Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

If things were ever going to be easy in Nero’s life, he wouldn’t have been left on the steps of an orphanage as a baby, he wouldn’t have grown up indoctrinated (not really) by some self-indulging zealots who meant to take over the world, he wouldn’t have had to fight one of the people he’d regarded so highly, and he sure as hell wouldn’t have had to exist near to the block of ice that was his emotionally-absent physically-present father.

It’s a little flame that sits inside Nero that has only succeeded in growing until it’s nearly uncontrollable and Nero sees the bright red tips in his eyes. And sometimes, like now, it’s like gasoline has been poured on it. 

They’re sitting in the lobby of the Devil May Cry. Nero has his leg propped up on Dante’s desk as it balances a book he’s been trying to read for the past hour. His father sits in the shitty couch Dante’s had for over a century, it seems. His face is slightly scrunched in a scowl as he stares into an open book he’s definitely not reading, the most emotion he’s expressed toward Nero since they met. 

Nobody other than them is home right now. Any minute now, Lady is going to barge through the door, all smiles and laughs with his uncle. Nero wonders if he’s physically vibrating in the chair he sits in.

“What is it,” his father dares to try after several moments of tense silence. It’s not even a question, more an annoyed callout. Were Nero not ready to burst from the rage in his heart, he might have been able to notice the sad attempt at connection. 

He knows that a lack of response would be his father’s preferred response, but that’s never been Nero’s style. He turns to meet the eyes he’s inherited and spits, “nothing.”

Physical features aren’t the only thing he inherited.

Nero was very fond of Dante. He’d grown to consider him family even before finding out that they were actually blood related. He’d have been alright with just knowing who his father was if only Nero never had the chance to meet him. 

As things stand currently, Kyrie is the only person in support of Nero attempting to form a semblance of a relationship with his father. It was a great proposition at first, enough that Nero had unlocked power he didn’t know he had as a result of how passionately the desire to have a family ate at him. 

However, as soon as he properly met his family the passion soured and he so desperately wished he could banish his father back into the underworld. The man was unapologetic, difficult to work with, and all together a detriment to the team when it came to actually being a team. 

“There is something,” his father tries again. It doesn’t read as the pathetic attempt to begin to reconcile, it reads as prodding. “If we are going to attempt to work as a team, then you need to—”

“A team?” Nero spits again. He doesn’t even look at his father this time. He gets his feet off the table and slams the closed book on the desk. “You expect all of us to just accept everything that’s happened? Everything you’ve done?!”

Nero misses the way his father’s eyes flicker to his hands on the book. He receives no other response. It sends the fire to the tips of Nero’s fingers. Were he in the right headspace, he’d have answered differently and not made such a clear implication of the fact that he had not been okay with getting his arm ripped off and being left for dead.

“Dante,” is all his father can muster as a response after several moments of more tense silence. And Nero has no choice but to stand down. The essay that Nero deserves as an apology is condensed into one name that he can’t bring himself to argue with. Because, they’re all dealing with Dante’s stupid homicidal brother for Dante’s sake. And that’s all. No other reason.

None.

Even if the end of the world is nigh, even if there’s a new threat that Lady’s gotten leads on, something that Trish has potentially seen with her own eyes and according to her, resembles something akin to a new Mundusesque uprising, something that Dante made priority number one. Something that Nero’s father begrudgingly agreed to lending research and skill to. 

Outside of Kyrie and the kids on Fortuna, this awful scene was all Nero had. He hadn’t been told how long his father and his uncle had been back on the mortal plane. For all he knew it had been a day, a month, a year. That stung at him deeply, though he’d never admit it to anyone. All this time, and his father had yet to even try and talk to him about what had happened in the Qliphoth. 

So, he gets up off the chair, knocking a set of books he was supposed to be looking into for a potential explanation as to why people were dying from an unknown plague of likely demonic origin onto the floor. 

“Where are you going,” his father is incapable of making anything sound like interest.

Nero doesn’t answer him. Out, is all he would have said anyway.

The streets are cold and empty. People are hiding out in fear of being the next area affected by the plague, or by the unprompted changes in the weather that have been reported all over the Earth. It’s an impossible situation for many, but it’s an ideal scenario to brood about your father in. 

He takes a deep breath, doing his best to alleviate the tension that bunches in his shoulders and makes it difficult to turn his head sometimes. He turns his palms over for a moment, studying the lines in his very human hands. The hands that have killed family, the hands that caress gentle skin back home. The hands that only exist because of a mistake, he’s sure. 

There’s no way in hell a woman looked at his father nearly a quarter of a century ago and had pure intentions. 

He shakes his hands out, hoping more of the tension goes with it and he keeps walking. The sun is low in the sky and he isn’t keen on going back into Dante’s shop until there are at least three more people in there. 

Shops around the street are closed or boarded up. Apartment buildings are in ruins from the poor infrastructure and the past two weeks of rain that never let up until mudslides and erosion took its toll on the city. The occasional portal opening didn’t help the area either. A purple light in the distance catches his gaze. He makes his way toward it, wondering if it has anything to do with the demon lord they’re now hunting.

Upon closer inspection, it appears to be someone’s storefront. There’s no sign anywhere indicating that the place was ever in operation. The building itself is worn and dirty, clearly having once been an architectural pleasure. His hands graze over the chipped bricks that make up the doorway as he peers through the window. A woman sits at a table, surrounded by shelves of books. There’s a black mat on the table and several broken pieces of crystal. They glow a deep purple, giving her an ominous, dark expression. 

Without looking away from what’s in front of her, she raises a hand and beckons him in. 

Nero takes a concerned step back and looks around. He’s the only person on the street. When he looks back at the window, she’s watching him. She beckons him again.

He moves toward the door, his hand grazing against the gun he has concealed behind his belt for his own comfort. 

The inside of the store smells like rotting wood and stagnant water. He keeps his distance from the woman and her table. Something about the crystals makes his skin tingle. 

The woman’s skin is unnatural, not demonic in nature, he can feel as much, but smooth and glossy as if she were a mannequin of some kind. Her eyes are vacant, but the expression on her face is curious. Before he can ask who the hell she is, or more importantly, what the hell she’s doing here. She speaks to him.

“You lack understanding, Nero,” she says. Her voice doesn’t match her person. It’s smooth, it’s warm.

“What?” he asks, genuinely confused. His rage toward his father is momentarily set aside by the creepy woman who knows his name. He takes a cautious step back. “How the hell do you know my name?”

“There are things we must all contend with,” she responds.

“What the hell are you talking about?” he asks, the annoyance clear in his tone. “You’re not a demon. What the hell are you?”

Without moving her head, her eyes turn completely downward toward the crystals in her eye sockets, revealing the whites of her eyes. The sight makes Nero jerk backwards and reach for his gun. What the hell is happening right now? He yells as much.

She takes a piece of crystal in her hands as she turns back up at him. It glows even brighter in her hand. Nero’s skin begins to itch and in the split second it takes for him to think of telling her to stop whatever it is she’s doing, the window smashes beside her in some kind of explosion. Nero’s sent backwards with enough force that he crashes through the rotting wood of the building.

He lands onto a bustling street in broad daylight. 

Nero catches his breath and jerks out of the way of an oncoming car. He catches his breath on the sidewalk, immediately recognizing the street he’s landed in. He’s back home. This is one of the main streets on Fortuna.

The thing is, the street is wrong. 

Nero blinks the sun out of his eyes and jumps out of the way of an oncoming vehicle. He lands on a sidewalk beside an ornate porcelain statue of a chicken that someone keeps outside of their shop. He catches his breath against the building as he takes in a sight he hasn’t seen in several years. 

After the fall of the Order, the city was in ruins. Some repairs had been made in small areas deemed worthy of saving by those who could afford it, but even then, they were not what they had been. Not what Nero is looking at now. This is what Fortuna looked like a long time ago. 

He watches a woman step down onto the road to get past him, disgust on her face at the sight of Nero. He sticks out like a sore thumb among the hooded people on the streets. He glares at her and looks down at himself. He’s very dusty and a quick sniff of one of his sleeves lets him know that now he smells like rotting wood. 

Unsure of where to even begin with whatever this is, he decide that he's going home . 

With any luck, he can at least clean up and find out where the others are.

Chapter Text

Forgetting who he is and what his life is for a moment, he eventually finds himself standing awkwardly at the end of the walkway leading to the home he shares with Kyrie and the kids. The house itself looks right, the colour is a little brighter and the mailbox is definitely new, but the family stepping out is definitely not his. There’s a man with dark hair and a blonde woman. She’s got a baby in her arms and they wait for the man to lock the door before they head down the pathway leading to Nero. 

He looks around, feigning that he’s looking for something as he walks away, so as to not look any weirder than he already does. It’s an attempt. 

He heads back toward the street he’d landed on, one he so vividly recalls defending from demons in his youth. It’s so full of life, so full of people. He sits by himself at a cafe, fishing out a couple of coins from his jacket when a waitress informs him he can’t sit there without buying something. She brings him a black coffee and Nero watches his surroundings.

He eyes a man with a newspaper a few tables away and as the man adjusts the paper to read, he gets a glimpse of the cover. The headline is about some sort of monument the Order wants to construct. In some insane turn of events, he’d been sent back in time.

The entire situation has finally started to dawn on him, but it’s not as shockingly paralyzing as it should be given he’s been under the impression that he’s not in Kansas anymore. Or— bad analogy. He is in Kansas, he’s just not sure when in Kansas.

And comparatively, Dorothy doesn’t have shit on Nero.

What does properly dawn on him is that in somehow being knocked many years back in time, he’s completely away from the situation at hand back home. Dante’s missing a nephew, Lady’s missing a research partner, and Trish is missing a sparring partner. They’ve all got to deal with the demon revolution without him. Kyrie and the kids are on their own. A sense of urgency sets in Nero that pools in his stomach as anxiety. He downs the coffee as he impulsively forms a new plan.

There’s one place he can go, he knows as much. It looms over him the entire time he’s been sitting at that cafe, daring him to look into the past. He’s hesitant to go there, but he doesn’t have very many places to start. And if anyone may know why the hell Nero is in the past and more importantly, how to get back, it will be someone in the Order. 

How he’ll get to them and get the answers he’s looking for, he’s not sure, but he’ll cross that bridge when he gets to it. Both literally and figuratively.

He gets close enough as the sun begins to set. He takes a moment to watch the empty streets of the mining town at the base of Lamina Peak. It’s strange to see the town whole. Some of the families have begun moving out, but there are still signs of life. Mining still appears to be happening, even if sparsely. 

Shaking his head, he ducks into mining tunnels he doesn’t remember existing that seem to guide him to where he needs to be. He emerges somewhere closer to the castle and he watches at a distance from beyond the bridge as the guards on the night shift settle into their watching posts. Now’s as good a time as any to break into the castle. 

Having spent most of his youth in and around the castle, it gives him the advantage of knowing what spots were blind to the guards, what windows were left unlocked, and what other tunnels hadn’t been sealed off yet. It doesn’t take him long to scale a wall that was facing the coast and find a window that leads into one of the libraries. He slips in undetected and lands swiftly on his feet. The library is cold and dark. Memories threaten to surface, but he doesn’t dwell on them. He gets to work.

He finds a candle and with the low light, he goes up and down the crowded bookshelves, looking for anything that seemed like it would help him. He finds a set of books that seem promising when he hears the door to the library open. Nero ducks behind a bookshelf near the back of the library, Blue Rose at the ready.

“Oh, I’ll show them. It-it- this will be my magnum opus!” a familiar voice yells out. Nero moves a book to peer through the shelf and if he’d had any doubts about having been sent to a past before he’d been born, then, seeing a younger version of Nico’s father is confirmation enough. 

The man dashes around the library, pulling books off the shelves while mumbling about how he’ll ‘get it to work’ and how he  ‘just needs the right formula’. Nero shudders at the thought. He knows what those comments allude to. He could just take care of the problem right now, he thinks. He could prevent any of the man-made horrors from ever coming to light. But, it brings to mind whether Nico would exist if Nero so much looked at Agnus differently.

The door to the library gets shut and after waiting a few more minutes, Nero continues his own search. He settles into a corner that keeps the window in clear view with five different books set around him. He flips through one for a minute, finding a catalogue of devils that feed on the souls of children, but none of them are capable of time travel. He sets it aside and picks up another. 

He’s opened the cover, trying to piece together the Latin on the first page with his bare minimum understanding when he feels a shift in the air and hears a faint sound of quiet steps. The hair on the back of his neck stands in attention and he feels a familiar warmth in the air. It was one that was with him up until very recently. He’d know the Yamato’s devil aura anywhere.

He reaches for his gun and a low growl sets in his throat. If that… man was here, then, Nero would have no qualms with kicking his ass.

He takes quick and quiet steps around to where the sound came from, stopping behind a bookshelf to let the intruder show himself. He waits a moment and the aura shifts again. He heaves a sigh and turns around. The Yamato’s blade points at his neck when he turns around and makes eye contact with her. 

The woman wielding the blade that never leaves his father’s side is smaller than Nero is. Her skin is tan, her hair is a reddish brown and her eyes are a sharp grey. She eyes him with an intensity he’s only really seen in his uncle or his father.

“Who are you?” she asks. There’s a faint accent in her voice that Nero can’t place.

“Uh, I’m a Knight of the Holy Order,” Nero says matter-of-factly, very content with the fact that it wasn’t technically a lie. “Who the hell are you?”

She frowns and pushes the tip of the blade into his throat. It pierces the skin on his neck just slightly. “You are not anyone I’ve seen on patrol.” 

He pulls away from the sword as best he can given his back is pressed against the bookshelf and glares at the woman, “Why would a trespasser know the ins and outs of the patrols? Tell me who the hell you are or I start screaming.”

Her frown deepens, “Or I kill you right now and we live with the mystery.”

“Okay, go ahead and do that. Do you think I’m not expected back at my post? Do you think no one is looking for me right this second?” Nero glares at her, hoping she would drop dead from the intensity.

To Nero’s fortune, a set of footsteps is heard from outside the door the moment he finishes speaking. Her gaze wavers towards the entrance to the library and it’s more than enough time for Nero to swipe the sword away from her grasp. The Yamato answers to him and he’s able to shove it into the wooden floor. Nero points his gun at her.

“So, as I was saying,” he says with a small shit-eating grin, “who the hell are you?”

“Kill me,” she says. Her frown deepening further somehow.

“What?” Nero asks, his face scrunching in confusion for a moment. “Just tell me who the hell you are, I’m not planning on turning you in.”

“Natasha,” she says finally. She eyes the entrance again and looks back at Nero.

“Okay,” Nero has no idea what he’s doing, but if this woman is breaking into the Order’s libraries, she may be of some help to him. “And why are you breaking into the Order’s library?”

“Research,” she says plainly. 

“Research on…” Nero starts, gesturing for her to continue. When she doesn’t, Nero rolls his eyes and throws a shot in the dark. He’s got nothing left to lose anyway, “Alright. I’ll start, then. I’m not actually a Knight anymore. I’m from the future where Fortuna is in complete ruins thanks to the Order and the Saviour. I’m trying to get back there. See? Easy. Now it’s your turn.”

Her expression remains cautious, but she seems to relax a little bit. She has to think he’s insane.

“You know of the Saviour”, she says. It’s an accusation somehow. “It has yet to come to fruition.”

“Oh, I know. I think we’re a few years shy of it, but you’ll know it when you see it,” Nero says.

“Describe it,” she says. It’s a test. Nero frowns.

“It’s a huge-ass robot thing in the form of what they think Sparda looks like,” he responds. Come to think of it, he doesn’t know what his grandfather looks like. She keeps studying him. 

“It’s powered by… a soul.” He adds as he shudders at the memory.

“Are you a friend to the Order?” 

“No,” Nero says firmly, “I just want to get back home. I left a lot of important stuff on the table.”

“I can help you,” she says. She doesn’t think he’s insane. “But, you must help me find something.”

“Wait, how the hell do you know about the Saviour?” Nero asks. Now he’s confused as to why she hasn’t tried anything yet.

“Do you think demonic energy is the only thing above this material world?” she shakes her head. “The universe is built on balance. There is the power of the demon world and there is a heavenly power that balances it. We are the middle ground. I’m granted the ability to see the powers that make up our world. I am aware of Fortuna’s fate. For now I only seek to find the Temen-ni-gru.”

Nero’s understood maybe half of that. He adjusts his grip on Blue Rose, “Is that a place?”

“Yes,” she says, “It’s a tower.”

“Is that not… in Fortuna?” Nero has no idea how he can help her with that.

“It could be,” she says, eyeing the rest of the bookshelves, “it must be summoned. I need to find out how.”

Nero weighs the pros and cons of the situation. If whatever this lady was looking for came to be, he hadn’t seen anything of it where he’d been from. So, it either failed, or she found it and it was of no consequence. He can live with that, he thinks. He doesn’t have much of a choice, he realizes soon after.

“Done,” he says. He slips Blue Rose back into her holster.

Natasha reaches over and grabs the hilt of the Yamato. With strength Nero wouldn’t have expected from her, she dislodges it from the wood and tucks it carefully back in its sheath. True to his word, they spend the remainder of the night picking out things regarding the underworld, Sparda, and whatever the hell the Temen-ni-gru is. 

By the time Natasha first yawns and Nero’s eyes feel like they’re going to bleed, he’s learned that the tower is a gate that Sparda himself sealed thousands of years ago. A worry sets into his stomach from the knowledge, but they haven’t found much more than that. She stands up, tucking a book Nero hadn’t looked at yet under her arm.

“I’m assuming you have no place to stay,” she says. “I have an apartment in the city.”

Nero debates on whether he should accept kindness from a random woman he’s just met who threatened to kill him. Still, she had the Yamato with her. That also merited some kind of investigation. Nero shakes his head, “I could do with a shower, too.”

She holds her hand out to him, there’s a warmth in the small smile she gives him that seems to calm whatever nerves Nero had been holding onto since he’d landed in Fortuna’s past. He gets himself up without accepting her help, though.

“Come,” she says softly as she makes her way toward the window they’d both come through. Nero follows in silence as they make their way down the side of the castle and through a tunnel Nero was told as a child to never venture in. By the time he’d been old enough to try, it had been sealed off with concrete. The next part of their escape route involves scaling down part of Lamina Peak until they reach yet another small tunnel that dumps them back out into the mining town. 

There’s a motorbike parked there that takes them all the way across the city and into a rundown apartment complex. Her apartment is cramped. There’s a white leather sofa in one corner and very few pieces of furniture tightly packed together in the living room, but it smells like coffee and perfume. Like a home.

“I’m home, darling,” Natasha calls out as they step in. She shrugs her coat off and tosses it over a stool that sits by a bookshelf much smaller than the ones in the castle. The books on it are worn and appear to be leatherbound. An awkwardness sets in Nero’s stomach as he realizes that from the outside, this woman just brought a random man home. He’d have to explain that he would just be spending a night here.

The thought gets shot out of his head as Nero chokes on his own spit when her darling comes out of the small kitchen, a mug of something steaming in his hands.

“Interesting,” is all his fa— Vergil can say in greeting. 

Nero recovers from his coughing fit and turns to the woman again. A blush turns most of his face red as he looks away from the sets of eyes watching him. A sensation creeps up his back that eats the embarrassment and awkwardness, one that shakes his very core. He balls his hands into fists to prevent himself and the others from knowing that they’re shaking. 

In true kin-of-Sparda fashion, he beats it down and makes light of it, “you collecting white haired orphans or something?” 

The words come out of his mouth with the snark he meant them with, but he couldn’t repeat them if asked to.

Both Natasha and Vergil shoot him a curious look before looking at each other. 

“Who are you?” She finally asks.

Nero hears the question, but he’s not quite sure he’s processed what he’s seeing just yet. There’s two of them. There’s the two standing there in front of him. They’re standing. Darling. The word echoes in his head and his eyes dart back and forth between them. They are. They’re there.

The flash of the Yamato being drawn again snaps him back out of the tunnel he was spiraling down. It points at his throat like it had up on the Qliphoth. The same steel eyes stare down at him, but they’re softer somehow. They lack the coldness Nero had only ever seen in them. It freaks Nero out more than being threatened, or the fact that he may be standing in front of his—

“You would do best in answering the woman who opened her home to you,” Vergil says in the same monotone Nero’s spent the last few months hearing. There’s something very off about him, something Nero can’t place. 

“N-Nero,” he finally says softly. Nothing makes sense. Nero feels like he’s going to black out.

“Nero,” Natasha repeats. She’s staring at him curiously, “how did you know that the both of you were orphans?”

Because, I think you’re— “Uh, based on personal experience. The uh, the white hair gene tends to make you unlikeable for some reason. Prone to being abandoned,” it’s a terrible excuse, but it gets his Vergil to sheath the Yamato again.

“Where are you from, Nero?” Natasha asks.

“Fortuna,” Nero says, doing his damndest to wash down the anxiety that’s pooling in his chest. “I was left at the steps of the orphanage here.”

“When?” She follows up.

“I don’t know. I’m twenty five, but that’s not when we are, is it?” Nero’s unsure if that made any sense.

Natasha looks up at Vergil. She’s easily a foot shorter than he is, but she looks up at him with a confident expression. “He’s not from here,” she says. Vergil doesn’t respond, so she continues, “he is from Fortuna’s future.”

“Interesting,” Vergil repeats. 

He’s so young, Nero thinks. His face is clear of the fine lines that in a future mirror Dante’s own. Nero’s so used to the stoic grace Vergil carries himself with that seeing him standing here in a baggy turtleneck and oversized slacks with a mug of steaming coffee is jarring. 

“Sit,” Vergil commands, gesturing to the sofa. Nero holds his hands out in a gesture of peace and scoots back enough so he can sit.

“You know me,” Vergil says. Just like himself from several years into the future, his questions come off as matter-of-fact statements.

“I— no, not really,” Nero responds, surprisingly truthfully. Vergil stares at him and it’s just as uncomfortable now as it ever was.

Vergil tips his chin up ever so slightly. There’s a darker tone to his voice when he says, “you know Dante.”

Natasha glances between the two men. Nero notices the shift in the air and shrugs, “Who doesn’t know Dante? Son of Sparda and all that.”

Vergil makes a sound of content. He asks, “what do you know of the Temen-ni-gru?”

“Nothing,” Nero says with a slight frown. The concern he’d felt when he’d learned what the tower was comes back with a vengeance. This is bad. This is going to be very bad.

“He is being truthful,” Natasha adds. She reaches over and puts a hand on Vergil’s elbow. A movement that Nero is sure would have had anyone else’s hand cut clean off. Not only does Vergil allow it, but he physically relaxes .  

“Let the boy rest. I told him we would help him find his way home if he helped with the search.” She finishes.

“If you leave, I will know,” Vergil says, meeting Nero’s eyes for a moment before walking off down a very short hallway. He disappears behind a door.

“Don’t mind him,” Natasha says with a small smile, “he likes theatrics.”

Uh-huh. Theatrics. 

Are you my mom? The question is on the tip of his tongue when he asks, “where’d you pick someone like that up?”

She tilts her head curiously, “the same place I picked you up. I am starting to wonder if the Order is manufacturing strange white haired men.”

“Oh, that’s not what they’re manufacturing,” Nero says absentmindedly as his mind takes him back to facing off against manufactured devil after manufactured devil. He wonders how much detail he can give her. He wonders if he’s already said too much.

She smiles at him again and gestures to a door down the small hallway opposite to the one Vergil had disappeared behind, “that is the bathroom. There are towels in the cupboard. I’ll leave you a set of clothes outside the door. You are welcome to the sofa.”

“Thanks,” Nero says softly. He’s making eye contact with her, searching as deep as he can for an answer. He doesn’t find one there. The smile remains on her face as she turns and heads behind the same door Vergil had disappeared behind.

Finally alone, Nero beelines for the bathroom, gets the water running until he’s sure it will burn his skin, and finally lets himself have the mental breakdown that’s been nipping at the edge of his consciousness.

Was that his mother? Did he just meet his parents from nearly thirty years ago? Why was he here? Where was the stick that was perpetually up Vergil’s ass? Why did his mother leave him at the orphanage? What the fuck happened with Dante and Vergil between now and then that ended up in the Qliphoth and V? Where was this woman in Nero’s future? Where was Dante now? 

The questions hit him hard and fast, faster than any physical blow from either of his half-demon relatives could have. He sinks against the wall of the bathroom and breathes in and out as deeply as he can. The fog from the hot water clouds his vision and he shudders at the thought of everything he doesn’t know.

He’s unsure of how long he sits there, lost in thought and seemingly paralyzed as he cycles with what’s being revealed to him and everything he’s left behind. Eventually, he shakily breathes out one last time, the warmth in the bathroom becoming too much to tolerate. He checks outside the door and sure enough, there was a set of pajama pants and a white t-shirt folded neatly for him.

Nero spends the next roughly half hour standing underneath the scalding water, letting it wash over him like the wave of emotions he was desperately trying to beat down. When he’s able to face the world again, he figures out that the shirt is a little tight around the shoulders. It makes him laugh, given he assumes the clothes are Vergil’s. He wonders how old the man is at this time. 

He finds a blanket set for him on the sofa and figures he doesn’t have any other option but to settle in. Not before he does a deep dive into, well, the entire home. Kyrie would disapprove, but there’s so much Nero wants to know, so much he wont get to know, and so much he’s afraid of knowing. 

He opens any drawer he can find, skipping over a safe he doesn’t want to waste time on, and he finds receipts for groceries, stolen letters from the Order that detail day to day operations, and a few photographs. None are of either of the two he’s just met. He sees a couple posed in front of architecture that he’d only ever seen to exist in western Europe. The signs around are in Spanish. The woman has reddish brown hair and grey eyes, but she’s not Natasha. 

Following his yet-to-be-disproven logic, he stares at the two in the photo for a long moment, wondering if these are his maternal grandparents. Dante has never spoken of Sparda. He’s heard the odd comment about Eva, he knows Trish’s role in that, but he doesn’t know much else about them.

The rest of his search doesn’t result in anything. The bookshelf is lined with tomes, books stolen from the Order, and the odd grimoire. He opts to try and get some sleep after that. Their couch is uncomfortable and his nerves are shot beyond belief, so it’s a struggle. 

Eventually, the exhaustion wins him over.

Chapter Text

The smell of bacon brings him back from the edge of restful sleep. He wakes up, momentarily thinking he’s back home. His immediate thought is to remind Kyrie that he’d promised her he’d cook her breakfast. His eyes adjust to the morning light and he focuses on the figure of Vergil sitting on the corner stool, Blue Rose in his hands. 

Nero jerks up into a seated position, “hey, that’s not yours,” he says with a frown. 

“It’s an effective piece of craftsmanship. If crudely made,” Vergil says, twisting the barrel around in his hands. “Where did you acquire this?”

“I made it,” Nero says, holding his hand out like a child who refuses to share. “I put it together myself. Etchings, too.”

Vergil stands and walks over to hand Nero his gun. “There are much more elegant ways of going about violence.”

Nero huffs a laugh, “I can wield a sword, too, you know.”

“Can you?” Vergil asks, curiosity in his tone.

“Yes. Better than you, I’d bet,” Nero says, a bit of the residual anger bubbling up in his words.

The faintest smile appears on Vergil’s lips before he says, “we’ll have to see about that.”

“Hey!” Natasha’s voice cuts through their conversation as her head peers around the entrance to the kitchen. “Breakfast.” 

Having them both seated in front of him in broad daylight and listening to the small talk between them confirms Nero’s initial and only working theory. The shock from the fact that he’d been sent back in time is immediately displaced by the shock of being sent back in time and meeting his teenage parents.

Vergil excuses himself and promises to return later in the day. Nero pushes down the awkward emotion that settles in with the anxiety in his chest when he watches what is evidently his father kissing his mother goodbye. The sound of the door shutting rings loudly in Nero’s ears as his vision blanks for a moment.

This leaves him alone with Natasha. Alone with—

“Thank you,” Nero says, pushing his plate back. Nero will never admit that he thinks Kyrie is a better cook than his mother.

“Not a problem,” she says with a smile. “We can go through the texts I own and see if we can find anything relating to messing with time.”

“Yeah,” Nero stands to take their plates and put them in the sink. His mother or not, Kyrie has him trained to help out when he is a guest. “That sounds good.”

The rest of their morning is spent going through the books on the shelf. Natasha finds a vague description of a spell that can affect a person’s place in time, but it seems like they’ll have to break into the castle again. Nero finds an entry on a demon that uses time travel as a way of getting around. He also remembers a certain half-demon that can teleport through space. He wonders if any of it is related.

Nero also has a thought sitting in his head. He wonders if it’s selfish. He wrestles with the thought as he tries to read an entry on a demon that is made up of blades. 

After a few frustrating moments where he can’t shake it, it wins. He looks up at his mother and says, “ I— I know it’s probably not my place to say, but I think you should give up on the search for the tower.”

She glances up from the book in her hands, “and why is that? What do you know?”

Nero shakes his head. He doesn’t know anything, actually. He just knows what becomes of whatever is happening. The concern is apparent in his voice, “it’s not going to end well. I can’t exactly tell you how.”

She watches him curiously for several moments. Long enough that Nero becomes uncomfortable with the gaze. He looks down when she decides to respond.

“What are you to him?” 

“To who?” he asks, knowing exactly whom she was referring to.

“You look like him,” she says. The curiosity in the way she looks at him makes sense now. She’d been having a similar internal debate to the one that Nero had.

“I don’t think I can tell you,” Nero says, staring down at the words in the book in his lap. 

“Are you… Dante?” she asks. 

“No,” Nero says with a laugh. “I can promise you that your boyfriend would have reacted very differently if I was Dante.”

“He said he could sense your presence when you arrived. He’s looking for him. For Dante,” she says softly, “he thought his brother had been dead. He wants to make things right between them.”

Something sinks into Nero’s stomach. It makes his chest ache and he can’t look up. Of the series of questions he’s trying to answer, it brings forward the question of what the hell happened between now and Nero’s time that resulted in the horrors Vergil would commit.

Nero struggles with himself. He’s unsure what he can say. “It’s just not a good idea.”

“To find Dante?”

“No,” Nero shakes his head, “to find the tower. Is that where he’s going?” 

She nods, “he is seeking out someone by the name of… Arkham.”

She watches him, expecting a reaction to the name. Nero’s never heard of it. Regardless, he tells his mother exactly what he thinks. “ Arkham? That sounds like the name of a very good person who doesn’t want to unleash hell on Earth.”

She sighs and shuts the book she’d been looking in. She asks again, “ who are you , Nero?”

Nero doesn’t think of the consequences of what he’s about to say, “I’m—”

The door to the apartment gets kicked open, causing them both to look up. Vergil storms through, the aura coming from him is dangerous. He disappears wordlessly behind the same door as the previous night, only this time he emerges with a different sword in hand. He tosses it in Nero’s direction.

“Your assistance is required,” he says as he exits the apartment as quickly as he had come in.

“Go,” his mother gestures for him to follow. Nero picks up Blue Rose and follows him out. The thing Nero hasn’t been able to place about Vergil makes him ever so slightly more approachable than his middle-aged counterpart.

“Where are we going?!” Nero yells as he catches up with him.

“I believe I’ve made contact with someone important,” he says. They head down the street of their apartment building. A few blocks down, Nero sees what assistance Vergil needs. There are several demons coming from an opened portal, many are already taking shots at the nearby buildings. 

“He believes he holds more power than he does,” Vergil says as he unsheathes the Yamato. He turns to look at Nero. “I intend to set boundaries.”

Whatever the hell that means, Nero’s delighted to be presented with some kind of normalcy. He laments that he doesn’t have Red Queen with him, but the backup blade Vergil gave to him will do just as well. It’s masterfully made, the weight makes it easy to wield and it slashes through thick skin with ease. 

Nero glides through the devils with a practised ease as Vergil dashes around them from the outskirts. With both Nero and Vergil here, it's not a fair fight by any means. It makes Nero wonder how skilled Vergil is at this age.

“Hey!” Nero calls out as he dodges one of many claws coming at him and kicks off of another to slice through an incoming demon with ease.

“What?!” Vergil calls back, absolutely annoyed as he lunges forward at a creature much larger than he is with murderous intent.

“How old are you?!” Nero yells. He charges a shot with Blue Rose and aims down at another demon as Vergil yells back at him.

“How is that pertinent?!” Vergil yells back from across a newly crossed horde of demons.

Nero laughs, the adrenaline of being back in the most normal scenario he’s been in in months makes the blood pump in his ears. It’s his favourite song.

“I dunno! I figure even a child would be able to handle this horde by himself!” Nero knows that Vergil is not a child, but if Dante’s words are anything to go by, Vergil has many buttons. Nero just needs to press them. He slashes through another demon as the fight slows down.

Nero holsters Blue Rose and takes a look at the blade Vergil had tossed at him. It really is very well made. He wonders if the manufacturer is still around in his time. He could definitely use something like this to train—

The blade distracts him enough that he misses sight of a demon crawling up from a pile of rubble that they had created. It leaps off and tackles Nero to the ground. Nero grunts and pushes at the demon’s clawing jaws with his hands, only just keeping his own face from being eaten.

With a final, skillful trick, Vergil leaps off of a decaying demon in front of him, flips backward, and lands directly on top of the demon that is trying to bite at Nero, Yamato first. The sword pierces through the demonic flesh and is held still through the demon fading away, revealing the tip to be held, yet again, at Nero’s throat. Vergil lands softly on his feet as the demon fully dissipates, one leg on either side of Nero. Vergil’s coattails sway in the wind as the sun sets behind him.

“I am eighteen years old and if this has proven anything , it’s that I already possess a mastery that you can only dream of in your middle age,” Vergil’s words are loaded with arrogance and his expression is beyond condescending.

And Nero laughs. He’s on his back on a street in the middle of Fortuna as it was however many years ago, his eighteen-year-old father is standing above him pointing a weapon at his throat, and he just called Nero old.

He could not make this up.

“ Why are you laughing?” Vergil asks, narrowing his eyes. The Yamato doesn’t move from its position at Nero’s throat.

“Nothing,” Nero says through the laughter. “I just— Nothing. I’m twenty five. ”

Vergil glares at Nero a little longer, but he sheathes the Yamato again. He holds his hand out for Nero, the arrogance still plain on his face. Nero doesn’t take his help, but he does hand the blade back to Vergil as they begin to head back.

Dusting himself off, Nero asks, “where did you meet her?” 

It’s a casual enough conversational piece that in no way shape or form implies Nero is trying to get any information out of this version of his father that he wouldn’t get from the other one. None whatsoever.

“The library,” Vergil responds plainly. He runs his hands through his hair, it sticks completely up now with the sweat that trickles down the side of his face.

“I want to give you shit for that, but I technically met the love of my life in church,” Nero says with a small laugh. He’s still riding the wave of confidence the adrenaline has given him.

Vergil turns to him, the faintest look of amusement on his face. “It’s hard to believe a woman would look at you and have wholesome intentions.”

“ Hey,” Nero starts, although he wouldn’t exactly disagree. Kyrie was special, but her determination to stick with Nero through the good and the bad, her strength and heart, it all put her in a league of her own. It’s a miracle Nero ended up where he was with her. 

Vergil takes a few steps ahead of Nero as Nero finds his words, “I could say the same about you.”

Vergil turns back to look at him for a moment before continuing forward, “you could.”

The rest of the walk is in silence. Nero’s adrenaline high comes to an end as he realizes he’s had his second proper conversation with his father. About girls. 

He makes a face for only himself as he follows Vergil up the stairs leading into Natasha’s apartment. As they enter, she’s sitting at the small dinner table with an open book on the desk.

 Her expression is unreadable as she takes in the sight of the two of them entering.

“Are you alright?” Vergil asks. 

“Yes,” she says, forcing her face into a smile. It fools no one, Nero’s sure, but nobody says anything of it. She continues, “I had dinner without you. There are leftovers in the fridge.”

“Anything interesting?” Nero asks, gesturing to the book as he takes a seat across from her at the small table.

She shrugs, “I’ve figured out an easier way to get into the castle.”

“Oh, yeah?” Nero asks, genuinely impressed if that was the case. It was a fortress. 

Without breaking eye contact with Nero, Natasha vanishes. He’s positive he didn’t blink.

“What the fuck?” Nero says, blinking hard and looking around for Vergil. He’s by the counter, scooping cold pasta onto two plates.

Natasha reappears in front of him with an arrogant smile that’s only just less intense than Vergil’s.

“Magicks of all kinds exist, Nero,” she says, her smile warming, “not just demonic. You would do best to remember that.”

She holds out a charm on a necklace she wears. It’s a little rune, Nero realizes. His mother was a sorceress of some kind. That’s pretty badass. He’s a little proud.

A plate gets served in front of him and Nero nearly chokes on his own spit again. If the Vergil he knew met this one, they’d kill each other. This Vergil, completely unbothered, takes a seat next to her and starts shoveling cold pasta into his mouth. His sweaty hair falls over his face and for a split second, he could have easily been mistaken for Dante.

“Let me warm that for you,” Natasha says, reaching over for their plates. Vergil pulls his away.

“I like it cold,” he says, like a child. Eighteen, indeed.

Nero stifles his laugh and gives her a grateful smile, “I’m fine with this, too.”

The unreadable expression on her face comes back and she shakes her head, picking the book up from the table and she heads into the other room. Vergil and Nero eat in silence. The sounds of running water come in the distance and Nero realizes that he’s alone with his father again. This time outside of a familiar combat zone.

“What are you to her? Vergil asks, the empty plate in front of him pushed aside. Right to business, as always.

“What?” Nero asks, genuinely confused.

“You share her expressions, her eyes,” he says flatly.

They’re yours, idiot. Nero squints at him, the confirmation that she is his mother sinks the anxiety into his stomach again. “Sorry for having eyes?”

Vergil doesn’t respond to Nero’s sarcasm. He continues his series of questions and not-questions. “You are not Dante. Why do I sense a demonic presence in you?” he asks.

There’s a moment where Nero wonders if he should come clean about his relation to them. He’s concerned he’s going to faze out of reality if he messes up the timeline somehow. Thus far he’s kicked many rocks and it doesn’t look like the dinosaurs have come back, but this is something major. Still, clearly, his parents have had some kind of discussion and neither seems prepared to let the subject go. 

Maybe if he doesn’t outright admit to it. 

Nero stares at Vergil, doing his best to keep his face as unreadable as he can. It’s a long shot to assume that Nero’s his own son, Nero can admit that, but if Vergil knows that Nero’s different, that Nero makes his skin itch in a way similar to Dante. On top of all of that Nero looks like them. 

What other conclusion could he come to?

“You know who I am,” Nero challenges, pushing the feelings that sink in his stomach as far down as he can. 

Vergil’s expression is unreadable, his eyes bore into Nero’s. He asks, “are you father’s illegitimate child?”

“What?!” Nero chokes on his pasta this time. Vergil watches him choke with the same unchanging expression. Nero manages to clear his throat and yell back, “what the hell is that supposed to mean?”

“My father was on this mortal plane for a very long time, perhaps, before he met mother—”

“ No,” Nero says flatly, “definitely not.”

“Dante…” Vergil muses, “no, that is unlikely…”

Nero keeps staring at him, the challenge to recognize him as a son remaining. He watches Vergil’s face go through the most subtle train of thoughts. The man’s eyes stare down at the table for a moment as he goes through all possible relations he could have to Nero before he settles on one. Vergil looks up again.

If not for the fact that Nero was aware that Vergil didn’t like to expand on his thoughts, nor would Vergil ever admit to the insane claim that he was staring at his child from the future, Nero would have missed the subtlest of nods that Vergil gave him. It was an understanding. He knew.

Vergil keeps staring at him, face unchanged. His voice is steady, controlled when he asks, “how are you here?”

Nero pushes the half-eaten plate away from him and sets his hands in his lap to hide how they shake. He’s expecting to fizz out like the demons or implode on himself. A layer of sweat develops in his hands as he goes into the explanation of having been on a walk, seeing a strange woman in a shop, and going through a wall that brought him into the past. He pointedly leaves out the reason he’d been on the streets in the first place. He does note the situation that had been at hand. Demons afoot, plagues, locusts, the whole shebang.

“And I don’t think I was supposed to tell you that,” Nero ends with a frown. He could have doomed the entire world with that. He’s expecting to implode in 3… 2…

“You haven’t phased out of existence,” Vergil says, as if reading into Nero’s worry, “if you had changed anything, you likely wouldn’t be able to sit here as you are.”

There was some logic to that, Nero thinks. He’d indirectly told Vergil what their relation to each other was and lived to tell the tale. He could test the waters this way and see what he could get away with saying. 

“This woman,” Vergil asks, “what was she like in appearance?”

Nero shrugs, “I don’t know. She looked like she was made of porcelain. Her eyes could move in her eye sockets on their own. She wasn’t a demon, though. She looked like a puppet almost? Not like a demon puppet, I’ve seen plenty of those.”

“How are you so sure?” Vergil asks.

Nero shrugs, “just a feeling. The feeling. You know what I mean.”

Vergil hums in acknowledgment. He doesn’t say anything else as he gets up and pours a glass of water. Nero expects him to head out of the kitchen, but is once again surprised by the act of the glass being set in front of him.

“You should eat,” Vergil says. Then he walks out of the kitchen.

Nero grips the edge of the table, grounding himself as best as he can. He’s only somewhat confident that he still wont fade away. He waits there for a moment before he reaches for the glass on the table. He hasn’t disappeared, he hasn’t exploded. It seems like everything remains in place.  He takes a slow sip and Nero breathes as deeply as he can. 

He wonders if he should just tell Natasha. He wonders if Vergil will. 

He also can’t believe his father served him dinner.

Nero decidedly takes a walk after yet another stressful conversation with his father. This time around, he wanders the streets of Fortuna as he remembers them mostly. Some of the shops are different, but he recognizes the majority of the ones that have their closed signs up for the night. He catches his reflection in the window of a dress shop. The two mannequins in the front window will one day model a dress that a fifteen-year-old Nero will save up to get Kyrie for her birthday. 

The block he and Vergil had rid of demons has been sectioned off and crews are already beginning to work on the “electrical short” that had caused the damage. Nero takes a look around the outskirts of the area and he finds the source of the summonings. It was professional work. 

And he thinks back to what Vergil had said, it had been Arkham, most likely. What was that guy’s deal? It takes Nero about an hour to disrupt the seal enough that it can’t be used without redoing the entire thing before he’s content with leaving it be.

“I hope you guys are okay,” he murmurs to the sky above him. He’s sure the gang is dealing with their issue as best they can. Kyrie can handle the kids. But, still, Nero feels useless in the grand scheme of things. There’s a major event and he’s stuck in the past. 

For a moment, he wishes he could reach for one of Nico’s cigarettes. He sure as hell deserved one now. 

As he walks down the main street that connects everything, leading him down a longer more scenic route to his mother’s apartment, Nero thinks on just that. 

His mother is here. He’s met her, he’s talked to her. He likes her. Nero had been sure that she had been a random one-night stand, somehow. That a woman who’d been drunk or inebriated in some way shape or form, had looked at Vergil and only in that state would have wanted anything to do with him. 

But, no. There was a whole woman here who cared for him. 

There’s the faint acknowledgment of something that sits in the back of his head as he walks down the streets illuminated only by streetlights. The stars above him shine as bright as they did when Nero looked up at them with a matching brightness in his own eyes. 

He laughs at himself at the thought, he’s not in the right headspace to admit it to himself just yet. 

Instead, he thinks of the other side of that relationship.

Vergil was still the same stuck-up, arrogant bastard that Nero knew, but there was a softness to his edges. It was a lack of something, Nero notes. Something that the man he met on the Qliphoth carried heavy on his back. Because of this, Vergil was infinitely more approachable and he seemed like he could be reasoned with at this age. 

It drives the question further into Nero’s head and his heart. What the hell happened? What separated them and led Vergil down the path he ended on and Nero abandoned?

He turns around suddenly, feeling a set of eyes on him as he finds their owner in a large black crow.

“Even in the past, you’re around, huh?” Nero asks with a faint smile. He stands alone at a bench in a small park near a makeshift pond. The streetlights give the area a glow as the crow regards him curiously.

“In a few years, some of your offspring are gonna make a hell of a mess out here. Don’t tell anyone I told you that, okay?” Nero says with a short laugh. “It’s great though, this lady swings her bag at you and two days later like ten of you come down on her. It makes the papers.”

The crow caws at him as if responding to his words. Nero nods at it. “Yeah, just like that.”

He stares down at the path for a moment before looking back up at the crow. “You know anything about deadbeat dads and meeting them when they’re six years younger than you?”

The crow caws again. 

“Yeah, didn’t think so,” he says as he walks down closer to the pond. It’s the site of another set of memories. Many dates, many awkward attempts to put his arm around her, and the site of his first kiss.

Its water glimmers underneath the moonlight. He manages to see the larger of the fish swim by the edge. Nero wonders if his parents have ever been here. 

The selfishness of telling his mother not to look for the tower rushes back as he sits there again, this time without Kyrie. He could stay here. He could get to know his family in a way that his present would never allow. He’s already got a better relationship with Vergil than he ever had in his own time.

Would that be okay? Has Nero not earned a family? 

And he’d be doing a good thing, he realizes. He could keep his parents together.

He considers the thought of that meaning that Nero as he is would disappear at some point. He’s uneasy at that thought. 

He looks to his right, fully expecting the most gorgeous woman to come out of Fortuna to be at his side. And she’s not, and his heart sinks. He couldn’t leave her. He couldn’t think of a future where she was not in his life.

And yet. 

The thought lingers in his head as he heads back to the apartment. The moon is high in the sky as he reaches above the door frame to find the spare key she keeps. He unlocks the door and 

gets to witness more of the domestic life Vergil had lived in his youth. Nero has begun to process some of it, realizing that there was a softness to his father that Nero never knew, but it still makes him no better than an awkward child.

They sit against the couch, doing their own research. Vergil sits with his legs spread apart enough that Natasha can sit comfortably between them with her back against his chest. She holds the book that they’re both looking at open. 

They’re a couple. It’s still as off-putting as it ever was.

“Are you alright, Nero?” she asks.

“Yeah,” Nero says, unable to look in their general direction. “Sorry I took so long. I haven’t seen the city like this in years.”

Vergil hums in response and she says, “you don’t need to apologize. We saved you a stack.”

Nero looks over beside them and sure enough, there are five books that need eyes on them. He takes his jacket off and sits on the ground. The ones she’d set out for him are all demonic in nature. He starts skimming the first one, looking for any sign of a porcelain woman or glowing crystals of any kind.

When he’s able to sneak glances at the two, he wonders if this is how Dante and Vergil felt in their youth when they’d see their parents. It was awkward at best, horrifying at worst.

A couple of hours pass and Nero finds no leads in his own search. Eventually, the words frustrate him and he tosses another book aside into the pile he’s already looked through.

“Have you considered there is no demonic influence in what’s happened to you?” Natasha asks, looking over at Nero.

He can’t fully look at her when she’s still wrapped up in half-demon.

“What does that mean?” Nero asks. Out of the corner of his eye he watches her look up at Vergil.

 “Do you know what angels look like?” she asks.

“No,” Nero hears Vergil respond. “Definitely not.”

“I can speak to the coven,” she says after. Nero’s staring at his pile of books.

“Coven?” Nero asks.

“Some of us have to work for our connections to power,” she says, playful in her tone.

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Vergil says immediately. There is no anger in his tone. “I certainly have put in work.”

“Uh-huh,” she responds. Nero watches her stand up out of the corner of his eye. He watches her put her hands on her hips and bend over slightly to move her face closer to Vergil’s. “Of course, first-born of the legendary dark knight Sparda.”

Nero’s chest aches. The look she’s giving Vergil reminds him of the way Kyrie looks at him sometimes. 

“I’d appreciate it if you did,” Nero chimes in, sounding more awkward than he feels. Everyone back home would laugh at him for third-wheeling his own parents like this. Hell, once this was all over he’d laugh at himself for it. 

“Of course, Nero,” she says, straightening out and turning to look at him with some concern on her face. 

She opens her mouth to say something else, hesitates for a moment, and then looks back at Vergil.

Nero watches Vergil look up at her and decide to stand. Vergil leaves the room without a word. 

Natasha stands there, looking the most awkward he’s seen her. Her usual confidence is entirely absent.

Nero meets her eyes and decides he can’t take the two of them teeming with awkwardness over their entire situation. He grabs the bull by the horns. He pushes the books near him aside and shifts his position so he’s sitting criss-cross.

“He told you,” he says after a few moments of silence. It’s not a question. He knows that she knows. 

Her face softens when she realizes they’re on the same wavelength. She drops to her knees beside him. “I—”

She looks at him with wide eyes and Nero is tempted to run away. He’s dealt with a lot in his life and suddenly finding out he had a family via violence atop of a demonic tree is a million times better than this. He meets her eyes, seeing the concern and wonder in them. Nero’s eyes shift elsewhere, or else he’d drown in his mother’s gaze.

She reaches out to him hesitantly. Her hand held up in midair. “May I?”

He’s unsure of what she means to do. He thinks it’s a hug when he responds, “uh, sure.”

She doesn’t hug him. She takes his face in her hands, cradling the side of his face gently and Nero fights the emotion that wells up in his eyes. She doesn’t fight the emotion in hers. Tears stream down her face as her thumbs rub against his cheeks. She whispers softly, “ nene.”

And Nero awkwardly jerks away from her grip. That’s way too much to handle right now. It makes him want to stay . He can’t look at her because the emotion he’s trying so hard to beat down wins in the moment. He does his best to nonchalantly rub at his eyes before he tries to glance back at her.

She gives him a concerned look, “you said— an orphanage.”

“Yeah,” Nero says, his tone colder than it means to be.

“I— what becomes of us?” she asks. “Of you and me?”

“I don’t know,” Nero says. He wishes he had an answer for her. He doesn’t trust himself to say any more than that without his voice breaking.

They stay like that. Nero stares at the ground, letting the anger he feels toward the father he left back home rise back up into his throat. It's his fault Nero doesn’t have an answer to any of the questions that plagued him his entire life . It distracts him from the tugging at his heart, the way he wishes the ground would swallow him whole. He feels her watch him.

“I’m sorry,” she says finally. 

Nero doesn’t think it’s an apology she has to give, but it breaks him all the same. He breathes heavily, unable to stop the shaking that overcomes him in the moment. He fights the tears harder than he ever did Urizen. Some break through his defenses, but he’s determined not to cry. 

“We’ll get you home,” she says after what’s been a minute of Nero’s silence. “Or…”

“Or?” Nero asks, turning to look at her. He’s embarrassed by what he thinks he looks like in front of her.

“Stay,” she says. There’s a plea in her eyes. “Help me fix this…”

She shakes her head at Nero’s look of confusion, rubbing the tears out of them, and composes herself the best she can. “I know he is not meant for greatness. I know he will find Dante and many will pay for it.”

“Then why are you helping him?!” Nero yells, the emotion he’d been holding in pouring out at once in a pained question. If she’s part of the reason he finds the tower, she’s no better than him.

She looks down at the ground. “Two years ago, I dreamt of a boy with a sword among the ruins of the castle. I had thought it was the wishful thinking of my subconscious. I belonged to the Order then, in body and soul. They had taught me the practise of magick. I was alone in the library one night and I thought the boy had found me. You are aware of what happened next.”

Church girl running away with the guy with the sword. Nero’s heard that one before. Sort of. 

Nero doesn’t comment, so she continues, “once I’d escaped from the order, I had many more dreams. I saw him atop of a tower, but it was accompanied by grief, by a world that I had never seen before. I have been living with the misguided hope that he would lead to the Order’s fall. And then you fell into our lives. I no longer believe he was the boy I dreamt of.”

She looks up at him, her eyes as big as they had been when she cradled his face, “and I cannot do that to my own child.”

She inches closer to him, the same plea from before in her eyes, “he wants to find a power his father left behind. The life it brings you is not worth any power in this world. His path has been walked, but we can save you.”

A hell of a woman his mother turned out to be. Kyrie would be head over heels.

Nero shuts his eyes and takes a slow deep breath. The thought rings in his head louder than it has all night. He hates to admit it, but he wants to stay. He’s met his parents and his mother is determined to save him from the fate at the orphanage. He shouldn’t want to give that up, he should be proud of the man it’s made him. He’s saved lives, he has the girl of his dreams at his side. 

And yet. His mother makes a hell of an argument, even if she doesn’t have the full details. Nero’s earned this, hasn’t he? A small reprieve from the world that’s taken so much from him. He thinks of the lives that would be saved if Vergil never unleashes the Qliphoth on Redgrave City. Thousands of families that would get to live. Nero’s own included. 

He’d trade his own life for the city’s, he thinks. And he’s earned the right to have a family. Even if it’s in the most fucked up circumstance he can think of.

Just for a little while. 

A little bit. 

He can always change his mind. 

“I can’t help you find the tower,” he says finally, resigned to his own selfish desires. He opens his eyes, they’re tired. He gives her his own pained expression.

“We don’t need to,” she says. A small smile on her face, “you leave him to me. It’s done. It’s over. We can live here without a problem.”

“I don’t know,” Nero says. “That doesn’t sound right. Time is fucked up, isn’t it? I feel like I’ve just doomed my timeline to fighting dinosaurs in space or something.” He laughs awkwardly, trying to lighten the moment for himself.

“Find Dante with him,” she says in response. Her eyes are pleading. “You can change things for the better. Reunite them for good .”

Nero blinks. He hadn’t considered Dante in all of this. 

He hadn’t considered that he could give Dante the relationship he always wanted with Vergil. Nero could have his father. He could save everyone who died from the Qliphoth. He could save everyone who’s ever suffered at the hands of his father’s pursuit of power. This could be bigger than all of them. 

All at the cost of life as Nero knows it. He’d grow up as someone else. Someone who didn’t watch Dante murder Sanctus only to later learn that was his uncle. 

“I wouldn’t get to meet you,” Nero says weakly after a moment. “You’re cool and badass and I’d be in diapers."

She laughs humorlessly.

“ Nene ,” she says again. She reaches forward and takes his face in her hands again. This time he lets her. “Your eyes tell of the suffering they’ve known since birth. Let me heal you. Let me raise you.”

Nero shuts his eyes. He can’t face her. He thinks of Dante’s attempts to reconcile with his brother, of whatever unknown befalls Vergil that turns him into the monster Nero could only just bear to look at. He thinks of the countless decayed bodies he passed on the streets of Red Grave, innocent souls that never stood a chance. Between the disaster in Fortuna and the Qliphoth, the deaths as a result of Sparda were well in the thousands. 

He thinks of the Order, of the Saviour. If events were to happen at all similar to how they did, they’d have Vergil with them. The order would be no match for the three of them. Credo would be alive . Nero’s eyes shoot open as the thought enters his head. He stares forward, looking past his mother.

All this time Nero had been thinking of Kyrie in relation to him. The more he thinks of it, the selfish move would be to keep Kyrie’s family away from her.  

Could he be that selfish? Could he live with the fact that he could have prevented all that loss of life, all that pain, all for his own love?

He lets go of a shaky breath, the decision was made. This was bigger than them all. 

“Okay,” Nero says, turning his glance back at her. He can live with the fact that he will likely disappear if it means saving so many people from suffering at the hands of his family. If it means Kyrie won’t lose her brother. And if Nero gets a family as a result? It could be worse, he thinks. 

He gives her a real smile and raises his hands to cover hers. “Where do we start?”

She laughs nervously, still clearly reeling from their conversation. She drops her hands from his face. “I must convince him to stop looking for the Temen-ni-gru.”

Nero sighs. It was all fun and games when it was all hypothetical. Still, the Vergil that was present now seemed to be just slightly more reasonable.

“I’ll beat it into him,” Nero says with a smile that reaches his eyes.

She gives him a strained smile, “please don’t.”

Nero laughs. 

When he lies on the couch later that night, his parents asleep not so far away, Nero feels as light as he ever has. It’s not anything he ever expected, but in the deepest parts of his soul, it really was everything he’d ever wanted. 

He had Kyrie and in the life he’d led, that was more than enough, despite everything. And now he was presented with an opportunity to fix everything. He’d be selfish not to fix it. 

It hurts, the pang in his heart brings the emotion to his eyes as he thinks of the last time he spoke with Kyrie. It hadn’t even been in person, it’d been over the phone. She’d asked him about the situation at hand, about how the search for the cause of the demonic outbreaks was going. She was terrified something would hit Fortuna and Nero had assured her everything would be fine.

And now Nero was in a position to really make good on that promise. Kyrie had always deserved better than Nero and giving her Credo back is the best thing Nero can do for her. Nobody loses in this scenario.

Nero wipes at his eyes and flips around so he isn’t looking into his mother’s empty living room. 

He stares at the white couch until he succumbs to his tired eyes. His mind is racing, but above it all he thinks back to the thing he couldn’t admit to himself before. The realization he’d had upon seeing that his parents were more than just a random night together. In a proper state of mind, Nero wouldn’t admit it to himself. And he won’t ever.

But, now, as sleep comes over him in slow rocking waves and the walls he’s constructed around himself are down, Nero finds the most comfort in knowing that he was conceived of love.

Chapter Text

The next morning is quiet. At breakfast, Natasha sets a plate down in front of each of her boys. Vergil has seemingly relaxed more to Nero’s presence as well. There’s something so strange about him. His hair is wet. It droops down over his face, again, making him look like Dante.

And then the thought hits Nero like a freight train.

“You don’t know where Dante is,” Nero says flatly. He’s sure of the answer, so he doesn’t frame it as a question, but he needs a way into the conversation.

Vergil stiffens and looks at Nero through the wet strands of hair. “No.”

Nero looks at him curiously now. It makes Vergil narrow his eyes.

“And I’m guessing you checked the Devil May Cry?”

“The what?”

Nero looks at both of his very young parents. They’re both looking at him like he’s speaking in non-demonic tongues.

“The Devil May Cry?” Nero tries again to no avail. “You know… his shop? His place?”

Their expressions only get weirder and it dawns on Nero that the shop likely doesn’t exist yet.

“Shit,” Nero says. “Not sure you were supposed to know about that.”

“I find it difficult to believe that Dante is using the talents he was given as a human marketeer,” Vergil says through a bite of egg.

“Well, he’s not—” Nero starts. He fumbles his words in his head and stops to get his thoughts straight. “He runs a demon hunting business. It doesn’t pay very well.”

“Ah,” Vergil says. There’s the faintest hint of a smile on his face. “That makes some semblance of sense.”

“We could go there,” Nero offers. He finishes the food that was served to him, saying a silent goodbye to Kyrie’s cooking.

“If it’s true that Dante opens a demon hunting operation, I highly doubt it’s now,” Vergil says.

“What makes you say that?” Natasha asks.

“I would know if he was around,” Vergil says. He runs a hand through his hair, setting it in the way he wears it.

“Can’t hurt to look, right?” Nero says.

Vergil narrows his eyes slightly, but says nothing. After a moment of silence where Nero thinks he’ll come up with a reason to say no, he nods.

Nero shares a quick glance with his mother. It makes him giddy on the inside even if he’ll never admit to it. A subtle ache sets in his head, but he blames it on having been in the past this long. Some kind of time-sickness.

Within the next hour, they’re all suited up and Nero is guiding them out of Fortuna. It takes a lot longer than he remembers it taking, but he chalks it up to the lack of regulations getting into the city in the future. Things are lax because no one is going into Fortuna. Now, the city is bustling with life and people are flocking in and out.

They reach the familiar street Dante lives on by late afternoon. Nero’s thoughts wander as he leads his parents down the road. He notices their usual pizza shop is a lot smaller than it is in the future, there’s an apartment complex next-door that isn’t there in the future, and well, very noticeably, the neon red sign isn’t out front. Nero’s skin itches indicatively, but he’s still not convinced Dante’s around. If Vergil is feeling anything, he’s not letting on.

Not prepared to admit defeat, Nero heads up to the doors, they’re not the same ones he’s used to seeing, and tries to push them open.

They give.

The second Nero takes a look in, he sees the lobby looks mostly like it does in the future. There’s exactly half a drum set, a sofa, and a jukebox in the corner. It’s missing a few key items Dante keeps around, but it’s more or less what Nero is used to seeing. It definitely smells like it.

And on the sofa, is the man himself. There’s a dirty magazine resting on top of his face and he’s shirtless, very much revealing the workouts he’s put himself through. Nero has to stifle a laugh.

“Jackpot,” Nero whispers to himself. He turns back to his parents, who are waiting expectantly outside. Vergil gives him a curious look. Nero doesn’t put two and two together.

“The doctor is in,” he says with a grin. His mother’s eyes widen and Vergil takes a step forward. Nero steps aside and follows Vergil in. They all stand there watching Dante sleep for several silent moments before Vergil breaks the silence.

“Dante,” Vergil says, there’s a gentleness in his tone. It’s one word, but, just like Nero’s father is able to do many years in the future, he can pack a lot into his brother’s name.

Dante stirs slowly, his hand reaching up to pluck the magazine from his face. A necklace hangs from his neck. The large red stone takes up at least a fourth of his chest. His eyes open slowly. And he turns to look at his brother.

Surprisingly, he doesn’t say anything.

Neither of them do.

They all stand there in silence. Vergil’s side all stare at Dante, who hasn’t moved from the couch. Dante’s eyes are fixed on Vergil.

The moments go on for what feel like an eternity. Dante breaks the ice by slowly beginning to sit up. Still, neither twin says anything. Nero turns to look at his mother. She gestures for him to step back with her. The twins are fixed on each other and neither notice when Nero takes a set of slow steps backwards.

The silence becomes tense as Dante stands from the couch and takes a few steps forward. Vergil doesn’t move as Dante approaches him, stopping too closely. Their ever so slight height difference is apparent when Dante’s eyes shift up, meeting his brother’s eyes. And then they shift down, taking in the rest of him. Vergil’s expression remains stoic, controlled.

This isn’t exactly the warm family reunion Nero was hoping for.

“Vergil,” Dante finally says. His voice is a forced growl. His eyes narrow slightly. “I thought you were dead.”

“As did I,” Vergil says in that monotone that would ordinarily drive Nero insane.

Any moment now…

Dante nods slightly. He turns and takes a few steps toward the distant jukebox in the corner. He presses a button on it and it makes a whirring noise. Dante mutters something unintelligible to himself before kicking it. It whirrs again and Dante gives it another kick.

Vergil doesn’t move as obnoxious rock music starts blaring through the jukebox.

It takes every bit of restraint Nero has not to start laughing.

In a flash, Dante is back at Vergil’s side, the Rebellion coming straight at him. Natasha yells, but Nero holds an arm out to hold her back. Vergil blocks the Rebellion with the Yamato at the last possible moment.

“No!” Natasha yells as the twins begin a duel Nero has seen a million times now.

“Let them get it out of their systems,” Nero says. “We’ll give them a bit.”

“They’re going to kill each other,” she argues.

Nero shakes his head, “they wish.”

The two end up with Vergil standing above Dante, the Yamato pointed at his throat much like Vergil had done to Nero not too long ago.

“It really is you,” Dante says in that same forced growl. Vergil doesn’t respond, but he does hold his hand out to Dante. Unlike Nero, Dante does take it. When they’re both upright, Dante seems to relax, if only a little.

“Sorry about the mess,” he says, “I’m just moving in.”

“I see,” Vergil says, turning to take stock of the little furniture Dante has in the building.

“So, what have you been up to? What’s shakin’?” Dante is doing his best to seem cool and it’s the most ridiculous thing Nero has ever seen.

Vergil turns to look over at Natasha and Nero. He turns back quickly and responds, “I’m looking into something important.”

“Who’s the girl?” Dante asks, he looks over at them. He locks eyes with Nero for a lot longer than Nero is comfortable with.

“None of your concern,” Vergil says with a tone that is trying very hard to be serious, but comes off as an annoyed brother. Dante smirks, looking more like Vergil than his younger self.

“Uh-huh,” Dante says, still looking at Nero. “And who the hell is that?”

The question sends a pang in Nero’s chest. He’s not sure why eighteen year old Dante not recognizing him hurts, but it does.

“An anomaly,” Vergil says cooly.

“Anomaly? He’s a demon?” Dante asks, ever observant.

Vergil turns to look at Nero, curiosity on his face again. Nero squirms involuntarily at the two sets of identical eyes now fixed on him.

“I’m more human than you are,” Nero says after a moment, his eyes slightly narrowed.

Dante gives an indifferent shrug, but Vergil’s gaze remains. Nero looks around the shop to avoid making eye contact with him.

“You should have dinner with us,” Natasha says, unaware of the disaster she is going to cause.

Dante’s smirk grows as he turns to look at Vergil.

“That, I wasn’t expecting,” he says. The smirk doesn’t falter when he adds, “I’d love to visit your home, dear brother.”

“I could kill you where you stand,” Vergil says flatly. It’s both a threat and vaguely a promise.

Nero relaxes as Dante smirks and responds, “I doubt it.”

A glowing blue sword spawns near Vergil’s head and hits the jukebox directly. The music stops and smoke flows out of it. Dante turns to look at him, his eyes murderous.

“So, dinner?” Natasha cuts in, a nervous smile on her face.

The twins are left alone with Natasha as Nero offers to go get them groceries for dinner. There’s no point in them going back to Fortuna now that the sun has begun to set. It gives Nero some alone time to try and clear his head of the dull ache that hasn’t left him alone. He does feel bad for leaving his mother alone with them, but he knows she can handle at least half of the problem should anything arise.

The trip is shorter than he remembers, but that may be from his mind being very occupied. He’s just met his eighteen year old uncle, which is somehow worse than having met his eighteen year old father. And not because Dante is any worse than Vergil at this age, but because Dante, knowingly or not, is trying very hard to be Vergil.

Nero doesn’t think it’s on purpose, but the similarities are there. Dante keeps part of his hair over his face and does his best to remain quiet and mysterious despite that not being who he is at all. Vergil comes off as quiet and mysterious because getting words out of him is a chore.

Still, it’s fascinating to watch. When Nero left for the market, Dante had been talking about the things he wanted to do with the shop. It was essentially what he would grow up to do, Nero was glad to hear, but it seems like he had grander plans that never came to fruition. Vergil had taken to helping put a photo of their mother in a frame.

Nero walks the aisles of the market wondering what Kyrie would say to him now. He knows she’d be supportive of Nero doing what he could to make sure the twins never ended up the way they did, but he’s not as sure that she’d have agreed to let him disappear for her sake, or anyone else’s. He wishes she were there if only for a second. He’d like to see her one last time before he reaches the point of no return.

He gets back with a few different proteins and vegetable options for something his mother called a paella. She busies herself in the kitchen and doesn’t let Nero help her with the bags. She insists that it’s his turn to watch the children.

Nero figures out what she means as soon as he goes upstairs.

Dante is standing in what’s supposed to be his room. It’s empty save for a mattress and an empty coat rack. There’s a book in his hands, one Nero recognizes. He could probably recite some stanzas from memory from all the times he heard V repeat the poems. Vergil stands in the doorway.

“It’s mine,” Vergil says, his eyes in a glare.

“So?” Dante snaps back. His voice is still low. “Why do you need it?”

“Because it’s mine,” Vergil repeats.

“It’s not like you read any of this anymore,” Dante takes a step back, trying to turn away from .
Vergil.

“And how many of our possessions do you think I still have?” Vergil asks. There’s a thick tension that sets in the air and Nero understands why this seemed like a childish spat to his mother. And she was right in a sense, but she didn’t know the full truth. And Nero was just not in the mood to hash it out right now.

“Dante,” he says with a tone he only takes with the kids back home. “Give your brother his fucking book back.”

“And who the hell are you?” Dante snaps. “Stay out of this, old man.”

Nero is once again caught off guard by someone much older than him calling Nero old. He narrows his eyes at Dante and responds, “Seriously? Are you a child? Are you six years old? Give your brother his shit back.”

“Nero,” Vergil starts, turning to look at Nero. Nero is surprised by the fact that Vergil did nothing to mask the look of annoyance and hurt on his face. He didn’t think Vergil was capable of emotional expression. At least not from what Nero knew of his father.

“Don’t you start, either,” Nero snaps at them both. “I’m not much older than either of you and you’re up here arguing like children. You’ve both thought the other was dead for fuck’s sake. Make up! Be brothers again!”

He receives silence in response. Dante brushes past Vergil in the doorway, shoving the book at Vergil and actually shoving Nero aside to get past him. Nero doesn’t say anything given the entire outburst is a lot to process on its own. Dante makes it to the bottom of the stairs, grabs his coat off of a rack, and heads out of the shop without a word. Nero turns back to Vergil.

Even as an eighteen year old, there’s a certain confidence to the way Vergil carries himself that it was something Nero was so sure was a fundamental aspect of Vergil’s presence, given his older self carries himself both confidently and gracefully. That’s why, when Nero turns back to look at him and sees Vergil clutching the book to his chest with his head bowed in what appears to be shame, Nero’s chest pangs with sympathy.

“Look,” Nero tries to explain, a weird forced smile on his face, “I know that’s important to you.”

Vergil doesn’t look at him. He steps through the doorway into the empty room and lets himself fall down onto the mattress in a seated position. He holds his head in his hands with his elbows resting on the book and the sight of watching his teenage father have a mental breakdown isn’t something Nero thinks he’s prepared to deal with. He’d take Urizen over this any day.

What he knows of Vergil guides his decision into leaving him be. He heads downstairs and figures if he knows any of the two best, it’d be Dante, so he’s going to tag his mother in on this one.

“Uh, I don’t think I defused the situation,” Nero says as he steps through into the small kitchen at the back of the shop. The kitchen smells amazing. Natasha has put her hair up and the way she turns to look at Nero makes him feel like he’s ten years old again. He squashes his emotions and adds, “I think your man needs you upstairs.”

“Stir this,” she says with a comforting smile. “When the water line disappears, let it simmer.”

Nero gladly takes the wooden spoon from her and moves over to the stove. He tosses a little more salt and pepper into the mix for good measure, but he follows her instructions and sets the lid on top. He has an inclination as to where Dante may have gone.

The air outside is cold and nips at his cheeks, but sure enough, as expected, Dante was sitting on the roof. His hands hang off of his bent knees. He stares at the building opposite them despite his hair being directly in the way.

“Hey,” Nero says as he completes the simple jump kickoff onto the roof. “I don’t think we’ve met properly, I’m Nero.” He’s confident enough about his ability to talk to his uncle, even if said uncle is eighteen and a son of a bitch.

“That trick to get up here isn’t easy,” Dante responds, not looking away from the building.

“Yeah, well. I’ve had practise,” Nero says. He leans off the side of the building’s rooftop edge. “I kill demons for a living, you know.”

Dante’s eyes flicker over to him, but quickly move back to the building. Nero sees his hand twitch, but he only responds, “cool. Me, too.”

“How long you been doing it for?” Nero asks.

Dante shrugs nonchalantly, “six or seven years now.”

Nero counts down in his head from eighteen. That would put Dante taking on demons since he was at least twelve. Nero had been aware of the fact that Dante and Vergil had been separated as kids because of their father’s enemies, but there was a difference in seeing the result of decades of perseverance versus seeing it play out in real-time.

Dante doesn’t move a muscle as he sits there.

“Wow, got me beat for sure. I’ve only been doing it since I was sixteen. That’d make it…” he trails off, counting in his head.

“Nine years,” Dante finishes for him. “You’re bad at math.”

So he was. Nero laughs and says, “I guess I am. Maybe that’s why I’m so good with a sword.”

Dante glances up at Nero for a moment through his hair before turning back to the wall.

“Your brother’s pretty good, too.” Nero adds. “Not as good as me, but he’s up there.”

“If he’s as good as me,” Dante says, his tone slightly less growly now, “then he has you beat by a mile.”

“Oh, yeah, tough guy?” Nero says, a smirk coming up on his lips. “You wanna put your money where your mouth is?”

Dante turns to look at him, his face as serious as Vergil’s suddenly. “You got cash?”

Had Nero brought Red Queen with him, he’d have hacked at Dante then and there, but given he was limited to Blue Rose, he has no other choice but to step down.

“Devil hunters don’t deal in cash,” he says, like a liar.

“What the hell pays the bills, then?” Dante asks, his attempt to hide his confusion failing.

“You know,” Nero says, trying his best to stay cool and relevant. “Money. But, that’s not as important as being the guy with the biggest sword.”

This gives Dante pause. Nero watches him glance down for a moment before looking back up at Nero and nodding.

“So, come on,” Nero says, holding his hand out for Dante to stand up. “Put the shit with your brother behind you. You’ve got a chance to get to know him and kick his ass.”

Dante doesn’t take Nero’s hand when he stands. This hurts, too. Dante instead crosses his arms and doesn’t move from where he’d been sitting.

“Why do you care?” he asks.

Nero frowns a little, “what does that mean?”

“Why do you care whether Vergil and I make up? Who the hell are you?” Dante asks.

Your nephew, you asshole. “A friend,” Nero says. “You can trust me.”

“Uh-huh,” Dante responds, “exactly what someone I can’t trust would say.”

Nero rolls his eyes so hard he’s sure he’s seen the back of his head. His retort is cut short when in the distance they hear screaming. Both Dante and Nero are looking over the edge of the building in a flash, looking for the source of the sound. In the distance, Nero can make out the slight edges of a portal.

“Shit,” he says, leaping over the edge of the building. He lands atop a balcony and gets himself down to the street level. He’s going to yell up for Dante when he notices the man already several steps ahead of him on the street. Motherfucker.

He runs after Dante, catching up as the two approach the source of a portal. Nero gets a glimpse of a demon holding a scythe slash at a civilian. He lunges for it, but not before Dante gets in front of it and slashes it in half with the Rebellion.

“Get out of here!” both of them yell in unison at the remaining bystanders. The area is clear within seconds.

It takes Nero a second to stop himself and turn to the portal, where several more of the same demon have come through. He pulls Blue Rose from her holster and fires two shots, disorienting one enough where he can rip the scythe from its grasp. He slashes at the other two with it, decapitating one and narrowly missing the other.

Nero ducks out of the way of its rebuttal slash and hears Dante grunt in the vicinity. A quick glance his way shows that more demons have come from the portal. Nero uses the scythe to pole vault behind the demon in front of him and fires a final shot at the horde that’s coming up behind Dante. Nero desperately wishes he had Red Queen.

A final slash at the remaining demon has a now weaponless Nero running through the dissolving demon toward Dante, who’s holding his own against what has to be at least twenty demons. The ones with the scythes slash at him and the new scaled ones claw at his back. Dante flips through them, firing shots with what Nero recognizes as Ebony and Ivory, landing only to jump up again and use a scaled head as a stepping stone to get out of the centre of the hoard.

“You gonna just gawk at me or join the party?!” Dante yells, reaching for the Rebellion again.

Nero grunts as he finishes reloading Blue Rose. He grabs at the back of one of the scaled demons’ head and manifests his spectral arm. A satisfying crunch comes from the punch and the demon dissolves around him as he fires point blank at another.

Dante’s gone through another five of them. It’s brought the horde down, but not enough. They’re outnumbered. Beads of sweat come down the sides of Nero’s face as he’s able to grab at another scaled demon by its tail with his spectral arm and swing it into the horde, knocking most of them back several feet. It gives both Dante and Nero the much needed breathing space.

Dante pants heavily but refuses to show any other sign of exhaustion. Nero leans down and grips at his knees, considering for a split second that maybe he was getting old.

“Come on!” Dante calls out toward the demon horde. “This party’s just getting started!”

He lunges forward again and Nero has no choice but to follow him.

Dante manages to eliminate a handful of demons, taking a second to grin at his handiwork when another demon rushes him from behind, knocking him prone and vulnerable to three demons that surround him almost instantly.

“Dante!” Nero yells, rushing forward to help when a flash of blue goes by him. He stops short when in a swift movement, all three of the demons get sliced in half. Vergil appears a few feet away, head bowed and sheathing the Yamato.

“Took you long enough!” Dante yells as he kicks himself up and lunges toward the closest demon with the Rebellion.

“You’ll forgive my mistake of believing you could handle something so simple on your own!” Vergil snaps back, eyes focused on the part of the hoard moving toward him.

Nero had seen Dante and Vergil fight each other in different ways, but seeing them fight together was something new entirely. It was like they had rehearsed this specific fight a million times down to the millisecond. Dante would leap one way and Vergil would meet him halfway, resulting in the gnarliest takedown of five demons in a row that Nero had ever seen.

A thudding sound causes them all to look toward the brute that had emerged from the portal. A demon standing much taller than all of them, glowing tendrils surrounding what looked like a rocky body, pulsing with power. It raises an arm and the ground around them begins to shake. Vergil and Dante grunt behind Nero as they continue taking down the lesser demons.

Naturally, that left the big bitch to Nero.

The piece of the ground Nero was standing on erupts upwards just as Nero lunges toward the demon’s face. He sprouts his spectral wings, giving him the extra boost he needs to land a spectral fist directly at its face. The demon staggers backwards from the force as Nero lands back on the ground and fires the two remaining shots in Blue Rose at one of its feet. A piece of the rock crumbles and the demon roars. The sound waves from the violent screen push Nero back a few inches.

Flashes of red and blue go by Nero as both Dante and Vergil leap at it. Dante slashes at its head and midsection while Vergil focuses on its legs. The demon roars again and takes a swing at Dante with one of the glowing tendrils, throwing him back into the side of a building. Ebony and Ivory slip out of Dante’s hands and land in front of the demon.

Nero’s reloaded by now and is ready for his turn again. He uses the recovering tendril from the building to run up and gain momentum as he goes for another spectral blow to the demon’s head. He whiffs. He loses his balance and another tendril wraps around his torso, pinning the arm that’s holding Blue Rose to his side. Shit. The pressure from the tendril begins to constrict him.

Nero has a way out. It’s going to hurt a lot more than it’ll help, but it’ll get him out of this. Before he can fully channel the focus into his devil form, the tendril falls with Nero still in it. The demon roars and Nero’s able to roll out of its grasping range when he hits the ground. He turns to see Vergil holding one of Dante’s guns, still pointed in the direction that Nero had been held in. It’s Ebony, he thinks. Nero turns back to the wounded tendril for a moment, the skin isn’t cut cleanly like it would have been with a sword.

What a shot.

Nero grunts and leaps at the demon again, landing a spectral fist at its stomach. It staggers backwards again as Dante returns to the fray. He leaps forward, piercing the demon’s stomach with the Rebellion. He drags the sword downward with his weight, revealing the demon’s revolting innards, but more importantly, the beating bag of black sludge that provides the demon with its connection to the underworld.

Dante leaves the Rebellion stuck in the demon as he kicks off of it and flips backwards, landing directly behind his brother. He picks up Ivory and in a move that happens quickly, he steps forward and turns, pressing his back against Vergil’s. They press their respective guns together and with what sounds like glee, they both yell, “jackpot!”

Ebony and Ivory fire together, piercing the delicate flesh of the pulsating bag, spilling black goop all over the ground as the demon begins to dissipate. The three stand where they are, catching their breath as even the goop begins to fade away.

“Woo!” Dante yells, his face not giving away any semblance of real joy. “Nothin’ like a little dance to get you going.”

Vergil’s looking down at Ebony, a slight frown on his face. He looks up only when he tosses the gun at Dante. “Those are a disgrace.”

Dante ignores his comment and turns to Nero as he holsters his weapons, “not bad for a guy with no sword.”

Nero grins. Of fucking course he held his own.

“Formidable,” Vergil agrees. “Much better than your previous performance.”

“You’re a demon, aren’t you?” Dante asks.

“Not exactly,” Nero responds.

“You’re family, then,” Dante says, crossing his arms.

Nero’s grateful for Vergil for the first time when he takes a step forward between Nero and Dante and says, “I suggest we don’t keep the dinner waiting any longer.”

“Oh, no,” Dante snaps, taking a step to the right so he can look at Nero again, “why the hell are you helping us?”

Nero scowls, his own emotion getting the best of him. “Yes, I’m your fucking family, asshole! That’s why I care! So, can we please go have this shitty family dinner that I’ve been trying to have?!”

Vergil watches Nero with his eyes slightly widened. Dante’s expression doesn’t change.

“I don’t believe you,” Dante says.

“That’s your fucking problem!” Nero snaps, turning to take wider, quicker steps toward the shop.

“Make haste,” he hears Vergil say behind him. Dante grunts.

Nero reaches the shop first, heading in and finding his mother looking concerned by the door. He’d ordinarily burden Kyrie with his problems, but she wasn’t here right now. And it would be too much to tell her that all of Dante’s words have gotten to him, that he could deal with Vergil’s attitude and eternal distance, but Dante is one of the only people in his life that Nero is close to, and it would be way too much to admit that Nero was hurt by Dante’s words, despite Dante being in his right to be suspicious.

Instead of trying to articulate his emotions, he closes the distance between them and hugs her. The embrace his mother gives him when he leans into her is more comforting than he thought it would be. She smells like the air after a storm.

“Nene,” she says softly, “what happened?”

Nero sighs into her shoulder and pulls back, feeling only barely less tense. He turns back to the twins who are close enough to be heard, but far enough that Nero can answer, “Demons. Dante also thinks he knows about me.”

“You could tell him,” she offers.

“I’m still worried that’ll make things worse somehow,” Nero confesses. “I know we’re changing things for us but, his life?”

She gives him a knowing look as Dante and Vergil come through the doorway.

“D’ya make pizza?” Dante asks, sniffing at the air.

“No, not this time,” she says with a soft smile. “I have something my mother used to make for me.”

“And we are grateful,” Vergil adds with a shove at Dante’s shoulder.

It’s like they’d never been separated.

Chapter Text

The family dinner that Nero thought he’d only get to experience in his dreams is easily the most awkward thing he’s ever done. This also includes the time he tried to ask Kyrie to be his girlfriend by trying to spell out the phrase ‘will you date me?’ in flowers by her window and straight up forgetting the letter ‘A’ in ‘date’. Or the time he tried to show off Red Queen with the knights and he ended up falling off of one of the castle’s roofs.

They sit around different parts of the office for dinner. Nero takes a seat on the not-so-old sofa, Vergil had gone and sat at Dante’s desk as soon as they’d gotten back, and Dante went and sat himself crisscross on the desk itself. His mother tasks herself with handing out the different style plates that Dante had scattered all over his kitchen.

There’s a silence only Nero categorizes as awkward as his mother sits beside him on the sofa and they start eating.

Nero watches Dante inhale food like it’s the first and only time he will ever eat. He gets up and his shitty little microwave dings every time he steps into the kitchen while Vergil eats his second portions luke-warm. Nero also eats them without reheating, but he’s grateful that Dante isn’t pressing the issue he has with Nero at dinner.

The relief doesn’t go as long as Nero would have liked, however.

“This is great,” Dante says in between forkfuls. “It’s crazy my brother got so lucky.”

Vergil stares down at the plate in front of him.

“He definitely has,” it’s Nero who responds.

“So what are you, then,” Dante asks again, pointing at Nero with his fork, “if I’m expected to believe that you’re family. Are you a bastard kid? Is that why our father left?”

“No,” Nero says with a slight frown. “Definitely not.”

“You sure as hell aren’t my kid,” Dante says, the faintest smile on his face. “You can’t be Vergil’s, either. You’re too old.”

Vergil is still staring down at his nearly empty plate as if taking his eyes off of it will kill him. Natasha is pushing a lump of food back and forth on hers like it’s crucial that she does so. Dante is staring right at Nero, oblivious to the sight in front of him.

“What if I’m your step-dad?” Nero asks, realizing he could have a little fun with this if Dante is so insistent on figuring out what Nero’s relation to them is. Vergil’s gaze looks up to try and meet Nero’s, but Nero’s shit eating grin is directed directly at Dante.

“Not possible,” Dante says, shoveling more food into his mouth. “I’d remember. We lived alone after father disappeared.”

“There’s a lot you could be forgetting. For example, you wet the bed every day until you were six,” Nero says, the grin remaining on his face. “There’s also the time that—”

“Dante,” Vergil cuts in with a tired sigh, completely ruining Nero’s fun.. “Nero is family, I can promise you that. His existence is a mystery to me as well, but you can trust him.”

Dante looks over at his brother for a moment, letting the words sink in.

“Why’s it a mystery?” he asks, turning back to Nero.

Nero rolls his eyes again. He mulls it over as much as he can in the moment. He hasn’t exploded or burst into flames and he’s told his parents that he’s their son from the future. It should be okay to tell Dante if he’s never going to let up.

“Should I tell him?” he turns to ask his mother, feeling like he’s ten.

“It’s your secret, Nero,” she responds, giving him a curious look.

Nero sighs again. “Look, Dante. I’m your nephew. From the fucking future. I don’t know how to sugarcoat it. I got zapped here by some porcelain looking lady who I’m thinking may be an angel and since I have no idea how to get back. And given I’m stuck here, I’m trying to fix things so you don’t end up where you do.”

They sit in silence for a moment as Nero prepares for the inevitable bombardment of questions. Where do we end up? What are you trying to fix? Angels exist? What am I like? What’s Vergil like?

Instead, Dante turns to look directly at Vergil. “He’s my nephew.”

Vergil’s staring back down at the plate in front of him again.

Dante breaks out into a smile for the first time since Nero’s re-met him. It’s the shit-eating grin that Dante wears on his face nearly every day when he’s older. It makes Nero relax enough that he can take another bite of the cold food on his plate.

“So that’s who you are,” Dante says, a soft laugh leaving his lips as he turns to look over at Natasha.

“It’s been an…” she trails off as she thinks of the right word, “interesting week.”

“Well,” Nero cuts in loudly before Dante can get any more questions in. He sets his plate on the ground by the sofa. “I’d love to keep catching up, but I’m exhausted as hell. We should go.”

“Aw, our little one needs a rest,” Dante says, that same grin on his face. It fades into one that threatens to be sincere, “you don’t need to leave just yet, you know.”

“We have other things planned,” Vergil cuts in.

“Oh. Family trip to the zoo? Theme park? And I’m not invited,” Dante’s having a field day with the knowledge that his brother grows up to have a child.

“No,” Vergil refuses to take the bait.

“Just spend the night. You can always leave tomorrow,” Dante offers. “Besides, I just got the hot water running again. It should get some use.”

Nero makes eye contact with both of his parents. He shrugs and both he and his mother turn to look at Vergil. He also shrugs, but he’d never given the impression that he was in any hurry to leave.

“Come on, dad. I’ll show you up,” Dante says to Vergil, the grin coming back.

Vergil gets up and beelines upstairs without being prompted. Dante hops off of his desk, the grin still on his face.

“Go easy on him,” Natasha says softly. “He’s still unsure how to take any of it.”

“Oh, I’ll bet,” Dante says as he watches Vergil go up the stairs. He turns to Nero, “I’ll get your old man settled in.”

Nero sighs as the two head upstairs and out of sight. Dante had more or less reacted the way he would have expected him to. Not that Nero had ever considered this scenario. He helps his mother collect the plates and helps her get them washed in the tiny sink in the kitchen.

They wash in silence for a few moments before he feels her gaze. He turns up to meet her eyes.

“Are you happy, Nero?” she asks as she dries a scrubbed dish he’s passed her. She watches him curiously as Nero looks down at the soapy water.

The question hits him like a ton of bricks. He wasn’t unhappy, he’d say. He could also argue that he was happy where he had been, despite the anger and frustration that he lived with. Kyrie was his happiness. He’d found his family, however broken it had been. And yet, he’s been given a chance to meet his family here, before any of the things that led to his birth. He’d be lying if he said he wasn’t excited to explore it.

“I could be,” he answers honestly. “I’ve just re-met Dante and Vergil is… very different than when I knew him.”

“What was he like?” she asks.

Nero huffs a laugh. He thinks of how to describe a forty something year old Vergil.

“Awful,” he finally says with a content nod. “You know how we met? I’d had a demonic arm, uh— have you seen his demon form yet?”

She gives him a serious nod. Nero continues, “okay. I didn’t have one until very recently. Long story short, the demon in me manifested in my arm.” Nero wriggles his fingers at her as he continues, “I’d been able to uh, absorb, I guess, the Yamato’s power into it. I could use it spectrally, summon it like he does, cool stuff. Until one day, dear old dad comes into my garage, rips my entire arm off, and leaves me for dead.”

He watches her face go on a rollercoaster of emotion. She finally settles on a single question, “why did you have the Yamato?”

Nero shakes his head. “Mamá,” he says in the same tone she calls him baby in, “it’s a really long story. The short and sweet is The Order had it and Dante showed up to take it back, but he left it with me. I didn't know any of us were related and Dante didn’t say anything.”

She stares down at the new dish he’s handed her. She’s lost in thought for a moment before she looks up at Nero again and says, very firmly, “I am glad to know you as you are now.”

The words freeze him into place, making his chest swell enough that Nero can’t find the breath to respond.

She continues, “I have an idea as to what happens to me, but I’m glad I’ve been given the chance to meet you, Nero. I know I’d be very proud of the man you are. I am. And if I know your father as well as I do, I know he had to have been proud of you. He is.”

The words cut Nero deeper than he would ever admit. His hand immediately rushes to violently rub at his eyes, getting soap in them in the process. The stinging overpowers the emotion in an instant. He groans as he steps away from the sink, squeezing his eyes shut now from the stinging sensation in them. Shit. Fuck. Now he’s just embarrassed.

“Nene!” His mother yells, rushing over to him. He feels her guide him back to the sink and has to submit to her helping him rinse his eyes. She doesn’t bring anything else up as they finish the last of the dishes. He’s eternally grateful.

They head upstairs once they’ve finished and find Vergil in what will later become his actual room at Dante’s place. There’s a set of single person mattresses pushed together with sheets stretched onto them and a couple of duvets folded atop of them. The moonlight spilling in through a window reveals the man himself. Vergil sits in a wooden chair in a corner, a soft moonlit look on his face as he flips through the book from his childhood.

Nero stands in the doorway as he watches his mother approach his father. The house is quiet save for the sound of sirens coming from a distance. There were no civilians on the scene after they’d all gotten there, but they couldn’t save everyone.

“Hi,” she says softly, a hand reaching out to gently hold the side of his face. He looks away from the book, up at her with gentle eyes.

“Hello,” he responds with the same softness.

And Nero understands now. He wordlessly walks in and picks up a duvet before making his way back down the stairs. There’s a lot he doesn’t know, but he at the very least can say that understands now.

He’s never known anything about Sparda, but going off of the assumption that he at all resembled his sons, then, he’s sure it’s a family thing. There’s always a man, an other in a world that would never understand him, a world that had taken everything from him, a sacrifice or not. And there was a woman, a being of kindness, that would see him for what he was and who he could be. Women whose strengths could take down the king of demons and his kin without a single blow.

Nero lays on the uncomfortable couch that Dante will keep in his lobby for decades and he’s able to drift to sleep a little easier than he has been able to since he arrived in the past.

He gets it now.

Dante opts to skip breakfast the next morning, choosing to still walk around shirtless as both Nero and Vergil stand around a toaster. Natasha went out to pick up groceries given Dante’s first order of business was to make sure that his brother and the plus two stayed until past breakfast, at least.

Nero has spent most of the morning answering the more generic of Dante’s questions. No, he’s never won the lottery. No, Dante’s not married in the future. Yes, his business is still up and running, but no, he’s not filthy rich.

“Devil May Cry,” Nero says, responding to the most recent question.

“What kind of name is that?” Dante asks. “Devils never cry.”

“I don’t fucking know,” Nero responds, giving Dante an incredulous look. “You named it. It was already that when I joined up.”

“Now it’s going to be called Devils Never Cry, then,” Dante says, leaning against the door to the kitchen as the toast Nero and Vergil have been waiting on pops out of the toaster. “Getting a neon sign made is very cool, though.”

“That’s ridiculous,” Vergil says, pulling a slice of bread out. “The fact that you’re venturing a human enterprise is ridiculous.”

“How else are people going to know who to contact when there’s demons to kill?” Dante asks, crossing his arms.

“There shouldn’t be a need,” Vergil says, “your talents are better utilized trying to rid demons en masse. Not one at a time.”

“Oh, yeah? How do you plan to do that, brainiac?” Dante squints at his brother.

“Simple,” Vergil says. “When I find the Temen-ni-gru and unlock the power our father sealed away, I can make things right.”

“Huh?” Nero asks, immediately choking on the bite of toast he was attempting to swallow.

Vergil chews slowly, giving Nero an annoyed expression. He doesn’t answer with his mouth full. When he can, he says, “there are better ways of going about demon slaying.”

“And you think that… gaining power, that mind you, your own dad sealed away for humanity’s sake, will… protect humanity?” Nero is trying really hard to find some kind of logic.

“Humanity is neither here nor there, if they benefit from demonkind’s eradication it is of little importance,” he says in between bites.

And there it is.

Eighteen, forty something. It was all the same.

Nero clings to some hope. He tries, “you don’t see how fucked up that is? Need I remind you that you’re human, too?”

Vergil takes another slow bite of the toast in his hand and shrugs. A second pauses before he swallows and says, “the skin that contains power is nothing more than a vessel.”

“And your little human girlfriend?” Dante asks. “And your human son from the god damn future?”

“Nero is not human,” Vergil snaps. “And the woman is—”

Nero’s eyes narrow and he cuts in, “the woman has a name. And I’m fucking human. I bleed just like anyone else.”

“Yes, well,” Vergil says, turning to toss the half eaten piece of toast in his hands in the sink, “you’re about as human as a houseplant. And whether I like to admit it or not, she’s a means to an end.”

The rage that Nero holds in his heart flares up his chest and into his eyes again. Had he no respect for Dante’s shop, he would have turned and thrown a spectral punch at Vergil without hesitation.

“You can come in,” Dante says, interrupting Nero’s internal rage.

Three identical sets of blue eyes turn to look over at the small woman that appears in the doorway of the kitchen. Her auburn hair is put up again with strands coming down the sides of her face. She carries a paper bag in her arms. Sunflowers and a baguette are visible at the top.

Nero decides he’ll apologize to Dante later and goes for the sucker punch. He’s deterred only by the fact that Vergil looks like he’s seen a ghost when Nero turns to him. Vergil stands there, frozen in the spot, as Natasha sets the bag down on the rickety table that Dante keeps the microwave on. Her expression is unreadable as she turns and walks out the way she came.

“A means to an end?” Nero finds his words through the anger clouding his head, he speaks with disgust dripping from his tone. She didn’t deserve that, not after what Nero had seen last night. Not after the things Nero hadn’t seen.

He moves to follow Natasha out of the room. He stops at the doorway for a moment, turning back to add, “there is something so fucking broken in you.” He doesn’t wait to see Vergil’s reaction, if there had even been one.

He hears Dante begin to say something as he goes through the lobby, his mother nowhere to be seen. Nero heads through the entrance to the shop to a street bustling with people, none of them redheads.

She comes into his field of vision the closer he gets to the corner of the street Dante’s shop is on. Nero breaks into a jog. He catches up with his mother, coming to match her pace as they keep walking down the street. Her face is still unreadable, stoic over whatever emotion she’d been forced to have.

“Hey,” Nero repeats between pants, “did he not agree to stop looking for that damn tower? Where are you going?”

She shakes her head. “I have a friend in the city. I did not want to reach out to the coven, but I will if I must.”

“What?” Nero asks, his mind immediately jumping to the worst, “you’re leaving just like that?”

She gives him a curious look, “what?” and she realizes Nero’s freaking out, “oh. No, of course not. I would never leave you. I just refuse to argue with him.”

Nero’s heart sinks as looks at her curiously. He’ll deal with his own emotions later.

“So… you were gonna wait him out?” Nero asks.

She shakes her head. “I know how stubborn he can be. I know how he sees the world around him.”

“And you’re okay with that?” there’s a softness in Nero’s tone he usually reserves for Kyrie’s moments of sadness.

“No,” she says with a sad smile, “but there is no point in arguing with a wall no matter how much you love it. Your only hope of getting your message across is breaking it down.”

Nero watches her for a moment. The sadness of her expression doesn’t reach her eyes. There’s intensity in them, determination. It stirs something in him. It makes him want to hug her.

“What are you going to the coven for, then?” he asks.

“I wanted to find proof, proof that this relentless search of his will do nothing but bring more pain. I know it’s there, I know what is to come. We’ve discussed it, and he says he believes me, but that he can handle it. I just don’t know how to make him see,” she explains. “I thought finding Dante would help my cause.”

Nero frowns. Sparda had to have passed down the stubborn genes, too.

“I’m sorry,” he says, “for him.”

Natasha looks over and gives him the warm smile that convinces him that staying was the right decision. “I should be back before nightfall, but I would not wait up for me.”

“I’ll come with you, then,” Nero says. He sure as hell doesn’t want to go back to face Vergil again.

Her smile brightens as she says, “discussion of the powers that be isn’t as interesting as sprouting devil wings.”

Nero smiles back at her, “maybe I’ll learn something.”

She takes Nero down several blocks and through a couple buildings that aren’t really buildings. They’re a series of illusions that are meant to deter those who aren’t looking for them. Nero finds himself lagging behind as he stops to try and touch one of the illusions. His hand disappears behind a wall. It’s freaky.

At the back of one, in a small alley there is a shop that is meant to be a nursery. There are all sorts of green plants around a windowsill that looks into a line of tall fridges filled with roses, but the exterior looks almost too perfect.

“This is a sect that operates outside of Fortuna. It’s mostly reconnaissance, gathering information for the Order. They are the only people who will still talk to me,” she says as she stops them a few feet from the door. “They were friends once. They know what I know about your father’s future.”

Nero gives her an understanding nod as they head into the shop and a man wiping down a counter looks over at them.

“Mauricio,” she says.

The man wiping the counter doesn’t respond to her. His eyes glance between Nero and her before he narrows his eyes at her.

“He is with me,” she says softly. “I mean no harm. I need help I cannot find anywhere else.”

The man glares at them for longer than should be necessary before he steps aside to let them pass through toward a doorway that’s covered by a dark curtain.

They come into a smaller room in the back. Lounging on a sofa, there is a man with long greying hair twisted into loose braids. His arms are tattooed with various mystic symbols and he wears a loose button up shirt with none of the buttons done. The man glances at his mother when she walks in. He’s definitely older than she is.

“Mi nena,” he says with a faint smile, his accent is similar to hers. “What a miracle. I haven’t seen you in years. I thought you had stayed in Fortuna.”

She looks over at Nero and then back at the man. “Something has changed…”

The man’s expression becomes unreadable, "Are you returning to us?”

She looks back at Nero. Hesitant. He’s not sure how to help her.

She takes a breath, “this is Sparda’s legacy. This is his firstborn’s son.” She can’t look the man in the eye. “He was brought from Fortuna’s future. It was not the work of demons, so I think I can prevent the tragedy of Fortuna.”

The man stares at her for a long moment. She’s staring at the ground. Nero stands awkwardly beside her, unsure of whether he should say anything.

“You were permitted to leave the Order to play a supporting role in his demise. You know you cannot interfere in what is destined to be ,” the man says, looking up at Nero and then back at her. “He must go back.”

She shakes her head, “We both know the Order did not agree with my departure. But, can’t you see? We can stop the fall of Fortuna! We can save lives.”

“And risk something worse? You know there are things we cannot begin to understand!” He adds, “you prevent the fall of Fortuna and bring forth an uprising, a plague of a thousand years!”

“And what of the sons of Sparda? Did they ask to be brought into a world that would only repay them with suffering?” She finally looks up at the man. There’s a crack in her voice that makes Nero’s fingers graze Blue Rose. They stand in several moments of tense silence.

The man stares her down, but she doesn’t flinch. Nero decides he’s going to step in when the man breaks the silence and turns around, going to sit back at the sofa.

“What do you intend to do?” he asks, defeated.

“I want to repay the debt that humanity owes,” she says, “if the sons of Sparda can live normal lives, we can deal with Heaven’s rage.”

He shakes his head, “you are asking for war with the celestials.”

“Hold on, hold on,” Nero cuts in, “there really is a Heaven?”

“Balance, child,” the man says, “in—”

“There’s a balance that keeps the world in check, I got it. What I’m asking is why the hell haven’t we run into any kind of angels, then? Why would something like that let U—” Nero catches himself, he realizes Urizen isn’t even a concept to them. Still, his question is one that deserves an answer. He finishes, “let demons roam so freely.”

“The way the demon world operates and the way the Heavens do are different. Demons want raw physicality, the pleasure of tearing something limb from limb. Demons treasure being corporeal. The heavens do not. They prefer to be incorporeal. They are in between roots, they maintain the ocean, they claim to keep the notion of love alive.” The man responds.

“Even if it’s between a demon and a human?” Nero asks, for literally everyone in his family.

“They are not particularly fond of that, no. But, in most cases, the Heavens turn a blind eye in exchange for services. Sparda was a special case,” the man says, “his gift to humanity knocked the scales, so to speak. He paid the price, and the heavens take payments in dividends. Understand this, boy. His sons are not destined for peace.”

The man turns to look directly at his mother. She looks away again.

Nero frowns. That he had a problem with. “That’s fucked up,” he says as eloquently as he can.

“Life is not fair, child,” the man says.

“It doesn’t have to be unfair only for us,” Natasha turns back to them. “If the Heavens want a war. We have all of Sparda’s kin. We can give them war.”

Nero is absolutely on board with this. Stopping all the deaths at the hands of the Order if the four of them can stop the Saviour before it even becomes real, Vergil never becoming Urizen, and Nero being able to have a family. If he pushes the thought that tempts him with selfishness of going back away, he doesn’t see a downside to any of it.

Still, a question comes to mind.

“What’s supposed to happen to them, anyway? I know they’re at odds and… we meet at bad times, but what’s their deal, then?” Nero asks.

“You don’t want to know,” Natasha says immediately.

“Come, child,” the man says, gesturing for Nero to approach him. Nero does.

“Nero, you—” his mother doesn’t get to finish. Nero’s stepped close enough that the man brings his hand close to his face and blows a powder into Nero’s face that feels worse than any punch he’s ever taken.

He jerks backwards, trying to reach up and rub at his eyes and cough at the same time. His vision goes over black as he falls backwards. He falls through a roof and suddenly, he’s standing in the corner of the small kitchen he shares with Kyrie and the kids.

He sees Kyrie standing at the kitchen sink, worry written all over her face as she stares down at a dish in her hands. He watches Dante, fully grown, stand in the doorway. His hair is longer than Nero remembers it.

“Don’t worry, kid,” Dante says, “we’ll find him.”

“Yeah,” Lady says. She’s sitting on a countertop. “He can’t have run off too far.”

“He is not on this plane,” a chilled voice responds. Nero turns to look at the man sitting at their small dinner table. He doesn’t look well. The bags under Vergil’s eyes are noticeably darker than Dante’s, his face looks thinner, and the elegant coat he wears looks too big on him now.

“You can’t know that for sure,” Dante snaps back, concern in his voice.

“I do.” Vergil stares at his brother with an expression that can only be described as cold. His eyes stare straight forward at Dante. His expression is unreadable.

“If we have to go back to the underworld to find him, we will,” Dante says as Lady shoots him a scolding look. Dante gestures over at Kyrie, giving Vergil an exasperated expression. He means to say ‘can you at least pretend to be hopeful?’

“I’m fine, you assholes!” Nero yells from his spot. Neither of the twins nor Lady acknowledge him. “I’m trying to fix this fucking mess!” Nero yells again.

Vergil’s eyes glance over, and if it weren’t for the fact that Nero falls through the ground into a void, he’d have sworn his father looked at him.

Nero gasps for breath as his vision goes black again before slowly fading back into the room he’d been in before. The skin on his face is so dry it feels like it’s going to start flaking off and his mouth is the Sahara. His mother kneels by him, an apologetic expression on her face.

“Nene,” she says, “are you alright?”

Nero groans, attempting to sit up. He manages to, but his whole body aches. “Peachy,” he finally says with a groan.

“Seeing is not for the faint of heart,” the man says from the sofa.

“Yeah, well,” Nero starts, feeling his body fail him as he tries to stand up. He lets himself slump down so he’s lying on the ground again. “You know what, never mind.” He says, shutting his eyes and inhaling deeply.

“What did you see?” his mother asks.

Nero doesn’t open his eyes, but he answers, “I saw the time I left behind.” He doesn’t open his eyes. The lack of response has him add, “they’re looking for me.”

“Interesting… Did you think they weren’t?” the man asks.

Nero opens his eyes and his mother helps him sit up again. She hands him a glass of water. He downs the entire thing before answering, “I guess not, I don’t know. I knew Kyrie would be worried about me, but I didn’t think they—” he cuts himself off, frowning at how much he’s revealed. He didn’t think they’d put him before the mission at hand.

She gives him a curious expression, “Nero, they’re your family.”

“Yeah, well, it’s a little different than here. They’re both old dogs, then.” Nero says as he hands the glass back to her.

“Hm,” the man says. He stands up from the sofa, he goes over to a bookshelf and pulls one off of the top shelf. “That didn’t work as expected. Interesting that it took you back to your own time instead of showing you what is to come.”

“It’s not something you should see,” Natasha says.

“Very true,” the man responds, “but, if you must know. The sons of Sparda are destined to meet, to fight until only one remains. The other is cast out by his own hand. He meets an untimely end and alone bears the weight of his father’s transgressions against the demon lords.”

Nero frowns, his gaze drops to the wooden floor he’s sitting on.. That would explain why Dante behaved the way he did in the Qliphoth. He’d thought Vergil had been dead.

“They don’t need to,” Natasha argues. “The Heavens have no right to ask for their suffering.”

The man shakes his head, “you would do well to heed my words, boy. If you continue down this path you will only find a new path to suffering. If you think demons are vengeful, you have not dealt with celestials. You need to go home.”

“I do not fear the Heavens,” she says, determinedly.

“Some winged assholes don’t scare me, either,” Nero adds.

“You will not know until it is too late,” the man says. There’s a hint of sadness in his tone. He turns back to Nero, “Still. The Coven may learn from this experience, yet. Tell me, child. What is it like having an abomination for a father?”

Nero’s blood boils for a reason he doesn’t fully understand. He turns and glares up at the man from his spot on the floor. Before he can speak, his mother answers.

“You will respect my family in my presence.”

Nero turns to look at her. She’s still kneeling beside him, hand resting on his knee, but her expression could kill a man.

“Or what, Natasha?” the man asks, turning to her with an expression to match, “will you cast me out as a traitor to your cause? Or will you finally admit to yourself that you do not care for the Order’s teachings, you don’t really care for Sparda’s sacrifice. You only care for his offspring. The one that stole you from us. ”

“No,” she says immediately, “I trust you. And you would do well with respecting me. I care deeply for the city that took me in when I’d decided to abandon the castle. Do you think I want to see it in ruin? Or die with it?”

“You talk like someone who’s never had anything to sacrifice everything for,” Nero adds, his tone cold. The selfishness wins for a moment and he lets himself feel guilty for leaving Kyrie. He knows she will be happier living in a city her brother exists in.

“And if he is someone I don’t want to see hurt, is that so wrong? I never loved the coven. I had made the decision to leave long before I met him.” She stands up as she finishes speaking.

The man shakes his head, “I will not oppose you, but I cannot help you. The Coven will know.” He takes a book from the shelf and hands it to her. “I hope what you seek to do works in your favour.”

“It will,” Natasha says, her eyes narrowed as she takes the large book from him. Its edges are frayed. It is very old. “There hasn’t been anything I haven’t already foreseen.”

“You did not foresee bearing his child,” the man says, a venom in his tone that makes Nero’s blood boil again. He turns to the man, ready to say something when his mother speaks.

“Nero,” she says softly, holding her hand out for him. Nero takes it, feeling lightheaded, but fine enough to stand on his own. It overpowers the need Nero feels to have this unnamed man at gunpoint.

“Let’s go,” Natasha says firmly. She tugs at Nero’s wrist and they’re out the door in a matter of seconds and back out on the street in less.

“So… what was that about?” Nero asks after a period of silence as they head down the street, but not back in the direction of Dante’s shop.

She sighs.

“There are… things you don’t know,” his mother says after a long pause. They walk for another block in silence. Nero wants to give her the time to respond, but he has little patience for not being told things.Especially by his family.

“About what? About you and my old man? About what the future holds?” he asks as they turn a corner into an open market. His mother begins picking herbs from a basket as her expression gives away her nervousness. Nero steps in front of her when she turns to look at another section of the vendor’s stand.

“I’m all ears, mamá,” Nero says, holding his arms out. He’s exhausted with family secrets.

She sighs again, “let me pay for these, and I will tell you everything.”

Nero watches her hand a woman in white a handful of coins in exchange for a small paper bag before she gestures for him to follow her. The sun is low in the sky as they head back toward Dante’s shop. The street that the market had been on is familiar, one of the many that Nero traversed on his way to the Qliphoth.

They make it to Dante’s by the time the sun has fully set. His mother doesn’t step inside, instead, she sits on the porch and gestures for Nero to sit with her. He does.

She takes a deep breath. “I was raised very far from here, but my father had an accident and we were unable to afford staying there after he passed. I was fifteen years old when we moved to Fortuna. My mother made a living from divining tea leaves in secret. She taught me how. I made the mistake of showcasing my talents at school. That had me recruited into the Order’s basement.”

“Their… basement?” Nero asks, his eyebrows scrunch together as he tries to remember if the castle ever had something that resembled a basement and not an evil laboratory.

She smiles at him softly. “It is not a real basement, Nero. That is just what we called it. We operated in secret, in the depths of the castle. We were taught of the natural order, the thing that the Order wants to dominate by any means necessary. We were taught proper magicks. But, I never fit in with them. I was never as strong as they wanted me to be.”

“You’re plenty strong,” Nero says, giving her a smile. He gestures toward the door they’re sitting in front of. “You’re shacked up with that guy, for gramps’ sake.”

She laughs softly, “I don’t possess the power you think I do. I can do some things, and amulets help plenty with it, but there are people much stronger than I. When I was getting ready to leave the coven for good, I was in their library sneaking away resources for myself so I could continue my studies outside of the Order’s gaze. I was shoving a book into my bag when I looked up at a young man I thought I had only ever seen in a dream.”

“Vergil.” Nero says.

She nods, “he was broken. And we fought. I didn’t stand a chance. He is much stronger than I am, but I like to think he saw a similar affliction in my eyes.”

Her gaze flickers toward the ground, pensive for a moment. Nero wants to ask her what’s wrong, but she continues before he can.

“We parted ways, but I kept seeing him out of the corner of my eye when I would be in the city on missions from the Order. On a particularly cold night. I finally led him to a rooftop and we spoke until the sun peaked on the horizon.”

Wow. How romantic. Nero lets her continue.

“I know little about him. I know he is Sparda’s firstborn, about Dante, and that they lost their mother at a young age. I don’t know how he survived until we met,” she says. “In two years I’ve only chipped so much at the wall he’s built.”

“Yeah, that tracks,” Nero says with a small nod of his own. He stops himself from adding that he can’t even get Vergil to hold a conversation with him. He is curious as to how the hell his parents even got together, but he sure as hell is not going to open that can of worms.

“After the rooftop, I looked for help. I wanted to know why I had dreamt of him. I discovered… a lot more than I thought I would. I saw what the sons of Sparda fight over, I learned that Fortuna was to fall, with who I thought was him at the centre. Santiago was there with me, he saw it too.”

Nero doesn’t want to interrupt her, but he’s under the assumption that was the name of the man they’d just seen at the nursery.

“And so, I learned my place in his destiny. I was resigned to being a step into what the natural order demanded. I was helping him find the tower, knowing full well it would lead to our ruin. And then you came into our lives, Nero. You have given me hope of a future where… he doesn’t become what destiny has chosen for him. You give me hope that we can give you the childhood you deserve. And I know one thing, if he finds the tower, there is no escaping it.”

A thud from behind the door makes them both turn back. The door remains still. They turn back to each other.

“What do they fight over?” Nero asks.

“The amulet. I’m not sure of its significance, but Dante has a half. The other is back in Fortuna… He doesn’t like to wear it,” she says.

“And what happens to him? All that ‘he alone atones for the sins of the father’ shit?” Nero asks, his tone only slightly mocking.

She sighs. She looks over at the street as she answers, in a low voice, “I do not have the words to describe to you the torture I saw.”

Nero watches her, eyebrows raised. He offers, “and you can’t blow that dust in his face and have him see that?”

She shakes her head, “he is protected against traditional spellcasting. As is Dante. The demonic blood that runs through their veins is stronger than yours. Any spell cast on them requires more power than I have at my disposal.”

“Always somethin’,” Nero says with a sigh. “Do you think I could help you with that? If you think my blood would help?”

She cocks her head to the side, a curious expression on her face. “It’s possible, but I could not bring myself to ask that of you.”

“Could you show me how?” Nero asks, realizing that it was kind of weird to be offering his mother his own blood for magic. “Or is that some inherited thing? Did I get screwed here?”

She huffs a laugh and shakes her head. “There is an innate calling to magic, but it is mostly learned. I could show you some things, when there is time.”

Something in Nero stirs, a warmth in his chest. He gives her a smile that she returns in kind. For the first time since he arrived in the past, he’s glad to be here.

“I—” Nero starts. He stops when voice cracks with the emotion that’s reached his neck thus far. He takes a breath and reaches over to take her hands in his. “We’ll fix this.”

“We must,” she says, “otherwise we risk even your future as you are now. If we fail and things are allowed to happen, but differently, who knows if we’ll even get the chance to right the wrongs again.”

Nero nods, “we’ll get it right. I’ll talk to Dante. If there’s anyone that icicle will listen to, it’s him.”

She shakes her head and pulls her hands away to push some of her hair back, “I thought I had convinced him to stop seeking the tower. I thought he had agreed to come find Dante in place of it.”

“Could be the amulet,” Nero offers. “Maybe it does something to them.”

She nods, gesturing to the little paper bag she carries with her. “We have research to do of our own.”

Nero takes a moment to look around, realizing they’re still having this conversation outside.

“Why don’t we go inside?” he asks. “We can game plan in there after I beat Vergil’s ass.”

“I did not get the proof I wanted,” she says softly. She looks down at the small steps she sits on.

“And you can’t look at him right now, can you?” Nero asks. “He hurt you.”

She shrugs, “I cannot control what he does or does not feel.”

Nero frowns. In a flash he gets up and goes through the door. The lobby is empty and he heads into the kitchen, finding Dante with half a snack cake sticking out of his mouth. He’s still shirtless and instead of the frayed jeans he wears a pair of navy blue sweats.

“Where is he,” Nero asks, but really it’s more of a demand.

“Out,” Dante responds.

“Motherfucker,” Nero growls. “I’m gonna kill him, y’know?”

“Doubt it,” Dante says with his mouth full.

“Why is he like that?” Nero asks, his own emotions sneaking through the immediate concern for his mother. “Is it so fucking hard to be a normal person? What the fuck happened that made him such a fucking monster? He may as well be the god damn icicle I have to deal with already and he hasn’t even finished puberty.”

Dante chews silently, unresponsive until Nero’s watched him swallow. He says, very simply, “I get it.”

“I really thought there was a person underneath it all, you know?” Nero says, running a frustrated hand through his hair. “I didn’t think he’d been born fucked up—”

“Not about that,” Dante clarifies, crossing his arms. “I meant that if I got the chance to talk to my father like you have, I’d be fucking pissed, too. He abandoned us when we needed him. My mother—”

Dante stops himself and Nero stares at him, doing his best to hide the surprise. He’s never heard Dante speak about either of his parents. He knows Trish’s story because she told him. To see Dante being even remotely open, it’s enough of a shock to stop Nero’s thoughts in their track.

“So,” Dante says, clearing his throat a bit, “if my father ever showed his demon-ass back here again, I think I’d be pretty pissed,” Dante finishes. Nero’s tempted to pull from his uncle’s school of making light of important things, but thinks against it.

“You have no idea,” Nero says with a sigh as he leans against the wall, deflating given that the target of his ire was nowhere to be found. “It’s just that I’ve seen him be a person here. Nothing like how I know him. It shouldn’t surprise me that he is the guy I already know.”

Dante frowns and crosses his arms. “Yeah, and you have no idea.”

“Of what? Being an orphan? Being abandoned by your parents? I think I do,” Nero snaps back, frowning at his eighteen year old uncle.

Dante cocks his head to the side a little, “if you wanna make it a competition, I’ve got you beat by a mile any day of the week, guy.”

Nero rolls his eyes, “and what’s with you and this eternal rivalry you have with him?”

Dante shrugs, “we’re twins. It’s what we do. You wouldn’t understand that. Not with what we’ve seen.”

Nero’s frown deepens, “alright, then. What’s dear old dad seen?”

Dante shrugs, “I don’t know, that’s not my question to ask. I’ve got my shit and he’s got his. What I’m saying is, I’m never giving up on him. He’s my family and he’s all I’ve got. That’s something I’d have to reckon with if I ever got to see my parents again.”

Nero’s frown stays in place. Dante was right, to a degree. On another note, Dante expressing what he’s tried to convey with actions in their future does resonate with Nero enough that a pang of compassion for the two in their middle-age hits him in the chest.

And Nero sighs. Dante, young or old, isn’t prepared to give up on his brother. Nero still has a chance to make sure they don’t go through whatever it is that breaks them up again.

“Yeah, whatever,” Nero says, pulling himself off of the wall, “he’s still an asshole.”

“Didn’t say he wasn’t,” Nero hears from behind him.

Nero heads up the stairs, his mother has to be in the room she and Vergil are staying in given Nero heard footsteps behind him when he’d stormed inside looking for Vergil. He opens the door to see his mother sitting on the bed, folding a pair of pants that were definitely not hers.

Nero changes his mind. Nero’s going to kill him.

His mother doesn’t get a chance to say anything to him when Nero’s flown down the stairs, almost literally, and out the door. He brushes past Dante, almost shoving him as he bee-lines for the door and out into the dark street.

He shuts his eyes and stands in the cold for a moment, focusing on whatever makes his skin crawl the way it does when a demon is around. There’s a determination in him that has him sure he can locate Vergil in the city, despite not having any idea where he is.

When his skin remains unchilled, he starts heading in whatever direction. He heads south, toward the industrial part of town. There’s no way Vergil was in a residential area, so Nero convinces himself he does have a lead to start on. As he makes his way toward the looming buildings in the distance, he ends up with yet more time to ground himself in the situation he’s found himself in.

Dante and Vergil are so different from the adults he knows and at the same time, they’re the exact same. Nero hates the father he knows and while he was beginning to grow soft on who Vergil seemed to be as a younger man, for every step Vergil takes forward, he takes a whole teleported step backwards.

He takes a long breath, exhaling and watching his breath leave his mouth and dissipate into the darkness ahead of him. The stars are bright above him, but they don’t bring any comfort. He tries to think of Kyrie, if only to focus on something. She’s probably been born by now. Credo’s definitely a little kid. They’re probably having fun back in Fortuna.

He thinks of the promise he made to his mother. He sympathises with Dante, but Nero can’t bring himself to have the same blind faith in Vergil. Instead, Nero’s going to do this for his mother. He’s going to learn some wild magic spell, he’s going to engrave her smile into his eyeballs, and when the time comes for him to slowly fade away into non-existence because he’s saved his family, well, then it’ll all be okay.

The silence walks with him a he reaches the factory buildings. All kinds of meat products stare down at him as he continues walking, not really looking for Vergil anymore, but not opposed to finding him either.

A flash of what Nero would swear up and down is orange grabs his attention.

He thinks—

No.

It couldn’t be.

He follows the movement down an alley between two large buildings. It smells like stagnant water as he watches another flash move through a large exhaust pipe that juts out from one of the buildings. It’s big enough to just barely fit a person through and the gate that holds it shut is broken. Nero clambers through, bumping his head and scraping every patch of visible skin on his body. Still, if he’s seen what he thinks he’s seen, it’ll be more than worth it.

He’d know that shade of reddish brown hair anywhere.

The lack of a flashlight doesn’t bother him as much as he stumbles through in an awkward taller-than-a-crab-walk. After a few moments of adjusting, he can’t see in full darkness the way he would during the day, but he can see enough to where he finds where the pipe turns into the building and where it ventures off into what he has to assume is the city’s sewer system.

Was this something from the future trying to reach him? Had forty year old Vergil really seen him earlier?

“Kyrie?” Nero asks, desperate yet fully aware that this was seeming more and more like a trap. It also raised the question of how anything in this time would know of her connection to him to even set the trap. It’s the seed of doubt that has him walking forward.

And then he hears her.

“Nero!”

His feet splash along the water that’s pooled on the ground as Nero hears her yell for him down a dark concrete tunnel leading further into the sewers. He’s never run this fast in his life.

“Kyrie!” Nero yells back. If there’s some weird congruence point in the future that leads him here, maybe he can talk to her. Maybe he can see her. The thought of having her even remotely close to him again competes with the sprint as to why his heart is racing.

“Nero!” her voice comes again. Nero nearly falls over himself when he rounds a corner deep into the sewer system. It’s coming from a room with a locked door. A quick scan of the area reveals that right beside it the wall has a few cracks in it. He hears her voice coming from behind it again. Stale concrete is no match for Nero’s spectral arm punching a hole in it.

He rushes through the hole and into a vacant area with only a marble statue in the corner. It reeks of sewage and something Nero can’t put his finger on.

“What the—” Nero starts, as a translucent figure jumps from the statue. It leaps towards Nero, but seems to be tethered to the statue. It looks like a demon, but not like any demon he’s ever seen. It’s ghost-like for starters and it looks like a person who’s had parts of them carved out and replaced with volcanic rock. A faint white glow comes off of it. It distracts Nero enough from the feeling of his heart breaking.

“A name,” it hisses, the statue pulling the demon back into it.

“What the hell are you?” Nero asks, squinting at whatever the hell it is he’s looking at.

The creature lunges at him again, reaching a little further this time.

“What do you call a boy who will not bend? A boy who sees the violence in his father’s heart and refuses to acknowledge its suffering? A boy who’s wounded… something will not let him live.”

Nero reaches for Blue Rose as he dodges the demon’s next attempt at lunging for him. He cracks a smile as he realizes this is a demon he can take his anger out on.

“Hey,” Nero says, “don’t you go accusing me of having wounded pride when you’re the one nailed to a statue.”

“Pride,” it repeats slowly, as if savouring the word. It hisses as it retracts into the statue again. Nero aims at its head, assuming that destroying the statue will destroy the demon possessing it.

Before he can get his shot off, the statue shatters. Nero frowns as he’s left in the dimly lit room on his own.

The demon catches him off guard when it comes at him from underneath him. He gets tossed backwards as the demon manifests into a physical form. Pieces of human flesh hang off of a massive humanoid body, exposing what looks like bright red rock beneath it. Its head is a black mass of demon goo with two bright white eyes. It drags itself toward him, one of its legs dragging behind it.

“Pride,” it hisses again. “You’ve reminded me.”

“Uh-huh,” Nero replies with a frown. He lunges at the demon with his spectral arm out and gun at the ready.

The demon’s fleshy ‘arm’ grows twice its size and attempts to swing at Nero in a slow but forceful motion. Nero dodges the blow and fires two shots into the demon’s head. They don’t appear to have done anything.

“You…” it hisses. It moves for another swing.

“Meee,” Nero mimics, grabbing the demon’s giant arm with his own spectral one. It weighs nothing as he throws it back into the wall. It lands with a loud thud before sliding toward the ground. The ground begins rumbling beneath him as some bits of gravel falls from the ceiling.

Nero looks up at the ceiling and there’s a faint crack in the concrete above him.

“Shit,” he says, taking a step toward the demon, “looks like we’re gonna have to cut this playdate short.”

He lunges at the demon again, grabbing at it again with his spectral arm. He punches it once, twice, again and again.

The ceiling begins cracking a little more, letting some dust and debris fall into Nero’s hair and the hood of his jacket. Nero looks up again and the distraction is enough for the demon to seemingly melt in his spectral arm. He looks down at the ground he’d been pummeling the demon into and he’s alone now.

“Fuck,” he says, getting up and taking off as the ceiling starts to crumble completely. He stops outside of the wall he’d broken and assesses the damage. The city was going to have a hell of a time cleaning this up.

Nero figures it’s best to not be around in the event that anyone was around to hear and report a disturbance. By the time he’s nearly back to Dante’s shop, the sky has begun to lighten and the exhaustion of having been out on very little sleep begins to hit him. He’s grateful for the excuse to drop dead on Dante’s uncomfortable sofa.

As fate would have it, nothing in Nero’s life was going to be that easy. He comes back to find the door wide open. There’s evidence that someone bleeding was dragged into the shop. Nero’s skin itches all over.

Nero rushes in and stops short of the bloody sight he’s quite literally stepped in.

Vergil’s blood is pooled at his feet as the man himself awkwardly leans over the very couch Nero had fantasized about passing out on. His head and a part of his upper torso rest on the couch, his arms attempting to reach the back of the sofa to pull himself up. The rest of him is draped across the floor. His blue coat is stained nearly everywhere.

And he’s either just shown up, though the cakey blood Nero’s stepping in and the dried blood at the door say otherwise, or Vergil had gone back to die at Dante’s place.

“What the fuck, man?!” Nero both says and thinks. How can he kill his eighteen year old father if he already went and got himself killed? A rush of adrenaline comes over him, beating the exhaustion and impending doom in Nero’s heart, as he rushes over.

Nero kneels beside him and pats at Vergil’s face when he receives an unwilling lack of response. “Hey,” Nero says softly, “I know you’re more stubborn than this.”

No response comes.

“Hey,” Nero tries again, his pats turn into slaps. An emotion rises in his throat. He yells, “hey!”

The room remains silent after his outburst.

“No,” Nero says, the emotion winning over him as he says, “No. You do not get to fucking die when I’ve come all this way back!”

He turns Vergil’s head in his hands. His hair is bloody and strands that are still stained with blood mark Nero’s hands. His fingers shakily move toward his neck, where he detects a faint pulse.

“Alright,” Nero says, taking a breath to steady his nerves. An uneasy confidence sets in him as he focuses on the demon blood that they all share. “You’re gonna be alright.”

He looks down at the rips in Vergil’s clothing and manages to find the source of the blood. It’s still bleeding, meaning whatever he got into it with had some serious firepower. Nero reaches over and gets the rest of Vergil’s limp body onto the sofa. He’s surprisingly light.

The next step is addressing the wound(s). Nero gets himself a glass of water, finds a bottle of whiskey underneath Dante’s desk, and he’s digging around for anything to be used as gauze when he hears a soft gasp from the top of the steps.

His mother stands there, eyes widened for a moment before she races down the stairs to them. She’s wearing a white shirt that fits her like a dress.

“He’ll be alright,” Nero says, looking back at the unconscious body on the sofa. “I heal fast, so he’s gotta heal at double that rate.”

“I know, nene,” his mother says, sleep still hanging on her every word. “I have seen worse.”

Worse. Before Nero can asks, she speaks again.

“This,” she says, reaching over to gently run her fingers across Vergil’s cheek, “is what we are up against. This stubbornness.”

Before Nero can think of a response, she reaches for the things in his hands. He hands the bottle over and she kneels by Vergil’s side. She tears at the navy blue turtle-neck he wore under the sky blue coat and opens a hole big enough where they can see the actual damage.

It’s not pretty, but if Vergil is healing at a rate faster than Nero’s own, then that has to mean this is already better than how he’d shown up. The series of wounds that line his torso have yet to heal over and are bleeding way less than Nero had expected. The skin around the wounds is mangled and torn in different places. It looks like he’d been stabbed with a morningstar.

“In the bathroom, see if Dante stocks first aid,” she says, tearing at more of the shirt to see if there were any other wounds. There appeared to be several gashes along his arms, but those had already begun to heal on their own. They likely were a source of the blood on the ground, but not anymore.

Nero didn’t expect to find anything in Dante’s bathroom and isn’t exactly surprised when he finds a nearly empty tube of toothpaste, a bar of soap, and nothing else. The cabinets are empty save for the dust they’ve collected over time. Nero heads out and shakes his head when his mother turns to look at him.

“It wouldn’t be the first time,” she says. She takes a long swig of the bottle in her hand, a lot longer than Nero would have. The edges of his lips turn down, impressed as she lets a trickle of the amber liquid pour directly onto the open wound. Vergil doesn’t flinch.

She sets the bottle by the sofa and gives Nero a tired smile that softens him from the inside out.

“Come,” she says, “you were also out late. So long as he is breathing, he will live.”

She reaches for his arm, but Nero’s emotional regulator is fried from exhaustion. He overtakes her completely and just wraps himself around her in a hug again. She doesn’t seem surprised, she just holds him. It’s all he could ever ask for.

Nero lets the thought of Kyrie rush to the forefront. It’d been a trap because of course it was, but he misses her so much. He wants to go home. He could never leave his mother. Vergil could have died. Nero wants to see Kyrie. The thoughts bombard him and create a whirlpool of emotion that Nero would never acknowledge, let alone begin to process were he not running on fumes. He breathes shakily against her and one of her hands rubs at his back.

When he pulls away from her, ignoring the wet patch he’s left on her shoulder, she doesn’t acknowledge the moment. Instead she asks softly, “where did you go?”

“Nowhere, really. I ran into a weird demon, though,” Nero says, clearing his throat. He’s eternally grateful to have his mother here with him.

“How so?” His mother takes his hand and guides him up the stairs.

Nero shrugs before slipping off his jacket as they step into the bedroom she shares with Vergil.. He sets the jacket on the chair he’d seen Vergil sit in a night ago.

“I thought I heard—” Nero coughs, rather than say her name. He tries again, “I thought I heard someone. It was a demon, it seemed to know enough about me to use her. It got away from me, but it seemed to be tied to a statue.”

His mother nods. She takes a seat on the edge of the bed, pensive for a moment before she looks up at him and asks, “did it ask you for a name?”

Nero frowns slightly as he takes a seat beside her and reaches down to start unlacing his boots, “no? I don’t think it did.”

She nods, her expression unreadable. “Get some rest. There are things we will need to look into tomorrow.”

Nero shifts awkwardly before turning to gesture to the rest of the bed, “I’ll take the floor.”

She cocks her head to the side, brows furrowed. The movement of her reaching up to faux-angrily tap on his forehead with the pads of her fingers happens so fast it catches Nero off guard.

“Sleep, child,” she says, moving to take up one side of the bed and gesturing for him to take the other.

Nero laughs.

Chapter Text

Next morning's breakfast is tense. Dante’s disappeared, so Nero doesn’t even have a lame albeit funny quip to fallback on if his parents keep refusing to speak to each other. Vergil had seemingly completely recovered by the time Nero had gone down to the lobby.

The difference in ambience is palatable when Nero goes downstairs. Vergil sits at Dante’s desk, showered and in an old grey T-shirt that had to have been Dante’s, eating cereal right out of the box. His mother sits at the now cleaned up couch, flipping through one of Dante’s dirty magazines absentmindedly, a chipped steaming mug in her hands.

“Uh, hey,” Nero says as he runs a hand through his hair, trying to smooth out any flyaways that would make it look like he’d just woken up. He’s suddenly embarrassed to be the last one awake.

“The demon,” his mother starts as she takes a sip from the mug. It’s strictly business. “It did not ask him for a name.”

Vergil makes a sound of understanding. He takes a moment before he turns to Nero and asks, “did it make any allusions to any sin?”

Nero frowns slightly. “A… sin? You know we deal in demons, right?”

Vergil doesn’t take the low hanging bait, he responds, “we are dealing with the original sins.”

“The actual things? So.. hunger, wrath, and all that?” Nero asks.

“Gluttony, but yes,” Vergil responds, his deathly serious tone contrasting completely with the visual of him shoving brightly coloured cereal pieces in his mouth.

“Shit,” Nero says. He connects a few pieces in his head, realizing that it may have been a subconscious thing that let the demon in the sewers know about Kyrie. “Are they not like your average demon? Able to dig into your head?”

“Yes.”

“Tied to statues?”

“Yes.”

“Fuck.”

“Which one?” Vergil asks.

“Uh, Pride, I think,” Nero says with a frown as he recalls the night before. He’d been played hook, line, and sinker. “It said I ‘reminded it’.”

Vergil nods. The room stays tense before his mother breaks the ice.

“How many?” she asks.

Another tense moment passes before Vergil responds, “with this, five.”

“What the hell are you talking about?” Nero says, the frustration apparent in his tone. “Five what?”

“Sins,” Vergil responds plainly. He sets the cereal box down on the desk and wipes his hand on the shirt.

“And what does that mean?” Nero asks, the tension sinking into his stomach. Whatever this was, it couldn’t be good.

“I’ve made a recent discovery. If they are released and given their names back, they are the key to the Temen-ni-gru. It can be summoned,” Vergil says after yet another tense moment that gets worse somehow.

Nero breaks from under the tension. He closes the distance between himself and Dante’s desk, leaning over it to yell at Vergil.

“We can talk about this, right? No bullshitting? Why the hell are you still looking for that stupid tower? And don’t play stupid, I know that you know it’s only going to ruin you, so why the hell would you put anyone through that? You found Dante, you have a home. Hell, I’m here telling you it’s a bad idea!” Nero doesn’t realize his questions are a masked plea.

The silence weighs even heavier the longer Vergil stares up at him in silence, the same stoic look he’d mastered as an old man plastered on his face with the deep, impenetrable eyes.

Nero’s about to demand an answer when Vergil speaks. It’s the same monotone that grinds at every nerve Nero has. “Dante ran into Lust before we’d arrived. When I had been in more communication with Arkham, I had dealt with Sloth and Gluttony. Though, I did not know what they were. Last night, I went to seek out Arkham. It was…” he trails off for a moment before finishing, “a miscalculation. He’d found Envy and I was… made aware of what had been happening.”

“Which was…?” Nero’s frown is static. He’s going to get answers to his questions, but he wasn’t going to argue against another pressing issue.

“I’d known the portals that had been opening around us were his doing. I assumed it was a pathetic attempt to assert dominance. He was tempting the sins, waking them by releasing demonic power near them. It took a bit of persuasion for him to reveal his plan, but Arkham was compliant when sufficiently pressured.”

“So… he got one over you, is that what you’re saying? You were manipulated?” Nero asks with a hard blink, genuinely surprised. For all of Vergil’s faults, being susceptible to being toyed with was definitely not anything Nero expected.

Vergil scowls at him. He says with annoyance in his tone, “I’m going back to Fortuna.”

“What?” Nero asks, his stomach dropping all while the rage fills the gap it leaves.”There’s no way in hell you’re going after that stupid tower now. I won't let you.”

Vergil’s scowl gets worse. He stands up and presses his palms onto the desk as he leans over to get his face as close as he can to Nero’s while still meeting his eyes. He’s thinner and only just taller than Nero, and yet he seems to loom over Nero with an authority that Nero has never seen him have.

“Child,” he spits, “I have a mission. A purpose I would give everything to fulfill.” There’s a moment where Vergil tears his gaze from Nero. He looks to his right, his face only just scrunched in… pain? Disgust?

He turns his head back, head bowed and continues, “I’d give it all without hesitation. Love, Dante, the entire human world if I must.”

Vergil stares at the desk, shaking his head in disbelief. “Instead, you land headfirst into this life and make accusations I can only verify by intuition. Despite the power of the Temen-ni-gru that I could so easily wield, I am choosing to willingly go back to the life I found in Fortuna.”

Only now does Vergil meet Nero’s unwavering stare, “the one that phases you out of existence for a future my father only could have dreamed of.”

Nero remains silent as he glares up at Vergil. He doesn’t realize that only in this past is where he’s found the closest thing to being referred to as son. He doesn’t realize that this is the most open that Vergil has ever been with him.

“Why should we believe you?” comes an interjection. Both Nero and Vergil turn to look over at Natasha. Her expression is just as intense as theirs.

There's a heavy pause before Vergil responds, “because it’s taken me this long to understand that I finally have something to protect.”

Vergil stares down at the desk in front of him and Nero finds himself relaxing. Just like with Dante last night, seeing Vergil even be remotely open about anything disarmed whatever fuse was about to go off in Nero. It was enough to earn the benefit of the doubt.

“We don’t have resources here to figure out what Arkham’s goals are,” Vergil adds after a moment.

“The castle,” Natasha says, seemingly confirming whatever was in Vergil’s head.

Vergil nods.

“How the hell did he get away?” Nero asks. “I thought you got him to talk.”

“Yes, well,” Vergil pulls away from the desk, not facing anyone when he adds. “There were a few different things I was not aware of.”

It was one hit after another. Vergil being manipulated, the openness, and the admission that whoever the hell this Arkham guy was had bested him.

Nero nods slowly, processing the information he’s been given as quickly as he can. He has to believe Vergil has finally decided to stop trying to summon the damn tower. Because if he didn’t, Vergil was going to leave anyway. Nero asks, “and how do I know that you’ll come back?”

Before anyone can continue the conversation, the door slams open.

Dante comes through with his hands up, revealing that he is being held at gunpoint by a woman. And not just any woman. By Lady.

Despite this, Dante still gives them a shit eating grin when he says, “hey guys.”

In a second and a flash of blue, Vergil’s dashed past the desk and the tip of the Yamato is pointed at Lady’s neck.

“Hey, hey,” Nero cuts in, moving over to try and move the Yamato away. He doesn’t get a chance to get near Vergil. Lady points another gun with her free hand at Nero.

“What the hell?” Nero asks impulsively. He scowls as he realizes that she doesn’t know him.

“Tell them to stand down,” Lady barks at Dante, pushing the gun further into his back. Before Dante can respond, Vergil answers her.

“Shooting him will do you no good. He will live and you will lose your life,” he says coldly.

“Hey!” Nero shouts again, “there’s no need for that!”

“Guys,” Dante finally says, holding his hands up. “It’s fine. I got this.”

In an impressive feat of speed, Dante turns around and yanks the gun out of Lady’s hand, pushing it into the gun that’s pointing at Nero. Both guns fire and Vergil phases out of the spot he’d been in, appearing beside Natasha, who’s since stood up, the Yamato positioned in front of her as a bullet clinks off of the Yamato’s blade.

Vergil glares in Lady’s direction and Nero predicts what’s going to happen well enough that when he steps in front of her, Vergil stops short of directly impaling him.

“Nero,” Vergil says calmly. “Step aside.”

“No! What the hell is the matter with you!?” Nero yells, turning around to ask Lady what the hell her damage is. She takes the moment in stride and punches Nero square in the nose as soon as he’s facing her. He staggers back as she turns to run out of the shop, picking her guns up from the ground.

“What the fuck!” Nero yells, staggering away from them as he holds his face. His nose might be broken. The taste of copper immediately overtakes his mouth as he hears a thud and movement from beside him.

“Aw, a girl too much for you?” Dante yells with a laugh in between his scuffle with Lady. He has her pinned to the ground on her stomach while she tries to kick at him with her feet. Her guns lay on the ground once more.

“Let me see,” Vergil says, sheathing the Yamato and taking a step forward towards Nero.

Nero squints at Vergil from behind his hand, completely shocked that Lady’s head wasn’t on the ground already. He gingerly pulls his hands from his face, the pain overpowering the inevitable awkwardness of letting Vergil fuss over him.

Vergil’s expression is unreadable. He holds a hand out and the tips of his fingers come to gently rest on Nero’s cheek. If Nero wasn’t in so much pain the tenderness would send him down another spiral.

Before Nero can even begin to process what’s happening, Vergil’s hand moves and something in Nero’s nose crunches.

“Fuck!” Nero yells again, turning away from him and holding his face again. The sting seeps through his entire body, rendering him useless for the time being.

“You’ll be fine now,” Vergil says, stepping out toward the lobby.

Nero growls as he pushes at his nose with his fingertips. It increases the intensity of the pain enough that the illusion of the pain subsiding when he lets go of his nose helps him focus on the sight in front of him. Lady is still on her stomach with Dante sitting on her back now, her guns in his hands.

“You gonna play nice, lady?” Dante asks, amusement in his tone.

“Let me go!” Lady yells back. The expression on her face is enough to kill a man.

“Who are you?” Vergil asks, standing a few feet in front of her, but off to the side so he can make eye contact. “What purpose does coming here serve?”

“I don’t talk to demons!” she yells in response. She struggles against Dante enough to make him shift on her back.

“Hey,” Nero says, a little less invested, a little more in pain as a light whiff of nausea hits him, “she’s not a bad person.”

“You know her?” Dante asks.

Nero opens his mouth to respond, but instead holds his nose as he shuts his eyes and nods as the full wave of nausea comes over him.

“What is her relation to you?” Vergil asks.

“I don’t know any of you, you lying demon scum!” Lady yells.

“Lady, shut up!” Nero yells, opening his eyes. The nausea hasn’t subsided. “I’m trying to fucking help you here!”

“I don’t need help from demons!” she answers just as quickly.

“A sucker for a pretty face, huh?” Dante says a smirk plastered on his face. “She broke your nose and you’re still trying to make nice.”

If Nero could roll his eyes, he would. He grunts again and decides the confidentiality is not worth it. His nose stings, he wants to throw up, and he needs to be sure Lady isn’t dead before he does. “I know her years from now. She’s one of your best friends, Dante.”

Nero doesn’t wait to see the twins’ response to that, he sprints toward the bathroom, emptying his stomach completely and crying out from the awful stinging in his nose. It’s awful. He holds himself against the cold sides of the toilet for a moment, feeling the pain subside a single percentage. He takes several deep breaths as he hears the sound of a scuffle in the lobby.

Nero shuts his eyes and decides he’ll let the kids play for a little longer.

He hears several more thuds, some yelps, and a few gunshots. Nero only raises his head when there is a complete silence. He grunts, the pain in his nose having subsided enough where he can get up and look at himself in the mirror as he steps out. He looks the way he feels.

He steps back out to the sight of Lady holding her guns out, left pointed at Vergil and right pointed at Dante. The twins are holding their own respective weapons at her.

“Hey,” Nero says, stepping out back into the lobby. He’s not giving his time travel any further thought as he speaks. “I know her from my time. She’s on our side, I think she may have killed her father as a result or something.”

Lady’s guns turn and shoot directly at Nero. Vergil appears in front of him in a flash, again deflecting the bullets that were headed towards Nero’s face as Dante once again restrains her. This time he pins her against the wall, a gun pressed underneath her chin as her own guns fall on the ground.

“No more of that,” Dante says, kicking them away.

“You’re all liars,” she says, her tone dark. “You wouldn’t understand what a family is.”

Nero sighs loudly. “Lady, what the hell are you doing here?”

She doesn’t answer him. He frowns at her and tries again, “Dante can stand like that all day. Just tell me what you want and you can go.”

Lady’s eyes dart between the three of them. When she makes eye contact with Dante, he winks at her. She scowls and looks back at Nero.

“I’m going to stop you from raising the tower,” she says, venom in her tone as her gaze shifts to Vergil for a moment. “I know you demons want to open the portal to Hell.”

Nero shakes his head, “no, Lady. You’ve got it twisted. We are trying to stop Arkham from raising that thing.”

“Liars,” she spits.

“What do you know of the Temen-ni-gru?” Vergil asks. He unsheathes the Yamato when Lady doesn’t answer him.

Her scowl comes back and a silence falls among them. Nero doesn’t break eye contact with Lady. She, like the rest of his family, is so young. Her face is soft. And yet the way she fights, the way she carries herself, it’s decades older. In a strange way, it’s like getting older softened her up.

“Dante, let her go,” Nero says with a defeated sigh.

Dante makes a dissatisfied sound, but puts his gun down. Lady steps out from his reach and takes quick steps backwards toward the door.

“Do yourself a favour,” Nero says, his tone filled with concern. “Get the hell out of here. Go see the Americas or something. You don’t need to live like this.”

She doesn’t answer him. She maintains her glare as she steps backwards out of the doorway and turns to run. Nero sighs and takes a step forward to pick up Lady’s guns. He hopes this’ll be a memento of hers.

“So,” Dante says, watching Nero. “You gonna tell us any more besides that she’s a friend?”

“You’re the one that knows her best,” Nero says, looking from one gun to the other. They’re due for maintenance.

“Uh-huh,” Dante says suspiciously. “Do you know if she and I—”

“Dante,” Vergil snaps, stepping towards them. “That woman tried to kill you.”

“And?” Dante asks, turning back to Vergil for the moment. “I’m just asking. Obviously, I don’t know her right now.”

Nero rolls his eyes again and walks over to the back of the room. He lets himself sink into Dante’s desk chair as his mother approaches him with a wet rag. He takes it from her and wipes at his face, getting the dried blood off of him as best he can.

“Why did you bring that woman here?” Vergil asks, giving Dante an incredulous look, “you know a gun wouldn’t hurt you.”

“Why wouldn’t I bring a babe home? She also mentioned the tower,” Dante says, letting himself flop back onto the sofa.”I thought she might know something. I didn’t think she’d have that much fight in her.”

Nero’s nose is aching, setting a small headache in the back of his head, but he’s significantly better than he had been twenty minutes ago. He’s well enough to roll his eyes at Dante’s words.

“Okay, genius, what were you expecting to happen once she got here?” Nero asks.

“This, mostly,” Dante says with a nod. “I just thought she’d be a little more cooperative with more guns pointed at her.”

“I could have told you that she wouldn’t have been,” Nero says with a grunt, “toughest human woman in the world.” If Trish ever found out, Nero would hear about it forever.

“I would disagree,” Vergil says plainly.

Nero blushes and gives his mother an apologetic look. She reaches over and puts her hand on his shoulder, a warm look on her face.

“Hopefully she takes a hint and gets the hell outta dodge,” Nero says.

“I doubt it. Not when she’s been tailing Vergil,” Dante adds.

“Huh?” Nero asks, his brows furrowing. Vergil watches Dante curiously.

“She basically admitted it,” Dante says, as if it were obvious. He stares at everyone in disbelief. “Just a moment ago? She said she knew Vergil wanted to raise the tower?”

Nero stares at him blankly, Vergil’s expression remains unchanged.

An entire beat passes before Vergil breaks the silence by saying, with a hint of surprise, “I was followed.”

“Oh,” Nero says. She’s got something to do with the gramps tower. Of course she does.

Vergil shakes his head, dismissing the thought. He adds, “I’m going back to Fortuna.”

“Why?” Dante asks, “We can figure out this tower shit here.”

Vergil shakes his head, “we know only part of how it’s being summoned. There’s more to uncover and to what end.”

“Arkham has moved, if the location of the sins is to mean anything,” Natasha offers. “He is no longer near Fortuna.”

“I need to find out how he is locating them. Where the Temen-ni-gru is to rise,” Vergil adds. He turns to Nero for a moment. And in a tone Nero can only describe as gentle, he says, “I will come back.”

“Whatever, dude,” Dante says, moving to sit back at his desk. He kicks his feet up on to it. “I’ll be here.”

“It shouldn’t be longer than two days,” Vergil says. “Do not get yourself killed.”

“Yes, mother,” Dante says, annoyance clear in his tone.

Vergil glares in his direction before he gestures to Natasha and Nero. “I trust you know what we are up against, now. ”

Nero looks at his mother, who looks at Vergil. Vergil says nothing and stops by the door as Natasha pulls the necklace that she'd used to disappear off. She walks over to Nero and slips it over his own head. "I will see you soon," she says with a smile at Nero before she turns to follow Vergil out the door.

Nero stares down at the small rune hanging at his chest.

“Okay,” Dante says as soon as the door shuts, getting up from the sofa, “now that mommy and daddy are gone, you’re gonna have to put in work to earn your keep here until they get back.”

Nero turns around, giving him an incredulous look. “Are we not on a case right now?”

Dante shrugs, moving over to go sit at his desk. “We also gotta find that lady.”

“Her name is Lady,” Nero says, looking around. The lobby is way too big for the two things Dante has in here. Lady, Vergil, and Dante had a fight and nothing save for a few floorboards were damaged.

“Lady? What kind of name is that?” Dante asks.

“I don’t fucking know,” Nero responds, “that’s just her name.”

“It’s always the hot ones,” Dante says, shaking his head.

Nero’s incredulous look doesn’t change as he watches Dante. He and Lady were definitely not anything when Nero knew them. Dante showing any interest in anyone was weird enough. The guy seemed to only live for inhaling pizza and killing demons. And yet he was here, eternally shirtless, talking about how he thought Lady was hot.

Nero shakes his head as he reaches into his pocket and fishes out the bit of cash he had before he’d gotten swept up from his own time period.

“Do you have any cash?” he asks Dante.

Dante frowns. “I’m already two months behind on my electric bill.”

Nero sighs. He should have expected that.

“Alright, I’ll be back, then,” Nero says, heading toward the door.

“Where are you going?” Dante calls from behind him.

“I’ve been wearing the same clothes for nearly a week. I’m gonna find a secondhand shop,” Nero says as he reaches the door.

“Bring back some pizza!” Dante yells before Nero shuts the door.

The more some things changed, the more they stayed the same it seemed.

Nero learns very quickly that his money gets him much further thirty years ago. He’s able to stretch what he has into getting himself a few new shirts and two new pairs of jeans. To his own amusement, he is able to order Dante a pizza from their usual spot near the office.

He’s leaning against a counter waiting for his order when he overhears a woman who’s sitting in a booth. She’s trying her best to whisper, but the panic in her voice is raising it to just under a normal speaking voice. She’s talking about a problem using all the keywords Nero’s heard before. The Order, Sparda, Summoning, that sort of thing.

Ever the entrepreneur, Nero approaches the table she’s sitting at. Both her and the man sitting across from her look up at him as he approaches.

“Hi,” he says with a smile, “I can help you with that, you know. With your little problem. I work for a place not too far from here and we specialize in helping with that. We’re called Devil May Cry.”

“No, thank you,” the man says immediately. He glares up at Nero, but a second after he’s spoken, the woman objects.

“Sit,” she says, the panic not subsiding. Nero smiles over at the man and scooches into the seat next to him.

“Talk to me,” Nero says, cupping his hands together on top of the table.

“My daughter had been acting strange…,” the woman says, pain overtaking the panic in her tone. “She was up most nights until very late. And the other night, I heard her chanting something… it seemed to echo throughout the house. It shook violently and the next morning my daughter seemed to be in a trance. She left without a word. And now I fear she’s left something behind... I can hear it in the walls and there's an awful rumbling.”

“Accidental summoning,” Nero responds softly with understanding. “Not exactly accidental, but people never actually know what they’re getting themselves into. Shouldn't be a problem. Just point me in the right direction.”

“You can’t be taking this seriously?” the man beside Nero asks. He turns to the woman and adds, “you think the solution is going to fall out of the sky like that? We need to seek real help from The Order!”

“Hey,” Nero says, turning to meet the man’s eyes, “I’m as real as it gets, pal. Tell you what, I’ll do this pro-bono. Point me in the right direction and if I can’t get the job done, I’ll pay you.”

The man scoffs. The woman gives Nero her address, a key, and Nero takes off after giving them instructions to hold his stuff and his pizza. If it was the open and shut case Nero thought it was, then he should be back in the next hour or so.

The woman didn’t live very far from the pizza place. Nero rounds the home he’s looking for and makes his way inside, pulling Blue Rose from his hip. The door unlocks and Nero steps into a living room decorated by time. Family photos line the walls and an old set of sofas fill a space that’s clearly been inhabited by love.

Nero steps carefully through, eyes and ears open for any semblance of a disturbance. He heads towards the back of the house and starts opening doors. He finds the daughter’s room and sighs. It would be an open and shut case. The girl’s room is decorated with wilting flowers, black linens, and is lined with posters for bands with unreadable names. There’s also a giant pentagram painted on the wall.

He looks around for a potential real summoning space, but finds none in the room. He steps out and finds nothing in the other bedroom. He steps around the house, which is eerily quiet, he’s noticed. No sounds of wind pushing through old wood, no cracking. He finds another door that leads to a small staircase and a basement. Jackpot.

He grins to himself when he hears the sound of pitter patter.

“There you are,” Nero says, strolling forward and turning the lights on in the basement.

A demon with a circular, scaly humanoid face, but an insectoid body crawls along the lines of a real summoning circle, trapped. When Nero turns the light on, it turns its nightmarish visage toward him. Black goo seeps from what’s supposed to be a mouth and its eyes are completely white.

“Hiya,” Nero says with a tight smile, casually stepping down into the basement.

It hisses at him and tries to lunge through the circle’s invisible wall at him. The screech it emits when it hits the wall nags at Nero’s ears.

“You’re a big bitch, though, aren’tcha?” Nero asks as he begins to round the circle. “Don’t know many humans who can summon something like this.”

It continues to hiss, following Nero’s every step. Nero finishes his round and his eyes move over to an open book in a corner of the room.

“Don’t move,” he says to the demon nonchalantly as he walks over and picks the book up. It’s a guide. The book looks a little too formal to be found in the home of a girl with a pentagram on her wall. Nero brings the book with him as he turns his attention back to the demon who’s been trying to break free of the circle to get to him.

“Alright, alright, sheesh,” Nero says as he approaches it again.

He reaches up and points Blue Rose at the demon’s face, as best he can between the eyes. He charges the shot and it fires where he needs it to. At point blank range, the demon’s head explodes and it fades away slowly.

Nero frowns at the corner where the book had been, looking down at the summoning circle. He fires several more shots into the blood that makes up the lines, disrupting it as best he can before he treks up the stairs.

Was it possible Arkham was recruiting? He remembers Vergil saying that only Sparda’s kin could unlock the key to the tower. What good would having a human following do him?

When he makes it back to the pizza shop, the woman is waiting in the booth alone. Nero slides in across from her, seeing the stuff he’d bought and an extra box of pizza off to the side of the table.

“This,” he sets the book on the table. “Where did your daughter get this?”

The woman shakes her head, “she mentioned running into a strange man who told her that all the answers to her world were within this book. I thought she had run into a pastor of some kind.” She looks up at Nero, apologetic.

Nero scowls. “That man come around often?”

The woman shakes her head again, “No. She spent some time looking for the man, but she never found him.”

“Good,” Nero says with a nod. “Your home is clean now. You can go back. Feel free to ring up the office if you find anything else.” He gives her the address to Dante’s shop.

She gives him a nod and steps out of the booth. “Thank you, young man. I hope you’re able to find peace in your profession.”

Nero watches her leave the shop, a curious expression on his face before he takes a moment to rest his head on the table. The shop is mostly empty now, with only a handful of people still eating whatever other Italian foods are served here. The table is cool against his cheek and his arms provide a comforting darkness as he takes several deep breaths.

He’d emerged victorious from one world-threatening situation, was pulled into another, but somehow managed to fall headfirst into a different one. And just like he’d experienced before, Vergil was at the heart of this one, too.

And for a moment, Nero lets himself feel comfort in the fact that this was the closest he was ever going to get to having had his parents. If he forgot about Arkham, about the fighting, about the fact that Nero was nearly seven years older than Vergil, it was nice.

He’s going to miss his mom so much.

With a final sigh he picks up the paper bag full of clothes from beside him and Dante’s cold pizza. The trip back to the office is peaceful, a welcome change to everything in Nero’s life up until now.

He makes it back to find Dante asleep at his desk. There’s a magazine resting on his face as Nero steps through and shuts the door behind him with his foot.

“Dinner’s here,” he says with a grin.

“Oh, yeah!” Dante yells from underneath the magazine. He raises a hand to pull it from his face and watches Nero expectantly.

“Did you—” he starts before Nero cuts him off.

“No olives,” Nero cuts in with a cheeky smile, he sets the box down on the desk.

Dante gives him an incredulous look. Nero gives it right back.

“What?” Nero asks, opening the box.

“I can’t get used to that,” Dante says as he reaches over to grab two slices at once. He makes a disgusted face when he takes a bite into a slice. They’re definitely cold.

“Get used to what?” Nero asks. The pizza tastes the same way it does nearly thirty years in the future. And just like then, it tastes better cold.

Dante gets up and leaves Nero alone for a moment. His shitty microwave hums for several seconds before Dante comes back and in between bites responds, “the fact that you know us, but you don’t actually know us.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Nero says with a playful eye roll. “Trust me, I’d have loved to have been here as a toddler.”

Dante cocks his head to the side for a moment. “We didn’t raise you?”

Nero frowns, taking another bite. “Not talking about this.”

“No, come on,” Dante says. He takes a seat at his desk again. “What the hell happens?”

Nero shrugs as he chews. He swallows and answers, “I don’t know. I get left at an orphanage in Fortuna, grow up oblivious to who you are until I’m seventeen, don’t find out about my old man until I’m as old as I am now.”

Dante maintains the frown on his face as he watches Nero grab another slice from the box.

Nero does his best to ignore Dante’s gaze, but after he gets through the second pizza slice it grates on him.

“What?!” Nero asks, a frown setting in on his face.

“I’m gonna kick his ass,” Dante says flatly. “You don’t turn your back on your family. He knows that.”

“Dante,” Nero says, a lot softer than he means to. “I promise you I don’t fucking care at this point.”

Dante shakes his head. “It’s not about that. He knows better.”

Nero isn’t following. “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

Dante leans back in his chair and stares down at the ground between his legs. Nero watches him now.

After a few moments, Dante raises his head again and makes eye contact with Nero. He responds, “don’t worry about it. Just know that I’m gonna kick his ass.”

Nero rolls his eyes again, “whatever.”

The rest of their night is spent shooting the shit. Nero’s all but dropped his concerns regarding the time he came from, so he answers more of Dante’s questions about who he becomes. It surprises him that he never really loses the hairstyle. Nero leaves out the details about who Trish is, but he tells Dante more about what she and Lady do.

“I took a housecall earlier. Woman with a kid who was given a book on how to summon demons. Arkham is using people to tempt more of the sins, I think” Nero says with a grunt from the sofa at some point. He’s lying on his back, arm resting behind his head.

“Yeah, no shit,” Dante responds. “There’s only two more he’s gotta wake to summon the tower.”

“And only one of us can rename them,” Nero adds. "So if he succeeds in rousing them, we're the ones that are gonna have to deal with them."

“Right, but we know not to do that," Dante says.

A silence comes between them before Nero asks, hesitantly, “do you think Vergil will?”

“Hell no,” Dante says affirmatively. “He’s got a stick up his ass about the tower, but he’s said he wants nothing to do with it anymore.”

“You think he’ll hold true to that?” Nero asks, staring up at the ceiling.

“He better,” Dante says. “Why do you doubt him so much?”

Nero turns to look at Dante. “I have my reasons.”

“Like what?”

“Dante.”

“What?”

Nero sits up and shakes his head. “You just got your brother back. He’s deciding to give happiness a shot. Don’t ruin it.”

“How’s me asking you why you doubt him gonna ruin it?”

Nero rolls his eyes, “because where I come from he’s responsible for thousands of innocent deaths, okay? If we can avoid that, we’ve won.”

Dante’s eyes widen slightly, he tries to mask the shock on his face, but Nero can see the conflict he’s created.

“See? Told you I had my reasons,” Nero says as he gets up and stretches. A crack in his back makes him hum softly before he takes a step toward the stairs. “We’ve avoided that, I think.”

Dante responds from behind him as Nero heads to the top of the stairs. “It’s all tied together, isn’t it? You changing our present makes your future nonexistent.”

“Yeah.” A silence that’s heavier than Nero would like it to be sets between them. When he reaches the top of the stairs he adds, “I’ll see you tomorrow, Dante,” Nero says with a quick smile before heading into the room that had been previously occupied by his parents.

“Yeah. Night, kid,” Dante calls back.

The next morning, Dante’s nowhere to be found. Nero eats a bowl of dry cereal alone as he plans how he’s going to head out to try and find out more about what Arkham has been up to. Based on what he’d seen the day before, it seemed he was giving out information to whoever would do his bidding, and scouring the city that way.

It would be a faster way of seeking the sins than summoning demons on his own. This way, a portal could open anywhere and there would be a higher chance of reaching sins.

Nero takes his time before heading out. He takes a long shower while Dante’s water is still running. He lets the scalding water run down his face as he continues to process the fact that he won’t exist soon enough. He’ll stop existing and—

The water coming down on him may as well have turned ice cold. All those nights ago, his mother said let me raise you.

Was she already—

It’s a strange feeling. He shakes the thought out of his head and instead wonders if Vergil even knows. Or, if that had been the thing that changed his mind about the tower.

You don’t turn your back on family, after all.

Nero slips into a fresh shirt and jeans before shrugging his jacket back on. He brushes his wet hair back with his fingers as he heads for the door where he runs into Dante.

“Whoa there, Vergil,” Dante teases, a shit eating grin on his face. “Let me get that for you.”

Nero scowls as Dante reaches over and messes Nero’s hair up with his hands.

“You’re a child,” Nero snaps. He swats Dante’s hand away and tries to fix his hair somewhat.

“Looked too much like your old man for my liking,” Dante says as he steps out of the way for Nero to get outside. “You headed somewhere?”

“Gonna see if I can find out where else Arkham is trying to find sins,” Nero responds.

Dante scoffs, “good luck with that. I’m gonna take a nap.”

Nero rolls his eyes and steps out into the streets again. His search isn’t as fruitful as it had been the day before. He spends some time in a larger bookstore with a small section of books on the occult. He flips through most of the books there, finding some things on the underworld and some on how to read tarot cards, but nothing of real interest.

He hangs around for a bit, hoping someone else would come in and take interest in the section. It could be something. He stands around the other side of the bookshelf, standing in attention when the top of someone’s head appears above one of the shelves.

To both his fortune and dismay, whoever it was knew about him. It’s Lady that pulls a set of books, revealing her different colour eyes. They glare at Nero through the row of books.

“You’re really bad at research,” she says firmly.

“Thanks,” Nero responds with a frown.

“Why are you in here?” she asks.

“Why are you in here?” Nero counters.

“I asked you first,” she answers.

Nero matches her glare, “the same thing you are, I’d bet. I’m trying to find out what else Ar— that guy is doing to find the tower.” He lowers his voice as he finishes.

She doesn’t answer his question. Instead, she asks, voice just as low as Nero’s, “why did you keep trying to defend me? Your kind doesn’t care about humans.”

“I’m not—” Nero stops himself. He frowns for a moment, trying to piece what he’s trying to say. “My mom is human. Vergil's only half.”

Her glare turns into a look of confusion, “that’s a thing? You can be a quarter?”

Nero shrugs and rolls his eyes, “I guess so.”

“I don’t like you,” she says, just as firm.

Nero frowns again, “thanks.”

“But, I’m going to help you,” she adds. “We need to stop that tower from being summoned.”

Nero tries to get a read on her face, realizing they’re having this conversation through a bookshelf. “Can we have this conversation elsewhere?”

“I’m not going back to your den.”

“Den?” Nero scowls again, “Lady, where the hell else do you propose we have this specific conversation?”

She frowns and turns to leave. Nero rushes out from behind the bookshelf to get a read on her, but she’s gone. He waits for a moment, feeling ridiculous despite himself. He heads out of the bookstore and into the bright sun outside. He squints as he raises his hand to block the sun from his eyes. Lady’s definitely nowhere to be seen.

Nero stands among the bustling streets before deciding to spend the rest of the afternoon scouting the place he’d found Pride in. The trip to the industrial part of town takes him a better part of the afternoon, but he makes it with enough sunlight to spare.

They large buildings that line the street are a lot less intimidating during the day. Not that they were particularly scary, but they go from being potential demon infestations to just some old rundown buildings.

Nero manages to break into one, the one closest to the pipe that led him into the sewers. He’s able to make it to a higher ledge where he finds a window who’s lock is rusted enough to break.

The inside of the building isn’t particularly impressive, it’s a manufacturing plant of some kind. Nero walks down metal pathways, finding a bunch of scrap and things that have been left around by workers. He gives the main floor and a few offices a sweep before he decides that it’s not much of a lead.

He could try the sewers, though, he doesn’t particularly want to. He finds his way back into the large pipe and drops into the opening into the sewers. A lot of the ceiling is broken down, though luckily for both the city and Nero, there’s not much damage done. He’s able to move a few pieces of broken cement and is able to get fairly close to where he’d fought Pride before he’s unable to progress forward.

Nero scans the area as best he can given his limited vision and his inability to move forward. He’s able to see some markings carved into the wall. He approaches them and recognizes a few of them. He’d seen them in the books his mother had in her apartment.

He commits a few to memory, determined to give her a call when he gets back to the office. Nero’s trying to find where they end when a giggle fills the air. He spins around to find that his face is pressed directly against that of what has to be some clown looking demon.

“A curious devil boy, are you?” the demon says, an unsettling grin on his face.

In a flash, Nero has Blue Rose out and fires a shot. The clown dodges it and laughs again.

“You’re just like the others!” it yells. “You must give a man a chance to speak!”

Nero scowls. He hates this. “Who the hell are you?”

The demon bows, “I am but a humble Jester. Here to aid you in what you seek.”

Nero squints, he can’t believe what he’s seeing. “Hard pass, fucked up clown demon.” He reaches out with his spectral arm and manages to grab the demon.

Nero moves to slam it into the ground when it yells, “wait wait wait wait! Don’t you want to know how to stop the Temen-ni-gru?”

Nero stops about an inch before the clown’s face hits the ground.

“What the hell do you know about that tower?” he asks, genuinely confused at everything unfolding before him.

“Plenty, my dear boy! If you’d just put me down, I can tell you all I know!” it says, kicking its feet against the fingers of Nero’s spectral arm.

Nero frowns. How is this his best lead?

He sets the demon down, crossing his arms expectantly.

“Ah, thank you,” the clown says, bowing again.

“Speak,” Nero says.

“Of course, squire. The Temen-ni-gru is the key to the demon world! Sealed by—”

“Yeah, yeah,” Nero says, using Blue Rose to gesture, “I know that. Tell me something I don’t know.”

“Hmm,” the clown says, tapping its foot.

“How do we stop it from being summoned?” Nero asks, his patience running low.

“Only the sons of Sparda can achieve such a feat, you know,” there’s a playfulness that the clown is reaching for, but none of it comes off without a demonic undertone.

Nero holds his expectant glare.

“You must simply refrain from renaming the sins!”

Nero decides he’s had enough of this. He lunges forward, his spectral arm reaching for the clown once again. The clown manages to dance around Nero’s arm. It’s both off-putting and frustrating.

Nero growls and lunges completely forward, Blue Rose charged for a shot.

The clown laughs and sinks into the ground.

Nero looks around for where it may reappear. He sees the tip of a hat protruding from a wall off to his left and he lunges for it. He’s able to yank the clown out of the wall and it reacts like a child. It kicks and punches the air as Nero holds it at least a foot off the ground with his spectral arm.

“No more fucking games!” Nero yells. “How do we stop the tower?”

“I know something you don’t, boy,” it says with a giggle.

Nero slams it into the ground.

“Ye-owch!” it yells. It crumples like a cartoon character would and unfolds itself when Nero raises it off the ground.

“I’m all outta patience, clown,” Nero spits, “tell me what I want to know or be ready to die.”

“Jester, boy,” the clown corrects. “I am but a humble Jester.”

Nero moves to slam it into the ground again, but is stopped by its yelling.

“No, no, no, no! You stop it by completing the amulet!”

Nero frowns. “What amulet?”

“The perfect amulet!” it yells. It continues to ‘fight’ against Nero’s arm. “The sons of Sparda have an amulet! That is the key to sealing the underworld for good!”

Nero remembers the large gem Dante wears around his neck.

“Why are you helping me at all?” Nero asks. He’s delighted to finally get a win.

“Not all demons can understand that without a human world, we’d have nothing fun to do!” it yells. “It’s in our interest to keep you lot around!”

Nero hates that the logic makes sense.

“Alright. Well, thanks for the tip,” Nero says with a grin as he slams the clown into the ground again, raising Blue Rose to get a final shot in and take care of the clown.

It sinks into the ground when Nero slams it again. Only this time, it doesn’t reappear.

“Shit,” Nero says with a frown. He waits a moment, looking around for any sign of a clown demon. It never comes.

He ends up cutting his losses as he emerges from the pipe back into the city streets. He didn’t necessarily stop the demon, but he’s got news, though. That’s a very good thing, he thinks.

The trip back to the office is a shorter one, given he’s running a lot of possible scenarios in his head. The amulet was the key. Okay. If he could get both Dante and Vergil to get the amulet together, they could completely seal the underworld. It'd fix everything.

He steps into the office, finding Dante, still shirtless, messing with the jukebox in the corner of the room.

“Didn’t take you for a handyman,” Nero says with a bit of a smirk.

“I’m not,” Dante responds, pulling at a wire. “I can’t exactly get a new one.”

“Here,” Nero says, walking over. “Move, let me look at it.”

“What are you gonna do with this?” Dante asks, suspicious.

Nero rolls his eyes, “odds are I know more about this tech than you. The orphanage in Fortuna didn’t exactly have state of the art equipment. If something that I wanted to use was broken, it was on me to get it to work. Now move.”

Dante steps aside, satisfied with Nero’s explanation. Nero steps in and looks at the inner machinations of the jukebox. He pushes the taped up cable that connects the speaker to the internal player aside, finding a set of knobs that were loose and a wire that needed to be reconnected on the speaker.

Nero gets up and shuts the machine. He presses what he thinks has to be the play button and the machine whirrs. Before he can lean down to take another look at it, Dante reaches past him and kicks the machine.

The whirring stops and more obnoxious rock music starts playing.

“You did it,” Dante says, a content smile on his face.

Nero did something, he thinks.

Dante strolls back over to his desk and takes a seat at his desk. His fingers tap out a rhythm on the desk as he flips open a magazine.

Nero shakes his head. That’s a sight he’s seen a million times.

A knock pulls him away from his thoughts as a woman peers through the doorway.

“Is this the Devil May Cry?” she asks. Nero recognizes the woman from the pizza shop.

Both Dante and Nero respond at the same time.

“No.”

“Yes!”

“Sorry, he’s not used to the name,” Nero says with a smile that quickly turns concerned.

“It’s my place!” Dante whines from his desk. He mutters, “that’s a stupid name.”

“Not a problem, young man,” she says with a smile. “I just wanted to thank you for your help.”

She takes a step inside and approaches Nero with an envelope that appears fairly padded. “I have this for you. I don’t have any other children and my retirement savings just pile up.”

Nero’s eyes widen a bit as he reaches for the envelope, “oh, thank you. We appreciate that.”

“Yes,” she says, her smile unfading, “I see your business is rather new.”

Nero laughs and scratches at the back of his head. “It’ll definitely help.”

“I also was able to find something in my daughter’s room. I may have found a letter from the man who gave her the demon summoning book,” she says.

“Book?” Dante calls from behind them.

Nero turns to look at him, “Arkham’s handing out literature, trying to get people to open portals to wake the sins. I told you about this.”

“Oh,” Dante says, getting up from his desk to get closer to the conversation.

“She had said that the strange man went up to her while she was out at the shopping plaza. And well, my daughter is impressionable and her interests are… unique. When I was looking through her room for some evidence of where she may have gone, I found this.”

She digs into her purse as Dante approaches them. She pulls out a folded piece of parchment. That’s dedication to the villainy, Nero guesses.

“Your daughter didn’t come back?” Nero asks as Dante takes the letter.

The woman shakes her head, “no. I’m on my way to file a police report. I wanted to stop here to thank you first, it’s on the way.”

“You don’t have to do that,” Dante says, not looking up from the letter. “I know where she is.”

“How?” both the woman and Nero asks.

“She was invited to a party,” Dante turns the letter around so Nero can take a look. Nero leans forward to read the small print. “Don’t read the last sentence.”

It’s a weird combination of old-timey flowery language, but it is an invitation.

“I don’t understand,” the woman says. “A party…?”

“Sorry about him,” Nero says again, reading through the letter, “she’s been invited to some kind of summoning… it says If thy grace be denied, serve thee a greater power. A power that shall run through thy veins and flow eternally. It’s corny as hell, but that’s an invitation. A sacrifice made in thy name, the blood of the lamb, and thy willing spirit. That’s what to bring. Where the powers that be intervene, where the lords burn and heaven’s weep. That’s a location. Perveniet—”

“Not that last line, I said,” Dante says with a frown.

Nero looks at him incredulously, “it’s Latin isn’t it?”

“Yes, it’s a spell.” Dante says, snatching the letter back and turning to the woman. “You said your daughter left in a trance?”

The woman nods. Her face is one of panic again. “Has she been kidnapped? I need to take it to the police and—”

Dante shakes his head, “getting civilians involved will get more people killed. We’ll find her.”

“You aren’t detectives,” the woman says, “you’re both so young. I fear what you were raised in that led you to this.”

Dante gives the woman a grin. The expression doesn’t reach his eyes, “we were raised to kick demon ass. We’ll find your daughter and get her back to you.”

“Absolutely,” Nero adds. “Do you know where she would go during the day when she was acting strange?”

“She spent a lot of time searching for books all over the city. She liked horror and I never thought she would be wanting to reenact anything she'd read," the woman says, her concern making her voice crack.

"We'll get her home safe," Nero says. Dante gives a nod.

The woman clearly doesn’t believe him, but she knows she doesn’t have many other options. Tears well in her eyes as she nods, “alright. Please do whatever you can.”

Nero gives her a small smile and a salute with a hand placed over his heart, “scout’s honour. Stay safe until then.”

“Thank you,” she says to both of them before hurrying out the door.

“Man,” Dante says, tucking the letter into a pocket of his jacket. “Place doesn’t even have a name yet and business is booming.”

Nero rolls his eyes, “you’re fucking welcome.”

The next day rolls around and Nero wakes up to the sound of Dante yelling at someone. It’s gotta be over the phone, given Dante yells and nobody yells back.

Nero clambers down the stairs, nearly tripping on the oversized grey sweats he’d bought himself to get a better idea of what the hell is going on.

“Morning, princess,” Dante says when Nero approaches him, pulling the phone from his ear where someone is still speaking through. He points the receiver end at Nero, “tell your dad we need him back here stat.”

Huh?

Nero rubs the sleep from his eyes and takes the phone from Dante.

“Talk to me,” Nero says into the phone. He figures Dante was on the phone with his brother, but if someone is going to give him a straight answer about what they’re arguing about, it’s not Dante.

“Hello, Nero,” comes a greeting from the other end. There's a short pause and never in a million years would he have expected what came next. “How are you?”

Huh?

“Uh,” Nero says, blinking hard, “uh, fine, thanks. What are you and Dante arguing about?”

There’s another short pause over the phone before Vergil answers, “tell Dante we will be back soon. Some of the research is taking longer than we expected.”

Ah.

“We do need help with the letter, I’m guessing he told you about that?” Nero says. He moves to sit on top of Dante’s desk. Dante leans back in his chair and crosses his arms.

“Yes, he was correct in assuming the latin was a spell. If my own assumptions are correct, then Arkham is planning a particular ritual that could summon someone as strong as the First of the Fallen. You must stop him if we do not make it back in time.” Vergil answers.

“And… you think Dante and I can handle something like that?” First of the Fallen or whatever, it sounded huge.

“Without question. Dante could handle that on his own,” Vergil offers. “Until then, we can figure out where the ritual will be. Our best guess is Ley Lines.”

“What the hell is that?” Nero asks.

“They’re overcomplicated in most occult circles, but they are easily defined as points where the powers that connect the human plane to the demon world and the holy world are the strongest. Power bleeds from there and goes off in many directions, hence the lines.”

“Huh, so you think he’s gonna cast a spell on people to meet him at one of these points for a mass summoning?” Nero stares at the ground intently.

“No, I believe he will enchant thousands for a mass sacrifice. Summoning a demon of that caliber will no doubt wake the remaining sins, but also empower he who controls the Temen-ni-gru.”

“Oh, is that all?” Nero says with a frown.

“Yes. We are splitting our time between here and the coven’s many hideouts. We will let you know as soon as we find out where the point Arkham has chosen is.”

There’s a silence between them. Nero wants to ask when they’ll be back, but it’s only been a couple of days.

“We are not abandoning you, Nero. I assume you know how things like this operate,” Vergil’s voice starts in his usual monotone, but trails off.

Nero scoffs, keeping his composure despite the worry that had set in his stomach alleviating, “very funny. I’ve faced worse than this, you know. I’m just not up for picking up your slack,” Nero‘s tone is softer than he means it to be. His insides twist around, threatening to eat at him from the inside out, but he pushes the feeling away for the matter at hand.

“We will be in touch,” Vergil says. “Natasha says hello.”

“Can I talk to her?” Nero asks. A moment passes as he overhears the phone being passed over.

“Nero,” his mother says with a smile he can hear over the phone. “How are you?”

“Fine, thanks. How are you?” Nero asks.

“Fine as well, given the circumstances,” she says with a sigh. “I knew Fortuna was not going to be a return to peace, but it hasn’t been that long, has it?”

Nero laughs. “Yeah, I get that. I got zapped here after having dealt with a case that lasted several months. Demons don’t know what holidays are.”

“Yes, we do,” Dante says in Nero’s presence as he overhears Vergil say it over the phone.

His mother’s soft laugh softens the twisting feeling in Nero’s stomach. “Have you eaten?”

“Uh, not this morning, no. I just woke up,” he responds. “I’m gonna scavenge in Dante’s kitchen.”

“Good,” she says. “I will not name who, but I know someone who loses his appetite completely when under duress. I was concerned you were the same.”

“No,” Nero says with a laugh of his own, “where I’m from I definitely have to eat.” He pauses, before adding, “too many non-demon people down my throat about forgetting.”

“With any luck, I'll get to meet all of your loved ones,” she says in response. Nero can hear the smile on the other end.

“Yeah,” Nero says. He smiles sadly at the ground. “One big happy family.”

“It’s what you deserve, Nero.”

Nero doesn’t know what to say to that. Beside him Dante makes grabby hands at the phone. Nero pulls himself off of Dante’s desk and away from Dante as his mother speaks again.

“We will speak soon. Be careful, nene.”

“Always am. I’ll talk to you later.”

The dial tone rings when Nero relents the phone. Dante gives him an exasperated look.

“Well? Are they coming?”

Nero shrugs, “I don’t know. Why do you need them here?”

“It’s kind of important to keep the team together,” Dante says as if it were obvious. “Do you know what the hell ‘lords burn and heaven’s weep?’ means?”

“No, but we can dig around?” Nero says. “They’re working on their end. We should look into something else.”

“I guess,” Dante lets the phone fall onto its receiver with a scowl. “It’s just always better to have the upper hand. With everyone here.”

Nero watches him curiously. Dante’s upset that his brother isn’t here. Nero wonders how many times their mother saw this.

“I ran into Lady,” Nero says, “she says she wants to help.”

“I’m sure she hasn’t stopped thinking about me,” Dante says smugly.

Nero rolls his eyes and continues, “I’d love to ask future you what her damage is.”

“Nothing’s stopping us from finding her and asking her ourselves,” Dante offers. “If we find her, we’d also have a good chance of finding out what the hell Arkham is doing. Assuming she’s on our side.”

“She is. And we do have her guns,” Nero adds. “I’m sure she’d want them back.”

“Not as much as she’d want me,” Dante says, raising his eyebrows suggestively. Nero wishes he had a brick in his hand.

Pointedly ignoring Dante’s comment, Nero says, “anyway. What’s that amulet you got on your neck?”

“This?” Dante holds the ruby in his hand. “Gift from my mother.”

“Does Vergil have one too?”

“He should,” Dante says, “we got them from her for our birthday. Why?”

“You don’t think that may have something to do with the tower?” Nero asks. He doesn’t exactly want to mention that he ran into and lost a clown demon.

Dante shrugs, “could be. Another reason to need the team together.”

Nero opens his mouth to say something about not being so whiny when Dante’s head jerks around like a dog who’s heard the mailman. Nero watches him curiously for a moment. Dante answers the question on Nero’s tongue.

“Get dressed,” Dante says, getting up to grab Ebony and Ivory off of the wall behind him. “Something’s coming.”

The sudden tone shift and expression on Dante’s face is enough to send Nero back upstairs, two at a time, and gets himself ready for the day in record time. When he heads downstairs, Dante is waiting for him by the door.

“Do you own a shirt at all?” Nero asks as they step out. Dante’s in his coat, but Nero doesn’t think he’s seen Dante wear a shirt once the entire time he's been here.

“Yeah,” Dante answers plainly as they join the pedestrians on the street. Randomly, his head jerks upward and he squints at the sky. Nero watches him curiously.

“Yep,” Dante says to nobody in particular, turning and squeezing his way through people walking in the opposite direction. Nero follows his lead. A few blocks up the street, they come by a—

Seriously?

“Dante,” Nero says with a frown as Dante’s hand hovers over a wooden door handle leading into a building covered in advertisements for alcohol and naked women.

“What?” Dante says, stopping to turn to look at Nero.

“Are you even old enough to be in there?” Nero asks, incredulously. He’s never going to let Dante live this down.

“First of all. I’m eighteen, asshole. Second of all, it’s in here,” Dante says, using his free hand to gesture at the door.

Nero, who’d grown up seeing demons invade supposed “holy” sites, supposes it isn’t that much of a stretch to assume they’d invade a brothel. Or whatever the hell the Bullseye Bar/Love Planet combination establishment was.

Nero gestures toward the door and Dante pushes it open. Immediately they’re hit with the stench of spilled liquor and the unmistakable smell of blood.

“Shit,” Nero says with a scowl on his face as they step through the smashed wood and glass on the floor. The door shuts behind them with a soft click and they’re left with the scene of the destroyed bar in front of them. An eerie glow comes from the hallway that leads to the strip club.

“Shame,” Dante says with a frown. “I liked coming here.”

“I’ll bet you did,” Nero says with a scoff. He clambers over toward the bar and finds the first of what he hopes isn’t the first of many bodies. From the amount of blood that’s trailed around the floor, his hopes aren’t very high.

Dante’s over by a case on the wall, inspecting a gun that’s mounted. Nero watches him remove it from its mount, carefully inspecting it from top to bottom as if it were a precious gem. He weighs it in his hands and gives himself a little nod before he shoves the gun into one of his jacket pockets ungraciously.

Nero laughs softly. He knows the history behind Ebony and Ivory. Somehow he’d assumed that most if not all of Dante’s weapons had been either won in battles or given to him by some inventor. He’d never have imagined that the Coyote was taken from a bar wall.

“You coming?” Dante asks as he steps toward the eerie glow.

Nero hops over the bar, a tingle of guilt sitting in his stomach as he leaves the corpse on the ground unattended.

Still, there were more pressing issues.

Dante opens the door, taking the lead again as they’re both met with an explosion within the strip club. They’re thrown back away towards the bar and most of the door and its doorway comes with them.

“Babe alert!” Dante yells from the rubble.

“What?!” Nero can’t hear him through the awful ringing. He holds himself up with his arm as he reorients himself, looking for where the origin of the blast came from.

It presents itself as a young woman with a rocket launcher. Nero heaves a sigh of relief as he watches Lady dart out of the way of what looks like weird purple goo through the giant hole in the wall she’s made.

“Now we’re talkin,” Nero says with a laugh as he gets himself up, unholstering Blue Rose in a practised motion. Dante’s already on his feet, Rebellion at the ready as the two walk back towards the hole. Lady’s up against a series of demons.

Three of them, humanoid figures draped in white, teleport behind her, ready to swing their scythes, but not before Dante dashes forward and impales both with one forceful jab.

Lady turns around, surprised to see anyone behind her.

“Miss me?” Dante says with a grin.

She swings her missile launcher around her, effectively knocking Dante back and allowing her to fire in the direction of another set of demons.

Nero laughs as he twirls Blue Rose in his fingers, looking for an open target when he notices a figure up a set of steps watching them. It’s a bald guy, real menacing looking like in those shitty movies they’d show on that ancient black and white television in the orphanage.

In a slow movement, the man turns to make eye contact with Nero. An uneasy feeling comes over him as the man watches him. Before Nero can make any move, the man turns and walks through a door leading to what looks like a hallway.

“Oh no, you don’t,” Nero says, turning to make sure everything was good on the dance floor.

Dante and Lady were rounding up their respective hordes. The demons seemed to be endlessly spawning from under them, but it never got to an amount that they couldn’t handle.

Nero dashes for the stairs, following the man in through the hallway. As Nero steps through, the sounds and lights of the club behind him seem to fade away. He’s left in a hallway of darkness.

Nero can make out the door frames and about three feet of the ground ahead of him, but not much else.

“I’m guessing you’re Arkham, right?” Nero yells, kicking the first door open with his boot.

“Real nice place you got here,” Nero says as he steps through the door. Inside he finds a sacrifice.

Nero swallows the feeling that dares to rise up his chest and continues, not glancing at the blood stained mess beneath his feet as he steps around, looking for some kind of clue as to where the hell he is.

“All the gore goes really well with the glitz and glam, yeah,” Nero says as he looks around at the blood splatters on the walls. He looks down at the totem in the hand of the victim. It’s made of solid gold. Blood stained coins surround the site.

Finding nothing else, he steps back out into the hallway.

“Curious,” a deep voice says from behind him. Nero swings around back toward the doorway to see Arkham standing there. As Nero takes a step forward, Arkham takes one back, stepping back into darkness.

Nero runs back into the room, finding the same mess, but no Arkham.

“And you’re a magician?” Nero says, heading back out to the hallway, “you must be real fun at parties.”

“How are you a son of Sparda?” Arkahm asks again, appearing directly in front of Nero when he steps through the doorway again. An unseen force glues him to his spot on the ground, freezing him in place.

Arkham runs a finger down Nero’s cheek, looking at his own fingertip when he’s done. He stares into Nero’s eyes, searching for something.

Nero grunts as Arkham produces a small blade. He traces the same line down Nero’s cheek with the blade. Nero can only whine from behind his closed mouth.

Arkham traces the same line with his finger again, taking Nero’s blood from his fingertip into his mouth. He shuts his eyes and hums pensively.

“Strange,” he says again, opening his eyes. “You carry the blood of Sparda, but to my knowledge, Sparda only had two sons.”

In the second it takes for Nero to catch his breath and settle himself into being able to move again, Arkham disappears. Nero grunts again and touches at the bleeding wound on his face.

“Why don’t you show your face again, you asshole!” he yells. “I’ll tell you who the fuck I am.”

Nero kicks down another door, but the interior is empty. He doesn’t waste time going through it. He turns to the opposite side of the hallway and kicks in another. The force of his boot kicking the wooden door down works against him when the door gives in as if it were made of paper.

Nero falls forward through the door into a vast nothingness, small shards of wood fall around him as unceremonious confetti as he seems to fall endlessly in darkness.

“What the fuck!” he yells to nothing, to nobody.

He lands with a loud crunch of his ribs onto a solid piece of ground.

At Arkham’s feet.

Nero groans angrily and lifts himself up as best he can despite the pain in his chest. He meets Arkham’s eyes with a growl. It’s all he can muster given he’s unsure if he’s able to breathe properly.

“Tell me who you are,” Arkham commands in a somber tone.

Nero’s concern for his health stops when Arkham finishes speaking. “I’m the guy that’s gonna put your ass in the ground, you son of a bitch!”

Nero coughs violently, a searing pain in his midsection making him bow his head down. He grunts, taking several deep breaths before he can look up again.

“Very well,” Arkham says. He watches Nero for a moment, a condescending expression on his face before he turns and fades into the darkness yet again.

The pain in Nero’s torso subsides for moments at a time, letting him get himself into a standing position, clutching at the pain that’s migrated to a spot on his side.

“Why won’t you face me!?” Nero yells, hissing immediately after. He stops to catch his breath when a shape begins to form in front of him amidst the darkness.

It forms a humanoid body that begins to take colour. Red hair, the skirt with the yellow flowers she’d been wearing the last time he saw her, one of his old T-shirts that she wore while gardening. The look in her eyes when he told her the job was calling and it sounded dire.

“No,” Nero whispers to himself more than anything.

“Nero,” she says, just as clearly as he heard her in the sewers. Just as clearly as he hears her when he’s asleep.

“You’re not her,” Nero says, turning around. He saw the darkness take her shape, he knows this isn’t real. And still, he can’t bear to look at it.

“Nero,” she tries again, “it’s okay. You can rest now.”

He holds himself firm, unmoving and unwavering. He watches another figure manifest in front of him. A little boy, not any of the kids he’d had back home. Somehow, worse.

A little boy no older than nine years old stares up at him, white hair messed up in his face, but his eyes as sharp as they are even into middle age. His frame is small and malnourished, wearing an oversized navy blue shirt and pants that reach the ground. He holds the sword at his side, ever present in any form he may take.

“What the hell is this?” Nero asks, turning around.

Kyrie is still standing there. She gives him a look of concern and Nero has to turn away again.

“Nero,” the little boy says. It’s a voice a little boy should have, but nonetheless uncanny.

“I’m not playing this game,” Nero says, turning away from both of them. “You can—”

Nero gasps as the sword pierces through him as if the child were holding the real Yamato. He looks down at the edge of the sword that sticks out in front of him.

“I told you you could rest,” Kyrie says from behind him. “You don’t have to struggle.”

Nero feels the sword move down his torso, nearly splitting him in half before it withdraws. He collapses, a mess of blood and coughs. He feels the warmth of his blood pooling around him and struggles to breathe as he watches the little boy sit next to him, legs crossed.

Nero reaches for him, unsure of anything now as his sight begins to waver.

He wakes with a gasp, hands immediately checking his torso for any wound. He’s clean. He looks around at the hallway he’d been in before he’d fallen into whatever that was. The doors are still shut.

“Arkham,” Nero growls, getting to his feet. “I’m tired of these fucking games. Come out and show me what you’ve got!”

Nero flexes his fingers along Blue Rose’s grip and turns at the sound of footsteps behind him. He watches Arkham walk into a room. In seconds, Nero’s followed him in. It’s the same room Nero had walked into the first time he kicked a door down.

Nero manages to get a shot in before Arkham turns to him. The bullet stops in midair and falls onto the ground with a thud.

Frozen in place again, Nero watches as Arkham walks over to him again.

“Your relation to the sons of Sparda, to the Order of Fortuna,” he says. “You are not a son of Sparda.”

Nero fights against the restraints as best he can, but they still only amount to grunts. Arkham walks a short circle around Nero as he continues.

“You do not belong here. You reek of tampering not brought on by devils,” he spits. “I fear that you are the anomaly that removed my ace from this equation.”

“A shame,” Arkham says at the same time the small dagger plunges into Nero’s shoulder. Such a good little soldier, he was.”

Nero can only grunt in response. He can feel his body shudder with the rage and pain searing through him.

“Still,” Arkham continues, “the blood of Sparda is hard to come by. And with this, you will no longer be a pest to my plans.”

Arkham wipes the blood from the blade onto his hands and moves toward the centre of the room.

A book comes from somewhere inside the coat Arkham wears and with the bloodstained hands, he picks up the golden totem from the ground. He begins chanting in Latin.

Nero feels the grip against him begin to wane as the ground beneath him begins to shake. Still, he’s unable to move as he watches vines begin to come from the ground beneath him, they snake around him as Arkham’s power over him completely fades.

“Greed,” Arkham says, shutting the book. “The blood of Sparda is yours.”

A hiss comes from all corners of the room as smaller vines begin to emerge from the larger ones that wrap around him. They begin to shove themselves into his skin, worming themselves through his body. Nero manages a real scream, then.

He watches as Arkahm leaves the room without another word as the roots begin dragging him downward, piercing through skin and borrowing further into his body.

Nero uses the last bit of strength he has to reach for the roots that are trying to pillage his heart with his spectral arm. He detaches a large one from a smaller one, ripping part of his shirt and yanking at his mother’s necklace in the process.

And then he phases through the roots.

He falls over onto his side, gasping for air as the several holes throughout his body bleed profusely. His spectral arm fades and Nero’s left clutching at the necklace and the bits of thick demonic root he's ripped. He's trapped in a cocoon of vines, bleeding out while Dante and Lady are taking care of the invading demons. His mind blurs, unable to register anything but the burning ache all over his body.

Another vine snakes from underneath the ground. It passes right through Nero, leaving him untouched.

He pants heavily, using the last bit of strength he has left to breathe when he hears another voice in the distance.