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Ritsuko woke up and knew she was dying. She knew this because there was an oxygen mask on her face and an overwhelming burden of pain on her body. Ground zero was her belly, and the agony radiated outwards; not seeming to taper off significantly until it reached her ribcage and her buttocks.
But why?
Maybe she had been stabbed? Or perhaps she had had appendicitis at work and been too caught up in what she was doing to notice the signs. Yes, that sounded plausible – people often called her a workaholic, after all, although she didn't see it herself. She just happened to be “in the zone” a lot of the time, and it wasn't her fault that affected her productivity.
So her appendix, she hypothesised, would have ruptured; and someone would have found her unconscious – she wasn't a medical doctor, but it seemed plausible to her that she would have gone into shock or passed out from the pain. And then… well, she guessed that the medics would have stabilised her condition; ensuring she stayed away from death's door long enough to give them a chance to treat her peritonitis.
And that would have been what led to her lying here, on a hospital bed, wearing an oxygen mask (or, perhaps, an anaesthesia mask – but that didn't matter.)
The ceiling above her didn't look like a hospital one, however. Ritsuko lifted her head off the pillow and craned her neck to take in her surroundings. They looked like Central Dogma.
Huh?
What was going on? Why would her sickbed be in Central Dogma?
She panicked, but then realised this was just a dream she was having while out for the count on ketamine or whatever it was they had sedated her with while they worked. Relieved, and tired from briefly holding herself up like that, she flopped back down onto the pillow.
The pillow was soft and comfortable. Ritsuko's pain seemed to be easing slightly from the combination of having worked out what was going on and being under anaesthesia. Maybe she was going to be on the road to recovery when she woke up.
That was a very reassuring thought. Ritsuko's next thought was that, given that she was in a dream, it would be easy to sit up in bed and look around her. So, with some effort, she sat up and pain! Pain! Pain! It might have been even worse than it was when she first woke up! She felt light-headed and knew within seconds that she could be in trouble if she didn't get her mask off. She pulled it away from her face and painfully, miserably threw up. Never before had she imagined her body as a sponge being violently wrung out. She let her head droop down to her chest and just sat in place covered in sick; she couldn't bring herself to move again and risk further agony.
She noticed that her dream was taking place in the part of Central Dogma that she'd always privately nicknamed “Rei Ayanami's birthplace”. A silly way to think about it, really, considering Rei was never “born”.
Her dream even smelled like Central Dogma. The human brain was amazing.
Suddenly, Ritsuko had a visitor; he had heard her being sick.
“Looks like Sleeping Beauty's woken up,” smirked Gendo, approaching her with a large syringe.
Ritsuko wasn't entirely compos mentis yet, but she took one look at her “nurse” and knew that her appendix was intact, she had not been dreaming, and something very bad had happened.
“How are you feeling, baby?” The word “baby” had some significance to it, she could tell by Gendo's tone. He was mocking her for something, but she couldn't think what it was.
“I'm fine,” Ritsuko heard herself croak. She must have been intubated at some point too. “What's that?”
“Morphine,” smiled Gendo. In a real hospital bed, cared for by a real professional, she would have welcomed it, but she wouldn't trust Gendo Ikari injecting anything into anybody.
“Oh, uh, no thank you! My… my pain's nearly gone,” she lied, wincing at the toll her accidental “protesting” voice took on her body.
“Brave girl.” Ikari walked up to the bed and ruffled her hair. “But you need to let me change these sheets. They're disgusting.” He whipped Ritsuko's soiled blanket away from her and walked to the other side of the room with it. She now sat on the bed cold, naked and… able to see a huge, crude, freshly-stitched surgical wound on her abdomen.
Gendo didn't have another blanket, but he returned with a hospital gown instead. “Ritsuko can have a little dignity,” he smirked, “as a treat.” He opened it up to help her into it, noticing that she looked, as expected, horrified. “What's wrong, Ricchan?” he asked, attempting to feign innocent concern.
“What did you do to me?” whispered Ritsuko hoarsely, icily.
Gendo stopped in his tracks and chuckled, putting the performative hospital gown down on the bed. In its stead, he took off the lab coat he was wearing (why was he wearing one?), draped it over her shoulders, and buttoned it up. Her naked body was very attractive, but his suturing skills, he noticed, were not. He could avoid looking at the incision now, and she got to be less cold. Win-win.
Ritsuko didn't bother putting her arms through the sleeves. It smelled like him, which was not entirely welcome right now, but at least it was nice and warm.
“As you'll remember, you destroyed the Dummy System the other day; a spiteful, reckless action with the potential to jeopardise the Scenario. You did this because I hurt you and you were jealous of Rei. How childish.
As I told you yesterday, I was extremely disappointed in your behaviour. You know that Ayanami Rei, as the pilot of Eva Unit-00, plays a critical role in our mission and it is thus imperative that ‘spare parts’ are available for her.
As it stood, your destruction of our inventory of replacements put us at a dangerous disadvantage in the event of Rei no longer being viable. It was an unacceptable situation, with contingencies that Nerv must avoid at all costs.
We needed to find a substitute for the contents of that tank. At the outset, I thought that this may well be impossible. But then I thought, as you probably did when you decided to behave like a child, ‘an eye for an eye’.”
He gave Ritsuko some time to process what he meant.
“I did wonder why you had mixed that vodka with cloudy lemonade,” she said quietly.
Gendo entered the cell he was holding Ritsuko in with two vodka-and-lemonades. She had been teetotal for the past couple of months, but the drinks were such a welcome sight after what she'd been through in the past couple of days, and one probably wouldn't do any harm. He noticed her look of puzzlement as he handed her the one that had a pink straw in it. “It's cloudy lemonade,” he explained. “Oh, alright.”
They began drinking their vodka-and-cloudy-lemonades, and Gendo apologised at length to Ritsuko. He was sorry for how he had been treating her recently and disgusted at what the old men of SEELE said they had done to her to “aid the interrogation”. He even felt guilty about how he had spoken to her earlier, apparently, although that one was hard to believe given that she was still in solitary confinement. Surely she understood, though, how he felt about her doing something like what she had done?
She didn't say much in response. There was only so much she could take, and she didn't want to hear it right now. She focused on her drink.
“Your hindsight is 20/20. But most date-rape drugs are colourless, odourless and tasteless.”
What the hell did you poison me with, then? wondered Ritsuko, though she didn't say anything.
A cruel smirk spread across Gendo's face as he prepared for the big reveal. “Anyway, your right kidney and your womb have been removed. You did invite me to do what I wanted with your body yesterday, after all. They will be transplanted into Rei if and when necessary.”
Her womb? Why? Rei didn't actually need a womb, and Gendo knew that. It was an utterly useless thing to do! And he knew that Ritsuko knew this.
She continued to keep her countenance neutral, save for the odd unavoidable expression of pain. The problem she was facing was that a madman with no surgical training had just performed unnecessary major surgery on her out of pure spite. The fact that he decided which of her organs to harvest based on what would wind her up the most? That, though infuriating, was immaterial. Reacting would only give him what he wanted.
“Well, I hope you've put them on ice,” she muttered hoarsely. “We don't exactly keep this place prepped and ready for organ retrieval.”
“They have been immersed in LCL for preservation.”
“Good.”
“On that note, Dr Akagi, the state of your womb was quite interesting. Why didn't you tell me you were pregnant?”
Oh God.
Of course that was what he had meant when he said “baby” like that earlier. How could Ritsuko have forgotten about her grape-sized unborn baby? He or she was the only source of hope she had left in her life. He or she was like a pearl inside a stupid, awful, bottle-blonde oyster.
He or she was contraband in Ritsuko's relationship.
Her poker face was shattered. “Because… well… obviously, it was an accident, and I didn't know what to do. I've never wanted kids, but suddenly I was in this situation, and things started to seem different… maybe it was the hormones…” Feeling tears prick her eyes, Ritsuko took a deep breath. “And when I decided I wanted to have the baby, I didn't know how you would feel about that.” Deep down, she thought, she did know: Gendo would probably be brimming with anger and disgust. Pregnancy would put an end to her being slim and sexy, and she would have something to care about besides him and the Scenario. “So I wanted to wait until the twelve-week mark before telling you.”
Silence.
“Commander Ikari… the first twelve weeks of a pregnancy are when the risk of miscarriage is at its highest… I didn't want to tell you if I was going to be pregnant one day and not the next. And… waiting also bought me more time to work out how to break the news to you…
Smiling inwardly, Gendo cast his mind back to when Yui told him she was pregnant with Shinji, fifteen years ago. Unlike Ritsuko now, she had been so happy, so excited… nothing at all like a scared child confessing they had broken something, fearing punishment. “I see.”
Few things energised Gendo like being feared. He couldn't help smirking. “Congratulations.”
He saw Ritsuko relax slightly, unaware that her punishment was not yet over. It was delicious.
“So, does this mean… the next iteration of Rei will be carrying my baby?”
“Babies, Akagi-kun. There were two fetuses.”
Twins!? thought Ritsuko, oh my God!
Yes, it would be hard work, especially as a single mother (she assumed Gendo wouldn't burden precious Rei with child-rearing as well as child-bearing), but surely double the struggle would mean double the reward? And twins would mean she wouldn't have to get pregnant again in order to give her child a sibling. She was hoping for a daughter, but maybe it would turn out she was having one boy and one girl – so that would be the best of both worlds!
Through her agony Ritsuko was slightly excited; it was like there was a tiny ray of sunlight peeking out from behind a dark cloud. She smiled softly; she had a beautiful smile. Which made it all the more satisfying to wipe off her face.
“But no, Rei won't be your surrogate. I disposed of them.”