TASTE OF FATE
By: Blackladycharon
Author's Notes: Written for a challenge on the Magna Opera LJ. A kind of retelling of the last battle with Nelo Angelo from Vergil's perspective. It was going to be DMC 3 in the lair of judgment, but Vergil kind of hijacked the story. Definitely shounen ai.
Disclaimer: Kalliope the Mewthree: Blackladycharon doesn't own Capcom or the Devil May Cry series, so it's pointless to sue her. She's making no money off of this.
Taste of Fate
I don't know why I'm waiting here.
Nothing will change, nothing can change. You won't recognize me, not after all that's been done. Mundus hasn't left much to remind me of who I am, just white hair, a masculine body, and a too human heart that bleeds within this metal chastity belt that passes for a suit of armor. Everything else has been warped and twisted to suit him. I look in the mirror and see a horrible, alien face, see murderous red eyes. Once we were the same height, now due to magic forced through flesh and bone I tower over you. I'd scream, but I don't think I can do even that anymore. Only hideous grunts and dark, mocking laughter.
Even my name he's taken from me, or tried to. I cling to it with the desperation of a drowning man. Vergil, I am Vergil, not Nelo Angelo. I am not Mundus's black knight, for all that he has his boot firmly on my neck. I am still alive, still aware, still ME beneath everything done to me. Yet I'm standing in this room, this court, waiting. Waiting to be judged by you, the only one who ever could judge me. Dante, Mother's Joy, Father's Pride, and my other self in many ways. At times I curse you for stopping me in Temen-ni-Gru, at times I bless you. I was mad, in a way, insane with fear and loneliness and a desire to make sure that no one, you foremost among them all, never left or hurt me again.
Our relationship has ever been twisted, sibling rivalry and bloodlust tainting everything between us. Our demonic hunger for blood and battle, and our dear mother ever seeking to protect you, the more human acting of the two of us. I don't think it ever occurred to her that I acted as I thought an older, protective sibling should act. I battered and beat at you to try to make you stronger, to make you capable. Yet I would then turn and protect you far more fiercely than she ever could against the evils of our childhood. I suppose that shows the split within us, the human to protect, the devil to maim and kill what should be most precious to us. I acknowledge that, and I always feared that one day you would look into my eyes and see the truth. That I love you as far more than a sibling, far more than the other half of myself.
If I am lucky today, you will kill me without ever seeing that truth in my eyes.
I stand before the windows, looking at the throne the castellan once used to pass judgment from, imagining you there instead. That confident smirk, the lazy insolence with which you hold yourself, your red and black clothing draped regally across you and the throne both. You would never sit in it as it should be, Dante, but would plant your back against one arm of the throne and drape your knees over the other, twirling Ivory lazily as you passed sentence, that jackanapes grin of yours never reaching your eyes. Sometimes pale blue stolen from winter winds, when angered or wounded cold gray ice, those eyes of yours haunt me. It would be with gray ice that you look at me, Dante. Gray ice as you kill me, and I would welcome that anger to take into the darkness of oblivion with me.
Inhuman my hearing always was, made more-so by all of my time within Hell. I hear your tread as you approach this door, then your muffled cursing as you discover you require the Quicksilver to open it. I'm fairly sure Mother would not appreciate what you said there, my brother self. I hear your tread depart, then, a few minutes later, your resounding bellow upon meeting Pluto's dragon.
"SHIT!!!"
How base and crude, just as it always is with you. We are twins, the same self, the same soul, but I do not understand you. You adopt human mannerisms to pass yourself off, hide a mind sharper then Yamato's edge behind stupid words and actions. Yet I know you, I know you are far from stupid, Dante. You act for them, as I never could, carving your place in their world as I locked myself within myself. I hear your tread returning, and know that the time for thinking is over. The door swings open, then closes behind you with an ominous click. You spot me almost immediately, your lips curving up in that almost psychotic, 'Oh goody something to kill' grin you get when you can already scent the blood that hasn't yet sprayed. You rest that ancient grenade gun you found somewhere in the bowels of this decrepit place on your shoulder, gesturing with Ebony as you speak.
"A man with guts and honor. I like that, but it's a shame you serve Mundus." Not willingly, never willingly Dante. I am a slave, this armor the collar that renders me a hound at Mundus's feet. You watch as I stab the zanbato I carry now into the floor and remove my helmet. My heart yearns for Yamato, lost somewhere in the Room of the Fallen Ones, and to be at your side, fighting some other opponent rather then being the obstacle you must remove. As I pull the huge sword out of the floor, I see a flicker cross your face. Recognition? Despair? Confusion? All three? I am at a loss to be sure, as the battle begins.
The clashes of Alastor and this zanbato are harsh, discordant. They are not the ringing, sweetly encouraging cries of Yamato and Rebellion setting the pace of battle where both of us strove to disable the other long enough to claim the victory. Your moves have gotten better, differed from the old patterns so that I only just know them. Save for when you devil trigger and take to the air. I swear that that satanic succubus guitar of yours and Alastor have got to be related. That Vortex maneuver and the thrown lightening bolts attest to that. Soon enough you herd me in front of the throne, reverting to human form. The lack of your usual devil-may-care smile undoes me, gives you the split second you need. I throw my head back in a roar of agony as Alastor spits me right through the breastbone, narrowly missing my heart and pinning me to the throne. Irony, the seat of power is what I'm going to die on.
Your hand forces my head that I'd let slump upright, and I stare into your eyes. Gray ice, as I'd thought they'd be. I can feel Ebony's barrel pressed against my temple, and I wonder why you don't fire. You have to, to go on and defeat Mundus. To leave this room, you have to kill me Dante. Do it now, before my traitorous heart shows in my eyes. Let me die with some dignity, even if I have no honor left. Minutes pass, the world narrowed to your eyes and mine, and then you smile. Not the devil's grin, but a sad, wistful twisting of your lips as if it were you pinned to this moldering relic, not me. I wonder what it is that saddens you so.
"Ya know, Verge, I figured this'd happen. Figured out it was you faster than that blonde man trap on two legs'd give me credit for." You tilt my head up further, still smiling that melancholy smile. "I'm gonna kill him, Verge. Slow and painful, with all the glee in my twisted little black heart. Not for Pops, not for Mom, not even to keep the human world safe." Your mouth hovers over mine as if to catch my dying gasps, and I still wonder why you haven't pulled the trigger yet. "No, I'm gonna kill him for you. It's not like God adores me anyhow, but I think I'm about to really piss the old geezer off, if he's still doddering around up there." With that blunt, charming, utterly you statement your mouth covers mine. I taste my blood and your blood and human tears, copper and salt and darkness in a bittersweet mixture. I close my eyes, lips curving upward in a smile as you draw back. The last words I will ever hear echo louder than a shout, even though you only whisper them before you pull the trigger, sending me out of this room and out of this life.
"Goodbye, Vergil. Momentai."
FIN
Notes: Kind of a rescripting of the final fight with Nelo Angelo in the first Devil May Cry game. It was going to be DMC3 in the Lair of Judgment, but Vergil hijacked the story.
Momentai: Not sure if I spelled this right, since I'm going with sounding it out phonetically. Stolen from another character in another anime, it translates as 'take it easy'.