Chapter Text
Hell was lovely this time around.
A statement not many could make, but if anything, Dante was overly qualified to do so, what with all the times he had ended up down here. And it was just the truth. This was definitely the one hellish escapade Dante was enjoying the most in comparison to all his previous ones.
It was just that tang to the air, that underlying current in the atmosphere, humming in such a tune that Dante’s blood could not help but be energized, the underworld’s very fabric of reality providing Dante’s demonic half with more power. It was the demons, snarling and grotesque, wild and ferocious like Dante himself, that were found aplenty and gave him all the outlet he needed for the urge in him that always hungered for combat.
And then there was that part that had been sorely lacking the last few times Dante had ventured down under, the part that was the main cause for the grin Dante seemed to sport freely most of the times, for the laughter that escaped him so easily, a strange lightness to his every move. The thing Dante had been missing for decades now and still could not truly believe to have regained.
Of course it was—
Right on a wordless cue Dante stepped to the side, neatly getting out of the way as a wave of blue energy cut through a group of demons that had been trying to sneak up on him from behind. Always one to reciprocate, Dante fired off a shot with Kalina Ann to stun the hulking beast that was trying to take the opening covering Dante’s ass had made, Dante following up by taking a quick trickster step forward to get up close and personal to kill it with his blade. Demonic flesh split under the weight of Dante’s sharp edge, the demon tumbling now lifeless to the ground. The group from before following the exact same pattern.
There were no words exchanged when they were done. They both just turned to the next target, the next demon out of the current horde that was foolish enough to challenge not one but two Sons of Sparda. Steps light, blades singing, the air humming with a crackle of energy. But Dante was sure he could spy a quick lift on his brother’s lips before the other skipped away to inflict more carnage, countless blades of blue crystallizing in the air to hit their targets. It mirrored the giddy joy that bubbled up in Dante as he felt his twin’s essence flare, the feeling all too present in his body; it felt like it pushed up against his ribcage from the inside, making his heart seem to overflow.
It was Vergil. Of course it was Vergil.
Twin, brother, long lost other half of Dante’s soul. Whole and healthy and here by Dante’s side, like he hadn’t been for decades. A resonance in the air, the mirror of Dante’s being just a few steps away, fighting by his side. Fighting along with him, moves sure, no conflict between them, no animosity to be found as they covered each other’s weak spots like they had been born to do so. Like they had always fought with their backs to each other. The silent promise of being there blanketing everything and making something settle happily in Dante’s skin where before it had been insistently itching, scratching, calling and never calming. But now it was quiet and content.
It felt like the impossible, like a miracle undeserving. And still Dante couldn’t help but take it with both hands and hold on as tight as possible as things finally seemed to make sense again. He couldn’t have been any giddier about it.
So yeah, that was more than enough to make the hellish wastes around them seem better than any spa spot Dante had visited in his time – even if those visits had always involved the one or other challenging hunt. This was so much better. Was probably the best he could have ever imagined, and Dante had imagined a lot, in drunken stupors, in despairing daydreams, in half-awake nightmares.
He wouldn’t change now for anything.
Although…
It was a bit too quiet currently. Next to the sound of flesh being rend apart under sharp blades, the splatter of dark demon blood, grunts and growls and the movement of fabric – it was too silent. Vergil tight-lipped as ever, and after decades of not having been able to hear his voice, Dante suddenly couldn’t stand the silence for a second longer.
“Soooo, what are we doing here again?” he asked without further ado, as he batted away a demon that tried to jump him from behind. He couldn’t really remember what that one had been called.
After all the lesser demons they had slayed, the fiends continuing to pour in from the fields surrounding the stump of the Qliphoth, they were getting just a bit samey. Which was one other reason for the question. Vergil was probably feeling the same tediousness of the one-sided massacre they were committing right now. Again. For the hundredths of times.
Man, how long had they already been down here?
The following seconds kept being filled with the soundtrack of gore and carnage from both of them. No smooth snide voice rising above the cacophony to answer.
It began to itch at Dante in a way he really didn’t like. After a few moments more he decided that it really didn’t matter what Vergil’s answer would be, as long as he would just say something. The prolonged silence between them grating in a way Dante was suddenly overly aware of, Vergil’s quiet almost foreboding, making his heart pound and his fingers twitch around his weapons.
Vergil had to talk, had to make noise beyond the beat of his heart, the breath of his lungs, because those could be someone else’s as well. As long as Vergil was talking, he couldn’t be gone. As long as he was berating, he couldn’t have disappeared again, couldn’t have died—
Vergil’s presence flared, as he did some magic mojo behind Dante’s back, while Dante sidestepped a scythe that had been heading for his head in his distraction. Vergil’s aura was bright, overly so, even in comparison to the underworld’s background miasma. It felt – it felt large, striking, like a helium star brought down to burn all those that opposed it to the ground. Changed, stronger, but still the same in its form, its feel. It was a desperately needed balm on Dante’s agitated core, his own powers calming down a bit to hum in tune with it.
But it was still not enough. Dante glanced over towards his brother, seeing that dark clad back a few paces away locked in his own battles.
Was Dante going to have to try a different question or—
“We,” Vergil suddenly said with force, as he cut a Riot clean in half, “are keeping these pests from getting to the human world.” With fluid steps he was upon the next demon, never stopping, never hesitating. His battle a dance of violence and blood, elegance and control clear in every aspect of his powerful form.
Weren’t Dante kept preoccupied with his own demons he would have loved to watch, just to see if he could maybe find some openings for himself. After this they were probably going to switch back to each other as sparring partners. They were definitely way more fun and challenging than this horde of lesser demons.
At that thought an old-new itch to battle his mirror reared its head again, invoking a bit too much power into Dante’s next strike. Fighting his twin was the best way to be sure of his realness, of his steadiness, of Vergil matching Dante as he should have always matched him. The urge grew until Dante felt his teeth sharpen in his mouth, small red sparks spattering from his blade. The haunting silence over the sound of the battle slowly spreading again, mocking him.
Dante was just about to ask the next thing he could think of to spur the conversation on again, when Vergil surprisingly continued.
“The Qliphoth has weakened the barrier here immensely. Even with it felled, demons could still pass through,” he explained, with a slight mocking tilt like he was speaking to a child. A thousand cuts suddenly rend the space a Fury stood apart, stunning it sufficiently that Vergil could skip close and take it down fully. “Which means that as long as the fabric of space isn’t sufficiently healed, we have to keep guard. It’s just in our fortune that everything that comes close pays us a visit first.”
“Has to be our incredibly attractive personalities, right?”
Vergil scoffed. “If so, then these demons have no taste.”
Dante grinned at the comeback, shooting down a Pyrobat or two with Ebony and Ivory. His teeth had flattened down again.
The real reason the demons seemed more interested in them than slipping into the human world was pretty clear to be honest. Why make the effort to skip dimensions when there already were two human smelling things right here? And those demons with a bit of intelligence were way too distracted by the lust for Sparda’s blood to do the smart thing and make a quick exit.
Honestly, sometimes it seemed there was nothing in hell that even had a shred of decent sense. Except maybe Vergil and him, but Dante just knew his twin would debate him on that as well.
Once declared a fool, always declared a fool.
Right on cue Vergil asked, “But you already knew that, so why the question? Don’t tell me my last winning strike made you lose all the intellect you had left.”
“Hardy har har. And no, I can remember just fine that I managed to block.”
“With your face?”
“It was a dirty move! I just needed some more support to counter.” Which Dante had done by getting smacked with the flat side of his own blade as his wrists had buckled thanks to a misaligned block.
“Pray next time you find something better than your head.”
Dante made Balrog settle on his fists and punched in the face of the closest unfortunate demon. He shouted over his shoulder as he pummelled whatever scaled things he could get his hands on, “Next time I’ll use your head!”
“You’ll try and fail.”
A barking laugh escaped Dante, something in him only all too eager to rise to the challenge. He had missed this, even if it was mostly the urge to give Vergil the next punch in his volley of blows. Soon. For now, Dante threw one severely banged up demon into a close by group with more force than necessary to give some of his pent-up agitation an outlet.
Brotherly feelings at their finest. Who else could call forth such a pure unaltered want to battle?
But Vergil cut in first before Dante could answer on his own.
“Not that I don’t love being reminded of how much of a fool you are…” – hah, sure Dante believed that – “But why did you really pose that question?”
That made Dante stutter for a split-second before he skipped into the midst of another group and broke out some dance moves to keep his quarry engaged in close combat. Figures Vergil would get curious about it.
The urge to keep hearing Vergil’s voice was still overpowering. And that same thing that always made him want to keep his brother in sight, that stung whenever he saw the distance they hadn’t bridged yet, also unwittingly made him offer this piece of himself. In a rare show of honesty Dante mumbled under his breath, “Just wanna keep you talking I guess.” He downed the last demon with a truly spectacular move, only to then suddenly hope that the noise of fighting had covered his outburst.
But Vergil had clearly heard. He stilled for a second, his arm with the Yamato kept aloft from the end of his last strike. A demon saw an opportunity and jumped at him from behind, claws outstretched. Dante’s heart skipped a beat. A blue summoned sword lodged itself firmly into the demon’s throat, stopping its lunge with a dying gurgle, as Vergil turned to fixate his eyes onto Dante with a predator’s intensity uncaring of what was going on behind his back.
Ah man, had Dante screwed up again? He really wasn’t looking forward to another few hours of icy silence, like that one-time Dante had laughed loudly when a demon had exploded right in Vergil’s face as its final act, covering him in gore. It had of course been Dante to throw it at Vergil in the first place, but how could he have known that Vergil had had his guard down right at that moment to propose a bit of rest.
Still, laughing had been what had earned him the cold shoulder for hours to come. Not such a great thing to do in hindsight, because Vergil could play the prissy princess really well while judgmentally silent.
But right now, Vergil just blinked, his eyes skipping away, his arm finally lowering. He exhaled heavily, seemingly tired of it all. “If so, then ask better ones. We both have more important things to do.”
With those words he turned around and skipped forward through space right into the middle of a group of fiends. The sound of Yamato’s sheath whacking something over its head was loud, before the song of the blade itself cutting through flesh took over.
Dante felt curiously wrong-footed. He misregulated his strength because of it and batted a Hell Caina straight across their impromptu arena made up of broken Qliphoth bits. It crashed into a trunk of it with a big bang.
“Gotcha,” Dante said, his voice even despite the inner turmoil.
Guess Vergil was in a good mood, otherwise he wouldn’t have indulged Dante like this. Which meant that now he had to think of a good question. To help him along he took out Cavalier, hoping the heavy-duty chainsaw motorcycle could give him some space to think. That everything around him ended up as mincemeat was just a bonus.
There really were too many questions Dante could ask. Way too many. Decades of separation meant that despite all the familiarity, Vergil still felt like a stranger sometimes, like someone different he couldn’t predict, couldn’t fully grasp. The big gaps of knowledge, of things Dante should know, should be able to intuition, just full of unsureness.
Like, what did Vergil really think of Nero, besides not harbouring any animosity towards him? What the fuck had been up with the entire Qliphoth disaster? Was it weird being two people at once? How much of it could he really remember?
And further back there were other questions, deeper ones, older ones, whispered faintly underneath it all. Slowly surging up now that Dante allowed himself to think.
What had happened after Vergil had fallen into hell? Or where had he been after the fire, how had he survived afterwards?
Did he ever miss Dante? Why him and not me?
Where do we really stand?
Where have you been?
They had accumulated over decades of staring into the bottom of a bottle or breathing air that seemed too heavy to slide down Dante’s throat. Of days sitting in lonely melancholy, thinking too much about things that never could be, never should have been.
And now against all the odds the opportunity was here.
The questions swarmed Dante so easily, only all too willing to slide out on his traitorous tongue and disturb the peace they were currently living. But they were still too heavy, too wrought with danger to bring up now. Things still felt way too fragile, the moments of true connection seeming to flee all too often and quickly for moments where Dante felt like he was talking to someone he barely knew at all. He couldn’t risk what he had.
So, with an ease that spoke of experience, Dante skipped the entirety of those dangerous inquiries and instead went for something closer. Something familiar and safe. Something that didn’t even really need a question posed.
“What do you want to do after this?” Dante asked.
The air suddenly grew still, like space itself held its breath. Blue power streamed over everything and every demon in their vicinity was stuck in it, in this bubble of frozen time. Dante as well. With nary a sound, their surroundings were marked with a thousand lines, split markings where space and time had been efficiently cut apart. And with a click of a scabbard and a shatter, reality violently reasserted itself.
All the demons fell to the ground in splattering gore, their dying breath stolen by cut existence. Silence spread itself with force. Nothing besides them both still lived.
A few strands of Dante’s hair floated down before his eyes in silvery whisps.
“Hey!” Dante called scandalized. “What was that for?!” He immediately dismissed his weapons to check if Vergil had cut more than a few ends, fingers pawing through his strands with unsettled horror.
Horror that was simply ignored with ease.
“As if you have to ask,” that snide voice drawled.
Dante’s eyes skipped from the hair he was checking to where Vergil stood in the midst of the leftover carnage. He held himself straight-backed, inscrutable, as unreadable as one of his old-fashioned poetry books. But then his demeanour almost seemed to… soften, one of the corners of his lips lifting, a challenging light entering his eyes.
It made that insistent part inside of Dante rear its fighting impulse with glee, fingers suddenly itching with too much energy.
Dante left his thankfully intact hair alone to put his hands on his hips. According to his check he had been spared the agony of horrible style and bald spots, for the gods truly seemed to want to bless him today.
And it only made the grin he summoned to his face all the more real. “Yeah, my mistake.”
Vergil cocked his head, his half-smile falling away for moment of calm. Of him studying Dante intently. “Maybe after I beat you,” he said, cocksure like it was a given, “I can ask you something better.” Then his calm demeanour dropped in favour of a taunting lift of an eyebrow. “If I recall correctly, I'm ahead in our tally.” Those sharp eyes however remained the same.
With a laugh Dante summoned his sword back to hand, ignoring the inquisitive gaze that made his skin lightly crawl, made him want to hide or fight. “Are you sure you’re not just skewing the numbers now? I’ve beaten you down plenty.”
The intensity of Vergil’s eyes fell away as he huffed. “And I have returned that favour more often than you.”
“Gotta earn that information.” Dante’s grin turned a bit wistful, “That almost takes me back.”
Vergil raised a brow; knees already bending into a ready position. “Well?”
What did those questions matter anyway, Dante thought. He had his brother right before him eager to provide the challenge he had long-since craved, so why would he need to answer those dusty old niggling things? They were nothing in comparison to the ecstasy of being in the presence of Vergil again.
And there was still time…
He was getting something even better now anyway. A fight, a clash, them poking and prodding and defining the shape of themselves by the challenge of the other, steadying their feet in defiance and acquiescence of their mirrored selves.
Dante’s teeth sharpened and his heart beat with the quiet thrill of expectation. Right now, he would just focus on paying his brother back for the humiliation he had received a while ago. That would need all his attention anyway if he wanted to get anywhere.
Later. He would ask those questions later.
Yeah, later…
Hell was lovely this time around. Especially with long-wanted company like this.
“You’re on.”