Part Six (Final): Legacy
34. Last Temptation
"Okay, Nozomi, are you ready?" I said.
At my station in the control room, I flipped through a binder. The main projector screens flickered, showing the Black Moon that hovered over the Indian Ocean.
The craft was not unguarded: the Disc Angel and others, of various shapes and sizes, patrolled outside it. They had good reason to: an armada surrounded the craft in turn. Prime among the armada was the helicopter destroyer Ise, which carried Evangelion Unit-14 on the aft landing pad.
Nozomi and the entry plug were shown on the third, rightmost screen in the control room. She gripped and released the actuation levers, staring out at the scene before her, and she said,
"I dunno, can we go over the plan once we break in one more time?"
I sighed. "Yeah, sure, all right. Let's pause it."
The images froze. Waves stopped mid-break against Ise's hull. The Disc Angel sat tilted in mid-air as it dove toward the armada.
In the control room, some of the controllers backed away from their stations, stretching and drinking coffee or tea.
I paged through the binder, going to a middle section. "Okay, what's on your mind?"
"Finding the target once we're inside," said Nozomi. "I was just thinking we don't have enough material in the plan for a search."
I looked to Major Hyuga at the adjacent station. He looked over an identical blue binder and shook his head. "That's not her job. People on the ground will have to identify the target's location."
"Nothing she can do to help with that?" I asked.
"Nothing we're sure of. Let's focus on phase one. None of that stuff matters if we don't make it inside."
I relayed this to Nozomi, and Nozomi agreed to continue. "All right," she said, "let's give it a shot."
The simulation resumed. Ise steamed toward the Disc Angel at full speed, and Unit-14 engaged the enemy. It hopped between towed platforms, punching the enemy before flying away thanks to bursts of thrust from its jetpack.
"Take it easy," I told her. "You're burning a lot of fuel here. Quick, short bursts."
"I don't think I can reach the center that way," said Nozomi. "You want me to go for the edges?"
"Yeah, let's try that this round and see how it goes."
And so, we went on. Ayanami was gone. The hooded stranger was gone, but her children and the Angels were still there, and so were we.
The pawns were left to fight while the queens had abandoned the board.
It'd been nearly a week since Ayanami left us.
We'd left the Yellow Sea with the images of Ayanami and the stranger still haunting the operations room of Ise—an eternal reminder of the war between them.
The stranger's children around the world had liquefied, retreating to the Black Moon in the Indian Ocean to regroup. The remaining Angels had left their battlefields as well, with the Disc Angel hovering around the Black Moon as its final protector.
We began to plot the siege of the Black Moon—the final operation to remove the Angel and alien threat from Earth—but we had no plan for the future. What would we do then? How would we get that Geofront off our planet?
That was the thing with everyone else—Misato, Hyuga, and the others. They were so focused on what was right in front of them that they couldn't look beyond it. Even if we beat our enemies, that wouldn't mean we'd done all we'd hoped to. The enemy had made a real mess of the world, and just killing them or driving them back to their craft wouldn't fix any of that.
So it'd be a mistake—a real mistake—to be satisfied with just defeating them.
We had find the stranger. We had to make her give Ayanami back.
But no one else on the base was thinking about that, let alone had a plan. All they thought about was battle plans and exercises, about forming armadas and integrated command structures and whatever else.
So I did.
When exercises were done for the day, I grabbed a quick bite to eat and went back to my office in search of the answer. I paged through the insane ramblings of Keel Lorenz and his Seele disciples. I dug through the old Nerv archives—the Dead Sea Scrolls, Ritsuko's research, all of it. If there were information about Lilith and her people, it had to be in there, right?
But not everyone would leave me alone to that. As I studied some documents on the Spear of Longinus, there was a knock on my door, from Captain Aoba, of all people.
"Sorry to interrupt," he said, drumming his fingers on a manilla folder. "I just had some recommendations for future Eva testing. I thought you might want to know, in case we need you and Nozomi for the test."
I waved him over to my desk, and I took a look at the contents of the folder. Most of it had to do with trying to remove fragments of the Crown of Thorns from the Eva; Aoba wanted to run some live exercises to make sure the Eva was fully functional again. The artifact the enemy had used to take control of the Eva—the Crown of Thorns—had occupied all of Aoba's time in the past week and kept Unit-14 out of commission while they removed it.
"I'll pass it along to Hyuga; that's his call," I told him.
"Ah, I see," said Aoba, who furrowed his brow. "I guess I'm still a little out of sorts."
As could be expected—being liquefied by those creatures and trying to reconstitute yourself had a tendency to scramble your brain a bit.
"Are you feeling all right?' I asked.
"Fine, fine." He laughed. "Once you've been there once, what's another trip to the ocean, right? We're all fine." He picked up the folder from my desk and shot me a look. "What about you?"
I raised an eyebrow. "What do you mean?"
"Are you doing all right—since Lilith left us?"
"Ayanami," I said, glancing at the Spear of Longinus blueprints again.
"Ah." Aoba frowned. "Right," he said at last. "So you're doing well?"
"Fine," I said, smiling. "Just fine. Ayanami…did what she needed to do for our sake. I'm sad she's gone. She deserved more, but we're still here, and we need to keep going. And we'll find a way to bring her back."
"That's good to hear," said Aoba, nodding. "I'm glad to hear that. Some of us have been worried."
I slid the computer mouse aside, looking at him. "Worried about what?"
"A friend of yours—a friend of all of us—is gone. As far as any of us know, there's no way to save her. She might not even know we're still alive."
"She knows," I said, staring at him. "Ayanami knows, and she knows we're looking for her."
"Maybe you are," he said, "but the general isn't. The major isn't. Maybe we can save mankind. She'll still have sacrificed herself."
"You don't know that."
"That's all we're doing here—sacrificing ourselves for others' sake." He put a hand on his chest. "You, me, everyone—we're all giving a little bit of ourselves, but who says we have to suffer like that?" He glanced at the monitor. "How much are you going to give up to fix what happened?"
I tilted the monitor away from him. "As much as I choose to," I said. "I'm sorry about what happened to you, but don't you have something else to do?"
"I wonder, though," he said, "let's say we get through this but Rei is gone and won't come back: is that worth it? Is that worth all of this just to stay out of the ocean?"
"Get out," I said.
"Is that worth staying out of the ocean where none of this would even hurt?"
"Get out!"
Eyes narrowed, he gave me a slight nod, and he walked out.
I didn't blame Aoba for questioning things. I'd been there before. I don't think I reacted much better, all those months before, when I first confronted those creatures up-close.
But Aoba's doubts weren't my problem. I had too much material in front of me: Seele R&D, manifestos, and so on. I could spend weeks combing through their writings.
I could spend weeks and not find anything of value, not accomplish anything. These reams and reams of documents would be spokes of a hamster wheel: I'd run through them and go nowhere.
I started asking questions about our plans going forward. What would we do if the enemy forces were defeated? What were we going to do about the second Black Moon over the Indian Ocean?
What could be done, if anything, to bring Ayanami back?
"What—did she go somewhere?" was Misato's remark. "Do we need to send a taxi?"
That's what she said when I visited her office. She shook her head, looking to the ceiling, and sighed. The point was well-taken: it wasn't as easy as just going to fetch her from someplace. Where Ayanami had gone—or where she could be found—weren't easy questions to answer.
"We'll take the Black Moon," said Misato, "and we'll capture the head of the snake. If there's a way to get Rei back, she'll know."
But whether she would tell us, even knew anything, or would relent to help us was something neither of us could know. We were trapped in that, in miserable uncertainty with no way out. I suggested we interrogate Keel Lorenz, but Misato just laughed.
"We are interrogating no one," she said. "My people are taking care of that. You're not a trained interrogator. You'd give him as much information as you'd get, if you even got anything at all."
"So, what am I supposed to do?" I demanded.
She cocked her head at that. "Shinji, some things aren't entirely in our control. There might not be anything you can do about Rei right now. That's reality."
Reality sucked.
"But there are things you can contribute to in the here and now," said Misato. "The enemy is still out there. The Angels are still out there."
So what. We'd kill them, or we'd pack them all up in the craft they arrived in and send them back. Then something else would come hurtling from the cosmos, or maybe some archaeologists would dig up another Geofront, or Godzilla would rise from the ocean. On and on we go. Cataclysm is always just around the corner. There's no salvation on the horizon—only the people we bury and trample underfoot in search of it.
The thing is, I knew that wasn't a healthy attitude to hold. It wasn't something I liked or embraced, but it was the only thing I felt capable of holding in my heart at the time. Misato was right—keeping up with Nozomi mattered—but I just didn't have it in me to feel it rewarding. I couldn't find a meaning in it that I liked.
But once Misato and others pointed out the futility of my search, I couldn't go back to what I'd been doing, either. I'd learned a lot about Seele's inner workings in the previous week, but even Seele didn't know that much about Lilith—about who she was, where she came from, or the group of seven. What they did know was cloaked in quasi-religious nonsense, identifying Adam and Lilith with figures from Jewish folklore. None of it really meant anything.
Rather than spend the rest of the day on that waste of time, I did something more for myself: I read a book, A Tale of Two Cities.
It wasn't the first time I'd read it; I'd once given Ayanami a copy for a school assignment, and she took to the piece. She read it cover-to-cover in a day or two, and she kept the copy on her for a long time. I used to wonder what she enjoyed about the story: I feared the moments of human brutality would offend her, but there was definitely something about the story she liked.
So I read the Dickens novel again. I read, and I remembered things I'd forgotten. A lot of people reinvent themselves in that book. The spy, Barsad, assumes different roles based on who's in power. Darnay sheds his aristocratic background to live a quiet life. Doctor Manette is reborn on his release from prison, only to die again for periods of time as he relapses into his obsessive shoe-making.
I think Ayanami would've appreciated, maybe even enjoyed, the idea that people can change so fully and completely. She'd done it before, and she would do it again.
As nice a diversion as that was, reading a book would only do so much. I ate dinner late, by myself, and I headed back to my quarters with Asuka. It was half past nine at that point, and Asuka was on the bed, in shorts and bare feet, as she worked on her laptop.
"Been busy?" she said, hardly looking up from the screen.
"I've been…looking into things," I told her. "And thinking."
"Yeah?" she said, peering up. "What about?"
I sighed, and I took the chair at the desk, sitting down backward to face her. "We're not getting her back."
"Aha." Asuka closed her laptop, and she leaned back against a pillow and the headboard. "It doesn't seem likely, does it?" she said. It was more of a statement than a question.
"No." I flicked a finger at the desk's edge. "I didn't want to believe it, but that's how it is. And everything we're doing is about going forward."
"Yourself included?" she asked.
"What do you mean?"
"First's gone, but you've been halfway locked inside the control room or your office ever since," she said.
"I'm not running away from this," I said, frowning. "Not after what Ayanami did. How could I?"
Asuka smiled at that, and she waved me over. "Shinji, come here."
I stared blankly.
"I'm not going to bite," she said, laughing. "Get over here."
I got up and pushed the chair back into place. I lay down next to Asuka, and she wrapped an arm around me.
"I'm proud of you, you know," she said. "But I don't think anyone would have a problem if you took a day to yourself. She was your friend. Take the time to grieve. I didn't do that when Mama left me, and I didn't realize until much later how much weight that left inside me. Don't do that to yourself."
I sighed. "I don't know. There's so much going on—"
"Shinji, you need to lean on people sometimes," she said, pointing a finger at me. "It doesn't have to be me—but I won't complain if it is. You put up with a lot of my shit. Give me a chance to be there now and then."
"You have been," I said, closing my eyes in her warm embrace. "You have."
"Thanks." She squeezed me a bit. "Now, at least take the morning tomorrow. Get outside this hole. I'll take care of Nozomi's session. Agreed?"
I opened my eyes and stared—stared at the gray ceiling that was bathed in the cold, blue-tinted lights of the room. "Okay."
"Good," she said. "That's good."
Asuka tried really hard. She tried so hard to help me, but being comfortable in someone's arms—that can do only so much.
It's hard to feel good when you think you don't deserve that. Someone else can't feel that anymore, so why should you?
It's hard to feel good when nothing you can do would really change the situation you're in. When every option is equally pointless, why do anything at all? Taking time to myself might help me let go, but it wouldn't really improve anything—nothing except what was in my own head.
People we love go away in time. We die, and if science has anything to say about it, we don't go anywhere after that. We fall asleep, never to reawaken. Why bother trying to live, then? Why bother doing things? They won't amount to anything. The people we touch with our lives—the people we influence—will only die in turn. The stuff we did will be forgotten and lost. In time, there will be no evidence we ever existed at all.
Maybe that's when I finally understood my mother. The chance to make something immortal and everlasting—the chance to do something meaningful in that it could never be erased—did appeal to me, at least in that time. It was something of real consequence. My father and I could never be that.
At the same time, I was still alive. I was still alive, and I had no interest in dying. But what is there to keep going for? Ayanami's wish? The promise I'd just made to Asuka? Something else?
I spoke to Asuka about that question, and just like always, she had an answer right away.
"Why do you think she did it?" she asked me.
I didn't know.
"She had to know she'd die," Asuka argued, "or something worse. She gave up a lot, didn't she?"
"She was always like that," I remarked.
"But she felt it was worth it. She must've felt that way. It mattered to her that we'd still be here, that we'd still have the chance to go on."
"Was it really worth that, though?" I said, sighing and looking to the ceiling.
"It was worth it to her."
And that's the only thing that mattered, isn't it? As long as it was worth it to Ayanami, who were we to judge that? We do things for people, for other people, that might not directly benefit us, but we can still take joy in them. We can still find happiness in that.
"We should get married," I told Asuka.
Asuka sputtered, showing me a bemused look. "Are you serious?"
"Of course."
"You're incredible sometimes, Shinji," she said, shaking her head. "But you know, we can't right now."
"Why's that?"
"You have to be eighteen."
I huffed at that. "Well, in two years then."
"Yeah, two years."
We lay there for some time, and I fell asleep in Asuka's arms. I'm not sure exactly when.
The next morning, despite my uneasiness, I left the base to pay my respects to Ayanami.
I set out for Minamiashigara around seven o'clock from the train station in downtown Tokyo-2. I'd been invited there a few times before, but I'd never visited—not since the end of Instrumentality. When they were holding the dedication for the monument, I was still in my reclusive phase. I didn't want to be seen in public. I knew Minamiashigara well, though.
It was the place where Asuka and I left the sea.
The town had been been rebuilt since those days. The rising of the Geofront from Tokyo-3—just 10 kilometers away—had carved out a new beach on the town's south side and widened Odawara Bay. When Asuka and I had first returned to the world of the living, we'd found most of the seaside property smashed and broken—likely from the initial tidal wave after the Geofront rose. Given two years to rebuild, the town had laid out a new road along the south shore, dotted with beachside homes. More than half of them were still for sale, though. The beach there wasn't much to look at, either, with rocks going right to the water's edge. It would take a few thousand years or more to weather that into sand, I'm sure.
The freshly-paved road led to the monument.
The monument park charged no admission unless you wanted a guided tour, but you still had to get a ticket. The government had been savvy enough to offer me lifetime admission, though, so I showed the person at the counter my pass, and he let me through.
The central area of the monument was a concrete dais. Three statues in black marble stood equally spaced around the platform: one of Ayanami, one of Asuka, and one of me. The statues were life-sized, and I would've stood a little taller than my stone counterpart if not for the statue's base. As uncomfortable as it was to look at myself that way, I did like the statue. The artist captured something about that boy—his uncertainty, his vulnerability, his anger? I wasn't quite sure. Those black stony eyes were hard to read. But it did, at least, feel like me at a different time.
Behind each of the three statues were stone slabs, engraved with the names of those who had not yet returned from Instrumentality. Fittingly, my parents' names were listed on the slab behind my statue. I took a moment to find them among the other names—some of whom had dates next to them, showing they eventually had returned—and I moved on.
From the stone dais, a staircase led to the ocean. The Walk of Life was meant to offer a path for those returning from Instrumentality, but that day, I stopped at the top step and looked over Odawara Bay. In the distance, one eye stared back at me—an eye on Lilith's petrified head. Only half of the head was still intact, and it sat knee-deep in the water. A ring of buoys was meant to keep people from touching it or trying to snap off a souvenir.
I headed down the steps, rolled up my pant legs, and waded to the buoy line. The head was enormous—four men could've stood on each other's shoulders and still not reached the top—and its expression was equally haunting, for even in death, the petrified face wore an open-mouthed smile.
As the waves lapped up to my knees, I craned my head to look up, and I said to no one in particular,
"This isn't goodbye, you know. That would be too sad."
I balled my fists at my sides. I was shaking; the water was cool and uncomfortable.
"But until I find you again," I went on, "I'll try to keep going like this."
The stone face didn't move. It stared blankly across the breach with its small smile.
"Thanks," I said to it, and I waded back to the shore.
If it came down to just Ayanami versus all of mankind having the chance to live outside of Instrumentality, then it was a simple decision. Ayanami knew that, and so did I, but that didn't make it any less unsatisfying. Ayanami might have found peace or happiness through what she'd done, but some of that peace came at the cost of my grief, too. Trying to be happy for her sake felt more like an obligation than something I really wanted to do. I would've liked it better if she'd been there. The challenge was to realize in my heart that it just couldn't be so.
Those heavy thoughts weighed on me as I trudged up the Walk of Life to the monument dais, but as I reached the halfway point of the stair, the wind picked up. There was a low thumping sound. Helicopter rotors sliced through the air. A military chopper came down on the road outside the museum. Three SDF members disembarked: Captain Suzuki and two of her men.
My satellite phone rang.
"Hello, Shinji?" It was Hyuga. "Asuka's going to be on the line in a moment. There's been an incident here."
Captain Suzuki and her men walked toward me.
"What happened?" I asked. "Is she all right?"
"We think she's fine. The control room—she's coming on now."
There was a clicking sound, and Asuka was next to speak. "Hey, Shinji? It's me. I'm all right."
Suzuki and her men stopped in front of me. "You need to come with us, sir," she said. "You're needed at the base immediately."
I covered the phone. "What's going on?" I demanded.
"Shinji?" said Asuka on the phone. "Are you there?"
"I'm here!" I answered. I pulled on my hair. "Are you sure you're all right? Talk to me!"
"I'm fine. Everybody here is fine. One of Maya's people was grazed; that's all."
"Grazed?" My blood ran cold. "Grazed by what?"
There was some static. A distant voice broke in. "That's enough," the male voice said.
"Hey, I'm not done; hey!" More static.
"Asuka?" I cried, hunching over the phone. "Asuka!"
The line went dead.
