Author: Moiranna
Title: Dolorous
Theme: #04 – Pain
Rating: PG
Realm: Devil May Cry
Pairing: None
Characters: Dante, Lady, Vergil
Genre: tragedy, family
Warnings: Vergil actually has a heart
Word-count: 503
Summary: A howl pierced the stillness of the night. A broken sound – hollow, containing everything and nothing at the same time. Loneliness. As if the world had ended. And in a way it had.
Dedication: To Marie, who died too soon. I love you.
Notes: A companionfic to "Survivor's Guilt." The story is on purpose a bit out of character, as I don't think that he'd react this way. Then again… Who knows? Also AU-ish since I ignore Vergil's supposed death on Mallet Island.

A howl pierced the stillness of the night. A broken sound – hollow, containing everything and nothing at the same time. Loneliness. As if the world had ended. And in a way it had.

Silver held silver, clutching at the broken form like a survivor to a buoy in the middle of the storming ocean. He was so still. The once so vibrant form so unnaturally still. Blue eyes open but lacking all light. The truest red pooling out underneath, slowly starting to coagulate.

Lady was crying quietly; holding a hand to her face to muffle any sounds she might make. To hide her shock to his breakdown. Of all the possible reactions she had imagined that he could have this was the one furthest from the mark. She felt like a voyeur staring at across two lovers, and more than anything she wanted to leave, but at the same time she was frightened of that if she moved his attention would turn to her. That the grief once more would turn into hatred.

His eyes blind to anything but the form in his arms, identical eyes closed for the final time, Vergil wept for his fallen sibling.

It had happened without any warning. They'd been gone on some mission to slay a nest of devils, nothing out of the ordinary. The trio had separated just for five-ten minutes to check different locations, but that had been all that was necessary for the younger devil-slayer to meet his end. For a minute Lady had believed it to be Vergil who had – after so many years of threatening to assassinate his sibling – followed through on it, but the moment she had seen him look at his twin she knew that hadn't been the case. It wasn't something she'd perceive just like that, but there was something with how Vergil's eyes had tightened and he more than usual moved with extreme stiffness during the three seconds that he paused to look at his sibling and observe what had happened. When he turned towards her, Lady was frightened out of her mind, because everything about him emanationed cold-blooded murder.

It took Vergil less than five minutes to kill everything in the castle, and when he returned to where Dante lay his hold on Yamato was so tight that it threatened to snap the blade in two.

And then it was as if all the fighting spirit went out of the elder Sparda sibling. Yamato fell to the ground; for the first time since Vergil had received the blade forgotten. Lady suspected that this was the first time since the twins had been young boys that Vergil dove towards Dante with such strength, just holding him close.

And that scream would haunt her for the rest of her life. The knowledge of that the only time the eldest son of Sparda – despite hatred, bitterness and resentment towards his brother's foolish love of humanity - would show such pain and vulnerability was when his other half no longer existed.