Chapter Text
The sun had just begun to set as they arrived at the Devil May Cry. After the chaos of Mallet Island, Trish and Dante’s little unauthorized flight, their impromptu landing at the nearest airfield and the uncomfortable interrogation from the air marshall, it had taken them a while to actually make it home.
Home.
The Devil May Cry has never felt less like home as Dante swings open the doors for Trish with all the faux bravado he can muster. Hysteria hangs at the edge of his consciousness, pushed back by the need to perform and get Trish settled. There are too many loose ends to clear up, too many things he has to do that he doesn’t have time to breakdown. He keeps pushing it off for later, later, later.
Dante waits until Trish is turned in for the night. Ever the hospitable, ever the kind host, he gets her situated and adjusted. After the day they’ve had, even the demoness cannot mask the exhaustion that drags her down.
He lets Trish have his bedroom. It's the only room with a proper bed, though it's not really much better than the beat-up sofa in the front. At least it affords her some privacy and a semblance of peace for the night.
There will be none for him.
She seems to read this, her eyes sharp despite the exhaustion that causes her lids to droop.
“Rest, Dante. It's over.”
The finality of the statement threatens to shatter the fragile mask he is wearing. He’s done his best to avoid thinking about…anything that has occurred in the past twenty four hours and he can feel his resolve crumbling away.
He forces a half smile, hoping it looks convincing enough, as he bids her a good night's sleep and shuts the door as quickly as possible. The sharp click of the door shutting echoes through the building and his skull. He stands there, staring at the scratched wood for a long minute, unsure what to do next now that he is alone with nothing to distract him from remorse’s bloody noose that wishes to wrap around his throat.
He has to move, he has to keep moving, lest he stand still too long, his demons will finally catch up and sink their claws of retribution through him and drag him down.
Numbly, Dante descends the stairs of the loft and finds himself standing in the middle of the main room. He feels out of body as he gives a half-hearted glance to the couch, but knows he won’t find rest there. Not tonight. Maybe never.
His body is wired, antsy, held on the precipice of a full blown panic attack but forced to wait. There is an ache that travels from his muscles to the back of his skull and behind his eyes. His body has been locked with tension for hours and begs to release. It’s out of pure stubbornness that Dante remains tense and tight. He’s not ready to open the floodgates, he’s not ready to let his emotions come forth. He’s not ready to face what he’s done.
Every time he begins to think about it, Dante pushes it away. He can feel his breath quicken, his body tightening. His hands start to shake and he has to focus on something else, anything else.
Save Trish
Defeat Mundus
Get them off that godforsaken island
Go home
But now that he’s done all that, finished his little list…Now what?
With no crisis, no immediate doom he has to take care of, Dante is only left with the gravity of what he has done.
Alastor mocks him from its stand behind his desk, the greatswords finish pristine and gleaming despite the bloodshed it has doled out on Mallet Island. He almost can’t stomach to look at it, nausea tickling at the back of his throat as his mind reminds him how easily it had slid between the corrupted armor plating, through the deathly parlor of barely living flesh, notched neatly between the third and fourth rib and plunged into the faintly beating heart.
A full body shudder wracks through him as Dante pushes away from his desk and stalks into the small, ground level bathroom. He braces himself against the sink, his vision doubled as he struggles to regain his breath. Hastily he rips off his gloves and tosses them to the side. The black leather feels sullied and stained, guilty by association. He turns the tap and slashes water onto his face, scrubs his clean hands raw beneath the icy stream.
When he looks up, his reflection is blocked by a thin, navy sheet. After he had gone about replacing the old mirror, mostly on Lady’s nagging insistence, he had promptly covered the thing up, unable to look at his reflection and the ghost that stared back.
It's been like that for years now, nearly a goddamn decade. It's the only mirror he’s got in the place and he refuses to look into it.
Tonight, though, he makes an exception.
With trembling hands, he pulls the sheet away and Dante is faced with an unfamiliar visage. Ten years have passed and he’s aged since he has last gotten a proper look at his own face. The fat of his cheeks has turned gaunt and mature, his eyes now accompanied by dark shadows beneath them. His hair has been styled, rather than the heavy mop that had once hung in his eyes. It’s still him, he knows this as he drags a finger along the bridge of his nose, but he cannot recognize himself. Even more so, he cannot recognize his brother.
Dante presses his lips tight together, his eyes prickling at the too recent memory that pulls at his mind: the icy hand gripped in his own, the corrupted pallor of skin, the unblinking soulless eyes searching his own in the faintest breath of a memory.
In the dim light, his skin is ashened but nowhere near the greyed, decayed flesh of Nelo Angelo- Vergil. He drags his fingers along his cheek and beneath his eye, pulling the skin. It moves, not like the hard, stone-like marble of his brother.
Dead. His brother is dead.
Dante’s hands tremble as he removes them from his face and looks down at them hovering over the sink. His hands are pale and clean, smooth and callus free. He cannot help but search them from imperfections, for the vile taint of fratricide on his skin.
His palm is scar free. He drags the blunt edge of his nail across it, a pale mimicry of a line appearing for just a second before fading away. Even that last memento, he cannot keep.
He doesn’t want the husk of Nelo Angelo to be the last memory he holds of Vergil. He doesn't want to remember the confused and blank stare of Mundus’s servant, the lines of pain and torment pulled at his face, the cold feeling on his skin beneath Dante’s, the breathless release as he fades away and there is no more. Not even in death could Vergil shine through, killed long before Dante could reunite with him.
Dante sifts through his memories, trying to find something, anything that he can cling to. Something Vergil. His mind always brings him back to the Temen-ni-gru, the rushing waters drowning out everything but the sound of Vergil’s voice as lets himself fall. His white hair whistling in the wind, blue eyes bright as he plummets into darkness.
If only he hadn’t let him fall, Vergil would not have wound up in Mundus’s control, his servant, prisoner. Ten years, Dante has lived an oblivious life. He selfishly forced himself to forget Vergil, to push the events of the Temen-ni-gru behind, to move on. All the while, Vergil has been tortured, corrupted and enslaved, made to suffer at the hands of the very being that stripped them of their lives and childhood, the very thing that killed their mother.
If only Dante had thought to rescue his brother once in the decade that had passed. Maybe this could have all been avoided. He could have fished his brother from the depths of Hell, saved him from the fate of Mundus, brought him back home.
Instead, Dante had done the unthinkable.
His vision blurs and Dante lets his head fall forward, his long bangs shielding him from his own reflection. His shoulders shake as he bites down the grief that is rising over him, threatening to take him under and drown him. His hands grip the side of the sink so hard the porcelain cracks under his fingers.
Not that it matters. Nothing matters. Not to a man who killed his own brother, not to a man that’s lost everything.
“Dante?”
A jolt rushes through Dante as the door to the bathroom cracks open. He hastily tries to compose himself, to throw back on a mask of composure as he desperately tries to force his typical devil-may-care smile, but that comes stuttering to a halt when he sees his mother standing in the doorway.
Trish, his brain forces the correction through his heart doesn’t quite catch the memo. He’s left standing raw and exposed, thoroughly off-kilted and unbalanced as he teeters on the cusp of absolutely falling apart.
“I’m fine,” he throws out despite the slight tremble of his hands and the wetness around his eyes. There’s a shortness to his breath that makes his voice weak, small. He feels eight all over again, cowering in a closet and hoping it is all one terrible nightmare.
Trish looks unconvinced, pulling the same face his mother used to when she’d catch Dante and Vergil in a childish lie. It's a memory that rocks Dante’s weakened composure until it all but collapses.
“Fuck,” he hisses more to himself than Trish as he doubles over again. He grips the sink, turns away from her as a new wave of grief tears through him. “It’s nothing.”
Trish says nothing as she lingers in the doorway, too demonic to know how to deal with human emotion. Demons do not give sympathy nor condolences. But Trish tries regardless.
“You freed him,” she offers. There is no softness in her tone nor an attempt to be sympathetic. Her voice is matter of fact and direct as she speaks. “Nelo Angelo was a prisoner of Mundus and you freed him.”
Dante shakes his head, refusing to hear the out he is being given for his grief. “I killed him.”
“Your brother died a long time ago. Nelo Angelo was nothing more than his body forced to keep going.”
It does nothing to ease the guilt in his heart, the anguish in his soul. It doesn’t matter if Vergil had died today or somewhere within the ten years prior. Dante still let him rot, let him suffer, let him die. Dante couldn’t save him and now would never get the chance.
He jumps as he feels a cool hand on the back of his neck, long nails lightly scratching at the base. It shouldn’t feel comforting, it barely does, but it’s the closest thing Dante’s had to human touch in years and it only makes his resolve crumble as tears slide down his face.
Trish says nothing more as he whimpers over the sink, biting his lips until they bleed to hold back the noise. She doesn’t leave him, just continuing the light petting on the back of his neck. It’ll never replace the comfort of his mother dragging her fingers through his hair or the way her hugs were always soft, warm and enveloping, but it’s close enough that he soaks up the small touch.
It does nothing to erase what he’s lost- again, the voice in the back of his head reminds him, cold and clipped and distinctly Vergil, forever -but it reminds him despite everything, he is not alone.