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It had only been a full day, but it felt like Nero had been sick forever.
At first it had only been a small cough. Nero had started asking for more water, grown tired more quickly during the day, and eventually complained about his throat. Nothing too worrisome, Vergil had thought. Spardas didn’t really get sick, most of the time. Nero would pass this one off. Then Spardaghetti had come, and Nero hadn’t wanted to brawl with his uncle. This, Vergil recalled, was the first time he’d truly been alarmed.
He should have prepared for the worst.
Instead, he woke up in the middle of the night to a toddler coughing up inordinate amount of mucus, his skin burning hot against Vergil’s. For a few key seconds, his mind had scattered in a panic. His child was sick. Coughing. Feverish. Instincts had risen from inside, a swirl of power that caught Nero’s attention.
“Da’?”
The voice was small and weak, and the word provoked another coughing fit. Vergil placed a hand on his forehead. “I’m here, Nero. I’m here.”
Seeing Dante with a fever had unsettled him, but Nero? Every tiny cough was a needle punching through his skin, raising the hairs on his arms and stinging his stomach. When Nero’s tiny body shook with a shiver, something unknown unhinged itself in Vergil, like he was falling apart from inside.
“I hurt,” Nero whimpered.
“Yes. Of course. You are sick, Nero.” That… hadn’t been the best response, no doubt. Vergil silently cursed himself, threw the covers away, and stalked to the light, flipping it on. He hurried to Nero’s side of the bed, crouching nearby and running a hand on his burning cheek. “It happens.”
He said it like his own insides weren’t churning, like this was a normal part of life--and for Nero, it might very well be. Sometimes, it was easy to forget the smaller ways in which demon blood could help, and how Nero’s limited abilities also led to increased vulnerabilities. Vergil steeled himself; he needed to treat Nero as efficiently as possible, and for that, he could not allow his flaking heart to take control.
At least he had a vague idea what he was supposed to do here. He brought Nero fresh water and helped him drink, years of discipline and emotional self-regulation being put to work into keeping his hands steady even when a deep shudder crawled through Nero's body and tore a whine out of him. He was calm. He'd faced hundreds of demonic horrors through his life and stared them down. A toddler's fever was nothing.
Yet that night, the hours during which he stayed by Nero's side, pressing a cold compress on his forehead, bringing him water or urging him to try and sleep more, were easily some of the worst in his life. No matter what he did, the fever remained, and he hated feeling so utterly powerless. He told himself he was there, at least--it was obvious Nero sought him out every time he awakened, and Vergil remembered all too well his own, one-time fever.
It had been his first year away from the house, alone. November had rolled around, and it had rained for a week. He hadn't found proper shelter that time, had been drenched and failed sleeping properly for days. The cough had come first, overcoming what natural resistance their demonic heritage conferred. But the fever was the worst. Most of the event was fuzzy in his mind, but he remembered curling in a large doorway, half-protected from the winds, the chill deep into his bones. His entire body burned but he kept shivering, and the whole world had gone hazy, indistinct. He would've sworn he could hear their mother in the wind, kept expecting her to pick him up and magically make everything else disappear. He had still been a foolish, sentimental child.
Nero was one, too. Part of Vergil wanted to teach him better, to make him understand the world would not always be soft and kind, to pass on what he’d had to learn killing demons with an oversized katana or battling a fever through a cold November night. Theirs was a lineage of hardships. If he sufficiently prepared Nero, then perhaps life could be kinder to him.
Not now, however. He was still teaching him to wash his hands and brush his teeth, or that there were colours beyond red and blue. How was he supposed to make him understand the cruelty of life when he still asked why dogs barked or the sun rose every morning? Perhaps once he could write and read and reason… Too often, Vergil found himself wondering if they would have that long, or if their luck would run out first. Dante's own brush with death didn't help any. Vergil closed his eyes, pushing the grim thoughts away, and held Nero tighter against him, held him through coughing fits and restless sleep, until dawn came and they could finally go to the pharmacy.
Vergil bundled up Nero as best as he could, tying him up around his chest the way he'd seen others do with newborns, and though that made every step feel strangely unwieldy, he could at least rest secure in the knowledge his son was safe with him. Nero had fallen asleep once more despite his frequent shudders and he remained so for most of the short walk. He only stirred as Vergil approached the counter, cough syrup and thermometer in hand, and a big coughing fit overtook him. Vergil set a hand against Nero’s tiny, shaking back, fighting against the tightening in his chest while Nero battled the roughness of his throat--and as he waited, his eyes fell on a small array of children’s books.
He had a few at home, of course, but they were for younger children, with very few words he could easily translate. Nero knew them all by heart now. It had not taken long, once Vergil had integrated reading to the night routine, and these days he’d grown bored enough to demand Vergil shift into his demon form once again, as he had needed to do the first few times he’d tried to get him to sit still for a story. Now Nero loved those moments, and sometimes he invented his own stories. After the night they’d just had and the day to come, Vergil couldn’t help but feel they both deserved a new book. He browsed them, picked one about a ghost trying to out clothes in an attempt to become visible, then headed to pay.
The lady at the counter took one look at Nero and muttered something about how “he shouldn’t take him out of he’s contagious or something” and Vergil positively growled at her. The sound emerged of its own volition, like the demon inside had brutally uncoiled. She startled, but before she could offer another gem of wisdom, he snatched his purchase’s bag and stalked off. It was, perhaps, a bad idea to make himself so memorable in his immediate neighbourhood, but he was too tired and worried to care.
They returned home, Nero shivering every step of the way. He mumbled about his itchy throat and the bright sky and asked why there was a cat on a leash--still coughing, still so obviously sick. But he was awake and blabbering, and that was comforting to some extent. Vergil knew he should put his little monster back to rest, in his bed, and make sure he slept more. He didn't want to, not just yet, while he was awake to some extent. They settled in the sofa after he'd had the cough syrup, Nero leaning against his chest holding a plastic glass of water as his father cracked the new book open.
Slowly, his arms wrapped protectively around the tiny, burning body, Vergil began the story of this strange ghost desperate to be visible, his voice low and steady as Nero stared at the new images, occasionally interrupting with a coughing fit and forcing Vergil to hold the water. Those eventually subsided, however, but as the glass slid suddenly to the ground, Vergil realized the lack of cough had more to do with Nero falling asleep than anything else.
His eyes tracked the widening pool of water, but he didn’t move from his seat. Once, he would have set his child aside and rushed to sponge it up, and while something shrivelled inside of him at the sight of the spilled water, he was now even more bothered by the idea of waking Nero up. Cleaning could wait. Vergil reached for the bottle with his foot, tipping it back up with his toes, and let what had spilled run its course while he kept Nero close to him. Just a few minutes, he told himself, knowing full well it’d last until Nero stirred on his own.