#and haures being an extension of my own chronic illness and pain and my own intrusive thoughts manifested

[valentinesparda]

Hey Valentine!! Been thinking about DMC lately and was wondering if you could tell me some stuff about your DMC s/i? :0 perhaps what their relationship with Vergil is like? -[Wayfinderships]

@wayfinderships OH BOY OH BOY IVE BEEN THINKING ABOUT DMC RECENTLY TOO !!!! i miss my half demon husband. it sure has been a whole hot minute since I talked about gabriel in general, and it sure has just hit me that you and most of my current mutuals completely missed my dmc era, so!!

gabriel is my self insert, and they are a collector of demonic goods, a purveyor of powerful artefacts, and they meet vergil shortly before dmc3 is taking place, mostly because their paths cross through happenstance and they offer up information for him. they're around the same age as the twins at this point during the timeline, the two of them are kind of friends and kind of bickering back and forth, and eventually when Vergil Goes To Hell, they kind of dig themself into a hole of work since they're the apprentice to the actual collector they have been working for

um to make a long story short these are bullet points:

find a particular artefact associated to a general of hell named haures, who has his own little plans and manages to take possession of gabriel gradually over time, for the most part they function like they green goblin talking to his own mask

haures corrupts them and essentially demonizes them so they functionally stop aging / age so slowly that it isn't really noticeable

they are also hearing from haures about mundus and sparda and are doing their own little research, maybe in hopes of coming across that one weird white haired dude they met before

their research brings them to fortuna when nero is a little kid !! will expand upon that when i get back around to dmc4

they cross paths with dante a lot!! and he is their friend somewhat

the whole time they're doing all of this they are like actively dying from haures and have to stay in tip-top shape otherwise he will actually kill them!! but no one else can communicate with haures so he's just kind of their intrusive thoughts

badabadaba dmc5 rolls around and v shows up and suddenly it's like they're 20 again and experiencing feelings

anyways gabriel's relationship with vergil was initially a little fling for the short time that they knew each other when they were younger, and tidbits of that are echoed in meeting v. like gabriel wouldn't admit to it and they think they're doing such a good job of hiding it but everyone they know can SEE how they act

and then suddenly vergil is back!! and they are a dam in the process of breaking!! the two of them proceed to bicker like an old married couple and most of vergil's time spent as v winds up being mental anguish and maturity and confronting his own human emotions, so even though they are continuing on that leftover thread from when they were younger and they didn't spend very much time together, it's like they've known eachother forever. like they do care about eachother, clearly, but they're overall very sweet in their own ways and completely awkward in navigating their relationship and feelings. because they are eachothers first love or something. yucky. I'm not approaching the lady in red topic right now because if I do then I have to do mental gymnastics but it's fine, we'll just loophole it

anyways blah blah gabriel and vergil are like. aggressively embarrassed in how they interact with each other, because they're kind of too similar that it's funny, but they do genuinely like eachother. maybe it's just because they were each other's only friend when they were in their teens and were both being manipulated for someone else's gain lol. and after vergil's stay in hell and subsequent Speedrun of the human existence he calms down a little and lets himself learn to love, not just romantically but like, familially. he gets to learn about the people that he left behind again and the one he's never met before (his son), and that is just. so important to me

so gabriel is kind of the only person initially rooting for him, even if they would rather swallow glass than be vulnerable, but they can also have vergil help them control their corruption and possibly use haures to their advantage because i had it set up where he was yeah, a dumbass trying to usurp the throne, but I wanted to plan a whole plot surrounding him and maybe lore connecting him to sparda, specifically

I know i joke about them bickering and being unable to function as real people but i have a very special place in my heart for vergil, not just favourite character wise but also self ship wise. im personally very hardheaded and dragging my real feelings out of me is like literally pulling teeth, so I've hidden a lot of my affections behind jokes and that kind of is also reflected in how I talk about vergil. but i did eventually open up about it and that's where the handfasting ceremony came from. i finally just accepted that i loved him as a character and ive been trying to unlearn my bad behaviors and learn that it's okay to be vulnerable, and not to hold everything in all the time

i like. rambled but its to avoid having to voice how their relationship is in full detail, so all i really have to say is that it's complicated but also plainly simple how they work together, how they love. they do deeply care about the other, and while it takes some time to let the initial feelings go unsaid, they are at their center both very lonely people who have put their trust into someone that they can see themselves in, who know how the other one feels and expresses feelings, with the addition of v functioning as an a-ha moment for vergil while gabriel has had 30 years to think on the guy they first loved - and proceeded to immediately fall back in love with upon seeing again

#asks #panchi tag #UMMMM. sorry i rambled. i got embarrassed and ended up repeating myself a alot #i know what i want to say but there is a lot of feelings that also have to be parsed through and im like. snervous about it #there is actually a lot that has gone into their relationship but i'd rather die than elaborate on the true sweetness #like gabe memorizing poems from vergil's book knowing that their memory is bad & v using blake as a calling card for his bare flirtations #him calling them little vagabond and a sick rose and them having a split second of familiarity ring in their head but choosing to ignore it #and shadow being used as not only a coping mechanism and a method of self protection but also a subconscious extension of his own emotions #and haures being a symbol of gabriel's own sins and his corruption being representative of their trauma and how it sits in them #and haures being an extension of my own chronic illness and pain and my own intrusive thoughts manifested #i dunno am i a little insane?? maybe. #si: gabriel #otp: my morning star #long post