Mari awoke slowly. It was dark outside, the sky just starting to turn orange. She felt Ria's arms wrapped around her, holding her close enough to feel her breathing.
'Oh no, it's morning!' Mari realized. 'Which means they know we...'
Ria was still fast asleep. Mari smiled and relaxed a bit.
'Well if they know and haven't woken us up in anger, then there's no point in ruining this.'
Mari turned slightly and stared at her sleeping girlfriend. She knew that beneath all that was something inhuman, something quite monstrous even. But Mari didn't care, she loved Ria regardless of what she was.
Love…
Part of her felt stupid for even thinking that. She had been dating Ria for what, two months, three months? She was crazy to be thinking like that already. And yet she couldn't deny what she felt.
Ria stirred, her eyes slowly opening as she mumbled incomprehensibly.
She stared at Mari, and Mari looked at her.
"Hey..." Ria said sleepily.
"Hi," Mari replied. "That was... amazing."
"I…" Ria hesitated as she pulled Mari closer. "I never knew it was possible to be that close to someone."
"Yeah..." Mari agreed.
"Were you...okay with how...domineering I was during?" Ria asked.
"I actually liked it," Mari admitted.
"You realize your parents are almost certainly fully aware of what we've done?" she added.
"They haven't kicked down the door, so I guess they decided it's fine," Ria insisted.
A fair point.
"This is nice," Ria added sleepily, "Hugs are nice. I'm really a big fan of hugging right now."
"Same here," Mari agreed.
Ria held on tightly, not wanting to let this moment end.
"Are you okay?" Mari asked.
She didn't say anything, but she'd heard Ria crying a few times in the night. The pain of the past few days must have weighed heavily on her, even now.
Slowly, Ria let go. She pulled herself away and got out of bed to move towards the window.
There, standing in her PJs, Ria stared at the city below, her face now utterly unreadable.
"It still bugs you, doesn't it?" Mari asked.
Ria shook her head. "I'm sorry, I'm ruining this."
"No, no," Mari insisted. "Nothing you do could ruin this. Talk to me."
Last night would be one of those nights she remembered for the rest of her life.
"It's just…" Ria sighed. "When the peace plan failed, I thought about how everyone I knew would react to the truth. I knew Shinji and Asuka from the past would feel betrayed, I knew Kodama would hate me. I expected it. I was trying to come to terms with it. And they reacted pretty much how I expected. But that just pisses me off. I mean yeah, I lied, I lied big time. But I've known Kodama since I was three, and Shinji and Asuka are my parents, technically...sort of, genetically speaking at least. That should have counted for something!"
"They're just traumatized is all," Mari explained. "Kodama had to deal with her brother. Shinji and Asuka have fought the Angels for months now, not to mention the assassination attempt. They've dealt with the other Angels far more than I have. So it's hard for them to look past it, but they will. Just give them time."
Ria nodded. "Yeah, I suppose. Misato isn't exactly helping things. I really hate that woman right now."
Ria clenched her fist, teeth bared.
"She's not worth the effort," Mari insisted as she pulled herself out of bed, placing a hand on Ria's shoulder. "She's an blind, stubborn fool, and nothing you can do can change that."
"I suppose," Ria said reluctantly.
It was plain that when it came to Misato, nothing Mari could say right now would really lessen her anger. Still, Ria did her best to put it out of her mind for now.
"Sooooo... my parents probably won't be up for another hour," Ria noted "Should I make some breakfast for us while we wait for what will probably be one of the most awkward conversations of our life?"
Mari nodded. "Sounds great."
/
The two walked quietly to the kitchen. It's not like they had any reason to be sneaking around, but still it was early, no need to disturb the parents.
Ria felt strange. She was at once happy, indeed overjoyed about Mari. It honestly did quite a lot to take her mind off everything that had happened of late. But underneath that joy she found herself feeling tense.
It wasn't just all the rejection, Misato's actions, or her loss of control. It was the deal. The Empress wanted Ria to work with her. Between that and the pardon it seemed like the second person besides her parents to actually accept that Ria was a person was the ruler of Japan. Which was incredibly helpful. But the offer made her uneasy.
She was incredibly tempted to take the offer. It would give her a chance to actually go after Iruel and allow her to take part in this war instead of just sitting on the sidelines. Iruel's taunts had been frustratingly true: she could have done so much more to have stopped this.
Of course taking the deal came with several hang-ups that made her wary. For starters she would be making oaths to a government she held no real loyalty to. A nation was just a place after all, loyalty to a place was asinine to her. But oaths were a serious matter. She couldn't just neglect an oath. And there was the somewhat antagonistic intent behind the offer. To what degree she couldn't be certain but it was clear the Empress was thumbing her nose at Misato with this offer and pardon.
Now making Misato feel powerless was all well and good but her mother still worked for WILLE. Antagonizing WILLE would only make things harder for her.
And of course, once she signed up with the government, would they let her go? She and Mari had dreams after, dreams that certainly didn't involve her working for the government attack dog for the rest of her life.
Of course refusing the offer felt...risky. Sure the pardon had come with no strings attached on paper, it did feel like she owed the government. And if she didn't take the offer, she would still owe them. And how long would it be before they called that in?
It was a concern for later, when she wasn't half asleep, exhausted, and desperate for breakfast.
Ria took one step into the kitchen, only to jump in surprise as a shape sprung up from the couch.
"I'm up… I'm awake," Ria's dad said sleepily as he forced himself off the couch. At the sight of Ria and Mari he nudged Asuka, who had been sleeping on the other couch.
The two got up, staring sleepily at the two teenagers standing in the kitchen. Ria now desperately considering jumping at a window.
"Okay, just so we're clear: We're not mad at either of you, and no one's in trouble. And as far as Mari's mother knows, she slept on the couch," Shinji said, blinking hard several times as he fought the urge to fall back onto the courch.
Mari sighed in relief. "Oh, thank goodness! I mean, sorry that you had to do that, but if my mom knew about this... oh boy."
"And admittedly leaving you two alone was incredibly stupid of me," Asuka said.
'Well at least they're aware of it,' Ria thought.
"Still..." Her mother's tone grew serious. "We need to have a conversation."
'Oh this is going to suck.'
/
Okito's platform lifted up and turned towards the window, the straps holding him in place. Once the platform was fully raised he looked as tall as he once did, even though most of his body was still missing.
Every moment was filled with sharp stinging pain from his wounds. His body was fighting desperately to heal but lacked the strength and fuel to do anything besides prevent rot and disease setting in.
On the other side of the glass was Hikari Hokari Suzuhara, his Lilin mother. She was clutching her hand to her heart, a wounded expression on her face.
"Why are you here?" Okito said, his eyes focused on the ground behind her, "What can you possibly accomplish by coming here other than hurting yourself?"
He bore the Suzuharas no real malice, truth be told. Hurting them had just been a necessary step in his plans. But all his plans had turned into failures, the ideals he fought for hollow lies. So what had he accomplished by hurting them?
They were Lilin of course. Hurting them shouldn't really matter, not in the long run anyways. But still he felt...regretful about the damage he had inflicted.
"I want to know why," Hikari said, her voice shaking with pain. "I want to understand why you thought we wouldn't love you once we knew the truth."
Okito froze, the question striking him harder than he would have thought. He wracked his mind for an answer, trying to come up with a response.
Only to find nothing.
"I don't know," he admitted. "I always thought you would, but I don't know why. I don't have a satisfactory answer."
It had been such a safe assumption. And yet Ria still had her family, and Shamshel went the extra mile to ensure hers were protected.
Okito found himself wondering if he should have tried to get his family in on the plan. Dad had access to WILLE after all, and Kodama would have been another voice that might have convinced Ria. And Ramiel would easily have agreed to letting them in on the rewards their plan offered...
'Oh paths that could have been,' Okito mused.
"If you want my advice," he sighed, "forget about me. I'm not worth the pain. Leave me here and move on with your life."
He would escape or someone would come for him eventually, of course. But he didn't see any point in them making themselves sick over him.
Hikari shook her head.
"It's not that simple," she said firmly. "None of us can forget you, the horrible things you did, the wonderful things you did. If you cared so little for us, why did you allow us to love you if you 'knew' we would just reject you in the end? You could have run away, or been utterly awful to us. If you didn't think of yourself as our son, why did you pretend you were?"
She paced in front of the glass, her eyes near leaving Okito.
Okito shook his head "It made things easier. Besides, you were never supposed to know. If I hadn't royally screwed up anything, the main body of the plan would not have been enacted many many years from now."
Okito cursed his foolhardiness and whatever bastard brought the pilots here in the first place. Things would have been so much simpler.
Tears rolled down Hikari's cheek. "So that's all we were to you? A convenient place to stay?! Did you ever care?! Did you even try?"
"I... did, I do," Okito's confession surprised even himself. "Sure, I didn't care as much as you once did for me, but I rather liked all of you."
They all had their annoying quirks and habits that irked him, but the Suzuharas were a fine bunch of people. He would have been far more miserable living with anyone else.
Hikari said, "If you did ever really care about any of us, help me protect your sister. Tell me something, anything I can give to Misato about Zeruel that could get her pardon revoked."
"Huh?" Okito was rather confused. Both by the question and his mother's sudden anger.
"They still have her going to school!" she raged. "She's sitting there, with reach of Kodama all day! And I can't do anything about it!"
Looking at her closely, one thing quickly became apparent to him, Hikari hated Ria. Which almost certainly could entirely be blamed on him.
'Great going there Sachiel, made your best friend utterly miserable.'
"Ria's probably the last Angel you have to worry about," Okito insisted.
She didn't like that answer and began to storm off.
"There is one you should worry about," Okito said just as Hikari disappeared out of sight.
She paused, then stepped back into view.
"Who?" she asked.
"The one who crippled dad," he said calmly. "The one known as Bardiel."
Admittedly it should have been apparent how foolish his dreams of Angel unity were after his encounters with Bardiel. But he had always told himself that Bardiel was an exception to the rule, a deviant and a monster.
Her expression was now one of concern.
"Why?" she asked.
"I'm a monster and an idiot," Okito admitted freely. "But Bardiel... even for me at my worst, Bardiel was too much. He's gone after you and father before. You never noticed because I forced them to stay away."
He had kept it hidden from Ria, fearing Bardiel would taint her perception of other Angels. Ironic, all things considered.
She was surprised.
"What did they look like?" she asked nervously.
"That's the thing, any description I could give you would be useless. Bardiel has no body, or if they did they long ago discarded it. Bardiel is a thief of the body and soul. They take over people, merge with them, become them. They are abomination to both species. Once I encountered him the body of a old woman, the next as a child of seven. Others have told me he's taken over at least a dozen. No one knows what becomes of his previous bodies. It hunts for Father, and by extension their family. It seeks to finish what it began with Unit-03."
Okito's words shook Hikari to her core.
"How can we tell, how can we tell if...someone's been taken over?" Hikari asked fearfully.
"Both times it was able to ambush me and its behavior was quite different between bodies. But...the way they laugh, it was the same both times. They laugh like they're gasping for air, heavy and rasping."
"That's it!?" Hikari exclaimed "You just told me there's a body snatching Angel coming for the family and the only identifier you can give us is its laugh?!"
"I don't mean to be cruel," Okito's voice wavered. "Not here, not with this. But that's all I can tell you. Bardiel is an abomination. I didn't even recognize what they were until they attacked."
"So what can we do?" she about begged.
"Prepare. Develop code phrases. Arael tells me it takes a while for them to merge, so they may not know them at first. Beyond that stay where you are. Tell the General everything I told you. She might be able to learn more."
"I…" Hikari struggled to find words. "Thank you. "
"Don't," Okito snapped. "I should have told you ages ago. Nothing's changed. All I've done is make your life that much more awful. Now please...just, leave."
This encounter was becoming too much for Okito to endure.
Hikari rushed out. Sleep soon overtook Okito as they prepared him for another round of tests.
