When Asuka came to, mere moments later, the apparition hadn't moved. She still stood in the doorway, looking exactly as she had when Asuka saw her last. She wore her white plug suit and had old blood-stained bandages on her left hand and over her left eye. There were probably more bandages beneath the suit, but Asuka couldn't see these. Asuka, on the other hand, looked completely different from the time she had been at Nerv; she wore old clothes and a long and scuffed brown jacket to cover them, her red hair was a little longer and much more unkempt than it had once been, and her clear blue eyes held none of the fire that had made her such a formidable young lady. However, as she sat in shock, staring at the old comrade that seemed to have stepped straight out of her nightmares, a brief flicker of that old fire returned and then was gone again.
"Pilot Soryuu..." said the girl. And then nothing more. There was no way for Asuka to tell whether this was a greeting, a call for help, or the knell like accusation of a literary phantom. Rei's voice was as flat and emotionless as it ever had been.
There was a clattering sound as one of the patrons stood abruptly, knocking his chair spinning. He pointed a shaking finger at Rei and cried out in a voice that bordered on hysteria.
"It's her! The monster from the end!"
A collective gasp went around the room.
"Is it happening again?" asked another, terror evident in his own voice, "Is she here to do it all again?"
Rei didn't even seem to hear the men. She stood silently for another moment her eye fixed on Asuka and then repeated,
"Pilot Soryuu."
Asuka stood slowly and felt every pair of eyes in the room turn on her.
"Is this real?” she asked, her voice unsteady, “Are you here for me?" Rei nodded.
"There was no one else... I..."
This was different. Asuka had never heard indecision or uncertainty in Ayanami's voice before. A sudden buzz went round the room, that quietened quickly as Asuka stepped forward. She looked around her at the thunderstruck people, all staring at her, then quickened her pace, reaching Rei's side and seizing her hand. Asuka dragged her swiftly outside, where she stopped and fumbled in her pockets for the key that started the old Nissan she had managed to scrounge enough money together to buy recently. Rei stood by her side, plug suit and all, a vision of the hell Asuka thought she had escaped, making any kind of structured thought impossible.
"Pilot Soryuu?"
"Why are you here?" asked Asuka, avoiding looking at her old colleague.
"I asked to be," replied Rei, simply.
Behind them, the door to the cafe opened. Asuka grabbed Rei's hand again, pulling her down the street to where she had parked her car. It was battered and green, something she wouldn't have been caught dead getting into not so long ago. Slotting the key into the lock, she opened it and held the door for Ayanami.
"Get
in," she instructed. Rei complied and Asuka quickly moved around
to the other side and climbed in herself. A moment later the car started
and she pulled out into the sparse traffic.
Twenty minutes later they were entering Asuka's apartment. The car journey had been hellish for her; looking at Rei had been extremely difficult and questions had continuously tumbled through her mind, questions that fear prevented her from asking. She didn't know why she had taken Rei with her, why she hadn't just run away screaming. That was what her mind had most wanted her to do, and now, entering the closed environment of her dwelling, the desire to do so was growing ever stronger.
Rei, on the other hand, had remained silent in the car. She never made any threatening gesture, nor displayed any of the terrifying magic she had demonstrated just prior to and during Third Impact. There was something about her manner, though, that was different from before. She didn't quite seem comfortable (if comfortable was the right word for one so interminably separate as her) in the car, as if she wanted to say something, but couldn't come close to even beginning to form words.
Asuka held the door open once again as Rei moved into her last refuge, and she fought the urge to push her back out and barricade the entrance. When Rei had passed inside, Asuka closed the door and then turned to face her.
"Why are you here?" she blurted out, all the tension from the car journey suddenly spilling free.
"I asked to –" started Rei, beginning to repeat what she had said on the street.
"NO! Why are you here right now!" cried Asuka, "Why have you come to me?"
"There was no one else..." said Rei, "I... the commander is dead..."
"I know that!" snapped Asuka, "You killed him!"
Rei bowed her head.
"I couldn't go to him because he is dead," she said, "I couldn't go to Shinji, because he told me not to."
"Well, I'm telling you not to come to me!" yelled Asuka.
Rei nodded. She turned away towards the door, making to open it and leave.
"What the hell?!" cried Asuka, incredulously, "You come all this way, you come back to life to see me and then you just leave?"
"You asked me to leave," replied Rei, looking round, confusion creeping into her voice.
"Are you real?!" said Asuka.
Rei nodded again.
"Are you alive and here right now? This isn't just a nightmare I'm having, is it?"
"It's not," replied Rei.
"Then why are you here? What do you want from me?"
"I need... help... your help. There wasn't anyone else."
Rei again looked uncomfortable, like she was struggling with something she didn't understand.
"You're not here to start Fourth Impact?" asked Asuka. Rei shook her head. "You're not here to kill me?"
"Why should I do that?" asked Rei, her brow furrowing slightly. She took a step forward and Asuka flinched slightly.
This isn't like me, she thought, I'm behaving like a frightened kitten when it's obvious she means me no harm.
Still, the memories she carried, the ones she seemed to have been given by Shinji, and in particular the ones about her death and what happened shortly after, clamoured in her mind every time she looked at the pilot of Unit 00.
Because that's what she still is, even after all this time. She looks like she's just stepped out of her Eva five minutes ago.
Rei had stopped at Asuka's flinch. There was again a look of uncertainty on her face that would never have been there normally.
"I... think I need a coffee," said Asuka after a long moment in which they simply stared at each other. "Would you like a coffee?"
Rei nodded the affirmative, standing irresolutely in Asuka's entrance hall. The red head sighed, some of the tension leaving her body. It was now obvious that she wasn't a danger. In fact, if anything, Rei looked more lost than Asuka felt.
"Well, come in then, Wonder Girl."
She led her into the small lounge area that the little apartment afforded her and then once Rei was seated at her kotatsu, Asuka went into the kitchen to prepare coffee. She found her hands were shaking more than a little and she couldn't help spilling granules over her work surface as she made up a cafetière and boiled the water. She also couldn't seem to help herself drinking the first cup she poured in three quick gulps, before she poured another for herself and one for Rei. She found milk sugar and cream and placed them all on a tray and carried them back into the other room. The crockery clinked loudly in her still shaking hands as she placed the tray on the kotatsu.
"I didn't know how you liked it... so I brought everything..."
Rei didn't answer, just as she so often hadn't when they had been at Nerv together. It had used to infuriate Asuka to no end, but right now she was too nervous to be annoyed. The blue haired girl sat placidly at the kotatsu, her hands resting in her lap, staring at nothing in particular as Asuka sat down.
"Are... you okay?" she asked Rei and the other girl looked at her.
"I am healthy, I think. My eye hurts. The rest of me has healed since the last mission."
Since the last mission? Does that mean since the last angel or since we all died? wondered Asuka.
"Where have you been all this time? A year and a half has passed since Third Impact."
Rei looked at her blankly.
"I don't know. I don't think I would understand if I did."
"Yet you turn up now, completely out of the blue?" said Asuka, "You scare me half to death and –"
"You are different," said Rei, suddenly.
"Of course I'm different!" snapped Asuka, "Anyone would be different after the things I've been through!"
"You're also the same," said Rei, her blank expression never faltering. To Asuka's astonishment, she saw that underneath the blankness there was actually something there. Something like curiosity. Or wonder, perhaps.
She sighed and sat back, looking at Rei carefully.
"Why have you come back now?"
"I came back because I chose to," replied Rei.
"Right, right, and you came to me because there was no one else... hang on, you said just now that Shinji told you not to go to him?" Rei nodded. "You've seen Shinji?" pressed Asuka. Rei nodded again.
"He said he couldn't help me. He has his own struggle."
"You've seen Shinji..." repeated Asuka, more to herself than Rei, though the blue haired girl obediently nodded again. Asuka chewed her lip, subconsciously. "How was he?" she asked, after a pause.
"He was healthy," replied Rei, but then, sensing she needed to say more: "he looked thin. He is still struggling with his world."
His world, thought Asuka. Rei was probably right, this was his world. The world he had recreated after Third Impact. It seemed that the experiences he had had were too much to contain himself and he had given everyone, all the people on the planet it seemed, Asuka included, at least some of the memories of the final few hours of the old world. Which was how Asuka knew a little of how Gendo and Ritsuko and even Kaji had died. It was also how Asuka knew of events after her own demise and prior to her subsequent resurrection.
She suddenly realised that neither of the pair had yet touched their coffees. She sat forwards depositing two spoonfuls of sugar into her black coffee and stirring it.
"You should drink that before it gets cold," she told Rei, "how do you like it?"
"I don't know," replied Rei. She reached out her hand to the cup and lifted it slowly to her lips, taking a small sip.
"Warm," she said, "bitter." She looked at Asuka. "Is that good?"
Asuka flushed, partly with annoyance, partly with embarrassment.
"Well, my coffee should be good," she snapped, "it always used to be, but then, as you say, I've changed. Anyway, are you saying you don't know whether you like it?"
"I've never attached importance to taste before," replied Rei, quietly. She looked at Asuka again, her one good eye wide and red. "Is taste important in life?"
"What kind of question is that?!" cried Asuka, "Of course it's important. What you like and dislike is a fundamental for normal people."
"I'm not a normal person," said Rei.
"You can say that again, Wonder Girl!" agreed Asuka.
"You are not a normal person, either," said Rei, "but taste is important to you?"
This obviously wasn't intended as an attack, but Asuka chose to take it that way because it meant she didn't have to deal with the uncomfortable first half of the statement.
"Fine!" she said, irritably. She stood and made her way to the kitchen again, returning with several more coffee cups. "Like is easy," she stated, as she retook her seat and set the cups up before Rei, "try that coffee again, then try adding some milk, or some sugar and see which way you prefer it."
"Prefer?" asked Rei.
"Which one you'd like to keep drinking if you only had one choice."
"Choice..." said Rei, "yes, I chose to come here, I have choice."
She sipped the coffee again and then picked up the milk jug, carefully pouring a small measure into the cup.
"Different," she said once she had sampled it, "less bitter... Smoother..."
Asuka found herself watching intently, enthralled by this display of methodical discovery. She poured another cup and added some sugar then handed it to Rei, who tasted it carefully.
"Sweet, but still bitter."
"That's how I take it nowadays," said Asuka. She poured another cup and added cream this time.
"Thicker," said Rei, "a little cloying..."
"There you go," said Asuka, "'cloying' is definitely an emotional response, something I never thought I'd get out of you at least. Some people like it like that though... You can try any combination, you know, with different measurements of each substance."
Measurements of each substance? thought Asuka, That sounded like something Rei would have said. She's been back five minutes and already her manner is affecting me...
And she marvelled at how, in the space of thirty minutes, she had gone from fearing for her life to mere mild annoyance at the one who had caused the Third Impact. She'd even slipped back into the old nickname without even noticing it.
Though that was slightly unfair, she thought, Rei may have been the catalyst, but it was Gendo that had manipulated her, pushing her towards the final cataclysm. It was Gendo's selfishness in trying to bring back his dead wife that had brought about the conditions suitable for Third Impact to take place.
Well, that may have been true, but what was also true was that they were each partly responsible. From Shinji to Ritsuko and Misato to herself. Even Kaji had a hand, through throwing his life away when he could have been searching for a way to stop what was going to happen.
Five minutes passed as Rei experimented and sampled various coffee concoctions, seemingly unaware of a now calm (and slightly bemused) Asuka watching her intently.
"I... prefer this one," said Rei finally holding up the black coffee with one sugar, looking to Asuka for some kind of affirmation. Asuka was still watching her.
"Is that why you came here? To find out what kind of coffee you like?" she asked. Rei didn't answer. "Come on, Wonder Girl, you can tell me after coming all this way."
"I came here because I chose to live," replied Rei slowly. And again she looked like she was struggling with something.
"And you want me to show you how to live?" asked Asuka. Rei shook her head.
"I want you to tell me why I chose to live," she replied.
The answer quite took her by surprise.
"Why me?" asked Asuka, "Why not Maya, or Misato, or any of the other survivors?"
"I never talked to Lieutenant Ibuki, or Hikari, or anyone else apart from Shinji and you and Major Katsuragi and Commander Ikari. I could not go to Major Katsuragi because of her proximity to Shinji –"
Well, I was right about that, then, thought Asuka.
"– I could not go to Commander Ikari because he is dead," finished Rei. She actually looked a little drained at saying so much at once, but sudden indignation was flaring in Asuka.
"You'd actually go back to that bastard even after what he did to you?" she asked. Rei nodded.
"He created me, he is the reason I exist at all."
"Bullshit!" cried the young German, "If he were alive, I'd kill the bastard before letting you go back to him!"
Rei said nothing, but for once, this didn't enrage Asuka more. Instead, she sat back on her hands and sighed.
"I may have changed, but you sure as hell haven't much," said Asuka.
"Not much time has passed for me since Third Impact," replied Rei, evenly. Asuka regarded her for a moment.
"How long have you been... back?" she asked.
"Four weeks," the blue haired girl replied, "I found Shinji easily, but finding you was harder."
"Four weeks," mused Asuka, "and I bet you haven't changed out of that plug suit once, have you? Where are you staying?"
"I have no residence," said Rei.
Asuka smacked her forehead.
"Geez! What am I going to do with you? How long is it since you washed?" Again, Rei declined to answer. "Right! The first thing we're going to do is get you out of that suit and into a hot bath."
Asuka stood purposefully and walked round the table to where Rei was sitting.
"Come
on," she said, holding out her hand. Rei looked at it for a second
and then joined it with her own.
Back to The End and After - New Beginnings Index - Back to Neon Genesis Evangelion Shoujo-Ai Fanfiction