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Chapter Text

The White Rabbit did not react to skewering like one would expect. Dante had plunged his sword into more than his share of demons, as was typical of a half-demon deep in the throes of denial (or so he assumed), and generally there was a lot of bleeding, screaming, begging, and flailing. Sometimes there’d be fighting, if he’d impaled himself something really fun. 

Smiling however was new. Yet there he was, dangling from Dante’s sword, blood raining from around the wound like a faucet left on, smug fucking mouth that had dared to utter Vergil’s name, curled up into a toothy grin. Then, one hand swinging up to grip the blade just before where it was piercing his skin, he threw his head back and laughed. 

The red tinge covering Dante’s vision shivered, receding just a touch, as he huffed out an irritated breath. He drew his tongue over his teeth, alarmingly sharp and crowded into his mouth and wow his tongue was scary long like this wasn’t it? …or conveniently long, depending on-

“When he comes for you,” Rabbit gasped through a torrent of discolored blood, eyes bright with mania and mirth. “And he’ll come, and he’ll tear you apart. When he makes you scream for the first time-” A pause marked by a wet rattling breath that seemed to shake the world around it; another hand lifted and grasped Sparda’s sword. 

“Who the fuck-” Dante asked, around tongue and teeth and the mouthwatering smell of blood in the air. 

“Remember it could have been different.” Rabbit said. A soft grunt and a wet squelch as the mutated human slid further, dragging himself deeper onto the blade. Blood rained down in soft, rhythmic drops. Dante blinked, rage very much banked because whoo, what the hell was This Shit? “Or not. Maybe it was always…this way. Should have been. You.” 

Lightning streaked the sky, exploding outwards into blue cracks. 

Rabbit was close now, close enough to smell the sour metal of his breath, close enough that Dante’s hands-claws-were dripping in ichor and strings of mutilated intestine, close enough to see eyes going glassy and blown wide pupils shrinking to pinpricks. A meaty, deformed hand clapped onto his shoulder, oddly companionable. 

The sky trembled, crashed, flashed blue and cold before plunging back into unholy red. The building beneath Dante’s feet rolled, rising and falling like waves, and cracked around them. Dante didn’t stumble, hulking body adapting to the movement. A frigid wind blew, rushing up his spine with a cold, wet lick.  

A scream, pained and high, drew his focus; the world ran blue. 

Lady? Was that-

“Dante.” Rabbit breathed, slow and shallow, hummed as his eyes rolled wildly in his skull, and smiled again. “It’s time to wake up.”

Dante’s brows, or where his brows would have been if he had them at the moment, furrowed. “What?” 

Piercing silvery blue eyes, brimming with inky fluid threatening to spill over, focused on him even as Rabbit’s head lulled and his body went limp. “Wake up, Dante!” 

Dante jerked up, fell forward to crash with a muted splash into thinking bitterly cold. He sucked in glass and cloying, choking fluid then gagged it out in an acrid, throat burning rush.

Thin, watery, blood flecked bile right onto someone’s polished black boots 

Awkward.

He looked up through burning eyes, finding it took entirely too long for the blurry figure at his side to take shape. And then it did take form, consolidating into something almost impossible for his mind to comprehend. It had been years, so many years, but he knew that face like he knew his own. Because he knew his own, really, even if it wasn’t exactly-

“Vergil?” His voice was foreign to him, gravely and weak, shaking on a single word. A heavy one. A word, a name, that he rarely allowed himself to think about let alone say out loud, a name that cut like glass to hear. 

Vergil cocked his head to the side, eyes giving away nothing as they swept over Dante, before he nodded once, mouth pressing into a thin line. “Can you stand?” 

Dante laughed, something quippy and vaguely offended on his lips because of course he could stand. Except he ended up trying to hack up all of his organs, or at least his stomach, forcing out more of the fluid that felt like ice shards coming back up. He became aware of a few things all at once: He was cold, aching cold, all the way down to his core. He was shivering with it, his skin was blue tinted, his breath was coming out as mist. 

He was soaking wet and, yep, naked as hell. 

He felt…drained. Hollowed out, like after a serious throw down where he’d taken some serious hits and healed up from something that would have pulped a human and was in need of no less than 4 large pizzas to even begin feeling normal, but also nothing like that at all. Hollow and thin and stretched out under his skin, ill fitting and crammed in, trapped in a not right body that was shaking more and more violently with each passing moment. 

He cast a look around, registering the flashing red light and screaming alarms around him. The strewn bodies, clad in familiar armor. Blood splatter that would put the entire Abstract Art wing of any museum to shame, staining the air with a heady metallic scent. 

His mouth, his gums, ached around his teeth. 

He couldn’t stand. 

Vergil- Vergil, his not dead brother who Dante had seen die with his own lying eyes- stepped forward without a word and, while Dante let out shrill noise he’d never EVER admit to if it was brought up, even under threat of death, scooped him right up like he weighed nothing. In testament to just how fucked up Dante was he didn’t bother putting up more than a toothless protest before limply settling into his brother’s arms. His body was too heavy, too strange, for more than that. 

A smoky, cool scent filled his nose, comforting in a way that drained what energy was left in him

“You ever mention this,” He slurred with a thick, clumsy tongue, eyelids too heavy to keep open. “And I’ll kill you.” 

Vergil’s chest vibrated beneath his head, his low laugh warm to Dante’s ears. “You’ll try.” 

---

What was it in him, Vergil wondered as he tucked his brother close, that made him want to sink his claws into Dante’s skin and tear it apart with the same intensity he wanted to sink his teeth into the pale, curved column of his neck and taste-flesh of his flesh and blood of his blood-? It itched, he decided, it itched terribly. 

He paused before through Yamato’s tear and out of the room his twin had been contained in, eyes cutting to the bleeding form propped up against a far wall. The woman who’d betrayed Dante, put Sparda’s sword and Eva’s pendant in the hands of filthy humans, killed countless fleeing demons, and scarred White Rabbit. She seemed lesser now, holding her stomach closed in an attempt to keep her insides where they belonged, blood and black grit bubbling from her lips and nose. Hardly worth his continued anger or effort now that he had everything he’d come for. 

She would live, if she was careful and smart, and would have his boredom with her to thank. 

Still, a short chat wouldn’t cost him anything but time. 

“Does it bother you, knowing that if you had listened to The White Rabbit instead of slaughtering like the most bestial of demons that none of this would have come to pass. Your team may have lived.” He watched her, considering the way her already pale skin lost its color and her face twisted with hatred. “Rabbit’s sons would have a father. Maybe the youngest boy would be free of this place before it kills him.”

And there it was; the faltering in her expression, the uncertainty in her eyes, so stricken for just a moment before she made herself hard again, spitting and swearing. Proof that she would be haunted. 

Rabbit would have approved, assuming he could be talked around from his ever present murderous impulses where that woman was involved.

On to more important things then. “If you come near what belongs to me again I will bury you so deep in this realm that the nightmares your father left you with will become the sweetest dreams.” He tossed the words over his shoulder carelessly, already through the tear and in the quarters he occupied in Mundus’ spiraling tower. She shouted after him, a waste of energy she could scarcely afford, the words falling on disinterested ears. A brush of fingers against the hilt of his blade and the tear sealed behind, leaving only the faint taste of ozone in the air. 

It mixed nicely with the burnt sugar and firewood scent wafting from Dante. 

He bypassed the door to his own chambers and instead pushed into the dimly lit one that held his greatest weaknesses. They were asleep, curled up together on Nero’s bed, white hair forming twined hallows around their heads. 

Griffon, perched watchfully on the top of the headboard, clicked its curved beak. Inky wings flapped as the familiar rose up and floated closer. “Boss. Looks like it went well. …assuming you intended to come back with your arms full of passed out omega. No judgement or anything, not my business what you’re into, that’s not what you pay me for. Not that you pay me in anything aside from my continued existence which ain’t so bad.” 

The creature settled on his shoulder, head cocking as he peered down at Dante. “Looks a lot like you.” 

“He is my brother.” Vergil laid the other man onto the empty bed. “The one who killed White Rabbit.” 

Griffon made a low shrieking noise. “Those are some very heavy fucked up family dynamics you’ve got there, boss. Gonna kill him?”

Vergil pressed a fingertip to Dante’s frigid skin and, an echo of a whisper of a warm hand and golden hair making him wince, pulled a blanket over the shivering form.. “I think I’ll keep him. Nero and Vito will need another father.” 

Not that White Rabbit had been a father so much as a vessel and unlucky final participant in Mundus’ plans to breed Vergil and continue the Sparda line under his terms. Where other attempts had resulted in deaths, most omega demons unable to survive a mating or unable to carry his seed to term, the Rabbit had been a different matter. It took, it seemed, a hybrid to mate a hybrid. 

Useful information.

“That’s very normal of you.” 

Griffon had taken on more of Vergil’s humanity in his creation than had been intended and it often showed in his less than agreeable personality. He shot the familiar a bland look then gestured to the boys. “Return.” 

The familiar alighted with a grumble, body dissipating into an inky shadow the moment its razor sharp claws pulled from Vergil’s skin. It slipped across the floor and over the bed; Vito’s hair darkened from the roots to the midpoint and dark runs raced across his skin. The boy stirred, shifted, and burrowed closer to his brother, nose pressing into Nero’s neck. His skin pinkened, Griffon’s energy, siphoned from Vergil, revitalizing his weak body. He crossed to them and, moved by a force he couldn’t name, bent to carefully loop the pendants, once again broken apart, around their necks. 

Vergil looked from his sons to his brother and, hand rubbing absently at his chest, decided it would do for now. He would report to Mundus of his success in retrieving Dante but failure in retrieving the pendant and sword, and then he would sleep. 

After rest he would have a clearer idea of what to do with Dante. 

And what to make of the strange, aching pressure behind his ribs. 

Chapter Text

Dante was not in his bed and he wasn’t alone in whatever room he was in. It wasn’t the first time he’d woken up somewhere unexpected so that didn’t freak him out but if the softness of the bed, decidedly not sagging in the middle or consisting of a mattress directly on the floor if his guess was right, told him he’d upgraded for a change of pace. Nice sheets too, soft against the skin and huh, that was a lot skin they were touching. A lot. 

All of it, actually, which was a little more unusual but still, not the first time. 

“Come on V, if you don’t eat your dad will melt me. Again. Do you know how much that freaking hurts, kid? Do not reccomm- No, Nero, get down from there!” 

There was a taste of sulfur to the air, so faint that even Dante would barely pick it up. Not the most pleasant thing but in his line of work making it home with his hair reeking of smoke, rotten eggs, and demon guts was standard. A little sulfur was nothing to open his eyes or reach for his gun about. 

Not that he knew where his gun was. Or sword. 

Hopefully he’d ask whoever it was chatting away about lunch for it and they’d give it back without it becoming a thing where they called the cops and he had to run away naked into the night. Or afternoon. Morning? He generally had a great sense of time but now there was nothing. Or, rather, there was a cloying, hazy something, like trying to hear while underwater. 

A thump and a squawk like yelp was followed by a childish giggle and a soft pattering of feet. 

The presences nearby weren’t setting off his finely tuned sense of self preservation at least, so that was probably fine too. Contrary to what some believed he had a good nose for danger and things coming at him with the goal of ripping out his spine through his eye sockets. He just preferred to run towards those things, rather than away, but that was very different from not being aware. No matter what Enzo may have

Memory was a funny thing, always finding a way to come screaming back when you least expected or wanted it. One second you’re wondering about the thread count of the sheets and the next you’re sucking in a breath around a wave of crushing pain and guilt. 

Nothing like reliving the death of one of the few people who he could trust- and yeah, trust to be a scumbag who put himself first 99.9% of the time but that was still Trust, it was still Something and it was gone now, slipped between his fingers like water, like blood- to fuck up a guy’s day. His teeth, too large for his mouth all at once, ground together as a sickly mixture of rage and grief hit him as fresh as it had when Rabbit had driven that damned sword into Enzo. Enzo taking a hit for him was a joke, something they both knew would never happen in a million years because he just wasn’t that guy, but there had been no humor in the blood covering his hands and spilling out over the gravel. 

Things have moved too fast after that to deal with it. White Rabbit ‘dying’, the asshole vice president who Dante very much hadn’t voted for turning on him, Rabbit coming back and dying again after spewing a bunch of life altering and cryptic shit then Lady…

Lady. 

Had she shot him? In the back?? While he was taking his ‘just saved the human world from being merged with the literally toxic demon world’ victory lap?

Who did that? 

You really couldn't trust cops, could you? 

And then. Then. 

Grogginess and nausea. An endless parade of uniformed fuckwads poking and prodding at him, constant shocking pain and a haze over his brain, awake but not for what seemed an eternity. 

Ice. Dark. 

Vergil. Silvery-blue eyes, pushed back white hair, mouth pressed into a thin line and…warmth. Vergil had been warm. 

A wave of prickling cold rushed over him from head to toe and with it came a sense of…a presence. Heavy, pressing against him like a physical thing, seeking him out curiously, greedily. Power, pure oppressive power, curled around him, pinned him in place. Heat spread through his body to settle at his core, banishing the cold in favor of fire. Dante’s toes curled and a shaky gasp escaped his lips, very much blowing his ‘pretend to be asleep’ cover. 

“Stay away from him Nero, Uncle Daddy looks like he’s about to lose it. You know better than to play with unstable half-breeds.” 

The presence vanished as suddenly as it had appeared. 

Which was a good thing because somehow just as violating as being used as a living science experiment. 

…but with a more confused, slightly turned on aftermath. 

Post finding out he was half demon life just got more and more weird. 

The bed shifted. Dante opened his eyes warily and had about half a second to take in white hair, a little face with narrowed blue eyes peeking over the bottom edge of the bed framed by two tiny hands, one of which was covered in blue scales before the atmosphere shifted dangerously. The air crackled and burned, burnt ozone filling his nose, and static so dense he felt it baring down on him rushed over his skin, setting his hair on edge. A bird shaped shadow swooped from fuck only knew where to land between Dante and the…kid? Tiny demon? 

It was a huge ugly thing, black and iridescent like gasoline spilled over asphalt with a wicked, three pronged beak, talons made for tearing, and glowing golden eyes. Purple lightning sparked from its body in looping arcs. Not your everyday bird but not a demon type he was used to either. 

“Nero, go back to V.” The bird ‘said’, without moving its beak or actually making any sound at all and yet still Dante heard it, clearly. He felt how irritated and on edge the thing was, knew it’s thoughts like he knew his own; it was aware it wouldn’t win a fight but would do it’s damnedest if Dante made any move towards it’s boys-

He looked across the room. A second boy, Dante wasn’t really familiar enough with kids to guess at an age but the kid was pretty small, all told, sitting at a low table. Big green eyes watching him curiously, hair a familiar white shot through with chunks of black, holding a pencil in one hand and something that looked entirely too much like an eyeball in the other. 

Around the boy’s neck was a chain. From the chain dangled Dante’s pendant, a gleaming red in the warm light of the room. 

Pushing up happened without thought, body drawn towards the pendant with the same fervent need he’d felt the entire time it was out of his hands. 

“Shadow!” The bird shrieked. A shadow rose up from the ground in a bubbling geyser, growling animalistically. It twisted in on itself, condensing into a rippling ball with two red pinpricks of light suspended inside. Another beat and it stretched out, taking on the form of a hulking, snarling cat. It blocked Dante’s view of the boy, as clear a statement as if it had spoken. 

The rippling skin rising up to form wickedly sharp needles also said a lot, as did the feeling of protective fury draped over a deep well of calm radiating from the creature. 

A person would have thought Dante was the problem here, not the hair trigger demons or the tiny heirloom thief.

No one moved for a long moment. Disappointing; if the demons had attacked then he could just fight it and out and take what was his. Starting a fight against demons guarding some little kids and snatching his pendant back would be a bad look, even by his standards. 

“Hey, well. This is going well.” He said slowly. “Can we just establish that that’s my pendant over there? And since it’s mine-” 

“Where Pa?” A voice asked from past the cat. The bird huffed audibly, wings shaking. 

“Your dad is sleeping V, so how about we all just sit tight until the boss comes back?” This was directed at Dante with a distinctly unimpressed look from the bird.

“But about the pendant.” 

The bird sighed, beak parting and eyes rolling. “Take it up with your brother.” 

“Vergil. Who is also your boss, I’m guessing?” 

“Guess you’re smarter than you look.” 

The bird was an asshole. Considering what a hostile little jerk Vergil had been when they were kids that tracked. “And he dropped me wherever this is.”

“Mundus’ tower, in his shithole city, in the middle of the realm. Specifically Nelo Angelo-Vergil’s-wing.” 

Dante stopped, turned over how easy the exposition was and how he’d liked almost none of those words being strung together, and nodded. “And these tiny little…demon children are…Vergil’s?” 

He didn’t need to hear it really, he had eyes and was capable of connecting the dots on occasion. Vergil was here, in Hell, living in the tower of the Big Bad King of Hell- if he’d gotten his lore right- and it was pretty unlikely there were two white haired humanoids running around that weren’t related to them. Which meant his brother was a demon fucker but it seemed like that ran in the family. 

Of all the things to inherit from their mother. 

“Great, I think I’m all caught up.” Dante slipped from the bed with deliberate care to not seem like he was about to start throwing punches, taking the sheet with him for the sake of modesty he hadn’t realized he had until just then. The cat let out a low, rumbling growl, two spiked tails lashing behind him. “Down boy. Just point me in the direction of Vergil and I’ll leave you to your babysitting.”

“He’s…recovering.” The bird’s wings flapped what Dante was almost willing to swear anxiously. “Wasn’t like he had much of a choice, considering how Mundus likes to punish failed jobs.” 

The more he heard about this Mundus guy the more he wanted to cut his head off. 

“Recovering? He was hurt?” The jolt of rage that bubbled in his stomach was an old friend, stirred whenever his brother was brought up. 

The bird eyed him, an undercurrent of something calculating passing through its gaze. “Yeah, you could say that. Reporting to King Shit that he’d failed to retrieve the sword or those gems that power it-” Dante assumed they were ignoring that red and blue twinkling elephants in the room, currently swaying from the necks of Vergil’s sons. 

(From an orphan with no family to speak of to a resurrected twin, two nephews, and a potentially missing, potentially deadbeat dad in no time at all. The Sparda Family development was really coming along nicely, and not at all in a fucked up way, if Dante could say so himself.)

“Was never gonna go well. It was even worse when all he had to show for the effort was your frostbitten ass, considering-”

“Enough.” A door Dante hadn’t registered before swung open and hit the wall with a crack. 

Dante stared, hard, head empty of thoughts. Vergil. It was Vergil, it was…fuck. That foggy memory, the knowing, didn’t match up to really seeing him at all, it didn’t. 

He couldn’t. 

He didn’t so much sit down as collapse back onto the bed in a wordless heap, scarcely hearing the excited voices calling for ‘Pa!’. Vergil spared him a glance, brows lifting, before raking a hand through his hair, pushing the pale strands back. “Griffon, Shadow, there will be an addition to our contract. In the future you will respond to Dante the same as you would myself. He’s your master going forward.”

The cat snarled and, with one last lash of its tails, sank back into a pool of shadow. Dante watched, bemused, as it slunk back to the boy at the table and attached itself to outstretched fingers, slipping over and up the boy's hand and arm, leaving behind darkened nails and intricate patterns in it’s wake. The boy’s hair gained more black, draining down to leave only the tips white.  

“Take the boys to the bath-”

“No!” The scale-armed kid shouted, tearing out from where he’d been hidden behind the bird to launch himself at Vergil’s legs. “No bath!” 

Silvery eyes dimmed and, for less than a heartbeat, Dante saw nothing but ice on Vergil’s face. It was a mirror, a dark pit of nothing at all, complete blankness etched into Vergil’s features; Dante twitched, sucking in a breath, muscles coiling to- 

Then Vergil was putting a hand on the boy’s head and tutting in a way that made Dante think of their mother’s gentle scolding. His heart squeezed painfully in his chest.  “Go, Nero. Look after Vito for now and we’ll go to the courtyard after. I need to speak to Dante.”

That earned him a black look from the kid, as if Dante was the source of all his life’s problems, but it didn’t take anymore urging for him to toddle over and take his brother’s hand before following the gliding bird out of the room. Vergil watched them go and Dante watched him watch. He took in his brother, noting the slight difference between them. Vergil was like looking at a reflection slightly distorted; his hair shorter, his eyes paler, the shadows beneath them deeper, his mouth thinner. He was less broad but not, Dante thought, remembering how easily he’d been picked up and carried, weak. There was strength in those arms, in the trim waist, in the long fingers that rested seemingly absently on the pommel of the sword sheathed at his hip. Vergil was dressed well, a blue button down and slacks, but his feet were bare, pale skin stark against the dark lavastone of the floor. 

The flush of heat from earlier returned, a punch to his gut and licks of creeping warmth radiating out. 

He tore his gaze away, pressing a hand to his eyes.

No. Absolutely not. He was not getting hot and bothered over his long lost brother. Sure, Vergil was hot but that was by virtue of being Dante’s twin, not anything else. It was appreciation, not something that should have his cock stirring under a sheet that would hid nothing. 

“Dante.” Vergil’s voice was low and smooth, different for Dante than it had been for the children. Dante looked through his fingers. Vergil crooked a finger, beckoning and, like a puppet on strings, he was up and walking towards him. 

Vergil’s mouth quirked up into a half smile. 

----

“It is unfortunate that we lost the hybrid,” one of the white coats admitted, shrinking away slightly when Baines turned his irritated gaze on him. “And the items but! As they haven’t been used yet, and considering what we’ve learned of demons since the invasion began I don’t think we have much to worry about.” 

Baines stared across the table at the collection of nervous men and women, all on edge since their most secure facility was raided and Dante was snatched with very little fight on their end. Only Mary had survived and it was unlikely she’d be of any use anytime soon, her organs so damaged it was a miracle she had survived to the operating table at all.

She would make a good subject for their latest project, a little something conceptualized after hearing her report of how the White Rabbit had sustained himself with demon blood, and fueled by material taken from Dante. God had greater plans for Mary than a simple death, it seemed. 

“Explain.” He demanded, exasperated when their simpering didn’t allow for more information. 

“Well,” A different white coat started, eyes darting around wildly. “Demons don’t often give birth to twins. They consider it an abomination and believe it halves potential strength. If they had been raised by demons, the sons of Sparda likely would have been encouraged to compete and the stronger would have consumed the other.” 

A mousy looking woman nodded enthusiastically. “Yes, yes, it’s an instinctual drive, from how our subjects have explained it. A need to combine what should have always been a whole, to take the other in. Considering Dante’s weakened state, and the clear brutality of the one who rescued him, it stands to reason that he won’t be an issue and without two brothers the sword might not be a problem either.” 

Baines frowned, mulling that over. It would be unfortunate to lose Dante completely, his genetic code had proven useful so far and may have continued to be so. But if the alternative was him running loose with no loyalty to their cause then death at the hands of the other hybrid was preferable. 

Cain and Abel, playing out once again. There was something fitting to that. 

“Or they’re fucking.” The woman added, mouth pressed into a thoughtful moue. A deafening hush fell over the room. She blinked rapidly, cheeks pinkening. “Err. Copulating? Some of the subjects suggested that could happen but between opposite gender twins, mostly. You know. As an alternative method of ‘becoming one’ again, a sort of primal directive to breed. But the sons of Sparda are both male so that seems unlikely. Thankfully.”

“Yes,” Baines agreed dryly. “Thankfully.” 

Chapter Text

As kids Dante had always had a nasty habit of following behind his brother, moved by unshakeable faith in Vergil and a desire to make his prickly twin happy with him. There had also been plenty of times when he veered towards the opposite, stubbornly digging in his heels even when he knew it would lead to a fight; more often than not moments like that came on the heels of Vergil ignoring him in favor of books or ‘lessons’ in the basement kitchen with their mother. Dante hadn’t had patience for either of those things but he’d also hated anything that took Vergil’s attention away from him. 

Not that Vergil had been much better, sulking bitterly and starting fights if Dante spent more time at sword practice or played with the pack of wolfdogs that lived on the estate instead of him. Dante had seen a lot of terrible things but nothing compared to a cranky Vergil who wanted attention. 

It was so easy, like breathing, to come when Vergil called that Dante didn’t realize he was doing it until he was standing in front of his twin, looking ever so slightly downward to meet Vergil’s eyes. Then lower to catch the fleeting, triumphant smirk curving Vergil’s lips.

Okay, that was fucking irritating. 

A childish part of him that was closer to the surface than it should have been at his age delighted in ending up taller. 

The less childish parts of him were, for lack of a better term, crash and burning. A hundred thoughts were warring in his head, demands to know how Vergil was alive and where he’d been all this time, how had he ended up in the demon world and for how long, how had the White Rabbit had ended up with the amulet and Vergil’s fucking blood, why they were apparently in Mundus’ tower, what the hell was going on with those kids, how had Vergil found him, what was happening with the humans-

“You need clothes,” Vergil’s eyes dipped downwards as his eyebrows rose pointedly. Dante looked too, remembering belatedly his state of undress. “And food.” 

Dante opened his mouth to refuse, to get the answers he needed, but his stomach chose that moment to rumble fiercely. He sighed loudly; betrayed by his own body, again! First freaky demon shit and demon triggers and now giving Vergil the satisfaction of being right. 

His brother’s lips curled upwards again, a snapshot of humor that smoothed over just as quickly as it happened. “I have everything you need here, Dante. I’ll take care of everything.”

Why did hearing that give him the creeps? 

A warm hand clasped his arm and pulled him towards the door; the shock of heat against his skin, the weight of Vergil’s hand on him stole Dante’s ability to speak. He’d already known it was Vergil, there had somehow never been even a moment of doubt, a rightness having settled deep in his being the moment his brother had walked into the room, but feeling was different than seeing. The warmth, the pressure, all the signs of life pressing right against his skin. 

Dante’s head spun. There was nothing to do but be tugged along, eyes locked on the long fingers curled around his arm. 

Somewhere Enzo was laughing at something so simple shutting him up.

Outside of the room was a corridor, dark stone from top to bottom, lined with burning torches and shut doors. It was long in both directions and curved into shadows with seemingly no end with walls and an arched ceiling so high it was dizzying. The thick webbing spiraling overhead and the multiple glowing red eyes blinking out of the inky darkness was a little concerning. 

“Phantom.” Vergil said, gaze following Dante’s. “A potential familiar. For now it likes to skulk around and bite the heads off of invaders.” 

Dante nodded like that wasn’t a problem, desert dry mouth forming words in spite of the storm in his head. “So you’ve got your kids some interesting pets. Fun.”

“There isn’t much difference between my familiars and the hellhounds mother kept on the estate. I suspect the binding method was different, we never made it to summoning rituals, but the concept is the same.” Vergil said conversationally, with seemingly no regard for the bomb he’d casually dropped into Dante’s lap. 

“The what?”

“Hellhounds.” Vergil’s hand moved away from Dante’s arm, finger tips dragging along his bicep with a slowness that could only be called exaggerated. Dante didn’t have time to process that, the shiver that raced down his spine, or the odd bereft feeling at the loss of contact before the hand returned, settling on his lower back and pushing him forward. His stomach flipped as calloused fingers drifted over the base of his spine. He twisted around even as he was moved forward, trying to put eyes to where Vergil was touching him. 

Had they touched like this before, when they were kids? He remembered a fair amount of furious wrestling and sparring, the occasional lashing out that ended up with one of them being thrown through a wall or door or table-

Not so much…whatever this was. 

No one just *touched* Dante, not since their mother. 

Dante swallowed, frost and smoke on his tongue, and licked his lips without thought to chase the taste. Then, shaking his head, frowned over at his brother. “Has anyone ever told you that you’re a little handsy?” 

“Rabbit never complained.” Vergil said mildly. “There isn’t anyone else who has been that close to me and is still alive to speak of it.”

Dante blinked. Blinked again. Tucked some of it away into a ‘do not touch’ box deep in his mind and surged on. “Rabbit? As in tall, mangled, deeply disturbed, Alice in Wonderland cosplayer? That Rabbit?” 

Vergil’s eyes cut across to Dante. “That isn’t how I would describe him, but yes, ‘that Rabbit’ who, I understand, you cut in half with our father’s sword. Excessive. I can’t imagine how I’ll explain to Nero and Vito that their uncle killed their other father.”

“In my defense,” Dante said because what the fuck was he hearing? “He was doing a lot of murder and dimension merging. Blew up a plane with me on it. Contracted a lot of demons to try and kill me. Was doing some mad scientist shit. Murdered my only friend. And stole my amulet.” 

And had spoken Vergil’s name which everyone knew was the one thing you didn’t go around doing but Dante didn’t see what mentioning that would gain, considering all of the unwanted revelations he was getting. Bad enough that he had to contend with his dead brother making babies with some demon but now it wasn’t even some demon but a psycho furry with delusions of world destruction. Who he’d killed! 

He wasn’t sure which of them should have been more mortified but he was leaning towards Vergil. Of all the potential crazy out there to stick his dick into that’s what he had gone with? 

Not that Dante’s track record was pristine but the worst any of his bedmates had ever done was try to kill him; usually after but there had been one merc who’d tried to choke him out during. He’d been kind of into it, actually, until his oxygen deprived brain caught up and realized it wasn’t a kinky game. A real waste of a wild time that had been.  

Taking out the barrier between worlds, undoing the legacy and protection for humanity their father had left behind, and shooting up demon blood to the point of horrific mutations was a little different. 

What had Vergil seen in that guy? Was there something about the unhinged gleam in his eye that got his brother going? Was batshit crazy and ugly as fuck Vergil’s type? 

Why was he thinking about this? 

Why was it pissing him off? And it was; a slithering, oily pit of irritation was taking root in his gut and his teeth were just a touch too sharp against the tip of his tongue. 

“I thought you might take that badly.” His brother said, expression thoughtful. “You were very possessive of your things as a child. You bit off my finger for wearing your coat once.” 

“It grew back!” A pause as they both looked at Vergil’s hand, with five intact fingers; Dante winced. Looking back on it his insistence of being fully human, with superhero type upgrades, had been pretty laughable. Human children did not bite off their twin’s fingers like little feral monsters and then sit up all night watching it fix itself while their mother burned herbs and cursed their father’s existence in the background. 

Not exactly wholesome and normal to say nothing of the part where demons had stormed their home and laid waste to just about everything. 

Dante pulled away from Vergil, gritting his teeth at the way some part of his brain howled at the loss of contact (getting in touch with his demon side had made him all kinds of weird and it just got stranger and stranger).

“Rabbit had your necklace. Your blood. He knew exactly what to do with it.”

Vergil’s answer came without hesitation, voice cool as a blade. “I gave them to him. I told him how.”

Dante blinked hard. “…You what? You— why the hell would you—” His fists curled at his sides, nails biting his palms. “Don’t tell me you were helping that freak jumpstart the goddamn apocalypse.”

Vergil’s gaze flickered, silver flashing red. He didn’t flinch. “It was my plan.”

The words landed like a sword point between them. Dante’s chest clenched; every sharp retort died in his throat. For a second all he could hear was the rasp of his own breath, teeth aching with the urge to bite down on something, anything.

“Do you even hear yourself?” he spat finally, voice rough. “Taking down the barrier would’ve gutted humanity. Wiped everyone out. Our father—”

“My son is dying.” Vergil cut across him, calm as if he’d been waiting for this exact moment. “Rabbit thought it a side effect of his own hybrid nature. But I see it. This air eats him alive. I will not watch Vito choke the way Father left us to choke on the consequences of his actions. I will not abandon him.”

Dante’s anger faltered, knocked sideways by the bluntness. He swallowed, throat dry, head swimming. For a beat he could only stare at Vergil—the brother he thought dead, who now stood here declaring genocide like it was strategy.

Having a sick kid was dirty pool. What could Dante say against that? 

“…At least,” Dante said finally, voice thin with disbelief, “it isn’t just daddy issues.”

Vergil’s mouth curved—half-smile, half-warning. “Not just.”

Easy agreement, smooth as silk. He pushed against the door and slipped inside, leaving Dante to follow. Which he did, after taking a wary look up to find those blinking red eyes had followed them down the hall. 

The room was bigger than his apartment and nicer, if stone, red fabric, and Victorian furniture was a person’s vibe. His eyes swept over the sitting area, couches and chairs of wood and deep red fabric arranged around a roaring fireplace, on one side, a huge four poster bed with heavy curtains drawn shut around it and heavy looking wooden furniture at the back of the room, and the folding screen hiding away the furthest corner, faintly surprised at how normal it looked. Not a single demon spider or tray of eyeballs to be seen. 

“Clothes in the wardrobe. Bath behind the screen. I’ll see about food.”

“When you say food-”

Vergil made a noise that bordered on laughter. “Don’t ask questions you’ll regret.” 

Fuck his life, he was absolutely about to eat some freaky demon bits wasn’t he?

Still, it would serve until he figured out what he’d missed while on ice and what to do next. They needed a way out of this shithole of a world, obviously. He wasn’t sure what he was going to do with a vaguely genocidal twin and two little demon kids, one of whom had a blue arm, once they got there but that was a problem for future Dante. Just like deciding how he felt about killing his brother’s…boyfriend? Husband? Co-parent? After foiling their joint plan that may have had the ultimate end goal of getting their sick kid out of Hell. 

Yeah. 

That was probably going to keep him up at night. 

Was he supposed to apologize?

---

Dante smelled bothered. The burnt ozone and fire of his scent was turning sour and acrid as he looked around the room; it made Vergil’s skin itch. He wanted to reach out, to smother Dante in his scent as he’d done while carrying him from that human facility, to push and hold and bite until there was only fire and the faint honeyed sweetness of arousal coming from his brother. 

It likely wouldn’t be appreciated. Dante would fight it. 

Vergil would win, ultimately, their natures demanded it, but it would be a vicious fight. Dante would make him fight claw and fang for it. 

He licked over his eye teeth, knowing that tearing what he wanted from Dante’s flesh would be the most amazing thing he’d ever done. Subduing a mate was, if you believed the alphas lucky enough to do so, like nothing else.  

Soon. When Dante was recovered. It wouldn’t mean anything unless they were both at their best. 

Mundus had been surprisingly pleased with the idea, once he’d finished making his displeasure with Vergil-with Nelo Angelo-known. He’d let his other generals vent their hatred-for Vergil, for Sparda, for the humans- on him while ordering him to not defend himself until his body was little more than meat and splintered bone. Then, when he’d pulled himself together to drag himself back to his quarters to sleep and heal, he’d wished him luck in making Dante submit. 

It would be worth it, the demon king said with a disgusting smile splitting his face, to add more Sparda spawn to his ranks. The quiet order had settled into Nelo Angelo’s bones, twined with his blood and marrow, locked behind his teeth and burned into his brain, becoming part of his being as all things Mundus demanded of him did. His master yanked on his strings, jerked him upright and to attention, wound him up like a favorite toy, then let him go to watch what happened next. 

Vergil pushed against it, twisted it around to find holes, fought back Nelo Angelo’s cold, consuming desire to obey. 

He was exhausted and…Dante was upset. 

“White Rabbit lived like a demon.” 

Dante startled, stood up straighter as his head whipped around. “What?” 

“Fighting each other, dying or killing each other, taking everything they had in victory, that’s how it works here. Rabbit knew that when he fought you.” Vergil said. “He wouldn’t mourn you if he’d won, he would have just taken all you had to offer, picked your bones clean, and moved on.” 

In theory. In reality Rabbit wouldn’t have wanted to risk Vergil’s retaliation. It was one then to set Dante up to have his head blown apart and something else completely to have actually killed him. 

Dante made a face. “That’s a great…baby daddy you had there.” 

“It’s a good thing his personality was of little interest to me.” Vergil said dryly. 

“Eww.” 

“Don’t be a child.” Dante, childishly, stuck out his tongue. Vergil very seriously considered biting it off and swallowing it. It wasn’t as if it wouldn’t grow back but, no, that would be a misstep. Dante stank of his humanity and humans, generally, didn’t do such things. “We were compatible and had common interests.” 

In so far as falling into Mundus’ hands and being amusing playthings were common interests. A pair of hybrids of complementary dynamics, provoked into the peak of their breeding cycles with potions and magic, forced to mate under their master’s greedy gaze. Even keeping Nero and Vito had been a matter of Mundus thinking it was prudent to keep Vergil’s children where he could always see them, a constant silent threat hanging over their heads. 

Even Rabbit getting away had hinged more on Mundus’ disinterest after Nero and Vito had proven to be ‘disappointing specimens’, making it not worth the effort to run the breeding experiment again. 

Dante was a new variable, Vergil’s other half in every way, and more likely to produce what Mundus was seeking. 

“You lived. That means you take his place, take what was his,” The two sides of him said together, a rare agreement. “Forget him like you would anyone else.” 

Dante’s face did something unreadable, eyes narrowing and mouth pressing into a thin line. “How long have you been here, Vergil?” 

A complex question. He could say since he was plucked from their home, more dead than not, and brought through a rip between the worlds. He could say since Mundus had gotten tired of the fight, the running, of the useless rebellion and took it upon himself to break Vergil into pieces, plucking free his memories, his rage, his heart, and rebuilt him into his favorite doll general. He could, even, say since the boys were born and something in Nelo Angelo’s armor had cracked, some instinct he hadn’t known he had rising up to wedge it open further bit by bit, making him someone new once again. 

Lifetimes.

“Long enough.” 

Dante’s scent bled bitterness.