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“I don’t even have the words. I- he’s alive. He’s alive!!”
When V had first seen Dante, far below and cradled in the mass of skeletal branches, he hadn’t been certain of that at all. Like crouching down and finding a long lost heirloom beneath the dusty remains of a home, after a month away and the memory of his own hatred flickering deep and dark he’d been far more certain of Dante’s death.
He’d only regretted saying it when Nero had flinched, expression turning young and hurt and unable to face the idea that this man he clearly admired even could be dead.
Should be dead.
V gazes down at Dante, glancing back at the Devil Sword Sparda, and doesn't quite dare let hope settle.
Griffon grasps the hand he barely raises consciously and flies him down, dropping him gracefully before circling once in the macabre fashion of a vulture. The bird lands above Dante’s head, peering down at the artful drape of his body on the anthropomorphic growth of demonic wood, and he blinks once.
“Is he breathing? He can’t be alive, after all this time, right? It’s been a month!”
V studies Dante, brow lightly furrowed, taking the moment slowly as he taps his cane with every tentative step, right up until he is faced with the reach of the truth.
He doesn’t touch, not yet, eyes roaming over Dante’s body. Still. Utterly still.
And yet….whole. No sign of decay. No sallowing of his cheeks from the sapping of blood and other vital fluid, no sign of injury besides smudged red on a brow that no longer bears even the hint of a mark.
He doesn’t even smell of anything, which alone is a stark contrast in this place.
V watches his chest for a very long moment, eyes glancing up after to meet closed ones.
No breath. But…V’s brow furrows, and he reaches up curious fingers to brush at strands of hair fallen across Dante’s brow.
”His hair grew,” he murmurs, then hums, eyes flicking back to the still chest. He moves his hand from brow to hover over sternum, hesitating with one more flick of a glance to the slack face before resting his palm. Shrodinger-like, he waits with a touch too light to reveal either the presence or the absence of a heartbeat.
Nevertheless, he cannot avoid realizing:
”He’s still warm,” he says with surprise, the quirk of a disbelieving smile at the corner of his mouth. He presses harder, and when he feels nothing leans in instead and rests his head on Dante’s chest.
It takes a long, long time. But…
“There it is,” he says, opening his eyes and looking up again at the still face as the single heartbeat falls again to quiet. “His heart yet beats,” he murmurs, picking his head up and running his hand over Dante’s chest like he is considering the fine surface of some great beast or machine.
His eyes roam, taking in the abortion of a throne, the grand roots of Qliphoth that support it. He does not say it, but he does not think it was the sword that saved Dante.
“What a lucky bastard!” Griffon squaks, flapping his wings once and sitting back on his haunches. “Do you want help getting him down? No offence, but he’s still got twice the muscle you do and he’s been napping for the last few weeks. Kinda doubt he’ll be easy to wake up now.”
Shadow sits down at V’s side, sniffing curiously at Dante’s hand where it’s hanging down near his level.
“Yes, in a moment,” V answers, stepping back and then around, studying the structure and turning over his theory in his mind. “If I am correct about why this happened then there should be—ah.”
His face settles into one of grim satisfaction, using his cane to reach out and follow the fleshy root from the back of the throne to its source in the ground. Climbing up, he hooks his cane onto the fingers of one of the frozen spectres and slips his hand behind Dante’s head, peering down his back.
”Well now. That explains a lot,” he says, clucking his tongue against his teeth. “The great defender of humanity will not like to hear about this.” He glances up at Griffon as the bird hops down, cocking his head to see what V is seeing: an umbilical mass of Qliphoth roots connecting to Dante’s body from brainstem to mid back. “That is no tapping root. It’s feeding him. Best we not tell him.”
“Talk about a plot twist,” Griffon quips. “Can we cut him out without killing him?”
”I don’t think we’ll have to,” V murmurs, and hops back down, stepping up on Shadow to settle instead in a more stable position straddling Dante’s stomach. “I should just need….” He pulls Dante up against him, holding the back of his head as he digs his fingers into roots that pulse and bleed, searching for the fragile junction made to split and disconnect like the tail of a lizard.
He can envision the inner landscape of Dante’s body as he does so, mapped with vampiric roots turned benefactor. The hot rush of his blood pumping past barbs that, were it not for a quirk of genetics, would recognize that this is not their master but his twin, and that they should be sapping the life from him as indiscriminately as they’d done the thousands below.
Instead, by a combination of their inescapable duality and their father’s lingering power, Dante Sparda has lived to challenge Vergil another day. Fed all the while by the tree he’d seeded in his desperate search for power not dependent on bloodline.
Vergil would be furious. V cannot help but find a grim amusement and hope. The roots break free, and almost before V can feel them bleed Dante’s skin closes behind them to leave only the sturdy ridge of muscle and spine.
”Yes,” he says to Griffon and Shadow alike, resting Dante back again. “Help me to get him down.”