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Trish parked her bike on the sidewalk right in front of the Devil May Cry and turned off the engine.
She took the helmet off and let it hang from the handle, her eyes going up to the red neon sign.
It burned like a beacon of safety against the orange haze of the city night.
A soft sigh escaped her lips.
She might have seen this sign hundreds of times and pushed through that front door just as often, yet what she found inside Dante’s shop was always unpredictable.
For many years, she would find the half-devil slumped behind his desk, a bottle in one hand and several empty ones scattered across every surface.
Sometimes Dante would simply be napping with a magazine draped over his face.
And at other times… the smell of blood would linger thick in the air, coating her tongue as soon as she pushed the doors open.
These moments were the worst.
Because either her friend had gotten hurt on the job, or… It meant that he had tried something stupid.
Desperate.
And Trish had seen clear signs of what he had already tried, but failed, to do.
Entering the Devil May Cry was always both a heartbreaking and heartwarming moment.
It was the only place Trish could consider a home. At least as far as a demon could have one.
She’d been renting flats and booking hotel rooms wherever the hunts took her, never bothering to settle down anywhere.
Dante’s shop was the only constant in all of this chaos.
Or… That was how it used to be.
Because since the Qliphoth… everything had turned out in the most unexpected way.
Dante was a changed man. And the transformation had extended to his shop.
Meanwhile Trish… Well, she was still struggling to come to terms with all of this.
She had avoided the Devil May Cry after Dante and Vergil had returned after almost a year of absence, stuck in the Underworld together.
Trish had been happy to see her friend again, and quietly dreading crossing paths with his older twin.
But time passed and eventually… she met them both.
At first, her relationship with the blue half-devil had been extremely tense.
Trish and Vergil were still haunted by what Mundus had done to them.
He had been the Prince of Darkness’ favorite slave, and she had been an active participant in his torment.
That kind of shared past left scars that could never fade entirely.
But their relationship had surprisingly evolved, improved even, over the few times they had been in contact.
They were not friends; they would probably never be, but they could tolerate each other’s presence and work together.
For Dante’s sake. And for Nero’s.
Trish didn’t harbor any particularly ill feelings toward Vergil.
She never had. Not even while she had been Mundus’ pawn.
She had followed the orders her master and creator had given her, like the perfectly obedient soldier that she had been meant to be.
That was it.
No more, no less.
And to her surprise, Vergil seemed to have accepted that fact and made his peace with it.
At least he wasn’t trying to outright kill her anymore.
And to Trish’s relief, his presence in Redgrave was bringing great improvements.
Since the blue twin was living at the Devil May Cry, Dante’s mental health had improved so dramatically that it sometimes left Trish reeling.
He was still the pizza-loving, lazy, desperately broke, and kind-hearted hunter he had always been, but the crushing weight of guilt and grief was gone.
The red half-devil was happy.
And it showed.
He felt more open.
Warmer.
Even his hunting style had grown flashier and more energetic than ever.
In Trish’s eyes, Dante looked like a big puppy wagging his tail in bliss.
She had never seen him so alive, and it was making her feel strange emotions that she wasn’t sure she interpreted correctly.
Warmth?
Joy?
Affection?
Yes. All of them.
As unusual as it was, she could clearly feel every nuance of them.
But there was something else deep within her chest… sadness? Fear?
…jealousy?
Was it normal to feel these darker emotions too?
She was relieved to see Dante doing so well, but Trish felt like she was slowly losing her right to be there.
And that… hurt.
The demoness had no family. She was just one of Mundus’ creations, a decoy.
She had no ties to anyone or to the human world without Dante to anchor her.
He was her link to Redgrave. To Lady. To Nero.
Without him… she was nothing.
And now that Dante wasn’t as lonely as she was, Trish sometimes felt as though there was less room for her in his life.
She understood why.
Yet it still hurt.
But whatever her feelings about this situation were, the truth was rather simple to grasp.
She had to get over it.
Because no matter what she felt toward Vergil, he was there to stay, and Dante needed him. Badly.
She wouldn’t interfere in that part of her friend’s life; he deserved to be happy after all he had been through.
Vergil too.
As long as they could keep their relationship somewhat afloat, Trish could stick around and enjoy Dante’s company.
That was precisely why she was here tonight. To see how her friend was faring.
And maybe because she felt a bit lonely with Lady out of town.
Trish went up the small flight of stairs and pushed the door open.
A deep sense of familiarity met her as she entered the shop.
The soft light, the smell of wood, gunpowder and pizza, Dante’s desk in the middle of the large room.
It was just like always.
But for the person sitting on the couch on the left side of the room.
Vergil.
Unease spread inside Trish’s chest.
She couldn’t sense Dante inside the shop. And that meant that she was alone with the blue twin.
Trish hesitated for a second about what she should do, then simply chose to stay until her friend came back.
“Dante is not back yet?” She asked the man who seemed focused on a magazine that was spread on the small coffee table before him.
“The mission must be taking longer than expected,” Vergil replied neutrally without looking up at her.
Trish hummed pensively, and she neared Dante’s desk.
She glanced at Vergil discreetly, not daring to come closer but still somewhat intrigued by what he was doing.
To her surprise, she spotted a block and a pen next to the magazine.
Was he drawing?
That was unexpected.
Curiosity chipped away at her cautiousness, and the demoness’s eyes lingered on Dante’s brother longer than they should have.
Vergil seemed focused. There was a deep wrinkle between his eyebrows, betraying his annoyance.
“Keep staring, and I’ll gouge your eyes out.”
The icy warning came sharp and heavy with threats.
She snarled softly but shifted her attention elsewhere immediately.
Vergil could kill her, and she wouldn’t be able to do anything about it.
Dante would be pissed, sure, but that wouldn’t bring her back to life. Not again.
“I didn’t mean to be rude.” She replied evenly.
“Perhaps. But it brings back too many memories.” Vergil muttered, still not looking at her.
Trish paused, unsure what to respond to that.
Yes. She used to watch while Mundus tore his body and mind apart with utmost cruelty.
But that was in the past now, and she couldn’t change what happened back then.
She would not bear the costs of her former master’s twisted ways.
Not so many years later.
“I didn’t know you liked to draw.” She murmured, letting her eyes go back to the coffee table briefly.
Many sheets were lying around it, on the floor too, and her eyes soon spotted the little trash bin that was overflowing with crumpled paper.
“How surprising.” The statement came sharp and loaded with sarcasm.
But Trish could see the bitterness and pain hidden underneath the words.
Dante was just the same when he was hurting inside.
And that thought didn’t sit too well with her…
So she boldly decided to get closer.
Maybe it was foolish, even downright dangerous, but she was uneasy and bored. Two very destructive characteristics, especially when combined.
She took a few steps toward the couch, slow and deliberate, cautious of any potential aggressive reaction from her reluctant companion.
But Vergil didn’t even bother to look up at her, and so Trish came all the way to the small table.
She looked down at the white sheets.
On all of them was a face, delicately sketched with a simple pencil.
A woman’s face.
Drawn over, and over, and over again.
Always in the same posture, the same expression.
And yet all the drawings were slightly different.
Noses, lips, eyes, jawline.
All similar but never identical.
And all of them were slightly different from the picture inside the open magazine, but it was still undoubtedly the same model.
“Those are gorgeous.” Trish whistled softly as she picked one sheet of paper up to admire it.
Pale blue eyes finally looked up at her, an angry gleam in their depths.
“Those are nothing but failures,” Vergil muttered as he leant back on the couch, looking … tired.
No, discouraged.
Failures.
And yet, every single piece was extremely well done.
The technique obviously wasn’t the problem here, but Vergil kept redrawing the same woman with many light modifications.
Like he wanted to correct something.
“Why this woman?” Trish asked as she picked another drawing up and looked at it with attention.
Vergil kept silent.
She looked down at the magazine, comparing the drawings to the original picture.
“Do you know that girl?” She asked, wondering why he seemed so obsessed with her.
“No.” Came the flat answer. “Not… her.”
Strange…
“Then why are you so obsessed with that woman?” Trish asked, picking a third sheet up.
Still very similar, but this one’s nose tip was a bit rounder.
“You’re not the type to get lovestruck over a photograph.” She mused softly to herself.
Vergil went entirely silent, and she winced.
She needed to be more careful, or this could end up badly.
Trish looked up, expecting to find the Yamato in Vergil’s hand, but instead… she found him looking away.
Avoiding her gaze.
She waited, unsure what his next move would be.
But then, he spoke up softly.
“She… reminds me of someone”
Someone?
“Someone… you know?” She asked, looking at the drawings again.
There were just so many. He must have spent hours sketching that lady’s face again and again.
All these drawings looked perfect, and yet he was entirely unsatisfied with the results. To the point where they were all discarded.
Trish could feel that there was more to this, something he was trying to hide poorly.
Judging from his words and the sheer number of sheets… Vergil wasn’t trying to make a portrait of some woman.
No, he was trying to draw a very specific one.
She froze in uncertainty, her eyes riveted on the man on the couch.
Could it be…
“A former lover? Someone important, I guess?”
Silence stretched on endlessly, heavy with the weight of the past and the distrust of the present.
Trish didn’t expect him to tell her anything.
Vergil was nothing if not private by nature, and with Trish? Their shared past made him colder than a block of ice.
And that was the reason why she almost dropped the papers she held in her hand when he gave her a barely audible confession.
“...Nero’s mother.”
Her heart skipped a beat.
Trish stared at him in disbelief, her stomach twisting.
Nero’s…
God.
This was… huge. And very unexpected.
“You…” She muttered, grappling for words while her brain was still reeling from the shock.
“Your memories are coming back?”
The Dark Emperor had erased everything that had made Vergil himself.
Hacking out pieces of his soul, bit by bit, shard after shard, until there was nothing left.
No personality, no memories, nothing.
Just a mindless servant who would carry out orders and suffer in endless agony for his master’s pleasure.
No voice. No choice.
Only pain and obedience.
And despite surviving his time as Nelo Angelo, even after the Qliphoth’s fruit had healed his body, Vergil’s memories were still damaged.
Terribly so.
Dante had told Trish that their childhood had been erased from the blue twin’s mind.
But fragments of the past seemed to be slowly returning to Vergil.
Still… large portions were nothing but a blank slate.
Those gaps in his life were slowly filled in by Dante’s stories, and that seemed to help Vergil link together the events he actually remembered on his own.
Flashes of memories were resurfacing more and more since the twins had come back from the Underworld.
And now… now it looked like Vergil was piecing back together another precious part of his damaged mind.
Another memory. A major one where no one could help him fill in the gaps.
Shit.
This was important.
If that picture had triggered some kind of recognition inside him, it might be the key for Vergil to remember that woman.
Maybe it would be Nero’s only opportunity to know something about his mother.
Sadly, Trish was the last person Vergil would accept help from.
Dante and Nero should be the ones to help him figure this out; it was a familial matter after all.
Even if Trish bore the face of their mother…. She wasn’t Eva. She had no ties to Vergil outside of the pain and horror of what Mundus had used her for.
And yet…
This felt somehow bigger than her cautiousness.
Bigger than the lingering conflict between them.
This felt like the tiniest chance to… do something right.
Balance the scales with Vergil even if only for the tiniest bit.
“This is of no concern to you.” He snarled, his defense raised back up in an instant.
“It’s not. And yet it is.” She argued, crossing her arms over her chest.
This was going to be difficult.
“I was there when those memories were taken from you. I’d like to help you get them back.” Trish stated flatly, despite the unease these memories brought back.
Her words were greeted by a humorless chuckle.
“That won’t absolve you of what you did.”
“No, but that is still better than nothing.” She shrugged off the caustic tone.
Vergil was obviously contemplating attacking her, but Trish wasn’t about to back off this easily now.
She still had one major ace up her sleeve.
“This isn’t only about you. It’s important for Nero too.”
The look Vergil sent her was filled with disbelief and disgust, but he didn’t comment, nor did he deny that fact.
And yet…
“Absolutely not.”
Trish clicked her tongue in annoyance.
“You’d deprive the kid of the chance to know what his mother looked like?” She asked, her tone edged with a bit of anger.
Vergil seemed about to tell her off, but she wasn’t finished.
“You’d give up on a chance of getting that part of your memories back? For what? Pride?”
Trish waited, camped on her two legs right in front of him.
He was glaring at her, and she could feel the air warp around the couch as his power surged.
He was angry.
Furious.
And honestly… Trish couldn’t blame him.
She was daring him to open up to her. The one person who had been present for every hour of agony he had been put through.
Worse, she had been made to deceive him. Break him.
To make him believe that Eva had come to save him from Mundus’ grasp, only to hurt him worse afterwards.
She felt the muscles of her jaw lock into place.
If he refused her help… then she would just have to leave him be.
There was no way to out-stubborn one of Sparda’s sons -or his grandson- and Trish didn’t want to put an additional strain on this already precarious truce.
Perhaps this just wasn’t meant to be, but…
It would be such a shame.
She waited in silence, her eyes going back to the magazine and the woman printed on the page.
Soft brown locks, milky skin, hazel eyes… She was as beautiful as any model pausing for a magazine could be…
But perfection wasn’t the point here. On the contrary, it was singularities.
Something to remember. Something special.
Silence stretched on heavily, and Trish was about to simply give up and excuse herself.
But then…
“What are you suggesting?”
She paused as Vergil’s voice eventually cut through the stillness of the shop.
Looking down at the drawings and then back up at him, she took a deep breath and went straight to the point.
“If that photograph triggered your memory, then maybe…”
Trish let her power course through her veins, her body changing to meet her demands.
Blond hair turned brown, her eyes changed to hazel, and her clothes transformed to match the deep emerald green of the dress in the picture.
“... seeing her stand before you might help.”
Vergil grew two shades paler on the couch, and for a moment she wondered if she had gone too far again.
Dante’s twin seemed frozen somewhere between shock, yearning and anger.
Trish gave him a moment to digest the sight, keeping the new disguise on.
He kept staring.
His lips parted slightly as if he was searching for words.
“You’re not… her.” He eventually muttered.
Trish wasn’t sure if his words were a threat or relief. Maybe both.
She held still, but this time… his gaze was more focused, pale eyes scanning her borrowed features with unsettling focus.
“The lips are… wrong.”
“… Too thin.”
Trish let her power rise again and slowly changed the shape of her lips.
She let her mouth grow smaller, then larger, the upper and bottom lips becoming fuller.
Barely a few seconds after starting to modify the lips’ form, Vergil’s voice echoed in the shop again.
“Stop.”
She paused all modifications, keeping the lush lips but the rather small mouth she was sporting.
He was still staring, a deep wrinkle between his eyebrows.
“Is that what she looked like?” She whispered, not moving.
There was a wild gleam in his eyes. Unsure and frantic. Desperate even.
“Not yet, but… somehow this feels more… familiar.”
He straightened from the couch, and Trish had a lot of trouble not to flinch and back away when he came closer.
Vergil bent down and picked one of the drawings lying on the ground, putting the sheet of paper next to Trish’s face.
He looked at it and then at her. Again and again.
Until he extended it to her.
“The eyes…” He muttered, his voice rough.
“What’s wrong with them?”
“I don’t know.”
He motioned at the drawing.
“They’re simply …wrong.”
Trish looked at the eyes of the girl in the drawing.
Those were slightly more almond-shaped, eyebrows arching elegantly above them.
She changed her eyes, following what she could see on the drawing before looking up at him for confirmation.
Vergil studied her for a moment before giving a small shake of his head.
Still not it.
He turned his back to Trish, and she didn’t know if he was reflecting on what was missing or rejecting another attempt.
But then, he picked up other sheets of paper and extended them to her, pointing out small changes, small adjustments.
And she guessed that he actually wanted her to keep going.
For a moment, Trish could only stare.
But then she followed his lead and kept adding and removing things.
Details.
Freckles.
Scars.
Wrinkles.
It went on for over an hour.
But then finally, after she added one last mole on her left cheek... Trish looked up at the blue twin again.
Vergil had gone perfectly still.
The grief on his face was raw enough to steal her breath.
And she knew.
He wasn’t seeing Trish anymore.
He was looking at a ghost.
They had done it.
That small piece of memory had returned to Vergil.
And it was painful to watch the loss it was bringing in its wake.
Trish kept still and quiet.
She didn’t know what she was supposed to do now, and so she simply waited again. Giving him some time.
Until Vergil pointed at the couch stiffly.
“Sit.” He mumbled.
“And… stay still.”
She did as asked without a comment, sitting down where he had been only a few moments ago.
He went to Dante’s desk and dragged the large wooden chair back to the coffee table before sitting down in front of her.
Then, he reached down and grabbed the pencil and a new blank sheet.
For a while, the soft scratching of the charcoal on the paper was all that could be heard in the shop.
“We could take a photograph, you know…” Trish muttered, staying seated while he was drawing this body she now wore like a cloak.
“Yes.” He confirmed without stopping the pencil.
“But this shall allow me to… remember better.”
She nodded along in silence, letting him take his fill of this borrowed appearance. Hoping it would help him recover more than just the face of a lost loved one.
Perhaps other memories.
Happy ones.
Things he could share with Nero.
Maybe even with Dante? Who knew…
The sketching went on and on in an unusually comfortable silence.
A strange moment out of time.
For the first time, Trish felt no animosity coming from him. No tightly contained hatred. No cold disregard either.
He wasn’t ignoring her.
And she wasn’t bringing him pain.
Not in the way she once had.
Not as another weapon in Mundus’ hands.
Not as the ghost of Eva haunting his every glance.
A precarious equilibrium.
Something fragile but… soothing.
And in that extraordinary moment between two former foes turned… simple strangers, Vergil spoke up after a while.
“Why ?” He asked, his eyes not looking up at Trish.
“Why do you keep wearing our mother’s face now that Mundus is gone?”
Trish’s breath caught softly in surprise. She hadn’t expected that question.
At least not from Vergil.
Perhaps she would have been less surprised if it had come from Dante, but her friend had never asked.
“I was made like this.” She stated evenly.
She knew very well what Vergil thought of her keeping Eva’s appearance; he had made it clear many times over.
But he had never tried to know her reasons.
And now, she… felt ready to tell him the truth.
“I may be able to change shape, but that is still how I really look.”
Pale blue eyes lifted from the paper for a moment, pinning her on the spot with a complicated gaze full of cautiousness.
“Mundus made me with your mother’s face. It’s hers. But it’s mine too.”
“And what? Your loyalty to him prevents you from changing? Or perhaps you are still trying to manipulate us by taking on our deceased mother’s face?”
Trish felt her temper flare, electricity crackling around her hands and threatening to singe the emerald dress.
“No.” She spat, standing up abruptly from the couch.
“But that face and my name are the only things I have.”
She glanced down at the sketch he had been doing. The face was done.
And she was done, too.
Time to leave.
She turned back to her usual shape in a blur, the warm air inside the shop brushing against her naked shoulders and her exposed belly.
Not giving herself the time to think too hard about his words, she walked straight toward the door, feeling deeply irritated.
Hurt.
More than she’d like to admit.
More than she had thought his words could.
Because Trish had been made into a tool. With a single purpose.
She had no family, no home, no place she belonged to, not here and not in Hell.
Just a borrowed face and a name.
And that hurt.
She was reaching the door, boot clicking sharply on the tiles of the entrance when…
“Wait.”
He called out to her.
Trish paused, looking over her shoulder in anger and defiance. What could he possibly want now?
She had just tried to be… nice. And he had just spat in her face.
“I…” He started, coming to stand and turning around to face her.
“...can understand that.”
Trish raised an eyebrow in cautious disbelief.
“I… just wanted to know your reasons.” He muttered.
For a moment, neither of them spoke.
The tension that had filled the shop seemed to loosen, little by little.
Vergil’s gaze drifted toward the unfinished portrait resting on the coffee table.
Then back to Trish.
“I never considered it.”
His voice was low, almost reluctant.
“Considered what?” she asked.
“That Mundus made you. Just like he remade me. And that you… have suffered from it too.”
The admission caught her off guard.
Silence followed.
Not uncomfortable.
Just heavy.
Vergil looked away first, as though he understood that feeling far more than he wished to admit.
A weapon.
A tool.
A servant.
The similarities were unpleasant but real.
Trish felt her anger crumble, and she turned around, hesitating to leave now.
She took a cautious step back into the room, wondering what she should answer to that.
But the Devil May Cry’s front door burst open before either of them could say anything else.
“Damn, that mission sucked.”
She looked over her shoulder in surprise and found Dante striding into the shop and carrying three pizza boxes.
Her friend stopped and stared.
He looked at Trish.
Then at Vergil.
And finally, at the sheer number of paper sheets covering the floor.
Then slowly narrowed his eyes.
“...Why do I feel like I missed something?”
At first, neither of them answered.
“You didn’t.” Vergil eventually muttered, discreetly hiding the last portrait away.
“Doesn’t look like it.” The red twin insisted, tension starting to fill the room.
Trish didn’t want this to turn into a dispute, and it looked like Vergil wanted to keep the portrait a secret, at least for now.
“Appearances can be deceiving, Dante.” She shrugged. “I just arrived.”
She met Vergil’s gaze.
And for the first time, a flicker of something unusual appeared in his eyes. Almost like cautious gratitude.
Dante looked at her in silence, and at one point, she was pretty sure he would confront her lie, but surprisingly, his eyes shifted back to his brother.
And then...
“Well, you got perfect timing, ‘cause I brought dinner.” The legendary hunter eventually shrugged and passed her by.
Instead of aiming for his desk, where his favorite chair was missing, he went to the coffee table and put the pizzas down.
“C’mon, they’ll get cold.”
Vergil and Trish looked at each other again while Dante sat down in his favorite chair and picked up one cardboard box. He looked over his shoulder at them, and they both knew.
Dante wasn’t easy to fool, and now he was making them pay for keeping secrets.
Testing them.
Well... they were stuck now, weren’t they?
Vergil and Trish stiffly sat down on the couch side by side, but to her surprise, the blue twin pushed one box toward her, inviting her to eat while Dante stared at them in disbelief.
“Thank you.” She muttered, and she picked up a slice and started to munch on it.
Dante was speechless.
“So? How did the hunt go?” She asked him after a while, with a small, amused smile.
His shock was understandable, but... it looked like her relationship with Vergil had greatly improved tonight.
Not perfect, by any means, but... better.
Enough that sharing a meal with both twins at the Devil May Cry wasn’t uncomfortable at all.
And as Dante finally snapped out of it and started to talk, Trish realised that she was enjoying her evening a lot.
Yes... she could get used to that and maybe ...
Maybe there was still room for herself here after all.