Chapter 45: Double Vision
The cavern’s oppressive heat pulsed in time with Dante’s labored breathing. He stood over Cain’s ruined corpse, the stench of charred flesh, blood, and voided bowels thick in the scorching air. Justice. Cold.Brutal. Complete. A grim satisfaction settled over him, colder than the Ninth Circle’s ice, momentarily eclipsing the agony screaming from every nerve ending. He’d reclaimed a shred of power, paid a fraction of the debt owed.
Then, a flicker of darkness at the edge of his vision. Instinctively, he tried to turn his head fully, a movement abruptly halted. The world remained stubbornly flat on his left side. His missing eye. The gaping socket beneath the bandages throbbed with a phantom ache, a constant reminder of Lucifer’s mutilation, of helplessness. He looked down at Cain’s face, frozen in a rictus of agony, one eye wide and vacant, staring sightlessly at the fiery ceiling. The other… the other was intact. A dull, lifeless grey orb, but whole.
A raw, reckless impulse surged through Dante, hotter than the molten rivers. Mine. The thought was primal, possessive. He shouldn’t be here. He shouldn’t be doing this. His body was a shattered vessel held together by willpower and bandages. Every breath was a knife, every heartbeat threatened to burst his abused chest. But the void where his eye should be… it was an open wound on his soul. Cain owed him this. Everything.
With a grunt that tore from his chest, Dante dropped to his knees beside the corpse, ignoring the fresh wave of agony that crashed through him. Blood seeped through the chest bandage, warm and sticky. He ripped off the sodden glove covering his right hand, revealing raw, knotted knuckles, skin peeled back, tendons exposed. He didn’t hesitate. He plunged his thumb and forefinger into the cooling socket of Cain’s remaining eye.
The sensation was grotesque – yielding jelly, slick membranes, the faint resistance of the optic nerve. He hooked his fingers behind the globe and pulled. It came free with a wet, sucking pop. Dante held it up, the grey orb glistening obscenely in the hellfire light, trailing viscous strands. Cain’s eye. A trophy. A necessity.
Dante closed his own remaining eye. He focused inward, past the searing pain, past the trembling weakness. He drew upon the deep, dark wellspring of his infernal power – the same power that fueled this realm. Ancient words, guttural and resonant, scraped from his ruined throat. They weren't elegant incantations; they were commands, demands whispered to the fundamental darkness. Shadows coalesced around the stolen eye in his bloody palm. Black tendrils of pure necromantic energy snaked forth, wrapping around the orb, sinking into it. He felt the residual essence of Cain dissolve, burned away, replaced by a thrumming resonance that vibrated against his own demonic signature. The witchcraft was brutal, primal – a forced binding, a repurposing of flesh and spirit.
He raised his free hand to his own face. With trembling fingers, slick with Cain’s blood and his own, he peeled back the edge of the bandage covering his left eye socket. The exposed cavity felt raw, exposed to the searing air. He didn't flinch. He brought Cain’s eye, now pulsating faintly with absorbed dark energy, to the gaping hole. He pushed.
The pressure was immense, agonizing. He felt the orb squeeze against torn muscles and shattered bone. A sharp, electric jolt ran through his skull as the necromantic binding took hold. The optic nerve, severed by Lucifer, writhed like a dying snake, then fused with the invading tissue in a burst of painful magic. Dante gasped, a strangled sound, as the world lurched violently.
Then… depth. Suddenly, overwhelmingly, the flatness vanished. The cavern walls surged with dimensionality. The flickering flames had layers, textures he hadn't perceived before. He could see the minute cracks in the obsidian floor, the swirling currents within the molten rivers. He could see.Fully. Binocularly. The stolen eye settled into its new home, cold and alien, yet undeniably functional. Vision flooded back, sharp and clear, but tinted with a faint, unnerving grey filter, a lingering echo of Cain’s stolen sight. It felt… intrusive. Wrong. Yet undeniably his now.
He swayed violently, the combined toll of the magic, the brutal surgery on himself, and his existing injuries hitting him like a hammer blow. Black spots danced at the edges of his restored vision. He clutched his chest, feeling fresh warmth bloom beneath the bandages. Too much. Fucking idiot. He shouldn’t be upright, let alone performing dark rituals in Hell. He needed… home. Bed. Before he collapsed onto Cain’s corpse.
He focused on the library – the smell of old parchment and leather, the muted colors, the feeling of Dabi nearby. With a desperate surge of will, he tore through the fabric of space. The transition was agonizing, a white-hot rip through his core. The fiery cavern vanished.
He reappeared standing on the thick Persian rug in the mansion’s library. The sudden shift from blistering heat and violence to the quiet, book-lined room was jarring. The cool air hit his sweat-and-blood-slicked skin like a shock. He stumbled, catching himself heavily against the edge of Hela’s massive oak desk. The impact jarred his broken ribs, drawing a sharp, involuntary gasp.
"Jesus fucking Christ!" Vincent’s voice exploded from the plush armchair he’d been sprawled in. He shot to his feet, eyes wide with alarm and anger. Dabi, curled in a nearby chair with a book, dropped it instantly, scrambling up. Lilith, sitting rigidly on a sofa, went pale. Hela, standing by the tall windows, turned slowly, her obsidian eyes instantly sharp, scanning Dante’s condition.
"Where the fuck did you go?" Vincent demanded, storming towards him. He took in Dante’s appearance – the blood-soaked bandages, the pallor worse than before, the fresh crimson bloom on his chest pad, the trembling weakness. "Look at you! You look like shit warmed over! What the hell were you thinking, teleporting out like that?" He reached out, maybe to grab Dante’s arm, maybe to steady him.
Dante flinched back minutely, a reflexive twitch born of recent violation. He straightened as much as he could, leaning heavily on the desk. The world tilted slightly with the movement. He met Vincent’s furious gaze with his own. The restored left eye felt cold, unnatural, but it worked. It saw the worry warring with Vincent’s anger. "Out," Dante rasped, his voice wrecked, barely audible. He offered nothing else. The word hung in the suddenly silent room, a wall.
Vincent stared, dumbfounded, his mouth working soundlessly for a second. "Out? Out? That’s all you’ve got? You vanish for hours looking like you crawled out of a slaughterhouse, reappear looking even worse, and just say 'out'?!"
Dabi moved closer, his blue eyes wide with concern, lingering on the fresh blood. "Dante… are you okay? What happened?" His voice was soft, laced with fear. He reached out tentatively, his fingers brushing Dante’s bloodied forearm. The touch sent a jolt through Dante – grounding, yet unsettling after the horrors he’d inflicted and endured.
Hela stepped forward, her gaze piercing. She didn’t look at the blood first. Her obsidian eyes locked onto Dante’s face. Specifically, onto his left eye. Her expression shifted minutely, a flicker of surprise, then intense scrutiny. She saw the faint grey cast to the iris, the unnatural stillness compared to his own stormy grey. "Dante," she stated, her voice low and resonant, cutting through Vincent’s simmering outrage. "Your eye. You have two eyes."
Vincent blinked, his tirade momentarily forgotten. He peered closely. "Holy shit… he does. How…?"
Dabi’s gaze snapped to Dante’s face, realization dawning. "Your eye… it’s back? But… how?"
Hela remained fixated. "Where did you acquire it?" Her tone demanded truth, though her expression was unreadable.
Dante met her gaze steadily with both eyes now. The borrowed one felt cold in its socket. He saw the ancient knowledge in Hela’s eyes, the understanding of dark magic, the unspoken question of the cost. He couldn’t tell them about Cain. Not the gore, not the torture, not the brutal reclamation. The shame, the violation, the cold fury… it was his burden. The eye was a tool. A necessity. Nothing more.
He pushed himself off the desk, swaying again. The room seemed to pulse. He needed to lie down. Now. Before he fell. He looked at Hela, then vaguely towards the others. His voice, when it came, was flat, exhausted, a deliberate dismissal wrapped in a lie. "A friend," he murmured.
Silence descended, thick and heavy. Vincent looked ready to explode again. Lilith watched with haunted eyes. Dabi’s worry deepened into confusion and a flicker of hurt at the evasion. Hela simply held Dante’s gaze for a long, unnerving moment. She saw the lie. She saw the agony etched into every line of his body. She saw the chilling emptiness behind the restored vision. She saw the abyss he’d stared into, and perhaps, what he’d dragged back with him.
Dante didn’t wait for further questions. He couldn’t. A wave of dizziness crashed over him, turning the library into a swirling vortex of color and shadow. The borrowed eye blurred. He took a shaky step towards the door, towards the sanctuary of his room, but his legs buckled. Darkness surged at the edges of his vision, both eyes failing as his body finally, violently, rebelled against the impossible strain. He pitched forward, collapsing onto the ornate rug, the world fading to black before he even hit the floor. The last sensation was the muffled sound of Dabi’s frantic cry and Vincent’s sharp curse, echoing from a great distance.
The darkness wasn’t empty. It pulsed with fragmented echoes: Cain’s choked screams, the wet rip of flesh, the searing heat of his own Inferno, the sickening crunch as bone yielded beneath his fist. Pain, a familiar, grinding companion, anchored Dante as consciousness seeped back, viscous and unwelcome. It wasn’t the sharp agony of fresh wounds, but a deep, pervasive ache radiating from his shattered ribs, the raw socket where Cain’s eye now resided, and the phantom burn where his wings should have been. Cool sheets pressed against his skin, a stark contrast to Hell’s furnace breath. Softness. Sanctuary. He lay utterly still, breathing shallowly through the discomfort, letting the quiet reality of the bedroom solidify around him.
Moonlight bled through a gap in the heavy curtains, painting a silver stripe across the floor. It illuminated Dabi, slumped in an armchair pulled close to the bed. His head rested against the high back, tilted at an awkward angle, mouth slightly open. Dark circles bruised the skin beneath his closed eyes. One hand lay limp on the armrest, fingers loosely curled. Watching. He’d been watching Dante sleep. The sight pierced through Dante’s icy numbness, a sharp, unexpected pang. Dabi looked exhausted, vulnerable. Dante’s gaze traced the sharp line of his jaw, the faint scar tissue marring his neck, the way his blue-black hair fell messily across his forehead. A knot tightened in Dante’s chest, different from the physical pain. Guilt? Shame? He pushed himself upright, ignoring the protest from his ribs, the dull throb in his skull. The movement was stiff, deliberate. He reached across the short distance separating bed and chair.
His bandaged right hand, knuckles still raw beneath the gauze, closed gently over Dabi’s limp fingers resting on the chair arm. Cool skin met his own. With his left hand, the one attached to the arm Cain broke before Malak tore him apart, Dante lifted his fingers towards Dabi’s face. He hesitated for a fraction of a second, hovering near the scarred cheekbone, before letting his fingertips brush against Dabi’s skin with deliberate softness. A feather-light touch tracing the edge of rough scar tissue. "Dabi," Dante murmured, his voice a low rasp scraped raw from screaming, from commanding infernal brutes. "Wake up."
Dabi’s eyelids fluttered instantly. A soft intake of breath. His blue eyes blinked open, unfocused for a heartbeat before sharpening, locking onto Dante’s face mere inches from his own. Concern flooded his gaze, chasing away the remnants of sleep. "Dante?" His voice was thick, sleep-roughened. He shifted, trying to sit straighter, his hand instinctively tightening around Dante’s where it held his. "Shit. Are you okay? Did something happen? Pain?" His eyes scanned Dante’s face, lingering on the fresh bandages visible beneath the loose sleep shirt, searching for signs of distress.
Dante didn’t pull his hands away. He kept his left fingers resting lightly against Dabi’s cheek, anchoring himself in the warmth, the solid reality of him. The borrowed eye saw the genuine worry etched into Dabi’s features, the exhaustion, the unwavering focus. "For the most part," Dante answered, the rasp softening slightly. He held Dabi’s gaze, both eyes now – his own stormy grey and Cain’s unnervingly flat grey. The silence stretched, filled only by their breathing. The weight of his actions, his disappearance, the evasion upon his return, pressed down on him. He saw the flicker of remembered hurt in Dabi’s eyes, quickly masked by concern. Dante swallowed, the motion painful. "Back there," he began, his voice dropping even lower, rough with more than disuse. "When I… came back. Collapsed. Before." He paused, searching Dabi’s face. "I’m sorry. For how I was. Shutting you out. Shutting everyone out. Saying… ‘a friend’." The lie tasted like ash now, bitter and corrosive.
Dabi’s thumb moved slightly, stroking the back of Dante’s bandaged hand. A silent acknowledgment. "You were… wrecked," Dabi said softly, no accusation, just observation. "In shock. Bleeding everywhere." He didn’t look away. "Where did you go, Dante? Really go?" The question hung between them, heavy with unspoken dread. He knew. He had to know, after seeing Dante return drenched in blood that wasn’t entirely his own, with a new eye radiating dark magic.
Dante took a slow, shallow breath, feeling his ribs protest. The phantom screams echoed louder. The scent of burning flesh seemed to permeate the cool bedroom air. He forced himself to hold Dabi’s gaze, to not flinch from the truth reflected back at him. "Cain," Dante stated, the name a harsh scrape in the quiet room. No embellishment. No justification. Just the stark fact. "I went back to the Ninth Circle. Found him." He saw the understanding dawn in Dabi’s eyes, followed swiftly by a flicker of horror, quickly suppressed. Dante pushed on, the words coming now, cold and precise, like shards of obsidian. "I took him to my Inferno. The real one. Not the club." He paused, the images flooding back: Cain’s arrogance dissolving into terror, the brutal efficiency of Malak summoned from molten rock, the sounds. "I broke him. Every bone I could reach. Made him feel helpless. Used Malak on him." Dante’s voice remained flat, devoid of inflection, describing the horror clinically. "The brute fucked him. Hard. Tore him open. Burned him from the inside." He didn’t describe the size, the heat, the screams that weren't human anymore. Dabi could imagine. "Then I carved him apart. Slowly. Until he begged for death." Dante’s gaze didn’t waver. "I gave it to him. Eventually. Throat cut. Slow." He fell silent. The confession hung in the air, thick with the stench of violence and vengeance. He waited for the recoil, the disgust, the judgment he knew he deserved. He braced for Dabi to pull his hand away.
Dabi didn’t move. His blue eyes held Dante’s dual gaze, searching the stormy grey and the cold, stolen grey. The horror was still there, deep in his pupils, a visceral reaction to the brutality described. But it wasn’t directed at Dante. It was for Cain, for what had been done, for the sheer abyss Dante had been thrown into. Dabi’s thumb resumed its slow stroke on Dante’s hand. His other hand lifted, covering Dante’s fingers where they still rested against his cheek, pressing them gently against his skin. "Okay," Dabi breathed, the word soft but solid. "Okay, Dante." He leaned forward
Dabi leaned forward, closing the small distance Dante had bridged. His lips met Dante’s with aching softness, a deliberate counterpoint to the brutal truths just spoken. It wasn’t hunger; it was an anchor, a silent affirmation in the cool, moonlit stillness. Dante’s mouth yielded beneath his, the tension in his ravaged body easing incrementally, replaced by a profound, bone-deep exhaustion. The kiss deepened slowly, a shared breath, Dabi’s hand sliding from Dante’s cheek to cradle the back of his neck, fingers tangling gently in the sweat-damp hair at his nape. Dante’s bandaged hand tightened slightly on Dabi’s, the only sign of the storm still churning beneath the surface calm.
They broke apart, foreheads resting together, breathing mingling in the quiet. Dante’s dual-toned eyes – one storm, one chilling grey – held Dabi’s, searching. The cold fury, the lingering horror of Cain’s end, seemed momentarily banked, replaced by a vulnerability so raw it stole Dabi’s breath. "Lay down with me," Dante murmured, his voice a shredded whisper against Dabi’s lips. The request wasn’t sexual; it was primal, a plea for sanctuary. "Just… hold me. Please."
Dabi didn’t hesitate. He stood, guiding Dante back against the pillows with infinite care, mindful of the bandages, the shattered ribs. He kicked off his shoes and slid in beside him, the mattress dipping under his weight. Dante immediately turned into him, burying his face against Dabi’s chest, seeking the solid warmth beneath the thin fabric of his shirt. Dabi wrapped his arms around him, one hand splayed protectively over Dante’s back, avoiding the worst of the damage, the other cradling his head. Dante’s body was a tense line against him, trembling faintly, every ragged breath a shuddering effort. Dabi pressed a kiss into Dante’s hair, inhaling the lingering scents of antiseptic, blood, and the faint, unsettling ozone tang of dark magic clinging to the stolen eye.
"Right here," Dabi murmured, tightening his hold just enough to be felt, a steady pressure against the chaos. "Not going anywhere." He felt Dante’s grip on his shirt tighten convulsively, then slowly relax as the tremors subsided. Dante’s breathing, harsh and shallow at first, gradually deepened, losing its ragged edge. The rigid tension bled from his muscles, leaving him heavy and pliant against Dabi’s side. Within minutes, the harsh rhythm evened out completely, slipping into the slow, steady cadence of exhausted sleep. Dabi remained perfectly still, listening to that breath, feeling the fragile weight of Dante’s trust settled against him. Outside, the moon cast its silver path across the floor, illuminating dust motes dancing in the stillness. Inside, Dabi held the line against the encroaching dark, a silent vigil over the shattered prince finally finding temporary peace. Dante’s fingers, still loosely curled in Dabi’s shirt, went slack.