Meanwhile, back in the apartment, Vergil stared at his hands. They weren't shaking—they couldn't—but the leather gloves were stiff with dried blood, the scent metallic and thick in the stale air. The Joker's laughter echoed in his skull, not as memory but as phantom, the way a severed limb might itch. He flexed his fingers. The coat draped over the chair reeked of alley filth and something worse: satisfaction. He'd enjoyed it. That was the rot.
Outside, rain began sheeting down, rattling the fire escape like thrown gravel. The apartment's single bulb swung lazily, casting swaying shadows that made the Yamato's scabbard seem to breathe. Vergil exhaled through his nose. Gotham's filth was one thing. But *this*—this weakness, this trembling in his marrow—was unacceptable. He reached for the blade, half-expecting it to recoil. It didn't. The steel was cold comfort.
A knock at the door. Not the tentative rap of a landlord or neighbor. This was three precise strikes, wood groaning under the force. Vergil didn't turn. The air pressure shifted, the way it did before a storm. The knock came again—harder this time, splinters weeping from the frame. Yamato sang in its sheath. Vergil smiled, all teeth. Gotham wasn't done with him yet.
The third knock never landed. Vergil moved faster than the sound could travel. The door swung inward—not from the force of the visitor's fist, but because Yamato had already cleaved through the hinges. The blade's tip hovered a millimeter from the throat of a man in a trench coat, his gloved hand frozen mid-air. Rainwater dripped from the brim of his fedora. "Detective," Vergil murmured, savoring the way the man's pulse fluttered against cold steel. "Lost?"
The detective's Adam's apple bobbed once. His breath fogged in the space between them, smelling of cheap coffee and gun oil. Behind him, two uniformed officers lurched backward, hands scrambling for sidearms. Vergil didn't glance their way. His focus stayed locked on the detective's face—the crow's feet, the nicotine-stained teeth, the way his pupils dilated not with fear, but recognition. "James Gordon," Vergil said, rolling the name like a blade between his fingers. "You should've brought more men."
Gordon exhaled slowly, careful not to lean into the steel kissing his throat. His voice was gravel wrapped in cigarette paper: "Batman's description didn't do you justice." Vergil's smirk deepened. Behind Gordon, the cops finally cleared their holsters—
—and Yamato was sheathed before their hammer clicks finished echoing. The blade's absence left a vacuum in the air, the officers blinking at suddenly empty hands. Vergil leaned against the splintered doorframe, arms crossed, the picture of indolence. Rain misted his coat, catching on the silver embroidery like dew on spider silk. "Descriptions rarely do," he mused. The officers' radios crackled with static—no backup, just dead air. Gotham held its breath.
Gordon's glove creaked as he lifted a hand, signaling the men to stand down. His eyes never left Vergil's. "You murdered seventeen people in that alley." The words were accusation and offering both. Vergil examined his nails. "Eighteen," he corrected mildly. "You missed the one in the dumpster." A lie. The woman had lived. But Gordon's flinch was worth the fiction.
Rain dripped from the detective's hat brim between them, each drop a metronome. "They were human beings," Gordon ground out. Vergil tilted his head, the way a surgeon might regard a faulty scalpel. "And I don't count the Joker as human." Yamato's hilt warmed against his palm. "Do you?" The silence stretched taut. Outside, a cop's boot scuffed concrete—nervous, shifting. Gordon's jaw worked. The truth sat between them like a severed head.
The detective exhaled through his nose. "This isn't about him." Vergil's laugh was a winter wind through dead branches. "Everything in this city is about him." He stepped closer, ignoring the way the officers twitched. Gordon stood his ground, though his pulse jumped under Vergil's gaze. "You let that *thing* live for decades," Vergil murmured, "and now you're here for *me*?" The katana's tip traced an idle line in the air, splitting raindrops mid-fall. "How… sentimental."
Gordon's hand twitched toward his revolver. Vergil watched the thought form and die behind his eyes. Smart man. The detective swallowed hard. "You don't get to decide who's human," he said, but the words lacked conviction. Vergil smiled. Behind them, the rain painted Gotham's alleyways in greys and blacks, the scent of wet asphalt sharpening the air.
"Oh?" Vergil tilted his head, slow as a blade tipping. "Then when your daughter was paralyzed waist-down by Joker, you still thought of him as human?" The officers behind Gordon stiffened, one muttering Barbara's name under his breath. The detective's breath hitched—just once. Vergil watched the truth flicker across his face like neon reflections in a puddle.
Gordon's knuckles cracked as his fists clenched. "That's different." Vergil exhaled through his nose. "No. It's hypocrisy." Yamato's hilt warmed in his grip, the leather creaking softly. "You let him live because you believed in rules—in mercy." A pause, deliberate. "But mercy is just fear with a prettier name."
The detective's revolver cleared its holster this time—too slow, always too slow—but Vergil was already stepping through space itself. The blade's edge kissed Gordon's throat from behind, whispering against stubble. "Tell Batman," Vergil murmured into his ear, breath cool as grave dirt, "that if he wants answers, he'll have to ask properly." Then the alley folded in on itself, swallowing him whole, leaving only the echo of his parting words and the taste of ozone in Gordon's mouth.
Three nights later, the Bat signal clawed at Gotham's smog-choked sky, its beam trembling like a drunk's flashlight. Gordon stood on the rooftop, knuckles white around his thermos, flanked by SWAT in riot gear. They didn't see him arrive—one moment the rooftop was empty, the next Vergil stood bathed in the signal's glow, Yamato resting against his shoulder. The officers' rifles snapped up in unison, red dots dancing across his coat like fireflies. Vergil didn't blink. "How adorable," he said, and the words carved smiles into the men's Kevlar vests.
Gordon's thermos hit the concrete with a dull thud. "You wanted answers?" Vergil's smirk was a scalpel sliding between ribs. The SWAT team's radios erupted in static as Yamato hummed to life, its edge splitting the Bat signal's beam into prismatic shards. One officer's helmet slid cleanly from his head, the cut so precise his hair remained perfectly parted. Vergil watched the man's face rearrange—confusion, then horror, then the dawning realization that he should be dead. "Relax," Vergil murmured. "If I wanted you dead, you'd already be in pieces."
The night air thickened with the scent of sweat and gun oil. Gordon exhaled sharply through his nose. "What are you?" Vergil tilted his head, considering the question—or perhaps considering how best to dissect it. Above them, the Bat signal flickered once, then died with a groan of failing electronics. In the sudden dark, Vergil's voice was a blade unsheathed: "Do you believe in demons, Commissioner?"
One SWAT officer's rifle clattered to the rooftop. Another crossed himself. Gordon didn't move—not when the radios burst into frantic static, not when Vergil stepped forward and the concrete cracked underfoot like thin ice. "I believe in men who think they're gods," Gordon rasped, hand hovering near his revolver. Vergil's smile was a wound in the gloom. "
Let me tell you a story, Detective," he murmured, Yamato's tip carving lazy arcs in the air that left afterimages of blue fire. "Once, a demon named Sparda fell in love with a woman from the mortal world." Neon from the streets below painted his cheekbones in garish pinks and greens, casting his shadow long enough to swallow the rooftop whole. "My mother."
The confession hung between them like a noose. Gordon's pulse hammered against his collar—not from fear, Vergil noted, but from the terrible weight of truth settling over Gotham's skyline. Somewhere below, a car alarm wailed before cutting off abruptly, as if something had silenced it mid-breath. Vergil tilted Yamato vertically, watching streetlights fracture through the blade. "She named me Vergil," he said, and the name tore through the night like a declaration of war.
Gordon's hand found his revolver at last, fingers trembling—not from the cold, but from the way Vergil's words slithered between his ribs.
"My brother Dante," Vergil continued, flicking Yamato's tip to puncture a passing raindrop mid-fall, "could swing Rebellion before he could spell it." The blade's edge caught the distant glow of a GCPD patrol car, painting the SWAT team's faces in fractured red. "Our mother would bandage his scraped knees with the same hands that once stitched Sparda's wounds." The memory tasted like blood and honeysuckle—the way Eva's smile had faltered when their training left bruises, yet never stopped them from sparring.
One officer's rifle clattered to the rooftop. Vergil didn't turn to look. The rain hissed where it met Yamato's edge, splitting into twin streams that steamed against the steel. "She died because we were too weak to protect her," he said, and Gotham's skyline blurred behind the sudden warp of space around him—not tears, never tears. Behind Gordon, a SWAT operative vomited into his gas mask. The stench of bile mixed with gun oil and ozone.
The detective's revolver sagged in his grip. Vergil watched the man's throat work as he swallowed—once, twice—before speaking through clenched teeth: "That's no excuse for what you've done." Yamato flicked upward, its tip lifting Gordon's chin with surgical precision. The blade was warm where it kissed skin. "No," Vergil agreed. "It's a reason." The katana hummed, resonating with the memory of his mother's blood soaking into hardwood floors. The scent had clung to his childhood like cheap cologne.
Gordon's pulse jumped under the steel. Vergil leaned closer, close enough to count the burst capillaries in the detective's eyes. "And that," he whispered, "was the day I decided I needed nothing." The admission tasted like the first clean cut through rotten flesh. "No friends, no family, no loved ones." Yamato's edge bit deeper, drawing a single bead of blood that traced the line of Gordon's jaw. "All I need is power." The blade trembled—not from hesitation, but hunger. "And the motivation to get more."
The rooftop exhaled. Somewhere below, a garbage truck compacted its load with a metallic scream. Gordon's breath fogged against Vergil's cheek, smelling of nicotine and dread. For the first time since stepping onto Gotham's streets, Vergil felt something almost like peace. The kind that comes after a forest fire, when the ashes settle and the saplings begin their slow crawl toward the sun.