A Glass of Wine (Chapter 27)
The sixteenth Angel appeared above Tokyo-3 at noon on a Saturday. In the Katsuragi apartment, the phone went off before the alarms, which were only a second behind. At the sound, Asuka dumped her chopsticks into the takeout curry bowl in front of her and got up to find her shoes. Misato already had the phone in hand.
"Copy that," she said. "We'll be there in ten. Clear access gate seven."
They barely spoke on the drive. Asuka spent half the time in the Alpine's cramped backseat, squeezing her way into her plugsuit while signs of emergency flashed by outside-road signs displaying evacuation directions and the civilians which followed them in a pell-mell struggle for safety. She could see buildings shrink as the city's core block retracted, and as the tallest of the buildings disappeared from view she caught her first glimpse of the Angel.
Now fully dressed, she slid back into the passenger seat and craned her neck alongside the dashboard to get a clear view of it: an illuminated double-helix which hovered over downtown. Its body was a complete circuit, and as she watched, Asuka realized it was rotating.
Misato was on her car phone, keeping command updated as they sped through the city. "Prep units 00, 02, and 03 for surface intercept. I want Asuka and Rei up top as soon as possible, with Nagisa as backup."
Asuka tracked the Angel's bulk as they passed directly under it, and kept looking at it as the car turned into their access gate. "How do I kill something like that?" she said.
Misato hung up the phone. "Any way you can," she said.
The lift locked the car in place and rumbled them away into the dark.
((()))
Rei Ayanami awoke hours beforehand. The sun had yet to rise over Japan, and as she sat up in bed and listened to the sounds of the city outside her window, of passing cars and tittering birds impatient for the morning, she knew that an attack was imminent.
It was not a conscious thought, and she would never be able to articulate the reasons why she knew. Perhaps it was a change in air density which presaged the Angel's sudden existence over her home. Perhaps it was a burst of errant tachyons which she perceived through a side of herself less concerned with time in a linear sense. Perhaps it was just the human side of her owing all to a gut instinct she too often neglected.
In any case, the realization did not overmuch change her plans for the day. She got up, showered, ate a small breakfast of apple slices and juice, dressed, and took the train to headquarters. By noon, she was deep within Central Dogma, floating in the tank, listening to its thrum. She was there, looking out through the haze of liquid, when she saw Commander Ikari take a phone call. Next to him, Dr. Akagi did the same.
Rei did not need an explanation. She knew what was coming.
They both hung up a second later. Akagi exited the chamber immediately. The commander lingered.
"Rei," he began.
"I know," she said, her voice distorted by the fluid and the intercom. "The next Angel has arrived."
"Yes," he said. "It's time to go."
((()))
Asuka left Misato at the parking garage and made her way down to the cages on her own. The elevator stopped on floor F-5, pilot lockers, and Kaworu joined her. He was in his plugsuit already, but he spent the elevator ride fixing his synch clips into his hair. "So," he said, "how are you?"
"I'm good," she said. "Ready to go."
"Excited?"
"No," she said, quickly. "Absolutely not. This is my job. People don't get excited to do their jobs."
"Except for you."
"Shut up," she said, even though he was right. She had a fluttering in her stomach that would not die down. It had been too long. Wondergirl was sortieing alongside her, which sucked, but still: a real battle, with her at the point position. Time to shine. Everything else might be confusing, but this was not. Fighting was always simple.
Except that the last time she had a fight, things afterwards became more confusing than ever.
The elevator reached the cage terminal. She caught Kaworu looking at her as they exited. "What?" she said.
"You're going to be great up there," he said. "I can hardly wait to see it."
She smiled. "Thanks, Fifth."
He nodded, and for a moment, before parting, she thought to step close and hug him. In the end, she settled for a quick squeeze of his shoulder before turning to leave. It just wasn't the right time for more.
((()))
Rei achieved activation while Unit 00 was in route to the launch pad, her displays cycling through levels of synch before giving way to a view of the launch bay as it scrolled by beyond her visual receptors. It was mostly repaired, with the holes in its teal walls and floor patched by new construction work. The bloody carcass the Second Child had made of the fourteenth Angel was entirely gone.
Rei heard cross-traffic communications as the army of technicians oversaw deployment of two Evangelions simultaneously. She could not see Unit 02 from where she was, but she knew by comms that Pilot Soryu was being sortied through the southwestern launch bay, opposite her own.
"The plan calls for a pincer maneuver," she heard Major Katsuragi say, her voice as small as her face on the plug's video feed. "Units 02 and 00 will approach and apply pressure until we can get definite intel on the target's composition from the Magi. In the meantime, I want all defensive towers targeting that thing."
Lieutenant Hyuga's voice filtered in from off-camera. "Ma'am, the last attack removed all but twenty percent of our topside defensive batteries. We don't have much to target it with."
"The last attack?" Katsuragi said. "The last attack didn't even leave orbit."
"No, the one before that," Hyuga said. "The one with the arms. What are we calling it?"
Lieutenant Aoba's voice was equally filtered. "Tapey Arms."
"I voted for Mister Ribbons," Lieutenant Ibuki said, "but I always get vetoed in this stupid boys club."
Major Katsuragi frowned. "That thing killed over six hundred people, Lieutenant. Giving it a pet name is unacceptable."
"Yes, ma'am."
Katsuragi crossed her arms. "Rei. Asuka. You both understand the plan?"
"Yes," Rei said.
"It's not exactly complicated," Pilot Soryu said, her feed switched to audio-only.
"Good. Prepare to launch on my mark." On the screen, Katsuragi was silent for a moment while she leaned forward, searching for the video-off key on the console in front of her. "But yes," she said, absently, "Mister Ribbons is clearly the better name."
Unit 00 locked into position at the launch pad with a thud. Above her, Rei heard the rhythmic clack-clack-clack of blast doors opening all the way up the shaft. She closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and tried to center herself.
She thought of the commander standing in front of her, welcoming her back. This was the right thing to do, she told herself. This was her proper place. Her rightful duty. This was the correct Rei to be.
Then why did it feel so wrong?
The launch light flashed green, the buzzer sounded, and she rocketed up the shaft.
((()))
Unit 02 snapped into place at the top of the shaft. Asuka felt the sudden weightlessness of stoppage, then focused, bringing herself out of the exit building. She pulled on her starboard yoke and retrieved a pallet rifle from the armament tower next to her. The weight of the rifle in her hand felt great. The sensation of movement at seventy-five meters felt great. Being an Evangelion again felt great.
But not wholly perfect, not like it once had. Where once there was dead certainty in the righteousness of her purpose there now lingered a sour note of doubt. Being in an Evangelion used to bring happiness. Victories used to feel good. Now, they just brought ruin.
Asuka shook her shoulders, trying to roll out of her uncomfortable thoughts. Focus up. Ignore that.
She advanced from the launch point, moving past the low buildings and into the open space of the retracted core block. Her HUD registered a solid ping on Unit 00, which was visible across from the Angel, armed with a long-range rifle. The sight of Ayanami brought a deep frown to her face.
Ayanami, the girl who gets to just abandon her duties for a while and then come right back. Ayanami, Commander Ikari's favorite. Ayanami, the girl who gets to have a little boyfriend when she does not. Ayanami, the special little Wondergirl, in her little protected bubble.
"Whatever," she told herself, and focused on the Angel. None of her passive scans gave her anything but fuzzy returns. She would find some way to kill it. Her, not Ayanami. Not some pampered little doll.
"Everyone hold position," Misato said, over the comm. "We're trying to get a firm blood pattern return."
Asuka raised an eyebrow. "It's a giant floating halo made of pure light," she said. "What else could it possibly be?"
"Don't be a smartass, Asuka."
"Whatever." Asuka closed her eyes for a second and let her AT field unfurl. A slight heat-haze shimmer flexed in the air, then stabilized. She opened her eyes, confident.
The air in front of her warped, ballooning against her AT field—a quick-time premonition that she felt rather than saw. She clenched her hands on her control yokes.
The Angel's double-helix form collapsed, its body forming a singular, luminous circuit that then broke. One end darted forward, directly toward her.
Asuka leapt to the side, rifle up, and fired as the beam-rod flashed by. Her aim was on-target. Rounds detonated across the Angel's flank. No effect.
"Damnit," Asuka shouted. "I need something—"
The Angel turned, faster than she could react. The pallet rifle detonated as it plunged through the weapon's housing. Then white heat in her chest, pain-flare in her mind. No breath left. Fire in her lungs. Asuka reached down and grabbed the thing, now buried in her heart, and felt the heat of its body in her hands. She locked her feet into the street beneath her, churning pavement, trying to fight back.
The body of the Angel flexed, coiled high into the air, and bore down on her. Its weight tipped her over onto her back and drove her along the urban floor of the city, pavement shattering and buckling in a deep furrow as she slid.
Instinctively, Asuka threw her legs up and wrapped the thing's body, trying to get control of it, trying to lock it down. She pulled it close to her and rolled, shoulders heaving as she tried to gain top-control on something with no arms or legs. The thing squirmed and kept her on her back. Its hard-light body coiled around her legs and drove deeper into her chest. Her shoulders and head smashed through the fascia of a high-rise apartment complex. Debris crashed against her external cameras.
No matter. She didn't need to see it, anyway. Asuka screamed and deployed her progressive knife. The hilt found her hand and she drove the blade into the Angel's body. A spray of blood. A scream in her mind, one with her own.
Everything in her world became immediate, pressing, and deadly. She felt the heat of the Angel as it scoured her body. Touching it invited the corruption, but she could not get away. The corruption spread through her legs where they gripped the target, and through her chest where it had speared her, and through her hands. The blade of her progressive knife boiled in the Angel's body. The superheated liquid steel of the blade burbled down her wrist and scored the paint from her armor, till pure steel shone through with gunmetal insistence.
She felt that it wanted to burrow deeper, aiming for some unknown end goal, and that no matter how awful the pain in her legs or hands or chest, she needed to bear it if she were to keep it from its prize.
"Rei, supporting fire! Now!"
Misato's voice was panicked. Through the warbling, echoing scream, Asuka saw Unit 00 drop into a crouch at the edge of the battlefield. But Unit 00 was gone from her field of view, cloaked by the smoke and dust of this hand-to-hand struggle with the Angel. How was she seeing it? How could she know this?
It was in her mind, she realized. Her sight was its sight. Its sight was her sight.
She felt the length of the Angel, its body almost vertical, coiling and snapping in the air as it drove down into her. An easy target for Wondergirl.
Unit 00 fired. Its rifle kicked a 405mm shell downrange. The projectile was on-target, but ineffective—spanging off the target's body and colliding with a civilian structure. Asuka felt the impact like a punch to a numb limb. Nothing significant, nothing meaningful.
Unit 00 fired again, again, again. Two misses and another bounced hit.
"Negative impact." Wondergirl's voice was quiet. "Rifle ineffective."
"We're deploying a positron cannon," Misato said. "Maintain distance. I'm prepping Unit 03 right now. Just hold on."
An armament tower shuttered open. Unit 00 glanced at it.
The Angel's back-end swiveled around, an eyeless face focused on the new threat. Asuka felt its intent even as it moved, like a whisper in the back of her mind. It was going to spring for Wondergirl.
"No," Asuka said, teeth gritted. She let go of her worthless knife and planted her free hand, allowing her to roll the thing as she had originally intended. For a moment, she was atop it, knees braced against the ground, hands around its body. A possibility entered her head that maybe she could pull it out of herself, so she tried.
Unit 00 dropped its rifle and reached for the fresh cannon. The Angel flexed, its end moving up and down, up and down, as if checking its distance to her, like a snake about to strike. Asuka pulled hard, trying to get it to budge. It would not.
Then it whipped away from her, and the sudden force of it flipped her onto her side again. It was still in her chest, but the rest of it, the part of it which had borne down on her so much, had flitted away.
The Angel's body contacted the side of Unit 00's cranial armor. It did not shatter the armor, but rather warped through it, its tip phasing through the Evangelion's temple. At the point of contact, contamination; an arcing, vine-like growth that spread rapidly and buckled the head plate as it passed beneath.
Asuka knew it had connected with Ayanami without any visual, knew it had collided with her head, knew it had wormed its way into her skull. She knew it by the way she felt Rei clutch her face, fingers in her hair, trying to breathe while the Angel slithered into her skull—an ice pick migraine that would not relent.
The same growth spread across her flesh from the impact point, bulging the veins of her face and blurring her vision as it pressed in on her optic nerves from within her own skull. She blinked and saw the palms of white-gloved hands pressing her face, blue hair in her vision.
"Rei, what is your status?" Major Katsuragi was in her ear.
"I am compromised," she said, though she was not herself anymore. She was more than herself, more than both selves. She was both of them, linked by a luminous bridge, and with each breath she found herself inhaling and exhaling between both bodies, both selves. An oceanic calm belying unheralded eons. A girl wrapped around a singularity.
Is this what it was like to be Rei Ayanami?
Another breath and she was back in another body, another self. Crimson fire, immediate, scalding, burning every present, every now. Nothing timeless, nothing considered. Nothing but red-hot, contemporary mistakes. A girl wrapped around shame and lies.
Is this what it was like to be Asuka Langley Soryu?
Who was she, now? She twisted, writhing in two bodies, two selves. She was Rei Ayanami in Asuka Soryu. She was Asuka Soryu in Rei Ayanami. The First and Second, interchangeable.
The pain redoubled, chest and skull, heart and mind. She could not stand it. Consciousness narrowed, then vanished, and she was suddenly they, and they were nowhere.
((()))
"Rei!" Misato smacked her hand flat on the console. "Asuka! One of you respond!" Nothing but static. "What's happening out there?" she said.
"Both units' comm suites are down," Hyuga said. "Some kind of interference. I'm not really sure what I'm reading, here. Maya?"
Ibuki spoke. "I'm seeing phase-space deflagration across both units' AT fields, emanating from the points of contact. It's blotting out passive radio signals."
"Could a tightbeam comm link from a topside asset get through?" Hyuga said.
"It's possible," Ibuki said.
"Do it," Misato said. "Where is Unit 03?"
She stepped over to Aoba's console. Ritsuko was already there, standing behind the lieutenant, arms crossed. "Abort the process. Restart from step 101," she said.
"Yes, ma'am."
"What's wrong?" Misato said.
"Unit 03 won't synchronize." Ritsuko inclined her head to the view on Aoba's console. The Fifth Child sat in the entry plug, face a calm mask. Synch data scrolled next to the image.
"He won't cross the absolute borderline," Ritsuko said. "We've tried three times. He approaches, teeters, then fuzzes out. I've never seen anything like it."
Misato felt the tingle of curiosity. How was this possible? How had a kid who had always synchronized at a solid eighty-five to ninety percent become suddenly unable to even establish a baseline? It seemed impossible.
One glance at the main screen—where Units 00 and 02 were writhing and dying—forestalled any burning questions she harbored.
"Eject the entry plug," she said. "We'll sortie Unit 03 using the dummy system. There's no time for anything else."
"Belay that."
The order came from on high. Misato looked up to see the Commander, his eyes turned down towards her.
"Sir," she said, "if we don't get support topside right now, Asuka and Rei could die. If you won't let me take Shinji out of quarantine, I at least need to—"
"Kaworu Nagisa is the designated pilot of Evangelion Unit 03," Ikari said, his voice final. "You will make every effort to sortie him. Not the dummy system."
"Sir, I have to object. This is not—"
"Your objections are noted, probationary operations manager." The commander took his seat once more. "You have your orders. Carry them out."
Misato felt her jawline clench. "Yes, sir."
((()))
They stand on cold concrete at five years old—the first day of their second life. They feel a hole in themselves where the previous them used to be, the one who died in a way they will never learn. The hole is made of missing memories and feels like vertigo. The Commander looks down at them and says something they cannot remember. His words bring happiness. They stretch that happiness across the hole in their heart, like the skin of a funeral drum, and try to move forward. Always forward. Always convincing themselves that it is enough.
Flash.
They stand at mama's funeral. Rainwater pools in the dirt that runs between the nubs of grass. The rain tack-tacks against the umbrella their grandmother holds for them. Mama goes in the ground before they can get another look at her. They wondered if mama would look pretty. In shows and movies, the dead person always looks nice in the casket, but they will never know. The casket never opens, so they will always remember Mama like she was in the room, feet turning in the air.
Grandmother tells them it's acceptable to cry at a time like this. As if there is any chance of that happening. Never again.
Flash.
They are in the entry plug when everything goes wrong. The plug ejects, severing the synch all at once, and they are thrown back into themselves. They feel it bang hard once, then twice, then the long, quick fall. The LCL is hot in their lungs. They wait in the dark and wonder if this is what death is like. Like sitting in that hole within themselves. They wait in pain. In time, the hatch cracks, and the LCL pours out. The Commander's face is there again, as always, asking if they are okay. They cannot make themselves speak. He smiles at them anyway. Always forgiving. Always good.
Flash.
They are on the flight deck, standing in the warm Pacific sun. They feel good for the first time today. The wind takes away the shame from last night, when they did something they'll always be ashamed of, and if they breathe deeply enough they can barely remember the feeling of Kaji's face as he pulled away from them, disgusted. Misato Katsuragi is there. Three boys are with her, each one lamer than the last. The last and lamest is Shinji Ikari. He is not what they expect. Not much to look at. They say as much.
He does not fight back, does not bridle. He does not look impressed at all. Everyone else always looks impressed. They think maybe they've misjudged him.
Flash.
They are on the umbilical bridge. A moment before, they were in a hospital cot, but now they are here. Their arm hurts. Their head hurts. Each breath feels like a knife in the lungs. They spot him through the pain, kneeling alongside them. They feel his hands at their back and arm as he cradles them, and through the pain they see him. He wears the commander's face, but younger, like a boy aspiring to manhood. Even more, he wears a new expression—a tightening of the brow over blue eyes, a twitch in the jaw. It is actual concern for them. They've never seen it before.
"I'll do it," he says, looking away from them. "I'll be your pilot."
Flash.
They sit on the veranda. The city is dark. Their back still hurts from the heat of the shower and the memory of the acid which drenched it mere hours before. The taste of stolen wine on their tongue and the swim of its effects in their head. They look to their right and see him again, and realize that they were wrong. He's quite a bit to look at, if they go below the surface. He's always been enough to look at. He doesn't know it yet, but that's when they make up their mind to kiss him.
Flash.
They sit on a park bench as the sun sets. A brown-haired boy is next to them. He's the first one since Shinji who looks at them like they aren't a thing, like they aren't a tool. But more than that, he looks at them with something more. When he looks at them, they feel like they can be more than they are, and like they can determine what that more is. He says something nice to them, and they lean in. Lips touch lips. They feel like they are betraying someone.
Flash.
They do everything wrong. They lie to Shinji, then screw up the apology. They hit him and kick him and tell him he's worthless. They tell Misato that she never understood them. They shut out Kaji, and now he is gone. They impose on Hikari and feel awful afterwards, then resolve to never speak to her again. They feel it all in the middle of every night, where they hug their pillow tight and wish to God they could just do the right thing, say the right words, and make it all go away, but they can't because they're the biggest idiot they've ever met.
They stand by a lake with the Fifth Child, listening to his words. The words make them feel good, feel right. They hope they are making the right choice, hope that this new boy, this Kaworu, is a door and not a wall. They kiss him.
Flash.
They do not call Kensuke back. They follow Shinji's advice, only to see him hurt. They listen to Asuka as she tells them it is their fault, and then they stand in Commander Ikari's office. Hoping they are making the right choice. Hoping that this is a door, not a wall.
They ask for forgiveness, and he gives it.
Flash.
They are wrong. They know they are wrong. They cannot admit that they are wrong.
Flash.
They have always been tricked. That hole in themselves will never be filled, not by him.
((()))
Rei opened her eyes. The Angel was still within her, still searching, but she fought back. She would allow no more. She felt Asuka stir, seeing her sight as an afterimage on her retina, like a dream yet to slough from her waking mind. She could feel the risk of the melding bearing down on her once more. Still, she was more herself than Asuka, if only for a moment.
"Rei, can you hear me?"
Rei saw her communications window. It was a tightbeam broadcast, filtered through from Nerv HQ.
"Yeah," Rei said, "yeah, I'm here."
"Unit 03 can't move in." Misato's voice was urgent. Since when had she thought of her as Misato? "We're working on alternatives. Just eject out of there and we'll regroup."
Rei thought about ejecting. One glance at her mission clock told her that mere minutes had passed since first contact. She could feel the Angel redoubling its efforts, could feel the strain on her mind tightening again. Another blackout was coming, and she knew she would not wake from it.
"We can fight it," Asuka said, hearing her thoughts as though she had spoken them aloud.
"We can't," Rei said. She knew it. Asuka knew it. "And if we eject, our AT fields will cease to be. It will be free to refocus its attack on anything else."
It was not clear who thought of it first—if Asuka had realized her intent before she did herself, or if her intent had been clear from the onset. Either way, the thought now existed, hovering in both their minds. A clear image.
The self-destruct handle.
"No," Asuka said. "You are not doing that."
"It's the only way." Rei turned in her seat. The Angel felt her intent and drilled in again, trying to blot out the image in her head. She whimpered, holding her head with one hand. She palmed in the activation sequence in spite of it. Layered over her sight, she saw a red-shod hand doing the same.
"Don't," Rei said. "One of us can do it."
No chance, Wondergirl. The words were in her mind, not in her ears. A white-hot competitiveness, even now, its meaning clear: You're not beating me to it.
"You have to get out of here," Rei said. "You have mistakes to fix."
The self-destruct command's spherical housing rolled over, exposing the red handle. Both hands grabbed it at once.
Rei turned her head, and it was as though Asuka was there, looking back at her. She could see the corruption running through Asuka's chest, vining its way to her neck, bulging at the flesh not sheathed by the plugsuit's collar. Asuka's face was inches away, her mouth a tight line that refused to acknowledge the tears in her eyes. "You are not doing this. You have things to fix, too."
Rei shook her head. "You know what will happen when I'm gone," she said.
An image of bodies in darkness, waiting for souls. The feeling of phantom fingers in her hair while she drifted in the tank, her memories gliding out into a greater darkness. Empty shells that needed only her death to live.
"They don't count," Asuka said. "They'll never count. They won't be you."
"They'll be as me as I ever was," Rei said. Her vision darkened and she fought back, wincing. Asuka felt it, too.
"I won't let you do this," Asuka said.
"You cannot stop me," Rei said. She pulled the handle. A beep of confirmation from the pilot interface, then a winding whir as the aft of the pilot's cradle spun up the order for the self-destruct sequence, building the electrical charge that would instigate the core collapse.
"Rei!" The voice was loud, angry. The Commander. "What are you doing?"
Rei did not respond. Across her vision, she saw that red-shod hand pull the same handle, heard the same beep, the same whir. She looked back at Asuka.
"Why would you do that?" she said, though she knew the answer at once, the way the heart knows the mind. She felt Asuka's fire, her burning, ever-present vitality propping up her many hatreds. But she felt something else, too—something buried deep beneath the fire, something she never would have admitted aloud.
"You always liked me," Rei said, naming it aloud.
The whine of the self-destruct mechanism neared top-pitch, mingling with the strained scream of the Angel, now panicked and thrashing against the collapsing AT fields which contained it.
Asuka grinned. "Yeah," she said, as the world turned white. "But don't tell anyone."
A final flash, then darkness.