Chapter Text
The shop is quiet.
Everything is quiet.
The rain had stopped long ago, the rumbling thunder faded away as the early morning light broke through the clouds. Capulet had once been a loud, chaotic city, but after Temen-ni-gru, the streets have grown quiet, empty. The pre-morning dawn paints the still un-named shop in a sleepy haze, a sobering silence after all the devastation.
Ash and drywall cover the floor. With the doors blown off the hinges- admittedly, Dante’s own fault -the elements had crawled in. Fly away debris and large sections of his ceiling and wall litter the floor and many of his possessions have either been damaged by the fight or suffered through the onslaught of rain that followed.
Miraculously, his desk remains unscathed, the portrait of his mother untouched but a bit dusty, and his phone somehow still connected and whole. It almost makes Dante laugh, but the sound dies bitterly before it can escape through his lips.
Now, in the quiet, solitude of his shattered life, there is no one to pretend for.
Dante takes a stuttering breath, clenching his eyes shut. His palm stings though the cut that has long ago healed in the agonizing climb down the tower’s crumbling steps and the sobering walk home.
The silence is grating. Every creaking floorboard, every rustling of wind agitates him, sending his mind ablaze. Everything is still too fresh, too tender and he seeks the comforting distractions that have propelled him for years.
He staggers to his jukebox before belatedly realizing the thing is busted for good. A large chunk of the ceiling had fallen and crushed it. No amount of demonic infusion will get her working again.
Spinning on his heel, Dante turns to the makeshift bar, shoved in the opposite corner, and already knows any booze he’s got there has been shattered in the fight. Sure enough, a sea of glass and sticky residue cling to the bubbling laminate wood top. One of his magazines is a casualty of the destruction, glued to the counter and fading away under the remnants of one of his many bottles of Jack.
The rest of his reading material has been blown to the wind and shredded into useless pieces.
There’s nothing here. Nothing left of the little he had built up. It had taken him years to build a semblance of a life for himself- a roof over his head, possessions of his own, comforts and securities he had long been denied, a home. And now it’s all gone. It’s the fire all over again- everything he owns is broken and destroyed, his family lost once more.
No.
No, no.
He's not going to think about that. Not now. Later. Much later.
Maybe never.
He needs to do something, anything. He needs a distraction, he needs to not think.
Looking down at his hands, Dante can see the grime caked on his skin and gloves. He’s filthy after the Temen-ni-gru. Dried blood and viscera cling to his skin, the dust and smoke of the devastation around him is coated in a thick layer. His white hair is ashened and stiff. His clothing is in tatters and…honestly, the temptation of a shower- the ability to rid himself of everything that has happened in the past twenty four hours -nearly makes his knees weak with want.
He doesn’t have high hopes for his already pitiful plumbing. He already struggles to get consistent water pressure on a good day, let alone any heat, but he’ll take anything at this point. Anything to wash it all away.
Thankfully, damage to the bathroom is minimal. A sharp crack along one of the walls is the most prominent. The tile has popped off in several places and shattered in others, exposing the damaged drywall. Mold seems to have come and gone and come back again from what he can see but Dante shrugs it off as a problem for Later-Dante as he heads for the shower tap.
A loud hiss and worrying groan greets him before surprising him with a glug of water. It takes a few minutes to get a steady stream but somehow, despite everything, he has running water. It’s nearly enough to get a small smile to his face until he reaches under the stream and finds it icy cold. The only person he knew that actually liked frigid baths had been V-
Dante forces that thought to a stop with a harsh bite to his tongue. He feels blood flood his mouth as the wound of his tongue quickly heals. He spits it into the bath, watching it diffuse and slowly swirl down the drain.
He sheds his clothing. His coat is in tatters and beyond repair with one sleeve torn off and gouges running down the back and sides. His pants are in a similar state of ruin. Both will have to be disposed of. His boots are caked with grime but he thinks they might be salvageable with a decent scrub. His gloves-
Dante stares at the thin cut across the leather. His skin had long ago healed and erased any mark or scar that could have formed. All evidence faded except for the glove. Minutes tick by as Dante drags his finger across the gash. He should throw it away with the rest of his destroyed clothes.
He peels them off, tossing the right one in the bin by his sink with his other discarded clothing but pauses with the left. A knot forms in his throat, pressure building behind his eyes. He needs to get rid of it, get rid of everything so he can move on, rebuild, but he can’t seem to make his fingers let go.
Reluctantly, Dante moves and rests the glove on the edge of the sink. He knows it's ruined. He knows it's useless and nothing more than a bitter memory, but he cannot part with it. Not right now.
Later, he promises to himself once more as he turns back towards his shower. He’s naked now, save for his half of the amulet. It hangs across his chest, weighted and heavier than it has ever been before. The chain feels tight around his throat, despite how low it hangs around his neck. It’s the only thing he has left his mother, one of the few items he’s retained from his childhood. He’s never taken it off and refuses to do so now as he climbs into the shower.
His skin prickles under the icy stream but Dante welcomes the numbness that settles across him. The faded adrenaline has left him fatigued despite his mind feeling jumpy. He wants to drown in the onslaught, get washed away and taken far away from everything. He wants to disappear, he wants to become nothing.
With a sharp inhale, Dante closes his eyes. The slap of the shower against the tiles is too similar to the sound of rain pelting the cobblestones of the Temen-ni-gru. The frigid water is not too dissimilar to the contrast of cold rain on his overheated skin.
He can practically hear the clash of steel, taste the blood in his mouth, smell the tang of battle. It’s overwhelming how quick the memory overtakes him. Hours have passed but it feels like he is right there, the running waters of Demon World rushing around him, pushing him towards the edge, Vergil’s unmoving face cutting him away, falling, falling, falling.
A choking gasp leaves Dante, his chest burning as he struggles to breathe. He feels like he is drowning and he presses against the shower tile as his vision blurs. His heart is racing, thundering in his chest as if it's trying to escape, to break through his ribs, tear through the skin.
He wraps his arms around himself as he forces himself to breathe in slow, even measures. He takes note of what’s around him. Nell had walked him through this before, when memories of the fire would paralyze him. He observes the uneven spray of the icy shower against his back, the mold growing in the corner of the shower, and the way the water runs a deep red and slowly begins to lighten.
He keeps watch as it goes from red, to pink til it runs clear.
He stays beneath the spray far longer than he needs. He stays until his heart slows, his breathing evens out. His body aches. It's not the soreness of a hard fight he sometimes gets after a hunt, but rather something deeper, beyond skin and muscle, something that has sunk into his core and hollows him out.
Dante fumbles for the tap and shuts off the water. He stays dripping in the shower a moment longer before he allows himself to stagger out. He grabs the singular threadbare towel he owns and roughly wipes himself down. The fabric is rough against his skin and he welcomes the raw sensation to draw him away from the chill that has come from the freezing shower.
Shaking out his hair and pushes the dripping ends out of his face, Dante turns towards the sink and the small, oval mirror that hangs above it.
He flinched at the face that greets him.
Pale blue eyes, haunting and distant, stare back at him. With his hair pushed out of his eyes, Dante has a full view of his thin arched eyebrows, the long line of his nose and the sharp cut of his jaw. Without the lazy smile that has always been transfixed on his face, he looks…
Dante swallows the lump in his throat and shakes his hair, forcing it to fall across his face like he is known for. But when he looks back, the reflection remains unchanged.
It's as if he’s back atop the Temen-ni-gru, the sharp point of Yamato hovering a hair’s breath away from his chest. Everything around him fades to black. He’s no longer in his shop, in the small bathroom in the back. Rather he's atop of the tower, surrounded by the night and the rushing waters of Hell. His vision tunnels till all he can see is Vergil opposite of him, sneer curling up the corner of his lip and eyes ablaze with raw hatred.
Dante shakes his head, clenching his eyes shut as he fists his hair.
“Don’t look away from me,” an achingly familiar voice snarls at him, a low and quiet threat. “Hiding is beneath you, but so is letting me go. Open your eyes. Face the consequences of your weakness, your humanity. It has failed you once again. Do not grovel at me for your own mistakes.”
“Stop,” Dante whispers, his voice feeble and shaken. “Stop, please.”
“No.” Vergil’s voice is full of vitriol and zero remorse. “This is a lesson, Dante. A lesson you have failed to learn over and over and you will see now what happens when you choose wrong. Smother who you really are and rot away in isolation. Alone and forgotten. Let humanity rip apart what’s left of you.”
Dante’s fingers dig into his scalp, the pain doing nothing to dull his senses, to quite Vergil’s taunting voice.
“You know why you let me fall?” Vergil asks sharply. “Because you were weak. Weak of body, weak of mind, weak of heart. See where this weakness gets you-”
The mirror cracks at the first hit, Vergil’s visage shattering as shards of glass rip through the deadly silence. Dante feels the jagged edges slice across his skin but he barely registers any pain and he punches again.
And again.
And again.
Rage burns through his veins. He’s pissed, angry. Angry that Vergil raised the Temen-ni-gru, angry that his brother was so blinded by his want for power and he couldn’t see the trick pulled over him, angry that despite it all, Vergil still tried to destroy everything. Angry that in the end, Vergil left him, chose to fall, chose to cut Dante out of his life once more.
If only I had been faster. His hand grows numb between his punches.
If only I had been stronger. Glass embeds in his skin.
If only I had been enough. His vision blurs until all he sees is red.
He punches until there’s nothing left, until his own blood is smeared across the wooden backing.
Distantly, he registers his throat burn from the force of his screaming. Distantly, he feels the wetness of tears trailing down his cheeks.
Fight is slow to drain out of him, but once all the fire has burned away, Dante slouches, unable to look at the stain of his blood against the wall.
With trembling fingers, he grips the edge of the sink. His chest heaves and gasps for air. His eyes sting and he bites his tongue hard to stop the flow of tears. Blood fills his mouth once more and he spits it down into the sink.
The basin is a mess of blood and broken glass. Through the bloody fragments, he can see his splintered reflection staring back at him, eyes rimmed in red as he trembles. Gone is the image of Vergil: stoic, apathetic and controlled. All that’s left is Dante, alone once more and shattered, broken and ruined.