A/N: Back to Chibi Vergil! A person's character during childhood and adulthood can completely be different, can't it?

[The Adventures Of Chibi Vergil – 4]

3 year old Vergil Sparda woke up from dreams of falling into a volcano crater and drowning in lava. Stirring at the disturbance that had pulled him out of his fiery dream, Vergil felt a sheen of sweat on his skin and lots of uncomfortable heat beneath his skin. In fact, his shirt was heavy and sticky, and he feared for a moment that he might still be in the lava pool.

Shifting his position on the bed, Vergil became aware that something hot was being pressed against him and warming up the sheets around him and making him sweat. Cracking one eye open slowly, he was just in time to see a hand peel off his covers and immediately felt gratifying cool air touch his skin.

"Vergil, Dante, it's time to wake up." He recognised his father's soft and gentle voice speaking.

To signal to his father that he had heard, Vergil began to stretch and wriggled as much as he could out of the hot and stuffy covers that was now folded back, keeping his eyes closed. He gave a lazy yawn, stretching as much as he could until he could almost feel a comfortable ache in his muscles.

"Oh dear." He heard his father say, and then strong hands snaked around Vergil's back. It was not long before the strong hands that Vergil knew belonged to his father carried him up, and rested him on a soft but firm and warm chest and shoulder. Knowing that he was in very safe hands, Vergil shifted himself into a comfortable position within his father's familiar hold, rested his head on his father's shoulder, and let his barely awake self-fade back into the welcoming embrace of sleep.

Holding one son against his shoulder in one hand, Sparda used his free one to feel the forehead of his other son once more just for good measure, frowning slightly when the temperature difference he felt on the two hands became much more obvious. The two boys were both sweating buckets –as evidenced by the water droplets dotting their foreheads and soaking their shirts –but the poor sick one was still in the deep clutches of sleep.

Hoping to cool down the poor boy, Sparda peeled the covers back off his son, then climbed off their bed quickly and nimbly. He could feel the steady breathing of a boy falling back asleep on his shoulder, and so he kept quieter than usual and walked gentler than normal as he walked out of the boys' bedroom.

Sparda had been on waking duties for the day, but it seemed like neither boys were intending to wake up just as yet. Walking back to the kitchen where he and his loving wife had already finished their breakfast in peaceful lovingness, Sparda set his sleeping child on one of the highchairs they had for both boys, strapping the boy onto the seat. Wiping the drool off the corner of the sleeping boy's mouth, he made sure that the boy wouldn't topple into anything dangerous sitting in the highchair before going back to his wife's side.

"Vergil has a fever." Sparda reported. "Dante seems okay. I'll bring Vergil down to the doctor later today after he wakes up and eats a little bit."

"A fever?" Eva repeated, wiping her hands on a dry cloth nearby as she finished the last of the dish washing from their finished breakfast. "Dear me."

Then, spying one of their boys strapped on the high chair, still drooling and head bowed limply in heavy sleep, Eva walked quickly over and propped the heavy head back a little with one hand, checking for temperature with the other.

"Hmm? Vergil doesn't have a fever." Eva remarked in surprise after a short while, turning to look at her husband in confusion, putting a hand to her own forehead just to be very sure of the normal body temperature. "He's a little bit wet with sweat, but he isn't feeling very hot to me."

It took a very short while for Sparda to realise his embarrassing mistake, and even though he would rather die than admit it to anyone else, it was his wife he was currently talking to. Despite him being a scary-ass demon from Hell, there was nothing that Sparda could possibly try to lie to his wife about without her knowing.

Thus, he was completely honest when he looked into her eyes and confessed, "I mistook. Dante is the one with fever. I left him back in the room."

It also took Eva an equally short while to understand the tone of embarrassed confession in Sparda's tone, and even though she shook her head in exasperation at her husband's complete inability to distinguish their sons even after 3 years, Eva chuckled softly.

"It is because Vergil is wearing red pyjamas and Dante is probably wearing blue ones, isn't it?" She asked knowingly as she gently wiped the sweat that was still on the sleeping child's skin. Vergil was still sleeping very well despite being touched and actually being strapped to sit upright. "Could I have made a mistake in dressing them yesterday?"

"It's my fault, dear." Sparda admitted with another wave of embarrassment. "You went to bed earlier because you said you felt a little dizzy, remember? I bathed the two of them yesterday night, and... I was so busy playing with them, then trying to get them to dry down and dress up that I forgot who was who."

"For a demon with intellect and brains better than the average human, Sparda, you are terribly bad at recognising the differences between your own sons. I told you many times: Dante is the one whose hair parts from the right, and Vergil from the left." Eva chided lightly, but she loved him enough to accept this weakness of his. To accommodate his failure to recognise the difference between his sons, she had done her best to colour code them in red and blue, but it seemed like while this method was effective to a large extent, it was making Sparda reliant on the colours to tell his sons apart. It wasn't going to be healthy for their father-son relationships in the future.

"I washed their hair yesterday, and their hair part couldn't come out no matter how much I combed. They were so tired that they almost fell asleep on the bathroom floor, so I just randomly grabbed their clothes, dressed them and put them to bed." Sparda protested, but Eva shook her head again.

Sliding her hand softly through her sleeping son's silver-white hair, she watched as the small baby hairs slowly bend into shape, and a very natural hair part from the left quickly appeared in the wake of her hand-combing.

"Your point, Sparda?" Eva challenged, watching as a healthy blush of red appear on her poor husband's face. Caught between wanting to tell him that it was understandable for him to mistake the twins occasionally (since they were still young and hadn't grown enough visible features to tell one apart from the other) and wanting to scold him for still not being able to tell them apart after 3 years of caring for them, Eva could only helplessly shake her head as she sidestepped him in her venture out of the kitchen and towards the boys' room.

In the room, Eva quickly confirmed that her poor Dante was indeed suffering from a fever. Working quickly with her worried husband, they quickly changed the poor boy out of his sweat-soaked clothes and wiped him as clean as he could be. Dante was still peacefully asleep –thankfully –when Sparda finally tucked him back under the covers for a longer sleep while Eva prepared some porridge and medicine for the poor boy.

Coming back into the kitchen, Sparda gave a short laugh when he saw the other twin having lost a fight against gravity. Vergil was currently sprawled forwards on the highchair's baby table, cheek pressed against the cold plastic and mouth open and drooling like an open tap all over the table. Neither boys had gotten over the age of drooling yet, but it was a different thing completely to see them flooding the table instead of wetting their pillows.

"You wash and change Vergil into dry clothes. Make sure he relieves himself as well. They just got off diapers, and still need reminding to go after waking up." Eva instructed her obedient husband, watching as the once-scary-as-hell demon walk over and pick up the drooling child in his hands in a completely affectionate move. "I'll make some porridge for Dante and get something together for Vergil."

Not protesting –not that he had any in the first place –Sparda brought his drooling son to the bathroom, gently waking up the boy with chatter and songs while helping the boy wash up and clean up. Vergil had his eyes half-open by the time Sparda stood him in front of the potty and pulled down his pants.

"It's time to go. Take aim, little soldier." Sparda instructed, watching with satisfaction as taught habit made the sleepy child reach down to take aim. "Do you have your target, little soldier?"

There was a sleepy sound that he assumed was agreement.

"Then go ahead and open fire." Sparda said, and watched a steady stream appear. The boys had been early in starting to try getting off their diapers, but it had taken them painfully long –and with many tiring accidents in many different situations –to master using the potty whenever they felt the urge.

"Target eliminated." Vergil reported once he was done –finally sounding more awake. Sparda continued the role playing of them being soldier-and-captain as he pulled his son's pants up again, got his son to wash his hands properly before finishing up with the last of freshening up for the day. Vergil was more or less ready for the day and already jumping up and down at the bathroom door trying to reach for the doorknob by the time Sparda had everything righted and put back in place in the bathroom.

It didn't take long for Vergil to realise the missing presence of one more very noisy boy when the both of them entered the kitchen again to the sight of Eva concentrating on preparing a good meal.

"Where is Dante, Papa?" Vergil climbed into his own highchair, this time somehow being able to find his seat without the help of either adults. A small sense of pride came to Sparda as he watched his son conquer the chair. Just a year ago, the boys could barely talk and now they were climbing up their own chairs, knowing when to be obedient.

"Dante has a fever today, so try not to disturb him today while he sleeps, alright?" Sparda answered, but was pretty sure the full meaning of the sentence would not get through to his young son.

"What is fever?" Expectedly, the first question was the word that was still a little bit too advanced for a 3 year old's vocabulary. Actually, this was the first time either of the twins had gotten a fever since birth, which made further sense as to why Vergil did not seem to understand what it was.

"Fever is when you are sick. You will feel hurt and tired, and want to sleep a lot." Sparda did his best to dumb things down to the most basic that he could, watching the metaphorical gears turn in Vergil's mind as his son put on his thinking face.

"Dante hurt? Sleeping?" A look of concern showed up quickly on the 3 year old's face, and though Sparda couldn't be sure if the boy had completely understood him, he was sure the gist had somehow gotten through as he patted his boy on the head.

"Don't worry. With Mama watching over him, Dante will bounce back by tomorrow. It's just you and me for the most of today."

"Dante no play with us?"

"He has to sleep after eating medicine to get better so that he can play with us tomorrow." Sparda said, then decided that trying to get Vergil to understand how being sick felt like was probably too hard to describe in words. Grabbing the breakfast that had been prepared by the boys' loving mother while they had been washing Vergil up, Sparda made sure that his curious son had no more time to ask more questions by stuffing the boy's mouth with food.

Food was clearly a good distraction, because Vergil was soon talking about other things and completely forgetting about his brother's absence. In fact, the young boy seemed much happier to be monopolizing his father's attention, and attention was something that Sparda could give in abundance now that he didn't have to keep an eye out for the generally-naughtier of the twins Dante.

"Sparda," Eva called as she came out of the boys' bedroom later in the morning to find her husband and son playing.

"Yes, dear?" Sparda paused in the middle of his crawl, temporarily ignoring the happy yells of his son sitting on his back, ordering for him to continue forth.

"We're running out of fever medicine for Dante. Could you drop by the grocer to get a box with Vergil? I want to give Dante a cold shower to bring down his temperature now." Eva tasked, and even though the question had been phrased as a 'could you', Sparda took it as a strict order. Besides, he should already be thanking the lords that his wife was not complaining about the fact that he was leaving the caring of a sick Dante all to her while he kept Vergil company. Whatever Eva had planned for the rest of the day had probably been cancelled –seeing how Eva seemed to be bustling everywhere to suit Dante's demands and make the poor boy comfortable.

"Get your coat." Sparda instructed his son as soon as he set Vergil on two feet on the ground, meeting excited blue eyes that could not wait to meet the world outside the window. The moment Sparda let his hands go, the 3 year old had immediately dashed towards the entrance hall, where their coat stand stood beside the shoe cabinet. There was not even instructions needed when the child jammed his feet into his tiny shoes as well, movements filled with nothing but almost-infectious eagerness.

Sparda chuckled to see that Vergil was still trying to jam his feet into his shoes even before the Velcro was untacked, waiting to see how long it would take for the boy to realise that jamming was not going to work.

"Papa, Vergil grow. Cannot fit into shoes anymore." Vergil announced after a short while, looking up at his father proudly and brandishing the shoes.

"I wished that were true," Sparda said with a smile while he accepted the shoes offered to him, untacking the Velcro before bending down to help his son into the shoes, "but unfortunately, you haven't grown too big for your shoes yet."

Finally, the two of them were ready to leave the house, and Eva sent them off at the door with instructions for Sparda to buy carrots and some fruits as well to boost the boys' immunity systems. Then, deciding that Vergil had been rather obedient all this while for not making a fuss over Dante's absence in their play time, Eva suggested for a treat to be bought for the boy –to which the child understandably cheered and remained completely elated about even until the father-and-son duo had walked two streets away from their house.

"Calm down, Vergil. If you keep jumping up and down dangerously on the road like that, I'm not going to buy you anything." Sparda warned, and the trigger words 'not buy' immediately made the boy sober up.

"Wait here for me, Vergil, and don't go anywhere. Don't accept anything strangers give you, and if anyone tries to take you away, run inside and find me, okay?" Sparda instructed outside the grocery store, earning a nod of understanding obedience in reply.

The reason why Sparda didn't let his sons come with him into the store was that they would immediately be magnetised to the snacks aisle, and make a fuss about buying everything on the shelf. Sparda and Eva had gone through enough of their crying and screaming fusses in supermarkets and grocery stores to risk their luck. Nowadays, it was a habit for Dante and Vergil to wait outside while the adults did their shopping quickly.

It was definitely more assuring for Sparda that the son he was leaving alone outside the store was Vergil instead of Dante. He was more or less 80% sure that if the boys were switched around, and if it were Dante standing outside waiting for him, Sparda would eventually walk out of the store to have a missing child case on his hands.

"Vergil! Vergil! Papa, that Vergil, my friend! At kindergarten!" An excited female voice squealed happily a few store's distance away, and Vergil turned –with a brilliant grin –to find Dara walking towards him, hand in hand with her father. Actually, walking was probably not the way to describe things, because Dara was currently dragging her poor father to the grocer to meet Vergil enthusiastically.

"Hello Dara." Vergil greeted with a happy smile the way only little children their age could afford to upon seeing friends.

"Hello Vergil. Are you here with your Papa?" Dara replied with the same smile that made the little girl even cuter than she already was. With her pink fairy dress that her father had donned on her –with the little wings jutting out on the back –Vergil thought that she was really pretty as a fairy.

"Yes, I am waiting."

"Where is Dante? He is not here?" Cute little Dara looked left and right cautiously, clearly expecting the more mischievous twin to jump out and scare her anytime. Dante had done that often to the girls in the kindergarten, and had made Dara cry a few times. Dara did not like Dante as much as she liked Vergil.

"Dante is pain and sleeping." Vergil said, doing his best to recall his morning conversation with Sparda. "Papa said he is fever. Sick."

"Then come play, Vergil! Papa and I going to playground." Dara invited with an outstretched hand, secretly glad that Dante was not around.

The little girl liked the Sparda twins, but she liked Vergil more than Dante. This was because while both of them were popular boys in the kindergarten, Dante was a lot louder and more playful. Dara had tried to get closer to Vergil in school, but his brother had always been there, taking his attention and interrupting Dara. The fact that Dante was not here now made her happy that she could finally spend some time alone with Vergil.

Well, as alone as she could be with her father watching over them, but she didn't really care so much.

"Dear, Vergil's papa might be worried if we take him away without asking." Dara's father reminded, but as usual, children didn't register the worries of other people as Dara grabbed on to the boy's hand and started tugging the same way she had tugged her father.

"Dara, I cannot!" Vergil protested, resisting the girl's tug. "I want to go. But Papa said wait here."

"My papa can tell your papa that we at the playground." Dara answered enthusiastically. "We can play together!"

"I cannot!" Vergil shook his hands and managed to lose the girl's grip on him, stepping back. "I like Dara, but Papa said I cannot go with anyone. If anyone try to take me away, I will run inside to find him."

A little worried at the boy's frank rejection, the girl's father watched his daughter carefully, waiting for some form of sorrow to appear on her face. Dara was the only child of the family, and had been doted on ever since she was born –which had prevented her from experiencing any form of rejection because she had been given everything she wanted at home.

What surprised Dara's father, however, was the fact that his daughter's face was now a deep red as the girl forgot about going to the playground, fidgeting in a shy manner now.

"I like Vergil too."

This time, Dara's father watched as the unfamiliar young boy with silver-white hair blush also, fidgeting in the same way that his daughter was doing. Vergil eyes looked down at the ground shyly, feet shuffling his weight from left to right.

"I like Dara too."

Dear God. In the span of a moment, the playful 3 year olds had suddenly become lovebirds, and Dara's father had just stood there and watched as his darling daughter give her cutest smile to the shy boy standing in front of them.

"Let's be boyfriend girlfriend!" Dara demanded happily, grabbing Vergil's hand again, but this time the boy didn't resist, grinning beautifully.

"Okay! I am Dara's boyfriend now." Vergil announced proudly, and planted a surprise kiss on the girl's cheek.

That son of a... Dara's father could not believe that his darling daughter's first love had just shamelessly planted a kiss on his sweet daughter's innocent cheeks. And was Dara really grinning like the moon had come to down play with her? Dara's father knew that this was an extremely innocent puppy love going on here –with neither of the two children knowing what it meant for real to be in love –but it didn't mean that the poor man was any happier about another boy being the reason for Dara's beautiful love-struck smile. That smile was reserved for him and her mother only!

"I go shopping for medicine for your brother, and you get yourself a girlfriend immediately, Vergil?" An intruding voice took their attention, and Sparda walked out of the grocer with a look of complete helpless amusement at his son holding the hands of an unfamiliar girl.

"Papa, Dara is my new girlfriend!" Vergil announced happily, showing off their held hands.

"Vergil's papa is also Dara's papa now!" The girl declared, raising both hands as if asking for loving hug from her 'new papa'.

Sparda could only chuckle helplessly at the look of horror hanging unmasked on the poor girl's real father, patting the poor man on his shoulder in comfort.

"You know the two don't know what they're talking about." Sparda advised the poor frozen man. "Your daughter is beautiful, by the way. I wish I had one as cute as her. I only have this one and his twin brother."

"Err, I can't say the same likewise..."

"I understand. Boys." Sparda answered, not needing to expand on his sentence at all.

"Come now, Vergil. You can have your date with your Dara some other day. Dante is waiting for medicine at home." Sparda held the plastic bag of groceries in one hand, holding his son's free hand in the other.

"But I want to play at the playground with Dara." Vergil protested, resisting his father's urge for him to start on the journey home.

"You want Dante to hurt?" Sparda asked, but knew that the boy probably didn't care about his brother now that he had gained a girlfriend. It was probably a bit early, but Sparda could predict that the future of the boys to be like that. Girlfriends before brother. He just hoped that at least parents came before girlfriends.

"Dara, now that you are Vergil's girlfriend, don't you want Vergil's brother to feel better? Dante will treat you nicer if you let Vergil go home with me and the medicine." Sparda asked the girl instead, hoping the little girls cared more about siblings than boys did.

Apparently the promise of being on Dante's good graces was more important than playing together to celebrate their getting together, because Dara immediately let go of her new boyfriend once the meaning of the words sunk in, still grinning proudly at herself.

"I let Vergil go today! Dante will like me more!" She said, returning back to her father's side.

"But I want to play!" Vergil continued protesting, looking forlornly at the girl. Sparda got a general sense that what Vergil wanted was simply to play, rather than to play with the girl.

"You can play tomorrow. Let's go." Sparda urged, gave another friendly farewell to the poor father and the love-struck girl before steering his son well away from the temptation of another invitation to play.

The father-son duo was a good few blocks away, until Sparda was sure that Vergil no longer felt the intense desire to play, before he struck conversation again.

"So, do you really like Dara, or did you just want to play?" Sparda asked casually, amused at how fast the confession and getting-together process had been. Then again, 3 year olds like them were innocently ignorant about love and everything related to it.

"I like Dara. She is pretty."

"But Mama is also pretty. And you like her. So why don't you ask her to be your girlfriend too?" Sparda suggested mischievously.

"Ew. No." Vergil scrunched his nose. "Mama is Papa's girlfriend. She cannot be my girlfriend. Mama is Vergil and Dante's mama."

Well, at least Vergil knew that his mother was a woman out of the dating market. Sparda gave an internal shrug.

"Mama is not only my girlfriend, but also my wife. Do you want to make Dara your wife in the future also?"

Sparda wasn't very sure if his son knew the difference between a girlfriend and a wife, but this was only a very shallow casual conversation.

"Yes. I will get married, then we will have lots of babies."

The innocent reply startled a chuckle out of Sparda helplessly.

"Then what about Dante? Will he marry and have lots of babies too?"

"No." Vergil answered. "Dante will disturb Dara and me. He will live with me and Dara, and he will not work. He will sleep every day and bully Dara, but I will protect Dara."

Sparda stifled more helpless laughter. "Is that so?"

"Yes." Vergil's answer was very serious, as if he was utterly convinced that his prediction was more like a prophecy. "But I will ask Dante to give me money to let him stay at my house. My house will be super big and have one hundred thousand rooms, but I will kick him out when Dante doesn't give me money."

"But he's your brother. Won't you just give him one room if you have a hundred thousand of them?" Sparda entertained helplessly.

"No. Dante must pay if he wants to stay." Vergil declared strongly. "If he wants to bully Dara, he must pay money to stay. And if he wants to stay, he must work."

Sparda wasn't sure if the sigh that came out of his lips was one of resignation, amusement or just general helplessness. He wasn't even sure what to think of his son's declaration.

"Let's just hope for his sake that Dante marries someone in the future, then."

That future that Sparda hoped... it unfortunately didn't come true.