[Nero has grown more comfortable in asking the meaning of words that he does not know, but Vergil would not anticipate Nero integrating any of them into his vocabulary. It comes as pleasant surprise to hear. One that he cannot entirely contain with the faintest of smiles and a glint of fatherly pride in his eyes. He's able not to get too lost in the warm feeling, however, when she asks after his own reading.]
My father possessed an extensive collection of books he gathered throughout his time among humans. Although there were some books he forbade us to touch ourselves, he did not bar us from his library. [Through his eyes as a child, Vergil simply saw it as an impressive demonstration of just how long Sparda had lived and a physical indicator of his father's wisdom and knowledge. They were mere books, but they were still a part of Sparda's strength and discipline in his eldest son's eyes. It was something to be admired, and Vergil took quickly to trying to replicate in his own way with his own bookshelf. Now...? Well, it remains still impressive to Vergil, but what he thought unique to himself—that connection he struggled to find with others but so readily found in books—he can safely speculate now must have been the same for Sparda. For all that he loved humanity, he was not one of them. He had to learn somehow, and the written word was likely easier than in practice. At least at first.] So, for myself, it was not a matter of either or, but rather both. I read for myself plenty, but I did not refuse to listen should Mother or Father choose to read or recite something to us.
Dante was more like Nero, however, and he preferred to listen to a story rather than read it himself. Although he never had much interest in literature. He mostly demanded Mother to tell us stories of Father when she was putting us to bed.
[Which Vergil still listened to with rapt attention until he could no longer keep his eyes open. Especially after their father's disappearance when such stories and memories were his only real remaining presence in their home. For all that Vergil tried his very best to act unaffected by Sparda's disappearance in an attempt to seem older and more reliable than his years, he still missed his father just as much as the rest of his family.]
[Father and Mother. Kyrie knows it's foolish to be so awe inspired by something as mundane as referring to his parents by those names, but she still finds something in her struggling to grasp at the idea that Sparda, the entity she'd worshipped for the majority of her life as a god, was something so normal as a father who would read to his boys and tell them stories. It's comforting, she supposes, that someone with such unfathomable power, who accomplished mythical feats in his own right, should do something so human as that. It's so like her own father, only he'd be telling her tales of Vergil's father instead of the labors of Heracles or the ordeals of Orpheus.]
I hope... I hope it doesn't embarrass you or make you think I'm still blinded by the Order when I say that your father was my hero when I was growing up. I think perhaps even more so now that I'm piecing together an image of who he was outside of what Sanctus was preaching.
[She won't ask if there's anything of Sparda that Vergil might see in Nero, doesn't want to give the impression that she's some kind of obsessive projecting images of a false god on the perfect, fallible, flawed man she's given her heart to. She shouldn't want to know. Similarities or none, she loves him and nothing will change that.
She does wonder though...]
He must have had some incredible stories, being as long lived as he was.
[Vergil can somewhat understand Kyrie's urge to clarify her feelings towards Sparda. No doubt his father and his legacy remain a somewhat...complicated matter for her. The actions taken by the leadership of the Order likely called into question much of what she had been led to believe, and she had to reconcile the discrepancy behind their actions and the example she was meant to follow. Now she knows not only there are more of his descendants than just Dante around, but she has fallen in love with one of them. Vergil never faced such a complication in his relationship with Beatrice, but he cannot imagine it to be an easy thing to reconcile all the same.]
[It must seem strange to her to have a portrait of Sparda hanging above the fireplace, and it is not one of austere faith. Instead, a depiction of a man with his beloved family. No doubt the photo album Vergil gifted to Dante for Christmas would seem utterly alien to her. Images of Sparda not as a mighty warrior, but a proud albeit perhaps sometimes exhausted father with twin boys running him ragged.]
He did, [Vergil agrees, faintly. What he cannot admit aloud is that much of what he remembers of those stories are fragments now. Eva kept Sparda's spirit alive for her boys after he was gone, but she could not keep him alive. Not truly. For all that Vergil can remember of his father, he remembers him more in pictures than in the flesh. Sense memories of how he sounded or smelled, or what it was to be slung over his shoulder while protesting not to be tired enough for bed faded with the passage of time. And it is not something that Vergil can blame on what became of him. It was simply an inevitability.] As children, there was no one that Dante or I wished to be more like than our father.
[So, while Kyrie's hero worship of Sparda may stem from a different place than his own in his youth... Vergil isn't willing to admonish the girl for admiring his father.]
[The family painting above the mantelpiece is something Kyrie's studied quietly some evenings while Nero's insisted on doing the dishes so she could put her feet up. It's been an oddly humanizing thing to see the family as they were, and then to look up at the young faces of Vergil and Dante and recognize familiar features from when Nero was a child. Hard to believe that it's a legend, living as a man, raising children and loving a human woman.
It's so normal.
She looks over at the picture, briefly admiring it with a smile.]
I know he's not human but is it strange if I say that he looks it? I mean no disrespect, I just- every image of him we were ever shown was of someone otherworldly and almighty, we were never told anything of his worldly life.
[She takes a sip of her tea, pondering what it must have been like growing up without any knowledge that one's father was literally a god to some people.]
[It would be an odd thing coming from most people, but Vergil understands plenty of what she means by it even without her elaboration. He's seen (and scoffed at) the depictions of his father on Fortuna before, and they are nothing that he ever recognized to be Sparda. Not that he anticipated it ever would be. How Sparda seemed through the eyes of a human, someone who had never met him, was always going to be different than through the eyes of either of his sons. The family portrait was far closer.]
[He pauses in having another bite of his breakfast at her question before slightly shaking his head.]
If he did, I've forgotten it. It was... A long time ago.
[The soft, far off rumble of thunder draws Kyrie's attention to the rain again for a split second before she returns her focus to Vergil.]
It feels longer when they're not there to check with too, don't you think? Sometimes I think I remember something someone said or something that happened and then I'll second guess myself when I'm not so sure. Then I wonder if I imagined it in the first place. Do you find that, too?
[This could come dangerously close to toeing across the line here, venturing into more personal stuff, but she reasons that if she's ever going to turn this relationship with Nero's father into something less awkward, she's going to have to let herself be open with him.]
[The further the line of conversation goes, the further and further Vergil finds himself uncertain of how exactly to proceed. He's not so averse as he once was to discussing matters pertaining to the heart such as this, but he is still hesitant to do so with someone he does not yet bear a close relationship with. And Kyrie is no exception to that considering, but he supposes perhaps she ought to be.]
[He nods a little after a brief moment.]
It is in some ways another loss. And sometimes felt just as acutely as the first.
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no subject
My father possessed an extensive collection of books he gathered throughout his time among humans. Although there were some books he forbade us to touch ourselves, he did not bar us from his library. [Through his eyes as a child, Vergil simply saw it as an impressive demonstration of just how long Sparda had lived and a physical indicator of his father's wisdom and knowledge. They were mere books, but they were still a part of Sparda's strength and discipline in his eldest son's eyes. It was something to be admired, and Vergil took quickly to trying to replicate in his own way with his own bookshelf. Now...? Well, it remains still impressive to Vergil, but what he thought unique to himself—that connection he struggled to find with others but so readily found in books—he can safely speculate now must have been the same for Sparda. For all that he loved humanity, he was not one of them. He had to learn somehow, and the written word was likely easier than in practice. At least at first.] So, for myself, it was not a matter of either or, but rather both. I read for myself plenty, but I did not refuse to listen should Mother or Father choose to read or recite something to us.
Dante was more like Nero, however, and he preferred to listen to a story rather than read it himself. Although he never had much interest in literature. He mostly demanded Mother to tell us stories of Father when she was putting us to bed.
[Which Vergil still listened to with rapt attention until he could no longer keep his eyes open. Especially after their father's disappearance when such stories and memories were his only real remaining presence in their home. For all that Vergil tried his very best to act unaffected by Sparda's disappearance in an attempt to seem older and more reliable than his years, he still missed his father just as much as the rest of his family.]
no subject
I hope... I hope it doesn't embarrass you or make you think I'm still blinded by the Order when I say that your father was my hero when I was growing up. I think perhaps even more so now that I'm piecing together an image of who he was outside of what Sanctus was preaching.
[She won't ask if there's anything of Sparda that Vergil might see in Nero, doesn't want to give the impression that she's some kind of obsessive projecting images of a false god on the perfect, fallible, flawed man she's given her heart to. She shouldn't want to know. Similarities or none, she loves him and nothing will change that.
She does wonder though...]
He must have had some incredible stories, being as long lived as he was.
no subject
[It must seem strange to her to have a portrait of Sparda hanging above the fireplace, and it is not one of austere faith. Instead, a depiction of a man with his beloved family. No doubt the photo album Vergil gifted to Dante for Christmas would seem utterly alien to her. Images of Sparda not as a mighty warrior, but a proud albeit perhaps sometimes exhausted father with twin boys running him ragged.]
He did, [Vergil agrees, faintly. What he cannot admit aloud is that much of what he remembers of those stories are fragments now. Eva kept Sparda's spirit alive for her boys after he was gone, but she could not keep him alive. Not truly. For all that Vergil can remember of his father, he remembers him more in pictures than in the flesh. Sense memories of how he sounded or smelled, or what it was to be slung over his shoulder while protesting not to be tired enough for bed faded with the passage of time. And it is not something that Vergil can blame on what became of him. It was simply an inevitability.] As children, there was no one that Dante or I wished to be more like than our father.
[So, while Kyrie's hero worship of Sparda may stem from a different place than his own in his youth... Vergil isn't willing to admonish the girl for admiring his father.]
no subject
It's so normal.
She looks over at the picture, briefly admiring it with a smile.]
I know he's not human but is it strange if I say that he looks it? I mean no disrespect, I just- every image of him we were ever shown was of someone otherworldly and almighty, we were never told anything of his worldly life.
[She takes a sip of her tea, pondering what it must have been like growing up without any knowledge that one's father was literally a god to some people.]
Did he have a favorite story he'd tell you?
no subject
[He pauses in having another bite of his breakfast at her question before slightly shaking his head.]
If he did, I've forgotten it. It was... A long time ago.
no subject
It feels longer when they're not there to check with too, don't you think? Sometimes I think I remember something someone said or something that happened and then I'll second guess myself when I'm not so sure. Then I wonder if I imagined it in the first place. Do you find that, too?
[This could come dangerously close to toeing across the line here, venturing into more personal stuff, but she reasons that if she's ever going to turn this relationship with Nero's father into something less awkward, she's going to have to let herself be open with him.]
no subject
[He nods a little after a brief moment.]
It is in some ways another loss. And sometimes felt just as acutely as the first.
[Other times, less so.