Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Mundus is dead. 

Or as close to it as he can be, at any rate. For a being as old and powerful as Mundus, millennia of conquest and victory and tribute fueling his lifeforce and abilities beyond what he’d have accumulated by simply living that long or inheriting strength from his forebears, can’t really be killed by something as simple as what Dante did to him. Not when it boiled down to ‘hit hard and fast with all that you can’ and not much more. All that could do- all that will do, has done, however you’d want to phrase it when the deed’s been done but the effect’s still going- is delay him for a while. Force him to take a nice long nap while he gathers back his power. A reprieve for Dante but not a panacea for the world in general. 

Sure, Dante packs a punch, especially when down in the demon world and fueled by the sword bearing his father’s name and legacy, itself fueled by the sword and amulet that for two thousand years sealed and separated two once-joined worlds, but in the end he was just brute forcing it, and that wouldn’t cut it when it came to something as strong and storied as Mundus. That’d be too easy.

To truly kill Mundus, he’d need something a lot more complex. Elaborate. Drowning in preparation and ritual and kind of magic that could seal Mundus to the point of erasure. And though Dante knows a handful of helpful spells and has made up a few wards here and there, he’s far from an expert on the stuff; more a dabbler than a practitioner, if he had to put a name to it. So if he really wants to blast Mundus from this plane of existence, he’ll either need to come back in a few years once he’s learned some new tricks, or convince someone who already knows them to take a dive into the other side for a quick kingkilling trip. That or send his more-magically inclined son to clean up his messes once he’s ready, if said son ever ends up existing. Who’s to say? That’ll all depend on whether Dante ever manages to escape his current predicament. 

That predicament being the fact that he’s very much stuck in Hell with no way home. ‘Least, not as far as he can tell. That’s why goal number one right now is to find some portal that’ll pop him back where he needs to be before he loses it. 

Which is. Well. Something! Dante’s trying to be an optimist about it right now but he’s not going to lie and say he’s very happy about it. Interesting as Hell can be, he chose the human world for a reason. Hell- the Underworld, the Demon World, whatever you want to call it- it just doesn’t have the same appeal.

It’s Mundus’ fault anyway. Maybe if Dante had killed him it would’ve reversed whatever spell Mundus had used to drag him here and sent him right home, but he didn’t and now Mundus is gone so he’s going to have to figure this out all on his own unless Mundus comes back with a quirky ‘surprise! And goodbye!’ real soon, which, given Dante did beat him about three inches from oblivion, is very much not going to happen. 

Back to Mundus and his semi-unkillability, the reason why killing Mundus is such a tricky endeavor is that he’s more than just your average demon. He’s King of the Fire Hell, for one. Important guy right off the bat. Strong. Impressive. Titled and storied, ranked and elevated, high brow and high class and all that jazz. He’s also Demon Emperor to top it off, whatever that means, which makes him the highest ranked demon Dante’s ever heard of, not to mention faced, and that comes with its own perks of bonus survival.

(It should perhaps be noted that that does, technically, leave room for higher high ranked and higher strength demons Dante hasn’t heard of to exist, by virtue of them either not attacking the human world in recent times and thus staying out of his path, or by them being a whole lot more subtle than the guy who burned down his house, murdered his mother, kidnapped slash brainwashed his brother, and sent a demonic clone of his mom to lure him in after years of sending his lackeys to ruin his life before that, but that’s a different topic for another time. If Dante has to deal with anyone else like that before he’s able to get home, sit down, maybe cry a bit, and take a nap, he thinks he might spontaneously explode). 

Mundus is a capital-E Entity, a legacy, not exactly cosmic but definitely beyond the rest of the rabble Dante’s faced over the years, and even though he knows Mundus could still be beaten into hibernation by someone without all the fancy know-how to permanently off him- Dante just did it, after all- it wouldn’t and didn’t really kill him. Not in a way that would stick. Not in the way that would truly, fully, permanently eliminate him from existence. 

See, if demons are the Underworld’s equivalent of men, then Mundus is the equivalent of a god, and gods don’t simply dissipate when there are still hordes of believers left to will them back into existence with their body (and souls) as fuel. So the texts Dante’s found say. Or so he’s translated them. Linguistics isn’t his strong suit.

(That had always been-)

But if any two demons were to be considered gods of the true sort, those two would be Mundus and Sparda, and Sparda is gone, gone, lost to the winds, deader than dead, never to return- at least as far as Dante can tell given the guy disappeared and never came back with milk or cigarettes or ancient artifacts or even his just his body and soul, and Mundus seemed to think so too, because he kept gloating about that during their fight and the various demons Dante has met over the years never stopped yapping about how the traitor which spawned him had died and left behind a disappointment in his place- so if Sparda can die, Mundus can probably die too.

Dante just doesn’t know how to cause that. 

Yet.

Maybe one day he’ll unravel the mystery behind all that and use his newfound knowledge to stick it to the bastard who came into his life swinging and lit the candles on a birthday cake that would consume the rest of his life in its flames. Maybe he’ll lay out all the pieces that make up god-killing for dummies and have a little scene when he realizes it’s way more complicated than anything’s he’s done and requires a way larger skillset than he has at his disposal, meaning it’ll probably be beyond him no matter how hard he tries to prepare. Maybe he’ll discover the secret to killing a demon-god is actually stupidly easy- if obscure- and just stand there dumbfounded by the fact that his father apparently died from something so basic after two thousand years of romping around a world that he’d split himself. Maybe he’ll discover it was some sort of freak occurrence that had never happened before and would never happen again- unless either Dante got insanely lucky or Mundus got insanely un lucky, which knowing Dante’s luck will never, ever happen- and decide to go back to cleaning up his father’s messes in other ways because there’s nothing he can do about it and that’s what he’s been doing for the past ten plus years depending on how you look at it, so why not? Revenge done, Mundus (not) killed, it’s time for cleanup duty and to carry a cross he never asked to bear but has never been able to bring himself to set down. If it ain’t broke don’t fix it. Being miserable does not count as being broken. It’s just unfortunate. 

Basically when it comes to taking what happened to Sparda and applying that to Mundus, Dante has absolutely no idea where to begin. To do that he’d need to know at least something, and the closest he’d ever gotten to unraveling the mysteries of his father’s death and Mundus’ slaughter had been a day or so before when a scantily-clad version of his mom showed up on his now in-pieces doorstep spilling out the sob story that was his past and inviting him to the place where she said he could explore it and earn his revenge. 

Getting revenge? Sort of happened. He fought Mundus, even if he didn't exactly kill him, and that’s way more than Dante’s managed to do in the past twenty years. And he certainly did do the whole exploring thing. A lot. Probably more than he had in nine years. 

(Since the-) 

Mallet Island had been a hassle at the best of times and a maze at the worst. Had Mundus been the one to plan out all those keys and thingamabobs needed to open up all those doors? Or had he found a random castle with a conveniently obtuse set of navigational tools and thought ‘Ah, yes, this is the perfect place to torment the son of my greatest enemy by making him not only fight his way through my army but exhaust himself trying to figure out how in the world he’s supposed to get through the lion door in the courtyard that speaks in tongues from a statue beneath alongside the other fifteen weird entry things this castle for some reason has’? If this were any other situation, Dante might’ve had a good time going through those puzzles. They were clever. Dante’ll admit that much. But when you’re trying to fight and kill the guy who ruined your life? Clever puzzles just turn into annoying obstacles, if he’s putting it nicely. 

What was the point of all that anyway? Did Mundus think it would be funny to watch Dante struggle? Did he want some entertainment before the actual show? Some fun advertisements to tide him over before the movie began? Or was there some sort of judgment or valuation thing going on? Did he decide Dante needed to go through a special trial before he was worthy of bowing before him? Was Dante’s ability to put a trident in a stone and a sword in a statue some sort of measure of his worth? 

Maybe if Mundus wakes back up in Dante’s lifetime he can get the answer to some of these questions. Maybe he should’ve just asked Trish during one of the handful of times they saw each other between their arrival and her- betrayal. 

(Death. Sacrifice. Why do the women who wear his mother’s face seem to think he wants them to die for his sake- ) 

But he didn’t. He’d just gawked and marched on.

Now Mundus is as good as dead, Trish is dead and on another plane, and Dante’s alone with no one to ask anything of. So there’s not much he can do besides wander.

That all wraps back around to his current predicament. The whole “stuck in Hell with no way home” thing.

See, right now he’s cruising through the Demon World mowing down any and all demons that are so unfortunate as to cross his path, because whatever fancy magic Mundus had used to send them to Hell apparently didn’t have an automatic reverse button, so with Mundus down Dante’d lost his world-crossing express ticket, and now he’s stuck in the world he doesn’t want to stay in with no idea how to make it back. 

It’s not all bad. Flying’s pretty nice. Fighting too. It’s been ages since he last has so many good fights in a row.

Fighting and flying also feel like his only options at the moment, which does definitely put a damper on how good they sort of are since it’s that or leaning back on his well-practiced habit of sitting in misery, but he’ll just say he’s having a (not) good time to give himself a moment of reprieve in this otherwise crummy situation. 

The high of killing Mundus had clearly done something to his brain and body that put them on full go-mode, because right now he just knows that if he doesn’t blow through as much energy as he possibly can in the next however-long period of time it takes to blow through it, he will either Actually Explode or go full on Demon-Mode in a way he’s terrified he won’t be able to come back from. So fly and blast away it is. At least until the feeling dies down and he’s certain taking a break will not lead to the Death of Dante in the most pathetic way possible besides just lying down to starve or something equally unpleasant and unepic.

Man. Could the scenery at least change? Dante’s been zooming through Hell for what’s gotta be at least five hours at this point and for all he knows he’s been going in circles because everything still looks indistinguishable from the place he started out, all lava plumes and giant rocks and the occasional craggy pit. It would be nice to know he’s at least going somewhere, even if he doesn’t come across a portal right away. At least that way he’d be able to say he was theoretically making progress.

If he had to describe how he’s doing, Dante would say he’s having both a wonderful and terrible time. He feels better than he’s ever felt. He feels…not the worst he’s ever felt, because nothing compares to the fire or the Temen-ni-gru, and the whole Mallet thing hasn’t hit him fully yet because he shoved everything that happened during this big yet-to-end trip to the back of his mind to keep from having some sort of mental breakdown that would be really inconvenient for his get-home-plan, but he feels awful too and it’s just too much to process so he’s just going to say he feels A Lot. 

In the Underworld, Dante feels stronger than he ever has despite the exhaustion that by all rights should be forcing its claws into him, sliding in under his skin and pulsing its grip to either tear him limb from limb or at least gore him a bit as it drags him down and pushes him under the lovely pinkish water of Hell and gift him with the lovely burning sensation that comes with taking a dip. He’s never maintained his Devil Trigger this long, never pushed himself this hard this long, never kept fighting and flying- and it’s the flying thing that’s the most out of place, probably, because yeah he’s fought for really long times before even if not while expending so much energy and putting as much effort in as he is now, but when it comes to flying he usually prefers to stick to the ground or maybe glide for a few minutes but not stretches that are probably in the hours- this long. This kind of effort and expenditure should come with the sort of exhaustion that would have him collapsing onto the couch instead of walking the few extra steps to his desk and the comfy chair there. If he was on a normal mission, it’d be the sort of thing that would have long since sent him stumbling for the nearest Divinity Statue desperate for a Vital Star of whatever size he could get his hands on.

But it hasn’t. Dante’s still got a star in his pocket, untouched and undesired, and he feels like he’s on top of the world. Exhilarated. Delirious. All-powerful. High. 

Was it killing Mundus that did this to him? Did Dante absorb some sort of special demon energy from him when the Demon Emperor not-died? It’s been ages since the last time he’d done something like that- not since the Geryon and his evil clone back in the Temen-ni-gru whose powers he hasn’t used in an age because they don’t really make battles any more fun- and he can’t remember exactly how that felt or if that feeling was the same as the feeling he’s feeling now. He doesn’t think it was. What he’s feeling now is unique.

(What he’s feeling now is like the battle high he’d felt the last time he was in Hell turned up to ten, back when he’d fought-)

It could also just be because he’s in Hell. Maybe Dante’s demon side is latching onto whatever sort of ambient energy exists in the Demon World and is having a field day with it while the human side of his brain just doesn’t know how to process it all. One side high, one side confused. Dante the single man left with mind a whirl. 

It reminds him of when he’s stocked to nearly bursting with red orbs, having killed so many demons in so short a time that it feels like his body’s filled to the brim with so much energy that if he doesn’t either slow down for a bit or get to a Divinity Statue to spend them, he’ll have to Trigger and toss some fancy moves around just to burn through enough to gather all the rest. That’s the sort of feeling that will send him rushing down passageways high and careless, ready for slaughter and bouncing off the walls to look as cool as possible while doing it. 

If by some chance any of that sounds somehow pleasant, it’s really not. 

Not emotionally. Not before he’s started or after he’s done. It’s that sort of indulgence that feels so good in the moment but so bad at every point when you’re not experiencing it, and one that Dante both longs for and loathes. 

It’s the longing that makes his distaste cross to disdain. Annoyance to hatred. 

(Though not enough to keep him from ever shooting for it when he realizes just how close he is. For as much as he likes to say he hates the high in the before and after, he loves it in the during, is addicted to the feeling in a way where the temptation’s easy to ignore until the bottle’s right in front of you and there’s no one to yell at you to put it down, and the hatred that follows is a more a mix of disgust at his indulgence and inhumanity and a longing for the feeling of power and fulfillment and rightness to flow through him once more).

When Dante loses himself like that, when the high of battle crosses over him and the flair he puts into every fight he’s ever in goes from something meant to make a battle as fun as possible while he’s stuck putting something down to something where he’s toying with enemies who would probably be begging for mercy were they intelligent enough to ask for it- and with some of the big ones, sometimes they do beg for mercy, promising to stop attacking or to leave him alone forever or even to bow down in subservience if he’ll only let them live and not either smite them on the spot or entrap them in weapons he’ll sell the next time he runs out of cash- in those moment, or after those moments are over, Dante’s left feeling inhuman. Like his demon side has won. Like the side of himself he wishes didn’t exist had taken over without his permission and caused him to do things that don’t actually sicken him nearly as much as he feels they should. 

That’s a problem he faces a lot more than he’d like to admit.

Feeling like he should feel one way or another, but not actually feeling that way or the other. Moments where he arrives at a mission to find the contorted remains of the five hunters who failed before him and thinks ‘huh, I should probably be horrified right now’ but only feels mildly disgusted by the sight and smell. Moments where he hears a demon’s nest has been cleared out before he can get to it and thinks ‘aw, but I wanted to be the one to do it’ instead of being happy that said nest was destroyed before any more people could be hurt. Moments where he realizes he should feel bad, and does feel bad, but only because he’s feeling bad about not feeling bad, in a twisted sense of the word.

Basically, Dante is a very messed up person trying his best to be human but occasionally failing terribly and that realization does not make him a happy man. 

He doesn’t want to be a demon. As fun as it can be when he indulges, he spends way, way more of his time not wanting those things and not being happy about that kind of stuff, and the joy of indulging does not outweigh his disgust at that joy. When Dante chose the human world, that was not a temporary choice. He didn’t do it just to sound good. It’s a promise he made and one he plans to uphold until the day he dies. It’s the person he wants to be. It’s the feelings he wants to have.

It’s just a matter of how much choice he really has in the end when those demon instincts sometimes have such a more powerful hold than the human ones.

(Supposedly, he’s fifty-fifty. Logically, each side should have equal claim over him.

But based on the beings he’s encountered, demon instincts run a lot stronger than human ones, and sometimes he feels like even with the fifty fifty split it’s more a seventy thirty or eighty twenty when it comes to urges that the demon side of him loves and the human side stares at in horror.)

Back in the present and his merry jaunt through Hell, he finally gets a change in pace when a pack of Blade descends upon him and gives him a chance to burn through at least a little bit of his battle high. 

It’s not that much of a battle. For all they’ve given him trouble in the past, he rips them to shreds before they can lay a finger on him. 

His claws dig into the tail of the first to reach him as he snatches it out of the air, launching the beast at its brethren with enough force to both tear its spine from its body and fling said body not just into but through the Blades trying to get the jump on him from the side. The move practically douses him in various liquids that Dante does not want to think about; blood is blood and if he had any sort of significant (well, actually, he does have a pretty significant reaction to it, but it’s one that’s good-bad and one he can tamp down because he doesn’t want to be that person) slash visceral reaction to that he wouldn’t have survived a day in his current profession, but he thinks there might be spinal fluid too and for some reason the prospect of getting that in his mouth is absolutely disgusting, so he scrunches up his face as he tricks away. Not that that gives him a reprieve. A lot of demons don’t have particularly strong self-preservation instincts, so what Blades remain launch themselves past the bloody remains of their fellows to get an attack in on the thing that decimated their brethren and Dante deals with them much as he had the first. One by one, or sometimes in twos or threes when they’re feeling annoying, the pack descends. And one by one, or sometimes in twos or threes if Dante aims just right, the Blades fall and die.

Something about Hell makes their energy disperse in an odd way. It’s like an express delivery right to Dante’s heart, a rush of power bursting forth as their corpses burst into a million tiny specks that fade into the non-existent wind an hour or minute later. Really the stagnancy of the air is one of the things about Hell that puts Dante most on edge. It’s unnatural. Unreal. Dead.

(There’s a part of him that urges him to shove his own power into the corpses long enough to keep them solid; to break apart their ribs instead of just their spines, shoving Ifrit-clad fingers into their chests to part the bone and expose entrails rich in whatever it is demons feed on down here, before popping them out with a little fiery flare like they’re nice breakfast sausages ripe for the taking.

Dante not-so-politely yells at that part of himself to shut up.

He’s half-demon, but he’s not a monster. He’s not a cannibal.

Because while he’s half-human and it’s the human side he wants to indulge, he’s still half-demon, so eating a demon would basically be cannibalism and that’s a line he has no interest in crossing.

Not yet at least.

Hopefully not ever.)

The high lasts through the Blades, as it’s lasted through each and every fight Dante's thrown himself into since Mundus had gone down and Dante had been left wanting. Again, he wonders whether this is from Mundus or just Hell itself, and if it is from Mundus, if there’s an actual physical component or gain he got from the killing or if it’s all just in his head. Killing-  felling, defeating, whatever-the-hell it was, Dante was just gonna say killing from now on because he liked simple things- the guy who killed your mother, almost killed your brother, then tortured your brother, and brainwashed your brother, and enslaved your brother- (but not killed! Because no, twisted wretched bastard as he was, Mundus hadn’t been the monster who had killed Vergil. That had been Dante. His own damn twin- )

Well whatever it was that he’d done to Mundus, Dante feels half like he’s on top of the world and half like he’s going to burst into a million tiny pieces if he doesn’t rip everything in sight into a million tiny pieces first, and he wonders if maybe it is all just from satisfaction at achieving at least some degree of revenge. If that’s the case, he’s in for one hell of a crash when the mental high finally wears off and Dante’s subjected to whatever kind of terrible backlash-exhaustion he’ll face once his body finally finishes processing all he’s forced it through and lets him know just how badly he’d overextended himself.

Dante continues forward. He doesn’t really know where he’s going. Just forward. Maybe if he goes far enough he’ll run into a portal and make his way home. Maybe he won’t and he’ll be stuck in Hell forever. 

The latest in the series of bottomless, fiery canyons Dante’s passed eventually gives way to a fiercely boiling lava lake- or some sort of large body of not-water, Dante can’t see the end so maybe it’s an ocean, he doesn’t know, doesn’t think he can figure it out with the way his brain is still buzzing and body is still humming with an excess of power he can’t figure out what to do with- and in the center of the lake is something that throw Dante off nearly enough to make him nose dive because oh. Oh boy. Finally, finally there’s something that’s not only different, but looks promising.

For in the middle of the lava lake stands a castle. 

A grey-stone, big towers, fancy crenellation, a few bretèches, honest-to-the-potentially-nonexistent-god castle.

It’s the first sign of civilization he’s seen since he landed in Hell. The first one recognizable to his human-raised brain, at any rate. It’s reminiscent of the one on Mallet Island. 

(Does this mean Mundus did have his people built Mallet? That this was a long con? Or did he instead choose it because it reminded him of the architecture back home?)

The castle reeks of Mundus, even from miles away, and Dante’s certain it’s a prominent part of Mundus’ domain. Maybe even a summer home or something. He’s not there right now- again, Dante can just tell, his demonic senses are even stronger down in Hell to no one’s surprise- but it’s chock full of demons and Dante’s going to hope that means there’s something worth protecting inside.

There are a few enticing things about the castle, which run through his mind as he speeds through the skies:

First, that maybe a place as human-looking as a castle might have something as human-adjacent as real food. 

The hunger he’s facing right now isn’t that bad yet, but the ‘yet’ is carrying a lot of weight, and he doesn’t want to get to a point where he ends up doing something he’ll regret. Even demons need to eat, and Dante’s seen enough invasions that involved a kitchen raid to know they don’t only subsist on the flesh of their brethren. Hopefully Mundus and co. have tastebuds Dante can appreciate and the guards haven’t cleaned out the pantry in their master’s absence. 

Second, that castles usually have bedrooms, and if there’s a bedroom, there will probably be a bed, and maybe being in a bed in a real room will allow Dante to relax enough to get some sleep. 

Sleep would be more than welcome. He’s not about to drop or anything. He could keep going for days, maybe even weeks if he conserved his energy. Hell’s powering him in a way the ambient Human World never has. But despite having been born a half-breed, the two halves that make up Dante’s whole haven’t always worked very well with each other, and right now Dante’s human side feels like it’s seriously lagging despite the overwhelming energy keeping his demon half raring to go. And again, his human side is his favorite, so it’s the side he wants to pamper, and also the side he does not want to lose if it comes down to it. Who knows what might happen if the human side of his brain undergoes the whole saying about how if you don’t choose a time for your body to rest, it’ll choose a time for you? What will his demon side do? Will it still feel like Dante doing it? Will he do a bunch of terrible stuff while thinking he’s being perfectly reasonable, until the human side of him wakes up and he gets slammed by guilt and horror once it processes everything he’s done? Will he black out entirely while doing whatever demon stuff his demon side wants to do, like it’s an actual split personality instead of just a voice that he thinks is probably slightly more vocal than most people’s impulsive thoughts but has never really considered a separate consciousness (since he’s never given it an opportunity to prove it’s nothing more)? Will he flip some sort of switch so Demon Dante is the Dominant Dante and will remain that way until he encounters some sort of soul-sucking orb or annoying demon-sealing sigil again that quiets it down enough to let Human Dante rise back up and go ‘What have I done?’

After that train of thought derailed off a cliff and took all of its passengers with it Dante’s not really sure what his original third thought was, but the quick replacement is that maybe the castle will be occupied by demons that will put up enough of a fight to sate his own demon side, burn off some of the energy that has left Dante feeling like he’s stuck in someone else’s skin, and let him calm down enough to come up with a better plan for escaping Hell. He’s tired of the Wrongness in the air and what it does to him.

(He’s scared by how the Wrongness feels Right.)

The castle is guarded by some sort of giant serpent that Dante can’t help but compare to Cerberus despite the utter lack of visual similarities. The thing doesn’t even use ice. Or speak. Really it’s only similar in that it’s a guard and that it seems to be sneering at him when he tries to rile it up. The fire it uses is the opposite of the old pup. It’s a lot more level headed too.

(Really he’s only making the comparison because he’s spent the last several hours trying so hard not to think about something that that something is trying to worm itself into every other thing he does spend more than five seconds considering.) 

The serpent rears its head at Dante’s approach, launching itself from the point where the castle’s bridge would be were it to have been lowered. As it is the castle is sealed tight, so the bridge and the serpent are Dante’s best bet of getting into it and he isn’t going to pass up the grace of convenience. Its tail makes some good swings for him, and the fire breath does make Dante all toasty warm, but the thing never does manage to squeeze him tight enough to make him pop, and though the acid-like venom that shoots out from its mouth when it dives for him with teeth bared and mouth letting out an earsplitting screech does manage to sear an unfortunate hole into his coat, it ultimately misses skin. He’s had more than enough practice dodging projectiles to keep out of the thing’s way. So many flying scythes. So many globs of bug juice. Acid spit’s just another thing to add to the list.

The fight gets his heart rate up even if it doesn’t draw any blood, and Dante would say it was a nice little reprieve from the monotony of his latest jaunt. When the thing dies from one last shot to the head Dante thanks it for the entertainment. He feels a little less jumpy now that he’s gotten a more significant chunk of his energy out. Wonderful. He’s finally making progress. Points to the castle even if its only redeeming quality is the gate guard and the inside’s a complete bust.

The bridge falls open once the serpent is dead. Convenient. The dirt it sends into Dante’s eyes is annoying, but it’s worth not having to circle the castle for ages looking for a suitable entrance so in he goes.

Unsurprisingly, Dante’s jumped about five steps into the castle walls. Though the minions prowling the halls are child’s play in comparison to the serpent guardian, what they lack in strength they make up for in numbers, and while it’s not too bad when Dante’s in a large room, the wealth of corridors make things a little more tricky which is in this case more an annoyance than a pleasant source of entertainment.

It reminds him of Mallet, just without the puzzles. Thank god for that. He doesn’t have the brainpower for puzzles right now. If he has to face one he thinks he’ll just turn around and walk the other way.

Violence though? Violence is laced through his blood, entwined with his essence in a way it can never be torn from. Just because people like to say that violence is the thing of beasts, that doesn’t mean humans can’t be violent and can’t enjoy it too; the word depravity wouldn’t exist if humans weren’t around to do deprave things, violence and maiming and killing and tearing among those things which are frowned upon yet still extant and unfortunately common, so that’s a part of him that has support from both sides and clings to him like sap to a tree.

He blasts through hall after hall, the static flowing through him letting him know that he won’t be able to rest until each and every potentially-interesting but highly-doubtfully-challenging demon still alive in the castle is dead and gone. It’s died down somewhat in his most recent bout of pistol fire and evisceration-by-sword, the multitude of red orbs that do neat little dances to hop toward him whether he goes for them or not actually seeming to quiet the burning need in him for once rather than just charging him even further. He’s not sure of the mechanics of that. Maybe it’s some sort of overflow situation; once you get so high, you go back to zero. He’d be cool with that if it means he can rest. And hey, Mallet had some annoying orb doors that could only be broken if you had the cash, so maybe his new stockpile of orb-energy will prove useful making progress in the castle if he’s barred by a glowing door with a phantom hand that demands payment for progression. Maybe that’s what’ll get him back home.

He continues onwards.

And onward.

And onward.

Hot damn this castle is huge.

He goes through the castle level by level, clearing out the entire ground floor before ascending to the next, then the next, then any towers or protrusions as he encounters them, et cetera. His exploration hasn’t revealed an end to the flow of lesser demons committing suicide-by-Dante, but it has revealed a few somewhat useful looking bedrooms, so he files those away in the back of his mind to use later. The beds look cozy enough to stay in if his searching doesn’t reveal any magic portals. 

Other fun rooms include a giant hall for dining with a gargantuan throne at its head, an armory, a completely foodless kitchen (boo), a room full of enchanted chests and barriers that he leaves be after they don’t shatter with a few hits from Rebellion- and oh, he has Rebellion, when did that happen? Did it sense he needed it after gifting the Sparda and thus Force Edge to Trish and somehow make its way back to its wielder? He has no idea when he swapped to it from Alastor, just that it’s in his hands- and a trophy room full of things Dante doesn’t want to think about.

From the looks of things, he’d say this castle was very recently in use. The demons populating it seem more like guards than fellow looters, though Dante can’t help but feel like they’re missing a few big guys who’d be better at beating back actually competent intruders.

He’s not sure whether he’s happy or disappointed about that.

Still he moves forward, ascending and clearing room after room until he finds himself doing a little loop up the staircase of the last tower left to check, muttering under his breath about how there better be something actually useful in the room because while a bed would be nice the castle has been an overall disappointment and he really, really would like to get home.

The tower is immediately unsettling. It doesn’t look notably different from any of the others, but it instead feels completely and utterly muffled. As in, from the outside, Dante hadn’t felt anything from it at all. No guards. No inhabitants. Nothing. And going up the tower, Dante can hardly feel his own power either. It’s like the whole tower has been enchanted to suppress whatever’s stored within it. It doesn’t siphon his energy, but it feels like it might be setting him up for that to be done by another power. Dante doesn’t like it one bit.

If you’d mentioned the suppression concept to Dante ten minutes ago- or ten hours ago, probably, he’s not sure how long he’s been in Hell because whatever sort of weird day and night cycle that may exist here doesn’t align with the human world’s and his internal clock has fallen off the wall- he’d have said he was all for it. He’s so over the buzzing. Going into some sort of sensory deprivation chamber sounds nice after dealing with however long it’s been of feeling as he felt.

But while actually ascending the tower? It makes him feel nauseous. Rather than tamping down on his power, the tower does something to make him feel almost separate from it. Like it’s forced his demonic energy into a box too small for it, locked it away, and then kicked him and the box so they went tumbling down the hill in a way that couldn’t help but leave you slightly motion sick.

Whatever the tower is for isn’t a good thing. More than anything else in the creepy castle, it feels like a prison. That includes the bloodstained cells he’d seen in one of the other towers. It’s just Wrong.

As he finally reaches the door at the top of the staircase, Dante resolves to just peek in, do a quick check to see if anything jumps out at him, and then turn around to make a break for one of the bedrooms so he can sleep all of this unpleasantness away. 

He kicks open the door, unlocked and unsealed, and doesn’t even bother taking a step into the room as his eyes quickly run over the contents and he preps to leave.

But he doesn’t.

Because as his eyes run over the room they land on something he could never mistake for something else- never again- and the world falls out from under him.

Because there, still, limp, and lying in a heap on the ground, is-

“Vergil?”

Chapter Text

“Vergil?” he repeats, limbs heavy as he staggers forward, aghast.

His brother’s name comes out a choked whisper, Dante unable to believe what he’s seeing and barely able to breathe because he knows that armor and without the unfamiliar glow he knows that face, distorted as it is, and he’s falling to his knees in front of the unmoving knight so he can bring it into his arms, the body both so heavy and so, so light as the dead man to whom it belongs lies there motionless on the floor. “Verge?”

Vergil- because oh, oh god, this is Vergil, this limp, cold, still creature on the floor is absolutely Vergil even though Dante saw him explode however long ago it was, the amulet he’d treasured over their father’s sword finally falling from him in a way Dante just knows Vergil would’ve never have allowed were he to have even the faintest hint of strength left in his body- does not react in the slightest when Dante shifts him into his lap. 

Vergil’s limbs are splayed out with a complete lack of care, arms and legs at odd angles that have to be putting pressure on the sockets and joints in a way fit to pop or tear as they bend unpleasantly in an arrangement that seems more like the result of Vergil being tossed on the floor like a ragdoll than the kind of heap someone would’ve fallen into if they’d exhausted themself so badly they’d collapsed without any energy left over to move into even a remotely more comfortable position. His head lolls backward, skull knocking against the back of the armor, and the tight planes of his face appear to be solely from lack of fat rather than the pull of the permanent frown Vergil used to wear. Several of the plates that make up the armor- plates Dante thought once were made of onyx, but appear much greener in the light of the room they’re in, clashing with Vergil’s skin tone and making him appear all the sicker- that had hidden him from his own twin are cracked and partially broken even if they’re still intact enough that none of the big pieces like gauntlets or breastplate or greaves have come off, filled with hairline fractures that make them look as though they might shatter if hit hard enough, while somehow retaining a presence that indicates that no, they will not be breaking anytime soon, not without enough force that all of Vergil’s underlying bones would break and organs would rupture too. The armor itself is layered enough that the skin or cloth or whatever it is that lies directly beneath the plate is still hidden even though small chips come off into Dante’s hands as he grips his brother close, the small ting of bits of demonic metal echoing across the room when they hit the floor. Gone are the pulsing tracks of blue energy- which should’ve indicated who it was, how did Dante not realize that, blue had always been Vergil’s color, and it hadn’t been just any blue, it had been Vergil’s blue, and even if he hadn’t picked up on that for the love of all that is-no-longer-holy he’d had the damn summoned swords too- that once lined his armor, the grooves they’d once run through empty and dull. They aren’t even pulsing red, like they had been at the end of the fight. They’re just empty. Lifeless. Dead.

(Just like-)

Vergil doesn’t so much as twitch as Dante shifts him into his lap, trying to take in the sight before him and looking for a sign of life. Any sign of life. Dante can’t even tell if his chest is moving.

The lump that is his brother smells like burnt flesh and decay. A rotting chunk of meat left by a predator who did not care to eat the whole of its prey. Abandoned sustenance that sat too long in the sun, any nutrition that could once be found in its consumption replaced by the illness-inducing proliferation of bacteria and the like on a surface that’s long since lost its proper shape.

Vergil’s still a person in there. No matter what’s happened to his body, it couldn’t take that away. But Dante has doubts as to how human-like Vergil still is beneath the armor that surrounds a distorted, too-long body and seems molded to his flesh. He wouldn’t be surprised to pull away the armor to reveal padding and a skeleton.

Dante curses under his breath, doing his best to stretch out his senses and detect any demonic signs of life. The energy that has always reached out to him. The life-force of a mirrored soul. The resonance that should exist so long as the two of them draw breath.

What he finds is…questionable. 

The demonic energy coming from Vergil is barely perceptible. It’s also strangely unfamiliar; twisted into something different, contaminated by Mundus in a way that makes it so Dante can barely recognize the pieces of Vergil that lie in its depths and that he hadn’t recognized when it mattered. Were Dante not fully aware- blessedly, finally, too-late now aware- that the thing in his arms was his brother, he’d probably assume the faint energy in the room was coming from the armor itself, not the corpse-like thing inside it. Nothing that’s alive should feel that weak. Vergil should never feel that weak. How can he even still be alive while that weak? 

God, Dante’s an idiot. Why didn’t he go after Vergil? Why didn’t he jump after him when Vergil fell? Why did Dante never try to open another portal to find him? Why did he never take advantage of any of the portals he’d seen and help close over the years? Why hadn’t he tried to…he doesn’t know, divine that Vergil was alive? He’s heard of mystics and witches using magic to find someone before. Some could actually pinpoint a location, some could just tell you whether that person was still alive. Dante had never bothered with any himself, but he’d heard good things from people he trusted with other things, so there were probably at least a few who were legit. And yet Dante had never so much as tried to find Vergil. Vergil, who Dante hadn’t actually seen die. He’d just fallen. Why did Dante write him off as dead?

(Maybe it was because to Dante, being stuck in Hell was as good as being dead. He liked the Human World. If it was between having to live the rest of his life in the Demon World or offing himself…he’d probably go for the latter. Probably. Hard to say.

Well. Historically it was. Given how things are going right about now, Dante may be placed in a position to make a decision sooner than he thought!)

Vergil should never have ended up in this state. Nothing should exist in this state. Were it anyone else, Dante would’ve turned up his nose and walked the other way as if he’d never seen the decrepit lump in the first place. He helps when he can but sometimes he can’t and he doesn’t feel like it and the best way to move on without too much pain is to act as if nothing ever happened at all.

But Vergil’s still alive, right? So there’s still room for Dante to do something? Unless he isn’t and there isn’t and this is all just the leadup to the therapist Dante will never hire hearing the story of a lifetime. Dante’s hoping it’s not, but Demonic corpses do still radiate power in the moments before they dissipate. Energy is not a guarantee of life. Even things that were never alive in the first place can hold onto the energy they’ve been imbued with. It’s not out of the realm of possibility that the Vergil-like life force coming from the armor is in truth a remnant of the armor clinging to the energy it had sucked out of its wearer or energy with which its creator (or Mundus) had charged it with in order to control the being trapped within. The energy doesn’t have to be coming from his body itself. Even if it is, it could be the last hurrah of a cooling corpse.

Is that what Vergil is? A corpse? A discarded tool brought here for Mundus to use for whatever he pleased, unsatisfied by merely enslaving the son of his greatest rival when he could defile it in some other way shape or form? A once-refined weapon, once-real person, stripped down to a non-functional state in which it helps no one and nothing, least of all itself?

“Vergil,” Dante pleads, unsure of what to do. 

(Because if Vergil is dead- if Dante finally found him, finally held him in his arms once more, finally got the chance to touch his brother when not attempting to kill him or Vergil Dante, only for that peace to be because his brother and greatest rival has passed on and left his body behind-

Well. 

Let’s just say it’ll be very, very bad. Dante doesn’t want to think about the kind of breakdown that would follow that. 

There would be no coming back from that one. That would be it. It would be the end. Simple as that.)

If Vergil is breathing he must barely be doing it given his chest isn’t moving, so Dante lowers his head to Vergil’s to check, right ear hovering just above Vergil’s lips. The armor covers most of the good pulse spots. His mouth will have to do. 

It takes longer than it should, but eventually he hears the faintest of breaths, feels the slight stirring of air you might get if a paper was pushed off a desk, a barely-there warmth brushing against his cheek to accompany it. 

A breath. Life.

It may barely count as a breath, but it’s more than a corpse would ever do, and Dante will take his victories wherever he can find them.

So yes. Vergil is alive. 

Barely. 

For how much longer Dante doesn’t know.

But at least Dante finally, finally has a chance to save someone dear to him.

“Vergil!” Dante repeats, a mantra, louder now, as if getting louder is the thing Vergil needs to wake up, like Dante’s the alarm clock Vergil didn’t set because he was not interested in getting up at six in the morning on a Saturday when he’d stayed up past midnight reading the night before, but Dante had always wanted to play and had never been very good at respecting Vergil’s boundaries so he’d slam open his door and burst into the room shouting anyway.

Now, at this moment, Vergil feels so empty. So weak. It’s wrong. Unnatural. Sorrow-laden, guilt-inducing. Even as children Vergil had never felt as powerless as low as he does now, always a background thrum in Dante’s mind even if he hadn’t known much about demons back then- much less that he was one himself- and didn’t understand what that thrum was until it disappeared after he and Vergil were separated when he ‘died’ in the fire and roared back to life when they ran into each other at eighteen. 

(Even then the thrum had never truly gone silent. 

Not until after the Temen-ni-gru. Not until he and Vergil were consigned to live in different planes, different worlds, a barrier and disagreement between them and a silence to mark it.

Dante’d gotten really into music after that. Speakers were the first thing he’d bought once he’d sorted out his living situation. Speakers and a jukebox. A lot of playing Nevan. Anything to keep the silence, keep the emptiness, at bay. 

That Vergil neither brought a hum when they fought on Mallet Island nor causes one now when he’s here in Dante’s arms terrifies him.)

If this paltry amount of energy were to come from anyone else Dante would've thrown up his hands and pronounced them dead. But he won’t- can’t- accept that he'd found his brother again just for him to already be dead. It would break him. 

So he doesn’t. Simple as that.

A truth’s not a truth if you don’t agree with it? Right? That’s totally not the stubborn denial-driven idiot in him rearing its ugly head! It’s just the tr- er, well. How it is!

As he stares at his brother, the thrum of excitement and exhilaration that had propelled him so far finally gives into the combination of dread and horror that’s overcome him. and he can’t even be grateful for finally being released because this situation is absolutely, positively not worth it.

Fuck, he can’t lose his brother again.

Because he’d been the one to do this. He’d been the one to drive the sword through Vergil’s heart and send him up in a burst of sparks from which he may have survived in the moment but couldn’t possibly survive long term. 

It’s not even like it was that freak of an accident. Dante’s hands aren’t clean. He’s sure as hell not a saint, and though he wouldn’t call himself an indiscriminate murder or anything, he isn’t a first time offender when it comes to Vergil and sending a man to a grave he may or may not drag himself out of. Even though Vergil survived in the end, it was Dante’s fault he’d nearly died as a kid and teen. Dante had been the one to drive Vergil out before the fire. Dante had been the one who’d driven Vergil to jump at the Temen-ni-gru. Now, in both of those cases Dante could argue that Vergil had at least a teensy bit of agency in making the decisions Dante had pushed him towards. That Vergil had some choice in the matter. That Vergil was himself and not merely a puppet whose puppeteer hadn’t been cut off until it was far too late. 

Now though? Vergil hadn’t had any agency as the knight. Not enough to count. Not as far as Dante could tell. The little snaps and laughs and small things he’d done had had hints of Vergil in it, hints of the cocksure brother he remembered, but Vergil wouldn’t have hidden his identity if he’d had a choice. Those things had to have been the result of some of Vergil’s innate personality bleeding through despite the clamps Mundus had placed on his mind; they weren’t things that came from him having any real degree of control. That much was obvious. Yet someone his identity hadn’t been- somehow Dante’d seen a guy using their father’s moves, using summoned swords, clad in blue energy and with his hair pushed back in a way Vergil had been doing since they were kids, and hadn’t gone ‘hey wait a minute, something seems wrong here, maybe, mayhap, perhaps, perchance I know that guy’- and Dante had blindly been the one to cut him down. 

That means this time it was all Dante’s fault. Undeniably.

Mundus may have been involved, may have been the one who at some point picked Vergil up and molded Vergil into the puppet he became, a marionette unlike the rest in appearance due to his cage of armor as opposed to cloth and the invisibility of the strings upon which he’d been hung, but Mundus would never have gotten his hands on Vergil had Dante not delivered Vergil to the Prince of Darkness in the first place. Vergil hadn’t ended up this mostly dead heap on the floor because Mundus had fought him. Mundus must’ve had some involvement in his transport- Dante was pretty sure there had been something weird going on with the red lines in Vergil’s armor and with the way he’d been zipped away after at least their first two fights and he realizes now, apparently the third too- but Dante had been the one who’d beaten Vergil until he’d fallen back writhing in a pain so extreme Dante could still hear his screaming in the back of his head, the one who’d dealt wounds so bad Mundus had withdrawn his knight rather than sending him back for confrontation number four, so in the end the blame could be piled on Dante in some way anyway. Always could. 

(Most of their childhood fights had been his fault too. Dante would get bored, Vergil would be content, Dante couldn’t be content entertaining himself and didn’t care that Vergil was having fun because he couldn’t imagine how someone could have so much fun with their head in a book, and they’d go at it with swords or fists until they were either bloodied and needed to stop before their mother found out, their mother interrupted them, or someone broke a bone and the gravity of the situation got knocked into their seemingly empty skulls. 

There were times when Vergil had started the fight too. Less often. Usually it was more like Dante provoking him until Vergil joined in, but he could remember a handful of times where Vergil had been the instigator. Snarky comments, little jabs. Stuff that made Dante flip his lid like Dante’s pestering flipped Vergil’s.

As an adult, Dante eventually came to realize what horrible children he and Vergil had been. Poor Eva, down a husband and left with two half-demonic children who tried to rip each other to shreds at the slightest opportunity. She deserved more than she’d got. By a mile.)

Of course, the unpleasantness of Mundus’ actions doesn’t end at capture and brainwashing, and it doesn’t end at transport either. Mundus hatred of them and their father meant he clearly couldn’t let Dante or Vergil catch even the slightest bit of a break, because when Dante shifts Vergil to make him more comfortable (or to appease his own mind, really, because Vergil is very obviously completely mentally absent so he probably wouldn’t even twitch if he were impaled by a stake and lain over a bed of hot coals right about now), the mass of sparks that Dante had seen cover the knight during their battles decides to roar to life and shock the both of them. Yikes. Sparky. It’s enough to momentarily daze him. And when he blinks back to the present-

Ah. That’s where the smell of burnt flesh comes from.

He curses Mundus again. Even beaten into hiding and almost-dead, the bastard just had to get in the last word. To torture Vergil a little more. To somehow continue his torment from beyond the sort-of-grave. 

Dante’s always been one for a spectacle, and right about now he’s seriously considering planning for his biggest show yet once he’s made it out of this actually hellish Hell, something long and loud and cruel in a way he promised himself he’d never be because cruelty like that’s the thing of demons, but he thinks he can push his morals to the side just this once when it comes to dealing with the guy who killed his mother, tortured his brother, and also killed who knows how many humans and demons two thousand years ago in the war from which Sparda would emerge the victor and splitter of worlds. Mundus deserves it. No one will ever deserve it like Mundus deserved it. There’s no mother left for him to kill. 

(If Dante doesn’t figure out how to save Vergil, there will be no brother left to torture either.

Not Vergil. And maybe not Dante either.)

But that’s for the future. That all depends on what comes next.

Right now, Dante has a mostly-dead but not totally-dead brother in his arms.

And he has a feeling that if he doesn’t do something soon, said brother will slip from the first to the second and will never, ever return. Another failure to add to Dante’s ever growing list.

“Vergil, are you with me?” Dante asks, cradling his brother's face in his hands. It’s cold to the touch- not in the way of ice or anything, just in the way that it’s not warm like it should be, in a way that is uncomfortably reminiscent of a recently-made corpse- and has the give of rubber. Just a little too shiny, springs back up when pressed, not in the nice, natural soft way of plush skin but in the disturbing way of a ball made to withstand the beating of children, pushes back against him even before he reaches the hardness of bone. “Come on man, wake up already. This isn’t funny. You’ve won. Sure I beat you when we fought, but if we’re factoring in emotional damage then trust me, you’ve won by a mile and there’s no need to keep rubbing it in. First prize to Vergil! Gold and all. There’s Dante sitting on the next podium clinging to second place, and, gasp, who’d’ve thunk it- for once he isn’t even trying to argue his case for number one! Victory for Vergil! Once and for all!”

Vergil does not react. 

Dante tries his best to smother his rising panic, despite the fact that the only living being in miles is currently lying unconscious in his arms. It’s less about maintaining a reputation and more about retaining some semblance of problem solving ability, if he’s being honest. Losing it is not gonna help anyone right about now. Sure sometimes the loss of regard for your own health and sanity can do wonders in a fight when your instincts take over and you give it your all regardless of your condition, but the fight is over, the losses dealt and rewards collected, and now Dante’s sitting in desperation as he tries to piece together the remnants of the shattered prize.

At the moment Vergil’s face is the only bit of skin Dante can see, pale and crossed with eerily pulsing lines that alternate with each shallow breath Vergil takes, shifting between a bruise-blue and the black of the starless void in which he’d fought Mundus. His pallor is one of a statue, not a man. A lifeless construct. It is not merely white in the way of someone who avoids the light of day, but rather the whiteness who has never even heard of the Sun, of a man who’s spent nearly a decade in a world which no longer knows the touch of the heavens and all that that brings. 

“Come on, Vergil,” Dante chokes, his words a gasp and breath a desperate cry for help from a man drowning in the whirlpool of his own spiraling thoughts. What is he supposed to do? What is he supposed to say? Can Vergil even hear him, or are his words really just platitudes to offer comfort to himself? An excuse to say he tried? “I've got you. Just say something, buddy. Please. Anything.” 

Desperation claws at Dante’s chest. In Hell, emotion seems to live in extremes- either the exploding cold-yet-hot anger he channeled into attacking Mundus, the overwhelming excitement-slash-bloodlust of his rush through the plains of Hell afterward, or this choking grief-fear-desperation-guilt that pushes Dante’s heart toward a sky-high cliff he realizes those first two feelings had never so much as approached despite the terribleness with which he had regarded them until this very moment. Who knew things could get worse? 

Dante switches tactics. If pleading will not work with Vergil, he’ll go to insults instead. Vergil never was one for bowing to compliments. Even in their childhood he’d seemed to often run on spite. 

He piles on the cheer for his next attempt, smiling at closed eyelids as if they’ll open any moment now. 

(He knows they won’t.) 

“Hey, I'll even take an ‘I hate you Dante,’ or ‘You know I was always mother's favorite,’ if that's the only sort of thing you want to say! No hard feelings. I get it. A lot has happened. I’d probably hate me too.”

He does, actually. Has for a while. Seeing the sight he does now only makes him hate himself more.

Minutes pass as he waits for a response.

Vergil continues to sort of breathe, the faintness of it so much so that Dante half wonders if maybe he’s just making a false association between a breeze coming through the window and a thing that he wants to be true.

But this region of Hell doesn’t have wind and the tower has no entries or exits save the door, a window likely too hospitable for a son meant to suffer for the sins of the father who’d abandoned him too, so there’s nowhere from which the non-existent wind would come. The breath has to come from Vergil. Vergil has to be alive. He supposes he could take off his gloves and put two fingers on the only visible part of Vergil’s neck to check for a pulse, but he’s terrified of what option number two might reveal there so he keeps his hands where they are.

Another few minutes pass.

Vergil is as silent as he’s always been when he doesn’t want to grant Dante what he desires.

It only follows everything else Dante’s seen from him in the past nine years. Vergil hadn't said a word in any of their other encounters on Mallet Island, so why would he start talking now that he seemed even deader than before? Maybe it’s not that Vergil’s being stubborn, but that whatever Mundus did to him simply stole his words away. Though he’d laughed at times and grunted in exertion (or pain) at others, he’d never uttered a single word. No insult, no provocation, no expression of frustration or disappointment or betrayal or any of those other things that Vergil would’ve very logically felt had he been faced with the one who’d opposed and damned him. They spoke with their swords and energy, leaving Vergil to teleport away and Dante to stumble forth, licking his wounds.

Dante blinks.

Licking his wounds. Stumbling away to heal them. At Divinity Statues. The magical statues of the Goddess of Fortune which would bestow upon him the best healing he’d ever found, in the form of green trinkets he’d either consume then and there, or pocket for use in a later fight.

He still has one on him, doesn’t he?

“Wait. Shit, one sec Verge-” Dante hisses, shoving his hand into a coat pocket to find the last Vital Star he swears he has somewhere on his person. It’s not there. He tries the next pocket, and then the next, and then the next and next until he’s sweating bullets but finds the stubborn thing in the very last one he checks, maybe he shouldn’t have added so many to the interior of his coat because not being able to quickly find a Vital Star mid battle because it was in pocket number five could definitely get him killed one day, some combination of his rotten luck and abysmal memory getting the last laugh, but for now he has it when he needs it so that’s a problem for another day. “Alrighty. Okay. I need you to use this, got it?” A moment. He tacks on a squeaky “Please?”

Silence is the response. Dante takes it as agreement. 

Yes, nothing should technically be considered a no, but in this case Dante’s gonna imagine brother number one is a little more clingy to life than brother number two, and make an executive decision he thinks will benefit them both.

He places the Vital Star on Vergil's breastplate with utmost care, watching the way the neon-green light dances across the reflective metal like the aurora borealis Dante has never seen in person but hears makes some people reflect on their whole lives and their places in the world, eyes locked on the sight as waves of green waltz along the metal and dip into cracks that speak to the damage Vergil has been dealt and make Dante feel the same sort of thing. The light pulses, strong and weak, strong and weak. It brightens. Holds strong. Dante holds his breath as the intensity of the light reaches its zenith, sure that the Star has sensed something to heal nearby and is trying to reach it. 

But nothing else happens. The night sky goes dark, aurora having seen and shown enough, its dance complete and its purpose left unfulfilled as the glow dims back to its barely present regular level, the Vital Star sitting whole and undisturbed on Vergil's still chest.

Vergil remains unhealed and the star remains unused. 

Dante feels about five minutes from snapping. He refrains only because he thinks Vergil would be humiliated beyond the grave were Dante to do such a thing for his sake. 

Look, Vergil, he thinks, shouldn’t you be honored by how much I’m holding it together for you?

(Not that he’s doing a very good job of it. He’s doing a job of it. He hasn’t blown this whole place to smithereens. Could probably do it with a fully charged Devil Trigger explosion if he wanted to. But just doing a job is not doing much, and even with the constant buzzing of Hell having died down into something ignorable, Dante’s already dangling at the end of his rope and he’s inches from falling into a pit from which he might never be able to claw his way out.)

“Oh come on, come on!” Dante hisses, patience running thin, tapping his fingers on Vergil's breastplate this time because Vergil is laid across his knees and Dante cannot reach thighs which have many a time felt the wrath of claw-tipped taps tapping into them tiny holes. The sounds of claws on metal echoes in the room to fill the silence of a non-functioning panacea. It’s almost worse than their absence. 

Another minute passes.

Then two.

Still, nothing.

(Nothing save the ascent of Dante's anxiety, in a contrast to his slipping sanity finding itself climbing higher and higher by the second like it’s competing with his ability to hit rock bottom for fastest unhealthy inclination to go far, far further than you would've thought possible.) 

“Is it the armor?” Dante asks no one in particular, since there is no conscious being anywhere within hearing range except himself. He'd killed anything and everything that might've heard otherwise. 

(Vergil included, if this doesn’t work!)

“I guess my clothes are thinner than plate mail. Maybe that’s why it’s not working. Probably a lot easier to seep through cloth than whatever weird kinda demonic alloy your new suit’s made out of. Not sure if the metals they have down here are the same ones from up above. Most Devil Arms are just made outta demons,” Dante muses aloud, more self-platitudes and meager offers of comfort that will not come. He’s spent his whole life talking to himself, whether he’s the only one in the room or whether there’s some friend or acquaintance or demon he’s about to kill that he’s decided he’s going to tease before it or he meets an untimely end, whichever comes first. Dante is a performer, and his performances have always first and foremost been for himself. It’s nice when others appreciate them, but if they don’t, then whatever, they get Dante through the day. Surely it’ll get him through this one too.

He lifts one of Vergil’s arms, running fingers along the gauntlet until he reaches Vergil’s hand. Most gauntlets would have a cloth or otherwise malleable fabric on the underside, but the ones Vergil’s got are hard all the way through. It’s not normal metal he’s clad in. Normal metal wouldn’t be able to bend to hold a sword (which had not been Yamato, Yamato hadn’t looked like that and the sword hadn’t felt like her, so if it wasn’t Yamato, where did she go?). But the armor Vergil’s stuck in had, and if the whole glowing rifts thing hadn’t keyed in the fact that something was wrong about it, the bending when it shouldn’t have bent thing does now.

Not that that’s the only thing wrong with Vergil’s situation. Or more specifically, his body and the wretched thing encasing it.

Dante lifts Vergil’s right arm and compares it to the left arm of his own body. Once upon a time they were perfect mirrors. Now there’s a good foot between them, maybe more. It’s not even close. “You seem weirdly long. Did you just have some sorta crazy growth spurt in Hell? Did all that special demon energy give you some extra growing juice? Is that why I’ve felt so weird? Body’s trying to go through demonic puberty take two because we’re still tiny compared to dear old dad and just triggering isn’t enough; it needs to give a boost to our more human forms too?” Dante had never had any sort of lessons on demon biology, much less half-demon biology. His parents lessons had mostly stuck to simple things like ‘you’re durable, but don’t hurt each other for fun.’ If Vergil’s current state is what they’re supposed to be like, he wouldn’t know. “Or did Mundus do something to you? Stretch you all out of proportion because he wanted Father and when he ended up with his mini-me he had to do some rearranging to make you fit into whatever he’d prepared?” 

It’s possible. Dante doesn’t know for certain that that’s what Mundus wanted out of Vergil. Doesn’t really have any concrete evidence of it. 

But Mundus had clearly been obsessed with Sparda, and Dante has a feeling that he hadn’t chosen Vergil to be one of his new generals solely because Vergil had conveniently been in the right place at the right time at some point over the last nine years. What Mundus had done felt targeted. None of the other goons he’d thrown at Dante had seemed as messed up as Vergil had. Not even the stupid spider. Vergil had been a special case. Vergil’d felt like a prisoner and tool both.

Evidence or no, Dante is sure that what was done to Vergil was done out of spite. As a way of enacting vengeance on the man Mundus never was able to kill.

(He doesn’t have evidence for that part either, to be fair. But with everything Mundus had said, Dante was certain Mundus would’ve never stopped raving about how he killed Sparda had he been the one to cut the old man’s life short, so however Sparda had met his end, Dante’s certain Mundus hadn’t been the one to do it. Whether the lack of confirmation is good or bad remains to be seen.)

In his musings, Vergil’s arm slips from Dante’s grasp. The gauntlet Dante had been so carefully examining clatters against Vergil’s breastplate as it falls down, limp and lifeless as the rest of his body. Dante takes a deep breath.

If the armor is what’s stopping the Vital Star from working- whether it’s because it’s too thick for the star to work through or because something about the enchantment in it prevents its magic from taking hold- then Dante just has to remove the armor for the Vital Star to do its thing. Easy peasy. Simple and doable. A rare quickly-solvable puzzle from a man who’d made Dante feel like he was on some sort of cruel game show broadcasting his increasing frustration to an audience laughing at his inability to cross a drawbridge after an hour of slashing it with his sword and backtracking through all the parts of the castle save the one that’d lead him to where he actually needed to go. Sorry Dante, try again later!

If the armor is not what’s stopping the Vital Star, then well, whatever, it doesn’t matter, either Dante’s going to sit here and stare at his brother while he dies, or he’s going to try to do something to fix it and at least if Vergil dies after that Dante can say he tried.

The Vital Star goes back in Dante’s pocket for the time being. Dante handles it with the care he’d give to a fractured vase that’s showing its wear but hasn’t shattered quite yet, unwilling to risk anything bad happening to the star due to some freak alignment of the proverbial stars which might somehow cause his only lifeline to go kablooey. He hasn’t seen a Divinity Statue for ages and he doesn’t know where else to get anything that can heal, so he can’t afford to waste it. He’s still holding out on the armor removal being the absorption fix he needs.

The questions of where to start with the armor and how long he has to remove it hang heavy over Dante’s head. Does it matter whether he starts with a gauntlet, sabaton, or the chestplate itself? Given the nature of the energy that had pulsated throughout the armor Dante has a feeling the star won’t work until all of the armor’s gone, not just the bit blocking access to Vergil’s chest, so he’ll have to remove it all eventually. Does he go fast to make sure Vergil doesn’t expire while he’s midway through removal? Or does he go slowly in case there’s some sort of defense mechanism to prevent removal that might send Vergil into shock if he takes it all off at once? Dante’s already gotten shocked just from moving him; who’s to say how much fight the armor’s got left in it and what it might do once he starts trying to chip away at it. Mundus gave it at least a little bit of extra juice, and if it’s going to fight Dante the whole way, Vergil might end up more ash than man by the end of it.  

Option two’s probably the safer one. Smarter one. But Dante’s never been a patient man, so he goes for option number one anyway. He starts by slipping Vergil off his thighs and onto the ground so he can look for any particularly notable cracks or gaps in the armor that look like they might lend themselves towards swift removal. Order by ease. Seems logical enough.

But after giving Vergil a good once over, he decides he has absolutely no idea what he’s looking at or how he’s actually supposed to remove anything in the first place, because he’s always been a mobile stylish clothing guy and armor has never really lent itself to that. Besides, what would the point be in the first place? Why wear armor when you could recover from a sword through the heart? Anything that could do real damage to him could just as easily do real damage to armor. Armor would just limit his range of motion and slow him down. So, Dante’s never bothered with it. Unfortunately, right about now he’s really regretting not at least giving it a shot. 

He tries to visualize the suits of armor their father used to keep in his study. He and Vergil had looked at them all the time as kids, enamored with the ideas of knights and battles and putting on the armor themselves to beat each other up. The house had burned long before they’d gotten big enough to fit in even the smallest suits so that had never happened, but they hadn’t foreseen the demise of their mother, demonic invasion, and destruction of their lives as little innocent kiddos, so dream they had. The rest of Dante’s experience with knights came from either enchanted armor hellbent on smushing him and held up by magic instead of real straps or flesh, or those popcorn high fantasy movies that just loved having the female lead tenderly remove the armor from her lover before they had the classic, ‘these two characters definitely just had sex but we're only rated PG-13 so you just get to see them lying under the covers after the fact’ scene. And sure it was possible that the guys directing those movies had some sort of historical consultant to make sure the armor and thus its removal was right, but with the quality of most of the ones Dante’s fallen asleep to, he’s pretty sure the answer to that question was no.

All that’s to say he doesn’t have the slightest idea where to begin. Which means prying off the armor bit by bit starting wherever the hell he feels like it, it is! 

Based on the whole not-glove gauntlet thing it’s entirely possible the armor didn’t follow regular armor rules anyway. Dante wouldn’t be surprised if Mundus never meant for Vergil to take the armor off. Actually he’d be surprised if Mundus did. Why release a captive from a prison which encloses their flesh when said prison is potentially tied to your method of controlling the unruly prisoner? Dante might not know the mechanics of whatever he did to Vergil, but the armor’s gotta be related somehow.

Dante peels off his gloves and shoves them in one of his interior pockets. He doesn’t want the texture of his gloves interfering with his ability to feel for gaps in the armor or to get in the way of his nails if he has to use them to pry two segments of armor apart. Though he could trigger and turn them into claws without expending too much energy, at this moment he’d much rather be human. It’s hard to be gentle in demon form. Not impossible, and not to any degree, but there’s a certain level of softness that he doesn’t think he’d be able to uphold if he pushed his human flesh aside.

(If Vergil sees the normally-hidden scar on his left palm, still present despite the years that have passed and the healing that should’ve occurred, then it’ll be a worthy sacrifice. Because Vergil being able to see it will mean Vergil is alive and coherent enough to see and process and know, and Dante can endure questions or even just a hard stare for the sake of that little victory.)

When Dante shoves the ends of his nails into a particularly large crack on the underside of one of the ridiculous pauldrons covering Vergil’s shoulders, he’s treated to the lovely hello that is yet another ungodly surge of electricity shocking him with enough strength to make his hair stand up.

Because of course that wasn’t a one-time thing.

Of course it isn’t that simple.

Dante tries again on the other pauldron. Then on a gauntlet. Then on a greave. Then on one of the weird prong thingies coming from Vergil’s shin which, if it even has one, Dante doesn’t know the name of.

Every attempt to pry the armor from Vergil’s body earns him a shock that doesn’t abate until his attempt ends.

Dante curses. Of course he can’t just free Vergil. Of course the armor trapping his brother isn’t just an aesthetic thing. Of course Mundus couldn’t let his torture end at merely enveloping a man in a suit which distended his body every which way; he had to put a stupid electroshock therapy defense mechanism into it too.

With every new discovery Dante makes, the deeper his hatred of Mundus grows. If and when they ever do meet again, it will be neither pretty nor kind. To hell with style, Mundus is going to suffer.

“Sorry Vergil,” Dante mutters, a guttural sort of sound escaping a throat that feels raw with anger, raw in the way it does when you want to sob but try to hold back and your body lets you know it’s not happy with your refusal.

He would cry, except right now he feels an empty sort of outrage that has shoved his emotions in a box and kicked them in a corner to be dealt with later. What Dante feels right now doesn’t matter. He can deal with all that after he’s fixed Vergil. Or confirmed it’s impossible. He’s not quite there yet.

Really it's his own surprise that shocks him, more than any lingering electricity does. Why wouldn’t the armor shock anyone trying to remove it, when Dante had seen Vergil shocked by it each and every time Vergil had seemed to catch onto some piece of information or recognize Dante or do something that the glowing eyes present in the sky or the corner of the room Dante hadn’t been paying attention to grew brighter and the air even more oppressive than it had before? If the armor was what Mundus had used to dehumanize Vergil- and oh, Dante almost laughs at that one, he meant it in the way of making someone feel less than human but what if Mundus had actually tried to excise the humanity from Vergil so he was left with only the demon parts, and maybe that's why Vergil is so big now, because the part of him that was human and thus small has been drained from his very being, his very soul- then why would he want Vergil to remove it? To rebrand something is to impose your ownership onto it. If Mundus wanted to show he owned Vergil, why would he let Vergil or anyone else take that brand away?

Still. Painful as the shocks are, they’re necessary. Vergil will die if he’s left as is. Dante’s almost certain. He will never fully heal without outside intervention. He needs help.

Sometimes you have to do something painful to reach something you want. Sometimes you have to get worse to get better. 

(Dante’s spent a long time on the ‘getting worse’ part without doing much of the ‘getting better,’ but he’s heard it’s how it works for others and who knows, maybe this is what will start the uptick he’s been reaching for for so long.)

Vergil isn’t conscious right now, and the shocks are unpleasant but not unbearable, so Dante decides the shocks are a worthy price to pay for freeing his brother. Based on their already waning strength per attempt, he’s pretty sure they won’t completely fry Vergil before he’s freed, and the only one actually feeling the pain will be Dante, who’s happy to consent to it to get the end result he wants and needs.

Singed fingers find their way back to Vergil’s right gauntlet, digging into the crack along the underside.

“Your master is dead. There’s no point in fighting anymore,” he tells the armor.

(And, perhaps, Vergil too.)

Neither armor nor man respond. 

Once again the room is wreathed in silence, the power-dampening enchantment in the room muffling any sounds that may have come from the outside, few as they’d be with the wasteland the castle is surrounded by. It’s too bad the dampener didn’t dampen the shocks too. Mundus must’ve given his own magicks a pass.

Dante takes a breath. He lets the pool of energy in his chest grow deeper. Now-clawed mostly-human hands aren’t getting him anywhere in his attempts to pry the armor from Vergil’s body. His attempts have won him nothing but the smell of burnt flesh and aggravation. If Vergil is to be freed, he needs to do more. Be more.

His breath holds, the energy in his core growing and growing until his need for air eclipses its desire to take from the rest of his body.

It is released in an instant, Dante’s Trigger washing over him for only a second as the energy rises up, washes over him, and is forced into the being before him instead with a strong exhale. 

Electricity- now visible, so strong and so angry and so furiously defeated- rises up in defiance, jumping at Dante with enough strength to send him careening into the wall behind him, but he doesn’t care.  

For in his hand is the gauntlet he’d been trying so hard to pry off. In his hands is the first step in his coming victory. The first little win in what he will ensure is a series. 

Where the gauntlet once rested he can see skin. 

The excitement is dizzying. Or maybe it’s the head trauma. Dante’s pretty sure he can smell blood from where he hit the wall.

He ignores it, dropping the gauntlet and shooting first to his feet then back to his knees once he’s back at Vergil’s side, lifting the newly-freed hand to inspect his work. 

The hand Dante has freed is almost skeletal, the skin clinging to it looking like it's holding on for dear life and so thin that if Vergil made a fist, Dante expects it would tear free and expose the bone underneath. Dante doesn’t think he’s ever seen so little flesh on a living person. Dante’s theory that maybe Mundus just stretched Vergil out instead of actually making him grow bigger gains a little more weight (weight which his brother most definitely does not have, bony as he is). Dante wouldn’t be surprised if Vergil had all the same skin and underlying flesh as he did in the before , stretched and spread thin to cover a surface area far larger than it was meant to. Beyond that, what skin is there isn’t in good condition. The skin by his knuckles and where his thumb connects to his hand looks the most raw of all, but none of it is healthy by any stretch of the word; the gray of Vergil’s hand is like the white of his face but worse, stretched to the point of absolute tension in some places while wrinkly like a plum or a hand left submerged in water for too long in others. He may not be Frankenstein but he does look patchwork and it’s not a pretty or reassuring sight to see. There will be no immediate, complete relief upon being freed from the armor. Even if Vergil lives, the Vital Star will have to put in serious work, and even then Dante has doubts as to whether it will be enough to get Vergil back on his feet. Even when he’s used one to patch up a hole in his guts threatening to spill his intestines out for all to see, he never needed one to rebuild the cells in his entire body. Holes or no, it’s very likely that most of Vergil’s body is in this condition, which means that none of it is doing well at all. 

What makes Dante even more uneasy are the eerie black lines similar to those marring Vergil’s face which go from fingertip to wrist and beyond, their full extent hidden by the armor still coating the rest of Vergil’s body. The full extent of the damage is still beyond him. Dante has a feeling the sum of it will be much worse than its part.

But for now he revels in his victory, in the single hand he has freed to taste the air for the first time in who knows how long. Hopefully not nine years. Hopefully closer to five. Hopefully Vergil hasn’t been in Mundus’ clutches the entire time since the brothers last saw each other.

(Though maybe it would be for the best if it had been nine years since Vergil was encased in his own personal prison. In the armor, Vergil didn’t seem to care about Dante in a way more than a seasoned fighter would be interested in a worthy opponent. If he didn’t care about Dante, then maybe he didn’t care about having been kidnapped and imprisoned by his father’s greatest enemy. Wasn’t really aware of it. Didn’t hate what he was doing, at least. If Vergil had been in Mundus’ possession from the moment he left Dante’s sight- or near enough to it- then the longer it took for Vergil to be encased in armor and drained of himself, the longer he’d likely had to endure whatever torture Mundus saw fit to inflict upon the first son of his greatest enemy, because Dante is sure Mundus didn’t just politely ask Vergil to step on over and that Vergil would never have bent the knee without a fight. Maybe it would’ve been the best were Vergil to have been immediately captured, immediately shackled, and immediately driven from his own mind so he didn’t have to face the nightmare for very long. It meant the least suffering.

Or maybe Dante’s just imposing his own thoughts onto his brother. Maybe Vergil would rather have fought back for a decade of agony rather than be beaten into submission in only a day. 

No. Not maybe. Definitely. Vergil would’ve gone out kicking and screaming. He never gave in without a fight. Never. 

In any case Dante doesn’t even know if Vergil wasn’t internally kicking and screaming while trapped as the knight, just in a way Dante wasn’t privy to. 

The idea of that reality sickens him.)

Dante swears Vergil is breathing easier now that the gauntlet’s gone. He moves a hand over Vergil’s mouth- a human hand, he’d triggered only momentarily, just to bring all his power to bear and force the armor to give way- and the breaths that hit it feel…well. They’re breaths. Noticeable now. Not just maybe-movements of air. He’ll say they feel stronger.

Do they? 

Maybe. Maybe not.

But for the sake of his own sanity he’s going to say they do.

(In truth, Vergil doesn’t feel any more alive than he had been. His breath is just as shallow, his energy just as weak. But Dante, so desperate for a victory, cannot accept the fact that his attempts may not have helped. That he is just as useless as he’s always been. That his brother will die by his hand regardless. 

And so he tells himself it did. He convinces himself it did. That it helped. That Vergil is getting better.

He couldn't live with himself if it didn't help, and the potential truth that all that his attempts had brought his brother was further pain when they’d both been shocked by the gauntlet’s removal. Either he helped Vergil or he made things worse and his precarious mental state could only accept one of those things right now, so accept the happier- albeit less realistic- one it does.)

“Alright then, one piece down, a bunch more to go!” Dante cheers. He plasters on a grin to accompany it, half real, half fake, all there because grinning in the face of shitty situations is how he’s made it through life for the past twenty years, with a few exceptions for the rare times he’d accepted everything was terrible because there was no acceptance here to be seen, so it’s easier to fall back into habits than to let his true emotions come through. 

And oh does he let himself revel in it. 

Finally, finally he has some good news. Finally, finally he can say that not everything has gone wrong. Finally, he has a real chance at saving his brother. Finally, his brother’s death might not be on his hands. Finally, he might not be alone.

Basking in his temporary victory, Dante swears to get the rest of the job done. “Don't you worry your pretty little head off, Vergil,” he says, digging his fingers into the next gauntlet. It seems his little Devil Trigger explosion and the electric blast it had triggered in response had eaten up the last of the armor’s energy, because it doesn’t so much as spark at Dante’s touch. No more frying for Vergil, no more blasts for Dante. It’s a win-win.

He takes a deep breath. Centering himself. Centering Vergil as best he can, just in case there’s even a semblance of awareness in that statue-white head of his. “I've got you. You'll be back to normal in no time. I promise.”

And he means it. He really does.

Chapter Text

His hopes for a quick return to normality are quickly dashed. 

Though the electricity has ceased its roaring and all further attempts to remove the armor are happily shock-free, Vergil is bound by more than just bottled lightning, and piece by piece Dante realizes he’s in for more of an ordeal than he’d anticipated. With each piece of armor he sinks his claws into, the bud of hope he’s so happily cultivated is infested by flies happy to feast it to oblivion before the beauty can manifest. The rot is deep, and it’s questionable how much will remain once it is excised. 

Vergil is…not in good shape.

That much should’ve been obvious from the moment he removed his helmet, back when he was just the Mysterious Knight who’d shown a face Dante- obviously, blindly, idiotically- couldn’t quite name but had appeared notably pale and almost decrepit, skin clinging to his cheekbones for dear life and unevenly colored.  

Yet in the poor lighting of the castle on the island in which he’d both live out and be crushed by his dreams, Dante had filed away the knight’s pallor as a typical part of demon weirdness, not as a sign of an unhealthy state of being. He’d been in the heat of the moment. What care should he have possibly given to the precise skin tone of a being who’d nearly killed him once, he’d barely beaten once, and who was attempting to kill him once more? Some humanoid demons have non-human skin colors- Nevan, for example, had been green, the less-human but still humanoid Agni and Rudra red and blue- and the ashy tone of his opponent hadn’t rung any alarm bells. The glow of his eyes and armor had been far more distracting. Compelling. 

(If only Dante’d bothered to think about it for more than two seconds before Vergil went for him, Dante threw himself into the battle, and the glow would be subsumed by an explosion that would carry his half-dead brother away from him, unto a still-uncertain death). 

Yet now, close enough to his brother to touch, the severity of Vergil’s illness (decay) is too obvious to ignore. Aside from the general thinness and discoloration of his skin, there’s also the way he’d been positioned to think about. When Dante had come into the room, Vergil lay on the floor as if he’d been dumped there by someone who didn’t give a damn about his comfort level, limbs splayed every which way and no attempt made to put Vergil on the- frankly disgusting- cot in the corner of the prison he’d been thrown into. 

And it is that point- that Vergil has been placed in a prison, not just of the metaphorical sense- that begins to sink in as he looks around, desperate for some way to save the brother whom he’d lost twice- thrice- before. 

In his haste to reach Vergil and confirm the body he was seeing and assumption he’d made was no mere hallucination, he’d shoved the rest of the room’s features out of his mind, ignoring the manacles, ignoring the chains, glancing over all the evidence pointing to the room’s true purpose and the likelihood that Vergil’s being there was no mere coincidence. The entire room seems to be his brother’s (former? Can it be called former when in it Vergil still lies, mind locked away and life on the precipice-) prison, no specific bars separating the imprisoned from the visitor, but the hooks and attachments found at multiple points around the room had most likely been used to tether him to spots from which he couldn’t reach his tormentor even if he’d wanted to. It’s likely why the dampening effect exists; to keep Vergil from getting too unruly, from summoning up his own power to break through links that held him in place. He wonders whether the tower had always been enchanted that way, or if it’d been a response to what Vergil had at some point done. The cell’s certainly been put to use many times over the years, long enough that Vergil’s very essence had seeped into the enchanted stones that lined the walls and floors, stains both visual and magical in nature making the whole room feel subtly like Vergil in the worst of ways. The room reeks of Vergil, in both the magical and physical way.

You see, most higher demons have a specific scent to them. The lesser demons tend to all mix in with each other, but a demon of any considerable power has their own special perfume. All bad ones if you ask Dante, but distinct enough that even if he couldn’t go ‘Oh yeah that one’s Griffon and that one’s Geryon’ if you’d bottled the scents up and shoved them at him with no context, he could probably say ‘well that one’s one demon, that one’s a different demon, and that third bottle’s more of the first’ and be right about it. From the demons he’s dealt with, he knows he (and Vergil) have their own distinct smell too. Whether Sparda’s scent was so distinct as to be immediately recognizable, or demons’ scent-memory and hatred ran so deep as to be able to recognize it two millennium later he doesn’t know, but he does know he’s been pinged for Sparda’s spawn over and over in his life, so there’s something special there.

Vergil’s scent permeates each and every inch of the room around them. It’s sunk deep into the stones beneath them, into the wall decorated by chains and cuffs, into the straw-stuffed cot in the corner, into the locked chest that oozes malevolent energy in a way that makes Dante so sure it contains well-used instruments of torture that he doesn’t want to get within five feet of it. It all has a sour tinge to it. More so than normal demon scent. Even if the emotions they felt were typically on a different spectrum than that of human emotion, demons did still feel in some sort of way, at least stuff like anger and annoyance and a sort of twisted ‘I’m gonna kill you and enjoy it’ sort of happiness, and emotions of the strongest sort could push a scent one way or another. The sour tinge to the hints of Vergil in the room indicates something Dante can’t name, but knows lie somewhere between emptiness and pain. A life of constant displeasure. Of illness and corruption and change and rot.

Dante huffs in anger. Had it not been enough for Mundus to merely mold Vergil into a doll that would do whatever he pleased? Had he continued to torture him just because? Had that been how Mundus played with him? Chains and bloodletting? Was it because Vergil had been on occasion defiant? Or was it because Mundus just felt like it, whether Vergil obeyed or not? 

Was it anything Vergil had done? Or was this all some sort of retribution for the sins of the father, past down to his abandoned son? 

Thinking about it makes Dante’s lingering nausea rise to the top, so he shoves that line of thought into the corner with all the other things he doesn’t feel like dealing with right now. 

The corner is getting pretty full. Shove much more over there and the pile will probably tip and send an avalanche of unpleasant thoughts and feelings rushing towards him. If he was a smart man, he’d start tackling it one by one before he was overwhelmed.

But if Dante’s got any claim to intelligence it sure isn’t in the realm of self-reflection or any sort of ‘dealing with your emotions’ thing, so he shoves those unfun feelings in the corner anyway and just hopes it doesn’t start to give until he’s in a time and place where he can deal with the fallout of the inevitable collapse. 

(Once upon a time his mom had sat him and Vergil down to talk about ‘big feelings’, as she put it. The kind that made you want to yell, the kind that made you want to burst into tears, the kind that made you run away or made you punch your brother ‘till he punched back and you both ended up on the floor with bloody knuckles and noses that would soon run with tears because your mom always looked so upset when you fought, even though you couldn’t help it because when you got angry you just had to fight, it was so hard not to fight, you felt so much and it was hard to get it out any other way.

She said that usually when the big feelings got so big you couldn’t ignore them anymore, it was because you’d had a lot of big feelings that you hadn’t paid attention to, and if they grew big enough it would make all the big feelings a whole lot worse. When you got a big feeling, it was important that you took the time to think about it. Why do you want to yell? Why do you want to cry? Is there something that you can do about it? Are you upset your brother is sitting in the window seat you want to sit in? Could you ask him for a turn? Did he get more of their mother’s attention that morning? Have you tried asking her if she could spend a little more time with you too? Stuff like that. Identify the problem and try to think of a solution. Because if you don’t, then all the little-big feelings grow into big-big feelings and then you feel even worse. 

Dante had never been a good listener. He will keep piling his feelings in a place he doesn’t have to deal with them until the day the pillars break he’s crushed under their weight.)

The mark of Vergil’s presence in the room runs deep. It couldn’t have gotten that deep in the time between Vergil’s final fight with Dante and Dante’s arrival in the room. 

No, with the way Vergil’s energy thrums through the stones and his soured essence seems to seep up through the cracks, it’s obvious he’s been there before. For a long time. Many times. Longer than any person would spend if they were just visiting- which he wouldn’t have been doing while injured anyway, so that means he had been the one to bleed in the prison, and that the clamps and chains and torture instruments strewn about the room had been for him.

Again, Dante is reassured in his increasingly violent fantasies about Mundus’ end. Sure he’s never been a guy for brutality, because that’s what demons do, and being stylish and having fun is not the same thing, but just this once he can make an exception. Once Vergil’s better Dante’s going to have nonstop seances until Mundus pops up and Dante gives him what he deserves. 

Prison aside, the condition Vergil’s in now is bad. Or Bad. Capital B. One might even say horrible. Horrid. Horrifying. Abysmal, to spice things up.

…This probably isn’t the time for that. Here Vergil is dying in front of him, and Dante’s trying to make a joke. Real classy.

(It’s the way he’s always gotten through things his mind doesn’t want to process.)

Point is- Vergil’s in bad shape and the more of his body Dante reveals, the heavier the stone in his gut grows.

Because as it turns out, that ugly, unhealthy thing that is the skin under Vergil’s right gauntlet isn’t even the worst of it by far. 

As Dante examines Vergil’s arm, he realizes that the sickly black lines running through Vergil’s skin seem to be more alive than the rest of him. Each breath, choked and barely there as they are, the lines pulse far stronger than the breaths that accompany them. They almost (not almost- actually) seem more alive than he does.

(Maybe they’re sucking the life out of him. Maybe they’re bleeding him dry. 

Maybe they’re just running on Mundus’ lingering energy. Maybe there’s not even enough life left in Vergil for them to pull from.)

Some of the lines leak dark fluid into the surrounding cracks in the skin, a stream meandering its way across a jagged forest floor, while others seem viscous enough to not move out unless Dante jostles them too much prying the armor surrounding them. When he pokes a finger into one, the way it both clings to Vergil’s skin, shivering but refusing to part, and sucks the warmth from his fingertip as if trying to eat him too sends a shiver down his spine. The identity of the mysterious substance is something Dante can’t even begin to guess at, but whatever it is, it clearly isn’t just dark blood in the way that some demons bled black. It feels strange. Wrong. Capital W. In comes Dante’s great vocabulary to save the day, but Wrong is Wrong and sometimes Wrongness is the most disturbing thing of all. He’s pretty sure something was injected into Vergil at some point- or forced in by some manner, he doesn’t think demons have the same sort of medical technology and syringes as they have in the Human World which means the method by which the substance entered Vergil’s body is a disturbing one he’d rather not explore- but he has no idea whether it had just been put in there a single time to either replace or accompany the blood he should’ve had, meaning if Dante does some bloodletting someday down the line it’ll eventually bleed itself out and allow Vergil to get back to normal, or if it’s become self-sustaining over time and has begun to replenish without intervention, living inside and alongside Vergil and becoming a complete replacement for blood in a way that means said blood will never return on its own. He doesn’t think he wants to know. It’s unsettling and unnatural. Dante will leave it at that. Its origins can be discovered and dealt with later.

(The black substance also reeks of Mundus. Mundus and rot. Corruption. The closest thing to an unholy abomination Dante has ever encountered. 

Who’d have thought the most disturbing, hellish thing he’d find in Hell would be his own half-human brother.)

The black not-blood is sticky, adhering skin to armor in a way that means some of the pieces Dante removes tear off the underlying skin with them. He isn’t sure if the lines have always been leaky or if they’d poured out during the three battles in which Dante had unknowingly been attempting to murder his own brother, the blackness spilling out from the crevices it lined like blood might spill from a vein or wound, but whatever it was had bound armor to flesh and the blackness was the stronger of the two when it came to it versus skin. The inner layers of tissue revealed when the top layers come away with Vergil’s armor aren’t nearly as red as they should be. They look like someone had taken a human body and tried to turn it greyscale. Unnatural. Like Vergil had been emptied and reassembled according to the whims of another, not quite himself even if he may have been made from at least a few of his original pieces. Even the few victims of vampire-like or other blood-draining demons Dante has seen don’t look that pale. That gray. Dante’s getting the sinking feeling that all of Vergil’s blood has been replaced by the ichor. It would explain why his flesh has lost the pinkness it should by all rights have.

Not all of Vergil’s skin comes away with the armor’s removal, but the skin that isn’t torn to bits by Dante’s attempts to pry Vergil free of his body-shaped cage isn’t in better shape. 

The closer Dante gets to Vergil’s heart, the worse it looks. Starting midway up his arm, about halfway between Vergil’s armpits and elbows, the skin has begun to crack into uncountable fragments. And when Dante says crack, he doesn’t just mean in the way that skin tends to crack if you work it too long and hard at some sort of dry, manual job. No, Vergil’s skin looks like the mudcracks you’d get after a rare summer rain. Crevices create countless tiny islands of skin, no uniformity to their shape or size. Some skin peels away from the rest, while other bits flake off against the armor or the hands attempting to free it from its confines, no matter how gentle Dante’s touches. Vergil wears no protective layer between the armor and skin. The armor had rubbed him raw. Though really it’s doubtful the cracks in Vergil’s skin were caused by the terrible chafing that would’ve come from wearing armor unprotected. No, looking at them, brushing his fingers against them and coming up with white powder, Dante has the feeling they’re the result of some sort of internal corruption. That whatever had caused the black lines had stolen the vitality from the skin through which they ran, sucking them dry until bits turned to dust. Or maybe the cracks were caused by the blackness themselves. It’s hard to say which one is the symptom and which is the cause. Whether the blackness is what’s causing all the problems, or if the blackness is merely coexisting with the rest of the terrible things that have been done to Vergil’s body, a consuming affliction that merely added to Vergil’s existing ailments rather than causing more. Whatever it is, none of it’s good. Beyond those patches which are layers of dry upon dry upon dry, other bits of skin flake away to reveal the black liquid pooling underneath, seeping into every inch of Vergil’s being as if it’s meant to be there, as if it’s a true part of him rather than a foreign substance trying to claim him from the outside. Dante does his best to avoid disturbing the bubbles sitting under Vergil’s skin. The fluid seems strangely alive, and if it’s sleeping, Dante doesn’t want to wake it up. 

The one meager form of relief he’s able to find is that that with each one freed, Vergil’s limbs somehow shrink back to normal size, at least one aspect of his damage and disfigurement reverting itself even if Dante has no idea how to cure the cracking or mysterious black liquid or unhealthy paleness that envelope Vergil whole.

Not to say the reversion of Vergil’s limbs is a particularly pleasant affair. That’s why it’s only a little relief instead of something sending him down the halls running and jumping for joy.

While Vergil seems to have been stretched into his longer shape, his limbs don’t simply squish back down like a rubber band does after you’ve released the tension on it. It’s not like he frees the limb, there’s a little pop and a magic poof, and Vergil’s arm is back to normal. No, instead, the moment Dante has removed the last bit of armor encasing that particular limb, he’s treated to the horror show that is the frankly disgusting crack-squelch of reforming flesh and bone, the bits and pieces that make up Vergil rearranging themselves in a way he imagines would be amazingly painful were Vergil to be awake for it, shifting here and there and bulging in ways limbs aren’t meant to until they settle into the forms they are meant to take. Dante supposes it’s one bright side to Vergil’s unconsciousness, alongside to his lack of awareness of the situation meaning Vergil hasn’t flung Dante and run away to deny Dante any chance at putting him in his debt yet (which Dante wouldn’t even cash in on, because as far as he’s concerned, he owes Vergil for everything he’s put him through, so if Vergil does ever wake up and doesn’t try to pretend nothing that happened in the interim between his and Dante’s first battle in Hell and his resurrection happened, Dante’ll be happy to consider this an action free of charge.) 

If Dante had to compare Vergil’s nauseating reformation to something, he’d say it reminds him of Triggering, but worse. Sure it happens in a flash and to the outsider it may seem like he just poofs to go from one form to the other, easy peasy no lemons squeezed here because acid in a wound hurts and surely flashing from A to B is no big deal, but it’s actually so much worse when you’re the guy whose body has to contort itself from one shape to another! Time never feels as slow as it does during the transformation to go into or revert from his Trigger. Because it’s not merely phasing from one form to the next in some sort of poof of smoke, but instead it’s the restructuring of his body, his flesh, his blood, his bones, his cells, his very being- And well. If it’s going from A to B, then rather than being at A one moment and B the next, a better comparison would be to say that it feels like you’re a guy driving from point A to B across the rockiest possible road at 150 miles an hour with a boatload of obstacles you’re speeding too fast to ignore and have to mow down to get to your destination, the pleasure of the trip be damned. 

And sure, being Triggered feels right. Good, even. There’s a high with unlocking your power and feeling your senses extend and grow to a height a human form could never achieve; in stretching out your limbs and feeling things a human body couldn’t begin to comprehend; in indulging a side of you that’s constantly begging for the light of day and well aware that it could be granted at any moment were its jailer to only give them the courtesy more than once every few weeks. But that doesn’t mean it’s a warm fuzzy feeling in the moments where he’s actually swapping from one to the other. That only comes once the transformation is done. And being human feels right too, most of the time, so it’s not really a high Dante chases when the conversion process is so crummy. 

So watching Vergil’s limbs compress makes Dante cringe because ouch. It doesn’t look pretty. It sure as Hell doesn’t sound pleasant either; lots of crunching and snapping and the occasional squelch. It’s also just plain weird to see Vergil suddenly get smaller. One minute Vergil looks like a gibbon, the next one of his arms is a foot shorter than the other. Creepy.

When Dante finishes removing the last of the armor from Vergil’s leg and all four limbs seem to match, he breathes a sigh of relief. He’d feel awful if for some reason one of Vergil’s legs remained five feet long while the other had gone back to normal. Vergil would never forgive him for it either. 

(Which is a funny thing to think about. Vergil and forgiveness.

If there’s anything Vergil will never forgive him for, it’s abandoning him in the first place. Or killing him. Both, probably. Dante doubts he’s going to get out of this with a pat on the back and a thank you card penned in a hand Dante just knows is going to be stupidly fancy. Vergil spent ages practicing his handwriting as kids, trying to get it to match their mother’s elegant letters. Dante’d been content with his horrible scrawl. Never Vergil, though. Vergil hadn’t been content with anything.

Maybe that’s why he left. Dante had never had enough for him, never been enough for him, never been something he’d wanted at all, so Vergil couldn’t bear being in his debt. Couldn’t bear getting help from him. Couldn’t bear the thought of spending another moment in the presence of someone so lowly and undeserving as he.

But dammit if Dante wasn’t going to try to help him despite it all.) 

With all of Vergil’s limbs freed, Dante’s finally able to remove the armor covering Vergil’s chest, which had stubbornly remained attached despite all of Dante’s earlier attempts to remove it mid-limb freeing. With each chunk of armor Dante removed, the magicks keeping it together had weakened, to the point that with every other piece of armor gone, he’s confident he can wrestle the breastplate free.

When he does, he rips the thing away with enough force that it goes flying toward the wall, slamming into it with a loud thunk Dante couldn’t give a damn about because screw this prison cell he’s not trying to keep it nice and tidy and undamaged by blunt force and-

He freezes, staring at what he’s revealed.

Down falls the boulder into the pit of his stomach, his center of gravity tumbling down, down, to the invisible pit below. 

Because oh.

Oh that’s not good.

That’s not good at all.

To be fair, nothing about Vergil has been good so far, besides the fact that he’s technically (barely) alive where Dante had been earlier convinced he’d been dead. Can’t do anything with a corpse, so a not-quite dead almost-corpse is a million times better in comparison! But somehow this triumphs over everything else when it comes to the contest for “worst things you could see on a person you’d really rather live,” in a way Dante’d never imagined.

Because there, in the center of Vergil’s chest, is a pit of black so dark that not even the constant dying light of the ever-present yet invisible light source that illuminates this region of Hell gives it any sort of depth. The pit seems to eat all of the light around it. There are no shadows. No highlights. Nothing that indicates whether it covers something that goes down half a foot or to the core of the earth. 

It is emptiness. Pure emptiness. Emptiness that consumes all around it.

Emptiness, that is, save for the cerulean sphere sitting somewhere deep inside the pit, foggy and lined with cracks yet perfectly round and pulsing in a way that should- but doesn’t- light the emptiness around it. 

It’s hard to say how deep within the pit the sphere lies. It looks to be both an inch and a mile away. If it were close, it would be small. If it were full, it would be gigantic. Looking at it, knowing in the depths of his soul just what the sphere is, Dante has a feeling that it is in truth sizeless, a concept given form that does not exist with a true size because it adapts to whatever size it needs to be given the precise moment, large or small depending on whether it is in or out or safe or disturbed. 

Dante’s never actually seen this particular sphere before. He’s seen ones like it, but never this one. Not even when it was healthy, not to mention when it’s so occluded by corruption that it seems more rot than anything else.

But setting his eyes on it- while hardly feeling anything from it, which scares him, because it’s supposed to be strong and pulsing and alive- he’s certain of what it is: Vergil’s demonic core.

Dante’s never seen his own demonic core, let alone Vergil’s. He’d never actually been sure that they even had one; cores are things he’s seen in other demons, but there are plenty of demon things Dante doesn’t have, and he’s never had any proof half-demons have the same sort of tangible core too. Yet as he stares at it, Dante knows it has to be. Knows of course it is, it couldn’t be anything else, not with the way it resonates with something at the core of his own being, and man is the ‘one soul, two person’ thing his parents had joked about as kids coming back to him because what if they weren’t joking after all? If Vergil actually does die, will that reflect in Dante and-

He shakes his head. This isn’t about him. This is about Vergil.

Vergil, who Dante know can’t deny is absolutely dying. Over and over he keeps thinking he’s seen the worst of it and that yes, this must be the most glaring sign of Vergil’s impending death, this must be the worst things can be, no wonder he’s out of his own mind when he looks like this, is in this condition- but this? There is nothing that could be worse than this. Of that Dante is certain. Certain to the depths of his own core certain. He’s never been more certain of anything in his life, and doubts he’ll ever be more certain of anything again. He can’t say when the rot will kill him, but Vergil’s not going to survive this without outside intervention. He might not survive even if he gets it. Is it even possible to recover from a rot so deep?

To put it simply: if Dante doesn’t figure out some way to remove it, the rot and corruption staining Vergil’s core will consume him whole.

This time Dante really does get up, hands dropping from Vergil so he can pace around the room and take a deep breath without getting sick or flailing like he so desperately wants to but in a way that might hurt Vergil, delicate as he is in his current state.

“Fuck!” Dante shouts to the heavens, hands going to his hair as he practically walks divots into the stone floor. He may not be one to curse out loud most of the time, but by that-god-who-must-hate-him-if-it-exists does this situation deserve it.

Dante punches the wall. It feels like he’s been cheated when no rubble falls when he pulls his fist away.

But of course it wouldn’t. If this room had been built to contain Vergil, there’s no way it would crumble to a non-Triggered Dante. Vergil would’ve long since broken free if that were the case. Provided he’d had any sort of mental wherewithal to do so. Which for all Dante knew had been destroyed the moment he’d fallen into Mundus’ grasp, never to return regardless of whether Dante figures out how to keep his body alive.

“Fuck,” Dante growls. “Fuck.”

He’s not eloquent like Vergil. What would Vergil even say. Foolishness? That had been one of his favorite words from the moment he’d heard it in one of the storybooks their mother had read them as kids. Fool was the perfect word for Dante, Vergil insisted. Someone lacking in understanding and whose existence was a joke. Useless for all but entertainment. A jester (and hah, oh how that would turn on them, betrayed by Jester-Arkham both). Their mother had said that that was mean and he shouldn’t call Dante that, but all that did was stop Vergil from saying it when Eva was near. He never held back when they were alone. Not even atop the Temen-ni-gru. Remember what we used to say? Remember what you used to say? Many things had changed since they last saw each other, but some things stayed painfully the same. 

Dante turns back to Vergil. He stares his new greatest fear in his face. Funny how that can change. 

Slowly, with steps light enough to cross glass without causing a crack, Dante returns to Vergil’s side. He kneels down, keeping a fraction of an inch between them so he doesn’t disturb Vergil more.

The void that is Vergil’s chest is haunting him. The black lines that Dante had seen throughout the rest of Vergil’s body all seem to gather there, thickening and darkening as they approach the void until they too are bottomless pits that seem to consume any and all light that touches them. Dante’s certain that were he to light a torch and bring it over, it wouldn’t illuminate the void in the slightest.

He raises his hand, letting it hover over the void for a minute or so. He doesn’t have any particular plan when he does it; just sort of lets it hang there in case something will happen. What, he doesn’t know. He’s not that creative. Just something.

When the void does not waver and the orb does not shift, Dante comes up with a new tactic.

Maybe the corruption can be drawn out. 

Maybe, just maybe, if he lets it latch onto himself instead, if he provides it with fresh, new energy from which it can draw-

He reaches for the orb. Vergil’s core.

The moment Dante’s fingertips brush against the surface of the void that is Vergil’s chest, Vergil’s back arches, Dante’s flung away from him, and with it Dante's eardrums are blasted to oblivion by a piercing sound so inhuman, so intense, Dante doesn’t think it comes from Vergil's throat at all.

Dante’s body once again slams into the wall- whether by some force Vergil had let out or from a primal instinct in Dante throwing himself away in reaction to the absolute terror he’d felt at a sound he doesn’t know and that should never be made- heart hammering as the body that was moments before practically a corpse overflows with energy and life, sick and corrupted as it is, contorting and convulsing and sending waves of inhuman noise so far removed from even the ungodly screeches of banshees that Dante’s not sure if it’s actually real but his mind goes blank with terror all the same.

Oh no.

Oh no.

He’s made a terrible mistake.

Dante, absolute fucking genius he is, has made a terrible, impulsive, unforgivable mistake.

“Vergil!” Dante chokes once he’s gathered enough of his wits to scramble back towards his brother, hands pressing down to prevent Vergil from thrashing and hurting himself anymore. He babbles as the weight of his idiocy settles in. “Snap out of it! Look, I’m sorry for trying to take what’s yours, I know you’ve always had a stick up your butt about me taking your things and I shouldn’t have gone for it this time, my bad, won’t try it again, cross my heart and hope to die, but d’ya think you can find it in your heart to drop it and forgive me? Please?”

The air is thick with the ash-dust of Vergil’s skin, and blackness oozes from the strange lines to the tiles below him like Vergil had been stabbed, the viscosity that had once disturbed Dante momentarily abandoning the substance in favor of allowing it to rush forth from a cracked and damaged vessel with all the fluidity of an overflowing stream. The sounds permeates his head and drills into his brain, into his heart, into his soul, and if it doesn’t stop soon Dante thinks he might go forever deaf with the sound of the screech forever echoing in unhearing ears.  

Eloquence leaves him. Panic settles in. He can’t joke anymore.

“Vergil, please! I’m sorry! I’m sorry! Stop this! I’m sorry!”

Vergil continues to thrash. Pressing down on his arms isn’t enough to still him, individual fingers and toes twitching as his hips and arms and legs and everything goes every which way, mobile in a way that makes the momentary convulsions of his body following the armor’s electrocutions seem mundane. 

What you are or aren’t supposed to do in case of a seizure be damned, Dante pulls Vergil up into a hug, praying it’ll keep him from moving. (Needing an excuse as to why he’s not looking at Vergil’s face as he has an extremely disturbing seizure, unable to look him in the eye; needing an excuse to say he at least tried to help and didn’t just sit there and watch like he always had as his family was taken away from him, even if all he does is make things worse.) Shoulders pressed into Vergil’s, Dante holds him as tightly and as closely as he can without digging into Vergil’s chest, a feat that is only achieved by a slight arching of his back but he’ll be damned if he ever touches the void again. It wasn’t worth it. Why the hell did he do that? What the hell was he thinking? Clearly the answer is that he wasn’t. Classic brainless Dante; inaction may harm others, but action’s not always great either, and your thoughtlessness has caused Vergil to pay for it in overwhelming agony somehow worse than anything else Mundus had done. Congratulations! Amazing! It’s not Dante’s work if it’s not making something worse!

Nothing else Dante’s tried since finding Vergil has earned the slightest bit of reaction. Sure an arm or a leg might’ve twitched here and there when the shocks sent electricity running through them, but that’s because shocking naturally does that. When electricity courses through a body, things happen. They move. Doesn’t need to be a brain or functioning nervous system behind that as far as Dante knows. But now? The seizure that’s taken hold of Vergil isn’t the contortion of muscles because of a current; it’s as if his body has lost control, a constant stream of inputs even after the switch was flipped that is nearly tearing him apart. Touching the void must’ve done something deep. Something unbearable. Something incomparably agonizing and ruinous and hopefully reversible, please be reversible, if Dante’s permanently broken Vergil then- 

Dante hasn’t the slightest idea how much time has passed when the mind-numbing screeching stops and Vergil goes limp. He just knows that the silence is both a blessing and a curse. 

When he sets Vergil back down, his breaths seem even shallower than before. Though even calling them breaths feels like an exaggeration. By this point they’re so soft Dante half-wonders if his wish for Vergil’s improvement (his fear of Vergil’s true death, the one from which there is surely no returning) has just made him start to purposefully misconstrue the slight movement of air caused by his own hand as a sign of life from an otherwise cold and still lump of flesh. 

When he pulls the Vital Star back out of his coat, he stares at it for a good minute. What is he supposed to do with it? What if putting it on Vergil’s chest causes the same reaction that touching the void had? What if it causes something worse?

Dante sits and thinks. And thinks. And thinks.

(After his last mistake, he’s not rushing in blindly again. Screw his instincts, he’s gonna consider each and every action he takes regarding Vergil very carefully from now on. Like Vergil would. 

When he wasn’t angry, that was. Get him mad and it was like a switch was flipped, the slowly trailing fuse reaching the bomb and exploding everything in your face. Vergil had always had a temper. Sure he’d think things through for an age, but once you pushed him past his breaking point he was off like a rocket and all logic was out the window. Where Dante stopped caring, Vergil stopped seeing. At least Dante knows he’s doing stupid stuff in the moments he does them. From what he remembers of his encounters with Vergil, it had always seemed like Vergil only realized his faults in hindsight.)

Eventually, he settles on putting the star on Vergil’s stomach, just below where the void ends.

Touching the lines hadn’t seemed to hurt Vergil, even if it had creeped Dante out. So as long as the Vital Star doesn’t touch the void itself, it should be fine. He hopes.

Then he waits.

And waits.

And waits.

And bites his lip, because if this doesn’t work he thinks he’ll scream-

But then the Vital Star begins to dissipate, ever so slowly, absorbed into Vergil’s pale-as-death-and-then-some skin. 

The spread of sparks is a sight to behold. Normally vital stars just pop and heal Dante in an instant. There one moment, and gone the next. But whatever the corruption that stains Vergil is, it slows the absorption rate to something able to be followed and worth watching. Thousands of tiny green sparks spread out along Vergil’s abdomen, fireflies dancing up and across his skin before seeping down into bits not yet stained dark. Fascinatingly the star retains its shape until its complete dissolution, the drain starting at its own core before rolling out in waves to its edges which only start to fade when the rest of the star has gone. What skin the star-sparks touch momentarily gains its green glow before fading into something just the slightest bit pinker than it had been before, still not healthy but healthier, which in this case feels like the most Dante can ask for. 

When the last of its green glow has gone out, Dante breathes a sigh of relief. The cracks in Vergil’s skin may not have been mended and the blackness may not have faded out of sight, but the star didn’t hurt him and also didn’t outright reject him, so Dante would call that a victory. Small or no.

More waiting doesn’t result in anything useful. Vergil’s breaths don’t speed up and his body doesn’t gain any warmth. No miracle panacea jumps out from the cracks in the stone. No medicine woman knocks on the door selling her wares. Nothing changes but Dante’s topsy-turvy emotional state as he goes through various states of unease.

“Alright then,” Dante breaths, “I can work with this.”

The Vital Star might not have done much, but that doesn’t mean it’s done nothing. It might not have made any visible changes to one looking at Vergil from the outside, but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t working internally. He may not be able to see any difference, but that doesn’t mean none was made. Maybe it’s just working from the inside out. Mending rotting organs and distorted muscles. Trying to create blood to supplement ichor. Healing Vergil in a way that Dante might not be able to immediately sense, but that’s helping and could continue to help if Dante delivered more supplies to help.

It’s progress. Slow and small, but progress.

Now to find more.

He rises to his feet, looking to the door

His most immediate plan is to find Vergil something to eat. Vital Stars would be nice, but likely rarer than normal sustenance. However, to find anything he’d need to leave Vergil, and abandoning Vergil in a room naked and unprotected sits wrong with him, so in the end he tugs off his coat and lays it over Vergil’s body, pulling off his vest once he’s gotten Vergil situated so he can fold it over and place it underneath Vergil’s head to serve as a pillow. It isn’t the most comfortable way to leave things, that’s for certain, but it’ll have to do for the moment. He’s killed everything in the immediate vicinity, and he’s certain he’ll feel it if anyone else approaches, so Vergil should be fine if Dante leaves him alone for an hour or two. Probably. Hopefully. 

(Dante’s doing a lot of that lately.

Existing in uncertainties. Hoping with more desire-driven-reason than logic-powered-probability. 

Vergil would hate it. Vergil liked planning everything down to the minute. Sometimes even to the second. He’d never liked being spontaneous like Dante did. Sure Vergil would be spontaneous if you got him mad enough to break from his routine, but that didn’t make him like it, it just meant that Vergil would snap when pushed to his limit and as much as Dante sometimes found it funny to push him there, teasing and prodding to provoke a reaction ‘cause it was fun, he almost always regretted it in the end. 

Right about now, he’s back to wishing for Vergil to scream and punch him, if only because that would mean he was alive enough to react at all.)

“I’ll be back in a bit,” Dante says. If Vergil’s in there somewhere, if there’s some part of his brain that’s aware of the situation he’s in, trapped and unable to move but able to hear, he wants to make sure Vergil knows what Dante’s doing and that he’s not about to leave him behind.

(Like he had before, all those years ago, when Vergil had fallen and Dante had merely watched, too shocked to follow). 

He’s not just abandoning Vergil. His departure has a purpose; it’s to help Vergil, not harm. And he’s coming back. It’ll be fine. “I’m gonna try to sniff out some food for you. Can’t promise it’ll be five-star dining, but anything’s good on an empty stomach, and you’re all skin and bones so I just know you haven’t been eating right.”

No response. As always. Why should Dante have expected any different?

No opposition given to his actions, with a wave Dante leaves the room, throwing one last glance at his unmoving brother before setting off to see what kind of supplies he can find.

Chapter Text

Ransacking the kitchen a second time proves just as pointless as the first. Dante isn’t sure whether the kitchen’s just there for show, whether it was picked clean by the guard demons he took out earlier, or whether it just hasn’t been restocked in a long while, but there’s nothing of note in any case so he walks away empty handed and empty stomached. There isn’t even a handful of grapes or grape-adjacent pickings for him to sample. And here he’d taken Mundus for the type to lounge while having his servants feed him fruit and fan him with palm fronds. 

He considers looking elsewhere for food, trying to scavenge something that doesn’t look like it’ll leave him with food poisoning or worse, but the plants outside the castle all seem too sketchy to try. If there was meat available he could go for it, but the only ‘meat’ he can sense anywhere nearby feels exactly like demons, and well…

Demons…have never looked appealing to Dante in the food sense of the word. 

(Not in a way he’d like to admit, at any rate.)

Most of them look too gooey, too exoskeleton-y, or like they’d be tough and gamey. Not exactly the sort of mouthwatering cut you’d find on any classy menu, or even the kind of bad but technically edible stuff you’ll find at the third chain store in just as many blocks made by minimum wage workers being supplemented by tips that would probably rather be literally anywhere else if their livelihood wasn’t tied to serving dirt cheap food to dirt poor people. 

Now, Dante will eat just about anything if someone serves it to him. He’s not an ungracious guest. Someone gets him something he hates but serves it with genuine care? He’ll scarf it down. The guy who made a 3 A.M. pizza somehow forgot the sauce so it’s just bread, a bit of oil, and cheese? A bummer, but better than nothing. That one time Freddi was clearly getting over a cold and must not have had much of a sense of smell if any because the ice cream in Dante’s sundae had clearly spoiled at some point, probably during the power outage that hit much of the city that Dante figured had knocked out power to the mini fridge Freddi only kept a few things in, Dante’s ice cream included? God it had been horrible, but Dante had eaten it anyway, if only because Fredi’d been so worried after Dante hadn’t shown up in almost two months because he’d been away on one of his longer jobs, and he felt bad letting the guy down. He hadn’t even known ice cream could spoil like that. Milk, he knew. But ice cream? Wasn’t meant to smell like that. Dante had had nightmares after that.

When it comes to things that aren’t gifts- things that will not bring anyone any pleasure by Dante consuming them, things he hasn’t been given or hasn’t been asked or expected to eat- he’s much more picky. There’s a reason a good eighty, maybe eighty-five percent of his diet is pizza, tomato juice, and strawberry sundaes: Laziness. Unoriginality, or a lack of adventure, even, though mostly in the culinary sense. Dante’s pretty sure his taste buds don’t actually match a normal human’s, and he’d much rather stick to things he knows he likes than waste time, money, and good fun trying things he doesn’t. He hasn’t grown tired of his favorites yet. If he ever does, then figuring out a new ten-year-sustaining meal will be that Dante’s problem. Present Dante’s gonna chill with his faves for a while yet. No point in worrying about the future if it ain’t a problem now. Grief felt in advance is grief doubled, and he doesn’t need to et himself into grief debt on top of everything else. Future him’s problems are for future him, and Dante’s got more than enough on his plate to deal with in the now.

As for demons and their culinary properties? 

Dante’s never had anyone expect him to take a bite out of one. Not anyone he wanted to please, at any rate. He’s met a few folks who thought he was feral in the kind of way he might chow down on anything that looked at him funny but well, he doesn’t like that sort of person and he’s not much of a people pleaser anyway, so he’s never given enough of a damn to try to impress them and he sure as hell didn’t try to impress him by doing that. All that’s to say Dante’s never had a reason to munch down on this demon or that. Never intentionally gotten any limbs, blood, organs, or other bits and bobs in his mouth, and has never had plans to. Nor does he particularly want to do it now. Because again; they just don’t look good. 

(And going back a bit, because despite all of Dante’s claims about living in the present he’s a creature of the past who’s unable to tear himself away from it as ambivalent and uncaring as he may like to appear for the most part, water off the back of a duck who’s pouring it onto the poor little bug that is Dante reclining on a leaf swept out onto the river that’s gonna drown in it on the sooner side of sooner or later, not having intentionally consumed any demon bits doesn’t mean it’s never happened at all. It just means he wasn’t trying to get a chunk of demon flesh down the gullet while cheering in excitement at the latest guy he’d cut down, or that he didn’t consciously lick his lips after having gotten a nice warm spray from the chunky demon that’d charged at him, or that he spat the finger out within a millisecond of processing that he was for some most definitely godforsaken reason chewing on while mulling over the fact that his client had probably been the one to summon the demons he’d been hired to deal with in the first place. 

Dante didn’t eat demons on purpose. Rephrase: He purposefully didn’t eat demons.

He wishes that means he never did it at all. Alas, his brain and body don’t always agree, and even then both seem to be two-toned and at odds, so things happen as much as he wishes they wouldn’t and there’s not much to do about it other than gripe and whine and pretend it never happened in the first place in order to hold onto the sense of superiority slash necessary elements of existence that he holds himself to.

Humans don’t eat demons. Dante’s a human. Thus Dante doesn’t eat demons, simple as that. If he manifests it hard enough, holds to it long enough, maybe it’ll get hammered into his unconscious slash demon side and it’ll actually become true. 

It remains to be seen. Has never worked for him before.

But maybe one day it will. Maybe. 

Probably not. 

But maybe.)

There’s also the whole matter of cannibalism to deal with. Dante may only be half demon, but he wouldn’t eat humans either and he’s half that too, so he’s not comfortable with the whole thing and will pass for now. 

Besides, how’s he supposed to know which demons are safe for consumption? What if they’re poisonous? Venomous? He thinks poisonous is the one that’s a problem with eating something. Could be both. Eating venom is probably just as bad a getting slashed with it after all. And what if demon meat doesn’t agree with him? What if it makes him sick even if it doesn’t poison him in the more technical sense? He doesn’t want to end up leaning over a bush outside regretting his life choices whether or not he has someone to care for. Dante’s only been sick to his stomach a handful of times in his life, but it’s not something he wants to repeat. It’s too risky to try. Dante’s not starving and while Vergil looks starved there are ways to supplement a lack of actual meals, so for now, Dante’s going to put the meat option aside. He’ll figure it out. Maybe he’ll even find a way home before his stomach starts growling. Then he’ll be able to treat himself and Vergil to all the pizza and ice cream in the world! Freddi’s has never sounded so good. 

Though…now that he thinks about it, he’s pretty sure you’re not supposed to give actually starved people heavy foods. It can overwhelm them or something. Make ‘em sicker than they already are. 

Ha. Wouldn't that be something. If Dante somehow excised the corruption and got Vergil out of Hell only for him to die because of something as simple as sugar shock, it would be the worst joke ever. 

He’ll probably hunt down some chicken broth or something instead. Might even get some bones to make bone broth himself. Their mom made it for them sometimes as kids, and Dante remembers her going on about how there was no better cure for sickness than chicken noodle soup, which she’d kept an abundance of in order to appease her boys who freaked out every time she so much as got the sniffles.

(Briefly, he entertains the thought of trying to make a bone broth with demon bones. The castle does have a kitchen, weird as it is. What would demon bone broth even look like? Demon blood blackens when it’s exposed to air too long. Would it look like feeding Vergil sludge? Oil? Would it be a nice light brown like the chicken bone broth their mother used to make them was? Would it be red? Dissipate before Dante could do anything useful with it? 

What would his own bone broth look like?

Would it look human? Demon? A mix? Neither?

Morbid curiosity holds him tight, but it doesn’t get the best of him. He’s got other things to deal with. 

…He’s also got organs and bones he shouldn’t. Things that are missing. Things that don’t belong. He doesn’t know enough about ‘standard’ demon biology to know if they come from that side, or if his amalgamation of an inhuman human body started doing its own thing when fed code it couldn’t understand. Demons are too varied to make any good conclusions on. Since the parents who might’ve had an explanation are dead and buried and then apparently fucking nonconsensually exhumed and then reburied- or otherwise unavailable, he supposes he’ll never know.)

Still. A lack of food-food doesn’t mean he’s completely out of luck when it comes to getting Vergil back in shape. He’ll just have to make a substitute.

Vital Stars.

He’s got a whole train of thought here, front manned, cars full, caboose stocked. 

Vergil had absorbed that Vital Star earlier, right? And Vital Stars heal? Restore you to how you’re meant to be? Produce energy from nowhere- or from themselves, really, it’s not nowhere, but it’s also not from you, the user, so it’s kind of like nowhere if you ignore all the orbs you have to trade to buy one, assuming you didn’t get lucky enough to stumble upon one while running around like a chicken with your head cut off or a very astute/obsessive explorer- to make you better? Well, food’s something that gives you energy too. Produces energy from outside yourself in a form you can absorb it in. Sure, food has vitamins and stuff in it that your body uses to make things work, but Dante’s pretty sure healing also relies on that sort of stuff and Vital Stars have healed him up even when he’s pretty sure his own body has nothing left and when he hasn’t eaten in a few days, so maybe Vital Stars can be a substitute for food too. A temporary swap. They definitely don’t compete in the the taste category, leaving Dante feeling both like he’s choked down a mouthful of dust and had some of the yucky-tasting medicine a well-meaning, completely ignorant foster-parent of his had forced down his mouth once when she’d discovered he had a temperature of 104 degrees- which now that he thinks about it, was really irresponsible of her, because he’s pretty sure humans can get brain damage if left that hot that long, so really what she should’ve done was bring him straight to the hospital instead of shoving cheap cold medicine down his throat, so really she might not have been that well-meaning after all, especially when he considers all the other stuff she said and did to him that he’s not going to unpack right now- so he’d never down a Vital Star ‘cause he was hungry if he could eat real food instead, but you’ve gotta work with what you’ve got, and right now he’s coming up dry on the food front, so Vital Stars it’ll have to be.

…If he can find any. Or a Divinity Statue to trade at. They’ve been kind of sparse during his time down here, and not having access to one would really put a damper on his plans.

It really is odd. His exploration of Mundus’ Castle hadn’t revealed any statues to him even though Mallet Island had so many, so Dante’d assumed Mundus’ Hell-based castle would be the same. The Temen-ni-gru had its fair share of them too. Dante’s always associated them with Hell. That they’d be absent when he finally made it in doesn’t seem right.

Though to be fair, both locations were either inhabited or constructed by humans at one point, whereas as far as Dante knows humans never made their homes in Hell, so maybe the Divinity Statues were human constructs that wouldn’t exist somewhere they’d never willingly resided. 

How or why they’d make something like the Divinity Statues he doesn’t know; Lady told him the things had never reacted to her presence while going through the tower and the voice and power Dante had always felt emanating from the things didn’t seem like something humans should’ve been able to create, but maybe they were made by an alliance between humans and demons that meant that while they were made by human hands, only demons could take advantage of them, and maybe the humans of two thousand years ago were just more powerful and spiritually inclined than the humans of today. They did build the Temen-ni-gru after all. With or without demonic help. Their pantheons were also far more expansive than the most popular religions of the modern time. Maybe the gods were real once, but had diminished as they lost believers. Maybe the Goddess of Fortune had been a real being once worshiped by men who managed to capture her image and power in statues scattered through demonic monuments, where some sort of demonic resonance kept them powered even as knowledge of their goddess faded from the public consciousness.

…or maybe Dante’s making mad rambles as he tries to think of next steps, delaying the inevitable crisis that will come when he runs up against a wall.

He has his priorities straight. He’s fine. Doing great. Don’t press him on it.

Checking in on Vergil reveals there haven’t been any changes, so he grabs what he needs from his coat, shoves them into whatever pockets he can and waves goodbye to the rest, and heads on out. Though the direction he’d come from had been empty, there’re plenty of ways he can go, and if he’s lucky, maybe, just maybe one will have what he needs. Surely he’ll come across a Divinity Statue sooner or later. Right?

If only.

A few hours of wandering the wastes reveals nothing. No statues, no roads that look like they might lead somewhere special, nothing. Wherever the Divinity Statues are hiding remains just as much a mystery to him as it was the moment he’d stepped into the realm. Disappointment feels too light a word.

He’d found plenty of demons to be sure- had lopped off some heads, chopped off some tails, put some energy bullets in some brains, and crushed the skulls of things that seemed like they couldn’t possibly have had anything in there based on the way they were acting and how shamefully easy those fights had been- but all it had won him was a few minor distractions and a bunch of red orbs good only for bartering with the elusive statues he still couldn’t find. 

He heads back to the castle to check on Vergil. His dear darling not-quite-dead brother looks the same as Dante left him, pale and still and ashy. Ashen. It’s like Dante’d only stepped out for a minute to check the weather. Though with the condition of his skin, Dante probably wouldn’t be able to tell if he started gathering dust. As he is, Vergil fits right in with the mustier parts of the castle.

That he’s safe and doesn’t look worse is at least something. 

Dante heads out once more.

Another six trips. One for each cardinal and intercardinal left, assuming he came from the south and headed southwest on the last trip, which he has no real reason to assume, but he’s gotta figure out some way to orient himself, and that’s good enough for him.

Still no luck. 

Not with the Divinity Statues, and not with Vergil. 

He’s killed a lot of demons though. The jittery high of red orb overload has hit him again. He thinks it’s making his anxiety worse. His brain’s visited lots of bad places at this point. Too much time spent looking for things and not enough time spent actually doing or fighting things. Too much time thinking. The downtime’s not good for him. Never has been. Especially not when he’s so stocked up on orbs he’s pretty sure he could cash em all out to have whatever exceedingly hidden goddess statue’s closest to him teach him each and every skill available from the newly found Devil Arm that he has not, in fact, newly found, because everything he’s met so far has been disappointingly weak and disappointingly disappointing, so he doesn't even have a new toy to occupy himself with. At this point he’d probably even take a chatty one, just to get out of his own head. The buzz is making him antsy in a not fun way. Feels like a sugar high. Or caffeine high. Or another high Dante’s never hopped on ‘cause you’ve gotta get to humanly-fatal levels for him to feel much of anything, and dante’s never had the spare cash needed to achieve that. So a something high but more murdery. It’s not as fun as it sounds.

He’s really hoping he finds a Divinity Statue to dump the orbs at sometime soon. Both for Vergil’s sake and his own.

Seven more trips. 

He goes farther on these ones. Tries to zig zag a little to cover more ground. Finds two structures along the way; empties them of their residents and discovers nothing useful inside.

It’s maddening. By the fifth trip, the orbs that fall from his prey (victims, his mind supplies, traitor that it is, to which he replies that they are enemies , of course they’re enemies, not victims, what the hell is he doing projecting innocence on a bunch of hellspawn that are the ones attacking him even if they seem like the lowest of fodder right about now, pathetic little things even most human hunters wouldn’t have much trouble with that go down like flies with hardly a chance to defend themselves) seem to have slowed in the rate at which they fly to him. By the seventh they hardly come to him at all. 

Do orbs have a limit? A point at which they just won’t come anymore?

Will Dante find that limit? The possibility both excites and scares him. 

Demons don’t approach the castle, but they do rush toward him as he makes his trips, so at least Dante can say they’re somewhat entertaining. If he were actually aiming for orbs and not the market at which they could be used, he’d love the attention. Seeing as he’s at maximum capacity, full stock, filled to bursting in a way he’s never been before, the demons’ lives and deaths just go to waste. 

At this point his memories of the Divinity Statues feel almost like a fever dream.

He’s sure he’s mowed through hundreds of demons at this point. It’s been a lot of trips, especially when you consider just how many he’d plowed through to make it from Mundus to the castle in the first place. Some of them are dead as soon as Dante realizes they’re there while others take a fair few hits, but the stream seems never ending, and Dante wonders just how many demons live down here anyway. What’s their population density? What kind of survival instincts do these guys have? Are they fighting for someone, are they protecting their territory, or do their little demon brains see/feel a potential enemy and throw them out their regardless of their chance of survival? 

Chances are he’ll never find out. Not like he’s gonna ask any of ‘em while they’re throwing themselves on his sword or getting their brains bashed in by his gauntlets. Not big conversationalists, these ones. 

Dante’s not feeling like much of a conversationalist either.

(This should be ringing warning bells in his mind.

It’s not.

Mostly he’s just tired, in the mental way more than physical, though one’s bleeding into the other and only time will tell if the energy supplied by Hell’s ambient cache will last forever or if he’ll eventually collapse from overexerting himself for someone who can’t do very much of anything at all.)

Not that it’s important. So long as they keep throwing themselves at him, he’ll keep fighting them, and if he has to cut down a thousand demons to find what he needs, he’ll do it. It’s what he’s always done. 

Dante spends a while with Vergil on one of his returns, trying to take stock of everything that’s wrong with him so he can be sure of what might change between this trip and the next.

As he waits, he mentally catalogs each and every imperfection on Vergil’s body; every crevice, every patch of cracked skin, every small cut, every eerily-lively black line, every odd lump where the newly-resized bones hadn’t seemed to have set quite right, every bit of evidence that Dante’s horrible at protecting anything of value. 

Vergil’s body as it is post Vital Star becomes a perfect image in his mind. If he closes his eyes he can name each injury in a heartbeat, map them out without a moment’s hesitation. He needs that kind of memorization to be sure Vergil is making progress. (He needs it to be his carrot on a stick, to be proof that Vergil is improving and that Dante hasn’t only ruined him, but that Dante has contributed to his recovery whenever that comes to pass, eventually, in a future that Dante’s trying oh-so hard to hold onto).

Eventually something has to change. 

Vergil, however, remains the same as he has been. Hours and days after finding him, he hasn’t changed a bit.

He’s still lying there, falling to pieces and nude save Dante’s coat, and the sight is a pretty sad one. Depressing and pathetic.

When Dante spends the next hour or two wandering around the castle in search of an outfit, he tells himself it’s a good use of his time. He’s being productive. Vergil would hate to be left naked on the floor and would absolutely flip if he woke up like that. Dante wants his coat back too.

He’d say the outfit he comes up with is pretty good. Either Mundus enforced a clothing rule for the humanoids in his castle or he surrounded himself with willing fashionistas, because Dante ends up with a nice set of a shirt, pants, boots, jacket, and even gloves that fit well enough to pass. They also look close enough to something Vergil would wear, shades of silver, black, and a silver that’s almost blue, so he gives himself bonus points for that.

If only he could get a second opinion.

Dante hits the orb max. 

It’s…indescribable.

Feels like there’s knowledge brimming at his fingertips. What knowledge, he doesn’t know. That comes from the Divinity Statues he still can’t fucking find, doesn’t it? What even is it that he almost kind of knows? What knowledge is lurking just beneath the surface, whispering that it’s there but not revealing what, exactly, it is? Some sorta leftover from the demons he got the orbs from? Combat knowledge? Memories? Desires? Feelings? ‘Cause if that’s the case, that’s creepy and he doesn’t want it and he’s not gonna think about it because at this point thinking is spiraling and both aren’t very good. 

What gets him is that the max doesn’t even stop him from absorbing orbs, it’s just that he doesn’t feel like he’s getting any more anymore even though they’re definitely still slamming into him. 

Honestly the absence of that little rush when he absorbs him is almost worse than the constant bombardment. That sort of horror in knowing that something’s happened to you but nothing’s changed. The feeling that something should be different but isn’t. The addition of zero which says that a process is occurring even if there are no visible results and all that jazz, except it’s that he’s adding several dozen at a time and ending up with nothing to show except his continually cracking sanity. 

He doesn’t like it. A monster should feel like a monster. 

Not that Dante’s a monster. He’s just a demon. Half. And ironically he’s spent a lot of his life wishing he didn’t feel that way, but not feeling it when you’re still being it is almost worse, because then it goes into the background where it could be associated with his standard state which has always been and has always been meant to be his humanity, and a demonic thing being like his human thing is very very bad wrong bad. 

The orbs keep coming. With every demon popped.

He just doesn’t feel it when their candles are snuffed and their lifeblood flows into him.

God he hates it.

Fuck he needs to find a statue before the constant zero addition drives him mad.

He tries spicing things up. Making it fun. Plays with a few demons, starts throwing out quips the vast majority of them probably don't understand and that a frustrating percent of the ones that do understand don’t react to. Unfortunately this makes his fun not very fun at all. 

When demons throw back quips of their own, he loves it. When they get all mad and charge him or call him names, he loves it. When they start making grand speeches of their own…that one’s kind of more hit or miss depending on the situation, sometimes interesting and sometimes boring, but it can be good. 

But these guys? He’s the Son of Sparda to them and that’s about it. Most demons- even the ones capable of speech- hardly react to him at all. Most that do spin it to be about Sparda.

He’s getting real fuckin’ tired of hearing Sparda’s name. 

He’s getting tired of a lot of things.

But what is he to do except continue to mow his way through the underworld in search of a miracle cure for Vergil? Not like Dante has an easy way out. He hasn’t seen any portals in his journeys and he doesn’t know how to make a portal on this side of the barrier either, so he’s trapped either way. At least with Vergil he has something to do. He just wishes there was more variety to it. More interest. When the fun things are no longer fun that means things are really, really bad, and Dante’s long since drifted past that. 

Eventually, Dante gets an idea:

The red orbs he’s got stocked up are affecting him.Whether or not the newly added orbs are provoking some sort of reaction, his baseline has been affected and that’s something to note. 

He’s got the jitters as an easy symptom, but he’s also pretty sure his heart rate and temperature are up, and the fullness he’s experiencing kind of registers in his head like he’s got too much blood. Sort of. It’s hard to describe; it’s like there’s an extra pressure dancing through his veins, running and rushing through every inch of him as it fills him with a power and presence he normally doesn’t have. He wouldn’t exactly call the feeling good, per se, but it’s not bad, and if he had to place it somewhere on the affinity scale it would probably be on the more positive side of neutral, even if it’s not a way he wants to feel forever. And if it’s good for him, then isn’t there a chance it might be good for Vergil? Good in the demonic way, at least. Debatable on the humanity front. Since Dante associates humanity with sanity it’s probably bad, but Dante’s not a human doctor and he doesn’t have any sort of medical training to put to use so conjecture is all he has.

He still hasn’t found any Divinity Statues. It’s been days at the very least. Maybe a few weeks. No sun cycle means Dante’s perception of time is wack and without sleep it’s only getting worse, so it’s hard to say anything more specific than a few days minimum, hopefully a month max. He’s banking on it being about a week and a half. (It probably isn’t). But with all that time gone, at this point he’s just wasting energy and red orbs searching for something that doesn’t seem to be there. So why not put the red orbs to good use another way? Or try, at any rate.

Dante can’t use the orbs for anything right now, but they’re making him feel more lively, sort of, so what if he uses it as fuel for another engine? Gives ‘em to Vergil instead? To a guy running on empty to the point there aren’t really even fumes?

He returns to the castle with a plan. 

He starts by kneeling in front of Vergil and holding one of Vergil’s hands between the two of his. Physical contact may or may not be necessary for this, but so long as he doesn’t accidentally crush Vergil’s hand or cause his fingers to crumble to pieces while he grasps them, he doesn’t think it’ll hurt. Touch is used for a lot of rituals. The theory he’s running with is half-baked at best, but part of that relies on trying to convince Vergil’s body to accept something of Dante, and forming a physical connection between them might be what’s necessary to remind Vergil’s flesh that two were once one and that what’s Dante’s has always been Vergil’s too, so it should take what he’s offering and process it accordingly. Sorry to Vergil and his touch aversion, but some things are necessary, and this is one.

Step two is the matter of transferring the orbs over. Seeing Dante’s never so much as heard of this being possible, much less studied it or tried it himself, he’s got approximately a whisper of a hint of a faint idea about how this is going to go down.

When interacting with the Divinity Statues, it is not, and has never been, a matter of visibly extracting the orbs from himself and then physically handing them over. He’s never seen an orb after he’s absorbed it. It’s just there in him or it isn’t. The transfer has always been a spiritual thing. A conceptual thing. Something he can’t really put into words because it’s so natural that it just happens in the same way that you inherently know how to blink or move your limbs. But much in the way of moving your legs, just thinking ‘okay leg, you move now’ doesn’t actually make your leg move, and just thinking ‘okay orbs, you go into Vergil now’ doesn’t make them go into Vergil. There’s some sort of extra connection that needs to go on for your leg to move. You will it to do it and so it does. Dante’s trying to will the orbs to go into Vergil, but with no draw on the other side like that which comes from the Divinity Statue, nothing happens. Even if he doesn’t ever see the orbs fly out of him when he interacts with the Statues, Dante does feel them leave himself, and right now he’s not feeling anything. Just full. As he holds Vergil’s hands in his own, he does his best to remember the feeling he gets when he interacts with a Divinity Statue and feeds it the orbs he’s absorbed over his last bout of demon hunting, but the feeling simply doesn’t come. Nothing does. 

Except frustration. And maybe a little disappointment for flavor. Dante’s getting tired of the taste.

He keeps at it for a little while, shifting where he’s sitting as if holding onto Vergil’s knee or hand or forehead is going to do any more good than his hand. 

It doesn’t. 

Of course it doesn’t. 

It’s time for Dante’s bungee cord of a personality to crash back down again and for the cynicism to come roaring back with a vengeance, because Dante’s genius idea is a dumb idea and this isn’t working and why in the world did he even try?

You can’t transfer red orbs from person to person. Not without murder, at any rate. And he’s not going to kill himself over Vergil in hopes that it could maybe possibly potentially give Vergil all the orbs Dante has stocked up on, which may or may not even help fix the problem Dante still doesn’t know the extent of. Because if it doesn’t work then they’ll both be dead and nothing will be achieved, and Dante’s not so worn down as to go for that so he doesn’t.

(Yet.)

A long while passes. 

Dante goes on a few more trips looking for orbs, and despite his earlier admission of defeat, still takes a few more shots at getting said orbs to magically transfer to his brother, just in case he was going about it wrong.

It doesn’t work.

Vergil remains as he has. Dante gets increasingly frustrated. Orbs go nowhere. It’s an effort which is fruitless in all respects save worsening Dante’s mood, which isn’t a very pleasant fruit to harvest at all.

Eventually he gives it up. 

This isn’t happening. If transferring orbs between people is somehow possible, it’s beyond Dante, and with no Divinity Statues anywhere in Hell as far as he knows, there’s nothing for him to hook up to to try to remember the feeling. Either he’ll find a statue and trade his abundance of orbs to it for a Vital Star that Vergil can use, or he won’t, he’ll stay jittery, and Vergil will stay cold and silent. Same as he was. Same as Dante is now. Except maybe with a mental breakdown and its lasting effects thrown into the mix. 

(And again, the statues’ absence seems odd- he always thought they came from Hell and he’s pretty sure there were Divinity Statues in that weird space he got transported to from the Temen-ni-gru, but maybe that was Limbo, or maybe it was just another circle of Hell and this one is Divinity-barren, either because there had never been any at all, or because Mundus had rid his territory of them. Mundus seems like the kind of guy who’d destroy ‘false’ idols. He’d probably only tolerated them in Mallet island so Dante would get strong enough to be an entertaining fight. 

Too bad for him Dante got strong enough to win.

Too bad for Dante, he’d been stingy with his orbs and hadn’t stocked up on more Vital Stars at the last statue he’d encountered, assuming he wouldn’t need them.

He’s regretting a lot of life choices right now. Dante and his big mouth and big head. What a win streak he’s on. Maybe he should just quit while he’s ahead.)

A few more trips. An equal number of disappointments.

It’s just Dante and Vergil again. Dante and an unresponsive not-corpse.

Dante falls back onto the floor with a whole-body sigh, not bothering to brace himself and just continuing the sigh when the impact knocks some of the wind out of him. The impact isn’t enough to make him bleed, but he almost wishes it would, if only to feel something more than the numbness that has seeped into his limbs as the realization of his helplessness sinks deep into his bones, and the hum of orbs that hasn’t decreased so much as gotten so normal he doesn’t really notice it anymore unless he actively thinks about it. 

“Maybe this is what Hell truly is,” he muses, staring up at the ceiling with his arms spread out in a T. “It’s not just the creepy never-setting always-setting Sun or the acid water or the lava shoots or the demons or the skin-crawly feeling that follows you everywhere. It’s the realization of your greatest fears. The psychological horror the thrillers just can’t match.”

It’s the whole, forcing you to watch your brother die on you yet again, the fourth death of its kind, unique from the rest in which there was a degree of uncertainty from the absence of a body you could no longer see, except unlike all the other times with bombastic fights or world-ending fires, this time it’s just them, nothing pressing going on, no enemies breathing down their necks, no fear to drag them to another place, no obvious impending time limits, just them- and instead of one explosive moment in which the world seems to come to an end or everything between them comes to a head, it’s the long, drawn out, depressing horror of bearing witness to someone dear to you fading away as you’re condemned to just watch, completely helpless, completely useless, despite anything and everything you might try to do to stop it. 

It’s about hope and despair. 

It’s about a solution seeming so close, and yet unreachable. It’s about getting halfway there and burning yourself out only to be forced to acknowledge the burn has won you nothing. It’s about compromising your ideals for the promise that the end justifies the means before realizing the end you’re aiming for is not one you can ever achieve.

It’s a mental thing. 

Where physical pain and exhaustion were what usually got advertised when depicting the horrors of Hell, it’s the emotional weight of it all that will cause Dante to fall. The loneliness when two bodies are present but only one person’s really there. He just knows it.

Caught up as he is in uncharacteristic melancholy, Dante doesn’t notice the intruder to this private, terrible moment until they begin to speak.

“Well aren’t you poetic,” a familiar voice calls out from the doorway. 

Dante’s on his feet in an instant, Rebellion in his hand and his body between Vergil and their new companion.

There is a threat that has approached him unnoticed. A demon which can speak is a demon which can fight- and fight well- not some mere minion or fodder that will explode the instant Dante cuts into them. A being with the capacity for speech is, in most cases, a being with the capacity to think and plot and scheme and do severe harm. A demon which can play. Torment. Strategize. Optimize. Identify what is weak and go for it first, to eliminate that thing which will make its opponent unravel.

An intruder is a thing worthy of panic.

Except in the case of the intruder who approaches him now, relaxed and almost amused until the moment his own quick reaction seems to send a spark of alarm through her.

Dante looks over his new companion and processes what he sees.

A blonde woman, lips red and eyes a sparkling blue-green. The plumpness of her cheeks and the jut of her nose are familiar to him, carved into his memories via trauma and reinforced by frequent examination of the photograph he’s held onto for twenty years. 

The intruder isn’t that woman. 

The woman of his memories is long dead.

But Dante knows the one before him all the same, and at his recognition the panic begins to abate, at least in part if not yet in its entirety. 

It takes him a good few seconds to relax to a point where his hair no longer stands on end and his trigger no longer feels a hair’s breadth away. Even then he doesn’t totally loosen, shoulders still tense and muscles still tight as he stares at Trish where she stands just a few feet away, one eyebrow raised and a hand on her hip. The timbre of her voice had sent shivers down his spine, the slight wrongness to it- the unfamiliar tone to a familiar voice whose last words had played on repeat over and over and over in his mind for two decades now, over two thirds of his life- having set him off.

“What are you doing here?” he asks, blinking as if to dispel a mirage. Hearing another human voice- or, not human voice, not really, she’s a demon playing at human, but it’s human enough to count after the cacophony that was hundreds upon hundreds of garbling demons choking out their swears or death cries- is jarring. 

Trish scoffs. She’d quickly shaken off her surprise at Dante’s brief jump to attention and had begun to lean on the entryway, body language casual and unconcerned. A professional in nonchalance. “I live here. Or used to, at any rate. With Mundus gone for now, my plan was to grab my things and get out of here. You…made some good points. I’ve had enough of being his pawn.”

Dante blinks. Then blinks again. 

One by one, oddities about the situation begin to pile up. 

She might not be Eva, but-

“Wait. Didn’t you die?!”

First Vergil who was dead- who’d died on him twice, no, thrice- isn’t dead (except he sort of is), and now Trish? Who, unlike Vergil, he had seen and cradled the apparently- not -corpse of, which he distinctly remembers had not been breathing and had not had a beating heart? 

If it wasn’t for the fact that he’d never heard his mom speak with that kind of lilt to her voice or dress that kind of way, he’d have thought his dead mother had popped up in Hell to crank the torment up to eleven. Because why not? If Hell was going to cash in on the dead brother trauma, why not cash in on the dead mother trauma too? Maximum misery, maximum guilt. A recipe for success when going for the mental anguish strike. Just pull out the big guns and get blasting. If you wanted to break a Dante, there was no better way.

Trish’s brow creases like she’s hurt, eyebrows coming together and little wrinkles forming at the top of her nose. It would be such a human expression if it weren’t for the certain unnaturalness to it, a certain inhumanness, from the way her skin seems just a little too smooth and her wrinkles a little too even. The twinge to it tells him Trish’s feelings are a little more complex than simple hurt. Unfamiliar. That she’s not used to the emotion. That, or she just hasn’t mastered the art of mimicking human expressions yet. It’s hard to say what demons normally feel or how they show it when Dante hasn’t tried very hard to befriend any.

(Including but not limited to himself!)

When Trish speaks again, there’s an uncertainty to her voice. Hesitation. Did his accusation manage to strike something in her? Hit the heart that he’d once accused her of lacking?  

“I…almost did, yes. Or maybe I did die. I don’t know. It was-” she sucks in a breath and shakes her head, the crease deepening. Now she seems truly disturbed, and Dante can’t help but feel bad for her even if showing it is oddly difficult right now. Normally he’s a great actor, but the whole Vergil and being stuck in Hell thing has done a number on his own nerves, and he’s struggling to put up the normal happy-go-lucky face he likes to wear around others. He’s not sure whether he wants to with her. His own feelings are pretty complex too. “It doesn’t matter. I’m alive now, and here now, and that’s all I’m going to say about that. The method isn’t important- just the results.”

Dante thinks the method is pretty important, actually.

But right now it’s far from his top priority. As long as she doesn’t try to attack him or Vergil or anything, Trish isn’t of much concern. 

Unless she wants to help him out, that is; make up for what she did when she attempted to lead him to his death and had him fight a brother she probably knew was his brother even if he didn’t. Dante’s feelings about the latter are complicated and he’s feeling addled enough to not want to sort through all that, but the former he’s already forgiven her for. Did the whole ‘sobbing over her body, mourning what she could have been and thanking her for what she did’ thing. So really she doesn’t owe him anything. He’s not sure why she’s here. He wouldn’t blame her if she grabbed her stuff, waved goodbye, and left. 

“If you say so,” Dante replies. 

His gaze drifts to the amulet hanging from Trish’s neck, glinting in the light of the ever-setting sun. The one he’d set upon her before he left in remembrance of a woman who’d once loved it. 

Then it moves to her back, and the familiar sword hanging there. The one he’d placed next to her before he’d gone to fight Mundus in a ballsy move that somehow hadn’t bitten him in the ass. 

The sight makes something churn in his gut. There she is, the woman who isn’t his mother, wearing the sword that isn’t his father, and the amulet that is-isn’t supposed to be one (because yes, it had once been one, and might’ve been intended to be one, but when it was split into two it was supposed to remain that way as long as its two new bearers lived, and Dante didn’t like the reminder that one had lost their necklace, because that one had been willing to throw away everything for the necklace and that he’d lost to it spoke to how far he himself had been lost).

Still. It wasn’t as if Trish had stolen the two; Dante had been the one to give them to her.

Now, leaving the Sparda and the Perfect Amulet behind before diving into Hell to chase Mundus probably hadn’t been the smartest idea. Actually, no, it wasn’t just probably not, it definitely was not the smartest idea. Even if the amulet didn’t do much for him power wise the Sparda was an extraordinarily powerful weapon, and whether or not Dante would’ve used it in Hell, leaving such a monumental Devil Arm behind with nothing but a corpse and a memory to guard it left it open for anyone who came by to steal. 

But after Mundus had ‘killed’ Trish and faded away with a laugh, leaving Dante with a portal and some haughty words about how Dante would pursue him if he wished to avenge his family and do that which even his father could not, Dante hadn’t been able to leave without a second thought. He couldn’t just abandon her there to dissipate with none to watch her. (And maybe that should’ve been what tripped him off to Trish’s survival- if demons disappeared once their lives came to an end, why had she remained? Something special had gone on there. He just wasn’t sure what). So instead he’d given her an amulet and a sword to reunite a couple that had died apart and alone, despite the fact that Trish and the amulet were not Eva, the Devil Sword Sparda was not Sparda, and a reunion in death like that was awfully morbid, even for him. 

Part of why he’d left them behind might’ve been his own confidence. His own cockiness. He wanted to bring Mundus down by his own power, not with his father’s leftovers (Rebellion had only come to him after Mundus’ defeat; said defeat was done with Ifrit and Alastor, which while not demons felled by Dante himself, were Devil Arms he’d retrieved with his own skills and were fueled by his own strength rather than the lingering energy of his father that made the Devil Sword Sparda what it was). And in any case, though Dante’s feelings on his father were complicated to say the least, something about the idea of bringing the sword that was meant to represent Sparda’s spirit back down into Hell- the place he’d cut himself off from forevermore when he’d separated the two worlds- just hadn’t sat right with Dante. 

So to Trish went the sword and the amulet, both to reunite symbols of a pair that had been separated, and also as a promise: a promise to return for them and give them a proper burial one day. A proper ceremony. So long as the amulet and sword remained in the human world, Dante would have a reason to come back. He’d have to come back. A promise to survive. A promise to win. A promise to end things once and for all.

But then Dante had gotten trapped in Hell and Trish had apparently made her way there with sword and amulet in hand so it was all pointless anyway. At least he’d managed to beat Mundus badly enough to send him back into hibernation. Which wasn’t really ending things once and for all, unless Trish decided to burst in with a ‘so it turns out you DID kill Mundus like I’d said was impossible a few hours before my ‘death’-’ but he seriously doubted that. When Mundus had gone down, it hadn’t felt like death. His energy had lingered. It dispersed, but didn’t shatter. It had felt like a retreat.

The faint puffs of air that make up Vergil’s barely-there breathing echo in Dante’s ears, drawing him back to the present.

Dante lets his attention shift. Vergil’s still vulnerable. Still defenseless. Dante tightens his grip on Rebellion, trying to get a read on the woman in front of him. 

He wants to trust Trish. He really does. Something in him already does, to an extent, though it’s twisted and confused about how it wants to manifest in the face of her betrayal and self-sacrifice, in the face of a familiar face which is not the face of the one who has made it familiar for- and Dante was supposed to be the twin, not Eva, so seeing her twin is still disconcerting to say the least-, and something about the situation has him just on-edge enough to stay cautious. 

He speaks slowly, watching for any slight movements that might give him more of a clue into what she’s thinking or what her intentions might be. How are you meant to interact with a woman you’d poured your heart out to after thinking she died?

“The portal closed on me after I defeated Mundus and I couldn’t make it back. How did you get here?” he asks.

Were there more portals? Was he not as trapped as he thought? He hasn’t really tried all that hard to find a way out since he ran into Vergil. Glancing around for portals while hunting down useless demons had been about all he’d tried.

Trish lays a hand on her chest, long fingers and painted nails landing just below the amulet. That she doesn’t actually touch it instead touches Dante in a sentimental sort of way. It’s as if she’s trying to show she knows she doesn’t have a real claim on it- or that it’s not for her, not really, it was a memento of his mother that Dante passed on to the corpse that looked more like his mother than the burnt husk he’d buried twenty years ago because she was a corpse who paralleled that of another who couldn’t comment on his actions- and thus doesn’t want to impose a claim any more than she already has. Wearing it is one thing; taking it in hand is another. More intimate. More possessive. 

“Portals don’t always work equally on both sides. When I found the one Mundus had left behind it was nearly closed on the human side. But, thankfully for you and me both it seems, it had just enough give to it that when I brought the amulet to it, it opened wide. This is what Sparda used as a key to the barrier between worlds, isn’t it?”

She taps one finger on her chest, gesturing to the gleaming piece of jewelry. It misses the edge by a centimeter.

“It is, yeah.” 

Alongside his blood and the blood of Lady’s ancestor. Which Trish shouldn’t have had access to. Maybe she’d gotten some of Dante’s blood from him bleeding on her while he said his goodbyes, but Lady wasn’t on Mallet last he checked and there should’ve been no way for Trish to get any of it. 

Unless Lady had tracked Dante down and gone there while he was busy carousing in Hell. 

God, he hopes not. She didn’t need to get wrapped up in this mess too.

But maybe Trish didn’t need the blood. Maybe the amulets were enough. If the barrier was already shaky, it didn’t seem too unreasonable for the amulet to be able to pry it back open just enough for Trish to slip through. Lady was probably downing some brandy at a bar, getting her informant of the day to spill as much information as she could get without having to bring out the green. She was probably happy and healthy and completely unaware of Dante’s current crisis and impending mental breakdown.

Still…

“But how did you plan to get back? If you just wanted to grab your stuff and go, I assume you have some sort of escape plan lined up. Will the portal reopen if you bring the amulet to it again?” Will the amulet be the key to Dante’s escape? The key to getting Vergil home? As little good as that will probably do, Dante thinks with a mental scoff. No human doctor will be able to fix this. Not when Vergil’s demonic core is rotting out. But maybe he’ll be able to stop by one of the Divinity Statues he knows the location of and it’ll be worth it. Maybe. Hard to say.

Trish stares Dante down, silent. Were she human, he’s certain her expression would’ve wavered under the weight of whatever thoughts must be drifting through her mind. Were she Eva, he’s sure she would’ve started chewing on her lower lip as his mother always did when she was thinking about something particularly hard. Vergil did that too. 

(Does that. He’s not gone yet, just unconscious. Dante should not be speaking in past tense. Past tense implies death, and Vergil’s not dead, just a little- okay a lot - under the weather.)

Dante just chews the inside of his cheek. 

He doesn’t have enough clear memories of his father to say if he had any nervous ticks his children may or may not have inherited.

But Trish isn’t human and she isn’t Eva. So her lips remain unchewed and her expression unwavering as Dante feels the heat of her gaze. 

Her face stays unnervingly blank until she finally speaks again. 

“With the Yamato.”

Dante’s heart practically jumps out of his chest. 

Behind him, he can almost swear he hears Vergil twitch. 

“You know where it is!?” 

He’d been wondering what had happened to it. It was one of the things that kept his mind from connecting the dots after the amulet incident, so used to associating Vergil with the Yamato that when he saw the Knight had a giant slab of a sword more in line with Rebellion, the possibility of its wielder being Vergil hadn’t crossed his mind.

But if Trish knew what happened to the Yamato, and they could get access to it, then…then…

Dante doesn’t know what, but he’s certain it can do something. Having it close will help Vergil. It has to. When Dante had been pierced by it atop the Temen-ni-gru and in those fleeting moments he’d handled it against the disgusting slime monster Arkham’s hubris had made him into, he’d sensed the resonance between blade and man, one that seemed stronger than even that which still existed between brother and brother. The window to Vergi’s soul had been sealed tight with Dante on the wrong side, but from what Dante could sense between the two, he was almost certain Yamato had a key. More than Rebellion did to Dante’s, at any rate.

Yamato, Rebellion, and the Force Edge: the three swords that made the world. The Force Edge contained Sparda’s power and used it to establish and maintain the barrier between worlds, while Yamato was the one to sever the connection in the first place and split the world in two, and Rebellion…existed. Exists. Dante doesn’t know why. Never has. As far as he can tell, it’s just an extra durable blade. No special powers in sight. 

Maybe Sparda felt bad about only having one sword to give to two kids and quickly made a replacement, handing the good blade to his first born and offering the quick double to his second in hopes that he either wouldn’t notice or would be a good boy and accept the second, lesser pick. Maybe he’d exhausted all his special abilities on the first two and the third one was just kind of there. Not like Dante would know otherwise. With dear old dad having disappeared on them as kids, there was no one to ask. What he knows of Rebellion is what he’s discovered fighting with it, and that’s probably leagues less than his brother knows about his sword of choice. Vergil spoke of Yamato like she spoke to him. Rebellion has resonated with Dante, sure, and feels like more than just a hunk of metal, yes, but he’s never heard it utter actual words.

Back to Yamato, it turns out that Dante’s hopes are too good to be true.

“I know where part of it is,” Trish settles on after taking a few moments to think. The wording is very deliberate.

Dante’s heart twitches again, this time in a bad way. “What do you mean you know where part of it is? Like, you have part of an idea where it is? Weird way to put it, but I guess you could phrase it that way.” 

That’s not what Trish means. Dante knows it. But he can’t help but try to make light of it, because there being a part implies there are many parts. There being many parts means it’s not whole. It not being whole means…means…Dante doesn’t know what it means- he doesn’t know anything, anything at all, again and again he keeps jutting up against walls or gaps in knowledge that he just doesn’t have and the ignorance is grating on him, Vergil would know, Eva probably would’ve known, Sparda would’ve surely known, yet of all those competent people who once made up his family it’s the barely-functioning mess that is Dante who’s left for some ungodly reason, and his inability to match them frustrates him far more than it ever has- just that it’s not good. Or bad. Or even horrible. It’s something so, so much worse. He’s not the poet of the family. That particular mother-son bond had gone to the other one.

Trish shrugs, either oblivious to or uncaring of Dante’s internal struggle. “Mundus broke it. Some of the pieces fell into the river before he could retrieve them. He only managed to save the one,” she says nonchalantly, as if dropping the fact that the sword that split the worlds is apparently now split into pieces is some casual, normal statement. 

“Broke it?” Dante croaks, still shocked by the idea that a sword like the Yamato could break.  

Trish’s patience for his dumb responses has worn thin. When she speaks she does so slowly, as if she were addressing a child. “Yes, that’s usually how something that used to be in one piece ends up in more than one. Amazing thinking skills, Dante. Do you want a prize?”

He doesn’t answer. His mind’s still whirling.

So Mundus broke it then? It didn’t just…he doesn’t know…break on its own? Get broken in a battle with a mob of demons looking for Sparda-kin or half-human flesh?

Another thought comes to Dante.

Is that how Mundus broke Vergil? Shattered his spirit when he shattered the blade Vergil held so dear? 

Dante’s recollection of it is foggy at best, imagined at worst, but he had the faintest memory of their father talking about sharing their souls with their blades, or their blades sharing their souls with them, or- something like that, and he wouldn’t be surprised if by damaging the blade Mundus really did end up damaging Vergil in a way that went beyond the sadness or disappointment or shock of losing an item you held dear. 

Rebellion was Dante’s blade in a way no other was, and there’d always been something about his connection with the blade that went more than skin deep. It had joined him in Hell when he hadn’t brought it there, it had seen him through the worst parts of his life, and it had awakened alongside him when he’d triggered, crossguard opening up and eyes glowing in a mirror of the red that colored his soul and core. 

But when it came to Vergil and the Yamato? 

There was something special there. Something Dante had never been privy to, but knew went beyond whatever he had with Rebellion. Even as kids Vergil had been drawn to the blade time and time again, sneaking into their father’s study to peer at it whenever the door was left unlocked and sitting there for what Dante was sure had been hours. When the house had caught fire and the attack started, Vergil had apparently managed to summon the Yamato to him while Dante’d fumbled enough that he’d had to stumble through burning wreckage to find his own soul-bound blade. He’d felt something that pulled him to it, but he didn’t pull the Rebellion to him as Vergil had with his own blade. When Dante had located Rebellion he had noticed Yamato was missing from its adjacent case, but he’d assumed it had either been stolen by the demons or died with the one who was one day meant to wield it; it was only when he saw Vergil a decade later that he put the pieces together and realized what must have happened to her. 

Which was another thing about them: Vergil always called the Yamato a “her,” personifying the blade in a way Dante had never really felt the desire to with Rebellion. Maybe Yamato was just a special sword. Maybe Vergil just had a special relationship with her. Dante couldn’t say. The only way for him to know would be to ask, and he and Vergil had never had the chance to sit down over a cup of tea or coffee and chat about it.

And if Dante didn’t find a way to fix Vergil, he never would.

“But Yamato aside- what in the world have you been doing?” Trish asks, voice finally regaining some emotion as she speaks with something between shock and disgust.

“What do you mean?”

Trish waves her hands around, taking a step into the room. Dante’s grip on Rebellion tightens. She stops a few feet short of him and Vergil, raising her hands in surrender. Is it a gesture of placation, or actual fear of threat?

“This. The whole area absolutely reeks of death,” Trish says slowly and with emphasis as if speaking to someone dumb, waving her hands around a room which had felt like death from the moment Dante had entered it thanks to the state of its formerly-sole occupant, so he’s not sure what the big deal is.

“It’s a torture chamber. Feels like death is a very logical thing for it to stink of.”

“That’s not what I mean. I mean the whole area. Region. Domain. There’s been a slaughter going on around here, and alongside the traces of dead demons, I’ve felt traces of your energy too.” She frowns. “I will say this isn't really an unusual thing for a demon to do when they’ve got their hands on a new domain. But you're awfully human to be doing this, aren't you?” She cocks her head to the side, analyzing him. She seems genuinely puzzled. Dante doesn’t blame her- he is too. “Were you just too…sad and tired…to go on that kind of streak on Mallet? Or did the blood high of killing all of Mundus’ lackeys get to your head and send you on a happy little killing spree?”

Were Dante not so overwhelmed, he’d have laughed at that statement. Sad and tired is definitely a unique way of phrasing depressed. Not that Dante’s really depressed. He just gets extra bummed out around this time of year. Their birthday. Normal things. People feel bad all the time, and he’s not special.

(Did Mundus send Trish on his and Vergil’s birthday on purpose? Or was it just a(n un)lucky coincidence?)

“I’m not doing this for fun. It’s something I’m doing it because I have to.”

“Why? Decided to instate yourself as the new Emperor? Mundus won’t be happy when he’s back, but I guess you probably don’t care about that.”

Dante’s eyes widen. “Emperor? What? No way! I don’t want to stay down here a second longer than I have to, and I sure as hell don’t want to rule anything. Where did you even get that idea?!”

She shrugs. “The few demons I ran into who were willing to cough up information spoke of a new blood tyrant. Why else go on a killing spree? They think you’re trying to scare them into submission. Going around slaughtering those who don’t immediately promise loyalty to you in a show of power.”

“That’s- that’s not-” Dante runs a hand through his hair. “I promise you, that’s not what I’m trying to do. I’m just trying to find something. It just so happens that there’ve been a lot of demons in the way. It’s not my fault they’ve been throwing themselves at me whenever I get near; I’m just protecting myself.”

“So you say. You seem off though.”

“Maybe” Dante relents. He takes his eyes off Trish and the familiar-unfamiliar judgment in them to run his gaze over Vergil and check if there have been any changes. There have not. None that he can sense at any rate. “I feel weird down here. Jumpy.”

“Hell is much more ‘charged’ than the human world. Your civilizations are more lively than ours, at least in some ways, but the air is much duller. Weaker. It doesn’t feed into your power like the atmosphere down here does. If that’s what you’re used to, it makes sense you’d feel off when just existing helps you recharge.”

Dante frowns. 

“So theoretically, an injured demon would heal better down in Hell than up in the human world?” If that’s the case, then would Vergil get even worse if Dante tried to use the Yamato to take him back?

Trish mirrors the expression. Hers is slightly lopsided though. Eva’s wasn’t. He thinks it’s a fault in her replication. “Theoretically, yes. And in practice. I can feel my own wounds repairing themselves faster here than they did before I crossed the barrier. It was odd being hurt up there and having it take so long to fix itself” She rights her head for a moment before tilting it slightly once more, her puzzlement not yet dissipated. “Why do you ask? Did Mundus hurt you badly enough it hasn’t healed?”

“I’m fine,” Dante insists. “It’s not for me.”

“Not for-” Trish’s gaze finally settles on the other thing behind him- and how she didn’t notice Vergil when she’d entered the room he doesn’t know, unless it’s that Vergil is so weak that the residual feelings of death present in the castle are giving off more energy than the almost-dead man is, which kinda maybe is the case that Dante just doesn’t want to acknowledge- eyes widening before she brushes past Dante to see the thing he’s been guarding. Dante has to hold himself back from tearing her away. “Nelo’s alive?”

“Nelo?” Dante’s never heard that word. Name, if his suspicion is right.

“Nelo,” Trish repeats, pointing to the body at their feet with the casualness one would use to point out a piece of litter on the side of the road. “Nelo Angelo. Him. I hadn’t recognized him at first- honestly thought he was just a more humanoid victim of your happy little murder spree that you’d decided to bring back- but I’d know that corruption anywhere. Mundus always was one for marking those he claimed so you couldn’t deny who’d claimed them.”

Something about the name and talk of claims trips something inside of Dante, making his response come out with the hint of a growl. “His name is Vergil.” Not whatever title Mundus had assigned to him. Vergil is more than that. No longer that. Not since the moment Mundus was banished and Dante freed him.

Trish looks up at him, once more cocking her head to the side like it’s the only way of imitating human emotion she’s really figured out. 

“Is it though?”

“What does that mean?”

“I see you’ve stripped him of the armor. But does dressing him up as a man make him a man when he’s been stripped of his identity and given another? Maybe he was Vergil once, but if he was, he’s not anymore. There was no true man inside the armor. No mind. Mundus made sure of that.”

“That’s not true!” 

This time Dante’s response comes out as a roar. Trish’s back hits the wall as she jumps away, hands raised in a defensive position. Sparks dance along her fingertips, hair jumping with static. 

Dante hadn’t laid a hand on her, yet she’d been pushed back all the same. He feels like he should feel guilty. But he doesn’t. Not really. And that doesn’t bother him nearly as much as he thinks it should.

When he and Vergil had fought back on Mallet, Vergil had played with him. Had laughed, had cocked a finger, had done those things Vergil always liked to do to mess with Dante or show he was better. When he and Vergil had fought back on Mallet, Vergil had shown he’d had guts and honor. He’d only walked out of the mirror once Dante had looked at it, had invited Dante to a better location rather than stabbing him in the back. A mindless, empty being wouldn’t have done that. There are bits of Vergil in the knight. Vergil still lives somewhere deep in the mind of the half-dead body on the floor. Dante just needs to fish him out.

Dante turns away from Trish, looking down at where his brother lies prone on the floor. When he speaks, it’s to both of them. Trish to convince, Vergil to remind.

“He’s still Vergil no matter what’s been done to him. Nothing could take that away from him. Nothing. He’s Vergil at his core.” Even if the blackness is eating away at it. Because black or not, there’s still blue shining deep within, and as long as the blue is there, so is Vergil. 

Dante pauses a moment, then turns back to her. An idea dawns on him.

“The amulet. Can you give it to me?”

Trish pops it over her head and throws it to him without a second thought. “All yours.”

Dante nods in thanks. He appreciates the gesture. 

Then, after flipping it in his hand a few times to refamiliarize himself with it, he sends a pulse of energy through the amulet and splits it in two.

The silver chain he slips over his own neck. The gold one he holds over Vergil. 

Dante kneels to do it, holding the amulet out so the pendant dangles about an inch over Vergil’s chest. After a minute, he makes a decision. Sure, trying to touch the core with his hand went badly, but Vergil didn’t reject the clothing. And while Vergil the person has rejected Dante time and time again, ran away when Dante tormented him and slashed his hand when Dante tried to save him, he’s always treasured the amulet above all else. When the amulet and Force Edge fell, Vergil went for the amulet first. When Knight-Vergil had Dante cornered, it was the amulet that had stopped him from dealing the killing blow.

So if there’s anything that can reach Vergil’s heart, anything he won’t reject, corruption or no, it’s the amulet. 

And when Dante slips the chain around Vergil’s neck and softly places the amulet atop the vest…

Vergil lets out a sigh.

A real, audible sigh.

His breathing picks up. Not strong, but elevated from the force of a soft breeze to that of a living man.

Behind him, Trish lets out something akin to a gasp.

“...He always did love that amulet,” she murmurs. Then, stronger, to Dante, “It was the only thing that was ever able to calm him. As Nelo Angelo, that is. All it took was a threat to the amulet to get Nelo back under control. All it took was returning the amulet to bring him down from a craze. Nothing else. Only that. I had never really understood the importance of it until you-” 

Trish cuts herself off, clenching her fist over the spot where the amulet had lain when Dante had placed it on her chest.

Dante has the eerie feeling that something happened to Trish after he left. Something between her and the amulet.

He doesn’t think he wants to know what.

“It doesn’t matter. I was wrong, you were right. He’s still Vergil in there somewhere. Just…very deep.” Her hands drop. “Though he might not be for much longer if you don’t find a way to fix him. He’s not in good shape.”

“Yeah, I can tell,” Dante bites back, more bitterness entering his voice than he meant to. Trish is just trying to help. She doesn’t deserve his ire. The stress is getting to him. Has already gotten to him. Is eating him alive.

“Are you going to do anything about it?”

“I’ve been trying!” Dante waves at the pile of bodies, still sitting by the wall.

“Not very well,” Trish observes.

“Look, I only had one Vital Star and it did almost nothing so I had to improvise.”

“Of course it didn’t do anything. A single Vital Star can’t heal what Mundus did to him. Vital Stars only work on the living.”

When Dante goes to correct Trish, she interrupts him to do it herself.

“Or the lively, sorry, didn’t mean to imply your brother’s a completely lost cause.” From the way she says it, Dante can tell she doesn’t mean it. Not really. And can he blame her when Vergil’s got one foot in the grave and the other halfway there. “I’ll give it to you- Vergil’s not dead, exactly, but he’s not exactly alive either. What’s been done to him will eat him until he falls to the corruption. One measly little Vital Star can’t heal someone who’s very essence has been filled with rot.”

Dante clenches his fist. 

Damnit. There it is. 

The confirmation that Vergil will die if Dante doesn’t do anything. That his fears aren’t unfounded, and that Vergil’s well on his way to his true, final end.

But Dante’s not giving up now. Not while Vergil still draws breath. Not when he finally has a chance to save Vergil in front of him like he lacked nine and twenty years ago.

“Is there nothing that can be done to excise the rot? Burn it out or something?”

Trish takes a bit to respond, face scrunched as she thinks over her options, whatever they are. “There is one thing that might work.”

“Really?”

“But you’re not going to like it.”

“You don’t know that,” Dante counters. He’s not going to pass up a chance to save Vergil. He’ll do anything. Anything to wipe the blood off his hands. Anything to give Vergil the life Dante stole from him. It may not absolve him of guilt, but at least he’ll be able to pay back what he’s taken. At least he can say he tried to make up for what he did. “I’ll do anything.”

Another twitch. “Be careful what you wish for.”

Dante feels a twitch of his own fighting to rise to the surface- his of irritation. “I mean it!”

“Do you really?” Trish monotones.

“Of course I do,” Dante huffs.

She waits a few moments, thinking whatever it is over. Then-

“Have you ever heard of the Qliphoth?” 

Chapter Text

“Have you ever heard of the Qliphoth?” 

Dante blinks, thrown off-kilter because he had expected a statement, not a question. 

“...Don’t think so,” he answers, dragging out the ‘o’ of don’t as he wracks his mind trying to think of where Trish might be going with this. It’s a solution to Vergil’s problem, surely. But- “Why do you ask?”

Despite his claim, the term sounds vaguely familiar. He thinks it has something to do with mysticism or holiness, or maybe its absence, or something spiritual in some way. Which he admits is a whole lot of nothing, made almost meaningless by the multitude of definitions or attempts at definitions which pop into his head, dispersed across a range wide enough to give him the genre without anything particularly helpful, but it’s better than nothing. It points to significance, even if he’s not sure what that significance actually is. The term exists in a weird space where he doesn’t think he’s ever heard it aloud, and his complete lack of idea of how it might be spelled has him sure he’s never read the word either, but something deep within him recognizes it anyway. The term makes something in his head go a little fuzzy in the way that Abyssal or other demonic languages do, calling out to some sort of innate knowledge that he’s a little too human to access but too demon not to carry, and he’d be lying if he said it didn’t make him uncomfortable. Dumb as many of them are, there’s some sort of inherent knowledge a lot of demons have that Dante’s spent much of his life clawing at- whether to access it or to rip it to shreds and get it away from his human-preferring person- and at times he feels it rising to the surface with a grin, doing its best to ‘help’ him in one way or another. He’s never been able to get rid of it. The best he can do is deny where the knowledge comes from. The worst he can do is give into it, admitting it’s useful or being unable to stop from understanding the demonic babble he’s overheard even if he pretends it’s nothing more than unpleasant, unknowable sound.

At times the knowledge feels like just that: knowledge. Information. A bit of something to be aware of. Facts he now knows, absent of direction. 

Other times, that bit of opinion or subjectivity or bias or whatever you’d call it that carries the weight of influence comes with that little buzz in his head, not only trying to tell him something’s there but doing its best to make him feel a certain way about it. It digs into his instincts, saying hey, don’t forget: you’re a monster too, a beast, beholden to thoughts and feelings buried so deep in your blood that you’ll never be free of their sway, nothing more than a wolf that howls at the moon simply because it’s meant to, no more in control than the bird that flies towards the horizon because it has to, no better than the bee that kills itself bumping against the glass because it needs to get outside to its queen and will destroy itself in pursuit of an impossible dream whose impossibility was made such by its own curious wandering which trapped it on the wrong side of the glass in the first place. 

The Qliphoth is Important. Capital I. Italicized. Were demons beholden to that kind of thing, he’s sure it’d have the trademark symbol plopped on there too. That wispy little line of demonic knowledge that curls up in the back of his mind on occasion doesn’t so much curl as explode at the word, insisting he should know what it is, that he needs to pay attention, that he’s been tied to it in some way- or that Sparda was, Dante’s realized over time, and he’s really hoping this one is a fatherly tie and not a personal one, because with the look Trish is giving him and the obviously negative leadup Trish had introduced it with he’s pretty sure he’s not going to be too keen on whatever she reveals- and that it’s got a certain legacy he’ll crumble to if he’s not too careful. It’s probably got the biggest fanfare of anything since Mundus. Seeing as the Mundus thing was fairly recent Dante should maybe acknowledge that that doesn’t sound like that much of a big deal, but the only thing that’s ever drawn nearly as much of a reaction was the Temen-ni-gru, so clearly there’s something big and bad going on here if the only things that can compare are the King-Emperor of Hell and the giant tower which split the worlds in two. The Qliphoth- and oh, it’s the, not a, there’s only one and exclusivity has ever been the mark of importance- will surely have repercussions both in its absence and use.

So with the way his head buzzes and how much weight Trish seems to be putting on it, Dante’s gonna go out on a limb and say the Qliphoth is a big, big deal.

“Because it’s an important question,” Trish deadpans, and in his scrambling to remember just what it was she and he both said before that buzzing threatened to consume all possibility of conscious, intentional, human thought, Dante’s not sure if she’s being sarcastic or genuine. It’s hard to tell with someone whose face doesn’t react in the right way when she says this thing or that, who seems to still be adjusting to the intricacies of human emotion and expression that Dante has long since mastered (both in its natural form and in the way of putting up a facade when his first instinct is maybe not what the situation calls for.  

“Alright then, no, I haven’t heard of it. Got zero idea.” He’s not going to mention the little buzz in his head. He’s always assumed it’s a normal demon thing, but if it’s not, then he does not want Trish confirming he’s even more fucked up and beholden to twisted instincts than he already knows he is. “Care to enlighten me?”

“If I told you it could save your Vergil, would it matter?”

Dante blinks. Tries to center himself. “Like, would it matter what it is?”

“Yes.”

“-” He takes in a breath, immediately going to respond in the affirmative because he’s already been over this, he’ll do anything for Vergil, will give up whatever she asks and put himself through whatever’s necessary to make for all the nightmarish things Vergil’s had to endure over the past two decades thanks to Dante’s blindness, ignorance, and altogether poor decision making, but-

He already said that. She already knows that. 

So why bother asking unless she thought he would say no?

That little buzz that promises additional knowledge if he’s only to listen grows a little louder. Dante, ever happy to deny himself, pushes it down and settles on a cautious “Maybe.”

It’s a non-answer to a two-option question whose binary he’s rejecting. But after rushing in blindly only to shoot himself in the foot time and time again, Dante’s decided he’s going to take his time with this one. Vergil’s already been languishing for days or even weeks now. Another few minutes of conversation won’t be the thing that kills him.

Trish sighs. She walks a short circle around Vergil, her heels clicking as they drag against the stone floor in an odd rhythm.

“In short, it’s a demonic tree that bears fruit every few thousand years. The fruit it bears contains immense power, and whoever consumes it will receive said power upon ingesting it. It’s what Mundus used to become King of the Underworld.” She slowly pulls her chin up from Vergil’s prone form to lock eyes with Dante. “If you ate it, you could take his crown. Make sure he never comes back.”

The idea is tempting. Most demons would probably take it in a heartbeat. Dante’s faced more than his fair share of lumbering beasts with a penchant for ranting about how they’re the strongest demon of this (or the other) side of the barrier, how they’re unmatched, how they’ll crush him with the immense, uncomparable power they already bear before adding his own to the pile and launching themselves to even higher heights, power and strength the only things of worth in their little world, bonds and relationships and happiness and peace all human contrivances they see no point in indulging. A power-obsessed demon is a dime a dozen. He’d bet nearly any demon with enough of a brain to form thoughts beyond just ‘kill’ and ‘survive’ would be raring at the chance to be the next big guy on the throne. To be endowed with the kind of power that makes everyone else tremble. That solidifies the purpose of your existence. Why have any power if you don’t have the most? Why live if not to show you’re the best?

Dante has plenty of answers to that. To have fun. To relax. To eat good food, to have a nice nap, to engage in thrilling battle and live to fight another day. There’s more to life than power. He’d give the chance at the throne a hard pass.

Dante has no interest in being the king of Hell, power or no. The Human World is his home and that’s where he wants to stay. Or, well. Get back to. He’s kind of stuck in Hell right now, which is putting a bit of a damper on things, but he’ll get back there eventually, so he doesn’t want anything tying him to Hell in any way beyond that which has already wrapped itself around him, filling him with thoughts and feelings that are very much demonic in nature and admittedly have him a little worried about what might happen if he’s to return to the Human World, but he’s dealt with plenty of worrisome thoughts before and come out on top, so he’ll just be returning to form to do it again. Dante has never been and never will be king of any sort of responsibilities (Besides those which his father dumped in his lap when Sparda decided to go on a merry jaunt from which he’d never return, either happy to shirk his responsibilities or unfortunate enough to be relieved of them through a death which Dante has never actually confirmed but certainly hopes for, because if Sparda’s out there alive somewhere he’ll be on the brink by the time Dante’s done with him, as thanks for a lifetime of trauma and pain the likes of which Dante would wish on no one, least of all the mother who’s no longer here to look her husband in the eye and ask him why he did what he did and whether he knew her grisly end would come quite so soon). He’s certainly not going to sign up for any more; being the king of a realm not his own first and foremost among his list of ‘things to avoid’.   

On the power front, he’s also happy to pass Go lighter the 200 hundred dollars (or 200 souls…?) which nearly any other demon would be happy to collect. He has more than enough power to beat back any demon that threatens him; any more will make fighting even more boring than it already is, and he’ll be out of one of life’s greatest pleasures. Which happens to be one of life’s only pleasures when you’re as prone to moodiness as he is, a dark day a normal day, the light more of a passing fancy and a rare break than a constant, the stronger pull of his desires from the moment his demon side awoke now swayed more toward the side which he’s so stubbornly tried not to indulge but has only become more desperate for with time. With how draining it’s becoming to fight so many breezy battles, he’d rather not make them all completely stakeless. He can only hold back so much. 

Besides-

“How would that help Vergil? Unless your fancy fruit grants magic healing powers too, in which case man was Mundus overconfident to pass up on using those during our fight.”

Trish makes a choking sound at that, gasped and swallowed but accompanied by an upturn of lips that could almost be called a smile. It might be her attempt at a snort. Whether she was consciously trying to mimick something she’d observed during a period of people watching- or that she’d seen in a memory pried from Vergil, if that’s how Mundus made her, since Dante’s pretty sure he’d have felt it were any demons to have hung out long enough to observe Eva’s quirks, his childhood powers less than the current ones but his demon radar always on in a way he hadn’t been able to describe as anything other than a value awareness of his father and brother’s locations, and in a rapidly approaching threat he’d been unable to do anything about until it had arrived and the first flames that would consume his childhood began to burn- or she’s just making some sort of natural, albeit distorted expression of genuine amusement, he’s not sure. The sound, unnatural as it is, only serves to distract from the intended purpose. “As far as I know, it doesn’t do anything like that. It just augments a demon’s natural abilities. I suppose if a demon had some sort of innate healing powers they’d grow stronger, but as far as I know, it doesn’t grant anyone powers they don’t already have.”

“Then why eat the fruit?” 

Trish smirks. “Easy. You don’t.” She inclines her head toward the body on the floor, eyes gaining a wistful sort of look. “Instead, Vergil does.” 

Dante’s eyebrows raise. The buzzing in his head multiplies. He tells the unhelpful thing to shut up. It lessens slightly, refusing to die but at least lowering to a level at which he can concentrate on the information he is willing to receive in the form of Trish’s little plan.

Trish continues, watching with raised eyebrows, as if trying to gauge his expression. “Your role would be to plant and protect the tree until the fruit is ready for harvest. Then, once it’s matured, you’ll feed it to Vergil instead. The pure power stored in the Qliphoth fruit should be enough to blast through the rot Mundus forced into him, and elevate his healing powers to the point he can eat through it himself. Feed him the Qliphoth fruit and at absolute worst he’ll be back to normal. At best, he’ll be stronger than you could ever imagine.”

That’s…perfect. What a lovely thing it would be: play gardener, sit back and relax while the tree grows, give Vergil a little snack, and then watch as everything fixes itself and he’s finally able to get back to normal.

But it seems too good to be true. Too easy. Dante’s cursed and Vergil can’t possibly be much better; never will there be a chance for gain without some terrible price Dante couldn’t be forced to fork over.

“What’s the catch?”

“What makes you think there’s a catch?”

“Why would you ask me if it mattered what the Qliphoth was if it was some miracle cure, no strings attached?”

“Good job, you caught on.” Trish’s twisted amusement withers, the slight upturn in her lips falling into a tight straight line. “The tree does not grow on its own. You must feed it if you want it to bear fruit.”

Dante considers making a joke about how he’s never had a green thumb, how he’s killed every plant he’s ever tried growing and replaced them with plastic versions that looked far healthier than the real ones ever did.

But something’s off in the air, more so than the typical wrongness that suffuses the atmosphere in Hell and accompanies the strange dampening enchantment on the tower, so he doesn’t. The joke dies before it reaches his lips. So too does the smile that would’ve accompanied it never surface.

Trish stare bores into him. Dante feels oddly hollow.

“And what kind of fancy fertilizer does a demon tree need?”

“Blood.”

“Figures.”

It always comes down to blood with demons. Whether it's the blood that runs through your veins, begotten from an absent father, or the blood with which you soak the fields, hoping for a bountiful harvest, demons are nothing without blood, and Dante’s nothing without bloodletting. Earlier, Trish spoke of a blood tyrant. An emperor built on fear. Dante has no interest in the crown himself, but if slaughter’s what it takes to win Vergil his life, crown or no…

“So all I have to do is find the tree, kill some demons to soak it down to the roots, and wham: magic superpower fruit at the ready?” 

Trish speaks in a monotone. She doesn’t bother answering the question he asked, instead getting straight to the point. The question he’d been leading to.

“Human blood.”

“Ah.”

There it is.

The catch. 

Ever have things been complicated when it comes to good things in Dante’s life, and ever complicated will they continue to be. He’s a man who’s made his home in castles built for oblivion, the rose-colored castle of his childhood falling to pieces and burnt to a crisp on a day that would forever guide the rest of his life and the many crumbling castles to come. Whether it was Eva or Nell, Eva or Vergil, Eva or the too-high-number of foster mothers who’d tried to bring him some measure of happiness but had found themselves on the wrong end of a demon instead, Dante’s never been afford a good thing that lasts. He’s gotta say: two minutes of hope is on the shorter end of things, but it’s not unreasonable given his history. Honestly it feels more of a foolish thing to have held onto it than to have not immediately resigned himself to his fate of its quick and easy death. Not everyone bleeds out slowly; some folks are speared through the heart and discarded a corpse a moment later. Not everyone burns until their smoke-filled lungs finally give out on them; some are killed mid-suffocation by a concert of stabs and a falling beam. Some castles do not crumble slowly, worn away by weathering and times; some implode in a grand mass of dust, there one moment and gone the next, and it’s those that Dante’s most familiar with. 

There’s always a catch when Dante’s been offered something good. Really the only surprise here should be how big of a catch it is in comparison to those who’ve come before.

“How much human blood are we talking?” His words come out gingerly, testing the waters. Trish holds no axe, her role one of an escort, not executioner. Yet the swords of Sparda have never held any qualms about spilling the blood of their fellows, and in this moment, her words offered freely, their implications and request open in the air, Dante feels the Devil Sword on her back hangs over his neck.

If it only takes a little bit of blood, maybe he can call in a few favors. Get Morrison to contact the sort of people that could get that sort of stuff without too many questions, in a way that couldn’t be traced. 

If it takes more than that- or if Morrison doesn’t agree, because the man’s got at least some sense of morals and though they’ve never talked about it he knows Morrison knows what Vergil did nine years ago, and how shaky Vergil’s backstory is, so if Dante admits to the reason he needs the blood then Morrison will most assuredly give the plan the axe that Trish has not- then maybe he could, he doesn’t know, rob an overflowing blood bank of type AB+ or whatever the not super useful type of blood is, he doesn’t really know how human blood works because he’ll never need a transfusion and Lady’s O- so she needs the special stuff that they always talk about on emergency room TV shows. Or maybe he can uh, maybe- no, getting blood from prisoners is immoral and there are plenty of innocent people locked up, not to mention those who may not be innocent exactly but sure as hell don’t deserve the kind of punishment they’ve got ‘cause they mugged someone for their breakfast money, so he’s not going to do that just in case, but maybe- well- he could- 

Trish continues on, ignorant to or uncaring of the spiral into which he has begun to descend. 

“Thousands.”

The hair on the back of his neck begins a grand and courteous salute.

“Of what. Pints?”

Trish cocks her head to the side once more. There is no puzzlement in the movement this time, her head only tilting a few degrees to the side. Just judgment. Just the stare of one who’s been asked an idiotic question and wants the one who asked the question to know just how poor aa question it is. 

Dante swallows.

“Gallons?”

She tilts her head further, the bones in her neck clicking as they’re pushed to a point or in a way their human arrangement does not favor. 

Dante takes a breath.

“...People?”

Trish straightens, the judgment fading to blank nothingness. “Probably.” It takes Dante a moment to realize he’s bitten down on his cheek hard enough to draw blood. “I wasn’t there when the last one was grown. I’ve only heard stories. Demons tend to exaggerate about that sort of thing, so I can’t say it’ll take a few thousand people for certain, but you’re definitely not making it with fewer than a hundred.”

“Ah. Of course it does. Why wouldn’t the hellspawn tree need a little mass murder to get started? Only fits the bill,” Dante rambles on, pointedly avoiding making eye contact with Trish.

Dante paces around the room for a little while after that. 

Thinking. 

Considering. 

Weighing.

Trish walks over to the chest Dante couldn’t bring himself to touch, kicking the thing and humming when it opens. She balances on one foot as she uses the other to nudge whatever’s inside, half her body still as a statue while the other rearranges bits and bobs Dante would rather never see. 

He pauses in front of her once, opening his mouth and raising a finger like he has something to say, but finds himself unable to muster up any words when it’s time to speak. Trish, on the occasions she pulls herself away from her investigation, fluid and smooth in a way Dante’s jarring, jagged, highly affected steps could never be, merely stares.

Dante returns to his pacing.

At some point Trish says she’s going to go grab some of her stuff and that she’ll be back in a bit. Dante lets her go without a word.

He pauses over Vergil, looking his brother up and down. Though his breath has evened out since getting the amulet, it’s still not particularly calm or normal. Just more obvious. Less ‘am I just imagining he’s breathing’ and more ‘I’m pretty sure he’s breathing, but it isn’t good.’

Kneeling at his side and taking Vergil’s right hand in his own, Dante focuses on how cold his skin is, and how much still flakes off when touched. He runs a hand over one of the lines on Vergil’s cheeks, and his stomach does flips at the disgusting viscosity of the texture.

He’s being a bit of a baby about it. It’s not like Dante hasn’t shoved his hand in disgusting things before. For one, he lives in a pretty shady part of town, full of seedy alleyways, and he’s accidentally stepped in plenty of gross things he’s had to scrape off his boots before. He’s run from demons that have had him jumping or thrown into dumpsters. He’s serviced disusting backed up drains to keep up appearances as a handyman that’ve had him wishing he’d paid his client to hire a plumber instead. He’s shoved his hand through icky goo monsters and choked on the spit up of living piles of sludge. 

But something about the viscosity of the blackness that consumes Vergil turns his stomach in a way none of those things ever have. Stuff like that isn’t supposed to belong to anything both alive and healthy. It reeks of disease and something unnatural. It speaks to fears Dante would rather not voice. Fears Vergil can’t run from and Dante can’t either. Not really. His feet would probably refuse to carry him if he tried.

He hates the sight. Wishes it had never come to be. Wishes he could take it away. But- 

When Trish comes back, a bag in hand and a shawl the color of a two-day old bruise hanging from her shoulders, Dante voices his decision. That he even considered otherwise sickens him. Has a few days- or weeks, maybe he should ask Trish, maybe she’d know- in Hell really impacted him so much?

“I won’t do it,” he tells her. “I can’t.”

Because he can’t. He’s not sacrificing innocent people just for Vergil’s sake. It’s wrong. Immoral. Inhumane.

(And for a man who’s spent his life trying to be as human as possible, that last one’s the most unforgivable of them all). 

Trish crosses her arms. “Is that your final decision?”

Dante turns, setting Vergil’s hand down and rising to face her. “Why even ask?”

“Because I don’t think it is,” Trish responds.

“Of course it is.”

“Is it?”

“Why do you keep pressing me?”

“I just want to make sure you’re thinking things through. Isn’t that what humans do with their fancy brains and complex emotions?”

Dante has to hold back a bitter laugh. “And what would you know about human emotion? You’re just a demon.”

“So you said to me before.” Trish is a perfect picture of calm, voice even and body relaxed. “But what if I want to be more?”

He blinks, offput, as Trish begins to wax on, one hand waving him off as if she only half cares about the words leaving her lips. “I’ll be honest. I don’t understand humans. Not fully. Your selflessness even when confronted with those who don’t offer you their loyalty or devotion confuses me. You don’t see that kind of thing in the demon world. Here, if you do something, you do it because you want something in return. If you don’t get it in return, then whoever you helped will pay for it a hundredfold. It makes sense. You get what you give. You give tribute, you get protection. You steal goods, you’re dealt pain. There’s no ambiguity. There’s no question of ‘why’.

“But in the towns I passed through in the human world? The people I saw? They were being generous for generosity’s sake. They did things and expected nothing in return. One day I saw a man give some random woman shivering on the street his lunch, and when I asked why, he just said ‘she needed it more,’ smiled, and walked away. He didn’t know her and she didn’t give him anything in return, but he did it anyway. It baffled me. Why bother? Why help? Especially at the cost of his own lunch? He didn’t just give without getting; he gave and was actively hurt by it.

“So I’ll admit it: I don’t get it. There are a lot of things about humans that I don’t understand. But I want to. Your passion is…inspiring. Fascinating. Weird. I want to help you, if only to keep things interesting for me.” She pauses a moment, expression wavering as her gaze drifts over t Vergil. “And, I feel like I owe it to him. As an apology for everything I put him through. I never laid a hand on him but…he acted odd around me. I don’t think he knew who I was meant to be, but I think it pained him anyway, and I think that that sort of pain without context must have been agonizing. Even if I don’t understand human emotions, I’m familiar with pain.”

Trish brushes past him once more, this time dropping to one knee. Dante doesn’t stop her as she reaches for Vergil’s face, brushing a stray hair away from his face and back to join the rest. It must’ve gotten blown out of the way during Dante’s laps around the room.

“He’s not a lost cause just yet. But he can’t stay like this forever. You’ll have to make a decision eventually.”

“Haven’t I?”

Trish takes a deep breath. 

When she turns, he thinks she’s showing the most genuine emotion he’s ever seen on a demon.

“Have you? Or have you said no simply to push the decision until another day, so you don’t have to face your fears in the here and now?”

“...”

Trish stands.

A hollowness lines Dante’s words as he tries to counter her. He’s made his decision. He made it years ago. “I’m not killing humans. Vergil wouldn’t-”

Vergil wouldn’t approve, Dante was going to say.

But…wouldn’t he? Raising the Temen-ni-gru hadn’t been bloodless. Hundreds of people had died when the tower emerged from the earth, and dozens if not hundreds more had died when the demons came pouring out. Dante had never been able to steel himself enough to find a final body count and confirm whether it had reached a thousand. He’d turned the TV off once they got to three-hundred forty-seven confirmed dead and several hundreds missing, and never read a paper or watched a newscast about it afterwards. He knows Lady knows the number. He interrupted her the first few times she tried to tell him. Eventually she gave up. He’s pretty sure she’s never forgiven him for his willful ignorance. No problem; he’s done a lot of unforgivable things over the year and he’s sure he’ll do a bunch more.

…

Still. Dante is not Vergil. Dante is not going to do something stupid just because Vergil did it. He didn’t jump off that cliff and follow Vergil into Hell the first time, did he?

(And oh, how he has regretted it nearly every day of his life thereafter.)

“Whatever you do, I’ll support you,” Trish tells him. Goads him.

Dante won’t rise to the bait. “Then stay here and keep an eye on him. I’m heading out.”

“Fine then. Keep going on your pointless little quest while your brother fades bit by bit. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

Dante walks away.

Three trips later, Trish- who’s stuck around for reasons he doesn’t know, or that are perhaps related to the fact that by taking the amulet he probably also stole her escape route now that he thinks about it, but she did hand it over willingly so if anything it’s not like he’s really forcing her to stay here- asks him what he is doing on those trips of his if they’re not meant to be power trips intended to cement his place as ruler of an underworld he doesn’t seem very interested in. She’s sitting on the chest at the opposite end of the room when she voices her questions, the Devil Sword Sparda resting against her thigh, one end on the floor, and her free leg swings back and forth in a surprisingly human show of boredom.

“Did your little trip help clear your head?” Trish asks, leaning back against the wall. “I told you, demon blood isn’t going to work. Even if it did, the seed hasn’t been planted yet. It’s not going to grow.”

Dante kneels at Vergil’s side, checking for any changes to his condition. “And like I told you, I’m not going around killing things for fun. I’m looking for something.”

“Which is?”

“Divinity Statues,” he answers, squinting at one of the patches of black around Vergil’s chin. Has the line thickened, or is Dante’s imagination getting the better of him…?

Trish continues her questioning. “Why?”

“Need to barter with one.”

The Devil Sword Sparda clicks against the ground as she shifts position. At the edge of his vision, he sees her lean forward, interested. “For what? I thought you said this wasn’t about power.”

“It’s not.” That was Vergil’s thing. Dante’d- Well. He hasn’t had enough for a lifetime; really, he’s never had much at all, not in any way that mattered. For a guy who can shrug off a scythe to the heart and snap bones with barely a flick, he’s never had enough power to do anything of actual worth; never been able to save those he’s cared about, as evidenced by his current situation, in which all the power in the world would’ve done nothing to fix his inherent blindness and stupidity. He doubts he’d be able to do anything useful even if his little stash quadrupled. But this power isn’t for him anyway. “One Vital Star didn’t do much, yeah, but what if I got a bunch of them? I feel like I’ve got more red orbs stocked up now than I’d ever absorbed in my life, pre-Mallet. If I could find somewhere to trade ‘em away, I could get a boatload of stars to use on Vergil.”

Trish takes a few seconds to respond, her words coming out slow and careful, a more measured response than he’s used to.“...And you want a Divinity Statue for that.” 

Something tweaks in Dante. “Yeah. I do. Pretty sure I already said that.”

“...And you think a Divinity Statue will somehow give you a Vital Star?”

Dante lifts his head. Up until this point he’d been studying Vergil’s face, trying to tell himself that the cracks hadn’t deepened, that the ash hadn’t spread, that all was the same. But at Trish’s odd question he moves from the unchanging blankness of Vergil’s face to the furrowed brow of Trish’s, and where he’d expected some sort of sarcastic smirk, he instead finds genuine puzzlement.

“Um, yeah. That’s where I normally get them. Sure you can find them lying around sometimes, but that’s kind of a crapshoot. Divinity Statue’s’ll give you ‘em for a reasonable enough price, and I’ve got enough orbs in me to bankrupt one.” 

That she doesn’t know this is odd. How sheltered was she before she went looking for Dante? 

Now that he thinks about it, he has no idea how old Trish is. Did Mundus create her five minutes before he sent her to collect Dante, or has she been around for years? Did she exist before Mundus shaped her into Eva’s image, a being who had her original existence overwritten with that of another, or did she only come into being after Mundus killed the original woman and decided to come up with a new one to put his plan into action?

Finally, Trish’s voice morphs from one of slightly puzzled neutrality to full-on annoyance. ”What in the world are you talking about?” 

“What, have you never used a Divinity Statue yourself?” 

“No. Lord Mundus forbade anyone from using the ones he kept without express permission. He never deemed me worthy of trying.”

“You never tried to use one while he wasn’t looking?”

“I did, actually. It didn’t work.” Her gaze drifts over to Vergil. “Nelo caught me in the act. Suddenly appeared around the corner, clinking around silently in a way no one in that much armor should be able to do, and stared at me until I turned around and froze. 

“I thought I’d die when I was caught. That Nelo would report me to Mundus and that that would be that; here one moment, gone the next. Mundus was the one who made me. He could just as easily make another.” She sighs. “Nelo didn’t, though. Just kept quiet. Didn’t raise his sword or cause any problems. It was like nothing ever happened. I always wondered whether it was because he couldn’t tattle, or because he didn’t want to. Silence as his own little form of rebellion.” 

She sighs. “I don’t know what it is about you that has me talking so much. Some leftover from your mother, maybe. Or something Mundus wanted to make sure you’d follow. I kind of hate it, to be honest. Makes me wonder if the feelings are really coming from me.

“But getting back to the point- I’ve never heard of anyone getting a Vital Star from a Divinity Statue before. They can strengthen you and teach you more techniques, and I’ve heard tale of some bartering with them for temporary boons, but they don’t give out Vital Stars. Trust me. If they could, the little stars wouldn’t be nearly so rare. Mundus never had more than a handful in any of his fortresses at a time. They were too precious for that. Too rare.”

Dante frowns. He pointedly ignores the comments Trish made about his mother, deciding he’d much rather pretend his mother is entirely dead and gone and not wanting to explore what kind of nightmare freakish thing would result from some bit of her spirit being trapped in a fake, whether it was actually her soul or just some sort of living, influenced, albeit separate, existence. “That doesn’t make any sense. I’ve gotten loads of Vital Stars from Divinity Statues.”

Trish bats her eyelashes, unconvinced. “Are you sure what you were bartering at Divinity Statues? Not some…counterfeit idols?” 

“They’re the lion-headed ladies with the hourglasses, right?”

“A crude way of putting it, but yes.”

“Then yeah, I’m certain those were Divinity Statues. And Vital Stars are the little green star thingies that heal you, right? The ones that look like concentrated Green Orbs?”

The room almost seems to grow colder as Trish gaze sharpens to a knife’s edge.

“...Are you messing with me?”

“About what?”

“ ‘Green’ orbs,” she says, emphasizing the first word as if he’s making it up.

This time he rises to his feet. He doesn’t have time for this. (Or patience, really, because he seems to have all the time in the world to watch his brother’s decline, pain all the more sweet when it’s prolonged.) “For the love of- are you sure Mundus didn’t keep you locked up in his little castle like some demon Rapunzel, let down your hair thing? There’s no way you’ve never heard of a green orb. Demons drop them left and right!”

When she sighs, he can practically taste the pity dripping from her words. “Hm. Maybe all the killing has gotten to your head. You seem to have gone insane.” 

Dante chokes. “Okay, raise me this- how do demons heal from killing other demons?”

“By ingesting their flesh or bathing in their blood.”

“That’s-” Dante frowns. Logical, actually, since he’s seen more than his fair share of little cannibals, but… “...that’s not some sort of euphemism for absorbing red orbs, right? Which I know you’ve seen, so don’t you dare try to tell me I’ve made those up too.” Green orbs are usually paired with red, so maybe demons who bite into others get healed by the green orbs that come along for the ride, or something.

The disappointment is palpable. “In what way is that a nicer way of putting things? And no, it isn’t. Red Orbs give you strength, but don’t restore your health. Demons who wish to heal consume other demons. Or humans, when given the opportunity. But thanks to your father, that’s not really an option down here. Bloodbaths and feasting are the way to go.”

“...” Dante takes a moment to think, trying to figure out where to go from here. “Okay then. You said you tried with one of Mundus’ Divinity Statues. Does he have one here?”

“He does.”

He nearly facepalms. What do you know? Dante’s been wasting his time flying for miles, over and over and over again, when the very thing he’s been searching for was right here under his nose the whole time. Figures one of the few locked rooms he couldn’t access would have something useful in it. That’s just his luck. 

“Take me to it?”

Trish practically skips toward the door. He doesn’t blame her for being so excited to get out of a torture chamber currently occupied by its favorite, dying, quite literally rotting occupant. “Sure. I don’t think Mundus ever revoked my permission to the room. If he did, the next step to entering is probably holding up Nelo’s body. He should have permission.”

Dante cringes, throwing Vergil one last glance. “We’re not doing that.”

Trish sighs. “Well then, we better hope I’m enough.”

Trish leads him to the lowest level of the castle, to a room guarded by a door that unlocks when she cuts a finger and presses it onto a small tile. When Trish pulls her hand away, he realizes she doesn’t have fingerprints. Why would she? She wasn’t born in a womb. There would be nothing for her to press up against; no mother to leave her mark. 

Dante looks down at his own hands. His gloves are on; the fingerprints beneath hidden. Despite all the wounds he’s sustained over the years, all the burns, cuts, and handful of chopped-off fingers, his fingerprints have always come back. That little sign of humanity has always returned. Right now Vergil’s fingers are too cracked and ashy to resemble anything but little mud plates covered in the dust of their broken brethren. They don’t in any way mirror that of the brother whose swirls were different from the start.

Once upon a time, those fingerprints would’ve been the only thing to differentiate them. Now they’re hardly mirrors at all. Even if Vergil recovers, he doubts they ever will be again. 

They enter the hold. The Divinity Statue rests in a low spot in the room, placed on a pedestal which lies within a sunken platform whose steep edges drop down to the five-sided divot in the floor.  The room itself is lit by a handful of torches held aloft by various appendages, spindly fingers, thick paws, and jagged claws only sometimes attached to something reminiscent of a wrist jutting out of the wall to hold the balls of flame which, after a quick attempt to fan them down with a random tapestry Dante pilfered from the wall for the curiosity-driven attempt, seem to resist all attempts to smother them. Their light reflects oddly against the Divinity Statue, which is to say it doesn’t really reflect on the Divinity Statue at all. The only shimmer on her golden frame is that which mirrors the eternally falling sand in the hourglass she holds, specks of illumination crossing her shoulders, arms, and back, but never falling on the front of her maw. It’s kind of eerie. Dante could’ve sworn he’d seen the ones in Mallet light up with the dance of light there- torch or sunset, whatever it was at the time, the land locked in an eternal sunfall that seemed to spell the end without ever fully gettin there- ‘cause he’d spent a moment thinking about how cool it was and whether he’d ever want to cart one back to DMC to get a nice little addition to the shop, but he’d abandoned the thought when the weirdness of the flickering (and maybe the thought itself) made something flip in his stomach. The lack of light here’s somehow worse. The statue’s in her own little world. Feels portentous.

He steps into the recess. Trish stays back, going over to something on the side of the room that he doesn’t really care about. A pile of something shiny. What it is doesn’t matter. He only really cares about the Divinity Statue; whatever other battle trophies or tribute or useless hunks of junk that Mundus decided to hoard are uninteresting and unimportant. If any of them could do something for him, Trish would’ve mentioned it. Knick knacks will earn him nothing; entertainment included.

He lifts his hand toward the Divinity Statue, hovering it in front of the lion’s maw but not making contact. He’s never actually touched one of them before; something about them has always stopped him. Not a physical barrier, not a voice, not anything real, but some sort of indescribable feeling that he shouldn’t. That he can’t. He’s tried and failed before. Now’s not the time to be pushing any limits. So, he lifts his hand, he looks at the statue, and he calls out to it in his own little way that he’s never really been able to put into words when Lady asked about it, letting his mind and spirit wander until he feels them pulled in by the Statue and brought to that in-between realm where he’s reduced to a speck of barely-there nothingness and her exchanges take place. 

A cold wind washes over him and he’s dragged away from the stuffy basement and into the thin air of infinity, the Divinity Statue the only thing that matters, and the only thing that truly exists. He’s not there with it; not in a physical sense, no hands or torso or anything to be seen. But he’s there mentally- or spiritually- in the only way that counts. The only way he can manage. The normally murky-red clouds around them are suffused with energy, darkened to a more carmine or vermillion shade, and Dante’s not sure whether that’s a product of the number of orbs he has on him or something more sinister. Something’s off about this statue’s personal realm. Something draining. 

No words are exchanged between him and the statue. That’s not how things work. Empty echoes overpower him, drowning out any and all sound before it can achieve any sort of meaningful vibration.

Instead, he simply knows what she has and what it’ll take to get it. She doesn’t actually display her wares to him, nor does she present costs; she merely Appears, the center of his vision and the center of this little universe, and if he chooses to barter, she’ll shine as she takes her fee and delivers the promised knowledge or good. 

At this moment, she does not glow. Nor does she in the next. Or the next. Or the next of the next, or the several after that, because as the serenity of the Divinity Statue’s realm wavers under the force of Dante’s mounting concern, he comes to realize that the little victory that was locating a statue will and does ring hollow: 

The statue doesn’t have any Vital Stars to give. She never will. 

He knows with utmost certainty. 

There is no sound in the Divinity Statue’s realm beside distant vocalizations that sound different here than they did in the Human Realm, so he can’t ask her why in any way other than a desperate, wordless, emotion-driven plea that earns no response. Why would it? Divinity Statues are blank. He’s not sure they’re really alive. Why would she hear his concern and offer him any sort of apologies or explanations? Instead the Divinity Statues kneels in collected silence, waiting for Dante to either raise his offer or back down from his attempt, patient in a way he thinks only the master of her own timeless universe could ever be, content to sit and wait for others to come because time only passes for her when she wants it to, as evidenced by all the times Dante’s spent a while hemming and hawing over a Divinity Statue’s proffered goods only to exit her realm and find he’s been returned to the same instant he left, marked by either a sun still sitting where it once was in the sky, a decaying body still at the exact moment of decay, a filling fountain not yet filled, or some other thing that would’ve definitely changed had Dante been bartering and then plopped back in his body in real time. In this suspended, protracted infinity, there’s no one to hear Dante including himself, so he can’t do much more than flounder to an unfeeling god in search of reprieve it will not entertain. It doesn’t push against him; there is no opposition to his ineffective calls. He’s a man screaming at the sea, not a customer ranting at a butcher who’d much rather take their knife to that wailing meat whose demise will return them to their business faster. The waves will continue to crash across the shore and the eddies will continue to roil despite his dissatisfaction. All Dante’s doing is exhausting himself. He can’t even hold onto the satisfaction of hearing his own voice shout the pleas no one will entertain, drowned out by that droning hum with its distant voices which belong far more than he. It’s dissatisfying and useless. He very nearly gives up entirely.

But- there are still a few things he can retrieve. His time doesn’t have to be entirely fruitless. 

The Divinity Statue doesn’t have any Vital Stars, but that’s not to say she doesn’t have anything for him at all. He picks up a few tricks she offers to teach him. Stares at the idea of a star of an unfortunately golden hue that would shield him if he wished, but he does not wish for it to, so it does and will not.

She dangles a handful of purple orbs in front of him, grapes held in front of a pampered young lord by someone who will never down them herself. Not literally. Again, the only thing allowed to visibly exist in this realm is the Divinity Statue herself, neither Dante nor her goods given any sort of physical representation, so maybe the better comparison would be to someone passing off unwanted leftovers to the starving man who’s so desperate he’ll take the refuse. 

And he does. 

When he lets go of his breath and opens his eyes to see his own hand hovering in front of a Divinity Statue now only barely lit, not the center of the world but instead lying in a pit where, rather than controlling the world around it, it seems to ignore it, he buzzes in a different sort of way. 

He needs to trigger. Needs to. Hasn’t felt this way since he was nineteen and had gone weeks trying to convince himself that what had happened up on the Tower and in the heaven-aimed Hell he’d dived into was a fluke that didn’t reflect his true self, which he so desperately wanted to sit on the human side of half-humanity. 

But he’s already spent a pretty hefty amount of time tamping down on the buzz and a lifetime smothering his own needs, so he ignores the current running under his skin to turn to Trish with a forced smile.

“Welp, guess you’re right! The Divinity Statue doesn’t have any Vital Star after all.”

The chalice Trish had been holding clatters against the table she sets it on. The echoes of sound grate against his earring, made sensitive by the muted hum of the Statue’s Infinite Domain. “So you admit you’re insane?”

Dante shrugs. He exits the pit slowly, doing his best not to go too fast. Normally he’d have skipped his way out of it, but right now he feels like he’ll just keep going if he gives himself the chance to go any faster. He accepted the orb trade because he thought the extra power could help him on his way- and yes, he knows he’s a hypocrite, that he’d earlier denied the need for power, but really it was him saying he didn’t need that incomparable sort of power; the power he’s gotten from Divinity Statues and conveniently placed orbs in the past is nothing new and sits within the realm of acceptable modification- but he’ll admit it’s left him a little more jumpy than usual. “Yes, but that’s unrelated. I think we’re both right about this one, actually.” He straightens his coat, patting down once-full pockets that now hold a whole lot of nothing. “You said you’ve never seen a Green Orb either, right? How much did you watch me on Mallet?”

“Admittedly less than I would’ve liked to. Mundus had me running errands for him. I spent most of my time delivering orders to his generals or making sure things were set up properly for when you got to them.”

Dante blinks. Does that mean Mundus did rig the traps around Mallet? That’s… Dante’s honestly not sure what to think about that. Messed up guy.

He moves past the implications of Mundus’ puzzle-proclivities to get to the point. “Gotcha. Well if you weren’t watching me all that closely, that means you would’ve missed all the Green Orbs I got. Which I’m definitely sure I got, because I’ve been relying on them to keep me in tip-top shape for a decade or so now, and brain damaged or not I don’t think I'd keep up a consistent hallucination for that long. Whatever pea’s in my skull tends to hop from one thing to another. Too little space to remember any one thing long term, you see?” Trish stares blankly, unamused by his little tale. Dante continues, undisturbed. “Anyway. My theory is that Green Orbs only show up in the Human World. And/or for half-human demons. That’s why you’ve never seen one- you’ve only been to the Human World the once, and weren’t watching closely enough to catch ‘em when they popped. And following that, I’d bet Divinity Statues giving out Vital Stars is a Human World exclusive too. Maybe with bits of leeway for when a portal’s sitting nearby.” ‘Cause he’ll admit that he’s pretty sure he got a Vital Star once or twice when in a Hellish place, but to be honest his memory’s a bit shaky and he’s not sure if he was actually in the depths of Hell, in Limbo, or in some funky extension of the Human World that got corrupted by proximity to a Hellgate. He’s never had anyone explain the specifics to him. Mostly he stumbles around into being right, or otherwise thinking he’s right even though he’s way off the mark. But the point is: he’s never gotten a Vital Star from a Divinity Statue when he was in the depths of Hell, trapped without a portal like he is now, so maybe the deeper you go the fewer healing items Demons and Divinity Statues have to offer.

Finally, Trish seems to find some sense in his words. “Because of the barrier, few demons have access to the Human World, and those that do tend to be on the weaker side,” she murmurs, working through the train of thought Dante’s already pushed to the station. “Even if the Divinity Statues on the Human side offer Vital Stars to those who can use them, none of the demons who’d made it over would’ve been strong enough to access one and report back on the phenomenon.”

“Exactamundo.” 

She frowns. “So what will you do, then? Go back to the Human World and smother Vergil with Vital Stars until he’s all better?”

Dante nods. “Yep.”

Trish’s eyes narrow. “He’s dying. The demon world’s atmosphere is trying to heal him, but it’s not doing much more than keeping him alive. The second you take him to the Human World, he’s going to crash. Are you sure you’ll be able to get enough Stars to keep him from dying within a week? Are you sure the Stars will work at all? It would be unfortunate if you brought him all the way over only to have him die because you were wrong.”

 “-” Dante’s breath catches in his throat. “I mean. I could be right.”

“Are you going to risk his life on a chance?”

He bites his lip. “It’s a good one.”

“Good enough to kill him for? Will you look at his corpse and tell yourself that it’s okay because you tried? That it’s fine he died on you because you got impatient and decided to take a risk you knew wouldn’t succeed?”

Dante stumbles over his words. “I don’t- you don’t know it’s not going to succeed.” He needs this victory. He’s not going to abandon it so easily.

But Trish is a stubborn demon when it comes to things she feels strongly about, so she prods him without remorse. “Don’t you? You gave him a Vital Star once before. Did it do anything? Did it help? Or did it just fade? You can fill a broken jug with water, but unless you patch the hole, the water will inevitably drain and you’ll be left with a wet table and a sharp edge that’ll cut you if you ever so much as graze your hand against it. It will never fill in a meaningful way. You’ll just exhaust yourself trying.”

Dante laughs, voice high, the sound stilted. “That’s oddly poetic of you,” he says, borrowing a phrase she’d used earlier, uncomfortable at the uncanny way in which she stares at him, eyes wide and fathomless. 

“Dante.”

“That’s annoyingly confrontational of you,” he grumbles. He only half meant to say it out loud. That he did doesn’t bother him as much as that piercing gaze.

“And?”

He huffs, turning away from her and her soul-searching stare. If she’s going to dig up his core, then he’s not going to bear witness. 

Because she’s right.

She’s, horribly, truthfully, unfortunately right.

The Vital Star didn’t work. Dante knows this. 

A hundred Vital Stars wouldn’t work. A thousand. All the Vital Stars a Divinity Statue or ten would ever have to offer. A Vital Star can’t replace health you didn’t have in the first place. And right now, Vergil’s health pool is probably hovering just above zero.

See, Dante’s thought about this a few times over the years. As he’s grown stronger over time, as he’s fought more demons and grown more durable, grown more hardy, Vital Stars have grown more effective too. Sort of. They’re proportional, basically, but when he first started out, using a big Star while on the brink of death would let him take five or six more hits, while a few years down the line using a big one when a pinprick away from kicking the bucket would let him tank a dozen plus. Using a Vital Star when he’s only taken a single hit doesn’t increase his max; it just brings him back to where it already was. When he’s had some of his really bad times where he quit fighting for a while for this reason or that, he’d get a little more fragile, even if never as much as he was pre-Trigger, pre-Temen-ni-gru, pre-Vergil showing him who and what they really were, so he knows your max can regress, in a way. He’s not really sure of the mechanics of it. Humans work in a similar way though, where even your Olympic marathon runner can end up out of breath after a half mile if they break a leg or two and get depressed over it and spend a few years languishing on the couch in mourning for who they once were and might never be again, so he figures it works the same way for cambion health: stop exercising and you’ll lose your gains; stop fighting demons and your health pool drops down to higher-than but not-quite-as-higher-than normal. Experience a setback and you’ll be back a few squares, even if not to square one, even if you can get back to where you were faster than you did in the first place. 

So all that’s to say: A Vital Star can’t save you if you’re in a bad spot to begin with, and right now Dante can tell Vergil’s max is low enough to make a human look good. At least with a human, if you took a letter opener to their arm it’d probably scab over eventually. If Dante did that to Vergil, he wouldn’t be surprised if his arm just split down the middle and fell off at the seam after a short tug. Well. Maybe that’s exaggerating things, but it’s not good. Vergil’s rotted down to his core. Until the rot is excised, a Vital Star will be useless. Water in a broken jug, like Trish said, except said jug’s also had the top lopped off so it could only hold a fraction of the water it once did even if it weren't for the hole causing any and everything that might be placed inside to leak to its sad, sad death. 

To be honest, he’s also thought about this in the last few weeks, or whatever X amount of time he’s been stuck down here, looking for statues he couldn’t find. But he needed the victory, y’know? Needed something to work towards. Without the Divinity Statues, he had nothing. At least with a goal in mind he could keep some sort of routine, even if his efforts would ultimately be fruitless. He just needed to pretend they wouldn’t be. 

Trish, unfortunately for him, isn’t so happily deluded. He’s not sure if he’d call her a pragmatist or just lacking the sort of empathy that would let her allow Dante to continue on his merry, ineffective way, but whatever the case she doesn't have the patience for his antics. Or the patience to call them anything but. She seems content to wait for him for reasons he doesn’t understand, but she’s not going to be a completely silent observer, so he supposes he’ll have to deal with her comments as long as she sticks by his side. It’s probably good for him. Doesn’t feel like it, but things don’t always feel the way they are. Trish is one of them. 

(She looks like a dead woman. She is not that dead woman. She both does and doesn’t feel like that dead woman at different times that always pierce him to his core and make him bungee between anger, self-consciousness, desperation, annoyance, and longing. Which is a lot of emotions for the relatively short amount of time she’s been with him in Hell, but Dante’s more human than this land, more human than is good for him right now, in this unforgiving realm which cares little for his humanity except in the ways it seems to destabilize him, maybe in preparation for a life down here, and humans are prone to emotional instability, as much as she may claim demons are the ones that exist in extremes. At least those demons are pretty consistent with their high highs and low lows. Dante’s never been one to stay in one place too long on the emotional scale. See, that would probably be healthy, and if Dante’s not self-destructing, he’s pretending to be someone else. 

Which, admittedly, he’s been doing almost his whole life. But there’s the someone you want to pretend to be and the someone you are. In Dante’s case, those two rarely align.)

He takes a deep breath. 

“Finally admitting defeat, then? Would you like to hear more about the Qliphoth? We’re not far from where Mundus kept the seed. I could get it for you if you’d like.”

“No thanks.” Dante turns to face her, plastering on yet another wide smile. “I’m not giving up yet. I’ve still got a few things to try first.” He’s still got a few morals to bend and break that don’t involve the mass slaughter of human beings. 

Because he’s not doing that. He’s not doing that. It doesn’t matter how many failures he faces or how far he’s pushed; he’s trying to save Vergil, but he’s not Vergil, and he’s not going to do that. It’s not worth it. His humanity. What little is left. 

The only option left to him isn’t pleasant- he’s not joking about some compromised morals, even if said morals were plotted atop a high horse that he maybe didn’t need to get on in the first place- but it’s far more acceptable than harming humans will ever be. Because he’s not doing that. He’s not. Not for Vergil. 

(Not, ultimately, for himself, because that’s who his actions are currently geared towards helping at their core. Vergil is unconscious. Vergil has been dead for nearly a decade. Dante’s the one with a life. Dante’s the one so desperate for a victory that he will (not) compromise his morals to achieve it. It’s a very selfish selflessness. He just doesn’t want to admit it. He won’t. He likely never will.)

“Suit yourself,” Trish replies. She walks past him, bumping into his shoulder as she goes. “Just know I’ll be here when you inevitably change your mind.”

“I won’t.”

“You will. You’re too human not to.”

His breath catches in his throat.

She doesn’t turn back.

Chapter Text

The “few things” Dante has left to try are really just one. 

Cannibalism. 

As Trish so kindly reminded him, demons tend to heal themselves by feasting on the flesh and blood of others. In flesh there is power, and in consumption- in domination - that strength is subsumed. 

It’s not always necessary to ingest another demon’s body or blood to reap the benefits of their life essence; bathing in it works well enough. Though it won’t be nearly as potent as latching onto a demon with claw tipped-fingers and tearing into their jugular with usually jagged, sometimes uncomfortably flat teeth, draining their blood down the ol’ gullet with a gusto no decent person would even entertain, a skin-touch only bloodshower is better than nothing, and has the bonus of being a passive process. Just as existing in the Demon World naturally imbues demons with energy, coating oneself in the blood of other demons naturally pulls their energy in, strained out from their essence and turned into your own. Energy transfer between demons is more efficient than most of what goes on in the human world. Though demons tend to have a maximum amount of power they can accumulate before their flesh either begins to curdle, corrupted by power it was not meant to hold, or before said flesh raises the white flag and refuses to take a drop more in the first place, simply unable to store so much raw power, what does transfer transfers almost in full. The predator’s dream. Less hunting and greater reward.

Dante’s experience mostly lies on the absorption side of things. Demon hunting is a naturally bloody business, and he’s had more than a few inadvertent showers when he’s cut up one of the big ones or whacked his way through enough of the little ones to fill a pool. Back when he’d first started hunting, Dante’d assumed that the demon blood that had mysteriously disappeared before he could wash it off had simply poofed into the aether, fading like dust in the wind and gone with the demon’s body as if it had never been there at all, the unnatural presence either removing itself from the world it didn’t belong to, or being actively removed by some cosmic entity displeased with its existence. He’d been all for it. It was really convenient from a clothing perspective; something that disappears on its own can’t leave a stain. Not to mention the way it’d make cops bug out when they got reports of some maniac with two guns and a full-body bloody paint job, only to arrive on scene and find he was already missing the second half of that lovely description, or otherwise slowly ceased fitting the second half by the time their conversation came to a close, which really made them go all bug-eyed. It’s a lovely thing when the evidence gets rid of itself. Less of a headache to explain away.

But while ignorance may only sometimes be bliss, it will always eventually come to an end in one way or another, and Dante’s happy little hypothesis was proven wrong before he ever hit the Temen-ni-gru. Remember: dumb as he might like to pretend to be, and as much as he’s willing to overlook a thing or two for convenience, Dante’s not a complete idiot. Looking for clues is part of his job. It’d be stupid to ignore the ones blaring at him at the end of each and every fight. 

He’d kill a demon, feel it get all over his clothes and skin and watch it spray all over the room, and then come back to the spot a few minutes later squeaky clean but standing in a puddle that had maybe darkened, but not disappeared. He’d go out in a dry wave with cracking skin, slice the tops off a few baddies, and come home well moisturized and silky smooth. He, once getting the suspicion that things weren’t quite what they seemed, would kill a demon, intentionally coat himself in its blood, and hold out his hand to watch as the blood didn’t break off in little pieces or turn to dust, but instead filled all the tiny cracks in his skin until there was nothing left, or otherwise soaked down through the fabric of his sleeve until it was gone, undeniably pulled in, not out. A few experiments later he was left with an answer he didn’t really like. Especially when he realized that on weeks when the jobs were flowing but the money wasn’t, he was just fine skipping out on meals because, despite all the excess energy he’d been exerting while chasing around demons and firing energy bullets, he wasn’t hungry. Weeks that he had neither, he was. The conclusion was only too easy to make.

So it wasn’t just a visual thing. The blood was coming into him, and it was fueling him almost better than real food. It had a special buzz to it that human food didn’t. As with everything of the sort, Dante did his best to ignore that bit of knowledge, and did his best to eat at least one meal a day no matter how hungry he was or wasn’t, so he could at least pretend he’d never had that little realization at all. As if it would undo it. As if it would help. 

The energy carried within demon blood is special. It’s more than calories; if it weren’t, Dante would’ve probably keeled over from some horrible vitamin deficiency years ago. Maybe gotten scurvy. He’s not really a fruit guy. Yet whatever energy demons carry, physical or metaphysical or whatever the hell something like demonic energy should be considered, it’s enough to make up for any and all other benefits you’re supposed to get from food. That or Dante’s anatomy is even more fucked up than he thought, which isn’t outside the realm of possibility. He shouldn’t be able to move very long with a pierced heart, the blood obviously not supposed to flow through his body and fuel his limbs when the main pump’s got two glaring holes and occasionally a giant blockage, but every time it happens, move he does, whether through through magic or some other means. Logic’s claim to it is pretty shaky. So all this is to say: there’s something special about demon blood and the energy it carries. It’s something less tangible, but more effective than other human energy sources. More efficient. A battery whose charge you can steal by taking out the parts. Magic at its finest.

But just because most of Dante’s experience comes through the absorption side of things, and the absorption one is the only one Dante remotely wants to participate in, his comfort with it still not super high but better than it used to be, that doesn’t mean Dante’s never taken a dip into the other side of things.

Through some personal experience he’d never personally wanted to experience, Dante knows that the ability for demons to gain strength and energy through the more literal consumption of their own extends to even those who’ve only got a fifty-fifty percent split. Whether it’s more or less effective than that of their full blooded brethren he has no idea and doesn’t really care to find out. That would require a lot more testing than he’s willing to try.

Now, Dante has never gone to town on the whole demon eating thing. Never tried to intentionally chow down on a Fetish thigh or lap up the juice of a fallen Bloodgoyle. 

One, the idea grosses him out because he’s half demon, and that gets uncomfortably close to cannibalism. Sure, Sparda was a different type of demon than the ones Dante’s been faced with, but the half is enough to weird him out. For all he knows, some random demon could be his second cousin. But it’s close enough to make him pass up even the finest of demon flanks. 

Two, he’s seen the kind of things demons run up against and their hygiene practices, and he doesn’t want a part of that either, completely independent of the demon thing. It’s not like Dante would run out into a field and take a bite out of some random pig if he was feeling hangry, because that’s gross and while Dante’s not a germaphobe or anything- the state of his office speaks to that- he does have some standards when it comes to what he puts into his body. It doesn’t have to be healthy , per se- he’ll readily admit a diet which is mostly comprised of pizza, sundaes, and various alcohols is not something a doctor would give any sort of happy check- but it does have to be relatively clean. A pizza box may sometimes grow mold when he leaves it for too long, but he sure as Hell wouldn’t eat any slices left inside, if for some horrible, ungodly, unimaginable and uncharacteristic reason he’d ever let a slice of pizza go more than a day without being eaten. It would go in the trash with the box when he got the energy to toss it. No mold for Dante, yessiree. 

Three, Dante’s a man with specific taste, and most demons look like they’d be absolutely disgusting. Even just thinking about some of those textures touching his tongue gives him the chills. Some things are not meant to be consumed by someone with a delicate palate like Dante’s human form has, its tastebuds probably not quite normal on the human scale but the organ still mostly human in strength, size, and composition, and the vast majority of demons fall among them. He might try a cricket if it were prepared by someone who actually knew how to do that, but there is no world in which you could convince him to pop a Beezlebug wing in his mouth after he’d swiped it down from the sky. That’d just be…no. Shivers. Moving on.

The fourth and final reason is the most important of the bunch, both in terms of being his prime factor and also being what should’ve long since made him acquiesce this would be his one and only saving grace: Dante doesn’t want to eat demons and Dante doesn’t want to drink their blood because he knows how it makes him feel, and that feeling, so reminiscent of this high he’s been strung up on since he entered Hell, is not something he enjoys feeling when he knows its source.

Now, to the outside observer, there might be something wrong with that last bit. The whole admission that Dante has consumed demon blood, despite all the reasons he doesn’t want to. 

But he’s got a good reason for it! Which is that he didn’t and doesn’t mean to. 

( Usually. )

It just sometimes that happens. Accidentally. On more than one occasion. And maybe more occasions than he has fingers and toes. 

But not on purpose! It’s the natural result of getting excited and having fun while fighting, which naturally has him opening his mouth, which naturally- and unfortunately, surely, he’s not doing it on purpose, doesn’t do it on purpose, really (he just can’t help himself, sometimes)- means some of the blood flying off the more spray-happy demons gets into his mouth, and naturally results in him ingesting some of it because it’s a natural reflex to swallow every so often. Gotta get the spit down somehow, y’know? Plus the occasional red permanent visitor. But he doesn’t mean to do it, because when he accidentally swallows too much in too short a period of time, or when he only swallows a bit but it belongs to a greater demon with greater amounts of energy that power their stuffy little frames, it makes his mind and body buzz with a kind of power and exhilaration that humans Should Not Feel and he doesn’t like that. That’s a demon thing. A vampire thing. Dante is not a vampire. He’s also not a full demon. And he doesn’t want to give into the instincts of the side he’s spent half his life trying to tamp down. 

But…Vergil probably doesn’t have the same qualms he does about this sort of thing. Even from the little Dante had seen of him after the fire, it had been clear Vergil had been more in tune with their demon side. The Trigger that had made Dante shudder and pause every time he pulled it out on that tower had washed over Vergil with a grace that only came with repeated use, something called forth rather than dragged up, the emergence of a natural, harmonic state rather than the bloody birth of a monster begging to be allowed air. Vergil had been fine with taking their father’s power and all that meant. Had wanted and fought for it. The inheritance Vergil had sought and the world he’d chosen had been that of the one they now stood in- or lied in, in Vergil’s case, a rotting sack of meat with no power to do anything for itself anymore- not the one in which they’d first been born. 

Part of Vergil’s chosen world was its natural order. That natural order included demons feasting on other demons. There’s no way Vergil didn’t know that, and given Dante’s pretty sure Vergil never came up for air between their last meeting and this one (and if he did, Dante doesn’t want to know it, because the idea of Vergil returning to the Human World only on the condition that he not be subjected to Dante’s presence is not one he wants to entertain, for all that speaks to Vergil’s opinion of him, which really should’ve been cemented the moment Vergil fell but alas, Dante’s traitorous heart is a bit of a dreamer despite all evidence that dreams bring nothing but disappointment, an eternal and universal truth that holds constant no matter the world so unfortunate enough to host him-), Vergil’s probably been eating demons for years. What else is there to eat? He’d know better than Dante. Trish probably would too, but Dante isn’t really in the mood for chatting and doesn’t want to hear anything worse than he’s already imagined, so he’ll sit this conversation out for once. Anyroad, even were Vergil to have gone a near decade without a demon snack, were he the one making the decision here he’d probably think it over for a minute before jumping through whatever hoops he needed to to make sense of it and arrive at the logical conclusion that it would be A-Okay. So if Vergil would be fine with it, Dante should be fine with it too. It’s not like Dante will be the one eating the demons. That’ll be Vergil. Dante’s just procurement. 

(Unless, of course, they’re stuck down here long enough Dante’s strength starts to wane and he needs a little pick-me-up that even the ambient energy infusion of Hell can’t make up for- but he’s hoping he’ll find a way to fix Vergil before that. He’ll worry about securing their passage home after he’s sure Vergil will survive the transition.)

So, if it’s between feeding on demons or leaving Vergil to waste away from a total lack of energy input… cannibalism it’ll be.

For the sake of his sanity, after a few fruitless surveys into the bog he’d chosen as his newest hunting grounds, away from the lava wasteland he’d come from so he could find some new demons to impose his new reign of terror upon, Dante admits to a few things. Tosses up some excuses and concessions that won’t necessarily make him sleep any better at night- sometime in the future that is not now, being that this region of Hell both doesn’t seem to have night and that Dante hasn’t slept since before Mallet- but will hopefully keep him from needing to take a little scream break here and there when the wear and tear on his morals gets to be a little too much. 

First, the excuse: 

It’s not really cannibalism to eat demons, because Dante and Vergil are their own thing. They’re cambion. Special. To say it would be cannibalism for Dante and Vergil to eat demons would be like saying humans are cannibals because they eat beef. Sure humans and cows share a common ancestor, but humans aren’t cattle and eating the occasional prime rib is perfectly acceptable. 

(He’s going to ignore the fact that the common ancestor humans and cows share is many, many more generations back than Dante and your average demon. Which is one. And he knew that guy. And cows can’t beg for mercy. Not in a language he can understand, at any rate- which is a whole other can of worms, the whole understanding demons thing, because the fact that Dante can innately understand them even when they’re not speaking in any language he’s actually taken the time to learn is disturbing, to say the least, more of that magical demonic knowledge that he hates because human knowledge has never come to him that easily and that demonic knowledge somehow slots in so much more naturally says some things about his natural state that he doesn’t want to be true- and even then he’s not the one powering the machine at the slaughterhouse.)

Second, the concession:

Despite his love for flashiness and the ways in which the hunt for style can lead to some rather bombastic battles colored by blood falling like rain and spilling like oil, rivers running down streets and hugging flesh as if to be its second skin; despite the kick Dante gets out of kicking a demon around while they scramble to locate the source of the teasing that tears into their flesh with the playful viciousness that complements the blades and bullets that open physical wounds alongside them, words a weapon meant to entertain and torment in one; Dante has never been one to make his opponents suffer. Not physically. Not in a prolonged sort of way. Death with dignity isn’t something Dante always affords his opponents- he’ll admit it’s funny to watch a Marionette hobble around on one leg, and riling up the Cerberus heads with the good ol’ puppy come hither had been a hoot- but death with sanity’s meant to be a given, or at least death without being subject to the kind of sadism that might result in a new term being named after him to show just how deep his obsession goes. 

All that is to say: Dante generally goes for a clean death. Aims for it like dentists to toothpaste and doctors to supplements; a success rate of nine out of ten. Sometimes the baddies are just too tricky to take down in a hit or two, their bulk, brawn, or very rare ability to form coherent thoughts meaning Dante has to chip away at the blocks before he can knock that whole tower down, but he at least tries to be quick about it. Death by thousand cuts endured in half an hour, not half a day. Watching someone beg for mercy can flip from being amusing to being uncomfortable pretty fast. He doesn’t want to prolong a death any further than the last laugh. That’s just cruel.

But now? While cruelty isn’t going to be the point, it’s undeniably going to be a factor. The dragging out of the death’s going to accompany the dragging forth of the body, because Dante needs to make sure the demons he kills for Vergil’s sake don’t poof into demon dust and red orbs before they reach their destination as they so often do, lest they disappear before they can be of any help to Vergil. 

If there’s a way to keep them from disappearing in under a few minutes Dante doesn’t know it. He’s fought demons in the thousands and only ever ended up with a few dozen that have stuck around for more than an hour, but he’s never been able to determine what exactly makes them do that. When he’d asked Trish, she’d given him a blank stare and an unhelpful “You just use your energy,” said in the kind of tone you reserve for children asking a question they should already know the answer to, which had made zero sense and, after several failed trips, didn’t seem to be something Dante could do on command. Without the ability to keep the demons around for more than a few minutes after death, he’d have to keep them alive until arrival, which could quickly dip into the side of cruel and unusual punishment. Or torture. Cut off the legs so they can’t run while keeping them alive enough they don’t bite the dust. Snap their fingers, maybe dislocate shoulders so they can’t claw at you. Hurt them enough that they stop regenerating, but not enough that they keel over. Knock them unconscious if possible, but probably just maim them until they’ve either got no fight left in them or simply can’t fight back. It’s not going to be pleasant in any case. Is not anything Dante wants to do. But it’s not about his wants right now; it’s about Vergil’s needs. Clean deaths will be dream of the past, a coat temporarily placed on the rack until Dante’s finished with his business here and can grab it on the way back out, assuming his time in Hell hasn’t distorted him too much for it to fit. 

Third: the realization. He has no idea how or what he’s actually going to feed Vergil.

Do different demons have different nutritional benefits? Is there any difference between drinking demon blood and eating demon flesh? He supposes he could ask Trish, but almost every question he’s tossed her way has been met with a look that reminds him too much of being scolded by a dead mother, and he’s not really in the mood for dealing with that right now. Feels too raw. Too much like his fault. 

He could theoretically go the external absorption route, slicing a demon open over Vergil’s body and letting the blood run over him, but he’s pretty sure Vergil would hate him for that, and Dante’s not too keen on the idea anyway. Not to mention the fact that it’s not nearly as efficient. The kind of body count necessary for any measurable success via blood shower would be even higher than the one Dante’s going to have to accept with the feeding route. 

It’ll have to be through the mouth. Eating, drinking. Whichever Vergil takes to the best. It’ll be best for everyone. Dante doesn’t want to find out the hard way that being as bad as Vergil is means he won’t pull the blood in through his skin and watch as all of his hard work in assembling a passable outfit goes down the drain because Dante saw to bathe Vergil clothed. He’s also not stripping him. Vergil deserves at least that much. So direct, sustenance-in-mouth cannibalism it is. 

Let their mother never learn what her sons have been up to. She’d always been so proper; she may have married a demon, but Dante can’t reconcile that with someone who’d approve of what her two little literal hellions are doing today. She’d never even liked when they tore into each other, which was the most basic of demonic instincts. If she saw them eating their father’s people…

It’s a good thing they’re stuck in Hell, away from prying eyes. If such a thing as Heaven exists, demon-lover or no he thinks Eva would deserve to be there- she’d always been so kind, had always done her best, had married the best demon to ever exist in terms of pure service to humanity, barrier forming and all that- and hopefully the distance would mean she’d never be forced to bear witness to the sort of sins of the flesh going on below. 

Now all Dante has to do is put these horrible ideas into practice. Glory be. 

When Dante returns to the castle a few hours later, some reptilian demon he’s never seen before having been procured from a long stretch of marsh in which he hadn’t expected reptiles to live (not that this one does there anymore, so maybe he’s doing it a favor-), Trish gives him a low-chinned stare. Judgment. Whether he’s been deemed guilty or innocent, he doesn’t know.

Not that it takes him very long to figure it out.

“You’re fine with demon blood then?” Trish asks, staring at the banged up thing Dante’s dragged in by the tail. 

“It’s not the same,” Dante argues. 

“If you insist,” she trills. 

Her disagreement is unspoken. That doesn’t make it any less true. 

He’s got an argument on the tip of his tongue, a dozen different angles of debate that he’d thrice thought over during his trip back because he just knew she would judge him, but they lie an inch out of grasp, a centimeter too far for him to fumble for in the moment he’s got, and Trish doesn’t give him a chance to offer up any of them. She’s gone in a moment, her departure marked by a swish of her hair and the rustle of a scarf draped over her shoulders like a shawl, off to do who knows what in a castle that, unlike for Dante, has welcomed her home. 

She has a habit of doing that. Leaving before he can say what he wants. Walking out on him when he’s desperate for- conversation, support, something other than the silence that’s plagued him since Vergil left the picture. 

It frustrates him to no end. Is she doing it because she doesn’t care about whatever justification he might have, or because she thinks (knows) she’s won? Because she hasn’t. It’s not the same. Not in the ways that count. (Except it is. Specifically in the ways that count, even if not the materialization). 

Trish has said it herself; killing is the way of the demon world. Dante is doing the natural thing. He’s living according to the rules of the world he’s found himself in. 

(But should he?

Is it okay to do something terrible because those around you are, too?

(It’s not.)

But Dante’s not doing something terrible. There are benefits. He’s not going that crazy. He’s mowed his way through droves of demons in the human world and hasn’t felt that bad about it. He’d mowed his way through dozens of demons just to get to the castle in the first place, and he hadn’t felt bad about that either. What’s a few dozen more? It’s not a moral quandary. It never has been. It’s natural. It’s no big deal. 

Both demons and people die every day for no reason at all. These demons are dying for a good reason: saving Vergil. And Dante’s not picking off demons who leave him alone; he’s only fighting those who fight him, those who want to fight, those who’ve signed their own death certificates by throwing themselves in the ring. It’s the way of the world. They’ve consented. So it’s fine. Dante is fine. What he is doing is fine. It’s within the rules. This world’s and his own.

(That the latter have shifted is not something he’s willing to admit.))

With Trish having wandered off to some other part of the castle, Dante’s left without anyone to consult when it comes to just how he’s going to make his little bout of not-cannibalism manifest. He’s not going to chase her. If she wants to leave, she can leave. No need to act like a little kid about this. Dante’s responsible enough not to walk away from an argument. He’s also responsible enough to not walk away from a mess he’s created, even as he’s about to make an even bigger one, at least in the physical sense. 

Dante knows he’s on a time limit here. The demon he’s brought with him won’t last forever. It’s only a matter of time before it disappears into the aether like so many of the many, many failed attempts before this. 

Dragging back a live demon is a tricky thing. Demons tend to fight until the end. They don’t really lie down and let you do what you will with them. Or if they do, Dante hasn’t figured out the trick to it. It had ended up taking him somewhere in the realm of ten to fifteen tries before he’d managed to make it back to the castle with this one in the first place. He doesn’t want to lose this chance because his hesitation meant the thing died on him before he could use it. 

See, the first few demons he’d run into ended up dying in the initial scuffle, Dante either being forced to kill them outright, accidentally killing them while trying to deal non-lethal wounds which ended up not being quite as non-lethal as he’d hoped, or watching in despair as they pulled off some sort of self-destruction that left him staring at a smoking crater or steaming pile of goop that wouldn’t be much help at all. The next few failed to make it through the door because they tried to make a run for it in this that or the other way during transport, leading to Dante either intentionally killing them to prevent them from getting away, or again, accidentally killing them while trying to subdue them back to a more easily-transportable state. Another three died of their injuries mid-transport, Dante not intentionally worsening said injuries as he dragged whatever demon it was along but the injuries and bloodloss they’d endured to be put in a more easily handled state simply proving too much for their feeble bodies, and a fourth just made a successful break for it while Dante was busy fighting a pack of Nobodies whose annoying eye bombs proved the demons to be more trouble than they were worth. Dante’d ended up killing the whole pack out of frustration, so he hadn’t managed to bring any of them back either.

All that being said: it was a huge pain in the ass to get the lizard demon back, and Dante doesn’t want to waste it. He’d hope the lessons he’s learned trying to nab this one would make later hunting easier, but it’s hard to say. Demons are feisty little things. They don’t take very kindly to attempted kidnapping. 

(For them, it’s probably worse than death. One has dignity. The other doesn’t. Good thing at the moment Dante has none.)

The thing squirms relentlessly as Dante attempts to maneuver it into a position in which he can do something with it, and the motion keeps him from being able to do anything useful. He stares at it, trying to think of next steps. Of ways to still it without outright killing the thing. Its movements are spasmodic and make him uncomfortable; he really wants to get this over with as soon as possible, for Vergil’s sake and his own. The thing screeches when Dante throws it onto the floor and pins it in place with one boot, pulling Rebellion off his back to cut its good leg off at the junction with its body.  While Dante’d inadvertently crushed one of the demon’s legs while attempting to subdue it, rendering that limb basically useless, the other thigh looked thick enough to have some good meat to it, so off it goes. The spray gets pretty far, splashing up against Dante’s boots and knees and splattering across Vergil’s face, red droplets running down an otherwise pale cheek like some sort of demented application of blush. Dante leaves it be; it’ll be a good test to see if Vergil can absorb the stuff through his skin after all. 

The demon wiggles under his boot, brought back to life and opposition by the sudden addition of pain, so Dante spears it through the shoulder with Rebellion and calls forth Alastor to pin it in its bad thigh to keep it in place while he works, not wanting to kill it quite yet if he can avoid it and also not particularly keen on having to hold the thing down himself to keep it from escaping. That’s a little too much. It’s pretty plump as far as demons go, and as long as Dante already has the demon here, he wants to maximize his earnings- it’ll mean fewer trips in the end (will mean fewer deaths, if all goes well) and a better time all around if he can manage it- and holds the dripping leg up for examination. The scales on the thing are pretty thick; it’s got a good centimeter of depth, more including the skin underneath. Dante hasn’t really gone poking around in Vergil’s mouth, but he doubts Vergil’s got a mouth full of fangs since Dante’s only really got the pronounced canines, so he pulls an extra hunting knife out of one of his boots and uses it to descale the thing. It’s bloody business. Messy and unpleasant. By the time he’s satisfied, Vergil’s covered in so much splatter he looks like he’s got the measles or chicken pox or some sort of human disease they’d always been immune to as far as Dante knows, face covered in little red dots that haven’t yet faded. Slightly concerning. But Dante’ll give it time yet.

With that, he hopes for the best and shoves the severed limb in Vegil’s mouth.

…

It’s a stupid idea.

Honestly he can’t even make an excuse for why in the world that would have been even a remotely good idea when Vergil, very much predictably, if he’d made even a half attempt to predict anything rather than charging ahead brainless, does not bite down and does not eat it. If anything he just gags, his near-absent breaths strengthening into a momentary wheeze that has his chest only half inflating and making an aborted spasm that has Dante tearing the limb out and throwing it across the room before Dante accidentally kills the guy. Great job, Dante. You nearly made your brother choke to death! It seems like Dante’s inventing a new way to torture and/or kill his brother by the hour!

Clearly the limb was too big. Vergil can’t eat something bigger than his mouth. He needs something smaller. Easier to imbibe. Theoretically Dante could use his hunting knife to cut the leg into smaller chunks, but he doesn’t want to risk Vergil choking on something if he tries to filet the leg and puts a cube down Vergil’s throat that he either can’t swallow or goes down the wrong tube What an ending that would be. Death by demon chunk. And not even one you chose to eat yourself, but something your panicked brother decided to try to feed you while you were unconscious and thus really not in a position where any smart person would try to feed you something.

That’s a bust.

So, with flesh proving too much for Vergil to handle, the idea of smushing it into a slurry a little too much even for Dante’s now admittedly compromised-slash-shifted-to-the-left morals, and inactivity worse than death, Dante decides to move onto option number two-point-five: pouring blood down Vergil’s throat. It has to be at least somewhat helpful, even if it’s maybe not as good as the meat which would have flesh and blood both. 

He considers going back down to the kitchen and retrieving one of the many inordinately jeweled goblets to use as a transfer device, bleeding the demons into the cup and putting the cup to Vergil’s lips instead, but Dante doesn’t want to risk some sort of taint entering the blood if the goblets were contaminated or if introducing an additional surface might somehow reduce the effects or potency or something. Does it make sense? Is it logical? Maybe not, but magic is magic, and Dante’s not gonna mess with that.

He unpins the demon from the floor, sending Alastor back to the void and flipping Rebellion once as he preps for what needs to be done. A batter up at the plate; a home run waiting to happen. A quick swipe of Rebellion across the thing’s neck is all it takes to end the demon’s life and spill the blood which- Dante hopes- will be Vergil’s salvation. Here’s hoping for at least a double.

The demon’s head lolls to the side as its lifeblood pours from the gash across its collar, having not quite been beheaded but losing several of the muscles meant to keep the thing in place. Some of its blood catches on its cheek and collarbone and is wasted as it falls to the side of Vergil’s face, misdirected as if in a last show of defiance which will in no way save its life. The majority pours relatively straight down though, and it doesn’t take too much adjustment for Dante to hold it in the right way to have it fall toward Vergil’s open mouth.

The blood pools in the yawning chasm. It spills quickly; not much time passes at all before the cavity is filled to overflowing. It’s not immediately clear whether the demon’s bleeding too fast for Vergil to keep up or if he’s not swallowing at all. By the stillness of Vergil’s throat, his Adam’s apple frozen, not even making the slightest bob, Dante would say it’s the latter. Unlike with the Vital Star absorption, which was a passive ability, consuming liquid blood requires swallowing, and swallowing apparently takes more reflexes than Vergil seems to have, weak as he is. That or consuming demon blood isn’t as instinctual as Dante’d figured. On the one hand, it’s nice to know they’re not hardwired toward cannibalism, and that if Dante goes over the deep end he probably won’t be channeling his inner vampire even if his empty shell goes for broke on the slaughter side of things. On the other hand, it’s really inconvenient that wire seems to be disconnected if not missing entirely, because Dante’s future mental breakdown is only a (somewhat likely) possibility while Vergil’s paralysis is a current fact which Dante’s had little luck undermining, so he’d much rather have the instinct intact. 

The blood that misses Vergil’s mouth or otherwise flows out of it is another source of discomfort. What disturbs Dante more than the waste of ‘precious life’- if you could call the life of random demon grunts precious, which…Dante probably should, because all life should be precious, didn’t people go on and on about that and wasn’t it a sign of being a good human being to consider all life precious? Except in this case he both does and doesn’t feel bad that his heart isn’t fluttering at their loss and the exhaustion creeping at the back of his mind has drained him of the ability to give a damn- is the way the blood is absorbed by the black lines on Vergil’s face as it hits them. The blood doesn’t simply mix in and dissipate. No, instead it bubbles where it brushes up against the void, as if the vapid substance is consuming it before it can be claimed by the one which it has infected and for whom the blood is met. 

The sight doesn’t bode well for Dante’s hopes of the stuff naturally being replaced by Vergil’s own blood over time. If the ichor can get to the blood before Vergil’s natural absorption factor can, then it seems to be the stronger of the two. The dominant factor. With Dante floundering for a way to get rid of it from the outside, it’s up to Vergil to fight the corruption off, and if said corruption manages to hijack the energy source Dante’s providing, it’s questionable whether Vergil will be able to accumulate enough to turn the tides.

…But that’s a problem for later. Things can’t exactly get worse for Vergil, so Dante might as well go feeding the both of them- the monster and the man- in hopes that a miracle will occur and Vergil will do as he’s always done and crawl out of the wreckage to win in a situation that he by no right should emerge from triumphant.

The blood continues to spill down Vergil’s cheeks. His throat is still; he hasn’t imbibed, hasn’t swallowed. Fate has decreed Dante must be unsuccessful, as it so often has, and so Vergil’s success must therefore be limited too.

After enough spillage, Dante decides to take action rather than simply wait for good things which never happen to surprise the world and make their unannounced entrance for the first time in an age. He squats in front of Vergil, momentarily holding the sputtering demon to the side and showering the experienced stone with its newest layer of red as he pinches Vergil's nose, hoping that with his only other airway cut off Vergil’s latent survival instincts would kick in and cause him to swallow before he suffocated. 

(Hoping, he says, but it’s more like praying, because with the evidence he’s seen thus far, it seems more likely that Vergil will just sit there and drown in the blood Dante’s trying to use to save him rather than produce the amount of energy or control over his faculties, innate slash unconscious as it should be or no, required to continue breathing and survive. And what a way would that be for Dante to kill Vergil this time; not choking on his own blood, as one might reasonably do were they stabbed in just the right way in battle, their own life essence turned against them as it fills their lungs and drowns them where they kneel, but choking on the blood of another- the stolen life of another turned mass murderer- as Dante tries to save his life. It would only be right, only follow the path he’s laid out before him his whole life. Try to do something good for Vergil, push him away anyway. Try to play, make him run. Try to knock some sense into him, make him fall. Offer a hand, receive a slash. That Vergil seems to be trying so hard to reject Dante’s help only fits with his own stone-set habits.)

Miraculously, it seems like at least some of Vergil’s survival instincts are still present, because the pinching works and after some gargles Vergil begins to swallow.

Dante doesn’t even attempt to suppress the sigh of relief that comes out at that. 

Said sigh jostles him just enough to shift the demon and send a blood splatter across Vergil’s face, but the black lines and Vergil’s own slow but (apparently functioning! Whoo! Win number one of the day!) natural blood absorption leaves his face nice and (disconcertingly) white after a minute or so, so no harm done.

Once Trish comes back, no words offered to explain where she’s been or what she’s been doing, Dante heads out once more. It’s bloody work, and the honesty of it is as questionable as its morality, but that’s not really important right now. Dealing with the consequences is for Future Dante. Vergil will understand. Dante can make him understand. For now his minor success is enough motivation to stave off his natural inclination for torpidity, so in the name of a brother whose catchphrase lives on only in the insubstantial, Dante sets forth. 

Six more demons go down that way before Dante takes his first break. Six in the way of feeding, that is. A handful of others don’t make it back. The waste is frustrating, the delay moreso, but failure’s a familiar friend, welcome overstayed or no, so Dante keeps on as he has been until he can’t, nabbing and dragging and slicing and dicing in an attempt to quench an everlasting near-corpse’s thirst.

The break comes when, after demon number seven, Vergil’s swallowing function shuts down. As with the first demon, before Dante’s grand idea to suffocate his brother into compliance came to mind, demon number seven’s contribution is about half wasted as it once again pools high in Vergil’s reddened mouth (mostly made so by said contribution and that of its brethren; in keeping with his pallor, Vergil’s gums and palate were degrees paler than healthy too, an ashen pink in the way of the chalk dust with which he and Vergil had dirtied hands and knees back when they’d lived in another world in which their ignorance had mistakenly told them all was and ever would be well) before making its grand escape to the floor. Dante waits a minute to see if Vergil’ll start swallowing again, but when he merely gurgles at the next aborted attempt at watering (bloodening?), Dante tosses the demon he’s holding, tilts Vergil to get the rest of the blood out of his mouth before he can choke on it, and sets him back on the floor.

(The way he’s manhandling Vergil makes him uncomfortable. It’s like he’s a ragdoll. A plaything. He shouldn’t be reduced to this. He’d probably be upset Dante’s doing so much for him. Vergil had never been one to accept unasked-for help without a fight, had never liked Dante’s “pity” when Dante tried to help him out after Vergil’d done something to get put in time-out that Dante had somehow escaped. But what else is Dante supposed to do? Let him die? No way. Shame is better than death. Dante’d accept it if it were the other way around. Vergil will have to deal with it when he wakes up. He can beat up Dante and ragdoll him around all he likes once he has the power to do so.)

Sitting around kicking his feet until Vergil processes enough of the blood to accept some more leaves Dante antsy, so he decides to make better use of his time and do something actually productive. If he can’t help Vergil directly, he’ll do it the roundabout way via helping himself.

The Divinity Statue looks the same as the last trip when Dante makes his way to the basement, left unlocked after their first venture. It shines with its innate light, an icon in its own little world, down in the pitted pedestal. He glides down the steps more easily than he’d marched down those of the tower, the gentle pull of the Statue a far cry from the muffled opposition of the tower’s twisting descent. She may not have any Vital Stars for him, but she’s not completely bereft of resources, and with the way the constant fighting has begun to make Dante’s head pound, he needs all the benefits he can get. 

Away goes a legion of red orbs, relief washing over him as the jitters of the high leave him in favor of the condensed pulse of energy that is a single, beating purple orb. He’s far from emptied; he’s made sure to maintain a good stock of the red in case he ever ends up with another Devil Arm to add to his arsenal and the result is a neverending hum of static in his veins. But he’s doing somewhat better. He thinks the decrease in orbs helps. Many for one. The exchange of a dozen warring souls for an augmentation- a fortification- of his own. New energy courses through him, a freedom, and he appreciates it. That or there’s some sort of placebo effect going on, but relief is relief and he’ll take what he can get.

After he figures enough time has passed, Dante heads back upstairs, unpins the last stocked demon and bleeds it, and watches in satisfaction as Vergil swallows it like he’d hoped. Good. He can work with this. He’s waited before and he doesn’t mind waiting again.

With a wave and a promise to be back soon, Dante leaves Vergil where he lies, recovering the coat and vest he’d pushed to the side when he’d dressed Vergil and promising to bring back a pillow on his next trip. 

Ideally he’d move Vergil somewhere else entirely, carrying him out of the prison cell and placing him somewhere less oppressive and with an actual bed. It’s possible the dampeners could be having an effect on Vergil’s healing- maybe that’s why they were put in place, to keep Vergil from healing too fast while he was being subjected to whatever torture Mundus saw fit- and the cold stone floor leeching Vergil’s meager body heat probably isn’t helping either. Not to mention how uncomfortable it is to lie on the floor for long periods of time, a hard surface at your back and your neck supported in all the wrong ways. But for now Dante doesn't want to risk it. Vergil’s still too fragile. His skin still flakes off like crazy at every touch, the bones in his limbs have an uncomfortable give to them that makes Dante worry they haven’t actually set after resizing, and he doesn’t want to chance accidentally touching Vergil’s chest in a way that might set him off again. Sure the clothing didn’t seem to do anything, but what if it’s because the clothes were just light enough to not activate it? What if Dante presses too hard trying to carry Vergil away? What if cradling him against his own chest, where his own Demonic Core lies even if healthy and sealed away, triggers another episode? Right now Vergil’s too unstable to risk it. So on the floor in the Tower Vergil will remain. Dante will bring back a few more demons, check on Vergil’s status, and then reassess once the time’s right. 

(Somewhere in the back of his mind, the morality of the situation begins to weigh on him. 

Sure he’d waved it away earlier in his panic, but when his mind is slightly clearer and he’s just flying around looking for demons to knock out and bring back to die a slow death later, some of his doubts come back.

What is he doing? Is it wrong? Is Vergil’s life really worth the lives of so many others?

…Yes, yes it is. And no to the question before it. The demons Dante is taking out are fodder. He’s taken out hundreds, probably thousands of them across his lifetime, and he’s never had an issue with it before. It’s not like he’s going for the intelligent ones. The types he’s taking out are the ones which attack the first thing they see. It’s like slaughtering animals. People have always had to hunt to survive. It’s the natural cycle of life. If Dante was that against it, he’d be a vegetarian. But he’s always loved his red meat, so if he has no problem with that, he shouldn’t have a problem with this either. He doesn’t. It’s fine. It’s fine. He’s not killing just for the fun of it, he’s doing what needs to be done to keep his brother alive. C’est la vie. 

And beyond that, this is Mundus’ domain. That much Dante has figured out. Dante beat Mundus and to the victor goes the spoils. In this case, the spoils are demon fodder. Simple. Logical. No big deal.

Such is what he tells himself.

It doesn’t feel nearly as much like a stretch of logic as he’d worried it might be once he completes the thought.

It doesn’t feel nearly as much like lying to himself as it is.)

The demons in this area must either breed like mad or have been around long enough to make some pretty hefty populations, because Dante continues at his blood-draining fiasco for a while. The orbs that pop out from the demons he’s killed flow into him instead of Vergil- not to mention the orbs from all the demons he accidentally or not-so-accidentally kills trying to haul them back for Veril- and the influx leaves him jittery and definitely back in the zone of high in more than your typical emotional way, limbs inadvertently twitching and face bearing an untouchable smile that he just knows would have Lady aiming a gun at him and telling him to calm down before he does something stupid were he to see it, but eventually he just. Stops caring. Down here, there’s no one around to see. No one that’ll live through the encounter at any rate. No one beside Trish, who judges him no matter what, so he learns to ignore her judgment anyway. Sure he could put up a facade, has always liked to in the past and has gotten to a point that it’s almost easier to hide behind the mask than it is to project his real emotions to a theoretical audience even in times when he’s the only one around, but what he’s learned over the years is that sometimes to keep from shattering entirely you need to indulge in all the little things you normally push aside, and he’s in a mood to indulge in that horrible bloody way that he has no way of expressing and no desire to express in the human world. He’s probably never going to get free range like this ever again, so he might as well go all-out seeing as there’s no risk of collateral damage and the benefits of this will probably be his to reap for years to come, a field sewn with perennials that’ll continue to return time and time again until the inevitable, cyclical wildfire comes and it’s all razed to the ground. 

He allows himself to get a little bloody when he fights. Not every fight’s one for food after all; some are just about staying alive himself. Having hacked and slashed his way through enough demons to put Mallet Island, the Temen-ni-gru, and Dante’s top 10 other Big Jobs to shame cumulatively, he’s got a pretty good idea of which enemies are worth bringing back and which are a waste of time to lug all the way to the castle. Some just don’t have enough blood for the time and hassle of bringing them back alive but incapacitated. So, he avoids them for the most part, but when they either go for him or are in the way and get caught up in the line of fire, he lets himself go at them, and the spray from them makes him disturbingly giddy.

He makes sure to pace himself with visits to the Divinity Statue. He maxes out on skills to be learned for his Devil Arms so most of his red orbs are funneled into purple ones, but it’s still an exchange and a lessening, and with the sort of…fullness? Satisfaction? Feel of control? he gets from each trip, he’d call them productive. He’s not intentionally getting red orbs for the purpose of trading them, but as long as he is, he might as well stop avoiding them and put them to use. If anything, the extended length of his Devil Trigger makes the trips to and from the castle much faster.

(Deep down, he realizes that he may in fact be overindulging. Maybe he’s frying his brain doing this. Is it possible to go so deep you can’t return? Maybe. It remains to be seen if he can be weaned off. If he can cut it out cold turkey. If, assuming he’s able to do one of the two, he’ll ever be able to achieve a normal human high capable of satisfying him again.

If he could only use one word to describe what demons do, Dante would choose ‘feel.’ Sure, demons don’t experience the same kind of spectrum of emotions as humans do, but when they feel they sure do feel, intensity the name of the game, and right now he’s nearly drowning in an intensity he’s only ever felt a handful of times in his life in far, far more dilute doses. 

At some point he’ll have to stop. 

At some point he’ll tamp it all down, never to see the light of day again.

If he doesn’t, then at that point he’ll cease to be Dante. 

But he will. Dante always figures it out. He always manages. When he gets to the end of this, he’ll do it again.

(He doesn’t know how.))

Trish deals with the futility of Dante’s actions well enough. She agrees to keep an eye on Vergil whenever Dante goes out to hunt and steps out of the room while Dante’s feeding him until she’s needed again. She’s perfectly polite in all ways except the judgmental stare, but since she doesn’t actually voice her disapproval anymore, Dante can ignore that well enough too. 

They have a great system going on- Dante’s there when Trish isn’t, Trish is there when Dante isn’t, Vergil’s always near-dead and all-quiet on the floor, and no one talks about their problems or emotions. 

All fine and dandy if you ask Dante. He’s making progress. He’s had a lifetime to thicken his skin to the judgment of others. He’ll make it through this bump just fine.

Except, as it turns out, the whole “feed Vergil blood to make him better” thing was an extremely half-baked theory to begin with and incomplete results should never be used to make conclusions, because after at least forty successful feedings, Dante can tell it hasn’t done jack shit. 

The grayness of Vergil’s skin remains every present in all places except those where it is white, the lines pulse as if Mundus lay waiting in the other room, the cracks remain dry and crevices just as deep, the lumps stick out just as they had before-

Dante rises to step across the room and kicks the wall. It does nothing except scuff his boot and make his foot throb.

Of course it was useless. Of course the blood hadn’t done anything. Of course Vergil would remain as still and lifeless as before.

The most lively thing about Vergil as he is is the slight rosiness to his cheeks, brighter now than they were when Dante had first freed him. (Yet not brighter than when they’d last fought, for at that time Vergil was definitively alive, whatever his mental state, and his cheeks had been made red by the glow coming from eyes which were only ever meant to be blue.) The pale blush could just as easily be born of effort as born from healing, or even a stain made by the sheer amount of blood that has been splashed across his face during the feeding process. Dye something red enough times and no matter how much you scrub at it with a sleeve, it’s going to be left a pale pink.

But, he thinks (he insists), maybe he just hadn’t given Vergil enough. Maybe the blood had helped, but only internally, where Dante wouldn’t be able to see the results. Vergil did cough pretty hard the last time he started choking. That seemed far more lively than anything else he’d done (save that inhuman screeching that had resulted from Dante’s hare-brained attempt to reach for his core.)

He’s not giving up. This is a bump in the road. The oppression of a long tunnel. If he turns around now, when the end might be just out of sight, he might never reach the light on the other side. It’s entirely possible the trip back will take longer than the trip forward. He just needs to keep going. This will work. It will work. It has to.

Trish does talk to him sometimes. They’re not always two ships passing in the night; sometimes they dock in the same harbor. She tells him all sorts of useless to useful things: tells him about the Demon World, about Mundus, about Sparda’s Biggest Hellborn Hits, or at least about the rumors and mythology that has emerged in the two thousand years since his departure, the veracity of said tales questionable especially when they get into certain topics such as loyalty which make Dante laugh when the only consistent thing in Sparda’s history if you ask him is his history of abandonment. 

(She also asks, in one particularly dark moment Dante would rather not talk about, if he’s okay. She sounds so genuine in her question, so sincere in her wonder over the range of human emotions and whether all humans tend to swing like Dante does or if that’s just a him thing, that it’s hard to be mad at her. 

When he says they don’t and she makes some remark about how that must be the demonic side of him coming out to play, Dante does his best to keep from exploding on her. It’s hard, but he does it. He keeps his cool. Tamps down on the fury that’s been building and building and leaking from every pore.

She picks up on it anyway. Observant little thing, Trish. She may not understand everything she sees and everything Dante does, but she sure does tend to notice it all. How like Eva she is without even knowing it. His mother always was good at picking up on his and Vergil’s emotions and coming tantrums.

Having displayed her occasional ability to make a somewhat kind, somewhat compassionate observation, she lets him know that she thinks it’s human of him to be so emotional in the first place. Were he not human, he wouldn’t care enough to get so upset. Were he only a demon, he’d have left this all behind and moved on. It’s an impressive show of devotion. Mundus wouldn’t have lasted that long. He’s honored.

Until she says Sparda probably would’ve done the same, and Dante’s left with his head spinning over whether he should really take that as a compliment. How are you supposed to feel about a father’s whose legacy is one of betrayal, even as that betrayal was in the end for good?)

Now, Trish is great and could be greater if Dante was willing to talk to her more. She makes good points and is probably smarter than him, which he could probably confirm if he bothered to exchange more than a handful of words with her per trip. But her topics of conversation aren’t merely limited to fun facts and her own existence. Sometimes she tries to dive into him, and there are certain topics he doesn’t want to touch with a ten foot pole despite Trish’s insistence on dangling them in front of him, line baited and ready to be snapped at first bite, so he’s not risking any conversation at all while the halfway silence slash dangled prompts are driving him madder than he already is. 

He knows he should take some of the outs. Risk getting upset and embarrassed for a chance at the momentary engagement that’ll let out some of that steam currently trying to turn his brain to mush. He misses encountering smart demons to tease and play with- they’re great targets for getting his frustrations out on. Eloquent he may or may not be , but Dante’s always loved exchanging words and taunts with whoever will play along (or not, which can be entertaining in its own way depending on how the other party reacts). It helps him relax. Helps him make the best of shitty situations and even better out of already fun ones. A silent Dante is hardly Dante at all. He’s always been a talker, always will be. If he has any nervous habits, then talking is one, and talk talk talk he wants to do but keep silent, silent, silent is what he does in this moment that has stretched forever and an age in the timelessness of Hell that feels like it might be the number two thing trying to drag him down into the depths of the looney bin (almost-dead not-quite-dead will-probably-soon-be-dead Vergil is number one). 

Vergil lies. Trish sits. He leaves. New stomping grounds await.

The marsh-like area his last round of harvests had come from is cleared of any and all demons with enough meat to them to be worth the trip. He’d thought there were more demons to pick off, to be honest, had sworn he’d felt and seen at least a few dozen if not hundred more during his previous trip, but with each trip the number grew scarcer, and eventually Dante was left with slim enough pickings that it simply wasn’t worth the effort to chase down a distant demonic blip that hardly ever materialized into something that came running when he came close enough. He’d cut his way through the fighters faster than he thought. Kind of surprising, kind of disappointing, but not the end of the world. They’d come back eventually. For now, Dante moves on to the desert and all the frustrations that come with it.

It’s a pretty beautiful place, all things considered. Spans a lot of definitions of desert too, unified by general dryness and not much else. Some areas are marked by red-orange swathes of land in which your view is limited only by the length to which your eyes can see, an infinite flat plane full of scrubs and the occasional structure. Others boast sand of the golden variety and dunes which make finding much of anything a nightmare, the constant up and down of the landscape necessitating flying. And beyond those deserts, characteristic of the human world even if usually found in different parts of said world, are stretches of silver grains that threaten to consume Dante with each and every step, flying not merely desired, as in the golden lands, but necessitated by the impossibility of landing without consumption. The few creatures that Dante comes across there he lets go free; they burrow into the mirror-like, ever shifting ground as soon as he flies overhead. Their scurrying bodies leave ripples in the sand almost reminiscent of water, the strange material the sands are made of presenting a distorted reflection of Dante flying above, and the strangeness of seeing his already uncomfortable-to-look-at Triggered form distorted has him swearing off any attempts to divebomb potential prey.

What’s both odd and inconvenient about his newest game preserve is that all in all, it’s pretty empty. The silver-sand divers whose slippery habits keep them out of reach occupy only a fraction of the land, but they’re the most common demons Dante sees by far, which is unsettling given the amount of life he could’ve sworn he’d sensed on one of his earlier scouting trips. Yes, deserts in the Human World aren’t quite as full of life as, say, a rainforest, but deserts are still pretty full of life if you know where to look for them, and this one just isn’t. There are signs of life all right: caves that looked carved out by claws, stacked structures that can’t be natural, burrows and nests and chomped vegetation that all indicate that someone lived here recently, but recently doesn’t seem to encompass now, and it’s kind of giving him the creeps. His internal radar had picked up at least a few dozen if not hundreds of demons- sometimes it’s hard to differentiate when they’re that weak and their signals kind of blur into each other. But for all the signs of life Dante sees and all the life he once felt- which would have been an underestimate if anything, not over- on earlier ventures, yet the life he actually runs into is sparse. By his third trip he’s having to cover miles to bring back a pair of good bodies for Vergil even though he’s certain he'd sensed more presences in the area the trip prior, and he’s certain something’s up. Sometimes he’ll find a place full of demons happy to jump him, grab a few, and come back only to find it’s been completely deserted, every other demon gone without a forwarding address. Nothing there. Nothing alive. Nothing to trace. 

Sometimes he can sense a faint hint of an energy signal- something leaves him sure there was once a demon there, and one who’d lived there not only a while but recently, even though he comes up blank when looking for the energy-giver- but that doesn’t help him at all when he’s here for harvests, not studies, which is grating on his nerves. It's odd. Empty. Kind of horror movie-esque. 

Where did all the demons go? 

Is there someone else taking advantage of his trail to catch the food he’s left on the table? 

Have his battles kicked off some sort of feeding frenzy amongst the natives? 

The latter isn’t completely out of the realm of possibility. He’s seen it happen more than a few times in the human world, going to clear out a condemned building housing a portal and finding packs of demons starting to turn on each other once he’s started clearing out the ones three suites down. There’s something about first blood that can have formerly friendly demons deciding they aren’t so friendly after all. But given Dante doesn’t find any corpses and doesn’t feel the residual energies that indicate a battle, he doubts it.

The former idea though- that of there being a chaser out there, a single demon going for what Dante isn’t- is the one that really excites him. The prospect of there being another being strong enough to take out all the fodder makes his blood rush and his heart race, desperate for some sort of engagement. He'd love a good fight. Needs a break from the monotony. Wants to feel alive again, in a way that just serving as a somewhat bloodthirsty delivery boy just can't quench. So he allows himself to take juuuuust a little it of a detour during a few of his trips, cruising around for longer than he needs to just to get Vergil some good pickings in hopes of maybe encountering whatever demon it is that must be taking out all the little guys. 

It’s a bust.

Dante doesn’t end up finding any particularly noteworthy opponents during the rest of his trip through the desert, instead continuing to struggle to find even the sort of cannon fodder demons that’ve been sustaining himself so far. His trips take increasing amounts of time, inversely proportional to any and all rewards and absent of any battles challenging enough to make up for the lack of quantity.

It’s a disappointment. Not the end of the world, but disappointing nonetheless. He tries to make the most of it though, tells himself that while a good fight would be nice, if he gets too banged up it’ll delay his return to Vergil, and Vergil can’t afford losing one of the two people helping him out, so it’s probably for the best. Especially because Dante isn’t really sure if Trish will stick around for very long without him, since she didn’t seem very convinced Vergil could be fixed in the first place. So nah, fighting is great and all, but he decides he’s not going to waste any more time looking for a good one. If he finds it he won’t run, but he also won’t delay things any longer when he’s not making any returns on his investments. He never was good at that sort of thing.

Instead Dante goes back and forth from castle to desert, picking off enemies and bringing back the disappointingly few he can find until the desert seems to be picked clean, the trips made all the more exhausting (the first source of exhaustion being the mental sort from having to search so hard for prey and having to deal with the disappointment of not finding a good fight) by the fact that the ‘sun’ in the desert lies directly overhead. 

It seems like Hell exists in an odd state of permanence, dusk in one place, dawn in another, twilight in a third, high noon in a fourth, and probably a million other variations, maybe even with their own weather. They seem to be confined to different zones, “time” and temperature shifting as Dante crosses over some sort of invisible threshold that just barely tickles his senses but does it consistently enough that he knows it’s not just his imagination. It’s hard to say why; he’s not sure what rules govern existence down here. For all he knows there is no overarching set of rules, each region beholden to its own laws of reality that may or may not change based on whoever’s controlling it. But different zones have different rules, and the rule of the desert is the permanently glaring sun. The spot where Dante had fought Mundus- which he hasn’t returned to since he left, and has no intention to return to- seemed stuck at an all-consuming night. The castle, meanwhile, has sat at the edge of sunset since Dante’s arrival.

(Which, if he’s being honest, greatly disturbs him thanks to a teensy little detail that Trish mentioned ‘randomly’ during one of Dante’s stops back at the castle:

The castle was not stuck at sunset when she lived there.

When Mundus ruled this area- for the castle was Mundus’, she confirmed, one of many but one he visited often and one where both she and the Armored Vergil spent most though not all of their time when not on missions- the ‘sun’ (a concentration of light whose association to any celestial body Trish could not begin to explain) remained about halfway between the pinnacle of the Hellish heavens and horizon. He liked it that way, apparently.

She didn’t explain all of Hell’s logic to him, just that many parts were influenced by its inhabitants.

What does it mean that the ‘sun’ has now almost set? That it’s just barely floating above the horizon, already half gone and burning low as if it might burn itself out at any moment?

It’s been like that since the moment Dante arrived at the castle. Since the time he arrived at the marshes. Maybe before. He can’t remember what it looked like at a precise time everywhere; the boundaries of Hell are odd and do funny things to his head beyond just that Wrong feeling that still clings to his flesh and feels as if it’s trying to turn him inside out.

But the question is- 

Why is it like that now? Why has it changed? Mundus is dead isn’t he? Or as defeated as he can be? Is sunset the natural state of Hell; the one to which it returns when there is no ruler to direct it? Or does it mean something else? Something sinister?

It feels like an omen. A premonition. Of what, Dante hasn’t a clue.)

When he leaves the desert, stops by the castle for his last feeding, a quick orb exchange, and an extremely short conversation with Trish in which she not-so-subtly tells him he’s wasting his time and decides he’s had enough of his current struggles and the judgment they’re afforded, he chooses a new direction for his travels, taking him to a forest.

It’s hard to say what time of day it might be in the forest given the trees are infinite in their reach and no matter how far Dante flies, he can’t seem to reach an end. There’s something oppressive about the higher elevations, something that seeps into his bones and has him choosing to land and walk rather than continuing his ascent, and he decides some things are better left unknown. Mystery is the spice of life and all that. He’d like to say moonlight filters in through the canopy above, the sparse light a blue-silver that washes everything out into a near monochrome, but it’s really only a guess at best. Really figuring it out would require him to spend a considerable amount of time in the forest, which he has no intention of doing. A spark of unease dances through him even when walking on the forest floor. His hair stands on edge and his Trigger simmers beneath his skin, begging for freedom even as its release fails to bring significant relief. It almost feels like the forest wants something from him that his body both does and doesn’t want to give. 

(And isn’t that the crux of this whole situation.)

He hurries through the trees, looming tall and seemingly omniscient overhead, looking for prey. This trip won’t be yet another failure. Discomfort is temporary. It’s a worthy price. He will not be beaten by the unseen.

He travels forward. 

He stumbles.

His heartbeat skyrockets.

He’s alone.

It’s a root that did it to him, that tried to upend his life and most certainly upped his heart rate, one of the tangling feet of the everlasting leafy guards of this place, and he lets out a shaky laugh when he realizes it. He’s fine. It’s fine. It’s his own carelessness that got him, not a demon, and it’s not a problem because he can just keep walking like nothing happened because nothing did. He’s not hurt; no ankles were twisted and his knees aren’t even muddy. He is unchanged. Same as he ever was. This is fine.

So he watches his steps from then on. Keeps his eyes on the roots and leaves at his feet. Keeps himself upright and safe. His demonic sixth sense will let him know if there are any threats nearby. His normal five- the human ones, sight first and foremost- will keep him safe and upright in the meantime.

His solitude doesn’t last. Not completely, that is. Yet like a pond in which a stone is thrown the disruption to the stillness and silence is only momentary, and when it returns as strong as it ever was, Dante’s left feeling more on edge than ever.

The reason is this: The first demons he runs into, long-legged, owl-like beings scattered about the forest’s edge, don’t attempt to attack him when he enters the vicinity. They don’t approach him at all. 

They don’t come running or flying and screeching and fast. They don’t teleport to him. They don’t dash forward or dart high or low. They don’t so much as shift an inch in his direction.

Instead they raise their heads and bare their wide, reflective, milky eyes right at him, freeze for a soulsucking moment-

And bolt in the opposite direction. 

“What the…?” Dante mumbles, temporarily stupefied by the way every demon in sight- and even some which he hadn’t seen but whose presences he can sense growing increasingly distant- suddenly and near-immediately flee from him within moments of his approach. 

The ‘owls’ aren’t a type of demon he’s seen before, so he chalks it up to some sort of innate fear. They could be non-combatants. Eyes that large would work well for seeing far enough away to know when to run (then why did they not go until he drew near?), legs as long as those were perfect for bolting (they were more reminiscent of flamingos than owls, saffron stilts with claws fit for evisceration), wings like those perfect for escaping from land-bound predators (does this mean they’re not bothered as much by the canopy as Dante is? Was he being rejected as an outsider?), and the thick plumage that sent feathers every which way would probably serve as some nice padding, given just how much is still floating down around him. 

He reaches out to catch one of the feathers, curious as to why so many came down. The second his fingers make contact they’re sliced to the bone, an ultrafine mirror’s edge treating his skin like butter.

Dante drops the feather before it can do further damage. The grimace reflected back up at him from the feather’s mirrored surface has him deciding to leave the rest of the feathers alone. Some things are better left unexamined.

On he continues, and firm does the pattern hold. 

He encounters demons of all kinds, some resembling birds, some air-loving deep sea creatures with their distended features and natural glows, some quadrupedal beasts that would fit right at home with the storybook demons that crept into women’s homes at night, all fleeing him before he can raise his gun.

Now, if one or two had done that he wouldn’t have thought much of it. Some demons serve as scouts, and those will naturally run away to inform their masters of his approach. Some also just aren’t combative in the first place, oddly, usually ones that have harvested something or other that they mean to bring back to a group and whose delivery is more important than their desire to fight. Like worker ants, sort of. That’s how he’s come to understand it over the years at any rate.

But the demons he’s come across have been far too varied to all be workers and far too numerous to all be scouts. Not only that, but Dante had seen at least a few of those types of demons before, and they’d launched themselves with all the vigor of normal fodder without a moment’s hesitation. For them to instead turn tail and run doesn’t make sense. Why the change in behavior? Why run away?

Dante tries running another perimeter; looks for anything new and notable that might’ve snuck in behind him and scared the rest of the demons away. 

When he doesn't find anything, he tells himself it was a weird fluke and presses on. The air’s getting to him. It’s all in his head. This is probably normal. No reason to be concerned: Hell’s just being Hell.

It doesn’t stop the hair on the back of his neck from standing high and the skin on his arms from sitting tall. Something’s out there, his gut tells him. Something’s wrong. 

He ignores it. Tells himself he’s being dramatic. This is in his head. Things are fine. (He needs to get out of here).

So he comes up with explanations: maybe the forest is just occupied by the scaredy-cat type of demons. The timid runners and the skittish variants of the species he’d seen before. It’s not like every human has the same personality, and even dogs and other animals come in the friendlier-and-not sort. It makes sense for the ones who aren’t keen on fighting to hang out in the forest where there’s more cover. And it makes sense for the ones who aren’t keen on fighting to bolt at the sight of someone who they don’t know. It’s a natural response.

It’s also extremely inconvenient. He’s here to get food for Vergil, but all the food’s running away. So what’s he supposed to do? He has a code: if the demons don’t try to fight him, he doesn’t try to fight them. He’s not cutting down innocents. Through everything, he’s held to that. Don’t fight things that don’t fight back.

But it’s been hours since Dante left the castle. Hours since Vergil was last fed. If he doesn’t get something soon, then with the return time his trip will probably span into the double digits, and he doesn’t really have the time for that. Both because of Vergil’s condition and the sake of his own patience. 

It’s one thing to keep at something that’s tedious but productive. It’s another to keep at something that’s tedious but hardly seems to be doing anything at all.

…Not that it won’t ever do something. It’s going to work. Eventually. At some point. It will.

…Dante just has to tough it out until he gets to that point, whenever that point is. Hopefully sooner than later. Very much hopefully. Please. He’s tired. He needs a beer and a nap and a magazine to nap with and he doesn’t think he’s gonna get any of those any time soon so he’s very much running on empty.

But fate is fickle and has funny ways, for despite its normal insistence on giving Dante a bad time (or, perhaps to ensure he does not spend enough time thinking to have a good one), he’s saved from having to make the final decision on whether his morals will survive to not kill another day when a harpy appears from the brush and divebombs him. 

In the heat of battle, the hair on his neck and skin on his arms settles. Dante falls into a familiar, grounding rhythm, jumping this way and that, shooting off neverending bullets, and breaking out a pair of gauntlets that with all the neck-slicing haven’t seen as much use as they deserve. It’s a noisy fight. Harpies are loud creatures and this one’s no exception; it comes at him screeching, fights him squawking, and dies with a cry that would empty a human forest of all its furry and feathered inhabitants but leaves this leafy ghost town just as eerily silent as it has been before its number of inhabitants was reduced by one. In the wake of his silent passage, the sounds of the harpy’s life, loss, and death are a bizarre, alien comfort, a rapturous swansong that leaves him feeling all the more disturbed when he’s plunged back into a noiseless march in which even the expected snaps of detritus underfoot seem muffled and uncomfortably distant. 

It’s only when he’s another several hundred feet deeper into the woods that Dante realizes the idea of capturing the harpy hadn’t even occurred to him during the battle. He, who was here to gather sacrifices for a greater cause, had simply beheaded and disposed of the first lamb presented to him, ending the thing before its blood could so much as splash the altar, and he hadn’t even noticed until he’d come upon an ‘owl’ feather which, in reminding him of his own spilled blood, back upon his entrance to the forest, had knocked into him the gravity of his error.

(Were he not so insistent on denying his mounting doubts and clinging to the idea that all was well, Dante might’ve acknowledged that the forest did not agree with him and that he was wasting precious daylight (sunset) scavenging around for goods not meant for him. Unfortunately for all involved, when it comes to being Dante, denial’s the name of the game, so continue on he does, and the misery will only be set to evolve as denial’s complement.)

He proceeds. Things flee. He advances. They bolt and soar.

It’s disturbing. Aggravating. Unsettling.

What really gets him though is that it’s not a complete repeat scenario. Not from the beginning. 

See, when he first arrived in the forest, those creepy owl-demons stared at him. They paused, shot their gazes into his core, and then seeing something they did not like, fled as fast and far away as they could. 

Early in his progression, he encountered similar scenes. Demons that would stop and look before making a break for it. Curiosity. Interest. Inspection.

Then as he went further, the pauses grew few and far between. Instead of examining and evaluating the thing that approached them, the demons simply escaped as soon as they noticed him.

As he moved deeper still, the pauses not only disappeared, but didn’t even last long enough for him to see the things that were running from him. Visibility in the forest was and still is poor, a faint mist coating the air at the entrance and a heavy, almost impermeable fog soaking into his clothes by the time Dante’s realization- no, his acknowledgment, he’d known, he just didn’t want to admit it- came to pass. By the late stages of his journey, his encounters with demons were reduced to a faint awareness of their presence at the edge of his senses, the things so high strung they were gone with the wind almost as soon as he became aware of their fleeting existence. Whether they simply were naturally more perceptive or had been set on high alert he didn’t know. 

All of the demons fled in the same direction. Opposite the way he came. No angles were taken, no twists and turns. All went away.

And so it eventually comes to the point he can’t deny it. Why the things are running. What they’re so scared of. What they’re avoiding. Why they flee.

Him.

And it’s not just that they’re running from him because it’s in their nature to run from things. They’re not just cowards who’ll bolt from anything strong. Oh no, it’s more specific than that. They’re running from him, Dante, specifically, because Dante’s apparently (sickeningly) the worst thing around.

You see, he comes to realize this is the case when he encounters his first demons that don’t bolt when he gets within a thousand feet, which he can only assume is because they’re currently fighting for their lives as they throw themselves at a giant Kyklops-lookalike that that’s a boiling water version of Phantom, hopelessly outmatched but soaring to their deaths with gusto as they’re taken out one by one, the deaths of their comrades obvious and frequent but their attacks surely not lessened by anything akin to doubt or fear with the ferocity with which they’re launched. Dante hides out in some of the vegetation as the fight goes on, squinting over  a fallen tree and through the mist to follow the slaughter and wondering what will come next. If any more demons will come out of the woodwork. If some of the little guys will end up winning some sort of advantage. Stuff like that. 

They don’t, it doesn’t, and the scene keeps playing out just like it is until Dante’s curiosity gets the best of him and he flares his energy just the slightest, hungry for the knowledge of what the demons will do if made aware of his presence. 

He’s careful when he does it. He only lets a taste out. A smidge. A tiny sample that doesn’t even pass the three-quarter amount of the Kyklops-lookalike, infused with Dante’s best attempt at projecting he’s not trying to be hostile.

It ends the same way as the rest.

The smaller demons are gone in an instant. They do not stop to stare in the direction of the energy; they do not pause to collect themselves. They do not attempt to get a last hit in on the Water Kyklops; they make no effort to finish the job.

Every single one scrambles away from Dante the moment his energy hits them. Every single one bolts like their life depends on it. The only one that does not is down two limbs and cannot run, and that one lets out an earsplitting scream until the Kyklops lifts a razorblade leg and pierces it through the skull.

The Kyklops-Lookalike doesn’t follow them right away. Instead it stands frozen as it pins Dante with a six eyed stare. Or what should be a six-eyed stare; for as little as the little guys managed to do to the rest of the body, they’d gouged those now-blank pits clean. The emptiness of its stare sits heavy in his stomach. 

Its legs twitch once, twice, and Dante sets a hand on the fallen trunk in preparation for launching himself into a fight.

The Kyklops-Lookalike who proves itself so different from its doppelganger in its actions is skittering in the opposite direction before he even gets off the ground.

“What the hell,” Dante breathes, staring at the wall of gray into which the demons had retreated. He should’ve been comparable. He hadn’t flared any more of his power. If it had just been sensing him, then that demon of all of them shouldn’t have run. Dante’s had to fight off legions of weaker demons even when flaunting his full strength before. 

It doesn’t make any sense and screw it, it’s not just creepy, it’s freaking him out. He needs to get out of this forest. Nothing makes sense here. He feels sick from more than just the strange aura about the place. Something here is wrong.

Demons live to fight, and they’ve never hesitated to commit suicide-via-Dante before. So why now? What is it about Dante specifically that’s so terrifying as to send them running for the hills when they’ll happily kill themselves on the next big guy? Was the Kyklops-lookalike so much weaker than him that the little demons thought they might have a chance there where they don’t have one against Dante? But he’d been careful when showing his hand; he’d only revealed a tiny bit of the power begging to surface. Did they see through his false-projection? Did they recognize him? If Phantom’s long lost brother had been as strong as Dante, would they still have fought him? Or is it something about Dante’s energy or aura or essence or whatever it is that’s specific to him and him alone that seems to fill them with so much fear? 

If so, what is it? When did it start? And why? It’s not like the demons have been scarce since he arrived in Hell- there were enough to be annoying when he first arrived, and good pickings for a while after that. He can’t be that much stronger than when he entered Hell. Sure, he’s been picking up purple orbs here and there, not wanting to let all the reds he’s getting of to waste, but it isn’t as if he’s been able to fight anything that would improve his skills. He’s just increasing his trigger time. Right? 

The only other thing he can think of is reputation, but that’s never stopped demons from going after him in the Human World, so why would it stop them now? If anything, his reputation has always been the reason why demons have always gone after him. He’s the Son of Sparda. As much as Dante has tried to make a name for himself as the Devil Hunter Dante and not just the Son of Sparda, he’s never been able to shake his father’s influence and there’s no way the demons in Hell weren’t aware of it until midway through his hunt. They’d either know the whole time or not, right? So why only start running now? Who could he have run into that could’ve identified his heritage and spread the word? Is that why they’re running? Or is it just him?

It’s hard to say. He doesn’t have concrete evidence.

But reputation aside, why run? Don’t demons like fighting? The ones that just ran from him had to. They were in the middle of a fight when he appeared. They weren’t cowards. They weren’t pacifists.

So why run? Were they scared of death? It’s not like Dante didn’t watch the Phantom Lookalike squash six of the minis before it speared the last, so it’s not as though they weren’t willing to sacrifice their lives while those who survived kept up the fight.

But maybe there’s a difference there. Some degree of hope held in a battle against a Kyklops that would shatter in a fight with Dante. If you factor in the reputation, if they somehow knew who he was specifically, it could be that they latched onto that aura and decided it would be a pointless fight. The little guys had completely blinded the Kyklops despite their losses. Even if they did not survive the battle, the Kyklops would be wounded. Maybe it was a battle to help their brethren somewhere deeper in the forest. Lasting harm to save others another day. 

Fighting Dante, on the other hand, wouldn’t result in anything substantial. It would be a pointless death- for them, anyway. (Not like anyone but Dante cares about Vergil. There’s no one left alive. No one save maybe Trish, whose feelings on Vergil seem to stem from wondering whether or not she’s in any way responsible for him and should in any way feel guilty, which is not a topic Dante wants to explore). Not a one sided death. Not in a battle that’s hardly a battle and more like a prolonged massacre. Not to someone who they are not meant to fight. 

(This last part is a more automatic thought than the rest, and doesn’t really register amongst the rest of the shifting thoughts plaguing him. It should disturb him. It would, were he to take another moment to think about it. 

But its meaning does not sink in fully. Not when he has other things to think of. Not when he’s too focused on the big picture of ‘why are they scared of me’ and ‘why can’t I find any fun fights’ instead of the specifics of ‘why shouldn’t they be fighting me in the sense of a suggestion or rule and not merely the waste of life in a battle that has no hope of being won.’

It will eventually. Soon. To an extent. An extent which will take time to be fully realized.)

How Dante knows this he’s not certain. None of them speak to him. He can’t read minds.

But it isn’t just a vague idea he has. There’s an…aura, of sorts, around them. One that tells him that his assumption is not mere assumption but truth. One that tells him beyond a doubt that the creatures are scared, that they are scared of him, and that it isn’t the normal fear of the unknown.

Word of his efforts have spread. The desert was not empty because demons had been picked off by some mysterious creature Dante had not been able to locate. It was empty because its residents had escaped to the forest, fleeing him. 

Some of the ones in the desert hadn’t even run from him. They just froze and wait to die. 

Dante’s not sure if he’d call it more sickening or just sickening in a different way to pick those ones off. 

Demons don’t always have visible faces, or features which resemble that of humans or other animals. You can’t always go, ‘yep those are its eyes, and that shining means it looks like it’s gonna cry now’ when a demon is caught beneath you and faces its death. 

But he can feel when they’re paralyzed by his presence. When they don’t want to fight. When they’re scared to die.

He couldn’t when he first got to Hell. He’s not exactly sure when things changed, to be honest. But at some point, amidst all the fighting, amidst all the desperate attempts at aid, amidst all the exposure to demons and Hell’s air, their feelings became…obvious. 

It makes him sick to his stomach. He wants to be done with this. He’s not sure how much longer he can keep things up.

The forest is messing with him. His head feels as muggy; the fog is invading both sight and mind. He needs to get out of here. He needs to get back to where things make sense.

He heads back to the castle. He feeds Vergil. He says hi to Trish.

His feet carry him to the Divinity Statue. His hand raises to hover before her maw. He lets his mind wander and his spirit drift, up, up, up toward the dimension in which his travails will be rewarded.

His heart stops him. His mind catches up. He’s not doing this. This devotion. This barter. This sacrifice. This change.

Panic rises to the forefront, a pot that had for so long sat on the edge of boiling that’s finally gotten that last boost of heat necessary to make the building bubbles burst.

What is he doing? Is this really good for him? Does the trade really bring relief? 

He’s giving red orbs for purple orbs, yes, and there’s a definite change in feeling when he does so. But is it a “good” feeling? Does he feel more “himself?” What side of “himself” is it? 

What’s the impact of feeding so much to his demon side? How long has it been since he last did any sort of human thing? Since he slept or ate?

Is it possible to disrupt the fifty-fifty? Has he been feeding the fifty he should not and does not prefer?

His hand drops. He marches back up to Vergil’s tower unaugmented. Trish raises a brow and makes some sort of weird joke about a temper tantrum that only half lands.

“Damnit, Vergil,” Dante mumbles, sitting on the floor with his palms pressing into his cheeks, eventually using his hands to cover his face entirely. “What am I doing?”

Silently, he adds ‘ Would you still approve?’

Something has to change. 

If not scenario, he’ll go with scenery. He’s feeling worse and worse, primarily mentally, hardly physically (which is a large part of the mental wear, to be quite frank, the fact that despite the constant movement and fighting and carrying he’s still bouncing along feeling as if he’s got a caffeine drip hooked up to each and every available vein), but Trish seems to have endless patience from a lifetime of servitude and Dante can’t stand to be around two (partially) silent, (barely) living reminders of his greatest failures, so he keeps making trips, keeps chasing demons, and keeps spiraling to places even he thought he’d never go.

Eventually, Dante reaches a place at which he can sense a material difference in the air.

He’s passed over a couple places like that. Invisible lines in which something was different. Places where something in the back of his mind- something in the demonic part of his mind- tells him he’s passed into the land of another. Many of them felt like no-man’s lands. Domains which had not been Mundus', but if they were owned, their owner's claim was faint. 

(Besides the forest. The forest’s claim was almost overwhelming. Draining. And for some reason, Dante was certain there was no one to which it belonged. It was its own master. Its own Domain. One in which some were welcome and some were not, the judgment of which Dante was neither privy to nor desired to explore, and the judgment he was bestowed made fairly evident by the way in which he wilted until his departure.) 

Passing into this one, Dante’s immediately aware that this one most certainly belongs to someone specific. A true King. Someone strong. Someone worthy of the title. Someone who, if Dante were interested, could probably put up a good fight.

It’s hard to describe what, exactly, what the difference is. It’s as if there’s a slight pressure once he reaches a certain point- or rather, once he crosses a certain threshold, a slight difference in the color of the soil having been visible even from afar, going down a perfectly even line going as far as the eye could see, a distinct border if he’d ever seen one- as if gravity is more intense, or the air slightly more unpleasant to breathe, or some other minute but notable thing. Crossing the threshold makes him feel like he’s gone somewhere outright hostile, which is not primarily alarming for the potential threat that poses, but instead so much as it makes him realize that the place he was in before was, somehow, pleasant in comparison . He’s not sure when or how in the world Mundus’ Domain had ended up anywhere on the side of fine and dandy, but the harshness of the air in the New Land, the New Domain, is enough that it makes him think about how he was feeling prior to crossing over, compare it to the Human World, and have some not so pleasant revelations about what all’s gone on while he’s been in Hell. What kind of adapting he may or may not have been doing. It’s not really fun.

This place though- the Land Over The Threshold- is worse than both Mundus’ Domain and the Human World. It’s certainly worse than the many nothing-Domains he’s wandered through during his scavenging. It’s also much more distinct once he actually crosses into it rather than just staring at it from the other side. 

There’s the pressure, yes. A feeling that he is distinctly unwelcome. But there’s also the visual scheme the new place has got going for it. The sky is covered in an endless, roiling mass of clouds that resembles the red of blood- demon blood, dark and murky compared to that of humans (dark and murky and closer to Dante’s than he’d like to admit)- or the deepest bits of flesh and skinned limbs, constantly twisting and writhing in a way that makes the dusty sky seem as if it’s consuming itself. There is no wind in this part of Hell, just as there wasn’t in Mundus’ domain, and the sight of the movement above him when there’s not so much as a breeze where Dante stands is somehow sickening. Hell may not follow proper Human logic, but even this seems Wrong. The emptiness of the skies- not heavens, they’re as far from the heavens as can be even if once he’d entered Hell via ascending unto the heavens that should’ve spat them out, and oh he’d almost gotten all poetic there, channeled the brother lying limp back in a castle he should’ve returned to rather than pressing on, but Dante’s never been one for good decisions- above Mundus’ chosen territory had felt uncomfortable in their blankness, no clouds to shield them from an infinity which seemed simultaneously endless and the result of a hidden dome. At times Dante wondered what would happen if he were to fly as high as he could; could he be an Icarus in a land with no Sun? Some Domains had light sources- the eternal sunset of Mundus’ Domain wasn’t something Dante was going to forget, not with the way the trembling shimmer on a forever bleeding horizon had sent hot shivers up his spine each and every time he spent more than a second looking in that direction- but there were no stars sourcing those light beams. The light in Mundus’ domain, unpleasant as it was, was different than this one. Mundus’ light was ivory. Light in a way that it washed everything out to cast it in a pale, bone-like shade, as if Dante were watching an old film that had lost some of its color, disturbing in how it felt just the slightest bit wrong, but overall not too offputting. Here in the Land Over the Threshold, everything is cast in carmine. There are no rays of light piercing through the cloudcover, but whatever invisible illumination keeps this place from being pitch black gives it a red filter that twists Dante’s stomach, and that combined with the pressure do wonders to scream ‘get out.’

Leaving isn’t an option though. Not if Dante wants to return to the castle with more than exhaustion and empty hands. It’s been six trips since he last managed to bring anything back. His nerves kept his latest trips short. His desperation has pushed this one long enough to reach uncharted territory.

As they’d run to escape a man whose promise of mercy lay on shaky grounds, some of the demons Dante’d been following had taken oddly precise turns in the miles leading up to the Threshold. Perfect rights and lefts. Loops and backtracks. Reversals and flights. It had seemed strange at the time, a choice that had him wondering if their brains were just as fried from constant exposure to Hell’s atmosphere as Dante’s was. That had been a fun hypothesis: If the Demon World is charged with enough energy to keep Dante overcharged to the point of bordering on the edge of irrationality, then the demons he’s met have seemed insane because they’ve been driven to that insanity by a lifetime of overexposure (and he’ll be soon to join them!). Or something like that. An excuse to explain away his own discomfort, really. (An excuse to label those running from him as crazy, not justified. An excuse to say that a love for violence has an external cause, rather than being a sign of an innate flaw.)

He hadn’t realized what those twisty-turvy demons were doing at the time, but that must’ve been it. Avoiding this place. Whatever it is. Whoever it belongs to. That’s probably the more important of the two. The question whose answer would probably answer both sets. Demons who’d been running full speed toward the Threshold had jutted violently to the side and rerouted before they could so much as approach it, the quick change in momentum slowing them enough for Dante to catch them in a move that had seemed wonderfully convenient at the time but has Dante hesitant now. What’s so wrong with the Threshold? Is this a demon etiquette thing, or will he be in some sort of danger if he crosses over? Is that the pressure? His demon brain’s way of letting him know he should stay away? Or is it the imposition of the Domain’s Owner’s power?

Despite the distinct sense of not belonging, Dante presses onward. Vergil had shown some progress the last time he’d been fed. The one successful trip Dante has had since the forest. It had taken a boatload of blood, but he’d got some color back to him, and that means it’s working. He’s finally made progress. He’s not going to abandon his path now.

He sets forth.

He runs into opposition.

It’s more of a disappointment than surprise.

A huge chunk of the demons in the Domain Dante’s found himself in are fire-based in the way that they don’t seem to have actual flesh beneath the flames, or if they do, either stay on fire when Dante tries to drag them which is a big pain, or have so little blood Dante doesn’t think it would be worth it to try to take them on the hours’ long trek back to the castle. Some of them explode upon getting knocked out too. He isn’t even trying for the kills on those; they just go lights out then light up and that’s that. No more demons. Just Dante and disappointment. What a lovely pair they make.

Some demons try to run from him. Not like the ones in the forest did, not with the same gravity, but they must know they’re outmatched and have enough of a survival instinct to send themselves on their merry way. Others launch themselves at him with a fervor he wasn’t expecting, rushing at him in a way that makes him feel they’re trying to keep him out. Like they know he doesn’t belong here and don’t want him here. Like they’ve got either loyalty or orders.

At one point he ends up fighting two massive wolves that, for a change, aren’t on fire and feel pretty firm under their fur when he gets up close and personal. Perfect for Vergil. They’re fleshy in a way that means they must be chock full of ready-for-consumption blood. One of them runs off while he’s busy picking up the other, but he doesn’t pay much attention to it. They’re big enough he couldn’t carry both of them. The other one running just means he’ll have to track it down when he returns, but that’s no big deal.

…or so he thinks. 

Because before he reaches the border, he’s jumped by a new demon who ends up throwing all of his plans out the window; one whose presence is palpable, demonic energy curdling the air around him and confidence rolling off him in waves. The first worthy opponent since the serpent way back when. The first opponent worth the time since Mundus. 

“Trespasser,” the demon addresses him, holding his head high. “You’ve a great deal of confidence to come into my lord’s Domain and plunder his treasures.”

Dante has to crane his neck to look the demon in the eyes. He’s a good five times Dante’s size, skin made of some sort of stone-like material that appears a murky grey-blue at first glance, but upon the demon’s quick movements is revealed to have a layer of iridescence in several spots, copper greens and cobalt blues and tourmaline purple flashing along the surface with each surprisingly graceful hop of a ground-shakingly heavy body. And he very much is hopping, the demon practically floating as he shifts from one foot to the other, holding himself high in a fighter’s stance topped by an excited, if hungry grin. Rock-like scales jut out from the metallic base of his body, concentrated around his joints and, made visible when the demon makes a lap around Dante, still clinging to the wolf, along the length of his spine. Bright orange eyes with slit pupils never leave Dante, a second, translucent eyelid sliding over them occasionally as the demon blinks but likely never stops seeing, made especially disturbing by the fact that his eyes don’t blink at the same time. Massive horns curve out from his temples, a pseudo-crown atop one who, were it not for his mention of this Domain belonging to another, Dante would think this land’s King by power and presence. Amber gemstones embedded in the mountain of his skin flash in the dreary lights of this place, reflecting nothing but the flames within. When Dante lets the wolf slip from his grasp and moves to draw Rebellion, the demon jumps backwards and the gemstones alight. The roar of their flames compliments the demon’s haughty laugh quite nicely.

“How fancy,” Dante remarks, doing his best to think of something fun to say. Something entertaining. Dante-like. Having gone so long without anyone able to keep up a banter- or anyone he’d want to banter with, seeing as Trish’s idea of bantering brushes too closely against things that aren’t really banter material if you ask Dante- has left him rusty. The prospect of having a strong opponent should excite him. Get his blood pumping. And it does, to an extent. But the life coming back to his limbs and charged energy flowing through his veins seems more concentrated on his hands and feet than brain, and it’s hard to feel quite as happy about this little fight as he should. Still, Dante’s going to try his best. He may be tired, but he’s still him. He’s not going to let this chance slip him by, antsy and exhausted and high all at once or no. “You ever tried roasting meat with those flamethrowers of yours? I’m sure it would make this guy-” he gestures to the wolf- “nice and crispy.”

That’s a good quip, he thinks. A fun little bit of conversation. He should be proud. Is, really. It’s hard coming up with fun things to say when fun’s been a five hour drive out of your vocabulary for days or weeks on end.

The demon, in a move that injects some much-needed amusement into Dante’s veins, snorts out a laugh. He puts his hands on his hips for emphasis, but importantly does not drop the combat stance his legs are positioned in. Were Dante to launch himself at the demon, the demon would be able to meet him in an instant. “Hah! Bolverk would have my head if I tried such a thing. He’s quite sentimental when it comes to those pups of his.”

Okay, Dante likes this guy. He’s fun. 

“If he cares about ‘em so much, maybe he shouldn’t be letting them run around off-leash. You never know when you’re gonna run into a guy who likes his pups on a platter instead of at play.”

“So you mean to eat them then?”

“Something like that.”

“Then why not have your feast now? Why take Freki back with you when you could gorge yourself here? It is a long way back into Mundus’ Former Domain.”

Dante shrugs. “I’m a classy man, and I’m afraid I left all my seasonings back home. Spitroasted meat’s good, but there’s nothing like adding a bit of salt and pepper to really draw out all those natural flavors. If I’m going to go all out of my way to grab some grub, I’m gonna make it fine dining once I’m ready to chow down.”

The demon has no eyebrows, per se, but he’s humanoid enough that his face morphs in a way Dante would call curiosity. “Home, you say? Yet you’ve just come from what was Mundus’ Domain, and you are no soldier of his. My lord has never spoken of a man such as you. Were you one of Mundus’, he surely would’ve identified you long ago, my good ser.”

Dante winces. “Eh, it’s a temporary thing. My travel plans have gotten a bit messed up, so I’m hunkering down there for a little while. Don’t worry too much about it; I don’t plan on staying much longer.” 

The second Vergil’s recovered enough to leave, Dante plans to make a run for it. There’s a shard of the Yamato back in the castle; even if it’s not as strong as the full thing, Dante’s certain he can make enough of a cut with it to get him and Vergil back to their real home in the Human World. 

Or Dante’s home, at least. Their childhood home is gone. Whether Vergil ever had a place to call home after that is…

Well. Dante wouldn’t know. They may be brothers, but they’re also strangers. All he knows about Vergil’s life after their parting was that they met at eighteen and nineteen, and around that time Vergil went around destroying Seals and summoning the Temen-ni-gru. At some point he met Arkham. Everything beyond that is a complete mystery. 

The demon he’s speaking to knows none of this though, and promptly moves on, puffing out his chest before returning to a full combat stance. “Tell me, Trespasser, what is your name? I am Balrog, right hand of Argosax, rightful ruler of Hell and master of this Domain. I would have your name ‘afore I have your life.”

“Dante,” said man replies, assuming a combat stance of his own. This ‘Balrog’ may be huge, but Dante has a feeling that the demon will be fast regardless of his size and that running wouldn’t do him ay good. The demon could probably jump straight to him if he wanted to. And even if he did manage to initially lose Balrog, he can’t risk leaving a trail and leading such a strong demon back to Vergil in any case. Trish isn’t weak, per se, and to be honest Dante hasn’t seen that much of her so she ay have more abilities than he’s aware of, but he’s not sure she could take Balrog down, and Dante’s not going to risk leading someone to an otherwise sitting duck. He’ll have to stand his ground and fight. Once his opponent’s dead, he’ll grab the wolf, get running, and find another region to loot. This place’s too much trouble. “You sure you can’t let me on my merry way? You’re an honorable guy, letting me explain myself instead of jumping me right away. I’d hate to kill a guy like you.”

“Hah!” Another laugh from the demon. “Kill me, you say? You are funny, Ser Dante. Have you not heard of the great Argosax?” Dante hasn’t, actually. “Have you no knowledge of the strength it would take to become First Knight of a demon such as them?” He doesn’t, actually.

So, Dante shrugs. “I know I have something I need to do and that I can’t waste time babbling. It’s been fun, but I really do need to get going.” Dante takes a deep breath. “Thanks for the chat. It’s been a while since I had someone to really talk to. I’ve got a buddy back home, but he’s not feeling too chatty at the moment, and conversation with the only other gal I’ve got is a little awkward right now.”

“It has been pleasurable to speak with you as well,” Balrog responds with a nod. “Rare is it that I get the chance to face one who even has the potential to be a good opponent. Bolverk is a bore, and I dare not waste Lord Argosax’s time with things that do not concern them. I will remember you when you are gone,” Balrog says, the sincerity in his voice frankly surprising for a demon. “I hope this battle lives up to the name our conversation has made for itself.” Balrog punches one palm with the opposite fist, breaking out into a wide grin as the speed of his hops triples. When he next speaks, it’s a road. “Ignite the flames! Now!”

He launches at Dante.

Dante barely manages to Trick out of the way before the spot he’d been standing in explodes into a plume of dust and rocketing gravel, the crater left behind a good thirty feet across and ten or fifteen feet deep.

“Woah boy,” he says to himself, whistling long and high. Had that landed, it would’ve hurt. This Balrog’s no joke. “Looks like this one’ll actually get the blood pumping.”

“Feel my power!” Balrog shouts, leaping for Dante once more.

Ifrit shudders when Dante meets Balrog’s fist with a fist of his own.

This one’s gonna be a doozy. For the first time in an age, Dante’s pumped.

The battle lasts a good while. Balrog’s no joke, and even if he were, the sheer exuberance and confidence rolling off the guy have Dante riding a battle high that has him happy to prolong things as much as he can, eager for a change of pace and a fight that’s both engaging and fun . They exchange both words and blows over the course of their dance, and by the end of it, Dante feels better than he has since before Mallet. He feels alive again. Himself.

In accordance with that, Dante pulls out all the stops, performs a wonderful show, and in the end, stands victorious.

Balrog lies under his feet, Rebellion to the demon’s neck. His flames have died back down to their amber origins, and though Dante can feel the heat rolling off him, it does not burn. Notably, while Dante weighs practically nothing compared to the massive demon, Balrog doesn’t attempt to throw him off. He merely lies there, his grin softened but not entirely absent.

It’s…a bit bittersweet, almost. Or maybe that’s just the feel of his aura. This demon is an honorable one. By the glint in his eyes, it’s clear he knows he’s been defeated, and, in a move few other demons would pull, will not fight it.

“So this is how it ends,” Balrog laments, closing his eyes with a second eyelid that, blessedly, is opaque. “It was an honor fighting you, Ser Dante.”

Dante spins Ivory once, returning it to its holster. He keeps Rebellion outstretched. “Same to you. It’s been a hot minute since I had a good fight.” Not since Mundus. And even if he hadn’t just faced the Emperor of Hell, it’s been years since he’s fought anyone close to Balrog’s level. This battle pushed him to his limits. He wonders if he would’ve won without the constant recharge of Hell’s ambient energy. Then again, it was likely supporting Balrog too.

He feels on top of the world. Loves it. God, he’s missed good fights like this. Fights for the fun of it. Fights with a good match. Fights with someone who was having fun too.

(Hasn’t really had once since Vergil-)

“Tell me, who are you, truly, Dante the Trespasser, feller of Mundus? Where do you come from? Your name is not one I’m familiar with.” He laughs. “Or rather, it is not a storied one, as one would expect from a demon of your strength. In recent times, whispers of your victory over Mundus have begun to spread across the Circle, but they are constantly changing, and still new enough that many claim them false. Were I not to have seen the changes in his Domain with my own two eyes, I’d have thought them mere rumors myself.”

So word of Mundus’ defeat has made its way through Hell, huh? Hopefully it’ll keep anyone from pursuing him. This battle’s been refreshing, but Dante’s overall patience has been worn thing.

Balrog’s question is genuine, so moving past his statements, Dante gives him an honest answer. The answer he’d like to identify himself by, at any rate. “A demon hunter looking to get home.”

“Home?” Balrog’s eyes snap open. Confusion momentarily clouds his features before they clear, realization overtaking it as he seems to see something beyond Dante, staring at and through and over him all at once. “Ah. The Human World, I suppose. I knew there was something odd about your scent! For you are the rumored Son of Sparda, aren’t you? Half human, half demon. How I did not realize it before now I do not know; you’ve your father’s fighting spirit and sense of honor both!”

The comparison makes Dante’s stomach flip. 

“You knew him?”

“Only from afar. I was young when he fought in Mundus’ army, and had not the chance to exchange either words or blows with him ‘afore he left.” His voice grows strangely somber. “I heard he’s passed. My condolences.”

Dante frowns. It’s…weird hearing this sort of sincerity from a creature like him. “You’re a demon. Why are you apologizing? Why do you care? He betrayed you.”

Balrog laughs, strong as ever. “Because I wished to fight him myself! And he must’ve been a man even greater than the legends, to raise a fighter such as you!”

“Did you plan to invade the Human World yourself then? Get revenge for what Sparda had done by taking it out on him?”

A snort. “I care little for the affairs of men; you can have your little realm. Unless you’ve other fighters of your caliber waiting for you, there’s nothing for me in the Human World. I merely wished to fight your sire for the sake of the fight! The glory of combat; the ecstasy of battle. You feel it yourself, do you not? The wondrous rush of blood, the way life seems so full when you’re fighting to maintain it. Sparda is a legend, even here in Hell. He who fought back the entirety of the Demon World to save the Human World. The one who must surely be the strongest of all demons. The one even Mundus, who Argosax could only match at best, could not defeat. Who Mundus fell to despite the armies at his back. What greater opponent could I hope to face? What greater thrill could I ever hope to encounter?

“I may be Argosax’s First Knight and right hand, but my loyalty is born solely from admiration for the power they hold, not for any attachment to land, personality, goals, or any other such ridiculous notion. In truth, I’ve been biding my time, growing my power so I may challenge them and emerge victorious. I’m close now, and in any other case I would call it a pity I could not face him before mine end, but after facing you, I’m certain the battle between Argosax and I would not have been anywhere near as riveting as the one I just fought with you! Here, I die satisfied. ‘Twas a good fight indeed.”

Dante’s not really sure what to say.

Balrog, a chatty demon if Dante’s ever met one, continues.

“Unless, that is, we strike a deal.”

Finally, Dante speaks.

“Like what?”

“Take me as your servant! You require guards for your new Domain, do you not? I would be more than glad to swear myself to a man such as you. At least until I’ve grown strong enough to be your match, at which point I’d insist upon a battle. You must understand.”

“Um.”

He…definitely gets the whole thrill of battle thing. Dante’d love to have a worthy opponent at his beck and call. Beats the monotony of taking down the various marionettes, hell-class demons, and spider-of-the-day that serve as your run-of-the-mill monster back home. It might be a little more tricky when they come at you half a dozen at a time, but that doesn’t mean fighting them’s fun, just annoying.

Still. Honorable Balrog may seem to be, Dante doesn’t trust a demon he’s just met. 

(Trish is…special.)

Besides, what would he do with Balrog most of the time? What if Balrog came knocking for a fight when Dante was busy with Normal Human stuff? Or some other issue that needed his attention? He really doesn’t need that headache on top of everything else he has to deal with.

So he lets Balrog know. “Sorry, but I’m not looking for any more flunkies right now. If you want a good fight, then fight the one you’ve been aching for already. I’m pretty sure I haven’t taken out Argosax, so go bother them if you want more. I’ve got places to be and people to save. Don’t really need a plus one.”

Dante hops off Balrog, heading back in the direction of the wolf, which had woken up at one point only for Balrog to aim a flaming kick at its head that had knocked it right back out. It has to be in one of the craters around here. 

“Wait!” Balrog roars, jumping between Dante and the many dips in the landscape which, somewhere, contain a currently much-more-appealing wolf. 

Dante’s eye twitches. “Look, man. I’m not taking you with me. You want in, it’s gonna be as the next course, got it?”

“What if I offered my services another way? The gauntlets you wear- they are a Devil Arm, are they not? Ifrit?”

Dante frowns, summoning Ifrit and shifting his arms to look the gauntlets over. “What about it? You a friend of his?”

Balrog shakes his head. “No. But if I cannot be of help to you as a guard, what about as a weapon? Ifrit is no match for my strength. I’d be of far better help than he ever could. My flames are far more intense than the little things he can conjure!” Balrog laughs heartily, hands on his hips and head thrown back. The amber gemstones roar to life, Balrog’s body once more wreathed in flames. They tickle where they lick at Dante’s skin, the air between them wavering from the heat. Balrog means no harm; it’s a show of power and excitement, nothing more. 

It’s an impressive one at that. But what Dante’s learned over years of collecting Devil Arms is that the ones who are loud when demons will typically keep being loud as Devil Arms, and he’s not looking to replace a nice, quiet set of gauntlets with one that’ll probably pull Agni and Rudra levels of never shutting up. He’ll have to turn this one down.

“Mm, nice offer, but Ifrit and I have only known each other for-” a few weeks? Maybe a month? Hopefully not two? How long has Dante been stuck down here, again? “-a short while, and I feel like he deserves a fair shot. Try again later. Maybe I’ll consider it then.”

The flames die down. The way Balrog’s face is configured he can’t exactly frown, but Dante senses he’s doing whatever his kind’s equivalent is anyway. 

“...Truly? You don’t want my aid? You won’t accept my servitude?”

“Yes, truly, exactly, correctamundo. Like I said, I have places to be and people who need me. Now scooch, before I decide to let Ifrit here prove who’s really the better of you two.”

Dante takes a step forward, trying to get a good look at some more of the craters. All of the ones he’s seen so far have been empty, but he knows the wolf’s around here somewhere .

Balrog falls to his knees, sitting on his heels so he’s as close to Dante’s height as possible. Dante still barely comes up to his chest.

Dante draws the Rebellion as Balrog clasps his hands together.

“Wait!”

“Look, buddy, I said-”

“I promise not to delay you further, once I have voiced my final request. I accept that you do not want my loyalty, much as I would like to give it. But before you depart, I must know- who is it that has earned your loyalty? You said you had one to ‘save.’ What do you mean by that?”

Rebellion shifts in his grip. What could it mean? Do demons not have the concept of salvation? Or protection? That doesn’t make sense; Balrog is Argosax’s guard, is he not? One charged with the protection and preservation of another? “...What saving normally does. Someone needs my help, so I’m going to help them.”

“With what?”

“Survival. Now move.” Dante takes another step forward. Again, the crater he catches a glimpse of holds nothing but debris.

Balrog flashes to the side, still kneeling but shifted to remain in Dante’s path. “Have they been captured?”

“No. They’re hurt. And I gave you your one answer to your last request, so move it, bud.”

Surprise crosses Balrog’s face. He continues on, ignoring Dante’s last statement. “Oh! What enemy could have hurt someone who has earned your loyalty? Was it Mundus?”

“That’s none of your business.”

“It is! For if there are demons strong enough to get past one as powerful as you out there, then they would be a marvelous oppon-”

His irritation comes to a head. “It was me, actually! I’m the ‘powerful’ one who cut him down. The one who hurt him ‘till he couldn’t get back up and might never get up again.” There’s no denying who the one to put the sword through Vergil’s chest was. No denying who’d dragged him down from a knight who stood tall and swung strong to a barely warm body that could hardly claim enough strength to breathe. No denying who’d let him fall into Hell in the first place. No denying who pushed him away. “Well. I guess Mundus was the one who started it. But I’m the idiot who hurt him worse. And if I don’t do anything, then he’s going to die and I-” Another breath. “I can’t. Not again. Not for real. I can’t kill him. I just can’t.” If Vergil dies after everything…well. Dante’s spent enough time dwelling on all the terrible things that would follow. No need to go through them all again. It would be the end. Simple as that. No point in elaborating. Fin.

“...I do not understand,” Balrog responds, dragging out each syllable. “This demon is weaker than you, yet you cannot kill them? Are they immortal?”

Dante lets out a bitter laugh. “Immortal? I wish. He’s dying, is what he is. If I don’t figure out a way to save him, he’ll waste away ‘till there’s nothing left.” He shakes his head. “I’m pretty sure just about any demon in Hell could kill him right now if they wanted to. He’s in bad shape. The whole reason I’m here is that I’m trying to fix him. I figured maybe some food would help but-” 

Suddenly, an idea comes to Dante. A last ditch effort. A last hope.

“You want to help me, right? Said you’d give me your loyalty if I asked.” Balrog nods, fervent. “You wouldn’t happen to know of any sort of…healing magic or healing items around here, would you? Like a Vital Star, but stronger.” 

If Balrog is the right hand of this Argosax guy, and Argosax is this region’s equivalent of Mundus, then maybe, just maybe, he’ll have access to something that can save Vergil.

Yet much to Dante’s disappointment, Balrog merely frowns. “You…have crossed into another King’s Domain to ‘save’ a dying man? To prevent an enemy of yours from meeting his end?”

“He’s not my enemy.”

“Yet you fought.”

“I didn’t realize who he was at the time. And he didn’t have a choice.”

“You wish to heal him.”

“I do.”

“Why?”

Dante clicks his tongue in frustration. “I just told you. Because he’s dying. He’s dying and it’s my fault and I don’t want him to die, so I’m trying to stop that!”

“But if he lost to you, then he is weak. Why help a being weaker than yourself? What do you have to gain from it? The strong survive, the weak do not. Why spend your own energy trying to ‘save’ one whose strength has left him?”

“For the love of-” Dante decides he’s had enough. “I don’t have time for this!” He tricks around Balrog before the demon can get in his way again.

There’s nothing on the other side.

Every single remaining crater is empty.

The wolf is gone.

Dante’s so close to snapping.

(Because isn’t it wonderful? The thing he came for has disappeared! The lovely food he’d found and fought for has disappeared into thin air! This whole trip has now been a bust! He’s wasted time and effort and sanity for a whole load of air! May things only go up from here, because the second they stop Dante’s surely going to crash hard enough to discover Hell’s core.)

“I don’t understand,” Balrog repeats, and Dante’s so, so close to turning around and shoving Rebellion straight into his face, courtesy and honor be damned. “Why try to save a being weaker than you? Is that what the food was for? For him? Why help another when you could empower yourself? There is no point. Unless he could grow to be as strong as you, and be a loyal ally, perhaps. Is that it?”

Dante turns around, seething. “How strong he is doesn’t matter. He’s my brother and I’m not going to let him die. I finally found him again after all this time and even if he could never fight again I still wouldn’t let him just waste away while I did nothing, because that’s not what good brothers do! It’s not what good people do.” Not what good humans do. And, despite everything he’s done since he got stuck down here, despite all he’s pushed aside, all he’s compromised on, all he’s bartered for, that’s what he wants to be in the end. It’s just a struggle for now.

Balrog blinks. “Your… brother? I had heard rumors Mundus had captured the Son of Sparda. Meeting you, I thought them either false, or missing the tales of your usurpation. I had not realized there were two.”

That’s enough. Dante’s done with this conversation. He doesn’t want to leave Trish and Vergil alone any longer. Things fled Mundus’ Domain while Dante was there, but with him gone they may come back, and while Trish isn’t a pushover by any means, Dante doesn’t want to risk anyone beating her and getting to Vergil by staying away too long. It’s not worth it at this point.

He begins to walk back toward the castle. His boots kick up dust as he stomps along his way, but he hardly cares. His lungs are fine. He can breathe dusty air no problem. It’s not like he’s the one on his deathbed, after all. 

Balrog shouts after him one final time, though he does not approach. “Let it be known that you have earned my loyalty, Dante the Trespasser, Son of Sparda, and Savior of Kin. Should we ever meet again, then my flames are yours. So long as you promise to fight me once more!”

Dante doesn’t respond. Instead he Triggers and takes flight. He can’t afford to waste any more time. Fighting Balrog was fun, but ultimately pointless. 

Given Balrog’s reaction, he highly doubts there are any healing items to be found in Argosax’s domain. Nothing Vergil could use. Maybe it’s a hopeless endeavor. Maybe there really isn’t anything in Hell that can heal Vergil. No miracle panacea.

Blood is his only hope, then. If there are no special artifacts, Dante will just have to keep on with what he’s doing. Sure it’s barely done anything, but barely anything is better than nothing. Vergil’s cheeks had some color to them on his last trip. That means there’s proof of his success. Proof something’s happening. Proof this hasn’t all been pointless. 

Dante’s making progress. He will continue to make progress. He’ll go back, gauge Vergil’s condition, remind himself of his successes so he doesn’t fall back into that pit of despair, and get back to it. Maybe he’ll have to drop the running rule to get somewhere, maybe he’ll have to start chasing down some demons not interested in fighting, but whatever, he’s done his best to make things work, they haven’t been working, and he’s going to compromise. It will be fine. He will be fine. Vergil will be fine. This will work. It will.

He returns to the castle and everything shatters.

Each and every sign of improvement Vergil’s had since Dante’s initial discovery of his fading corpse has vanished. Every last bit of healing evaporated into the ever oppressive, ever draining air. 

The faint blush is gone. Vergil’s pale as ash. The black lines on his skin pulse. They seem almost thicker. His breaths are so faint as to be nearly nonexistent, his demonic energy is hardly noticeable, and even the amulet seems to have more strength to it than he does.

It’s as if Dante had never done anything for him at all.

When he finally pulls his head away from the glaring, wearing, soul-sucking evidence of his complete and utter, ever failing inadequacy, Trish’s gaze wavers, and, as if finally picking up on the tumultuous emotions that have been plaguing Dante for an age but have at the end of the journey made their mark, she actually looks away. “He went back to looking like this a few hours after you left. Doesn’t seem like the blood actually did any good.”

Dante wants to scream.

He goes out.

He goes out.

He goes out.

He doesn’t know why he bothers. It’s pointless. It’s all pointless. Nothing’s working. He’s not going to find anything. There’s nothing to find. Nothing has worked. Nothing he can come up with. Nothing he has done. Nothing he can do.

And yet Dante can’t stop trying. Can’t stop looking. Can’t stop going and going and going even as he runs on empty, fumes of his efforts choking any so unfortunate to be around him, suffocating him and Vergil in this damp and dark room that has become the center of his life. So over and over he comes and goes from the castle, squirming or bloodied demon in hand, any and all jokes that might’ve once passed through his lips dead and banished from memory, his duty all that’s left to him as exhaustion weighs him further and further down. 

Trish doesn’t speak to him anymore. She just looks at him, the familiar yet twisted gaze of disappointment she gives him nauseating to the point of almost (but not fully, never fully, Dante can’t give up, not at anything, until he does, at which point point he’ll simply give up on it all, he thinks) making him lose it. He doesn’t. She stares. They go on. It’s timeless.

It’s hard to say how much longer he tries. How much longer his fool’s errand foolishly shambles on, the once-speedy trips slowed by an overall lack of motivation even as they’re continued due to the fact that Dante has nothing else to populate his life. 

Time passes so quickly while you’re frantically flying around looking for good demons to nab to keep your brother alive. Time passes so slowly when you’re sitting at his side waiting for him to get back to the point he can absorb the blood produced from their fading bodies or inspecting him for any signs of improvement when only looking at his face and fingers because you played dress-up once and can’t bear to reveal any more cracking skin to look for never-present signs of success elsewhere. Time passes in an indecipherable way in which no unit of measurement can be drawn up, Dante’s mind getting hazy with a despair that consumes all until he feels lost in an eternity that both will never end yet could come crashing down in an instant, Vergil’s life the only thing which may or may not change and the only difference that might matter, its continuation something that feels a torture designed to pull Dante into a slow, dull, eternal insanity, while the threat of his death pulls taut a string ready at any moment to snap. The passage of time becomes to be measured not in turns of the Sun, which don’t happen in a Hellscape that seems perpetually caught at the moment at which the sun meets the horizon, but instead in “number of trips to and from the tower” and “number of bodies which he has consumed.” Even then, Dante has long since stopped bothering to keep count. 

They’re not doing anything. The bodies. The demons. The blood. Anything Dante’s done at all. 

Dante stares at Vergil. He’s pale again. Dante has to go too far for new prey for any rosiness to remain from previous feedings. He swears the time between fades is decreasing. Vergil’s declining. He’s getting worse. Dante’s running out of time. The end is nigh.

The amulet’s the only thing that’s helped Vergil this whole time, and even it seems to be reaching its limit. Everything else was just busywork for Dante and Dante alone. Dante wasn’t even the one who brought it to him. Not really. That was Trish. Trish who sits there silent. Trish who wordlessly pleads with him to do something. She’s losing her patience. He has nothing else. Nothing else, and nothing worthwhile left to give.

However many bodies he’s fed Vergil, whatever the quality of those bodies were, if drowning Vergil in blood were the answer to all of his problems, then the efficacy of Dante’s methods would’ve long since shown itself. If there were some number of bodies or some amount of blood at which Vergil would open his eyes, thank or berate Dante for his actions (Dante would take either; any sound, any words at all, no matter how terrible, he just needs something to change-), and walk away, he would’ve already reached it. If suffusing Vergil’s flesh with the essence of demons was all that was required to return Vergil to an even semi-functional state, said increase in function would’ve long since manifested itself.

Yet Vergil sits almost unchanged. 

Still does he lie motionless on the floor, his breaths weak enough that the movement of his chest is near imperceptible. Still does the blackness lining his body continue to pulse, dark and unsightly and eerie in its strength when lying upon one so otherwise fragile. Still does he remain unreactive to any and all attempts Dante makes to wake him- every idea Dante has long since exhausted in his quest to get his brother to indicate in some way, shape, or form that he is not merely a mindless corpse made to imitate life by the puttering out of a body that could once heal from almost any wound. Dante doesn’t dare try for Vergil’s chest again. He doesn’t dare reach for Vergil’s core. The wretched screeching and electrical convulsions that provoked weren’t life; not really. And if they were, well then that’s not the kind of life Dante wants to see.

In short: if the blood was going to pull off a miracle, it would’ve already done so. 

Yet there have been no significant results. No notable changes. No visible improvement.

Which means it hasn’t done anything. 

Which means it isn’t going to do anything, no matter how long Dante tries, no matter how many demons he provides.

He needs to face the truth.

This isn’t working.

It’s never going to work.

And so, staring at the face of a man whose fate he’d all but sealed, he seals his own:

“How long does it take for a Qliphoth to grow?”

Chapter Text

There only ever was one option, wasn’t there?

Trish’s response is instant.

“It depends on the availability of food.”

“How long has it taken in the past?”

“According to the stories, the one that Mundus used took half a decade to bear fruit. The one that grew before it took half a century. The human population has skyrocketed over the past several millennia, and the further back you go, the fewer there were, so the longer it took for the Qliphoth to absorb enough blood to fully mature.”

“How long do you think it would take today?”

Trish makes a noise that indicates she’s doing something, but Dante can’t find it in himself to care. “I’m not an expert on humanity. The barrier has only begun to weaken considerably over the past few decades. What information Mundus and by extension myself had on humans is rather limited given there aren’t really ‘humanity status kiosks’ on this side of the barrier.”

“Ballpark it.”

“...”

Silence greets him. It takes Dante a few seconds to realize she probably has no idea what he means. The downsides of talking to a young demon whose looks eclipse her knowledge on the human front.

“That means give me an estimate.”

“...” Dante isn’t looking at her. His eyes are still on Vergil. But he’s pretty sure she’s frowning when she speaks, not happy with being reminded of any sort of inadequacy. “Find a big city like the one you live in and I’d give it two to three months. Probably. Remember: I was not alive for the last two Qliphoth harvests, and I’m working on legends that may or not be true here. Don’t shoot the messenger if it turns out I’m wrong.”

A turn of phrase in return. Is it that universal an experience that demons know it too? Betrayal and bad news a constant no matter where you live or how your society runs? Or is it something she did pick up on while on his side?

He scoffs either way. It sounds bitter. He just feels empty. “It’s more information than I have to go on, so I appreciate it. Really.”

“Really,” Trish deadpans. Then, a sigh. “You’re going to go through with it then? You’re willing to sacrifice others for your brother’s survival?”

When she puts it like that, it sounds terrible. It is terrible. But at this point Dante doesn’t know what else to do, and despite the logical part of his brain telling him a good person doesn’t do that sort of thing, none of the emotional receptors are against it. He thinks most of them might be dead. Or numbed, at the very least, and the few still functioning tell him they want him to fix this feeling no matter the cost. No matter what it takes. He can make up for it later. He will.

“That’s what I’ve been doing all along, isn’t it?” Dante muses, talking more to himself than Trish, though he knows she hears it too. There’s fire in his veins now. A low, slow growing heat that might be unease, might be grief, might be resignation, might be hope. “Sure a bunch of the demons I’ve killed didn’t seem that smart, but they probably have thoughts and feelings in their own way. They were scared enough to run when I came for them.” He didn’t always let them go. 

“Ah.”

Dante rises to his feet.

He has hope now. Real hope. A plan. One that seems like it might produce actual results. Screw the despair that’s wormed its way under his skin. He will not be feeding it.

(He needs to feed something else. It will take all he has.)

“So. Do the legends have any lessons for Qliphoth Growing 101?” It’s not said with quite as much enthusiasm as he normally musters, but it’s more than he had before. No daisies will start growing at his feet, but the weeds won’t die from poison spewing from his mouth either. Neither wilting nor growth. Suspension. Retention. The possibility for change.

It all depends on the time limit. The measure of the passing of days and hours and weeks and minutes of which Dante has lost any and all ability to track in the days hour weeks minutes months years since Vergil’s horrible game of hide-and-go-seek that Dante would more than gladly scream out to end, were that to have any luck of alerting Vergil and bringing them together again to play a different game on a different day.

Vergil’d always had a patience for the game that Dante struggled with. Vergil was always good at sitting still; Dante not so much. Content to hole himself up in an alcove or burrow between boughs with a book that could bring him the peace Dante’s rowdiness could only shatter, not imitate, he’d remain where he was for hours without making a peep. Dante’s best chance at finding him would be to listen for the rustling of pages. If that failed- if Vergil ran off prizeless, if his arms were empty when Dante charged at him with arms full of the swords Vergil had in ignorance of his future then foresworn- Dante would often find him by the quiet wisps of his breath. 

Vergil often found Dante by his own rustling. His own inability to lie in wait and sit still. Things have changed little over the course of twenty years. The only difference is that Vergil’s breaths have grown shallower, more erratic. He holds not the control he had as a child. This is no game of hide-and-seek. It’s a game of princesses, a game in which there is a captive who needs rescuing and resuscitation, but unfortunately Vergil has no savior prince, only a lost brother, and a peck on the cheek would do little to wake the ash-grey corpse before him. If Vergil's got some sort of lady-love that could hitch it in reverse, Dante's unaware, so no grabbing her for a quick smooch either. Not that they’d ever had any interest in playing that sort of game themselves; if anything, they would be the prince stuck in the castle and the knight come to defeat the monster to save them. In Dante’s mind, anyway. Usually that only came up when Vergil didn’t actually want to play and Dante came up with some excuse to mentally include a Vergil whose non-participation meant the only way Dante could pretend he was involved was to assign a non-speaking role. On a few occasions they got their mother to agree to play the princess, after she’d read them the fairy-tales her own mother had apparently read her in the seemingly impossible days in which she, paragon of wisdom, calm and collected and smart and strong and so mature, had been a mere child herself. She’d lie on the couch reading some book of her own while Dante and Vergil ran through the house and the fields and the mausoleum fighting imaginary monsters, shouting and shoving and striking down invisible foes until they’d decided they’d defeated the last of the looming threat and ran back to the house to give their mother that reviving kiss, one cheek for each prince and one arm for each savior to be wrapped in a hug. How sweet it was for the darling princes to save their Queen Mother. How strong they were to save her in her time of need.

It was a pity that all that practice was completely and utterly useless when the time came.

(Dante still remembers the taste of ash and blood and dust and something he would only later recognize as having been the remnants of demonic essence left by the creatures who’d died in the chaos surrounding her slaughter, as he leaned down to kiss his mother one final time before her burial, begging for the princess-queen to wake up, begging for his mother to rise from her seemingly-eternal slumber to tell him the game was over and that it was time to wash up for dinner in a kitchen that was still whole and that would soon house the surviving trio meant to be in it.) 

Unlike the princes and princess and other poor, captured souls in those stories, Vergil’s slumber is not one is eternal suspension. He is not frozen. He is not unchanging. He cannot wait for his prince to come. Given his current state, Dante highly doubts Vergil has a decade left in him. With how quickly he’s lost any and all gains of Dante’s attempts at healing him, he might not even have a year. There’s no time for hesitation. If Dante’s going to be saving him, he needs to get a move on, or there will be no Vergil left to feed its fruit.

Trish grimaces. “Not exactly. Mundus did mention it a handful of times and I know he grumbled about the barrier between worlds preventing it from growing, but it’s hard to say whether it was just the barrier stopping it or whether it was too early for it to sprout again.”

“Too early?” Dante blinks. 

“A Qliphoth doesn’t grow every day. I told you- it only bears fruit every few thousand years. It might just not be ready yet.”

A stab in the gut.

But Dante is durable. He’s endured worse. He has faced setbacks and torn through impossibilities before. He can’t rewrite the tale that’s already been written, but he’ll take the pen to rewrite what’ to come if he needs to. He will not be a bystander. Vergil wasn’t the only one who shaped their games as a child, even if he may have been the one to direct them for the most part as Dante filled in the single role he found fun. Dante had input too; at least for what he did himself. So will he reclaim it now.

“You said Mundus used the fruit to become king of the underworld right?” Trish nods. “If that happened just before my father betrayed him, then that means that happened around two thousand years ago. And if a few thousand years is a couple thousand years, and a couple can be two, then theoretically the Qliphoth could be ready to sprout any day now, couldn’t it?”

Trish considers it a moment. “Theoretically, yes.”

“And it feeds on human blood.” 

“Mm-hm,” Trish responds with the sort of enunciation you’d use on a six year old telling you the sky was blue like it was some sort of mindbreaking, divine revelation. He's not even mad; honestly the return of her humor is reassuring. Makes her seem more human. Makes him feel more human too. “I’ve said that several times now. Congratulations- you can retain basic information.”

Dante laughs. It's hard to say whether it's more or less bitter than the last time he'd done so, but it does feel less hollow. Resonates around the half-empty room instead of plummeting to the blood-stained floor.

“Look, I swear I’m going somewhere with this!” He runs a hand through his hair. Not to slick it back- that’s not his place. It’s for the comfort of it. The feel of- not anything on his actual flesh, the gloves still hide it, his fingers are not bloodied despite all the bloodspilling because he can’t bear to have the results of his actions linger on him any longer than it takes for him to step past the source body, not like his earlier days in which fingerless gloves and bare chests were acceptable things in the heat of the moment as they haven’t been for moments which have not been truly heated for years. But it’s an easy nervous habit to have and right now he’s feeling more than just twitchy. “You said we'd have to plant a new one. Does the Qliphoth still exist as a huge tree right now, or does it die off after it's borne its fruit? Do we need to find the last one to extract a seed for planting, or do we need to do some sort of ritual to produce a new seed for planting?” 

Nowhere in his days-weeks-months-hours-minutes of wandering had Dante seen any tree-like object anywhere near the size of the thing Trish had described, but that doesn't mean it doesn't exist. The Demon World exists in layers, circle upon circle with Domain after Domain scattered within each. Dante hardly passed the edges of Mundus'; it's impossible to say how much land lies beyond, not to mention what's in it all. From what Trish has told him, space in Hell is far more fluid than that of the Human World. It bends and writhes to the whims of its rulers. Neihboring Domains are not always neighbors in the direct sense, as more powerful rulers can at times create a sort of connect between disparate locations that makes them as good as adjacent, even if they're in different circles entirely. From what Trish has told him, the Domain they’re in now isn’t the only one loyal to Mundus, and in the past, Mundus would go between Domains simply by walking to the edge of their current location and stepping into the next. With Mundus sealed away for the forseeable future, shackled and bent and scattered among winds that may one day, but not for a while, return him to what he was, that's no longer the case. The connection has been shattered with its propagator. A new ruler would be required to unite Mundus' lands. Or former lands. Who’s to say what’ll become of the power dynamic and governance-slash-control now that Mundus is sealed away again; maybe it’ll be a power struggle in which his lands are split up into half a dozen different regions, maybe one demon will come to rule them all, or maybe they’ll have one-to-one transfers. It isn’t Dante’s problem. After Vergil’s fixed, he’s going home. He’ll keep on fighting whatever comes through the barrier no matter who sends them. He doubts it’ll influence his life that much.

“It’s a seed,” Trish answers. This time she sounds like she’s talking to an adult, curious but cautious. A little more robotic, but not overly so. The progress hasn’t reverted, merely stalled. “And there's no need to perform any sort of ritual to retrieve it; Mundus claimed it for himself as soon as it spawned. One seed for one tree. He made our job easy."

"How nice of him."

"He was ever a benevolent ruler," Trish responds.

Dante snorts. Yeah right. “Do you know where he kept it?”

“Here, actually,” Trish replies, matter-of-factly. Like it’s no big deal. Which it probably isn’t to her, but to Dante? It’s the best news he’s heard in ages. No more fetch quests. No more fruitless searches. No more obscure puzzles. Just an immediate chance for reward. "It's part of why Ne-" her breath catches. Her eyebrows twitch, face pulsing and contorting as something indecipherable goes through her head. An attempt at a human expression. A movement that’s more than demonic. Something not quite proper but getting there. It stops as she steels her voice and face and corrects herself. "-Vergil was stationed here, I'd wager. When Mundus didn't have him off expanding his territory or intimidating demons who'd either disobeyed his orders or acted in a way close enough to earn Mundus' ire, he would order Vergil to stand guard at the castle. Outside or inside, it didn't really matter. Nel- oh screw it, it was- Nelo Angelo had a reputation for ruthlessness, and he didn't always need to show his face to keep other demons away. He was an extension of Mundus, in that way. Just the threat- the knowledge- was often enough."

"Mundus trusted him that much?"

"Mundus trusted his own strength. Nelo Angelo was his plaything, and Mundus had full confidence in his ability to keep him on a leash. It's too bad I wasn't there when Nelo had his little freak out while fighting you; watching Mundus' reaction to learning his control wasn't as perfect as he thought would've been fascinating. He never reacted to surprises very well."

"He didn't seem to care for emotions either."

"Not in others, no. He was…displeased when I first reported back after getting you. He said I'd changed. Even asked about whether you'd corrupted me, and if he'd need to intervene and make any changes."

"Did he?"

"Not really. He didn't have a time. It takes more than a day to re-shape someone. Vergil took…much longer."

Dante considers, for a moment, whether he'd like a timeline on that. Whether he'd like to be able to definitively go 'Vergil spent this much of his life as a mindless slave.'

…He decides against it. Vergil wouldn't want anyone to know his weakness like that. Dante'd feel the same were the situation reversed.

"Do you know where in the castle it's kept, or would we have to figure out some way to get Vergil to tell us?"

"It's in a branch room off the basement I took you to earlier. Shouldn't be hard to grab now that we've unlocked it."

“Can you get it for me?”

“Sure. Here's hoping your timeline is right."

"Why bother telling me about the Qliphoth if you didn't think it was?" Was it all some sort of mental game? An attempt to see how he'd react?

"I don't know. Curiosity? Intrigue? You make me…feel, in odd ways. That was just one of them. I can tell you that Mundus definitely didn't think it was ready. Trust me when I say if he did, he would’ve planted it,” Trish explains. “If you ask me, he came at you prematurely. But Mundus' patience could only be worn so thin. I think capturing Vergil only made things worse, to be honest. He managed to go two thousand years without pushing himself to capture Sparda, only to throw everything away the moment he'd gotten his hands on a single, already-wounded son. I wonder how things would’ve gone if he’d spent another decade regaining his power.”

“Then I would’ve spent another decade gaining power of my own,” Dante responds with a shrug.  

Or another decade gathering weapons and catch phrases that were bound to soon thereafter gather dust. A much as he could grown, as much as he had, he knows he’d stagnated some in recent years. He’d gotten stronger by leaps and bounds during the Temen-ni-gru incident, had had a couple rocket moments over the years immediately before and after, but other than that? He just…hadn’t had the motivation. The drive. 

Now though? He’s in better condition than he has been in years. He's ascended higher than he'd dreamed. Funny it took being dragged down to Hell.

Then again, wasn't the portal to Hell located in the Heavens? To enter Hell, back when Arkham had been the biggest thorn Dante could envision, a much sharper rose dormant and waiting for its opportunity to bloom in the waters of another Sparda-kin's blood, he'd first had to ascend to the top of the Temen-ni-Gru, and then ascend even further into the portal up above. It was in Hell that Dante had spent the most time flying. It was in Hell that he wasn't so grounded. In Hell where he soared.

In Hell where Vergil fell.

But to Hell he'd been transported when he'd ascended after that third and final fight on Mallet Island, so maybe there was something to Hell and Ascension and Vergil too.  His wings may have been taken, his Trigger replaced by monstrous armor which had restricted him and reshaped his very being, but even then, he couldn't help but reach for the sky, leaping to higher grounds as he played with Dante and rising above when it all became too much.

(Was he meant for the Human World? Their mother's world?

Or was one child meant for one, and the other the other?

This is our father's world, our father's hopes and dreams, our father's sin, our father's mess of salvation. Our father's pit of abandonment, our father's most common deed, abandoning his home and his family without second thought in a cycle that Dante was not going to allow either Vergil or himself to repeat).

He continues. “Anyway, maybe the Qliphoth wasn’t ready before he decided to head on over to Mallet island, but that doesn't mean it isn't now. It's been- a little while. And, we have something he didn't." It's coming together. Something bubbles up in Dante's gut. Something good. Something he won't allow to die, something he's going to grab by the collar and drag to the surface until he's done what he needs to do. "Did he ever drag any humans down to Hell while you were here?” Dante knows the answer, and is rewarded with confirmation in the form of Trish’s silent stare. “Then that means he hasn’t been fertilizing it. And I might not be a garden guy-” not like his mother was, not like he and Vergil’d tried to be when they’d once helped their mother with her flowerbeds in the form of pulling out several dozen ‘weeds’ that were in actuality new sprouts of flowers she’d planted a week before, “-but I’m pretty sure that to make something sprout, you need to give it some food. That’s soil and water for the plants up top. And fertilizer if you want to go the extra mile. But from the sounds of it, the Qliphoth’s bread and butter is human blood, which Mundus has most definitely not been giving it since he hasn’t had easy access to the Human World for millennia-” and since he drained Vergil of all of his blood and replaced it with the soul-eating rot so he couldn’t have been using Vegil’s either “-that could get it going. 

“But, lucky for us-” he can feel things coming together. Feels the hope realized. The theatrics which he's been prone to since childhood are roused from their slumber, the props dusted and arranged, the script pulled from the can in which it had been dumped. Dante pulls one of his sleeves down with a flourish, fluttering the knife btween his fingers before, with one last flip, intentionally slitting his own wrist. It cuts deeper than he meant to, his excitement hastening his slice and bringing about a small stream that falls fast enough to splash onto Vergil where he lies supine below, soaking into the fabric above his breast and making the dark cloth shine where light reflects off the knife to to the man below, but that’s unimportant. It’ll heal in less than a minute. It’ll dissipate from Vergil’s clothes like it always dissipates from Dante’s. They're twins. Basically the same. It barely stings. “-we’ve got some right here.”

It might be half demon blood, but it’s half human blood too, and that’s more than Mundus had access to. Maybe, just maybe, if Dante pours enough of his own blood on the thing, it’ll come out of hibernation and go for it. Hibernation or dormancy. Or…he doesn’t know, he’s not a horticulturist, he just knows that if you leave a seed sitting there nothing happens but if you put it in a wet paper towel for a few days it’ll sprout- thank you, the two years of public schooling he went to with one set of foster parents before the demons that would never leave him alone for the rest of his life found and killed them and ended his happy little school and home life both- so if he feeds it blood then surely it’ll get that effect and make a nice little green stem pop on up before getting tall and woody. Or whatever color and texture a Qliphoth is. Dante knows nothing about it but what Trish has told him, and visual details weren't on her list of priorities.

Speaking of Trish, she snorts at his actions, rolling her eyes as she does so. “You’re either an idiot or a genius, and for once, I’m leaning towards the second one.”

“I try my best,” Dante responds with a wink, very pointedly ignoring the first part of her statement. Then he sobers up and voices his request. “So go find it.” Ah, whoops, that wasn’t an ask, that was an order. He clears his throat and tries again. “Please?”

Trish nods. “Can do. I’m sick of this operation- the blood’s cloying and this whole room smells like death. Speaking of which, can we go somewhere else? I don’t think Vergil will fall apart if you move him if that’s what’s got you so concerned. He has an actual bedroom on the second floor and I think we’d all benefit from some fresher air. It even has windows.”

Annoyance spikes. ‘And you didn’t mention this before?’ he thinks. 

He doesn’t push her. Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth and all that. If anything, it’s his fault for being a worrywart and not looking to move Vergil earlier. Since when has Dante been the worrying sort anyway? This whole situation has him all out of whack.

So, he just gives a nod of his own before shifting his position so he can wrap his arms around Vergil. He slips one arm under Vergil’s knees and places the other behind Vergil’s back, handling him like one would a precious artifact. A relic of an age long gone, fit to crumble at the slightest disturbance, flakes drifting down on touch and integrity shaky as is, even without outside force introducing the kind of motion fit to tear it apart.

Lifting Vergil feels like both lifting a lead weight and a hollow stone. He's heavier than he looks. Lighter than his bulky frame suggests.

Which contradicts itself, yes, but Dante has a good reason for it: the contradiction of desires versus reality. 

The heaviness is the reality part, and the greater surprise. Vergil as he is now is a husk of a man, all skin and bones and some small bits of muscle and other tissue that lacks the sort of padding it should have, high cheekbones and protruding ribs and knobby knees all sticking out farther than they have any right to, partially hidden by Dante's attempts to play dress-up, but impossible to ignore when Dante gets to the part of playing Dolls that involves moving his charge and feeling bone press up against his own hands and chest in ways that are not healthy. A(n un)healthy dust shower falls from him as Dante brings Vergil skyward, balancing a not-quite-corpse in his arms, and the fineness of his skin makes him look more like a carefully crafted, motheaten and decaying paper sculpture of a man who was once great but has since been failed to be maintained. A shell of a man. Yet not at empty one; the meat of the clam remains, the pearl carefully hidden, and though Dante cannot pry open its mouth- though he dare not use the force necessary to do so, terrified that in doign so he would snap the hinge and kill the creature entirely- he knows what it is he's handling, can see what it is he's handling, and has an idea of what's hidden at its core. Rot. Ichor. Obsidian corruption that absorbs all its touching, the life essence of the man to which it clings among them. Of all that Vergil is made up from, it's the depthless black substance which flows over and through him, and it's to that Dante would attribute the weight. It's taken all that Vergil should be for itself, dense and all consuming. If Dante could extract it, he'd bet it's where the vast majority of Vergil's weight would lie. The ichor is what drags him down. Without it, it seems like Vergil- like the small bits of skin that have died so throughoughly to separate themselves from the thing that is mostly-but-not-quite-there- might simply float away.

The corruption grounds him. Not for the better. But it does. Dense and heavy and undesired.

But it doesn't speak for Vergil in his entirety.

While on the one hand heavier than he appears, Vergil is, on the other hand, lighter than he should be, and it's that part of him that constitues desires, or wishes, or hopes, or whatever sort of word you'd like to use to say Dante wishes his slip of a brother weighed more than he did.

Vergil's tall now. Elongated. Unnaturally so, if you ask Dante, stretched out by demonic armor that seemed to have molded his very body to the whims of his master, and he should weigh at least as much as Dante, if not more. Dante's got a muscular build and it's entirely possible to be taller, skinner, and still doing well, but there shouldn't be that much of a difference. The couple inches Vergil has in height should not allow him to weigh only half as much as his baby brother. Or around there; Dante's never paid attention to his own weight and he's never been good at estimting weight by picking something up, but lifting Vergil feels like nothing compared to the kind of effort Dante has to put into pulling himself up, so he's lighter, hollower, and worrying Dante in being so.

With how little of Vergil there is, Dante has a feeling he was probably only able to move and fight as the knight because of a combination of demonic power and the potential enchantments of his armor puppeting a sack of flesh that probably shouldn’t have been functional. He isn't slender, and he isn't skinny. He's starved.

When Dante picks Vergil up he does his best not to jostle him too much, but there’s inevitably a bit of movement and the amulet slides across Vergil’s chest just an inch or so. It’s enough to make Vergil’s breath catch for a moment. Enough to make Dante think that maybe, just maybe, Vergil’s woken up. 

(Maybe, just maybe, he has an out. 

Maybe, just maybe, he doesn’t have to go through with this.

Maybe, just maybe, he doesn’t have to compromise himself. Because he is. A million justifications can’t change that fact. Morals will be bent. Promises twisted. New shapes made of pieces not meant to be molded; conclusions made from arguments he’d long since forsworn, long since shot down and berated in others. Yet hypocrisy has ever been a favored practice of Dante, and with no forswearing of that anywhere in sight, mind, or the faintest of chances, he'll keep doing as he does. It's a good thing. Otherwise, he’d have stalled to the point of self-denotation a long, long time ago.

A self-detonation larger than the one he’s already done, that is. A self-destruction of totality. Not the small, standard bits of self-destruction that have sometimes felt like the only thing reminding him that he’s still alive. Something more. Something impressive. Something worth standing and watching as you stare in amazement at the sort of beautiful end that can only ever come once.)

But he hasn't. Vergil’s breath only changes for a moment; for a half-second in which there is enough time for hope to be born and die. He does not wake. His breathing evens out a few harrowing seconds later. Back do the hushed inhales and exhales come, nothing gained and nothing lost. Stagnancy at its finest. Dante’s not sure whether to be grateful it didn’t hurt Vergil more or disappointed that even that couldn’t rouse his consciousness. 

(The temptation to poke Vergil’s core again for a reminder that Vergil is indeed alive and capable of emoting is great but summarily shot down. Of all the people Dante is willing to harm in this act of salvation, Vergil is not one.)

The walk to Vergil’s other room- and oh, was Dante pleasantly surprised when he heard Vergil had another and thus wasn’t confined to a prison cell and its crumbling cot whenever he wasn’t out and about- doesn’t take very long. Trish keeps her pace nice and slow. Leisurely. Calm. Dante finds it grounding. 

(It calls back to some of his most precious memories, trailing after his mother with Vergil at his side, watching her golden tresses sway back and forth with each step. Sunlight spills in through gothic windows, dawn’s rays washing everything in a hazy sort of honey-shade as two boys follow after someone whose warmth blends perfectly with a scene that their harsh blacks and whites have always seemed at odds with, too angular, too severe, unnatural in countless, infinitesimal ways. There is birdsong somewhere in the distance, off in the many trees that marked the border between the mystical land that made up their property and the strange land of the Other that lied beyond, an underlying symphony of which no particular note stands out as anything more than background noise easily filtered out by a boy who spent more time in the bombastic and the now than appreciating the minute details of a life he had not anticipated would be stolen from him years before its time. Shadows lap at the figure before them, the foliage from which they came dancing in a breeze the cold panes of glass kept from reaching them, at times obscuring, even if never hiding, that which they know better than any other save their mirror who would one day not be. Nor would she. All of this will go up in flames sooner or later. Honey yellows and amber oranges and crimson reds and steel greys washed together in plumes of flame and ash and blood.

But not yet. Not in this memory. Not in this dream which is not so much a memory as a compilation of the many times in which such a thing occurred, night terrors and childhood paranoia causing Dante or Vergil to rise from their bed before dawn on more than one occasion, their mother the only balm they could find in a home too empty with its occupancy reduced to three from four. 

She was so patient. So kind. So wonderful. So undeserving of the hand she’d been given.

At least in his memories she’s happy. At least in his memories she’s healthy. She’s not on either front in the final one, but at least the others still exist in vague reminiscence, even as their opposite ever rages strong and overpowering in the back of his mind.

Trish isn’t his mother and Vergil’s not walking, but this scene’s reminiscent of those  dreamlike days, and the calm that’s washed over Dante since his acceptance of what must be done finds it doesn’t mind the difference. 

Why not connect the two? Why not think happy thoughts?

Why give into the misery that’s been clawing at him? The misery that he’s already given into? The misery that he hasn’t given into, because of course he hasn’t, he’s doing something instead of just sitting there wallowing in it so he’s its master and it will not triumph over him again. It’s the misery he almost gave into. The misery he has once again taken up a sword against, though he may have earlier kneeled in front of it with head bowed. Not anymore. Not again. Not as long as he draws breath.

It would be an insult to his mother to squander the life she gave her own to protect. It would be an insult to his mother to not save the one she’d been screaming for with her last breaths.

It would be an insult to his brother, who ever mocked him for his fickle temperament, to give in so soon when it’s his life on the line instead of his own. Vergil had warned him over and over that his habits would lead to his ruin. He can’t let Vergil win this one. For them both.)

They stop in front of one of the handful of rooms Dante wasn’t able to access earlier. It has a lock on it and was sturdy enough to not break after a few hits, so Dante gave up and moved on during his outfit hunt earlier on.

(A room so hard to access from the outside is probably also difficult to escape from while inside. 

Vergil doesn’t really have a prison and a room. He just has two cells of which one is slightly nicer than the other.)

Trish motions for Dante to come closer. When she reaches for Vergil, she hesitates for just a moment, hand stalling above Vergil as she looks to Dante for permission. He grants it with a nod. She takes Vergil by the hand and places it just above the handle, which causes the handle to flash pink before a click rings out in the otherwise silent hall. After that she grabs the handle and pushes the door open, no opposition meeting her with the lock and enchantment undone.

“I don’t think it’ll lock behind us if no one activates the enchantment outside, but I’d leave the door propped open if I were you,” Trish says as the trio moves inside. She lets Dante and Vergil enter first, bringing up the rear now. “Getting trapped in here isn’t what I’d call a fun way to spend my day.”

“Couldn’t we just use Vergil to unlock it again?”

Trish frowns. “Not from the inside, no.”

“Oh.”

Trish doesn’t need to explain why. 

The inside of the room is basic; far more so than the vast majority of the other bedrooms in the castle. Unadorned stone surrounds the small space, no tapestries, lights, or even spots for torches to lessen the severity of the harshly-cut edges that make up the wall, the only break being a single grated opening in the wall through which you couldn't even fit a hand. The light that comes through it is paltry. That which cuts through the door does a better job illuminating the room than the cell-door window. There are no flat surfaces. No tables or nightstands or desks. Only two pieces of furniture stand inside, one being a four-poster bed that's accumulated a fine layer of dust, and the other being a tall wardrobe pressed against a wall lacking any sort of mirror, carved out of a matching, silvery wood. The bed itself is enormous, likely crafted for a demon larger than even Vergil in his armored form, and its length is only made more evident by the fact that it's a completely flat surface, seeing as there are no pillows in sight. Dante's honestly impressed there are even sheets.

Dante continues, disturbed but not totally thrown off his groove. He's better than that. Sort of. “No worries then, I can take care of any intruders that try to make their way in. Haven’t been any problems so far and I doubt they’ll be a problem later,” Dante responds. He carries Vergil over to the bed, but pauses before setting him down. “Could you-”

Trish walks up and practically rips the sheets off the bed as she tosses them to the side in a movement that sits at an uncomfortable juncture between impossibly smooth and completely rigid. Even movement but with a speed and immediacy that jars. The sheets pull out a bit at the ends once she backs away, but it’s good enough. Vergil won’t mind.

(He’d need to be conscious for that.)

When Dante places Vergil on the bed and pulls the sheets up to cover him, he can’t help but crinkle his nose. They smell musty. He has a feeling that Vergil didn’t actually sleep in the bed the last time he was in here. If he’d ever slept in it at all. It’s hard to say.

(He’d need Vergil to be conscious to confirm that too.)

The wardrobe pressed against the wall is empty. There’s a hook in it that Dante thinks might actually be for the sword he’d used to fight Dante, wherever it’s gone, but there are no clothes, no rags, no boots or bootshine, and nothing else save the wood of the paneling that makes it up. 

There’s no armor stand in the room either. Just the made, musty bed and an empty wardrobe that had probably been installed before the entrapment of its latest resident made it obsolete. 

After all, the armor was bound to his body. Dante had to pry it off. Chances are Vergil had been trapped inside for years, removal and replacement deemed unnecessary. The wardrobe is a vestigial organ. Not serving any purpose in its existence, only relevant to cause pain when it begins to rot.

Trish clears her throat after Dante finishes tucking Vergil in. It’s…dumb to do, probably. Vergil’s wearing a lot of clothes. He might overheat. But Dante’s not doing too hot himself. This part of Hell has a weird temperature that Dante can’t even begin to identify on a scale of freezing to scalding, and if he can’t actually heal Vergil then he’s just gonna play nursemaid like he remembers his mom doing with them when they were kids and hope something about the motion is comforting in the same way having his half of the Perfect Amulet back is clearly comforting Vergil where Dante himself can’t. 

“Look. I know I’ve asked you before, and I know what you said, but I’m going to ask one more time: are you sure you’re okay with this?” Trish asks.

“Yes.” He doesn’t hesitate. He’s over waiting. He’s made his choice.

“Dante.” Trish’s voice is completely flat when she says that. It reminds him of the tone his mother used to use when she wasn’t happy with him, as infrequent as that was. She always tried her best to be nice and happy and sweet around him and Vergil, no matter how frustrating they were being. Especially after Sparda disappeared. She always treated them the best. He knew she loved them with all her heart and that things were hard when trying to explain away a husband and father who left one day and never came back, but even the most loving mother encounters times when she has to get serious with the son who just ruined his third shirt of the week.

“That’s two more times, you know,” Dante teases. If you count her saying his name, then one plus one equals two and two is two too many. He doesn’t need to keep going down this road when he’s already arrived at his destination.

Trish rolls her eyes. “Fine. I get it. You’re certain. But one last question- and this one really will be the last, don’t look at me like that. Why did you change your mind? What made you finally decide the Qliphoth method’s okay after all?”

“It’s-”

Dante’s breath catches in his throat. It’s complicated. He doesn’t want to say it out loud. Saying it out loud might reveal how contrived it is. Or maybe it’ll help him accept his justification, thought up and debated time and time again as he went on trips that were doing absolutely nothing, no hope in sight and only a sliver of an old promise keeping him from giving into the plan that'd been chiseling its way to the forefront all the while.

After a few seconds of pondering it, he decides to answer just in case it’s the second one. (Because he’s desperate for reassurance, and terrified how he’ll end up if he gets halfway but decides to back down). “I wouldn’t exactly call it okay, but it’s acceptable, if that makes sense.”

“It doesn’t,” Trish responds without missing a beat. “But go on.”

Dante clears his throat. Where to begin?

In the end it all comes spilling out regardless of sense, the words tumbling from his mouth before he can stop them, the dam broken and freeflowing once the first bit of pressure found its release.

“So I’ve been thinking. What I’ve been doing lately, taking down all the demons around here and bringing them back to Vergil- doing that’s already crossed a moral line. I mean, they're demons, and demons are pretty plain evil for the most part, all 'I'm gonna eat you' or 'let's rip everyone around to shreds just for the hell of it,' and all that. Can't tell you how many times I've gone to deal with demon portals where the demons didn't even get any sort of reward for killing besides the fun of the kills themselves. The ones that come to the human world, those guys are there for happy murder fun time. Depravity, if you will. Nothing wrong with killing them if you ask me. If you trash a party you weren't invited to in the first place, it's on you if you get smoked.

"But here? Sure, some of the demons around here attacked me when I was minding my own business, but not all of them did and I killed them anyway, so if I have any sort of moral reservations over being a bad person, I’m probably already doomed and they shouldn’t matter. Saying it’s fine to kill demons and not to kill humans would be hypocritical. Kind of. I’m human and demon and if my loyalties should lie with anyone it should be to both or neither, even though humans are definitely my favorites and I’m not changing my mind on that. Not that I’m saying murder is all fine and dandy, mind you. It’s not. Shouldn’t be doing it in the first place. But, well, anyway- my hands are already stained, so the idea of staining my hands even more shouldn’t be the thing that stops me. 

“That and uh. Before I met you. When I was younger. I, uh. Hm. Let’s just say I did a lot of stuff for money that I wouldn’t do again now. Or wouldn’t have done pre-Mallet. Now I’m planning on doing worse things so I can’t exactly say I wouldn’t do it again now, but uh. Yeah! Bad guy, right? It’s already written. Already in the books. It's not doing something I wouldn't do so much as going back to what I've already done, just on a larger scale."

Trish blinks.

Dante continues.

“Back then my justification was that I needed enough money to survive, or needed the kind of reputation that would get me the good demon-hunting or supernatural jobs, or even that the guys I was taking out were terrible people so really I was doing the world a favor by offing the kind of cronies who’d go after a teenager they didn’t like taking their jobs, but sometimes I just didn’t care about who I was taking down or why and I was more brutal than I should’ve been, so really this whole murdering human things isn’t new, it’s just something I’ve tried to shy away from to get some distance from the Tony persona that I really haven’t been distancing myself from at all since it’s on my business license and gun and some other stuff I have to deal with from time to time. I’m still him and he’s still me. I’ve got human blood on my hands. This isn’t new.”

Dante realizes he’s rambling. Going all over the place. He’s trying to justify a terrible thing and to do that he needs to make a lot of leaps in logic, but right now his heart’s telling him to do it so he’s jumping like the floor is lava and he’s gotta dodge any and all plumes or shoots that might take him out of the sky. 

“But anyway- back to the whole ‘people dying’ and not just the ‘me killing’ part. I thought about it, and if they die by Qliphoth, will it really be that unique? That unforgivable? That bad? I mean sure, Qliphoths aren’t sprouting out of the ground every Tuesday, clearly, but there are plenty of other natural terrible things that happen in the human world. The Qliphoth would be like a natural disaster. Think tornado outbreak or hurricane or tsunami or earthquake or wildfire or something. Something that sucks, but's gonna happen no matter what, so you can curse it all you want but it'll happen anyway. 

“Anyway, point is- people die every day. Sometimes only tens, sometimes hundreds. In the really bad ones, you lose thousands. And most of the time there isn’t much you can do about it. People mourn their loved ones and it sucks that they die, but eventually they move on with life. The city may have burned down, but people will rebuild. People might have drowned when the floodwaters came, but when the water recedes, they sort through it all, get rid of all the debris that got washed up everywhere, and start life over. It might take a while, but normality comes back, right? Give ‘em time, don’t hit them again, and life will resume as normal, just with a few fewer people to live it. Life goes on. It’ll be fine. It’ll suck for a time, yeah, but then it’ll be over with and they’ll recover and it won’t be the end of the world so I shouldn’t freak out about it too much because they’ll move on eventually too.

“And I mean, it's not going to be as bad as, say, a tsunami, because the tsunami's not going to help out after it's done washing your life away. It comes, it ruins you, it goes, and that's it. But me? Definitely not. It’s not like I’m going to just raise the Qliphoth, take the fruit, and hike it out of there. Once the tree’s done its thing and Vergil’s eaten the fruit, I’ll chop it down, seal the barrier back up, and go back to saving people and killing invading demons like I always have. Probably even more than I always have. I’ll make it up to them and double what I’m doing now, even. For every human who died I’ll save just as many if not more. Then everything will go back to normal. It’ll be fine!” Dante finishes with a smile, wide and bright and not quivering the slightest bit as something inside of him seems to cannibalize itself during his long winded justification. 

(The demon in him eating his human heart, maybe? Bloodlust eating reason? Apathy eating care?

Nah. He’s just being dramatic. Pulling a ‘woe is me’ kind of thing. Nothing’s happening. He’s just being a baby.

Right? Right? It’ll be fine. It is fine. Always has been. Always will be.

It’s fine. 

Really.)

Trish looks at him with pity. Doesn’t say a thing. Just looks.

And Dante hates it. 

He wants to tell her to stop looking at him like that, wants to fall to his knees at her feet and take her hands in his own and shake them and beg her to stop staring at him with that creased brow and pursed lips and eyes that twinkle with something between disappointment and disdain with just enough sympathy to strike at the heart in a way that hurts most of all. 

Pity. It’s such an ugly thing. He doesn’t want it. Would like to throw it away. He doesn’t deserve it. Hasn’t earned it. Doesn’t want it even if he did. 

But Trish is Trish and Trish doesn’t do proper human emotions, not in the way Dante does, so she doesn’t have the heart or the know-how to deal with the situation like he’d want. 

Instead she just takes a breath. "Okay."

"Okay?" That's it? That's all she has to say? He pours his heart out and he gets that?

Trish seems to sense his discomfort, because she tacks on another few sentences, a sense f unease lining her words. “If that’s what you have to say to do this, then sure. I’ll say that all makes sense. I’ll say your logic is sound and I think you’ll be able to come back from this. Does that make you happy?”

It doesn’t. Right now Dante’s coasting on the edge of a breakdown trying to seem cheerful but really feeling horrible and happiness is miles away from the cliff he’s teetering on, on either the mountainside or the lovely spiky-rock ocean he’s threatening to fall into.

“...” He doesn’t think he can lie right now. But answering honestly doesn’t seem much better.

Trish heads for the door. She’s not looking at him anymore. Probably for more reasons beyond just wanting to head out.

“I’m going to go retrieve the shard of Yamato and the Qliphoth seed from the vault. We'll need both if we're going to make it back to the human world. I’ve been there before and it should let me in again. Stay here while I grab them; I’ll be back soon enough.”

She leaves.

Dante keeps on smiling as she leaves the room.

Keeps on smiling as she walks through the hall.

Falls to his knees once he can't hear her anymore.

What the hell is he doing? What is he going to do? What has he become?

…

It’ll be worth it, he tells himself. 

It’ll be worth it. 

It’ll be okay. 

He’ll be dragged back down to the pits of Hell the moment he dies for what he’s done, but it’s worth it and it’ll be okay anyway. This isn’t for him. This is for Vergil. He feels bad for the people whose lives will end so his brother’s can be preserved, but so is life. Sometimes terrible things happen but you have to move on. With Vergil alive and Dante surely doing better because of it, there will be a net gain.

Vergil would understand. Will understand. He’s not a stranger to sacrificing others for his own gain. He wouldn’t fault Dante for it. Sometimes you have to sacrifice to gain and that’s just a fact.

Besides, over the years Dante has come to realize that Vergil had a good point, back when they’d fought atop the Temen-ni-gru. Without power, you can’t protect anything. Not yourself, and not those you care about. Dante can see that now as he lies powerless in the face of Vergil’s impending demise. What Dante is doing is getting power for his brother and power for himself. Once he gets that power, he’ll put it back into the community. No more lazy evenings- he’ll get himself a boatload of contacts, hit up Morrison to see if he has any friends who might want to pass off some of their jobs, and kill every demon he can get his hands on. Maybe he’ll even wander around looking for hellgates or demon nests that haven’t been noted and put up for auction yet too; really go the extra mile. The human world will be safer than it’s been in decades. People will be happier. Reassured. Grateful for his help. There will be a net gain.

(This is all his fault in the first place. Had he been better, this would not be necessary. Since he wasn’t, it is. He’s made this mess. It’s his responsibility to clean it up. First with Vergil, then the rest of the world. If he’s good at anything, it’s messing things up. If there’s anything he’s okay at, it’s fixing them up after. He’s a handyman. Mostly as a front, but he does do actual handyman work sometimes, so he has experience fixing things, even when he’s never seen them before in his life. He’s adaptable. Good at figuring things out on the fly. That’s what he’s doing now. Fixing something broken even though the manual’s gone and he’s been given a bunch of junk he doesn’t totally know what to do with. It’s fine. It’s fine.)

For every human who died to save Vergil, Dante will be sure to save the lives of three more. Sometimes you must sacrifice some to gain some. Some for more. Nothing can be born from nothing. People have always offered tribute to receive in turn, have always given blood or food or beloved items to the gods so they might gain protection and aid in return. 

Dante is not a god and these sacrifices won’t be willing, but he’ll collect and he’ll pay out and it will all be okay.

It will all be okay.

It will all be okay.

Won’t it?

By the time Trish returns with Qliphoth seed and Yamato shard in hand, Dante would say he’s gotten a pretty good handle on his emotions. Enough that he’s not going to burst into tears if Trish doesn’t hold up her end of their bargain and asks him something again, at least. He can’t promise he won’t if she presses him. But she won’t do that. Probably. 

(If you asked Dante how he's feeling he's not really sure what he'd say.

He's doing great compared to Vergil. Has more energy than he ever has. Could Trigger for what feels like eternity, has the sort of stretch to his senses that has him certain he could hit a bulls-eye from a mile away.

He also feels fit to shatter. Both so similar to and so different from Vergil in that respect. Neither twin is whole, neither could withstand a thousand blows as they once could. Vergil flakes away with each touch, each breath. Dante stands tall for the moment, the tower built to keep the sleeping prince safe, but there's a crack in his foundation, and it'll only take a single, well-aimed blow to make him crumble. He's working on fortifying it, doing his best to patch the hole before it can expand even further, but until then, he's fit to collapse at any moment, if someone gets a lucky shot or knows enough to expoit his weakness. It's…exhausting and not. He can't beexhausted. But the knowledge eats away at him, as much as he tries to ignore it. As much as he pretends it's an arrow slit meant for offense, not a fault just begging to be widened.

One day the hole will be patched. Or, if Dante's lucky, Vergil- the sleeping prince who'd probably tell Dante he hated the designation while haughtily being proud to be so highly valued- will wake before then, so the tower becomes unnecessary in the first place, its fault no longer important because its very existence has been deemed in excess.

That wouldn't be too bad. Would probably be easier for Dante in the end. Less energy needed to be put toward fixing something he doesn't want to maintain in the first place. Less time spent worrying over something he wishes he didn't need to worry about. Resources to be devoted to a better cause.

It'll be perfect. Ideal.

Ha! Like things ever are when it comes to the two of them.)

Dante looks at the shard of Yamato first. Trish hands it over without complaint, the blade feeling cold to the touch even through his gloves but not breaking threads or, unlike the last time he came into contact with it, drawing blood.

The fragment itself is eight, maybe ten inches long. A dagger with no grip. The break looks cleaner than Dante had expected; the ends are relatively smooth, like the blade was simply snapped off rather than shattered as he’d assumed. It still isn’t good- a broken Yamato is still broken no matter how cleanly, and a broken blade implies things about Vergil that Dante doesn’t like- but it’s better than it could be. A break like this is one that can be mended. At least, Dante thinks it can. They just need to find the other pieces. Wherever they are.

Like with the amulet, Dante brings the shard to Vergil to see if the familiar item brings about any change.

Like with the amulet, it does. Vergil’s breath catches in his throat again, his chest momentarily inflating like he’s a normal person with normal lung capacity before it deflates back to concavity and his breathing returns to its post-amulet, disappointingly shallow normality.

Not to say that that’s it for the effects. When Dante places the shard in Vergil’s hand, he swears his fingers twitch. Not enough to grasp it. But enough that it couldn’t have just been Vergil’s hand being glanced by a weight.

A thought occurs to Dante then.

He and Vergil are identical twins. Or- were identical twins. Now they don’t look anything alike, Vergil pale and cracking while Dante’s tanned- or he was last he checked, who knows whether its faded down in Hell without a real sun to keep the tan up- and relatively smooth skinned, and Vergil thin and bony while Dante’s packing muscle and a healthy bit of fat to support it. But they were when they were nineteen and at all the points before that, and that means they should still have the same blood even if their outward appearances have diverged. Or would, were Vergil’s blood not to have been replaced with ichor. But that’s exactly why Dante’s going to do this next thing with his own blood- Vergil doesn’t have any blood of his own to do it with, and Dante’s can probably substitute for it well enough. 

He pulls his glove off and shoves it in his pocket for the moment. 

Then he puts it back on and pulls off the other to use that one instead. The left one. The one Yamato last touched.

“How’s this?” he murmurs, reaching down to where the Yamato shard sits in Vergil’s right hand. He wraps his hand around the Yamato, tightening his fist until the blade cuts into his skin and draws blood, an old scar brought back to life for the sake of another's resurrection. 

It reacts the moment it tastes him.

Across the room, waiting with the Qliphoth seed, Trish chokes at the bright flash of light that fills the room.

Dante lets out a dry laugh at the sight of it. Even when fueled by his own power, it still shines blue. Vergil was ever her favorite. She’d never give up his color, even when drinking her fill from Dante instead.

The flash wasn’t the only thing to come from Dante’s little meal. Alongside the familiar blue glow was an even more familiar flare of power, more muted than it should’ve been but stronger than anything Dante had felt in an age.

Vergil’s.

It dies quickly, fading back into the near-nothingness it’s been since Dante found him, but even a half second of height is more than he could ask for. He knew the Yamato would be able to draw it out of him if she had the blood to remind her who she belonged to, who to both draw her strength from and lend her strength to. In this case Dante was the wellspring while Vergil was the fountain, Yamato siphoning from one and giving to the other rather than doing both to one, but with Vergil so drained, it was the only thing Dante could think might wake her.

And besides that…Vergil’s breath has evened out again. Still not good, but better than before. Better than even the amulet breath.

He’s still not awake, but he’s better, and right now Dante will revel in each and every victory he can achieve, small or no. He knew he could count on the Yamato to help Vergil out.

“Did your little light show achieve whatever it was it was meant to?” Trish asks, keeping a careful distance. She’s rolling something- probably the Qliphoth seed- in her palm as she speaks, voice measured but movements betraying her nerves.

Dante rises, approaching her and holding out a hand to take the seed. “I’d say so.”

He knows that feeding the Yamato shard his energy won't be enough to heal Vergil. It'll take more than that. The Qliphoth, and whatver magic it can produce.

But he thinks it'll have helped Vergil to get that little kickstart. A little burst of energy from the sword he held so dear. A transfer from the guy as close to him as he can get.

Trish hands over the seed. 

Dante rolls it in his own palm, examining it.

For whatever reason, he’d been expecting something smaller than what the thing actually is. Seed to him meant something the size of a thumbnail or smaller. The seed she’s given him is more like a large walnut. Which makes sense for a demon tree; why wouldn’t a giant tree come from an equally giant seed? He wonders what would happen were he to destroy it without planting it. Is the Qliphoth some immutable part of the world? Would another seed spontaneously generate to take its place, were there no other? It’s a question he doubts he’ll ever have the answer to. A Qliphoth is a horrible thing from everything Trish has said about it, and once he’s done with his he plans to chop it down and destroy all that remains. Hypocrite be thy name, he doesn't want anyone else getting their hands on something apparently so destructive. That's part of his penance: ensuring the same thing can't ever happen again.

“I can work with this,” Dante says, twisting the seed around. 

It’s a wrinkly little thing, colored a smoky black in the way of tarnished silver. When he applies a slight pressure to it, it holds up in a way that has him fairly certain he couldn’t destroy it even with a fully wound punch from Ifrit.

The cut from the Yamato has already healed, so Dante pulls out his trusty knife to feed the thing.

Except before he can do that he needs to fix something. So he slips the seed into a coat pocket, dons his left glove again, and pulls off the right, swapping it and the seed once his fingers are free. His left hand is sacred. The right's free to blaspheme.

Out comes the knife after that. A quick slash across the palm- this one diagonal, from the heel up to the bottom of his index finger- and he’s got enough blood welling up to lather over the seed. 

It doesn't hurt as he rolls it in his palm once more, curling his fingers in and pressing the seed against the open wound there. He can feel the pressure on his nailbeds when he attempts to push into the wrinkly exterior with clawtipped fingers, the claws having pushed themselves to the surface in an automatic, undesired reaction to the assault on his flesh, self-inflicted as it was. He dismisses them with another pulse of his hand, pressing the seed even deeper, rubbing it against split skin and exposed inner flesh to slather it as best as he can. By the time he's done, it's completely coated.

He waits.

Nothing happens.

The seed is certainly reddened by his blood, liquid filling in and filling out the wrinkles so the seed looks almost smooth. But it doesn’t get absorbed, per se, just does what any liquid on an uneven surface would do and fills in the gaps. Dante's blood isn't any more sticky than a normal human's, so only so much can cling to the seed at once, and more of it pools in his hand than adheres to the seed itself. A waste.

“Could you grab me a bowl from the kitchen?” Dante asks.

“What am I, your personal maid?” Trish responds with a sigh. “But yes. I’ll be back soon.”

So she goes, and so she comes back a short time later with a jeweled goblet in hand. Fancier than the bowl he was looking for, but it’ll work. All he needs is something to pool the blood in so he can submerge the seed. Hopefully it doesn’t drown.

He places the seed in the goblet and slashes himself again, this time choosing a spot on the wrist that will get higher spray in a shorter amount of time. Dante heals fast enough that he has to cut himself a few times to fill the thing enough for the seed to be fully enveloped, but it’s more of a slight annoyance than an actual problem. Conveniently, the seed doesn’t float. He’s not sure if he should really be drowning it in blood if he’s trying to get it to activate- when it comes to demons it always feels like there's no such thing as too much blood, but maybe the seed's a more delicate thing, despite its hard exterior- but it seems durable enough that it probably won’t hurt it even if it’s only supposed to be lightly sprinkled with the stuff. Probably. 

From there it becomes a waiting game. 

Trish is over the whole ‘silence’ thing even if Dante isn’t (no, actually, he is, he very much is, he’s getting twitchy again with the weight of everything and the best way to take your mind off things is to either flip through a magazine you’ve read a million times before as you recite the words even before you get to them, or talk about something else with someone else, and there doesn’t seem to be much reading material down here), so they pass the time by talking about their respective pasts. Mostly Dante’s. Only stuff from about age fifteen to eighteen and twenty to twenty-eight. He’s not talking about his childhood and he’s not talking about the Temen-ni-gru, but he has some stories from back when he started getting into the demon hunting business and from the time since that Trish finds fascinating enough.

Once Dante has run out of his ‘gold’ level stories, he checks on the seed. 

It’s still submerged.

He nods and asks for Trish to talk for a while while he rests his throat. She obliges and regales him with stories of the various errands she ran for Mundus that could be considered at least somewhat entertaining. 

He checks on the seed again.

It’s still submerged.

He's getting antry.

“D’ya think demon blood at least keeps him from getting worse?” Dante asks. The he is implied. It could only be one.

(There are two he's here, actually, and neither's benefitting from Dante's inactivity. Both are degrading by the minute, in one way or another, and the bloodspilling might only be worsening it.)

“I’m pretty sure nothing short of curing him will keep him from getting worse,” Trish responds with a shrug. Her eyes are on the seed goblet too, narrowed in thought. “But I don’t think it’ll hurt him. I suppose it might keep him from getting worse faster.”

“Good enough for me.”

Dante heads for the door.

It sends a slight spike of anxiety through him, he'll admit. The prospect of leaving Vergil again. The prospect of leaving him unprotected.

But Trish is there and Dante's left him before. He'll be fine. There's no reason for Dante to be getting anxious now. He's cleared out any and all strong demons in Mundus' Domain, and he's certain that if any powerful demon attempted to enter from the outside, he'd know the second they crossed the threshold. There's no need to worry. None at all.

“I’m gonna get something for him to eat. Do you want anything?”

“If it’s not gourmet, no thanks. I spent more time in the human world than the day I found you, and sampling what humans have to offer completely spoiled me. Most of the stuff down here tastes like slop in comparison. I’ll wait until I really need it. I can go a while without a meal.”

“Your loss,” Dante responds. Not that he’s going to get anything for himself either. He can subside on red orbs for a while longer. At some point he’ll probably need to bite into some meat or plant material or something to make up for all the vitamins he doubts are found in red orbs, but he hasn’t hit that wall yet. If he ever will. Maybe red orbs can substitute for all his human needs. It’s hard to say.

He leaves.

He comes back.

The goblet remains the same as it was before he left.

He moves on to telling Trish about some of the oddities of the human world he thinks she might appreciate.

This pattern continues for a while; Dante and Trish trading stories until Dante’s gotten too restless from inaction and lack of progress until he makes an excuse to get up, hunt some demons, and come back to what he hopes will be a change in the seed’s status but never is.

It sucks.

It takes…he’s not sure how long.

He’s annoyed at the inactivity. Furious too. And disappointed. Never quite apathetic. Varieties of all things emerge.

Sometimes he thinks about making some sort of joke about how Trish got him all worked up for nothing. About how he had a great moral quandry for a little wrinkly ball of disappointment.

But he can't make himself do it. That would mean admitting that his last chance, shot in the dark, sky high hopes and prayers were nothing but a cloud of dust in the shape of a dream.

So he doesn't.

They talk.

He leaves.

Rinse and repeat.

And so it goes, until finally-

Finally-

“It’s working,” Trish greets Dante as he comes back from his umpteenth trip of the span.

He doesn’t have to ask what ‘it’ is. The Hell Pride he'd brought with him falls from his hands. Its head pops off its body as it hits the floor, skidding across the room until Trish slams down on it with a heeled boot and the whole thing turns to dust. Dante ignores it, crouching in front of the table they’d placed the seed goblet on.

There, he sees victory.

The blood is not gone. Not entirely.

But the goblet is only half full, and that’s emptier than it had ever been before. It's progress. It's hope.

“It’s working,” Dante breathes, staring at his own reflection in the goblet. (For once the seed fulfills its purpose, his other ‘reflection’ should be his reflection again). The seed of course obscures part of it, disrupting the liquid with its rounded edge and covering the center of his face so no distinguishing features there can be seen. But in the blood around it he can see his hair and the ceiling behind him, and seeing less means he’s in fact seeing more when the seed has grown a centimeter or so in diameter and is definitively, undeniaby, alive. “It’s working!”

Vergil is as still as he has been for the past unknowable amount of time, but that doesn’t stop Dante from falling to his knees at the side of Vergil's bed and shaking Vergil’s hands in excitement to include him in the celebration anyway. He’d left the Yamato shard in Vergil’s right hand so he has to be careful not to impale himself on it again- sure he did it intentionally once but he doesn’t want to strain Vergil or the Yamato so he’s not going to get crazy with it- but otherwise he gives Vergil a reassuring squeeze on his right hand and babbles on about how they’re getting close to fixing him, half because Dante just feels the need to say it, and half because he’s hoping that talking to Vergil and touching him on occasion might help draw Vergil’s consciousness back to the surface or otherwise let him know he’s not alone if Vergil is semi-aware but unable to move or control himself enough to make that known.

Dante addresses Trish with a brighter smile than he’s worn in an age. “Do you think I should pour out the rest and give it new blood?” Maybe what’s left is the demon part of his blood? If it can work like that? Or maybe it just hasn’t had enough time to absorb all the blood. Or can only absorb so much, like Vergil. It’s hard to say.

Trish shrugs. “I don’t know. Do whatever you’d like.”

“Oh come on. You have to at least have a suggestion!”

“If you’re happy to bleed, then sure, bleed yourself, why not. Go crazy.”

Trish rises from her place on a chair she’d brought into the room a few trips ago. 

“I’m going to go out for a little while. Without the rest of the blade, Yamato’s portal opening abilities will probably be stunted and it might not work just anywhere. There are certain spots in Hell where the veil is thinner than others. If I can find one I’ll come back and let you know so we can use it once the seed’s rooted and the time’s right.”

“Sounds great. Have fun!”

"In this place? I doubt it. See you soon."

He shrugs off her response. If she wants to be snarky, she can be snarky. All the more power to her; leanring to be human while stuck in Hell.

She's free to go. Dante doesn’t really need Trish for the rest of the ordeal. Not the current part, at least. He’ll definitely need her guidance again when it comes time to open a portal and keep things going according to plan once in the human world, since his current plan is pretty much just "plant the Qliphoth, let it grow however long that takes, find the fruit wherever that spawns, and give it to Vergil," which is extremely vague and could definitely benefit from Trish's demonic know-how, but for now it’s just a matter of cutting himself and waiting for the seed to do its thing and he’s not going to ask Trish to stick around to help with self-mutilation. Despite the propensity some demons have for it, she’s not a sadist. Dante’s glad for it. He’s not either. 

(It gets shaky on the masochism front. For all he’s grumbled about it from time to time, he’s never been that upset at any major stabbings. There’s a certain high it brings. The thrill of battle. The excitement of a threat. 

While Dante wouldn’t say he’s ever gone out of his way to be hurt and certainly doesn’t go out of his way to hurt himself, it would be a lie to say he hasn’t always put his full effort into not being hurt either. Sometimes it's easier to let yourself to get stabbed to take out an enemy at the same time. Sometimes he just doesn't feel like putting in the effort to dodge the blow. Sometimes-

Sometimes.)

Dante pours the blood out of the goblet, into a little bucket that he’d brought back during one of his trips that now sits in the corner of the room. He’s not sure what its original purpose was. It works well enough for what he’s using it for now. By the time he peeks into it after refilling the goblet with his own blood, the bucket’s empty anyway.

His blood has always dissipated in an undoubtedly demonic sort of way, but it usually takes way longer than full demons. The fact that it disappeared so fast this time- though still somewhat slower than normal demon blood- seems to point to his ‘the seed absorbed the human blood and left the demon blood to sit’ theory being correct. That the blood waited to dissipate until it left the goblet and entered the bucket also seems to point toward his ‘demons have some special way to keep demon bits, blood included, from disappearing too fast’ being correct too. The goblet must be enchanted. Maybe that's what the jewels are for. Maybe demons are also vain.

Then Dante waits. And watches. And waits.

And slowly but surely, the blood drains away.

The seed doesn’t increase proportionally to the blood it’s absorbing. The size hardly seems to change at all when the goblet’s half empty and Dante dumps the rest to repeat the process. 

But it is increasing. Slowly but surely. He just has to be patient and keep an eye on it. Keep it watered. Blooded. Same thing. Close enough.

Trish comes back at one point, saying she’s found a handful of potential locations. Dante nods and resumes his vigil.

The goblet empties. 

The seed grows.

The light is finally shining at the end of the tunnel, and though there are doubtless more tunnels to come, Dante’s not lying for once when he says he’s really, truly happy. 

When the seed has grown to about the size of a baseball, Dante knows the time to plant it has finally come.

A little bone-white prong sticks out of one set of blood-soaked wrinkles, angular and rounded and shimmering under the light of the forever-setting sun. It doesn’t look like any sort of sprout Dante’s ever seen, but the seed also doesn’t look like any seed he’s ever seen, and since usually sprouts come from seeds when they’re ready to get growing for real, Dante decides to call it a sprout and that’s that. 

(And, beyond any and all things which could be associated with logic and reason and evidence and such important things, there’s something within Dante which tells him that yes, surely, undoubtedly, the seed has sprouted and it’s time to plant. The seed has awakened. It is ready. It needs more, but it needs more than he can give, so it's time to make up for what he can't provide.)

“How close to the portal do I need to plant it?” Dante asks once he’s brought Trish in to see the new sprout, toes wiggling as he rocks back and forth on his heels from excitement, a show-tune boucning over his lips as he whistled in his wait. 

If only Vergil could see this. If only Vergil were awake. He’d be pleased to see Dante hadn’t messed something up for once. Maybe even proud. He took initiative. That's impressive. Dante is and always has been lazy. But for Vergil? Dante did something on his own- with Trish's help, really, but she didn't have to push him into it in the end, it was his decision and she merely followed along- and that counts.

Trish on the other hand sits somewhere around mildly impressed. She doesn’t move to take the seed from Dante, though she does lean in to examine the sprout coming from it and nods in approval once she’s seen enough.

“Doesn’t need to be right under it, but it should be within a quarter mile or so.”

Dante blinks.

“A quarter mile? Will space be able to warp enough to shift the Qliphoth in once it’s ready? Or is it just that huge??

“Shouldn't you have asked that before we got to this point? Besides, I already told you- the Qliphoth in the stories I’ve heard is said to be enormous. Enough to take up the entirety of a minor ruler's Domain. The units of measure down in Hell aren’t the same as those of your human world, but a quarter mile should be more than enough for it to catch the portal at some point in its growth.”

“Would it be better for it to reach the human world early? Cut a portal a little closer to the ground? I don’t know how long I can feed it for before bleeding myself dry.”

“Maybe? The old Qliphoths were made back before the barrier was built, so it’s possible the ones growing it had a steady supply of humans they were able to feed it before it reached human territory to keep it growing. So closer might be better. Unfortunately for you, the spot I found only thins higher up. Cutting close to the ground won't work.” Trish purses her lips. “Though-”

She continues to talk after that, going on about something probably related to whatever myths or tales she’s heard, but Dante filters it all out. Trish seems to be thiking aloud, and he can just ask her for the short version later on. For now, he has othe rthings on his mind.

Namely to the seed itself.

‘Do I need to keep feeding you for you to make it to the human world?’ he wonders.

He's not really expecting a response. When he does so, it’s more like he’s just voicing his internal question…not aloud, since he’s just thinking it, but…more openly? Projecting it? Putting thoughts into words instead of jsut feelings. It’s hard to describe.

Just as it’s hard to describe the response he gets, which is not in the form of audible words, but instead takes the form of the distinct knowledge that no, he does not need to keep feeding it, the Qliphoth has enough energy stored from its last life that it will be able to send its roots into the human world to feed once Dante plants it, his blood having kickstarted a natural process but having not been strictly necessary for it. It would’ve grown without his aid in two or three decades, but it appreciates his help. It will serve him as he’s served it.

(That last part should disturb him.

It doesn’t. 

Not yet anyway.)

“Dante!” Trish calls, drawing Dante’s attention back to the present.

“Oh, sorry,” he responds, blinking rapidly to clear his head. He doesn’t know how long he’d been distracted for, or how long Trish had either been silent or potentially called him for. His head feels a bit fuzzy.

(It would, with the way-)

He clears his throat. “We should be good to go now. Can you carry Vergil to the spot you picked out?”

Trish frowns, eyebrows furrowed and concern deeper than just about anything he’d seen her wear before. It seems genuine. Human. She's improving at an impressive rate. Is Dante that good? Is she picking it up from him. Weird, but kind of sweet. Odd she’d get better at seeming upset while Dante’s feeling more and more unreasonably happy, but hey, any emotion is good emotion, right? At least when it comes to learning how to have a better emotional range. She can figure out the good ones and bad ones once she's gotten a chance to experience them all.

“You’re okay with me touching him? You don’t want to be the one to do it?”

It's a good question. He knows he'd been pretty protective before. But by now Trish has earned his trust, so he doesn't see the need to keep her at the other end of an invisible ten foot pole. If anything, it feels kind of fitting for her and Vergil to be together. Vergil's way bigger than he was the last time Eva hugged him, and Trish both isn't her and isn't wearing the sort of thing he could imagine his mother ever putting on, but there's some sort of distant awareness of it being sort of right, so he'll tak it, even if he has to mentally squish them into boxes neither would probably like to be squished into very much.

Dante shakes his head, walking to the opposite side of the bed so he can take the Yamato shard from Vergil’s hand and pocketing it. Then he pulls Rebellion off his back and holds it in the hand not occupied by the seed.

“Nah. I’ll focus on protecting us; no offense, but between the two of us I’m pretty sure I’d win in a fight, and I want the stronger one to be on demon-defense duty. Don’t want any nasties getting the jump on us.”

“Uh-huh,” Trish responds slowly, hanging onto the utterance like she doesn’t really believe him.

Defense is a real concern. Sure Dante’s taken out (slaughtered, massacred) pretty much all of the demons in the vicinity, but he doesn’t want any newcomers who came in to fill the void attacking him and Trish and killing Vergil because he’s gotten complacent. He trusts Trish to be gentle with Vergil and he trusts himself to fight back any enemies, and that’s all they need. He's got the Qliphoth seed. One thing to protect for each of them. It's fair. Even. Right.

“Yep! So pick him up- gently, please, I know he may have hit like a truck in armor but right now he’s more like the china than the bull in the shop- and let’s get going. Just tell me where to go and I’ll get a-movin and a groovin’.”

This might not be the best time for him to talk like that, but the high of progress has him caught in its claws and he’s happy to ride it as long as he can. 

Dante finds a spot to plant the seed. He starts by going to the area that Trish had recommended, then follows his instincts to find a place that seems just right for the seed.

Once he’s found it, he digs down six or so inches, covers it back up, and waits. 

He thinks on it for a bit, then remembers one of the most important things about planting a seed: you can’t just leave it dry, you’ve got to water it. 

So he slits his wrist after that, sprays the ground and soaks it real good. Trish stares on with a look of disgust. 

“So how long do you think we have to wait?”

“It should be good to go once it’s broken out of the soil.”

“And that’ll take how long?”

“Your guess is as good as mine.”

Dante sighs. Then, he sits and the next round of waiting begins.

Waiting for the seed to sprout is, for reasons beyond Dante, somehow more aggravating and anxiety inducing than waiting for Vergil to wake during his earlier feedings. Dante has never been a patient man and the last few days- weeks- whatever it's been since he landed in Hell have only worn down his patience further. Sure a huge portion of his regular life pre-Mallet was technically spent waiting for a job, but there’s a big difference between waiting around for something you aren't that emotionally invested in while not being pressed for time, and waiting for something that you are very, very emotionally invested in that is definitely time sensitive. Dante doesn't know how long Vergil can last as he is, nor does he know if remaining in such a state will have worse long-term consequences the longer he stays in it. He also doesn't know how long it will take for the Qliphoth to break through the soil once it's ready, because for all he knows there might be a fifty year gap between sprouting and truly growing, and he can't afford that time. 

At least when it came to jobs it generally didn't matter whether he had a one day or one week gap, as long as he could pay the bills. He had a bunch of stuff he could pass the time doing too. Reading, napping, wandering around town, hitting up Freddi's, getting banned from pizza joints, losing at poker to Lady, losing at poker to Morrison, losing at poker to the guys to the guys at the one pizza joint he's not banned from that challenged him to a round probably knowing he'd lose and that they'd get a free meal out of it, the list goes on. 

But down here there's nothing to do but sit and wait. Trish didn't bring any games with her and Dante doubts she has any back in the castle anyway. There's nothing but demons to eat. Wandering risks leaving Vergil vulnerable to attack and that would be the absolutely stupidest way for Dante to lose him after all this time so that's not an option too.

Thus, he waits. He sits, sometimes paces or stands, and he waits.

At some point Dante realizes wrongness of the Underworld has started to become a little less wrong and a little more normal.

Is it because he's used to it? Like how if you stay around a smell long enough, you stop noticing it so much? Is he becoming desensitized? 

Or is it not that the wrongness has become less annoying and instead that Dante has aligned with it? Not that his brain and body have stopped throwing a fit at it, but they've actually adapted to it?

Sure, Dante puts up a human front. It's the form he was born in. It's his favorite form. It's the only form he knew for two thirds of his life. It's the one he wants to be him.

But his Trigger feels natural too. And down here in Hell, he's pretty sure that if he wanted to, he could stay like that permanently. He is half and half after all. Shouldn't both sides thus be equal? Shouldn't it be easy to keep up?

(At points he's wondered how long he could stay triggered in the human world too, but he's never tested it because if the answer is ‘indefinitely’ then he'll have to confront some things he doesn't want to think about, and he's not the type of guy who makes himself uncomfortable just for the sake of being uncomfortable. Screw people who say being uncomfortable is what you need to grow. Dante thinks that's a load of crap. And if it isn't, well he doesn't care anyway. He'll put up with being uncomfortable if it's because he's being lazy, or even sometimes if it's to help someone else, but he's not gonna do it just for uncomfortability's sake. He's fine where he is. Growth is an ideal you don't always need to be shooting for. Sometimes it's fine to find a place you're happy and stick with it.

Just ignore the whole ‘happy’ modifier there. That one's a hard one. Unrealistic. Dante's a pro at being content. It's close enough not to matter. Right?)

…He decides he's not going to think about that anymore. 

Like a lot of things! Because if anyone deserves an honorary degree in not thinking, Dante's the top of his class and ready to grab a diploma. He's multitalented too, or has a wide array of not thinking he can practice too. 

There's the not thinking that comes with doing something fast and stupid- things like going after the strange knight with what should've been an extremely familiar face and slicked back white hair and glowing blue energy that pulsed when his armor wasn't being overtaken by blue and who was oddly fixated on his amulet without stopping to question why said knight seemed familiar or why he might’ve been so fixated on the amulet or what that could've meant until said knight had exploded and left behind an amulet of his own (and oh was that a mouthful, but idiots could either go with short sentences that showed they didn't think at all or long sentences strung out by the fact that their lack of strong mental skills meant they couldn't finish a thought or couldn't follow it and oh Dante is berating himself again does this have a destination other than classic self hatred and guilt that will probably never go away, even if Vergil does somehow come out of this ordeal okay?). 

There's also the kind of not thinking that comes when your mind wants to think about something, when something comes up that your brain says ‘hey maybe we should take a look at this,’ but your heart and that other part of your mind say ‘nope! Not today!’ to and walk away from with a twitchy, falsely oblivious smile. 

So there's ‘no thoughts, tumbleweed in the mindscape’ school of not thinking and the ‘many thoughts, locked away in a maximum security prison, never to be seen again' school of not thinking, and Dante's passed both groups of classes with flying colors. 

He's at a point now where he should probably start thinking though. There are things he's going to have to do once the Qliphoth sprouts. Once he returns to the Human World. Once the Demon Tree has reached the surface where the locals probably aren't going to be very happy about the presumably giant monument that, by the stories Trish has told him, might even make the Temen-ni-gru look small.

First things first: Dante will need to have a place to store Vergil while he's waiting. The shop should suffice for that. He's not totally sure where the portal will lead- Yamato was Vergil's, and Dante doesn't remember either Vergil or their father ever telling him exactly how Yamato worked- but if they end up on Mallet, it shouldn't take more than a day to get back and Dante can probably just take the boat he'd left there to the port, hang out with Vergil while Trish grabs his car (which he hopes she can drive, otherwise things will get awkward, but if she could drive a motorcycle she can probably drive a car. He hopes), and then hide out in the shop until the news stories about the Qliphoth inform him it's ready to go.

He hopes Morrison got his request to have the front wall fixed. Trish did actually pay him, which was weird since she'd apparently hired him just to kill him and was planning to lure him with his mother's face, but hey, money is money, even if she might have maybe robbed someone for it since she'd only been in the human world for about three weeks before meeting Dante and bringing him to Mallet so he doubted she could've earned all that. And since she'd paid him, Dante did have a good chunk of cash left in the safe Morrison knew the code for that Morrison could use to fund however much of the repairs it would fund. If he got Dante's voicemail. Dante hoped he'd gotten the voicemail. Otherwise he really doubted the pizza delivery guy would deliver to a shop that had lost a fight with a large object and Dante was probably going to cry if he couldn't even get pizza once he finally returned to the human world so he really needed to materialize that future to keep hope number two from dying a cruel, starving, pathetic death. 

He's been through a lot, okay? Let him have his little things. 

For now the ground Dante had planted the seed in is still smooth, so there's not much he can do. Just sit and wait. And stand and wait. And pace and wait. And sit a little more.

He really hopes it sprouts soon. His patience is waning. He doesn't want to know what will happen when it runs out.

Eventually there’s a breakthrough. Of the literal and physical sense.

Trish isn’t the one to alert him to it this time. She’d paced around herself from time to time, but despite the fact that she’d had her eyes locked on the soil from the moment before to the moment of and moment after the Qliphoth finally sent a little stem to wave hello while Dante’d had his back and head turned in all the moments before, something tugs at his brain and causes him to turn just in time to see that glorious little white sprout meet the air.

He’s tricked over before he even realizes it, knees digging into the red powder that coats the soil and hands cupping around the sprout with just enough room to keep from smothering it, a flesh-built shelter for a blood-fed plant that will one day tower over him by far. A day which will hopefully come sooner or later for Vergil’s sake. Dante’s already waited more than long enough.

“How long until we want to open the portal?” Trish asks him from where she’s lounging on a small boulder some fifty feet away. 

She doesn’t ask how the Qliphoth seed is doing or what it looks like. He appreciated that. She probably learned all she needed to know just from Dante’s reaction.

Dante glances up to the sky where Trish had pointed out the fissure earlier. It’s a good forty, maybe fifty feet up. He’ll have to trigger and fly up there to reach it. 

If he’d had the full Yamato he could’ve maybe reached it from the ground, but he only has a shard and that’s not going to be unleashing a full Judgment Cut any time soon. And to be honest, he’s not sure if he could even make one go that far. He’s not Vergil. He’s used Yamato all of once; Vergil never let him touch it as a child even on those few occasions where their father allowed them to set hands on the swords he would one day gift to them. During his brief encounter with her at the end of the Arkham fight he’d immediately locked in on the fact that she was a far greater mystery to him than any other Devil Arm he’d ever wielded, closed off in a way that Rebellion never had been and one that made him wonder if he’d ever be able to use her to her fullest potential even if given more time. With most Devil Arms he knew a ton about how to use them from the second he had them in his grasp. Sure there’d be more to learn from trading with Divinity Statues or getting in some experience, but there was a baseline knowledge there that he knew was more than a human got with any old sword or nunchucks they bought off the market. With Yamato though? There had been a barrier. What Dante knew he knew from watching Vergil. If asked, he could probably replicate some of it.

But Yamato hadn’t revealed any of her secrets when he’d had her in hand. Hadn’t said a word to him. Hadn’t given him so much as a hint. She wasn’t just a hunk of steel- could never be, not with her history and not with the way she resonated so strongly with the guy who Dante suspected had the actual other half of his soul- but she’d told him no more than human steel would and that had unsettled him. Still unsettled him. He didn’t like how quiet she’d been after that initial spark of recognition. However Mundus had broken her and wherever her parts were, she’d been crippled badly. He could only hope she could be repaired once her other bits were found.

Vergil twitches when Dante pulls the Yamato shard from his hand. He doesn’t wake- of course he doesn’t wake, why is Dante still commenting on this like it’s news, it’s the only thing that ever happens with Vergil and the greatest consistency in Dante’s life right now- but he does react enough that Dante can tell both Vergil and the Yamato are not pleased with having been separated. He offers a silent apology as recompense before letting his Trigger wash over him and taking to the sky.

Two slices from the Yamato is all it takes to rend the world in two, a cross forming and blooming out into a portal large enough for two men at once. Or a single woman. It will have to be enough for a growing tree.

Trish raises an eyebrow. “Do you plan to just leave that open while you’re waiting for it to grow? I thought you'd wait until it was a little bigger.”

Dante shrugs, pocketing the Yamato and sliding his arms under Vergil to pick him up in a bridal carry. “Figured we’d go in now.”

“You’re not worried about someone destroying it before it’s fully grown?”

“Why would they? The Qliphoth’s existence will benefit them, won’t it? Give ‘em passage out to the human world.”

“You’re assuming most demons work on what I’d call human logic,” Trish counters. “Some would rather see the thing’s growth delayed so they can uproot it and place it in their own territory instead. Demons are far more territorial than humans. It’s instinct, not just culture. Gets hard for the powerful ones to ignore.”

“Is that so…” Dante responds, thinking back to the various demons he’d fought. Most of the more impressive ones he’d fought had ventured out of their territory to hunt humans, though he’d encountered a fair few over the years that had settled into some locale and wouldn’t leave until they’d met their deaths. 

And…he had to admit it: the longer he stayed in that castle, the more part of him wanted to settle there and fix things beyond what he was just doing. He didn’t like being in someone else’s territory. Someone else’s home. He had his own place back in the human world, and he wanted to go back to it. Whenever another demon entered Devil May Cry, something in the back of his head and deep in his chest alike seemed to spark with an irritation that even the most annoying of humans couldn’t match. A kind of fury at someone intruding on his home. His territory, more like. 

He’d always associated it with how he didn’t like being bothered in the first place, and how demons always forced him to get up where he could usually wave humans away or at least ignore them. But maybe that had been his demonic instinct rising to the surface instead. It’s hard to say.

Territorialism’s normal influence or no, Dante has a feeling it won’t be enough to doom the Qliphoth. Because-

“Mind coming a little closer?” Dante asks, tilting his head to the right to motion for Trish to approach. Because something occured to him. Not sure why, but it did.

Trish does. 

Until she doesn’t.

About fifteen feet from the Qliphoth seed, she jolts and freezes in place with a harsh intake of breath, eyes wide. He can see the goosebumps crawling across her flesh, an oddly human reaction for someone who so often seems beyond humanity in the way she reacts just a little bit wrong. But he supposes it isn’t that odd; even dogs raise their hackles when disturbed, so it’s not too crazy to think demons might have a similar reaction in the face of fear or discomfort.

“Something wrong?” 

Trish’s eyes dart from the Qliphoth seed to Dante, incredulous. “Did you know this would happen?”

Dante shrugs. Or tries to. It’s slightly more difficult than usual since he’s carrying a whole person in his arms. “Had a feeling it might.”

Suspicion crawls up Trish’s expression, eyes narrowing and the top of her nose pinching just the slightest bit. “And what gave you that feeling?”

He shrugs again. “I dunno. I just had a feeling.” Which he did. 

“I didn’t tell you about anything like this happening.”

“That you didn’t! Unless you did. I'll be honest, I might've zoned out during a speech or two of yours. Mind filling me in on the ‘this’ you’re referring to?”

Trish scoffs. “Don’t play coy with me. You know exactly what I’m talking about.” She raises a hand, pointing it toward the Qliphoth seed. As she does, her arm begins to tremble. She takes a step back and tries again, tremors calming but not abating completely. “Getting near that thing makes me feel-” she shakes her head. “I’m just going to go with ‘bad.’ I don’t think I can put words on whatever that feeling is. It’s like it’s cursed, or warded with enough strength to break me apart from the inside.”

Dante nods. “Makes sense to me. The Qliphoth's probably putting out bad vibes to keep any potential predators from destroying it, as some sort of evolutionary protection system or something. I bet anyone else that approaches would probably feel the same, so we should be good to leave it here.” 

By the time the Qliphoth is fully grown the intensity of its aura shouldn’t be anything near as strong as it is now, spread out in a much larger being rather than concentrated in a tiny area, but by then it’ll be strong rough to withstand attack and should swap to a more attracting type of aura that’ll bring in a bunch of little ones to help protect it, so they’ll have no problems jumping in it once it’s ready. It’ll be safe until it is, and when it is, it should invite them right in.

When Trish merely stares at Dante rather than responding to his last two sentences, he says as much to her.

“And you’re certain about that?” Trish asks.

Dante frowns. “Uh, yeah.”

“Where did you learn it?”

Dante blinks. “Didn’t you tell me?” He zoned off for a bit when she was talking earlier, but he’d assumed she said it then and that he absorbed the information even while his head was off in the clouds.

“No.”

“Oh.”

Dante shifts Vergil in his arms, scanning over a face he knows hasn’t changed in the slightest as he desperately searches for somewhere else to look that isn’t at Trish and the concern in her gaze.

“...Maybe the Qliphoth told me? When I planted it?”

“…Did you hear it say words to you?”

“No.”

“Are you sure?”

“Absolutely.”

“Interesting.”

Trish clears her throat even as a sense of unease crawls over Dante.

“Well then, we should get a move on.” She takes a deep breath, and with a flash her body is engulfed in lightning and she soars up to the portal Dante has torn in the sky. “I believe you. I don’t think anyone’s going to be messing with the Qliphoth before it’s ready, and I also don’t want to stay here, so I'll see you on the other side.”

Dante has to shake off the momentary shock of seeing Trish suddenly fly. Sure he’s seen her jump ridiculously high before, but he didn’t think she could actually hover . Even he can only do it when he has wings!

But that’s besides the point. 

Just as Trish did- for after a few moments he realizes what the lightning is, even if her form hasn’t shifted as his normally does when he Triggers- Dante lets his Trigger wash over him again and takes off, speeding into the blue-black abyss floating in the sky.

To the human world they go. Whether they end up in Mallet or elsewhere, he’ll figure out what to do and where to go next. He’ll have to. He always has.

(What Dante doesn’t notice is that, as he and Vergil ascend and Dante’s mind is made up, the sun that had ever gleamed off in the distance, frozen at a point from which it would neither rise nor set, finally dips down under the horizon, swallowed by the demon world equivalent of the earth, and casts the realm into darkness.

Can it still be considered the dawn of a new era if the land is engulfed by twilight instead? If it instead finds itself at a newly crowned dusk?

Dante has no answers to these questions, for Dante is unaware of the need for them to be asked. 

Instead he moves onward, forward, pushing through the all-consuming blackness towards new, familiar light.)

Chapter Text

Dante emerges from the portal to a world cast in the amber glow of lamplight. It doesn't greet, him, per se; it doesn't even touch him, given he's landed in an alley and the lights are reserved for the square ahead. But it colors his experience and sits so close he could walk into it with only a few short steps. Just seeing it's enough to fill Dante's aching chest with a warmth of its own.

His first breath is one of human production, gasoline fumes and a distant promise of fried food filling in the spaces left by what might otherwise be crisp, fresh, barely-post-twilight air. Another breath; more to greet. Someone's been smoking. Someone must've gotten in a fight. Someone with perfume had either reapplied it nearby or stood in the alleyway Dante's landed in for a good chunk of time; someone had tended carefully and kindly to the flowers growing in a flower box six stories up and a building over. Someone had not picked up the dumpster nearby in days if not weeks; someone, maybe because of that inaction, had gotten very sick. Someone had died.

(Someone, in his arms, is still dying.)

The many fragrances of life.

The many fragrances of humanity.

The many fragrances Dante had, for a time, feared he'd never be graced with again.

Breathing it all in, thick as the air is, as odd as the various scents and their many discordant flavors may be, Dante can't help but whisper a quiet "Welcome home."

He takes a step forward. Not to walk out into the plaza- not when the outside observer might think he's a corpse-bearer, not when it'll leave him so exposed- but to get a better look at where he is. This is not the place he entered Hell. It won't do to leap into danger so blindly. He has other things to care for. Other people to care for. Given their entwinement, the roots of one necessary to rebuild the stalk of the other, they're as good as one.

First, sight and scent. From there, sound. The click of his heels against the dark cobblestone path that lies abandoned in the alley, cracked and unmaintained, is a familiar one. In familiarity, there is comfort. Reassurance. He has made it out of Hell; he has made it home. To the Human World. To humanity. To the people he'd been born to, the people he'd sworn himself to, and the people who, after this was all over, he would give his all for, to make up for every sin he was about to commit, every wrong he would willfully, knowingly do. Though Mundus' Castle had been made from some form of stone, the sound of his footsteps through the winding halls and winding tower had produced an echo; a slight unnatural timbre that Dante never was able to allocate to either the general nature of Hell or the simply the stone itself. Everything in Hell had depth to it. Hidden layers. His steps here simply click, the faintest hint of an echo they produce something caused by the high walls and narrow alley, not anything from the stones themselves. With the difference in sound and the absensce of that ever-present pressure in the sit, the Human World feels almost…empty, in comparison. Dante'd be lying if he said it didn't leave him feeling a little unnerved.

Around him the walls loom high, closing him in. The portal, a crack between worlds, seems to have deposited them into a similar space, between two tall buildings in what's essentially a crack in the city, empty space between that which has purpose as something that is mostly unutilized and, perhaps, does not. It's not a pathway to anywhere; a quick glance behind Dante reveals another building at the back of the alley, preventing anyone from getting anywhere were they to walk in. It seems to have been built after the buildings to his side, made of brick where the two besides him are made of stone. A contrast between to similar sets of blocks, where one is cast in ivory and the other an off-red. It's familiar. It looks off in the evening light.

Out in the square a breeze drifts through the city, the mist lazily rolling on by though and carrying the amber light to fill the square with the orange haze that seems to have followed Dante since he arrived on Mallet Island at sunset what feels like a lifetime ago.

Despite the signs of life all around, there are no humans in sight. Just some balcony plants, a swarm of gnats, and a moth that seems dead set on killing itself on the side of one of the old lamps. Dante watches unblinking as it soars headfirst into the glass, banging its head against it over and over as it charges toward the unreachable, unattainable light. Inside the lamp is an immobile black speck Dante thinks might be another moth. The heat of the lamp probably fried the thing within moments of getting inside. That or it had some long, drawn out death in which it faded bit by bit, the heat stress eventually too much for it, but that's a much darker reality, and it'd probably be kinder if the thing had died right away. It's kind of sad to watch its friend knock itself against the glass in search of a brilliance that'd only kill it the moment it was attained. Then again, if it's going to die either way, wouldn't it be better to go out in a bang, having finally tasted the light it had fought for, instead of wearing itself down so much it simply collapsed and died having never gotten more than a glimpse of the paradise it could've attained?

"Isn't it bad to stare at lights for so long?"

Dante blinks as Trish's voice breaks him out of his reverie, yet another familiarity that, in this case, feels like it's been moved two inches to the right.

"Nah, regular lights are fine. The problem's when you get too caught up in the Sun."

It's probably a good thing they apparently arrived at the tail end of dusk; had the Sun been there to stare at, then lonely Dante may have burned his eyes to a crisp. He hasn't seen it in ages. Hasn't felt it in longer. In Mallet he'd spent a while staring at it through windows, even if his running had him inside half the time so its warmth never quite touched his skin.

The breeze kicks back up again. Leaves from unseen trees blow into the plaza from another alley, paper and other pieces of litter flying in their midst. This time Dante can't help but step forward, and with the slight increase in proximity, he finally gets to feel a ghost of the wind's kiss.

Hell had no proper Sun and it had no proper breeze. The former Dante's going to have to wait for, but the latter he couldn't keep away from, and even just that little preview is enough to ease some of the discomfort that worked its way into his bones as soon as he made it through. Man, it's good to be home.

Still, for all he calls this place home, he's not actually sure where 'this place' is. It's a city, all right. Brick and mortar walls stretch far above him, fire escapes and windows all around. In the distance he sees glass and steel. This city's a mix of eras, old and new segmented into their own little sections. By the leaves drifting on by there must be trees somewhere- a park, maybe, or maybe just planted pathways- and with the scent of flowers and insecticide, there must be people too. There are people talking in the buildings. Muffled voices drift through walls, out windows, down alleys, and across squares. It's disorienting after spending so long alone. Even when Dante'd gone hunting, he hadn't encountered nearly as many demons in one area as he can smell, hear, and feel in the surrounding blocks.

Mallet Island hadn't been anything like this. Given Dante hadn't cut the portal that got them here in the same spot the one Mundus had left for him had been, he's not all that surprised to see he didn't exit Hell in the same spot, but it's still strange to not see spires all around. An old city's different than an old castle. At least in the castle, things weren't so crammed together you struggled to see the sky.

But he can see some of the sky, so polluted by city lights you can hardly see the stars.

Standing out some few miles in the distance, towering above the rest of the city, old and new, is a clock tower. One he's seen before.

There's the answer to the question of where they are: the city of Red Grave.

It's been years since Dante last set foot in the city. Years since he even went near. Dante's not one to run from danger, but that doesn't mean he hasn't run from other things, memories included. Red Grave's got a fair few tied up in them. The last few are some of his worst.

Standing here after so long feels like a dream. Maybe a nightmare. He's had plenty of those, many of them taking place at a certain place along the city's edge.

It’s been years since he last set foot in the city proper, but he’d never forget her cobblestone streets and the shops that once lined the main thoroughfare. His childhood had been pretty sheltered all things considered; neither Eva nor Sparda took them out more than once a week at most. Dante didn't really blame them. He and Vergil weren't really 'normal' kids, and even if Vergil was definitely better at it than Dante was, neither of them was ever that good at pretending to be for very long. They'd start fighting at the drop of a hat, at the smallest disagreement or any perceived slight, and it almost always ended in blood, regardless of whether their father was there to physically drag them apart before they could do too much damage to their others, the furniture, or their clothes. Any trip Eva made to the city was controlled and kept as short as possible so Dante and Vergil's patience could hold long enough to get them back home before the inevitable fight. They were probably also minimized to keep Dante and Vergil's presence relatively unknown too. Sparda having white hair wasn't that weird; some people started to go grey in their 20s, so a guy who looked 40-something with a full head of silver wasn't that attention grabbing, even if said man was ridiculously tall. Under-10s with the same hair color though? Now that was weird. Unnatural. Inhuman, as it turned out, but even if humans didn't pick up on that part, they definitely picked up on the weirdness all the same. Attention was bad when you were trying to stay hidden. Screw learning how to interact with other people. What their parents cared about was staying safe. Learning how to be a proper part of society could come later. Or be done in small doses. Eva didn't want to keep them cooped up in the house forever.

Infrequent as trips to the city were, Dante'd absolutely loved them, even if it meant he had to dress up in a starched shirt and listen to Vergil whine about how he’d rather stay home. At least until their mom promised a trip to the bookstore or some other boring place that got Vergil excited even if Dante would rather go anywhere else. The clock tower, tall and old and seemingly magical as it was with all its gears and gadgets that his child mind hadn’t been able to fully comprehend, had been one of his favorite parts of those trips. 

He’d always hoped to go up it one day. To traipse through gears, glass, stone, and metal, and feel what it was like to be so high. To be a part of something so much older and more important than himself.

There were signs around town advertising climbing tours at hours on days they were not there. Eva had promised they’d go one day. Like many wonders she’d sworn would come to pass, death stole certainty, and the chance of ascending the tower as a family was long gone. Even if he’d returned to Red Grave at some point in the years between then and now, Dante doesn’t think he’d have wanted to have done it alone.

Maybe he and Vergil can go once Vergil is better. A victory march. Once he’s healthy enough to stand and talk and walk and climb the 342 steps it takes to reach the highest floor, they can finally feel what it's like to be on top of the world.

(They already have, back on top of the Temen-ni-gru. Now that was a tower that really reached for the heavens. A relic that'd been around for an age.

But that was different. Dante hadn't dreamed of the Temen-ni-gru when he was younger. Hadn't known its hellish facade had existed at all.

Had Vergil? He'd been their father's favorite, and Dante's pretty sure Sparda had told Vergil more of their history than he ever did Dante. Maybe it was because Vergil was the firstborn. Their mom had gotten on him about that too. Maybe it was because Vergil showed more potential. He'd certainly paid more attention in their lessons, and had followed their father into his study time and time again while Dante went to play outside while their mother tended to the garden. The older, more attentive, son. The smarter, more skillful heir.

Dante'd stumbled his way through life and he was fine with it. He didn't need more than he had. Things were about as good as they could be, given the lot he'd pulled when he'd come tumbling out into the thick of it.

But sometimes he wonders what things would be like if he'd been born first, or if their parents had switched them at birth or something. If he'd been the older one, would he still be him? Would Vergil still act like Vergil? Is his personality some innate part of his beings, or the result of some sort of superiority complex? Would things have been different had Dante been the one to storm outside that day to play on his own while Vergil stayed inside with their mother to read?

It's impossible to know. Unproductive to think about. Dante can't turn back time and make things better. Can't give Vergil his book back, can't crawl out of the wreckage faster to find him, can't lunge off the cliff to latch onto his hand.

All Dante can do is move forward, and hope that in the end, he'll be proven right.)

Dante wouldn’t even be mad if Vergil called the idea stupid and a waste of time like he had as a kid. Dante knew he hadn’t really meant it back then; he’d seen the sparkle in Vergil’s eye, and he knew from their own exploration around their property and Vergil’s love for climbing trees and cliffsides that he loved going to high places just as much if not more than Dante did. He doubts Vergil lost that love as he aged.

Even as Nelo Angelo, he’d not only greeted Dante in a tower, but had goaded him to continue the ascent. Even with so much of his self locked away, his love of heights and his unrelenting need to taunt Dante had shone their ways through.

(Vergil was still in there somewhere. Still is. Dante just needs to revitalize him; to drag him back out of the cage Dante had helped push him into nearly a decade before.)

…But being able to go up the clock tower depends on two things, and those two things might be at odds. The first is for Vergil to get better. That alone is a pretty big ask. The Qliphoth has been planted and Dante’s pretty sure it’ll make its way to the Human World just fine, so he’s about 92% certain his plan is going to work on the getting-Vergil-better front and it's really not the limiting factor here. But the second requirement for a successful trip is for the tower to still be standing once Vergil’s better, and on that front, Dante has some doubts. To fix Vergil, he needs the Qliphoth to grow large enough to bear fruit. From the way Trish had described it, the Qliphoth's going to end up absolutely huge, roots spreading far further than just the stalk, and the idea of the Qliphoth inadvertently knocking down the clock tower isn't completely outside of the realm of possibility. It may be miles away, but with so much uncertain, it's hard to say where things will end up.

Having grown impatient with Dante's silent stares, Trish breaks the silence once more. “Well, this isn’t Mallet Island.”

“That it is not!"

Mallet island was crawling with demons, while this place is barren. A relief: he's not really in the mood to fight right now. He just wants to get Vergil somewhere safe.

“But you do know where we are. Care to enlighten me?" Trish asks, cocking her head to the side with a hand on her hip in what has to be her favorite expression. 

It’s been a bit since she used it. The motion tends only to emerge when she's comfortable, which Dante hasn't seen in a while. Maybe now that they’re out of Hell she doesn’t feel so on edge. Or maybe Dante’s just saying that so he doesn’t really have to think deeper on their relationship, however that’s going to work in the future, once the Qliphoth’s dead and gone and Dante's chained to cleaning up a mess he'd gleefully (painfully) made.

“We’re in Red Grave. It’s about thirty-five, forty miles up the coast from where we left for Mallet." Were he to ascend the clock tower, or were he to let his demon side free to spread his wings and fly, he'd be able to see the ocean.

Trish isn't content with his answer. “Why choose this spot to emerge? Have any special reasons? Or was it just the first to come to mind? The place reeks of humans, so I guess it's a good a place as any if we're hoping for a good harvest."

“I didn’t choose to show up here,” Dante clarifies. He’d been just as shocked as she had when they’d come through. Maybe more. "It's just where the portal lead."

Trish frowns. “Here as in this alleyway, or here as in this city?”

“Both. Mostly the city. I've been to Red Grave before, sure, but it’s not like I knew how to get here from the Demon World of all places, and I definitely didn't try to end up here." As it turns out, he's spent years of his life running away from the city, even as he could never bear to move anywhere more than a few hours from it, forever tied to the place he'd been born and his mother and childhood had died. There was a reason he hadn't walked its streets in ages. "I just cut the portal where you told me to. I figured it would lead us back to the Human World either in Mallet or somewhere corresponding to where we cut it, depending on whether space traveled there equals space traveled here in some way.”

“It's not one-to-one, but for the most part it does," Trish explains. "That's irrelevant when you have the Yamato though. So why-" Trish cuts herself off, eyes narrowing. She takes a moment to consider her next words. "…Did you not know how the Yamato works?"

Dante grimaces, shifting uncomfortably. Vergil's starting to get a little heavy in his arms.

Trish's face twitches. It takes her an even longer moment to find her words this time, and when she does, they come out in a deadpan that's just dripping with frustration and disbelief. "You didn't know. You just…cut a hole in the fabric of the world, hoped for the best, and blindly hopped through it."

"Pretty much."

The sigh that rolls out of Trish is almost painful to hear. The disbelief morphs into disappointment, and doesn’t that sting coming from his mother’s mirror, fake as she may be.

"I don't know whether to blame you for being ignorant, Sparda for apparently teaching you nothing, or myself for being gullible enough to follow someone who's apparently running on complete guesses when it comes to doing things that impact the fabric between worlds."

Dante huffs. “Look, in my defense, the Yamato was Vergil’s, not mine, so my dad never really told me about what she could do and I didn't think it would ever be relevant. I had Rebellion, and it's pretty dull." At least as far as Dante can tell. If it is hiding some sort of secret power, Sparda had never told him and Dante had never managed to figure it out, so he wouldn't be using it any time soon unless it activated by complete accident. As far as he can tell, it's just big and sharp and has a pretty face. "How do you know how she works anyway? Did Mundus use it around you?"

Trish snorts, laughing once. "Ha! Of course not. Mundus would've made it to the Human World far earlier than he did had he access to the Yamato's full strength. With the Yamato, you can go anywhere. Human World to Human World, Demon World to Demon World, or one to the other. All you need is an idea and the strength to use it."

"And Mundus was too weak for that?"

"No, incompatible. The Yamato was Sparda's sword; only one of Sparda's bloodline could use it. Even had Mundus not shattered it in his initial confrontation with Vergil, I doubt he'd have been able to bend it to his will. The generals he gave the shard to either hurt themselves in their attempts to use it or failed to activate it at all. The one time Mundus tried it himself ended with him spending months recovering from the backlash."

"Why not make Vergil use it for him, then? Wasn't he under Mundus' control?" Unless he'd simply chosen to attack Dante of his own volition, but even then, he'd seemed to be in pain. Something had been wrong there.

Trish grimaces. "Yes and no. For the most part, Nelo Angelo would do whatever Mundus ordered him to do. From my encounters with him, it didn't seem like Vergil was 'present' enough to even want to rebel, not to mention actually attempt it. But whenever the Yamato shard was brought out, Nelo would become…unruly. Like Vergil was starting to wake up. Not even the amulet had been enough to calm him when in the Yamato’s presence, and Mundus had no patience for things he couldn’t control. Giving him the Yamato was too much of a risk. Mundus would rather lose out on the Yamato's power than chance the son of his greatest enemy slipping out of his grasp.”

“Ah.”

Dante supposes he should consider it a victory that there'd been enough of Vergil left in there to rebel, even if only when given a fragment of a sword he could no longer truly call his own. Like with Vergil having goaded Dante into a fight, taunting him as they fought and using their father's moves, it means that at some point post-armor, there had been a piece of Vergil alive in there. And if there was then, then there would be now. Sleeping, maybe beaten into submission or forced into a corner and prevented from escaping, but there. Dante can get him back. He will. He’s already well on his way.

"Do you think you could cut us a portal back to your territory?" Trish asks.

Territory? Seriously? "If you mean my office, then probably not. I'm pretty sure any other portals I cut will just lead us back to where we were in Hell." Though he doesn't have anywhere near the kind of control over Yamato that he does other Devil Arms, he has enough of a read on it to know he's not going to be able to slice open a sweet little pocket to send him to DMC, despite Trish's claims that it should be able to do so. Maybe he could convince the Yamato to do so if he had the full thing, but with this little fragment? No way.

"So we're going to have to walk?"

"Forty miles? Mm, I don't think so. We'll need to catch a ride."

"Do you have a driver you can call?"

"Do I look like I have that kind of money? Nah, we'll have to find a ride ourselves."

"Looking like that?" She sweeps a hand up and down in Dante's direction. The length of it has him pretty sure she'd pointing to him, specifically, instead of the dying guy in his arms. What's wrong with him? Sure it's been a while since he took a shower, or changed his clothes, or…did any kind of personal maintenance, but he can't be that bad, right? Trish taught him a trick to restore his clothes. Wouldn't she have pointed it out before now if he looked that bad?

"…Touché."

Before they head out, there's something Dante needs to take care of.

Had the portal popped them back out where he’d entered Hell, back on Mallet Island, the portal remaining out in the open wouldn’t have been a big deal. Inconvenient on the blood-harvesting front, but at least it wouldn't run the risk of someone finding it and sealing it before the Qliphoth had stuck its arms out. According to Trish, Mallet Island had a special enchantment that made it difficult to locate, and only someone with special tracking abilities- i.e. a Demon Hunter- would be able to find it. Chances were, even if someone did make it to Mallet they'd be the type to go on risky business and wouldn’t be immediately missed, thought to have gone out on a demon hunting or exploration type job that usually lasted a few days that seemed to have lasted longer than normal until one of their pals realized it'd been a hot minute since they'd seen their friend and organized a hunter-hunting party. It probably wouldn’t cause much of a commotion until the tree came through, grew a few hundred feet, and someone on the mainland nearby saw the thing poking out of the ground. 

(It also wouldn’t have harvested very much had it emerged on Mallet, defeating the purpose of busting a hole into the Human World for it to grow through in the first place. Not until it became the world's deadlist tourist attraction, or until some sort of special forces were called out to investigate the strange giant tree-slash-strange-object that emerged from the ground on the remote island that the authorities could've sworn hadn't actually been there a few months ago, as had happened in the wake of the emergence of the Temen-ni-gru, which is something Dante probably should’ve accounted for when formulating his original plan.

Though maybe it was something Dante had accounted for when opening the portal. Subconscious realization that the tree needed fuel and that Mallet couldn’t provide it. Subconscious offering of a place with enough sacrifices to have the tree grow in as short a time as he could make it, but one which he no longer lived in and to which his attachments were as minimal as he could make them. 

Red Grave is no longer his home. Most of the people he’d known as a kid probably died in the attack, damned by their passing acquaintance with a family who'd imposed their damnation on the wider city. In the times he’d gone back, he’d kept conversations minimal and friends hovering around zero. He won’t be personally affected by whoever dies here. Probably. And the people here have probably already learned to be resilient in the face of the disasters which had engulfed them in the past twenty years. They will live on. 

Those who don't will live on in the memories of those who do. Those who don't will be reunited with the people who died in the last tragedy to befall this city. It's…fine.

They most likely will never know the face of the one who brought damnation, versions one and two, and when he goes back to his shop when this is all over, he won’t have to see them or the damage he’s caused on a day to day basis and be reminded of what he’s done. It will be fine. Simple. Logical. Done.)

Dante shifts his grip on Vergil once more, moving most of his weight to one arm so Dante can pull his right glove off with his teeth, slice his index finger with the shard of Yamato now safely in his pocket, and run his fingertip down the length of the fissure the portal left in the sky, mumbling the kind of words he's used to close portals in the past but keeping the magical output to a minimum to ensure the seal is only superficial- only visual, not material- and that it will reopen once enough pressure is put on the other side. The space shimmers, the complete blackness on the other side momentarily brightened by the infusion of Dante's demonic energy and the magic that flows through his veins, before settling down into a near-nothingness that, to the outside, uninformed observer, would look like the haze of a highway on a hot summer afternoon; a swaying horizon distorted by the heat, either material or maybe just in your head, putting the world on an extra axis, all the information behind it still there, just with the added effect of a disturbance caused by something you probably wish would go away. Like with the haze, the contents on the other side should stay the same even were someone to walk through it. He doesn't think the seal's so loose that a human would cause it to burst open were they to stumble through. Were a hunter to prod at it it'd probably give in before long, but it should be fine in the meantime.

…To assuage his worries, Dante throws Vergil over his shoulder in a fireman's carry as he slices his finger back open and draws a few warding circles in his blood. They flash red upon activation before dissolving into a seeming nothingness once Dante takes a step back and returns Vergil to his earlier bridal carry. Both glow and blood are gone in an instant; the dispersal is faster than he's used to. The pull of the Demon World is strong here. Even through the barrier, the Qliphoth's hunger isn't quick to be sated.

With that taken care of, it's time to make their escape. He'll be spending plenty of time in Red Grave soon enough; no point in waiting around here any longer than he has to.

So, looking to Trish, he asks an essential question: “You don’t by chance know how to steal a car?”

Trish does, in fact, know how to steal a car.

(And apparently motorcycles. Makes sense she didn't buy one just to throw it at him. He feels bad for whoever's motorcycle it was, though. After what she and Dante had done to it…here's hoping they had insurance, and someone nice picks up the claim.)

This is important because no one in their right mind would allow Vergil into their vehicle even if they looked past the massive swords their other passengers came with, so it's really the only way for them to make it home since walking would put them on the road long enough it'd turn to daytime and they'd be spotted and reported to the police somewhere along the way. While Dante does have an arrangement with them- has for almost eight years now, actually, made in the wake of the erection of the Temen-ni-gru and the rise of demonic activity that followed its own ascension- there are some things they probably wouldn't let slip, and carrying a "dead" body out in the open is one of them. While Dante could escape them pretty easily, it'd draw attention and most likely backup, and though he could deal with that too, he really doesn't want to.

The clock tower, grand as she is, would never allow Dante to forget her, and if he hadn't seen her, he'd know she was there by the loud clang about a minute before Trish's return informing him it's two A.M.

It's a lovely sound. The bells are deep, not light, not night-quiet, and reverberate across the city in a way that probably isn't conductive to sleeping with the window open but is very conductive to reminding Dante that he has, finally, come home. Home to where time is. Home to where there is night and day. The date still evades him, but Dante's not yet desperate enough to go chasing down the newspapers flying off of overstuffed trash bins to confirm whether he was gone a month, year, or longer. Red Grave looks much the same as it had before, but it's an old city. Places like Red Grave hardly change. Dante's not sure he could say the same about himself.

They head back to Devil May Cry without much fuss, the roads relatively empty and the car completely silent for the duration of the trip. If Trish knows about radio, she doesn't use it. Dante's fine with the silence. Or near-silence; bouncing along the road, engine rumbling, the car's voyage is accompanied by a low, ever-present, not-quite-headache-inducing but slightly irritating hum.

Trish drives while Dante sits in the back, Vergil's head in his lap and legs pressed up against the opposite door. Rebellion has been dismissed to the void in which Dante keeps the rest of his Devil Arms, while the Devil Sword Sparda sits in the passenger seat, belted in to keep it from crashing through the window at any of Trish's abrupt turns. Sure the sword wouldn't be hurt by it, but retrieving it would be a pain and Dante doesn't want to make any detours, so it gets the seatbelt that neither Dante nor Vergil bothered with. Dante didn't pay enough attention to know whether Trish saw fit to buckle up.

The scene reminds him of days long gone. Of rides when Eva would drive them to the market while Dante and Vergil bickered and squirmed behind them until Sparda threatened to turn around and knock some sense into them if they didn't sit back down, quiet themselves, and return their hands to their own laps. Given Sparda's height, there wasn't room for Dante and Vergil to each get a window seat. Usually Vergil sat on the driver's side while Dante was in the middle. Probably because Dante started most of their fights, so it was easier for Sparda to reach for him and smack him on the nose that way. Now the role's reversed, Dante on the passenger's side sitting behind the sword that is not his father, while Vergil's splayed across the middle, the constant contact for once not resulting in a ride-stopping brawl.

When they turn the final corner, Dante breaks the silence with a sigh of relief.

“Morrison, my good man, I knew I worked with you for a reason.”

Standing at the end of the street, sign flickering on and off as it had since about five months after it was made, is Devil May Cry. What lies beneath the sign is the real beauty: a closed shopfront- doors, windows, walls, and all.

Trish, not yet having grasped subtlety or gradual change, keeps speeding toward the shop until she slams on the breaks just in time to avoiding crashing into the facade. She has to back off the steps so they're not at an angle. "Who's Morrison?"

"My agent and savior."

Trish frowns. "I don't understand."

"Don't worry about it. Point is, a friend of mine apparently fixed up your redecorating, so we don't need to worry about people waltzing in through a gaping hole in the wall and should be able to relax for a while. Until the Qliphoth emerges, anyway." Hopefully he'll be able to get there quickly once it does. Would be really unfortunate if someone manged to cut it down and kick it back into the portal before he arrived.

"How nice of him."

"We'll figure out exactly how nice he was once we look in the safe," Dante grumbles, wiggling out of the car and slinging Vergil's right arm around his shoulders so Vergil's limply 'standing' up. He'd bet the forty-three dollars in his wallet that that forty-three dollars now constitutes the majority of all the money he has.

Before he'd left for Mallet Island, he'd phoned Morrison with a request to get construction started and a promise to pay him back as soon as he could. Trish had paid Dante a pretty hefty sum up front, so Dante'd let Morrison know he was free to take as much of it as he needed to get the job done, but it wasn't that much. Chances were, Morrison'd had to dip into the rest of Dante's savings, sitting pretty in the safe that only three people had the code for, Morrison included. The bright side was that Morrison had made sure the job had gotten done rather than leaving it halfway finished in the event Dante's funds hadn't been enough to cover it, which for all Dante knew they weren't. He hadn't actually spoken to Morrison- just left a voicemail, since it was just before five A.M. when he grabbed his weapons and went with Trish to start the long boat ride to Mallet island- but Morrison was pretty on top of things. One of them had to be. It's why he'd stuck with Morrison for so long.

"What should I do with the car?" Trish asks through the passenger side window.

"Dump it somewhere." Someone will probably start looking for it soon enough. Leaving it so close to the office is just asking for trouble.

"And then I have to walk back?"

She has a good point. "Well-"

"It's fine. If anything, it'll be…fun, to see more of the Human World. It's so dreary at night. In the Demon World, there are demons around all the time. They don't constrain themselves to the same sort of cycle you humans do. It's not full one moment and empty the next."

Given the Demon world doesn't seem to have a concrete day and night cycle, Dante's not surprised. “Sure thing. Be careful, okay?”

Trish rolls her eyes. "I'm not an idiot. I won't put it somewhere it can easily be traced back to us."

She then yanks the car into reverse, making Dante Trick out of the way to avoid getting hit. She's gone before Dante can get in another word, leaving him standing alone on the steps to Devil May Cry, silence his only company.

He shakes his head, staring down the alley in the direction Trish had disappeared.

“I didn’t mean it like that,” he mumbles, exhaustion starting to creep over him now that he's in a familiar locale and his body seems to be cooling down on the fight or flight response that for ages has really only been fight and survive. “I meant it for your sake too.” He didn't want her to get hurt.

Sure he hasn’t known Trish that long. But she has a familiar face and a good personality, and short as the time they’d known each other was, he cares about her. She’d agreed to help him and had seen it through. She’d given him a way to save Vergil when he had no idea of where to even start, exhausting himself on a fruitless endeavor because he’d rather die acting than sit and watch Vergil fade away from him once more. And, while she can be sassy and had a bit of a crooked sense of humor, he enjoys her company. They work well with each other. Probably would work better in a better situation, too. He could see the two of them keeping in touch once everything was over. He's already thinking about extending her a more permanent job offer once the Qliphoth business is over and done with, acknowledging her skill and appreciative of her knowledge of the Demon World and all the complications he’s never really grasped despite all the years he’s spent fighting its spawn.  

He heads for the door, balancing Vergil on one shoulder and nudging Vergil’s feet with his own as if to make his brother walk. It’s a good thing Vergil shrunk back down to normal size- were he as giant as he’d been when he and Dante had fought, Dante would’ve probably had his shins dragging across the pavement and knocking into the stairs until they were lovely shades of black and blue, and Vergil would’ve thrown a fit about being defaced or something were he to find out. 

(Though, as he does move Vergil, he notices that Vergil seems just a little too difficult to move. Not that it’s that hard just- 

Is Vergil normal height now? Because as Dante handles him and limps him forward, he becomes more and more certain that Vergil's actually an inch or two taller than him. It’s hard to say when Vergil’s not standing himself, merely being dragged along by Dante, but there’s just enough drag to it that it might not just be because Dante is holding him too low. 

Would Vergil have naturally grown to be taller than Dante, even if Mundus had never gotten his grubby hands on him? Would they have grown apart as they aged, nineteen the last year of their life in which they were mirrors of one another? Or is it some leftover piece of Mundus’ influence that has Vergil remaining larger than he should be? It’s not like Dante can really compare their faces; Vergil’s is crumbling and relaxed in a way that Dante can’t remember ever seeing it. He can’t compare to that with his own mug. If he’s to compare how similar they still are after nearly a decade apart, two brothers in two world and two very different sets of circumstances, it will have to wait until after he’s harvested the Qliphoth fruit and Vergil’s gotten better. As they are, comparison is pointless. All it achieves is confirmation of how sick Vergil really is. Something Dante is well aware of. Since there’s nothing else he can do, he doesn’t feel particularly inclined to study it in any more detail.)

It takes a minute for Dante to fish his key out of the pocket he’d shoved it in, both because he’s trying not to drop Vergil and because he doesn’t actually remember which pocket he’d put it in. Sure he could always kick the door in or punch through a window if it came down to it, but he’d really rather not invite anyone to snoop in a broken building or have to face the extremely disappointed Morrison who’d surely result from the man finding out about whoever Dante called to fix the door or window whenever he got around to it- because Morrison found out about everything, no matter how subtle or sneaky Dante thought he was- so fish around he does until the key’s in his hand and Dante’s praying Morrison somehow either replicated or had the guys place in the old lock.

Thankfully it appears Morrison'd had them re-install the existing lock instead of making a new one, because the key turns and the lock clicks without a hitch. Moments later Dante’s stepping inside and basking in the sight of home. 

It's…off.

The furniture isn’t quite the same. Something in him twists uncomfortably at the sight.

That’s his old jukebox alright, standing tall in the corner, lights flashing and dents gleaming in the overhead lights which Dante is very pleased to see turn on, thank you Morrison for paying the electric bill in addition to fixing up the door and bits of the entryway that got bodied by Trish’s rough entrance. The drumset looks to be the one that had been there when Dante had left, albeit missing the snare drum and with a pretty heavy dent in the crash cymbal that has earned it a glorious retirement Morrison didn’t see fit to give it, but that’s okay. Dante can get a new one. There are post-birthday parents who’ve realized their mistakes and are trying to get rid of the headache-maker 3000 all the time. It won’t take him long to find one for cheap.

But other than that? It's al different. Even the dingy wallpaper has been cleaned and the demon skulls have been dusted. Even the things that have stayed the same are no longer what they once were. What should be familiar is not the same. Everything has been shifted somewhat, and among the scrubbed floors, dusted surfaces, and new furniture, Dante, covered in a month of grime never fully eliminated by small plunges into strange rivers and the occasional demonic-clothing refresh, doesn't feel like he belongs. It's just…too good for him. Too clean. Too neat. There are no pizza boxes, there are no bottles. The elephant ear sitting in a pot by the desk is not the same one that was there when he'd left. It'd probably burned to death in the fire after Trish's entrance. It'd gotten knocked over when Dante got slammed by the motorcycle, and he knows part of it caught fire because he'd dragged it to the sink to try to put it out with the faucet afterward. It hadn't completely burned down at the time, but by the looks of things, it had been damaged too much to survive. It's nice that Morrison thought to replace it, but it's still disappointing to see that the one plant Dante'd managed to keep alive for multiple years is now dead and gone. It's just a plant, but even so, he feels like he failed it.

His gaze sweeps across the rest of the room, taking in all the little changes and trying to find the bright side where he can.

His desk has been replaced by something just as grand in terms of size even if the woodwork is a little different, but it’s solid and looks to be just about as old as his last one if not older, and he’s pretty stoked to see that. He’s always been one for antiques. They're gorgeous, for one, and for another, it's fun to feel like a part of a legacy that goes beyond yourself. To inherit something from someone who really appreciated the craft. 

There’s a dart board on the wall that- were he not holding Vergil- probably would’ve made Dante burst out laughing because that definitely is not the dart board he’d put up there himself, but apparently Morrison had found a new one and put it back up there, complete with a demon skull and the dagger he’d used to pin it there, and he tells himself not to forget to give Morrison a pat on the back for that because the man’s outdone himself. He wonders if Morrison told whoever worked there that it was a prop, or if he hadn’t bothered explaining it all. Morrison works with a lot of no-questions-asked guys, so it could definitely be the latter. No information requested and none offered. It’s a good way to get by in this business. 

The cherry velour couch pressed up against one wall is a familiar sight. It’s not what was there before Dante left, but it's also not a stranger. See, Dante has this habit of stopping by estate sales whenever he’s got some extra cash in order to stock up for the inevitable next time some demons come by and decide to trash his shop, so the couch Morrison’s so kindly had placed to replace the one that had caught on fire when Trish came by is one that Dante did, in fact, already own, just not one that had been in this room. He’d kept it in one of the spare bedrooms upstairs. For him to have grabbed it means Morrison had done a little poking around while he was fixing stuff up, but it's not the end of the world. Dante's bedroom is locked and warded; anything he really didn't want anyone to see, they wouldn't have seen. At least it wasn’t Lady. Dante can count on Morrison never mentioning anything he saw that Dante doesn’t want to talk about; Lady not so much.

(Speaking of Lady, Dante’s going to have to do something about her. He still doesn’t know how long he’s been gone for and whether she’d have noticed his absence. He’s not sure how he’ll explain it to her. 

How he’ll keep her from interfering in what comes next.

He doesn’t want her to be hurt. Call him a terrible, selfish person, but Dante’s had enough of the people close to him being hurt because of his existence. The people of Red Grave are strangers to him now, but Lady? Lady’s had a hard enough life. She doesn’t deserve any more problems put on her plate.

Dante doesn’t want her to die.

So once he’s settled down he’ll figure out some way to distract her. Send her away. Keep her safe.

Somehow.)

The TV sitting on a stand he’d also kept in his junk room is one he’d kept somewhere alongside it, screen cracked and showing a big black spot whenever it’s turned on, but it’ll do for now. Not like Dante watches much TV. He’s not really sure why he keeps it. This one will be used to check the news in the morning, where someone will hopefully mention a date. The speakers on the walls are the ones that had been there prior to Trish’s arrival, but a few of the floor ones have been replaced by the trio Dante had left upstairs. He has no idea if they even work. They were cheap at a yard sale so get them he’d done, no questions asked. The pool table’s new but not new, taken from somewhere that wasn’t his normal stock that might’ve been a dumpster. No big deal. He can fix it up when he has the time. At least it doesn’t reek. 

His posters are all gone.

…He’s actually kind of grateful for that. Scratch that- very grateful. Dante doesn't want to deal with the headache he'd get from Vergil lecturing him about poor taste after waking. Sure he normally doesn’t care what anyone thinks of him- it’s their problem, not his, though he kind of does care what they think because those posters are more for them than for him and he’s using them to curate an image so maybe the better thing to say would be that he doesn’t mind if most people thinks he’s some sort of disgusting perverted slob because he knows what he is and also it helps thin out the crowd so he’s only left with the people who really need his help and won’t be scared by outside appearances- but Vergil? After what Dante’s done to him, he doesn’t need to see what the office is normally like. Posters of half (or all) nude women, empty bottles and empty takeout boxes everywhere. Actually- looking at the bar, Morrison’s also cleaned him of all the really good stuff too. Sneaky bastard. Dante hasn’t quite gotten to the stage where he’d call himself an alcoholic, but he knows Morrison worries about him overindulging. Poor guy doesn’t seem to get that a demonic constitution means increased alcohol tolerance, and it takes a lot more than a human his size to even get tipsy.

(Morrison does, actually, know how much it takes to get Dante tipsy. Or drunk. He’s been there for that. Seen the aftermath of that. It costs a hell of a lot of money to do and it never lasts that long, but Morrison's been around him enough to catch him a time or two and he knows better than to stick around. They're not moments Dante's particularly proud of, but he doesn't regret them either. He deserves a chance to let loose once in a while. If it's only occasional, it's not that bad. Morrison just worries too much.

(Morrison doesn’t worry too much.

Dante doesn’t like being worried about, whatever the case. No one should hurt themselves over him. He’ll be fine. Even when he’s not fine, he’s fine because of it.))

Speaking of Vergil, Dante starts by laying him on the couch and arranging him to be as comfortable as possible on a temporary bed which is much too small for him. When his head is rested against one of the armrests his legs go over the other end. But it’s about as good as things can get for now. Dante’s not putting him on the floor upstairs while he makes the bed.

He goes to lock the front doors, then with a promise to be back soon, Dante ascends the stairs, hopping up three at a time.

Once he makes it to his room, the door handle warming as it recognizes his soul and magic and the wards and lock disable themselves, the first thing he does is tear the sheets off his bed. Maybe a little too literally. Whoops! Looks like those will be going in the trash with the rest of the junk in his room. Not the first set of sheets he's inadvertently torn anyway.

The state of the room and the wards confirm that Morrison indeed did not enter, so it's looking a lot worse than the downstairs. Vergil would hate to be someplace so messy; he'd always thrown a fit when Dante went into his room and started pulling out multiple things without putting the old things back. It shouldn't be too hard to fix though. The clutter part, at least. Based on some of Morrison's other repair jobs, Dante's pretty sure he'll be able to find some trash bags to quickly shove everything in if he goes down to the kitchen. As for laundry, he doesn't need to separate by color. Everything on the floor and chair can go in the wash on cold. Anything really precious he'll hang or shove into a bag and toss into the closet to deal with later. It'll take the Qliphoth at least a few days to make its way into the Human World, and he can mess with laundry then.

Next he heads back into the hall to grab one of his two (see, look how capable and how much of a successful adult he is, he owns two whole spares!) extra sets of sheets and makes the bed. He also grabs the extra pillow he usually keeps for Lady when she crashes at his place and sleeps on the couch, tossing his regular pillows by the door. He hasn’t washed his own pillows in ages. The pillowcases he washed sometime this month- or within the month of him leaving, at any rate- but the pillows have gone longer and while Dante normally doesn’t care about that he thinks Vergil would, so away they go. Then it’s sheets and a comforter, folded back for ease of inserting someone in the bed.

After that he tricks down the stairs, grabs Vergil, and ascends the stairs one at a time, careful not to bump Vergil as he heads for the upstairs bath.

Dante’s never been a stickler for cleanliness when it comes to the house, but he is a stickler when it comes to himself. Going around sweaty feels gross, dirty feels uncomfortable, and bloody feels inhuman. Lady likes to joke about how the easiest way to tell Dante was having a bad day was to walk up to him and not smell the strawberry-scented shampoo; most days Dante showered at least once in the morning, maybe a second time at night depending on how messy the day was. Only times he skipped it were when he was in a really bad place. Humans were supposed to groom themselves and Dante didn't like greasy hair. He had an image to maintain. Only when he couldn't bring himself to get off the desk did he skip that.

Being back in the Human World, it's time to get back to habits. He'll shower once Vergil's clean. The showerhead on the second floor was installed for someone a good eight inches shorter than him, but it's got a bath, and that'll work for him now. Sure Vergil hadn’t really looked all that dirty when Dante had found him earlier, and the sort of rot-smell he has isn't something he thinks a human would catch onto nor something he thinks a bath would really help, but you don’t have to look gross to feel gross and Dante’s not going to let Vergil stew in that. For all Dante doesn’t care for being dirty, Vergil always hated it. Eva probably wouldn’t have called either of them super well behaved children- unless she was being nice and loving because she was always nice and loving and caring and supportive and all the things Dante wishes he had the energy to be but struggles to be because of some internal failing he attributes more to being a bad human than being part demon- but Vergil was the better of he and Dante. He was polite, he was patient, he hardly ever threw fits- unless he got dirty in some way or another and didn’t get cleaned off fast enough, in which case he would flip his lid. Unlike Dante, he refused to wear stained clothing, even to play. Unlike Dante, getting covered in mud wasn’t funny and getting sap on his hands wasn’t prime teasing opportunity. It was a sign to go back to the house to change and clean up. The longer he went without that the shorter his fuse grew and the more explosive his outburst would be. Vergil’d always had a thing for textures.

Once in the bathroom, Dante strips Vergil before placing him in the tub. And fuck, he’s barely got more color to him than the stained acrylic beneath him. This is more than just a case of not getting enough sun.

Vergil doesn’t react to being placed in the tub, either the action or the temperature. No complaints about it being cold, no complaints about not having a pillow and having his neck languish to the side. Dante can still hear it in the back of his mind though, so he shoves a towel behind Vergil’s head to make up for it. Sure it’s not perfect, but if Vergil wakes up with a kink in his neck he’ll probably deck Dante, or otherwise try and maybe fail and end up with some sort of mental crisis Dante doesn’t have any idea how to deal with since confronting his problems has never been his way of dealing with them, so towel-pillow it is. It’s as good as Vergil will get.

Dante doesn’t turn on the bath itself. Vergil’s still really flakey. Given how much of Vergil’s skin had flaked off in transport he wouldn’t be surprised if it just plain dissolved if submerged, so he’s not going to chance it. There’s also his fear of making too much contact with the black lines, and of them possibly spreading if given a little water ride. So he just grabs a washcloth and heads to the sink so he can start giving Vergil his version of a sponge bath. At least this way, if Vergil starts dissolving under the washcloth’s touch, Dante can pull it away and stop immediately without causing Vergil to lose fifteen pounds of skin. 

Thankfully the bath goes well. Some flakes do come off, getting the washcloth all grimey and making Dante take about fifteen trips to the sink to rinse it off before he has to grab a second one and repeat the process, but it turns out Dante must’ve knocked off most of the flakes in transport and that the skin underneath the first layer or two is in somewhat better shape, because Vergil doesn’t completely dissolve and he ends up being pretty clean. Dante shampoos Vergil’s hair pretty normally, using the pillow towel to cover up Vergil’s face and neck when Dante does turn on the shower just enough to rinse Vergil’s hair out- which takes a lot of tricky maneuvering to avoid getting the rest of him too wet, some splashing water acceptable but a full spray more than Dante wants to risk getting on the rest of Vergil’s skin- and with that done, it’s time to dress Vergil and head back to the bedroom. 

For now, Dante puts Vergil in a pair of sweatpants and a baggy t-shirt. Black and black. The color they’d always shared.

He takes a brief trip away from Vergil to toss the clothes Dante had found for him in the wash, keeping the coat out of the mix and putting the boots aside, but otherwise sets it on normal and crosses his fingers that demon fabric can withstand a spin cycle and hopes for the best. 

Then it’s back to Vergil’s bedside and waiting. 

And waiting.

And waiting.

…which he eventually decides he can do from the downstairs just fine. He’ll sense it if Vergil wakes up. He can be back up there in about three seconds. It’ll be fine for him to neaten up just a bit more. At least in terms of making it so they can’t be attacked. Neatening up in any other capacity isn’t something Dante really cares to do, not even when nervous. He can find his own entertainment in other ways. 

A quick shower of his own has Dante feeling much better than before. It's not quite as refreshing as he'd hoped- the water couldn't get warm enough, the water heater probably on its last legs after years of Dante cranking the temperature up to max- but he feels better than before. More himself. Less other. Even when demon blood dissolves, some ghost of it always seems to remain, even if just in his own mind.

Dante spends a minute looking at his reflection, staring at the man looking back at him.

For so long, he thought that would be as close as he'd ever get to seeing Vergil again. Looking at his reflection with his hair pushed back and either smirking or wearing a frown.

Now, though, he knows it's not. There's someone real for Dante to look at. Someone who's difference goes beyond just a hairstyle and quirked lips.

For now, anyway. That'll be fixed soon. Whether he ends up looking identical again or just doesn't look so dead is up to question, but whatever the case, he won't look like what he looks like now. He'll look better. A mirror with a few alterations is fine. Their amulets are different, and they'd hardly ever dressed identically either. The former Dante thinks about while cradling his half of the amulet, hanging from his neck as it has since he was a child, only having left for a few short hours in which another Son of Sparda had claimed it and then another had used it for reasons of his own.

After a while reminiscing, Dante decides it's time to move on. He grabs some spare pants and a maroon t-shirt from the stash he keeps in the first floor bathroom, then plods over to the front door, sighing at the lack of energy there.

There had been wards there, once. Not as elaborate as the ones on Dante's room- the stronger the wards are and the larger an area they need to cover, the more energy they take, hence why Dante limited the most potent of them to his room alone- but enough that no demon would be able to get the jump on him, and most lesser demons would be kept out. Now, though, they're skeletons of what they used to be and pretty much useless.

Trish’s violent entrance had triggered some of the seals he’d had in the shop, for all the good they’d done. It seems like Morrison’s men had also ended up wearing them away with their comings and goings, whether because of the overwhelming human presence or because they’d scuffed up the floor while working. As a result, the magic circle that flickers to life when Dante pours his focus into it is barely functional, several of the sigils gone and most of the rest faded. Dante fills them back in with a sigh and a quick cut to the wrist. Because why not- he’s bled plenty in the past few however many units of time, so why not bleed some more for another good cause? At least this one is more entertaining. With the Qliphoth seed he just sat there and let his wrist drip blood into a goblet. With this he gets to make some fun shapes and practice his perfect circle. It’s more engaging. The magic tugs at him too, always slightly confused by the dual nature of the one forming it but not attacking him outright. It’s more of a gentle purr, brushing up against him and trying to get a read on him before it settles back into the floor and the purr dies down into a hum far too faint for human ears to pick it out. Dante’s gotten pretty good at filtering out the sound over the years too. 

He digs out a few candles after he’s done. They’re special things, enchanted and meant to ward away evil spirits. Gifts from some clients of his. He’s got a pair of scented candles from Morrison and Lady too, gag gifts that they thought he’d smile at and toss because he knows they don’t do a damn thing, and he decides to pull out one of those and put it on his desk to get rid of some of the new construction smell. Sure, warding candles do actually exist- the ones he uses for the seals are legit- but they’re hard to make and a lot more expensive than the single-digit things Lady and Morrison gave him, that’s for sure. They also tend to give him a headache when they’re real. He likes being able to light one without having to deal with the slight pain.

He lights one downstairs before heading up and setting another one on his dresser and lighting that one with a snap too. Perks of being a fire-aligned demon. No need for a lighter. 

Then it’s back to the waiting game. 

At least until sunrise. Then it’s the check the news type of waiting game. 

But for now it’s just Dante and Vergil. Waiting as always. 

He’s tired of the waiting. This is a boring game. Dante isn’t patient.

But what else is there to do? Go running around the city looking for demons to hunt? He can't leave Vergil alone. Not now. Weak as he is and faint as it is, he still smells like the son of Sparda. Abandoning him would be a death sentence. No, for now all Dante can do is sit and wait. For the Qliphoth to grow, for Trish to return, for Vergil to wake, for things for once in his life to turn up-

Morning comes and with it the six o’clock news reveals Dante was carousing (if only) in Hell for three and a half weeks.

Which is absolutely ridiculous. Sure hell didn’t have a day and night cycle, but no way he was only there for 600 hours. Time must pass differently there. It must. No way he was there for less than a month. None. 

He gives Morrison a quick call at seven, knowing the man’s probably already gone out and come back from morning coffee, insane morning person that he is, and Morrison lets him know that not only is the safe Dante hasn’t bothered to check empty save fifty bucks left to make sure Dante doesn’t starve (and hey, turns out he was wrong! His forty-three dollars isn't the majority of the money he has left! He's not giving it up for losing the bet though. He'll need that money sooner or later. For gas, probably, since he's going to have a ton of driving in his future once the Qliphoth business is resolved and he's back to hunting demons like never before), but that he’ll be taking an 80% cut of any job he gets Dante for a while. Dante lets him know that it sounds fair enough and Morrison wishes him well before hanging up. He does not ask where Dante was for those three and a half weeks. He doesn’t even try some sly comment to weasel it out of him. He just lets it die.

Good ol’ Morrison. That's exactly the reason they work so well; Dante can always count on him to get things done and to now press when pressing's not wanted. He’s glad he found the guy a few years back. I’s made Dante’s life a hell of a lot easier when he’s got someone running the people side of things. Demons Dante can do any day. Humans, though? Well, he’s pretty good at dealing with them too, but that doesn’t mean he always wants to. Half the time the biggest complication on a job is the person hiring him, not the demon that needs to be slain. 

Trish calls him around noon telling him she's dumped the car and that she's on her way back. Dante tells her there's no rush if she wants to spend some time checking out the city- whatever city she's ended up in, which she doesn't mention and Dante doesn't ask- and she says she'll take him up on that and be back by the next morning. Another day of silence. Back in his own home, he doesn't really mind.

The rest of the day goes pretty slowly. Morrison had left Dante a pretty hefty stack of magazines to go through, appearing to have both the things that would've shown up on Dante's doorstep and the junkmail Morrison got and didn't want, so it passes the time, but it's just so…slow in comparison to life in the Demon World. Hardly any humans walk around outside either. Dante never has many neighbors, living in a part of town that most people wouldn't even walk through, not to mention live in, but it seems like there are even fewer now. Maybe some of the new guys got spooked by what happened to Dante's shop. Maybe they just ran out of cash. The rent around here's dirt cheap, but most of the people in his little corner only live here if they can't afford anything else, and unfortunately, even dirt cheap becomes too expensive when you've got nothing to spend.

Checking on Vergil doesn't reveal any change. Dante puts him back in the fancy outfit he'd grabbed from the castle once it's out of the dryer, but he doesn't react to it and Dante isn't surprised. At least the room's looking cleaner after a night of shoving things in bags and tossing them here or there. Could probably use with a rug cleaning and some floor dusting, but it's good enough for now. Dante's going to be gone for a few weeks in a matter of days. No point in fixing something if it's just going to go back to the way it was shortly thereafter.

A few hours later, while Dante’s sitting at his desk, feet up and flipping through a travel magazine Morrison had apparently left him, the front doors slam inward, thrown with enough force he can hear them rattle where they hit the walls that Morrison didn’t have anyone install doorstops on.

Welp. So much for having nice things. That probably damaged the hinges.

Dante huffs, closing his eyes in annoyance. “Look, I’m sure whatever business you have is important, but I just got those replaced-”

“Yeah yeah. With your track record, we both know they’ll get broken in a few more weeks, so there’s no point in whining about it.”

Dante’s eyes fly open, Lady waltzing in like she owns the place. After closing the doors, that is. She even does it gently, softly clicking them back into place. 

“Lady!” Dante greets her, mind scrambling for what to do next. Sure he said he’d get around to thinking about what he was going to do about her, but he hasn’t actually gotten to that yet, and now that she’s here he’s out of time so panic mode starts to set in just a bit. 

She struts up to the desk without a care, arms crossing once she stops in front of him. “It’s been a while.”

“It has, yeah.” Dante takes a deep breath, reclining in his chair to put some distance between them and do his best to appear at east, like that’ll help him any bit when Lady is here and he still hasn't figured out how to get her out of the way. Lady huffs and rolls her eyes, pushing his feet to the side so she can see his face. Her arms go back up once she’s been sufficiently addressed. 

She tilts her head toward the corner of his desk. "No pizza? Decide to go on a diet or something?"

Dante blinks.

He-

Forgot. It is dinner time by now, isn't it? The sun's starting to go down again and the light in the room pretty dim considering he hasn't bothered to turn it on given he doesn't really need it to see. Time had been passing slowly, sure, but it was still going by. He hasn't eaten a thing since he made it back.

"More like on a budget." He can point out the state of the place if he needs to; insist that he's doing fine, it's just that he spent everything on fixing the walls and is trying to save up.

Lady frowns. "When has that ever stopped you? I know you sometimes run a tab." Dante opens his mouth to protest, but Lady continues. "If it's really that bad, I can spot you though. Just this once."

Dante cracks a smile. Emphasis on the cracks part. Because man. Lady's a good person. She can't get caught up in all this. She might tease him here and there, might keep track of his debts and stop by every once in a while to collect on them, but she offer him loans in the first place no matter how late he is on repayments, she comes and drinks with him on the anniversary on the worst day of their mutual lives, and she's always got his back when he's needed her. She's a good person. He needs to get her out of here before things explode.

"Eh, don't worry about it. Budgeting's for nerds. For you, I can splurge," he responds with a wink.

He picks the phone off the receiver before she can say anything, dialing a number he memorized a few days after he moved into this place. Two minutes later he's got two extra large pizzas coming his way, one with everything except olives, one half five-cheese wonder, half meat lover's paradise. He's got Lady's favorite memorized too.

“What’ve you been up to lately?” Lady asks once Dante's put the phone back down, looking him up and down and staring at the candle still burning at the corner of his desk next to the picture of Eva. "It's been, what, three months?"

Dante laughs, the sound hiding his sigh of relief. From the way she put it, he's pretty sure she didn't come to check in on him and discover his absence. He and Lady sometimes have period where they'll run into each other every other week, sometimes have period where they won't see each other for five or six months. No point in treading the same ground. They've got their own turf. It's best for the public if they spread out and maximize the protected area.

“Oh, you know, same old, same old. Killing demons, chillin’. Killing some more demons, chillin’ some more.” He shrugs. “What can I say? I’m living the life.”

Lady bursts into laughter, uncrossing her arms to wipe a fake tear from her eye. “Suuuure you are.” She clearly doesn’t believe him. He doesn’t blame her- he doesn’t believe it either. Living the life? What life? A bad one? At least she's able to find some humor in it. “Anyway, just thought I’d drop by while I was in the area. Had an informant that wanted to meet in Burroughs and it was only a half hour drive, so I figured I’d stop by and see if Hell had frozen over and you’d decided to get your life together.” She lifts her chin, head swiveling as she takes in the sight of the rest of the room. “Which it may have, huh.”

Dante kicks off the desk, chair hitting the wall with a dull thud. He stands, walking around the desk and throwing his hands into the air to gesture around him , telling the paranoia creeping up his gut to take a hike. She's just commenting on the fact that the shop has very obviously been cleaned, which Datne hardly ever bothers to do. It's not about him. She doesn't know.

“What, don’t like my new style?”

“You mean teenage boy, minus the old softcore porn?”

“I’d like to call it ‘cool demon hunter whose wife told him to throw out all those degrading magazines,’ but you could call it that too.”

“Mhm. Any reason for the change?”

“I’ll give you two guesses.”

“Place got wrecked by demons and the cleanup crew said they didn’t want to be leered at, and/or they had a woman on the team who called you out on the cringeworthy decals?”

One half of that’s right. Well, at least one half. Dante figured Morrison had taken down the pictures just to send Dante a message, but it’s entirely possible he did it because his crew didn’t like it. Then again, the people who work with Morrison tend to keep their mouths shut about anything from bribery to murder, so for them to draw the line at pin-ups would be…well. Kind of fair, to be honest. Morrison also pretty much only works with people who do bad deeds for good reasons. He’s not the one hiring people for brutal murders. Usually he’s the one hiring the guy to get back at the brutal murderer. Or the guy to kill the demons in Dante’s case. Same difference. People to kill human killers or human hurters and all that.

Still, Dante responds as if Lady’s aced it. “Oooh, got it in one. This is why I can always count on you, Lady- strong AND smart. Brains, beauty, and brawn all in one.”

Lady shakes her head, uncrossing her arms to shove at him. It’s a playful shove and wouldn’t have moved him an inch if Dante didn’t let it, but for now he’s glad for any sense of normalcy or fun in the world and decides to play along, gasping as she makes contact and putting a hand on the arm she’d touched before stumbling away and dramatically collapsing to the floor. He misses adding a matching dent to the ride cymbal by about an inch. 

“Anyway,” Lady continues, watching Dante twitch on the floor and moan dramatically, “Like I said, I just thought I’d stop by and see how you were doing. Make sure you weren’t dead. I can see you’re doing just fine.”

“Fine? I’m dying here, Lady. Gonna kick the bucket any second now. My arm’s gonna fall off, just you watch,” Dante whines.

“You never change, do you?”

“Wouldn’t be me if I did!”

Dante hops back to his feet, walking back to his desk and hopping on top.

“How are you doing, by the way? Any big jobs coming up?”

“Oh God no, I hope not,” Lady practically groans. “I just came off three ‘once in a year’ jobs in a row. If I didn’t have to see another Hell anything for a year it would be too soon. Things were swarming like flies. Is it too much to ask for a short break?”

A thought pops into Dante’s head. 

A memory. An idea.

His hand drifts over to the travel magazine Morrison had left for him. The one Dante had been flipping through before Lady had arrived.

“Say,” he begins, the burgeoning idea leaving him grinning in a way that earns him some narrowed eyes from Lady. Hope. Possibility. A way out. He hopes his expression doesn't look as unhinged as it feels. “Have you ever thought about taking a vacation?”

Lady’s eyebrows shoot up. “A vacation.”

He can see it now. A chance to get her out of here. a chance to keep her uninvolved. Safe. “Yeah! A vacation! You know, go off for a few weeks and not worry about killing demons or being killed by demons or nodding off in your next stakeout.”

Take the bait, Lady. Take it.

"Now?" Lady asks, uncertain. "When things have just exploded?"

When things are about to explode in an even more dramatic, intense, unforgiveable fashion, actually. Dante shakes his head. "Didn't you just fix that, three big jobs and all? How many more explosions do you think will happen? I just got back from dealing with a big baddie of my own- I don't think any gates will open for a long while. There are only so many big guys and only so much skillful fodder, after all."

Lady frowns. “I mean… It would be a lie to say I haven’t thought about taking some time off. But that doesn’t mean I’ve ever planned to actually do it. Too many demons to kill, too many people in need of help. They can’t afford for me to go on a vacation.”

Dante cocks an eyebrow of his own. “But you just said you took care of it. And that it's time for the calm after the storm.” Nevermind that the experssion's usually before. He pauses a moment, waiting for the information to settle in Lady’s brain. When she looks about ready to respond, he continues before she can get a word in. “And if you just got done with three big jobs, then you’re probably pretty tired right? If you ask me, you’ve earned your rest.”

“What would I even do on a vacation?”

“Well according to Travel Light-” Dante begins, picking up the magazine and flipping through to the page that he hoped would prove his (Lady’s) salvation “-you could go snorkeling, ride a personal watercraft, tour some caves, relax on the beach, and more in the Bahamas with a limited time offer, promotion ending next week, see the next page for details!”

Lady just stares at him, eyes half lidded, unimpressed.

Dante puts the magazine down and holds his hands near his shoulders, wiggling them around with a big smile to really sell the deal.

(He really, really needs her to take the deal. Please. Lady. Please. He doesn't know what he'll do if he gets to the Qliphoth and has to face her down.

Please!)

Lady closes her eyes. 

For a moment, Dante thinks the bait will be left untouched.

But then she reaches for the magazine, flips it open and fingers through it until she finds the page Dante was talking about, and begins to read.

The doorbell rings while she’s reading. Dante heads over, sees the pizza guy, grabs the extra large four cheese pizza, shoves two twenties in his shirt pocket before he can comment on Dante’s absence and alert Lady to something being up, and slams the door. Lady doesn’t even flinch. Dante sends the pizza guy a mental apology. But he got a good tip, and he’s dealt with Dante’s eccentricities before, so the guy will be fine.

Lady grabs a slice when Dante tosses the boxes onto the desk, munching away as she flips to the next page and continues reading. The cheese on this one is extra cheesy and it aaaalmost falls to the page, but Lady catches it before it can, sending a quick glance to Dante to tell him she knows what she’s doing- she’s no amateur. He relents with a bow and takes a seat back in his chair.

“The Bahamas, huh,” Lady mumbles through a mouthful of pizza goodness.

“Mrhrm,” Dante mumbles through his own mouthful. Man. If only Vergil were awake. He’d never been as big on pizza as Dante had, but he’d liked it well enough when their mom made it, and no one could dislike something with this much cheese.

“How many years have I been doing this now? Almost ten?”

“Mmmm.”

“I’ve never taken a vacation before.”

“Mm-hmm.”

“I guess it could be nice to take just a few days off. The world probably won’t come to an end.”

“Mmmmmmm.”

"Some of my other contacts have been bugging me about it too. Alto took a vacation last month, and she won't stop nagging me about going on one of my own."

"Mmmmmmmhmmmmm."

He can practically see the nerve in Lady’s temple throb.

(He can actually hear her heart rate increase-)

“You don’t have to respond to everything I say, you know. Some people like to say things out loud to think!” she hisses, swatting at him with the magazine.

“Mm-mm, mhhhm mmrngh!”

“You don’t even have anything in your mouth anymore! I saw you swallow that last bite.”

“Well I figured you didn’t want me to say anything while you were thinking,” Dante explains, putting on his best puppy-dog eyes.

"Then you didn't need to make sound at all!" Lady hisses. Then she sighs, letting her head fall back as she gazes up at the ceiling. “This is exactly why I need a vacation. The demons are one thing, but you’re your own breed.”

“Well if we’re getting technical-”

“Think you could take care of the area if I head out for a few weeks?”

Dante blinks. His heart skips a beat.

“Wait. Seriously?” 

She’ll do it? She’s actually thinking of going? The bait has been tugged?

Lady narrows her eyes again, and Dante quickly tacks on an addendum. “That is, of course I can. You won’t need to worry about anything while you’re gone. Figured you’d earned it.”

Worrying about stuff wouldn’t get her anything, after all. Regardless of whether she worries or not, Dante is going to carry his plan through. Might as well absolve her of that burden before she tries to carry it. This way she'll get a few weeks of peace before everything comes crashing down, never to rise to quite the same place.

"Like I said, Alto and the gang have been bugging me about it for ages. Normally I'd tell them to piss off, but…" She takes a deep breath, eyes drifting down to her feet. When she speaks, she sounds almost distraught. "I fucked up on my last job. Badly. If another demon hadn't portaled in and ended up stabbing first one when it did, I'd have lost my head and the people I was protecting would probably have died not long after."

The emotion in her voice has Dante off-kilter. "What happened?"

"Kalina-Ann's cord snapped while I was grappling and I fell a long way. I ended up banging her into the ground when I landed and the bayonet snapped too, not to mention some of the internals got jostled in a way that meant I wasn't going to risk blowing myself up from firing her. I went too long without getting her looked at, and I was running on my sixth day of sub four hours of sleep. If I hadn't had so many jobs in a row, or if I'd taken better care of her, that wouldn't have happened. But I got careless and it did, and now not only is she in for repairs for the next two weeks, but my leg's not working like it should and there's no way I can run like I'm used to. The doctor said I'm fine to walk on it, but I'm supposed to keep from any strenuous activity for the next three weeks. You can't do that if you're hunting demons. A hunter fighting at half strength will end with civilians getting killed."

Dante straightens in his seat, looking down at her legs for the first time. She's wearing some pretty baggy pants, but when he looks carefully, he thinks he can see where the fabric is sitting on top of a brace.

"Seems like a perfect time for a vacation, then."

For once, the stars have aligned.

(To Lady's misfortune. Injuries aren't good, and the mental toll's not inconsiderable.

But really, when you think about it, the misfortune's actually good fortune in the end. This pain will be temporary. It will be what will save her.

It will be good. It's necessary. It'll keep her out of his hair. It will be her salvation.)

“It's probably as good an excuse as I'll have 'till I'm retired," Lady sighs. "What about you? You’ve been at this longer than I have.”

Dante shrugs. “Eh, you know how I get when I don’t fight for too long. I couldn’t stop fighting even if I wanted to. Makes me feel like crap to stay still for too long.” 

Which is true. Even in those moments Dante feels too lazy to get up, he still feels bad if he goes without fighting anything for more than a week, sometimes even a few days if the last fight was particularly boring. He's always assumed it's a quirk of demonic biology. Fighting is in his nature. Violence. If he doesn't indulge, he gets antsy. As much as he prefers his huamn side, he needs to try to satisfy the demon side enough to function.

“Fair enough,” Lady responds. She rolls the magazine up and shoves it in her back pocket, rolling her shoulder once before grabbing a handful of napkins, another slice of pizza, and heading for the door. Now that he knows to look for it, her limp is obvious. “I’m not set on it yet, just so you know. I still have to think things over. But if I do end up going, I'll let you know the days I book so you can keep an eye out while I’m off getting some R and R.” She stops in front of the door, turning to Dante with a fire in her eyes. “Just know, if I hear any complaints from my regulars because of you-”

“I know, I know,” Dante says, waving her off. “No need to nag me.”

“Take care of yourself Dante. I don’t want to come back to any messes; my people, my areas, or you.”

“I will.”

“You promise?”

“Come on, Lady.”

(He does not say yes.

Because he knows he’s going to break that promise. So better not to make it, because at least that way she can't say he lied.)

She rolls her eyes before turning back around. “See you later. Make sure to leave your phone plugged in so I can call you once I’ve got the dates all planned out. And if your phone service is about to go out again, send the next payment in today. I won’t have myself worrying over you just because you forgot to pay the phone bill.”

“Lady, if you don’t want to worry about me, you shouldn’t check in on me at all. Wipe your hands clean and go away. The choice is up to you!”

“Yeah well I think that once I’m on my little vacation, I might just take you up on that offer.” She waves, bumping the door open with a hip. “See you later Dante. Try not to get into too much trouble.”

“See ya later Lady!”

He follows her to the door, shutting it behind her.

Once he hears her drive off- and man how out of it had he been to not even notice her arrive?- he leans back against the door and slides to the ground.

Oh boy. Ohhhh boy.

He’s really gonna do it huh? He really is.

Chapter Text

Dante drops Lady off at the airport four days later, much to his relief. Apparently the flight was dirt cheap, the hotel didn’t look too bad, and no jobs had popped up in the meantime, so Lady decided why not. It'd save her the earful from her (actual) friends about working while injured, and being so far away, she couldn't just change her mind and hop back to it without some significant effort, so the distance would do her some good. No looking back.

On the car ride over, she gives a whole spiel about what she expects Dante to do while she's out. About how she'd told some of her usual contacts to route things through Morrison if they needed anything, about the different kinds of requests she got and what areas she'd looked into recently, about what jobs she anticipated might come up while she was away. She'd spent a good chunk of the four day downtime planning things out. Lady was nothing if not prepared.

It was too bad all that effort was going to go to waste. Even were Dante to have any intentions of following through with what Lady'd asked of him, it all kind of goes in one ear and out the other. Sure Dante is sort of listening- enough to hum and nod in the right places, enough to keep from obviously messing up and giving up the game before it's time for the star of the show to make its appearance- but his mind's positively buzzing with thoughts of the Qliphoth and what he's going to do once it makes its grand entrance, so everything unrelated fizzles out into nothingness. There simply isn't room for anything else. By by the time he pulls out of the airport lot, he can’t even remember a good half of the conversation.

After that he goes back to his classic: waiting for Vergil and lounging around. What a fun life. At least now he can sit on a beat-up couch instead of blood-soaked tile.

He does go on one short demon extermination mission in that four-day Lady-waiting period. Mostly to keep Lady and Morrison off his back. Big mission in the rearview mirror or no, it'll be suspicious if Dante refuses everything Morrison tosses his way, and he's not about to invite any extra investigation into what he has been or currently is doing. He'd just narrowly avoided disaster when Trish showed up about five minutes after Lady'd left, and if someone got suspicious enough to go upstairs and find Vergil, well… Dante's thoroughly avoided planning for that by doing his best to look the kind of cool that doesn't invite poking. He can't have them doing that before the Qliphoth emerges.

And, a week after his return, emerge it does.

He's mid-conversation when it happens. When the Qliphoth pierces the veil. When it pokes its head through the portal and sends its call far and wide to let its adherent know it's finally ready to spread the faith and reap the rewards of his past and future labor.

The sensation of the Qliphoth's emergence is unlike anything Dante has ever experienced or imagined. For a man who's never believed in a higher power, it's the closest he's ever come to understanding what people talk about when they claim to feel the presence of a god.

It's the sudden intrusion of knowledge. Certainty. It has arrived. It is time.

It's a slight pull; a call to action, a draw to a point in space whose location has been burned into the back of his mine.

It is a need. A mandate. A request and obligation to see things through.

Relief.

Anxiety.

The thing he wanted made real; the thing he once feared waiting for him to make the final step.

It is too late to turn back.

He couldn't stop if he wanted to.

He doesn't want to. That's the problem. He doesn't want to. He should, probably, but he doesn't. Vergil lies dying. (Dante's heart has already done so-) There is no panacea but this.

Trish seems unnerved by the way Dante drops off mid-sentence, head snapping toward the source of the Qliphoth's call as his words come to a screeching halt, so thoroughly distracted he couldn't recall what he'd been talking about if she repeated the first half back to him in search of the second, but for a miracle, she doesn't question it. Whether she knew the direction as Dante did (he's been able to sense the portal since the moment he went through it, the connection forged by his hand guiding the Yamato or his blood hiding the gaping wound between worlds from view ensuring he was never spared a moment of awareness of what he had wrought) and could identify it by the motion or she could simply connect the dots, she doesn't say. She simply watches. Waits. Lets him decide the next course of action.

She's an awfully passive woman at times. Not always; she has some snark that he appreciates in the moments it comes through, growing the more time she spends in his presence and learns what it means to be a woman in commmand of herself. But there's a subservience in her that she's yet to completely shake, the trait trained into her if not infused into her creation, and while she's had moments where she's broken off to do her own thing, she's still coming into possession of herself and command of her own faculties, actions, and desires and has a lot more room to grow. More questions to ask. More pushes to shove.

He wishes she'd try to step out more. Assert herself.

Maybe not right now though. Right now, he needs the help.

“Start the car,” Dante says (orders), swaying toward the stairs to collect Vergil. There both is and isn't an urgency to it; now that the time has come, he can finally work his way toward his destination. Now that the star has arrived heralded but alone, he need not rush to greet it. This will only happen once in his lifetime. He will do it right.

He's prepared for missions a thousand times before, but this march feels different. More…not exactly formal, but official. It’s a procession. For what? A coming future? A past that will die? A man to be reborn? A world that won’t ever be quite the same?

This change in the world isn't a new thing; it's been falling to pieces since the Temen-ni-gru. Since the fire. Since the day Sparda split the worlds and erected a barrier that, like all things, could and would not last an eternity, infinity something maintained only in dreams and disproved time and time again in a reality which only revels in the cruelty of denials.

The Temen-ni-gru was probably the largest tipping point, though. (Up until now.) Demons have been slipping through cracks in the barrier since before Dante had been born, but they hadn’t really skyrocketed to their current numbers until Vergil had carefully dismantled the seals his progenitor had worked so hard to maintain and Dante had run back to the Human World with the Force Edge Arkham's greed had pulled from its place, two brothers in a single year- and a single day, in the end- undoing two thousand years of maintenance and devotion the one who'd spawned them had not devoted to them in kind. The growth has slowed since the day of the Temen-ni-gru's resurrection, but the influx of demons has never stopped, merely stabilized. With the emergence of the Qliphoth, Dante knows the flow will skyrocket once more.

Only for a little while though. The single slice he's made won't be anything as damaging as the destruction of the the Barrier's supports. Once the Qliphoth’s fruit has been harvested and its purpose served, he’ll cut it down, seal back up the portal, and return to things to how they once were, spending the rest of his life cleaning up the stragglers and atoning for what he’s done. Dante's life for Vergil's. Devotion for continuity. If all goes well, he might even be able to figure out how to remake the barrier their actions had broken, leaving the world in better shape than it's been since before they were born.

Dante takes a moment to slip on Vergil's new coat and boots once he retrieves him, taking another to grab the gel Trish had bought and slick back Vergil's hair. For all Trish had groaned about being an errand girl, she hadn't actually refused any of Dante's requests. She'd just done them with a bit of back talk. A small price to pay for the help.

Vergil looks more like himself with the fancy outfit and slicked back hair. Dante would like to think Vergil would be thankful for it, but who's to say. Vergil has never been big on thanking Dante for anything. Eva'd force him to from time to time, insisting the boys treated each other with kindness, but it wasn't really a default action for either of them.

…Still, once he wakes up Vergil will probably appreciate the attempt to make him a little more like himself anyway, whether he voices as much or not. Or so Dante hopes.

With Vergil retrieved and Trish working on the car, there's only one thing left for Dante to do. One last tether trying to keep him grounded. One last tie to be knotted into a nice little bow, sitting cleanly apart from himself.

Lady’s on vacation, and after giving him the number of his hotel just in case he needed to contact her- a number which she apparently hadn't given to anyone else, seeing as she was really trying to stick to her promise of taking a break and was thus limiting her points of contact to include the one whom she'd made swear to clean up her messes- she let him know she’d probably be radio silent for the next four weeks, and not to contact her unless it was an emergency. He trusts she won't call him without reason. As long as his voicemail stays connected, she shouldn't suspect anything's up.

But there’s one more person that might check up on Dante, and that’s a mess he hasn’t quite figured out how to deal with. Thinking about what comes next is giving him a headache.

It takes him a minute, standing there, holding Vergil in his arms, before he shifts Vergil so he can use his free hand to pick up the phone and dial a familiar number.

“J.D. Morrison,” the voice comes crackling through the phone.

Dante does his best to keep his sigh quiet. He’d been hoping to get voicemail, but the world seemed to have other ideas. “Hey Morrison, my man! How are you doing?” He can only hope the falsity of his cheer is hidden by the crackle in the line.

Morrison lets out a long whistle “So the infamous Dante still lives. Who’d’ve thought.”

Dante laughs. It tugs at something in his chest best left buried. “‘Course I do. You didn’t seriously think a little island would be able to take me down, did ya?”

“You? Of course not. But you were quiet for a long time there, and I was starting to wonder if you’d run off on me. Would I be wrong to venture a guess you didn’t just get back today?”

Now that one hurts a bit. Abandon Morrison? No way. Not without good reason.

…Dante probably should’ve called. Dante definitely should’ve called. And had he not been so preoccupied with Vergil, the Qliphoth, and the rest of his thoughts he would have, but things had gotten away from him and he just hadn't had it in him to invite the sort of confrontation a call would bring.

“Nope!”

“Mhm. Figures.”

Dante's gaze drifts across the newly repaired interior of his shop, catching on the dart board and the carefully selected demon skull pinned there. An expression of care that was probably more than he deserved. “Look man, I’m sorry about not bumping up your phone bill before the first of the month, but I just wanted to let you know that I’ll be heading out for a longer job again. I finished with Mallet Island, but that doesn’t mean this job is over. I’ve got one more thing I’ve gotta take care of to finish up with what I found there.”

It takes Morrison several seconds to respond, the man clearly thinking over what he wanted to say next. “That all?”

Dante bites his lip.

He likes Morrison because Morrison usually doesn’t prod too much and doesn’t ask too many questions. The business they're in isn't the sort of thing you can talk about in a lot of places, and Morrison understands Dante's desire for privacy. He doesn't need to know the details of what goes on in the middle of a job, just the outcome, and anything necessary to pass on to their client. Dante's always had the feeling that Morrison doesn't want to know the details of Dante's jobs, willing to believe in the existence of demons and the supernatural but uninterested in learning the gruesome specifics of the sort of stuff they inflict.

This time though, he’s taken an extra step. Put some bait out, knowing Dante was well aware of what it was and what it'd mean. That Morrison can apparently read the unease in Dante's voice and words enough to suspect something already must mean he's slipping.

Still, Dante's had practice deflecting, and he knows Morrison's smart enough to give up when it's known his prodding is not wanted. So, he changes topics to something a little more honest. A little less suspect. “And the shop looks great too! Really! Thanks a bunch for fixing it up. I owe you.”

Morrison, blessed soul that he is, accepts the counter-bait. He has to recognize it for what it is. You don't last long in this field without being able to pick up on subtleties and misdirection. “That you do. Eighty percent cut until your debt is paid, got it?”

“Whatever you say, boss. What’s mine is yours.” Dante sighs into the phone, this time loud enough Morrison probably caught it. He doesn't have it in him to muffle it. “Anyway, I’ll be heading out now. I’ll let you know when I’m back. Not too sure how long this one is going to take, but it’ll probably be at least a few weeks, maybe more.”

“Understood.”

Dante shifts the phone off his ear, moving it back toward the receiver.

But before he can put it back, Morrison’s voice comes crackling through the speaker once more, easily audible despite the distance.

“And Dante?” Morrison pauses, waiting for the rustle of Dante pulling the phone back to his ear. “If you ever need me, I’m here for you. I’ve kept your secrets before, and I’ll keep them all ‘till the day I die. You know that, right?”

“...”

Dante’s eyes slide over Vergil’s face. A man twice- no, thrice dead- who is no longer dead, but not far from it. A man who has driven Dante to dark places in his grief, not of his own fault, but of Dante’s weakness. 

His eyes then slide to the door, outside of which he can hear the car running, Trish in the driver’s seat. A ghost of a dead woman, come back to alter his life in a way he can’t turn back from. 

(What does that make him, a man surrounded by ghosts of the dead who he has both invited and helped create?)

“Don’t worry about me, Morrison,” Dante eventually replies. The faux cheer has slipped from his voice. He’s too tired for the act right now. Too drained to put on a show. “I’ll be fine. Always have been, always will be. Take care of yourself.”

Another pause. A hint of disappointment in the reply. “You too Dante.”

Dante hangs up before Morrison can get in another word.

Trish raises an eyebrow at the frown Dante’s wearing when he gets in the car, but she doesn’t say anything about it. Instead, she asks a simple question.

“Ready?”

“As I’ll ever be.”

They set off.

The ride back to Red Grave goes much like the ride away had; Trish drives in silence, Dante stares at Vergil like it could ever do any good, and Vergil lies motionless and mostly dead.

He half wants to ask Trish to tune in to a news station to see if they’re reporting on the Qliphoth’s emergence yet, but even if someone has come across the portal since its emergence it probably hasn't gotten enough attention to make it on the air, and he's not sure Trish knows how the radio works in the first place. So do they continue on, the car's low thrum and the occasional choked gasp from Vergil the only color to the air.

Even were Dante not to feel the pulse of the Qliphoth and the portal in the depths of his marrow, he's sure he could locate the thing by sight. Trish's description had pretty much been limited to "big tree", and the sprout that Dante had left was hardly large enough for him to get a good idea of what the full thing would look like, but that hasn't impacted his vision at all. He knows the state it will be in once he reaches it. The color, the shape, the size. He can see it in his mind’s eye.

And when he arrives, it is just that that he sees. The Qliphoth, tall and strong in a barren wasteland that differs in so many ways from the one he'd left it in, yet feels similar in its sense of hollowness and impending dread.

The sun had set during the car ride, and while the streets of Red Grave aren’t as empty as they had been during their pre-dawn venture following their initial pass through the city, the streets around the alleyway are completely deserted. It’s as if every living being in the area had- consciously or unconsciously- fled. It's not as though the area would've been abandoned otherwise; it's in a pretty central location, and the trash cans had been overflowing with fairly new-smelling food the last time Dante had been there. The square beside the alleyway was well-traveled, and the walk back to the spot confirms there are recently-open shops on either side. People just…stopped using it. There's not a single person sitting on any of the benches. The buildings on either side feel empty, their residents having gone elsewhere for the day, and not a single shop has their sign set to open, havign either closed early or not opened at all. The scent of life Dante had picked up on during his last trip has faded, replaced by the faint, not-as-unpleasant-as-it-once-was sulfur of Hell. There aren't even any rats picking through abandoned refuse. It's empty. Completely. The only life left is that of the immobile, the flowers still blooming up above. He wonders if they, too, would've escaped if they could have.

Trish shivers as they approach. It's subtle, but it's still there. Dante feels bad for dragging her into this, but then again, she's had every chance to run away. It was her decision to stick by him. He told her that. If she really wanted to (unlike Dante) she could run away.

Both her reaction and the absence of humans has Dante pretty sure the Qliphoth's exuding some sort of unpleasant aura that's keeping others out. To him, it feels normal. Mundane. Maybe a tiny bit welcoming, though that might be him stretching things. Really it's just an awareness that he could ignore were he to want to, which he very much does not when it's the thing he's put so much of himself into welcoming into this world. If anything, it feels like an extension of himself, warm like the office in the evening on a summer day.

Dante only finds a single person outside in the three blocks surrounding the Qliphoth. They’re standing just outside the alleyway on the side near the square, head tilted toward the heavens as they take the sight in.

When Trish pulls up and Dante leaves the car, Vergil safe in the back seat, the person turns to face him. Their clothes are moth-eaten and dirty, and their pupils are blown wide. They look high out of their mind.

They stare at him for a good fifteen seconds before something seems to register in their mind, mouth opening into a small ‘o’ before they bolt across the square, tripping over themself and catching the edge of Dante’s coat as they scramble to get away. They seem terrified. 

(The fact that they reacted that way to him when they were just fine, entranced but otherwise stable staring at the Qliphoth- something that with further prodding Dante can now tell is just oozing demonic energy at this point- says something he doesn’t want to acknowledge.)

“You’re not going to go after them?” Trish asks when Dante ducks back into the car to collect Vergil. “Not worried about what they might say? About them telling people about you or the Qliphoth?”

Dante moves Vergil so he rests in Dante’s arms, held in a bridal carry once more. It’ll be easier than dragging him to wherever they need to get to in the Qliphoth. For all he does and doesn’t weigh, Dante will be just fine bringing however far he needs to. 

“They’re not gonna tell anyone.” Even if they did, it wouldn’t matter. What could they do about it? Who would believe them anyway?

“Whatever you say.”

Trish exits the car and follows Dante into the alleyway. They stop in front of the Qliphoth. What part of it they can see, anyway.

And the sight of it. What it looks like. Dante should probably get into that. Process it in a way beyond just ‘what I thought it would be.’ 

He hadn’t really felt a need to when he first laid eyes on it. It was right. It was what he imagined it would be. What it was supposed to be. Why describe something so obvious? It would be like stopping someone to explain to them that on a cloudless day, the sky is blue. Unnecessarily obvious. There’s just no point. 

But. He should. Describe it. Actually process what he’s seeing. A very simple, natural thing, that he is somehow having extreme difficulty doing. For all he knows he should stop and take a moment to consider what he’s walking into- and he will be walking into it, literally, in just a moment, going inside and seeing the inner workings of the thing he has brought to life, the thing that may have been born even without him but would not have been born so quickly, would not have sprouted so nicely, would not have found its way up so easily, were it not for him- he really, really wants to just go inside. Throw patience out the window, cast logic aside. Do what he wants to do. What he’s supposed to do. 

But isn’t he supposed to want to think things through, too? He thinks he does. No, he knows he does. So he does.

The piece of the Qliphoth that exists in the human world is only about six feet across and twenty, twenty five feet tall. The buildings directly adjacent to it are a good six stories high, so the Qliphoth doesn’t tower over it just yet. Yet. Give it time and it will. Give it an hour and it might. Give it Dante and it will in an instant. He’s not sure how he knows that. He just does. 

It's a similar color to the sprout that had emerged from the seed, a dirty white with shifting colors that are reminiscent of an oil sheen going into a storm drain. The texture is akin to coral. If Dante placed a hand on it- when he places a hand on it, he's not turning back now, just delaying the inevitable as if it'll change the outcome in any way- he would find it somewhat soft to the touch, yet impossibly difficult to cut into. It has some give to it, but only that- it may bend, but it will not break. As it grows taller, he expects it will harden to the point that a diamond would shatter against it. Even now, no standard human weapon could hurt it. Not even, he suspects, a bomb.

(He hopes whichever human authorities come out to investigate this don’t actually get to bombing the thing. The Qliphoth has sprouted in the middle of Red Grave's residential district. It covers several square miles so the Qliphoth probably won’t destroy the whole place, but even if it did, Dante hopes the inhabitants would try to rebuild after everything’s said and done. If the military came out with bombs and chemicals, it would only mess that all up. At least demons don’t leave behind any remains if you kill them the right way, poisoning the area in a way in which it will never recover. Most of them, anyway. And Dante’s not going to let the problem ones through.)

What bit of the Qliphoth is visible appears to be some sort of central stalk, two small protrusions jutting out about twelve and fifteen feet up. They’re slightly darker in color, a dirtier sort of ash than the whiteness of the main body. Where the main stalk has craters, these look more as if several layers full of holes have grown on top of each other, not filled in and awaiting something to do so. 

Dante takes the last few steps needed to put him in touching distance of the Qliphoth.

Yamato is in one of his coat pockets. He’d given it to Vergil again for the ride, believing it might bring him some sort of unconscious comfort- or the Yamato itself, which definitely still prefers Vergil despite the fact that Dante’s the one who’s been trying to talk to it and do things with it and all that, but he can’t really blame her; he doesn’t like himself all that much either, so he’d probably choose Vergil too if it were between the two of them- but pocketed it again once they’d arrived so Vergil’s limp hand wouldn’t drop it. The blade resonates with something in the air, humming against cloth in a way that makes a faint song ring in Dante’s ears, near silent and more distant than it should be, but audible nonetheless.

On the drive over, he’d envisioned cutting a hole in the Qliphoth’s outer wall to get inside. The Qliphoth would be hard to protect itself from unwelcome intruders, but the Yamato's blade could cut through anything.

Now here, he simply walks up to it. Falls to his knees. Places a hand at the base and brings it up until the point he rises, continuing to slide his palm up the exterior until he's reached above his head and the line he traced splits into a passage. 

Behind him, Trish gasps.

Dante steps aside. 

“After you.”

She eyes him for a moment, uncertain. The air has grown thick- cloying- quickly filling with the aura of the Qliphoth and the bit of Hell that Dante can feel pouring out from the inside. The longer the hole remains open, the more of that aura will pour through. It will be for the best for them to get inside.

She takes a breath. “If you say so. Just know, if I get attacked I will be blaming you.”

“You’ll be fine,” Dante tells her.

He won’t let anything attack her. 

And for the moment, he’s certain the Qliphoth will listen.

Trish enters.

Dante follows.

Behind him, the passageway closes. 

(In the Human World, the Qliphoth suddenly erupts, bursting out into a dozen different writhing masses as it blots out the sky and consumes its surroundings, crushing the innocent and naive and uninitiated as it envelops a world no longer safe from its terror, advancing to the stage in its growth that will kickstart the human panic that will only grow larger and increasingly cloying in the days and weeks to come.) 

Inside, things yet maintain the illusion of peace.

(Or so it appears to the deluded.)

The room he and Trish had stepped into is cavernous. Pearlescent walls rise toward fifty-plus foot ceilings, twisting branches at their apex forming elegantly ribbed vaults that glow withthe light of the unknown. They're not even in their elegance- nothing in this grand entryway is symmetrical, and though there's a distinct path to walk down, even the surface on which they walk is marked by uneven steps reminiscent of blackened skin stretched tight over bone- but there's something to marvel at in the spaciousness of the area and how it speaks to some sort of grand design of life. For the Qliphoth is alive, sentient or no, and the pulsing of the sinew-like tissues that stretch across walls and dangle from arches, swaying not in the wind but to the beat of the Qliphoth's nonexistent(?) heart only serves to hammer the point home. An arch marked the point through which Dante, Vergil, and Trish entered, the Qliphoth either having manifested it to greet its new residents or chance having made their entrance more grand than it might have been otherwise, and Dante won't lie and say it didn't make him feel a little honored. Welcomed. Invited. It's nice to for once feel like he belongs.

Even as Dante and the others weave their way through the Qliphoth's twisting paths, following the tether that guides him past transepts toward a destination the slight pull in his chest leads him to, he can see the Qliphoth twist and grow. New shoots emerge from among the vaults. Walls shudder and burst at the seams, cleaved in two to make room for a new aisle. Given what he'd seen on the outside and what Dante had stepped into, the size of the inside of the Qliphoth clearly isn't a one to one of the outside, but he wonders what the outside observer might be seeing at the same moment. By the visible growth and the faint, maplike knowledge in the back of his head, he has a feeling the interior is proportional to the exterior, but he didn’t walk down into Hell to get here and the bit he saw in the Human World wasn’t nearly this huge, so there has to be some kind of spacial distortion going on here. If it were the same size as what he'd seen in the human world, Vergil's head and feet would be brushing up against the sides.

He feels small, within it. A tiny figure dwarfed by vaulted ceilings and giant rooms meant for a grand ceremony but never housing more than a handful at a time. Space for a block party, a greeting only for three.

The feeling brings to mind the mansion. His home. Old home. The one that’s burned and gone and will never, ever be the same, even if Dante somehow figures out how to purchase the land and decides to renovate it with all the money he’s never going to have going on as he does. 

(He has no idea what the place looks like anymore. If someone’s already demolished what bits of the mansion remained and built something grander or simpler on its grave. If someone split up the land, at least a dozen acres if not more, and sold it to some developer to build a bunch of smaller, less isolated houses for standard, less hunted people. If people still whisper of the curses set upon the house on the hill and the strange people who lived there, overheard on trips to the cities and never outright denied by a mother who did not wish for any extra suspicion or eyes on a family that already drew eyes each and every time they went into town by virtue of their appearance and the slight air of wrongness that followed her children everywhere they went, their existence at odds with the human realm and its definitions of natives and foreigners and their personal abilities too weak to yet reign it in.

Not that Dante ever got it down perfectly. People still look at him funny, no matter what he does.

But he doesn’t freak out quite as many animals nowadays. At least, not when he’s paying enough attention to reign it in. 

Sure he’ll never be normal. He’s long since grown to accept this. Or to stop fighting it. But he likes to play pretend as much as he can, because that makes things better for everyone involved.)

The similarities to his old home end at the “big” part. The feeling of being small and unimportant in a place much fancier than his tastes. Well, maybe you could say that parts of the Qliphoth resemble the marble countertops and pillars they had, but the resemblance ends there. Why he’s trying to find any he doesn’t know. It’s hard to describe the otherworldly. Harder when he can't get rid of that persistent buzz.

Some bits of the Qliphoth interior are a darker color, more reminiscent of the black protrusions he saw outside, but for the most part is boring white and grey on white and grey on white and grey. 

It reminds him of one of the myriad environs he'd passed through on his jaunt through the Demon World. Fitting, he supposes. The Qliphoth is supposed to be Hell on Earth, right? The Demon World growing up into the Human World? Makes sense it would look similar. 

Still, there's something about it that doesn't seem quite right. Something is missing. It's blank, sure, but even the white part of Hell had more flavor than this. 

Those parts felt intentional. Like an aesthetic preference. 

This just looks and feels incomplete. 

But that's unimportant. The Qliphoth is going to do what it's going to do. Obviously it's incomplete; it's far smaller than the one in Trish's stories, and it hasn't started. Uh. Doing its…thing. Yet.

Okay one last breath to think about his doubts and push them away. It's too late to back down. Dante has been down this road a million times. He's not gonna waste any more time going down it. There's a new path forward that he's already started rolling down and there's not enough room to turn back.

So, he advances. 

The deeper he goes, the more his surroundings change. White, wormlike grass sprouts across the floor, and bonelike structures jut out from the walls. Pods that glow a faint blue cluster around certain spots, and large tubes run across open areas separated by stringy tissue that reminds Dante of what it's like to skin something and slowly tear its flesh apart with your hands. Despite it supposedly being a plant, much of the Qliphoth is fleshy in the way that reminds Dante of animals. Humans. Demons have blood and viscera and all that, but they don't have the same kind of squelch as a human does. Not nearly as much soft tissue. They don't pull apart in the same way.

The Qliphoth gets darker, too, like a printer that had run out of ink except in reverse. The inner portions are the ones the cartridge was full for; the section he’d entered in was where it had run dry. The ground is reminiscent of tar. 

It’s also reminiscent of some of the tiling he’d seen near where he’d opened the portal in Hell.

He pauses.

No. Not reminiscent. Exactly. This is the tile from Hell. As he looks around the area, he recognizes a strange boulder he’d looked at for a while while waiting for the seed to push through the ground. Apparently the Qliphoth had taken some of Hell with it when it had broken through the barrier. Fascinating. Creepy. 

Will it do the same to the Human World too?

“I see we’re feeling chatty today,” Trish remarks, walking past Dante before stopping with her hands on her hips, and a look of boredom on her face. “Qliphoth got your tongue?”

Dante’s surprised Trish knows a human expression enough to personalize it. She’d only spent a few weeks in the human world, right? Where did she get all this knowledge? Did she soak it up like a sponge, or did Mundus have some sort of window into the Human World- the modern one, not the one of the past that Mundus may have visited before Sparda severed the two worlds and sealed them away from each other, if he ever did that, honestly Dante isn’t sure- that he’d used to learn about it and shove all that information into Trish upon her creation?

“Not to be mean to your home and all that, but there’s a lot more to look at here than there was over there. I’d already seen it all by the time you came. Right now I’m taking in a new view.”

“Right,” Trish says, drawing out the word in a way that expresses her doubt better than any explicit confirmation of it. “Are we just touring for the sake of your curiosity, or do you have somewhere specific in mind?”

“Somewhere specific,” Dante repeats, moving past Trish in the direction that would get them where they needed to go. “If we continue down this way, eventually we-”

A pulse.

(Satisfaction.)

Dante’s breath catches. His feet stop.

(Success.)

He nearly drops Vergil.

(But he doesn’t. He wouldn’t. Not when that’s his purpose- his justification-)

Ah.

“Dante?” 

Trish is at his side in an instant, one hand hovering between them but not landing on either cloth or skin. She’s worried. The way her brows pull together and lips purse looks just like his mother. Why is it that, though their smiles are different, their frowns are just the same?

“What’s wrong?” The concern in her voice grows, a tinge of desperation coloring her words.

Knowledge filters in and Dante’s not quite sure how to process it.

"It's- the-"

He takes a breath.

Oh fuck.

Fuck.

Is it going to feel like this every time?

“The Qliphoth-" Dante gasps, voice even, face blank, trying to process the sudden influx of feeling and knowledge and emotion- “-has- fed. It got someone. It’s drinking. Blood. Human.”

His head feels funny. 

Something clicks and then-

Oh.

“Got a bunch of people, actually. Like. A bunch a bunch.”

Pierce through by roots burst out of the ground, bodies held aloft as tendrils worked their ways through soft, defenseless flesh, essence pulled out of people who weren't killed by the initial blow but instead got to experience the immense, overwhelming pain of dying bit by bit as veins and arteries and capillaries were sucked dry-

Trish’s brow furrows, deeper than it already was, her concern multiplying.

“Are you alright?”

Dante blinks, trying to dispel the state that’s come over him.

“Yeah. I’m- fine. It's fine. I was just-" Shocked, overwhelmed, horribly not so much upset as- "-surprised at how fast that happened, I guess. It’s only been a few minutes.” And that he somehow knows. He didn’t think he’d be able to tell when it happened, nor that the Qliphoth would immediately get so many people. He thought it would start with one or two. This…Right now, he’s fairly certain it had just downed at least two dozen. And that’s just the ones whose blood it’s already extracted, or begun to extract. Who’s to say more haven’t been killed and have been left lying there, waiting to be harvested next? Because that’s something the Qliphoth would do. Is going to do, if it hasn’t done it already. Being inside the thing has suddenly given hm a much, much clearer idea of how everything works and he’s not sure if that makes him feel better or worse.

“We should get going,” he rushes, marching toward their destination, not fast enough to reach a jog but fast enough that Trish will have to hustle to keep pace with his longer legs. 

Some more weight is settling on him. It’s so heavy as to be choking. 

But he said he was done thinking these things over. He knew what was coming. He knew. This is- more intense than he was anticipating, but it's not like he didn't know people were going to die. It's fine. What’s done is done. Now it’s time to wait. like Trish said, a few hundred, maybe a couple thousand people will die, and that’s unfortunate, but with how many already kicked the bucket, it won’t take that long. If people are smart, they’ll already be running for the hills. And like he’s said, people die in disasters all the time. This isn’t spectacular. Dante owes them nothing. At this rate, the terror might be over in a week.

They reach the throne room.

Already is it filling with blood. 

“Well that doesn’t seem very efficient,” Dante mutters as he walks up to the throne at the back of the room- and there’s no denying that that’s what the thing is, an amalgamation of vines surrounded by black growth and bulbous features that resemble tar. (That call to mind a different black susbtance, ichor, destruction, the thing he should be destroying, not embracing-)

At the foot of the throne is a berm of sorts, and in it pools the blood of probably somewhere between eight and fifteen people. Dante’s not sure how much of the blood the Qliphoth just harvested went straight to this little puddle and how much is either en route or was directed elsewhere, but it seems like an incredible waste of good material. The blood’s supposed to feed the fruit, right? Why pool on the floor here? Aesthetics? Something some previous ruler of Hell thought would make him look cool as he sat there dominating humanity? Some other stupid thing?

The blood splashes around his boots as Dante takes the seven steps it takes to get from the edge of the berm to the throne, setting Vergil down on the seat.

Vergil’s head lolls to the side when Dante lays him back. His body tilts too, falling towards his right. Dante catches him before he can completely tip over, trying to rearrange him so he’s leaning in a way that will keep him from slumping over until he ends up on the floor.

As he does so, something breezes over him.

Dante’s eyes shoot to the source of the feeling- no, to one of the sources of the feeling, across the multiplying points of sensation, of welcoming touch- and his breath catches at the sight of a good five branch-like tendrils caressing his arms, torso, and even legs. Tracing them to their source reveals they’ve come from behind the throne, and as one trails across Dante’s cheek, he freezes at the wetness of the touch, and the coppery scent that follows. It leaves blood smeared across his cheek.

He swats that one away a moment later.

“No,” he tells it, halfway to a growl. “Not me. Him. Vergil. You’re here for Vergil.” Dante's only here to see things through.

The Qliphoth is a plant. A demonic one, but a plant. It shouldn't be able to understand his words. It shouldn't have the sort of brain or nervous system necessary to think.

Yet it understands him nonetheless, heeding his command, if only in part. A few of the tendrils pull off him, not completely receding but coming to a halt a few inches from his skin, curling away from him as if stopped by some sort of two-inch thick invisible barrier. The one at his cheek is defiant though, stubbornly sliding across his skin to wrap around his neck. It doesn’t choke him- it's not long enough to do that, not far enough around (not bold enough to disobey him of all creatures-)- but it does curl from his left shoulder all the way toward his right, the blood coating it allowing for an easy glide across his skin even as some of the more uneven parts of the branch catch on his turtleneck and coat before tugging free.

Even without words, Dante can feel the sentiment reverberate through his bones. 'We are not here for him. We are here for you.'

But Dante won’t accept that. He’s not the one wasting away by the second. His is not the corpse this effort is trying to revive. To be here for Dante is to be here for Vergil. In serving the one, it will serve both.

“Why are you doing this?” Dante mumbles, the tentacle at his neck pulsing in what he can only assume is some demented attempt at comfort. “Is it because I fed you my blood? He has the same blood too, you know. Or will, once he's fixed. We’re the same, him and I. Can’t you tell?” Are they not?

The tendril pulses once more, tightening its grip on him ever so slightly. It isn’t wrapped all the way around, so it doesn’t really impact his breathing, but it still leaves Dante fairly certain that if it wanted to, it could snap his neck before he could react.

What an amazingly powerful creature. How lucky for all the past kings of Hell that the Qliphoth was content to bestow the power it gathered unto another, rather than gaining some sort of full sentience and using it for itself. 

The tendril pulls away, gliding once more across his cheek and sliding under his collar to caress his neck before it retreats toward the throne, mirroring the action in reverse with Vergil. Vergil's head lolls to the side once more. This time the tendril catches it before Dante can move a finger- or rather, he doesn’t even try, not when he can tell what’s about to happen, not when he knows the Qliphoth's intents and desires- leaving Vergil’s head tilted slightly but not terribly so. It’s only angled a few degrees to the side. But the way the tendril touches Vergil, so gentle and tender, makes him feel a little sick. It was bad enough on him. With Vergil, who’s still unconscious, who hasn’t been roused by the jostling of a car ride or the march up a demon tree or the touch of the tree itself, it feels uncomfortably close. 

Vergil has no say in this. Would he be pleased with what Dante’s done?

The other tendrils reach back out for Dante, catching in his coat. This time he practically rips himself away from them, the branches retreating as if burned from the pulse of power he sent out with the movement.

“Take care of him,” he orders, staring at the tendril sitting on Vergil’s shoulder and resting beneath his chin. He steps away, swallowing as he does so. 

The demon blood had done little to help Vergil. At best, it had kept him from worsening.

But human blood holds more power than demon blood. There's a reason the demons had spent two thousand years throwing themselves at barriers and killing themselves on demon hunters trying to get their old food source back. And for Vergil, whose humanity has been drained from him, replaced with an ichor Dante's best attempts could not combat…

The infusion should be good for him, Dante thinks. Or so he tells himself as the tendrils begin to curl around his brother, tiny roots breaking free from the larger pieces to slip under his skin, Vergil so dry and empty and dead that of the dozen infusion points, not a single leads to a drop of blood.

The Qliphoth will care for him until the fruit is ready. It will keep him alive. It will be good.

Dante gaze lingers on Vergil for a little while. Cements the image in his mind. This is the worst it will ever be. When it's all over, he will compare the Vergil he's saved to the Vergil of now, and he'll be able to say it's all worth it.

When he finally turns, Trish is waiting by the room’s entrance. 

“What now?” she asks.

Dante shrugs. “We wait.”

“How exciting."

Dante shrugs again. “You’re free to go exploring if you’d like. I love me a good party, but I never advertised this trip as my next big bash. Probably won’t be much for us to do while the Qliphoth’s doing its thing. Well, not until the other demons start appearing, at least. Do you know when that’s going to happen?” 

“Based on the stories, it probably already has. Can you not tell?”

Dante takes a moment to spread out his senses as far as they will go, feeling out for anything and everything alive in the tree. 

It’s made harder by the pings of successful harvests by the Qliphoth, already going at a faster rate than he could have imagined. The sudden knowledge that a pack of humans has just been murdered doesn’t particularly help his already unbalanced emotional state, not to mention the annoyance of the distraction of having a sixth- or seventh, he’d call his normal demon senses his sixth sense, or his third- no, not his third eye, never that, not after facing a monster who seemed to pride himself on having it- sense he’s never felt before buzzing in the back of his mind making it hard to concentrate on things which aren’t that. 

But underneath that knowledge, he finds the energy signals of some lesser demons residing within the tree. Probably the empusa Trish mentioned. She’d said they’d be the first ones to come up with the tree, meant to aid in the blood collection process. 

Sure the tree could send out roots to stab people with, and it was clearly already doing so by the uncomfortable pings rattling in Dante’s empty head and echoing uncomfortably through his very bones, but it was more energy efficient for other creatures to expend the energy to find humans and bring their blood back. The empusa weren’t meant to be very intelligent creatures, and their instinct would be to harvest blood, bring it back, and go out again. They were a class of demon who existed to serve. There wasn’t much worry about them going rogue and trying to use it for themselves. They were loyal to the Qliphoth (and the Qliphoth was loyal to Dante-), so despite their low intelligence, they could be allowed to roam free. The Queens Trish had mentioned might complicate things, but that wasn’t a guarantee. The stories only mentioned that the Queens existed, not that they were or weren’t particularly loyal slash obedient to the Qliphoth and the one at its core.

It’s the other demons that could prove problematic. The ones that crawl through the portal, widened by the Qliphoth’s presence, and try to invade the human world for their own purposes. 

Dante has set a hard limit of Red Grave as the full extent of the Qliphoth and the incoming demons’ range. Any who go past that will be taken out by Dante himself. 

(The Qliphoth should be able to protect Vergil in his absence. And Trish will help too. She’s thrown her lot in with them so far, and he doesn’t see any reason for her to leave now.

He'll take care of anything that needs to be taken care of outside of the Qliphoth. Assuming he's ever able to scrounge up the will or desire to leave.)

He understands that some demons should be allowed to roam. The Qliphoth roots will spread through the city, both in offensive and receptive form, and the ones without offensive capabilities will need some sort of way for blood to get to them when they can’t pierce anything themselves. That’s what the other demons will be for. They can kill some humans, soak the ground in blood, and then move on while the roots nearby absorb what blood has been spilled. The empusa can’t bring back everything, after all. They wouldn’t be enough. And some blood must be fresher than what they’ll return with. Blood feeds the tree faster via root than it does the empusa who’ll gorge themselves on it and slowly scuttle back to deposit it in the various fountains that will direct the blood to where it needs to go.

(Trish did not tell him this.

Dante simply knows.)

But not all demons have the empusa's blood harvesting capabilties, and the Qliphoth roots can only suck up so much blood before it goes bad. Letting certain demons out means allowing a meaningless slaughter. Some kill for the fun of it, or in a way that will leave no body- and importantly no blood- behind. Those Dante will have to cull before they can make their way out of the Qliphoth's depths. It'll be like his normal day to day activities, just with a slight ignoring of the giant tree looming above.

“Some have come out to play, yeah. I should probably go check on them.”

Trish’s gaze flickers to the side. “That would be a good idea, yes.” She seems uncomfortable. He feels kind of bad.

Dante’s flickers back to where Vergil is seated. A few of the branches have settled on his limbs, holding him in place, but he doesn’t look settled just yet. He seems more like a doll placed on a chair than a man- a king, bearing a newly-Qliphoth-bestowed crown of thorns he neither asked for nor donned himself- seated upon his throne. 

Trish sighs as she takes her leave. 

The disappointment in the action is palpable. 

And though she’s not his mother- doesn’t look or act like her in any way beyond sharing her body and face- it hits that bit of him that clung to her skirts and begged for her attention all the same.

He lowers himself into the puddle and rests against the the throne, doing his best to ignore the warmth of the blood lapping at his sides as he looks away.