Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

“What is it? You hungry?”

Nero half-turns, throwing a perfunctory glance over his shoulder at the silhouette haloed in the setting sun. A weird one, cloaked in rags and hunched over, like they dug themselves straight out of a grave—but Nero’s seen worse, and he’s not particularly swimming in luxury himself.

He gets it. And Kyrie does, too. It’s why they’ve never turned anyone away.

“You’re in luck, then,” he says, refocusing back on the van’s engine, “because Kyrie—”

He stops when his Devil Bringer prickles, itches with an abrupt flare of isolated heat. He stares down at it, at the way it pulses a cold blue. Something is wrong.

The man (demon?) has shambled closer, close enough that Nero can hear his labored breaths. No response, no nothing. Nero’s gaze returns to him warily, his other hand tensing against the body of the van. Red Queen leans against the wall next to the door, put there carelessly because Nero had thought their abode was safe.

Well. He doesn’t necessarily need Red Queen to handle himself.

His Devil Bringer throbs again, sharp and irritating, though the stranger comes no closer. Nero resists the urge to step back, resists the urge to strike first. He doesn’t want to act hastily. He’s learned, just a bit, but he also can’t help it: giving people the benefit of the doubt.

“What’s wrong?” he says carefully, eyes riveted.

It’s because of this that he catches the way the stranger stumbles, almost before it happens; the way his legs abruptly give out, and Nero is already halfway across the floor when the guy just—drops, smack dab in the middle of the garage.

“Hey! You alright?” Nero skids to a stop on his knees, instinctively reaching out but remembering himself just in time. Instead, his hand hovers awkwardly over the stranger’s prone form.

Prone, alright. There’s no movement at all. Did he pass out? What the hell? Nero hesitates. He has absolutely no idea what to do in a situation like this.

In the end, concern wins out. He carefully turns the man over—and that’s what he is, a man, long-limbed and rather heavy, his dark clothing just as filthy and tattered as the ratty cloak draped over him. The hood falls away as Nero shifts him onto his back, and Nero pauses at the sight he sees.

“Nero?” he hears from the door. Kyrie. “The food’s getting cold.”

“In a sec.” His voice comes out hoarse. He clears his throat and tries again. “In a sec!”

His Devil Bringer pounds. He realizes belatedly both of his hands are shaking. Confusion sits cold and thick in his chest—why the fuck is he reacting this way? Hey, moron, he thinks. Maybe have the inexplicable mental breakdown after he makes sure the guy is still alive, how about it?

He’s breathing, at least. Nero tries not to stare, but the cracked and splintered picture before him looks more statue than human, more clay than skin and bone. Little flakes of… of skin?... crumble like sand pouring off a stone effigy of a king, buried and eroded by time.

That’s the least of his worries, though.

“Nero…” Kyrie has approached from behind, her hands wrung together. “He looks bad.”

“No kidding.” Nero forces himself to look away from the stranger’s (...familiar…?) face to give the rest of him a once-over, searching clinically for any sign of other injuries. Nothing else on the outside. Just the bizarre disintegration problem. He’s unconscious, completely dead to the world, and Nero wonders if it’s okay to even move him.

“We’re not keeping him in the garage,” says Kyrie, as if she’s read his mind. She takes a better look at him and her voice softens. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” says Nero, shaking his head. “It’s fine. My arm’s acting up, but it’s probably nothing.” His gut gives him a pretty defiant lurch at that. Kyrie doesn’t look like she believes him, either.

“We’ll take him inside,” she decides.

“He’s probably dangerous.”

The look Kyrie shoots him can only be described as: Yeah, and?

Nero relents. His protest was cursory, anyway. “Have Nico keep the kids in the kitchen,” he says, as he assesses the best way to transport their new burden. The dude is tall as fuck; bridal might be the only way. Nero scratches the back of his neck, then sighs and gingerly slips an arm around the man’s back and under his knees.

Oh lord, Nero sure hopes he doesn’t wake. And—yeah, he’s heavy. Shit. You’d think a body gradually flaking into dust would’ve shed a few pounds by now.

The brats are nowhere in sight as Nero struggles into the living room, which means Nico actually listened to Kyrie, which is also bloody unfair because Nico never listens to Nero. Whatever. Kyrie’s fluffing one of the pillows on their secondhand couch, which Nero takes to mean this is their destination. Slowly, he lowers his oversized cargo onto the sinking old cushions.

His demon arm still hasn’t stopped tingling. What the fuck. Nero’s fingers curl into fists, as if that would lessen the ceaseless, rhythmic pulsing of the blood stampeding in and out of it.

A long beat of silence. Indoors, under proper lighting, there’s almost no mistake.

“His hair…” Kyrie falters. “He looks a little bit like Dante, doesn’t he?”

Like you, she doesn’t say, and Nero appreciates it. Really, he does, because he’s wondered too, like all the others, enough times about Dante, but he’s never had enough guts to ask for real. He’s still not actually sure whether he wants to hear yes or no.

“Could be a coincidence.” His gut rebels again, and Nero’s long learned not to ignore his instincts. “You think I should ring him up?”

“It sounds like you’ve already made your decision.”

Nero sighs again and scrubs at his hair. Kyrie reaches for his hand—the demonic one, even. She smiles. “I’m sure it’ll be alright,” she says, as strong in her optimism and in her belief as she’s always been. “Call him. I’ll grab a bowl for you from the kitchen and make sure the children stay away.”

“Thanks, Kyrie.”

She kisses his cheek and leaves him be. Nero reaches for the nearest phone and dials Dante, feeling jittery all over, annoyed again because he knows Dante’s number by heart. The old bastard had better be paying his phone bills, ‘cause there’s no way in hell Nero’s gonna haul ass all the way over there just to—

It rings. “Devil May Cry.”

Nero swallows. “Hey, it’s me.”

“Oh? And who may that be?”

“Don’t bullshit me,” Nero hisses. “It’s me, Nero. I.” He pauses awkwardly, picking at a loose thread sticking out of the back of the sofa. “Uh. Might need some advice.”

“Advice?” Dante sounds as cavalier as ever. It’s been five years since they met and his flippancy still never fails to grind Nero’s gears. “That’s a new one. Alright, kid. How may I serve you?”

Nero makes a face, which he knows is precisely why Dante worded it that way. “Some guy dropped by my place today—literally. He’s dusting to bits, which, as far as I know, is definitely not human. Ever heard of something like that?”

“Not in so many words. Dusting?”

“Like he’s crumbling apart. Skin cracking and veiny and everything.”

Dante doesn’t respond for a moment. “Sorry to say, but that sounds like it’s out of my expertise, kiddo. Have you tried Trish? If it’s demonic, she’d know.”

“Stop calling me that,” says Nero. “I guess I’ll try her later.” He exhales. “Actually, that’s not entirely the reason I called. My Devil Bringer’s acting up like no one’s business around this guy, Dante. I think… I think it’s Yamato, actually. I dunno. He’s got white hair, like us.”

The silence this time is deafening.

Jackpot.

When Dante speaks again, it’s in such a low rasp that Nero has to press his ear flat against the receiver to hear him properly. “Have you asked his name?”

“Never got a chance; he collapsed in the middle of my garage. Hasn’t woken since.”

“Describe him to me.”

There’s an edge to Dante’s tone that Nero’s never heard before. It makes his heart flip a little in alarm. “I did,” he says, halting. “He’s got white hair. It’s combed back, I guess. His skin’s cracking all over, like in those nature documentaries when the earth’s too dry. He’s wearing a cloak? Dirty as fuck. I don’t know what else you want me to say. He looks a bit like you. Got any relatives you don’t know about?”

More silence. Nero wishes he could see Dante’s face.

“Don’t go anywhere.” Rustling on the other end. A slam. Two slams, then a curse. “Watch him, make sure he doesn’t go anywhere. Don’t let those kids anywhere near him, either—and that girl of yours, too. I’m coming over.”

Nero scowls. “I thought you said this was out of your expertise—”

“Nero,” says Dante, strained and tense, and Nero stops short. “Listen to me. Don’t keep your eyes off him for even a second. You’ve got Yamato. That’s what he wants. I’ll be there ASAP.”

“You live an ocean away, I’m not gonna watch him for—”

Dante hangs up.

Nero stares, flabbergasted, at the opposite wall. “What the fuck? Dante? Dante! Oh, for fuck’s sake!”

“Might wanna watch yer language.” Nero whirls to find Nico leaning against the kitchen doorframe with her arms crossed. Kyrie stands behind her, a bowl of stew steaming in her hands, her eyes round and her forehead creased in worry.

“Sorry,” he says, his eyes flitting immediately back to the man on their couch. Dante’s orders, not that Nero would admit to following them. “Dante says he’s coming over.”

“For something like this?” says Kyrie, at the same time Nico says, “Wait, Dante?”

“He sounded serious.” Nero’s blood is still pounding in his ears. Nothing better to spike your cortisol levels than a legendary devil hunter confirming you’ve got someone dangerous lying on your couch. Thanks, Dante. “Sounds like he knows this guy, too.”

He stares hard at this insensate man. Still breathing, his chest rising and falling with each slow breath. Still flaking, his pallid, gray-tinged skin feathering away in shifting motes with each involuntary movement.

The brother Dante had once mentioned, maybe? Might make sense, given Yamato’s ceaseless, obnoxious thrumming from where she’s still contained in his Devil Bringer. But isn’t Dante’s brother dead? Dante has only spoken of him once, back when they met. After, never again.

“Let me get this straight: yer talking about the Legendary Hunter Dante?”

Nero hisses a breath between his teeth. “Yes, Nico.”

“Yer shittin’ me.” She still sounds agog. “My grandma made his guns.”

“Cool story,” says Nero. He feels weary, suddenly. Nervous, too, restless sparks vibrating just beneath the surface of his skin, and it’s a strange combination. He paces once around the couch, then sits down in the worn armchair beside it, closest to the man’s head.

Kyrie, ever attuned to his moods, hands him the bowl of stew. “Nico,” she says, and Nico jerks to attention from where she’s been fiddling with her hands, no doubt itching for a cigarette, “help me take the boys upstairs. I have a feeling Dante won’t be long, if it’s serious like you say.”

“He warned everyone away.” He’s agitated, he realizes, because now that he thinks about it, Dante didn’t seem confident in Nero’s ability to contain whatever potential disaster he might’ve just set in motion. Fuck Dante; Nero’s plenty capable. But also: maybe it wasn’t such a good idea to bring the guy inside, after all. Not that leaving him in the garage would’ve made the place any safer.

“Then we’ll stay away,” says Kyrie. “But I’m not leaving you alone here.”

Nero knows better than to argue. He watches the girls herd the kids up the rickety staircase, their mouths still stuffed with food given the fact that they had stopped dinnertime short. The youngest, Carlo, reaches for Nero as they pass, but Kyrie scoops him up in her arms, and Nero has to give him a tiny little wave to ease the distressed moue that tugs at Carlo’s lips.

“We’ll be upstairs if you need anything,” says Kyrie, and Nero nods.

He settles back with the stew. It’s thick and fragrant, brimming with cubes of beef and cut vegetables. Nero isn’t hungry, but it’s easy to swallow down. Kyrie’s cooking always is. Maybe Dante will want some, his pizza-only diet be damned.

Nero sets down his empty bowl on the end table. He hopes he won’t have to sweep later.

The sun dips into the horizon, casting long shadows from the window mullions along the wooden floor. Dust motes drift in the golden sunlight, inevitable no matter how often they clean the house. The children are quiet upstairs, but sometimes Nero will still hear the shrill twang of Nico’s voice, perhaps laughing at something Kyrie has said.

The man doesn’t wake. How fucked up is he to stay passed out for so long? Sometimes Nero thinks he can see the microscopic cracks along the ashy skin knit together in real-time, but mere seconds later the furrows return, deeper than ever. Like sad little attempts at healing.

Yamato’s resonance has receded to a low hum, less bothersome now but still simmering in the back of Nero’s consciousness. The confusion is unavoidable. The longer Nero stares, the longer he sits, alone, in this strange limbo of flame-orange sunlight and odd shadows and the quiet creaking of the house settling around him, the more questions he has, and the more his five-year-long uncertainty burns.

He looks like Dante.

(He looks like you.)

Fortuna is far, far away from Devil May Cry; Nero knows this because he’s traveled the distance himself several times. Fuck. How long has it been? He can’t believe he’s actually sitting here, waiting. He’s gonna punch Dante in the face the moment he shows up at Nero’s door.

Does the old coot even know where he lives?

Well, his mistake, if he doesn’t.

The sun sets. Kyrie appears once, leaning over the bannister and looking to Nero in inquiry. Nero shakes his head but gives her a thumbs-up, and she smiles, albeit weakly, and mouths good night before she disappears back down the hall.

The hours pass. The room darkens. Nero stands up to stretch, his limbs aching. He hasn’t sat so still for so long since he was still a brat in the Order, forced into the pews to listen to the endless drone of Sanctus’ sermons.

It’s after he cracks his back with a deep, satisfying pop that he feels it: a familiar blaze stirring the distant corner of his senses, like a sparkling and spitting firecracker set off in the stillness of a quiet neighborhood—and the instinctive prick of wariness that harkens a demon’s approach.

Nero spares a glance into the kitchen, at the clock ticking over the sink. Two hours after midnight.

Holy shit, he thinks. He got here fast.

Another half hour passes before he hears footsteps at his front door, and Nero immediately discovers the reason for Dante’s speed when he heads over and yanks it open.

Dante himself is human, but the blistering residual power of his Devil Trigger hangs like syrup in the thick heat of early summer, uncharacteristically unrestrained and burning off his red leather overcoat like temple incense. Nero’s lip curls in reflex, the fine hairs on his nape prickling with a caution his mind is slow to understand.

“Dante,” he greets, and for just a second, he thinks Dante looks relieved.

There is… an attempt at a grin. “Hey, kid. Long time no see. Let’s get straight to the point, shall we?”

Dante looks absolutely ragged, somehow even older than when Nero last saw him, his hair windblown and sweat glistening in a thin sheen over his bared skin. Not too surprising, if he clung to his Devil Trigger form for as long as Nero suspects he did. The punch will have to wait, Nero decides, for when he doesn’t feel so flummoxed. He pulls the door open wider, allowing Dante inside.

Dante’s eyes zero in on the couch. The shock that settles over him is palpable, an electric zing to Nero’s senses that makes his hackles rise.

“You know him, then,” says Nero.

He feels thoroughly and blissfully forgotten when Dante doesn’t respond, brushed aside without even a glance in his direction as Dante makes his way over to their unwelcome guest. His broad shoulders grow rigid, set, in diametric opposition to the way his coat billows about his legs, and he stands over the couch for a long, silent moment. It’s odd enough that Nero’s tongue ties itself in knots before it can demand answers.

“Yeah,” Dante says finally. Measured. He looks up again at Nero, jerks his head down. His pale eyes glitter in the meager light, uncanny and unreadable.

“Meet my brother.”

***

Nero goes to bed because Dante tells him to. The kid looks exhausted, confused, and frustrated, and if Dante wasn’t feeling completely disassociated from reality, he’d probably feel a little worse about it.

But Dante has his own problems.

For the briefest second during the call, he’d thought Nero’d been fucking with him, because there was simply no way. Absolutely, irrefutably. Dante killed his brother years ago—sunk a blade into his chest himself, had done so without a hint of recognition until he’d picked up the amulet with shaking hands. Had staggered at his own ignorance, and drowned himself for years, afterward, under the anvil of his grief.

So when Nero called with white hair, combed back, Yamato is reacting, Dante’s teeth had sharpened, right there against the phone, and closed in around syllables caustic and angry. Then, in the next breath, he’d remembered Nero was too honest to fuck with anybody. That’s when the cold hit. The disbelief. The fear.

The raw, unbridled hope, which only expanded from a tiny spark to a searing beacon as he shot through the brine-tinged sky. When, only halfway there, an age-old, long-forgotten thrum began deep in his chest—calling him toward Fortuna.

He’d been glad to find Nero still in one piece.

But he’d been even gladder a second later, when his gaze had drifted aside and fallen upon the one face he’s ached to see for more than half his life.

Dante reaches forward. “Vergil,” he whispers, chest tight. His fingers graze his brother’s cracking jaw.

And Vergil opens his eyes.

Chapter Text

Dante draws back immediately. Tension locks his muscles in place as Vergil blinks, once, twice—his disorientation obvious, his gaze muddled and cloudy. He tilts his head toward Dante, as if pulled by an invisible thread, and Dante’s breath freezes in his throat, jackknifes back into his lungs like it’s afraid to diffuse in the space between them.

Vergil’s eyes focus gradually. He stares at Dante.

“Welcome back to the land of the living,” says Dante. It’s not what he wants to say, but it’s… accurate.

“...Dante.”

Dante exhales. Vergil’s voice. He hasn’t heard it in over two decades. It’s soft, a rasp barely there, but so ingrained in Dante’s memory it strikes him like an arrow through the solar plexus. “Yeah,” he manages. “That’s me. Vergil.”

Vergil closes his eyes again. His shoulders slump, even laying across the couch as he is. It seems to take effort to talk. Or maybe he just doesn’t want to talk to Dante.

For once, Dante can’t blame him. The tumultuous mess of emotions stirred up by Vergil’s sudden return has his esophagus clogged up like a backed up toilet, and his ill-advised, long-ass flight across the sea’s got him running on fumes.

“Yamato,” murmurs Vergil. “I feel her.”

Wariness slams into Dante harder than a steel beam, immediately consumes his relief. He holds his breath. Tries not to think about the fact that he brought Rebellion for a reason, slung across his back. “Maybe. ‘Fraid I can’t give her to you, though.”

Heh. Dante hasn’t missed Vergil’s frosty glare, still potent even in a crumbling, deteriorating shell. “Yamato is mine.”

“Yeah, of course.” Dante’s gaze roams. Nero was right; Vergil’s seen better days. Not quite Nelo-Angelo-awful (and Dante remembers, with lurid brilliance, the inky taint of corruption bleeding through Vergil’s clammy skin in spiderwebbed veins), but still sickly, the shadows under his eyes fiercely prominent, his jaw and neck and fingertips parched like a desiccated mud flat.

Dante can only hope it’s temporary. “But I doubt you need her, right now.”

Vergil hisses at him. “She’s mine.”

“And I’m telling you that you can wait,” Dante snaps. “For heaven’s sake. The kid told me you collapsed in the garage. Have you seen yourself? What the hell is happening to you?”

And Vergil, the absolute tool, starts struggling to his feet.

Dante is frozen for all of two beats, because the moment Vergil starts to move, the more—the more segments begin to dislodge from him, clouding around them like the dusty puffs that disperse around dropped sandbags. The cracks in Vergil’s face grow wider; they crawl up from his jawline to his cheeks.

“Vergil—” he starts, visceral horror mangling the word, then: “Verg. Stop.”

His brother doesn’t listen. His brother never listened. Vergil’s boots touch the floor and Vergil rises from the couch and Dante slowly gets to his feet, too, so that they’re of height. They face off, and Dante gets a full view of Vergil’s face for the first time in decades, flooded in the cool moonlight filtering through the window. Vergil, too, looks at him—and for a single second, the tension between them dissipates as they balk at each other.

It’s been so, so long. Dante almost can’t fathom it.

(But of course he can. He lived it.)

If this is a dream, he thinks. Then cuts the thought short.

Vergil looks up, to where Dante suspects Nero’s room is, and the moment washes away.

He doesn’t know what Vergil’s planning with Yamato. Doesn’t know how Vergil crawled his way out of the Underworld to begin with or how Vergil is even still alive—but he knows, instinctively, intrinsically, that with his sword in hand, Vergil will do something irreversible. And why else had Dante rushed over here but to ensure his brother—who is, in fact, breathing, whole—doesn’t do something astronomically stupid?

“I won’t let you have her,” he says, squaring his shoulders, punching down the lingering yearning that’s bloomed from the gleam of Vergil’s eyes, the slope of his nose and the fullness of his mouth. Things Dante never thought he’d see again, his memories of them already faded sepia and cloudy from the annals of time. “And no offense—” Full offense. “—but I don’t think you can take me on right now.”

Vergil sneers. At his sides, his gloved hands curl into fists. Dante isn’t cocky enough to assume his brother is any less dangerous despite the ailment that afflicts him, the lack of weapon. He braces himself, feet sliding marginally apart, and watches closely.

One second. Two. Dante is ready when Vergil flashes forward in a blur of black and smoky cerulean. He tackles Vergil to the ground at the foot of the stairs, and Vergil snarls and throws Dante off him with a surprising burst of strength, only for Dante to snatch a fistful of Vergil’s coat and yank him straight back down a moment later.

He’s forty-three, but he’s not above wrestling his twin to the spotless wood of his nephew’s living room floor like he’s wrangling an alligator. It’s only when another skin fragment sloughs off Vergil’s face, crumbles to dust between the panels, that Dante falters just long enough for the toe of Vergil’s boot to embed itself with the weight of a mountain into Dante’s ribs.

His breath jabs out of him. Fuck. Ow.

As Dante wheezes, Vergil staggers to his feet. He takes a single step forward.

And drops.

Dante has never moved so quickly in his life. He tucks his knees under him and lunges, fractured rib be damned, to catch Vergil around the waist before he can crack his head on the first step of the staircase. Their momentum would’ve keeled them both over had Dante’s reflexes not kicked in, his other hand shooting out to grab hold of the railing.

“Vergil?”

Vergil doesn’t respond, head bowed. But his shoulders tremble, and Dante can hear his gasps, shaky and quiet as if Vergil’s struggling to keep them suppressed. More of him flakes off. The rolled-up sleeves of Dante’s leather coat have fogged up with dust—and, to Dante’s horror, he realizes they’ve left a scattered trail of particles straight from the sofa.

Shuffling at the top of the stairs. Dante looks up to find Nero looking down, his cropped hair a magnificent mess and his tank top falling off his shoulders, expression pinched. Kyrie, far more put together in her nightgown and tied hair, peers out from behind him.

“What the hell’s going on?” Nero whispers furiously.

“Just a bit of bonding,” says Dante lightly, even though his heart’s stamping a tattoo against his sternum. Vergil still hasn’t shaken him off, so Dante continues clutching him while trying not to seem like he’s actually clutching him. “Friendly scuffling, really.”

“You guys fought?”

Ah. Right. Dante probably deserves that bit of incredulity. “S’what we do, I’m afraid,” he says, and looks back to his brother with a pang of regret. “Hey. You still with me?”

Vergil exhales, barely audible, one more time. “Get off me.”

“There we go.” Dante reluctantly releases him, but hovers close. In part because Vergil still looks a hairsbreadth away from toppling, and in part because Nero, naive and woefully ignorant, is standing only a couple lengths away, involuntarily having brought Yamato right where he shouldn’t have.

Vergil notices. Of course he does. Dante feels the sudden chill in the air, the alkaline, crystalline tang of Vergil’s demonic power. It strikes a chord in him, even as it makes his teeth rattle.

Brother, he thinks. This is my brother. After so, so many years.

In his state, Vergil can barely make the second step, even with his hand on the bannister. Frustration rolls off of him in silent waves. Dante sees the way his nails dig into the wood, so hard the polished finish begins to splinter.

Vergil has never been able to cope with weakness. His pride, after all, was what led to his demise.

But Vergil is here now, and Dante has a second chance he isn’t going to squander just yet, even if he doesn’t know the right words to say, even if… even if Vergil has yet to change. Dread drips down his ribs like tar.

Don’t make me do it.

“C’mon, Vergil,” he says. “You’re in no state for anything. Yamato isn’t going anywhere.”

Nero grimaces, the fingers on his Devil Bringer arm flexing inadvertently. Vergil merely snarls in response and drags himself up one more step.

He’s probably used up the last reserve of his energy in their scuffle. Nevertheless, Dante meets Nero’s eyes behind Vergil’s back, a warning, and Nero straightens his shoulders to better hide Kyrie behind him. As for Dante himself—well, he takes a deep, silent breath, and braces himself.

“Last chance, br—”

And of fucking course, like the dramatic, party-killing asshole he is, Vergil chooses this moment to fall again.

Dante grabs him as he topples backwards this time, and the noise of alarm that slips through Dante’s lips as Vergil slumps against him is entirely involuntarily. “What an idiot,” he says emphatically, once he realizes 1. Vergil is indeed, once more, out cold, and 2. that the thunderous, panicked drumfire of his heart won’t be noticed.

“Pot calling the kettle black,” Nero mutters. Dante pretends not to hear him.

“He looks worse than before,” murmurs Kyrie.

Nero scoffs. “Doubtless because Dante fought him.”

“What can I say? Old habits die hard,” says Dante. He swallows, mouth suddenly dry. His heart’s sped up again, this time alongside a turbulent flutter of anxiety. “I’ll bring him back downstairs. No need to trouble yourselves.”

“No,” says Kyrie, as Nero opens his mouth, “the couch won’t do. He can’t even stand anymore; we need to put him in a bed. Is there anything we can do for him? He looks awful.”

Dante finds himself speechless for a moment. Nero has no such qualms. “He’s dangerous,” he says, and the exasperation in his tone suggests that he’s already said this before, “and I dunno about you, but that wasn’t the look of a guy who’s gonna thank you for coddling him.”

“He fractured my rib just a few minutes ago,” says Dante helpfully. But he appraises Kyrie with a quiet, flickering warmth in his veins.

“I’m not worried about that.” Kyrie gently nudges Nero aside so she can close the distance and take a better look. Nero reaches for her, then aborts halfway as if he thinks better of it. “You’re both here. I don’t think anyone in this house has anything to be afraid of, right now.”

Dante wishes. He glances back down at his brother, so deceptively docile in his hold. So uncharacteristically fragile. (But not weak. Never weak.)

Is it just him? Are the cracks propagating? His hands twitch when Kyrie frowns, and his grip around Vergil tightens. Not just him.

They’re half-demon. Why isn’t Vergil healing?

“Bring him upstairs,” she tells him. “He can take our bed.”

Nero splutters. “Kick Nico out of hers!”

“She’s asleep right now,” says Kyrie matter-of-factly. She heads back up the stairs and pats his elbow. “We’ll make do. Will you be staying here, Dante?”

“...Yeah,” he says. There’s no way he’s letting Vergil out of his sight, and it doesn’t seem like Vergil will be capable of going anywhere farther than a couple of feet anytime soon. “Sorry to impose.”

Kyrie only smiles. “You know you’re welcome anytime.”

Nero, meanwhile, merely squints at him.

They go on ahead to change the sheets. Dante carefully maneuvers his arms around Vergil and picks him up, judiciously trying not to notice the way the dry, fine debris continues to crumble off the few bared portions of Vergil’s skin. He’s never held his brother in such a manner, cradled like so—has hardly even touched him since they were children, and almost never without violence.

Vergil is warm. And so very, very still.

Dante sets him down on the newly-made bed as Nero and Kyrie watch. They help him peel off Vergil’s boots and tattered coat, leaving him in his vest and trousers, and Dante sucks in a sharp breath as the coat falls away from Vergil’s shoulders.

“Fuck,” says Nero.

The cracks threading down the entire length of his naked arms are even deeper than the ones spreading over his face. Whole sections of skin have already peeled off, revealing not muscle but a pitch, pulsating darkness that has goosebumps crawling over Dante’s skin and bile rising in his throat.

He knows this.

“Dante…?” Nero sounds hesitant. Dante hardly notices past the roaring in his ears. With foggy detachment, he makes the decision to unbutton Vergil’s vest and zip it down.

Vergil would kill him if he was awake. Dante doesn’t really give a shit, because his suspicion proves true.

Kyrie covers her mouth. “What is that?”

“Corruption,” says Dante, voice bland. He stares sightlessly down at the dark, virulent, visibly throbbing tendrils tangled in septic, bulging blood vessels over Vergil’s heart. The skin around it is dried and cracked to all hell too—no surprise there. “I’d wondered why he isn’t healing.”

“Corruption?” Nero echoes. “From what?”

Just thinking the name makes Dante’s upper lip curl. Red seeps into the corners of his vision. He grits his teeth and rams his useless temper down. “Doesn’t matter right now. New problem: I’ve no clue what to do about it.”

“Some kind of purification?” says Nero.

Dante laughs shortly. “Only exists in movies, kid. Besides, we’re half devil.”

“Well, I’ve got nothing.” Nero shakes his head and shrugs. “I’m usually around to kill demons, not put them back together. All this supernatural shit, there’s gotta be something.”

Dante pinches the bridge of his nose. I don’t know, he thinks, suddenly ferocious, suddenly so weary. I don’t know.

“We’ll think about it in the morning,” says Kyrie, and though she’s talking to Nero, Dante can feel her eyes on him. “We all need rest. Most of all you, Dante. You came such a long distance. We won’t be of any use if we’re exhausted.”

“Good idea,” says Dante. He’s too jumpy to sleep—hasn’t really slept well in years, anyway—but the need to be alone is overwhelming. “Thanks for the assist, little miss.”

“You’ll stay here?” says Nero.

Dante pulls the chair in the corner over to the bed. “Yep.”

Nero nods. Probably relieved he no longer has to hold vigil. He glances between Dante and Vergil one more time, his turmoil transparent, and Dante waits for it with bated breath, that inevitable question he’s been prepared to deflect for five years. But Nero doesn’t ask. He and Kyrie leave him be and close the door behind them.

Dante takes a moment to give the room a once-over, half out of curiosity and half for spatial awareness.

It’s sparse, but modest: a full-size bed with mismatched sheets and quilts; two nightstands marred with scuffs in the pressed wood, cheap veneer peeling back at the corners; an old dresser and mirror shoved up against the wall, next to the folding door of a closet and the half-open door to the tiny bathroom. Two small windows frame the bed between them, moonlight leaking through the narrow gaps between the blinds.

What they need, and nothing more. Dante knows most of Nero’s earnings go toward the orphans he’s got running around like baby sheep. He’s a good kid. Always has been.

“And now you’ll see for yourself,” he says, even though Vergil doesn’t respond.

Dante doesn’t sleep. He doesn’t need to, technically, not much, but the lack of good rest has a tendency to affect both his physical and mental reflexes. He lives with it, because sleeping’s become its own demon.

He passes the time watching Vergil. It’s strange. They used to be identical in their youth. They aren’t any longer. It’s he kinda looks like instead of he looks exactly like, now, so it’s funny, then, how Dante recognized him the moment he laid eyes on him.

Not too much of a mystery, though. He can still feel it, burrowed so very deep, cloaked in darkness and remarkably quiet: the cadence of a soul not quite his own, filling a space he long thought would remain forever hollow. Only when Vergil is close. Only with Vergil.

He’d once cursed that bond. How times have changed.

Dante leans forward in his chair, elbows on his thighs. It’s humid, and Dante’s henley is still damp and sticking to him, so he’s taken off his coat and hung it over the backrest. Rebellion sits right up against it.

“Sure did a number on you, didn’t he,” he says, and exhales, blinking away the scarlet irises and colorless skin that briefly superimpose itself over Vergil’s slackened features.

Dante scrubs at his face and closes his eyes. He’d thought it was almost over: the mourning, the regret, the listlessness fading in and out in phases, time passing him by in split-second intervals like the flickering of a black and white film reel.

But here’s the source of it, lying before his fingertips. Vergil looks almost gentle in his repose, his hair mussed out of its usual coif from their tussle downstairs, the frown line smoothed between his brows. Finally reachable, tangible, but falling apart in front of him while Dante has no clue how to stop it. Sometimes he wonders if Fate simply delights in laughing in his face.

“Hey, Verg,” he murmurs, hidden behind his hand. “Make up your mind, won’t you? Alive or dead. Little brother can’t do this forever.”

Vergil stirs. Dante stiffens, but his brother only shifts, as if uncomfortable, expression twisting into a grimace. Another shift, his hands clenching into fists and tension ironing his shoulders straight as a board.

Dante finally realizes what he’s seeing. Before he can make up his mind, Vergil lurches awake with a terse puff of air. His vest ripples as he instinctively attempts to sit up, and Dante half-rises from his seat—but Vergil only makes it halfway before he falls back with a hiss, propped up on the pillow behind him.

A beat. Vergil doesn’t look at him, his jaw tight.

Dante gives him more one more second. Then he says, casually: “Wanna talk about it?”

“Mind your own business, Dante.”

“You’re outta luck, brother,” says Dante, and Vergil’s gaze finally flits over to him, scrutinizing him with that same piercing quality Dante recalls from when they were teenagers. “Been my business since the cradle. Nasty job, 0/10, wouldn’t recommend.”

Vergil snorts. “As if my job is any easier.”

Yeah? thinks Dante. You weren’t here. “Then consider my life goal complete,” he says instead.

They settle into more silence. Dante considers asking again, but Vergil has ever been private; has ever tried to disguise what he perceives as weak. Has always tried, fruitlessly, to discard what he believes to be unfavorable.

(Dante suspects he, himself, is one of them.)

He half-expects Vergil to throw another tantrum and struggle off to find Yamato again, but he does no such thing. Rather, Vergil adjusts himself into a more natural position on the bed, reclined against the headboard, and asks: “Where are we?”

Dante blinks. “You came all this way without knowing where you are?”

Vergil sniffs. “I was a little preoccupied.”

Dante has so many questions, least of all how Vergil even got here to begin with. He voices none of them. “You’re in Fortuna,” he says, and wonders if Vergil understands the significance of that.

There’s no answer in Vergil’s expression. He’s looking down at his gloved hands, his uncovered fingers, hairline cracks in fine china. “I see.”

Dante’s looking at them now, too. Pressure builds in his chest, and exhaling does nothing to ease it. Vergil’s unreadability doesn’t bode well. “What’s happening to you?”

“It’s nothing,” says Vergil, because of course he does.

“Bullshit.” Dante bristles. “You can’t hide this from me. I saw the shit around your heart—that’s from—it’s from Mundus, isn’t it?”

Vergil bares his teeth. “There’s nothing you can do about it, Dante.”

“Screw that,” Dante snarls right back. “You’re not gonna shake me off this time. I want to help you, you irredeemable moron.”

“I don’t need your help.”

Flames lick the corners of Dante’s heart. There’s little else that can make him seethe like this—it’s Vergil’s privilege. Only Vergil’s. Always, everything, only Vergil. Dante seeks, and Vergil rejects.

As always. As ever.

“Too bad,” he grits out. “You’re getting it whether you like it or not.”

“You’re wasting your time.”

“Then it’s a damn good thing I don’t care about my time.” Dante sits back, crossing his arms. “I have all night, all day, forever if need be. I can wait for you, Verg. Been doing it all my life.”

“You? Wait?” says Vergil, almost amused. “You’ve never been patient, from as far back as I can remember.”

“Things change.” Dante presses his lips together. “It’s been a long time.”

The crease between Vergil’s eyebrows deepens. Dante can hardly see his eyes in the darkness but for two silver glints, reflecting off the moonlight leaking through the blinds. “How long?”

Ah. Weariness swallows him, suddenly. Draws him taut. He’s never been more aware of the lines carved into his face and the hollows dug around his eyes, from last he looked in a mirror. “Twenty-four years,” he says. “Since the tower.”

Vergil is silent.

“Been a long fucking time, brother,” Dante says again.

“Yes,” Vergil murmurs, eventually. “Brother.”

Chapter Text

“What do you mean, ‘crumbling’?”

“Exactly what it sounds like.” Dante leans against the frayed white wallpaper of the hallway just outside the door to Nero’s room, coat and sword reequipped and Nero’s phone tucked under his ear.

(“I can’t believe you still use a wired phone,” Nero grumbled at him once. “No fucking wonder why I can never reach you.”)

Vergil’s still inside, asleep again, which in itself is so unusual that it makes Dante itchy and restless. No way would Vergil freely sleep like this in front of Dante—in front of anybody, especially in unfamiliar territory—if he could help it.

Trish sounds annoyed. “What, like a statue?”

“Kinda like that, yeah,” says Dante. “Seems like he’s holding himself together with his demonic power. Literally. And he’s still corrupted, from… He stinks of him. You’ve had to have seen something like this before.”

“Most servants of Mundus don’t live long enough to be crippled by anything.”

Dante grips the phone tightly in one hand. “Trish. C’mon. Help me out here.”

“I’ve got nothing off the top of my head. But I can look into it.” A pause. Dante hears Lady’s voice, faint, disapproving, off to the side. Those two are always together, these days. “For a price.”

Dante gives her a brief huff of laughter. “You know you’ve already got the most valuable thing in my arsenal, right?”

“There’s always more to wring out of you,” says Trish sweetly. “Don’t get yourself killed, Dante.”

“You too.”

Dante hangs up, and turns around to find Nero waiting at the top of the stairs, looking uncomfortable. There’s always been something about Nero that tugs at Dante’s heartstrings; the family relation, no doubt. He tosses the phone, and Nero catches it fluidly with his human hand, pocketing it in his trousers. “How can I help you?”

“I’ve been thinking,” says Nero.

“Uh oh.”

Nero makes a face at him. “I’ve been thinking,” he continues, and with a low flash, Yamato materializes in his hand, pulled out of the ether in a shower of blue sparks and molten light. “This belongs to him, doesn’t it?” He brings her up, laying it across both of his palms with a care that Dante can appreciate, even if it’s wholly unnecessary.

He looks at Yamato for a long moment. Nero isn’t aware of what Vergil might do with her. Dante’s fault, that. His brother’s callousness has never been something he’s been able to talk about. “Keep her,” he says at last, “for now. Vergil’s in no state to wield her, anyway.”

Nero hesitates. “He seemed ready to take it by force.”

“He’s a little obstinate,” says Dante, the corner of his mouth pulling into a crooked grin. “Don’t worry about it, kid. He can keep his pretty little head on his shoulders for a couple more days without her.”

Nero looks doubtful, but Yamato disappears in another flash back into its inexplicable container in his arm. “So… your brother, huh?”

“Yep.” Twenty-four years, and Dante still isn’t ready for this conversation. Nero seems to realize this. He visibly changes routes, though curiosity burns in his eyes and makes his hands twitch at his sides.

“He’s… friendly.”

The laugh that bursts out of Dante is entirely genuine. “You don’t have to sugarcoat it around me. Vergil’s a grade-A asshole.”

“Oh, good.” Nero looks relieved, and significantly less awkward. “How is he? Did Trish know anything?”

“No dice,” says Dante. He traps a sigh behind his teeth before it can release, ignoring the breathless staccato of sudden anxiety roaring back to life between his ribs. “And no change, either.”

Nero actually looks a bit crestfallen. Sometimes Dante still can’t believe the gentleness of Nero’s heart, so paradoxical to the man who sired him. “Sorry to hear that.”

“Thanks,” says Dante, and means it.

Nero nods absently, then motions to the stairs. “If you’re hungry, Kyrie’s got leftovers from last night. And she’s making pancakes, if that’s more your style.” He scowls at Dante before Dante can even think to respond. “No pizza. Too unhealthy for the kids.”

Dante snaps his jaw closed. “Such a good father figure you are, Nero,” he teases, and is rewarded with Nero flushing bright red, mouth working wordlessly for several amusing seconds.

“Shut up, Dante,” he settles with, finally, and Dante chuckles. “...You sure?”

Even if he actually required sustenance, he isn’t in the mood. Dante waves him off. “I’m good.”

He can hear the cacophony of voices drifting up from downstairs, girls and kids alike. While he’s never been one to shy away from barreling into any form of party, strangers be damned, Dante aches. It spreads through him viscous and thick, coating his every thought in a bitter shroud, until all he can think about is his twin brother supine and convalescing in the room behind him.

He wants to sit with Vergil. He wants to talk to Vergil. He wants convalescence to actually convalesce.

Nero gives him one more furrowed, hesitant look, even though Dante puts on the greasy little smile he knows Nero loathes. Then Nero jerks his chin, a brief acknowledgment, and turns on his heel to thunder back down the stairs.

Dante breathes out and opens the door back into the bedroom.

Two things immediately come to his attention: Vergil is awake, and Vergil is sitting up on the bed, bare feet on the floor, struggling slowly to stand.

Dante is across the room in all of half a second, and Vergil raises his head long enough to grimace at him, cold and angry, when Dante’s fingers meet the center of Vergil’s chest and carefully push him back down. “Whoa there, hold your horses.”

Vergil’s fingers clamp around Dante’s wrist. He looks absolutely terrible in broad daylight, Dante realizes with a sharp dip in his gut. The moonlight had made his paleness almost ghostly despite his glaring deterioration, but now—every godforsaken crack and crevice, from fine lines to deep fissures, plagues crystal clear and grotesque across his blanched skin.

Cracked pottery, Dante should have said, to Trish. Humpty Dumpty.

“I won’t be kept here.”

“No can do, brother.” Dante yanks out of Vergil’s grip, far too easily (more dread). He manhandles Vergil back onto the mattress almost without effort (fuck), and when Vergil’s fist flies out to clock him, Dante catches it in a single smooth motion—and finds none of the previous night’s strength.

(Fuck.)

Vergil is already panting. The wrongness of this sours Dante’s tongue.

“Do you exist simply to deny me?” Vergil spits.

“It’s what brothers are for,” says Dante. “Stop, Verg. You know it, too. You’re in no condition to be up and about.”

“If I was up and about, I could do something about this,” snaps Vergil.

Dante’s breath punches out of his throat. His eyes narrow. “You know how to fix yourself?”

Vergil pauses. He doesn’t quite avert his eyes, but Dante gets the distinct impression Vergil's no longer looking directly at him. “It’s only a theory.”

“Hit me.” Dante will listen to anything, even his dumbfuck older twin brother with questionable morals.

Vergil’s gaze refocuses. “No.”

Dante—Dante is not going to punch him. He isn’t. In this state, Vergil would probably crumble under his fist, and that’d defeat the whole purpose of this endeavor, wouldn’t it? “Why,” he starts, then has to take a moment to rein in his temper, which writhes wild and furious in an iron cage, before he can continue. “Why the ever fuck not?”

“You’ll try to stop me.” Vergil face is frozen. Impenetrable.

“So? That’s never stopped you before. What makes this time any different?”

Vergil, for once, doesn’t rise to the bait. He turns his face away—a set of great steel doors barring themselves shut. “You, who ever chooses humans, Dante,” he says, and then nothing else.

Dante doesn’t leave, even when Vergil remains cold to Dante’s increasingly obnoxious attempts to weasel out a less cryptic answer. But that doesn’t last forever; they eventually fall into thick, terse silence, Vergil withdrawn into whatever goes on his rat-bastard mind. Dante settles in the chair with Rebellion set aside, out of Vergil’s immediate reach but within Dante’s. Alternates between staring in frustration at the floor and glancing up at Vergil when he doesn’t think Vergil will notice. His brother doesn’t try to get up again, so Dante supposes he should, at the very least, count his blessings.

He raises his head when a knock comes from the door. Kyrie pokes her head in, two bowls and spoons in cradled in her hands.

“Nero said you weren’t hungry, but I figured I’d leave these with you just in case,” she says, her eyes landing briefly on Vergil, who’s quite obviously ignoring her, before catching and holding on Dante.

Dante rises to unload her burden. The bowls are filled modestly with a light, golden broth and soft noodles. Thoughtful of her, because hadn’t Nero mentioned she was serving pancakes for breakfast? He manages a charming smile for her sake. “Appreciated.”

“Let me know if you need anything.” Kyrie ducks back out. Probably sensing the tension.

Dante sets the bowls on the closest nightstand. “Chow time,” he singsongs, though he still feels strung out with unease.

Vergil eyes him sidelong, unimpressed. “We don’t need to eat.”

“Maybe not, but it sure doesn’t hurt,” says Dante. “Besides, someone made this for you. It’s only polite.” When Vergil only scowls, Dante continues, in a tone much more deliberately annoying, “Need me to spoon-feed you, big brother?”

It’s certainly much easier to make jabs when Vergil is incapable of stabbing him with Yamato—not that that would have stopped Dante to begin with. Vergil’s frown deepens even further. Dante can see the blistering irritation rising beneath the thin surface of Vergil’s cool facade.

“I’m not an invalid.”

“Keep telling yourself that.” Dante picks up one of the bowls.

“I’ll kill you.”

“What else is new?” Dante scoops up a spoonful of broth. “Say ‘ah’.”

Vergil’s face darkens like storm clouds, thunder in his scowl and lightning in his eyes. “Give it to me,” he says, extending a hand, and Dante complies, though not without a mocking grin.

Their fingers brush. Dante tries not to notice the way Vergil’s hand shakes under the bowl’s weight when Dante lets go.

It takes only a second. “Dante,” Vergil whispers, and Dante shoots forward just as the bowl drops, catching it a bare second before it can spill in Vergil’s lap. When he looks up, his brother’s expression is tight, frustrated, pained.

Dante slowly leans back. His throat feels chained. “Looks like I’m feeding you whether you like it or not.”

Vergil doesn’t reply. The silence returns, heavy and foreboding, as Dante pulls his chair closer. They say nothing as Dante tips the broth between Vergil’s cracked lips. Vergil swallows with visible difficulty, and Dante wonders, with sinking dismay, if Vergil’s insides are just as fucked up as his outsides.

He gets his answer not long after. Abruptly, Vergil shoves him away. What strength he lacked in his fist returns, if briefly, in the quick burst of power that sends Dante backward. Dante swears as the bowl goes flying out of his hand—but that’s the least of his worries when Vergil throws himself over the side of the bed and heaves.

The ceramic shatters on the floor. Dante is back by Vergil’s side in an instant.

He doesn’t think either of them has ever vomited before in their lives, not even when they were kids. Demonic resilience, all that. Dante’s hand hovers between Vergil’s shoulders as Vergil shakes and gags, as Vergil’s fingers dig into fitted sheet, as more crumbling flakes crack off his cheeks and drift languidly to the floor.

He steels himself and lets his hand land. And it says something that Vergil doesn’t throw him off, even when his retching eases and leaves him gasping for breath, head bowed.

The door opens. Dante casually steps in front of Vergil and the mess. “We’re good,” he tells Nero, whose forehead is crinkled with concern.

“I heard—” His eyes fall on the broken bowl behind the chair, and its spilled contents splattered all over the floorboards.

“My bad,” says Dante. “Got some towels?” He reconsiders. “And some water?”

Nero’s eyebrows come together. He looks at Dante for a moment longer, and Dante knows he can’t completely hide Vergil from Nero’s sight, but Nero, fortunately, has the good sense not to say anything. “I’ll get you a cup,” he says.

The door shuts gently again. Dante exhales, but the tension wringing his body refuses to expel. He turns back to his brother, who sits hunched, staring sightlessly at the quilts piled at the end of the bed.

“Save me your mockery,” says Vergil. His voice is agonizingly hoarse.

“I didn’t say anything.” Dante runs a hand through his hair. Sighs again and pulls the chair away from the unsavory puddle on the floor.

“You think I’m weak.”

“Don’t put words in my mouth.” Dante’s fingers dig into the back of the chair. “I’ve never thought you were weak.”

Vergil’s mouth twists into a sneer. Dante almost can’t take it. Fuck Vergil’s pride. He’s sick of it. Fuck his own pride, too, while he’s at it.

“You’re my brother, Verg,” he says. Distantly, he’s aware of wood fracturing under his fingers. Aw, shit. Sorry, Nero. “You piss me the fuck off but that doesn’t mean I like seeing you suffer.” One more deep breath. “Vergil. What do you need?”

The door opens again and Dante has to physically restrain himself from swearing out loud. Nero stops short, gaze flicking quickly between them and assessing the palpable, electric silence hanging in the air, before his back straightens with determination and he thrusts out his offerings: a glass of water, a couple of towels, and small bucket.

“Thanks, kid,” Dante manages, somehow.

“I’ll, uh—” Nero jerks a thumb over his shoulder. “Leave you to it, I guess.”

He positively flees. This time Dante has to shut the door after him, and he presses his forehead to the cool wood as he does so.

“That boy,” says Vergil. Dante squeezes his eyes closed. “Why does he have Yamato?”

“It’s a long story.”

“I’m not going anywhere, clearly.” Vergil watches him, expressionless, as Dante wets the towels in the bathroom sink and proceeds to clean up the mess on the floor.

Dante hates cleaning. The general state of Devil May Cry is testament of that. But right now, it’s an excuse to delay meeting Vergil’s eyes, so he does it thoroughly, quietly, and without complaint. He tosses the towels in the corner to wash later and picks up the shards of ceramic one by one.

“Dante.”

The pressure cracks in Dante’s chest. “Long story short, there was an incident here, a couple years ago,” he says. “Yamato washed up the shoreline in two pieces. Nero put them back together.”

Vergil’s eyes go razor sharp. He understands. “Is he yours?”

“Nope,” says Dante, as casual as can be. “He’s yours.”

He dumps the shards into the small trash in the bathroom, insides tight and antsy all at once; then chances a glance at his brother when he returns, only to find that Vergil’s withdrawn inside himself again, fingers curled loosely against his thighs and his features blank. Remembrance, probably.

It stings.

It’s also a pain he can ignore. Comes with five years of practice. “You still haven’t answered my own question, brother,” he says, crossing his arms and leaning against the doorframe of the bathroom.

Vergil slides back into the present. His expression pinches, so much like his son. Or is it the other way around? “You won’t like the answer.”

“I’m not a child anymore, Verg, if you couldn’t already tell.” Dante sweeps an arm down his body. “I’ll handle it like a big boy.”

Vergil scrutinizes him for so long Dante feels the back of his neck prickle. He waits, breath baited, restraining the urge to fidget like he’s been caught red-handed with an arm stuffed in the cookie jar. Then Vergil says: “Human blood.”

And Dante feels his heart plummet.

Vergil notices, of course. Hardly anything slips past big brother. Something shadowed and opaque crosses his features, quick and fleeting, before it’s chased away almost immediately by marble smoothness. It’s shit, that he can still look calm and unmoving as a statue when he’s literally breaking apart, and ripping the fucking rug out from under Dante’s feet while he’s at it.

“You’re not just saying that to get a rise outta me, are you?” says Dante. “Of course not,” he mutters, when Vergil’s aloofness scorches away into visible ire. Dante rubs his forehead with his fingers, which has the added blessing of hiding his face.

“My demonic energy is what’s holding me together, Dante,” says Vergil. Even. Factual. “And the corruption is draining it from me. Human blood is the source of demons’ power; I suspect it’s the only way to restore my reserves. And for my… situation, no doubt I would need plenty.” His mouth thins. “I told you you wouldn’t like it.”

Dante is still hiding. His pulse roars in his ears. His brain buzzes angrily inside his skull.

If he’d let Vergil have Yamato last night—if he’d accepted her from Nero and given her back earlier—what would Vergil have done? Vergil, so iron-sure that the ends justify the means. Whose broken body cannot possibly deter the willful ferocity of his desires.

Vergil’s gaze chills further, as if he can read Dante’s thoughts. “Ever the same,” he murmurs.

“Right back atcha,” Dante says. “Vergil,” he starts. Then falters.

“Spit it out.”

Dante’s grip tightens around himself. His eyes keep drawing back to the cracks snaking over Vergil’s cheeks, his forehead, purple-black veins peeking out from under the high collar of his vest; his shoulders, his bare arms, peeling away into abyssal blight. A fatal disaster impossible to look away from.

Suddenly, he’s furious. At Vergil, though this time it’s not his fault. At Mundus, far out of his reach. At the world, for fucking with Dante’s life like this. Again and again, no reprieve, every gift at his doorstep a Trojan horse designed to consume his heart.

Vergil’s startled call of his name slams him back to awareness. He blinks and finds the world tinged in scarlet and smoke hissing past his lips, coiling around his jaw. The room smells of sulfur.

“How much,” he rasps.

Vergil eyes him warily, the frown line between his eyebrows deeper than ever. “You’ll have to be clearer than that.”

“How much blood do you need,” Dante grits out.

Vergil shakes his head. “Far more than you can offer.” He continues to watch him. “Calm yourself,” he says.

This, of course, only serves to piss Dante off further. His hackles rise. His voice reverberates. “Rich, coming from you. Don’t tell me what to do.”

Vergil’s upper lip curls. “I thought you said you were a ‘big boy’. Calm down, brother.”

Dante shakes. His teeth grind together, so hard it makes his skull ache. It’s not just anger, he realizes, with a dull douse of detachment. The cold terror that skewers his veins cannot possibly be mistaken for anything else.

Vergil, returned. Vergil, resurrected, but whose continued life carries with it the only stipulation Dante cannot stomach granting.

“It’s not fair,” he snarls, advancing on Vergil, looming over him. “I got you back. That’s it. That should’ve been the end.”

“Then you should have known better,” says Vergil, looking up to meet his eyes without fear or reservation, and it’s too strange, because Vergil has always ever looked down—at Dante, at the humans that populate this contemptible world. “Foolish, Dante,” he says, quieter, when Dante bows his head, bows his back, and reaches out to clasp Vergil’s wrist tightly in his fist.

“I’m sick of fighting you,” Dante chokes out. “I’m sick of losing you. I’m sick of everything.”

Vergil says nothing. Dante’s hand slides lower, to the glove that envelops Vergil’s knuckles. His rage seeps out of him, little by little, at the feel of cool leather beneath his palm. At the feel of Vergil, who doesn’t push him away.

Then he flinches. “Your fingers,” he whispers.

The tips have already scattered, all the way down to the second knuckle—leaving not the grisly black of corruption, but absolutely nothing at all.

Vergil looks at them dispassionately, as if his very being isn’t gradually disintegrating before his eyes. As if his third, final death isn’t already within sight on the horizon.

Dante’s chest aches and throbs, bruised and rupturing. There has to be something he can do. Something that doesn’t go against everything he stands for; something that doesn’t irreparably harm anyone else.

It occurs to him, abruptly, with a flash of insight. “What about me?” he asks. “My blood. We’re half-human. I’m half-human.”

Vergil’s response is flat. “It wouldn’t be enough.”

“But it might help.”

“I could drain you dry,” says Vergil, slowly, “and it would only restore a fraction of my power.”

“Better than nothing.”

“Then better a full human, if you insist on this.”

“No.” A low rumble in his chest, strange and sudden. Displeasure settles like cement in his bones, dry, ashy, cancerous. Not, he knows, out of intrinsic magnanimity, or goodwill toward the species that both raised him and rejected him in turns, that shuns him and yet looks to him for protection. It’s jealousy that digs its claws in his breast, dripping poison.

You’re mine, hisses his mind. “I’m the only one who can withstand you,” says his mouth.

Vergil judges him shrewdly. Dante itches, again, under that calculating look. But instead of letting it get to him, he reaches for Rebellion, quiet and thrumming in the corner of his awareness where she rests under the window.

Carefully, with a precision belying the significant size of Rebellion’s blade, Dante nicks his wrist. It’s quick to heal, skin knitting over the incision with barely a sting, so he presses a little deeper, just enough for ruby blood to drip in thin rivulets down the canvas of his forearm.

“Boorish,” says Vergil.

“I’m not gonna tip it into a wine glass for you, you prick,” says Dante. He offers his arm. “Here.”

Vergil glares at him, but leans forward.

Dante suppresses a shudder when his brother’s lips meet his skin. Cracked, dry, but softer than he had expected, and he waits for—something. Anything. For Vergil to sink his teeth in; for Vergil to Trigger just enough for blunt canines to taper into needles, to plunge in deep and ruthless and pierce his arterial vein. But—nothing.

It feels almost like a kiss.

And Dante yearns.

It’s fine, because Vergil moves swiftly and efficiently to clean the blood off his arm. It’s not sexual at all, Dante tells himself. But he can’t, for the life of him, look away, mesmerized by the tantalizing glimpse of glistening red tongue. Stupefied by the dizzying, wet warmth of Vergil’s mouth upon him.

Fuck. Dante hadn’t thought this through.

He moves to pull away, only for Vergil’s hand—the one with all five fingers still intact—to snap up and trap his wrist, a vice grip that Dante tries, weakly, and fails, this time, to dislodge. Distantly, he sees a smear of color return to Vergil’s pallid face.

...Well. Better than nothing.

When Vergil finally releases him, Dante looks down at Vergil’s other hand. The fingers are still gone beneath the fingerless glove. (Hah.)

“Not enough,” says Vergil, in sotto voce.

So Dante reaches again for Rebellion.

***

The sun is ready to set, casting a tangerine glow through the sheer curtains in their small kitchen. Nero scrubs the dishes in the sink, handing them off to Kyrie to dry and stack back into the cabinets. They do it silence, which is mostly Nero’s fault, because his brain hasn’t stopped spinning all day.

He’d tried to continue work on the van, but Nico had booted him out of the garage when he’d spaced out on her one too many times. There weren’t any jobs on the backlog, and no new ones had come in today, so Nero spent the rest of the day occupying the kids, chasing them around outside and giving them piggyback rides when they demanded it.

A good distraction while it lasted. But in the relative peace of the evening, with the kids drowsy from the day and satiated from dinner, Nero’s troubled thoughts slingshot back into him full-force.

“We haven’t seen Dante since this morning,” says Kyrie, finally.

Nero knows. Nico hadn’t stopped yabbering about it in the garage. The kids had also asked, since Julio had found Nero and Kyrie crashing on the living room floor that morning.

“I’ll go check on them,” says Nero immediately. He passes her the last dish and heads for the open doorway, only to pause when Kyrie lays a gentle hand on his arm.

“It’ll be okay, Nero.”

She always knows what to say. Nero looks at his feet. “Yeah.”

He climbs the staircase two steps at a time, but slows to a snail’s pace when he nears the bedroom door. Shut, like it has been all day, privacy one of the few things Nero and Kyrie could offer in their humble home.

Not all the way, Nero realizes. Dante must have left the room at some point, after all, or opened it sometime after Nero had left them be that morning.

He hesitates. Considers knocking, but he can hear no sound from inside, and no lamplight leaks out from the cracks. Carefully, mindfully, he pushes the door open a little wider.

His eyes take a moment to adjust, but Vergil’s outline on the bed is clear, haloed in the bronze tinge of light through the cheap plastic blinds. He’s sitting up, his expression obscured by the twilight shadows and his gaze nothing more than a glitter from the lamps in the hallway. Dante sits by the bedside, head folded in his arms at Vergil’s side. Asleep, given the even rise and fall of his shoulders.

Vergil’s hand is in his brother’s hair. It’s missing four fingers.

With a jolt, Nero realizes Vergil is watching him. Weird little jitters skitter up and down his spine as Nero gives a hasty once-over of the room: a single bowl on the nightstand next to an empty glass of water, dirty towels by the door and a still-empty bucket at the foot of the bed.

Nothing out of place, except maybe Rebellion, which has moved from its earlier position under a window to against the nightstand. Feasibly within Vergil’s reach.

Well. As long as—as long as Dante is fine.

“Child.”

Nero jumps a foot in the air. “Yeah?” he blurts automatically, even though, fuck, he’s not a child. What the fuck.

The way Vergil appraises him makes Nero’s pulse thunder. He feels, inexplicably, like a deer caught in the headlights, a rabbit under the eye of an eagle.

“What is your name?”

Nero is absolutely not fidgeting. “Nero.”

Vergil is silent for so long that Nero considers just. Fucking leaving. Bye, see you later, absconding right the fuck out of this bizarre awkwardness. He regrets coming up here.

“I see,” Vergil says finally, like it actually took him that whole minute to process Nero’s response. Nero catches the barest shift of movement: Vergil’s hand in Dante’s hair, smoothing it back, a casual motion that doesn’t sit quite right with the image Nero’s built up in his head. He wants to ask about the missing fingers, but maybe it’s self explanatory.

The rest of Vergil looks slightly better than it did last night, though, oddly enough, even though his face is still marred with cracks and there’s dust and dead skin cells and who the fuck knows what else scattered all over the sheets. Maybe he’s actually recovering?

Never mind. Nero’s outta here; he feels like a lost bull that charged into a china shop. He’ll pick up the glass and bowl later, when Dante is awake, because like hell is he going any closer to the bed when Vergil’s staring at him like this, staring at his arm like this. “If you don’t need anything, I’ll be downstairs.”

“Close the door on your way out,” is all Vergil says.

Nero does. He stands in the hallway, exhaling forcefully, realizing belatedly that he’s been holding his breath for the past thirty seconds. His Devil Bringer trembles a little on the doorknob. Yamato is humming again.

What the fuck, he thinks furiously to himself. He’s faced off a sentient statue as big as a fucking mountain before but this is what makes him nervous?

“What the fuck,” he whispers out loud, too, for good measure. Then he shakes his head, and goes back downstairs.

Chapter Text

Nero is sorting through sheafs upon sheafs of paper scattered about the kitchen table when Dante actually shows his face downstairs the next day. It’s already almost noon, and Dante looks thoroughly bedraggled, shadows under his eyes and the faintest, saddest hint of stubble prickling his jaw. He’s wearing his coat again and armed to the teeth; Nero can smell the gunpowder and steel, though Rebellion is the only weapon that he can see.

It doesn’t escape his notice that Dante always rearms himself upon leaving Vergil alone, leaving no weapon within Vergil’s vicinity. There’s a lack of trust there that Nero doesn’t really know how to parse. Not that it’s his problem.

Nero wrinkles his nose. “You reek.”

Dante yawns and makes a show of stretching, blatantly not giving a shit. “Charming. You talk to your girlfriend like that?”

“Don’t compare yourself to Kyrie,” Nero mutters. “She’s a thousand times your better.”

“How precious.” Dante grins.

Nero glances toward the staircase. “Is it okay to leave him alone?”

“Debatable,” says Dante, and Nero raises his eyebrows incredulously. “Don’t give me that look. He’s not going anywhere.”

“How are you so sure?”

“Hm.” Dante drifts over to the fridge and opens it without asking Nero’s permission. Not that Nero expected him to. Mi casa su casa, or whatever. “It’s in his interests to stay put, for now. Do you have any—”

“No,” says Nero. “And I’m not ordering any.” Always predictable, Dante’s tastes. “Feel free to eat literally anything else. And what do you mean, his interests? You mean Yamato?”

“Something like that,” says Dante. He shuts the fridge door without taking anything, then seems to notice the whirlwind of papers stacked around Nero for the first time—only to grimace. “Doing paperwork so early in the morning?”

“It’s 11,” says Nero. “And it’s not paperwork, asshole. They’re Order documents.”

“Sounds like paperwork to me.”

“I’m looking through all this shit to see if there’s anything that might help,” says Nero, voice rising to talk over him. He flushes a little. Dante’s always been able to get under his skin with absolutely no effort on his part at all, deliberate or not. “They did so much research on demons I figured it’d be the best place to look for a solution. But,” and he pauses, “I talked to Vergil last night. He looked a little better already.”

When Dante goggles at him, Nero feels mollified.

Dante clears his throat. His smile returns to his face, slighter than before but still crooked and impertinent. “Did you, now. What did you talk about?”

Argh. “Not much. He asked my name.” Nero ducks his head to better hide his embarrassment and shuffles the nearest stack of papers around with restless hands. “That’s all.”

“Hm.” Dante scans the papers, arms folded over the back of an empty chair, then scratches the back of his neck. “He won’t be better for long. Have you found anything?”

Nero shakes his head, and Dante doesn’t look surprised.

“What happened to him?” asks Nero, his eyes returning to the report he’d been scanning when Dante had barged in. “The more info we have, the easier it might be to figure something out.”

Dante is silent for a long moment. Long enough that Nero glances back up at him, brow furrowing. When Dante notices, he flashes another smile—even more unconvincing than the last one.

“It’s a long story.”

Nero eyes him. “That you’re keeping to yourself.”

Dante fingerguns him with a click of his tongue and a wink. “Got it in one.”

“Typical.” Nero scoffs, and tries not to let it bother him. “None of it would be useful? None of it at all? This can’t possibly be without precedent.”

“It’d be just our luck, wouldn’t it,” says Dante. He falls back on his heels and crosses his arms—and Nero gets the oddest feeling it’s more for self-comfort than anything else.

But again, it’s none of his business. If there’s anything Nero’s learned about Dante, it’s that it’ll be a hundred years before Nero can pry any kind of useful information out of him. The guy simply doesn’t share. Nada. Case in point: five years, and only a single mention of the twin brother whose sword Nero keeps stashed on his person at all times.

So, yeah. Nero has a life, thanks.

But—speaking of which. “Dante,” he says, and lets Yamato swirl into being again, clasped in his Devil Bringer. Dante’s eyes zone in immediately on the pristine katana. “Look, I know you said that I should keep this, but honestly I don’t feel right about it. It’s his.”

Nero likes Yamato. It’s a powerful Devil Arm, makes him feel powerful, too, and there’s something oddly comforting about it when he holds it in his hand. Yamato gave him what he needed to protect Kyrie during the Incident. But the truth is: Nero doesn’t use it much, not anymore. Not many demons he hunts can stand up to him, these days. And as far as he’s concerned, he already has what he needs: in Kyrie, in the kids, even in Nico.

Dante refers to Yamato as a she, too. Nero still isn’t used to doing that.

Dante’s face does something strange. Caught between something that looks a little like longing, and a little like wariness. “Like I said, he doesn’t need her right now.”

“But he obviously wants her back,” says Nero. “Just take it. I dunno why you don’t want him to have it—her, but it’s pretty obvious to me she wants to be back with him, too.” He holds out Yamato, and keeps holding it out, meeting Dante’s eyes defiantly.

Finally, Dante reaches for it. “Alright. You win.”

“‘Bout fucking time for that, I guess,” Nero mutters, which earns him a surprised chuckle. Dante leans Yamato carefully—almost with reverence—against the edge of the table.

It’s then that the creak of a door opening reaches Nero’s ears, followed by the unmistakable bitter stench of cigarettes and the sound of keys jingling and Nico humming slightly off-key. She swaggers into the kitchen and immediately stops short.

“Uh,” she says, when Nero and Dante both turn in her direction. “Where’s… Kyrie?”

“In the yard with the kids,” says Nero. Nico doesn’t even glance at him. He rolls his eyes. She’s already gone so starry-eyed behind her lenses, he almost expects her to go supernova. “Hello? Earth to Nico?”

Predictably, he goes unacknowledged. Nico scrambles closer. “You—you must be Dante.”

Dante’s eyebrows quirk. He shoots Nero a look, but Nero only shrugs in response. Maybe he could’ve warned Dante in advance, but hey, if Nero had to suffer through Nico’s word vomit for three hours straight the day before while Dante holed himself up, then the object of her excitement does, too.

“Uh, yeah,” says Dante. Nero nearly snorts when Nico grabs Dante’s hand from where it had been lying innocently on the table and starts shaking it enthusiastically. To his credit, Dante appears to take it in stride, even though his arm undulates up and down like a marionette on strings.

Aaand Nico is stuttering. Wow. “I’m Nicoletta Goldstein. Granddaughter of Nell Goldstein. Uh—y’know. The smithy who made those guns you got.”

Dante pulls them out. Ebony and Ivory, Nero knows, pristine and gleaming in the light, and well, yeah, they’re gorgeous pieces of work.

He tunes them out as he returns to the pigsty on the table.

In truth, Nero isn’t much of a reading buff, either. He’d always been much better learning shit with his hands, shoving and elbowing his way into knowledge through brute force and trial and error. Like you’re off to war, Credo had once observed. Unsophisticated, maybe, but it’s always suited Nero just fine. It’s why he has Red Queen. Why he has Blue Rose.

The research itself is hard to stomach, too. His tongue will always feel ashy when he thinks about the Order, when he thinks about Sanctus and Credo and Agnus. Pulling this shit out, all the experiments and documentations and subject numbers—ugh.

It really is nothing useful, and Nero doubts he’ll find anything even if he somehow, through some miracle, manages to go through everything without bashing his head to a pulp on the nearest door frame. But… well… he owes Dante, really. And Nero’s never seen him like this before: still grinning impetuously like the dick he is, but off-beat. Subdued. Actually, blatantly worried.

And Nero gets it. If it was Credo…

Unease slithers through him.

If only there was something to fight. Some giant asshole to beat up.

Those kinds of problems were always easier to solve.

***

Dante takes one more Devil Arm upstairs with him than he had coming down, Nero’s shout for him to go take a shower still echoing from the kitchen. Yamato is quiet in his hand, indifferent as always.

He’s considering her, the elegant black scabbard and navy blue sageo, when his ears perk to the sound of movement within the master bedroom. Trepidation immediately tightens his shoulders. He takes the rest of the steps two at a time, and when he reaches the stop of the stairwell, hollow, frozen dread douses him at the sight of the door partly open.

He bursts inside.

His brother looks up from where he had been perusing a leatherbound book (where’d he get that?). Dante’s brain screeches to a halt, halfway to colliding into the front of his skull at the sight of him: crowned in the sunlight from the open windows, his cracked face smoothed over and calm but for the silver eyebrow that twitches almost imperceptibly the longer Dante stands there, boggled, with his palm still braced against the door.

Then Dante sees the child.

The boy—one of Nero’s kids, the middle child?—stands in front of one of the windows, the cord of the blinds still wound in his tiny hands, gaping at him.

The tension in Dante’s spine returns tenfold. He exhales through his teeth, a soft, controlled hiss, in an attempt to expel it. Then attempts lightheartedness. “Hey kid.” He can’t, for the life of him, remember his name. He also has no fucking idea what to do with children. “Whatchu doin’ in here?”

The boy ducks his head and kicks shamefully at the floorboards. “Kyrie said we had a guest who’s very sick… it was really dark in here and it’s scary when it’s dark so I thought I might…” He motions weakly behind him. “Open the windows.”

Dante stares at him for a moment. “Alright, fair. But let’s get you out of here. We wouldn’t want to get you sick, too. Nero’d kill me.”

Vergil marks his place with a finger. There’s a sharpness in his tone that had disappeared the night prior. “He opened the blinds and brought me a book. I’m not contagious, Dante.”

Dante winces. “Uh huh. C’mon kid, out you go.”

The boy gives one more insistent tug on the blinds, which open completely to match the ones on the opposite side of the bed. Then he scurries to the door, but not before skipping around on his heels to give Vergil a quick, shy wave on his way out. Dante watches him fly back down the stairs.

The cold still lingers between each breath. Only now does the blast of adrenaline begin to fade, but it’s replaced with a slow, steady constriction in his throat. He hears the soft thump of Vergil shutting his book. Damning.

Vergil goes straight for the jugular. “You thought I would harm a child.”

“How could I be sure you wouldn’t?” Dante bites out. “It’s not like you’ve ever been mindful. Of humans.” Or me.

“I would not stoop so low,” Vergil hisses.

“So a child’s life is worth more to you than anyone else’s?” Dante laughs shortly. “Where’s the line? They’ll still grow up and then you won’t give a damn anymore about the futures they have ahead of them.”

Vergil’s fingers curl atop the cover of the book in his lap. “Ironic that you tout mindfulness, Dante. You, who threw away your right, your heritage, your family the moment it suited you.”

“What?” Dante’s fist goes white-knuckled around Yamato, still in his hand. Vergil’s gaze flickers down to her, and when it returns to Dante’s face it’s winter-cold, clear and glacial as sea ice.

“Return her.”

“Hell no,” Dante snarls. “If you want her, you’ll have to take her yourself. And for the record, I didn’t throw away anything, brother. It was you who abandoned me—for your stupid, meaningless power.” He scoffs; and then, like a flood of rainwater over a retaining wall, the rest of it bubbles up behind his lips before he can stop it. “And look where it got you. I hope it was worth it.”

He regrets it immediately. Something cracks on Vergil’s face—metaphorically. Literally. Fury burns frozen and barren in the fiendish cerulean corona of his eyes, the paleness of his skin, the ivory glint of his tapering fangs. His cheeks flake black and gray and drift past the pestilent veins that have crawled up his throat like vines.

“Vergil—”

Vergil sets the book aside and throws off the quilt he’d been so docilely reclined beneath. Any other time, and Dante would have braced himself for imminent impalement, whether by Yamato or Vergil’s ethereal summoned swords, but—

Horror slams into him.

“I thought you said it helped.” And just like that, Dante no longer gives a fuck that Vergil looks hellbent on killing him. He drops Yamato and surges forward in an afterimage of glowing crimson dust, grabbing Vergil by the shoulders to sit him right back down and stare with growing panic at the way his brother’s right leg is—

Gone. Straight up to the knee, a trouser leg rounded by his thigh cut off abruptly and draping to the floor, fluttering gently from Vergil’s movements.

Vergil’s hands shoot up to Dante’s throat, six blunt nails digging brutally into the warm, vulnerable skin. Only six. Five on his left, one on his right. “I won’t stand you mocking me, Dante,” he says, so soft and furious and gravel-rough.

It’s painful. But Dante’s felt worse. “You’re falling apart.”

“What does it matter to you?”

“I didn’t mean it,” Dante chokes.

“You did.” Vergil’s grip tightens incrementally. A thumb presses harshly against Dante’s esophagus, and Dante gasps. “My indolent little brother. You, who’ve always had everything, who always gets your way. You, who can’t get enough, so you take what’s mine, too—who couldn’t care less for anything, and yet the world revolves around your whims, Dante, ever so serendipitously.”

“You’re wrong.” Dante wheezes, then finally reaches up to yank Vergil’s grip off him. “Vergil, what the fuck.” He inhales deeply, hoarsely. “That’s bullshit.”

“I see. Where is my amulet, Dante?”

Dante’s breath goes cold in his chest. “The amulets combined. In the Sparda.”

“I asked where.”

With Trish. “Not here.”

Vergil’s face is an effigy in ice. Dante has never seen his twin look so cold, even in his nightmares. His silence is almost tangible, balanced on the edge of a knife.

“Fuck.” He scrubs his face. He can’t help the way his hands shake, but he studiously ignores it in favor of unsheathing Rebellion from his back. Vergil watches him indifferently as he nicks his wrist again, then turns his head away when Dante sticks his arm forward, blood beading like rubies over the healing wound. “Vergil.”

“No.”

“You say I always take what’s yours,” says Dante. His voice comes out steadier than he feels. “But you’re always saying no when I try to offer you what’s mine.”

“I don’t need anything from you.” Vergil’s mouth twists into an ugly grimace. “Nothing more.”

Simmering frustration churns with the sickening guilt in Dante’s belly. This time, when he tries to force his arm to still, it does. “I don’t care if you don’t think you need it. Just take it.”

Vergil doesn’t respond. The wall is back up, opaque and impenetrable, absolute and unforgiving. His attention has returned to Yamato, lying forgotten and careless on the floor beside the door. Dante can’t help but flinch a little at that himself—Why Vergil Wants to Kill Him Reason #999.

“Brother. Please.” The word is charcoal on Dante’s tongue. See? I can humble myself. Be grateful, he would have added, not so long ago.

But Dante would say it over and over, now. However many times it’s necessary, if only it would move his brother just enough to let Dante save him.

Vergil’s glance is sharp and angry. “Enough, Dante.”

But Dante can be stubborn, too. “It’s the only stopgap we have. I don’t care how much you hate me, how much you don’t want my help. I won’t sit here and watch you die on me.” The shakes break through. He shudders, violently. “Don’t make me watch you die again.”

Their eyes meet. Dante stays his reactions the best he can under Vergil’s thorny scrutiny, clinging to that one scrap of dignity if nothing else.

“You wished for my death all those years ago,” Vergil says.

“I was nineteen and a dumbass. What did you expect?”

Vergil makes a sound. Amusement, almost, but it could’ve only been wishful thinking with Dante’s emotions so bruised, because Vergil’s expression remains cool as stone. “As long as we’re in agreement.”

“You weren’t much better, trying to kill me at every turn.”

“No.”

“No?”

“Your killing intent was one-sided.” Vergil shifts back onto the mattress, leaning back against the headboard again, his hand resting upon the book. For all his aloofness, his impassiveness, there’s a weariness inherent in his grace. Slower than before, as if his brief fit of outrage had burned more than Vergil could give. “It was never my intention.”

Dante’s head pounds. Just like his brother to strike where it fucking hurts, in the same tone he’d use to ask about the weather. “You had a funny way of showing it.”

Vergil’s responding hmm is noncommittal. Immediate concern grips Dante, stinging and breathless. His mouth is dry when he says, again, “Take the blood, Vergil.”

“It’s pointless.”

“Then you didn’t take enough.” Dante comes closer. Sets his knee on the bed, and Vergil dips alongside the mattress. “I’ll keep insisting. I won’t stop until I’ve talked your ear off and you’ll wish you listened to me in the first place. I’ll force it on you if I have to. Please, brother. I’m fucking begging you.”

“There’s nothing to be gained by extending my life like this,” says Vergil. But the hard edges in his expression soften at last, ever so slightly. For a single instant, he looks almost regretful. “It’ll buy me no more than a week or two, at best.”

“So you’ve just given up?” Dante’s fingers tangle themselves in Vergil’s collar. “That’s it? Just like that? You haven’t even managed to take Yamato from me. That’s pathetic.”

Vergil’s anger must be as ephemeral as his thread of life, because instead of tearing open Dante’s throat for manhandling him, all he does is say: “Your bedside manner needs work. Let me go.”

Dante trembles for an entirely different reason, now. “You don’t get it, Vergil,” he says, even as panic and terror and deep, all-encompassing anguish clouds his mind, snaps around it in an envelope of seclusion and denial. “I don’t get everything I want. The world doesn’t follow my whims. I’ve fought tooth and nail for everything I have and—I’ve failed, every time, when it mattered to me the most.

“There’s only one thing I’ve ever wanted, and I never got it. So you can’t just—you can’t just come back, and fucking dangle this in front of me, and then leave me behind again, you asshole.”

“One thing you ever wanted,” Vergil echoes, “does not devalue everything else you already have.” His eyelids lower. Dante starts when he feels a thumb swipe under his eye; he ducks his head immediately, but it’s too late for that. His hair, at least, sweeps over to better hide the traitorous glimmer.

Vergil’s voice goes low. “How predictably selfish of you, to prolong my suffering to assuage your own guilt.”

“Fuck you, too.” Dante’s fist tightens, and Vergil’s vest creaks. “Callin’ me selfish, when you’re just as cruel.”

Vergil considers him. “Dante,” he says. “Do you know why I came back?”

Dante manages a sour, wet chuckle over the slow shearing of his heart. “Beats me. Pissed off that someone else was using Yamato?”

“That would’ve been easy enough to rectify.” Vergil’s good hand folds over Dante’s own. It’s a featherlight pressure, barely there, but Dante feels it like the spark from a firecracker against the back of his glove.

“I wanted to see you one more time,” he says. “Despite it all. This is enough, brother.”

Forty-fucking-three years old, and that’s all Dante can stand. He gives in and buries his face into Vergil’s vest. Through the muffled sound of his tears, he says: “It’s not enough for me.”

When they were children, and Dante had tackled him to get him to play, Vergil had smelled like old books and parchment. Like the old, stuffy, musty library that Vergil loved so much.

Now, his brother smells like blood, and rot, and brine. But Dante still can’t bear to pull away.

Vergil takes his blood. He takes it until Dante is dizzy from it, and Nero finally gives in the next day and orders pizza, because when Dante isn’t by Vergil’s side he’s downstairs melancholically raiding the fridge but eating absolutely nothing.

(And Vergil, too, continues to eat nothing else, can keep nothing else down, and while their bodies don’t necessarily need human sustenance, the black ooze that starts to stain the corner of Vergil’s mouth drives Dante’s own appetite right out of him.)

It’s a good thing, then, that he’s not fully human, that his blood replenishes so quickly and effortlessly and yet—it’s not enough. Perhaps, optimistically, it’s slowed Vergil’s inevitable deterioration, but as Dante watches, more and more of him begins to crumble, and the agony that tightens like chains around his heart soon becomes as normalized as the grief that’s consumed him for the entirety of his adulthood.

Vergil has always been quiet, as far back as Dante can remember. But he grows even quieter now than he was in his youth, when Dante had once competed fiercely and insistently with books for Vergil’s attention. Withdrawn, again, gazing inward. They keep the blinds open to let in the sun and sometimes Dante catches Vergil staring at his fracturing, ashy hand under a strip of effervescent light, a far-away look in his shadowed eyes.

All Dante can do is incite his annoyance. Poke and prod the lethargy out of the beast inside his brother before it can settle down forever, before it can leave Dante alone, again, forever. Their bickering is almost enjoyable. Nostalgic. But they’ve also never been in such consistent proximity since they were eight, and sometimes the silence that lapses between them is worse than even their arguments, feels even heavier than the weight of Sparda’s legacy on Dante’s shoulders—a weight that has always been meant for two.

Nero doesn’t find anything. Trish doesn’t call. Neither does Lady. If it would do any good, Dante would go out to hunt for a solution himself. But he can’t leave Vergil, not now, not anymore when every second that passes is a second counting down.

And as the days crawl past, as the rest of Vergil’s arm and his remaining leg dissipates into ash like the burning, curling edges of a photo lit over a candle flame, Dante realizes with a thickening cloud of despair that he might have to accept this, after all. Vergil already has. Dante can see it in his stillness and the way his gaze no longer seeks Yamato, propped up next to her sister against the wall. He can see it in the way Vergil barely swats at him, after Nico gifts Dante a flashy Devil Arm cowboy hat and Dante impulsively plops it on Vergil’s head.

He’ll probably have to apologize, Dante thinks to himself at one point, dully and hazily while Vergil reads a new book and Dante waffles over reaching out to touch him. To Nero. To Kyrie. They’re gonna have to burn the sheets, the mattress, the whole fucking bed once this is over. Sanitize and scour this whole room, probably. There’s no salvaging the unmistakable stench of death that pervades every corner, from drywall to floorboards.

Vergil can smell it, too. He asks Dante to open the windows, and for the first time in his life Dante complies with one of his brother’s requests—only to sit at the bedside, a knot in his throat, when the summer breeze ruffles Vergil’s hair and Vergil closes his eyes, as if to savor it.

Nero. He has to tell Nero, or else Nero’s father will die in Nero’s bed without Nero ever knowing it. Dante has delayed this long enough.

“Beware, Dante. If you think too hard your brain might rupture.”

“Har har.” Dante sweeps his feet up the edge of the bed, leaning back in his chair just enough to tilt the front legs off the floor. Vergil, predictably, shoots him a frank, unimpressed look from where his head is raised against two pillows.

It’s been two days since he’s been able to sit upright.

“What?” says Dante. “At least they’re not in your face.”

“Your manners will forever be a lost cause.”

“And you’re surprised?” says Dante. But he removes his feet and leans the chair forward again with a thump. Then leans further forward, because fuck it, if this is really all the time they have left then Dante isn’t going to waste it anymore.

Vergil glances at him. Surprise is faint in the slight upturn of his brows when Dante crawls onto the mattress beside him, squeezing into the empty space between Vergil and the edge of the bed. Vergil doesn’t move aside to give him room—doesn’t move at all, really, not that Dante expected him to, but Dante doesn’t mind. He wraps his arms around his brother’s clammy shoulders instead and reels him in, even though Vergil still reeks of sickness and Dante had finally washed up yesterday, Nero’s shirt far too tight around his shoulders. It’s easy to get a hold on him; it’s the side that’s missing an arm.

“What are you doing?”

Dante tries not to grimace. “What does it look like?”

Vergil exhales. This close, Dante can hear the rattle in his lungs. He just barely manages to resist tightening his grip. A reflexive response, perhaps. He remembers the last time they’d done this: they were seven, and Dante had had a bad dream.

It doesn’t feel the same. Of course it doesn’t—it’s been thirty-six years.

“Have you not outgrown your clinginess, as well?”

“I’ll show you clingy,” Dante grumbles, undeterred.

“Spare me,” Vergil drawls. Then, unthinkably, he turns—slowly, achingly—toward Dante, and Dante’s heart stops beating when his brother rests his forehead against Dante’s collarbone.

“Verg?”

Vergil doesn’t respond. Dante… Dante won’t risk it, so he doesn’t continue, either. They lay together in silence under the striped wash of sunlight. The birds chitter outside. The breeze drifts in, lazy and meandering, stirring up motes of dust, stirring up Vergil’s unruly hair. Dante really only pays attention to the last bit. Pays attention, too, to the steady rise and fall of Vergil’s chest against him, the wisp of cool breath against his sternum, the foreboding, offbeat throb of the poison suffocating Vergil’s heart.

He can’t see Vergil’s face with Vergil’s head tucked like so. Guesses, maybe, that he’s fallen asleep. But then Vergil speaks, so quiet in the narrow space between them.

“It wasn’t worth it.”

A pause. Dante swallows; is almost too afraid to respond. He stares at the opposite wall. “What wasn’t?”

“My path,” says Vergil, with no inflection. Only quiescence. “Meaningless, after all.”

Dante’s next breath comes out shaky. Yes, he thinks, but bites his tongue. Don’t mock me, Vergil would say, so instead Dante waits.

He doesn’t have to wait long. “That night. When I fell. I miscalculated.” Vergil makes a noise. It’s almost a laugh. Could be a laugh, if not for the way it cuts short, for the way it lilts strange and bitter. “How I would’ve scorned myself, had I known back then I’d want for something as banal as sunlight. And in the end, it was you who defeated Mundus.” His voice lowers. “All this time, for naught.”

Dante does tighten his grip this time, heedless of the way he feels Vergil tense. “I should’ve followed you. We could’ve taken him on together.”

“It would have been unbearable.”

“I wasn’t that bad.”

“Not what I meant.” Vergil goes lax again. “I see it now. Mundus was waiting for us to weaken each other. Had you fallen with me, you would have suffered the same fate.”

“O ye of little faith,” says Dante, but hears the unsaid; a revelation so tantalizing he can almost taste it on his tongue. His heart thunders. He presses his cheek to Vergil’s dry, brittling hair. “We could’ve taken him. I’m sure of it.”

If only he could rend the planes apart by the seams—he would confront Mundus now, in a heartbeat, no astral projection bullshit, but his true body. Dante would rip out his spine and revel in it.

“Dante,” Vergil rasps, and when Dante hums in acknowledgment, he says: “There is a way.”

“What do you mean?”

“There's a tree,” Vergil murmurs, “that grows in the Underworld. The tree of life, so they say. Every few thousand years, it bears a fruit—a fruit that bestows its consumer indomitable power.”

Dante’s mouth dries up. “Sounds right up your alley.”

“You could say that.” Vergil blinks slowly. Dante can feel the tickle of his eyelashes. “The tree feeds on human blood, like all denizens of the Underworld. From countless lives,” and Vergil raises his remaining hand, curls his graying fingers to cup an invisible object, “a single fruit, the size of an apple. Pure human blood.” He drops his hand. “It’s what gave Mundus his title and his power.

“Indubitably, it would heal me—restore me enough to burn away the corruption.”

Dante’s grip tightens further. No longer an embrace, but a vice. “Of course,” he says, harsh and vitriolic. “Of course ‘countless lives’ is what it takes.”

Vergil doesn’t make a sound under Dante’s iron strength, though it must be painful. The fractures on his shoulders visibly darken, and it’s almost enough for Dante to release him. Almost.

His brother doesn’t seem to notice, or otherwise care. “There is no ‘antidote’ to Mundus’ corruption,” he says levelly. Almost gently. “Only brute force. My own demonic power must overpower his. The amount of blood you give me... is a second of energy in an hour of lethargy.”

Dante breathes. Focuses on it, and nothing else. “You know I can’t,” he manages. “And you know I can’t let you.”

Oh, but he wishes. There’s a part of him, wild and feral and callous—there’re billions of humans on this planet, what’s a few thousand, for his brother, for Vergil—but no.

No.

“Ever the same,” says Vergil quietly, again.

The lack of belligerence sucks the last of the bitter wind from Dante’s sails, leaves him cold. His grip loosens, but he presses closer. Ever closer, as if he can absorb Vergil unto himself, cradle him close and protected in the searing well of his own power.

Just a little more time. That’s all Dante asks.

Chapter Text

“You wanted to talk?”

Dante glances over his shoulder from where he’s leaning on the upstairs railing. Nero winces. Good grief. Dante looks a right mess; has looked a right mess for over a week now, deep bruises under his eyes and silver stubble an unkempt lawn along his jaw.

He looks like he hasn’t slept in a month, which Nero knows not to be true, since he’s already walked in thrice on Dante napping at Vergil’s bedside within the past handful of days alone. Ah—but this is what loss does to you. Nero, too, knows this intimately, in his and Kyrie’s shared mourning five years past.

Dante props his cheek on his palm, elbow against the railing. “Hm, yeah. Figured I owe you an explanation or two.”

“About what?”

Dante scrubs his face. Finishes it off with a rake of his fingers through his hair, and a long, deep sigh. “What do you know of your parents?”

“My parents were Credo and Kyrie’s parents,” says Nero automatically. Then he shakes his head. “They were the ones who raised me, anyway. At the orphanage. What? You finally gonna address the fact that, y’know.” He gives a vague wave at Dante—Dante’s platinum hair specifically—then at his own.

“You never asked.”

“Figured maybe you didn’t know, either.” Nero shrugs. Not the whole truth, but hell if he’s admitting to Dante, of all people, that Nero’s insides twist into a Gordian knot whenever he truly considers asking that one specific question— “Maybe I’m a tenth cousin thrice removed, some shit.”

“Nah,” says Dante. There’s a hint of a smile on his face, one that doesn’t reach his eyes. Few of them do. It’s always made Nero a little antsy, twinged at the strings keeping his temper in check from the day they’d first clashed right up till now.

Like so. Something in Nero’s gut flutters, as if his body already understands what his ears haven’t even heard yet. He shifts his weight from one foot to the other. “Well? What is it?”

At least he doesn’t seem to be the only one struggling. Dante’s hesitation has never been more evident. The knot tightens. Out with it, Nero thinks. Before he loses his fucking mind.

Dante doesn’t say anything for too long.

The silence extends. So does the awkwardness.

“I mean, I can guess,” says Nero finally, and if his voice comes out a pitch higher than usual, Dante’s probably got his head stuck too far up his own ass to notice. “Look, just spit it out already, rip off the band-aid in one g—”

“Vergil is your father.”

Oh.

He’s living in a goddamn soap opera. Hello. Nero wants full reimbursement for the time and effort he’s invested in his life so far, because this show is shit.

“My—” He can’t even get the rest of it out. Reaches out blindly to clutch the banister because he’s certain his kneecaps’ve grown wings and flown out of their fucking sockets. For one, infinite second, his vision goes black around the edges and tunnels solely on Dante.

His temple throbs. “How did you—how long have you—are you sure? Did he tell you that?”

“No,” says Dante. He hasn’t moved an iota. Just watches Nero, with an opaque gaze and a thin mouth. “I suspected when we first met. Felt it in my gut, you could say… but I wasn’t sure. Not until I saw the way Yamato reacted.” He sighs again. “Then I knew, beyond any measure of doubt.”

Nero stares at him. “Vergil is my father.”

“Yeah.”

“And you’ve known for—what, five years?”

“Just about.”

“So you’re my uncle.”

“Guess so.”

A laugh breaks through Nero’s parted lips. It’s short and rough and then he’s livid. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

Dante looks impossibly more tired. “Before? I didn’t think it mattered.”

“Didn’t—didn’t fucking—”

Nero lets go of the railing. Stalks forward. Thrusts a finger at the closed bedroom door, and who cares if his hand’s trembling, just a little? Nero sure fucking doesn’t. “Alright, fine. Five fucking years, big fucking deal, not like—not like my parentage is important or anything, fuck that, right?”

“Nero—”

“But he’s been in that room for ten days,” says Nero, voice slowly crescendoing, “and he’s dying and getting worse and I’ve just been sitting on my fucking ass downstairs twiddling my thumbs and letting you two have your space—and now you’re telling me—he’s my father and I could’ve spent all that time—when he’s only got how much time left—”

And he roars: “WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK, DANTE?”

“Look, kid,” says Dante, raising his hands, and it’s probably supposed to be a conciliatory gesture, but the only thing Nero sees is scarlet, blazing red and before he knows it his fist is winding back so hard and so fast that when he throws it forward, his demonic knuckles meet Dante’s cheek with a sickening CRACK.

Dante doesn’t necessarily go flying. Maybe, subconsciously, Nero held back just enough not to break anything indoors, or Dante braced himself with just a hint of that stupid Royal Guard of his—but he still staggers backward, clutching his jaw. Spits out a bloodied tooth, even, and Nero’s never seen this expression on his face before—

(lots of firsts, since Vergil arrived, and maybe Nero’s never known Dante at all)

—a little stricken, a lot pained.

But all it does is further stoke the bonfire of Nero’s rage.

“You selfish prick,” he chokes. “How can it not matter? Just because you don’t give a shit doesn’t mean—doesn’t mean that I—”

But Dante only shakes his head.

“Nero?” Kyrie’s voice, from the staircase landing.

“Stay back,” Nero snarls, and advances again. Dante watches him come. Doesn’t even try to dodge when Nero’s left fist wrenches his collar, his uncharacteristic compliance unsettling and ever more infuriating—and then there’s a soft hand curling around Nero’s other elbow, and Nero jerks his arm aside, but Kyrie only grabs on tighter.

“Nero, let him go.”

Nero shakes, weak with fury, weak with hurt. “He deserves this.”

“You’ll regret this later,” says Kyrie. “Let him go.”

“It’s alright, lil’ miss,” says Dante. Has the gall to smile, blood blooming between his teeth, a blank slate behind his eyes. “Tooth’s growin’ back already. Let him at it.”

“Shut up,” Nero spits. Chest heaving. Nostrils flared—

—but then his fingers slowly uncurl, leaving behind milk-white indentations in his palm. When he finally steps back, Kyrie’s hold on his arm loosens, but doesn’t release entirely.

“Let’s head downstairs,” she says. “We’ll talk. Dante…”

Dante waves her off. He’s holding his cheek again, his whole stance deliberately lounging and turned aside, his gaze averted beneath his shaggy hair without it being obvious.

“You know what’s funny?” says Nero, sardonic and acrid, as he allows himself to be led away by Kyrie’s gentle, but firm hand. It earns him a glance—just long enough for Nero to catch the way Dante’s face flickers when he says: “My father. All these years, I thought it was you.”

Fortunately, the kids are playing outside in the yard; Kyrie had heard Nero’s yelling on her way to grab snacks for them indoors. She sits him down at the kitchen table and resumes doing just that. They don’t speak. Nero stares hard at the wooden surface and listens to the steady scrape of her knife as she peels apples. He can see it in his head: the blush-red, single spiral of paper-thin skin that drips into the sink as she expertly pares it off with a small ceramic blade.

She cores the apples and cuts them into slices, then disappears out the back door to dole them out to the kids. When she returns, Nero is ready.

“How much did you hear?”

Kyrie sits down next to him at the table. She puts one of her hands on top of his, which sits loosely clenched atop his thigh. “Only the end,” she says. “What happened?”

Nero swallows. He still can’t yank his eyes off the table. There’s a single pale ring against the wood grain, caused by Julio, who had forgotten to use a coaster. “He said Vergil is my father.”

She takes a moment to process that. The meaning behind that. Then she says, “Oh, Nero.”

“I asked him why he didn’t tell me before and all he said was it didn’t matter.” Nero’s shoulders hunch. “Maybe not to him, always so fucking cool about everything. You remember, right? You and Credo, you’ve always been my family. But ever since I was little, all I ever wanted… I just wanted to know...”

“Yes,” says Kyrie softly. She strokes the back of his hand with her thumb. “I’m sure he has his reasons. Didn’t he also lose his family?”

Nero doesn’t know. They’ve never talked about it, go fucking figure. His and Dante’s relationship had never been about talking. “Guess it didn’t translate into decency.”

“Regardless, he’s losing his brother, now, right in front of his eyes,” says Kyrie. “You and I and Nico, we all know it too. Maybe Dante wanted to spare you. They say ignorance is bliss.”

“Then why’d he tell me now?” Nero covers his eyes with his free hand. “After all this time. So fucking late. Last I checked Vergil was missing his legs. He’s falling apart and there’s nothing anyone can do about it.” He laughs wetly. “If I’d gone on without knowing, my last words to him would’ve been I’ll be downstairs, can you fucking imagine?”

Kyrie squeezes his hand. “But Dante told you. It won’t come to pass.”

“Y’know he’s an asshole, too?” says Nero. “Even Dante called him an asshole.” He falters. “Maybe it’s a good thing I didn’t know. He left me behind. What kind of deadbeat father does that?”

“Maybe he didn’t know about you.”

And Nero remembers: Vergil, pinning him with sharp eyes, asking his name. Curiosity for the person holding onto Yamato? Or more?

“Fuck him,” says Nero thickly, at last. “Fuck both of them. I have a father? Fine. He’s dying? Fine. I didn’t have a one for twenty-four years. Turned out alright, didn’t I?

“Didn’t need one then.” His voice cracks. “Don’t need one now.”

Kyrie rises from her seat. Nero’s loose fist curls immediately tighter when she releases him, but then she’s leaning over him and wrapping her arms around his shoulders.

The dam breaks. He clutches her tightly to him by the waist, stifles his tears against the threadbare fabric of her dress. She combs through his cropped hair with gentle fingers and soothes him with the soft, lulling hum of her voice, and Nero tries not to get snot on her, he really does, but only Kyrie can make him feel safe and cared for and vulnerable all at once, and it’s all he can do not to bawl like a child.

Kyrie, as always, doesn’t appear to mind. “It’s alright, Nero,” she murmurs. “It’s okay to be hurt by this. It just means you care. Of course you care.”

“Make it stop.”

She presses a kiss to the top of his head. “We’re all only human,” she says. “Even Dante and Vergil. They’re half-human, too. I don’t know about Vergil, but from what I hear, Dante’s made his fair share of mistakes. But I also know that he’s kind. We only need to communicate with each other properly.”

“You always think the best of people.”

“I know that’s not a criticism because you’re exactly the same way.” He can hear the smile in her voice. “He’s given you time. Not a lot, but more than if he’d said nothing at all. Honestly, I don’t even need to give you advice. In the end, you always know what you should do.”

“But it’s good to hear it, anyway,” Nero mumbles.

They stay like that, arms around each other, his face pressed into her stomach. Long enough that Nero’s quiet sobbing finally subsides, long enough that his cheeks dry and her humming falls silent.

“Thanks,” he says, when he finally musters the will to pull away.

She smiles at him, always a balm for his emotional turmoil, a cloud in an overbright sky. She hands him the box of tissues on the counter. “It’s never a problem.”

Nero accepts her offering and stares at it morosely. “What would I do without you?”

“The jury’s out on that one.” While Nero wipes his face clean, Kyrie sits down. “It’s a bit odd, isn’t it.”

“What is?”

“If Vergil is your father, then that makes you Sparda’s grandson.” She props her chin on her palm, chewing the inside of her cheek. “We suspected there was some relation there after everything that’s happened, but I don’t think even Sanctus realized how direct your descendancy is.”

Nero scrunches his nose. “Is it that weird?”

“That this entire island once worshipped your grandfather?”

“Okay, yeah, it’s weird.” His gaze falls to his lap. “But y’know, I thought, if anyone’s my real father, it must’ve been Dante. Sometimes, he almost acted like…”

Kyrie’s touch falls on his forearm, this time. “He cares about you, Nero. Letting you into his devil hunting business, the sign he sent, the advice he’s given you—that’s how it looks to me from the sidelines. He may have kept this from you, but I’m certain there’s a reason for it.”

“I still don’t have to like it.”

“Of course not,” she says. “But you deserve an explanation, first. Then you can decide what you want to do with it.”

Nero’s fingers clench around his tissue. He dreads seeing Dante again. Just the memory of that blank, guarded smile makes him feel like shit. Kyrie was right. He’s glad she stopped him, even though he knows, from experience, that he hadn’t done any actual damage.

Oh, violence. Of course they’re fucking related. From what little he’s seen of Vergil, he can already conclude it’s the Sparda way.

“This sucks,” he says, and slumps against the chair.

“We can’t choose these things,” says Kyrie. She pats him on the wrist. “But we can choose what we do about them.”

A knock sounds from the door. Not from the front; rather, the one leading into the garage. They glance at each other.

“You done cryin’ in there?” comes Nico’s muffled voice. “Can we come in yet?”

“‘We’?” says Kyrie, at the same time Nero growls, “Nico.”

The creak of the door opening, then footfalls: Nico’s thudding boots, followed by a lighter step and the clack of heels. Nico sweeps into the kitchen.

“Ran into them out back,” says Nico, jabbing her thumb over her shoulder at Lady and Trish, who’ve come up behind her, both of them bristling with weapons: namely, Sparda’s ridiculously huge sword and Lady’s ridiculously huge Kalina Ann. Nico raises an eyebrow at Nero, and he rubs his eyes again furiously and scowls at her. “You good, Nero? Done cryin’ like a little bitch?”

His stomach sours with embarrassment. “Shut up.”

Nico raises her hands. It’s a disconcerting parallel of Dante’s motion earlier. “Ain’t saying anything more on the subject. We all need a good cry now and then.”

“Shut up.”

Kyrie deliberately interrupts, rising to greet the two devil huntresses in her kitchen. “It’s good to see you two again,” she offers. “How have you been?”

“Oh, absolutely swell,” says Trish, flashing a smile just for her. “Running around like headless chickens without a clue what we’re looking for, courtesy of our favorite mutual idiot.” Her gaze is shrewd when it lands on Nero, but she doesn’t ask.

Lady, meanwhile, looks spectacularly grumpy. “Where is he?”

“Right here,” says Dante’s voice from the stairs (“Dante!” Nico squeals). Nero suppresses a wince and judiciously doesn’t look in his direction when Dante comes into view. “Do you have to roast me every time we meet? My self esteem is only so stable.”

“If only it actually knocked you down a peg,” says Lady, giving him a brief, unsubtle onceover. “So.” She clicks her tongue. Long, slow, clearly annoyed. “Where’s the other guy?”

“Upstairs.”

The way he says it—level but for the barest hint of defensiveness—involuntarily draws Nero’s eyes back to him. Augh. Immediate regret, because Dante looks fucking awful, even worse than earlier, even though there isn’t a single mark on Dante’s cheek where Nero’s fist had landed. But the lines under his eyes have never been more brutally apparent.

“You look like shit,” says Trish.

Dante cracks a smirk. “Thanks, I’m here to charm.”

“You sure about leaving him alone?” says Lady sharply.

The smirk vanishes. “Yes,” says Dante, crossing his arms.

“You know what he’s done. What he’s capable of.”

Nero’s stomach lurches. “What he’s done?”

Lady stares at him. Then she crosses her own arms and turns back to Dante. “You’re keeping your brother in his house, with Kyrie and Nico and their kids, and you haven’t told him? Are you stupid?”

The heat of her glare is so vicious it’s a wonder Dante’s not sporting two smoking holes in his skull in place of his eyeballs. “Lady,” he starts.

He’s interrupted by the scrape of a chair leg against the tile as Nero stands. “I’m done with you keeping things from me,” he says. Burning, burning inside, and it’s only because of Kyrie’s soft Nero that he manages to wrangle his temper into submission. “Tell me about him.”

Dante shoots Lady a look, sour and irritated, but she meets him with a defiant tilt of her chin. Then he exhales. “Does everyone have to be present for this? Who’s watching the kids?”

“I should check on them,” says Kyrie, altogether too kind. The tension in the air seems to slide off her shoulders as easily as oil against water as she gives Dante a smile that isn’t unkind. “Nero will tell me everything later, anyway.”

“Ouch,” Dante mutters, but moves aside so she can pass him by. “Anyone else?”

Nico shrugs, her regard bright and keen as she plops into Kyrie’s vacated seat. “Shoot me, I’m curious.”

“He’s a murderer,” says Lady.

“And the rest of us?” Dante interjects, before Nero can fully process that. “We’ve all got blood on our hands.”

“None of us raised a demon tower that leveled an entire city district,” snaps Lady. “None of us sought to unleash the demons of Hell upon the human world. Look, Dante, I know how much you missed him. I was there. I saw everything. But someone has to keep their head in this situation, and last we met Vergil was a power-hungry asshole who didn’t care a whit for humanity.”

She’s met with silence. Dante works his jaw, the line of his shoulders strung as taut as a bowstring. At his sides, his fingers curl.

Nero sits back down. He feels frozen. It’s hard to breathe. For a few glorious minutes, emboldened by Kyrie’s gentle optimism, he’d thought that maybe—even if Vergil didn’t have much time left—

Already suffocated.

“That’s it, then,” he says. “My father’s a murderous bastard.“

“Father?” Lady and Nico say simultaneously. Trish’s eyebrows hike up her forehead, so high they almost touch her hairline.

“Thought so,” she murmurs.

Nero swallows. “You knew, too?”

“Not for sure.” Trish sideyes Dante. “But given what happened here last time, it makes sense.”

Nico gives a low whistle. “And here I thought my daddy was fucked up.”

“Don’t put Vergil on Agnus’ level,” says Dante. He raises his head, the barest hint of glowing embers in his unblinking eyes, his mouth a stark red slash on his pale face. Nico flinches, even though he’s not looking at her. Looking, instead, at Lady. “I hear you, Lady. But you know what? I don’t give a shit. He’s still my brother—my twin. You’re not gonna convince me to give him up. Not in a million fuckin’ years.”

They stare hard at each other. At the table, Nico catches Nero’s eye with a grimace and twirls her finger in a circle at her temple: batshit, ain’t they? But he’s in no mood to indulge her, his head pounding and the lump in his throat growing ever larger.

Then Lady sighs. “This is on you.” She’s the first to look away. Her voice goes quiet. “For the record, I’m sorry you have to go through this again.”

Dante visibly slumps. “I take it you haven’t found anything.”

“Nothing concrete,” says Trish, looking remarkably unfazed about the whole thing. She shakes her head. “Like I told you on the phone, most servants of Mundus die quickly. There’s almost nowhere to look about something like this; it’s not like Mundus conveniently left any diaries lying around.” She presses her lips together. “But I did remember something, after our call. You might not like it.”

“If it’s the tree of life thing, I’ve already been informed,” says Dante wearily. “Will there ever be a solution I do like?”

“The tree of life?” Trish pauses. “Ah,” she murmurs. “The Qliphoth. I see. Vergil told you about it?”

“The Qliphoth?” Nico interjects. “Whuzzat?”

“The Yggdrasil of the Underworld.” Trish places an elbow atop the back of her hand. “It’s fed by human blood harvested by empusas. It grows a single fruit every few thousand years—the culmination of all that blood, condensed to the size of an apple. Impossibly powerful for a demon.” She tilts her head. “It was the fruit of the Qliphoth that crowned Mundus king of the Underworld millennia ago.”

“And Vergil asked for it?” says Lady, looking so very crabby and completely unsurprised.

“Not in so many words.”

“It’s valid,” says Trish matter-of-factly. “You said he’s corrupted? If a boost of demonic power is all he needs to wipe out Mundus’ influence, I’ll bet my left leg it’ll work.”

“Trish,” says Lady, scandalized.

“It’s not happening.” Dante’s face is grim and set.

But Nico looks intrigued. “Human blood, eh? So what, yer brother can just suck some humans dry like a vampire and he’ll be right as rain? Why not try that?” She pauses. “...Not that I’m offerin’. Gotta be a hospital or bank ‘round here somewhere, though I suppose they wouldn’t just let anyone walk out with the stuff.”

“That’s hardly comparable to the fruit of the Qliphoth,” says Trish. “We’re talking every last drop from tens of thousands of people, consumable in three bites.” She glances at Dante, whose face is exceedingly blank. “And Mundus’ poison is nothing to scoff at. No doubt Vergil would need a ridiculous amount to overpower his corruption.”

“So I’ve heard,” says Dante, at the same time Nico says, “Eugh. Lovely. Go hard or go home, eh?”

“But the Qliphoth wasn’t what I was thinking of.” Trish’s eyebrows furrow in thought. “Though it certainly is a more solid solution… All I have is an anecdote. Something I bore witness to, while I served under Mundus.” Her gaze goes distant. “Your brother was present too, but I doubt he remembers in the state he was in.”

Nero sees Dante’s lip curl. One more question to add to the ever-growing, mountainous pile—but what else is new, at this point. For fuck’s sake.

“Mundus had a theory,” Trish continues, “about twins. Two halves of a whole; a single soul split into two before birth. He must have theorized that recombining a pair of twins could form an even more powerful entity, because that’s what I saw him do—merge them, in every possible way he could think of. Physically, mentally, inside and out. Demon twins, of course. Absolutely grotesque, in the end.”

“Yeah, and?” says Dante.

“It was never actualized.” Trish scrutinizes him. “They perished, and I’m certain they weren’t the first to have done so. It went beyond just twins, too. Siblings, littermates, strangers, even entirely different species. I suppose he wanted to find a formula for the perfect soldier. Perhaps even consume them, afterward. Didn’t care to know at the time.”

Lady’s nose wrinkles. “Ugh. What’s wrong with you demons.”

“Just Mundus, in this case,” says Trish calmly. “In retrospect, I believe he may have wanted to try it with you and Vergil, what with you being the Sons of Sparda. Of course, that went out the proverbial window after you...”

Dante’s expression goes black. “Right. Your point?”

Trish waves him off. “Again, it’s only a theory. Mundus’ theory, no less. If it’s possible to share your demonic power with Vergil, you could, again theoretically, purge him of his corruption yourself.”

“You mean like... a blood transfusion type deal?” Nico’s chin tilts forward, her eyes wide. “But with yer,” she flutters her fingers vaguely, then finger-quotes, “‘demonic power’, or whatever.”

“Yes.”

Nico leans back in her chair. “Power. So damn vague,” she mutters. She thrusts off her glasses and cleans them with a washcloth she yanks from her pocket. “Did he ever think to just stick a needle ‘n tube in those twins and pray for the best? Do an actual blood transfusion, or somethin’?”

Trish smiles tightly. “He tried everything you can conceivably imagine. Nothing worked. They died in the end, in agony.”

“You’re making a very convincing case,” Dante deadpans.

“I never said it was a solution. For that, we should go the Qliphoth route. And from the looks you’re all giving me, that’s off the table.” Trish shrugs. “If you’re going to ask me how to do it, I’ve got no answers. Again: Mundus tried everything.”

Dante says nothing. Then: “You could’ve just told me all this over the phone, y’know. Fortuna’s pretty remote.”

“How rude. Already shooing us off? We came all this way,” says Trish, but there’s a glint in her eye and airiness in her voice. She nudges a still-frowning Lady with her elbow. “Lady insisted.”

“I did not!” Lady splutters.

“She wanted to check on you in person.”

“Trish! Hush!”

Trish sniffs. “I’ll do no such thing.”

Dante, somehow, manages a chuckle. It’s short, laidback, and grates on Nero’s ears. “Aw, Lady. And here I thought you hated my guts.”

“Shut up, Dante. You still owe us.”

“Hey, now. You didn’t find anything.”

“But we wasted our time for you, hm?” Lady puts a fist on her cocked hip. “I’m putting this on your tab. Don’t do anything spectacularly stupid before you get back to Devil May Cry.”

Dante, for the first time since he came downstairs, catches Nero’s eyes. “It’s like a big, warm hug,” he says, and Nero can’t help it; he snorts.

The two huntresses, still bickering, take their leave to pick up takeout from a restaurant down the street. Nico takes one look at Nero, at Dante, before she, too, jerks her thumb over her shoulder and excuses herself amidst a jumble of “Kyrie” and “outside” and “er, see ya later”, and Dante definitely would’ve left too, right back upstairs, had Nero not slapped a hand on the table and blurted out: “Wait.”

Dante stops. Looks over his shoulder.

Nero fumbles. “Can we talk?”

“We’re already talking.”

Ugh. Back to this. “You know what I mean.”

At least Dante turns back around. At least he’s not smiling that fake, feckless smile, replaced instead by a stone wall of unreadability. “I don’t know what you want me to say. You heard it all from Lady.”

“Your reason,” says Nero. “That’s all. Why didn’t you say anything before?”

“Isn’t it straightforward?” When Nero’s scowl deepens, Dante relents with a hiss of breath. “Vergil isn’t who I’d call a brilliant role model, kid. Nor am I. Figured I’d do you a favor and keep the burden of this fucked up family off your back.”

“Without my say in it?”

“That was the point.”

“Then why tell me now?” says Nero hoarsely. “You’re not making any fucking sense.”

A beat. “Dunno,” says Dante. “Felt bad, I guess.”

Echoes of his earlier rage stirs in his belly. Hot, viscous, syrupy thick. But then Dante’s shoulders tense, guarded, and Nero sees his nonchalance for what it truly is: a defense mechanism.

A breath in. A breath out. Dante’s guilt lingers, heavy, in the air. Nero can almost taste it in the back of his tongue.

“I deserved to know,” he says.

“Fair.”

“Are you keeping anything else from me?”

“Not deliberately,” says Dante.

“Swear.”

“Is that really necessary?”

“Yes,” Nero bites out. “Swear it. No more bullshit, or dodginess, or giant fucking secrets about my identity or your identity or Ver—or my father. This—this is my family too, now, and no matter how fucked up you say it is, I want to know about it. Full transparency.”

“I get the feeling you’ll regret that,” says Dante dryly.

“No more bullshit,” Nero stresses. “I swear to God, Dante—”

“Right.” Dante heaves a sigh. “I swear.”

Nero’s throat works. “Okay. Good. Can I… can I see him?”

Dante gives him an odd look. “You don’t need my permission for that.”

But Nero remembers the way Dante’s voice had grown tight and sharp when Lady had asked for Vergil’s whereabouts. The way his pale blue eyes had flashed bright, cinder-red in the wake of Nico’s remark about Vergil and her father.

Nero knows protectiveness when he sees it. Between his apparent exhaustion and the gut-wrenching flashes of grief, Dante reeks of a very particular kind of ferocity—

The kind of a man with only one thing left to lose.

“Whatever,” Nero says. “I’m going up.”

***

After Nero’s—frankly quite unpleasant—punch, Dante had retreated to Vergil’s bedside without a word, cheek pulsing and mouth bleeding. Vergil had still been awake then, and without a doubt had heard every acrimonious syllable through the door. He’d given Dante such a withering look, even recumbent against the pillows, that had Dante been a lesser being, he might’ve shriveled up into a silver-tufted raisin.

“Save it,” Dante had said, crawling back into the bed, and was insurmountably glad when he wasn’t pushed away.

Vergil had faded into sleep (unconsciousness?) long before Dante caught wind of the unmistakable click of Trish’s heels and Nico’s loud, twanging voice downstairs. He’d been doing that a lot; more and more time spent asleep than awake, when once upon a time Dante had never even seen Vergil rest.

That steady deterioration, so painfully apparent.

He’d peeled himself off his brother, reluctantly, and left the quiet of their makeshift sanctuary to confront his metaphorical demons. Now, at Nero’s heels, he wishes they could be alone again.

Nero’s nose scrunches up the second he opens the door. “Smells like something di...” He trails off. A stricken look flashes across his face. “Never mind.”

Dante doesn’t grace him with a response. He does a quick, cursory check of the room, as he always does upon returning: Vergil, a lump in the sheets, still in the same position Dante left him in, curled on his side; Rebellion and Yamato, also unmoved against the windowsill. He lingers on them, his thoughts whirling, and is only drawn back when Nero sucks in a surprised breath.

“He’s asleep.”

Something pangs in Dante’s chest. A strange hesitance. Distantly, he realizes he doesn’t want Nero to step any closer. Which is… which is fucking stupid, because Nero is Vergil’s son, and Dante knows Nero, and Nero is better than his uncle and father combined. There’s no threat here. Vergil might snap at him later for displaying him in such an unaware state, but what can Dante do? Vergil spends 80% of his time passed out now, anyway.

Dante circles around to settle back into the bedside chair, leaving Nero to fidget at the doorway. Then the kid straightens.

Approaches. Dante clamps his teeth against the instinctive rumble in his throat, and he must’ve been successful, because Nero keeps coming.

“He’s not faking it, is he?” he says, his voice kept low.

“Vergil’s the worst actor on this side of the planet,” says Dante. “Even as power-hungry bastard he was shamelessly honest. Too honest.”

“...The type to monologue?”

“The type to monologue.” The corner of Dante’s mouth curls. So slight. Helplessly fond.

Nero squints at him. “Then everything Lady said was true.”

“‘Fraid so.”

He expects Nero to ask why. Why cling to him? Why save him? A callous murderer, no compassion for humanity, eyes ever turned to the sky and heedless of those he crushed in his climb.

For that, Dante only has one answer—has only ever had one answer.

But Nero asks no such thing. He stares hard at Vergil’s still, half-hidden form, perhaps cataloguing every little thing he can see: his silver hair, his shadowed face so like Nero’s own, the blackened veins and gaping fractures marring his skin like open sores. The flat space beneath the rise of his hips where his legs should be.

“Okay,” says Nero.

“Okay?”

Nero shoots him an annoyed, if pained, look. “He’s still your brother, isn’t he? You said as much.” He turns to Vergil. “And I…” He clams up.

Dante rises and claps him on the shoulder. Nero jerks like a startled piglet under his palm, but Dante’s feeling magnanimous enough not to rib him for it. Not today, anyway. “If it’s any consolation, I don’t think the idiot here even knew about you.”

Nero bows his head. “You think?”

“Well,” and Dante grins, unrepentant and teasing, and Nero looks up again, alarm blooming across his face, “he thought I was your father, too.”

After Nero stutters his way out the door, the tips of his ears bright, fire-engine red, Dante kneels on the edge of the mattress and puts a hand firmly on Vergil’s shoulder.

“Hey,” he says, shaking it. “Hey.”

Vergil stirs. So, so slow. “What,” he slurs.

Relief slams into Dante so swiftly he’s left breathless.

“You weren’t fucking moving.”

Vergil makes an indifferent noise. His visible eye drifts shut again. “Get used to it.”

Dante’s jaw clenches. His relief dissipates as quickly as it came, sucked so sharply out of him it leaves him hollow. His hand flies from Vergil’s shoulder to his chin.

“Turn your head,” he says, even as his fingers are already tilting Vergil’s head toward him, easily, effortlessly, because Vergil isn’t fighting him. Dust pours off him as he moves, clouds up to coat Dante’s bare hand, and it’s… it’s...

An explosive hiss escapes between Dante’s teeth at the sight that greets him. Vergil opens his eyes again.

Eye. One. A third of his face is missing, an entire chunk ripped out of him, like a hole punched through a concrete wall. The skin of his cheek curls black and rotten where there’s nothing, where there should skull, muscle, blood.

Nausea builds in the back of Dante’s throat. “How are you still alive.”

“Mm.”

“Vergil.” Dante’s fingers loosen. Cradle the bottom of his jaw, instead, his thumb brushing off the rest of the dust. “It hasn’t even been two hours. You were fine earlier.”

“You can try asking it to slow down,” says Vergil, and Dante absolutely can’t stomach his lethargic amusement right now. Figures his stuck-up brother would finally yank the tree out of his ass on what was more than likely his deathbed. “Try it.”

“Goddammit, Vergil.” Dante pulls away to reach for Rebellion, so quick about it his fingers fumble around Rebellion’s well-loved hilt. But when he presses his vein to Vergil’s peeling lips, the blood trickles from the corner of Vergil’s mouth, unswallowed.

“C’mon, Verg. Don’t be a baby.”

Vergil’s eyelid keeps fluttering, like he can’t keep it open. His iris, normally such a sharp, glacial blue, stays muddled and cloudy. “Dante,” he says. “No more.”

There’s a claw in Dante’s chest: three-inch talons plunged through both lungs, gouged into his heart. He should be drowning in blood. Exhaling iron. Gurgling his last breaths.

But here he is, still breathing, his heart still drumming, healthy and strong, and his twin—the other half of his being, his complement, his mirror, the only one who truly understands—ready to leave him yet again for somewhere he can’t follow.

“C’mon,” he repeats. It comes out scraped raw. “You don’t want me to think you weak, do you?”

“You said you’ve never thought me weak.”

“First time for everything.” Dante drops Rebellion; she lands with a graceless clang on the floor. Sits down at the edge of the bed and gathers what’s left of Vergil into his arms. In this, Vergil doesn’t resist. He angles his good cheek to rest against Dante’s breast.

“You’re shaking.”

“No shit.” Dante laughs dully. Cuts it short. Whispers: “Why you? Why does it always have to be you?”

“You were always the fortunate one,” says Vergil. So damn calm. “Naturally. Everyone’s favorite.”

“Fortunate? I’m pretty sure the world’s fucked us both, ass over teakettle,” says Dante. He brushes Vergil’s greasy hair back from his forehead into Vergil’s preferred style, because his brother doesn’t have the hands to do it anymore. It takes him two tries. He’s unpracticed.

It also reveals even more of the ghastly hole in Vergil’s face. Dante tries not to look at it. “You’re wrong about that, anyway.”

“Even Mother loved you more.”

“That’s ridiculous.” He swallows past the block in his throat. “She loved us equally. She died looking for you.”

Vergil is quiet for a long moment. “I don’t even remember her face.”

“I have a photo of her on my desk," Dante says. “And a demon friend that looks exactly like her, funnily enough. Kicking ass and taking names.”

The Vergil of Dante's memory would have bristled in outrage. But the Vergil of now only coughs up the faintest of laughs. “Astounding.”

“She’s here now. She has the amulet. Vergil, please.” Please, stay. Please, don’t give up.

“Don’t make a habit of begging. It’s unsightly.”

“You ass.” Dante presses his cheek to the crown of his brother’s head. Then tilts his face just so; replaces his cheek with his mouth. Vergil shudders. Violently.

“Dante…”

“This isn’t fair.”

“So you’ve said.”

“When I was little, I thought we’d always be together. We’re twins. It’s only right.”

“Yes,” sighs Vergil.

Dante kisses his hairline again.

“Verg,” he says. Softer than he’s ever been. “I’m going to do something really stupid.”

Finally, a single mote of clarity pierces through Vergil’s hazy gaze. “What?”

“Two things, actually,” says Dante. “Bear with me.”

His lips linger on Vergil’s clammy forehead. Then, in an instant, he goes for it: tilts Vergil’s chin up, leans down, and kisses him right on the mouth. Vergil goes rigid with surprise. Not always predictable after all, am I, Dante thinks.

It’s not the best kiss. Not even close. It’s chaste as all hell, for one, the lightest touch of a butterfly, barely there—because for all of Dante’s bravado, his pulse’s thundering so hard in his temples he’s surprised he can even see straight, can see Vergil’s lone eye, bright with shock.

Vergil’s lips are dry, too. Cracked and peeling and coppery with blood. But Dante’s wanted to do this since he was a teenager. Wanted, wallowed, denied, and lost the chance.

So yeah. It’s good enough.

He pulls away and moves to get off the bed before his brother can remember he still has a head to headbutt with. As he rises, Vergil makes an aborted, jerking motion with the stub of his arm. “Dante,” he snarls, but Dante isn’t ready to face him.

“Movin’ on,” he says. He stoops over to pick up Rebellion and sets her against the side of the headboard. Reaches for Yamato next. He needs her too.

“Dante,” Vergil hisses one more time, his voice trailing away with fatigue, and Dante freezes when the next thing he says is: “Again.”

Dante picks up Yamato. His lungs feel too small for his chest.

He closes his eyes. The grin that manifests itself on his lips can’t be stopped, even when the ache in his heart twists sharply, relief and agony both at once. “Who am I to deny you,” he says, and lets himself be reeled back in by the sheer gravitational force of Vergil’s glare.

Vergil returns the kiss, this time.

“Tryin’ to one-up me?” Dante teases, then yelps when Vergil bites him.

It’s still chaste, if intimate. Dante wishes it could last forever. Wishes he could do it properly. But this close, he can already taste the rancid imminence of death against the seam of Vergil’s lips, the sour pungency of sickness adhered like a second skin to his disintegrating body. Except for the bite, Vergil’s mouth stays firmly shut.

When he at last steps back, his brother lets him go—can do nothing but, without a hand to hold on. They look at each other, Vergil’s features as inscrutable as ever, a thousand words implicit in his silence. His remaining eye shines with the iridescence of an ice floe.

God, but Dante can’t bear to lose him again. And after Mundus, after Arkham, Argosax, Sanctus, after even Vergil himself—

The world owes him this much.

He unsheathes Yamato. She slides smooth as silk out of her scabbard, glittering like crystal, still and beautiful as a mountain lake. For the first time, he feels her resonate: a cold, soft tingle that trickles up the bumps of his spine.

That’s right, he thinks at her.

He looks up. Exhaustion has melted the corners of Vergil’s composure, newfound apprehension evident in the draw of his brows. His gaze flicks between Dante and his beloved weapon.

Dante’s grin grows strained. “Don’t pout, brother,” he says. “She still likes you best.”

“What are you doing?”

“Just a theory.” He turns Yamato’s hilt away from him. Bit too long. His hands slide over her tsuba, down to the ribbon-thin, shimmering keenness of her blade. “Let’s save the Q&A for later, shall we?”

And with a mighty jerk, he thrusts her through his chest.

Chapter Text

Yamato can sever even the dimensions themselves.

Sparda once used her to separate, then seal, the Demon World from the Human World. So, naturally, why can’t Dante do the same thing to himself?

Her power floods through him, a flame so blistering it’s brutally cold. Pain explodes behind his eyelids, but he’s braced himself for it—is used to it, in any case. Nothing new, getting stabbed. Nothing new, getting stabbed by Yamato, especially.

But it had never felt like this: like two tectonic plates shearing apart within the very confines of his ribcage. Like something whole, once left unobserved, cracking neatly in half.

Vergil’s voice carries to him as if through a curtain of water, smothered by the pounding adrenaline in his ears and the rush of tempestuous energy roiling through him. His name, Dante realizes, then remembers: ah, but this is just the beginning.

His palms curl around Yamato’s platinum blade, stinging, sliced through and bleeding profusely.

“Dante,” Vergil says again, and Dante thinks he can listen to Vergil say his name forever, no matter how derisively he says it. “Idiot. Did you miss being impaled this much?”

“Oh, absolutely,” Dante gasps. His head spins. That’s new.

Vergil looks ready to drag himself out of bed, lack of legs be damned, through sheer stubbornness alone. But then he halts, and stares, mouth parted, over Dante’s shoulder—and, well, if that’s not a clue to turn around, then Dante doesn’t know what is. He turns. Hisses, when the maneuver jostles Yamato—hoping, desperately, that his luck still stands, that Dante didn’t just yank this idea outta his ass for nothing.

Spoiler alert: he didn’t.

Power, a voice hisses, deep in the recesses of his mind. It sounds disturbingly like Vergil, which is only fitting, because that’s what hangs in the air behind him: a coalesced sphere of raging scarlet light, sparking and roaring and dripping refulgent beads of liquid flame in a vicious hurricane around itself.

With another grimace, Dante reaches for it. It’s his; it won’t hurt him. He knows this down to his bones. It pulsates in his grasp, searing hot but achingly familiar.

Realization dawns on Vergil’s face as Dante takes a shaky step toward him, followed swiftly by an emotion so foreign on his brother’s features that Dante doesn’t recognize it. “No,” says Vergil.

“Yes,” chokes Dante. Every subsequent step is a lance of agony, every breath a mounting pressure till Dante is wheezing. He can already taste blood on his tongue, bubbling in the back of his throat. He needs to get Yamato out of him, quickly. She must’ve hit one of his lungs, and he can’t heal with her still inside him.

But Vergil comes first.

And Vergil can’t stop him. Not when every limb he could’ve used to do so has crumbled to nothing.

Dante extends his free hand, misses. The second time, his fingers successfully curl around Rebellion, still upright against the headboard. His grip is slick with blood and sweat. In his other hand, the sphere crackles with brilliant lightning. Illuminating, in lurid red, Vergil’s icy rage.

“You’re a fool.”

“Takes one to know one, big brother,” says Dante, sucking in a whistling breath, and Vergil lurches back but Dante closes the distance in a blink—faster, stronger, even gutted by Yamato—and in the next second, slams the amalgam of his infernal energy—the core of his power—the demonic half of his soul—

Into Vergil’s chest.

Vergil struggles, spitting, snarling, almost feral, his features contorted and savage in his collapsing face. His thrashing disturbs the dust on his skin and the flaking fragments of his being. The cracks around his cheeks grow deeper, grow wider, and as Dante watches, a chunk of Vergil’s jaw disintegrates into the light.

Doesn’t matter. This will work. It has to. His grip tightens around Rebellion.

If Yamato can split demon from human, then it only makes sense that Rebellion would do equal and opposite.

The noise Vergil makes when she punches through his flesh rebounds in Dante’s skull. Echoes back to over a decade ago, to a helmet clattering to the floor and oil-slick armor shattering in a cloud of ash. Dante clenches his jaw against it, weathers the memories and gathers his withering strength for one

more

push.

The bubble bursts. Power erupts from Vergil in a crimson flare so brilliant that Dante sees stars; blasts him backward with a violent crash into plaster and drywall, pins him with staggering force to a wood stud. Blood gushes into his mouth. His hands immediately scrabble over Yamato’s blade, fruitlessly trying to yank her out of him—it shouldn’t hurt this much—it hadn’t hurt like this before, fuck—

The light clears. The boom, Dante discovers muddily, was from Vergil Triggering.

At least, he assumes it’s Vergil. There’s a beast hunched over the debris of the bed frame, panting azure fire and glimmering with dusky scales and armor plating. Its enormous wings flare in a canopy squeezed beneath the ceiling, pulsing with runes, and the tail that winds about its clawed feet bristles with frighteningly long needles. It’s magnificent. Resplendent in dark, shimmering navy.

Yes. Vergil.

Blue from horn to talon, but for the static that crackles in tiny arcs across his bladed arms. Blue, but for the electricity that snaps across the dazzling sapphire V carved into his chest. Those are scarlet.

Those are Dante’s.

The Trigger dissipates with a sucking gale. Dante can’t tell if it’s by choice. He hears, more than sees, Vergil collapse.

Can’t do anything about it. His arms won’t move, much less the rest of him.

He can’t breathe, either.

Looks like he’s stuck here. That’s fine, he thinks. There’s nowhere he needs to go.

Yamato still protrudes from his right pectoral, coated in blood. A droplet slips down, breaks the surface tension. Plops onto the floorboards.

Aw, shit—he probably got it all over Nero’s wall. That’ll be a bitch to clean. And not only is the bed broken, but the nightstands and the lamps are, too, fallen to pieces in the corner.

But Vergil is whole. Dante sees this now.

Thundering up the stairs. The door slams open.

“What the fuck is going on in… Dante?”

Dante manages a smile. Then he lets himself rest.

***

Vergil wakes.

He wakes to the instant awareness of three things:

1. completeness.

2. a cacophony of voices chattering around him, loud and frantic.

3. the sound of a gun cocking next to his temple.

“You move, I shoot.”

He opens his eyes. The woman shoots. The bang shreds through the air, but Vergil has always been quick—much quicker than Dante, and in a fraction of a second he’s on his feet and several paces away, effulgent afterimage curling into smoke at his heels.

“Lady! That’s my fucking floor!”

Nero.

“We have to burn this room down anyway,” says Lady coldly, the barrel of her gun still trained on him.

Instead of disarming her, Vergil, quite judiciously, takes stock.

Two eyes. Two arms. Two legs. The cool, violent energy of his demonic power restored to him, sweeping in lazy, predatory circles along the highway of his veins. Burning away the last of the weakness that had plagued him for so long.

But it’s different—not alone, intertwined with something new, something warm, something radiant and rumbling and ferociously tender. It resonates in Vergil’s chest with a flush of heat, and Vergil’s fingers twitch in response, tempted to reach up and grasp it—this unfamiliar, familiar thing, almost suffocating in its immensity, in its unending feedback loop of expanding, tumultuous power.

It rattles his teeth. Fires up his nerve endings till he thinks he might explode out of his own skin.

He knows, abruptly, what it is.

“What did you do,” Lady bites out.

He finally deems to glance at her. Recognizes her, vaguely, but her name doesn’t sit correctly in his mind. Then he looks past her, to where Rebellion lies, discarded on the floor, her blade shattered halfway up; to the facsimile of his mother in horrifically scanty clothing, the Devil Sword Sparda misplaced in her hand; to his son, whose face is pale as a sheet, his shirt and forearms stained gruesome red.

To Dante, ghostly and unmoving in Nero’s arms. Nero’s demonic hand keeps a wadded towel pressed tightly to his chest. It’s soaked through, almost black with blood. Yamato lays beside him, forgotten.

“He’s not healing,” says Nero. His voice trembles. He’s applying pressure to the exit wound, too, but there’s so much blood, and the room reeks of iron. “Trish says… Trish says he’s human.”

Dante groans, barely audible.

“I pulled her out,” Nero continues shakily. “I thought he’d heal. I shouldn’t have—I shouldn’t have.” His shoulders bunch up to his ears. “I told Kyrie to call the ambulance. They’ll be here any minute, they’ll help him—”

“Don’t come any closer,” says Lady.

Nero immediately bristles. “Don’t fucking shoot him!”

“Vergil,” says the fake-Eva. “What happened?”

Vergil lets the ice in his veins bleed forth. “Does it matter?”

Lady gapes at him. “Why you—”

“Verg.”

Like a vacuum, all sound sucks from the room. All heads turn. Dante’s scratchy voice is a knife through Vergil’s skull, inciting a pounding throb at its base. He counts each one, because otherwise his mounting fury will consume him.

Dante smiles, heedless. Dante, his foolhardy little brother. So infuriatingly reckless, so maddeningly impudent, so unbearably selfish. So sorely soft-hearted.

“Guess what.”

“What,” Vergil grits.

“I win.”

And he snickers, or what should be a snicker. It emerges instead as a huffing wheeze, airy and whistling, no oxygen to spare. His chest spasms beneath Nero’s palm, frantic and panicked. Vergil can see the whites of his eyes.

“Stay still,” hisses Nero, his features an open book of unrestrained terror.

Dante, of course, does no such thing. His heavy-lidded gaze fixates on Vergil, and his arm raises as if to reach for him.

Like a fish reeled in on a hook, Vergil comes forward.

Lady fires again. The bullet splinters the floorboards at Vergil’s feet. Unfazed, he bends down to retrieve the broken Rebellion.

“Quit shooting holes in my house!”

“I swear to God, Vergil,” says Lady, her eyes wet and glinting beneath the shadow of her hair.

It would be simple, Vergil thinks. He’s faster, stronger, than every living being in this room, on this island, on this side of the planet. More powerful than ever before, his blood thrumming with a novel, savage vitality, hungry for release.

It’s his brother’s fault. Dante’s demonic soul scoured his corruption with the brute force of an incandescent sun, scorched-earthed every sickening tendril of Mundus’s influence. Its sheer might had blazed the way for Vergil’s own power to regenerate, to finally knit his broken body back together again; but it hadn’t stopped there, and the fake-Eva, at least, seems to sense this too, her unfamiliar eyes hard and flinty as she raises her chin like she’s scenting the air.

It would be so simple. They stand in his way, and he owes them nothing.

But it’s Nero’s gaze that pins him in place, his youthful face struggling to conceal dismay. And Vergil, despite himself, wonders if Dante had taken care of him. If Dante had filled a void Vergil had unknowingly left behind, for his son to be so fearful for Dante’s life.

Vergil meets his stare. He has nothing to hide.

“Let him,” Nero says finally, his voice crackling like sandpaper, dry from shouting. “Just let him.”

“Let go of Rebellion first,” says Lady.

“No,” says Vergil.

“That wasn’t a request, asshole—”

“Lady,” interrupts fake-Eva. There’s a light of understanding in her uncanny face as she cautiously drops her defensive stance, the tip of the Devil Sword Sparda lowering just enough to graze the floor. She appraises him almost as if she knows him, as if imitating his mother’s likeness could possibly give her insight to the unpleasant churning in his gut. His hackles rise beneath her scrutiny.

But the doppelganger pays him no mind. “It’s okay,” she says.

Lady shoots her a disbelieving glance. For a long, hard moment, her gun doesn’t lower. But then she sighs, harshly, and steps back, grudging acquiescence written in every rigid line of her body.

He doesn’t need their permission, but he takes it for what it is.

Vergil looms over Nero, over Dante in Nero’s grip. Yamato calls for him from where she lays next to Nero’s boot, but Vergil ignores her. His brother is still awake, if barely. His mouth moves, but no sound comes out. Only quick, shallow breaths.

Vergil gives him a perfunctory onceover. A puncture in, through, out. An unmoving concave in his right side, where Nero is inefficiently trying to stem the sucking airflow and the bleeding. His lung has collapsed, Vergil knows. Pinkish, frothy blood leaks out from beneath the seal of the towel. Dante will suffocate, if he doesn’t bleed out first. He’s already going into shock.

“So foolish,” he says, his anger a distant thing, a squall of wind and snow and drifting thunder. Insults flood his tongue like a thousand stings of a needle. He swallows them down instead.

And Dante—Dante is undeterred by the unmistakable charge in the air, by the viciousness curdling Vergil’s blood. Just as he’s always been.

His little brother reaches for him again, his hand shaking uncontrollably. But I saved you, Vergil can almost hear, in the half-lucid glimmer of his eyes and the crooked uptick of his mouth, smeared a glistening vermilion. Gimme a little credit, here.

Yes, Vergil retorts. But at what cost?

He kneels. “Give him to me.”

Nero eyes him warily. “What will you do?”

“What is necessary.”

“That’s not an answer.” But Nero looks down at the sheen of perspiration over Dante’s ashen skin; at the ruby trail threading into his wild, pale stubble; at the way Dante slowly winds his fingers, unnervingly cool, around Vergil’s wrist; at the unfocused glaze in his eyes.

Nero looks down, and Vergil sees the realization wrench through him, what Vergil himself already knows: Dante has run out of time. No human interference will guarantee his life, now.

Still, he hesitates.

“Nero,” says Vergil, and this time, he cannot contain the growl that resounds in his voice. Nero raises his head, inhaling wet and shaky, and Vergil bites back a surge of temper, bites back the way his fingers flex and itch to take Dante by force—

He would be shot in the back, he knows. Maimed, perhaps, by the Sparda, and that would waste what little time they have left. “Please,” he says, in an echo of Dante’s own plea, not so long ago.

Nero finally lets go. “Careful,” he whispers, strangled. “Just—be careful.”

Dante collapses against Vergil’s front. His head lolls into the crook of Vergil’s neck. “Vergil,” Vergil hears, at the end of an exhale, no more discernible than the weak, thready pulse Vergil feels beneath two fingers. Dante smells like sweat, blood, wrongness. Too mortal and too human, his flesh too yielding and his bones too brittle.

Vergil wraps an arm around him. He flips Rebellion around and grips her by the end of her shattered blade.

“Deja vu,” murmurs Dante, with a ghost of a chuckle.

Vergil closes his eyes. “It’s only right,” he says.

Dante’s next breath, slow and thin, tickles his jaw. “Yeah.”

With that, before anyone else can react, Vergil drives Rebellion through Dante’s back. One thrust—his hand reaches, curls around her hilt—two, through both their bodies and out his own.

“Son of a bitch,” he hears Nero shout, before the roar of flames drowns him out.

.

.

.

.

.

Vergil wakes again.

He is not, he notes with a measure of satisfaction, dead.

And neither is Dante, judging by the steady, audible rhythm of breathing behind him, the furnace of heat pressed along his spine.

Slowly, cautiously, Vergil sits up. They’ve both been dragged back onto the bed, its mattress miraculously intact despite the collapsed bed frame. It reflects the state of the room: still functionally a room, with four walls and a roof overhead, but with a sea of glass below the shattered windows and a mess of broken furniture shoved haphazardly against the baseboard. Blood splatters the wood floor and the collapsed hole in the drywall, dark and oily in the meager moonlight.

A third set of breathing reaches Vergil’s ears. He sees Nero sitting against the closed door, his head in his arms, Yamato hooked in his inner elbow, sound asleep. Vergil feels a crick in his neck just by looking at him.

He rises.

Immediately, Dante’s hand shoots out to grab his elbow. Vergil glances over his shoulder, down at Dante’s supine form, into Dante’s bright and crystal clear eyes.

Something catches in his chest, brief and strange, almost foreign; a curl of elation not his own, so fierce and sudden it leaves him breathless. It’s overpowered instantly by scathing, cold rage, and his brother jerks back in alarm even before Vergil launches himself at him.

“You imbecile,” he snarls, his fingers curling around Dante’s throat, thumb pressed hard against Dante’s thundering pulse. Strong. As it should be. “What were you thinking?”

“Hello to you too, Verg,” says Dante with a real laugh this time, no gurgling, wheezing, rattling, or otherwise. He seems remarkably unperturbed despite the dried blood still crusted to the corner of his mouth, still stained in giant, viscous swatches all over the front of his borrowed cotton shirt. “And you’re welcome.”

Vergil’s hand slides lower to yank him up by the collar. “You would have died, you absolute blithering fool.”

“Oh, please. You’ve gotta be self-aware enough to know how stupid that sounds, coming from you.”

“I cannot possibly surpass you,” Vergil hisses. “Just how much thought did you give to the repercussions of separating yourself with Yamato? Discarding your demon half, no less—the half that would have kept you alive with a sword sticking out of your chest?”

“None at all,” Dante admits, infuriatingly blase. Almost cheerful.

“You walked willingly to your death.”

“Yes.”

“Wretch.” Vergil shakes him, fiercely, savagely. As if he can forcibly rid Dante of his apathy, rid him of his unfettered recklessness. “Your life isn’t expendable!”

The shit-eating grin fades. Dante’s eyes narrow to slits. “Neither is yours.”

“Dante.”

“Vergil,” Dante echoes, mockingly pitched high. But then his grimness returns, the lines in his face carved deep and bone-tired.

He looks, Vergil realizes with a sharp pang, so, so much older than he once did. The years had not been kind to him. Even now, Vergil will blink and expect to see the Dante of twenty-four years ago, brilliant and brazen and trailing fire and scarlet like the tail feathers of a phoenix—only to blink again and see a dark, muted stranger.

But Dante has always looked at him the same way. From early childhood to their ill-fated adolescence to their current jaded adulthood, his gaze has remained pale and luminous, keen and avid and fixed. Narrowed down to Vergil, and Vergil only.

And just as it had back then—just as it has, always—something within Vergil trembles to see it.

Dante’s hands clasp over the back of Vergil’s own. He doesn’t try to free his trapped collar, but instead skims his thumbs over the whiteness of Vergil’s knuckles. They both watch as he does so, as if Dante can’t believe he’s doing it, while Vergil cannot help but wonder why.

Finally, Dante concedes. “Alright, so I didn’t think of the risks. But it doesn’t matter.” His smile is wry. “Would’ve done it anyway, even if I’d known.”

Vergil’s anger returns, quick as a whip. “I could have left you there. Taken Yamato, and left you to your demise. Your friends,” and he spits this, like poison, “would not have been able to stop me.”

“But you didn’t.”

Vergil’s upper lip curls again. “I should have.”

“Nah, you wouldn’t.” Dante finally pries Vergil’s fingers off him. Gently, because Vergil himself is barely holding on anymore. “But like I said; it wouldn’t have mattered.”

He glances over at Nero, still motionless at the door. “Well,” he amends. “Maybe just a little.”

Vergil follows his gaze. “He feared for you.”

For the first time, discomfort crosses Dante’s expression.

“Brother.”

“Beats me,” says Dante to his unasked question, after another pause. “I haven’t necessarily been… the kindest.” He ducks his head, concealing his face with the shagginess of his hair, a gesture undoubtedly deliberate.

It’s strange to see Dante, usually overflowing with unbearable confidence, so hunched and disquieted. Vergil assesses him.

“But you were there.”

“Barely.” A note of strain enters Dante’s voice. “It was harder some days, than others.”

“Foul-mouthed and impatient,” says Vergil. “He’s too much like you.”

Dante snorts. “You’d be surprised.” But his tone softens. “He’s a good kid. Give him a chance.”

It’s a bold statement, because they both know Nero is awake. In the silence of the night, his breathing is too measured, his shoulders too still. He’s been awake for awhile, Vergil thinks—perhaps had never been asleep at all.

“You don’t need to tell me that,” says Vergil, anyway.

Dante raises his head, and smiles. It’s a slow, genuine, arresting thing, vivid and warm. His eyes, limpid and alight, crinkle at the corners.

With it comes a flush of delight that stirs through Vergil’s chest, a distant resonance that Vergil quickly realizes, again, does not belong to him. It pulsates in the back of his awareness, not unlike the torrid lava of Dante’s demonic soul that had enveloped him prior—before it flips, quickly, into surprise, not unlike Vergil’s own.

Dante stares at him. Vergil makes to pull away, but again Dante grasps him by the forearms, obstinately refusing to give him distance.

“You used Rebellion,” he says carefully, as if to feel out the shape of the words, “to reunite me with my demon half.”

Vergil silently meets his eyes.

Dante’s mouth works. Then he thumps his chest, right over his heart; a solid thud of hard, muscular flesh. “I’m not going crazy, am I?” he says. “I think… I can feel you. Right here.”

“Merely a side-effect.” Vergil does pull away, this time, putting an appropriate amount of space between them on the bed. He picks a white strand of hair off his filthy vest, an excuse to dodge Dante’s bewilderment. “You conjoined a part of yourself with me. It’s not so easily separated, even when given back.”

Dante hasn’t stopped staring. “You could have used Yamato. Like I did.”

Vergil scowls. “And waste time justifying myself to your guard dogs?”

“You had no idea if it would work, did you?”

“More so than you, after your melodramatic spectacle.”

Dante’s face splits into a grin. “And you were on my ass for doing something stupid.”

“I wouldn’t have died.”

“Sure,” says Dante, still grinning that asinine grin. “Keep telling yourself that.”

The ensuing stab of irritation is all Vergil’s own, but the pool of warmth latent between Vergil’s ribs has yet to subside. It only grows more massive, bubbling against his lungs till it clogs his throat.

His nostrils flare. “Dante. Control yourself.”

Dante laughs. “It won’t kill you, Verg. Haven’t you ever felt anything positive?”

And Vergil, at last, no longer needs to conserve his energy. Between one breath and the next, swords of cerulean light blaze into being just over his shoulders, pulsing and crackling with renewed vigor. They awash Dante’s dirty and jovial face in cool, icy blue.

Dante’s laugh peters out. Both of them pause.

Vergil tilts his hand. The onrush of power has never felt more liberating. It buzzes at the tips of Vergil’s fingers, prickles the fine hairs at the nape of his neck, electrifies the air around them. Ozone lingers on the back of his tongue, clings to his next exhale, sharp and alkaline.

How long has it been, since he’s been able to summon his swords so effortlessly?

Too long.

Dante’s palms rise, slowly, in surrender. His pupils have dilated, blown almost completely black, ringed in thin coronas of silver.

And of course, in midst of the building, crackling tension, Nero decides to make himself known. “For fuck’s sake,” he barks, jumping to his feet in an instant, waving Yamato around furiously in one hand. “Stop it! Haven’t you guys done enough?”

The summoned swords fizzle out. Dante’s composure immediately re-coalesces. His grin redirects itself.

“Mornin’, kid!”

Nero cracks his neck with a swift jerk. “Pretty sure it’s midnight,” he grumbles.

“Still morning,” says Dante carelessly. “How goes it?”

A vein throbs in Nero’s jaw. Even Vergil will admit to sympathy in the face of Dante’s perpetual, exasperating nonchalance.

“You owe me new furniture,” says Nero slowly. “And paint. I’m never gonna get the blood off the wall.” A beat. “And therapy. Fuck you, for making me go through that.”

Dante shrugs. “Sacrifices had to be made.”

The glare he receives is black and sullen. “That’s not funny.”

Dante’s smile fades.

Silence follows, thick, tangible, and hesitant. Nero glances between the two of them; longer at Dante, as if he isn’t sure he’s even allowed to look at Vergil.

Anger would be rightly deserved, and Nero does look angry, a standout in the smorgasbord of emotions flashing across his face—but he looks resigned, too, and long-suffering, and acutely, heartbreakingly relieved. The latter cracks his expression. Vergil can see into his heart as easily as if his torso were made of glass.

Finally, Nero appears to steel himself. He comes forward, staring determinedly at Vergil. This time, when Vergil rises to his feet, Dante doesn’t stop him.

Nero thrusts his arm forward, Yamato clenched in his fist. For a second, Vergil considers him—his cropped hair and petulant face and furrowed brow, the hint of worry in his faint frown and the trace of anxiety in the barest tremor of his outstretched limb.

Vergil considers him—then reaches, and when his fingers curl around Yamato’s lacquered sheath, Nero lets go.

Immediately, the final knot of tension in his spine relaxes. Yamato: Vergil’s last locking piece, a slice of him so integral that he had felt her loss more keenly than almost no other.

He slides her halfway out. She’s immaculate, gleaming, nary a scratch nor splotch along her hamon, his reflection as clear as in a mirror. No blood. She’s been cleaned, and Vergil doesn’t have to guess to know who had done so.

He sheathes her again with a click. She sings sweetly in his mind, brimming with cool, vibrant power—in her rightful place, at last.

Nero steps back. “By the way,” he says, turning to Dante, whose eyes slide reluctantly away from Vergil. “Trish says you owe her a new weapon. I dunno what happened, but after the light faded, both Rebellion and Sparda were gone.”

“No worries,” says Dante, with a desultory wave. “I feel ‘em. Pretty sure they both got mixed up in the clusterfuck that is...” And he gestures a vague circle over his chest. Then another circle at Vergil.

Nero makes a face. “What does that mean?” he mutters, then pauses. Rubs his eyes with both fists. Groans, his shoulders slumping. “Never mind. I don’t wanna know. Just. Whatever. As long as the house’s still standing, and I don’t have to fix any more bulletholes in the floor.”

“Everyone’s alright, then?”

“Yeah,” says Nero. “Nico kept the kids outside. Freaked the fuck out of Kyrie, though. The ambulance came right after you two collapsed and we had to kick them out. Never thought I’d ever have to tell EMTs to fuck off. Man.” A short, mirthless laugh, then a hitch of breath behind his hands. “The shit I do for you.”

Dante’s expression is inscrutable. “I warned you, kiddo. You’ve got yourself a high-maintenance family, now.”

“And I told you to stop calling me that,” says Nero, muffled.

“Nero.”

Nero looks up again. His eyes shine in the darkness of the room. Dante, too, looks Vergil’s way.

For once, it’s easy for Vergil to say. “Thank you.”

Nero nods. He doesn’t otherwise respond, though his mouth quivers. Dante sighs and climbs off the bed.

“Come here,” he says, spreading his arms, and Nero looks at him like he’s grown twenty more heads and and a hand between his eyebrows. When he makes no further movement, Dante beckons him with his fingers. “C’mon, kid. I’ll stand here till you bring it in, even if it takes all week.”

And just like that, Nero staggers forward. He throws his arms clumsily around Dante’s back and presses his face into Dante’s shirt. It’s caked with blood, but Nero doesn’t seem to mind. Dante pats him between the shoulders and meets Vergil’s eyes. He smiles again, helplessly, in faultless synchrony with the trickle of fondness pooling in Vergil’s heart.

It’s indeterminant, who it belongs to.

“Sorry, Nero,” says Dante. Low, sincere. “Thanks for everything.”

After showing them to a drawer of extra shirts and wrangling out of them a promise not to inflict anymore property damage—on themselves or their surroundings—Nero leaves them be, intent on finally getting some proper rest. Dante waits for his footsteps to fade down the stairs before throwing himself back down on the bed, landing spread-eagled in a single bounce.

Vergil feels his brother’s scrutiny like a sword of Damocles hovering over his head. He ignores him in favor of leaning Yamato under the window. Strange, that she would be set here again, where she had rested for the past week—but now by Vergil’s own choosing, and without her sister beside her.

It was not so farfetched to assume Dante had absorbed Rebellion. But the Sparda?

Vergil himself doesn’t feel it. Only the simmering hum of the demonic power that has always been his, bolstered and galvanized by the deep andante that undoubtedly belongs to his brother. Their combined melody reverberates within him with convoluted, echoing emotion, stronger than ever.

But not overwhelming. He can still recall the full, explosive force of Dante’s entire demonic soul entwined with his, the scorching inner flame and boiling pressure that had vied desperately for escape. And isn’t that just amusing? That the indomitable power Vergil had sought, all those years ago, had lay within his brother all along.

Perhaps Vergil at nineteen truly would have abandoned him, for a taste of such tantalizing calamity. He had not known, then, the extent to which Yamato could sever, to which Rebellion could unify.

But then again; perhaps not.

Dante interrupts his reverie. “Penny for your thoughts.”

“What use are thoughts, when you already have access to my emotions?”

“Oh, so you admit you do have emotions.”

Vergil sighs. “You’re exhausting.”

Dante’s smile twinkles in the moonlight. He turns on his side, and opens his arms again. “It’s what brothers are for. C’mere, Verg. It’s your turn.”

Vergil shoots him a sneer, but sits down on the edge of the mattress, regardless. Dante grabs the back of his vest and yanks him down the rest of the way.

“I don’t feel everything, I think,” he says, even as Vergil shoves him aside to adjust himself into a more comfortable position. “It comes in flashes.”

“Already far more than necessary.”

“It’s not just me, right?”

A flicker of vulnerability twinges Vergil’s heart. Finally, he looks his little brother full in the face. Past the stoic, crooked lilt of Dante’s mouth, he catches the faintest shadow of uncertainty.

“No,” he says. “It’s not just you.”

“Good.” Dante falls quiet.

A touch to his wrist. Vergil stiffens. But, perhaps emboldened, Dante’s hands continue to trail up Vergil’s arms, featherlight, leaving gooseflesh in their wake. They roam over Vergil’s bare shoulders, up the clothed column of his neck, and eventually come to rest in a cradle around his jaw.

Dante’s eyes fix on Vergil’s mouth. After a beat, he leans up to kiss his forehead instead. His stubble tickles Vergil’s skin.

Vergil allows it. Then, with the slightest tilt of his head, he lets their lips meet, too.

“This isn’t a dream?” he hears, barely audible.

“You think highly of your imagination.”

Dante’s shoulders shake—soundless laughter. “Like you wouldn’t believe,” he says, and kisses Vergil again.

Whatever Vergil expects to come next, it isn’t grief.

Like a tsunami, Dante’s anguish crashes through him—rips him from the quiescence of the moment to buffet him out into an endless, storming ocean. It comes in a wave. Then another, and another, and keeps coming, astonishing in its enormity, stupefying in its devastation.

Vergil grits his teeth. Swallows around the sudden lump in his throat, the wetness that threatens to fill his eyes.

The ache is tumultuous and all-consuming. For something lost, long ago—for something finally found again.

(In the vast, limitless dark, deep within the fraying confines of his mind, Vergil had let himself wonder, only once: did his brother miss him? Did his brother think of him? Did his brother regret?)

“Dante.”

Dante wraps his arms around him, draws him closer, so close their chests align and their hearts beat in unison. He buries his nose in Vergil’s neck. “I’m not sorry.”

Vergil isn’t, either. Slowly, he returns the embrace.

And if his neck grows damp, if Dante’s shoulders start to tremble—Vergil is too busy to notice, basking as he is in the ferocity of Dante’s love.

Chapter Text

Nero stares into his mug.

This has to be a nightmare, he thinks. A nightmare just like the ones he’d get as a teenager, the ones where he rushed into Order HQ and stood before Credo and Kyrie in full regalia sans trousers—but worse, because at least back then, he’d jerk awake immediately in cold sweat. No such luck here.

If he wishes hard enough, maybe he will wake up. Preferably on the makeshift bed on the floor, next to Kyrie. Or with a stabbing pain in his neck from sleeping in the shotgun seat of the van, with Nico chattering in his ear. Or even in the middle of the fucking road, waiting for some higher being to run him over with a semi.

Anything is preferable to this: sitting at the kitchen table, just him, in silence, with his deadbeat father.

Said deadbeat father takes another sip of his tea.

Even Kyrie can betray him, Nero despairs. She’d made the coffee, steeped the tea, set pancakes on the counter, and gone upstairs to wake the children, effectively leaving Nero to his doom.

More silence.

A pipe squeaks in the wall, followed by the unmistakable sound of the shower running upstairs. Dante.

Dammit, he should have said hi when Vergil first came in. But Vergil had been clean and whole and not dying and wearing one of Nero’s shirts and Nero’s brain had effectively clocked out and catapulted straight into the sun. Even Kyrie had greeted him, completely unfazed, and then five seconds had passed and Nero still hadn’t said anything, and now it’s been five minutes and far past fashionably late.

But then what does he say? So, you’re my dad, huh? No shit, Sherlock.

He clears his throat. Instantly regrets it, when Vergil’s eyes flick up, but Credo hadn’t called Nero bullheaded for nothing, so Nero barges on. “How are you feeling?”

“Well enough.”

Silence.

Okay. Now what.

No one has the right to look so unerringly blank. Nero can read his future clearer in the dregs at the bottom of his mug than whatever Vergil’s thinking behind the expressionless line of his mouth.

Vergil finishes his tea. With enviable grace, he stands, taking his empty teacup with him to presumably to place in the sink. “Thank you for the tea.”

He turns aside.

Hold up. Was Vergil fleeing? “No, wait,” Nero blurts, stumbling to his feet after him and banging his hip against the edge of the table as he does so. “Ow. Wait.”

Miraculously, Vergil pauses.

Fuck it.

“Dante says you’re my father.”

Vergil sets his cup back on the table. His silence is more pensive, this time around. “Yes,” he says slowly. “I’d imagine so.”

Something hiccups in Nero’s chest. “Then, did you... you didn’t…”

It’s hard to spit out. Vergil watches him impassively.

He doesn’t need to do this, Nero thinks. He’s twenty-four, his childhood long over, his independence long established. He’s made his own family, the one he has now with Kyrie and the boys and even Nico. He doesn’t have to throw himself under the bus like this, doesn’t have to give his supposed father an easy opportunity to steamroll all over him. He doesn’t need to know.

Except he does.

“Did you know about me?”

“No,” says Vergil.

It snips the string that’s kept Nero’s spine taut. He slumps, rubbing his chest, just over the invisible fist finally loosening its grip around his heart.

Vergil considers him for a long moment. “Dante has told you little.”

“Yeah, he’s been real liberal on the details,” says Nero. “And you?”

“It doesn’t matter anymore.”

Twins, alright. “Tell that to Lady.”

Recognition flashes across Vergil’s face, something hollow and distant and shrouded in a memory. “It’s been a long time. Circumstances have changed.”

“In what way?”

“Death,” he says calmly, “has a way of giving you new perspective.”

Nero looks away. “Right.”

He’s glad Lady and Trish aren’t here, housed instead in the motel down the street. After yesterday’s stunt, Lady had been a hair-trigger away from murdering Vergil in his sleep whether Nero was present or not.

Upstairs, the echo of running water creaks to a stop.

“I’ll take your word for it,” he says.

Vergil tilts his head. Another pause. They’re still standing around like chumps, even though there are chairs right in front of them. Nero’s tempted to plop back down, but Vergil’s already taller than him at full height, and Nero doesn’t wanna crane his neck any more than he has to.

Besides, Vergil hasn’t made a single move, either, as if he’s still prepared to abscond. Regally, of course.

“The children in this house,” he says, apropos of nothing, jerking Nero’s gaze back toward him. “Are they yours?”

Nero’s brain hikes up its suitcase and goes right back on vacation. “Er, no. They’re orphans. Kyrie and I are just standing in.”

Something almost like relief flickers across Vergil’s face, so quickly that Nero isn’t sure if he just imagined it. Vergil nods. They lapse into painful silence again, so thick Nero could slice through it with Red Queen. Such is the way of Sparda: constipated communication (and utmost violence).

He wants to drown himself in something. More coffee will do, in a pinch.

“Want more tea?” he asks, waving his demon hand at Vergil’s cup. When he receives only a shake of the head, Nero turns and approaches the carafe sitting on the counter, grimacing mightily at himself.

“And your arm,” says Vergil, behind him, as Nero pours himself a generous mugful. “Were you born with it?”

“Nah.” Nero reaches into the fridge to add some milk. “Any idea what’s up with that, by the way? It just showed up a couple years ago. Used to hate it, but, well.” He pauses. “I don’t mind it so much anymore.”

“It has the same energy as a Trigger.”

Nero shuts the fridge door. He turns around. “Like… my arm Triggered?”

The sudden interest in Vergil’s pale eyes is unmistakable. “Perhaps.”

“Great.” Nero scowls and flexes his hand. It hasn’t thrummed in a while now, ever since Nero gave Yamato to Dante. Proof that it had been Yamato calling for Vergil, after all. “So I guess it BSOD-ed and froze when the rest of me stayed human.”

Vergil looks at him blankly.

“Blue-screen-of-death,” Nero elaborates. Then remembers: two decades of who-knows-the-fuck-what. Right. He isn’t even sure if Dante knows what modern technology is, much less Dante’s once MIA brother. “...Never mind.”

Vergil, mercifully, glosses over it. “I assume you’ve learned how to wield it.”

“Oh, yeah,” says Nero, coffee in hand. Familiarity blooms in his chest; this kind of talk, he can handle. His mouth slants into a smirk before he realizes it, easy and comfortable. “Why? You askin’ for a demonstration?” Without looking, he takes a sip.

And promptly burns the fuck out of his tongue. Argh, shit. His fingers clamp down around the handle of the mug—an only half-successful attempt to suppress his flinch. Which, of course, cracks the ceramic. Audibly.

His nape grows hot when Vergil arches a perfectly derisive eyebrow.

“Yes,” Vergil drawls. “I suppose I am.”

“Brilliant,” says Nero. He sets down his (traitorous) mug, his tongue a hot steaming throb of nerves in his mouth. “There’s a place right outside the city, if you’re interested. I usually use it for practice.”

Before Vergil can respond, footsteps sound from just outside the kitchen. Nero looks up just in time to see Dante saunter in, as if summoned by just the sheer prospect of battle. He’s in another one of Nero’s old shirts, stretched absurdly tight around his broad shoulders, dripping all over the linoleum like a shaggy wet dog.

“No fair,” he says, slinging an arm around Vergil’s shoulders with a grin that reeks of ‘I know I’m still wet and that’s exactly why I’m touching you’. “I get dibs on first fight.”

Nero watches with mild fascination as thunder rolls into Vergil’s previously cool expression, the type of darkening that heralds a storm. He pries Dante’s arm off of him with incredible force, considering the way his fingers leave white imprints in Dante’s skin. “Do you not understand the concept of a towel?”

“Sure I do,” says Dante, as he continues to drip. “I’ll dry outside. Boy, do I need a workout. I feel like I’ve slept a month.“

Nero frowns at him. “You just showered.”

Dante shrugs him off. “C’mon, Verg,” he says. “You know you want a go at me.”

“Don’t ignore me, asshole,” Nero mutters. “Maybe I’ll kick your ass.”

He receives a cheeky grin in return. “Twenty years too early for that, kid.”

“Oh yeah? Wanna say that again?”

Kyrie conveniently pokes her head into the kitchen, because of course she does, only after the Worst Interaction of Nero’s life. “Please don’t damage this house any further,” she says, with all the serene implacability of oh-hell-no.

It works, because Dante gives her an apologetic wave.

“Right, sorry.” Nero’s own hands curl inward. His blood’s already swelling in his veins, electrified with the anticipation for a good fight, vibrating deep and eager all throughout his body. As it always does, when Dante has the gall to antagonize him.

For all he shits on Dante’s bloodlust, Nero is exactly the same way. Familial revelations or not, he supposes some things never change.

Dante’s still grinning at him. There’s an odd, unfamiliar light in his eyes—and Nero realizes with a start that it’s because, for the first time that Nero can recall, Dante’s mirth is reflecting in them.

Well. Maybe some things do.

***

Vergil stands before him, hale and healthy and cold. Perfectly still.

It’s quiet outside the city. Idyllic. Only the rustle of grass and the whisper of a breeze, the mountains in the distance and the warmth of the sun against the back of his neck. Nero is spreadeagled beneath the nearest tree, arguing with an overexcited Nico between harsh panting. Vergil hadn’t gone easy on him.

Exhilaration floods through Dante, savage and consuming. Vergil must feel some of it; the corner of his mouth twitches.

“Rude,” says Dante. “Making me wait.”

“Naturally.” Vergil sniffs. “Nero asked first.”

“I’m your brother.”

“He’s my son.”

Vergil says it without hesitation. Dante smiles. “Yeah? And your verdict?”

“Why ask?” Vergil raises Yamato. A flick of his thumb notches her up an inch from her sheath, the ensuing click soft and sharp and menacing. “You already know.”

Dante does. He’d hung back, and watched, and felt. “Aw, you’re making me jealous.”

“Foolishness,” says Vergil.

Dante lifts his own arm. Rebellion’s power coalesces within him, folding in with the stunning force of the Sparda, with his own strength. A Devil Sword manifests in his hand with a burst of blood-red flame, dark and looming, its blade a jagged terrain of infernal teeth.

Vergil’s eyes narrow. He strikes.

Their blades clash in a shower of sparks. His brother is kinetic and fluid as quicksilver, a hurricane making landfall behind Yamato’s unsullied edge. Dante meets him step for step, blow for blow, dancing in and out of Yamato’s range with a bubble in his throat and breathless exultation in his lungs.

Dirt and overturned grass flies from the soles of their boots. Electricity prickles over the fine hairs of Dante’s arms, arcing in slender, crackling filaments into the earth.

“C’mon, Vergil,” he says. His cheeks hurt from grinning. “You’d better not be rusty.”

“You’ll eat your words.”

Their blades collide again. And again, in brilliant arcs of silver and flame as they dodge and duck and confront each other’s blows with a synchrony Dante hasn’t experienced in decades.

Something slots into place. His soul sings, a building crescendo of crimson and cerulean. Lifting, gradually, till it sustains itself on a tight, ringing fermata—

A note answers. Vergil’s pupils dilate, dark and abyssal. The air draws taut. Dante sucks in a breath. It’s sweet. Thick. Redolent with power.

They blast apart. Vergil bares his fangs behind a conflagration of beryl-blue flame; it mirrors the way Dante feels his own lip curl back, involuntary, the way he feels the itching drag of elongating teeth overfill his mouth.

His Trigger is upon him in a blink of an eye. Power roars in his ears; thunder rattles his bones; the sky colors itself in a surge of blood red. A shockwave flattens the grass, booms across the clearing, drowns out Nero’s startled shout from the sidelines.

The crimson bleeds away to blackened earth and charred treetops. The world spreads beneath his feet—beneath his talons, beneath the unfurling veil of his wings.

And across the way: Vergil, blue and brilliant and blazing against the halcyon sky.

“Let’s settle this,” he says, his voice deep and echoing with inhuman vibrations. His scaled tail drifts lazily about his feet. Yamato’s argent blade flashes in the sunlight.

Dante exhales smoke and laughter. “Took the words right outta my mouth.”

The hanging of a breath. Anticipation sparks his each and every nerve ending, coiling keenly through his muscles. The acrid taste of ozone stains his teeth.

Vergil’s beastly mouth tilts into something like a smile.

They charge. Hurtle through the air like missiles, swords raised and flaming contrails in their wake— dissonant halves of one soul, harmonizing at last.

“I’m up one!”

“We’re even,” says Vergil.

“Hey now, I pinned you to that tree over there—”

“Yes, immediately after I put Yamato through your gut again.”

“Doesn’t count if I followed up.”

“And I followed up with a hit to your face. Perhaps you have a concussion.”

“Ha ha, very funny.” Dante exhales in a whoosh, leaning heavily on his new sword, its tip stabbed into the earth.

He holds out for another ten seconds, give or take. Then he tosses pride to the wayside and flops down on his back instead, face tilted toward the sun. The thump of grass that reaches his ears indicates Vergil may have done the same.

They’re alone. He doesn’t know when Nero and Nico left them be, nor where they’d gone off to. It doesn’t much matter to him, not when he’s reveling in the quiet pull of Vergil’s presence beside him.

Over the years, Dante had dreamed plenty. What-if scenarios, mostly; sometimes he’s eight, cowering in the closet with ash in his lungs and soot in his mouth but clutching tight to Vergil’s shirt; sometimes he’s nineteen, lowering Rebellion to meet Vergil in the middle, their amulets tangled between them; sometimes he’s twenty-eight and recognizing his twin immediately beneath the helmet. Sometimes, even, he’s in his thirties, mired in the bowels of the Underworld and dragging Vergil’s decrepit body out of the gloom.

He’d dreamed plenty, but he’d never dreamed of this.

“Sorry,” he says.

Vergil visibly starts. Dante tugs at the grass. He feels Vergil’s sidelong scrutiny but doesn’t turn his head. Continues: “I don’t think I can give you your amulet back, after all.”

He hears the smooth sound of Yamato sliding back into her sheath. In his periphery, he glimpses Vergil laying her across his lap.

“It’s become a part of you.”

“Seems like it.” Dante inspects his Devil Sword. He doesn’t really understand the logistics of it, or how it formed to begin with. But he knows the Sparda played a part, with the amulets as collateral.

“Mother, Father,” says Vergil. “You have them both, now.”

The Devil Sword dissipates in a controlled burst of ruby particulate. “And you,” says Dante.

Vergil acknowledges this with an inscrutable hum. His voice is like a quiet scratch of fabric. “Will your avarice never cease?”

Dante props himself up on an elbow, twisting around to face him. “You have me, brother,” he says.

Vergil scoffs. “You’re ridiculous.”

“I’m serious,” says Dante. He scoots closer. He can almost feel the rabbit-quick drumbeat of Vergil’s heart—or maybe it’s his own. It’s still a little hard to tell them apart. Dante doesn’t really want to. “You have me. All of me, if you want.”

Vergil’s expression doesn’t change. “And what would that entail?”

“Well, good luck shaking me off, for starters.” Dante’s hand finds the back of Vergil’s, which rests idly atop Yamato’s sheath. “Room. Board. I could use a roommate, actually. Wouldn’t mind some help with rent.”

An eyebrow lifts. “Do you not receive payment for your services?”

“You’ll set me straight, I’m sure.” Their foreheads touch. “And we can figure out how to give the amulet back to you.”

“Dante,” says Vergil. “I don’t care. Keep it.”

Dante smarts. He starts to draw back, but Vergil keeps him still with a firm grip on his hand, nails digging painfully into Dante’s skin.

His brother gives a controlled, measured exhale. It doesn’t actually temper the strange flutter low in Dante’s gut, subtle but lingering, almost nervous, like a caged bird chittering restlessly behind gilded bars.

When Vergil finally speaks, he speaks tightly, with great care. “It’s still mine, in the end.”

Dante watches him. Twenty-four years, it took, to get here. Twenty-four years and death and almost-death for them to stop impaling each other long enough to open their eyes.

“Yeah,” he says.

“It’s yours,” he says.

“All of me,” he says.

Vergil nods, once, slight. When he leans in, Dante welcomes him, easily.

“Trish stopped by,” says Nero, when they return to the house. The sun is low on the horizon, its fading rays skimming amber and orange over the tiled rooftops of the neighboring buildings. It glows through the threadbare living room curtains. “She and Lady are heading back to the mainland. She said, and I quote, ‘stop cavorting and get back to Devil May Cry already; you owe me a sword’.”

“Feelin’ the love,” says Dante. “And Lady?”

“I think she may have doubled your debt. Something about trauma.”

“Ah.”

Nero scowls and stabs a devil finger in the center of Dante’s chest. “Don’t you two even think about hauling ass. Not before you help me repair the damage to the bedroom.”

“Neither of us are carpenters,” says Dante dryly. “Trust me.”

“Then you can scrub the floors. In case you didn’t notice, it’s your blood all over the place, Dante.”

Dante turns to Vergil, who looks remarkably placid. “Help. Your son is bullying me.”

Nero flinches. Vergil, however, says simply, “It sounds reasonable to me.”

“Oh, goddammit.”

“Right,” says Nero, halting, surprised. He can’t quite conceal the sheepish look that crosses his face, eyebrows angled up. “Uh. In that case, I’ll go get some rags.”

He scurries off. The door leading to the garage slams behind him.

“It’s good to see you looking so well,” says Kyrie from where she’s sitting on the sofa, a book in her lap. She looks relaxed, which is more than Dante can say for everyone else.

If he’s being honest, with Kyrie, sometimes it feels like he’s talking to his mother. “Thanks to your hospitality.”

Kyrie smiles and reaches for a steaming cup of tea atop the coffee table. “You don’t need to flatter me. Just don’t worry Nero like that again.” Her gaze slides to Vergil. “We met briefly this morning—sorry I left so quickly.” Undoubtedly to force Nero’s hand, Dante suspects. “I really am glad to see you on your feet.”

Vergil inclines his head. “You’re his partner.”

“Your future daughter-in-law,” says Dante, and ducks immediately to avoid the lighting-quick fist jabbed his way. He chuckles at the irritated throb in his chest.

Pink dusts Kyrie’s cheeks, but she takes it in stride, hiding it behind a laugh, setting her cup back down on the coaster. “Not yet. He’s thrilled, you know, even if he doesn’t look it. The whole devil hunting business fits him like a glove. And, well. With everything that’s happened here these past few days, too... You’ll keep an eye on him, won’t you, Dante?”

“Aw, miss. You know you don’t have to say that.”

“Still,” she says. “I’m not privy to this part of his life, and I’m okay with it. But I’ll rest easier knowing he has eyes on his back.”

“Four, now.” Dante slaps Vergil smack dab between the shoulderblades. “He’ll be so smothered I don’t think he’ll ever visit.”

“He hardly needs babysitting,” says Vergil. “He was trained well.”

Kyrie’s smile turns wistful. “Because of my brother. Thank you.”

“Okay then!” Nero bursts back into the room, frazzled, a giant wad of disposable rags and a familiar bucket clutched in his fists. He huffs loudly. If Dante angles his head just right, he can just see the smoke billowing out of Nero’s ears. “Up! Upstairs, let’s go.”

“What’s this?” Dante says. “Is that a blush?”

“Shut up! I still owe you an ass-kicking!”

“Nero,” Kyrie chides, and when Nero whirls around, he’s met with three pairs of eyes blinking owlishly down at him from behind the staircase railing. The children, finally showing their faces.

As Nero backpedals with a sputter, Dante sidles back closer to Vergil, whose shoulders have gotten progressively tenser in the past ten seconds. “Your grandkids.”

“Don’t,” Vergil growls.

He’s pushing it, but it’s been so long since Dante’s had the opportunity to jackhammer Vergil’s Big Red Button. “You sure? I’ll bet they’d love a piggyback ride from Grandpa Vergil.”

Yamato appears in Vergil’s hand.

“Alright, first of all: no stabbing me in front of the kids,” says Dante. “Second of all: see ya!”

“Dante!” Nero howls, as Dante makes a break for the door. “Get back here, you ungrateful sonuvab—! Shit, Kyrie, sorry—”

The breeze blasts in Dante’s face as he bursts outside, sticky and vaguely unpleasant now that the sky’s going dark. The raucous chirruping of cicadas assaults his ears, prominent even in the center of the city, heard once and unable to be unheard again.

He aims for the nearest roof, bounds up with a coiled spring of lower body, and dashes across the shingles with a step lighter than his physicality gives him credit for.

In all fairness, he’s not 100% sure Vergil will follow him. They’re not eight anymore.

The bond stretches, a little like an unraveling pile of yarn. Vergil’s annoyance, sitting heavily by the wayside, gradually begins to fade as Dante leaps over the alley and makes his way across the next roof. They’ll have to test this someday, Dante thinks. Startles. They have time to test this, now.

The thread unravels further—then snaps back in a violent retraction when Vergil catches up to him in a single stride, azure afterglow wisping off his pale skin. His irritation is near tangible. Instinctively, Dante drops beneath Vergil’s outstretched blade and swings out with his boot.

Vergil knocks his kick aside with Yamato’s sheath, the show-off. “Are you a child?” he bites, in a tone offset by the gleam in his eye and the bated swell in Dante’s breast. He takes advantage of Dante’s distraction and in a single, fluid stroke, brings him down with a crack of the scabbard.

Dante hits the shingles with a winded laugh. “Couldn’t resist. You know me.”

“We’re helping Nero,” says Vergil. The icy metal tip of Yamato’s sheath lingers under Dante’s chin. Vergil hasn’t even bothered to draw her. Down her length, Dante meets his brother’s frozen eyes. “And that’s that.”

“Didn’t think you’d advocate for him so quickly.”

Vergil’s mouth thins, unimpressed. “It’s hardly a chore.”

“Vergil.” Dante knocks Yamato aside and springs to his feet. He’s not jealous, not really. It’s easier when there’s another point of turmoil he can fixate on. “You know you can’t hide stuff like this from me anymore. You don’t need to.”

“Then we don’t need to speak of it.”

Dante plows on, regardless. “It’s fine, y’know. I know you don’t want to admit it, but all of this was out of your control. All of it. You wouldn’t have left him behind if you knew. And he doesn’t seem to blame you for it, either.”

“That doesn’t matter.”

Dante throws up his hands. “Oh, come on. If it was anyone’s fault, it’s mine.”

“Don’t be stupid,” Vergil hisses.

“Oh yeah? I let you fall.”

Fall. The word still prods Dante in his most tender scar, even after all this time. A scar he’s nursed for years, one that’s never healed quite right. Not even now, he realizes, with Vergil standing alive and levelheaded in front of him as if he never left.

“I didn’t come after you,” he pushes out. “And then I killed you. Even if you did come back, it still took years. I’d say that’s straightforward enough.”

"Falling and every subsequent consequence was my choice, not your mistake,” says Vergil, his voice resonant and cold as the sea. He raises Yamato again, still sheathed. “You’re burdening us both unnecessarily.”

Dante stares hard at him. He crosses his arms. “Pot calling the kettle black.”

Neither of them moves. A standstill.

The cicadas chirp. The houses creak. The power lines rustle.

Vergil lowers Yamato. He sighs. “Let’s return.”

“To Devil May Cry?” says Dante hopefully.

“To Nero.”

Before he has an aneurysm, Dante hears. He sighs, too. He hates cleaning.

They find Nero in the master bedroom, scrubbing furiously at the dried blood on the floorboards, his face ruddy with frustration. The broken bed frame and lamp have been vacated from the premises, presumably tossed into the nearest dumpster. The drywall above Nero’s head is still a total mess, bloody wood studs and wispy insulation peeking through the dust and plaster.

Nero looks up when he sees them at the doorway. His eyes widen—then quickly narrow again.

“Oh,” he says. “You’re still here. I thought you fucked off for good.”

“Nah,” says Dante. “Your old man dragged me back.”

A beat.

“Oh,” Nero says again, quieter. “...Thanks. I guess.”

They work mostly in silence. It doesn’t take long, between three men with demonic speed and demonic scrubbing strength. After, when Dante can practically see his face mirrored off the finish, Nero keeps his head down, his gaze so fixated on a knot in the wood that Dante's prepared to see lasers shoot out and scorch a hole straight into the ceiling below.

“Will you be leaving, then?” Nero asks, with the type of casualness that doesn’t sound casual at all.

Dante meets Vergil’s eyes over Nero’s curved back. “Probably for the best.”

“Right. Of course.” Nero scrambles to his feet. “I have your stuff, give me a sec.”

He’s gone and back in a flash, their clothes—laundered, folded—bundled in one arm, Dante’s duster and Vergil’s overcoat hanging off the other.

“You can, uh, keep the stuff you’re wearing. I don’t really need them,” he mutters, ducking his head as they take the burden off his hands. “I don’t think you left anything else.”

Dante dons his coat. It settles with a familiar, comfortable weight around his shoulders. “Thanks. And thank Kyrie for us, too. We owe her one.”

“Yeah,” says Nero. He spares a glance at Vergil. “So… you… you’re staying with him, then?”

Vergil nods. For a moment, Nero looks almost crestfallen—but it’s gone in a flash, replaced by nonchalance. Poorly pasted nonchalance, anyway.

“Hey, kid.” Dante claps him on the shoulder, which earns him a sustained, irate glare. Far better than the kicked-puppy look, and exactly what Dante was aiming for. “You know you can come by anytime. I’m sure Vergil’ll wanna see you.”

Now Vergil’s glaring at him, too. Two peas in a pod, these two, unlikely as it once seemed.

“As if I’d wanna come by,” Nero grumbles. “Your place is gross and never has running water.”

Man. If Vergil’s eyes could kill…

“Here I am, tryin’ to be nice,” says Dante. “But the invitation’s still open. Think about it, yeah?”

“Yeah.” Nero hesitates. Then repeats, firmer, more confidently, “Yeah, okay. Soon, maybe. Don’t do anything stupid.”

“Why does everyone keep assuming I’ll do something stupid?”

Nero shoots him a deadpan look. “Oh, I dunno, maybe because you stabbed yourself with a powerful sword and turned yourself human the moment we looked the other way?”

“It worked, didn’t it?” says Dante. “Everyone’s a critic.”

Nero rolls his eyes, which Dante graciously ignores. “And you know,” he continues, “what with Yamato and all, maybe him or I will drop in on you instead.”

“I’m not a taxi service,” says Vergil, at the same time Nero says, “God fucking no please don’t.”

Dante only laughs. Nero looks at him for a hot second. Then he visibly braces himself, throws on a mulish, determined scowl, and strides forward. Before Dante can react or otherwise process what’s happening, he’s being yanked into a brief, nervous hug—before Nero jumps back, skittish, like he’s been scalded.

“Shut up,” he blurts.

“I didn’t say anything.”

“You’re thinking it.”

“Sure. Whatever helps you sleep at night.”

Nero looks at Vergil. The same obstinate expression crosses his face, tinged with discomfort, mirrored faintly in Vergil’s own frown. But instead of bringing it in—Nero’s tact in play, for sure—he says, “I’ll be seeing you, then?”

“Yes,” says Vergil, in that slow, deliberate way of his, the way one says the sun rises from the east, an indisputable truth. Nero seems to understand this; his rigid posture loosens, just a little. “Let’s go, Dante.”

Dante’s heart gives a pang in response. It’s strange. Not upset, nor sad, or any other measure of negative emotion. Content, rather, but in a distant way, floating and foreign like he’s waiting to wake up from a dream at any moment.

It’s absurd. Of course they would go together. Dante had asked, and Vergil had agreed. To say it is one thing, but for it to actually be so—

Vergil glances at him, even as he withdraws Yamato. Dante paints a smile on his face, throws up a two-finger salute, and says: “Ciao.”

Nero swallows, and nods.

Yamato splits the air. A void opens with a hollow yawn, pitch and cryptic, laced with ethereal threads of glowing blue light. Dante has to quash the immediate clench in his gut at the sight of Vergil haloed by another abyss.

He steps forward, closer. Keeps Vergil within reach even as Vergil turns around and says, to Nero: “Take care.”

“Sure,” is Nero’s reply, quiet.

“...You too,” Dante hears, a second later, as he and Vergil enter the portal together. “Father.”

Upon reemerging, an entire ocean and a timezone away, it occurs to Dante, for the first time, that though Vergil may recall where Devil May Cry resides, he’s never actually stepped foot inside.

It’s. Well. It’s a mess: magazines tossed about, empty whisky bottles cluttered around the aging leather sofa, greasy pizza boxes piled on top of sheafs of paper at his desk. The air is stale and musty with dust and the odor of old food.

Judging by the faint traces of Vergil’s exasperation, Dante supposes Vergil expected no less.

It’s not, however, the first thing Vergil remarks upon.

“Devil May Cry,” he reads, his gaze on the neon script tacked to the wall. “So it’s true. Has this always been the name of your office?”

“More or less,” says Dante. He flicks the light switch, and exhales in relief when the lights actually turn on. Still ahead of the utility bill, it seems. He flicks on the ceiling fan, too, for good measure. “Just so you know, Verg, this is a judgement-free zone.”

“You’re my brother.” Vergil makes an assessing circle around the room. “I will judge you wherever I like.” He comes to a stop in front of the sofa and carefully leans Yamato against one arm, sets down his folded clothing, and takes a seat on the cracked leather, graceful as anything. “How unsurprisingly tacky of you. Where did it come from?”

Dante makes a face. “It’s a long story.”

Vergil slouches against the cushion, already making himself at home. Dante’s breath hitches. “We have time.”

“You know it already.” Dante comes around, too, to stand before Vergil, to tower over him and cast his brother’s face in shadow. “I was nineteen.”

“I see. And?”

“Isn’t it obvious?”

The seconds tick by. If he wants to, Dante could sit on the sofa next to Vergil, but he doesn’t. He wants to be face-to-face. Slowly, he sinks to his knees at Vergil’s feet. His brother’s opaque gaze feels like an anvil on the crown of his head.

It’s not as unreadable as it once was. Dante can feel Vergil’s hesitation. He waits.

“How long?” Vergil asks, finally.

“You’re gonna have to be clearer than that.”

“You,” he says. “For me.”

Dante laughs. It fades quickly into the low whir of the ceiling fan. “Dunno. Always, I guess, in a way. We’re two of a kind. It always felt like you were mine.”

“We’ve been apart longer than we’ve been together,” murmurs Vergil. “Far longer.”

“Doesn’t matter.” Dante rests his forehead against Vergil’s knee. He breathes out when he feels slender fingers slide through his hair. “It didn’t change anything.”

The fingers tighten, then loosen. “My foolish little brother.” Vergil’s words are soft, almost fond. “Your sentiment will be your end.”

“You’re not exactly helping your own case here, Verg,” says Dante, catching Vergil’s hand and kissing his open palm just to make his point. He knows the calmness in his heart isn’t his own. “And I’m pretty sure I’m the older one now.”

“In your dreams.”

“Nah.” His dreams don’t hold a candle to reality.

They lapse into comfortable silence, for once lacking stress, lacking urgency. Vergil resumes combing through Dante’s hair. It’s too long, now, constantly falling into Dante’s eyes, but Dante can’t really be assed to cut it.

The phone rings.

“I’m closed,” Dante grumbles.

Once, twice. Eventually, the ringing cuts off, and the silence returns, but only for a blessed three seconds. With a jolt, it starts up again, louder than ever.

Dante groans. “Unplug it.”

“You’ve been away for how long?” Vergil rises to his feet, pushing a reluctant Dante off him. “With the way you run things, it’s a miracle your establishment has survived this long.”

Dante parks his ass on the floor. “I’ve got people in my corner.”

“So, charity.”

“I prefer to call it ‘pulling in favors’.” He tilts his head back.

Vergil approaches the desk. Dante watches, stomach in his lungs and lungs in his throat, as, instead of unplugging the cord, Vergil picks up the receiver.

“There’s a password,” he says.

His brother pauses, but only for a second. Then he puts the receiver to his ear and meets Dante’s gaze, and Dante soaks in the impossibility of this moment: that Vergil would stand here, so naturally, phone in hand, with crystalline eyes and loose shoulders and poison chased from mind and body alike.

That Vergil would stand here, together with him and home at last.

“Devil May Cry.”