A/N: If some of the lines sound familiar and you can figure out where it's from, well then kudos to you. It inspired this fic. Any characters you are not familiar with in the DMC universe are mine. Happy reading
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Prologue (my first EVER for a DMC fic) >.<
Memories and thoughts encompass my core in a blind realm of disconnection. I am my only company here. My essence fades every moment, my thoughts become incoherent and gibberish, and my memories...my memories are burning, disintegrating into grey ash that falls away into the nothingness around me, and I feel the pressure on my shoulders lighten with every particle that disappears. Because today I realized that I have allowed myself to be misguided. I will be deceived no more.
Throughout all my life I have straddled two worlds. The world of the demons, and that of the humans. I thought I had no choice. I am of both worlds. That always was, and will forever be, the reality. I merely chose to embrace the part of me I believed was the strongest – a poor choice, I now admit.
Today I rediscovered what I knew when I was young. One cannot be half of oneself. Denying who you are – or in my case, what you are – deprives you the chance to grow into a fully functional, powerful and intact being.
She's at it again. I see her kneeling before a candle-lit shrine in a shadowed room, her slender hands clutched together at her chest, sweat beads sliding from her temples to join the downward journey of her tears. She's beautiful – there's nothing worthy on earth to compare her beauty to. She looks so real, her golden strands of delicate hair glowing so vividly that it takes me a moment to accept that what I see is but a memory playing through my mind for the final time. She rocks back and forth in distressed motion, her eyes squeezed shut tight, her lips quietly exhaling her desperation.
...Immortal soul combined with immortal body...good Lord, don't judge them for my foolishness, save them from the wicked, remember what he's done, all the good he's done for Your people...
She's doing it again. Asking for forgiveness, pleading for mercy, begging for a saviour. I never did understand what she'd been so afraid of, not back then, when everything was as it should be.
"Mom?" Her eyes fly open and she turns to me with a face etched with guilt.
"Darling, I'll be with you in a moment."
"What did you do that's so bad?"
"Darling, please, mommy needs to be alone right now..."
"Is it something I did wrong?"
"No, no, of course not..."
"This is the fourth time today you've come to pray. To grovel for God's mercy. Why?"
"That is between me and God."
"Is it because Dante ate all the chocolate? I told him not to, but he never listens to me."
"Oh, darling, it's not your fault." And she pulls me into a smothering, leg-burning long hug.
What is sacrifice? What does it mean to make a real difference? Sacrificing my humanity to feed the devil in me – a high price to pay for an unworthy goal – it could hardly suffice as a sacrifice.
No.
Sacrifice means to give up something pricelessly valuable for an equally valuable cause. Something that could never be retrieved. An eye for an eye. A life for a life.
A life; a mother. A brother. A family.
My essence. My power. Wipe the slate clean, start afresh. Memory lost, cast away deliberately, never to be recalled. Never to return.
What has been lost, and will be forgotten, will never be replaced – there won't be another Eva. There won't be another brother. The family that once was will never be again. I know the past will find its way back to me and I will inevitably look it in the face one day.
That doesn't matter. I won't remember. I'll be cleansed.
Knowledge is power – today I exchange that power for my freedom.
