Story/Art Page || 21 ❤️ || Enjoyer of sci-fi and superheroes || SILENCED by tiktok || If you want to fight me, just block me. It's better for both of us.
a/n: dmc brain rot settled in again, i wrote this awhile ago so,,, it might not be super duper polished...i just wanted to post it because i held it hostage for a month (cough cough like what i did with another v fic.) and because its v day!!!
cw: angst--reader is going through the motions of grief.
word count; 2.9k. 1/2.
Maybe it’s a curse, you see V everywhere you go.
Humans cling to ration like driftwood among a wreck — you find you’re no different. What else would explain these past few months? Like all small-minds, you drift towards the supernatural.
A curse is a little too much, though, isn’t it?
Synonymous in superstitious minds with resentment, and V didn’t resent you, did he? No, he didn’t, what you had with V was special, no room for animosity in between shared breaths and entwined limbs.
Perhaps there’s a simpler explanation, one you’ve yet to find.
At first you hoped maybe it was delusion, your mind playing tricks on you. Some sort of mania brought on by nights of restless sleep or no sleep at all when the static was too loud. You'd prefer it if you’d simply gone mad, it’d be easier to fix if you had. A pill, a therapist, alcohol.
Anything but ruminating, rolling questions around like marbles and staring at drywall. ‘Why didn’t you tell me,’ ‘Was it real?’ ‘What did it mean to you?’ ‘Did he—‘
Grief is a funny thing to be feeling for this man, who feels more real now that he’s dead than he was alive. You keep the memories close to your chest, tucked besides your heart in prayers it’ll be enough to beat for two.
It feels silly to grieve, to mourn for a man who didn’t live for long and due to that fact, one you didn’t even know for long either. You barely knew V, truthfully. But you knew enough to know V was different. He had a way of worming under your skin, instilling himself as a necessity rather than a burden, parasitic in his own way.
And that is what this was, V was parasitic in nature.
He used you, he used Nero, he used Dante.
The only difference is while they are able to move forward; you’re the only one getting held back, dragged back into a tarpit of misery by ink laden arms tightly wrapped around your torso, weighing you down and leaving you to move through the world at a shuffling lame pace.
For whatever reason, V clung to you, sunk his teeth in deep and refused to let go, even in death. It doesn’t help that you're all too happy to let him drown you. The only reason you haven’t let him is because Nero won’t let you.
It got easier to ignore the specter that lives in the corner of your periphery; you found maybe V really did decide to simply haunt you. He’s too real looking to be fake, warm blooded and smooth skinned. Fresh faced and just as sly.
V leaned towards skittishness early on, you miss when all you’d see was an inky mop of hair standing out in the crowds of a bookstore you found yourself frequenting; he would’ve liked it, the optimist in you presumed, though considering its steady supply of visitors — a thought gnaws in the back of your mind he might’ve hated it.
The librarian spouts prose you feign interest in for a few minutes, nodding and smiling, grateful for the distraction from the chill that settles in at the base of your own spine, it skitters up along the ridges and that’s how you know he’s here.
Penance for being a regular you suppose, librarians become difficult to shake off when you become a familiar face. You can’t remember if V liked socializing, there was no other place he’d spend his time besides your home or Devil May Cry, no time to have observed his social skills. Adrenaline drips through your veins as if being fed through an IV. You glance off to the side and excuse yourself awkwardly, pointing in some vague direction before dipping into the aisles you came to expect V to haunt.
It’s a form of self-harm, a phantom-blade you press against your forearm and use to saw back and forth along skin, through tendons to bone. You shouldn’t be coming back here, shouldn’t want to whisper “V? Griffon? Are you there?” just to see if Griffon’ll materialize out of thin air with some crude greeting.
Yet, you do. Like clockwork. V does too.
He’s there at the midsection, your tentative steps come to a halt. Like always, he’s the picture of a scholar in academic ease, inked fingers brushing along the spines, he flows along the shelves until he rounds the corner and disappears further into the eight hundred twenties of the dewey decimal system.
You follow him for around an hour, until that very same librarian finds you with her cart and traps you in another conversation about dead poets you can’t, for the life of you, care about, not unless it was your very own telling you about them.
But again, when you try to catch one more glimpse, he’d already vanished into thin air.
— x-x-x-x-x-x —
As the days passed by and June bled into July, then August, then all the way back to April again, some semblance of normality returned in muted colors; it became easier to breathe and live in your own skin again, — as best as one could while still grieving.
With the seasons changing, you found no need to haunt the aisles with him, you didn’t necessarily believe you needed therapy, greedily however, you ate through the books you finally decided to check out on, the type that dissected grief and offered some semblance of relief in knowing you aren’t going through the motions incorrectly.
You did try to move on, avoided the library like the plague, stopped talking about him to the walls, got rid of the books he thumbed through despite them being yours and not his. Treated them as if they’d been infected with Scarlet Fever, would’ve burned them if you could.
It didn’t work much, if anything, it only made him more aggressive.
There were smaller signs at first, these you did write off as delusions.
A murder of Crows whose caws sounded too much like Griffon's boisterous laughter, a black cat much smaller than Shadow, but with amber eyes far too reminiscent and knowing, suddenly making your front door its home.
You’d brought it in eventually after it failed to get the message delivered via broomstick and batting. The collar at its throat reads Shadow now.
V found you time and time again. Stood still and stared at you through the leaves in the park, gauging whether you’d listen to your senses telling you to run or if you’d fall into old habits again, he was always at the end of the trails, always gone before you could follow him deeper through brush.
You hated him for it, you went on these walks to reconnect with nature, not with the lover you lost. It got to the point where you’d stopped searching for snakes in the grass and kept your eyes peeled for a man in black until you’d simply decided to stop going out at all.
‘Healing isn’t linear, and that’s okay!’ rung in your head over and over through the crunch of gravel, repeating it over and over in hopes of drowning out the second pair of steps following closely behind you. ‘..doesn’t mean you failed, you’re just human.’
‘Just human. Just human. Just human.’
It never worked.
— x-x-x-x-x-x —
Your lover is cruel.
You’re beginning to think V knows what you’ll do should he leave you alone for too long. Or is he driving you to it? Is he trying to save you? Is he just unaware he’s going about it the wrong way? Or perhaps he does know and is simply goading you into it?
Was he capable of being that cruel? You’ve considered it. You never were that strong when it came to surviving matters of the heart.
Before your breaking point, no one ever said anything. Nero saw the signs, of course, he visited constantly. He’d seen the cat and the collar and gave you a look that said everything you already knew; You were hurting yourself further, needlessly scratching the wound open, leaving it red and raw.
But he didn’t know about the man who still visits you, who started to make himself at home and as comfortable as the cat did. You couldn’t tell him, how could you? Nero wouldn’t believe you, you hardly believed yourself nowadays.
Behind your eyes, you hear his voice late at night, silky and seductive, chastising you should you find yourself in need of relief late at night. The only thing he left behind, a shirt you’d lent him when he stayed the night, pressed against your nose, hand tucked and working sloppily between your legs.
Most times when you dream of V, it’s pleasant. He’s alive, sitting across from you in the van, watching you with those knowing eyes of his, he hardly ever says anything. Yet caught in between respite and consciousness, you hear him all the same.
“You’re suffering,” He's amused, it glints in his eyes and shows in his demeanor, cocking his head sparrow-like.
“...do you miss me so?”
The dreams never last long, you’re always left in this limbo. Going somewhere and never reaching your destination, always moving towards him when it’s too late then waking up to find yourself clinging to that same sad shirt and reeking of desperation.
Lemon zest and poppy clung to him most, you’ve no idea when he found the time to swipe it from your cabinet, nor why it’s the scent that reminds you of him most when he often smelled like puddles after a rain shower. Or wet dog as Griffon put it so very nicely once.
You wondered what he thought about when he spritzed it on himself. It should’ve been your first sign he was something else if the way he ate wasn’t. What man doesn’t know the difference between parfums and room spray?
All you’d seen was someone in need, there’s a reason Nero insisted you return to Fortuna the instant he got an inkling you were getting in over your head, your naivety would get you killed some way or another.
Nonetheless, the air freshener still remains where he’d last left it.
There's one problem with shutting yourself in, there’s no other place for him to find you other than your home. If you squint hard enough, you’ll see him a little better, it doesn't matter if your vision is blurred from sleep or the strain; you can pin-point the exact moment those pouty, copper-rose lips twitch into that smirk you ‘hated’ so much.
Though, you can never see his face fully in time, he leaves the second your hand fumbles against the wall in the dark and the light comes on, disperses into dust like you’d been told he had all those months ago.
It all piled up and came toppling over when you saw him for the last time. Then, all he’d do was linger around corners, let himself be seen in the edges of your mirror or the darkest corners of your room.
That night he’d been sitting in the dark on your couch, leg propped up on one knee, book in hand. The plastic grocery bags you’d carried in had fallen from your hands, crinkling and spilling their contents, neither of you flinched.
V haunts you; there’s no dancing around it. It’s a secret you keep close to your chest, if only to keep him there.
You hate remembering V as he was when he ‘passed’, all crackled skin and no energy. Fearful. Reduced to a mouse aboard a sinking ship. Any confidence he’d ever had, feigned. The hours you used to get with him reduced down to mere minutes, if you were lucky to see him at all.
Towards the end V smelled cloyingly sweet, the way an old book smells when it’s been abandoned and begun to fray at the seams, left for bookworms to get at it and render it incomprehensible. The bells tolled, June 15th.
‘V returned to himself’, Dante had put it, you’d heard through Nero. A vague explanation you understood in the abstract. It sounds much better than the funerary terms you’ve associated with Vergil’s return.
This must be what a swan feels should its partner pass, this heart wrenching void that spans from behind your sternum and slithers through your body, leaving you numb and cold most mornings. If you were a swan, you’d tuck yourself away under your wing, wait for a coyote or wolf to come along and accept the inevitable.
But, you aren’t one. You’re human. Blood, flesh and bone.
All you have to drown the world out is a blanket to hide beneath, people will notice you’re gone, they already have. Nero isn’t letting you waste away and Kyrie’s been piling food up on your nightstand.
You wish they would’ve just left you to your devices, taken over your lease and sent you off back to Fortuna to heal in familiar places. Instead you’ve been forced to recover in their home — Dante’s home, you suppose. The loft has enough room for three small bedrooms — surrounded by laughter and warmth you can’t be coaxed into feeling. Rendered down to the ghost that haunts the upstairs.
You understand now to some degree, that this was never meant to be. V did too, he knew more than anyone else that he was living on borrowed time, slipping away further and further with each passing day.
He knew what he was doing with each kiss, every stolen moment, all of them piling up into a debt he had no intention of paying back. So why did he let it go on this long? Was he truly so selfish?
You hate him, you want to hate him. You do.
You think about how selfish he was to use your kindness, you think about his stupid hooked nose and his stupid jade green eyes, you think about how soft the skin of his face felt beneath your finger tips, how warm his arms were, the weight of them wrapped around you at night, how you wish you could feel them again.
But he isn’t here, and your heart shakes at the thought, you can’t hate him. You can’t. Your nose gets stuffy at the thought, trails of saliva splutter out with each sob lost against your pillowcase. The stupid shirt is slid over it, contraband no one bothers to scold you about anymore.
You love him, oh. You love him. Enough to tug your hair at the roots and curl in tighter on yourself.
Past tense is impossible to think about; there’s only the present and the memories you’ll drag with you to your grave. You’d rip your heart out, tear it free from flesh and viscera if it meant he could take it for himself and live again.
He would, eagerly. Maybe he’d grieve you as much as you grieve him.
“You have to move on,” Kyrie is the one who tries the most. Everyone else besides Nero and Nico avoid you like the plague. “It’s been months…”
It falls on deaf ears, the concept of moving on is for people with strong hearts like Dante. Not you.
“Hey, you um,” Nero’s long since gotten over the fact you had something with his fathers alter-ego now that he’s seen how much of a toll it’s taken on you. “You want anything? I can get you those little candies you like from the corner store.”
“…whatever you want.” He’d muttered, his hand squeezed your shoulder from atop the cover. “Just don’t die on me. Please.”
Nico doesn’t quite get what you saw in V, to her, he was just the weird guy with the loud bird. She tries for something light and always finds herself falling flat.
“Tough crowd.” You’d heard her mutter beneath her breath once. That got a small chuff out of you.
But you can’t stand seeing Vergil. You’ve only seen him a handful of times. He looks like Dante, yet a little less worn. His skin is a pale smooth canvas, his hair slicked back and snow white. His eyes, deep-set and pale silvery blue. His nose, straight. He’s sharp where V was soft, and Vergil’s seen you more times than you’d ever know.
Once late at night, you’d stalked down the stairs in hopes of swiping a bottle of water with no one noticing you. And there he was, sitting on the same couch V had, reading the same book V used to hold against his heart, the embossed V staring back at you mockingly.
Your throat had closed up, eyes stinging at the corners, hadn’t you cried it all out already? You didn’t want to stay for long, couldn’t afford to let him of all people see you like this. Did some part of V remain inside him? Did he know just how deep this particular root ran? Would he pull it out if you’d asked?
“Does it help you to grieve in such a way?” He’d asked before you could scurry back up.
Your fingers curled around the railing tightly, knuckles blanched. “No.”
“Good.” That caught you off guard, you swallowed the lump in your throat, ignored the offense and rage that nearly blinded you. Good?
Good?
What did that mean? How was this any good?
You’ve lost weight, your hair has long lost its shine, your skin is dull, the bags underneath your eyes are more pronounced than they’d ever been before, with each swipe of your tongue, you can feel the plaque on your teeth. Everything you do for yourself can be considered below bare minimum, and this is somehow good?
When you’re scrolling to find a good fanfic of your favorite character and stumble upon a fanfic that annoys/disappoints you just from the tags attached
I’ve been seeing a lot of Simon/Ghost x reader fics where the reader is pregnant. I would like to see a fic where the reader tells Ghost that she’s childfree and Ghost respects that.
germansingergirl
tangentwithtanner
janainaart
titsay
