Chapter Text
In the morning, after hours of staring at the cracks strewn across the ceiling of Dante’s bedroom, created both by years of invading demons damaging the house’s foundation and months of two brothers’ scuffles rocking the house just the same, Vergil rises and has a crisis over his morning cup of coffee.
(Importantly, he’s having coffee, not tea.
For Dante does not drink tea. He drinks coffee, tomato juice, all manner of alcohol, soda on occasion, and tap water if he’s out of all the rest, but he never did care for tea. Though Vergil may be in the midst of an identity crisis, for the moment he’s chosen to continue on with his little charade while determining next steps, and so sacrificing his normal morning drink is only logical. He may or may not ever finish the bags sitting in the cupboard above the fridge.)
Vergil has not dressed for the day. He rose with the Sun while Dante is known to laze about until noon, so it only makes sense to remain in his sleeping clothes if he’s going to be up and about because on the rare occasions Dante’s insomnia does (did, it’s did, how long will it take before his brain ceases to insert the present tense into sentences which will forevermore be put in past) lead him to rise early, he certainly didn’t put on his day’s finest. He would stumble down the stairs, make himself coffee that didn’t do anything due to their bodies’ natural healing factor outpacing the potential effects of caffeine as it purged the ‘poisonous’ effect of the stimulant, and sit in either the kitchen or his chair until either it was time to open shop or Vergil invited him out for a spar.
The Sun has only just risen, so it’s not time for the first. ‘Vergil’ is dead, so it will never again be time for the second.
So the crisis comes.
Because Vergil, the real Vergil, has come to realize how idiotic an idea this is.
He knows his brother better than he knows anyone else. But that doesn’t mean he knows Dante well, it just means that in his years of traveling through Hell he hasn’t managed to get to know anybody else. He may have a good read on Dante’s personality and he may be his mirror image, but he doesn’t know the history of Dante’s relationships with his friends. There are large gaps in Dante’s past that he never felt on elaborating on during their own jaunt through Hell. If anyone presses him on anything that Dante did not explicitly mention to Vergil, Vergil will be left grasping at straws.
But maybe they won’t. Whatever things Dante refused to speak about likely aren’t things his friends would press him on either. Dante had a habit of deflecting when it came to personal or otherwise undesirable questions, so Vergil can do the same. Refusing to answer unpleasant questions is a very Dante thing to do.
(It’s also a very Vergil thing to do. How convenient is it that in this matter the two line up.)
However, there are other considerations to be had.
Such as the fact that Vergil, for all intents and purposes, does not exist. Not legally.
He and Dante were marked as dead at age eight. Vergil Alighieri has been dead for over thirty years, and neither he nor Dante had ever attempted to rectify that. Tony Redgrave’s identity was one made of a mix of documentation developed by a foster parent and forgeries made my both Morrison and Dante’s old agent, and it’s through that name that Dante established himself. The deed to the shop is in Tony Redgrave’s name, his false birth certificate bears the Redgrave name, his business license, driver’s license, passport, and even the library card Vergil used far more than Dante ever had all bear the name as well. Dante Alighieri- both the original and the man whom their mother had named as such to take full advantage of the name she’d inherited from her parents and the love of the old epics and the poets that followed- never rose from the ashes of their childhood home. As far as Vergil knows, he’s the only one left who knows their last name. He doubts Dante would’ve told Lady or Trish, and he knows from his own conversations with the boy that Nero has no idea what his father’s surname is. With Dante dead, Vergil has a feeling the knowledge will die with him. Him, Vergil. The true Vergil. Not the Dante whose passing will be passed off as his own in Vergil’s desperation and inability to deal with things as he should.
Somehow recalling that fact makes him both furious and numb.
Dante wasn't meant to die before him. Not to something so mundane, to some nameless demon of which they'd never heard and who hadn't even done anything of note. If he was to die, it should've been in a grand battle. It should've been both of them. At worst it would've been a training accident. Without Dante, there's no one good to fight. Without that, Vergil has very little to look forward to. Books and magazines aren't nearly as engaging as a bloody battle with the only demon able to match you. Nero, strong as he is, couldn't keep up when fighting a Vergil who hadn't been exhausted by a long fight with his brother moments prior.
But fate, if extant, is cruel, and Vergil has been left alone in a world that has advanced without him. Vergil has no identity. He has no friends or acquaintances of his own. None that would remember him so many years later. He has no legal identity, no purpose in life, and nothing that is his and solely his. He’s been living in the apartment above Dante’s shop since he returned from Hell and all that is his is Dante’s and vice versa. The only things that are solely his own are materialistic; books, clothes, soaps, teas, and so on. His understanding of the modern world has improved in the time since his return from Hell, but that doesn’t mean he feels as if he’s a part of it, just that when he flounders it’s more discrete. Dante himself didn’t care much for the innovations of the past twenty some odd years since Vergil had fallen into Hell, and though he’d taught Vergil what he’d known, it didn’t stop Nero or Nico from gawking at their ineptitude. It was like the blind leading the blind. Though it worked for the moment, Vergil has a feeling the world may soon be leaving him (as Dante did it) behind. Alone and uninterested, his already tenuous connection to it grows ever weaker.
For all intents and purposes, Vergil exists as an extension of Dante. His independence, though desired, is questionable.
Even Dante’s friends see him as such. To them, he’s someone who’s only allowed to exist with Dante’s supervision. They haven’t forgiven him for what he’s done. Not for the Qliphoth, and especially in the case of Lady, not for the Temen-ni-gru either. He’s heard them arguing with Dante about letting Vergil go anywhere without oversight. Once he overheard Lady chewing Dante out because he’d allowed Vergil to go to and from the library on his own, fighting as if she thought he’d start murdering random innocents with no cause if not under direct supervision for a span of two hours. On the few occasions he’s gone out on missions with only Nero, he was fairly certain Nero had only- or at least mainly- accompanied him because he couldn’t be trusted fighting on his own either, and that the compromise in freeing Dante from his duties was having another member of their family watch him instead.
Vergil’s uncertain whether humiliating or infuriating would be the better descriptor. He isn’t a child that must be constantly watched lest he hurt himself or others. He’s not sitting on the precipice of insanity, one wrong move away from either slaughtering the masses for wronging him or embarking on a journey for ultimate power during which he’d mow down anyone in his way. What he did in the past, he did because he had a reason. He didn’t do it for the fun of it. He has no reason to ever do such a thing again. There’s no need for him to be constantly monitored. He can manage himself.
Yet for all his attempts to convince Dante’s companions otherwise, he’s never managed to sway them. Only Dante himself trusted Vergil enough to let him go as he pleased from time to time. He knew what Vergil would and wouldn’t do. He knew Vergil- and the world- would be fine if left to his own devices on occasion.
(Or maybe Dante was just too tired to act otherwise. He’d spent his whole adult life cleaning up after his brother’s and father’s messes, and maybe he hadn’t bothered to keep Vergil under lock and key because he couldn’t bear the thought of having to clean up after him again. Of having to fight him for the sake of stopping him, rather than for the sake of fighting, once more. They never spoke of such things, but Vergil is well aware of the effect his actions had on Dante and his mental state. Even had it not been obvious from the room he’d walked into as V and from the way Dante had acted since their reunion, he’d been taken aside by both Lady and Trish to drill into him all the ways he’d hurt his brother and what that had led to and it hadn’t been anything pleasant.
For all they’d made sure Dante watched Vergil to prevent him from doing anything terrible, they’d ask Vergil to do the same with Dante. Keep an eye on how much he drinks, they told him. Make sure he’s not stashing bottles as if to hide them. If he’s starting to drift into the habit of napping for hours a day and doing nothing in the hours he’s awake, find a way to get him up. Warn us if he stops paying his bills. Make sure he eats at least twice a day. If he doesn’t bother to turn the jukebox on at least twice in a week, do it for him and try to get him up to choose a song so he’s not just wallowing in despair.
Help him, they’d asked. Keep him well.
And Vergil had.
A pity he couldn’t keep him alive after it all.)
He doubts he’d get a moment of peace if they learned that Vergil survive while Dante died. Ignoring the potential issues of blame- and oh, Vergil is certain they would blame him for Dante’s death, no matter the facts of the matter (which implicate Vergil anyway, regardless of Dante’s insistence upon Vergil being blameless, which Vergil’s sure Dante only insisted upon because he was too nice for his own good)- if they only tolerated Vergil’s presence with Dante’s intervention and supervision, there is no way they’ll give him a moment of peace with Dante out of the picture. With or without Dante being by his side, Dante was always there as a threat. As insurance. Without him? It isn’t even a matter of them being friendly to him; it’s a matter of being allowed to exist at all. Does he think they’ll kill him? Of course not. They’re not capable of that, and they’re not that vitriolic. Much as he may grate on their nerves, he’s not so paranoid nor does he think so little of them as to believe they’d attempt to murder him without second thought. But he’d be a pain for them to manage whether he wants them to or not, and that isn’t an existence he wants to live.
Living as Dante will afford Vergil a freedom he hasn’t had since childhood. The scrutiny he’d be placed under as Vergil is nothing compared to the wellness checks Dante’s friends would perform for him. He lived life as he pleased, with a few manageable interruptions. Vergil living as Vergil would be full of undue monitoring and miserable. It’s for the best for his own sake.
There’s also that factor he already considered of Dante’s friends being upset by his death. So it’s for the best they think Vergil is dead and Dante lives as well.
(He is pointedly ignoring the question of addressing what would happen if they found him out. He does not have an answer to that. He is unsure of how long he can maintain the charade and what sort of blowout will occur when it fails, but those are issues for the future. For now he needs to survive. He will determine his next course of action as it comes.)
As it stands, there is no Vergil without Dante. There is no Vergil that is allowed to survive on his own. There is no Vergil that exists legally. There is no Vergil who has a place in the human world.
If he ran off to Hell, he’s certain his son would pursue him. He’d find a way to open a portal. Given he holds the blood of the one who originally split the worlds, is allied with the human who’d aided in sealing the severance, and would have the aid of a demoness whose knowledge of Hell likely eclipses Vergil’s own, he’s certain Nero would find a way into Hell eventually. In doing so, he’d have to abandon the family he chose to have. He’d risk hurting himself. He would find nothing but loss. If he even survived the trip.
Running to Hell thus isn’t an option. Vergil’s spent more of his life there than the Human World and in a way wonders if it’s more his home than any other he’s had, but he wouldn’t find the peace he desired. Not without harming one he’s sworn to never harm again.
So staying in the Human World is the better option. And since Vergil doesn’t exist- since there are none who’d particularly want him to exist- Vergil won’t. Dante will. It’s as simple as that.
…
It’s an idiotic idea.
…
But it’s the only one he has.
It takes two days for the first call to come in.
In that time, none of Dante’s acquaintances come to visit. Instead Vergil lounges around a shop not meant for him, putting on a facade for an absent audience that drains him for no gain whatsoever. It is both incredibly boring and anxiety inducing. He wasn’t meant to be a performer. That was always Dante’s thing.
Yet as much as he doesn’t think the call is worth his time when the caller spills out her request, he knows Dante would’ve headed over without too much grumbling, so Vergil grabs the Devil Sword Dante- the Devil Sword, he’s just going to call it the Devil Sword, calling it by Dante’s name will remind him of his failure- and heads out to complete it. It should only take two hours at most.
(Unless this is another oddly difficult job in which he finds himself overwhelmed and summarily defeated just as Dante did, this time without any fanfare as a result of dying alone.
Vergil’s feelings on the matter are surprisingly murky.)
The job isn’t by any means difficult.
It does, however, reveal a few potential kinks in Vergil’s plan.
For one, though he may have the Devil Sword, he does not have access to the rest of Dante’s arsenal, which is a not-insignificant issue. The Devil Arms he’d had on him at his death did not fall around his body when he passed. They’d either dissipated or remained within his corpse- Vergil isn’t certain what happened to them, just that he didn’t see them when Dante died and doesn’t currently have them on his person- meaning Vergil did not claim them and does not currently have access to them. Though Dante’s changed his favored arms frequently over the years, Vergil’s found the receipts he’s kept from selling some for cash and seen the collection of the ones that remain in Dante’s basement vault beneath the shop, so ceasing to use his newest arms without reason or evidence as to where they’ve gone would be suspicious.
Then there’s the matter of his guns and summoned swords. Dante did, upon getting his own Devil Sword, begin to use summoned swords akin to the ones Vergil favors. He used a similar ability with Lucifer as well. But he tended to only use them while either Triggered or while using the Devil Sword, whereas Vergil uses his more liberally, which means Vergil typical style won’t do. If he’s to maintain his facade, he’ll either have to cut down on his usage, or increase it gradually as to seem natural. Like he was just getting more used to them and naturally increasing the count over time. Dante instead used guns to supplement his melee attacks, which while not something he’s never done before, is something Vergil isn’t nearly as skilled at doing. He did retrieve Dante’s pistols and the sawed-off shotgun he’d kept when Dante had died though, having brought Dante’s coat with him for sentimental reasons he can’t quite explain, so he at least has access to the guns to start. Since Dante had kept the holsters attached to the interior of the coat, they’d accompanied Vergil back to the shop. He’d brought Ebony and Ivory with him for the sake of appearances during this mission, but hadn’t put them to use for more than a handful of vanity shots when it crossed his mind. Shots which, for some reason, came much more easily to him than they should’ve
The guns aren’t Devil Arms. Not in the traditional sense. They were crafted out of human materials by human hands. They shouldn’t contain any sort of knowledge-bearing soul.
Yet somehow when Vergil uses them, his mind is flooded with knowledge he did not earn, and using them comes as naturally as using the Devil Sword which is a Devil Arm- albeit not fully traditional- and though he’s not as sure with them as Dante would’ve been, he doesn’t struggle as badly as he feels he should. It’s a matter of practice, not knowledge. Even then he feels more practiced than he should. Taking out the shotgun doesn’t fill him with quite as much surety, but he doesn’t feel like a beginner either. He doesn’t feel as lost as he should after having only held one pistol once. Despite all the times he watched Dante in battle, the guns shouldn’t feel as natural as they do in his hands from only watching and not using. It’s strange. Disconcerting.
But maybe he’s not wholly correct about them not being Devil Arms. Maybe they come with imbued knowledge. Maybe his resonance with Dante had passed the knowledge over to him without him being aware of it.
The Yamato, Rebellion, and Force Edge were not made from Demons. That much Vergil knows. He’s never been able to pinpoint what they were made of, nor how they were made, but he knows they were crafted from a different material than the other Devil Arms he’s come across, and as he sends a rainstorm of bullets down at the Assault nipping at his heels, he wonders if maybe they were made into Devil Arms by frequent use imbuing them with enough of their Father’s power to make them into something adjacent. Dante had told Vergil the story of how he obtained Ebony and Ivory; the guns were precious to him, irreplaceable, and had been with him since he was a teenager. The shotgun he’d had since Mallet Island. Maybe the years of use and proximity to Dante had had a similar effect on the guns as Sparda’s use may have had on his trio of swords. It’s impossible to say without knowing the mechanics of either, but it’s the best explanation Vergil can come up with as to why the guns are as powerful as they are and why they come with such knowledge as they do.
They are, he comes to realize at the end of the job, potentially his only option when it comes to ranged attacks.
Because despite their physical appearances having aligned once more, there’s a glaring issue when it comes to demonic energy: color. The bullets of demonic energy Dante and thus Vergil fired from his guns are fast enough as to be imperceptible and avoid this issue entirely, but the summoned swords Vergil favors and that Dante had begun to use are very visible, and, for Vergil, very blue.
Dante, in all he did, was always red. Vergil is not. Nero takes after him in that respect. The second he uses any sort of energy-based attack in front of anyone who knows him and Dante, his deception will be revealed.
…Unless, perhaps, it’s possible to change the color of one’s demonic energy? He doesn’t know. It might be, it might not. For the sake of himself and those who will have to live with the consequences of his actions, he will do everything in his power to find out.
The woman who’d hired him to clear out the old storehouse on the edge of her property doesn’t seem to notice anything is wrong when she gives him the payment he’d asked for, and Vergil considers it a mercy.
Once he’s out of sight he uses Yamato to return to Dante’s grave. He has something to check.
The grave is undisturbed. Good. If Dante’s body had been unearthed and moved without consent as their mother’s had, those who’d done so would find themselves summarily executed. Though he knows Dante wouldn’t approve of the action, there are some disrespects which cannot be excused, however well meaning.
Dante’s energy lingers in the area. In a way, it reminds Vergil of when he’s sleeping. Though he and Dante both keep a tight hold on their energy, it has a way of seeping out when one’s asleep and their guard is ever so slightly lowered.
But Dante is not asleep and there is no excess of energy needing to be reigned in. What’s left is all he will ever have. Lingering remnants of that which has been lost. A reminder. An elegy.
Still. Vergil did not come here to simply reminisce.
Instead he crouches at the headstone, body several feet above where his brother lies, and holds out a hand. He lets his own energy wash over him and out, sending it down into the earth where there may yet be prizes to claim. Several distinct energy signatures react to his prodding. Once he’s locked onto them he pulls.
Several distinct consciousnesses, muffled but still extant, brush against his mind. It’s disorienting. Sickening. How Dante kept a hold of so many distinct entities at once he doesn’t know; even just having Beowulf under his command was more than Vergil had ever wanted to deal with, hence why it was able to slip from his grasp so easily after his second battle with Dante and the ensuing encounter with Arkham. But if he’s to maintain this facade, if he’s to convince anyone he is Dante, then he needs the Devil Arms Dante so loved to flaunt, and so he retrieves them from the one who’d claimed them first and makes them his own.
King Cerberus is pleased with him. His submission was not one he’d originally been pleased about, finding Dante a poor master due to his perception of what made a good king and master, but he’d entered Urizen’s service as the Qliphoth’s guard willingly, and he finds no issue with serving Vergil instead. Cavaliere’s claim to consciousness is questionable. It has a presence but little more. Seeing as it was made from the remnant of Devil Armor fused with an inanimate object, this is of little surprise.
Balrog is somewhat of an issue.
He promised himself to Dante. He gave himself willingly to the one who’d proven himself strong enough to beat him, thinking it was an honor to be in his service. He liked Dante’s character- his loud and boisterous personality- and while Vergil wouldn’t necessarily say Balrog throws a fit about entering his service again, he’s certainly not happy about it. He’s also not happy about sharing space with Beowulf, whom Vergil had added back to his arsenal after Dante pulled the Devil Arm out of his vault following their return from Hell. That much can be easily remedied. Vergil can always store Beowulf back in Dante’s vault upon his return. He’ll miss the arm he found himself getting used to in his time in the Human Realm, but Balrog is similar enough and it’s a sacrifice he’s willing to make. Unfortunately he can already feel the inevitable headache of trying to make sure he uses Dante’s variants of their shared skillset when it comes to wearing Balrog, whose chatter Dante had tolerated but always grated on Vergil’s nerves, but so long as he doesn’t reveal Vergil’s identity to anyone, Vergil can manage. Convincing Balrog to keep quiet in terms of the difference between he and Dante takes a good half hour of arguing, but the demon eventually settles, on the condition that one day he and Vergil be allowed to fight when the time of his initial contract has passed.
That Dante’s contracts could so easily pass to Vergil is at first a surprise, but in the end only follows everything else Vergil has observed over the years. Locks Dante had placed that were meant only to open for him opened in Vergil’s presence. Wards Vergil had placed on his room to keep everyone without express permission out had done absolutely nothing to stop Dante from slamming the door open and barging in. Vergil had beaten Beowulf and converted him into a Devil Arm, but Dante had taken the Devil Arm as his own without issue. For all intents and purposes, magicks seem to regard them as the same being. Why would any other Devil Arm be any different?
With the other weapons out of the way, the last thing to retrieve is the Hat.
Of the myriad weapons in Dante’s arsenal, Dr. Faust is the one Vergil has the least interest in using. Were he not embarking on this journey of impersonation, he’d have happily left it in the ground even had he decided to free the rest.
Unfortunately it’s also the crux of his plan.
So collect it he must, even if doing so takes more effort than he wants to give.
From what Vergil’s seen and Dante had described, Dr. Faust works by converting Red Orbs into usable demonic energy. What orbs Dante didn’t use at Divinity Statues to unlock new techniques he could funnel through the hat’s abilities to achieve results that were, in all honesty, outstanding for a human-made creation. Dante had pestered Vergil more than once to reach out to Nico for a Faust-like creation of his own. Vergil had always rejected the idea. He preferred to keep his energy under his control at all times, hence why he used summoned swords instead of bullets filtered through a gun and why he manifested a copy of the Force Edge to accompany the Yamato rather than looking for a Devil Arm made by another. The idea of putting on a scarf or gloves or hat of his own to supplement his own abilities isn’t appealing to him. It wasn’t when Dante had proposed it, and it isn’t now.
But tasteless as the hat is, it has a benefit he’s seen nowhere else. The singular time Vergil had worn the stupid hat after losing a bet with Dante, he’d discovered that apparently the red of Dr. Faust’s abilities was not, in fact, because Dante’s power was red, but instead because of the conversion factor of the hat itself. Dante had figured it was likely because it used red orbs as fuel, and that that fuel source colored the energy it produced. When Vergil had used Dr. Faust to sweep Dante toward him, the visual representation of his energy hadn’t been merely tinged red or purple. It had been red through and through.
Getting the hat to respond him is the hardest of all. It takes nearly ten minutes of intense focus to manifest it in his hand, by the end of which Vergil very well nearly gives up on his plan entirely. He isn’t going to rob the grave of his own brother for a hat. Wouldn’t deface it for any cause.
Yet in the end it materializes in his hand just the same as the others, and donning it before throwing it for a few hat tricks reveals red energy, same as before.
Yes, Vergil thinks, this will do quite nicely. He’ll need to devise a way to get all of his energy to gain a red tinge- his tricks, summoned swords he may still use, platforms to jump from, various slashes he knows are accompanied by his energy, and so on- but he has a starting point, and it’s better than where he was this morning.
He can do this.
He will do this.
(He already is and he can’t go back.)