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Rei has never been seen.
She is looked at quite often. People got caught in her eyes, seeing the red of the blood-soaked earth, seeing the first and the second impact. She is stared at quite often. Staring at her unnervingly, the way a child does to a doll, thinking little of how the doll felt to be stared at. She is leered at quite often. By men and boys, leering at the dips and curves that make her up, salivating at the mouth like hounds.
She thinks she might have been seen. She had thought so with Ikari Gendo; she had thought, this is the weight that came with the heavy gaze of a father, a mentor. She had been wrong. He sees someone he once loved tucked away in the taut corners of her skin. She had certainly felt seen with Ikari Shinji, or she had desperately wanted to. But he saw something false in her, something he could create from her, but not something she could readily give. She doesn't know who Ikari Shinji sees; maybe it is Ayanami Rei, but it is not her. And he did not look at her very often with the arrival of the Fifth Child, though she misses his eyes the most. When Asuka Langley Soryu turned to her, it was often a glare, a scowl, or a taunt. When Nagisa Kaworu looked at her with false courtesy, he held tension in his face and a knowing look that she could never decipher. She loathes his eyes the most.
She is looked at quite often, but she has yet to be seen.
It is hard even to see herself. The window, the mirror, the water returned her face, replete with glass skin; tight lips turned down, always down, and eyes that held more death than they did life. She cannot comprehend how these things make her, her. How porcelain the mirror Rei was, sculpted perfectly with intention, not a mark in sight. She cannot make sense of it. She feels half a picture, half a thought, half a memory. Her wounds healed and invisible, the skin no thicker where it should be, yet she can feel them clearly. She runs her hands beneath her clothes over the train tracks on her arms and body. Here, below her belly, and here above her rib, and there below her shoulder blade. She can map out the homes of these invisible wounds, she can feel the sharp pain they delivered, but there is no memory. On her tongue sat light a faint taste, but just as she pieced together the recollection, it washes away. Maybe her brain harbors all her scars, tissue so thick with a painful past it refuses to remember.
Who am I? Who is Ayanami Rei?
She wants to be seen, oh god, how she desires it. Maybe, just maybe, if she is seen, she can catch a glimpse of who she is in the reflection of a set of eyes.
She looks at Asuka Langley Soryu and thinks, "That is a girl who knows who she is." A girl who wants to be seen so badly there is not a moment she is not screaming it from the top of her lungs. And she is seen, she is seen. Rei sees her. Rei wants to see more of her. She wants to see the girl without her skin on, without armor, to feel the sealed wounds that cover her heart. Maybe she wants to be like Asuka, but if breathing has taught her anything, it's that it is tricky to separate yourself from your wants. Lungs want to breathe, and so she loves breathing. People are not too different from breaths of air.
"Suzuhara-kun is looking at you," Rei says because it is accurate, and she isn't sure what else to say. She feels a pull in her marrow to say something, anything, to the girl next to her.
Asuka sneers, her lips sliding in an ugly show of teeth. "Of course he is; I can smell his dog's breath from here." She twists in her chair and swaps her expression for a mischievous smile. "Hey, Toji, you tryna get a look at my bra straps or something?"
Suzuhara Toji bursts into flames and scowls at the red-haired girl, negating her accusations. She rolls her eyes and leans back in her chair, her arms crossed firmly over her chest. She is not frowning like Rei thought she would be. She's smiling.
"You like being looked at."
Asuka startles like she'd forgotten the presence of the girl sitting by her. Her nose scrunches up like the crushed petal of a flower. "What are you on about?"
Rei glanced at the circle of boys that had formed around Suzuhara Toji, taunting him for his schoolboy crush. Asuka followed her line of sight and snorted.
"I mean, what girl doesn't like being looked at?"
The statement confused Rei, and she fell silent. She spends the rest of the class thinking about it before concluding. She turns and waits for Asuka to end her conversation with the class rep, Hikari. Eventually, the german girl slips back into her seat next to Rei. She takes this moment, pouncing before Asuka can leave again.
"I don't."
Asuka doesn't look up from her writing but replies with an irritated, "Huh?"
"I don't like it," Rei speaks softly so that only the other girl can hear her. "I don't like it when boys look at me."
Asuka looks at her from the corner of her eye, like she's scared to engage too far into a conversation with someone she's sworn to hate. "You're lying."
Rei frowns and shakes her head.
“Yeah, well, Shinji’s always fucking staring at you.” Asuka drops her pencil and turns in her chair to face Rei. A slight tug of satisfaction rippled through Rei to have the girl's full attention.
She thinks about Ikari Shinji, and a stone sinks in her stomach, not yet hitting bottom. “It’s not like that.” She can hear the sour taste of sorrow on her tongue and hopes Asuka can't detect it in her voice.
The corner of Asuka's lip curls. “Sure, dollface.”
Heat crawls into Rei's face; Asuka has only ever called her by names she'd rather not repeat. She wants to hear it spill from her mouth again, so she keeps talking.
“When Ikari-kun looks at me, he doesn’t see me. It’s like he’s looking at someone else, not Ayanami Rei.”
Asuka stares at her for a while, something shifting in her eyes. She had an inkling that Asuka understood what she meant—that many people looked at her without really seeing Asuka. Rei feels an itch under her skin. She wants to dig her fingers into the girl's scalp and peel back the mask she wears—a terrible hunger for knowing things, knowing everything about Asuka Langley Soryu, rumbles through her.
A scowl flicks onto Asuka's face, and Rei slumps in disappointment.
"What? You gonna cry because stupid Shinji doesn't have a crush on you anymore?"
"No." She says simply. "I think he has given his heart to the Fifth Child."
Asuka groans dramatically, flopping against her chair. "Stupid Shinji. Couldn't he at least pick a girl? If I have to watch him make heart eyes at that pervert one more time, I'm going to throw up."
Rei's stomach twisted in on itself. She felt a prickle of concern, but she couldn't place the cause. Asuka always said offensive, derogatory things, and it had never bothered her before.
Asuka turned her finger on her, wisps of hair curled around her cheek like the licks of a flame. "And you are lying. You liked when Shinji made kissy faces at you, and whatever, you have awful taste, but every girl likes the attention. Good or bad."
Rei thought of how Asuka would provoke Shinji to get his attention, just to fight or make fun of him. Anything to be seen.
Rei ignored the girl next to her in favor of her work. She didn't think Asuka was lying. Rei was sure that the girl craved attention, whether it was good or bad. She thinks maybe Asuka has never learned the difference.
In a few months, the ground around them had grown glossy with ice. She watches as Asuka leans over a shop window. Her breath softened the glass that was laced over with frost. With an ungloved finger, she draws the simple shape of a cat, giggling softly to herself. When she straightens her back, she realizes she's being watched, and her face flushes from shock and embarrassment. It was so rare to see Asuka act her age. So fiercely she wishes to be grown up, she has wrung out every bit of girlhood from her body. Rei feels a pain between her breasts, a deep empathy. Childhood is something that has been stripped from all of the children who pilot Evas; small deaths, the kind that slowly kills a soul before the body—all to save the world, to save people they have never met. She mourns for Asuka and Shinji, and herself. How odd it is to feel the absence of something she's never possessed.
Asuka stomps over to her, her brow furrowed in the middle. "What are you looking at?"
Rei blinks, thinking the answer is obvious. "You."
Asuka stands still, her soft bottom lip slightly ajar, bits of white sticking to her hair. She shifts her weight and looks past Rei indignantly. "What do you want?”
The bag in Rei's hands swings gently, knocking into her knees. "I was waiting for you so that we could walk to Nerv together."
Rei half expected the girl to curse her out or brush her off, but soundlessly she fell into pace, slowing down only once to wait for Rei to catch up to her. And for as long as she's allowed, Rei will do so, sticking to the girl like a flat shadow cast by the sun. They are a few minutes into their walk when she feels a burning gaze on the side of her face. When she turns to glance expectantly, Asuka is already speaking.
“Aren’t you cold?”
Rei thought for a moment. Her breath blew white in the air, and when she looked down at her bare hands, her fingers were prickled and red.
“Oh, I suppose so. I didn’t think about it.”
Asuka gave her an odd, disapproving look. “You’re so creepy sometimes.”
And before Rei could reply—though she likely wouldn’t have—Asuka has cut her off from the sidewalk and crowded into her space. She brings Rei’s hands between her gloved ones and rubs them together. Pulling their hands up, she blows on them, hot breath billowing on skin. Rei’s stomach feels heavy, holding a sea, and the waves are sloshing mercilessly against the cliffs of her.
Their eyes meet, and Asuka stops for a brief moment. Stops rubbing their hands together, stops blowing, stops breathing. She stares and stares like she is seeing Rei for the first time. Static crumbles in Rei’s ears and the air is charged, tight like the string of a bow. There’s only wondering where the arrow will pierce. She is close enough to see the blue rings of Asuka's eyes as she says something ugly. As she looks away, her hands fall away, and Rei wants to grab them, but she doesn't have the strength to.
“Don’t make it fucking weird.”
And Rei wants to ask what she means because too often do Asuka’s words puzzle her, but she knows she will receive a brusque reply or be ignored. So she stands still and lets the other girl stretch the distance between them.
Rei sees Asuka cry on the day she is pulled out of a mission. She hadn't meant to, mostly stumbled upon it, but after she had watched the girl run out of Nerv headquarters, she found herself looking for her. She was crying, not out of her eyes but from her invisible wounds. The scars and hurt weep tears of blood, and Asuka shudders and hugs herself. She seemed so small and tired that it made Rei put a hand over her heart as if a spear had skewered it.
She sits on the floor next to her, moving slowly the way one would with a wild animal. She sits and waits until the weeping becomes gasps of air, and the gasps of air become minor hiccups. Eventually, Rei feels the need to speak.
"Why are you sad?"
Asuka grunts low, and brings her head up quickly. Her glassy eyes are rimmed red, screwed up in frustration. "They replaced me! With Shinji!"
"Because you're injured." Rei says calmly.
"So what? They have you pilot all the time no matter how fucked up you get."
"That's because I'm expendable."
Asuka whips her head to glare at her, looking hurt and wrathful all the same. "Shut up." She growls. "You're so fucking…" She trails off like she can't sum up Ayanami Rei into words. "Do you know how much Shinji would cry if you died? And Ikari-san? He'd probably kill whoever he felt was responsible. But me? No one fucking cares about me, they all pretend they do, but they don't. No one does, not even my mom—”
"I do." Rei stops her. "I would be sad if you died." She crawled closer to the girl and held her hand. "I care about you, Asuka."
Asuka stares at her dumbfounded, her soft bottom lip ajar. For a moment, she is silent, and then her eyes begin to soften, her brows meeting sweetly. Asuka's lip wobbles, and then she is laughing, gently. The hand in hers curls around her fingers, squeezing tight, and she smiles in a crooked way.
It has Rei thinking.
Is this love? This sick growth that spread, thick in her blood and hot under her skin. She has always been cold; she has always been rigid; warmth and softness have never served her. And yet here she is, debased by a simple smile. This want, this desire, to hold her, to protect her, to die for her. Is that love? To want to spend time with someone, to think of them, to want to be loved by them. Love. It tasted so foreign in her mouth.
How she drank her in. The fire red of her hair, the brightness of her eyes. The way her limbs arranged delicately when sitting as if placed by a sculptor. The ignition of her fury, the strength in her arms, the arrogance atop her lip. Her laugh, girlish and loud. The mischievous twist in the corner of her mouth. The sound of her voice, bold and sweet and demanding.
Rei felt so incredibly human in Asuka’s presence.
The agony rips through her with every shift of her lungs. Her eyelids drag down, threatening to tip her over into unconsciousness, but she struggles against it. She needs to see her , to know that she's safe. The water trickling in from the cracks of the entry plug tickles her toes. She needs to…Rei thought she might throw up. She felt hot and sick all over, her brain sloshing inside her skull to the rhythm of the waves. Her eyes close, just for a moment.
When she jolts back, it's to the loud groan of the entry plug’s door and the shrill scream of steam. The door wails and falls in on itself, and behind it, there's a girl with eyes so blue the sky would shy in comparison. A slight sense of urgency lights up in the back of Rei’s mind. She wades through the thick fog in her mind. She had to...! Rei swallows the picture of the girl before her. Her hair was matted against her temple, damp and limp like pitiful flames. She was reaching for Rei frantically. The fabric of her plugsuit from her hand and up to her shoulder was shredded, and the skin beneath it was an angry, blistered red.
The crimson sea slapped against Asuka’s thin frame, threatening to swallow them both. Asuka’s blue eyes are vast, taking Rei in like they cannot believe what they’re being told. The world feels silent and still. Rei can hardly bear to look at her friend. Her heart burns over with relief and fear, and it crushes her like death. She wants to run towards her, to be held, but she cannot summon her legs to do her bidding. Something snaps in the other girl, and she’s moving. She cradles her arms beneath Rei’s knees and her back. Wet eyelashes fluttered against Rei’s cheeks, close to the corner of her mouth.
“Don’t bite down on your tongue” is all the warning Asuka gives before lifting the girl into her arms. A blaring white pain whips through her, and distantly she can hear herself screaming, and then she faints.
Asuka doesn’t come to see her in the hospital. She is not surprised, it is not something Asuka has ever done before, but Rei cannot help but feel wronged. On the table by her bed is a vase of flowers from Shinji and Misato. She stares at the card and wonders if Asuka had refused to sign it. She turned on her side, her back to the flowers, and stared at the place where the floor met the wall, waiting until she could leave.
Shinji is in the hall waiting for her when she’s discharged. He’s not alone, she notices with slight irritation. She greets Shinji and the Fifth Child, keeping her eyes away from Nagisa Kaworu. Shinji showers her with concern and attention, but it doesn’t bring the curiosity or blossom any affection in her chest the way it had before. She watches him closely as he walks ahead of them to use a payphone to call Misato for a ride home. A thin veil of dread envelopes her at being left alone with the Fifth Child.
Kaworu turns his matching eyes to catch hers. She hates them, hates them because like a mirror or window, they returned her image. And she's scared that he can see her when she still isn't sure of who she is, terrified that she'll see something in the reflection of those rings of red that she won't like.
The boy, although there is very little about him, that is boy-like, hums softly. He smiles at her knowingly, and she understands that this is someone who has seen the world naked, someone who simply watches things unfold as they happen.
"You certainly made the Second Child angry."
Rei doesn't respond, but her grip on her bag tightens a fraction. There is a moment of silence and the moment stretches impossibly long as if she was stuck in the spaces between seconds. She spares a glance at the Fifth Child and feels her face become pale and bloodless. Nagisa Kaworu is staring at her coldly, dissecting her slowly, seeing right past Ayanami Rei to it. That thing inside of her that hid her scars and muddled her memories. His mouth slips into a displeased line.
"You should fix it before it's too late. Don't let it become a problem out there." He pointed out the window in the hall into the pitch-black night. "Try not to have any regrets in this life, Ayanami Rei."
Rei levels a stare back at him, trying to see something, anything that can swallow the distance between him and her. Shinji calls them over with a soft yell, and she walks towards him, swallowing around the lump in her throat.
In a few days, she is cleared to continue piloting. She balances against a wall and starts peeling her plugsuit off, getting ready to shower after a day full of training sequences. She gets it down to her stomach when the shower room's door is flung open. Asuka struts in, her brow still damp with sweat and knitted impossibly tight at the center of her forehead. She walks right up to Rei, cornering her so she cannot escape.
"Ayanami Rei, you have ten seconds to explain to me what the hell your problem is before I kill you."
Rei stares at her in apprehension, holding her suit up to her chest. She has never been nervous about being nude around anyone, not even Shinji, but she feels the need to shield herself now.
"About what?" She asks carefully.
She isn't sure if it was the words she said or how she said it, but something makes Asuka's face burst into fury.
"About what?!" Asuka howls, pressing herself closer to the other girl. "How about you start with being a suicidal bastard? Or maybe that you think so little of me that you felt the need to become a suicidal bastard?"
Rei frowns. She doesn't know what Asuka wants her to say; she isn't even very sure why the girl is mad in the first place. “I was helping.”
A fist flies past her head and connects loudly with the wall behind her. She doesn't flinch, but her eyes widen a bit. If Asuka hadn't been wearing her plugsuit, Rei would bet her knuckles would be torn and bleeding.
“No, you were trying to fucking kill yourself! And if you want to off yourself, put a gun to your head, for all I care, but I’m not going to be your fucking trigger.” Asuka quivered with rage, slowly shaking her head. “You do not put that shit on me.”
Rei did not understand the reason for this lashing, but she felt like she had behaved poorly; she felt small, childlike, the way she felt when Ikari-san gave her a disapproving look. This punishment felt much worse than any that had come before, and she felt deathly sorry. She could not bear to have this beautiful girl yell at her so harshly; it pained her in her throat, a great big lump that stung her eyes and prevented any words from escaping her.
Asuka's face stoned over and pulled away, leaving without another look at her friend.
Rei had felt so light, weightless on this feeling in her chest, fuzzy and invincible like a drugged fool. She had been seen, and it had gotten to her head, and she had flown too close to the sky. Eventually, even the birds have to land, and sometimes even they crash.
Asuka’s rage is not eternal. There is no shortage of things to be angry over in this world. Rei is glad she is no longer one of them. It ends in the same way Asuka does most things: direct and brash. She walks up to Rei confidently, a cherry lollipop hanging in her mouth.
“Hey, dollface. Come with me, got something to show you.”
Rei hurries and slips her shoes on. She gathers her things and follows Asuka out of the Nerv changing room. Rei kept silent, listening to their footsteps and the cracking of candy between teeth. The sun hung low in the sky, its red wax dripping into the sea. Asuka stopped at the foot of a steep hill, covered by a thick layer of dead amber grass. The streetlamps hummed, springing to life.
Asuka looked at Rei over her shoulder, the night breeze pushing back her long red hair. Her dark eyes glistened with the newborn moon’s light. Rei followed her up the hill, digging her heels into the earth to not slip on the way up. At the top, Asuka stood for a moment, taking in the sight of the city below. She watched as her friend placed her book bag on the ground and sat on it in fear of dirtying her uniform. Rei mimicked her, and their knees bumped together as she arranged her legs. A long breath was let out, and then Asuka leaned back onto her arms to gaze up at the sky. She was frowning, and she seemed a space older than she was.
Rei could smell her perfume, the sweetness tickling her nose. She wanted to lean closer and breathe deeply to see if she could place the smell, but she sat still and waited for the other girl to speak. When Asuka did finally talk, it was not at all what Rei had imagined she would say.
“My mother hated me.” Asuka started. “When I was four, my mother participated in an experiment with my Eva. She was never the same afterward. She was insane. Carrying around this doll that she’d replaced me with, calling it Asuka and kissing its cloth face. But she didn’t recognize me. It would’ve been better if it was just that, but she hated me. I used to scream until I lost my voice, begging her to look at me, to see me. But she didn’t want me.”
Asuka’s lower lip quivered with emotion, and Rei’s head swam at the sight. Rei had never been good at comforting people; most thought her emotionless, with a heart so cold even her breath, came out icy. She stared at the side of her friend’s face trying to convey in her posture and eyes that she was listening intently, that she cared.
“When I was assigned the pilot for Unit 02, I was so excited I ran to go tell my mom. I thought, “Now she has a reason to be proud of me. She’ll hug me and tell me how much she loves me and throw out that stupid doll.” I found her hanging in her hospital room. I wasn’t enough to make her stay. She left me forever. And that doll, the one she thought was me, was lying on the ground, staring at me; its head was torn from its shoulder. She hated me up to her very last breath.”
The weight of her friend’s words sat heavy in her lap. She wanted to reach out, to hold her, but she worried when they touched Asuka would snap, realizing she still hated Rei, and the stone in Rei’s stomach would hit bottom. So she inched closer, soundlessly, allowing herself only this.
“I have this dream where I’m walking backward on a set of train tracks. It’s just rained, and the streets are empty, and they look like the ones I would walk every week to get to the hospital. And when I turn around I see this thing, standing under an alcove and it pins me to the ground, and it’s shouting and shouting, and it’s my mother’s voice. She’s killing me, trying to take me with her, and my eyes roll back, and I stare at the sky. It’s starless, and not because it's a cloudy night. No, it’s just one vast pitless void. That’s why I like coming up here. I can see the stars and remind myself that this isn’t a nightmare.”
“I’m sorry, Asuka.” Her friend turned at the sound of her voice, breaking even in the silence that had trailed after Asuka’s last words. “I never had a mother or a father. I’ve never had anyone. I was raised to do one thing: pilot.” She pressed her lips in deliberation. “If something like that happened to you or Ikari-kun, I think I would find it very hard to live.”
Asuka stared at Rei until Rei felt her cheeks burn and her stomach clench.
“Why did you jump in front of me?” Asuka asked.
Rei met her eyes, looking at her intently. In the blue rings she caught an image of herself, and her chest expanded with a harmonious understanding. “Isn’t that what people do for those they love?”
Asuka was bloodless in the moonlight. Rei’s eyes fell to the ground. Shame flooded her like hot water.
“Look at me.”
Rei looked at Asuka—her deep glittery eyelids, her pale lips, her cheeks a dusted pink, almost invisible. She could hardly stand the beauty of her friend. It paralyzed her. She did not think she could deny Asuka, not ever.
“You love me?” Her friend asks.
Rei had always had difficulty conceptualizing romantic feelings. It had always seemed a tilted sort of thing, to trust someone so much with the softest parts of yourself. It did not feel so tilted with this girl that made her feel incredibly seen and incredibly human. Ayanami Rei nodded slowly. Yes. She thought. Undoubtedly.
With hands gripping the sides of her skirt, Asuka leaned forward and kissed Rei on both her cheeks, soft eyelashes fluttering against her temples. She smelled like saltwater and honeysuckles, and when she drew away, her kisses remained on Rei’s skin, little twin brands.
“I won’t hurt you,” Asuka said as an apology. She pressed her hand against Rei’s stomach; her eyes turned down. The girl before her looked incredibly small and incredibly fearful. It wasn’t what most people would recognize as Asuka Langley Soryu, but Rei had caught glimpses of her before. “I won’t hurt you anymore. All these years and only now do I understand, and I’ve never been one to skirt around dumb shit. It costs nothing to be plain about such things. I love you. Do you not love me?”
A pain ached between her breasts, a good pain, pounding vigorously. Asuka’s fingertips touched the bottom of Rei’s heart from where it sat against her stomach. Can she feel it? Rei thought, how it runs for her.
Rei looked intently at her friend, though her eyelids dragged heavy with emotion.
“I love you, Asuka,” she said finally and wept slowly, a soundless weeping, without noise or movement. Rei had been dried up, utterly, like an old well, and the soft trickle down her pale face felt incredibly foreign.
Asuka looked at her with a starveling’s eyes, and Rei saw it. How she had gulped down scraps of affection for years, her heart rumbling like an empty stomach, wanting and wanting. Rei would give it to her willingly because, without Asuka, there wouldn’t be any water in her well.
Asuka kissed her again—not on the cheeks and not sweetly, but greedily, with her whole, soft mouth. She ate up Rei’s breath. Claiming everything for herself. Rei had never been so happy to share in the girl’s selfishness. Rei kissed her back hard as if she was trying to pull the pain of the years out of their bodies with her teeth. Asuka’s hair swept over her like the red curtain of the sea, hiding them both from the world. This was theirs alone. No angels, none of the cruelty and harshness of adults, no death, and no impacts. Rei kissed her and kissed her with all the tenderness and possession she had, with everything she had to give to a kiss.
They pulled back an inch to gasp night air and shiver with exhilaration. Rei holds her close, not wanting to trade their world for the real one just yet. She brings their mouths together again, deeper, and the taste of Asuka is bright in her mouth, brighter than the moon. They can fight and die tomorrow; today, they will love.