Observance
Pre-note: This is manga continuity, for (sort of) brevity's sake.
/\/\/\/\
"Hello, sir!" he said, snapping off a salute. "My name is Rando Mugai. I am honored to work with you, sir!"
He was young, barely old enough to know how to grow a real mustache. Tall, but lanky. At least he looked fast. The dark suit hung over his frame like a deflated balloon. He wore it with eager pride, without any hesitation or second thought.
Jin Hatasawa nodded at the recruit. "We aren't SDF, Mugai. There are only a few people here you need to show that kind of deference to and I'm not one of them."
"But, I mean, sir, I will be looking to you for guidance since you are my senior—"
"I'm not that much older than you," he grumbled.
"Sorry, sir."
Jin waved it away. "Like you said, we're working together from now on. I'll show you the ropes but formality will only get in the way."
"If, if that's what you want, sir…"
What he wanted was to be freed from this burden. Tasked with training a new recruit was not ideal, especially now. The Fourth Angel was defeated five days ago. Section 2 details were more critical than ever. And while Jin welcomed the extra help, it shouldn't come at his personal expense.
They met in NERV's Section barracks within the Geofront. It was an adequate home away from home, used mostly as an extended locker room for agents changing shifts. The weapon ranges and gyms were spacious novelties. In the past. With NERV abruptly thrust into the leading role in the battle against the reemerging Angels security held a greater degree of seriousness and weight.
Jin gave Rando a tour of the facilities, directing him towards the staff sergeant for any future inquiries. The recruit took it in with an air of revelatory import. Like he was watching his destiny unfurl before him.
"Why are you here, Mugai?"
"Excuse me, sir?"
"Why NERV?"
"It was here or the SDF," Rando said. He adopted a slightly sheepish look. "Actually, my application for the SDF is sitting in my apartment, filled out. After the Angel hit us, I felt like I didn't have a choice but to go to NERV."
"The SDF might give you a real chance at attacking an Angel, head-on."
"For all the good it would do." He shook his head. "NERV has the best shot at stopping them. Even if I can't do it myself, if I can help the people who can, then I will. I want all the Angels dead."
Jin glanced at him. "Then you are in the right place. You're familiar with our detail?"
"Rei Ayanami," he recited. "First Child. Age fourteen. Attends Tokyo-3 public middle school at—"
"I know you were briefed. I want to know what you know, outside the dossier."
"Um, it was heavily redacted…"
"Yeah."
"I, I don't know much else," Rando admitted. "What should I know about her, sir?"
"You'll have to find out on your own. I just want you to go into this with an open mind. It'll help."
The tour ended at the dressing room. Rows of metal lockers cut the area into five narrow rectangular alleys. Jin pointed in the direction of Rando's, and turned to exit. He made it a half-step before he saw it.
A lifetime passed since the Third Angel attacked. After years of numbing routine the past month was a chaotic blur of renewed responsibilities and purpose. There was no chance to mourn the relative peace of the post-Impact world. Now there was nothing but the mad scramble to prevent another.
Jin stared at the empty, unmarked locker before him. The nameplate was removed. All contents were likely destroyed. Its owner didn't have any family left.
"Sir?" Rando dared.
Jin was back where he belonged. He couldn't think of any cover. "Yeah?"
"… That's your old partner's locker?"
The rookie was brighter than he gave him credit for. "Yeah."
"My condolences, sir."
Rando sounded remarkably sincere about that. Jin turned away from the locker. "He knew the risks. It's something we all learn, sooner or later."
His tone communicated a flight from sentimentality. His partner accommodated with a sprightly "Yes, sir."
They left the locker room and headed to the parking garage's fleet of dark sedans. Rando called shotgun without being asked. Jin almost smiled. They were in the car, waiting their turn on the linear elevator to the surface world. Rando was trying to absorb everything, a mix of childlike wonder at where he was and professional memorization of the process. Jin held a brief, startling image of himself in the passenger seat, years ago, eager to impress.
It passed, but he allowed his thoughts to linger on his present position. He glanced at his partial reflection in the rearview mirror. Sharp eyes glanced back, shadowed by heavy lines. The salt worked to overtake the pepper of his buzz cut. The mirror showed him someone more tired, more aged than he remembered. Maybe it was the job. Maybe it was the hurt world dying a slow, second death. Maybe it was just him.
Jin looked back over at Rando as they exited the elevator, natural sunlight trying hard to pierce the tinted windows of the sedan. He couldn't see himself in his new partner anymore. The moment of almost-camaraderie was forgotten.
Tokyo-3 sprawled out before them, a dense bundle of skyscrapers and weapon buildings towering over jigsaw streets. It was already bumper to bumper, competing traffic jams trying to squeeze around road crews and reconstruction teams. There, a patch of sidewalk was still cracked open from the impact of a shell casing from Unit-01's rifle during the last battle. A group of children hopped around it on their way to school.
Jin looked away, and pulled into city traffic.
/\/\/\/\
"I'm home."
Jin walked down the front hall of his apartment, kicking his shoes back towards the door. His tie, removed in the elevator ride, hung open around his neck. He shrugged out of his suit's jacket, using the motion to stretch. His hands dragged along either wall.
The second door on the right was the bedroom. He ducked in, already half-out of his clothes. The hall opened to a partitioned living room/kitchen. The TV was on. Cable news hummed censorship about the latest Angel attack, images pinging from one destroyed building to the next. Dinner's aroma crept through the air as it reheated in the microwave.
"Welcome home," Uta said as he entered.
She sat on a stool at the partition, used as a counter and dinner table. Newspapers and magazines were scattered around her.
"I didn't wait for you to eat," Uta said.
"Thanks."
"I can't sleep right if I eat too late. And you're always too late on Thursdays."
"Can't help that."
"Did you hang up your suit?"
"No. I'll just grab a spare at base."
She sighed at his t-shirt and boxers. "A man in a suit is no fun if he never wears it."
He eyed her outfit, pajama combo number two, consisting of a button-up she stole from him and ratty green sweatpants. Not that he expected lingerie and a bourbon when he walked in the door. "Sorry to disappoint."
"Take a seat," she posed.
"I sit all day." He retrieved his meal from the microwave four seconds early. "NERV needs to spring for bigger cars."
"Don't eat standing up. It isn't good for you."
Uta kicked the free stool beside her to make room for him. Jin sat. The stool creaked under him.
"These things aren't sturdy," he complained, hunched over the counter as he ate.
"Only because you're too sturdy."
He looked himself over. He doubted a short, scrawny security agent would strike the desired air of intimidation and menace. NERV was many things but subtle was not one of them.
She watched him eat. "How was your day?"
"Behind me."
"Weren't you supposed to meet your new partner this morning?"
Jin frowned at his food. "He's treating this job like a holy crusade or something." Maybe that was why he was hired. "He's young. He'll learn."
Uta opened a magazine before her. "Isn't that part of your job, now? To teach him?"
"Unfortunately."
"If all else fails you can just scare him into doing whatever you say."
"I'll keep that in mind." He finished inhaling his meal and tried to sit up straight on the stool. "How was your day?"
"It was."
Jin peeked over his wife's shoulder at the magazine that claimed her attention. Another interior design catalog detailing the trendiest and priciest things people owned to show they owned the trendiest and priciest things. Not that Uta wanted any of them, even if they had the space or money.
"Any progress on the realty agent front?"
"You don't have to force an interest," she said, turning a page.
"I am interested. I don't get any of it but I'm willing to learn—"
"You worked your detail today?"
Jin hesitated at the abrupt turn. "Yeah."
"No problems?"
"No problems..."
"She's pretty low-key, right? Your detail?"
"Yeah…"
Uta kept flipping pages at a leisurely pace. "I saw Kotori today in the hall. Her kid, Keiko, is in middle school. In your detail's class, actually. Said she's not much of a talker. Stares out the window almost all day, that nothing really claims her attention. Even a new transfer didn't faze her."
Jin's microwaved dinner sank in his stomach.
"I mean, who would transfer in to Tokyo-3 now? There must be a reason."
Beating around the bush was never a constructive use of time or energy. "Must be a reason," he agreed.
They sat in silence until Uta flipped the last page of the magazine.
"So it is all true?" she asked. "That NERV's robots are being driven by teenagers? Kids?"
Fucking Shinji Ikari, Jin thought.
There were rumors after the Third Angel hit the city, NERV and the UN employed too many people to keep a secret that big under lock and key forever, but the Third Child's spilling the beans to his class disseminated the information at a faster pace than any uniformed adult could. Yes, NERV constructed giant fighting robots to combat the Angels. Yes, they were piloted by teenagers. Yes, one of the pilots was the Commander's son. And yes, the other was his detail.
"It is true," he admitted.
Uta stared at her magazine's back cover without seeing it for a long time. "It's not right," she finally said.
Jin did not respond.
"It's not right," she repeated, in case he hadn't heard.
The confrontation he worked so hard to avoid was spilling through his hands, all over the rest of his life. All control is a delusion, his old partner once told him, on a long day of watching their detail. Sooner or later, it all tumbles out of your grasp.
He thought the Old Man was just being pessimistic, like usual. Not that Jin was an optimist. They both lived through Second Impact. There were no optimists over fifteen.
"And your detail is another kid NERV puts in their robots?" Uta was asking.
"Yeah," he sighed.
She glared a hole through her magazine and the cheap linoleum countertop. "Children should be protected," she stated.
Jin frowned. "What do you think my job is?"
"What is your job?"
"I make sure my detail is safe."
"Until she's forced to risk her life against giant monsters?"
"If I could climb into that robot and take her place I would," Jin said. "In a heartbeat. But I can't."
"Why are they using kids at all?"
"I don't know. I'm no scientist. NERV has its reasons."
"But doesn't it bother you?" Uta pressed.
"I watched how useless the UN and SDF were against the Angel," he got out. "Saving the most lives has to be our top priority."
"This job isn't worth selling your soul for."
"I only took this job—" Jin stopped himself. He breathed. He could not look at his wife. She could not look at him. They sat side by side at their narrow kitchen counter, in their tiny apartment. He rubbed tired eyes. "It's late; I'm beat. I don't want to go to bed angry."
"I'm not angry at you," she said.
He lifted himself off the stool. "Good."
She looked up at him, dark hair crowding her cheeks. "I just don't understand you sometimes."
/\/\/\/\
What Uta did not understand was that piloting the Evangelion was central to Rei Ayanami's existence. Jin knew how disinterested she was with the public education system. He knew she saw no value in socializing with her peers. He knew her hobbies did not extend further away from what the Commander allowed. He knew she did not appear to mind living in that fourth story dumpster of an apartment.
He knew her identity as the First Child overwhelmed and overruled those other, trifling concerns. It was who she had grown to become.
Jin had wondered on occasion what manner of coldly calculating humanoid the Commander would produce, had he children of his own. It was a significant surprise to find out the answer was Shinji Ikari. The Third Child was back after an abrupt departure and even more abrupt reinstatement. Whatever drama passed between him and Captain Katsuragi was behind them. NERV seemed as disinterested with the exit as they were with the reentry. Sometimes Jin truly had no clue what the Commander was thinking.
"Huh," Rando said, scrolling through his phone. "Just got a message from the Third's detail. He's in our perimeter."
"Huh, indeed." Jin didn't bother sparing a glance beside him.
They were parked outside Rei's complex, nestled between a dumpster and an unlinked chain link fence. They both chafed at the Section sedan. Rando's knees were bunched over the airbag panel. Jin's left shoulder was almost in his partner's ear.
The eleventh day together began like the previous ten. Meeting at HQ, relieving the prior detail, then ordering Rando to make a coffee run at the twenty-four hour convenience store three blocks away. Seniority wasn't all bad.
It was Monday. Normally, a school day for Rei to stare out the window for seven periods plus lunch. Her testing results at the middle school were horrid, mostly because she was rarely present for exams. That didn't seem to reflect in any way on her intelligence; Jin glanced over a list of books she took out of NERV's on site library once and got a headache at the titles alone. The texts had to be grad level at least. Not that he'd know.
Today she was due in NERV for Unit-00's reactivation test. If she felt any anxiety regarding the event she hid it well. Most around base held her in a curious regard, like a three-legged wolf. They'd whisper and make eyes behind her back, but there was no denying the danger she carried, even apart from her ability to pilot and the Commander's long shadow. There were too many reasons not to want to know her. Even among the other agents on her detail, there was a sense of detachment. A fear of getting close.
Shinji Ikari appeared in the fourth floor stairwell. He found apartment 402. He rang the inoperable doorbell. He waited. He opened the door.
"Uh, did the Third Child just walk into Ayanami's apartment?" Rando asked.
Jin realized, no, this was not a bad dream. Just a nightmare. "Yup."
"Shouldn't we, uh, should we intervene?"
"… No."
"But, sir," Rando craned his neck to peer up through the tinted windshield, "this is exactly the kind of situation we—"
"Mugai, you do know the First is trained in unarmed combat, right?"
"Well, yeah, but—"
"The Third isn't."
"Oh."
Moments passed. Rando's gaze upwards never budged.
"But, sir—" he began again.
"If the Third is dumb enough to try something the First will let him keep breathing." Jin sat in consideration. "Probably."
"That's what I meant. Isn't the Third in mortal peril right now?"
"Not our detail, Mugai."
Moments passed. Rando's foot tapped a nervous symphony on the car floor. He pulled out his phone. He was four digits into dialing Shinji's Section detail when the boy stepped out of the apartment, physically intact but dazed. He leaned back against the shut door.
Jin let out a breath he wasn't aware he was holding. "There. No physical injuries present." Odd.
"Where's the First?"
The apartment door opened behind Shinji. He nearly fell backwards onto Rei. She waited while he righted himself, sputtered something, then remembered he was blocking her way. With the regard most honored for an empty toilet paper roll, Rei passed him and headed to the stairwell. Like any other day. Like every other day.
"Where she always is," Jin answered. He saw Shinji hurry after her down the stairs. "Let Team Five know she's heading towards HQ. With the Third in tow."
Mugai busied himself on his phone. Jin relaxed as much as the Section car allowed. It was a strange comfort that Rei did not in fact murder the Commander's son after he barged into her apartment. It was equally comforting that she was not fazed by the episode. The Third could have thrown her a surprise party, robbed her at gunpoint, or lavishly decorated her concrete cell with colorful flowers and stuffed animals and Rei would have treated him with the exact same casual disregard. It felt good that he knew what to expect from her.
/\/\/\/\
The positron rifle lanced the Fifth Angel, holing through it entirely. Teams were moving as soon as it was pronounced dead, hurrying to recover the Eva units and pilots. Captain Katsuragi was the first one out of the makeshift command station. She led everyone else through the burnt forested hillside, down towards the lake where Unit-01 cradled Unit-00.
Jin was impressed with the Captain's speed and agility. She'd make a decent Section agent. He sprinted after her, keeping her in his sights darting between husked trees. He idly wondered how she processed Angel battles. What did physical prowess and occupational authority mean after the Evas deployed? It was on the Children then, to fight or die. She was left to watch, to pray silent words to silent gods, and then run into the aftermath to survey the damage done.
Rando was beside him, then wasn't, as he failed to vault a felled tree. Jin kept running.
They broke into the clearing by the lake. Everything was burnt and shattered, fried trees snapped at the base like twigs by the Eva units. 00's back panel was open, the armor shield flung across the hill to Jin's left. The entry plug was on the beach, still sizzling. The stench of burnt metal fogged the entire area.
"Shinji!" the Captain nearly screamed.
The boy was at the foot of the hill, Rei's arm around his shoulders as he helped her walk. They looked unsteady, but okay. Jin pulled to the side to allow the medical crews easier access. They began assessing the pilots where they were, waiting for the transports to maneuver around to the lake.
He kept his eyes on Rei, out of habit. She looked exhausted. Not the usual, heavy-lidded stare he was accustomed to but an actual struggle to maintain consciousness. The battle must have taken a lot out of her. Or enough to allow Shinji Ikari to touch her without complaint.
Rando broke the tree line and caught up to him. He tried to dust himself off, realized his suit was zebra'd with mud, and gave up.
Jin eyed him. "You okay?"
"Yeah. Sorry, sir. I lost my footing."
"Looked painful."
Rando slumped. "I was hoping no one saw that." He surveyed the area. "Are the Children okay?"
Physically. "Seems so."
Medical vans pulled into the clearing, tires kicking up dirt and ash. The backs opened and gurney teams rolled out to meet the pilots. A medic draped a Mylar blanket around Shinji as another attended to his hands. Captain Katsuragi was an insistent, unprofessional presence at his side, fussing and fretting. Shinji's focus remained, laser-like, on calming her down.
Who okayed that setup? Jin wondered for the hundredth time. He turned back to Rei.
She watched Shinji. She watched him as she was loaded onto the gurney, as she was lifted into a van for transport back to headquarters for medical treatment. She watched for as long as she could, until the van doors shut, sealing her away. She watched with an intensity he never saw on her before. That he didn't know she was capable of. It wasn't any kind of battle-high. It was a concentrated need to know.
The van pulled away from the burnt clearing and Jin realized Rei Ayanami had needs.
/\/\/\/\
He heard rumors about the Second Child's fracas in a downtown video arcade but didn't believe the extent of the damage until he watched the city security feed himself. If gymnastic violence was an Olympic sport, she'd earn gold. Or beat the hell out of any judge who refused her. Rando openly gaped and sputtered beside him. Jin offered a level grunt of "huh."
They watched Asuka somersault across the public sidewalk to deliver an acrobatic kick to the jaw of a thug accosting the Third Child.
"What a way to meet," Rando muttered.
"Huh," Jin grunted.
They were in the Section barracks on an off day. Jin was in partial denial of his wavering metabolism, only training when the mood struck him right. Rando seemed to live at the Section gym, despite his perpetually lanky appearance. The two worked across the spacious room from one another, Jin plugged into an MP3 player filled with pre-Impact rock trying to ignore Rando's periodic waves.
He relented at lunch, deigning to share a table. Rando looked like he won a small lottery. They ordered and sat in the adjacent mess hall. Rando was almost giddy at the latest NERV scuttlebutt regarding the newly arrived Second Child. Something about killing an Angel atop an aircraft carrier in record time. He rattled off stats like the Children were competing athletes. Ayanami, the seasoned veteran, plagued by injury woes. Shinji, the miracle rookie signed from the boonies with a penchant for arguing with the refs. Soryu, a magician on the field. Or on a public street outside a video arcade.
Rando dragged him to a media room on base to show him the footage of Asuka. Jin was too tired to mount a proper resistance. Rando was queuing up a second time when the Angel alarm sounded.
The battle was a short, embarrassing failure. Normally there were all sorts of traumatic drama. It felt even more jarring. N2 mines halted the twin Angel, giving NERV time to hatch a plan.
The synchronized dance strategy Ryoji Kaji concocted was unorthodox. Jin had not met the man in person but the rumors circulating were enough to foster a healthy distrust. No one in his position should smile that much. Regardless, his plan was approved swiftly and put into action. NERV's battle against conventional methods continued unabated.
Jin found himself haunting the media room, watching the security feed of Rei watching the Second and Third train. With Rei at NERV there was little need of a Section presence around her. She couldn't get into much trouble here and the Commander discouraged too close of a shadow in HQ. In general their orders favored a hands-off approach, only intervening in extreme cases. Which made no sense to Jin. Mankind's future was riding on these kids. They shouldn't be taking chances.
But he was not in a position to object. Orders were orders, whether it was his to watch and wait, or Rei's to watch and wait.
Over the monitor the Second and Third tried to coordinate their movements, failing at an intermediate step where he was supposed to take her hand in his. He made a desperate grab, lost hold, and tripped to the floor. The Second slid away from him and complained at his clumsiness. He apologized. The Captain ordered them to restart from the beginning.
Shinji almost face-planted on his effort to push up from the ground. There was lasting tactile injury from his plug suit burning into his palms after freeing Rei from her Eva following the battle against the Fifth Angel. Somewhat brave, Jin admitted, but also somewhat useless. The plug's internal environmental controls were designed for almost any contingency and even if Rei had been in mortal danger the Third had no medical training to save her with.
Jin shook his head. That kind of panicked impulsivity was to be expected from civilians. Why wasn't the Third trained like the First and Second? What kind of operation was NERV running?
He watched the security feed as two child soldiers practiced dancing together. He kept shaking his head.
The Second, to her credit, was adaptable. At least in regards to paths to piloting. If she had to memorize a dance routine to get into the plug, so be it. But she was also single-minded about it to a fault. She grasped the routine quickly and was unwilling to accept that her partner hadn't.
The Third, to his credit, did what he was told. If someone with power like the Captain ordered him to dance, he'd hem and haw a bit, then try to accommodate.
So they danced together, but not together. The exasperated Captain called an early lunch after a morning of failures. Everyone departed the dance hall except Rei. Alone, she waited. Alone in the media room, Jin waited.
The two other Children returned by themselves, Asuka dragging Shinji by the sleeve with the intent of practicing out of the smothering gaze of adults in positions of authority. Asuka stopped short, seeing Rei.
She eyed her like a dead roach the janitorial staff overlooked. "Still here," she muttered. "Whatever. Third, get over here. We're doing the routine again. Until you get it right. So get it right, already. You're making me look bad in front of Mr. Kaji."
They got into position. They began. For a time, they performed in unison. Rote memorization had its uses. But Shinji again missed the hand linking move. He fell forward as he tried to compensate and blindly groped Asuka's chest. Her slap reverberated over the music.
"Pervert!" she cried, covering herself.
"I didn't feel anything!" Shinji protested, waving his numb hands before him, not realizing that was the absolute wrong thing to say.
Asuka blushed in hot shame. And slapped him again. "Jerk!"
The Captain and Kaji returned from lunch to survey the damage. Shinji sat on the floor with two swollen cheeks, looking put out. Asuka looked furiously humiliated. Rei looked on.
Misato sighed, then turned to her. "Rei. Have you memorized the routine yet?"
"Yes."
"Try dancing with Shinji."
"Yes."
The Third's anxiety went from eight to eighty as she approached him. Rei was, as ever, outwardly bored with the entire situation. Orders were orders. Live in a hovel. Pilot a giant robot against Godzilla movie abstractions. Dance with an angsty teenager.
Just keep your head down and follow commands. You found your purpose, so do what you need to so you can accomplish it.
Rei stopped besides Shinji. She glanced at him as the music rewound to the beginning cue. Shinji went red. Redder than his bruised cheeks. Jin stared.
The song began. They danced. Together, as one. Rei had memorized the routine, along with each step Shinji had difficulty with. She compensated for him, while keeping herself in time. They began moving with a natural fluidity, two streams meeting to flow in concert.
The Captain ruined the moment with a comment of how well they performed, directed at Asuka. The girl fled the room. A softly blatant insinuation from Kaji directed Shinji to run after her.
Jin ignored it. He watched Rei through the monitor, watching Shinji leave, as she absently cradled the hand he held as they danced.
/\/\/\/\
The hallway was dim and long, the ends disappearing into hazy, indistinct shadow. They were the only two people in it, as far as he could see. She walked towards him, stopping only because he was blocking the door. Rei Ayanami bothered to look up at him.
She wore a questioning face. What he assumed was a questioning face.
"I'm Jin Hatasawa, Section-2," he explained. "I'm assigned to your detail."
"I know."
Why am I surprised?
Those were, technically, the first words she ever spoke to him. Not that he held it against her. Agents were supposed to blend into their details' shadows, figuratively and sometimes literally. Having them be aware of their presence could be counterproductive. The relationship was at best neutral. Ideally. The Old Man warned him developing opinions and sympathies with a detail were inevitable. It was human nature. He taught Jin to compartmentalize, to see the bigger picture. Direct contact between subject and watcher worked against that.
Yet here we are, he thought.
"You're here for a meal with the Commander," Jin half-asked. Her silence was his answer. "He isn't here."
"I know," Rei said.
Gendo Ikari and the Sub-Commander were on a trip to the Pole. Odd vacation choice, but Jin was not one to judge. He hadn't been on holiday since he was eleven years old. And he knew better than to ask specifics for why NERV's top two left together. The security must be insane.
The Commander left, absent for the weekly meal he scheduled with the First Child. Again, Jin knew better than to question Gendo's willingness to sponsor a full sit-down lunch with Rei and yet couldn't be bothered to not scowl at his own son. Jin knew his place.
"He isn't here," Jin repeated. "You don't have to be here, either." Well, that sounded remarkably harsh.
"I was not ordered not to attend."
That answered that. He stepped aside, allowing access to the dining hall. Rei went inside without another word, another glance at him. Jin followed.
The hall was a low-ceilinged oval, dimly lit in an unintentional stab at intimacy. A long narrow table sat in its exact center. There were no windows, and only two doors; the entrance, and a passage to an adjacent kitchen. Rei sat at one end of the table, alone. A waiter appeared from the kitchen almost at once, carrying her usual meal of dry vegan salad and water. He placed it before Rei with the barest contact possible. No small talk, no greeting. He left. Rei unfolded the napkin holding her utensils with a carelessly deliberate reverence, a muscle-memory prayer. She ate.
This was not the first meal Jin was present for. He was witness to the Commander's brand of mealtime socializing with Rei several times. It was less a friendly routine, less a business lunch, more of a catered interrogation. At best. Some meals passed entirely in silence.
She was remarkably quiet as she ate, he thought. Even the scrape of the utensils against the plate was a whisper, despite being the only sound in the hall. Jin was familiar with this kind of patient silence. Most days with the Old Man were spent with a sparse economy of words, instilling in him the power of language. Not that he was explicitly ordered not to speak, but it reinforced the instinct to keep his mouth shut. A large part of his job was staying alert and learning, about his surroundings, the people near him, his detail. The Old Man said you learned more shutting up than running your mouth. Jin was only slightly jealous Rei grasped that lesson at a younger age.
She ate. She ate without any visible enjoyment. He knew she was in almost constant medical care for undisclosed conditions. Perhaps that necessitated such an austere diet. He'd go crazy with such a basic, unrelenting meal plan. Good for her, adapting and moving on.
He doubted the other Children would make peace with the limitations Rei faced so unerringly. Jin had trouble faulting any of them for fouls on the battlefield, despite the stakes. They fought, they risked their lives. But they were human. They weren't robots incapable of fear or bad ideas. They were bound to screw up. And despite the risks, the pain and horror of what they went through, they all climbed back into the entry plug.
It was outside combat where Jin could shake his head at the Second and Third. Questioning commands, mouthing off during synch tests, ignoring schoolwork; Children acting like children. Somewhat expected for an untrained kid like the Third, but Soryu was in the program for almost as long as Rei. Amazing how different they turned out, and what they chose to apply their training to. Jin heard the Second Child requested to move in with Katsuragi and Shinji. Well, another distraction for the Third couldn't hurt.
Jin watched Rei out of the corner of his eye. A small, shameful part of him hoped she'd strike up a conversation to fill the mealtime quiet.
She ate. Jin half-consciously cracked a thumb knuckle under his fingers. The sound felt deafening in the room. Rei did not look up to investigate. She did not break stride on the piece of lettuce she was carefully carving up. She did not care to react at all. Jin immediately felt guilty.
It was a long meal.
/\/\/\/\
It was a long day. The Angel, a massive living bomb falling from orbit, was dead. The Eva units were en route back to base with no serious injuries sustained by the pilots. That was always a minor shock to Jin, when things went relatively smoothly. Somehow, yet again, NERV stumbled onto success.
He was on a linear rail back to the city surface after hours in a public shelter. It was a day off, and the shelter was the faster option. Even if he had trekked into HQ there was nothing to do during a sortie except sit around and watch if they all wound up dead. Or in Rando's case, pace the floor and wait. Not out of any sort of fear, but an impatience to see the Angel destroyed. Then he'd sigh like an expectant father outside the delivery room.
Don't think too hard on it, was his old partner's advice to Jin's curiosity about him. The Old Man was a selective chain smoker. He indulged frequently but didn't follow a set routine, or use the habit to compliment a meal or downtime. Jin finally figured out it was his way of avoiding talking to people he didn't want to talk to. By the end of their partnership he never smoked when they were alone together.
Early afternoon light flashed out of the rail car's window and Jin was aboveground. He called Uta when the Angel alarm first sounded to make sure she was on her way to a shelter, too. The rest of the sortie was spent scrolling through his phone, reading updates from NERV. The attack, the existential threat against humanity, was reduced to terse sci-fi novel blurbs.
Jin exited the transport and decided to walk home. It was a clear day now, not a wisp of cloud overhead. He tried to scan the horizon for proof of the Angel but every view was blocked by architecture. The weapon buildings and Eva lifts were retracted, the cityscape was back to normal. The pedestrians around him chatted as they walked, glad to be free of the cramped shelters. Like it was an inconvenience. Like they weren't all just hiding for their lives.
Like the shelters were invincible. Three separate ones were partially demolished during the Third Angel's arrival. The exact casualty list was kept secret by NERV's PR machine, and conflicting anecdotal evidence only served to persuade the public to forgive and forget. It could have been worse. At least we made it out alive. The next one won't be so bad. Our shelter is safer.
Seven people died in Shelter 34 that day, crushed or buried alive by falling debris from the Geofront ceiling. Five died almost instantly; a mother and father and their eight-year-old daughter, a businessman, and a nurse attending the shelter. The other two suffocated under the collapsed roof; a university student visiting his grandparents over the weekend, and the Old Man.
To die in such a place, in the dark, alone, and to have NERV obfuscate the details, was infuriating. No one around the barracks talked about him anymore. There was no manner of official service, just a quiet cremation that only Jin and Uta attended. And then that was it. Time to move on.
Jin looked around the city street as he walked. So many people living lives at the epicenter of an apocalypse in waiting. He hated being out in Tokyo-3 on his own time. And Uta hated going out with him. He was never present with her. His eyes kept sweeping the perimeter, he was tensed for action. His phantom earpiece fed a steady stream of imagined threats. Even now he was idly scanning his periphery. The stocky guy in the suit over there knew how to fight. That teenager on his left was cradling something unusual in his jacket.
Was that how it was for the Old Man, even on his final day in that shelter? Reading those around him as nothing but possible threats? Gauging who would suffocate first, the university student or himself?
Cars were honking, pedestrian volume notched up a few bars. Jin refocused. Traffic lights were nonfunctional. Every building window was dark. The neon lights throughout Tokyo-3 were snuffed out. They stayed out.
That's not right, Jin thought.
Tokyo-3 was a company town, NERV-owned and operated. And the power grid was a large part of it. Despite the city's needs being an afterthought compared to the Geofront, it remained a part of the myriad web of redundancies serving NERV. There were simply too many backups to the backups for the power to stay out this long.
He was already dialing Rando, who he knew would be on base.
"Sir!" he answered, sounding untroubled.
"Are the Children safe?"
"Huh? Oh, yeah. They're fine. They went to the command room after the battle. But, sir, things are a bit of a mess down here with—"
Jin sighed. A stressed exhalation of an anxiety level he was surprised he could feel. The kids were okay. This was not some elaborate terrorist attack or coup. The kids were okay.
The thought triggered who else he needed to call.
"… and without the AC it feels like a volcanic armpit down here," Rando was still talking, "and—"
"I need to go," Jin said. He hung up and dialed his wife.
"What's going on?" Uta asked him, grasping the outage was not right, though perhaps not to what extent.
"Where are you?" he asked.
She worked three days a week at a government finance office downtown. He was surprised she applied for it, and surprised she stayed at it. But he also admired her stubbornness. She was a de facto social worker and therapist, trying to direct Tokyo-3's belligerent elderly and disabled to the proper government departments and absorbing all their ire and discontent along the way.
"Almost back at the office." She paused, and now her voice edged into worry: "Why?"
It was impossible to get back to a shelter within the Geofront now. The linear cars would be without power, too. They were both stuck aboveground in a powerless, giant target.
"It's probably nothing," he tried to convince himself.
"Where are you?"
He glanced up at their apartment building. "Home."
"… I want to be with you."
"Stay at the office," he told her. "I'll find you."
Jin started the trek across town. Weaving through the near-panicky pedestrian traffic was easy; they saw him coming and got out of the way. Even without the suit and sunglasses he cut an imposing figure. Not that he enjoyed exploiting his physical presence but Section teachings were so ingrained in his everyday thinking the response was nearly automatic.
"Hey," Uta suddenly asked, "is she okay?"
His detail. "She's okay."
"Good." She sounded genuinely relieved. "Good."
The fight he braced for never came.
"I guess I can't meet her, huh?"
Jin was taken aback by the question for a moment. "That'd be against about two dozen regulations, hon."
"I figured." She sighed over the phone. "But she's a good kid, yeah?"
"Yeah," he told her. "She's a good kid."
/\/\/\/\
Shinji Ikari ruined Wednesday afternoon. Rei's restart synchronization with Unit-00 stretched through last night. She dragged herself home just before dawn to sleep it off. Despite the dull unerring clatter of construction, there existed a strange urban serenity. Jin was at peace a moment, knowing his detail was resting as best she could after carrying out her purpose.
And then Shinji showed up to deliver some school printouts. Like Rei needed or wanted them. She answered the door in, as far as Jin could tell, nothing but a loose night shirt. A little modesty, or at least awareness, might be good for that girl. But that mindset, that belief that she was nothing but an expendable soldier was too powerful to override. Especially for someone like Shinji Ikari.
They conversed briefly on her doorstep, he handed over the schoolwork, and he turned to leave. The mild spark of annoyance for interrupting his detail's sleep faded and Jin was mentally compiling this meaningless episode for his daily report when Rei spoke after him.
She invited him inside her apartment, moving aside to allow him access. Jin and Rando stared. Shinji stared. Then he nodded. Then he entered. Rei shut the door behind them.
Rando had the common sense for once not to utter a word. Jin could only ponder how to relay this to the Commander without getting the Third disappeared.
The two agents sat in the car in silence. The afternoon sun drifted through clouds to rest on the rim of the valley mountains.
Rei's apartment door opened. Rando leaned over the dash to see. Shinji appeared first. The front of his shirt was splashed with some sort of liquid.
Tea? Jin thought. The concept did not compute. Both Rei having tea, and then offering it to someone. Imagining such a benign domestic scene deeply unsettled him.
The two stood outside Rei's apartment. Shinji was talking, looking sheepish. He gestured down to his stained shirt and gave an apologetic smile. Rei missed it. She watched his hands. The palms were scarred and discolored. Full tactile sensation would never return to him. His file said he played the cello but recent reports from Katsuragi mentioned he had given up on it.
Rei had, for various reasons, access to those reports and file. She had to know.
Shinji was looking out over the balcony. Rei drifted to his side. She watched him carefully feel for the railing, and hold it. One pale hand tentatively found the rail beside his. Her gaze floated to his profile. She leaned towards him. The Section car's horn blared.
"Sir!?" Rando gasped in surprise.
Shinji jumped. His hands reflexively clutched his shirt around the collar as he looked for the source of the noise. He laughed a little at his expense. His watch caught his eye, he noticed the descending sun and bade farewell to Rei. He left.
Rei still gripped the balcony rail. She turned on the Section car. Her red eyes bore down upon the agents.
Shit, Jin thought.
"Shit," Rando said.
She walked to the stairwell. She disappeared into it.
"Shit shit," Rando babbled. He turned to his partner. "Sir, what did you—"
"Hand slipped," Jin explained.
Rando stared at him. Then leapt back in his seat as far as the car allowed. Jin followed his wild eyes. Rei Ayanami was outside his window.
"Shit," Rando breathed, like he saw a ghost.
Jin opened his car door.
"Sir?! What are you—"
Jin got out and shut the door behind him.
They stared at each other. She looked no different than usual. Being so close to her, Jin realized again how slight she was. He towered over her. An outsider looking at them would only see a near giant of a man and a vulnerable wisp of a girl wearing nothing but a nightshirt.
But for a moment, he was afraid of her. The girl he watched over for years, who he saw more often than his own wife. The girl who diligently practiced the viola because she was ordered to. Who lived on her own in a rundown apartment and believed she didn't merit any better. Who risked her life to safeguard all others. The girl forced to carry the weight of the world.
Jin sighed. He took off his suit coat. "What are you doing, going outside dressed like that?" He draped it over her shoulders. It reached past her knees. "You'll catch cold."
He didn't dare touch her, but nodded back to her apartment. Rei's eyes flickered away from him, down to the loose gravel of the ground beneath her bare feet. She turned back to the stairwell. Jin followed. They ascended two flights.
"You watched," Rei spoke.
To him. Unprompted. Jin swallowed his agent protocol.
"Yeah," he replied.
"You interrupted."
"… Yeah."
He glanced down at her. She wasn't angry or accusatory. She was matter-of-factly. But her shoulders were low. Her eyes studied the floor. She hadn't looked up once since they left the Section car. Jin looked away.
He waited for her to continue, and she did not. He spoke: "Look. You're still young. No need to rush anything. I'm not, ah, telling you what to do, but our jobs have to be top priority. Everything else is secondary. Any distraction can be detrimental. I don't want you to lose sight of what you're doing."
They walked up the stairs.
"Besides," he went on, "you could do a lot better than Shinji Ikari."
She looked at him with an utter lack of understanding, a genuine innocence. He frowned. This was not the girl for the Third.
They reached her apartment. Rei shrugged out of his jacket and he retrieved it before it hit the ground. She hesitated on her doormat, looking back to the railing Shinji held with the numb, mangled hands he used to rescue her from the burning entry plug. Her sight slid from it, discarded to an unfocused spot on the floor.
She entered her empty apartment. The door shut behind her.
Jin descended to ground level, back to the Section sedan. He deposited himself heavily in the driver's seat as Rando tucked his phone away. They both sighed at the same time.
"The First is, um, okay?" Rando asked after a suitable amount of awkward silence passed.
"The First is okay," Jin reported.
"… Good, sir."
The sun fell out of the sky. Stars tried to break over the neon city lights.
"Good."
/\/\/\/\
He had never been in the Commander's office. The chamber met the level of stark intimidation Jin expected from the man. Early morning sun, reflected via Geofront mirrors, cast everything in a hazy aura. From his position in the center of the room Jin could barely see his superiors. The Commander and Sub-Commander were indistinct blurs of authority.
"Agent Jin Hatasawa," the Sub-Commander read off a dossier.
Like he didn't know his identity. The impersonality stung, and let Jin know this was not a friendly chat.
"Born July sixth, 1983. Father deceased, 1999 car accident. Mother deceased, 2002 ovarian cancer. No siblings. Worked guard duty for government depots shortly after Second Impact. Tough job." Fuyutsuki almost sounded sorrowful with the last comment. It was forgotten in the next breath. "Flitted around the country, hired by various private security firms. Hired by NERV in 2010. High marks in training and recommendations from previous employment led to Section 2 assignment. Detail: Rei Ayanami, First Child."
His life in a half-minute. Jin couldn't help but feel a little smaller. Gendo might have paid attention to the story. The glare off his glasses was deceiving.
"Married Uta Mizutani in 2009." Fuyutsuki turned a page in the dossier. "Three medical insurance applications for IVF over the next two years. All approved. No children."
Another page turned.
"Partnered with Section agent Hiroyuki Taketa, deceased 2015, during the Third Angel's attack. Suffocated under a collapsed shelter roof. Recovery crews found the body two days later. No surviving family. Lived alone. Gambled recreationally. He spoke well of you."
Jin felt battered on all sides and off-balance. The casual recitation of trauma and personal failure reduced him, made him feel his emotions were meaningless and undeserved.
Another page turned.
"You've been on the First Child's detail almost since NERV hired you. People can change, over such a period. It can lead people to make errors in judgment; to watch their detail over security feed for days at a time, to seek them out without reason, to initiate contact, offer opinion and interfere directly. It can lead to mistakes."
The dossier shut.
Gendo finally spoke, sounding preoccupied: "What is your intent towards the First Child?"
It took a second for Jin to process the question. They thought he wanted her.
He prided himself on self-control, ever since childhood. He was always bigger than other kids and his father told him he therefore had to set a good example. His peers looked up to him, literally. He stuck out, whether he wanted to or not. He had to be responsible and mature even if he didn't feel it, even if it meant burying emotions and desires.
Because if people with strength acted however they wanted and didn't follow the rules what was the point of having rules? Might did not make right. Just because you were strong didn't mean you got to do whatever you wanted.
Jin was a half-step towards the Commander's desk to put his fist through his teeth before the control reasserted itself, before he remembered where he was and what he was. He stood at attention.
"My intent is to protect her, sir. That's my job."
Fuyutsuki tossed his dossier to a corner of the desk apart from everything else, relegating it to the unimportant fringes of consideration.
"It was a mistake to put you on her detail." His tone communicated no fault on their part. "Report to Section HR for reassignment."
The air left him in a befuddled silent sputter. An unpleasant chill sapped his strength. His head pitched forward and he stared at the floor without seeing anything. The world skidded off-kilter for an agonized second of eternity.
The two other men busied themselves with paperwork, idly scanning files on the desk. The Commander bothered a glance up over his glasses in Jin's direction.
"That is all. Dismissed."
/\/\/\/\
The suitcase was propped against the front hallway's wall. Her shoes were beside it. Jin caught movement beyond the sliding glass door to the balcony. He approached.
Balcony was a generous title for the floating shelf stuck on the apartment building façade. There just happened to be a hole in their living room wall leading to it. Jin couldn't even sit down on it comfortably.
That was where Uta was. She sat, legs dangling between the rails. She stared out towards the rim of the valley wall as the sun dripped below its lip. Despite the location in town, the noise pollution and horrid neighbors, the view had been decent, especially with the weapon buildings retracted.
Currently the cityscape was a haphazard collection of jagged ruins, melted skyscrapers and reconstruction crews scrambling between them. The Tenth Angel was remorseless. The devastation left in its wake would take months to repair.
"Welcome home," Uta spoke.
"Thanks."
They watched the sun linger on the mountains around the city.
"How is—" She almost said your detail. "How are things there?"
Jin tried to forget the past twenty-four hours. "Bad."
A dead Child, a lost Eva, HQ breached and the Third somehow stuck inside Unit-01. Eaten, was the word floating around base. Maybe modeling the Evas so closely after people was a mistake. The giant robots of his youth didn't have blood or internal organs or mouths and teeth. Don't build it if you don't want to use it.
"How is she?" Uta dared, in a shamed hush.
He was too tired to feel frustration or self-pity anymore. "Hurt, but still breathing." Like everyone else.
Rei was in NERV's hospital wing after a run at the Angel carrying an N2 mine. Calculated desperation. And ultimately, useless. It took a frenzied Unit-01 to kill it. Eat it alive. Jin remembered the skittish, apologetic boy outside Rei's apartment, weeks ago. The boy with ruined hands and a tea-stained shirt. That was the boy who piloted Unit-01? Who tore apart the Angel like an animal? The boy Rei watched with such dedication?
He looked out over the broken city, trying to see her apartment. It was too far away, too obscured by other structures. As he looked he saw the highways leading out of Tokyo-3 aglow with the snarl of hundreds of taillights. People had had enough. The city was emptying.
"You were right," Uta said.
"Huh?"
"We should have bought a house in the valley."
"A bit late now."
"Yeah."
A house on the rim was more space for less money than a city apartment, even with the added expense of a car for commute. But it was away from people. Uta spent most of her adolescence, before and after the Impact, with just her mother on a small farm, miles from any other human being. It was a quiet, lonely existence. Jin didn't blame her for craving friends and interaction. He couldn't. He also couldn't quite fathom it. He was too exhausted from work to socialize.
In their beginning his fatigue and her exaltation at meeting other people worked. He was too tired to look at anyone else and she loved his undivided attention. They met in a government-run facility for job training. He enrolled to try and figure out computers. She just wanted to socialize. It was less a college, more a desperate stab at re-civilizing the world by those who survived. He met her expectations of what a man was supposed to be; she was cute and bubbly.
They wed spitefully. The world was half dead, human civilization was crumbling at its foundations and global ecology was spiraling the drain but they survived. They lived. They weren't scientists who could restore the earth, or politicians who could broker peace. But they could create a happiness in spite of it.
"I'm sorry," she told him.
"Forget it," Jin said truthfully. "No use feeling bad over the apartment anymore."
Uta stared out between the balcony rails. "I don't understand you."
What was so hard to understand? He was a straightforward guy.
"I'm sorry," she said again, and her breath tripped over the words. "I'm sorry I'm not who you thought I'd be."
Her hands gripped and twisted the hem of her blouse into a tight knot. Her fists pressed against her abdomen.
Jin dropped beside her. His knees jammed against the railing. He held her as best he could on the narrow balcony. He kissed the side of her head, her left temple. He held her and she held him.
"I'll stay if you want me to," she managed.
"I can't protect you here. I don't know if I ever could." He shook his head at her protest. "You'll be safer with your mom. As far away from this city as possible."
Her phone buzzed in her pocket. She retrieved it with a tired finality.
"It's the cab," she said. "The cab to Mom's."
Jin helped her to her feet. They maneuvered back into the apartment. They walked through the living room, down the front hall. He picked up her suitcase for her. She kissed him, one hand on the doorknob, the other reaching up to find the back of his neck. He felt her nails in his skin, felt the metal of her wedding ring in his skin.
They rode the elevator down to ground level. They walked out of the lobby. A taxi idled by the curb, under a fluorescent street lamp. He placed the suitcase in the trunk. He opened the door for his wife.
Uta looked up at him for the first time since they left the apartment. Her expression was lost, defeated. She couldn't even try to smile.
"We had some good times, right?"
Jin stared at her. "This isn't goodbye. I will see you again."
He kissed her. He kissed her forehead, through her hair. They hugged. The driver rolled his eyes around to check his watch.
Uta dropped into the cab. She slouched in the seat. Jin held the door, peering at his wife, urging his eyes to memorize her, chastising himself for not doing it sooner. He stumbled upon a vivid memory as he studied her, of seeing this expression on her before, back in their government training days. He was hired by yet another security firm, across the country. He left in five days. He left her in five days. The new job wasn't much, but it was a change in scenery, a fresh start, another chance to find himself. She didn't cry, or get angry, or wish him well. She looked defeated. Like the rest of the students in the facility meant nothing. Like she was alone again on the farm.
Jin asked her to come with him. She was surprised and scared and thrilled and guilty but she agreed. They married a year later, scraping by, happily miserable. Even when the doctor said she would never conceive naturally.
The job from NERV was a miracle. They could afford IVF. They could have children, create a new happiness for the sad, broken world.
It failed, all three times. And that happiness they wanted to create became a half-remembered daydream. Her defeated look returned, then shifted into a placid acceptance of failure. And he did not know how to fix it. He did not want her to accept this, too.
"I love you," he said.
She looked back to him. Her expression held. "I love you, too."
They shut the door.
/\/\/\/\
Lieutenant Makoto Hyuga was a loyal, diligent cog in NERV command's machinery. The organization was built from the ground up on layers upon layers of bureaucratic delegation trying to facilitate Gendo Ikari's wishes. Jin watched Hyuga do his best to fulfill them and make the perpetually rebuilt NERV function.
Since Uta left he hadn't been back to their apartment. There was no reason to until it was safe for her to return. He lived on base now inside the Geofront in the Section barracks. Workdays he watched his new detail Lieutenant Hyuga slave over his terminal or run odd jobs for Katsuragi. He was stressed, the entire command apparatus was, but it was a nervous tension used to propel their work and to avoid feeling anything else. Mood, like orders, carried through the ranks. If the higher-ups panicked and despaired and lost their shit it would give permission for everyone else to, as well.
Set a good example, he could almost hear his father tell him. Not that Jin was in a position of authority. He enjoyed a degree of seniority before, more for years served as opposed to actual age. Now he had to restart at the bottom of a much lesser totem pole.
There were rumors about him now, regarding why he was reassigned. He didn't care. He never cared about office politics or the latest gossip. He wasn't here to make friends or impress people. He was here to do his job.
On off days he haunted the Section gym. Sometimes he spied Rando across the facility. It looked like he made friends with his new partner. Jin surprised himself with the lack of offense he felt. He was almost happy for him.
Jin's new partner on Hyuga's detail was quiet with a complexion of lightly burnt glue. They exchanged names and that was enough for them both.
Every other day Uta traveled to the town a few miles from her mother's farm to get phone service. She called Jin in the early evening, before dinner. They talked of everything except reality. They recalled friends from the training facility, or neighbors from their first one-room dive apartment. Favorite movies and books. The time a bird flew into their balcony window and injured itself. Mrs. Hirasawa's cats. They talked and wished they could be together.
"I want to understand you," Uta told him.
They said I love you. They said goodbye.
Jin hung up. He leaned back against the bench, outside on the lawn of the Geofront, in the shadow of NERV's partially destroyed pyramid. He watched the reflected sunlight grow thinner. He stood up and entered base.
There was a balcony. An easily missed, unobtrusive jut of metal on the left wall, almost an offshoot of the shoulder pylon guard. It held a decent view of the umbilical bridge, midway between the LCL level and the control room. The balcony was short, not as small as his apartment one, but two people on it were almost too many.
Jin stepped onto it. The stench of blood and oil saturated everything. The railing looked slick. The soles of his shoes felt tacky against the metal floor. It was humid. The air circulation gave Unit-01's cage a feeling of being in some nightmare creature's lair as it breathed down his neck.
It's been three weeks, Jin thought, gazing down at Unit-01's newly re-armored face. There's no way the Third could survive in there for three weeks. No food, no water. He got the impression this salvage operation the higher-ups were consumed with was a show for the rest of NERV. To demonstrate the administration did in fact give a damn about human life.
He turned to Rei, in the corner of the balcony.
Jin almost offered a hello before remembering it was pointless. He still appreciated that about her. No nonsense. No time wasting. Get to the point, as the Old Man used to say.
"You're here every day," he stated.
Rei did not react. Her sight never wavered from Unit-01. He followed her eyes to it.
Was I wrong about the Third? Jin idly wondered. He ran away after the debacle with the Fourth Child, but came back. He fought, he saved them all from the Tenth Angel, and paid the ultimate price. He was the bravest coward Jin knew.
How did Ayanami see Shinji? She was too analytical to be swayed by emotional whims or impulse. She was deliberate. She did not act without purpose or thought.
Jin recalled the afternoon outside her apartment when the Third delivered her schoolwork. The way she looked after dancing with him. The need in her eyes after the battle with the Fifth Angel.
… Was I wrong about Ayanami?
Get to the point.
"You're here every day," he repeated. "And…"
He stopped. What point did he have besides trying to make himself feel better? It was arrogant to think he knew what she was experiencing, that he ever knew. He watched her, for years. And that was it. He watched her, as she grew and changed in ways he failed to see. He was not her friend, or her father, or even her protector anymore. He was a man with no claim on any of her emotions.
"I'm sorry," Jin said.
She did not react. She did not say a word, or hitch her breath or bother to glance in his direction. Rei stared at Unit-01, waiting, trying to both hope and mourn at the same time, and not sure how to do either.
"I'm sorry."
/\/\/\/\
End
Author notes: I know original characters can be a losing proposition in fan fiction (especially given my track record with them) but this idea hounded me into action.
I realized very late on that I fudged the timeline for the homework delivery, power outage and Gendo's trip. I'm owning the screw-up. It didn't flow as well otherwise. Also, my laziness. So take that, canon!
Thanks for reading.