Disclaimer: I don't own Neon Genesis: Evangelion
Author's Note: I like to pride myself on my ability to start a sentence in one chapter, and finish the same sentence halfway through the proceeding chapter. There simply isn't anything quite like the taste of nonlinearity.
I like this chapter, actually. Everything starts to wind down, and I think that—so far, at least—I've been successful in starting to tie the knots of all the little plot threads I've got running. The end is near!
CHAPTER v: DISILLUSIONMENT; or, A SHIP MODEL INSIDE THE CABIN OF A MODEL SHIP
The room was nearly quiet. A thin layer of dust had settled on the cello in the corner. The desk was cluttered by needless jibber jabber that meant absolutely nothing. The air was heavy.
Asuka's steady breathing was a rhythm to his heartbeat. No—a hammer to the inside of his skull.
Naked, he leaned against the bed, knees pointed straight to the ceiling, fingers laced through his short hair. His knuckles turned white from grip. Tufts of directionless hair poked out of the spaces between his fingers like poorly mowed grass. He panted. He tried to get himself in order—his heart rate, pulse, his conscience— but it only made things worse.
He repeated two words to himself, believing every syllable inside the dead room. It was all he had, inside the room. The syllables. Himself. His words, his room, his life—or what was left. Misato had grown dull and weary. Kaji had died countless times and had isolated himself from everything. His father never really talked to him to begin with. Rei had disappeared. And Asuka—
Asuka…
He shivered.
Even his cello had stopped cooperating.
So he sat. Worn down, beaten, and yet stoic like the stone buffeted by the storm of unending existence. He couldn't take it anymore.
"I'm scum." The whisper fell flat again, when faced with the immutability of the whole situation. "I'm scum." He almost wept, but he didn't seem to have it in himself anymore.
Asuka's breathing stopped. A snort. He turned his head to face the naked figure, whose back was to him again. She went back to breathing in rhythm.
"I'm—I'm scum." He grabbed the pair of pants by the door—had to be his, she only wore dresses—and put them on as he tore out of his room. He didn't bother closing the door.
Who would care?
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Rei shivered as Ikari approached her. His steady, confidant gait down the center of the auditorium was as uncharacteristic as it was unsettling. There was something in the eyes he had—determination? No, that wasn't it. Certainly not fear. Confidence?
No. Arrogance. Gall. Blatantly smug confrontation.
She ran.
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"You fear the closeness of others, so you choose to bear the fundamental loneliness of the Lilim existence. Your endurance is quite remarkable, Shinji Ikari."
"Kaworu…"
"And yet, when the choice between rebirth and extermination was presented, your indecision was rooted in your inability to differentiate between those who had caused you pain and those who loved you."
"B-but I didn't—it wasn't my intention for this to happen."
"Regardless of your intentions, indecision has always been a valid option for you Lilim—an option you chose when the time had come."
"…Still… It's just that I don't know what to do—the first time I've ever been given a choice and—and—I've never had that before! How did you expect me to react?! And—how—how could I even make a choice like that? It was better that I decided nothing at all…"
"You have nothing to fear, Shinji. I will continue to be your guide through the hardships that await."
"What hardships?"
"All decisions have consequences. You must bear these, as must all of the Lilim. Your chosen path will not be without pain."
"Without pain? Does that… that means that…"
"Yes, Shinji. It means that you still have your heart."
---
Shinji watched the sunrise from the roof of the apartment complex. Red poured through the streets of Tokyo-3, dying the windows of shops, drenching the cars—the unstoppable wave of the inevitable foreshadowed in a dawn.
There was a clatter behind him. He didn't bother to turn around.
"Shinji," The voice was very soft, like a tentative stroke with a horsehair paintbrush.
He turned. His eyes met irises drenched in the same bleak engulfment of red.
"…"
He couldn't bother with formalities anymore. Was this before or after the Sixteenth?
She approached, and stood next to him at the building's edge. The blue in her hair had a silver sheen to it. Maybe that was just the dawn's light.
"She loves you, doesn't she?" Her voice hadn't changed.
A light breeze blew across the city, sending waves rippling across the crimson rivers of light that had consumed the streets. Her skirt wavered in the breeze. Her shadow gave that much away.
He couldn't reply. She threaded her fingers between his.
"It's… been a long time, Rei." His face softened, looking at her for the first time. "Are you… are you real?"
She gazed at him. Her embrace felt like water from a warm spring; the way she melted into him, relaxed, totally at ease, natural. And her voice was like another brushstroke:
"Does it feel real, Shinji Ikari?"
Shinji pulled away, and for a brief millisecond, saw everything.
"R—"
Kaworu's face stared back, the red dawn hitting his face at its obscure, indefinable angle, engulfing the other side in silhouette. He smiled warmly.
"I told you I'd be here as your guide." His mouth moved slowly and deliberately, and the words came out like silk too soft to be real.
Shinji stepped backwards, screaming as his foot met only air and he tumbled into the vast red ocean of sunrise.
---
The sound of silence greeted his return to consciousness. The air was empty.
He rolled over. The bleak apartment smelled of dust and mildew. A glass full of evaporation stood on top of the refrigerator in the corner, accompanied by various narcotics and other medicines that defied logic. Bloodied bandages lay in a cardboard bin beside it.
He removed the pale arm that had been carefully draped across his chest and sat on the edge of the bed, rubbing his face. He gazed at the other occupant, admiring her peacefully sleeping form, hypnotized by her shallow breathing.
There were no sounds of construction outside the window. There was only the silence of a screaming dawn.
He dressed quietly, but he knew she'd wake up anyhow.
And the door to the apartment clattered shut like the lid of a rattled coffin.
---
Rei joined him on the roof. The devastation from the Sixteenth Angel and Unit 00's destruction loomed before them. The water in the crater reflected an overcast sky, brightly alive with the long arms of the sun's flames on the horizon.
They stood like that for awhile.
"The Seventeenth arrives tomorrow." Her tiny voice lit the air like a small candle in a cathedral.
He nodded vacantly. "But I'm not supposed to know that."
She grasped his hand subconsciously, threading her fingers through his. "I'll protect you, Ikari."
"I… Yes. Thank you, Ayanami."
"Do you… wish to continue this?" She gazed at him from the corner of her eye.
He sighed. "I don't know. I think that it's probably best that we do."
Her brow crumbled into ache, and she glanced away. "Alright."
He sensed the despair in her voice. "What?"
"Why do you fear change so much?"
"I don't know." He ended the conversation, and they gazed into the orb of sunlight on the horizon.
But the sun wasn't rising. It was setting.
And the final rays of the sun reminded Shinji that there was someplace he needed to be.
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The auditorium was filled with the echo of the raindrops on the exterior of the building. The storm had finally brought its full wrath upon the place.
Rei's foot found itself caught in a gap in the rug. The shoe refused to move as she pulled her body weight forward, resulting in an unexpected plunge and a twisted—probably strained, if not worse—ankle.
The boy who was slowly creeping up to her had finally shed his skin. The illusion peeled off of him in long, leathery straps, pooling at the floor and flowing into the puddle at the bottom of the stage like ink. Nagisa stared down at her now, a dangerous smile alight on his features.
"Where is Shinji?" His voice was soft, yet it somehow drowned out even the clatter of raindrops.
She stared up at him insolently. It'd be difficult to fight back with this bad foot.
He reached for her, but her good leg lashed out, kicking sharply. Three of his fingers snapped backwards and broke. She was immediately on the foot again, limping as quickly as she could while he yelped in surprise. She didn't turn to watch him reset the knuckles.
He sprinted up to her and threw her to the ground again. Her face smashed into the concrete, protected only marginally by the rotting layer of carpeting on top. She groaned.
"I'll ask again: where is he?" She struggled against his hold. He was strong. But his strongest grip was only on one arm.
"He is safe." She broke the other arm free, and swung it sharply into the side of his head.
He grunted, but maintained the grip. She swung again, but found her forearm caught in his teeth.
His sharp teeth.
Blood trickled down her arm. It contrasted sharply to the pale skin. Watching it only made it hurt more.
She fought the instinct to rip it out of his jaws. That would make the wound worse. She opted for the other solution; a knee to the groin. Too bad it was with her injured leg.
He released her arms and coughed a loud cry, doubling over next to her. She slid away and tried once more to hobble to the door. She kept her bloodied arm close to her body.
Rei slammed her shoulder into the heavy door, not having the limbs to spare a push. Her blood trickled down her dress and fell to the floor like the leak of a faucet. She ignored it. It wasn't deep enough to cause major blood loss.
She was halfway to her destination when the door behind her burst off of its hinges. Kaworu stood calmly, stoically, almost impassively. The smile was gone. His eyes…
She was afraid.
She had to get to the door. It was probably her only option at this point.
He was fast. She couldn't stop him as he grabbed the back of her hair and yanked her into a wall. Blood spattered on the brick. She heard her nose break, but she tried to block the pain. Her endurance was staring to wear.
He pinned her to the wall, bloodied arm twisted behind her back, the other shoulder dislocated from his elbow grinding into the joint. He held her head against the wall with the same arm's fist, gripping a handful of powder blue strands. He pushed a knee into the small of her back.
"Tell me where Shinji is." The hiss in her ear only further drove home the fact that he was incomplete control. "Tell me or I'll kill you."
"If I die, you'll never find him." The soft words managed to choke out, strained. "You should know that."
He exhaled, bowing his head in defeat. He relaxed, then stepped back into the hallway and ran a hand through his disheveled hair.
Rei collapsed her back against the wall, sliding down to a heap on the floor. She panted heavily, and strained to pop her shoulder back into place. Sweat and blood plastered the ripped school uniform to her body.
When Kaworu turned around, his smile had returned. "A deal, then?"
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—standing in the railcar. The red orb of sunlight was still, unmoving, even as the buildings passed by the windows. The ground underneath the soles of his feet was no longer the roof of the apartment building. It moved and gyrated, shook, rattled. The noise of general movement filled the small railcar. And all the while, the sun stayed still.
It was raining, somewhere.
The train suddenly dived into a sharp descent, plunging into a tunnel. The sun was instantly replaced by the fluorescent lights.
Feeling slightly disoriented, Shinji grasped one of the metal poles and sat down in a seat. The padding was shot, and the metal framing of the seat itself made his bottom ache uncomfortably. It didn't matter, though. He was sure that most of the rest of the train car was the same way.
Lights flashed by. They illuminated nothing, save for the long shadows that stretched across the unwelcoming floor of the railcar. Apparently the interior lights were shot—probably a faulty fuse someplace.
He sighed and breathed into his hand as it ran across his face and through his hair. Everything was so messed up.
"Why are you here?"
The tiny voice came from beside him. He didn't turn to look. He already knew who it was.
"Because—" he stopped. He didn't know why he was here. At this point, he hadn't really paused to fully comprehend where here actually was. "Because it's always like this. I always end up here. I never know why."
The figure hadn't moved. The school girl's shadow flickered in and out as the light flashes illuminated the car. Her dress swayed in syncopated strobe. As the lights flickered by, the shadow morphed from a dress into the form-fitting plug suit. Shinji paid it no heed.
"Do you fear this place?" Her words didn't echo through the stark interior.
"I don't understand it." His did.
"Do you fear what you do not understand?"
"Of course I do! Everyone does, don't they? I-I mean, it's only logical, right?" His outburst was punctuated by a crash and a jolt of the car; the transit probably hit a gap in one of the tracks. It continued on monotonously.
"But you do not make an effort to understand it, do you?"
"How can I? With things happening the way they are—how can I understand it anyway? How can I even begin to try? These events—it's all beyond my control! Everything I've done so far hasn't made a difference."
"But you've never been trying to make a difference, have you?" Her shadow moved closer, and stood next to his lump of a silhouette projected on the floor.
He trembled for a moment. Then he sobbed when his voice caught in his throat. He didn't want to admit the fact that he'd done nothing. "I don't want to…" his mumble fell flat against the cacophony inside the railcar. "Different means change. I don't want that. Change… change hurts people. I don't want to hurt anybody. I just want to be left alone."
"You've always been alone, Shinji." A shadow of a man stretched across the door of the car, his hands in the pockets of his pants. It was as if his back was to Shinji, stoic, waiting for the station to arrive.
"But—well—no I haven't! I—I mean—"
The man's shadow turned to a perfect profile of a mature face. "When I left you alone, you hated me for it. And yet, when I needed your help, all you wanted was to be left alone. You must decide what you want."
"But that doesn't count! You never gave me a choice in the matter!" His shout did little to faze the shadowed occupants. "And besides, you just used me in your twisted schemes and—and you didn't really do it because you wanted me around anyhow! What kind of father does that?!"
"But I still remembered you."
"That doesn't matter!"
"Doesn't it?" The shadow turned, and faced the door once more. It was gone in a fluorescent flicker.
"Wait! Father—!"
The shadow on the floor extended a hand. Shinji looked down and watched it.
"What is it that you want?" Her voice came again from the flickering darkness. Her offered hand was still outstretched.
When he reached his own hand out, she fell through the floor and collapsed on top of him. She was no longer just the two dimensions.
"Is this what you wanted?" Her crimson eyes stared into his. They were sprawled on the floor of the car, its rocking somehow making it all the more intimate.
"What… what happens now?"
"You're going to have to make a decision."
He looked away. "But Kaworu said I didn't have to make any decisions anymore. And—and besides, I'll only make things worse if I do."
"You're going to have to take that chance, Shinji." She smiled, and in the flicker of a white light from outside the window, she was gone.
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Another train flew by. Kaji could only watch it from where he leaned against the wall.
"If the First doesn't get here soon, she's going to miss the show." Asuka walked across the very top of the bench, her hands outstretched for balance on the slim surface. She was talking for no one but herself.
Kaji could only tiredly gaze in her direction. He needed a cigarette.
"You need a smoke, don't you?" Asuka pivoted on the back of the bench, her hair swaying as she moved around. "I can tell. Even when you don't say anything, I can tell."
He frowned at that.
"Kaji," she hopped down from the bench and made her way towards him. "What's it like dying?"
A double take. "What?"
She looked away, and sighed to herself. "Nothing," she said. "Just… forget it."