Authors Note: Wow sorry for the delay on this posting. Hopefully will be able to have another one up in a couple of days. Hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas and a Happy New Year. I would also like to say Thanks to everyone that has read and reviewed this story so far.

Entry 21: Grave Secrets

I was waiting in the common area waiting for Dante to show up. I was extremely edgy, wanting to see him but also reluctant. I had made the decision that I needed to tell him about my involvement in our mothers death no matter how unintentionally it was. It was my duty to protect her and Dante while father was away. My responsibility, but I had failed them. But, mostly I had failed myself.

I also knew that before I laid my soul open for Dante and his condemnation, that I had to speak to someone else first. I had to speak to our mother. I had to do more then just light a candle for her, I needed to tell her everything that had transpired in my life since she had been murdered.

"You ready to go babe?" Dante's voice penetrated my ponderings.

With catlike grace I rose from the couch and walked over to him, I didn't need to take anything with me I was just going home for the weekend. I hid my raging emotions behind a mask of bored indifference and the look on his face told me that Dante knew that something was wrong. I sighed and said, "I'll tell you later." Knowing that if I didn't offer something up to him he would pester me to death with the never ending questions of 'what's wrong', 'do you want to talk about it', 'are you mad at me'?, and the list would go on into infinity if I let it.

I followed him out to the parking lot and groaned, of course he had ridden the Harley. I walked over to the Low Rider and waited for Dante to get seated before I swung up behind him and wrapped my arms around his waist and cuddled in close to him inhaling the deep heady scent that was leather and Taye.

On the ride home Dante was strangely quiet, usually when we hadn't seen or spoken to each other for a few days or so he was a chatterbox, an endless fount of information on the latest television shows. But not today, it made me wonder if there was something wrong and I felt the worm of guilt start to gnaw at my stomach. I had been so self absorbed in my own musings, my self-loathing and recriminations that I hadn't stopped to consider the absolute hell my family was going through as well.

When we got home I found that father and Nero had gone into the city for a couple of hours, so that gave Dante and I the house to ourselves. Which was fine with me, after I was finished making peace with mother I would come back and tell my Dante everything.

In my heart I knew he wouldn't damn me, I knew that he would find no fault with me. But my brain was a different matter altogether. My stupid brain that I wanted to shove sharp pointy objects into just to shut it up, would feed the garden of doubt. My own self loathing was the fertilizer that helped it grow. No matter what my heart told me my brain would contradict it.

Before I could tell Dante that there were things that I needed to do before I told him what was laying heavy on my heart I was snapped out of my musings by an all too familiar voice. The voice of one of my tormentors, the one person who other then Mundus I truly hated. The woman who had caused me nothing but misery for 10 long years. If I would have had my Yamato, I would have removed her head from her shoulders and not lost any sleep over it.

The only thing that had kept her safe from my wrath before this was that she was always with Dante and that had been in a more public forum, but, now she was here in my home and I couldn't but wonder what her game was. I pivoted around and glared at Dante and demanded coldly, "What is she doing here? You above anyone else should know how I feel about her Dante."

Before he could reply I spun around and directed my anger at her, the person who dissevered it, "What do you want Trish? Have you come up with new and interesting ways to torment me and torture me?" Not waiting for an answer, I stomped out of the room and continued until I got to the sliding glass backdoors. This was one of those times that I wished it hadn't been glass, but wood. I needed to slam something. Anything, before I went back to the foyer and slammed that woman into a wall.

Grabbing the handle of the backdoor I wrenched it open with enough force that it came halfway off it's track and hung useless on the patio. I heard Dante calling for me to wait but I ignored him and kept going.

As long as she was there I would vacate myself from the premisis and if I had to walk all the way back to New Cross I would, but right now I had a different destination. My steps were quick as I walked up the little hillside where my mother was now buried. Father had wanted to build a shrine for her but Dante and I had vetoed him on that. So instead of a replica of the Taj Mahal, it was just a simple grave surrounded by her favorite flowers, daisies and tiger lilies. There was no angel marking her tomb just a simple piece of polished marble that read Eva Sparda beloved wife and mother, along with her birth and death date.

I walked over to her grave and looked down at it and sighed, even though it hadn't been that long since I had last been here, I still felt like it had been too long. I needed to feel the peace and contentment from her that I always had as a child. I needed to hear her call me 'Vergil Angel', again. No she had not watched A League of Their Own too many times, it had been her endearment for me a special thing that was between mother and son.

I sighed again and knelt down in the grass by her final resting place and whispered softly, "I need to talk to you mother." Like with father she was never mom, mommy, or mama to me, she had and would always be mother. Some may think is condescending, but it was always more respectful and revered for me to address my parents more formally then just as mom and dad.

I absently started to pick daisies and lilies and weave them together in a delicate floral wreath and I spoke again, my voice as soft as a spring breeze, "I am sorry that I haven't been to see you lately. I've been away. I've been away trying to get better." I hesitated, wondering how I could tell her what I had done. Tell this beautiful woman who had been one of the guiding forces in my childhood the atrocities that I had done. How could I tell her that I had become one of the monsters. One of the bad guys. One of those things that she had told Dante and I about. How could I tell her and break her heart.

"I have done things mother. Things that I am so very ashamed of now. Things that I felt was right and just at the time. Things that have damned me." I paused, feeling my throat grow tight and moisture filling my eyes.

Before I could continue talking to her I heard someone coming up the pathway and I halfway expected it to be Dante telling me that 'she' was gone, so I was not expecting to see her.

I dropped the half completed wreath as I leapt to my feet and growled, "That is close enough. You have no right to violate this place."

Trish stopped several yards away from me and started to speak, but I knew she saw the hatred flashing in my eyes and heard it in my voice. She brought her hand up to her mouth and started to chew on her pinky nail and tried to speak again but all that came out was an intelligible squeak.

I growled bitterly, "Look woman if all you came here to do was squeak at me save it." I would come back later. I couldn't violate my mothers resting place by spewing my venom at her. I started up the path towards her and upon reaching her, I was proud of my restraint, I did not wrap my hands around her neck and choke the life out of her, nor did I strike her to the ground, what I did do was pause and say in a soul chilling voice, "Tell Dante I will speak to him later. Tell him that I am going back to the asylum." Then stormed away but was stopped when she finally found her voice.

"Vergil, please wait." She said softly.

It was the please that made me stop. That one word that I didn't think was in her vocabulary. I turned back around slowly and wished I hadn't.

How dare she. How dare she cry. She had no right to cry. None whatsoever. After everything that she subjected me to she had the unimaginable cheek to stand there with tears in her eyes. I hissed at her, "Don't you dare."

She dashed the tears away and started to speak again, although this time it was different her voice was. It was not those honeyed tones that she used on me when I was a child. It was different. Her voice was mature and like her apology it was filled with the last thing I ever expected to hear, regret. The tears that she had so recently wiped away started to fall again.

In my blind hatred of her I thought I would be immune to anything she said,. Anything she did. I thought my absolute disdain of her would make it possible for me to blank out her word. So I was unprepared for the floodgate of memories that opened and cascaded over me. I remembered a part of my past that I had managed to blank out until that point in time. A past that I had chosen and needed to forget.

What was it that brought this fresh wave of memories to the foreground? Was it the regret in her voice or the tears on her cheeks.

In the wash of memories that cascaded over me her voice was no longer mature or filled with absolution, it was the soft sweet tones that had belonged to my mother. It was the voice that had haunted and tormented me in my waking hours and in my nightmares. The harsh criticizing words of, 'You are a disappointment', 'If you weren't so weak you could have saved us', 'Dante would have been strong enough to protect me.' 'You let me die. How dare you call yourself a son of Sparda.' Then her voice would change, her words would no longer be hurtful and recriminating, but full of darker things. Softly spoken words of seduction, 'Pleasure me Vergil.' Her hands soft, warm and gentle stroking and touching my body demanding a response from me. Her mouth, hot and wet against me. Trying to force a response from my prepubescent body.

When I was old enough to achieve an erection it was her that had fed me the drugs. It did not matter how much I protested to this new violation, my body would respond and I would go from unwilling to being an insatiable beast. Needing to fed the hunger that the aphrodisiacs raised in me. And I would take her over and over again, giving into her demands to be fucked. And fuck her I would, her and anyone else who wanted me. Like I have stated earlier, I was anybody and everybody's meat.

But there were things that I hadn't wanted to remember. As long as I told myself that I had not been willing then it was all right. Right? But now I knew the truth, I had been less then a whore. Somehow in my twisted way of thinking I didn't see it as consensual rape, I saw myself as willing and that made me the lowest thing that had ever walked the planet.

I knew in that moment why I had blocked those particular things and shook my head in denial as I saw all those horrible memories flash in fast-forward before my eyes. The memories that I had eventually convinced myself were not mine, but someone else's. I had always tried to be mother and father's 'good' boy. And things like that didn't happen to 'good' children. I knew that they weren't supposed to happen to anyone. But they had. They had happened to me.

"No!" I said softly. Wanting and needing to make it all go away again. But no matter how much I protested they would not go back behind the wall that I had built to keep them at bay. The wall was like any other great fortitude that had been built, when the crack in it was found all that was needed was the right amount of pressure and it would collapse in a heap of rubble and leave you vulnerable. I started to scream and cry, "No! No! No! It didn't happen to me. It didn't happen to me." But it had and now I knew it.

Trish stepped forward to...what? Comfort me? I didn't know. The only thing that I was aware of was that I needed to get away from her. I needed to go to my safe place. Not my happy place, but my safe one. I felt my inner fortitude start to throw up bricks again and I knew that soon I would be safe behind a wall again.

"NO!" I screamed at her when I saw her hand come forward, "Do not touch me. Don't you dare touch me." I hit my knees and continued to howl and scream out my horror and pain. And no matter how hard I tried to build a fortress around those memories again nothing I could do would erase them from my mind or ease the sorrow which was now me. The sorrow of the damned. The sorrow of the little boy knowing that the woman who was being cruel to him was not his mother but someone else who looked like her and sounded like her. The only thing that was different was her smell, that was something that they couldn't duplicate. The sweet earthy smell that was Eva Sparda. Eventually they broken me and when they had succeeded she was there, mother, but not mother, to help him rebuild who he was. They turned him from the wide eyed innocent into a cold hearted ruthless machine. A machine of destruction and vengeance. A machine who's only worth was his ability to follow orders without question and to pleasure those who were in his masters favor.

I felt her arms wrap around me as I relived those times, the times when my master, would want something done and send for me, his Dark Slayer, his Vengeance, to carry out his wrath. I had systematically eradicated legions of people and other demon lords all for him. All for my master. All for the hope that maybe, just maybe I might get scraps from his table. In the end it been for nothing. There was no praise for me. No laurels to adorn the brow of this mighty warrior. There had been nothing. And that is what I had become, I was nothing.

I pulled back from her and saw the bleakness on her face, the face that mirrored my beloved mothers, her lips parted and I knew she was going to speak, and when she did it was something that I had thought that she was incapable of, two simple words that cut me open, "I'm sorry."

Before I could pull away I was drawn in closer to her and she continued speaking softly against my ear, "I'm sorry Vergil. So very sorry for what I did to you. For what I allowed to be done to you." I turned my head slightly and my cheek brushed against hers and the salty tears that fell from her eyes and trailed down her cheeks mixed with the ones that were running down my face.

She spoke again, "I understand fully why you can't forgive me and why you hate me. Why should you forgive me? When I can't forgive myself. I just wanted to let you know that I am sorry. I wish I had been woman enough at that time to stand up to Mundus and tell him that I wouldn't do it. But I was afraid Vergil, so very afraid of what he would do to me. I was nothing more then his puppet, his creation. I tortured you and betrayed Dante. I have been nothing but a scourge on the noble name and house of Sparda."

Trish tried to pull away from me but I held her fast and tight. She was as much of his victim as I was. She had been created by him for one sole purpose and that was to aide in the destruction of the Sparda name. I knew in that instant that if I forgave her it would help me heal. She needed my forgiveness as much as I needed to give it to her. I wanted and needed people to forgive me for what I had done to them in the past. Was I any different then her. Was my moral high ground any less rocky then hers? I knew the answer was no.

I brought my hand up and brushed the tears off her cheeks and said softly, "I forgive you Trish." It was heartfelt and sincere. I felt my own tears begin anew only this time they wee not the tears of the damned, but tears of healing. Tears that helped wash away that hurt."How? How can you possibly forgive me Vergil? When I can't forgive myself." Trish hiccoughed out.

Somehow I managed to smile through my tears and answered her question, "We were his pawns Trish. Pawns that he used in his sick and twisted games." I pulled her in close to me again and said, "You were as much his victim as I was Trish. I don't know what else to tell you. I don't know what you want me to say. If you want me to hate and revile you. I can't do it. I just can't."

I really didn't understand why and how I had blocked all that out until now, I needed to speak with my therapist about this break through. Why now? I had seen her before this. Why now was I plagued with these memories about my past. Was it the innocent child I had been that had made those things 'go away' and only let me remember digging myself out of hell. Or was it the adult that refused to believe those things had happened. I didn't know. I did know one thing that it wasn't false memories that I was having. They were all so very real.

Pushing her gently away I said, "Trish I need you to go back to the house. I will talk to you more when I get back. I…" I paused, not wanting to share with her what I was doing here. Not wanting anyone to know that I had come to this lonely hillside to make peace with my mother. I sighed and continued, "I need to be alone right now. When I get back to the house we will talk more then."

Trish nodded and replied, "Okay Vergil." Then smiled softly at me turned and walked down the hill and back towards the house.

I watched her walk away and once she was out of sight I turned back around and knelt down picking up the chain of flowers that I had been working on I continued speaking to my mother as if we hadn't been interrupted, "There are things that I need to tell you mother. Things that I have done and things that were done to me. Horrible things." I tried to finish the wreath of flowers but found that I was blinded by the saltiness of my tears.

I sat down completely and there in the growing darkness I told her everything that I could remember. Told her about the abuse that had happened to me, told her about the things that I had done. My voice caught and my throat grew tighter as I told her about what I had done to Dante. "I am so very sorry mother. So very sorry that I wasn't strong enough to protect you and Dante. That is the one thing that I can never forgive myself for, that I was weak. I was to weak to save you and that I was a double damned fool to have ever trusted a demon."

Rising to my feet I placed the half finished flower chain n her grave and dusted off my pants I turned to walk away when I felt it. I felt that I wan no longer alone on the hill. The presence that I felt was not malevolent but one that was pure.

Before I could turn I heard a voice that I hadn't heard in over 15 years, "Vergil Angel."