Crumpled up and abandoned, the former Evangelion pilot Asuka Langley Soryu laid on the floor of Misato's kitchen. The room was thoroughly trashed. The table and chairs were overturned and broken apart. Asuka laid where she had been left for dead after her sole companion, Shinji Ikari, discarded her in favor of more apocalyptic ambitions. She didn't know how long it had been. It felt like only seconds ago, but it could have easily been centuries or longer. She was aware of existing in a ceaseless present time.
She felt something wet on her toes and recoiled. Making a sudden movement helped shake her into a higher level of awareness. She rolled herself into a half-upright position. Her feet had touched a puddle of spilled coffee, now cold. She remembered everything.
Everything meant in its most holistic sense. She was one of billions of undulating human minds swirling around in a singular multiplicity. The feeling of relative insignificance was not altogether new to her. Asuka hated herself. The vivid awareness of her billionth's share of human consciousness presented her with a particular sense of perspective. She had always sought to place herself at the center of everything, but there was no place of honor in the new shapeless world with no internal boundaries.
She felt her own mind shining through a prism that refracted what made up the whole of herself into every color of the human experience. The prying turned into abrasion, a scraping away of her wholeness into digestible component chunks.
Asuka felt a billion other billionths of the new being pressing in upon her, too. Their rapturous glee at seeing her for who she was horrified her, their erotic bliss with their new-found intimacy disgusted her. They pried into every seam and pulled her apart along every hatred, fear, anxiety, loneliness, and the empty place for love. They held each aspect of herself up to their faces like mirrors. In so many words, in languages Asuka did not know but could now understand, they called out:
You are me, too. We feel the same. We are more alike than we ever knew.
"You don't understand me! Nobody can understand me! Get out of my mind!"
Asuka pushed herself up against a kitchen cabinet and coughed hard. She tasted coppery LCL come up which she spat onto the floor. She wiped her mouth on the stolen yellow shirt she wore.
"Where'd you go?" she groaned. "Come finish the job. You stupid coward. You never finish anything off! Except yourself!"
Asuka could feel his absence even out of all the billions.
She surveyed the upended ruin of their home. She felt responsible for it. Responsibility swelled into a perverse sense of satisfaction. This had been her work. It had taken her a lot of time and tears to get here.
She had finally proven herself right. After all those false starts, false hopes, and one terrible kiss, Asuka had proven categorically to herself for all time that the Shinji she needed—had thought she needed—did not exist. Could not exist. She had given him every opportunity.
"He'd rather jerk off by himself than hold me."
She ruminated on those words. When thrown at him, they hit like bullets. The blowback burned her, also. She bore witness to his memories of the act, many of them simultaneously, passed into her through the bond of Instrumentality. She rubbed her neck.
"I can't believe I believed all this time I might be more to him. That's what was behind all his stupid smiles and his stupid 'sorry's'."
Another memory that wasn't her own came over her. It was the ghost of his voice calling out in the new world of introspection: "You're the only one for me!"
"Liar!" she hissed back. He had begged for anybody to save him when she refused him, so anybody else would have done in the end. Asuka was proven right.
"Help me, save me!" called out from her memory.
"As if that would flatter me into forgiving what you did," she growled. "Conceited little boy. Jerking off to the whole world. They never asked you to do this. And then what did you go and do, huh?"
There was no answer.
"Why aren't you here?!" Asuka screamed.
She kicked at a toppled chair. It skittered across the floor into the upturned table., She hugged her knees to her chest to crush out the rage. The needy billionths came creeping back at the edge of her awareness. She pressed herself back together, wiping tears from her eyes with her borrowed yellow shirt.
Asuka got to her feet. Rather, she remembered being on the floor and then she was already standing on the cold tile. Intent served as implication, convenience instead of chronology dictated the order of events. Adapting to this world was different the physical struggle she had expected. She wondered where she truly was and where she had to go. The cloying verisimilitude of the apartment fell apart under closer consideration. She wasn't really there.
"If you're nowhere, that means you can go anywhere," she remarked to the domestic ruin, then marched out of the kitchen and through the apartment door.
Asuka emerged into one of the anonymous corridors that criss-crossed the GeoFront. She looked behind her to see that there was no doorway, only more corridor.
"I'm dead and I still can't leave this place? Wunderbar."
She perceived a dripping red warmth that ran down her right arm. When she looked, there didn't seem to be anything the matter. Nothing was amiss other than that the right sleeve of her plug suit was torn apart and hung in ribbons from her shoulder and wrist.
"My plug suit?" Asuka ran her left hand along the slick material. It was the second time that day she had woken up in the suit without having put it on herself. The thought made her hair prickle, and it pushed against the fabric.
"I am dead, right?" she asked the corridor. Nobody replied. She continued walking.
She replayed the last few seconds of her life as she understood them. The monsters descended on her. Tearing. Then they leapt into the air to prepare the killing blow. Her lips formed the words. I'll kill you, I'll kill you, I'll kill you. A second presence in the entry plug crawled towards her. The presence was intensely familiar even through the bloody murk of LCL. And at his touch, her miserable physical existence ended with a pop. Asuka felt her lips.
"Did he regret it? Did he think I wouldn't find out?!"
She and Shinji had ricocheted in and out of each other's minds saying nothing particularly new but learning a great deal about one another. Memories struck her like tidal waves. He had brought them both back to the moment where she had thrown down the gauntlet. Where, with a kiss, she had for the second and final time of her life confessed her need to be loved to somebody who would not reciprocate. He balked as he had before. Strangling her, though, was different.
"You won't even hold me," Asuka said.
She was in Instrumentality, a word she learned from Misato's recollections moments or millennia before. It wasn't long before the titanic cacophony of several billion more souls poured into her—their—collective consciousness. The latter arrivals weren't remotely aware of what was going on. Their great upheaval drowned out Asuka's former guardian.
The sterile white hallway stretched onward into a fluorescent infinity. There was no geometry to her environment which left Asuka increasingly disoriented and nauseous. She braced herself by a window that opened onto the vast subterranean habitat. The silvery arc of the GeoFront's false sky shone brightly. There was no blue of natural sky there. No bombs had fallen here.
"It's not real."
Asuka looked down at the bucolic forest canopy. The trees should have been blown over and burnt into charcoal. In the distance, she could distinctly make out a small garden. She squinted at it, hoping to see a figure tending to the patch. The plots were overgrown, the gardener was gone. She continued walking.
Her plug suit began to bunch and peel back in awkward places. It was designed to form a hermetic seal around her body, but the battle damage made that impossible. Asuka felt self-conscious despite the emptiness that stretched ahead. She could feel it beginning to slough off.
"Just what I need, four billion perverts staring at me naked."
Asuka looked to the side to find she was miraculously if implausibly at the door to the locker room assigned to her and Rei. She stomped inside.
The locker room was also empty, which wasn't all that unusual. There had only ever been two female pilots, and one of them spent most of her time in the hospital recovery ward across the GeoFront campus. Asuka shuddered at the thought of her. She opened her locker to find her school uniform in its usual place, neatly folded and hung up, like she had just put it away before going off to battle.
"They made me wear that. They made me look like her."
The locker was, aside from her shoes and watch, otherwise empty. Asuka disengaged her plug suit's form fitting mechanism, but the seals were so wrecked that she ended up needing to tear herself free strip by strip. She slumped onto the changing bench and tore away. Peeling off each piece reminded her of the awful, awkward fitting sessions back at Nerv's Third Branch in Germany but in reverse.
"Sorry to ruin all your fine work, Herren," she mumbled. "You really outdid yourselves tailoring this thing. Anybody who worked in your department should've had their computers seized and scanned."
Bits of her pride came off with every piece. Her right sleeve fell to the floor in a haphazard coil with no effort at all. She had held up her hand to the monsters out of defiance. They had stripped her of that, too. She had won then lost her greatest battle. The last battle ever fought on Earth. In her fourteen years of life, Asuka could count two days when she wanted to live the most. The first day ended with her mother's death, the second ended with her own.
Asuka stood up and shook off the rest of the suit. The last scraps to hold on were the gauntlets with their shackle-like cuffs. She let them fall to the floor with a dull clunk, then reached up to her hair. Her red headsets came out with some knots of matted red hair. She held one in each palm, hefting them. They were somewhat heavy to wear as improvised hair clips, but she had long decided that she could bear the minor discomfort in order to wear such a obvious symbol of her own greatness and authority. Everywhere she went in Tokyo-3, others knew the weight of responsibility she bore for their sake and often thanked her. Her headsets were like a crown, though unlike royalty she had earned the right to wear them.
"My inheritance, from Mama. Was I born into this? Did Mama choose for me, by entering the Eva?"
The headsets felt like two leaden lumps in her fists.
Asuka turned back to her locker. Ordinarily she would have placed the headsets on the shelf inside so she'd be ready to accessorize with them again after showering. Her eyes drifted down to the pile of rags by her feet. With two flicks, she sent the headsets flying deep into the darkness of the far locker room and into oblivion. Then she dug her heel into the ruined red heap on the floor and twisted it in, her teeth bared. She shambled into the shower.
The water gave her no comfort. She couldn't help but trace her fingers along the tell-tale signs of her mental breakdown. The tone of a youthful athlete had given way to protruding ribs and hip bones. Her muscles felt tight but without strength, like a rope pulled too taut. Everywhere she pressed felt hollowed out of flesh. She wanted to punch the tile, but she doubted she even had the strength to hurt herself anymore.
Showered and dried off, Asuka put on her school uniform. The silence of the locker room was hemmed in on all sides by the buzz of unintelligible voices. They came from the ceiling and the floor, too.
"What's the point in wearing this when there's no school left to attend?" Asuka babbled to fill her head with her own voice. "I guess I might as well. I guess I have no choice. What would Hikari say if I walked in without one? She let her moronic boyfriend off on dress code infractions every day. Who wears a tracksuit? Tacky." She pulled on the straps of the pinafore and pulled the red ribbon around her neck. "What would my classmates have said at Universität?" she said as she tied the bow.
Asuka felt a change in the atmosphere, a displacement of the hot humidity by somebody cold, clammy.
"You're here," she said.
She turned around. Rei Ayanami stood facing Asuka in front of her own locker wearing her own school uniform. Asuka looked her up and down.
"I hate that I have to look like you in any way."
Asuka balled her fists. She curled her toes into the remains of her plug suit underfoot. Rei's eerie red eyes returned Asuka's glare more attentively than they ever had in life. No longer dully impassive, Rei held her in a gaze suffused with curiosity. Asuka folded her arms across her chest and frowned. The portentous ache in the pit of her stomach she credited to anger, not fear.
"Well? Where's he gone off to? Isn't he your son or something?"
"I am not his mother," Rei replied. Her voice, though as monotone as Asuka remembered, contained hints of emphasis she hadn't detected before. An edge.
"So where is he?" she said with a haughty jerk of her head. "I wasn't through with him."
Rei looked upwards.
"Did he think he was through with me?" Asuka continued. "Will you ignore me, too?"
"He is gone."
"I know he's gone! Where?! Where can anybody go from here?"
"He has gone back into the world. He wanted to experience the boundaries between people again. He hopes to come to a new understanding between himself and others."
"Hah! So he ran away?" said Asuka. The idea of going back, though, sent her reeling. Whatever survived out there which waited for her couldn't be good.
Rei didn't respond.
"Of course he ran away. He does all of this, whatever this is, and he runs away. He finally, finally almost got what he wanted," Asuka raved on, unfolding her arms so she could caress her throat meaningfully, "and he still runs away! Invincible coward!" Asuka kicked her locker door shut.
"You gave him permission."
"What could that possibly mean?"
Rei didn't elaborate. Asuka understood what Rei had meant, and she knew Rei did, too. Asuka hadn't raised a hand to stop Shinji. She had goaded him into the act.
"Fine, he's gone. Gut. Can I go now?"
Rei glanced back upwards.
"Yes, but if you go you will die."
Asuka tasted LCL in her mouth again, or maybe it was simply her own blood.
"Is that a threat?"
"It is reality. Your injuries have left you weak and vulnerable. You would not be able to provide yourself with even basic needs."
Asuka looked down at her body, feeling certain places where she remembered the pain. Her flesh felt whole to her in this place, but she knew better. She remembered their tearing mouths, their spears. When she closed her eyes, she could feel it again. She pushed all of that down for now. Asuka knew she had plenty of time for those new nightmares to join the old ones.
She lunged at Rei. "He leaves me to die but I don't die! He tries to kill me but doesn't finish the job!" Asuka grasped Rei by the shoulders and shook. "Are you here to do it? What?! No!"
Asuka's hands passed through Rei's clothing as though she was shrouded in smoke. They sank into the flesh of Rei's shoulders. Their skin rippled and smoothed out into a single surface. She saw an orange tank full of blissful Rei doppelgangers. Crushed eyeglasses. A severed hand. The Earth from orbit but her feet still touched the ground. Her and Shinji passing into and through each other. The intimacy of it all was unlike anything Asuka had ever known.
Asuka ripped her hands free. They came out clean and with a snap. She took a step away from Rei, but tripped over her tattered plug suit and fell into the lockers.
"You cannot die here. The boundaries between our hearts were broken by Third Impact. A human organism was once composed of many complementary cells surmounted by a single mind. This new organism is made up of many minds which complement each other to form a single existence, a perfect understanding. Your emotions are the cells. As our bodies did not forget to regrow the cells we shed in life to maintain its wholeness, so this new organism will not forget that which makes it whole."
Rei paused to consider.
"However, I believe that you will only know pain here."
"My choices are pain or death?! So this is Hell?"
"This is neither a heaven nor hell. It is everlasting life in its most elementary form. A new organism we—"
"Who cares about any of that? What are you?"
"I do not know. But..."
Rei closed her eyes. Her lips curled up into the slightest of smiles.
"When did you learn that trick?"
"Before we met," Rei said before continuing. "But I know that here I am at home in the heart of this new world. Here I can experience humanity for the first time. I did not know how to interpret your words or your faces before. A word could have two opposite meanings, or ten meanings each similar but exclusive of one another. A face could have a thousand from moment to moment."
She opened her eyes, now full of inquiry. Asuka felt somebody else recalling her memories. That somebody recalled an elevator ride.
"You opened your heart to the Eva," Rei said finally.
Asuka swallowed a mouthful of clotted metallic vileness. She shook her head violently.
"Stay out! Freak!"
"There can be no secrets here," Rei said. She stepped towards Asuka, who flinched but didn't withdraw. "I would like to understand. Please?" She reached out her hand.
Asuka twitched her arm to slap Rei's away, but the plaintive simplicity of the request stayed her. She relaxed to indicate something like acquiescence. She was getting tired and giving in was getting easier. Rei placed the palm of her hand on Asuka's arm, muddling the border between them once again. She closed her eyes. Her lips stayed frozen in their typical near-frown. Asuka sensed memories of her early childhood. Of her mother and dolls and pride and loss. It wasn't like when the Angel had ripped through her mind. The sensation was reminiscent of hearing a movie playing in the theater next to her own.
In Asuka's theater, she saw scenes from the triple lives of Rei Ayanami. In the beginning there were so many cold hands. Four hands, two and two, had belonged to an Akagi. The hands got warmer. Four hands, two and two, had belonged to an Ikari. Gendo's had made her feel useful, but Shinji's made her feel recognized. From his hands, the heat had reached her face to turn it pink, an effect Rei considered miraculous in the moment.
Asuka saw that nobody new to Rei's life had chosen to be there in the sense that they were there for her company. Rei's life was their science fair project. They had degrees in engineering, medicine, or metaphysical biology. They had signed all the NERV confidentiality agreements and releases. Up until Shinji, Rei had never considered whether or not she herself could choose who to let in. She had nothing else but piloting the Eva.
Then Shinji had torn open her entry plug and begged her not to say goodbye or to say that she had nothing else. Rei realized she had been wrong. She could choose to have something beyond her given purpose. She chose to smile.
Asuka gritted her teeth at the scene played out before her.
"All that for you," she said.
Asuka opened her eyes—she didn't remember closing them—to find that they remained in their locker room, now clear of steam. Rei's lips parted and she inhaled a short, sharp breath. She withdrew her hand.
"Thank you, I understand better now," she said. Her eyes filled with sorrow.
Asuka rolled her eyes to break contact. "So you think you understand me, too?"
"We are alike and complementary. That was why we piloted Eva. We had nothing else. That is why we opened our hearts. We had no one else."
"Don't compare yourself to me."
"What makes us different is in how we experience loss. I have not felt the loss of somebody I needed. The people I have lost I chose to lose, or no longer needed. Those choices were necessary. How do you experience loss? Loss dominates your life for a life spent so alone."
"Do you want a medal for bravery?"
Rei thought.
"I do not want for anything here, nor need. What do you want?"
"Nothing!"
"Who do you need?"
"Nobody!"
"Then why do you want to leave here, the only place where he will never be?"
Asuka stood up.
"This is stupid. I'm tired of it. I have nothing left to say. You already know what I'm going to say before I say it! What else would I say to you, anyway? 'Good job blowing yourself up'? Well you didn't save him or the world so what good was it? We both lost, is that what you want to hear? That I'm no better than you? That we're the same kind of failure? I'm done! I'm leaving!"
Rei stepped aside to clear Asuka's path to the exit.
"He allowed for that choice."
"He allowed it?!" Asuka wailed. "He'll never choose what I can and can't do!"
Asuka leaned back against a wall that hadn't been there a moment before. They were in an elevator. The floor indicator ticked down. Rei faced the elevator door. Asuka kicked her foot into the wall.
"Here?! Here we go again! 'Open your heart'? I did. It's still there in my plug buried in that ruin above us, or below us, or wherever we are! Scoop it out and look inside!"
Asuka began to sob. Her own words called out to her: "If I can't have all of you, I don't want any of you!"
"I told him! You were there! I told him exactly what it would take! What did he do? He ends the world to get away from me! I hate him! I hate him!"
"If you go back, you will die."
"Maybe I want to! I didn't fight him! I let him! I let him!"
"You don't want to die," Rei said, peering over her shoulder for a
moment. Asuka thought her red eyes conveyed just the slightest hint of smug self-satisfaction, or maybe her rage had now blinded her. "You said so several times. You remember, as well can I."
Asuka for the first time felt fear in this place.
"When my previous self chose to die it was not a difficult decision for her to make," Rei continued. "Her choice then was clear: die and lose herself or lose those whom she loved. I have come to believe that is an aspect of what it means to love: Choosing to sacrifice oneself for the sake of others. When my previous self died, her love died, though. She did not love herself. I have learned from her example in that way as well."
"Stop talking!"
The floor indicator ticked lower. Rei tilted her head upwards.
"You bring yourself deeper."
"Please just shut up."
"Do you think it is possible to sacrifice part of oneself for the whole of oneself?"
"Stop."
"Do you think it is possible to love beyond destruction?"
"Just stop!"
Rei turned fully around to look at Asuka.
"Do you think need precedes love?"
Asuka shoved past Rei and punched the elevator's Emergency Stop button. The doors swung open and she stepped out into the sun, sea air, and the thick scent of a man's cologne.
つづく