Disclaimer I: Evangelion belongs to Gainax. Not me. If I make money off of any fanfiction, it won't be my fault, and will be indirect as well. Don't sue me. The usual.
Disclaimer II: With thanks to all those who gave me help and/or encouragement in my venture into Rei's psyche, especially Ken Stokes for confirming and refining my tentative theories about how her mind works. Domo arigato, Stokes-san! Sorry if I bent things a little, but the story took over.
Disclaimer: (I think this is the third….) I find myself referring to EoE, so I guess I need to include a spoiler warning. This fic also contains spoilers for the series. Gomenasai.
The Rustling of Leaves in a Quiet Room
Rei sat down in front of her small bedside table and carefully moved the clutter aside. Her eyes darkened slightly as she stood the cylinders of pills in a cluster next to her "cup"—one of Dr. Akagi's discarded beakers. A glance at her cell phone's display confirmed that it was time for another dose, so she counted out the appropriate number of pills and swallowed them with a drink. The water sloshed as she set the beaker down at the back of the table. She watched as the circular ripples on the surface of the water repeated their pattern going nowhere, faded, and disappeared.
The mood was on her again. She was done with tests and upkeep for the day, but there were several hours remaining until the designated time for sleep. From the drawer of the table, she took a small notebook and a calligraphy pen. She flipped to the page last written on and drew a neat line down the paper to divide the old text from the new. Then she began to write.
I do not know why I write this. It is a liability to make my words permanent. It is dangerous. What if someone finds and reads them? I don't know what I would do if someone I know read these words. I suppose if a stranger were to read them, it would make no difference. It wouldn't matter, like so many other things. Perhaps I shall destroy this diary after I am done with this entry. Perhaps I shall destroy it tomorrow. Perhaps I shall continue to hide it until the end, when it won't matter any more.
If it does not matter, then why do I write? I don't know. It bothers me that I don't know. It bothers me that such an inconsequential thing should bother me. Pain and death aren't enough to make me upset. Yet, my synch ratio fluctuates by an entire point when I merely wonder why certain things cause an emotional reaction. Why is this?
It's part of my nature, obviously. But what is my nature? Ikari-shirei once said to himself, while I was in the tube, that I was a piece of the "mother of all". Lillith. I know my body is partially from her body, and my soul is a piece of her soul. But I'm not the mother of humanity. I'm the mother of the Angels. I'm not sure. I have not read much of the mythos upon which Project E and NERV's other exploits are based. I only went to the library once. It was nice. It was quiet. But it was also downtown, surrounded by people. I don't like all those people at once.
I don't like our classroom, for the same reason. There are many people in a close place. They look at me. They talk; they are impolite or polite. They disturb my thoughts. I don't disturb their thoughts. At times, I want to do something like stand up on my desk and shout, "I am the pumpkin queen!" That would startle them. I might have been capable of doing that at one time, but that was before the electroshock therapy. Now, even just the thought of it is enough to make me blush with embarrassment. I can't do such a thing as stand and shout. It's a physical impossibility. So I remain silent, watch the sky, and think.
Besides, not all of them deserve the disruption, even those who have startled me out of my train of thoughts. Soryu-san has done several things that broke my introspection, but I have been ordered not to unbalance her. At times she annoys me, but it's not a real problem. I can maintain my calm except when she talks about the Ikari family.
Ikari-kun startled me once. For a second, I thought that he had somehow penetrated to the core of NERV and realized something that even Akagi-sensei doesn't fully comprehend. "You remind me of a mother," he said. That was a shock to me. I think my face turned red. In retrospect, he was probably just instinctively recognizing the genetic material from his mother that I contain. In any case, Ikari-kun seems to have inherited from his father the ability to get a reaction out of me. That's embarrassing. I don't like being forced to react like that. But now I wish I hadn't said out loud that I was embarrassed.
I think if I was normal like Misato-san or Soryu-san, I would hate both Ikari men for doing that to me against my will. But maybe if I was normal they couldn't make me react. Or it wouldn't bother me. On second thought, I don't think Soryu-san is normal either. She shows emotions all the time, even when it embarrasses her. She reacts even when you don't do anything. But then, she's the kind of girl who says "boku," so maybe it's to be expected. I don't know much about people.
I wonder what it's like, referring to oneself as a man. Maybe it gives self-assurance. In private, Ikari-shirei says "boku" sometimes. Perhaps it's a confidence booster for men to talk in certain ways when they're not in public. But Ikari-kun doesn't seem to get any confidence from talking one way or the other.
I wonder why he's so… lost. He's more talkative than I am, but he doesn't seem to have a sense of purpose. He looks for purposes given to him by other people. It seems that the only times Ikari-kun talks are when he is asking others to help him find his purpose.
I will give him a chance to find a purpose of his own, or to decide to abandon them all forever. He can't have my purpose though. He can't even know what it is. Correction: he is not allowed to know. As Soryu-san would say, "Er darf nicht wissen, ob er wissen könnte oder nicht."
I wonder whether she knows that I know conversational-level German. I wonder what she would think if she knew. What does it say about me, that I do not tell her I understand what she mutters to herself in fits of pique or humor? She seems to use German, with the assumption that nobody can listen in, as a stress release. She is already reduced to using it only when Misato-san and Kaji-san are not within earshot, as they both speak the language fluently. Should I tell her that I know most of the words she uses? Should I tell her I know what profanities she mutters about the bridge technicians? Should I tell her that I know she jokes about peeking into the men's shower, after she complains in Japanese about Shinji doing the reverse? Should I continue to violate her privacy, or should I further reduce her available venting time? I've seen her psychological reports. She needs to vent her emotions, or else they'll turn inwards and become deadly. This cannot be allowed until the end offers her a chance at catharsis. Offers the choice to all people in the world but one: Ayanami Rei.
I've never seen my own psychological reports. Akagi-sensei made a comment once about "light and water," but the term describes my room in Terminal Dogma more than it does me, I think.
I'm not like light or water, though. Nor am I akin to any other naturally occurring element. Am I like a doll? I never had time to play with dolls, so I don't know. I'm constructed, though. I'm an Angel who destroys Angels. I control the spirit of the woman who hates me enough that she tried twice to kill me. The first time, she succeeded. The second time, Ikari-shirei saved me. Then Akagi-sensei put the awareness filter in her head, and locked my emotions so they couldn't cause interference. There weren't any more troubles except during the cross-synch experiment. The dummy plug test, as it were.
How do I feel about the dummy plugs? They are me, yet they are not me. So many identical forms. Each can hold our collective soul, our spark of life and intelligence: our Lillith-fragment. Each collects its own memories, both true recollections of a false life and the animalistic recall of "before".
What makes me different from the possible future Rei forms? I possess our soul, and they have never done that. I am Ayanami Rei.
What makes me different from the past Rei form? She no longer possesses our soul. She and I contain different memories. She and I occupy different spaces in the minds of others. We are real to different people in different ways, and thus are different in the real world.
What makes the past Rei form different from the future possibilities? Although they all wait in the same dry room for the end, she will come with me and any other future Rei forms that have held our soul. Only those of us who ever possessed the soul; only those of us who have gained reality by existing in the minds of others, will retain reality during the end. All of the others will be reduced to mere shadows. During the Third Impact, they will all return to Lillith along with our soul. They will help her to collect humanity. They will assume whatever form is necessary to collect each person and convince him or her to come to the Hall of Judgement. They will talk to each human with that human's own voice and force them to choose between life and death, between individuality and loss-of-self.
This is not what Ikari-shirei wants. He already chose. He wants to merge all people into one entity. He wants Complementation: the fusion of humanity. This is one option. SEELE's option is already lost; events have deviated too far already from their scenario to allow Instrumentality—the creation of a higher form of life—to take place. Yet, it is the third option, choice, that will occur.
Somehow, I feel good knowing that I will give choice to the others. I have no choice of my own. Even my decision to force Ikari-shirei's hand was made for me by the Ayanami Rei that existed before me. The one who was destroyed by pills and treatments. The one who slapped both of them. The unstable one.
She told me that this was the only thing to do. She ordered me to follow her plan, and argued more forcefully than Ikari-shirei did for his scenario.
How can I refuse my own soul the final request it made before it was medicated into submission as the current me? If I am a doll, it is not Ikari-shirei's. I am the puppet of another me. I read the words she left for me in the earlier pages of this book, and I—
I have discovered something. This is one reason why I write: to discover things. It is easier to organize thoughts when they are written down.
What I have discovered is the other reason why I write. I should have thought of this sooner. I write in order to give reasons and instructions to the next Ayanami Rei, should the need for one ever arise. She will read this book and, I hope, follow the instructions of both incarnations of Rei II. Remember, intended reader: a purpose that we create for ourselves has meaning. A purpose imposed from outside is meaningless. This is why the hollow Rei forms are purposeless. This is why the dummy plug is an affront to us. This is why we must give choice to all the true humans.
A new factor has come up: Ikari-shirei has implanted Adam in his hand to cement his control over Third Impact. SEELE must now kill him in order to fulfill its scenario. The plan may need adjustment due to this new factor.
I will write down the further ramifications tomorrow after considering them during school. It is now time for me to eat and sleep.
Rei set down the pen. After waiting for a moment while the ink finished drying, she closed the notebook and placed book and pen in the drawer. She shut the drawer and shoved the table back against the wall so that both shelf and contents were again hidden from any casual observer. She moved next into the kitchen and removed a package of sushi rolls and a bottle of soy sauce from the refrigerator. After eating, she walked about the room, efficiently performing her evening tasks in preparation for sleep.
In the dark, moonlit apartment, the skin of her face seemed to gain a translucent glow, against which her eyes were deep pools—red as blood, and as powerful.
—
Author's Notes:
For those unfamiliar with Japanese title forms: Ikari-kun is Shinji, and Ikari-shirei is "commander" Gendo. "Boku" is the masculine informal term for "I". Women who use it, I am told, are generally considered tomboyish or are trying to act tough.
"Er darf nicht wissen, ob er wissen könnte oder nicht" is German for "He is not allowed to know, whether or not he would be capable of knowing".
Asuka may be my favorite Eva character, but Rei has always fascinated me. Probably for much the same reason as she fascinates Shinji and Asuka, although the latter maybe only in my fics. Rei is the great unknown of Eva. Her motives and modus operandi, to me, are even more difficult to discern than Gendo's. She's a black box presented in albino. Some of you may have noted that this comes out somewhat in my Asuka monologues. We noisy people, who say everything that we believe (except the truly important stuff), tend to be intrigued by the completely silent. Sometimes they're admirable, because they know when to shut up. Other times it seems that they're more messed up than we are. In any case, it's interesting to wonder what they're thinking about. I'm still not certain, but the stuff in the fic at least seems plausible to me.
Rei probably doesn't know German. But then, you never know. It is given that Rei III has none of the memories of the two before her, yet speaks perfect Japanese after only a couple days of possessing a soul and sentient mind. The natural conclusion is that Rei's knowledge is somehow fed directly into her brain after she gets the soul. So why not extra languages?
Have fun with all the little asides and references. I had fun putting them in. I forget which other fanfic I alluded to in here. Whichever one it is, it's good. I recommend it. …Um, yeah. ^_^; Thanks to the author, whoever it is. I'm sure it will be mentioned in some review to this fic. If it isn't, I'll go find the info myself and post it.
Thanks for reading this far! As a final treat, you get what may be the shortest omake ever written:
The next day, Asuka turned to Rei in the classroom. "Hey," she said casually, "red, white, and blue. Tell me, Wondergirl: did you ever consider hiring out your head as an American flag?"
Um… that's all. Don't shoot me, OK?
-Worldmage