Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

Regret.

Of all the emotions Vergil thought he would feel on the threshold of death, he had expected regret the least. There had been bitter desperation when Mundus had so violently unmade him in the process of forming Nelo Angelo; determination and rage when he plunged Yamato into his own fading form to split his human and demon halves; and comfort in knowing he could finally rest, when he had used his last breath as V to return to himself.

But here - as Vergil blinks slowly up at the stars in a spreading pool of his own blood, his son's hand in his and his brother's voice shouting his name from far, far away, over the ripping of steel against demon flesh - regret wells up from within him like the scalding blood that bubbles over his lips.

"Nero," he whispers, as his vision begins to grey at the edges.

His son's hand tightens in his, desperately-

Vergil closes his eyes.

(:~:)

It begins, as you might expect, with a phone call.

Vergil does not deign to look up from his book at the first shrill ring; the ancient rotary phone, like the half-squashed armchair in which he is presently resting, the tacky wallpaper, and the constantly-flickering filament bulbs remain in this state of disrepair entirely due to Dante’s incomprehensible attachment to them. So, as far as Vergil is concerned, the phone and the distasteful clientele that enquire at Devil May Cry fall soley within Dante’s purview.

The phone is still ringing.

Vergil turns a page.

A dull thudding sounds from the direction of the upstairs bathroom. Bits of faded plaster drop from the ceiling, scattering like ashes across the bloated floorboards.

"HEY, JACKASS! ANSWER THE PHONE!” Dante’s voice is muffled by the sound of running water.

Vergil blithely ignores him.

The phone continues to ring.

A door creaking open.

“VERGIL!”

Another page. Vergil taps his chin thoughtfully as he peruses it.

The sound of the upstairs bathroom door smashing against the wall ricochets down the stairs. Bits of plaster rain down around Vergil, staining the limp velvet of the sofa with patches of white powder.

Vergil calmly brushes off his shoulders as the rapid squeak of wet feet on wood rises over the continued ringing of the phone. He makes the mistake of focusing overmuch on the lines before him, though, and his hair brushes the edge of the wet towel that whips through the space where his head had been a moment earlier.

Vergil lowers his book and stares accusingly at Dante, who smirks at him – then a blur of motion as the towel snaps toward him again.

In his haste to save his precious book – a first edition Wilfred Owen, for goodness’ sake – Vergil’s head snaps back from the force of a heavy, damp towel smacking him full in the face.

The ringing stops.

“Devil May Cry,” Dante’s singsong voice says.

The towel slides slowly down Vergil’s face to pool in his lap, and he straightens ever-so-slowly to glare at his brother, who lounges lazily against the desk edge, one hand gripping the handset, free hand grasping a second towel around his waist as his sopping white hair drips messily onto the tarnished wood.

“Mm-hmm. How many?” Dante says, eyes dancing mischievously as he returns his brother’s stare.

“I’m going to kill you,” Vergil declares. He reaches for the Yamato, set within arm’s reach at his side as it always is, wherever he goes.

“Uh-huh. Sure.” Dante has the gall to wink as he does so – obviously speaking to the client, but also openly challenging Vergil’s words.

Vergil stands, casting his book aside. “By the time this is over you will be pleading for the sweet release of death–”

“–Yeah, yeah, hold on, my brother’s being a hardass like he always is – Verge, big job here? Maybe do the shhhh thing? – yeah, you were saying?”

The Yamato sings from its sheath and whips towards Dante’s smirk – or, where Dante’s smirk used to be. The owner of the smirk in question has danced a few steps away, handset tucked between bare shoulder and chin and the ancient rotary phone itself caught up in his free hand.

“Uh-huh. Okay. Meet you there.” Dante slams the phone back on the table, gives the handset an entirely superfluous twirl, and smashes it back into the receiver without a care.

Really, it is a wonder the phone has not cracked in half sometime in the last two decades.

Vergil levels the Yamato squarely between Dante’s smiling eyes, a hairsbreath from the bridge of his nose. “Choose the method of your passing, brother.”

Dante raises a casual hand and flicks away the blade with a single finger. “I think I’ll pass,” he grins – and Vergil nearly reverses the Yamato to plunge it into Dante’s arm, because Dante would definitely survive that to whine about it – “But we have a job. A big one. Many demons, much killing to be done, yada-yada-yada, the usual.”

Vergil bares his teeth and tightens his grip on Yamato – but Dante straightens, and Vergil halts as abruptly as he begins.

“It’s Fortuna,” Dante says, and there is the ghost of seriousness in his humoured tone. “The girls are already there. No word from Nero yet. You in?”

A shard of ice spears into Vergil’s gut at the thought.

Fortuna. No word yet from Nero.

He lowers the Yamato with careful impassivity. “Of course,” he says, in as unaffected a voice as he can manage. “If only not to let you brag about your kill count for the rest of the month.”

Dante barks a laugh. “Right.” He claps a still-damp hand on Vergil’s shoulder, and grins at Vergil’s flinch as water stains his immaculate coat. “I’m gonna go get dressed. Won’t be the first time I’ve gone into a fight wearing something like this, but boy if road rash doesn’t hurt when you don’t got more on.”

Vergil nods once, hand white-knuckled on the Yamato’s hilt.

Dante’s hand stays on his shoulder for a moment longer than it should, the merest pressure. Dante’s half of their mother’s amulet swings against his collarbone as he straightens.

“You can use the time to call Nero, yeah? See if he wants in.”

Vergil stands there, still, as Dante’s thudding footsteps fade up the stairs. Vergil’s half of the amulet suddenly feels much heavier where it beneath his shirt, suspended by a silver chain.

There are increasing moments, in the two months since they returned from the underworld, where Vergil and Nero have been able to hold conversation without resorting to swords and bullets and demonic energy flaring into the air. Vergil holds each small, personal detail that Nero shares close to his soul, committing the exact words to memory like the poetry he so values. Each precious gem of memory also spears his heart with the knowledge of all he has missed in over two decades of his son’s life, but there is nothing Vergil prizes so much in the world, except perhaps for the Yamato.

And yet…on the rare occasions Nero and he are alone, without the boisterous presence of Dante, Vergil finds himself falling back into silence more often than not – a quiet, furled part of him terrified of speaking one wrong word and shattering the fragile, carefully built bridge between them forever.

Fortuna.

No word from Nero.

That might very well be good news – Nero is perfectly capable of handling demon hunts alone. And yet…

Vergil’s hand drifts over the phone. Something he does not want to admit is welling up within him, curling his fingers over the handset – something remarkably similar to concern and fear.

Concern, for Nero’s welfare.

Fear, should Nero have the task well in hand and take the call as an insult.

Vergil closes his eyes, running his free hand over the grip of the Yamato to ground himself.

A hand encased in half-finger gloves bats his away, and Vergil snaps his eyes open.

“Aww, c’mon, Vergil,” Dante drawls, hooking the headset in the crook of his neck as the rotary dial whirrs under his other hand. “Couldn’t you get over your emotional constipation long enough to call your own son?” His voice holds its usual easy lilt, but there in his gaze is the merest hint of disappointment.

Sentimental fool.

Vergil growls at Dante and stalks across the room. His hand remains white-knuckled on the hilt of Yamato at his side, but he forces his shoulders to remain relaxed. Unaffected.

“Hey, it’s Dante,” Dante is saying, and it takes every morsel of willpower Vergil holds not to turn in place. “Mmh? Uh-huh. We’re on our way.”

The ding of handset meeting receiver.

Vergil turns, deliberately slowly, and knows he has not quite succeeded in hiding his emotion when he meets Dante’s knowing gaze.

“That was Kyrie,” Dante says, jovially. “Nero’s fine, last she knows. Just headed out to it.”

“Then let us make haste,” Vergil cuts him off, already moving towards the door. Relief wars with impatience within him.

He hears Dante bark a laugh behind him as he draws the Yamato from its sheath and slices a portal into the air.

(:~:)

They emerge under a night sky studded with stars, lit with moonlight.

“About time you two got here!”

Vergil raises an eyebrow as Nero’s raw-throated yell ricochets across the square towards them. The square itself, once a well-ordered series of graceful fountains and stonework, now resembles a scene from a particularly bloody war epic – shattered stone mulched with demon guts, fiery craters seething with burning oil, fountains smashed to dust trickling water that quickly turns sanguine with congealing blood. A haze of smoke lays over it all, with the double-flash of Lady’s guns, Trish’s flickering lightning and the blue glimmer of Nero’s demon arms blossoming from within.

“Eyy, how’s my favourite nephew?” Dante calls, whooping like an idiot as he revs Cavaliere and roars down off the rooftop, Cavaliere’s exhaust pipes sparking flame.

Rolling his eyes, Vergil reaches into the nexus of power in his core, folds time paper-thin, and leaps down into the battle proper, darting ahead of his brother to send a summoned sword straight through the throat of the nearest demon, spraying vile ichor into the air. Vergil spares a single, glorious instant to smugly meet Dante’s gaze – first blood’s mine, beat you to it – before the Yamato dances from its sheath and plunges, thirsty for blood, into the demon horde.

For the longest while, the world sharpens into exquisite clarity; the singing of the Yamato in his hand, the sheer exhilaration of demon power rushing through his veins to burst in conflagrations of brilliant blue blades that turn the air into sharpened rain.

It would have been almost perfect even if he were fighting alone; but there, to his left, a flare of demonic power so perfect a counterpoint to his own – Dante, Ebony and Ivory in hand, hooting with glee as he draws a blazing double-helix over Vergil’s head, a maelstrom of bullets ripping open a half-dozen demons at once; and to Vergil’s right, the deep roar of Red Queen revving into explosive power, Nero whooping as he sends his devil breaker smashing into the jaw of a Fury and flips onto the arm as it returns, riding the roiling air currents to leap off and eviscerate the demon from jaw to tail.

Watching Nero fight, Vergil feels pride well up within him – the sheer fluency of his son’s attacks, the raw power of their lineage bursting from each movement. It is at times like these he is grateful to fight alongside his son – to speak in a language that does not need interpretation, to understand and anticipate each other’s movements with utter clarity.

Together, the three of them slice a wide swathe through the lesser demons, with Lady and Trish cleaning up stragglers at the periphery, and soon, through the haze of smoke and flame, Vergil catches sight of the source of the demons themselves – a large, flickering, jagged gap in the veil between worlds.

“Vergil, there!” Dante shouts, gesturing with a hand bloody with demon guts.

“I see it,” Vergil returns, crouching in the moment of stillness Nero’s exploding devil breaker gives them, feeling the Yamato flare to brilliant heat under his fingers as Judgement Cut sharpens the very air to steel, disemboweling two dozen demons at once. Dante’s very vocal whoop of laughter at this sends warmth blossoming in Vergil’s chest.

“Ugh,” Nero says behind him as vile ichor rains down upon them, and Vergil turns hurriedly on the spot – but Nero is smiling as he snaps a new devil breaker into place, blue demon hands settling on his shoulders.

Vergil feels the edge of his mouth quirk upwards in response.

Nero catches sight of the almost-smile and blinks at him, something like astonishment on his face.

Dante has already run off, grinning, whipping King Cerberus in a whirl of blue ice about his sword-hand.

Vergil tears his gaze away from his son and leaps after his brother. A few more adrenaline-fueled paces of blood-slick ground, and they are at the threshold of the portal itself.

The Yamato twirls in Vergil’s hand. He can feel Dante and Nero flanking him, their presences white-hot with demon energy.

“C’mon, I want pizza,” Dante moans. “Hurry it up.”

Vergil rolls his eyes and tightens his grip on the Yamato’s hilt, feeling for the gap in space that anchors open the rip in the veil–

–and two colossal, shaggy arms burst from the rip on either side of Vergil, snatching up Dante and Nero in the grasp of two clawed hands.

“GOLIAAAAAaaaaaaaath–” Dante’s voice fades away comically with distance as he is hurled across the battlefield in a mess of white hair and crimson leather.

Nero’s grunt of pain as the goliath tightens its grasp is a dagger to Vergil’s heart. Vergil reverses the Yamato in a lightning-fast flourish to plunge into the goliath’s wrist, and hears Nero yell as his demon arms gouge long, bloody furrows into the goliath’s matted fur.

A bone-shaking howl echoes through the portal, muffled by the veil, and powerful fingers that grasp Nero loosen, allowing him to drop to the ground.

Four small, piggish eyes glow fell and yellow in a snarling face as the goliath emerges fully from the gap in the veil, climbing to its feet in a thunder of massive limbs against stone. Its gargantuan shadow falls over Vergil and Nero in the silvery moonlight.

Vergil smiles mirthlessly and tightens his grip on Yamato, readying to leap up and blind the creature – when a sharp intake of breath from Nero causes him to snap his gaze towards his son.

Nero has plunged Red Queen into the ground at his feet, his freed left hand tugging with increasing desperation at the sparking devil breaker – a Ragtime, Vergil recognises – connected to his right elbow. To Vergil’s concern, a dark blue-black glow is beginning to emit from the crushed cracks in the devil breaker’s casing, pulsing with increasing intensity in a high-pitched whine.

“Something’s wrong with this thing!” Nero shouts, fingers working desperately at the join between metal and flesh. “It’s jammed, I think it’s gonna blow–”

Several things happen at once.

The goliath opens the slavering, flaming maw in its abdomen and reaches out–

–Vergil takes one step towards Nero, the Yamato extended in a hope to slice away the devil breaker and allow Nero to reform his arm–

–Nero’s eyes widen as the Ragtime flares blue-black-WHITE just as the Yamato touches the metal–

The world dissolves into blue-black flame, and a fist of superheated air strikes Vergil square in the gut, knocking all the breath out of him at once.

The Yamato is ripped from his hand with impossible force, wrenching his wrist in a brief flare of pain before his healing takes over.

Nero shouts once, a wordless exclamation of agony.

Jagged stone digs into his shoulders. Vergil snarls as he wrenches himself into the flip, curling into the inconsequential spikes of pain as he skids to a halt on one knee, one gloved hand having scored five equal gouges in the ground before him, the other thrown back, grasping the Yamato’s sheath.

Silence.

That is the first, chilling thing that Vergil notes – that there is no sound at all, save for his own tightly controlled breathing.  His hair has fallen free from its neatly slicked form, and he brushes back the grime-stained white strands from his vision with an impatient hand.

There are two things and two things only on his mind.

Nero and the Yamato, Nero and the Yamato, Nero and the Yamato–

The dust has cleared.

Vergil straightens, and freezes in place, staring.

There is no trace of the goliath – only a shallow, burnt crater still smoking at the edges, with the scent of charred flesh hanging in the air.

But beside the portal to the underworld, the Yamato hangs a metre or so in the air – encased in a blue-black bubble of frozen space-time, the Yamato’s sharp edge buried in a single, opaque blue shard – a remnant of the Elder Geryon Knight from which Nico crafted the Ragtime devil breaker.

And erupting from the top of this sphere itself is fountain of pure, blue-black light, streaming upwards in a column before gracefully flaring out into a large, translucent dome that curves back down to meet the ground, in a strangely beautiful hemisphere of dark blue light roughly fifty paces across.

A few steps away, Nero is staggering to his feet, the cyan-toned skin of his full devil trigger form still knitting back together. There is an echo of irritated pain in his yellow-red eyes.

Vergil’s lips thin. The fact that Nero had no choice but to release devil trigger –and that his wounds are still visibly healing – belies the extent of the injuries he must have received from the blast.

“You are well?” he says without inflection, coming to a halt at Nero’s side as his son reverts to his human form. Vergil hopes he has succeeded in keeping the mounting concern out of his voice – there is no need to make Nero think Vergil considers him weak.

There is something other than physical hurt in Nero’s eyes as he snaps his chin towards Vergil, though. “I’m fine,” he replies, shortly. “I can still fight, if that’s what you’re asking.”

Vergil feels his next words stick in his throat, stunned that despite his best efforts to the contrary, Nero apparently still believes Vergil is disappointed in him.

“That’s not–” he begins. “Ah,” he murmurs instead, looking away. It is at times like these he hates himself for the inability to express anything – anything at all – without harming those around him.

Vergil glimpses Nero’s shoulders drop from their defensive hunch as Vergil turns away, his own shoulders rising to protect his vulnerable core.

“Wait–” Nero says, slowly–

“Hey!”

Vergil and Nero turn as one to find Dante jogging up to the other side of the wall of light, easy grin in place, grime-soaked coat swinging jauntily in the night air – until he runs face-first into what is a surprisingly solid wall of light, that is.

Vergil allows himself a smirk at that.

Dante, naturally, springs up again like a berserk roly-poly marionette with his nosebleed already drying, looking for all the world like he meant to do that.

“You really know how to make things even more of a mess, don’tcha?” Dante calls, eyes darting between the two of them in a rapid assessment for injury even as his tone remains deceptively light. “You two all right? Need me to break in and carry your geriatric bones out of there, Vergil?”

“I am unharmed,” Vergil hisses. He hears Nero stifle a snort behind him, and pointedly does not look at his son as he approaches the centre of the dome. Nothing remains of the lesser demons here – only the shimmering gap in the veil between worlds and the frozen dark blue sphere beside it, Yamato suspended within.

Vergil extends a hand, hovering over the surface of the sphere. Up close, there is an unnatural air to it – flecks of metal slag still dot the space within, as if caught in an eyeblink as they were flung from the piece of Elder Geryon Knight that comprised the centre of the Ragtime.

He hears Nero give a low whistle as he comes up behind him. “That’s a weird one. I’ve never seen one of the devil breakers do that.”

Vergil’s fingers move into the sphere.

Instantly, he feels the Yamato’s familiar presence – but terribly, terribly wrong. It is as though the Yamato has frozen – ice-cold, unmoving, with none of the song it sings for him whenever he holds it in his hands.

And strangely, as his hand slips deeper into the sphere, its motion slows in his vision, although his fingers feel as though they continue to reach…and reach…and reach…

“Hey!”

Something smashes into his cheek, and Vergil stumbles back, blinking.

What had he been doing? He had been…he was…

Vergil comes back to himself slowly.

Clawed hands of blue light – Nero’s demon arms – are holding Vergil upright, shaking him.

“Nero,” he breathes eventually, eyes focusing on the concern on Nero’s features.

His son releases him abruptly.

“What the hell was that?” Nero demands. “You just – your hand went in the sphere, and then you sort of just gradually froze and your eyes glazed over like you were dead–”

Vergil jolts. Looks down at his hand, which appears quite normal in the starlight, half-finger gloves slick with demon blood.

He looks back up at the sphere. It is unchanged, the pieces of molten metal caught half-flight as they had exploded from the center of the devil breaker.

“Most curious,” Vergil murmurs.

Nero makes a frustrated noise. “You need to stop with the vague comments, old man.”

Vergil looks up at the translucent blue dome above them, and wonders.

Then he turns on the spot and begins walking. He hears Nero swear softly behind him and his son’s quick steps following, but Vergil is too occupied with thinking to care.

Time. Ragtime allows its user partial control of time, and the Yamato, space. How many times has Vergil leant into Yamato’s thrumming presence and used its power to bend space to his will and step from one end of a battle to another? Without the Yamato, he cannot move through reality without traversing the intervening space – not through this wall of light, which echoes with the taste of the Yamato’s power.

Dante is waiting impatiently for them when the reach the edge of the dome, Trish and Lady on either side of him.

“What was that?” Dante says. “Why’d you leave the Yamato there?”

Vergil chooses his words carefully. “I believe there is an…event horizon of sorts around the Yamato, for the moment. I found myself drawn into it, without ever reaching the Yamato itself. I am indebted to Nero for removing me.” He hears a small noise of surprise from Nero beside him at those last words.

A furrow forms between Dante’s brows. “Well, that’ll put a wrench in things. We can’t close the portal without the Yamato.”

As though responding to Dante’s words, the portal chooses this moment to flash as it disgorges a half-dozen Empusa.

Vergil’s hand goes automatically to his opposite hip, only to close on empty air.

“On it,” Nero says, already darting away, a feral grin on his lips as his right arm blurs to blue mist and he snaps a new devil breaker into place.

Vergil stands there for a moment, holding Dante’s falsely cheerful gaze. As much as he likes to make fun at the expense of Dante’s intellect, Vergil knows his brother is no fool; Dante will have thought through the possible scenarios in just as much detail as Vergil has.

“So,” Dante says, over the sound of Red Queen eviscerating one Empusa after another.

“So,” Vergil says plainly, “either Nero and I break this barrier, or you do.”

A wicked smile tugs at Dante’s lips, and Lady and Trish leap back as one, familiar enough with Dante’s antics to know what will come next.

Vergil folds his arms and raises an eyebrow in challenge as Dante steps back a few paces, twirls the devil sword Dante a few times, reverses it, and plunges the blade into his own chest. Demonic energy flares from the wound, blasting forth in a blazing wave of orange-red flame, revealing Dante in his full demon form already rocketing towards the barrier at full speed, sword in hand.

BONG.

Vergil looks down at Dante, who blinks blearily up at him, reverted to human form, flat on his back on the other side of the very-much-still-intact barrier.

“Hn,” Vergil murmurs, smirking.

“Ow. I’m okay, by the way,” Dante wheezes, raising an arm only for it to flop down again. “Thanks so much for asking.”

Vergil spares a glance behind him. Nero has cleared the Empusa easily, and is already stalking towards the next group of hellbats that have just appeared through the portal, Blue Rose smoking in his hand.

“It appears I have more scum to deal with.” Vergil gestures as Dante staggers to his feet. “I would suggest you call Nicoletta in the meantime. She might shed some light on this turn of events.”

Dante’s bark of laughter echoes after him as Vergil darts towards the fray. “Ha! If I tell her you called her that she’ll roast your sorry ass!”

Vergil leaps into the fray, summoning an array of blue-lit blades to hail upon the hellbats like deadly rain. But as he reaches into his soul and focuses infernal energy into his free hand to form Mirage Edge, his other hand tight about the Yamato’s empty scabbard, he still feels the absence of the Yamato like a missing limb.

He fuels his power with that irritation, and paints the air with blades.

(:~:)

Dante knows it must be bad when Nico’s starts cursing for real, and not simply for emphasis.

“Dammit, can’t believe I missed this,” she growls, slamming open the door to the Devil May Cry van. “Damned rookie thing to do.” Behind her, the translucent blue wall shimmers on, through which Nero and Vergil’s devastating dance continues, cerulean blades and winged demon arms flashing with occasional crimson flame from Red Queen, the howls of dying demons rising above it all.

Earlier, Dante had tried to dig his way down with devil trigger to the edge of the dome, and found the wall continued downwards – until it curved inwards, obviously forming another half sphere underground.

Four hours in, and neither Nero or Vergil show any signs of tiring, even as the sun begins to rise over the horizon, casting the square in alternate bars of orange and red.

Dante tears his gaze away from the carnage and focuses on Nico. “So what’s this sparkly lil’ thing, then?” he says with a brilliant, unfettered smile, jabbing a thumb over his shoulder at the dome. Lady and Trish lounge against a fountain near the van, passing a bottle of liquor between them.

“So it’s like this, right?” Nico says, stomping over to Dante and slamming a rectangular frame of metal in his hand. “This here is a Ragtime core,” she says, “housin’ a fragment of that badass elder geryon knight V defeated way back when, y’know? It manipulates time, in like, super short bursts. But old Mr Grouch there,” – she points at the flickering form of Vergil – “his fancy schmancy sword cuts through space. From what you two idiots’ve been tellin’ me, the power of the Yamato ain’t something to be messed with. So when father-of-the-year tried to save lil’ snarky there by cutting off that Ragtime, the sword and the fragment must’ve like, reacted–”

“–and messed with space-time,” Dante finishes, staring at the Ragtime core in his hand. “Majorly,” he adds, glancing at the point in the distance where the Yamato still hangs suspended midair, frozen in time now, he understands. “Right, right. I get it. How do we get ‘em out, then?”

Nico pauses,  “Huh, now that’s where the problem is, ya see. Ain’t sure when that thing’s gonna come down. Depends on the time decay. Could be a day. Could be a week, at most.”

“A week?!” Dante barely registers the demonic energy that has seeped out of the edges of his cloak, roiling red with the sudden panic in his gut. “They need to last out a whole week?!”

His mind is spinning a thousand miles a second. During the period he and Vergil had remained in the Underworld, they had often had duels lasting days, by their reckoning – a record two and a half days at the longest, by their best guess. But when either of them needed rest – they required less than full-blooded humans, to be sure, but required it nonetheless – they would find shelter and take turns keeping watch, preventing any curious demons from wandering too close.

But this – a portal wide enough to admit a goliath, without any way of closing it, and a dome of dimension-defying space-time trapping Vergil and Nero in it with nowhere to retreat, to evade, to hide?

This is another thing altogether.

And Vergil does not have the Yamato.

Nico is saying something – something about needing to sit down and do some calculating – but Dante is already turning from her, the piece of Ragtime dropping from his fingers, brushing past Trish and Lady, though they both say something to him as he passes. Something immaterial. Useless.

Dante presses both gloved hands against the cool, solid light of the dome, and stares at his brother and his nephew hungrily, as if he could reach them by will alone.

Vergil and Nero have truly found their rhythm together now – Dante can see it in the way Nero shifts aside a moment before Vergil gestures brilliant blue swords to lance through the space Nero was was a moment before; how Vergil gathers lesser demons with Mirage Edge precisely to where Nero can blaze his way through them with Gerbera.

Watching them, watching the small, pride-filled twitch of Vergil’s lips when Nero moves in for a perfect kill and the exhilarated delight in Nero’s face when the two of them move precisely in tandem – Dante almost does not want to tell them, to break apart this new ground they have gained as father and son.

Dante’s hands form into fists, clenched so tight they hurt.

He takes a breath – a breath so like the moment before he entered Urizen’s den, knowing he would have to kill his brother again – and sends demonic energy flaring through his fists in a booming retort.

Father and son snap shared gazes towards him, and Dante straightens, drags a smile out of the deepest part of him – the part that sometimes makes him sleep for days on end on the couch at Devil May Cry without food or water, an easy smile on his lips for all who enter, lethargy in his bones and the world a grey morass of nothing.

“So, good news, bad news?” he calls, not quite able to stop the crack in his jaunty tone. “Which do you want first?”

Nero slips into full devil trigger to obliterate a group of Hell Judecca. Dante winces at the obvious expenditure of precious demon energy, but the ensuing pause gives Vergil and Nero time to move towards the edge of the dome, where Dante stands.

“Right, when is this thing coming down?” Nero says, shaking out his devil breaker, the metal gleaming in the slow sunrise. “I wanna get back home soon. Kyrie makes a mean breakfast spread.”

“I concur,” Vergil says, flicking a crystalline blade over his shoulder without looking to spear through the first of the new wave of Empusa that now begin to emerge from the portal. “This was an amusing exercise, but I would prefer to return to my notes on Wilfred Owen.”

Dante looks at the both of them, and knows his smile has not quite reached his eyes when Vergil looks at him sharply.

“So, good news first, then,” he says, with a forced smile. “You two are going to have some quality father-son bonding time.”

Nero’s scoff and Vergil’s almost-flinch sends disappointment lancing into Dante’s core. His brother and nephew really are foolish in similar ways, sometimes.

“Get on with it, Dante,” Nero says, fishing Blue Rose out of its holster to obliterate the first Empusa that scuttles close.

“Bad news,” Dante says, feeling his smile slipping, now, “Nico says this dome likely won’t be coming down in a day. Or possibly a week.”

Blue Rose stops firing abruptly. Vergil’s Mirage Blades freeze midair where they had been slicing through the last of the Empusa, and convulse chaotically, pulverizing the demons in an uncharacteristically messy kill.

“Okay,” Nero breathes, lowering Blue Rose. “Okay.” He glances at the portal, where a Fury slowly emerges, claw by blazing claw. “Could you call Kyrie for me?” he says, with a ghost of his usual cocksure smile. “Tell her I won’t be back for breakfast, and not to worry.”

“Sure, will do,” Dante says, flashing a grin at his nephew.

“Dante,” Vergil says, without inflection. He has lowered Mirage Edge now, his opposite hand clenched tight around the Yamato’s empty sheath.

Dante nods once.

There is nothing that needs to be said. They stand on opposite sides of this thin, translucent barrier, and understand each other with the innate familiarity of twins, without needing speech.

(:~:)

A day, or a week.

The first thought that comes to Vergil’s mind is memory – of bitter, formless eons in the Underworld, the Yamato in his hand, hunted down again and again by Mundus’s servant hordes, killing and surviving and surviving and killing until he could do so no more.

Vergil holds Dante’s gaze for a long, long moment before turning to where Nero is already moving towards the Fury, Red Queen in hand. “Nero,” he calls.

“What?” Nero hisses, looking dead ahead.

“You will need to adjust how you fight.”

Now that makes Nero twist on the spot. “I don’t need advice from you,” he spits. “I’m capable of surviving this on my own.”

“This is no time for youthful bluster,” Vergil says coldly, snapping out a mirage blade that spears the Fury through the eye. It crumples immediately, even as another emerges from the portal, followed by two more. “If you wish to survive this and return to Kyrie, I would suggest you listen to one who has far more experience against endless tides of demons than you do.”

For a moment, it almost seems as though his son might refuse. There is furious denial there in his expression, and furled within, an almost helpless vulnerability.

“We need to conserve our demon energy,” Vergil says, in the scant few moments before the first Fury notices them. “Leave Devil Trigger for only the most desperate of situations. Move less. This is not the time for flashy showings of power. Your devil breakers are now too precious to waste. Use them well, and sparingly.”

“And you?” Nero says quietly, revving up Red Queen as the first Fury stalks closer.

“I will manage,” Vergil says, allowing the greaves and gauntlets of Beowulf to shimmer into existence on his arms and legs. “And I will guard your back, as you must mine.”

There is a glimmer of warm surprise in Nero’s gaze at those last words.

Then the Fury is upon them, and they begin as one, as the sun rises well and truly over Fortuna proper.

(:~:)

Dante sets down the phone on the van’s dashboard, and gives in to the urge to bend over his knees and put his head in his hands. The scent of stale cigarette smoke burnt into the squashy passenger seat grounds him.

He has done his best with Kyrie, but a girl of her caliber would figure out something was off sooner rather than later.

Nico’s muttering drifts from somewhere behind him, among the clutter of the van. Numbers, scientific crap Dante never had the attention to learn.

Dante breathes in again, and almost chokes. Perhaps the scent of stale smoke is not a good idea after all – it brings him too close to the crackle of encroaching flame, the creak of twisting wood, huddling much as he is now over his scraped-up knees in the dark, airless closet, waiting for his mother to return with Vergil.

He sits up abruptly, rubs a hand over his eyes.

“Hell,” he whispers, to nobody in particular.

“I’ve got it!”

Nico’s yell galvanizes him out of his seat. He crashes into the back of the van’s small space, eliciting a yelp from Nico.

“Hey, watch the merchandise! These things are fragile!”

“Nico.” Dante hears the demon fighting for release growl under his human voice.

“Okay, okay!” Nico says, flinging up her hands. “I’ve double-checked my calculations and everythin’.  Ninety-eight hours.”

“Ninety–” Dante stops.

“A little over four days,” Lady says behind him, sticking her head in the driver’s side window. Something similar to concern flickers in her eyes, and Dante wants to punch something, anything, to get this feeling out of his chest.

“And Dante,” Lady continues, “We have company.”

Dante spares a moment to curse volubly as he flings open the passenger door.

(:~:)

“Fuck off,” the man with white hair in the grimy red coat says, and the lieutenant bristles.

“Sir,” the lieutenant says, “I am aware demon hunting is your specialty, but it remains that I am under orders to form a perimeter around any remaining demon activity and ensure it remains contained.” He feels his platoon behind him, stood straight and unified against this…hobo-like figure in bloodstained leather.

The man’s blue eyes flash, ice-cold, as he throws his head back in a roar of laughter. “That dome back there,” he laughs, “is keeping everything contained. In fact, it’s keeping everything so well contained it’s keeping two of my family trapped in there, too.”

The lieutenant leans back, fear rooting his feet to the ground, as crimson embers suddenly flare from under this strange man’s coat, and that voice somehow growls with the predatory echo of demonic power.

“So, lieutenant,” the man smiles dangerously, “The name’s Dante. Legendary devil hunter, son of Sparda, and if you don’t know what that means you can ask anyone on this damned island. I could kill two dozen demons before you even drew your sidearm, capiche? So you can take your orders and shove them where the sun don’t shine.”

The lieutenant gulps.

“What’s up with Fortuna, anyway?” the man – Dante, is saying, now. “Since when do they allow military forces from the mainland here?”

“Sir,” the lieutenant says, attempting to look around Dante to where cerulean and crimson light flashes within the dome of light.

“Okay, you know what? I refer you to my associates,” Dante says, and two women suddenly flank him – wearing eye-popping outfits and hefting even more eye-popping weaponry. “Good luck talking to them – Lady, Trish, have fun. I don’t care.” And with that, he stalks off, a hard set to his shoulders.

“Uh,” the lieutenant gapes, then the blonde-haired woman summons lightning to her fingers, and he begins to quaver in his boots.

(:~:)

It is late afternoon the first time Vergil notes Nero slipping up.

Earlier in the day, Dante had said four days – and Vergil had closed his eyes briefly and nodded, Nero had cursed loud and long, and Blue Rose had blasted a molten hole in an approaching Hell Antenora, and that was that.

The first time had been a trifling thing – Nero’s right boot had slipped on a patch of blood-slick ground, and the revolving Chaos he had been holding at bay had skidded past Red Queen’s edge in a shower of sparks. It would have taken a half-inch off his nose, too, if Nero had not blasted it in the face with a shockwave from Gerbera and used the recoil to hurl himself backwards.

Vergil had been there to steady Nero when he landed, and had not missed the telltale tremor of exhaustion in Nero’s shoulder. Then there was the fact that Nero had voiced no cutting denial of Vergil’s aid, only a quiet, panting breath before slipping out from under Vergil’s hand and blurring into motion again.

The second time it happens, Vergil is waiting for it – and so spots the moment Nero takes the full weight of a double Hell Antenora downswing, Red Queen straining against the demon’s massive cleavers – and Vergil moves even as Nero’s ankle buckles under the strain.

Mirage Edge scores sparks against the cleavers’ edge, guiding the blow down and ever-so-slightly to the side so the cleavers pass a handspan from Nero’s wide-eyed face – and Vergil uses the Hell Antenora’s continued momentum to scrape his blade up past the cleavers themselves, amputate both the demon’s arms, and continues the upswing to take off its head.

“Enough,” Vergil says, as he moves to skewer the Hellbat that dares to draw close while Nero plants Red Queen in the ground and staggers to his feet.

“What the hell are you saying?” Nero hisses, in between great gulps of air.

“You need rest,” Vergil continues plainly, drawing a half-circle around Nero to plunge Mirage Edge into a Hell Caina’s throat. “We must each take our turn. Rest. I will guard you.”

“Bullshit,” Nero growls. “I’m not some kid that needs to be looked after–”

Vergil bites back a snarl and snaps towards him. “Nero. I have no time for this.”

For a moment, he stands face-to-face with Nero. His son’s eyes stare defiantly up at him, dry and red-rimmed with exhaustion.

Vergil glances at the portal. Another wave of vermin are coming, scuttling through the portal like an endless plague.

This will not do.

“I am aware you fought for near thirteen hours that day in Redgrave City,” Vergil says, fighting to control the mounting frustration in his voice. “But that was with constant reinforcement and moments to rest. By my count, you have yet to have halted in sixteen hours. Rest. You will need it.”

Nero’s expression twists. “But–”

Vergil growls, breaking their shared stare as he flings out a fan of bluelit blades to hobble the first line of demons. “We cannot expend any more of our precious energy in dispute. I am willing to take the first turn to rest if you wish it. But we must decide now.”

In the corner of his vision, Nero’s step stutters.

A pause, in which demons scream in a circle about them, pulverized by a half-dozen mirage blades.

“Oh,” Nero says, with a hint of awkwardness. “Okay. I mean– you would– for me–?”

“Yes, I would,” Vergil says shortly, and decides to ignore the traitorous hammering of his heart at the broken-off question. “Now go. Rest.”

Nero does not reply, but begins to move towards the edge of the dome farthest from the portal. The two of them methodically clear the demons that scuttle after, and Vergil spares a raised eyebrow at Dante, who gives them both a wan smile from the other side of the wall.

Vergil watches as Nero sits heavily in the dust by the dome’s edge, Red Queen in his lap, one hand caressing the flat of the blade. Dante crouches behind him on the other side of the wall, unspoken pain etched into the edges of his small smile. There are a precious few seconds to breathe here, with the next wave of demons just beginning to emerge from the rip in the veil.

They watch the oncoming demons for a moment, quietly; just the three of them.

Then Nero shifts, and the breath stutters in Vergil’s chest even as Dante’s surprised intake of breath ricochets across the wall of light.

Vergil stares down at Red Queen, reversed in Nero’s grip, with the hilt held up in offering.

“Now, you take good care of her,” Nero says fiercely, blue eyes shining in the afternoon light. “If I find one scratch on her when I wake, you’re paying for repairs. You know how Nico is.”

No amount of smokescreen could mask the obvious emotion behind the offer, through, and Vergil allows Mirage Edge to dissipate as he reaches out and closes his fingers around Red Queen’s grip.

“I swear I will treat her with the respect she deserves,” Vergil says solemnly. He places Yamato’s sheath at Nero’s side.

Dante, the maudlin idiot, is smiling well and truly now, and Vergil makes a face at him that plainly says sentimental fool.

Vergil glimpses the tiniest of grins on his son’s features as he spins on the spot to engage the first Hell Caina, Red Queen revving to life under his gloves.

(:~:)

Nero looks so very young like this, curled up asleep with his head pillowed on his filthy coat, thin red undershirt streaked with grime and sweat.

Dante sits as close to his nephew as he can, one scruffy-booted leg half bent in front of him with an arm resting languidly upon his knee, left temple leaning against the cool dark blue light of the dome wall between them. The Devil May Cry van is two paces away, and a part of him is absurdly grateful that Nico has slipped inside and closed the van doors, giving them a quiet space shielded from view of the military line at the far side of the square.

A military line that now also apparently has reporters and cameras, or whatever. Dante cannot bring himself to care.

Nero slumbers on in the dead, loose-limbed sleep of the utterly exhausted, the setting sun casting drifting shadows upon Blue Rose resting loosely under his fingers. For a moment, that smooth, unmarked face and white hair brings Dante forcefully back to his childhood memories of golden late afternoons, waking from a warm, languid nap to find his brother curled on his side much like Nero is now.

Dante almost extends a hand to brush the grime from Nero’s hair before remembering he cannot. He raises his head a little instead, and watches Vergil continue to carve a bloody semicircle four paces wide around the curled form of his son.

At first glance, it would seem that there is no emotion on Vergil’s face except occasional disgust as he eviscerates demon after demon. But to Dante, familiar as he is to his twin’s every expression, every movement, Vergil’s true intentions are an open book.

There is determination fired into the thin line of Vergil’s mouth, challenge in each flourish of Red Queen as it bites into demon flesh. It is as if Vergil has drawn a line around Nero, marked in demon blood and defended only by his own person – as though Vergil is saying one thing with every stroke of his blade: Do not dare touch him.

“You idiot,” Dante whispers.

It a cruel thing indeed that Vergil’s care for his son is obvious to everyone except himself and Nero.

The sun slips away to its daily death, and the moon rises over Fortuna once more.

(:~:)

Vergil pushes on, a wraith of blue lightning and with a crimson-flamed blade, silhouetted in the light of the rising moon.

A day ago he might have scoffed at the idea of fighting with a blade like Nero’s Red Queen – a sword built for raw power and aggression, so unlike the elegant and precise strikes he favours with the Yamato. But today, here, with wave upon wave of unceasing demons and no time to rest, he is glad for the solid blade in his hand and Nero’s trust in offering it.

The thought that his son trusts him with something so precious as his favoured blade warms his heart, even as he siphons carefully again and again from his core of demon energy, curling it into a small, compressed sphere at his centre, like a man might curl over his only supply of water in an endless desert.

The strain is starting to show itself; in the thinned-out, faraway quality of his demon core, and in the ache of his wrist each time he parries.

Devil Trigger would wipe away his physical exhaustion for a moment, but he dares not use it for fear of depleting his reserves further.

Time slows to a momentary trickle, tinged crystalline blue. Red Queen carves a hissing furrow into a Hell Caina’s head, and the demon lets out a deafening screech as Vergil lobotomises it with a single twist of his wrist.

Vergil spares a quick glance at his son. A small part of him is relieved to see that that Nero is still slumbering on, with Dante’s still, watchful form on the other side of the wall, despite the cacophony. Someone has set up floodlights farther back, beyond the shape of Nicoletta’s van, but Vergil neither has the time nor interest to see whom.

The moonlight has smoothed over Nero’s features, painted him even younger than his years.

Perhaps Vergil should wake him soon, before his own demon core stretches even further, like drops of blood drifting gossamer thin into water.

Nero shifts a little in his sleep. His lips move, forming a single word.

Kyrie.

Three Furies stalk forward at once, fell yellow eyes glistening in the searing heat of their fire-lined features, eyeing the curled form of Vergil’s son behind him.

Vergil takes a breath that tastes of iron – pushes down memory, of fighting and fighting until the Yamato is ripped from his fingers, three red lights suspended above him as dripping black armour is sewn into his skin, each piece stealing a small part of his soul until he is no longer himself–

A little longer, perhaps.

He will let Nero sleep for a little longer.

(:~:)

Dante’s chin slips off the heel of his hand and he jerks awake abruptly, shaking his head to clear it.

Dammit, he’d dozed off.

The roar of Red Queen and the screech of dying demons still echoes across the square, but there is a deeper, mechanized thud-thud-thud repeating over it all – Dante squints up, and winces as a helicopter searchlight daggers light into his face.

Damned military. Damned cameras.

A quick glance to his left reveals his favourite nephew still sleeping soundly beyond the dome wall, and beyond that–

Dante cannot stop the hiss that escapes him as he rolls onto one knee in a half-crouch, staring at the silhouette of his brother, sharply etched into the night by the glow of moonlight and searchlight alike.

Vergil moves almost entirely in a blaze of crimson now, Red Queen a blur in his hands, only the merest whispers of blue mist curling at his feet to lend speed to his strikes. At first glance, it would seem nothing is wrong – the absence of blue blades only a testament to Vergil’s careful conservation of his demon power.

But as Dante watches Vergil wrench Red Queen free of a Hell Atenora’s skull and curl under the flaming arc of a Hell Judecca’s scythe, Dante also notes the brief, blue-tinged flare of Vergil’s demonic aura and hitch in the scythe’s movement that belies a pause in time.

Vergil is drawing on his power to slow time to avoid injury – against demon attacks that he usually would have had time to smirk at before batting aside with a careless flick of his wrist.

Then it happens again a few seconds later with a Fury’s flame-wraught paw, and again, and again, Vergil’s forehead beaded with sweat, and Dante risks a glance upwards again to find the moon truly past its zenith and and beginning its slow descent towards the horizon, and realises with dawning horror that it must be well past midnight, and his brother has been fighting for over twenty-four hours without rest since the dome appeared – against multiple enemies and without the Yamato in his hand.

“Shit,” Dante hisses.

He hammers a fist against the dome wall beside his nephew’s head, and watches with mounting urgency as Nero jerks awake, each movement frustratingly slow.

Dante smashes his fist into the solid light, ignoring the ache crackling across his knuckles. “Dammit, wake up, kid!”

“Mmph,” Nero groans in a voice rough with thirst, rubbing a grimy hand over his face. “Wha – oh.” He stares through the wall of light up at Dante, at the moon high above them, suspended among the early morning stars, and twists to stare at his father’s flickering form.

“Shit,” Nero says, with feeling.

“For once, I totally agree,” Dante growls.

Vergil fights on a few paces away. It is telling of that he has not noticed Nero’s wakening.

Bitter fury flares in Nero’s ice-blue gaze as he scrambles to his feet, tugging his blood-stiff coat over his shoulders. “How long did that dumbass let me sleep? This is bull. I can fight just as well as he can, and he knows it.”

Dante cannot quite stop the surge of disappointment and anger that rushes through him at Nero’s words, and red-yellow embers of demon energy spark out of his fists before he can stop them.

Nero twists to stare at him, already half a step away from the dome edge.

Frustration boils under Dante’s skin. He can feel his devil trigger crawling under his skin, clamoring for release. He wishes he could break through this barrier, grab his brother and nephew, and knock their blockheaded skulls together.

“There isn’t time,” he growls instead. “Get that dumbass to rest before he kills himself trying to give you a few more hours’ sleep.”

Some of the fire seeps from Nero’s expression. It leaves him looking a mixture of stunned and confused, with the tiniest hint of guilt.

Nero moves towards his father, and as the helicopter searchlight washes briefly overhead, Dante raises a hand and flashes the rudest gesture he can think of up at it.

It takes the edge off the convoluted mess that is his thoughts, at least.

(:~:)

Vergil’s existence has narrowed to the Red Queen in his hand and his next opponent – whether Empusa, Fury, Pyrobat, Hell Antenora or any of an endless possession of scum. He stands as the last sentinel before sacred ground behind him, and nothing passes his blade – not even he parries an Empusa’s saw-like jaws only to find a Hell Judecca’s scythe lancing to his left, aiming for the space behind him where he knows Nero is still resting–

Vergil moves before he is fully aware of what he is doing.

As he holds the Empusa at bay with one hand tight on Red Queen’s hilt, he calls on the precious, shallow reserve of his demon power and slows time – enough to press his free hand around the edge of the scythe as it passes towards his left.

The bite of the scythe through the thin leather of his glove and into his palm brings with it a jolt of ice-fed pain, firing adrenaline into his weary limbs as drops of scarlet blood drip down his palm and wrist to scatter like bright crimson coins against the filthy ground.

He revs Red queen once, and the Empusa’s jaw explodes off its head, trailing bits of brain matter with it.

The Hell Judecca leans its full weight into the scythe against Vergil’s left hand, and Vergil grits his teeth against the agony of jagged metal grinding against the bones of his palm–

–and something – someone rips Red Queen from his other hand and beheads the Hell Judecca with a furious yell.

Vergil barely has time to turn his head in shock before a sharp, mechanical click sounds, and a shockwave shudders through his bones as a pure white energy beam the width of his head erupts across the dome, vaporising a swathe of demons at once.

The scythe drops from Vergil’s numb fingers, the cut on his palm healing over near-instantaneously, as he watches Nero flick the twisted remains of the Gerbera to the ground, and snap a Punchline into his elbow with a low curse.

Nero turns burning, icy blue eyes to him, and looks for an instant so like Vergil himself reflected in the shattered mirror of his childhood home that Vergil forgets to breathe.

“Hey, jackass,” Nero hisses, “You might want to get some rest before this kills you.”

Vergil instinctively bristles at that, despite the numb ache in his sword arm that sings with relief at the sudden stop in movement. Mixed with the anger within him is a slow, seeping hurt – that Nero would find his hours of single-minded effort to allow him to rest nothing but an insult.

“I hardly think my life was ever in any danger,” he scoffs, hiding the pain behind this defense much as he brings his sword hand behind his back to hide its telltale shake. He hears Dante’s sharp intake of breath behind him, though, and grits his teeth. Of course Dante would see too much. He always does.

To his surprise, Nero gives him a searching look, glancing at Vergil’s left palm, which still slowly drips blood from his ruined glove despite the healed cut within.

“Just get some rest, will you?” Nero says eventually, as the first of the next wave of demons scuttles closer. “I’ll wake you if I need help.”

That little admission warms Vergil, if only slightly. He almost tells Nero to be careful, but holds his tongue just in time. It would not do to break this tentative accord between them with another insinuation that the might think Nero weak.

Dante is waiting for him with a cocky grin and spread arms, and Vergil scowls at him as he draws closer to the barrier.

“Hey, how’s the old bones doing?” Dante says, all teasing amusement. “Creaking in their joints yet?”

“Shut up,” Vergil says shortly, lowering himself to the ground by the dome wall, hating the way his knees catch as he finally takes his weight off them. For a moment, he simply rests with his back against the wall of light and his head tilted back, eyes closed, breathing. He curls the Yamato’s sheath under his hand, grounds himself to the echo of the Yamato’s song there.

He feels Dante’s presence behind him on the other side of the barrier, that coiled reservoir of demonic energy so much like his own at full power, and knows from the rustle of leather that Dante has mirrored him, so they sit back-to-back with only the thin barrier of light separating him.

“Some day, huh?” Dante says eventually, over the sound of Blue Rose firing and the thud of helicopter blades overhead.

Vergil chuckles once, the dark mirth bubbling up out of his exhausted core to shake his shoulders where they join his aching neck.

“Yes,” he agrees, and leaves it at that.

Dante eventually begins to whistle quietly behind him, a tuneless series of notes that belies Dante’s poor taste in music, and Vergil almost tells him to stop before he feels his battle-tightened muscles slowly relaxing to the quiet sound, so different to the screams of demons and the whir of machinery overhead.

Vergil means to meditate at first, silently reciting the lines of William Blake’s poetry to clear his mind, but soon his chin drops towards his chest, and the world fades to grey mist, with the tuneless melody of his brother’s voice curling around him in the cold night air.

(:~:)

Vergil snaps awake to Nero’s shout.

“Ahhh! Dammit!”

Vergil is on his feet, Mirage Edge flaring to full brightness in his free hand, before Dante’s answering shout would have woken him proper.

What he sees clenches an icy hand around his heart and squeezes it fit to burst.

Silhouetted in the early dawn light, Nero twists away from the purple-black greatsword buried in his side, the cyan skin of his devil form blazing about him to seal the spurt of dark blood that erupts from the wound at his side before he reverts to human form, a snarl on his lips.

The Proto Angelo looks dismissively down at Nero’s panting form, and raises its sword overhead as though to strike again as a half-dozen Scudo Angelos close in.

Vergil has thrown open the well of his demon powers and let his full demon form blaze out of his core before before he even registers Dante’s warning shout; he crosses the space between himself and his son in a heartbeat, and the Proto Angelo’s outline blurs as Vergil gathers a sizzling sphere of demonic energy into his hand and sends it blasting into the Proto Angelo’s centre, sending a thundering shockwave exploding outwards.

Flith. Scum. Foul vermin of Mundus’s creation.

Through the roaring fury in his ears, Vergil hears the howling screams of the Scudo Angelos as the shockwave rips jagged pieces off their silver armour.

Vergil lands light-footed beside his son, allowing his demon form to dissipate into the wind, and nearly staggers in place as the whiplash when his receding demon energy drains into the shallow pool at his core. He notes that the sun is rising over the tops of the buildings on the far side of the square now – he has had a scant few hours’ rest, but it seems that what demonic energy he as replenished in that time was consumed all-too-rapidly by his burst of power.

“Thanks,” Nero says beside him, uncharacteristically quietly, and Vergil spares him a glance as they whirl into battle again as one.

There are shadows under Nero’s eyes now, a cracked quality to his lips. Vergil and Dante require less sustenance than full-blooded humans, but he supposes there too is a limit to Nero’s demon powers. Vergil is suddenly aware of the dryness of his own mouth, the ache in his throat with each even breath.

Even in Hell, there had been sustenance to be found, as foul-tasting as it was. He had not starved or thirsted for water, even in the Underworld.

Not here. There is nothing here – even the broken fountains under the dome have long since dried up.

Vergil feels Nero mirroring him, fusing their fighting styles together into one, like binary planets caught in each others’ orbits – guarding his father’s blind spots where Vergil guards his son’s. Shields shatter under their blades as they battle their way through the Scudo Angelos, leaping over and under and around the purple-fired blade of the Proto Angelo above.

Hordes of demons are pouring out of the portal now, Empusa and Hell Antenora and Pyrobats and Hell Judeccas and Baphomets and Furies and a whole Behemoth, and Vergil hears Nero’s wordless yell behind him as they fight back-to-back now, a sea of demons on all sides like a rising tide threatening to drown them, the Proto Angelo raising its greatsword as though to cleave them apart–

–The tide breaks around them like a storm surge rushing by their feet, and Vergil does not know if he imagines the press of Nero’s back against his, solid and warm and familiar, buttressing him against the tide as he does his son.

They fight on together, wordless, as claws and blades open shallow cuts in their skin and draw arcs of blood that heal near-instantaneously at first, then gradually slow, enough so that their hands turn slick with congealing blood as the sun climbs high into the sky and the oppressive heat burns down on them.

The Proto Angelo crumbles into dust as Mirage Edge and Red Queen plunge into its chest together, then gaps appear between the demons – a terribly slow, gradual thing, until finally Vergil skewers the last hellbat with a mirage blade as he hears Nero’s desperate yell of exhausted victory behind him, turning to see a Fury’s head toppling off its neck to scatter brains across the ground.

The portal shimmers ahead, a few stray Empusa scuttling from it, but none of the hordes of the past hours.

Red Queen clatters to the ground, Nero’s hands and knees following a moment after. Vergil makes to reach him but finds his body betraying him, sending him down on one knee, leaning his full weight on Mirage Edge, plunged tip-first into the blood-slick ground.

Vergil muses – through the sawing of Nero’s breath and Vergil’s own desperate efforts to control his breathing – that it is one thing to fight Dante for two days on end, focusing on one opponent to the exclusion of all else; but it is another thing altogether to face horde upon horde of demons with nowhere to turn, no sustenance, and nothing but the endless rush of oncoming death, again and again with no rest.

“How long?” Nero gasps, face an almost sheet-like white.

The sun blazes above them, well path its zenith and moving towards the West.

Vergil opens his mouth to answer, but then the next, mercifully scattered wave is upon them, and his response is lost as they both stagger to their feet and fight on.

(:~:)

“Forty-one hours,” Nico’s voice sounds from behind Dante.

Dante jerks away from the barrier as he looks at the mug of coffee that appears under his chin. He turns dry, red-rimmed eyes towards Nico, and accepts the cup automatically.

“It feels longer,” Dante says instead, voice hoarse.

“I know,” Nico replies, squatting beside him and pushing up her glasses with one hand. “Whole world’s gone to hell, ain’t it?”

Dante does not have the energy to reply. The slow lethargy that sometimes comes over him in the particularly lonely watches of the night has spread down his limbs again, leaving him desiring nothing and desiring everything at once, formless, useless, each movement of his hands a faraway thing like he is watching it all from somewhere other than his own body.

“Hey,” Nico says, reaching out and tapping his shoulder.

Some of the scalding hot coffee tips out of Dante’s cup and onto his lap, searing through his dirty trousers in a flash of pain that is gone just as quickly, but Dante cannot bring himself to care, even as Nico swears and rushes to apologise.

Then a familiar crystalline voice sounds from somewhere beyond the Devil May Cry Van, and Dante shudders, the world rushing in on him again with forceful clarity, and he throws back the scalding coffee in one long gulp, uncaring for the burn in his throat, throws down the mug to Nico’s protests, and darts around the van in a half-sprint.

Kyrie crashes into his chest halfway around the van, red-gold hair gleaming in the noon sunlight.

Dante hears the clicking of dozens of cameras and raises his head to glare at the scrum of reporters behind the military line twenty metres away, raising a hand to flash every rude gesture he can think of at them. They respond with even more flashing cameras and a thrown question or two, but then Trish steps up to them with lightning in her hands, and the crowd goes quiet.

“Let me go – let me go, Mr Dante–”

There are unshed tears in Kyrie’s soft voice, but also an edge of steel there that reminds Dante so much of his mother that he has to blink away the illusion.

“In here,” Nico is saying, then the van door slides open and they help Kyrie into the van together, sliding the door shut behind them. The heat is stifling in the van, but the clamor of the crowd and the furious sounds of the battle have dulled, at least.

Dante crouches by Kyrie’s side as she breaks down into tears in the privacy the enclosed space affords her.

“Mr Dante,” she says, through hitching sobs. “I have to see him.”

Dante opens his mouth, and closes it again. He wishes once again that it were he in the dome instead of Nero – Nero would know what to do, what words to say. Dante might have a laugh for everyone, friend or foe, easy jokes and jaunty smiles, but in the realm of sympathy and comfort he knows he does only marginally better than Vergil.

“Hey hey hey,” Nico says suddenly, settling next to Kyrie on the narrow couch and pulling her into a hug. “It’s okay, Kyrie. Your boyfriend may be an idiotic lil’ brat but he’s tougher than a behemoth. He’ll get through this just fine.”

“But–”

“You shouldn’t be here, Kyrie,” Dante says softly, and though Nico glares at him he pushes on. “It won’t do you any good to see him, and he can’t have any distractions right now.”

“I know,” Kyrie says through her tears. “I know.”

An audible gasp rises from the crowd outside, and even as Kyrie’s eyes widen and Nico swears, Dante is gone in a flash of crimson embers from the humid heat of the van and pressed against the blue-lit wall of the dome, useless, flaring demon energy seeping from under his coat.

What has just occurred becomes quickly obvious.

Nero is shaking out his right arm with a small, bitter smile, flexing his human fingers as the remains of a Gerbera scatter to the ground at his feet.

But he does not reach to his belt for another devil breaker.

Because he has no more.

Dante watches Nero shrug minutely at Vergil’s questing glance before moving back into the flow of the battle, blue-lit demon arms bursting from his back.

“Aw, hell,” Nico curses softly behind him.

Dante turns on the spot. To his relief, the driver’s side window is only partially lowered, Nico leaning half out of the van, Kyrie nowhere in sight.

They stare at each other for a long, long moment, Nico uncharacteristically quiet.

Then: “Take Kyrie home,” Dante says hoarsely.

“Sure can do, Boss,” Nico replies, with none of her usual cheer. “You’ll be okay on your own?”

Dante quirks a small smile at that, a shadow of his easy smile. “With Lady and Trish to hold back the crowd? Peachy.”

And the afternoon wears on to evening, measured in drops of blood.

(:~:)

Sunrise.

Fifty-four hours in – two and a half days.

Nero raises dry, red-rimmed eyes to meet the rising sun, and feels the urge to laugh bubble up inside him.

Not that he actually laughs. He is breathing too hard to do anything but wheeze.

Blood seeps down his temple from a cut on his hairline, trickling scarlet down his chin to drip onto the hand he presses to the filthy ground. His demon arms have faded into the air – he cannot afford to keep them out, not when what precious demon energy he has remaining is needed for healing and movement. The ragged rents in the back of his coat expose strips of torn skin to the chill morning air.

It will heal. It will all heal – but much, much more slowly than it should, over long minutes instead of seconds.

Vergil is a blurred shadow of motion to Nero’s right. Each elegant movement of Mirage Edge scatters bright, crimson drops into the air from a long slash across Vergil’s chest, knitting together gradually, inch by slow inch, thirty seconds where it should have taken an instant.

Nero presses one hand to the ground, breath haggard, brushing the congealing blood and sweat out of his eyes.

“C’mon, Nero,” Dante’s voice calls from somewhere behind him, raw and agonised and with a low note of fear that clenches around Nero’s gut. “Get up.”

“I’m trying, dead weight,” Nero hisses, staggering to his feet. He regrets the words the moment they tumble out of his mouth, but even as he half-stumbles towards the nearest demon and blasts two new holes in its face with Blue Rose, loaded with its last clip of ammo, Nero spares a glance over his shoulder to find Dante half bent with guilt at the dome wall, one hand curled against the barrier as though he has just slammed a fist into it.

“Dammit, I didn’t mean–” Nero croaks through his dry throat. “I just–”

“Leave it,” Vergil hisses as he moves closer, the two of them falling into a familiar pattern now, saving movement, guarding each other’s backs. “There will be time for sentiment later. For now, survive.”

Survive.

Survive…

Blue Rose runs out of ammo midnight that night, seventy-two hours in, and Nero is so, so tired by that point that it only registers when the gun clicks uselessly in his hand, and he watches the Fury’s jaws gape wide over his head, his dodge far too slow, his demon form out of reach.

I’m sorry, Kyrie.

Then there is a blur of blood-streaked black leather in front of him, and Vergil grunts in agony as the Fury’s jaws snap shut over his left arm, jagged teeth grinding into bone and flesh with a horrible crack.

Dante’s shout echoes out somewhere far, far away, somewhere near the endless vault of stars that is the sky and the floodlights that blind from above, and Red Queen moves in Nero’s hand, the pain in his wrist mirroring his wordless scream as he jams the blade in the Fury’s burning yellow eye.

Vergil tears his arm out of the Fury’s slackening jaws with an agonised shout that melds with the Fury’s roar – so loud and so not Vergil that Nero almost freezes there and then – drops the Yamato’s sheath, reaches up with his ruined arm, wraps his bloodied fingers around Nero’s on Red Queen’s hilt, and revs Red Queen once.

The Fury’s head explodes.

Red Queen plunges into the ground, both Nero and Vergil’s hands still wrapped around the hilt, blood-slick fingers intertwined.

Nero finds himself kneeling with his brain-spattered face no more than a handspan from Vergil’s ruined arm, with a jagged end of a white bone poking up through Vergil’s tattered sleeve, blood cascading down to the ground below.

“Shit,” he whispers, as his empty stomach clenches.

The next wave of demons begins to scuttle out of the portal ahead.

“Nero.”

The word is the merest susurration of air.

Nero turns to his father, whose hand is trembling where it wraps around Nero’s on Red Queen’s hilt.

“You need to…you need to set the bones, or my arm will not heal correctly,” Vergil whispers, lips white, pale eyes somehow bleached further of colour. “I cannot do it myself.”

“What do I...” Nero says swallowing against his dry throat.

“Pull…my wrist...one way, and my elbow another,” Vergil says. “It does not matter if it is not exact. I will heal. Quickly. We have no time.”

Nero pauses, watching the moonlight glisten off the sickly white of bone.

Nero’s arm had looked much the same, the raw, torn ends of bone stark white against the fountain of blood gushing onto his garage floor, when Vergil had taken his Devil Bringer from him.

“Nero. Now.”

Nero fixes one trembling hand around his father’s wrist, the other around the elbow, and pulls.

Vergil howls into Nero’s shoulder, one awful, long-drawn scream, breath hot against Nero’s neck, then the Lusachia are upon them and Vergil has heaved Nero to his feet with his good hand, Mirage Edge flickering to life in his palm the moment it leaves Nero’s arm.

Nero does not know if he glimpses or imagines Dante’s curled form against the barrier a little ways off, head in his hands, silhouetted by dozens of camera flashes behind him.

Then his father is at his back, and Red Queen is in his hand, and he survives.

(:~:)

The first time one of them is run clean through, there are screams from the crowd beyond the barrier.

The sun falls slowly from its zenith.

Eighty-seven hours. Three and a half days in.

Vergil had used Beowulf to leap in front of his son where he could no longer conjure mirage blades, and the Proto Angelo had rammed its greatsword in Vergil’s chest up to the hilt.

Nero screams. Or hears Dante scream. He doesn’t know which, anymore.

Vergil coughs once, scattering droplets of blood that sizzle on the flaming purple sword buried in his chest, and slides off the blade as the Proto Angelo raises its sword again in preparation for the killing blow.

Nero feels something break within him.

It is a shattering he has not felt in a long time – the howling, bitter rage of an orphan child surging up from the depths of memory, when he had been given worth only for his white hair and its similarity to Sparda, when he had been shunned by all except Kyrie and her family.

When he had wished so desperately for a father.

Then everything that had happened since, until the Qliphoth, and finding out that the same monster that stole his arm was his jerk of a father–

Nero would not let his father die. Not for Nero. Not like this.

The same surge of emotion rises up within him as it did on the roots of the Qliphoth, knowing that he might lose his father or his uncle or both.

It draws on reserves of demon energy he did not know he had, flares white-hot wings from his back, turns his hands to claws and washes his skin into cyan, and the Proto Angelo howls in agony as Nero – cerulean energy cascading in thundering waves from his full demon form – rips the greatsword from the demon’s grip and thrusts it straight down through the Proto Angelo’s mouth and into its chest.

The Proto Angelo collapses into sable dust, but Nero is already turning to the next demon, then the next, all formal fighting technique gone, death in his claws and swords in his winged arms.

He catches glimpses, through his blinding rage. Glimpses of Dante, in full demon form, hammering fist after flaming fist uselessly into the barrier, screaming his brother’s name.

Nero collapses to his hands and knees by his father’s side in a dome momentarly empty of opponents, the last of his demon energy slipping out of him like dreamsand between his fingers, and nearly sobs with relief when Vergil coughs once, weakly, and struggles to sit up, blue-black scales glittering around the wound in his chest as it knits itself slowly back together.

“Dad,” Nero whispers, as his vision greys at the edges.

Vergil looks at him, a stunned expression on his features.

Nero realises he has spoken aloud.

They stare at each other, father and son, as the portal disgorges yet another group of demons.

In the blazing noon heat, the scent of death heavy around them, Vergil’s eyes glisten with something other than the sunlight. There is something like a wild sort of joy in his face – it makes him look ten years younger, wipes the exhaustion from his features.

“Sweet dreams, form a shade,” Vergil whispers.

Nero stares at him. Blake, his mind supplies, but he has no breath to wonder further.

Still wearing the same expression of stunned joy, Vergil staggers to his feet. The wound in his chest flashes blue as it knits over completely. He takes a single step to his left to place himself solidly between the line of oncoming Hell Antenora and Nero. The ghostly outline of Mirage Edge flickers in his hand for a moment, then dissipates, wavering outline too weak to maintain its form.

Vergil blinks down at his empty hand, and Beowulf’s greaves and gauntlets shimmer into place a moment before the first cleaver comes down, shattering on Vergil’s left greave.

Nero looks up at Vergil, then, and wonders when his father had begun to love him.

The thought allows him to wrap numb fingers around Red Queen’s hilt and use the sword to push himself to his feet.

He staggers up next to his father, step slowly steadying, sword in hand, and fights not only for himself – but for Vergil, too. For their future as father and son, and for all they have missed together.

And the afternoon wears on until nightfall.

(:~:)

This new, shared knowledge between them spurs them on until just past midnight.

Four days. Mere minutes before the dome will fall, by Nico’s calculations.

The world has slowed to but a dream, now. Vergil sees nothing but his son – more blood visible than skin, one broken arm dangling uselessly at his side, Red Queen flashing in his one good hand.

Vergil himself feels his heart thudding painfully with every movement with Beowulf, shuddering with his thrumming heart as cuts open up on his skin – his back, his limbs, his forehead, glancing hits from demons he can no longer fully dodge.

Two ghosts dancing a broken, necromancer’s dance in the silver moonlight, broken forms pale under the torn rags of their clothing, dripping blood ever-so-slowly to the hungry earth to mix in the churned mud under their feet.

There is a moment when they crush one last Riot’s head as one, Beowulf greave against the flat of Red Queen’s blade, and Nero overcompensates and stumbles over Red Queen and against Vergil. They fall to their knees in the dust together, Vergil trying unsuccessfully to support Nero’s weight, an arm around Nero’s side, and they rest there for a few heartbeats, both staring at the portal’s shimmering depths as if daring anything else to come through.

Then the world plays a cruel trick on them.

Vergil feels Nero’s breath hitch against his shoulder as a giant, shaggy hand emerges from the portal, followed by another, then four beady eyes set in a snarling face.

“What dread hand and what dread feet,” Vergil murmurs, as the goliath emerges fully, towering above them, blinking fell eyes at the starry sky above, the glittering dome and the floodlights beyond.

A cruel, cruel twist of fate.

Gasps from those observing rise into the night air from the edges of the square.

Dante screams once behind them, an exquisitely raw sound of denial.

Vergil has never heard Dante sound like this – not at Temen-ni-gru. Not even as Nelo Angelo, or as V, or on the Qliphoth.

“If thought is life, and strength and breath,” he whispers, as clearly as though his book of poetry is in his hands, and feels Nero shift against him.

Vergil does not know where he finds the strength to pull Red Queen from Nero’s fingers, or what allows him to stand, though Nero fumbles at his wrist as though trying to stop him.

The Goliath looks down at him, opens the slavering maw in its abdomen.

Vergil’s vision greys at the edges, and he knows he cannot take another step, or he will fall. He sways a little in the night air, takes a breath–

–and uses the last of his strength to hurl Red Queen like a lance towards the Goliath’s face.

The Goliath plucks the blade from the air like a metal toothpick, examines it for a moment with cruel intelligence in its eyes, and, in a blindingly fast movement, reaches down and plunges Red Queen directly through Vergil’s gut.

Nero screams, a ragged, broken sound.

Vergil looks down at the blade in his abdomen, at the blood sluggishly seeping from its edges, and feels no pain at all.

He falls.

His head smashes against the ground, and Red Queen comes to rest hilt-first against the stone.

Hand at his face, sword calluses against his cheekbone. Someone is cradling his head, as the goliath’s enormous, furred shape blocks out the light of the moon overhead.

“Dad,” someone is whispering, as a hand finds his, blood-slick fingers curling around his own as a figure curls over him, shielding him with their own body. White hair brushes his forehead.

Nero.

The scent of blood, and smoke, and his son’s warm hand in his rapidly cooling palm.

Vergil attempts to raise a hand to push his son to safety – to allow whatever comes to strike him alone.

He fails. Nero clings to him, hair brushing his cheek, one good arm wrapped tightly around Vergil’s chest, and Vergil feels incredibly, wonderfully warm.

Then a whisper of air, as the dome vanishes.

Noise and heat and light explode above; Dante is screaming, crimson energy blasting from his full demon form, and the goliath is gone from Vergil’s sight as suddenly as an eyeblink, and the stars are suddenly there, wheeling above and close enough to touch.

If there is one thing Vergil regrets – here, in what must be his final moments – he regrets all the time he had wasted not knowing his son.

“Nero,” he murmurs, into the grey emptiness. His sight is all but gone, and all he feels is his son’s hand in his, tightening desperately around his fingers.

He hopes it is enough, and that Nero understands.

Vergil closes his eyes.