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Vergil would’ve thought slicing his brother’s palm open right as he purposefully took the final step backwards off the edge of a waterfall made it abundantly clear he did NOT want Dante interfering.
And Dante, as usual, was undeterred by the pain and already committed to the action; with even more stubbornness than he usually had. The brothers’ clothes were soaked with water during their third duel of the night, making both of them heavier than Dante had anticipated, and for an irritating moment Vergil worried all Dante had succeeded in doing was tumbling clumsily over the edge with him by gripping his shirt.
Dante had somehow managed to dig his heels through the rushing water and into the slippery rocks, and even with his sliced hand slick with his own blood he had miraculously found the strength and dexterity to haul Vergil back towards him, sending the elder twin crashing gracelessly into the freezing, rushing water.
Vergil pulls his face out of the water a moment later with a gasp. He would’ve been prepared to shut his mouth when he hit the water at the bottom of the waterfall, but being pulled forward was so unexpected he had left his mouth wide open and ended up inhaling an atrocious amount of water, coughing it up for an embarrassingly long time, trying to curse his brother’s name through each awkward hack of water.
“Why do you NEVER LISTEN?!”
Dante sits in the water beside him while he flips himself onto his back, for once too tired from all their fighting to really bother retaliating beyond calling him an idiot and splashing some more water in his face. Vergil’s hair is damp from the fall, reverting to its flat, scruffy look, his dripping bangs in front of his eyes. He’s the spitting image of his brother regardless, but when his hair is down there’s no denying the family resemblance whatsoever.
“I heard you. You were just talking like an idiot, as usual.”
Red streaks flow towards the waterfall; Vergil’s wounds are large, having been sliced across the chest by his twin, not to mention the numerous injuries to his legs and arms. It was amazing he was even able to stand and almost throw himself off the waterfall in the first place, but now without the adrenaline motivating his body to move he knew immediately he wouldn’t be going anywhere anytime soon. It’d take a while, but he would heal.
Assuming Dante didn’t interfere. He’d been talking about killing him just five minutes ago.
“Leave me here. This was the home of our father. This is where I want to be.”
“There you go again saying the stupidest things I’ve ever heard.”
“We don’t BELONG among humans.”
“You don’t know that! You haven’t even given them a chance!”
Vergil doesn’t bother trying to respond. For twins, they couldn’t think more differently. Talking things out has never worked, even when they were kids.
Dante always ironically complains he’s way too quick to jump the gun, but Dante doesn’t listen to anything Vergil says at all.
“You’re just cranky, cuz you lost,” Dante adds, realizing Vergil wasn’t going to continue this conversation willingly. “This is why you’ll never get a girlfriend. As soon as you don’t have a comeback you use the cold shoulder technique instead.”
Remaining quiet would only prove his point, and Vergil could never allow that. Instead his hand moves slowly through the water, the water flowing hopefully masking his movement. If he could just find his sword…it couldn’t possibly be far…he had dropped it when Dante yanked him, but the blade was too heavy to be washed away by the stream, so it could only be somewhere right next to him.
“No comeback? You insult me.” Vergil can’t believe both of them are smiling right now. Even with the rushing water there’s no way Dante couldn’t tell what Vergil was doing. He was just letting it happen, either confident things would go his way if Vergil did find Yamato, or he was looking for another fight. He finds the handle easily, gripping it tightly despite the searing pain shooting through his arm.
Vergil’s fast, but given his weakened state and disadvantaged position in the water, his quick strike is easily dodged by Dante, who jumps up from the water and brings his boot down on Vergil’s sword arm. Vergil jolts and squirms, all the action kicking up another helping of water right into his mouth. He coughs and sputters yet again, miraculously even more embarrassed than the first time, and attempts to use his free hand to pry Dante’s thick boot off his wrist, but it’s not happening with the strength imbalance between them right now.
Dante clicks his tongue. “That was rude, big brother.” In their youth Vergil used to love being called big brother, despite only being a few minutes older than Dante. Now the term of endearment is used exclusively for mocking him. “And yeah. No comeback. That was so pathetic a corpse could’ve dodged it, it’s like you were trying to miss.”
Once he’s finished hacking up the rest of the wayward water, Vergil counters again: “if you were only going to mock me I’d rather you carried out your threat to kill me.”
“Hey, don’t tempt me, I could still change my mind. By the way, you know you’re not supposed to drink seawater, right? But I guess if you like it so much…” Dante maneuvers his free foot as if he was going to kick more water in Vergil’s face, and when Vergil shuts his eyes and scrunches his face in anticipation for the attack, Dante stands down, satisfied with the submission. “The great Vergil, son of Sparda, afraid of a little water…I can’t believe I’m related to you.”
When Vergil doesn’t retaliate in any way beyond a cold glare, Dante remarks that he’s “no fun,” and then kneels beside his brother, securing Yamato around his own waist.
“What are you doing?” Vergil already protests with his tone of voice. Dante Probably wouldn’t steal Yamato, but the alternative was almost worse to him.
“You know what,” Dante smirks. Vergil protests again with a: “don’t you dare…”
“One…”
“No.”
Dante flips Vergil’s bleeding body over while Vergil writhes in protest, cursing how the blood he’s lost prevented his movement.
“Two.”
“DANTE. NO.”
Dante maneuvers his arms under Vergil’s armpits and around his back, lifting him out of the water.
“Three.”
“DANTE!!”
With some difficulty caused by his own injuries and the additional weight caused by the water and blood soaked in their clothes, Dante clumsily slings Vergil over his shoulders, securing him with his hands on the back of his knees and holding one of his wrists.
“I can’t believe we’re twins. You’re so much heavier than me,” Dante quips, pretending that him nearly losing his balance was just another tease. This was actually a lot harder than he thought. If he wasn’t also injured in a million different places it’d be like nothing to him, but with his own cut hand and the blood and water weighing him down and making his grip unreliable, he braced himself for a much longer walk home than initially anticipated. “Seriously man, did you let yourself go or something? That’d explain why you went down so easily too.”
“I’d rather death than this…” Vergil murmurs, more to himself this time, resigning himself to the fact that there was really no getting out of this humiliation. “As soon as my wounds heal, I’ll cut you to ribbons, I swear it…”
“I love you too, big brother.”
“I don’t know what you think is going to happen, but nothing you can say will change my mind, ever.”
“Okay~ maybe I can’t, but-OOF-”
Dante, despite being injured himself and carrying a fully grown man on his shoulders, doesn’t pay much attention to where he’s stepping, considering the ankle deep water no longer a threat now that Vergil isn’t actively swinging at him. He misstepped onto a particularly smooth submerged rock and nearly threw Vergil into the water again. Vergil hissed at him that he was an idiot, and that’d it be a lot easier to limp home if he gave up on dragging him back with him.
“Trust me, you’ll thank me later. Maybe you’ll meet a nice girl…Maybe that’ll calm you down~”
“That’s ridiculous.” Vergil lets out a humorless scoff of a laugh at the notion. Dante manages to shrug carelessly, even with Vergil slung pathetically over his shoulders.
“Hey, you never know. Then you can really be like dear old Dad, right??” even Dante doesn’t think it’s funny, almost pushing it too far, only saying it for the sake of getting another reaction out of his brother.
Vergil doesn’t indulge him, not to his surprise, instead trying one more time to tell Dante he should just leave him here, and that his efforts to drag him back to the human world would be in vain.
Dante hums an old song from their childhood over the sound of his brother’s protests, after remarking that the trek back to the human realm was going to be a lot easier now that they were out of the water.