Disclaimer and Acknowledgements: See Prologue.
Evangelion: Exorcism
By Akodo Tim
Dreamscapes and Memories
"When I say, My
bed shall comfort me, my couch shall ease my complaint;
Then thou scarest me with dreams,
and terrifiest me through visions:
So that my soul chooseth strangling, [and] death rather than my life."
- Job 7:13-15
* * *
Room 110, First Cranial Nerve Ward
NERV Headquarters Hospital Wing
January 02, 2016
Shinji stared at the broken body that lay on the bed beside his chair. Bandages covered her head and left eye as she slept in a drug-induced haze; strands of her copper hair peeked out between the cloth strips in places. Blood-stained dressings bound her right arm. A tangle of electrodes and wires ran from a bank of beeping machinery and instruments on the other side of the bed and disappeared under her hospital gown. Painkillers dripped steadily from an IV bag and disappeared into the tube leading to her wrist. Except for the bandages, Asuka looked just like she did two days ago...
Shinji's shaking hand clenched and flexed as he hung his head. He tried, with great difficulty, to push the memories of his last visit from his mind. Part of him, shameful of what he had become and unable to face her, wanted to get up and leave the frail-looking redhead behind, to throw everything away and never come back like he had done so many times before.
That's what killed Misato. That's why Asuka's like this now. That's why so many people died yesterday.
The Third Child shook his head, trying to clear his thoughts.
No. I mustn't run away. I owe it to her. I owe it to myself.
But I hurt everyone I'm close to. I don't want that to happen anymore.
I can't run away.
"Asuka-" Shinji's voice cracked as he said her name. He nervously cleared his throat and tried again.
"Asuka, it's... it's me; Shinji." He took a deep breath to compose himself. "The doctors said you might be able to hear me, so here I am. I know you must hate me for what happened, and I don't blame you. But, please, hear me out."
"First of all, I want to apologize for yesterday, for what it's worth. It's my fault you ended up like this. I should have helped you sooner. We should have fought those Evas together from the beginning, as a team." He paused for a moment, looking sadly at her bandaged face. "I let you down. I should be in that bed, not you. I'm sorry."
"At least everyone at headquarters says you're a hero." Shinji looked up at Asuka's face for some sign that she had heard the news; there was no response. He sighed. "Some people are saying you single-handedly saved everyone." The Third Child smiled. "At least you're getting the recognition you deserve."
Shinji took a deep breath and looked up at the all-too-familiar ceiling. "You know, it feels so empty at home. It's just me there now, now that Pen-pen's at Hikari's place and Misato's..." He left the sentence hanging. "You know, I even miss you calling me a perverted, stupid idiot every day."
"Misato's gone, Toji and Kensuke have moved away, and Rei..." Shinji's voice trailed off again. He took a breath and looked back at Asuka's bandaged face. "Now you're the only one I have left--but you're stuck here, and it's my fault..."
Guilt, frustration, and anger welled up again inside Shinji in a storm of emotion. "Damn it, Asuka," he moaned, "You're all I have. I need you. I need you to make me feel like at least something's back to normal, to do something so I feel like I exist!" At that last word, Shinji leapt from the chair and bent over Asuka, grasping her arms. Gasping, the redhead winced in pain as he touched her.
Oh God. I'm doing it again.
Seeing the Second Child in such discomfort stopped Shinji's tirade in its tracks; he jerked his hands away from her body as if he had been burned. The boy sank down into his chair again and stared down at his twitching hands.
One was bloody.
A harried-looking nurse knocked and poked her head around the door. "Is everything all right in here?" she asked.
Shinji sighed and nodded. "Everything's fine, ma'am," he mumbled.
The woman gave Shinji an incredulous look. "All right... but I'm here to remind you that visiting hours are almost over." She briskly turned and went back into the hallway, closing the door after her.
Shinji sat huddled in his chair in silence for a long while. Finally, he looked back to his fellow pilot. "Well, I guess I have to go." After a moment, Shinji reached into his bag and brought out a cloth-wrapped bento box. "I know this won't come close to making it up to you, but I hope it's a start; I know what hospital food is like." He placed it gently on her nightstand.
The Third Child stood up and walked to the door. As he grasped the handle, he turned back to Asuka's bed. "If it makes any difference," he said softly to the bandaged girl, "I'm glad you're still alive." He opened the door and quietly walked out.
The girl on the bed opened one electric blue eye after she heard the door close. She considered everything she had heard while she had been pretending to be asleep, then finally, after many long minutes, drifted off into a fitful slumber of her own.
* * *
Just where the hell am I?
Asuka gazed into the obscuring mists around her, trying to find some clue as to where she was. The swirling gray fog shrouded her vision, never letting her see more than five feet ahead of her, if at all. The ground under her feet was white, featureless, and absolutely flat.
"Hello?"
The mist swallowed her call without so much as an echo. If anyone did hear her, they didn't answer.
"Hello?" she called, louder this time.
Still no answer.
"Anybody?"
Silence.
"Hmph. Like I need anyone anyway."
With a toss of her hair, Asuka strode into the mist.
* * *
"This is stupid."
Time stood still as Asuka trudged through the featureless fogbank. Not a single thing had changed in the landscape surrounding her in all the time she had been moving; she could have been walking in place the whole time for all she knew.
"Why am I wasting my time?"
As if in response, Asuka noticed a faint shimmering in the air ahead of her. As she watched, it grew in size and brightness until it looked vaguely human-shaped, though a little taller then the Eva pilot. Asuka stared at it in a mixture of apprehension and wonder.
The glowing figure reached out a hand. Asuka numbly reached for it without thinking, expecting her fingers to encounter nothing and to pass through the apparition effortlessly. Instead, to her astonishment, her hand--her mended right hand, she vaguely noticed--met warm, solid flesh. The touch seemed familiar, too. It was caring, warm, loving. It was a feeling one would expect from one's-
"Momma?"
The phantom's brightness intensified as more motes of light appeared out of the mists and merged with it. The glowing form became brighter until it was painful to look at, yet Asuka couldn't tear her eyes away. Finally, the light faded and disappeared; in its place stood the woman whose face lived in Asuka's brightest memories and darkest nightmares. The visage of Kyoko Zeppelin Sohryu gave the young Eva pilot a crooked smile.
"Good guess."
Asuka gasped in astonishment and disbelief. She jerked her hand back. "No... This has got to be some sick joke," she whispered to herself.
"This isn't a joke, Asuka. Not like the one you pulled on poor little Alfred."
The redhead giggled despite herself at the childhood memory. "You mean when I told him that the LCL was some new Jell-o flavor..."
The phantom grinned. "...and that it was okay to drink the sample in the beaker because it hadn't set yet."
Asuka's smile broadened. "The look on his face was priceless! And then..." the girl's voice trailed off to a whisper; her smile disappeared.
"...he was so embarrassed that he made me swear not to tell anyone. And I never did... except... Momma..."
Trembling, the Second Child looked wide-eyed into the face of her mother; pride and love shone in the older woman's eyes. Asuka then suddenly drew the figure into a fierce, tearful embrace that would have left most people gasping for air in seconds.
"I missed you Momma."
"And I missed you too."
For a long while, nothing else needed to be said.
* * *
"Where am I?"
Rei looked into the muted reddish light that surrounded her and tried to find an object, a landmark, or anything else that could tell her where she was. She stood naked in a shallow sea of LCL that extended to the horizon and, although the warm liquid lapped at her ankles, she felt nothing under her bare feet. The fluid's bloody smell filled the air.
"Such a peculiar dream," she murmured to herself.
"Are you so sure it is a dream?"
Rei's eyes widened in surprise at the sound of the voice behind her. She turned around to find the speaker and came face to face with herself--or, rather, someone who could have passed as herself at one point in time.
Grotesque veins ran over her double's body and face and traced bulging trails under her plug suit. Her blue hair was unkempt, matted, and dripped with LCL. Unlike Rei, her other self seemed to be standing on the liquid's surface.
"Who are you?" Rei asked.
"I am Rei Ayanami," replied her twin.
"But I am also Rei Ayanami. What does that make us?"
Her double gazed back at her, unblinking. "We are both, yet we are not."
Rei recalled the briefing she read after the defeat of the Sixteenth Angel and the account of Unit 00's destruction, shortly before her current body's revival. "You are the second," she said flatly.
The plug suit-clad figure nodded. "Yes, and no."
"We are also the first," said a soft, delicate voice behind Rei.
Rei turned her head at the sound of the new voice and saw a little girl, about seven years old, wearing a red and mauve dress and a white blouse. Like her, the girl also had powder blue hair and scarlet eyes.
"We are all Rei Ayanami," the little girl said.
Rei appraised her two new acquaintances calmly. "But you are the previous vessels. You are dead."
The woman in the plug suit shook her head. "The bodies are dead..."
"But the Soul they housed is not," finished the girl in the dress.
"Souls are infinite entities," said the second. "An infinite object divided remains infinite, yet has a finite boundary."
"When the vessel dies, the Soul leaves a fragment of itself behind. The Soul's remnant is therefore infinite," added the first. "Even though the souls are infinite, they are also incomplete."
"The Soul must be complete for us to continue," added the young woman in the plug suit.
"You are the third," the two said in unison, "and also the last. You hold the Soul now. Complete it so we may continue." Rei's two previous incarnations walked toward each other and held hands. As they did so, Rei noticed that the LCL she was standing in was now up to her knees. Whether she was sinking or the liquid was rising, she couldn't tell.
"How do I complete the Soul?" Rei asked. "What must I do?"
The little girl and the woman in the plug suit embraced. Together, they turned their heads toward Rei and fixed her with two pairs of crimson eyes. "You shall see," they said as one. "You must fulfill your destiny."
"My destiny?" Rei asked. The liquid was now up to her waist.
As she watched, the bodies of her soul's former vessels merged with each other. "Yes," they said; the voice seemed to come from within Rei's mind. "The reason for our creation. Behold the keeper of the Soul."
The combined form of Rei's previous bodies grew into a single being that swiftly expanded until it towered over her. Its shape twisted until it took the form of a gigantic humanoid with seven eyes on its otherwise featureless face.
"Lilith?" Rei gasped.
The voices coming from inside her mind coalesced into words that flashed across her vision:
FULFILL YOUR DESTINY.
The LCL was up to Rei's shoulders.
RETURN THAT WHICH IS OURS.
As the viscous fluid covered her head, she saw that the Angel's face had transformed into that of a lovely young woman with close-cropped hair and red eyes.
COMPLETE US.
Lilith stared at the First Child with Rei's own face.
COME HOME.
Rei's eyes shot open. Disoriented, she frantically looked around in the darkness surrounding her and tried to find some clue of her whereabouts. She sighed with relief when she saw the pale green display of her clock on the desk.
4:00 AM.
Unable or unwilling to go back to sleep, Rei lay in her bed and listened to the faint buzzing of the flies in her dank apartment. She stayed there, thinking, until her alarm went off hours later.
* * *
"Asuka..."
Kyoko Sohryu held her daughter in the swirling mists and ran her fingers gently through the girl's auburn hair.
"Asuka?"
The Second Child looked up from her mother's arms. "Yes, Momma?"
"Asuka, dear... You must go now. You cannot stay here." There was a hint of sadness in her voice.
"What!?" Asuka tore herself from her mother's embrace and stepped back; her eyes burned with anger and confusion. "That's stupid! I finally get to see you after all these years and now you send me away? Why?"
"Look around you, dear. You know you don't belong here, in this world of dreams and semi-reality. You belong in the real world. There are people out there that need you. And you need them."
Asuka snorted and folded her arms in front of her chest. "If you've been watching over me this whole time, you know I can take care of myself."
"Trust me. I can name several people right now, if you wish."
The redheaded Eva pilot smirked. "Yeah, well that idiot Shinji needs me to keep him from making a total ass of himself. And someone's gotta be around to put Wonder Girl back in her place-"
Her mother frowned at her. "That's not what I meant, and you know it."
Asuka sighed. "Will I see you again?"
"Changing the subject, are we?" Kyoko couldn't help but smile faintly.
"Just answer the question, please?"
Her mother's smile saddened. "I'll always be with you."
"That's not an answer."
"My soul is in your Eva, but you don't need it to be with me. I'll always be with you--in your mind, your soul, and in your heart."
It was Asuka's turn to frown. "That's not what I meant, either."
"I know, and I'm sorry. But until it is time for us to truly be together, it will have to do. Until then, be strong."
Asuka placed a hand on her hip and gave her mother a confident look. "Like there's any doubt of that." Tears welled up in the pilot's eyes, betraying her emotions despite her cocky stance.
The spirit chuckled as its body started to glow again, the swirling motes disappearing into the fog. "That's my girl. Ich liebe dich, Asuka. I'm so proud of you."
Mother and daughter embraced once more.
"Ich liebe dich auch, Momma."
As Kyoko's spirit faded, Asuka's arms passed through the glowing form. Her hands, free of resistance, slowly continued their way around the front of her body until she hugged her own shoulders. Slowly, she sank to the featureless ground as tears streamed down her cheeks; a content smile was on her lips for the first time in an eternity.
"Goodbye," she whispered as the fog dissipated, leaving her in the comfort of a now-dreamless sleep.
The nurses on the night shift were busy tending to the wounded from the previous day's battle that evening, so it was understandable that no one watched the video feeds from the wards all that closely. If someone had, they might have noticed something peculiar on the image from Room 110. If they had looked hard enough they could have, for a brief moment, seen a faint shimmering in the air that vaguely resembled a woman, bent over the lone occupant of the room as if to gently kiss her forehead.
In that bed in the remains of NERV headquarters, the Second Child's sleeping body lay on its side. She hugged herself; her face wore the same peaceful smile as it did in her dream. A tear trickled from her left eye and was quickly absorbed by the gauze bandage covering it.
The nightmares would never come again. Her mother would see to it.
* * *
Heaven's Mercy Memorial Park, Tokyo-3
January 15, 2016
Shinji stood before the statue as its shadow lengthened in the evening twilight. The twenty-foot-tall sculpture was that of a solemn winged woman carrying a fallen body skyward; a bronze plaque shone on each of the base's eight sides, NERV's logo proudly emblazoned upon each. Underneath was a roster of the dead and missing from that horrible day two weeks ago; by Shinji's rough estimate, there were well over five hundred names engraved there.
Everyone else had gone home from the afternoon's memorial service long ago; Asuka was taken back to the hospital to get more rest, while Rei had quietly slipped away amid the hustle and bustle of the cleanup. That was a good thing, in a way; Shinji felt he needed more time alone with his thoughts, and couldn't face either of his fellow pilots.
As he looked over the names of the fallen on one of the bases, his gaze lingered on one name in particular:
Major Misato Katsuragi.
The only family he'd really ever had these past tumultuous six months.
It was Misato who had taken him in when his father shut him out; she helped him cope with life amid humanity; she had supported him, stood up for him, and encouraged him; and her brilliant tactical mind saved his life countless times. She had her faults, too--her cavalier attitude about life, her housekeeping, and her appalling lack of cooking skills, to name a few--but it had all been part of the human being that was Misato Katsuragi.
Shinji brought a cross-shaped pendant out from under his shirt and ran his fingers over its edges, gently tracing its outline. It was Misato who had dragged Shinji to the elevator that day, handed him the necklace he held now, kissed him tenderly, and sent him to the cage where his Eva waited. Everything else about that day was an insubstantial haze, locked away in the far corners of his mind. The end result was clear, though: Shinji had made it back; Misato hadn't.
I'm sorry, Misato.
I was a coward.
If I hadn't been so filled with self-pity...
If I had piloted Eva sooner...
You'd still be here, wouldn't you?
His quivering hand closed around the pendant, squeezing it until the corners of the cross dug deep into the palm of his hand. He closed his eyes and took a deep, shuddering breath. His mind replayed the last, comforting words she said to him as he lay in bed after the first Angel attack:
"You should be proud... Hang in there."
Oh, Misato, how can I be proud?
I can't...
It's my fault you're gone.
Please forgive me.
His eyes filled with tears; Shinji thrust Misato's pendant back under his shirt as he turned from the memorial and walked into the gathering gloom.
* * *
In the next chapter of Exorcism:
Secrets abound as SEELE makes alternate plans following the failure of Third Impact, NERV rebuilds, the mysterious organization from the prologue continues to plot from the shadows, and the past is revisited again. Find out what's in store for the Children and the rest of the world in 'Plans Within Plans'!