Primal

"You soulless bastard," She prodded, her feet crunching the snow beneath as she followed him. He had stormed from the building only seconds before, wrapping his coat peevishly over his bare shoulders, the pulsating music following him outside, much like she was at the moment.


"That's what they tell me," He shrugged, punching his fists into his pockets as he lowered his head in the cold, the wind and snow wiping against his face. He pulled one hand from his coat, lighting a cigarette between his teeth before plowing on, seemingly oblivious to Lady's following, even when she came next to him, scowling.


"That shit will kill you, you know," She snapped, hugging her own coat closer to her chin, glaring at the speed he insisted they use.


"Promises promises," He smirked, teeth still holding the burning cigarette, gasps of cold air and smoke being quickly moved through as he heightened his pace.


She just glared even harder, quickening her shorter legs to keep up with him. He seemed at home in this climate, his frosty, pale hair thrown carelessly around as though it were dancing, the light in his eyes brighter, more playful as he dared her to keep up with him. His face was pure beauty, unhindered by darkness as the moon occasionally kissed the earth with its rays, sliding over the brilliance of his skin and the fullness of his mouth. His eyes glanced towards her, a light nearby making her blood run a tad colder as his vision reflected it as an animal's would when caught by the sheen of a car's headlights. For a moment they appeared to be made of chrome, glinting only when he blinked, smiling as if he read her mind.


Smiling as if to say, 'ahh, but I've reminded you haven't I? Place me by human standards angel. See me as man. I'll only take the inevitable opportunity to remind you that I am, indeed, a devil.'


Yet even in that moment, she was also reminded of his youth, the flicker of his childhood still clutching at the soft skin of his face, the smooth planes of his eyelids. Did he ever smile like this with Vergil? Did the moon in some way, in those days, rejuvenate life inside him, rebirth that which had died? For but a split second, she saw his world if Vergil were to return and realized that she could never have the same impact as his brother could. Were Vergil to return, Dante would become the legendary Phoenix, destroyed in fire and then reborn from the ashes.


"Dante slow down," She begged him, his pace now simply too fast to keep up with, despite the fact that she was running beside him. "Dante, stop!"


But he only shrugged her away, continuing on until he was nearly running himself. Desperately she watched him go, her breath like fire in her lungs as she watched him, gracefully gliding like liquid over the piles of snow. Buildings loomed over him, soft lighting from windows illuminating his gorgeous form, illuminating that which wasn't human, that which could never abide by the rules or standards she set for him.


"He's not coming back Dante!" She finally cried, her voice hoarse. That stopped him and she gulped hard, seeing his stillness in the distance. "He's not coming back."


She panted, walking slowly up to him, her breath coming in great gasps of fog.


"No matter how fast you run."


He turned to her, the cigarette now seething embers between his teeth, quickly spat onto the ground and demolished by the falling flakes of snow.


"You don't know that." He said, visibly swallowing. She was torn now, between telling the truth, between telling that which she had originally come to say. She looked into his eyes, wanting so badly to voice that which had spurned her into that Godless establishment, that which had forced her to look at him in his lowest hour. She wanted to tell him, to tell him everything, to show him a sort of freedom that only the truth could provide.


Yet, could that freedom destroy she wondered?


"Dante," she sighed, moving a close as she dared. "He's not coming back. He can't come back. And..." She shook her head, looking down. "And even if he could, things cannot be like they were; like you thought they once were."


"Like I THOUGHT they once were?" He snapped, eyes blazing as he stood straight (nearing seven intimidating feet tall) and gazed down at her. "What the hell are you implying? That everything, every minute, every day, every everything about my brother is just some figment of my impossibly deranged imagination? That I only THINK he was my best friend; that I only THINK he tried to save my mother and ended up saving me instead? That I only THINK he's damn near the ONLY reason I'm even here today? Well fuck what YOU think because you can shove it where I think."


He stormed away, face a mask of fury.


"I know that he's your brother," She called afterwards, summoning all of her courage to say what she knew she had to. "I know that he always will be to you and I know that you will always love him. But Dante," She sighed, hanging her head in sorrow and exasperation. "Damn it. He doesn't LOVE you.."


Dante stopped once more, vision glued to the snow as he ground his teeth in his head, his jaw becoming a tense ball in his cheek.


"He CAN'T love you," She told him. "So stop looking for salvation in the heart of a monster. Stop looking at him and seeing yourself in his eyes because it's just a lie."


"Shut up."


"No," She said firmly, standing up straight. "You shut up. Stop this shit. Stop this running, this useless attempt at killing yourself, at killing your legacy, at killing anything and any memory you hold dear. Stop thinking that if you act like a big enough BASTARD that you'll get sent precisely where your bastard brother went! You ARE what you ARE Dante but you are NOT HIM!"


His lips bent downwards, his teeth still fixed tightly together. She knew she had gone too far, possibly gone there long before the revelation dawned on her yet she stayed where she was, her eyes focused only on him.


"There is more that you don't know Dante," She blinked hard, watching him perk up to the idea. "More that....." She tore her gaze from his, unable to keep contact. "More that I don't even want to tell you. More that you probably don't even want to believe."


There was silence as she bid him to speak, to either dismiss her entirely or to spurn her on. His lips looked dry and cracked, his face a mask of cruelty, just as Vergil's had constantly been. She trembled slightly in her coat, making a fist to stop the movement. The thickness of his lips parted, saying nothing as though unable to speak or form the words, his eyes darting anywhere but her.


"Tell me." He said finally, as if knowing, someplace inside himself, that what she knew could possibly devastate him.


"Dante," She spoke his name seriously, wanting him to look at her and yet daring herself to return the gesture. "I don't even think he is your brother. Dante," she pursed her lips. "I think he's something else."


His face cracked and he exploded in laughter, pointing a wiggling finger at her as he laughed, rolling his eyes.


"You," he shook his finger, shaking his head. "You had me for a second there Angel."


"I'm not kidding!" She insisted, glaring her best bout' of poison. "Listen to me! I was going through some of my father's old things about a week ago, his experiments, his research. Sick things, demented obsessions, mathematical equations for evil. Unbelievable things. And then I fell upon this," She reached inside her coat, pulling out a dusty, stained old book. He shifted through it, face a charade of disinterest. "I know it doesn't seem to make any sense- "


"Or even be in a known language." He cut her off dryly.


"Yes, but-.."


"Shh.." He held a hand out towards her, eyebrows squinting together as he gazed harder at a certain page. A drawing was made, scratched crudely on the surface of the paper, that which resembled a small boy holding onto the bars of what seemed to be a cage. "This is the equation for life," He breathed. "for existence I mean."


"Yes," Lady nodded quickly, eyes wide. "That's what I'm trying to tell you." she stared at him straight in the eyes. "If what these papers told me is true, your mother and father couldn't have conceived you naturally through childbirth."


"What?" He raised an eyebrow, looking at her as though she were crazy.


"From what this book says," She whispered, gazing at the book with slight horror. "Eva and Sparda were indeed in love. But there's something else. Sparda knew he was going to die. Dante, your dad KNEW that Mundus would find a way to defeat him and so he did. But not before Sparda could convince Eva to have a child with him, despite the very grim fate they more or less figured they would meet as a result. Unfortunately though, they couldn't conceive you through natural means, his demonic sperm unable to spark life in someone that was foreign to his world."


"Could you please skip with the demonic origin of the birds and the bees and just fucking get on with it?" he snarled.


"Damn it," She scowled. "Do you understand what I'm trying to tell you? Do you even grasp it? They damn near GREW you in a FUCKING lab!"


"That is....so stupid." He shook his head. "So stupid it's laughable. Your crazy father writes some deranged book about the process of life and my family and you're only too willing to barge in and interrupt my shit with your lousy beliefs in someone you shot in the head. You're just as cracked-out crazy as he was."


He tossed the book into her arms, features contorted with anger.


"Please," She begged him, against her will, grabbing his arm. "Just listen to me. Sparda KNEW that the world would need a savior after he was gone, that he would need to continue his line through a child. Your mother found a way to combine his seed with hers and to form life through that. But the balancing forces of good and evil knew that a son from the legendary would become one of two things: extraordinarily good, able to turn the tides of victory to the side of good.... or the other one: extraordinarily evil. Don't you see what I'm trying to tell you? Don't you get it?" She shook him by the shoulders, making him look at her furiously. "The sides, the genes, split Dante! Your mother and father played God and the result was what you could call a ghost in the machine, a split in the fates. You were given the side of good, the side of soul. And your 'brother', the mistake, the abomination, was given the side of evil."


Dante made a fist, grabbing her back, teeth gleaming from beneath a vicious snarl.


"I swear to you Lady," He promised in a hoarse whisper. "If you were ANYONE else..."


She yanked violently away from him, sizing him up even from her obvious height difference, pushing him back.


"And what difference would any of this make regardless?" He spat, gorgeous features tilted with anger. "He was my brother, my everything, regardless of what choices he made, of who you or anyone else say he was. Nothing you say can change any of it. None of what you say can change the fact that he laughed with me, had birthdays with me, shared secrets with me. Nothing you say can erase Christmas or Halloween or any of that trivial bullshit that HE spent with me. It can't bring him back and it can't make him seem like anything less than my brother."


"Yes but don't you get that?" She asked him. "He isn't even a person. He isn't a brother. He's a thing, Dante. And those memories, here, look," She pointed to a page he refused to even glance at. "According to my father, Mundus supplied everything. From your first holidays together to the memory of Vergil saving you. Vergil never even LIVED with you Dante. When he was five, he was taken to the underworld, memories supplied from Mundus so that WHEN and IF Vergil decided to create an uprising, your OWN CREATED memories would make it so that you'd be unable to stop him, to finally finish him. Don't you see? They're all lies! Which means that thing you miss so much, that thing you love, that thing you call your brother...? It's just a dead THING Dante."