I AM LIGHTNING

@marksofwoe​ asked: ❛  i  was  eager  to  prove  i  was  good  enough .  ❜ || THE BAD GUYS

            A thought both expected and unexpected coming from someone quite like V; a soul who at the best of times presents himself as quiet, put together, and very almost furtive. Perhaps battle has loosened his tongue, or their growing and unlikely camaraderie, or the quaintness of momentary peace found sitting on the sun-warm rooftops while the dust settles down below. Awash in the burn of afternoon sun, V seems more phantom than man--and perhaps that's just how he feels.

                In his own way, perhaps Raiden could understand.

                “To yourself? Or to somebody else?” Is the answer rasped out into heat, distantly curious as his gaze drifts from the pensive look on V’s face to the street stretching out below. Dante, Nero, squabbling in the midst of their boisterous laughter. Raiden laughs, too, for one short breath.

                “Maybe a few someones, huh...”

“Pretty boy?”

                    He quirked a brow, his never-changing smirk present on his lips as he gave a tilt of his head and leaned back in his chair. Morrison had warned him that certain organizations would send their people to help with the clean-up, since the absence of the Qliphoth didn’t quite mean the remaining demons had gone with it. Dante didn’t quite expect one of them to take a step inside his office, though.

“Means exactly as it sounds. Why? Don’t like it?”

            “Well. Awfully forward here at Devil May Cry, now, aren’t we?” Though the tune is one that is familiar to many a place besides merely this one (even the battlefield finds itself a stomping ground to silver tongues and sweet talkers.) But a bold introduction nonetheless; one that sees Raiden making himself bolder in return as the office door kicks quietly shut behind him, lip tilted to a quiet smirk.

Oh, it is upsetting him - …assuming the curled upper lip is upset nerves and not, in fact, another charming trait. Dante sure knows how to pick them - another one that is well suited for the role of this sort of employment, and yet irresistibly enchanting to engage with in the worst possible ways. V’s own lips flatten in effort not to smile nor snicker at all, only to smile wider, “Okay, fine. Are you familiar with…. memes?” Possibly not. “What about… Bongo Cat? Polite cat?” V’s smile tried the hardest on this last one -

“….Nya-Cat?”

               For all the effort to conceal his own mirth, V only makes himself more obvious--which does not go far toward much besides deepening the furrow of Raiden’s brow, the suspicious creasing of his storm-blue eye as V finally obliges him with something of an answer. “Memes--?” And with a bitterly familiar word at that, though almost certainly not the same as Raiden remembers. A laugh scoffs out of him, flat and rough, as he leans back in his seat. “Not the kind that you’re talking about, probably.”

               As much V proves when the explanation only becomes more baffling than it does enlightening. Raiden’s bewilderment, in turn, only becomes more obvious.

@marksofwoe​ asked: ❛  this  is  a  chance  to  write  your  own  story .   ❜ || THE BAD GUYS

              “Yeah.” The agreement comes out of him sighing--perhaps with relief, perhaps with reassurance, perhaps simply with the immensity of the concept. His story, after all, has been a product of everyone else’s prose and verses since the distant, rainy days of his first breath. Funny to be sitting here now and thinking himself any kind of free, Funny to be hearing that from someone in a similar position as Raiden’s voice drawls roughly on. “That’s why I went separate ways from Maverick in the first place. Only so much new ground you can break, only so much freedom to tell your own story you can have when you’re all tied up in contractual obligations and legal technicalities. But just because their hands are tied doesn’t mean mine have to be. Not any more...”

“Nothing which warrants that face, at least.” Though it is fun to have let the new hire think it, even for a moment. V cannot help but snicker in the absence of any real explanation, “Come on. You can’t make that face and expect anyone to remember their topic, Raiden.” He’s lying, somewhat, but -

@devilxhunted​ asked: ❛  i  always  scared  everyone  away .    ❜ || SOFT THORNS

            “A heart-throb like you? Heh. I find that hard to believe.” Not entirely true. Dante cuts an imposing figure--or would, if Raiden had any reason to be apprehensive. As friend, employee and sparring partner, however, he doesn’t. Only a smirk is afforded for the pretence, Raiden’s circling gait wide and steady--the same as the hand on his blade, the same as the stare boring into the elder’s sun-bright face.

              “Well, I really hate to break it to you, but it’s going to take a little more than guns and some fancy footwork to frighten me off, you know, boss. You ought to have that figured out by now.” The air shifts and not merely with the laughter rasping from Raiden’s smirking mouth--but with lightning rippling white-hot and warm blue down to the cutting edge of his sword, snapping on empty heat-ridden air as Raiden bends his knees in wait.

@notte-la-lagna​ asked: ❛  we’re  only  haunted  by  the  things  we  refuse  to  accept .  ❜

               “You think so, huh, doc?” A tantalising theory, if only there was any real truth in it. For Raiden, there is only a bitter taste to be found, one that pinches his face into a frown. One that will go unseen, thankfully enough, given his back turned to the good doctor’s direction and his face instead smouldering back at him in the aquarium glass. Though, his voice rasps all the same no matter where he’s looking.

                 “No...you don’t stop being haunted just because you accept that the ghosts are there. Just like any problem doesn’t disappear when someone notices it exists. It just becomes more obvious that there was a problem in the first place...”

                  A glance tilts sidelong over his shoulder, pale head just barely turned. “I accepted it all. The past. Myself. My nature--you think that made me any less haunted? Think that drove out the ghosts, put ‘em out of their misery?”

@lus-a-chalmain​ asked: ‘  i  used  to  think  love  wasn’t  for  me .  that  i  wasn’t  worthy .  ❜ || SOFT THORNS

              A pain that sounds uncomfortably familiar. Perhaps indeed that being quite why Terry is choosing to mention it. Raiden squints, pondering of that much in the quiet that, for a while, is all that follows. Familiar pain. But not a sort of pain Raiden is any surer about how to comfort because of it. It might be that solidarity is the best he has--

               “This world’s the kind of place that makes it real easy to feel like that.”

                 ...If Terry is even asking to be reassured in the first place. The phrasing turns over again in his head, taking new light, bringing new brow-pinching curiosity to his face. Another pause hangs between them, considering and brief.

@marksof-weakness​ asked: ❛  i  don’t  know  how  to  fall  asleep  anymore .  ❜ || SOFT THORNS

            A familiar voice is perhaps more a comfort than he’s ready to admit; something tangible to break up the city-night quiet that he’s sitting in the middle of on the office porch--the thrumming in his head, thoughts that he’d rather not think (and ends up thinking anyway.) Vergil looks as tired as Raiden feels when his gaze tilts up to meet the elder’s face--washed pale in the generous moonlight, the shape of him lingering halfway out the door as though unsure if he will go or if he will stay. Speaking, at least, and conversation feels like a small, precious mercy perhaps to both of them tonight.

             At least right now. At least in this situation.

              “Looks like that makes two of us...” His voice is rough, edged with laughter that is not entirely mirthful. “Guess we can’t all be so lucky as those two upstairs.”