#verladyweek

[dmc-questions-anon]

@verladyweek

[verladyweek]

DAY ONE: Start!

Verlady nation, this is not a drill, the time has come! This week, we’re celebrating one of the most intriguing and intense pairings in the Devil May Cry universe: Vergil and Lady - two strongly independent characters with a fierce drive and a deep history. Let us all celebrate as they come together in ways that spark both conflict and chemistry.

Whether you’re drawn to their dramatic encounters or the moments of unexpected connection, this week is all about exploring the many facets of their relationship, both romantic and platonic.

Today's lineup of exciting prompts that will dive deep into what makes this pairing so compelling is: Rainy Rendezvous, Huddling for Warmth, "Nothing about this is soft, but we pretend."

Additionally, you are invited to either share a song or a playlist that reminds you of their dynamic! Whether you’re a long-time fan or new to the ship, gear up and get ready to be very, very normal about Vergil and Lady. Vergil needs more power, but we need more Verlady! Let’s make this week smokin' sexy stylish!

To make sure your contributions are seen by this event blog, please feel free to use the event tag #verladyweek or tag the event blog directly, @verladyweek

Happy shipping!

[lmae98]

╰┈➤ Verlady Week 2024 Day 2: Misc Promp

A Headcanon about Verlady:

┎┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈୨♡୧┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┒

I can't help myself but to think of Dante as the "Fairy Godmother" in this relationship. I even have this clear image in my mind of him wearing a shirt with "Verlady's #1 Fan" printed on it.

┖┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈୨♡୧┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┚

@verladyweek

[ladynamida]

Here is my submission for Verlady Week 2024 Day 1!

@verladyweek

An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works

Summary:

“You will still be paid if that is what concerns you. I don’t intend to besmirch our contract.”

“Dead people don’t get paid, Vergil.”

---

Or, Lady and Vergil accidentally go mountain climbing.

---

This ficlet is inspired by the trope prompt "Huddling for Warmth", but there is a slight nod to the other two prompts too.

Big thank you to Sonder for hosting this event and everyone else who has inspired, motivated and supported me, as well as everyone taking part 💙

I hope you enjoy pining over them as much as I do.

[unlucky-leek]

So this isn't based on a @verladyweek prompt or anything, but it still feels relevant because it definitely happened due to all the wonderful Verlady content I've been consuming all week 😆

Basically I just woke up from a crazy DMC related dream, which, amongst other scenes (including Nero accidentally vaporising Vergil with a laser, and 'slicked Vergil hair DLC'), included this gem, which went something a bit like this:

♡

Vergil: *secretly hanging out with Lady in his room*

Dante: *calling from downstairs* Vergil! Are you home? I need to talk to you about something!

Vergil: *groans and slinks downstairs, with many apologies to Lady*

Dante: There you are! OK so listen to this, it's about this demon Nero found...*rambles*

Vergil: *Thinking about Lady and nodding*

*10 mins later*

Dante: So what do you think?

Vergil: *Jolted out of his thoughts* Uh, yes. Sure. Let's go fight it or whatever.

Dante: ...Bro. I just spent the last 10 minutes telling you how awesome Nero looked while killing the thing, were you even listening...?

♡

And yeah, that's basically all I can remember from it lol

Super dumb, but thought it was amusing so now you get forced to enjoy it too 🤣

(P.S. I can't believe it's the end of the week already, this has been so amazing! I'll see if I can post a final story later today!)

[kintsugicore]

Vergil thrived on simplicity: erect walls, fortify them, remain untouchable. It was a principle he had lived and breathed and survived by. Enforce it, and he stayed safe. Restore it, and he remained sane. But somehow, nothing ever stayed simple around her . The mission had been straightforward enough: enter, eliminate, leave. Clean, precise—just as he preferred it. However, what should have been a task either of them could have taken in their sleep had first devolved into bickering, then escalated into an argument, and finally culminated into the constant thrum of a headache she had been fueling for the past ten minutes. "We could’ve finished by now if you’d shown some restraint,” he bit out, frustration barely contained as he made his way through crumbling debris and settling dust. “If you had the patience to wait for me to clear the path—" Lady, casually rifling through her bag for another grenade as she stepped over the still-smouldering rubble, glanced back at him, her mismatched eyes gleaming with that distinct, simmering annoyance Vergil had long since learned she reserved for only two things in life: people who didn’t use turn signals, and him.

An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works

[muse-write]

Verlady Week Day 6

Prompt: Poems and Petals

@verladyweek

In the wake of the Qliphoth, there were few truly green areas around Red Grave City, and Lady could tell that the loss hurt Vergil in more ways than the simple guilt of being the one to cause it. When Nico drove them through forests that had flourished beyond the reaches of Urizen’s destruction, Lady had seen something like longing in his eyes as he’d stared out the window, quickly covered by a veneer of disinterest. He’d turned to cleaning the Yamato or reading a poetry book or polishing the buttons on his coat or whatever it was he did to seem uninterested in anything going on around him.

But Lady had noticed, and she’d asked Dante about it. He had only shrugged. “The guy’s been through a lot. When we were kids he wasn’t an outdoor guy or anything, but he always liked walking through the forest around our house.” He’d smiled briefly. “We were maybe five, but he had this book on trees and he’d tell me what every single one was called when we passed them. Every single one. And if he didn’t know it he spent ten minutes flipping through that book trying to decide. I think I slammed him into the ground to get him to stop, not like it worked.” The nostalgia had fled, and Dante had stared at his brother with that deep sorrow that always made Lady just a little afraid. She had seen him in those days after Vergil had fallen. She knew the depths of grief he was liable to fall into, even with his brother sitting across the room. He spoke up again after a second, the easy tone of his voice not reaching his eyes. “It’s probably been a while since he’s seen any trees that weren’t…you know, made of human blood and smothering the world with human-killing roots.”

Lady had to admit that Vergil, with his neat hair and elegant coat and cutting precision, did not strike her as a tree-hugger. Neither had V, for that matter. It wasn’t as though she knew him (either of him) that well. The weight of their past hung heavy between them, and if he was content to ignore her for the time being, Lady was content to ignore him, and even Dante seemed to recognize that was the best-case solution. But she did know that Vergil spent a lot of time shut away in his room upstairs, or, if not, then pretended to be shut away while he tricked around the city with Yamato.

And Lady had seen that room, and the bedroom fit for human life that it pretended to be. It was little more than a box with a bed and a tiny window. It was a sad place to spend all your time, and even if he deserved it, she couldn’t help but feel like it was a cheerless existence.

He can live in a cheerless existence, she told herself firmly. Does Vergil even know what cheer is? Maybe he’s perfectly happy living in a box. It’s better than whatever existence he had as Nero Angelo.

Try as she might to ignore it, it was that thought—that reminder of what Dante had told her so many years ago, that memory that she now shared as a vessel for Artemis—which lodged in her brain for a week straight.

Lady was pragmatic. She liked to think that she did nothing out of sheer sentiment. She had hung around Dante this long because he refused to fully pay off his ever-increasing debt, and she protected him and worried about him because he would rejoice at the fact that being dead meant he’d never have to. She had urged Nero not to kill his own father because she hated to see a kind young man forced to make the decision she had once made. So when she stopped by the greenhouse and surveyed its sparse selection of seasonal flowers, she picked one at random, because if she didn’t think about it, she could pretend she wasn’t doing this out of pity. Or sympathy. Or empathy.

It was a few sprigs of budding larkspur.

She chose it because it rose up above the others and it was blue, like Vergil.

Lady endured the somewhat mortifying ordeal of shoving open the shop door, crossing over to the stairs, ignoring Dante’s startled look, and stomping up the stairs with her hands full of flowerpot. Before her nerve could fail her, she rapped on Vergil’s door. “Vergil, open up, I have something I need to give you.”

The silence dragged on long enough that she wondered if this was one of those times he had used Yamato to go who-knew-where, but eventually there was the sound of footsteps and the door cracked open. “I have no reason to think that I need anything at all that you—“ Vergil began, but the irritation in his voice faded as his eyes fell on the pot in her hands. He stood motionless and silent for a moment, his hand clenching restlessly on the doorframe. “Is that a flowerpot?”

She shoved it at his chest. “Call it a housewarming gift or something, whatever you want.” She began to turn away.

He grabbed the pot before it could fall. “You’re about two months too late for that. Try again.” There was a bit of mocking humor in his voice, but he stared at her intently without a hint of a glare. He seemed genuinely curious, if bewildered.

Lady sighed. The best-case scenario here, she had thought, was that he would throw the pot out the window and laugh at the concept of ever needing anything as feeble as a plant. The worst-case was having to explain herself. Lady wasn’t sure if she could put her thought process into words, since she had done her best not to think about any of it too deeply. She plowed ahead anyway. “Your room’s awful. When I emerged from Artemis, plants helped me. They’re all dead now, I don’t have a green thumb, but Dante said that you liked trees when you were a kid, and I’ve seen the way you stare at the forests whenever we drive through them, and I thought a plant might…might help,” she finished lamely.

Vergil leaned more heavily on the door for a second. He stared down at the larkspur. One finger came up to lightly touch one of the petals. “Larkspur,” he said suddenly. “It’s poisonous.” His eyes gleamed at her, and suddenly something mischievous entered his expression, not unlike his brother’s. “Did you have ulterior motives in giving me this plant?”

She shrugged. “It’s tall and blue. I thought you two would get along well.”

“Ah. I forgot, you don’t have an instinct for ulterior motives, do you? You prefer to shoot first and ask questions later.” He sighed, but there was something exaggerated about it that told her he wasn’t completely being serious. “Quite an inelegant way of handing your problems.”

“Look who’s talking,” she shot back. “You’re not much of a plans guy either. You pretend to be, but if Dante does one single thing better than you, you’ll kill yourself to outrank him.” And maybe a couple thousand people in the process, she thought, but withheld that comment. It wasn’t often that she found herself bantering with him without wanting to fire a bullet through his head just to get him to shut up. She was even enjoying it.

“We’re twins,” Vergil said flatly. “It’s what we must do.” One index finger ran up the stem of the larkspur. Vergil cocked his head and glanced down at Lady. “Thank you,” he said. “The gift is much appreciated. It will certainly liven the place up a little.”

He carried it across to the window, where he set the pot down on the rug. Lady lingered in the doorway and cast a glance around. It was almost exactly as she remembered it: a tiny closet with a tiny bed that barely looked large enough to hold Vergil’s tall frame, and just enough room for a dresser. He had placed a warm lamp on the dresser, shoved a tiny bookcase into the corner, and put a blue rug down. With the plant in a spot of sunlight cast by the tiny window, the effect was almost homey.

The part of Lady inclined to be nosy wanted to look at the books he’d stuffed into the bookshelf, but she pulled back as he turned around. “Very pretty.” Now he actually did glare at her. She raised her hands in an expression of innocence. “You’ve made it look way better than it’s been in the past.”

“Yes, well, Dante wasn’t exactly interested in upkeep. I, however, was not about to live in a dark box with no personality.”

“If you need any more plants for your windowbox, you have my number.” Now that she’d done what she’d come to do, Lady wanted to get out of there as soon as possible, uncertain what she thought of this unfamiliar, bantering duel across the threshold of Vergil’s bedroom door. She backed away and stepped onto the stairs, trying not to consider it a retreat.

The larkspur went unmentioned for weeks, until one day, Lady returned to her apartment to find a pot of blue-and-gold pansies sitting outside her door. She raised her eyebrow at the note attached. One line was scrawled in neat, small, old-fashioned handwriting:

Don’t let this one die.

[lmae98]

╰┈➤ Verlady Week 2024 Day 4: Misc Promp

Share a quote or poem you associate with Vergil and Lady.

"Love, wich absolves no one beloved from loving..." — Dante Alighieri (Inferno, Canto V, The Divine Comedy).

༺═───────═༻

Is not even the complete fragment, I know, but this simple line is enough to evoke multiple images and interpretations.

For me it means the fight of this pair of sttuborns against themselves, about this love's meaning and this unwanted but powerful force wich they believed could not reach them.

Both of them went through horrible experiences that led them to lose everything they once loved, and silently, they clung to the idea of never letting their guard down again. So, it's obvious that they resist when a feeling like that takes hold of them.

@verladyweek