#because if I add it on here it'll kill the mood 🤣🤣

[synchronmurmurs]

Deo Volente

(God Willing)

[ Gen? | Punchy x Vergil ]

So while scrolling through tumblr on my commute home from work, I came across this incredible dialogue prompt that fit perfectly with an AU I have half a mind to write out in full. It's a reincarnated lovers sort of dealio, except... well, since it's Punchy/Vergil, their reincarnated selves fucken HATE EACH OTHER and they get to have brief flashbacks of their intimacy from their past lives that makes them both recoil in disgust and confusion. 🤣 It's a project I'm leaving well on the backburner until I have more time than none at all, but I couldn't help myself with this particular dialogue prompt, and so I wrote up a quick little snippet of their past lives' final moment together. It's a Lord/Retainer royalty AU because I am a SUCKER for that, and I'd normally post the dialogue prompt at the beginning to give an idea of what to expect, but I think that will spoil the fun.

I hope you enjoy? Because I have to admit I had a buttload of fun writing this. 😭😭 Indulgent as heck and probably the softest I've ever written Punchy before. 🤔

—

The first time that Lord Mundus' fury descended upon their kingdom, the lives of the great Lord Sparda and the wise Lady Eva were taken before his forces were, in a flurry of grief and anger, driven back by their sons. And yet, all of that insurmountable bloodshed was not enough to quell the anger of the exiled Grand Master, and when he came back, as he had promised he would, the very ground trembled beneath the weight of his vengeance. His flames would consume all.

——

The city is lost.

The castle is under siege.

And the horizon burns with hellfire.

Smoke hangs thick in the air, but Vergil remains in his quarters, his armour dripping with the blood of his enemies. He'd left a bright red trail leading back to his lavish quarters, one that he knows his knight, his right hand, his love, will find and follow.

His hand is steady as it finds the clasps of his cape, sighing in relief when it, heavy with blood, drops to the ground at his feet. His sword, the precious Yamato, is the next thing to go. Vergil calmly pulls at the cords that keep it strapped to his waist, holding it in both hands in deep reverence for its years of companionship and service… and then he puts that down too.

"My Lord, what are you doing?"

From behind him, voice muffled behind a helmet and slightly out of breath, yet is unmistakably hers, his prized knight speaks. He turns to face her, expression set in something wistful. Something hopeful. Something sad. The curve of his lips holds a yearning for something they never had the chance to live, but his eyes are resigned to his fate.

"I trust you escorted my brother to the aqueduct below the castle?"

A skipped heartbeat. "Of course, my Lord. But I could not stay."

Vergil closes his eyes and smiles, knowing he was right to send her to do it. But even as he gave her the order to follow his foolishly kind little brother through it, to ensure Dante emerged on the far side of the castle where a boat would be anticipating his arrival, he knew she could not follow the unspoken command to leave with him. She is his knight after all, not Dante's. She is his, as he is hers. Oh what did he ever do to deserve such loyalty, when he could not even keep an inherited kingdom afloat before it drowned in a sea of flames.

Oh why did she come back?

"There is still time." Her voice is pleading, right on the cusp of hoarse with restrained anguish. "They have not yet breached the inner castle, if we make haste, we can–"

The sound of Vergil's vambrace popping open is her reply; a sound burdened with a somber finality that tells her all she needs to know. It clatters noisily to the ground, followed by the other. And then he moves on to the rest of his adornings.

Where he will be going, his armour won't be needed.

The visor on her helmet lifts, the jaws of a steel lion parting, and from within, her eyes shine with unshed tears.

"Then let me be with you."

When he faces her again, he is unburdened with notions of nobility and royalty; they lie scattered on the floor of his chambers. He stands before her not as her Lord and master, but as something much simpler. Something he'd always wanted to be: just Vergil. And when he steps up to her and removes her helmet, when he kisses her so soft and slow that for but that one moment, their world is not burning down around them, she is as she's always been to him: Myra Stathis.

He holds her face in his hands and presses his forehead to hers, noses barely touching, and yet the warmth that overcomes him is tangible.

"Someday, in another world–" he pauses when the castle shudders and creaks, smoke thickening and heat rising, "–where the seas are calmer, and demons do not watch us, I will love you again."

Her hands cover his. The castle trembles again. Somewhere, an explosion sounds.

"And the gods willing, I will find you."

And on nothing but a promise to gods that have abandoned them, they wait together for the sky to fall.