Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

The night’s darkness is too heavy. It has become a physical thing, a million points of pressure bearing down on a single stone or a hand clenched around a throat. The hours have stretched on long and it feels like the sun set ten years ago. Rain batters against the window with such force that the glass threatens to splinter beneath and flashes of lightning are the only sure source of illumination in a room that’s become a mausoleum. Everything is stifled. There’s no music drifting through the walls. Not anymore.

Where do you think you are? asks a harsh voice in the back of his head. Not his, but one he hasn’t heard in ten years, and like the music (distant organs played by no one, wafting ghostly through the castle corridors) from the defunct club next door, he never will again.

Dante imagines a pair of red eyes staring at him from the shadows. He clacks his whiskey tumbler twice against the bartop, a signal for a refill, hoping the sound will banish his imagined stalker. It doesn’t. He’s the only patron in Bullseye on such a miserable night - there’s nothing else to distract attention away from him. The knock-knock of his glass doesn’t summon the bartender either. Instead the familiar rush of water from a faucet and the muffled clink and clatter of glassware bumping against each other persists even as he tries to summon another drink again.

“It’s been a while,” begins the man on the opposite side of the counter, just before the second knock. “Since you’ve really gone on a bender like this.” It doesn’t elicit a response. The dishwashing continues, crystal clear glasses lining up in a neat row one after the other. “How much did you have before you came here?” he asks. His tone is mostly conversational, more gentle than expected, as Dante becomes aware that he’s wobbling on his stool.

Normally, he’d disarm someone’s concern with a lazy smirk and snide comment. Pretending everything is okay, even when they both know it isn’t. And he should, because if he doesn’t, then it’s going to lead to a conversation he would do anything to avoid. But he’s too drunk, too exhausted, too miserable to conjure up the energy that a lie like that would take. 

“...couple’ve bottles… four, maybe five...” he grumbles and the words tumble leaden from his mouth. Silence falls over the pair, too strained for his liking, but he doesn’t dare lift his head to his bartender of so many years. With the state he’s in, whatever expression is on Eryn’s face would be too much to bear. 

It had been over a year since he’d done this, drank himself near catatonic to stifle whatever miseries he was trying to deny plagued him. It had felt like progress. Sometimes it felt like healing . He’d stop himself once he was harmlessly buzzed and be rewarded with an affectionate smile from the handsome man behind the bar. It would make Dante feel bigger, one-tenth of a better person. Amazing how easy it was to undo all of that work in a scant few hours of dedicated drinking. Already the first itch of shame starts to twitch up the back of his spine

“...you cuttin’ me off?”

A pause and then: 

“Do you want me to?”

Maybe he does. Maybe he should quit now and preserve what’s left of his dignity, though he questions if he ever had it in the first place. In the past, he’d take the hint. Let Eryn pour him some water and tell awful stories about other patrons and laugh until whatever sorrow that had taken root in his chest was chased off to be processed another, more sober day (if at all).

But then he remembers why he’s here, why he’s sitting on this stool in this bar, four-almost-five-bottles-of-whiskey-wasted while the sky falls outside. He remembers the eyes he is so sure are lurking in the shadows at his back and the way they looked beneath that helmet. Deep red with sickness, with disease, staring at him with the barest recollection. Dante was a familiar face, not a name, and someone who had to die. Otherwise, there was nothing in that gaze - a vast sea of emptiness, a window to a soul that had been hollowed out. 

How long had he been like that? Years or days? If he had gone to Mallet sooner, could he have saved--

“No,” he blurts before the thought can finish. “Not- not just yet. A few more and then I’ma stop. Promise.”

Finally, he wills himself to lift his head toward Eryn. Every inch of his bartender’s angular, handsome face is taken up by a frown, that much he expected, but there’s no suggestion of anger in his features. All he does is sigh and turn to take the half-empty bottle of Jack off the shelving. He shakes it in front of Dante, lets the dark drink slosh against the glass, and spins the cap off. 

“You finish this, and then you’re done.” Dante nods and stays mute as the whiskey fills his empty glass. Then Eryn looks at the bottle, considers it with an appraising eye, and takes a swig straight from it. A laugh crackles out of Dante’s chest. “You gonna tell me what’s wrong?”

“Not yet.”

“Eventually?”

“Soon’s I know how to tell it,” he mutters and brings his refilled tumbler up to his lips. It doesn’t burn, not after so many bottles, but it does help the warmth in his belly spread further. The memories don’t stop, but this has kept them dull - blurred recollections instead of the vivid movies that replay in what little sleep his conscience had allowed.

It’s only been a week and a half since Mallet. The first few days afterward, he felt like a new man, walking on air, living on Cloud Nine, all of those cliches. He’d killed the thing that destroyed his family.  He got the revenge he always wanted and a new partner in the process. Trish was great - even if her face took some getting used to. The way she laughed and talked and smirked was so different from his mother that he stopped registering the resemblance at all. She lived with him, albeit on a temporary basis until she settled into the human world, and her company kept his mind preoccupied. There was so much she wanted to see that he didn’t have time to let himself think about the demon in black armor.

Not until she asked about the photo on his desk. Not of his mother, but a newer photo of a woman with long crimson hair and a boy, barely ten, smiling broadly with a wide expanse of beach behind them. A souvenir from a trip he couldn’t make because of work.

“This is your brother’s family, isn’t it?” Trish had asked, studying Dante’s nephew and the boy’s mother with a tilted head. “Do they know yet? About…?”

After that, there was no distracting himself from the truth. He’d plunged his father’s sword into his brother’s chest and watched in an adrenaline-fueled daze as black blood pumped down the blade. It was thick and oily and it made him think, over and over, of illness. Infection. A human thing that never trifled them as boys, manifesting in every inch of Vergil’s warped form. It didn’t seem real. Had to be a nightmare. Another copy made by Mundus, the same as Trish. He hadn’t given up on Vergil ten years too early. Couldn’t be true. That would be cruel, too cruel.

But he had the other half of mom’s amulet and Vergil would sooner be removed from existence then give that stone up. It was all they had of her. So the cruelest fact was reality and someone had to tell Vergil’s family.

He throws back the rest of his glass, sucking down what is meant to be nursed on like it’s a shot. Impotent anger overcomes him as a flash of heat - the unfairness of it all, the sense that the universe is playing the same sick joke on him over and over - and the urge to hurl the tumbler into the wall swells along his nerves. The only thing that stops him is Eryn’s hand quickly falling over his. It’s the sudden contact of skin against skin that stops him dead, makes him look up at his bartender in confusion. A weak smile pulls across Eryn’s lips and, one by one, his dark hands work to uncurl Dante’s fingers from their vice grip. There’s a small splintered crack running down the side. He didn’t even notice.

“We both know,” he begins. “That I’d be stuck cleaning that up.”

“I- Sorry, I just…” Dante slouches on his stool, leaning more of his weight against the counter, watching the cracked glass drop into the trashcan before Eryn retrieves another from the line of clean ones. True to his word, even with the narrowly avoided outburst, he fills the cup… Then takes a pull of it for himself yet again. “That’s cheatin’.”

“Think of it as my tip,” Eryn replies and places the slightly emptier drink down. Then he hoists himself up to sit on the bartop next to Dante, back falling against the wall. His gaze sweeps over the old space, taking in the sight of empty chairs and booths, his mouth tucked unhappily to the side. “If Love Planet had opened back up, I wouldn’t have this problem.”

“Why? ‘Cause I’d be trashed nex’door?”

“Wh- No, idiot. The problem of not having any customers when it storms. People’ll go to a strip club even if the world’s ending,” he says and takes another sip from the open bottle of Jack between them. As a punctuation, thunder booms again and the lights fade out before flickering back on a half-second later. Both men lift their eyes to look at the fixtures. “Whatever. I’m closing her up for the night.”

“‘Ey, I ain’done drinkin’ that bottle yet.”

“So? You aren’t going home, cowboy.” In his alcohol saturated brain, the words don’t quite register. It almost sounds like nonsense. Why wouldn’t he go home? He squints at Eryn, watching him slide off the bar and cross the room to flip the deadbolts on the front door and turn the “OPEN” sign off. When he turns to face Dante, he sees the baffled look. “What? The state you’re in, you’re liable to pass out in the alley before you make it down the block.”

The blank stare continues. “So… what…? M’sleepin’ in a booth?”

“Yes.” Briefly, Dante eyeballs one and thinks that doesn’t sound so bad. He’s slept in more uncomfortable places. “That was a joke. My apartment is upstairs, remember.”

“Oh yeah… Huh.”

Were he more sober, his emotional state less tumultuous, the notion of being invited up to the apartment of a man for whom he’s carried a torch for the better part of a decade might light a fire in him. Instead it’s interpreted as a curiosity, something that makes his brows raise, before he drains the rest of his drink with the same vigor as before. Eryn keeps working, closing and locking the shutters, wiping down tables, wandering by Dante to refill his glass.

“Last one,” he says and shakes the bottle once more to show how empty it is. “You are going to be fucking miserable tomorrow.”

“Sh’yeah. Well. I’m fuckin’ miserable right now.”

Eryn stops wiping down the bar and he feels the itch that comes with a pair of intense, dark eyes staring a hole into the top of his skull. Shit. He didn’t mean to say that out loud. Getting his bartender worried about him wasn’t the point of coming here; he wanted to drink himself into oblivion and forget for a few hours. The last thing he wants is Eryn wasting energy being concerned over him. This is something he can deal with - should deal with on his own. It shouldn’t be someone else’s problem.

Except it’s about to be Aster’s problem, isn’t it? 

He forces down the last of the whiskey, nevermind that it hasn’t done him much good. For as much as he’s drank, all he’s gotten for his troubles is a headache, the inability to speak clearly, and the looming promise of a hangover. Even with the memories blunted, they aren’t gone. He still knows exactly what he did.

“C’mon, cowboy,” Eryn says, gently patting his shoulder. “Let’s get you upstairs before you collapse. I sure as hell can’t carry you.”

“Ha. And my plan was to swoon into your arms,” he replies and finally slides off the barstool. Oh, he is trashed. His legs are two slabs of concrete unwilling to move, his eyes refuse to focus on anything, and the floor feels unsteady at best. Everything is slightly topsy-turvy. He curses under his breath and accepts the fact that he’s going to have to lean on Eryn as they make their way through the door in the back and up the stairs. A hand grips him at the ribcage and pulls him close. Keeping him steady, Dante tells himself.

“Your sister-in-law would kill you if she saw you like this.”

Aster hates his drinking habits. She worries about him, about his mental health. He grimaces.

“Not my sister-in-law.”

“I know-”

“My idiot brother,” he mutters with a thick tongue. “Didn’t have the good sense to marry her.” Why are these stairs so steep? Every step up, he sways backwards and the only thing that stops him hurtling down to the bottom is Eryn clumsily hoisting him forward instead. But he keeps talking through all of it, glaring down at his boots. “Can you believe that? S’got a family, a real-ass-family, an’ he doesn’t wanna stay. Comes here to my town and wrecks everything and bails on them then jus’ keeps on screwing stuff up and now he’s fuckin’-”

The word itself can’t leave his mouth. He thinks about black blood soaking into his clothes. He thinks maybe he should burn that coat.

“It’s okay, Dante. I know.”

“No, you don’t- I- God.” His head lolls to rest on his bartender’s shoulder. That’s when he becomes aware of both the man’s cologne, something earthy and clean, and the fact that they’ve stopped moving while Eryn fumbles to unlock the door. “Sorry. Y’don’t gotta do this.”

No answer. He burns with embarrassment for running his mouth like a real drunk. But Eryn’s hand moves to settle around his waist as the door swings open to his apartment.

It’s a nice place. Sure as hell nicer than his little pair of rooms above the Devil May Cry - all hardwood floors and brick walls and furniture that wasn’t thrifted, gifted, or outright stolen. He’s even got Real Paintings hung, which is all the proof Dante needs that his bartender is probably too cultured for him. The stumble into the living room is a hassle, with Eryn cursing and trying to navigate getting some lights on while also making sure Dante doesn’t faceplant onto the floor. Eventually he’s dropped, somewhat gracelessly, onto the couch and he lets out a long groan. Above him, the ceiling rafters rock back and forth like a dunking bird.

“Horrible,” he gurgles. Eryn sits next to him, back tucked into one corner of the couch while Dante sinks into the other.

“Told you to stop.”

“An’ then you gave me more.”

“You sounded like you needed it.” The older man smiles at him, a little hapless and very fond. He thinks that’s a fond smile, anyways. Hopes. “And it’s still my job to hand out alcohol to sadsacks, even if they’re my friend.”

“Friend, huh?” he murmurs. Outside a pair of cop cars fly by in the rain, lights flashing, sirens blaring. The usual sounds of a city that’s always moving. He wishes everything would sit still for a while. All of this swaying is making him sick.

“I’ve known you for twelve years, Dante. We are - at the very least - friends.” He settles in, swings his legs up so that his feet are by Dante’s elbow. It’s a snug fit for two grown men on one couch but not uncomfortable. There’s something grounding about having another human body pressed against his. Stabilizing, just what he wanted. “I remember the first time you came in, calling yourself Tony. What were you, sixteen? Seventeen?”

A low chuckle rumbles out of Dante and he rolls his head toward Eryn. “Seventeen. Y’asked me for my ID, so I asked for yours. Had a real baby face without that beard. I thought ‘who’s this asshole trying to card me?’” 

“Pretty sure you called me an asshole out loud,” comes the response, but the tone is unbearably affectionate. The grin on Eryn’s lips pulls wide and Dante can see a flash of teeth and it is beautiful. He simmers with longing in his intoxication, glad that the other man is too busy reminiscing to notice being ogled so intently. “You were such a prick.”

“Past-tense?”

Those thoughtful eyes turn his way; Dante swivels his head in a faux-stretch. An attempt to play off how much he was staring. Out of the corner of his vision, he can see his look softening. “You’re not as bad now.”

He wonders how true that is. The storm continues to batter against the windows and the room is still spinning, though it’s become manageable with someone there to steady him. It does nothing to stop his wandering mind. Every time lightning flashes, he goes back to Mallet and the looming figure in black armor. His stature is oppressive, his rage relentless. The kind of fury that fills a room and smothers every other emotion. Just like Vergil to be larger than life. His eyes screw shut, he tilts his head back and brings his palms up to knead circles into his forehead.

“You okay?”

“Just a headache,” Dante lies.

The couch springs creak slightly and the weight at the other end shifts. Without having to look, he knows Eryn is getting up. He keeps his eyes closed and tries to focus his thoughts on the sound of the man’s feet padding across the floor. Again thunder and lightning boom through the air and then the distinct sound of nothing. No humming fridge, no ceiling fan whirring overhead. He creaks open an eyelid and finds himself in near total darkness.

“Well shit,” he hears Eryn mutter.

“You need to go down an’ check on the bar?”

“I’ve got the coolers on a backup generator. They’ll kick on in a tic.” More quiet footsteps and Dante pushes himself up on an elbow as Eryn comes around the couch. There’s still some moonlight coming through the clouds; it’s enough to illuminate the glass of water hanging in front of his face. “Drink.”

He does, inclined to make some smartass comment only for it to die in his throat as Eryn sits next to him. Right next to him, his low back touching lightly to Dante’s bicep. Enough to qualify it as hovering over him. Enough to make him agonizingly aware of the distance between them - as in, not much at all. He chugs down the water with gusto, hoping it will quell the heat burning in his gut. It doesn’t. His mind swims back and forth between his grief and his loneliness and how Eryn can’t help with one but certainly with the other. Now isn’t the time to think about that, not when he’s this drunk and in an emotional freefall, but he doesn’t have any control over what his feelings demand.

And Eryn is so close.

“So are we gonna talk about it now?”

“Not yet.” And then, in a more hushed tone: “It’ll spoil the mood.”

“What do you-”

Dante takes hold of Eryn’s shirt sleeve with a white-knuckled grip and closes the gap between them. Their lips crash together with inexpert fumbling, one part startled and one part desperate, before coalescing into harmony. He leans up, snakes a hand to press against the back of Eryn’s neck, and both of the other man’s palms come up to cup his jaw. Heat surges through his skin at the point of contact, as hot as his blood when he triggers, and Dante could melt from it. Practically does. Every fiber of his body tries to sink toward the man bent over him. He is aching in his bones, in his DNA, for more. Another touch, another brush of skin on skin, and he doesn’t care that it doesn’t look pretty. The only thing he cares about is how alive it makes him feel. It’s so much better than he imagined and he has imagined it vividly.

“Dante-” Eryn gasps out, pulling his head back enough to breathe. Dante gives chase and keeps kissing him, over and over, and each one is returned despite how cleary distracted the other man is. “Dante, wait- Wait-”

The words cut through his fervor; the realization of what he’s done sinks in. Their lips break apart and Dante swears through his teeth, is quick to retract his hands.

“Shit, I shouldn’t have-”

Only for Eryn to stop him. He clutches both palms tight, returns them to his shoulders, and makes sure to keep them there. 

“No, no. I-it’s fine. It’s just-” Everything in his expression is inexplicably soft and his smile is honey-sweet and Dante can feel snakes writhing in his gut as he waits for the other shoe to fall. “I mean, you are drunk.” That is actually something he will freely admit to. He must have nodded his head without noticing, because the older man laughs. “And I…” Dark brown eyes cut to the side and he hums with thought. Trying to parse out the words before settling on: “This isn’t… really how I wanted this to go down.”

“Wh- how you wanted-” 

It occurs to him that the look on Eryn’s face could be called sheepish and everything clicks into place. This was something he also thought about before tonight. Something he’s been wanting. If Dante weren’t already hammered, the information could make his head spin. So instead he boggles wordlessly and thinks he probably looks real stupid right now.

“Ohhhh, this is a bad night for me to try an’ handle this,” he finally groans, slumping back down into the couch. The whiplash is too much. He’s being pulled in two opposite directions and has no idea which way to go. “Definitely should not’ve done that.” 

At least Eryn doesn’t seem as bothered. He bends over Dante, rakes his mess of silver hair out of his eyes, and lets his fingertips keep going. They brush along his scalp and down the back of his head. It soothes some of the turmoil roiling in his brain, draws him to actually relax, breathing out the tension trapped in his ribcage.

“You need to rest.” He won’t dispute that. “We can talk in the morning.”

Lightning crackles and bursts in the sky, throwing cold light across the room, and thunder rattles the windows. For a moment, he’s back on Mallet. No comfort in the world could stop it from happening. The smell of corrupted blood chokes him and the hand clutching at his wrist is ice cold. Red eyes stare at him with hollow desperation. Something gurgles out of his cracked lips--

“Stay with me, right here. Don’think I could make the walk to your room,” Dante murmurs, his fingers spidering out to wrap around Eryn’s forearm, halting the other man from getting to his feet. Confusion briefly flickers through the man’s face but peters out when he can clearly see the stricken fear hidden in the tension of Dante’s smile. “C’mon, darlin’. Just for the night.”

The time he takes to mull it over is miniscule at best. A few moments hesitation before he eases back down, maneuvering his body to lay on top of and tuck into Dante’s own, bulkier frame. It’s astonishing how well they fit together. He marvels at the way Eryn’s head tucks into the crook of his shoulder and their legs twist together instinctually. Like before, what should be a cramped arrangement is instead perfectly easy to settle into. The other man is warm, his presence a sobering comfort (somewhat literally). Dante smiles into the top of his head, now more aware of his cologne than ever, and lets one of his arms wrap around Eryn’s back to pull him in closer.

“Just be careful with those hands,” he teases, pressing his nose into Dante’s throat.

“Who, me? I’m an angel,” he replies and grins more at the scoff the joke earns him.

But soon they relax, they take comfort in each other’s bodies, and - eventually - they sleep.

--

He dreams of Mallet. Of spiraling corridors doubling back on each other and stairways to nowhere. There are paintings lining the walls but they’re not of stuffy old castellans and their attendants. They’re of his house, the house, the one where it all started. Sometimes it is immaculate, as pretty as a postcard floating idyllic in a field of green, and sometimes it’s a ruin. It’s burning. There’s music playing somewhere and people talking through the walls. A party, maybe. Sometimes he thinks he hears his mother calling for them to come inside.

One time, he hears his father reminding him to look out for Vergil. He always tries to carry the weight of the world alone, he said. You boys need to take care of each other.

He’s in the chamber and the storm is raging outside. At the bottom of the stairs, there’s a woman with crimson hair flowing down her back like water and a massive, broken body in armor resting his head in her lap. She’s stroking her fingers through white hair soaked with black blood. She’s singing a lullaby off-key. Through tears.

One hand in black reaches up and wraps around her throat.

--

“Dante… Dante!”

His eyes snap open and agony stabs right into the front of his brain. The sunlight streaming in the windows is too bright. Everything is too bright. He forces his lids shut again and brings his palm up to smush into them.

“Whuh- what’s wrong?” he grumbles and even his own voice makes his head pound. There’s the feeling of hands on his chest. Memories from the night before filter back in. He recalls why he’s in an unfamiliar apartment, on a much nicer couch than his own, and why Eryn is on top of him. That part isn’t so bad. “Everything okay?”

“You were having a nightmare…?”

Thoughts of broken singing filter through the ringing in his ears.

“Was I?” He creaks one eye open enough to look down at the man sprawled on top of him. His brow is pulled together in a deep furrow. So Dante powers through his hangover and reaches up to brush a curl of dark hair out of his face. “You still worrying about me?”

“You drank six bottles of whiskey in a night. Yes, I am.”

“When you put it like that, it sounds like a bad thing,” he replies in an attempt to laugh off the concern. Eryn’s expression never falters. He holds that concerned frown like it’s Atlas with the world on his back. Of course he does. This is the only way things could end after he drank that much. He kissed the most beautiful man in the world and showed his hand - that he actually wanted someone else’s attention and approval. This wouldn’t go away now. Not until he comes clean.

The pain throbbing in his skull radiates through his whole body. It isn’t from the hangover. Dante lets his head fall backward and he stares at the ceiling fan. The power came back on at some point in the night - it spins lazily above them.

“I killed my brother.”

The stillness that falls over them is unnatural. If it weren’t for that fan, he might think time had stopped.

“...what…?” A momentary fumble for words before settling on: “But I thought he was already-”

He drops his steely gaze down to look at Eryn, jaw locked, lips pulled in a thin line. It’s a hell of a thing to say to another person this early in the morning. He’ll have to do it again later today. Briefly he thinks of the redhead at the bottom of the stairs in his dream.

“He was missing. I found him on that job with Trish and he tried to kill me.” It’s a gross oversimplification of what actually happened, but how much do the details really matter. The ending is the same no matter what. Dante laughs without humor. “He lost.”

“Oh.”

“He wasn’t himself.”

“Oh… Dante… I-” The words die in his throat. Instead Eryn shifts himself upward, loops his arms around his neck. Dante lets himself be pulled in to lay his forehead on Eryn’s sternum. The grinding silence persists. He stares into nothing. A weird hollowness has opened up in his chest after saying the words out loud. He killed his brother.

“I gotta tell Aster today.” For some reason, his mind wanders to the photo of her and Nero on his desk. Bright smiles, sunburnt skin, a weekend trip he desperately wishes he’d gone on now. “If I don’t… if she hears it from someone else… No. No, no.”

Eryn’s fingers brush through his hair again. Over his scalp, down the back of his neck, to his spine, and repeats. Slow strokes to make up for his silence.

“Has to be me.”

Chapter Text

Nero is ten years old when he realizes he hates his father.

It comes to him the evening his uncle appears on their doorstep. The storm the night before had left their street rain-soaked and scattered with bright red and yellow leaves. It’s impossible to not notice his shock of white hair, exactly like Nero’s, bobbing against the dark, wet pavement and warm, bright colors. He approaches with his head down, hands shoved in his pockets, missing the overcoat that’s come to represent “Uncle Dante” in Nero’s mind. There’s none of the usual swagger in his walk. It’s like he wants to go unnoticed, wants to seem nondescript. When he knocks on the front door, it is a muted tap that barely reaches the second story. Not once does he lift his head toward Nero’s bedroom window. If he had, Dante might have noticed his nephew perched in his window seat, in the middle of pouring over crafting the perfect response to one of Kyrie’s letters, wondering why his uncle had come calling at twenty minutes to midnight.

From his angle, Nero can’t see the door, but light from inside spills out onto the stoop. His mother’s skinny silhouette cuts into the glow. Soon he can hear the peaks and tones of a hurried conversation but none of the words. The clearest sound he can pick up is the light high note of his mom’s voice - surprise that his uncle is here. Then there’s a thump and click (the front door closing and locking, he guesses) and two pairs of feet padding across the wooden floors below him.

Nero chews on his lip. His imagination starts to chug, swinging wildly from the good (his birthday is soon and did adults normally have late night discussions about presents) to the very bad (he is probably in trouble for the skull trophy he broke in his uncle’s office last week). Eventually he decides he needs to know which it is. The letter can wait.

Outside his door, the house is still. No talking, no sound, just the usual calm that comes over their home at such a late hour. His creep down the stairs takes minutes, as he makes sure to avoid the loudest spots on each, before he notices that the living room is empty save for his mother’s open book on the coffee table and the flames crackling away inside the fireplace. Eventually his gaze settles on the entry to his mother’s store-study and the sliver of light peeking out from the gap between the door and frame. He moves forward and knows he is as quiet as a shadow or as stealthy as a comic book ninja. His back pressed to the wall, his head tilts just enough to allow one eye to peek through the crack in the door. A vague thought hoping for a bike drifts through his brain.

Glass shatters. He startles so hard he fears he’ll give himself away but neither adult inside the shop seem to notice. So he takes the chance and edges even closer to get a better look. There’s his uncle, hunched over, sitting in the office chair. He’s shaking his head back and forth. Muttering something that doesn’t make any sense. Something is gone. Someone is gone.

And there’s his mom, framed on either side by her rows and rows of books and a broken mug at her feet. She’s staring at Uncle Dante with an expression he’s never seen her wear before. Her eyes are stretched unnaturally wide, two points of gold in a dim room, and her mouth is tight. None of her features move. They’re frozen and it isn’t in fear or sadness or anger.

It’s nothing. Complete and total emptiness. A cold fist takes hold of Nero’s gut as he understands he shouldn’t be seeing this. He digs his heels into the floor, fights the sudden urge to run back to his room. 

“Say something,” he hears his uncle mutter. When the silence persists, Dante lifts his head and Nero can see every muscle in his shoulders tighten. “Aster-”

“We gave up,” she says and her voice is numb. His uncle’s back goes straighter. “We… I gave up… I could have… should have…” The words keep trailing off. Her eyes finally break away, turn to stare hard at the floor, still unblinking. One hand touches her brow, her back collapses against the bookshelf. Nero can see her knees shaking and he wants to run in, throw his arms around her legs and hold tight. The only thing that stops him is his uncle getting to his feet to approach her carefully, offering out an open palm that she immediately takes. “All this time… All this time, all this time…” 

“Don’t- Aster, this isn’t your-”

“Yes. It is. I could have done… done something…” The dam cracks. Her fingers come up to cover her mouth and they muffle a broken whine. She thinks he’s sleeping; she doesn’t want to wake him. Dante curses through clenched teeth and wraps his entire arm around her shoulders, hauls her in close - Uncle Dante and his annoyingly tight bear hugs, he thinks out of nowhere - and lets his mom crumble all of her weight into him. She doesn’t cry.

She just keeps saying the same thing over and over.

“...I’m sorry, Vergil…”

Confusion gives way to anger. For the first time in his life, that name makes Nero’s blood boil. It is instant, the way a spark takes to kindling, and his ears buzz with emotion he isn’t allowed to express.

Because it is always him, isn’t it? Always that name, the person attached to it, breaking things as they started to get better. The source of all his mom and uncle’s unhappiness rearing up from the depths to drag them back down. It didn’t seem fair that someone he’d never know could cause this much pain. Everything broken about their family had a source and that source, he realizes, is the moment his dad abandoned all of them. It ruined everything. Maybe forever. And he hates it.

Nero hates him.

Beyond the cracked door, his mom sinks deeper against his uncle. Nero hurries back up to his room. He doesn’t sleep.

--

He’s eleven when Kyrie sends a letter with her brother’s monthly patrol schedules tucked between the pages. There’s a specific day circled with orange highlighter once every week - the evenings Credo has a night shift that keeps him out of the house until almost 2 AM.

So Nero sneaks the cordless phone out of his mom’s office and up to his room. He crawls under his bed to muffle the sound, dials the number scribbled at the bottom of her letter, and holds his breath as the tone rings once, twice, and then-

“Nero?”

“Hey Kyrie!”

After that, it becomes a routine. Sometimes Wednesday, sometimes Thursday, always staying up late enough to make him miserable the next day at school but he doesn’t mind. He’s missed talking to Kyrie and a little lost sleep feels worth it. It’s not that he doesn’t have friends. He plays every day at recess with a handful of other boys and girls in his class, but as much as he likes them, it isn’t the same. They haven’t known each other since they were babies, been through what he and Kyrie have. He misses her. He’s happy they moved, happy to be closer to his uncle, but that doesn’t stop him from missing her. A little lost sleep is worth it.

“How’s your mom doing?” she asks during one call. She’s the only person, other than his uncle, who knows about what happened that night a few months ago. Nero’s whole face scrunches up.

“Dunno. She acts like she’s okay, but…” He doesn’t have to say anything else for Kyrie to know what he means. In the few weeks they’ve been talking, she’s heard plenty about the sudden bouts of sadness that come over his mom. So she just hums in acknowledgment and somehow that helps. It’s nice to not have to explain himself to someone.

“Y’know, Credo talks about you two sometimes.”

Nero scoffs. “What? Like ‘oh man almost caught ‘em’?”

“What? No! He misses you!” He can practically see her pouting through the phone. “I think he feels bad for being so mean after… y’know…” He remembers her parents’ funeral, holding onto her like that might stop the world from ending. He also remembers the cold glare his best friend’s older brother fixed on him and his mom the entire time. “He was real upset after the attack. It didn’t make him happy that your mom got hurt, Nero.”

She sounds wounded that he even thought that. And maybe it’s not fair for his mind to go there. It’s true that when things started to get more strict on Fortuna, Credo brought her to play with him at the park. He’d talk about combat training, let Nero ramble on about cars, fix Kyrie’s pigtails when she asked. 

“...Sorry…” he mutters.

“Mmh, it’s okay. Maybe we’ll visit someday and I can make him apologize to you. And your mom!”

“You really think he’d let you visit?”

“I bet if I kept bugging him about it, he’d have to give in eventually.”

A broad grin breaks out across Nero’s face. The rest of the night is lost to telling her all of the cool places they’d go, the places his mom and uncle and his uncle’s weird friends have taken him, and Kyrie vehemently agreeing to do each. Someday.

--

“What kind of twelve year old picks a fight with a bunch of high schoolers?”

A secretary wonders out loud to another teacher down the hall. Nero doesn’t move from his spot on the bench across from the principal’s door to confront them, even if his pounding adrenaline demands he does so. It would only make the situation worse. He’s getting suspended. Maybe worse. And he knows the rumors have started - the whispers went up in the halls as soon as his history teacher dragged him out of the fray.

Always knew he was weird.

He scowls at a spot on the floor. The cuts and bruises all over his face and arms hurt like hell, throbbing constantly despite the pain medication the nurse gave him. He scrubs at the worst - a bruise around his eye from one of the other boys throwing him into a locker - with the heel of his palm. All of his scrapes are too big to hide from his mom and none of them will be gone by the time she gets back in town. She’s gonna kill him.

“Oh, are you his father?” The secretary’s voice chimes in again and that pit of dread in Nero’s chest grows deeper. He yanks the red hoodie he wears under his uniform over his head, wishing it would swallow him up.

“Uh- No, I’m his uncle.” Dante always sounds so awkward when he’s forced to interact with the “regular” world. Demons are probably way easier to handle. “Should be one of the people allowed to check him out…?”

“Well, the principal’s going to want to-”

“Ahahaha… No, no, no. His mom would kill me ten times over if I sat in for some kinda conference. I’m just here to collect him.” And then his uncle leans into the doorway leading to the hall Nero’s sitting in, wearing a feeble grin that falters upon seeing how battered his nephew is. “C’mon, kiddo. We’re outta here.”

“Sir-”

But Nero’s already scrambled off the bench to rush to his uncle’s side. He keeps his hood up the entire walk to the car. Except as soon as he’s in the passenger seat of the old convertible, Dante shoves it back to reveal every one of them. He catches a glimpse of himself in the rearview mirror and flinches. It looks way, way worse than he realized. A cut on his forehead, a split through his lip, purple bruises on his cheek and jaw, and blood still caked around his nose.

“Holy hell, Nero.”

“Shut up.” He slouches deep into the seat, hands shoved into his pockets, head turned away from the scowl all over his uncle’s face. “You should see the other guys.”

“Uh, no, I heard. I got an earful on the phone.” Dante cranks the car as a punctuation. The engine rattles like always and today that sound is exceptionally annoying. Nero wishes he’d just replace this stupid beater. It’s so tacky. “You broke someone’s nose.”

“No, I broke two noses,” he grouches into his chest. “Bobby’s lyin’ if he says I didn’t.”

“Really not the point of this conversation, kid!” The convertible pulls away from its spot in front of the school, merges into the flow of midday traffic. Nero glances up at the school building one last time and notices a few curious faces watching the car from the second and third story windows. He curses under his breath, tries to sink down even deeper. “Look, far be it for me to tell you not to fight-” Isn’t that the truth. “-But there’s a time and a place. And it’s definitely not-” A pause for him to check the watch around his wrist. “-12:30 in the damn afternoon.”

“What am I supposed to do? Just let ‘em run their mouths?” He kicks the glove compartment in front of him. Dante makes a warning grunt that goes totally ignored. “They were-” Heat starts creeping up his face as his frustration mounts. “They kept asking where my dad was, how come it’s always my mom coming to get me, is that why I’m so weird.” 

“Nero-”

“It’s bullshit!” Now he’s sitting up straight, glaring up at Dante and he’s so annoyed by the recognition that flickers across his uncle’s face - everyone says he has his “father’s scowl” - that he slaps his palm down against the console between them. “I gotta put up with some assholes calling my mom a whore because my dad isn’t around? Really? Fuck that!” 

“Watch your mouth,” Dante mutters but doesn’t really mean it. Nero drops back into his seat. He folds his arms over his chest, turns his head, and glares at the city rolling by. They don’t speak as they turn down one street and then another. Tears of frustration prick at the corner of his eye; he’s too stubborn to wipe them away. Then eventually his uncle heaves a long sigh and Nero can see him glancing his way once, then twice. “...They really said that?”

“Yeah.” He itches his nose, brushing away flakes of dried blood. “They’re assholes, they talk like that to everyone.”

Another pause. They glide to a stop at a red light. Nero lets himself scan the street, spotting their favorite video store and the bookstore that always has a black cat in the window, and he recognizes that the block is close to the Devil May Cry. He’s pretty sure they could turn here and be home in a minute or two. But they keep waiting for the light to change with his uncle is very pointedly staring straight ahead. The hand clutching the steering wheel drums an impatient staccato against the cracked leather despite the radio being off.

Then he remembers that Bullseye is down that road and his mom mentioned something about Uncle Dante and Eryn splitting up. She didn’t say why, just told him to not ask about Eryn, but he had overhead their late night talking in the living room. A difference in how serious they wanted to be after so many years, he’d heard his uncle say. How much Dante was willing to “open up” to someone else. Whatever that meant.

The light changes to green and the old convertible lurches forward. A telltale sign of a transmission on the verge of giving out. Nero chews on his cut lip. He peeks over at his uncle occasionally, tries to stay sunk into his hoodie, and braces for more arguing when Dante opens his mouth:

“You knock any teeth out?”

All of the fight runs out of Nero in an instant. He turns his head, blinks wide-eyed and owlish, but feels a wide smile creep across his mouth, matching the half-smirk now pulling at Dante’s.

“Hell yeah I did.”

--

At thirteen, he starts “hunting lessons” with Trish. 

Twice a week, they meet Lady down at a warehouse near the docks. It is old, long unused by any of the shipping companies that operate out of Capulet City, and the perfect space for getting in some practice. Nero has no idea why Lady has the key to the place beyond she “knows a guy,” and he is pretty sure that means it’s a little shady, but he is also pretty sure that everything his uncle and friends do is at least kind of dubious. So he doesn’t ask questions beyond that. Besides, Nero is just glad to have a space to fight with someone who isn’t afraid to kick him around. Dante’s taught him a few things, but Dante is also unwilling to really hurt him.

Trish is different. She’s been part of his uncle’s circle for three years now and he doesn’t know what to make of her. He doesn’t dislike her, though. Technically she’s some kind of family (kinda?) but is very much against being called “Aunt Trish.” She comes and goes on a whim, disappearing for weeks on end, then turns back up to laze around his uncle’s shop and - occasionally - pester his mom. He knows Trish confounds her more than himself. Asking questions, poking at the artifacts, hovering over his mom’s research… She doesn’t seem to have much of a concept of “boundaries.” Trish does what she wants, when she wants.

And what she wants to do tonight is toss him across the room every time he tries to get in close. Nero groans from his spot on the concrete floor, rolling over onto his back, staring up at the scaffolding overlooking the warehouse. Lady’s sitting on one of the beams, kicking her feet back and forth like a little kid watching a show.

“That was a pretty clever attempt,” Trish calls. She’s examining her nails, leaning all of her weight on that massive, utterly alien sword Dante brought back from Mallet. “But you need to be more decisive. If you hesitate then I have time to kick you.”

“You really seem to like kickin’ me,” he gurgles. It doesn’t seem very fair that he’s been saddled with a wooden sword either. He knows he’s nicked her ankles a few times. Those should count as hits as far as he’s concerned.

Trish stoops down next to him. There’s an affectionate smile dancing on her lips and she pats at the top of his messy hair. It doesn’t do much to assuage his embarrassment. Mostly it feels like he’s being mocked. “Your goal is to not get hit. Which means you need to be thinking further ahead than someone like Dante.” As she speaks, Nero finds himself staring hard at the bruises on his legs and scrapes on his palms. None of them fade. “Sad to say, but you don’t have the benefit of eating damage.”

“Don’t let it get you down too much,” Lady says, hopping down from the scaffolding and dusting off her pants. “You’ll learn to manage. I did.”

“Did you? Last week, you asked Dante to throw you right into a mob.”

“I lived and it got the job done.” She nods with ironclad conviction. “That’s managing.”

“Ehh…” Trish wobbles her hand in doubt, then backsteps from a half-playful smack from Lady. All while Nero continues to lay on the floor and ache. “Let’s take ten and then get back to it for another hour or so. You don’t have homework, do you?”

The reminder fills him with a sense of impending doom. He flops back down and sticks his tongue out. “I mean. You know.” And leaves it at that. Both women laugh between themselves and he can hear Trish’s heels click on the concrete as she walks over to their bags.

“So you think Dante and Eryn are gonna work it out?” Trish calls over her shoulder.

Lady plops herself next to him, legs crossed. “Hell if I know.” Trish strides back drinking from one water bottle and holding another. She tosses it; Nero lifts his hand to snatch the bottle from the air with practiced ease. “Don’t know if now’s exactly the time to gossip.”

“Why? Because Nero’s here?” Trish rolls her blue eyes. “He already knows what’s going on.”

Bones sore, muscles throbbing, Nero finally coaxes his body to sit up. He sips water with his eyes flicking back and forth between his uncle’s friends. “I don’t mind. No one ever tells me anything.”

“Aw, that’s just because your mom and uncle don’t want you worrying about them. And what, no water for me?”

“I don’t see you breaking a sweat,” Trish replies. She folds her arms over her chest and Nero suddenly realizes the tank top she’s wearing is an old band t-shirt of Lady’s with the sleeves cut off. He definitely knows better than to ask about that right now and so it’s filed away, a thing to think about another day. But it does get his brain turning and so the question he does end up asking is:

“Why’d they break up in the first place?” Another sip of water. He thinks of all the times his uncle grinned like a dope at the mere mention of Eryn and how he hadn’t done that in a long, long time now. “I mean, they seemed pretty happy to me.”

The question goes unanswered for way longer than he expected. Somewhere in that pause, it occurs to him that maybe he shouldn’t have asked. The pair exchange hesitant glances.

“Loving someone… doesn’t really make your problems go away,” Lady finally answers. Her tone is a tentative stop-and-start, each word carefully chosen. It’s surprising enough that Trish’s eyebrows raise a bit. The other woman tugs at a frayed thread sticking out of her motorcycle glove and keeps talking. “What you’ve done, what you’ve been through, how you deal with it… That stuff, you know, stays with you.” Her two-tone eyes glance off to the distance and a wistful wrinkle appears at the corner of her mouth. “Sometimes it means you can’t give your whole heart to someone. Even if you want to.”

And then she seemingly becomes aware of her own melancholy, jerking back to attention with pink spreading across her cheeks and down her neck. A nervous chuckle bubbles out to break the tension between the three of them. “Uhhh… hhhhaven’t those ten minutes passed? I should get out of the way.” Of course, she doesn’t give either of them time to respond, quickly scurrying off to resume her observation from above.

The words stick with Nero for the rest of the night, even as he finally evades all of Trish’s counters to land a solid blow to the back of her legs. They bounce around inside his brain and knock old memories loose in the process, conjuring up images of his mom waiting lonely by the window at the old Fortuna house or his uncle hesitating mid sentence when he catches his reflection in the mirror. He thinks of Kyrie’s voice cracking over the phone when she mentions her mom; the stories she tells of Credo trying to act like their father and floundering when he fails.

It all seems so unfair. 

At the end of the night, on their way to the car, he looks over his shoulder and sees Lady walking with her hands in her pockets. Trish has one arm looped through hers.

--

“Hell of a way to spend your fourteenth birthday. Wouldn’t you rather be hanging out with your friends?”

Eryn’s question goes unanswered for the moment. Nero’s too focused on keeping an eye on the sea of sky. He waits for one, two, three seconds. A brown bottle careens up into the air. The arc is beautiful - Trish really does have one hell of a throwing arm - and he can track it easily. He breathes out, adjusts the rifle on his shoulder, braces himself. Lady’s gun kicks like a mule. He’s used to it by now, but the first time he fired it, it nearly knocked him on his ass.

BANG.

The beer bottle explodes into glittering dust. Behind him, a small chorus of cheers goes up. Nero turns around to face his family and sweeps his arm out as he gives a bow, dramatic and low.

“Don’t have any friends who I could do this with,” he answers as Lady hops up to take the gun from him for her turn. “None of them own guns.”

“What? In Capulet City?” his uncle asks. “Told you that school is for yuppies.”

That isn’t the truth, of course, and his uncle knows so, but he has the sense to not announce it. The fact was that even if Nero did know someone at school with a rifle, they probably wouldn’t be his friend. Everyone regarded him as a weirdo at best and a “problem child” at worst. Despite all his uncle’s advice, he hadn’t stopped fighting. Sometimes he reveled in it, waiting for someone to say the wrong thing so he could start swinging. It felt good. Gave him a break from his unending restlessness and the only other time he got that “peace” was when he was training with Trish. According to her, that was by design. The result of the demon blood in his veins.

It’s the same reason why he’s fine with spending his birthday in a field two hours outside of the city with his mom, his uncle, and the rest of their odd social circle, shooting first at clay pigeons and - when those inevitably ran out - the myriad empty beer bottles from his uncle’s shop and Eryn’s bar.

BANG. Another bottle explodes.

“Too easy. You gotta throw them faster, Trish,” Lady says as she hands the gun over to the blonde woman. “What’s the score anyways?” 

“You and Dante are still tied,” his mom announces without looking up from the book in her lap. “Then Nero, then Trish, and Eryn’s in dead last.” She re-adjusts her legs, settles deeper against the lone, massive tree at the center of the field they’ve spread a blanket beneath, and turns the page.

“In my defense, if I’m shooting a gun at my job, something has gone terribly wrong,” Eryn says before taking a swig from the bottle in his hand. He sinks more of his weight against Dante’s shoulder and Nero watches his uncle’s chest puffs up with contentment. It reminds him of a big, dumb dog soaking in attention. “And anyways, technically you’re in last place, Aster. When are you gonna go up and take a shot?”

BANG. He doesn’t hear glass break. He does hear Trish complain that Lady is distracting her on purpose now.

His mom finally lifts her head from her book, stone-faced save for the barest quirk of one eyebrow. Nero has to fight back a smirk. “Never. Guns are barbaric. They’re too loud and they make me smell like gunpowder and - Nero Sparda, you stop that!” she blurts and he stops in the middle of mouthing along with her words. When he bursts out a laugh, she half-heartedly throws a piece of ice from her drink his way. It sails harmlessly over his head. “Making fun of your poor mother, breaking my fragile heart.”

“Fragile, my ass,” Dante mutters. “I’ve seen what you can do with that hair.”

“Hair that smells like jasmine, which is how it is going to stay,” she retorts, chin lifting to a proud angle, hair fluffing outward.

There’s a pause. Wind blows through the tree over them, rustles autumn red leaves and sends a few sweeping across the field. 

“Sounds to me like you know you’d miss,” Trish says and immediately his mom’s hair flattens to her head. He looks between the two women, fighting a laugh and while doing his best to seem uninterested when his mother fixes her narrowed eyes on him. In the corner of his vision, Dante and Eryn are doing the same. His uncle even feigns fixing his hair, which looked perfectly fine before. 

“I am not going to be goaded into this, Trish. My ego isn’t so fragile.”

“Mmm, yeah it is.”

He waits. So does everyone else. Eryn isn't doing a very good job pretending he doesn’t care.

“...Oh fine! Give me that ridiculous thing,” his mom finally grumbles, snapping her book shut and getting up from her comfortable spot in the grass. Another small choir of cheers and applause goes up, including himself, and that doesn’t stop when she makes a point to mess up his hair on her way to take the gun from Trish. “Don’t look so smug.”

“Hm? Me? When am I ever smug,” the blonde woman replies, wearing the most smug look Nero has ever seen. She seems as pleased as a cat with a new toy. Nero can almost see a tail swishing behind her as Trish nearly skips over to his mom. Aster takes her place at their shooting mound (literally just an “x” drawn in the dirt) and Trish hovers around behind her with lips curled at the corners. “Now spread your feet - little more - and square your should-“

“Trish, I know how to fire a damned rifle!”

As the two go back and forth, Lady settles against the tree with her arms folded, clearly enjoying the fuss. Her head tilts toward Dante and he picks up on their muttered conversation. At first, just the tone - friendly and familiar - but then, as he scoots closer, the end of Lady’s words:

“...really your brother’s type.”

“Haaaaah. Trust me, thought the same thing.”

Fire crawls into Nero’s veins. He feels a familiar twinge in the nerves of his stomach, the first twist of anger every time his dad is so much as mentioned, and he jerks his head forward. Some of the talk falls away as he wills himself to ignore it but the mood stays. Why did he have to come up today? Why did that man always seem to butt into places Nero didn’t want him? Nothing about him seemed all that fucking special. And even if Vergil had been something great, he’d been dead for four years now. Nero would love it if he’d stay in the ground, an occasional sad memory and not this obnoxious ghost he couldn’t be rid of. It haunted his life, his mom, even his own scowl.

“Trish, stop hovering. I can’t shoot this damned thing if you’re not throwing bottles.”

“Okay, okay! Give me that shawl, at least. You need to lift your elbows more,” says Trish, already sweeping the camel-toned fabric off his mother’s shoulders as she talks, leaving her in just her favorite black day dress. It bares her shoulders - a look she’s preferred for what he thinks is his entire life - and uncovers the deep scar maring her left clavicle, dangerously close to her neck.

In the six years since she took that wound, the mark never went away. He still remembers it vividly. Nothing about that day faded in his mind. The smell of blood, the screaming, the way he’d clutched at her dress while some thing from his nightmares tried to tear her open… Nothing he could do but cower and wait to die. 

It had just been the two of them alone in that house and that’s the detail that never left him. There’s a lot about himself he doesn’t understand. According to his mom and uncle, his grandfather was some important demon, but what did any of that matter to him when he was basically just a human kid? The only part he did get was that his dad knew he painted a target on his mom’s back. And then he left anyways.

So why wouldn’t his family let him go?

Another brown bottle goes hurtling into the sky. 

BANG. 

He doesn’t hear glass shatter, but everyone applauds anyways.

--

He kills his first demon at fifteen.

It breaks his arm in three places and the bridge of his nose and he doesn’t mind. It was worth it to cram a sword so far down its gullet that he lost the blade. Even hours later, laying in his bed and hurting all over, he can’t contain the hum of excitement thrumming amidst his ribs.

Dante hadn’t seen it coming. Nero’s instructions were to stay back and observe him and Trish but one of the hive escaped and he pursued. He wasn’t supposed to, but calling the excitement “infectious” would undersell the electricity crackling under his skin. Watching the hunt made him feel alive; taking part was surreal. It wasn’t like fighting people - that was so easy that it bored him, even while his temper demanded he do it anyways - but something better. It felt wrong to call it natural but that was the truth. Fighting a demon, even as it threw him down a flight of stairs in an abandoned apartment, came more naturally to him than anything he’d done in his life. There was a fire in his gut, burning like kindling thrown into molten lead. He couldn’t snuff it out. He didn’t want to.

If only he weren’t so limited. The breaks in his arm meant he would spend the next month without any practice at all. An injury so small that Dante wouldn’t even notice was going to bench Nero for weeks. Maybe he could try to fight like Lady, all guns and acrobatics and knowing how to avoid anything. But he also knows that wouldn’t be the same. It’s the getting-in-close, the weight of a sword in his hand and something big and ugly and violent bearing down on him, that makes his nerves spark. He stares down at his arm, twitches his fingers in the cast, and a bolt of pain flares up his wrist.

The universe was playing a sick joke on him. He’d been saddled with predisposition to killing demons but had none of the benefits of his bloodline. No healing, only above-average strength, and no “Devil Trigger,” as his uncle called it. A laugh rumbles his body and he drops his head onto his pillow.

“This sucks,” he says to an empty bedroom. There’s no response - just a ceiling fan spinning listlessly over head and the loose corner of a Corvette poster rattling from the wind. And then his stomach growls because of course he’s hungry at 3AM. A long, frustrated groan drags out of his chest and, when his attempts to summon food to him via demonic psychokinesis fail, he staggers sore and weak from his bed to make his way down to the kitchen.

From the second floor landing, he can see the familiar glow of the fireplace. Rare was the night there wasn’t a fire going. His mother could never seem to get warm enough when the sun set, even in the depth of summer. More often than not, he’d find her asleep on the couch in the morning with the last embers fizzling out. No, that wasn’t the strange part. It was that she was still awake. He could see his mom’s figure on the couch, staring at the fire crackling away. She didn’t move, barely seemed to breathe, like a statue. It brought back memories of the night she learned his dad had died. There was even the same awful look in her eyes - wide and hollowed out.

“...Mom…?” 

His voice breaks the trance. She startles back to the real world, jerking her head his way and the frozen plane of her brow creases with concern.

“Hey, my love.” It’s been years since she’d called him that. Suddenly he is six again, crying into her skirt because something made her sad. “What are you doing up?”

“Uh, same to you? It’s 3AM.”

Confusion tightens her features and she looks around the room, spotting the clock on the wall. She blinks slow and owl-like and emerges a little more from her thoughts. “Is it…? Must have lost track of time.” One hand rubs her neck; she gnaws on her lower lip. “Do you want me to make you something?”

“Oh. Uh, nah. I’m just gonna get some cereal.” There’s an uncomfortable tension between the two of them and he notices his mom wringing the blanket in her lap around her fingers. “You … you okay, Mom?”

What a stupid question to ask. He knows she isn’t. When he came back with Dante and a broken arm, she’d looked gutted, all the while he insisted he was “mostly fine” and she tried to tell him she wasn’t mad. Even in the midst of his adrenaline high, he’d felt the first stab of guilt in his spine when he saw the horror in her eyes. The broken nose, the scrapes and cuts from falling and tussling with that demon, it had resulted in a lot of blood all over him. It scared her. 

But of course she softens on him, hides what she’s feeling behind a paper-thin smile. She’s done that his whole life. It’s not that different from his uncle’s boisterous swagger, now that he thinks about it. An easy mask to put on to keep the world from worrying about her.

“I’m fine,” she lies, but Nero gingerly crosses the living room to sit with her on the couch anyways. “You just… you scared me a little today.”

“Mom, I told you I'm okay,” he says with gentle exasperation. He holds up the cast wrapped around his arm. “This’ll be back to normal in no time-“

“And then you’ll go back to hunting again. Right?” Internally, he winces. It must have shown on his face with the way her lips press together. Hair rippling with anxiety, she turns back to the fire as the logs break apart, spewing embers up the chimney. “I… I know that I can be… overprotective.” An understatement but now isn’t the time to call that out. “But you know it’s because I love you, right?”

“I know, Mom.”

“To be honest, I hoped Trish’s ‘hunting lessons’ would inspire you to take after me.” His eyes flicker to the stacks of books always covering their coffee table and his nose wrinkles up. It coaxes a feeble laugh out of her. “Not like that. Just that you’d hate field work too, and I wouldn’t have to worry. Like maybe you’d want to work on cars, something mundane like that.”

“I mean, if it makes you feel better, I also want to do that.”

That earns him another tinny giggle and a dopey, lopsided grin takes over his face. “Not really, but thanks for trying.” She reaches over and pats the side of his face. Her thumb scrubs over a scrape on his cheek no longer chubby with baby fat. “I wish I could protect you for the rest of your life. You’re my whole world. And if I lost you then…” She shakes her head. “That isn’t even an option.” He hates this, hates being the source of her sadness for once.

“Mom, I’m not gonna die, okay?” She doesn’t look convinced. It wouldn’t convince him either. There was no guarantee when anything was possible. But he was going to fight like hell to keep it from happening and fighting like hell was something he was good at. “I’m at least as smart as Lady and she runs with Uncle Dante no problem.”

“Don’t- please don’t aspire to be like Lady. She might be the craziest of the three and my heart couldn’t take that,” she replies, tugging him down to lay his head on her shoulder. “Be more like Trish. You know, level-headed, easy going…”

“...always touching your research?”

Her expression sours. “Nevermind. Just keep being your wonderful self-“ A bashful heat warms his ears and he nudges her gently in the ribs. His mom hums with affection, turns her head down to kiss into the top of his hair. “I mean it. Mostly. Maybe your wonderful self who counts to ten before he gets angry.”

“Uncle Dante says I got a fire in my belly.”

“Uncle Dante is several hundred dollars in pizza debt. Let’s not take his advice too often.” 

Despite her light tone, his mom’s skinny arms wrap around and squeeze him firmly. There’s a protectiveness in her embrace that he hasn’t felt in a while. It makes him realize how long it’s been since he let his mother hold him. He’s always running around with his uncle or getting into fights or making trouble… They haven’t sat together like this in over a year. Nero sinks more of his weight against her smaller frame and she manages it without a problem. For some reason, he thinks of the photo on his uncle’s desk. Not the one from the beach, but the portrait of a blonde woman identical to Trish but with a kinder, softer smile than he’d ever seen on his “aunt’s” face. He thinks of his uncle’s rare moments of vulnerability looking at the picture, telling Nero very quietly:

“Enjoy your time with your mom, kid. For as long as you have her.”

Forehead tucking into the crook of her shoulder, Nero decides he’ll worry about getting cereal later. Right now he just wants some rest.

--

He’s sixteen and his uncle is single and drunk off his ass in his office. Again.

Nero steps over bottles scattered across the warped hardwoods, nose wrinkling at the smell of whiskey, bourbon, and cheap beer hanging over the room in a cloud. He detours to switch on the ceiling fan, hoping to circulate the air, before approaching the heaping sadsack crumpled up at the desk. They were supposed to help Lady with a job tonight, but he supposes that’s out of the question now. He’ll have to call Trish once he makes sure Dante is alive and see if she’d be willing to cover. If she wasn’t there already. Her favorite method of pestering Lady for attention was trying to steal her kills, after all.

“Uncle Dante, you alive?”

No response but as Nero draws closer, he can see the man is breathing. He steps over more bottles and makes his way to the bathroom at the back of the office. The light from the fluorescents is harsh and ugly and blue compared to the light in the main shop and it sears his eyes. It doesn’t help that the bathroom is filthy with soap scum and trash again. Bright blue eyes sweep over the room and land on what he’s hunting for - the mop bucket, tucked in a corner, filled with dirty clothes like a hamper. He has no idea how his uncle lives like this or how Trish and Lady are cool with it. This sort of mess always makes him anxious. At least the clutter in their house is clean.

Crunch.

Something cracks underfoot. Nero blinks and looks down at silvery shards of glass covering the floor. His eyes trail from the floor to the counter and then to the vanity mirror, broken right in the center. That’s when he notices the smears of old blood on the surface of the counter. A few are distinctly shaped like fingers - like someone tried to wipe it away. It doesn’t concern him as much as it probably should. Dante broke the mirror when he was drunk. It’s likely the wounds have healed by now. So Nero continues with his task of emptying the clothes from the mop bucket so he can fill it with cold water from the shower. Then he hoists it up onto his shoulder and wanders back into the office. Dante is still slumped on his desk.

“Tch. You’re too old to be doing this shit, gramps,” he says to the silent room. He walks over, adjusts the bucket, lifts it over his head and-

“Don’you dare.”

-Dumps it onto his conscious uncle anyways.

“GNAGH!”

Dante shoots up and scrambles out of his now-soaked chair. He’s breathing hard (Nero made sure the water was ice cold) and wild-eyed with his shirt, pants, and everything else completely soaked. A bit of pride warms the teenager’s heart. Perfect coverage. If the scene in the shop weren’t so pitiful, he’d brag about it.

“I WAS AWAKE.”

“Huh. Didn’t hear you. My bad,” he says nonchalantly. The empty bucket drops to the floor and hits a few bottles, sending them pinballing away. Dante keeps gawking at him as he drips. “Did you forget that we were gonna help Lady tonight or what?”

“Ugh, mean as a snake…” grumbles the older man. He shakes his mop of white hair around to get it out of his eyes and peels off his wet gloves. At least the cold seemed to sober him up some. “And no, I didn’t forget. Trish said the two of them were going to handle it. Y’know, date night.”

Nero’s eyebrows raise. “Oh? Is that why you got trashed?”

“Easy there, kiddo.”

“What? Tell me I’m wrong.” No response. Dante throws an old towel from the floor into his chair to soak up the water before it (further) destroys the leather. Nero pushes an empty bottle with the toe of his boot and watches it roll toward another group. Not all of this is from the same day - he hopes - but the volume is still… Well, he isn’t sure if he’d say impressive. Maybe concerning but it’s not like the alcohol can do permanent damage. Though maybe in this case that’s a bad thing. He sighs and gazes around the office as his uncle sits down on top of the desk. He’s squinting Nero’s way and he can’t tell if it’s because Dante’s hangover is making the light too bright or if he’s sizing Nero up. “You ought to drink some water instead of just stewing in it, old man.”

“All the good it’ll do me. Ah, don’t- you don’t gotta do that, Nero.” He raises a hand to wave his nephew off. Very briefly, the boy stops picking up bottles from the floor. “I can clean up after myself. Don’t you worry about it.” 

Nero appraises the state his uncle is in - a little green, definitely hungover, and visibly unhappy in a truly pitiful way. He does not stop picking up bottles and Dante throws his hands up in surrender. “I’m not doing it for you. Hanging out in dumps like this makes me feel like I’m gonna break out in hives. You can help me out, though.”

“You’re a stubborn little grump, you know that?” The only response Dante gets is a haphazard shrug. “Fine, fine. Lemme go find the trash can. And uh-“

“Don’t tell mom?”

“Atta boy.”

And Dante disappears to go fetch the trash can from the alley, momentarily leaving Nero to work alone. It gives him a chance to survey the office. Over the years, his uncle had added more trophies, another neon sign, an actual bartop that had become a catch-all for dishes and papers and an electric guitar and clothes. Among them was a jacket, heavy green canvas, with a Bullseye patch on the sleeve. Nero lifts it from the pile of garbage, careful to not disturb anything else, and immediately caught a whiff of men’s cologne. Rich, earthy, and probably not cheap. Definitely not his uncle’s. He’d seen Eryn wear it a few times but only in the last year or so. It was a birthday present.

“A’right, I got the broom too. I swear, never met a meaner kid before- Oh.” Nero jerks his head up to see his uncle standing there in the doorway leading out back, his mouth tight, his shoulders sagging. “Man, I thought I trashed that.”

“Uh- S-sorry, I found it while I was cleaning up and uh-” As he talks, Dante strides across the office and lifts the coat from his hands. “Sorry.”

He doesn’t say anything for a moment, clearly processing the reaction he wants to have versus what he should have, and settles on a humorless chuckle. “Don’t be. You’re just trying to help.” A big hand pats down onto Nero’s hair, rustling it around until the boy shoves him away. “Thanks, kid.” His other hand keeps the coat close to his chest. 

“Youuuuu wanna talk about it?”

Dante balks. “I’m not gonna moan about my relationship problems to a sixteen year old who’s never been on a date.”

“Wh- I’ve been on a date! I went to that dance with Jordan, remember?” Granted, that was two years ago and they never spoke of it again and he was thinking about Kyrie the whole time… But it was still a date, dammit. “And anyways. Isn’t that better? Like, a who-am-I-to-judge sorta thing.”

Dante’s mouth opens then closes then opens again. He starts to say something and reconsiders it. “...I mean, you got a point but still-“ The older man grinds his palms into his eyes.

“Would never leave this room. Scout’s honor,” says Nero, who has never been a Boy Scout, and hoists himself to sit on the bartop. Folding the jacket, Dante glances his nephew’s way a few times.

“Not much to say.” A full throated scoff bursts out of the teenager. “It’s the same stuff as last time. No big deal.” Judging by the hollow note in Dante’s voice, he’s pretty it is. Nero stays quiet in hopes that his uncle will keep talking. “Should we move in together, are we that serious, if we are then why am I so ‘closed off’ from him. Whatever the hell that means.” He punctuates the sentence by forcefully throwing the jacket into a corner of the office. “Closed off. Me! Like I’m not the biggest attention hog in the room.”

Nero does his best not to wince. It doesn’t work; his uncle notices.

“Guess being good at parties isn’t the same as being… open.” He says it like a four-lettered word. “But I mean. If he wants someone more open, then go chase after someone who is.” Dante paces away from Nero to pick up a bottle off his desk. Dregs of whiskey slosh around the bottom and he chugs it down before tossing it over his shoulder and into the trash. “Shouldn’t be running my mouth about this at you.”

Nero shakes his head. He hops off the bar and begins to load bottles into the crook of his arm. Glass clinks and clacks as he works, a sound that breaks the disquiet between them. “I asked.”

“Still. Grown-ass man complaining about his relationship problems to a kid. Shameful, that’s what it is. Setting a terrible example,” he says as a blithe laugh rolls out of him. Then more thoughtfully as Dante itches his palm over his scruffy jaw: “Though you might could use me as an example of what not to do?”

As he wanders over to scoop the last bottles off his uncle’s desk, Nero notices the photo of Dante’s mother is turned face down. Blood smears the corner of the frame, same as the bathroom counters, and it gives the teenager a better idea of what happened during his uncle’s bender. Plenty of ghosts haunted his family, after all. None of them were entertaining like the ones in those scary stories his mom loved. They lurked in unwanted places - photos, mirrors, memories - and always showed themselves at the worst times. And no one ever wanted to acknowledge the spectres hanging over their shoulders. No wonder Eryn got frustrated.

“Hey, why don’t you go pick us up some pizzas?” Dante asks, fishing around in his desk for money. “Let me handle picking the rest of this up. It shouldn’t be a kid’s job to clean up an adult’s mess.”

--

At seventeen, he dreams of his father. 

Silhouetted by silvery moonlight, the man from his mother’s photo reminds him of the edge of a blade. He is tall and unyielding and Nero thinks no force in the universe could move him from that spot. In front of him is the bay window from the Fortuna house, but there is no living room around them. The frame floats unsupported in the midst of a void of black that stretches eternal in every direction. Somewhere in the distance, Nero can hear the gentle beating of great wings. All of it makes Nero feel very small.

“Nothing is ever going to change,” his father says in a rougher voice than he expected. Blue eyes stare unblinking at the scene beyond the window. Sunlight bathes the old alley they called home in nostalgic gold. Music plays from an open window and a breeze rolls leaves down the cobblestone. His chest aches from a longing he didn’t expect. Life seemed so much easier back then. “Not if you stay the way you are.”

“...what…?”

“You are weak.” It isn’t scornful, more gentle than he expected really, and comes across moreso as a rueful statement of fact. Nero approaches him on unsteady legs. “You must change.”

In the alley, his mother talks to a woman with long blonde hair. Their laughter goes unheard through the glass. 

“You need to be stronger.”

The floor swallows him whole.

Nero jolts awake to the sound of the phone in his room ringing. Cold sweat soaks his t-shirt, wide eyes stare unseeing at the window across from his bed. The sky beyond is a dull gray, the first hint of dawn breaking. His dream rattles around in his head, vivid as a movie, and he clutches at his chest as though that might ease the bizarre ache in his ribcage. Breathe. He needs to breathe. He also needs to answer the phone. It’s been ringing this entire time. He fumbles out of the snare of his sheets, staggers over to the cordless in its cradle, and snatches it up before it can ring for the twelfth time.

“Ngh, hello…?”

“Nero!” Kyrie’s voice bursts through his grogginess. “Nero, I’m so sorry, I- I know it’s late or…. or early, I guess… but-“ Her words hitch; he can hear a small sniffle through the receiver. That little sound sparks a note of discomfort in him. Nero sits up straighter, paces over to his window to stare outside.

“Wh-wha- hey, hey, it’s okay. What’s wrong, what happened?”

“I- I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, but I don’t know who else to call. There’s- something is wrong. Credo is… something strange is happening. I’ve seen demons in the mountain castle and Credo won’t explain why…”

Nero feels his heart jump up into his throat. This has happened before. He remembers hushed conversations about strange things happening at Fortuna castle when he was a boy. He knows where and how her parents died. The memory of a creature trying to tear his mom apart flashes through his mind, bright and vivid and blood soaked, and he sucks in a breath to steel his nerves.

“I don’t know what to do…”

His eyes glide over to the sword and revolver in their case over his desk. Part of him considers calling his uncle, but Dante has been cagey for a few days now. Some job from Lady has kept him and Trish distant. And his mother is out of the city with work. 

“...do you think you’ll be okay for a day or two?”

“Y-yeah? I… I think so.” 

He needs to change. He can’t wait around for the rest of his family to solve his problems for him.

“Okay. Then I’m gonna come to you.”

Chapter Text

All things have to change, except - apparently - the townhouse at the end of the alley. It had sat unlived in, unloved, for nine years and, save for a fine layer of dust covering every surface beyond the front door, was exactly as Aster had left it when she was a younger woman. The floors creaked in the same way, the walls were drafty as they’d always been, and the front door continued to sit uneven in its frame. Even the quality of the sunlight streaming in through the boards sealing the wrecked bay window was identical to her memory. It was golden-warm and soft and speckled with motes of dust. The air still smelled like paper and coffee.

She strides careful through her old shop all the same. Nine years of neglect meant the floor could give out with any too-heavy footfall. Fingertips glide over the checkout counter as she walks. They drag deep lines through the dust, tracing squares where her register and guest book once sat. With a bit of imagination, all of the pieces easily fall into place in her mind. There were the shelves for the grimoires, here sat her haunted snowglobe, et cetera, et cetera. Small, maybe even cramped, but always cozy. Until it wasn’t, of course. After all, the bay window was destroyed by a demon that wanted to kill Aster and take her son. A demon created from the blood and bones of her own midwife. She shivers despite the warm sunlight in the abandoned townhouse, pulls her shawl tighter, and starts for the stairs.

Why was she here? What good would it do to revisit this place? Fortuna was a disaster beyond its brick walls. Most of the Order’s leadership was dead or unaccounted for, leaving humble bishops and confused guard captains to try and bring some stability. The fortress town itself was half-collapsed from rampaging demons and the quite literal fall of the “Savior” right onto the heart of the evacuated city center. Maybe she just wanted to see with her own eyes if the house she’d come alive in had been destroyed or not. Somehow the Harbor District, safe haven for degenerates and heretics, had avoided any damage at all beyond broken windows and a few collapsed walls. The lonely townhouse was the same. 

Aster’s fingers brush along the stair rail and more dust falls to the floor as she goes. She emerges onto the second floor landing and surveys what used to be her living room and kitchen. It seems so much bigger without all her clutter. The floors creak beneath her weight but she never gets the sense that they might give as she strides forward. Part of her feels guilty for leaving the house in such a state. Even with all of the tragedy that occurred in those final two years, did that justify leaving her home to moulder and rot? Did she not spend some of the happiest years of her life here? Nero was a baby in this city, this house. All of her personal grief seemed so distant when he was a giggling toddler following her around, clinging to her skirts. Sometimes living here had felt like a fairytale. Once upon a time, a witch fell in love and had a baby. She and her son lived on a secret island and spent every day surrounded by books and magic, living exactly the way they wanted with no one dictating what they could or could not do. 

Then her eyes fall on the blood stains - her blood - splattered across the kitchen floors and walls, soaked in so deep that it couldn’t be cleaned away no matter how hard they scrubbed, and she wonders why she didn’t burn this place to the ground.

Aster has to pull herself away. The scar carved into her shoulder throbs if she lets herself think of that day too much. Instead she wanders from the kitchen to the French doors leading out to the balcony and those are nearly as hard to force open as the front. It takes a little jostling and one good push before they give way. Light floods inside like a wave, sweeping over Aster, throwing the pink rays of sunset onto the dusty apartment and revealing her old view of Fortuna as dramatically as a theatre curtain being thrown back. Even the destruction wrought by the demons can’t mar its beauty - the disparate styles of buildings, the ancient domes and terracotta roof shingles, the bay glittering in the distance. She sucks in a breath and feels the familiar pang of nostalgia stab into her chest.

“No wonder you came here when you fled,” Vergil said to her once. “It’s very storybook, isn’t it?”

She can almost smell his cigarettes.

“Man, what a view.” Her son’s voice startles her out of her memories and she whirls around to face him. Instantly, an apologetic smile cracks across his mouth. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to scare you.” What a funny thing to say to someone who’s spent the last fortnight in terror wondering where her son ran off to. He seems to recognize that because he itches nervously at his nose. “I figured you’d be here. You missin’ this place?”

“I miss the way it was before…” She nods toward the kitchen. Nero spots the rusty stains covering the cabinets and a grimace stretches across his face. “That kind of changed how I see things.”

There’s a lot of things she’s seeing differently now. Her son is a prime example. Standing in the middle of their abandoned home, she realizes how much he’s grown. On the day of the attack, she’d been able to shield his entire body with her own. Now she wouldn’t be taller than him if she stood on the very tips of her toes. When had that happened? How had he gotten so tall? The days of an undersized, premature baby crying into her shoulder couldn’t have been that long ago. His step has an unmistakable confidence in it as he crosses the floor and emerges out onto the little balcony. He breathes in deep, smells the sea water and last traces of smoke lingering in the air. Both hands rest on the railing and her eyes focus intently on those. Nothing had changed more than her son’s hands - one pale and human, sporting two of the rings he’d apparently collected while alone in this city, and the other… Well, the rings weren’t the only souvenir he’d acquired in Fortuna.

He called it the Devil Bringer and the first time he said that ridiculous name out loud, she thought: Oh, this is my punishment for letting his uncle help raise him. 

Were it on any arm other than her son’s, Aster’s instincts as a scholar would have taken over and curiosity would have her dying to take some samples of the bizarre change that had consumed his limb. Deep red demonscale ran along the teenager’s knuckles and wrist, all the way up the length of his arm and vanishing beneath his rolled sleeve. That scale was broken up in places by large cracks in the surface. Revealed beneath was leathery skin that pulsed with a soft, blue glow that - in the stillness of the empty building - seemed to resonate a gentle hum. It looked, she thought, not unlike the inside of his uncle’s wings in his own demonic transformation.

But that brilliant shade of cyan doesn’t call Dante to mind at all, though she keeps that thought to herself. Mentioning his father now, in the day after her son’s triumph, would only sour his mood. Nero doesn’t seem to notice her staring anyways. He shifts his weight, looks back and forth from her, to the skyline, and back again.

“...You still mad at me?”

“I wasn’t-” He raises both his eyebrows before she can say the words. Aster huffs with annoyance. “I’m not anymore. If you’d gotten yourself killed, I would have been awfully cross.” The boy - the young man? - huffs with laughter and shakes his head as she steps forward to stand next to him. “Now I’m just…” Both hands gesture helplessly in front of her to try and conjure the words out of thin air, a habit she adopted from Dante. “Confused.”

“What’s there to be confused about?” They’d had this argument once before and she can hear the frustration in his voice. Always so impatient before letting his temper get the better of him. “I want to stay here.”

He’d already told her but it hurt to hear the words again. “There’s plenty to confuse me. Like the idea that you think you can live alone at seventeen.”

“I wouldn’t be alone; I’d live with Kyrie. And also I’m gonna be eighteen in three months. And also-also you and Uncle Dante both lived by yourselves when you were way younger than me.” He counts the reasons off on his demonic fingers with the practiced ease of someone who’s had the same conversation before. She bristles from the bottoms of her feet to the ends of her long hair.

“What about school-”

“There’s a school here where I can finish up. Kyrie goes to it. And it’s not like I got a bunch of amazing friends who’re gonna rend their clothes if I ain’t at graduation with them.”

“The people-”

“Got problems, sure, but they’re no worse than anyone back in the city. And there’s a lot of great ones here too. Our old doctor-” The one who’d put her back together after she’d nearly been torn in half. “-caught me on the walk here. He’s still got that big beard and still remembers how I hate needles.”

“And the Order -”

“There’s no one important left in the Order who’d give a shit about who my grandpa is. It’s just a bunch of old nuns and priests who have bigger things to worry about,” he says and the exasperation fizzles from his voice. It turns soft and sympathetic and for some reason that only makes the static of anxiety crackle louder inside Aster. He knows he’s winning and he’s trying to be gentle with that knowledge. A lump constricts in Aster’s throat. She wants to shut it out, to go back to when life was a fairytale. Nero gently touches his mom’s elbow and she hates that she has to look up at him. “Stella and Loreto were in the Order too, y’know.”

In an instant, she knows there’s no way she can change his mind. Her gold eyes search his face for even the hint of a crack in his convictions and finds them unyielding. There was only one way she’d get him off this island and that was by demanding it, as his mother. She suspects he’d never forgive her if she did. Not when he felt so called to do this.

“Mom, I can’t… I can’t leave Kyrie alone. And I’m not gonna ask her to leave right after Credo-” The muscles in his throat flex and tighten so that the name cracks halfway out of his mouth. “Credo’s gone , Mom. He used to go with us to the park.”

“I know.” 

Credo had been a boy too. Once. Sullen-faced and suspicious of her, as any good Knight of the Order should be, but willing to listen when his father told him to be kind. His distaste for her and Dante never turned to Nero. Perhaps he thought her son was like himself - someone who had no say in what his parents did and who they associated with. So long as Nero’s rowdy temper didn’t hurt Kyrie, he must have reasoned, then he seemed happy to tolerate her son. Maybe even accept him. How nice that would have been.

Except.

“They’re all gone. Her whole family.”

Except, except, except.

“...I know…”

A happy family obliterated by one stupid decision made by an elder brother that cost him his life. Where had she heard that before?

“I know you don’t trust her,” Nero continues and holds up a hand before Aster can interject. “But she didn’t know it was a trap when she asked me to come here. All she wanted was someone who could help. So how could I bail on her now? She still needs help . I wouldn’t be able to live with myself if I left.”

He’s right, though she has no idea where his rough-edged compassion came from. There was no vein of gold in Aster, no good natured altruism. Curiosity and spite had driven her desire to see the world ended eighteen years ago. Everything she did was for herself or her family or her research. Even now, she remains totally self-interested, thinking more about how lonely she’ll be without her loudmouth son to keep her life exciting. Yet Nero’s heart was purest aurum, despite his insistence to the contrary, and the notion that he’d ended up this way in spite of her raising him filled her with equal parts shame and pride.

“Please,” he says, so sincere in a single word. “It’ll be okay. You won’t have to worry - I heal just like Uncle Dante now!” She’s already learned about it but to hear it out loud is so strange. Her unique biology hadn’t inflicted a defect on him, like she’d feared all his life, but merely delayed it. She suspects the source of it is in his arm. Both hands land on her shoulders and squeeze tight. “And I’m stronger than I’ve ever been, especially now that I’ve got the Yamato.”

Yamato. His inheritance, the only thing of value either she or Vergil had to give, and a sword sharp enough to cut through anything - including the fabric of reality itself. How it had come to Fortuna she would probably never know but its long journey was complete now that it had found a home, quite literally, in her son’s arms. This house had sheltered it once, too. Dozens of nights were spent with one of the most powerful Devil Arms ever forged resting on the wall next to her bed. Always, always within reach. At some point, even that fact became commonplace to her but she never doubted or forgot what it meant to her son’s father. She’d have to tell Nero that someday. If he ever wanted to know.

“...Can I see it?” she asks. It’s a confusing request for only a few seconds before he nods firmly and stretches out his right arm. 

There seems to be no need for concentration. Whatever internal mechanism required to summon the blade forth (something she’d been keen to study if the subject were literally anyone else) seems to come as natural as breathing to Nero. The molten core beneath the scale armor in his palm pulses brighter and - in a burst of light and a shower of ethereal shimmering - coalesces into a familiar length of silver steel. Completely manifested in the world, the blade settles with comfortable ease into Nero’s palm and it rings as he turns it to catch the sunset’s rays.

Aster realizes she’s never seen the blade itself before today. Vergil never unsheathed it around her. She assumes that meant … something to him. She can’t imagine what. Even after all this time, the only person she’s ever been in love with remains inscrutable in so many ways.

“Thought it was lost forever,” she says. She doesn’t bring up its original wielder, truly lost to her. Instead she reaches toward it. “May I…?”

“You’re not gonna go chuck it into the harbor, are you?”

“Well, I’d be lying if I said I hadn’t considered it.” The teenager is quick to lean himself and his sword out of her range and his blue eyes narrow down at his mother with suspicion. Both lips stick out in a terribly dramatic pout. “But I’ll be good. I promise.” But still he takes his time to accept her word before slowly - very, very slowly - laying the sword, his birthright, in her hands.

It’s heavier than she expected. Dante told her once that their father gave them the Yamato and Rebellion as gifts when they were small children. She can’t imagine how a young boy was supposed to carry a blade like this, much less wield it. Did he ever think of it as a burden? When Vergil came into her life, the sword was his lifeline, an extension of himself, and his most treasured possession. But it seemed like he was sure something was always hunting for him and the Yamato and so she had to wonder if he’d ever resented being given the metaphorical weight of the world.

There had been so many times in her own childhood where she loathed the things bestowed on her by her mother. At night, she would sit in front of a mirror and watch her hair writhe into a braid with total autonomy. It was a nest of snakes, a red cascade she never asked for, and a constant reminder that she was an empty vessel that would someday be hollowed out and hijacked by the woman that created her. For years, she hated it, even when it was her only means of defense. She’d ruined so many knives and scissors trying to cut it off but nothing ever made a scratch. 

Aster tilts the Yamato until her own reflection peers back at her in the sleek steel. She certainly isn’t a child anymore. She wonders if she ever was one.

“You still didn’t answer me,” Nero finally says, lower back leaned against the railing, arms folded nervously across his chest. He’s bracing himself for the worst. After the stress of the past few weeks, the last thing he wants to be in is an argument. “About me staying here.”

Aster closes her gold eyes. “Give me a little time to process this.” Even without seeing him, she can feel the static of his frustration. That isn’t an answer, after all. “I’m not telling you ‘no,’ I’m not going to tell you ‘no,’ but I need a night to sort out how I’m supposed to say that it’s perfectly fine for my teenage son to move hours away from me.” When her eyelids raise, the boy-- no, young man across from her looks dumbfounded. That isn’t the response he was planning to counter. “So please just give me some time.”

“I- That’s- O-okay.”

“And I want to borrow this,” she adds and nods to the sword still resting in her hands.

“Wh- wait, why?”

“There’s something I need to do with it.” She’s already shrugging off her shawl to wrap it around the Yamato before her son can say anything else. It wouldn’t do to walk through town carting a blade out in the open. Though considering everything that’s happened, maybe no one would particularly care. “Do you know where your uncle is?”

“If you’re gonna try to kill him with it, don’t bother. It won’t take,” Nero mutters, earning him a bark of laughter from his mother. She turns to stride back into the house and he follows right behind her. How nostalgic. “I think he’s down by the docks. Last I heard, he was hunting for a phone booth that still worked. You know, he isn’t gonna let you throw it into the ocean either.”

“For the last time,” Aster grumbles as they walk down the creaking stairs. “I’m not going to toss it into the sea. You have a very dramatic image of me in your mind.”

“No, I have an accurate one.” 

She stops in the middle of the old shop floor to turn back to him, mouth tucked to the side. A broad, dopey smirk pulls across Nero’s mouth in response, the look of a son who knows full well how to grate his mother’s nerves without crossing the line that gets him in real trouble. Her mind wanders, takes in the sight of her son in the midst of her old shop, and she muses that moving was inevitable really. He’s so tall now that this house could never have contained him. Apparently not even the one in Capulet City was enough. She just hopes an entire island is. Of course, she doesn’t dare voice any of that. Aster just rolls her eyes with affectionate frustration and lets her only child open the front door for her, arms full as they are. They stride out into the sunset lit back alley together, ready to abandon their old home one final time.

“It won’t be that bad,” Nero says gently. “Not like I’m gonna be lonely.”

Waiting for them out on the street is Kyrie, now a young woman in her own right, dressed in all white and fussing with a gold charm hung around her neck. With her hair down, the girl looks identical to her long-gone mother - especially when a bright smile alights on her face at the sight of Nero. But she doesn’t approach, either. Both hands fold over her stomach and her fingers tug and fuss on each other. Honey brown eyes very pointedly avoid looking at Aster even as the pair approach. There is good reason for that. Unwittingly, Kyrie had lured her son into a trap when she begged him to come to the island, brought him right back to the Order that had tried to steal him away from Aster nine years ago. Most- well, some of Aster’s anger had subsided but none of the shame of being a part of the scheme had left the girl. It is tempered only by the very quiet sadness hanging over her like a blanket. Familiarity, it seemed, was a running theme of her return to Fortuna.

“We’re all done,” Nero announces as they get closer. His inhuman hand reaches out and she takes hold of it with the natural ease of someone who’s been in love for years. Clawed fingers curl ever-so-gently around her own and the blue glow beneath the scale shifts to twilight orange. It makes Aster think of the way his ears blush when he’s embarrassed. 

“It’s… nice to see you again, Miss Aster,” she says, voice halting with nerves. Finally, her attention turns toward Aster and the girl’s chest swells up as she sucks in a breath. Hit with memory, maybe. Her pink lips press together as the ideas for sentences begin and die before she can open her mouth. What she says, coupled with a sudden bow forward that catches both Aster and Nero off guard, is: “I’m sorry. I am so, so sorry. You don’t have to ever forgive me but-”

“Kyrie-”

“It’s all right,” Aster interjects with a degree of casual warmth that surprises even herself. Anger is a hard thing to hold onto when her son looks so happy holding her hand. “Or it will be.” That might be the more honest answer. “Right now, I’m more glad that the pair of you are alive and well. Everything else will just… work itself out. So there’s no need for more apologies.”

“Oh. O-okay.” Kyrie rights herself. One of those fussy hands squeezes tighter around Nero’s. Her shoulders drop and her entire body seems to uncoil to a degree. Not all of the tension vanishes but there’s enough relieved that her lightness is palpable. “Thank you.” 

Such earnestness in just a few words and one gentle smile. No wonder Nero is so drawn to her - she must be a welcome harbor in the storm of unspoken feelings that have characterized their cobbled together family over the years. Aster hums in thought, an action that causes confusion in both teenagers, and shifts the wrapped blade in her arms to rest in the crook of just one. Then she reaches out and pats the side of her son’s face like she’s always done, scrubbing her thumb over his cheek. A bit of dust from the house smudges away. Of course he flusters and of course Kyrie giggles.

“I’m going to catch up with your uncle. Stay out of trouble.”

“Will we see you and Mr. Dante-”

“You don’t have to call him ‘mister,’” Aster and Nero interject in perfect monotone chorus.

“Um… then we will see you and Dante back at the house…?” Kyrie tries again.

Strange, she thinks. I don’t think I ever saw the inside of Stella and Loreto’s house . There were still lines that a Captain of the Order of the Sword couldn’t cross, apparently. All she had ever seen of it was the outside - an older, stone two story on the edge of the District that had been in the family for quite some time. Being part of a respected clan in the Order had afforded them some amenities, as it was a bit larger than the standard Fortunan home, but it was hardly luxurious. It just meant there would be plenty of room for the pair. Whatever that might entail. Thinking about it was rapidly converting her to the island’s faith and she found herself praying to her son’s grandfather. Sparda help me get through this.

“Yes, of course.”

With Kyrie satisfied and promising to make them dinner, they go their separate ways - the kids arm in arm and Aster with a sword hugged to her chest. As she walks, she glances over her shoulder to give them one last look. They do look content together - soaked in the last amber light of the day, total opposites in every way and yet fitted together as snugly as a clock’s gears. Nero is staring at Kyrie with unfailing attention, as though she’s the only thing worth it, lovestruck as any seventeen year old could be. It’s incredible how much the sight makes her ache.

“See?” she can hear him say as they round the corner. “I told you she didn’t hate you.”

--

As Aster expected, no one pays much mind to a single woman walking through the Harbor District with a sword in her arms. A few people she passes seem to recognize her by her hair - a pair of young women even break into whispers as soon as they assume she is out of earshot, wondering if she is the witch their mother told them about as children - but none bother to approach. There were simply more important things to worry about. Windows needed boarding, debris needed moved, and she quickly became a background fixture in most people’s minds, just as she preferred it. Twilight was falling and rapidly giving way to evening as she wanders down familiar cramped and winding back alleys. Only a few of the street lights pop to life as she walks, however - power coverage in the district was spotty. Much worse was the chill filling the air as the sun vanished beyond the horizon. She could never get warm enough, the unfortunate drawback of a body made artificial. Hopefully, Dante would be down at the docks and she’d be able to steal his jacket.

Again she shifts the sword in her arms, holding it protective and tight, the handle resting gently against her jaw as she descends worn stairs in the streets leading to the harbor. It is a strange weight. Heavy with more than its otherworldly steel. Memories and hardship and loneliness - god, so much loneliness, more than one person should ever bear. But she still holds fast to it and remembers.

She had been dreaming of him again. Not that she truly ever stopped, but they came in waves. He would haunt her at night for a few weeks, vanish for months, then return to repeat the cycle all over again. Just like when they were together, he was always making her wait. How strange that Vergil would come back right before her return to the island. Her subconscious trying to warn her that change was afoot, perhaps. Sometimes the dreams were remembered as vague impressions, the mere understanding that he’d been there, but often they were vivid and real, her mind playing back a hybrid of memory and longing as clear as a movie.

(He was always how he had been when they were together - young, beautiful, effortlessly graceful, and yet emotionally awkward in his own endearing way.)

She rounds another corner. Ahead of her, the homes and buildings end and she can see the docks full of boats just beyond. More importantly, however, is the phone booth on the corner of the block and a familiar figure in all red tucked into it. Must have found the last working public phone in all of Fortuna. Aster laughs to herself as she approaches.

“Yeah- yeah, yeah,” she hears Dante’s voice rumble from within the booth. He’s got his body pressed into the corner of the booth, one arm folded under the other, and earpiece on his shoulder. Guarded, trying to keep the conversation between the two of them. “Everything’s fine.” Something from the voice on the other end pulls a raspy laugh out of him. “Just, uh, you know… Missing you.”

Ah, so that’s who it is. Aster’s eyebrows raise at the same moment that Dante’s head lifts from where it was slouched toward his chest. Naturally, he ends up staring right at her. He offers a small wave, then lifts two fingers - a silent request for two minutes. She replies by mouthing their preferred bartender’s name. His tired smile turns sheepish.

“Wh- dinner?” Then he’s distracted, looking down at the phone like a hand might jump out of it to grab him by the neck. “Yeah! Yeah, I can- I can do dinner. Soon as I’m back in town, uh… In a day or two? I’ll call you-” A pause as he’s interrupted. “Then … I’ll come by when I’m back.”

With a pleased hum, Aster leans her back against the frame of the old booth, legs crossed, sword still held against her. Dante cranes his head to direct a wide-eyed look of disapproval her way that she does her best to look oblivious to. He responds by smacking a hand against the glass. A few people walking by carrying chunks of debris in a wheelbarrow startle at the sound and both he and Aster have to wave nervously at the very normal, completely mundane humans who are definitely having very, very bad days.

“Sorry, I gotta go. Uh, outta quarters. … Yeah, you too. Later.” 

The handset taps down into its cradle. A moment later, Dante leans slow and ominous out of the booth to loom over her, eyes almost aglow. Aster bats her eyelashes at him with delicate innocence.

“Don’t you have anything better to do than eavesdrop.”

“Hm? Me? I never drop eaves. That would be rude,” she retorts. “But I am terribly curious about how Eryn is doing. That was him, right?”

Her idiot whatever-he-is-to-her emerges completely from the phone booth, arms folded over his broad chest, and mouth cocked to the side. Still wearing that western getup, something both absurd and yet suits him perfectly. Eryn did always call him “cowboy.” He itches at the side of his head and she thinks he might be trying to conceal how bashful such a simple question makes him. That’s her Dante - perfectly cool facing down an animate statue as big as a skyscraper but simple questions about his ex(?) could send him into endless hemming-and-hawing.

“Yeah, he heard what was happening from Morrison, that old hen. Got worried about me.” He starts walking toward the docks; Aster falls in step alongside him. “Like a big bastard like that’s gonna give me trouble.”

“Well, you won’t worry about yourself, so someone needs to do it for you.” The bundled weight in her arms, so far unnoticed by Dante, grows weightier. She clutches it closer. “It’s how he shows he cares.” Out of the corner of her eye, she can see him huff out a deep breath, and so she gently taps her foot against his shin as they walk. “Would you prefer he knew you started all of this?”

All of the color drains out of his face and a chill shoots through his entire body. “Oh god no. I can already see the look on his face.” He even tries to mimic it - handsomely stern with a twinge of disappointment - but can’t quite master the gravitas. Aster laughs anyways and Dante shakes his head. “He’s gonna find out eventually when Trish or Lady tell him but, y’know, maybe for now I will take being worried over.”

“You two going to try to work it out?” Again.

“We are… going to get dinner. Just dinner.”

The docks open up in front of them, mercifully lit by both electric street lamp and very old lanterns hanging from poles with oil lights glowing inside. People mill back and forth even as darkness envelops the city, unloading crates, talking amongst themselves, opening drinks to share with exhausted looking locals. There are more boats in Fortuna Harbor than there have been in nearly twelve years. All of it, from what she’s heard, is aid from the mainland. Like in the heart of the District, the bustle is a welcome cover. She and Dante go utterly unremarked on by even the most dedicated and scarred City Guard.

“So how you holding up?” he asks, swinging his hands up to rest behind his head. “Nero told me his plan. Asked me for advice on how to ask you which, uh-” He makes a cutting motion across his throat. “I told him you’d put me in the ground.”

“As if it would take,” she murmurs, echoing what her son said earlier. Then she sighs and lets her listlessness carry her across one of the emptier docks, heels tapping gently on the wood with every slow step. Dutifully, Dante follows. “And it’s… I want him to be happy, of course I do, and I think if I made him go back to the city, he’d be miserable but…” They find themselves at the end of the line. In front of them, the bay stretches out endlessly with orange specks of lantern light and the white moon drifting silent across the surface of black water. “I thought I’d have more time with him. I’m not ready for this at all.”

To her horror, her voice cracks.

“Aw man. C’mon, it won’t be that bad-” Dante flusters, even as Aster lowers herself to sit on the edge of the dock. He sighs, rakes a hand through his hair, paces two steps forward and back, and she thinks about how terribly funny their shared inability to handle their feelings really is. Truly a kindred spirit. Ultimately, all he can do is drop down to sit beside her and stare at the water. “You still got me?”

A warbly laugh bubbles out of her chest and she turns toward him and his stupid smile. “Trading one big baby for another, is that it?” A grin that immediately turns into a perfect crescent frown. Even still, he doesn’t move from his spot next to her and she lets her head drop to rest on his bicep. The corners of her eyes burn but she refuses to let herself cry. She’ll do plenty of that when she has to inevitably go home to an empty house. “I do have you.”

“You’re welcome,” he replies. One big hand pats on top of her head and a tendril of her hair slaps at it in response. “Easy, Medusa.” She can feel the familiar weight of his cheek laying against her scalp. They sit together in the quiet offered by the night, water rocking beneath the dock, the calls and chatter of people working behind them. Until Dante tilts his head down and asks, bored but curious: “What’re you carting anyways? You been hanging onto that this whole time.”

“Oh. Right.” With a simple tug of fabric, her shawl falls free from its tight wrap around the Yamato, revealing handle and blade in the moonlight. Tension grips Dante’s entire body and he repeats her same “oh right” in a much softer tone.

“Why do you have that?”

“Need it for something.” She doesn’t elaborate; he doesn’t ask. Soon the blade is perched delicately in her lap, a single strip of pure silver reflecting starlight back. “I can’t believe you gave it to him.”

Dante shrugs and leans back on his palms. She thinks of all their weekends sprawled out in the grass at the park while Nero ran around screaming with Kyrie in the distance. “It’s his by right.” Aster’s nose wrinkles. “Well, it is, and I sure as hell don’t want it. Swords like that have a soul.” She leans over the Yamato, as though its face might make itself manifest, but only her own darkened reflection peers back. Laughter rolls out of him smooth and warm, not entirely mirthless but not the happiest either. “Better for it to be in hands where it’ll see some use, ‘stead of collecting dust on a shelf.”

“You know, he never unsheathed it around me?” she retorts and Dante knows exactly who “he” is without question. His head tilts to the side as he scoffs with his entire chest.

“Probably thought it was rude.” The idea is so funny that it warms Aster up inside, just a little, a shift in mood that Dante detects with ease. He nudges her leg with one of his. “Seriously. He was a real stick-in-the-mud about that kind of crap.”

“Oh, it’s not ‘crap.’ It’s kind of cute.”

“Livin’ in totally different worlds with him, you and me,” Dante sighs. She can feel his eyes on her back, studying her every move, watching her every interaction with the sword. Maybe he’s afraid she’ll throw it away too. She does consider it, however briefly, but only in a half-minded and unserious way. Getting rid of the Yamato wouldn’t keep her son out of battle. Nero had made up his mind about what he wanted his life to be and she had to make peace with it, impossible as that felt in the moment. 

No, what she thinks about is the weight of memories. She couldn’t get out from under them. Being in Fortuna again, they were almost smothering. There wasn’t a place on the island that didn’t take her back to before in some way. It made her feel like she was drowning under the weight of the past (though she thinks she’s been caught in that great sea’s snare for much, much longer). Even looking at her own reflection made her think of the nights his fingers dragged through her sheets of hair. And the sword itself was an echo of him in the same way that Rebellion embodied Dante. Curious, she runs her thumb along the blade-

“Ah.”

-And predictably comes away with a split in her skin. Blood wells to the surface in an instant, coursing over her palm and dripping onto her dress. It didn’t even hurt.

“Hey, be careful. It’s not a kitchen knife.” 

Dante sits up straighter as she turns her hand toward him. The flow of red changes to run down her wrist and elbow. There hadn’t been any pain at all. She’s fascinated by it. If she wasn’t bleeding, she might never know she’d been cut. Again her golden eyes fall down to stare at the blade as Dante very carefully takes her hand into his to inspect the damage. Blood runs over his own fingers and she thinks again of a hand raking into her hair.

“You know, I didn’t think this would actually work. Just that it would be worth a shot,” she muses and Dante’s eyes flicker her way. Her free hand wraps around the handle of the sword. A drop of red hits the blade. “But now I’m sure.”

“Sure of what-?”

Her bloodied hand slides free of his. It wraps around the full body of her hair, tightens, and pulls. The crimson tips spasm outward outward in shock, but she acts with decisive brutality. She imagines a great snake in need of decapitation. The Yamato is heavy, incredibly so for something of such sleek beauty, but not so heavy that she can’t lift it. Its blade bites inward and for just a moment there is resistance. She’s a well-made homunculus indeed.

Of course it would be Vergil's sword to lighten her burden. The first person to convince her she was alive setting her free one more time.

In one great stroke, the impossibly keen edge shears through every infernal red lock with such ease that her forceful momentum almost sends her toppling off the dock. Only Dante’s arms grabbing her own with those lightning reflexes keep her from hitting the water. The hair clenched in her fist falls limp - a great beast slain, says a voice in her head - and she stares down at the now staggeringly mundane bundle. Not a serpent at all, nor has it retained the strange fluid quality it had when it was attached to her head. It’s just a very lovely shade of crimson in the moonlight.

“Hey, I thought you hated fighting! What’re you doing, swinging that thing around like-” Dante stops mid sentence to soak in what she’s done to herself. A solid three, nearly four feet of the scarlet hair that has poked, prodded, and smacked him for twenty-two years now sits scattered over their laps. What remains attached to her head stops perfectly parallel to her jawline. The angle is razor sharp and, he thinks, impressively even considering the tool to make it happen. “Huh.”

“That’s it?” she laughs and it bobs around her face with every word.

“Y’look like a different person,” he replies, eyebrows raising. With her outburst out of the way, he can carefully separate the Yamato from her hands to lay beside him. It’s not until that very second Aster realizes she’s trembling. Adrenaline pumping so loud in her ears that she almost doesn’t hear him ask: “Feel better?”

Her unbloodied fingers come up to tuck one side behind her ear, then they brush against the back of her neck. The emptiness of the space could make her head spin. Or it might be the literal pounds now missing from her frame. Might be both. Of course, he doesn’t get it, because why would he? She’s done a poor job of explaining herself tonight and maybe at dinner she will try to fix that. God knows Nero will certainly have questions. But even with his confusion, he’s grinning with something that might be pride, and then so is she.

“I feel a little lighter.”

She thinks maybe he does too.