Title: Indecision (5)

Author:  Yih

Written: March 2002

Dedication: To Bjørn, otherwise none as "The Dane"

1-5: Breaking Time

Rei and Shinji arrived home with two bags of takeout food since there was no way they were going to arrive home in a decent hour in which to make dinner.  They walked in companionable silence the entire way back, Rei's hand tucked into Shinji's own.  And they were happy in this quiet fellowship, happier than either of them remembered being for the longest time. 

"You're going to help me with my Calculus later?" inquired Shinji hopefully. 

Rei nodded and gave him a small smile.  Shinji pushed open the door and they called for Asuka several times that dinner was ready, but she didn't come down from her room.  So they decided to eat without her.  They put out what food they thought they wanted and left the rest in the refrigerator for Misato and Kaji, and for Asuka whenever she wished to come down and eat. 

"Mmm," Shinji murmured, chewing the noodles thoughtfully, "this is really good.  I didn't know you knew such great places to get takeout, Rei-chan.  We definitely need to tell Misato-san about this place, it'd be perfect when it's her day to cook." 

"You should get Asuka," Rei told him. 

"We already called her down more than enough times," Shinji replied indignantly, "and she didn't want to come down.  She really hates me, and I don't see why she hates you at all.  You're too nice to her, even though she's despicable towards you, Rei-chan."

Rei said nothing, knowing the reason why Asuka was volatile or at least, she thought she did.  Of course, she could always be wrong.  But her intuition told her the entire matter had to do with Shinji.  So she put down her chopsticks and got up.  The look of surprise on Shinji's face strangely pleased her for some reason.  Walking away from him, she realized that she never shocked anyone. 

She knocked on Asuka's door and met the face of silence.  She knocked again and heard something being thrown in the direction of the door.  She was about to knock again when the door slid open.  Asuka's head poked out and her red eyes met Rei's truly red eyes.  She didn't say anything and stared. 

"So it's you," she said lamely. 

Obviously, she had been hoping it was Shinji.  This secretively worried Rei in a way she did not quite understand.  Standing by the doorway, she had no idea what to do.  Asuka had not invited her into the bedroom, so she did not enter.  She stood there, ridiculously so, not knowing what to do. 

"You can come in if you want," Asuka called out, her voice rather calm not reflecting her earlier loss of control. 

"Okay," Rei said, not wanting to alarm the volatile Asuka anymore by coming in unexpected.  She slipped into the slightly disarrayed room.  Concluding immediately that Asuka had thrown more than a few things around her room. 

"Sit down," Asuka said, gesturing to her unmade bed, "I want to apologize for what I said earlier, Rei-chan.  I can call you, Rei-chan, right?"  When Rei nodded, she continued, "I've done a lot of thinking, Rei-chan, and I've decided there's no reason why I have to hate you since you aren't really wonder girl.  I mean, you're just another clone of hers, right?"  She didn't even see the astonished look on Rei's face because her back was turned towards her.  "I mean, you're just one of the hundred dummy Rei that were kept in the Rei room.  

"And while you look exactly like her, like all clones of clones do.  You don't quite act like her.  You're a bit more open, a little less of a high and mighty bitch.  I know this all might sound strange to you, me being nice and amiable to you but if I'm going to have to live through this year with you I might as well try to be friends with you right?" she inquired. 

"But why?" asked Rei. 

"I'm glad you asked that," Asuka responded, troubled that Rei bothered to say anything back to her.  "What I said early was uncalled for, after all your DNA was modeled after his mother's and that's sick to think that you have romantic feelings for him or that he'd have lover-like emotions for you.  Of course you wouldn't have anything sexual, you're relationship is like a mother or sister to the lost son or brother.  I kept thinking about why you two had become so close and that's the perfect reason, isn't it Rei-chan?  You want to help him like an older sister, a neesan.  I'm right, aren't I?"

Rei didn't say anything, disturbed that this conversation was being discussed in such a rational manner by Asuka.  They had left her raging like a tempestuous hurricane, but they had come back to find her as calm as a spring breeze.  It was a bit discerning, and made Rei confused on which Asuka was really Asuka.  "Why are you not mad at me?" she questioned. 

"I'm still mad at you," Asuka said nonchalantly.  "But I have no reason to be, it's rather irrational.  You and Shinji will never be together in that way.  I finally put two together, that Shinji looks at you the way he looks at a family member, and the way he looks at me is entirely different.  There's emotional attachment to both of us, but in different fashions.  He doesn't look at you the way he looks at me, and since I'm not related to him, what else could it be?  He likes likes me.  And I think he loves you in the way he loves his own mother.  You're the perfect replacement for what his father never was to him.  He listens to you, like this morning in way he won't even listen to Misato-san. 

"It's strange the way he follows your orders without a second thought," she mused.  "He's become a bit rebellious now.  Before, he use to obey me rather quickly, but now he turns to you first.  You've rather made Ikari turn into a little boy again, Rei-chan.  The backbone he was starting to develop has gradually disappeared as you two have gotten closer.  And of course, you do spoil him like you did at breakfast today by pushing off those night garments off the table.  He was capable of doing that himself if you had but waited a minute."

She clasped her hands behind her back, walking up and down the length of her room like an army drill officer.  It was in this moment that Rei realized she could like Asuka, if given the opportunity like she was now.  Though she did not quite like the way Asuka was referring to her relationship with Shinji.  She did not think of Shinji in that way, she thought of him as something more.  But her words did make sense.  He turned to her like he had turned to Asuka, perhaps because Asuka wasn't related to him in that way and she was; therefore, she had become his placebo mother? 

"And of course, you're the one that goes to wake him up every morning like a mother does for her son.  Of course, you're the one that's always helping him in every chore that he does like a mother does for a child that she spoils.  But then again, sometimes the way you look at him isn't quite motherly, is it Rei-chan?" inquired Asuka politely.  "You sometimes gaze at him the way I do.  I've been watching you both for the past six months, and it has disturbed me once I learned the truth about your genetic material." 

"Then you should not worry if what you say is correct," Rei whispered. 

"But I do," Asuka murmured, "because the way he brought you back isn't quite right.  Commander Ikari kept this one Rei dummy, you, in his private chambers, so that he might have one Rei at home with him all the time.  One that looked precisely like his wife at home with him all the time.  Rei-chan, you know that Commander Ikari gave you to Shinji for a sort of birthday gift.  But NERV should have ended with Third Impact, you shouldn't have even been brought back.  It was foolish, pure foolishness that Shinji agreed for your dummy self to become the next Rei to replace the Rei that had died.  I respected the last Rei, and I think I like this new Rei.  But the world has become almost the way it was before all the catastrophe had taken place, yet you're here as a reminder of what was." 

"How do you go from angry to calm so quickly?"

"I've learned to survive," she told her.  "And I want Shinji.  I don't know if I love him, but I can hardly get closer to him when he's always around you.  Why didn't you go to live with Commander Ikari when he brought you back?  He's still trapped in NERV and you are what NERV represents.  Shinji and I just wanted to escape it all, and then Commander Ikari is like the serpent in offering a new Eve to replace the old Eve, corrupting the world once again with things that it shouldn't have." 

"You are the old Eve?" 

Asuka's face was flushed with emotion and a tinge of anger.  "Yes, and you're the new Eve.  You are replacing me when I found my place.  If you had never come, if Commander Ikari had died--- I think my future, my relationship with Shinji would have been much different.  There are things we share that no one else can ever share.  I was there with him during Third Impact, you know.   You weren't.  You weren't even alive then." 

"I do not think he knows you care for him," Rei said softly. 

"Yes well, you drive me to jealousy and envy because he wants to know you so much and me so little," Asuka said bitterly.  "There are times when I almost like you as friend, and then there are times when I hate you so much for taking him away from him.  If you weren't here, I know things would be different because I wouldn't feel so insecure about where I belong." 

"You belong here," Rei reassured. 

"You most certainly, are not the Rei that I knew before.  You're not nearly as cold as she was," Asuka remarked.  "And that's what makes me feel terrible for what I do or say to you.  You are too nice, you're like a real angel instead of those angels that came to destroy us.  It's impossible to hate you all the time, and yet I need to dislike you or else I feel that I've given Shinji up to you.  Can't you understand, what it's like to feel threaten?  I don't think you can because you have never felt threatened by anyone, or anything.  You don't have the experiences that any of the others do.  That makes you so wisely kind and so ignorant at the same time.  You haven't been through half the shit me and Shinji, all of the rest of the world put up with.  In way, you're lucky and in a way, you're cursed because of it.  And I need to know something, do you hate me?"

"No." 

"But why not?" she asked.  "I hate you at times." 

Author's Note:  This is how I think Asuka would really act when she's extremely PO-ed, why is she PO-ed?  Well if that doesn't make a lot of sense above I don't really know what to say.  It's all past history and Asuka feels likes she's being replaced much like the doll with her mother.  She's got this thing against being replaced, wouldn't you say?  And what's with all the Eve imagery--- blame it on Paradise Lost by Milton.