I think Vergil and Gilver should kiss. Allow me to elaborate 🫴
Part of it is just because it's hot, but there are some really interesting things to explore here. Because Gilver while aching to a character like V or Urizen, he is more like Trish. He isn't part of Vergil, he's a copy of him. Having them meet would be so entertaining.
(Do disregard canon logistics and timelines, because I wanna discuss a silly concept so it doesn't matter, but at the same time is something easy to fiddle with if you really want to, just indulge in the idea first, yeah 👍)
Vergil would be very much offended that Mundus thought that a cheap copy could ever measure up to him. Gilver's reaction is much more existential. Being faced with the one you were created to replace, but not even good enough for that, just enough to fuck with Dante.
While created in Vergil's image, Gilver is much more his own person than I think even Mundus realizes (a mistake that proves his undoing later on with Trish making her own choices). At a surface level he's all of Vergil's worst traits dialed up to 11.
They meet and Vergil is faced with a horrifying version of himself, because this, all that Gilver is, is made to be him. It's supposed to be taken from Vergil. It's not a commentary on Vergil, because that's not Mundus' intentions. But it's how Vergil takes it, a stain on his pride. It's so different from looking at Dante and who he is. Because while bound beyond understanding by being twins, Dante is Dante. Vergil is Vergil. They've always been their own person, similarities included. But Gilver is supposed to be Vergil. It's violating, just how personal it is.
Gilver dislikes Vergil because he threatens his very existence and his sense of self. He knows he was made at his image, he knows he was made this way to bait Dante. But in the time he spends around Tony/Dante, he is just Gilver. He hides behind the bandages and it's easy to forget he was forged out of a pre-existing mold. Being faced with the original feels... Like he can be easily discarded. That Gilver will never be enough when Vergil is right there. And yeah, maybe he grew to enjoy being the center of Dante's attention for a while, would even go so far as to say he had fun when they went on jobs together. He wonders how much of those feelings are his own, or just feelings that Vergil would have, therefore so does he. And while he questions how real he and his feelings are, he cannot deny the sting of knowing that Dante would choose Vergil if given the chance. Gilver doesn't matter. Not to Dante, not to his maker.
Gilver hates that he can see why Dante adores Vergil, he hates that he knows deep in his bones that he could never measure up to the real thing. Yet he thinks Vergil is ultimately just as broken as he—the copy—is. So he fights for his right to exist, because though he was made at his image, he isn't him (or is he?). Vergil begrudges the fact that he almost admires the carnage Gilver is capable of. But Gilver disgusts him with how sadistic he can be; not because Vergil cares about the morality of suffering, but because he thinks this kind of behavior, the emotions behind it, they seem wasteful and weak. To him, the fact that Gilver behaves that way is a flaw in Mundus' programming, in his interpretation of Vergil; because he doesn't feel. Vergil doesn't care anymore—he's left human things behind, right?
It's just something interesting because they both would be faced with a question of "Is this all that I am?" while looking at each other. Everything they hate in themselves is given a voice. If Vergil got to meet Gilver as a young teen, around the time the dmc1 novel takes place, he would go through something similar to his dmc5 arc, but I feel the outcome would be vastly different, because splitting himself and walking on V's shoes as well as Urizen's is intimate in a different way. That's ALL Vergil. He cannot deny or rationalize the good and the bad of himself away. While Gilver is a mirror image built by arguably his greatest enemy. Gilver is someone he witnesses from the outside, and while Vergil is forced to look inwards because of it, the lessons he reaches are very different in the end.
They fundamentally dislike each other, but there's an element of messed up narcissism that would have them fucking I think. But ultimately only one can come out alive. But the road to that end is just deliciously unhinged.
Also, I would like to point out that every time I type 'Gilver' my keyboard suggests 'Gilbert' instead, and that's particularly funny to me.
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