V fell downward in what felt like a viscous sea, the space above cracked becoming the only light source shining through. The boundless abyss surrounding him ne'er became any smaller as he fell, cane embedded into the Demon King who fell with him, their eyes never leaving one another.
"What are you doing?!" the Demon King, Urizen, screamed; desperation unbefitting once the uncrowned monarch. "I told you to grant me power! You are my weakness, my most undesired side!"
V felt the words sting him, eyes widened as his focus never waned—entire body in tune with unbridled strength and willpower—the only amount this frail vessel could grant him. All proved for naught when a spike tentacle, circumference nearly eclipsing his stomach, impaled him in such same place.
A hollow grunt escaped him, human ichor spat from his mouth, as his body recoiled. In spite of turmoil and discord, his resilience never wavered, his hands unrelenting in their ironclad clasps.
"I disposed of you, I ate the fruit, I should have obtained everything!" The malignant Demon continued to howl. "You grant me nothing, I... am strong without you!"
Gritting his teeth, V could hear another voice rumble from behind him, Familiars his summoned Demons beginning to sprout from his impaled body. It was a gambit on the cosmos, all his effort condensed in one action executed.
A different voice in the form of rambunctious laughter echoed, "Haha! Don't flatter yourself buddy!" After Griffon's mockery, wings sprouted from the right side back shoulder of V, two of them expanding to be far larger than his own body size.
The colossal limb of Nightmare burst forth and slammed into Urizen's left shoulder as they continued to fall, and the shadowy form of Shadow merged with umbra; bit upon Urizen's other shoulder, face snarling a misbegotten visage.
V, now rejuvenated with strength stirring in his long pulverized viscera, pressed down his cane, compacting as much force as he could possibly muster. He fell, he continued to fall, the only constant in this maddening experience.
"Why?!" Urizen screamed, reviling.
He fell, chitin of the Qlipoth withering, becoming nothing but flaking motes of pure Demonic Energy fading.
"Why am I losing?!"
He fell, shattered body continuously cracking, and breaking at the seams.
"I had obtained everything!"
He fell, a rotten skeletal corpse was revealed underneath all of the senseless veils.
"I am—"
They fell, until the bottomless floor, a soundless echo permeated across, bleeding eyes of Urizen's inhumane form—yet human form—looking akin to the sorrowful tears of a drama mask. Its dry, broken lips bent forevermore into a frown, a broken figure revealed underneath all the fantasies of power.
"...I am weak."
V breathed out, eyes shut, grabbing the feeble and broken body into an embrace. "That's why I came," he spoke gently, white hair fluttering its last edges of life, coattails billowing alongside them, the endless stage reaching its end. "It will be alright, the two of us..." A splashing echo was heard, the ground seeming as if it were water. "Can become stronger."
The body of the Demon King from henceforth faded in his arms, slowly, turning into liquid as it no longer became seen. Revealed beneath it was V's own mortal trauma, a gaping hole yet to be closed, hemorrhaging along with Urizen's fading body.
V coughed, blood flowed endlessly from his mouth, and he fell over into the oceanic surface. A thud reverberated across the scape, ebony shadows his crucifix as they gyrated around his body, ready to consume him as done with his previous half.
His eyes never closed, even as he was consumed.
***
"Not a morning person, now are you, V? Figures, ya' didn't even set up an alarm clock!"
Irksome, V thought, Griffon's voice pestering him as he felt himself being dragged across the very abyss he had found himself in. Though, even if the quality of the tone beggard annoyance in him, he could whole-heartedly admit he felt... great fondness over it.
Wings wrapped sinew around his right hand flutter, dragging his body across, and he finally found his body breaking away from the darkness. Bursting out of whatever confined him, V's vision returned itself as he saw a bright world illuminate itself before him. His senses once diluted saw itself coming back, beckoned by the world around him.
He moved through, footsteps far more calm and composed than he could have expected, a trail of the same liquid shadows he burst out of trailing behind him.
"Well then, we can't go any further," Griffon spoke from behind him as V looked back, into the boundless wall of shadows that forsook any light. "This is the end of the line for us Nightmares. See ya!"
"...Yeah," V huffed, eyes shut, emotions flooding him with a deluge. He remained strong, glancing up to the azure sky which encompassed the entire area he had found himself in. Ceaseless clouds they were, and they were beautiful.
He turned to look back to the enormous wall of shadows, expecting one last witty remark from Griffon. Nothing. The shadows were no longer there, and only heaven within a wildflower—the sameness of green plains filling his vision.
V drank in the sight silently. His index finger moved to his only-gloved hand, peeling off the fingerless gloves and letting it fall to the ground, before reaching a hand up to his forehead, basking his eyes in a coverage from the sun.
"True, it's a fine morning," he said, not to himself, but to the set of footsteps sauntering its way behind him. "Vergil."
There stood a boy with white hair drifting into bangs across his eyes, blood basked in nearly every part of his body. In his right hand grasped a family crest, a Demon of Death coined only as the Yamato. He wore shorts, with an oversized cloak over his shoulders.
"...My, what an awful face," V said, walking to him, the boy according him a despondent stare drunken with silently turmitious sentiments.
A flick of argent with silver gleaming underneath the sun bespectacled his eyes, a deathly pointed blade right before his head and tipped with demonic blood. The young Vergil glared at him with a pale utterance, one which was unexpended of words.
V never once reacted, merely arching his spine backwards so as a simple countermeasure should demon steel find its way prodding his face. "I just came to bring you something you forgot."
He extended a book toward Vergil, writ with the large aureate letter of "V" upon mahogany leather. The boy's eyes in his view remained wide whilst he was frozen in unexpected contemplation.
"Something that the both of us truly need," V completed. His other hand drifted upward to gently touch the edged contour of Yamato. Immediately, he found the blade turned viciously, carved across the gale, and his own palm.
The book he held fell, collections of poems drafted upon paper like scriptures fluttering as it unceremoniously fell to the ground. Blood followed its release, dripping down a miniaturized sanguine waterfall.
"That's right," V expressed solemnly, "you keep averting your eyes like this." He hunched, stared upward at Vergil as he held his unwittingly phlebotomized palm in a vice grip. "This is my heart. The past and memories, a symbol for the things that will never return." His gaze never left the fallen opus of poems.
It was far too painful to bear, for they served as a reminder of my own helplessness. The house, my heaven upon a landslide, drifted amongst ashen smoke as wooden stags impaled the ground, unending demons howling adrift.
Forget them, cast them aside, rid of them, rid of them so that those memories shall never resurface from the pond of nightmares—for I knew I would never return home. The past stayed the past, and I ran, ran, and ran until I could escape!
"Foolishness," V softly chided as he stood behind Vergil, hands over the boy's eyes, the realm distorted from where they stood. "Although you say the past isn't needed, I was looking behind my back all the time. In that case, I should have faced it head on."
Demons trailed behind him in swathes, both in the past, and now in this reflection. V looked back as the world had turned back to the familiar chasm, masses of bodies the Prince of Darkness' thralls, before their beheld forms within fantasy's eyes were dispelled.
"I am no longer afraid of nightmares," V sombered, torrents of the past stirring around them in forms of undistilled ivory. "And the reason is that my heart... will protect me."
Vergil turned back. Two lost orbs met V's.
"That's why," he cupped the back of the boy's neck, pulling him in tranquility, "you no longer need to discard that which is left in your hands."
"...What I have left, in my hands?" Vergil finally spoke.
He fell, gaze turned to the heavens, slashed palm of his red-garbed brother—Dante—the forefront of his attention, his expression muted in shock and despair. There he—Vergil—lost himself, to a realm of Demons.
"That's nonsense," Vergil spat. "Either of us would have been better off alone. He must have felt the same."
"I wonder about that," V drifted, lowering his posture to renew the dropped book in his grasp. "I believe... well, I can only assume however, if Dante were given the choice; he'd choose to be your twin again."
"Why?"
"Because you can fight." He stood up, handing the item of his being toward Vergil. "Dante's coming." V continued to meet the silent contemplation of the boy, his head drifted to the sky as he could hear the shattering of glass, and the familiar haste of his brother outside the subconscious world.
"Dante? He still wishes to fight?" Vergil questioned.
"Naturally," a bout of nostalgia and humor overtook V for the brief phase, "it has always been that way, correct?" Then, he completed, "Do you hate quarreling with your little brother?"
Vergil looked away, Yamato too large for his hands grasped in its sheathed body, complicated emotions brewing within. "...I like it, actually. Fighting with Dante is the best."
V smiled. "Then go and fight. Give your foolhardy little brother a good batter, and you'll show him who's the strongest, isn't that right?" With recommenced clarity encapsulating him in the plain field, he handed the book to the boy.
Vergil received it. Sublimity bore the corners, and an ethereal flow followed the gait of his fingers. A burning acceptance fueled the soul as he brought it into his grasp, as if hugging a valued possession, for it truly was such.
A torrent bristled across the land between them, power of all kinds ladened within, and yet never did it bother either of them.
Even as V found it subsuming him, fluttering his hair, flicking his cloak—he felt with absolute certainty—he would not have it any other way.
Vergil, and V, stared one last time at one another.
Two souls once lost, and now they remembered.
"Thou dost smile
I sing the while
Sweet joy
Befall thee."
And he fell.