Chapter 16:
The Hard Way
"You could have told me! You had all this time and I had to find out from the internet?"
If I hadn't been wearing the mobility rig he'd given me, I don't think I'd have been able to stand up under it. The will to keep trying had left me fifteen minutes before and it was just inertia that carried me as far as I'd come.
He'd know, he'd learned, before I could warn him, before I could do any kind of damage control. I shouldn't have needed to, and I didn't think I'd even
have to, but in the end there was no avoiding the eventuality. Pessimism may not be the way to live but it did have a certain
accuracy to it.
It was his fault, in the end. The very thing that put us in the same bed is what put me out for the world to see my old shame. If he'd never come off that roof, if I'd never took him into the cockpit. That blasted camera.
"I didn't tell you because it
didn't matter. It shouldn't...
I shouldn't have to tear old wounds open just because--"
"Because what? Because I might want to know? Don't you think that I might have cared?" Touji fired back. His face was red, his arms shaking. He didn't know what to do with himself, but then I didn't either.
"So we could have had this fight earlier? There's no point in living in the past. I killed Shinji Ikari and buried him there. There was nothing to tell you because
he doesn't exist." I felt my arm straining, I was clenching a fist and I hadn't really realized I'd been doing it until the pain set in.
Nerv cafeteria probably wasn't the best place to have this fight. Thankfully it was empty, or at least it had rapidly become that way.
He took a step towards me and then stopped. More than hate or disgust,
fear was written on his face. Afraid of me? Afraid of what he'd already done, or maybe afraid of what he might do next?
"I... I can't do this. I need time to... to think. You know... I... I think I loved you? Goodbye, Natsu."
He turned to leave and I dropped to my knees. He would've said that. He would've said
that. Those words I needed so desperately to hear and then... take them from me just like that. To have it only
after it was already taken away. That was a worse fate than never having known it at all.
The burning behind my eyes gave way to hot tears running down my face to drip against my dress and the floor. I didn't have the strength to fight or even to stand. Hopelessness beat out righteous indignation and anger.
It was just like I was back then, weak and broken. Helpless and alone.
The door opened and I managed to work up enough energy to look up. Rei was standing in front of Touji with a look of confusion. My eyes met hers, and confusion turned to all of the fury I couldn't bring myself to feel. Her body tensed up for just a moment before she released a left hook into the side of his face.
It wasn't anything that I had wanted to see happen. The snapping crunch that echoed off the tiled floor made my stomach turn. Touji took a staggering step backwards and Rei took a step forwards, right up to his face. I could see her mouth moving, but I couldn't hear the words.
He stepped around her and out the door before I got a chance to see what had actually happened to him. Only the echo of his footsteps remained.
Rei stood in place, first turning her head to follow his departure, and then to look at me. Her rage turned to concern and she reached down to help me up to my feet. The shock of the incident had in at least a small way distracted me from my despair, enough to stand.
"What did you tell him?" I asked her, after finally finding my voice, even if it was shaky.
"I told him what he needed to hear," she answered in a tone of finality, there would be no elaboration on that point.
The dripping sound and the smell hit my senses at the same time and it was then I finally noticed that Rei's hand was covered in blood. "You didn't need to hurt him that badly."
She tilted her head ever so slightly and looked over at her left hand, then back to me. "This isn't his blood."
***
"You're probably the last person I would have expected to come see me with an injury like this, but then today has been a day full of things I never expected I'd have to deal with."
I could
hear her eyes rolling in every word that came out of Akagi's mouth. As far as the last two days had gone, she'd at the very least worked on
my brain, and now the open fracture in Rei's hand. The latter, at least, could actually
be fixed.
The crunch when she set the bone and got it back
inside of Rei's hand wasn't nearly as disturbing as Rei's lack of reaction to it. That she'd become
that accustomed to pain made my stomach turn. For this to be nothing to her?
I swallowed hard and took a deep breath to steady myself. If she could get through it, it would be shameful if I couldn't. The worst was over anyway, after the cracking sound Akagi had sealed up the wound itself with surgical adhesive and secured a vacuum cast around Rei's hand.
Her hand was locked in the shape of a half-fist and I imagined it would be for some time while her hand healed. The lack of conversation between Rei and Akagi regarding her injury told me that there was nothing Akagi could tell her that she hadn't already been told before.
She'd clearly been through some kind of hell, but then hadn't we all?
"If it makes you feel any better, he was furious about the... information leak." Akagi commented offhand while she wrapped Rei's wrist.
"Who?"
She paused and shrugged, "A lot of people actually. But in this case it was your father. I wouldn't read too much into it, but I thought you might want to know."
She would understand more than anyone else would. "That doesn't fix the last decade and a half."
"There's much you don't know."
I blinked at the sudden interjection, Rei'd said that. I hadn't expected it but then I supposed she knew my father far better than I did, and probably ever would. I swallowed the sudden lump in my throat and turned to her. "What don't I know?"
"What you were spared from." She answered simply, but with a hint of an edge to her voice and a look in her eyes that wasn't so far divorced from the look she'd given Touji, if a bit less severe. It still felt like a slap to the face.
My own lack of consideration for the feelings of others had been thrown directly into my face. It was all too easy to forget that the people around me had more experience than I had.
I blinked hard and swallowed the lump forming in my throat. "No you're right I'm... I'm gonna go outside. I'm gonna be outside if you need me. I'm sorry." I rambled. My feet were carrying me without a conscious thought, towards and then through the door.
The click-clack of my shoes on the hard tile and the gentle whirr of the mobility rig under my borrowed dress were my companions, along with the tears I was fighting back. The more steps I took, the faster I took them. Not quite to a full run; even with the mobility rig I wasn't quite up to that in full gravity, not right then.
But going
fast wasn't really the point. Getting away at
all was a goal all its own.
The impact caught me off guard but I turned away from it and kept myself standing, somehow. I caught a flash of red against white and my hands balled up. I didn't want to feel this way, didn't want to have to hold the pain inside or fight back the tears.
Asuka Langley Soryu, in all her smug glory. White, everything so damn
white, in direct defiance of everything about where she came from, about space itself. There was such an arrogance to it, the idea that she should be so special that she could waste so much for the pure sake of vanity?
She had it all taken care of for her, didn't she? Full support of Mars Fleet, her own custom painted Evangelion. All the privilege dripped off her smug countenance and I...
And I...
Well I was a discard wasn't I? Is
this what I'd been spared from? Luxury? I was nothing they'd wanted till they needed me and I was cast aside by the one person who might possibly--
I was a discarded son who came home a daughter that nobody wanted once they'd realized. I was refuse, garbage,
trash.
If that was what they thought of me, if that was what
he thought of me... if that's what everyone expected me to be... I'd give all those feelings to someone else. Let all my selfishness well up, embrace it, and throw hands.
It was sloppy, but better than I had been before. A jab with my right fist right into her jaw, quicker than she could react. The thick wet crunch the answered could have come from her face or from my hand, but if it was the former it still hurt like the latter.
The surprise on her face mirrored the surprise on mine; I'd never expected to connect. More than that, I'd never expected it to take her off balance. Blood sprayed off her lower lip before she caught her footing and surprised turned to anger.
I brought my forearms together to block her counter attack and was only partly successful. The punch that came back my way felt like it was going to break my arms and the snap kick into my ribs took me completely without warning.
My shoulder and head cracked against the metal wall and I saw stars. I staggered a few steps back and tried to blink my vision clear, but there was never really any chance by then. She was on me and her right arm was around my neck. Her left arm was under the back of my dress--
With a click and the sensation of the full force of gravity I knew she'd disabled my mobility rig. I could stand without it, though. I snapped my head back into her nose and she let me go with a grunt. I threw my elbow backwards and caught her under the ribs, if her cough was anything to go by.
I turned around, more clumsy than before because my legs felt like rubber but I could still hold myself up. Hands up at the ready, I threw a clumsy left that she blocked with her right, then punched me in the stomach with her left.
She took a step back from me, there was blood rolling down her face and I knew I looked worse. I could feel my head throbbing and I could feel the blood running down my temple and my eyes couldn't quite stay focused.
My vision slowly shifted to greyscale and my stance lowered, fists at my sides and ready to deliver a beatdown. I needed
more. It was like being in combat but I wasn't trying to
deal damage. I lunged as hard as my legs could carry me--
Her shoe caught me in the side of the head mid-lunge and I collapsed straight down into a pile I front of her. My shoulder hit first and by the time I came to a stop the room was spinning around me and I was staring up into her eyes.
Her eyes were beautiful, now that I'd had a proper chance to look at them. At least, from what I could see. It was getting harder and harder to keep my own eyes focused on her. It seemed like all the anger was gone, somehow. Replaced by... by
pity.
I didn't want her
pity. I snarled and snapped my hand out to grab her ankle, pull her down so she could wallow in this
with me. The wet thump of her foot colliding with my wrist ended my attempt and she shook her head at me.
"You're so fucked up."
***
I opened my eyes to the same hallway I'd closed them in. I should have been more surprised that nobody found me and took me to medical. My head was throbbing but the blood had dried. My eyes were working again, for the most part anyway.
The mobility rig was still locked up so I rolled onto my side and pulled it off the small of my back. Touji might know how to fix it, but I didn't. Figures that Asuka would know how to trash it, the way she handed my ass to me showed she had training.
I could have laid on the floor for another hour and it still wouldn't have made it any easier, so I started the arduous task of climbing the wall to get back onto my feet. I'd gotten stronger in my time on Earth and that would have helped a lot more if I hadn't also been suffering from a head wound.
"Well, aren't you just the spitting image of your mother. Seem to have her temper too."
The voice came from behind me a moment before a pair of small but strong hands lifted me the rest of the way to my feet. I hadn't even heard footsteps, but by the time I'd turned half way around the owner of the hands and the voice had stepped around me to enter my field of view.
A grown woman, though I couldn't possibly put an age to her. Brunette hair in twin-tails draped over her shoulders, thin rimmed red glasses and blue-green eyes that pierced right to the heart of me. She was, in a word, beautiful.
Given longer than that moment to look, I realized she wore the white-trimmed blood red uniform of a Mars Fleet officer. "Nothing to say then?" She asked me with a half smirk.
I blinked, hard. "Sorry I'm... I'm sorry. Who... are you?" I asked, leaving unsaid the question about how she knew my mother.
She gave a mock-formal bow and, once straightened, extended her hand to me. "Admiral of the Fleet, Mari Makinami, at your service. It's been a very long time, Miss Natsu Ikari."
