Disclaimer: I don't own Neon Genesis: Evangelion
Author's Note: A finale. It didn't quite turn out the way I planned.
I almost debated turning it into a two part chapter, since it's so long (twice the length of my average two-thousand-some chapters), but I figured that would muck up the coherency and linearity. So, I settled on keeping it as is, posting it as one whole big KABANG to an already messed up story.
CHAPTER vi: THOSE WHO REACH OUT TO GRASP; or, A FILM NOIR FIST FIGHT
Rei could only gaze at Kaworu with lidded eyes.
"What do you mean?" Her strain was portrayed in the barely noticeable quiver of her voice.
"A deal." He repeated himself patiently. "You know where Shinji Ikari is." He stepped closer to her disheveled form. "You also know when you're going to see him again—and don't lie; I can see it in your eyes." He reached to touch her chin, but she batted his hand away with a vaguely insolent glint in her eye.
She offered no response to his frown of mild disapproval.
"Do you know what lies behind that door?" Kaworu motioned to the door in the hallway as he continued.
Her gaze was as level as she could muster, but again refused response.
"Well, I do. And I also know that you know how to get to Shinji Ikari from what lies behind that door." He walked over to a space of wall next to her, leaning against it. He slid down to her level and squatted on the heels of his feet, his arms poking straight out in the air with their elbows resting on his kneecaps. "Do you understand?"
"How do you know this?"
"How I know is irrelevant, wouldn't you say?" He stood up and offered her a hand. "I never really wanted to hurt you, but you never seem to give me much choice."
She stood without taking the offered assistance.
"I do not need your assistance, Nagisa." She brushed past him and stood in front of the door.
He arched his eyebrows with a grin. "Don't you? How else are you going to get through that door? I'm the only one that knows how to open it."
She frowned.
"And besides," he continued, "Both of us wish to see Shinji again, so what does it matter?"
He stopped short of the statement, but they both knew how it ended.
She was motionless in front of the door for some time. All obstacles had solutions. How was this one solved?
---------------------------
"Asuka, what do you mean? What's dying like?" Kaji's gaze could almost be considered a piercing, visual assault.
Asuka's back was to him once again. "Nothing! It's nothing. Forget I asked."
Her mumbled words did little to quell his quiet alarm. He sighed, and broke the stare at the back of her head. He settled it on the rail tracks as his head hit the tiled wall with a soft clunk.
A long pause followed.
"It's… scary, at first."
She turned. "What?"
He didn't look at her. He kept staring at the tracks. "Death. At first it's really, really scary." He scratched his head. "I remember the first time. The very first time. Before this whole mess happened, back when—back when you were still around." The last part almost made Asuka smile. Almost.
"It was painful—that part never changed. You can't get used to that pain. Not the bullet, mind you—that's just normal physical stuff. Your mind can block that out, since it never really remembers it anyhow. The pain I'm talking about is the pain of death; and I really can't describe it exactly." He ran a hand over his hair, stretching his bangs backwards along his scalp only to have them fall back into place as he released them. "But… it's something that you can never get used to. Ever. It hurts every time.
"Eventually, everything just sort of fades out, like the end of a bad movie. The smells and tastes go first, and after that is your hearing. The first time it happened, it was… frightening, I guess, but it was acceptable. It was sort of like… have you ever had a dream, where the most absurd things happen, but you accept them as ordinary? It was like that, except… well, more real, I suppose.
"After those faded, my hearing went. Even the faint little ring you hear when you think there's absolute silence. Even that. And… and the weirdest part is that you can still see. Even through all of this, you're still seeing everything fine. You're stone deaf, totally numb, too shocked to really do anything, but you can still see everything. And it was all in perfect clarity, something I've never really experienced outside of dying. It's… very disorienting—sickly, almost, but sort of calming as well.
"But then your vision fades. That's the scariest part. You're so used to it, and then it just leaves…" Kaji took a shaken breath. His knuckles were turning white from how heavily he gripped his head. He probably didn't even realize it.
"And then there's nothing." His whisper was gravel across the bed of a stone quarry. "There's nothing." He repeated it again. "Nothing. There's just… black. There's no sound. There's no movement. There's nothing to see or feel or anything. And you're never sure exactly when your heart stopped beating, or when your brain actually died, or—whatever. The only thing you're sure of is the fact that—that—"
Asuka's motionless form observed him in silence. She observed a frightened man.
He calmed himself, briefly. "The only thing you're sure of is the fact that you'll never see anything again. Or hear anything again. You'll never do anything again. And you can't move or talk as it is. It's just an endless void. Nothing at all."
He let out a long, tiring sigh.
"You said you came back?" Her voice was quiet amid the cavernous silence that reigned.
She couldn't tell if it was a snort or a short chuckle that he coughed out. "I did. Yes." He nodded, and finally looked up at her. "You're right."
She squinted at him queerly, and he sighed again.
He continued: "At first I didn't even know what was happening. In fact, the only reason I do know what happened is because it happened so many times—and, of course, this place… I don't understand this place. It mucks with your mind."
"It's outside of where you're used to being." Her response was calm and calculated. She peered away from him, her eyes dancing across the gratuitous amount of graffiti on the walls.
"I realized that upstairs. I found that I could remember everything—but… it's all sort of mish mashed up here." He tapped his forehead. "I can't quite tell what happened from which lifetime. It's all blurred together."
"Hmm." A noncommittal grunt. She turned away and moved back to her bench.
"How'd you get here, Asuka?" Since they'd been in conversation anyway, he might as well ask the question that'd been nagging at him for god knows how long.
"I built this place." She said.
"You built it?"
"Your hearing obviously works." Her scoff reminded him of her old self. "Yes, I built it. Once you understand it all, it's really quite easy."
"Understand it all? What are you talking about?" He rubbed his temples with his thumb and forefinger.
She grinned vacantly as her gaze settled across the tracks yet again. "You don't honestly think that anything is real anymore, do you?"
---------------------------------------------
Rei returned to the auditorium to retrieve her viola. Kaworu followed her, returning the doors of the auditorium to their rightful places as he passed. He might as well, since this place was his to control.
"What are you getting?" It was a simple question, and one he already knew the answer to.
"A solution."
Why did she always need to be so damn ambiguous?
He frowned, and scrunched his eyebrows in concern. She wasn't going to…? No. Impossible. She couldn't have figured out the loophole so quickly.
She brushed past him and stood in the hallway, a bloodied arm clutching the neck of the viola, the other lightly holding the bow. She narrowed her eyes. These were pieces of the puzzle, she was sure. But how did they go together?
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After a long silence, Kaji had to ask the question that had been bothering him for quite some time.
"Asuka," he started, and looked over at where she sat on the bench; legs crossed, arms across her chest, her head turned so that she could stare down the tunnel. When she didn't respond, he continued. "Do you… do you plan on dying here?"
It almost looked as if her shoulders slumped the tiniest bit. She turned toward a wall, her pupils dancing across the unreadable lines of layered graffiti.
"I… don't know." Her voice was distant, unreachable. "Everything is clouded." She blinked, a motion that made it seem as though she pulled herself back into her own skull. She looked over at Kaji. "Anyway, isn't about time for you to be getting some shuteye?"
Before he could even begin to understand it, he slipped into unconsciousness.
--------------------------------------------
Shinji sat in the subway car.
"Please, someone help me. I don't know what to do."
The only response was the railcar's monotonous heartbeat-like swaying.
"I'm so weak."
------------------------------------------
The epiphany was a single heartbeat of staccato.
Rei gazed over at Kaworu. He stared at her oddly.
It was so simple.
She held the instrument and the bow in the same hand, and pointed it at Nagisa. He stepped back.
"No," he said. "You couldn't have figured it out so soon—"
And the hairs on the bow all snapped and melded into the wood, and the viola dripped and crystallized around the bow, and it sprouted long; twisting and contorting the space of the obnoxiously illusionary hallway. Cracks sprouted along the walls—stress cracks from a steadily breaking mirror. They weaved and sprouted through everything except her, snapping up surfaces, spiraling up Kaworu's legs. He screamed in pain as they tore through his flesh, scaring every inch of him, geysers of blood gushing out of the crevices. His screams blended into the hideous breaking noise.
And then everything shattered. There was blackness all around. There was only her, and a beaten, bleeding, very sore, very powerless, Kaworu Nagisa. He shivered on the floor more out of pain than defeat.
"Congratulations, Rei." His voice was mirthless, but it still carried an undertone of honor. "You found the Lance."
She dropped the Lance of Longinus, and it stuck in the floor like a tombstone. Stairs appeared in front of where it lay impaled, leading down into the opaque black. A light breeze floated upwards.
Without another word, she descended the stairs.
---
Rei limped downwards. The stairs had transformed from narrow and cramped to rather spacious in only a few steps. It wasn't long after that when she realized that the fluorescent lighting was coming from the subway station just around the bend. It looked very decrepit.
The first thing she noticed was Kaji Ryoji's dejected form leaned up against a dirty, defaced, tile wall. He didn't move. Perhaps it was simply that he couldn't move, in this place.
A subway car whooshed by, a strong gust of wind blowing the tatters of her school uniform around for a bit, strands of her hair bouncing to and fro about her forehead and getting in her eyes. Newspapers twirled around in a laughable dance. Graffiti could only watch from the walls, and observe.
Sorhyu was on the bench. She knew Rei had arrived. Rei knew that she knew she had arrived.
"So, the First has finally decided to join us." Asuka stood up and turned to face her. She planted a hand firmly on her own hip, striking her arrogantly familiar pose. "Or should I say the Second?"
"I am not a doll." She whispered.
Asuka's scrunched her eyebrows for a moment, then quickly glanced at a section of the graffiti-ridden wall, scanning the seemingly unreadable gibberish. She scoffed. "Oh, right. I see now."
"I am Rei."
Asuka's dismissive wave was perfectly characteristic. "Yeah, I know. I know."
Rei glanced at Kaji. "What is he doing here?"
"Don't worry about him. He's so out of it that he won't pose any problem at all." Asuka paced the length of the station to stare down at his sleeping—or comatose—form. "We can pretend that he isn't here. He's in such a deep sleep; I doubt another Impact could wake him." Her gaze settled on the trail of drying blood that ran down Rei's arm. "Say, you're bleeding. Was Nagisa really that much of a handful?"
"I was in his world. I could not control things there." She diverted her own stare to walls with graffiti. "I apologize for being trapped for so long."
Asuka sent her a suspicious glance. "He isn't going to come following you down, is he?" She narrowed her eyes. "If he does, you know what must be done."
Rei shook her head. "If he does, I understand where my place is."
"Good." Asuka strode back over to her bench. "And Shinji? You're sure he knows what to do?"
"I did all I could while I was in his world. But I'm afraid that my absence allowed Nagisa to warp some things."
Asuka sighed in frustration. "So you're saying that you know jack shit."
Rei dismissed her annoyance. "Everything is going as it should. It is all on schedule."
"I hope you're right, First."
All the assurance she needed was in the crimson stare.
---
Lights flashed by in the darkened expanse of the infinite tunnel.
He sighed. "I'm only delaying the inevitable, aren't I?" His soft voice did not echo in the tiny rail car.
"Maybe… maybe I don't have to leave. Do I really have to do something like that if I don't want to?" His fingers ran across his face as his hands gripped his head.
He winced. "No… that isn't right."
He stayed like that; crouched over on a bench in the nameless, destination-less train car, rocking back and forth in slow monotony, while the mechanical contraption sped ever forwards like the hammer of a gun. He did not want to move. He did not want to decide. He only wanted to be left alone, and this place provided that. That was okay, wasn't it?
He sighed again. He knew that something had to be done. Others were counting on him.
"Stop the train."
And the world stopped.
---
Screeches from the tunnel heralded the coming of another tram. A pair of lights at the far end turned a corner, and were now rushing with all the urgency of the apocalypse toward the only station on the entire loop line.
There was no engineer at the controls.
There were no bings of warning as stations approached.
There was no yellow line to stand back from.
There was only the obscenely piercing screech of breaks as the subway train brought itself from infinite speed to absolute zero in the space of several meters. The station filled with noise and sparks. The car warped and twisted and distorted out of shape.
Its only occupant let out a panicked scream as his body suffered the same distortion of space and reality, only to have all the rules come snapping back into place like a rubber band. The reality of this place retained its coherency once more.
There was a moment of silence as everything caught its breath.
The doors hissed open with a soft hydraulic hiss. Somewhere, Shinji Ikari swore he heard the words "Thank you for riding the Tokyo-3 loop line." But that could just as well have been his imagination.
He picked himself off the rotting seat cushion, and haltingly approached the door.
And then he realized the obscene truth of it all.
And he wished that he could glimpse the blue sky just once more.
"Shinji."
"Ik… Shinji."
He stepped off the train. The doors whooshed shut, and the train took off in an unnoticed cacophony of wind and noise. Zero to infinity in no time at all.
Nobody moved. Nobody said anything.
"You're… you're both real… aren't you?"
Asuka grinned.
Rei almost smiled.
And Shinji Ikari suddenly felt like the butt end of a cruel, sick, hilariously ironic joke.
---
"You wanna start, First?" Asuka remained seated, cross-legged, her rich amber hair scattered around her shoulders like beautiful, pearlescent seaweed.
Rei nodded, and stepped toward Shinji. Shinji tried to take a step back, but found that he was at the edge of the platform already.
"Ikari," Her voice was as pure as he remembered it. "Do you know where you are?"
"I—I'm in a construct of my mind, aren't I? But if that's true, then how are—how did—why are you here? Either of you? You really are the real ones, aren't you?" Shinji took a step sideways, inching his way down the platform. "This—this is the Sea of LCL. I remember when you said that. That's where I am, right? The primordial soup of life! But if that's true, then I'm just imagining you, right?"
Rei glanced at Asuka. She sighed and looked away.
Rei decided to continue. "You are in limbo."
"I'm—" he paused, letting the meaning soak in. "…what?"
Asuka stood up and confronted him. "You mean you don't remember?"
"R-remember what?" He inched further down the platform. The other two advanced in suit.
"You decided to fuck everything up!" Asuka pounced him, but he jumped backwards and collided with the wall. Her hands landed on both sides of his head, trapping him. Her face was inches from his own. "It's because of you that I couldn't stomach to return."
Shinji peered past her shoulder just long enough to watch Rei suddenly stare off towards the stairs. His gaze followed suit, as did Asuka's. A shadow made its way down, heralding the arrival of another.
---
"Shinji! Shinji, I'm here—"
Kaworu was cut off as Rei slammed him into the wall. "You cannot." Her voice was quieter than ever.
"What are you doing?" He was panicked. "He needs me! I can't just abandon him!"
Rei held firm. "I'm sorry, but I cannot allow you to do that."
With an anguished groan, he slammed his fist into the side of her face. It knocked her off and she reeled into the ground, slightly dazed. He spared half a second to stare down at her prone form, before quickly moving to step over it and towards the train. Instead, he found himself hurtling groundside as Rei snagged his ankle and pulled with all her strength. Blood spattered on the cement.
"I told you," Her quiet voice was strained. "I do not enjoy it, but he must go through with it—"
"He must go through with it?" Kaworu groaned and tried to pick himself up, but found all of Rei's weight pressed against his back, pinning his wrists. "He's suffering! We need—I need to help him! He doesn't have to do anything if he doesn't want to!"
She remained stoic. "You cannot."
He groped for one of the cracked portions of the concrete, dislodging a small chunk quick enough to lob it into the side of her head. It broke the skin, and might've even given her a concussion. She fell to the side with a yelp as he dropped the weapon and ran toward the opposite end of the station. Each step seemed to make the station elongate, another warping of reality. It only spurred him on, until the same fragment of cement slammed into the back of his skull. He collapsed to the ground, throwing his hands out to brace his impact. He never really felt himself hit the ground, though, thanks to the piece of debris that had shattered upon impact. Rei was upon him unnaturally fast, and she threw him up against the back wall, taking advantage of his daze.
"Shinji…" His speech was labored and aimless.
He couldn't afford Shinji to change things. Everything would be lost if that happened.
Everything.
---
"You can't keep me here!" She slammed his shoulders into a wall of the station. "Why can't you just make your mind up already?!"
"But Asuka—I don't even know what you're talking about!"
"Shut up!" Her scream pierced his ears. "Shut up! Just shut the hell up! Instrumentality, you dolt! What the fuck else would I be referring to?! Use your head!"
"But—but I can't! Rei help me! Please! You swore you'd protect me—"
"Don't go begging to the First, Ikari!" Asuka threw him across the railcar. The side of his face slammed into a nearby pillar and his leg got caught on the side of a decrepid, metal bench. The sharp edges of the bench tore open his pant leg and sliced through the skin on his calf. He screamed in pain. "This is your decision, not anyone else's"
He whimpered for a few moments, and gazed around the station. A disheveled and bleeding Rei pinned a horribly beaten Kaworu to a wall. They were both watching the scene intently.
"Rei. Please…"
Her face wore the saddest expression he had ever seen, and it frightened him.
"Still begging for help?" Asuka hadn't moved from the far end of the car. Her cold, her dead cold eyes hadn't moved from his prone form. "Still begging for help from her?" She grew more enraged with each syllable.
Damn she was fast.
Kaworu called out to him and struggled against Rei, but was again pinned against the wall. He couldn't get to Shinji.
Another tram came, and it stopped. It looked identical to the one Shinji rode in on. An idle thought occurred to him as he noticed it stop abruptly: maybe it was the same one.
He ran towards it, just barely making it through the doors before Asuka's outstretched hands reached him. She tackled him to the floor in an attempt to pin him down, but his panicked state lashed out at her, tossing her into the isle of the railcar. She grunted in frustration, and pulled him off the ground, throwing him into one of the windows.
Shinji heard his name called as he was thrown up against one of the windows. The blood that remained dripping down the glass was probably from the nose he had just had broken. Asuka's assault was relentless.
"Break this all down, Ikari!" Asuka's voice was painfully soft; a whispered wildfire, dangerously close to his right ear. She had him pinned. He couldn't escape. "Tear it down! Stop it all! You can't—we can't—none of us can keep going like this! Humans weren't meant for this! You are not a god!" Asuka threw him down finally, releasing the hold. She huffed and sat down in a ruined seat.
He curled up on the floor. He was crying. He was so weak.
Her breathing was labored. She stared at him. Her red hair glinted strangely in the glare of the oppressive, fluorescent lighting.
"Kaworu…" His whimper could barely have been heard. "Kaworu said I didn't have to do anything anymore. He said—he said that everything could all just stay like it was." He still hadn't moved his head from beneath his arms. He was so goddamn weak.
Asuka looked at Shinji through an unreadable expression. "Do you know why, don't you?" Her voice changed. It was so soft, now. So… uncharacteristic.
"Because—because Kaworu cares about me!" He coughed into himself, curling even tighter into a fetal position. So weak. "None of you ever did!" He couldn't even make eye contact.
Asuka's expression changed into fury. "You idiot!" Her scream echoed out of the tram car. "Why do you think we're doing this? Do you think we like this? How dense are you?"
---
Kaworu couldn't hear much of what was being said inside the subway car. He was pinned against the wall. He couldn't win here. All of the rules were stacked against him.
"Shinji!" He yelled as loud as he could, hoping his voice could reach him. How did the subway car get so far away? Had the station always been this cavernous? "Shinji, don't listen to her! Whatever she's saying, she's lying! She always lied to you before, didn't she?" It was his last hope.
Rei forced him off the wall, and then slammed him back into it swiftly. He grunted as his head made another brutal collision with the wall.
"Don't speak. Don't say anything." Her voice was still the same… except for the odd—could it be dangerous?—undertone. Her gaze bored holes into his.
He weighed his options quickly.
He decided to continue. "Shinji! I love you! I'm the only person to have ever said that to you! Don't you remember? Don't you remember me—" He was suddenly cut off as Rei shoved him sideways and into the ground. He was too drained to really fight back at this point.
---
"Kaworu? Kaworu!" Shinji picked himself up off the floor of the railcar and gazed through the window. "Kaworu always cared about me!" His foot snagged on something in the floor, and he fell out of the railcar. Asuka leapt out behind him. The railcar jolted into infinity immeasurable fractions of a second later.
He felt so weak right now.
Asuka stood in front of him. "Kaworu manipulated you." Her voice was so cold.
"No! He cared!" Shinji's strained voice cracked as he shrieked to maintain his perspective.
"Did he?"
He glanced over at Kaworu, who still lay pinned against the wall. Rei's grip did not falter.
He felt very weak.
"He's willing to let you sustain this blatant lie, Shinji. Why can't you wake up? Are you that cowardly?"
So…
She continued, but her voice was starting to fade and become so far away, like a distant bird call at the far edge of hearing. "When are you going to realize that you have control now? You don't need the illusion! Kaworu wants it for his own ends! He's just using you like your father used you."
…very…
And everything sort of blurred, and the voices became very muffled, and it all seemed like he was underwater in a gigantic aquarium. He could sort of tell that her lips were moving, but he could barely make out her words. Maybe it didn't matter anymore. Maybe all of it….
…weak.