(emptiness)

I did not make a report to Commander Ikari regarding that incident.

While it must be of interest to him that Inspector Kaji had decided to reveal some crucial insider intel to the Third Child, us pilots were under constant surveilance, so it was to be assumed that he already knew, or, at least, had received all the necessary hints to piece it together himself.

At least, that's what I was going to tell him if he ever asked me why I did not come to him.

I don't think he would.

I don't think he'd attach great significance to, or see a great mystery in, his usually moody son being just a little moodier than usual.

Who is to say that he knows what 'usual' even constitutes for his son?

So that is the reason I would give if asked, and it is true that if it were not for this justification I might have asked otherwise, but, it was not what truly motivated me at it's core.

I simply did not want to do it.

I was tired.

Of everything.

I went home without a single word to anyone.

I plugged shut the rest of the evening by the deciding it was a good moment to do laundry and shower, even buy groceries, so that when the next possible instant was freed up, I would find myself duty-bound to go to bed, as I had to to show up where I was expected.

It's not that I avoided thinking of what happened.

There were quite a lot of thoughts, commenting on everything at the back of my mind, what might come next, what consequences it might have.

But all this was done with the half-admitted, half-speculative awareness that the full weight of what transpired probably had not hit me yet.

I simply carried on, as I always had, for nothing was yet decided, nothing yet there to respond to.

The next time I encountered Ikari-kun was in a hallway.

At school.

Both of us dumbstruck by apprehension, silenced by the weight of yesterday's unresolved dispute, and everything that it stood for and implied, the further chainlinks of questions that it had posed, like the thick roots of a tree extending down to unknown dephts.

Our gazes and found each other, and for a moment, there probably was a liminal instant where either of us could have steered the flow of events onto a different track.

But what happened instead was that his steps quickened, and that my limbs stood frozen.

What happened was that I only watched, merely observing, as we passed each other without a word.

It was already decided then;

The tone was set for all our interactions going forward, starting from this moment.

Only then did I realize how familiar I had grown with our small, scattered exchanges, those mere smudges of imperfect connection.

The little routine conversations that had never seemed to bring me satisfaction, like an animal being fed the incorrect food that would nonetheless devour it and what little sustenance could be gained from it for lack of anything else to subsist on.

Somehow, beginning from next to nothing with irregular awkward fumblings, it had become a regularity for us to interact.

At school, at NERV, on the tram…

Now there was only static, unstated, unaknowledged avoidance just within the bounds of plausible deniability. A terse greeting here and there, maybe, and then quickly moving on.

Ikari-kun closely sticking to Major Katsuragi and the Second Child without making any attempt to bridge the gap to where I was sitting, quite a bit a bit.

A silence of a very different quality that the one before this entanglement, because, after all, there was no longer a chance of remedying it by getting to know each other.

The severity of a severed thread of fate, and of persisting a world where a possibility had been lost.

One time, I thought I saw him standing at the tram station, just another faded figure sheltering from the grey deluge a torrential summer rain.

But when the new passengers came in, trailing their soaked steps across the floor, he wasn't among them.

Perhaps he had chosen to sit in a different wagon, or decided

There was no guarantee that he ever saw me in the window, or that the glimpse that I had caught was really him – maybe it was just another student in the same uniform.

A few times, I found myself looking at him, lingering where I could have up and left right away, thinking about drawing near.

But he always seemed to be occupied somehow, speaking with the Major, with the Second, Aida and Suzuhara – or else he would be on his headphones, quickly ducking out of the way.

Passing me in a hurry.

This is just how it's going to be now, isn't it?

Forever and ever, until Kingdom Come. Until hell and high waters would rise to wash us all away.

There was little else I could do about it.

That's just how it happens – 'I can't take this!' becomes 'right now, I am feeling a little frustrated' becomes a tiny spot of nothing, a storm in a teacup, and in the end I'm confused why I ever had any feeling about it at all when it was just the inevitable, just the grindwheels of the universe churning on, processes evolving according to natural forces in paths predetermined by their initial condition.

It was just the truth. He and I and everything else are incredibly small by cosmic scales – we might be part of grand important things and processes, as far as this planet is concerned, but we are only links in the chain of events, conduits for cause and effect.

The difference I could make, even if I were willing to pay any price to that effect, is very much minute.

It is not that I was not aware of the part of me that entertained the thought of walking up to Ikari-kun and speaking to him, perhaps demanding some explanation, or apology, or perhaps ignoring it all for the sake of rekindling what was.

It's that I had judged that this part didn't matter, that it was a product of futile hopes that could not be justified.

That's what I do, isn't it? I immediately make it just a 'part', contain it, seal it off so that it's more bearable.

Because nothing is ever bearable.

Nothing ever will be, now that the prelude is over – it is only bound to get worse with time.

But it is still true, at least, I can't get past that perception.

It is only a temporary sentiment, right now.

Only a part – there were other feelings, at other times.

There were other parts, too.

Very good reasons to stay away.

Leaving aside whether he was right or prudent to do so or not, Ikari-kun had made it clear that the price of admission to being associated with him was to openly disclose all I knew of NERV, which I would not, could not do.

I made my choice, what I thought to be the least worst choice given the network of actions and consequences, so now I have to accept his response to it.

There might be many things that he is not considering, but how could I blame him for being ignorant of what he was prevented from knowing?

I can't make him associate with me any further, if he doesn't want to.

That was his choice - it is not up to me.

I can't control or change what he thinks of me, not if his mind is already made up.

He will decide for himself what all of this meant according to his understanding, in a world I am no longer a part of, no longer get any imput on, now that we would probably spend the rest of our brief lives utterly split from each other, each on our side of the wall, occasionally seeing each other as if across the side of a precipice.

This should have been expected, inevitable even, when he would sooner or later realize that I wasn't what I appeared to be.

Most likely, we had simply reached the point where the fiction could no longer be continued, where I could either refuse to answer him as I had, or tell him that deeply complicit in his father's plans, that the 'monster in the basement' and I are possibly one and the same… and then watch his revulsion unfold, stand there and stare as he rejects me, as is only natural.

I was something to be avoided.

This is how it was supposed to be to begin with, this is how it always was, before he came along.

I was supposed to be on my own, devoted to nothing but the plan.

The anomaly had simply ended, like a pair of virtual particles briefly allowed to exist as the result of a random quantum fluctuation annihilating back to nothing.

I was supposed to have nothing – for I didn't need it.

Wasn't made for it.

Couldn't get anything out of it.

If I had taken some comfort in his presence, well, that is a truth that cannot be denied, but though it may be true, that does not change that it matters little.

My feeble little wish isn't going to change anything.

The universe was not going to bend before my impossible dreams -

and I did not expect it to.

I accepted this.

Having this brief experience of something like human companionship was nice while it lasted, but I could never have expected it to last.

Nothing ever lasts.

I didn't need or want it, or, if I did, I didn't care, because it was never going to matter in the end.

...

Nothing had really changed.

Nothing was out of the ordinary.

Everything was just as you would expect it to be.

The reality of what had always been the truth had merely reasserted itself.

My presence and activities at school had simply gone back to exactly how they had been for the previous one and a half years before Ikari-kun's arrival here, only that the density of used seats was much sparser, and that the Second Child's distinctive red hair could sometimes be seen poking out of one of the crowds.

There should have been nothing worthy of notice.

Or so I thought.

I was handing in a permission slip for one thing or another – I think it was a movie that we were going to be shown as part of class.

I would be surprised if the Commander even read it when he signed it, it probably came to his desk as part of a high stack of many other trivial things required for the maintenance of NERV.

It would have been vice commander Fuyutsuki's duty to sort through these papers and only pass on those that justified his superior's authorization.

I doubt that Fuyutsuki read this paper either.

It is not of interest to anyone. There is no parent having thought and opinions about what they might be teaching his child or wishing to have discussions to prepare me for the discussion of difficult topics.

As part of her duties as class representative, it was Horaki-san who was tasked with gathering up the slips so that they could all be handed to the teacher at once, so between classes, I sought her out to give it to her.

At first she simply thanked me for the timely deliver of it and off-handedly mumbled something about how she wished that others such as Suzuhara could be bothered to remember bringing there, but that reminded her of something, and so she paused, hesitating for just a moment, before tentatively getting to the point.

"Sorry if this is too forward, but, did something happen between you and Ikari-kun?"

"Why do you think that?"

"Uh – it's just that I haven't seen you talking to each other at all these last few days…. If everything's okay, then I'm glad to hear that!"

"...is there a reason why you are asking this?!

Something definitely had changed compared to last year.

Once I could have claimed to be unaware that this type of question would be taken as sign to back away. Now I had to contend with this knowledge.

Being conscious of it, noticing as it happened, I could have chosen to step outside of my usual pattern of behavior, but I didn't. I chose not to.

I didn't mind that Horaki-san left then, indeed I welcomned it.

I distinctly desired no company.

I knew that, if I wanted her to keep engaging, I would have to make time for her at least once in a while, so she wouldn't think that it was unwanted or find the whole enterprise of associating with me wholly unrewarding, but right now I couldn't bring myself to invent in that necessary upkeep.

What for?

This would crumble, too.

Even if I were to cultivate this, to try to get closer, we would eventually reach a point where we'd be too different in our natures and the context we existed in, just as it was with Ikari-kun.

Quicker and sooner, probably, since Horaki-san barely knew anything about NERV and the EVAs.

I was not going to do it all again with so little expectation of differing results.

It's just 10 more weeks to Third Impact.

Some days I've dreaded it. Some days I've longed for it.

I think today's iteration of the ship of theseus that is my being tended more toward the latter.

Everything in this place takes so much hardship for so little reward.

I think I understand it better than I used to, but all this has led to is me knowing my own wretchedness.

...

I was back at my appartment.

No NERV-related duties for today.

I threw myself onto my bed and gazed in contemplation at the ceiling, its same old concrete blocks, with the same old dusty fluorescent light stuck onto them.

Somewhere there in the periphery, the journal of Yui Ikari was laying on my dresser with my own books and her husband's old glasses, but I wasn't inclined to open it today.

It occurred to me that my empty, meaningless life had now become even emptier, having lost one of the very few things in it that added the occasional bit of color, flavor ot texture.

But did I really lose that much?

Those flimsy encounters and meaningless pleasantries, those glimpses into the outskirts on a world I could never be a part of.

I suppose I regretted it a little, that it had to come to an end so soon, even if it was inevitable.

This might not make sense, but it was nonetheless the truth of my heart.

There was no use denying it.

But my regret of it would not really change the truth of the matter.

This, too, shall pass.

This subjective sense of hollowness will pass, just as I had always known of the pleasant moments that they would pass to.

That it a saying in Buddhism, I think.

It is a predominant cultural influence in this country, so I had heard of it, though it is by mere coincidence that I had come to be raised in this country.

I could have been given a physical form just about anywhere else;

Human cultures are all the same to Lillith.

But suppose Rei Ayanami could not help but hear some of the tales of the place she grew up in, even if she was never involved with it.

There were other stories in Buddhism.

There is the one of the prince who is asked who he is and says that he is his father's son, and then a sage replies to him: So if you weren't his son, then who would he be?

Next he says he is an aristocrat of the warrior caste, and so it continues, peeling off every idea of who he was, everything he considered a part of his identity, until he realized that he is really no one.

There is that other study of the student who asks the teacher about what illusion is, and the teacher tells him to go to a nearby village to fetch something.

In the village the student gets distracted, makes friends, gets married, lived his life, until eventually he loses everything in a flood, and only then does he remember his teacher and go back to him.

The supposed moral of course is that everything in life with all its entanglements is but illusion that distracts one from the path of enlightenment.

And both of these are supposed to be comforting tales, for if you are no one and everything you're attached to is illusion, then there is no one who can suffer.

Pain is inevitable, but carrying it, suffering from it, is not, or so the tale goes.

Maybe I should accept that all my playing at being a schoolgirl with friends was but illusion – nay, even my work at NERV and my supposed mission in service of the Commander was just illusion.

None of it matters, none of it is worth feeling distress over.

And if there is no me, then why would I be frightened of dissappearing into Lillith?

In a way it would be very convenient if I were Lillith, because Lillith is eternal and I am not.

Lillith would have no reason to be aggrieved right now.

She would not need to be distressed about an argument with Ikari-kun.

She would look at him with benevolence, as one of her children, but he would not be special in any way. She would not need anything from him.

All I need to do is accept that I had never existed, that I am not different from the unliving soil that this body came from, that everything that is is just as it should be and there is nothing for me to do, no reason to want it to be different, to regret or yearn for anything.

All I need to do is to declare that I am Lillith, to expand my self-concept to include all the universe and to to accept the justice of god and that the world with all its cruelty, is yet perfect.

Who or what am I to say it's not?

I don't know, honestly, the opposition to such ideas is often termed as pride, as ego, or the satanic spirit of rebellion, but I am honestly under no illusion that I am anything particularly great or important.

But I still cannot bring myself to think of Lillith as me, to stop valuieing all that I value and thus all that will be lost when I cease to be me.

This imperfect, flawed, pathetic little 'me', this wretched, botched life, is nonetheless the one I have.

No matter how glorious the promises of heaven, this earthly life is all I can be sure of.

I won't discard it in service of a heaven that may never come.

I won't reject this 'ego' to liberate a trapped soul that might not be in there to begin with, that might be unrecognizeable to me.

It may well be that there is this higher order or a greater whole that I might be thought of as a component of, but that greater something would not be me.

It would not be 'Rei Ayanami', nor would it care about the things I care about.

It would lack any of the features that make me Rei Ayanami -

and the very existence of such necessary features makes 'Rei Ayanami' a mortal, destructible thing, something faint and ephemeral.

I am what I am, and to be something is to fear for that something and feel pain over that something, and yet I cannot betray this just to escape from fear to comfort.

If this pain is proof that I am me, proof that I exist, then I would hold onto it to the ends of my strength to safeguard it from anyone who would take it from me.

This life is wretched, but it is real. It is mine. It might be the only thing in the world that is mine, but it is. I've paid for it in blood. I get to do with it what I want.

Do not misunderstand:

I would love to be rid of my limitations, it is not that I am going to pretend they're good or that they're worth it or that there is any kind of silver lining:

My life so far was just bad.

But it is the life I have.

This flimsy artificial creation, this empty life, this borrowed face and voice, this unknown, inhuman soul… somehow, between all this, what I now think of as my 'self' had crystallized, like a pearl grown around an irritant.

If I can't get rid of my limitations and my pain without also erasing what I've valued and what I've prized, then I am willing to pay the price of the pain.

It is all I can really be sure of.

Flimsy and tenuous as this 'me' might be, it is precisely what I am, even if that's just a very temporary self-reinforcing pattern inside an organic machine.

So now that I have this answer, it is possible to ask, of this 'me' that is not Lillith:

Wherefore do you exist?

And the answer is, obviously, simple coincidence.

Mere happenstance, as a byproduct from interactions of the forces of nature.

Why does a Pearl exist? It is the same thing.

It simply is what it is.

And at this point I don't think any answer more satisfying than that can truly is obtained.

What even is a 'purpose'?

Any 'purpose' you could think of would either be externally given and thus forced upon you, or arbitrarily chosen and liable to be ripped away from you, and then what would I do?

Shall I be left with nothing?

I wonder if having one is really all that desirable or comforting.

So there you have it.

Conclusion reached.

But of course, no music plays to congratulate me, no light shines down from the heavens.

I am still laying here, staring up at a dirty ceiling.

There's never going to be any objective confirmation; At any point I could just doubt and reach a different conclusions.

Anything that can be thought up can be unmade in thought just as easily.

My feelings and my implicit mind might be a biot slower and generate a stronger subjective feeling of certainty, but they would be just as fallible in the end.

And anyone who would validate or deny my conclusion would do so while being influenced by their own bias, their own benefit and agendas, even if they were to try.

Their opinions are not any different in quality than mine, even Commander Ikari's, arrived at by the same, fallible mechanisms.

I will never find out some definite answer, not even if I return to Lillith, for the consciousness that is going to remain after won't be able to directly compare with what it was to be me – its retrospective would be tainted by its own, different perspective, as subtle or imperceptible as that difference might turn out.

In the end all I can really do is to choose to believe it, and stick with it, thereby creating a bit of myself with that decision.

Nothing's going to tell me I'm right, and even if they did, that wouldn't buy me anything.

I just have to chose something, and stick with it:

A tiny little glimmer of light hanging alone in a gaping boundless void.

All I have to sustain myself is my will, a tiny, barren thing that might give out at any moment.

All that proves my existence is the stream of my thoughts that might cut off at any moment by some accident of biology.

This flimsy thing that is constantly struggling to hold itself up, to maintain its separate existence, its state of non-equilibrium, in a chemical sense, and its independence, in terms of information.

That is nonetheless the reality of what I am.

The only thing I'll ever really be.

I am not going to betray myself by wall-papering over it in order to comfort myself with some soothing belief.

So there it is.

I have decided.

Now what?

Before enlightenment, chop wood and carry water.

After enlightenment, you must still chop wood and carry water.

10 more weeks of EVA piloting.

10 more weeks of being here.

10 more weeks before the aberrant blip that is Rei Ayanami will have come to an end.

Even knowing that I still can't say if that's a good thing or a bad thing.

Not because I don't have an opinion about it, or because I cannot decide between the options, but because it's complex:

Some aspects of it are good. Some aspects of it are bad.

It's not immediately obvious. I need to think about first.

But at least until then, I must exist anyway, so I do figure that I can as least be aware of it.

So here I am.

Chopping wood and carrying water.

I was hoping to get to the changing rooms at NERV before the Second Child's arrival, but alas, no such luck.

Best to not ever look at her, there was never any telling what she might go on to take as a personal slight.

I swiftly pulled my plugsuit out of my bag and then went about the business of disrobing.

Already she was getting started.

"Geez! Not even a greeting for me? Talk about rude!"

I kept pulling off my clothes, hoping that she would lose interest.

"You're even gloomier than usual today, if that is even possible."

Why can't she just understand that I do not wish to speak with her?

She just kept going and going.

"You know, one might almost start to believe what Hikari said about you and Baka Shinji having a lover's quarrel or something."

She's like a chimpanzee. Only ever comcerned with who is mating with who, who is picking fleas of whose fur, and who's at the top of the pecking order.

Does she really think this is what it's all about? That it's all so simple?

Well. One cannot even blame her. Humans are just like that.

Even I cannot claim to be different, in so far as this shell of mine is part human.

The stench of ape clings to us all.

I kept trying to look very busy arranging my plugsuit boots so that I could slip my feet inside of them, trying my best not to even look up at her.

Though it was not as if this would deter her.

If anything, the lack of a response only seemed to agitate her, as if I were personally withholding from her something that belongs to her by not providing the reaction she wanted:

"But you're not fooling me! Are you expecting me to buy that you suddenly have feelings, too?"

And why would I tell her my feelings, if she's already so certain about what they are?

You cannot communicate with someone who is convinced they already have the answer.

They will just substitute their made up idea of you for whatever you say.

They will just keep projecting on you whatever they want, and I know I cannot stop her.

Does she think telling me how strange and repulsive she finds me is going to make me talk to her more?

Does she think it will make me speak to her about my feelings when she makes it clear that she doesn't find them acceptable, or even believable?

I could tell her what they are and she would just insist that they are wrong.

They they should be stronger, lesser, different -

She isn't interested in what the answer is. Only in the conformity and attention that she feels entitled to.

She just keeps going and going and with every word she says, it becomes clearer and clearer that her mind is already made up:

"I bet that frigid little pokerface of yours wouldn't even twitch if Baka Shinji got killed before your eyes. You'd probably shoot him yourself, if Commander Ikari told you to."

In hindsight, it says something about just how weary I was that I could not be bothered to keep from responding to her:

"Just for a moment, think about why the Commander would be giving such an answer, if it really came to pass. It would almost certainly be because it is the only possible option to avert something even worse. Because there is no other choice.

Do you really think the world is no bigger than yourself and all your petty rivalries and drama? Have you never bothered to consider how it is that we came to be in this situation to begin with? I would take no pleasure in following such an order, but there's much more to consider than just what we want."

"Are you calling me stupid, freak?"

If I were by myself, I think I might have let out a bone-deep, weary sigh.

She doesn't understand. Nobody understands.

Nobody is ever going to understand.

All of this is pointless.

"Please stop talking to me. I do not wish for any conversation with you. If you keep harassing me, I am going to report this to Major Katsuragi."

"As expected of an obedient little teacher's pet."

By this point, she was done changing, so she left it at this, exiting the room with one last haughty snicker of condescension.

I did not bother calling anything after her, it would only serve to prolong this same foolish, pointless game.

I am so, so tired


You know what one of my least favorite ff tropes of all time is? The 'first argument' - when the author decides that the characters need to have an argument now because they consider it a milestone or extra drama or part of realism, and then for a chapter or so whatever interesting characters you wanted to read about when you click on the fanfic temporarily get replaced by a bunch of generic sit com characters so they can perform 'having an argument' - bonus points if its needlessly gendery or throws a good bit canon characterization or situational urgency out the window so that everyone involved seems to be temporarily possessed by the ghost of a jerk for no reason.

Sure, it may be realistic for your characters to occasionally have an argument, but how about making it flow naturally as a consequence of some plot event, from their particular differences or painful limitations, the rough parts in their dynamic? That way it's actually charged with meaning & doesn't feel like an extraneous plot tumor.

But of course, you know what they say. If you're complaining you're only part of the problem. If the exact thing you want doesn't exist, you've got to make it yourself.