CONTENT WARNING: This chapter contains descriptions of serious physical injury. If you think you might be uncomfortable reading it, you can skip to below the second horizontal rule (look for the paragraph beginning "In spite of Nero's grumbling…").

The shining tower of Order Headquarters folded in on itself and plummeted into the sea, taking with it the bridge, the gatehouse, and the parade ground. The site of so much hope and scheming, so many noble and secret and evil deeds, and the origin of all the tragedies that had plagued Fortuna for the past two decades vanished into the roiling surf and broke upon the rocks.

It did not, thanks to Lady's ingenuity, take Nero along for the ride. Her improvised pulley system swung Nero clear of the collapsing structure, though his flight came close to a painful end at one point when its arc aimed him into the rocky cliffside. Fortunately, his legs were rugged enough to absorb the hard impact and bounce him back to a safe distance.

He was so caught up in the sheer relief of not being dead that it wasn't until Trish and Lady had dragged him up over the lip of the cliff, relieved him of his burden, and let him catch his breath that Nero recalled exactly what crisis he'd been facing when the tower collapsed. The condition of his own body, strained and aching and bleeding in places, was forgotten as he rolled over and saw Vergil's motionless form splayed face-down on the grass. From a glance, it was obvious that he had been broken by the crushing weight of the rubble; his limbs were twisted in unnatural positions, and his white hair was stained red from a deeper-than-bone gash that bit into the back of his skull. Even more awful was the ominous flatness of his body, as though all the depth of his torso had been pressed out. It took Nero a moment to process that Vergil's ribs had likely been crushed by the weight of the stone, and bile rose in his throat as he realized what that meant. The ribs existed solely to protect the vital organs, and without them…

Gradually Nero became aware of the sounds of a scuffle nearby, and he tore his eyes away from Vergil's prone figure to see Trish attempting to blockade Rosso near the far end of the van. "I want to see my brother!" the boy insisted. "Let me go! He's hurt!"

"Let Nero and Lady look at him first," Trish countered, slinging an arm around Rosso's waist and hauling him back a few steps. If Rosso had had the use of both legs, her task would have been infinitely more challenging; as it was, it was all she could do to keep him at a distance where he couldn't see just how bad it was. "Tony, hold still! You can see him after they've treated his wounds."

Lady, kneeling on the opposite side of Vergil's form, exchanged a pained look with Nero. There was no first aid treatment for the kind of damage his body had suffered. Either he would survive on his own through some miracle of his devil heritage, or he wouldn't.

Nero sought out Nico, who was leaning against the front of the van, looking more than a little queasy as she tried to avoid looking directly at Vergil. "Nico, get a blanket out of the van. We should at least cover him up." If it didn't keep Vergil's too-chilled flesh any warmer, it would at least give the appearance of comfort and aid, for Tony's sake. The more practical part of his mind also acknowledged the need to contain the seeping blood before putting him in the van, though that was hardly his first concern.

Nico hurried around the side of the vehicle, only too glad to remove herself from the unsettling sight. "And bring a bottle of vodka, too," Lady called after her.

Nero's lip curled in spite of the gravity of their situation. "Still gonna soak those gloves?"

Lady stripped the torn, filthy gloves from her hands and tossed them aside. "Do you really want me handling him without disinfecting first?"

"I'm not sure it would make much of a difference, at this point." Nero started to lift the edge of Vergil's blood-saturated coat to see the extent of his injuries, then lost the will to. "He's not healing."

"Would we be able to tell? There's been a lot of internal damage. I don't know that we'd be able to see improvement in something like his heart or lungs, for example."

Nero shuddered and tried not to envision the full extent of Vergil's internal injuries. It would be miraculous of any organ in his body hadn't been destroyed beyond function. "If he were in his devil form it would heal fast enough for us to see, but I think he burned all that energy protecting his brother. I saw him transform, when he first went in."

"It was probably the only way he could withstand the damage long enough to get Tony to shelter." Lady sighed. "We'll just have to do what we can, and hope that he's strong enough to pull through. Remember, he's already survived a lot. Even death itself, apparently."

Nico returned with the blanket and vodka then, and Lady doused her hands in the alcohol. She hesitated a second, then took a swig straight from the bottle and grimaced before offering it to Nero. He silently declined it—not because he couldn't use a stiff drink, but because he knew he needed to remain clear-headed and focused for a little longer. But damn, the minute this whole thing was over, he might just empty out Nico's secret bar single-handedly…

Lady gingerly sloshed some of the vodka over the gash in Vergil's skull. It diluted the blood in his hair to a sickly pink, which somehow looked even worse than the fresh red or drying rust had. She placed a hand on Vergil's shoulder, then hesitated. "I'm almost afraid to turn him over."

"Yeah, me too, but we need to know what we're dealing with here." Nero checked that Trish had Rosso well out of sight before bracing his hands along the side of Vergil's body. Lady counted to three, and together they rolled him onto his back.

Lady swore and turned away. Nero's stomach lurched.

"Get that blanket," he said when he had conquered the urge to vomit. "We'll have to wrap him up completely for the drive home. I don't want Tony to see him like this."

By the time the van rolled to a stop outside Nero's house, it was late afternoon. Nero roused himself from the dazed state he'd been in for half the drive and climbed forward to lift the receiver on the radio phone. Kyrie's cheerful voice in his ear seemed too bright, somehow. "Kyrie, we're outside, about to park the van in the garage. I need all the kids out of the house." He interrupted the suggestion she tried to make. "No—not closed in their rooms, I need them gone. Yes, all of them. Send them out with Julio, or to the orphanage, or anything you can think of. I know, but this is an emergency."

The pain and weariness in his voice silenced her protests more effectively than any argument could have. Once Nico had backed the van into its position in the garage, they waited until they saw the children traipse out the door, bundled up in hats and coats against the cooler evening weather. Julio stood sentinel until they had all started down the street, then cast an anxious look toward the van before hurrying after them. Nero scrubbed a hand over his face and wondered, not for the first time, if he were somehow going to wind up responsible for driving the peace out of all of their lives.

A moment later he saw Kyrie framed in the door to the house, lips pressed together in a line that Nero knew meant she was not happy about his demands, but was withholding judgment until she weighed the validity of the emergency he'd claimed. Her eyes widened as he stepped down from the van in bloodstained clothing, and the annoyance melted instantly into concern. "How badly are you hurt?"

"Hardly worth mentioning, all things considered." Nero moved out of the way as the others climbed out. Kyrie's anxiety notched higher at the sight of Lady's grime-smeared face and bloodied sleeve, and reached the stratosphere when presented with Rosso's hobbling gait and blood-soaked trouser leg. "Tony's got a broken ankle, but it's not serious."

"Not serious?" Kyrie's disbelief was palpable, and she lunged forward to check the boy over for more injuries. "A broken bone is very serious!"

"Not comparatively." Lady sounded as drained as Nero felt. "We'll need a straight run to the bathroom. Anything that can't be washed, move out of the way. There's liable to be some blood splatter."

Kyrie blanched, but somehow managed to maintain her composure. "Whose?"

"Vergil's." Nero nudged Rosso's shoulder. "You can still feel him, right? He still with us?"

The boy gave a solemn nod. "He's still alive. It's weak, though."

Nero turned back to Kyrie. "Lady and I will handle Vergil. Once we get him moved, you and Trish look after Tony, okay? He's going to need that ankle cleaned and wrapped up." The ankle wasn't a major concern for someone with Dante's healing ability, but Nero didn't want him coming anywhere near the bathroom until they had a chance to reassess Vergil's physical condition. He'd communicated as much to Trish during the return trip, and she was prepared to sit on Rosso if necessary.

Kyrie swallowed, but nodded. "How… how badly is Vergil injured?"

Nero just shook his head, but Lady held Kyrie's gaze. "It's bad. Just… let us handle it."

"All right. Nero knows where the first aid kit is, but I have some extra supplies you might need stored upstairs. I'll bring those down as soon as you're situated." The expression on Lady's face made it clear that a first aid kit wasn't going to be much use, but Kyrie soldiered on. "Just give me a moment to move a few things. Tony, come in with me, and you can sit in the living room while I get things ready. Here, lean on my arm."

Trish escorted them in, after tossing a reassuring look over her shoulder at Nero. She'd see that Rosso stayed out of the way.

Once Kyrie had given them the all-clear, Nero and Lady hefted their gruesome bundle and carried it into the house and down the hall, leaving Nico to start on the bloodstains in the van. Nero kicked the bathroom door closed behind him and lowered the body to the floor.

Lady braced her hands on her knees and took a few seconds to catch her breath. "Okay, how do you want to do this?"

"I'll stand in the shower, and you can help me lift him over the edge of the tub." Nero shed his jacket, boots, and socks; the rest of his clothes would need to be soaked anyway. "I'll probably need you to turn on the water, too. I won't be able to reach the taps once I'm holding him."

She nodded. "Blanket on or off?"

"On, until we get him in the tub. This is gonna be messy enough as it is." He squeezed past Lady and stepped into the bathtub. "Okay, I'll take this end, and you can—" He broke off as the door opened. Kyrie slipped inside, carrying her kitchen shears and a box filled with rolls of gauze. "Uh, thanks. You can just leave those on the counter."

"No." Kyrie closed the door behind her and pushed up her sleeves. Nero only noticed then that she was wearing her longest apron. "I'm here to help."

Nero and Lady exchanged glances. "I really don't think that's—"

Kyrie leveled a look at him. "Nero, I'm trained in first aid. I volunteered as a nurse in the disaster cleanup, and working at the orphanage, I've seen everything from infected punctures to compound fractures. Now, if Vergil is as badly injured as your behavior suggests, you're probably going to need to cut his clothes away to get to the wounds, and that will be easier with an extra set of hands."

She was right, as Nero soon learned. Even with his superior strength, he had a difficult time wrangling Vergil's six-foot-odd frame into the narrow bathtub with any semblance of control, and manipulating his limbs to remove the blood-weighted coat took Lady and Kyrie working together while Nero supported the slack weight. He tried not to grimace whenever he felt shattered bone shifting beneath his grip. There was little structure to Vergil's body in its present condition, and Nero constantly had to readjust his hold as what should have been rigid points of support shifted and slipped through his hands.

Kyrie, for her part, bore the grotesque spectacle with remarkable calm. Still, Nero was grateful that the healing process had kicked in at a cosmetic level during the hour-long van ride home. Vergil's torso and limbs remained mangled, but at least the damage to his face had been reduced visibly. By the time they had rinsed the caked blood from his hair and sponged the grit from the most severe of his wounds, he was looking almost presentable enough that Nero thought they could finally allow his brother to see him. Nero knew Dante had seen a hell of a lot worse in his day; surely Rosso would be able to handle the sight of a little blood.

Well—a lot of blood, still. Vergil wasn't healing that quickly.

When they had rinsed away as much as they could, Lady patted each wound dry with a dark-colored towel—Kyrie's foresight, again; given Nero's profession, she was no stranger to bloodstained laundry—and Kyrie followed with layers of cotton gauze and bandages. Lady finished her task first, and moved to the sink to rinse the towel. "So what's the next step?"

Kyrie reached across to lay a strip of gauze over a gash on Vergil's hip, gingerly lifting the edge of the towel that had been draped across his lap in an attempt to preserve Vergil's modesty—or, more accurately, satisfy Kyrie's sense of decency. "Well, he can't stay like this. He'll need some clothes. Although I'm not sure we could easily get anything on him without disturbing the bandages."

Nero didn't like the idea of to trying to wrestle broken limbs through shirt sleeves or trouser legs, either. "We used my robe, before. That shouldn't be too hard to get on him."

"I'll get it." Lady draped the damp towel over the edge of the sink. "Is it in your bedroom closet?"

"Yeah. And if you can grab any T-shirt and jeans for me from the dresser, I'll change, too. No point in dripping all over the house when we move him."

"Wait—I've thought of something. Lady, please get a spare blanket from the laundry room and bring it here before you go upstairs." When Lady had left, Kyrie abandoned her bandaging and rolled up the soiled blanket they'd used to carry Vergil in from the van.

Nero shifted Vergil's weight to one side to ease his aching shoulder. "You got a plan?"

"I do. Oh, that one is perfect," she said as Lady returned with a large blanket. "Help me spread it out on the floor. There—now, Lady, you take Vergil's feet, and Nero, keep his shoulders. I'll keep his arms from getting in the way. We're going to lay him out flat on the blanket, like you had him before."

"Uh, okay." Nero hefted when told, and soon they had Vergil positioned to Kyrie's satisfaction. "Now what?"

"Now, I'm going to finish bandaging these wounds, and Lady is going to go upstairs and get your bathrobe and a change of clothes for you. And you, mister, are going to strip out of those dirty things and have a proper shower. After which, you're going to sit on the edge of the tub and let me treat whatever injuries you've been hiding under your shirt." She gave him a knowing look.

Nero knew he'd been favoring his injured side, but he put up a token protest anyway. "It's not bad. It'll heal on its own."

"Well, it has until the end of your shower to do so. If it hasn't already healed by then, you get a bandage." She brandished a roll of gauze at him. "And if you don't cooperate, I'll cover you in the kind Kyle likes, with the little cartoon fish on them."

"Don't you dare," Nero countered. "Those printed ones cost twice as much as the normal bandages."

In spite of Nero's grumbling, he did feel considerably better once he was clean and attired in fresh clothing. He even managed to dodge Kyrie's threat of bandages, as the gash in his shoulder, while not fully healed, had at least closed over during his brief transformation into devil form as they'd escaped the collapsing tower. It would likely remain tender for a day or two, unless he had another massive adrenaline surge and needed to transform again—which he dearly hoped he didn't. This one day had already held as much excitement and stress as he usually faced in the course of several months.

Lady helped him move Vergil, now rendered decent in Nero's bathrobe, to the sofa. Even before they had spread the blanket over him to keep him from becoming more chilled as his damp skin and hair dried, Rosso had hobbled to his brother's side and seized his hand. Nero had to reach around him to tuck in the edge of the blanket.

"Tony," Kyrie said gently, "let's go down the hall, all right? It's your turn to get cleaned up."

The boy shook his head vigorously and clung harder to Vergil's arm. Nero winced reflexively; though it seemed that Vergil was still beyond feeling, he knew for a fact that the arm was broken in several places. Before Kyrie could insist on Rosso's compliance, he touched her shoulder. "Let him have a minute. I promised him he could see his brother once we'd treated his wounds, and he's been waiting all this time."

She nodded her understanding. "I'll go start on the laundry, then. Those things shouldn't sit too long, or they'll stain. I'll come back in a few minutes."

"In that case, I'm going to grab a quick shower while it's available," Lady said. Like Nero, she had returned coated in a mix of dust from the wreckage and Vergil's blood. "I'll be out in five minutes. I just need to rinse all this off."

Nero moved to the armchair and melted into it. Trish, perched on one arm of the sofa, mirrored his posture in her drooping shoulders. She looked nearly as exhausted as he felt, though he imagined her stress had more to do with attempting to contain a frantic boy who had been determined to break free of her supervision. When she caught Nero's glance on her, she stood and changed her seat to the arm of his chair. "I'm glad that's over," she murmured in a low tone.

"Over?" Nero stared at Vergil, still motionless and deathly pale. "I think we're a long way from over. His body's still a wreck, and he's barely healing. Who knows how long it'll take him to recover. Or even if he'll recover."

"Oh, he will," Trish assured him. "It may take him a month or two, but as long as he's alive, he'll heal."

Nero wrenched his gaze away from Vergil to stare at her. "A month or two?"

She shrugged. "Dante was unconscious for four weeks after Urizen put him down, and that was with the Qliphoth sustaining him." A shadow crept across her face. "He might have died, otherwise."

Nero lowered his voice, conscious of Rosso's proximity. "What do you mean, the Qliphoth was sustaining him?"

"I suppose it must have mistaken him for Vergil, and thought he was its master. It fed him enough power to keep him alive. Dante told me about it, later."

"Huh. I didn't know that." Nero looked from Vergil's slack face to Rosso's anxious one—the same face, but rendered in miniature and separated by three decades' wear. "Identical twins have identical DNA. I guess maybe the same is true for their devil halves."

Trish nodded. "However you look at it, they were once one single person that split into two."

"Hell of a case study for nature versus nurture," Nero murmured. Trish gave him a quizzical look, and he shook his head. "Never mind. I've sat through too many debates among the orphanage staff."

Lady reappeared a few minutes later, damp-haired and wearing long sleeves that concealed the scrapes on her arms. "Bathroom's free," she announced. She knelt beside Rosso and touched his shoulder. "Hey. Can you spare a minute for Kyrie to look at your leg? I promise, your brother will still be here when you get back."

The lines of worry carved themselves deeper into Rosso's forehead. "He's hurt. I don't want to leave him alone."

Lady exchanged a look with Nero. This level of concern seemed to go beyond even the degree of closeness that the two had favored as children. "He won't be alone," she said carefully. "Nero's right here. He'll stay with him. Won't you, Nero?"

"Yeah, I'm not going anywhere." He leaned forward and trained an earnest look on Rosso. "I promise, if he wakes up in the next five minutes, I will yell loud enough for you to hear."

The boy swallowed. "Will you call me if he… gets worse?"

Nero hadn't expected that, but he tried not to let his surprise show. "I'll call you if there's any change at all. But he's not going to get worse. He's looking better already."

Lady extended her arm to Rosso. "Here, I'll help you down the hall. The sooner we get you to Kyrie, the sooner you can come back and sit with Vergil."

When they had moved out of the room, Nero glanced up at Trish. "Anything about that strike you as odd?"

"He was awfully worked up when I wouldn't let him go to Vergil earlier. Maybe he thought we were trying to keep something from him."

"Well, we were. Vergil looked like—" Nero swallowed. He couldn't put into words what Vergil had looked like. "Maybe we were just being overprotective, but I thought he'd be even more upset seeing him in that condition."

"Perhaps." Trish pushed off the chair and moved to stare down at Vergil. After a glance down the hall to make sure Rosso was well out of range, she lifted the blanket and surveyed his chest through the loosely-tied bathrobe. "Oh! It's actually not as bad as I thought. He'll be fine."

"Not as bad…?" Nero blinked at her. "You must have a hell of an imagination."

"I don't need one. I had a hell of an education." She replaced the blanket and resumed her seat on the arm of the couch. "Mundus did worse to him than this on a regular basis. He always recovered."

"Shit. I'd forgotten about that." Nero recalled the shadows of torture that had played over Vergil's body when he'd regained his missing years. There had been marks of unspeakable violence, and the screams that had been wrung from him then suggested that he'd been fully conscious for that experience. At least the falling ceiling had been merciful enough to disable Vergil's brain before crushing his body. "So, not a month, then? You think he'll wake up sooner?"

"From these wounds? Almost certainly. Especially since they're purely physical."

"As opposed to… what was it you said that Devil Arms did? Damaged the spirit, or something?"

She nodded. "Injury caused by any kind of devil power can take longer to heal. What Mundus did…" Her eyes dropped to Vergil again. "Well. Time passes differently in the underworld, anyway."

Before Nero could wonder at that, Kyrie ushered a limping Rosso back into the room, his ankle tightly wrapped with a bandage. Behind them trailed Lady, carrying a kitchen chair, which she placed by the couch. "Now, you can sit here for a few more minutes," Kyrie told the boy, "but when it's time to move your brother, I want you to go and lie down in your room, all right? I don't want you putting any weight on that foot, especially by trying to climb the stairs."

"Move?" Nero echoed. "What's that about Vergil moving?"

"I thought you would want to take him upstairs before the children get back." Kyrie glanced at the clock on the mantel. "I'd like to go get them now, because it's past time for supper, and it will be dark soon. But I promised Tony he could sit with Vergil a little longer, so you can wait a few minutes."

"You think it's a good idea to move him, in that condition?" Nero thought of all the bones he would jostle by picking Vergil up again and suppressed a shudder. "Why don't we just leave him where he is?"

Kyrie stepped away from Rosso so she wasn't arguing over his head. "He needs to be in a bed, Nero. He needs rest and quiet, and he won't get that in the front of the house with people traipsing by every few minutes."

"Okay, yes—he needs rest. But we're not talking about a couple of hours here. It could be days before he can get up."

"All the more reason to give him a room away from all the noise and traffic. We can't keep confining the children to their bedrooms, and even if we did, they would have to come through here on their way to and from school."

She had a point, but… "If we put him in our room, where are you going to sleep?"

"On the sofa." She crossed her arms. "And don't think I didn't notice that you said 'you' instead of 'we.' I'm sure you're planning on sitting up tonight to watch over him, but I don't want you making yourself ill, either. Remember, you have your own healing to do. After tonight, you can sleep in the boys' room. There's a spare bed, now."

Nero capitulated with a sigh. "Okay. Lady, you up for one more trip?"

"As long as it's the last one for a while." She stretched her arms and winced. "Better yet, why don't we just have Trish carry him up? You have an injured shoulder, and she's stronger than I am, anyway."

A look of sour resignation crossed Trish's face. "I suppose I don't get a say in the matter?"

"Oh, no, you definitely have a choice," Nero replied. "You can either take Vergil upstairs, or you can go help Nico clear that rancid lizard tail out of my garage. Because that also needs to be done before the kids get home."

"Well, in that case…" Trish hopped up from the sofa. "You want the blanket to go upstairs with him, right?"

Lady flashed a rueful smile. "I guess that leaves me with Nico and the lizard. It's a shame I already took my shower."

Nero took pity on her. "No, it's fine. I'll go deal with the lizard. Why don't you go collect the kids, so Kyrie can get started on dinner?"

"That's a plan I can work with." She turned toward the coat closet, then hesitated. "Oh, I forgot. My jacket got a little blood-stained, so I rinsed it. I left it in hanging over the shower rod."

"Take mine," Kyrie offered. "The children are just at the park, so it's not far. I'll help Trish get Vergil situated upstairs, and then I'll start cooking. I'll make something fast, so we can eat as soon as you get back." Once Lady had shrugged into her coat and departed, Kyrie bent and touched Rosso's shoulder. "Tony, it's time for you to rest, now. Remember what we agreed. Come on, I'll help you to your room."

Rosso stood and hopped back a step or two so Kyrie could pull the chair out of the way. He watched Trish lift Vergil and move toward the stairs with him, then hobbled after them, leaning heavily on Kyrie's arm.

Nero followed them, intending to make certain that Trish had no trouble navigating the stairs with her awkward burden, but in the hallway he nearly collided with Rosso. The boy had halted at the base of the stairs, his unblinking gaze fixed on Trish's back until she vanished around the corner of the landing.

A/N: The bit about the Qliphoth sustaining Dante is canon, and I've been trying to find a way to work it into a story ever since I read those notes in the artbook. :)