Hobson's choice
Adam Kadmon
Disclaimer: I do not own Eva
Pre-note: mixing anime and manga continuity. Not too much, but when Toji's got to die, he's got to die.
They rarely went out drinking together. Hyuga couldn't hold his liquor and Maya thought it was all vaguely immoral. They could get a few beers in NERV if they wanted, but they needed to put distance between professional responsibility and private conscience.
A good bar's atmosphere was conducive to forgetting reality. The night's venue was chosen by Aoba, who always chose, because he was the only one of them who gleaned any pleasure from alcohol. The others were social drinkers; they did it to fit in. Aoba did too, to a certain extent. But not to conform to friends' expectations at a party. He did it to meet women and run crying from the world he lived in.
He picked a small bar. It was dark, like all good bars, and the walls were lined with odd inexplicable mementos from the owner's life. There was no TV, no music; how he wanted it. There was just the bar, running from the far wall to the entrance, a few insignificant tables, and restrooms in the back. When they arrived Hyuga looked bored. Maya didn't care.
Aoba liked it. There were no distractions to hide what this place was: a room to get drunk in. It had the feel of experience and age. The man serving the drinks confirmed it. He was short and old, completely bald. His face looked like a catcher's mitt. He didn't smile. He gave customers what they wanted, and they gave him what he wanted. This wasn't a social club and made no effort to be one.
The real reason Aoba chose the bar was because he could not stand to be around other people at the moment, people who laughed and joked and went about living like it was a picnic, all the while not bothering to look past their noses to see what an utterly hideous pit the world was.
Aoba stared down into his drink. He sat at the counter with his friends. He hadn't spoken since they arrived. Hyuga made a few remarks about how tiny the place was, and openly wondered if they had anything good even though he always drank domestic beer, and Maya responded with tiredly polite single words. Aoba didn't reply.
The wood under his glass was nicked and dirty. Someone tried polishing it to meet the expected standard of a bar mantel, but decided it was easier not to.
"What are we doing?" he finally spoke without lifting his eyes.
"We're out for drinks," Hyuga said. His voice had the kind of unstated authority nervous tension provided.
"Don't. Don't do that now." Aoba stared at his glass, short and squat. What he didn't drink lined the bottom edge like a grubby halo. "What we did today, what NERV did, what we let happen."
"Do we have to talk about this?" He glanced at Maya for support. She looked away. "I don't think now is the appropriate time."
"I'm not drunk enough yet to agree." When he spoke again it was mostly to himself. "Are we really doing the right thing?"
"Of course we are," Hyuga said. "If we don't, we could all die."
"Ends justify the means."
"In this case, yeah. They do. So let's do what we came here to do, alright?"
Aoba shut his mouth and Hyuga ordered more beer. The printed label had a silhouette of a man on a boat. There was a fish before him and a wave behind. Hyuga stopped drinking after amassing a small fleet. He mumbled to himself as he carefully stacked his empty cans to the side, nodded in accomplishment, then gradually lowered his head onto his folded arms.
Aoba watched him and tilted his glass forward, then back, making the contents slither up the sides to the lip. He did it until he was sure Hyuga was unconscious then slid it away from him to join the other three he already had.
"Is this what you signed on for?" he asked Maya. "Is this what you hoped you'd be doing when you entered NERV?"
"Please, just stop it."
"Why? So we can just forget about what happened? I'm sick of sweeping everything under the rug, pretending its all okay. It isn't. Ibuki, we killed a fourteen-year-old."
"No we didn't," she said immediately. "We didn't. It was the Dummy system. We didn't have any control. We had to do it. If we didn't Shinji-kun would have died. Everyone would have died."
Aoba felt a sudden brutally profound pity for the girl beside him. She was already convincing herself her actions were inevitable and necessary. There was no wrong committed here, so she wouldn't have to reevaluate what she was doing with her life. She wouldn't have to abandon the admiration and care she held for Dr. Akagi. She would still be able to function the way she wanted to.
"Everyone didn't die," he said. "Just one."
"Stop it."
"Or what?" He wasn't hostile or belligerent. He was genuinely searching for an answer. "The Commanders… Ikari called it 'a successful activation test.' The old man agreed. How the hell do you call it…" He shook his head slowly. "And Shinji-kun… he's in the hospital right now. I can't imagine they'll let him pilot again. I can't imagine he'll want to. He had to watch his best friend get beaten to death with his own hands."
"They weren't his hands."
"How do you think he saw it? He said it himself." Aoba slumped on his stool. "And what did we say? We said he had to do it. We didn't even try to make him feel better."
"We were a little stressed, if you remember," Maya said. She was still nursing her first drink, a spiked ice tea. She gave it an American name. "We had more important things to worry about."
"More important," he repeated. His brow knitted. "More important? His state of mind was what we were worrying about. We should have tried to do something different."
"I doubt we could have changed anything. I hardly know Shinji-kun. Maybe if the Major was there," she conceded. She stirred her glass with a thin straw. The slivers of ice left clinked near the bottom.
Hyuga made an odd coughing sound which almost sounded like a laugh, but otherwise was still.
"It's late," Maya stated.
"Yeah."
"We should probably get going. We have to be at work in the morning." She wondered why she even came out tonight.
"Yeah."
"I'd leave by myself but I don't know if you could carry Hyuga-kun alone."
"Yeah."
"Aoba-kun—"
"It's okay." He rose from his seat. "I know. Let's go."
He lifted Hyuga's arm up and over his shoulders, and gripped the hand as it dangled down. Aoba heaved him up by the waist and nearly fell on the floor. Maya moved to help him.
"Here," Aoba said in the general direction of the owner, and dropped too much money on the counter on their way out. The owner nodded, not looking up from the newspaper he was reading.
The city was quiet. It was past three. Even in the middle of the day it was quiet. After the Angel that swallowed so much of it, and without any explosion or clearly definable cause, people were afraid. More so than before. It was easy for them to go about their normal, mundane lives after one of the more typical attacks from a month or two ago because it was almost like existing in a better kind of post-Impact world. There was still fear and loss, but compared to the early 2000s it was a paradise.
Or everyone was just pretending. Smile and nod your head and laugh and forget giant hell creatures are ransacking your home on a regular basis. Why did people still live here?
"It's quiet," Maya remarked. She blushed in awkward embarrassment.
"Tends to get like that at this hour." Aoba shifted his weight and readjusted Hyuga's dead mass. "Tokyo-3 never had a great nightlife to begin with. Even before everything started." A weak smile left his face. "Kind of strange considering it's stacked with NERV personnel."
"What do you mean?"
"Do you know anyone we work with who doesn't have some sort of self-destructive vice? I think it's a requirement for employment there. And I'm not just talking about getting drunk or high or whatever. I mean any distraction to keep people from thinking about…" He shook his free hand to summon the appropriate word. "Everything. Being mean, or too nice, or aloof… we can never just…"
"We all have bad habits," Maya said as he trailed off. She grimaced slightly. She forgot how ineffectively philosophical Aoba got when he drank.
"It's more than that. It's about being honest with who we are and what we do." He spat out a sudden, harsh laugh. He calmed and his body sagged. "Even me. I have to get buzzed to talk to anyone."
"You're exhausted, Aoba-kun. So am I." She debated her next comment. "Maybe you shouldn't think so hard on this. It's not always easy to be totally honest. Sometimes it isn't a good idea."
"So let's just fucking forget it," Aoba spat. He ignored her startled hop. "We use children. We use fucking children and it's sick." He saw Maya opening her mouth and cut her off. "I don't want to hear you say it's for the greater good again. I don't want another excuse from a NERV officer. We use children, Maya. There is no excuse for what we're doing."
"So what do you want to do? Lie back and watch as the next Angel attacks and kills us all?" He didn't answer her. "I know what you're saying. Believe me. But, I mean, come on. Did you think this war would be easy? The first Angel resulted in the deaths of three billion people. This was never going to be a walk in the park. We're doing—we're just trying to prevent something like that from happening again."
"It's all about numbers. Three billion, one… it's all about numbers."
"It isn't fair but we don't have any choice. You know that. So please, please don't make this any harder than it has to be."
"Why not?"
"We're not murderers," she said.
"What do you call what happened today, then?"
"We're not."
"We're facilitating murder," he said.
"And the Angels, what are they facilitating? They kill without discretion. They're monsters without any concern at all."
"We're supposed to be better than them."
"We are," Maya said quietly. "We're working to save the entire world, Aoba-kun. To save people, and save them from another Impact."
"Another Impact," he whispered. His brow beetled. "What's so special about NERV, anyway?"
"What?"
"Why are the Angels only attacking this city, trying to reach this base? They say if an Angel gets into NERV it could trigger another Impact. How? Why don't they just do it from outside, or in some remote desert where no one can kill them? Why do they keep coming here?"
"What about that one Asuka beat? That was way out at sea."
Aoba fell silent. They walked. The street was tired and dark. The moon dipped towards the horizon.
"It still doesn't make sense," he said.
"I don't think it's supposed to." Maya watched him for a moment out of the corner of her eye. "Angels are… things, Aoba-kun. They're big and strange looking, they don't talk or act in a logical way. They kill. They—"
"What? Humans don't? I thought being under Dr. Akagi's thumb for so long would have matured you a little."
It was a low blow and he knew it. Disparaging her and her mentor when she was injured at Matsushiro just a few hours ago. He wasn't surprised when Maya flared into anger.
"What the hell do you want!?" she shouted. "Do you really want the whole world to be destroyed!?"
He didn't answer.
Hyuga's apartment came into view. It was a tall building lined with small balconies jutting from its face. Every window was dark and shuttered. It was an apartment to save money in. Tightly packed, overcrowded, noisy and reeking of people. It sat in the industrial district; it was a brief stopover between shifts for tired workers without family. Hyuga stayed there because he could. No one there knew him, and being a NERV officer wasn't conducive for relations with civilians. The last few attacks soured the city's perception of the people guarding them.
Hyuga refused to move to Aoba's building or Maya's overpriced shoebox because he said he didn't want to forget who he was fighting for and why he was doing his job. It was a stupid sentiment. He joined NERV long before the Angels attacked. He did it for the status and prestige. The organization was a hotbed for talent, only the truly gifted being selected for labor. A badge of honor. It didn't pay much more then the military, but the right to say you worked in NERV made it seem like much more.
Aoba also knew Hyuga didn't like his coworkers. He'd been around them too long in close confines for too many dead days before the attacks, and they all knew too much about him.
Aoba didn't have many friends either. Maya never talked about her free time, and he learned not to ask. He had a few acquaintances, bar buddies and a small band he played with sometimes, and none of them knew what he did for a living. They'd inquire, and he'd tell them he was a factory worker from out of town but he stayed in the city because he had a girlfriend here. It became a joke. They'd ask about her, and he'd evade, and they'd think he was lying, or she was ugly, or she was a he, or she was a bitch, or whatever.
Whatever.
They dragged Hyuga up to his home on the fifth floor. The door was locked, and Aoba had to fish into his pockets for the key because Maya refused without being asked. Aoba sometimes suspected she was still a virgin. Not that he could judge her; it had been over six months since the last time he got laid. A relationship was just too much work. Sometimes he'd find a girl at a bar and they'd fuck. Sometimes she called him a few days later to go out, or meet her friends, and he'd always politely tell her to get lost.
For a time he thought about dating Maya. She was cute and smart, and was a hopeless romantic, something Aoba longed to recapture. And she was part of NERV. She knew the strains and pressures, and might understand an affair for what it was; a warm body and a sympathetic ear. A few light prods and he quickly realized she wasn't interested in him or what he wanted, or any kind of intimate connection beyond the safe confines of a novel.
They dropped Hyuga down on his bed. It was small, built and used for one. His room was messy. Manga, anime discs, games, music, two computers, a TV, food. The carpet was visible only in small islands. It looked like an old college dorm Aoba heard about from his parents. All that was missing was a baggie full of pot.
They set his alarm and left, unable to lock the door, but it was late and Hyuga was expected at work in the morning. He'd get at least three hours.
Maya and Aoba's paths home shared the same sidewalk for a mile or so. Everything was still sleeping around them. They hadn't spoken since he swore out loud after tripping on a stray pizza box in Hyuga's apartment.
"This isn't what I wanted," Maya said after a half block. She glanced at Aoba. He stared at her to continue. "I signed on to work under the famous Dr. Akagi. I never actually thought I'd ever be working directly under her. It was so exciting. She's brilliant, you know. A lot of people think she's cold or unfriendly, but she's just really professional at NERV."
"But out, she's not?"
"I've only seen her twice outside of work," she confessed, almost guiltily. "The first was a complete accident. But the second time we had been combing over the data following one of Rei's synch tests, before the Angels came here, and it got real late. She didn't even notice the time. Dr. Akagi called it a day. We actually worked through dinner without realizing it. So, she suggested we grab a bite to eat before heading home, but in the city. I was tired, but I said yes.
"She picked this small Italian restaurant on the east side of town, the ritzy part. I didn't want to put her out. I mean, Italian can get pretty expensive in this city. But she insisted, and said it was no big deal.
"It was a nice place. Expensive looking and refined. They were about to close soon. The only other people there were a guy at the bar and a couple finishing up a meal. Dr. Akagi asked to be seated, and they let us in. I guess she must go there often.
"I ordered what she ordered. I don't eat that kind of food a lot, and I figured what she picked would be good. She started talking to me, just soft inquiries into which school I went to, how I got interested in computer sciences, that kind of thing. She had to have known all of it before I even joined NERV, but she still asked. She smiled a lot, and laughed when I told her my teacher looked like a wrinkled Commander Ikari. She was so friendly.
"I told her I really admired her. I'd wanted to for a long time, even before I met her, but I just couldn't find the right time or words. But that night I told her she was smart and motivated and talented. I told her NERV would probably fall apart without her, kind of jokingly, you know? I told her I wished I could be more like her, that she was the noblest person I ever met, and I meant it. I still do. But she just kind of… shut down after that. She'd still talk, but she'd only answer my questions.
"We ate and she paid the bill, and she said goodnight. She never invited me out after that."
Aoba didn't know what to say to all that, so he kept his mouth shut. That was the most he ever heard her say at one time. She was usually so reserved. Not about public displays of emotion, but about herself. She'd respond politely to coworkers, but she never offered more than what they asked. And even then she could carefully steer the conversation from her having to reveal too much.
"I never really knew what to think about her," he said after the silence became too heavy. "I knew she was smart, but she always seemed so sad."
"Sad?" Maya's body jerked up once in a surprised laugh. "Most people think she's angry."
"What do you think?"
"… I think she's sad, too."
The sidewalk ended. On their left was a quiet bookstore. On their right a crosswalk leading to Aoba's apartment. Straight ahead the clean and wide road to Maya's. He stepped to the side without a word, and stopped. She watched him stand in the crosswalk, one foot in the street. She didn't walk away.
"I'm tired, Ibuki."
He started to shake his head and halted after one move to the left. He kept it there, then let it sink back towards his chest. He walked away.
Maya looked after him until he disappeared behind a coffee shop across the street. The sky above her was lighter. The moon was gone, the tall buildings of the city masking it from sight. They looked like teeth around a shadowy mouth.
The sun would be up in less than thirty minutes. The horizon was already bleeding color. The morning commute would begin soon. The streets would be filled with life and noise again. She'd wake up, and shower, and eat, and return to the place in the ground where she helped kill people for status.
Maya was already making herself have trouble remembering that boy's name. Would she remember, years from now, or when the Angels stopped attacking? If they stopped attacking? Would she feel the guilt and disgust Aoba did? Should she?
"Will Dr. Akagi?"
Maya walked home under a day on the cusp of birth. She walked home and slept and did not dream.
End
Author notes: eh, sorry about removing Hyuga so quickly. I did say he couldn't hold his liquor.
Maya and Aoba were OOC. I've made peace with that. If you can't, great. If you can, just as good.