I'm sorry for the slight delay with this chapter: I had to fly back to school, which naturally meant homework, and time spent avoiding all sense of duty at my friend's house playing Super Mario Galaxy. Work level is better than it was in the Fall, but because I have more free time I've been avoiding the things I need to do, be they academic or fanfiction. I do have another chapter of Observance coming this week, so for those of you who read that, keep your eyes peeled!

Anyway, thank you all for your reviews! I'm glad you liked the style of the previous chapter, which was a bit experimental in the sense that I was trying to establish a sense of gradual change over the course of three years. I guess it worked! This next chapter marks the exciting conclusion of the ten-year post-DMC3 gap. Starting now, expect, gasp! Other characters! Seriously, it's been the DxL show for the past seven, considering that it was all happening over 10 years. Ah, well. I'm going to be talking about the first game in this chapter too, so hopefully my Dante makes sense. Why have you made continuity between games so difficult, Capcom? Why?

Can we just assume that I don't own Devil May Cry? If I did, this would theoretically be canon, wouldn't it? But it's not. It's fanfiction. Le sigh.


The Passage of Time

Part Two: Decade Nostalgia

Chapter 4: Resignation

First there was black. Then there was white, searing white, and constant pounding at his head as he turned over and groaned loudly and ignored the lurching of his stomach.

That usually meant he was hung over.

Dante had discovered the limits of his own healing abilities when he was twelve or thirteen years old, which was when he had chugged a bottle of vodka just for the hell of it. He had simply assumed that his demonic blood would allow him to drink as much as possible and never get drunk—and boy was he wrong. He was puking ten minutes later, and continued to puke up bile until he passed out. When he woke up the next morning with what, to date, was still the worst hangover he ever had, he realized that his healing did absolutely nothing for alcohol in the bloodstream, so he could, in fact, still get wasted. It did take him less time to sober up, and likewise less time to get over a hangover, but he still went through the stages and they were as intense as they would be for anyone else of his height and build.

Granted, he hadn't gotten smashed in a while. While he was definitely a heavy drinker, it was a result of how long it took him to feel the effects of alcohol—so long as he wasn't chugging straight spirits, and even then he was still a bit of a tank. On the whole, he actually had enough self-control to not get drunk to the point of blacking out, and hadn't since his early twenties. He enjoyed conscious drunkenness, particularly considering the alternative. And he was grateful that he could stop at that point and still have a lot of alcohol.

Lady had, of course, asked him to prove it. She had brought in a huge bottle of Everclear and asked him to drink it to see exactly how much it took for him to actually get drunk. After all, she had pointed out, he had never been aware of how much he actually had to get to that point, so it was worth investigating. And when Dante had asked her why she had chosen Everclear of all things, she had told him that it would be more entertaining for her with something that strong.

"Thanks for the concern," he had told her, grinning anyway. Then he did his first shot of the night.

And that brought him to this morning. At least he had made it to his bed, he realized as he buried his head into his pillow. He usually woke up on the couch after a night of drinking, or worse, sprawled out on his stomach on the floor next to the couch, so it was almost miraculous that he woke up in his actual bed. He guessed that Lady had been kind enough to drunk-sit him, or at the very least drag him upstairs to his bed. That was ... surprisingly generous of her. He would have guessed that she would stare at him with an annoyed look and proclaim: "Do it yourself."

Come to think of it, where was Lady? Glancing up, he saw that it was already nearly 1 PM. He would have expected her to show up by now, harassing him to get out of bed. Well, even if she wasn't there yet, the thought of her kicking him awake was enough to motivate him to get out of bed. Oh, how he would have liked to sleep through this hangover.

Dante dragged himself out of bed with a pained groan, trying to ignore the lurching in his stomach and aching pressure on his head, without much success. It took a second try before he actually managed to get out of bed and stumble into the bathroom. Hanging his head limply over the sink, he splashed some cold water on his face, hoping at least that he could shock his way to attention. No luck—no, wait, he felt a little more alert. Not much, but it would have to do. Maybe a shower would work best? Maybe later. He didn't feel like showering just yet. First he would relax downstairs and try to clear his head before climbing in the shower and falling on his ass.

The sound of his footsteps thundered in his ears as he trudged downstairs, each step sending shockwaves up his body, making his stomach lurch even more. The last few steps to the couch were unbearable, but he made it, sprawling face-first across the worn leather and burying his nose in a pillow that had been left there—the pillow that Lady usually used when she slept on the couch, with the blue pillowcase. Her pillow.

Wait, was she there? He flopped onto his back, avoiding looking at the dizzying ceiling fan to quickly scan the room for her presence. While his vision was certainly a bit blurrier this morning, he could tell that she wasn't in the room, and from the utter silence filling his home, anywhere in the building. He wasn't sure what to think of that.

On any other day, she would be sitting exactly where he was reclined, either chatting with him or sitting in amicable silence as they read magazines or cleaned their weapons, or whatever they were doing to pass time between missions, which to be honest were growing fewer and farther between in the past few months. Come to think of it, they had discussed instituting a more lax work schedule, so that they could spend less time sitting around the office doing nothing and more time doing other things. Maybe that's why she wasn't there yet? She was just taking advantage of the lack of missions to recover from her hangover back at her own apartment? He could only hope that this was the case, and not that she had gotten herself hurt.

After all, she might have driven herself home. Lady was a good driver, but nobody drove well with a few beers in them, let alone Everclear. He couldn't tell if she had slept over or not—the pillowcase smelt like her shampoo, but it always did if she hadn't just replaced it with a clean one—but hoped that she had. She had been drinking, right? Yes, of course, he remembered her doing a few shots with him. She had been laughing at him, laughing at how goofy he was being; and then she was beautiful and pensive, watching him gravely as he spoke, and he couldn't remember what he had been saying for the life of him. It was as if he had been running on autopilot, his mouth running off while his mind sat there appreciating the particular curve of her lips, neck, breasts—it had been a while, he had realized, since he had brought someone home, and all for the sake of winning her over.

Much to his distress, Dante didn't remember anything after that point, browning out right around then. That final thought before the darkness haunted him, drawing him to only one disturbing conclusion: what if he had drunkenly ... well, tried something? Normally, he was more than willing to wait as long as he needed to before trying anything that wasn't strictly platonic, but if his logical side had been out of the running, who knows what he might have tried? Anything, really, and the guilt of actions that he couldn't even prove consumed him.

He shook his head, perhaps a little too violently. It was time for that shower.


A shower, a nap, and about two-thirds of a pizza later, Dante was sitting at his desk and half-heartedly reading a magazine, definitely over his hangover but no less concerned than he had been earlier. He would have tried to contact Lady—call her cell, if it was even on, since she hated using it so much—but his paranoia about the previous night's events told him that contacting her was a bad idea when she was obviously ignoring him.

When she finally did show up, it was about 8:30. To see her walk into the room so impassively while he had been waiting and agonizing for seven and a half hours was more than frustrating, and his agitation quickly turned to anger.

"You're late," Dante pointed out flatly, not even bothering to hide his annoyance.

Lady didn't answer, instead crossing the room to grab a box from the corner—oh yeah, the old microwave he had been meaning to get rid of. He would have asked her what she wanted with it, but he noticed as she bent over that Kalina Ann wasn't on her back, and that she was only carrying one gun, for that matter. That, to him, was more disconcerting than whatever she wanted with the microwave.

She walked back around to the front of his desk, box in hand, and placed it on the floor. She then sat on the box like a makeshift chair, facing him but looking down at some spot on the desk in front of her, eyes blank, head propped against her fingers, slightly hunched over.

She didn't say anything.

"How much did you drink last night?" Dante asked, simultaneously attempting to fill the incredibly uncomfortable silence and discern what was wrong. He regretted being frustrated with her, not when something was obviously concerning her. He wracked his mind for anything that could have been bothering her—but the anniversary of her mother's death had passed a few months earlier, and that of Temen-ni-gru not for a while yet either. He couldn't think of anything, except ... the night before. It must have been the night before. Him.

Fuck.

"A bit," she answered, eyes still avoiding his. "Enough."

"Did you go home after you brought me upstairs?" he continued, still assuming that she was, in fact, responsible for him winding up in bed. It occurred to him, just then, that if he had done something then, had tried to force himself on her up there—

"No, I slept on the couch," Lady responded unflinchingly, though she still avoided his gaze. "Went home this morning. 10 or something."

"Ah." He wasn't sure how to respond, whether or not he should ask why she had stayed... His mind was a rush of guilty questions, all following the assumption that, yes, it was all his fault, he had done something to hurt her, said something that offended her, anything that was making what otherwise would have been another day at the office so uncomfortable.

They sat in silence until, a good half a minute later, Lady said: "We can't work together anymore."

They couldn't work together anymore.

She was leaving.

She...

"Don't make that face," she added, and Dante realized that he must have spaced out, because she was suddenly looking at him, both eyes matching in the intensity of their disgust. And that hurt the most, more than the words themselves, because she hadn't looked at him with such disgust for years. Arguably, since Temen-ni-gru, nearly ten years earlier.

Still, his blood was beginning to boil, and while deep down he knew that he had something to do with her leaving, it was still her fault for making the decision in the first place. For assuming that, whatever had happened, whatever she was thinking, it was impossible to work through. And he wasn't allowed to be stunned by her decision, upset, even, that he was losing a partner and a friend to something that he could only speculate on...

"I can't be shocked?" he asked accusingly, his anger feeding off of hers.

"No," Lady responded, her voice even despite its venom.

"Why is that?" Dante goaded. "Will you feel bad about leaving if I am?"

"No," she hissed, her back straightening.

"What's wrong, then, huh?" he snapped, suddenly standing. Oh, fuck being calm—he was pissed off, almost betrayed by her leaving when things were going so well. If she wanted to ruin everything, then she could go ahead and do that, but then he wanted to know why. "Why are you leaving?"

Lady looked away guiltily. "I just need to get away. Spend some time on my own. That's all."

Dante scoffed derisively. "So you couldn't just take a vacation?"

"It's more complicated than that," she angrily insisted, standing up. "It was a mistake coming here. I knew you wouldn't understand." She shook her head in what seemed to be a cross of frustration and disappointment, and started turning to leave. "Bye, Dante."

No, she couldn't just leave; that would be too easy. Lady was a fighter, and kept arguing until she got what she wanted, so giving up like that made no sense. He hated her for leaving, hated her for giving up, hated her for not fighting back.

"So that's it?" Dante accused, and she froze in her tracks. "Just: 'Bye, Dante,' and then you're out the door?" When she didn't answer, he added: "What are you running away from?"

"I'm not running!" she argued, turning to face him, aghast.

"You said you needed to get away," Dante pointed out, crossing his arms. "So what are you getting away from?"

Lady growled in frustration. She was fighting again. "It's not what I'm getting away from!" she insisted. "It's..." she trailed off, uncertain of what to say next. "I don't know; it's where I'm going!"

"That not what you—"

"Who cares what I said!" she interrupted, taking a few angry steps forward. "Would you shut up and listen to me now?" Her nostrils were flared, fists tight, eyes focused on his with murderous intent. He could only listen to her. "I just lost sight of myself and I need to figure some shit out! So would you lay the fuck off and let me leave?"

That last verbal explosion left her winded and panting. Her shoulders slumped slightly and her fists relaxed, though her eyes didn't lose their ferocious intensity as she stared him down, daring him to challenge her again.

"Where are you going?" Dante asked, as calmly as he could, given the circumstances.

She exhaled roughly, a strange, silent, supercilious laugh. "I don't know."

"Why are you going?"

Lady sneered. "I already—"

"No," he interrupted sharply. "I mean, why now?" She didn't answer, and he immediately feared for the worst. "It was last night, wasn't it?"

Lady suddenly dropped her gaze. "No," she said, and she was obviously lying.

"What happened last night?" he asked, because there was no need to humiliate her by pointing out her lie when they both knew the truth. More importantly, he needed to know what had happened. "Did I ... do something?"

She looked back up at him, eyes flashing with ... something. Was it suspicion? "We just talked."

Dante felt relief wash over him, soothing the heat of shame that had been rushing through his veins. They talked. Talking was nothing—talking was something they did all of the time. Talking was harmless. Talking meant that things were still normal.

Swallowing thickly at his obvious relief, she added, suspiciously: "Why do you think you did something?"

He felt himself panic at her words despite himself, as if she had already figured out what it was he had been worrying about. "No, I—"

"What do you think you did?" she asked again, eyes growing wide and almost nervous. Lady was a woman who seemed to hide all emotions under anger, so to see unadulterated fear on her face for the first time since Temen-ni-gru was alarming, to say the least. "Dante!" she exclaimed, her tone begging for him to say something.

He didn't respond. He couldn't. What was he supposed to tell her, that he had reason to believe that he might have tried to take advantage of her? There was no way that he could ever admit that to her. But he wasn't answering, and from the growing look of alarm on her face, he needed to soon. "I was drunk," he started, pausing here to find the right words to say. "Can't really remember what happened, and I wanted to make sure that I..." He stopped again; there was no way of finishing that sentence that wouldn't upset her.

"You think you got drunk and tried to..." She trailed off, hands twitching nervously. "Me..."

They were obviously on the same page. She was staring right at him, and he couldn't bear to look away.

"Is that it?" she continued, her fear slowly turning to anger. "And why would you think that Dante? Do you want to? Is that it?"

"Lady—" he started, but she interrupted him.

"God, I fucking knew it!" she exclaimed, her torso curling in on itself self-consciously as she ran shaking fingers through her hair. "I knew that you were flirting, I knew that friendly dinner two months ago was really a ruse to go on a date, I just—I..." She shouted, an incomprehensible, untranslatable growl of anger and fear and whatever else was running through her head—betrayal? Had he betrayed her by being attracted to her? Had she really known all along, and chosen to ignore it, deny it for the sake of maintaining the amiable peace that had developed?

"Is that why you want to leave?" Dante asked, voice careful and quiet, guiltily hoping not to upset her any more than he already had.

Lady's face relaxed, then tensed again, scowling lightly. "No," she admitted. "But now I see that it's the right decision."

And the line was drawn. "You know what?" he started, too offended to be gentle, much less guilty. "It took me years to get you to warm up to me, to even want to be my friend. Why I did it doesn't even fucking matter, because you fought back anyway!" The words were flowing: he was so suddenly furious, mad at her for holding his feelings against him, that he didn't care what he said and how mad it made her. "You didn't want anything to do with me, and I don't even know why because I always tried to be nice to you. Then we finally are friends, and for fuck's sake, maybe I hoped you'd see in me what I always saw in you, but now you're running away, and you don't even know what you're missing." Well, he went there. At this point, he was too pissed to care. "So way to go, Lady. Congratulations. You're making the biggest mistake of your life."

"Why, because I refuse to come running into your arms?" Lady asked, ironically taking a few steps closer to him as she spoke. "Is that it? Well fuck you, Dante."

He leered. "Maybe if we did—"

"Oh, don't finish that sentence," she warned. "If you're really that horny, then I'm sure there are plenty of girls at the local bar that are drunk enough to let you fuck them."

"You're the only girl who doesn't throw herself onto me," Dante bragged, crossing his arms confidently. He wasn't sure what he was trying to accomplish at this point, but she had damaged his ego enough in one conversation that he needed to feel as though he had the upper hand.

"Oh, sure, then I'm just a conquest," she decided, raising her hands in offense and hitting them against her thighs. He followed the motion of her hands with his eyes then looked back up at her face, where she was glaring back at him, exuding anger and hurt. "Great. Glad to know that this is the only reason why you wanted anything to do with me."

Guilt washed over him again when she so grossly misinterpreted his intentions. Sure, he wanted to spend time with her because he wanted her, but she meant more to him than that. "No," Dante protested, "not true. You're not just some—"

"Then tell me, right now, to my face, that the reason why you're attracted to me has nothing to do with the fact that I didn't let you kiss me ten years ago," Lady interrupted, hands on her hips.

She had a point. Maybe it did have something to do with that moment when she had squirmed and turned away so that he couldn't kiss her, but hadn't it started before then? Hadn't he been drawn to her since she had crashed into the Tower on that motorcycle of hers, shot at him with Kalina Ann, and wordlessly disappeared further into the Tower? Maybe not that soon, but her silence and coldness had a mystique that was only strengthened by her willpower and, of course, her beauty. But to say that he hadn't spent the years getting to know her, finding more and more things and common with her and reasons to be attracted to her really discredited him. "I care about you," he said, skirting around her question to address the core issue, and took a few steps forward, closing the distance between them so that they were only inches apart. She didn't move, instead keeping her unsure eyes locked with his. "You're just so busy pushing me away that you don't realize that we can have something."

Before Lady could so much as open her mouth to respond, Dante leaned in and kissed her. This time, she was taken completely by surprise and didn't have time to move away as he captured her lower lip between his own, tasting the barest traces of coffee. Everything about her, probably despite herself, was soft: her lips, plump against his; the skin of her cheek, smooth against his rough palm; her skirt, silky as he pulled her closer with one arm. Why hadn't he noticed how nice her blouse was? He had long since noticed the embroidery along the collar, but he hadn't noticed that high quality of the material itself. He found himself wondering if the shirt felt nice as it slid against the equally soft skin of her back and stomach, sweet friction between two similarly soft surfaces; and if his calloused fingers running along her back would send shivers down her spine just as the softness of her being was sending shivers down his.

God. It was perfect.

Only she wasn't moving.

Dante pulled back and looked at Lady. She was staring at him, eyes as wide as they had been before he kissed, but more outraged. Her body was tense in his grip, her skin bristling at the contact with his. She was, to say the least, unpleased.

"Fine," he said, releasing her, and she immediately took a few steps back, her eyes looking on in horror. "That was a mistake."

"Yes. It was," she coldly responded.

She rejected him so easily, as if she really hated him. It seemed as though she would only be satisfied when he was on his knees in front of her, begging for her forgiveness—and while he didn't want to emasculate himself that way, he was starting to believe that, at the very least, he had to be open with her.

Sighing, he said: "Look, Lady." He uncomfortably ran hand through his hair, brushing a few white hairs to the side only for them to fall in his face again. "You're basically the only friend I have at this point," he admitted. "There are a couple of familiar faces at the bar, sure, but ... I mean, you're all I've got." He laughed awkwardly, raising his arms slightly in invitation. "I can't let you go."

She shook her head, quickly and with wide, downcast eyes. "No, I can't. This is what I can't handle. I'm ... I'm sorry, Dante, I have to..." Lady trailed off and stopped before looking up at him, eyes as apologetic as he had ever seen them. Then she turned away.

"I don't understand!" Dante called out after her, struggling not to get angry again for all his frustration. "Is baring my soul not enough or something? I thought women liked that kind of thing!"

She was still walking towards the door when she spoke, so he barely heard her say: "Last night." She stopped in her tracks, right in front of the door, and explained: "That's what you did last night." She laughed half-heartedly. "You told me about your mother, father, brother..."

Was that all? Maybe it was a bit hard to swallow, but ... come on, she was Lady. She had her own familial issues. She could listen to his. "And?" he asked her incredulously. "Is that why you're leaving?"

"No." She opened the door. "I'm leaving because you're a demon."

She left before he could even process her answer.


Dante knew where Lady lived. He had known for several years now, only he hadn't told her that he had found out, much less pointed out that she was getting rusty if he could follow her home without her noticing. Still, he had only done it so that he could know, in case of emergency. Until then, he would sit on the information.

Now was an emergency. Sort of.

He hadn't seen her in two days. After she left, he didn't attempt to contact her in anyway because he felt that she needed to think things through, though subconsciously it was because he wasn't sure what he would say to her in the first place. But now he had a job—they had a job. Big apartment building filled with Blood-Goyles. She loved Blood-Goyles. She would have a hard time resisting with that many Blood-Goyles to shoot down. While he was definitely a bit apprehensive, unsure that he was ready to talk to her, or even wanted to talk to her after such a harsh exit a few days earlier, he wanted to smooth over the cracks sooner as opposed to later; before it was too late.

Pulling up to the building, he realized that he wasn't actually sure which apartment was hers, and figured that he would have to check the buzzers by the front door to find out. She probably wouldn't let him in if he buzzed, but if he tried to get in through one of her windows ... sketchy, but effective. Still, he didn't want to look through every window of the building to find her, because that would be even sketchier. But it was a small, narrow building, and he figured that each floor had an apartment, maybe two, so he just needed to know what floor she was on and he would figure it out from there.

Thankfully, the tenants' names were posted next to their corresponding apartment buzzer, so it was all a matter of finding one for Arkham, L. or M., whichever she went by legally. Shit, had she changed her last name? None of the buzzers had Arkham, anything next to them. She must have been going by an alias. That was it. It was just a matter of—

"May I help you?" a voice asked from behind Dante, and he turned to face an old woman in a dusty pink jacket who standing with several bags of groceries in front of the stoop, presumably waiting to get into the building.

"Do you live here?" Dante asked, wondering whether or not he should turn up the charm to get some information out of her.

"I'm the landlady," the woman informed him, and she opened her mouth to say something else, but he interrupted her.

"Great!" he exclaimed, crossing his arms confidently. "My friend lives here, but I can't find which apartment is hers."

The landlady looked at him as if he were an idiot. "Is her name there?" she asked, pointing to the little buzzers and matching labels.

"Well, no," he admitted, "but I think she might be—"

"Then she doesn't live here," the old woman concluded. "Now will you excuse me? I need to get inside."

"No, you don't understand," Dante pressed, because that woman's logic made no sense. "She definitely lives here. Her name is Lady—or maybe she's going by Mary, I don't know—but she has short, dark hair, hot, rides a motorcycle—"

"I know who you're talking about," the landlady interrupted. "Figured you'd be looking for her." Before Dante could ask what the woman meant by that, exactly, she added: "Moved out."

That made no sense. None. How could she have moved out that quickly? She had just decided to leave two days earlier. Or had she known for a while? He didn't understand. "No," he protested. She can't have left that quickly. "She can't have."

"She did," the landlady insisted. "Two days ago. Said that business was taking her out of town and she wasn't sure when she'd be coming back. Moved her stuff somewhere, cancelled her lease, and left."

"Did she say where?" Dante asked, almost desperately. "I need to talk to her."

"Gave no information." The woman shook her head. "Sorry, that's all I know. Now can I get into my apartment?"

"Oh." He stepped aside awkwardly, making his way down the three steps of the stoop. "Sure. Sorry."

The woman tottered up the stairs and started fishing for her keys in her purse, muttering something about how people these days didn't offer to help old women with their groceries. He had considered giving her a hand, but in light of her revelation his limbs felt stiff and it hurt to move. He hadn't expected Lady to stick around for a long time, but he had—incorrectly—assumed that, two days after their argument, she would still be in town, finalizing plans and wrapping up her affairs. He hadn't even been sure what coming to see her would truly accomplish, because Lady was far too stubborn for her own good and wouldn't change her mind on a dime once she made a decision—that took time, as he had learned, and that was time that he didn't have. Apparently, time that he never had.

He felt oddly and very abruptly drained, as if these past ten years had suddenly caught up with him and hit him very hard. He knew that, as a half-demon, he would live longer than the average human if his demon-hunting lifestyle didn't catch up with him first, but for a second, that's exactly how he felt: human. He was almost thirty, and the fact weighed down on him as if being thirty suddenly mattered to him. It didn't—he simply checked off days and months and years as a growing high score, and was curious to see when he would finally die. Aging, or whatever it was in his admittedly peculiar case, didn't bring with it a sense of finality, or even much accomplishment. Just ... interest.

And to think, he had spent ten years fruitlessly hoping that Lady would accept him, then like him, then want him, and then maybe, eventually, hopefully, love him. Ten years. That was a lot, he realized. That was a pretty long time to try and fail. And his muscles ached, and his stiff joints wanted to pop and crack and buckle, but he still stood strong, because as much as those imaginary pains hurt, they were still imaginary, and he was still half-demon Dante, not growing weaker with time, but stronger. And he would only grow stronger until age finally did catch up with him, whenever that ended up being, at which point he would feel these pains he pretended to feel and actually die.

If some incantation or poison-tipped dagger or trip to Hell didn't catch up with him first.

It seemed as though life moved, for him, in steps of—approximately—ten: ten years of joy, during childhood; ten years of loneliness, during adolescence; ten years of wanting, with Lady. And if he ever felt any nostalgia for them, it was because his life always seemed to be so different when each decade ended. He would go from nurtured to destructive; hopeless to hopeful; and then what? Where did his time with Lady leave him, other than standing on a stoop and wondering if he could have been able to convince her to stay if she had stuck around for only two days longer; wondering if he had been right to waste so much time on a woman who, ultimately, would leave; and asking himself, some higher power, anyone, why everyone he cared for ultimately died or ran away? Because, dear God-he-didn't-believe-in, he was completely alone again, and where was the justice in that?

Lady was all that he had, and now she was gone. She could have been—

"Hey!" Dante heard the old woman exclaim, and he looked up at where she was standing, bags of groceries in her arms, door finally open. "Are you just going to loiter around here? I'll call the cops if you do!"

He shook his head, and the movement was fluid and unhindered by stiffness. "I'm leaving," he said, turning and raising his hands in acceptance. "Don't get your panties in a knot."

Behind him, the woman made an offended noise and shut the door, but Dante didn't look back. He wordlessly climbed on his motorcycle, loudly and obnoxiously revved it out of sheer defiance of someone who wasn't there anymore, and drove away.


It took a few more months before Dante found another distraction.

Trish, as she called herself, had come to warn him about the rise of the King of Hell, Mundus, who had apparently resurrected twenty years earlier. Much to his surprise and suspicion, she was a spitting image of his mother, but the similarities ended there. As he had later learned, Mundus had created her as a lure to get Dante to Mallet Island, manipulating his affection for his real mother, and it was after that that Dante had decided that he could see himself making a move on Trish, if he ever felt like it. She was beautiful, after all, and he could get over the fact that she had his mother's face and see her for the person that she was underneath.

It seemed as though the mission had helped him overcome many of the issues that he had harbored over the years. By fighting and defeating Mundus, he was not only emulating his father, but also avenging his mother. By getting to know Trish, he was coming to terms with his mother's death, and finding a new friend to replace the gaping hole in his life. And while fighting and, ultimately, killing Vergil was certainly painful, he was glad to know that his brother was no longer Mundus' servant, and was hopefully at rest.

And he saved the world. Overall, a job well done.

Still, while his new Attractive Friend Trish certainly filled up a large hole in his life, Dante wasn't sure that she could fill the combat boots of the woman who had previously stood in that place. When Trish had cried, self-consciously hoping to be forgiven for being a demon that stole his mother's appearance, Dante had comforted her in a way that her dark-haired predecessor had seldom allowed him to comfort her: in his arms. And as she had looked up at him, pale eyes glistening with tears, he knew that he could kiss her, and she would kiss back. But he didn't anyway, not because the last time he had tried to steal a kiss in a moment like that had ended so awfully, but for another reason: she wasn't his mother, but she wasn't Lady either.

He comforted her with words instead, promises like: "Devils never cry," and "we humans never give up." He had said it, and then afterwards realized the call-and-response nature of his words with very similar ones uttered ten years earlier:

"Maybe somewhere out there even a devil may cry when he loses a loved one. Don't you think?"

"Devils never cry. These tears ... tears are a gift only humans have."

Trish had liked the sound of it and, later, asked him to change the name of the shop to match her new philosophy; for as long as she could cry, she would be human.

It was a perversion of Lady's sympathy, and yet Dante found himself changing the name of his shop to "Devil Never Cry" regardless. For as long as he could cry, he would be a human too. No matter what she thought.


End Part II