We are on our backs in the aftermath, staring up at nothing. At rock and white gauze, cast in flickers of candlelight. I am lying angled to him, just slightly; his arm is idly draped over my shoulder, casually possessive. From time to time his fingers contract, caressing my chest. I am blissed out. Content again, sated in every dimension—that rare, sweet state I crave day and night when I'm estranged from him.

The sheets are black, and silk, and they feel better on my skin than anything I can remember. I could say that it's because my brother always favored black silk, that in my psyche the two were inextricably linked, that purely through tactility, such powerful emotion could be evoked—because of recollections of home, of hearth, of him. Of the vast house, of the late night. Of his bed.

But it isn't really that.

Black silk feels like any other silk. It's Vergil who feels like nothing and no one else. He feels like dusk; encompassing, omnipotent. He is a midnight landscape in winter, still and infinite, reverent and intense. Worse yet, he feels like home.

Do you think we lay like this in the womb?

It's a weird thought, pretty fucking warped, really, and really fucking funny and I want to say it out loud, like I say everything out loud, declaring myself to the heavens and everyone else, whether they want to hear it or not—

I want to ask him, but I am afraid of saying anything that might remind him of who we are, and make him remember how little I merit his attention.

"I believe you're thinking, Dante. And for once, not audibly."

There's no way he can know that I'm thinking about how much I want to talk. I hold my tongue. It's killing me.

"Say something," he says. In his gravel-dragged satin tones, it almost sounds menacing. "Eva always used to worry when you were quiet for too long, and I understand why."

"Sorry about the angel's head."

"It isn't your fault. It was…inauspiciously proximate."

"I was aiming for you."

"We both know you need practice."

I roll my head lazily to the side and meet his gaze, his raised and hovering brow; the cool amusement evidenced by the slightest curl of his lip. I take in all this at a glance.

Nothing can match the feeling of my brother's good nature; those moments when he's unguarded and indulgent. It's like suddenly breaking out of a long, dark, narrow forest, into a wide-open, sun-drenched field. You don't take it for granted. You lie down in that field, and you bask in that warmth for as long as you can.

Emboldened by the afterglow, I reach over to fondle his dormant cock. It's still half hard, and it stiffens immediately under my touch. "Whoa, Verge. Already? What would mom think?"

"She'd probably just be happy we had all our body parts."

"Not if she knew where we had them."

"Eva is dead. And if she's watching, she's more warped than we are."

"We're not warped." I say it flatly. I'm sure of this much; whatever we are, whatever we have, it's natural for us. I have never known another way to feel about him. It never occurred to me there was another way to feel.

He pauses. "Eva would be glad. She wanted me to give you more of myself."

"Uh, sure, but probably not exactly like this," I say.

"Don't be too sure," Vergil mutters obscurely.

I stare. "What the hell does that mean?"

His brow notches. "It means her feelings on the subject likely evolved over time, with more information and the benefit of hindsight. Like feelings do."

"What do you know about feelings?"

He seems to be actually pondering the question posed by my snide little jibe. "I have them," he says, finally. It's a laconic, noncommittal admission.

I don't want to get into heavy territory, much as I long to. I am afraid it would sunder this idyllic interlude my brother has graciously granted me. I'm afraid to break the spell. I default, as always, to irreverence.

"What's this?" I reach for the book on the nightstand.

There is an argent flash to my left, like tiny lightning, and Vergil's katana tips it out of the range of my fingers. "Just a little light reading," he demurs. "Not your cup."

"Oh yeah? Well who knows? I might like a break from Faulkner." Annoyed, I'm already reaching for it again.

"Dante," Vergil says. "I'm beginning to feel unkind."

I'm not inclined to let things go. But I do, this time. I don't know why. Wanting to preserve illusions, maybe, or maybe I know it's inevitable regardless, and so there's no sense in devastating a perfect moment while I can actually touch it. I can't resist a parting shot, however. "What orifice did you pull that sword from, anyway? Do you still sleep with that stupid thing?"

"No," he says coolly. "I only allow one stupid thing in my bed at a time." He is sated and languid, and I breathe in the sight of him, until he turns, casting an indolent glance over me. "You've never read any Faulkner."

"What can I say, Verge. Too busy getting laid."

"Don't let my penis keep you from The Sound and the Fury," he drawls.

I chuckle and let my head fall back against his shoulder. "What do I need a boring old book for? You already talk like one."

"That's not all I do."

He's right about that. My whole body is still violently alive with the glow of what he did. I close my eyes and replay it in my mind, committing it to indecent memory, savoring the really good parts, feeling my motivation rise in the southern hemisphere. When I reach the crescendo, I see him again in my mind's eye, rising above me, horns and all, like some ancient demigod.

My lips part, and I can't stop myself from asking. "What was that thing that happened? Where you…with the lightning and shit. That was pretty edgy, bro, I'll give you that. But what the hell was it?"

He's silent for a long moment, but he continues to absently caress me, so I don't press him. "There are things I've learned, Dante. Someday you'll realize them as well. But know this much. In both this world and Father's, we're alone on the head of a pin."

"And what does that mean in plain English?"

"It means there has only ever been you and I."

I snort, softly contemptuous. "I've always known that."

He seems taken aback. His fingers still; hitch, but only briefly, and then they are back to stroking my skin, drawing in and out in slow, absent starbursts. "Then you'll understand. You're all I have left, but you're also all I've ever had."

His words hang in the air after he says them, and I'm almost afraid to breathe in case I make them cease to exist, but words can't be unsaid. Words are like sparrows, my brother said earlier, and can't be caught again.

Still, I feel like maybe Vergil's words are different—if anybody is enigmatic and alchemical enough to turn his own declarations to dust in the palm of his hand, and blow them away, into the wind and out of existence, it would be him.

I turn toward him, all at once, seizing the back of his head and pressing my mouth to his, sealing his lips so that he can't swallow them or take them back. He'll just have to swallow my tongue instead. His arms are around me at once, his counterattack unhesitating, as always.

"Again, then," he murmurs, as we break apart, staring into each other's eyes at close range.

There is never a time we don't want another round—not in battle and not in bed. We never get enough, and we always come back for more.

He doesn't have to ask, but he does, because he's just built that way.

#

He sleeps; I don't. I won't make that mistake again. I have visions of waking up alone in this canopy bed, gauze flapping, in the midst of the empty field I found him in—the rift in the rock sealed up, healed, like it never existed. I'm not sure where my mind came up with the idea, but it sure seems like something he'd do. Can he teleport objects, or only people? I don't know, and I'm not about to find out.

I lie awake beside him with my eyes closed, feeling him breathe, steeping in his scent, his solidity, his presence, his being. Pretending it's permanent this time.

Eventually he stirs. A beat later he slides out of the bed, silent as smoke, and begins to reassemble himself. I watch his nude, muscled body slowly disappear under each item of clothing, like fine art being shrouded, until he is shouldering into his coat once more. He sheaths Yamato, which means he's headed toward the door.

"Leaving," I say, flatly. "Just like you did after mom died."

He pauses. If he's surprised to find me awake, he doesn't show it. "I have a little event to plan. It will take the better part of a year."

"A party, huh?" I say. "Am I invited?"

"No. I want to do this alone."

"Who parties alone?" I scoff at the thought, but as soon as I say it, I realize the answer is me. Pizza, because I hate cooking for one. Cheerful violence on the daily to slay demons both literal and figurative, and to outrun my interior life. Beer, to dull the edge of his absence. "What if I crash it anyway?"

He smiles grimly. "It wouldn't be a party without you."

"A year is a long time to wait for a party."

"You have nothing but," he replies, without philosophy.

The words hurt me with their unintended truth. He's right; I have nothing else at all. I sneer to hide my flinch. "What, are you hand-carving an ice swan? It's really going to take a year?"

"All the best events do."

"You should let me come. Maybe I can help."

"It's not safe."

I laugh, and I don't really make any effort to sieve the cynicism from the sound. "In case you haven't noticed, bro, we've never been safe. We're marked forever, because of Dad. Did you ever think that just maybe we're better off together?" It costs me almost everything to say it, because I mean it in more than one way.

"Marked forever, yes. Both of us." His tone is serious, sober in a way that I rarely remember, wholly without his usual dry lilt. "But demons chase the target that draws the most attention to itself." He pauses deliberately. "Eva knew that."

I think of mom's overwrought screams, and Vergil's offhand diagnosis of maternal self-sacrifice. I wonder if she wasn't playing decoy, like a bird who fakes a broken wing to lure the predator from the nest.

"So you're gunning to be Hell's Most Wanted. What a hero."

"I don't gun for anything. You know that."

That's my brother. Too good for guns, and too good for me.

I'm out of bed and dressing. It's not a complicated operation, given I generally don't wear underwear, wasn't wearing a shirt, and that my boots zip up the front. Vergil would say I'm lazy, but I prefer to think I prioritize efficiency.

"Don't bother looking, Dante. You won't find me after today."

"If you're so great at hiding, why did you let me find you this time?" I demand, inexorable, fastening my pants.

Vergil pauses, and his face becomes unreadable. "Because of all our yesterdays," he says. "I wanted one more, before…" He stops, as if he's said enough.

"Revisiting our dead past, huh?" I say, irked. I reach for my coat, which lies across the flagstones in a spilled and jagged mountain range of crimson leather. I have no idea how it got there, but it's not my main concern at the moment. My guns are there too, which is good, because I'm gonna use 'em.

"Making it a closer past."

"Fuck the past. And wait up. This time I'm coming with you." I'm pulling on my boots, with an eye on reaching for Rebellion.

"That, I cannot allow," he says.

"Try and stop me." Who does this guy think he is? He's not the boss of me, as I'm pretty sure I informed him many times during our childhood.

"Don't make me," he says quietly. "For once."

"No. No. You aren't getting away that easy. You're going to deal with me. Either that, or you let me go with you."

"If only you were only my brother." He gazes at me for a spell, studying me like one of his books, as if memorizing my face, or maybe the moment itself. "Then I might consider it."

He turns with a flare of his split-bottomed coat and strides out of the room, snapping out he candle as he goes. "Lock up when you leave," he drawls.

The darkness is sudden and disorienting. I curse blue obscenities as I drag on my other boot, zip them both up, grab my sword and dart after him, in the vague direction I last saw him, feeling for the door. We were in his little rock lair all along, I realize, as I come out into the great room. He's not there, so I dash into the antechamber and find it empty. Our father's portrait hangs on the wall; distantly, I wonder if he plans to leave it, or if it's more precious to him than I am, something he'll come back to, something he'll reclaim.

I sidle roughly through the crack in the rock, bursting out into the great wide open. The sun is so bright it's blinding. My fear is that he's done his little trick again, whirled himself elsewhere, materialized in another place; a high shelf just out of my reach.

But no. He's walking away from me again, crossing the smooth green velvet of the mossy field at his usual unhurried-but-purposeful stroll, his coattails streaming merrily in the wind like banners of war.

We're back where we began.

"Hey," I yell. He doesn't turn.

I don't yell a second time. I lunge at him with everything I've got, ready to slash him senseless, ready to bring him the fight he wouldn't give me. I'm running, he's walking. I catch him in no time. He turns, then, smooth as a bolt of silk, and blocks my strike. "Leave me, Dante."

"Nah, bro. Never. Not in this lifetime. You know that." I raise Rebellion again, feeling its gratifying heft in my hands. I want to drench the grass in his blood, then kiss his wounds.

This time Vergil closes his eyes so he doesn't have to roll them. "I," he says, "am about to shelve you. Indefinitely."

My brother never gets angry; he gets annoyed. And that's when you know things are about to get ugly. Most people would probably find that disturbing. Personally, I think it's part of his charm. Even his violence is genteel.

I lunge, swinging wide with a slashing strike. He manages to draw, check and reverse my attack in short order. I'm disarmed for a beat, struggling to regroup. My mind is warm around the edges. Oxytocin and post-coital bliss have blunted my killer instinct. I'm softer than I should be. Too sated, and too melted.

"Tempus abire tibi est," he says, through gritted teeth, as he thrusts, and runs me through.

I fall back onto the grass. The landing hurts more than the skewering. Vergil sheathes Yamato with a finite click, looking down at me, arctic and impassive, gold-washed in the light of a dying day, silhouetted against the lowering sun.

Silence, and pain, and neither are hollow. Neither takes precedence, but there is mist over everything. It obscures his legs, giving him the appearance of a vengeful ghost, hovering above me. He looks exactly like Father, for a moment, embodies him, and I wonder why it is that I only favor him, even though my brother and I share a face.

I am looking at up at him through the demi-veil of my dampening hair, which the blood has tinted pink, along with my field of vision. "Je vois la vie en rose. I must be in love."

"You never excelled at French," he says, coolly. "Not as a language, anyway."

He's funny.

I'm coughing up blood, and he cocks his head, leaning down. I reach up and grab the thick blue velvet of his lapel in weakening fingers, leaving a dark clutch-mark of blood like a pressed rose. "Vergil," I croak, urgently, as if there is something dire that needs to be said before we part company yet again.

"Yes, brother?"

I grin, and he begins to look doubtful. "They're both nouns," I tell him. "Whether I say 'my brother is an evil fuck'" –I pause to rasp in a breath— "or 'my brother is a great fuck'. Both. Nouns."

The corners of his mouth shift, so subtly you'd swear they did nothing at all, and my brother Vergil is smiling. It is rare, and slight, and inexplicably gratifying. "I'll keep it in mind."

"Got one more for you," I call after his retreating back, struggling upright against the dead weight of my battered body, against my better judgment, until I am almost on my feet. "Fuck you, asshole. Nowthat'sa verb."

He is liquid mercury when he wants to be, and before I am even fully standing I find myself slammed onto my back again, cruelly pinned to terra firma. Vergil is standing over me, legs staggered outward, frozen in the act, having thrust his sword into me once more. His gaze is narcotic, half-lidded, and I can't take my eyes off him, even as I wrack and shake, unable to control my body's reactions.

Blue lightning crackles over his shoulders, down Yamato's shaft and into my pierced body; as he penetrates me for the third time. But this time the force that invades me is ruthless in a different way. This time I am stricken and immobilized not by ecstasy, but by sheer power. Blue lightning tethers me to the earth.

"Stay. Put," he murmurs.

"That's two verbs." I choke out the words.

Vergil is shaking his head. "A poor student, even in your own language. I shall have to teach you better grammar. Slowly. Painfully. Unkindly." He steps away, sliding Yamato from my chest with the kind of ease that denotes a very sharp sword. "Another time."

"I hope you fucking die." My words are coarse and unsparing. "I hope you fucking die, and I hope I get to do it. How's that for some fucking sparrows? Do you hear me? I despise you."

His impassivity seems to ratchet up a click, like a watch spring over-winding, and the temperature drops all around him. His voice remains the epitome of dispassionate calm. "If that's true, then I'm glad for you, Dante. Caring for me would be a weakness."

I feel something at the corner of my eye. Impossibility in liquid form. It spreads, blurring half my vision for a moment, and then it's gone, leaving a rare, shallow track on my cheek, no different than a raindrop.

Vergil is looking at me, strangely. His gaze is white-blue and startled; almost haunted. "But your body has never lied to me," he says.

I am too weak, too furious to respond. Not that I have any taste for his enigmatic revelations at that moment. My eyes watch him; loathing, coveting, cursing, vowing.

Next time.

Vergil seems oddly dazed as he pulls the cravat from his neck in a flutter of black silk, no doubt intending to wipe my unworthy blood from his precious katana, the honorable Yamato.

Next time, Vergil. I'll teach you a lesson in pain.

I close my eyes—against the inevitable, the agony, the icy mirrors in his head.

"There is always a next time for everything." His voice is quiet.

"Until there isn't." My voice is terse.

"There is always a next time for us."

"Until there fucking isn't."

I feel black silk beneath my eyes, as he dries my tear. Black silk feels like any other silk, but Vergil feels like home. "I used to loveyou so much," I mumble thickly.

"Always was once a collection of befores."He touches my face, and presses his brow to mine. For a moment there is coolness against fever, melting us down to that blessed equilibrium I can never find alone.

I am sorry about the statue.

Then my brother is gone, and I am left to contemplate his gifts: the great rage, and the itch of my knitting wounds.