Chapter Fourteen - Last One Standing

[XIV]

She really did fall asleep, or at least dozed off a little. She was too much on the defensive to allow herself to relax enough to fade into the darkness of real sleep, but she treaded the line between awake and asleep carefully. She had just begun drifting further towards sleep when the creaking of a door roused her back to full consciousness. She raised her head, blinking her eyes tiredly, for a moment forgetting where she was. It all came back to her as she looked at the floor scattered with books and torn pages, and she realized with alarm that the door Dante had left through God knows how long ago had just recently been shut.

Someone had been in the room with her.

She looked around, but everything appeared to be the same as before she had drifted off. She looked down at herself, and all her weapons were still there. For a brief moment she panicked when she realized Kalina Ann was gone, but then quickly remembered she had lent it to Dante.

Dante...

It still felt weird knowing his name, seeing as she'd been thinking of him as "the demon in red" and "that bastard" for so long. It was nice, though, it made him seem even more human.

But who had been in the room with her just now? Someone had passed through, completely ignoring her either because they hadn't noticed her or just didn't care. But who...?

Vergil.

She suddenly realized it must have been him. He and Dante were headed in the same direction, she was sure. She had actually forgotten about Dante's evil twin, since he had disappeared after the fight with her father on the tower. She should have realized he was still a threat, that a little fall wasn't going to kill him.

She stood slowly, stretching. Her muscles were sore. She checked the wound on her thigh, which seemed to be holding up pretty well, although it still throbbed dully. She felt strange, empty, without the large weight of her launcher pressed against her back. She took it everywhere with her and had grown so accustomed to its weight it felt strange being so light. She felt a bit powerless without it.

But what could she do, anyway? She felt useless just standing there, but there wasn't much she could do. She couldn't kill Vergil, and she couldn't kill her father if he had managed to claim Sparda's powers. But she needed to do something. She couldn't just stand there. She had to continue her journey to the top. She hadn't come all this way to do nothing.

Unholstering her pistol, she gripped it tightly, adding a fresh round to the gun. She wasn't sure what she would do or see once she reached the top of the tower, but one thing was for sure; she had been determined to reach the top, and she was still going to. Although she had left the job up to Dante, part of her still hoped she could somehow finish her father off herself.

Please, she found herself willing the universe as she left through the creaky library door, please, I just need to see him. I need to finish it myself. I need this to end. I need peace...

[XIV]

When she reached the stairs outside of the tower, she knew she was close. There wasn't much building left to climb, and pouring down from the sky she could see an unearthly red beam. She shuddered, and it wasn't from the light wind that was sending a slight chill through her. She knew that beam was the portal to the Underworld, and the idea that she was so close to it was a bit frightening. She could handle demons in her world, but in their world? Not a chance.

But it meant she was close.

She continued up the stairs alone, hearing no noises except her footsteps and the occasional breeze whispering in her ear. It was dark, the sky covered in clouds, and the air was filled with the crispness that only came at night. She wasn't sure exactly what time it was, but she knew it was sometime in the early hours of the morning. Probably fairly close to daybreak. It had been twilight when she found the tower; the whole ordeal had been lasting all night.

She continued up the stairs until she finally, after long last, reached the top of the tower. The strange markings on the floor were still lit up in red. She was entirely alone. She looked up at the long, red beam, leading into an explosion of red color eerily floating among the clouds. The entrance to Hell itself. That was where the three of them were; it had to be. Until one of them came out, there was nothing she could do except wait.

But she wasn't waiting very long. Just as she was wondering what was happening, what her father had transformed into, how Dante was doing, she realized a figure was falling from the sky, down the long red shaft of light. It looked like a dot from far away, but it grew larger and larger as it came closer. Her eyes widened.

It was him.

He looked exactly as he had always looked. He didn't look like he had transformed or anything. She wondered if he had gained any new powers at all, wondered what Dante had done to stop him. Her wide eyes followed him as he fell all the way to the top of tower, landing with a thud right in the center. She squeezed her gun so tightly she could feel her pulse pounding in her palm, as well as feel her heart thudding against her chest. He lay so limply in the middle of the tower she wondered if the fall had killed him, or if he had been already dead when he was thrown down, but in the next second she saw him twitching slightly. An anticipation the likes of which she had never known before seized her.

This was it.

"Why?" She heard his voice hiss as she slowly walked closer to him. She was behind him; he didn't see her. "How could I...?"

He was weakly pulling himself along the floor, leaving a thick trail of blood in his wake. He was near death as it was. He had been defeated. Dante had done it. She could feel her heart steadily thudding, and she mentally thanked Dante for defeating him, thanked fate for allowing her one last chance to finally do this, to finish him off herself...

"I shall become a GOD!" He hissed angrily as he struggled across the floor. "No one here can stop me!"

She stepped in front of his path, keeping her gun aimed down at his head. He looked up after a moment of painful crawling and noticed her red boots, and his angry eyes trailed up into her face.

"What a surprise." Despite the pounding of her heart, her voice came out cool and collected. She felt light-headed, and she could hear her voice, but it felt like it was coming from someone else. "Here I was looking for you, and lo and behold, you come to me."

"Mary..." His voice was raspy, weak, and at the mention of her birth name, for once she didn't feel anger. She felt oddly peaceful, perhaps because, for the first time all day, she was in complete control.

"Don't ever call me that again." She said calmly, though there was a hard edge to her voice. "My mother was the only one who could say my name."

He seemed to realize how serious she was, and he shuffled towards her desperately. "Wait...please. Do you really want to shoot me? Can you shoot me, your own father?"

She didn't respond, simply kept her gun hand steady, her eyes hard and unforgiving. He seemed to drop the desperate act as his eyes flamed with rage.

"What have I done wrong? Even the heroic Sparda sacrificed a woman so that he could become a legend! I wished to be a GOD! And I sacrificed one miserable human being for that reason. That is all! Was that really so awful?"

She still didn't say anything. She didn't feel anger. She was still light-headed and her heart was still pounding with the anticipation of what was about to happen. What was really, finally, about to happen.

"I have some unfinished business to take care of." He continued, his voice sounding rational and calm once again. "Help me, Mary."

She looked down at him slowly, heart beating in her ears, and something told her this moment was going to be a turning point in her life. Just as her mother's death had been, so her father's death would be.

"Mary died a long time ago." She said slowly. "My name...is Lady."

She grasped her gun with both hands. She was not going to miss.

"Good-bye, father."

Absolute shock and horror passed through his eyes as he seemed to realize, for the very first time, that she was actually serious.

"NO - !"

His cry was cut off by the bang of gunfire, never to be finished. She fired every bullet she had left into his skull, pulling the trigger until nothing but blank clicks came out. She was empty. He lay before her face-down in a pool of blood, skull hardly recognizable anymore, completely still.

She felt like she was floating through a dream. Her head felt like it was swimming through clouds, and she was suddenly filled with a strange sense of peace. She didn't even realize she was stumbling slowly backwards until she collapsed in a heap to the ground.

As she collided with the ground, it seemed to jolt just a little bit of reality into her, and she lowered her gun slowly. She didn't need it because it was over.

It was over.

It was over.

It's over it's over it's over it's over...

She heard herself laughing a bit hysterically, though her voice still didn't feel like it was coming from her own throat. She looked up at the sky, into the unnatural red that was the entrance to the Demon World, and she laughed with a joy she didn't feel. For a moment her eyes followed the swirling red color in the sky, watching as it twitched and fluttered smoothly. It was the same color as his blood. She still felt dream-like as she watched the sky, feeling a weird emptiness, and it wasn't until the swirling red blurred and she realized there were tears rolling down her cheeks that she became aware of the burning in her heart.

She realized she was sobbing now, she could tell by the way her chest was heaving, and she knew that the laughter before had just been the pain trying to hide, trying to find its way out of her. Images filled her head of long ago. Of being a little girl. Of laughing. Of feeling safe. Of her mother and father kissing. Of her father telling her bedtime stories. Of innocence. Of her mother's smile. Of life as it would never be again. She looked down, away from the blood-colored sky, and saw her tears falling onto the cold ground.

"Here I thought I wasn't gonna cry..." she murmured to herself, trying desperately to find humor in the situation, in the irony, but there wasn't any.

After all the time she had spent waiting for this moment, she had expected to feel so happy, so triumphant, so vindicated, so free.

But all she felt was grief.

So she let herself cry, sitting alone on the top of the tower with an empty gun and the splattered mess of what had once been her father.

[XIV]

She stood among the rubble of the run-down city streets, taking in the demolished buildings and cloudy night sky. All was silent; demons had been roaming these streets earlier, were responsible for their destruction, but right now she was the only creature wandering through them. And thank goodness; she still felt vulnerable without the comforting weight of Kalina Ann on her shoulders. She could defend herself if any demons showed up, but not as easily as she could if she had her trusty launcher, so she felt a bit more on edge than normal.

She wasn't sure how long she had sat crying on top of the tower, but eventually the tears had stopped and she simply felt light-headed, and her more rational self told her it was time to go, time to put this behind her and continue on with life. She had done what she had set out to do.

So what's left to do now? She had wondered as she began the long descent down the tower. She had thought about where her life was going to go all the way down the tower and out into the city streets. Well, she had to continue in the demon-killing business, of course, but what else besides that? Was there anything else besides that?

Well, first things first - she had to head back to her house. It was going to take a really long-ass time since her bike was gone. She felt pissed at the thought that her motorcycle - which had been her mode of transportation for the last few years - was either lost or destroyed, but she hadn't really expected much less. She wasn't exactly in the mood to make the journey on foot yet, though. And besides, she needed to wait for him. She needed to get her launcher back. That, and she had to admit there was a slight worry nagging on her heart that he wasn't going to come back, that his brother (or maybe something else) would kill him off, and even though it was a stupid worry, she'd feel better if she saw him alive. It was a strange thought, the idea that seeing his stupid cocky grin would actually make her feel relieved, but it was true.

So she stood among the buildings, inspecting them with her eyes in the silence for lack of anything better to do. Her mind was restless, conjuring up all kinds of horrible ideas of what could have happened to him in the Demon World, but in the next moment she heard a clatter coming from behind her. She wheeled around in surprise, tensing, expecting a demon, and she was instantly relieved when she saw that it was a demon, but it just so happened to be the one she wanted to see. She realized in the back of her head with awe that this was probably the first time in her life she had ever been happy to see a demon.

He looked a bit weary, and he wasn't grinning or smirking, her launcher hoisted over his shoulder as he made his way down the pile of rubble, sighing.

"What an ordeal." She heard him say to himself, and when he looked up and noticed her standing there, his eyes seemed to light up a little. "You're still here." He sounded pleasantly surprised.

"I need that back." She explained, her eyes drifting to her beloved weapon. Although it was true that was the main reason she had stayed, she hid the incredible relief that washed over her upon seeing him still in one piece.

He lowered the weapon from his shoulders and handed it back to her, but before she could grasp the comfort of the cold metal in her hands, he pulled it away.

"No late charges, I hope?"

She kept her face stony, but inwardly she smirked, glad whatever had happened in the Demon World hadn't changed him too much.

"Hmm, I'll think about it."

She reached her hands out again, and he handed the weapon back to her. She placed it back in its rightful spot, secured safely on her back. The faintest trace of a smile was on his lips, but it didn't last. His eyes drifted up towards the cloudy sky where her eyes had just been, and he took a few steps in front of her. She followed his gaze, looking up towards the sky for any potential threats, though at the moment all seemed calm.

"We should be fine for now. But I'm sure they'll be back soon. Very soon."

The words and the ominous way in which he said them gave her a slight chill. There was nothing joking about his voice. He didn't even sound annoyed. He just sounded as serious as could be, and kind of weary, like a man who had seen more than his share of hardships. She wondered what exactly had happened to him on his journey to the Underworld, though she was almost positive she knew.

His brother. It must have been. He must have finally killed him. She would've thought he'd be happy if this was the case, but she knew now that he wouldn't be. She had expected to feel happy when she killed her father, but instead she'd been filled with intense despair, which was still throbbing dully in her heart. She realized with a pang of sympathy that he was probably going through the exact same thing as her. Which was strange, because she hadn't thought it was possible for demons to feel emotions -

And then she heard a slight sniffling noise and turned to look at him, and when she did she was hit by a jolt of amazement.

There were tears on his face.

She was looking at him from an angle, so for a moment she thought she was imagining it, that maybe it was a trick of the light, but there was no denying it. There were tears on his weary face. Her eyes were wide. This defied everything she had ever believed. She hadn't thought it was even possible...

"Are you crying?" She asked softly.

He shifted away from her, completely hiding his face, and her words seemed to bring him back to his senses a little. "It's only the rain." He said it in a voice that attempted to be casual, but she caught the pain he was masking underneath. It would have been impossible for her not to, since she used the same tactic to hide the same pain.

She lifted her hand into the air and felt around. It was dry as a bone. "The rain already stopped."

He shifted uncomfortably for a moment, turning his head even further away from her.

"Devils never cry."

There was almost a sort of defiance in the way he said it, and she could sense his embarassment that she had noticed him showing weakness. For that moment, just a moment, he seemed sad, ashamed, and vulnerable all in one, and she honestly wondered in her heart if, despite the near immortality and extraordinary skills, he was actually a human after all.

"I see." She said quietly. She looked away from him, back towards the sky. "Maybe somewhere out there, even a devil may cry when he loses a loved one." She looked back to him, trying to see his reaction. "Don't you think?"

He shifted his head ever so slightly toward her, though he kept his back turned.

"Maybe."

No defiance, no more "I-wasn't-crying", just honesty, practically admitting he had indeed been shedding tears. She wasn't sure why, but in that moment she felt connected to the demon in a way she had never felt connected to anyone. He was someone who could understand her, who felt the same pain she was feeling. Who had enough of a heart to let himself cry. Just like a human.

Just like a human...

However, just as she was beginning to ponder these things, she realized they had company.

"By the way..."

She reached for her gun and, quick as lightning, fired three shots over his shoulder. The three demons leaping towards them flew backwards and fell to the ground. She reached for her other gun and held both arms out, circling around and taking in the sudden horde surrounding them.

"Looks like we're gonna be busy for a while."

She turned her back to him, body tensing in a way all too familiar by now as she prepared herself for battle.

"Well, bring it on." She heard him say, and his voice sounded much lighter, more like his normal self, as if the little moment hadn't happened. "I love this. This is what I live for!"

She glanced to the side, watched as he unholstered his pistols with an unnecessarily extravagant flourish, and suddenly he was grinning, back to the way she remembered him.

"I'm absolutely CRAZY about it!"

Well, he certainly seemed crazy as he proceeded to bounce around, off the buildings and through the air, guns blazing with a skill only a demon could possess, and she joined him, the two of them working as one to take out the demonic attack. It was strange, really, but in the bleak setting of the cloudy morning, being attacked by countless demons, the two of them finally began to feel their spirits lift. The despair clouding her heart seemed to lighten considerably as she whirled around, pushing herself to her limits to take out the enemy. She knew then that this was what she was meant to do, what she would always continue to do. Killing these demons, making the world a safer place, was what caused the clouds to lift.

That, and the knowledge that not all of these demons were so bad after all.

A/N: THE END.

...Or is it?

Actually, this is just the beginning.

DUN DUN DUN...