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Dante had been to Hell a time or two and it still didn’t hold a candle to the stagnant vibe of government offices. Yellow lights, the buzz of fluorescent bulbs, out-dated carpets and the remnants of old notices and signs that encouraged people visiting to give each other at least six feet. Everything felt old without being the fun kind of vintage that Dante liked, that depressing kind of timeless. Still, he supposed, much like Hell, if one found themselves in line at the social security office, they only needed to keep going if they wanted to get out of it.
Vergil was speaking to the lady at the window in hushed tones, having waited for his number to be called. There was no rhyme or reason to the wait times that got thrown up on the screen hung above the waiting area. What took someone two seconds took the next person twenty minutes, and the numbers seemed to be called out of order, making Dante wonder if the workers knew what each person was there for ahead of time and decided to pick the next number up based on need alone.
He glanced at his brother, trying not to seem too antsy. The guard by the door was reading a magazine, scanning the waiting room every now and again. Because they were surrounded by humans, Dante felt like he stuck out. White hair notwithstanding. To Vergil’s credit, though, he had dressed down for the errand, wearing a black turtleneck and jeans. It was so bizarre to see that Dante found himself staring for more reasons than just how shapely his brother’s ass looked in dark-wash denim.
Aaaannndddd the second worst place to pop a boner has been found!
Dante sighed, leaning back in his chair.
“Church had a good run,” he murmured, rubbing a hand down his face. Vergil was pulling papers out of his back pocket, unfolding them, speaking to the lady at the window some more.
They were here to sell his story and get replacements for papers he never had in the first place .. A birth certificate, a drivers license, a social security number .. So many people had lost so much in the aftermath of the Tree that Red Grave was churning these claims out like hotcakes, but Vergil’s chosen cover story was a little more complicated. It was only their good ( bad? ) luck that the mansion fire that killed their mother was the stuff of local gossip and myth.
Vergil had been separated in the fire. Dante was his twin. Dante had scraps of the original birth certificate, salvaged from the fire after the fact, he vouched for his brother .. But where was he between eight and forty-five?
“Terrible circumstance,” Vergil would mutter, giving a practiced wounded look and tone. “There are awful people in the world .. “
And a precursory check would show that Vergil Sparda was a ghost. He dropped off the face of the earth, it seemed. Nothing, no jobs, no applications for driver’s licenses, no jobs, no checking accounts .. And Dante had to keep from biting his lip and breaking his poker face at that. Dropped off the face of the earth indeed. Dropped off, and under, down down down ..
No one pushed further than that, and Dante wasn’t sure if he was grateful or not. If it was one entity you didn’t fuck with, it was the goddamn IRS. Maybe the Red Grave officials decided that weirder shit had happened? That the Tree probably shook some shit loose and broke more than just demons in Hell out of their cages? It helped that Vergil had some weird fuckin mannerisms when he wanted to; staring too long, not blinking or at least never been caught blinking. More than once, Dante had to snap at Vergil to unfreeze or he was getting sprayed with holy water.
Dante was shaken out of his thoughts when Vergil returned to him. Blinking up at him, he waited for Vergil to nod and then stood, following him out of the office. Vergil had a legal envelope in his hands and Dante could guess what was in it.
Sure enough, once they had gotten back into Dante’s classic ( it’s not old, Vergil, shut up ) convertible, Vergil opened the envelope and showed him the pristine new vital documents.
“Well, look at that,” he sighed, pulling the car out of its spot. “Welcome to full personhood, buddy.”
Vergil rolled his eyes, slipping the card into his pocket.
“Now we can get a proper driver’s license," Vergil was saying, cut off by Dante’s derisive laugh.
Vergil frowned, eyes narrowing, “What?”
“I am not draggin my ass to the DM-fuckin-V today,” Dante shook his head, sounding tired. “Trust, know and believe that, Verg.”
Vergil’s frown deepened into something approaching a pout and Dante resisted the urge to use his thumb to rub out the crease between his twin’s eyebrows. Resisted that urge primarily because he liked having hands and Vergil was never too far above dismemberment as an opening move.
“If I get my license, you need not ferry me around anymore,” Vergil countered, speaking slow.
“Yeah, and I don’t gotta do that right now, because you have a sword that can cut portals through time and space,” Dante huffed, merging into traffic.
“You said I needed to use that sparingly – ”
“Nah, I said you needed to use it smart, and not to pop into the fuckin bodega at 2 AM when you realize we’re outta Cherry Garcia, Verg.”
“If you took me to get my license now, I could drive to the bodega.”
“Number one,” Dante said, lifting a finger off of the steering wheel. “No one, and I mean fuckin nobody drives to the bodega – ”
“There are cars in front of it – ”
“Second, the bodega is three blocks from our house – ”
“What if it’s raining?”
“Vergil, damn. ”
Vergil huffed, turning to glower out the window.
Dante inhaled, held it .. Exhaled through his lips.
“And third,” he said, finally, “I just spent the entire morning in a government office as it is. I’m all itchy. The DMV is the sixth or seventh layer of fuckin Hell, besides.”
“Inaccurate,” Vergil muttered, under his breath. “The sixth is Heresy, the seventh is Violence.”
“Be a smart ass to me, kiddo, that’s a great way to get me to do what you want,” Dante huffed, amused. Vergil rolled his eyes, but quieted.
After a few miles, Dante relented.
“I’ll take you tomorrow,” he said, feeling like the big brother for a change. “Why you so down-bad to get it anyway?”
“Normal people have them,” came Vergil’s easy reply. Dante arched an eyebrow at him.
“Are you normal people?”
“Are you?” Vergil fired back, without flinching.
“Point taken,” Dante chuckled. “But, still .. Kinda .. I dunno. I think it’s neat that you wanna do this stuff, honestly.”
“What is so novel about it?” Vergil raised an eyebrow, his expression curious if a little guarded. Was this another tease, another ribbing Dante intended to give him? Ever the boisterous extrovert, Dante had no shortage of ( what he certainly believed ) witty pokes.
“Kinda mundane stuff like this?” Dante shrugged, keeping his eyes on the road. “A license, a social.” He was careful about his words, not wanting to step on any toes, least of all any in Vergil’s boots. “It’s all kinda .. Y’know – ?”
Vergil cut him off before he could grasp at more flowery words that had, until then, eluded him.
“Human.”
Vergil just spoke the word, without judgement, without the disdain that Dante had heard in his brother’s voice whenever he had said the word, in years gone by, what felt like a lifetime ago.
“Yeah,” Dante muttered, glancing at him side-long, but not holding the look. Vergil, he could see, also didn’t seem interested in looking at Dante when he spoke. His gaze was forward, on the road ahead.
“You think that my leaning into the mundane is out of character for me,” Vergil continued, his tone even, maybe even soft. Dante noted that it wasn’t a question, either, but a statement, raw and real. Vergil, thankfully, didn’t make Dante reply to that, taking a small breath before he continued to talk. “From eight until nineteen, I lived a very .. woeful existence. As I’m sure you did as well. No foster homes, no one to care for me in the traditional sense. I cared for me. Ate out of trashcans, stole.” The barest, smallest shrug of his brother’s shoulders and Dante could tell that he was forcing himself to be even-keeled. “I didn’t have time nor the inclination to do “normal human things” because I was so .. ”
Vergil trailed off, his eyes sliding closed, his mouth turning hard, just for a second, as if the words were difficult to chew and swallow, let alone speak.
“SO dreadfully asinine,” he continued, with a heavy exhale, another shake of his head. “Why learn to drive, I was going to be the King of Everything before long.” He rolled his eyes, trailing off bitterly, looking out the window. “A stupid, selfish boy, chasing stupid, selfish delusions of grandeur. Defeat after defeat, one thing was hammered into my mind, seared like a brand upon my very soul.”
“Yeah?” Dante muttered, curious.
“I want to go home,” Vergil murmured.
“That’s where we’re headed – ”
“No,” Vergil scoffed, giving him a look. “That is what I kept repeating to myself. Years upon years of it. I want to go home. I didn’t have a home, what home was there to go back to? But still, I wanted it. One morning, I woke up, feeling like I had died and perhaps I had, alone on a beach, hearing the faint buzz of a plane, flying away – ”
“I said I was sorry about that – ”
“ – And even then, I wanted to go home,” Vergil continued, not faltering. “Time crawled and I healed, and then I realized two things that scared me, chilled me in a way that I can’t rightly put into words.”
“What, what?” Dante asked, deeply invested.
“I was forty-two years old,” Vergil said, softly, smiling in a sad sort of way, barely quirking his lips. “And while it almost assured that you and I will live a very, very long time, certainly longer than most people are afforded in this one life we are given, I can never get those years back.”
“Oh,” Dante exhaled, shaking his head, a pang of unique, terrible pain in his chest. “Verg.”
“I was cheated out of one entire life,” Vergil continued, not allowing himself to be derailed. “Nero’s entire life, I missed. I was nothing for longer than I was Vergil. And most painful – ”
“I dunno, man, I’m gonna start fuckin cryin if you keep goin,” Dante muttered, shaking his head, catching their exit.
“ – You and I are a scant three years from being older than our mother.”
“Kick me in the fuckin nuts next time, Vergil,” Dante grumbled, cringing hard enough he felt a twinge in his jaw, an ache. “It’d get the job done, but it’d be nicer.” He gave his brother a withering look, saw that Vergil didn’t look the least bit guilty about dropping that emotional nuke on their car-ride. “So, what? You’re makin up for lost time? Having a second go at your Dirty Thirties?”
“Perhaps nothing so outrageous, in truth,” Vergil said and Dante caught, out of the corner of his eye, the barest ease of tension in his shoulders, his hands. The kind of subtle shift that Dante only noticed because he was either a Cambion or Vergil’s twin, or both, he wasn’t sure. “I just want to live. I want there to be a record that I lived, anyway.”
“And to do that, you’re gonna get a terrible pic taken of ya at the DMV and curse downtown traffic like the rest of us workin stiffs, huh?” Dante said, daring to throw a smirk at his brother. “Whew, damn, babe .. You got a helluva way to go about “livin,” huh?”
Vergil seemed to take the teasing for what it was, and didn’t pursue it with teeth bared. Instead, Dante stayed staring forward, eyes on the road, catching the barely-there softening of his twin’s features as Vergil regarded him.
Wordlessly, though, perhaps even a bit gently, Dante offered his right hand to Vergil taking it off the steering wheel to extend it in the space between them in the bench-seat of his old, beat-up convertible, palm up, fingers relaxed. And Vergil, just as wordless, just as easy, slipped his hand into Dante’s, laced their fingers, and gave the gentlest squeeze.