Title: Battle Scars
Fandom: Devil May Cry
Characters: Vergil, Dante
Prompt: #43; Punch
Word Count: 1494
Rating: PG-13
Summary: Young Dante is harassed by a mob, and Vergil comes to his rescue.

---

Vergil didn't need telepathy, or any sort of twin-sense to tell when his brother was in trouble. Usually, when Dante needed help, he could hear it.

Dante was more than an hour late for dinner, and Vergil had been combing the streets of town looking for him for nearly that long. He knew when he got close, though, because he started hearing the trouble. Just around the corner, he could hear the rumblings of a crowd, a series of angry shouts.

He didn't doubt for a second that Dante was the cause of it.

"Fucking freak," came one voice, especially loud. And angry. There was a violence there Vergil wasn't expecting, so he paused before he turned the corner. His eye caught a rock about the size of his fist lying on the sidewalk, and he couched down and put it in his pocket.

"Stop it!"

The voice was clear and young, and so obviously Dante that Vergil's head snapped up at the sound of it. He scrambled to his feet just as Dante came around the corner, about fifteen, twenty people right on his heels.

The man at the head of the mob, a heavy-set fellow with a mean face, caught Dante by the arm. Dante shouted something unintelligible and jerked away, and crashed straight into Vergil.

Vergil managed to keep his balance, barely. Dante wasn't so lucky, scraping the cement with his face before Vergil dragged him roughly back on his feet.

There were tears in his brother's eyes, and blood on his shirt. Vergil could feel the mob behind him – he didn't want to turn and look – but he knew whatever was happening, it was bad.

"Dante," Vergil scolded. "Where did you—" And then he noticed the ugly mob. Really, he only pretended to just notice them, but they were still scary enough that he didn't need to fake his face. He spun around, keeping Dante at his back. "What are you people doing?" he demanded loudly.

Dante started to answer the question, so Vergil stomped down on his foot. The crowd shifted and started at him, calculating his intrusion.

"Kid," the man at the head of the pack growled, "outta the way."

Vergil shook his head.

The man crossed his arms and glared. "Let me guess," he said. "You're the big brother, here." He must have noticed that he and Dante looked exactly the same.

Vergil shrugged. It was true enough, especially now, with Dante huddling behind him like a coward. Dante wasn't usually a coward, though, even when he should be. Something was wrong.

"Listen, kid," the man said slowly. "You're gonna let me at your freak of a brother, or you're going to get hurt, too."

"I'm not a freak!"

Vergil had no idea why Dante suddenly felt the need to assert himself, but he knew he needed to put him down, now. "Shut up, Dante," he ordered as nastily as he could manage, with that sick pit in his stomach.

"Not a freak, right," a random person snapped. Vergil scanned the crowd, but couldn't find him. Not like it mattered.

"More like a God damned monster."

Monster was echoed many times, and the crowd surged closer. It was like a single organism, a demon made up of lots of people. The leader, the one who'd grabbed at Dante, he was the closest. He was too close, and Vergil was starting to feel claustrophobic.

"He stole from my shop," the leader, said. "Kid needed to be taught a lesson."

"You're going to, what? Hit him?" Vergil asked, coldly.

"I already hit him. I hit him and watched the bruise disappear right in front of my eyes."

Oh.

Dante's hands were on his arm, but he shook them off, thinking hard. Vergil knew what they were, he knew that they were exactly the kind of monsters these villagers were so afraid of – though they were far too ignorant to even know what they were dealing with.

He knew what he should do. He should do exactly what their mother told him to do, which was let them do anything they wanted to Dante. Short of cutting off his head or cutting out his heart, they couldn't kill him. He would play dead and he would heal, and these people would never be the wiser.

That must have occurred to Dante, too. And still, Vergil could almost feel his brother's paralyzing terror. He wasn't scared of the pain, he was used to that. No, he was afraid of the hate. These people wanted to hurt him so bad you could taste it in the air.

And they might try and cut off his head. Vergil didn't know if he could stop them.

"You can't have him," he said. He wished he was older, that he had a lower voice. He knew that his threats carried no weight, here.

"He stole from my shop, kid. Ain't no one gets away with that."

Vergil glanced over his shoulder.

Dante shook his head, and he didn't look anyone in the eye.

Vergil narrowed his eyes, and then turned back to the mob. "He says he didn't do it," he said, unenthusiastically. His eyes were scanning the crowd.

"And, well, he did," the man said with a sneer. Oh, he was right, Vergil was positive about that, but he didn't like the way the man was standing, trying to loom over the both of them. His middle was thick but so were both his arms.

He called Dante a freak, but to this man the two of them were just a pair of little boys. Victims to humiliate and hurt and maybe even kill.

Vergil started backing up, and he didn't need to send Dante a memo. Both boys picked up the pace, but the leader stepped ahead of the crowd, heading right toward them both with his hands curled into fists.

Dante tripped and fell down with a yelp, and Vergil was forced to stop and hold their ground. The man's grin widened, and he reached out to grab them.

Vergil wasn't an idiot. He had a rock in his fist. He'd had it the whole time.

As soon as the man got close enough – the very second – he swung his whole arm in a high arc and the rock connected right at the man's temple. The blood spray hit Vergil in the face and stung his eyes.

The man hit the ground with a heavy thunk. He fell with his eyes wide open.

Someone screamed.

Vergil stared down at the man as the crowd fled, shouting and scrambling to get by each other. He held out his hand without thinking and pulled Dante to his feet, and all the people made sure not to touch either of them as they fled.

In a second, no one was left but the man on the ground.

"Vergil?" Dante asked in a small voice. He was doing his best not to stare at the body but his eyes kept slipping.

"Why did you rob him," Vergil asked tonelessly.

Dante shrugged. "Mom doesn't like him, she said he said—"

"Why did you say you didn't."

He squirmed where he stood. "I thought if you thought I did it, that you wouldn't—"

Vergil hit him in the face.

He hit him hard. He hit Dante so hard that his brother's eyes rolled back and he fell back down on his back, and blood ran over his cheeks and lips. The bleeding stopped after a second. So did the crying – Dante swallowed his sobs so fast that Vergil would have missed them if he'd wanted to.

"I hurt him because he hurt you," Vergil said. "But don't ever lie to me again."

He let Dante get up. He was so mad he wanted to knock him down again and maybe again after that, but Dante looked so pathetic standing there, rubbing at his face with his sleeve. Blood on his shirt.

Body next to them.

"We're going home," Vergil announced, loudly. No one around to hear, the street was empty except for the dead man and Dante and him. He waited for his brother to start walking but neither of them did, instead they were staring at the corpse.

"I never saw someone dead before," Dante said quietly.

"Shut up."

"Vergil, you really—"

"I said shut up."

"He's dea—"

"We're going home." He grabbed Dante's shoulder and shoved him forward, and normally Dante fought against everything anyone tried to make him do, but today he just started walking.

They walked in silence almost all the way home, and both of them kept their eyes on the ground. Their house was in sight when Dante decided to break the silence, with, "I won't tell Mom."

Suddenly, Vergil's eyes started burning, and he wiped them on his sleeve. "Please," he said, and you couldn't tell from his voice that he was crying, "just shut up."

---