fandomtownies | Groovy Tunes, Friday Morning

Kat	"Vergil?" Kat spoke softly, her posture keeping her just as small. Still, her voice filled up the empty room-- a testament to Vergil's stillness. "You're back." She watched him from her corner of the room, careful. "Are you going to tell me where you've been?"
Vergil	With utmost care, Vergil fit the flowers into the vase in front of him. The roses were a deep and vivid blue, as they always were; a symbol of not just his mother, but the love she had shared with their father, and her sons. He didn't look at Kat. He didn't see the need. "A village called Fortuna," he said. His gloved fingers gently pulled a thorn off the stem of a rose. "Chasing some stories about my father. It's not important." Not to her, at least. And so, he was not inclined to share; the information he did give was an indulgence, provided while he poured most of his focus into tending to the flowers. Three of them, all in all. One for Eva. One for Sparda. He held up the last one. One for Dante.
Kat	She wasn't wanted here. Kat could tell that much. Tolerated, yes, but nothing more. She supposed sometimes Vergil needed that, to have his space... and so she resolved not to take it too personally. It was harder than she liked it to be. "Remember last year?" she said. "When there was space for a blind gateway in Limbo-- something that tied us straight to Dante? The channels are open again. We could give it another shot."
Vergil	Vergil's posture hadn't shifted. It was unnaturally still, as if he was somehow wreathing himself in silence. "No," he said, after a long pause. "Our sensors are finely calibrated now. We're picking up a little bit more about Dante's location every time the demons use the portal system." He placed the last flower down on the shrine. Looked up, at the old painting, his father's face scratched out, his mother's, his brother's: smiling. "I don't want to run the risk of interfering with our settings."
Kat	"Okay." Kat waited a moment longer, for a reaction she knew wouldn't actually come. "I'll get out of your hair." She vanished from the room before his lack of a goodbye - or worse, his absent goodbye - could become something she noticed, instead of just expected.
Vergil	Vergil blew out a breath. He brought the last rose up and pressed it to his forehead. He shut his eyes. "It won't be much longer," he said. "I promise. I'll get you out of there."

Dante had hoped to get to sleep in that morning. Wasn't like he had any reason to be at any of the PW functions, besides being on StuCo, and nobody was gonna cry if he opened up the store half an hour late. Instead, he'd spent the night plagued by nightmares. Eventually, he'd gotten up, gone up to the roof, and smoked a single everything-sucks-it-doesn't-count cigarette. (It'd tasted like shit.)

So he arrived at Groovy Tunes half an hour early, instead. And found a rose waiting on the counter for him, a blue one, like the one that had randomly shown up at his door at Valentine's. "Weird," he muttered. Checked in the corner for the blue guys. "Is this your handiwork? Not funny."

Not even smacking them with the rose got them to 'fess up, though. Instead Dante was left to hang out behind the desk, studying the blue petals, trying to pretend as hard as possible that it wasn't tickling at the back of his memory in the worst, impossible-to-reach kind of way. He didn't even bother to change the music on the stereo until the afternoon.

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