Part 14

In the time it took me to finally return to myself, I was too tired, too hurt to care.

It isn’t the physical pain that wore me down. It is the mental pain. Every fiber of me snapped with pain, every thought accompanied with unspeakable pain. The throbbing of my mind was so loud, so unspeakably deafening that I didn’t even know what to do. Someone was screaming inside me.

Kill. Kill. Hate. Revenge. Anger. Kill. Kill.

The screaming never stopped, and kept on repeating itself. Every word that screamed inside me brought a new explosion of pain, and my mind struggled endlessly to follow and cope. The pain was so intense in my mind that I wasn’t sure if I could feel my body anymore.

A sharp sting on my cheek proved me wrong, and I blinked my blurry vision away to familiar surroundings. By now, everything had become pretty much familiar to me. I remembered every inch of this room, especially the sight of sun shining through the window, at me. I remembered every scratch on the window sill, every dust particle that settled there. It was my mind’s way of trying to forget the pain…

But it wasn’t working.

A familiar face grinned at me, but I didn’t try to place a name to that face. There is no point. It is just a name, just a face.

I am quite surprised, woman. I hear his voice as it slices through the repeated screaming in my head. At his attempt at contact, I instinctively try to bring him closer to my mind, to let him feel and share my pain. But he escapes quickly from my mental grasp, staying well far away while lurking in the corners of my mind.

I thought you had a spirit hard to break. But it seems like I needed to do nothing at all. Lily is breaking you from the inside. She really is a vicious demon.

He ventured into my mind again, voice piercing through me again. I clutched desperately for him, for his words that gave me the briefest of relief of the screaming in my head, but he escaped my grab again. In my head, laughter reverberated with the screaming.

Soon. Soon Lily will break free. And by then, you will be so weak that Lily cannot do a thing with your body. I will enslave you, and with you, Sparda’s spirit will be broken. Oh, how satisfied will Mundus be when he finds out that I have tamed you!

I understood he still believed that Lily was somehow within me. I understood that this Lily was the woman screaming inside of me. Where I would have been afraid of ‘letting go’ this Lily, I didn’t care now. I just wanted it to stop. So what if I let Lily out? I just wanted to feel painless.

Just a little while more, Woman. When Lily breaks free, then you will feel nothing. You will cease to exist.

Some part of me was afraid about the ‘cease to exist’ part, but the other –louder –part screamed in joy. I would feel nothing if Lily broke free.

I must say, you are a good tool, though. I hear Vergil’s been losing control of his demon because of you. You must be special to him.

Vergil? That name briefly cut through the screaming, and for a moment, the demon Lily was quiet. I cried out at the sudden relief, clutching on to that name in hopes that it would keep Lily silent.

There was a long pause of heavenly silence, as I reveled in every second of it, trying my best to scrape back whatever understanding I could still piece back in my mind.

“You must be really special, then.” I heard the man’s voice again, but this time I wasn’t in my mind. “The thought of Vergil calms Lily down. This is surprising.”

There was faint interest in that voice, but I didn’t care as I turned the name Vergil over and over in my mind, glad that his name and the memory of his face stopped the screaming.

“Nevertheless. You will break soon. I shall leave you until then.” The voice announced, and I distantly heard footsteps walk out of the room as I held on tightly to the name.

I forced his face in the forefront of my mind, and kept his name on my lips. I’d found a weapon against Lily, and I wasn’t afraid to use it to stop her torture on me from the inside.

Kill. Kill. Hate-

The screaming was beginning again, but I forced Vergil’s face in my mind. I forced myself to remember how he’d smiled at me in the diner. I forced myself to remember his cold eyes, his cold tone of voice. Everything about him had been cold. I hadn’t understood before, but suddenly, now, I saw everything in clearer perspective.

 If this was what keeping the demon side away cost, this pain and mental torture, then I understood why Vergil was so cold and indifferent; so heartless and emotionless. Feeding the inner demon with emotions made the pain harder, the mental torture even crazier.

Vergil had just been trying to stop his demon from rising to the surface. Vergil probably had years of experience, but maybe that’s why he was so cold. Because he needed to stop feeding the demon his emotions.

But maybe…

Maybe you could squash down the demon with positive emotions. Maybe… maybe you could squash it down with this thing called love. Every time I saw Vergil with Sasha, I saw a little more smile, a little more genteel. I saw a Vergil that cared more than the Vergil in Devil May Cry. Maybe it was because of his love for Sasha and Leon.

Yes, that must be it. I had to focus on something, something that I loved.

Kill. Kill. Hate.

Lily was rising again. Struggling to keep my mind churning as fast as I could to shut the bitch demon up, I ransacked through my mental files for something that I loved. I drew out the file of Devil May Cry, of Dante and focused on him. I used to love Dante very much, didn’t I?

Dante. Vergil. Sparda. Eva.

Family.

What? Did I just hear that? I had just been trying to flood my mind with things that I loved.

Family. Vergil is… brother. Dante is brother.

It struck me suddenly. Lily. This was really Lily inside of me. And Lily… understood who her family was. She, within me, understood that Vergil was her brother. That Dante was her brother. No wonder she said family. They were all literally family to her! That was what made her stop her screaming. Because she heard her brother’s name!

I flooded my mind with as many memories of Dante and Vergil as I could in my mind, trying to bring the demon inside me to silence. I could almost imagine a child inside me, watching through my eyes as I recalled everything I knew about them. And when I lost images to put in my mind, I quickly referred her to the times I was playing Devil May Cry, while I was back at home.

My mistake was showing her the first Devil May Cry game.

At the sight of Dante crying, Trish dead, and… Mundus.

MUNDUS! REVENGE ON MUNDUS!

She exploded, and I lost myself.

_____________________________________________________________________________________

Kill. Must kill. Must make Mundus pay. Life ruined. Kill.

I did my best to refrain from bitching at the screaming demon in my head. It was enough that I was trying to push her down. I was too tired to even try to reach out to her. I had tried to do it, but demonic Lily didn’t understand.

Ever since the name Mundus came up, Lily had never given up on the idea of vengeance. I understood that she somehow wanted to kill the demon king who had ruined her life –or what was supposed to be her life. I had tried to explain to her that in the end, she was still saved by her loving parents, but all Lily wanted was to feel the satisfying crunch of Mundus’s bones –if he even had any -beneath her hands.

Barely conscious of my surroundings now, I raised my head with effort, looking up at the evening sun sifting through the buildings, shining a bleak ray on me. I had been looking on to this ray of light, bringing me the hope that someone would come to save me. But it has been a week, and I know I’m dying.

By natural rights, I should be already dead from dehydration by now. But I am not. I don’t want to think so much about it, but at the moment, my tired, lethargic mind just wants to give it all up. My mind is telling my body to just collapse and die, but my body still has its primal instincts to fight the situation that I’m in.

I, holding on to my last thoughts, think about my family waiting for me at home. Maybe in my own world, at home, they think I’m dead. If they have already have held my funeral, then wouldn’t be just be sad? I’m sure Marielle is thinking about me, her elder sister ‘Lila’ who has never truly loved her back. Thinking back, I feel guilty about how I had never truly showed Marielle how much she meant to me.

I thought about my parents, and how they would never know how their darling daughter truly died. Though I had never really been their blood daughter, they had loved me. They had loved me the moment they found me crying on their doorstep. They treated me like their real daughter, and I had never considered anyone else my parents.

Eva and Sparda.

I understood that this was the second time Lily was trying to communicate with me by tapping on my thoughts, but I was too tired to care about replying her. She wasn’t going to get anything when I was going to die soon. She could complain and bitch about Mundus, but if I died now, I had a pretty solid idea that she was probably going to go down with me.

I am your demonic side, and it makes you half-demon. You will not die.

She insisted, but it changed no fact that I felt god-damned weak and close to losing myself. Perhaps I would just fall into peaceful sleep a day or so later, and I would never wake up again. Yes, that seemed like a peaceful way to die.

You will not die. Brother will get you.

By ‘brother’, Lily could mean two half-demon, but I could not imagine either of them looking for me. Dante was probably too lazy to bring his ass out of the office to even try to locate me, and Vergil was probably just thanking his lucky stars that I’d saved Leon. Right now, I didn’t regret what I did, because even if I died, I would die knowing I’d saved Leon. The little boy could grow up remembering a foolish woman in his life who sacrificed herself in a world unknown for him.

He is close by. He loves you. Brother loves you with his heart. You make him change. You wake his demon up. Virgil is awoken.

I didn’t even bother trying to analyze what Lily was trying to tell me. She spoke in such cryptic words that I just didn’t bother. After the screaming and moaning that she’d tortured me for a week with, I was not going to be friendly to her just because she offered a moment’s worth of silence. I was still exhausted and broken mentally, and I don’t think I can piece myself back properly this time.

My mind is shattered, and I felt as if I am only operating with the shards of my mind poking in the middle of nowhere. I’m slowly drowning away in insanity, and there was nothing that could anchor me in place. Lily’s presence was only dragging me further downwards, and I’d given up struggling to break to the surface. I was breathing bubbles of consciousness on the surface, the black waters of insanity slowly sliding into my mouth and choking me.

Virgil is calling me. He’s coming for you.

I didn’t understand why Lily was suddenly showing a singular moment of solidarity with me when she’d been pretty much determined to break free from my body the past one week with her endless screaming and pounding in my head. I know my headache is my body’s reaction to her, and I was pretty sure she knew about it –except for the fact that she didn’t even stop for a moment. I hadn’t slept properly, hadn’t eaten nor drunk anything. The demon who had taken me had roughed me up when I initially struggled to be tied to the chair, but those physical scrapes and chafes, the slaps and bruises were nothing as compared to how damaged my mind was.

Hold on to something. Hate, vengeance, love. They are similar feelings.

Sure they were. They were all extreme feelings, but I wasn’t in the mood for extreme right now. I wasn’t in the mood for anything, except to fade away. I let my eyes close, embracing the oncoming darkness, but Lily struggles again, bringing another bout of sharp pain, as if someone had taken a gun and shot me through the head.

I gasped, my eyes shooting open despite my resignation and general desire to close them and never open again. That hell of a demon was still trying to hurt me, even after breaking me. Did she not understand that I was almost crazy? Anything more would break me. Anything more would just drive me cuckoo. I am close. I know.

We are saved. Virgil has found me.

Lily cheered quietly, but I had no energy left to entertain her. I blinked tiredly, letting my mind go blank as I stare at the last of the evening ray shining through the window. Overhead, the fluorescent lamp turned on as sensors detected a darker surrounding.

I turned my face towards the glow of light bathing on my face –no matter how synthetic the light was. This wasn’t sunlight, but if I closed my eyes and imagine, I could place myself in a field of happiness, in a place where I was basking in sunlight, getting a comfortable tan where I was comfortable and myself. In my fantasy, I saw my favorite DMC characters there, and they got on well. Trish hugged me there, and Dante treated me like a little sister he cared for. Nero shared his first person’s perspective on the fiasco in Fortuna City, and Dante and I combined forces to make fun of the lower-skilled Nero.

In that place, I was happy, relieved from the bindings of my life. In that fantasy that I continued to escape in, Marielle appeared, and the best thing was that she led Vergil to where we were. Vergil was smiling, that soft, gentle smile that he always gave to Sasha. Now that I’m almost dying, I can admit. I was jealous of Sasha. I was jealous of Sasha’s ability of making Vergil smile, and yet all I could make the man do was frown and growl. I didn’t understand what it was about me, why Vergil hated me so much, and I was frustrated.

Why couldn’t Vergil ever accept me the way I was? I had been taught from young that the good at heart would always be repaid in kind, but so far, none of that had happened to me. I’d come to Devil May Cry with good in heart to make friends, but Vergil refused to see any of it.

Virgil. Brother is here.

Lily’s calm voice tore through my inner cries, and I scraped the last energy I had back, looking up instinctively. I didn’t understand Lily for a moment, for I saw nothing.

And then it happened.

There was a shivering in the air in front of me, and it warped suddenly with black mist. Someone stood out of it, and the black mist disappeared as I sucked in my breath, unable to make a gasp.

He stood before, a fire in his eyes that I had never seen before. I wasn’t sure if it was my lethargy, but I thought I saw his hair even spikier, even more defying of gravity as it stood up stylishly. I don’t know if it was my slightly-blurred vision, but I thought I saw his muscles even larger, his body even more solid than how I’d last remembered him. This time, he carried off his blue trench coat as if there were consistent soft breeze at him, the tips of it fluttering in non-existent wind.

His blue eyes –that held black fire beneath the depths –roamed quickly around the room and landed on me. In an instant, the fire seemed to explode even brighter, and his expressionless face hardened. For a moment, all my broken mind could contemplate was whether he was going to kill me. His hand tightened over his unsheathed Yamato.

Up till today, I am still unsure if I really saw it glow, but I think I can swear to that image. Quite literally, his blade lit up like a purple-blue torch and it reminded me faintly of his devil-trigger that I’d seen in Dmc3. I blinked when I saw the same purple-blue mist smoking from his skin as if his aura had suddenly become so heavy and dangerous that it was now visible.

He spoke no words, but Lily was crying out for her ‘brother’ inside, bringing endless waves of pain as she did so.

He walked over to the chair and sliced the bindings on my wrist apart. It was pathetic how I was so weak that I couldn’t even run with my legs untied. I could have moved my ass from this chair, but it remained a fact that my mind was so shattered that I couldn’t comprehend where I could and could not go.

Wordlessly, he picked me up, and carried me bridal style. It would have shocked and surprised me, if not for the fact that Lily was still torturing me, her screaming louder now as she tried to reach her ‘brother’. I was too tired to tell her to shut up.

Vergil tucked me carefully against his chest –the first gentle actions he ever did for me –and rested my head leanings against his broad shoulder while my legs dangled over his arms. In that moment, comfort and warmth washed over me like a wave. Someone was here to hold me and carry me. Even in my broken mind, I knew I was saved.

Vergil straightened, and seemed to wait for a moment. One moment later, the wall that cut the room off from the corridor crumbled for no apparent reason. I was too tired to make any response to that, as I struggled to keep consciousness while in Vergil’s safe embrace. Vergil stepped out into the corridor, and I spied demons beginning to crawl out from holes on the floor, apparently finally alarmed at the presence of the son of Sparda.

That is when my slow, broken mind sudden understands that this isn’t Vergil. This is Virgil. With the ‘I’ instead of ‘E’.

Dante had a demonic side which he affectionately called Etnad –a totally flip of his name. I never understood why Vergil never had a name for his demonic side, when my demonic side was obviously Lily.

Maybe he did. Maybe I was dealing with the demon Vergil now. I was dealing with a powerful Virgil, a demon, a son of Sparda.

The demons in the corridor advanced towards us, but Virgil didn’t even bother to lift a single finger to them. He waited for another moment, and as if the air had suddenly changed, the demons exploded into dust. A part of my mind staggered in awe, but for the most part, I was too numb.

“I’ve got you, Lily.” He finally whispered, and I heard the deep echo. This was more or less the first time I saw Vergil’s demonic side. I wasn’t sure if it was a good or bad thing that his demonic side was out, and he hadn’t devil triggered. Maybe this was a whole new level of bad-assery.

“Be safe.” He looked down at me, and his blue eyes were soft like a baby’s. The hard, stone cold face cracked and show a gentle man smiling down at me.

I blinked, but he must have known that my head is not in the right place. He stops in the middle of the corridor and bends down, strong arms lifting me up.

His lips connected with my forehead, and I closed my eyes.

“Sleep.” Virgil said, and I for the first time in a week since I was captured, I finally did.

And for the first time since coming to Limbo, I saw the love Vergil had in his eyes.

For me.