Disclaimer: I don't own Devil May Cry. Can't sue me! (MC Hammer tune: Doo doo doo doo, doo doo doo, doo doo doo! Can't sue me! Doo doo doo doo...)

Summary: Follow-up of sorts to "Abandoned." Takes place before and after Heather returns to her home, and Dante and Vergil. Her thoughts, basically, concerning what she has done to support her children.

To the People Who Hated "My Angel" and Are Currently Reading This: Thanks for giving me the inspiration to write this. This one's dedicated to you!

The Hurting

Pain.

I know it so well now.

I know they still don't understand why I ran away. I do not understand it myself. All I know is that I had to get away. I had to put some space between myself and the men I love. Yes, men. I love both of them, the elder and the younger.

How did it come to this?

All I wanted from them, and they from me, was sex. I did not think that it would ever progress beyond that. When did their hearts and mine become involved in this relationship? True, when first I met them the idea of spending the rest of my life with one of them crossed my mind. But never in my wildest dreams could I have imagined them fighting over one such as I! I am not beautiful, I am not skinny with big breasts; men such as they do not fall for females like me. I supposed I should consider myself lucky, but right now, when my heart is torn between them, I feel only anguish.

I cannot choose between them! They are both exactly what I have always desired in a man!

I feel the solid kicks within my womb. My children (yes, there are two of them. I have felt the twin heartbeats beneath my hand) are rebuking me, telling me not to question my decision to run.

How long has it been? Six months? Seven?

I have lost count.

Within months, I shall be a mother. Who the father is, I do not know. The money I have scraped together, saved from begging on the streets and odd jobs I have completed in various cities, will help me figure out their parentage. Perhaps God will relieve me of my choice, and I can build a life with the father of my children.

But what would that do to the other twin?

I do not wish to think about that.

I could not bear to hurt them any more than I already have.

I would rather die than see them hurt any more.

My fingers curl protectively against my bulging belly, hiding my children from the gazes of those I share this haven with. They are a rough folk, used to life on the streets. A teenager, no more than sixteen by the looks of him, huddles beside one of the supports, staring out at the rain sheeting through the cold night. A drunk, passed out from guzzling the liquor he holds in his hand, snores alongside the river. He is so close to the concrete bank that he will fall into the rushing water if he moves even an inch to the side. A woman stands before the metal can in which we have built a fire, rubbing her hands together and watching me with curious brown eyes. She has been following me for the past three days, as if she knew that I have been suffering false labor pains in the mornings. It worries me; does she know something about my children that I do not?

Oh God…

If anything were to happen to my babies…

Pain…

I cannot stifle the cry. It tears from my throat, draws the gaze of the teenager from the rain to stare at me. A burning agony, the likes of which I have never experienced, rips across my belly. Whatever this is, it is far worse than any of the pains I have been suffering of late. Worse than the pain that has enveloped my heart ever since that morning after I first had sex with Vergil in an alley, and awoke beside Dante in my own bed the next morning, when I realized the full extent of my feelings for him and his twin.

It couldn't be…

It is far too early…

The woman approaches me, concern knitting her eyebrows. She asks me if I am in labor, and I tell her that I do not know. With all of the false labors I have been experiencing lately, can I honestly tell if this is true childbirth?

A sudden deluge from between my legs reveals the truth.

The woman helps me up without a word, and takes me to rest on her coat beside the garbage-can fire. The teenager watches with interest for a while, and then she beckons him to her. She tells him that I will soon have a baby, and that I will need his help. When he refuses, she offers him something; I do not see what it is. Whatever the object passed between them is, it is enough to convince him to help her, to help me

What follows is a myriad of lurid, incomplete notions and strange images. I see the woman kneeling between my bent legs, concentration etched upon her weathered features, her arms outstretched as if to catch something. The teenager supporting me against his legs and chest, helping me to sit upright. Burning agony, a slippery, tearing sensation. The protesting squalls of a newborn as it is forced from the warmth of its home into this cold, strange world of oversized people by the powerful muscles of the female who nurtured it for so long within her body. The woman exclaiming her surprise as a second baby follows. The rending sound fabric makes as it is torn, used to make blankets for freezing infants.

The welcome relief of rest as I lay propped against the wall, my babies snuggled tight against the warmth of my body, all three of us drifting slowly into sleep.

I have been in unimaginable pain this night, but it is soon surpassed by love and warmth, security.

Will the ache in my heart be assuaged in this manner?

I pray that I can survive the choice, the decision between the men I love, as I have survived the age-old ordeal of childbirth.

But until I return to Dante and Vergil, until I can sort out my own thoughts and emotions, I must survive, for myself and for my children.

A chill overtakes me as they begin to nurse, and I feel as if I am soon to be sick. I am both warm and cold, a fever for certain.

Images dance through my head, and I am struck by something.

They are just 'my babies.' They do not have names.

A boy and a girl. The boy was first.

They need proper names.

Michael, for the boy. Named for the archangel who defeated Satan, as I hope he will someday defeat the devil within him. He will need the strength of his namesake, if he is to conquer the otherworldly being that sleeps inside his soul. His father, whichever one he is, managed to do it; with any sort of luck, this boy will do the same, when his devil awakens.

And for the girl…

I always wanted a daughter named Angela, but that does not seem right, somehow. Their grandmother, Dante and Vergil's mother, was named Eva. I should name her for that woman, the woman who dared to love a devil.

As I have.

A combination, perhaps.

Aeva…

Michael and Aeva.

Yes. The names fit.

I hold my children close as they drink of the immunities in my milk, gaining the sustenance offered by my body, as I begin to shake with fever.

Dante… Vergil…

Forgive me…