OH MY GOSH I FAIL SO HARD.

I feel like I've betrayed you all by not updating in like um forever. I AM AN AWFUL PERSON. I promised myself I would update again this weekend seeing as I've updated Observance twice, which I probably shouldn't be doing anyway because I have to outline my 10-page research paper and I'm sick as it is... But I love you guys, so I'm doing it anyway. 3 Just so you know, though, I can't promise any more updates until Spring Break since I'm now officially going into finals, so give me a few more weeks and I should have the next chapter out.

I'll try to be a bit better about updating next quarter, but no promises there... Either way we're four chapters (this one included) from the end. All of the Lady stuff that I've been talking about will probably be too long for an epilogue on top of the things I already have planned, so I expect that will be a bonus fic. I wonder why I spend so much time planning chapters when I know that I'll change a lot based on how everything is flowing by that point.

Anyway, this chapter is going to be similar, in a sense, to "Pax Romana" (Part II, Chapter 3) in the sense that it's a series of moments and reactions over time, only with a bit more of a sense of narrative between them. So if you liked the vignette-ness of that chapter, you should like this one, and if you didn't hopefully you'll still enjoy it. ;)

Thank you all for your continued support, I love you all, and I hope you enjoy the chapter!


The Passage of Time

Part Three: Longevity

Chapter 1: Feminine Wiles

"I'm leaving, Dante."

Dante looked up from his magazine with a near incredulous look on his face. Honestly, he had kind of seen it coming—Trish had been antsy in recent months—but now that it was out in the open he was a little stunned.

Trish was an interesting woman. She looked like she was in her mid-thirties and probably always would, since Mundus had created her as a full-grown human adult, but she had only been in existence for about three human years, included the two years spent with Dante. Mundus had trained her to fit in with humans on a superficial level, but once Dante got to know her better it became clear that she knew very little about human society—about as much as any demon who had never set foot in the human realm, which wasn't much. As a result, simple things excited her with an almost childlike interest that was born from a sense of perpetual discovery. Trish was, of course, still a very mature if not a bit callous woman both in appearance and in attitude, but every now and then her disinterested mask would slip and she would reveal an appreciation for like that Dante had never seen in anyone else.

Trish was also an oddity as a demon because her devil trigger kept her in her human form, a mystery for another day—because she was about to leave.

"Don't you have anything to say?" Trish added, raising one eyebrow expectantly.

What did she expect him to do, beg her not to leave? Actually, that was probably about right. "I mean, it's your decision," Dante finally answered, putting down his magazine. "Why, though?"

The question seemed to satisfy Trish's ego, so she smirked and sat on the edge of his desk, just like she always did. "I just need to get out of here. It's nothing personal," she insisted, ice blue eyes glinting sincerely, "I just want to go off on my own and do my own thing."

Dante nodded. "Fair enough." Her reasoning didn't surprise him in the least—she was always excited to go on missions to different places. She liked traveling and being on her feet, and seemed to dislike the idle waiting that took place between frequently uninspiring missions. The exciting chases didn't happen as often as they used to and big missions were a rarity, so the fact that Trish wanted to hunt some bigger game was perfectly understandable. "Will you come back?"

"Oh, probably. I'll end up back here at some point. Couldn't tell you when." Trish shrugged lightly and looked down at the phone on his desk, running her fingers over the surface. "I'm not running away. Not like she did."

Dante cast her a sharp look.

"I'm sorry for bringing it up," Trish continued, though her casual tone failed to match the vehemence of an apology, "but I'm just saying."

"It's fine," Dante said, waving her off, but deep down something still managed to sting. He liked to think that Lady was out of his life at this point, having run away so long ago that it felt like she hadn't been there in the first place.

...no, that was a lie. It was an absolute lie. In reality, it had only been a little over two years, and if Lady was out of his life it was thanks, in part, to the amount of time he had spent convincing himself that he didn't need her. And, in fact, he didn't need her. She wasn't good enough for him, if she was going to be such a callous bitch. He was happier without her.

"You sure?" Trish prodded. "Because—"

"Trish," Dante abruptly warned; a part of him wondered when he had gotten so forbidding. Trish, thankfully, wasn't one to flinch at him, having been at the receiving end of a pretty violent bout of anger on the day of their first meeting. He didn't let his temper out often, but he did have to admit that he had been doing it a lot more than he had before—maybe his decision, two years earlier to focus on his mission, had made him too serious, made him care too much. Maybe he just needed to chill out a bit more.

He looked back at the blonde demon, still perched on the desk with an expectant look. She certainly wasn't wounded by his little outburst—why would she be?—and was simply waiting for him to cool down and continue the conversation.

"When are you thinking of leaving?" he asked, deciding not to apologize in favor of simply moving on.

"Soon," Trish answered, the conversation resuming its casual pace. "I hear they've been getting some pretty interesting demons down South, and figured I would try to get in on the action."

Dante smirked, first and foremost wondering where Trish got her information. Enzo, perhaps? Shit, he hadn't seen the man in years; maybe it was worth inquiring. "Who'd you hear that from?" he asked, and he almost hoped that she would answer Enzo so he could find out how the man was doing. Dante had cockily decided only a few years after the events of Temen-ni-gru that he no longer needed an associate to find him jobs—a decision that he regretted now that jobs were coming in at a trickle. They had tried to maintain some semblance of a friendship, but stopped making the effort to seeing each other after a while and hadn't really spoken since ... since before he had started working with Lady, for sure.

"Man named Morrison—nice guy. Knows his thing," Trish responded. She seemed to notice Dante's face sink a bit at her answer and, perhaps misinterpreting the reason for his reaction, added: "I could tell him to let you know about jobs when he hears about them, if you'd like. Business is slow enough."

"Nah, it's okay," he answered, more out of pride than anything else. He really didn't need Trish to mother him; the resemblance was eerie enough as it was. She wasn't his mother, though, and he was glad that he had made that distinction in his mind. Made things less awkward.

"I'll give him the password," Trish said dismissively. She then got up from her spot on the desk and brushed her hands against her pants. "Anyway, I was thinking I would leave tomorrow morning. Rest up tonight, start driving in the morning." She cocked her head and smiled mischievously. "So are we going to do something fun on my last night in town?"

Dante smirked. "Going-away party at Murphy's?" he asked, thinking about one of her favorite bars in town.

"What, and invite all of our friends?" she deadpanned, arms crossed.

She meant it in good fun, but somehow Dante didn't have the energy to return with a joke of his own. "You know what I mean."

"Right," Trish said, walking towards the door. "By the way, you're treating."


Dante ended up getting into contact with Morrison, who quickly proved that he was a very capable liaison and source of information. Ironically enough, more jobs started to pop up in the month or two after Trish's departure, but that hadn't been her only reason for leaving and he wasn't about to call her up and tell her to come back—she hadn't left a number.

Morrison spent time with him on occasion, but now that there wasn't a consistent presence in his life to nag him into motivation, Dante was seldom compelled to clean. Sure, he'd throw out the stale pizza when it became sentient and do his laundry when he was out of boxers—or buy new ones—but for the most part he didn't make the effort to keep things clean. He was getting sloppy on missions too, causing more collateral damage than was truly necessary. Fortunately for him, his reputation as the best devil hunter in town kept the clients calling despite the promise of getting all their shit destroyed.

He could do whatever the fuck he wanted when there was nobody there to tell him otherwise. Sure, he was spending more money than he was making and that would eventually bite him in the ass, but he figured he'd keep gambling until he won something and deal with the consequences when they finally caught up with him.

Naturally, she would show her face right about then. And there was no flourish, no announcement, no nothing. Suddenly she was standing on the other side of the desk, staring him down as if she hadn't been gone for nearly three years.

"You owe me money," Lady said, her arms crossed and her nose wrinkled, much as it had been when she first showed up in town, only there was more history behind it.

Dante stared back at Lady with disbelief, which he associated in part with the fact that he had never expected to see her again, much less wanted to. Little details started flooding back towards him, like the particular color of her blue eye—teal, and he couldn't believe that he had ever forgotten that—and he resented the images and memories that he had never wanted to remember. A part of him wanted to ask questions, but the other part wanted to push her back out the door and out of his life. She wanted money? Fine: he would pay her, and she would leave.

Oh. Right. He had no money.

"Can't pay you back," he answered, leaning back in his chair and trying to act natural. "Don't have any money." Strangely enough, he found that he didn't feel like asking her where she had been, what she had been up to, despite the nagging curiosity emanating from the dusty corner of his mind he had always reserved for her.

Lady scowled and raised her arms. "Of course. I'm gone for three years and everything in your life falls apart. Just ... just look at this place. It's a sty." She crossed her arms again and kicked a beer bottle away from her feet. "So what do you need to get the money, more jobs? I'll get you jobs."

"I have a contact," Dante coldly pointed out.

"And now you have two," Lady informed him rather stubbornly, and he realized that this trait of hers wasn't as endearing as it was frustrating, which, in his opinion, was a sign of progress. "I'll pass along some of the jobs I don't feel like dealing with and collect the pay in your stead. We'll do that until you've paid me back entirely and then you won't have to see me anymore." She lifted her chin and looked at him through slitted eyes. "Deal?"

"Whatever it takes," he answered, leaning forward a bit to grab a magazine from his desk. "I don't even know what I owe you for, but fine. Whatever you say."

Lady scoffed. "Of course you forgot. It's various expenses that you couldn't make when we were working together, and the only reason I'm collecting is because I'm a little short of cash myself. This isn't me finding some random excuse to come running back to you, if that's what you think," she added, picking a bit of lint off of her white blouse, "so don't get your hopes up. I hope you're over me by this point."

Dante's hands clenched, though he barely heard the sound of the magazine crumpling in his grip as he leaned forward in his chair. "I am," he said, sure to look into her beautifully mismatched eyes as he said it to drive the point home.

Lady's face was unperturbed, and she casually responded: "Good," before watching him relax back into his seat, perhaps wondering, like him, why he had just reacted so negatively. "I'll be in touch."

"I'm looking forward to it," he deadpanned, focusing his attention on the magazine in front of him. Oh, damn it, he had already read this one.

She didn't respond; instead, he heard her footsteps as she retreated towards the door. There was a creak as the door opened, and the sounds of the street began flooding into the office. The door didn't close immediately, though, and she suddenly added: "By the way... 'Devil Never Cry?'"

Dante didn't look back up at her, instead rereading the same sentence about the virtues of using a forty-four Magnum instead of a forty-one.

"I don't like it," she concluded, and chuckled softly as she closed the door behind her, the ceiling fan now the only source of noise in the room.

He was mad enough that he wanted to change it back; what was worse was that he knew he would.


Lady was somehow a constant in his life, even though he could never predict when she would show up next. Over the next couple of years, she would sporadically pop in with various missions for him to go on, which were usually more trouble than they were worth—not like he ever saw the money, because it went directly to Lady. And the missions weren't the type to pay well anyway: usually just easy but unpleasant jobs that she didn't feel like doing herself, so each annoying mission barely added to the apparently astronomical sum of money that he owed her.

He would say that he was paying back his debt to her, but not getting paid for jobs meant that he couldn't pay back anyone else he was indebted to. And that was never a good thing.

At least the constant debt and terrible missions were a continued reason for him to resent her and push her away. She noticed it, too, pointing out that he was being, as she liked to say, "cold" to her at least once a visit, but seemed to shrug his behavior off. Maybe, he thought, she was taking advantage of his coldness in order to stave off the urge to rekindle their friendship—pure conjecture, of course, but he saw some validity to it. She didn't have to be friends with him because he didn't have to be friends with her. He would pay her back and then she would be gone, and that would be one less meddling female presence in his life.

But then Dante was introduced to the next meddling female presence in his life: a certain Patty Lowell.

Now, he was glad that he had protected Patty—the poor girl had gotten screwed over in a demonic scheme—but resented the fact that she had attached herself to him and refused to let go. Metaphorically speaking. What was worse was that this was all the result of a damned coin toss courtesy of his good friend Morrison, who had taken to exploiting his terrible luck with gambling by doing coin tosses for jobs. Honestly, the only way Dante would win a coin toss was if he called heads on a two-sided coin, but he wouldn't be surprised if it somehow miraculously managed to land on tails just to spite him.

Patty was a very nice girl—bossy and meddling, but very nice when it came down to it. She was only eight, but in ten years she would prove to be a very strong woman. So it didn't come as a surprise when she immediately began idolizing Lady.

"She is so cool," Patty marveled, staring at the door that Lady had just exited through. It took a great deal of willpower for him not to start laughing at her, right there and then. "Did you see that pool shot she made?"

Unfortunately, he had. That was the reason he had to take this new, rather annoying-sounding job. "She is good at pool," Dante pointed out, tilting his head back and closing his eyes. He would have pulled out a magazine, his usual defense mechanism when he didn't feel like talking to people, but they were all out of reach and he couldn't be bothered to get out of his chair. Maybe if he pretended to fall asleep...

"I bet she's good at everything," Patty continued, brushing off her skirt before prancing towards Dante's desk and resting her arms and head on the surface. "Is she a good demon hunter?"

Dante sighed—apparently Patty couldn't tell that he wanted to sleep, or just didn't care. He lifted his head back up and glanced down at her in annoyance. "What's with the sudden interest?" he asked suspiciously.

"Would you just answer the question?" Patty demanded, pounding her fists against the desk.

With a pronounced groan, he sat up completely, straightening and lowering his feet to the floor. "Yeah," he answered, not bothering to hide something that he couldn't deny was true. After all, if she hadn't been good, she would have been killed a long time ago. "She is."

Patty grinned, pushing herself away from the desk and back towards the broom and dustpan she had shoved aside earlier. "I wanna be just like her," she announced proudly.

Well wasn't that just the worst idea ever. Dante rolled his eyes and leaned forward, lazily propping his arms up on his desk. "What, a devil hunter?" he asked, and snorted when Patty nodded proudly, adjusting the broom in her grip as if it were a weapon of some sort. "I'm pretty sure you can't hurt a demon with a broom."

"You ever tested it out?" Patty threatened, pointing the broom's bristles at his face as if they would fire out and stab him.

Dante raised his arms in mock-surrender and leaned back in his chair again, this time not bothering to put his feet up on the table. Shutting his eyes, he heard Patty sweeping again, busying herself with chores and perhaps daydreaming of her future as a badass devil hunter. He tried to imagine Patty, still aged eight, wearing a plaid skirt and holding Kalina Ann, but the missile launcher was far too big for her to hold and she fell over. He laughed inwardly at the sight of the frustrated girl pinned under the weight of Kalina Ann, and when Imaginary Patty noticed, she pulled out a handgun and shot him in the face.

Dante shook his head, his forehead aching from the imaginary bullet hole, and he looked back at Patty, who was trying to get the dust out from under the sofa. "You don't want to be like Lady," he decided.

Patty looked back at him with confusion. "Why not?" she asked, pulling the broom out from under the sofa and standing up again. "She's really cool and pretty."

"Doesn't make her a good person," he warned.

"Better than you, I bet," Patty sassed back, apparently choosing to ignore the fact that he had rescued her from demons and was now humoring her attempts to be his maid—and he hadn't even made that big of a deal about the pink ribbons and fluffy curtains and stuffed animals all over his home. Some gratitude.

Patty put the broom and dustpan against the wall and moved back to the sofa, readjusting the bright-eyed stuffed animals that were gleefully sitting where he wanted to nap. "She likes my taste in decoration," she added, moving a rabbit from the left to the right, then back to where it had been before.

Dante groaned. "She was just—" he started, but then cut himself off when he saw the subdued look on Patty's face. Okay, he was going to say that Lady had just been humoring her, but he wasn't that heartless. Besides, Lady was secretly a fairly girly person, a trait that she tried and for the most part succeeded in hiding, except in those instances when she smiled at the sight of children and the fact that her skin was so sof—

Dangerous territory. Best quit when he had the chance.

"You know what you need, Dante?" Patty asked, sitting down on the sofa. Her curly blonde hair, frilly pink dress, and big blue eyes certain seemed at home amongst the other stuffed animals.

"Some peace and quiet?" he muttered under his breath.

"You need more girls in your life," she decided, nodding confidently. "I'm not enough. Maybe you need Lady around more often. She'll knock some sense into you." She shook her head. "Morrison and I won't be able to do it by ourselves."

While he was definitely offended by the fact that he was a special fixer-upper project, he was more disturbed by the notion of Lady playing a big part in his life again, and not just as a debt collector. It wasn't that he didn't feel the need to spend any more time with her than he already had: it was his worry that the sentiment would change as soon as she started hanging around more. But no, no—it wasn't going to happen. It wasn't. "Why would I want her hanging around here again?" he insisted, this time out loud. "It's bad enough when she comes over with awful jobs that I barely even get paid for."

Patty narrowed her eyes, then widened them again in realization. As she leaned forward in her seat one of the stuffed animals began to topple off of the couch, but she quickly stuck her hand out and grabbed it before it could hit the floor. "Did you guys use to be friends?" she asked, taking the stuffed animal, which looked like a donkey with a big pink bow around its neck, and putting it in her lap.

Dante groaned lightly, partially because there was, once again, no point in lying to her—knowing Patty, she would probably ask Lady the next time she was over anyway if she wasn't satisfied with his response. "Yeah," he answered. "And partners."

Patty nodded sagely, clutching the stuffed donkey closer to her. "What happened?"

He sat up and scratched his head, unsure of how to explain it to her. It was a long, twisted story and he wasn't even sure how to broach it. When should he start, at Temen-ni-gru, where he unabashedly flirted with her and tried to kiss her and eventually decided that he felt something deeper? Or perhaps, start when he had held her in his arms on the street and hoped that they could get over their differences and work together. Or maybe he should start when she injured herself and crashed on his couch, waking up the next morning to decide that she was willing to put up with him; or even before that, with all of the times he asked to spend time with her and she had rebutted him.

Either way, it seemed almost impossible to avoid what one of the catalysts for their rift had been: his feelings for her. He felt uncomfortable enough thinking about it in the first place without having to say it out loud, and the consequences of doing so seemed to outweigh the benefits of being completely honest. Patty seemed the type to tease him about, as she would probably call it, his "crush" on Lady for hours on end, and perhaps unwittingly bring it up the next time the woman came over, which could even be in a few hours, if she needed to report additional information for his job. And as if bringing up that specific fact wouldn't make all subsequent interactions with her even more awkward than they already were—for Lady would assume that he still hadn't let go, which he totally had—the girl would then probably start playing matchmaker, trying to set them up together. That, in and of itself, would lead to disaster.

"I don't know," Dante finally answered, shrugging. "Shit fell apart. It wasn't working out. Now she's just a bitch, and I don't need to put up with it."

"It didn't look like she was being mean," Patty commented, readjusting the ribbon on the stuffed animal in her lap. She looked up and, noticing the incredulous look on Dante's face, added: "Not to me, anyway. You were meaner to her than she was to you."

Dante laughed bitterly. "That's because she's the bearer of bad news," he explained, sitting up. "She comes marching into my office with jobs that take way too much time and energy to clear, and that wouldn't pay well even if I saw the money that was made, because she always takes the money. Oh yeah, and about that money that I apparently owe her—"

"Well, maybe she's just being hard on you because she likes you?" Patty interjected, leaning forward as if it helped to make her case more convincing. "You know," she added as Dante sat in stunned silence, "like likes you."

"Patty," Dante started, feeling sufficiently uncomfortable for reasons that made him even more uncomfortable, "adults ... don't work like that."

"Well, I think you try should be her friend again," Patty decided, hopping off of the sofa and replacing the stuffed donkey in the little nook she had been sitting in. She then turned to face Dante again, hands on her hips and glaring proudly. "And if you don't, then I'll just be her friend and spend lots of time with her and you'll have to deal with it."

Dante shook the paralysis off, getting up to grab a magazine from the pile so he could finally properly ignore her. "Whatever you want to do," he responded, because at least she wasn't suggesting that he should try to be Lady's more-than-just-friends again. "Doesn't matter to me."


"Well, it's been a nice visit, but I should be off," Trish mentioned, stepping out of the bathroom with her toothbrush in hand, which she put back into her worn brown travel bag before closing it. "I've stayed long enough as it is."

"Barely two days? Trish, you're killing me," Dante joked, walking out of the kitchen with a half-eaten slice of pizza. "Don't tell me my company is that bad."

"No, I just need to get going," she explained, gracing Dante with a rare, genuine smile as she walked towards his desk, where she had left Luce and Ombra. "Not that I haven't had fun." Grabbing a hold of her guns, she quickly scrutinized them before turning back to Dante. "Mind if I use your cleaning stuff for a quick job? Mine's already packed."

"Go right again," Dante said, taking one last bite of pizza and leaning against the pool table.

Trish moved to the other side of Dante's desk and sat in his chair, grabbing his cleaning kit from a drawer. As she got to work, she glanced up at Dante and, with a tone so casual that it was suspicious, said: "I like her."

"Who, Patty?" he asked, hoping that guess was the correct one.

"Well, her too," Trish answered. "Say bye to her for me if I end up leaving before she shows up."

"Will do."

"I was talking about Lady, though," she continued, looking back down at the cleaning job she was doing on Luce. "You didn't do her justice in your description of her." Trish then looked up in consideration, one eyebrow raised. "Oh, I'm not referring to the poignant alcoholic odes to her perfection that you did a few times when we first started working together, because as far as I can see, you were right on several of those points." She then looked back down at her guns, admiring the work she had already done. "I'm talking about the bitter descriptions about how she was an ungrateful bitch and a total nuisance. She's definitely feisty and demanding, but I think you might have been a bit harsh on her." She looked back up at Dante, grinning in satisfaction at what must have been a pretty stunned look on his face. "Although I like how the two of you played down what's gone on. She was appropriately angry and you were irritatingly indifferent. Subtle."

The one problem with Trish's sarcasm, Dante noticed, was that she was so good at it that he sometimes wondered where the truth in her statements was. Still, this was now the second person in a month to insinuate something about his non-relationship with Lady where one had definitely been enough. "I'm over her, what do you want me to say?" he asked.

"I don't think you are," Trish said, shaking her head, "and I don't think you'll ever be. You'll never feel anything for anyone else as long as she's in your mind."

Dante looked forward, leaning his head back slightly, before looking back at Trish. "I could have loved you, you know."

"No," she responded, barely fighting off a snort, "you didn't and you wouldn't have. And I'm not talking about the family resemblance." Smirking, she closed Luce and moved on to Ombra. "No matter how hard you've tried to convince me that you felt nothing for Lady, I've always sensed this ... this sadness underneath. Maybe you thought you were over her, but you're lying to yourself because you think you'll be happier that way. But you're not going to move on, so you might as well stop denying it."

Dante frowned deeply, unsettled by Trish's words. "Trish—"

"No, don't," she interrupted. "You're just going to come up with more excuses." Trish didn't even look up from her cleaning of Ombra as she spoke. "No matter how hard you fight back, and no matter how hard you try to push her away, you'll never succeed. Besides, the circumstances of how you met were too disturbing to make you forget her, and too early for you to stop comparing every woman you see to her. And don't deny it, you did it with me too," she scolded. Seemingly satisfied with Ombra's state of cleanliness, she looked back up at Dante, a move that he noticed out of the corner of his eye because he couldn't bear to look at her. "It doesn't matter if you like her and she doesn't like you or the other way around or anything. She'll always be there in your mind, and as you probably still haven't realized, you'll always be in hers. It's too late to forget her; it was too late as soon as you two met."

Dante heard her stand and turned back to look at her. She was repacking his cleaning kit and, in noticing him watching her, added: "But that was just my opinion. You don't have to agree with me."

It was stupid. What did she know? Sure she had made some good points; sure some things had rung true. It didn't mean she was right about him, her; them. It didn't have to mean anything at all.

Trish had since put the cleaning kit back and slung her bag over her shoulder, and was now making her way towards him. Dante, snapping himself out of his reverie, asked, trying to be as casual as possible: "So, where you headed off to this time?"

"I've got a lot of them that I'm following," she answered, referring to the demons that she was hunting. She had mentioned to him, earlier, that she enjoyed those chases more than the average hunt, and was so glad she had taken the opportunity to do so. Sure, sometimes a plain old slaughtering of lesser demons was satisfying, but nothing quite surpassed the thrill of chasing a shape-shifter.

"If you get sick of it, you could always come back here," he offered, grabbing the cue ball from the pool table and tossing it up into the air. He could feel normality slowly seeping back into the conversation, having treaded such a fine, dangerous line only a minute earlier. As long as he remained unperturbed, it meant that her words hadn't affected him, and were therefore irrelevant.

"Why, that's uncharacteristically kind of you," Trish joked, her face close to his and her voice very light and airy—a different kind of sarcasm this time—"but for the time being I think I want to travel around a bit." She smiled sincerely, because it was true, and who was he to deny her happiness?

"Take care of yourself, alright?" Dante said, watching as Trish moved towards the door.

"You too, baby," she responded as she went through the door, and it was like she was laughing at him even though she wasn't.

He forced the strange feeling out—strange feeling; there was no strange feeling—and moved to the door to watch Trish make her way down the street. He was surprised to find that Lady had intercepted her, and was offering the blonde demon a ride on her motorcycle. They chatted, laughed, and then drove away, and for some reason he found it comforting that two of the most important women in his life seemed to get along.


"So, Lady," Dante said, reaching for one of the remaining pieces of pizza in front of them. Lady looked back up at him, her gaze shifting away from the amulet she had been conspicuously eyeing. "You've been spending a lot of time at the shop..."

"Yeah?" Lady lazily responded, leaning back into the cushions of the booth. "I'm friends with Patty now. You have a problem with that?"

"No, I don't care," he answered, and then shoved a slice of pizza into his mouth.

Lady watched him curiously before grabbing the second to last slice to nibble on as well—apparently relenting on her decision that she was too full to continue eating. "Why did you ask?" she asked after a moment, her eyes not leaving him all the while.

Dante felt odd under her gaze, not because he had forgotten how intense it was. He masked the sensation with a laugh. "No, I was just thinking."

"About?" she pressed, taking another bite of pizza.

"About the poker night," he explained, picking up the last slice of pizza, deciding that at least he still had his sundae to hide behind when the pizza was done. "You seemed pretty worried about me during the mission, that's all."

Lady scoffed. "Yeah, because the job rode on you not being an awful card player as usual. Isn't that reason for me to be worried?"

Dante shrugged. He supposed that she did have a point about his unfortunate bad luck and how his inability to gamble could have led to their downfall—however, he had ultimately pulled through and they had killed the demon. Still, in the ensuing weeks he had thought a lot about the concerned looks on her face as she dealt cards and served coffee and shot him in the chest and grazed his heart, and in that moment realized that the attraction hadn't really left so much as it had changed. A part of his heart still ached at the thought of her, but it wasn't so much out of a desire to begin a relationship with her so much as fix their old one, repairing what had been broken years before. He hoped that, because she was still sitting with him, she felt the same way, and that she wasn't there just to snatch the amulet from him with he was distracted.

Lady wasn't talking, and Dante, deciding that he didn't have anything to say either, started digging into his strawberry sundae. After a tense moment, she pointed out: "You never answered my question."

"About you being worried?" Dante asked, swirling the strawberries and ice cream together.

"No, about why you asked me that question." She followed his spoon with her eyes as he scooped up the sweet ice cream and placed it into his mouth. "What did the story of the poker night have to do with what you said before?"

He looked back down at his sundae, absently playing with it some more. "I was just thinking," he started. He realized that their conversation was cyclical, and, in that instant, realized that that was just the nature of their relationship. Even the conversations that he had with other people about her were cyclical: they were all saying the same thing. He had just refused to listen.

"About?" she repeated, this time a little bit more urgently.

There were two ways to break the pattern, and both involved Lady deciding that she was satisfied with his answer. One was to tell the truth, be completely and openly honest with her and satisfying the goal of her asking the question in the first place; the other was telling a lie so obvious that it couldn't be anything but false, at which point she would decide that she didn't particularly want to hear what the truth was if he was so willing to lie and stop asking the questions. Neither had anything to do with respect or disrespect, or love or hate or any other complicated emotion, because that was almost peripheral to their relationship. As Trish had pointed out months earlier, they were apparently stuck together, stuck in each other's minds whether they liked it or not. He would always remember her and she would always remember him regardless of their opinions for one another; though it was to his benefit, at least at this moment, to try to be her friend.

"About how Patty said that we were friends that night." He put the spoon down and looked at her intently. "Are we?"

Lady stared back at him, her expression betraying a bit of surprise at his question. She didn't answer, looking back at him uncertainly. Subtly, he saw different emotions pass over her face and through her eyes, as if she were trying on different masks before deciding how she wanted to answer his question. It was right there and then that he realized that he was seeing Lady unmasked, Lady without her stubborn answer at hand and her wall of protection to hide behind or anything of the sort. He didn't smile because he didn't want to show his hand—and, for a second, laughed at the loss of her immaculate poker face where his, which had always been weaker, was still standing strong—but would have if he could.

Abruptly, she asked: "If I decided I wanted to work with you again, what would you say?" She paused, blinked, and added: "Hypothetically."

"Hypothetically?" he confirmed, and watched as she nodded in affirmation. The question would have taken him by surprise if it hadn't already done so countless times before—only this time she was the one asking, albeit hypothetically. It was a complicated question that left a lot to consider, but it was still one that he had already answered: "I'd say yes."

"Okay," she responded, and her eyes briefly flitted back down to the amulet—apparently things were back to normal, if she was already plotting how to get a hold of the amulet again instead of allowing their conversation to distract her from her purpose. "I was just wondering."

Then Lady smiled, and Dante did too at the idea that he had made her smile again for the first time in five and a half years.