Chapter Text
The Devil May Cry office was too quiet.
Dante sat at his desk with his boots up, lazily flicking a pen at the ceiling fan and missing most the time. A half-empty coffee cup sat cold by his elbow.
“This is hell,” he groaned.
“You’ve seen hell,” Vergil replied from the couch, not looking up from the book in his hand.
“I’ve fought through hell. This is worse. At least down there I had something to hit.” Dante leaned back, tipping his chair until it creaked in protest. “I’m going stir-crazy. Need to get back in the saddle.”
“You said you were going to retire.”
Dante scoffed. “Obviously, I wasn’t serious. I need a job.”
Vergil finally glanced up, steely eyes cool and unreadable. “A job will find you soon enough. It always does.”
As if on cue, the phone rang.
The tenement reeked of something that had died in the walls weeks ago and continued to decay ever since.
“Smells like home,” Dante muttered as they stepped inside. His boot scuffed against grit on the floor as he trailed a step behind Vergil. The limp was slight, buried under the swing of his coat, but not invisible.
Vergil didn’t comment. His hand rested lightly on Yamato’s hilt, eyes tracking the darkness ahead. The faint drag in Dante’s stride told him enough — the nerve damage still lingered.
They reached the open stairwell. Two floors down, something shifted — the scrape of claws on tile, wet breath drawn through too many teeth.
“Guess we’ve got company,” Dante said, rolling his shoulder. “Shame. I was hoping for a warm-up lap first.”
The thing came fast, a tangle of bone hooks and tendon whipping up the stairwell. Dante stepped in without hesitation, Devil Sword Dante in his hands, and met the first strike with a two-handed block. The recoil jolted through him, a flash of pain crossing his face before he twisted and shoved the demon back.
A burn flared along his ribs — the old Requiem scars — sharp and hot, like the cursed armor still gripped him. On instinct, his left hand twitched toward where the gauntlet would have been, ready to channel that unnatural weight… but there was nothing. Just empty air—
—and a voice?
A whisper like metal grinding on bone, so faint it could have been a memory: Not enough.
It was gone as fast as it came. He ground his teeth and tightened his grip on his sword.
His style was different — fewer flips, no showboating flourishes. He pivoted on his good leg more, avoiding deep crouches, and kept his weight forward so the left didn’t have to hold him for too long. The swings were deliberate, aimed to win fights, rather than draw them out.
The demon was relentless. On the third pass, Dante lunged, but his knee gave halfway through the motion. The blade still connected, carving deep into its side, but he stumbled as it shrieked and retaliated.
Vergil was already there. Yamato’s draw was a whisper of steel, intercepting the creature before it could press the advantage. The slash was clean, surgical — severing an arm, opening its core. He didn’t glance at Dante, didn’t speak, just shifted aside so the next blow was his brother’s to take.
Dante took it, Devil Sword Dante hammering down with enough force to split the thing in two. The pieces hit the floor wetly, sliding toward the wall in twitching heaps.
They kept moving, clearing the rest of the building room by room. Dante handled the smaller spawns without trouble, though Vergil caught the occasional tightening of his jaw when a strike jarred his left side.
When the last corpse stilled, Dante planted Devil Sword Dante’s tip on the cracked tile, leaning against it as though it were the most casual posture in the world. His breathing was a touch too heavy. Sweat traced his jaw, disappearing beneath his collar.
Vergil slid Yamato back into its sheath. “Rusty.”
Dante smirked, though it lacked the usual edge. “Eh, could have been worse.”
Vergil let it go. He followed Dante out, noting the limp still there in his stride, subtle but constant. Dante kept his head high, every line of his body telegraphing the same stubborn message: I’m not done yet.
The Devil May Cry sign flickered to life as they strode up, sputtering in the evening haze. The streets were quieter than usual — most things with half a brain had learned to steer clear of this block.
Vergil let the door swing open first. Dante stepped in, shedding his coat in one practiced shrug. He tossed it toward the rack, missed by a solid foot, and didn’t bother to correct it.
Vergil seamlessly bent down to pick up the coat and draped in on its regular hook.
Dante moved for the couch, that limp just visible now that the fight’s adrenaline had drained. He didn’t drop into the cushions so much as sink, leaning back with a sigh that ended in a faint hiss between his teeth.
Vergil crossed to the desk without a word. From there, he could see the way Dante’s left leg stretched out a little further than the right, how his fingers unconsciously kneaded just above the knee. The scars along his collarbone caught the desk lamp’s light, uneven where the cursed armor had fused with his skin.
“You hungry?” Vergil asked.
Dante cracked one eye open. “Since when do you ask?”
“Since I prefer not to watch you pass out after a job.”
That earned him a quiet huff of a laugh. “Fine. Pizza.”
Vergil picked up the phone but didn’t dial right away. From the couch came the faint creak of leather as Dante shifted, a muffled grunt at the motion. When Vergil glanced over, his brother had his head tipped back, eyes closed, one hand resting on the old wound like he could press the ache into silence.
“You’re staring,” Dante said without opening his eyes.
“Just wondering,” Vergil replied, tone flat, “if you intend to recover before you throw yourself to the wolves again.”
A lazy smirk curved Dante’s mouth, though it didn’t reach his eyes. “Yeah, yeah, of course.”
Vergil didn’t answer. He ordered the pizza, hung up, and took the chair opposite the couch. The silence between them was steady, unstrained — and for now, that was enough.