A/N: Happy new year!
12000 words of hurt/comfort. Enjoy.
Music for this chapter: I Have Made Mistakes - The Oh Hellos
In the quiet, cool hours of the deepest part of the night, when the moon is past its zenith and birds yet to break the silence, Vergil wakes.
The taste of alcohol is still on his tongue, and his limbs are heavy with sleep. He floats on his side, the softest pillow under his head, one arm outstretched, where the moonlight shines silver over his son's hand clasped in his.
Still half in a dream, Vergil blinks slowly at Nero's white-haired head, pillowed on the covers at the edge of the bed, eyes closed in slumber.
Vergil does not recall the moment his mind must have slipped from drunken stupor to dreaming, but he is glad for this moment – this impossible illusion conjured from his most hapless longing, brought to the surface of his sleep-addled mind by inebriation.
He smiles faintly at his son, the familiar grief in his chest flaring in a dull ache. Nero's fingers feel so real in his, sword callouses to sword callouses, warm against his palm.
He misses his son so much he feels as though he is fading – but already sleep is settling over him again, without a care for his shattered heart.
Vergil tightens his hold on Nero's hand, and allows sleep to claim him once more, knowing that when he truly wakes his hand will be cold and empty, and his son still lost to him.
(:~:)
Nero opens his eyes to the sound of birdsong.
He blinks the grit from his vision. His joints ache from a night sat on hardwood floors, curled over the edge of the bed with his father's hand in his. The morning sun filters through the window, turning the air to warm gold.
Vergil is still asleep on his side, exactly as Nero arranged him, with his fingers loose in Nero's palm.
Dante, on the other hand, seems to have rolled over and snuggled up to his brother during the night, only the edge of his untrimmed beard visible where the rest of his face is smushed into Vergil's back.
Nero spares a moment to wonder how Dante could possibly breathe, and then straightens slowly and carefully extracts his hand from his father's. His heart clenches with faint guilt as his father shifts a little in his sleep, brows furrowing, fingers curling once over the covers where Nero's hand had been–
–then Dante shifts closer to Vergil, mumbling disjointed syllables as his arm tightens around his brother, and Vergil relaxes back into slumber.
Nero stares at his father and his uncle for a moment – at the peace on Vergil's face, at the way Dante's grimy crimson sleeve is curled tight around his brother's middle – and feels a pang for something he does not know, a connection that he could never fully understand. A bond between brothers, forged in hellfire.
He leaves them still sleeping there and pads softly from the room, trying in vain to work out the crick in his neck.
Nero is almost surprised when, halfway down the creaking stairs, he finds his stomach declaring that it is hungry – apparently a night of dreamless sleep had done him good, no matter how awkwardly he had hunched over the side of the bed for most of it.
He crosses to the fridge and opens it.
Nero stares.
The shelves towards the top of the fridge hold a meagre assortment of fresh food. The lower shelves, however, are composed almost entirely of beer, with a cardboard pizza box haphazardly stuffed on one shelf. A line of red tape runs between these two sections with a sticky note stuck to it.
Nero looks at the beer for a moment – but finds to his relief that the siren call of alcohol has dimmed a little with last night's revelations. He extends a hand, picks up the sticky note to examine it.
There, in his father's handwriting:
–CROSS THIS LINE ON PAIN OF DEATH, DANTE.
Nero grins, replaces the note, and closes the fridge.
He crosses to the desk and picks up the phone. The steady whirr of the rotary phone is calming in the morning quiet.
"Hey, Kyrie," he says, smiling into the handset. "Yeah, I'm okay. More than okay, actually. You know those omelettes you made last Saturday? Could you tell me the recipe?"
(:~:)
Vergil wakes, and immediately regrets doing so.
He slams his eyelids shut against the morning light that seems to spear like a keen-bladed lance right through his eyes and into his skull. A throbbing headache pulses behind his eyes, and his mouth feels like sandpaper – sandpaper that has had something crawl into it and die, that is.
Dante's bristly face tickles the back of Vergil's neck, his brother's familiar weight behind him.
Face pressed into his pillow, eyes clenched shut, Vergil attempts to cast his mind back to the previous evening.
He recalls returning from the mansion with Dante, bottles in hand, and settling on the couch to trade memories of their childhood; the heady taste of Sparda's wine on his lips, loosening his tongue, until he had found he was able to chuckle at Dante's increasingly ludicrous retellings of their childhood exploits, even as the first tear at the sheer scale of what he has lost over a lifetime slid unbidden down his cheek–
And then, nothing.
Except–
Vergil forces open his eyes and looks at his empty hand, stretched out on the covers towards the edge of the bed.
He had known Nero had only come to him in the early morning hours in dream, and yet a part of him had hoped that he might wake to his son at his bedside.
Vergil swallows the disappointment and wraps it tightly around the familiar grief at his core.
He shifts slightly instead, looks down at his brother's filthy crimson sleeve wrapped securely around his middle, and stops, eyes sharpening into a glare.
Had he been so inebriated the previous night that he had not been able to prevent Dante from climbing onto the pristine sheets without removing his coat? That is dried demon blood there on the edge of Dante's sleeve, for goodness' sake. Vergil would have to bleach the sheets to get rid of the smell, and that does not even include the sheer mess Dante's boots would no doubt have made–
His brother mumbles a little in his sleep and digs his unshaven face further into the back of Vergil's neck, breath scented with old alcohol, and Vergil narrows his eyes, snatches up his pillow, and twists in place to smack Dante across the face with it.
Dante jolts awake with a muffled shout, limbs flailing as he twists away, and Vergil smirks when he sees Dante roll to a halt on the far side of the bed precisely in the square of light from the window and open his eyes to the full glare of the morning sun.
"Wha-aaaaargh!"
His brother's screech sends knives into Vergil's aching head, and he takes advantage of Dante's momentary disorientation to club him squarely in the face with the pillow again as Vergil buries his own face in the mattress in an effort to filter out the noise.
"VERGIL," Dante is yelling now, a pillow smashing against the back of Vergil's head. "YOU SH–"
Vergil pushes out a hand and shoves Dante's face away, fingers mashed against his brother's unshaven beard, but Dante somehow manages to flail a pillow one-handed at Vergil and bash him repeatedly in the face–
They devolve into a horizontal brawling match, pillows flying, fingers curling into each others' hair and wrenching it painfully against its roots, and Vergil feels a momentary spike of pain as Dante twists around and captures his arm in a lock, until Vergil reverses it and presses his full weight against the back of Dante's neck in a half-nelson, like he used to do when they wrestled in garden as children.
"Do you yield, Dante?" Vergil chuckles darkly into his brother's ear, smirking around clenched teeth.
Dante curses long and loud, face mashed into the mattress, and growls, "I yield."
Vergil releases him, flops onto his back, and smirks at the ceiling through his pounding headache.
"Dammit, I always end up losing to that move," Dante grouses beside him.
"You remain far too gullible," Vergil replies, and raises a hand to block the pillow that arcs lazily towards his face.
They watch the sunlight on the ceiling for a long while, resting side-by-side.
"My head feels like a goliath sat on it," Dante says eventually.
A sudden thought occurs to Vergil. "Actually," he says contemplatively, "I recall father only taking two fingers of his favoured liquor every Saturday evening."
"Two fingers at a time?" Dante snorts beside him. "You could have mentioned that sooner."
"I had no intention of losing to you," Vergil retorts. "Not even in this."
"Hardass."
"Lightweight."
"Hey, look who's talking– wait." Dante sits up abruptly, hair mashed in a riot around his head. "Do you smell bacon?"
Vergil opens his mouth to poke fun at his brother's intellect, but stops when the familiar scent reaches his nose.
The two of them freeze for a long, long moment, both thrown into memories of waking together as children to the scent of their mother's cooking drifting up from the kitchens.
"Uh," Dante says, with the air of someone pulling something from the depths of their very, very uncooperative brain, "I think I was pretty wasted by then, but do you remember Nero being here last night?"
Vergil's heart seizes within him.
He remembers the feeling of his son's hand in his, Nero's white-haired head pillowed against the covers at the edge of the bed–
Vergil's limbs move of their own will. He registers the chill of the floorboards as he sets both feet on the floor, and hears Dante's noise of surprise as his brother notes his own socked feet, as well.
Vergil registers that he may well have removed his shoes before sleep even when drunk, but for Dante to have done so as well? Nigh on impossible.
Someone had removed them for him.
Vergil steps out of the room, his head weightless, wild, terrible hope in his veins, and the stairs almost seem to float under his feet as he descends the corner and halts in place, the breath leaving him all at once–
"Nero," he whispers, a choked, strangled sound.
(:~:)
The sound of his father's voice startles Nero so badly that he almost drops the contents of the frying pan in his hands.
He looks up at the stairs, at the shock on his father's face. Vergil's features have blanched completely white, and he is staring at Nero as though he is a wraith.
Nero opens his mouth.
"Hey," he says, lamely, and feels his ears immediately start to burn.
To Nero's mounting concern, Vergil blanches further, almost seeming to sway in place until Dante appears behind him with a clatter of uncoordinated limbs and slings a casual arm over his brother's shoulders.
"Hey, it's my favourite nephew!" Dante exclaims delightedly. "With bacon!"
"Oh, right," Nero mumbles, looking at the pan in his hand. "Yeah. I, uh–" he risks a glimpse upwards again and looks away the moment he meets Vergil's gaze. "I used what I could find in the fridge," he says. "I– I hope you don't mind. Dad."
The last word seems horribly contrived, tacked on like an afterthought, and Nero looks down at the sizzling rashers of bacon in the frying pan and wonders what it would be like to drown himself in it. His shoulders hunch up around his neck.
His ears feel like they must be on fire.
"Of course," Vergil voice is saying faintly. "I certainly do not mind in the slightest. You can– you can use anything there you might wish."
Nero shovels slices of bacon onto three plates, and glimpses Dante looking back and forth between the two of them so quickly his eyes seem to blur in their sockets.
"This is Kyrie's recipe," Nero tries, desperately. "I don't– I'm not sure it turned out that great, but I thought–"
"I am sure it will be fine," Vergil says, sitting heavily in the only chair. He is staring at the omelette and bacon and buttered mushrooms like he cannot quite believe they are there.
Dante, of course, offers nothing but enthusiasm. He leans a hip on the side of the desk and picks up his portion with one hand, grinning at the fluffy eggs and steaming bacon as he digs in with a fork.
"Mmmmm," he groans around a forkful of eggs. "S' amazin'."
Nero sets a full coffeepot on the desk and sneaks a glimpse at his father. Vergil has just sampled his portion and is now blinking slowly as he chews, eyes gradually losing their glassy appearance.
And then Nero becomes aware both Vergil and Dante have stopped eating and are staring at him, and his pulse ratchets into a thunder in his ears.
"Is…is it not good?" Nero ventures, left hand drifting up towards his elbow for the briefest instant before he catches himself.
"You're kidding, right? This is the best food I've had in months," Dante laughs briefly, before he turns serious. "But Nero, you're not–"
"–You're not eating," Vergil says, his eyes flickering up to meet Nero's for the briefest instant before darting away again.
"Oh," Nero blinks, looking down at his own untouched plate. His stomach is flipping with nerves, but he settles on the edge of the desk in a mirror of his uncle, picks up a fork, and begins to eat. He glimpses his father relax slightly in the corner of his vision when Nero swallows his first mouthful, and this somehow unclenches Nero's stomach, allows him to actually taste the food passing between his lips.
At first Nero finds the silence unbearably heavy, with nothing but the clinking of cutlery against plates and the sound of his uncle's sloppy chewing to fill the quiet morning air; but then he catches sight of the faintest curve at the corner of Vergil's mouth when he tastes the coffee, and a small measure of relief filters into Nero's chest.
When all their plates are finished, and the coffee pot emptied, Nero gathers his courage, stands, and gives his uncle a look.
"Gotcha," Dante quips, slipping off the edge of the desk and gathering the dirty dishes, pausing to ruffle Nero's hair fondly as he passes, grinning all the wider when Nero ducks away and curses at him.
"Yell when you're done," Dante says as he strides away, the door to the small kitchen closing behind him.
In the sudden silence, Nero finds himself looking anywhere but his father.
"So, uh," he begins. "I don't know if you remember what happened last night?"
"I–" Vergil blanches. "I chanced to wake in the middle of the night and you were– you were at my bedside, but I was unsure if that was an illusion brought on by the effects of the wine. Before that, I recall foolishly rising to Dante's challenge and drinking more than my fill."
"Okay," Nero breathes, a heady mixture of relief and disappointment filling him. Relief that his father does not recall his shaking, tear-filled confessions of the previous night; and disappointment that the memory of pressing his face into his father's collar and the scent of woodsmoke, new parchment, and old wine there will forever be his alone.
Vergil is watching him with something like trepidation in his gaze.
"I have something to say," Nero mumbles, because he cannot delay this any longer.
He tries several times to begin, but the words stick in his throat and he holds his left wrist with his other hand in an effort to stop himself reaching for his elbow again.
"Nero," Vergil whispers, his voice strangled and guilt-ridden and hurting, and Nero squeezes his eyes shut.
"I'm sorry," Nero gasps, and the words tumble out of him, dragging with them a weight he did not know he was carrying. "I'm sorry." He looks down at his boots, at the bloated wooden floorboards, fighting the shaking guilt in his hands.
The scrape of his father's chair against the floorboards. Nero chances a glance up at his father, finds Vergil standing a careful two paces away, a lost expression on his features.
"What– what could you possibly have to apologise for?" Vergil says, voice hoarse. He is looking at Nero with the same expression he had in the forest clearing, that Nero now recognises to be a mixture of desperate concern and shuttered fear.
The memory twists the shard of guilt deeper into Nero's heart. To make matters worse, he knows what he has to say next, and anticipatory fear wraps cold hands around his neck, too.
"I have a confession to make," Nero says, and swallows against the surge of nausea. "I haven't…I haven't been sleeping. Or eating all that well. And I've been–I've been thinking about drinking. Thinking about it a lot more than I should have been."
Vergil grows paler with each admission, leaning more heavily against the desk as though trying to ground himself. He makes an abortive motion towards Nero before stopping, hand returning to his side, an aching movement of strained control.
"And uh," Nero mumbles, looking away, "When I sleep, I see you dying or dead in the dome." His father's sharp intake of breath skewers him through the core, and despite his best efforts, his left hand drifts to his right elbow and clenches hard around the joint. "Or sometimes it's the memory of you, uh. Taking my arm," he whispers, and hears Vergil make a small, choked noise.
"I know you wouldn't do that again," Nero says, breath coming shorter now, almost wheezing between his lips, "I just. Sometimes when I think about it, or about what happened in the dome, I find it hard to breathe."
"Nero," Vergil says, with such catching grief in his voice that Nero looks up despite himself, startled to see the pain in Vergil's gaze. "Why would you apologise for this?"
"Because I pushed you away," Nero says, and his voice cracks with guilt. "I should have told you. I'd barely slept in three days before our training session, and I just wanted to accomplish something, and so when you stopped the training I hated myself so much I pushed you away." He pauses here, swallows the tears crawling up his throat. "But I didn't– I didn't want you to go."
There. He said it. He has said it, all of it, and his father can do with it what he will. Nero stands there, breathing hard, and waits for the hammer to fall.
Silence.
Then: "You didn't want me to go?" Vergil whispers, with something rising on his face, a wild sort of emotion that leaks through his tight veil of control.
Nero nods, minutely.
"I thought," Vergil is saying faintly, "That you wanted no part of me in your life."
"No, I–" Nero half-exclaims before he shutters his voice again, folding the emotion tight under his sternum. "I do want you," he says awkwardly. "In my life, I mean. Dad."
At the last word, while Nero feels like he may be dying inside from a mixture of longing or embarrassment or both, Vergil is looking at him with a stunned expression, like Nero has just offered him the galaxy.
The morning sunlight is golden, and the cold air somehow warmer, and the space between them seems lighter somehow. Nero finds the fingers of his left hand have loosened of their own accord on his elbow, and Vergil's red-rimmed eyes are wide with something that can only be described as joy.
"Then I will do my best to be worthy of it," Vergil murmurs, eyes shining with something other than the late morning light.
Nero swallows against the sudden moisture in his own vision.
"There's another thing," he says quickly, scrambling to speak before the tears can continue to come. "I've been going to therapy. It's been…difficult, but it's also helped me a lot."
Vergil's brow furrows. "Therapy," he says, as though the word is foreign to him.
"Yeah," Nero says, searching his father's face. "You talk to someone, and they help you figure out your problems."
For a terrifying moment, Nero wonders if his father will judge him for this and deem him weak – then Vergil nods, and says, "I am glad you are getting better."
"Yeah," Nero breathes, relieved. "I mean, it was tough at first, but it helped me realise I'd been hiding things from everyone, and I think," he stops, then, as a thought occurs to him – a wild, impossible thought, too fanciful to even consider–
"Nero?" Vergil says, faint concern in his gaze.
"Could you–" Nero clasps his fingers tightly together. "Would you consider–"
His father looks at him, a crease appearing between his brows.
"Would you consider coming to therapy with me?" Nero blurts, before retreating back a half pace, ears burning.
"Would I–" Vergil looks at him, a dazed expression on his face. "Why do you ask?"
Nero opens his mouth as a half-dozen answers fly through his mind, but none seem to fully encompass the mess of emotion in his chest, so in the end he looks away and mumbles, "It would mean a lot to me."
Vergil is silent for so long that Nero eventually looks back up, and the breath stutters in his chest when he realises his father has taken one long step closer, so they stand only an arm's length apart.
"Of course," Vergil says, his expression full of determination. "I will do any– that is to say, I will come with you. Of course I will come with you."
"Okay," Nero breathes, almost lightheaded with the rapid influx of emotion. "Okay."
They stare at each other, within arms' reach. Nero desperately wishes that either he or his father would close the meagre distance between them, but his boots seem to have glued themselves to the floor, and though Vergil's hands twitch by his side, they do not move to reach for Nero.
Nero cannot bear it any longer, and he raises his cracked voice, calls in the direction of the kitchen. "Dante," he calls, voice scratchy with unshed tears. "You can come back out now."
The kitchen door opens with an uncharacteristically quiet creak. Dante takes a half step out onto the wooden floorboards, takes in Nero and Vergil's expressions in one sweeping glance, and breaks into a brilliant grin.
All Nero registers is a flash of crimson leather before he finds himself squashed into a three-way hug, his face buried into his father's collar, his left ear squished into Dante's beard, and Dante's arms wound tight around both Nero and Vergil.
"Dante," Nero hears Vergil sigh exasperatedly, the sound thrumming through Nero's cheek, but then Vergil's arm shifts and Nero feels it settle around his back below Dante's.
Nero chokes in a breath and slowly, jerkily brings his arms up to wrap around his father and his uncle, and feels their hold tighten around him in return.
Nero breathes in his father and his uncle's scents, old wine and coffee, parchment, embers, woodsmoke, and feels their breath ruffle his hair. He feels as though his knees are jelly and his heart a reedy thrum underneath his ribs, but his father and uncle's arms are tight around his weight, supporting him even if he should fall, and he smiles into his father's collar, relief and safety and warmth bleeding into his soul.
(:~:)
The rest of the day passes in languid, golden motes of time.
Dante is the first to break the three-way hug with a surprisingly logical observation that Nero must have taken the evening flight the night before, but doesn't seem to have brought anything with him except the clothes on his back.
When Nero admits that he would quite like to wash up, Dante announces his intention to let Nero borrow some clothes, zooms upstairs, and then bounces back down with a truly horrendous crimson coat in hand.
Nero gapes at the coat and the wide leather strap at chest level that holds it halfway closed, staring at the remnants of dried blood in the lining.
Vergil, on the other hand, takes one look at the coat and rips it out of Dante's hands, retorting that "No son of mine would wear something as atrocious as this," and that Dante had looked stupid in the coat at nineteen and Nero deserved far better.
Nero has no time to reel at his father calling him son, because Vergil gestures at him to follow, all haughty elegance, and before Nero knows it, he finds himself in his father's room with the wardrobe open and his father piling his arms full with a soft blue cable-knit sweater, a comfortable pair of trousers, and an expensive-looking but slightly worn button-up shirt.
Later, Nero emerges from the shower, tugging self-consciously at the light blue sleeve of his sweater, and though Dante jokes about and makes finger-guns at him, Nero sees only Vergil's slightly startled look as he takes in the sight of Nero, and the faint smile that follows.
They spend the day doing anything and nothing – a three way pool competition that ends with Dante victorious; Nero napping on the sofa and waking with his father's coat over him; then an excursion out to the market for groceries where more than one old lady with a basket pauses to coo at Nero and his father, whose outfits so obviously complement each other: Nero's light blue cable-knit sweater and the soft grey scarf his father had insisted Nero wear, and Vergil's long dark blue peacoat and light grey turtleneck.
By the end of the trip Nero's ears are tomato red and Vergil has a faintly confused expression on his face, but Dante is grinning most of all.
They make pizzas for dinner, much to Dante's delight, and Vergil's look of pure murder at his brother when Dante stops working the dough to plant a floury hand on Vergil's cheek is enough to make Nero laugh out loud.
Afterwards, Nero and his father stand at the kitchen sink together, Nero rinsing and Vergil drying, and the moment is quiet enough that there are no expectations between them, no raw pain or seeping blood or tears or choking breaths, just the soft sound of the tap and the squeak of cloth on ceramic.
It is nice, Nero thinks. To just…exist, with his father.
Then all too soon the three of them step out into the winter evening, as snow begins to gently fall.
Dante ruffles Nero's hair, deftly dodges Nero's retaliatory punch, and saunters back inside with a jaunty wave.
And then it is just Nero and his father, standing in the empty street silhouetted in the soft lamplight, the neon letters of Devil May Cry flickering above them.
"You sure you don't want this back?" Nero says, plucking at the blue weave of the corded sweater with his free hand, the set of clothes he wore the day before tucked under his other arm.
"Keep it," Vergil says, and there is an emphasis to the phrase, like he wishes to offer more than a simple cable-knit sweater.
They stand there for a moment, breath misting in the air, snow settling on both their shoulders. Nero notices that Vergil's expression is beginning to shutter again, as though he is bracing for a blow.
"I'll see you in three days," Nero says clearly, quite deliberately holding Vergil's gaze as he speaks. "Don't be late. And," he says, face beginning to heat, "Just. Call the house. If you want to find me."
Relief filters into Vergil's face, softening the corners of his eyes. "I will," he says, and then the Yamato opens a portal into the winter air, and Nero manages a small, fledgling smile at his father before stepping through.
(:~:)
Three days pass in a gust of winter air; what seems like an instant.
Nero rises that morning feeling jittery, unable to sit still for more than a minute, and would probably have found it difficult to force down the mid-morning breakfast if Kyrie hadn't make a point of preparing his favourite breakfast foods and distracting him with quiet conversation as he eats.
She presses a kiss to his cheek before leaving for the orphanage, and Nero is left in his flannel bathrobe and pyjamas and his I love my girlfriend 3 fluffy slippers, his too-full stomach a tense coil of nerves.
He climbs upstairs to change, and dithers for a moment before his gaze alights on the blue cable-knit sweater his father had given him. It reminds him of the lazy afternoon surrounded by his uncle's laughter and his father's hesitant smiles, sleeping on the sofa in the Devil May Cry shop and waking to his father's coat over him.
Sweater on and soft grey scarf in hand, Nero goes back downstairs and settles on the bench in the garden to wait for his father.
His pulse ratchets up a notch as a familiar rip in reality opens up beyond Kyrie's winter tulip beds. Vergil steps through, and to Nero's surprise, his father is not in full battle gear as Nero would have assumed; rather, Vergil wears the same dark blue peacoat and light grey turtleneck he had worn two days ago, and would have looked almost normal if not for the Yamato in his leather-gloved hand.
Vergil's sharp, assessing blue eyes flicker over Nero, lingering on the sharp curve of his cheekbone, which Nero knows has at least regained some of its previous colour after two days of semi-decent sleep.
And then Vergil blinks once and his lips twitch in a minute smile as his gaze fixes on Nero's sweater, and Nero feels his ears burn.
"C'mon, or we'll be late," Nero says, rising and quickly turning to go so that he does not have to think about his father's smile, and what it might mean.
They step out into the snow together, father and son, in a comfortable silence.
(:~:)
The therapist smiles brilliantly the moment she opens her office door to the sight of Vergil standing awkwardly behind his son.
"Nero," she greets. "This must be your father."
Vergil becomes aware his left hand has clenched so tightly around the Yamato's sheath that his knuckles ache, but to the therapist's credit, she gives the sword no more than a cursory glance as she extends a hand for him to shake.
Nero makes the necessary introductions, looking to Vergil's assessing glance halfway between terrified and embarrassed, but the therapist welcomes them in as if it is the most natural thing in the world, and Vergil loosens his death-grip on the Yamato at his side.
Nero makes for a high-backed armchair, and Vergil stands on the threshold of the room for a moment, uncertain. But the therapist indicates a low sofa instead, wide enough to accommodate three people, and Vergil settles carefully on one end, Nero on the other, a cautious amount of space between them.
Placing the Yamato beside him, Vergil sits silently, trying in vain to control his thudding heartbeat, as the therapist opens the session and listens attentively to Nero's retelling of the events three days ago.
Then Nero pauses after describing Dante's drunken antics, and breathes an nervous laugh before obviously skipping over a subject to talk about breakfast the next day instead. Vergil furrows his brow, but the therapist does not interrupt Nero, so Vergil does not speak, either.
"So I just, told him about what I'd been going through," Nero says, palpable relief in his tone as he nears the end of his story. "And I apologised for what happened during training." He sinks a little into his sweater as he says this, ears reddening, and Vergil feels an unbidden tug in his heartstrings at the sight.
"That's wonderful, Nero," the therapist says, genuine gladness in her expression. "I'm very proud of you for taking those steps."
"Nah, it wasn't me," Nero says, the blue yarn of his sweater rising about his neck as he scrunches up his shoulders around his flaming cheeks. "I just– I followed what you and Kyrie told me to do."
"Nevertheless, that took courage," the therapist says. She turns to Vergil. "Now, Mr. Vergil– ah, would you like me to address you as mister, or is Vergil acceptable?"
"The latter," Vergil says, feeling as though all the moisture has left his mouth at once. Nero and the therapist seem to be on a first-name basis, so he must be as well.
"Okay," the therapist nods. "Vergil, how did you feel when Nero confessed his troubles to you?"
"I was–" Vergil pauses, struggling to encapsulate his the riot of emotion that had filled him in that moment. "I was grateful," he says at last, settling on a word that does not expose too much of his desperate relief then.
"Okay. How so?"
Vergil blinks slowly at her, all too aware of Nero's scrutinizing gaze in the corner of his vision. "I was grateful because I had thought–" he swallows then, against the echoing ache. "I had thought Nero wanted nothing to do with me. I was glad I was mistaken in that instance."
The therapist smiles at him. "I see. Anything else?"
Guilt.
Vergil opens his mouth to deflect the question, but finds himself held in place by Nero's expectant expression. "It grieved me," he says eventually, "that Nero had struggled so much."
The therapist tilts her head at him. "Why?"
"Because–" Vergil stares at her. Why should he have to explain this? To her, this stranger? To himself?
But the longer he remains silent, the more he finds that he has no single answer. To say because he did not tell me sounds self-serving, to say because he is my son sounds distant – and to say what he has not ever said out loud, that small four-letter word, would bare his soul for all to see and leave him defenseless.
"Because I do not wish to see him suffer," Vergil says instead, hating the veiled coolness so obvious in his own voice, and sees disappointment flicker in Nero's gaze. The sight pierces his heart, makes his left hand clench at his side momentarily where the Yamato would hang instead of leaning against the side of the couch.
"And what do you feel when you do see him suffer?" the therapist says, glancing at his hand and the Yamato beside him.
"I feel…" The self-hatred rises up within him again, burning at this throat. "Anger," he says, and knows from Nero's sudden stiffening that it had been the wrong thing to say.
The therapist does not react beyond making a small note in her journal. "Interesting," she says. "Why anger?"
Vergil finds he has no answer beyond admitting his utter hatred of his weaknesses, his inability to protect those around him – how he can only hurt, and never heal.
So he remains silent, as Nero's increasingly burning gaze skewers him to the back of the sofa.
"Okay," the therapist says. "I can sense that's an area that might be too difficult for you to explore at the moment. Why don't we talk about something else? I notice you seem to find it hard not to have your sword in hand. Why is that?"
Vergil looks down to the Yamato, startled. His left hand has inched towards the grip without him realising it, so that his fingers just brush the tsukamaki.
He looks at the blade for a long moment, the only remnant of his childhood, his birthright, that had been with him the moment his life had shattered in that lonely playground as a child and had served him and sung for him like no other blade ever had; his only true line of defense, that meant security, and trust, and safety, even when he had been so utterly alone.
"It is–" he draws in a breath, almost hitching in his chest. "It is power."
Nero looks away abruptly, his hands clasped tight on his knees.
"Power," the therapist echoes. "What is power to you, Vergil?"
Vergil looks at her, then, this human who has never bled out into the dirt beside a child of hers as a goliath loomed overhead, who has never fought to survive year after year like he has as his body fell apart around him; who has never felt the pain of abandonment, or understood what it was to be unmade as he did when Mundus disassembled his soul and reformed him to Mundus's own liking.
"Everything," Vergil says, voice empty, slamming down mental walls around the memory of three glowing crimson lights above him, his screams echoing helplessly into the darkness. "Power is everything."
Nero makes a horrible noise, somewhere between a derisive snort and a bitter laugh, and the therapist looks at him.
"It's okay, Nero," she says placatingly. "I think it's worthwhile to listen to what your father has to say. We'll work through this step-by-step."
"Sure," Nero says bitterly, looking away, and Vergil flinches despite himself.
"Vergil," the therapist says, her voice soft, unassuming. "What, then, is weakness to you?"
The dome, Vergil's demon energy seeping slowly from the ever-diminishing pool in his core, knowing that he was all that stood between his son and the hordes of demons still pouring out of the portal – the terrifying moment he thought he would not move fast enough, until the Proto Angelo's greatsword had pierced his chest instead of Nero's as Vergil threw himself in front of his son, then his fear for Nero had turned to horror when Vergil realised he had not the strength to pull out the sword fast enough to immediately aid his son, and he had wrenched the greatsword from his chest with a ripping scream, hands bloody on the jagged blade, the pain so great that his vision had turned white with it–
"It is worthlessness," Vergil whispers, folding the memory of his own weakness deep within him, the shame burning like acid forever at his core. "Weakness is worthlessness."
Nero's clenched fingers are bloodless at his knees.
Vergil glances at his son's face, at the thinned lips and intense eyes, and falters. Something a little like panic rises in his throat.
"Okay," the therapist says. "You've said power is everything to you. What do you mean by everything?"
Vergil looks at her. The words he had said to Dante on the Temen-ni-gru all those years ago echo through the intervening time. Without power, he cannot protect anything – not himself, not his brother, nor his son.
Power is the only way to ensure the safety of those most precious to him, and he is willing to give anything for his son – even his own life.
"Nothing else matters," he says with finality.
The therapist nods, opens her mouth to ask the next question–
–And Nero rises to his feet in a flash of blue, rage and blind hurt in his gaze as he turns on Vergil.
"Are you fucking kidding me?" he snarls, and it is like the words themselves are blades that find the spaces between Vergil's ribs and plunge in, leaving him breathless, bleeding. Nero's teeth are gritted as he takes one step forward, closing the space between him and Vergil. "Nothing else matters? Nothing? I trusted you enough to bring you here and this is how you repay me?"
"Nero," the therapist says sharply, "Sit down. Your father is not finished speaking, and we will work through what he means with the same respect we offered you."
"No, he can go to hell," Nero hisses at the therapist, burning eyes never leaving Vergil, and Vergil opens his mouth to reply, breath heaving in his chest, but finds he cannot.
"I can't believe you," Nero says, the betrayal in his tone turning his words to jagged ice. "After all we've gone through. You're still on that same power shtick you had when you tore off my arm."
The memory turns Vergil's stomach, bubbles acid behind his lips, and the Yamato's presence seems suddenly to burn beside him. In this moment, Vergil hates himself so much he wonders why he tried so desperately to survive when he finally escaped Hell and dragged his broken body back into the human world.
Something within Vergil shatters.
He had been right, when he told Dante he should have died in Hell, caught at last by the remnants of Mundus's legions. It would have been better if he had died, then Nero would have been happy, and Vergil would not have been able to wound those the cared for the most by simply existing.
He brings a hand to his neck, clasps it tight around the twin chains of his mother's amulet and his father's locket.
"You're an asshole." Nero is laughing now, bitterly. "After all we've been through, after all I admitted to you, you still think my weakness makes me worthless. I've had enough of this. I've had enough of you."
"Nero!" the therapist barks, the first time she has raised her voice in the entirety of the session, and Nero twitches in place, looks towards her.
Vergil is finding it increasingly hard to breathe, the fine chains under his fingers almost cutting into his skin. His vision is greying at the edges, and he knows what comes next – what had happened to him time and again the first few months he escaped from Mundus's power after Dante had freed him on Mallet Island.
"No," Nero says, voice hardening, and Vergil cannot look away from his son, even as Nero takes another step closer, and his shadow falls over Vergil where he sits on the sofa.
"Weakness is worthlessness to you," Nero says, his voice low and cutting, the voice of one who only wishes to hurt as he has been hurt. "Is that why you left my mother? Because she was weak, and human?"
Vergil feels his wrists and ankles flare with phantom ice, the rough metal of the manacles chafing away at skin and flesh, and Mundus's cruel laughter above and before him as he swore to struggle on until his last breath – until one day, anywhere from a week to an eon into his captivity, when Mundus had visited him, drew a casual, fiery line of new agony across his broken body, and told him that the only person who had loved him ever since he was eight years old was dead.
He had broken to Mundus's torture soon after. In a way, he had hoped then that the pain – both physical and internal, where a part of him grieves for her without ceasing – that the pain would finally stop, when Mundus unmade him.
It had not.
The gorge hammers behind his lips, now, and Vergil's hands are numb and cold. He has to leave now, before he is unmade again in a shadow of what Mundus had done to him–
"Is that why you abandoned her? Abandoned me?"
Vergil pushes past Nero and his fiery words, snatches up the Yamato in nerveless, icy fingers that are not his own, takes one blind step away, and slices a portal into the wall.
Nero's scream chases after him, lashing at his back like a cat o' nine tails, drawing invisible lines of blood. "And you're doing it again! You're leaving me–"
Vergil steps through the portal, hears it whisper closed behind him, and falls to his hands and knees on the dirty wooden floorboards of the Devil May Cry shop, the Yamato clattering by his side as he loses his meagre breakfast to the floor.
The leavings of his stomach ruin his gloves, seep through the pristine sleeves of his dark blue peacoat, and Vergil is almost surprised there is no blood there – there had been, the first few times this happened in the early days after he came back to himself, the shell of Nelo Angelo having left scars within him as well as without.
"Vergil!"
The clatter of rapid steps down the staircase, and then a familiar arm winds under his chest, pulls him up so he leans sideways against a warm weight, shivering as sweat beads his face and he blinks slow tears out of his tunnel vision.
A frantic hand at his face. "Shit, Vergil, are you hurt? What happened?"
"Mundus," he whispers into Dante's shirt, one nerveless hand digging into the cloth of his brother's pyjamas, staining the cotton there, and Vergil looks at it dimly, so, so sorry–
Dante inhales sharply. "Mundus? Where? Is Nero safe–"
Hearing his son's name sends a shard of ice spearing into his ruined chest, and Vergil chokes on a breath.
"No," he gasps, the bitter taste of bile still on his lips. "Not– here. Not– alive. In my head."
Vergil watches understanding dawn on Dante's face, and nearly weeps as his brother pulls him closer and begins to gently wipe the tears and disgusting bile from Vergil's chin with the edge of his own pyjama shirt.
"'S ok," Dante says, voice rough with emotion. "I've got you. You're here with me. You're not with him, the ugly bastard."
"Nero said–" Vergil shivers violently. "He accused me of– but I wasn't– and I couldn't–"
Dante stills. "What did he say?" he asks, and his eyes narrow when Vergil shakes his head numbly. "What did he say?" Dante growls with greater intensity, eyes glittering.
Vergil feels the phantom chains tighten around his limbs, ice-cold, spearing pain into his wrists and ankles–
"Shit, Vergil, breathe–"
Gulping in a breath so desperately it burns his throat on the way down, Vergil sinks into his brother's arms and focuses on the scent of old coffee and fresh embers in Dante's shirt, in the feel of his brother's hand on the back of his neck, and attempts to drive the chill of Mundus's chains from his skin.
He does not succeed.
(:~:)
By the time Nero turns the last corner into his street, his boiling rage has cooled into a simmering pool within his chest – not hot enough to snap, but still present, spreading painful heat down to his snow-numbed hands.
He lets himself in out of the afternoon light, shakes the snow from his boots, and stalks in socked feet to the den, where he sits heavily on the couch and puts his head in his hands.
A long, slow exhale, soft and steady into the silence except for the ticking of the clock.
Nero glances up at it. Kyrie would still be at the orphanage at this hour, or off to the opera house. In a way, Nero is glad for the solitude. He needs to think.
The therapist had stayed silent for a long while after Nero's outburst, watching the unmarked wall that Vergil had stepped through, letting Nero breathe.
Then she had quietly told him that it was unwise to continue in such a high state of emotion. At Nero's sharp retort, disbelief at what his father had done still ringing in his ears, she had looked up at him with a serious expression and told him she had cause to believe he had been mistaken.
Then she had advised him to call his father, and ended the session.
Nero presses his closed eyes into the heels of his hands, and heaves a sigh.
He doesn't understand.
He doesn't understand how the father that Nero had found drinking away his sorrow over losing his son could be the same man who declared that power was the only thing that mattered to him a half-hour ago.
"So power is everything, huh," Nero snorts derisively. "And weakness is worthlessness."
And am I nothing to you?
But no, Nero's raw, exhausted mind supplies. What was it that Vergil had said back then, when he believed that he could only see his son in drunken stupor?
Vergil had said then that everything he touched he hurt against his will. That he believed that even dying for Nero would not be enough to make Nero love him.
That doesn't sound like a father who would choose power over his son.
Nero scrubs a hand over his face, a headache starting behind his eyes.
And when Nero, in the depths of his blinding rage, and accused his father of choosing power over his mother, power over him, there had been a moment where Vergil had gone sheet-white, his vision glazing over like it had when Nero had found him staring into space with a bottle in hand. That is strange too, if Vergil cares about power over everything else.
And last time, Nero had pushed his father away when the last thing his father wanted was to leave.
The answer is somewhere in this convoluted mess, just beyond Nero's reach, and he struggles desperately for it.
Call him, Nero.
"Dammit," he whispers, pushing away the echo of the therapist's last advice upon him leaving the office. "I know."
He rises, pads over to the phone in the hallway, and dials the familiar numbers to the Devil May Cry shop.
Nero stands there, handset pressed against his ear, trying to decide what to say should his father pick up, as the phone rings, and rings, and rings on, until the simmering dregs of Nero's anger fade to faint concern.
The ringing stops.
"Devil May Cry," his uncle's voice says, somewhat breathlessly. "I'm sorry, but we're closed for business at the moment. Please call back later if–"
"Dante," Nero says, and hears his uncle take a sharp breath. "Is…is my father there? I need to talk to him."
"Nero?" Dante's voice turns hard, an echo of on the Qliphoth, when he had told Nero that Vergil was his father.
There is an unidentifiable noise somewhere in the background, beyond the static of the phone line. A horrible, guttural wheezing, like a wounded animal.
"Shit," Dante's voice says, from somewhere further away, and then there is a clatter of rapid steps and a rustle of movement, and Dante's voice clears over the static again. "Kid, I don't think you should talk to him at the moment," Dante says quietly, voice like an ice wall, unyielding and firm. "It wouldn't be good for him."
"What–" Nero's breath hitches. "What do you mean?"
"Dammit, Nero," Dante curses, as the sounds rise again behind him. His voice grates against the phone, strained with tight control. "What did you say to him?"
"I–" Nero whispers, slow horror seeping into his veins. "I don't know. I said– I said a lot of things. Is he– is he okay? Is that him?"
"He's–" Dante exhales, a long, hissing breath. "He needs me right now. I need to go."
"No, Dante–" Nero says frantically, pressing the phone painfully into his ear, as though the shorter distance would keep his uncle on the line. With the handset so close, he can hear the noises more clearly now – tearing, anguished gasps.
"Please," Nero pleads. "Did I– did I hurt him?"
A terrible pause.
"Yes," Dante says, almost harshly. "But he'll survive this. He always does. He's been surviving every day since before you were even born."
Dread sends Nero's heart plummeting to his feet. "What– what do you mean?"
"Shit, kid," Dante growls, and Nero flinches away from the phone at the shuttered anger so obvious in his uncle's voice. "He's been alone and on the run from hordes of demons since he was eight. The Yamato was all he had. Then at nineteen, shortly after he met your mother, he fell into Hell. Mundus captured him there."
At the word Mundus, there is a terrible sound, like a broken-off scream, and Dante curses and the phone clatters against a hard surface.
"Dante?" Nero says, his hands beginning to shake where he holds the phone against his ear.
A scrabbling noise, and Dante's voice hisses rapidly into the line as though he is right by Nero's ear. "He's suffered more than you and I could ever know," Dante says, and there is a terrible note of guilt there that spears right through Nero's chest. "That ugly bastard tore him apart."
Horror crawls up Nero's throat, holds him fixed there, choking him.
"I don't have time for this," Dante says, with grim determination in his tone. "Kid, you mean a lot to me, but don't call back for a while. My brother needs me right now."
Nero hears the click of the handset against the receiver, and then the short, rapid tone of the lost connection.
For a moment, he stands there, stunned, staring at the handset in his hand, breaths coming increasingly quickly.
Some part of him registers guilt, but terror overwhelms all else; terror that he has hurt his father, physically and emotionally. Terror that he might be the one who caused his father such pain.
"No," he whispers hoarsely.
He needs–
His fingers shake as he dials the number to the orphanage. It rings through to voicemail, and Nero nearly curses, black spots swimming before his vision, as he slams the handset back onto the receiver, snatches it up again, and calls the opera house.
The receptionist's voice is sunny and all-too-cheerful, and informs him that Kyrie is not present at the opera house.
Nero fumbles the handset back onto the wall, takes a moment to wheeze in two desperate breaths, knees shaking, then scrabbles to call the therapist's office.
He manages to sound halfway normal when the assistant answers, but she informs him that the therapist is in a session with another client and cannot be disturbed, and Nero hangs up before she can even offer to take a message.
He holds onto the phone with one hand, pressing it into the receiver, bracing himself against the wall with his other hand, gasping in panicked breaths.
"Dad," he whispers, caught halfway in the triangle of winter sunlight lancing in from the window above the front door, as though the light slices him in half as he curls over his stomach, nauseous. "Please. Dad."
He has not been so terrified for his father since the dome, when his father had taken the first greatsword for him, and when the goliath had thrust Red Queen through Vergil's stomach.
The haunting, choking wheeze he had heard in the background behind Dante's voice echoes in his ears.
Nero cannot lose him.
Not like this. Not by his own hand.
Nero slowly slides to the floor, head pressed to the wall under the phone, as though pleading with it, cold, shivering, arms wrapped around his knees.
He waits. He waits and waits, like he used to do in the orphanage when he was just old enough to run, and the other children had laughed at him, saying that he was the only one with a father that had abandoned him. He had stumbled to the front corridor and waited for someone, anyone to come for him.
Nero cannot wait anymore.
He crawls to his feet, fingers digging into the wallpaper, shuddering with dread, wracked with guilt.
The phone nearly slips in his shaking fingers, and it takes three tries, but he dials the number to the Devil May Cry shop again, and waits, trembling, leaning against the wall for support.
The phone rings on, and on, until Nero is sure it will ring on forever–
"Devil May Cry," Dante's clipped voice says,and Nero nearly sobs with relief. "We're closed for the night. Call back tomo–"
"Dante," Nero whispers, as the first tear wells up over his eyes and slices a burning path down his cheek.
"No, Nero," Dante says, tiredly. "Your dad doesn't need this right now. Hang up."
Nero breaks.
A stifled sob escapes him, his free hand pressed over his mouth, hot tears cascading down his cheeks to spatter against the handset. His head collides with the wall with an audible thunk, and he slides down the wallpaper nervelessly, dragging the phone by its cord with him.
"Nero?" Dante's tone changes to one of faint concern.
"Please," Nero pleads, barely breathing between the gasping sobs that shudder up out of him. "Please."
"Shit," Dante says, sounding horrified. "Nero, are you crying?"
"Please," Nero repeats, an endless plea pouring out of his lips as he curls over the stabbing pain in his chest, forehead pressed to the wall. The floorboards are knives at his knees. "Please, Dante."
He hears Dante curse, and then a familiar voice in the background, raw and exhausted but there, and Nero sobs harder as he presses the phone to the curve of his jaw, hard enough to bruise, straining to hear the merest whisper of his father's voice.
The phone goes dead.
Nero stops sobbing abruptly, staring at the phone in his hands. He is too shocked to even move; he becomes aware he has stopped breathing, but there is a disconnect between the knowledge and any intention to start breathing again, and so he just stares, and stares, chest still, until shadows start to creep into the edge of his vision and he feels cold, like the empty air in his lungs and the air outside is nothing at all–
A flash of blue light behind him, reflecting off the glass panes of the front door, throwing his long, warped shadow out before him for an instant.
Nero gasps in a breath so desperate and long-awaited that he feels dizzy with it, and he twists in place, looking back towards the kitchen, as his spine finally gives up holding him upright and he tumbles forward over his knees towards the floor.
The slam of the back door against the wall, the clatter of something against the ground, rapid footsteps – then there are hands on his shoulders and then arms around him and Nero falls into the familiar scent of old wine and fresh parchment.
Nero chokes, face buried in his father's shoulder, and his breaths turn to hitching sobs of relief.
"I'm sorry," he gasps. "I'm sorry, I'm so, so sorry–"
Vergil's breath ruffles his hair, incredibly close and warm, and Nero leans into his father's embrace, arms wound so tightly around his father's middle that his arms ache with the effort.
"Nero," Vergil whispers, one hand resting on the back of Nero's neck, the other around Nero's back, holding him steady. Vergil's voice is scratchy with spent tears, and his breathing is just about slowing down to normal, but he is so wonderfully warm and alive that Nero feels the relief shudder through his bones.
"I hurt you," Nero chokes, fighting to control his breathing. "I hurt you and I didn't even realise."
"It is of no consequence," Vergil says quietly.
"No, it was," Nero, fighting to look up at his father. "I hurt you," he says. "It matters when you're hurt."
A slight furrow appears between Vergil's brows. "Does it?" He says, confusedly.
"Yes, it does," Nero says, shivering in the cold. "It should matter. And it matters to me."
Vergil pulls him into an embrace again. There is a tentative comfort slowly growing here, the first time they have held each other without agony or pain, or spilt blood between them.
"Then yes." Vergil's breath is a susurration of air over Nero's hair. "You did hurt me."
"I'm sorry," Nero says, slowly warming in his father's hold.
"I accept," Vergil says, with such perfect, plain clarity that Nero wheezes a laugh. He cracks open his eyes and stares momentarily at the sloppy T-shirt and drawstring trousers his father is wearing, so obviously borrowed from Dante.
Nero closes his eyes again, sinking into the warmth. "I just– I didn't understand what you meant about power being everything to you. That weakness was worthlessness."
Vergil dips his chin to press his cheek into Nero's hair. He stiffens for a moment after this, as though terrified he has overstepped, but Nero tightens his arms around his father, and Vergil relaxes, face pressed Nero's hair.
"For most of my life, weakness meant defeat and pain," Vergil whispers, as the angle of the sun slowly changes through the window, sunlight suffusing them both.
"I'm sorry," Nero repeats. "I thought you were– I thought nothing ever affected you. That you couldn't be hurt."
Vergil gives a dark chuckle. "If only it were so."
Nero nods into his father's shoulder. "Dante– Dante mentioned something about Mundus."
Vergil's hisses audibly at the name, his shiver shuddering through Nero's frame, and Nero twists to look up at his father.
But Vergil simply shakes his head and buries his face deeper into Nero's hair, as though grounding himself. "He was a demon," Vergil says quietly. "My father had previously defeated him. I thought that I too could best him. I was a fool."
Nero blinks at the shifting sunlight. "When was this?"
"I was nineteen," Vergil says. I had just left your mother not too long before."
At the mention of his mother, Nero pauses, waiting with bated breath, hoping–
"She was–" Vergil's breath hitches, and his hand moves from the back of Nero's neck to the curve of his jaw, thumbtip to cheekbone. "She was like sunlight after the longest rain. Brilliant and untouchable, but warm."
Nero does not dare speak, lest he break this spell, and lose what chance he has of learning of his mother forever.
Vergil's voice holds a longing ache. "I had been alone for a decade by the time I chanced to meet her. She was the first person to love me since my mother died, since I thought my brother dead as well. For a while it was as though we could be together forever. That I could afford to be human again."
"It sounds like she was amazing," Nero says, the old longing filling his soul, for a mother he has never met.
"She was. But we were so young," Vergil says. "And I had Sparda's blood. There were yet dangers in the world beyond my power to halt, and I knew what it was as a child to have my life changed in the span of an instant."
"So you left her," Nero whispers, and feels his father flinch.
"I did," Vergil says, and the regret lies heavy in his voice. "I did not know she was… if I had known, I would have done differently. But I needed power."
Nero swallows against his dry throat. "Why?"
"Because," Vergil says, holding him close, "I never wanted to feel as I did as a child again, abandoned and helpless with only the Yamato in hand."
Here, with his father holding him safe, Nero thinks he begins to understand.
"Mundus wished for a general to serve him," Vergil says, with only the merest hitch in his breath at the words. "He attempted to make me one. I resisted him for what had to have been months, despite the pain, and the blood. I had planned to fight until my dying breath, but he–" Vergil breaks off.
Nero gathers his courage, raises his head off Vergil's shoulder, closes his eyes, and presses his forehead against his father's.
"It's okay, Dad," he whispers.
To Nero's relief, Vergil does not push him away. He breathes in and out once against Nero's cheek.
"One day, he told me your mother had died," Vergil says, voice trembling against Nero's ear, leaning against Nero's temple. "And I finally broke."
Nero chokes in a breath at this, curls his arms tighter around his father.
"If he had told me of your existence," Vergil says, "I would have fought, and fought, until I had no breath left to live."
"Okay," Nero mumbles, because he has no words for this, no words for the enormity of this revelation.
"I am sorry," Vergil says, curling into Nero's shoulder desperately, as though terrified his son will pull away from him. "I am sorry for taking your arm from you. I should have allowed myself to fade away. It would have been better than hurting you."
Nero takes a sharp breath, the phantom pain shooting through his right elbow, and he feels his father tense.
"No," Nero says sharply, sitting back to glare at his father, hands sliding to grasp his father's hands tightly when Vergil reaches for him as though terrified he will disappear.
"I accept your apology," Nero says. "But don't ever say you would rather die. I don't want you to die for me."
Vergil looks at him, frowning. "But I–"
"I want you to live," Nero growls, fingers digging into his father's palms. "I want you to live, and we'll work this out, and you'll be my father, and grandfather to my kids when Kyrie and I decide to have them. Get it, asshole?" There is no heat in the word.
Vergil is looking at him now with astonishment.
"And power isn't everything," Nero continues fiercely. "You have Dante, and me, and Kyrie. We're here. And you can never be powerful enough to make sure nothing ever hurts us."
"I can," Vergil says, slowly. "If I was powerful enough in the dome, I could have protected you. Kept you from harm."
"We protected each other, dammit!" Nero growls. "I watched your back, as you watched mine! Like you said, remember? And you are not going to throw your life away for me, because I–" he breaks off, face flushing.
To Nero's surprise, Vergil looks almost as though he is on the verge of tears, raw vulnerability in his gaze.
Vergil reaches for Nero's cheek, running a gentle, sword-calloused thumb over his cheekbone. He leans forward, presses his lips to Nero's forehead, and Nero freezes at the memory of Vergil doing the same days earlier.
"I'm so proud of you," Vergil whispers into Nero's hair.
Nero feels tears rise in his throat.
He relaxes into his father's embrace, Vergil's cheek against his temple, as the sun lances through the window above the door to warm them both.
They rest like so for an indeterminate time, until the sun's rays turn orange.
Nero's breathing has long since returned to normal, and he feels his father's heartbeat as a slow drum under his cheek. His joints ache against the hardwood floor, and he feels his father shift as well, minute movements that betray Vergil's growing discomfort.
Nero sits back a little, meets his father's gaze.
They both immediately flush – Nero's ears turning cherry red, Vergil trying to return to his usual impassive expression but failing miserably with the dried tear-tracks on his face and the sloppy t-shirt.
"Uh," Nero croaks. "Want some tea?"
Vergil nods, blinking rapidly. His left hand keeps drifting towards his hip as though to grasp something there, only to clasp empty air.
Nero half-flees into the kitchen for the kettle, and stares down at the Yamato, carelessly abandoned on the tiled floor, just within the threshold of the back door.
Vergil passes him, avoiding eye contact, and stoops to pick up the Yamato. He looks almost ridiculous standing there barefoot, hair unslicked and hanging into his eyes, dressed in one of Dante's death metal T-shirts and loose cotton trousers, feet bare.
"Um, take a seat in the den," Nero says as he fills the kettle, the awkwardness climbing up his throat. "I'll be there in a bit."
"Very well," Vergil says, still not quite meeting Nero's eyes.
Nero takes a long as possible to make tea, but all too soon, he finds himself carrying two steaming mugs into the den.
Vergil is sitting ramrod straight on the sofa, the Yamato leaning against the coffee table. He looks as though he might have been attempting to regain some of his usual aloof composure in the past few minutes, but even with re-slicked hair, he has managed nothing of his usual elegance.
Nero hands Vergil a cup of tea and cradles his own as he sits next to his father.
Silence.
The space between them is less than a handsbreadth, and it burns with the memory of tears and vulnerability and emotions unsaid. They sit there, each sipping at their mugs of tea, tiptoeing around each other's space, trying to figure out the new middle ground between them.
"I'm–" Nero tries. "I'm glad you came," he says, and hides his face by taking another sip of tea.
A long pause.
"You needed me," Vergil says quietly.
The space between them grows more comfortable after that.
They sit there in almost cozy silence, until Nero finds his eyelids slipping closed, exhaustion claiming him, and he leans his head against the back of the sofa and falls asleep.
He thinks he imagines, in the moment before he falls asleep properly, someone tucking a warm throw around his shoulders.
(:~:)
Kyrie lets herself into the house a the sun's edge falls below the horizon.
The house is dark, unlit, and she frowns as he passes into the den and flicks on the light–
She presses a hand to her mouth to hide her delight.
Nero and Vergil are both asleep on the sofa, but there is a patterned throw around Nero's shoulders, and Nero's head has slipped down onto his father's shoulder.
Vergil's cheek rests in Nero's hair, and his hand has slipped partially over Nero's beside him, so that their fingers barely touch.
The hall phone rings beside Kyrie, and she snatches it off its hook before it can wake Nero and his father.
"Hello?" she says softly into the phone.
"Kyrie," Dante says, concern in his voice. "Are they okay?"
"Yes," Kyrie murmurs. "I think they're more than okay."
She giggles quietly as she exchanges a few more words with Dante, hangs up the phone, and goes to make supper.
Nero and Vergil sleep on.
Next up: A quick couple snapshots of father-son therapy, more bonding, Dante comes to therapy, and then a very Sparda Christmas.
Thanks for the lovely comments! Have a very happy new year! I'm also on AO3 and tumblr, if anyone wants to find me there!