Chapter Text
Vergil splashed cold water across his face, letting its icy sting ground him into the present. He was home, in his bathroom. None of it had been real—at least not this time. Nightmares clung to him harder with every piece of armour Dante removed, memories slipping out of his subsconscious, invading his dreams and plaguing far too many waking hours. He no longer counted how often a single word had staggered him out of reality. When he washed dishes, the prickling of hot water on his skin brought back hell’s scorching flames wrapping his body. When he stepped on a sharp rock, he felt the sting of demon roots through his heels, climbing alongside his bones, holding his body like a doll. Everything and anything brought the torture back to life, turning his days into a painful glaze.
Pain, though… Pain, Vergil had learned to deal with. He had gone through so much of it, what was the ghost of torture against his iron will? Vergil would deal with pain as he always had: gritting his teeth, stiffening his back, and enduring the grind until it became better. The real issue, he’d found, was not the physical pain.
All too often, Mundus’s otherworldly voice filled his ears, reminding him he was nothing, only a meaningless speck meant to serve, a weakling tainted by human blood. It haunted him day and night, declaring with utmost confidence that no one would care if he vanished. Dante hadn’t sought him a decade ago, why would he now? No, he was alone, unloved, could not rely on anyone but himself, his own power. And those words… those words sounded too much like his own, once, and they seared Vergil’s heart and mind harder than any flame. Against them, his only shield was Nero’s bright smile and eager voice, and Dante’s ever-annoying, invasive presence.
Vergil needed them, needed his family to hold him tight, steady him before he spiralled out again and believed the lies. Nero slept, however, and Dante was either in his dirthole napping or out hunting, so Vergil had nothing but cold water and his own willpower. He splashed himself again, harder this time, letting the water run through his hair and weigh it down before it slid along his neck, its path easy to track until it hit the accursed breastplate. Dante had torn all but the chest and back pieces of the armour now, but the last pieces had knocked Vergil out for a full day and left him exhausted for weeks. With the incoming trip to their secret camping site—a full weekend out in the sun which was bound to drain him further—they’d opted to wait for the last two massive chunks of armour.
Vergil hated it. He did not want to wait anymore. They had needed half a year to rip every bit of this armour off—half a year in which he could barely muster the strength to be the parent Nero needed, half a year in which, in fact, Nero took more care of him than the other way around. School was right around the corner, and Vergil had wanted to be healed by then. Now he knew he wouldn’t be, and the failure was acid in his stomach.
It wasn’t fair. Not that life had ever been fair to him, anyway, and Vergil wouldn’t have wasted time to lament this misfortune if it didn’t also affect Nero. His son should not have to be a caretaker at five. He should be running outside with friends, or playing ball with his goofy uncle, or devouring books faster than the library allowed lending. Nero had already been cut off from so many childhood joys, to think Vergil himself was now blocking out even more…
Vergil’s grip on his sink tightened. This could not stand. He stared at himself in the mirror, pushing aside the bang hiding the fissures of corruption lining his face, a clear brand of his failure. They still ran deep, although they no longer had the faint glow of power Nelo Angelo’s armour had granted them. The red of his eye had faded with time, too, but it wasn’t gone entirely yet.
Maybe… maybe he could make them vanish.
The idea came unbidden, borne out of frustration and another sleepless night. Every time Dante tore off a piece of the armour, his previous powers returned, too. He’d regained his peculiar sense of time and space, could feel it almost within reach. Last week he had managed a few brief blue sparks, sign his summoned swords weren’t that far either. Vergil—the man he’d been once, the one Mundus had shattered into small, cutting pieces, the one Nero had loved so deeply and readily called demon dad… that man was just around the corner. Perhaps if he only gave a little push…
Vergil stared at himself, inhaled deeply, then slicked the bang backward with the rest of his hair. He steeled his breath and reached within, where the core of his power waited. Once, Nero had asked him to transform to prove he was his dad, and Vergil had been unable to. The armour had clamped down on his power, sucking it away before he could shift, using Vergil’s own energy to grant him strength and speed but keep him in line. Mundus’s power had always come at the cost of obedience. Vergil’s own strength meant freedom—it was his one tool to protect himself and others, and without it, he was not himself.
The armour pulsed as he wrestled his devil power away from its cage, letting it suffuse his bones and sink into every inch of his body. Cold washed over Vergil, a familiar strength more grounding than any water could ever be, and it tore a sharp chuckle out of his throat. This… He had no words for the sense of home it brought him, the way a hundred broken pieces of him suddenly joined together, reforming a mosaic once forgotten, painting his self in ways no poet could hope to capture. Scales crept alongside his arms, and a few tears rolled out as blue fire.
The first bone in his back snapped.
Vergil cried out at the sudden pain, but he’d barely made sense of the brutal agony when a second bone followed suit, breaking. His legs gave under him and he collapsed to his knees, back hunched as muscles and bones snapped and fused back, stretching out into wings through unspeakable pain. One deployed fully, bending and cracking the armour piece on his back to carve his way out, but the other stuck under. Vergil gagged at the clarity of the sensation, the pull of muscles as the folded wing half jutted out, parts trapped under the metal.
He did not get a chance to think more closely of what was happening to him. Fire poured out of his eyes, his entire body clenched, and his skull exploded in brutal, mind-wiping pain. Vergil collapsed, darkness dragging him to the edge of consciousness as his body struggled to get through the devil trigger, his meagre power too weak to carry out his will in full.
###
Sometimes Nero woke up and his da’ wasn’t in bed. He didn’t sleep well, not anymore. That didn’t worry Nero, because his da’ said it was normal and it would go away with time. He never wanted to say how long ‘time’ was, but Nero had learned not to ask questions. Da’ couldn’t talk much, even now, so everyone was very careful about when they really wanted him to speak. He kept the questions and asked them from zio Dante and the Lady. Sometimes even from Trish, but she had strange answers. Everything was already confusing, and she made him feel lost.
So Da’ wasn’t in bed, but Nero wasn’t scared. He could still feel him in the house. He had gotten better at feeling demons. Sometimes he did nothing but sit close to his da’ and feel him. It was a bit weird to do that, because he didn’t feel the same all the time. Sometimes he felt like Mister Knight, and sometimes he felt like Da’ from before. It changed when Zio Dante came and they removed the armour, too. Nero didn’t understand it, but he liked when his Da’ felt like he’d always had before, so he paid attention. Those were the days Da’ had more words, even if they were very short days because he needed to rest more, too.
Then Da’s presence flared, the way it did before, when he made himself warm and scaly, and Nero’s heart jumped. Was his demon dad back? This was him! It didn’t feel like Mr. Knight at all! Eyes wide, Nero scrambled out of his blankets and jumped down.
His father screamed, raw and loud. Something heavy fell.
“Da’!”
Nero half-gasped, half-yelled the exclamation. His tiny feet hit the ground fast as he ran out of the room. Da’ was hurting, and his presence wavered in strange ways, and this wasn’t normal, it wasn’t. His heart had bundled up all tight and he had tears in his throat. Blue light radiated from the bathroom, so Nero dashed for it.
“Da’!”
He found him sprawled in their bathroom. And he had been right about his da's demon—he was there—but only horror filled Nero. Everything about it was wrong wrong wrong.
Blue scales only covered half of his face, and the two big horns Nero had liked to grip while riding on his da's shoulders were all cracked and brittle. One of his wings stretched out at a weird angle and the other only half jutted out. Tears filled Nero's eyes: it looked broken and snapped. His da' growled and raked a dark scaly hand across the tiles. When one of his claws snapped and he howled, Nero jumped back with a cry of fear.
He hurt. He had to hurt and he was all wrong and his movements jerked so much. Nero's heart pounded in time with his da's rattling gasps, and with the flickering of his old aura. Panic crawled through him, freezing him to the spot as blue energy ran over his da's body like tiny bolts of lightning. What was happening? Why—
His da's screamed again, and something popped, and he arched and hit his head on the ground. A whole horn crumpled into dust and it was too much for Nero. He scrambled out of the room, his vision blurred, his body shaking. He didn't want his da' to suffer. He wanted them to be happy again, to play in the park or read books or ride his bicycle. But there was always something—fatigue or pain or Uncle Dante coming to remove armour or the sun being too strong and now-now this! And what if his da' was dying and he would be gone again, and Nero loved Uncle Dante and the Lady but he didn't wanna go back to that, he didn't, he—
He knew what to do.
They had showed him. They had showed him the buttons to press on the phone to call for help, told him it was important if demons came. And there weren't any monsters but Nero was so scared, and he didn't know what else to do. He ran to the phone on the wall and dragged a chair under it, climbing up as the terrifying clang of his da's armour smashing into something echoed into the house. He grabbed the receiver, and his hands shook so bad he almost dropped it. But Nero held on, sweaty palms on it as he smashed the number in. Every new ring made his heart jump. Please please please answer.
"Vergil?"
Relief washed through Nero at the Lady's voice and he sobbed into the phone. His words wouldn't come, staying deep in his belly where they were safe.
"Nero, is that you?"
She didn't sound drowsy at all now. Nero nodded, then remembered she couldn't see. He reached deep inside to drag the words out. They came in the form he knew best.
"Zia Lady! Da' è male. È… è…" Nero stopped, sniffed. They needed English. The Lady spoke English. "He's a demon. Half. I mean… he's—"
Another sharp scream cut him off. The Lady said some bad words in the phone so she must have heard.
"Hide somewhere safe and wait for me, Nero. I'm coming."
She hung up the phone, but Nero didn’t. He stared at the receiver because that was easier than looking back towards the bathroom. He couldn’t breathe right, and he was so dizzy, and everything was wrong. But the Lady was coming, and if she needed help she would call his zio, too, and they would make everything right again. Or at least the way it’d been, before tonight. Nero sat down, small hands around the phone, hoping she would be here very very fast.