Chapter Text
This is highly undignified, a voice says, distinct in its quiet idleness among the cacophony.
Vergil rakes claws up his neck, through his hair, down his face, then snaps back to the beginning. If we reach the spine, another voice cries, we can stop all of this!
This isn’t good, Quiet muses like a lazy summer twilight. We should do something about this.
Up, up, up, slash down, snap back. Up, up, up…
The screaming won’t stop. If Vergil can just make it stop, he can—he can—snap back.
He’s not sure how many forgotten tunes his throat’s retaught him. None of them have worked. A solid, droning note has a pinkie on the cliff face, but it won’t last. It won’t. Up, up, up he goes, and down, and back.
If we can speak, we can breathe. Not Quiet this time, for this voice is urgent. Not V, though. V isn’t where he’s supposed to be, though Vergil doesn’t know precisely where that is. Still, the idea has merit. He waits for his lips to reform, nails skittering at the base of his skull.
“Memory, hither come,” he breathes, breathe, you imbecile, “And t…tune your merry notes—”
An earthquake voice cackles. Merriment is not for you.
Foolishness, another says.
Shameful.
Weak.
Die.
DIE!
Snap back.
Up, up, up.
Slash dow—
His hands are caught. Vergil lets out a sound that makes Quiet repeat, This is highly undignified. When Vergil dares to open his eyes, it adds, In front of Dante as well. We’ll never hear the end of this.
Dante entwines their fingers, spreading blood old and fresh. He presses their foreheads together and curls to mirror Vergil perfectly in a half-fetal mass. Like a heart, Quiet observes. How very symbolic. This is strange. Isn’t this strange?
Dante’s breath puffs on Vergil’s exposed bone and sinew, cauterizing the wounds. With his twitching fingers accosted, Vergil has no choice but to let his flesh close.
His teeth gnash. His legs jerk. He has to move. He has to stop. The conflict is maddening. The voices’ war exacerbates it.
Dante tangles their ankles and starts moving his feet slowly up and down like pulleys. His feet are warm like the rest of him. Vergil’s perpetually cold toes simmer.
Weird, Quiet hums. What are we doing?
Vergil follows its unseen eyes to his legs. They move in counterpoint to Dante’s, creating an odd rustling rasp of linen on denim. The sound fills the echo chamber between Vergil’s ears.
Oh right, Quiet says, we used to do this all the time. Why are we doing it now? This is highly undignified. We should stop.
Vergil doesn’t want to. His gaze has fixed on Dante’s moving lips, but his buzzing being is pinpointed on their pulley system. Following their movement brings to mind old anatomy lessons on leg bones and veins, then conjures thoughts of how his and Dante’s legs were almost one pair because twins start as one being.
Who decided to split first? It had to have been Vergil. Then again, Dante is the restless one, and the loneliest. He’d never consent to occupy the womb alone. Or maybe, Vergil got curious, and Dante eagerly imitated him. It would certainly explain their childhood dynamic.
It occurs to Vergil through the plastic wrap on his senses that Dante is not saying words, perse. Mostly nonsensical “lalala”s that occasionally resemble a melody. Mother would be appalled at the pitch-blindness. She would forgive him, though. She always forgave her boys. Even Vergil.
Vergil’s throat rises. At first, Vergil is convinced he is going to be sick, but it’s only to match Dante, followed becoming follower. Dante steadies into a monotone hum to make it easier. Vergil despises the simplification. He is pathetically grateful for it.
The voices go down, down, down. No slashing. No snapping. No more. No more. Please.
The twins naturally stagger their breathing so their “song” does not cease a moment. Dante smiles without teeth.
Vergil’s voice fades first. Dante carries on a second or two longer. The silence brings its own hum. It creates space for cleansing breaths.
“Can I let go of your hands?” Dante asks.
It’s not, Vergil understands, a bid to be released. It’s a question of trust. Slowly, he nods.
Scrutinizing, Dante releases him. He relaxes when Vergil doesn’t go back to tearing his own skin off, instead making rapid, writhing fists between them. Their pulleys are almost done carrying their load, Vergil thinks. But not yet.
Dante rubs their foreheads. “You want some leaf water?”
Vergil thinks he should give a derisive remark on Dante’s intelligence. He doesn’t. Speaking is an untold burden. On his next heave, he huffs soundlessly.
Dante demonstrates a rare instance where having a twin is useful. He replies as if Vergil has spoken: “Which one of us can use a microwave, huh?”
If Dante boils water in the microwave—
“Relax, Madame, I’ll make it juuuust right. I’ll get the fine China and doilies and little biscuits.”
Vergil traps Dante’s insufferable knee between his own. Dante squeezes back with a goading smirk.
His little brother is still quiet, though. “You want me to open the window?” he asks.
…yes. The dark is. Not good. Not good. Not—
“I gotcha. What kinda leaves you want in your water?”
Vergil relinquishes his brother’s bones and makes his ankles into rolling gears. The most he can muster is another hum. Seems their pulleys did not remove all the weight from his chest.
“Well,” Dante says, pulling the blackout curtains open. Already midday, Quiet grumbles. “Right now we got three kinds. The yellow one, the blue one, and the gray one.”
Yellow: Rooibos, oaky vanilla with almond. Blue: Turmeric ginger with licorice root. Gray: Earl grey with bergamot and a hint of lemon.
Dante plops next to him. “One for yellow, two for blue, three for gray.”
Vergil taps his outstretched hand three times.
“Cool. Anything with it?”
Twice for no.
“Comin’ right up!”
Vergil clamps around his wrist.
For once, Dante’s eyes don’t flash. “What’s up?”
Through the cracks of dirt in his head, Vergil directs his hands to loosen and move. The signs are clumsy at best, but Dante understands. His little brother rolls his eyes before he’s even done.
“Yeah, yeah, I know, wait five minutes.”
He doesn’t.
“I do!”
Vergil repeats the gestures with exaggerated precision.
“Ugh, get off my ass,” Dante grumbles. As he heads for the door, he says, “You’re lucky you’re my brother!”
…perhaps Vergil is.