Devil May Cry Writings

Posted: April 7th, 2024

Saw this reply from @sadisticsparda on my other post and decided I wanted to go into this a little bit! Putting this below a cut because it got long.

The basic idea behind this is that Vergil doesn't actually want to kill Dante in DMC3- he just needs Dante out of the way for a little while so he can accomplish what he's set out to do.

What Vergil wants is power...to protect himself and the things that are important to him*. So putting two and two together, you could say that Vergil's actions in DMC3 are in part to help protect Dante, just in a way that Dante doesn't approve of (and he doesn't tell Dante this because Just Stubborn Vergil Things™). Based on both DMC3 and the DMC3 Manga we know Vergil met Dante a year prior to the game, but obviously didn't kill him even though he almost definitely could have, given Vergil has unlocked his demonic powers while Dante hasn't for the most part. This is part of why I'd say Vergil goes a little soft on Dante and might want to protect him too. He could've killed Dante for the amulet or our of hate) pre-DMC3 but didn't, which shows he cares about Dante at least a little bit.

Even in DMC5, when V goes on about how if Dante had never existed (implied things would be better for V/Vergil) and raises the Devil Sword Sparda to kill Dante...he doesn't actually stab him. He stabs the dirt besides him, and afterwards says he just did it to wake Dante up. He had the perfect opportunity to kill Dante, even after Dante had "killed" him once in DMC1, but he didn't do it. So I think his feelings about Dante are very complex, where he both does and doesn't really hate Dante, but could never actually bring himself to kill him.

Instead, I read Vergil as wanting to beat Dante and prove he's better, but not really wanting to kill him. There's also a conversation at the end of Visions of V where V asks Child Vergil (memory) if he hates fighting Dante, but Child Vergil responds that he likes it. V then tells Child Vergil to go fight Dante and prove he (Vergil) is stronger. Which to me, supports the theory that Vergil just wants to fight Dante, not kill, because fighting is what's fun. See below for more on this.

In Visions of V, while we don't see Vergil take on a demonic Trigger, he does unlock his demonic power/extreme healing factor after getting attacked outside the manor as a kid. Specifically, he was stabbed through the chest (and summoned up Yamato, though that didn't stab him, just came to him). Since Vergil then slaughters the demons who attacked him, you can then put this together: get mortally wounded/stabbed through chest -> unlock amazing power -> never get that hurt again.

Putting all of that together, you get this.

-> Vergil wants power to protect himself and that which is important to him

> He knows that getting mortally wounded/stabbed gave him his first power boost, and unlocked his Trigger

-> When he fights Dante he realizes Dante doesn't have his Trigger

-> Vergil wants Dante to be able to protect himself (or wants Dante to be more fun to fight), so he'll give Dante the (stabbing) boost he needs

-> Now Dante will be able to fend for himself while Vergil is gaining the rest of his power (and/or for the times they aren't together and Vergil isn't there to protect him, like during the Manor Fire/Attack)

Now, is this giving Vergil a lot of good guy credit? Yeah. Vergil also tried to kill Arkham and failed, so it could be that he was legitimately trying to kill Dante but got cocky and didn't finish the job. Maybe he didn't think Dante would be able his demon powers/Trigger like Vergil did. Maybe Dante surviving by any means just didn't cross his mind. Because sure, Vergil puts on this high and mighty front, but sometimes he doesn't really think things through all the way, or doesn't have as much figured out as he thinks he does (ex. the famous "Why isn't this working!" scene). So, Dante living could definitely have been an accident/mistake on Vergil's part.

But I like reading Vergil as someone who does care about his brother (at least as of DMC3). He just needs Dante to get out of his way while he's trying to accomplish his goals. If Vergil can't actually get Dante to leave, then unlocking Dante's Trigger will at least keep him from getting himself killed by the occupants the Temen-ni-gru, so then Vergil won't have to worry about Dante dying before Vergil has achieved his goal. Maybe Dante will see reason once Vergil has gotten the power he desires. Or maybe Vergil kniws he won't but can't bring himself to kill his brother anyway. Who knows.

The alternate take on Vergil unlocking Dante's Trigger on purpose that I sort of mentioned above is that since Vergil thinks it's fun to fight Dante, maybe he did it not so Dante could protect himself, but so Dante would put up a better fight. Fights aren't fun when they're one sided, so maybe Vergil wanted to put them on a level playing field. That would both make the fight more fun since Dante would put up more of a challenge, and mean Vergil's victory was even better/more legitimate since he would prove he was the stronger one even when they both had access to their full demonic strength. I personally like thinking Vergil stabbed Dante to unlock his Trigger for both the Protection and the Better Fight reasons.

Anyway, yeah! That's the idea: Vergil knew getting stabbed unlocked his powers, so he stabbed Dante to unlock Dante's (whether to protect Dante or to make fighting Dante more fun). That or he's just bad at murdering people. We have evidence of that in the same game. But I think the first theory is more fun.

*my idea that Vergil wanting power in order to protect that which is dear to him comes from my interpretation of this quote from DMC3- "Might controls everything, and without strength you cannot protect anything, let alone yourself." So I see it as Vergil wanting power to protect himself so he'll never be hurt again, but also extend that to the other things he cares about. Is it a bit of a stretch? Maybe. But I'll stretch it anyway! Similarly, in Visions of V, V/kid Vergil both say that they wanted to be protected, which is less of a "see Vergil wants to protect others/Dante" thing, but still goes into how protection is important to him.

EDIT: I want to add this on from a reblog of mine!

#I definitely don't think Vergil was trying to kill Dante#Though that doesn't necessarily mean he was trying to unlock his trigger?#He could've been just lashing out in anger#or maybe both#But I definitely don't think that stab had any killing intent whatsoever#Devil May Cry#DMC#Vergil DMC#Dante DMC via @dmc-questions-anon

Honestly yeah. Looking back at this I realize I glossed over that point a lot, but I also think it's very likely that Vergil wasn't trying to kill Dante or unlock his Trigger, he was just trying to get Dante out of the way and figured stabbing him was a good enough way to go about it. The whole unlocking Dante's Trigger was just a(n in)convenient side effect.

So basically, Yes! It could definitely be (and tbf, the canon explanation probably is) that Vergil stabbed Dante because he was mad and wanted Dante out of his hair, and the whole potentially unlocking a Trigger thing didn't even cross his mind. As of DMC3 he hasn't forgiven Dante for what happened when they were kids, so stabbing Dante would both get Dante out of his hair for a little while, and also be a way of getting back at him for everything he's done (for being the one Eva chose). It just so happens that his attempt ends up backfiring when Dante immediately heals and comes back stronger.

I just find the Trigger thing fun 😅😁

REBLOG:

#I definitely don't think Vergil was trying to kill Dante#Though that doesn't necessarily mean he was trying to unlock his trigger?#He could've been just lashing out in anger#or maybe both#But I definitely don't think that stab had any killing intent whatsoever#Devil May Cry#DMC#Vergil DMC#Dante DMC via @dmc-questions-anon

Honestly yeah. Looking back at this I realize I glossed over that point a lot, but I also think it's very likely that Vergil wasn't trying to kill Dante or unlock his Trigger, he was just trying to get Dante out of the way and figured stabbing him was a good enough way to go about it. The whole unlocking Dante's Trigger was just a(n in)convenient side effect.

So basically, yeah it could definitely be (and tbf, the canon explanation probably is) that Vergil stabbed Dante because he was mad and wanted Dante out of his hair, and the whole potentially unlocking a Trigger thing didn't even cross his mind. As of DMC3 he hasn't forgiven Dante for what happened when they were kids, so stabbing Dante would both get Dante out of his hair for a little while, and also be a way of getting back at him for everything he's done (for being the one Eva chose). It just so happens that his attempt ends up backfiring when Dante immediately heals and comes back stronger.

#so yeah i think the intended canon is that Vergil stabbed Dante without the intent to kill but with the intent to temporarily stop him #but since vergil doesn't always think things through he didn't consider the fact that that might awaken dante's trigger #my reading that he unlocked dante's trigger intentionally is DEFINITELY a stretch toward me liking to read the brothers as more friendly #but overall my idea of what canon meant for us to interpret is usually #vergil didn't mean to kill dante but wanted to stop him and the trigger was coincidence/he didn't factor that in #over -> vergil wanted to unlock dante's trigger either for a better fight. to protect dante. or to have a strong companion #over -> vergil wanted to kill dante (i sincerely don't think he did)

Back to top!

Posted: June 14th, 2024

I like to think that Dante and Vergil are basically made up of four halves of the same two souls, mixed and matched to make two people.

The idea is that in the womb, both a human and demon soul tried to develop, but since one being couldn't contain two souls, it split into two, resulting in twins. Yet since the genetic material was also made of both sides, rather than one twin getting the human soul and the other getting the demon soul, instead the souls themselves split in two, with each twin getting half of one. One half demon, one half human. By the time Dante and Vergil were born, the two half-souls each twin had had merged into single souls, so essentially they each have one whole soul, but those souls are blends of two half souls and match each other at that.

It ends up creating some interesting effects. Blood magic is something that sometimes works for both members of a set of identical twins- being most effective closest to birth and often lessening in effectiveness with age- but there are also magicks which resonate with the soul instead, and thus don't work for identical twins, who normally have independent souls despite shared blood.

Except they do for Dante and Vergil. Because even though they're separate people and should have different souls, they register as being the same.

Because they are, in a way. Two base souls, four identical halves, two once-identical people. With pure humans, the soul doesn't develop until much later in gestation, long after the zygote has split in two. This means that human twins have separate souls despite shared blood. But add a demon into the mix and things get funky, the soul beginning to develop almost instantly after conception. And while Dante and Vergil may have diverged appearance-wise with age and differences in life experience, their souls stay the same. So soul magic which should only work on an individual level works on both, which can be both a boon and bane. It all depends on the context.

[This is perfect for both fluff (Vergil can get into Dante's locked rooms because the seals think he's Dante) and angst (a spell meant to trap one either successfully traps the other, or manages to get both, pleasantly surprising the one who set it and proving bad for our protagonists who mean to fight them). Context!]

Back to top!

Posted: September 20th, 2024

I know Dante and Vergil are half human, half demon, but I like to think that they still struggle more with giving into demonic desires/instincts because of how much stronger demonic desires are compared to human ones.

Most of the time, base human instincts are like a whisper. There are things they do unconsciously of course, but those conscious desires themselves are often more like suggestions than orders. Demonic instincts, on the other hand, are like an unignorable scream. They're loud, they're frequent, and they beg to be listened to. So yes, you could say Dante and Vergil's demonic instincts might be halved, but when you halve an ear-splitting scream, you still get yelling or at least a raised voice. When you halve a whisper, you hardly have a breath. So even if they're only half demon, that doesn't mean it's an equal half when it comes to instincts and desires. It just means those instincts/desires are less strong than a full demon's.

I also like to think that in general, demons tend to feel in extremes. Their feelings don't generally align with common human emotions- especially not pleasant ones like love or happiness, feeling something more akin to satisfaction or pride for the latter- but when they feel, they feel. Their lives are intense ones. Sky high rage, frustration, a sense of betrayal, purpose... Humans feel those thing too, of course, but I'd like to imagine that humans experience much more of a sliding scale in their daily lives. Yes, humans CAN feel extreme rage, just as they can feel extreme happiness, but they tend to go through different levels of emotion rather than hopping from 0 to 100 like demons tend to do. They'll start at a 15, slide up to a 50, then descend to a 30 in a matter of minutes. Most humans exist in the middle ranges for most of their day-to-day existence. Demons on the other hand can also feel a 30 or 50 or 70 or so on, but that's not something that comes as naturally to them. Their daily existence is one that flips between extremes. Older demons like Sparda tend to have a better grip on their emotions, but that's something that comes with power and lived experience. An artificial demon like Trish does too, because her existence itself isn't quite as extreme; being a manufactured being, she's better able to keep a level head. That and they both want to emulate humanity to some extent, which helps them keep cool.

So what you end up with is a pair of campion who, especially in Dante's case, tend to feel more demonic than human because their demon half is just plain stronger. Having a 50-50 split of blood does not mean they have a 50-50 split of habits or desires.

(And an extension of this would be the idea that at times their demonic halves only get stronger because of the human blood in them. Demons feed on humans and human blood can empower demons, so by having a constant supply of it, they're constantly running on a bit of a high. For them it's just standard, but it does end up meaning their demonic sides end up stronger than they should be even considering the 50-50 split and the fact that demonic instincts should be stronger in the first place. It's what happens when you indulge; when you grant yourself that first indulgence, your mind learns to want or need that indulgence, and even of you stop, it'll always think back to it, like an addiction.)

Back to top!

Posted: April 7th, 2024

The first time Dante ever held a knife to his own hand- blade hovering over skin as his mind went blank-yet-full with the weight of everything he'd done- was after Vergil's fall. 

It wasn't his fault. Not totally, at least. When Vergil had cut him that last time, as gravity claimed him and pulled him far, far, too-far away from Dante and down into the abyss from which he'd never return, the kiss of Yamato had left a scar that lasted far longer than any other mark Dante had ever been dealt, save the twin marks (one mark, they merged, really, the larger one from Rebellion and the smaller, pinker bit in the center that he knew had to have been a reminder from the Yamato because Vergil never did things by halves and just had to stab him through the heart twice over) on his chest. It was a small thing all things considered; Yamato was a thin blade, the opposite of the blocky thing that was Rebellion, so the mark it left was only a centimeter or so thick even if it went from one edge of his palm to the other. Something that would be unremarkable to any other demon hunter. But it was a scar, and Dante never scarred.

The thing on his chest didn't count- he'd got it at the same time, and that had nearly- actually- nearly killed him, so of course that would scar. It was only right. But his hand? It hadn't been that deep. He'd been cut deeper. But scar it did. And he couldn't pull his eyes away.

Whenever he had enough downtime to pull off his glove and stare at that perfect line on his hand, he couldn't help but fixate on the thing. At the silvery-pink reminder of his failure. Of his isolation. Of his being part of the other.

Those first few days Dante had only glanced at it to check whether it was still there, hoping he'd wake up one morning and find it was gone. Sure some people thought scars were cool, and the one on Lady's face gave her this snazzy, rugged look, but he wasn't that into them to be honest, and a little scar on the hand wasn't cool at all. A scar on the face? Showed you'd survived something that could've taken out an eye, or even killed you. A scar on the hand? Maybe it would be cooler if it was closer to his fingers, like he'd almost had them lopped off, but his was in the center and boring. He didn't need it. Didn't want it either.

(After all, who wanted a constant reminder that they'd failed? That they'd been too slow? That they'd hesitated in a moment when they couldn't afford it and had lost something that could never be replaced?)

Besides, if anyone ever asked about it, how was he supposed to explain it? ‘Oh yeah, this? Got it when my brother raised a demon tower, fought me in Hell, and then decided to jump off a cliff when I didn't want to give him our mommy's necklace.' He'd probably off himself first. 

(Or- off the one who'd asked, that dark part of himself whispered. Suggested. Hungered.

It had gotten louder since that day. Since he'd awakened. Triggered.  

It had been there since he was a kid, sort of, egging him on, pushing him to do things he didn't want to do and wasn't going to, but it had never been as loud as it had gotten since Dante had been consumed by a transformation that let him know just how much of a monster he really was. 

Before it had felt like some annoying but ignorable, weak thing. Now though? Now he couldn't get it to shut up. Now he was starting to worry it might actually win.)

So, he decided the scar was better gone. Once it was gone, he wouldn't have to worry about wearing gloves all the time to keep the questions away. 

(Once it was gone, he wouldn't have to be reminded of his failure each and every time he glanced at his own marred flesh and each and every time he clenched his own cut hand and felt the skin pull in a way that reminded him of just why it felt different and just what that meant ).

But then the scar had begun to fade and Dante started to panic. 

It had taken about three and a half weeks for the edges of the scar to begin to fade, color starting to even out from a silvery-pink to a pink-tan that was closer to the rest of the palm. At a glance, it wasn't really that big of a difference. Had Dante not been (obsessively) checking it (every time he had downtime) on a daily basis, he probably wouldn't have noticed.

But he had been checking it. He'd engrained its every detail into his brain- had stared and studied and memorized and analyzed until he could call up every bump and every shade and every irregularity in his mind with a moment's notice- so he did notice, and when he did, the alarm bells began to blare, drowning out all other thought.

He couldn't let the scar disappear. Couldn't let it fade back into nothingness, into the regularity of his skin and the mundanity of the every day. Couldn't lose the last physical reminder he had of Vergil. The last true reminder. The only thing that was his besides his own face.

(Once in those three and a half weeks, Dante had slicked his hair back after a shower when his bangs had gotten in his face and it annoyed him. Then he'd looked in the mirror, been transfixed for thirty or forty seconds as a dead man stared back at him, and promptly shattered the glass with one hand while he used the other to rip the hair back down the second he pulled himself out of it, tugging hard enough that more than a few strands were torn out and fell to join the mirror fragments and drops of blood scattered across the sink. 

Dante replaced the mirror after that. Didn't say a word to Lady when she came by just as he'd gotten it out of the box, smiling before he took it upstairs, went back down, and acted like nothing was wrong in a way where she'd get the message to not question him.

He made sure to never, ever slick his hair back like that again.

He was coping just fine, why did you ask?)

Technically Dante had the glove Vergil had slashed too. The one coated with his own blood. The last thing Vergil- or the Yamato, but the Yamato was as much a part of Vergil as Rebellion was Dante- had touched, but it wasn't the same. A glove was just cloth. Just an item. A thing. 

But a hand? Vergil was Dante's own flesh and blood. More than the typical way people meant it when they were talking about parents and kids or brother and brother. He and Vergil were twins. Identical twins. So Dante's flesh might as well have been Vergi's flesh and vice versa, their blood and their essence perfect mirrors that, until the day Vergil had died, had still looked so remarkably the same. So when Vergil marked Dante, it was like he was imparting a bit of himself into Dante. Carving into his flesh. Sending him a message, using one extension of himself to mark the other. Vergil had always liked writing his name onto the things that he considered his so Dante wouldn't take them. Maybe slashing him with the Yamato had been something similar; putting a claim down on Dante's palm and saying “this is mine. Never forget.”

Now that Vergil was dead and gone- because even if he'd been so, so strong, stronger than anything Dante had ever faced before, Dante couldn't see him surviving Hell when he'd been so badly hurt after their fight, honestly wouldn't be surprised if Vergil had either plain bled out or otherwise starved- he'd have no flesh of his own. No living flesh, anyway. It would've died with him. So that scar, that carving was the last chunk of flesh Vergil had. He'd claimed it. And when that flesh started to lose Vergil's mark, Dante's mind started to panic. He couldn't lose that. Couldn't let that last bit of Vergil go away. Couldn't let Vergil's last chunk of flesh heal over and be reclaimed as just another part of Dante. Couldn't forsake and erase Vergil any more than he already had. Then Dante wouldn't have the reminder. Then Vergil would really die.

(He had a vague memory from his childhood of his parents joking about him and Vergil having the same soul, just split into two bodies. It was after one of those countless times he and Vergil had done or said the same thing without really realizing it, whatever that thing was, now lost to time with the three other members of that memory dead and gone. One soul, two bodies they'd said. Two halves of the same whole.

When Vergil had fallen and Dante had stepped through the portal back to the human world, he'd felt like something inside him had been ripped away. Like he'd been broken. Shattered. Like some irreparable damage had been done, some irreplaceable part of himself lost.

He wondered if his parents hadn't been joking after all.)

So he took a knife to his hand- couldn't use Rebellion, it was too thick, too wrong, not Vergil's, never would be- and ripped it across his palm.

It was messy. Got blood all over his desk from the splatter, then on his coat when Dante just stood there, entranced, watching it run down his hand. He wasn't a stranger to blood by any means. On the side of the one bleeding or the one causing it. But there was something special about it this time. Something about the redness contrasted against the paleness of his skin, something about the thickness of it as it ran through his fingers and over the edge of his palm down his wrist, something about the fact that it was something coming out of himself on his own terms. 

It felt good. Better than it had any right to feel.

And in that moment, watching that thing that kept him alive begin to pour outside of himself, he felt relieved. Relief like he hadn't felt since he learned Vergil was alive (but he wasn't anymore, he never would be, he was dead and gone and it was all Dante's fault). Like the movies said people felt relief on a fresh spring morning after a harsh rain, or when the weight of a thousand years (or was it pounds?) was taken off their shoulders; the kind of relief that's stupid sweet and ridiculous and shouldn't be real except in this moment he learned it kind of was.

No spring showers on this one though. Not unless you counted the blood spray. That was kind of a shower. It got everywhere. Definitely wouldn't be fun to clean up. Maybe he hit an artery or something. Did people have arteries in their hands? Dante didn't know, never cared much for anatomy when he could survive a claw through the heart and a bullet through the brain. Who needed anatomy expertise when things healed themselves? Wasn't like he was ever going to the doctor to let them look at his freakshow of a body. All he knew was that arteries bled a lot so you didn't want to hit them if you were anyone other than a half-demon demonslayer who could take more than his fair share of hits, and his hand was bleeding a lot, so maybe he hit an artery. Or maybe he just sucked at judging these things. The wound was already closing.

(And he watched with baited breath, praying it would scar.)

But anatomy didn't matter. The source of the blood didn't matter, other than the fact that it was his.

Because when he first cut his palm? That relief sank into him and everything was right for a time. His frayed nerves fixed themselves as the blood flowed out of his palm, a much needed balm relieving the pressure building under flesh and tension humming through bones in an instant, a panacea far richer than any green orb or vital star. 

For something that had made him feel increasingly close to losing it for the better part of the month, Dante calmed down a crazy amount the second he decided to do something about it. Who knew it would be so easy.

There were two reasons for the calm. For the ease. He didn't really notice it at first, didn't process it, but they were there. 

See, keeping that reminder of Vergil? Keeping that chunk of flesh that Vergil had sliced looking just like it had when Vergil had sliced it? Keeping Vergil's claim alive- keeping Vergil alive- by keeping the scar? That helped ground him. Helped snuff out some of the guilt that was clawing up Dante's throat and doing its damned best to suffocate him every time he did anything that even remotely resembled something they'd once done together. It was a fucked up source of emotional stability, but it stabilized him anyway and Dante had always been a bit fucked up (gotten so much more fucked up when he listened to his mother's dying screams from behind the flimsy door of a wardrobe that shouldn't have stopped him from reaching her and only came out to see her burned and mangled body once there was no hope of saving her and buried her barely recognizable corpse in a garden she'd never again tend to and and saw the puddle of blood that by the resonance in his soul he knew was his brother's and no one could live after losing so much blood and did that mean he'd have to go on living with half a soul? turned out no not yet not then, but now in the present he was having to live it and it sucked so, so much more than his destroyed world had sucked back then). So he didn't care. He'd take it. He'd take what he could get. Why not? He always had. It worked. Didn't matter whether it was ‘healthy' or not. It worked.

But the other thing that helped? Was the whole cutting himself thing in general. The opening of the flesh, spraying of the blood thing. Completely unrelated to Vergil. Well. Not completely. Vergil had caused it. But not because of the memory of the blow he'd dealt. Dante could probably slash his thigh and get the same effect.

Now, Vergil had been the one to awaken Dante's demon half. He'd been the one to stab Dante twice over, piercing his heart once and then piercing it again for good measure, using special demon swords that could apparently awaken latent demon power. So you could say Vergil was the one to blame for the pressure that had started to eat away at Dante the moment he'd finally thought he could rest, the urges that ran hungry through his blood and sank into his bones, the screaming fire that clawed its way through his veins and into his heart and begged begged begged to burst free from his chest and arms and legs and face and hands-

It was a lot. Almost unbearable. The kind of thing that had Dante constantly on edge, terrified that if he let his concentration slip, he might do- something. He didn't know what (did know, just didn't want to acknowledge it and what it meant), but he couldn't let it happen. Something bad.

But when Dante cut into his hand and bled, it let that pressure out just a bit. It let the thing that had settled into his body taste freedom. It indulged that part of his brain that wanted to be free. To break free. Violently. To burst forth from flesh too tight, too soft, too small, too human to contain it. 

Dante had never been that hung up about getting hurt. His pain tolerance had always been pretty good in the first place, and when you combined that with his durability and how fast he healed, being hurt had never been a big deal. 

But after Vergil? After the Temen-ni-gru? 

During that whole ordeal he thought it was all the adrenaline that pushed his battle-high brain somewhere where he was having a blast despite the pain. He'd figured that the reason he'd been able to push through all the stab wounds and burns and crushed limbs and all that jazz was that he had too much going on to sit down and think about how much being hurt sucked. He thought, ‘yeah I'm covered with cuts and bruises and those do ache, but the reason I don't mind is probably because fighting is fun and these new weapons are cool and also I have an older brother and crazy clown to stop and so my brain's probably just too hopped up right now to think ‘pain bad'.'

Then he ran a knife across his hand and realized it hadn't just been the battle high. Wasn't just the normal adrenaline of a fight that had made him happy and the pain negligible. 

No, it was the pain itself that was pushing that adrenaline. Driving that battle high. Shooting his happiness and enjoyment and fun through the roof. Or if not the pain, the cause of it.

See, it wasn't just that he didn't mind getting sliced. After Vergil, after the Temen-ni-gru, after awakening to his Devil Trigger, he realized he liked it. He liked it very, very much.

Now, Dante had never actually slept with anyone. He'd flirted tons, kissed a few hot babes, gotten a little handsy from time to time, but he'd never gotten hot and bothered enough to do the horizontal tango. Or vertical. He'd been in enough bars to know people sometimes liked that too. But Dante? Had never actually gone that far. Something in him always held him back. A fear that he'd hurt the person he was with if his mind and control drifted too far, maybe. Or maybe it was normal human hesitation. Whatever it had been back then, it was definitely the ‘not wanting to hurt the other person' reason now. He'd already ripped one door off its hinges without thinking about it, and he'd accidentally broken enough bones from temporary partners in his youth that he didn't trust himself to keep calm and safe and stable around someone while riding any sort of physical high.

But anyway, the new thrill that pain (not just pain, but the pain of cutting, the pain of being opened specifically) gave him made him feel like what he thought sex was probably like for all those people who wrote poems and songs and stuff about it. When his inner tissues were exposed to air they never should've kissed, it felt like heaven. Assuming heaven wouldn't immediately smite him for the crime of being half-demon, which wouldn't be at all pleasant, but hey, it was an expression. It was great. Sublime, to use a fancy pants type of word that Vergil (who would never again speak, never again feel) probably would've liked. 

The warmth of his blood on his skin was nice too. Which was weird, when he thought about it. His blood came from his own body. So shouldn't that just feel like a normal temperature? Unremarkable? Because wasn't his blood just the temperature of himself? So shouldn't it feel the same inside as out? Or was it a liquid-solid-air difference thing? Was it a fucked-in-the-head masochist thing?

Whatever it was supposed to be, Dante was pretty sure whatever he was feeling wasn't normal. Dante knew he ran hot, but his blood seemed to run so much hotter and as it ran down the creases of his palm, across his wrist, down, down, down his forearm, it was practically scalding- but in a good way. A really good way. A way that made him want to cut his palm deeper, get the blood flowing thicker, longer stronger, a fountain he could stick his arm into and get rid of the chill that he hasn't realized coated his skin so strongly until that red, red, red, red, beautiful red blood started its journey down flesh until it was finally stopped upon hitting the sleeves of a coat whose red just couldn't compare. 

Dante shook his head to stop himself from falling any deeper into the trance he could feel himself slipping into. 

Point was: Vergil stabbed Dante through the chest and that shouldn't have meant anything except shock and pain and anger, but maybe there was something special about demon hearts, because when Vergil stabbed Dante's, he awakened a passion in him that words could not describe. 

Or maybe it hadn't been Vergil who had done that and Dante had just been fucked up beyond repair when Lady shot him in the head. Wasn't brain damage supposed to be permanent? Like those cells didn't replicate or something, so your brain was always your brain even if your whole skin replaced itself every however many years? Maybe Lady fucked him up more than they realized.

(She didn't. Couldn't be her. A human couldn't do that. Wouldn't. It was Vergil. It was Vergil who had done this to Dante. Sparda might've been the reason Dante existed but Vergil was the other half of Dante's whole and he was older and smarter and he always figured out things first so maybe he'd figured out just what it was Dante needed and gave it to him on purpose because he realized Dante wasn't at his full potential and just needed help getting there. Or maybe he'd done it as one last way to screw his brother over, because Vergil hated him, had hated him since they were kids, and couldn't pass up his chance to permanently alter Dante for the worse. 

Question was: did Vergil do it for Dante's sake? Or for his own? Did he do it so Dante would grow strong enough to protect himself? Or so Dante would prove an entertaining challenge?

Did it matter? Could it be both?

Did Vergil know just what kind of beast he'd awakened? 

Did- had- Vergil felt the same?)

Dante didn't indulge in that pain for too long the first time he sliced himself open. Lady started banging on the door at some point- Dante had absolutely no idea how long it had been since he'd cut his hand when the knocks finally broke him out of the staring contest he was having with his palm, the open wound like an open eye that captured him as it refused to blink and stared into his soul- and the sound and fear of her seeing something she shouldn't see, shouldn't be privy to, had not earned, did not deserve to be scarred by- that was enough to snap him out of his little reverie and get him to wipe his palm on the inside of his coat before shoving on his new pair of gloves and yanking the door open before Lady got the bright idea to use a gun or something and forced him to buy a new lock.

She had a job for him that day. One that didn't really sound worth his time, but Dante was desperate for cash, and more desperate for distraction, so he joined her.

The mission ended up being pretty fun. Easy, but not a terrible way to pass the time. He'd do it again for a 10% pay raise. Lady killed maybe a third of the demons, but she took three quarters of the cut. Dante didn't fight her. She needed the money more than he did. He didn't need to buy three meals a day. He could just go on a diet. Most pizza places weren't open for breakfast anyway.

(Or he could start eating demon flesh for energy, because that was a viable way of getting fuel in his body that he hasn't realized was a thing until he found himself unconsciously snacking on a limb of one of the minions he'd killed in the Temen-ni-gru while he tried to wrap his head around what was going on sometime between the first battle with Vergil and the reveal of the whole deal with Arkham, only dropping the thing way too many bites in when he suddenly processed what he was doing and thought what the fuck was wrong with him what the fuck had Vergil done to him to make him start munching on demons without even thinking about it because that was gross even though it was actually really delicious and good and filling in a way human food had never been and had he always been this hungry and just not realized it until he was eating properly or was this void something new something born when Vergil had stabbed through his heart and left Dante to patch it back up-)

Dante walked out of that mission without a scratch. 

At first he was happy about it, because his coat was expensive and his pants were cheap but not free- although really it was more that he didn't want to have to bother going to a clothing store when he ran out than that he was worried about being able to afford more-, and no scratches meant no ripped clothes. Dante knew how to sew enough to seal tears and apply some patches, but he didn't really love doing it (wouldn't love doing it until he pricked his finger the first time after the Temen-ni-gru and that tiny ruby pebble of blood, the shining bubble that rose up on the tip of a pale-white finger, made him feel things it shouldn't have) and was happy to avoid his next sewing session for at least another day.

But that night, lying on a mattress without a frame, under blankets that hadn't been washed since he'd bought them after tearing through his last set during a demon-related nightmare that had him waking up fanged and clawed two weeks before, a thought popped into Dante's head that he couldn't help but indulge.

Wouldn't it have been more fun to have been injured?

Wouldn't it have been nice to have been challenged?

Wouldn't he have enjoyed being torn into just as he tore into others?

Wouldn't he have felt more alive if his inner ( demon- self- they were one and the same one entity now made whole why did he try to differentiate between the two it was a lie to himself he knew that it had always been him just hidden so deep in the recesses of his mind that he hadn't ever acknowledged it was there even though it always had been and always would) parts, his blood and stuff, got to kiss the open air? It had felt so nice on his hand. Maybe it would feel good everywhere else too.

It took the ear-splitting blare of a car alarm and the loud shout of the guy that had probably broken into it going off somewhere down the block to break Dante out of that particular reverie. 

Why the hell would he think it would feel good to be hurt? What was he talking about? Your insides were on the inside for a reason. He didn't want them to be outsides. That just didn't work. Thoughts like that were crazy person thoughts. Insanity.

He burrowed into his stale blankets and tried to sleep the bad thoughts away. Thinking had kept leading him down dark paths of late.

But of course he couldn't catch a break, because sleep only made things worse. 

His dreams that night were memories- or one memory to be specific- of his mother patching him up after a particularly nasty fight with Vergil. 

He and Vergil had been exploring the grounds around the house that afternoon. Dante had wanted to keep going even when the sun was starting to set, while Vergil kept insisting they needed to go home right then and there so they didn't disobey their mom's order to be back by sundown. Dante of course kept saying that if they ran back they'd be fine, and kept trying to drag Vergil toward one of the more hilly parts of their acres-large yard. Vergil didn't want to go. Dante tugged harder. Vergil tried to shove him off. Dante kept tugging. In the end they ended up on the ground in a short wrestling match, both brothers trying their hardest to get on top of the other so they could be the one to prove their decision was the right one. 

In the real end, one of Vergil's nastier shoves saw Dante slammed into the hillside, and Dante didn't notice the rock that had embedded itself into his arm until he felt the dirt that came from ripping it out fall onto his face. 

You see, when Vergil had shoved Dante away from him, Dante had ended up with his left arm behind his head, palm just above it, and his wrist had been the thing to stop his head from hitting the hill behind him. But the hill wasn't all dirt; it was pretty rocky territory, and some chunks stuck out from the hill face. Including one particularly sharp one that had impaled him with such perfect positioning as to be caught between two of Dante's bones, meaning that when he twisted his arm to yank it forward and push Vergil again, the twisting of the bones locked the rock in place well enough to rip it from the hillside and keep it in Dante's arm. 

Their fight had ended once they saw the blood coating Dante's wrist. 

A bloody nose was one thing. Impalement was another.

Dante had tried to pull it out, but Vergil yelled at him not to and dragged him to their mother instead. 

Eva had been disturbed, but remained calm overall. The boys didn't know they were demons yet- they knew they were special somehow, and that their dad went on long trips, and that he was super strong, and that he was special too, but not what that special really meant- but she did, and she must've realized Dante would be alright. That or she just hadn't wanted her kids to be as panicked as she was and was keeping it all in. Dante couldn't say. The memory was too hazy for that. Most of his childhood was. He kind of hated that.

Whatever it was keeping her grounded, Eva treated the situation with complete grace. Eva, face calm, told Dante to hold still, holding his left hand down with one of her own to keep him from jerking it away while she pulled the rock out with the other. Vergil stood next to her with water, ointment, and some bandages to bind the wound with. He'd looked sick with guilt.

Except- in the dream, Vergil didn't hand any of those things over like he did in real life.

In the dream, Eva didn't pull the rock clean out and set it down to the side, soft fingers and gentle touches helping Dante to ignore the pain.

In the dream, Eva wrapped her delicate fingers around the rock before ripping it to the side, towards his flesh instead of away, and it tore the wound open even further. In the dream, Eva shoved her fingers in the wound, long, painted nails jabbed deep into flesh and muscle and sinew and all the things fingernails had no right to ever come into contact with. 

In the dream, Eva pulled the bloody fingers out with far more care and grace than she's shoved them in with, placing them on Dante's forehead and dragging bloody lines down his face. 

In the dream, Eva shoved her fingers back in once Dante was left with four bloody tracks from hairline to chin, fingers pulsing as she grabbed something inside. 

In the dream she yanked again.

In the dream she pulled something else out.

In the dream, that something else was-

…

Dante awoke choking on a scream.

After that whole debacle, he decided he'd had enough of sleep. He'd gone days without sleeping before- even a week, once, when he was a kid, freshly out of substitute parents and on the run from the demons who never wanted to leave him alone, and who he didn't want attacking any innocent bystanders he decided to take a nap by. It had sucked, but he'd lived. A week without sleep was nothing. And that'd been when he was a kid. Before his inner demon awoke. He could probably go for a month now.

Now, Dante had never had a problem sitting back and taking a nap. He was all for relaxation. Nothing pressing to do? Catch some Zs. Something pressing to do that he didn't want to do? Also a great time to catch some Zs. 

But sometimes he got restless. Going too long without fighting (not just moving or doing but fighting) made him antsy. Made him jumpy. Made his already fidgety tendencies go into overdrive. And with whatever had happened to him after the Vergil-Temen-ni-gru-stabbing thing? He felt like he was a dam and every day he went without running around to do something was a day of torrential rainfall, just waiting to make the thing burst. Like he was only moments away from the whole thing failing and wiping out everything in its path, whatever that failure would end up looking like, whatever lied in the way. 

So eventually he got fed up with sitting around all day and night (got scared of what might happen if he actually burst) and decided to put his restlessness to good use patching up some of the holes in the walls that he'd bought stuff for two weeks ago but never bothered to actually fix because he couldn't be damned. He tried hard to make it look good; on his business license he was a handyman, and at some point he was probably going to have to do some actual handyman stuff to keep that front going, so he figured he might as well get some practice in on his own place. And if it didn't look good, then no harm done. He'd practice in the parts of the shop he used for personal stuff. And it wasn't like he had any direct neighbors who'd get annoyed at him for hammering or putting up plaster at two in the morning. The guy that had lived next to him had moved out after the whole demon attack thing, and Dante hadn't seen the landlord trying to sell it to anyone else.

He spent a while like that. Not sleeping, working at night and moving around from little job to little job to keep his restless hands and restless mind busy. 

It worked for a little while. 

Not forever. 

But enough to get him to the day of his next job that actually involved demon hunting instead of just smashing the occasional cockroach. There were a lot of little jobs popping up in the wake up Temen-ni-gru. Dante wasn't sure if the demons were ones that hoofed it out of the tower once it surfaced, or if they were straight-from-Hell deliveries just taking advantage of the weakened barrier, but they were making a fuss and Dante was more than happy to take them out. The city didn't need that kind of trouble. It was enough of a dump as it was. Dante would be doing everyone a favor by killing the little demonspawn that showed up in dark alleys and abandoned business parks, and he liked helping people. Helping people made him happy. Made him feel like his existence actually had at least a little bit of worth.

(And the killing things thing made him happy too. The thrill of battle. The risk of injury. The actual cuts that had his lifeblood come out. That made his heart sing, a passionate ballad that would make even Nevan gape in awe.

But the attempts to stave off sleep with jobs and home improvement could only work so long. No matter what he did, a certain restlessness still settled over him, a pall that even a quadrupled workload couldn't quite clear. Sure he got some of his energy out bashing the skulls of lesser demons and pounding away at a set of shelves to hold some of his records so he didn't have to spend so long rifling through the pile in his basement, but the restlessness went beyond just wanting- needing to move. There was something specific he wasn't doing. That couldn't be substituted. That needed to be released.

(He knew what it was. It had taken him a few days to identify just what it was, but he knew now.

He wasn't going to indulge it though. He'd chosen the human world, and that was what he was going to be if it killed him.

…though, with the way things were going, a very small part of him was worried it might.)

Two weeks passed and Dante wasn't feeling any better. He tried to go out more, do more jobs, but there were only so many demons to kill and so many jobs people were willing to give him in such a short span. So he did what he could, and stared at the ceiling thinking about nothing in particular (about his faults, his failures, his fears-) when he had nothing else to pass the time. 

It wasn't a state he could remain in forever though, and just over two weeks after the lovely nightmare where his subconscious was apparently trying to convince him his mom hated and wanted to brutalize him or something-

(or was trying to convince him that she loved him, maybe, because what he wanted was pain and pain was what she delivered to him, sick and sadistic-masochistic as it was, and what better sign of love was there than to do something you might not want to for the sake of another? Eva would never have hurt him but she had always known what was best for him, so if she did hurt him, was that her way of saying that getting hurt was what was best? What he needed? That she was willing to go against her morals for his sake?)

-he slipped back into the realm of unconsciousness without realizing it. It was his own damn fault it happened. Had he tried harder, he probably could've stayed awake longer. Hadn't some human teenager managed to stay awake for eleven days once? What was fifteen to a half-demon? Laziness, that's what. The fact that he'd maybe potentially exhausted himself by spending so much of his time hunting other demons didn't matter. He had nothing to do and hadn't felt like looking for something to do, so he'd sat back on his chair and listened to the jukebox he'd finally repaired during his two weeks of sudden productivity until it apparently lulled him into the sleep he'd been fighting off for long enough that it was honestly kind of unpleasant to fall back into it.

His dream that time was-

He didn't remember. Unpleasant. Bloody. 

(Wonderful). 

The rest was lost the moment he rose. 

All he knew was that when he woke to his lovely sixth sense screaming at him to get up, get out his sword, get to business and kill the thing trying to invade his territory, he was still just enough out of it that he didn't react in time to stop the Hell Sloth's blade from plunging through the meat of the arm he'd unconsciously raised to block it. Not that the demon did any significant damage, or anything that would last. He was mostly just annoyed to be ripped out of a nap by stabbing. But he had Ebony and Ivory on him, having fallen asleep on accident so he hadn't bothered to take them out of their holsters, so his rude wake-up crew was dead before he could get out of his chair, and one teensy- well the scythe that had got him was still scythe so it wasn't that small- slice through the forearm wasn't enough to put Dante out of business.

What it was enough for was sending a bubble of pleasure through his chest. For reigniting the desires from that dream: The desire to be cut, to be opened, to be let free.

To---

(Trigger.)

He shook his head.

What did he even want to be let free from? His flesh? His responsibilities? 

Or was it his humanity? That thing that encompassed both?

He shook his head again.

No. He didn't want that. Wanting that would be all kinds of messed up and Dante wouldn't deny he was fucked in the head, but he wasn't fucked up enough to think those kind of feelings were good feelings. Those feelings were- what were they called? Intrusive thoughts? Like when you walked by a bridge and thought about what it would be like to just jump off then and there but didn't actually do it because that would be dumb and messed up. Everyone had those. They were only bad if you acted on them. And Dante wasn't acting on them. He was noticing they were there and shoving them in the corner with all the debris and pizza boxes he didn't want to deal with. He'd get to them another day. And if he didn't? Maybe they'd just go away on their own. The debris and pizza boxes wouldn't, but feelings weren't material, so hey, maybe they'd be special and go ‘toodle-oo!' and do the right thing and disappear. 

(They wouldn't. They couldn't. The feelings were just as much a part of him as his natural desire to breath. So long as he lived, they'd live besides him.

And the debris and pizza boxes were all gone now too, dealt with in Dante's attempt to not deal with everything else on his mind. There was nothing to hide behind anymore. Nothing to occupy. Nothing to distract.)

Life couldn't be that simple though. Couldn't be that nice. Dante had learned that ages ago.

Sometimes he wondered if he was cursed. He had shit luck- and not just in the ‘oh man a lot of bad things have happened in my life so it seems like I'm unlucky and no I'm totally not just making excuses for my personal failures because while my luck is fine my attitude isn't' kind of way, but in the ‘loses a 50% shot 95% of the time' kind of way. Really. He was absolutely famous for it back when no one knew him by any name but Tony Redgrave. Got to the point that no one would let him on their team when they were playing poker- or whatever the game of the day was in the Cellar- because they didn't want to lose. Well, except for the guys that had something to prove about their own skills and thought having Dante as a handicap would make them all the more impressive when they won, but he didn't want to be with those guys anyway because screw them. 

Still. Bad luck on the life front and the fun front seemed to mean something, maybe, as if there was some sort of grand cosmic entity out there who'd taken one look at Dante, grinned, and stamped him with a big ol' ‘fuck you.' Maybe that was why he was so messed up. Maybe he'd been born with a curse handicap and no matter how hard he tried, he was destined to fall victim to it.

That, or he was making excuses. He was good at that. A certified excuse-making professional. The excuses he gave to others and lies he fed himself were the only things that kept him going sometimes!

But anyway, if he was cursed, he wondered what had earned it. Was it his fate as a half-human, half-demon abomination that was an affront to nature on both ends? The only other hybrid he knew was Vergil, and Vergil hadn't been dealt a very good hand in life either. As for the small stuff, Dante hasn't lost that much against Vergil when they played games as a kid, not to any degree where he felt like anything was lopsided, so that meant that either that Dante's shit luck hadn't manifested until after the fire, or that Vergil had shitty enough luck that it made them cancel out.

It was still weird to think about Vergil after the fire.

Dante had spent ten years of his life thinking he was an orphan with a dead brother. Then he spent a year thinking he was an orphan with an absent, asshole brother. Now he was alone again, and it was all his fault. Vergil wouldn't be coming back from that. He couldn't. Dante'd guaranteed it.

When Dante was busy, being alone wasn't that bad. He'd been alone for almost his whole life. He was a pro at being alone. If anyone could do it, he could! He always had. Always managed. 

But being alone because he'd run his brother out of the house by being annoying didn't hurt as much as being alone because he'd let his brother die. Killed him. Cut his life unfairly short. Most of the time being a stupid kid who did a stupid thing wasn't that bad, but in his case his childhood stupidity and stubbornness and inability to let things lie had run Vergil out of his life entirely, and it wasn't something he could forgive himself for. He'd thought Vergil's death had been his fault all those years. Apparently Vergil hadn't died, but whatever had happened to him clearly hadn't been good, and Dante couldn't help but wonder what would've happened if both he and Vergil had been in the house when the attack had happened and Eva hadn't had to run out to find him. Maybe staying together could have saved him. Maybe it could have saved them all. Dante would never know.

And the thing that had happened in Hell? When Dante had steeled himself to kill Vergil if that was what it took (except he hadn't, he couldn't, he never could, he would've held back from dealing the final blow until Vergil had given it to Dante instead, but of course Vergil never did the reasonable thing)? When Vergil decided to run away while Dante stood there motionless like an idiot, sealing his brother's doom because he was too dumb to figure out what a man stumbling toward a cliff had planned? When Vergil was so disgusted with the prospect of being with Dante and living that sort of life that he not only ran away, but lashed out at Dante when Dante tried (barely, poorly, not enough) to save him? 

Maybe if Dante had been a better person, Vergil would've listened. 

Maybe if Dante had been a stronger, faster person, he could've caught Vergil before Yamato had bitten into his hand.

Maybe if Dante had been a truer person- a more humane one, not a half-demon thing that was way too obsessed with death and fighting and killing and winning-, he would've leapt after him. Maybe then their combined strength could've seen them stumbling out of Hell together.

But he wasn't any of those things. Instead, he was a wreck who was apparently undergoing some sort of psychotic break. 

If he was…what was there to do about it? Because sitting on the floor of his shop, arm still impaled by a scythe and blood rushing in excitement as it dripped down the blade and his arm alike, Dante was coming to realize he couldn't live the rest of his life like this. Denying himself, that was. Because with this small serving of violence, this thin slice of a scythe that had cut him with all the right-ness of a letter opener splitting open an envelope, the force of the hunger washing over him was enough to both allure and terrify him.

It felt good. It felt so, so good. 

To bleed. 

To be cut.

To open. 

To release.

And he was terrified that if he denied himself for too long and let the hunger grow, one day he wouldn't be able to sit on the floor and just stare. If he held it all back, kept it all in, then at some point he wouldn't be able to hold it back any longer and would just burst, violently and wholly in a way he couldn't recover from. 

Because sitting there on the floor, his mind was already racing with all the terrible things he really shouldn't do, but really wanted to. And the longer he thought about it, the less unappealing they seemed. 

Should he indulge the urge? he asked himself. Should he stop? Was there really any harm in indulging, if the only one getting hurt was himself?

Because that's what the desire was. To open. To unleash. To release a part of the self, not the other, that had accumulated past a point that could be considered healthy. Because be it blood or demonic power that needed to run free, he was generating way, way more energy than he could expel while running around as a human, and he had the feeling that at some point, he wouldn't be able to hold it back anymore, and that wouldn't be good for anyone. 

So he should just give in, right? He should stop pretending to be human and yank the blade out with a lot more force than he needed to and revel in the pain it brought and the extra blood spilled and extra skin and tissue split, basking in the freedom that being opened- that being released, freed- brought?

But that was the problem. To stop pretending to be human…He shook his head, starting over in an attempt to clear his thoughts. He wasn't pretending to be human. Sure, he was part demon, there was absolutely no denying that anymore, but he was part human too. Half. An even 50-50 split, as far as he was aware. Which meant he was also human. He had a right to claim humanity. Even if he wasn't human and human alone. 

And when he thought about it, even if he did indulge, even if he did say ‘to hell with normal morals, I'm going to slice myself up,' did that really make him less human? There were human masochists too; if there weren't, there wouldn't be a word for it. Deriving pleasure from pain wasn't a feature exclusive to demons and the irredeemable. 

Or maybe he was just a psychopath. Or sociopath. Probably closer to sociopath. He still felt things. He still cared. Still raged and laughed and did all the things that people did. He'd just never been normal about it. Had hardly ever felt the need to. Hadn't in years. 

So would it really be wrong to indulge himself? Would it make him less human?

Probably not.

But would it be wrong? Would it make him less of a good person? A good human? 

Well, he wasn't a good person in the first place, even if he tried to do good things sometimes, so that wouldn't be a loss. 

Still. He couldn't get over the fact that hurting oneself was messed up. Unhealthy. And there was always the risk that if he started to indulge, he wouldn't be able to stop. With how hard he'd ripped the scythe out and how long he'd stared at his hand before Lady showed up that one time he couldn't count that one out.

It wasn't that he felt like he really deserved to be hurt (even though he kind of did), and that hurting himself felt like some sort of satisfying punishment. It was more that he liked the high of pain. That feeling of being opened that could only come from being hurt. 

Well. Not just being hurt. Over the course of those few weeks between the Temen-ni-gru and the scythe incident he'd been smacked around a few times, and when he compared what he'd felt then to what he felt now, the scythe yanked out in a fit of determination and arm pulsing as it tried to heal, he'd come to realize that what he wanted was a very specific pain. Not just any pain. Not the pain of crushed limbs or poison. Not the pain of a broken bone or pulled muscle.

It was specifically the pain of being cut. Being opened. Of release.

Dante grabbed a knife from one of his pockets and ran it over the scar on his palm, once just gently enough to tickle, and then again with enough force to break skin.

It felt euphoric. 

He didn't even try to suppress the shudder that ran through him once blood began to first bubble up and then deliciously, addictingly cascade down his hand. 

He pumped his hand a little, open and closed, open and closed, splay the fingers make a fist, stick a nail from the other hand into the open wound like the dream-Eva had done-

And suddenly the trance was broken.

Because nope. Nope. Nope! He was not going to corrupt her memory like that, not going to let a fucked up dream from his fucked up head alter the memories of a kind, and caring, and much-better-than-him woman into some sadistic monster that she would and could never, ever be.

Eventually the phone rang and Dante dragged himself away from the spot on the floor he'd been lying (bleeding) on, not really in the mood to talk to anyone, but now that he and Enzo had called it quits he'd been looking for a new broker to replace his old help, and he kind of needed to answer calls if he wanted to do that. He'd been putting himself out there the past few weeks, both for the whole distraction-from-a-freaky-desire-for-violence that was really a-freaky-desire-to-be-cut thing, and because he realized that actually putting in some effort in the present would allow him to be a lot lazier in the future once he got a new information broker to bring the jobs to him rather than having to go out to collect them himself. Basically he needed to answer the phone if he wanted to do more than vegetate and chop himself up, so answer the phone it was.

…Not that the call was worth it in the end. It ended up being a wrong number. Some old lady trying to call the pharmacy, who insisted the number was right and that he was trying to prank her no matter how many times he told her that no, sorry ma'am, this is not the pharmacy, he didn't even know where any pharmacies were (had never needed one, always healed on his own and had never gotten sick enough to need meds, only occasionally feverish or delirious from blood loss for a couple minutes, maybe a couple of hours ‘till his natural healing factor kicked in), but she went on and on and on until finally her son apparently came to the door and she told ‘the rude pharmacist' Dante she'd have to call him back later after she got out the muffins. 

Dante decided he'd had enough of phones and yanked out the cord after that. 

Successfully distracted, he pulled his jacket off to wash the blood out of the sleeve. His hand had healed while he'd been on the phone- well, scarred over (exactly as he wanted it to)- so thankfully the motion didn't tear it open any more, but it didn't make the whole washing business any more exciting. Getting blood out of leather was never a fun time. But, so was the life of a man who got covered in blood as part of his day job and felt like leather was too iconic to pass up. At least with real demon blood, the stuff tended to disappear on its own via either flaking off or getting absorbed by uh. Himself. Somehow. Didn't really know how it worked but it was convenient so he wasn't going to question it. His own blood, on the other hand, was apparently just human enough to not do that though, so cleaning it was.

(There were so few things he could control; so few things he could fix. He'd already obsessively fixed things around his shop in an attempt to get some control in his rapidly spiraling life, what more was cleaning one single coat? 

Man. Him. Cleaning. That bubbling energy and burning desire really was turning him into someone he wasn't.)

So he cleaned. 

Went back to life as normal.

Not the normal he'd had two months ago. That normal was gone. Died with Vergil. Died with the last of Dante's ability to pretend he was still just some ‘special' human. But it was as normal as he could manage with a restlessness that clawed at him every hour of the day and every second of the night and when burdened with the knowledge that he was far beyond the kind of ‘abnormal' any true human could be.

Sure he'd always known he was special- remembered his parents vaguely telling him and Vergil they were as a kid even if they didn't elaborate, had figured it out by the number of near-fatal wounds he'd quite literally walked away from and the countless guns he'd ruined by having a trigger finger too fast and too strong for any full human to possess. He wasn't a complete idiot. To be surprised by the whole half-demon thing would be. Well. Dumb. He wasn't a poet either. 

But he'd never really been sure how deep the rabbit hole of his specialness went. Not till Vergil stabbed him through the heart once, and then again for good measure, then showed him just how much of a monster they both were with scales and horns and things Dante did- (didn't, did, didn't-) want to think about.

So he wasn't normal. Physically or mentally. But he'd cope. 

Probably. 

Eventually. 

Somehow.

(He so desperately hoped). 

After a few more incidents of dozing off and one that actually got him (wonderfully) impaled on a mission, Dante eventually relented to sleep's siren call. 

His bed probably didn't miss him as much as he nearly missed it. He thrashed in his sleep, he knew, based on the rips he'd long since stopped counting in his comforter, sheets, and the cheap mattress topper he should probably have thrown in a dumpster ages before. But sleep was sleep, restless as it was.

Every time he slept, he was greeted by the dreamscape he'd tried so hard to avoid. His dreams were never good ones. Not comforting ones, at any rate. What ‘good' really was in his demented mind was questionable. They were more or less variants on the one that put him off sleeping in the first place- some pleasant memory that started off normal enough, but ended with him impaled or cut or torn or opened in some other way that allowed for something to either be tenderly, slowly, carefully brought out of him, or for something to burst free in a shower of blood and viscera way too thick to have actually come from the wound itself but perfectly representing the sort of thing Dante kept feeling needed to come out. 

(Because it wasn't just a lump in his arm or an annoying pimple on his cheek- which he'd never actually dealt with but he'd watched enough TV and heard enough normal teenagers complain to know getting rid of those was apparently somehow satisfying. 

It was his whole body that needed release. It was the thing that slept in every molecule. The thing that had tasted the air on that glorious day that yearned , no, hungered , ordered, begged to taste it again.) 

Dante kept hoping that if he ignored the need long enough, that if he left it hungry and desperate and wanting for food he would never give, it would eventually starve and die on its own.

It wouldn't though. He knew it wouldn't.

But that didn't stop him from acting like it would and ignoring it anyway.

Sometimes Vergil showed up to help “free” Dante. 

Sometimes the dream would start during their first clash atop the Temen-ni-gru, Vergil and Dante fighting as normal until Dante tripped or Vergil forced him to his knees before taking Yamato and slicing a thousand tiny cuts all over Dante's body, watching as he bled until there couldn't possibly have been any blood left to bleed, but he continued to bleed out anyway. Sometimes Vergil used Beowulf to punch straight through Dante's chest, the brutality of the initial blow contrasted by how gently he pulled Dante's heart free, the organ pulsing unharmed in Vergil's hand, red and normal until it wasn't, first going the blue of Vergil's power before being overtaken not by the carmine of a normal heart, but the brilliant crimson of Dante's demonic soul. 

Sometimes Vergil would appear over Dante in the shop as if he'd woken Dante from the dream that still held him, stopping in front of the desk Dante had dozed off at and holding out a hand for Dante to place his own in so Vergil could grab the knife Dante used to cut himself and use it to make small incisions here and there across the rest of Dante's body, using the openings to pull out bone and tissue and dark, hard things that didn't belong. 

Sometimes Dante would ‘wake' in bed to find Vergil sitting on the edge, Dante's chest opened and ribs parted and organs both recognizably human and not lying on a sterile metal tray carefully balanced on where Dante's thighs would be, hidden by sheets folded over at his waist. 

Vergil never spoke in those dreams. Not a word. Not even a grunt.

Eva had spoken some in that first dream, reassuring Dante all would be well. She spoke in most of the other dreams Dante had about her. Even Lady spoke in the two dreams she starred in, loud and furious about how he'd been pretending to be human when he was so deeply not and wrong on the inside. 

But Vergil? Vergil never uttered a thing. Never made a single sound. The only thing to make sounds in the Vergil dream was Dante's own body as it dripped blood on stone or wood or blanket, or his bones or tissues or organs as they made a little ‘plop' as they hit whatever thing Dream Vergil had decided to place them on. Vergil's own body didn't make any noise. There was no squelching as he stuck his fingers into Dante, no quiet intakes of breath from a body which, being dead, did not breathe. He did not swallow. His chest did not rise and fall. His mouth stayed immobile, his body perfectly controlled as he mutilated Dante in whatever way he (Vergil, but really Dante, who was the source of all the fucked up things happening, because these were his dreams, powerless as he was in them all) saw fit. But his eyes moved with his body, flickering from his work to Dante's face. His eyes peered into Dante's very soul. His eyes said he knew. He knew what Dante was. What he wanted. What it was like to need to be freed. 

Dante couldn't tell if Dream Vergil thought he was doing Dante a favor in offering him release, or if he was mocking Dante by showing he, Vergil, had the strength and courage and sense to do that which Dante would not. That he had already changed Dante. He was just judging Dante for not acknowledging this. He seemed somewhere between sad and completely uncaring. Dante wasn't sure. He'd been good at reading Vergil when they were kids, or at least he thought he had, but those kids had died when they were eight, and Dante didn't know how to read his brother anymore. All he knew for certain was that Vergil pitied him. 

That pity ate at Dante more than the restless need to break free itself. He hated it. 

For some reason, Sparda never appeared in any of Dante's dreams. Once an absent father, always an absent father, he supposed. 

He wasn't sure how to feel about that either. On the one hand, at least his brain wasn't trying to convince him his father hated him too. On the other hand, it might not have felt the need to since it was obvious Sparda didn't care about them from the way he'd never come home. 

(That or, if his hypothesis about his brain making these specific people pull him apart was true- that his brain was conjuring his loved ones to maim him not out of cruelty but as a sign of love, as a sign that they knew what was good for him, and they wanted to help him when he wouldn't help himself, so wouldn't he help himself so they could rest, please?- Sparda had been absent because Dante simply couldn't imagine his father loving him enough to even bother.)

Eventually Dante realized that the Vergil dreams came more often when the scar on his palm began to fade. So he started cutting it more often. That way he wouldn't have to face Vergil as often. 

It seemed to help. Vergil would visit him on the nights he cut into the scar, always, without fail, as if coming to exact the toll he'd forever marked his to collect, but his gaze wasn't so full of pity, wasn't so painful, and that was enough for Dante. Then Dante would be free of him for a few nights after, visited instead by his mother or Lady or even some random demons that would pin him and pierce him and tear him apart until there was no Dante left to free. To an outsider, the Vergil dreams, so clean and precise and caring, were probably a lot less disturbing than the crazy demon mutilation kind. But to Dante, the Vergil dreams were so much worse- hurt him so much more, the strange empty pity in his eyes sickening Dante more than any butcher-imitating demon ever could- so he'd take the other dreams any day. At least with the dreams about Eva Dante could confidently say she'd never do that, and with the dreams about Lady, she was more fond of poking holes through him than actually taking anything out. Demon dreams weren't fun, but that was just what demons did normally, with the small caveat of Dante normally being able to fight back. Vergil though? The Vergil dreams were the worst. Full stop. They never let him forget his crime. His guilt. His anguish. His (self) hate. And Dante couldn't decide whether Vergil would ever do that or not were he to be given the chance. He couldn't read Vergil anymore. Well, technically Vergil was dead and there was nothing left to read, but he hadn't been able to read Vergil on the day he died either, and Vergil lived on in a way through the scar and in Dante's dreams, and Dante couldn't read him in any of those, so it was close enough. 

Regardless of how good or bad he was at reading people and how much he hated slash didn't care about them, the whole not sleeping thing couldn't last forever, and putting off sleep just made the dreams worse when he did eventually give in to the need for sleep. Doing nothing about the dreams didn't make them go away, and cutting himself could only make the dreams go away for so long, so Dante went back to sleeping as normally (haha, what a term, normal didn't apply to him anymore, it never had but now it was even less accurate and the more he thought about this all the funnier it was- wasn't but it had to be or what did he have if not humor- was wasn't it?) as he could. 

It helped, somewhat.

But actually sleeping clearly didn't help as much as he wanted it to, because on the missions they worked together, Lady always stared at him with a frown like she was judging him. Once she even asked if he was okay. 

There'd been another time Lady seemed like she'd been about five seconds from asking another question he didn't want to answer, but Dante used his quick thinking skills to crack a joke before she could, making her yell at him and walk away instead of bringing up how he didn't look good or something. (He knew he didn't look good, the pizza delivery boy had commented on it once, and if the pizza guy told you you looked bad, you had to look horrible). 

Life went on.

Dante went on.

He knew what he could do to fix it, the sleeplessness, the bad dreams, the burning, unpleasant desires. Had one more thing he knew he could try to bring some peace back to his new not-normal, never-again-normal-but-could-be- more -normal life. With the things Dream Vergil and Eva were pulling out of his body, and the pieces that fell out of Dante when Dream Lady or Demons decided he'd make a lovely human model for swiss cheese and shredded beef, he knew what it was that his mind was trying to tell him. Those weren't human parts coming out of him. And they weren't just any demon parts. He'd caught his own reflection a few times when he did that in the Tower. When he'd- (Triggered, a word that shouldn't be so forbidden because he'd been the damn one to come up with the word, but he was the one denying everything too so he'd deny this alongside the rest ) . He'd been able to see his own arms and legs during that. 

He was an idiot. He knew this. The longer this went on, the more he realized that he was an idiot and he was a huge one for letting things continue as they were. But being a stubborn idiot wasn't the same as being a blind idiot. 

He knew those pieces were himself. The part of himself he did not want to acknowledge. The part of himself that Vergil had awakened. The part of himself that had been there since his mother and father came together and made the half-demon half-human abomination that was Dante (and Vergil, the other half to his whole, who was now half-nothing, half-nothing seeing as he was dead). 

He just…couldn't do it. Once the high of the whole shebang with the Temen-ni-gru wore off and the reality of what had happened really set in- once Dante's sense of ‘cool!' began to be replaced by horror- he just. Couldn't. 

It was stupid. But he couldn't. It was all in his head.

So he'd cut his palm and do his best to sleep and live as well as he could in the meantime. Maybe if he cut it for long enough, Dream Vergil and the rest would go away. 

It was like honoring his memory, the cutting. Maybe Vergil's spirit was restless, and that was why Dante was being haunted. Maybe if Dante kept up his ritual slicing of the palm, letting the blood well up, pumping the hand to coat it nice and good, watching the blood fall, fall, fall onto the desk below (always with Eva's portrait turned away, because Dante did not want her to witness that, did not think she deserved the punishment of seeing how fucked up her last living son was, even if the ‘her' that was was only a picture, not a living woman), it would somehow appease Vergil's spirit and allow him to rest. Maybe it would be enough. It would have to be. Because Dante wasn't going to do anything more than that. Wasn't going to indulge any more than that. It wasn't healthy. He'd just cut his palm and call it a day. Good enough.

(And if he enjoyed it? If the pain of cutting his hand and the heady allure of watching the blood from within burst forth to greet the world without made bubbly things happen in his chest? 

Was that bad? Was it unforgivable? 

Would that be wrong?

Maybe, some part of him- some horrible, traitorous, curious part of him- suggests, this new source of joy and comfort is a gift. Vergil's gift. The last he'd ever give. For he and Vergil were always mirrors, and though they didn't always like the same things, they'd always loved to fight and to hurt and maybe, just maybe, to be hurt. 

Maybe Vergil knew this would happen. Maybe Vergil wanted this to happen. 

The only question was whether this new source of pleasure was a gift or a curse.)

But something in him also told him to stop blaming Vergil for everything. 

This didn't start with Vergil, that bit of him said. That thing in Dante that wanted to bleed- wanted to be bled and cut and sliced and to break free- had always been there. Dante was just looking for an excuse to blame someone else. He just didn't want to admit that the sick monster who found pleasure in his own pain and who wished to shirk his own humanity and burst forth from his flesh had always existed beneath his half-human shell, buried deep in his body, in his heart, in his spirit, nestled among the thing that was his one-half-of-a-forever-lost-whole soul. 

Maybe the only reason he hadn't felt so twisted as a child was his mother- the being who carried him in her womb (for actually only seven months, he and Vergil were premature and it almost killed her and he wasn't sure how he knew this because she and Sparda never ever talked about her being sick or ill or injured if she wasn't unwell in the present moment so he wasn't sure how how knew this but he knew it so deeply and surely he couldn't possibly be wrong)- was human, and if he'd been born with his demon side out front, it would've killed her before he and Vergil had cooked enough to survive on their own. Maybe he'd started out looking and feeling more human because a human had carried him and he'd needed to be human long enough to be born. The demon in him had always been there. The corruption, the rot, the fucked-up everything he'd one day become, had been there from the beginning, just suppressed for a time until he could mature enough that the depravity of it all wouldn't immediately kill him. 

It made him wonder: if he'd been a half-human half-demon carried in the womb of a demon, would he have come out more demon-like and have had to learn to become human? Would he be in the reverse situation, a creature who thrived on pain and destruction who found himself terrified by the idea of becoming happy and sweet and what humans considered sane? Was his demon side emerging and taking hold of his instincts and desires an inevitability? An unavoidable fate, now that he was long since separated from the human who'd brought him into this world and shaped his humanity? Was the demon side overpowering the human? Was it wearing away at the human he'd once been? Would he have turned into that thing, felt these things, regardless of whether or not Vergil had stabbed him? Should he blame Sparda instead, because it was Vergil's attempts to be like their father and gain their father's power that had pushed him to raise the Temen-ni-gru and do what he'd done to Dante and the world and himself? Should he blame Sparda for leaving them? Should he blame Sparda for contributing the demon half to Dante's existence? 

No. No. The blame was only with himself. Dante was a broken person, always had been, or at least had been since he was eight and alone and terrified and learned just how dark and damning the world could be, and it was his own damn fault. Partly, at least. He wasn't going to completely absolve Sparda of guilt, because Sparda didn't deserve that, had done nothing to show he was good after just plain disappearing on them, but Dante also wasn't going to lie and say that he'd tried as hard as he could have to be a good person. To be human. He probably could've put in some more effort there. At least in the past. He'd done some things he regretted, for sure.

Now though? Now Dante was doing everything he could. He was going to the store and had made pasta for himself the other day and talked to old ladies shambling across the streets and was trying to find work and had made his store presentable and had even gotten himself new sheets and it Just. Wasn't. Working.

If anything, it would be the futility of it all that drove Dante mad. 

But life went on. 

Dante continued to dream.

Dream Vergil got more creative. Sometimes he'd just stare at Dante, sitting on the edge of the desk, holding Yamato and gazing right into Dante's soul as a deeper and deeper pit grew in the depths of his stomach from the dread of not knowing just when Vergil would pounce, or just what he might do when he finally decided to move after spending so long thinking about the details of the day's particular maiming. Other times he'd leave his hand in Dante's chest cavity after slice-cracking him open, feeling around, running his fingers over things Dante didn't know he had and definitely didn't know could even feel, keeping it in there for far longer than he needed to and again building that sense of dread as Dante grew increasingly terrified of what might come out when Vergil finally pulled his hand away. 

Dream Eva once stopped midway through ripping the stone across Dante's arm to sigh and ask Vergil to come over, disappointment clear in her eyes as she frowned at Dante and asked why he couldn't be more like his brother, be more like Vergil, who knew what he was and accepted what he was and look at what Vergil can do, look as he is overcome by blue and scales and a form that shouldn't have been seen on a child, couldn't have belonged to that child unless Vergil had transformed the day he and Dante were separated and Eva died and maybe that was how Vergil lived despite the huge puddle of blood, Dante didn't know he and Vergil hadn't talked enough about the things that mattered and now he'd never get the chance to-

Once Dream Lady shot herself in the head instead.

Dante woke screaming.

It was a comfort when Vergil came to him in the next dream and started pulling Dante apart like normal. As was right. No one else was supposed to be hurt. Not Lady. Not Eva. Not Vergil. 

Only Dante. Always Dante. 

He was the one who wanted it, the one sick enough to get high off getting stabbed, the one who'd been cut and crushed and splayed and stabbed and lived. No one else deserved to be hurt because he wasn't doing what his brain was screaming for him to do even as he denied it day after day. 

He'd take it, he told dream Vergil the first night after that Lady dream. (Because it was only in the dreams where the Vergil-who-had-died haunted him that Dante was able to sometimes, but not always, tell he was caught not in a memory but a dream. With Child Vergil or Dream Eva or Dream Lady or Dream Demons it all seemed so real, so indecipherable, until he finally woke.) He'd take the pain and the maiming and whatever other horrible thing his brain came up with as long as no one else was hurt. He'd accept it too. He'd accept how much he liked it. How much he wanted to break free. 

Now, that didn't mean he would actually break free. 

(Trigger.)

But he wouldn't deny that his interests and pleasures and desires existed. He'd acknowledge and accept they were real and strong and alluring. He'd indulge the pain part a little more- get a little more reckless on his missions, let a few more things hit him and bleed him out and open him up- if that kept everyone else in his psycho dreamscape safe from the sort of harm that was inflicted upon him.

Dream Vergil, like always, stared impassively. Maybe with a hint of pity. Dante hated the pity. Nothingness was better.

But after Dante begged and begged and begged in that one dream, no one else was hurt in his dreams again. Only Dante. Only the one who should be. 

Life went on.

Dante continued picking up every job he could get his hands on. The last few had all come from a guy named Morrison, who if Dante was a good judge of character- and he was, really, he just sometimes had fun working with bad people because it made life exciting, and he sometimes let people go who maybe didn't deserve it because he had too damn much empathy-, seemed like he might be a good fit for the position of ‘Dante's main broker.' Only time would tell on that one.

A steady income meant Dante was gorging himself on all the pizza and strawberry sundaes he could want, plus some jelly toast and maybe even some scrambled eggs on the mornings Dante felt especially energized (and wanted to be more like a proper human, because proper humans ate real meals, so if he wanted to be human, that would be a good start). He was better fed than he'd been in years. 

But a good diet (or better, because it still wasn't good, would probably have sickened or killed anyone who wasn't half-demon because he was most definitely going way too heavy on the fats and carbs and missing out on a bunch of essential nutrients) couldn't make up for lack of restful sleep. Nor could it calm the static that still lined his veins and the restlessness that made it hard to give his 100% focus to anything.

Then one day his new normal-not-normal, could-it-ever-be-normal-again-probably-not life crumbled to pieces right in front of him.

Dante had gone to an abandoned mansion just outside town for a cleanup job. Should have been easy- would've been easy were Dante not half-distracted, half-dead-on-his-feet tired from weeks-months of nightmares- but he messed up. Badly. A grade A fuckup with extra credit for perfect timing.

The details of how it happened didn't matter. 

What did matter was the result: Dante ending up with his head bludgeoned badly enough he couldn't keep his balance, one leg completely numb with the foot belonging to it turned a little too far to the side, and a wicked set of claws piercing his lungs where they'd been stabbed into his chest and broken off when he'd used Rebellion to slam the demon who'd done it away from him.

If he'd had any vital stars on him, it wouldn't be a problem. It'd still be bad. Dante would probably be left with a headache for half an hour, maybe an hour if he got unlucky; the ankle might tweak for the rest of the night with every step; coughing up all the blood that had gotten into his newly-healed lungs would keep him up and grumpy for a while until they were finally clear. But it would be fine. Bearable. He'd live.

Except he didn't have any vital stars.

Which meant he didn't have any way to heal any faster than his admittedly-fast-but-potentially-not-fast-enough-to-live-this-situation healing factor already healed him.

…

…Except he did.

It just wasn't one he wanted to resort to.

In the Temen-ni-gru, he'd been so frustrated by how much of the damage he'd done to Vergil had been reversed when his brother decided to embrace their demon side and go full on scaly monster. Dante remembered how much damage he'd immediately shrugged off when he took on the red scaly monster that was his own demon form. 

His Devil Trigger.

Or so he called it. And then didn't call it for a while, because he hadn't wanted to acknowledge its existence and what it meant for him.

But whatever he did or didn't call it, it had healed him far faster than his normal healing factor did. And Dante knew it could heal him now. That if he just gave in, if he finally let the desire wash over him, if he finally indulged, he'd be just fine. The demon who'd clocked him so badly would be dust in less than five minutes.

Still. He'd gone so long pushing against that urge. To give in felt like a betrayal of his values.

(To give in felt like admitting Vergil was right.

And admitting Vergil was right meant acknowledging Dante was wrong. It meant he'd murdered his brother for no reason. That he'd torn the life from Vergil's hands because he was too stubborn to admit he, Dante, was wrong.

It meant that Vergil had died for nothing.

It meant Dante lived for nothing.

And he couldn't live with that.)

So he stayed there at the trunk of whatever tree he'd been tossed into, dumbly staring ahead as he debated his life's worth and his failures and Vergil and whether he'd heal in time and if he even wanted to heal in time or if this was the end he deserved, the pain of the holes in his chest delicious for the freedom it gave but the ache in his head and foot horrible because they were alterations, not freedom, just twisting, not release, and that wasn't what he wanted or needed or-

A scream rang through the air.

All thought stopped.

Demons screeched sometimes. Some of them even imitated human voices, or human screams, which got annoying when trying to track them through a populated area where normal humans sometimes screamed just because.

But that scream was no demon. That, Dante knew. It was too scared. Too real. And if the sound of a human scream had managed to make it through the roar of blood rushing through ears already ringing with the force of the impact they'd borne, then that meant the human was close. It meant they were in danger. 

It meant that if Dante did nothing, they'd die.

Which meant that he didn't have a choice.

(He did have a choice, he'd always had a choice, he just needed an excuse-)

Dante Triggered. 

It wasn't for him. It was for the human. It was for the one who would die were he to just lie there, were he to sit and be as pathetic as he felt because he couldn't bring himself to accept the half of his heritage that went into his daddy issues. He wasn't doing it because he wanted to save himself. He was doing it because he wanted to save someone else. That was it. That meant it was okay. It wasn't for him. He wasn't indulging for him. He was doing it for them. That was very, very important.

(It was only half the reason).

Dante Triggered.

And when Dante Triggered, he was filled with pure euphoria. Ecstasy. Bliss. A mix between serenity and a rush of energy that could've powered the whole of the city for a week, the land around him erupting in a sea of red, wave after wave of excess power rolling over him and obliterating everything nearby because it had been building for so, so long, and now that it was finally free it was going to soar.

The demon didn't know what hit it. Couldn't possibly have known what hit it before Dante was there, Rebellion in hand, slashing at it with so much force its head was torn clean off. Its skull slammed into the manor steps in a plume of dust, concrete fragments raining down around it. The demon's body fell a few seconds later. Crystallized blood burst from where it had fallen, momentarily shining in the moonlight before flying towards Dante- towards the Higher Demon in the land- and disappearing as they were absorbed into someone who felt like he was on top of the world. 

He moved on the second the orbs were gone. The demon who'd clawed him hadn't been the only one. There'd been twenty, maybe thirty when Dante had arrived. Eight or so had remained when Dante'd gone down.

It took less than two minutes for him to rip the rest to shreds.

(If he'd been more aware, or had a better grip on his consciousness and memory and sense of self beyond that high of finally releasing the tension that had built up in him and finally breaking free of the shell that had been holding him back, keeping him within for so long, he might have stopped in horror at how eerily reminiscent of his dreams the scene before him was. Except this time, instead of being the one being torn into, Dante was the one tearing others apart.

And it was glorious. Rapturous. Euphoric. Divine.)

A few of the demons landed a few blows, but none of them mattered. The pain didn't really do anything for him; probably because pain was only good when it was the closest thing his demon could get to breaking free, and now that it was free, the pain served no purpose. He didn't hate the pain though. It was a non-factor. Unremarkable. Not pleasant, not unpleasant, just a way of life. Probably because demons and pain went hand in hand. Or maybe because he, specifically, was fucked in the head. It didn't matter. What mattered was the way the demons crumpled under his blows, and the satisfaction Dante felt when he was able to bring his full strength to bear. What mattered was that they didn't stand a chance. What mattered was that it felt sublime.

When Dante looked back at the scene, bloodlust sated with the demons dead and the static pulsing through his mind finally able to at least die down to a manageable hum even if not totally calm, he was happy to see there weren't any signs of the demons left over. No demonic life remained. The only power still pulsing through the air was his own. The only sign of the demons' presence still left was the damage they'd done. 

The damage to the surroundings, that was. 

Dante was fine. He could feel his wounds closing, knew if he gave it another minute he'd be good as new.

The human looked untouched too. Which was great. He'd done this for them.

(For him. 

For them.

For him.)

But they also looked horrified, and before Dante could utter a word (really he'd had more than enough time, or would have had more than enough time if he was in his right mind, but if cutting himself has made him high then finally triggering had him on the highest trip of his life and he didn't think he could even manage words, finally having gotten his first drop of water after a months-long thirst and so caught up in the ecstasy of it all he couldn't focus on anything else), they screamed like they had when the first demon had approached them, sobbing and choking as they stumbled away.

They called him a monster. A demon. Unholy spawn of the Devil.

(Not just any Devil, that thing in the back of his mind laughed-sneered-spat. The spawn of Sparda. A Devil who'd earned Dante a target on his head for life. A Devil who'd sided with humans. A Devil who was somehow but surely dead and gone, just like every other person unfortunate enough to share Dante's blood.)

Dante didn't correct them. Just stared dumbly. Thought was coming back to him, reason seeming a little more approachable, but he didn't trust himself to talk just yet. He didn't know if it would come out as a hiss, and he didn't want to find out.

The human ran.

Dante didn't chase after them.

Because they were safe, and that was all that mattered.

Because they would keep running if he went after them still looking like some freaky red demon bug thingy, and now that he'd finally found release, finally freed the half of his spirit that had remained trapped for so long, stuffed into a body that fit it but was not meant to contain it all the time, he didn't want to shove that part of him back in so soon. 

(He wasn't sure if he even could, and he was too scared to try for fear of finding out the answer was ‘no.')

So he stood there, letting the power of his Devil Trigger thrum through his blood, letting the strength and that feeling of being whole- of being right , of aligning with his true self- pulse throughout his body. He didn't need to catch the human. What he needed was to know he'd saved them. 

(What he needed, what he'd long needed, was to be free, and he was freer than he had been in months). 

Finally the dam broke.

And Dante made a decision.

He'd spent weeks- no, months, probably, time got really funny when you went days or weeks without sleeping and were constantly on edge- denying himself and his desires, insisting that giving in to the side of himself he'd always hated would be the last straw to losing his humanity and abandoning his morals and becoming something he never wanted to be. Day after day, night after night existing in a constant state of unrest and unease and discomfort all because one half of his brain insisted the other half was insane and bad and should not be fed in any way. A blur of time half out of it, trying so hard to focus on anything other than that thrum of desire in his blood that never went away and never really let him give his all to anything else because it was ever-present and all-encompassing and so, so alluring. 

He'd been terrified of what would happen if he gave in. Had imagined dozens of different ways he might break and dozens of different ways that would ruin everything he'd ever worked for. 

(Everything his mother had wanted for him. Everything he wanted now, different because he could never be the man she'd wanted him to be, too broken and too corrupt for it, but damn would he try to be the closest thing he could manage). 

But after finally breaching the dam? After finally letting go of all the pressure- all the water he guessed, he'd never been good at metaphors unless they were for cracking jokes- he'd been holding onto?

The demons he'd slaughtered had been a mess before they'd turned to orbs and gone away. He wasn't going to deny that. What he'd done hadn't been pretty. Hadn't been neat.

But it'd only been demons that he'd hurt. He hadn't touched the human. Hadn't gotten any closer than absolutely necessary to save them, and hadn't felt any desire to chase them when they ran.

And with the clarity Dante was feeling, having transformed back into his own form at some point during his grand ol' revelation, his injuries healed and all the pain gone? He realized that Triggering was absolutely fine. 

That it was good.

Not just in the way that fucked up things could feel good while still being fucked up. Not like how drinking until his liver was probably begging for mercy felt good, or like how slipping the twenty out of some random guy's wallet had felt good when he was younger and desperate for any way to support himself and stay alive.

Triggering was good in that it was, undeniably, good. Better than the alternative. Necessary to maintain the goodness of the world, and not bad for those around him.

Because it went like this: 

Dante, when Triggered, hadn't hurt a human who'd been helpless and, he'd realized partway through his rampage, bleeding. The bleeding part was very important. He would never, ever indulge in it- and this was a never ever he'd never ever go back on, not like the never ever of never Triggering, he promised this-, but human blood had always smelled this lovely kind of sweet when he was hurt, and from the moment he identified what the weirdly good smell that popped up on missions was, he'd been terrified that one day the smell- the desire- might drive him to do something he'd regret. But while Triggered? While Dante was as demon as he'd ever get? (Or so he hoped, so he prayed to gods he didn't really believe in, or was sure either didn't care about him or actively disliked him even if they existed given the whole everything that his life had been .) He hadn't done a thing. He hadn't charged the human. Hadn't felt his mouth water. Hadn't felt any pressing desire to chase them when they ran.

He'd just been happy they'd gotten away. And that was that.

And with that, Dante realized that big, like changing thing: 

Triggering didn't make him less human. It didn't turn him into a monster. 

(Ripping apart demons was a nonfactor in this realization; it was only natural to defeat that which threatened you by any means necessary, and plenty of human hunters got real messy too.)

Standing there, feeling peaceful and satisfied for the first time in ages, Dante realized that Triggering was exactly what allowed him to be human. Exactly what would allow him to continue to be human, in the future. 

Triggering released all that mounting pressure. It made the worst of his desires go away. It didn't drive him to do anything he regretted. It felt good. It was good.

Triggering didn't kill his humanity; it allowed him to keep it. Sure he didn't really feel human while actively Triggered. Nothing Dante had ever felt in his normal body could match up to the power high he felt when scaled and clawed and tearing through demons left and right before they could do a thing. But after Triggering? He felt more human than he had in months. Since the day of the Temen-ni-gru. Since before then, really. After he'd first Triggered, Dante had been too…saddled with thoughts to feel normal. He felt all stretched out of sorts even after he came back to himself, not used to the whole Demon thing and the way the Devil Arms he now had made him feel when he used them. And in the months before that, a pressure Dante hadn't recognized at the time had been building in him too, making him feel all out of sorts. It made him wonder whether he'd have found his Trigger eventually even without Vergil. Or not. If not, he'd probably have just exploded or something. Or died. Or gone on a rampage. …Which all things considered, he'd prefer spontaneous death by explosion to that.

But now? Now Dante felt like he could go walk on back to his shop, grab a beer, and relax with his feet up on the desk without a care in the world. He'd finished a job and come out none the worse for wear. Better, even. Dante's coat was open in the front and the claws had gotten stuck in his ribs before they could push out of his back, so the leather had gotten out of the battle relatively unscathed. Washing the blood out would be a pain as always, and the shirt he had on under it was a goner, but he could live with that. He had soap and extra shirts. No big deal.

So he made a decision. 

No more denying himself. Not his Trigger, at any rate. If anything weird like the urge to snack on demon arms or get all territorial or something came up he'd push that to the side, because even humans sometimes wanted to do things they shouldn't do and then didn't do them, but he wasn't going to sit and stew in his own restlessness and pent up demonic energy just because he was scared of what might happen if he let it rise. It was safe. Perfectly safe. It was half of him, always had been half, and now he knew that there was nothing wrong with indulging it.

Well, nothing wrong with indulging every once in a while, at least. He didn't want to Trigger all the time. Humanity was still better. The body he'd been born in was still better. He preferred it. By a lot. For all it felt good and right, something about being in that state still had the undercurrent of being wrong.

But he'd indulge from time to time, just to keep himself human (just to give himself a small gift when it all became unbearable). The more he fought the more that pressure grew, so he'd probably be fine if he just Triggered at the end of a battle and left it at that. So long as he didn't go too many weeks without a job, he probably wouldn't get restless enough to have to Trigger at the shop. If he even could. Battle made the urge grow stronger. He was pretty sure his Trigger was some sort of stress response.

So he went home, happier than he'd been in months. Years, maybe. 

On the walk back his mind went back to Vergil once more. 

He wondered if Vergil would be proud of him for finally accepting the other half of their heritage. The one Vergil seemed to have vastly preferred. 

Maybe. Maybe he'd be disappointed Dante still favored humans. 

But Dante wasn't going to abandon them, not when there was so much good to the human world, not when their mother had loved it so much.

(And most definitely not when the demon world had brought him nothing but pain, tha bad kind far outweighing the good.)

When he got back to his shop, Dante flopped into his chair, grabbed some of the good stuff from the alcohol-only mini-fridge shoved under his desk, and kicked back, feet up on the desk as he decided to ride the indulgence train and bask in finally being free.

At some point he shifted enough to feel the butt of his knife digging into his thigh. He pulled it out, flicking it open and closed a few times. It shone under the light, reflecting across the desk and Dante's face alike.

He took off his left glove, looking at the scar on his palm.

Then he tossed the knife onto the far edge of his desk.

“I figured it out, Verge. Sorry it took me so long. You were right. And now you can rest. So, goodnight. I'm sorry. Sorry.”

He downed the rest of his drink and grabbed another.

Dante woke to the sound of footsteps approaching. Heels clicked rhythmically across the wood floor, growing louder and louder as Dante blinked the sleep away, one hand raised to his temples to rub away the slight headache that told him his body hadn't totally finished getting rid of the alcohol in his system yet.

When Dante lowered it, he froze.

There, in front of him, was Vergil.

“-”

He couldn't speak. Words froze in his throat, eyes wide as he stared upon a twin who, by all rights, should be dead.

Dante kicked off the desk to put his feet back on the floor, whole body tense as some invisible weight kept him stuck in his chair, unable to stand or reach out to the one whose life he'd-

Vergil had stopped in front of the desk, his always-reticent gaze somehow blanker than any he'd pinned Dante with before. He looked impeccable. Hair slicked back, every strand in place; coat starched and bright and free of any loose threads; cravat perfectly fluffed, shirt free of dust or lint; pants neat and untorn and boots polished to shining.

So often had he entered Dante's dreams bloodied and maimed or dark-eyed and pale skinned. 

But now? Right now? He was perfect. Untouched. Alive.   

“---” 

Still the words did not come. Dante's mind was racing a million miles a minute with all the questions he wanted to ask.

How did you live? 

How did you make it back?

Do you forgive me?

Are you here to kill me instead?

Vergil loomed. 

Dante blanched.

Vergil reached forward, taking Dante's left hand with his right. It was a soft movement, his touch barely stronger than the wind, yet somehow strong enough to pin Dante down.

First Vergil used his own left hand to move Dante's hand into a loose fist, wrapping around it as he curled Dante's fingers toward his wrist. Then, with a tenderness Dante had never felt from him in life, Vergil released the fist, pulling Dante's fingers straight one by one. Open once again, Vergil used his left hand to press Dante's hand against the desk. The fingertips of Vergil's right hand were icy where they remained on the edge of Dante's palm, sharp nails floating just so, so they didn't stab into him.

Vergil's left hand then drifted across the desk. 

Dante hardly paid attention, eyes still locked onto the empty pits that were Vegil's.

Not that they were empty in the traditional horror sense. Silver-blue irises he'd never forget stared back at him, framed by white lashes and surrounded by sclera that looked completely and perfectly normal. 

But no light reflected off his eyes. The blackness of Vergil's pupils was all-encompassing. Normally Dante could tell there was something in there. At least, he had before Vergil had fallen. Even while Vergil had fallen. Terrifyingly so. There'd always been a fire there. Maybe not a physical one, not one Dante could describe, but a living Vergil had always had something there that pointed to the passion and fire of his spirit. 

The eyes before him were completely and utterly empty.

The only thing that managed to pull his attention away from that black abyss, sucking him in and eating away at a soul once severed, forever maimed, was a distinct pain in his palm.

Dante's eyes snapped down.

Vergil's right hand kept Dante's left trapped against the table. Vergil's left hand had found the knife, and was pressing it into the scar on Dante's palm, harder than Dante ever did, deeper than Dante ever did. But not as deep as the Yamato. Not deep enough to pierce through. Enough that Dante couldn't ignore it. Enough to remind him. To make him sick.

For the first and last time, Dream Vergil spoke. 

“You are not done,” Vergil breathed, words accompanied by a sickly-sweet smile. “The toll has not been paid. You have not earned your forgiveness, nor reprieve. 

“What you have done can never be undone. So long as you exist in this world, you may not stop. You may not forget. You can never undo.”

Vergil pulled the knife away, setting it on the table. 

He curled Dante's hand in once again. This time he drove Dante's nails into the scar. It stung.

“Goodnight, brother. Sleep well. You will never be free. You've long since damned yourself.”

Vergil let go.

He walked away.

When Dante blinked away the last remnants of sleep moments later, finally having realized that it was all a dream, of course it was a dream, Vergil was dead and gone and he'd never, ever, ever, ever come back because of what Dante had done, he scrambled to his feet, hand shooting across the desk in such wild desperation to grab the knife that it was flung across the room entirely. 

Dante ran for it, falling to his knees once he'd reached it and sliding it open to slice it across his palm without a moment's hesitation, the ferocity and urgency with which he moved cutting so deep he nearly severed his own hand in two.

It did not bring him pleasure.

It just hurt.

He began to sob, laughing all the while.

Vergil was right. He'd never be free. 

Never. 

Back to top!

Posted: April 18th, 2024

He knows her, he thinks.

He knows her- knew her, in that time of before, where the void of the past, heavy and alluring and terrifying and oh-so-tempting sits in his mind- and he unconsciously thinks about where he might know her from.

He knows her, or he once knew her, and she was important to him- or her face was, maybe, if not her self, for there is something about her presence that is not quite right but he does not know how or why and can't seem to find the context that will explain it because that information has been torn from him with all the rest- and he does not think much more on it, for attempting to identify just where he knows her from causes that lingering hum forever residing in the back of his mind and constantly thrumming through his forever-hidden flesh to multiply in a way that means he can think of nothing but the pain itself, all thoughts wiped away save the burn of agony and the ingrained knowledge that clearing his mind and giving in is the only way to eliminate it.

He knows her. 

He knows her.

He-

-

He decides the whys and wheres and whens and hows are irrelevant. 

He knows her. 

That is all. 

That is all that matters.

(That is all he is allowed.)

For if he has known her for a time longer than the moment in which they currently reside, it is (it must be) because they both work for the same master, and they must have encountered each other at some point before.

(Before but not before. 

He does not think of that time as anything other than before. To give it a distinct name is to invite the pain back in. To let his thoughts drift or grow or settle into any sort of material thing is to invite the pain to rip them away from him; to invite the void to eat at his very being in a way that leaves him feeling as if he has lost something beyond those surface thoughts, even though he is unable to think for long enough to identify whether there is anything left for him to lose.)

Sometimes she asks him what he thinks of something.

“How long do you think they'll last?”

“Do you think they seriously believe he'll treat them any better than their predecessors?”

“That nutjob seems to be a cut above the rest, don't you think?”

It feels like a trap every time she says it. Every time she prompts him to recall or analyze something. Every time she does not necessarily say the word itself, but clearly means to lead into it by asking something which requires interpretation or consideration for response. Every time she requests the whys and hows and whens that cannot be answered with the single, obvious, well-known facts which his master allows him.

He does not respond when she does that. 

He never responds. 

First because he cannot identify how he should feel around her (he l---s her he hates her for she is not her but she is she and she is her and she is the closest thing he will ever come to have). But second, because to speak is to show he has thought of his words, and his master does not care for it, so he never speaks at all. To her. To his master. To any.

(And he knows that his silence infuriates his master. That it both pleases and aggravates him. Pleasure at having won- something. Aggravation at being unable to make his- something answer him.

His master may be able to make him bend to his every command when it comes to physical actions, but words are more fleeting things, and those are the only things which he can deny. 

Through a loophole, yes. To do so he must put the fear of thought above the fear of the punishment of disobeying. But it is a logical thing. A simple thing. A thing possible even for one so confined as he.

If feeling was left to him, he would say that that- reality- not thought, never thoughts, for they are forbidden- pleases him. 

But he does not feel. Instead he has a vague recollection that such a thing would please him. He does not know where this feeling-reality-certainty, not-thought comes from. But it is a truth. One so fundamental to his being no pain nor order can ever fully take it from him. And one he sees no reason to deny.)

The third reason is that he does not believe himself capable of speech any longer. The few times he has tried, nothing has come out. He is silent. Silenced. He knows that at one point he screamed and screamed a glorious concerto until his throat was raw and bleeding and stripped enough to make no sound, but despite his accelerated healing factor, he seems to never have healed from that particular wear, and now makes no noise at all. None of the speech variety, at any rate. Nor screams. The thump of his footsteps and clanks of his armor rubbing against itself may indicate his presence to those without sight, but they shall never hear him by a word or cry or grunt or any such sound that comes from the mouth. That, too, has been taken from him.

He is silent. He is silenced. He feels little to no desire to speak, but even if he did, that capability has long since left him.

He accepts his reality as it is. He does not think speech would benefit him much. He sees no need. 

He does not think on it further. Not for long. 

The pain grows whenever he tries. It begins with a hum of disapproval meant to discourage him from thinking without necessarily interrupting his task, a buzz that certainly draws his attention as if to warn him of what will come if he continues to think- continues to disobey- but does not stay his hand. On occasion his mind unconsciously begins to stray, and if he were to be immediately and wholly crippled each and every time he did so, he would hardly be any use. So it begins faintly- subtly- a warning that if he continues as he is, then shall he find himself suitably disciplined. If his mind yet continues to wander, continues to explore that which his master has not deemed appropriate for him to explore, then it grows into a distinct and biting sting, now meant to punish. A pain that is true pain, not just discomfort. And if he yet presses on, if he continues to push himself to complete whatever thought it is that he has tried to pursue, the pain grows and grows and grows until it is no longer a distraction but an all. Until his body and mind alike are consumed by the pressure and fire and force and power that have such absolute control over him he cannot help but crumble under their weight, thoughts dispersing not merely because the pain is such that he doesn't wish to endure it any longer, but because the pain is so wholly consuming it is no longer possible to form thoughts beneath it. Until the pain erases everything that was on his mind before it began, leaving him so dazed that even were he to retain the strength to attempt the thought again, for a time his fragile consciousness can no longer recall anything worth thinking on at all.

He does not often get to that point. 

Thinking is not worth it. He does not like being so out of sorts. Feeling so out of control. There are few things he can say he does or does not enjoy, and that weightlessness, that dissociation, is chief among them.

His control over himself is fleeting as it is. At times he feels a passenger in his own body (his own body that never really feels like his own body, more like a hard shell containing a fluid essence that has been strained and stretched and pressed and changed , irreparably, until it has become something other than that which it once was and should still be-), simply present as the body does things his mind accompanies it for.

At times he is content. He feels no desire, so he sees no reason to be more involved than he is. If he is a passenger meant only to provide occasional feedback as his master desires, then a passenger he shall be. 

It is a simple life. It is only fitting for a simple being such as he.

(But other times, in moments where the pain begins to grow because his thoughts have begun to spark in a way his master would not approve of, something within him screams that he must not be content, must not grow complacent, that he must fight to take back the- the- something he cannot name, for it has been both taken from him and, he thinks, internally suppressed in a way meant to protect himself that seems so illogical even to a one so incapable of deep thought as he. He wonders if this internal screaming is so strong because he can no longer scream aloud. He wonders if the internal screaming is his own voice, beaten and suppressed until it is merely a shadow of what it once was, or if it is another being so unfortunate as to be stuck inside the shell with him.

He does not know. He doubts he ever will. At times he thinks he should feel disappointed. Instead he feels empty as always. Maybe it is for the best. Emptiness is safe. Emptiness is sure.

(The emptiness sickens him.))

He does not need to think. 

So his master says. 

He does not need to think, for he need only act and recount. He need only remember as much as is necessary to fulfill his duty and report back to his master. He need only process enough to determine combat efficiencies and take advantage of an enemy's weak point. He need only know as much as his master has explicitly, with no room for interpretation and no room for excess, told him- given him permission, for everything he does must have his master's approval, as if his master is concerned he might do something undesirable and irreversible if given even the slightest taste of freedom- he may know.

But there are a few exceptions his master need not know about. A few memories he has that are not exactly related to his duty. Some processing ability that factors into more than just fighting. Some knowledge that his master neither imparted unto him nor requested he find himself.

Those things he both holds close and pushes as far away as possible, both desperate (but not too desperate, for while thinking is bad, feeling is worse-) to retain them, and terrified (but not too terrified, for his master is the ultimate terror, and nothing may even approach such a level) to lose them.

First and foremost among them is the importance of The Amulet. 

He does not know what the significance of The Amulet is. 

He does not know the details of how it came into his possession, merely that it was at that time a gift. 

He does not know when it was gifted unto him, merely that he has had it as long as he has been himself (and that that ‘himself' is the self of his current state of being, which at times feels so wrong that he cannot help but be sure he was different in the before).

He does not know whom The Amulet came from, nor why they wished for him to have it, nor why its importance is so deeply ingrained in his being that nothing his master has ever done- that no amount of pain and prodding and orders or ‘education'- has ever managed to strip that importance from him.

He does not know why The Amulet provokes such strong thoughts-feelings inside of him, nor why his master is unable to strip them away despite the control his master holds over every other facet of his being. He just knows that nothing can take them away from him, and they are the strongest hold anything can have, or has ever had, on him.

(He does not know why the thing that screams in the back of his head screams loudest of all for The Amulet. 

What he does know is that it does, loud enough to drown out the pain and everything else until all he can do is think, think about its retrieval, think about its importance in a way that may not reveal the details of context but does mean nothing can stop the thoughts screaming, ordering, begging- desperately, unignorably, overwhelmingly- for him to retrieve it, as if it's the only thing that voice-desire-presence has the power to do, the only thing it can manage, and the only thing he does that is fully, ultimately, of his own- the voice's own, but it feels like him, though the thick haze that is his strained relationship with feeling- like his own decision, and not his master's.)

The Amulet is, in truth, all that matters.

He does not need to think about why.

Simply that it is.

(But when, one day, he does think about it, having seen the silver twin to its gold, he will be able to do nothing but think-

Think of why there is another-

Think of what it means for there to be two-

Think of whom the other might be that he has one of his own-

Think of what might have been taken from him, and what he might have once been-

Think that he must make The Silver Amulet- the Twin- his own, very much his own, he has long wanted it to be his own, for in the before it was once his own and it was- wasn't- was meant to be his he is sure of it and there is a mystery here and he knows not only The Amulet but the face and body and blood and soul and where does he know them from it has been ages but he knows them for they were once allies- enemies- allies- enemies- one, the same, the other, all he'd wanted was for-

The Amulet falls.

He ceases to think.

Back to top!