leonawriter | (no subject)

"Ugh," says Trish as Dante walks in through the door and to the office desk. It's clear it's just for his benefit, too. "Sometimes I regret not tossing him to the demons or throwing him off when I had the chance. And now I'm stuck with two of you," she adds.

Ah. That explained why she was in such a foul mood. He'd seen Vergil stalking away from the place on the way here.

At the same time, though-

"Hey, it's not like you knew whose ass we were hauling up."

Which just gave rise to the old conflict that'd more or less died out but wasn't ever fully gone of not knowing whether Vergil being back was a good thing or not. Which always made him feel guilty, because of course it was a good thing, Vergil was his brother and Nero's dad and he wasn't trying to break hell loose - literally - and hadn't stepped out of line too far since getting back topside. If you ignored the normal squabbles.

Can't shake that many years' worth of habit so fast, I guess, he guessed.

It didn't help that - as he'd said - they hadn't known whose ass they'd been hauling up that damn tree. He might've spent weeks - months? - with Vergil in Hell, but that one still stung. Being used like that-

"Dante, how much time did you even spend with V?"

Great.

"Uh?"

Now she's got that look on her.

"For fuck's sake, Dante, it wasn't exactly that hard to figure out. And that was before he went all sob story on me - no, I'm not telling you what he said." Not that he was gonna ask. He hadn't been. Probably. Maybe just a bit of cajoling, but that was it. Just hearing that there was a sob story was already good. "Anyone who spent more than five minutes with him would've figured it out. Only one who couldn't was the kid, because he-"

"Didn't know, okay, I got it, I get enough of that from Nero, thanks- wait, you knew?"

"It's not as if he did a great job of trying to hide it," Trish said off-handedly. As if it was nothing. "Did you ever even see him fight? Or were you just too focused on making yourself look good to pay any attention to anyone else in the room?"

"Hey! I can focus on others just fine! What was that about him not even trying to hide it? He was using an alias-"

"Which was just the first letter of his own name-"

"-and he looked different-"

"Oh come on, you even know the answer to that one- besides, black wasn't even his natural colour. Which you'd have seen if you'd been paying attention."

"Are you still on that?" Then- "Wait, does this mean you knew? You knew, and you let him go up knowing what'd happen?"

"V was a mess," Trish says with a shrug, pushing herself away from the wall and sauntering toward the doors. "Which you'd have known if you'd been paying attention, Dante. Yes, I knew. After all that, it was hard not to. So grow the hell up already. And maybe get your eyes tested."

She waved on the way out, and the door shut behind her.

"Fuck," he says into the empty office.

He'd always just assumed it was one of those hindsight is twenty-twenty things. Everything seems obvious when you look back, right? And it had. All the poetry, the way V had fought, talked, everything - he'd felt like he should've figured it out.

But V hadn't said it outright, so he'd just figured he'd been lied to, and that was it.

Except-

Looking toward the door, not at where Trish had gone through it, but somewhat to the side? That was around where V had been when he'd first come into Devil May Cry all those months ago. Leaning back, reading from that book - Vergil's book.

What was it he'd said?

"'I have no name, I am but two days old'."

He'd passed it off as a joke at the time. Vergil always had been bad at jokes.

"A powerful demon is about to resurrect." Dante had asked for the demon's name, and V'd even said it then - Vergil. It'd been Dante who'd flipped his shit at hearing his dead brother's name from the mouth of some goth reject quoting poetry and pushing all the wrong buttons-

He wondered if V had even realised that pretty much everything about him had pissed Dante off specifically because it felt like he was just making a mockery of everything about Vergil.

If he'd been the weak human faced with the full rage of a demonic presence, he... probably wouldn't have pushed things either. Even he had some sense of self-preservation. He supposed Vergil - V - had to have too.

V had said that Vergil was going to resurrect. Vergil had come back.

"Fuck," he said again.