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The first time Vergil was asked about Nero’s mother was by Dante. There was no buildup, no warning. Just a simple question of who she was. As Dante put it, he wanted the ‘juicy details, but not too juicy. That’s gross’. Vergil had to pause what he was doing, ignoring the overwhelming stench of the Underworld that he grew used to at some point and never forgot. With the ground squelching under his feet, pulsating and tugging at him as if to draw him under, he struggled to pull any concrete memory. A gentle voice, the smell of the ocean, a flash of hair. All that remained of her were fragments of a woman he only assumed he loved. He had no words to share with Dante. Not as enemies were drawing near and their work was not yet done, not when the very thought closed his throat. It was easy to ignore that pit inside him in the underworld; almost as easy as it was to forget who he was amongst the bloodshed.
Dante didn’t comment on it. Perhaps he too was distracted by their enemies or perhaps he knew better. His brother was far more intelligent than he let on.
The second time was by Lady. She had grown to know Nero while he and Dante were in the Underworld, crossing swords with each other and whoever else dared bother them. Just as before, he had no answer. As he pulled together a woman, her face was hollow, and blood gathered at the edges of where something should be. She was horrifying, a nightmare of a lover that came to haunt Vergil instead of the lovely memory he dreamed of keeping. He wanted to cut her down. Slice her to pieces, paint a picture of what she was supposed to be with her blood. He wanted to love her and hate her, find beauty in what remained. Find something in that image to ease his shaking hands.
When Vergil looked to answer Lady, the pity on her face stabbed him, twisting in his gut. “Don’t give me that look” was all he could say as he turned away from her. When he returned to the human world, he found eye contact became a difficult thing. Or, it always had been. He couldn’t remember either way.
Nero was the third to ask and the first time he gave it serious thought. A memory of gentleness and love he thought he never deserved was hardly a suitable answer for a boy searching for his mother. He was visiting his son, not having seen Fortuna ever since he met Nero’s mother. The island itself was familiar, tugging at his heart with a sense of longing and grief for a time that was stolen from him.
“I don’t remember her,” Vergil replied, his fingers rubbing against Yamato’s tsuba, letting the cool metal bring him back to earth.
“Hookup?” Nero asked and Vergil could only scoff.
“Of course not,” He rolled his eyes, “As if I would spend my time hooking up with random humans. She was not inconsequential to me. In fact, I believe I left her for her safety.”
Nero fell quiet, his hand drifting to the arm Vergil once took from him (a habit he noticed a while ago. He saw Nero rub his hand against the skin as if trying to feel for scales that were no longer there). “You met her in Fortuna, right,” Nero said, a question disguised as a statement or perhaps the other way around.
“I did.”
“Then you must have gone places with her, right? Maybe if we walk around a bit, you’ll start to remember things.”
Vergil wanted to argue. He wanted to speak of his memory and the claws that tore through it. It burned alongside his flesh, flayed under the pressure that broke his bones and spirit. Forgot was a terrible word to use, but it was the only one he had. He had books and books of words, tied together with thorned roses and gentle promises, written in the inks of cries of pain and joy. He searched over these words again and again, as if he could find the right ones to describe what was done to him. His suffering reflected back to him in a beautiful mirror or handed to him by a gentle figure who could take him by the hand and tell him “Look. This is what you truly are.”
Vergil saw his pain, his sorrow, his grief not for another person but for who he once was– there was never the way his memory was torn from him. He had to read more.
“An apt idea,” He said instead.
Nero did have the right idea, though not in the way he expected. The stone underneath Vergil’s feet felt familiar, scrapping against his boots in a melody that he could once play. Lively voices of people harmonized with the chorus of the humming cars and the occasional duet of birds, crying out truths only they know. If Vergil could speak their language, would they recognize him? Could they recall a man– No, a teenager that once stood on these very streets who still dreamt of tomorrow?
He could feel the ghost of a hand brush against his, cool and gentle. But, as he grasped for it, his hands only closed into a fist.
They passed by shops that reached out to him, a gesture that he could not return. The ghost of a tug lingered on his arm, enough so that he turned to Nero to make sure it wasn’t him. Nero smiled at him and Vergil wished he could smile back. “We were here once,” He explained.
“Most people were,” Nero said. Vergil couldn’t tell if it was a joke or something said to fill the space as if the void of words would consume anything else Vergil could say.
Some time ago, Vergil would have let it. The silence was a comfort. It was a shield, a second ribcage with a sternum covered in spikes that sliced through his skin as well as whoever reached for his heart. Yet, she found a way around it.
Nero allowed him to take the lead as they left the city and Vergil’s feet pulled him to the shore. His hands pulled his boots off, tugging his socks off and stuffing them into his boots. Nero replicated the action without hesitation. Vergil watched him take his boots to set aside, a silent promise that they would be safe. There was a familiarity in the action, in the two sets of boots sitting side by side as if they fit together. They filled his thoughts with a fantasy of another world where this irregularity was a habit, a tradition, the beginning of a myriad of stories that they both would share with a smile on their face. Vergil wondered if it was too late to start such a tradition. Would it still be special if it was made to replicate another family, a happier one that grew together like trees, interweaving their branches?
He stared at the way they sunk into the sand as if the ground wanted to pull them back to where they belonged. It screamed for his attention and Vergil couldn’t pull away. He had to look, he had to see them as if meaning could be made from two pairs of shoes. As if, as if, as if
As if he were here at all.
“Vergil?” Nero’s voice broke through the growing silence. He could only blink for even those few flashes of darkness would not be as empty.
He tore himself away from where he stood, noting the way his footsteps remained, the only reminder that he was here at all. It was proof he was real. Those footsteps continued behind him, chasing him to the edges where the water and land combined. The water soaked the bottom of his pants and tugged at him. It wrapped around his legs to pull him further in, to consume him entirely. The beach was a hungry place. Every part of it wanted to devour him, picking meat from bone until nothing remained. His corpse would roll through the sea and his bones would wash up on its shore and he wondered if, when he turned to his side, he would see her laying next to him. He stared at her and a voice rang out from her tattered throat.
“I dreamt the sea will devour me one day.”
“You did?”
Vergil shook his head, “No. Your mother did. She spoke of the sea. I don’t think she wanted to stay here.” The words felt right on his lips, but there was no memory to supplement it. He thought of those books once more, the knowledge of her spelled out on one of its pages as a universal truth whose proof was deemed irrelevant. Everyone knew it, after all.
“We could come back later,” Nero offered, “With Kyrie. We have an umbrella and some towels in the garage and a freezer to bring a snack.”
“That would be nice,” Vergil said. He read something like that once or maybe he didn’t. It was easier to remember the words in books he read than what still lingered in his mind, pieces that couldn’t be torn from him. He knew how to swim. He had to have learned it somewhere.
They only spent an hour at the beach, trailing around its edge, not daring to venture any further into its waters. He resisted its siren call and the images of his body slowly descending into its depths, disappearing from the world, trending the thin line between being stolen and being freed. Another day, Nero had promised him, when dressed more appropriately, when they were not chasing after the ghost of a woman who didn’t exist even in his memory. She had to have existed in someone's memory; She was a mother, a daughter, perhaps a sister, perhaps a friend. Nero existed and thus so did she. The waves may have washed away her footprints ages ago, but the sand still remembered her weight above it.
They left the beach just as they entered it, their actions reversed as if pulling back time. Vergil wanted to look back at the beach as he left, a habitual warning that he may never see it again, but he looked forward instead. They would go back, with Kyrie and towels, with an umbrella and a freezer full of snacks Vergil was sure Nero would eat most of.
A tradition in the making.
Vergil continued to lead them, past the town, and up a trail. He walked and walked until he reached the apex of a grassy hill that looked over the city. Not big enough to be a mountain, but high up enough he felt distanced from the world.
“I think she had hair like Kyrie,” He said as a flash of hair crossed his mind. A hand tugging him, this time warm and full of life.
“Long or short?”
Vergil considered the question, “Short. No, long. Tied up sometimes, but not always.” Whenever it could be. Or whenever she was forced to, releasing her hair from its bounds later when there were no eyes to see it. None but his. He closed his eyes to imagine it once more and instead saw limbs torn asunder with pools of blood gathering beneath him. Memories of her that were overwritten by something he wished he forgot instead.
When he opened his eyes, the vision remained. His hands were torn open, scraps of skin ribboned and wrapped around his bones, reminiscent of a present. As he walked, blood trailed behind him, and as Nero’s hand touched his arm, blood soaked into his skin.
Vergil flinched away, dropping to a sitting position.
“Remembering anything else?” Nero asked as he sat next to him.
He couldn’t answer. Not until his trachea pulled itself back together.
Nero frowned, “Vergil? Are you still with me?”
Was that addressed to him? That word felt familiar, but it was a distant memory, a distant song. It sat with a woman with golden hair, with a boy with silver hair. People he loved, people he hated. All of it felt so distant. When did he start this fantasy? When did he start believing he ever escaped? There was no one else to answer the question, so he did anyway.
He nodded with as gentle movement as he could manage; The ligaments between his bones had grown thin. He felt his skull waver like a rock on the edge of a cliff.
“Was this too much?” Nero turned, picking at the grass, wet with his spreading blood, “I thought it’d be nice to get you out more and show you more of Fortuna. It was nice spending the day together.”
“Is this real?” His voice croaked, his healing kicking in. He still healed. After everything, his body still pulled itself together, awaiting more punishment.
Nero paused, “Do you want me to tell you?”
He couldn’t answer. He wanteda to hear that yes so badly, but his head shook instead, still teetering. It’s not real, his thoughts screamed, it’s a trap. You’ve grown complacent. Weak. Nero’s words were a mercy, a promise of honesty. If he said yes, if he begged to be told he was freed, those words would only tighten the chains around him. He felt relief in the absence of a lie, even if it was such a sweet one.
“Do you want to leave?” Nero asked and he wondered who put those words in his mouth. He thought of another woman, a kind one Nero’s age. A daughter-in-law, if he could ever have a family.
Was he allowed to leave?
Was he allowed to stay?
“You’re the one in charge,” Nero said, “We can stay.”
Another lie. He was never the one in charge, not for a long time. A doll never puppeteered itself, especially not as its strings were still being dug into it.
But they stayed, sitting together with the breeze running up against him. It brushed his healing wounds, pressing stray kisses against him. He looked at his wounded arms and the skin draped over them like silk. He counted the bones in his hands before the muscle grew over it, obscuring it from view.
“What are you looking at?” asked Nero.
“I don’t know. Do you see the blood?” He said and looked to Nero, “You can tell me.”
Nero shook his head but reached out anyway, “Kyrie has bandages back home.” That was her name. Kyrie. Somehow, she always knew what to say.
“Would they be real? Is this real?”
“Does it feel real?”
The word ‘no’ sat on his lips, but he couldn’t push it out. It wasn’t the truth anyway. Not as he realized his arms didn’t hurt and that the grass was still a familiar yellow-green. “Yes,” Vergil said.
“Cool,” Nero said and promptly cringed, but his words brought a smile to Vergil’s face, “Do you want to talk about it? I get it if you don’t.”
His smile fell, “You don’t have to be my therapist, Nero.”
“I’m not trying to be your therapist. Sometimes, I wish I could, but I don’t think there’s anything I could say to make you feel better,” Nero’s gaze fell to the city in front of them, “I don’t want you to be afraid of telling me either. I don’t want to save you. I just want to understand.”
Vergil wanted to argue about how he was not Nero’s responsibility, not his burden. This was not meant to be about him, but Nero’s mother, and with that thought, the words spilled from him like an open wound. “It’s hard to believe she was real sometimes,” He started, his mouth bleeding himself out, gushing from him with more force than any of his torturers could manage. It was a blood spill they could only dream of and somehow, that brought a feeling of satisfaction in Vergil’s gut.
“I know she was real. You’re proof she was, but I know not even her name. I loved her with all my heart- all that was left of it and yet nothing of her was left behind. Even now as I search for her, I follow behind only a ghost. Of all the lives I’ve ended, all the suffering I brought to this world the only ghost I have is a woman I never harmed.”
“Was she kind?” Nero asked
“I wish I knew,” Vergil said, “She must have been kind to love someone like me. She must have been gentle and sweet. But, I don’t know that. I don’t know her at all, not anymore.”
Nero’s voice was low, “She did leave me, but you were teenagers, weren’t you?”
“We must have been barely adults.”
“Can I sound like a dick?” He said, hesitation clear in his voice and Vergil nodded, afraid of how his voice would sound if he spoke.
Nero shifted where he sat, looking past the city into the sky behind it, “I was a little glad to hear what happened to you. Or, I guess, the little I heard about it. Not that I enjoyed knowing you suffered, but that it was something making you suffer. ‘Cause, if you weren’t there, then you’d be back home with me. I can’t do the same with my mom. I don’t think.”
“Why not?” Vergil asked and Nero shrugged.
“I don’t know. She’s not here to tell me. I guess it’s hard for me to believe she’s real too.”
He hummed in response, “How do we know we exist?”
Nero turned back to him and Vergil felt the ghost of a chuckle leave his mouth, “Not like that. Our proof of our existence is left behind in the memories of those that remain. It’s in what we create and what we destroy. But, your mother… I know she was more than your creator. More than what remains of her in my memory. Her voice is somewhere in this world.”
“Oh,” Nero said, “Is it bad if I’m still angry at her?” It was what Nero said, but Vergil knew there was more to the question.
How much does she need to suffer for it to be enough? He wondered as well. He thought of her and what she left behind in Nero. A voiceless woman to be judged by the people she was meant to be understood by. A heartless figure or a martyr, taken too soon. Cruel or kind, but never a mixture of both. It would be cruel to tell Nero to ignore his pain and instead imagine the pain of a woman he’ll never know, whom he was supposed to love by virtue of existing as if he owed some great debt to her. As if she was to be worshipped because she was not here to prove him wrong. But, would it be cruel to do the same to her? To deny her suffering because of those she left behind? To turn her into a terrible woman who committed the greatest sin men could imagine for her– the sin of not being a mother.
“We were teenagers,” Vergil repeated, “We must have been barely adults.”
“It would’ve been hard to raise a child.”
“We were only teenagers.” He wanted to repeat the words over and over again like a prayer. They were words to forgive and lament them for loving too much. They begged Nero for forgiveness, pleading for him to understand. After all, they were barely adults. In a world that gave them no mercy, they must have found something in each other; why else would they have made Nero?
“Did you love my mom?” Nero asked and Vergil knew the answer. He thought he did.
“I think so.” He thought of her so fondly. He had to have loved her.
“Maybe,” Nero said, “But you weren’t in love with her, were you? You never had the chance to fall out of love with her. You didn’t get to grow up with crushes and heartbreaks. You never found out how it felt to stop loving someone naturally.”
It was true. Vergil left Fortuna as quickly as he came, leaving nothing behind. Perhaps she thought it was hard to believe he ever existed as well. “I wish things could have been different,” He said, gentle for the first time in his life. He wished he could have fallen out of love with her or stayed in love, creating a life when they were older and knew who they were. He wanted to dream of a tomorrow with her instead of binding chains. Fantasize about the son they could create later on when they were old enough to love him properly instead of fantasizing about being free. He found it didn’t matter which was crueler, which felt better in his heart. They both were kinder. They both were real.
“You’re still allowed to be mad at us,” Vergil spoke up.
“Am I?”
“It’s a shitty place to find yourself in,” He wanted to cringe at his words but found fondness in the way he reminded him of Dante. “There’s enough pain for us to share it.”
And for the first time, Vergil didn’t mind sharing what was his.