Disclaimer: Capcom owns Devil May Cry, not I.

Sorry this is so late! I haven't been feeling up to writing this fic, and I didn't want to give you guys any more inferior work. …let me know the damage, okay?

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Clio

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"He's doing quite well," Sparda said quietly to Dante.

Dante restrained the urge to knock on wood. He didn't know that much about legal stuff, but it was pretty clear Sparda had done a good job picking Vergil's lawyer. He was asking questions that allowed Vergil to explain his actions, and he had clearly gone over this with Vergil before, so there wouldn't be any surprises.

"So you're saying you left Dante's custody in case there were buried compulsions to assassinate him and remove a key defender of humanity?"

"Yes," Vergil replied, a flicker of shame at his perceived weakness crossing his face, but holding together amazingly well.

"Weren't you worried that by doing so you might be placing innocent people in danger?" And the lawyer was also anticipating questions the prosecution might ask.

"I avoided people as much as possible, partly because even humans still… scared me." Vergil admitted that? Dante stared.

Part of the time he was aware of just how broken Vergil had been, and it seemed like he hadn't made any progress: now, here, seeing Vergil do so well under questions like these he had seemed like the old Vergil, strong and proud, yet even stronger for the ability to admit his weakness.

Then, hearing Vergil, Vergil, say humans had scared him pounded into Dante the depth to which his imprisonment had changed him.

"But," Vergil continued, rallying amazingly well, "I doubted Mundus would care about having me attack humans. The smart thing to do would have had me be utterly unaware that there was anything wrong with me, besides the trauma, until I attacked Dante, which was what I thought happened."

"What did you do when you were out on your own?"

"I wandered, but I went to apologize to Mary Arkham, who at first thought I was a son Dante had kept secret from her," a slight, somewhat strained smile: a far cry from Vergil's old smirk. Still, that he could find that, find anything, amusing under this pressure spoke volumes.

Go Vergil! Dante inwardly cheered him on.

"We will call Ms. Arkham, aka 'Lady' as a witness later, your honor," the lawyer said in an aside. "What else, Mr. von Schwärzung?"

The lawyer had been calling him by the family name all the way through. Besides being formal, it was different than calling him Vergil: the family name invoked Sparda's hard-earned reputation. Sparda just hoped that his deeds could help instead of hinder his son, for once.

"It finally occurred to me that the Guardian Clan, of Vie du Marli, might have some way of detecting if there were any spells on me. So I went to them."

"And did they find any?"

"No." He shook his head.

"And did you then return to Dante's custody?"

"I was… ashamed, afraid to, after worrying him. I felt that I had no right to claim his hospitality or family ties to him after my actions in raising Temen ni Gru and convincing him I was an enemy as part of my plan to gain Father's," he nodded at Sparda, "power."

"What made you return?"

"Despite my attempts to avoid them, I was ambushed by an A-class demon who spoke of Mundus still being active. I returned to warn Dante, who it turned out already knew." So his act of courage, of facing his brother, had been useless.

"And you remained there?"

"Yes."

"What did you do?"

"Mainly, I stayed home and helped with whatever I could, but on one occasion there was a call and no one to send out, so I went despite Dante having told me to keep my presence a secret."

"So, it was Dante's idea to keep your presence in the human world a secret, not your own?"

"Yes." Vergil nodded. "I was told that the secrecy was, like Father's, so that Mundus would not be able to find out I had been revived. If I had known that I had been sentenced, I would have preferred to face justice." He looked down at his hands, which Dante noticed were gripping the podium not quite hard enough to break the wood. "There was a long time during my recovery that I would have preferred death to my shame."

"What precisely were you ashamed about?"

"My weakness, in committing such crimes for the sake of the power to resist Mundus and failing to make them worth it: I gave away my honor for the sake of convincing Arkham that I was nothing but a power-hungry demon and he still was able to gain my father's power despite me. Without Dante's help I might not have been able to wrest it from him." Admitting that? Vergil? "And then I lost to Mundus, was broken so easily and used to attack my own brother as his puppet," and there Dante saw the depth of Vergil's self-hate as he heard the wood crack.

Vergil removed his hands from the slightly splintered area. "My apologies." He bowed his head.

"Are you able to continue?" Or should he petition the judge for a recess, the lawyer was asking. "My apologies, your honor, the defendant is still fragile, as the psychological evaluation attests."

Dante noticed Sparda had winced and looked at him questioningly. "Giving them proof of his inhuman strength…" Sparda shrugged. Well, it couldn't be helped now.

"Yes, I will," Vergil nodded, and Dante hoped the humans watching had some understanding of what it cost Vergil to say these things, to lay himself bare like this, to continue for so long.

And this lawyer was going easy on him. The prosecution wasn't going to be so kind.

Someone was going to attack Vergil. Say horrible things about him and make him hurt inside: Dante would be able to feel it. And he wouldn't be able to kill the person.

Some days, he really preferred dealing with demons. At least you were allowed to kill them.

Still… he had to have faith in Vergil, in the strength that had allowed him to regain himself. He had to have faith in his brother.