3. A long dark walk through the night, pt 1

Rei Ayanami sat in a wooden chair across from Rei Ayanami.

"I believe you are the third," one of them said. "I was the second. It is nice to meet you."

The one who was the third cleared her mind. There had been a great eye in the sky, something that looked like an Angel but felt strangely more familiar. There had been a great noise, and a light, and flashes of memories. Then she was here.

Before that, she had briefly become a god. She had fused with the Seeds of Life and begun Instrumentality under Shinji's hand. After he chose to reverse it, her body had disintegrated, but her spirit had remained on the Earth. She had seen Shinji on the beach, she had seen him on the street, she had seen herself rejecting the Commander.

I am not your doll.

"You are dead," the one who was third said.

"As are you," replied the other. "And yet, here we are."

The third Rei looked around. She was in a nothing space, a great grey expanse of nothing in particular. There were just two chairs, and her. And her.

The second Rei was still wearing the plugsuit she had died in. She had a look on her face that was almost a frown, a tiny crinkling of her brow and lips. The third Rei tried to clear her head of the lingering thoughts and sensations that plagued her.

Why am I here? Why am I alive?

She felt her own death all around her. She had been strangled to death when she was just a child, barely able to walk. She had been annihilated in a wall of flame after she detonated her own Evangelion unit. She had crumbled into pieces after Instrumentality failed, her brief touch with godhood sputtering out like a candle under water. She had been blended to death – so many of her blended – destroyed like chaff in vat of nutrient fluid.

Most people only get to die once.

"Why am I alive?"

The other Rei – the Rei who had come second – said: "We have not yet fulfilled our purpose."

This did not help the strange feeling inside of her. She had thought her purpose had been Instrumentality – to follow the Commander's plan to unite humanity. That is what she had been told all her life. Or at least, it was what had been coded into her head by NERV's geneticists. Her life – she reminded herself – had only really lasted a few months.

But at the end she had rejected this purpose. She had cast the Commander aside and given Instrumentality to Shinji's control. Even now, her head pounded when she remembered the feeling of severing Gendo's hand, of floating up to merge with the great white being who owned her soul.

"Was I wrong to do that?" she wondered aloud.

Perhaps her version of Instrumentality had been a mistake. She had wanted to give Shinji happiness, wanted to give him the chance to create a world where better things were possible, but the world he had created was empty and dark. There was no happiness to be found there.

"I do not know," the other Ayanami said slowly. "Although… I believe I would have done the same."

"I see," Rei said. "Then what now?"

"Now it is different," the other said. "The crown of light has been placed on our heads."

"Yes," Rei said, not understanding her words, but feeling somehow that her meaning was right. It was a remarkably similar feeling to when she had united with Lillith. Her brain was lost, but her soul told her that it was the most natural thing in the world.

"We have another chance," she said.

The other Rei nodded. "You do. This time you may set things on a different path."

She had a new purpose. She was going to right her wrong - and do it properly this time.

"I know what I must do," she said.

She was going to save them all.

Then she was back in her grey room, alone.

Kaworu woke up with Ode to Joy in his head.

This wasn't anything new. Kaworu always woke up with Ode to Joy in his head, especially after starting anew. The supreme art of the Lillin had guided him to many a new life. The song had persisted in his head throughout his last life. It had been the last thing going through his mind at the end of his last life, when Shinji's hand crushed him. As always, Shinji's face had been the last thing he'd saw before he died.

No, that wasn't quite right. He had died, yes, but he hadn't returned here immediately. He had reappeared on a beach and met Shinji again - not a new Shinji, but the same. And then Ayanami, who was in so many ways like him, and yet so different. Then a mysterious man, and an unknown creature that filled the sky, and only then did he awaken in his bed.

Kaworu looked at the room around him. It was familiar - sloping white walls, sparse decor, a simple bed. It was the same room as the last time, before he ventured down to NERV, met Shinji, and was crushed to death. A pleasantry. He always preferred when there was minimal difference between each incarnation - less time spent on adjusting meant more time on what really mattered.

A voice crackled out of a speaker: "God's in his heaven, all's right with the world."

Kaworu smiled. The familiar code words, letting him know the cycle had begun anew. His reply was well rehearsed: "For God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son, that whoever believes in Him may not perish, but have eternal life."

A pause, and then a response: "Welcome back, Tabris."

Da da da da daaa daaa da.

The twelfth Angel appeared just as it had the first time. First, a black shadow across the ground that gently sucked at the streets of Tokyo-3. Then, a zebra-stripe orb hovering silently in the sky.

Rei remembered what had happened the first time. The hovering sphere was merely the shadow, the true angel was the black mass on the ground. It had devoured Shinji, only for him to burst out the next day, killing the Angel in the process. There was no point attacking the sphere.

Section-2 had shuffled her from the apartment into the depths of NERV headquarters with all the speed she was used to. She was changing into her plugsuit before she had finished rubbing the sleep out of her eyes. Her first contact with Shinji and Asuka was through their Evangelions.

They were positioned apart from each other, Asuka's red Eva standing ahead, Shinji a way behind her. They weren't speaking. Rei wondered if anything had happened between them.

Misato's voice was clear and crisp over their comms. "One unit will lead the charge. The other two will provide support."

"I'll do it." Asuka's reply was instant, before either of the other could speak. She was already running, making sure she'd arrive before the others.

"Asuka, slow down! Damnit, is this about the synch scores?" Misato's voice came out.

There was a pause before Asuka answered. "Synch scores? Of course not! I'm going first because I'm the best!"

Rei cast her mind back. The last time, the twelfth angel had emerged the day after Shinji had eclipsed the both of them in his synch score. Asuka had goaded him into taking the lead position, and he had been swallowed.

Asuka had hesitated before she answered, as if she was figuring out what Misato was referring to. To Rei, this was a piece of evidence towards the theory that Asuka at least had also travelled back in time. Rei desperately needed to confirm her theory, but she would have to wait until they were out of their Evas. She had spent enough time with Commander Ikari to know that their unit's private channels weren't really all that private.

A shadow crossed Rei's mind. She had not spent all that much time with the Commander. She had not witnessed the first assault of the twelfth Angel. She had never seen Shinji rise to the top of the synch scores. That had all been the second Rei, who's memories were interfering with her own. Perhaps that is why she had been sent back, to relive the experiences of her predecessor and correct the course. If that were the case, it would point to her being the only one to be sent back – Asuka's hesitation a mere idiosyncrasy caused by stress.

Unit-02 reached the edged of the dark sea on the floor and climbed a nearby building, perching like a bird of prey on the top. Cautiously, Asuka fired a round of shots from her Eva's pistol to no avail, the bullets sinking into the liquid shadow and disappearing.

Rei knew that the Angel was immune to attacks from above. They could fire off as many bullets as they wanted, it wouldn't penetrate the Dirac Sea. But she wasn't going to let the Angel take Shinji again. She had a plan.

Underneath the armour plating, stashed between her prog knife and backup pistol, Rei had a N2 bomb.

Unit-02 stretched a hand towards the floor, an AT field flickering at the end of its palm. It's other hand slowly drew its progressive axe from its holster on the unit's back. Asuka's voice rang out.

"Ayanami! Push at it with your AT field!"

Rei muttered an affirmative into the comms. This is what the plan had been last time, to use their two units AT fields against the Angel's inverted one, leaving it vulnerable. Although last time the plan was to bombard it with 992 N2 bombs, not one progressive axe. A potential hiccup.

She pushed her field outwards, feeling it catch against the Angel's. It was an odd sensation; the inverted AT field had a distinctly different texture than a regular one. Usually, two colliding fields caught against each other instantly, like rubbing sandpaper together. This one felt more like trying to grip a wet bar of soap. She probed around, trying to find a way to properly connect.

Rei could sense Asuka was having similar issues. In the distance, Shinji's Eva stood, gun trained on the sphere. Rei wondered why Shinji was not helping. Perhaps he was keeping up appearances by aiming at what looked like the Angel, to not raise suspicions among the NERV staff… or perhaps Asuka had said something to him. Something to keep him at a distance.

Rei desperately needed to speak with him.

Her AT field finally connected, locking into the Angel's inverted field. She pushed at its sides, found a way to move it. It wasn't the same as eroding the field of a typical Angel. It was like she was manipulating her field through a maze that she couldn't see. She felt a small wedge in the inverted field, pushed her own in and felt it catch, felt Asuka's field beside hers forcing its way in, felt an opening gradually getting wider.

Asuka drew her arm back, clutching the progressive axe by its very end. With the force of her whole body, she hurled it downwards, towards the now exposed inky blackness.

A tendril of the blackness whipped out, too fast to react to. It collided with the axe in mid-flight, shearing straight through it. Shattered pieces of axe flew through the air, the axe head somersaulting high into the sky before landing in the puddle of dark with a soft splash.

Then the buildings began to sink.

Asuka reeled back, the red Evangelion teetering. "Damnit! That didn't happen last– I didn't know it could do that!"

Misato's voice came over the comms. "It's alright. Asuka, Rei, fall back! We'll analyse the Angel more before sending you back in."

Rei had no intention of falling back. She flicked on her comms.

"Pilot Soryu, please maintain your AT field. I will neutralise the Angel from the inside."

There was a cacophony of voices over the comms system. Misato, Shinji, Ritsuko – even Asuka was voicing some form of protest. Rei ignored it all. She could feel the Angel's inverted field still had an opening – an opening large enough to accommodate Unit-0. Silently, flicking open her armour plating to prime her N2 bomb, she slipped off her building and into darkness.

This is my purpose.

The cafeteria was just as it was before.

Off-white walls. A mediocre bowl of fried rice. The old steel chair by the door still had one leg slightly shorter than the other three, leaving it tilting at an angle. It was Kaworu's favourite chair, the off-kilter sitting situation providing just a tiny bit of excitement to break up the monotony of the white-walled facility.

It was almost off putting, how similar it was. Kaworu was used to variations on the theme, to noticeable differences each time he went around. He had been born in bases and facilities across the world and beyond. He had awakened in the depths of the sea, inside volcanos, in a floating fortress among the clouds. He had seen facilities with technology so advanced they made the Evas look analogue, and he had seen facilities made of carboard and cobwebs. The Book of Life has many pages. This time, however, things looked exactly as they had been the last time.

Even Gatto was back.

Gatto – that old Siamese cat – strutted its way across the tabletop and leaped into Kaworu's arms, snuggling in like it had never left. Kaworu petted it absentmindedly.

Whether things were different or not was irrelevant. There was still a Shinji to meet, and this time ideally, to save. There was a Shinji out there who needed him.

A voice came again over the speakers. "Tabris. Your Evangelion is completed. The scenario is intact, you will be deployed when the time is ready. Only five Angels remain."

"Doesn't this all seem familiar to you?", Kaworu said.

There was no response. Kaworu smiled. He had spent lifetime after lifetime cultivating a set of expectations for himself, one of which included a proclivity to spout cryptic phrases. There was nothing he could say that could surprise the higher ups at SEELE.

And maybe – he was hoping - nothing he could do.

Da da da da da d da da da daa du da.

Everything was black.

Rei had not been prepared for such blackness. Even her room, in the dead of night, with the lights out and her eyes screwed shut, had not been such perfect darkness. It was an absolute nothing, a void that consumed all light. The inside of the Angel was a truly sunless space.

Then there was the slightest flicker of light, a tiny blue glow. It took Rei more than a few moments to realise it was emanating from her. Her eyes were drawn to a tiny red dot, which gradually bloomed into a flower, crimson wings spreading bright against the pure black backdrop. Asuka.

"Wondergirl," Asuka said. "I should be so lucky."

"Pilot Soryu," Rei said. "What are you doing here?"

Asuka folded her arms, a subtle movement of red-on-red-on-black. Her tone was accusatory. "Not even a day back and you're already trying to outdo me. What game do you think you're playing at?"

Rei ignored her primary question, her mind preoccupied. "So you have been sent back as well. You remember the past? The… last time we were here?"

"Of course I do! What, you thought you were the only one?" Asuka sneered. "It's you, me, and the idiot. And apparently, two other people I've never met, which is just perfect. Stuck with a psycho, a doll, and complete unknowns. I should strangle that goat the next time I see him."

"That is good to know," Rei nodded. Something still nagged at her, though. "Did you follow me in?"

Asuka rolled her eyes. "Don't think I came in here to save you or anything. I just know you're going to need my help. Anyway, I'm not letting you steal my glory like that, Wondergirl. Let me handle this."

"I cannot," Rei said. "This is my purpose. I must destroy this Angel myself."

"Ohhh, look at miss high and mighty over here! Since when did you get a backbone like that?" Asuka sneered. "Did someone tell you to act like this? Was it the Commander?"

Rei mulled her words over for a moment. "No. I believe… I am doing this for myself."

She looked up into Asuka's eyes. "I am going to detonate my Evangelion and destroy the Angel from the inside. If you remain inside your Evangelion, you should be safe. Please do not attempt to stop me."

Asuka's eyes burned into her. Something was being left unsaid. Rei was never good at intuiting what people meant when they weren't speaking.

The two pilots stared into each other's eyes. Red and blue. Blue and red.

"If you remember," Asuka began, through gritted teeth, "when we first met, I said we should be friends."

"I remember," Rei said, passive as ever.

"That didn't exactly work out, did it?" Asuka said, still scowling. Rei was unmoved. She was used to being on the receiving end of the Second Child's scorn.

But she thought on everything they had been. She thought of a long moment in an elevator, one that ended in Asuka striking her face. She thought of all the foul words Asuka had hurled, towards Shinji, towards the Commander, and especially towards her. And yet, she though of what she had seen of Asuka during Instrumentality. A lonely, broken girl, lashing out. A girl who, in another world, could have been a friend.

Rei found her mouth moving, almost without her intent. "I never hated you, Asuka."

She was surprised to hear herself say it. Maybe it was just the darkness, or the red and blue light, or the lingering effects she felt from Instrumentality. Whatever the reason, she knew one thing; the words were true. The truth in them shocked her.

Asuka- to her credit – looked even more shocked still.

Then the floor dropped out, and there was darkness again.

This time, his Evangelion was a deep blue. Mark-06, they had called it. He didn't worry about the naming conventions. He had seen far too many variations; with no consistent theming he could discern.

The cockpit was warm, the feeling of LCL a welcome change from the chill of the lunar atmosphere. The second he powered the Evangelion on, alarm bells started blaring all around him. That didn't matter. It was far too late to stop him now.

He felt the Eva seize up – someone had triggered the manual remote shutdown. An easy fix. Kaworu extended into the Eva and bypassed the shutdown, switching the Eva back on. Just as it was with every Eva, synchronizing was as easy as breathing. The clamps around the Eva's feet sloughed off like sand – nothing in the face of the Eva's overwhelming strength.

The Mark-06 hovered slowly upwards, the moon's gravity no match for its AT field. Below him, SEELE operatives gathered around, desperately trying to stop the ascent. One fired something at him – some kind of rocket, perhaps - that bounced harmlessly off.

Kaworu felt, rather than heard, the fighters mobilising. Off course there was no air at Tabgha base, so his brain must have supplied the screams independently. Three jets flew past him, pelting his AT field with a rain of bombs, the blasts doing nothing but temporarily obscuring his vision. They weren't even N2 weapons.

The fighters turned for a second pass. Kaworu pointed two fingers at the incoming jet, his Eva's hand the shape of a gun.

"Bang," he said.

The jet exploded into a short-lived ball of blue flame, snuffed out almost immediately by the vacuum. He turned as the other two passed by, pointing at them in turn.

"Bang! Bang!"

Two more fireballs, and the force was defeated. The Evangelion continued to rise, the base shrinking rapidly underneath him. SEELE didn't have a single piece of weaponry in the base with the capacity to stop a rogue Evangelion, let alone one with Kaworu at the helm.

If the Commodore wanted him to stay so badly, she would have to come get him herself.

Inside, he saw all of what he knew. Stretching before him, the pale blue dot the Lillin called home. The moon, the stars, the sky.

"I'm coming home, Shinji," he said.

The only response he received was the quiet purring from Gatto, curled up by his feet.

Once again, Rei Ayanami came face to face with Rei Ayanami.

It was a different space this time. Where the last one had been blank, this one was distinctly orange tinted, and smelled vaguely of LCL. Rei wondered if this was a sign if reality bleeding into the psychic space – after all, she was still submerged in LCL. If that was true – if this was some form of illusion or mental projection, then there remained the possibility of accessing her unit. She could still detonate the bomb.

"You are back," Rei stated matter-of-factly, eyeing the other Rei. This time the chairs were gone, and they stood freely. Rei reached out with her mind, trying to connect with her Eva. She felt she could almost touch it, but it lingered on the outskirts of her mind. She could reach it; he just needed more time.

"Yes," the other Rei said, after a moment. "We were not finished our discussion."

"Is this my purpose?"

The other Rei tilted her head. "Yes. You are on the right path."

"I cannot reach my Eva. Will you help me?"

The other Rei paused again, her eyes flickering. "I will assist you all I can, but you do not need your Eva."

This was an unexpected development. What did this other Rei want? She had said she was on the right path, but now she was leading her away. Is it possible she didn't know what Rei was planning? If she was her – if they were inside her mind – then she would expect her to know. After all, she had met her death in the same way.

Rei studied her copy's eyes. "Why are you here?"

"I want to know you," she replied.

"But I am you."

"Yes, but also you are not. I want to understand you."

"You want to… understand me?"

The other Rei stepped closer. "Yes," she said. "I want to understand others, but to do that I must first understand myself. The only person who can take care of you is you. So let me understand you."

Where had Rei heard that before?

Rei examined the other's eyes more closely. There was something else there, something she recognised from mornings in front of the mirror. The Rei she had seen earlier had a certain softness in her eyes, a rounding she had not seen before. There was none of that in this Rei's eyes. Either she was a reflection of Rei herself, or she was something else entirely. Rei moved forwards and put one hand on her double's cheek, the flesh oddly cold.

"I want you to be the greatest, Rei. I want you to win," the double said.

That settled it.

"You are not the second Rei Ayanami. You are not Rei Ayanami at all."

Rei squeezed the imposter's cheek, gently at first, but then harder and harder. Her flesh was like dough, moulding at her touch. Her farce warped and melted around her fingers, collapsing over itself. The rest of the body followed suit, the ex-Ayanami falling into a puddle of doughy mass on the floor. Whatever material had made her up bubbled softly, then faded away.

"I did not expect you to see through it so quickly," a woman's voice said.

There was a woman there, where before there had been nothing. She wore a brown dress and had no face.

No, she did have a face. It was just that her features were so unremarkable, Rei couldn't find any words to describe them. The minute she looked away; she couldn't remember a single thing about how the woman looked. Was she tall? Short? What colour was her hair? Her eyes?

"Who are you?" Rei asked.

The woman was looking at her without a hint of an expression. "I was told to do this with you, but I suppose there's no reason I can't do it alone."

She and looked up. Where the was previously nothing there was now a window, or perhaps a screen. Through it, Rei could see the cityscape where she had been just minutes ago. A long line of buildings ringed Unit-01. The woman raised her arms, and two shadowy tentacles appeared, just like the one that had disarmed Asuka. Two wicked barbs, aimed at Unit-01's chest.

Rei's stomach dropped.

"Why are you doing this?" she asked.

"Because I want you to win," the faceless woman said.

Then Asuka fell from the roof.

Shinji faced the Angel alone.

Rei had disappeared into the darkness, and Asuka had followed not long after. Shinji knew what they were going through. A combination of the claustrophobic monotony of being trapped in the staling LCL and the psychological invasion as Leilel tried to access their memories. Shinji wasn't sure how he had escaped the first time, but he had the impression it had something to do with his mother's soul. He only hoped that somehow, Asuka's mother was capable of doing the same thing. He tried not to think of Rei, how he didn't even know if there was another soul in Unit-0, if she even had a way out.

Although the Angel wasn't acting exactly the same way it had before.

Misato was screaming over the comms, telling him to retreat. Honestly, he wanted to – he really did – but the thought of the two other pilots in there kept him put. He had spent sixteen hours in hell, slowly suffocating as his mind was poked at. If he could save them, he should. He knew he should.

Right?

But what was he meant to do?

Misato's voice rang out once more: "Shinji! Fall back right now! Goddamnit, listen to me!"

He turned his head, looking back at the city. Retreating would not be hard, just three or four buildings separated him from the edge of the darkness. His Eva could make those leaps without any real difficulty. He could get to a safe distance, allow the scientists at NERV the time to work out a plan. If the Angel was the same as last time, it wouldn't do anything to harm the pilots inside. Rei and Asuka would have the sixteen hours of life support that an Eva can manage.

Although if it was like last time, would the scientists even be able to make a rescue plan? As far as he knew, they hadn't made one for him.

Shinji felt himself sinking. The darkness was sucking at the building he was on, pulling it down. He reached out his AT field, stretching it against the surface of the liquid shadow. It recoiled at the touch, flowing away. He actually felt himself rise slightly, the shadow spitting out the end of the building it was swallowing.

He felt a small, tentative glimmer of hope. His AT field was having an effect – not just negating the Angel's form but repelling it. If he kept it up, he could make progress. He could defeat it. He could rescue them.

"It's alright, Misato!" he said. "It's working! I've got this-"

He was cut off when the darkness bubbled, and a tendril struck outwards. It struck straight through Shinji's AT field, splitting it like wood. The tendril collided with his Eva's outstretched palm and pierced all the way through, snaking up his arm and exiting through the back of his shoulder.

The pain was immense. His entire arm was alight, every nerve from his palm to his shoulder screaming. He forced his brain into the regular processes, the subroutines he'd worked out over almost a year of piloting an Eva. He told himself the pain wasn't real, that his arm was still there, still attached and functional.

It almost worked, until the next tendril hit.

The second tendril was followed by a third, and a fourth, and another and another. Tentacle after tentacle pierced his Eva, skewering him through the arm, leg, midsection, shoulder. The tentacles jerked upwards, and his Eva was physically lifted into the air, dangling from the Angel's pins.

He was a puppet, captive on the Angel's string. Every inch of his body was pain beyond belief, half a dozen puncture wounds spraying blood. He tried in vain to move, the synchronisation between his brain and the Eva telling him his muscles and tendons were severed and useless.

I should have run away, he thought, through the haze of pain.

But he hadn't. In fact, he couldn't. Asuka and Rei were in there, and they weren't getting out.

In the cold light of the day, he wished – just for a brief second - that there was another way it could have been done.

There were seven of them gathered in the courtyard. Seven, like there were always going to be.

Him. His brother. His sister. The gardener. The hunter. The priest.

And her.

She was smiling – the damn woman. She was the only one smiling. Even the stupid hunter had the presence of mind to look solemn for once.

This was the way it always was to be. The seven of them were selected by no accident. They had been prepared all their lives, training and living in it for all time. This was all he knew. This was what he was here for.

Why did he feel so sick?

She smiled at him and said: you're going to be okay. She put her hand on his shoulder.

He was disgusted at how much it helped.

He said: I thought you were meant to be the scared one.

She said: You're ready. Go give 'em hell.

He refrained from commenting on the irony.

Author's note: This and the next chapter were originally going to be one whole chapter but then they got really long. Next chapter will be coming soon.

In order to understand the psychic energy I was attempting to channel with this (and the next) chapter, please listen to every Modest Mouse album.