Antidote

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This is the final installment of the Poison/Antidote DxV saga.
Thank you for reading!

~ Epilogue ~

It was warm and he was comfortable; something seemed wrong about that, and Dante frowned to himself, but didn’t open his eyes. If he could make it last a little longer, he would. But… his body ached strangely and his throat felt a bit raw…

“Vergil!” He sat up so quickly he heard a spring twang and snap beneath him, and he turned swiftly to find Lady staring at him through startled blue-and-scarlet eyes.

“Have a good night last night?” she asked; he tried to analyze her inflection, attempting to pick out any hidden meaning, but his heart was pounding too fast in his ears. He threw off the sheet and leapt to his feet; he heard Lady gasp.

“Good God, Dante!” she cried, and he stared at her, startled… then realized he was naked. He would have laughed if he hadn’t been fighting down a rising panic… he snatched the sheet and wrapped it haphazardly around his waist.

“Guess it was a good night then,” muttered Lady in an embarrassed tone, her face crimson.

Dante couldn’t spare her a thought though— he cast his eyes desperately about the room, and—

What the... son of a bitch.

Now he felt only utter blank confusion. Behind the desk, Force Edge was hanging in its usual place on the wall next to Rebellion. Cerberus was lying on the desktop, and next to it…

The amulet, with its broken chain, glittered in the hazy light.

Dante tried to cast his thoughts back to the previous night… what had happened in those final moments?

He turned to Lady. “When did I get back last night?”

She gave him a sternly reproving look. “How should I know? I left after I cleaned up your mess. When I got here this morning, you were passed out on the sofa there.”

Dante sighed; he knew he should thank her for her housekeeping, but the only emotion he could feel at the moment was bewilderment.

The last thing he could remember was losing consciousness with the rain pouring over his face and his twin brother draped over his own exhausted, strangled body…

Had he made his own way back to Devil May Cry later then? And how had he gotten the amulet back from Vergil…?

Or… had his brother brought him back here, and chosen not to take Force Edge and the amulet? It seemed like such a ridiculous notion; he tried to dismiss it.

He picked up the precious trinket and turned it over in his hand, rubbing his thumb absently over the engraving on the back.

The engraving…

He looked down and his vision blurred as some innate brotherly sense whispered the truth to him… the truth that Vergil had carried him, unconscious, back here… that his older twin had undressed him and laid him on the couch; had hung Force Edge back on the wall and left the amulet on the desk for him to find.

An uncomfortable lump rose in his throat now, and his eyes burned. It was true that he had shed a few tears those months back when he had left Vergil in the demonic realm, but now he finally sank to his knees in despair and wept for his brother.

As sobs shook his shoulders, he felt hot tears drip onto his hands and trickle over the amulet clutched tightly in his fist.

The amulet with the engraving on the back…

The engraving that read,

Vergil & Dante.

~ Antidote FIN ~

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Closing Author’s Notes: So concludes the Poison/Antidote saga. I hope you enjoyed reading it… please comment / review.

There is another sequel saga currently in progress; Affliction is Vergil's side of events; Recovery will be Dante's. Affliction is currently in the works. If you'd like to continue the story, please check it out.

Thank you for reading! ^_^