Title: something about candy canes

Author: Brittany

Fandom: Devil May Cry

The courtyard was a picturesque winter wonderland, all snow drifts and strings of colored lights – it was really too bad the place was swarming with fucking demons. They were all crawling out of the huge clock tower in the very center of the place, and Dante had a hunch he'd have to check that out, sooner rather than later.

Speaking of which, he glanced up at the time. Twelve-fifteen. "Hey, Lady," he called over his shoulder, stopping fire for just a second so he didn't drown himself out. "Lady!"

"What?" she snapped, pausing for a reload. "What is it now?"

He shrugged. "Merry Christmas?"

She looked up at the clock tower, and then she rolled her eyes so blatantly that he could see it from fifteen feet away. "Sorry, Dante, but I'm not really feeling a lot of Christmas spirit right now."

Dante wanted to point out that, hey, they were decorating the place in red – but a line of demons rushed him and he didn't have a chance. He hefted Rebellion and they disintegrated into piles of sand and pools of blood before they could even scream. He smirked. "Hey, Lady," he started.

"Shit!"

She didn't sound worried, she didn't ask for help, but there was just something about her tone that sounded off. Dante jerked around just in time to see her go down and the Pride demons swarm. "Lady!"

Rebellion hummed as it spun through the air, slicing and dicing everything it touched into sautéed demon sand. It smashed into a window, and the glass shards took out everything the flying sword had missed. Except Lady, of course, because he'd known she was smart enough to stay on the ground.

She was pushing herself to her knees when he crouched down beside her. He'd only planned in giving her a hand up, but that changed the second he saw how fast that stain on her shirt was spreading.

"Lady, what—"

She looked up at him, and her eyes were more vacant than he'd ever seen them. "Gun jammed," she started. "It's…"

There was some kind of wound on her right shoulder, or maybe it was closer to her chest. He couldn't even tell if it was a stab wound or a gash, but what really bothered Dante was the fact that she didn't even seem to know it was there, despite how much it was bleeding. Or maybe because of that.

He scooted closer and did what they always did in the movies, which was to cover it up with his hand and hope enough pressure would make it stop bleeding. "Do you even feel that?"

She did, because she jerked, even if she didn't try to move away. "I'm—" She gritted her teeth. "I'm fine."

Like hell she was. The blood was pooling under his fingers and soaking her shirt, and he was, he realized, absolutely fucking furious she hadn't said something when the situation got out of hand. She could die from something like this. They needed a goddamn hospital.

Her eyes widened. "Dante—"

He fired several shots backwards, behind his head, and when the screams died he started shooting forward, leveling Ebony over Lady's shoulder. There were only a few stragglers left, but the next wave was coming any minute now, and he didn't have a freaking clue how he was supposed to waste them all while protecting her.

"I need your rocket launcher," he said.

She shook her head—God, delirious and she was still difficult—but he was already tugging it off her back, carefully, and she didn't try to stop him. "Bring it… back."

"Don't worry, I've got some collateral for you." One of her guns was lying uselessly in the snow beside them, it must've been the one that jammed. "And this one won't let you down, promise."

Ebony looked utterly ridiculous in her comparatively tiny hands, but her fingers curled around it anyway. She'd have to be dead before she forgot how to hold a gun.

He stood, swinging Kalina Ann up onto his shoulder. "Be right back."

The demons had already gathered in the base of the clock tower, he could tell because of the screaming. They'd bust out in a second, and then they'd be knee deep in evil from here until freaking New Years. Dante wondered why he hadn't thought of this a minute ago—but hell, he'd been having fun a minute ago.

He fired three times, shooting them at the bottom, middle, and top sections of the tower. Then he dropped Kalina Ann, and it clattered to the ground as he whipped out Ivory. He gave the rockets half a second to travel, and then he pulled the trigger once, twice, three times.

The bullets collided with the rockets, and the explosion was beautiful. When it was over, the tower was a pile of rubble, and there wasn't a demon left.

Lady was still breathing when he made it back over there. She was alert enough that he had to peel her hands off his gun, and she even blinked when he snapped his fingers in front of her face. "You awake? You missed a great show." he asked.

She hissed. "Condescending bastard."

"That's more like it." He shoved Ebony back in the holster and carefully picked her up, trying to ignore how limply her head fell against his chest. "Some Christmas, huh?"

She laughed for a second, then she broke it off with a groan. "We decorated," she said. "Look."

Dante glanced around at the snowdrifts slashed with streaks of blood, red on white. Like candy canes. Merry fucking Christmas. He stood up, shifting her weight against him. "Sure," he said. "Hospital."

She nodded, and it said a lot that she didn't even argue that point. Maybe she didn't have a clue what he was saying. Maybe she didn't know what she was saying, either, because the next thing she said was, "This is the best Christmas I've had in a long time."

And he wasn't sarcastic in the slightest when he grinned and said, "Yeah, me, too."