No Quarter

ages Here.  He drifted off into numbness, tucked comfortably inside his unconsciousness in the corner of his mind.  He wasn't there for long.  Something tugged at him with great insistence, then finally jolted him into full awareness and back into the fire-like pains.  He screamed and began his struggles again.

    His weapons were torn away from him.  His thick crimson leather had been shredded by several black-oil like tentacles that had reached from the living pool called Nightmare.  His body was held in mid-air, floating over the center of the formless creature.  His thighs were held impossibly wide apart as a thick tentacle fucked him furiously.  Dante knew he was bleeding badly, and the tentacle had already torn open his bowels.  It had probably torn through his small intestines, by the horrible ache in his belly.  The creature probably wanted to pierce through him completely, until the tentacle cut through his body and made its exit through his mouth.

    Smaller slivers of the slippery limbs wound itself around his neck, then joined together.  Dante fought his restraints instinctively, knowing the thickening tentacle meant to rape his mouth.  The acrid scented, oily tentacle pressed itself against his mouth, rubbing itself against his lower lip trying to push past his clenched teeth.  The tendrils around his neck tightened, punishing him for his disobedience.  Then another tentacle pushed itself inside his abused hole, widening and tearing him even more.  He screamed, and the tentacle slipped inside his mouth -- burying itself deep inside his throat.

    He bit down on the tentacle, but he couldn't hurt it.  It slid in and out of his mouth, attempting to match the speed of the thrust in his ass.  He couldn't breath, and suddenly he was in a panic to find air.  The tentacle had filled his mouth and throat so completely that he was being smothered.  The rim of his hole was ripping wider apart to accommodate the growing size of the snakes twisting deep inside him.  The tentacle in his throat drove further down his throat, making its way toward his belly.  Dante's last thought was asking for death, as life flickered out of him.

 

    He was startled awake. Perhaps by the fact that he had not expected to be awake at all.  He drew in an unsteady breath, irritating his still-torn throat.  He coughed hard, spitting up blood and grayish gel-like fluid.  He drew his legs together and tried to sit up.  He couldn't, not without tremendous painful reminder of the harsh rape. He decided to lie still and let his wounds heal and for his strength return.  

    He studied what he could of his present prison.  He was lying on a thin velvet blanket that had been thrown on a stone floor.  The blanket did little to stave off the cold that embraced him completely.  Dante welcomed the cold.  It expedited his healing.  The room he was in was dark and scentless.  Not even the smell of mildew or even the creature that had raped him.  He could detect the faintest traces of his own blood, as the open flesh inside his abused body closed.  He didn't have to check to know he was naked.

   'How the hell are you going to get the fuck out of this one...' 

   His body accelerated its healing process, and it made him feverish and sleepy.  He didn't want to fall asleep, but his body had shut down on him, and lolled him into the darkness in his mind.

 

   "Get up, my dear little brother..."  Dante heard someone say but the words made no sense to him.  The voice was far-off.  There's a familiar edge to it that Dante found nearly comforting.  Inviting. 

   "You turned out prettier than I thought," the voice continued.  The sound of it felt closer, as if the speaker was closing the distance between them as he spoke.  "I'm glad to see that."

   Dante's eyes snapped open and he found himself staring at the face he knew, but had long forgotten.

   "Remember me?" 

   He did and he didn't.  Dante stared at the man with silver hair and blue eyes, and a gray complexion that made him look regal, but dead.  The man sat in a red velvet arm chair, his elbows rested on the arms of the chair with the palms of his hands pressed together.  He almost looked like he had been praying.  The man wore a black silk jacket with white ruffles of the shirt beneath spilling out at the collar.  He might have worn the dark pants with the same fabric but Dante found himself noticing the stranger's bare feet instead.        

   "Mother always did say you were the pretty one," the man said.

   Dante gathered what little strength his body had collected and push himself up.  He was no longer in the small dark cell.  He had been moved into the Count's chamber and placed on the silk adorned canopy bed.  Dante wound the red silk sheet around his hips, and shrank back until his back was pressed against the headboard.  He was reasonably certain the wounds inside him had healed, although he could still feel the intimate pains reverberate through him.  He was still very weak and his vision had not even returned completely.

   "Vergil..." Dante said the first word that became clear in his mind.  His voice was dry and fragile, and nothing like his own.

   "Did you like being fucked by that thing?"

   "What's wrong with you? "

   "With me?" Vergil's smile grew.  He rose from the arm chair where he had been sitting.  He brushed the few wrinkles from his jacket as he spoke.  "What a noble ambition you have, baby brother.  To come all the way here and endured this for mother and I.  And all you got was cocks, kind of, down your throat and up your ass.  Very nice."

   "Obviously remember who I am," Dante said.  His voice was still a whisper, but it no longer sound so slight.  "Why are you like this--?"

    "Like what?" Vergil whispered as he walked toward Dante.  An unnatural smile spread across the pale face.  "We have so much to catch up on."

    Dante drew in a breath and held it.  An inexplicable fear that he didn't realize he was capable of seized him by his throat.  As Vergil came closer, the fear spread down to the rest of his body.  He was shivering but he didn't understand why he was.

    "You couldn't possibly be afraid of me," Vergil said as his smile grew.

    The bed creaked with the new weight as Vergil crawled onto it.  Dante found himself frozen, staring at his brother with the sheets still clutched tightly in his hands as Vergil came closer.  He flinched when Vergil touched his face with his fingertips.  They were ice.

    "It's nice to feel someone warm..." Vergil said absently.  His eyes roamed the face and bared shoulders as his fingers stroked Dante's cheek with a child-like affection.

    "Pretty, pretty Dante..." He leaned forward for a kiss.  "Give me just a taste..."

    Dante found his strength then and pushed him away.

    "Don't --" Dante hissed.  "If you want to stay here, I don't care.  I have a job to finish -- "

    Vergil looked at him, mystified for a moment.  Then he laughed.

    "Of course you care, dear brother," Vergil whispered and cupped Dante's chin.  His grip tightened when Dante tried to turn away.  "You care because you love me."

    Sharp teeth grazed his neck then bit down hard enough to draw blood.  Dante winced but found himself unmoving and silent as Vergil's cold, damp tongue lapped at the blood that trickled out from the wound.  The slight pain woke something deep inside him.  It stirred the demon blood in him -- to be tasted by another halfling like himself.

   The wound healed quickly, and Vergil bit down again harder and deeper.  His teeth remained in the wound and held it open as blood seeped onto his tongue in a small rivulet.  Dante moaned and wrapped his arms around Vergil's neck.

    "Vergil..." Dante whispered, his eyes fluttering close as he spoke.  "Let's leave this place...together..."

    Vergil laughed softly and licked at Dante's lips, slipping his tongue inside only for a moment to let Dante taste the coppery sweetness of his own blood.

    "Together? And go where? This is the only world I know...the only one I can exist in.  I do not have the luxury you have."

    Vergil tugged at the silk sheet Dante had clung onto and let it slip onto the floor.  Vergil drew in a breathe and nodded approvingly.

    "I am unlike you, little brother..." Vergil said as his fingers traced a slow line from Dante's chin, down to his throat and down the center of his chest.  "I am bound to this place."

    "Would you die if you leave this Island?"

    "Quite difficult to be dead when I already was long ago, with mother.  Half of me was happy to know you had survived the assassination.  The other half of me hated you.  I've hated you for years.  I've not been allowed even death in this hell.  I live because you live."

    Dante frowned and knocked Vergil's hand away from him before they dipped down between his thighs.

    "I refuse to be responsible for the choice you made," Dante said as he moved to slip off the bed.  "Do as you like."  

    Vergil seized him by the throat and pinned him down on the mattress.  The grip was iron.  The fingers that was wrapped around his neck gripped harder and tighter.  Soon, Dante couldn't breathe.

    "Yes, I will do as I like...as you would do as I like," Vergil smiled as he moved to kneel between Dante's knees.  "Would you like a small taste of what kind of hatred and anger that had kept me alive in this place?"

    Virgil pressed two fingers into Dante's mouth, stroking the hot tongue in languid motion.

    "Who knows...maybe you would come to like it, just as I have."

    The grip around his neck loosened enough for Dante to draw in a few shallow breaths and prevent himself from going unconscious.  The wet fingers were lifted from his mouth and pressed hard into him.  Dante's chest rose, his body unprepared for the unexpected invasion.  Dante's vision blurred for a moment then he felt a single drop of tear run from the corner of one eye into his hair.

    "Don't...touch me...like that..." Dante seized Vergil by his sleeves, crushing the smooth silk in his hands. 

    "Touch you like this?" Vergil whispered and drive his fingers in up to the knuckles.  "It seemed to me you really like this.  You are grabbing onto my fingers rather tightly..."

    Dante bit down on his lower lip, refusing to let the scream that was working its way up from the bottom of his throat      to come out.  Vergil's sharp nails had cut him open inside, the blood had already started to trickle out and wet the silk sheets.

    "You can scream all you like, little brother," Vergil whispered and leaned over to lick away another tear that had started its descend.  "I think you are most beautiful when you are screaming..."

    The cold lips pressed against Dante's slightly parted lips, and the cold tongue slithered in to the cavern to touch the warm tongue there.  A surge of anger and desperation seized Dante then -- he was mindless from wanting to struggle out of the fingers that continued to shred him and spit out the cold snake-like thing that was filling his mouth.  Dante bit down on the tongue hard. Hard enough for him to taste the acidic taste of Vergil's blood in his mouth and for Vergil to pull away from him with a surprise cry.

    "Don't touch me! Don't ever touch me again!" Dante screamed as he stumbled out of the bed, ignoring the fire-like pain that engulfed him.  

    Vergil touched the corner of his mouth that had a drop of the blood from his bitten tongue and smiled.  He raised his fingers that had been stained with Dante's blood up to his mouth and sampled it.

    "Where are you going?" Vergil said.  He made no move to take after Dante, even as Dante found his way toward the doors.  "This is the safest room for you to be in, dear brother.  There is quite a lot of unruly creatures that haunt the hallways."

    Dante yanked open the door.  To his surprise, it was not locked.

    "I would rather be out there with them -- " Dante growled.  He slammed the door close behind him, cutting off the horrendous sound of Vergil's mocking laughter.

    Then he ran.  He was not certain where he was going, following only the slightest sensation of Alastor's presence in another part of the palace.  That was all he has.  He made his way down a spiral of staircase until he set foot on the wet tiled ground that told him he was on the bottom floor.  He vaguely recalled where he was, but he also remember that was a dead end.  He pressed his back against the cold, stone wall and tried to collect his thoughts.  In his mind, he tried to retrace his steps of the labyrinth and think of where he had met with Nightmare.  His beloved guns and demon sword were there.  He had remembered the Nightmare tore them out of his hands and discarded them in a water filled fountain in an unkempt courtyard.  A tickle spiraled down between his thighs.  He glanced down and wrinkled his nose at the thin trails of blood that had made a crooked line in the inside of his thigh.  His movements had prevented the wounds to heal.  

    Dante stared up at the winding staircase, expecting Vergil to saunter down it with a knowing smile on the pale face.  Vergil never came.  Perhaps Vergil was waiting for something to subdue him.  To be violated and murdered by one of the many creatures that wandered through the halls and rooms.  The creatures that were drawn by the human blood in him.  Dante cursed at his own weakness as he walked back up a flight of stairs where he had seen an exit at the landing.  He cursed at the human blood in him that kept his demon blood from taking its true form.  Then his own voice told him that he would come to hate himself more, if he had not a drop of the weaker blood in him -- his mother's blood.  He might become something like Vergil, who had been re-made through demon power and blood.

    Dante paused at the door -- waiting for a moment to collect his strength as he listened for the presence of demons who would be waiting for him on the other side.  He made out slight commotions behind the door but he couldn't tell what they were.  It would not matter.  He would dash past those creatures and find his way out through the main door way.  Even at his damaged state, he could outrun the demons.  From the depth of his foggy memory, Dante mapped his way back to the main courtyard.  He would have to make his exit through the atrium, then go through a long span of the hallway, and enter the third door on his left.  No matter what waited for him there, as long as he has his hands on his guns and Alastor, he will fight his way out.

    Dante pushed open the door, slightly at first.  He was surprised to see the atrium empty.  Swiftly, he leapt over the metal railing and landed softly on the ground floor.  Alastor was near, he could feel it calling out to him.  Dante could feel a sense of renewal coming over him then.  The demon sword was a balm to his wounded soul and if he could just hold his guns again, and feel the reassuring weights of them in his hand -- he would be complete.  He just need to have his weapons and nothing else mattered.

    Dante made his way across the ruined floor with its cracked marble tiles and broken shards of glass.  Pieces cut into his bare feet but he didn't stop.  The pain meant nothing to him.  He pulled open the main door and had expected at least the knife-bearing marionettes that often laid waiting in the hallways.  There were nothing and no one.  The silence bothered him.  It was not suppose to be like this.  Especially when he knew Vergil would not let him leave Mallet Island.  He would deal with that later.  Right then, he need to have his guns and his sword and nothing else mattered.

    He walked close to the wall, listening intently for clattering noises of the Marionettes.  Nothing. Not even when he reached the third door.  Mentally, he prepared himself to face Nightmare again.  It's an absurd idea to try to outrun something that covered most of the ground in the room, unarmed.  Even if he was armed, his weaken state slowed him down.  He closed his eyes and drew in deep breathes.  If that thing captures him again, it would certainly rape him again and perhaps this time, he will die.  Raped then torn into pieces.  

    'So be it...'

    Dante pushed open one of the two doors and peered into the room from the slight opening.  The light spilled out from the open skylight instead.  There was nothing in the courtyard.  The familiar glitter in the fountain made him cast aside all caution he had in mind.  He ran across the open yard, even as he noticed the marionettes that had been hung up high had dropped down onto the ground.  One sliced a thick line across his back when he bent down to fish Alastor from the bottom of the water.  The pain fueled him.  With the familiar weight of the demon sword in his hands, Dante swung out in a wide arc, catching two marionettes at once. After that, he was driven both by instinct and rage.  He didn't stop until the room was silent again, except for the sound of his labored breath.

    A flash of red at the foot of the fountain caught his attention.  It was his coat and it was in tatters.  He kicked it aside and found his pants beneath.  To his surprise, most of it was intact, except for the top button that was missing.  As soon as he slipped it on, he felt safer in that instant. As if he had gained a shield.  Dante walked carefully through the yard, stepping over the pieces of the marionettes as he did so.  He found his guns in two corners of the yard, hidden by small patches of grass.  He shoved one into his belt line and carried the other in one hand, Alastor in another.  His options were simple -- leave the Island and return when he has fully recovered. Or he could continue.  He was close to locating the portal into the underbelly of the Island.

    "Shit..." he said under his breath as he climbed up the crumbled stone steps in the rear of the courtyard that would lead him back toward the heart of the palace.  

    It was purely ego driven, he knew.  He could better deal with the possibility of failing and meeting his end than returning home and accept the fact that he had been defeated.  Especially when he had been raped by a creature that was left alive in this Island, then a re-discovery of his brother. 

    His brother...

    Dante pulled open the heavy iron door at the top of the stairs and stepped onto the smooth tiled floor of the landing.

    Vergil... 

    Dante's fist closed harder around the hilt of the sword and brought Alastor closer to his body.  A question crept into his mind then but he dismissed it quickly. He has no answer to it.  And he didn't want to think about it.  He would not have time to mull over it, even if he could.  Strong arms slipped around him from behind, bringing him back against a statue-like body.

    "I see you found your toys," a voice whispered into his ear.  "Perhaps now we can play?"

    Dante broke out of the embrace and jumped back, his gun and sword ready.  A smile spread over Vergil's face as he brought his sword up from the side.

    "I think it runs in the Sparda blood," Vergil said as he walked a slow circle around Dante.  "The pride that made it so hard for us to walk away, even from a situation that we knew we would be met with a certain death."

    "I don't intend to die."

    "And the same pride that made us say things like those, even if we don't really believe it," Vergil said.  "Did you think you could go any further into this palace without facing me? Without defeating me?"

    Dante gripped his gun so hard that his hand shook.  Vergil noticed it and it only made his smile widen.

    "I...don't want to fight you..."

    "Dear little brother, it seemed that we have come to an impasse.  You want too much of something I simply could not give," Vergil slashed down at Dante, Dante caught his sword with Alastor and pushed him back.

    "We don't have to do this," Dante said and blocked another hard swing from Vergil's sword.  Dante leapt back, placing a distance between them.  "I don't want to do this."

    Vergil shook his head. 

    "It is all fate, Dante.  From the day when you escaped death to this day when you appeared before me...alive, when I am not.  I am not who you think I am."

    Vergil lunged forward.  Dante brought up his gun and squeezed off three shots.  All three slugs struck Vergil in the chest but they passed through him--the wounds opened and closed around the paths of the bullets.  Vergil scored a cut across Dante's arm and the burst of pain made him drop his gun.  The second swing of the sword was parried but Dante stumbled from the impact of the swords.  Vergil moved faster of the two and brought Dante down with a kick to his left knee.  Even before Dante registered the fact that he had fallen, Vergil planted his sword through Dante's left shoulder, and drove the blade through until it anchored deeply into the stone floor.

    Dante's mouth opened in a soundless scream as blood pooled out of the wound, coloring the white tiled floor and his silver hair.  Alastor rolled out of his left hand.  The gun he had stuck in his beltline had tumbled across the room when he fell.  Dante's pain-filled mind whispered for him to surrender so he could be granted a quick death.

    "Unlike you, little brother," Vergil said as he crouched down and dipped his finger into the blood.  "I could have cared less what becomes of you."

    "Why...?"

    "Why what? Why do I hate you? Or why have I turned against our father's bloodline?" Vergil asked, and took a slow lick from the blood-stained finger.  "Loneliness breaks a man in millions of ways.  Especially when it had so many years to disfigure him."

    Dante reached weakly over to the sword that had impaled him and tried to pull it out by the blade.  He only succeeded getting his fingers cut on the sharp edges.  The blade was driven down too far into the ground and he was still too weak.  Nightmare had sapped most of his energy and he was slow to recover from it.

    Vergil pulled Dante's bloodied hand from the sword and licked at the cuts along the fingers until the wounds healed. 

    "You are not alone anymore..." Dante whispered, his fingers curled around Vergil's.  "I don't have to be alone anymore."

    "You are such a romantic," Vergil said and bent down to kiss Dante's mouth.  "Haven't you learned from father's fate? My fate? Even mother's?"

    His hand skimmed across the plane of Dante's belly and paused at the belt line.  His fingers dipped in between the thighs and kneaded the flesh there.  

    "It's a curse all Sparda inherits.  Mother, she was was the unfortunate human who had loved the wrong man.  She had always been alone and she died alone.  Should I say, she died because of father's misplaced noble intentions?"

    Dante's eyes narrowed until they turned into slivers of ice.

    "How could you say that? How dare you -- "

    Vergil shook his head.  "Father loved humans but he didn't love mother or his children enough to protect them.  Where was he then? Where is he now? Do you think he would come now to save you from me? Do you think he loved you enough to stop me from what I am about to do to you?"

    Vergil moved to kneel between Dante's knees.  Dante struck out, his fist not close enough to hit Vergil.  The sword that impaled him only tore his flesh even more by his violent movement.  He didn't care.  At that moment, the rage inside him overcame the pain he felt.

    "Get off me!" Dante roared, his hips bucked and his free arm swung at Vergil wildly.  None of his blows struck its target.  "Goddamn it, get off me!"

    Vergil chuckled as his fingers moved to undo the zipper on Dante's leather pants. 

    "Are you angry because I've shattered this pristine image of our father or because you are coming to realize that I was right? That the years you've spent retracing his footsteps, careful to follow them exactly, were all done in vain? That all you've done meant nothing to this world that didn't care what you had given up for it?"

    "Shut up! What the hell do you know?!"

    "I know plenty, little brother, and I've seen everything. I know what being a Sparda did to me and now, I see what it did to you.  You are just too blind to see it. Your insipid ideals -- of doing the honorable thing...of protecting others."

    Vergil tore at Dante's pants, his talon-like nails raked downward and shredded the leather.  The nails cut into Dante's leg and gouged long crimson lines from his hip down to his knees.  

    "So who's going to protect you now?" Vergil whispered and bit down on Dante's lower lip, cutting his teeth on it until he tasted blood.  Dante pressed his hand against Vergil's chest and pushed, desperately trying to escape the unwanted intimacy.  Vergil tore away his pants, a strip at a time, as his nails continued to cut into his leg as he did so.  

    "S....stop it!" Dante screamed.  The panic was grasping a hold onto his mind and he knew it.  He could feel his demon blood boiling, his Devil Trigger on the brink of being activated.  Vergil pulled his thighs apart and roughly shoved two fingers into him.  Dante screamed, the pain of holding back his Trigger was more painful than the sharp nails re-opening the cuts that barely healed.  "Let go...please...I don't want to -- "

    Vergil pressed a third finger inside and the renewed pain made Dante's eyes sting with tears.

    "You don't want to what?" Vergil's voice was hoarse with arousal.  "You want to call out your Demon to protect you, don't you? The little bit of gift Sparda blood bred into you.  Go ahead, let it out.  I would like to see it.  I would like to see what you really look like inside."

    Dante let out a scream instead.  Tears trickled from his eyes and disappeared into his silver hair as he continued to scream, the sound of it was frightening, even to his own ears.  The horrendous cry that echoed the hall was full of hate and anguish that even Dante was surprised by it.  It was his true self, finally unleashed.  Perhaps Vergil had been right, although he didn't want to believe it.  That he had been chasing their father's selfish delusions all these years.  His mother and his brother were murdered for them.  He spent years growing up alone in the world that feared him and hated him for them.  Layers of scars, one thick line crossing another, on his body and his soul -- Vergil's words were like the knives that took its time to cut each one open.  

    "No...no...no..." Dante shook his head, uncertain if he was speaking to Vergil or to himself. 

    "You still have a choice," Vergil said and pulled out his blood-stained fingers.  "You always had a choice."

    Vergil smeared the bright crimson along Dante's pale cheeks first, then pressed the digits against the colorless lips.

    "I won't...betray..." 

    "Stubborn little thing, aren't you?" Vergil laughed.  "No matter.  If you would not make a choice, then it will be made for you.  Simple as that.  You are not strong enough to fight it.  Not then. Not now.  Not ever.  You will always be that weak little boy who watched his mother and brother being butchered twenty years ago.  The little boy who didn't even shed a tear at the funerals but somehow decided to dedicate his life to revenge." 

    Dante turned away, refusing to let the blood-stained finger tips slip inside his mouth.  Vergil kissed Dante on his cheek instead.

    "This is my love," Vergil whispered into Dante's ear as the tongue traced the shape of it.  "This is my love for you."

    Dante's eyes widened and his body went rigid with pain as Vergil stabbed through him in one hard stroke.  The cock slid in easily through the blood and buried itself up to the root.

    "Hot..." Vergil sighed.  "Wonderfully hot...little brother."

    Dante's free hand clenched at Vergil's arm, his nails biting into the grayish, hard skin but it barely made even a single mark.  He was being raped by a dead thing that was feeding off the warmth inside him, the temperature of his body rising minute by minute from the stirring demon blood.

    "Do you still love me?" Vergil asked.  He ran his hands along the smooth legs that were mottled with blood, but the wounds had already closed.  He remained inside the warmth, moving very little and letting the burn caress his engorged shaft.  

    "Do you love me enough to stay here and be rid of our own loneliness in this way? Let me rape you like this so I can feel alive?" Vergil said and leaned down to kiss Dante's swollen lips.  "I can make it happen.  In this place, I can make anything happen."

    "No... Stop... I don't..."

    "Little liar," Vergil laughed and slipped his tongue into Dante's mouth.  His tongue found Dante's, he licked against it then finally bit down onto it when Dante didn't reciprocate.  His sharp teeth gnawed on the thick flesh until he tasted blood, until Dante finally gathered enough presence of mind to pull away.  "You like being fucked.  You have that sordid need in you, regardless you want to acknowledge it or not.  You like being raped.  Your body responds to me like a whore."

    An animal-like growl worked its way up through Dante's throat.  His Devil Trigger was teetering close to being set off -- it was only held in check through sheer will power.  The growl turned into a roar, as Vergil picked up his stucco and thrust in and out of the heated orifice hard and deep.

    "Say it," Vergil said between breaths. "Tell me you like this."

    Dante continued to scream -- his mind struggling to control his demon self from surfacing.  He knew if he was to Trigger, he would not be able to stop himself from killing Vergil until his demonic power's exhausted.

    "Tell me how much you liked being a whore.  Tell me how much you missed your dear older brother."

    Dante felt himself losing consciousness as something else start to emerge from another part of his sub- consciousness.  Something dark and hidden that had been restrained since he was a child, but had always lurked in the depth of his blackened soul.  He shook his head but whatever it was had already cast its spell over his human blood, suffocating it.  

    "Vergil...please...get...away...please...get away from...me..." Dante said before what remained of his breath in his lungs were stolen.  

    The last memories Dante had of Vergil was his face, suddenly softened as he leaned in for another kiss on the parted lips.

    "I'm sorry I couldn't be with you..." Vergil whispered into his mouth.  "I want to, more than anything in the world.  But I love you too much to choose this life for you.  Good-bye, my sweet little brother."

    Then a shadow swallowed him whole.  

 

   When Dante woke, the smell of blood -- his own...and someone else's, assaulted his senses. Dante sat up and was instantly mystified by the blood and bits of flesh that had splashed along the walls and on the floor.  In the far end of the hall, a head stared into the corner -- its short silver and the ashen skin flickered a single thought : Vergil.

    Dante crawled toward the corner where the head had rolled into.  His heart sank deeper and deeper into the recess of his chest as he came closer.  He had murdered his brother.  The demon inside him tore Vergil apart, piece by piece like a stuffed doll until there was nothing left.  

    "Oh God...please...no...no..."

    Dante touched the hair that had been half-soaked with blood.  Red human blood like his own.  

    "I'm sorry...I'm sorry...." Dante whispered, but he couldn't make himself do more than stroke the pale hair.  Then tears came down, in steady rivulets as he said his apology again and again.

    "Why does it have to be this way...?" Dante said then turned the head around to look at him.  Vergil's eyes were closed and a peculiar smile was on the thin lips.  In spite of the smudged blood that painted the face, Vergil looked peaceful.  Almost like he was asleep with a delightful dream in his head.

    "Why must we...?" Dante paused.  He didn't want to ask the question.  He would not have his answer anyway.  Instead, Dante held Vergil against his chest, rocking slightly as he did so.

    "That...was what you wanted all this time, wasn't it?" Dante whispered.  "You wanted me to kill you.  The Sparda curse....and now, who will end it for me?"

    Dante laughed, tears continued to stream down his face, wetting Vergil's white hair.  

    "Goddamn you...selfish bastard..." Dante said gently, in spite of his angry words.  He brought Vergil's face up to his eye level then kissed its lips lightly, careful not to disturb the smile it had.

    "Sleep well," Dante said and set the head back down on the carpet.  "I will see you again, when it is my turn to rest."

    Dante got up, his eyes caught the glints of his weapon scattered in the hall like his missed jewels.  He pushed all of the aches inside him to the side and picked up Alastor.  He held the demon sword up against him with the flat of the wide blade against his cheek.

    "You wouldn't abandon me right?" He asked softly.  

    The sword reverberated, striking a comfortable sensation in his chest in its response.  Dante smiled and bent to pick up his guns, as his mind worked to decide the route toward the heart of the palace.

End