(Pain)

I was recalled from whatever distant realms I had been dozing in to the cold harsh light of reality, the shrill artificial brightness of flashlight blazing straight into my face as soon as the main hatch of the entryplug had been dislodged from its position.

The paramedics climbed right in with practiced routine – it would have been a long, long day for all of them, considering the explosion in Matsushiro.

I was only half awake when they hoisted me onto a stretcher and began disassembling the top of my suit to get access to my chest and arms.

For all the time I had been drifting between wakefulness and sleep, the pain had burned inextinguished within my awareness, keeping me from drifting into unconsciousness altogether, and yet occupying all attention I may have given to the external world.

I felt a marked prick as an an infusion needle was inserted into the inside of my elbow.

I made some deliberate attempts to gather what had befallen in the meantime, but I couldn't follow the words spoken around me for long.

By the time I would reach the end of longer sentence, I would not longer know how it started.

When I heard an answer, I would have lost track of the question.

By and by, I felt a hazy sort of warmth leaking into my being.

I think it was sometime after the prick, but I could not make the connection between them at that moment – only later would I piece together that I had probably received a hefty dose of painkillers, and at last, must have drifted off to sleep from the relief the more that it started numbing the pain.

My next clear thought took place in NERV's infirmary, in my old familiar sickroom, soaked in that old familiar pallor of the much-diffused light from above.

It cast everything in desaturated hues that could not have been more different from the golden evenings that stood out in my memory as I tried to piece together the chain of events that resulted in my being here.

The overarching impression was of waking up after a dream, or what I imagine sobering up from a great intoxication must be like, though I could not speak from personal experience there.

There was a marked absence of surprise, or even disappointment.

Reality as I had always known it had merely reasserted itself after a fleeting erroneous lapse, just as I was daring to doubt it.

It's what I had expected all along, so it was hard to have all too great feelings about it.

Or maybe I was still processing it.

Who knows. Who was going to care?

I felt the blanket slide off me as I sat up, and found that I had been left in the main part of my suit, though the clasp at the neck had been undone to allow access to my chest, which I found wrapped in bandages. My arms were likewise wrapped up, especially the left one, and the inside of the right elbow still had a piece of gauze taped to it where the infusion had been connected before.

Given the current state of my limbs, I did not trust myself to affix the top half of my plugsuit back around my neck, but as the bottom half still sat loosely around by lower body, I was not sure I would manage to get up from the bed without stumbling over my own legs.

Knowing I would have to wait until someone saw it fit to concern themselves with me, I let my gaze wander out the large, panoramic windows of the room, looking out on the structures and buildings below.

The artificial lake in the geofront was easy to spot as always, but as my eyes followed the familiar shapes, something remarkable stood out to me – the sight of cranes erected atop NERV's pyramid, ostensibly replacing some of the outer paneling on the walls.

But how?

So far as I knew, the entire battle had taken place near Matsushiro, a good distance away from Tokyo-3 – and since I was still breathing here as proof of human situation continuing undisrupted, surely the angel must have been defeated.

Since I was seeing evidence of it, it must obviously have happened, yet still I found it hard to imagine a possible course of events that could have led the battle to escalate to the extent that it would involve the geofront… or rather, it was perfectly conceivable that such an ostensibly powerful angel could have gotten past Unit One, but if it had, then how could it have been stopped from making it all the way to Lillith without triggering the self-destruct mechanism?

At present, I had no way of finding out.

The dice had fallen, and all that could be done was to observe as the consequences unfolded.

Outside, down below, the cranes kept lifting objects up and down to the pyramid in the process of mending it.

After some indeterminate length of time, a physician arrived to run some tests and finally had a nurse affix the suit back to my body after they were done changing the bandages.

It was not considered necessary to tell me anything about just what exactly happened the day before.

Maybe they were used to me not asking – not long ago, I probably would have expected everything that was not considered necessary for me to know to be trivial and irrelevant.

There one was nothing and no one of whom the thought would have stung at me persistently like some particularly obstinate mosquito or a small rock lodged in one's shoe.

It was also perfectly possible that the medical staff simply did not know anything in detail.

I was to return over the course of the next few days to have them changed again and possibly run some follow-up tests, but for now, they saw no reason to keep me here any longer.

I was sent to wait in the hallway until they could send someone to discharge me properly, handing me painkillers first and such things.

Thus I went outside and sat down on the bench that stood there likely for the purpose of serving people on these sorts of waits.

It was there that I encountered the Second Child – she was leaning on the wall, still in her suit.

She had a token band-aid on her face and would undoubtedly have been given a checkup as a routine matter but by and large, she did not appear to have suffered any significant injuries.

I could not presume to know what she was really thinking or feeling deeper inside, but at least in posture and voice, she gave every impression of being entirely nonchalant.

She pounced upon my presence as if she had been presented with some entertainment to relieve her boredom.

"Ah, Miss Honor Student! I can't wait to hear how you defend the latest mischief of your favorite idiot!"

"...must you always refer to him in such a deprecating manner?"

"Don't look at me, Miss Favorite! I'm not the one who took Unit One on a crazy rampage while threatening to destroy half of headquarters!"

(...somehow, this did not shock me as much as it should have.)

"Why would Ikari-kun do such a thing?"

(In saying this, the slightest tone of deja-vu resonated along with my voice.)

"Beats me! But if you don't believe me, looking outside ought to convince you. They're still putting the tiled back on the roof of the pyramid."

I remembered the cranes outside.

"What happened?"

"He threw a tantrum like the over-sized baby that he is, is all. He went stomping on the building like some little brat stomping on a sandcastle. It was one giant baby's tantrum from start to finish. He refused to do his job, and then he got upset that others did it for him in ways he didn't like."

"What do you mean, he refused?"

"He wouldn't fight EVA 03 while there might be someone still inside. Stupid idiot! In wartime, it's kill or be killed! But what really galls me isn't even that he wouldn't fight – if he had decided to say 'Screw the orders' and that he was going to try saving Suzuhara no matter what, I could have respected that. At least then he would have made a decision.

But instead, he just completely refused to take any responsibility, and did nothing at all."

"He did not wish to take an innocent life."

"Hogwash! All he cared about is to keep his own hands clean. In the end, the Commander ended up having to switch on that auto-pilot thingy they'd been working on… and let me tell you, that thing isn't taking our jobs any time soon. It was totally crazy. They could barely control it. It tore Unit Three limb from limb, like some feral beast… but the bottom line is, this 'Dummy' or whatever was still loads more useful than stupid Shinji.

I dunno about Suzuhara, but if it were me, the first thing I'd do once I'm out of the hospital would be to punch that idiot in his stupid face! I'd never forgive him for disfiguring my beauty, too."

"...disfiguring?"

"Yeah – Suzuhara lucked out and survived, but he lost his leg. I guess now he's gonna have to stop making playing sports into his entire personality."

I could not detect the slightest hint of sympathy or compassion anywhere in her speech and demeanor.

"What happened Ikari-kun?"

"What do you think? They knocked him out by cranking up the LCL pressure and cut him from his entry plug with a laser torch. He might have gotten lucky after his last stupid stunt, but this is probably the end of the line for him. He's finished as a pilot. There's no way he's going to bounce back. Not a chance."

As in the incident with the thirteenth angel, she gave not the slightest indication that she would particularly miss a person she had lived under the same roof with for months.

She spoke with such contempt as most people typically reserved for vermin.

"He's weak. I mean, to begin with, he only became a pilot 'cause his parent told him to. He never had any real conviction or drive. This kind of mess was really inevitable when you consider that he's not really pilot material at all!"

I waited until I was more or less certain that she was done gloating, since I doubt that she would otherwise thought to answer what it would never occur her to weigh in about:

"Is Ikari-kun going to be okay?"

"He's still knocked out, but he doesn't have any physical injuries. He'll wake up soon enough. I bet he's escaping into some pleasant dreams right now…"

"Dreams?"

"Yeah – do you not get those or what?"

It really should not surprise me that she would not think me capable of that…

I'm sure the hurt must have shown on my face, if only slightly.

But it should not surprise me that she did not notice that, either.

Nor the many disparate feelings that had rippled through my consciousness like sparkles of many colors or tones of many qualities, occurring, welling up and sometimes subtly intermingling.

I did not doubt her account.

It all really made perfect sense -

That Ikari-kun could not bring himself to take a life… more yet, that he would outright refuse such orders… that I could see. Though uncommonly harsh, it was well within his nature, consistent with his decisionmaking and previously displayed priorities...

And the Commander, too, had merely acted like I would have expect him to.

He did what he had to do, whatever would be necessary, no matter the cost.

I could see the point in both courses of action – the necessity of pragmatic action, and yet, the painful unfairness of it – and yet, how this would not change the outcome.

I could follow both trains of thought, both lines of reasoning…

Understanding what must be, yet grieving that it must be so.

I could not cast either as wholly in the wrong, though they might see their courses as irreconcilable.

I would not discount one just to defend the other… that would have been too convenient, too self-blinding, too distorting of awareness and detrimental to the clarity I craved.

A dim dream pulled at me as well, a longing for what was missing from this world, the shadow of some synthesis were both the needs of sentiment and pragmatism could be harmonically reconciled…

But I was well aware that such a thing need not exist simply because I wanted it.

The human minds can imagine all sorts of things and always picture them sweeter than they had any hope of being.

So, I remained frozen in place.

Sitting right where I was.

Splintered in oxymoronic awareness. I could see the merit in both, I could not judge one to be more right than the other.

Had I been able to choose, either to do it or to refuse, as Ikari-kun had, things may have ended up different…

Not that there is any way to know.

I may have been overwhelmed either way, seeing how powerful the foe was.

There was no way to tell.

We might wonder about potentialities forever, but the only thing that did happen is what in fact happened.

Once something is past it can no longer be changed.

It can only be acted upon in hindsight.

Only the present can be influenced, but whenever I try, it seems to turn into the past far too quickly…

The Second Child was eventually picked up by Major Katsuragi. She had her arm in a sling and a bandage around her head, but she was standing and had likely been deemed fit to be walking around.

She also assured to us that Dr. Akagi was also alive.

That is good for both of them.

She took the Second with her, as for me, she simply sent me home, under orders to recuperate.

One could tell that she was stressed out, tired and, perhaps racked with guilt to what had happened with Ikari-kun while she was out of commission – she usually put more effort into affecting some superficial friendliness with me, but today she was quite terse and grateful, perhaps, that I would conveniently demand no consoling or cajoling from her.

I was willing to let her have that convenience.

I didn't have the strength in me for deliberate action beyond the usual, well-rehearsed scripts.

…

No, of course I did not have the opportunity to speak to Ikari-kun in the aftermath.

At first, he was, of course, unconscious, and then, when next I asked, I was told that he was being kept in a holding cell.

Only authorized staff would be allowed in there.

There wasn't any chance.

Besides, my orders were to rest.

My hands were not so reliable yet, so I had to lifts the pots by wrapping both my eyes around it so that I might pour down the toilet what might have otherwise become a shared meal.

It was long since cold, and most likely spoiled, seeing as it had sat uncovered on the stove for over 24 hours.

I was too much in shock to waste time putting any of it in the fridge – I would have had to transfer it to different vessels, too, seeing as the big pots would not all have fit inside my modest fridge.

It took long, it was agonizing, clumsy and far too close to risking the pot falling onto my feet, but if I didn't do it myself, then who was going to?

There was no one who would do this for me, no one to lighten my burden.

The idea of asking anyone to assist me with this seemed absurd.

I may have clogged the toilet, but there were ways to remedy that, eventually.

I likely used my hands far more than I would have been supposed to.

Then again, it was not as if any other part of my body was going to last…

I let myself sink onto my bed, and stared up at the rarely used light on the ceiling, containing only one neon tube in place of the four it had been designed for.

I thought if I used only one it might have helped me in replicating the dimmer light I was used to from the laboratory, but in the end, it didn't work out.

The best facsimile turned out to be by reading light, though it was not an ideal one.

I seem to recall that I spent long laying awake, irrationally irked by such a simple thing as a minute difference in the lights.

It made no sense, so I did not understand it and spent long laying here, tortuously waiting for the capricious, inexplicable comings and goings of sleep to finally well up and sweep me away, relieving me from the burden of consciousness but for a little.

I had known that the move was inevitable, so there was nothing to be done about the discomfort. It was only inconvenient.

I think was I was feeling then is a little bit like what I was feeling now, only with a fraction of the intensity – but for all my new experiences and ideas, I still didn't know what I was supposed to do with it.

The closest I could liken it to is a dull pain that is just bad enough to merit addressing but not bad enough to be an immediate emergency, so that it must be borne for just a few more hours until the morning broke.

Only that I wasn't feeling that much pain at all, as far as my body went.

Whatever drugs that they been giving this time were serving their purpose.

It was something else that hurt, different from my arms.

I was told to rest, and there was nothing else for me to do, so that's what I did.

...

The only thing I left the apartment for was to get my bandages changed.

Once again, it was not really thought to be necessary to keep me up to speed with any further events. The low-ranking nurse would not know, but neither would a routine maintenance task have justified using the time of someone qualified enough to be in the know.

The fighting was done, my purpose was done, and while there was neither piloting nor experimenting to do my function was to take up space, to move slowly, mostly in the direction of time.

I could well have left that day without finding out anything about what had become of Ikari-kun.

It was only by happenstance that I crossed paths with the Second Child on my way back to the surface. She was carrying a large bag which appeared likely to contain PE clothes, or maybe a swimsuit, probably a towel to wash off with.

Perhaps she meant to get some additional combat training in, banking on some fantasy about making Dr. Akagi eat her words at the next simulator session, though in hindsight, it was just as likely that the was looking to have a swim to celebrate finally being rid of the hated rival, as far as she's concerned, just an interloper who briefly almost rudely usurped what was always meant to be her role in the story, a most unworthy pretender.

I probably would not even have spoken to her, had it been up to me.

I was going to do both of us a favor and simply walk past her, but not to be ignored, she made quite sure to block my path.

Perhaps this had always been inevitable as well:

"Stinks, huh, Wondergirl?"

At this point I was beginning to understand how her jabs worked or what they were usually support to reference, but I preferred to reply just as if I didn't, as if this might keep me from being dragged deeper into this sad, frustrating world:

"I don't understand what is supposed to stink here."

"Well, it stinks for you, I since she's gonna be skippin' town tomorrow, as soon as he's done packing. Unless you changed your mind on growing human feelings after all."

I did not see any point in attempting to reply to this.

Her face split into a smirk.

The memory might well be distorted in hindsight, but I could almost claim that she must have licked her lips.

"Poor, poor you. He didn't think of you at all. Looks like he doesn't even care if you have to fight and get hurt on your own. And to think he dares to call himself a man. That's what you get for being a sucker. You should'va known all along that all those boys only ever want one thing.

Especially that one. That brat can't even stand himself. He'd be content with just about any warm body. Which is probably just about the only thing you got in common with a real person. He'll forget all about you once he gets his hands on a body pillow. Not that there's probably much to remember in the first place…"

I think she mostly stopped because she did not wish to give the impression that she cared about us in any way, not even as a nuisance or something worth being angry at.

From the start she had always been looking to put us beneath her, and now that Ikari-kun had shown a moment of weakness, she was having an excellent day.

Let her. It's no business of mine.

I did not even really object to her making her contemptuous exit, as there was only really one question I was really interested in anymore:

„Are you going to see him off when he leaves?"

The Second Child made a face.

Clearly she had been too disgusted to even think of such a thought.

That seems quite in-character for her. Perhaps whatever slump she was supposed to have been going through was just a temporary blip on the radar after all.

...

(I did not even consider the possibility of speaking with Commander Ikari about this.

Once he had made a decision, there was usually nothing in the world that could have swayed him,

and I couldn't even present anything that my own mind would have let fly as a 'real reason')

…

The last of my bandages were removed today, but the neurological examination found that the nerves of my left arm had finally incurred some permanent damage after much abuse.

The feeling had come back to most of it, but two of my fingers couldn't quite be made to curl up all the way anymore.

Hardly worth mentioning… merely the first of many parts of me that was set to cease to function rather soon. And even if it were all gone, there were spare parts available.

Until then, physical factors should not affect the synchronization rate.

They should keep having what they wanted to it right up until I physically melted into a sludge.

It should not be at all surprising.

I had known since the beginning that I was never going to be turned into a 'real girl' by some blue fairy; Besides, in the original book, the poor puppet squashed his conscience into dust, and then ended up getting executed by hanging for all his crimes, likely because the author was a misanthrope who hated boys almost as much as the Second Child seemed to – the author had to be beseeched to change the ending into something that could eventually get a Disney adaptation, which I had never seen for roughly know the reputation of.

They do not seem to get all that much sympathy, those 'boys' or whatever persons tend to get labeled as such. I could only observe, as an outside observer without any real stake in these fights.

Who said that imitating man was going to bring you a soul, anyways, when man (or woman for that matter) is often the most piteous, destructive existence around?

On my way back up, I overheard some of the technicians talking.

They sat there sipping juice, not taking much note of my presence as I helped myself to a few gulps from the water cooler.

"Rei… didn't try to stop Shinji. They seemed to have gotten really close lately, so I thought she might…"

"Maybe we misunderstood their relationship after all…"

"And now we're back to square one, with only two pilots again… "

...misunderstanding?

Who knows.

Could well be.

But at this time, I could not have cared less whether my feelings were anything like a regular human's. Why would I want them to, if this would make me understand why I would want to keep him here with me?

Why would I ever prevent him from leaving, when there was a real chance that he might?

Why would I make him want to share my sorry fate, when I could shoulder it myself just as well?

Why would I want him to be bleeding in my stead, when there's only one of him in all this wide world?

No. I hope that he runs far, far away and never looks back, and never again has to crush his own heart, or stain his trembling hands with blood.

Let him get away.

Let him do what I cannot do, and escape in my stead.

Let at least him get away, and maybe that's the closest I would ever get to getting away vicariously, at least escaping as a memory in his mind.

If he only ever thinks of me with regret, just a twinge of it, a little bit of a lament as having to leave me behind even if he hated everything else in this place, I would already be well beyond satisfied.

I would never want to hold him back from following where the voice of his heart compels him to go. If that's somewhere far away from me, then so be it.

If he can free himself from EVA, then he should do it.

I want him to do it all the more because I can't.

So at least one of us gets away.

It's not really that I wanted him for myself, anyway.

Not really.

I won't deny that it might have been nice, if it had happened.

But before that, I wanted him to be happy.

…

I was ready to let it all go.

At least, I was trying to.

I sincerely believed that I was, until I passed that trash can near the terminals, just as I was right about to return to the surface.

It only stood out to me in the first place because there was something not quite fully thrown into the trash can properly, lingering just beside the opening as the result of some half-hearted gesture.

I drew near propelled only by a detached curiosity, passing like a cloud, but that would have been before I'd realized that it was.

Ikari-kun's SDAT player.

...right. He did say (somewhere, sometime?) that he was going to throw it away.

So it was really nobody's SDAT player right now.

Therefore, there would be no issue if I took it, which turned out to be something I was really glad of.

I had not known that I needed this until I saw it.

That is, I had wanted, desperately somewhere in my heart,

to keep at least some tiny minuscule part of him with me, however peripheral,

just so I would be able to remember that those days we'd spent together had been more than just a dream.

If I could keep this, if I could touch it… I might have some chance of convincing myself that it wasn't just an illusion, and if that was so, I thought I might even be able to bear the things that were coming on my own, even without him at my side.

Aside from that, however, I had accepted our fates.

I always knew they would be leading into different directions in the end.