Chapter Text
Her name is Eva. She is Nero's grandmother. A grandmother! She's kind and funny and warm and real.
The only witness to their meeting is Artemis' silent moon, the light of her own twin's sun reflecting off its pale surface. Nero is relieved; the goddess of the hunt is the closest to his age of all their distant, Olympian family. She'll understand if he asks of another, smaller boon the next time they meet, surely? He doesn't want to imagine the taunting the gods will give him if they hear about certain awkward, teary hugs on the surface.
Secondly, Eva makes her home at the foot of Olympus; for the absence of noise and drama. Her status as a mortal-turned-goddess leaves her little domain and even less duties, apparently, but Nero needs only one glance at the vast gardens surrounding them to realize where her specialties lie.
She leads him to small table for two at the edge of a rose bush, its brambles reminding the prince of his father's own crown of thorns. Gods, the Fates never missed a single chance to be smug, did they?
But it's easy to forget about Fate, Olympus, and even the Underworld while his grandmother gives her side of the family history. Nero fills in his own stories where he can. They can only tell of time passing at all thanks to the moon's slow ease towards the back of the garden. Nero already forms plans to spend a future night watching the night sky, maybe just to see those constellations his cousins spoke so highly of.
“What is that you brought with you?” Eva points at the weathered scroll that sat on the table, forgotten amidst their long talk.
“Oh that? My, uh, father gave it to me before I left. He said it’s mine until he can beat me again.”
Eva's thin brows knotted together like the brambles at her feet. “Beat you? As in fight to the death yet again?”
Nero gulped under her sharp eyes, but nodded.
“That won't be happening if I can help it,” she scoffed in the exact manner Vergil did. Though her voice struck far more fear into his spine, somehow.
All that anger fell right out of her voice as quickly as it came, however.
“Oh....” she gasped as the parchment unrolled onto her lap. “These were his favorite poems, when he was but a boy.”
“It is?” Nero leaned over to try and peek. Eva moved closer and pointed to a page at the back of the stack.
“See there? That’s where he's written his name. He always did that, to keep his things separate from Dante’s.”
“Yeah, that definitely seems like him,” Nero snorted. “But I dunno why he thinks I need it. Seems like it'd be better off stashed in his desk.”
Eva looked at him sidelong for a good minute, her ruby-tinted smile getting wider and wider. “Don't you see?”
“See what?”
"You're his only son, Nero," she said it like it was the word of the Fates themselves. "He wants to share his interests with you."
“That doesn't... he doesn't—there's no way!”
Eva laughed with the echo of a gentle breeze behind it. Nero swore he could see the roses around them grow a little. "An appreciation of literature goes very deep into our family—all the way back to Sparda, actually! He always said that its creation is one of the greatest gifts that mortals possess."
"Well, that's nice and all, but I can't say I'm a huge fan. Father didn't really do the best job of selling it, y'know."
"Well, we'll just have to fix that now, won't we?"
Eva grinned again and returned the scroll. Nero rolled it up quickly and flinched. He pulled back his hand only to find the thinnest line of blood beginning to flow on his finger.
"...you bleed," Eva gasped like any mother would. At least, Nero thought so. He didn't exactly have any experience to go off of.
The prince just grimaced and wiped it away. "Yeah, so I've been told."
“No, Nero, I don't think you fully understand,” his grandmother held him by his shoulder, her eyes fixed on the thin stream of blood staining the blue of his robes. "Gods rarely bleed, and those that do certainly don't bleed red. That is exclusive to the mortals."
Nero grimaced. "But we're a little mortal, aren't we?"
"I used to be, but even when my brambles pierce my skin, I no longer bleed the color I was born with."
"So.... what does that mean? I’ve died dozens of times now, so I’m definitely still immortal."
Eva frowns, and Nero knows instinctively that even given their circumstances, hearing of her grandson's deaths will never be an easy topic. "Indeed, you are."
Nero looked to his uninjured hand; the clawed palm of his Devil Bringer. He hadn't noticed earlier, but its usually strong blue glow is dim, even under the darkness of night. “I’ve always felt like my arm was fueled by my blood, the way it powers me up, y’know?”
His grandmother nodded.
"But I figured that was because of my father, or Sparda, or whatever daemonic power we have naturally."
"That may be true, but I believe it is more indicative of your strength—the human strength that Sparda sought to protect. You are the embodiment of that power, in both mortal and god, daemonic and human.”
Eva settles her hands over his, a comfort settling into his veins that he’d never dreamt of feeling. It seeps into his slowing pulse, like a new boon that pulls him away from a fight, rather than towards one.
"Nero, you may be the God of blood, of life itself."
The air leaves his lungs so completely he forgets how to bring it back. But with a weak pulse of his chest, he realizes that he can’t. And what had begun as a thin splatter on his chiton becomes a steady river of blood, dripping from his nose and mouth.
"W-well, that makes a lotta sense," he stammers and falls to his knees, an ache settling into his bones entirely.
"Oh, Nero," Eva kneels to his level, both arms enveloping him in something he thinks is a hug, but again, his frame of reference is really small, and he can only feel so much anymore. "Don't despair, my little daemon. You'll be alright. We'll see each other again soon, I’m sure."
"Yes..." he gasps with the last breath he can fathom. "We will."
As Apollo's chariot streaks across the sky with a deluge of pinks and yellows, cast with a brightness the prince has never seen, Nero’s Styx-born body fades into the earth.
The House of Sparda receives its prince by the same avenue in which he was born and had died to every time since; through the Pool of Styx.
Nero has learned to expect nothing else.
He takes a big breath, shakes the Styx out of his hair, and looks up.
A crowd of faces and bodies block out the entire receiving hall, masking his father's desk and the giant mural behind it. There's Dante and Credo with Kyrie, next to Patty, Nico, Trish, Lady and Lucia, their faces covering an entire spectrum of joy and relief he'd yet seen in all his immortal years. Even Griffon and Shadow seem as lively as they can, sans the list of the dead. Was the prince's death even technically a death, since no one had killed him? Would it qualify as those vague 'natural causes' Griffon always went on about?
Even Vergil lingers at the back of the thrum, stern crystal blues averted away, but the entirety of his frame still faces his wayward son.
"You came back!" the crowd is shouting and gasping with varying tones of glee.
Nero lets them swarm him, the warmth of dead and eternal souls alike drying his skin instantly. He can't help but crook his smile at them and laugh.
"I'm home."