Decision
Chapter II
By Riko Ozaki
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Disclaimer:
The characters portrayed herein are copyrighted to Anno Hideki and Studio Gainax. They are not my creations. If asked, I will pull this prose from the internet if it offends them.
Please excuse any mistakes which I may have made due to syntax and punctuation; English is not my primary language.
Thank you for reading, and please review. It helps me to progress in learning a new language, and prods me to be a better author.
This chapter was pre-read by 94Saturn, Rose1948, and Jintsu.
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The sun was shining brightly as the tram car bumped and swayed its way up the cable towards the top of Mount Futago. The sole passenger of the car rested her head between the glass window and her left hand. Staring out into the verdant foliage of the mountain, she remembered the violence that was visited upon these hills four years ago. Nature had removed the scars and replaced them with teal-colored new growth. The mountain was still a bit lop-sided, but had returned to its fully overgrown self.
The young woman sighed in remembrance, thinking about past lives and past chances. How she had met a young man that had cared for her, and had taken her place in a major battle, so that she might live. In her mind's eye she went over every detail of that encounter: the pain she felt as she was thrown from the hospital gurney, the loving-kindness he shared with her as he cradled her body from harm. Her eyes stinging as she remembered her last thought as Unit-00 self-destructed to save him from the evil which should never touch him.
The car creaked and groaned to a stop at the terminus of the line, and Ayanami Rei gathered her small bag of clothing and exited the tram. Walking up the five stairs to the worn path on the side of the mountain, she gazed at her surroundings. In front of her was a path which led into a cedar forest, majestic in their width and height. To the left was the normal high-alpine forest. To her right was the sheer cliff of the summit of the mountain. With a slow, measured pace, she strode down the path between the cedars. Sunlight played hide-and-seek with her face and birdsong echoed from the forest as she strolled along the sun-dappled path. The plain dirt path was soon exchanged for a stone paved track through the cedar cathedral. All too soon, she found herself at her place of work.
It had been a hard three years for her. After the rejection of Third Impact, Rei had been forcefully separated from Lilith. She had been given a new body, free from the stigma of Yui Ikari and all angelic indicators, and been told that she needed to learn to live for herself. After this momentous event, she was unceremoniously dropped in Osaka, nude and unconscious in a park.
She stopped her musing of the past as she walked into the caretakers hut for this small shrine on the mountain. Going into the back room of the hut, she shuffled over to a cot in the corner and sat down. Opening her bag, she removed her work clothing and started to change out of her street clothes. One of the things that Rei learned early-on after her rebirth was modesty. It was one of many traits which she had learned the hard way. With no friends, no secret multinational organization looking out for her and no resources, she stumbled her way into a new life. Besides, the Ayanami Rei that was known to all was dead, supposedly gone with the entity known as Lilith. This person looking in the small, cracked mirror was just another inhabitant of the island-nation of Nippon. Black haired, brown eyed, she looked like countless others in this sea of Asian humanity. The only feature carried over from the previous Ayanami was the haunting look of loneliness trapped within her eyes.
Finished with her change of clothing, she walked towards the door, picking up a basket for her cuttings, and a pair of old-fashioned grass shears. As she left the hut she again thought of the one that had been the only person to show her kindness in her short life. She wondered if he still lived, if he had found happiness with another. Maybe with the Second. She shook her head to clear her thoughts as she passed through the door of the hut, and moved towards the left side of the memorial area. The grass had been growing well for this time of year, and she had much to do today. Kneeling down by a stone marking some person she never knew, she started clipping the grass away from the marker. This was serene work; she could trim and think at the same time. It allowed her to learn to function as a human being, and gave her time to reflect upon her past and to gaze upon what might be her future.
As she neatly clipped away the growth from around the ratomba she grimaced at the irony of her fate. From being almost god-like to becoming almost a peasant in this world of post Third Impact. Quite a change, and for the most part, for the better. But a few doubts still lingered in her troubled mind. She was still very much alone in this world. The grim reminder of her past life still mocked her, no more than ten meters away to her right. Her own personal ratomba that some caring soul had placed here to remember her by. She could only think of three people who could have placed that marker: One had been executed for crimes against humanity; another was still serving a long sentence for his part in that fiasco, and the third...
The third,...Third Child... Shinji Ikari. She longed to speak with him. To tell him that he did the right thing, in rejecting Instrumentality. She wished to say so many things to him, now that the leash on her emotions had been cut. She had come back to Hakone to try and find the elusive and shy former Third Child. To try and make an amends of sorts, but her inquiries had been turned away. She was now just another person who had been touched by Shinji during the event, and was seen as just another devotee of the savior of mankind. She left then, not wanting to explain who she was and why she had the appearance she now wore.
She slid her gaze over to the right to take in the sight of her memorial, and was shocked to see a new addition. She could easily read the chiseled kanji on the granite face from where she knelt. She also noted the other characters with the blood-red paint over them.
'You knew,...You knew of my origins, yet you cared not for them. You cared only for me. How I wish I might be able to tell you how I feel now. But it is futile, for I cannot find you to tell you these things that I feel within me. Every day my soul cries from the loneliness that I dwell in, within this existence.'
She paused her clipping of errant tufts of grass, as the tears silently flowed again. Rei had cried many times in these past few years, as she was learning to become a human being. She had experienced many of the emotions that others took for granted. But for the most part, she felt "normal". Not deathly depressed, nor ecstatically joyous, just somewhere in the middle. It was only when she was forcefully reminded of the past that her depression became almost unbearable.
She crushed said depression down into a small black sphere, and shoved it back into the pit where it belonged. Her day was long enough as it was, without this rapacious feeling eating at her psyche. She willed herself to calmness, and then continued on in her task.
But as the calm spread through her mind, she felt something was off-kilter. Just a twinge from her intuition that things were not as they seemed. It was then that she heard the slight scuffing of leather, and the almost silent swish of clothing passing her. She broke her concentration from her task and looked to the right.
She almost screamed.
Standing before her, looking down at the ratomba was Gendo Ikari. He then knelt down and sat in seiza style, and started speaking in a soft voice. A voice she knew all too well. For it was not Gendo before her, but Shinji.
"It has been three years since that awful time in Tokyo-3. I'm glad to say that things have gotten better since the last time I visited you. The sessions with the psychotherapist helped me see what I was doing to myself, and opened my eyes to the changes I needed to make. It's been hard, but I feel like a new person. You probably wouldn't even know me if you could meet me now."
She was amazed at the change in his appearance from what she remembered of him. In these past three years, he had matured well beyond his boyish looks as the pilot of Evangelion Unit-01. His once short hairstyle was now a shining mane of coffee-colored hair, which was tightly bound at the back of his head. The queue cascaded downwards almost to his shoulder blades, lightly lying upon an expensive suit jacket. She took in the details of this new Shinji, like a sponge hungrily absorbing water.
An expensive designer-made grey suit wrapped him in silk, while well crafted brown loafers adorned his feet. He also had wire-rimmed glasses on his now rugged face, quite possibly prescription made. His father had poor eyesight, so possibly the genes were passed on. If he had been wearing white gloves, the resemblance would have been eerie. Rei slightly cocked her head to the side and listened in on his monologue.
"But there are some things that are still keeping me from gaining a sense of closure on this whole mess. Why didn't you come back? Everyone else did. Even that rat-bastard of a non-existent father of mine chose to return! I lay awake at night wondering if I said or did something to keep you from returning."
"I remember the first time we met...as father tried to force you to...pilot Unit-01. I think...NO; I know that I felt something for you at that point. And then before the fifth Angel, how we talked before the attack. And after I killed the Angel and thought I had lost you...my heart was frozen in my chest. But then to see you alive, to see you smile for me..."
Her feelings were running rampant through her mind as she bowed her head, thinking back to that wonderful memory. Her heart seemed to expand within her breast at hearing his confession, while her golden-brown eyes slightly glistened with yet to-be shed tears. The feelings of desire and adoration swelled to the bursting point, and she quietly sobbed once, as a lock of her raven-black hair came loose from under her straw hat.
"...After the sixteenth Angel, and finding out that it wasn't you in that body, I...I...just felt as though my world ended. I guess what they say is true: a person does not know what they have, until they lose that most important thing to them. Of all the people I wanted back, you were the one that I felt needed a second chance, Rei. But it seems that I failed in that, also. I am so sorry, Rei..."
Upon hearing this, Rei's slight smile from reminiscing on her most poignant memory of Shinji turned into a frown.
'I...I cannot tell him. Not yet. I need time to be able to approach him in my new form. As I did not acknowledge you in your new guise, you would not recognize me in mine. Where do you live now, Shinji-kun? How can I contact you? How may I reach out to you? My heart cries out to yours in its loneliness.'
Rei slowly raised her head until she could just see Shinji beyond the brim of her hat. She then watched as Shinji reverently leaned forward until his forehead rested upon the ratomba, his hands clutching grass tufts on either side of the stone. She witnessed his tears falling unabated as he finally broke down and openly wept for her; the person that meant so much to him. She quietly and covertly observed him in his sorrow for almost ten minutes, as his short, racking sobs echoed through the clearing.
'I must do something...I cannot stand to see him in such pain. I will be found out by the UN, sooner or later. My new life has been free from encumbrances of that agency, but I will trade my freedom for the end of his pain.'
Rei started to move towards Shinji, raising her right arm to reach out towards his shoulder. She quickly reversed herself as Shinji lifted himself from the ratomba and sat back on his heels.
"I just wanted to tell you this Rei, because I may not be back for a while. With the help of my psychotherapist, I have finally come to terms with my past, and I am ready to move forward with my life."
'No...Not now!'
With her heart clenched within an icy embrace, Rei watched as Shinji then carefully stood, still looking down at the stone. She heard his voice steadying and felt his resolve growing, as she saw him clasp his right hand with his left behind his back. His next words immobilized her body and glaciated her soul.
"I will be moving to the outskirts of Hiroshima-2 and starting college this spring semester. I would have liked to think that we might have been going to school together again, but I guess it was never meant to be."
'I have lost him. I am now veritably dead to the world. Why, Mother? Why would you return me to this existence to finally find myself and to realize what love is, and then have all I have ever wanted cruelly ripped from me? Have I not suffered enough?'
Rei knelt on the cool grass with her face cradled in her hands. Her sobs of despair were just barely held in by her once iron resolve. That resolve cracked and shattered like a glacier calving icebergs in the arctic as she heard Shinji's next words:
"You will always be with me in my heart, Rei. I will never forget you. I love you. Goodbye."
Behind her hands, Rei's eyes snapped open wide in disbelieving shock. As the import of his words finally struck home, her tears flowed freely from her puffy- from- crying brown eyes. Five seconds passed, and then another five before her icy immobility crumbled. She slowly stood up and glimpsed Shinji unhurriedly walking away down the path between the cedars, his hands in his pockets and head slightly bowed as he disappeared into the distance.
As her stuttering sobs racked her body, Rei looked longingly after the only person that ever told her that they loved her.
"Shinji..."
'I cannot let it end this way. He is...is...I don't know what he is right now, but I'm going to find out.'
The old resolve of the former First Child wrapped itself around her thoughts as she calmly dropped her gloves and grass shears. Setting off at a brisk walk, she took a short-cut which led to the tram station; the only way off this portion of the mountain.
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A/N:
In talking with Lord Saturn, I realized he was right. This story needed closure. I could not just leave them there with no explanation of how or why.
And to leave poor Rei like that was just too cruel.
Ozaki Riko page 5 27/02/08
