I have left my voice long lonesome
Never spoken and never known
All empty words are loathsome
Why is it they express nothing?

The desire for sound is strong
Sitting here in sane still silence
But, no, that still is slightly wrong
And so I have expressed nothing

No, I want to sing some sad song
That might make my voice manifest
But no one here can listen long
And so I will express nothing


The uncaring eye has betrayed me, it seems, deceiving the observer
That sad idealist beneath the breast, it deems, a timid undeserver
In the past this object has, unseen, ignored my everyday desires
A tiny female child, unclean, receiving lies from pious liars

Ever condescending, yet not exactly a separate entity
Deep and silent, waiting, and always sharing of my identity
Though sleeping, it still seeks an ending, and any ending will do
And somehow, my sensible sense rending, all of the lies become true

With all that I have written here, though I know it's just a truthful lie
It still fills me with doubt and fear, in truth it is mine, this lying eye



Chapter Two: A World of Whispers


One day, Rei asked the one person that she trusted a simple question, and got an answer that was far too simple and far too truthful.

"Why am I here?" she asked, knowing that he would understand her meaning.

"Your purpose is to destroy mankind as we know it," was the nightmarish reply.

And so, Gendou rears his ugly head once more. What the hell was he thinking when he told her, a little girl, something like that? Was he hoping that she would just eventually get used to the idea? Did he think she would be excited by it or something? Did he think she wouldn't care that she was a real live monster?

"He was always honest with me. He kept only a few precious secrets. Would it have changed anything if he hadn't told me? Yes, but it would have only made things worse. You fail to understand the situation. He wanted me to know these things. He wanted me to know that I had a purpose; a reason to be alive. He wanted me to lose my desire to return to emptiness. Eventually, I did."

This was a little confusing to me, since Gendou's entire plan was based around the fact that she would be willing to sacrifice her own identity. I asked her for further explanation. "Didn't he want you to be suicidal, so that you wouldn't disobey him? So that you'd go along with his plan?"

"Don't use the word 'suicidal'. It isn't appropriate for this. I will explain why, later. In any case, Gendou Ikari was a self conflicted man. I cannot always explain his actions."

Remember that, by this time, Rei was living alone. Gendou was a man obsessed, and Rei would never be his first priority. Still, she came to his defense, ignoring my logic.

"He had his reasons. The situation was complex, and cannot be described by someone that was in my position. I do not hold any of these insignificant things against him. The only thing that I hold against him is that he sought to eliminate my free will. You probably think that I am making excuses for him. I have no reason to do that."

Well, I can't really argue with her (since she doesn't really have an argument), so I'll just let it rest for now. She'll always think of him that way; hating him for treating her like a possession, yet loving him at the same time. God knows why.

In the beginning, I thought that she was using him, like a teacher's pet. I thought she used him to further her own goals, so that she could get special treatment.

Christ, I was an idiot back then. I had no idea how complex the situation actually was. Oversimplification just made things so much easier for me.

The main thing that I've been searching for, listening to these recordings, is a simple comparison. What is it that separates Rei as a child from Rei as a teenager, or Rei as an adult? Is there any real difference between them? If there wasn't, it would scare the crap out of me, because that would negate everything that I've learned about Rei. It would make her a monster, in my mind. Thankfully, that isn't the case. The Rei that I hear being described in these interviews is far different from the Rei that I know today.

For one thing, she actually cared what people thought about her. Too immature to have gained a cynical self-confidence, she was frightened by any sort of social intercourse, and she avoided other people at all costs. Much of what she knew about herself came from these other children, speaking about her amongst themselves. Occasionally, one of the meaner children would speak directly to her, and that was much harder to ignore.

"You're weird. Can't you talk?" Or some insult like that.

"Yes, I can talk." Or some passive and meaningless reply like that.

She was seemingly impervious to these barbs, since her expression was always uncaring, but she inwardly accepted them as being the truth. It made perfect sense for her to do so. She was weird, after all. She was a freak. She was the least talkative child in the school.

And there was more; there were things about her that the children in her school would never know. The things they saw in her as strange were just a fraction of the reality. Even the fanciful stories they made up about her, portraying her as a demon and worse, didn't match up to the truth.

Back then, this is the Second grade, Rei had a much different perspective on things. I think her words can explain it better than mine.

"The other children... they would speak, but never said anything of any significance. They could only state the obvious. At that young age, however, I was not aware of this. I thought that they were, in a way, superior to me. I would be treated as an inferior because of my social ineptness, and I came to the natural conclusion that the scale that they were using to judge me was the correct one. I came to the conclusion that I was a bad person. I wanted to somehow conform to their standards, but was unable. I was unable to understand them at all. That world of whispers didn't belong to me, and I didn't understand it."

I interrupted. "'World of whispers'? What do you mean?"

Rei gave me a cold glare. She hates being interrupted when she's actually talking. "They always whispered about me, and I could hear them."

She continued. "Trying to understand them was a useless endeavor, and I came to realize this with time. I also came to realize that I did not need to please others. There was no reason to."

She has very few friends, even today. I used to think that that was all she needed; friends. I thought that, if she learned to communicate somehow, she would find that she wasn't really all that different from anyone else. Everyone has problems, you know? I thought she was obsessed with her own self inflicted pain and depression. She was obviously just way too self-absorbed, right? That was really stupid of me, I have to admit. It should have been clear to me. Though Rei's problems were very similar to my own, I never guessed the truth, and it never occurred to me that she might lack a sense of self worth, just like me.

She has four friends, but I'm tempted to say she only has three, because Touji and Kensuke are only worth about half a point each. I'm forced to bring them in, but I would have preferred to just leave them out entirely. Unfortunately, they are an important part of this, and they were among the only students from Rei's early classes that I could track down.

Touji Suzuhara and Kensuke Aida first met Rei in the first grade. Actually, 'met' isn't really the right word. They first saw her in the first grade. They would continue to see her throughout their childhood. They wouldn't really meet her until much later. As for me, I don't think I really met Rei until recently, when the two of us sat down at my dining room table with a tape recorder running.

Kensuke and Touji knew Rei better than any of the other students, and even talked to her a few times, but, for whatever reason, she wasn't exactly overflowing with fond memories of the two.

"I don't have anything to say about them from those days. I wasn't aware of them. Just students in my class, like the rest."

I found that a little hard to believe. Touji and Kensuke weren't exactly two non-descript kids that kept to themselves. "No memories at all?"

"They were students in my class."

They, on the other hand, had plenty to say.

"Well, to be honest, I thought she was really weird, from the first day I saw her. Like, sometimes the teacher would ask her a question, and she'd just stare at him." That's Touji.

"Yeah, I remember that. Personally, I think she knew the answer, but she just wouldn't say it." That's Kensuke.

"Why would she want to do something like that?"

"Passive aggressive behavior, I guess."

"What the hell do you mean by that?"


And so on.

I don't think I'll transcribe anything else from that particular tape. I'm sure you understand.

Rei didn't fit in very well at school, for obvious reasons. Her odd paleness and her strangely colored hair and eyes were always very noticeable, especially on the first day of the school year. It took a lot of silence and a lot of motionless sitting to allow her to fade into the background, but, pretty soon, people learned to ignore her as easily as she ignored them.

She never excelled in school, though she did pretty well in some subjects. She was good with math, always turning in assignments completed and on time, and usually doing well on tests. She didn't do particularly well in Japanese, for obvious reasons, and she was horrible with English, though her grades weren't that bad. History was her best subject. She was also good at sports; a quick runner, a fast swimmer. This is a little strange, since a person with an introverted personality generally tends to shy away from sports. A girl like her probably should have been either scrawny or flabby, but she was always in good shape. Having always been a little curious about this, I asked her directly.

"I enjoyed it," she said. still a master of the short answer.

Though a little frustrated with her, as was usual, I pushed for more. "I always thought that you had to stay fit, that it was something that you were ordered to do... did you really enjoy it?"

"It was something that I was ordered to do. This doesn't mean that I couldn't enjoy it. It was something simple. Understand?"

No, I didn't understand. Rei tends to say things in a way that doesn't make sense to anyone besides herself, these days.

"Please explain a little more," I implored her.

A brief pause.

"I cared for nothing, least of all myself. I believed as a fact that I had no true worth as an individual. This was the attitude I displayed. People would say I was repressed, but, in actuality, I repressed very little. 'Repression' does not describe it. 'Apathy' does not describe it. None of these convenient words you're using can describe it."

"I don't really understand what you mean,"
I said, "What does that have to do with running and swimming?"

"Absolutely nothing. Understand?"


She's got a weird way of communicating sometimes, but I guess it's better than saying nothing at all, like she used to. She's always thinking and observing, but her face is always passive. She's always wearing that expression that says, 'I don't care,' but she's always paying attention. You get the feeling that you could have a conversation in front of her and she wouldn't listen to a single word, but this isn't the case. No, she listens to everything, she just doesn't think and react the same way that the average person does. The average person will care what other people think about them. She, on the other hand, doesn't. She doesn't display emotions and facial expressions for the benefit of others.

Her flow of logic is a little strange sometimes, and she often misunderstands a person's intent completely. This wasn't much of a problem when she was a child. All she had to do was complete assignments in class and follow simple orders from Gendou Ikari. She didn't often have to deal with other people on the sort of personal level that would allow a painful misunderstanding.

On the rare occasion that one of the other children would speak with her, however, and make a futile attempt at being friendly, Rei would misunderstand their intentions completely.

One morning, during the break, Rei sat alone at a bench, as she usually did. My guess is that she was practicing Kanji or something like that. In any case, on that morning, a new transfer student from her fourth grade class approached her, probably pitying her, and perhaps intrigued by her strange looks.

"Uh, hi. I'm Takako. Mitsuhara Takako. Are you here all by yourself?" she asked, curious and sort of concerned in a childish way.

"Yes," Rei responded, her typical one word non-answer.

The girl, new to the class, was surprised by Rei's dead tone.

"You sound sick. Are you okay?" she asked, wide-eyed and innocent.

Rei, thinking that the girl was trying to insult her, just repeated herself. "Yes."

"Uh... okay. Bye."

The girl left, and would never try speaking to the strange girl again.

That same day, and this is not a coincidence, two boys tried to approach her, and failed. Their names were Kensuke Aida and Touji Suzuhara. According to Touji and Kensuke, she was pretty much the same back then as she was when I first met her. They were always in the same class, every year, and she never seemed to change her attitude, or even her facial expression. After a couple years of this, they started to get a little bit worried. Those two may be idiots, but, when it comes to people, they're a lot more observant than you'd think. They knew that Rei wasn't just some emotionally repressed girl, even at that young age. They, like myself, figured that a friend or two was all she needed.

Having seen the rare encounter take place, the two of them decided that some kind of action should be taken. A young Kensuke Aida stood next to a young Touji Suzuhara on the basketball court of their school. As Touji dribbled a basketball absentmindedly, the two of them discussed their naive plan.

"But how are we supposed to do it?" asked Touji, still very hesitant.

"We'll just go talk to her. How else do you make friends with someone?"

"Talk to her? She's like... weird."

"Yeah, that's the whole reason we're doing this," Kensuke reminded him, "Remember?"

"But what are we gonna say? 'Hey, what's up'?"

"Well, why not?" Kensuke shrugged. "She's just a girl."

"It just seems... weird. What if she actually says something back?"

Kensuke rolled his eyes. "Are you scared of her? You know the stuff they say about her isn't really true, right?"

And so the two of them agreed to their plan, and chose a specific time and place. If Rei had been male rather than female, this would have been much easier for them, and they probably wouldn't have felt it necessary to actually plan out something as simple as a friendly greeting. They discussed many possibilities; calling her, going to her home, talking to her during lunch, and even sending her a note. It sounds unbelievable, I know, but those two were always doing weird stuff. One time they snuck out of a shelter during an Angel attack, and were nearly killed.

Ultimately, they decided to pretend that they just happened to live in the same apartment building as hers, (assuming that she lived in an apartment building and not some kind of dark, scary cave), and would therefore have a valid reason to be walking in the same direction as her. They planned this out pretty thoroughly for a couple of grade school kids, thinking up excuses to give if she questioned them as to why she hadn't seen them at the building, or why she hadn't ever seen them on her way home. I wouldn't be surprised if Kensuke actually drew out possible routes of travel on a map. He was only about nine years old at the time, but he's always loved that kind of thing. He's a geek personified.

That afternoon, after school ended, they carefully put their plan into effect.

The two of them exchanged glances, remaining seated as the rest of the class left, and standing only after the girl in question had left the room. Nervously, they followed her, keeping a distance at first. There was no reason for this, realistically, though they said it was a part of their plan. They were just scared of her, like everyone was, and keeping a distance was the natural thing to do. It would take some courage for them to actually go up and talk to her.

They tailed her as she walked at a brisk pace, staring straight forward, and tried not to be noticed. She turned into an alleyway, an empty alleyway, leaving their field of vision. They followed her, peeking around the corner of the building. She was exiting on the other side of the alley. They hurried to catch up. They were heading towards an empty section of the city. It started to rain. Then, something happened that would change their perception of Rei forever.

This was when the two boys really started to feel uneasy. There wasn't anything spectacularly strange about what Rei was doing, but I can imagine how it must've felt for them. They must've felt as if they were trying to prey on a predator; stalking this girl who was starting to seem almost inhuman. Everything in her projected an attitude of uncaring; her gait, her expression, her clothes, her hair... everything. The rain, dripping down her cheeks like an overused metaphor, completed the atmosphere. Whereas a normal girl would have ran to shelter, used an umbrella, or at least started walking faster, Rei had no reaction to it at all. The sight of a small girl walking emotionlessly through the rain is just utterly creepy.

They continued to follow her for several minutes, remaining unnoticed as far as they could tell, until Rei came to a stop in front of a bench on the sidewalk. The boys watched in confusion as she sat down, rain still pouring down on her. She remained there for some time, not doing anything in particular.

"I sunburn easily, and so I usually had to hurry home. On the Commander's orders, of course. Still, I would sometimes want to delay my arrival to my apartment, which wasn't cleaned often. I did that sometimes, especially if there were enough clouds to block the sun. People would bother me occasionally, if there were people around. They would assume that I was a lost child if I was sitting by myself, so I usually went to an empty portion of the city. But it isn't important. It was just something I did."

Touji and Kensuke could do nothing except stand there stupidly. If they went up and talked to her, they would have no way to explain what they were doing there. It would be obvious that they had followed her, and they would have no excuse to give her. Rei wouldn't care, of course, but they couldn't have known that.

So they stood there, and every strange rumor that they had heard about the girl started to surface in their minds. She was a demon, maybe, or a witch. She had murdered both of her parents, and lived alone. She could kill with a single emotionless glance. These theories gained more credibility with each second that passed. Kensuke and Touji left, quickly, and would never look at Rei the same way again.

Rei doesn't even remember this incident. Sitting alone in the rain wasn't a strange thing for her to do, really. She was just wasting time. But to Touji and Kensuke, that one act, which they would never be able to understand, proved beyond a doubt that Rei was something other than human. Like I said, they're idiots. I can't help but wonder what might have happened if she had gone straight home that day, rather than pausing to sit in the rain. Would the three of them have somehow become friends?

Well, probably not, but it's possible. If they had actually been willing to give her a chance, and not just assume all kinds of stupid things about her, she might have been able to make a few friends. "World of whispers' is how she describes it, and that says it perfectly. They loved to talk about her, but they hated talking to her, and that's how it's been for her entire life, up until this very day.

There's been at least one change, though. I don't assume anything about Rei anymore.



A note from Rei Ayanami - The way she has described it to this point is not completely correct. It wasn't that people misunderstood me, and allowed me to push them away against my own desires. It wasn't that I was afraid of them, and how they would judge me. That was part of it, but not everything. It was also that I wasn't the same as them. It is almost like she was describing earlier in the story with the various coins. I was different. Something hidden lay dormant inside me. I cannot be compared to others.

Rei Ayanami


A note from the Author - I think you can see why I'm the one that's writing this. I just read through the poems she wrote for this chapter and the note she added in to criticize me, and... well, I'm sure she's gonna cut this bit out, so I might as well just say that SHE IS AN INSANE FREAK.

Asuka Langley Sohryu



End Chapter Two




Thanks goes to LeperMessiah and nodsri for pre reading.
Thanks goes to Rev'd for the idea of writing this from Asuka's viewpoint.