[FFML] [NGE] Before and After - Chapter 8

[Michael Clark]

My thanks to Henry for reminding me last chapter to be more careful with
tenses. Especially with these first-person works, it can't hurt to be
precise.


Before Tabris
Chapter Eight

I met the Fifth one week after I was brought to life again.  Doctor
Akagi was gone.  Vice Commander Fuyutsuki had summoned us for a
synchronization test.  I didn't meet the Fifth right away.  I arrived
at the lockers in my uniform, the uniform for a school that no longer
exists.  That's where I saw someone else.  We collided at the door.  He
stumbled, catching himself.

"Guh!" he said.  "Sorry, I didn't look--"

Then he did.

"Oh," he said.  "Ayanami."

He wore the skin-tight suit they'd given us.  His was blue all over,
light on his chest, darker below the waist and on his sleeves.  Mine was
different.

"I'm surprised," said Ikari-kun.  "I didn't think you'd be needed
after..."

As was I.  I didn't see the point.  The Evangelion I'd piloted was in
pieces under the crater lake, but the vice commander insisted.  The
major insisted.  Therefore, I complied.

"Well," he said, looking down.  "I'm in your way."  He stepped aside and
jogged down the hallway.

"Ikari-kun," I said.

He stiffened.  He stopped at the corner, facing away.

"I don't know which locker is mine," I said.

"Oh, it's got your name on it.  You don't need me there to show you,
right?"

He ran off.

Ikari-kun was right.  I found my locker quickly.  I removed my clothes.
I donned the white suit, and a button at the wrist tightened it.  The
material conformed to my flesh.  I stored my uniform in the locker.  On
the inside of the door, there was a full-length mirror.  It would've
been tedious to come back because a piece of equipment was out of place.
I checked my appearance.  I looked at my legs.

There were many legs.

They sprouted from my knees.  They were human legs, all in pairs,
miniature and writhing.  From the white material, they stuck out.  They
kicked.

I slammed the locker shut, and it echoed.  It reverberated through
the room.  I looked away, and I felt down there.  It wasn't real.  It
couldn't have been, I thought.

But it wasn't the first time I'd glimpsed a reflection that wasn't mine,
that belonged to something else.

I opened the locker slowly and gazed into the mirror.  I saw no
sprouting legs or a masked face with seven eyes, but I thought there was
a darkness in the center of the reflection.  It was a blind spot that I
could perceive but never touch.

Maybe Ikari-kun saw it, too.  It had been eight days since I was brought
back and six days since the major took me to the hospital ward and
pumped my stomach.  I'd made the decision to live and make my own
choice, but that boy--Ikari Shinji-kun--he ran away from me.

It was the same after the synchronization test.  The vice commander
allowed him and the Fifth to leave before me.  When I returned to the
locker with the mirror inside, the room was empty.  I changed quickly
and left.

"Ah, Shinji-kun?"  The major peered inside as I departed.  "He's not
here, is he?"

I shook my head.

"He's avoiding you, too?" she said.  "I don't understand that boy.  It's
not good to withdraw, to isolate yourself from friends and people who
care about you."

There must've been a reason.

"I bet I know where he's gone," said the major.  "It would be just like
him to go away from people who can voice their disapproval and seek
comfort in someone else.  It's just like with him and his father."  She
tilted her head.  "Say, maybe you'll find him there?"

"Where?" I said.

She told me of the place and how to get there: which elevators to take,
which stairs to avoid.  It was familiar to me, so it wasn't difficult.

"But only if you want," she said.  "To catch Shinji-kun when he's
vulnerable, that is."

"Major?" I said.

"I thought to give him space would be best for him to heal, but I see
now when you give him space he just retreats and makes the gap even
wider.  Go confront him, Rei.  I know he's shying away from you, and it
must make you wonder what you two used to be like, yes?"

I walked away.

"Ah, Rei, wait a minute," she said, "you're not wearing--"

"Correct."

"But why?"

"It was expedient."

"And the other... ?"

"Also correct."

"My, my, eager to give a show, are we?"

"Major?"

"Rei, go back in there and put your clothes on properly this time.
You're not allowed to do those things until you're at least my age."

That was not expedient, but I obeyed.  The major's outlook on the world
was strange.  How could the purpose of clothes no one sees dependent on
age?

But she was right about the other thing.  I'd been looking for Ikari-kun
over those six days.  I'd seen him little since he visited me in the
hospital.  At that time, I still wore my bandages.  The major had said,
one of those days, that Ikari-kun and I were connected.  "When I held
you in my apartment," she'd said, "it was Shinji-kun who called in the
cavalry to save you.  You left that night in a hurry, and it saddened
him, but he wouldn't say what happened or why."

It was the major who told me to live for something, but to that point,
I'd learned nothing of what I could be.  Ikari-kun was avoiding me.  The
major and the others--they didn't know who I'd been, who the second had
been.  I carried with me for that week the bottle of pills.  I kept it
close.  I wouldn't stay in that place, forced to live, for one second
longer than I wanted.  The major had been right, though:  I had the
power to break the cycle of death and rebirth.  I could die one last
time if I wanted, at any time.

Then I would be gone for good.  I'd disappear to nothingness.

I'd be alone.

That wasn't enough.  Ikari-kun knew what the second had been like.  The
major had told me he hadn't come home of late.  "But," she'd said,
"there's one place I know he'll go.  Shinji-kun watches over his
friends, no matter what."

So I followed her directions.  I took the great escalator to the
surface.  That's when I met the Fifth.  He stood at the top.  He had his
hands in his pockets, facing me.

"You're the First Child, aren't you?"

I said nothing.

"Ayanami Rei?"

I said nothing.

"You and I are the same, aren't we?"

I said nothing.

"So," he said, "we've both taken the same form as the Lilin while
inhabiting this planet."

"Who are you?" I asked.

The Fifth smiled to himself, chuckling.  He took the opposite
escalator, going down to the Geofront.  "Interesting," he said.  "Very
interesting."

I watched him descend until his head fell below the railing.  He was
pale.  He was something foreign, something that didn't belong.

He was like me.

How could there be another who was the same as me?  That question I
couldn't answer, not then.  I moved on, toward my destination, but I
didn't forget the Fifth's knowing grin.

The major had given me directions to that place, but I knew where to
go.  It was the first place outside the tank or the laboratory that
I could remember.  A week had passed since I left that place.  The
halls were still white with a tinge of blue.  The doctors and nurses no
longer ran through the halls.  The crowd at emergency had thinned, but
some--the more desperate, the more feeble--lingered.  I didn't stop to
see what maladies ailed them.  They weren't my concern.  That task fell
to doctors who were meant to keep them alive.  I had another place to go
to.

At that place, the numbers _303_ were painted above the door in black.
There was writing on the side, too.  "Soryu," it read.  "Asuka Langley."

It was a girl's room.

There were four tall windows on the far side of the bed.  The sunlight
was bright, yet the hospital staff kept two fluorescent lights from the
ceiling on.  A heart monitor beeped with the girl's pulse, and a bag of
intravenous fluids hung from a stand.

She stared.

She stared at the ceiling, eyes wide, but she said nothing when I
entered the room.  She blinked occasionally.  That's all.

She was like me.  She was forced to live.  Nurses had taped her wrists.
I'm sure they brought bags of blood for her and put the fluids back that
she lost.  They saved her life, but she found a way to stop living.
She froze herself in her body.  She used it as a shell and retreated
within.  She'd been a pilot, but not anymore, not since the Fifth had
come.  The major had told me about her.  "She's very prideful," the
major had said.  "I don't mean to be rude in saying so, but she didn't
get along with most people, whether it was you, who didn't try to engage
her, or Shinji-kun, who wanted her as a friend.  I think trying to prove
her self-worth as a person was so important to her it alienated the
people who might care for her, and it drove her so mad she couldn't be
the best she finally settled into a rusty bathtub to let her life seep
into the water and slip away."

I didn't know who this girl was, but if the major had given me a
true picture of her, then I understood well enough.  She'd wanted
self-satisfaction.  She didn't get it.  What reason was there to go on
living, then?

I sat on the stool at her bedside.  I read to the rhythm of her heart, a
constant reminder that we both were alive, though we didn't want to be.

"Asuka?"

The lock on the door jittered.  It was Ikari-kun.

"I brought some stew for you.  I thought maybe it'd be like a taste of
back home, back in Germany, right?  That is, um..."  The lock shook.
"If I can get inside without spilling this."

I stood up.  The stool scratched the floor.

"Asuka?  You're awake in there, aren't you?"  The door rattled.  "Asuka,
speak to me!"

I turned the knob.  Ikari-kun balanced a bowl of brown stew on a tray,
trying to steady the sloshing broth with one arm while reaching for the
door with the other.

"Ayanami?"

To the sound of the overhead speaker, a pair of nurses jogged by.
Ikari-kun peered past me, into the room.

"Asuka," he said.  "She isn't awake, is she."

"No."

He looked at my shoes.  "But Ayanami came to visit; that's nice of you."

I said nothing.

"Am I in your way?" he said.

I said nothing.

"You're not leaving?"

I said nothing.

"Of course.  I guess, um, maybe if you could leave this for her?" he
said, offering the tray.

"What is its purpose?"

"It's just a nice thing to do.  It makes me feel like she's still here."

"She is."

His head come up.  "Yeah, yeah she is, so if you could--"

I stepped aside.  "You may enter."

"You're not leaving?" he said again.  "That's okay; maybe..."  He
stepped back.  "Maybe it's better if I just take this way.  I don't want
the nurses upset because of the food or anything, since I have to go."

"You must go?"

"Uh, yeah!  I just came to give this to her, but you know, you convinced
me that it's a bad idea, so I should go.  Yeah.  I'm going.  Going!"  He
took two frantic steps down the hall.

"Hey, kid, look out!" said a voice.

There was a _thud_.  The tray tilted.  Ikari-kun ran headlong into a
defibrillation cart.  The bowl of stew flipped end-over-end.  It missed
the paddles and the two attendants.  It didn't miss Ikari-kun.

"Gah!" he cried, a piece of pork sticking in his hair.  "Hot-hot-hot!"

One of the nurses stayed behind while his companion ran the crash
cart to the emergency.  He ordered me to fetch paper from the toilet
and dry the steaming broth.  With ointment and cold packs, he treated
Ikari-kun's skin and hoped to mitigate any burns Ikari-kun suffered.
Though he wasn't permanently harmed, Ikari-kun's clothes were stained,
and he sat at the base of the door, motionless.

"All this," he said, speaking to the floor, "but you stayed.  Why?"

"You've been evasive," I said.

"You noticed?"  He sighed.  "I guess that was just a matter of time."

"Why?"

"It got more difficult, trying to hurry or slow down and make it not
look conspicuous."

"That's not what I asked."

"Yeah," he said.  "I know."  He looked up.  The back of his head
tapped the wall.  "It's funny.  I thought I'd forgotten what my mother
looked like.  Then Ritsuko-san told me I saw it--my mother's death,
the accident that killed her.  I realized then I must've wanted to
forget, so it wouldn't be painful when I remembered, but I did remember,
somehow.  I remembered every time I looked Ayanami in the eye."

I'd not considered that--where my body had come from.  It stood to
reason that the people who made me would choose someone who'd died,
someone they wanted to bring back.

"I wonder," said Ikari-kun.  "I wonder what Father's trying to do.  What
was he thinking, making someone like you?  How does he sleep?"  He shook
his head.  "I look at you, and I see all the others.  They smiled so
easily.  The Ayanami before--it took a lot for her to smile.  She was my
friend, but I only felt like she was happy once or twice."  He pressed
his fingers to his temples and pushed.  "Honestly, I don't know what to
think.  She kissed me.  _You_ kissed me, and you're my mother!  That
shouldn't happen; you shouldn't even exist!"

I shouldn't exist.

Ikari-kun was right about that.  This body, with me inside it, never
should've been.  This body I use to write with--it was made.  It was
fabricated.  Had that man been accepted death, I wouldn't be.

But Ikari-kun didn't know that at the time, and he panicked as soon
as the words left his lips.  "I didn't mean that!" he said.  "That's
not what I should've said.  It's just--I don't know what to think.  I
feel like, when I see you, I want to start talking about things that
happened, but then I remember you don't know those things, and it's like
you died all over again."

No matter what Ikari-kun wished for, he couldn't put my memories
back in my head.  He feared those painful feelings.  It was better
to avoid me altogether.  Even when I left Ikari-kun that day, he was
uncomfortable.  I let him have his time with the former pilot of
Unit-02.  He'd explained enough for me.  He made it clear: he considered
the one before me a friend, not me.  Had she died and not come back as
me, he would've been hurt only once, not every time he saw me.  He was a
victim of someone else's need.

The need that brought me back.

Why am I alive?

That question--I couldn't answer it at the time, nor can I now.  Someone
brought me back.  Ikari-kun thought it was his father, the Commander.

The Commander wears glasses.

I have a pair of glasses.  I see clearly.  They're not meant for my
eyes.

My face is his wife's face.  My body is his wife's body.

Ikari-kun wondered what his father's intentions were.

If Commander Ikari is the one who made me, I thought, then who made the
Fifth?  Whose body does he have?

We were the same.  That I felt.  Whether he'd been reborn like I had,
whether he'd been made in imitation of someone else, like I had--I
didn't know.

But he did.  He must've, I reasoned, or he wouldn't have said anything.

Why should there be someone the same as me?

Why should he look the same as me?

In my apartment, as night fell, I looked in the square mirror.  I
thought I could imagine the woman I was made to resemble.  I touched my
face.

And the hand I saw had stubby fingers and blubbery white flesh.  It
wasn't enough.  Being modeled on that woman, whoever she was--it didn't
explain what I saw, what I felt.

The Fifth thought he knew what I was.

That's why I went to him to find out.

I visited Nerv the next morning.  The Fifth had no lodgings of his own.
The major has assigned him temporary quarters in the facility, like
those of the defense teams that patrolled the halls.  I knocked at his
door.

Silence.

I knocked again.

Silence.

I puzzled over that.  He was new to the city.  Where would he go by
himself?  Where would he go that Ikari-kun and I weren't there, too?
Not another test or synchronization procedure, none that I knew of.

I pushed on the door, and it gave way.  The Fifth must've felt he had
nothing to fear by someone else being there.  The room was unadorned.
There was a cardboard box in the corner, holding a collection of compact
discs: the works of Beethoven, Mozart, Handel, and Vivaldi.  The drawers
he'd filled with identical white shirts and dark pants, seven sets in
all.  I hadn't come to that place wanting to know who that person was,
only what he knew, but what I did see unnerved me.  We had singular
interests: he in Western music, I in biology.  We put no value on
clothing, so what we wore was the same all the time.

"My, am I intruding?"

It was him, the Fifth.  He entered with that smile from before, the
smile that held everything back.

"Or do I have it wrong, and it's _you_ who's intruding?  Well, let me
not be an inhospitable host, but please do remove your shoes.  I think
that's the custom here, is it not?"

I left my shoes on the mat beside his.

"Be at ease, First, I've been expecting you," he said.  "Please, sit if
you like.  You wouldn't have come if you didn't have questions, yes?"

We sat together on the futon.  With a bed right beside it, I surmised he
preferred the floor, but I didn't ask--not then.

"Fascinating, aren't they--these people, this world?" he said.  "They're
capable of such great things.  It all comes from knowledge, you
know--the ability to use it and build on it to make great wonders.  For
having to choose between knowledge and strength, I confess I prefer the
way these Lilin are, always dreaming and striving to create.  If only
they had the strength to make with their bodies what they use cranes and
motors and pumps for instead.  Then they would be truly godlike.  I've
truly enjoyed being among them, even if it's only for a short time."

"You speak as if separate," I said.  "You're an observer of humanity,
but not part of it."

"Naturally," he said, grinning.  "I'm no more one of them than you
are.  That's what you're wondering about, isn't it?  How we could be so
similar?  Well, I know you were involved in a bit of an accident.  I see
you're hardly the worse for it on the outside, but perhaps it's had an
effect on your memory?  Yes, I see it has.  Such a shame."  He tilted
his head.  "Or is it someone else who's had an effect on your memory?"

This boy, the Fifth--he liked to talk.  With his words, he hoped to
impress and dazzle.  I was not amused.  "How are we the same?" I said.

He sighed.  "So direct we are.  I'm afraid I must beg your patience,
First.  The fullest explanation is a complicated one.  Tell me: are you
familiar with the work of Kubrick and Clarke?"

"Who?"

"I suppose not.  A pity, really--they were visionary men.  They imagined
a world in which humanity reached for the stars and realized they were
mere children.  In the balance of things, they couldn't have come closer
to the truth."

"Truth?"

"To capture that truth fully, we must start long ago, in a galaxy far,
far away."

I blinked.

"No?  I'm surprised with you, that you would partake so little of these
children's achievements, but very well then.  We will start with a time
long past, but the galaxy is the same as the one we inhabit now.  I
know you've forgotten it, so forgive me if I'm too detailed.  I said
humans were children, and it is so.  They, and all the life on this
world, are the spawn of far older creatures, a race of beings whose
name for themselves I can't hope to pronounce, not with this body.  Let
me say that they were intelligent, astoundingly so, but they were also
frighteningly alone."

"You speak of aliens," I said.

"Ah, so you've heard the term!"

"This doesn't pertain to the question I asked," I said, rising.

"I assure you it does."

I put on my shoes.  I opened the door.

"Haven't you felt like you were something else?" he said.

I stopped.

"That though you looked in the mirror and saw human hair, human flesh,
there was something inside you, something different, something that
would make a sane man tremble and scream?"

I stood in the doorway, my back to him.

"I know you don't remember, so to this point I've tried to be gentle,
but it pains me too much to see you walking around thinking you're
something you're not.  What have they told you--that you're a clone?
That you were made to bring someone back?  Did they claim your memories
would never return, that they were irrevocably lost?  Some of that is
true, the rest lies, but all of it is incomplete.  Listen to me and
don't be skeptical.  They gave you a name, and I'll use it.  Ayanami
Rei, _sit down_."

This boy--he knew things he shouldn't have.  I told myself it'd be
reasonable to stay, if only to find out what he knew, but...

I sat, and the Fifth, with a smile, continued.

"Those aliens were the first.  They were first because their world spun
around two of the biggest and brightest stars, so great and hot that
they burned with a penetrating blue hue.  Compared to humanity, they
were godlike creatures.  They peered across the universe from their home
and saw that the galaxy was devoid of life beyond them, and for that
reason, they saw no point to venturing into space.  They built up their
planet to the point the that soil and water beneath their structures
could no longer be seen.  Tell me, First, can you imagine it?  Can you
see, in your mind, the great cities they built?  The colossal spires
that touched the sky?"

I closed my eyes, and I saw them.  Layers of framework and walkways
built upon each other.  Towers pieced the sky, yet their foundations
couldn't be seen through the thick maze of the city below.  It was a
world-city shining in pure white metal.  The twin stars bathed the
planet in a blue glow and gave each building a confused, double shadow.

"They were indeed great builders.  They left no square centimeter of
their planet untouched but left the cosmos as it was.  Ironically, it
was the cosmos that touched them instead.  Somewhere near their star
system, a giant star was in its death throes.  It was a quickly-spinning
star, and when it died, it released fantastic energies over a narrow
swath of the galaxy.  Such cataclysms occur throughout the universe
every day, even now.  Only rarely does this burst of energy find itself
directed at a planet, let alone one that contains intelligent life.  The
first ones were hardy; they could survive those rays of death, though
it made many sick and slew the old, the young, and the weak.  Though
the first ones lived on, their planet was dying.  The great and many
creatures that grew in the soil, swam through the seas, or flew through
the air--all died or were irrevocably corrupted.  Can you see it, First?
A sky with no birds, an ocean with no fish?  A place where the soil
itself is inert and hasn't a trace of microscopic life?  That was the
world they woke up to."

I saw it clearly.  The suns' rays were hot and deadly.  The corpses of
unthinkable creatures stained the white metal irrevocably.  The stench
of death was inescapable.

"They were always good mathematicians.  It wasn't long before they
realized they'd perish before they built the craft needed to save their
civilization.  They built great vessels, knowing each would hold too
small a number--not enough could be saved, not enough would live on."

The vessels were giant, but so were they.  They built those craft--great
egg-shaped ships--with the last resources they could muster.  Their
people watched, knowing they had nowhere to go.

"They salvaged the souls of those who'd die.  They created seven
guardians to go with those souls as progenitors.  Their race would fall,
but the souls of their kin would survive in the new forms that the
progenitors would create.  The first ones called those seven _Seeds of
Life_.

"They divided the Seeds into two kinds.  Three would have the Fruit of
Life and bestow on their creations the greatest strength and fortitude.
The other four would carry the Fruit of Knowledge, and their children
would be builders and thinkers.  They'd live and die quickly, but with
each generation, they would be more immense and great than they were
before.  That is the Fruit of which humanity is borne, but it wasn't
the first gift to be bestowed on this world.  You see, the first Seed
to set foot on this world carried the Fruit of Life instead.  That was
Adam, and for a time, it was Adam's children, the Angels, who walked
this land."

Not all of them walked.  Some of them flew.  Others rocketed to space
and slept.  Some of them were like humans, with arms and legs and faces.
Others were purely geometrical, entirely round or with sharp edges and
corners.  They represented the gamut of what could be.

"But that time was short-lived.  A second carrier, a _moon_ they called
it, impacted this world by chance, and the Seed that arrived with it
carried the Fruit of Knowledge.  Never, the first ones had decreed,
should the two Fruits mix.  Such would make a being like the first ones
themselves--unspeakably intelligent and mighty, to be sure, but they
also feared such a creature would be arrogant and think itself perfect,
leading to the same catastrophe--by chance and hubris--that had befallen
the first ones themselves.  To protect against this, they sent with each
Seed a Spear, so that if the Fruits were in danger of mixing, the Spear
would subdue a Seed, and all would be well.  The second Seed, in the
black moon, happened upon Earth by accident.  Its Spear was destroyed.
The impact, some think, created the gray rock that revolves around this
world today.  With only one Spear left, there was no other choice.  It
was Adam who was subdued, and the second Seed fostered life on this
world--the creatures who are collectively _Lilin_, for the name of the
Seed who bore them.

"You'd think humanity would be grateful for this turn, happy to be
alive, but they weren't.  So determined they are to achieve something
higher than their existence, they disturbed Adam.  They ripped the soul
of Adam from the giant's body.  They set off the cataclysm they call
_Second Impact_.  And that, First, is why we're both here, isn't it?  To
keep Adam's children from returning to their progenitor?  The people
here--they hold Adam's body in the place they call _Terminal Dogma_.
Ikari Gendo--he hopes to make that body part of his own, but that isn't
enough."

I shivered.  The Fifth spoke of monsters, of aliens whose thoughts and
motives a human mind could never understand, yet he recounted the tale
like a living witness, a survivor, like the last of those who could know
first-hand.

And I?

I opened my eyes.  I told myself I'd imagined his tale after all.  What
I saw--it went with what he said.  He was the one who put those thoughts
into my mind.  He was the one who knew things he shouldn't have.

"You're a child," I said.  "Who would've told a child these stories?"

"I admit, some of it had to be told to me," he said.  "After all,
the Dead Sea Scrolls were meant to be a guide.  Who would reasonably
memorize them front to back?  No, no, not everything I've told you is my
own account, but most of it is.  I know these things because this body
used to be an empty shell.  The people who sent me desired a vessel, a
means to control something they couldn't understand.  Maybe there's a
real Nagisa Kaworu out there--who can say--but the soul those men imbued
in this body came with memories of those days, memories they had no need
or reason to erase."  He smirked.  "That's right, First.  Don't let it
surprise you, for as I said, we are the same.  I knew what you were the
moment I saw you, but unlike Seele, the man who created you had need of
a blank slate."

He grinned.  It was serene; it was chilling.  I stood up, backing away,
and he rose, too.

"You must excuse me, First.  This conversation--watching your
reactions--it's been very enlightening, but I must go.  I have a date,
you see, with Shinji-kun."

"Ikari-kun?"

"Indeed.  I've spoken at length at him.  He's very charming, once you
get him out of his shell.  I dare say he's a model for the Lilin to
follow in that he's not afraid to admit his insecurities, his fears."

"What do you intend toward Ikari-kun?"

"It's not what I intend; it's what _he_ will intend toward me."  He
strolled past me, to the door.  "I will commandeer Unit-02 and take it
to Terminal Dogma.  Your master, Ikari Gendo--he has a part of Adam's
resurrected body.  I've sensed that, but there is something far greater
beneath us.  The others meant to keep that from me, but they were
misguided, foolish to think I wouldn't know what was so close.  They
will panic, and Ikari Gendo--he'll surely send his son to stop me."

"Why would you do this?"

He shook his head.  "Have you listened to nothing I've said?  I do
it because I have the soul of Adam, and it is my destiny to live and
reunite with his body, whatever is left of it.  Though it would destroy
these people, I should think you'd want to do the same."

"I'm not like you."

"No?  So you like that body, then?  You like being a pale imitation of
someone else?  Or maybe you think to make it your own?  Don't make me
laugh, First.  It's impossible.  If you think me cruel for saying so,
just remember--I say this out of brotherly love."

"I'll stop you before you reach the cage," I said.

He backed out of the doorway, into the hall.  "Will you?"

I stepped forward, but a barrier blocked my way.  It was multicolored,
translucent, and it shimmered with an eight-sided pattern.

"This, dear sister, is an AT field," he said.  "It is formed from the
light of the soul.  It keeps us separate and distinct from others.  The
Lilin don't know how to project it.  It may not even be in their power,
but if you wish to stop me, then break this barrier.  Look into your
soul.  There, you'll find the knowledge, the strength.  There, you'll
know that all I've said today is true.  If you don't find that within
yourself, then I suppose this is goodbye."

He walked away, whistling, and I made no move to stop him.  The AT field
in the doorway held even as he left it behind.  He trapped me there.

I didn't believe him.  It was unthinkable.  Impossible.  I'd been made
to serve a purpose.  I'd been made in imitation of a woman to look like
her, to replace her when she was gone.  Even so, I wasn't Ikari-kun's
mother, and I wasn't whatever the Fifth insinuated I was.  I wasn't some
alien creature, caged and imprisoned in this body.  That creature had a
purpose, too, but I refused it.  It couldn't be.

I touched the AT field, and it reacted.  Like waves on a pond, the
octagonal pattern flickered and sparked.  I slipped off a shoe and
pressed the heel against the rainbow wall.  The barrier turned it away
with no visible change.  It reacted to me, to my flesh, to my skin, and
nothing else.

What would it mean, I wondered, for an alien to be forced into a human
body?  Its shape would be a lie.  Its eyes would see falsely, in colors
distorted from its true sight.  If it were a large creature, like Eva,
then the human body would contain its strength and bottle it into a
harmless package.  It would be malleable, controllable.  It would be
like a jar on a kitchen counter, holding something precious until the
right time--the time it was needed.

The time of its purpose.

I pressed both hands on the barrier.  I pushed.  Lights flickered.  The
concrete walls crumbled and fell.  I obliterated that doorway.  I shoved
the AT field aside.  I walked beneath sparks from severed cables.  They
couldn't hurt me.

The sirens blared.  People ran through the halls.  I moved against them.
They, so desperate to preserve their own lives--they were frightened.  I
saw it in their eyes.  I felt it.  The Fifth had made good on his word.
He took Unit-02 into the shaft to Terminal Dogma.  I stood at the edge,
by the cables and pulleys, as technicians lowered Ikari-kun and Unit-01
down to fight him.  I stepped out, over the abyss, and I floated.  I
floated down, toward the lowest level.

We descended further--the Fifth and Ikari-kun below, and I behind
them.  They fell into a sea of red.  The Fifth commanded Unit-02 with
his thoughts, forced it to fight Ikari-kun.  There, he barricaded
himself.  The Fifth projected a wall to protect his soul, an AT field
much stronger than the pathetic thing he used to block the door.  I felt
it.  I touched it.

And with an earth-moving crack, I shattered it.

But the Fifth didn't care.  He flew above the sea of LCL.  He floated
down before a red cross.  He was right: they held the body of a white
giant.  They crucified it.  They subdued it.  The Fifth stared at the
white, blubbery hunk of flesh in awe.

"Adam, our mother," he said, looking upon its purple mask.  "Must those
borne of Adam return to it, even at the cost of destroying humanity?"
He frowned.  "No, this is wrong!  This is..."

A mistake.  In coming to that place, he'd made a mistake.  That
seven-eyed monster, the one with human legs sticking out of its own--I
knew what it was.  It wasn't Adam.  It was the _other_, and the
Fifth knew it, too.  If he'd been deceived or was simply wrong, it
didn't matter.  Ikari-kun defeated Unit-02, and the Fifth, instead of
attacking, congratulated him.  Ikari-kun took the Fifth in the Eva's
hand, but the Fifth didn't resist.

"I was fated to live forever, even if it means destroying humanity as a
result," he said.  "But, I can choose to die, to be or not to be.  It
makes no difference.  My death is the only true freedom."

They were empty words, lost on Ikari-kun.  "What are you talking
about?" he said.  "Kaworu-kun, I don't understand a word you're saying!
Kaworu-kun..."

Why he held such attachment, such compassion for a deceiver, I couldn't
say.  He hesitated, but the Fifth urged him on.

"They're my last words," said the Fifth.  "Now, erase me.  Erase me or
be erased instead.  He who escapes the cataclysm and seizes the future
is the only one who matters, and you're not the one who must die."

He looked up.  He knew I was watching.  He met my gaze, for I watched
them from above.

"You all need the future," he said.  "Thank you.  I'm glad to have met
you."

Ikari-kun held him there.  He waited.  He agonized over it, but in the
end, there was only one outcome.

The Fifth's head splashed in the pool of LCL, and that was the end of
him.

They raised Unit-01 by rope and pulley much as they'd lowered it.  I
floated after it, listening to Ikari-kun's sobs for the whole journey.
The blood of the fifth had stained Unit-01's armor.  By the Commander's
side, I watched the technicians wash it off.  The Commander knew what
I'd done.  "There are cameras in every hallway," he said.  "Did you
think I wouldn't find out?"

I said nothing.

"It's no matter," he said.  "It's for the best.  The final Angel is
dead.  The time you were made for soon approaches.  After that..."

" 'After that'?" I said.

He looked at me strangely.  He left me there, on the catwalk.  He
must've known there was nothing else to say.  What would happen then?
I'd be allowed to die?  To do what I wished?  The person who made me
would never think of what came after.  He was fixed on his desire, and
in doing so, he caused fear and pain.  The people on the surface, in the
city that used to be, had lived in terror.  The pilot of Unit-02 had a
broken mind, fleeing from the real world.

And Ikari-kun?

He sat on the catwalk, still in his piloting suit.  He curled into a
ball and wouldn't move from that place.

"He was an Angel," said Ikari-kun.  "But he was a friend, too.  That's
not right.  It shouldn't have been him.  It shouldn't have been him..."

I stood over him, saying nothing, but he noticed me.  He glanced up and
flinched.

"What do you want?" he said.  "What were you doing there?  How did you
get there?"  He trembled.  "I don't know what you are anymore."

He cried again.  All comfort and warmth had abandoned him; he wanted
nothing else from this world.  It's not just me who wishes to die, but
we're trapped.  They by what they want yet cannot have, and I...

What am I?

Before the giant on the cross, the Fifth had said it.  "No, this is
wrong!" he'd said.  "This is Lilith!"

_Lilith_.

I'm trapped by it, the black spot in my mind.