Disclaimer: Same as Chapter 1.
Chapter 2: Judges
Rei could just barely make out Shinji's voice calling her name. The pain from the Angel was overwhelming all her other senses and she was putting all her energy into not screaming. She felt her eyesight slowly start to fade. Suddenly she opened her eyes to find herself standing (or rather, floating) at the edge of a beach of thick, yellow liquid. The thick smell in the air told her it was LCL.
And standing in the pool was Rei.
...It looks like me, the pilot of Unit-00 considered from her place on the sand. Am I here...Or there? The being raised its head to Rei to reveal...herself. But Rei knew it wasn't really her...she was smiling. A strange smile, one that imitated warmth but was in reality a mockery of it. It didn't help that the thing's eyes were red, like her own. The color she loathed.
"...Are you one of the beings we call an Angel?" Rei asked her doppelganger as it continued to stare at her with her own eyes.
The Angel didn't answer, but merely continued to smile. "Do you wish to become one with me?" It asked her sweetly, like a mother offering her child a rare treat.
Rei didn't hesitate in her answer. "No. I am me. I am not going to go with you."
"What you desire is of no consequence now," the Angel whispered with its mock sweetness. "Just look."
The pale-haired girl shifted her eyes downward. Sure enough, thick veins were spreading from where the Angel had made contact with her Eva (near her stomach) and were creeping their way up her neck. Rei cringed as she felt it slowly probe the depths of her mind-- she tried to block it out, but knew the Angel was unceasing as it looked at her mind with an almost scientific curiousity.
She felt flashes pass through her mind's eye. Of people and events past. The Commander...Dr. Akagi... The fight with the 4th Angel... the 7th Angel... Rei could sense a flicker of rage from the being as it watched its brethren die and a vindictive smile flickered at her lips. At least she was causing the Angel some pain--if it had a sense of what that was.
The Angel glared at the girl before her-- she seemed completely emotionless. It continued its examination of her mind and located something that finally caused Rei's facade to waiver. It grinned with its smile of poisoned honey before diving into the area of the mind that the lilim called the 'soul.'
No... Rei faltered, but it was too late. She felt not just images, but feelings this time. What she'd always tried to force out of her head but haunted her as she slept at night. Some of the images were just a little blurry, as there were imagined events mixed with the real.
The Commander's face, lined with fear and concern, as it burst through the broken entry plug.
The cold feel of chain link through her swimsuit as she sat at the opposite end of the school pool, and overheard a boy with glasses acknowledge her, saying "She's probably just got a bad personality."
Walking calmly through the rain, passing the girls who whispered about her-- none of what they said nice.
The darkness of a cold room, with strange, frightening words written on the walls.
The hysterical screaming of a dark-haired woman as her hands wrapped just below her chin, in a desperate attempt to wring the life out of her.
"Interesting. These all share a common thread," the Angel uttered, a hint of intrigue in its voice. "I believe there is a lilim word for it." If it expected Rei to answer, it was disappointed. "...Loneliness," it ultimately determined.
It continued its journey through Rei's subconcious, and Rei saw images of a familiar shock of red hair. Sorhyu...
This time, she was assaulted with Asuka-- Rei saw the spiteful half-German yelling not at her, but at a familiar brown- haired male.
The barely discernable softening of the red head's glare when he wasn't looking.
The twisting in her stomach as she watched Asuka walk off with the boy-- looking no less cruel, but comfortable.
The screaming she had heard as she descended into Terminal Dogma to retrieve the Lance of Longinus.
The boy slamming his fist in fury and helplessness into a nearby hospital chair as he stood over the girl's inert form.
Her own hands around Asuka's throat, crushing her airway as she waved her arms about in a futile attempt to escape death... Wait... Rei shocked herself at that thought.
Do I... truly wish for...that?
"And this... it must be 'jealousy'..." the Angel spoke to itself, as though marking off a list of things to be done. "Strange. It all seems directed at..."
No... Rei thought, somehow knowing what was coming. Please don't make me face that...
And her mind was flooded this time with images of a single boy.
She felt his eyes on her back as she walked away, somehow not feeling quite so cold.
His hand on hers, warm against the icy water as he worried about her small burn.
His tears as he burst through the entry plug, like his father had before him, yet the feeling was stronger-- and much warmer-- than before.
The odd, indescribable ache at his nearness on the escalator, her eyes falling on him as he happened to look the other way.
The almost impossible-to-suppress urge to reach out and hold his hand, if only to let him know the truth.
"Please stop," she half-pleaded to the Angel. Her strength had faded before the sensations that she held close to her heart--so close that no one else should be allowed to see them.
The Angel raised an eyebrow, its smile broadening slightly. "... I've violated your very mind, yet only now do you protest. Why?"
"This... Is it the lilim emotion... that you call...love?"
Rei suddenly snapped back to reality as she felt a warm drop of moisture slide down her face and onto her lap. She raised a free hand and caught another, staring at it. "These... are tears."
Her mind felt dazed and muddled from the Angel's maintained contact with her.
"Am...I the one crying?"