Chapter Text
I stand concealed within the shadows that crawl between this building and the neglected playground beyond.
The structure itself is old stonework, weather-eaten and tired, repaired in places with newer masonry that sits upon it like poorly matched scars. Fresh blocks interrupt ancient walls in uneven patches, as though someone believed decay could be shamed into retreat by effort alone.
My gaze moves over the yard.
Weak shafts of sunlight struggle through the overcast sky, offering little warmth and less illumination. There are no swings. No slides. No instruments of joy save for a crooked wooden climbing frame abandoned in one corner, its timber split with age and softened by rot.
The children have chosen conflict instead.
A cluster of older boys quarrel over a faded leather football, their voices climbing steadily toward violence. Younger children shriek nearby, each tantrum more piercing than the last as they demand a turn.
I shut the noise from my mind.
For one brief and unwelcome instant memory intrudes—Dante at my shoulder, smaller then, pestering me to play while all I desired was silence enough to read.
I bury the recollection at once.
My attention shifts to the caretakers hurrying from the building.
Cowled women. Sisters of the Holy Order.
They scatter among the children like anxious birds, dividing arguments, issuing stern reprimands, repeating hollow instructions about sharing and patience. Futile labor.
In the midst of their distraction, a smaller figure slips unseen between them.
He takes the ball cleanly.
A triumphant grin flashes across his face as he darts away, kicking it ahead of him over the dirt.
My heart gives one hard strike.
There.
Moonlight-colored hair hangs lank against his brow, darkened with grime as though it has not been washed in days. I click my tongue softly, displeased by the sight before I can stop myself.
He is too thin.
Do they not feed him properly?
His clothes are worn to near threadbare. The shoes upon his feet are little more than surrendering leather and torn seams.
Disgraceful.
Yet he moves with careless delight, chasing the stolen prize as if he owns the world for these few stolen seconds.
I find I cannot look away.
Since my escape from the Demon World, I have come to this exact place each day and stood as I do now—silent, unseen, watching the child who has made himself the axis of my attention.
I leave only when necessity demands it.
Demons testing the city’s borders are eradicated before they draw near this district. Anything foul enough to creep toward this pitiful refuge is cut down long before it reaches the gates.
Then I return.
Again and again.
The instinct within me grows louder each day.
Take him.
Remove him from this squalor.
Claim what is yours.
It is a battle of wills.
An exhausting one.
I turn sharply and saunter away before impulse overcomes restraint.
I will not interfere.
He has survived this long without me, just as I survived without him.
Though in my defense, I did not know he existed.
I am prideful by nature, and stubborn beyond reason. Once I set my will against a course, I see it through.
Even when the Devil beneath my skin snarls otherwise.
Mine.
Mine.
Mine.
I doubt I would make a suitable parent in any case.
The boy is better served knowing nothing of me.
Sleep remains an adversary more persistent than any demon.
Whenever I permit my eyes to close, nightmares seize me with practiced cruelty. My flesh and bones ache with echoes of Mundus’ thunderous voice still rattling through the chambers of memory. Phantom pain rends me open anew—ribs crushed, organs ruptured, nerves flayed beneath power too vast to contest.
I wake gasping, clawing for breath as though his power still closes around my throat.
The mind is treacherous.
When left idle, it returns to torment eagerly.
Thus I have learned the value of distraction.
Simple. Effective.
So long as my hands are occupied and my purpose fixed, shame recedes. Defeat dulls. The degradation suffered at the foot of that black throne remains, for a time, at bay.
Each morning I rise and repeat the same litany within my skull.
I am Vergil, son of Sparda.
I will not yield.
Vergil.
I am Vergil.
I do not yield.
It is the last dignity left to me—that I did not break.
Mundus tried.
With pain. With humiliation. With force enough to crush cities.
I fought him in every way left available. I endured. I refused submission beneath each torment inflicted upon me. Somehow, through years that blurred into a single unending wound, I clawed my way back to Yamato.
Constant. Faithful. Mine.
The only companion that remained.
Perhaps pride should have been discarded long before then.
Dante’s outstretched hand seems less offensive in retrospect.
A sigh escapes me.
I lie upon the narrow bed in this drab rented room, Yamato held against my chest in an uncharacteristically human gesture. The weight of it steadies my breathing. I stare at the cracked ceiling and force my body to remember that terror is memory, not present fact.
I am free.
I escaped Mundus.
I survived.
Yet some smaller, colder part of me wonders whether my escape was permitted.
The suspicion is one reason I keep my distance from the child.
If I am being tracked, then proximity is danger.
If I am bait, then he is prey.
My child.
My nestling.
My son.
The words come unbidden and refuse dismissal.
Yet I cannot abandon him to a fate akin to my own—alone, undefended, noticed too late when demons finally scent what runs in his blood.
I will not allow him to suffer as I suffered.
To wake each day only to fight for the next.
To be hunted without respite.
I close my eyes once more.
Any measure of rest will suffice.
Tomorrow I rise again.
Tomorrow I cleanse this city of whatever filth creeps through its cracks.
Tomorrow I return to the shadows beside the playground.
And I will watch him.
——————————————————————
It is a marvel, I find myself thinking, to have helped create life.
Not that I ever intended such a thing.
The notion remains faintly absurd. I, who spent years pursuing power with single-minded cruelty, who measured all things by usefulness, now stand arrested by the existence of a child with my eyes hidden somewhere in his blood.
It compels unwelcome questions.
Did his mother die?
Or had she simply rid herself of an unwanted burden and fled?
I recall too clearly the manner in which I regarded her then: not as a woman, but as a means. She possessed access to documents hoarded by the Order of the Sword—records and sealed histories I required. I employed every persuasion available to me, subtle and otherwise, until doors opened.
I was young.
Desperate.
Foolish enough to mistake obsession for purpose.
My hunger for strength eclipsed consequence. I thought only of ascent, never of what might be left in the wake of it.
Foolishness indeed.
And yet I wonder.
Had my stay in Fortuna been prolonged—had I known there was a nestling forming quietly beyond my sight—would I have remained?
Or would the knowledge that another life depended upon me have driven me harder still toward Sparda’s power?
The answer does not come.
I distrust whatever it might be.
Was it fate that returned me here?
I do not care for such words, yet the question persists.
Or was it mere happenstance that Yamato tore open a path to Fortuna? Perhaps the boundary here is thinner than elsewhere, the membrane between realms weakened by old wounds.
A true Hell Gate once stood in this city.
I remember enough of the old tales. My father used Yamato here long ago to defend Fortuna before choosing, for a time, to rule over it as feudal lord.
Perhaps the blade merely followed memory.
Or perhaps it answered blood.
The boy is my nestling. A future inheritor, whether he wills it or not. It is not impossible that Yamato felt what I had not yet known to seek.
I find it difficult to accept there is some portion of myself walking about in worn shoes and torn sleeves.
Yet denial lasted only until I first saw him.
Weeks after my arrival, once my body had recovered enough to stand without trembling, I happened upon the orphanage. To my eyes, his appearance alone marked him mine. Pale hair. Blue eyes carrying a severity children should not possess.
To my senses—those instincts more demonic than human—the certainty was immediate.
A pull.
Visceral and absolute.
Take him.
Carry him away.
Build walls. Build shelter. Build a den fit to keep him warm and hidden from every cruelty of this world.
Only stubborn will allows me to resist.
At times, barely.
The storm over Fortuna seems incapable of exhaustion.
Rain lashes the streets in heavy sheets. Lightning rends the sky in white fractures, followed by thunder deep enough to shake dust from rafters. Even from here I hear frightened gasps from within the orphanage as younger children startle at each peal.
I remain where I always do.
Watching.
It has become something dangerously close to obsession.
Hours vanish while I stand cloaked in shadow, eyes fixed upon the building that houses my nestling.
This past month has taught me an inconvenient truth: I cannot rest until I am satisfied he is safe.
For all my internal arguments, all the discipline with which I oppose instinct, I have failed rather completely.
I have not stolen the child away.
That is the extent of my victory.
Instead, I spend my days cleansing the city of anything infernal enough to threaten him. I do not retire until every scent of demonic presence has been chased down or cut apart.
Then I return here.
To watch.
I laugh once, low and dark, at the absurdity of it.
The nestling has overturned my world without so much as noticing.
Still.
Purpose, however humiliating its source, remains purpose.
Another week passes.
As I near the orphanage, I stiffen beside a neglected park half-hidden behind overgrown trees. Beyond the branches lies a small open space: a duck pond filmed with rainwater, scattered benches sinking into mud, and a weather-worn play area left to decay.
There.
A faint ripple of energy.
Tiny, but unmistakable.
My nestling.
I divert at once, irritation sharpening my stride. I find him at the pond’s edge, leaning dangerously far over the water with no regard for gravity or consequence.
My stomach turns.
He rises onto the balls of his feet, stretching farther.
Something below the surface has captured his attention, yet startling him now may send him straight into the pond.
I feel my own energy stir as I weigh the least disastrous approach.
Then he stiffens.
He turns sharply.
Blue eyes wide and bright lock onto the place where I stand.
Interesting.
Had he sensed the flare of demonic energy?
This is the closest I have ever been to him. Usually there are walls, fences, distance enough to preserve sense.
“You should take care, little one,” I say, moving nearer despite myself. “The water is quite deep.”
He glances back toward the pond.
“There was a fish,” he says brightly. “I saw it.”
Something long dormant shifts within my chest.
“It’s gone now,” he adds, disappointment plain upon his face.
“You should not be wandering alone.”
I let the rebuke carry some edge. He looks down at his tattered shoes, cheeks reddening.
“Are your caretakers aware of your location?”
“Um… I’m not sure.”
No.
Anger moves through me swift and hot.
Careless fools.
Do they have no measures in place? No locks? No headcounts? No sense whatsoever? This city contains hazards enough without adding demons to the list.
He should not be unguarded.
Not ever.
“What’s that?”
He turns in a full circle, eyes searching the air.
So.
My first suspicion was correct.
He senses it.
Even diluted to a quarter of Sparda’s blood, the inheritance stirs within him. Quantity may matter less than quality after all.
I study him too intently. He fidgets beneath my gaze.
“Come,” I say at last. “I shall escort you home, child.”
He looks prepared to object.
I take several purposeful steps and gesture for him to follow.
What occurs next startles me more than any ambush.
A tiny hand curls around my own.
I stop.
Look down.
Those brilliant blue eyes stare up expectantly, waiting for me to lead.
“I’m Nero,” he declares, puffing out his chest with solemn pride. “What’s your name?”
So trusting.
So catastrophically unguarded.
Are all children this reckless? To approach a cloaked stranger in a deserted park? My growing catalogue of dangers expands by the second.
Or perhaps he is simply starved for kindness.
His question is innocent.
The truthful answer is not.
For one dangerous instant I nearly give it.
Instead, I choose a lesser truth.
“You may call me Vergil.”
Nero beams.
“We’re friends now,” he announces, squeezing my hand.
Something within the armor I keep drawn tight around myself fractures by a single hairline crack.
My demon half purrs in approval.