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He could feel the shackles around his ankles and arms, still new enough that familiarity born of time had not dulled the sensation. Though it would.
Vergil knew this the same way he knew the sound of his own blood dripping drop by drop onto the stone floor would inevitably fade from notice. How the throb of broken bones would become as mundane as his own heartbeat, until that part of him was torn away too. Until a stone-like hand reached inside-
‘Sund’ring, dark’ning, thund’ring!’
Blood pouring as it always did between Mundus’ fingers while the delicate organ fluttered in its cage of ribs.
‘Rent away with a terrible crash
Eternity roll’d wide apart-’
Stone fingers closed. Squeezed like his heart was some curious oddity the Emperor of Hell had deigned to investigate.
‘Wide asunder rolling
Mountainous all around
Departing; departing; departing-’
The fingers pulled, snapping the nerves and arteries connecting Vergil’s heart to the rest of him.
‘Leaving ruinous fragments of life
Hanging frowning cliffs and all between
An ocean of voidness unfathomable.’
Fire licked through Vergil’s veins. Fury and pain and helplessness. Humiliation at how easily he had been defeated by his father’s fabled foe, his vengeance unsated and making him burn hotter still.
‘The roaring fires ran o’er the heav’ns
In whirlwinds and cataracts of blood
And o’er the dark deserts of Urizen
Fires pour thro’ the void on all sides
On Urizen’s self-begotten armies.’
It burned. Yet Vergil could do naught but sigh, a faint little gasp as the hand disappeared and so too the enemy it was attached to. Ribs ceased creaking. Change unwound itself back to the ache of broken bone that thrummed to a beating heart still locked inside his chest, not yet stolen.
He was alone.
‘But no light from the fires. All was darkness…’
The shadows encroached around Vergil as they pressed in further still. His devil eyes could barely see through the gloom.
There was a small pile of stone dust in the corner of the cell, barely large enough to call a pile. Claw marks gouged the wall above it, deep and lasting. The mark of whatever hapless fiend had ended up here before him.
It was the dust, however, that retained Vergil’s indifferent attention. He did not count each speck of crumbled stone. He already knew how many laid in the pile, had counted them all numerous times before. Now he simply pieced the specks together in his head as though they were a puzzle, as though there were any point to it at all.
…
‘…And a first Age passed over,
And a state of dismal woe.’
The darkness did not shift. The coldness from his chains did not ebb. Weariness wove itself through Vergil’s entire being, brought on not from endless pain and torture but the unique torment of waiting. Anticipation and anxiety gave way to boredom and finally a dull apathy as time ticked on. As he laid forgotten in a dark, dank cell.
Blood dripped drop by drop. Its rhythm was ceaseless and soothing.
Vergil rolled his head towards the sound. He reached a hand towards it until his fingers dragged through something viscous and warm. They lingered there, too tired to drag themselves away. Desperate enough for a sensation other than stagnant nothing that they crept a little further still until they knocked against something solid. New.
Vergil shifted his head to get a better look only for a harsh cry to rip from his throat. Sightless blue eyes stared back at him. Pale skin was covered in blood, right arm missing and a torn hood covering what was left of a mutilated face.
Nero… Vergil could not breath. He could not think beyond the ruined face of his son.
The young man’s blood stunk of Mundus’ magic. Chains screeched as Vergil tried to drag himself closer. Metal dug into skin, into bone. The pain was nothing compared to the failure laid before him with the unseeing gaze of death. Nothing compared to the grief that wracked his soul.
A deep voice spoke, more familiar and hated than anything else Vergil had ever known.
“Without strength you cannot protect anything-”
Three glowing red eyes danced above him. Above Nero’s twisted form. They morphed into a single yellow one on an armoured chest. Dozens more opened in the darkness, their pupils rimmed by an acidic green and narrowed in malice. Blood dripped down scaled hide, trailing between armoured plates and horns. A giant arm reached past Vergil into the shadows beyond. Razor teeth flashed in a terrible grin.
“Let alone yourself.”
Somewhere nearby his brother screamed his name.
Vergil’s eyes snapped open as he bolted upright. He reeled for a moment as the ceiling of his room in the Devil May Cry greeted him.
Sweat coated the cambion, sticky and rapidly cooling on his skin in the room’s tepid air. Swatches of silver scales faded from his arms and neck. The eldest son of Sparda raised one shaky hand to his mouth. His eyes darted to the side where Nero’s corpse had been and found nothing but twisted bedsheets and a wall. Yamato hummed it the pocket of space the Devil Arm called home, soft and soothing.
It had been a dream.
Just a dream.
Yet, Vergil’s heart still beat hard enough to hurt.
The cambion gasped silently as though more air could help. Once, then twice. When the third time did not work, he stopped breathing entirely in hope the weakness would follow. His hand dropped from his mouth to his chest to clutch at his sleep shirt. The other clenched the bedsheets beside him.
A growl slipped from Vergil’s throat. It was fraught and strained, everything Vergil hated when control slipped his tightly honed grasp. His nails elongated into the beginnings of claws. His limbs trembled. Another growl pierced the air, a warning to any lesser beings foolish enough to dare take advantage of the momentary slip in his guard.
A flash of blue temporarily painted the neutral walls. Several spectral swords floated around Vergil’s hunched form in a circle. Yamato appeared faithfully in his hand, its weight an old and grounding friend. His heart continued to pound, blood rushing in his ears so much so he feared they would burst from the pressure.
Ghostly hands and claws traced his skin. Vergil foolishly closed his eyes. Nero’s ruined form burned itself into the patch of darkness behind his eyelids. He growled again, the sound leaking desperately into the air.
A faint trill answered it, rising and falling as it continued. Soft. Vulnerable.
Floorboards creaked at the threshold of his bedroom door.
The air whistled as spectral blades flew through it and struck the hallway wall past the door. Sheets billowed as they floated back down to the bed from where Vergil had leapt to his feet, his knuckle’s white around Yamato’s hilt.
Dante crouched wide eyed and pale faced outside Vergil’s room, but whole.
Fully and blessedly whole.
And if the Legendary Devil Hunter was whole, then Nero surely was as well.
Dante stood slowly, his palms splayed out. The trilling from before had grown silent and Vergil belatedly realised what it had been. Guilt tugged at the very edges of the fear that still assailed him, Sparda’s eldest son certain that Dante would not try such a thing again any time soon.
“Sorry! Sorry,” Dante said, the apology rolling clumsily off his tongue. “Didn’t mean to disturb you.”
Vergil said nothing. He lifted his hand from Yamato’s hilt and ran it through his hair as though the tremor in it was not present. As though it was just another night when his twin’s antics had woken him from slumber.
As though Dante had never been anything but considerate of Vergil’s sparse attempts to sleep.
The spectral blades embedded into the wall disappeared in a flash of blue sparks. Dust from the ruined plaster trickled from the fresh holes they left behind. Their height had been perfectly aimed and if Dante had not ducked-
A sick feeling crested the lingering turmoil from his nightmare, tangling with the sour taste Urizen’s visage had left in Vergil’s mouth.
“Are you hurt?” he asked, the rasp in his voice betraying him.
Dante’s lips tweaked up in a smile that failed to reach his eyes. “I’m still up one, if that’s what you mean. Better luck next time.”
“Dante.” Vergil closed his eyes as the sick feeling turned to the beginnings of nausea in his stomach. He ran a hand through his hair again, claws scratching along his scalp.
“Sorry.”
Vergil grunted. The younger twin had gotten better in the past month about making light of his own safety. The jokes about impalement. The little comments and casual remarks that brushed too close to disregard, too close to the thinly veiled self-destructiveness Vergil had barely learnt to parse.
“Are you hurt?” he repeated insistently.
Dante shifted his feet. “No,” he answered plainly. Then, “Are you okay?”
Vergil fought back a snarl. The pounding in his ears turned to pounding behind his eyes, his whole head feeling like a vice had tightened around it. It was a match for the vice around his chest.
“I am fine,” he ground out, willing his traitorous body to obey.
“Then you won’t mind if I come in,” Dante said breezily.
Vergil fixed his brother with a withering stare. He crossed his arms as though they could hide the still too fast beat of his heart.
The younger twin ignored the look as he lifted one boot past the invisible line of Vergil’s private space. His steps were quiet but not silent, the heels of his boots tapping against the floorboards with dull little thuds. The base instincts in Vergil honed in on the sound. A ripple ran through the elder’s demonic energy, like the spikes on his tail flexing in anticipation.
“Reading Blake before bed?” Dante’s voice cut through the tension in the air like a sudden burst of colour. “Don’t you ever get tired of his stuff?”
Vergil’s eyes flicked to the book on his nightstand and the bookmark poking out from between the pages. "There is always something new to glean from a masterpiece. Perhaps you would understand if you indulged more in true literature.”
Dante pulled a face.
Vergil pursed his lips as he gazed at the volume of poetry. He had been reading through the Book of Urizen once more. A mistake, Vergil thought in retrospect. Bitterness welled in his throat. Yet another thing that has been stolen from me.
The cambion’s eyes burned in a way that infuriated him. He pressed his tongue to the roof of his mouth if only to stop himself from growling yet again. Dante moved further into the room, his arms loose and posture idle, but for the thread of tension woven into his spine. A gloved hand shot out to retrieve the offending book.
“Two ears in close volutions,” Dante read aloud from the page it fell open to. “From beneath his orbs of vision- What the hell is that supposed to mean?”
“Eyes, brother,” Vergil said from somewhere distant. “Most beings have them.”
Urizen had plenty. Mundus too, red and glowing and infinitely cruel.
“Then why not just call them that?” There was a put-upon huff as Dante skimmed the rest of the page, the lines around his mouth growing tighter the more he read. “You know what, this entire thing is a drag. What else is in here?”
Paper rustled as the younger twin flipped through the book. Chains clinked in Vergil’s ears. His bare feet burned against the cold floor. The constriction in his chest wound tighter still as the air seemed to close around him. The room swayed. It was too big and too small all at once, his vision tunnelling to a pinprick of light.
Vergil could hear that infernal dripping, could count the stone dust in his cell.
“To see a world in a grain of sand,” a steady voice began. “And a heaven in a wild flower, hold infinity in the palm of your hand and eternity in an hour.”
The vision ebbed just a little as recognition rippled through the haze of panic. Vergil latched onto it desperately, digging his metaphorical nails into the crack. Digging the edges of his power into the warm flame that burned before him.
“A robin red breast in a cage puts all of heaven in a rage.”
The flame brushed back, welcoming the sharpness of Vergil’s presence like it always did.
“A dove house fill’d with doves and pigeons-”
“Shudders Hell thro’ all its regions,” the elder twin continued, the words slipping almost automatically from his mouth.
He closed his eyes, letting the neat order and familiarity of the verse steal over him.
“A dog starv’d at his Master’s gate-”
“-predicts the ruin of the State.”
“A horse misus’d upon the road-”
“-calls to heaven for human blood.”
Neat lines of syllables. A simple call and response routine. Predictable. Understandable, at least to him.
“Each outcry of the hunted hare-”
“-a fibre from the brain does tear.” It was not Vergil’s voice that answered Dante, but a memory dredged up from the shambles of his younger years. A soft voice amidst a great and echoing archive, soft hands and lips against Vergil’s skin.
Silence drifted in the wake of a sudden and profound sense of loss. Something inside Vergil itched to call Nero, to hold his son close like he never had before. It settled over the lingering anxiety and stifled the last of the shaking in his hands.
Dante offered a tentative smile from where he stood. Dark circles lined the space beneath his eyes, only serving to make the worry in his expression clearer still.
Vergil straightened his rumpled sleeping shirt. He swallowed, suddenly all too self-conscious.
“Dante,” he rasped as though greeting his brother for the first time that night. He took a step – to where he was not sure – and stumbled.
“It helps if you breathe,” Dante said kindly.
Vergil glared at him. Still, he allowed himself a small inhale. Air flooded his starved lungs as though it were delivering salvation. The sensation nearly made him stumble again.
Quiet settled over the room. Vergil found himself thankful and irate all at once. Dante thumbed the worn cover of the volume of poetry he still held. Pages crinkled softly in beneath his hands. Vergil could almost feel their battered edges growing more battered still.
“Give me that,” he snapped at last, when his breath and heart had both settled back around his lungs. He snatched the book from Dante’s lax hands and smoothed the dull ‘V’ over once before placing it on the bookcase in his bedroom.
Dante gave a tired little smile, but the obvious comment about failing to share did not fall from his lips.
“It might just be me,” the younger twin said instead. “But your great literary love was one grim bastard.”
“Blake merely wrote of the condition of life and its dichotomy,” Vergil answered. Light and dark. Joy and woe. “Shakespeare and the other great poets of history were much the same.”
“Guess I just prefer old Shake’s comedy.”
Vergil side eyed Dante for the complete butchering of the legendary bard’s name. “I’m not surprised. The intricacies and thoughtfulness of his more complex pieces are lost on you.”
“You laughed when dear old dad wore that donkey mask acting out that play about fairies and you cried when it didn’t fit you.”
Vergil sniffed. He ran a hand through his hair yet again, lips pursing when it refused to stay in place. “I do not know the incident you speak of.”
In truth, the memory was fuzzy at best. Vergil recalled his father’s voice speaking with the distinct cadence of iambic pentameter. He recalled some cylindrical monstrosity that was more a blob than a head, their mother laughing at the millennia old devil’s attempt at arts and craft. The weird red, glittering smear from Dante’s attempts to help. Yet, the details were absent: the exact sound of Eva’s laugh, whether she had joined Sparda or simply watched. Whether Vergil and Dante had done more than sat and stared like lifeless statues.
A pang squeezed the cambion’s heart.
Across from him, Dante gave a jaw cracking yawn as he stretched his arms above his head. “Whatever. It’s too late to start reminiscing about stuffy old soliloquies.”
Vergil frowned. He glanced at the tangle of sweat soaked sheets half hung off his bed, the image of Nero’s ruined face still fresh in his mind. Sleep…did not hold much appeal.
“Do not let me keep you up,” he said at last.
Dante waved a hand. “You’re not,” he said. “I was heading downstairs anyway to do something about the back rooms before the next time Pattycakes visits. If I have to hear her complain about it for the hundredth time I’ll jump- I’ll blast hardcore rock until I go deaf.”
Vergil stared at him. The seconds ticked by and Dante squirmed beneath his brother’s gaze.
“I clean,” the younger twin burst out somewhat defensively.
Vergil said nothing.
“Whatever,” Dante muttered again. He folded his arms over his chest, his gaze cast sulkily to the side.
A fond smile tugged on Vergil’s lips despite himself. “Perhaps I shall simply have to witness it for myself,” he said.
Hesitation flickered over Dante’s face and form. His eyes darted to the disordered bed, then to Vergil. Something like understanding trailed in its wake. The elder twin’s shoulders tensed.
“Who knows,” Dante said, his attempt at casualness pitifully transparent. “Maybe there’s some new poetry collection you haven’t read before. With the amount of shit down there, it wouldn’t surprise me.”
“No,” Vergil said dryly.
Dante grimaced at the blunt agreement. His hands twitched and the shadows under his eyes seemed to grow a little darker. Concern flickered through Vergil, yet his brother seemed to rally himself from whatever thought had assailed him.
“Come on, then,” Dante said, a spring in his step as he crossed back to and through the bedroom door. His infamous red coat swung obnoxiously behind him.
Vergil briefly debated then cast aside the idea of changing out of his pajamas. The room seemed to grow darker when his twin left it, pressing in like it had in his nightmare. Like it had back in Mundus’ cell.
The cambion focused on the bright spot that was Dante’s back. Furrowing his brow like every other time Vergil had pulled himself free from oblivion, he followed his brother to the relative hell of decades worth of disorganized clutter.
~ ~ ~
Dim yellow light bathed one of the lesser used rooms of the Devil May Cry as the hours crept farther away from midnight. Dust was the only clear sign the room was rarely used, for almost every surface was filled with broken and forgotten things.
Dante sneezed as he lifted a box to get closer to the warped shelf in front of him laden with books and other things he had collected over the years. His nose wrinkled when he felt the sticky strands of a spiderweb catch against his face. He wiped it off with one hand. He rubbed his eyes with the other in a futile hope it would remove the grainy feeling that had settled over them hours ago.
Dante blew an irritating lock of hair from his face. Weariness dragged at him, making his fingers clumsy against the sides of the box he held. It dropped to the floor with little grace, narrowly missing his foot. Several long-empty whiskey bottles rattled inside.
Dante winced at the noise. He could not help but steal a glance at where his brother dwelled on the other side of the room shifting through a pile of musty tomes. If Vergil had heard the commotion, he did not show it.
The younger twin sighed.
They had not exchanged words since leaving Vergil’s room. Not on the trek down the stairs. Not when Dante had noticed his brother eyeing the rotary phone, a deep crease on his forehead that had only deepened further still when Vergil continued walking past. Dante had expected some barbed comment or dig when he had revealed the state of the room they were now in. Yet, all that had emerged from Vergil’s mouth was a sharp huff.
Tentatively, Dante focused his attention on the presence that surrounded his twin. Power pulsed like a shield – like plate armour – close to Vergil’s skin, its core set somewhere inside him. Its distinct cool energy permeated the air around Sparda’s eldest son more than it usually did. The edges of it were sharp. Vergil’s back was stiff.
The old light globe in the room flickered and Vergil’s back grew stiffer still.
This was a bad idea, Dante thought as doubt slowly crept through him. You can’t even deal with your own messed up head.
He blinked, his eyelids staying shut for a second longer than they should. Dante pried them open, the gritty feeling returning twofold.
He looked at where he had leaned against the shelf in front of him, dust free streaks of wood gleaming through where his fingers had splayed. Pages turned behind him. A broken teacup sat in front. Dante could not recall where the crockery had come from. Nor the volume of medieval swordplay beside it or the stained binder that, on a second glance, looked a lot like one he had lost years ago with half his old tax receipts inside.
Morrison had lectured him for hours when Dante had admitted it had been misplaced. Something about bookkeeping and potential audits from not so friendly government officials. Not that the threat had ever eventuated.
Maybe there were some benefits after all about being the only person for miles around who could deal with things when the bogeyman got a little too real for comfort.
Dante reached for the binder. His fingers had barely brushed its black spiral spine when something else caught his attention.
A thin strand of magic, different from his and Vergil’s, weaved its way between two lopsided and slightly burnt books. It bled power and yet it seemed starved. Ravenous even as it tried to latch onto Dante’s own power.
“Hello,” he murmured, tilting his head. He carefully moved the books aside, seeking the source of the thief.
It was a dingy little box that could easily fit into the palm of his hand. Dante pulled it out, grimacing as infernal magic bit at his fingers. He felt his own power rear back, away from the hungry reach of whatever curse had befallen the trinket.
The devil hunter vaguely remembered a teary old man grasping his arm as a much younger Dante had tried to pocket the thing, pleading and begging. Desperate to keep the wonderful visions the curse had bestowed.
All for the bargain price of your lifeforce, Dante thought sourly. The curse reached again and Dante’s fingers tightened, his own magic rallying in a forceful surge.
Little patterns of a black ichor-like substance crawled across the box. The grim and scuff marks moved with it. They were almost as indecipherable as they had been when Dante had first seen them. He recognised some of the lines now, enough to understand.
The vision it showed him was different too.
A garden bloomed in front of him, devouring the cluttered shelves. Vines weaved up along scuffed wood and through broken objects, roses and leaves budding along them until the entire room had vanished. Pink and white petals fluttered in a light breeze Dante could not feel against his face.
He breathed. If he closed his eyes, the devil hunter could remember the floral scent of their mother’s garden in spring. The crisp tang of cut grass and freshly pruned shrubs cut through the heady pollen.
Vergil was standing in front of him looking as he did now and not the nineteen-year-old youth before he fell from the Temen-ni-gru. The elder twin was smiling, his face and posture softer than Dante had ever seen. A boy that could have been Nero raced circles around his legs.
Dante’s hand reached to brush away hanging vines and felt wood. Bitterly he remembered why he had buried the box in his junk room in the first place.
The Legendary Devil Hunter pulled on the fiery core inside him and sent a fierce pulse down his arm and through the hand that still held the offending curse. The black ichor writhed in panic. Dante’s eyes followed each line as they rapidly formed and reformed into different patterns. His magic broke them again every time until the vision around him faded as the curse threw everything it had into surviving. Then he broke it too with one final, forceful push against the magic that had woven it.
Sparks of red wafted up in the air. Dante hummed to himself as he turned the now gleaming tobacco container over in his hands. It had a raised silver edge around its lid, an intricate design etched in the center.
Perhaps it was worth it, he mused, going through all the odds and ends he had stored over the years. The box – now curse free – would make a fine gift for Morrison.
“Keep an eye out for live curses,” Dante said when he grew aware of the gaze pressed into the back of his head.
“It is foolish to store cursed items so close together,” Vergil answered.
Dante glanced around the room as he pocketed the tobacco box. The clutter seemed to stare back at him, impartial as all intimate objects were. Even the Devil Arms he had tossed here kept to themselves, the product of long years of isolation.
A ruin flashed red in the molding between the ceiling and the walls. It settled as whatever infernal power had flared up dissipated.
“It’s fine,” Dante said, a little belatedly. “I made sure this place was locked down tighter than a high security prison. Nothing’s getting out.”
A faint cloud of dust puffed into existence next to Vergil as he flipped through the old pages of a book to air it out. “And if two compatible and destructive curses should merge?”
Dante’s lips turned down. “They would have done it by now,” he said dismissively.
Vergil clicked his tongue, though the noise was not human in nature. His judgement was almost tangible. “It is not something to be caviler about. The building could have burnt down around you.”
“Only if certain curses got within touching distance of each other,” Dante retorted, heat leaking into his words. “I was careful when I stored them away.”
“Then why don’t you locate them now? Or do you not remember with this…storage system of yours?”
“Don’t need to remember if no one ever moves them.”
Vergil scoffed. “What if an external force were to change the situation?”
“Like the Temen-ni-gru?”
The tension that lingered in Vergil’s shoulders tightened further still.
Great job, a little voice in Dante’s head sneered in reminder. Or did you forget you’re here to help him, not to collect worthless trinkets and defend your bad decisions.
The younger twin sighed. He rubbed his right eye with the palm of his hand as he swallowed down his irritation. Guilt fit neatly into the tired void it left.
Dante leaned back against the shelf and folded his arms around himself. Vergil seemed to watch him from the corner of his eye. Dante watched his brother back in turn.
“Sorry,” he finally dredged up the courage to say. “I don’t want to start a fight.”
That would be a first.
Dante ignored the voice in his head.
Silence descended over the room. Dante resisted the urge to sink to the floor. The seconds ticked by like sand in some enchanted hourglass, agonizingly slow. The light overhead flickered again. Then came a quiet rustle from the calm, methodical turning of pages, followed by a quiet thud as the book was set aside.
If Dante listened close enough, he could hear the quiet shaking of his brother’s hands.
Sparda’s youngest son was no stranger to nightmares or their lingering effects. He had woken more often than not drenched in sweat, flesh still stinging from where it had healed unconscious marks left by his Triggered claws. Skin still burning from phantom scars that had long since faded. If there was an easy answer to fixing it, Dante was sure he would have found it years ago.
Eventually even burying himself in the deep end of a bottle or twenty had stopped working.
A knot tugged in Dante’s chest, aching and lonely. It drove words up his throat and to his mouth to spill forth without much thought.
“Do you- Do you want to talk about it?” he asked. “Whatever dream it was you had.”
Vergil’s posture grew sharper. He turned away so his face was fully hidden and Dante felt his stomach drop.
Idiot-
“It is of no matter,” the elder said.
Dante chewed on the inside of his cheek. After a moment he spoke again, his heart pounding inside his chest. “It didn’t look that way.”
Vergil said nothing.
Dante’s fingers picked at his skin. He stilled them with conscious effort. “I promise not to laugh at you, if that’s what you’re worried about.”
“It’s not.”
“I won’t tell Nero or anyone either. It’ll just be between us.”
“There is little purpose in revisiting the matter.”
“Maybe,” Dante said. “But you know what they say about bottling things up. It’ll come back to bite you. Or burst out. Something about pressure and all that. The thing is that keeping it all inside ain’t good. People need outlets for ‘healthy expression of negative emotion’ or something like that.”
At least that was what the pamphlets that kept appearing on his dresser said.
Dante held his breath as Vergil shifted. Silence fell again, but less oppressive than before. It felt almost contemplative, though Dante could hardly focus for the rapid beating of his heart.
“Give sorrow words,” he heard his twin murmur at last.
Dante frowned. “What?”
“It is from Macbeth,” Vergil said, tilting his head in thought. “Give sorrow words, the grief that does not speak knits up the o-er wrought heart and bids it break. Malcolm tells Macduff such after his family is killed. The sentiment is the same as your lackluster idiom.”
“My what?”
Vergil ignored the other. “Perhaps indulging in sentiment would reap some benefit,” he continued. “Just this once. It is preferable to breaking.”
Dante pretended he did not understand the layers behind Vergil’s words or the way they pointed, however intended, to him.
Paper rustled. Dante finally let himself slide to the floor. He pulled one knee up in front of him, his attention rapt on his brother.
Despite accepting Dante’s offer, Vergil did not speak again for a while. He stacked books on the growing pile beside him, intermittent dust clouds filling the air around him. The original, far messier pile that Vergil had started with had nearly been depleted when his voice broke the quiet.
“Sometimes they feel more like memories than dreams.”
Dante scarcely dared to inhale, too afraid of breaking the tentative thing that had bloomed. A dull little thump echoed as Vergil placed another book down.
“The touch of cold, the scent of- It is too real to have merely been conjured by the senselessness of a sleeping mind.” A breath. “The paths they tread are familiar.”
Fabric shifted as Vergil’s shoulders tightened, their usually proud line curling in. His hands stilled at last against the mess he had been sorting. His less tangible presence felt sharp and pained. It said to Dante what Vergil did not: I know those paths too well.
Pale skin gleamed with a strange luminescence where the sleeve of Vergil’s sleep shirt slid down when he ran one hand through his hair. The yellow glow of the room’s lone lightbulb made it seem more sickly than ethereal in nature. Dante wondered how many wounds had broken that skin. Wondered at the few faint but permanent scars that had been left behind.
“Yet, it is nothing I have not mastered before.”
Decades ago, a younger Dante might have called the easy way in which Vergil said such things arrogance. Now time and experience meant he knew better.
“These instances are simple facts of existence,” Vergil continued. “The blades of the waking world dig into us and we survive. We wrest victory, as our birthright decrees. Our enemies fall leaving us standing alone as is right and fitting.” Vergil’s hands hovered momentarily over his biceps before falling away. “And, when night comes, we’ll go to places fit for woe.”
Dante knew enough to know when his brother was quoting something he found profound, even if the younger did not understand the reference. Still, he understood Vergil’s point well enough. It clung to him, peeling back the curtains to all the places Dante preferred to keep shut away.
“When did you get so wise?” he asked with false levity, unable to sit with the feeling.
There was a huff that almost sounded amused. “Somewhere between a tower and a tree I would imagine.”
Dante felt his own lips curl into a wry a smile. “That would do it.”
“Yes…” Vergil grew quiet.
Dante shifted where he sat. After a moment, he spoke though hesitantly. “Just because it’s a fact of life, doesn’t make it easier to live with.”
He should know.
Vergil glanced at the younger twin. His expression was indecipherable but there was a shadow in his eyes.
“I have mastered those old dreams,” Vergil repeated, though with varied words. “The memories are just that.”
Then why are your hands shaking? Dante wanted to ask. Why do you leave sometimes even when you’re standing right there?
Vergil’s fingers reached for another random book Dante had collected over the years. He stroked its stained covered gently. The room’s light flickered again.
“Yet, they have changed,” Vergil said as though he had heard his twin’s unspoken questions. “The memories have shifted to play out a different scene than the script would dictate. It is not always myself-” Vergil paused right as the inflection of his voice grew more frantic.
A sound built in Dante’s throat, instinctive and inhuman. He swallowed it almost painfully, unwilling to interrupt because he failed to control the thing inside him.
“The changes make it…difficult to shore an adequate defence against them.” The elder twin inhaled audibly. “It is…frustrating.”
Quiet rose in the wake of Vergil’s words. The air around him had grown tense again, minute bursts of restless energy flaring at the edges of his being. Dante twisted his fingers in the fabric of his coat.
“Is that why you woke up?” he braved.
“I was scared,” Vergil answered softly. Of what he did not say.
Anger at old foes curled Dante’s hands. Guilt too for having failed to protect his twin, for having failed to grab his hand when they were young and foolish and so easily fell to Mundus’ plans. Yet, it was not the time for Dante to indulge in his own selfish whims.
Not when his brother’s confession still hung vulnerable in the air.
Seconds trickled by. Dante felt a keen need to acknowledge what Vergil had shared, to bind the foundations of their fragile bond firmer still. Yet, every response he thought of felt inadequate.
So, the devil hunter reached out instead, not with a physical hand but with the brush of his power. A burning core forced into a softer flame as it touched the edges of Vergil’s own cool presence. It seemed to flare briefly upon the contact, bold and fierce, before subduing to a softer state. Dante’s efforts to mingle their energies might still be clumsy, but Vergil was sure as his power weaved between the tendrils of Dante’s own, clasping like fingers around another hand.
Affection bloomed between the tentative bond. For a while the pair were content to sit and bask in the comfort of each other’s presence.
It was Vergil who pulled away first, though not completely. Dante smothered a wince at the loss, sitting straighter when he noticed his brother’s attention focus more firmly on him.
“Thank you,” Vergil said, not quite meeting the younger’s eyes.
Dante smiled. “Any time.”
Vergil hummed. It was a neutral sound, another closing gate between the fragile parts of his brother and the rest of the world. Dante included.
Selfish, said the little voice in his head. That’s why no one ever stays.
The devil hunter hunched in on himself, riding the familiar wave of self-loathing the thought brought. Weariness pulled ineffectively at him like the coy bastard it was of late.
“What of you?”
Dante startled, looking up to where his brother stood across the room. “What do you mean?”
“Is there anything you wish to speak of?” Vergil asked.
Dante scratched the back of his head with his hand. “Nah,” he answered, his skin prickling. “Nothing important anyway.”
Vergil raised an eyebrow. “Surely you do not think I am foolish enough to believe it a mere coincidence that you appeared so suddenly after my…abrupt awakening.”
The younger twin looked away from his brother’s piercing stare. In truth, he had already been awake when he had sensed the turmoil in Vergil’s presence erupt into something more violent. Yet, the admittance hung like concrete on his tongue.
“What can I say?” Dante tried. “I’ve always been fast.”
Vergil looked unimpressed. “You are fully dressed,” he pointed out.
“I could have been napping on the couch for all you know.”
“But you were not.” Vergil’s forehead gained a little crease like it always did when he was faced with a problem that irritated him. “Even you have enough sense to remove your shoes before sleeping, however brief the respite, and I know you were not out on a job.”
Dante’s lips thinned and he fought hard not to frown himself. His promise to Vergil still stood: that he would not take any jobs alone while the dark thing inside him still had its hooks sunk deep. It was hard though when the itch inside him grew stronger, restless and hungry for blood. His or a demon’s it did not matter. It never had.
Pathetic.
Shame pricked Dante. His hands curled into themselves, fingers grazing his palms but not biting, too aware of Vergil’s gaze upon him. The smell of gun powder and smoke could never be removed from his well-worn red coat, but it had faded in recent weeks. Grown stale, like him. Like the scent of Nell on her masterpieces years ago.
Useless.
Fire burned in a distant memory. The devil hunter exhaled slowly as tiredness settled its heavy weight atop his shoulders. It dragged his eyelids down but not shut.
Maybe that was why sleep had evaded him of late.
Then again, it had never really needed a reason before. Insomnia – it had been another of the things the pamphlets on his dresser spoke of, a common symptom of his messed-up head. Dante did not like to think about it. He did not like to think about the pamphlets at all if he could help it, but he was trying.
Across from him, his brother shifted, worry leaking through the cracks in his carefully controlled expression.
Dante owed it to Vergil to try.
“Give sorrow words, huh?” Sparda’s youngest son stared at his hands. The echo of Vergil’s vulnerability lingered in the air around them with motes of dust and the smell of old books. Dante inhaled, holding his breath for a moment before he let it out in a gush of air.
Alright then.
~ ~ ~
Vergil stilled when Dante began to speak.
“I don’t know how to start,” the younger said. “Shit, where would I even-” A sharp breath. A wry flash of teeth.
Vergil squeezed his power around his brother a little more firmly where their essence was still tangled, a spark of success flaring when his brother’s own nervous energy calmed.
“I’ve never been good at this,” Dante admitted.
Vergil offered what he hoped was a reassuring look, even if the muscles of his face barely twitched. “I gathered as much.”
The knowledge had been burned into him by the events of the past month. By his fear, more poignant than that of his latest nightmare, as he had watched his little brother break down and almost lose himself to the torments of his mind.
Vergil felt Dante’s presence dull a little, something like shame flitting over the younger twin’s face. A flash of anxiety mixed with regret over his careless words.
“Though I suppose I have been little better,” he offered to numb the sting he had caused. Certainly, it had not been until he had gained perspective from splitting himself in twain that Vergil had begun to understood the benefits of facing rather than running from what hurt him.
The older cambion watched as Dante pulled his other leg up so he could rest his chin on his knees. It reminded Vergil of the conversation that had weeks ago in his bedroom after his brother’s last disastrous solo hunt. Close held truths had been shared then too.
“We’re couple of old, stubborn geezers,” Dante said, an amused tilt to his lips.
Sometimes Vergil wished his brother did not try so hard to hide.
“I am sure Nero would agree,” he chose to say instead. Then, because he knew how long his twin could keep deflecting if allowed to, “Why can’t you sleep, Dante?”
A silver fringe lowered to cover blue eyes. The tired lines in Dante’s posture grew more visible.
“I don’t know,” the devil hunter said at last. “I just can’t.”
Discontent flickered through Vergil, yet his ire was not directed at the one in front of him. There was, in truth, no true person or foe he could direct it towards. The more Vergil read about the affliction of depression, the less in control he felt. Power was useless against the twisting paths it had carved deep in his brother’s mind.
Dante’s scream echoed from his nightmare. Vergil fisted his hands, reaching for Yamato’s soothing presence. He focused on Dante in front of him, on the feel of his brother’s power pulsing against his own.
‘Give sorrow words.’
It was a sentiment echoed in the literature Vergil had read and in the advice blogs on the internet Morrison had shown him how to find. Talking was supposed to help.
It had helped Vergil just before with dispersing the heaviest remnants of his dream. His whole body felt lighter for it, however raw his admissions had left him.
Vergil breathed. In and out. He wondered at how easily Nero seemed to navigate such conversations.
“How do you feel?” he tried cautiously.
That earned him an annoyed look from his brother.
Still, Dante seemed to consider the question. His shoulders shook as yawn tore through him. “Tired,” he answered.
“That is understandable.” There was an awkward pause. “Is there anything else?”
“This is stupid,” Dante burst out. “I feel stupid. I just-” He rubbed his face, groaning in frustration.
Vergil chittered in sympathy.
“Half the time I can’t even drag myself out of bed when things get this bad! People call me lazy for a reason. It’s a goddamn part of my branding people have come to expect. So why the hell is it different this time?” Dante growled as he suddenly stood, rubbing at his eyes. “At this point, I’d welcome a Behemoth knocking me out.”
Vergil chittered again, trusting his demonic instincts more than his human words not to tip the situation into something bad. Anxiety trickled down his spine when Dante started pacing, but his brother kept his hands empty and relatively clear of the rest of his body. The air around him, however, and several objects on the shelves around him were less fortunate as his brother gestured emphatically.
“The good old demon constitution means sleeping pills don’t work. I’d kill for a drink but-” Dante glance at Vergil before cutting himself off. “Being strong is fun and all on a hunt, but it sure does suck when the trade-off makes you suffer later.”
“Perhaps there is a spell that could suit your needs,” Vergil offered, as wary as he was of things strong enough to alter the state of mind of Sparda’s descendants.
Dante sighed. “Believe me, I’ve looked. If there was something, I would have found it by now.”
“Did you look through every book you have?” Vergil asked in return, gesturing to the pile beside him and the generally cluttered room. “I imagine it would be easy to have missed something.”
“Ha, ha,” Dante said. “I get it. The place needs a clean-up, but aren’t we fixing that now?”
“Only because you thought it a better option than trying to sleep,” Vergil answered.
Dante groaned again, more lightly this time. “It was a stupid idea.”
“It presents an opportunity to search,” Vergil countered. “Now that I understand what is we should be looking for.”
His brother looked at him, a surprise colouring his expression. It slipped quickly into something softer. Grateful. “I guess.”
Vergil clicked his tongue. “Then let us continue this endeavour,” he declared, his mind already scouring through the snippets of books he had sorted. “And rest assured, I do not intend to be left to deal with it alone.”
Dante grumbled, as he always did when cleaning was involved regardless of how willing he was to do it. Still, he turned to start rummaging through a new pile of stuff.
Their talking trailed off with the new distraction. As they worked, Vergil wondered if he should continue to pursue it, his uncertainty in general conversations doubling in face of an emotion laden one with his brother and his own still raw nerves. Yet, success cradled a newfound resolve at having found something tangible he could assist Dante with.
It was enough for now.
The cambion rolled his wrists as he paused in investigating another pile of books around him. The monotonous task of turning and shaking pages was easy to lose himself in. Noise erupted behind him every so often. A bang or clatter. Muffled swearing when Dante obviously dropped something he had not meant to. There was no more bitter, burning trace of a curse left unproperly stored, though Vergil kept a keen eye out for them all the same.
This will not be finished by morning, he thought. Fortunately, there were no pressing jobs or other concerns to occupy their time that day.
There was another bang, this one followed by the resonating sound of a shaken instrument. Vergil turned, curious at whatever Dante had found.
It was some sort of guitar, though it was not like the hollow wooden ones he had seen people play on the street as a child. Red decorated its neck and the edges of its body – typical for his brother – and an aged cream colour sat in a decorative sort of splash underneath where the strings ended.
Dante ran his hands across the guitar. His fingers glided over the strings. A chord sung clear through the air. Soft and high. Pure in a way so much in their lives had never been.
Fingers twitched. Another chord rang clear. Vergil watched his brother’s face as it softened with a kind of quiet thrill.
Dante had never played guitar when they were children. At least not that Vergil could remember. Yet, as fingers strummed a third chord, something old and nostalgic rippled through him. The feeling settled in his core.
Vergil exhaled softly. He rested one hand on the last book he had added to a new pile beside him. Quiet music rose to fill the gaps in the room. It was different than the usual heavy, discordant songs that Dante listened to on his jukebox. Softer. Sadder. Yet, the contentment that adorned his brother’s face wrapped itself around Vergil’s heart.
As the minutes passed, the elder twin allowed himself to lean back against the shelves behind him. The last dredges of tension he had been holding slipped away like water through his hands. He must have sighed or made some sound for his brother paused his playing to shoot him a look.
“Do not stop on my account,” Vergil said. “Not when you have finally found a skill you are adequate in that does not involve some inane and ridiculous kind of weaponry.”
Dante huffed and looked back down as his fingers began to move once more. “It sounds better with an amp,” he said absently.
Vergil hummed, not entirely sure what an amp was but unable to dredge up his usual curiosity to care.
The song continued, floating through the air between them. Individually plucked chords morphed into heartfelt strumming, a simple four bar beat underlying the entire piece. The crescendo built slowly, each chord a building block in Vergil’s ears, in his blood and soul. They formed a structure Vergil could feel mirrored by the twists and bursts of his brother’s latent power. It was a dense and painful thing, a burning wildfire that almost stole Vergil’s breath away, growing greater and greater until the entire thing crashed down with an almost violent flare.
Runes flared on the body of the guitar. Vergil could see the inferior material and strings straining under his brother’s strength. Yet, the instrument held and Dante drifted back from wherever his playing had carried him.
His eyes were hidden again beneath his hair. Something glimmered on his cheek in the dim light of the room. Vergil tangled his power further still with his twin’s. The fire from before had settled to a quiet, yet steady flame. A few final, lonely chords brough the song to its end.
“Impressive,” Vergil said in earnest.
Dante fiddled with the tuning pegs at the top of the guitar. He ran his other hand down the body once more, a hair breadth away from the strings. “Yeah,” he said, sounding breathless. “I forgot how good it felt to play this thing. I don’t know why I stored it away.”
Vergil looked at the crowded room, at the broken trinkets and dusty Devil Arms mixed in among each other. There was a drumkit in the corner missing its cymbals and high hat. A thick layer of dust had gathered atop each drum.
Sparda’s eldest son thought of the book on psychology Morrison had given him and the works he had read since. He thought of how his poetry had steadied him even in the worst of times.
‘Give sorrow words’, Shakespeare had once written. Nor was it the only thing the Great Bard had written on such sentiment and wisdom. ‘In sweet music is such art,’ Vergil recalled from one old manuscript in his father’s study and in a more recently gifted book.
There was more than one way for human expression. Perhaps that meant there was more than one way to excise the shadows that lurked in both their hearts.
“Perhaps you should bring it back out,” he told his brother. “Its addition can only help to mask your poor taste in interior decoration.”
“The Devil May Cry is an icon,” Dante quipped half-heartedly.
“Only to those reminiscing some long and thankfully forgotten time period,” Vergil said.
“Says the man who once wore an ascot.”
Vergil sniffed, the corner of his mouth lifting just a bit. “Once again, evidence of your poor taste.”
Dante laughed and it rang mostly true. “Then you should have seen the place after I completed my first job for Patty. Bows and stuffed bears everywhere. Pretty sure Lady or Morrison have photos tucked away somewhere, not that I’ve ever found them.”
“I find the girl has excellent taste,” Vergil remarked.
“Trust me, not as an eight-year-old kid.”
Vergil’s smile grew a little more. “Then perhaps we should locate those photos to ascertain the truth of your words. For if I recall, your opinions on fashion and decoration were equally dismal as a child.”
That earned him an unidentified object flicked at the back of his head. Vergil’s smile grew fangs and their cleaning divulged into something more childish as the last stars twinkled in an ever lighter sky.