Vergil's OneShots (DMC Fanfiction)

Annual Affair

[AnnualAffair]

When the Sparda brothers stepped out of the cab after paying their dues, it was still in the early afternoon. As the afternoon sun bore down on the top of their heads, their clean white hair almost reflecting the brilliant whiteness.

It had been long since the last time Dante's hair had been this white. While he did take showers every day, he had never truly paid attention to scrubbing out all the dirt from his hair. But specifically, for today, Dante had spent a full two hours in the shower washing out the dirt that had collected over the past year, restoring his white hair back to its full glory.

Neither man talked to each other as they paused to scan the area spread out in front of them. There was only a single woman standing in front of a tombstone by herself in the bright weekday afternoon, shedding silent tears for a loved one passed. Vergil quietly tapped his brother on the shoulder, directing Dante's attention to acknowledge the presence of the woman standing at the far corner of the graveyard. Wordlessly, Dante nodded.

Behind them, the cab rumbled away and returned a still silence to the graveyard.

Summer had blown past in a wink, and the temperatures were slowly falling in the recent days. Even with the bright sun overhead, Vergil still felt dry coolness on his face as they started to make their way opposite from where the woman stood. The only sounds that both men made was the small crunch of dead leaves beneath their boots, slicing through the silence like a recently-sharpened knife.

The grave for Sparda and Eva was separated from the rest of the graveyard, atop a small slope beside a tree that had grown solid and sturdy over the years, providing a comfortable shade against the sunlight during the hot summer days, and a good shelter against cold wind in strong summer rains.

The brothers exchanged no words as they scaled the small slope to reach the peak, Vergil setting his bag down in front of the tombstones that held his parents name and year of death. Sparda's tombstone had no year of birth because nobody knew how old he had been when he died. Vergil had only found about his mother's age (upon death) a few years back and had her tombstone changed to accommodate that information, and so it appeared to be newer and relatively cleaner than his father's tombstone.

Vergil aimed a light kick at his brother's side when Dante plopped down unceremoniously on the floor beside his bag, bending to unzip it, then retrieving the cloth that sat on the top of everything that he had brought along. Throwing it at his brother's face, Vergil's only instruction was "clean everything" before setting about his work pulling out the items he had brought along with him.

A picnic mat was set up in front of the tombstones, and then an empty tray. A container of packed sandwich left by a grateful client following a successful hunt followed the tray, and with those things removed, Vergil held the bottom of his bag lightly, and upturned it over the tray.

"If the lights run out at the joint, you're going out to get candles." Dante commented after looking over at the sound of heavy things landing on the tray made out of malleable aluminum foil.

"Just clean." Vergil answered shortly, standing the candles that had fallen out from the bag upright. He counted nine of them, not nearly enough to last for the whole afternoon. Still, he had requested for backup and had to make do with what he had at the moment as he began to arrange them according to size.

Dante was done wiping down the tombstones quickly in his haphazard fashion, but both Sparda men doubted that anyone would seriously bother about the state of cleanliness of two blocks of stone erected on the soil. Even the owners of the tombstone had not bothered, and thus the cleaning process had been more of manners than any real need for hygiene.