Chapter Twenty
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"So yeah, I've got some new bootleg stuff from some really old albums, awesome stuff. I think you'd like it, I can burn you a copy."
Emily seemed utterly nonplussed that Shinji was there, and had gladly invited herself in, pillaging through what she had helped Kaworu purchase, CD's clicking softly as she shuffled through the racks, pulling a few out here and there.
"Shit, we could go clubbing! You like that kind of stuff, right?"
It wasn't until Karen looked his way that Shinji realized Emily had meant him. He felt vaguely awkward, ill-at-ease, as if they'd caught him in some sort of lie, even though they'd been the ones to walk in on him. Karen had only seemed vaguely embarrassed, and entirely at herself.
//Maybe it's about time you stopped feeling ashamed first over everything, this isn't NERV anymore.// Emily, for her part, seemed quite happy to keep talking until he figured himself out.
"I wonder, last time I couldn't get in to Metropolis. I was too skinny or something." She frowned. "Stupid damn bouncers. I suppose we could always go up to the strip and just cruise. If you two are with us, we shouldn't have any problem getting in."
Karen smiled at him, glanced at Kaworu. "You can just talk over her, she doesn't mind. In fact, you could kick us out if we came at a bad time."
"Kick us out?!" Emily snorted, as if the idea were mad, sorting through music with the swift, sure motions of a rabid fan.
Kaworu smiled. "Actually, I was about to make breakfast, if you two would care to join."
"Breakfast, but it's..." Karen trailed off, and slowly turned a very deep red, as if calculating how long a person would have to stay up to consider late afternoon 'early,' and what they would probably be doing with all those extra hours.
Shinji realized he was calculating the exact same thing, and he /knew/ what they had been doing for at least a fair portion of time and suddenly he was just as red as Karen, Kaworu laughing behind his pale red eyes at both of them as Emily rummaged oblivious on the floor. She looked up, though, as Shinji's stomach suddenly, and determinedly announced that it would like pancakes, yes, /right now/.
"Uh... yeah." He sighed, giving up any hope of maintaining his dignity with his stomach still roaring, quietly trying to figure out when the last time was that he actually had a meal and failing miserably. "Yeah, breakfast would be good."
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He was surprised that Kaworu could cook, not so surprised at how the pale-haired man drizzled the batter languidly into the pan, glancing at him with a vaguely lewd look, until Shinji had to cough and turn away or risk blushing once more.
//You're not at all impressed that he survived a bomb blast, or came back from the dead, but it's amazing he can flip a flapjack?//
Shinji laughed a little, in a rare light-hearted mood and determined to enjoy it. Kaworu looked up from the stove, probably knowing what he found so funny, and the angel's smile sobered him again, too full of meaning to take lightly, before it turned teasing again, playful. Karen pretended to be more interested in the food than in how they were looking at each other, while Emily didn't bother to pretend, easily distracted by the meal.
"Syrup, Shinji?"
It was an innocuous enough question, but there was a noticeable gleam in Kaworu's eye, a teasing little half smile. Karen blushed and somehow managed to look even /more/ down. Shinji felt himself turning red too, glaring back at Kaworu, mouthing 'quit it' even though he was smiling, and shivered as a hand gently, affectionately ruffled his hair, Kaworu setting the bottle down before sliding into his seat.
The angel proceeded to let his toes trail up the inside of Shinji's calf, making simple, polite conversation as if completely unaware of what he was doing, until Shinji had to kick him under the table. The fox like grin he got in response left him wondering if he was ever going to be safe in his own house again.
"Awesome." Emily sighed happily. "Fuck, I'll steal you some IHOP supplies and we can just keep doing this, all right?" She sopped up what remained of her maple syrup with a few pieces of pancake, before drenching the pancake in more syrup. "Gonna need another one, if you've got it. Too much syrup now." The girl could switch subjects without even taking a breath. "Man, some weird shit's been going on around here. Explosions and bridges crashing and military all over the damn place. You guys notice anything?"
"Nothing out of the ordinary." Kaworu said mildly, though Shinji threatened to endanger the lie, having to hold in a sudden fit of giggles, unable to look up.
"You're coming into work tomorrow?"
Shinji did look up then. "Wait, you have a /job/?"
Karen and Emily exchanged a confused look, as Kaworu nodded, and Shinji laughed again, for a very long time.
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"No, no thank you. No, everything is fine."
Misato rolled her eyes, switching the phone to her other hand as Lae continued to talk, as if he didn't know that short, clipped answers meant the conversation should end. Asuka was switching on lights in odd places, never enough in one room to make things comfortable, casting it all in strange, dim shadows instead.
"No, we don't need - everything will be all right. Tomorrow, then, we'll be ready for tomorrow." She turned the phone off with a tap of her thumb, raising her hands in silent exasperation, biting back a scream she had never, ever allowed herself. Eventually, Misato thought, she would have to remedy that.
"He's very worried about us."
Asuka wheeled carefully back into the room, showing more initiative than she had in a long time. No doubt Lae was responsible for the single-floor house they had been put up in, with extra-wide hallways, guide rails in the bathrooms and ramps to the doors.
"It would help if he had any say over what happens. He's as powerless as we are."
It still didn't mean she forgave him, for what he said had happened to Shinji. He was brave enough to say it to her face - she didn't forgive him. Any of them, or Ritsuko, or Gendo, or herself. It was always easier, in any situation, just to blame yourself and be done with it, she thought. Things always came down to that, anyway.
"He likes you."
The statement came out of the blue, breaking into her thoughts. For a moment Misato was completely confused.
"What?"
"I can tell, that man, he likes you." Slowly, Asuka's eyes went distant, glassy. "I knew a boy like that, once. I broke a boy like that once." Blue eyes focused slowly back on her. "I did, didn't I?"
"It wasn't just you." Misato gently smoothed a strand of the girl's red hair. "You must be tired. I'll help put you to bed."
Asuka didn't argue, her training had to have been a heavy strain, even with the suit. The red-haired woman always carried with her the air of a chronic weariness anyway, even on the best of days, a disease that had never quite gone into relapse.
It would take the rest of her life, to deal with what the Angel had done to her. At least the rest of her life.
Misato took over control without thinking, pushing Asuka's wheelchair into the main bedroom - two king-size beds, side by side - and setting her in front of a very nice armoire, the mirror large enough that she could see her own reflection, next to the seated woman, without having to bend down at all. Sighing, she picked up a heavy hairbrush, gently combing out Asuka's thick red hair. It shone, like blood turned into gold, and when she used her fingers to work out the tangles, she found the roots were still dark with sweat, damp and warm.
"I could be better. Better than I was, better than this."
"I don't want you to be better. You know they don't deserve it." Misato was amazed, there was no edge in her voice. It seemed she was tired too. "I don't want you to be special, this time, to fight for them.
"I don't see how that's your decision to make."
Asuka's hair had been swept back behind one ear, revealing the long, unprotected curve of her neck. The brush was heavy, weighing down her hand. A few hard, focused strikes would be more than enough.
The mirror. The brush would shatter the mirror, and what remained would be razor sharp.
Misato took a deep breath, heard it rattle in the silence, and set the brush down, so gently it made no sound against the pane of glass that protected the top of the table.
"I should have killed you, before I ever let them touch you."
"You didn't, though."
"No, I didn't."
Asuka leaned back, hair spilling over the edge of the chair. It reminded Misato of summer, not summer now, but the summers past, long before the Second Impact. The smell of that color should have been sweet, like strawberries so ripe they burst on eager fingertips, staining all the way down to the palm.
Misato realized she was, in fact, quite old, to remember things like that. She looked down. Hands clenched, her knuckles were sticking out, just a little, the way her grandmother's had, in an old photograph. She was afraid to take her eyes off of the mirror, when she finally did look up. Afraid that she would blink, and open her eyes to find nothing there at all.
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"Hello, Miss Kent. I hope you slept well."
She hadn't, but Toby rather doubted the woman actually cared. The fluorescent light above her small, windowless room was buzzing, her mouth was dry and yet mucky wet at the same time. She was desperate for a glass of orange juice, even though she usually hated the taste.
"I'm fine."
The woman nodded once, briskly, long dark hair tied up in a bun, short cut skirt and suit to match. Bureaucratic, efficient, but the lines in the suit were cut a little too nicely, altogether too /there/, not nameless or faceless. The woman was important. Toby remembered she was still wearing the clothes she'd arrived in, uselessly tried to smooth out an ocean of wrinkles as she stood.
"Please, come with me."
It wasn't the U.N. Maybe they'd been who she had spoken to earlier - though she doubted even that now, and she certainly wasn't with them now. She'd reconciled herself to that fact early on, when there were no people talking in the hallways, no newspapers or televisions or post-it notes in the rooms along these long, gleaming corridors. She knew it from the moment they'd asked her to stay, in the little room with the green coverlet and no windows, or clocks. The door had locked, from the outside.
So far, her surroundings were very much like NERV, a place hidden from the public eye because it was so blatantly designed for the good of the many, never taking the few, the individual, into account. Along every wall, she expected to see a portrait of Mill or Descartes, someone stoic and statuesque. It became a game, waiting for a corridor that wasn't completely blank.
Toby played the game with herself because she knew she was scared shitless, and didn't want to face the blankness that came with that. It was easier to breathe shallow, and refuse to deal with what was wrong. In these places, people who came in didn't go out again, not with what she had done as a defector. Especially because of what she had done.
It was more a fear of physical pain than the death itself, that they weren't just going to shoot her in the head or some similar, tidy death. It was going to be her punishment for what she had done to Shinji, she would suffer as he had. Toby could still remember how he screamed. It was all she could think about, even sitting up in bed with the lights on, the only sound in the silence inside and out. She didn't remember falling asleep.
"We'll let you freshen up soon, Ms. Kent."
"Call me Toby." Her words sounded hollow, more hollow than the woman's pumps against the floor. Call me Toby. Call me Ishmael. She smiled because it couldn't possibly matter either way. No cameras to watch her, but they were probably hidden behind the walls, now that she thought about it. Whoever these people were, they had more money than NERV, and that thought made her stomach lurch again - they couldn't be SEELE, could they? But Cate said SEELE had been destroyed, the past so much muddled, distant history that Toby hadn't ever given much thought to it, it was just the past and had nothing to do with her.
"Who are you people?"
The woman turned, glancing back at her.
"SEELE, Ms... I mean, Toby. I thought you might have figured that out by now."
She stopped for a moment, hurrying to catch up as the woman kept walking.
"You can't be. SEELE, I mean. It was destroyed, all of it. Cate was certain."
The woman smiled, on her expressionless face even the slight amusement was like a peal of uncontrollable laughter.
"I'm sure he's certain of a great deal of things. I doubt many of them are true."
//SEELE wouldn't need me to tell them anything. The UN didn't know, didn't realize what Cate was doing, or about the Dominions and the suits -// She hadn't even been sure of that, only caring that defection was the closest she could get to confession, to anything near penance. //These people know, though, they have to know everything. So what could they want from me?//
Toby felt mousy, frightened and small as she followed the woman down a hallway arched up like a blank-faced museum, past expressionless security guards in full gear, into a room more massive than anything she had seen at NERV, double the staff and equipment that she had ever seen. Her hands flexed, dropping some imaginary object that should have smashed dramatically on the floor. The silence was like a vacuum, choking her words.
"Is that... an Eva?"
The enormous arm hung at the end of the floor they were standing on, upright, disappearing into a shaft that had been cut away, less than half of it visible from where they stood. No one else seemed to take much notice.
"We were able to recover some of Unit 01 out of the rubble, it was a rather improbable save, though there isn't really that much to study. I consider it more..." The woman gave an expressive flick of her fingers. "Decorative."
"So," Toby kept her voice low, walking at an awkward pace to keep close to her inexpressive host, though no one seemed to be paying any attention to her. "Adam and Lilith? You don't care that he has them?"
"He can protect them well enough for the moment. He wouldn't know what to do with them even if he could do anything - and if the Dominions get lucky, there will just be less to destroy later."
"What if they start the Third Impact?"
"Funny thing about that - the consensus is, we're not entirely sure that they /can/."
"So why am I here? If you already know - if Cate is so wrong about everything, why did you accept..?" It didn't make any sense, people this powerful bothering to explain things. People this powerful didn't even need to bother with killing her. Her silence was meaningless to them.
"You have no idea what he's really planned, do you?"
She thought she had, until she had met this woman. Toby could hear her voice waver a little, clenched her fists to steady herself. "We had to build the suits to protect Lilith and Adam. We thought the Dominions were trying to cause the Third Impact, and we had to stop..."
She trailed off, the woman was expectedly shaking her head.
"... and so, I suppose, you also never asked what he was doing with the cores, after Shinji defeated the first Dominion and Kaworu Nagisa destroyed the second?"
"We loaded the first into the cannon - I was responsible for transferring the core power into energy a human could harness..."
At the beginning, she had been too busy creating, testing the suit -
-//guilt, guilt because he died and you had such a convenient excuse and you weren't there you betrayed your only brother//-
- testing the suit, working every detail over and over, and after that with meeting Shinji, with the double shock of Kaworu's return and Cate's orders -
-//betrayed him betraying Shinji was as easy as breathing, wasn't it wasn't it wasn't it//-
Toby had never considered it, questioned it, but by just saying it aloud it finally made sense, until she realized she had to be stupid not to see it. Stupid, denying the truth because she would rather stay ignorant, because every day she spent focusing on her work was another day to push everything else to the side.
"He's going to turn the Dominion cores into weapons."
"One weapon, actually."
The woman stopped, Toby nearly tripped over the doorway of their final destination. She took a look around, but nothing stood out, mind still reeling with the shock all she saw were white coats and computer screens filled with code, metal tables, plastic equipment. All the rooms she had been in yesterday and the day before last and the day before that.
"Cate knows nothing about SEELE, not about who we are, not about our true intentions. He has co-opted our name and our methods to make a name for himself, to bring the United States back to what he believes is its rightful place in the world. As the leaders, of course, and he will be the commander in chief, ready to destroy whomever will disagree. I doubt he'd have to do it more than once or twice." The smile came again, mocking and bitter. "Space lasers, good god. My father faces Gendo Ikari and all the glory of the Human Instrumentality Project, and I am left with giant space lasers."
"Your father?"
She nodded. "SEELE is more than any man can destroy, even Gendo Ikari, though he did do an admirable job of cutting away the dead wood. I honestly don't think the old man saw it coming - Ikari had only visited once, and for a very short time, almost too short to do any damage. Of course, SEELE had thought to inform me, so I suppose a merciful death was best."
"You let your father die?"
One shoulder raised in a pragmatic shrug. "If it had been his decision, he would have done the same for me." She seemed surprised Toby was still shocked. "We were never all that close."
"So... so what do you want from me?" Toby felt her insides tremble, just a little. "I've told you everything I know."
"I'm sure you have, Toby." She held her breath, waiting for some stupid movie addendum - "but just to be sure," or "but that doesn't mean we can't torture you anyway," but it didn't come. Nothing came. Toby stole another glance around the room, perhaps there were some clues or cues she had missed the first time.
The plans on one of the wider screens hanging at an angle near the center of the room, those looked vaguely - no, very familiar.
"Tiphereth."
"You've invented quite a weapon here. Whatever your reasons. As I'm sure you've realized, allowing Cate to destroy enemies at his whim is rather counterproductive for the rest of the world. Tiphereth is a powerful tool - and if you're not set on revenge, I imagine that Shinji could be convinced at least a few scores needed settling."
"Shinji's dead." The words came out with no conviction, she wanted to be told they were false, that, along with everything else she'd believed, this was just another of Cate's lies.
"No, he's not."
Toby closed her eyes for a long moment, exhaling softly, and could feel something in her heart twist at the words, either draining away or being plugged up, a wound mending, maybe enough to save her life.
"We've been keeping careful track, but Kaworu Nagisa has been with him the entire time. I doubt there's any more we could have done for him... and though some of my colleagues don't agree, I don't think we could have interfered had we wanted to."
Toby felt her fears evaporate, somehow with Shinji alive it seemed there really was nothing left to fear. "He won't fight for you, even if I rebuild the suit. He didn't want to fight the second Dominion, we had to force him into it. He won't do this."
"I think you underestimate his pride. After all, Cate ripped him from a nice, anonymous life, purely for his own personal gain."
It seemed this woman had a personal score to settle in seeing Cate suffer, though Toby readily admitted that might just be SEELE talking, unimpressed with the man who had thought himself worthy to assume what he thought was an untended throne.
"What about the other Dominions?"
"I'm sure he can handle them, or perhaps we can even count on the assistance of the Seventeenth Angel... it does seem that Nagisa's interests here are truly benign."
The woman turned, and it seemed she was about to leave. It was clear the other people in this room were her team, ready to work at her disposal, to get the materials she would need, anything else she might require. Toby had been given the task, it was now her responsibility to accomplish it - stupid to even ask if she had a choice. She was still too stunned, stupid with the realization that Shinji was alive - //I have sinned and I have been forgiven//- to think to protest. One thought finally did hit her, just as the woman reached the door.
"Cate will use the girl, Asuka Soryuu. Tiphereth isn't the only suit, there's a second one and they're having her pilot it. I can't be sure - if he decides to use her as a weapon against us..."
The woman seemed nonplussed.
"You'd better make sure this suit will be the one to win, then."
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He thought he might hear the sea, the echo of the tide, with his head against Kaworu's chest, but it was only a simple heartbeat, the echo of nothing but his own. Shinji was content just to be still, enjoy the long-fingered hand running gently through his hair. It didn't take long before he was drifting, half-awake - still recovering, though he knew he would soon be healed, and whole.
"It was a long day, ne?"
"It was a normal day." Shinji sighed, content. All he could ask for was a lifetime full of normal days. "I called the shop, they didn't even fire me. I could quit, if you want... or not, and we can keep being like this. Normal."
Acquaintances and breakfasts and polite goodbyes, helping Kaworu with dinner, walks and music and making love. Simple and normal and pleasant.
"We could keep being like this... forever."
The pause was long, it could have been the middle of the night before Kaworu spoke again.
"It isn't over."
Shinji tried to worry about that - if it wasn't over, that meant he would have to fight again, right? He wouldn't be able to live these quiet, peaceful days. The dread didn't last, though, snuffed out by weariness and Kaworu's gentle touch.
"As long as you're here, it will be all right." An indulgent chuckle, Kaworu was always gently amused with him, it seemed. He didn't mind, it wasn't as if the angelic man didn't have every right, and it certainly wasn't unkind.
//I wouldn't even mind if he was unkind, as long as he stayed with me.//
He shivered, the thought taking him places he didn't want to go, memories and possibilities and fears, those who had hurt him and left him. It was all banished as Kaworu shifted, so warm, stupid to think that no one so warm could ever hurt him but the thought comforted anyway.
"... but you're an adult now. You don't have to get hurt like that, not ever. You'll never have to be someone's son again."
It probably should have hurt, those words. Shinji thought about letting it hurt, just because if it were anyone else it certainly would have. His lover was still talking though, and he let it go.
"Do I let you hurt, then, or do I protect you, even when it isn't the same kind of pain? Do I let you deal with what I know you can survive?"
Kaworu was thinking to himself, thinking out loud, Shinji now lost in the heavy space between sleep and waking. Unable to answer had he even understood, even bothered to focus on the words and not just the tone, Kaworu's voice. Kaworu, here with him. Always.
"I don't think she wants to hurt you any more than I did - but she will. If I let her, she will, and I don't know what I should do."
Shinji wondered what Kaworu meant by that, but was asleep before he could ask.