#feels meme

The cosmic force that called herself Nina was finding humanity more and more tiresome as the boys went about officially claiming her remains. It was a process that seemed to tear at their wounds as a seam-ripper tore at pesky hems. Dante handled as he always did: raw, but frank and honest. We need to get Mom, this is how we do it.

Vergil demurred, and didn’t let anything show. He took point, as the eldest and he dealt with the paper work and he went to collect her from the coroner ..

In the end, Nina was slightly sad to learn that the woman whom her adopted son, neglected by Astaroth, and beloved despite his own shenanigans and nuisances, so loved ended up taking up only about as much space as a large jar.. And she didn’t want to think about two, full grown men such as her grandsons, sitting in the back of the cab that took them to the cliffs near the bay, with their mother, beloved and loss, sitting in the plain metal urn provided by the government for those who were unidentified and unclaimed.

Eva, not “Jane Doe 839,” had been rescued, by her boys, from her potter’s plot and they solemnly spread her ashes into the wind, allowing her to join nature, the ocean, the rocks, the sky.. She had gotten a message from one of those human-talking-boxes during their ride back, and Vergil seemed to indicate that Dante had broken down on the ride back. Folded in half, crying as though a child, for a moment inconsolable until he finally allowed himself to be soothed, both by himself and his brother.

“But are you alright?”

She sent that to Vergil’s little talking box, but she got no answer. So she was forced to wait. To sit. And stew. And worry. And lament.

When he did come home, opening the door, he looked as he always did. Calm, neutral, an icy veneer that hid the tempest that Nina could clock the minute he crossed her wards. She stood up from the table where she had been waiting for him. He shrugged off his coat, and Nina was concerned, because he didn’t sound as if anything was wrong, as if he had just gone to the store, perhaps picked up some tea.

“It was a calm day for wind, thank Lucifer,” he was saying, hanging his coat up on the hall-tree.

“That’s so comforting to hear,” she said, cautiously. The shoe was about to drop. She could feel it. It was coming.

“We didn’t know what to do with the urn,” he said, still conversational, still light as he went to turn to her. His hands were shaking. “We’ll likely return it to the coroner’s office, though I’d be concerned if they reuse it of course – “

“Vergil.”

Nina spoke his name softly, her hands worrying each other in front of her. Vergil seemed to see her for the first time since he came home, and he swallowed hard, throat clicking.

“Yes?”

“Are you alright?”

“Of course,” he said, too quickly, voice tight. “It was a lovely moment, just Dante and Mother and I ..” He seemed to look sheepish and Nina tensed. The wheels were about to come off this apple-cart, she could feel it. “I didn’t know what to do with the urn. I, ah. I left it by the door for now and I, um..”

He made a vague gesture with his hands and Nina felt the bands around her heart tightening.

“She .. She was so small..”

That was it. That was the leak in the dam and soon, the damn broke. Vergil bit his bottom lip, eyes narrowed as he fought it and, to Nina, it was as if watching a death on time lapse. He brought both hands to his face, heels of his palms against his eyes, as though to stop the tears from flowing, but he crumbled. A house-fire of a man in that moment, Vergil leaned against the breakfast island in the kitchen, and collapsed.

Nina was there, arms around him, trying to hush him, one arm around his shoulders, the other to pull his head to her, to allow him the opportunity to hide, to make himself small, to try to cling to an anchor to weather the storm of his heart at that moment. Haggard, ugly sobs escaped him as one hand gripped Nina’s arm with enough force to bruise.

“I know,” she whispered, stroking his hair. “I know..”

It steadily became more a panic attack, hyperventilating gasps and wheezes, and less a collapse of emotions, and Nina found herself to be the one keeping him upright. Some comments came across, through the filter of his sobs, his attempts at pulling in air.

She’s gone.

Truly gone.

They hadn’t even known her name.

She was kept in a box, in some human’s office..

“I know,” Nina cooed, gently. “I know..”

He started to settle, the intensity burning fast, but when Nina shifted, he clung to her all the harder, most his weight supported by the island, but so much of it still trying to exist in the circle of her arms.

“I need,” he attempted. “I can’t .. I never want to let go, I can’t – “