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The Demon World was never truly quiet. Somewhere in the distance, creatures howled, rivers of molten rock hissed beneath black stone. Strange winds wandered through caverns older than human history.
But tonight felt quiet enough.
Dante sat on a broken pillar and twirled his sword's replacement lazily between his fingers before finally planting the sword into the ground. Across from him, sprawled against a slab of stone, Vergil was asleep. His head rested against the rock wall. Yamato lay beside him within arm's reach. One arm was folded over his chest while the other hung loosely at his side. For once, he looked his age, or maybe younger.
Dante remembered how much he dislike seeing Vergil felt as sleep. He looked... too calm. Too peaceful for this world, almost as if he's meditating. In their childhood, Dante comprehended a sleeping Vergil as an act of pretending to ignore him, looked like he's silently judging every life choice Dante had ever made.
The fight had been particularly good tonight. Nothing serious, just the usual: disagreement about direction, argument about who had killed more demons, a few insults, a sword fight. Well, very normal sibling activities.
Vergil had won by exactly one point, according to his own highly suspicious scoring system. Of course Dante had loudly declared the system corrupt. Vergil had called him a sore loser. Now he had fallen asleep, how irresponsible.
And Dante had been left alone, again.
"...Man."
His voice sounded strange in the silence. Dante leaned back and looked upward. The sky of the Demon World wasn't really a sky. Just darkness stretching forever above them. Still, something about the moment felt familiar. The silence. The stillness.
The feeling of being the only person awake in the world.
His gaze drifted back toward Vergil. Sleeping. Like 'back then'. A laugh escaped Dante before he could stop it.
"You really haven't changed."
Dante shook his head. When they were kids, he used to think Vergil had some supernatural ability to fall asleep anywhere. The guy had schedules, actual schedules.
Wake up - read - train - read again - sleep.
Repeat.
Meanwhile Dante possessed enough energy to power a small city. Their mother had once described him as a hurricane with shoes. Vergil had called that description accurate. The memory made him smile.
And suddenly he wasn't looking at a sleeping man anymore. He was looking at a boy. In a small living room, moonlight spilling through the windows. On a couch, a tiny blue-clad brat with a book balanced on his face.
Vergil.
Again, he was sleeping.
Dante remembered exactly how offended he had felt. They had been supposed to play, at least according to Dante. Vergil apparently hadn't received the memo.
"Vergil!!"
No response. The book remained on his face.
"Vergil!!!!"
Nothing. Dante had poked him.
Still nothing.
"Verrrrrrr-----gilllllllllllllll!!!!!"
The injustice of this situation could not be tolerated! So naturally he escalated. Little Dante climbed onto the couch and began bouncing. The entire thing shook violently.
"Vergil!" "Vergil!" "Vergil!" "Vergil!" "Vergil!"
~~Bouncing~~
"Wake up!!!"
~~More bouncing~~
"We said we'd play!"
Bounce
Bounce
Bounce x 3,14
The sofa creaked in protest, the book slid slightly, and Vergil remained asleep. Dante had been genuinely impressed. At that point it became a challenge:
He bounced harder.
Nothing. He grabbed a pillow and smacked his brother with it. Nothing. He dramatically announced the arrival of a demon invasion. Nothing. At one point he was reasonably certain the couch had nearly flipped over.
Vergil still slept through everything.
Eventually Dante exhausted himself, not physically. That was impossible, but emotionally. The battle had been lost. With all the dignity available to an eight-year-old, he flopped down beside his brother.
The room became quiet. The moon hung outside the window. Their house felt enormous at night. Too large, too empty. The silence had settled around them just like it was settling around him now.
Dante remembered staring at the moon, remembered glancing sideways at Vergil's sleeping face, thinking about something he had never said aloud.
What would happen if he didn't have his brother beside him anymore?
The thought had come from nowhere. Children asked strange questions sometimes. He hadn't been worried, hadn't been scared. The idea simply seemed impossible. The world always contained two of them.
Dante and Vergil.
Where one went, the other followed. Where one fought, the other fought too. They were twins. The concept felt permanent, like the moon, like the stars. He remembered sitting there and trying to imagine a day without Vergil. He tried, and failed. Because how could that even work?
Who would argue with him? Who would race him? Who would roll his eyes whenever Dante did something stupid? Which was often, very. So that's just impossible.
The question had lingered for a while, then he had forgotten it. Children were good at forgetting things.
Until life decided to answer.
The memory shattered, the house disappeared, the couch disappeared, and suddenly there was fire. Years and years, the answer stretched across decades.
What happens when you lose your brother?
- You keep looking. Even when you tell yourself you've stopped. You get angry, get tired. You miss him, hate him, and love him very much. You forgive him and hate him again real quick.
You build an entire life around the empty space where he should have been, to keep moving. Because there isn't anything else to do.
The answer had been much longer than that little boy could ever have imagined. A lifetime long. Dante stared at the sleeping figure beside him. He's older now, tired, and alive.
Alive. The word still felt strange sometimes. Alive and here, and not a memory. That's enough for Dante considered this a happy ending.
The silence no longer felt empty. It felt fragile, like something precious. Vergil shifted slightly in his sleep, just a small movement, and nothing more. Dante felt an odd ache in his chest. Back then he had hated when Vergil slept while he's still awake, because that meant he's now left alone. Even if only for an hour or until morning, the world felt smaller whenever Vergil wasn't paying attention to him.
Now he understood that feeling far better than the child who first experienced it. Since he'd spent decades learning exactly what alone meant.
His gaze drifted toward the distant darkness, toward all the years between then and now. All the wasted time, and somehow they had ended up here. Two old idiots stranded in Hell. Fighting demons, each other, arguing over nothing. Like children again.
Dante smiled softly. It wasn't fair, really. He had finally gotten his brother back, and now the idiot decided to fall asleep. Part of Dante wanted to kick the rock, or maybe throw a pebble at his forehead, wake him up, demand another round. Just for old times' sake.
Instead he stayed where he was. The younger Dante would have started bouncing on furniture by now. The brat couldn't stand the silence.
But this Dante could.
He already knew what the alternative felt like. What it meant to sit alone with nobody coming back. He knew what it meant to wait for years, to wonder, to hope, lose hope and find it again just to lose it again. So he remained still, letting Vergil sleep, letting the silence exist. Just like how he'd learnt to do in most of his life.
"Funny thing, Verg." His voice was barely above a whisper.
"I figured out the answer." Vergil didn't move. Dante hadn't expected him to. His smile grew faint, bittersweet
tired
"When I was a kid, I used to wonder what I'd do without you." Only the darkness listened. "You probably would've called that a stupid question, and we'd never get answers for that"
...
"Turns out life answered it anyway."
His throat tightened slightly. The years sat heavily between every word. Another glance toward the sleeping man beside him. The brother he had chased through memories, nightmares, and battlefields. The brother who had finally returned.
Dante leaned back against the stone. The silence felt different now, no longer empty. It's full. As if the years themselves were sitting quietly beside them.
The boy on the couch. The man in the Demon World.
The same person. The same question.
Only answers had changed.
A slow smile touched his face. "You know what I still don't know?"
Vergil remained quiet. Dante didn't mind, not tonight. His eyes drifted upward toward the endless darkness above, a future neither of them had ever expected to have.
"I still wonder what a whole lifetime with you would be like."
.
Just the distant sound of wind moving through ancient stone. For the first time in a very long time, Dante didn't feel alone. Maybe tomorrow they would fight again. Maybe they'd argue, and Vergil would again insult his intelligence. And maybe Dante would deserve it. Things didn't need to be perfect. All that mattered was that there was still a tomorrow. A tomorrow that contained both of them.
Dante closed his eyes, resting beside his brother. The way things should have been all along.