V. Mädchen
Gendo sat in his dimly-lit office, Akagi Ritsuko standing just beside and behind him, staring down one of the techs who had participated in the recent battle.
"What is the status of the Lance?" he asked grimly.
The tech was visibly trembling. "It reached escape velocity when Unit 00 launched it. It has achieved and maintained a lunar orbit, but we can't get it back with our equipment."
Commander Ikari looked displeased, but released the tech. The man scuttled out the door like a frightened rabbit.
"Ah well," Gendo said in the ensuing silence. "If I can't have the Lance, at least SEELE can't, either."
"There's nothing you like more than foiling those old men's plots, is there?" Ritsuko asked, her voice somewhere between mockery and accusation.
"No," Gendo replied earnestly. "Nothing at all."
Ritsuko nodded and added mentally, Except torturing Children.
****
Asuka seemed to progress quickly after the battle with the Angel. She regained cognitive and motor skills, and in due course would be released from the hospital and allowed to return to Misato's apartment. Among the highest echelons of NERV command, there were whispers that she might even be put back in an Eva.
Yet something had changed within her, been irrevocably altered by her encounter with the Angel's mind. Shinji could see it when he looked at her eyes: where once fierce pride had resided, now there was only an empty void, aching to be filled, or extinguished.
Much to the psychologists' objections, the medical staff chose to put the Second Child out of the hospital and treat her on an outpatient basis if necessary. Commander Ikari wanted a functional pilot as soon as possible and largely ignored the psych ward's pleas to keep the child in custody.
Asuka had expected Misato to take her home when she was released, but the Major was otherwise occupied when the release order came, and a kind nurse on the medical staff lent Asuka the money to take the subway to the stop nearest her apartment, which left the girl herself only a few blocks to walk.
When she arrived, she could hear the sound of Shinji's cello emerging faintly through the door, playing some piece whose name she did not know. She opened the door with barely a creak. Shinji seemed not to notice that she had come home, and she chose not to announce herself. Instead she leaned against the wall at the entrance, listening to the music from some other room.
Asuka let out a deep sigh, pushing every bit of air out of her lungs and then, with a long breath, let it back in.
It was there, too, she thought, recalling the feeling of the fifteenth Angel. It had its own mind, its own thinking, feeling mind…and it was invading mine. Violating me, forcing its way in…
The night was dark, but starlit. The wind whispered through the grass, rustling it gently. Asuka walked the dirt path, clothed in a red kimono, zori sandals padding her feet against the pebbles and sharp things.
Seemingly without cause, she stops. Asuka, the wind murmurs to her, Asuka…
She looks about as though for the source of the voice.
Come to me, Asuka, the wind says. We can live together.
"Who's there?" she asks. She is only a young girl, no voice would want with her.
We can die together, Asuka. Daddy doesn't want us anymore.
"Th—That's not true!" Asuka protests, panic rising in her. "Be quiet!"
Asuka, I can help you…free you …
"Be quiet! I can run from you!"
But Asuka, the wind whispers, how are you to run if you've no feet?
And Asuka looks down, and she sees that she has no legs, no feet in her sandals, that she is supported only by nothing.
Gaki, Gaki, the wind taunts, hungry ghost, she wanders the world forever, feeding on her own hatred.
The night has become cloudy, and the clouds burst, and rain cascades down upon Asuka, creating a fine mist about her. Still she cannot discern the place speaking, perhaps, she thinks, because it is all around her; perhaps it is the voice of some angel come to bring her release…
No! she tells herself, Must not! It's only a trap, always a trap, everyone wants you dead! Must resist…
Come with me, Asuka, you're not wanted. Why not leave?
The voice…is very persuasive…
Aren't I? Come with me, Asuka…
No! Go away! Go away! Go away go away go away go away!
But Asuka…don't you want relief? Don't you want to escape? Shed the bonds of those who want you not.
Go away!
O Asuka, I—
Silence, then. Only silence. Silence, rain, and tears.
She licked her lips and stepped deeper into the apartment. She drew nearer to the sound of the cello, never ceasing. It seemed to underscore her very existence, fill the apartment, fill her mind, fill even, for a brief instant, the darkness in her heart.
She walked toward the sound, everything around her intensifying as she came closer to it. Finally she arrived at the door to Shinji's room, still thrust open. The boy was playing with his back to the door, focused entirely on his instrument. Asuka paused for a moment.
"I'm home," she said softly.
The playing lulled and then ceased, and Shinji turned around slightly so he could see her.
"Welcome back," he said, smiling earnestly. "I didn't hear you come in."
He seemed perplexed at her silent gaze, so devoid of the faux malice he was used to seeing there. "I-I can stop, if you want…"
"No," she whispered. "Please."
He looked at her, surprised. Her face seemed to crumple and then the rest of her body succumbed and carried her to the floor. Shinji tried to be careful of the cello, getting up as quickly as he could and going to her.
"Asuka," he asked urgently, "Asuka, what's wrong?"
She tried to shake her head through her mounting sobs, but could only rock back and forth on her heels, crying. Shinji crouched next to her and put one hand on her shoulder. Uncertainly, he reached out and wrapped his arms around her, pulling her closer to him.
It was warm in his embrace, she realized; even in his arms she felt more at ease, safer. Shinji, a shield between herself and the world.
They sat that way for a long time.
****
Sunday found Rei in the bowels of NERV's medical offices, on the pretext of a physical exam. It had certainly been enough to get her past the more ignorant medical personnel; between her bearing and her status as First Child, very few people questioned her presence.
As she descended, Rei had recognized the room where the Second Child had been kept after her battle with the fifteenth Angel. She knew that Asuka had been released only a few days ago, but had not heard anything about the Child's present state of mind.
Rei contemplated that battle. Something in Asuka's furied shouting had disquieted her; she thought that perhaps it was the meeting of such a passionate soul with her own, emotionless being. It was not that she had no emotions, she reflected, but rather that she had not been properly instructed in how to use and express them. And so when the Third Child had saved her from a superheated entry plug, she had understood that what she felt was gladness, but had not known how to show it on her face, nor had she understood why Ikari-kun was crying when he was not sad.
What silly creatures we humans are, she thought.
'We' are not human, she corrected herself gently. I am something different, a doll with human form. I would not wish for all humanity to be like me.
She shook herself out of her trance as she approached Central Dogma. Ritsuko was waiting just outside the door for her: even with her permissions Rei was not granted unlimited access to this portion of the facility. The Doctor ran an ID card through the scanner alongside the door and it whooshed open.
"Alright, Rei," Ritsuko said tonelessly. "You know what to do."
Rei nodded without a word and removed the deceptive school uniform she had been wearing, placing it in a characteristically tidy pile on a nearby table. She stole a brief glance at Ritsuko, and saw in her eyes a strange, almost frightening mixture of amusement and sorrow.
The girl ascended the scant few steps provided to the LCL tank, presently empty. She entered through a doorway designed to appear exactly as the rest of the tube, and nodded again at the scientist.
"Flooding tube," Ritsuko said, her voice indicating that the announcement was solely for the benefit of whatever tapes were recording at the moment and that she would just as soon have remained silent.
Dr. Akagi thumbed a switch on a control panel and a faintly orange liquid began to fill the tank Rei was in. The girl was unafraid, having had more than enough experience with the LCL in piloting an Eva. It rose around her, to her knees and then her chest and finally over her head, tinting the world a strange shade of half-crimson.
Ritsuko's fingers flew over the keypad, taking readings from blood pressure to heart rate to the thickness of the girl's skin.
"Administering stimulus," Ritsuko said, her tone never changing.
She pressed a button and a mild electric current raced through the LCL to surrounded and then penetrate Rei, who twitched reflexively.
"Everything is in working order," Ritsuko said to the air. "Systems are operational. Preparing for memory transfer."
A hum began, so low that Rei felt more than heard it. It never altered in intensity, but droned on and on. She felt something in her mind, a slight prickle running along the contours of her brain.
In only a minute both sensations had passed, and Ritsuko was speaking again.
"Memory transfer complete. Dummy system updated and operational." She turned to look more directly at the First Child. "You can come out now, Rei."
Doctor Akagi drained the LCL tube and Rei exited the same way she had entered and began to pull her school uniform back on.
There was silence for a moment.
"What is the status of the Second Child?" Rei asked out of the blue.
"Asuka?" Ritsuko asked, slightly surprised that Rei showed any interest in either of her fellow pilots, much less the girl who was so antagonistic toward her.
"Yes." Rei's voice was as flat as Ritsuko's had ever been, and it frightened the Doctor to imagine what must cause it to be so.
"The medical staff deemed her fit for release three days ago. She's returned to life with Major Katsuragi and the Third Child at their apartment and there have been no further…" she choked on the words. "…Incidents."
"What about the psychological staff?" Rei asked, seeming to sense the heart of the matter instinctively.
Ritsuko licked her lips. "Yes, well…" She seemed more than a little upset about this discussion, but Rei did not want to break it off. "They said we should keep her in custody for at least another week. Commander Ikari wasn't interested in their side of the story, he seems not to realize that the girl needs her mind as much as her body in order to pilot an Eva."
Her hidden rage had crept, for a bare moment, into her voice, but she quickly concealed it again.
"And so, she was released on Commander Ikari's orders. If I had had the final word we would have kept her here as long as the psychological staff damn well pleased." She caught herself a second time, and kept her voice studiously neutral. "As it is, we'll just have to be careful."
Rei nodded, having finished re-dressing, and looked to Ritsuko for final permission to depart. Doctor Akagi nodded and Rei left the room, and left Ritsuko to ponder whether there was any chance the Second Child would ever truly pilot an Eva again.
On her ascent, some people wondered at the First Child's sopping hair, but none stopped to question her.
****
Misato sat on a park bench, the premises all but deserted. On another bench, back-to-back with hers, sat Hyuga. They leaned over the backs of the benches and talked in what they hoped was an innocuous manner.
"Word is, production has already begun on the rest of the Eva series," Hyuga was saying.
"What?" Misato exclaimed, forcing herself to keep her voice to a harsh whisper. The tech nodded.
"Uh-huh. There's going to be eight total…they're supposedly being produced at seven sites around the world."
"I assume the Commander knows about this?"
"Well, I haven't told him myself, but no doubt he's got informants somewhere along the line that have relayed the information to him."
Misato nodded. "The old men must be getting antsy."
"They prefer to trust their weird predictions over their own instincts. Commander Ikari is the other way around."
"Are you saying you think you know who'll win this thing?"
"I think there's no need for a victor, not yet. Right now Ikari and SEELE are both concerned more with the Angels than their own petty feuds."
"I wouldn't be so sure of that."
Hyuga chuckled humorlessly and shook his head. "Neither would I. But we have to either play the part we expect, or its exact opposite. And right now, we pawns don't have a full view of the board. So I'd say the only way to survive is to trust our collective gut."
"Mmm, well, I'd say that if we whisper like this much longer we're going to start attracting attention."
"What little there is."
"You know the drill."
"Yeah, it never happened." Hyuga turned, an ever-so-slightly impudent grin on his face. "I don't even know who Katsuragi Misato is."
"Right."
She sighed, and the two went their separate ways.
****
Asuka looked forlornly out the window of the apartment. Since it was Sunday no one was doing anything particular; Shinji was obliging Kensuke on a trip to look at new model fightercraft and Misato was out wandering somewhere.
Probably hitting all the bars in town one by one, Asuka thought disgustedly. As if she didn't have enough alcohol in the fridge.
Asuka had not felt any inclination to step out and join the world—or, more precisely, she wanted to but could not bring herself to exit the apartment. Instead she had meandered back and forth between the rooms all day, keeping PenPen company—or perhaps it was the other way around, she couldn't really tell.
In the distance she heard something, and she thought it was tolling bells. Loud alarum bells, she thought they were, but she could not consider where they might be coming from.
As quickly as they began the bells had ceased, replaced instead by silence, save for the occasional car roaring by beneath her.
Why? she asked herself, peering out the window and yet seeing nothing. What did it do to me…? Why couldn't I fight it…? It awakened something…memories. Memories I didn't want.
"It made you remember me," a voice from behind her sneered.
Asuka turned sharply and saw her young self, staring her down with a vicious look in her eyes.
"You shouldn't be here," Asuka said, strangely unperturbed by the girl's presence.
"I'm tired of being oppressed by you."
"What do you mean!" The panic grew in her voice and her eyes.
"You don't even remember me unless I come to you!" the girl said. "You hated your Angel because you had to remember me!"
"You shouldn't be here!" Asuka said. "I'm not asleep, I'm not in a coma! Go away!"
"You're not crying. Cry for me," the girl said, watching Asuka, a calculating look flashing through her eyes. "Cry with me, Asuka…Die with me, Asuka."
"No! I already said I wouldn't! I won't fight you, too! Go away!"
"Nein."
The young Asuka stepped forward several paces, and Asuka herself resisted the urge to back away.
"Do you hear it?" she asked herself. "The tolling of the bells. Iron bells!"
"Solemn thought…" Asuka whispered.
"And ringing the bells…neither beast nor human…"
Asuka nodded, barely comprehending.
"Go away…"
"Cry with me, Asuka."
"I can't! I won't!"
Against her own will, tears began to pool at the edge of her eyes, finally spilling over and down her cheeks.
"I'm strong! I'm not worthless! I have meaning!"
The little girl vanished immediately, as though Asuka's words were the key to her release. She watched the spot where the child had been, not moving.
Asuka heard a distant ringing. Silver bells, she thought.