15. Virgil
VIRGIL
When we step into the swamp, it's raining in earnest. Dante pulls up the collar of his coat and hunches against the downpour. I have no need to. The rain passes through me as though I'm a ghost.
Which I am.
But if that's so, I'm a ghost who has experienced something new for the first time in centuries. Not witnessed some fascinating invention or glimpsed beauty through another's memory. Felt something new.
Rain plops heavy and insistent into the normally beguiling stillness of the water. Even hunched against the weather, there's a looseness in Dante's posture I haven't seen before. His coat flies out around him, and he moves without bothering with precise footwork, without calculating each step.
I can't hear it now, but I imagine the watch ticking steadily at his wrist. Moving forward at last.
I've lost count of the number of souls I've guided through their genesis realms. I've witnessed so many variations of grief in that space that their forms have become nameless.
I've seen devastation that brings people to their knees and keeps them trapped in the loop of what-could-have-been for years of mortal time.
I've seen bitterness ignite into fury that made me grateful I'm untouchable, that hurled objects pass through me without harm.
I've seen people blame themselves, beg and bargain with forces that don't answer, curse their version of god, or simply go numb and retreat so far inward they become unreachable.
I have never, not once in the millennia, seen someone brought to tears of joy.
Tears of joy for another.
For someone they once loved who has moved on without them.
Dante splashes his way across the bog, and I struggle to keep pace, lost in my thoughts. When he reaches the door, he stops and looks up, letting the rain fall against his cheeks.
"I feel good about this one, Virgil. I mean, what could be more difficult than seeing my past?"
I open my lips to protest, but he meets my gaze at that moment, and he's smiling. A real smile. Not the easy, practiced ones that Matthew and his husband shared from the previous realm, but genuine, nonetheless. Crinkles that I’ve never noticed before touch the corners of his eyes.
Thoughts tangle in my mind. Words like pride and caution and something else I can’t remember at this moment.
But all I do is smile in return.
Dante turns and opens the door.
“Dante,” I gasp.
But he's already walked into the space. I follow behind, hurrying to catch up. He burns with energy, radiating it like he might glow and overtake the shadows of this place. Damn hell through sheer force of will.
He doesn't know this realm as I do, though.
Successes do not promise more of the same here. This isn't the financial district of a modern city, where momentum builds and compounds. This is a place built on ancient rules and hidden things, whispered secrets and patient lies.
The room is polished. That's the first thing I notice.
A long wooden table, sleek floors buffed to a mirror shine, glass windows stretching the height of two men.
The view reveals New York at night but from impossibly high above.
We gaze down like deities upon our realm, weighing it with silent judgment.
Dante has transformed.
The man who smiled in the rain is gone. In his place stands someone wearing a new suit.
It’s dark, precise, expensive in a way that doesn't announce itself.
His shoulders have rolled back, his chin lifted.
He glances at his watch, and it's almost as though time obeys him once again.
The suit fits him with cruel precision, tailored to his impressive height and broad shoulders.
But it's armor. Despite the luxurious material, there's no softness here. No entry point.
Another man steps forward. "Mr. Dante, a pleasure."
"Mr. Harrington."
"Dante," I hiss as I walk up beside him. Then louder, "Dante." Hoping, begging that the tether of the name might draw him back to himself.
He looks over at me, and an expression flickers across his face. His teeth catch on the edge of his bottom lip. "Vir—"
"Mr. Dante, if you'll do the honors."
Another man sits at the table and gestures to a leather portfolio lying before him.
"Dante, don't give in to this," I say. Foolishly, I reach for his arm—and my hands pass through its substance, swinging back toward me helplessly. "Dante, please. You're more than this. Please. Don't stop here."
Dante turns toward me again. His eyes have gone flat, assessing. "Mr. Vernon, is that right?"
"It's Virgil," I say.
He hesitates, then frowns. "I asked you for mineral water ten minutes ago. Why are your hands presently empty?" He turns back to the table before I can respond. "Forgive me the disruption, gentlemen."
"Of course." One of the men waves a dismissive hand. "It's so difficult to find competent assistants these days."
Dante gives a contemptuous huff in reply, paired with an arched eyebrow of agreement.
"Dante," I scream. "Dante, it's me. Virgil. Don't do this. Don't let hell claim you here. Not for this!" My voice cracks with a desperation I haven't felt in centuries. "Dante!"
The meeting proceeds as though a man does not stand shouting on its edges. At some point, I stop screaming and start pacing. Then watching.
Dante sits perfectly upright. He laughs. It’s fake and hollow, but with the appropriate measure of charm folded in. The men praise him, clasp his hand, defer to his judgment.
Here he is safe. Protected. Elevated by the work of his own hands.
Not vulnerable.
Not touchable.
To this version of Dante, Matthew was nothing but a stepping stone. Relationships merely barricades to be demolished. Love a liability to be liquidated.
Time passes, as it’s wont. I’ve long since lost the ability to measure the substance accurately. Hours bleed into days, days into years, until the whole of it becomes one indistinguishable ache.
Given how thoroughly Dante has ceased to register my presence, it becomes easy to study him.
He's handsome in that dangerous, armored way he was when I first spotted him walking his empty loop through the conjured streets of Manhattan.
His jaw is cut as sharp as a blade. He's Hercules reborn, burning through his labors, chasing eternity, slaughtering everything of meaning along his path.
It strikes me now that perhaps my fascination with him was never solely based on his connection to life, that vitality that still clung to him like warmth from a dying fire.
Perhaps it was something baser. More ancient.
The pull of physical beauty, yes, but paired with some ineffable spark that drew me to him before I understood his depths.
Before I knew him as a man who had suffered greatly and emerged not cruel but cautious.
Before I witnessed him weep tears of joy for another's happiness.
Before I realized he was someone I could admire.
Perhaps even something more than that, given time. Given different circumstances. Given anything other than what we are.
But that is a hopeless thought. He is dead. I am worse than dead. We stand in hell, and a loop has swallowed him whole.
The room shudders. Water seeps over my shoes.
"No," I whisper, though I know I speak only to myself now. I've lost him to the fantasy. Endless time has passed.
Another tremor. More water, rising.
I rush to Dante and attempt to grasp him once more. It's hopeless, but I cannot stop myself from trying. "Dante," I plead. "Remember who you are. It's Virgil, the infuriating ancient poet who pecks at you with endless riddles. Please. Break the loop while we can still walk from this place."
More water floods in, swirling around my ankles now.
I must leave before I'm taken with it. The bog is one of the few things that could capture me. No one cares for me enough to search in earnest. I would sink beneath it alongside Dante and unravel what few threads keep me tethered to sanity in this half-reality I inhabit.
Another tremor. Dust cascades from the ceiling. The water climbs toward my calves.
"Dante," I beg. "Dante. Come back to me."
He continues speaking of mergers and acquisitions and quarterly projections as though I do not exist.
We have found the beast that can slay the hero.
I am certain I still possess a heart, for I feel it fracturing within me. I turn and walk toward the door. I don't need to open it, as I can simply pass through, escape, survive.
I look back.
At that moment, Dante glances over his shoulder. He doesn't see me—not really—but it's as though something within him senses my departure. Some fragment buried beneath all that armor feels me leaving.
An expression passes across his face. One that reminds me of Mikey Dante begging his mother for food, of a twenty-seven-year-old Michael making promises he won't keep to a man he loves, of the wide eyes of the newly minted Mr. Dante as his worldview shatters, his capacity for trust explodes.
Maybe it's that look that turns me back.
The water rises. He's sinking into the bog. And he doesn't even know it.
I should leave. But to what purpose? To walk these endless paths again? To guide another lost soul only to watch them drown at some later junction? To beg and weep and witness, always untouching, always unhoping?
Perhaps I've finally found someone singular. Someone worth staying for.