So one night I was feeling particularly melancholy and just came out with some raw emotion, chopped it, screwed it and Devil May Cry'd it. Subtle romantic undertones, but you'd only notice them if you were me with my Dante x Vergil shipping fetishes. 8D Also, Murmuring Mermaids is really a song! Please listen! So gorgeous and beautiful! As a final note, I do not own Devil May Cry in any of its forms, and I do not own the characters of Dante and Vergil.

Vergil is dead.

Dante cannot process. He knows this was coming—they aren't fully devil like their father, old age would've got to them some day, maybe some devil disease would cripple their bones or perhaps a piano would fall on one of their heads—but it doesn't prepare him any better for the agonising reality that crashes down around him.

Vergil's body is usually hot. And now it is cold. He is not stiff, so he must not have been here for very long, and it gives him an eerie lifelike quality. He is flexible; his arm rises without protest when Dante lifts it, and it drops just as naturally. But Vergil, however, is simply not there.

Vergil is gone. This is only his shell.

Dante's white brows merge together as pain overtakes him. He's on his knees, slumped, and he's falling sideways with a hand over his heart as a sob leaves his lips. And in his head he can only hear one thing, and it's that stupid song that Vergil put on repeat.

Murmuring Mermaids. A piece by Lunz, a collaboration of Hans Joachim-Roedelius and Tim Story. Vergil knows all about these two, but Dante knows nothing except the music's haunting melody because it's burned into brain. Branded between brain cells.

He knows it back to front. Soft piano steps at the beginning, high notes in two pairs of three. The first of each six notes accompanied by a lone, lower key. It dips. It turns. Dante doesn't know the real terms—Vergil does—but he knows that as it goes on, seconds ticking by quietly, it lowers across the scale. Black notes somewhere in there. Melancholy and beautiful and teasing.

It really should be happy, but it seems to define loneliness. The ode to desolation. The hum of a breaking heart that makes Dante's throat hot and tight. It is playful; but he is not at play.

He looks over again, really unable to keep his eyes away. He doesn't want this to be real. He doesn't want to look at anything else. He can't. He can not.

Vergil's really dead.

He draws in a deep breath and lets it fill him, but it's fuelling his anguish and his heart swells to unnatural proportions and jumps into his throat. It's Mother and Father all over again. After all that he banked so much on Vergil, secretly so, and vowed that he wouldn't lose him. Not Vergil. Not the one thing left of his life before.

The pain is inexplicable. No words suffice. Not a single word in any language on Earth can ever be enough to even begin to describe this.

He sinks to the floor, draped over his body. Vergil is a symbol of the sacrosanct, Dante's own personal little sacred. Terracotta and Tuscan. Sunday school. Morning coffee and afternoon crêpes. The Old Country. Fiesole overlooking Firenze.

The chocolate cake Mamma made for their eighth birthday.

All of this is violated; all of it is gone with Vergil. Dante sobs again; puts his mouth over Vergil's heart and screams. There's nothing there but an empty core, overloaded with blood. There isn't even a soul anymore.

Dante's left incomplete.

He thought maybe it would come back to him, when Vergil died. Or if he died, his soul would go to Vergil and heal him. There's nothing of the sort. Twins are a lie. Born of the same embryo and spirit, dying alone.

The thought haunts him. What was his final thought? Was he scared?

The idea of Vergil terrified breaks something deep and personal in Dante. Not because it's Vergil who's never afraid of anything, but because he would never want Vergil to be afraid. The idea that he was alone, knowing he was alone, and that this was really it. That it was the end.

Dante knows Vergil inside out. He knows that death in its entirety is Vergil's worst fear. You wouldn't think, but it's true. Vergil's cold and aloof because that's how he deals with the loss of his once-was. Dante finds solace in beer, women, and the hard graft of demon hunting. Vergil finds solace in nothing.

Death is something Vergil keeps at arm's length. He puts himself before death every day because he must; his life demands it of him. His life wants his blood, but Vergil keeps on. Vergil fights when he must, stops when he must, does horrible and immoral things when he must. Vergil is true steel. So what does the unbreakable fear?

The one thing that can crack him forever. Death.

Dante weeps. Vergil's lost. Vergil's gone. Vergil no longer exists.

Vergil does not exist.

It hurts. Oh, how it fucking tortures him. Vergil is not a soul or a body or a mind. The spark that makes Vergil move and think and gives him a personality is gone. This body is a shadow.

He doesn't care to think about the particulars of afterlife. None of it matters. He would like for Vergil to ascend, but Vergil would like for Vergil to descend. Either way he'll be happy. But either way, he's not here. Gone.

Gone the wind, gone the sun. And that song. That song.

Dante wants nothing. But he is crying regardless, hot tears steaming across his cheeks, out with a vengeance to get him for all those years he kept everything locked up inside. This is the straw that breaks the camel's back; this is the finality that Dante must face.

"Vergil."

He says the name. Nothing comes back at him. He says it again, and still Vergil just lies there. He doesn't hear. None of him works. He's gone. Gone. Vacated. Never coming back.

"Please!"

He's gripping him by the shoulders, holding him close to his face but his head lolls back and he's not replying. He is not there. But he continues. Pleading. Begging. Pleading more. Whimpering and crying and saying over and over again, "No, no. Don't do this to me, please. Not now. Not me."

He hits him. His cheek snaps to the side, but nothing. He hits him again the other way, but silence is his response.

"PLEASE!"

Nothing. He hauls him up into his arms and buries his face in his chest. And he sobs. Screams. Really tears his throat up as he howls inconsolably.

"FUCK! FUUUCK! VERGIL! FUCK!"

He looks back at him expectantly. He can kid himself that those eyes will open and there'll be sharp blue peering at him in irritation. He'll find a hand locked around his throat, then he'll be thrown down against the ground as Vergil's snarl fills the space between them. Then Vergil will move away, pull his coat straight, and pretend as if he hasn't just shown anything more than cool indifference.

He continues to kid himself. He sits there, thinking, Just another second. Okay, a minute. No, another minute. It totals up. It makes an hour. It makes another. He's stunned; he's waiting, yet nothing comes back at him. Not a breath, not a sigh. Just a cold, dead corpse.

Dante feels empty, and with that comes a certain kind of peace. He's not quite ready to let go of the body yet, the one that wears his brother's face, but the peace is soft. It's kind and gentle. It settles across his chest wonderfully, eases a cover over the hole inside him. He can breath easily, taking in with precise detail the way the air moves, the smells around him.

And when he's dissected the silence, he can finally let go. He lies it down, then stands, and looks out into the darkness around. He doesn't even look back at his once-was as he walks away. And for a while it is all right. It works. The void is sealed for now.

Days are quiet. Demon hunting is clockwork. He wakes, he fixes breakfast, he spits bullets. Lady comes in. She's chatty and snappy, and talks like nothing's happened. Trish is sharper, though. She senses it. Feels it in her bosom. She knows something's up, and when she purposely steps in Dante's way one day, she sees it in his eyes when he looks up at her. She sees nothing.

She also hears it when he wakes in the night, screaming.

He's begging for Vergil to come back.