Summary: A drabble about Kat and Dante talking through some stuff in the aftermath of Vergil leaving; Kat engages in some introspection about Vergil, Dante, and how things have come to this.
Part of @dmcgenweek
Day 4 Prompt: Protection/Smile
(I’m falling a little behind, sorry!)
“Did you really mean what you said back there?” Kat picked at her lo mein with her plastic fork, as the TV in the hole-in-the-wall Chinese restaurant blared with yet more talking heads arguing over how accurate the word “demon” was and what exactly had happened at Silver Sacks Tower. “About the world being under your protection?”
Dante glanced at her and chewed slowly, mouth full of dumpling. “Yeah, of course I meant it.”
She fell back into silence, making a token effort to eat. Truthfully, she wasn’t hungry. Remembering the look on Vergil’s face as he snapped at her to stay out of an argument over the fate of humanity still made her stomach churn.
“What, you thought I’d bail? Like he did?”
“No.” She put her fork down, giving up the pretense. “You told me once I could count on you to stick with us until the end. I believed you, and I still do.”
“Then what’s with the thousand-yard stare?” He took his boots down off the table and let his chair fall back onto four legs with a thump, leaning on his elbows to look at her.
“Hey.” His frown was full of concern, but she couldn’t help seeing Vergil’s ‘what am I missing?’ frown in it. “You wanna keep it to yourself, that’s fine by me, but unlike my brother, I actually care about the answer.”
“…there’s a part of me that wants to defend him, you know. Say he does care, he’s just hyperfocused, that’s just his way.” She leaned back in her chair, tilting her head back to watch the ceiling fan spin. “But I guess no matter how well you think you know someone, you never know how they really feel.”
“Kat, you can trust me. I swear, I will not let him or anybody else squat on Mundus’ empty throne. I don’t care if I have to kill every damn demon on the planet.”
“I know.” She sighed and lifted her head up to meet his gaze again. “It’s just, this fight has been my whole life ever since I joined up with Vergil, and now…” She shrugged. “He’s gone, the Order is gone, all my friends are gone. This was supposed to be the endgame. He used to call it V-Day, like Victory Day. Only now, I think the ‘V’ stood for something else.”
Dante snorted, remembering the time he’d commented on Vergil’s pretentious-ass dashboard in his car and the response was “if I have to spend all my time hiding, I deserve this one indulgence.” Then he reached across the table and gently put a hand on her arm. “Not all your friends are gone,” he said.