2010-03-09 - The First Seal

Leo Stenbuck's room on the Shirogane - currently stationed at the seized La Vie en Rose - is back near the engines, outside of the gravity block. This means it is marked by the constant low thrum of engines, and an extremely low level of gravity.

Tonight, at least, the door is unlocked; perhaps this has something to do with the fact that it is like 4 AM Zulu time, and, you know, a military ship. If anyone busts into his room without permission, he is within his rights as a Captain in A-LAWS to just punch them in the sack.

Inside, the room is dark as shit; there are no windows to let light in, one of the downsides of living outside of the normal crew quarters. Leo's Haro - that used to be Rei's Haro - is sitting on the chair at his desk, in sleep mode. The young man himself is, predictably, asleep in bed.

Less predictable is that there is someone else in bed with him; Louise Halevy. They appear to be what doctors refer to as 'snuggling', but miraculously, they do at least appear (mostly) clothed.

It's not actually visible, of course, underneath the space comforter, but the only piece of clothing visible on the floor is the upper part of Leo's A-LAWS uniform. So unless their clothing /evaporated/...

Which, to be fair, is always a possibility.

Less predictable still is the fact that for the past half-hour, Leo Stenbuck and Louise Halevy have been watched.

It's worth noting that despite -- or perhaps because of -- the sense of tremendous autism that she possesses, Rei Ayanami is a tremendously skilled person in a positively alarming number of fields. This is how no one managed to see her in the low-g corridors of the Shirogane. This is how security footage of her presence on the ship, quite simply, will not exist. This is how the logs of shuttle arrivals and departures will never register her presence. And this is how she's managed to essentially act as a ghost, haunting the room for this silent spell, observing. She makes no obvious judgment in her expression; she seems about as fazed by the surprises of the room -- the taken Haro, the new girl -- as she would be had they not been surprises at all.

And maybe they weren't.

Finally, from her dim corner of the room, Rei Ayanami speaks. Her voice is quiet and small, but with a clarity and power that transcend her small stature. "Leo," she whispers, in a tone as cold as a gravestone.

Rei steps forward. Half-lit, and barely at that, the shadows render her indistinct, like a vision emerging from a solitary haze. She doesn't wear her plugsuit -- her form is not as bared by her tiny A-LAWS uniform, but everything else about her is... the same. The exact same.

"Wake up."

Louise is not the soundest sleeper in the world, but tonight, she's simply exhausted. She does sort of groan briefly when Rei talks, and toss in her sleep, but she can't quite force herself back to awakeness over a single human voice. She tugs at the sheets briefly, pulling them a little tighter over herself, annd remains asleep.

You're on your own, Leo Stenbuck.

Louise might not wake up, but Leo sure as hell does.

His eyes snap open instantly; when they do, they're glowing bright yellow, beams of light lancing outwards in all directions from his pupils. They're astonishingly visible, even in the almost complete darkness of his room, and it's obvious he's awake even though it takes him several seconds to even start moving.

His first thought is that he has, and not for the first time, been woken from a dream by the sound of Rei's voice. In every other case, of course, Rei's voice has been part of the dream, and it has not been so much a dream as a nightmare. But there were no nightmares tonight - Louise's presence helped stave them off - and Leo is pressed by a niggling certainty that the voice he heard was no dream.

Carefully, Leo slips his arm out from underneath Louise, and rises into a sitting position in the bed. He slowly rotates his head to scan his room. There's someone here... he can feel it. But...

"Hello?" he whispers, voice uncertain.

Rei's eyes don't glow. She might be inhuman, but even she has her limits. Still, a scan of the room reveals her, standing there, stone-still. She doesn't blink -- her red eyes, one of which visible in the poor light of the room, fix on Leo's gaze, and suffice it to say that she would win any staring contest between the two easily. Her breath is silent and even, like she were in some sort of zen trance. She doesn't move. She never did, anyway. It's another sign that she's real.

"Leo," Rei repeats, in the same hushed tone, speaking as quietly as one would at a funeral, like someone trying to remain reverent of the dead. Still, despite the force of her whisper, no emotion comes through. It sounds familiar.

SOME TIME AGO

Rei Ayanami, fourteen years old, watches Leo Stenbuck sleep. Occasionally, she cranes her neck, as if to observe some specific part of him. Every detail is important. She's never wanted to watch anyone sleep before.

NOW

The wraith in Leo's room speaks again. "There are things I don't understand, Leo," she says. She sounds affectless rather than helpless; neutral rather than questing. "Will you help me?"

Leo places the voice the moment Rei speaks again; his eyes widen, his body tenses, and his breath catches in his throat. For a brief moment, panic swells within him, and he only barely fights it back. A dream, he tells himself, that's all this is, a dream, I'm still dreaming.

As Rei makes her bid for assistance, Leo squeezes his eyes shut and wills himself to wake up. When it doesn't work, he grabs his left arm and savagely pinches it. That's supposed to work, right? ... but, alas, it is to no avail.

After a few seconds, Leo opens his eyes again. When he does, his eyes have adapted enough to the light that he can at least sort of make out Rei, but she's still blurry, indistinct. Like a ghost. "No one can help you," he manages, after a few more seconds of staring. He sounds like he's about to cry. "You're dead. I couldn't protect you..."

Despite himself, Leo leans his head into Rei's hands, closing his eyes again. After a moment, he reaches up to touch her hand... but he's too slow, and his fingers brush only against his own cheek, an instant after Rei's hand moves away. The young man's shoulders sag, and he drops his hand back into his lap and opens his eyes again. If nothing else, the touch has convinced him she's not a dream.

And she's right, he tells himself. She's not dead. But she's not Rei, either. She looks like her, and talks like her, and feels like her... Rei asks her question - 'What is evil?' - and, again despite himself, a small, pained smile flickers across Leo's face. That's like her, too. She's so much like her, in so, so many ways...

No, he corrects himself, the smile vanishing. She's like she used to be. Not like she was.

"Evil?" Leo asks, his voice still fragile. "... why?"

Rei's voice remains resolute, in its quiet way. "Help me understand, Leo," she exhorts -- demanding without sounding demanding, requesting without sounding like it matters at all. But that's Rei. Or that was Rei. Nothing ever seemed to matter. Until they did.

"I need to know, Leo." Rei doesn't smile. Not even a bit. This is deadly serious to her; again, it's like she was fourteen again. Everything was deadly serious then. Even the things that weren't. It took her a year before she learned to prioritize. And even then, she never really disclosed what those priorities were. Well, she did. But that was at the end.

Rei's breathing does seem to get a bit heavier, though, after that brief touch. For just a moment. Maybe it's a trick of the ear -- maybe the flare of her nostrils is just the shadows being crafty. But who can know for sure?

Part of Leo wants to call security - or just escort 'Rei' out himself - to have this spectre gone from his sight and deal with her no more. But another part of him is sucked in by the similarities, screams to him to protect her, to help her, to hold her. Leo swallows roughly, at Rei's perceived... what, worry? Frustration? The uncertainty of what it is - or, indeed, if it happened at all - fills Leo with frustration of his own.

Regardless, it doesn't take long for one side of his heart to win out over the other.

"Evil is... cruelty," Leo attempts to explain, dropping his eyes to stare down his bare chest at where his half of the blanket is pooled in his lap. "People who love war are evil. People who love to cause death, and pain, and fear. People like..." His voice falters, and he falls suddenly silent.

Rei listens. It can be assumed that she's focusing with some degree of care -- the way her breath evens back out, as if willed to do so, the way her red eyes stay fixed on Leo's, watching every detail of his expression, staring at the whites of his eyes when he refuses to look at her.

"Are you evil, Leo?" Rei asks, a moment after Leo stops speaking. The question is as flat and innocuous as the others, but that's her M.O. -- she was never one to complicate difficult questions with things like emotion or inflection, but at the same time, seemingly simple ones become complicated and difficult from same.

Rei stays next to the bed. She's as motionless as a statue. Nothing else in the room seems to interest her. Not the Haro -- not Louise -- not a god damned thing but Leo, Leo's eyes, the subtle movements of Leo's mouth, the secret codes he betrays in his expressions that Rei is fluent in without quite investing herself in -- like waking up one day and being able to speak German. She may not understand them. But she understands him.

Well, that's a hell of a question.

In truth, it's one Leo has been wondering for awhile. He still recalls the first time he felt real fear of what he was becoming; talking to Daisaku Kusama about how the more people he saw die, the more people he's sure he killed despite his attempts to go for disables instead of kill shots, the easier it got. The less he cared.

After the first... after Viola... once he was on the Atlantis, and the adrenaline wore off, he cried for a few hours. He didn't even pull the trigger on that one... he just couldn't save her. The fact that she, apparently, somehow lived, years later...

Leo stops in the middle of the thought and tilts his head, looking appraisingly at the Rei in front of him, the Rei he's sure isn't the one he held in his arms, the one he kissed, the one he loved. Maybe she didn't live, after all.

But that's a tangent, a distraction. He pushes it out of his head. The facts are thus; the more he kills, the easier it gets, the less he cares. When he fought Yazan, he shot down that ship... he didn't even hesitate. And he only did it to try to... well, to cause fear. To cause fear to Yazan, but to cause fear.

The more he thinks upon it, now, the more it seems he drifts ever closer to that which he became a soldier to fight.

"I hope not," Leo answers Rei, voice barely more than a whisper.

Rei doesn't seem moved by Leo's confused answer. Or, if she is, she hides it well. But maybe not well enough. The fingers of one hand briefly curl, halfway toward forming a fist, before she regains control and forces them to go limp and shiftless once again. Her eyes tense. It's not a squint, but there's a very subtle shift in her eyelids, visible if only because she's so glacially still otherwise.

"Leo," Rei says, once again heralding a change in topic. Sort of. She swallows, quietly, trying to underplay it more than she typically underplays things.

"What is good?" The question isn't quite as flat as the others. It doesn't quiver, nor does it emote, but there's something lurking behind it, like a phantom.

A grimace flashes across Leo's face, at that. The older he gets, the harder it becomes to answer these questions for himself... how can this girl, this, this ghost, this copy, whatever she is, how can she expect him to answer them for her?

But he takes a deep breath, and tries his best. "Good is... helping people. Protecting the innocent. Guiding the lost." This, he has to admit, is easier than the first question once he gets rolling. "Good is being loving, and kind, and, and selfless."

"And... other things. I don't know how to explain it," he finishes lamely, as his momentum dies as the reality of who he's talking to crashes down on him again, shattering the stability he was slowly rebuilding. He draws his knees up to his chest and hugs them, seeking some sort of comfort but unwilling to turn and cling to the sleeping Louise.

The last thing he needs is for her to wake up and panic.

Louise is still sleeping pretty soundly. She has not yet been roused by the Kool-Aid Rei.

Rei doesn't even look at Louise. It's as if Louise isn't even there. Which, considering, is possibly for the better. "Leo," Rei says. She's back to her neutral tone, to controlling herself, to coming off as still and as passionless as...

...as death.

"Leo, do you trust me?" Rei seems to have no expectations in asking this. She doesn't sound hopeful, or sad, or anything. She just lets the question hang, so languidly that it might as well not have a question mark at the end. She hasn't blinked once during this discussion. Her eyes never did convey much life. Her irises are the color of blood.

"This is important, Leo," Rei adds, before he can answer. The way in which she says it is so numb that she undercuts her own emphasis. But then, Leo knows Rei. Knew Rei. Something. This is her way.

Leo says nothing for several long seconds; he just stares at Rei, his arms locked around his knees. The longer her presence lingers, the more the invisible weight on his heart seems to grow. He doesn't bother trying to hold back the tears that he feels might spring forth at any moment. He's certain, after so many hours spent trying to cry and failing, that they won't come.

He wishes they would.

"Yes," he eventually says. He immediately corrects to, "I don't know." The latter is more the truth, he knows, but it's hard; he keeps slipping into seeing Rei as... well, as Rei, and not as what she is, and having to forcibly remind herself that it isn't really her. No matter how much it seems like it is. No matter how much he wishes it was.

Why should he trust her? She broke into his room, after all, and although he's too tolerant to honestly claim that she's unnatural, that she should not be... she's a stranger, at the end of the day.

But then why is she talking to him like this?

"I'll try to," he offers weakly, after a short pause.

"I trust you, Leo," Rei says, in a tone so cold that it might as well have been intended as an insult. There's a long silence that hangs in the air after, before Rei admits, "I don't have anyone else."

Again, a long, dull silence, that would seem to attach meaning to Rei's statement where she herself did not. "It's important," she finally continues, "that no one knows we speak. I was never here. You'll understand later." Rei doesn't say this encouragingly or persuasively: it's just stated as fact. "Gendo Ikari has taken an interest in you, Leo. You must let this happen. Whatever he wants, you need to go along with it. You need to gain his trust."

Another pause. Briefer. Rei's voice tightens. Her tone is as sharp as a dagger, suddenly. Her eyes tense again. Her hand freely curls into a fist. "Because if you're not an evil person, Leo -- and I don't think you are -- then... when I disappear..." There's another pause. Rei swallows again. She's having trouble maintaining her veneer. This isn't the old Rei at all. But it's a lot closer to the one Leo had than she was five minutes ago. She can feel things. This much is clear. "My fate has always been predetermined, Leo. I've always been used with a specific purpose in mind. They couldn't let me die with that unfulfilled. I'm the third, Leo."

Rei's mouth curls into a frown, and her whisper becomes heated with... anger? "The third."

The blue-haired girl draws in a sharp, short breath, and her head moves back somewhat, neck tightening. She blinks for the first time. "When Gendo takes me away, Leo... you're going to destroy NERV. I can't trust anyone else to do it."

So many words in a row catch Leo off-guard, and more than once he almost interrupts Rei, certain that she couldn't have any more to say. Even for Rei - the real Rei, he tells himself - this was... uncommon. Far more surprising than that she has so much to say, however, is /what/ she has to say.

Even in the barely there light, Leo's confusion and concern become more and more evident the longer Rei speaks. When she beseeches him to destroy NERV, he actually pushes the blanket pooled on his lap aside and rises to his feet, rustling Louise as he does so. "Takes you away?" the young man repeats, still quiet but obviously distressed. "Why is he going to take you away? And what third? The third what?"

Leo reaches out to gently grasp Rei's shoulders. "R-" he begins; he only barely catches himself. That's not her name. That's not who she is. He swallows, and then demands, "What's going on?"

Rei shivers when Leo touches her, although she doesn't wrench herself free. Her entire body seems to go tense for a moment. Her gaze hardens further. Her frown deepens. She looks up at Leo, unafraid to stare him down -- she never was, anyway. "Naoko Akagi strangled the first," she says, her voice still agitated, lowered to a whisper. "Yazan Gable murdered the second."

Beat.

"And I'm the third."

A single tear gathers in the corner of Rei's eye. "Leo," she says, voice slowly becoming choked, pained, as if the longer he touches her, the longer they're this close, the more she hurts. "Leo." She has to breathe to control herself. "Do you believe in the soul?"

Leo doesn't know what's worse; the fact that the suspicions he had about what this new Rei was - innocently planted in his mind by the Man from Jupiter - were correct... or the fact that Rei, the real Rei, /his/ Rei, wasn't even the real Rei at all.

It's an unimportant, trivial thing, he'll tell himself later... but now, in the darkness, scared and confused, it's world-shattering. The weight on his heart grows and grows, until it's unbearable, and suddenly Leo can't take it anymore.

Heedless of any thought that it might be selfish, that the gesture might be wanted, he pulls Rei against his bare chest and wraps his arms around her, burying his face in her hair. It's not really Rei, he knows that. But she's so much like her, and he misses her so much... the temptation of holding her again, one last time, is too great to resist.

"Yes," he chokes out, a few seconds he's dragged Rei into his embrace. "I do. And I'm sorry, I'm so sorry. I couldn't... I couldn't stop him..."

It'd be a touching moment. Maybe it still is. But Rei doesn't return the embrace. Her hands hang at her sides. In a way, it's the most familiar thing she could do, though -- it was a long time before Rei started freely returning hugs without being implored to do so. She stands there, accepting the embrace, but offering nothing in return other than a few tears, eyes shutting as her head presses to Leo's chest. She knows this position intimately, but she can't feel the connection to it that she should. It's just deja vu.

"My soul is disease, Leo." 'Disease.' Not 'diseased.' She's careful to pronounce the distinction. "It always has been. I'm tainted in a way that can never be cured. And I always have been. There was never any other option for me. I was always going to die. I just didn't die in the way NERV wanted. So they brought me back. And when it happened again, they did it again. My soul is a weapon, Leo. My soul is plague."

Rei doesn't break away. Her words go quieter. She hushes herself, almost seeming to let Leo's body muffle her speech. "You have to destroy NERV, Leo. Or NERV will destroy everything. And they'll use me to do it. That was their plan all along. It doesn't matter if I die. I never mattered."

If he had still needed to prove to himself that this Rei and his were different, the fact that his embrace goes unreturned would have done it. As it stands, it is merely a savage twist of the knife, producing a surge of agony that presses ever more greatly on his heart and strangles the breath out of his lungs.

'My.' She says my... but, Leo thinks, she means 'our'. They're not the same; he knows it, and he suspects she knows it. But they /are/ the same. If what she's saying is true, then...

A spike of anger, of strength-giving fury, breaks through the malaise on his heart. It isn't much, but it's all he has, and he latches onto it, letting it empower his heart even if it boils his blood. "I'll do it," he says; his voice is still quiet, especially muffled as it is by Rei's hair, but his fury and resolve are plain to the ear.

Perhaps surprisingly, he immediately continues, "And don't say that. You're not a weapon. You are what you choose to be."

He should let go of her, he tells himself as he speaks. But this... this, he thinks, will be the last time he gets this chance. It's not even a chance, not really, but it's all he has, and it's the last of its kind he'll /ever/ have. He doesn't want it to end.

Everything ends, though. If anyone knows this, it's Rei Ayanami.

She steps backward, wresting herself free of Leo's embrace. A hand comes up, and she wipes at her eyes. It's one of those moments that exposes a rare vulnerability in the girl. It's one Leo's been privy to. But that was /his/ Rei. This thing in front of him is god knows what. But she certainly knows how to play the part.

"Not all of us have choices, Leo. Some of us were simply made to play our parts." Rei can't look Leo in the eye when she says it. It's as if the statement is too maudlin, too fatalistic, to... well, frankly, outright nihilistic, even for her. "I should go. I'll return -- later. When I can tell you more. But for now... I..."

Rei's eyes finally flick over to Louise. Briefly. Just long enough for it to be seen.

"I need to go."

The blue-haired girl turns around, facing away from the man who just held her, and begins to slowly walk. When she's at the doorway, she stops. "Leo. I'm sorry I died on you. I know that we can't..."

A long pause. The sentence fades into oblivion. The next one is quieter. "I'm sorry for what I'm going to make you do."

And then, barring some obstacle, Rei's out the door and gone.

Leo doesn't move to stop Rei; when she pulls out of his embrace, his arms drop limply to his sides, and he just stares silently at her as she leaves, her words echoing in his mind. 'Some of us were simply made to play our parts.'

SOME TIME AGO

-This is the purpose of living, for those who have no life.-

NOW

And then she's gone, and he's alone again. Just like with the real Rei, and just like with 'her'. The brief taste of it, of what he had before Yazan Gable snatched it away from him, makes going back to nothingness even harder.

Leo lets out a long, shuddering breath, and then he, too, turns to look at Louise. He stares at the sleeping young woman for several seconds... and then pushes off the ground, floating lightly through the low gravity of his room to drop lightly into bed next to her again.

"Louise," he urges, gently shaking her shoulder. "Louise, please wake up..." He's back to sounding downright wretched, like he might burst into tears at any moment.

Louise shakes and groans a little, pulling the covers over herself for a second; hoewver, she does wake when roused, eventually. Rubbing at her eyes, she murmurs, "Uugh, Leo...? I fell... did I fall asleep here in your room?" She picks up almost instantly on Leo's wretched feeling, gently wrapping her arms around him, asking, "What's wrong?"

Leo's first answer to Louise's question is to press his lips fiercely against hers; he holds the kiss for a few seconds, and then breaks it, only to bury his face in her neck. "Louise," he pleads, voice muffled, "Please... I need you... I don't want to be alone, I can't, please..."

What he means, exactly, becomes clear enough almost instantly; he wraps his arms around her, but only one stays there for long. The other starts sliding down her body, disappearing underneath the covers.

It's not lust... not exactly, at least, not right now. He's just scared, so scared, of being alone; everyone he's ever had has left him, or been taken, or pushed him away. He just wants to know that he's not alone, at least not for the momen, and his tone reflects that. "Please," he begs again, shaking gently despite the lack of tears.

Anything. Anything to not be alone.

Louise isn't sure what to make of this -- but it's clear that she can't just go back to sleep, obviously. Leo's desperation is apparent, and she... feels like it's her duty, to keep him from that fear and desperation.

"... all right," she says to the shaking Leo as his hand slides beneath the sheets, pulling him in close for a kiss. It's not quite a kiss of passion -- Louise hasn't been... 'serious,' with Leo, long enough to quite muster that -- but it is at least warm, and at least seems to say, 'I'm here for you.'

Her thoughts, for the shortest moment, turn to Saji -- but it's not the confusion of passion that takes her there. Instead, it's a quiet reminder to herself that this is probably best -- it pushes her further away from him, ties his fate less to her own.

Leo returns the kiss with a little more spirit... but 'passion' might not be the right word for it. Desperation is definitely a better word for it, in this case. He breaks it after a moment, to murmur, "Thank you..."

Then he renews the kiss; while their lips are still locked, he fumbles his way underneath the sheets, and then climbs carefully on top of Louise, rolling her onto her back as he does.

SOME TIME LATER

There's a brief sex scene between King Kong and Naomi Watts. It's tasteful, though; it's behind a screen, you only see it in silhouette.