You Know Me Through The Years

Guilt

There were good days. Oh so many good days. Then there were the bad days, and they did not play around. Of course, being stuck in a place where day and night did not exist was something completely different. It left Dante thinking about the good days on the off chance he was not killing demons or arguing with Vergil on which direction they needed to go.

The Underworld was an endless expanse of nothingness; not so different from outer space except for the abundance of demons and plenty of breathable air. It also turns out that space is not habitable by demons as they also need oxygen. Dante had found this out after he had managed to strangle an impusa to death. Vergil seemed to be slightly impressed by this act and actually gave his brother a compliment. It was tic tac sized, but it was a compliment and Dante was taking what he could get.

Heroics aside, he sure did miss being around Vergil. When they were kids, they fought over everything. Now they were at the point were the past was the past and old wounds needed healing. It occurred to the brothers that they were going to get nowhere fighting each other. Not only were they evenly matched at this point, but they were exhausted.

Time was definitely different in the Underworld for sure. Vergil had mentioned time went slower there than it did topside, but not by much. Of course, time was nonexistent where the twins were in the first place. Eternity was as endless as the realm they currently traversed, making everything seem so tedious. Hordes of demons wanted to challenge the brothers every chance they could get, but Dante was not one to give up easy and neither was Vergil.

Yet, when there was a dull moment, sometimes conversations happened. The conversations that needed to happen between them for years that had never happened seemed to bubble up from Dante; much to Vergil's annoyance. Still, the older brother indulged the younger by at least answering to the best of his ability.

"You once told me that without power I couldn't protect anything or anyone." Dante opened up when they sat on a ridge overlooking the plains below. Their feet dangled off the rocky edge as they took the chance to enjoy their respite. "I thought you were an idiot."

"Maybe I was." Vergil confessed and Dante shook his head before chuckling.

"To hear you admit that is priceless." The red clad twin slapped his thigh before leaning back on his hands and crossing his ankles. Vergil merely side eyed him with a grunt. Somehow they had grown comfortable in each other's company enough to think about the old days and all the regrets. "Hey, you know, Nero inherited your honest streak."

"That doesn't surprise me." Vergil continued to look ahead. "I see a lot of his mother in him too."

"Ah...yep. I can see it, even if I've never met her." Dante smiled a little as he realized this was the first time Vergil had mentioned 'the woman' ever. "That's the thing about being a parent. You see a lot of yourself in your kids."

"You have children?" There was a slight tone of surprise in Vergil's voice. Dante had been quiet about his children, as he only wanted Vergil to come to terms with the decisions he made. Roe and the kids were not part of that, and Dante had been keen on keeping them out of the picture...until now.

"Crazy isn't it." That was an understatement. "It seems that we were both young once." Dante took that opportunity to lay on his back with his hands behind his head and bent a knee.

"I always wondered if everything had been switched, if you were in my position and I yours, if things would have turned out differently." Vergil lamented, but his brother bumped his upper arm with a fist.

"You can't think like that." Dante said. "What is done is done. We made our choices, now we have to live with them. The good and the bad." As intelligent as Vergil was, he clung to the idea of trying to change his destiny, where as Dante knew it was futile because to him, destiny did not exist. There were lessons in life that Dante had learned that Vergil had not and possibly could not learn. "As much as I want to go back in the past and change so many things, I wouldn't have my family."