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Nero flits in and out of dreams. His dreams spiral, from running with Kyrie in a meadow to being chased by a monster made of slime.
But no matter what dream it is, it always ends with his arm cut off.
Every single dream. No matter how innocuous it is, he always finds himself on the floor and clutching a bloodied stump. He doesn't fucking know shit, and whenever he looks at the hooded figure's face, it always ends up being someone he's never expected.
Sometimes it's Nico, for whatever weird reason. When the dream is especially rough, it's a person from his past: Agnus or Sanctus or even two halves of their faces combined grotesquely into one, coming back to torture him once more. Whenever their faces appear, it sends his heart jackhammering still into the next few dreams.
After dreams like those, he closes his eyes for reprieve to never see any face and feels that excruciating pain in numbness in a limb that was never there. But in dreams like those, Nero still sees those horrible faces.
He doesn't try to keep track of how many times his hand gets cut off. But no matter what, he could never forget that blow to the chest, the feeling of air rushing out of his lungs, the feeling of his back crashing into something loud, and now he's staring back up at the ceiling of the garage and he's not feeling any pain yet and knowing that when he turns to look at his arm it will be—
Gone.
Blood pooling on to the floor, sleeve ripped out and jagged and edges soaked with blood. His blood.
There's that feeling of sick and bile crawling up his throat at that feeling of wrongness—of something missing. Nero wants to throw up so bad, but as much as he wants to, he's never been able to throw up in his dream. All his head does is look up, eyes clear despite the pain clouding his focus, and see that face slightly covered by the hood, and it's Dante.
He doesn't know why there's a sharp pain searing through his chest. There's a feeling of despair, agony lancing through his bones at the thought of Dante doing this to him. And at the same time there's the sense of finality and acceptance, as if to say I knew it was you.
Nero doesn't know why, but as he's warped into yet another dream of riding a horse on a carousel, he knows. He knows. He knows. But at the same time, he doesn't know.
All he knows is that there is a feeling, a sense that Dante is at fault.
And he doesn't fucking know why his head would blame him, when all he's ever done was help him (albeit sarcastically and irritatingly). He doesn't know jackshit, but he knows that whoever did this to him is going to pay.
Nero blinks his eyes open for the first time in a long time.
And immediately closes it shut.
His head hurts immensely and he resists the urge to pinch the bridge of his nose. Nero feels a light breeze at the back of his neck and he huffs out.
He's looking up at the ceiling, sweat dripping down his temples. He realizes one hand is gripping the sheets too tightly and he releases them. He's still shivering, and the hand he raises too cover his eyes is shivering as well.
His necklace feels uncomfortably warm against his skin and he brushes away the hair covering his eyes to feel a modicum of comfort.
"Kyrie?" He calls out.
To his left, billowing curtains cover the windows and it's calm and peaceful until he sees a flash of something dark move and hears something snap shut. Nero jerks up in bed and kicks the blankets to the side only to face a slender youth dressed in dark leather.
"Took you long enough to wake up," he says drily and Nero has to adjust his assessment of the man. His body is covered in swirling dark tattoos and he holds a silver metal cane to his side. More or less of same age, dark hair blown slightly to the side because of the wind, his stance far too relaxed and open to be a demon hunter. Nero has to bite back that last thought because Dante is far too relaxed and open to be a demon hunter but he eviscerates all his enemies just the same.
The man appraises Nero and comments, "Your body seems to be just fine, as far as I can see."
He starts walking, his cane clacking along as he taps it to the floor. He has no reason to use a cane at his age, and that sets Nero tenser.
"The front door was closed. So I came in through the window," he adds nonchalantly as if normal people come in through the window. Nero's jaw sets because he feels his legs are practically atrophied with disuse and the fact that he doesn't know the odds in a fight makes him grit his teeth.
By then the man is in front of Nero, looking down and having slung his cane over his shoulder. His face twists into something that is almost impatience? and berates him with words that do the opposite. "No need to be so on guard. If I intended any harm, I would've done so before you woke up."
And isn't that the truth?
But it doesn't set Nero at ease when the man plops onto the bed, wood slightly creaking at the added weight.
"Call me V. That's my name."
Bullshit, he wants to call out. Who the fuck names their kid after a letter?
Another part of him tries to focus more on the situation at hand; the part that asks better questions. Who is this guy? One of the more sensible questions. Is he human?
A hand instinctively reaches out and he looks again at the stump wrapped neatly in gauze and at the blankets and sheets on his right splattered with dried blood. He remembers the dreams and he lets out a light 'tch' in indignation.
"Who are you?" Nero asks after a long pause.
"I know the demon that took your arm."
He looks up in alarm. That halts all trains of thought.
"That demon," the raven continues, "absorbed the Yamato, which was sleeping in your right arm, gaining incredible power."
The end of his lips appear in a smirk but it disappears as quickly as it came. "Right now, Dante is heading towards that demon."
"And why the hell do you know that?" Nero fires back.
There's a slight pause in this, almost as if he's weighing his answers. Almost as if he's weighing an untruth.
"I'm a devil hunter," is what he settles on. "I've been chasing that demon for...a long time. Which is how I learned about your right arm too."
His head hangs low, slouched and fiddling with the metal of his cane. "I also made a request to Dante. As for me alone defeating him would be simply impossible. I intended to borrow Dante's power and take him down, but he far exceeded my expectations."
Suddenly, he thrusts the handle of his cane toward Nero's chin and he jolts in surprise. "So come with me, Nero."
"Dante alone might be unable to win," he says with slight pause as if unbelieving of what he has just said. Dante? Not win? What a big fucking joke!
Nero voices this, grabbing the cane and sitting up higher in one motion. "Unable to win? Dante?"
Are you sure we're talking about the same Dante here, goes unsaid.
"Are you for real right now? You make a crappy comedian."
Instead of answering, 'V' raises an arm. The ink...moves? The ink forms into a shape of a bird and it shoots out.
"Boy, you are slow in the head!"
"Whoa!"
"The point is, he's real bad news so get preparing, you dumbass!" The bird punctuates with an unholy screech and isn't that a sight: getting yelled at by a talking bird just right after waking up. Nero's almost tempted to rub his eyes if not for the constant pecking that tells him that the bird just materialized from a guy's tattoos, is real.
"Huh? A bird?" It hits him. "No...a demon?!"
He catches the demon by his neck, attempting to wrestle with it to get it to shut up. More than once does he get stabbed by the bird's sharp beak. "Stop pricking me already, idiot!"
Nero clamps his hand down on the bird's beak, shutting him up effectively, when a voice rises again amidst the clamor.
"We have little time to spare," V says. "You should obediently come with me considering what might happen if you don't. Unless..." his voice trails off.
"You don't have the confidence to fight demons without that right arm of yours?" He says almost smugly.
He knows he's being riled up, so he knows that he won't answer. He still has many priorities. Kyrie and the children, need to be protected, for one. The business might suffer if he'd leave and—
"That's right, V!" The chicken pipes up irritatingly and Nero resists the urge to wring its neck. "Well, if he says he won't do it, nothing we can do about that? Let's tuck the kiddo back into bed and hurry on back—"
The chicken's voice is cut off by a sharp cry and Nero feels satisfaction in hearing the clack of his beak close.