#swordevil

heavy rain beat against the windows; muffled, outdated music crept disjointedly from the (albeit rundown) jukebox; dante’s snores provided brief, frequent interrupts every seven beats. (though he was a devil, could all that pizza still clog his arteries...?) 

her eyes close. and she sighs into her half-finished, lukewarm beer. 

things almost seemed normal, if it weren’t for the other sparda twin, seated rather uncomfortably to her right. there was a healthy space between them, though lady could easily feel the intensity of his anxiety from where she sat. 

nero was in earlier. and with him, left a blanket of tension that suffocated the entire office.

it wasn’t her business, vergil’s family matters. by any means, she should absolve the thought from her brain, but.... 

she thought of nero, a kid waiting for his father to say the right thing at the right time, wondering how much, or how little to care. lady was there. lady listened to her father’s sinister honeyed words. she wanted to believe. she wanted a family. 

and vergil, who seemed to be racking his brain for a way to bridge the gap. all he had were severed ties. he wanted to connect them. it all seemed... too perfect for a tragic ending. she’d wanted them to see it through. they had to. 

maybe all he needed was, a little push. 

urged on by a final sip of liquid courage, lady turns her chin ever so slightly, voice an octave lower, only not to wake dante. “ i think he wants to talk to you just as much as you want to talk to him. “ it;s soft, comforting. “ nero, i mean.” 

hisvore

flirt with the monstro man u fuckign weenies / accepting

                                 secondhand rapture   /   accepting 

      at first, she doesn’t understand what he means. hands slow over haggard bandages, allowing herself to feel the torn gauze with bruising fingertips. 

of course, lady knew pain. she’d known pain from the day everything changed. the first step into her childhood home, on that day. on that day. on that day, the glass ceiling shattered into millions of rose-tinted daggers. her heart is just as scarred as her body. it heals. it heals over and over itself. old wounds are as visible as the new ones. 

such is life. 

“i hardly think “devil hunter” is a riskless job.” she laughs, more bite behind her words than she’d intended. lady pulls back the curtain, revealing a tattered, yellow flesh. with heavy icing, this was back to working conditions in two days. not half bad. 

they didn’t expect him to understand, not with the regenerative prowess he had. lady wondered when they’d stopped interpreting such a cold, icy gaze as calculating, and instead saw the worry in his brow. instead saw the debate behind his eyes. instead saw the conflict of body and mind.  though, she supposed recovering from pain was a skill he’d learned, too. pain was his lover, too. a distant, forgotten one. 

“don’t look at me like that, i’m not so stupid to go and get myself killed, now. “ again, she laughs. a breathy chuckle against a bargaining smile. (why is she laughing? was it funny?) and, ever so slowly, her hand reaches to his own. hesitant. comforting. and with his finger, does she trace the constellations in her flesh. the soliloquy of survival, the story of her life, told by countless battles hidden in a toughened, uneven skin. “plus, a younger me would’ve called me ‘cool’. i don’t think she’d change a thing.”