Disclaimer: This is a work of fan fiction. The author does not own anything concerning Gainax's IP Neon Genesis Evangelion. The company gives the word and this comes down.
Blood Red Eyes
My reflection drifts through the Link, as if the glass it is seen through is warped. The reflection has been dead for forty-five seconds now. The refraction of light is lukewarm to touch and cooling rapidly. I feel the heat flow into me every time my fingers trace over the naked skin covering her heart in the gloom.
I watch streams of inky blood pump from her shattered nose and fissured eye sockets in lazy spirals. The darkness becomes cloudy.
She floats here, right through this liquid world. Her eyes bulge from the sockets, the face is lumpy like uneven bread. I remember the feel of my fingers entwined in the wet mop of hair when I began hollowing out its face on the support strut. Thick purple blotches stand out vividly on her throat—a large one, the size of a baseball, covers the right side where the artery burst—and her hands are lowered, frozen into delicate claws.
This anonymous seed floats amongst coils of red in the dark.
My world is a mad creation. Everything turns upside down and all in the world scatters asunder.
Fifty-two seconds dead.
I choked her, Father.
The tactile sensations of skin on skin enthrall me. Yes, touch, something so rare in this tank. Human interaction, I cherish it. Simple connection with another being via emotion and demonstrated with a predetermined feeling. I love it. Father tells me it's so hard for people to come together and open up, anymore. The lights have gone out across the world.
I'm his light in the dark. His little girl. The only thing he can truly communicate with.
One minute.
I wish to be like him. Warm, considerate, intelligent, iron-willed, I wish to be all of these. I want to be able to walk freely and see everything out there. Outside.
I feel I am fulfilling that wish. I knew her name. I knew her mind. And I connected with her. I enjoyed choking her. I enjoyed hitting her.
"I did enjoy it," I whisper, looking to the forest of red eyes in the jet black all around me. I hear a hiss. A twitter caroms through the concave walls of the tank, ripples left to right. Strange globes of light appear here and there, suggestions of movement. The roll of a shoulder, the movement of a foot. I look back at the dim white smear hovering in front of my eyes. It moves closer and farther all at once, leaving little ripples that brush my cheeks. The reflection's bloody eyes lose their luster; now, only little slits of white can be seen accreting a foamy sheen of disease. A hum permeates the fluidity of everything.
One minute, thirteen seconds now.
She intruded upon my personal space, giggling like she always does. Like all these gibbering reflections do. It tried to sniff me, to sink her teeth into my pale skin. I am not soya paste. I am not a tea rose. I am not some giggling homunculi. I am not her friend or playmate. I am not deserving of this. I am me. And I will not be treated like part of the herd any longer. So I demonstrated this in as plain a way possible.
Now there is no mirth, only shifting, graceful shapes in the dark. The filters try to suck all the blood out, poor vampires that they are. No laughter now, ladies.
Their sick smiles spread wider, but some frown so sharply I think some of my little tricks-of-light may begin to cry. I try not to laugh. The poor mummers are scared! I clap my hands over my mouth, sides trembling with barely kempt mirth. I wouldn't be able to stop if I allow but one laugh to burst free.
I wonder what Father might say about this. I picture it clearly. That poor old man, his lined face stretches in a sharp frown instead his sweet slow smile. No warmth, none. Only a flinty face, like that of He Who Covets. All hard lines, frowns, hate. The thought of Father—Daddy—being mad is like being robbed of my few happy memories—our talks once every hidden moon. Sudden shame fills me up, burns my eyes.
I will not shed this shame in front of these dumb creatures. The thistle-haired woman is right in one regard: they are freaks, not worth the oxygen they ingest. I let them fuel my perturbation. I hear a wet, clotted noise beyond the curve of the tank and it moves, rippling through the field of red dwarfs floating in the deep. A thick coughing noise, gargles to giggles. They mock me.
I bark.
"I am not spare parts. I am not a replacement. I think. I feel. I breathe. I am more than the sum of my totality." They twitter and sudden pressure shoves between my nipples. The weight pushes rivers of Link from my lungs. I choke for a moment from a simple shift in the currents. They wade closer.
One minute, twenty-seven seconds.
"I…am not you."
Resolution.
"I carry my own spark. What do you want other than food and hate?" A cold forearm drifts against my stomach, drags along my navel. I shiver at the rubbery sensation. Pictures of eyeless rubber dolls reaching out from this ichor with yawning mouths topped off with row after row of festering teeth. No, no dolls, only choral laughter bubbles forth out of the black.
Do they not comprehend me?
The razor's edge I crawl upon allows me to know there is another side to the anger. A lighter, softer side where there are no demons. No warped images when the lights come on, smiling, reaching, touching, and slithering into me.
I think about a razor's edge often, picturing a long, tapering piece of blackened carbon steel. And sometimes I imagine grasping it, feeling the horrible rasping bite of the blade. I watch beads of impossibly bright blood sheeting across the curving surface like rain on a window, down my wrist and then I slice into my gut.
Down, down, down parting muscle until it slips into intestinal jelly. No such fantasies today. I do not always canter with despair in this hellish broken torus. Emotion is not the wailing banshee outside my door. It is let in and embraced by the fire, made a friend. Because I know there is more to this hermetically sealed existence. And it lies beyond the great wall of white through which Father and the Vessel walk. Through that…that door.
They think us dumb animals. How wrong they are.
I am…unique. I know the world's wonders. I know the name of the firestar dangling in the sky miles above Mother's Moon. I know the name of the weeping insects clinging to the elms who never sleep. I know the thing called sum-ur is eternal. The world is changed. Transformed into a planet of endless light and heat; a place of red memories. An entire ocean of memories, wiped clean of human taint. What better world can there be?
All this and more I've found out in my decade sitting in the Chamber. I am a 'miracle baby'. That's what Father called me. My shame dies like a guttering candle, replaced by this warmer feeling pumping in the veins, shunning all the common blood in my heart.
One minute, fifty-seven seconds.
I am the last of the original three.
Once, I was Lilith's future vessel. Now? Mine is a world defined by glass, primordial breath given form, white flesh, succubotic laughter, disdain, and eddies of blood leaching from carrion women. But I've learned so much. I listened, Father, aren't you proud? Aren't you? You look at me and see only another one of these seeds.
Do you not see a daughter in this one? Can you not see the warmth in this one's smile given only to you? The way my fingers touch the glass to reach you? No, I'm only another mad dog swimming in blood. No one sees me. Not you, or the thistle-haired one, or He Who Covets, or the Vessel.
Ayanami.
The latest model merely an insignificant seed elevated to a disposable godhood. I was meant to take the soul of Mother. Not that loathsome thing.
And why. Not. Me?
My birth-sisters gained the Light of Lilith before they died and that fucking bespectacled piece of trash picks a seed? A piece of pond scum scrubbed from the bottom of a barrel and given shape, breath. That is what they chose over me, an original. Father simply stood there and did nothing with closed eyes and heart to all transpiring. I cannot articulate the rage I felt at that moment.
Flesh gives way to digging nails. More trickles of bright red in the black.
This one will show you how wrong you are, Father. I deserved the Light. You watched the pain etched here on this one and did not care. There is only the red scent of life wasted. I inhale the syrupy blood greedily as the filter baffles do.
Two minutes, twenty-six seconds.
Red.
The scramble to remove the thick ropes of clotting blood never ceases to amuse. Why the hurry? I breathe in blood every day. The Link is blood. This foreign stuff is but a speck of impurity. And is not blood that which gives us the sparks of motion, intelligence? The light inside our minds is blood. Red. And with it, I live on. Are not my eyes the same color as that which flows from the dead? Red.
The reflections stare back at me, hating me, with fiery garnet eyes.
Am I nothing?
I was not quickened; I came into the world wailing. A mewling baby. All three of us were the proto-vessels. Die-cast children before mass production began. You wanted a daughter, Father, someone to nurture. You told us that back when the mountains were still shorelines waiting to meet. I wait here and endure.
I grew, Father. My limbs lengthened, my breasts filled, the puppy fat burned away, my face curved, smoothed, and yet I am unremarkable now. I have too many reflections trapped with me, they cannot see the real me. A child abandoned. I wish for freedom from my chattering reflections.
I wish for freedom from Father's disinterest. He loves his child. I know he does.
Two minutes, fifty-one seconds.
The body floats near me, unseen, only a thin, curvy line of white flesh apparent. I see the tip of a nipple, the crook of broken fingers, the dip of her throat, glimpses of the ruin of her face. A roadmap cracked in the glass.
"I shattered you…"
My fingers glide through grease slick hair, the top of her head coated in blood, saturated in blood and pulpy to the touch. I realize the support beam is what did her in, the I-beam won out against the skull. Chips of it moved under inquisitive fingers, nearly pushing through the skin. A lumpy, creamy something rushes against my fingers. It feels like meat swimming in angel hair pasta.
Hmm, what is meat?
I shove the lifeless thing away feeling unsettled. Away, away it hooks into the current dreamlike, off into the Stygian dark all around me. The hyenas scream as if they're actually moved. Much as they laugh, the dead scare them. I hear the sloshes and panicked kicks of fleeing seeds stampeding to the blackened corners. All that can be heard is the hum of the filters and the blaring wails of the godhead high above us.
"Good, let me alone," I say after a long stretch of stillness.
My head rests against cool glass, the extreme border of the world. An insurmountable black cliff. A true reflection stares back at me, finely carved scratches on pallid cheek, clumps of hair matted red and black. Strained. I wonder how people exist out there free of the Link. Without fluid in their lungs, how do they survive? I dream of walking out there. Trying to picture how a world without fluid feels. It feels cold, like the glass. How bitterly cold the world outside is. People in a cold world are the only sources of warmth, but they separate. Diffidence is the keyfor them, but I want to touch. Feel real skin, the soft pinks and deeper hues people carry in the false world.
I dream of so many things.
Two minutes, forty-two seconds.
My tongue slithers a trail up the smooth surface leaving foggy condensation. It tastes like blood. This is how all things taste. I press my cheek against the rapidly cooling traces of saliva. Fingers of cold seep down my spine. I love its caress. Rushes of tiny, prickling needles run along my back, my neck, my chest, my arms.
Something warm, inviting, nestles in the depths of my abdomen.
Something clanks in the dark and I hear the rhythmic thunder of hydraulic locks opening. A sudden, blinding white light illuminates the entire chamber. A silence sweeps through the Link as quick and silent as Death. The blurred figures of people stand in that opaque wall of light. They are three. A cold chill runs up my spine. The shapes are different save one. The Thistle-haired woman and who are these strangers accompanying her?
They are tense, looking all around at the obsidian clefts of shadow thrown around by the light and looking up at the sprawling mass of the great core. The Godhead of Rage. The Dummy, Father calls it. I suddenly miss him and wish he was here.
There is something wrong with how coolly the Thistle-haired one speaks.
"And this," she says.
The way she looks at us beyond the great rime of light licking at the dark. Her hand sweeps up with that odd little remote of hers.
"This is the truth."
The other standing at her side is a woman, wearing a red jacket and pointing a strange plastic thing at the doctor. She is like a caged animal, looking to lash out at the doctor. At the Akagi woman. Something inside desperately wants the animal-woman to hit the doctor and watch her rip those flat, blank eyes out of the sockets.
There is a young man standing behind them both. Blue eyes, distraught by body language, nervous. I feel pity for him. But do I know him? He is as familiar as my glass encased world. Strange, I have never laid my eyes upon him. I shall have to ask Father about this later on. I wish he were here, he would silence that monotonous droning buzzing out of the doctor's mouth.
My eyes linger on the boy. The problem takes root deep in my mind. Lights erupt in the Link and we are exposed. Horror is all that is written on the faces of the strangers. The boy's face simply collapses in on itself. Sad little dying star.
Three minutes, seventeen seconds.
Ikari…Shin…ji… Shinji.
Yes, that is his name. A toddler cries in a room, horrified at what's going on around him. Crying for mother, ignored. A man with a face that would later become stone looks on in rapturous awe, He Who Covets.
Sounds reach me, "…just empty vessels…"
Whore.
Something screams within me, a resonant weeping. A wail from Mother's Moon that only I can hear. Distantly, the wall of light shifts before my eyes and the walls turn to stone. I see black cliffs looming up above me and a giant of light looking down upon me, through me. Mother screams.
"Daddy…" I see his face flash behind my irises and I calm. His slow smile and that calming voice, the deep timber of it reminding me of something echoing through the empty cave my mind once was, still is. I never knew his name. Ghosts summon up and I hear Father.
"Sensei, I really must go...I'll have the thesis ready in a few weeks, I promise."
"Very well, Yui."
I hear a shrill beeping in the chamber. The boy is looking right at me. Say something! I must! He sees me…but there are no words for Shinji.
Shinji.
I wonder if I learned that name in my sleep in the soft songs of the core why is the doctor lifting the device I see now there is a fire inside me that was never meant to be but why didn't daddy ever tell me why I just wanted to be a normal girl I don't want to see the end all there is a red memory red sea red memory and all the canticles sung there in the water in a field of shapes…
Four minutes.
I feel a hand lazily caress my cheek and clouds of blood hit my face and I smile before my face falls apar—
"Dadd—"
A/N: You've been trapped in a tank where you can breathe water and been surrounded by psychotic giggling woman-children all your life. All of them look like you. Dumber than you, wilder. You grow; you change, while everything around you stays the same. Your knowledge comes with sleep and you know not why. Another you walks into the room every so often. Your 'father' speaks with you through the glass, yet you know fully that you're a tool. How do you think you'd develop? Rei, but not Rei. Just a very close relative. Let's call her Hisako.
This is my poorly thought out, ham-fisted rendition of how I see a sentient clone dealing with her last minutes of life. It's seen much iteration in my brain and on the page. And I realize there are two versions of the clones, anime and manga clones. Mix and match and choose as I please. And if the violence seems utterly out-of-character (especially for manga-centric readers), please fondly recall these are Dummy System clones.
And I'm utterly uncaring for canon when it comes against my story. That also has something to do with it, I think.
Cheers!