Chapter Text
The wilderness of enormous, skeletal ridges had an undeniable style. It stretched on and on; perhaps it had no physical boundaries. This place predated the creation of the material world—of reality. At one time, the two worlds had been connected. The primeval creatures populating this land were alien to the human denizens of the other world, who called them devils and demons. Could such beings ever truly die? Or would they carry on in some form as long as they had the will to do so? These questions had occupied Dante’s mind for over two decades.
But now, as he propelled himself high up into the air with a laugh, he no longer had reason to be so hung up on that stuff.
“Is that all you got?” he called out to his infuriated brother. Vergil worked hard to perfect his can't-phase-me look, but he was born with a bad temper, and Dante delighted in getting a rise out of him.
It was a game that kept the surprises coming. Many times, Vergil gave no reaction to what should have been a painful poke at his dignity, then lost it over a little dig Dante tossed out without banking on it too much. Like saying that he'd been better at math than Vergil when they were kids. That set the fireworks off, and having found a weak spot, Dante hammered away at it. Using Vergil as a springboard, kicking off from him to launch himself into the air, as he had done just now, was another surefire way to tick his brother off.
“Puerile.” Vergil glowered, the muscles above his high collar standing out like cords. Clink, clink, clink. Dante swatted away the projectiles flying at him with his gauntlet. In doing that, he blocked his view of his brother for a jiffy. The next second, Vergil dived feet first into his chest. Well, someone got his panties all in a bunch…
With a flip, Dante righted himself midair, landing lightly on his feet. He dispelled his greaves and gauntlets but didn’t summon another Devil Arm. There was a much better way to even the score. He placed one hand on his bent knee and, with a grin full of meaning, motioned for his brother to come at him. Vergil pursed his lips and flicked his gaze upward. He didn’t want to play at this.
Still, Vergil was nothing if not a good sport. With a deep breath, he flexed his hand around the hilt of his sword, staring Dante down. Summoning up all his preternatural speed was his only hope for overcoming. But it wasn’t gonna work.
“Why the sigh, bro?” Dante teased. “Did you want me to go easy? All you have to do is ask!”
“You’ll eat those words.”
In a flash, Vergil dashed towards and past Dante, slashing at him on the way. Dante blocked, but that was a given. The idea was to wear his focus down with successive hits. Vergil zipped back and forth faster than the eye could see. Dante held off each strike. As Vergil was about to whizz past him a fifth time, demonic energy surged all around them. A Fury teleported behind each of them, and a third right between them, its claw raised to strike at Dante.
Releasing all his built-up energy, Dante blasted the demon away, into his brother’s reach. Vergil carved it up with lightning-fast strikes from both his swords as the second Fury lunged at Dante. Rock-hard ice particles enveloped him in a protective whirlwind. Its blow repelled, the Fury doubled back, and Dante pummeled away at it with his fire staff. The third demon blitzed around in search of an opening. Hang tight, you’ll be up in a sec.
It had other ideas. Just as Vergil finished its brethren off, the third Fury darted towards him. Vergil met it halfway with a forward lunge, thrusting it at Dante in a straight line.
With a strike of his staff, Dante sent his own Fury flying in an arc towards Vergil, right above the demon hurtling towards him. He grinned a little: this was their own take on the kill switch trick, and he loved it. He catapulted himself up into the air, then descended in a spinning shower of bullets that knocked his new Fury down.
From the spot he landed on, the two remaining demons were lined up just right for a kill-steal. His grin widened. Whipping out his rocket launcher, he caught both Furies in a vicious energy beam. His brother had to jump out of the way to avoid getting scorched.
An ethereal projectile pierced his forearm just as the two demons exploded. Touchy, touchy.
“2–1 to Dante! A stunning victory, a dominant performance!”
“Even you call your supposed victory ‘stunning.’ I rest my case.” By Vergil's standards, that was a pretty tame reaction. He didn’t snap at Dante or send any more projectiles flying his way. He just breathed out. Despite the distance between them, Dante caught his meaning. They’d been fighting for a long time. They were both due for some R&R.
Dante strolled over to his brother’s side, rubbing his already-healed forearm. How long had they been here in the Underworld? He had no clue. But one thing was certain: not counting their childhood in their parents’ house, this sabbatical had to be the high point of his life.
That truth was hella unsettling. He dreaded what he would become if he stayed here much longer.
Of course, it was only human to be happy to have his brother back. Selfish, considering what Vergil had done, but human. That wasn’t what bothered him.
The problem was the way this place and the company he was keeping affected him. Being in the Underworld was invigorating. The very atmosphere here crackled with demonic energy, and it filled him with more vitality than he ever had before. Surrounded only by demons and his brother, who’d always had a yen for all things demonic, he became more and more in tune with this part of his heritage. It no longer took much effort to maintain his new, completely inhuman form.
And he was having a blast. Blazing with demonic power, he spent all his time here fighting. Here, he would live forever. He was unstoppable. It was the most fun he’d had since… ever.
Back when he was young, saving his money to set up his shop, just smashing up the odd demonic hideout with maybe two Hell Prides in it was exciting. He’d dreamed of what an amazing life he would lead as a Devil Hunter, rescuing Dominique Tereshkova lookalikes and loving every second of it.
It didn’t work out that way. At all. He'd hit some pretty rough patches during his adult years in the Human World.
He shook his head. He didn’t want to think about all that right now. He popped down next to his sitting brother, too close, sending dust flying with his sudden movement. Vergil glared. Dante grinned at him. His mood was lifted instantly.
“So, we’re tackling that crevice there next?” He motioned with his head towards the narrow opening.
His brother gave him an exasperated look.
“Why would we do that, Dante?” Going back to their childhood, Vergil had a particular way of inflecting that name. Especially when he was in a pique.
“I don’t know, bro, you’re the one who can’t stand staying in one place.”
“That’s rich, coming from you. And that crevice is where we just came from.”
“...For real?”
“For real.”
“Damn, I got turned around,” Dante said with a laugh. “This place is a brain teaser.”
“No, it isn’t.”
“Oh, come on! Everything’s shape-shifting non-stop, space and directions are all weird…”
“There is nothing ‘weird’ about it. It is entirely intuitive. All you have to do is think like a demon.”
“I’ll pass, thanks. You be my tour guide, Verge.”
“I stand in awe of whatever miracle allowed you to find your way back to the Human World last time you were here.”
“You’re sitting down, bro.” Satisfied with the scowl he provoked out of his brother, Dante added: “I got back home through clever use of the ancient technique called Walking Through The Gate Before You.” Courtesy of a Yamato shard, he didn’t say. Somehow, the conversation had looped right back to the times he was trying to put out of his mind.
“A Hell Gate just opened right before you.”
“Yup!”
“Do you have any idea how abysmally low the chances are for something like that to happen? You could have wandered this realm for all eternity and never come close to a gate.” Vergil rolled his eyes. “The entire universe must be conspiring in your interests.”
His brother held firm in his belief that Dante was a spoiled brat who always got his way.
“Are you still mad about that time we lost Bobby Beak to a watery grave, Verge? I told you no one can beat my Rubby Rover in a derby duck race. You didn’t have to run crying to Dad about it.”
“Don’t make me regret correcting your assignments so you wouldn’t be grounded until you could spell our names.”
“I could spell our names fine; I was just trying to cheer you up. You like assignments, and you like to think your little brother needs your help.”
“Sadly, you need more help than I can provide.”
“Nah, bro, you’re the squeaky wheel. No worries, though! Little brother is on hand with a jar of grease and some life lessons in losing.”
“You couldn’t give a lesson in matching socks.”
“It was a style choice.”
They fell silent, sitting side by side, shoulder to shoulder, looking out over the horizon where the red soil bled into the sky. The barbaric vista was magnificent, much more so than any other parts of the Underworld Dante had been to. Or maybe that was because this time, he was here with his brother, not alone. Man, he was getting sentimental in his old age.
A light breeze tussled the field of tall, white strands around them, carrying tiny white and pink lights up toward the sky. Thousands of restless stars each charted their own arc, and in the lull of the moment, their deep, resonant sound reverberated inside him.
He wanted to enjoy this peace. He didn’t want to destroy it. He was diving into the deep end with what he was about to say, but…
“Still a lot of activity around those parts.” He tried to sound casual. But Vergil stiffened. He knew where this was going.
“Yes.” Vergil crossed his arms and stared ahead with a moody frown.
Dante’s stomach sank. Was he doing the right thing here? Should he let it be? Did he risk too much by pushing? There were enough Devil Hunters in the Human World. Let them take care of it. Dante had already done more than his part. Much more than twice his part.
The Underworld had no equivalent to the daily, monthly and yearly cycles of the Human World. Time didn’t matter to demons. Sometimes, Dante wondered if time was even passing here. But at some point before, the demons had eased up a bit on interrupting his fights with his brother. And then… “a lot of activity” was overselling it, but demonic traffic did get heavier than usual in a certain direction.
This trend wasn't just a flash in the pan either. It had legs. When Dante asked Vergil about it, his brother had said he couldn’t think of any explanation other than the obvious: a gate had opened somewhere to the Human World. Probably a good stretch away, or else they would’ve been seeing a crowd of demons swarming toward it.
After that conversation, things between them became tense.
Dante had brought up returning to the Human World just once during their stint here. That was long before this change in the demonic M.O. around them. Vergil responded with a big-time snub. One word followed another; they both said too much. Fine, OK, Dante said too much. He lost it, but who wouldn’t? He’d dumped his shop, his friends, his entire life. All for his prodigal brother with the lifelong habit of seemingly dying, then turning up whenever he got in the mood to stomp all over their parents’ memory. Vergil had pulled this shit one too many times. Yet here he was, acting like he did nothing wrong and treating Dante like an idiot.
So he let Vergil hear it: how he threw everything away for power and still lost; how his hankering to live in their “father’s home” got him enslaved to their mother’s murderer; how he was only freed because he lost to Dante—again. And the rest. He had said a whole lot that he shouldn’t have. But unlike Vergil, Dante always had a knack for fighting dirty. In the heat of the moment, this instinct took over, and he threw punches where they hurt the most.
He just couldn’t contain his frustration with his brother’s obstinacy. How could Vergil enjoy being in the Underworld after everything that had happened to him here? It made no sense. It didn’t help that he was in the dark about what exactly his brother went through here. Vergil never talked about it. Dante knew very little of his brother’s life after age eight.
It was a tough break to love a stranger.
The clash that had followed his outburst was up there with the worst moments of his life. It was the closest the two of them had come to battling once more with killing intent.
After that, Dante didn’t bring up returning to the Human World again. Not even after Vergil had fessed up about the possibility of a breach. It just hung between them, unsaid.
And it began to gnaw on him, not all the time, but more and more often. He tried goading his brother a few times with the memory of losing to Nero. Perhaps Vergil would get mad and go back to the Human World to set the record straight. But that turned out to be one of those jabs that had failed to land.
That was no great shocker. Vergil had refused to fight Dante upon his return because to him, only defeating an opponent at full power had “meaning.” His underperformance against his son didn’t bother him much since he saw it as a fluke. He took it for granted that he would get a shot at a redo sometime and that he would win this second bout. But he wasn’t desperate for it as he had been for a rematch against Dante. Nor did the memory of his loss make him flash his temper the way he did every time Dante took him down in a one-on-one.
Like he had done when they got into their first argument about the score. They’d been fighting for who knows how long, and Dante had lost count several matches ago, so this was purely about his commitment to his Annoying Little Brother bit. His first instinct was to rile Vergil by banging that drum further, but he reined himself in. He would act like an adult for once. So he gave his brother the chance to bow out of their deadlocked battle without admitting defeat. Neither of them could achieve a decisive victory. Maybe it was time to leave it at that, or they would be here forever.
His brother had cycled through what Dante now thought of as Vergil's three stages of loss. Anger. Irritation. And, finally, anticipation. With one of his rare excited smiles, Vergil said, “We got plenty of time.”
It had surprised Dante how happy those words made him. This was his brother. This was someone who was like him. Finally.
He’d always preached to his brother about humanity. He was failing Vergil by not pushing him to live as a human: by allowing themselves to be bound by the spell of this savage, beautiful, primal land. Vergil had flirted with the demonic more than enough already. He needed Dante to stop him, not enable him.
His gaze fixed on the blood-red horizon, Dante ground the words out: “Let's give it a look-see. If it’s a gate, plenty of demons must have rolled through by now. We might be needed on the other side to clean things up.”