Kapitel 35: Chapter 35

"A-Ayanami?" Shinji hesitated as he caught sight of Rei Ayanami, who sat on a wheelchair in the middle of the hallway leading to her hospital room, wearing only a white gown and a tired expression. She was talking with Doctor Akagi—rather, Doctor Akagi was talking to her—and he could not help being surprised. He'd not realized that there might be someone else with the First Child when he came to see her, which was stupid in hindsight. He'd even brought flowers, a fact he now found himself feeling very embarrassed about.

"What is it, Shinji?" Ritsuko said. As usual, her voice was cold, her expression clinical as she looked him over.

Rei remained silent besides her, as if she hadn't noticed him at all.

"Um, I ... I wanted to see how Rei was doing and ... " Shinji stuttered, his cheeks warming up to a deep crimson blush. Overcome by his self-consciousness, he didn't dare move a muscle and stood there firmly glued to the spot.

"And you brought her flowers, how charming," Ritsuko said in a sharp tone that sounded slightly amused. She then turned to Rei, and Shinji noticed the much smaller girl had her head bowed and was looking at the floor. "Don't you think so, Rei?"

"Yes," Rei answered obediently.

Being passive was part of her nature, but her manner seemed different now. Not passive as much as it was utterly submissive. Blue hair disheveled, red eyes down, she looked like someone who'd just been picked up from an orphan shelter. Someone without power, without desire, without anything to call her own—even the hospital gown fit her poorly, as if the act of clothing her had merely been an afterthought.

Ritsuko patted Rei on her head, a gesture that coming from anyone else might have been affectionate. But coming from Ritsuko Akagi it carried all the detached satisfaction of petting an obedient dog after performing a successful trick.

Rei did not lift her head or look at her, her face remaining neutral. Like everything else, if she was bothered at being condescended upon she didn't show it.

Shinji swallowed awkwardly, wanting to say something but not knowing what.

"I suppose you want to talk to her alone, right?" Ritsuko said, turning again to Shinji, putting her hands in her pockets in a familiar manner, and walking towards Shinji. "Just don't take too long. Rei, don't forget what I told you."

She said this last part as she moved past the Third Child, without so much as looking back at Rei. Shinji half expected her to whistle and for Rei to follow at her heels.

Shinji waited for Ritsuko to disappear around the corner before cautiously approaching the blue-haired girl. Thankfully, he didn't have to worry about looking her in the eyes as hers were still firmly focused on her tiled floor. "Um …"

He offered her the flowers, red roses because it was apparently the only kind easily available in Tokyo-3.

Rei lifted her gaze, but a questioning expression came over her soft features—barely an expression, really, wondering why he was giving them to her without an obvious reason. "Flowers?"

"I-I just thought that...well, the hospital can be very depressing so..." Shinji began hesitantly, struggling to get the right words, "I thought these might cheer you up."

No one had ever given her flowers before, Shinji was sure of that much. Rei was probably wondering what was she supposed to do with them. Even so, she took them regardless, not saying a word.

"They are red," Shinji continued, feeling stupid for pointing out something so obvious. "I thought they would look nice...and they match your eyes."

"I do not like red," Rei said innocently, unaware of the effect those words would have on Shinji.

The boy froze, wondering desperately if he had made a mistake in bringing the roses. An awkward silence settled over the hallway, until finally …

"S-sorry, I...didn't know..."

"But they look nice," Rei replied. "What do I do with them?"

Shinji raised an eyebrow.

"Well, you put them in water or they'll die," he said.

"I see."

"Uh...Rei?" he started timidly, remembering what Misato had said and what she'd suggested he do. He didn't really think he had a choice. The memory of what he'd told Asuka was too painful, too overwhelming. Keeping it to himself was more than he thought he could endure.

"Yes?"

"I need to...talk to you about something important. You are the only one I can talk to. You are the only one I know will listen to me." He looked nervously down the hallway. "So could I..."

Rei didn't answer right away, which made Shinji wonder if he was intruding on her. He thought she might not have been listening to him, since she was staring at the roses, but the odd sense of detachment was nothing new. No, if she didn't say anything it was because she didn't want to.

"I-I'm sorry..." Shinji apologized, all he could think of doing. "I didn't mean to impose on you. I'll leave you alone."

Shinji turned to leave, but Rei called to him.

"Ikari," Rei whispered, "you can come in if you want. My room is the second door on the left."

Shinji had spent enough in NERV's medical ward that he already knew much of the layout. The nurses knew him on sight, though he'd never learned their names. It was, like most hospitals, a somewhat depressing place despite its benign function. The bright lights and polished tile floors belied the pain that these very walls were built to treat.

He wheeled Rei down the hallway, following her directions until they reached a room with the name Ayanami R. written on a chart hanging on the door. The room looked depressing, almost entirely bare except for the bed and a few small pieces of furniture. Unlike the large room Asuka had been kept in during her coma, Rei's was much smaller and closer to what might have been deemed ordinary with none of the complex life support equipment.

Asuka had required more constant attention in her condition than Rei now did. She had been completely dependant on those around her. Helpless.

Shinji felt a new pang of guilt. He hadn't thought about that for the longest time—about what he had nearly done when the unconscious redhead had laid sprawled, half naked in front of him. He hoped the nurse on duty that day, who certainly must have found Asuka on the bed after he left, had never told her. But it wasn't because he feared her anger. Asuka simply didn't deserve the humiliation such an episode would cause her.

Rei Ayanami, ironically, probably wouldn't have cared.

Closing the door behind them, Shinji pushed the wheelchair-bound girl to the foot of her bed. He carefully placed her left arm around his shoulders to help her up and onto the bed. She was surprisingly light, her skin cold against his.

"Would you like me to put those in water?" he asked her, gesturing towards the flowers she still cradled on her lap.

"I do not have anything to put water in," Rei replied.

Shinji looked around, spotting used plastic dinnerware placed on a tray by her bedside. "A big glass will do, I guess."

He picked up the plastic glass, walked over to the small bathroom, and gave it a rinse under the sink faucet. He then filled it with water and returned to Rei's side, holding out the glass for her to put the flowers in it. She did, and he placed them down on her nightstand. He found a chair nearby and pulled it close.

"So, uh, Rei … I need to talk to you," Shinji said as he sat there uncertain about what to do with himself.

"Go ahead," Rei said, but did not turn to face him. She was staring at the roses in a strangely disconnected manner.

However, Shinji knew she was listening. He struggled to find the words that would properly and coherently explain all the things he was feeling. It took him a while, but he did at last.

"I...I had a fight...with Asuka," he began, focusing on Rei's form. He felt exposed even though she was the one who was nearly naked. His insides felt raw, vulnerable. "And I said things that I shouldn't have...and she...cried."

Rei said nothing, but her red eyes shifted slightly, and her head barely tilted.

"I-I feel horrible. It's not like when we fought before. It's not like when she calls me stupid. Now it's...painful. She shouldn't have said the things she said to you—there's no excuse for saying that even if it's to someone you don't like. I … said them right back at her. I told her I hated her. I told her …" a whimper escaped his lips. "I told her I wanted her to die. And she cried. I made her cry."

Rei still said nothing, and even though Shinji knew it wasn't real he thought he saw in her otherwise neutral eyes a reflection of his own guilt. And for a fleeting second, the red became sapphire blue in his mind's eye and he saw Asuka staring back at him, tears streaming down her pretty face.

That image alone was like a punch to the stomach, because in that very moment Shinji had wounded her more severely than Angels or Evas ever had. Asuka had suffered a lot in her life, having fallen from grace as a child prodigy with the world at her feet to a devastated and bitter teenager. But despite her anger and her haughtiness and her prickly character and everything else that might have influenced her to become the girl she was, Shinji had never seen that look before.

Because that look, that single moment of painful sorrow, encapsulated all that was wrong in their relationship. All the things he had always felt but never said.

"I shouldn't have… " Shinji barely managed, feeling stinging tears rolling down his own cheeks, "But she... she can be so mean. She had no right to say those things to you … but I had no right to say them to her." He leaned forward, burying his face in his hands, weeping. "I had no right … please, forgive me."

"Forgiveness is not mine to give," Rei said.

Those words, like a drink of cool water on a hot day, had soothing quality that reached beyond the words themselves and touched something else.

Shinji looked up, slightly dumfounded. "Uh?"

Rei was staring at him now, her gaze easy and non-judgmental. "You can ask me for forgiveness, but I have no reason to forgive you. You have done nothing to me that would require it. If you feel it is the Second who should forgive you, then you should go to her and ask her to do so instead."

"I can't." He shook his head, sniffling and wiping away tears with his hands. "I can't go to her. She hates me. She—"

"She is who she is," the albino replied. "And she does not have to forgive you. It is not an obligation."

"But …" Shinji simpered, "what's the point in apologizing to someone if they will just hate you for it?"

"Will it make you feel better?"

After that Shinji fell silent, uncertain about the answer and its implication. It would make him feel better, but that was just his selfishness. It wouldn't help Asuka, and it wouldn't make her feel better. And so he would only fuel her hatred of him, gaining nothing else.

"People make themselves what they want to be, not what others wish them to be," Rei said. "I can only be me, and no one else. You accept me for being me, so you should accept her for being her."

Shinji didn't understand how that could help. He'd tried to accept Asuka, finally resigning himself to letting her be alone, because he was sure that was what she wanted of him. He'd tried to accept that even though he didn't like her attitude or her abrasive personally as a whole, those were qualities that made the Second Child the girl she was. All she had to do was be a little nicer to him, a little more thoughtful, and he would have gladly repaid her kindness several times over.

But Asuka would do none of those things. Because she hated him. And after what he'd said, maybe she did indeed have a right to.

The silence lasted several minutes in which Shinji tried to compose himself.

"Is that all?" Rei finally said.

Her voice was soft as always, but Shinji was suddenly taken aback by her bluntness. "Y-yes..."

"Then I think you should go." She lay back on her pillow and stared at the ceiling, not caring to cover herself with the thin bed sheets. There was no indication of antagonism coming from her, nor was there any sense that he was bothering her. And yet …

"Rei, are you...angry with me?" he couldn't help asking. In his present state he didn't think he could take someone else rejecting him.

"No, why should I be?" Rei answered calmly. "The doctor told me to rest for the next activation test."

"Activation?" Shinji stared at her in disbelief. "So soon?"

"You will not make a scene, will you?"

Shinji wasn't stupid, no matter what Asuka liked to say, and so he'd never believed the tests would be stopped for something as seemingly unimportant as Rei getting hurt. But what purpose could they achieve by putting her back in the Eva when she was still bedridden?

NERV—his Father couldn't possibly think she was so disposable. She was a pilot, but also a teenager, someone like him, someone like Asuka, and her life had value too. But any outrage was futile, and he was already too emotionally exhausted. There was nothing he could do about it now. He couldn't protect her; couldn't speak for her; couldn't apologize. He was useless to her, same as with everyone else.

The waves of heavy feelings pushed down on him, making him sink on the chair, shoulders slumped, head down.

"I have to pilot Eva," Rei said, turning her head and looking blankly into space. "There is nothing else I can do. It is the reason I exist."