Chapter Text
Hours passed while they sailed back to the mainland, and none of them spoke of their loss on Dumary Island. Nero sat against the boat’s railing, legs curled up against his chest, the occasional spray of water a refreshing surprise dragging him out of his darker thoughts.
Killing Arius hadn’t been enough. He had almost given all of himself to this cursed-ass katana, and not even the power that had granted him had let him save the island. Sure, it’d be worse if Mister Villain Incarnate had been there to greet Argosax and help the demon lord spread his minions, but that seal had still been broken. Every day, more people died on his watch, and no matter how hard he tried—no matter how much he trained or risked—he couldn’t save them. How long was he supposed to fight like that? If Sparda had chosen him, why the fuck hadn’t he granted him even more power? How was Nero supposed to be the new saviour or whatever when he could barely face Mundus’s generals, let alone his second in command or the Prince of Darkness himself?
They were all fucked, that was the truth of it, and some days he wondered why he bothered to fight at all. But everyone wanted him to—everyone counted on him to. And if they thought he could do it, what right did he have to give up? It just… just wasn’t fair. Lucia was wrong. He liked helping people, but he didn’t want to be a hero. He didn't care for the glory of it, the public eye. He wanted to curl home around hot cocoa and listen to Kyrie sing, knowing she and everyone else were finally safe from Mundus's hordes.
‘xcept he couldn't. His life was not his for the choosing. Sparda had granted him his blessing, setting Nero’s feet on a path he had no option but to follow. He needed to see this through and get to the end, no matter what.
Nero’s stomach tightened. He didn’t have a hundred ways to get stronger, but he hated what it did to him, to unleash the full strength of Sparda’s blessing. Sanctus promised him it was holy strength, but it didn’t make him feel that way. When he used the Yamato, he felt dirty… twisted and evil, thirsty for violence and domination in a way that made his blood curl every time he looked back. He hated it, hated how he became as bad as the demons he fought.
“There is great power inside of you, but I sense great darkness, too.”
Nero jumped at the voice, and his eyes flashed to Matier, so small that even standing while he sat, she did not seem much higher than him. He offered one glare before turning his head away, to stare at the sea. “I ain’t in the market for old spiritual wisdom.”
“Good thing I do not sell, but give.”
He snorted and ignored her, which earned him a sharp hit from her walking stick—a new gnarled staff to replace the artefact Arius had stolen from her.
“Has no one taught you respect, young man?” she asked. “Sparda was quite the charmer.”
“I don’t give a shit what Sparda was like.” Not that he’d ever tell anyone from the Order that, except maybe Credo. The knight would frown at him for it, and tell Nero the Sparda’s sense of justice and his steadfastness in defending humans were values to emulate, not mock. He would love to hear Sparda was all polite and proper from someone who knew him. “Wait, what kind of charmer?”
Matier chuckled at his sudden change of mind. “Ah, but the kind who’d get into any woman’s heart. Wouldn’t you want that?”
Not any woman, Nero thought, and he couldn’t help the red colouring his cheeks. He scoffed, trying to mask it with derision. “Ya sayin’ the great Saviour and Legendary Dark Knight was some womanizing schmuck?”
“The best of them,” she answered with fondness, and now he couldn’t help but wondered if she’d—oh lord. Nero blushed even harder. Yeah, he was definitely not telling Credo that. Matier leaned heavily on her cane as she lowered her stout body down the ground beside him. “Your Order, they are funny people, to revere him so.”
Something in the way she said ‘funny’ told Nero she meant another word. He wasn’t sure he wanted to know. Nero didn’t care for all the decorum around the Order of the Sword—all the fancy outfit and big ceremonies felt pointless when the world crumbled around them. Credo said it grounded people, made them seem dependable and helped calm them when panic would only worsen their situation, but to Nero it all still felt like bullshit. The core of it, though… If Sparda was not with them, then how was Nero so powerful?
“W-why not? He guides us. Gave me these powers.”
“He did, didn’t he?” Matier said, a strange inflexion in her voice, “but they are still yours. A part of you, so to speak.”
He snapped his head back to her, glare back in full force when he saw her smirk. “Whatcha gettin’ at?”
“You cannot change who you are, only accept it. Accept your self, Nero.”
She tapped the Yamato’s hilt with her index finger, and the sword vibrated at her touch, its power surging up as if to meet her. Nero scrambled away with a surprised swear. He could feel the Yamato in the depths of his soul, calling to Matier, pulsing, its entire will bent towards a single desire: claim me. Her eyebrows arched—could she hear, too?
“You are not mine to claim.”
All frailty had vanished from her voice and a quiet strength emanated from her. She pushed herself back up, and although she groaned with the effort, Nero knew she needed no help, and never had.
“Good day, Nero. We will talk once more once my old feet are on the ground.”
She trudged away, ignoring the frustrated swirl of power she’d awakened at his hip. Nero’s heart hammered in his chest, snippy words stuck in his throat. What was going on with the Yamato? It’d never done that sorta shit before, always seemed dormant until it unlocked his powers. After, though… Was the bloodthirst not him, but the Yamato? Was this asshole sword just taking over every time he called upon its power? What the fuck was going on, and if Matier knew, why didn’t she just tell him?
“Hey!” He got up and scrambled after her. She stopped and turned at the sound of his voice, raised eyebrows a silent invitation to go on. This was why he didn’t take advice from oldbags: they were infuriating. “Stop fucking around and just tell me!”
“But I did, and I think you know it,” she said. “Accept your self, Nero.”
Matier bent her head as if bowing to him, then turned to walk away once more. He didn’t call out to her this time. What would be the point? Get told the same feel good bullshit a third time? No fucking thanks. His hands fell to his sides, and as his left fingers brushed against the Yamato’s sheathe, the blade quieted once more, leaving behind the eerie sensation of a child seething.
“Yeah, fuck you too.”
Nero huffed, then stomped back to his initial spot and plopped down. He hated that he knew what Matier meant, or thought he did: these powers were his alone, but he was terrified of what they’d make him do. But without the Yamato’s help, he had no hope of ever winning. Nero sighed and leaned his head back against the railing, waves of exhaustion crashing through him. He was ready for this whole ass mission to be over, and for a quiet if meagre meal with Kyrie and Credo.
###
Lady jumped off the boat the moment it reached the docks, not bothering to wait for the captain to stabilize and tie them down properly. She hated boats—boats and planes and any transportation she didn’t control, or which left her trapped in the middle of deadly water or high in the air should shit go wrong. Just because she tried to prepare for any eventuality didn’t mean she wanted to deal with jumping off a crashing plane or drifting on emergency rafts or whatever, and she’d lived through one too many demon ambush to ever relax on a boat. Minor demons crossed all the time now, portals opening without warning and death diving for you. Those who wanted to survive learned to stay alert.
Alertness wouldn’t save her on a boat, though, not if demons destroyed it. She was glad for solid, reliable ground under her feet. Lady stretched out with a relieved sigh then turned to watch her morose companions walk to the docks.
After the sparks between Nero and Lucia, no one had said much else. Lady didn’t blame them. Even though a bunch of the islanders had already made it to the mainland, Lucia had lost a lot of good people there, and Nero… Lady had dealt with the bitter taste of defeat too often to resent the kid. He had a good heart—too good, honestly. It’d kill him one day, and this shit world would be even poorer for it. But that was the way it rolled, didn’t it? Good things weren’t meant to last against its onslaught.
Thankfully, she didn’t care to be good.
Credo had called her heartless, once, and she had laughed at the idea. Maybe she was—maybe she’d lost that part of her somewhere along the way—but being dead didn’t give her much of a heart either. As long as she lived, more and more demons died, and who cared if she did it for the money? For revenge? That was up to her, to what her soul demanded. Credo should take care of his soul and leave hers well alone. She got a card out of her pocket and handed it to Lucia.
“You ever need help protecting your flock from demons again, this is my number.”
Lucia crossed her arms without taking the card. “I am not staying. Matier will protect them.”
Lady’s eyebrows shot up. She moved the card towards Matier, then drew a second one and once more offered it to Lucia. “You ever want a partner…”
“A partner?”
“You’re not the type to leave your people on a whim, and you’re not the type to let a demon like Argosax sit on your home without fighting back.” Lady didn’t think Lucia had much interest in serving the Order, either. She already had her clan, and the knights might not take well to her being a demon. “All I’m saying is… I don’t care who made you or how. I’ve worked with a demon who had a good heart before. You’re competent, and if you’re going to strike out on your own, you’re going to need money. So call me if you want a partner who knows what she’s doing.”
Maybe she shouldn’t do this. She’d spent years telling herself she worked better alone—nine years, in fact, not that anyone counted how many had passed since this world went to shit, or since Dante had disappeared on her, leaving behind nothing but his brother’s amulet and a note saying “BRB”. Typical Dante. Even after all these years, she still wanted to put one in his forehead for that bullshit.
Lucia accepted the card slowly and turned it between her fingers before reading the name inscribed on it. "Devil Never Cry?"
"Don't ask—I didn't name it. Belonged to my first partner before he took on a job that'd get him killed. Now he's gone."
Lucia must not have missed Lady's implied warning about playing the hero, because she narrowed her eyes. "My plan was not to take on mindless mercenary work."
"Suit yourself," she said, doing her best to hide the surprising stab of disappointment. "I kill demons, get paid in food and shelter and first aid kits—all that shit's in such short supplies, it's often worth more than coins these days. But I ain't gonna stop you if you wanna seek a higher calling. We all do what we have to. No matter where it leads to."
Lucia turned the card between her fingers, then slipped it in her back pocket. "I will keep it safe. Do not die before I call."
She brusquely extended a hand, and Lady shook it with a laugh. "No plans to die while I still got unfinished business," she promised, before turning to Nero. "Let's go make our report before your older brother gets on my ass for flunking my paperwork duties."
Nero huffed. "Keep complaining, all ya gotta fill is a single form. I get mountains of it!"
She'd seen his load and it wasn't that bad, but Nero hated it even more than she did. He got so caught up in complaining about the absurdity of making "Sparda's Chosen" waste hours filling out little squares on a sheet of paper that he completely missed Lucia's "Au revoir" and barely waved as they headed out to their ride. Lady rolled her eyes. Nero would bitch about that title all the time, except when he thought it should get him out of chores he disliked. Not her problem. She got paid to work with the kid, not to strip him of what dregs of childhood he still retained. The world would do that fast enough without her help.
###
Lucia and Matier walked the beach side by side, in silence, as they so often had in the past. It should be familiar and reassuring, this routine, but Lucia’s stomach churned at the heresy of performing it on a continental beach with soft sand while the gravel strips of Dumary Island were being trampled by demons.
They had lost, and their tight-knit communities lay in shambles, broken families clinging to one another as they found shelter in makeshift encampments by the sea. Walking among them had driven the loss home harder than any desperate run through burning streets. Lucia had seen the numb horror on the faces of those who’d escaped, had noticed the ones missing, dead or abandoned. Lady had saved many—more than Lucia had initially expected, in truth—yet those she hadn’t left irreparable holes behind.
All because she hadn’t been strong enough. She had put everything she had into this fight, her entire body shifting as power had coursed through her, and still she had been defeated. Arius had crushed her, and Argosax… Even now, far in the distance, the red glow of his great rift marred the sky.
Despair tightened Lucia’s chest. She could not let the greater demon devastate the world, yet she did not see what hope they had of ever defeating him.
“I see the weight of the day on your shoulders,” Matier said, “and in every slow step you take.”
Lucia stopped in her tracks. Water lapped their feet and she stared at it, unable to meet Matier’s eyes. “I failed you. I failed Vie de Marli, and all the people on Dumary Island.” The rawness in her voice surprised her. She had been doing her best to bury the shame and anger, to no avail. “I’m—I’m so sorry.”
“Oh, child…” Matier trailed off. Love had filled her tone to the brim, and she closed her eyes, her head slowly swinging from one side to the next, as if to a rhythm only she could hear.
“Ce n’est surement pas de briller,
Qui nous empêchera de tomber.
Ce n’est surement pas de tomber,
Qui nous empêchera de rêver.”
A sharp, almost pained laugh escaped Lucia as her mother slipped into the song, shedding off all of Deux par deux rassemblés’ fast-paced bop to offer instead a slow, heart-wrenching rendition of its message. Her love for Matier filled her chest, forcing it to expand with warmth until the sheer strength of it filled her eyes with tears. How could one remain so strong and full of life even as nothing but death surrounded them? And yet Matier’s voice rang loud and clear as she stared at the sea and sang of failures and second chances, and fighting for your dreams. Spitting out bits of her semi-clandestine collection of francophone music, ever the one-woman musical.
“Mamaaan,” Lucia whined, as she so often would when Matier got it into her head to sing the most atrocious French hits from decades ago, filling her poor ears with Plastic Bertrand.
Matier’s song died as she cackled, the amused twinkle alive in her eyes, her smile as true and honest as ever. “Ah, my child, do not ask me to stop. These are my roots, as is Dumary Island.” She tapped her cane across Lucia’s shin. “You would do well to remember yours, too, as you travel the world.”
“How could I not? Your singing will haunt me no matter where I go.” Lucia forced a smile to her lips but did not look at Matier. She didn’t think she could handle it, not yet. She had lost so much in such a brutal, short period of time, the idea of leaving Matier’s side… it was impossible, and yet they both knew that she must. She would never grow strong enough watching over refugees.
“The island too, mon ange.” Matier walked in front of her, letting her robes trail into the waves lapping their feet, and captured Lucia’s hands in her own, gnarled ones. Her neck bent as she looked up, her eyes darker than the nighttime sea. “You are a daughter of the island. It has blessed you, and its love for you will follow you no matter how far you go.”
The words scorched away her sadness, leaving only bitter anger behind. She snatched her hand away, stepping back from Matier. She’d heard this lie before, about Dumary Island granting her strength and healing, but she knew it for what it was now. Her trembling fingers reached for the amulet at her neck, which had shone a bright turquoise as she’d transformed, drawing upon the power of her lineage.
“Even now, you lie to me—” An angry snarl choked out her next words and she shook her head. “I have seen the others, the secretaries. I know I am Arius’ defect—a devil fabricated by his hand and thrown away. All my life…”
Lucia had no words for the betrayal burning through her, anger and denial twinning in her heart. She didn’t want it to be true, but every time she closed her eyes, she heard his words. Everything that belongs to the devils will eventually revert to its original form. She squeezed them shut now, and inhaled deeply before she found the strength to risk opening again.
“Tell me the truth, maman. All of it.”
Matier met her gaze without hesitation, and although she hunched still over her cane, her posture held no shame. She smiled softly, the barest hint of regret to it. “I have never lied to you, mon ange, though I long ago should have mustered the strength of a more complete truth. Walk with me, and I will tell you of the feathered baby devil I found at sea, bubbled in fast-depleting powers, and of how Dumary Island and myself came to adopt it.”
So they did. Matier and Lucia strolled along the continental beach as Matier retold her fated encounter by the sea on Dumary Island, and how the same baby had later gotten so sick she had taken it into the depths of the Island and found Lucia’s amulet hanging over a cradle-shaped altar. Matier’s voice turned soft and weary as she spoke of pleading for Lucia’s life, of the Devil Heart enshrined in her amulet calming her fever for the first time in days. Always, Matier had always told Lucia had been blessed by the Island, but she’d never explained how or why—she had certainly never said it was a demon’s core within the amulet, ground down to its purest essence. No wonder only she could use it…
Lucia absorbed the information, silent. She would need days to work through it properly, but they didn’t have that now, and only a few words echoed through her mind, over and over.
“So I am different,” she whispered.
Matier answered with an agreeing hm, and let the splashing of waves fill the conversation for a time. Lucia closed her eyes and breathed in the salty ocean air, so similar here. She had always been a demon, and Matier had always known.
“You are. But you are also my daughter, as you are Dumary’s. Never forget that, Lucia. Never forget your roots. They will hold you steady in the strongest of storms.”
Was it really that simple? Did it not matter at all, who had created her or what she was? She let Matier’s words sink in, wrapping herself in her mother’s voice, the embodiment of strength and wisdom for so much of her life. She wanted so badly to accept this as truth, to allow herself to be more than Arius’ defect.
Birth is but one block of who you are, Lady had said. It was up to her to her to find the other ones—to add to what Matier had given her through the years. Lucia’s eyes fluttered open and she slipped the Devil Never Cry business card out of her pocket. The next blocks were up to her, weren’t they? She could build herself into whatever she wanted.
“Find your path, mon ange,” Matier said, wrapping her fingers around Lucia’s forearm. “I will keep our people safe.”
Lucia’s voice tightened. These were goodbyes, and she had never expected having to make them.
“I will miss you. I will miss your voice.”
Matier laughed again, the clear sound bouncing off the waves. She tapped Lucia’s forearm. “Of course you will. After all, toutes les mamas…”
And she launched into another song, her hips shaking as she strung Maurane’s lyrics about mothers with golden voices and the love they deserve. The beach was deserted for miles, and Matier put the same energy into it as she would have at home, cooking or cleaning—as if the very collection of miscellaneous French songs she owned was not burning even now. Her earnestness washed Lucia’s melancholy, and she could only join one last time, spinning with her old, eccentric, ever-loving mother.
Alléluia mama!
J'ai tellement d'amour pour toi.
Je veux chanter et danser comme toi.
Je veux aimer comme toi.