What is it that you see?

You cannot fight against what is ingrained in your veins, nor can you ignore the hypocrisy of your actions. You cannot break what is already broken, nor can you change a mind that refuses to be moved. The scales of trust and distrust, truth and lies, coexist in delicate balance. What stirs beneath the surface is a story no one can tell, for true reality is in the eye of the beholder. Yet, even the most unmovable can be subjected to cracks; a small opening to which new possibilities can arise. What exists on the other side of that thin line?Aka, what could have stopped Eva from committing a crime she could never take back?

You are very lucky I'm not posting this as a one-shot like I originally planned www. It ended up getting so long, and I was going to do it still as one story, but I have spared you on behest of one of my fellow AO3 readers who has now convinced me not to commit to my torturous bit. You're welcome lolP:EG came swinging at me and then put me in a chokehold cuz all I can think about lately is this game. I could go on for paragraphs about how much I love Eva Tsunaka as a writer. My original draft notes was literally six pages long lmao. But, I’ll spare you it and summarize: she is such a great character because of her complex flaws. She’s done an unforgivable and cruel crime, yet there’s still a very scared girl with so many issues underneath her aggression. I don’t doubt she exaggerated some of her bullying, but I don’t think she’s lying about having been hated, bullied, and essentially used by other people in her life. Her issues are absolutely not an excuse for her crime, but it does make her pitiable and explain a lot about her behavior. The quote I honestly think describes what happened for her to have such a toxic life (both due to the people around her and her own natural self-destructiveness) is something she said in the prologue when refuting Wolfgang's statements about no one killing:"Living with constant praise from the public has ruined our sense of self... If you need examples, just look around the room... If you continue to convince all of these people to trust each other, they'll only be more vulnerable." - Eva TsunakaIt's a general statement that applies to the Ultimates, but in particular, I've come to read this quote as being the most applicable to Eva. She lived with both praise and hatred, and that ruined her sense of self as she sought to please the adults in her life, while never getting the recognition and love she wanted for doing so. Her sense of self was ruined in her pursuit of praise. As for the trust statement, it reflects her inability to trust anyone anymore, as when she trusted the people in her life when she was young, all she got back was pain that gave her a complicated relationship with people and herself as an individual. If she stops trusting people, she'll never be vulnerable again, even if she wants to trust someone. Maybe I'm over analyzing it, but it kept crossing my mind. In essence, she's a pathetic person who was already kinda mentally/emotionally broken from before she was in the Killing Game, so it never really would have taken much effort to push her to her lowest, because frankly she was kinda already there.I wanted to write this fic not just because I love myself some Yuri and pain, but really try to figure out what would realistically stop Eva from killing Wolfgang. It was definitely interesting trying to consider the actions of a character that thinks like Eva, someone who distrusts everyone, doubts everyone’s words, feels she is superior to everyone yet also feel inferior to all. This fic is the result of that pondering! I can’t say it’ll be great, or if I'll get the characters perfectly down, but I've tried my best haha! I hope you enjoy!