Helios sat at his desk, working through the documents that had piled up there. Since they had ultimately only missed a single day in the lab, not much more had really accumulated.
Still, it was a pretty hefty mountain of paperwork. Especially considering that Helios normally created new medicine first and only afterwards did his documentation.
Apparently, Soley claimed Vale's attention far more than they had initially assumed. Dante might have felt guilty about that, but the staff on site had already destroyed all traces and remnants. Sure, they had been the cause of what had happened—but it hadn't been them who had actively driven the innocent into ruin. Passively, yes. But not with the intent to take lives.
Vale himself had visited Helios that very morning, but soon had to leave again. The night before, he had kept restless watch over his son, though he had fallen more into anger than concern. He had confronted Dante loudly, shouting at him about the circumstances that had led to Helios's poor condition. Only after a while had he come to realize that not even a guardian was able to stop a sudden fever.
In the end, it had turned out fairly mild, since Helios had immediately yelled at anyone who came too close to stay away. At some point, Vale had given up and instead kept asking how he was until he finally had a doctor called—shortly before leaving for his business trip.
In all this chaos, Dante only hoped that no one had noticed the th two missing fingers on Helios left hand. At least no one had asked questions so far… or looked more closely. Yet the uncertainty gnawed at him.
Dante caught himself staring at Helios again and again. The relationship between father and son was obviously shattered—so much so that the hostility could almost be felt in the air. Dante didn't know exactly what had caused the rift between the two. Perhaps it was the fact that Vale had treated his son like a tool from an early age—since Helios had been eight years old, to be precise. Or perhaps there were even deeper reasons that Helios never confided to anyone. Notably, he never spoke a word about his mother.
Granted, Helios was generally not someone who revealed much about himself, but before taking the position as the Vale family's guardian, Dante had thoroughly informed himself about the young man. He knew the key facts: the time when Helios had started working, the groundbreaking developments he had produced, and finally the founding of Aeternum Pharmaceuticals. The latter had only happened after Vale recognized his son's extraordinary genius.
The Vale family had been wealthy even before, though through trade, not science or research. Only through Helios's talent had Vale been able to lay the foundation to build the pharmaceutical company and turn it into a major player within a short time. For Vale, it had been a stroke of luck. For Helios—perhaps only another chain.
One way or another, the Vale family's trading company was a fact that had personally made it easier for Vale to establish the pharmaceutical business.
About Helios's mother, Dante only knew that she had died young. The few paintings hanging in the manor showed a woman of rare beauty—softly drawn features, dark curls, and an expression that radiated both kindness and pride. Helios had inherited much from her: the curly hair, the full lips, the gentle contours of his face. Even her delicate hands.
Of course, he also carried traits of his father, but Dante kept catching himself thinking how glad he was that Helios resembled his mother more. At least in his imagination, she must have been a warm, loving woman—the complete opposite of Vale. How he would have loved to meet her, perhaps to better understand which parts of Helios had been spared from his father's harshness.
Perhaps, Dante hoped, one day Helios would speak of her, when he was ready to open up.
His gaze drifted back to the young man before him. Helios's face was marked by concentrated sternness: the slight wrinkling of his nose when he disliked a phrasing, the impatient furrowing of his brows as he worked through a document. Again and again, Dante noticed tiny shifts in his expression, nuances he had never consciously perceived before. How had he ever believed Helios's face was unreadable? In truth, it was a constant flow of the smallest, barely tangible changes. He could never get enough of watching him.
Inevitably, his thoughts wandered back to Helios's transformation. He could barely remember his own. It even felt wrong to call it a transformation at all, when the change had only taken place on a cellular level.
He still couldn't believe how quickly Helios had recovered.
A sigh pulled him from his thoughts. Helios raised his head and looked straight at him.
"Dante, if you keep staring at me like that, I'll be full of holes like a piece of cheese."
Dante flinched slightly, caught like a schoolboy. He quickly turned his gaze away—only for it to fall back on Helios a moment later. He cursed himself inwardly for his behavior, which was anything but that of a hardened guardian.
"You really are doing well?" he asked, trying to hide the concern in his voice.
Helios nodded. "I'm getting better by the minute. Honestly, everything's fine. I just can't wait to get this crap finished."
"How is it possible that you've recovered so quickly?" Dante asked thoughtfully. A bad feeling crept over him. The thought made him sick, but he voiced it anyway. "Do you think the remedy didn't work?"
Helios gave him a wide smile. "Who knows. We'll only find out if I run a couple of small tests," he said as he got up.
Dante frowned. "Didn't you once say that blood tests are pointless because nothing specific can be found?"
"I did." Helios began rummaging through the drawers of his desk. "However, I still have blood results of mine that are barely three weeks old. I'd like to compare them with my current blood status. And I also need another blood sample from you. But first…" he explained, digging around in his desk until he seemed to have found what he needed. "Here, catch," he said, tossing a stopwatch to Dante.
The stopwatch sailed in a wide arc through the room—missing Dante by nearly a meter. Only thanks to his reflexes did he manage to grab it at the last moment.
He snorted softly and shook his head. Helios was a genius in his field, but when it came to throwing and aiming, he was hopelessly lost. And yet, that very fact brought a smile to Dante's lips. In the midst of all the grim thoughts, it felt good to be reminded of these human weaknesses.
"A stopwatch?" Dante asked, raising a brow.
"A stopwatch," Helios confirmed. "When I give you the signal, please start the countdown. When I say stop, you stop it, okay?"
Dante nodded.
Helios stepped closer, took Dante's hand with a surprisingly gentle gesture, and studied him with a probing, almost fascinatingly curious gaze. A smile flickered across his lips. "Now."
At that very moment, with a precise cut, he drew the scalpel across Dante's palm. The gash was so deep one could even see the bone. Dante let out a startled sound.
A sharp pain shot through the skin, making Dante's fingers spasm involuntarily. Warm blood welled up, streaming between his fingers as the burning spread deeper into his tissue. The throbbing reached up into his arm—dull but relentless. He clenched his teeth, silently watching as the wound slowly closed—millimeter by millimeter—until, after barely three minutes, nothing remained of the deep cut.
Thoughtfully, Helios looked at the spot where the wound had sealed.
"Three minutes then for a cut to heal. It took nearly seven for you to recover from the poison injection. When your brain was pierced by the bullet, it took just over five minutes. Apparently, it depends on which tissue is injured and how severe the damage is. Considering how long nerves normally take to regenerate, five minutes is truly impressive," Helios murmured to himself.
"What exactly are you trying to test?" Dante asked.
He opened and closed his hand several times, only to realize he felt nothing of the cut anymore. Everything was as usual.
Helios didn't answer right away. Instead, he pressed the scalpel against his own palm. A mischievous smile played on his lips as he said, "Start the clock."
Then he dragged the blade deep across his skin. Blood welled up instantly. A sharp hiss escaped him, followed by an angry curse. He clutched his wrist. "Damn it, that hurts like hell!" he spat. "Why do I feel pain when you never do?!"
Dante couldn't help but laugh. "Oh, I feel it all right. Pain is always there. That's exactly why I hate getting hurt."
They fell silent, both of them watching in fascination as the gaping cut sealed itself before Helios's eyes. Skin and tissue fused seamlessly until nothing remained but a faint rosy trace. Dante stopped the clock once the wound had completely closed. Helios looked at him in surprise.
"Dante?" Helios asked. "How long did it take?"
Dante glanced at the stopwatch and could hardly believe what he saw.
"Seventy-nine seconds."
"That was pretty quick…" Helios said thoughtfully.
He hurried over to his sideboard, grabbed the materials to draw blood, and wasted no time in doing exactly that. He prepared the sample, then picked up his Bunsen burner and held his hand over the flame until he yanked it back with a pained groan.
"Damn it, if only the pain weren't there," he grumbled again, watching as the burn closed just as quickly as the cut had before.
"I think we need pain to hold on to our humanity."
Helios turned back to his samples. With practiced ease he prepared the slides while the scent of alcohol and heated metal still hung in the air. The burn on his hand had taken barely two minutes to close—noticeably faster than Dante's injuries.
"Why do your wounds heal faster than mine?" Dante asked with interest. "Did they change the formulas?"
Helios nodded, without lifting his gaze from his work. "A little, yes. But since I don't really have anything to compare it to, I'd say it's because I tinkered with the substances. Besides, I extracted your DNA. You injected it into me too—the empty vial was still in the case. It was only a theory, but maybe my DNA is adapting to yours, in a sense," he explained as he routinely analyzed his blood, completely ignoring the mountain of paperwork.
"Oh? So you're going to get a bit more muscular now?" Dante teased.
Helios snorted. "Never. I like myself the way I am—you'll never see me with that many muscles," he said with a faint smile. "Jokes aside, I think all the substances have, in a way, interlocked. By now, I assume it's your DNA that made any of this work in the first place. Though I'll admit, I'm not particularly well-versed in that field."
Dante sank into the armchair, which creaked softly under his weight. He leaned his head back, watched Helios's concentrated expression, and asked thoughtfully: "And how will my DNA affect you?"
"In the best case, it only helped anchor the immortality serum into my own DNA."
"And in the worst case?"
Helios shrugged nonchalantly. "It'll be a surprise. We'll know more the next time I die."
A sharp pang shot through Dante's chest. He didn't want to think about that for even a second. He had lost Helios once. A second time was out of the question.
"Anyway, I think by now it was, in a way, a success. I'm not only alive again, but I've gained fairly rapid regeneration. Maybe that's also why my body adapted so quickly and I wasn't out of commission as long as you were back then."
"I'm really glad I didn't have to watch you suffer for an entire week. That one day was bad enough," he said quietly.
"It was the best thing that could have happened," Helios said, before letting out an annoyed sigh. "It was hard enough to come up with a plausible excuse for one day. I would've had serious trouble explaining a whole week."
Helios's intelligent green eyes caught his gaze.
"Did you know they called a doctor?" he asked, as if he still couldn't quite believe it.
Dante nodded. "I couldn't stop them. Your screams were… don't you remember anything?"
"No. It's all pretty blurry."
Dante grimaced. "Let's just say their concern was justified."
Helios snorted. "A quack wouldn't have been able to improve my condition. They should've been aware of that."
"They were. But no one wanted to see you suffer any longer," Dante said softly. "You have no idea how terrible it is to stand by and be completely helpless. The only thing I could do was try to hide your finger stumps."
Helios pressed his lips together briefly. "Believe me, I know very well what that feels like," he said so quietly that Dante could barely understand him. He looked up from his microscope. "I need the contact information for your prosthetics manufacturer. Later I'll ask Spider to bring the man here."
Dante exhaled audibly and grimaced. "Really? Spider?"
"He's still my best man when it comes to assignments in the shadows, and besides, I won't be able to leave here for quite a while, and I need the prosthetics," Helios said irritably. "I'd rather still have all ten fingers, too."
So Spider would take care of getting Helios his prosthetics. That might really be the best option, even if Dante wasn't exactly thrilled about having to face the assassin again. He wasn't worried about Helios—after all, Spider seemed to have a soft spot for him.
He simply had no desire to deal with him himself.
Helios smirked. "I'm just as reluctant to meet him. But he's the only one who'll get the job done without my father finding out about any of this. And he's the only one who can confirm Belladonna's death."
A curse slipped from Dante's lips. "I hadn't even thought of him anymore." His gaze hardened. "I'm pretty sure he's dead."
"You didn't check. He could still be alive," Helios doubted.
"I honestly doubt that," Dante said with confidence. He knew exactly where to drive his blades when he intended to kill someone. "But if it puts your mind at ease, then yes, we really should ask Spider."
"I don't doubt your abilities, Dante. I just don't want any nasty surprises, and that situation wasn't one where everything could be calmly verified," Helios said, giving him a look that could almost be taken as an apology.
"I know…" Dante said quietly.
After that, silence settled over the room, broken only by the soft clinking of glass, the rustling of paper, and the hum of laboratory equipment. Helios worked tirelessly through his analyses, comparing current blood values with old samples, also checking Dante's DNA, and running further small self-tests. He didn't gain much new knowledge, except for the realization that his regeneration was faster than Dante's.
And even by midnight he was still wide awake at work, though fatigue clearly gnawed at him. Dante would have loved nothing more than to drag him home so he could finally rest, but by now he knew Helios too well. Nothing could pull him away from his work once he was absorbed in it.
Around one o'clock in the morning, Helios set aside the last of the documents. Some work still remained unfinished, but a hearty yawn betrayed that he had finally decided to grant his body a break.
Still, he hadn't spoken about why he hated his father so much. Dante burned to finally learn the truth. There was so much he wanted to know about Helios. He often had to hold himself back from blurting out all his questions, even before they became a couple. He didn't want to pressure Helios, or make him feel as though he had to open up before he was ready. Everything in its own time—something they now, fortunately, had plenty of. Dante couldn't help but smile at the thought again and again. It wasn't perfect, but everything would somehow fall into place.
When they arrived at the manor, they grabbed a few snacks from the kitchen that Dante prepared. Thomas had left meals in the fridge for them, which only needed reheating. After eating, they left the dishes in the sink so as not to accidentally wake anyone, and headed to Helios's bedroom, where he immediately set about contacting Spider.
In bed, Helios finally snuggled close to Dante, who pulled the slender body of his lover against him. Helios's skin was warmer than usual, and he seemed to be trembling slightly.
"Everything okay?" Dante whispered, stroking his back soothingly.
Helios nodded. "Maybe I should have rested a little longer, but I don't feel bad. Actually, I'm amazed at how good I feel."
"Not just you," Dante replied softly, relieved.
Helios nestled even closer to him, as if wanting to erase every bit of distance between them. "When things calm down here, I'd like to go on vacation," he said with a smile in his voice. "This time without any mission, fights, or other distractions."
"We'll go wherever you want," Dante promised with a smile.
Another yawn escaped Helios. "There's a place I've always wanted to see…" His voice grew drowsy, the words quieter.
"And where's that?" Dante asked curiously.
Helios murmured, barely audible: "I'll tell you when the time comes."
Moments later his breathing became steady. He had fallen asleep.
Dante looked down at him, his features relaxed, almost peaceful. Carefully, he bent forward and kissed him gently on the forehead. "So our first plan that has nothing to do with violence or blood?" he whispered, more to himself than to Helios. A quiet smile stole across his lips. "I can't wait. We could travel the whole world, if you want."
With that thought, Dante closed his eyes too. And as sleep finally overcame him, he imagined all the things they might experience side by side over the next hundred years.