Nero woke to an uncomfortable rattling sensation. It took a moment for Kyrie's insistent "Nero!" to penetrate his consciousness, and another few seconds to realize that the rattling was the throbbing in his own skull as she shook him gently. He groaned and rubbed his eyes. "I'm up." That was completely untrue. "Sorta."

"I'm sorry to wake you, but it's almost lunchtime, and the children will be returning soon." Kyrie squeezed onto the few inches of sofa beside his legs and helped support his weight as he pushed himself upright. Even with her assistance, he flinched at the movement. "Does your shoulder still hurt?"

"Yeah, a little."

She rubbed his back, careful to avoid the injury site. "Come have something to eat. You skipped breakfast, and even your body can't heal without fuel."

Nero waited for her to stand before swinging his legs to the floor, but he still didn't feel capable of standing. He scrubbed his face with both hands. Grit burned his eyes, and stubble scratched against his palms. If he maintained this schedule for much longer, he'd be as scruffy as Dante. "How's Vergil? Any change?"

"I was just about to go upstairs and check. I thought I could take a shift sitting with him while Lady eats. I told Tony—" She caught herself. "—Dante that he could stay up there with him again today, as long as he came down for mealtimes."

Nero nodded. "In that case, I'm gonna grab a quick shower before the kids get back. I can eat with them while you're with Vergil."

"All right." She waited a moment, then nudged his arm. "That does mean you have to stand up at some point."

Nero groaned in protest, but got to his feet. "How long did I sleep?"

"About five hours."

He rolled his aching shoulder and winced. "Felt more like five minutes."

"I'm not surprised. You stayed awake for more than thirty hours straight, barely slept at all, and then sat up all night again. Not to mention your injury, or everything that's happened with Vergil, which is exhausting in its own right." She steered him gently toward the hall. "Go ahead and get in the shower. I'll fetch some clean clothes for you."

Nero was grateful for that; just now, even climbing the stairs sounded exhausting. He stumbled toward the bathroom and hoped a dousing with cold water would help him wake up.

Lunch passed in a fatigue-induced blur. Nero scarcely registered the squabbles of the children over the table, and he washed the dishes afterward in a state of hazy automation. He must have looked as bad as he felt, because at some point Julio appeared beside him and began drying and putting away the dishes without being asked.

"Thanks," Nero mumbled when he realized he wasn't alone in the kitchen. He stared at the plate in his hand and tried to remember if he'd been in the process of washing or rinsing it.

Julio took the plate from his hand and dried it. "Is there anything else around here you need help with? You guys seem to have a lot going on right now."

Nero had spent the past forty hours alternating between sitting at Vergil's bedside and stealing too-short naps on the couch, so he had no idea as to the state of the rest of the house. "Not unless Kyrie has something she needs done. But don't you have homework?" Or did the kids even have school tomorrow? "Wait—what day is today?"

"Sunday. And I finished my homework this morning, before we went to the park."

"Oh." He had a vague memory of the children barreling toward the front door as he came downstairs that morning, but his fatigue had kept him from wondering where they'd been headed.

Julio shot Nero a sidelong glance. "You should probably get some more sleep. You seem really out of it."

"Can't. It's my shift next."

"For staying with Mister Vergil?" Julio's towel stilled. "If he's really hurt that bad, should he… should you take him to a hospital?"

The tension in the boy's voice penetrated the fog of exhaustion that occluded Nero's senses. He knew it must have been a difficult question to ask; in Julio's experience, those admitted to the hospital weren't necessarily released alive. "I don't think the hospital can do anything for him that we can't do here. Remember, he's not all human. His body works a little differently than ordinary people's." He nudged Julio's shoulder with his elbow. "But you don't have to worry about him. He'll be okay."

"But he's still bad enough that one of you has to stay with him all the time."

"That's just in case he regains consciousness. Knowing Vergil, he'll try to hop out of bed the instant he wakes up, and then he'll probably hurt himself all over again or suffer a relapse and prolong this whole thing. The fastest way to get him back on his feet is to make sure he stays off of them."

"We could just strap him to the bed," Lady yawned as she entered the kitchen, bearing a set of dishes. "Then we could all get a little shut-eye, and just check in on him every few hours."

"Great idea—right up to the point where he gets himself un-strapped and comes after us with a sword. I don't think Vergil's the type to take that sort of thing lying down."

Lady snorted. "That's kind of the point, isn't it?"

Nero scowled and added her plate to the ones soaking in the dishwater. "Give me a break, I'm sleep-deprived. I take it there's been no change?"

"None." Lady yawned again and dropped into a kitchen chair. "Kyrie's with him now, but when I left he was still giving his award-worthy performance of Sleeping Beauty."

"It sounds like that would be a lot easier to fix," Julio put in. "In fairy tales, all it takes to wake someone up is a kiss."

Nero scrubbed his burning eyes with the back of a wrist. "If this goes on much longer, maybe we should try it."

"Well, I'm not kissing him," Lady declared.

Nero flashed a grin over his shoulder. "Hey, I seem to recall you saying he was pretty hot stuff at one point."

"Recognizing that someone could be considered attractive by conventional standards should not be mistaken for a statement of personal interest." She glared in the general direction of the upstairs bedroom. "I may have relaxed my stance on Vergil's behavior, but I'm not a masochist."

"That's a real shame," Nero drawled. "I mean, just think: If you two got together, I'd have to call you Mom!"

Lady massaged her forehead. "If I were any less exhausted, I would drag you out back and throttle you."

Nero responded with a halfhearted snort. "Yeah, let's skip it and just say you did. I'm too tired to fight back."

Julio was glancing between them with an odd expression. "It's really weird to feel like the adult in the room, but I think you both need naps."

Lady just nodded through a yawn. Nero pulled the sink plug and slumped against the counter as the water drained. "Kid, you are not wrong."

Any hope of an afternoon nap was dashed a short time later by Trish's arrival. Nero hadn't realized she was gone—or at least had been too tired to process her absence from lunch—but Lady had evidently been aware of her whereabouts. "Find anything on your scouting mission?" she asked as Trish joined them in the living room.

Trish pushed her sunglasses to the crown of her head and shook her red bob. "I canvassed nearly the entire town this morning. No sign of Lauda or the Nilepoch. I couldn't sense any demon activity at all, really—which is surprising, given all the energy disturbance over the past few days. I expected that would have agitated them."

Lady shrugged. "If that pressure was as uncomfortable as you all made it sound, maybe it drove them deeper into hiding instead."

"Perhaps." Trish didn't look convinced. "I stopped by the mining camp afterward, too. It was suspiciously quiet."

"No demons?"

"None. Not so much as a Scarecrow, and there's usually at least one lurking around the area. Given everything we know is happening on this island—the Ascension Ceremony, the Alto Angelos, the Nilepoch—it's unsettling that there's no sign of a disturbance among the creatures from the underworld."

Lady's brow furrowed. "The calm before the storm, do you think?"

"Or just the universe giving us a much-needed reprieve," Nero said. "Frankly, I'm glad we've got the break. I mean, look at us: Lady and I are dead on our feet, Vergil is…" He'd started to say dead to the world, but choked it back; Vergil's gradual healing was still too tenuous to rule out an unfavorable outcome. "…still unconscious, and we're definitely not up to facing a squadron of Angelos or the Nilepoch right now. Let's not go looking for more trouble when we're barely holding it together as it is."

Trish frowned. "Ignoring the potential dangers won't make them disappear."

"True," Lady added. "We don't know what Lauda is planning, or where the Nilepoch will appear next."

"Yeah, but unless I've missed something, we also don't have any good way of figuring those things out. We can't predict the Nilepoch's return unless we get lucky and manage to capture another one of its victims—and that's assuming it's following the same pattern as before, and not just hopping around randomly now. And Lauda's probably gone to ground to plan the next stage of whatever crazy scheme he's working on. He's likely to find us long before we can figure out where he's holed up. Which is just as well," Nero added as he rolled his shoulders, wincing at the lingering ache from his injury. "I'm happy to let him stew on the back burner for a while while we regroup and heal up."

Trish's eyes flicked over Nero and Lady, taking in their disheveled appearances and the bandages Lady still wore on one arm. "I suppose there's some merit in that. You both look as though you could use some more recovery time."

"What we need is more than half a night's sleep." Lady gave Trish an appraising look. "I don't suppose you'd like to take the night shift with Vergil so we can all catch up on our beauty rest?"

Trish scowled. "I'd rather keep searching for our enemies. Besides, someone has to keep watch out there at night, and since I'm the only one of us who can sense approaching demons…"

"I'll take the night shift again," Nero interrupted, getting to his feet. "After the last two nights, I'm more or less on that schedule now, anyway. For now, I'm gonna go check in with Kyrie, see if she needs help with anything. We might as well get anything done that needs doing while we have the time."

"Good point." Lady stood as well and stretched. "I need to move around and loosen up a bit, anyway. All that sitting still has left me stiff. Mind if I do some weapon maintenance in the garage?"

"That's fine, as long as the kids are out of range. Or you can save it for tomorrow when they're at school, if you'd rather. You could open up the overhead door for ventilation then."

"If you're taking the overnight shift, I'll bank on getting a proper night's sleep. Once I'm rested, I was thinking that Trish and I could go check the area around Order headquarters and see if we can pick up Lauda's trail from there. I get what you're saying about not looking for trouble, but I don't like how quiet things have gotten, either." She hesitated and tossed Nero a questioning glance. "Unless you'll still need me to spell you with Vergil tomorrow?"

Nero shook his head. "With the kids at school, Kyrie and I can manage on our own here. And Dante's been sitting with him during the day, too. If one of us can't be up there, we'll just tell him to yell if Vergil wakes up."

"All right. Make sure you get some rest in there somewhere, too. You've slept the least out of all of us these past couple of days."

"Yeah, and I'm feeling it, too." He sighed. "Of all the useful genes I could have inherited from Vergil, apparently the one I missed was the ability to go days without sleeping."

Trish snorted. "That can't be genetic, or Dante would have it, too. And we all know he can't even make it through the afternoon without a nap."

"Maybe it's a shared sleep pool," Lady said. "You know how some people say identical twins share certain powers, like ESP? Maybe Dante just does all the sleeping for both of them."

"Oh, so Vergil constantly drains Dante of sleep? That would explain why Dante always has a magazine over his face whenever I see him at his desk."

"The V must stand for vampire." Lady laughed, the sound a little more shrill than usual, and rubbed her eyes. "Oh, boy, do I need sleep. I'm getting slap-happy. That wasn't even that funny."

Nero left them to chuckle over Dante's sleep habits and climbed the stairs to his bedroom. Kyrie was seated in the chair beside the bed, a pile of mending in her lap. On the far side of the bed, Dante slumped forward in his own chair, elbows propped on the edge of the mattress as he paged through one of Trish's magazines. Between them, Vergil lay motionless, just as he had when Nero had left him that morning. "Hey. Anything new to report?"

Kyrie secured her needle in a fold of fabric before looking up. "Not since I've been up here. He is looking much better today, though."

Nero leaned against the bedpost and sighed. "I don't see much difference, to tell you the truth."

She stood and placed her sewing on the chair, then beckoned Nero closer. "When I first came up, I was going to change the bandages, but when I took the old ones off, I found that he didn't really need them replaced. See?" She tugged at the edges of the loose bathrobe that covered Vergil's chest. The open gashes that had still been seeping the previous night had closed, and all but the deepest of them were reduced to lines of livid pink running across Vergil's pale skin. "His recovery is speeding up. He seems to be healing about as quickly as you normally do, now. That has to be a good sign."

It was indeed a good sign, and yet Nero couldn't shake off his anxiety about Vergil's condition. The fact that his body was healing normally indicated nothing about the state of his mind. "Now we just need him to wake up so we can make sure he's really okay."

Kyrie touched Nero's arm before returning to her chair. "I'm sure he'll be fine, Nero. All three of you have endured injuries and experiences that would have destroyed a normal person, and you've come through it stronger each time." She shook out the length of fabric and picked up her stitching again.

Dante raised his head from the magazine. "All three of who?"

Kyrie froze for an instant, but quickly covered her uncertainty. "Of whom," she corrected gently. "Nero explained how you are related, didn't he?"

Dante nodded and turned his questioning gaze on Nero. "You mean I'm gonna get hurt like this too, someday?"

"Not like this, no." At least, Nero hoped not. He'd seen seen Dante brush off dozens of wounds with little more than a laugh or a one-liner to cover his pain, but there had been one or two serious injuries he hadn't walked away from. Trish had said he'd been unconscious for a month after that first fight with Urizen—but something like that couldn't happen to him more than once, could it? "Kyrie just means that the job we do can get pretty rough. The demons we fight hit hard and fast, and every once in a while, they get lucky. But getting hit isn't usually a big deal, since we all heal fast. Just like your broken ankle that healed in two days."

"It would take at least six weeks for an ordinary person to recover from an injury like that," Kyrie added. "Your healing ability is very special."

Dante's eyes tracked back to Vergil as he absorbed this. "So… my brother would have died from what happened to him, right? If he was just plain human?"

"If your brother were just human, neither one of you would have made it out of that tower," Nero said. "His powers are what got you to safety in the first place."

Dante wasn't satisfied with the indirect response. "But a human wouldn't have survived getting hurt like he did, right?"

Nero's instinct, honed to a keen sensitivity caring for children who had lost their families in the Order's collapse, was to soften any talk of death around a child—but Dante had already proved that he was no stranger to loss, and the serious expression he wore now put Nero in mind of the teen mercenary that Dante was quickly approaching in age and memory, if not in the present reality. "Yeah. Those injuries would have killed anyone else instantly. Probably even me, since I have less devil blood than you two."

A deep furrow appeared between Dante's brows, and his gaze swung back to Nero. "Have you ever come close?" His voice was subdued. "To dying?"

Nero could feel Kyrie's anxious gaze on him, but he didn't feel right hiding the truth from Dante—not when he'd already confessed the facts of their relationship and the boy's future profession. "I… got hurt pretty bad last year. I don't know how close I actually came to dying, but it was definitely the worst shape I'd ever been in." He clenched his fingers against the phantom tingle that raced up his arm. "It wouldn't have been so bad except the injury knocked out my powers, too, so I wasn't healing as fast as I should have been." He shrugged. "But I eventually got them back, and I got better. Like Kyrie said, stronger than ever."

Dante's taut expression didn't relax. "So why do you do it? If you get hurt sometimes, and you could even die, why do you keep fighting demons?"

"A whole lot of reasons. It's something I'm good at. It's something that needs to be done, and I'm one of the few people who can do it well." His gaze strayed to Kyrie. "But mostly, because there are people I want to protect. It doesn't matter if I get hurt, or even if my life is in danger, so long as I can keep the people I care about safe." He cocked his head at Dante. "Does that make sense?"

Dante digested this, then nodded slowly. "There are people I… wish I could have protected, too. I think if I had the chance, I'd do the same thing you're doing. Fighting to protect them."

"Good. I'm glad you understand." Nero grinned. "Because at the risk of spoiling the rest of the story, that's exactly what you're gonna spend the next few decades of your life doing."

"Does that mean…" Dante's teeth caught at his lower lip. "Does that mean I'm going to have more people like that? People I want to protect?"

"I'm pretty sure two of them are downstairs right now." Nero relished the flash of surprise on Dante's face. "And there's this other girl who calls you all the time… Patty? Polly? Something like that. I've never met her, but I guess you took care of her for a while when she was a kid, so she must be somebody important to you. And of course there's your brother—though he'd probably be offended if anyone said he needed protecting—and there's me—I don't really need protecting either, but that doesn't stop you from trying—and…"

"I get it." Dante's frown had melted upward as Nero's list had progressed. The smile made him look more like his usual self.

Kyrie seized the natural pause in the conversation and jumped to her feet. "Nero, hold out your arms, please."

He turned. "What?"

"Put this on." She shook out the bundle of dark fabric she'd been mending, and Nero recognized Vergil's overcoat, which had been badly torn when Nero dragged his body free of the rubble. "I'd like to check the drape."

Nero dutifully slipped his arms into the sleeves. The coat was a touch loose through the shoulders, just like the turtleneck he'd borrowed from Vergil months before. He recalled wrestling Vergil's shattered limbs out of the blood-soaked tatters of the coat two days before, but now the bloodstains had been scrubbed out, and Kyrie's neat stitches had restored the material so the damage was scarcely visible. "You've done a great job on this. Thanks for patching it up." Nero's throat closed a little as he glanced at Vergil's unconscious form. I hope he gets the chance to wear it.

Kyrie squeezed his arm as though he'd spoken his thoughts aloud. "I'm sure he'll want it when you face the Nilepoch. He seemed very particular about having the proper equipment." She stepped back and cast a critical eye over the garment. "Now, can you move your arms as though you're holding a sword? I want to be sure my repairs will hold up in combat."

Her optimism about Vergil's recovery was heartening. At Kyrie's direction, Nero swung his arms about, then assumed a few of Vergil's favorite fighting stances to test the pull on the mended fabric. The postures felt unpracticed, but not entirely unfamiliar; it had been some years since he'd fought with the Yamato in hand, but somehow the sword must have embedded the techniques for its use in his memory.

As he moved through the kata the Yamato had imparted to him, Nero noticed Dante's eyes flicking thoughtfully between him and Vergil. When Kyrie pronounced her repairs sound and took the coat to hang in the downstairs closet, the boy cupped his chin in his hands and continued staring. Nero wasn't sure what to make of his lopsided grin. "What?" Nero demanded at last.

"Nothing." Dante glanced at his brother again, then back at Nero, and his smile widened. "You just really look like him."

Nero took his place in the hard wooden chair at Vergil's bedside shortly after the sun slipped below the horizon. With daylight pouring into the room, Vergil had looked no more than usually pallid, but in the dim yellow glow of Kyrie's bedside lamp his face became sallow and gaunt. Nero pulled the chain to switch on the lamp's rarely-used second bulb, but the extra illumination did little to improve Vergil's appearance, so he dimmed it again.

It's just the lighting, Nero told himself. Vergil's so pale, his skin just reflects whatever color of light hits it. Besides, Dante would have noticed if he were growing weaker, and he wasn't any more worried than usual.

The conclusions he reached were logical, but they didn't stop Nero from dragging his chair nearer the bed to keep a closer watch.

The hours passed slowly, and Nero's fatigue was held at bay only by the uncomfortable nature of the chair he'd occupied for much of the past two days. Despite its hard planes and upright posture, by midnight he was nodding in his seat, and an hour after that he had fallen into a fitful doze with his chin on his chest.

It was nearly two o'clock when he was startled awake by a noise. The sudden movement sent pain lancing through his neck, no doubt strained from the unnatural sleeping position. Nero massaged the aching muscles as he glanced around, seeking the source of the sound he couldn't quite recall. He had heard something, hadn't he?

He'd nearly convinced himself that he'd only been dreaming when the sound was repeated, quite close by. Nero jerked to the front of his chair; he'd recognize that creaking bedspring anywhere. Without taking his eyes from the bed, he groped for the pull-chain and switched the lamp to its brightest setting. "Vergil? You awake?"

There was no answer, but Vergil's next exhalation was longer, and held just the faintest trace of a growl. Or was it a groan?

It didn't matter; it meant he had heard the question and responded. Nero nearly laughed in his relief. "I'll take that as a yes. Took you long enough to come back to us."

Vergil's eyes opened a slit, though a moment passed before they focused on Nero. His forehead creased in concentration, as though he wanted to ask a question, but no words passed the cracked lips.

Fear reared its head again at Vergil's continued silence, but Nero did his best to quell it. He just woke up. Of course he's not up to talking yet. It doesn't mean anything's wrong. Vergil was still staring at him, so Nero took a guess at what he might have wanted to ask. "You've been out for two days. Closer to three, now."

Vergil's frown deepened; apparently that hadn't been the correct question. Before Nero could try again, Vergil drew a longer breath—it rattled eerily in his chest—and made a few false starts before he managed to rasp a word. "Dante?"

For an instant Nero wondered if Vergil had mistaken him for his brother, but then he realized Vergil only lacked the energy, or perhaps the lung capacity, to string together what he was trying to ask. "He's fine. Just a broken ankle, and it's already healed."

Vergil's eyes pressed closed in the nearest gesture to a nod that he seemed to be able to manage. He remained motionless for an unnerving amount of time. When his eyelids finally flickered again, Nero gulped air; he hadn't realized he'd been holding his breath. Now that Vergil was conscious, he realized, he couldn't bear to see him regress to another coma. "Hey, you think you could drink some water? You lost an awful lot of blood." Another eye-nod. Nero was glad that he seemed to be coherent, at least. As awful as his head injury had been, it hadn't left him without the capacity to communicate.

Nero worked his arm carefully beneath Vergil's shoulders to help him sit up far enough to swallow. He tried not to flinch when he felt the scapulae grind against his wrist. Vergil felt it, too, and hissed air through his teeth. "Sorry," Nero murmured. "Just about every bone in your body got broken, and they're not all put back together yet. I know it's gotta hurt like hell." Vergil didn't answer, but Nero waited until his jaw unclenched before lifting him further.

At first Vergil tried to reach for the glass Nero held to his lips, but grimaced when he attempted to raise his arm. "Yeah, sorry about that, too. Pretty sure I dislocated whatever was left of your shoulder pulling you out of the rubble. Probably tore a lot of soft tissue, too. We didn't have a lot of time to get you out before the building collapsed."

Vergil managed a few more swallows of water before pausing for breath. He tried to speak again, but either his throat or his lungs weren't up to the task, and the attempt faded into a fit of coughing. As the convulsions folded his body over, his gasps for air turned to rattling wheezes.

"Hey, take it easy. Your whole rib cage and everything in it got crushed. It's gonna be a while before you're back up to full speed." Nero steadied Vergil upright again and propped the pillows up behind his back—then discovered that Vergil's ability to communicate non-verbally had in no way been compromised. "Don't give me that look. You almost died, you know."

"Wouldn't be the first time," Vergil rasped, scarcely more than a whisper. His voice was as parched and cracked as his lips.

"So I've heard." Nero tried to assess his condition without staring, but Vergil didn't seem to care about Nero's scrutiny; he merely slumped back against the pillows and closed his eyes, gulping shallow breaths.

A minute passed before he roused himself to speech again. "Building collapsed?"

"Yep. The whole tower, gone into the ocean."

Vergil cracked one eye. "Sea."

Nero snorted, more relieved than annoyed at Vergil's return to pedantry. "Whatever, genius."

The eye closed again, but Vergil only seemed to be gathering his strength for another question. "Yamato?"

Nero had anticipated this request, and he produced the sword promptly from beside the bed. "Don't worry. I wasn't about to leave that behind." The relief in Vergil's eyes might have been comical, under different circumstances. Nero tucked the weapon behind the nightstand again and refilled the glass from the pitcher Kyrie had had the foresight to place there. "Here, try to drink some more water. You need it."

Vergil managed to put down another few swallows before waving it off. When he spoke again a few minutes later, his voice was a little less raw, though he still paused between phrases to breathe. "I don't mean to sound ungrateful, but I could do without this recurring experience of regaining consciousness in your bedroom." His eyes dropped to his body, wrapped in a layer of threadbare terrycloth. "And bathrobe."

"Well, that's the price you pay for heroics," Nero retorted, then reined in his cajoling tone a little. The last thing he wanted was to discourage Vergil from noble acts. "You probably saved Dante's life, you know."

"Wouldn't be the first time for that, either."

Nero answered this casual admission with a frank stare. "I'm not even gonna pretend I get whatever goes on between you two."

The look Vergil shot back at him didn't really have enough energy behind it to convey annoyance, but it tried. "Our relationship is complicated."

"So, what, nobody is allowed to kill him except you?"

"Something like that."

"You have got the weirdest family drama ever."

Vergil emitted a huff of air that might have aspired to being a laugh. "You mean 'we.' It's your family, too."

Nero stared at him in open surprise. Vergil's internal filters must have been temporarily crushed along with his body; he rarely acknowledged their relationship in conversation, and never casually. It was the sort of offhand remark Dante might have made, but Nero hadn't expected it from Vergil.

This uncharacteristic openness expressed itself in another form a moment later, when Vergil tried to push himself more upright on the bed and let out an audible groan of discomfort. Nero couldn't recall ever seeing him react to pain when he was in control of himself. The effect of witnessing him behaving like a normal human was unexpectedly jarring. "Uh, you probably shouldn't be moving around too much just yet. But if you need anything, I can get it for you."

Vergil suddenly seemed to realize that he was revealing more than was his wont, and his expression closed. "All I need is to get back on my feet."

"Forget it." Nero put an arm across Vergil's chest to halt his forward movement. He didn't press hard, but he could see from the sudden whiteness of Vergil's lips that even that light contact had caused a staggering amount of pain. "Look, I know you're not a fan of the location—or the wardrobe—but it's what I've got. And if it's the company you don't like, I can go downstairs. Kyrie's on the couch, so it's not like you have anywhere else to sleep, anyway."

Vergil scowled. "I don't need to sleep."

"Like hell you don't." Nero crossed his arms. "You may be Mister Insomnia the rest of the year, but you got pretty damn wrecked a couple days ago. I figure you just marked another tally in your back-from-the-dead column. For a while, I thought you weren't coming back at all." Nero let that sink in for a few seconds. "Now I know you're a little less human than I am, but I've had enough close shaves to know that even our bodies heal faster with rest. Everyone else in the house is asleep, and you sure as hell don't have to prove anything to me about how fast you can recover. So why don't you just go back to sleep and see where you are when the sun comes up in a few hours, okay?"

After a moment, Vergil relented, though he didn't look happy about it. He grudgingly allowed Nero to help him back into a recumbent position. Nero turned the lamp to the lower setting and tried to get more comfortable in his chair, though the hard seat edge bit into his thigh and there was no support for his head. He rubbed his aching neck and grimaced at the pressure on knotted muscles.

A minute passed in silence before Nero heard Vergil sigh. "You needn't spend the rest of the night sitting in that chair."

That sentiment, Nero understood; he'd been uncomfortable even with Kyrie constantly watching at his bedside after he'd lost his arm. "Okay. I'll go downstairs and get out of your hair."

"That's not—" Vergil blew out another breath. "I'm not likely to suffer a relapse, so there's no point to your sitting up overnight. You may as well sleep." He paused for a few heartbeats, then muttered, "I'm not occupying the entire bed."

"Oh." It was a roundabout invitation, but a surprising one—a welcome one, if he were honest. Vergil didn't seem the type to trust anyone enough to invite them to stay near while he slept. "You sure I won't disturb you?"

"It would disturb me more if you sat there staring at me all night."

"That's fair." Nero circled the bed and eased down in the open space beside Vergil, trying not to jostle the mattress. His shoulder twinged with an echo of the wound he'd sustained, and he winced.

Despite his own condition, Vergil didn't miss a thing. "Are you injured?"

Nero brushed off his concern. "Nothing serious. Got stabbed in the back by one of those scissors things during the whole building-collapsing fracas."

"Stabbed?" Vergil deadpanned. "Must be Tuesday."

Nero gave a weak laugh, surprised that Vergil remembered his offhand comment from days before. "Some weeks, every day is Tuesday." The past few days had felt like a whole month of them.

Vergil fell silent, and Nero thought he must have drifted back to sleep. He was just on the edge of sleep himself when he heard Vergil's voice again. "What day is blunt force trauma?"

"You just declared it Friday, apparently."

"Ah. There go my weekend plans for the rest of the year."

Nero glared into the semi-darkness. "Are you going to go to sleep voluntarily, or do I have to smother you with a pillow to knock you out?"

"You can't," Vergil replied smoothly. "That's Wednesday."

In spite of himself, Nero laughed. "Shut up and go to sleep."