I love reading tags. I really do. I read some of @poppedbubblgum 's on their repost of the DMC Short Story #1, and I realized that several things might not be clear (to be fair, I wrote this in like 2 hours). So I'll be using their tags to clear some stuff up ( I hope that's ok), and I might as well share some of the thought process too.
First off-
Some parts of the story might not feel clear- that's because I'm a bad writer... lol. Well, some of it was on purpose to recreate a sense of confusion and tension. Vergil is stuck in his own mind, overwhelmed, so everything is neither linear nor clear.
Also, I guess I couldn't decide whether to use 3rd or 1st person, so I went with a mix of both. (I probably should've stuck to one to make things clearer)
But the story structure goes like this:
A few hours before the beginning of the story, Vergil and Nero had an argument that resulted in Nero screaming at Vergil.
(So, actually, I did write that scene, or a part of it. Basically, it boils down to Vergil accidentally saying something that triggers Nero, who then screams at him. Nero is also traumatized, and it was something simple that triggered him. It was really bad timing on Vergil's end- he didn't do it on purpose. I didn't add this part in bc I thought this whole story was getting too long. Maybe I should've?)
At the beginning of the story, Vergil is sitting in the Devil May Cry office. He hasn't been doing anything because he's trying to figure out how to act. There are too many ways this could turn out. But he's stuck on what to do- that's why he's been rereading the same book over and over.
Vergil notices that Dante is keeping a close watch on him, and instead of getting upset, he's resigned to this. He knows that there's a good reason Dante is watching him, which is because he has no idea how Vergil is going to respond to this whole situation.
Even though the two are brothers, they've been separated for so long that it's difficult to tell how the other one will respond to certain situations. After all.. There is that one time Vergil blew up over-
And this is THE FLASHBACK scene- to that time the two had finished a job, and Dante brings up a happy memory, which ends with Vergil spiraling- (Now I realize that I made Vergil have flashbacks within a flashback scene)
And in those flashbacks, Vergil remembers these happy moments with his mother, and later his father.
Basically (I'm going to talk more about it below), the gist is:
Dante says that Vergil remembered the wrong flowers, and teases him for that. Which sets him off because it suggests that his memories might not be as reliable as he thought. This makes Vergil afraid because his parents are gone, and all he has left of them are his memories- the good ones. And because Sparda lived a (very) long time, he's probably also going to live a long time. But at some point, he will forget all of his memories about his parents, and when he does, it will be like a second death for them.
This puts Vergil in a foul mood, and instead of talking to his brother about his worries, he lashes out because that's more familiar to him. Antagonizing, fighting, arguing. That's easier than talking.
But that made everything much, much worse instead. It didn't help in the end. Vergil continued spiraling.
The next day, Dante tries to make things up with Vergil by saying that he made the error about which flowers they destroyed when they were younger. Dante was wrong, Vergil was right. Vergil knows exactly what Dante is doing, so it doesn't really make him feel better.
And this part wasn't very clear, but basically, Vergil realizes he acted the way he did because he loves his family and he's scared of what'll happen if he loses what he has left of them. And despite Vergil's actions, Dante still tried to help (in his own way) by shifting the blame onto himself.
So Vergil decides to go find Nero to mend things with him.
Yeah. That's the story.
Your thoughts are very nice (thank you).
I'm glad that the main tone- that Vergil was stressed was very clear. That's why the conversation between Vergil and Dante overlaps with Vergil's thoughts to show how Vergil was stressed and overwhelmed. Everything is a blur to him.
Also, I'm about to go into a tangent about the flowers (why did I even choose to focus on them?)
Also, it definitely seems really random that Vergil is so hung over the flowers in Eva's garden. (At some point, I actually was going to cut that out- wasn't sure people would want to read someone obsessing over flowers, especially Vergil of all people.)
The whole garden idea was actually inspired by VoV. In Vergil's memory (in chapter 25), after Eva catches the two fighting, she says she'll make them weed the garden as their punishment.
Their house had a garden. Children like playing in dirt (at least I did). Vergil and Dante were children once. They're probably going to do stupid things in the garden. They'll also remember Eva working in it. And as we know, the twins were absolute menaces. They're probably going to cause so many messes, especially outside. I felt like they were going to destroy a lot of Eva's flowers, but that whole act would be a family dynamic in the end.
In this story, Vergil gets upset over whether Eva actually planted the gladiolus, since she had planted them for him. He told her, in a roundabout way, that he wanted them, and she planted them only for that reason. It's a memory of her performing an act of love for him.
And Dante insists that they destroyed the lilies, not the gladioli, which leads Vergil to question if they even existed. Which then leads him to ask: if the flowers existed, what color were they? And he tries to remember, but he can't, which sends his thoughts spiraling further.
That's why he gets so focused on this little detail- whether there were truly gladioli in their garden- because if he can't remember them, he's bound to forget everything at some point. He equates his ability to remember this one specific detail to the ability to remember everything in the past.
And that's really important because all he has of his parents now are his memories of them. If he forgets them, then no one will truly remember them for who they are (apart from Dante of course). And most of his memories of them are good ones where he felt loved. He doesn’t want to lose that either.
Recovery isn't easy, nor is it linear. Sure, Vergil is no longer stuck within the cycle of wanting power and ignoring his trauma, but he's been stuck so long in being constantly stressed, and it isn't going to be easy to escape. The cycle reappears in other ways.
In this case, Dante inadvertently made Vergil aware that his mind has limits. He can't remember everything forever. Which makes him panic about his memories and what losing them means. He's scared that he'll forget his parents. And so, he gets stuck in this cycle of fearing the consequences of when he forgets them and trying to find something that shows he isn't going to.
I genuinely never expected to write a story about Vergil thinking about flowers. I think the entire premise is silly, honestly. I still do.
But I think that I chose this is the end because... well, trauma can make people do seemingly silly things. But to those people, it isn't silly, it's logical. It means something. Trauma isn't logical in a standard sense.
In this story, Vergil focuses on this little detail about the garden, which he sees as proof that his mind is still functional. If he can remember the gladioli, then he can remember his parents. And that doesn't make sense, but it kind of does?
If you can remember an act (or several) of parental love, then that's enough. But if you forget those memories, then who are your parents then?
Thank you for your tags. I really loved reading them.