There were no seagulls, noticed Gendo.
He had seen them for the first time when he had been in Okinawa, in his grandfather's house -the one that had been exactly like the one he had behind him-. The laughs of the birds had confused him; he had thought that the white flyers were laughing at him, and he had thrown a stone to one of them.
His grandfather had told him that the birds weren't laughing at the young -indeed young; he only was nine- Rokubungi, but at anybody that couldn't fly like them. But, although with the passage of time he would have realised what his grandfather had meant if he hadn't closed his childhood memories in a far and dark corner of his mind six years after that summer, at that moment Gendo hadn't liked the answer.
'But, Grandpa, they shouldn't be laughing at me, anyway,' he had said, trying to throw another stone.
'They're free,' had replied Hideki Rokubungi, catching the stone in the air, 'and the seagulls can fly freely with a wild wind on their wings. That's a true joy of life, Gen-chan. If seagulls cannot laugh, as free as they are, then nobody can.'
'I don't like them.'
'Why? Because they can do something you cannot? Do you want to fly?'
'I do not wish to fly. I wish they couldn't,' had muttered Gendo.
'Enjoy what you have, and leave the rest live in peace,' had said the old fisherman, messing his grandson's hair. 'Come on, let's dinner.'
Now he could see it clear. It was strange how the memories had come back without any apparent reason. Gendo stopped to daydream and looked at Yui, laid at his side and staring at him deeply. He let his gaze wander across her body, remembering where each lunar he had kissed so many times in the past was on the warm flesh, tracing every curve under the soft white dress.
Yui was lying down on the blanket, with her feet dancing with the air over her back. He passed a finger across one of her soles, making her giggle in response.
"I always liked to hear you giggle, Yui," Gendo muttered absently.
"Then why didn't you make me laugh more often?" she asked back.
Ten questions for each vague answer she gave. That was Yui's conversation, and Gendo had so many questions... But the time was a senseless thing there. For how long they had been sitting on the blanket, it was a question that Gendo couldn't answer. Sometimes it seemed a year and sometimes it seemed that he had just arrived five minutes ago; but even when Gendo thought that he had stood there for a lifetime, he didn't feel any need or purpose to go to another place. For the first time in many, many years, Gendo Ikari knew peace.
"I don't know," he answered, still caressing her bare foot. "It didn't seem important, then. We had the time of two lives to make all that things."
"Did we?"
"I know now that we hadn't. And now I regret not having done other things."
"You cannot change the past."
"But I can create the future."
"You could," pointed Yui, closing her eyes at the soft breeze that had started to come from the sea, "before."
"I know," replied Gendo bitterly, leaving free his feet. "Why did you have to leave me, Yui?"
"Why did you have to leave me, Gendo?" echoed back Yui, digging a small hole in the sand with her feet and feeling how the bright grains fell slowly between her fingers when she raised them.
"I didn't leave you, Yui... It was you..."
"Do you love me, Gendo?"
"Yes," replied Gendo without hesitation. If there was something sure in his life, it was that.
Yui nodded and got up, cleaning the sand from her sundress. Dry as it was, all fell to the ground, creating a small sparkle of light around her waist for a moment. Gendo feared for an awful moment that she would go away -he tried to get up but he couldn't, though- but she simply turned back and stared at him.
Slowly, the green eyed woman leant over Gendo; slowly, she approached him, and Gendo started to see his own reflex on her eyes; slowly, he felt her warm breath blow against his face while, kneeling down, Yui tilted her head. Slowly, her face merely inches from his own, making Gendo fight the urge of kissing her, she spoke again.
"I know... that you love me... but... did you love me?"
Gendo gulped hard. She had asked the question he had feared to confront in all those ten years.
"Yes..." he answered, his voice merely a whisper.
Yui shook her head.
"Is that true?"
"I..." Gendo lost the words, feeling that anything he could say wouldn't help him. He had never could lie to Yui, and he didn't know what was the truth.
"What?" she muttered.
"I love you now," replied ashamed Gendo, looking down, "but..."
"But?" Yui breathed, leaning even closer to him.
"But, I... Yui... I didn't knew that, before," he finished, still avoiding her gaze.
Suddenly he felt her lips brushing against his own, and, for a delightful second, her sweet taste in his mouth. Before he could do anything the smooth sensation ended, and he found himself blinking, surprised, while he tried to understand what just had happened. Yui got up, smiling, but she didn't say anything, waiting for him to speak.
"Why?" was all that a stunned Gendo managed to reply.
"For being sincere," answered Yui enigmatically. "It's a beginning,"
***
CHAPTER 3: ARAEL
(Part one)
Clouds.
A grey sky.
Rain.
Drops falling tenderly.
Rei stared out of the window while she waited for Ritsuko. Outside it was raining, for the first time in several months. She couldn't see anything from it, she noted a bit disappointed, due to the bright light. In the school, she had chosen a sit from where she could see the sky, clouds, the water of a font and the school's playground, where the small children of the lower courses played happily, shouting in their games.
Rei liked that view; the window was almost the only reason, apart from her orders, that made her keep attending the school. Everything seemed the same day after day -children playing, water, trees, clouds and the blue sky- but, notwithstanding, there were everyday small changes that made the sight from the window delightful. Today the change could be the first fallen loaf of the autumn. Or maybe the small children of the playground would have come with a new game, or maybe the clouds over them would have drawn those delicate webs that announced that the weather would be colder for a brief time. There could be so many things...
The young girl only could see now how the drops ran slowly through the glass, as she felt how they fell also across her face, coming from her soaked hair. She knew that she should have picked an umbrella to come to the headquarters, but she liked the feeling of the rain on her face. While she had walked for the empty streets, its normal crowd absent from them, she had crossed with several people, most of them running to avoid the rain. But she had seen also a few people that walked quietly under the sky's tears. She had felt a vague feeling of community with them, almost like if the blue haired pilot and the lone wanderers shared a small secret.
There weren't any secrets in her life, she thought. All had been organised and fixed. From her birth to her upcoming last duty, Gendo Ikari had thought in everything; she was supposed to pilot her Evangelion to defeat the Angels, and later, to reunite Gendo with Yui trough Third Impact; then she could return to the void. But now...
She placed a hand over the window, feeling the cold and wet crystal under her fingers. Maybe she might ask Ikari about the subject, she thought. Maybe he could help her to understand that, and perhaps...
She turned back when she heard the door of the room opening behind her.
She was waiting for Doctor Akagi, but who appeared in the door's frame was the brand new Commander of Nerv, Kouzo Fuyutsuki.
"Commander," she acknowledged.
"Rei, you're soaked," blinked the old man, surprised. "Why didn't you catch a umbrella?"
Rei shrugged slightly. Among the things she was foreseeing to do that day certainly wasn't talking with the Commander about her deep feelings.
"Well, I... how do you feel, Rei?" asked Fuyutsuki.
"Fine," replied Rei flatly.
Seeing that the young girl wasn't talkative, Fuyutsuki shook his head and turned to leave. A soft whisper stopped him, though. He hated when Rei did that.
"Commander?" she asked.
"Yes, Rei?"
"Is there any change in my duties?"
He looked at her slightly surprised; he wasn't expecting Rei to ask such a thing. But it made sense, though. Rei had a so important role in Gendo's plans that she had to know what the true intentions of Seele and the Commander were and what were her own duties in both scenarios; now she had found an incognita, since she didn't know how was his own.
He observed the blue haired girl staring blankly at him. He shrugged mentally. It wasn't necessary to tell Rei what he expected of her, yet.
"You're supposed to keep piloting your unit, of course."
He could see the slightest hint of annoyance over her face. Of course, she wasn't meaning that, and she knew that Fuyutsuki was aware of that.
"Yes, sir," she replied.
Akagi's arrival prevented him to add anything further. Saluting the blonde woman with a nod, he left the room, leaving both women alone.
Ritsuko shrugged, and she accompanied Rei down, to the Dummy Plug Core System, deep in the Geofront. Fuyutsuki had established that the Dummy Plug Project had to keep going on, so the sequencing tests were still performed on a weekly basis.
Naked, she felt how the LCL started to rise till she began to float on it. She often had heard Shinji's complains about it, but although she didn't like the taste of the orange liquid, it did not bother her either, and being merged in it was for her a certainly soothing sensation, at least while the mental probe didn't start its task.
She was starting to feel the intrusive presence of the computer in the outskirts of her mind when Ritsuko, after she had verified that the process was working fine, crossed her arms and looked at her. Rei simply stared back at her, knowing that she would win any staring contest that involved any rival less capacitated than the Sphinx.
As it had to be, Ritsuko turned her head to avoid Rei's gaze and simulated to be working in her laptop for a few moments.
Rei found she lost in her thoughts, as she realized that this was the first Dummy Plug's test that hadn't seen Gendo controlling it.
The sound of a cellphone's ring avoided her to keep thinking in that, with certain relief for her part. She knew where that line of thoughts leaded, and she didn't like it. She closed her eyes and shivered into the cold LCL, as she heard vaguely -the computer's probe clouded slightly her senses- how Akagi was talking with somebody.
While she was trying to drain her mind and think in another thing, suddenly Rei felt how the LCL spilled out of the plug and the probe was withdrawing from her mind. She looked questioningly to Akagi.
"The Fifteenth Angel has come," she simply said.
Rei nodded. That was her duty, as ordered by the Commander. By the moment, she had an objective and an enemy to defeat; it would have to be enough.
By the moment. Rei felt that it wouldn't last enough.
The plug suit fit her body perfectly, but that thought didn't relief her.
She looked at her face in the mirror. Blue over red. Blue eyes, red hair.
Sighing, Asuka left the changing room and headed for her Evangelion. Another battle, and she feared that it would be like the last one, with Shinji saving the day while he muttered 'I mustn't run away,' like he always used to do. Even Wondergirl tried to show her how an Evangelion should be piloted...
Well, then. She was still Asuka L. Sohryu, the pilot of the first battle-designed Evangelion. She'd show them how an Angel should be destroyed.
Rei observed absently how the Second Child climbed up to her garish Evangelion. She tried to drain her mind. There were still Angels, and that thought comforted her a bit. Until the Seventeenth Angel appeared and were defeated, she would still be useful.
The tired face of Misato Katsuragi appeared in the plugs of all the three Evas; in the Prototype and the Battle models, near the Launching Pods, and into the Test Type, frozen in its cage.
"The Fifteenth Angel has been spotted," Misato informed them. "It's orbiting the Earth in L.E.O."
"Like the Ninth?" asked Asuka, remembering the living bomb that had fallen over them, months ago.
"No," pointed Ritsuko from another channel, "this one seems to be waiting."
"So..."
"So, this is the plan," Misato said, "Rei, you'll catch the Positron Rifle and beat him, and from there we'll see what happens."
"No!" gasped Asuka. She knew it; they weren't going to rely on her anymore. She couldn't stand for that.
"No!" she yelled. "Misato, I can do it!"
"Asuka, I..."
"I can!"
"Let her go," ordered Fuyutsuki coldly. Misato looked at her officer surprised, and then shrugged.
"As you wish," Misato replied. "Launch Eva-02."
It was still raining outside when Asuka grabbed the Positron Rifle.
Through the feedback of the Evangelion she felt the cold drops of rain all over her extended body. The clouds didn't let her to see the Angel, but she knew that the Fifteenth Messenger was there, floating in space.
She looked at the image that a spy sat was airing to the broadcast while she waited for the Magi to finish the calculations. The Angel looked, lacking of a better word, like a giant insect made of light, with several... legs... around it with no apparent order.
Asuka frowned. She didn't like insects, and this one wasn't an exception.
The computer biped, telling her that the antimatter generator was working and that the computer has left all ready to fulfill the destiny of the bright creature.
Asuka sighed, and she pulled up the rifle and looked at the grey sky through the aiming point.
Then the Angel unleashed God's wrath over the redheaded girl.
'She's suffering,' thought Rei, hearing the screams of the pilot of unit two from the comlink.
A ray of light had fallen from the sky to Eva-02, and although there was no physical damage, the Angel seemed to be assaulting its pilot's mind. Rei couldn't understand what Sohryu what saying -since she was speaking in a foreign language-, but it was obvious that the German redhead was suffering. Rei tried in vain to ignore Sohryu's screams to think in something useful to destroy the crystalline being, but she couldn't. In despite of what many people thought, Rei did have empathy and she wasn't able to stand up at Sohryu's pain.
She wasn't the only one, as she heard Ikari's petition to go up and rescue Asuka by the comlink. Knowing that Ikari was better pilot than she was, she hoped that the Commander allowed him to rescue the unit two.
"No," denied Fuyutsuki calmly. "The Eva-01 is still frozen."
"But..." Shinji protested.
"Ikari, shut up. Miss Ibuki, increase the LCL pressure in Unit Two's plug, please."
Maya looked at him surprised.
"Do it," he ordered absently. "Rei, be ready to rescue Unit Two."
"Yes, sir," she replied softly.
She didn't remember her name, or even who she was.
She didn't remember why she was there.
She didn't remember anything.
The young girl looked unsure outside from her Evangelion, and she saw it. A few kilometers, the white being was approaching slowly to the city.
She pushed a button, and she smiled with the slightest of the smiles as she began heard the spinning sound of the sonic edge.
She knew only that it was her duty to defeat that cruel creation of the Gods. And, for some reason unknown to the girl, it was a smoothing thought. She didn't need anything else that that enemy, and a weapon to defeat it.
Suddenly, a bright ray of light came from the clumsy creature and hit her unit straight.
The orange liquid she was submerged in was cold, she remembered, and it had a disagreeable taste. She couldn't get rid of the thought, but it didn't mind. In a few seconds she would reach it, and then it would be erased from the face of Earth. The girl without name smiled as she turned to face her enemy, with a strange joy in her heart.
She charged against the Angel across the rainy fields of the city.
Author's Notes
And well, here we have another little chapter of this fic. I'd like to thank Lynx for preread for me –I'm sorry, I promise that I'll try to improve my grammar for the next time-.
If the end of the chapter confuses you, don't worry. It's a little flash-forward, and all will be explained in the next chapter.
I'd want to dedicate this chapter to Uzumaki. Her comments made me change the plot of this part of the story from a bored novelization of the series to –I hope- a more interesting plot. I'm not sure if I want her to keep reviewing the story or not... ^_~
See You!
Athos