Chapter Text
Thursday, November 3rd
“I was angry with my friend; I told my wrath, my wrath did end,” V hums, a melodic tune to the way his voice twists around the words. “I was angry with my foe; I told it not, my wrath did grow.”
“I think I’ve heard that before,” he comments in response.
V chuckles. “That part is rather famous. But… And I water’d it in fears; Night and morning with my tears; And I sunned it with smiles; And with soft deceitful wiles.”
“What’s it called?”
“Patience? I fear you have it not,” V simply states. “And it grew both day and night; ‘Til it bore an apple bright; And my foe beheld it shine; And he knew that it was mine.” Leaning back, V let his whole body sink into his companion. “And into my garden stole; When the night had veil’d the pole; In the morning glad I see; My foe outstretch’d beneath the tree.” With a soft sigh, V leans up to whisper in his companion’s ear. “It’s called The Poison Tree.”
“The Poison Tree,” his voice echoes V’s. “Fitting.”
“Much so.”
Footsteps. V shuffles away and the door opens.
“Jonathan, mom said you need to- oh,” the twelve-year-old at the door cuts himself off, awkwardly lingering in the doorway. “Uh… Are you staying for dinner, Vee?”
His inflexion is always a tad too reliant on the vowels that follow the actual letter. It makes V smile.
“If you will have me. I can easily walk back home if that suits better. It’s only up the hill a little,” V says. He rises, closing his poetry book and holding it to his chest with one hand, the other reaching to get a cane under his weight. His legs are half asleep but slowly start to shuffle as he makes his way to the doorway. The boy waits for him and glances curiously at his book.
“What book is that, Vee?”
When they’d first met, he’d been awe-inspired by the fact that V, a cool and grown-up teenage boy, was reading books instead of playing sports. “It’s a book of poems by William Blake. It belonged to my father before he passed.”
“I’ve never heard of William Blake,” the boy responds, frowning.
“William Blake?” A feminine voice asks as they enter the kitchen. Tired eyes glance over from the stove where a middle-aged woman is cooking, a warm smile gracing her lips as she takes him in. “Oh! I had no idea you were here, Vee.”
“I apologize for not greeting you,” V says with a bow of his head. “Are you okay for me to stay for dinner or should I take my leave?”
Her smile gets even softer. “Of course you can stay to eat. Get Jonathan to give you a ride home, I’m sure your uncle won’t want you walking home in the dark.”
V shrugs. “Probably not.”
“Now… William Blake?” She hums as she turns back to the dinner. The boy, Will, sits down at the table, eager for V to explain. Jonathan creeps into the kitchen as well, lingering at the door as she urges V to sit. “What brought him up?”
“I have a book with his collection,” V comments. “It was left to me by my father. William Blake was his favourite poet.”
“I loved reading his poetry when I was in high school,” she reminisces. “Do you write poetry too?”
V nods. “I do.”
Will’s eyes light up. V knows that Will had tried to be aloof and uncaring with V since pride said he’d have to be when it comes to his older brother’s friend, but V can see the spark. The spark of creativity and the longing for someone else to share that spark.
“Bless me with the; Leaf of the world tree; On it I see; The freedom reign.” A little nervous, V stumbles over some words before picking up again. “We are falling; The light is calling; Tears inside me; Calm me down.” Scratching the back of his neck in the way his brother often does, V looks away. “It’s just a work in progress.”
Will’s smile is bright as he praises the poem. Joyce’s eyes are soft as she looks at him. And Jonathan’s hand is warm under the table.
But you, dear reader, may ask how they even got to this point.
Well…
Sunday, August 28th
Dante, son of Sparda, brother of the dark slayer, and uncle of two wild teenage boys, stares down the woman in front of him. His feet are up on his desk, his hands are playing with an old keychain that was left discarded in a drawer.
“No.”
The woman, hair pulled back in a ponytail, large square glasses magnifying her brown eyes, jolts back as if struck.
“But-”
“I’m not moving these boys out to the middle of nowhere for just a chance that a Hellgate may appear.”
She gives him a pleading look, hands pressed together in prayer.
“Please, I have connections. I can get you all the money you need to live without working, a nice house, papers, whatever you need. Please, the children there were all-”
“Children?” Dante swings his feet off the table and they land with a heavy thump. The keychain drops out of his hand with a clatter. “You never mentioned children.”
“They… okay…” She breathes in slowly. “I worked for a time in Fortuna. Under Agnus.” Dante’s grip on the table grows so strong that the wood threatens to splinter. “B-but I left when I found out what they were doing. But.. I saw that broken sword. I know what they were doing with it, how they were turning humans into demons.” She looks away. “The ones in Hawkins, they have a lab there and they have a piece of that sword, I’m sure of it!”
They have… Yamato? The final shard of Yamato?
“And they’re using it to turn children into demons?”
She shakes her head. “Just to give them… they call them psychic powers but it’s just demonic power. And some of them just can’t take it. They… they die.”
A scowl crosses Dante’s face only for a brief second, but it’s soon replaced by an indecipherable half-smirk.
“I guess it’s time for me to take a vacation then.” Standing, he walks towards the stairs leading to the bedrooms. “V!” He yells with a casual air before crossing back over to lean against the front of his desk. Slowly, someone edges towards the stairs, dark hair falling to his shoulders. V’s fingers are clasped tightly to the bannister, knuckles white as the teenager finally comes to a stop, leaning against the final post.
“Uncle Dante?” V hums as a rather large Maine Coon saunters down the stairs without a care, nuzzling against V’s ankles as it lurks about.
“Tell your brother to pack your things. We’re going on vacation for a little while.”
V can see the look in his eye. Dante knows that, knows that V will question him later. But he’ll be able to handle that. Later.
Slowly, V makes his way back up the stairs but the cat stays, slowly making her way over to Dante and the client. She purrs low as she rubs her face against Dante’s pants. Sometimes he’s glad that Shadow is a black cat because white fur would show up starkly against the red and black of his outfits and V would look even worse.
The client, because it has finally been decided in Dante’s mind, steps back ever so slightly and it causes a twitch in Dante’s lips. He occasionally forgets that, for a cat, Shadow is pretty damn big. Back when she was just a baby, she’d already reached his ankles in her cat form, but now she inches closer to the edge of his leather boots. Nudging up, she lets out a soft mewl, as if she were still just a kitten and he, like always, can’t help but give in. It’s that or answer back in front of the very human client in front of him. So, he ducks down and hefts the giant cat into his arms.
For a regular person, she’d be heavy as all hell but he doesn’t even break a sweat, cradling her carefully.
“Is… is that your cat?” The client asks, a little taken aback.
“She’s V’s cat,” Dante responds with an amused snort. “Always been pretty big, but she somehow keeps getting bigger.”
Despite the words, he shifts his hold so she’s secure with only one hand and the crook of his elbow as support while he scratches under her chin with his right index finger.
“So… Tell me about this job and let me call my broker. If you two get all the details set, I can get everything together within a week.”
The client’s face breaks out into a relieved expression, a thankful smile forming as she bows her head.
“Thank you…” Composing herself, she straightens out. “Alright, here’s what we can do-”
Friday, September 2nd
And that’s how Dante, V, and Nero end up sitting across from the principal of Hawkins high, a sour look on the principal's face as she takes in his lax posture and the mess of white hair pulled back into a loose ponytail down Nero’s back. The teenager looks miffed himself, has the whole trip and then some. V has been amendable, probably because Griffon is his filter for any irritation he has and the bird has not popped out once since they left.
Maybe the principal doesn’t like cats, Dante asks himself as he watches the way she eyes Shadow, the giant cat resting at V’s feet, purring quietly.
Dante just feels uncomfortable with the whole situation. Maybe that’s because Lady was there every other time. When she told him that “they’re six years old, Dante. They need to go to school” and he’d told her he hadn’t even been to school.
She’d given him the deadest stare and then gotten the boys ready, called up the local elementary school, and dragged all three of them there. Via Morrison’s handiwork, V and Nero both have identities and Dante legally has the name, Anthony Dante Redgrave, with V William Redgrave and Nero Julius Redgrave as his nephews, sons of the now-deceased Paul Vergil Redgrave.
Morrison really can do the gods' work if he feels inclined. How nice.
When middle school had rolled around, he’d gotten the basics of ‘being a parent that went to school things’ down. But he could not deal with the administrative stuff very much, all the soccer moms made him want to rip his hair out, and the only reason the two boys even made it to high school is because Lady had sat in the chair next to him and explained his relationship with V and Nero that should have been plainly apparent from the pile of paperwork he’d painstakingly filed out.
At least he didn’t end up picking that shitshow of a school. Sure, the one they’d ended up at had had at least two stabbings but Nero kept Blue Rose tucked under his jacket and meeting the business end of V’s cane was no joke.
This, though, is different. The new paperwork, the stuff his client has procured for him alongside the fancy house on the outskirts of town they’ve yet to see and the full wallet in his back pocket that holds the promise of many more prosperous days ahead, doesn’t have a single ‘Dante’ scrawled on it. Nothing, zilch. His name is simply Anthony Redgrave, no middle name. Vergil’s name was simply Paul.
Apparently, the tiny town is famously conservative and fairly religious. Like Fortuna wasn’t already bad enough, and they’d worshipped his father. But perhaps a name from the Divine Comedy isn’t the best thing to have in a nice Christian town where residents have names like Richard and Tim. And, god forbid, Karen.
The principal is apparently named Clara Evers, which isn’t the worst name he’s heard in a while, but she doesn’t wear it well. Clara’s supposed to be a pretty name if he thinks about it. She’s more shrewd and stern. But no names can pop into his mind for her. Mildred, maybe? That’s a name, right?
“Mr Redgrave,” she says after alternating between staring at the three of them and going over their paperwork for a solid minute or so. “Your nephews are welcome at Hawkins High as long as we sort some things first.”
He leans forward, placing a splayed hand over one of the papers. He picked it on purpose.
“Yeah, let’s lay down some ground rules, hm?” Picking it up, he holds it for her to read again. “This is a notice stating that V can have his service animal with him at any time.” And the hell they’d gone through getting the permission and little green vest to wear when out, don’t remind him. “And this-” he uses his other hand to pluck another paper from the table. “Is V’s permission to have his cane in school.”
The third one he pointed to, he doesn't pick up. Nero leans forward and grabs it with his left hand, waving it about a little. “Yeah, this one’s for this,” he speaks for the first time since he’d grumpily climbed out of the procured car that Dante totally hadn’t almost trashed because the three of them had gotten on fine with first his motorcycle and then the minivan he’d put hours into fixing up. But apparently, the van wasn’t exactly the right fit for the look they were going for. An author looking for inspiration from a small town in the middle of nowhere and his two nephews who lost their parents at a young age.
Nero, possibly out of spite for the situation, lifts his bandaged arm and waves it about as he did to the paper before letting the paper slip from his fingers and flutter back onto the desk. Dante eyes Blue Rose’s holster peeping out from under his black coat.
“Of course, Mr Redgrave,” Mrs Evers, as she insisted on being called, tells him. She’s trying to be civil and Dante can respect that. It’s why he hasn’t rolled his eyes or leaned his chair far enough back to let the front legs detach from the floor and become one with the air. “But your nephew, Nero. He needs to cut his hair.”
Dante gives her a blank look. “Excuse me?”
Nero’s annoyed stare hardens into a glare. “No.”
“Boys are required to have hair no longer than shoulder length,” she states like it’s a simple fact they should already know. Dante places the papers back, settles in his chair, and grips the armrests so tight he can hear the beginnings of the wood splintering. If he stays for much longer, all that will be left of it will be kindling.
“Since when?” Nero fires back, teeth clenching. V remains silent. Often, this is the time when he’d try to placate his hot-tempered brother, but his passive attitude and lack of an intervention probably just means he agrees wholeheartedly with Nero’s outburst.
Dante does too. He’d had his collection of scorn for his unruly white hair back when he was a teen and that was just by random strangers on the street. It’s why he let Nero grow it out in the first place. His body, his choice. It’s just hair, he figured. If Nero wants it long, he can have it long. He can always cut it if he doesn’t want to keep it.
Mrs Evers moves away, sensing the tension in the room. But she doesn’t back down from her point. “I apologize, Mr Redgrave, but it is school policy. Has been since this school was constructed in 1921.”
Nero rolls his eyes.
“Living in the last damn century, ever learned about changing with the times?”
Nero has always had problems with authority. And that was before some jackasses decided to kidnap him for their precious cult. Sometimes Dante wishes he’d taken Griffon up on that offer of pecking out the eyes of that disgusting old priest. But even before all that mess, he’d gotten detention for all sorts of little things that kids and teenagers get in trouble for. Back talking, bad-mouthing teachers, cutting class, all those things. He really did march to the beat of his own drum and Dante’s rather proud of that.
But they’re in town for a reason. If that means playing nice and putting up with some backwards rules, so be it. If all goes to plan, they’ll be out by Christmas.
“It’ll grow back,” V says before Dante has the chance to.
Nero scrunches up his nose but relents, plopping down beside his brother. V’s hand comes to pat Nero’s shoulder before he reaches down and runs his nimble fingers through Shadow’s thick fur. The white button-up is probably getting to him. At Capulet High, no one gave a shit about V’s spiralling tattoos but Dante has the feeling they won’t be so accepting here. He’d picked a vest to wear, but it lacks the corset that his other one has and is shorter.
Dante, however, had barely changed his outfit. No way was he surrendering his style for a chance at a hell gate. There are just some things he doesn’t compromise on. The holsters and straps, fine. The gloves, sure his hands feel a bit weird but it’d be weird for a writer to be wearing leather gloves. But the jacket, he wouldn’t be caught dead not wearing a red leather jacket of some kind. The zip is fully done up now but he makes it work. His sick skull belt has been retired for now, tucked to the bottom of one of his suitcases while a far more quote-unquote normal black belt replaces it. Red pants remain, black boots tucked beside the damn belt and uncomfortable, impractical dress shoes have replaced them.
At least Nero, in all his rebellious teen fortune, gets to keep the steel caps, long jacket, and blue button-up that would remind Dante all too much of Vergil if not for how the top button remains open, a very unVergil-like thing to do. Lucky kid.
“Other than the hair-” Nero gives her an outright poisonous look but doesn’t move to cut her off, “everything seems to be in order. They can start on Monday.”
Breathing out a discrete sigh of relief, Dante leans forward again. He’s itching to get out of there and get something to eat. Pizza? Pizza.
“We’ll have their timetables by then and they can collect them before class.” She stands before he does and both he and Nero follow quickly. Shadow rises, urging V up and the teen does with a bit of a tremble. His cane rattles ever so slightly and he puts more weight onto it then normally. A bad day, then. Dante hadn’t noticed when in the car. They’d been sitting and he seemed content enough to just listen to the radio and drift in and out of sleep. Nero had promptly put his own headphones on and scowled the whole trip.
It’s practically instinctual how fast Dante goes to his side and makes sure he’s stable before guiding him to the door. Mrs Evers has a slightly guilty look on her face, as some do when they see V and the struggles he puts up with. Griffon has been cooped up too long and it’s wearing V out too much. Shadow stays close as Dante helps V to the door and Nero takes over for him, making sure he’s in catching distance if V were to suddenly collapse.
“Well then…” Mrs Evers attempts to save face by clearing her throat. “It was nice meeting you all. I look forward to having your s-nephews attending Hawkins High.”
He nods idly. “Cool.”
And they walk out as a trio. V’s stability improves somewhat once they’re out in the fresh air, but his fingers twitch to let Griffon out and Dante keeps careful watch as Nero helps V into the backseat, sitting in the back with him while Shadow leaps up to spread across both V’s lap and the middle seat.
“Pizza?” Dante suggests as he hops in the driver's seat.
Nero gives him a look.
“Pizza.”
