Chapter 10:

Cylon one-three

I closed my eyes and leaned my head back in the seat, and took a deep breath of the filtered, clean, cockpit air. How could I even start this conversation? Where would it lead? Where would we be at the end of it?

Would she let me pilot again? Would she have me arrested, deported, institutionalized?

I looked up at her in the mirror and sighed, "The truth is, Misato, I don't know who... or what I am."

"That's... I'm not sure what to make of that Rei, why don't you start at the beginning and we can work from there alright?" She said, the edge from before, from when she was angry was gone, as if she could feel the conflict I was having.

"If you'd asked me to explain it before, when we'd first met, I would have had a different, much simpler answer for you, but right now, I just don't know." I took a deep breath and held it for a moment, then continued, "I have memories in my head, how to fly this plane, how to drive a car. There was this horse, and his name was Blue, and I remember that he used to snap branches off of trees and chase the cows around with the branch in his mouth, hitting them in the butt with it. Rei Ikari never owned that horse, but I remember it."

"So you're not Rei Ikari? You look like her, you fit her profile..." Misato protested.

"That's... not what I mean, I don't think, not exactly. I've got these memories, these feelings in my head, but when I tried to think of the name of the girl, the woman they came from, I can't find it. I can feel feelings for the people she knew, love the people she loved, but her name won't come to me, and when I think of myself, the only name I can think of is 'Rei'..." I trailed off. I had tried not to think of it, tried to avoid it, but when I said those words their meaning rang true in my mind, try as I might, the name, the name of that person who died in that cockpit fire, was lost to me.

"Try to help me understand, Rei. Are you talking like... brain washing? Some kind of mental contamination? Maybe Ritsuko can help, do some kind of test or something..." Her voice was... wavering, she was grasping, she thought she was losing me, or maybe thought I might just crash the plane after I lost it.

"I don't remember the life of Rei Ikari, I don't remember being sent away by my f-f-father, I don't remember what happened the last fourteen years, not really, but my yearnings are still there. If you'd asked me this question the day we met, I would have told you that I was that other person, trapped in this body that isn't mine... but when I think about it, when I really think about it, I don't think that's true. I think..." I hesitated, I felt the tears starting to stream down my cheeks, empathy. Empathy for the dead, for what the dead have lost, for what she, what I, the old I, the me from my memories but not the me I am now, had lost. The people she'd left heartbroken, left behind.

"I think, it all started with a wish. A wish that the Rei Ikari you picked up from that phone booth made, before I woke up in your car. 'I wish that I could be a stronger person.' Those words are in my head, spoken in my voice, but I don't really remember speaking them. It was a wish that I had made, and was given these memories, these feelings, to let me be a stronger person," I choked out, my throat started to get tight, the tears started to flow more steadily, I could taste the salt in my mouth, felt my sinuses loosening up and draining.

"That... That doesn't really make any sense, how could that be possible? Rei that's just... so unbelievable..."

"Well, how else could I explain it? What's the difference between a lie you'll believe and a truth that you won't believe? What would you have me tell you that you'd listen to? How do you explain what I know, how I can fly this plane, how I knew how to shoot that Angel? I've been doing what I've been doing because that's the kind of person my memories tell me I am, that's what I have to live up to, but... I don't think that person is really me. And maybe I'm not Rei Ikari, and maybe I'm not this other girl, maybe I'm some combination of the two of them, I don't know, I can't know. Is it really so hard to believe?

"Angels, Evangelions, the end of the world, second impact? It's science fiction Misato, but it's happening to us right now, right here, in this world. If something like that can happen, AT fields and second impact and Angels and a dead ocean full of blood and a scar on the moon... is it really so far fetched... that somewhere, somebody took pity on a scared little girl... and granted her that one wish?

"I wish that I could be a stronger person; I am a stronger person because of that wish, but I am still the scared little girl too," I finished and clenched my eyes shut against the tears, slumped down in the seat and... hugged myself. Forced to actually look and examine myself, forced to look at the uncomfortable truths that I probably should have suspected all along. So easy to discover the substance of my fears when I actually had to put voice and words to the feelings.

"If that is the case, Rei. If what you're saying is true... and I know that you believe it, and I know I can't think of anything else to explain it, not really... and you have a lot of good points. You're still the same person I've known, who's gone into battle for me, who's lived in my home, no, our home. You're still my friend, so, that's what matters," she said after a long moment. I felt her hand reach past my seat and grab onto my shoulder, I reached up and touched her hand.

"Then I will keep being Rei, or her or... whoever I am. I'll keep doing that, if that is..." I hesitated, was I asking her permission to exist? Granting her authority over my existence? Would it matter if I had? She couldn't write me out of existence, she could kill me, but she wouldn't, even if I let her.

"You're fine, we can talk about this when we land. I don't know what I expected you to say when this whole thing started, I know it wasn't this... But I know you're not lying to me either. Your honesty is more important than the substance of what you have to say. I can still trust you, I do still trust you, or I wouldn't be here with you right now, alright? We'll take this one step at a time, and we'll figure it all out together... and it will be just between the two of us, because I don't really, really, understand, and I know that the rest of Nerv won't be willing to take the chance," She said, her tone warm, comforting, she squeezed my hand against my shoulder.

Motherly, sisterly, a friend. All of those. Commanding officer? Yes but... more, much more. I had a crush on her, I could admit that, I wanted that crush to turn into something else, if I was to be honest. This was more than that, deeper than that, a connection, a lifeline in a whirlwind of confusing emotions and fractured memories.

The more I tried to grasp onto that other life and make it real to me, the more it pulled away, the more it felt like an instruction manual, or a movie I'd watched. The more I reached out for it, the more the hand on my shoulder felt like what was real, like that connection with another human being, the one right behind me, was what I needed, not to cling onto a false past.

Was I losing myself in the role, or was I truly Rei all along? If you lose all your memories, are you still the same person? And if your memories are replaced with the memories of another person, are you yourself even still? Are you that other person? Or are you some kind of combination of the two?

Who's soul is it that resides within my body, what is the self that is me?

If I dug deep, if I picked at that wall between the memories I was using, and the memories of Rei Ikari, if I braved that fear, and tried to remember her life, if I tried to find it buried deep within me... would that fix this crisis? Would I know who I was?

Or, are some things best forgotten, is there something so dark in her, in my past, that I wanted to forget, that I was willing to lose myself to not remember?

I shook my head and squeezed Misato's hand, "As long as you're with me, to help me through it... whatever happens, I think I'll be okay. I'm still the girl you first met, I'm just... I'm just trying to figure out exactly what that means."

Misato laughed, "Well, to be honest it either means you're completely out of your mind, or you're telling the truth. But, in either case your heart is still in the right place and you wanna do good, so that's enough for me, you know?"

I couldn't stop myself from snickering, if she was trying to cheer me up she wasn't doing a bad job, "Well, I know now. But if all of this turns out to be a bad trip or some kind of perpetual hallucination I'm going to be really disappointed."

I leaned forward in the seat and checked the autopilot, made sure the course setting still matched the compass, that was good. Fuel levels good... so far. I flicked the gauge face with my finger, yeah it wasn't sticking.

"Misato, I'm going to jettison the center drop tank, it's empty and we can't really afford the drag right now. We'll have to hope that Elmendorf has some that will fit or it's going to be a tricky flight to get back across the pacific," I announced, my voice flat as the tears dried on my cheeks. Think about the objective at hand, push the emotions away. Cope.

"Alright. So you were planning to fly back to Japan, not just catch a ride on a transport? I guess I'm okay with that, this is probably faster and safer..." she trailed off, she sounded exhausted. Processing what I said or just stressed out? No, stop thinking about that.

I rolled through the MFD and released the center drop tank, the aircraft lurched slightly with the change in weight and then the engine dropped in pitch slightly, compensating for the loss in drag with a reduction in power to maintain airspeed. That probably bought us more than just a few minutes of flight time.

"Well, I guess I just assumed we'd keep flying this jet till we got back to Japan, or at least until we got back in touch with headquarters," I said with a shrug. I looked over the side of the fuselage and down, through a gap in the clouds, I could make out the coast. "We're over land now, so at least we'll stay dry if we have to bail out."

"Neither of us is dressed for arctic survival, so I don't think that's going to help much," Misato answered back.

"Just trying to find a silver lining. As long as everything continues on like it has been, we should make Elmendorf with fuel to spare. I'd dump the Aim-9s to increase our range but I don't want to be defenseless in case something happens," I rambled as I cycled through the pylon inventory. I could have just looked out the canopy, sure, but I wanted to make sure that the DSMS was inventorying properly.

"If something happens? The angel is dead, and I don't think another one would try to track us down, and for that matter I don't think a couple missiles would make a difference, Rei."

I shook my head, "No, but I wouldn't be surprised if word has spread about who's flying this jet, and I think either one of us would make a pretty good hostage, don't you think?" I asked.

"Well, when you put it that way you sound paranoid."

"Just because I'm paranoid doesn't mean I'm wrong, people suck."

Misato groaned into the intercom, "God, you're so cynical, you know that?"

I snickered, "Well, it does have survival value."

"Survival of the most paranoid, huh? Sounds about right for Nerv personnel."

XXXXXXX

The shrill whine in my ears snapped me out of my haze. I must have drifted off for a moment while we were cruising. That could have been bad, but the shrill beeping was worse. I looked over the front panel-

"Rei what the hell is that noise?!" Misato yelled from the back seat.

My eyes snapped over to the radar warning receiver, two inbound radar spikes? "Contact, two high, try to get a visual! Radar going active... now," I announced as I toggled the active radar on, and saw... very little. Stealth? What was going on.

"What's going on?" Misato yelled from the back seat.

I clenched the throttle and prepared to push it to the lock, hesitating only because I knew I needed to save the fuel, was it a missile, or was it an escort? Were we going to be lead in, or shot down? "Two contacts on the RWR, might be friendly..."

I licked my lip and toggled the radio over to transmit, "Ikari to approaching aircraft, please identify and state intent, over."

"Cylon one-one to Ikari, we've been looking for you. What state?" the voice came back, smooth, calm, collected. Fighter pilot. Yeah, professional.

"Cylon one-one, two sidewinders, one-niner-zero-zero pounds fuel remaining," I called back as the inbound jets resolved into actual recognizable shapes instead of pinpricks.

"Roger, Ikari is assigned as Cylon one-three. We'll guide you in to Elmendorf," that smooth operator voice called back. The voice sounded young, but confident in a way that I'd rarely experienced. The kind of voice that belonged to a person who was probably the coolest cucumber in any room he entered... or at least a master at making it look like he was chill.

"Cylon one-three, roger," I called back. I licked my lip, so this wasn't that bad after all. I looked down and noticed that the internal tanks were starting to drain, and reached over to punch the last two drop tanks, then hesitated. No, I would hang onto those, probably had enough fuel for a landing and there was no sense in being wasteful.

I switched back to the intercom and looked up in the mirror at Misato, "Do you still have your pistol?"

She hesitated, "...why would you assume I've got a pistol?"

"Because I'm not stupid," I answered simply, then shrugged, "If you've still got it, hang onto it. Paranoid I might be..." I trailed off as the two jets formed up on either side of us. F-22 Raptors, interesting.

"But?" she probed.

"Well, as far as welcome wagons go, sending a pair of Raptors was a little heavy handed don't you think? Stealth fighters to escort an F-2B? The only thing they'd be able to hide from out here is us, if anybody else rolled though they'd still see our radar return and still know that we were out here, even if they didn't see the Raptors," I explained, turning my eyes to the jet on my left.

The pilot flashed me a thumbs up, I gave one back and nodded. Yeah, why would they send the Raptors? Those things cost a fortune, both to build and to fly.

"Maybe they just wanted to send their best, not everything is a conspiracy, Rei. You are pretty important, maybe more than you can fully appreciate. It wouldn't be out of the question for them to pull out all the stops, ya know?" She asked, though I wasn't sure if she was trying to convince me, or convince herself.

"Well, I hope you're right. If it comes down to it, I could probably only take out one of them, if I was lucky. Two sidewinders and a hundred fifty rounds left in the cannon don't exactly make for a threatening offensive posture," I explained as I leaned back in the seat. I hadn't even needed to adjust the autopilot, those Raptors had just settled in on their own.

"Rei, do you plan out how to kill everyone you meet?"

I shook my head, "no, no I don't... I'm just not really in the greatest place right now you know? That's... well that's part of the reason I wanted you up here with me, to make sure I didn't do anything stupid."

"Well, you'll have to define 'stupid' for me, because attacking an Angel in a fighter jet wasn't the brightest move that's ever been performed," she chided.

"Well, yeah, but it did work, and you did get in the back seat."

"That was probably a little dumb on my part too..." she admitted.

I hummed and disengaged the autopilot, then nudged the stick forward gently and watched the altimeter drop. I licked my bottom lip and eased back the throttle as we started to drop under the clouds, saw the Raptor off my left keeping on my wing as I finally got a good look at the ground.

At least Alaska didn't look any different. Trees as far as the eye could see off to the left, blood red ocean to the far, far right, on the horizon.

"Cylon one-three, Elmendorf Tower, cleared to land, runway one-six."

I blinked, I hadn't even requested landing clearance, had one of the Raptors called it in for me? That was irregular, were they being considerate of the fuel situation or was it something else?

I shook my head, too late for that now.

"Elmendorf Tower, cleared to land, runway one-six, cylon one-three, acknowledged."

I looked over my shoulder at a flash of movement, the Raptors pushed ahead and away as I descended towards the airfield, nudged the rudder to line up on runway sixteen. I licked my lip, throttle back, flaps, gear down...

I felt myself pressing forward in the seat as the drag slowed the aircraft, altitude dropped. I bit down on my bottom lip, it had been a while, too long even... no, I had this, I just killed an Angel and flew a few over a thousand miles, yeah, I had this.

I stepped into the left rudder as a crosswind buffeted the aircraft, and pushed the nose down slightly. One hundred feet... seventy five. I cut the engine back to idle and deployed the air brakes. Fifty, thirty, twenty. I licked my lip. Ten, five, touchdown. I hit the wheel brakes and kept the aircraft centered on the runway as we slowed down.

"Cylon one-three, proceed to north parking. Welcome to Alaska."

"Tower, proceed to north parking, cylon one-three acknowledged."

"Well, we're on the ground, we made it," Misato called from the back, I could hear the relief in her voice, saw her relaxed posture in the mirror.

"Well as long as they don't arrest us on sight, right?"

"Oh, ever the optimist, Rei."

XXXXXXX

It's difficult to appreciate how heavy a helmet becomes when you've been wearing it for hours until you have the chance to take it off and realize just how much better you feel. It felt like I grew an inch just from my neck no longer being compressed. Or, maybe I un-shrank? Either way, it was a good time.

By the time I had the canopy open, the ground crew already had a ladder and a fuel truck out to the side of the aircraft. They were nothing if not efficient.

I set the helmet down in my lap and took a deep breath of cold Alaskan air while I looked around. We were a hell of a stand-out on the tarmac. A blue camo painted F-2B next to a row of F-22 Raptors painted in dark gray.

Oh, and the pilot, she had powder blue hair, and it did get a few stares. I shook my head and stood up in the seat, stretched out, and turned to step down the ladder. I had to avoid screwing this up, broken arm and all, since there wasn't an aircraft carrier captain to catch me if I fell this time.

Grabbing a ladder with a cast was still a pain in the ass though. One step, two, three. I started to slip, and felt strong hands grab me around the waist and help me down the ladder. "Easy kid, I gotcha. Can't believe you were flying that thing with a broken arm."

That voice, I remembered that voice. The Raptor pilot? He must have landed while I was trying to figure out where the hell 'North Parking' was. I turned to look at him when I hit the ground, looked up at him and turned a little pink.

"Thanks for the help..." I said to him, my throat felt dry, the cold air probably, I needed a drink, and a shower, and a fifth of Tennessee's finest bourbon. The last part was optional.

"Hey, not a problem. You know, you don't even have an accent in your English. I almost didn't believe it when they told me that a little Japanese girl was flying that thing," He said with a laugh as he patted me on the shoulder.

"Well, I wouldn't say little girl, I'm fourteen, that's like, teenager, totally different thing," I deflected with a laugh, "So, I'm Rei Ikari, and you are?"

"Lieutenant John Becket, at your service," he answered with a small mock bow, "and who is that divine creature climbing out of the back seat?"

I looked back over my shoulder and saw Misato climbing down the ladder with a dexterity and grace that I clearly lacked. I looked back to Becket, and he was... well not quite leering. He was looking at her with a look that was clearly intended to be smooth and attractive.

He wasn't doing a bad job of that.

Her feet hit the tarmac and she turned around. "Colonel Misato Katsuragi," she answered with a smirk and a strong emphasis on her rank.

Oh, snap, she was pulling rank already? Misato knew how to shut a guy down.

He laughed, "Oh, Colonel is it? I guess that makes Rei your personal driver then?"

"Yeah, it's exactly like that," I grumbled, "Anyway," I coughed, "So, where can I get a shower and a bite to eat and something to wear that isn't olive drab? This flight suit is a little past it's expiration date."

"Yeah, I think we can do that. Get both of you fed, cleaned up, and then we'll go from there." He explained and gestured to a parked Humvee, "They'll take you where you need to go."

I nodded and started to walk towards the awaiting vehicle, then took a look back at the F-2, "And the Viper?"

"We'll cross that bridge when we come to it." He said with a shrug.

"I'll make some phone calls," Misato said, "We'll come to... an arrangement I'm sure."

XXXXXXX

Heat, and moisture, and hard tile. It wasn't perfect but it was everything I wanted. I could taste the thick clean steam as the hot water rained down on me. I leaned my head back against the tile as I sat in the bottom of the shower stall. I'd long since finished washing, but I couldn't bring myself to actually leave and face... whatever it was that was going to happen after.

I licked my lip and shifted, listened to the crinkling of the plastic bag over my cast. Damn broken arm. I could have done without that, but then, what I did to break it, I wouldn't change. Ayanami. It was funny, all that had happened recently, and she was what I thought about.

I needed to get back there, back to Japan. As much as there was a part of me that wanted to stay in America, to go further, even, and reclaim that old life... I shook my head, I couldn't do that, it wasn't mine to take.

I pushed my hand through my hair and sighed. I was a mess, this whole situation was a mess. We'd probably have been fine if we'd just let that IPEA pilot do her thing and stayed out of it.

"But I could never let myself stand by and just watch, could I?" I asked myself as I leaned forward and onto my feet and then stood. I reached over my head and stretched, arching my back and rolling up onto the tips of my toes... a satisfying crack echoed through the shower stall as my muscles stretched and my joints popped.

You never really appreciate how satisfying cracking your back can be until you're stuck in the world's smallest cockpit for an extended period of time.

I turned the water off and pushed my hair back, it would probably fall back down into the low maintenance bob cut once it dried, but wet hair in the eyes was irritating as hell so at least it would stay long enough to keep me from being too bothered.

I shut off the water and leaned against the wall. Legs felt like rubber, back hurt, and my arm felt like it was clamped in a vice. Yeah, I needed to sleep it off probably, but the shower had to come first. Never been able to sleep without having one first.

I grabbed the towel off the stall door and wrapped myself up in it. I shuffled through the empty shower room over to the mirror and regarded myself. That face that I'd become so accustomed to, the little imperfections, the slightly crooked smile. Brown eyes with bags under them, black like I'd been punched in the face, and that powder blue hair slicked down to my head with water.

I chuckled and shook my head, the more things change, the more they stay the same. Keep up the fight, because you can, because you can't let yourself do anything else if you have the chance. Fight, kill, and win, because it's what you're good at, and because you're already broken.

So break yourself more, to stop somebody else from being broken.

I licked my lip and spit into the sink, "A hero of war, is that what they see? Just medals and scars, so damn proud of me."