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The storm had passed, leaving the old industrial district dead quiet. Dante didn’t make a production out of the drive. You had been getting diner food across town when he remembered he needed to drop off a ring of keys he’d borrowed from his brother. He didn't ask if you wanted to meet Vergil; he just parked the bike outside a nondescript brick tenement, told you his twin was staying on the third floor, and led the way up the concrete stairs.
The room was bare. There was a narrow cot in the corner with a gray blanket, a single wooden chair, and a makeshift shelf made of dark planks resting on heavy construction bricks.
Vergil stood by the narrow window, the dim twilight catching the deep lines around his eyes and the white of his hair. He wore his dark coat, looking like a man who carried the cold of a long exile inside his skin. When the door opened, his blue eyes shifted to Dante, then immediately landed on you.
The look on his face was one of quiet dismissal. He didn't scowl. He just looked at you as if you were a minor inconvenience someone had tracked in from the street.
"Brought your keys back," Dante said as he tossed the heavy iron loop onto the small table by the door. "And this is the lady. Play nice."
You didn't shrink under the weight of Vergil's stare. Instead, you stepped into the room and offered a calm smile. "Nice to meet you, Vergil."
Vergil didn't take your hand. He didn't even return the greeting. He simply turned his gaze back to the wet glass of the window, letting the silence turn heavy.
Your eyes traveled past him, settling on the dark wood shelves. There were only about ten volumes stacked there, but the bindings were old, leather-bound, and clearly antique. You took a few steps toward the corner.
"May I?" you asked.
Vergil didn't turn around, but his voice carried a biting edge in the quiet.
"Ne sutor ultra crepidam."
You stopped an inch from the shelf, translating the old Roman slight in your head: let the shoemaker not go beyond his shoe. He was telling you to stick to your lane and keep your hands off things you couldn't understand.
You turned your head slightly to meet his icy profile. "Et superbia comitatur stultitiam."
Vergil’s head snapped around, his eyes narrowing as he took a tenative step away from the glass. He had clearly caught the translation: And pride accompanies folly. He didn't look annoyed; he looked...Focused.
"Audentes fortuna iuvat," he murmured, a low, dangerous test. Fortune favors the bold. "But fortune does not protect the fragile from what they cannot understand."
"Non scholae sed vitae discimus," you countered, your voice steady and even. We learn not for school, but for life. "I’m not fragile, Vergil. I just know when a man is hiding behind dead languages because he doesn't know what else to say."
Dante shifted against the doorframe behind you. The lazy, unbothered slouch left his posture instantly. His head tiled as his eyes fixed on the back of your neck. He didn't say a word, but the sudden, quiet focus in his face meant he was seeing a completely different version of you for the very first time.
Vergil stared at you, the arrogance completely freezing on his face. He didn't counter. Instead, he watched your hand as you turned back to the shelf, your fingers carefully sliding a tiny, fragile pamphlet-style binding out from between two massive texts. The paper was aged to a deep tea-brown, the small print at the bottom reading Boston, 1827.
You turned the fragile page and spoke the lines softly into the cold room:
"Inherited with my name, a proud heart and a lofty mind, but these are feelings such as wrong what most I should have loved and bless'd."
The silence that followed was heavy.
Vergil didn't move. He stood completely still. Those specific lines from Poe’s Tamerlane, a poem about a warlord who threw away the only woman he ever loved to pursue a hollow throne of power, cut straight through his armor. He had spent his entire life trying to be a conqueror, only to realize he had destroyed his childhood, his brother, and his own pieces of humanity to get it. Hearing a human quote his own private penance back to him stripped his condescension away.
"You understand the text," Vergil noted.
"I understand that Tamerlane was a fool," you sighed, carefully sliding the booklet back into its slot on the brick shelf. "He thought an empire would make up for everything he left behind in the valley. By the time he realized he was wrong, he was just an old man dying alone."
Vergil stared at you for a long moment. For a man who viewed humanity as frail, simple creatures, the fact that you had just laid his entire internal guilt bare on a random weekday night was a complete shock to his system.
"Most focus on the grandeur of his conquests," Vergil said quietly, his left hand settling over the hilt of Yamato out of pure, defensive habit. "They do not look at the valley."
"Then most people don't finish the poem," you replied.
Dante watched the two of you, a slow, incredibly proud smile returning to his face. He stepped forward, his coat brushing against your shoulder as he wrapped his arm around your waist, pulling you back against his side.
"Alright, school's out," Dante chuckled, though his eyes stayed sharp as he looked at his twin. "The rain’s starting up again, and we're heading out."
You gave Vergil another small nod. "Goodnight, Vergil. It was nice to meet you."
Vergil didn't answer right away. He stood by the shelf, his hand still resting on his sword, his eyes tracking you as Dante guided you toward the exit.
Dante reached out, turning the handle and pushing the door open to the damp night air of the stairwell. He stepped through, but before you could follow, Vergil’s voice stopped you both.
"Dante."
Dante paused on the threshold, looking back over his shoulder with a lazy raise of his eyebrows. "Yeah?"
Vergil didn't look at his brother. He kept his eyes fixed on the space on the shelf where your fingers had just been.
"In the forty-odd years you have existed, your choices have been entirely devoid of merit," Vergil said, his tone completely serious. "However. The companion you have brought to this room may be the singular decision of your life that was not an absolute waste of time."
Dante froze. His hand tightened on the doorframe, his expression shifting as the weight of the praise settled into the quiet hallway. He didn't drop a punchline, and he didn't tease him. He just looked back at his brother, gave a short nod of acknowledgement, and led you down the stairs into the dark.
The concrete stairwell was dark and smelled of old rain. Dante didn't say anything until you hit the fire door at the bottom of the flight, pushing out into the cool, damp air of the alley where the motorcycle was parked.
The first drops of the new storm were just hitting the hot exhaust pipe with a faint hiss.
Dante stopped by the front wheel, kicking the stand down firmly with the heel of his boot. He turned around, leaning his hip against the leather seat, and just looked at you. The dark leather of his coat was already catching the sheen of the mist. He looked entirely different than he had on the way over; the heaviness in his shoulders had completely vanished, replaced by a quiet grin.
"Well," Dante sighed out a disbelieving breath. "That went about ten times better than I thought it would."
"Because he didn't throw a sword at me?" you asked, stepping closer.
"No, because he actually talked to you," Dante chuckled, shaking his head. He reached out, his hands settling on your waist, pulling you in until your shoes clicked against boots. "Trust me. For Vergil, saying you aren't a total waste of space is the closest he'll ever get to rolling out the red carpet. The guy was practically getting choked up."
You laughed, resting your hands against his chest. "He's stubborn."
"He's an asshole," Dante corrected softly, though there was no real heat behind it. His thumb brushed against the side of your hip, his expression softening as he looked down into your face. The humor faded for just a second, leaving something entirely genuine in his blue eyes. "But he was right about one thing. You're the best call I've ever made."
He let the moment linger for a beat before that familiar, cocky glint returned to his eyes. He leaned down a bit, squinting at you.
"But seriously, since when do you speak fluent Vergil? I’ve been living with you for how long, and you never told me you could trade insults in dead languages? What else are you keeping under the hood?"
You smiled, leaning up just enough to trace the rough line of his jaw with your fingers.
"Facta, non verba, Dante," you whispered.
Dante’s eyebrows shot up. He clearly didn't know the exact translation, but the specific, heavy drop in your tone told him everything he needed to know. "Yeah? What’s that mean?"
"Deeds, not words," you murmured against his jaw.
Dante let out a rough growl of a laugh. His grip on your waist tightened, locking you flush against his chest before he let go to grab the helmet off the handlebars. He handed it over, his eyes dark with a sudden heat. You knew that look. It meant you'd be lucky to make it to the bedroom before he had his hands all over you.
"Get on the bike," he said, as he swung his long leg over the seat and fired up the engine. The loud, mechanical thrum of the motor shook the pavement beneath your feet.
You slid onto the leather behind him, your arms wrapping tightly around his midsection, pressing your front flat against the familiar, solid breadth of his back. Dante glanced back at you, and ripped the throttle, tearing out of the dark alley and into the rain.