Chapter Text
"Vergil?"
The boy had barely spoken when the ground beneath him began to crack and he started to fall again; his older brother saw him falling but said nothing and did nothing, he simply stared straight into his eyes with a look of disappointment that felt like a slap in the face.
He landed beside the Nightmare's eye. "What do you think you're doing, showing me that asshole?!" He screamed, climbing up the eyeball. "You think this is going to make me cry?! Is that it!? Showing me how he managed to do something I couldn't? How his relentless pursuit of power eventually paid off?! He can shove all that power right up his ass! And you can too!"
Tentacles began to emerge again, but the boy was too busy punching the creature's eye; they were about to grab him once more when cracks began to appear across the Nightmare's skin.
The body began to glow as the boy heard Griffon's voice in his head: "Hey, don't get too excited, if you use demonic energy like that, you're gonna die..." The bird was not talking about the kid.
The boy's eyes widened as he spotted a crack; he punched it with all his might, and it gave way easier than he thought it would. He didn't think twice before thrusting his entire arm inside; he could see the Nightmare's core, and didn't hesitate to grab it and rip it out with every ounce of strength he possessed.
The Nightmare's body split in two amidst a beam of energy that blinded everything for a moment. When Griffon could see again, the boy was standing in the middle of the room, holding the Nightmare's core, with black sludge dripping from his white hair.
The boy stood motionless for a long moment and on his hands was Nightmare’s, it was warm and it seemed to pulsate with power, but reminded him more of a living heart.
The black sludge that came from the demon ran from his hair, streaming down his face and dripping onto the floor of the ruined church. He was panting, yet his eyes remained fixed on the glowing object he held.
"You... you actually did it," Griffon said, hovering behind him with a mix of awe and disbelief. “Damn you, boy.”
“You shouldn’t doubt me,” the boy said as he studied the core, he felt a pulsating energy radiating from it. It was different from the others; instead of a colored sphere in the center, the Nightmare's core was entirely white and seemed pretty solid.
"It won't accept a contract easily," he threw the core up in the air once like it was a ball (it was a kind of a ball just one that was very dangerous).
"Don’t- do that, are you crazy?!” Griffon shrieked from the other side of what reamained of the church. “Just finish it off," he said while bringing Ebony and Ivory back to the teenager as fast as he could. "It'll obey you either way."
The boy took Ivory but left Ebony with the bird for a moment, his left hand was occupied by the core. He was about to act when black sludge began to reform and he felt his hand growing hot. "It's starting up again."
The sludge formed channels and began connecting in mid-air, creating a skull shape that glared at the boy with profound hatred.
Griffon would have grimaced if birds could. "You're more stubborn than a mule, but it'll end the same way it always does." He turned to the boy. "Just shoot and get it over with!"
At that moment, Shadow began to growl loudly, and Griffon took notice. "What is it, kitty?"
That was when numerous hands began emerging from the gap in the doors, trying to pry them open. The ‘kitty’ launched its spikes to try and hold them back, and Griffon joined in, blasting shockwaves at the hands. "Bunch of trash! These guys must've been drawn by the high concentration of demonic energy here!"
He looked at the boy. "Finish this now- if we get caught in the middle of this, we're dead!" Then he noticed a Death Scissors demon emerging from a section of the ceiling that had been torn away earlier, and he shouted, "It's unfair coming from up there!"
However the boy wasn't paying attention to that; he was staring deep into the Nightmare's eyes, narrowing his own. "You want this, don't you?” He showed off the pure white core to the thing in front of him. “You want this shit- that's your life, isn't it?" He looked at the creature, formed from the very same flesh that had corrupted his own once, and let out a scoffing laugh. "It's not nice having your life forcibly taken from you, is it? It's not nice, the idea of being made to do something you don't want to do without even being able to object, right?"
He clutched the core to his chest. "I'm not giving it back to ya." One of the Nightmare's claws impaled him from behind; he coughed up a bit of blood, but payed no mind to it, he was used to pain like that. "I won't do it. Y'all didn't give it back when I begged and cried, so why should I do it for you?" He looked at the creature's single eye, the one that had always belonged to him. "It's mine. You want it? You know what to do."
The tentacle in his stomach began to dissolve and spread throughout his body, while others merged with his back, leaving marks that joined the ones already covering him.
He dropped back to the ground, landing on his feet with the Nightmare behind him, and snapped his fingers before pointing at the small crowd of lesser demons entering the area: "Jackpot."
With that, a concentrated beam of demonic energy was enough to send them all back to the Demon Realm.
Luckily, Griffon had grabbed Shadow by the neck and flown to a spot untouched by the blast. "Well... I don't know what happened, but it worked. You didn’t do too bad, kid."
The boy chuckled, but the sound died out as his head began to feel heavy; before he could even process what was happening, he collapsed to the ground, his vision blurring until everything went completely black.
When he woke up again, he was on the sofa in his house, and music was playing on the record player. It was a soft rock track he liked to listen to on most days during that time, the type of music their mother had enjoyed too, but that Vergil hated.
Vergil didn't have good taste in music though, so he'd do what was necessary and change the record whenever he could.
"It's a miracle you let me choose today," he murmured, sitting up on the sofa; it took him a moment to remember that the sofa no longer existed, it had been completely destroyed years ago. He scoffed. "Another dream like this, huh?"
He had a lot of dreams like that, actually, dreams disguised as memories. Well, he preferred calling them dreams because his memory was terrible, so he couldn't confirm or deny if everything that happened had actually happened. It was easier to think of them as just dreams.
The real him was probably passed out on the floor, with Griffon dragging him by the hair after he'd used up his entire reserve of energy in that final moment.
"That was sick, but I should've calculated better," he murmured, letting himself get carried away by the music for a moment. "A new lesson for me. You'd laugh at me, wouldn't you, big brother?"
That last Jackpot had been earth-shattering, but it had wiped him out in the process.
Power was such a strange concept to him.
He'd always felt powerful; even after everything that happened in his childhood and his time as a mercenary, he was always the most powerful person in the room thanks to his blood and he never had a good reason to not trust his capabilities. So, when Vergil spoke about might, and how, without it, you couldn't protect anyone and yourself, he genuinely thought his brother was being stupid.
Not because what Vergil said was completely wrong, he understood that now, more than ever, but because strength had never guaranteed anything for him. Or for anyone else he knew actually.
Their father was extremely powerful, yet that hadn't guaranteed he could stay.
He'd been strong even as a child, but that hadn't stopped their mother from dying.
It didn't stop Morris Island from burning, nor did it prevent the deaths of Grue, Jessica, or Nell.
He woke his inner devil and even that didn't bring him home after the events at Temen Ni Gru, nor did it make his brother look at him with anything other than indifference and disdain.
Power had never given him anything; if anything, it had taken everything away from. If he could be left alone in expense of his strength, he would gladly cover the price, but even now he didn't have that opportunity.
Now more than ever he actually needed that kind of power, it could finally make a difference and yet he didn't have much of it. It was ironic, wasn't it? Vergil would surely be laughing at him, with that upturned nose and that "I told you so" look he always had since their childhood.
"You really did tell me, Verge," he resigned as the floor began to fill with blood and fire, he didn’t need to look to see who the blood belonged to. "I am weak. You said I was- maybe you were wrong about how I was weak, but I am weak nonetheless." He looked at his hands, marked by black lines, and couldn't help but wonder if something was wrong with him.
When he needed power, he didn't have it; and when he did have it, it seemed like a curse that would inevitably strip away everything he cared about.
Deep down, he had already made peace with the fact that he was the problem, that he was likely the broken one. How could the demonic nature be so simple? It was he who was like this... and that was why he'd been cast aside. He wouldn’t admit it out loud, but he knew.
It had all been pointless from the start, hadn't it? He'd known that, he'd kept it in the back of his mind, but chose to ignore it because he wanted to prove a stupid point.
It had all been nothing more than an excuse to keep existing, and in the end, he couldn't even manage that right. He wouldn't be able to defeat him.
He was exhausted; he just wanted to lay his head on the sofa, smell his mother's kitchen and hear the sound of his older brother turning the pages of those stupid old books he liked. Maybe that guy was really right, he really was tired. He really wanted to stop; why go on? He'd already done so much in his life. For sure someone else could pick up where he left.
He closed his eyes for a moment, feeling the sensation of falling again, and grimaced as he landed in another pitch-black space with water on the floor. "A guy can't even have a nap in peace anymore." He sat up with a sigh.
Ebony and Ivory fell near him; reflexively, he picked up both guns and rested them on his lap. "I said I'd use you two in a way the old lady could never imagine... even I couldn't have foreseen it. I wonder why she made you two for me?" He tilted his head, recalling moments with the old lady from years ago, memories he desperately had tried to forget. Some he had managed to put behind him; others, he hadn't.
She had always thought his way of shooting was barbaric, yet she kept crafting better guns for him, hoping one wouldn't blow up in his hand. And in the end, she succeeded, so well, in fact, that they survived everything.
That was what she'd wanted, wasn't it? Guns that could outlive anything, even him.
He wondered if, since the attack on his childhood home, there had ever been a moment where he actually wanted to outlive something for his own sake. Mostly, he had done it because his mother told him to.
He ran as she asked, changed his name, "forgot" where he came from, and survived. It didn't work out, yet he kept going and going even after changing his name back again. Why?
Because he wanted revenge for his mother's death, but Vergil had already achieved that. So why did he keep wandering through hell long after?
Why had he cast that part of himself aside just to keep going? He knew Dante didn’t hate him.
"I didn't want you to be useless," he whispered in realization to the guns, but not just to them; to everything he had lived through.
If he gave up, what would have been the point of everything he’d endured? What would have been the point of all the damage he'd caused? It would have been for nothing, just useless damage. The pain would have continued unabated until his very last breath; and what good is pain without a moment of relief to follow it?
That was why Dante had cast him aside: because he didn't want it to be useless.
The boy looked ahead and saw a sword he hadn't seen in years.
Rebellion.
The boy lost his breath just by looking at it; he missed that sword so much that, on some days, the ache was physical. He rose on unsteady legs, his hands still gripping Ebony and Ivory, and collapsed onto the floor beside the sword he had carried from childhood until he was nineteen. He let Ebony on the floor for a moment and touched the blade of the sword with his fingers trembling, he missed it so much. He missed how he used to put that sword close to his chest and let its vibrations and murmurs lull him to sleep.
He noticed after some time that there was a mirror in front of him, reflecting its sister-blade, the Yamato; as he stepped before the glass, his own brother appeared once more, wearing that same air of superiority and disdain. "You again?" He asked, touching the mirror; his older brother mirrored the gesture but still said nothing. "You're not going to say anything? Seriously? Not even now will you say a single word that actually means something?"
He struck the mirror with his fist and it cracked a little. "I don't get it, we're twins. How did we end up so different? We were supposed to be one and the same, but we never were, right?" He kept staring at his older brother's face. "You always seemed bothered by my mere existence; you never wanted to play, sometimes I thought you didn't even want to look at me. And even now, you have nothing to say to me, do you?"
He shook his head in frustration. "I think I'd understand better if we'd actually talked at some point after we met again, but you never wanted to... and the last few times, I didn't want to either.” He wished he could, but he couldn’t just pin all the blame on his older brother. “So I guess that's it, isn't it, Vergil?"
The mirror shattered, and he heard a scream that finally snapped him back to the land of the living, it was Griffon. "You're alive!"
"Please don’t be dramatic; I just ran out of energy." The boy placed a hand on his forehead and noticed his white hair had turned black; he wrinkled his nose in disgust. "What the hell? I look like an emo kid now."
"You always looked like a emo kid, now you just look like you just came from a funeral," Griffon remarked, landing on his shoulder with an air of superiority. "It seems you can't keep that guy out for long, so you'd better be responsible about it, though that might be hard for you."
"Shut it."
"The thing is, there's nowhere left to go; we're in a dead end," Griffon said disappointedly.
"There is a way," the boy said, recalling Vergil's reflection. "It's a really annoying way, but it's all we've got."
Vergil.
The eldest son of the legendary Dark Knight, Sparda.
Half-human, half-demon, he has slain powerful demons such as the Prince of Darkness, Mundus, and Argosax the Chaos.
Most likely... no, he is without a doubt the strongest devil hunter to ever exist.
The boy grimaced. "Devil hunter." He scoffed, finishing the last button on his shirt but leaving the top two undone. "Last time I saw him, he was actually doing them a huge favor by breaking the seal on Temen Ni Gru."
"The past is the past," Griffon said, circling back to the bench where they were waiting for a train. "What matters is the present, and this is the present."
"It's just weird," he threw his arms up in frustration. "Last time I saw the guy, he was caught up in some crazy business, and now he's like this."
"You've been away for a long time," Griffon said, landing on the bench. "Anyway, I checked, and there's still a fair bit of time before the train arrives. Having to move around like this is such a hassle..."
"I like trains," the boy noted, but quickly returned to the previous topic. "Well, you've got a point; that was a long time ago. Back then, I was the devil hunter, but now I'm making contracts with demons." How the mighty has fallen.
"Could you really call yourself that?" Griffon asked. "Your shop didn't even have a name yet."
"I was going to come up with one."
"Right..." Nightmare spoke skeptically. "Still on the subject of Vergil- how are you going to introduce yourself? Is it going to be 'Big brother, help me!' Or something like that?"
The boy chuckled softly. "With this snot-nosed teenager look, this hair, and these fake tattoos? Vergil will never recognize me, not that he'd care if he did, anyway. Well, from what I remember about the devil-hunting gig, someone shows up with info on demons and the hunter kills them; I'll just do that."
The boy finished adjusting his shirt, feeling the red fabric against his skin like a fragile suit of armor. But in this diminished form, in this teenage body that wasn't truly his, he needed anything that could pass for "normal" in human eyes.
"You really think you can fool your brother?" Griffon asked, tilting his head. "Even looking like that?"
"Vergil never really looked at me, especially not the last time we met," the boy replied, his voice lower than he’d intended. "He looked right through me in that tower, as if I were just something that needed to be there for his plan to move forward. That won't change now."
"Speaking of which," the nightmare began, his voice low enough not to draw the attention of the few passengers, "what do you know about what he's been up to?"
The boy fell silent for a moment. "I know he defeated Mundus," he finally said. "I don't know how, or when exactly, I just know he did it. And that after that... he sort of became what our old man was."
"A guardian of the balance between worlds?"
"A guy who kills demons and doesn't talk about it." The boy corrected with an annoyed click of his tongue, Vergil wanted father’s power so bad back then well he got it, yay good for him, he didn’t say that part out loud. "You met him. He isn't exactly the type to share his feelings- not even when he was a kid."
Griffon laughed bitterly at the memory and sighed embarrassed by the past a little. "You are confusing me with another guy, but I know what you are talking about, he sliced him in little pieces in a second. Didn't even blink."
The boy shrugged, “I don’t really care. It was a demon created by Mundus. He had his reasons."
"And you think he won't do the same to you? You show up there, full of yourself, with demons clinging to you like ticks, and he’s just going to... listen?" It was a good question honestly.
"He'll listen," the boy said with determination. "Because I won't give him a choice."
"Look at you, acting so cocky," Griffon remarked from the seat beside him. "And how are you going to get in there? What name are you going to use?"
"That's easy," he said, pointing to the gold engraving on Ivory: 'For Tony Redgrave'. "My name's going to be Anthony, or Tony. Doesn't matter."
"That's kind of risky, don't you think?" Griffon pointed out. "Because of the guns."
"Maybe, but it's what I've got. I don't think my brother even knows about my mercenary days anyway, so fuck it." He shrugged and stood up to stretch his legs, feeling a wave of weakness that would have knocked him to the ground if not for Griffon.
"What is it? Did you use up too much energy again?"
"Nah... I'm just…" he paused for a minute trying to discern the sensation, "…hungry."
"Humans are so... meh," Griffon said with obvious frustration in relation to the human need of food to stay functional. "You need something new all the time... well, I could hunt some rats-" a gunshot made his eyes widen, "I don't know what humans are supposed to eat!”
"Pizza, you stupid bird," the boy replied, holstering his gun. "Humans are supposed to eat pizza and strawberry sundaes. However we've got a problem here: the pizza, the train, and the job for Vergil, it all costs money. Money we don't have." Being broke was his natural state; even after all this time, he was used to it.
But to the nightmare, the concept was likely alien: "Money!"
"Yeah, money is important."
"And how do we get it?"
"I've got a few ideas," Tony said with a half-smile. "I'm actually getting nostalgic. We just take it from someone."
"Better make it quick; with the increase in traffic, the number of people is going to rise, and any scandal could attract too much attention." Griffon spoke as he helped the boy walk, looking for a target, until they both heard a scream coming from an alley, it was always an alley.
When they snuck over, the scene was straight out of a movie: a gang of masked, armed men had a young woman cornered against a wall; she was weeping and defenseless. "Please! I'll hand over the money- just don't shoot!"
Dante narrowed his eyes and scowled; he had seen scenes like this far too often during his time as a mercenary. "Bunch of cowards- that’s exactly why I used to beat up gangs like this. Well," he began cracking his knuckles, "old habits die hard." He extended his hand, summoning Shadow, which instantly launched into the attack.
The black panther emerged from the boy's shadow as if it had always been there, a fluid movement that made the armed men instinctively recoil. Before any of them could react, Shadow was already in their midst, a blur of claws and teeth that tore a weapon from one of the thugs' hands with a sharp snap.
"What the fuck is that?!" The man shouted, trying to back away, but Shadow had already moved on to the next target, knocking him down with a precise strike to the leg.
But, Tony wasted no time. While the men were distracted by the beast that had appeared out of nowhere, he advanced silently, catching one of the henchmen off guard from behind. A quick blow with the Ebony's grip, and the man dropped like a sack of potatoes.
"Three," he muttered, already turning toward the next one.
One of the gang members, a large man, finally regained his composure. "Shoot him, you idiots! He's just a kid!"
The remaining men raised their weapons, but before they could pull the trigger, Griffon let out a piercing shriek from above, a shockwave that sent them all stumbling, disoriented. Tony seized the opening, disarming two of them with quick, precise movements that spoke of years of practice. Shadow then finished by fanning out his tail, forming a fan of blades, and slamming all the men against the wall; there was a loud crash, and they all slumped to the ground, unconscious and piled atop one another.
Tony quickly began searching the men's pockets, chuckling softly as he took a generous amount of cash from each of them. "See? Memories aren't so bad sometimes," he murmured.
That was when he turned around and saw the woman huddled on the floor, weeping. "P-please... d-don't hurt me... you can take my money, too..."
Tony pursed his lips. "Look, I think I've taken enough; they've probably had a long day," he said, pocketing the money he had found, when he spotted a silver necklace with a red stone in the center.
It looked very familiar; he remembered a sweet, gentle voice calling out to him and his brother. "Happy birthday," she had said. He had taken the amulet and literally jumped with joy, he had thought it was beautiful and one of the coolest things he had ever gotten.
He reached up to his neck and felt that it was no longer there.
Tony walked slowly toward the young woman so as not to startle her further, then nudged the necklace closer to her with his foot. "I don't want your things," he said before turning to leave the alley; he walked a short distance before leaning against a pillar for support.
He shouldn't have pushed himself so hard.
Tony stood leaning against the pillar for a long moment, his heart racing and his breathing shallow. The adrenaline from the fight was beginning to fade, giving way to the weakness he had been trying to ignore. His hands trembled slightly as he shoved the money into his pocket.
"Look at that- you almost passed out again," Griffon remarked, landing on his shoulder with an air of superiority. "And yet you still want to play the hero."
"It was just a moment," Tony replied, his voice slightly shaky. "I've been through worse."
"Yeah, but back then you had a body that healed itself," the nightmare pointed out. "Now you're basically a human with a few extra trimmings. You need to learn to pace yourself, or you'll end up dead before you even get close to your brother."
Tony gritted his teeth but didn't answer. He knew Griffon was right, even if he hated admitting it. Before, he could throw himself into any fight without fear, trusting his body to recover from any injury, but now, every blow left marks that took ages to fade. Every use of his power left him weaker.
"I know," he finally murmured. "But I couldn't just... stand there and watch while you guys did the work; I couldn't help myself."
"Of course not- you're a fool," Griffon said, though his voice held a softer tone. "But at least you're an idiot with money now."
Tony laughed, a weary sound. "Yeah, at least there's that."
He straightened up, feeling the weakness slowly subside. The woman's necklace still echoed in his mind, the red stone and the silver chain. He didn't want to think about it now.
"I want pizza," he said finally.
He sat inside the diner with a slice of pepperoni pizza, likely a bit stale not that Tony cared, he’d eaten far worse, and the mere sight of a pizza before him almost made him want to cry.
"Come on!" Griffon said impatiently inside his mind, now back within him. "Eat! Before you collapse again."
"It's just..." he paused for a moment for dramatic effect, "I'm overcome with emotion."
Tony picked up the slice of pizza with both hands, as if it were a sacred object. The cheese melted slightly between his fingers, the aroma of pepperoni and tomato sauce filled his senses, and for a moment, he just sat there, gazing at that triangular slice as if it were the most beautiful thing he had ever seen.
"Are you going to eat it or make love to it?" Griffon asked impatiently from within his mind.
Tony didn't answer, he took a bite and felt the flavor explode in his mouth. The hot cheese, the slightly tangy sauce, the crispy crust, it was perfect. He closed his eyes for a moment, letting the taste wash over him; his hand trembled slightly, and he wasn't sure if it was from hunger, exhaustion, or the emotion of finally having something that reminded him of the world he had lost.
"It's... it's so good," he murmured, his voice muffled as he chewed. "I haven't had pizza in... I don't know how long. Not real pizza." In Hell, the food was, at best, ash and things he didn’t have time to register before eating or he wouldn’t do it, things he would sometimes pretend were pizza just to make the experience less repulsive.
"You're actually getting emotional over pizza?" The nightmare's voice in his mind held a mix of amusement and disbelief. "Humans are so weird."
"You don't understand," Tony said, swallowing the bite and picking up the next one. "Pizza is... it's proof that good things still exist. You know? Even after everything, there's still pizza."
"That's deep." Griffon mocked.
"Shut up and let me eat."
Tony devoured the pizza in minutes, unconcerned with his appearance or the stares of other customers. He was hungry in a way that transcended physical hunger; it was a hunger for something that made sense, something to remind him of who he was before everything fell apart.
When he finished, he leaned back in his chair, feeling his stomach full for the first time in weeks. The exhaustion returned, but it was more bearable.
"Feeling better?" Griffon asked justo to make sure.
"I’m good as new," Tony admitted. "The pizza gave me some bonus points, I know that.”
"Good, because we've got a train to catch and a older brother to find."
Tony let out a sigh. "You're not going to let me forget that part, are you?"
"Never."
The train ride was uneventful; Tony slept through most of it, and the moment he woke up to get off the train, he was bombarded with questions.
"How do we find your brother?" Griffon didn't even give him a chance to catch his breath.
"Well," he began, scratching his head, "I always had a middleman who screened jobs for me and handled the money. It was either Morrison or Enzo." He grimaced at the thought of Enzo. "I imagine Vergil wouldn't do things much differently, he doesn't have patience to do that and neither the charisma. We need to find his middleman and tell him we've got a job for him."
"And how do we do that?"
"By asking around." Tony shrugged; as he walked, he couldn't help but wonder how Morrison was doing. Was he still alive? Still working as a middleman? He even thought about that scumbag Enzo. "Best to ask at bars, places where the underworld crowd hangs out. They're bound to know."