Disclaimer: I do not own Devil May Cry, though I own all three games, Sound DVDs, manga, novels, comics, Revoltech figure, little DMC2 figures... I'm not making money, Capcom is.

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So, here they were.

Down that hall, the second door on the left was the room in which the rituals had been performed on her. The door had been open and she'd glanced in and recognized it, shuddering at the memory. It strengthened her resolve, which was a good thing.

Before, she wanted him dead, but now when he'd finally learned remorse… now there was a chance he might be redeemed, she was growing uncertain about killing him. She didn't want even him to go to hell and suffer what would feel like an eternity without God's presence, and then be destroyed on Judgment Day.

Especially since they would do their worst to him, if he truly was Sparda.

Something in her said this was her fault somehow, which was nonsense. She was the victim here, and he was choosing to die. She would merely do the deed, and she would do it quickly and cleanly despite how much he deserved to suffer, what she had fantasized about.

These stone rooms, either hollowed out beneath the castle or natural caves altered to seem planned, were where he did his magic, where his death would take place.

He led her into a room that was clearly a natural cave, though it had been altered. There was an alter at the center, in an odd shape. There was an odd design on the floor, glowing, and objects were placed on points within it. It seemed that everything was prepared.

"Eva?" he said finally, after letting her look around the room.

"Yes?"

"Here." He lifted up a sword from a niche in the wall. "Use this, it will answer to the hand of a human without testing: it is a demon blade, but will work faster than a human weapon would."

"A demon blade?" It looked odd, but not obviously unholy. She would have thought it was made of normal steel: it was thin and delicate, like the blade a fencer would use, and the handle had a flowing design that looked somewhat like leaves guarding the grip.

"It will not do anything for you, it was created for a human to use. The energies will not touch you and cause corruption," he assured her. "I have a normal sword, but it would take longer."

"Take longer?" she asked, not liking what she thought that statement meant.

"To kill me."

"Wait a minute, I thought, well, you never actually said, but I thought I would be," killing you with one blow.

"I have to be at full strength when the ritual starts, and the energy caused by the damage to me will enable it to work better. If you wish, I could injure myself, and reserve the final blow for you."

She winced at that idea. She didn't like people being hurt and though she'd considered it, suicide revolted her because of the idea of self-harm as well as the eternal damnation that accompanied it. Besides, that was the deal, right? A day of her pretending they were a happy couple in exchange for her getting to kill him.

She was tempted to take advantage of it, to put in blows that wouldn't be fatal but would hurt. Castrating him was a particularly attractive thought.

She'd paid for this, she should see it through.

This was his penance, she realized. He wanted to give her his death.

People had flagellated themselves, hurt themselves in penance for sins: the pain of Purgatory allowed you to pay for your sins and go to heaven. Sparda didn't love God, he didn't want God to forgive him: he wanted her to. He was offering her his pain in the hope of… no, not in that hope. He knew she could not forgive him, even if she tried. She was not that saintly. He simply wanted her to have it. He had said that demons fed on pain, the torment of souls, so… The death of a devil must be a princely gift.

He held two swords out to her now, one unornamented, utterly workmanlike and practical: she could tell it was a good blade, a normal, human blade.

But with that one, it would take him longer to die.

She wanted him dead, but she didn't want to be a torturer, and for some reason, now… perhaps that frankness when he had confessed his ulterior motive had convinced her that he was capable of honesty despite his nature, that he was Sparda, that he had needed to do what he had done. It didn't make it right, he was fallible, but he thought he had done… a horrible thing, but he had seen that it was the thing to do that was most likely to succeed in protecting humanity, and was that not a noble cause?

She had wanted to believe all along that this was simple, that he was simply lying, the devil, evil, because he had done evil to her. She hadn't wanted to think she should forgive him, that… it was complicated.

The second most horrible thing he had done to her, worse than the torture but not worse than the key act, was to fall in love with her.

She took the demon sword.

Sparda put the other one away. "Everything is prepared. I will lie here," he said, indicating the alter, "and you will strike until I, or at least, my body, is killed. Then my soul will go to the sword and maintain the seal for as long as I can." He laid a hand on the alter and, not looking at her, told her, "Eva, you don't have to do this if you do not wish to."

"I paid for it, didn't I?" With more than just the pretense.

He knew she had, but, "If you do not wish to, then don't feel you must for my sake. You owe me nothing. You have already been far more generous than any other human would have been in your place. It is my fault, I… I knew you would hate me, but I felt, my instincts said that you would react as a demoness would, admire my strength, and… You would have made a wonderful nun, Eva. I think you are already a saint."

"No, I'm not. I can't forgive you, and a saint would. I want to kill you, that's why I gave you that day. Otherwise, I never would have."

"You are strong. If you had been weak and fallen for your captor, as I have seen humans do, I would not have admired you and your emotion would not have been returned."

"I figured."

"Then, if you were sure."

She wasn't sure, but she was going to do this.

He lay on the alter, not looking at her until he was settled, then he closed his eyes in acquiescence.

She walked over, and when she was standing over him looked at the sword in her right hand. What would kill him the quickest? His head, throat, heart (groin)?

His face was detached, she envied him the ability to turn off his display of emotion. Though, he seemed to be concentrating, perhaps on the spell being cast? She wished she knew what he was feeling. Though she knew he was as much at peace as he had been for years.

She should not delay this. "I'm going to start," she told him, positioning the sword over his heart. Yes, that would be what she would strike at, the heart that dared wish for her to succumb.

"Yes," he answered, and she knew he meant thank you.

It was harder than she thought it would be. She meant to stab down cleanly, but there was a rib in the way and she had push hard to get through it. She'd never been one of those people who fainted at the sight of blood, but she didn't think she could have done this if he had been human.

As it was, she felt detached, and thought that he must have chosen human form for this because she must not have the strength to get a sword through the carapace of his devil form.

She made a lot of cuts going in, but they quickly vanished, the blood stopped flowing and the flesh closed up around her sword. She drew it out, and there was nothing to mark the damage she had done but blood staining his clothes and the cut in them. He wasn't wearing his normal outfit, simply black pants and a white dress shirt. Strange, death should be a formal event. This was his funeral, his deathbed.

She went for the throat next: much easier to cut, and she wondered if the ordinary sword would have cut this easily, though she had muscles from carrying the twins and doing most of the work of taking care of them.

Again, the flesh healed around her sword after the initial blood flow, so she wiggled it back and forth. There was no pain on his face.

"How much damage am I actually doing?"

His eyes opened. "Not very much. We are much harder to kill than humans: blood is simple to replace. If you slashed, it would work better. Focus you will, and it will cut through even my bone like butter." They closed again.

She followed his advice, slashing: it did indeed go through him. Again, again, and soon enough his clothes were in ribbons. Her only reactions were the momentary interruptions of his breathing when she destroyed something crucial to it.

Focus, but on what? Her anger kept rising to the surface, and she found herself thinking of vengeance, but vengeance was God's, not hers. Wrath was one of the seven deadly sins for a reason. She tried to focus on ending this, tried to focus all her hate into him, so that it would die with him and she could be pure of it, that he would not be there to remind her of her defilement, of his torment of her: that he not debase her love of her children, that she would be able to stop seeing him and his crimes in the faces of innocents and be able to love them purely as they deserved.

She wanted him to feel that as this body died so did his guilt, for he was tormenting himself and she was tired of it, tired of everything.

Blood splattered on the plain black dress she wore, nothing fancy, none of the beautiful things he loved to give her (trying to buy her, no, trying to delight her) for this, they would be ruined.

She would burn this dress in a fireplace after this. Let everything be dead and buried, let only her and her children go on. And the world he had done all this to save, and was it worth it? She had thought it not worth her suffering. No, she was not worth the world. She would have been willing to die, but…

Jesus had died for humanity, but Sparda would not take days to die, and he was no Jesus. Jesus had harmed none. Jesus had not sinned as Sparda had. The thought of connecting them was ludicrous, blasphemous.

Perhaps this truly was the end of days, the Emperor of Hell about to rise again: Jesus had come when Mundus invaded, would the second coming happen now? The world would be doomed then, her children would perhaps be doomed to fail. She didn't want them to fail, she wanted them to live.

They would be so sad that their father had died, and they would never know why, never know that he had died for them: they would not have that guilt. They would never know his crimes, her crime (for she was murdering him, even if it was by his own will).

His white shirt was almost all stained now, and she cut him in a way sure to get blood on the last piece. His white hair was splattered, and still he seemed too pristine, too perfect, devil that he was, black heart that he had.

It took a while for her to notice that the breathing had stopped.

From the sight of her first stab, a purple light rose, and she thought it beautiful. It floated up, and then vanished.

Everything stopped glowing except the light in the ceiling, and she was alone with a corpse.

It was done, he was dead, she tried to tell herself that chapter of life was over, that now she was free to live for the children.

Even so, it felt like the center of her life had gone: he had stolen her entire destiny and written it. She felt anchorless now, drifting, like something that she had grown to rely on was gone, like she was missing an arm.

She put the sword down on top of him and watched him for a while.

Then she left and closed the door.