JL Sigman (jlsigman) wrote in roads_diverged, @ 2008-07-14 14:42:00 |
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Current mood: | accomplished |
Devil May Cry, Dante, "The Perfect Son", English Countryside
Title: The Perfect Son
Author: jlsigman
Rating: PG
Word count: 3551
The birthing chamber was well furnished and as clean as one could humanly manage in England in the enlightened times of 1899. As the Lady Eva was led in, there was still an average chance that neither mother nor child would survive the hours ahead. Lord Sparda paced, and sat, and paced, and waited, and made an act of praying despite his beliefs. He was not allowed in, despite his worldly and even rumored otherworldly powers, and all he could do was memorize the pattern of the grain of the wooden doors, and wait for them to open again.
He was first rewarded by a study nurse bringing out a bundle and showing it to him. “Your first son, m'lord,” she said breathlessly. Sparda saw a wisp of hair the same pale color as his own and a wrinkled brow before she turned to go back inside with the child.
“When can I see my lady wife?” he asked as he fought not to snatch the infant from her grasp.
“That depends, m'lord, on when the second babe decides to enter the world.” With that astounding announcement, she firmly closed the door in his face.
In one warm corner of the room, the nurse had the presence of mind to take a length of string from the blue blanket and carefully tie it on the baby's left wrist. “No mistakes here, luv, you're the eldest,” she soothed. The infant blinked once and was calm, as if he understood her words.
The second child was born with a loud cry, identical in appearance to the first. The nurse looked around, then quickly plucked a red string from one of the coverlets. She laid the second one next to the first and said, “Now, don't be hatin' your brother for being first, you'll have your own,” she murmured. The second infant squirmed and squeaked, turning as red in the face as the string she tied around his wrist.
Once everyone and everything was cleaned and proper again, the lord of the house was allowed inside. He went straight to his wife's side, kissing her hand as they exchanged looks no less intense than the one that had bound them together for life. Then she nodded to the nurse, who brought the two infants over.
“I've named the older one Vergil,” Eva murmured, exhausted but infused with strength at the same time. The infant was handed to his mother, who kissed his brow before allowing her husband to carefully pick him up.
“Vergil,” Sparda said with a tone that indicated he was speaking to more than just his wife. “My first-born son. My heir. May you have the strength to bear it well.” He handed the child to the nurse.
“The second one,” Eva was almost laughing. “This second one is quite a devil already. I've called him Dante.” She tried to tuck a flailing arm back into the swaddling before handing him over.
Sparda's eyebrows raised as he tried to not drop the squirming child. “Dante,” he said, with a hint of exasperation that seemed to catch the infant's attention. “Second born, heir to the wind. May you have the courage to find your way.” He looked at the boy a moment longer before giving him to the second nurse.
The twins grew quickly, becoming tall and strong beyond most boys of their age. The nurse often wondered if she shouldn't have chosen some other colors or ways of marking the twins at birth, so strongly did they pervade the youngster's lives. Vergil was studious, Dante could not sit still. Vergil had an aura of command, Dante ignored all social boundaries. Vergil's temper was cold, Dante's temper blazed hot. Vergil was always impeccable in blue, Dante's red clothes hid a myriad of sins.
Their sire taught them what he could or swordsmanship and leadership, but both children could tell he held some great secret back from them. Their mother dispensed love and justice as equally as possible, but there were times when she would look sad and wouldn't say why, no matter Vergil's pointed questioning or Dante's impassioned pleading. Vergil tried to find answers to all in his books, while Dante could be found trying to ride the wildest stallion the stables could produce to forget his worries.
All childhood's end. However, their's ended on a particularly cruel note one stormy night. There was a frantic clatter of hooves, then a cry taken up by the servants, and then, the thing that sprang the ten year old boys out of their shared bed, a wail from their mother's throat, cut off too suddenly. Dante grabbed his practice sword as he followed his twin down the darkened stairs.
The foyer was crowded, servants ringing a place where a low voice could barely be heard. Their old nurse heard the twins entrance and turned with a gasp. “Boys...” she trailed off, and they noticed the tears on her face. “You shouldn't be here. Let me take you back upstairs...”
“Where's mother?” Vergil asked, deceptively quiet. Dante glared from his spot beside his twin.
Her glance darted to the center of the circle and back, but before she could try to convince them again to leave, Dante gave a shrill war cry and charged, determined to get through at all costs, his twin at his back. The servants scattered like a flock of doves, giving the boys their first sight of their mother kneeling beside their blood-covered father. They skidded to a halt, the sword falling from Dante's nerveless grip, two pairs of blue eyes opened wide in shock. They had been hunting and seen death before, but this was something horribly different. “Father?” they both asked at the same time.
Eva looked up, her dark blue eyes terrible to behold. She was nearly mad with grief and rage, gripping something tightly in each hand, her lord's blood soaking her skirt. She saw but didn't really see the two boys there. “He was murdered,” she whispered hoarsely. “Never forget he was murdered.”
“By whom, mother?” Vergil asked, staring at what she had in her bloody hands.
She took a deep breath and looked down at the corpse before her. “Servants of another,” she finally said, her voice a broken thing. “I know not who.” She turned away from her dead lord to face the two boys. Her bloody fists were extended to touch each in the chest, then she turned and opened her palms. “This is the first part of your birthright. The rest you will have to discover on your own.”
Vergil only saw the amulet. Dante only saw his mother's dead eyes.
Things were very different after that night. Lady Eva never smiled again, no matter Vergil's accomplishments or Dante's capers. She was often found in their father's office, going through papers and books. She would not, however, let the boys in, saying they did not have the right to be there yet. The older boy turned cold, knowing himself to be the new Lord Sparda, despite his minority, and expecting to be treated as such. The younger was barely at home, roaming with others his age who couldn't be bothered with schooling. The brothers quarreled often over the younger twin's behavior, which grew more outrageous as the years went on.
The boys had already turned fifteen when the Archduke Franz Ferdinand was assassinated on June 28th, 1914. The world was soon at war, and Vergil was determined to be a part of it. He had been attending the military academy and had been showered with accolades for his brilliant mind and exceptional strength. Due to the desperate times and high mortality rate, they would overlook his birth year with a wink. He got the orders he wanted soon enough: he would be sent out on his 17th birthday to fight in the trenches in France.
Dante cornered him in the yard the day before he was to leave. They hadn't spoken since Vergil had announced his intentions. “You're a damn bloody fool, you know that,” he snarled. “What do you think, Mother will give you the keys when you return?”
Vergil flushed an ugly color, but sneered. “I go to uphold our family honor. Just because you have none left to defend - “
It took several servants to separate the brawling brothers. “I'll come back a hero, brother,” Vergil spat, “and then we'll see how things are.” He turned on his heel and walked away.
Dante tried to hide his pain, but he couldn't fool the ones who knew him best. His mother could offer him no comfort, however, having none left. So he turned to his friends, the ones who weren't already off to war, and spent his days drinking and his nights whoring until he slept the dreamless sleep of the exhausted, and then rose to do it all again. One by one, however, his friends left for the trenches and either never came back or came back less than themselves, and in the end he went out alone.
It was a hot, lazy July day when two men came to visit the manor. Both were in military uniforms and would only speak to Lady Eva. Dante was just slouching down the stairs towards the kitchen and saw them leave. He saw his mother sitting too straight in her chair in the parlor, and with a fear in his heart he went to her.
“What did they want, mother?” he tried to ask lightly. She seemed to have aged overnight, her once brilliantly golden hair dimmed with gray.
She turned her head to glance at him, then away to the other wall. “There is news of your brother,” she said, rising from her chair like an old woman to stand in front of the family portrait, taken when the boys were five. “There was a terrible battle, almost twenty thousand dead.”
“No...”
She turned, blue eyes merciless. “Your brother is missing and presumed dead. You are now the Lord Sparda.”
His eyes were wide, panicked. “He's not dead.” His voice was thin, barely more than a whisper. “He can't be dead, he said he'd come back - “
“It's time to take up your - “
“HE'S NOT DEAD!” he screamed. “Don't you think I'd know?” He grabbed at the pendant under his shirt. “He's not dead,” he repeated, then fled the room.
When he didn't show up for dinner that evening, his mother knocked on his door until her hand was raw. She didn't need the servants to tell her that no-one had seem him since that morning, but when she was informed that there was a horse missing from the stables, she locked herself into her husband's office. “Heir to the wind,” she whispered as tears streamed down her face, looking at the diaries the twin's father had so meticulously kept. “Find your courage...”
Summer turned to fall with no news of either young man. As fall turned to winter, one of her dead lord's associates sent a message that one or the other might have been seen in Germany. The neighbors started to whisper that the family was cursed, and slowly society withdrew itself from the place, lest the taint spread. Before winter closed it's icy fist around the manor, a rumor was passed along of a young man in red in Austria fighting like a demon, or perhaps it was fighting with a demon, no-one was sure. But nothing about a similar young man in blue was ever heard.
Lady Eva became very ill when the year changed, and a distant cousin of hers came to help with running the manor. Spring's promise of new life and new help from the Americans meant little to the household. Lady Eva was dying, and no news had come about either of her sons in months. Most of the servants had either left or been dismissed, until only a few of the most loyal remained, the fields were wild, and the house seemed ready to descend into ruin if the wrong wind blew.
There came a day of spring storms, the soft rain soaking the ground until dusk. The night air was still, wet and heavy, muffling every sound. The heavy pounding at the front door shocked the house, as there had been no visitors for some time and no sane traveler would seek shelter in a place surrounded by such rumors. The Lady Eva's young cousin had a robe over her shoulders and steel in her hand as she went to check the door, as the doorman was old and mostly deaf. She peered through the glass beside the entrance, blinked at the stranger who was not strange at all, then quickly unlatched the door and flung it open. “Welcome home,” was all she said.
Dante stood in the doorway, staring at the woman holding one of his father's swords in her hand. For a moment he was confused, seeing another in her place. “You... you're not mother,” he finally managed. Even before he had left, his mother had been thin and gray This woman was young and golden, tall and well proportioned, stunningly beautiful.
She smiled, and his heart stopped. “I am not. My name is Tricia, I am a cousin to your lady mother.” Her smile faded. “But you must come quickly, she is so very ill...”
He took the stairs two at a time, not bothering to shed his long red coat or even attempt to stop dripping rain and mud all over the carpets. The young woman kept up with his pace, and the two were almost racing each other by the time they got to the far wing where the Lady Eva had retired. Dante's hand rested on the door a moment, then he took a deep breath and entered the room.
There was a fire giving off more heat than would normally be necessary, if the occupant had not been unable to stay warm. The figure on the bed stirred, and Tricia silently glided to the bedside to help the older woman sit up. Dante stood by the fire and stared into it, waiting and dreading. After a moment, his mother spoke in a soft but still strong voice. “You have come into your power?”
He did not look up, but nodded.
“What have you learned, then?” she prodded.
This time he looked up, with eyes haunted by knowledge both fair and foul. “That he was much, much more than he seemed.”
She sighed, feeling she had no time to coddle him. “Come over here, boy,” she snapped, and was glad to see him jump a little before standing on the opposite side of the bed from Tricia. She saw the glances the two exchanged, and was glad for that as well. “Any news of your brother?”
His eyes got dark with deep pain. “He is dead,” he finally rasped.
“You are sure this time?” she asked pointedly.
He flinched, then pulled something out from under his shirt and over his head. A single amulet dangled from a chain, a fusion of the two given with bloody hands years before. “I am sure.” He put it back on.
Eva closed her eyes, rallying her strength. “You may recall that your father was murdered. I have learned who ordered it.” She glanced and Tricia, who nodded once. “It was one of your father's former associates, a man named Mundus.”
“He is a powerful man, much like your father was,” Tricia said, looking at Dante. “His castle is hidden on an island in the seas north of Scotland. I will show you where it is.”
He gave her a hard look. “If it's hidden, how do you know where it is?”
“He has raised me from childhood,” she said, not hiding from the truth.
He sighed, and his shoulders slumped under his great coat. “Is there anything else, mother?” he asked, sounding almost as old as her. “I fear I will have to leave here soon to continue taking care of family business.”
“Do not be bitter, son,” his mother said as she reached for his hand. “This is not what we had planned for you, or for your brother.”
“The best laid plans,” he muttered.
“Gang aft agley,” Tricia finished with a soft smile.
He laughed without meaning to, short and pained.
His mother handed him a key. “This will unlock your father's office. There is much you will need inside.” She sighed. “I am old and tired, and will rest now.”
Dante nodded at the dismissal, then bent to kiss her brow. “I will see you tomorrow, mother,” he whispered before leaving.
Tricia waited until the door was firmly closed and his footsteps had receded. “Will you see him tomorrow?” she whispered sadly.
The older woman chuckled. “I will see some more mornings,” she promised. “I may not see my grandchildren...” She trailed off as Tricia blushed. “But I will see this through to the end.”
Dante turned the key over in his hands several times. This was something he had wanted, something Vergil had wanted even more, ever since his father had died. But now that he had it, he had to restrain a wild urge to throw the key out a window and then himself out another. His mother could say that this had not turned out like they had planned with all sincerity, but she was not the one who had to do what he really did not want to do. But he was the one who did what he had to do, so with a final shake of his head he unlocked the heavy bolt and pushed the door open.
It was a bit musty, with a smell of old paper and worn leather. He carefully crossed the room, like a child afraid of being caught trespassing. He put off actually looking at anything by spending several minute starting a fire, ostensibly to take the chill out of the air that was, he told himself, because no-one had lit a fire here in months. Not because of the huge sword he could feel staring at him from across the room. Not because of any ghosts, or demons, or anything at all connected to the things his father had done while he was alive.
With a frustrated sigh, he stood up from his crouch in front of the sullenly flicking fire and turned to face the rest of the room. “I know I'm not the one you wanted,” he started, walking up to the bone-hilted greatsword. “I know I'm nothing like my father. But I'm all you have left now, so we may as well work together.” He wrapped his hands around the grip and pulled it off the wall.
As expected, the eyes in the demon skull lit up, but he didn't flinch. Nor did he fight the intrusion into his heart and soul. After several moment, the sword's eyes dimmed, and something very much like a grin could be seen on it's skull face. Dante merely smirked, setting the sword back on it's stand for now, and pulled the book from the shelf marked with his birth date and started reading.
The next morning Tricia found Dante still in his father's office. There were papers strewn across the top of the desk, maps half-buried under scribbled notes, daggers used to mark important points. The young man was reclined in the chair behind the desk with his feet on a stool, head leaning against one of the wings of the chair, snoring softly. She resisted the impulse to kiss him, and instead laid his coat around him and quietly closed the door again.
They were gone within the week, Lady Eva's health having improved and more of the servants having returned once the news got around of Dante's return. They sailed to the island Tricia had pointed out, and before he disembarked she kissed him soundly. “I will wait for you, as long as it takes,” she promised.
He nodded, and gave her the amulet. “I will come back for this,” he promised in return, then left without looking back.
He came back thinner, harder in the eye, a sack the color of dried blood in one hand. He very gently touched her face, as if he feared disturbing a dream. “They did not harm you?” he finally asked.
She shook her head, then leaned her cheek into his calloused palm. “When they asked what I was doing here, I told them I was waiting for my lord to return.”
He grinned, an echo of his old rakish grin, and pulled her close. “Then I guess we should go and make it official,” he whispered, and she agreed.
As she predicted, the Lady Eva lived to see her son return home, to view the proof of his victory by gazing upon Mundus's severed head. But she did not live much longer than that, yearning for her own lord, and missed the birth of her grandson by some months.
Dante held the child carefully. “Nero,” he said, looking into eyes the same color as his, touching hair the same pale color. “My son. My heir. May you get what you need, and fight for all that you desire.”