When I want to, [Vergil says. Which he recognizes may sound a bit strange. He knows Nero's smart enough to understand the unspoken implication of where Vergil had been if he wasn't in the human world. It wouldn't be an unfair assumption to think Vergil would be like a man starved, eager to consume everything and anything he can get his hands on. Perhaps if his temperament or the circumstances of why he was gone for so long were different, he might. Vergil doesn't take a bite of the toast just yet in trying to think of how exactly to explain it better to Nero without necessarily getting into the worst parts of it. He nods in the direction of his bookshelf.] I used to have a bookshelf about that size in my bedroom with nearly every shelf filled. I shared it with Dante, but it felt like it was mine more than his. Most of the books were mine, and he only ever really touched them to hide them from me so I'd pay attention to him.
The book that I— That V carried. I only had it for a few days before... I didn't even get a chance to properly read it. And I'd left it behind the day Mother died. I didn't bring it with me to the playground and I never went back for it. I simply took the Yamato and left. [There had been nothing left for Vergil to go back for, only a path forward.] But it survived. Of all the books that were once mine, it was the only one to truly survive the fire and the elements and time.
[He glances at Nero, smiling faintly.]
It was the first thing I reclaimed as my own, but it still felt strange in some ways to call it mine.
[He doesn't know if that actually clarified anything for Nero, but Vergil hopes it does. He hopes Nero understands that the times where he seems indifferent or even outright resistant to new things and experiences isn't because he's a stick in the mud or because of some haughty perspective that nothing new can possibly be as good as what he knew. The day he lost his family was the day Vergil began to lose pieces of himself, and he never once went looking for them again. It's those fragments that he's looking for now. He knows it's an impossible task to reclaim them all and living entirely in the past would serve no purpose, but. He wants as many pieces of himself as he can find back. He owes it to himself and to his family—both those lost and those found—to be the better man he's trying to be. So, he's not always ready for something new. He's not always open to it when there are missing or broken pieces he's trying to account for.]
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The book that I— That V carried. I only had it for a few days before... I didn't even get a chance to properly read it. And I'd left it behind the day Mother died. I didn't bring it with me to the playground and I never went back for it. I simply took the Yamato and left. [There had been nothing left for Vergil to go back for, only a path forward.] But it survived. Of all the books that were once mine, it was the only one to truly survive the fire and the elements and time.
[He glances at Nero, smiling faintly.]
It was the first thing I reclaimed as my own, but it still felt strange in some ways to call it mine.
[He doesn't know if that actually clarified anything for Nero, but Vergil hopes it does. He hopes Nero understands that the times where he seems indifferent or even outright resistant to new things and experiences isn't because he's a stick in the mud or because of some haughty perspective that nothing new can possibly be as good as what he knew. The day he lost his family was the day Vergil began to lose pieces of himself, and he never once went looking for them again. It's those fragments that he's looking for now. He knows it's an impossible task to reclaim them all and living entirely in the past would serve no purpose, but. He wants as many pieces of himself as he can find back. He owes it to himself and to his family—both those lost and those found—to be the better man he's trying to be. So, he's not always ready for something new. He's not always open to it when there are missing or broken pieces he's trying to account for.]