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You and Rei sit together in the hospital hallway, after the end of the world. You can hear the beeping and whirring of machines in other rooms, the sound of doctors’ shoes and urgent, faraway voices. You’ve been here before, this hospital, sitting with this girl. But never like this. Too much has happened for anything to be the same again.
Rei is looking at her hands, moving them deliberately in front of her, examining how each joint works, how her skin moves as she flexes and turns them. You’ve never seen her do something like that, and it strikes you as kind of weird, but any comment you might make about it sounds stupid and patronizing in your head, so you stay quiet.
You don’t know how long the two of you have sat here. It feels like days, weeks even, but the sky was just beginning to lighten when you reached here, hobbling as fast as you could across the ruins of the city, supporting a bleeding Asuka between you. Now the light from the windows is the flat light of day.
A nurse had come to find you not long after you had sat down, to inform you and Rei that Asuka was stable, and while they could not get back her missing eye, she should otherwise recover to her normal self. At your panicked questions, he told you that yes, Ms. Katsuragi was upstairs, and so was Dr. Akagi. They were both gravely injured (very similarly too), but they were alive, and the results were hopeful that both would make it through tonight and beyond. And no, he said, unfortunately only family were permitted to visit Ms. Soryu or Ms. Katsuragi, at least until they were awake to accept visitors. You opened your mouth to insist you were Misato’s family, before remembering that, no. Yes, you’d been living with her for months. And yes, she had called you her little brother before she shoved you into the elevator and collapsed, trying to hide her injuries until she thought you couldn’t see. But waving around her necklace and monologuing about chosen family would mean nothing to the hospital staff. So you just nodded. You noticed, dimly, that the man would not look at Rei, his eyes flicking from you to the end of the hallway and back, his body tense.
You called out to the nurse as he was walking away, remembering the other person you wanted to ask about. He turned, sympathetic, to tell you that no, there was no patient by the name of Ikari Gendo here. You slumped back into your chair. That was… what it was. It could mean a number of things. You weren’t quite sure how you felt about any of them.
When the nurse’s footsteps had faded quickly away on the linoleum floor, Rei spoke. “He’s dead.”
You stared at her. “What?”
“Commander Ikari is dead,” she said, matter-of-factly.
“Oh.”
“I hope that isn’t too hard for you to hear. He was your father, after all.”
You sat there for a moment. Then, “I guess I should ask you, how are you doing? He’s- he was closer to you than to me.”
She gave you a small smile. “I’m doing fine.”
“Okay,” you said. “Good.” Then there was silence again.
In the present, you glance at the scar left on Rei’s neck, vibrant red but shallow, like a new scratch. You had suggested that she ask for a bandage for it, thinking of the arc of blood across the sky, but Rei quietly insisted that she didn’t need one. The two of you, the ones that had been at the very center of the black hole that threatened to engulf everything, you are the only ones you know of who haven’t been injured. Asuka, who’d had to feel every moment as her Eva was ripped to shreds. Misato, shot in the gut while dragging you across the battleground of headquarters. You don’t even know what had happened to Ritsuko-san, or any of the five other people you know. And Kaworu… you will have time later to properly mourn Kaworu. So much time now. Even Rei got a scratch, though you can barely believe she wasn’t hurt worse. You had seen her a thousand times repeated, warped, ripped open. Yet here she is. Whole, sitting there next to you in the blank hallway. And you yourself? You’re fine, physically. It doesn’t feel like you should be. It doesn’t feel right.
Your back feels like it’s trying to weld itself to the plastic chair. The seconds, or maybe minutes, tick on.
“I’m alive,” Rei says. It’s so quiet you could tell yourself she didn’t even say it. But you look at her and see her lips moving. “I’m here.”
She looks up at you, maybe remembering she’s not alone, maybe simply deciding to acknowledge you. “My life was going to end yesterday. I always knew it. It was a fact, like the moon in the sky. Always there, even if I couldn’t see it. But… I’m here.”
You nod slowly, not sure how else to respond. Rei’s spoken so rarely, and of herself even less. She’s been a mystery to you since you met her, and the things you learned about her- god, only a few days ago now, only brought up more questions. Not to mention… well, the Third Impact. You want to hear what’s she’s thinking, you need her to tell you something, anything important, before you scare her away. There’s nothing to do but listen. Her face looks like she’s just come to realize that she exists.
“Shinji,” she says, and you realize that this this is the first time you’ve heard her say your given name. The syllables sound strange coming from her mouth. “Do you know what it’s like to be living for a purpose, meant for the one moment of your destruction, and then to outlive your fate?”
You shake your head.
“It’s… terrifying.” Rei starts to laugh, a desperate and totally foreign sound, louder than you thought she could be. It echoes off the cold white walls, making her voice hollow, strange, resoundant. “And it’s wonderful. The whole world is open to me, Shinji.”
“You mean… you knew instrumentality was coming? And you still went along with everything, even though you thought you were going to die?”
“Of course,” Rei says. She looks back down. “It’s what I was created for. I am… a vessel. Or I was. I was looking forward to when I could disappear. When I didn’t have to worry anymore about my responsibility. But I was scared to die. I never imagined a time that I could exist without his hold over me.”
“You mean my father.” It isn’t a question.
“Yes.”
You take a long, stuttering breath. In, and out. The thought of your father has been a deep, stinging wound in you for a long time, one that you can’t stop yourself from touching, even as it screams under your fingertips. You’ve realized that it was never about you, not really. Your father never actually saw you. He was caught up in his cosmic game of sacrilege and bodies, and had no time for the needs and thoughts of children, even, especially, his own. He was always so far away, and that was no one’s fault but his. That doesn’t make it hurt less. But the knowledge helps stop you from drowning in the pain.
“I guess,” you say, “you’re free now. We both are. That’s scary. We get to choose what happens next.”
“Exactly,” she says. Then after a moment, “I’ve never had that before.”
“What do you want to do,” you say, “with that freedom?”
A pause. “I don’t know.”
You look at her, then at the floor. Then back at her. You say, “I think I’d like to talk to everybody, about what happened. How everything went… the way it did. And I’d give Misato-san a hug. She said I was like her little brother. And that she was proud of me for how far I’d come! I’ve never had anyone say anything like that before.”
Rei nods.
“I realized, with… everything, that I’ve never really had a connection with anyone before becoming a pilot. Other than. Um. My mother. But she hasn’t been my mother since I was a baby. I don’t remember her all that well. Living with Misato-san and Asuka, being friends with Tohji and Kensuke, knowing you. You’re the first people I’ve actually gotten to know. And it’s hard, its so scary to have others be a part of your life, and be a part of theirs. But I’m glad I can be.”
Rei lifts up her hands to look at them, clenches and unclenches them, then turns them over. “I understand.”
There is another long silence in the stark white hallway. You wonder if Rei is going to say anything more, or if she has deemed the conversation over. You scratch the back of your neck, just as something to do.
“I’m looking forward to it,” Rei says, just as you were resigning yourself to another chunk of plain white time. “To having a life of my own. And a body of my own.”
You don’t know what to say to that, so you just look at her.
“As I said, I was a vessel. Yes, I’ve had my own experiences and thoughts and memories. But none of that mattered beyond my own mind. I was a means to an end. I have so many bodies, and none of them were ever mine, not really. Yet, now it’s all over. And I’m still here.”
You swallow. If you don’t ask now you may never get yourself to ask. “Ritsuko-san said you are a clone of my mother. But only one of your bodies could contain your soul at a time. Is that true?”
She looks at you with an expression of mild surprise. “Yes. She told you that?”
“Yeah.” You knew it must have been true, but God, it’s so strange. This girl is a physical copy of your mother, though clearly not your mother at all. Like a roundabout type of sister, or an alternate universe’s version of yourself. “Did you know that she destroyed all your extra bodies? In that creepy underground lab. The ones you had before instrumentality, that is.”
“Huh. I didn’t know that.” Rei looks down again. “I suppose I wasn’t planning on using them anyways. I’m glad I’m alive, but I don’t want to live forever. Maybe that means this body is all the more mine.” She smiles a little. “No one else can touch me.”
You stare at her. You’re not sure what to make of this. You expected her to be at least a little upset, if she reacted to this news at all. You didn’t expect her to look pleased.
“How do you… do that?” You say. “I mean, deal with being a clone. I can barely handle what it means to be myself, and I’ve only ever had one body.”
Rei shrugs. “I’m… me. My thoughts and actions, how I’m influenced by others and how I choose to react. Maybe I am just an object, scrambling around for meaning. But I’m me, for whatever that’s worth.”
“Huh.”