Okay, so I am not done having feelings about Harriet Bree.
The thing that’s so interesting about Harriet is how clearly attention is drawn to her allusion in her introduction. Like in her first friendly interaction with team RWBY, Vine pretty much spells it out:
None of the other Ace Ops have their allusion made this clear. Which seems like a pretty big hint that Harriet’s allusion is something we should take note of. This is the Hare that’s competitive and fast, the one that lost a race against their friend the turtle.
So where is her turtle? Vine and Elm also share a tale and they’re both there. Considering his powers it could have made a lot of sense for Marrow be a turtle, but he’s not. The Hare is alone.
While it’s not explicitly addressed on screen until halfway through volume 8, “Where’s the turtle?” has pretty much been part of Harriet’s character from her introduction. And then we get to go from the hints that Marrow is a rookie on the Ace Ops team to explicit confirmation that he is the replacement for Harriet’s previous partner, Tortuga.
A moment which in she herself connects and compares the loss of Tortuga to the more recent loss of Clover. Her turtle is dead. Which makes the volume 7 moment when she talks about how the Ace Ops are just colleagues…
Bullshit. These are the words of someone who did “confuse” the two and has now decided to never do again. Harriet thought of Tortuga as her friend and then when they died, they were just replaced. Like they didn’t even matter. And she was expected to just carry on.
So she’s not going to do that again, make herself vulnerable like that again. Except she clearly still has, because Clover’s death hurt her. (She cared about the kids as well, which is why she lies about never having liked them when they end up on opposite sides. Lying about not caring to protect herself is a pattern with her.) And Clover is just replaced too.
Harriet isn’t trying to drop the bomb on Mantle out of personal loyalty to Ironwood, or out of loyalty to the Atlas military. She’s doing it because she thinks it’s what Clover would have done. We get to see Hare be quite openly disturbed by Ironwood’s actions over the course of volume 8, but she always quickly shuts her own reactions down and gets back in line. Because that’s what she thinks Clover would have done! And he’s not here, so she’ll do it for him. Because that way he’s not fully replaced, not fully gone, and a bit of him will still be left.
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