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Her dream is different tonight. The last that Asuka remembers of it are Rei's fingers on her cheek before her eyes fly open, plunging her back into the dimness of her room.
The winter storms have begun to sweep through Japan, drenching the city with rain that seems to have no end. It hammers on the windows, rattling them, like it’s persistently trying to get in and take up residence in Asuka’s room. It reminds Asuka of herself, trying to reach Rei, and that this rain is more welcome to Rei than she would be.
Asuka’s spine pops as she sits up, echoing the thunder rumbling from the other side of the city. The clock beside her says it’s 3, but under the cover of clouds, it could be any time of the day. The clock might be tricking her, as her own emotions had; after all, she’d believed what Rei had said. She’d thought, for those fleeting weeks that seem to have happened to another person, not to Asuka Langley Soryu, that for the first time since Kyoko left her, she might not have to be alone.
A thought wanders across her mind, one that’s visited her frequently. Asuka pushes her blankets aside with a furious swipe of her arm and stumbles from the bed, staggering as her feet hit the floor a half-second sooner than she’d anticipated. She catches herself on the edge of her desk- what if she’d hit it, she wonders for a second; what if she’d hurt herself, what would Rei think?- and tugs at a drawer. It wouldn’t matter to Rei. Asuka pulls a pen and paper from the drawer and shuts it, seats herself on the rickety, uncomfortable chair that she’s grown more and more used to. Rei has moved on by now.
Only Asuka hasn’t moved on, and it shows. The bags of trash she brings outside are laden with equal amounts used tissues and crumpled balls of paper, and sometimes a pen that she’s drained of ink. She’s on her- fourth? Fifth?- pen by now, and there’s not a letter to show for it. Asuka won’t do to Rei what she does to herself; though she doesn’t think it’d matter to Rei, she won’t dredge up those memories of held hands and quiet moments and almost-kisses that she believed, that she continues to believe in vain, might have turned into kisses if only she’d had the courage.
The Commander knows . They were supposed to be able to work past this. They are EVA pilots; there’s nothing in the world that could stop them- except, Asuka now knows, Rei’s own loyalty to the Commander. The lunches they’d eaten in secret on the school rooftop, that Asuka had to plan days in advance for so she wouldn’t have to rely on Shinji for food or Hikari to make sure the rooftop door was open, meant nothing. Their hushed conversations in the locker rooms, held in whispers, must have gone unremembered by Rei; she must not recall the day that Asuka grabbed her wrist, desperate, and pleaded for her to stay, and Rei had answered, I will, you have me.
Asuka’s pen scratches the paper, and at last the suffocating warmth of her room is broken. Her pen, moving in time with the pattering of the raindrops, will not be stopped until Asuka is done, or she’s used up both sides of the paper. That’s how it’s always been- she didn’t think so much about her letters like Rei did, she just wrote, and perhaps that had been too much. She’d shown Rei too much of herself too quickly, and she the echoes of that choice plague her still. Asuka will find herself, sometimes, with her mouth open and ready to speak to a girl that’s long since left her side, and though her mind will have fabricated an answer, there will be no familiar voice to say it. Rei may speak in class and to the Commander when she must, but she’ll never answer Asuka again.
Lightning flares across the sky somewhere near: there’s an almost simultaneous call of thunder, loud enough to rattle the windows and set off several car alarms, which chirp discordantly beneath the sounds of the rain. Rei is out there, thinks Asuka, tucked in her bed and sleeping peacefully, undisturbed by the storm. She may be out there, but she’ll never come back. Asuka blinks twice, rapidly. The sudden brightness of the lightning must have hurt her eyes; they burn- something wet and warm splashes against her thumb, and a damp, grey stain is spreading across the letter.
It’s nearly done, anyway. Asuka’s writing stretches the length of the page, dancing haphazardly along the bottom edge of it. The pen advances again, scribbling madly. The longer she sits here, the closer Asuka will come to the thought she forbids herself from considering, that if Rei would take her back- that if Rei might want her again, somehow- Asuka would return to Rei’s side as easily as the first day she’d gone. Who else would there be who could stir in her any feeling other than anger?
The ball of Asuka’s pen scratches something solid. She’s hit wood. A word trails off the edge of the paper, incomplete, but the other side of the page is something Asuka won’t be dealing with tonight. Her hands seize the letter and scrunch it up, twisting and crumpling it beyond recognition. She goes to tear it, and that’s when her strength leaves her all at once: her fingers curl around the edges, but this letter is one that refuses to be ripped apart. Asuka yanks again at her desk, at the drawer below the first. Before it’s opened all the way, a swarm of crinkled edges springs up from within, the same cold white as Rei’s skin. Asuka smooths her letter out, shoves it on top, and slams the drawer back in place.
Thunder rolls off the buildings again, closer to the heart of the city. On the same shaky legs that took her to her desk, Asuka stands and wobbles her way back over to the bed. That drawer is getting full; she’ll have to clean it out someday soon, destroy those memories she refuses to let leave her. She might have need of them if Rei comes back, even if that day might never arrive.
Curled up in bed, Asuka holds her pillow close to her face. Sleep is not far, now. It never is in times like these. It hovers over her, a waiting predator, swooping down when her eyes are closed to fill her dreams with images of Rei, of Asuka’s hand around her shoulder, and to take from her those thoughts that dare intrude and try to remind her that Rei no longer belongs in her arms, nor she in Rei’s.
Asuka’s mind has rarely ever paid attention in class, but today it focuses in on one thing, rather than wandering randomly. She’s focused on a moment, one she knows shouldn’t have happened, but somehow it did. That scraping of Rei’s shoulder against hers in the locker room yesterday couldn’t have been a mistake, not when it felt so much like their touches from before, not the rough knocking together that their collision should’ve been, but more like a soft and fleeting connection, simultaneously physical and intangible.
Rei is looking out the window again. She’s returned to doing that, and she’s too far from Asuka’s seat for Asuka to see where she’s looking. It’s probably for the best. Catching sight of Rei’s eyes would tell her whether she’s right, that Rei is looking at her, thinking of her, wishing for the same return to days before as Asuka.
Asuka blinks, and the room shifts. The floor is so much further away; her desk is cold and clammy, like her skin, and everything appears as a blur to her save for two points of red, staring at her from across the class. The rest of reality has been wiped away, save for those eyes and the girl who watches Asuka. How could it not have been? How could this world that Asuka’s reconstructed, one in which she’s preparing herself again to remain alone, withstand a gaze such as that?
The teacher clears his throat, loudly, from his place at the front of the classroom. Rei’s head swivels away, back towards the window, and the moment is undone. Asuka’s palms hit the top of her desk, damp with sweat. A second later, Asuka herself goes down atop her arms. What just happened couldn’t have been real. It was a trick of her vision, a hallucination brought on by too many hours spent awake, crying, and not enough spent sleeping. Rei wouldn’t look at her like that. Rei has moved on.
Asuka stays with her face shielded from her classmates, from Rei, until lunch. When Hikari comes and taps her on the shoulder, Asuka tells her she’d just fallen asleep. It’s the first lie she’s told Hikari; it’s believed whole-heartedly. Hikari turns away, moving to sit with Toji, and Asuka is left to wonder whether she’s the one that lie came from, or if somehow Rei’s apparent skill at deception has rubbed off on her, and now she’ll spread it to someone else.
The scraping of a chair grates at Asuka’s ear. Her eyes snap toward it, and catch Rei as she rises from her seat, clutching a small paper bag in her pale hands. Her lunch, Asuka thinks. For the first time in however long, Rei’s brought a lunch.
And she’s headed this way. Asuka ducks her head, pretending to be busy rooting through her own bag for her lunch box. She doesn’t expect to feel Rei’s fingers sliding over her shoulder, their touch too firm to be an accident, but quick enough to be casual. Asuka looks up- Rei’s eyes dart toward the classroom door, then upwards at the ceiling- and then Rei is gone through those doors, leaving Asuka baffled not by her actions, but by what they’re supposed to mean. Outside- the roof- it couldn’t be-
Asuka snatches her lunch from her bag. The classroom spins around her as she stands, blood draining from her face, but she makes it to the door. Her hand darts out, and the weight of her body carries her around the threshold, into the empty hall. If Rei came out here, she’s gone already. Asuka’s fingers slip free of the doorway, trailing along the white plaster wall. She could turn and go back inside, but that was never an option. Rei’s called her here, she knows it.
Making it up the stairs is a little harder. Asuka has to stop, repeatedly, so she doesn’t lose her balance on steps that seem to spin when she looks at them for longer than a second. When she does make it to the top, there’s the door, usually locked during school hours. Today, it’s open.
She finds Rei already in their usual place, the little shaded area beside the stairwell that fully covers both of them if they sit close together. Rei’s opened her bag and has a sandwich in her hands, already half-eaten. She doesn’t say anything, not when Asuka sits beside her; not when she asks, “What’s going on?”; not until she’s finished eating and wiped her hands on the napkin she brought with her.
“Asuka?” Rei says. Asuka pushes her lunch, barely touched, to the side. She nods encouragingly to Rei, hoping Rei will continue so she can hear more of that voice she’s missed, that she regrets not trying to remember and spent nights trying to recall. “Do you think that… you would ever be able to forgive a girl like me?”
“I don’t understand,” says Asuka. “A girl like you?” Rei nods, but no explanation is forthcoming. She tugs her legs up closer to herself, fingers moving to lock with each other and secure Rei into the little ball that Asuka knows her to form when she’s distressed. “Rei, of course I’ll forgive you-”
She reaches out, hoping to touch Rei, to pull her into a hug. Rei jerks away so violently that at first Asuka thinks she might have fallen, but as she moves closer she sees the look on Rei’s face. There’s something akin to terror there, hidden behind a flickering veil of a grief that borders on tears. In that second that Asuka hesitates, Rei gathers her bag up and scrambles to her feet. She’s rounded the corner before Asuka can react or even speak again, and Asuka hears the slam of the metal door behind her, masking the sounds of Rei’s descent down the stairs.
Yet again, she’s been left alone. Asuka lowers her hand, staring at the lunch she brought. She’s no longer hungry, but she can’t bring herself to pack it up and go and chase after Rei. Instead, she holds her hand out before her, running the fingertips of the other across it, touching the space where Rei’s fingers had brushed, if only briefly, over hers- what Asuka believes was Rei’s way of saying goodbye.
Things aren’t the same as they were before, but then again, how could they ever be? No touch of Rei’s, no matter how intimate or dwelling, can dispel the memories that flock to the fore of Asuka’s mind whenever they’re close together. It’s a paradox: the nearer to each other they are, the more vividly Asuka is reminded that Rei will likely leave, and in the event that she doesn’t, that fear will linger within Asuka, never truly gone.
Rei is closer, though. There’s no denying the brief touches in the halls as they pass each other, those moments alone when they can make it to the rooftop, or linger in the locker rooms as they did before, and hold hands. When they’re not talking, the silences are suffocating in the same way Asuka always imagined their first kiss would be: needy, desperate, an attempt to say the things that couldn’t be spoken between them.
Slipping away would be easy for Rei or Asuka. All it would take was a single opportunity missed to be with one another, a touch that goes unanswered, a gaze across the classroom that’s seen but not returned. They’re both still here, and that’s what confuses Asuka the most. She could step away at any time, but she wants this; it would seem that Rei does, too, since she hasn’t mentioned the Commander and changes the topic every time Asuka brings him up.
So they stay, holding each other at arm’s length, dancing around these feelings that, for every day that goes by, turn from an impasse into their new normal. One day, Asuka finds herself wondering if Rei considers her sufficient , and it’s not the inadequate feeling that’s haunted her before that fills her breast, but overwhelming relief. She touches her fingers to Rei’s, lets Rei be the one who reaches for her hand, and doesn’t ask for more than Rei is willing to give. The more that Asuka hoped for regresses into a distant dream, visited rarely in her sleep, and pushed aside in the waking world as an impossibility.
Their lunches on the rooftop become spontaneous, less a question of whether Asuka’s prepared or not, but if Rei’s brought a lunch, if the door is open, if the weather is sunny and doesn’t threaten to dump rain on their heads. It hasn’t happened yet, but Asuka suspects Rei would insist on eating up there regardless. She still wonders if the Commander might know or suspect, if it even matters to Rei- if to her, being with Asuka matters more.
Asuka would be content without an answer, but in that fashion her life has recently undertaken, she receives one. She and Rei, occupying their own world together on the roof, have just touched hands. As always, Rei’s is warm, a bit like the summer sun that Asuka won’t be feeling on her skin for a few more long months. Asuka looks at her, admiring her, but keeps it hidden. It’s a fear of hers, never stated or admitted, that someday she’ll get too close again, and that’ll be what sends Rei away. Today the red bow around Rei’s neck, frayed at the edges- a sign that this couldn’t be Rei’s- is crooked.
Asuka reaches over across Rei, who’s snuggled up against her shoulder, and straightens it out. When she tries to pull back, there’s a hand wrapped around her wrist. Rei’s eyes, hidden behind her bangs, glimmer up at Asuka.
Suddenly, she’s closer. Asuka didn’t see her move. She blinked, maybe the world stood still, maybe she’s been transported to another world where she and Rei never parted by an Angel. Rei tilts her head forward, slowly, until their foreheads touch. Asuka’s vision is occupied solely by Rei; she takes in a breath to speak, and Rei’s fingers find her lips, silencing her.
Her breath, having nowhere to go, seeps from her lungs and into the corners of her being, warming her. Her chest aches; this is the closest they’ve been, but it’s not enough. She wants something more than just Rei’s hand on her lips. Asuka closes her eyes- maybe she could imagine it, or Rei would surprise her- and the hand moves away.
The moment endures for what feels like an eternity. Rei’s breath travels Asuka’s mouth, hot and wet like the air from a summer storm. There’s something else, what might be a sigh that shakes Rei’s body, but nothing after that.
At last, Rei pulls back. Asuka doesn’t open her eyes. There’s still that hope within her- foolish, unquenchable, a reflection of her younger self that she refuses to let the world see- but even that dies quickly. When she at last gets to her feet and looks around, Rei is gone. She’s been long gone, and on the horizon in the direction she’d sat is a gathering of clouds, dark and nebulous, slowly slouching their way towards Tokyo-3.
Rei doesn’t show up at the gate after school, nor had she been in class when Asuka returned from the roof. Asuka suspects, as she’d known would happen all along, that Rei has tired of her at last. They’ll be returning to their previous arrangement of wordlessly refusing to acknowledge each other’s presence, save for those moments in combat when they would have to talk to each other to survive (which, for Asuka, had been every moment).
The storm from before is rolling in fast, already drenching the eastern edges of the city with fat, pelting raindrops. Between those and the clouds that blot out the sky, turning it the dark color of a moonless night, Asuka has no choice other than to return home. It’d have been useless anyway, she knows, to have waited for Rei. Rei, when she’s made up her mind, is decisive; if she’s tried Asuka again and deemed her inadequate, nothing Asuka can do would sway her.
Misato isn’t home when Asuka arrives at the apartment. Shinji must be, but the silence tells Asuka he must be curled up in his room, listening to music and trying to do homework- something ordinary like that. Asuka sighs, fumbling with her keys as she unlocks the door. Leave it to Shinji to still think like a civilian, not a pilot, whose live should revolve around risks and adventure- but maybe he does have a point; he’s not the one, after all, whose heart has been broken.
Just as Asuka manages to open the door, there’s a sound from behind her. She notices the men first: wearing suits and sunglasses even in this weather, they stand out more than Rei, who clutches something against her drenched uniform with clammy, shaking arms. Wordlessly, Rei unfolds them from her chest and extends, with both hands, a dry white envelope.
Asuka takes it in equal silence, looking at Rei rather than what she’s just been given. There has to be an answer for her sudden disappearance, if only Asuka can puzzle it out. The only thing she notices that’s different about Rei is the state of her uniform, its second button missing and held together instead by a safety pin. Maybe that was it. Maybe in Rei’s haste to leave the rooftop, she’d torn her uniform, and… no, it wouldn’t make sense-
Her message delivered, Rei turns and begins to leave with the men from Section 2. She doesn’t look back at Asuka as they depart, as she’d done on those days when Asuka walked her home. Asuka steps after them, arm lifted slightly, Rei’s name caught in her throat- but what would she say?- and by the time Asuka has worked that out, Rei and the men are gone.
Asuka, left in the doorway with the envelope and still stunned, manages to get into the apartment and lock the door behind her. She staggers past Shinji in his room, who hadn’t heard her enter, and enters her own, kicking the door shut behind her. Her legs, uncertain, pitch her onto the bed. Rei’s envelope rattles in her hands, something solid scraping her palm. Asuka tears it open, a jagged rip at the top, and turns it over. Its contents tumble into her lap: a letter, a button; a goodbye.