Neon Genesis Evangelion:

Apocryphal Rhythms

Part4

by ZERØ's Wings

There was a flash of orange and white light. "Wait!!" he screamed, groping frantically from the center of the void. The light was gone. So was Tokyo-3. So was…

"Rei!"

Shinji screamed her name again, suddenly pulled from his dream. He was lying on the hard, cold wood floor next to his bed. His eyes fluttered open and he was staring straight into the face of Rei Ayanami III. She was standing so close that she could've licked the sweat off the bridge of his nose.

Rei wore a blank expression, like the first page of an unwritten novel. Her eyes did not have their usual ruby tinge, they were more of a rust color, and her pupils were dilated. Her mouth was a short, lipless line between her chin and phyltrm.

"You were calling my name," she said. "You sounded like you were in pain."

"I…" Shinji struggled to catch his breath. He felt like he had the wind knocked out of him.

"You fell off the couch. I believe you were dreaming."

"I…I was having a nightmare," Shinji finally managed.

"A nightmare?" Rei asked, turning her head to one side in a curious, bird-like motion.

"You know, a…a bad dream."

Rei frowned. "I have only had good dreams, Ikari, and not even many of those."

"Lucky you," he muttered, lifting himself back onto the couch. Rei moved back a bit and helped him get his legs back up. "I stopped sleeping after I killed Ka…the last angel. Every time I did, my mind would just find every bad memory and bring it back to me."

"A bad memory with me in it?" Rei asked, still puzzled.

"I was…" Shinji stopped; his eyes were filling up with tears.

"What? Please go on," Rei urged him. Shinji turned away from her suddenly.

"I was…I was dreaming of the day you died!!" he yelled, and then he began to cry openly. "You…you shouldn't even be here!" he sobbed. "What is my father doing with you?" he demanded, coughing in harsh spasms.

Rei plopped down on the couch beside Shinji. His words had struck her so suddenly and surprisingly, that she could no longer stand. Her knees quaked beneath her, but she couldn't even feel them. She felt like her head had spouted wings and flown off, leaving her body far behind. "I died?" she said in a breathless whisper. "I have no memory of that event."

"I do." Shinji dried his eyes on the cuff of his nightshirt. "The truth is, I don't even know if you're the real you. Or if there is a real you." Shinji shook his head. His mind hurt to think about all of it. The dummy system. Its very name was like a curse to him. It was the thing he hated most, after his father, and it came from Rei, one of the few people he cared deeply about.

"I am the same person that I have always been. My mind constitutes the same memories of my predecessors. My personality is shaped from the same experiences as Rei I and Rei II."

"I want to believe you," Shinji said, tears still wavering in his eyes. "I just don't know if I can. After you died, you came back like a different person."

"I am Rei Ayanami," she blurted out, the words coughed up from the deepest corners of her mind. "I am neither false nor fake. I am me." She spoke definitively, commandingly, with a sureness Shinji had never heard before.

Shinji leaned forward and put a hand on Rei's left cheek. His hand was shaking as he brought it toward her, then it felt like sparks and heat were leaping from it as it rested on her face. He swallowed hard and steadied the hand. I can't believe I just did that, he thought. Neither could Rei.

She was startled by this action and her first instinct was to pull away from his touch, but she wouldn't let herself. Rei could no longer afford to be cold and calculated with Shinji. She could no longer afford to treat him as part of her geometric equation. She opened her mouth to speak, but Shinji covered it with the same hand.

"I have to say something first," he said gently. "I'm sorry Rei. I'm sorry I doubted you."

Rei took Shinji's hand and wrapped it between both of hers. "It's all right," she said. "I enjoyed spending time with you, and that is all I meant to do."

Shinji gave her a questioning look.

"Commander Ikari gave me a day to do something I truly enjoy. I came here to find out what that is."

"Well," he began, an honest grin spreading across his face for the first time in weeks, "I'm sure we can find something more fun to do with your day off."

Shinji made scrambled eggs for breakfast. Rei declined, explaining that she disliked eating eggs just as she disliked meats. Shinji apologized profusely. She had toast instead. No butter, no jelly, just toast. It was what she ate for breakfast every morning for as long as she could remember.

Midway through their meal, Misato barged into the kitchen, in varying states of undress. Just out of the shower, she was drying her wet hair with one towel as she tried to keep another wrapped loosely around her torso, and was somehow rummaging through the fridge at the same time. She pulled out some milk and drank it straight from the carton, then tossed it back in.

Rei sat and watched this unruly behavior silently, her hands folded in front of her mouth with her fingers interlaced. When Misato finally left, taking her frenzied commotion with her, and Rei and Shinji were left to sip their after-breakfast tea in peace.

"Misato's not much of a morning person," Shinji explained with a sheepish grin.

"She did not seem to be aware of our presence," Rei stated calmly, but with a tiny bit of laughter just poised on the tip of her tongue.

They both finished their tea and Shinji washed the dishes by hand. He took up the frying pan he had cooked his eggs in and scrubbed the grit from it with a fastidious zeal. Rei simply sat and watched, impressed by his thorough upkeep of the apartment. Rei thought for a moment of how dirty and disorganized her own apartment was. She remembered the day Shinji stopped by and cleaned the place up. She had thanked him, something she had never done before to anyone. Not even to him… Rei joined Shinji at the sink to finish washing the dishes.

*****

"Are you at all concerned about the U.N.'s seizure of Units 05 through 13?" Fuyutski demanded. "SEELE has already proven that it will use any means to destroy us." Gendo Ikari was mixing his tea using a stainless-steel tea ball on a delicate link chain. He put the tea aside and swiveled at his desk to meet Fuyutski's stare.

"They are minions derived from Adam. They will not overcome Unit 01, as they have no souls. I am more concerned with Rei. Her latest bio-fusion rate with the Lillith sample was unsatisfactory."

"Have you considered that you are perhaps too concerned with Rei?" Fuyutski, like everyone around Gendo, was disgusted by Gendo's treatment of his own true son, while giving all the latitude in the world to a girl who was neither his daughter nor his wife, but a ghostly apparition that combined the two. It drew too many disturbing comparisons.

"Fuyutski, if I wanted to hear this, I would simply have another meeting with SEELE. I want you here for your loyalty…and friendship." Gendo was becoming tired of everyone's constant criticism of Rei. It seemed everyone had an unkind word for the person he loved most in his later life. In his life after Yui…

"But as a true friend," Fuyutski said in desperation, "I cannot placate you if you go down a path toward madness."

Gendo turned an angry glare to his longtime friend. His scarlet tinged glasses amplified the ferocity in his eyes. "I certainly hope you trust me more than that," he said in a dangerous tone.

"I do, I do," Fuyutski replied, his argument thwarted.

"Very well, then," Gendo said, completely somber once more. "I gave Rei a day to sort out her feelings. I suggested she do something that she truly enjoys. I'm sure she has no idea what that might be, but if she does discover something that she truly enjoys, it should raise her mental stability and ensure bio-fusion."

"You seem afraid she will follow a path similar to that of the second child."

"There are safeguards against that happening. Rei simply needs to focus herself on the task at hand. Perhaps some down time will help her regain her concentration."

Fuyutski scoffed at this silently. Can't you see it, Ikari? She's breaking away from you. She has finally received access to her own humanity, and so the timid Yui in her has gone dormant. The angel in her will awake soon, and partake upon Rei all its wrath and fury.

Gendo left his desk suddenly, and walked toward the mammoth double doors at the other end of his office. He stepped briskly over the Sephirothic System of the Ten Divine Names that was projected onto the marble flooring. Gendo reached the large doors and opened them, spilling blood red light into the hallway before him. Gendo turned and called back to his second-in-command: "The third impact is close at hand. I trust you to keep everything running smoothly until the incept date."

Fuyutski nodded. "Of course. What else did you hire me for?" Two friends shared a familiar, comfortable smile. It was the last time they would ever be comfortable, because as of tomorrow, they would be too busy orchestrating the coming apocalypse. God had created earth in six days, and they would have just as many to destroy it.

Gendo let the door swing shut with a yawning scrape across the marble flooring, and its thunderous slam home had all the fury and certainty of dogmatic law.

End part4