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Dante hadn’t seen Vergil for years. Anyone else would have assumed that the elder twin had perished, but Dante knew that it wasn’t the case.
He knew it in the way that every now and then there’d be the faintest sense of that he was being studied, in how some devils and demons just seemed to appear out of nowhere while others just died without any apparent cause. The same thing was with bounties. Some nearly killed him while others were pretty much a walk in the park – and this wasn’t because of that Dante possessed extreme skill or speed (though his skills were without a doubt awesome!). Some targets that killed other bounty hunters – people that were far from greenhorns turned out to be as dangerous as a new-born kitten when Dante faced them.
Not that the pattern was apparent to see with the naked eye – it had taken Dante a few years to pick up the exactness of it. Once he’d even thought he’d caught the look of a blue coattail swishing by in the corner of his eye, but the movement had been so swift that he had waved it off as imagination.
The most obvious sign of that Vergil was alive presented itself twice a year when Dante took the three hour long drive to the cemetery to leave some flowers on their mother’s tombstone. While Dante drove there maybe once a month (when he felt melancholic – though he’d never mentioned that to Lady, Trish or Nero because he knew that he’d never live down their taunts of that he was getting old and sentimental) there were a couple of times when he knew that Vergil had been there as well. Her birthday and the anniversary of the day she had died to save them. Not the date that read on the tombstone – it was off by three days – but on the real date. This was why Dante was certain of that the single white lily came from the elder son of Sparda and Eva and not from their father (though whether or not the Dark Knight still lived Dante had some serious doubts).
On one such date, the anniversary of her birthday to be precise, Dante arrived, as per usual, somewhere around dusk. It had been raining all day and the drive over had been hellish due to the limited lack of sight, but as Dante neared the tiny village where he had grown up the sky cleared up, showing one of the most magnificent sunsets he’d seen all year.
Grumbling quietly to himself over that he had been too into his own thoughts to notice that he had parked in the largest puss of water he moved the motorcycle a few feet ahead before he made his way over across the neatly tended walkway, gravel crunching under the soles of his booted feet. Even from a distance he could tell that nobody had been to the grave, and while he approached he admittedly scanned the surrounding area for traces of that Vergil’s white lily had fallen to the ground, but no such luck.
Putting Vergil to the back of his mind he traced the letters of her name with a half-gloved hand while with the other hand emptying out the wilting tulips from the last time he had been here and placing down the fresh new ones – yellow this time, which he had nicked from his neighbour’s garden. Not like batty old Mrs. Smith cared either way.
It wasn't until he threw the old flowers out that he realised that it had been almost four months since he had last visited his mother. And for that fact - how long it had been since his first ever visit. Back then, some thirty years ago, this had been the only grave up on the hill, only a few young saplings some thirty yards away to keep her company. Now it was difficult to move through the maze of angels, doves, tombstones and plaques. Rising from his crouch he looked out over the field of the fallen, the impact of that life moved on hitting him like a punch in the gut. The thought of that he or his brother probably never would have a headstone or anyone to mourn them seemed a tragic thought that he’d tried to push off as far as he was capable of. Then again, what would they care once they were in the earth? Cemeteries were for the living, not for the dead.
He was still musing around the subject when a familiar presence appeared somewhere to his left. Giving no indication of that he had picked it up he shoved his hands into the pockets of his coat and turned around to walk back the same way he had come from which was the opposite direction of the other presence.
Dante was almost by his bike when he grinned to himself and paused for the briefest of moments, unable to leave without a parting comment.
“You’re late. I almost thought you’d kicked the bucket.”
With that he started whistling tunelessly, straddling the mechanised monster and driving off, not waiting for an answer. There wouldn't be one anyway.
---
Two months passed by. Life went on without anything out of the ordinary occurring. Vergil passed into the vague nothingness that always lurked into the furthest recesses of Dante’s mind. Almost forgotten, but not quite.
Then one day Dante found the Sparda sword on his desk – only it had turned back into the First Sword, Vergil’s half of the crystal missing. It hardly took a genius to figure out who had been there.
Still Dante didn’t go after his sibling. While the sword was a great asset he could live without it – and besides, the whole sword hadn’t been stolen. Vergil had only claimed what was rightfully his.
Chuckling to himself, Dante hung up the sword, twirling the crystal and tossing it up in the air and catching it before pocketing it. Maybe he should go to a jeweller and have the thing reset into a medallion?
“Bro, you’re getting nostalgic on me,” he muttered to nobody in particular, almost absentmindedly reaching for the phonebook to look up the local jeweller.
---
Dante stood in the shower, trying to scrub off the worst of the blood and gore from his latest mission. The water had run red for the past ten minutes and wasn’t looking to be getting any clearer any time soon. Tracing the sponge over his newly healed ribcage he recalled just how close he had come to having his heart torn out from the chest. If that claw had gone just an inch higher…
He shook his head to himself. It was pointless thinking like this. Either you just grit your teeth and got on with it or you got yourself a daytime job.
Still, the thought of that he was getting older kept tugging at the back of his head. Sure, thanks to his demonic heritage he probably had another thirty to forty years before he’d hit the human equivalent of thirty, but there was weariness in his bones where before he had felt just fine.
Sighing quietly to himself he renewed the fervour with which he cleansed himself, scrubbing his skin red, cursing loudly when he ran out of hot water and had to spend the last five in freezing cold.
A towel loosely wrapped around slim hips he walked towards his bedroom some minutes later, absentmindedly towelling his pale hair and humming to some melody he’d heard on the radio earlier that day.
It wasn’t until he’d sat down on his unkempt bed and felt a hard edge poking him in the back that he registered that someone had been in the room. Before his mind had fully processed the thought he’d grabbed Ebony and strained his hearing to hear whoever it was that had intruded. Adrenaline kicking his system into full operative mode so fast that his pupils shrunk to the size of pinpricks and his body tensed to ready itself for the attack that surely would happen any second now. However - the room remained silent, the only sounds his quiet panting, remaining droplets of water from the shower hitting the floor and bedding and the breeze coming in from the open window.
Less than two seconds passed before Dante relaxed his stance, rising to close the window and draw the curtain closed before the window, dimming the room from the bright light of the day. He’d noticed the small sign which told him that he was alone; because just as he could tell who it was that had visited him he also knew that by the previously opened window that he was alone.
Not that Vergil would ever be crass enough to enter or leave by the window. By smell alone Dante could tell that he’d come and gone through the front door (arrogant bastard that he was) but the curtained window was an old sign of theirs, from when they’d been children. Back then they’d had to share a room, and an open window was their sign to say that it was okay to enter, and likewise a closed window gestured that the one whoever was in their room wished to be alone. Certainly, their mother had had a knack for closing windows and thus confusing them, but they had soon learned to tell the difference by whether or not the curtains were drawn.
Putting Ebony down on the nightstand next to him Dante plopped down on the bed, picking up the item that had been placed there. It was a book, a thick leather-bound tome worn with age, yellowing pages almost falling out of the spine. The average person wouldn't have known the language of the handwritten pages, the faded ink almost illegible even to those who knew how to descipher the squiggles.
The red hunter quirked an eyebrow as he flipped it over a few times through calloused hands before he idly perused the contents, scanning page after page of neat handwriting. Soon however he grew bored and flipped to the final page where the writing wasn't quite as faded with age. Barely had his eyes seen what stood there on the last three lines before he slammed the book shut, rose faster than he usually did when playing human and in less than two seconds slamming it into his bookshelf. Pacing back and forth for several minutes, hands clenching and unclenching almost convulsively before he finally grabbed his clothes, jerkily pulling them on and almost tearing his belt with the force applied. He needed to get out, anything to get away from what he had just read and the way his heart beat far too fast in his chest. Fuck, he was too sober for this.
---
It had been two weeks before Dante abandoned the bottles and fights before he caved in and went to find the stupid idiot whose DNA he shared.
“So, you’re my personal stalker, bro? What’s up with that?” Dante paced the room restlessly and Vergil followed his movement with his eyes, his usual look of quiet resentment lurking just beneath the surface. The elder twin was reclined in his favourite chair, the antique blue one with the velvet cushioning and the lion-pawed feet, his legs crossed over his knee and Yamato casually placed across his lap. While upset Dante didn’t miss that Vergil was resting one arm on the armrest, his cheek resting against his knuckle which would make him a few fractions slower than usual. To anyone but Dante it would have been a sign of that Vergil didn’t consider them enough of a threat, but Dante knew that it was a weird form of courtesy to rather say that this wasn't a hostile situation.
Vergil scoffed. “You flatter yourself, Dante. I haven’t had any interest in your life for the past six years.”
Dante just raised an eyebrow. “Liar,” he said, tone sotto voce before he continued in a more teasing tone. “So that’s why I found our old man’s journal on my bed the other week?”
If anything Vergil looked beyond bored with the conversation and gave Dante a look that he’d been on the receiving end of so many times that he knew it by heart. It said “you’re being beyond stupid. Why am I forced to explain something so elementary to you?”
“I had no further use of it, and knowing you you’d pitch a fit if I had thrown it away.”
Dante paused mid step and turned his head to look at his twin. “Really?” The suspicion held in that single word was enough to make a lesser man cringe in his feet and confess anything wrong he’d done. Vergil was no such man.
“Yes, brother, ‘really’,” Vergil mocked.
“What did you want to find out about him so badly that you travelled over there to get it?”
Vergil studied his nails for a long moment before looking up at Dante who had changed his position to that he almost leaned over the chair, looming over where the elder twin sat.
“Not that it concerns you, but I wanted to find out what he knew about the attack.”
The last two words hung heavy in the air between them. For many years it had been an unspeakable subject between the twins regarding the attack that had cost their mother her life and destroyed their family - should have killed them as well. Even to this day Dante didn't know how his twin had survived as they had been separated in the mayhem.
“And are you happy with what you’ve learned?” Dante hated the scorn and anger that filled his voice, the knowledge of what he’d read in those very pages burning from the inside-out. Betrayal, whispered that little voice inside the younger hunter's head.
Even as close as they were to one another Vergil's face gave nothing away, his voice carefully neutral. “No. It was what I expected, but it gave me no joy to learn the truth.”
For a few moments the siblings just looked at one another before Dante abruptly turned his heel and left.
Vergil remained in his chair until he heard the roar of Dante's bike speed off before he relaxed his face and sighed quietly, pinching at the bridge of his nose. "You're too soft for your own good," he muttered to himself before rising to close the door that his younger brother had failed to close. On his way back to the chair he picked up two other leather-bound volumes filled with neat handwriting, one with a distinctively feminine English handwriting and one written in the language of their father, and carried them over to the fireplace near the large bookcase in his study. The embers were glowing but started up as Vergil without any further ado tossed in the two volumes and watched them burn.