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 something called the Qliphoth?”