Like Vergil, Rin was not immediately swept up to Amrita Academy. She too was out in the wild landscape that exhausted even Vergil so much that he slept nearly immediately upon his return. Rin stayed out there another week, and her injuries did not require immediate medical attention. Her clothes paid a price, and she was famished, but after a shower and a hot meal, she leapt immediately into helping others in the kitchens. Mizu agrees with Vergil that Rin is foolish. Her time seeking revenge does not erase that she is a rich girl raised well, loved, and educated. Her ignorance over Mizu's eyes made Mizu snap, but each time Rin gets that reaction from Mizu or her grumpiness or anything else, for some reason, she sticks around. Mizu suspects Rin has less experience with the darkness her revenge has brought her too, and some of it may prove too much to stomach. Yet they've known each other a long time now, so much as Mizu knows most anyone. Rin always wants to know more, but Mizu still isn't sure she's ready for it.
It is something to consider, but Mizu sets those thoughts aside when Vergil speaks again and the conversation returns to where it originally was, where Mizu's thoughts lie. Where people consider her a monster, a demon, an onryō. It's what Taigen considered her growing up, and she stands between him and his honor yet. It's how Akemi treated her for taking Taigen from her side and for abandoning her to her father. Oh Akemi accepted Mizu's help escaping, but it was not for any friendly feelings. It's why Ringo returned the bell, the symbol of his apprenticeship. Mizu never anticipated the cheap item to mean so much. She only wanted him to stop appearing out of nowhere before her. Yet receiving it hurt more than she expected. It's where the story Mizu shared, of her mother and her husband, ended. Mizu, the monster.
Vergil does not mention her mother or Mikio. He does not know of Taigen, Ringo, or Akemi. It circles back to thoughts she herself considered only moments before. It takes no tricks of reading her mind to approach this subject however, not when Vergil has twice raised the issue of Master Eiji being her father, as well as her master. Of everyone in her life, he's known her the longest, seen her grow from a young child to an adult, and taught her much of what she knows. If only one person in Mizu's life were to accept her and to love her fully, she would want it to be him. The thought, recognized consciously, aches because it's the kind of wish that someone like Mizu never gets fulfilled. Wishing for it, leaning on it in any way, only asks for more heartbreak and pain. She will have her revenge. She will not change that for anyone, and in so doing, she may never have swordfather's approval. Mizu may leave the limbo that Folkmore is, kill Fowler, and return only to be rejected once more, only to leave for London worse off than she is now.
Mizu adjusts to lay her head on the pillow, to see Vergil's face, if not particularly in focus for how close they are. Tears stain tracks down her face, but Mizu ignores them and leaves them be. Everything feels raw and on edge without the adrenaline rush and enjoyment of a fight. Nothing to direct and drive her emotions through. Only words and Vergil's arms around her, and his back under her hands. Vergil's warm, and the bed and sheets around them are warm despite how cold it is outside, and Mizu... Mizu is comfortable, physically, if nothing else. It drives a stark comparison to the piercing painful question, to thinking about swordfather and his rejection of her, about their conversation on the cliffside about being an artist.
"He wanted an apprentice, someone to work with him and to continue to make swords as he does, as an artist. Everything he does he does to make good swords. I cannot be that person. So long as my revenge is incomplete, I can never be that person. I have never been that person. He did not understand my desire to train with a sword. He allowed it, but he understood I would have trained whether he allowed it or not. Once my revenge is complete, even should I decide that returning and becoming a swordsmith is what I wish for, I do not know what it would be like, but it would not be the same.
"He did not wish for me to leave, and I did. It will never be as it was." That is the truth, as unfortunate or tragic as it is. Mizu is who she is. Master Eiji is who he is. She could never be the apprentice he wanted. She isn't. She's always dedicated herself to more than making swords. To revenge. That is her art. Swordfather does everything to make good swords. Mizu made good swords to enact her revenge.
"And that means it will not be as good as it once was?" he asks, the question sincere in its asking.
Vergil understands perhaps better than most how one can irrevocably change things with their decisions. He knows that no matter what he does now with Dante, they cannot go back to what they were as children. Too much has happened and been said for them to ever go back to that. But that does not inherently mean there is nothing worth salvaging, nor does it mean what they might build with one another cannot be just as good as what was. Or perhaps even better. But Vergil's hold on that small hope of being able to still build something out of what has become of his relationship with his brother comes from his desire and drive to do as much. With as much as Mizu has denied herself though, it would not surprise him to learn she has never considered this question in the first place, or she has a less charitable answer for it.
The question shifts, and Mizu frowns. It was good, yes, and despite how it ended when she left, the pain couldn't poison her memories of all those years. That time went deeper and survived in ways the period of her marriage could not. It remains inaccessible, something that will not return even if she does. So Vergil asks about that potential future, that event that hasn't happened and cannot yet happen until an unknown point in the future.
How can she judge what it will be like, when neither she nor swordfather are yet the people who would be in it? Mizu does not know how the rest of her revenge will change her, nor how Master Eiji will change, at least in his opinion of her, during that time. Mizu cannot even be sure she would make the attempt in the first place, that she will wish to do that.
"Could you predict what it would be like to reunite with Dante after you achieved your dream for power?" Mizu asks. "Imagining what it might be like with swordfather is as impossible for me as it would be for you after you refused Dante's hand decades ago."
"Could it be as good? Perhaps. It could also be impossible. That, the more likely." Mizu glances down. "He may not see me as a monster for how I was born, but he could still determine the demon's taken all the chairs for what I've done. What I'll do."
Before she even speaks, the frown that forms on her face there in the dark tells Vergil all he needs to know about the answer that is to come. They have been down this road with one another far too many times for Vergil not to recognize it. At some point during these sorts of conversations, Vergil can always feel her slip from his grasp. As of late, the wall that takes its place between them, shutting out whatever sense or questions Vergil might speak to her has not been quite so tall or thick. He has found ways around or through it when necessary, and he's learned to simply rest beside it when it's not. But still it makes its appearance all the same.
Vergil's jaw tenses slightly at the mention of Dante and Vergil's refusal to take his hand, to do anything other than pursuing power. It is not an unfair comparison, but with a recent conversation with his brother still so fresh on his mind—Dante's initial silence still so deafening that it leaves his subsequent promise little more than a whisper—the comparison settles a bit more poorly than it otherwise would for Vergil. Part of him feels like biting back that he's more than aware of the difficulty in predicting what it would be to reunite with his brother. He faced that uncertainty once as V, disguising any aspect of his true identity out of a fear that Dante would refuse to help him. He faces it now each day with Dante here in Folkmore. But he holds his tongue because it is not her he is answering if he does. He listens instead, trying to push aside the distraction of his brother.
The rest of her answer leads him to sigh. Mizu gives a small chance that the worst may not come to pass. She tries to couch the worst outcome in a probability. But she still speaks with unearned certainty, and damns the alternatives with insignificant chance.
"So long as you recognize, could is not the same as will. No matter the probability you assign to it. He still has a choice and will of his own, just as you do."
And as she said, she cannot truly predict what Master Eiji will do.
No doubt Vergil's answer it not the same as hers. No doubt he sees foolishness in her words. The sigh speaks of that as surely as any words. Mizu's aware that they do not see eye to eye on everything in her life, and at times it seems on swordfather most of all. It's the only relationship Vergil has witnessed anything directly, lived it as she lived the fight with Dante she referenced. So he may feel more entitled to his own opinions about it, and Mizu does not begrudge him that. Yet he saw but a single swing in all a sword can do and does. A blade that may break or perhaps already is broken.
Mizu nods her head slightly in recognition of what Vergil says. They each have choices, the two of them. Mizu is the one who comes and leaves, while Master Eiji stays where he is. The first choice is hers. Once there, they each do as they will. Stubborn, the both of them. She lets that future, that hazy unpredictable future rest.
"I told him I'd come back after I killed Fowler," Mizu shares, "if I survived. Let him decide whether or not I was worthy of steel by his hand." She pauses and traces the kanji for fire on Vergil's back. "He can decide for himself what to make of what I did to Edo."
If he cannot accept her for doing that, if that's enough to turn her away, there will be no reason to go back after killing Routley and Skeffington. No need to ponder that distant future. They must get through the immediate aftermath before parting for a greater time, whether it be as great as the years before or less. The voyage around the world alone will take a good amount of time. If everyone in Japan sees her as a monster, who is to say she will even return? Mizu does not care to think about it, about anything after her revenge. It's a distraction all the more likely to make it never become a concern in the first place.
Vergil knows better than to push too hard on a point with Mizu. It only causes her own stubbornness to flare if he does, and the point ultimately becomes lost in the disagreement of perspective. She has been willing enough to hear him out. While it is obvious her pessimism still reigns supreme when it comes to predicting outcomes, her belief in the history of people who were meant to love her serving as basis for such predictions, she at least acknowledges that Master Eiji will make his own decision based upon his own judgment. Not her history or her assumptions, but as he knows her. It is more consideration than Vergil believes Mizu would naturally give to it, in any case, as she can more easily reflect that Master Eiji knows her to her core and that is his metric. Not what he wants her to be, but who he knows her to be.
"He will," he says, letting the matter rest by not speaking of which way her swordfather's decision will fall. Mizu knows what he thinks the outcome will be. She knows what he believes it will be. And they both know that the answer will not reveal itself until the time for it has arrived. There's little sense on either of them continuing to dwell upon it any further. Vergil brings a hand down to one of Mizu's legs, disentangling it to hook it loosely around his hip as he somewhat lazily rolls Mizu over onto her back. His remaining hand at her back slips out from beneath her to support some of his weight on an elbow beside her as he leans down to kiss her. Despite their current positioning, the kisses he places to her lips are chaste and simpler expressions of his affection for her. He teases her lightly by saying, "Might we at the very least agree that you have made marked improvement in your choice for lovers?"
Which really is less about Vergil's ego as it sounds, and more subtle a reminder that her bad memories of the man before Vergil does not determine what happens between the two of them any more than her mother's decisions determine Master Eiji's decisions. Vergil is not her late husband, and he would not have even for a moment considered the decisions he made. Even if there was something he found himself in disagreement with or his pride was bruised, he could never find it within himself to lash out at her, nor abandon her when she might need him. Not with how he feels for Mizu.
The irony of the matter is that neither of them will be in a position to prove their claim until Mizu leaves and their ways part. Should Mizu prove right, and she does not wish to, there will be no one to which she can point it out. Should Vergil prove right, Mizu will not be able to inform him or perhaps, as is fitting, let him bonk her on the head with the pair of tongs he bought her. Vergil draws her attention back to her body and keeps her thoughts inhabiting it with a simple touch. No need to think of the future, even one so short after her return, when they have that moment and each other. No reason to think of the fact they will part.
Mizu bites her lip for a moment before laughing. He's known of Mikio's existence for all of a single morning, and he turns all the comparisons she's made, all her quiet thoughts, into a teasing remark aloud. Spoken of. Not something haunting her thoughts. They may yet be banished.
"You're more than a month late to that realization," Mizu replies. She runs one hand into his hair and enjoys brushing it with her fingers. It's yet one more place it's easy to draw differences between them, by far a less important one, but it's grounding to touch Vergil and even with her eyes closed be unable to mistake the two. "I've known that since the first day by the pool. Not only because you kissed me when I pinned you down, but because you opened yourself up to me, you listen and do not think any worse of me, you already knew me at my most foolish... you care for me, not some idea of me, and you will still care for me when I defeat you."
Mizu knows everything she said, it's obvious, something Vergil knows and surely, with this conversation at least, knows she knows as well, yet it feels far more fragile to say it aloud. She teases back, "I wouldn't delay my mornings for you otherwise."
Vergil's eyes close briefly as she runs her fingers through his hair, savoring the sensation and focusing on her words a little more closely. Although with such close attention to what she's saying, Vergil's eyes open again not long after, searching hers in the dark. It feels like so many times now, he's tried to say what he feels for her, and so many times he's missed the mark. Arguably, he still is when she describes Vergil's feelings as caring for her rather than what he knows them to be. But he can't think of it that way in hearing her speak of it. It's the first she's ever acknowledged aloud anything about how Vergil feels so directly and with no qualifiers. An indescribable warmth fills his chest and spreads throughout him even as she teases him.
"I already told you earlier it isn't morning yet," he says with a smile, gently bumping noses with her and nuzzling her in his affection. "So, perhaps you might consider delaying morning a little longer with me."
Vergil kisses Mizu again sweetly, bringing more of his weight to rest comfortably upon her in subtle proposal of how the morning might yet be delayed further.
Mizu relaxes into an amused smile as Vergil yet again continues his claim that it is not morning. No clock, save her relic, is in the room, somewhere on the far side of the sheet and blankets he's covered them with. It wouldn't be easily seen anyway, for it is as dark as night outside. None of that matters because the time is not the point. When morning comes, when they treat it as the start of day, their time together will end, and though it will come again, Mizu is loathe to give it up.
Stubborn and narrowly focused on her goals as she is, Mizu melts into the kiss and the continued desire to spend more time with her. No excuses about time saved in traveling instantaneously, it's what she wants. Her leg tightens around Vergil, as though he's the one that might get up and leave, and Mizu kisses Vergil repeatedly.
"Perhaps a little while," Mizu says against his lips, "until you've finished."
Half a joke, but Mizu lacks the urgency to rush anything. It's enough to explore him beneath her hands yet again and to pull his head down the small distance to kiss him. This moment is hers, and that cannot be taken away from her.
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It is something to consider, but Mizu sets those thoughts aside when Vergil speaks again and the conversation returns to where it originally was, where Mizu's thoughts lie. Where people consider her a monster, a demon, an onryō. It's what Taigen considered her growing up, and she stands between him and his honor yet. It's how Akemi treated her for taking Taigen from her side and for abandoning her to her father. Oh Akemi accepted Mizu's help escaping, but it was not for any friendly feelings. It's why Ringo returned the bell, the symbol of his apprenticeship. Mizu never anticipated the cheap item to mean so much. She only wanted him to stop appearing out of nowhere before her. Yet receiving it hurt more than she expected. It's where the story Mizu shared, of her mother and her husband, ended. Mizu, the monster.
Vergil does not mention her mother or Mikio. He does not know of Taigen, Ringo, or Akemi. It circles back to thoughts she herself considered only moments before. It takes no tricks of reading her mind to approach this subject however, not when Vergil has twice raised the issue of Master Eiji being her father, as well as her master. Of everyone in her life, he's known her the longest, seen her grow from a young child to an adult, and taught her much of what she knows. If only one person in Mizu's life were to accept her and to love her fully, she would want it to be him. The thought, recognized consciously, aches because it's the kind of wish that someone like Mizu never gets fulfilled. Wishing for it, leaning on it in any way, only asks for more heartbreak and pain. She will have her revenge. She will not change that for anyone, and in so doing, she may never have swordfather's approval. Mizu may leave the limbo that Folkmore is, kill Fowler, and return only to be rejected once more, only to leave for London worse off than she is now.
Mizu adjusts to lay her head on the pillow, to see Vergil's face, if not particularly in focus for how close they are. Tears stain tracks down her face, but Mizu ignores them and leaves them be. Everything feels raw and on edge without the adrenaline rush and enjoyment of a fight. Nothing to direct and drive her emotions through. Only words and Vergil's arms around her, and his back under her hands. Vergil's warm, and the bed and sheets around them are warm despite how cold it is outside, and Mizu... Mizu is comfortable, physically, if nothing else. It drives a stark comparison to the piercing painful question, to thinking about swordfather and his rejection of her, about their conversation on the cliffside about being an artist.
"He wanted an apprentice, someone to work with him and to continue to make swords as he does, as an artist. Everything he does he does to make good swords. I cannot be that person. So long as my revenge is incomplete, I can never be that person. I have never been that person. He did not understand my desire to train with a sword. He allowed it, but he understood I would have trained whether he allowed it or not. Once my revenge is complete, even should I decide that returning and becoming a swordsmith is what I wish for, I do not know what it would be like, but it would not be the same.
"He did not wish for me to leave, and I did. It will never be as it was." That is the truth, as unfortunate or tragic as it is. Mizu is who she is. Master Eiji is who he is. She could never be the apprentice he wanted. She isn't. She's always dedicated herself to more than making swords. To revenge. That is her art. Swordfather does everything to make good swords. Mizu made good swords to enact her revenge.
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Vergil understands perhaps better than most how one can irrevocably change things with their decisions. He knows that no matter what he does now with Dante, they cannot go back to what they were as children. Too much has happened and been said for them to ever go back to that. But that does not inherently mean there is nothing worth salvaging, nor does it mean what they might build with one another cannot be just as good as what was. Or perhaps even better. But Vergil's hold on that small hope of being able to still build something out of what has become of his relationship with his brother comes from his desire and drive to do as much. With as much as Mizu has denied herself though, it would not surprise him to learn she has never considered this question in the first place, or she has a less charitable answer for it.
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How can she judge what it will be like, when neither she nor swordfather are yet the people who would be in it? Mizu does not know how the rest of her revenge will change her, nor how Master Eiji will change, at least in his opinion of her, during that time. Mizu cannot even be sure she would make the attempt in the first place, that she will wish to do that.
"Could you predict what it would be like to reunite with Dante after you achieved your dream for power?" Mizu asks. "Imagining what it might be like with swordfather is as impossible for me as it would be for you after you refused Dante's hand decades ago."
"Could it be as good? Perhaps. It could also be impossible. That, the more likely." Mizu glances down. "He may not see me as a monster for how I was born, but he could still determine the demon's taken all the chairs for what I've done. What I'll do."
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Vergil's jaw tenses slightly at the mention of Dante and Vergil's refusal to take his hand, to do anything other than pursuing power. It is not an unfair comparison, but with a recent conversation with his brother still so fresh on his mind—Dante's initial silence still so deafening that it leaves his subsequent promise little more than a whisper—the comparison settles a bit more poorly than it otherwise would for Vergil. Part of him feels like biting back that he's more than aware of the difficulty in predicting what it would be to reunite with his brother. He faced that uncertainty once as V, disguising any aspect of his true identity out of a fear that Dante would refuse to help him. He faces it now each day with Dante here in Folkmore. But he holds his tongue because it is not her he is answering if he does. He listens instead, trying to push aside the distraction of his brother.
The rest of her answer leads him to sigh. Mizu gives a small chance that the worst may not come to pass. She tries to couch the worst outcome in a probability. But she still speaks with unearned certainty, and damns the alternatives with insignificant chance.
"So long as you recognize, could is not the same as will. No matter the probability you assign to it. He still has a choice and will of his own, just as you do."
And as she said, she cannot truly predict what Master Eiji will do.
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Mizu nods her head slightly in recognition of what Vergil says. They each have choices, the two of them. Mizu is the one who comes and leaves, while Master Eiji stays where he is. The first choice is hers. Once there, they each do as they will. Stubborn, the both of them. She lets that future, that hazy unpredictable future rest.
"I told him I'd come back after I killed Fowler," Mizu shares, "if I survived. Let him decide whether or not I was worthy of steel by his hand." She pauses and traces the kanji for fire on Vergil's back. "He can decide for himself what to make of what I did to Edo."
If he cannot accept her for doing that, if that's enough to turn her away, there will be no reason to go back after killing Routley and Skeffington. No need to ponder that distant future. They must get through the immediate aftermath before parting for a greater time, whether it be as great as the years before or less. The voyage around the world alone will take a good amount of time. If everyone in Japan sees her as a monster, who is to say she will even return? Mizu does not care to think about it, about anything after her revenge. It's a distraction all the more likely to make it never become a concern in the first place.
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"He will," he says, letting the matter rest by not speaking of which way her swordfather's decision will fall. Mizu knows what he thinks the outcome will be. She knows what he believes it will be. And they both know that the answer will not reveal itself until the time for it has arrived. There's little sense on either of them continuing to dwell upon it any further. Vergil brings a hand down to one of Mizu's legs, disentangling it to hook it loosely around his hip as he somewhat lazily rolls Mizu over onto her back. His remaining hand at her back slips out from beneath her to support some of his weight on an elbow beside her as he leans down to kiss her. Despite their current positioning, the kisses he places to her lips are chaste and simpler expressions of his affection for her. He teases her lightly by saying, "Might we at the very least agree that you have made marked improvement in your choice for lovers?"
Which really is less about Vergil's ego as it sounds, and more subtle a reminder that her bad memories of the man before Vergil does not determine what happens between the two of them any more than her mother's decisions determine Master Eiji's decisions. Vergil is not her late husband, and he would not have even for a moment considered the decisions he made. Even if there was something he found himself in disagreement with or his pride was bruised, he could never find it within himself to lash out at her, nor abandon her when she might need him. Not with how he feels for Mizu.
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Mizu bites her lip for a moment before laughing. He's known of Mikio's existence for all of a single morning, and he turns all the comparisons she's made, all her quiet thoughts, into a teasing remark aloud. Spoken of. Not something haunting her thoughts. They may yet be banished.
"You're more than a month late to that realization," Mizu replies. She runs one hand into his hair and enjoys brushing it with her fingers. It's yet one more place it's easy to draw differences between them, by far a less important one, but it's grounding to touch Vergil and even with her eyes closed be unable to mistake the two. "I've known that since the first day by the pool. Not only because you kissed me when I pinned you down, but because you opened yourself up to me, you listen and do not think any worse of me, you already knew me at my most foolish... you care for me, not some idea of me, and you will still care for me when I defeat you."
Mizu knows everything she said, it's obvious, something Vergil knows and surely, with this conversation at least, knows she knows as well, yet it feels far more fragile to say it aloud. She teases back, "I wouldn't delay my mornings for you otherwise."
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"I already told you earlier it isn't morning yet," he says with a smile, gently bumping noses with her and nuzzling her in his affection. "So, perhaps you might consider delaying morning a little longer with me."
Vergil kisses Mizu again sweetly, bringing more of his weight to rest comfortably upon her in subtle proposal of how the morning might yet be delayed further.
no subject
Stubborn and narrowly focused on her goals as she is, Mizu melts into the kiss and the continued desire to spend more time with her. No excuses about time saved in traveling instantaneously, it's what she wants. Her leg tightens around Vergil, as though he's the one that might get up and leave, and Mizu kisses Vergil repeatedly.
"Perhaps a little while," Mizu says against his lips, "until you've finished."
Half a joke, but Mizu lacks the urgency to rush anything. It's enough to explore him beneath her hands yet again and to pull his head down the small distance to kiss him. This moment is hers, and that cannot be taken away from her.