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Shadow opened the door just ahead of Vergil’s knock.
She greeted him with a wag of her tail and the blithe, wide-pupiled welcome the same as any other spoiled cat. Complete with the way she sat unmoving in the doorway so that he had to move around her only for her to immediately melt and flow around his legs as he entered.
V was properly dressed this time. That awful robe Nico had gifted him was nowhere to be seen. Without a 3 AM call to interrupt his sleep, it seemed he was perfectly capable of entertaining a guest first thing in the morning. He extended his hand over the countertop that separated the living area from his kitchen, and after a moment of consideration, Vergil handed over the brown bag under his arm. V exchanged back a small cup of coffee on an ivory saucer.
It was a perfunctory gesture. Polite. But the hospitality coupled with the quiet clashed against the memory of the previous visit and left Vergil staring at his reflection in the dark brown liquid.
The paper bag rustled, and V held up one of the apples. “Empire?”
“Cortland.”
“Hm.” Barely a syllable, but it perfectly captured a breed of ‘I don’t know why I expected different’ disapproval that would have been at home in the mouth of someone’s mother-in-law. “And only one kind?”
“Only one kind is necessary if you choose the right apple.”
“Whose pie was it that Nero found superior again?” V asked smugly.
“Irrelevant, given that you conceded.”
“Only fair, given it was not an equal contest.” V turned, a teasing glint in his eye. “But I understand you got to enjoy a fresh slice of the true recipe with Nero, so perhaps you were the victor.”
Vergil busied himself with his coffee.
The atmosphere of V’s home was significantly more relaxed than Vergil remembered it being despite little material difference. All of his books about Umbran magic were still there, but they had been placed neatly on their home shelves above several cracked tomes above the Inferno and below several thin hardcovers in the sort of rich, pleated burgundy leather reserved for high-quality, if somewhat antiquated, collections of literature. Rosemary still hung on the air, but it was just one smell beneath a menagerie of other scents. Coffee and cinnamon being the most prevalent. There was no music, but the windows were all cracked as if to let in the natural rhythm of the spring rain. His bedroom door had been closed to preserve his privacy rather than threaten with it.
“Your shoes,” V said absently. Before the wrinkle had finished forming in Vergil’s brow, he added: “I’ve prepared an appropriate substitute.”
One withheld scoff later, Vergil had unlatched his boots and set them aside on a rack clearly meant to hold them. The ‘substitute’ was a pair of slippers that bore an upsetting resemblance Griffon. Another tacky gift from Nico, perhaps? He bore the indignity of the fluffy blue slippers, if only because the alternative was to bear being barefoot.
The scent of lime dominated V’s kitchen. A bright pop in Vergil’s senses that seemed mismatched to V’s tastes until he took in the accompanying tang of vinegar. Such a rustic cleaning technique. Not one he remembered Eva using, but it brought him the same sense of rightness as properly made tea or yes, even V’s diligently brewed coffee. Ingredients and tools were arranged neatly on the smooth stone countertops. Butter with condensation beading on the wax, milk, sugar, baking powder, and eggs that were room temperature to the touch. Metal spoons sat in a glass measuring cup, awaiting use beside a spring-form pan. The luxury of a space so well cared for by someone other than himself was one he didn’t often get to indulge in at Devil May Cry.
A thin pane of glass adorned the front of one of V’s cabinets, forming a neat and freely visible sleeve for the printed page with the baking instructions on it. At the bottom was a picture of the ideal final product, and at the top, in a decidedly regal font, its name.
“Szarlotka…”
“According to Kyrie.”
Vergil glanced aside. “You speak with her often.”
V smirked back at him over the edge of his own cup of coffee. “I am on good terms with the woman likely to become the mother of our grandchild, yes.”
Vergil couldn’t stop the way his body tensed, but he did manage to hold in the wind that those words nearly knocked out of him.
V had toned himself down a bit, but the strange welcome of quiet, coffee, and cleanliness did not indicate any intention to make this a peaceful venture. For the time it took to bake a pie, Vergil was stuck here. V stayed out of his way, at least. He was content to peel the apples at the dining table (which gave him a direct line of sight into the kitchen in case he wanted to make a comment, Vergil noted). As long as he was quiet, his presence was no intrusion at all; it never was.
Vergil already knew his other self to be on cordial, or at least neutral, terms with most of the people Vergil was still distant from. Meaning those Dante called friend. He had little desire to be especially close with any of them barring Nero. Kyrie as well, but she was too much a saint to bear at times and at others far too adept at applying what she knew of V to him. Which made it doubly frustrating that she and V seemed to know each other so well.
“Are you going to the viewing?” asked V. “The flower viewing, I mean.”
He wiped a stray bit of flour from his cheek with a shoulder, squinted at the instructions, and split half the dough aside to line the bottom of the pan. “I hardly see the point.”
“The point,” V said patiently. “Is to spend time with someone other than Dante. Unless you’d like to tell me you’re satisfied with only his company.”
“I am satisfied with no company at all.”
V laughed. “How strange then, that you have attended my previous birthday bash, and come calling on me for Nero’s birthday, to the point that you, O proud, would humble yourself so far as to visit me a second time.”
“I’m merely reclaiming what I should have already known. And Nero is my son. And you…” Vergil’s brows knitted, and he dropped the thought. V was a complicated matter.
For once, V didn’t press him. He merely brought the finely sliced apples to the kitchen, turned on the stove and sat a saucepan atop it to heat. “My point, Vergil, is that allies are of value. Whether you have the strength or not, there are things you cannot accomplish alone.”
“Like learning my mother’s pie recipe?”
“Is that sarcasm I hear aimed at me in my own kitchen?”
Vergil ducked down, both to hide his smile and slide the pale crust into the oven. As he stood up, the chain around his neck rattled and slipped forward from under his collar. The oven light flickered briefly off the red gemstone. Vergil pressed it absently back against his chest, but when he stood, something was different. V’s eyes had gone dark. His expression pinched in and his grip on the bowl of apples so tight that his fingernails had gone white. Unconsciously, Vergil bridled, and a faint blue-tinged wind crept along the tile and up the cabinets like a living breeze.
The ‘heating’ light on the oven clicked on. The pan began to tick on the stove as the metal expanded and creaked.
With all the inelegance but none of the precision of a machine, V reached into another cabinet and sat down a bottle of cloudy yellow-green liquid. Elderflower syrup. No label. Another thing, Vergil thought distractedly, that he would have to learn to make to his satisfaction. As V slowly sat the bowl of apples down, his fingers brushed the edge of the pan.
V bore it without jolting. He set the bowl down without losing even a single thin slice of the apples and vanished into his bathroom. The sound of running water could be heard faintly over the rain.
With little else to do, Vergil continued with the rest of the recipe. At some point, V re-emerged, but he didn’t return to the kitchen. He sank into that ridiculously lavish recliner, and not a word more came out of him. Not a quip, not a line of banter. Nothing. The dense silence persisted while the apples softened and the scents of spice and sweet dough browning feebly attempted to warm the suddenly cold atmosphere.
Eventually, the moment came when there was nothing more to do in the kitchen. The pie was assembled and there was nothing to do for forty minutes but wait. Vergil shaved some of this time away by cleaning the kitchen, but his own efficiency made a joke of the effort.
Thirty-five minutes to go.
He took a seat on the couch across from V. He was flipping through a book whose title Vergil couldn’t make out, but he knew it must have been some favorite of V's by the wear into the gold leaf adorning the edge, where a stray finger had worried as he took in something that resonated with him. They had been the same as children, so excited by some turn of phrase that they would wear the edge of a page to a soft, blurred line.
The question came after only three minutes, low and hoarse. “How?”
“Dante.” Vergil folded his hands and leaned back. “He was able to call them back somehow. Something to do with his absorption of the Sparda.”
“I see…" His eyes wandered up with such bald longing that Vergil had to make a conscious effort to not cover it. "It’s good to see it again. Good to know it still exists.”
“I hope you don’t expect me to share it,” Vergil said imperiously.
“I do not.”
The dead-eyed response caught Vergil off-guard. He’d been joking. Sort of. “You stubbornly insist that all else which is mine is yours as well, but yield on this one thing?”
“Dante’s not mine.”
Vergil’s head rolled back. That was the kind of evasiveness he associated with Dante, and it galled him to think some part of him did that exact same thing under duress. “Eva, Nero—”
“Have I ever asked you for the Yamato?” Vergil bristled and his fingers curled instinctively, even though she was not in his grip. It didn’t escape V. Of course it didn’t. “Same principle. I would never expect that much pity from you.”
“You would never accept that much even if I were to show it.”
“Then what have I to gain expecting that which my very nature would forbid?”
He certainly had the stubbornness down. V couldn’t have helped being drawn to the amulet if he tried. It was a part of them nearly as much as they were part of each other, and Vergil was left combing through inner landscapes so private that they were strange even to him in search of a rationale for this reticence. Was it some form of propriety? Surrender? No, no it couldn’t possibly be the latter—not without a fight. There was no joke being told here; nothing V could gain at Vergil’s expense by admitting defeat.
“Charming of you to worry after me,” V said dourly.
“Hardly what I’m doing.” Vergil crossed his arms. “I’m curious why you continue to concede.”
“I know my limits.”
“It was within your limits to best my demonic half, albeit assisted. I cannot believe the matter is of no importance to you. Taking what is rightfully yours should be in your nature. ”
“Sparda had two sons, Vergil. Two swords, two amulets. I’m an anomaly born from your foolishness, and my only inheritance is memory, for better and for the absolute worst. The amulet and the Yamato... In my hands, their potential is diminished. There is nothing gained if they are mine.” He smiled, but it fell painfully short of the smug arrogance he was reaching for and landed firmly in the territory of bitter. “The same is true of Dante and Nero. They have one brother. One father. There is no fair contest there. Nothing to truly concede. They will never be to me what they can be to you.”
The rationale was simple and straightforward. There would have been something almost honorable about how well he understood his place if it were not so clear that it burned him. V was his own person, but when it came to the past, he was more the same than different. In ways Vergil perceived in his gut but couldn’t articulate because those admissions were still too white-hot to speak, even here. it was V's domain to understand the space between them, and it seemed that for a while yet he would remain the more adept at crossing that space with grace.
So, gracelessly, Vergil tossed the amulet into V’s lap.
“Vergil—” V growled.
“Just hold it,” he said dryly, as the kitchen timer pinged. “Until I’m done with the oven.”
A brief silence, and then a faint, mocking murmur. “Frightened of a little hot air even though he’s so full of it...”
They exchanged equally frigid glares, but there was little malice from either of them.
While the pie cooled and Vergil wrestled with the distant nostalgia brought on by the perfume of elderflower in the air, he re-examined V’s bookcase. The pages of his more academic tomes were marked with pale yellow tabs, sprouting from the tops like new spring daffodils. He pulled one at random and flipped through. The text was esoteric, even now.
“Your pursuit of Eva's legacy remains dogged.”
V leaned forward from the depths of his chair, fixing Vergil with a warning stare. “And your pursuit of Sparda’s wasn’t?”
Vergil smiled. More would be his hard-headedness if he couldn’t take that truth in stride. “I understood you thought our actions then foolish.”
“I do not intend to undo our mother’s works,” V said disdainfully. “Nor will I be raising any towers.”
“Then what are you hoping to find?”
V shrugged and dangled the amulet before his eyes. The red-hued reflections of a face that did not belong to either of the sons of Sparda stared back from the facets. “There is no room for another seed of Sparda, but you have both been rather negligent at being sons of Eva. I’m merely taking the niche available to me.”
And hoping that Vergil would not squander the ones available to him.
Truthfully, he was still coming to grips with the idea that there was a space for him in this world—much less ones he did want to occupy despite the challenge his past posed. He’d had little time to consider that V might be more aware of what was on the table. Or that he might already know he could never claim them. Not that way Vergil could.
“I’ll bring you a bottle of wine as my thanks,” he offered. “At the flower viewing.”
“Progress.” V smirked as though that had been his plan all along. “You were always the shyer twin. I was worried I’d have to coax you more.”
Heat rushed to Vergil’s ears and the book clapped shut in his hands. “I was reserved!”
“And easily overwhelmed.” V rose and pressed the amulet to Vergil’s chest. Though he grinned like a Cheshire cat, his fingers were slow to release it, and Vergil could see the effort it cost him.
“Come,” he said with surprising gentleness. “Let’s see if you made a pie worthy of a son of Eva.”