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Here’s the thing about the White Violin: she’s stunning, beautiful in a ethereal, terrifying sort of way, her inhuman eyes white-blue like lightning and everything about her electric.
Here’s the thing about Eudora Patch: she’s a sensible woman, but her terrible taste in both women and men will be her downfall.
“Am I included in that?” Diego asks when she mentions this as they're driving to the station, Diego handcuffed in the back. She doesn't say Vanya's name outright, but he'd figured it out a while back. His first reaction was incredulous bewilderment, but that's faded and now he seems to think it's funny. It's annoying.
“What do you think?” Eudora asks, her tone bland.
“Rude,” Diego protests, but it’s half-hearted and he’s smiling a little, like being included in her bad taste in partners is something to be smug about. “You know, I don’t think that’s fair. I’ve never murdered— wait, no, technically I have. But they deserved it—”
“She’s killing abusers, so I’m not sure that line of argument holds up. Maybe they’re not gangsters or whatever, but pretty sure they still deserved it.”
Diego grins at her. “So you’re defending her?”
Eudora splutters. “What— no, murder and all the shit you do as a vigilante like, oh you know, assault, are still crimes. I’m just saying, you don’t have the moral high ground over your sister when you’re basically doing the same thing.”
“Okay,” Diego says, in a tone that suggests this will be the start of a debate. Eudora sighs and waits for him to start. “But what she’s doing is premeditated murder.”
“Yes, your heat-of-the-moment stabbings are so much better, Diego.”
“Okay, wait a goddamn second—“
They continue arguing aimlessly about technicalities until they reach the station.
Ultimately, she gets what Diego is saying; Vanya— the White Violin— slaughters, Diego defends. The White Violin’s crimes are driven by fury, Diego’s crimes (“Yes, Diego, crimes—“) are driven by his need to protect (and maybe also his need to run about his leather and a domino mask, but he gets touchy when she brings that up).
Eudora desperately tries to ignore the part of her brain that points out that Vanya defends as much as she avenges. She protects the victims of her victims. She is a criminal, but she’s no villain.
“Oh, Detective!” the White Violin says when Eudora steps into the room. Her tone is far too casual, but not blase like Diego’s often is when he gets caught red-handed, instead oddly polite, like they’ve just bumped into each other on the street and are making stilted small talk. “I was hoping to catch you.”
She’s in one of the orphanage’s several bedrooms, rows and rows of beds, not enough space for a dozen or so children. Like chickens in a battery farm. Just like the rest of this place, the room is off-puttingly grey, the White Violin’s tux stark in contrast and her eyes the most vivid thing in the room. Sitting on one of the beds cross-legged, she rosins her violin bow without looking, eyes fixed on Eudora, relaxed and yet still so poised.
“Oh?” Eudora manages, her gun out but pointed at the floor. Starting a fight with this woman is suicidal, but she still needs some defense. She should be muttering into her radio right now and getting backup, but she’s more interested in hearing her out than taking her down.
(The one time they managed to take her in, someone had managed to deafen her and then swiftly knock her out. The sight of her out cold, and later restrained and locked up, made Eudora sick to the stomach. She escaped the maximum security prison they put her in, of course, and they’re lucky— the police force, the FBI, everyone— that she decided to go back to her crusade against people like her father instead of taking revenge on those who had, once again, locked her away.)
“Those children—“ she jerks her head to the front of the building, where they had found the children huddled and scared stiff. “—protect them? Make sure this doesn’t happen again.”
Eudora doesn’t ask what she means, because she knows, saw those children outside, ribs visible through ragged clothes and bruised up around their wrists, necks, everywhere. Between that and the half torn down building, the situation made itself clear fairly quickly, Vanya written all over it.
What makes you think I have the power to do that? she should say, because she doesn’t, but the fact Vanya—the White Violin— risked waiting for her to come by and ask, her inhuman eyes so strangely soft looking at her, a Mona Lisa smile with just an edge of hope, well—
“Of course,” she says, like it’s the simplest thing in the world. As if she could right all the wrongs in this world just because a murderess asked her sweetly.
“Thank you,” Vanya replies, as if she believes her. Her expression not cold and predatory anymore, but startlingly human. Too much faith in her eyes, too little fear.
The same could be said of Eudora, though. Eudora’s seen this woman shatter unbreakable glass, crush a man’s skull, reduce a mansion to rubble in minutes and yet.
And yet here she is, not shooting or yelling for backup or attempting to arrest her. Because she’s not an suicidal idiot, yes, but also because she doesn’t fear her. She should.
But when she smiles, it’s shy and dimpled and how could she fear a woman who looks at her like that?
Shit, maybe Eudora is an idiot.
“You’re a good woman, Eudora Patch,” Vanya says, finally breaking eye contact and ducking her head to unsuccessfully hide her smile. Shy and lovely and fond.
Such an idiot.
Here’s the thing about the White Violin: she is a ruthless executioner that has sent the city into a panicked frenzy and puts her victims on show as an example, a clear message of you may be powerful enough to avoid the law but you are not powerful enough to escape me, no mob boss or politician or celebrity too risky for her to target.
Here’s the thing about Vanya Hargreeves: she is a timid, kind-hearted young woman whose smile makes Eudora want to take her face into her hands and tell her everything she finds wonderful about her until she believes it all.
Here’s the thing: Eudora cannot separate the two women in her mind, the murdering vigilante from the sweet violinist, and she is very, very fucked.