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red-moon-at-night · 1 year ago

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An Analysis of Haruka’s MVs: Distance and Disability

Hello! I’ve recently fallen down the rabbit hole that is Milgram and I have been itching to make some completely normal and sane analysis posts. My silly alternate title for this was gonna be “Things About Haruka’s MVs That Just Make Sense: A Hyperfixation-fuelled Analysis”, because honestly my autistic brain has been having a field day over here.

I am in awe with just about every single music video in this project; the animation is incredible and each one packs so much carefully laid out information. But I have been rotating Haruka’s in my head constantly since I first watched them, and I have a lot of Thoughts. Not about whether he’s guilty or innocent/forgiven or unforgiven. Not about whether or not I can justify his murders. Just some straight up imagery and symbolism analysis, through the lens of disability.

Haruka’s disability has not been specified, but I am confident we can at least say he is neurodivergent. I feel like the cultural differences in names for several things e.g. ‘learning disability’ vs ‘learning difficulty’ will just invite unnecessary drama, and is a little pedantic. What does matter here is that Haruka's experience as a disabled person is heavily intertwined within his story and his motives.

So, without further ado... let’s get into this!

Trigger warnings/TW: I will be discussing ableism, eugenics and harm towards disabled people. Everything else will be related to the music videos ‘Weakness’ and ‘All Knowing and All Agony’, so any triggering content within them may also be mentioned. Read at your own discretion and stay safe!

Disability: some brief (important) historical context

It is only within the last few decades that those who are disabled have been ‘seen’ for the first time. A modern society is (ideally) expected to be built to include and accommodate for disability, and to acknowledge disabled people’s existence. But for many countries (even the ones making steps outlined above) this is still not the case. For a very, very long time, globally, that has not been the case.

For most disabled people, society makes it very clear that they are a burden to it and are better off not existing.

I’m going to make this section as succinct as possible because...it’s heavy stuff. But it’s important, and I want you all to get the gist of what I’m saying. The weight of it.

Let’s highlight a piece of history regarding IQ and eugenics, surrounding the publication and subsequent worldwide reception of ‘The Kallikak Family: A Study in the Heredity of Feeble-mindedness’ by Henry Herbert Goddard in 1913:

“In 1927, it was used as evidence in the case of Buck v. Bell, which culminated in a Supreme Court ruling that the involuntary sterilization of ‘mentally defective’ persons was not unconstitutional in the United States. By 1938, thirty-three US states had passed laws allowing for the forced sterilization of women with learning disabilities and twenty-nine had made sterilization compulsory for people who were thought to have genetic conditions. Many European countries followed suit: Denmark in 1929, then Norway in 1934, and after that Sweden, Finland, Estonia, Iceland, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, Latvia, Hungary and Turkey.”

— Limburg, J. (2021) Letters To My Weird Sisters: On Autism and Feminism, p. 126

This history of a ‘sterilization law’ includes Japan, who between 1948 and 1996 enacted the Eugenics Protection Law which “authorised the sterilization of people with intellectual disabilities, mental illnesses or hereditary disorders.” According to the government, about 25,000 were sterilized.

SO. It’s important to bring this up. To establish how much disabled people are not wanted, just from their governments. Let alone society. To this day, disabled people are hidden away from the public by families that are ashamed of their existence.

Japanese culture values collectivism, and maintaining the harmony of a group...to the extent of excluding those that don’t fit into the mould. That are different.

The question is: where do they go? The ones that are publicly rejected?

Haruka and The Curious Case of Distant Waters

Okay that’s enough of the heavy real-world stuff! Time to delve into some...*checks notes*...heavy fictional stuff. Fun!

Haruka’s MVs prominently display themes of distance and separation through the motif of water, specifically being submerged underwater.

The name Haruka reinforces this concept as the specific kanji used (遥) translates to ‘distant’, ‘remote’ or ‘far away’. As there are many, many kanji choices for the name (including but not limited to: ocean/sea, eternity/permeance, clear/distinct/obvious, and spring/growth/cherry blossom) it feels like a particularly cruel and intentional choice to go with that one.

Through the exploration of this motif, we can see the extent in which Otherness/the state of being ‘Other’ drives Haruka to great lengths to close the distance and escape it.

What I noticed throughout both MVs (particularly AK&AA but note the beginning scene of Weakness), is that whenever Haruka looks at himself in a reflective surface (e.g. the vanity mirror, the fish tank), water either begins to rise and overwhelms him, or is already there and he appears submerged:

I think this is the “All-Knowing” part of AK&AA. He knows he’s different, and he knows there’s a huge ocean between him and his peers, his family, everyone. A disconnect when trying to listen and understand, but also when trying to be understood by others and listened to himself.

You know when you submerge your head in water, and your hearing gets all muffled and incomprehensible? And have you ever tried speaking underwater? You can’t, because if you open your mouth you’ll drown. It’ll just come out as bubbles rising to the surface.

I also think the bubbles symbolise rising tension, between what he wants and what he currently has. Bubbles are everywhere in these MVs, even in places where they shouldn’t logically be? Such as this scene, following the line “don’t wipe me out, don’t wipe me out”:

Immediately pans up to Haruka gasping for breath, droplets of water rising from...somewhere. For about a split second, and they’re gone.

This boy is really going through it. I’m getting an ‘emerging from the ocean before I drown’ vibe from this one folks. When the line that follows this scene is “I can’t stop, I can’t stop”, what I’m REALLY hearing is “I can’t stop (killing) or I’ll drown”. This is his lifeboat, pulling him out from the depths of being neglected and hidden away, into the spotlight.

Some interesting images from Weakness in relation to that (of spotlights):

Anyways, onto the next point:

Blue to Orange: Water to...Nectar?

So, the orange liquid. It’s clearly representing blood, but I don’t think this is just a “danganronpa pink blood” situation of censoring/getting this video onto youtube without restrictions.

I think it’s most likely honey, specifically nectar.

The etymology of the word nectar shows its compounds translate to “death” and “overcoming”. Nectar is also called the drink of the gods, so it would make sense for it to be a ‘death-defeating’, immortalizing liquid.

For Haruka’s victims to contain nectar is very interesting. It reinforces that necessity to kill, to take the life of another, to sustain himself. To overcome the ‘living death’ he is experiencing by being hidden away from society.

This is his means of escape from drowning.

However, as we all know, things don’t turn out great for him. By the end of AK&AA Haruka is rejected once again by his mother, after which the door is shut (the light with it is gone too) and we’re met with this imagery:

The nectar floods the room, engulfing him much like the water from earlier.

There are many things we could take from this. One being that the nectar-gathering/killing-spree has clouded his vision; it’s so sweet, so sickly sweet and he’s addicted to the taste of attention, even if it’s very bad attention.

Who else has honey imagery in their MV again?

Oh, right.

Anyway, the nectar/honey situation could also be representing submerging into an even further level of distance. All that murder is gonna push people away, despite his motive being to close the gap between him and normal people. The 'ocean’ has lost clarity and become a maddening, delusional substance. After all, there is a type of honey literally called ‘mad honey’ known for its medicinal and hallucinogenic properties.

That’s enough about honey, though. Let’s move onto less unfortunate... oh, sorry, what was that? *checks notes*...Ah, yes. I meant to say, let’s move onto even more unfortunate symbolism:

The Necklace

So, this necklace. Haruka steals it from his mother’s belongings, and is his only material, physical connection to her. It is taken on the declaration of “making (her) love me again” and getting her attention once more, now he is no longer a child but a teenager closer to adulthood (at least, that’s what I consider the ‘shirt with a vest sweater and tie’ to represent. child him = the blue polo, teenager him = this one, adult him = an amalgamation of his teenager clothes).

I wasn’t sure if this was an opal or pearl/mother of pearl, but I’m leaning towards opal from the other depiction of it in Weakness:

Opals are fun because they can symbolise both good luck and bad luck, usually to do with whether it’s your birthstone. There’s something to be said of Haruka’s belief in his ‘misfortune’ and the superstition surrounding these gemstones.

But they are even more interesting for the powers they supposedly have; in medieval times the opal was considered the ‘patron of thieves’ for their ability to grant the wearer invisibility.

There is a deliciously sad irony to Haruka’s theft with that titbit of information.

Now, if this isn’t an opal, and it’s a pearl/mother of pearl there’s still some fun interpretation to be had! A little less sad, even. Pearls invoke strong imagery of the sea, of purity, and of a connection to the maternal. If this is the last thing he has relating to his mother, I can see this necklace representing a lifeline when he’s deep in the ocean. A reminder of why he’s doing all of this killing, and who it’s for.

His mother’s attention (or the idea of having a mother at all, any mother) is his driving force in life.

Speaking of that...

So We Really Need To Talk About That Fish Tank: AKA, Why Haruka’s Mom Wins ‘The Worst Parent of The Year’ Award

This fucking fish tank.

Okay, I’m gonna start by saying: I don’t think this is reading too far into things. When it takes an animation team months, sometimes years to create a 3-5 minute music video, and one as detailed as this...you don’t just wing it. There are storyboards, there are key frames and there are choices made down to the smallest of details.

From the sheer volume of animal/insect/fish décor that resides in the Sakurai household, you bet I’m gonna pay attention to what type of fish are in that fish tank.

For one thing, they live in saltwater. This is a marine tank, aka the harder choice of aquarium to have. I mean, way, WAY harder. For the experienced only.

These fish right here? One is a clownfish, and the other is a yellow boxfish.

Boxfish are a nightmare to keep alive. This article goes into more detail than I will, but all you need to know is: if there was ever a fish out of all the fish you could possibly want in your tank, this is the one to avoid like the plague.

They release deadly toxins when stressed, as a survival instinct. Boom. All your fish are dead. They need to eat a shit ton of food, but are notoriously clumsy swimmers and slow eaters. Boom. Starving, stressed out boxfish. Boxfish either dies from starvation or dies from stress and toxins.

For Haruka’s mom to have not just one of these fuckers, but a tank consisting ONLY OF MULTIPLE BOXFISH AND CLOWNFISH...

This is a high-maintenance tank. And it shows how much time and effort, how much care she puts into the things she loves.

How neglectful she is as a parent of a disabled child in contrast.

There’s something about the last scene between Haruka and his mother that reinforces this for me:

Haruka’s relationship with animals and himself: AKA, “why don’t I just become the damn fish tank?”

Let me backpedal a little bit. This subheading will make sense in a minute.

So, like I said earlier we have a lot of décor in this house relating to insects and fish. We also have a lot of pets. Both living and dead, taxidermized creatures in one household, proudly on display.

I think this may have created some confusion for Haruka regarding the value of animals being alive or dead, as in his perspective his mother values both equally. The fish in a tank may be full of alive creatures, but they’re still on display as if it’s artwork. Isn’t breaking the glass of a framed picture of a fish equal to breaking the glass of a tank with a ‘picture of living fish’?

(This isn’t to say Haruka is clueless to the impact of his actions, nor to justify any harm to animals. I just find the train of thought to be intriguing.)

So when considering these ‘objects’ are proud trophies of his work:

This is a carefully arranged display, which by the way, doesn’t contain a single fish. In fact the only piece of that moment visible here is the...large piece of driftwood? Okay. Keep that in mind.

We proceed into Haruka’s mother opening the door and seeing her son, for the first time in any of the MVs. Note the way they composed this shot:

I’m obsessed with this scene. The blue eye framing Haruka, with a literal fishbowl effect on him...

He is the goddamn fish in the aquarium now. His mother’s full attention is on him and him alone, with only the dead animals, the books, the lamp and the driftwood as window dressing to this wonderful display.

Doesn’t it just scream “Look at me! Look at what I did, mom!” to you?

That blue spotlight is on him once more. He is not just drifting deeper into an endless ocean, but contained in a vessel to be stared at.

One Last Observation

I didn’t know where to fit this in but I think the end feels appropriate.

His clothing here:

Is a frankenstein-esque mash up of clothes from his younger years. He wears this throughout AK&AA, and as I mentioned before it signifies him as an adult. However, I should clarify what I mean here as Haruka says “he thinks he’s 17″ and “doesn’t care about his age”. So... not an adult, but on the cusp of adulthood.

But I think he actually does care about his age, and quite a lot too.

This outfit feels symbolic of refusing to let go of the past, and of himself as a child. He’s literally grown out of his clothing, but he still clings onto it. He’s attached to the past because it not only contains his happiest moments, but the change from being loved to becoming neglected.

As a disabled person, you’re often treated with a lot more forgiveness when you’re younger. That is to say, some people don’t realise that children with disabilities grow up into adults with disabilities. There is a point where even support from medical and social services drops off like a cliff edge once you turn 18.

The ill-fitting clothing in this context becomes more than a reflection on Haruka’s feelings, and extends to reflecting society’s feelings on disabled adults ‘refusing to grow up’.

I don’t blame Haruka for holding onto his childhood like this. He’ll be even less publicly visible and seen once he is no longer a pitiful child, but a ‘weird’ adult in ill-fitting, children’s clothes.

#milgram #haruka sakurai #analysis #weakness #all-knowing and all-agony #symbolism #disability #*drops this onto the fandom like a ton of bricks* hi i'm new here pleasure to meet u #oh man I finally finished it... this is a very (and I mean a VERY) long post asdfghjkl #I'm pretty happy with how it turned out though! I got most of the things I wanted to say and point out down #believe it or not there was actually MORE I could've said but I think tumblr may have crashed on me if I did that lmao #particularly to do with Weakness as I focused more on AK&AA here. but anyways #I love how morally grey everyone is in this series! It makes for some really fun analysis!#it's so so nice seeing a disabled character in such a position too and not just 'is a cinnamon roll' or 'the devil reincarnate' yknow #I debated leaving in the real-world history stuff but I think it sets the tone of my analysis pretty well and shows the importance of--#--haruka's disability not as a justification of his actions but as a vital backdrop to his environment and struggles

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ohbutwheresyourheart · 8 months ago

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I have far too many half-written things in my google docs that have never seen the light of day, so I've decided to start buffing up the best ones and posting them unfinished. Maybe I'll come back to them later, or if not at least someone will hopefully enjoy reading them as they are.

First up: fragments from a WIP based on the concept that Eva did not actually die when the twins were children; instead, she got caught in the magic field of a Geryon and sling-shotted to the middle of Devil May Cry 5. What I wrote revolved more around the aftermath, and Eva trying to come to terms with the modern world, her losses, and not knowing what happened to her sons.

The building is echoing once the buffer of trash is removed. High ceilings dissipating into shadowy un-shapes. Dark corners shifting like predators turning and twisting. It’s too like the manor in those early days before she tamed it as Sparda had; made it respect her for all she was a mortal woman.

Made it respect her because she was a mortal woman.

She feels so tired, though; too tired to start a fresh war. So Eva lives with the shadows and whatever they may hide. At least it’s not outwardly hostile. Even if it was, by rights she shouldn’t be comfortable here.

This domain, this world, empty of her sons.

----

Swollen and fragile all at once, like a wine glass held too long in hot water - ripe for shattering with a single thoughtless move.

Midmorning is an inauspicious time for any demon to appear; Eva uses the reprieve to walk the city streets. Capulet is smaller than Red Grave but still a decent-sized city in its own right, checking off all the requirements: university, libraries, museums, churches, arts district, cheerful cafes dotting the sidewalk…

A few months ago -- no, thirty years ago -- she would have delighted in browsing the art supplies store, or checking the museum events for child-friendly exhibitions (but boys you must behave), or laughing into her coffee as two eight year olds descended into extensive debate on the merits of chocolate cake over strawberry tarts.

Now she buys peppermint tea in a to-go cup and takes it to the park.

Capulet is unexpectedly windswept in August, errant breezes stirring up the parched over-long grass around her ankles and pulling her hair, strand by strand, out of the confines of her ponytail.

The park is quietish; the younger children are out in force but a university city never really feels alive during the summer while the students are away. She follows the winding gravel path towards the duck pond at the centre and circles it once, twice. Watches other mothers with children tossing breadcrumbs to the ducks; running; playing.

“Why don’t you go and play, boys? Just--”

“Be careful, I know.” Vergil’s eyes, already so much older than they should be. “Why even try when we have to pretend?”

She’d never come up with a good enough answer for him.

Trish finds her on a bench. She sits down without ceremony or preamble, sunglasses her one concession to the summer day but otherwise as unaffected by the August sun as she no doubt will be by the coming autumn chill.

(Eva is rapidly coming to dislike Trish. Not because she is a demon, per se, but because it’s so fucking demoralising to constantly see the perfect version of herself; an Eva who will never succumb to sagging tits or a bloated stomach or even messy hair.)

“Are you all right? You’re sitting there like a ghost.”

Eva sips her tea to save herself from an immediate response. The cup is almost empty and the dregs are cold; she doesn’t remember drinking it.

“I’m fine.”

“Mm.” Trish doesn’t look as though she believes Eva in the slightest, but thankfully doesn’t push the issue. “Well, in that case, I have a favour to ask.”

“Oh?” Eva becomes instantly wary. Even as despondent as she feels, she knows better than to thoughtlessly promise a demon anything.

Something flashes in Trish’s eyes, gone too quickly for Eva to define it. The slow smile that curls the corners of her lips is equally inscrutable.

“Don’t worry, it’s not a favour for me, exactly,” she assures her, waving a perfectly manicured hand (again that familiar burst of jealousy towards a creature that could control their human physical appearance at will; Sparda had never had a bad hair day in his life--). “Lady heard you’re quite the dab hand with magic and she wanted to know if there were any goodies you could make for her, or teach her, or… whatever, really.”

“Last I saw, Lady has a tongue in her head,” Eva replies coolly.

Trish’s smile widens. “Oh, she does, but she’s out of town this week and when I saw you I thought I might as well ask now as later.”

“Mm.” Now it’s Eva’s turn to give Trish a searching look. She taps her nails (not perfectly manicured by any definition of the term) against her empty cup, wishing there was some left; she could make use of a timely pause to sip her tea and give herself a moment to think. “Well, I’m happy to talk to Lady about what she needs when she’s back in Capulet.”

“I’ll pass the message on.” With one flowing, elegant movement, Trish gets to her feet and stretches like a languid cat. “I’d better get going. See you around, Eva.”

“Yes, see you,” Eva mutters to her back; Trish is already going, sashaying through the park like she owns the place.

Something about this doesn’t smell right and Eva has sense enough to be cautious.

And yet… When she returns to Devil May Cry, she spends time going through the cupboards she’s restocked and checking her herbs. She uses the laptop Nero and Nico set her up with and finds websites that sell the supplies she needs -- whether advertised for witchcraft or otherwise -- and prepares lists of useful tricks; things that used to give her the edge she needed to survive another night.

It might not be useful for Lady -- if, indeed, Lady even asked the question -- but it’s useful for Eva. Practically, because she can’t be too careful even now, and in the abstract; when she goes to bed that night, Eva sleeps better than she has in weeks. Her hands might be dry and her nails might be broken, but with her fingertips stained and smelling of herbs once again she almost begins to recognise herself.

----

To Eva’s palpable surprise, Lady does actually swing by Devil May Cry the following week.

“Trish told me she saw you,” Lady explains as she unholsters Kaline Ann and sets her down on the desk. “Did she tell you the kind of thing I was looking for?”

Because there is truth in this cover story that Lady and Trish have concocted between themselves. Yes, mainly they want to check on Eva, but it also never hurts for an old bitch to learn some new tricks.

And how does Eva look? Less like Trish than she used to; Eva has taken to shoving her hair up in a loose bun at the back of her head (the better, Lady assumes, to keep it out of her face now she was no longer playing lady of the manor) and has swapped her elegant black gown for a serviceable sweater and jeans. On her feet, Doc Martens. On her hands, broken nails and stained fingertips. In her eyes - fire.

“In passing.” Eva is - suspicious? Well, Lady can’t entirely blame her for still finding her feet with all of them, particularly Trish - though Trish herself had taken it as a compliment that Eva considered her enough potential trouble to be wary of.

“You’re welcome to anything I can teach you, although…” Eva’s gaze slides across and down to Kalina Ann. There is something distinctly hungry (covetous?) in her eyes. “You seem to have the offensive side pretty well covered.”

Lady grins, one firearms aficionado to another. “Give Nico a call if you want anything - you can’t beat the Goldsteins for guns and for you she’ll probably do it for free.”

That does it: the reserve cracks and Eva grins back. It is not the kind, motherly smile that Dante probably remembers. This is the smile that a tiger would give you if it could.

“Noted.” Eva pulls out a stack of books from one of the desk drawers. “Now, where do you want to start?”

It does not take long for Lady to be very, very glad she arranged this meeting. Eva is an absolute trove of knowledge. Much of it Lady already knows, and some of it is interesting but not strictly relevant -- Lady’s fighting style being much more full-on than Eva’s tactics lend themselves to -- but she still picks up plenty.

----

Nero is a dutiful, darling boy. He checks in with her, regular as clockwork, trying to disguise the anxiety in his voice. He doesn’t know how to be with her, but he tries nonetheless.

He asks her, often, to visit him in Fortuna; to meet his girlfriend and the children they have adopted. Eva demurs and lets him think she’s still putting off the inevitable label of grandmother. It’s not a total lie, but it’s far from the primary reason. Maybe, perceptive as he is (and he is; Sparda’s eyes staring at her, seeing straight through her despite the un-Sparda-ish mouthing off), he knows that, too, and is giving her time.

It’s just… what if they come back, and she isn’t here to greet them? What if they think she’s truly gone again? She can’t hurt her boys like that a second time. She can’t let them down again when they look for her, reach for her. God knows she was worth fuck-all to them then and even less now, as much protection as a paper cut-out, but if they know she’s willing to put herself between the two of them and danger, then… that’s something, isn’t it? However little, it’s something.

The latest attempt comes on a late autumn evening. October is slipping away, each dark evening bringing them a little closer to Halloween. The most enterprising of the local children have already ventured out trick-or-treating with the excuse that the 31st is a school night, and Eva watches troupes of ghosties and ghoulies and long-legged beasties parade past the windows with a bittersweet smile. She bought a bag of candy but doesn’t really expect any trick-or-treaters; Dante, with good reason, didn’t take pains to encourage the local kids to come calling.

Nero and Nico pull up, a welcome interruption to her descent into melancholy, out of breath but radiant from their latest skirmish. They stop by Devil May Cry on the pretence of leaving word for Morrison that payment is due, but Nero could do that himself on the little computer phone he carries around with him. In reality, they’re checking on her.

Eva doesn’t mind, really. She likes the company, and the kids (God, she calls them kids, they’re not that much younger than she is) are energetic; it’s hard to be actively maudlin when refereeing a shouting match. Nico especially is nosy and almost impossible to brush off or offend. On every visit, she wheedles a few more secrets out of Eva’s recipe books. Lately, Eva has been amusing herself by giving her tidbits and letting Nico reverse-engineer either the process or the product. Usually, she gets it right. Occasionally, she comes up with something better.

Tonight, though, Eva feels even harder to cheer than normal. Nico is put off by a wad of cash to get takeout -- Sparda laid the bounty of the world at her feet, but Nero and Nico are giving her a world tour laden with grease -- leaving Eva and Nero alone for half an hour. Nero has unchecked notebook privileges, as long as he’s careful with them, and he flicks through the entries thoughtfully.

“How did you learn all this stuff in the first place?”

“It depends which stuff we’re talking about.” Eva leans over his shoulder, pointing to the pages. “Sparda gave me a lot of them; things he’d picked up over the years, I don’t even know where from. But this one -- here -- that was from a hunter I partnered up with a lot in the early days. These tisanes were from my aunt. I used to say she should have been born a mediaeval herb-woman, except they’d have hung her for a witch.”

But Nero has stopped looking at the pages. He’s looking at her instead; thoughtful, in a way that is so Vergil it makes her heart skip a beat.

“What were they like, your family?”

“My family...” How long has it been since family wasn’t Sparda and the boys? How much longer since it meant the house she grew up in, and the people who populated it? “Oh, they -- they’re long gone. Better not to dwell. I have the boys,” Except she doesn’t. “And you, of course.”

Nero isn’t diverted, not for a moment, and the tilt of his eyebrows is pure Vergil. But he lets it go for now.

They taper off into silence. It lasts for a few minutes, Eva turning over possibilities in her mind. The words, when they come, are nevertheless a surprise; something she hadn’t meant to let loose.

“My father was a twin,” she says abruptly. “He and my uncle were thick as thieves. I always used to hope I’d have twins -- they say it skips a generation, so I thought it was likely I would -- and then they’d both always have a friend.”

She lets out a hollow little laugh. A friend. What a fucking fairytale.

Where did she go so wrong? Yes, the boys had always had their spats, but Eva had chalked that up to a mixture of their demonic blood and the marked differences in their personalities, watchful but not truly worried. She tried to encourage them to get along, to talk out their problems, but had also comforted herself that it was something they would grow out of as they got older and developed a bit more emotional maturity. Siblings fought; it was perfectly normal. Even she and Elijah--

Eva squeezes her eyes closed. She can’t think about Elijah right now.

A warm, calloused hand covers her own and Eva opens her eyes to see Nero watching her, his expression unusually serious.

“It’s not your fault,” he tells her, quietly but with a forceful conviction behind his words that reminds her of Sparda. “Yeah, they’re idiots, and they’re both kind of fucked up in their own ways, but it’s not your fault. They’d be a lot worse if it hadn’t been for you.”

Is that true? Eva isn’t sure which is worse; that she has ruined her boys, or that they would somehow be even worse without her.

But none of this is Nero’s problem. Grandson, she reminds herself once again. Grandson. Not a peer, not a comrade to lean on. A young man she needs to protect.

Pull yourself together, Eva.

----

Eventually, Eva gets sick of sitting around Devil May Cry waiting for something to happen.

She has never been a passive person. Eva makes things happen. Ever since Lady asked for some tricks to help her on hunts, Eva has been building up her supplies again. Restocking her herbs, potions, and powders. Dusting off Dante’s collection of magic books (a surprisingly comprehensive collection; Vergil had always been the bookworm, while Dante was too much of a fidget-bottom to sit still for five minutes) and reminding herself of her favourite cantrips. Eventually, she contracts Nico to make her a pair of guns like her old ones.

The last time Eva felt so lost, she was drowning in grief for her husband and it ended in tragedy for her sons. She will not make the same mistake twice. Reaching back through the years, breaking down the walls she had so carefully built up, she remembers how it felt to be fifteen and alone; fifteen and desperate; fifteen and unstoppable.

Then she asks Morrison for some work.

As a young woman trying to break into this line of work, Eva had gotten used to the looks she elicited from these “brokers”. The initial amusement, thinking she’s joking. The surprise when they realise she isn’t. The patronising shake of the head as they assure her this is no work for a pretty little lady like her. Finally, the shock and anger as they hastily reconsidered their position with a gun jammed up against their throats.

Over time, she’d gotten a reputation for being an infernal bitch who was extremely good at what she did, which meant the work came easier. Eventually, by the time she met Sparda, she’d been running her own jobs without a broker at all - unless they were coming to her for a favour.

But that was then. Now she’s back to square one. Unproved. Untried. Untested. It’s aggravating but Eva knows she’ll have to just deal with it if she wants an in.

Because Eva is pretty sure she can talk Morrison into kicking a few jobs her way. Asking Lady, or Nero, or Trish to share, though? It will all be there - amusement, surprise, disbelief - and the worst thing of all is that they will be speaking not from baseless stereotyping but all too real knowledge.

Dante told us all about it, Eva. You barely lasted a minute when the demons attacked, isn’t that right? This is way too much for you.

No. She will work until she has beaten the softness out of herself. Until she can go back to them on an even footing. Until it’s second nature once again to have gunpowder on her clothes and the spark of magic at her fingertips. Until the Underworld has learned to fear Sparda’s whore again.

Then she will get their respect, rather than their pity.

Morrison drops by periodically for coffee and a chat. There hasn’t been any money-grubbing yet; Dante owns the office outright - Eva has seen the deed and it’s real enough - and the bills are being paid out of his last earnings. It won’t last forever, but it’s been enough to take one worry off Eva’s mind so far.

Instead, Morrison seems to simply enjoy her company, or maybe he just can’t kick the habit of showing up at Devil May Cry to see Dante. Whatever the reason, Eva enjoys his visits and his dry humour. What Morrison makes of her, she’s not sure; Eva had told him, in a tone that made it clear she was lying, that she was Trish’s long-lost sister. Morrison had simply chuckled and refrained from asking any questions.

That’s one thing Eva always did like about brokers; they’re the kind of people who don’t ask difficult, unnecessary questions.

“You’ve got this place looking real good, Eva.” Morrison looks around with genuine admiration and gestures with his lit cigarette to the spider plant growing ever larger in the corner. “Way better than Dante ever did. Mother of God, the state I’ve seen this office in… well. Maybe best not to elaborate too much there.”

Eva laughs, remembering how Dante always tried his best to weasel out of his chores. Even getting him to make his bed was a challenge. It seems he hasn’t improved with age.

“It’s certainly been quite the project. But, now that it’s done, I’ve been thinking I need something else to do.” Eva watches Morrison carefully, waiting for his reaction. “Do you have any work for me?”

Morrison smirks. “Getting bored already? Yeah, I got a few things on the back burner - the kind of stuff the other ladies think they’re too good for, if you catch my drift, and the kid really has got his hands full.”

...Okay, that was absurdly easy. Eva narrows her eyes, but Morrison doesn’t look like he’s trying to mock her. On the contrary, when he sees her expression, he holds his hands up in mock surrender.

“Hey, I don’t control the work that comes in! Besides, pay is pay, am I right?”

“I’m looking for hunting work,” Eva says pointedly, wondering if he’s mistaken her meaning.

“Yeah, yeah, I got you.” Morrison chuckles as he takes a drag on his cigarette. “What, were you expecting me to say no? If nobody will do the work, I won't get paid either.”

“I…” Eva is floored. All of her preparation, all that time spent rehearsing her arguments, and it turns out she doesn’t need any of them. “I was expecting, uh…”

“Pushback?” Morrison gives her a knowing look. “Do you really think I’d have lasted this long with those ladies if I trotted out that kind of line? As far as I’m concerned, if you hang around with Dante, Lady, and Trish, then you know what you’re doing and you can take care of yourself.”

Morrison pulls a notebook out of his pocket and rifles through it, humming under his breath. He tears out a page and walks over to lay it on Eva’s desk.

“Here are the details. Just give me a call when you’re done with them and I’ll arrange your payment. Damages come out of your cut, mind you. If everything goes well, I’ll see what else I have for you.”

----

It really is grunt work, but Eva doesn’t mind; she’s not arrogant enough to think she could jump single-handedly into something like Red Grave, guns blazing.

The job also isn't urgent - hence Morrison being lackadaisical about bullying someone into taking it - which gives her the leisure of reconnaissance and planning time.

An empusa nest out on some waste ground that a local developer bought before noticing his unexpected squatters. Straightforward enough, although Eva takes more precautions than she thinks are necessary just in case. After all, she’s seen her judgement is far from perfect.

But in the end, all goes smoothly. No nasty surprises. Just some nasty stains on the concrete from empusas blown to kingdom come. Eva grimaces at them, hoping they don’t count as “damages”. The land is being developed anyway, right? Surely they’ll be putting down fresh tarmac?

In the end, Morrison does take a cut from her pay, but it’s less than she feared and so Eva swallows it with as much good grace as she can muster. The stack of notes is a reassuring weight in her hand. Ballast, though for (or against) what, she’s not entirely sure. The important thing is that she’s done a competent enough job that Morrison leaves her with the details of another couple of jobs. In this way a reputation is built.

“Morrison,” Eva calls out just before he leaves.

Morrison pauses on the threshold. There’s a beat before he looks back at her over his shoulder and Eva gets the impression he knows exactly what she’s about to ask.

“Do you think he’s coming back?”

Because Morrison is not Trish, or Lady, or Nero. He does not know her connection to these people. To Dante. So he has no reason to lie to her or spare her feelings.

He sucks in a breath, considering. “You know, I’d gotten to the point where I never thought I’d see anything Dante didn’t come back from. So many times I thought he was in way over his head, only for him to walk away laughing. But this job… this felt different from the start. Gave me a sort of -- premonition, you might say.”

A soft hum; something that might have been a laugh, if there was any humour in it, and Morrison shook his head.

“The truth is, Eva, I don’t know. I really don’t. He could come waltzing back in here tomorrow, carrying a pizza and laughing at us all for ever doubting him. Or we might never see him again.”

Eva sinks slowly into the desk chair, feeling the truth of it in her bones. A tidal wave of exhaustion crashes over her, threatening to drown her in one clean swoop. Tired of worry. Tired of uncertainty. Tired of never even having the cold comfort of a body to bury. Tired of that tiny speck of hope that even now refused to be snuffed out completely because, however ridiculous it was to expect it, there was still the chance--

“I knew someone else like that, once,” she hears herself say. “He never did come back.”

Morrison gives her a searching look. He seems, for a moment, to be on the verge of saying something more, but in the end refrains. Instead, he tips his hat to her.

“You take care, Eva.”

“Yeah,” Eva replies distantly. “You too, Morrison.”

----

The work is important for more than Eva’s ego.

Her blood sings in her veins once again. The hum of power at her fingertips, like the whine of electricity. A promise, maybe even a vow if you were so inclined to call it such, that one day in the none-too-distant future a small slice of the world would once again turn at Eva’s call and beckoning. She has known this once before when playing lady of the manor. Now, the power is both weaker, for lack of Sparda’s force bolstering her, and sweeter, for knowing it is all of her own clawing and devising.

Her blood sings and Eva tastes iron and lightning on her tongue. Her fingers smell of metal and herbs and something no mortal can rightly put words to; the tang of the Underworld and the burning sulphur of demons.

When Eva looks at her reflection in the chipped bathroom mirror and sees an old, familiar light in her eyes, she knows it is time.

Very little magic needs to be complicated. The point is will, and the directing of it. For those unfamiliar with the craft then the trimmings of rituals and candles can go a long way in finding that direction.

For those who live long enough to become old hands, just the thinking, coupled with the right runes, is enough. Eva takes a sharp knife, a handful of herbs, and a silver-backed mirror (in this, old ways are better; a mercury mirror would work better still, but this will do for now)... and she searches.

Blood of my blood, flesh of my flesh, soul of my soul, I seek thee now. Come to me, come to me, come to me…

It is a powerful spell. Kinfinding may not be enough to physically draw her boys forth from the Underworld, but it should at least show them to her in the scrying mirror.

Eva seeks until her blood runs dangerously thin and her head pounds and her vision begins to darken. She seeks further still until she knows herself at the very precipice of what she can safely come back from… and only then, with great reluctance, does she let the spell go.

She has not seen them, either of them, even once.

----

Eventually, it feels meaningless to even keep up the pretence she thinks the boys are coming back.

What has happened to them is almost immaterial. The nightmare scenarios are so numerous that eventually they blur together into one long snuff film that leaves her numb. Like Sparda, they were there and then they were not. Like Sparda, she will never know what exactly happened.

Devil May Cry becomes part tomb, part cocoon. She has saved enough money to keep Morrison at bay for a while even after Dante’s funds run out, and she continues to take work for the sake of it, though she doesn’t keep track of her income versus expenditures. If or when the money runs out, she’s not sure. It’s pointless to think so far ahead. Perhaps she’ll just die, like she should have before.

A wife without a husband. A mother without sons. Once, she would have vomited at the thought of a woman identifying herself by the men in her life, but somehow it crept up on her over the years and now she’s left with gaping, bloody holes that gung-ho feminist rhetoric does nothing to paste over.

Nobody seems to notice the change in her philosophy. Though, she gets precious few visitors anyway. Trish and Lady leave her to her own devices, having apparently satisfied their curiosity about her. Morrison has tapered off their tete-a-tetes and only shows up when he wants money. Nero is a busy boy these days.

One night she dreams about them. The dream is very similar to the ones she used to have about Sparda; lifelike, almost lucid dreaming, where everything was the same - she is in bed, having just awoken - except he is there, smiling gently, brushing her hair out of her eyes.

Sleeping in, Eva?

Dreaming about the boys is very similar. She dreams she awakens in the night to a sound downstairs. There is no panic of a break-in; nobody bothers her these days. Voices, muffled, from the floor below. Eva calmly gets out of bed, registering even the rustle of the sheets and the cold, bare wooden boards under her feet. She pads slowly out of the bedroom to the top of the stairs.

There they are, standing in the centre of the office, illuminated perfectly by a strip of moonlight through the window. It is like a picture. It is too perfect and too easy. This is how she knows she is dreaming.

Still, for the first time in months, her heart eases.

They are talking softly to each other, too softly for her to catch the words (there is a limit, she concedes, to just how much even her vivid imagination can conjure). Eva doesn’t mind. She stands at the mezzanine and soaks them in.

Dante gestures to the stairs and looks up. He freezes as their eyes meet. Vergil, a half-heartbeat behind his twin, mirrors him.

“...Hey,” Dante croaks, the gesturing hand that had fallen still now awkwardly waving. “We’re home!”

This is more than she expected. Eva’s throat constricts. Even her dreams of Sparda were not so vivid or so long.

“You’re late, boys,” she manages after a moment. “Dinner was hours ago.”

She is trying for levity, trying to play her part in this scene, trying to piece together something happy for when she wakes up, but her voice cracks halfway through the sentence and she finds herself choking on a sob.

Dante is halfway up the stairs in a moment, hand outstretched to her. Eva, too, is reaching out to her little boy and she cries out when she finally has her arms around him again.

She does not get even a heartbeat of joy before the world collapses into shadows and flames. Dante dissolves, her arms closing around thin air, and the staircase morphs into an endless corridor to hell. Her boys are nowhere to be seen, but she can hear them screaming.

Or maybe she just hears her own voice, screaming herself awake.

There are more dreams, afterwards; more recognisable for what they are. Her life runs before her eyes in reverse. Searching for the boys. Watching Sparda walk away for the last time. The face of every person she never saved. Then, at last, the denouement: Elijah, torn open. Her father and uncle staring sightless into an abyss. Her mother reduced to so many scattered chunks of meat.

Eventually, because Eva is someone who makes things happen, not someone things simply happen to, she makes the decision to go back. She has faced Red Grave; faced the ruined manor. It is time to face much older ghosts.

It is a private matter, and so Eva tells nobody of her intentions. She lets Morrison know she will be out of town on personal business, timeline uncertain; she will give him a call when she’s back. He is free, in the interim, to pass her usual work on to other sources.

For anyone else (because she still hopes, deep down, that her boys will one day come home), she leaves a note on her desk.

Out of town for a while.

Eva re-reads the brief scribble and wonders what else to add before realising there really is nothing more to add. No forwarding address or contact number, because she does not want anyone to find her. Anyone who wants her, can wait until she comes back.

She makes it ten minutes out from the city before she turns back to scribble an address at the bottom of her note.

Just in case.

----

Plane tickets are cheap these days, and she has a passport courtesy of Morrison, but Eva elects to drive. Call her old-fashioned, or even just plain curmudgeonly in her old age (ha), but Eva likes the hum of a good motor much better than the press of noisy crowds.

Besides, she’d need a car at the other end of the flight anyway, where she’s going. She can even call it a vacation if she finds a motel to spend each night in. If not -- she’s slept in a car before and it won’t kill her to do it again, especially when the rental is much more comfortable than any old banger she’s passed a night in before.

Highways turn to country lanes as she veers further and further off the beaten track. The temperature drops, too; winter in the shadow of the Appalachian mountains is nothing to sneeze at. Eva has forgotten a lot of things over the years (too many things), but she remembers that. Funny how events and people slide slowly but surely from her mind but sensory impressions remain: the icy, pinesap-tinged tang of morning air in winter; the crackle of a fire; the warm doughy smell and pillowy softness of homemade dinner rolls.

Become someone else, she’d told her younger son as their world burned around them. Change your name, change yourself, and hide. Not easy, no, nothing like easy -- but possible, for the right price. For the price of giving up who you were before.

Except no bargain is ever so neat and no transaction ever so complete.

#devil may cry #dmc #eva #dante #vergil #nero #nico #trish #lady #i have a whole headcanon backstory for eva #shocking revelation: she did not have a good time before meeting sparda!#fragments from the google docs

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