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The darkness was a whore, spreading her legs across the landscape. She clawed with gnarled shadows, stretched her fingers past her domain and reached into the hearts of men, twisting and turning- a boon of visions, a knowledge of what hides in the creeping depths for any who dare to look.
There are some who can see through her, some for whom the darkness bends, for they have walked the path where even that grasping bitch dare not tread.
Dante, son of Sparda, brother of Vergil- Vengeance made flesh in a bloody reckoning.
He welcomed her triumph over the light, because the dark mother offered nothing but truth- but the light, it could be refracted, reflected, channeled to be anything that you wanted it to be.
“There’s nothing in the darkness,” Eva had said, “nothing that isn’t there in the light.”
But she’d forgotten to tell him that only in the vast nothingness of that same darkness, could he see the truth. The light had a cruel fragility, one misstep, and it shattered like so much glass to be scattered in the wind.
When even twilight had passed and Dante was alone with the purity of his guilt, he knelt on the cold stone floor of the chamber- prepared to do his penance.
The mirror was his witness, his apostle. It knew all of his dark secrets and held them dear. And Dante could imagine that in some way, it was Vergil who watched him and accepted his nightly atonement- not the cold, polished and painted glass that reflected only his own image.
He’d never held much with ceremonies and the warrior’s code, not until he’d failed his indomitable twin. It was as if a flame had been snuffed into nothing, and he couldn’t let all that Vergil had been disappear into the unforgiving sands of time, as if he’d never been. So this, this was his homage, the pallid bust carved into the temple for all to remember.
Dante met his own eyes in the mirror, cold. And for a moment, he thought he could see Vergil, that face his own, but marked with that unidentifiable quality that made him different.
He drew Yamato, appraising the cool blade- held its point against his cheek. Dante closed his eyes, relishing this last touch of his brother against his skin. He offered up the taichi, bowing his head in honor of these ways that had never been his. Then Dante straightened, positioning the weapon’s tip at his stomach and steeled himself for the pain to come.
“My blood for yours, oh my brother.”
And he thrust Yamato inside of his devil flesh, his eyes closing and his jaw locked. It burned, this penetration- it pierced more than just the organic, it sliced into his very soul. But it wasn’t just the steel that was inside of him, it was Vergil- his fingers digging into him, Vergil’s teeth tearing at his insides and it was for Vergil’s seeking mouth that his blood spilled in stark slashes of crimson across the floor.
It was getting harder now, the wound healing before he could pull out his tormentor and savior. Already the flesh knit together as if there had been no trespass, and it wasn’t enough. He was becoming numb to the pain, and when that explosion of sensation had dulled to nothing but shades of grey, then what would he do? How would he feel his brother inside him then?
Dante rested his head against the cool relief of the floor, Yamato still lodged inside of him. He dreaded the separation, the removal of that unforgiving steel from his body. He would take that blade inside of him for all eternity if it would fill that emptiness that bore the name Vergil. Perhaps it would slice him, as his brother had, tearing and wrecking through his insides in that familiar way…
Disgusted with himself, Dante jerked the blade free and held it up in another act of supplication.
Forgive me, brother, for I cannot forgive myself.
In that moment came stark revelation. That cursed image of himself, it stood proud and indifferent.
It stood, while he knelt.
Dante stretched his hand out into the space before him, seeking that which he thought to never have again. Doubt clouded his mind with poison, and he knew, even as he reached out for that subreality, that it was a vision from Hell, sent to taunt him to submission.
The glass was a sparkling pool, eternal depths from which sprung the preternaturally hard marbled arms of death.
Flesh met flesh, and yet another corporeal darkness had escaped the fabled looking glass.
Dante had always thought that Hell would be hotter, not this frozen, arctic sea of nothingness that seemed to envelop him- seeping from the very touch of this doppelganger. He traced a hand over the hard line of the creature’s jaw, so familiar- still unmistakably set against him.
“Vergil,” The words were out of his traitorous mouth before he could force them back down his throat.
The silvery visage turned, blinding in ethereal perfection. There was a dark void in the frigid depths of that gaze, an eternal hunger that scorched from the inside out.
Yamato was within his reach, but Dante did not draw his brother’s weapon. He knew that this demon was not his brother, knew that it had been sent as his destruction. But he also knew that the taichi could shred the borrowed skin that it wore and he would have to watch his brother die. Would have to watch this time, as the light went out of those eyes, the hard and unforgiving mouth as it went slack, and the blood, that river of sacristy as it was loosed to flood in an unholy consecration across the floor. There would be no surcease of those memories, no kiss of Lethe to obliterate what he had done, and his ravenous guilt would be given fleshy realization.
No, it didn’t matter that this hellspawn was not Vergil. It didn’t matter in the least.
Sparda damn him.
Mundus damn him.
And God damn them all. Because if he didn’t look into that emptiness, it could be Vergil.
Redemption was not so fey a mistress in the end- to go into that mystic darkness with Vergil a whisper on bloodstained lips. All that he had ever known, all that he would know was Vergil, a scar on his memory- his first awareness had been his brother, and now it would be his last.
“Vergil is dead.” Dante spoke softly, a monotone invocation.
The Redeemer looked at him through Vergil’s eyes and offered him Vergil’s fingertips, Vergil’s grasp, and Vergil’s flesh.
Dante had suffered for too long to deny himself this, no matter what it cost him.
He embraced him as brother, ignoring the rigidity of the sculpted musculature beneath him.
It was nothing, seemingly infinitesimal, but the shoulders of his double relaxed, and Dante wouldn’t have known it if not for that weight against him.
“Mundus will reward you well for this kill.”
“Yes.”
And the single word that fell from those lips was seraphim idolatry- for Dante would forsake all others for that scorpion tongue and raise him higher than any, if only to worship at that deceitful temple of his body.
Vergil was his. Had always been his. His essence, his soul- the other half of his own, and yes, even his image, it belonged to him. And this entity, created from primordial ether, if it bore Vergil, belonged to him as well.
Dante tangled his fingers into the other’s hair, jerking his head back and with the force of his body, had him against the wall.
“Are you here to kill me, hellspawn?” Dante asked, his mouth inches from that hard set mirage of his twin. “That flesh is mine. Vergil is mine.”
The other had no words.
“If you don’t talk, I’ll find other uses for that mouth.”
But Dante didn’t give him the chance to answer, and in truth, he could have spoken, could have cried his identity to the heavens- but Dante would not hear. Sound had ceased for him, as had time and all that binds reality into the tapestry of existence.
Dante crushed the silent mouth beneath his, crushed it, and invaded-pillaging with his body, burning with his hands. That leather clad body responded- more tinder for that consuming flame. But when those arms closed around Dante, it was kerosene, and the flame became a holocaust.
Years fell away in a tattered cascade of memories, and Dante imagined that this Vergil knew him, that his recollections rooted them into a sordid and bloody past, a place where they’d indulged youthful devil whims of touch and taste. Where he’d felt his brother’s cock pass his lips, where he’d tasted the salt of his skin and felt the tip of his sword slicing into his him, marking him for those few moments his flesh allowed him that ownership. Though it had been Vergil branding him, he’d seen the darkness in his brother’s eyes, heard the involuntary sounds of lust as their mouths had met, greedy and consuming.
Blood brothers. That which was twain becoming whole. The eternal joining of the circle.
Never ending.
Complete.
And Dante felt that in this creature’s embrace. It was a sharper blade than any that could be thrust past the shell and into the meat of him. It was a murder, a petit mort of an ideal. Because that’s all Vergil was now, the sum of his beliefs and what Dante carried with him.
And this coupling was a betrayal.
But Dante would have it. He would have it, and be damned. But he wouldn’t be alone.
He bit down, drawing blood from those cold lips. Dante savored it like a fine wine, glorying in the somehow familiar sting of that sweet copper.
And the other allowed it. Something Vergil never would have permitted. Neither would he have permitted Dante to force him to the floor, as he did this vessel- never would have arched into Dante with abandon, yearned for his dominance, not as this one did.
Control. Dominance. Power.
“Where did it get you, brother of mine?” He growled against the smooth whiteness at the back of Vergil’s neck. “Where is your power now?”
The Vergil growled back, pushing his hips against him.
Dante bit into the skin there, so white, so smooth, perfection. “It’s my turn to cut. Yours to bleed.”
He braced his forearm against the place where he’d bitten, his hair falling into his face, something else Vergil would never have permitted.
Dante could do nothing without remembering Vergil. He couldn’t sleep, he couldn’t eat, couldn’t fuck.
It enraged him. He was tired of being chained to an ideal for which he would never be good enough. It had always been Vergil.
It still was.
A primal sound escaped him, raw and desperate.
“Be with me, in my pain. Let it know you, as it knows me.” Dante tore at the red leather encasing the hard body beneath him, ripped at the staunch material until his fingers dug into heated skin beneath.
Was it Onanic tribute to find desire for this body that was as his own, to know its taste, its texture, its every nuance?
But here in this darkness, he was only going to take. Vergil owed him…
It wasn’t Vergil though, with his sculpted cheek pressed against the cold stone of the floor, wasn’t Vergil whose hands were pressed beneath his own thighs, wasn’t Vergil…wasn’t Vergil…wasn’t Vergil…
And it was his fault that it wasn’t. If only he’d been able to reach him, if only Dante had fallen instead…
He was thick with his rage and regret, his devil cock seeking that most secret and guarded of entrances.
Without preamble, without permission- he thrust inside the almost trusting flesh that had been bared before him, tore inside the way his guilt tore at him. There had been no kiss to lead the way, no taunting with the slow meticulous intent of his tongue to ease his body into the sheath that now gripped him with dissent.
He withdrew to thrust again, with no care for the body he entered. It was only demon flesh, after all.
The interior walls tightened, as if protesting.
“You will not keep me from what is mine.” Dante growled as he ripped through any defiance, blood now slicking the channel.
Dante realized he should have been more careful, as the blood offered a softer entrance. It was a softening that he did not want. The pain had been real, existential. An empirical definition of the fissure inside. A truth for this demon who sought to defeat him with it.
And still this other made not a sound. He offered himself, allowed all that Dante would have taken, but seemed to offer more with his silent endurance, though it could have been a taunt. But it didn’t matter. Not now.
All that mattered was this moment, the heat of their slicked bodies, and the emptiness that Dante still couldn’t fill, no matter how hard he drilled that false image of his brother beneath him.
He let the memory take him then, falling into that faded and worn time before- that singular molecule of water in an eternal sea that always slipped through his fingers.
Dante spilled then, his mouth set in a grim line, his eyes open and calculating. There had been no pleasure for him in this baseness, this primal ownership. He withdrew as he’d entered, with no pleasantry and an innate emptiness inside of him.
He was dressed by the time he spoke, “You’d better be gone when I get back. Or I’ll cut that face from you and send it to Mundus in a box.”
Dante was through the door without a thought, or a backward glance.
~~*~~*~~*
The doppelganger rose elegantly, sliding the leather up his hips as he went. He caught sight of himself in the mirror, and paused appreciatively.
He angled his head to the side for a moment, and then ran his hand through the platinum disarray, pushing it back from his face and watched it conform to a learned motion.
Satisfied, he took one last look around the room, finding something about it oddly his. It wasn’t the room itself, it was something else. He was loathe to leave, though he knew that he would be back. But when he returned, it would be to complete the task Mundus had set him.