In keeping with how long it has taken Mizu to share what she has done, Vergil needs time to understand it. All that's happened since she forged the blade only adding and shaping the reflection on the act itself. It is such a personal matter, to forge her own steel and blade again, that Mizu did not know how to explain it then. She feared any attempt would only push Vergil away. Better to face him with her own blade and to fight the better for it than to explain it. He's lived first hand how her sword has changed her, the way Mizu's seen the difference between Vergil fighting with Yamato and Mirage Edge.
Vergil was always worthy of her true blade. Her concern was herself and the blade she'd make. Their conversation about it helped, as well the way they met blades. Vergil's rules bristled, but they never came from disrespecting her as an opponent. No matter that the more she's learned and seen and even experienced in memory, Mizu knows he holds himself back and could press her even harder. Yet he enjoys it and finds it worthwhile. He looked after her when he did not need to. He made himself safe, that Mizu could push so hard she fell unconscious and trust him to mind the boundaries of her clothes and body. Vergil wants her to feel as safe with him, as he does her? It is a rare instance that Mizu allows herself to fight so hard as to lose consciousness without it being to the death. He's had trust from the beginning built somehow over past wrongs and common ground.
Her shortcomings, her flaws, her body's frailties, all of it was accepted. Swordfather's always insisted that an impurity in the right place is a quality, but those words never penetrated so deeply as for Mizu to see it in herself. Still, she struggled with that. She struggles to this day. Her inclination to make a sword too brittle, not too soft. To be too hard, inflexible. Mizu's hardly reached some remarkable best form of herself she could ever be, only a better swordsman than she has been. That was her goal from the start with sparring Vergil. Mizu simply didn't understand all the ways he'd see her to that goal. No that she's done. She's better, yes, but she can be better yet. Like she's a living blade not yet forged and completed.
The sword is the soul of a samurai. Mizu is no samurai, but her sword is her soul, the most intimate part of herself. Vergil is a part of it, a simple statement of fact yet one that says more than words can ever say. Words that fail Vergil as well. He leans in, and Mizu releases some of the tension that built waiting. Her fingers tighten around the pendant and press into the skin beneath them. Mizu kisses Vergil back, words not fully capturing her feelings as well, and awareness of the room around them, the cabin, and the snow beyond fade away, such that someone could climb the stairs with Mizu none the wiser. Yet none the more in danger because she leaves that to Vergil.
She hadn't realized how much she wanted Vergil to know about her sword without a sense of how to tell him or when or even perhaps why she did not wish to give him her sword when he gave her his pendant. It would give him part of her, yes, but it would rob her of him too. It was not the time to explain, not in depth, and her words felt so short a measure of comfort compared to his. Not a competition, not a price to be paid, and not as necessary perhaps when she was the one more tempted by the trial. So she takes Vergil as hers and part of her and gives herself in return in the kiss. It is not so different a position than all the times he's carried her after sparring, the difference in knowing. Vergil knows better the depth of Mizu's feelings, the arc of those feelings, and Mizu safe as ever and accepted.
Vergil kisses Mizu sweetly and slowly until its end, and when he does eventually part his lips from hers, he does not stray far. He nuzzles her in a familiar gesture of affection before kissing the corner of her lips. He cares for little else beyond her even when not kissing her, his world narrowing down to their little points of contact and yet not seeming the smaller for it all the same. He knows it's likely untrue, but he likes to imagine their hearts beating in unison. How else could such a feeling within his chest be shared with another if that were not the case?
"I loved and guessed at you. You construed me, and loved me for what might or might not be," he recites quietly, only borrowing a few lines from the otherwise brief poem. "Nay, weights and measures do us both a wrong. For verily love knows not 'mine' or 'thine.'"
The words still feel as though they fall short of fully reflecting all that he feels, but they are close as he is liable to find in his own or another's in being able to speak of it. A love so accepting and so deep that it becomes one, and in turn, by sharing it, they are one as well. To that end, it does not matter what is to become of them or how inevitable it is that they shall leave this place one day and without the other. It is as they promised to each other, that they shall always belong to the other. There is no amount of time or distance that will unmake any of this. Not even heartache nor grief can replace it.
Vergil dips his head to the faded mark, placing a few light kisses before taking the skin into his mouth. He takes his time in darkening it again, alternating between his efforts in bruising the skin and teasing it with the light graze of his teeth or brushing over it with his lips. It's a different tempo than when he had left the mark the first time, more akin to the massage he'd given her than a ravenous hunger wherein the point is more for her to linger in each sensation.
Her soul has been before him for nearly a year, yet with all his demonic power, Vergil was none the wiser to his own presence within it nor the power that provides, power that cannot be detected by a demon. Not in the sword. Perhaps in Mizu, though she suspects not for the complete lack of wariness her demonic opponent had for her in the arena. She has no proof but suspects they'd carry more respect for Vergil or any of his family. So few people have recognized her power that it is no matter, and Mizu hardly minds being underestimated. That no one can sense Vergil and his influence on her by looking at her sword is their loss and potential downfall.
Vergil speaks words that may begin as his but carry on into phrases she believes he borrows. They do not all make sense to her, but the final sentiment is simple and clear. There is no ledger or accounting between them. They do not act because they owe each other as much love as the other has given. They love, and they both act accordingly. Where they cannot communicate themselves, where they might not understand everything, it does not matter. The ease with which Mizu does not judge what Vergil offers or ever feels he comes up short, he feels the same of her.
Mizu sighs softly as he pays further attention to the lightly sore stretch of skin. It's already fading, it was, before this moment. Her head tilts to make it easier, and she holds tightly to him, tight enough to bruise in her own right. Bruises Mizu knows she won't see, faded back into the empty stretches of his skin. That hunger grows patiently in the back of her mind. It's soft attention, for all it bruises again, and Mizu treasures it. She waits, and it's some time before she pulls herself higher, her chest leaving the warm water. Mizu tugs his head farther down and taps the skin hard over bone in the middle of her chest. "That's where your pendant lay that day, and I would carry you with me there again."
It rested against her bindings, but fresh marks will lie closer to her.
Even as he continues to attend to the freshened mark, Vergil does not impede her movement in rising further out of the water. He only ceases his attention along the small stretch of sensitive skin when Mizu directs his head between her breasts. There's only a brief moment of hesitation, but only for the novelty of the location. He's left his marks along her neck and shoulders, dipping low to her collar bone. Her back has been peppered in the shapes of his fingertips, and her thighs teased until the heel pressing into his back signals she will no longer abide his nonsense. But this portion of her body? Vergil has a tendency to... Well, neglecting it would be an inaccurate description for it, but he certainly does not have the tendency to prioritize it when pleasuring her. Mizu is not exactly indifferent to it, but there are other parts of her body that seem to thrill her more when he provides them with attention.
But it's only a brief moment of hesitation before he begins to oblige her request. Vergil's hand falls from hers and he disentangles their legs as he licks away the rivulets and beads of water that linger upon the canvas of her skin. With his freed hand, Vergil swings her legs back over his lap while his hand at her side slips to the small of her back and scoops her into his lap. As is usual, Vergil lifts Mizu as though she weighed nothing at all, a sensation likely heightened even further by the more weightless motion through the water. Mizu does not need any sort of help in remaining seated higher above the water even with a tub as deep as the one she has here, but that was not the point. The air just above the water and the air throughout the bathroom are not exactly cold and absolutely not the sort that she often seeks out, but it is still cooler than the water itself, and especially where their bodies meet one another. It's enough to feel a difference, to draw more subtle attention to the sensation of his mouth and breath on her skin. Vergil grips at her thigh firmly while his hand at her back adds some support to the way she must slightly twist to provide him access.
It's a bit more work to leave a mark there than his favored locations for marks on her skin, but Vergil is nothing if not patient and persistent with the task. Just as he had when freshening the mark on her neck, he alternates between sucking hard at her skin and teasing it balancing accomplishing what she's asked with allowing her to enjoy the process from start to finish. By the time he finishes, the spot is redder than the rest of her skin that's been heated by the water. Vergil is certain it should darken and bruise like every other mark by then and allows his affections to her skin to wander then. He turns his head slightly aside so that he is able to trail kisses over the swell of her breast before drifting over her heart and ending with the round of her shoulder. Resting a cheek against her shoulder then, Vergil looks up at her the best he can.
"Wherever you will it, I will always mark my love upon you. As with all things of mine that I've willingly surrendered to you, it is yours to claim as you will."
With ever remarkable ease, Vergil adjusts their positions to do as she asks. She no longer needs to lift herself up, and Mizu relaxes in Vergil's hold, trusting him to have her. Her hand slides down around his shoulders and holds tight more from the urge to do so than any need to support herself. Her eyes close, and memory mixes with the moment. She still feels his pendant under her hand, and she remembers the weight of it on her chest. The feeling she could not let him down so long as she had it. A demand and a reality.
Given the location, the stretch of skin over bone, Mizu surprises herself with how much she enjoys receiving the mark, not only the thought and conclusion of it. Goosebumps spread across her shoulders, and Mizu nearly whines when he stops. The continued attention defeating the sound in her throat. She breathes a little harder and looks down, though his face doesn't come easily into focus. Instead it's a warmth against her shoulder, again warmer than the air around them. Surprising how she nearly shivers with how warm it is.
Mizu lets go of his pendant to run a finger over the tender skin he's left her. She traces the rough shape of the pendant and smiles. "I always want to carry you with me, so much even my sword is not always enough. I want more," Mizu says. Relaxed as she is, a little more slips out. "It feels odd when I have not a single mark from you on my skin."
Even with multiple marks from Vergil, Mizu feels that strong urge for more, some need she doesn't look too closely at. Yet the ghost lingers, the desire to carry him with her more than memories and the connection they have. Something more than her mind and, given her sword, her soul. He's before her, so it's a foolish thought, and Mizu sets it aside without more consideration.
It would be a difficult thing to resist smiling when she confesses to wanting so much, to wanting more. So, Vergil puts no effort into it, and allows himself to be simply pleased by Mizu's greediness. He doesn't need the confirmation from her that she desires the physical marks of his affection upon her. If Mizu did not like it, she simply wouldn't allow for it. Or if she was at least willing to entertain the act of creating them, but did not wish for the bruises to linger, she would use her healing factor to make it as though they never were. But he still likes to hear her say it.
"Your attempts have not been unwelcome," he says, the hand upon her thigh tracing along the outside of it to her knee before returning along the top of it until he very nearly meets her pelvis. It's a slow, soothing touch. Vergil knows it often frustrates Mizu to no end that his own healing factor prevents her from leaving such physical reminders of her affection, proof of their connection to one another. Would that Vergil could, he would slow his own healing for the sole purpose of allowing her marks to linger for longer. But his ability is not like hers. He cannot target specific injuries and leave the rest alone. His body naturally seeks to heal the most significant damage. He would not likely be in the position to allow for her marks if his body were to ignore them. But he does still enjoy the sensations just the same as her if nothing else. "But I am not without you simply because you have not been able to leave a visible mark. I have your scent and you occupy no small part of my mind when we are apart."
Whether in the heat of passion or with slow determined dedication, Vergil always responds to Mizu's attempts to mark him. It encourages her, when so often the bruises fade before she gets a proper look at them. Smooth unmarked skin beneath her fingers, her lips. Like she was never there. Mizu doesn't care about power or legacy or remembrance in history, but to leave a mark on someone that matters to her? Not a way to honor or greatness or the next high. Her, seen and understood and making a difference. It stunned her to learn Master Eiji considers he made his best sword when she was his apprentice. Even if no one else knows or understands, those swords are out in the world, a testament to that. With Vergil—
Mizu sighs, "Scent fades so quickly."
His better sense of smell extends the time he carries her, but it's a matter of days. New odors and scents overwhelm old ones. There's a reason she wears his clothes when he's gone. Well, more than one, but that is one of them. Especially when she visits Cruel Summer and comes away smelling so terribly of demon even she sees need of a bath, no matter how recently she's washed herself. Mizu doesn't understand why or how the fighting pits have such a steady stream of demons from Vergil's world, but she's gotten better at fighting them. Individually. She isn't yet prepared for crowds of them the way she can handle groups of men.
"What is my occupation of your mind like?" Mizu asks. The only place she may last and one that will change unavoidably one day. It cannot be helped.
He's not certain if it's frustration or disappointment that she speaks with when she notes that scent is not as long-lasting as she would like. Whichever it is—assuming that it is either of them—Vergil finds the presence of such an emotion difficult to ignore. Vergil's smile fades a little upon hearing it. He likes to think that he does well in navigating Mizu's emotions when they arise. Their similar temperaments allows him to have a better sense of what may alleviate the distress or discomfort she's experiencing from them. But this is not one that Vergil knows even in the vaguest sense could be helpful for her in soothing whatever it is she feels over the impermanence.
So, he continues tracing her skin and he answers her question.
"It varies, depending on the circumstances," he says, turning his head slightly to press a kiss to her shoulder. "For example, on mornings I wake uncertain if I will see you that day, I wish I was with you so we could waste hours of the morning in whatever manner we pleased. But the closest I can be is imagining the weight and warmth of you on the bed beside me."
Vergil pulls back from resting his head against her shoulder to look at her properly. It's plain that he is looking at her that same way before they got into the bath together, but Vergil also holds in his mind's eye the image of her that he describes.
"The gentle sound of your breath and that look of peace on your face when you're still sound asleep, neither of which I possess the heart to ever willingly disturb because if I did not know it was a gift you've unwittingly given to me countless times, I would think it mere fantasy for all the calm and peace I feel within myself." The hand at her back slips away in favor of intertwining fingers with one of her hands. "But if I know I am to see you, I've no need for such visions to act as comfort in staving off a lonely morning. I've all my thoughts of what is to come even if it is a great test of my patience to have to wait and fill my time with other things between waking and when I see you again because all I can think of is what I wish to do with you, to say to you, to share with you.
"Mizu, you are among my first and last thoughts each day. There are reminders of you for me littered throughout each day I am not at your side that I'm sure you would find foolish. But you bring me peace and happiness each time I think of you, and I think of you often."
Familiar as Mizu is with her own thoughts of Vergil when they are apart, thoughts that only fade when her focus is so intense nothing but her current actions fill her mind, Vergil's descriptions are not that great a surprise. Her bed feels cold and vast when she wakes up alone in it, and she rises immediately, instead of the many hours Vergil gets her to stay when he's there. Without him, it's simply a place to sleep and to take the necessary rest to get to the business of her day. Nothing special.
It is indeed a lonely morning. Those weeks at Amrita, whatever else they did, introduced her to them by spending every night together. That might have continued afterward, save that Dante stayed with Vergil. Then Nero arrived. Mizu will not tear him apart from his family nor ask him to choose between them. A fool's errand, even if she were so selfish of him and his happiness to consider trying to keep him all to herself. That would never work, and if it did, in the end, it would only leave him alone. Far better that Vergil has people, the life he came to Folkmore to seek, with or without her.
Mizu does not understand how he can think so well of her, how thoughts of her can bring him peace and happiness without the dark shadow of separation that waits for them. It is of her making without any need of the fox spirit's interference to heighten the drama into a tragedy.
"I am not that good," Mizu declares, "You wonderful idiot."
She pulls him in for a kiss, hard and demanding. Demanding what, Mizu isn't certain, only that she needs Vergil and something from him. No, perhaps it's to give something to him. She breaks it off with a grunt of frustration to kiss and bite her way down his jaw and to his neck. There, Mizu makes yet another attempt at leaving her mark on him. She sucks and bites and pulls on his skin. Over and over, she gives herself to the effort, but the mark doesn't stay. It never stays. She leans her face into his neck, eyes damp. That image he painted will disappear after she does. Mizu knows it.
Mizu kisses him harder than he would expect, leaving his kiss in return likely a little clumsier than she would prefer. There is passion in the kiss, but there is something else he feels in the intensity behind her kiss that Vergil cannot name, cannot identify. Except, he thinks, he has heard similar talk before. Not as heated, no, and certainly gentler, but...
Mizu breaks the kiss with a noise that sounds near to a growl, but Vergil does not stop her. He does not, however, sink into the feeling of her mouth against his skin. There is too much disconnect between the act and himself, between Mizu and him for him to feel even the harshest press of her teeth as happening to his own skin. For all that Mizu has been confused regarding his thoughts of and feelings for her, never has she had such force behind her refutation of it. Not even when he called her beautiful had there been such an energy behind it.
He finds it... he finds it so difficult to understand. Months ago, he had taken her on the floor of her living room, and in that fit of passion sprung forth a greater intimacy than either of them had ever really known. Vergil let the words slip from him as quietly as he could for fear of a reaction like this one. But he received its opposite then.
She buries her face in his neck and Vergil wraps his arms firmly around her. He doesn't believe it will make a difference to how she's feeling, but Vergil doesn't know what else to do, how to possibly soothe what she's feeling. He considers it briefly, but declaring his feelings firmly and true would likely only produce a worse result. Mizu knows how he feels, and to some extent, that appears to be the problem. Asking her to explain it to him doesn't even cross his mind as a possibility. Teasing her even gently or at his own expense just seems cruel. So, he is left without any words. Not his own. Not borrowed. Useless as it feels to him, a warm embrace and silent patience is all he can offer.
The warm water fails to ground Mizu. Her emotions roil inside her, turbulent and unrelenting. Guilt and pain and sadness well up overwhelming. Mizu holds onto Vergil tightly and doesn't let go. She doesn't want to let go of him, not now, not in the future, not when she leaves. Yet she must. She will. That's always been how they will end. She knows it. He knows it. Damn well, the fox spirit knows it. He holds her tight, and Mizu holds onto him.
She feels his heartbeat against her, and Mizu focuses on the steady beat. It slowly calms her until her breathing feels less ragged. Until she feels more like herself. More at ease. As foolish as it is, it's him. It's Vergil grounding her as he's grounded her so many times before. The thought Vergil will come to hate her or despise her or wish he hadn't known her, once she is gone, continues to come to mind. It may be true, and there's nothing she can do about that. She's been clear about her goals, about her plans, from the very beginning.
Mizu continues to lean against him, and unlike when they spar or make love, she feels small. "I'm sorry," Mizu says softly, "That wasn't your fault."
Vergil deserves better. The least Mizu can do is treat him right while she's here. His feelings and thoughts toward her are wonderful, better than she deserves, but his and his to have. Mizu will not pretend either of them are perfect. Vergil's done terrible things, but he's never done them to her. He's never treated her anything less than well.
"Did you ever plan to stay," Mizu asks, "in Fortuna?"
Vergil doesn't need nor want an apology from Mizu, but he does not dismiss it all the same. He recognizes that it's part of Mizu's reassurance. While he feels strongly that he shouldn't need nor want that either, he does. Vergil is soothed when she says the reaction is not his fault, the implicit message being that he's done nothing wrong. It's easier to believe her now than it was over the noodles. Or, well, it's easier to accept in the moment than it was that night. Vergil isn't certain if it's because of that experience, or if he's just simply grown a little more confident that his overtures of love and affection are not wrong. No matter how uncomfortable such vulnerability may make either one of them, Vergil is certain that his feelings are not wrong. He just may perhaps misstep from time to time in how he expresses them, and that can be wrong albeit not intentionally so.
At her question, Vergil's gaze darts away to elsewhere in the bathroom. He has no desire to lie to Mizu—never has and never will—but the answer comes coupled with shame and guilt. It's not something that he allows himself to dwell upon, but that is the only way he finds peace from it given that the unintended consequences from his choice irrevocably shaped the rest of his son's life. Never mind the lingering question of whether or not Beatrice's life was cut short as a consequence of his absence. There is nothing that can ever truly make the guilt and shame with that leave him entirely with both of those things weighing upon him.
"No," he admits with his next breath. "I was merely there to gather what information I could about my father."
Her apology only came for Vergil's benefit, so he'd know not to blame himself. Mizu's sorry to hurt him, even in those moments, when he might blame himself. It isn't his fault, not tonight and not when she leaves. It's the least she can do to make sure he knows that. Mizu didn't apologize to Ringo because she wasn't in the wrong. The people she's wronged, what few of them she identifies, are dead, and the dead do not need, nor likely want, her apologies. She did what she did. She must live by her choices. It's not entirely unlike leaving swordfather, except Mizu knows Vergil will not ask her to stay.
She watches Vergil's reaction to her question, the pain he feels clear cut. A decision he would change, given what he knows now, given who he is now. He didn't know what would happen as a consequence of his decision. Vergil left Nero's mother behind after what, Mizu's reasonably sure, they both knew was a relationship that would not last. Everything Vergil's told her says the woman was smart. She knew what she was doing, and she made her choices too. Vergil made the choice in line with his goals, in line with what the two of them knew their relationship to be.
Vergil regrets it. Mizu feels worse in that moment, as she traces the smooth skin of his neck, already no mark marring it. He regrets it, however, because of Nero primarily, what happened to him. Perhaps to a lesser extent, whatever happened to the woman he loved. Those aren't concerns Mizu has to contend with. She cannot leave him pregnant, and Vergil is powerful enough to live and to survive on his own without her. He even has Dante and Nero watching his back, should some threat truly emerge. It's not the same situation, no matter that Mizu is merely here to gather what information she can about her fathers.
Mizu cups Vergil's face and kisses his forehead. That he made a fair decision in that moment matters little to him, and Mizu cannot wipe those pained feelings away from him. "You don't know what would have happened if you stayed. Only what happened when you left."
They aren't meant to be absolution. Only the truth. "You were hunted, were you not? You could have drawn that attention to them."
Because the truth, so often, is terrible. Mizu understands only having bad decisions to make, one or the other. She sighs. What happened to Vergil and Dante didn't happen to Nero. That's something.
Mizu speaks sense. There is nothing incorrect about what she says. He has no way of knowing what would have been had he stayed. Vergil already possessed doubts about what sort of father he might have been to Nero had he been there from the beginning even before he knew of Nero's true upbringing. Those doubts, when he imagines what could have been, do not exactly abate even now. For all that he believes he would have loved Nero the moment he knew of his existence to the best that Vergil was capable of loving someone else, there is no telling that it would have been enough or right for Nero. And that is nothing to say of what would have become of him and Nero's mother. There's a good chance they wouldn't have worked out long-term. After all, they were young, and Vergil has now way of knowing how raising Nero would have impacted them. And Mizu is correct that eventually, the demons sent to hunt him would have caught up. There was no guarantee that he could have protected them both when they did, and that he would not relive the same nightmare again. It was that fear, after all, that made him run in the end.
"I know, Mizu," he says, harsher than he means and jerking his face free from her hold. Vergil does not mean to lash out at her. Even if Mizu is probing at old wounds and regrets, he knows there not to be malicious intent behind it. But knowing that does not make it a less of a sore subject. "But what does knowing change? I did not plan to stay in Fortuna, but that does not mean part of me did not want to stay. It was the first—"
Vergil cuts himself off, looking away from Mizu with a slight shake of his head. He's quiet a moment, brow furrowed in a combination of frustration and anger at himself for his past decisions, and his seeming inability to convey why this regret is one he cannot reason with.
"After the attack on my family, I never once thought to stay. Not once did I feel the temptation. Even knowing the likelihood that the families who took me in suffered a terrible fate for looking after me, I never looked back. I do not now." Vergil looks at Mizu in a brief glance, unable to bring himself to fully meet her eyes. "But I will always look back at that decision with regret, Mizu. I had a chance for everything that I truly wanted even beyond my conscious mind. And I threw it away because I was too afraid of losing it. I left without saying anything because I feared I would not be strong enough to walk away otherwise, but I feared being too weak to stay.
"And yet, that choice changed nothing. It merely sealed her fate. Doomed Nero to grow up more alone than he should have ever been."
Vergil does not understand how it is Nero forgives him. Even knowing that Vergil did not know of his existence is not enough to absolve him of the hand he had in Nero's upbringing, in believing himself not to be enough and unworthy of even the barest scrap of love. Vergil does not think if their positions were reversed, he would have the ability to forgive so easily. He certainly doesn't even now.
Logic does not batter back emotions, and Vergil's response reflects that. Mizu lowers her hands and does not hold onto Vergil when he does not want it. It only feels fair that he should say her name that way. How different can it feel to be the one left behind? That's not what Vergil's upset about, but she can imagine frustration that does not aim at himself. There will be time for that. Vergil's hurt, still, and there may be no hurt for this injury if even Nero cannot mend it. Certainly Mizu cannot fix such a wound.
She listens. Of course part of him wished to stay. Mizu assumed as much from the way he spoke about his time there, about the relationship he forged. It would be stranger if such feeling did not form in his heart, an impurity to his purpose. It could make his resolution bitter, or it could make him stronger. From all Mizu knows of Vergil, she'd say it was an impurity in the right place. She could even go so far as to say it's what saved him from shattering a second time, what allowed him to pull himself together again and become who he is.
His need for survival may have doomed families who did nothing more than take in and care for an orphaned child, but Mizu feels no pity for them. By Vergil's own words, people stopped taking him in once he got a little older. People whose kindness does not extend to an older child are not that good. Their deaths do not sit with her, not even if every last family that helped Vergil died. The shame is that those who refused to help him didn't die as well.
Both options Vergil faced sparked fear of weakness. Too weak to leave, too weak to stay. He knew the target he'd place on Beatrice's back if he stayed, and he thought he might be too weak to protect her. The very issue Mizu raised by suggesting he could have brought demons to her. She grimaces a little because she did not mean to call Vergil weak. The fear was logical, however. All his father's strength failed to prevent the calamity that orphaned Vergil and Dante. He sought that power, to be as powerful as his father, to be more powerful. How powerful does he need to be to feel capable of protecting those he loves? Mizu isn't sure, but Nero has power aplenty in his own right.
"Regret it," Mizu says and accepts that he will. "So long as you don't let that regret drive you to further regrets. Make it strengthen you, not weaken you."
Mizu should have seen through her mother from the moment she saw the woman alive and well. She abandoned Mizu and never came searching for her. The woman only saw Mizu back to health for the security and regular access to drugs it could bring. She never should have married Mikio for her mother's sake. Perhaps if she saw through her, Mizu would spend her life wondering how it might have been. If it might have been what she wanted, but she knows now it wasn't. It never could have been.
If only she and Vergil had the opportunity outside Folkmore—
No point wishing for what she saw on the train, that perfect life that offered her everything. Mizu is not the sort of person who can get what she wants.
Vergil keeps his gaze averted from Mizu for a moment or two after she speaks. His face turns towards her, but his eyes are slower to follow. He knows he has no reason to feel shame before her. Mizu has never once offered harsh or unfair judgment when it comes to his past choices, no matter the consequences or lives lost. Still, he finds it harder in that moment to feel that Mizu truly sees the whole of the man before her. That she can truly love him without exception, can feel safe enough with him that her deepest, darkest secrets can be entrusted to him even knowing the destruction and ruin he's left in his wake time and time again. But Vergil brings his gaze up to hers, and he does not see all that his guilt and shame says he ought to see looking back at him.
"I choose to stay with you, do I not?" he ask, quietly. Even when he questions whether he has the proper strength to stay, to be what she needs him to be, Vergil has yet to leave when she's asked him to stay. In fact, it's unlikely that he would leave barring her asking him to do as much.
Vergil does not give her a chance to answer, leaning up to press his lips to hers in a bruising, insistent kiss.
A less flawed person, someone who hasn't lived through the bloodshed, rejection, and ambition Mizu has and does, could not be trusted to care for her. All it took for Ringo to turn away was failure to protect someone he felt a connection with. All it took for Mikio was for her to be a better fighter than him. It took nothing at all for her mother, for it was never there—only money. Vergil has no expectation that Mizu protect Nero (no doubt both father and son would scoff at the idea), not even should she soundly defeat one or both of them. Vergil will not so readily abandon her, has never abandoned her to see to her own survival. What mistakes he will still make, they are no betrayal of her.
Mizu only starts to smile, a bittersweet ache in her heart, before Vergil kisses her. Until she needs to leave, Mizu has him, and she parts her lips to let him in. He's here in her home, here in the privacy of her chambers, here in her heart. She trusts him with it all. Her doubts are entirely her own, in herself. Whatever the future brings, she can give herself entirely to Vergil tonight. Perhaps not trust herself to hold him and to take him tonight, too much balanced on the edge of a blade, but she will find a way while here. He deserves that safety. The safety she feels, even now this very moment, with him.
Mizu kisses Vergil back and hopes he feels that safety he's made for her rather than the shame he carries. Everything he might have wished to be for Beatrice, he is for her.
He's claimed her mouth dozens if not hundreds of times by now, but still when Mizu parts her lips for him, he is still just as reverent as the first time. What she gives is what he takes. Nothing more. Nothing less. As has been their way from the very beginning even when playing by the fox spirit's rules. One his hands rises from where it had been wrapped around her, tracing up along the line of her neck until he can hold her face, subtly altering the angle of the kiss.
Vergil kisses her until they're both left just slightly breathless. Their lips barely part from one another, enough that they share in the breath. Almost magnetically, he's drawn to kiss her again, although it's briefer, smaller kisses that still allow for the both of them to catch their breath.
"I love you."
The words are spoken softly and quietly between little kisses, but not in the way he spoke them the first time. That first time, his quiet speaking had been out of hopes that perhaps she would not hear, that he could retain plausible deniability to avoid rejection of such a direct statement his feelings. The quiet way of saying them now is because they are words meant for her and her alone even though there is no one else around to hear them. Vergil does not make a habit of saying them often even after having braved saying them that first time, but he says them now freely. They are feelings that he would have divorced himself from in his youth, yet he is willing to embrace here and now with her.
Mizu continues to kiss Vergil, slowing the recovery of her breath, but she does not care. Times like these, one feels more important than the other. A shiver crawls up her spine with his words, and perhaps breathing is worthwhile to hear them. She hasn't needed to hear them to know them since the first time Vergil spoke them. They pulled the blindfold from her eyes for what Vergil showed her since the first time they were together. Once aware, she sees his love all the time. Spending the night with her. Letting her wear his clothes. Cooking for her. Coming over for the holiday he thought mattered to her. Sparring her letting up as little as before, not treating her as delicate. Just tonight, the way she's on his mind every day.
He didn't have to say them again, he doesn't ever, but greedy, Mizu breathes them in. They are soft and gentle but firm and sure of themselves. No matter that Mizu just made a fool of herself in front of him. It takes a moment to remember that came not long from baring her soul and admitting she's taken representation of him, of the relationship they started, into her sword. That too was tonight. She feels raw and tender but secure in his arms. She kisses him again and again.
His love feels so solid and secure a thing, hers fragile and waiting to break. It hasn't broken yet, and Mizu knows how she feels. She knows how it feels to hear it. So despite how inadequate it feels, it's what she can offer, all she can offer. Her love. With her arms wrapped around him, Mizu says as softly, "I love you."
An imperfect brittle thing, as hideous as she is, yet somehow he makes that beautiful. He sees something in it.
Close as they are and with one of his arms still wrapped so firmly around her, he feels that shiver work its way up her spine at his words. It pleases him more than words can possibly express, and he truly has no burning need for her to say anything back to him. That reaction alone, the kisses that follow, are enough. But Mizu says the words back, and he aches sweetly in hearing them again. Some part of him feels so greedy to be so eager in hearing them once more, but Vergil cannot deny how each beat of his heart afterward feels all the fuller for it. No piece had truly been missing—he's not ignorant of Mizu's feelings even if she also just as rarely speaks of them as him, and certainly not after her confession tonight—but there is still something found in her words that brings about such joy. Impossible as it may be, it feels a return to innocence for as much as Vergil trusts her, trusts her love to be warm and kind and protective. It's things Vergil knows Mizu would never describe herself to be, but it's parts of her he sees even when she cannot. What mistakes she's made or chosen harm she's inflicted on others does not negate that, does not change the fact that's who she chooses to be for him.
Vergil's next kiss is more earnest, more wanting than the smaller ones that precede it. He nips lightly at her lower lip until her lips part for him once more, his tongue meeting hers. He sighs, pleased, as his hand leaves her cheek for between her shoulder blades in almost a mirror of how she so often touches him. Vergil's other arm loosens so that his hand comes to her lap. Fingers drag along her thigh until he reaches her knee, nudging at it to part from the other and grant him access to touch her.
Before she loses thoughts to his touch, something Mizu senses will come, she tilts her head ever so slightly back to where Vergil held it. It's almost nothing. Mizu meets his kiss but lets him kiss her as deeply as he wishes. She doesn't hold her weight but leans back against his hand. All of it trust and love and anticipation. Three things she always longs for with Vergil: sparring, snuggling, and sex. Tonight has been heavy on snuggling, much to her enjoyment, and the bath is no place to spar, not even grappling. She smiles against his face, and a very different sort of shudder runs through her.
Mizu parts her knees as much as she can and stay in his lap. She resists the urge to push closer toward his hand, but one hand reaches partway toward the water before she catches herself from pulling him closer thoughtlessly. He might tease her terribly for it, but after a second thought, Mizu strokes her fingers down his arm toward his wrist to pull it closer. She wants to forget about everything else but them, but him. She's damn well not meditating her way there.
Mizu tugs on his wrist and Vergil has a difficult time not grinning over her impatience even as they kiss. He allows her to draw his hand closer once her legs are parted, but he does not oblige her immediately. Not directly. Instead, he inverts the positions of their hands, placing his over hers. While the change in position may come as a bit of a surprise, Vergil doubts Mizu is ignorant of what he is doing. It's not the first time he's done this albeit the context was a little different. Guiding her fingers to tease over her own folds, Vergil breaks the kiss.
"If you're that impatient, perhaps you should take care of matters more yourself," he says, teasing her as she predicted he might, before kissing along her jaw. He speaks low into her ear when he reaches the corner of her jaw. Vergil pushes her fingers gently near to her entrance, drawing a line to a teasing stroke of her clit as he speaks. "Then perhaps the next time you find yourself in my clothes...and alone...I could occupy a corner of your mind."
The reality is that Vergil doubts very much Mizu dedicates much time if any at all to that. Whatever arguments she makes to herself to allow for such indulgences with him likely do not hold much weight in pleasuring herself alone, assuming the thought even occurs to her in the first place. But reality is not the point. The point is building a fantasy. Regardless of whether or not Mizu ever thinks of this later or acts upon it, both of them will still possess the memory of his hand over hers as she pleasures herself in want of him. It's a sweeter thing, he thinks, than to simply miss him. A longing with release that was not dependent upon his physical presence.
With Vergil there, surrounding her and holding her, the scent of him close despite the bath, Mizu wants him and to lose herself with him. A small huff, as he talks, gives away her immediate thoughts, but his voice wraps around her. She lets him guide her hand, his hand over hers a lifeline to what she pushed for. Her fingers move in imitation of his, what he's done time and time again, so much that Mizu knows exactly what she likes and what shortens her breath.
Vergil continues to speak, and the image he paints appears like brushstrokes in her mind. Even then, even in this image, he ghosts the scene. His clothes, his scent, the memory of his hand on hers, weighted further because she feels his fingers over hers. Mizu groans, sinking further against his hand at her back. Her longing for Vergil when he's gone fuels the image he paints. They're together this moment, and Mizu wants him more. Like he's a figment of her imagination.
"When I wear your clothes," Mizu manages, her fingers repeating the slow movements. She bites her lip, not to quiet herself but not to rush faster. When he's gone she always wants to feel him as long as she can. "You're always on my mind."
Sometimes with bodily longing, but that ache goes unanswered until next she sees him. Not this time, not in the image in her mind. She's on her bed in her mind's eye, a book of poetry spread open on the bed beside her. Even the pillow smells faintly of him. It's all him. Her fingers move in small circles. As with swordplay, she imitates ways he's teased her before. She breathes harder. "I lie where you did on the bed."
Between the water and his own strength, Vergil is able to support her weight easily by his hand alone as she leans back against it. Still, he leans in towards her just enough that there's space between his back and the wall of the tub for his tail to manifest. It curls behind her, giving Mizu something else to lean back against beyond just his hand, but snakes its way over her opposite leg along to her inner thigh.
Vergil dips his head to kiss along her throat, nipping at it lightly, and allowing her to seamlessly take the lead in teasing herself with her fingers. He's come to know her body well, and he's pleased to see Mizu's paid just as much attention when she's able to take the lead, touching and pleasuring herself in want of him. To say it's a thrill to bear witness to would be an understatement. And there is a temptation, of course, to pleasure her further beyond her touch alone to both reward and fulfill that want, but Vergil resists it for now. Mizu is taking it slower than that, and he follows her pace and movements.
"Where I would want you. Close to me," he murmurs against her skin. As close as she could be in that circumstance. Vergil returns to her lips, the languidness of the kiss mimicking the movement of her fingers. He breaks the kiss, but remains near to her lips. "You could close your eyes until it's easier to imagine it's not your hand alone convincing you to stay in bed just a little while longer. I'm right there with you."
A thrum moves through her as Mizu feels Vergil's tail first at her back and continuing around her. With his hand still lightly on hers, with his other hand still supporting her back, with her still in his lap, it gives her more of Vergil. More touch and connection and him. An ocean to the smallness of men. She teases herself the way she imagines Vergil would have, if she had not rushed him. His fingers instead of hers. Mizu hungers for more, wanted more and faster, yet she's wound up here all the same.
Already, small grunts and labored breathing escapes her. It's what she needed—to be loved and to be wanted despite everything terrible about her and what she'll do to him. It amazes her, and each time he speaks, each stroke of pleasure, drives away other thoughts so he holds her body and mind. Mizu kisses Vergil back instinctively, but she hungers for his words. So close, she can hardly see him now, but she pretends how she feels him fills the scene in her mind. His body warm and close, holding her, around her, touching her. His clothes a pale stand-in for Vergil but enough to bring him more to life.
"You are the reason I stay in bed," Mizu says, words harder. "You and your... many tricks." Mizu says it affectionately. Vergil has no job that needs doing, and Folkmore does not force it. Yet she's a person of habit, early to rise. Here he goes adding another one, for a morning when she's slept in his clothes and wakes smelling him. The bed would be cold, unless she slept in his spot. So she imagines doing so, going to bed alone, and waking with him curled around her, somehow still on the same side of the bed as her. A fantasy within a fantasy and a pleasant one at that.
Her legs kick a little as she imagines it further. "I tangle my legs in the sheets, like you're holding them."
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Vergil was always worthy of her true blade. Her concern was herself and the blade she'd make. Their conversation about it helped, as well the way they met blades. Vergil's rules bristled, but they never came from disrespecting her as an opponent. No matter that the more she's learned and seen and even experienced in memory, Mizu knows he holds himself back and could press her even harder. Yet he enjoys it and finds it worthwhile. He looked after her when he did not need to. He made himself safe, that Mizu could push so hard she fell unconscious and trust him to mind the boundaries of her clothes and body. Vergil wants her to feel as safe with him, as he does her? It is a rare instance that Mizu allows herself to fight so hard as to lose consciousness without it being to the death. He's had trust from the beginning built somehow over past wrongs and common ground.
Her shortcomings, her flaws, her body's frailties, all of it was accepted. Swordfather's always insisted that an impurity in the right place is a quality, but those words never penetrated so deeply as for Mizu to see it in herself. Still, she struggled with that. She struggles to this day. Her inclination to make a sword too brittle, not too soft. To be too hard, inflexible. Mizu's hardly reached some remarkable best form of herself she could ever be, only a better swordsman than she has been. That was her goal from the start with sparring Vergil. Mizu simply didn't understand all the ways he'd see her to that goal. No that she's done. She's better, yes, but she can be better yet. Like she's a living blade not yet forged and completed.
The sword is the soul of a samurai. Mizu is no samurai, but her sword is her soul, the most intimate part of herself. Vergil is a part of it, a simple statement of fact yet one that says more than words can ever say. Words that fail Vergil as well. He leans in, and Mizu releases some of the tension that built waiting. Her fingers tighten around the pendant and press into the skin beneath them. Mizu kisses Vergil back, words not fully capturing her feelings as well, and awareness of the room around them, the cabin, and the snow beyond fade away, such that someone could climb the stairs with Mizu none the wiser. Yet none the more in danger because she leaves that to Vergil.
She hadn't realized how much she wanted Vergil to know about her sword without a sense of how to tell him or when or even perhaps why she did not wish to give him her sword when he gave her his pendant. It would give him part of her, yes, but it would rob her of him too. It was not the time to explain, not in depth, and her words felt so short a measure of comfort compared to his. Not a competition, not a price to be paid, and not as necessary perhaps when she was the one more tempted by the trial. So she takes Vergil as hers and part of her and gives herself in return in the kiss. It is not so different a position than all the times he's carried her after sparring, the difference in knowing. Vergil knows better the depth of Mizu's feelings, the arc of those feelings, and Mizu safe as ever and accepted.
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"I loved and guessed at you. You construed me, and loved me for what might or might not be," he recites quietly, only borrowing a few lines from the otherwise brief poem. "Nay, weights and measures do us both a wrong. For verily love knows not 'mine' or 'thine.'"
The words still feel as though they fall short of fully reflecting all that he feels, but they are close as he is liable to find in his own or another's in being able to speak of it. A love so accepting and so deep that it becomes one, and in turn, by sharing it, they are one as well. To that end, it does not matter what is to become of them or how inevitable it is that they shall leave this place one day and without the other. It is as they promised to each other, that they shall always belong to the other. There is no amount of time or distance that will unmake any of this. Not even heartache nor grief can replace it.
Vergil dips his head to the faded mark, placing a few light kisses before taking the skin into his mouth. He takes his time in darkening it again, alternating between his efforts in bruising the skin and teasing it with the light graze of his teeth or brushing over it with his lips. It's a different tempo than when he had left the mark the first time, more akin to the massage he'd given her than a ravenous hunger wherein the point is more for her to linger in each sensation.
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Vergil speaks words that may begin as his but carry on into phrases she believes he borrows. They do not all make sense to her, but the final sentiment is simple and clear. There is no ledger or accounting between them. They do not act because they owe each other as much love as the other has given. They love, and they both act accordingly. Where they cannot communicate themselves, where they might not understand everything, it does not matter. The ease with which Mizu does not judge what Vergil offers or ever feels he comes up short, he feels the same of her.
Mizu sighs softly as he pays further attention to the lightly sore stretch of skin. It's already fading, it was, before this moment. Her head tilts to make it easier, and she holds tightly to him, tight enough to bruise in her own right. Bruises Mizu knows she won't see, faded back into the empty stretches of his skin. That hunger grows patiently in the back of her mind. It's soft attention, for all it bruises again, and Mizu treasures it. She waits, and it's some time before she pulls herself higher, her chest leaving the warm water. Mizu tugs his head farther down and taps the skin hard over bone in the middle of her chest. "That's where your pendant lay that day, and I would carry you with me there again."
It rested against her bindings, but fresh marks will lie closer to her.
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But it's only a brief moment of hesitation before he begins to oblige her request. Vergil's hand falls from hers and he disentangles their legs as he licks away the rivulets and beads of water that linger upon the canvas of her skin. With his freed hand, Vergil swings her legs back over his lap while his hand at her side slips to the small of her back and scoops her into his lap. As is usual, Vergil lifts Mizu as though she weighed nothing at all, a sensation likely heightened even further by the more weightless motion through the water. Mizu does not need any sort of help in remaining seated higher above the water even with a tub as deep as the one she has here, but that was not the point. The air just above the water and the air throughout the bathroom are not exactly cold and absolutely not the sort that she often seeks out, but it is still cooler than the water itself, and especially where their bodies meet one another. It's enough to feel a difference, to draw more subtle attention to the sensation of his mouth and breath on her skin. Vergil grips at her thigh firmly while his hand at her back adds some support to the way she must slightly twist to provide him access.
It's a bit more work to leave a mark there than his favored locations for marks on her skin, but Vergil is nothing if not patient and persistent with the task. Just as he had when freshening the mark on her neck, he alternates between sucking hard at her skin and teasing it balancing accomplishing what she's asked with allowing her to enjoy the process from start to finish. By the time he finishes, the spot is redder than the rest of her skin that's been heated by the water. Vergil is certain it should darken and bruise like every other mark by then and allows his affections to her skin to wander then. He turns his head slightly aside so that he is able to trail kisses over the swell of her breast before drifting over her heart and ending with the round of her shoulder. Resting a cheek against her shoulder then, Vergil looks up at her the best he can.
"Wherever you will it, I will always mark my love upon you. As with all things of mine that I've willingly surrendered to you, it is yours to claim as you will."
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Given the location, the stretch of skin over bone, Mizu surprises herself with how much she enjoys receiving the mark, not only the thought and conclusion of it. Goosebumps spread across her shoulders, and Mizu nearly whines when he stops. The continued attention defeating the sound in her throat. She breathes a little harder and looks down, though his face doesn't come easily into focus. Instead it's a warmth against her shoulder, again warmer than the air around them. Surprising how she nearly shivers with how warm it is.
Mizu lets go of his pendant to run a finger over the tender skin he's left her. She traces the rough shape of the pendant and smiles. "I always want to carry you with me, so much even my sword is not always enough. I want more," Mizu says. Relaxed as she is, a little more slips out. "It feels odd when I have not a single mark from you on my skin."
Even with multiple marks from Vergil, Mizu feels that strong urge for more, some need she doesn't look too closely at. Yet the ghost lingers, the desire to carry him with her more than memories and the connection they have. Something more than her mind and, given her sword, her soul. He's before her, so it's a foolish thought, and Mizu sets it aside without more consideration.
"If only I could do the same."
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"Your attempts have not been unwelcome," he says, the hand upon her thigh tracing along the outside of it to her knee before returning along the top of it until he very nearly meets her pelvis. It's a slow, soothing touch. Vergil knows it often frustrates Mizu to no end that his own healing factor prevents her from leaving such physical reminders of her affection, proof of their connection to one another. Would that Vergil could, he would slow his own healing for the sole purpose of allowing her marks to linger for longer. But his ability is not like hers. He cannot target specific injuries and leave the rest alone. His body naturally seeks to heal the most significant damage. He would not likely be in the position to allow for her marks if his body were to ignore them. But he does still enjoy the sensations just the same as her if nothing else. "But I am not without you simply because you have not been able to leave a visible mark. I have your scent and you occupy no small part of my mind when we are apart."
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Mizu sighs, "Scent fades so quickly."
His better sense of smell extends the time he carries her, but it's a matter of days. New odors and scents overwhelm old ones. There's a reason she wears his clothes when he's gone. Well, more than one, but that is one of them. Especially when she visits Cruel Summer and comes away smelling so terribly of demon even she sees need of a bath, no matter how recently she's washed herself. Mizu doesn't understand why or how the fighting pits have such a steady stream of demons from Vergil's world, but she's gotten better at fighting them. Individually. She isn't yet prepared for crowds of them the way she can handle groups of men.
"What is my occupation of your mind like?" Mizu asks. The only place she may last and one that will change unavoidably one day. It cannot be helped.
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So, he continues tracing her skin and he answers her question.
"It varies, depending on the circumstances," he says, turning his head slightly to press a kiss to her shoulder. "For example, on mornings I wake uncertain if I will see you that day, I wish I was with you so we could waste hours of the morning in whatever manner we pleased. But the closest I can be is imagining the weight and warmth of you on the bed beside me."
Vergil pulls back from resting his head against her shoulder to look at her properly. It's plain that he is looking at her that same way before they got into the bath together, but Vergil also holds in his mind's eye the image of her that he describes.
"The gentle sound of your breath and that look of peace on your face when you're still sound asleep, neither of which I possess the heart to ever willingly disturb because if I did not know it was a gift you've unwittingly given to me countless times, I would think it mere fantasy for all the calm and peace I feel within myself." The hand at her back slips away in favor of intertwining fingers with one of her hands. "But if I know I am to see you, I've no need for such visions to act as comfort in staving off a lonely morning. I've all my thoughts of what is to come even if it is a great test of my patience to have to wait and fill my time with other things between waking and when I see you again because all I can think of is what I wish to do with you, to say to you, to share with you.
"Mizu, you are among my first and last thoughts each day. There are reminders of you for me littered throughout each day I am not at your side that I'm sure you would find foolish. But you bring me peace and happiness each time I think of you, and I think of you often."
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It is indeed a lonely morning. Those weeks at Amrita, whatever else they did, introduced her to them by spending every night together. That might have continued afterward, save that Dante stayed with Vergil. Then Nero arrived. Mizu will not tear him apart from his family nor ask him to choose between them. A fool's errand, even if she were so selfish of him and his happiness to consider trying to keep him all to herself. That would never work, and if it did, in the end, it would only leave him alone. Far better that Vergil has people, the life he came to Folkmore to seek, with or without her.
Mizu does not understand how he can think so well of her, how thoughts of her can bring him peace and happiness without the dark shadow of separation that waits for them. It is of her making without any need of the fox spirit's interference to heighten the drama into a tragedy.
"I am not that good," Mizu declares, "You wonderful idiot."
She pulls him in for a kiss, hard and demanding. Demanding what, Mizu isn't certain, only that she needs Vergil and something from him. No, perhaps it's to give something to him. She breaks it off with a grunt of frustration to kiss and bite her way down his jaw and to his neck. There, Mizu makes yet another attempt at leaving her mark on him. She sucks and bites and pulls on his skin. Over and over, she gives herself to the effort, but the mark doesn't stay. It never stays. She leans her face into his neck, eyes damp. That image he painted will disappear after she does. Mizu knows it.
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Mizu breaks the kiss with a noise that sounds near to a growl, but Vergil does not stop her. He does not, however, sink into the feeling of her mouth against his skin. There is too much disconnect between the act and himself, between Mizu and him for him to feel even the harshest press of her teeth as happening to his own skin. For all that Mizu has been confused regarding his thoughts of and feelings for her, never has she had such force behind her refutation of it. Not even when he called her beautiful had there been such an energy behind it.
He finds it... he finds it so difficult to understand. Months ago, he had taken her on the floor of her living room, and in that fit of passion sprung forth a greater intimacy than either of them had ever really known. Vergil let the words slip from him as quietly as he could for fear of a reaction like this one. But he received its opposite then.
She buries her face in his neck and Vergil wraps his arms firmly around her. He doesn't believe it will make a difference to how she's feeling, but Vergil doesn't know what else to do, how to possibly soothe what she's feeling. He considers it briefly, but declaring his feelings firmly and true would likely only produce a worse result. Mizu knows how he feels, and to some extent, that appears to be the problem. Asking her to explain it to him doesn't even cross his mind as a possibility. Teasing her even gently or at his own expense just seems cruel. So, he is left without any words. Not his own. Not borrowed. Useless as it feels to him, a warm embrace and silent patience is all he can offer.
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She feels his heartbeat against her, and Mizu focuses on the steady beat. It slowly calms her until her breathing feels less ragged. Until she feels more like herself. More at ease. As foolish as it is, it's him. It's Vergil grounding her as he's grounded her so many times before. The thought Vergil will come to hate her or despise her or wish he hadn't known her, once she is gone, continues to come to mind. It may be true, and there's nothing she can do about that. She's been clear about her goals, about her plans, from the very beginning.
Mizu continues to lean against him, and unlike when they spar or make love, she feels small. "I'm sorry," Mizu says softly, "That wasn't your fault."
Vergil deserves better. The least Mizu can do is treat him right while she's here. His feelings and thoughts toward her are wonderful, better than she deserves, but his and his to have. Mizu will not pretend either of them are perfect. Vergil's done terrible things, but he's never done them to her. He's never treated her anything less than well.
"Did you ever plan to stay," Mizu asks, "in Fortuna?"
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At her question, Vergil's gaze darts away to elsewhere in the bathroom. He has no desire to lie to Mizu—never has and never will—but the answer comes coupled with shame and guilt. It's not something that he allows himself to dwell upon, but that is the only way he finds peace from it given that the unintended consequences from his choice irrevocably shaped the rest of his son's life. Never mind the lingering question of whether or not Beatrice's life was cut short as a consequence of his absence. There is nothing that can ever truly make the guilt and shame with that leave him entirely with both of those things weighing upon him.
"No," he admits with his next breath. "I was merely there to gather what information I could about my father."
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She watches Vergil's reaction to her question, the pain he feels clear cut. A decision he would change, given what he knows now, given who he is now. He didn't know what would happen as a consequence of his decision. Vergil left Nero's mother behind after what, Mizu's reasonably sure, they both knew was a relationship that would not last. Everything Vergil's told her says the woman was smart. She knew what she was doing, and she made her choices too. Vergil made the choice in line with his goals, in line with what the two of them knew their relationship to be.
Vergil regrets it. Mizu feels worse in that moment, as she traces the smooth skin of his neck, already no mark marring it. He regrets it, however, because of Nero primarily, what happened to him. Perhaps to a lesser extent, whatever happened to the woman he loved. Those aren't concerns Mizu has to contend with. She cannot leave him pregnant, and Vergil is powerful enough to live and to survive on his own without her. He even has Dante and Nero watching his back, should some threat truly emerge. It's not the same situation, no matter that Mizu is merely here to gather what information she can about her fathers.
Mizu cups Vergil's face and kisses his forehead. That he made a fair decision in that moment matters little to him, and Mizu cannot wipe those pained feelings away from him. "You don't know what would have happened if you stayed. Only what happened when you left."
They aren't meant to be absolution. Only the truth. "You were hunted, were you not? You could have drawn that attention to them."
Because the truth, so often, is terrible. Mizu understands only having bad decisions to make, one or the other. She sighs. What happened to Vergil and Dante didn't happen to Nero. That's something.
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"I know, Mizu," he says, harsher than he means and jerking his face free from her hold. Vergil does not mean to lash out at her. Even if Mizu is probing at old wounds and regrets, he knows there not to be malicious intent behind it. But knowing that does not make it a less of a sore subject. "But what does knowing change? I did not plan to stay in Fortuna, but that does not mean part of me did not want to stay. It was the first—"
Vergil cuts himself off, looking away from Mizu with a slight shake of his head. He's quiet a moment, brow furrowed in a combination of frustration and anger at himself for his past decisions, and his seeming inability to convey why this regret is one he cannot reason with.
"After the attack on my family, I never once thought to stay. Not once did I feel the temptation. Even knowing the likelihood that the families who took me in suffered a terrible fate for looking after me, I never looked back. I do not now." Vergil looks at Mizu in a brief glance, unable to bring himself to fully meet her eyes. "But I will always look back at that decision with regret, Mizu. I had a chance for everything that I truly wanted even beyond my conscious mind. And I threw it away because I was too afraid of losing it. I left without saying anything because I feared I would not be strong enough to walk away otherwise, but I feared being too weak to stay.
"And yet, that choice changed nothing. It merely sealed her fate. Doomed Nero to grow up more alone than he should have ever been."
Vergil does not understand how it is Nero forgives him. Even knowing that Vergil did not know of his existence is not enough to absolve him of the hand he had in Nero's upbringing, in believing himself not to be enough and unworthy of even the barest scrap of love. Vergil does not think if their positions were reversed, he would have the ability to forgive so easily. He certainly doesn't even now.
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She listens. Of course part of him wished to stay. Mizu assumed as much from the way he spoke about his time there, about the relationship he forged. It would be stranger if such feeling did not form in his heart, an impurity to his purpose. It could make his resolution bitter, or it could make him stronger. From all Mizu knows of Vergil, she'd say it was an impurity in the right place. She could even go so far as to say it's what saved him from shattering a second time, what allowed him to pull himself together again and become who he is.
His need for survival may have doomed families who did nothing more than take in and care for an orphaned child, but Mizu feels no pity for them. By Vergil's own words, people stopped taking him in once he got a little older. People whose kindness does not extend to an older child are not that good. Their deaths do not sit with her, not even if every last family that helped Vergil died. The shame is that those who refused to help him didn't die as well.
Both options Vergil faced sparked fear of weakness. Too weak to leave, too weak to stay. He knew the target he'd place on Beatrice's back if he stayed, and he thought he might be too weak to protect her. The very issue Mizu raised by suggesting he could have brought demons to her. She grimaces a little because she did not mean to call Vergil weak. The fear was logical, however. All his father's strength failed to prevent the calamity that orphaned Vergil and Dante. He sought that power, to be as powerful as his father, to be more powerful. How powerful does he need to be to feel capable of protecting those he loves? Mizu isn't sure, but Nero has power aplenty in his own right.
"Regret it," Mizu says and accepts that he will. "So long as you don't let that regret drive you to further regrets. Make it strengthen you, not weaken you."
Mizu should have seen through her mother from the moment she saw the woman alive and well. She abandoned Mizu and never came searching for her. The woman only saw Mizu back to health for the security and regular access to drugs it could bring. She never should have married Mikio for her mother's sake. Perhaps if she saw through her, Mizu would spend her life wondering how it might have been. If it might have been what she wanted, but she knows now it wasn't. It never could have been.
If only she and Vergil had the opportunity outside Folkmore—
No point wishing for what she saw on the train, that perfect life that offered her everything. Mizu is not the sort of person who can get what she wants.
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"I choose to stay with you, do I not?" he ask, quietly. Even when he questions whether he has the proper strength to stay, to be what she needs him to be, Vergil has yet to leave when she's asked him to stay. In fact, it's unlikely that he would leave barring her asking him to do as much.
Vergil does not give her a chance to answer, leaning up to press his lips to hers in a bruising, insistent kiss.
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Mizu only starts to smile, a bittersweet ache in her heart, before Vergil kisses her. Until she needs to leave, Mizu has him, and she parts her lips to let him in. He's here in her home, here in the privacy of her chambers, here in her heart. She trusts him with it all. Her doubts are entirely her own, in herself. Whatever the future brings, she can give herself entirely to Vergil tonight. Perhaps not trust herself to hold him and to take him tonight, too much balanced on the edge of a blade, but she will find a way while here. He deserves that safety. The safety she feels, even now this very moment, with him.
Mizu kisses Vergil back and hopes he feels that safety he's made for her rather than the shame he carries. Everything he might have wished to be for Beatrice, he is for her.
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Vergil kisses her until they're both left just slightly breathless. Their lips barely part from one another, enough that they share in the breath. Almost magnetically, he's drawn to kiss her again, although it's briefer, smaller kisses that still allow for the both of them to catch their breath.
"I love you."
The words are spoken softly and quietly between little kisses, but not in the way he spoke them the first time. That first time, his quiet speaking had been out of hopes that perhaps she would not hear, that he could retain plausible deniability to avoid rejection of such a direct statement his feelings. The quiet way of saying them now is because they are words meant for her and her alone even though there is no one else around to hear them. Vergil does not make a habit of saying them often even after having braved saying them that first time, but he says them now freely. They are feelings that he would have divorced himself from in his youth, yet he is willing to embrace here and now with her.
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He didn't have to say them again, he doesn't ever, but greedy, Mizu breathes them in. They are soft and gentle but firm and sure of themselves. No matter that Mizu just made a fool of herself in front of him. It takes a moment to remember that came not long from baring her soul and admitting she's taken representation of him, of the relationship they started, into her sword. That too was tonight. She feels raw and tender but secure in his arms. She kisses him again and again.
His love feels so solid and secure a thing, hers fragile and waiting to break. It hasn't broken yet, and Mizu knows how she feels. She knows how it feels to hear it. So despite how inadequate it feels, it's what she can offer, all she can offer. Her love. With her arms wrapped around him, Mizu says as softly, "I love you."
An imperfect brittle thing, as hideous as she is, yet somehow he makes that beautiful. He sees something in it.
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Vergil's next kiss is more earnest, more wanting than the smaller ones that precede it. He nips lightly at her lower lip until her lips part for him once more, his tongue meeting hers. He sighs, pleased, as his hand leaves her cheek for between her shoulder blades in almost a mirror of how she so often touches him. Vergil's other arm loosens so that his hand comes to her lap. Fingers drag along her thigh until he reaches her knee, nudging at it to part from the other and grant him access to touch her.
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Mizu parts her knees as much as she can and stay in his lap. She resists the urge to push closer toward his hand, but one hand reaches partway toward the water before she catches herself from pulling him closer thoughtlessly. He might tease her terribly for it, but after a second thought, Mizu strokes her fingers down his arm toward his wrist to pull it closer. She wants to forget about everything else but them, but him. She's damn well not meditating her way there.
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"If you're that impatient, perhaps you should take care of matters more yourself," he says, teasing her as she predicted he might, before kissing along her jaw. He speaks low into her ear when he reaches the corner of her jaw. Vergil pushes her fingers gently near to her entrance, drawing a line to a teasing stroke of her clit as he speaks. "Then perhaps the next time you find yourself in my clothes...and alone...I could occupy a corner of your mind."
The reality is that Vergil doubts very much Mizu dedicates much time if any at all to that. Whatever arguments she makes to herself to allow for such indulgences with him likely do not hold much weight in pleasuring herself alone, assuming the thought even occurs to her in the first place. But reality is not the point. The point is building a fantasy. Regardless of whether or not Mizu ever thinks of this later or acts upon it, both of them will still possess the memory of his hand over hers as she pleasures herself in want of him. It's a sweeter thing, he thinks, than to simply miss him. A longing with release that was not dependent upon his physical presence.
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Vergil continues to speak, and the image he paints appears like brushstrokes in her mind. Even then, even in this image, he ghosts the scene. His clothes, his scent, the memory of his hand on hers, weighted further because she feels his fingers over hers. Mizu groans, sinking further against his hand at her back. Her longing for Vergil when he's gone fuels the image he paints. They're together this moment, and Mizu wants him more. Like he's a figment of her imagination.
"When I wear your clothes," Mizu manages, her fingers repeating the slow movements. She bites her lip, not to quiet herself but not to rush faster. When he's gone she always wants to feel him as long as she can. "You're always on my mind."
Sometimes with bodily longing, but that ache goes unanswered until next she sees him. Not this time, not in the image in her mind. She's on her bed in her mind's eye, a book of poetry spread open on the bed beside her. Even the pillow smells faintly of him. It's all him. Her fingers move in small circles. As with swordplay, she imitates ways he's teased her before. She breathes harder. "I lie where you did on the bed."
It's what she sees.
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Vergil dips his head to kiss along her throat, nipping at it lightly, and allowing her to seamlessly take the lead in teasing herself with her fingers. He's come to know her body well, and he's pleased to see Mizu's paid just as much attention when she's able to take the lead, touching and pleasuring herself in want of him. To say it's a thrill to bear witness to would be an understatement. And there is a temptation, of course, to pleasure her further beyond her touch alone to both reward and fulfill that want, but Vergil resists it for now. Mizu is taking it slower than that, and he follows her pace and movements.
"Where I would want you. Close to me," he murmurs against her skin. As close as she could be in that circumstance. Vergil returns to her lips, the languidness of the kiss mimicking the movement of her fingers. He breaks the kiss, but remains near to her lips. "You could close your eyes until it's easier to imagine it's not your hand alone convincing you to stay in bed just a little while longer. I'm right there with you."
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Already, small grunts and labored breathing escapes her. It's what she needed—to be loved and to be wanted despite everything terrible about her and what she'll do to him. It amazes her, and each time he speaks, each stroke of pleasure, drives away other thoughts so he holds her body and mind. Mizu kisses Vergil back instinctively, but she hungers for his words. So close, she can hardly see him now, but she pretends how she feels him fills the scene in her mind. His body warm and close, holding her, around her, touching her. His clothes a pale stand-in for Vergil but enough to bring him more to life.
"You are the reason I stay in bed," Mizu says, words harder. "You and your... many tricks." Mizu says it affectionately. Vergil has no job that needs doing, and Folkmore does not force it. Yet she's a person of habit, early to rise. Here he goes adding another one, for a morning when she's slept in his clothes and wakes smelling him. The bed would be cold, unless she slept in his spot. So she imagines doing so, going to bed alone, and waking with him curled around her, somehow still on the same side of the bed as her. A fantasy within a fantasy and a pleasant one at that.
Her legs kick a little as she imagines it further. "I tangle my legs in the sheets, like you're holding them."
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