I'm reposting this story I published from AO3, it went through a very thorough revision and now it's more of my liking.

Warnings: Babysitting, Slight Child Neglect, Necessary OCs, Past Relationships, Implied Abuse, Dante and his gals being emotionally inadequate for the obvious reasons.

Please do leave your feedback if you liked what you read and/or want to give any criticism. I'd appreciate it a lot!

She Has Your Eyes

by PinkROmantic

Chapter 1

She wore a ring with a large yellow gemstone in her long bony fingers resting under her chin. It was her grandmother's ring, she must've returned to that house to pick it up of all things. Her thin lips struggled to find a smile and her eyes wouldn't meet his again.

She was afraid of him, but for what reason, he couldn't decide.

"… I'm sorry… I'm bad. I just… really wanted to do something good for you, Dante, at least once."

And he was unable to stop her as she walked away. Even though he wanted to follow, he forced himself to stand his ground. There was some sort of helplessness filling him as she disappeared from his sights, a sad relief and an aching rage he couldn't pick apart.

She left and that was all he needed to understand.

…

The old chirping ring of the outdated phone fazed him out of his sleep, had it been replaced for a less grating sound he would've ignored it until it stopped. He cracked one eyelid open to confirm the light of morning didn't grace the windows of the obscure shop yet. He'd fallen asleep again with his back reclined on a chair while his legs rested on his desk, a lewd magazine slipping off his chest as he heaved. The phone didn't stop for a good minute. In a good morning he wouldn't have neglected a call, but he was too sour and tired to put up with it now.

"Devil May Cry… we don't open until 9." He yawned, and abruptly hung up.

It rang again right away. He had to repress a groan, having to hear the damned ring for another whole minute, so he picked it up just to immediately hang. It didn't work. The phone just kept ringing for another three minutes, and he almost felt like disconnecting the phone, but he just gave up the asshole-act.

"… Yeah?"

"Don't hang up."

There was a tired female voice on the other side, the light static making it hard to figure their identity, but he was pretty sure it couldn't be Trish or Lady, neither bothered to call him this early if they knew his habits well enough. "… Look at your porch."

"Yeah, no, sorry babe, but it's cold outside and it's not time for my morning jog yet, sooo—"

"Dante, this is important."

"Okay, bye~"

"Please just look. Help her, you're the only one I can count on."

"Who's this?"

"… Don't look for me." And they hung up just like that. If the receiver's sound wasn't crap, he was sure he would have recognized the voice. The message was too ominous to be from his close colleagues, so he could rule them out.

He stared at his shop's door, the idea of stepping out alone was such a hassle.

Putting down the phone, he took out one of his pistols, and threaded to the door with heavy steps, "I better not see a flaming bag of poop at my door, you hear me?" he shouted, kicking out the door abruptly.

He didn't shoot. Looks were deceitful and he often relied on his senses to find traps of supernatural hailing, but he found none, although his senses were alerting him of the presence of demonic nature he couldn't feel any immediate threat. There was just the chilly air of the dawn.

Suddenly, a new sound broke down, his eyes darted to his shop's porch, and Dante could feel his heart dropping down to his stomach.

The pitiful wailing of a baby coming from a bundle of clothes inside what appeared to be a cradle, right in front of him. "Oh come on, are you seriously doing this to me?" he groaned a little too loudly.

Dante looked out right and left, up and beyond, but whoever left this child at his door was already far away. He felt stupid and guilty for standing out there like an idiot while listening to the cries of the child for a solid minute, not knowing for sure what to do. He felt even stupider when he picked up the shell-like cradle, trapped in a weird mix of dread and fascination.

The baby seemed to lessen the crying when they noticed the man, but didn't seem to calm them, Dante was after all just a stranger in their eyes and haven't yet given the child a reason to stop being distressed. Dante could relate, he felt like he unironically wanted to cry.

"Hey… shhh… it's okay. Shhh, stop crying." He wanted to sound reassuring, but he honestly didn't know if it'd matter to a baby, he was still freaking out even as his arms shook awkwardly the little cradle. "That's it, no crying… Wait, damnit, what am I doing?"

He unceremoniously twirled the his left to avoid a painfully predictable sickle slash, when six wraith-like black demons showed up. He sighed, not wanting to even pretend that he cared about them. Besides, six only? Didn't they know that seven was the lucky number? Probably came in a rush, saw him distraught with a baby and probably thought he'd let his guard down. What an amateur's mistake.

Without letting go of the cradle, Dante yanked out Ivory and ducked other three attempts to cut him, he spun to give one of those Pride demons a roundhouse kick that literally plastered them to the other side of the street's walls, he gave two gunshots to the second one before headbutting a third that tried to stab him in the chest.

Dante went a little trigger happy to deal with the remaining four, yet felt too uninterested to add any more spice to his fight, these demons were relatively easy to deal with for him. The baby's cries intensified with the ruckus of the gunfire, so the faster he dealt with them, the sooner he'd be focused on quieting the bawling child.

After shooting down the last of them, Dante returned to his shop with the cradle still under his arm.

How more clichéd could this get? How many stories started out like this? Mystery parent leaves baby alone at the door of someone with the expectation that they'd be taken care of? Dante wished he could be less predictable than what had been written thousands of times. But he had to acknowledge that his reality had been nothing short of clichés so far, and nearly none had been more surprising than this.

The child eventually ceased sobbing, as if finally realizing that the man didn't mean harm, and the interior of the shop was significantly less cold than the porch. Dante hesitated to put down the cradle on his desk, now that he examined it more closely, he realized it was actually some sort of musty blue demonic shell, possibly from an insect-like spawn, and the clothes that wrapped the child was merely a bunch of dirty gauze. The child must've been freezing outside…

He unwrapped her from the thin cloth simply to verify that the baby was in fact a girl, small and soft, her face was all pink and eyes swollen from crying so much.

He finally braved to scoop the baby from the shell, copying what he's seen people do in movies when they carried a tiny child like this, his strong arms acting as a supplementary cradle.

The first thing she did when he held her in his arms was cling to his shirt, like her life depended on it. And in a way, it did. Her soft tubby little fingers were strong for an infant, testament of what she truly was, but he still cradled her in fear of breaking her little body.

She was calm now, her little blue eyes looked back into him, innocence and curiosity that were completely alien to demons. He wished he could be just as calm.

Dante had no idea of how to take care of a child this small. Sure, he had prior experience on jobs consisting of protecting and saving children from devils, but never demanded a whole lot of investment from him. Besides, from what he could make out, this wasn't really a job.

The fact that they even left her at his door of all places… Dante didn't want to dwell on it but his worst suspicions could be confirmed if he put the minimum amount of thought into it. He was tempted to go out and run to the streets, baby in arms, yelling and demanding an explanation for this bullshit.

He considered calling to Trish first. In the past several months they've grown a little distant and he felt awkward to call her in to announce 'guess what, somebody dropped a baby on my porch.' That'd been a good conversation starter were they still in better terms... But what were the chances of Trish knowing what to do?

In the end, he called on Lady, cryptically telling her to come to the shop quickly. She didn't press him for questions, saying she could be there in an hour or two.

Needless to say, the wait was hell. Dante just kept cooing the child nervously and whenever he felt like he wanted to pick a magazine or turn on the TV, the baby whined, as if not wanting him to leave her alone.

It was tragically hilarious, a big tough hunter like him losing his nerves with a tiny baby alone. He didn't want to panic, but what was he supposed to do if the child wanted to take a crap or if she was hungry? Dante wasn't really equipped to look after a baby's needs.

But then again, this wasn't a normal human baby.

The one who called minutes ago could only be her. Nicole.

The last time he was ever intimate with a woman was with Nicole, whom he tried so hard to forget for the past few months, to a degree. He was currently split between wanting to chase the madwoman to shove the baby back to her arms, or just letting her go and kick back this bad trip down memory lane for good.

One thing was certain: this was Nicole's baby. And he wasn't sure if being certain about the baby's origins that made things better or worse.

Dante looked down at the child for a while, examining the length and hair color. It was a little hard to tell if it was white or just a very light shade of blonde, but judging from how much its grown, Dante imagined the baby had to be only a few months short of a year.

And well, he hasn't seen Nicole for over a year, which led to… "Noooo…" he whispered with fake surprise, throwing his head back.

Before two hours went by, Lady came into the shop, her carefree mug dropped along her brown sunglasses when her heterochromatic eyes met Dante's little guest on his lap as he sat on the couch. Lady put down the heavy military bag she always carried to where work called her, not without eyeing her coworker inquisitively.

"That's a cute one. For how long do you need to take care of them and how much you're getting paid?" she sighed, as if this was nothing but a tiring unfunny joke.

Dante couldn't say he felt any differently from her. "This ain't a babysitting job, Nicole literally left her on my door early this morning."

Lady seemed to keep her reaction in check when he talked of Nicole, only offering him a knowing look, Dante briefly swayed his eyes somewhere else. "And you didn't feel her coming?"

"As I said, she only dropped the baby at my door this morning while I was asleep, she didn't even linger long enough for me to sense anything. She called at my shop then, she must be pretty far away by now."

"She called? How did she sound?"

"I haven't heard her voice in while, cannot really tell. Her words came off as desperate, if anything."

"Any note left?"

"Nope."

"Are you even sure that this is a real baby?"

That question made him tense, and in all fairness, this wouldn't be the first time Dante was personally targeted by enemies with particularly underhanded tactics. Lady was right to put the baby in question. Nicole wasn't the type to do this, but was he fully certain that Nicole was the one behind this at all?

Dante shrugged and picked up the child again, placing her inside the shell-like cradle, aware that Lady wouldn't feel at ease otherwise.

"You can hold her at gunpoint if you want, but she's just a harmless little baby, human or not."

"I'll be the judge of that." Lady reached into her military pouch and took what appeared to be a round ornate glass vial.

Holy water was used mostly just to distract or repel demons momentarily, although they usually left vicious burns on them for a considerable period of time, and devil hunters carried a few vials anywhere. Dante used to do it a long time ago, but he thought that the irritability that the water caused him wasn't worth the trouble. Lady opened the little vial and poured some on her leather gloved hand, sprinkled lightly on the child's arm. The contact with it made steam appear on the baby's tender skin.

The child shed a high-pitched cry, flailing her stubby little arms up, having no way to defend herself from the pain she obviously felt. Immediately Dante pulled her close to his chest, trying to shush the baby. "Well… at least now we know she is not entirely demonic, otherwise the water would've melted her arm to the bone."

"On top of that, she's completely helpless… Nothing more than just a child." he muttered, feeling like a jerk for letting Lady run that little test on the girl. He could see a glint of guilt on the bewildered huntress' face as she placed the holy water vial back to her bag. "I'm sorry, baby, sorry. You're okay now."

Both devil hunters shushed awkwardly at the child, both guilt-stricken and unsure of how to deal with this very human-like child.

Eventually, it seemed the baby's cries died down from exhaustion, the poor thing was sniveling and her burnt arm was shivering. He tried to cover it with the cloth, even though he knew it'd heal eventually.

He haven't panicked this much in years, Dante didn't have anything resembling fatherly instinct even when he had to protect children in the past. Why couldn't this be like all those other times?

Lady sat down on the desk, still perplexed.

"So, is this for real? She's yours?"

Her words struck Dante hard, his mouth went unpleasantly dry with the one question that he didn't want to hear for the answer he already had. He knew who this child was the moment he remembered Nicole, and that thought… frightened him.

Even seeing the burn marks of holy water not completely faded away from the baby's skin made him feel sick in the stomach, his chest was her only comfort. He didn't know what to do or how to deal with these alarming new feelings. He suddenly didn't want to turn his gaze away from the baby, fearing that she'd cry aloud again.

"What do you want me to say, Lady? I don't have a case against that assumption, for now."

"Well… you certainly look pensive about this baby. But whether she's yours or not, she was left here by Nicole."

"So what? Do you think she planned on this?" Dante sighed.

"If her goal was to make you take the baby under your care because she didn't want it anymore, it's definitely a possibility." Lady didn't know that. She knew that she didn't know that. But she also wanted to quickly grasp at an explanation to this conundrum, anything to dismiss the problem and move on with life. Dante, on the other hand, was still trying to digest what was currently happening.

"And… what if something else happened? I mean, she was literally pleading me through the phone." It was the first thing he came up with, and it just made them both uncomfortable.

"If that was the case, then we'd obviously need to search for her. If some stronger demon is after her and the baby, she must've… decided that she wanted to prioritize the child's safety first. But why did she leave? It's not like you'd turn your back on her if she was in danger in spite of… well, everything." At that last sentence, Dante hunched his shoulders.

"Knowing her, she'd just feel guilty because it'd look like she's using the baby as an excuse to stay with me."

Lady frowned lightly. "Many people use their children to force their partners to stay in a relationship. I didn't think she'd be sensible about this."

However, these were merely conjectures, and Nicole was the only one who could give them answers.

The baby seemed to get fidgety again, Dante's hands got sweaty against the cloth wrapping her, so he handed the child to Lady, who didn't even think when she held her in her arms to sway her. She obviously had as much experience as he did (none whatsoever), but didn't let that stop her from trying.

"In any case, if we cannot find her and make her take responsibility, this child still needs a proper home." The child's hands went up to Lady's face, she was visibly uncomfortable. "Yes, that's my nose."

"That home is obviously not here with me, right?"

Lady struggled with keeping the child's hands from touching her face.

"Are you mad? You can't really afford to take care of a baby in your line of work!"

And she was telling the truth. He wasn't sure why he brought it up all of sudden. The sole idea of having to make himself responsible for a toddler wasn't exactly enticing. But part of him knew that he had no choice, the child already existed.

"I know that. But this is no ordinary child, and I'm no ordinary man. Look, I agree that we should look for a better place for her, but in the meanwhile, I should be the one to keep her safe."

Lady sagged her stiff shoulders and passed the baby back to him, her blouse was dirty with baby drool.

"Just promise that you won't get too attached. This is no nursery."

"Can't promise anything."

Lady turned around, effortlessly picking up her bag as she walked towards the doors.

"… I'll just go out and buy some baby stuff. Do some homework yourself and learn how to change diapers while she's under your care, okay?"

Dante grimaced. "Diapers sound like another circle from hell."

"Can't have her taking care of her business on the floorboards. Then again, you never cared much about cleaning this place up, so I guess a bit of poop isn't going to bother you."

"Fine, fine, I get it." Lady was making this favor to him in the first place, he wanted to show a little more gratitude, but the morning hasn't been nice to him in particular. The baby seemed to breathe more calmly against his shirt. "… I owe ya."

"I still expect you to help me find Nicole. There might be something else we're missing."

He breathed, "… Let's hope for the best, I guess?"

Again, Lady wasn't wrong, but even if Nicole was in some deep trouble and was forced to leave the baby behind, Dante was busier deciding whether he wanted someone like that back in his life.

But she was truly never gone. As long as this tiny child existed, she would never be truly gone.