Chapter Text
After that, Nero had returned to the shop. He’d taken an extra long warm shower to combat the cold, while Dante had ordered three pizzas: one for each of them. Of course, Lady had tagged along to reassure Nero.
Dante was glad to see that Nero had started to trust Lady. The roles had flipped, now. Lady had reassured Nero about Dante, and helped him regain the kid’s trust.
She was a little rough around the edges, but hell, so was Dante.
Nero eased back into things with Dante, beginning to trust him again. And everything felt right in the world once more.
Things didn’t stay calm for long. Almost as soon as Nero had settled back in, things fell apart once again.
Dante had been napping at his desk, enjoying a rare patch of sunlight. He’d let the warmth lull him to sleep, allowing it to chase away the cold from his skin. The second he’d stirred, stretching out his stiff arms with a groan, Nero pounced. Dante had not even had the opportunity to peel the magazine from his face yet.
“You’re my father,” the kid said with certainty. He said it with anger, too, like the sentiment had been brewing for a while.
Dante blinked, still half asleep. “Wha’?” he managed. He peeked out from underneath the gun magazine.
Nero frowned, unimpressed. “We look the same, you know. I’ve never seen anyone else with hair like mine… until you. You showed me you're a demon- that’s why my arm is like this.” Nero gestured to the blue scales on his right arm.
Had the kid grown a little? Now, Nero wasn’t that much shorter than Dante, when the latter was slouching in his chair. Who said pizza wasn’t good for development?
He pulled the magazine off his face, closing it and setting it on his desk. Dante thought for a bit, trying to explain himself without divulging too much information. How would he satisfy Nero without delving into who his father actually was, and why he wasn’t around anymore?
“That’s why you’re so helpful,” Nero said, his voice thick with accusation. “You’re guilty. You left me behind. You’re trying to make up for lost time! And you-you-“
“Kid,” Dante tried softly.
“You moved all the way to Redgrave to get away!"
“Kid!” he said firmly.
Nero finally stopped talking in favour of glaring at Dante.
“I’m not your father,” he said, because, while Dante didn’t know much about the situation, he was sure of that.
Nero glared. “Then who is?”
“I … I don’t know,” he said. Because he just couldn’t. All those years, and he still couldn’t talk about Vergil.
“You’re lying.”
Dante held up his hands.
“Stop it! Why do we look the same then? It can’t be a coincidence!” Nero snarled, unrelenting. He looked just like a young Vergil when Dante had gotten into his books.
“I don’t-“
“You do know! Stop lying!” Nero said sharply.
Dante sighed. Clearly, Nero wasn’t letting it go. “I’m your uncle.” Sure, he wasn’t 100% certain, but Nero had to be Vergil’s kid. Something inside him just knew.
“You’re… my uncle?” Nero asked, deflating with confusion.
“Yeah, kiddo, I am. And I didn’t know about you, alright? I really didn’t,” Dante sighed. He shifted in his chair.
Who could have guessed someone could’ve put up with Vergil long enough to have a freaking kid with him?
Dante nipped that thought in the bud because it twisted his brain something awful. Who knew Vergil could bag a woman?
Nero studied Dante’s face, looking for any sign of dishonesty. He must’ve seen the certainty on Dante’s face, because the kid finally nodded.
“Okay, I believe you,” Nero said.
Dante breathed a sigh of relief.
“But then… what about my father? What happened to him?” The fire in his eyes told Dante that Nero was not going to drop it.
And fuck, he just couldn’t. He could barely admit it to himself, drinking himself stupid when the thoughts emerged until they allowed themselves to be buried again. Until “You killed him. You killed him” stopped shaking the bars around his skull, begging to be let in.
“I… I don’t know,” Dante said eventually.
Some small, stupid part of him still couldn’t quite believe that Vergil was dead. That Vergil could die. He hadn’t seen the body, hadn’t allowed himself to look. Some childish part of Dante believed that maybe Vergil had survived it all. His twin was a cockroach. A cocky cockroach with an irritatingly nasal voice and a pretentious vocabulary. He’d survived the house fire, at eight, and protected himself against the horde of demons, somehow. He’d even survived hell, in his own way.
Again, Nero scrutinised his expression with that pair of hauntingly familiar grey eyes. Dante waited with baited breath, until Nero finally nodded. Dante breathed a sigh of relief.
“Alright,” Nero said. “In that case… I guess I could take the couch after all.”
Nero took a shower while Dante dug up some old blankets from the recesses of his storage cupboard. He even managed to find a pillow right at the back. He set up the couch, still a little in awe that Nero had finally taken him up on the offer.
Nero emerged, clean once again, and still in that same pair of grubby old clothes. Now that he knew he was more likely to accept, Dante figured it was about time he got the kid a new wardrobe.
“You from Redgrave?” Dante asked.
“Fortuna,” Nero said.
An added bonus to that revelation seemed to be that Nero finally trusted him with information about himself.
Dante whistled. “Damn, kid, how’d you get all the way here?”
“Took a ferry.”
“All by yourself?”
“I’m not five,” Nero mumbled.
“Yeah, but … still, that’s quite the trip.” The closest Dante had gotten to an age confirmation, then. He mentally checked that off, older than five.
“So,” Dante said. “Pizza for dinner?”
Nero nodded. “I’m starving.”
Dante slept better than he had since…. Since he was eight, probably. Nero was under his roof, safe and warm. For once, he didn’t have to worry about where the kid was, or if he was okay.
Nero’s snores from downstairs confirmed that he was alright, and bundled under the blankets Dante had dug out from the cupboard.
With a fuzzy, sleep-syrupy sort of happiness, Dante fell into a deep slumber.
Nero became a staple part of the shop, slotting into place like he’d been there all along.
“Devil May Cry,” Dante heard Nero say as he came back from the shower.
Dante scrubbed his hair with a towel and shot Nero a questioning look as the kid hung the phone up.
“They didn’t have the password,” Nero explained.
Dante ruffled his hair. “My new receptionist, huh? You accept payment in pizza?”
Nero pulled off his hand. “I just washed it!”
“Yeah?” He quirked an eyebrow. “With whose shampoo?”
Nero grumbled half-heartedly.
“You done your homework?” Dante asked.
“Yeah,” Nero said.
“Why don’t I believe that?” Dante said, taking a seat at his desk. “You want another police officer knocking at my door complaining about my poor fatherhood skills?”
Nero leaned against his desk and gave Dante an unimpressed look.
“Show it to me. I’ll help,” Dante said.
Nero scoffed. “Yeah, after you ‘helped’ with my English? I’ll pass.”
“My spelling is fine. It’s the dictionary that’s wrong!” He grinned at Nero, who offered a half smile back. “Fine, fine, maybe my English isn’t the best. But I’m good at numbers, you got maths homework?”
Nero nodded.
“Let me see it, then.”
Dante breathed a contented sigh. Nero was a little behind with school, his teacher had said, but he was smart and a hard worker, so he’d catch up soon. She’d offered extra lessons too, free of charge.
Nero returned with his maths book, showing Dante the sums. Division? Now that, he could do.
“So,” he said, starting with the first sum. “We both share eight slices of pizza, how many do we get each?”
“You’d eat all of them,” Nero says.
Dante chuckles, going over to the phone. “Guess we need pizza for demonstration, huh?”
One call later, and the two of them sat surrounded by boxes of pizza and Nero’s maths homework. Dante had never wanted to be a father, but the fun uncle? That, he could do.
The guilt still ate at him sometimes. Some days all Dante could see when he looked at Nero was how much he had taken from him, how much he had robbed him that fateful day in Mallet Island.
But on good days like this, when Nero looked up at him with a smile, face covered in cheese grease, his thought was that maybe fate had given him a second chance.
As much as he wished he could go back, save Vergil from running off on his own after the house fire, he can’t. Some nights Dante replayed that scene in his head, watching Vergil slash his hand and fall to hell a million times over, wondering what could’ve been if he’d caught him. Or even if he’d seen the amulet in time and stopped himself from hearing that sick guttural sound as his little brother had stabbed Vergil in the chest.
He couldn’t turn back the clock. But life had thrown the next best thing at him in the form of a scrawny little pizza thief. He couldn’t save Vergil, but now that his son was in his care and finally trusted him, Dante vowed he’d never fuck it up again.