures of practical lessons I learned much about vampires, zombies, thralls, the uncontrolled spread of the infection and the terrible control a master could exert on a human body. While this increased my resolve to eliminate what became of Jojo, my skills only continued to flounder.  Though it would kill me to admit, it might take me years to develop enough to be a use, and that was time we wouldn’t have.

"He can't have gone far."

"I have a few ideas.  Give me that map."  It only took me a moment to find it.  "That's the place."

"Wind knights lot?"

"I remember him talking about it in college--you know he was interested in history?  Wrote his thesis on the revolution.  If he's after an army, and I'll bet he is, there's no better place.  Loads of old knights and soldiers buried there."

We sat quietly in the carriage.  I tried my hardest to maintain the breathing pattern the baron had shown me, though even with all the steadiness and care I could summon the energy it produced was paltry, a bare flicker compared to his steady glow.

Suddenly the carriage jolted to a halt.  I pulled a curtain aside; it was dark as a starry night, and surely we hadn’t made more than halfway through the tunnel.  The baron reached for the latch, but I grabbed his wrist and held it tight.  If we were lucky, it was just some wannabe highwayman that we could drive off without effort; at worst it could be a horde of ravenous undead.  Leaving our relative shelter without knowing could only be fallacious.

There were indistinct shouts, both from the driver and whatever third party had him stop.  We could not make out the words, but the commotion reached a sudden peak—and then just as suddenly stopped with a terribly wet crunch.  Another followed shortly after, and the carriage lurched.  Whoever it was, they were killing the horses.

The chances of a peaceful encounter had plummeted.  Keeping the Baron behind me, I stepped out of the carriage with my hand on my knife and was faced with a horrid scene.

What remained of the driver was spread across the floor of the tunnel, along with one of the horses, the other having broken its reins and fled.  At the center of the carnage was a young man in a longcoat and bowler hat, topped off with a remarkable mane of yellow hair.

“Oi!”

Hardly a moment passed between drawing my knife and dropping it, as the man bowled into me like a battering ram. I barely had time to dodge his next strike, a sledgehammer whipping through the air just before my face.  Fuck me, I’m out of my league.

Behind me, Baron Zeppeli had smashed the neck off a wine bottle and was, by the sound of things, channeling Hamon into it.  On my end, the ringing of glass was just another distraction, and when he started launching liquid projectiles I quietly admitted that I would be in his way and maneuvered to get the young man between the two of us.

My heart fluttered a moment when I saw the stranger stagger back with a spray of red, but when he straightened I saw that it was just a splash of wine against his face

His arms went down to block the knife, and I took advantage of that opening to swing my right fist into his jaw. He had the prescience to close his right eye before I rammed my thumb into the socket, but he still reeled from the pain, and that gave me the moment I needed to grapple him from behind.

Breathe in, breathe out.  Let my breath and my heartbeat synchronize, feel the light of the sun well up in my chest and let it build until I felt near to exploding.  When it felt as if my heart had been set ablaze by the light that resonated between our two bodies, I let all of that energy out with a roar and the man’s thrashing form went limp in my arms and crumpled to the ground.

Zepelli’s eyes met mine, and for a moment he smiled approvingly.

On hands and knees, our former assailant was panting like a marathon runner and soaked through with sweat, looking blankly at the both of us as if we had appeared before him from out of thin air.