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It was all Vergil's fault.
Honestly! It was. One moment the two of them had been all-out weed-whacking those roots they said they would cut, when in the next he found himself somewhere in the dirt. He could only faceplant so many times before the novelty of it wore off. Besides, earthworms tasted horrible. Whoever suggested they are in any way similar to noodles has lost it a long time ago.
He sat up to see where exactly his dear brother had sent him. Yamato and those portals were a thing, and this thing was a logistical and spatial headache to think about. By the looks of his surroundings, Dante was sure he wasn't anywhere near a city. There were trees, and grass, and trees and he could make out the glow of what's possibly a campfire to his left, and has anyone mentioned those trees already? Very well. He was in a forest somewhere in bumfuck nowhere, right between I'm lost and send help.
The air smelled weird. It wasn't the first time he had camped outside, but something out there rubbed his nose the wrong way. There was a strange trace of iron on his tongue, although his mind was too dazzled to figure out where he smelled that before. The sulfuric note likely came from himself. The netherworld tended to rub off on whatever ended up down there and sooner or later even the strongest perfume had to surrender to the stink of the demon world. Vergil had likely enchanted his cologne to get it to stick for as long as it had, and wasn't that just a Vergil thing to do? Just like it was so typically his very mature big brother to send him on a trip through reality. Dante wanted to scream.
Someone to his right did that for him, unfortunately.
His head whipped around to see a human dressed in what was likely a toga or something. That's what these wrap-around towel things were called? He groaned. A frat party? Had he crashed into some college campus or something? He hoped not. Those tended to sue and win court cases and he was in too much debt already to deal with that on top of everything else.
The guy pulled a sword from somewhere on his back and pointed at something behind Dante. Or, well, rather at something partially underneath Dante. A glance down revealed that he had crashed into some poor demon when he had made his entrance and the critter was knocked out. He was just casually sitting on what felt like a wing as if the big bug was a lawn chair. With how not even a single muscle was twitching it was obvious that this one wouldn't be waking up for at least a month or two. First hand experience with demonic comas was actually pretty useful. Who would have thought?
Dante shrugged. Ah, one less to worry about. He rolled off the downed devil and went over to give the human a friendly pat on his back.
"Who are you, warrior?"
Well shit, that language was ancient Latin and the only reason he could understand it was his demonic ancestry. So, Vergil hadn't just sent him through space but also through time. He wasn't really sure how to go home. Phones weren't invented yet, and neither was mail. Smoke signals didn't sound too appealing either, but Dante knew he had to find some way back home. His brand of luck meant he would cause one massive paradox and break the timeline if he so much as sneezed.
Right. The guy still wanted his answer.
"For now? I'm a friend, but I'm afraid I can't stay much longer. I've got a family to get back to who's going to skin me alive if I don't make it before dinner."
Dante felt his mouth twitch into a smile. Well, Nero wouldn't skin him. Probably…? But Vergil would fold him like an origami crane and then fill his boots with glass shards... if Lady didn't strangle him first. He better get back soon. He missed them already. Maybe that was why his voice nearly cracked at the word "family".
"Hold! Warrior, please!" the guy went down on his knees and bowed his head low, "my people are dying. Demons are ravaging our home. I beg you, noble one, help us. Aid my people and we will see to it that you return home safely."
"I don't care. I don't think you can send me home anyway. It's pretty far away."
"Anything, noble one. I beg you."
Dante had an image to uphold. He couldn't show his bleeding heart to people, much less strangers. There are enough who would use it against him, or worse, if they knew this particular altruistic weakness of his. So what if he used a trick coin? It felt nice to help others. It felt nice to be even a little bit like the legendary knight he once called his father, and who he had both feared and adored as a child. It felt nice to pay back his mother's death in blood. It felt more than amazing to be in control of his life for once, to not hide away as the monsters played rough outside.
The decision was made before his brain could stop him. He just outright refused to show that softer side of him to most people who needed help.
"Yeah, okay. Fine. Let's see what we're dealing with here. We make this quick and then you're going to hit the road."
The man looked at him with a confused frown and a raised brow, which was a hilarious combination. Modern slang didn't do well in what was likely some measly years BC. Dante didn't care much.
He cast a glance back to see which demon he had landed on. Some pity found its way into his chest when he noticed the crater they had both made together. Then his blood froze solid and hellfire ripped him apart because the poor bastard he just knocked out was his own father.
There laid the legendary dark knight Sparda, beaten up by his own offspring from 2000 years in the future. Daddy was smashed into the dirt like an overrun cockroach. By the looks of it the old bug was in full infernal armor and had his fleshy spine of a sword in his hand. The Sparda was a freaky thing on a normal day. Seeing it wedged awkwardly between a tree root and his dad's right wing looked just goofy.
It did make Dante frown though, and that was never a good sign. 2000 years in the past, there should have been a rebellion against Mundus happening, but by the looks of it Sparda was still the ever so loyal general. The demon of death, or whatever Vergil had called him once or twice… and he was in a teeny weeny tiny coma. Now that wouldn't do. Someone had to start an uprising and ruin the Emperor's next few millennia before time collapsed into itself.
With a sigh Dante brushed his hair back and picked up the Sparda from where it was stuck. The sword recognized his blood, hissed twice! and went dormant. The confused Force Edge let itself be wielded by him very begrudgingly, but it would be good enough. He turned around to face the man from before to offer him what he hoped was a friendly smile. He wasn't good at this but if he was going to fail he would have some fun doing it.
"You can call me Sparda, nice to meet'cha."
He hoped his dad wouldn't be too mad about this once he woke up. Seriously, Vergil would have been a much better choice to play pretend since the guy was a carbon copy of their father, or at least what they both remembered him as. Details went fuzzy after years of abandonment and traumatic life-changing crisises. Dante wasn't sure why it always had to be himself in these situations, but he had learned a long time ago that complaining only ever led to more debt, heartbreak and maybe some unexpected problems later. If he could at least avoid one of these, that would make his day.
This would likely come and bite him but what else could he do? He'd just sub for his dad for a little bit, maybe get to beat Mundus's ugly mug again, and then return to his own time once pops had recovered. He was still breathing, fortunately. Death by Dante was as common to demons as the flu was among humans, but he really needed his father's past-self to be alive for obvious reasons. His point was; there was a glimmer of hope.
"Warrior Sparda, this demon you have slain–" the guy said but Dante cut him off, already pissed that he had to play pretend.
"That one won't bother anyone again. He's not dead, yet, but he's gotten a serious beating. He'll learn from it. Now, what was that about a demon invasion?"
Dante wasn't sure how one was to start a rebellion, but he knew how to throw a party. He hoped the difference between both wasn't too big, or that the time-space continuum wouldn't take too big of a hit from this.
And, well, if it did then it was all Vergil's fault anyway.
—
Living in Anno whatever BC was not much different from what Dante was used to. The toilets didn't flush, there was no electricity anyway and the local demon population was as dense and vicious as always. The only thing that was really all that different was that pizza hadn't been invented yet and that drove Dante up some walls. If he was a bit more dramatic and a little harsher during combat then it was because of his withdrawal symptoms. Naturally there weren't any strawberry sundaes around either, much to his dismay. The empusa paid for it whenever he got his hands on one. The joy of misplaced aggression!
The humans who had declared him to be their savior and knight in dark armor sent him some odd looks every now and then. Being a very pale, white haired man with a coat in faded and dusty red of all things made sure he stood out among the linen-clad Greeks. Or were they Romans? He never really bothered with history before. Dante was more of a fiction fantasy type of guy if he decided to read an actual novel. Still, the staring was a bit uncomfortable. Okay, fine, yes maybe his coat wasn't as red as it used to be, but it was still a dot of color in a sea of beige-to-boring around him. Too long didn't read; he stood out in the crowd.
Assuming his father's demonic form was both nostalgic and a pain in his ass. He's done it before to beat Mundus just out of sheer spite, but that had been one battle. This was different. Now he was expected to actually play the part and do it convincingly enough to fool the devils that knew the real Sparda up-close and personal. Pulling the form from the sword strapped to his back and forcing it on his own body left him sore and irritated. It wasn't his shape. His bones and muscles let him know that every night he was allowed to shift back. The humans around him wrote his foul mood off as just him being a demon thankfully.
Vergil was wearing Sparda's human face so easily all the time. Dante on the other hand felt like he was suffocating in his father's scales.
He groaned from his perch up in a tree. It came out more like a hiss but the people below him didn't seem to mind. Some looked up with curiosity. They had started to basically worship him after he had minced his way through a few lesser demons and it was beginning to creep him out. This was turning into a Fortuna situation. Knowing his own luck, Dante had likely landed on that twice damned island. He really didn't want to know, for his own sanity. Italics alone didn't do his irritation justice so I might as well go with a big bold, no.
However, they still needed his help and he couldn't turn around and just leave them be as long as daddy dearest was still knocked out. Unfortunately, he also couldn't be everywhere. Dante wrecked his brain to think of what his dad had done in this situation. Training them seemed like the logical choice, but his style of fighting didn't mesh well with their archaic weapons. How was he supposed to teach a guy how to kill when said guy thought his gun was a magical artifact? Which left the devil sword. Unfortunately the Sparda was terrifying and at least as big as some of the warriors. Force Edge wasn't much better either. The sword hated its sealed form as much as Dante hated his little masquerade.
"Baby steps." he mumbled to himself.
Hope dies last.
But it was definitely dying. The messily doodled sketches of a certain katana that he had stashed in his coat pocket told him as much. It wasn't like a bunch of ancient people who have never even seen a katana before could help him make one.
With a huff he jumped down from his tree and waved the people closest to him over. His father's form still alien and wrong on him, he swallowed the feelings that he just didn't want to deal with, and got to work.
"Get everybody on the field. I'm going to show you how to do this properly before you lose any more limbs."
Focusing on the shining eyes of the grateful crowd made him almost forget that the shadow he was casting wasn't his own.
—
Fighting demons he had beaten into submission in his own time again was strange. They had usually barked at him some " son of Sparda" nonsense and never bothered to use his name anyway, so having them call him by his father's own wasn't too weird anymore. Having them ask him things probably only Vergil knew jack shit about was another. And yet, every time he botched an answer or stumbled through a conversation, the demons just laughed it off as if it were normal and returned right back to fighting him.
He eventually pinned one of the more humanoid ones down and just asked bluntly.
"You've always been a scatterbrained fool, Sparda. How one such as you managed to climb the ranks is still baffling half of the underworld."
Which didn't match up with the noble and composed image he had in his head. His father had always been in control. He was calculating, a strategist with not a single hole in his armor. Dante should have given himself away during the first fight, and yet there he stood, confused enough to let the demon he had interrogated escape. He could have sworn the bastard was laughing at him as he scuttled back to hell.
After that encounter Dante had become desperate. Two weeks. He had been at it for two weeks already, and by the time the third rolled around, he was ready to gamble. His fighting style switched from the stiff imitation of his father and Vergil back to his own stylish playfulness. He even threw in a dance move or two that had the peanut gallery bedazzled. Human and demon alike, that was.
Then the biggest test of them all came walking in. Modeus. They have only met once before but Dante knew this was his father's trainee and closest thing to a friend Sparda had at the time. If anyone could sniff him out it was Modeus. The few blurred memories of his father that he had left to work with could not possibly be enough to fool the one devil closest to the real Sparda.
So he tensed when the demon walked up to him and put a clawed hand on his shoulder. Modeus threw him a long look that searched for something in his face that Dante knew wouldn't be there because he was only pretending, and he was so screwed! But the inevitable collapse of his act didn't come. There was no yelling or accusations at all. Weirder even: Modeus was smiling at him.
He didn't believe Modeus would actually say, "I'm glad to see you are feeling better, M'lord. I missed how you can turn a mere battle into a spectacle!"
At Dante's stunned silence Modeus continued, "I am glad you honor our promise and live true to your aspiration."
"Aspiration…?"
A smile, so strange for a devil, and Modeus was walking past him with a soft laugh and a shaking head.
And that was when Dante realized that maybe, just maybe, he was more like his father than any of them had ever realized. Or, perhaps, that even legendary dark knights were young and foolish once.
—
Dante had been pretending to be his own father for about two months when the real deal finally showed up again. Sleeping beauty looked like hell-sludge roasted in a microwave after it got spat out by misery and pain, but Dante was just glad to see him up and walking. If he weren't a master of putting up a pokerface he'd probably resemble a Disney princess on crack then and there.
"I assume you are the root of my headache?" Sparda grumbled.
It was a strange sight. Sparda in his human form, dark armor and his hair a wild mane that could rival Dante's Saturday morning hangover hairstyle. Meanwhile there was Dante who had borrowed Sparda's demonic form and shadow. Having both stare at each other in the moonlight above the human city he had helped to protect was more than awkward.
The silence between both was even more so.
"Aren't you going to defend yourself?" Sparda teased with a grin, "what have you done in my name, nestling?"
"Hey, I'm not a kid."
"Ah, so he does speak. I was beginning to think he could not."
Dante huffed and let his borrowed wings flare out in irritation. Sparda noticed and shook his head. The action was as familiar to him as it was unfamiliar to Dante, who didn't even realize he was unconsciously doing it.
"Since you have my sword and my face I'm guessing you are the one who knocked me out, dragged me into a cave and hid my unconscious body in a cocoon of human-made cloth?"
"Couldn't leave you out there, obviously, and it wasn't like this was planned. If Verge hadn't sent me here I wouldn't have crashed into you."
"So this" Sparda gestured vaguely at Dante, "is all because…?"
Uncomfortable and somewhat embarrassed to stand before his dad like that again, – with his hand in the cookie jar and a broken chair right behind him – Dante let his borrowed devil trigger drop and faced his father as the man nature intended him to be. The look of disbelief that earned him was almost worth it.
"Listen, I can't explain. Don't even ask. I covered for you because you're important and you need to do important things. Me? I just wanna go home."
Sparda dropped the sneer and the teasing glimmer in his eyes went out. Instead he looked at Dante with something like awe.
"If that's it then let's get to work. I believe I know of a way to return you to your proper place and time."
Dante looked at his future-father with wide eyes, "How did you–?!"
"You believe I wouldn't recognize my own kin? Even though you don't exist yet, I see a son before me and as a demon my future nestling has top priority."
There was a strange feeling in Dante's chest that he couldn't place at all.
—
After so much time in Sparda's form, his own devil trigger felt weird. While he could access his more lithe in-between form if he focused enough, his true form seemed to be the one to come more naturally to him. He was a sinner, who was he trying to fool? It was only right his body reflected that. Unfortunately it scared the shit out of the humans he had trained, who hurried to hide behind a very amused Sparda whenever the opportunity was there.
The only saving grace were the curved horns he got so used to, and the double set of wings were close enough to the bug wings of his father to be manageable. Outside of combat he never bothered with this before his trip through time. Sparda made it look so easy! Be it casual conversation, just domestic everyday tasks, or even full blown all-out combat against Mundus and his army; Sparda swept through it with grace and style. Dante found himself copying those moves after a few days. To the unnamed third party watching the two, it was obvious how the elder devil was teaching his oblivious son.
They had eventually reached a point where both could agree that the humans were ready to defend themselves, which gave them some free time to do whatever they needed to do. Sparda was beginning to plan his final battle against the emperor whenever Dante was busy looking for a way home. He didn't want his son to be involved in that and possibly be in danger because of him, not that Dante knew that bit of course. However the two always made sure to meet up each night and just share a moment or two before Dante went to hit the hay. Sparda insisted on standing guard and watching over him as he curled up to sleep.
"I'll have to admit I expected much worse when I first saw you. This is…"
Dante had already tuned out. He didn't need to hear his dad scold him like some kid. These memories would actually stick with him and he would rather not put more baggage and daddy issues on his already massive pile.
"... To think they would even be capable of it! I had no idea. Nestling of mine, you did well."
"Uh wha-?"
"Humans have interested me for quite a while now. They just create stories out of nothing! Fantastic tales that contradict reality at times, and they tell so many of those around their pathetic little campfires. I think it's fascinating."
It was adorable how passionate the legendary dark knight could be if he wanted to. Dante never knew his dad had his own wild phase when he was basically the demon equivalent of his own age. Or that Sparda was a nerd for romcom fantasy stories and camping trips. It did explain his future fondness for half-burned marshmallow-toast though.
"Hmm I guess I like a good fantasy novel every now and then too..?"
But Sparda was already rambling on again, "This only proves there is more to them than the squishy flesh hanging on bone. To see them fight like demons, and then beat them too! Ha!"
An arm wrapped around his head and pulled a horn close until father and son felt their foreheads touch.
"I am happy to know I will have a son who fills me with nothing but pride one day. I can not wait to meet you and your brother properly."
Everything else that happened after that was a blur. The next few days of his life those little words just kept playing over and over in his head, until they had etched themselves into his very soul. His dad was proud of him. He wasn't sure what to feel so he felt everything at once. The whole palette of emotions just rushed through him like a tsunami. Vergil was the approaching storm, but Dante learned to rock this hurricane.
It was bliss.
Then Sparda pulled the newly forged Yamato out, gave him one last hug, and pushed Dante through a portal back into his own time.
Just like Vergil, alright.
—
When Dante woke up he was in his bathtub, swimming in half melted ice cubes and soggy clothes. He pulled himself out of the water and heated up his core to dry himself. His dad had shown him what some demonic energy could do at home, he wasn't about to let that knowledge go to waste. The little display of power had both Nero and Vergil storming into the room in record time.
"You're okay, old man!"
Suddenly Dante found himself with both arms full of Nero. He couldn't even complain about the unwanted title of endearment. Indeed the kid was trying to skin him alive by clawing into his back like he was about to vanish. For all he knew his nephew might be thinking along those lines.
"Why am I in an ice bath?"
Vergil answered this time, "You decided to wander into one of my portals. It collapsed and dropped you on the roof a few hours later. Indecent, and on fire if I may add."
Wandering into and getting thrown in one are two different things, don't 'cha think, Verge?
Out loud Dante huffed, "Huh. How long have I been gone?"
"As I said before, a few hours. Dante, use your ears or I shall cut them off."
He wanted to bite back but his father's words kept playing in his head. A son he was proud of, huh? Vergil could say whatever he wanted, nothing could take that from him now. Every time he would look at his brother and see that echo of Sparda in him he would remember. How could he be mad if that wave of warm and fuzzy kept coming back? He knew he looked like an idiot but quite frankly he didn't care.
"You are still sick. Get back in the tub."
Dante felt his smile grow wider and laughter bubbled up from his chest.
"Brother, heed my final warning. Back into the tub with you. Now!"
Vergil couldn't even mutter another word before he got ambushed by Dante and pulled into a hug. Nero got grabbed on the way too. The sneaky brat had tried to run away while the twins had been busy with each other. It just wouldn't do to leave the kid out of what was forced family bonding time.
It may have all been Vergil's fault, but in the end that trip had been pretty fun. What was it? The memories we made on the road are what matter the most? Yeah something like that. Looking at Nero most of the best things in his life were Vergil's fault, if he thought about it really hard.