How many sad brothers can I fit in one fic?

Dante had never been the faster of the two of us. Even when we were children, I'd always been able to outrun him. As his presence neared mine in our dash through the forest, I debated warping ahead as I had during all our other chases. Having shorter, stumbling legs in my new body put me at a disadvantage. I could no longer outrun him.

In the end, perhaps it didn't matter. No matter how far or fast I'd ever run, Dante had always caught up given time. This was no exception, though I could have done without him slamming all his weight against my back and knocking me face-first into the ground. His triumphant laugh sent a few birds darting out of the trees above as I spat dirt out from between my teeth. "Gotcha!" he chirped through panting breaths. Both of his knees crushed my back, and his hands pinned my shoulders. "I'm getting too old to do that much sprinting, you know? But it turns out, coffee helps a lot. A lot. I have not had this much coffee in a long time. Wow." A laugh broke through his rambling string of words. "I'm so fucking psyched to kill some demons! I feel like I'm going to vibrate out of my skin."

"You've had too much caffeine," I said, glaring up at him from the corner of my vision to see his eyes wide like a child having a sugar rush. "Now get off of me before I send another sword through your heart."

"Aw, be nice, Verge."

"I refuse."

"Alright, but if I let you up, you have to promise you won't run off again."

"Very well. You have my word." I hadn't planned on running anyway. I saw no point to it.

As Dante hopped to his feet, he dragged me up alongside him. "Wow, you're a mess," he said. Heavy hands dusted at the new dark smear of dirt that he'd caused over the front of my uniform.

"Yes, unfortunate," I hissed. He didn't seem to mind my glare. "But I suppose it was already ruined."

Dante nodded. "That's a lot of blood. I knew I heard a scuffle, but I wouldn't have expected you to be the one to come out looking worse for it."

I hadn't bothered to inspect my wound before, not having the time to do so. Looking down at my mended leg, I found blood soaked into the fabric down past my knee. The deep red stain had connected between the back and front and formed a ring. "It looks worse than it was," I said. "Just a single bullet. The women are fine if you care to know. I didn't bother fighting them."

"Oh, I know." He flashed a blinding smile. "If you had managed to do any harm to either of them, you would have ended up a lot worse off than just one bullet wound."

"You shouldn't have brought them."

"I wouldn't have if I'd known what I was dealing with." He tried to poke at my chest, but I stepped back out of range. His eyes flicked over me before the hyper glaze eased from them, and his tone slowed. "What are you doing back out here anyway? More practice?"

Crossing my arms, I shrugged. I could think of no reason to lie. "I'm going to quell this influx of demons. They must be spawning from somewhere, perhaps another gate."

"Unless they got another crazy scientist to make a new one, I definitely got rid of all of those. Besides, the forest looks pretty normal now. Last time there was a gate here, it was all tropics." He blinked, his brow furrowing. "Like a normal island."

"Are these normal as well?" I asked, sweeping my hand toward the ground. I had noticed the odd rocks early in my trips to the forest. Any attempts I'd made to investigate had been cut short by demons or Nero regaining control. The number of rocks seemed to grow like an infection the deeper I tread, more and more littering the ground. "I believe finding where they're the densest may be the key to this issue."

Humming, Dante plucked a stone from the ground and held it up to the light filtering down between the trees. "You think they're demonic? I don't see anything too weird about them. Just seems like a bunch of busted-up rocks."

"But if they're broken pieces, they must have been part of something once."

"And it's our only lead," Dante said with a smile.

I couldn't deny that. Despite all my time wandering in the woods, that was all I'd been able to find. I couldn't even say where I'd searched before because all of it looked so similar. Dante must have thought the same. As I headed off in the direction of the scattered rocks, he was quick to follow and start his usual whining.

"I swear it was easier to navigate this place when it got turned into a weird demonic jungle, and that version had some stupid maze puzzle that took me like an hour to figure out. What's up with demons and puzzles?"

"They're not all idiots like you, Dante."

"Just because something is true, doesn't mean you have to say it."

I couldn't hide a smile at his feigned offense, so I turned my face away. Talking with him felt far too comfortable. We might as well have had a script for how easily it all came back to me. He'd changed much over the years, but he was still Dante.

An errant thought latched into my mind, and I couldn't stop myself from wondering if there ever could have been a world where this was normal - Dante and I walking side by side in search of some demonic trouble. It was impossible, I knew. I'd put an end to any chance by my own hand, but that was our fate. No world could have ever existed with a different outcome. It was too painful to think otherwise.

"What is your plan now?" I asked, seeking to distract myself. "Surely you're not going to keep up this friendly act."

His answer was a laugh that tapered off as though he couldn't breathe. "I don't know. I don't have a plan." Desperation bled into his eyes. I could remember that look, that broken attempt at a smile. All those years ago in the tower, I'd seen it creep into his expression as the night wore on.

"It's like I'm playing Russian Roulette with all the chambers loaded," he continued. "I can't win."

I was fairly certain it would just be called suicide at that point, no roulette about it. If he thought he couldn't win anymore, he must have given up all hope of getting Nero back. That was odd for my brother. He'd always been far too stubborn to give up on anything, even me for a time.

"Do you plan to kill me then?" I asked.

His sigh sounded almost like a sob. "That is what I promised."

I found it to be an odd answer, perhaps not even an answer at all, but I let the conversation drop. Sooner or later, we would fight again. Whether that fight would be to the death, I couldn't say. It was up to Dante.

The growing swarm of rocks led us to the ruins of an old fountain and what I assumed to be a building. Little of it was visible beneath the tangle of roots and thorny vines that had grown up around its walls. "I don't think it was like that last time I was here," Dante muttered.

"If something is being hidden, I'm going to bet on it being in there," I said.

My brother had never been one for stealth or forethought, and that had not changed over the years. My belief was enough for him to slash his way through the blockade of vines that clogged what must have been a doorway at one time. The vines curled from his sword as though recoiling, and Dante darted through the gap. Before I could follow, the wounded vines sprouted anew. Like a hydra, they doubled in number in an attempt to bar me from entrance, or perhaps to lock Dante in.

"Hey, that's not nice," I heard him call.

Rushing into such a snare was a bad idea, but I couldn't leave Dante to whatever horrible death awaited him. I had Yamato back in its sheath before the vines began to fall away from the fresh cuts. Once I rushed after Dante, the entrance sealed again, and I realized the issue. The plants formed a seamless cavern. Not one shred of light came through. I could sense danger, but I could see nothing except the warning glow of the Bringer's hand.

Rolling the sleeve of my coat up, the pale glow washed over the room. Dozens of soulless eyes reflected in the light.

"Oh, there you are," Dante said to me with a grin. Rebellion rested on his shoulder, and fragments of a demon lay at his feet. "Thanks for the light. Have you considered taking that thing to a party? I bet it would be fun."

"Do you ever say anything worthwhile, or do you just reuse all the same lines?"

"Hey, if it ain't broke-"

With a gurgling cry, another demon leaped for him, and its brethren answered with their own ragged screeches. Whatever the things were, they coated the walls like roaches and were just as easy to crush. A swarm simply made them easier targets. They came apart with ease. Limbs twitched on the ground around me with every slash. I didn't need to take a single step to take care of them, yet I could see Dante leaping around in the corners of my vision. His eager laugh played along to the sound of rending bones.

"You're going to wear yourself out over these weaklings," I said.

"There's no point in fighting the little ones if you don't have some fun with it!" One of the demons flew over my head and splattered against the wall. "Bet that would have gone a good hundred yards if we'd been outside."

"No, it would have hit a tree."

"Aw, stop being realistic."

When the last of them demons ceased its struggles, I raised the Bringer once more to scan the room. Without the demons there, I found the walls covered in pods of varying sizes instead. "Oh gross," Dante said. "Must be some type of breeding ground."

"But only for one type of demon, it would seem, likely the weak ones we fought. I've seen several others around Fortuna... and I have a feeling they're coming from that instead." I turned my arm toward the wall that held no plants or pods. Upon closer inspection, it wasn't a wall at all. The massive stone slab sat in front of the wall. It must have been fragmented at one time because shimmering slivers of gold held together jagged pieces like the ones that had littered the ground outside.

"Well, damn, it is a Hell Gate," Dante said. "Actually…" He pointed to the center, where two pieces came together into something of a heart shape. "Hey, I made those."

I didn't want to know. "Then it's made of pieces of the gates you destroyed?"

"Looks like it. Huh. I didn't know gates could be reformed. That sucks." He didn't sound too put out about it.

I was more concerned about who or what had reformed the gate. "The demons we've seen wouldn't be smart enough to manage something like this on their own. There must be some sort of mastermind."

"I'm sure if I break it into smaller pieces this time, it won't be a problem." Dante leveled his sword at the structure, and before I could tell him that would only combat half the problem, a thin vine shot from the wall and wrapped around his arm.

As I tried to take a step toward him, a piercing pain tore through my leg. One of the vines had grabbed hold of me as well, and still more snaked in toward us. Even as I looked down, I felt the bite of thorns against my arm. Their grip was so tight that my muscles and bones began to ache against the pressure. The vines seemed to be trying to tear us to pieces like some medieval torture device.

"I would almost be into it if not for the thorns," Dante said, his eye twitching.

"Must you?" I snarled.

"Of course I must." Pain marred his smile, and the air pulsed with power as he reached for his Trigger. Likewise, I aimed to use my Summoned Swords, but a crushing weight around my neck shattered the thought. Warmth seeped down the collar of my coat as the thorns sank into my throat. This form was far too fragile, far too weak. Black melted into my vision as my heart beat in a frantic desire for air that would not come. My thoughts raced alongside my pulse even though I knew exactly what to do. I just needed to shake all the damn adrenaline. Back in my own form, my demonic blood must have blocked the worst of it out. It was no wonder humans were so quick to freeze in the face of fear when their bodies worked against them.

"Are you dying?"

My mind ground to a halt. The voice was distant, toneless like a whisper, yet I heard it clearly.

Impossible. He shouldn't have been awake.

"You keep saying that," Nero continued, "but I don't know what you mean. I'm sort of always awake."

He could hear my thoughts. That was new.

"Kind of?" he answered as though I'd asked a question. "It's all over the place but so damn loud. Are you seriously dying?"

I am not, I attempted in response. I have this under control. And isn't dying what you wanted anyway? Or were you that keen on having Dante be the one to do it? Either way, I would not allow it. With the taste of blood filling my mouth, a Trigger would come with ease to combat the damage. But Nero spoke again before I summoned it.

"Give me an eye and my right arm."

I had no reason to. No reason but curiosity. So I gave him what he asked. With a quick flick of our eyes, he assessed the situation and dragged the Bringer forward against the hold of the vines. The one around my neck pressed in tighter, but Nero shot out a phantom hand to snap the vine holding Dante's arm and the sword trapped along with it.

Dante looked worse off than I must have, vines piercing his chest and soaked with his blood. But as soon as he was able to cut himself free, frantic eyes snapped my way. "Vergil!" he gasped between wet, hacking breaths. "Hang on."

Hearing him call my name left me more troubled than the pain. He shouldn't have been calling for me, and I wasn't the only one who noticed.

"That was your name, wasn't it? Vergil?" Nero said, distant voice even softer than before.

For a moment, I wondered how he'd known. I hadn't let him hear. But he could see. He could read the name on Dante's lips.

Rebellion was quick to eat through the vines around me. The crushing weight against my throat let up, and I drew in a ragged, agonizing gasp of air. It felt as though I'd swallowed needles.

Before I could hope to find my feet, Dante's arm looped around my gut and dragged me back toward the entrance we'd used. "Let's come back later, alright?" he said with a thin, nervous laugh.

As much as I hated running, it was wise to heal and face the thing from another angle. I didn't have much of a choice in the matter anyway, as Dante carried me along like a child with a toy. Being smaller than him had several disadvantages.

With some silent assistance from Nero wielding Yamato, Dante cut down any prying vines and tore through those blocking the exit once again. He kept running until we were well behind the tree line. I would have demanded to be put down, but my breaths were still far too thin and clouded with blood to form any words. Though I was allowed my feet, Dante's hands snapped to my shoulders. Anxious eyes searched me up and down. He must have feared damage to the boy's body.

"He was worried about you," Nero said. He sounded...tired, resigned perhaps. But he was wrong. I was certain of it.

Dante's hand hovered over the wound on my neck, his brow pinched. "For a moment, I thought that damn thing was going to cut down to your spine," he said with a twitching smile. "Looked pretty ugly, but it's healing fine."

A painful weight settled in my chest as Nero's voice faded to a breath. "I guess I can't blame him. I'd want my brother back too. He was right… It wasn't fair of me to ask that."

You're wrong. My thoughts turned frantic once again as his dread seeped into me. You don't understand. It's not like that.

But his emotions were agony, and I didn't want to feel them anymore.

I didn't want him to see anymore. I'd never wanted him to suffer. He was supposed to be asleep, hidden away from everything and safe. I was supposed to protect him. I…

No, wasn't protecting him from anything. I was only using him. The thought shouldn't have ever occurred to me. But... before all of this, from the beginning, I had protected him in a way. Always for my sake, not his. But I had always looked after him.

Now, I was failing him.

All I could do was shut him out and hope that he found rest this time.

"Are you alright?" Dante asked. I must have looked troubled based on the way his eyes continued to search me.

"Why did you save me?" My voice was still hoarse, my wounds all stinging, but I could speak again at least.

Dante's answer should have been simple. He was supposed to say that he did it for Nero; instead, he paled. His mouth hung open as he searched for an answer before he gave in with a sigh. His shoulders dropped. "I can't watch you die again, Vergil."

That wasn't the right answer. It couldn't have been. "You promised him-"

"I know what I promised! Goddammit!" His fist connected solidly with the tree at his side, the wood splintering. "But I can't do this again. Do you know how much it hurt? Knowing that I killed you? Knowing that if I'd been able to catch you, that none of this would have-" A bead of blood welled up as he sank his teeth into his lower lip.

"There was nothing you could have done." That was the truth, not a consolation, just the truth. After everything I'd done, Dante was not supposed to care. I should have been nothing to him. Nothing he said made sense, but Dante had always been that way - far too emotional to think rationally.

"Maybe not," he said, "but I'd replay it all in my head over and over, thinking of what else I could have done."

"I chose my fate. You don't get to take the blame for my mistakes."

His smile was worn down by years of anguish. "Oh, it's way too late for that. And now, here you are again. Another chance for me to fuck up. If you live, Nero gets smothered. If he somehow gets control back, you're gone, and if I kill you again, you both die. In any choice, I lose someone." He breathed a laugh and brought up his hand in a mock gun to the side of his head. "Take a spin. Every chamber's loaded."

Suicide, not a roulette.

"I don't know why you would care about me," I admitted. "But if it hadn't been Nero's form I stole or if you hadn't known him, would you have been happy to see me?" I had asked the question before without getting a straight response. Now, I could tell that Dante was far too tired and far too open to hide the truth.

"You know… part of me is happy to see you anyway." Guilt weighed heavy in his eyes. "I wish it could have been under different circumstances. I wish I could have actually seen you as you again."

Instead of smug affirmation or twisted joy, all I could feel was relief that Nero was deaf to all of this. "Sorry," I said to someone.

Dante didn't seem prepared to respond to that, so he shrugged and leaned against the wounded tree at his side. "I'm dead tired. I guess the coffee wore off."

"Yes, I suppose we haven't slept well lately." My body must have been rebelling the ill-treatment because my wounds still stung. Dante rubbed at the ones in his chest as well, which wasn't a good sign. Rolling up the tattered, blood-flecked sleeve of my left arm, I found the long, thin bruises laced with burning red pierce marks. "Oh," I drawled. "They're infected. Probably a poison."

"Oh, damn." Dante barked a more genuine laugh. "Looks like our demon blood saved us dumbasses again."

"Do not lump me in with you."

"Hey, you didn't notice either."

"I am the one who just noticed!"

Still looking far too smug, he stretched his arms out over his head. "I for one think we should say fuck it to this for tonight," he said through a yawn. "Let's sleep off all the weird poison and come back and do some weed control in the morning."

I was far too tired to find any argument. "Fine, but we're not sleeping out here, and I am not going back into that damn city of women who want me dead."

"Did you have somewhere else in mind? Wait! Let me guess. You want to go hang out in the nice beachfront headquarters that's trying to turn into an underwater getaway."

Perhaps I was becoming too predictable, but our options were limited. Though the castle would have been more comfortable, I had no interest in climbing through all that snow. "Weren't you the one who destroyed the headquarters?" I asked.

His hands flashed up in mock-surrender. "I take no responsibility for that."

Before we could leave the cursed forest, he insisted that he needed to go retrieve a bag. "Too annoying to carry while chasing you, so I just dropped it," he said. "But there are some vital stars in there." As much as I did not care, I trailed after him to find the bag, too exhausted to focus on anything but walking.

We both earned a vital star for our troubles, which did take the searing edge off the wound on my neck, but I also noticed something else in Dante's bag. "Is that Cerberus?" I asked, my voice flat. If he'd been carrying it when we faced the vines, they would have been no trouble.

"Yeah, I was thinking about using him to keep you from getting away before, but I didn't want to give the kid frostbite while his healing sucked, you know? Also, you kept running off too quickly."

"You left a powerful Devil's Arm just lying around?"

He shrugged. "I got him back."

"I'm amazed you've managed to keep any Devil's Arm for more than a few minutes with how careless you are with all of them."

"Hey, I seem to remember someone else losing Yamato."

I had no comeback for that, so I started toward the remnants of the Order's headquarters with Dante rushing at my heels and telling me not to run off again.

Through the wreckage, I brought us back to the library once again. We had made a mess of it last time, but most of the chairs had survived. I settled down in one, my feet in another, as Dante dragged a chair closer to my space for some reason.

"What's your fascination with this place anyway?" he asked.

"It's quiet." Tilting my head back, I looked at the fragments of sky visible through the damaged ceiling. The library was quiet, but the rest was loud. Far too many memories were locked in the crumbling structure, some painful, some comforting. "But it feels safe here," I said.

"Really? It feels like I'm about to get crushed under several tons of rock."

I should have said something to discourage Dante placing his chair right beside mine, but as night settled in, the air became cold enough that I could see my breath. I couldn't even oppose Dante kicking his feet into the same chair as I had. I was far too tired, and he was far too stubborn. Sleep came effortlessly.

I roused a fraction to find my temple resting against his shoulder as he settled his cheek against the top of my head. He took a deep, shaking breath that left him in a whisper. "I'm so sorry, Nero."

I couldn't remember the last time I'd dreamed, and I'd never been aware of my dreams. They came now in fragments of memories, flashes that I didn't always recognize. It was like a slide projector flipping between images far too quickly until it came to a sudden halt.

I could recognize this memory as my own. Shadows blotted out some walls and pictures that I could not quite recall, but I knew my childhood home. I found myself at the top of the stairs. Somewhere in the distance, a child counted loudly. Another must have been hiding. I couldn't say which of us was which.

I didn't belong there, not anymore. Within the dream, my form was the one I had lost, down to my old blue coat. Sitting on the top step near me was another boy who did not belong. And like me, he wore clothes that had been ruined some time ago. Seeing the mismatched jacket that I had reduced to tatters made me sigh. I still felt bad about that one. He must have liked it.

"Is it actually you?" Nero asked, tired eyes flicking over me as he rested his chin in his palm. "Or are you part of this dream now?"

"It's really me. I'm not so certain that this is a dream. At least, not the usual sort."

He made no move to fight me as I sat down on the step as well. No anger burned in his eyes. I could find only weariness in his features. "I like this dream more than the others, though," he said. "The others are more like nightmares."

I flinched against his words. "It seems you're experiencing my memories."

"Yeah, I thought so." He nodded, expression unchanged. "Can't say I'm too thrilled about it."

"Me either."

A few beats of silence passed between us as I tried to understand why any of this was happening. When he had been the one in full control, I had never been in such a state. I'd been asleep. There had been nothing but the sounds in the distance.

Nero's voice cut through my thoughts. "It's strange, you know, being the one who falls. I think I know how Dante feels, so I guess..." He stared at the palm of his Bringer.

Realization hit me like a knife to the chest. He'd seen me throw myself into Hell. No, he'd fallen with me. He'd seen far too much.

"I couldn't catch him either," Nero sighed, pressing his face into his hand.

Oh.

Of course.

He had watched Credo fall. I could feel his pain once again, still as great as that moment of agony when he had reached out for the man he saw as his brother. Nero understood what Dante felt, and suddenly, I did as well.

I had left my brother with that pain. Perhaps that was why he caught Credo in Nero's place.

I could no longer find any words to tell Nero that I didn't matter to Dante. He knew better.

"How long have you seen dreams like this?" I asked instead, hoping for some way to free him.

"I think it was after you really took over for the first time, after we talked, I guess. I was trying to get control back, and everything was so jumbled, but I kept seeing things." He shook his head, eyes shut tight. "And I know there's a way back. I can find it sometimes, but it always slips away. I just have to find it again."

"It's because you're still fighting," I realized. Some piece of him was still conscious, still refusing to give in. Since he'd learned the truth, he'd been too stubborn to fall unconscious as I'd intended. "I didn't dream like this, but I do feel your memories at times... when they're strong. I think it's because my mind is the dominant one between us, so you become lost within my thoughts."

His laugh was more like a cough. "I thought this was supposed to be my body. What a backward deal."

"You're going to continue fighting like this, aren't you?"

With a weary hum, he leaned over to rest against the banister. "I just need some more time to get my strength back. That's what you did, right? Just waited around until you were stronger than me."

For some reason, I wanted to tell him yes. I wanted to assure him that would be the case. But I would have been lying.

"If you keep on like this, you'll only get weaker," I said. "I gave you my power at times, but all I've really ever done is sapped energy from you to regain my strength. It's not a two-way street, Nero. You're draining yourself by trying to stay at the surface, just treading water, wearing yourself out." Reaching over, I rested my hand to the top of his head. He felt real. Alive. He didn't pull away.

When I had given him my power, I'd been left weak and drained. He must have felt that way all the time now. I was making him suffer again.

"In this state, all you can do is flit around in memories," I said. "You should… rest, Nero. Just let go. I won't harm anyone in your place, so please."

A smile wavered on his trembling lips. "So this is it then?" he said, closing his eyes just as tears fell from them. "This is all I get?" With a slow exhale, he relaxed under my touch. His voice fell to a fading whisper. "I'm so sick of the cold. God, I miss the sun."

As the shadows began to bleed out over the rest of the house, my heart began to race. In a surge of panic, I searched for something more to say to Nero, but the darkness burned everything away far too quickly, including him. He slipped from my grasp into the abyss.

I jolted awake to my skull throbbing. Dante rubbed at the side of his head, his nose scrunched against his own pain. "Must have been one hell of a bad dream," he grumbled.

I blinked, looking down at my hand. I could no longer recall how Nero felt under my touch. Perhaps I'd imagined it.

"It's nothing," I said. "We should get back to that Hell Gate so we can destroy it before more demons spawn."

While Dante complained about wanting breakfast, against all better judgment, I reached out again to relinquish control of my left eye.

But no presence was there to take it from me. No soft voice taunted me. Nero must have finally found sleep. That had been what I'd wanted from the beginning, yet the realization left me sickeningly alone.

I looked up, realizing Dante had gone silent, to find him staring at me. I couldn't read his troubled expression. I used to be able to read him so well. "What are you thinking about right now?" I asked him.

Again, he put on that fake smile I hated. "I'm just thinking about how I can't do anything right."

I understood. Neither could I.

"If nothing else, we can go destroy that gate," I said.

Dante's smile eased into something more genuine. "Yeah, I think we can do that."

Next chapter should be the last one.