01. Aren’t you the sweetest thing on this side of hell?
Eva can’t remember a time without Diana anymore.
(And—time —that was the crux of it, really. She’s done this so many times now.)
The first time Eva Tsunaka meets Diana Venicia, she sees danger.
For Diana Venicia sees the world through a rose-tinted haze, clinging to delusions where everyone is “sweet” and “kind”.
People like her—people who refuse to see the ugliness around them—don’t survive.
And for that, Eva decides on the first run: Diana is a threat.
The second time Eva Tsunaka meets Diana Venicia, she mourns. For the blood on her hands transcends any timeline and she must grapple with the fact she’s a murderer.
And she remembers, the way Diana had looked at her even during the end , even as she was outed as Wolfgang’s killer, the monster she truly was. How Diana, stupid, beautiful, Diana still had the audacity of looking at her like that—
Like she still believed in her.
And that makes Eva want to scream. Want to grab Diana by her shoulders, shake her until she understands.
“Stop trusting me.”
“Stop looking at me like that.”
“Stop being so—”
Diana tilts her head, smiling, so utterly unaware of the way Eva is unraveling from the inside out.
“You’re staring,” Her roommate teases, hands interlocked into Eva’s hair as she stops braiding it for a moment to continue speaking. “Did you want to say something?”
Eva clenches her fists, nails digging into her palms.
“No.”
(But she does. God, she does.)
The fourth time, Eva Tsunaka cannot stand to see Diana Venicia anymore, longs so desperately to leave this hell she bites into the apple again. Colors fading as she pulls the trigger, the image of a dead Diana, once so full of life, permanently stains her mind, imprinted, a permanent reminder of what she’s done.
(The ninth time, she questions why God won’t just let her die.)
On her twelfth run, she snaps at Diana. Tells her in the cruelest way she can manage that the world is not kind. That the love she gives away so freely will get her killed. That people like shouldn’t exist because they are too soft, too fragile, too—
Diana cries.
Eva watches, jaw clenched, (though she doesn’t know why she feels so strongly at the sight) waiting for the inevitable. For the moment Diana turns away, for the distance, the fracture that will keep Diana safe. Because all Diana cares about is deluding herself into a false security of safety, pretending the world is sunshine and rainbows.
But Diana doesn’t leave. She doesn’t run, doesn’t retaliate.
Instead, she asks, voice raw “Who hurt you?”
Eva can’t answer.
The twentieth time they meet, Eva stops seeing Diana as a problem to solve, a variable in an equation she can manipulate. She stops thinking about why Diana is the way she is, stops trying to categorize and rationalize and break her down into something digestible.
Diana Venicia is not digestible.
For she loves Eva Tsunaka unapologetically in every timeline.
So as Eva Tsunaka wakes up in the boiler room again, looking at a sleeping Damon Maitsu’s form.
She thinks if she can keep everyone alive, she might just win this time.