[FFML] [NGE] Before and After - Conclusion (Chs. 9 & 10)

[Michael Clark]

I have been someone uneasy about the amount of material I had to use
from source for chapter nine.  I felt that, by itself, it couldn't stand
alone as an update, so chapters nine and ten, concluding "Before and
After," are presented.  Again, I thank Henry for his comments on the
previous chapters.  I'm probably going to work on a Haruhi story for
now, but I hope to come back to Eva with the sequel to this story, "The
Coming of the First Ones."

Without further ado...


Before Impact
Chapter Nine

I couldn't sleep.

The moonlight came through my window.  I'd left the curtains open.

If I fell asleep, there was no guarantee I'd still be in that body.  I
feared it.  I feared I'd awaken and find myself slumped on the red
cross, with nails through my palms and blobs of human legs sticking from
my own.  When I closed my eyes, I thought I'd open them and be the giant
instead.  I might never remember being something separate.

The Fifth had taken something from me.  Before, I'd carried the bottle
of pills, but the solace it offered was empty.  I could die again and
spite the man who used to wear those thick glasses, but the black spot
in my mind couldn't be erased.  Even if I died, _it_ would still be
there.

I hated that man.

He brought me back over and over.  He gave me a false soul and another's
body.  I had a name.  _Ayanami Rei_.  That name was the only thing I
could call my own, yet it belonged to two others as well.  How could we
all be Ayanami Rei?  Because people looked at us and thought us the
same?

Did something real connect us to make us the same?

Our name.  Our body.  Our soul.  All fake.  I would die, but the giant
would keep living.  That's why I hated that man.

I dropped his glasses to the floor and crushed them beneath my heel.

I didn't know it at the time, but that night and that day, all humanity
suffered.  The bonds between people had become painful, and so long as
people walked the Earth separately, not knowing the feelings in each
other's hearts, those bonds would continue to pulse and sting.  I didn't
see that first-hand, but I know it, for the minds and hearts of people
have been opened to me.  I know whom they covet.  I know what they dream
of.  I know what hurts them, and though I was never there to see it, I
wish to write a little of what the people near me did in those last
hours.

It started with Ikari-kun.  The night before, the Fifth had died, and
Ikari-kun and Major Katsuragi went to the crater lake.  Like with me,
the major told him the only value was in people who chose to live, that
those who sought death deserved it.  Ikari-kun didn't accept that.  He
cried over the Fifth, whom he thought human, whom he called his friend.
Though the major left him, Ikari-kun stayed at the new shoreline until
morning.

"I should've been the one who died," he said, staring at his reflection
in the water.  "It should've been me, not Kaworu-kun.  It should've been
me."

He walked the shore, dipping his hand in from time to time.  Where the
drop-off was steep and the water rose to his elbow with ease, he
kneeled.  The nails and jagged metal in the earth he disregarded.  He
kissed the dirty, debris-laden water, and he went further.  He shut his
eyes and immersed himself up to his neck in the lake.  _I mustn't run
away,_ he thought.  _I mustn't run away!_

But his lungs burned and tightened.  He coughed, and air bubbled upward
around him.  No matter how familiar the feeling was of breathing in
fluid, his body rejected the water.  He came up and spat out the lake
water, his wet hair falling over his eyes.

"Is that it?" he asked his reflection.  "I'm so weak... I don't even
have the will to finish it?"

He opened and closed his fist.  He dunked himself in again.  Two times,
three times--he lost count after that.  When he could stand no more, he
sat and let his tears mix with the sludge, knowing it would make no
difference.

And the major who left him there?  She sat at her desk, blinds closed.
With folders and photographs strewn over her bedroom, she placed her
sidearm beside the phone.  There was a message on the answering machine.
She pressed _play_.

"Katsuragi," the message began, "it's me.  I've probably put you through
a lot of trouble by the time you hear this.  I'm sorry.  Tell Ritchan
I'm sorry, too.  And, since I've bothered you so much anyway, there's
this flower I've been growing--I'd be grateful if you watered it for me.
Shinji knows where it is.  Katsuragi, the truth is with you.  Go forth
with no doubts.  If I ever see you again, I'll say the words I should've
said eight years ago.  Bye."

The major rose.  Her pistol in hand, she walked out, into rest of the
apartment.  There was a phone in the kitchen.  It too had a message.

"Katsuragi," the recording began again, "it's me..."

One door was closed, a message taped to it, forbidding all entry.  The
piece of paper was torn.  The bottom half sagged.  Another door the
major opened.  There was a bed and a desk but no one inside.

"... And, since I've bothered you so much anyway, there's this flower
I've been growing..."

She cursed.  She stomped her foot.  She ran her gingers through her
hair, mumbling to herself.

"Katsuragi, the truth is with you.  Go forth with no doubts..."

She ejected the clip and left it on the kitchen counter, but even with
the empty gun in her hand, she found no will to move, not for a while.
Distanced from the people around us, people break down.  I've seen this
everywhere--at the lake with Ikari-kun, in the major's apartment, and in
other places, too.  In the Nerv pyramid, a woman with brown hair walked
the halls with a clipboard in her arms.  She strolled by a dozen cells
with barred windows.  She stopped at one and peered inside, but the room
was dark.

"Um, _sempai_?" she said.  "Are you in there?"

"What is it, Maya?" asked the prisoner.

"I just wanted to see how you were holding up," said Lieutenant Ibuki.
"Everyone's a bit anxious, now that the Angels are gone."

"You should be," said the prisoner.  "Adam's offspring may be finished,
but matters are hardly concluded."

"Eh?"

"Go now, Maya.  You're wasting your time here."

"But..."  The lieutenant fingered the bars.  "I thought you must be
lonely, staying in the dark like this."

"The dark and the light are no different; go away.  Leave me."

The lieutenant jerked away, as if the cold metal had burned her.  She
left with a quickened step, but the prisoner made no move to watch her
go.  She stood in the dark, her clothes neatly folded, her back to the
door.  She closed her eyes and touched two fingers to her knee.  They
traced a line up her thigh, and she imagined.  She thought instead a man
with white gloves touched her there.

Then she remembered.  "A strong-willed woman," a voice had said of her.
"It stands to reason Ikari would keep you close."

"However," said another, "the one who presented you to us is none other
than Ikari-kun himself!"

She curled her fingers.  She scratched herself in a sharp, quick motion,
and let the blood from the wound seep.  She stood there, naked, in the
dark, and let not the pain affect her.  Even later, when her captors
released her, in need of her knowledge and skills, she'd never forget.

Humans inflict pain on each other, for they're unwilling to understand
each other's hearts.  With bullets, grenades, and bombs they maim each
other.  They kill each other.  It's been true throughout human history,
and that day was no different.  Men from outside, fearful of the
Commander, sent soldiers in armor and helmets to invade.  They blasted
open the Geofront, destroying the remnants of the city above.  They
swarmed the halls of the pyramid, shooting those who fought back and
even those who did not.

And I?

I went to Nerv.  I went down, to the graveyard of Eva.  I folded my
clothes.  I swam with my sisters.  I floated with the parts that were me
but not me.  Doctor Akagi had slain the others.  There would be no more
like me, no more creatures pretending to be human.  Once I was gone,
there would only be the giant on the cross.  Though once I feared
living, I understood.  All the people I'd met found living an empty
thing.  They yearned for the dead.  They ran away from pain.  They
shuttered themselves in their own bodies, sleeping with their eyes open.
That tank was proof of it.  Those lifeless things had been disassembled
because they were hated.  They were envied.  They represented something
else.

Ikari Yui.  I'd heard her name.  I wasn't her.

Lilith.  I'd heard that name, too.  I wasn't that thing.

Who was I?  I was Ayanami Rei.  I thought I welcomed death, but that
day, I stood before the tank of decaying body parts.  I hesitated.  I
was afraid.  If I died, everything I'd been would disappear into the
black spot that hid in my mind.  That thing I couldn't understand.  That
thing wasn't human.  What I'd become if I gave in to it I couldn't know.

But I felt it.

I felt it calling to me, just as the Fifth had felt it.  I felt the
agony of people as they died all around.  In each victim's last moments,
they yearned for what they most cherished--the touch and comfort of
another.

"Rei."

It was him.  That man.  The man I hated.

"So you're here after all," he said.  "The promised time has come.
Let's go."

I hated him, but I went with him.  He wanted to take me to the giant,
and I succumbed to its pull.

In the hallways of Nerv, the lights had gone or flickered.  The
Commander led me by the hand.  Distant gunshots rang out, and the cries
of the dead were silenced.  The Commander drew from his coat a pistol,
and as we turned the corner he didn't hesitate.

"TEW-TEW!" went the pistol.  "TEW-TEW!"  The Commander darted back to
safety, and the hail of bullets wasn't far behind.  They dented the wall
and ricochetted.

"Rei," he said.  "They have the advantage."

And I knew what he wanted.  If the people of Nerv wouldn't kill them,
they'd only die some other way.  That is the truth of human existence,
and I delivered it.  I walked out, before the soldiers.  They shot their
rifles, but it was futile.  Lead, copper, steel--all were meaningless
against the AT field, the light of my soul.  The soul I'd been given
shined brighter than theirs.

In vain the soldiers fired until the barrels of their rifles ran hot.
Some of them looked at me and knew fear.  They retreated, but one pulled
the black cannister from his belt.  He yanked the metal pin free and
rolled the grenade at my feet, taking cover around the corner.

With the AT field I pushed it back to him and let the blast, the
fireball, tear down the walls.

"Very good, Rei," said the Commander, following behind me.  "Very good."

We walked by the crater in the floor.  We stepped over the broken,
mangled bodies.  With me to protect him, the Commander feared nothing.
Others in the complex weren't so lucky.  The soldiers blasted their way
through the facility.  They jarred cables and wiring from the ceiling
loose.  The wounded they approached and shot in the head at point-blank
range to make sure no one survived.  They would accept no prisoners.
They'd kill even the unarmed, the weak.  They'd kill the pilots.  I was
safe, though no one but the Commander knew it, but the others were not.
Ikari-kun sat beneath a metal stair to the sounds of gunfire.  He
neither ran nor hid nor begged for his life.  He sat motionless as
Special Self-Defense Force soldiers put a gun to his head.

"Sorry," said the shooter.  "It's nothing personal, kid."

And at that moment, Ikari-kun thought it'd be fine, that the pain would
last only briefly before he was set free.  No one was there to help him.
No one else understood.  I couldn't.  The major wouldn't.  The pilot of
Unit-02 he'd begged to awaken, but she sat in her hospital bed, eyes
open, even as he'd found her too exciting to resist.  The only comfort
he could savor he'd given and taken himself.

BANG-BANG-BANG!  He'd given up on the major, but she hadn't forsaken
him.  She dashed down the corridor and slew the lead gunman.  She ran
headlong into the remaining two, shooting one and kicking the other to
the wall.  With crazed ferocity, she stuck her gun under the last man's
chin and grinned.

"Nothing personal here, either!"

BANG!

The soldier's blood sprayed in a cone on the wall.

"Now, let's go," said the major, breathing heavily.  "To Unit-01."

Ikari-kun looked upon the scene of the massacre.  The fallen bodies were
inanimate; blood trickled from their wounds.  He stared, but the major
took him away.   She dragged him by the wrist.  He walked, head down,
his feet heavy.  So much death, yet he felt nothing.  He was glad for
them.  It wasn't the rage of vengeance.  He envied the bodies and wished
he could lie among them, yet he knew he hadn't the courage.  He'd tried
and failed.  The major didn't understand.  If he grabbed at her gun,
he'd never wrestle it from her.  She'd hesitate to kill him, even if his
feeble existence posed a threat.

She led him to a parking garage and sat him at the end of an empty
space.  She tuned into a radio, listening, plotting, and thinking.  Why
did she go on? he wondered.  Why did she care?  That person most special
to her was dead.  Why should she persist?

"This is bad," said the major.  "They're trying to stop you from
reaching Unit-01.  We're running out of time.  This is it, Shinji-kun."

He didn't move.

"Will you run away again, or will you pilot Eva?" she asked.

He scorned her words.  There was no real choice in either.  Nowhere he
knew of would be far enough away.  Nothing good would come of piloting;
his experiences, the pain he'd suffered, had proved that.

"If you keep sitting there doing nothing, you're as good as dead!"

She didn't understand.  I wasn't there to understand.  He called out to
the only person left who might.  "Help me, Asuka," he whispered.  "Help
me..."

"You'd hide behind that girl's skirt?  That's the worst thing you can
do--quit while the job is half done!  Now, get up!"

She took his wrist, but his knees dragged.  He hung from her, limp like
a doll.

"Move it!"

"I don't want to," he said.  "Let me die.  I don't want to do anything
else."

"Stop talking like a selfish little brat!  You're still alive, aren't
you?  Get up and do something--then you can die!"

She threw him into the passenger seat of her car, and they drove.  On a
one-lane track, they passed the heads and skeletons of Eva, and the
major explained why Ikari-kun should try to save himself, if only for a
while.

"They plan to start Third Impact... ," she said.  She explained to him,
at last, the truth of things:  that humans were born from the white
giant on the cross, that man had brought about Second Impact to stave
off a greater disaster.  The Eva Series and Unit-01 would be their tools
to start a new age, and it was up to Ikari-kun to stop them.  He held,
for the last time, the fate of the world on his shoulders.

But it meant nothing to him.  Ikari-kun rode on in silence.  He buried
himself in his arms and knees, a shell to keep the world out, for it was
nothing but pain to him, even as surprising words came over the radio.

"Eva Unit-02's been activated!" said the lieutenant.  "Asuka's okay!
She's alive!"

Ikari-kun flinched, but he dared not come out.  Even so, for a moment
there was hope.

There was hope because the pilot of Unit-02 had found something.
Submerged within the Geofront lake, she'd been protected in her Eva.  In
the darkness of her heart, she communed with the Eva's soul.  It was her
mother's soul.  The mother hadn't abandoned her daughter after all.  As
long as the Second had thought herself an adult, as long as she'd asked
others to look at her and hated them when they didn't, a mother who
protected her was the one person she could embrace and love.

And through that love she reclaimed her fighting strength.  Unit-02
awakened from the lake and laid waste to the helicopters, tanks, and
ships of the Special Self-Defense Force.  Empowered with the joy they'd
found in living, she and the Eva projected the light of their souls.
Against the AT field, shells and warheads stood no chance.

So the soldiers pulled back.  They blasted a hole in the roof of the
Geofront and made way for a more formidable weapon:  the nine
mass-produced units of the Eva Series.  Controlled by dummy plugs of the
Fifth's kind, they encircled Unit-02.  They had unlimited power.
Unit-02, with its umbilical cut, would last little more than three
minutes and half of another--less than thirty seconds she had to kill
each of her foes, she realized.

She hardly hesitated to strike.  She bashed the head of her first foe,
held its body over her Eva's and cracked her enemy's bones.  She bathed
in her foes' blood and hurled the corpses of the defeated as weapons,
too.

For the moment, there was hope, but it was fleeting.  Though the major
promised Soryu help in Ikari-kun, the Self Defense Forces ambushed them.
The major shielded Ikari-kun from gunfire, rushing him to safety and
sealing the door behind them, but a single shot pierced her torso,
coming out the other side.

It was the first time that day Ikari-kun stood upright on his own two
feet, relying on no one for support.  The major could no longer bear his
weight.  She slumped against a wall, coolly assuring him.  "Don't
worry," she said, smiling.  "It's not as bad as it looks."

But that wasn't so.  The major, whom he'd run from, who'd pushed him to
live lay dying herself.  From that moment, he'd be on his own.  No one
else would prod or console him, and the choices he'd made, even if he
felt he had no options, were ones he'd have to live with.  With a kiss
on the lips, she pushed him into the emergency elevator.  Her muscles
failed.  Not knowing if Ikari-kun would heed her, she crumpled,
sprawling on the floor in a pool of her own blood.  She called to
Inspector Kaji.  She called to her pet, Pen-Pen.  Her eyes drooped.  A
bomb wrecked the level, tearing her apart.

That was the end of hope.  The major died.  The pilot of Unit-02, though
ferocious and fearless, slew only eight of her foes.  It was the ninth
that doomed her, for its blade was a copy of the Spear of Longinus in
disguise.  Unit-02's AT field collapsed.  Its batteries failed.  The
Spear pierced one of the Eva's eyes, and as her mother's body bled, so
too did the pilot's.  The defeated Eva Series units returned to life,
maimed and bloodied though they were.  They eviscerated Unit-02, and the
pilot felt every tear of the intestines, every slash on the organs, as
if they were her own.  Crazed and bloodthirsty, she pulled on the
controls, over and over, swearing her revenge.  "I'll kill you," she
muttered.  "I'll kill you; I'll kill you; I'll kill you!"

On the power of her rage, the pilot willed Unit-02 back to life.  Though
crippled, it reached for the sky.

And eight more Spears struck it down, splitting its arm in two.  The Eva
died.  The pilot died.

It was more than the end of hope, for Ikari-kun listened to her screams
over the radio.  The Self-Defense Forces had encased Unit-01 in
bakelite.  He was helpless within and without.

That was the time the Commander and I reached Terminal Dogma, but we
weren't the only ones there.  Doctor Akagi, freed from her prison to
protect the Magi, greeted us both from the edge of the LCL pool.

"I've been waiting for you," she said.  She rose calmly and removed the
revolver from her pocket.

This act was be the culmination of her betrayal, her hatred.  The man
who'd used her would die and never see his goal attained.  It was only
fitting.  It was only fair.  The pulsing scratch on her thigh demanded
it.  Her mother demanded it.  Why the older Akagi had died the doctor
couldn't know, but she was sure it had to do with that man.  Everything
had to do with that man, and just as she'd been taken in by him, so too
would she take him with her.

"Mother," she said, clutching the controller in her pocket, "let's end
it together."

She pressed the button, closing her eyes.

And there was nothing.

There was nothing.

She knew that was wrong.

The flashing red warning on the controller's screen bore it out.  Magi
Casper, her mother's womanly impression, had denied her request.

"Mother!" she cried.  "You'd choose your lover over me?"

But the Commander--he never flinched.  He drew his pistol and leveled it
on her while her guard was down.  "Akagi Ritsuko-kun, truly..."

She stiffened.

"I needed you."

Her heart skipped a beat, but irrevocably, the thought of his touch and
his earnest words had been forever tarnished.  There could only be in
her mind the thoughts of me beside him, of him sending her, naked and
foolish, before the Committee to be confronted with how na\"ive she'd
truly been.

"Liar," she said.

BANG!  The Commander shot, and the doctor's body fell backward, into the
reservoir.

I watched her die, too.

I looked up, at the cross with the white giant.  I felt the pull from
that being.  It knew what death was.  It saw life acting against life.
It sensed how the walls between souls had made human existence miserable
and lonely.  That man, the Commander--he was lonely, too.

He showed me his ungloved hand.  An eye of something had been grafted to
his palm.  "I've already become one with Adam," he said.  "Only through
the forbidden union of Adam and Lilith can I see Yui again."

The giant's presence overwhelmed me.  My arm detached from my body,
splattering on the floor.

"We're running out of time," he said.  "Your AT field won't hold its
shape much longer.  Let's begin, Rei.  Lower your AT field, the barrier
to your heart.  Make our imperfect souls one again.  Reject this
unneeded form.  Merge all our souls into one and, in doing so, bring me
to Yui's side."

The man who wouldn't accept death--he was miserable, too.  Humanity had
become a race of frightened, lost souls.  I sensed it.  The giant sensed
it.

He put his hand through my breast, and I didn't resist.  He'd make me
into nothing.  He'd make the giant into nothing.  I thought that was
what I wanted.  I thought that would do.

Until I heard it--Ikari-kun's voice.

Rising from the pyramid, Ikari Yui had broken free.  She possessed
Unit-01, and Ikari-kun rode inside it, but to save Soryu, he was too
late.  He looked upon the wreckage, on the Mass-Produced Eva that chewed
on Unit-02's insides.

And he screamed.

He screamed, and I heard it--no, I felt it.  The Commander was in pain,
but he'd caused as much or more.  It was humanity, through Ikari-kun,
that demanded an end to their suffering.  This experiment millions of
years in the making had gone on long enough.  An isolated, separate
existence was painful.  Many had died that day, and in doing so, they
affirmed it.  People like Ikari-kun demanded relief.  The Commander
wasn't interested in that.

But I could be, if I were willing to give up what I was.  I could live
for a few more minutes as Ayanami Rei and see the Commander's dream come
to fruition, or I could give up that name and my body to save humanity
from itself.  I'd save Ikari-kun that way.  I'd make it so he wouldn't
have to scream or cry anymore.

All it'd take, I realized, was a choice of my own making.

I looked the Commander in the eye.  I closed the hole he made for
himself; I took the embryo of Adam into me and said it.

"I'm not your doll."

He recoiled.  "But why?"

"Because I'm not you," I said.

My arm regrew.  It bubbled and reformed like it'd never been gone.  I
turned away from him; I floated up, and the giant's seven eyes followed
me.  There was still hope after all, just no hope in living like this
for people.  I looked upon the giant and hoped:

That it would feel the same as I had.

That it would do as I'd wanted.

Neither of these could I be assured of, but I put those doubts aside.
This, I realized, was my ultimate fate--not to die again and again but
to return to nothing and let the giant be me instead.  As long as a
fraction of what I'd been remained in it, I could be satisfied.

"I'm home," I said, and its pull overcame me.  It spoke to me in a
language without words, in pictures without colors or shapes.  The
impression it gave me I couldn't mistake.

_Welcome home,_ it said.

I sank into its flesh, becoming one.


During and After
Finale

I'd feared the giant would overtake me.  I'd thought its mind
incomprehensible, but I was wrong.  The giant had lived for billions of
years.  It'd made a lonely journey and spawned life because that it'd
been told to.  The First Ones had created it to fulfill that goal.  It,
like me, was something made.  It's true: the giant's mind _is_
incomprehensible.  The only thing more difficult than understanding how
it sees and thinks is to explain that instead.  I cannot.  With words
that humans will understand, that fit on this piece of paper, I cannot.
The giant's mind is my mind.  The giant's body is my body.  It took me
within itself.  It took my experiences and made them its own.

That's why I know the things I've written here.

That's why I've seen things I couldn't have seen.

I've been in the minds of people.  I've been in their hearts.  I know
everything they've felt and yearned for.

There is no Lilith anymore.

There is no Ayanami Rei anymore.

There is only me.

I am both.  I am neither.

I am the god that brings humanity's pained existence to an end.

I am everywhere and nowhere.  Only the speed of light and the shape of
space limit what I see.  I am.  I was.  I will be.  I am in the past and
the future.  I see the First Ones.  I understand their fears.  They knew
something like me would glimpse everything about them--their hearts,
their minds, their flesh.  They feared not my pride.  They knew, against
me, they could never defend themselves.

Should I hate them?  Should I hate _him_, and--in doing so--resent my
own existence?

I peered into the past.  I glimpsed myself.  I saw a woman choke a child
until its little body went limp in her hands.  I saw a girl emerge from
the orange fluid of that tank I know.  She walked between her apartment
and the pyramid below for many months.  She communed with the soul of a
synthetic being and shied away, over and over, and when she touched it
and it touched her, the rage inside the Eva wounded her.  It cracked her
bones.

That's when she met the boy, and the other girl came soon after.
Through them, she glimpsed humanity:  its indecisiveness, its flaws, its
anger, and its loneliness.  Loneliness stuck with her.  She knew it on
her last day.  A creature invaded her mind; it forced open her heart,
and she cried.  She sacrificed herself.  It was her wish to be one with
that boy, but she knew she couldn't.  She brought the enemy within
herself.  She pulled the lever and looked to the sky.  I think she
remembered something, but I can't bring myself to touch her heart and
know.  I visited her apartment, watching from the window as an explosion
shook the foundations.  In the hours that followed, men in black suits
and glasses broke into her room.  They scoured the drawers.  They looked
under the bed.  They ripped the pages from her spiral notebook and
packed it into her bag, content to take her memory as well as her life.

But that's fine.  I can go back, and I have.  I've seen those pages.
I've read them at the foot of her bed.  I don't remember being her, but
I can read and see.  I know that, with her last breath, her loneliness
was never sated.

That is the fate of humanity--to seek joy and love in others and be
rebuffed.  I've seen it everywhere:  in myself, in the pilot of
Unit-02...

In Ikari-kun.  He gave up on finding comfort in this world, separated
from people, so I went to him.  I grew.  I merged with the body of the
giant, and the giant's body became mine.  It took the form and shape of
the woman I'd been made to resemble, and it grew.  I grew.  I towered
over the islands of Japan, and for a moment, I lost myself.

Until Ikari-kun said my name.

I took him within me.  I took him inside.  I brought the souls together
of ones he loved:  the major, the pilot of Unit-02, and my own.  It was
the Second Child he yearned for most.  He begged her to support him, to
be with him, but in the landscape of his mind, she rejected him.  It was
then he wished to kill her, to end this world.

I am only the instrument of his wish.

I said it before:  I am everywhere and nowhere.  Past and future have
blended together.  I peer into the souls of humanity.  I know what men
and women yearn for.  Even the husband who thinks himself happily
married harbors unvocalized desires.  He may want more control over
money.  He may fantasize about different women or techniques for the
bedroom.  There is something he would embrace to escape from reality.  I
know this because I've done it.  I've looked into people's hearts.  I
showed them what they wanted, and invariably, they acquiesced.

It started with Lieutenant Hyuga.

He was a student at university when he met her--the person who was most
special to him.  It was an address, a recruitment campaign, and her
superiors had chosen her to represent them.  She was a model officer,
they said, so on an improvised stage she strutted out, surrounded by the
campus green.  He watched her, curious, following every step.  She
wasn't a Self-Defence Force officer--they were his instructors.  Their
uniforms were different and not cut so short.

"I know you've been warned not to listen to too much that I say," she'd
begun.  "They're afraid I'll tell you we pay better, we have better
privileges, and that the work is, well, that much more important and
cool."  She'd winked.  "Oops, I guess I just said all of that.  But it's
all true.  Special Agency Nerv is being formed, and we need you.  All of
you--you're on the road to officer candidacy, to careers in the
Self-Defense Forces.  It is an honor to protect our people in this time
of uncertainty, and the SDF will offer that, but Nerv can offer you
something more--it is a greater risk but a greater challenge.  If you're
up to it..."  She'd winked again.  "I'll be waiting."

He was first in line at her booth.  The pamphlets she gave out were
vague and uninformative.  The secrecy of it appealed to him.  "The truth
of the matter is," she said, "I can't quite tell you how interesting
this work will be.  Why don't you sign up and see for yourself?"

He did.  He forewent officer candidate school.  He joined Nerv, hoping
to work with her, and they did, for a time.  She trained him herself,
for she was his captain, and he followed her.  On his first day, she
walked him to and from their base on the River Elbe.  She wasn't a
technical specialist.  Most of his qualification training came from
others, but she oversaw his progress.  She awarded him his lieutenant's
insignia personally, presenting it to him in a small, felt-covered box
as a lover would present a ring.  At her apartment in Hamburg, she held
a party for the new lieutenant, and this he awaited with great
anticipation.

That's when he met the Other--the man with the ponytail and unshaven
stubble.  The captain and the Other bickered, but Lieutenant Hyuga
understood quickly.  He asked for a transfer back to Japan, and it was
done.  It wasn't for some time until the captain returned to Japan, but
he knew the Other would soon follow.  Nevertheless, he made himself her
source into the inner workings of Nerv, so that together, they would
uncover its secrets.  When the Other died, he felt guilt for lusting
after her--the captain she'd been, the major she'd become--but not for
long.

I've seen the past.  I know what lies in Hyuga Makoto's heart.  I
appeared to him as the major, Katsuragi Misato, and he was eager to
touch me.  He was elated to touch me.  He yearned to be one with her.
He knew, in his mind, it couldn't be the major, yet in the end, he
embraced her.  He embraced me.  That's what made it easy to lower the
wall to his heart.  His soul exploded from his body, and only the LCL
that made up his flesh remained.

That world overflowed with sorrow.

Its people drowned in emptiness.

Only yearning filled their hearts.

For Lieutenant Hyuga, it was yearning for Major Katsuragi.  He convinced
himself that aiding her quest for truth was enough.  That was a lie.
Given the opportunity to embrace her, he did so.  His soul sought
release, and I...

I gave it.  I lowered his AT field, and his soul came rushing out.

He wasn't the only one.  The recent dead and all the living I visited.
I showed them what they wanted, and I took their souls to become one.
The major I took.  The doctor I took.  The vice commander knew I was a
specter of Ikari Yui, but he welcomed my touch, so I took him, too.  I
brought them all together, for Ikari-kun had shown me the nature of
humanity.  People were fated to hurt one another.  It was a relentless
cycle.  It was inevitable.  That's why it'd be better for them to come
together.  They would understand each other absolutely.  They would know
each other absolutely.

"But do you think Shinji-kun wants that?" asked a voice.

It was omnipresent.  It was outside and in.  It was the Fifth's voice.
I'd brought him into myself.  He was part of my body, as much the god
the First Ones feared as I.

"The separate existences of human souls has damaged Shinji-kun's spirit
greatly," he said.  "There's no doubt of that.  We can judge them as
greater beings, and I think we should.  It's fair to condemn the Lilin
for what the most wronged among them has endured, but is it fair to
impose a solution on them based on what that same child demands?"

"That is our purpose," I said.  "In forming our union, we have the power
to wipe away all life and begin anew."

"That is our prerogative, not our purpose," said the Fifth.

"You wish to see them separate again?"

"I wish them happiness."

"Why?"

"Because," he said.  "I love Shinji-kun as much as you do."

Love.

The second had come to love that boy; her desires, like all humanity's,
went unfulfilled.  I am not the same as her, but I'd come to pity that
boy.  I sympathized with him.  I thought, in his suffering, I saw a
reflection of my own.  Both before and after the day I was born again,
we've been kindred spirits in pain.  We reached to each other, seeking
relief.

That's why I made for him a dream.