Primal

“Sparda?”

Merely a flash in the darkness and both pistols were trained straight on the intruder’s face, a wicked gleam dancing in both of Dante’s eyes. Oh, but now was not the time.

An old man’s face, mouth set in a O, gazed at him through the shadows, face lined with sun-drenched years. It wasn’t a bad face that you immediately disliked, just a face that told of many nights and many days, none experienced with laziness or lax.

The man’s hair was a dried, almost cotton-candy-like white, still streams of slight silver clinging to his temples in one last battle before the imminent demise of his youth. Pretty gray eyes, with oddly long lashes, beamed with surprise and wonderment, unapologetically searching Dante’s face.

Dante growled deep in his throat, uncomfortable with the man’s seeming lack of fear. It almost appeared that the guy was drinking him in, filled with some insatiable NEED to stare and soak up the younger man’s appearance. It was a completely awkward stare and Dante’s patience (as rarely as it ever showed its face) was not exactly accompanying him on this little journey.

With a cock of his cream plated gun, the old man’s hands darted into the air, Dante’s grin of satisfaction catching the pale rays of moonlight that cast themselves through the planes of the nearby window.

“Wait a second,” The hoarse voice of the man came, more talking to himself than to the peevish hunter. “Wait just a second.”

Without another word he was in the young man’s face, totally oblivious to the guns on either side of his ears. He walked all around Dante, just staring in disbelief, his actions alone stalling the half-breed from any possible violence. The bastard even had the gall to push his fingers through the white strands of Dante’s forehead, earning a shocked and indignant intake of air.

Two hands on either side of his face and the younger twin had feared that the temperature in hell was inching to dangerous lows, eyes complete saucers when the old guy’s face damn near planted itself against him. The closeness alone left him speechless, not exactly a familiar situation in Dante’s life.

“Vergil?” The man whispered almost inaudibly. And then he looked deep, deep, deep within the young man’s eyes, a slight smirk crawling over his mouth. “No, I’m still alive, so you must be Dante.”

“Uh.” The young hunter managed to articulate, blinking hard as if to signify his discomfort.

“My God, but you two are just your father incarnate,” The laugh came. “I’m looking at you and I swear to it, your mother’s good looks never even registered. You look just like your dad.”

A pissy snort and Ebony and Ivory were once more fixated on the old man, Dante’s ever present ego waving its middle finger to civility.

“Are you kidding?” He spat. “I’m a fucking bronze God in the flesh.”

The man’s white hair flew backwards as he laughed heartily, waving his finger at the guns.

“Now I KNOW you’re Dante.”

“Yeah, and who are you?”

The man smiled warmly, unafraid when the other man’s finger squeaked impatiently on the side of his gun.

“I’m Joseph,” He said, eyes kind as he looked deeply once more into Dante’s eyes. “And I helped raise you.”

The guns didn’t lax in their position, though the drive to use them slackened with the youngest twin’s ever-present curiosity getting the better of him.

“I didn’t think you’d much remember me,” Joseph said dismissively. “It was after all, a long time ago and you were just a small child then. I knew your dad very well, God rest, and I had the ultimate pleasure of knowing Eva, your mom.”

“How……..” Dante swallowed hard, finally dropping his guns to his sides. “How did you know them?”

“Oh,” The older man sighed, grabbing a nearby stool, dusting it off and having a seat. “Back in the day I was a bit of a historian. Sparda came to me when I was still rather young, not much older than you I imagine. He needed a text which I only knew about, needed many things from time to time. Spell books, information, hell, even great vacation sights to take your momma.”

Dante snorted, hardly able to believe the domestication Joseph was professing. It was hard to see his parents in any sort of light, let alone that of a somewhat ‘normal’ family. He looked around the ruins of their old house dismally, wanting and not wanting to listen to the old man’s depiction of his father, their father. It struck him as almost ironic, as he suddenly saw the truth of their strange little situation; as much as Vergil despised any and all knowledge of his mother, denied her existence in most cases, the same was truth with Dante and Sparda.

“Your father was a great man Dante,” Joseph said, as if reading his mind. “A great man who made great sacrifices for you and your family.”

Dante turned away peevishly, sharp eyes darting angrily over black drenched walls and soot that gathered all around him. He willed himself not to cross his arms, willed himself not to characteristically kick something across the room.

“Do you know that when you were born,” Came Joseph’s soft voice. “That when your momma cried, Sparda told me that he wished he could. He was so proud, so shocked, so overwhelmed, that a demon God told a human man that he wished he could cry, wished he could demonstrate just how ecstatic he was. His voice even shook Dante. A two thousand year old devil was damn near speechless when he looked at you boys.”

“Yes well, I recall his speechlessness,” The twin retorted, still unable to meet the other’s eyes. “I recall that very much in my life.”

“Do you even know why you hate your father so much Dante, or is it just more convenient that way?”

Twin blue eyes stared shock-still, trained manically on the old man.

“How… dare… you.” He hissed, wanting nothing more than to blow the man’s brains against the wall behind him.

“Have you even thought about it though?” Asked the man again, undeterred by the homicidal glare. “Your father loved you Dante and you seem to remember him only by the fact that he’s gone now. Even as a child, you hated your mother’s stories, hated it when she’d promise Sparda would be back soon. I saw it on your face every time that light came into her eyes, every time she thought that the next day, your dad would be back. You recall him only by the dismal times he represents, not as the man that loved you and your mother more than the waking world.”

“You don’t know anything old man,” Dante sighed.

“On the contrary kiddo, I know a damn good amount,” Joseph crossed his arms. “I was there when you and your brother were created.”

An even weirder look plastered itself over Dante’s face, eyes wide.

“That’s sick.”

Joseph’s eyes widened as well, arms flailing out in front of him as an embarrassed laugh cracked the tense air.

“No no no no!” He chuckled, shaking his head. “I don’t mean I was there when you were conceived, good God! No no Kiddo, I certainly don’t know you THAT well! But you must know that you and Vergil weren’t exactly brought into the world through the most natural of methods. That would have been impossible.”


“What exactly do you mean?” Dante asked, attention finally transfixed on Joseph.

“Sit down kid,” The other man gestured at a nearby chair. “This might be a bit of a long haul.”

Dante actually obeyed for once, twisting the scorched chair so that his legs were wrapped around the back, arms crossed in front while he nestled his chin over them.

“Your mother and father planned for you,” Joseph began. “You were their miracle, their hope for the world. Sparda knew that the world was doomed, knew that the existence of human life in general was at the mercy of a ticking time bomb that is and was the underworld. His main source of power locked away in hell, Sparda’s strength, insurmountable as it was, slowly began to dissipate with time. He knew seconds ticked away, knew that time was short for both himself and for the humans.

“It was an inevitability he slowly forced himself to admit, slowly began to begrudgingly accept. And it wasn’t even until he met Eva that any hope on the contrary even dawned on the old bastard.”

“So you really did know my mother,” Dante smiled slightly.

“Know her? I introduced her to your dad!” Joseph grinned. “She was a librarian, a damn good one too. I would always go to her in search of more information to place in my own books, always picking her mind for the newest discoveries and latest knowledge pulsating through the world.

“I remember the first time he saw her too, the way a two thousand year old man, a complete and utter source of all things articulate was reduced to a mumbling, jittering teenager. He’d never demonstrated anything that didn’t strike everyone as being planned years ahead of time. Even the words out of his mouth were so carefully construed it was as if he’d written them the day before, in undoubtedly perfect, articulate little scrawl. But Eva?

“Wow, Eva had that ancient devil by the balls the first day he met her. She could have asked him to invite Mundus to Christmas dinner and by damn if he wouldn’t have delivered. I remember sitting in the library, scratching through my writing, watching as he nonchalantly picked through walls of useless books he would never, in another two thousand years, have had the least bit of interest in.

“Eva just sat there, tiny little glasses in place as she seemingly ignored him while reading through her own collection; a tiny little human woman of probably 24, completely ignoring an immaculate, Godlike creature that couldn’t seem to keep his eyes off her.

“He’d poked through another section, making strange little ‘interested’ noises like, ‘hm’ or ‘huh’ or ‘well’. Eva’s eye brow had merely raised a fraction, still seemingly oblivious when he’d grabbed up a small collection of useless garbage and planted himself across from her at a table, pretending to rummage through all sorts of human garble.

“ “Mr. Sparda,” Eva had finally said, eyes never straying from one of her books. “If you’re going to ask me to dinner tonight, now would be as good of time as any.”

“And that was that! Sparda had been none-the-wiser, swallowing hard, looking fearfully over at me and then just shrugging.

“ “Seven o’clock work for you?”

“ “Sounds great. Casual or formal?”

“ “Casual?”

“ “Even better.”

“She made him laugh. That was something that caught my interest from the get-go. Sparda wasn’t himself and yet in the same way, was more of himself around Eva. In all the years I’d know the silly bastard, he’d never once cracked more than a cocky smile, never more than a promising grin to any and all demons that passed his way.

“Even in his explorations with women, Sparda was forever the charmer but never the charmed, smiling only on self command. He was the devious vampire in the midst of women, answering everything perfectly, smiling perfectly, asking questions perfectly. With Eva though he was forever caught-off-guard, the perpetual deer-in-headlights to whatever the crazy little lady would say next.

“She would say the most off-the-wall things, (between us, I think she totally indulged in them for his sake) loving to see that confused expression, loving to see that first raised eyebrow and loving mostly when he’d toss that white head of hair back and blast out a hearty laugh with her.

“They had humor and they good amounts of it. Why your damnable brother seems to be entirely void of that is totally beyond me. I never even realized your dad was funny until he’d go out with Eva, breaking into my home directly afterwards and enlightening me about all of the stupid things he’d said or all of the incredible things she’d said.

“I was their in-between friend and I tell you son, I didn’t get much sleep in those days between the likes of those two. If it wasn’t Sparda bashing his way through my door, too pissed off or too confused to actually open it, it was Eva on the phone at all hours of the night, inquiring about him or just bitching in general.

“I won’t lie to you on that account either; those two could fight with the absolute best of them. They frustrated each other with their dishonesty and inability to truly commit. Eva was an independent woman who had long ago decided that the insatiable need of humans for companionship was merely a primal, animalistic instinct that she would never fall prey to. She saw herself as one of few that had evolved passed the need to procreate, passed the need to sate herself with someone else.

“Sparda, as you know, wasn’t exactly the committed type either. He was a bit of lady’s man, you might or might not know.”

Dante made a face.

“Why else would he choose the form of such perfection?” Joseph laughed. “If he didn’t love the attention, he would have picked the form of a ghastly old guy like me. No, Sparda fraternized with women but never stuck around for long. Thus, his relationship with Eva was both unexpected and frustrating for him.

“He’d clamber through my windows, already in a flabbergasted barrage of sentences, ‘why this’ and ‘why that’ and ‘damnable female!’ He’d pace, arms flailing as he demanded to know about human women, about their cursed irrationality, their insufferable logic.

“ “Hell has it wrong,” He fumed one day. “Oh but by the Gods, hell has it wrong! Torture, disembowelment, violence, blood, guts, give it all to me. I’d take an eternity of well designed hells before I’d spend one God damn day in a field of atrocious, blasted human females!”

“The worst was when they broke up, a year spent in the company of one pissed off, tyrannical devil.”

“They broke up?” Dante interrupted, eyebrow quirking. “Mom actually dumped the bastard?”

Joseph’s teeth creaked irritably at the disrespectful title though he said nothing regarding it, merely continuing on with his story.

“Actually, your dad broke up with Eva. It was right after her first demon attack, some lower, blood thirsty mongrel crawling through the library after hours and going after her. I’m not kidding when I tell you that your mother was a resourceful female, gouging the monster’s eyes out with a mechanical pencil and beating it to death with nothing more than the high heel of her shoe. Scared’ her to death I imagine, the ferocious creature chasing her up the stairs like it did.

“Now Eva was no slouch when it came to knowledge of the underworld but actually seeing it, actually having one creep up on her late at night? It scared her nearly to death. And your dad? Well, let’s just say it was worse for him.

“Suddenly he didn’t have the luxury of the fantastical life he’d been leading. He didn’t have his imaginary concepts of a future with the woman he loved, didn’t have the fictional world she’d momentarily unleashed upon him. He realized in one ten second conversation that to love her, meant inevitably, to lose her.

“He didn’t want this life for your mom. He didn’t want this inevitability. He didn’t want the darkness that was his reality to haunt the light that he perceived your mom to be.

“So one day he just did it. He looked her deep in the eyes and lied his tongue right out of his mouth. Told’ her he’d met someone else, someone better, stronger, smarter, anything to watch her heart break in front of his face. Anything to make her hate him, to forget him, to move on with no precious memories to grasp to.

“ “She’s more than anything you could conceive to be.” He’d said. “She’s the most beautiful woman I’ve ever met and I’ve promised to be with her. I could never look at you the same way I see her.”

“Of course your mother responded by laying a flat palm across his face several times, which, might I add, he completely deserved in my opinion. Your father, being himself, hadn’t exactly let me in on even the most menial of details, shocking both me and Eva when he’d released this titanic decision.

“It wasn’t even until later on that night, unable to sleep in my perturbed state that I found him. He was crouched in his chair, cold, steel eyes facing off into a distance I couldn’t see, face masked in a cruelty I’d never witnessed from him. I remember the shadows on his features, much like yours now, playing wicked games with the dancing firelight, making everything so much harder, so much more like porcelain, so much less human.

“ “Why?” Is all I could ask. “Just tell me why?”

“He’d remained silent, knuckles white as he grasped the rests of the large, red velvet chair, eyes still trained on an invisible enemy across the room.

“ “Sparda,” I’d finally whispered, not to be discouraged by his silence. “Sparda….. you loved her.”

“ “Precisely.” He’d said in so soft a voice, I might have imagined it. “Precisely.”

“As Sparda saw it, he was a break in the perfect life that Eva might have had. He saw himself as a deterrent from the life she had every potential to create, a flaw in the perfect design.

“ “This world is doomed,” He’d told me six months later as I argued drunkenly with him in a bar. “But not in her lifetime. She still has many years to find someone else, someone better, someone more real and more human than I can ever be. What monster would I be if I tore that away from her? What man would I be if I bowed down to the devil inside so selfishly?”

“He loved her unconditionally, the truest kind of love. He loved her from afar because he knew he couldn’t love her any other way. He was the beast that watched the beauty from far, far away, knowing that in all the ways of the world, they could never truly be together.

“They say that ‘hell hath no fury as woman scorned’. I used to believe that as well until I endured an entire year in the company of a sex-starved, heartbroken Sparda. I swear by God that year the population of demons dropped below any scale it’d ever seen before. Sparda was a merciless force of pure violence, drenched with black blood he refused daily to even wash off.

“He wore the blood of his enemies proudly, bathing in it and indulging in it with a hunger I’ve never seen since. He would search for them, call for them, summon them with spells simply to birth them from the underworld and send them down once more. Demons stopped even coming to the human world, terrified of the condition their buddies were showing up in.

“It began to slowly terrify me, the depths to which your father sank. An unhealthy starvation came over him, the need to sate himself with flesh and blood and death and destruction. He became more of a devil than he’d been in a thousand years, all patronage to his human side slowly being forgotten. He’d dismiss me when I’d plead with him, asking him to eat, asking him to wash his body of all the gore and filth, begging that he indulge in some of his worldly traits.

“True, he didn’t need to eat as his body naturally sustained itself. He didn’t need to adorn lavish clothing and sport beautiful, clean white hair. I simply wanted to remind him, to watch him fall into his human self once more.

“It was as though he couldn’t, as though it reminded him; yes, the more he tried to be a man, the more he was reminded he was a monster.

“Word came from a mutual friend that Eva was moving on, having been seen with a man or two from time to time. I’d never seen your father so ghost white, so absolutely soulless and depraved in a matter of moments. He’d refused to say a single word, the only language dancing in his eyes nothing more than an unspoken promise of absolute and total madness. He was insane with a jealousy he had no right to, all primal instincts of a devil rearing their ugly head.

“He’d never looked like an animal to me, never seemed anything more than a statuesque human. Suddenly I knew him for what he truly was, watching all sanity drain from the bottoms of his shoes, a thirsty, depraved look bleeding into those pure, white eyes.

“Sparda had gone quietly to his current mansion, a castle-like creation hidden away in the depths of a haunting forest, a place no human dared to travel passed dark and a place no animal made sounds above a whisper. Like a hermit, he’d refused to come out for days, ignoring my calls, ignoring the knocks on his windows and doors.

“I’d finally had enough, perching myself on his stoop like a homeless man, legs and arms crossed as I’d hollered out a thousand promises that I was not leaving until I saw that pathetic, self-pitying face of his.

“Night had come much faster than I had anticipated, my eyes counting the precise number of steps I’d need to take in order to reach my car if the need overcame me. Sounds began to fill the air, my mind at first scolding me for creating such pulls of the imagination. Soon though, I began to realize these sounds were real, the likes of which I can barely describe.

“At times, it was like a moaning, a raspy groan for air or something. At other times, it was as if a woman was screaming, screaming so hard it was a though next to nothing was coming out. Other sounds filled the air as though deep, thick fingernails were scratching along moist surfaces, cackling like that of a mad man following shortly after.

“I could feel the tiny hair on the back of my neck rising, my fingers sifting through my hair nervously as my eyes made out all sorts of grisly images in the dark that weren’t actually there.

“But the sounds themselves were not imagined and I finally got up the courage to cast a rock through one of the nearby windows, breaking away the debris as I crawled inside your father’s house. It became instantly clear that the culprits of the sounds were not coming from outside, but from deep deep within the cavities of the mansion.

“I’d crawled like a blind man through the darkness, tearing my lighter from my pocket and grasping it with shaky hands as I made my way through shadows unnatural to the known world.

“I merely followed the awful noises, screeching and heavy breathing making goose-bumps stand on my arms. Down down down I followed your dad’s spiraling staircase, throwing the flame here and there, swearing that something like someone’s breath had heated the back of my neck.

“I listened to the trickling of water as I went deeper and deeper into the murky depths of your father’s dungeon, the bottom looking like nothing more than an endless cave. The sounds of my footsteps became quickly drowned out by the horrid noises that now rained heavily upon me, screaming and scratching and sounds of ripping flesh making me cringe. I’d seen enough horror in my life to keep most men awake for the remainder of it, yet I would be the worst of liars if I tried to claim that I wasn’t experiencing absolute and total mortal fear.

“I’d clutched the back of my arm with my right hand as I reached the last step, trying to protect myself feebly as I wandered after my flame in the dark, turning a corner to behold a sight I wasn’t ready (and never in a hundred years have been) to see.

“Hundreds -if not even into the thousands- of demons were chained in a massive room, bolted to walls through their very flesh or caged like animals behind impenetrable steel bars. Chains tore against concrete mercilessly as they frantically tried to free themselves, my stomach turning as I realized that many had eaten away at their own limbs in useless attempts to gain their freedom.

“Blood trickled like streams of water, damp, murky puddles of Godless fluid filling the floor. I’d choked as it dawned on me that I was even standing in it, blood and puss and piss and gore sinking over my shoes and into my socks.

“And even as my eyes refused to accept it, even as every fiber of my being proclaimed it couldn’t be so, there in the middle stood Sparda himself, drenched to the bone in the very liquid I stood in. His eyes were cloaked in a madness I wouldn’t have ever anticipated, seeing him suddenly as though he were a total stranger; a very scary stranger might I add.

“He was torturing them, you see, hunting them, finding them and dragging them there. If ever in my life I have felt pity for demons, it was then. I listened with a human’s heart to their wails of pain, listened with human ears to their language-less pleas. I felt the very aura of their anguish, their own rather humane desperation to be freed of life itself.

“I nearly wept at the realization, nearly wept as I watched him grasp the flesh of a burly, chained demon and tear it from the bone in one relentlessly slow movement. The screams were unbelievable, the sound from the demon itself nearly drowned out by the other witnessing the scene. I don’t claim to know the psychological aspects of being a demon and I certainly can’t claim to know the emotions a demon can feel.

“Yet it was as if I were watching an enormous pack of hideously deformed dogs being mutilated without conscience by a tyrannical, monstrous being. Your dad no longer even appeared as a man, despite his form, instead, just a devil.

“He yanked chains that were connected to flesh, eyes closing in euphoria when a terrified, pained whimper came as an answer. It had become his only aphrodisiac, his only pleasure.

“Yet even in all his wisdom, in all the knowledge obtained by so many years captured by an already astute mind, your dad had missed one very important thing; that in his attempt to rid the world of demons, he’d become the most dangerous one it had ever seen.

“I had begged him through watered eyes, grabbed him by the shoulders and violently shook him, to stop this madness, this monstrosity. I’d screamed obscenities, threats, anything I could, begging that he withdraw from this absolute abomination of an existence.

“He’d remained completely silent, standing like a cold, crystalline statue, face blank as I’d rummaged through his home, finding large canisters of gasoline in the shed behind the mansion. He’d said nothing at all when I’d dragged them one by one down the staircase, one by one tossing them over the bodies of demons. And still not a word was spoken when I’d ignited my lighter once more, tossing it at the writhing creatures before they were engulfed in flames.

“I saw it and see it as a mercy. Their screeching haunts me to this day, the sound of heavy, tired bodies flapping their flesh against the bloody cement in an attempt to escape the fire that danced and demolished over the surface of their skin. The smell itself was enough to churn my stomach and I’d puked repeatedly as I watched them burn, unable to tear my eyes away

“It was hell on earth, provided by your dad himself and extinguished by yours truly.”

“So he truly lost his mind then?” Dante interjected.

“Oh without question,” Joseph had nodded, adjusting himself in his chair. “But it wasn’t all blood, guts, butts and carnage. Your dad finally pulled his way out that self-destructive-blood-binge.

“Rather than being a ruthless, violent, blood crazed maniac, he retired into being a sulking, withdrawn, violent, somewhat blood crazed maniac. He began to venture out with me from time to time, hands tucked behind his back aristocratically as we’d wander aimlessly from day to day.

“He even began to dress nicely once again, letting me burn his gore spattered, blood crackling old clothes, and soon adorning pants and t-shirts. He didn’t really indulge in his old fashions much after that, his royal-purple styles soon a forgotten namesake of times better than the ones he now endured.

“Simple black slacks and fitted white t-shirts became the norm, and for once, people didn’t stare quite so flabbergasted when we’d walk through time square in search of a decent hot dog vendor. Sparda had become that which he’d always strived so desperately to be: just human; just another drained, lifeless, depressed human.

“His eyes suddenly spoke of the years they’d witnessed, his youthful appearance never having been quite the lie it then was. Clear, white eyes became tired early in the day, glancing without reflection at everything they saw.

“Women would grasp so tightly to his strong arms, the most beautiful, painted smiles nothing more than lifeless masks to him, each one just another mockery of her face. I would ask him repeatedly to try, to try to see something more in those around him. I believed that without his appreciation for those he saved each day, eventually, the effort would seem pointless.

“I would poke him, prod him with my elbow and point to some gathering of pretty, sophisticated young females that looked to be about the same age that he appeared. Eventually he’d told me to stop, that he couldn’t see them, they all just looked like her anyways.

“He was as heartbroken as any human, as any devil. He began to doubt the reason as to why he strove so hard to save a race that could feel so much, could endure so much heartbreak and not implode upon themselves.

“ “I keep thinking I’ll die,” He’d sighed one day, lying on his back mid-afternoon next to me in the park as we’d stared at the sky. “I keep thinking that one morning I just won’t wake up. Despite my life, no injury in battle has ever wounded me so much, has ever put me on the verge of death so closely as this one. Yet that’s the tragedy of it,” He’d looked over to me through the saddest of eyes. “I keep on waking up despite it.”

“Yes, no matter how many years your dad had lived, his heart had never aged quite so much as it did the year he spent away from your mom. He fought with reckless abandonment, drinking with no-holds-barred and going through women like most people would go through underwear. Yet they were just bodies that held the face he imagined (through his drunken stupor) they wore, awaking hours later crushed with guilt and the sadness that came when he realized his mistake.

“They weren’t Eva and no amount of drugs or alcohol could make them Eva for him again. It wasn’t so much that he minded the times he would remember but that he despised the times he would forget; because when he forgot, the truth of it would inevitably come swimming back and some God-forsaken demon would pay the price for it.

“I thought things would never get better, truly began to believe the world was doomed. And then suddenly, things changed again.

“We’d walked through Central Park in New York, the sun finally throwing up its arms, yawning and deciding to call it a day. It was one of those Hollywood sunsets, the sky drenched in luxurious yellows, pinks, orange and reds. Gold seemed to kiss everything it touched, even trash and old cigarette butts on the street gleaming with a magic they seldom ever saw.

“And there she was. Just walking. I thought all my time discussing Eva had made me looney, seeing her face everywhere. She was walking through the park with a mutual friend of ours, hair pulled back in a classy ponytail, skirt reaching just slightly below her knees and the perfect-fitting burgundy shirt gracing the top of her body. Characteristically, a tidy pack of books was concealed by both arms, her mouth going a mile a minute as she chatted up the other woman about God-knows-what.

“Sparda hadn’t even seen her yet, eyes as always projected to the side and mind anywhere but the place his body inhabited. I feared the two would actually bump into each other, my mouth totally unable to voice even two words.

“At the last possible moment, they both glided towards the side, moving to avoid the other and heads bopping up nonchalantly to offer half-assed apologies for nearly colliding. Now I know it’s cliché to word it this way but seriously, it was as if the world had just stopped in that single second, halted on its access, crossed its arms and stared with the expression of ‘huh.’ on its face.

“They both just stared, blinking as if they were imagining the other being there. Sparda kept his eyes trained on her face, tongue going into his cheek as if in confusion. Eva glanced a little less apologetically at the rest of him, probably trying to ascertain how someone who usually dressed so boldly was now doting the most common of outfits.

“ “Sparda.” She said in her most tight-lipped voice.

“ “Eva.” Sparda had nodded congenially.

“The world tapped its foot impatiently as a moment wore on, the two just sizing each other up.

“And then it was like things started up again and Eva and Sparda collided in the most crushing hug. Arms and legs alike intertwined, the embrace clumsy and desperate. Sparda raked his hands over her face, touching and kissing her cheeks as if to make sure they were real this time. Eva buried her nose into his neck, gasping in tiny, feminine breaths, like she was trying not to cry.

“ “Oh you,” Sparda was panting in despair. “you horrible horrible woman.”

“ “You evil, psychotic…..” Eva searched for the word. “….. dumbass.”

“ “Oh God,” Sparda had laughed, planting his whole face ontop of her head. “I have been so miserable. Oh God, Eva. I have been so… so miserable.”

“ “I know, I know.”

“ “The only way I could be more miserable,” He proclaimed, petting her head desperately. “Is if I had to spend the rest of my life around you, damnable, insufferable female that you are.”

“ “I know exactly what you mean!” She’d cried, pulling him closer.

“A moment passed, the sun slowly gliding behind the far distance. It was the very last bit of sunlight that caught them both, the two bodies appearing like one big, massive gold creature that gleamed in an ethereal way.

“ “Sparda,” Eva whispered suddenly, looking up at him. “I wanna be miserable forever.”

“And just like that, in just that way, they agreed to get married, both wanting to be miserable forever; one an evil, psychotic dumbass and the other an insufferable, damnable female."