Hello~ For the detco ask game: #2 and post-antidote Shiho for #14?
2. why do you think vermouth is hunting down haibara? if the reason is as she claims, about the drug, why did she do this even when shiho can no longer continue with the research?
ok so i think the main reason is actually that vermouth felt betrayed by shiho. sherry grew up in the organization, just like vermouth, and vermouth never considered leaving a possibility. to her, people like them grew up here and were trapped here, that's just how it is, they're destined to be doomed, no escape. sherry leaving - and staying alive, managing to have a semi-normal life - should not have been possible, it's wrong, if she could do that what does that mean for vermouth spending all these years trapped here? how dare she leave, how dare she succeeds in leaving? it's a not the betrayal of the organization that vermouth is bothered by, it's the betrayal of vermouth personally. they were supposed to be both doomed.
and another layer, still related to betrayal - is that i think vermouth thinks that shiho is one of the very few people who have complicated feelings about elena, who was hurt / wronged by her, whereas most people consider her "hell angel", the one angel in the dark place that is the organization. perhaps other people got her kindness, and shiho is the only who doesn't feels so positive about elena and actually understand having complex feelings about elena, having been hurt by elena's actions directly.
to elaborate, i think vermouth has very very complicated feelings regarding shiho's mother elena, who made the drug vermouth took and then basically froze vermouth permanently at the same age, unable to grow old. almost sounds like a dream, and maybe when vermouth was younger at some point it had felt dreamlike, maybe back in the day she briefly thought that staying young forever is a gift, only later to realize it's actually a curse. there are side effects of the drug that's not so pretty underneath the dreamy forever young. there are things elena took from her that she could never get back. and the worst thing is elena has been dead for years and vermouth is still trapped, at this age, in the past, and she cannot forget because when she looks into the mirror she sees herself being exactly the same as when elena were still alive, not aging a single day. she resents and hates elena for it, although of course the experiment and research were the boss's idea, the boss's instruction, and she and elena were more like pawns of it all without much choice once the research began. her feelings are very mixed and complex because on the one hand, elena was the one who directly turned her this way, on the other hand, the two of them almost had an understanding, being the very few people who knew what it was like.
(elena was a complicated woman, she was interested in the scientific side of things, actually invested in doing the research, while feeling uncomfortable about the more morally gray sides of the research and the organization as a whole. and vermouth saw through that, saw through her guilt and conflicted feelings. just like elena saw through vermouth, the vulnerability beneath the cold assassin image, the pain of her. they understood each other, perhaps against both of their wills. but they couldn't help but really, really feel like they could sympathize with each other, the two women who were central figures to this research, playing opposite roles, the scientist and the test subject. understanding your enemy is a dangerous thing, it makes you sympathize with them. in some moments it almost felt like love.)
elena and the silver bullet / aptx drug made vermouth this way, trapped vermouth in this frozen body, the same age. at the same time vermouth is also trapped in the organization. layers of cage she cannot leave. she felt wronged by elena, but it's also love and understanding and hate wrapped together, all mixed up. elena's actions, entering the organization, also doomed shiho to the fate of having to grow up in the organization, work in the organization, without her parents' protection since they died. both vermouth and shiho have reason to resent elena, but it's not just pure hate, vermouth has her complicated things going on, and shiho has some fragments of affection, stories from akemi (and later tapes from her mother), maybe research notes, and sometimes relating to her mother on the enthusiasm for science research. they both feel complicated by elena, and have both been hurt by her. as long as shiho is still in the organization, she is essentially still suffering the fate elena left for her, and it's like a bond between her and vermouth, the two people who were wronged by the one everyone else called (hell) angel. but shiho leaving that behind, escaping to a new life, while vermouth is still there suffering, because she cannot escape, even if vermouth can escape the organization she cannot escape the drug effect, cannot age, is still forever in this frozen body.
so to summarize it is about the drug in a way, because the drug is what vermouth this way, but it's not quite that straightforward. it's really more about betrayal. and being left behind.
14. what kind of job do you think shiho will do when they grow up?
i have some different thoughts about this and don't quite commit to a single one. sometimes i think i want her to be ….. free from her past, build a new life, and i think in this regard she maybe does another degree, still in science but not the biochem stuff she did, a different field, a new field, something she has some interest before but not that invested, never quite delved deep. it's a clean break, refreshing, because the past carried too much baggage. she is still very very smart and she does well, goes into research in this new field, perhaps going into academia someday.
another possibility is that, as i've sometimes seen in fics, she goes into forensics and helps out a lot with shinichi's murder investigations. perhaps he opens his own detective agency and she is the forensics expert on the team. and maybe helps out a tokyo mpd sometimes as well. it's fine, fairly normal. perhaps this is the kind of normal life she can settle into, while doing something she's good at.
occasionally i entertain some darker twist of thought and have explored this in some fics, basically it's: what if what she did as sherry became something she has to answer for in court ……. yes she was forced into it, yes she was a child, but there are many complicated things, would the justice system take that all into account? basically when i consider this, i think the people who decided to try her in court weren't really intending to jail her. what they wanted is her talent, to have her work for the japanese government's research lab in some capacity. because such a genius scientist is not something they want to give up. so even if the evidence is complicated and even if she was a child back then, they wanted to engineer it to have her work for him. they kind of pressured furuya into helping (collecting information as bourbon, find out all the evidence of sherry's research that can be used in court) and they get her a good lawyer (eri basically) so that she doesn't go to jail, but is contractually obligated to work for the government. (they used things like what furuya did as bourbon to pressure him into cooperating, basically.) i imagine shinichi is outraged and shiho personally is more chilled about it, she's like whatever it's probably just like working for anywhere else (<- growing up in the org has ….. made her very, hard to care that much about such things.)
