A/N: My most sincerest deepest apologies! You have no idea how hectic my schedule has been. I literally haven't had a spare moment for months! Please do forgive a negligent authoress!
WARNING: I should warn you all; from here on out, the story does get darker. There will be less humour…unfortunate, because I love writing it, but otherwise nobody would take the plot seriously.
Anyway, hope you enjoy!
Chapter 7
For the first time in a long time, Vergil felt completely out of control. His mind, usually so strictly disciplined, had descended into chaos. Stop he willed himself stop running, what the hell are you running for? He wasn't some sort of scorned child. He was calm. He was in CONTROL.
"Vergil!" came the far off holler; far off, but not far off enough. Why was he running? He wasn't scared of Dante, surely? No. But this- this aching, this wrenching, nauseating sensation in his gut- it WAS fear. But of what?
His eyes stung violently, and for a shameful moment he was afraid he was crying. But that was ridiculous! He didn't cry, he didn't know how to. Devils never cry. Yet his eyes were burning. Searing with a pain so deep and sharp it felt like a thousand needles were sinking tortuously into his iris. He clutched at his face, blinded, gritting his teeth, and stumbled.
Meanwhile Dante, after a moment of dumbfounded hesitation, had charged in haphazard pursuit of his twin "Ouch! Shit! Son of a…" the previous profanities attest to the fact that said pursuit was not going well "Vergil! I'm not doing this shit again!" why was he even doing this? Why bother to follow? Vergil clearly didn't want to be saved, so why should Dante care?
Then again, he'd already wasted a hearty bit of effort getting this far. Dante was many things, but a quitter was not one of them "I will leave your sorry hide behind, do you hear me!" Wait, that was exactly what Vergil wanted him to do. Fuck.
Dante slammed to bone-grinding halt, and stood, motionless. His brow slowly furrowed. Crap. He wished to Father, Son and Holy Bleedin' Ghost he had enough time to sit about and narrate at length of his feelings, to soliloquize his angst poetically, think it over, study his psyche…but quite frankly he couldn't be fucked. He didn't have the patience for this. All he knew was that he'd lost too much; and he didn't want to lose any more.
He stood stock still, breathing hard, straining his senses, trying to catch the smallest hint of the presence he knew so well. Seconds passed. Nothing. Not a sound.
"VERGIL!" Dante roared, losing patience entirely. He tried to ignore the traitorous edge of panic in his voice "where are you? Dammit!"
He felt like a child again, and he hated it. He felt again like that little boy, in the ill-fitting itchy pullover, with grazed knees and twigs in his hair, sticky with sweat. He felt again the pang of loss, of panic, when they used to play their jesting games: hide and seek, tag, you're it. He had always lost: he had always cried out for his lost brother before the game was over, and always Vergil would come to him with a wry grin and a mocking taunt, and although Dante protested he had never really cared. Just so long as Vergil came back.
Just once, he hadn't.
The silence meandered on. THUD, clatter. Dante snapped around. Movement in the dark. The faint rattle of delicate metal on stone. He hurtled in the direction of the disturbance, ignoring every shameful reprimand his pride broadcast at him. I'm sick of this joke. He thought, desperately, feeling at once disgusted and liberated I'm sick of this pretence.
Suddenly, a blue figure loomed out of the thick darkness. Dante sped up, and growled, his confusion replaced immediately with anger upon sighting his wayward brother "Vergil, you bast–"
He stopped dead. The razor sharp tip of Yamato rested gently yet threateningly against his Adam's apple, and Dante swallowed on reflex.
"What the fuck are you doing, dude, it's me!" he tried to ignore how cold Yamato was against the skin of his neck. Quiet. Goosebumps rose along his collarbone. Quiet. Deafening quiet. A bead of sweat swells upon his brow, and slithers slowly down the contours of his face.
Yamato seemed to shiver, a soft succession of tremors unsteadying it, and with a soft hiss it was whipped away. Dante did not move, remained rigid and tense "Jeez. What the Hell do you think you're playing at, huh?" he addresses Vergil's blue patterned bent back "I risked my arse following you down here and I'll be damned if that fine arse goes to waste!"
Still his brother does not move. Had it not been for the light shift and rustle of silk as he breathed, Dante would have thought him dead on his feet.
Silence. Nothing but Dante's harsh pants, and Vergil's soft inhalations. Something snaps.
"LOOK AT ME, DAMMIT!"
Dante seizes his elder twin by the shoulders and twists him forcefully to face him. Nothing. No response. Vergil follows his movements like a rag doll, and Dante is so shocked he loosens his grip "Vergil?" he says, uncertainly, and the walls echo his concern mockingly back at him. He growls. The dull blackness blankets them, and Vergil's face is in shadow "Damn, it's dark in here…"
"But not that dark." A muffled voice murmurs. There's something odd in Vergil's tone. Something Dante has heard very few times before: the light, icy suggestion of fear. A shiver runs up and down Dante's spine. His heart skips a beat. A million possibilities file through his head, colliding and forming a cacophony of panic. Wait…but what could be wrong? They're invulnerable! Mutant half-breeds! Vergil couldn't be hurt. Of course not. He didn't care if he was, anyway. Stubborn bastard.
"Vergil? What the hell do you mean 'not that dark'?" he slams Vergil against the wall, and his frustration only builds when his twin does not fight back "for the love of pepperoni, get a fucking grip! What the hell are you playing at, running off like a sissy girl?!"
"Dante." His twin cuts him off sharply, his tone as clipped and cold as ever, but ever so slightly shaky. Dante realizes he was mistaken. It wasn't fear he had heard in his unshakeable brother's tone, but something both similar and different. It was pain. "Can you see me?"
"What?" he blurts out harshly, confused "Are you blind or something, I'm standing right in front of you!"
Quiet. Seconds pass.
"Dante…" Vergil's voice is very, very soft, and he hesitates before gritting out "I can't see."
Silence.
"What?" the word fell bluntly out of Dante's mouth, his mind sluggishly processing what he had just heard. System error…system error…brain cannot compute. Possible cause: uncomprehendible situation. Possible responses: a, attempt to solve problem like an intelligent and vaguely competent sort of person; b, stand dumbly gawping like a fish.
No prizes for guessing which option Dante chose.
Vergil growled "I. Can't. SEE. Anything." He repeated, focusing on how much Dante was pissing him off to avoid thinking about this potentially fatal (not to mention highly humiliating) turn of events. When it came down to it, it seemed the Son's of Sparda had many traits in common: the ability to deny things point blank being one of the less commendable ones.
Dante, meanwhile, was experiencing an internal conflict of manly pride versus remnants of fraternal concern. Now, Vergil was not only (in Dante's rather biased opinion) a prancing, cold-hearted prissy ponce but a USELESS prancing cold-hearted prissy ponce. Blind. Jesus. How the hell would Vergil be able to fight an enemy he couldn't even see?
Dante eyed the grimace of pain contorting his twin's features, and felt the slightest of lurches in the pit of his stomach "Here, hold this up for me, will you?" he grunted, shoving a grubby hand into one of the many small leather pouches at his waist and fumbling. A toothpick. A moldy baked bean. Something furry and suspiciously alive-feeling and- ah!
Vergil heard a sharp click and the soft hiss of chemical reactions, and barely restrained himself from flinching violently as something cold and metallic was shoved into his palm "What is it?" the sharp scent of something acrid like gasoline was pervading the air…
"It's a lighter, now will you just hold it?" Came Dante's irritated tones, far more defined than usual, the intonations clearer. Vergil noted a heightening in all his remaining senses, compromising for his lack of sight "And stay still!"
Coarse fingers roughly tried to pry his hands away from his eyes, and Vergil snarled, jerking violently away, and hissed "Don't touch me!"
"Christ sake, Vergil, I'm trying to fucking help you! Do you want to stay blind?"
Vergil shrunk backwards, his feet faltering on the uneven floor, and felt an animalistic surge of terror rise within him. He felt like a cornered rat, the darkness smothering and choking him, the pain in his eyes intolerable, every sound and smell and touch and feel of the world around him frighteningly vivid, and frighteningly foreign. In this heightened state, he felt more demon than human. The slick dampness of moisture in the air, the acidic tang of blood and intoxicating heaviness of sulphur. Dante's harsh breathing. The rustle of leather, the clink of metal. And something else. Something beyond a smell or a sound, but an instinct, screaming at him, an aura, so familiar. The primitive voice in his head breathed in the presence of Dante and purred: Twin.
Vergil shuddered.
"Look, not like I care or anything, but you might want to let me look at that wreck you call a face." Vergil could almost taste the smirk on the air "Can't let you walk around like that, it'll ruin my prospects with the ladies."
Very, very slowly, Vergil peeled his hands away from his face. The skin across his cheeks and nose, and especially around the eyes throbbed and stung viciously, and he could feel the regenerating flesh being eaten away by something as it attempted to heal. Vergil suppressed the urge to grimace and wince, and instead, painfully, allowed the muscles in his face to relax.
Dante's lack of response was more ominous in itself, and when he spoke it was with an unsettling lack of emotion "How do your eyes feel, Vergil?"
Vergil bared his teeth in what he thought was Dante's general direction, ignoring the way his heart beat out a rhythm of rising panic in his chest "Like shit." He considered the sensation, the feeling of a writhing poison eating away at his face "Burn. They feel like they're burning." He gritted out, wincing.
A moment of awkward quiet. Vergil almost (note the ALMOST) wished Dante would mock him, give him some excuse to get angry, anything to stop thinking about how much it damn HURT! He was not used to enduring pain for any length of time, and this…relentless cycle of agony was excruciating!
"Did any of the Medusa demons get anywhere near your face?" Dante's voice rang out, too guarded, too carefully put. Vergil stiffened.
"Just Slinky." He said, without thinking, and his cheeks flushed slightly at how ridiculous that sounded. He recalled with mounting rage how Dante had waved the gruesome snake head in front of his face, spattering his features with a stinging substance he was now sure was venom. DAMN Dante and his absurd, childish mannerisms! Making him look the fool! Anger flooded his head, cooling the panic somewhat. Calm. Control. Stay in control.
"Who?" Dante's incredulous voice, incredulous at his, Vergil's, lack of composure only served to make his twin's blood boil "Your decapitated head pet, you idiot!" Vergil spat furiously, trying to convince himself the shaking in his limbs was fury, and not- something unthinkable.
Realization. "Oh." The slightest hint of guilt seeped into Dante's tone "Shit."
What?! Vergil forced himself to wait for Dante to elaborate, his heart hammering in his chest. He couldn't be blind permanently. Surely not. It was impossible. Inconceivable.
"Some of the Medusa demon venom must've got in your eyes." Dante muttered sheepishly "You know, the…uh…" he trailed off slightly "evil non-healable demon-resistant…venom?"
Vergil drew in a long breath, wrestling his emotions and his mind into submission. Must…resist…urge…to rip idiotic twin brother limb from identical limb. Finally, when he felt composed enough, he (rather foolishly, in hindsight) murmured coldly "I see."
Dante, despite feeling slightly guilty, just could not resist.
"Well, actually, most useless and idiotic twin of mine, you don't 'see'!" Dante's gleeful laughter wrenched his twin from perfect composure to uncontainable rage "I hope you know how to read 'exit from hell' in brail!"
If Vergil had been able to see where his infuriating face was, he would have punched his twin so hard the wall would have come off worse for the impact.
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A/N: Apologies again for the wait! Anyone still alive out there, I'd appreciate some feedback to let me know if my writing's still up to scratch (or, as I suspect, that I need to go and dunk my head in a cauldron of literary talent XD ) Thanks for reading!