Fara can see very little through her eyestone. It turns the blackness that is her usual world into a blurry mass of grey and black she can push through enough to read ancient manuscripts and writings and pictographs, the ones she can't have any human describe to her or they'd go mad. She needs light and minimal distractions to do it and the strain always leaves her fatigued and with a pounding headache. She pays it gladly for the knowledge she gains.

It's always bad after focusing for a long time but she was worried about letting Dante walk into this blind. Not that that's ever stopped him before.

Air always helps her head a little bit and she knows she won't be able to sleep, so she takes her translation notes, tucking the recorder into her pack, and slides a pair of sunglasses on. In this day and age she's often able to get away with not hiding her eyes in the general public but she doesn't want to bother with it today.

Her walking stick taps against the sidewalk and she's surrounded by sound. Sound is the guide she steers herself by. When she first came to the city it drove her nuts, picking up every conversation for a good many feet around, able to pick up on words with uncanny ability. She got used to it but there are still times it feels like the air is flowing sound into her ears, filling up her head to bursting.

On the other hand, it's also a gift that has Dante making it a goal to sneak up on her. He hasn't managed it yet.

Fara makes her way down the street, the sounds of laughter and talking and the music of street performers on the corner swirling around her. She lives in what she's heard people call a 'bohemian' neighborhood, or an 'artistic' one, or, ala Dante, "where rich kids can drink coffee with their pinkies in the air and no one thinks it's weird". Lots of odd people around so no one really pays her much heed or makes too much of a fuss about odd sounds or occurrences once in a while. Much like Dante's neighborhood where, she is convinced, the people must live in some kind of constant denial.

She counts her footsteps silently. She has it memorized by now. She doesn't expect his office door to be locked and she's correct, no matter how many times she or Trish or even Enzo gripe at him about it. But then again she doesn't know many people who'd be willing to piss Dante off for the meager stuff he has in his office, either.

She calls out as she enters, but as she expected her voice echoes through the empty room. Not home.

Her foot crushes something as she moves towards the desk and she blinks, kneeling down. She rolls her eyes when she realizes it's a pizza box and rises again, kicking it aside. From the sound of it bumping against something else and other boxes she steps on, she gathers the floor is probably littered with them. She makes a note to create some kind of spell to repel roaches and vermin and give it to him. Even if he doesn't use it, hearing him grumble about it will be fun.

Her hand brushes against the desk and she carefully feels her way over it. There's the phone. Papers. There's the goofy paperweight that looks like an eight ball she believes he said Trish gave him. She reaches the blotter set into the desk and sets the recorder with the translation down. As she's lifting her hand her fingers brush another object on the desk and she pauses, touching it lightly. That, she knows, is the picture of his mother. It has to be because she gave him that frame for it for his birthday.

Eva.

Fara lets her fingers rest against the cool edge of the frame, not touching it because she doesn't want to smear the glass. She'd known Dante for years before he'd finally mentioned his mother. She'd already known about her, of course. Anyone interested in ancient studies or the demon world knew the legend of Sparda. The Legendary Dark Knight. The Traitor. The father Dante had never really known.

She suspected it was pity for the longing in her voice when she'd asked about his mother that had made him tell her. Her own mother was a succubus, a demon she wouldn't have recognized in any way if their paths ever crossed. She'd only carried and birthed a human spawned child because of a deal the demons had with her family back for generations, mixing demonic magic into their bloodline. Almost if not all of the children spawned within that blood line were at least part demon, and hadn't Dante been interested in that little tidbit of information.

But to carry a demon's children…twins no less…birth them, and raise them, not out of duty. Not because it had been forced on her, but willingly, out of love….

What an extraordinary woman she must have been.

What a brave and compassionate woman, to win the love of a demon such as Sparda. To raise someone like Dante, half demon and yet one of the only honest to God good people she's ever met. And she knows it's Eva's fire that burns in Dante. She's heard it in his voice when he speaks of her, the devotion behind the words.

The phone rings. Dante calling his own office, that's a new one. Fara straightens the picture with a care that's almost reverence and reaches for the phone, feeling around until she finds it and lifting it to her ear. "If you keep on eating pizza twenty four hours a day you're going to lose your girlish figure," she informs him.

Dante is silent for a beat. "One, what are you doing there. And two, how the hell do you do that??"

"Do what?"

"With your own phone I always thought only a few people call you so you just guess every time you pick it up, but with my phone?"

"La, la, la, it's maaaaagic."

"Ha, fucking, ha, now tell me."

"Why I'm in your office? To drop off the translations."

"I'm waiting."

"Because you are the only one stupid enough to call your own phone."

"Liar. Trish mentioned she might stop by the past week so I check in every now and again, in case you care."

Fara's smile fades as she hears the tension underneath his voice. "What's wrong?"

Dante is silent again for a long moment. When he speaks again, Fara listens as he describes his attempt to get back to the manuscript's resting place.

Now it's Fara's turn to be silent as she goes over things in her head. "Curiouser and curiouser…"

"No Alice in Wonderland references, please."

"Sorry, forgot," Fara rakes a hand through her hair. "Dante, I don't like this at all. I've never heard of a demon that can do shit like that…"

"There are demons with little funhouses and lairs they change all over the world," he reminds her.

"Yes, but they built those. There's a difference between being able to control something you or your master created, it's an entirely different thing to do it to a street in a city filled with humans without anyone knowing."

Dante's voice goes sharp. "Wait, are you thinking this thing…whatever it is, could just pick any random part of the city and change it around?"

"How the hell should I know?" She growls, more at herself than him. "Although it explains a few things about that damned manuscript."

"Such as?"

"I can't explain it over the phone."

He snorts a bit but accepts that. "Well, I'm just stopping to pay a mutual friend of ours a visit. If anyone knows about a powerful demon moving about it'll be her."

"Oh, no…."

"C'mon, Fair, I can handle her. Can you wait around for a bit?"

"If she actually succeeds in her goal of dragging you into her bedchambers and deflowering you, it's going to take more than a bit."

"Deflower? The hell...no, you know what? Nevermind, I'm going to pretend you never said that word. She hasn't succeeded yet, what makes you think she'll succeed now?"

"Because, Dante, she's a succubus and she will never stop trying."

"Nice to know you have so much faith in my self control."

"On the other hand, you're right. You spend half your time surrounded by hot women and never get laid, so what am I worried about, really?"

"Fara, with you always turning me down when I ask you to marry me, how is my poor, shattered heart ever supposed to mend itself long enough to think of another woman?"

"You're a slob and I'd bore you within a week," Fara laughs. "All right, all right, I don't have anything to do; I can stick around for a while."

"Thanks, Fair. If Enzo shows up tell him I'm still not doing that job he laid money on."

"Okay."

"And if he hits on you turn him into a frog or something."

He hangs up before Fara can retort and she shakes her head, dropping the phone back into its cradle. She settles in Dante's chair to wait, tapping the cassette and letting her thoughts wander.

She'd heard the undertone in his voice. Not worry. She doesn't think Dante even knows what that is. Caution, maybe, but even faced with something he's never come across before Dante will just charge headfirst guns blazing. Ordinarily it works in the end.

So why, she wonders, this feeling of unease that won't go away?

In between her and Dante and everyone else he knows in the business there's nothing at least one of them hasn't come across before. Is there?