A/N: This might come as bad news to some, but I have been having thoughts about ending this book with reasons being: 1) I am no longer able to commit to a 2-week uploading schedule. 2) Now that I have found employment, finding the time to sit down and write is getting much harder. 3) I haven't been getting any good ideas for story parts since there isn't much going on in my life enough to inspire story points. While I truly love writing and have enjoyed this whole journey thus far, and the lack of time might force me to upload unedited or sub-par story parts, and I would much rather end it before I find myself uploading stories I end up being ashamed about.

This decision is not yet set in stone. I will give it more thoughts while continuing uploading  parts already written at irregular uploading schedule. Thank you all for supporting me thus far.

[The Reason Why]

Personality: Post-DMC 5 Vergil

I watched him from afar while he makes his slow progress down the street. I doubted that he has yet spotted me in the crowd of people, but he is unmistakable in his environment. It might have something to do with the always-styled white hair, or the fact that he held his sleek sword loosely by his side as if it were his everyday going-out belonging. Mostly, though, I was sure that the reason why the people around him always seem to sense his presence, freeze up involuntarily at the sight of him and avert eye contact, was the fact that he had an extremely heavy aura.

As an outsider witnessing the strong effect of his aura, amusement and awe came in equal parts within me as I continued observing his slow, leisure progress through the street. With the exception being me, nobody in this crowd knew that he was the sole perpetrator of the Qliphoth incident. Nobody knew about the massacre that his demonic half had done, and yet the look of fear that crossed the faces of some innocent bystanders as he brushed past them seemed to fit the situation.

He stopped a good distance away from me, and cast his gaze around, looking for another individual with white hair like him. I consciously tipped my hat further down to hide any stray tufts of whiteness, keeping that movement small so as not to attract any unwanted attention.

He didn't seem to have caught sight of me, and thus turned towards the entrance of the café, where a nervous waitress awaited with an uncertain smile. This was the first time in my fifteen minutes sitting here in the café seeing this particular waitress hang an expression on her face that was not a happy, welcoming smile. Surely, he had to be the only person who could make such a professional waitress lose her cool, and he hadn't even opened his mouth yet.

I was seated too far away to hear their conversation, but the hard expression on his face paired with his words (that I could easily imagine to be delivered monotonously) was probably the reason why the uncertain smile slowly slipped from the waitress's face and instead fear slowly crept up. I was very sure that this intimidation was unintentional, but witnessing his effect was interesting. Perhaps if he frowned less, didn't look at people as if he were glaring, and softened the muscles around his lips, then there might be a slight change.

I was not the only person in this crowd in the café to witness this effect.

I sipped on my cup of lukewarm coffee as I saw a rather muscular man of impressive height stand up from his table near the entrance of the café, then moved to interrupt the conversation between my target and the waitress. The waitress startled in surprise at the intrusion of a savior, but my target only shifted his stone-cold gaze to the newcomer, a frown beginning to crease his brow. This simple –probably involuntary –movement made his intimidating aura increase twice fold, and I smiled stupidly to myself when I saw righteous expression on the 'savior's face fade a little, uncertainty creeping up his eyes.

Still, a man's courage and desire to prove himself in front of a woman as –honestly –attractive as the waitress was strong. My target listened quietly as the 'savior' said his piece, the poor man puffing his chest out and resting his hands on his waist to threaten submission with show of his muscles. Any normal person would have easily been caught in threat at the show of masculinity right in front of their faces.

But my target was unfazed. Masculinity was something that my target had never needed to think about. He did not need muscles to show it. He did not need to save women to know it. He practically oozed masculinity from his every pore from the straightness in the way he stood, the ease at which he held his entire body, the leanness of his well-worked muscles in his limbs.

He spoke a few words back in reply, snapping his eye contact back to the waitress who jerked at that sudden movement. His words must have injured ego or triggered anger, because the 'savior' decided that diplomacy and muscle-showing was not effective. A punch began to swing, but after having experienced the speed at which my target fought, I would say that it flew at an ant's pace.

The muscular man was on the floor in a moment, my target not having even moved a single bit out of his previous position. The sudden commotion turned even more heads and some shocked diners even jumped to their feet. The flustered waitress immediately went on her knees to help the stunned 'savior' up while my target only let his icy gaze cast itself over the guests who had been riled by the commotion. The effect was once more intense, and almost as quickly, heads turned quickly away from the scene, eyes averted from the situation.

This time, he managed to spot me sitting at the far corner of the café and our eyes made contact.

Because nobody had dared to keep their eyes on him after his splendid show of self-defense, nobody saw the small smile breaking out on his face like sunshine through dark clouds. Nobody saw the ice in his gaze melt like spring wind over winter snow. Nobody saw the tell-tale wrinkles of age at the corners of his eyes as the smile transformed his face of stone-like rigidness into something completely different.

I raised a hand in greeting with my own smile, beckoning him over.

He turned back to the waitress who had managed to coax the now-intimidated 'savior' back to his feet. The smile and warmness on his face disappeared in one split second, and cold words were addressed. He did not wait for a reply –did not give any space of time for reply –before he walked away from the scene; side-stepping a sore 'savior' before making towards me in a beeline. Eyes around us are adamantly averted, though some braver souls dared a quick peek towards me as if needing to find out who this scary person who had thrown a muscular man to the floor without warning was meeting.

He stopped behind a chair at my table, eye contact made with me, but holding none of the previous frigidity. It only took someone who dared to meet his eyes directly and study its depth seriously to know that a warm hearth fire existed beyond the glacial coldness that his blue eyes showed. He no longer broke into a smile now, but I saw the corner of his lips tilting up just a fraction.

"I was delayed." He offered shortly, a matter-of-fact tone in his voice.

"I guessed. Have a seat and give your order." I invited, gesturing to the seat he had stopped in front of.

"The waitress did not seem to appreciate my giving my orders." He answered plainly, taking his invited seat despite the fact that he was the older one between us two.

"It must be the way you said it. Dante and Nico have told you a million times to smile more when you talk to people and not look like you want to murder them."

"I must admit that thought crossed my mind multiple times. But murder brings inconveniences, particularly with remains disposal." He answered, resting his sword on the table in front of him. I hoped that the diners sitting near us did not catch this particular piece of conversation, but it seemed as if my hope was wasted given the stricken, terrified looks on some of their faces.

"We should stop talking about killing and murder. They do not make for good conversation topics." He continued, and I spun my attention back to him to realize that his eyes had not left me even though I previously broke eye contact to take a quick survey of the expressions of the people around us. He had clearly been aware of my rising worry about us being kicked out of the café for discussing about murdering people.

"I agree. An update on how you have been would be nice." I concurred.

"I am how I always should have been. Alive and leading a simple life. With a past as eventful as mine, you should be cautious to ask for more." His answer was not conventional, but nothing about him had ever been of the conventional type. 'Normal' was not even an appropriate word that I could ever peg on him. "Let us focus on you. How is your arm?"

I did not tell him the irony of him asking me about my arm when he had been the one to cut my original one off.

"Working just fine." I answered, flexing my fingers in front of him to prove my point. "Not better or worse than the previous one, but definitely more sightful to society. At least I don't scare the children anymore."

"Very good. What about your lady?"

"Kyrie? She's doing great. She signed up recently for singing lessons to warm up her voice with the intention of going back to singing as a job." I smiled. The replying one was unexpected but pleasant to the eyes.

"Are there any troubles or worries you would have me know?" His phrasing made his question sound like an interview, but I knew better. He had never been taught how to be a family man. The last time he had a family that truly loved him and gave him warmth similar to the one that he had hidden deep in his heart was when he had still been just a child. I could only assume the him back then must have taken his loving family for granted, and when they all crumbled into shambles around him, he learnt from his mistakes and failures that searching for such love from outside was difficult.

"Not exactly..." My hesitation must have been blindingly obvious to him, because the frown creases his brow immediately. This time there was no coldness in his frown, but rather a disapproving one at my attempt to lie to him. And though I have had more than twenty years without him as an elder, I still gave in to his unspoken demand with a sigh.

"Ever since my arm regrew, it is getting harder to devil trigger." I confessed. "Sometimes I wonder if I really am worthy to be considered of Sparda blood when I cannot even use the gift that comes from his blood well. Are three-quarter humans like me allowed to call myself a descendant of the Legendary Dark Knight Sparda?"

"Through you runs Sparda's blood. Even if you doubt yourself, I have no doubt in you that you are a descendant of Sparda. Even if you find difficulties reaching to your demonic half in comparison to your uncle and I, you will eventually come to master it. It is only a matter of time." I didn't know how much I had needed those words of assurance until they were out of his lips. The secret worries and quiet frustrations that had been plaguing me day and night, the thoughts that I had desperately trying but yet somehow unable to discard had not kept me in the best mood in the recent days. But those words... I hadn't known I needed them.

I hadn't known that I valued his opinion so much.

"What if it never happens? What if I can never be like you or Dante? It was pure luck that I managed to stop you two at the top of that tree, and it was all because you were already injured and tired..."

"You are a descendant of Sparda, Nero." His matter-of-fact tone of voice did not hold any other implications –just purely stating a fact that we both knew, but I struggled to accept. "You will master your hold over your demonic side eventually given enough time, training and practice. I may not be able to teach you how to do it, but you will be able to figure it out yourself. Like how Dante and I figured out the way to deal and balance our conflicting sides, you will do it as well."

"But yesterday, I could not save someone from the demons... I was too late because I could not trigger no matter how hard I tried..." I hesitated to say, but the words came out once I began. The guilt of losing someone because of my incompetency and the embarrassment of reporting such a pathetic failure to someone so skilled in controlling his demonic side... both emotions motivated my aversion of gaze from his steady one, focusing on the cup of half-drunk coffee on the table.

"When Dante and I were young, I could not control my devil trigger and I injured Dante on accident. Exactly half a year later, I stood by the side and could not bring the demonic side out when demons dragged our mother out of the house and cut her to pieces."

I blinked at the sudden confession, startled at the emotionless tone of his words. I had never gotten around to completely understand how he and Dante came to be separated and share such strange relationship; I only knew that their parents –my grandparents –had died early and my father and Dante had grown up separately since.

"You were young." I felt the immediate need to defend his younger version from his own unforgiving words. "It wasn't your fault that you could not trigger."

"You are young." The almost-instantaneous reply came as if he had been expecting my defense in the first place. "It was not your fault that you could not trigger."

"It's different. You were just a child! You couldn't have been past eight years old at that time." I protested. "It's not fair to compare you when you were eight to me when I am twenty-five now!"

"Then why are you trying to compare yourself, who is a one-quarter demon to your uncle and me who are half-demons? Why do you think we are on the same level to be compared upon? What makes you think you can master your devil trigger in the same time, or even twice the time it took me to learn?" The cool retort was made without a single hesitation, and I realized only then that he had brought up the topic of his own past simply to prove his point. He had known that I would try to defend his younger self, and had known that I would be forced to eventually accept that comparing myself against him and his brother would be futile.

"I understand." I gave in, leaning against the back of my chair as I kept steady gaze on him. He might not have been the best father in my past twenty-five years of life. In fact, he might not even have been the best example of a man in the actions I have seen from him so far.

But nobody could deny the facts that were displayed in front of me: he was trying to move on from his past, to atone for his mistakes he made while he was young and desperate.

Most importantly, the reason why I still accepted him and continued trying to make amends with him was because he had a warmth, love and care for me that nobody knew the depth of.

_______________________________________________________________________________

I looked up from my magazine just in time to see him walking into the office in his usual outfit. We make awkward eye contact for a short moment, and I did not have the time to start marveling at how similar his eyes actually were with his twin brothers before he snapped away eye contact. His cold blue eyes casts around the empty office, and though I could easily expect a question coming in relation to his brother's current whereabouts, he did not vocalize it.

Silently, without doing anything else to acknowledge my presence in his brother's office space, he stepped further into the office as if determined to pretend as if I were invisible. I had no protests in that area and thus allowed my attention to return to the magazine that I had grabbed off Dante's desk.

Gravure models and their sexy poses might not sexually excite a demoness like me, but the admiration of their swimsuits and beautiful lingerie entertained me for a short period of time in which I ignored the happenings of the world around me. Like how he had been determined to see me nonexistent in his life, I was likewise in the way I ignored all sounds that his movements made, ignorant of his return back to the office after changing out of his outside-wear.

It was only after I finished the last page of the magazine that I looked up again to find him a short distance away, sitting on the other end of the same couch that I was lounging upon. His eyes focused strictly on a book that he had produced from somewhere, and I was shortly reminded by that time I woke out of fatigue-induced unconsciousness completely butt-naked to find a weaker version of him sitting by, flipping through another book in a similar posture. I was also reminded by how talkative his weaker self had been, and how taciturn he now was.

Having him sitting so close to me, us both in our own little peaceful worlds reading side by side about the mundane things of human life... this picture was never something I would ever have imagined that I would be able to enjoy ten years ago. There had been too many issues between us, too complicated a relationship that we could not even begin to resolve because absolutely nothing would come out us either of us trying to reconcile our pasts. Both of us had made mistakes –very wrong mistakes –and we had harmed each other along the way in those mistakes. But fate had made us both take our own journeys until we now sat side by side (with nary just a small distance between us) reading our own books in peace.

He must have showered after returning back to the office, because the moisture gave additional weight that forced his hair ends to bend downwards. I had once heard the story of how Lady/Mary-Ann had first met the two sons of Sparda, and the woman herself had sworn that in the rain with his hair pressed down by the moisture, the twins had looked completely identical. Years and experience must have made their differences on each of the men because I found that there were little similarities between them now with the exception of their blue eyes and white hair.

Age wrote on this man the same way it had made its mark on his brother. Where there were once smooth skin and a look of determined ambition, a burning rage for power and revenge, now there was only the wrinkles and aura of resignation of a man who had committed too many mistakes, too many crimes to even begin thinking about starting off on his next adventure. Every inch of the man in front of me spoke of one who had been tortured by his fate, and that his struggles had led him blind.

Eyes that rarely showed any more color passively scanned the words of his book, and I was reminded by the rainbows that had been in his eyes the first time I saw him, the first time I fought with him.

He had been young and foolish, yes. But with that was also a charm of a blind, righteous determination to obtain power. That charm had been my first brush with something I eventually learnt from Dante as my own feelings and emotions. Seeing and admiring the rainbow colors in Vergil's eyes during our first meet had been the very first time I realized that my soul had thoughts and emotions that were created by me, and not something manipulated and put in there by Mundus.

I still remembered our first meeting vividly. He had rushed through the gates of Mundus's castle just as I had finished a training session with Mundus's generals to prove to our master that I was capable of facing the sons of Sparda. The foolish young man had hacked through the generals with ease and stood in front of Mundus, declaring that he desired to prove himself and show that he had the same power that his father had. I had been called in from the shadows, and the sight of me had knocked him immediately off his high horse.

I could see that my appearance bothered him very much, but back then, I had been taught that it was my biggest weapon. The weapon that Mundus had specially equipped me in the fight against the sons of Sparda had been my face. My appearance that had been crafted from the only woman in their life (at that point of time) who had loved them, cared for them, and given them warmth. Mundus had been trying to use that weakness against both sons of Sparda, and the effect had been obvious for the older twin.

Shortly into our fight, I knew that regardless of all the skills and training that Mundus and his generals had taught me, I was no match against a son of Sparda. He had the speed and strength that even I –a full demon made by Mundus –could not match. He had skills from experience of defeating countless demons of all levels. My experience in dealing with half-demons like him was practically zero.

But back then, I had been taught to use all weapons that I had been equipped with, and use them I did. Using the voice that Mundus had given me, I had cried out his name like how a mother would. I had spoken words of love, care and warmth to distract him, to make him hesitate. In the crucial moments where I had to catch my breath, I made myself cut a pitiful figure, broken and crying on the floor begging for a son that I never had to save me. I had emulated his mother so well that he had tears in his eyes when he stood in front of me, his sword pointed between my eyes.

The colors of every bit of his struggle had been in his eyes as his sword tip trembled, the tears coating his cheeks as he desperately convinced himself that I was not his mother, that his mother loved him and did not blame him for his powerlessness. I had said his name one last time, and my tears that destroyed his convictions and every piece of consolation that he tried to tell himself... they broke him as he fell to his knees and gave up fighting against who he thought was his mother.

That had been my first victory over a son of Sparda, but it was a victory that I would never be proud to wear on my sleeve. Both of us would never forget that day that my appearance caused him to crumble to piece, that lost him his freedom and soul –that gave him nightmares as Nelo Angelo. It had partially been my fault what happened to him, and till this day, neither of us have spoken about the results of that day. If someone were to ask him about how exactly he had fallen under the control of Mundus, he would vaguely reply that he overestimated his abilities, overreached himself and tried for the impossible while he was not fully ready.

Only the two of us knew the truth.

"If you have something to say, say it." The words in the silence made me realize that the magazine in my hands had been rested on my lap, and I had been staring at him for the past few minutes while the thoughts flitted through my mind.

The promises I had made to myself following that day –that I would one day try to atone for what I did to him, to convince him that even though my tears had been fake that day, I had real tears in my guilt for him now –the promises all flooded my mind. But the words would not come. The promises were all I made for myself, for my convenience, for my conscience. The truth was that there was nothing I could say to right my wrong done to him, and that we would never ever speak about that day for as long as we lived.

"Go sit on Dante's chair at the desk. I want to stretch my legs." I answered instead, elongating my folded legs along the length of the couch until my toes touched him at the side.

"Stretch your legs on Dante's chair." He replied unbudgingly as he finally looked up from his book back to me.

The flat blue eyes once again brought a sourness in my heart that would never be addressed.

"Fine. I'll stretch Dante's dollar bills instead." I answered, standing up and leaving the magazine on the couch to make for where I knew the old (missing) demon hunter had (tried to) secretly stash his extra cash.

By the time I was completely ready to step out of the office with Dante's extra cash safely tucked in my pockets, he had gone back to his book attentively. He did not look up when I opened the front door, and stood there for a moment, letting the natural sunlight come in for the moment in which I hesitated, staring at him and his focused self.

The relationship between the two of us was too complicated to fix with words, and the reason why I will never lift a finger against him ever again will never be spoken about.

_______________________________________________________________________________

It was a good natural sleep and I roused from it as I stretched to my limits, the creaks of my old joints reminding me how great it was to be alive with nobody to disrupt my beauty sleep. I scratched an itch on my jaw, reminded me of the existence of a greying stubble growing there. It was all quiet around the office and I could not bother to guess the time by opening my eyes. Opening my eyes meant that I would have to actually wake up from my comfortable position on the couch, and that was the furthest thing I wanted to do at the moment.

Demon hunting may be my gig, but this old bag of bones was getting close to retirement. Back in my youth I might have been able to manage three missions a day if I was lucky, but now one mission was all it took to have me plastered on the couch for the whole of the subsequent day. It also does help that there was the young one taking on more missions with his mouthy, strange sidekick/driver/engineer, leaving less work for me. I wonder if I was in the correct position to ask for monthly household allowance from him as his elder. Besides, I could claim my brother's share for his sake.

With my eyelids too heavy to open, I shifted until I was comfortably on my side, determined to lull back into lazy sleep with the hopes that somebody would bring pizza to the joint the next time I woke up.

The distant sound of children laughing and playing in the nearby playground chased me away to sleep...

"For gods sake, stop being so boring and reading that lame-ass book! I bet you don't even understand what it's trying to say, you pretentious artsy-fartsy." A familiar voice spoke in the darkness, and I didn't realize how much my voice had changed since childhood until I heard it.

"An old man gave it to me, and he said if I read it, I would become smarter than you!" I also only now realized how much my brother's voice had changed. Not only his voice, actually. His character had gone through a pretty big change as well, and puberty was probably not the biggest cause of that change.

"You don't have to be smarter than me, we can share our brain! If you stick to me next time, we can solve problems together and kick demons in their asses together." Childhood Me was so naïve I almost couldn't believe the embarrassing optimistic words I used to say. Mini Me had thought that the world was all colorful and rainbows back then, that my family would always be with me. In particular, I had thought my brother will always be by my side throughout my whole life. It had made sense to Mini Me: we had never been separated before because it had always been easier to keep an eye on the both of us while we were together. I didn't think it had been possible that we would be separated.

"Actually, I don't even know why I am even reading. I am already smarter than you, you stupid dumb-ass, if you really think we can share our brains. Nobody will want to share that thing with you; it will only take all the smart cells and turn them into cancer."

"What the hell? I'm your brother!" My protest had been paired with a punch, and that had been the start of our enthusiastic tousle. It had also been the first time he accidentally activated his devil trigger and broke my arm and had me sent to the hospital in an ambulance.

I woke up once again at the end of the short dream that involved witnessing my mother crying at my hurt, my father's scrunched brows as he frowned at how the situation had turned out, and that guiltless, unrepentant pout of my brother as he convinced himself that the accident had nothing to do with him.

This time, I opened my eyes to realize that it was already nighttime, and the lights in the office had been nicely dimmed to a soothing atmosphere that threatened to bring me back into deep sleep. I stretched once more to avoid the temptation, my stomach beginning to growl.

"You're awake." The simple words made me look up to find someone standing in front of my table, holding on to what seemed suspiciously like a pizza box. "I finished a mission. Bought you dinner."

"Pizza?" I sat upright immediately, ignoring the rush of blood from the head.

"Yes. Another of your undesirable, unhealthy snack." He answered lamely, but it did not change the fact that he was the one who had bought it for me in the first place. "Clean up after yourself. I don't want to have to clean after you."

"You got it." I rushed to the box on the table just as he turned to walk away to the back door that would lead to the apartment where he had his room. My already growing grin turned into a fully-fledged one when I saw the additional items sitting innocently on top of the pizza box. They were not serviettes or chilli flake packets, no.

It was my fourth favorite thing following pizza, sundaes and beer: money.

"Whoohoo! Thanks for the money." I greeted happily and managed to catch just the slightest hint of a smile before the door closed behind him.

People might say that it was because of a pesky brotherly relationship, or some annoying sense of responsibility that motivated me to keep him around and in check. Those theories were far from the truth.

The reason why I've been keeping him around? I'll give you four: Pizza, Sundae, Beer and Money.

_______________________________________________________________________________

I make very sure to keep myself safely hidden before I even attempt to peek out from my hiding spot at the two men standing in the middle of the deserted road littered with dead demon remains. Standing from afar, I could not catch their conversation, but from the easy expression on one man's face –the lack of expression on the other –I could see that neither had thought the hunting session to be difficult.

I could not understand why they were still standing around and waiting for something, but every second that they waited for something was every extra second I got to feast my eyes on the two most important men of my life.

My dearest baby was sporting a punkish faux-hawk with grime smudged on his smooth face and his pure white hair. I have no idea where he got his attire ideas from, but they seemed to be very reasonable choices that paired his occupation. The handsome looks that he channeled with his slight frown while he cast his gaze out at the pile of dead demons in front of him reminded me of his father, and I could only breathe a sigh of relief at how strong and capable he had grown up to be. He must have had gone through so much as a child, as an orphan, but that experience must have taught him how to cherish the things that truly matter to him, for he now stood beside the man who had captured my heart.

It was with a sour feeling churning in my stomach as I let my gaze travel to the man who had taken everything away from me. Do not be mistaken, he had stolen nothing from me. Rather, it had been me who had voluntarily given up everything that belonged to me for his sake, starting from my heart and including even my soul.

His quieter, more retrospective self was very different to the man I had first met, but I loved him no less. His journey of self-discovery had been riddled with pain and suffering, and I could only smile to myself at the fact that he had finally found himself a place he could begin to call home. For the man who had been looking desperately for some warmth of family, for something I could not give to him despite it being one of the most desperate things I had wanted to do; I was glad that at least I managed to be a part of the reason why he had found at least some bit of warmth now.

The talk that the two men were sharing must have something to do with rings, because I watched as my baby boy raise his left hand and briefly measured the size of one of his fingers with his free hand. He kept the space for the approximate size as he showed it up to his father, who only raised a brow and said something back. The man who had taken my heart then raised his own hands, showing the beautiful slender fingers that I would never ever forget, then measured his own ring finger.

The size differential between the two's finger seemed to have surprised my baby boy, but I was not surprised myself.

We had once talked about this very same topic in the past. The hands that had embraced me and give me love and warmth, the fingers that had wrapped around different parts of me –they had been startling slender like a woman's. Even my own fingers had been considered stubby in comparison to his feminine, capable ones. I remembered the deep chuckle that rumbled from his chest, the vibrations from bare skin to bare skin as we put our hands palm against each other, and realized that his fingers were actually thinner and longer than mine. I remembered the soft tease he made about my stubby fingers being suitable for holding donuts, and how he had shivered when I put his fingers one by one in my mouth, playing them with my tongue in reply to his tease.

That had been the best night of my life –something that I would never forget. He had promised me the world, and even a ring to fit on that stubby ring finger of mine. He had promised so many things, whispering them in my ears as if trying to convince himself that it was ever a possible thought for him.

But I knew better, and deep down, so did he. It had been a night of sweet truths and even sweeter lies. The imagination of a future where we could be together, bringing up a son and perhaps a daughter under a house with a beautiful roof and well-maintained garden... the make-believe vacations that we would take together as a family. It had been the first in a very long time that he had been lulled to believe that a family was possible for someone like him, and he had let his guards down with me.

But the next day, those guards had come back up, and he had regretted making those wishes with me. He had lied that he would come back to me after his mission, but in those blue eyes I saw the real truth: that he would never come back to face me again. I was a conduit for his imagination of an easier life. With me, he only created dreams.

But his reality was a far scarier thing.

I never blamed him for what he did. The pregnancy was difficult without him around, but inside me had been the product of a man who had wished for a family, and a woman who had wished for that man. I admit that a few times I sat in front of the bathtub with a knife at my side, wondering if I could just cut the baby out of me and pretend that I never met the man who changed my life. I had wondered if life could be easier if I tried to look for him again and insist that his dream was coming true; that his baby was coming along the way and he did not have to look for power anymore.

Again and again, I never had the courage to end it. I never had the courage to find him. And so, I gave birth to my baby boy quietly on the same bed that he had been conceived, the tears I shed on that day combining with the smell of my lover.

I never got the chance to love my baby, but the fact that he stood before me in his best form brought touched tears to my eyes. It might be years before I would get to see the two most important men of my life again. They may change even more than they have done thus far.

But it would make no difference, because I would always be watching over them, loving them.

As the sound of a mobile demon hunting joint roared in the distance, I wiped away tears and turned my back on the pair, opening up a portal in front of me and stepping through without hesitation.

"Back again so quickly? You disappoint me." Mundus mocked in distaste. "I cannot believe that you cannot even find the man who had given you your child. Do you really love them just as you claim?"

"I am but human, weak and feeble." I answered, looking up at the Demon King who had been keeping me captive for the past twenty-five years. "And it will take me another fifty years before I find them again."

"Pathetic." Mundus dismissed, but he knew that he would have absolutely no chance in tracking down the descendants of Sparda without my help. He might turn his nose up at me being a puny human, but both of us knew that he would never try to kill me because he still needed me as hostage. As if I held anymore importance to the lives of those who were the most important existence to me.

And thus, the reason why I could never return to either his or our son's side would always be my choice to sacrifice my life to protect the two of them from a demon king who had not yet forgotten about revenge.