Fanfic / break this heavy chain

“But if he knew about me…” Nero starts. “Would he—Would he like me?”
“He would adore you,” says Leon. “You’re the best, and he would love you.”

break this heavy chain is a Fusion Fic Crossover between Devil May Cry and Resident Evil, revolving around Nero as Leon Kennedy's son. Written in vignettes in non-chronological order, it focuses not only on Nero growing up, but on his relationships with the people raising him. In some sections, it also retells and reinterprets various moments in canon.

Now has Recursive Fanfiction:

• I carry your heart with mine - a Leon/Vergil two-shot.

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break this heavy chain and its Recursive Fanfiction provide examples of:

• Action Survivor: Par for the course for RE, Nero starts his first outbreak at sixteen and picks up a gun and a knife in short order. It's implied he's used both to great effect before he first meets up with Leon and Helena.
• Adaptational Backstory Change: Not for a character, but in canon, the Mold is a mysterious fungus with special properties that Miranda discovers in a cave. This fic implies that the Mold comes from hell.
• Adaptational Early Appearance: Kyrie appears chronologically before Devil May Cry 4 is set, as Nero's pen pal through a school program.
• Adaptational Gender Identity: Leon is specifically noted to be Transgender in this story, and the narrative often makes references to this. Most importantly, he had Nero before he transitioned and long before the events of Resident Evil 2.
• Amicable Exes: Leon and Ada, at least by the time of Vendetta.
• Anachronic Order: Less a story and more a collection of story vignettes of varying length. It's not uncommon for a snippet set after Devil May Cry 5 to be followed by one during the time frame of Resident Evil 6.
• Badass Family: Nero's entire family. On Leon's side, he has the Raccoon City survivors. On Vergil's side, he has the Sparda bloodline. No wonder he manages to pull through his first outbreak with aplomb.
• Berserk Button: Lucas Baker hits Dante's hard during the events of the Not A Hero DLC. It doesn't help that the Mold is implied to be influencing Dante's demonic side.
• Birds of a Feather: Chris and Dante hit it off at a survivors' reunion after Chris clocks Dante checking the exit points. The next snippet reveals that they get into a relationship quickly.
• Blood Knight: Nero, in line with Vergil and Dante, and in sharp contrast to Leon.
• Bottomless Magazines: Discussed by Lady and Leon. Apparently, the reason why Lady never runs out of ammunition is down to a spell that Leon figured out, and it's implied that Nero and Dante's shared demonic heritage means they don't need to reload their guns.
• Brain Bleach: Nero's reaction to finding out about Dante and Chris. It's less about their relationship at all than as a reaction to how he found out: being greeted by Dante coming out of his bedroom while wearing Chris's shirt. Which is a size too big for him.
• Canon Welding: For RE and DMC, starting with Nero being raised by Leon.
• Childhood Friend Romance: Kyrie and Nero start out as pen pals, then get into a romantic relationship by 2016.
• Chronic Hero Syndrome: Leon in a snippet set during an outbreak tells Vergil that if he can get people out and make a difference, he will.
  • Chris, it turns out, has this too, something Dante's narration notes in one snippet.
• Combat Pragmatist: Dante notes that Nero is this, as Nero goes for headshots and disabling shots when fighting against him. It doesn't work out so well for Nero, but that's mostly because he's trained in fighting zombies, and Dante is an Outside-Context Problem.
• Crossover Relatives: Leon as Nero's other parent.
• Crossover Ship: Obviously Vergil and Leon, but Chris and Dante also get together.
• Didn't See That Coming: Nero in his first fight against Dante is absolutely baffled by Dante being able to shrug off being Impaled with Extreme Prejudice.
• Disappeared Dad: For most of Nero's life, Leon's the only parent he knows, owing to Vergil's disappearance post-Temen-ni-Gru incident. For the longest time, neither Nero nor Leon know much more about Vergil beyond his name and appearance.
• Entertainingly Wrong: Nero's first meeting with Dante has him assume that Dante's Healing Factor and superhuman abilities mean he's a BOW. He is very mistaken.
• Everyone Has Standards: Ada, in the snippets she's appeared in so far, is shown to be as protective of Nero as she is of Leon, going so far as to promise to get him out of New York during the events of Resident Evil: Vendetta in one of them.
• Evil Cannot Comprehend Good: Urizen is baffled, to say the least, when Leon defends Trish from him.
  Urizen: Pitiful, weak human. You think to defend a demon?
  Leon: I think you oughta Pick on Someone Your Own Size, big guy.
• Extremely Protective Child: Nero shows shades of this in a snippet set during the Tall Oaks outbreak, outright threatening Helena Harper just in case she gets Leon killed.
• Famed In-Story: The Raccoon City survivors. Kyrie is shocked when Chris Redfield shows up to greet her at the airport, and Dante identifies Leon as Nero's father after Nero states his last name alone.
• Good Parents: Leon, who consistently does his best to support Nero and ensure his safety.
• Harmful to Minors: Nero's first outbreak is in Tall Oaks, and he quickly proves to have the same knack for survival that his father Leon has. Downplayed, as Nero's sixteen nearing seventeen at the time.
• Has a Type: Leon's narration admits that he tends to fall for the mysterious types, name-checking Ada and Vergil as examples. In a snippet set during 2016, Chris, who's known Leon since 1998, admits to not being surprised at Vergil being Nero's father.
• Healing Factor: The reason why Nero initially thinks Dante is a BOW—the only other person he's seen with one is Sherry, who was infected years ago with the G-Virus.
• Heroic Bastard: Nero, as in canon, with the main difference being that he's raised by his other parent rather than left in an orphanage in Fortuna.
• The Immune: Nero is implied to this due to his demonic heritage. He gets caught in both Tall Oaks and New York during outbreaks triggered by airborne viruses, but is never infected despite being significantly less protected than his father.
• Impossibly Cool Weapon: Red Queen, natch, although funnily enough, some of the cast view it as a ridiculous motorcycle sword.
• Nerves of Steel: Leon, especially when compared to his more hot-headed son.
• Not His Sled: Lady dodges her DMC5 fate of being defeated by Urizen and stuffed into a boss. However, the snippet implies Leon will take her place instead.
• One-Night-Stand Pregnancy: Leon admits as much about the night of Nero's conception. Notably, he'd tried to contact Vergil, but each attempt ended in failure.
• Outside-Context Problem: Demons are this for the RE gang, who are far more used to Umbrella and its various offshoots' biohazards. It's illustrated in the snippets set during DMC4, where Nero mistakes both Dante and the demons for BOWs.
  • Funnily enough, in a post-DMC5 snippet, an Ubistvo briefly turns out to be one for Vergil.
• Papa Wolf: Dante notes in one snippet that should he get in Leon's way, Leon would simply call an airstrike on him and go save Nero on his own.
• Parental Abandonment: Vergil unknowingly does this to Nero, as in canon. Tragically, given the timeline, it's possible that Leon's calls to him went unanswered on account of Vergil falling into hell after the Temen-ni-gru.
• Properly Paranoid: At the Raccoon City survivors' reunion, Dante is told that half of Chris's current squad is watching the perimeter, Leon and Claire are armed, and Carlos has an earpiece updating him on any movement on the premises every fifteen minutes. And that's just what's mentioned in dialogue.
• Romantic Rain: Leon and Vergil encounter this in I carry your heart with mine.
• Sadly Mythtaken: In-universe, Leon assumes this is the reasoning behind Fortuna's worship of Sparda, theorizing that the Order has simply deified a previous ruler and name-checking King Arthur as an example. In a case of comedic Irony, he says this to his son Nero, grandson of Sparda and son of Sparda's firstborn.
• Seen It All: The reason for Leon's Nerves of Steel, as well as the general attitude for both the RE and DMC casts. It's not uncommon for Casual Danger Dialogue to feature in the middle of either an outbreak or a demon hunt, with one of the DMC5 snippets featuring Lady and Leon bantering while shooting demons.
• Sir Swears-a-Lot: Nero, as in canon. What makes this notable is that he started cursing young, and at some point Leon just gave up cleaning up his language.
• Strong Family Resemblance: Nero has shades of both his parents, most obviously Vergil, as Dante notes in a snippet adapting the second Dante boss fight in DMC4. Leon's influence comes through in Nero's Combat Pragmatist combat style.
• Teeth-Clenched Teamwork: Leon and Vergil initially start out this way after DMC5. By the time of the two-shot, they've become far closer.
• Tell Me About My Father: A young Nero asks this of Leon for a family tree assignment. Leon's much kinder about Vergil than other examples, admitting that they only ever really had a one-night stand, and by the time he found out about Nero, Vergil was long gone.
• Tranquil Fury: Leon's reaction to seemingly losing his son in DMC4 is to decide to save him no matter what or who gets in his way. Dante quickly recognizes this.
• Unusual Pop Culture Name: In canon, Nero gets his name from the black blanket he was wrapped in when he was left at an orphanage's doorstep. In this fic, because Leon raises him, he's named after Nero Wolfe instead.
• You Remind Me of X: Dante figures out whose son Nero is this way, even noting their similarities during a fight.