[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
[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.