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If there was an end to the world, this was it.

Heat poured from the pavement like smoke from a cigarette; you would've thought you were in a desert, but it was cold and rain pattered down quietly to create a bubble of ambiance outside that little ring of angst and pain.

Dante's chest heaved: against the monumental walls of the old Italian manor house, long abandoned, he was a hub of life. His denim jacket clung to his skin, and the green polyester of his trousers hugged his legs. He appeared, in his mismatched garb, a drowned rocker and yet his features were anything but dramatic or staged. In the pale canvas of his face, his eyes burned intensely like small worlds of their own safeguarded by bright, clear skies.

He blinked, and his white brows became crumpled, and he rushed forwards with the obscenely-large sword grasped in his hands as if the Devil himself were powering his teenage body.

The year was 2004, and it was the ides of March, and Vergil hadn't enough energy to conjure even the remotest flicker of emotion for his brother.

The sword—the Rebellion—sliced through his forearm. Vergil had seen the wobble in Dante's step: What was the excuse for this poor show? Attention? Hatred? Deep anguish in some part of his young body that threw off his centre of balance?

Blood spurted out, soaked the overgrown grass before the house: green and red. Ugly colours. The Rebellion cried with it, but Vergil didn't care. Let Dante have it all. Let Dante break him into a million tiny shards and scatter him in a million small villages and settlements all over the planet.

There was a heated twinge at the base of Dante's skull; fire rose in him like bile, and again he slashed through the air with that obnoxious sword. Again it bit into Vergil's flesh, and yet the narcissistic motherfucker just stood there, staring at the eggshell-white face of the dead house as if he expected the Lord Above to breathe life and light back into it again. Acid tainted Dante's taste, and his face scrunched, and he ripped the sword from his brother's thigh to see the skin knit together again with no visible scar.

"I've always known you were one sanctimonious prick, Verge," he ground out, "but this is a whole other level of bullshit."

Vergil didn't respond. The ribbons of Father's other sword fluttered weakly in the wet wind.

"Always did have your head stuck up your fuckin' ass, didn't you? Even as kids, you were high an' fuckin' mighty. Well, guess what, you asshole? Mom's dead! Dad's dead! Grindin' this out with me in front of our old house isn't gonna solve nothin'. There's no fuckin' cure for the dead, dickhead! No fuckin' cure for none of this shit, and you still run around with that stick up your ass, thinkin' you've got a place in devil society. Newsflash, Verge! They don't fuckin' care about you! You're just another Sparda to 'em!"

No, you're wrong.

"To fuckin' Hell I'm wrong, Vergil! Sparda betrayed 'em, they got pissed, and Mundus sent a fuckin' army after all of us! It's only by the good graces of this damn hill that we got out alive. I don't care whether you stuck it out all the way to Australia; they don't care. They don't want you. You ain't never gonna have 'em like Dad did."

Vergil spoke for the first time in over an hour.

"It's not about that," he said quietly. His voice was deadpan, drained. "You know it isn't about that."

There was a sharp stab in Dante's chest. He ground his teeth together as his eyes threatened to well. What the fuck was wrong with him? This should've been easier than taking candy from a baby; Vergil was a sociopathic asshole, an enemy to everything that he stood for.

"We're not talkin' about this, Vergil. I said what I needed to say."

This time the elder barked a cold, high laugh. It wasn't cutting... just matter-of-fact, a sound within the soundscape.

"It's so easy for you, isn't it? You have your moral ground, your independent little shop. If somebody wanders too close, you can fob it off with the excuse you're a specialist in firearms and a dealer in ancient weapons. When they browse your wares, realise they're much too expensive, you can breathe when they walk away, and you can pick up the telephone and order a pizza and exist quietly in that little world you have for yourself. You like it because you're safe."

"I'm not safe from nothin', Verge: You know that as much as I do. Demons trashed the shop a whole bunch of times."

"Only because I was there."

"Yeah, because you dragged your business into my house, and cost me a damn lotta money and almost my life on several occasions!"

"And not once," retorted Vergil icily, "did you ever tell me to leave."

Dante snarled; the sword came back up, but Vergil was on his game this time. The Yamato was poised and ready in his hand—scabbard in the other—to deflect the thick steel of the Rebellion. Dante had to lock his calf to stop himself from spinning around or flying backwards.

"So fuckin' typical of you to play the emotional card, you jerk. You make it sound like you weren't fuckin' pinin' for me every time I went out the house. Pathetic, Verge; how d'you think I felt when all those times you kept sayin' it was like Mom and Dad all over again, and that you were alone again, and there was nothin' for you anymore?"

"Irrelevant."

Dante snorted.

"Irrelevant my ass! Do you know why it's irrelevant to you now, Verge? You really wanna know? Fine!"

He jabbed towards the house with the Rebellion, and then at the forest of trees bordering the hill like a balding head.

"Because I don't want any of this no more! This is history, Vergil! This is ten years ago today when I walked in and saw Mom hanging from the ceiling! When I saw Dad's half-eaten corpse in the study! When I saw those fuckin' demons comin' at me, goin' to rip out my fuckin' eyes! When I thought you were gone, too! And you think you can waltz back into my life, speak Italian to me, and think we can go back to how it was with you at the head of the house? No fuckin' way, Verge. You're just..."

The breath went out of him, and he had to look away. The sight of Vergil, cold and monolithic yet so much like a fragile little bird flapping behind china walls, was beginning to undo him. He knew that behind that hard face there was a thrumming heart; he could hear it from here, feel it pulse with his own.

"You're just a ghost of everything that should stay dead, Vergil. I thought maybe you were gonna be all right. Maybe life had taught you a few tricks. But nothing, Vergil. Nothing. You do these intimate things with me and you think I can ever want you like that for real?"

Vergil's eyes flickered.

"We're not devils, Verge. We're human beings—or at least, I am. And you keep destroyin' 'em like it's your day job, and you think I'll be okaywith livin' your fantasy life? I have my home in Vermont, my own little house, and it's fine without devils and without Mom and Dad and without you. You just can't let go."

Vergil's trained eyes caught every movement of muscle in his brother's face. Funny, really, how something so beautiful could be so brutal. Dante was a crass reimagining of himself with a fuller face, stockier build, more devoid heart. He didn't really understand when it came down to it why people said they were identical; they were nothing alike. Vergil was honest and to-the-point: Dante was a pied piper of a man, leading others astray before dealing that crushing blow.

Merciless, laughing coup de grâce.

"So that's how it is."

"Yeah," echoed Dante, "that's how it is."

The sleeping birds seemed to have awakened for this. The rest of Fiesole, however, was asleep: Perhaps this was a place suspended in time. Witch hour. A hidden, crushing eternity. The birds crooned lowly, sadly, tweeting a funeral march as Vergil's eyes roved over the place they had once called home.

One second. Ten. Seventeen.

"Well," he sighed finally, "I guess there's nothing else left to do now but to kill you, Dante."

Dante was barely ready when the Yamato came jabbing in at his side like a vehement viper; he sucked in a deep breath as he twisted to the side; the sword passed through the gap between ribs and elbow, and he brought the Rebellion under and up to smash the o-katana from his brother's hand.

Vergil was already blocking the heavy sweep with the scabbard. Had the sharp side of the Rebellion come into contact, it would've been cleaved in two but instead it was the wide and heavy, brought up with such raw, physical strength that it sent Vergil flying. The momentum was wisely accommodated, however, and he allowed Dante's bare strength to lift him into the air where he flipped over only to land several metres away by the house.

Dante's chest was heaving again, and the Rebellion cut through the thick, muddy sludge of their arena as he pounded forwards like a dead-weight, but Vergil had thrown back his left foot and was tucking the long katana into his side. Dante threw himself to the left in a quick, improvised role just as the bubble of purple, distorted, devilish energy swooned in his just-vacated spot; he caught himself on the pad of his foot to right himself, bringing the thick sword to his right to bar Vergil's sudden uppercut.

The Rebellion went flying out of his hand, span through the air like a bird trapped in a thick current, and Dante was left defenceless as the tip of the Yamato pressed against his jaw. It was heated, steaming in the cold rain. He felt Vergil's devil energy crackle invisibly along it, and it sent a shimmer through his body.

"Don't even—"

Ebony and Ivory were already spitting bullets before Vergil could finish his sentence. He was there one second, and the next he became a streak of blue painted in the air as he zipped away from the biting metal. They pounded into the marble of the house—that disturbed something old and precious inside the elder, and with a sharp hiss he moved to press the flat of his foot against the crouching Dante's back and sent him flying face-first into the bloody mud.

"Does it really mean that little to you, Dante?"

Vergil's voice was a high, predatory snarl. He thrust his hand downwards to slam the Yamato into the back of Dante's neck, but found his brother to have rolled over. For all the self-control in the world he couldn't stop the images in his mind of seeing him crucified against the bones of the house with the Yamato dug deep into his chest.

Worthy Judas.

Who was Dante to decide what was and wasn't true, to control that beautiful biology that separated them from humanity? Who was this simple little boy in his unflattering denims and ugly colours to say that it was okay to forget the life they had before?

Vergil ground his teeth together as another blast of bullets came his way. This time, he allowed them to smash into his skull, deflect off the devil bone and drop lifelessly into the soggy ground of the Florentine hill. Dante could never kill him even if he tried.

There was a strange and suspended moment of disbelief as Dante's eyes widened. In the sharp, angered blues, Vergil could see himself and the arm which he was bringing back. The birds screeched, and the Yamato darted forwards.

Dante screamed.

The monolith smiled, and watched as the hummingbird that was his human brother crack in two.

Author's notes: I claim no ownership over the copyrighted Devil May Cry materials from which my fanfiction is derived. All rights and reserves go to Capcom, director/producer/publisher/whatever of the games. I own my own creativity and personal interpretation of the works, characters, events, canon and concepts but nothing more. Unfortunately I wish the characters were mine, but they aren't!