They'd gotten separated in the woods, trying to find whatever out of the way, Godforsaken place it was Vergil had been looking for. Dante, still, was convinced it was more than his brother collecting debts owed and a few books here and there for whatever it was he researched, but he still had yet to get an answer.

It was funny, how he hadn't at least caught wind of Vergil after that. He couldn't, really. The ability to feel him had...Shut off, so it seemed, and he figured it was because, as Vergil would say, Dante himself was underdeveloped. And he very well understood it wasn't typical for Vergil to track him down or anything, because he had already said he refused to babysit Dante on their little 'outing' in the middle of nowhere, anyway.

Dante knew he'd meant it, too. Which was a drag, but there wasn't much else he could do about it.

He'd wandered for a while, hoping against hope Vergil wouldn't just take his car and leave, because he didn't put it past him at all. Vergil was a bastard like that, and would leave Dante stranded. All the while, he tromped through the underbrush and leaves scattered across the ground, making more noise than usual in the hopes that Vergil would hear him and tell him to shut up.

He couldn't have honestly said he was surprised when it didn't happen.

And he'd had no clue how long he'd been wandering, when he came upon an abandoned house, right there in the middle of nowhere. He found that odd, really, with their being no road that he could see, even an overgrown one, and no other definitive markings of civilization, but he approached, anyway, figuring the best plan would be to stay somewhere stationary, on the off (unlikely) chance his brother had a change of heart and went looking for him, from where he'd gone missing. He wasn't going to hold his breath there, but he wasn't going to totally brush aside the idea, either.

The front porch creaked as he made his way up the steps and onto its uneven boards, the paint - what once would have been a deep blue - faded and chipping from them. A screen door was amazingly still attached to its hinges, if only just barely, swaying in the breeze, the door of the house itself wide open, like some sort of gaping maw of an unnamed monster. But then, Dante was used to places that looked like that, and in a way, he always found them rather sad. It reminded him, honestly, too much of his own past; of the house he'd have grown up in, and how it - or, rather, what was left of it - must have looked at that point in time, even though he'd never been back there, and he never planned to go, either.

But the house was abandoned, there, and he didn't hesitate at all, as he made his way to the doorway and leaned in, peering into the shadowed gloom of the house. Something about it panged, and he couldn't explain it, as he'd been born, and had lived, a long way away from the place he currently stood, but it started a gnawing at the pit of his stomach, before he shook it off, rolling his eyes at himself. "Get a grip, loser."

It was quietly said, however, as he made his way into the house itself, noting the obvious disturbance all around; furniture overturned, broken glass from the windows, torn and yellowed bits of paper here and there on the old, wooden floor...It was obvious, at least to himself (and he usually guessed things right, on that account), that something had happened there. And there was a faint, almost untraceable scent on the air, that he knew well enough through his job. Which was funny. He couldn't track his own twin brother for shit, to find his way back to him, but he could pick up the scent of demons from years and years ago. There was an irony in that he himself just couldn't appreciate to its fullest.

It had been a while, though. He'd caught their scent, but with his limited capabilities in the matter, there was no way to tell ihow/i long it had been. Vergil, on the other hand...It was one of those odd moments, where he actually wished his brother was around, to give him confirmation on the matter, even if it would have come as a snide undercut to Dante's less than stunning grip on things of that nature.

His boots crunched on the broken glass and the floorboards creaked beneath him as he moved deeper into the house, daring to venture beyond the main, wide room. It all echoed something, and he couldn't quite put his finger on what, but it gnawed and chewed and jangled at his nerves, and he felt the hair on the back of his neck stand at attention with a repressed shudder. It was like a sense of deja vu, though why he couldn't say, even though he was damn sure he'd never seen the house, nor been to that particular part of the country before.

He paused in his progress when he stumbled across, of all things, a teddy bear, tossed against the wall as though its owner had had a temper tantrum before storming off to sulk, and for a moment, he bent to touch it; perhaps pick it up and set it to rights, when he caught himself. He knew better than to disturb things in houses that had seen ill ends. It didn't mean he always followed that rule, no, but he knew most of the time to leave well enough alone, because he had enough supernatural baggage without willing inviting more. So he drew back, away from it, still trying to piece together why it seemed so familiar, before straightening to his feet once more.

The hurried, panicked patter of feet startled him from his trance, and he stiffened, before reaching for his guns and purposely taking slow, measured steps, so as not to give away his presence, closing in on where the noise had originated. The house was abandoned. There shouldn't have ibeen/i anyone there, unless it was a few kids who'd come to do whatever it was kids did when they got away from their parents and into something they shouldn't have, and had spotted him while he'd been off in lala land like an idiot.

He could hear the tiny Vergil-voice in the back of his mind chastising him for being stupid, and he inwardly told it, in no uncertain terms, to shut the fuck up and let him work. It sucked that his conscience had the voice of his brother. It really did.

However, from the back of the house came a voice, and it might as well have been a punch to the lungs with the way it stopped his breathing.

"Dante? I want you to go and hide. Don't come out, no matter what you see or hear. Go." He didn't need to see it, to know the owner of the voice, or what was happening. It replayed in his mind; his mother ushering him to hide, him demanding to know where his brother was, and finding himself shoved in a cranny until it was over, hours later, coming across both their limp, ripped open forms.

He'd frozen, and when he saw her rush from the crooked hallway, it twisted inside, somewhere he hadn't thought about in years, and it was hot and painful - but it made him breathe. The first time he tried to speak, his mouth moved, but no sound came out. The second time fared a little better, as she moved to rush past him, and he wanted to imove/i but it was like his feet were nailed to the floor.

"Mom?"

She turned then, and their eyes met, her own widening through the fear he could see, just under the will to live, as though he were the ghost. He couldn't honestly say she'd be wrong in that assumption. But she slowed, still staring, as though she couldn't believe what she saw, and all the painful details came into focus; the mud staining her feet and the edge of her nightgown, and her hands were bleeding, though he didn't know why. And the hair he'd loved to stick his hands in as a child hung loose and tangled, as though she'd ran for a long, long time. He'd never known the truth of what had happened before, but he hoped that wasn't the case.

The knot in his throat was painful, but he swallowed it down and forced himself to move, to at least try to get to her, as futile as he knew it would be. "Mom?" There was a note of hysteria there, as he moved to grab her. He could protect her that time, right? He was strong enough, even though he'd heard stories about how she'd been before he and his brother had been born, and how she'd caught their father's attention. But he could do it, because he wasn't human like she was.

It was then the thing in the shadows leaped, and her attention diverted from Dante to it. It was only then he noticed she was armed, with a short, light sword he could vaguely remember hanging in their father's study. But the fact of it was, even he could see it was too late, and he moved to put himself in between, because better he take the blow than she, before something caught the back of his jacket's holster and tugged him. The vision before him drastically altered, and he found himself staring at a wall with peeling blue paint, not at all like he'd been seeing, and the feel of the room itself had changed.

"What the hell are you doing." He turned on the owner of the voice, eyes wide, mouth moving but no words coming out, and he saw Vergil's eyes narrow before the elder twin gave a snort. "I told you I wasn't going to babysit you."

Dante tried - honestly tried - to say something, but it wouldn't come, and he felt his muscles start to loosen, from where they'd locked in readiness to leap and take the blow. He, honestly, almost dropped then and there, but his knees unlocked, and he reached out silently to steady himself against Vergil's shoulder, as he heard him chuckle under his breath.

"Aw, did Dante see a ghost?"

When Dante looked up, it was with a full eye trigger, mouth twisted into a furious frown, and he had to restrain himself from knocking the shit out his brother. Was that it? Was that why Vergil hated him so much? Because Dante had been the cause of everything, by unknowingly distracting their mother? What if that had been it? What if...The same thing that had happened on that beach in Georgia had happened then, with his then-older self diverting their mother's attention and being the cause of her dying, and what had happened to Vergil?

He didn't know, but his stomach heaved, and he had to bite down on his tongue to hold down the bile. He pushed away from Vergil and weaved in the direction of the door, ignoring the taunting, "One would think as a 'demon hunter' you'd be better prepared for haunted houses, Dante," thrown in his direction.

He'd always figured it had been his fault somehow. He just hadn't expected it to be confirmed like that; so brutally and plainly, and he supposed he should have been grateful that Vergil had interrupted it before it had gone any farther. But it didn't stop that nauseating feeling of guilt in the pit of his stomach, because it, in his mind, had been confirmed. He'd killed her. He'd nearly killed Vergil. And it all made sense, if he looked at it that way. Vergil hated him because it was his fault, and really, he couldn't blame him.

He paused with a hand against the door frame, taking a steadying breath before looking back where Vergil stood in the middle of the dilapidated, destroyed room, arms folded and mouth twitching in amusement. "Let's get out of here, yeah? Place gives me the creeps." His voice was remarkably level, he thought, given the circumstances.

"Apparently." Vergil was eating his discomfort up, but Dante couldn't work up the ire to bitch about it. He waved the hand apathetically that had been against the frame, before moving on once more. He didn't have a clue how he was supposed to make up for it now, so the way he saw it; what he was doing would just have to be good enough, until he could figure out how redemption for something that huge was supposed to go.