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Dante woke with a gasp for air. His body felt like it was on fire and his heart was hammering in his chest. Looking around, he realized he was at home, in his bed and not on a crumbling island with falling stone and demon ash surrounding him. He was home and he just had a nightmare. At this point he was used to them, plaguing his subconscious nearly every time he tried to get a full night's rest. But this wasn’t just any nightmare, it was a memory. A memory of one of the worst days of his life.
He sighed and rubbed the remaining sleep from his eyes. Getting a shower would help him wake up and get rid of the sticky feeling from being drenched in sweat. Turning the temperature all the way cold he stepped in and sighed as the cold helped his overheated skin. He closed his eyes for a moment to relish the feeling, and allowing his mind to wander and process the nightmare he had just awoken from. “Been about 20 years now. Since that day, thought I lost everything. Sure I got a new close friend in Trish, and I was finally able to avenge my mom but it cost me my brother, the only family I had left. I thought I was all alone after that day.”
Dante sighed, reaching for his favorite strawberry scented shampoo, “But I’ve sure as hell gained a lot since then too.” Trish eventually went on to do her own thing but as soon as she met Lady, they got along like a house on fire…… He shook his head, maybe best to leave that analogy alone. Still, they would tag-team nagging him about his diet or his money habits, but he knew they were doing it because they cared about him.
When Patty started hanging around it had actually helped him get back on his feet and out of the depressive funk he had been in since that day. Hell if her mom hadn’t shown up when she did he would’ve signed the paperwork to officially bring her into his family. And while that didn’t happen, she still makes it a point to keep him in her life. Hell she had even slipped up and accidentally called him “Dad” once. She had blushed and stammered but she didn't take it back, and he would never live it down if he had shown how much that meant to him. Seriously, he almost cried.
Morrison’s involvement may be more that of a business partner, but Dante still considered him family. The older man was honestly the closest thing he had to a father figure and Dante knew he’d always be able to trust him. That was why he had left the deed to the shop with him. He hadn’t planned on returning if he was truly about to be forced to kill his brother again. And he knew Morrison would pass the ownership of his life’s work to someone who truly deserved it and would treat it with respect, someone like Nero.
“Speaking of the kid,” He thought and the suds finally were completely rinsed from his hair, and reached now for the handmade rose scented soap that was gifted to him from the Fortuna couple. Nero’s existence shook his whole world. He had gone to Fortuna island to stop the weird cult that worshipped his father, and get his brother’s sword back. But the discovery of his nephew had brought back a feeling he hadn’t had in ages, hope. Dante wanted so badly to tell Nero everything about their family, about how happy he was that he wasn’t the only one left. But seeing him and Kyrie together after the battle gave him pause. He would have to tell his nephew that his father was dead, and he had been the one to kill him. That the only other person of Sparda’s direct bloodline was someone that had spent his whole life jumping from tragedy to tragedy. And when Dante looked how happy the kid was already, he couldn’t ruin that. His demonic blood seemed watered down enough that he didn’t need to worry about being hunted by the entire underworld. So he kept that little detail to himself for five years. Would’ve kept it his whole life if Vergil hadn’t come back out of the blue.
And Vergil, well… the day after they cut down the qliphoth together, he had asked Dante how long he intended to stay and ‘keep an eye on him’. When Dante replied, the surprise was noticeable on his brother’s face. Dante let out a soft laugh at the memory. “As long as it takes, the ladies and Nero can take care of things topside until we come back. Or until we hunt every demon down here to extinction. I’m not leaving you down here again, not because I don’t trust you… well okay yeah I don’t. But because I want to keep you in my life brother. We were never meant to be separated like that for so long, after all we’re two sides of the same trick coin.”
They had argued about going back to the human world several times, Vergil insisted that the demon world was where he belonged now and that Dante still wanted to live like a human, the kind of life he could never have in the underworld. But Dante was eventually able to convince him to come back together, if nothing else then to be a part in his son’s life before it was too late.
Dante sighed, stepping out of the shower. Toweling off and looking at his reflection in the mirror, had it really already been 20 years since that day? Those three burning red eyes glowed in the back of his mind, that monster had yet to show his face again, but he knew one day Mundus would be back. “And maybe on that day, Vergil and I can take him together.” Putting on just his usual henley and jeans, Dante made his way downstairs, to where his family was. Where he could hear Nero and Nico arguing about her latest devil breaker, Morrison, Lady and Trish were discussing potential jobs, and even Patty and Kyrie were in the kitchen showing Vergil how to cook a proper breakfast. “20 years later and I’m happy to be here”