2010-05-17 - I Want to Walk in the Snow and Not Leave a Footprint

SIDE 6

SOMEWHERE IN SPACE

THIS COULD ALL BE HAPPENING RIGHT NOW

It's not every day that an RMS-117 Galbaldy Beta can just fly freely through Side 6.

Then again, it's not every day that, when hailed, a Galbaldy produces authorization codes identifying the pilot as Amuro Ray. The pilot has taken care to circumvent most patrol paths, betraying some innate knowledge of the territory, although only on an instinctive, reflexive level -- it's not so much having a map to hand as just relying on pure intuition. It's proven to be a mostly, if not completely, successful method.

The weirdest part, though, is when the Galbaldy picks a spot and parks itself, firmly within Katharon-aligned territory, but distant from any particular colonies or other attackable sites. It idles for a few minutes, then begins transmitting directly to another pilot via radio.

And that's how Amuro Ray found himself being summoned by... Amuro Ray.

Inside the Galbaldy, Rei Ayanami sits, staring vacantly ahead, waiting.

SIDE 6

THE ARGAMA

THESE FETID SURROUNDINGS MAY WELL BE SOMEONE'S ROOM

Amuro Ray is lying in his bed, in a tattered bathrobe and blue-striped white boxers, which are kind of dingy and yellowed with age and grime. There's a pen tangled in his dirty hair. A stack of Pizza Hut Personal Pan Pizza boxes is stacked in a corner; some are new, some are old.

Someone is knocking on his door.

"Amuro! God damnit, Amuro. Open this /door/!" It's a woman's voice. Shrill. Angry. "It smells like a fucking polecat burial ground in there!"

Amuro Ray does not respond; he is listening to a HC6 (Haro Compression 6) file on an old Haro v2. The kind that forms attachments. The song is even older than the robot. He hums tunelessly along, not even aware that he is making the noise, until the song is interrupted by a burst of static.

He sits up, rotates his head 84 degrees to the left and 10 degrees down to stare blankly at the Haro, then slowly, mechanically, stands from the bed. Crumbs and pieces of old pepperoni patter to the ground and bed around him. He appears to be sleeping on a sheaf of blueprints; the back of the bathrobe is stained blue.

The message repeats, and he nods, removing the earphones and gathering the old Haro under his arm. Amuro runs a shaky hand through his hair and gets stuck half-way, but at least he dislodges the pen. Runs a ragged edge of the robe over his face, clearing away some of the ink and dirt.

Opens the door. Beltorchika opens her mouth to shout, but he does not even see her. He walks to the hangar, but Astonaige will not let him take out any of his mobile suits. "Sorry, Commander. Orders are orders. You're grounded."

Amuro Ray nods, then walks to the other hangar, gets into an old spoil of war, and launches without authorisation. It's the fastest machine on the ship in terms of pure speed.

"AMURO! BRAINWAVES LOW! AMURO! BRAINWAVES LOW!" crows the Haro v2. It's been saying that off and on for nearly a month now. He ignores it, instead opting to get to the source of the transmission as swiftly as possible.

At which point, on finding the Galbaldy, somehow, in the depths of space, as if drawn there by magnets, at which point, then, he replies.

"What"

Amuro Ray activates his DCAM-004 Lion unit.

The faceless gaze of the Galbaldy mirrors Rei Ayanami's own stare. The girl focuses entirely on the view screen showing her Amuro's Lion -- but she's not even looking /at/ the Lion, she might as well be staring /through/ it. Her breath grows warm against the faceplate of her normal suit; luckily, in the future they've figured out how to craft anti-perspirant plastics.

For several long minutes, this stand-off continues. The Galbaldy's weapons aren't even powered up properly; even a cursory scan would show that it has left itself in the enviable position of 'sitting duck.' But Rei isn't concerned about that. Her hands aren't even on the controls. They're folded in her lap, as if she were in Sunday school. This is a moment of quiet contemplation.

Finally, though, Rei responds -- in the end, she almost always does. Opening the frequency to speak properly, Rei's voice comes through into Amuro's cockpit. She speaks in Japanese, knowing that the AEUG wunderkind can understand it. Her accent is very upper-class Tokyo, the sound of privileged private schools.

"Every night when I sleep, I dream in colors I have never seen while awake." Rei's voice is a low, soft monotone -- so wispy and thin that it sounds harrowed by the transmission through space. "I see visions that have no place in my life, or in my time. I see fourteen Rick Doms exploding into flames, fourteen lives staining my hands a darker shade of crimson. I see the Black Tri-Stars teaching me that there is more to war than myself. I see my sword piercing the helmet of Char Aznable as the flesh and muscle of my arm yawns and tears. I see Lalah and try to reach out to touch her, but she's always out of reach. I feel the weight of sin, and I can never wash the blood off of the gold in my pockets."

Rei's monologue takes on no emotion -- it is a formless grey mass, amorphous and eluding any specific tone. She may as well be reading it from a cue card. She may as well be reciting it mechanically, like a Haro.

But something shines through in what she says next, some obscure taste of feeling, of knowledge, of presence: "What are we going to do, Amuro?"

Amuro Ray should be shocked by Rei's presence out here in the trackless wastes of the cosmos, and yet... he can't feel that rightful surprise. When she begins to speak, in her monotone, it is a reflection of his own emotional state these past weeks. And so, he listens.

It makes sense, of course, now that he sees it, hears it, from the girl. If 'girl' can be used to describe her after what he has learned. And yet. And yet.

And yet, beneath the gauze which smothers his mind and soul these days, he feels... /feels/... a sense of... responsibility? to this... 'girl'. Especially, especially now. Now. Now that she has... changed. Now that he has... changed.

She finishes. Asks a question. About a minute passes in silence, before Amuro responds in turn.

"When I'm awake, I see armageddon," he replies at last, voice hoarse, as if he has not spoken in ages. "Every day, I see the world in flames-- no. No, that's not right." He shakes his head, irritated by his inability to express himself. His inability to feel as he once felt. The frustration is clear in his voice. That emotion, at least, is still available to him. "The world is... melting. Soft, like wax. Streaming down to the ground, puddling humanity, life in liquid." The Newtype leans forward, sounding like a young Tom Waits.

"And the one... the one doing it, the one rendering us all to... to mush, to jello, that towering beast..." Amuro coughs, clears his throat. It's hard to talk after so long. "It's... /you/, Rei. You... you want to know what we're going to... to /do/?"

Amuro Ray throws up his hands. "You're... you're part me now. And I'm part you. You can... you can see all the awful things I've had to do." The Haro shifts, and he lays a hand atop it, comforting in a strange way. "And I can see the horrible /thing/ you're /going/ to do... but I can't see /why/."

Amuro is met with silence, but knowing Rei as he now does, why should he expect anything else?

Inside her Galbaldy's cockpit, behind the tinted plastic of her normal suit's helmet, Rei closes her eyes. She tries to see what Amuro describes, but she doesn't. She sees nothing. Her eyes are closed and it's dark in her head now. A darkness deeper than death.

When Rei opens her eyes, she replies. "You see what I was made for, Amuro," she says, her voice still a monotonous drone, given dynamism only by the faintly percussive syllables of the tongue she speaks in. "Not what I will do. I know what my past selves did not... I know... right and wrong. I won't let what you see happen. No matter the cost."

There is an unspoken, fatalistic coda of 'to myself' that resonates from Rei's last statement.

".../knowing/... you," Rei continues, struggling to find a verb that conveys what she's experienced (and experiencing), "has both helped and hindered this. Your strength and compassion... I can feel them, and take inspiration from them, to find in myself things I didn't know existed. But in doing this... Amuro, I will not do the horrible things that you see, but to stop myself... I must do other things just as horrible. I must hurt people. I must abandon those who care for me. I must push the man a past me loved to the brink. But since we..."

Rei trails off, again at a loss for description.

"...since then," Rei says flatly, picking up after a solemn beat, "I know the cost of this. I know I am hurting them. I know I am going to hurt them. And I know that I can't stop, I mustn't relent. How do you..."

The transmission of Rei's voice pauses again, sending only the sound of a ragged breath. Her voice sounds frail when it next echoes through space, even as the Galbaldy floats, motionless, arms at its sides. Rei sounds like glass beginning to crack, a thousand little spiderweb lines radiating from one small jagged hole. "Why does it always hurt so much?"

Amuro's response is almost as long in coming as Rei's-- not /as/ long, though. He's not quite as socially isolated as she is, even with his own awkwardness and her contribution weighing down his words.

He wonders, as she speaks, how much of this fatalism is his fault. Since the War, he has been a deeply damaged individual. Since his return to war, he has understood that he cannot live in a peaceful world. "You've seen what I was... 'made' for too, then," he says, quietly. "We were more alike than you might think even before this... whatever this is." Both the product of thoroughly broken homes, of distant, exploitative father figures, of obsessive taskmasters, of the circumstances of conflict. Both victims of expectations, bearers of burdens far beyond what any one person should ever be asked to carry.

Both gods of death. Both soldiers... soldiers of sorrow.

"You... don't have to die to change the future," Amuro says, after another pause. "You... you feel that way now, because you don't, you don't know any other way. You don't have anyone to support you. Who can... who can understand what you're doing, what you have to do." He gestures, uselessly as the cameras are not rolling. The Haro flaps its ears, eyes blinking in concern. "You are alone." A beat. "But you're not, not really. You just don't realise it yet."

The White Devil lapses into silence, pulling the Haro onto his lap. He's wearing a borrowed normal suit, and it doesn't fit very well. Pinching his legs, ballooning around his chest, stretching across his shoulders. "You're never alone, Rei."

It's a stupid kind of thing to say, something a high school counsellor might whip out in a desperate attempt to deal with a suicidal case far above his expertise grade. Even so. "You know me better than most now," but not everyone, no. "You know I wouldn't... wouldn't say that if it wasn't /true/. You have to, to /look/ harder. At the world. At the people around you. You don't have to take the harder path just to /punish/ yourself for some... /imagined/ transgression."

He reaches up. The Lion's hatch open and he enters into space, drifting across the void to the Galbaldy, adjusting with the verniers just before the torso, hovering. "It's not your fault that you were created, Rei."

When the Lion's hatch opens, so too does the Galbaldy's. Rei's barely even conscious that she's doing it until the hiss of oxygen rushing out into space is silenced by the touch of the void. Her own normal suit fits her fine -- it's a standard-issue A-LAWS one, branded and in her team colors. Rei kicks out of the cockpit and into space. She has surprising control -- she's never free-floated in space before, but somehow it feels familiar.

"Look around, Amuro," Rei says, floating in front of the man who, for good or for ill, feels the need to claim her among his many burdens. "Do you see the stars? Every day, every minute, one of them reaches its end. It's the way of the universe, and nothing we do changes that -- every second, a star is growing sick of the sight of so much nothingness, and refusing to shine any longer."

As she speaks, Rei's head turns away from Amuro, staring off into the distance. "I know that I could continue. I could pretend that this life was mine to lead... I could grow old, if I wanted. But I don't want that. I've seen the world, and my place isn't here." Rei's head turns back toward Amuro. She drifts close, and her small, slim hands come out to touch the older man's shoulders.

"It wouldn't hurt if I didn't let it hurt," she says, seeming to answer her own question from before. "It's a choice. It's always a choice. Even when it's no choice at all."

Rei hangs there in space, still, her arms loosely gripping Amuro, floating free. She stares at him as intently as a killer might before claiming a victim. Her red eyes are cold but still burning. The fire is inside. "It's not my fault, Amuro. I know that. But it's my responsibility."

Amuro reaches up and places a gloved hand over Rei's, yellow fabric clashing with the teal of the A-Laws suit. Brown eyes meet red, varying only by a few degrees on the colour wheel. She describes her view of the universe, and he nods, as if this confirmed something for him.

"Stars die, and when they do they create something new. The universe is a... a /cycle/. A /process/. Decay and, and, and rebirth." His free hand clenches into a fist. "I can't, I can't just... just listen to this from you. It doesn't matter what they, what they made you /from/, you're still a person. A girl. You can't just..." the Newtype trails off, seeing the universe in terms of possibility.

Amuro sighs. "You're serious about this, then," he says, voice dull. "This is the only way you know how to stop this, isn't it."

His eyes bore into hers, feverish, the eyes of a madman in the face of a martyr, a man who has already resigned himself to death. A reflection, indeed, of Rei herself. "This is what you're choosing. You're choosing to die for them. For us."

Rei maintains eye contact. The deeper Amuro's gaze goes into her crimson eyes, though, the more apparent it is that there's no limit to the distance he can sink. Rei doesn't so much meet Amuro's stare as consume it. Her expression is almost painfully blank, almost certainly a exertion of pure willpower.

"I've chosen it for myself," Rei says, after an extremely long silence. It could be that she needed this pause in order to find the courage to say that; it could be that she needed this pause in order to judge whether or not she /should/ say it. But why should she hide? Would it even do any good?

Rei's hand turns, gently gripping Amuro's fingers, showcasing absolutely zero strength. "I never wanted this," she says, although the content of 'this' is left ambiguous. "But every day, it gets harder to remember. To accept life is to forget myself -- though I will not let it be fulfilled, I am a being with a purpose. To deny this purpose is to deny myself. To negate this purpose..."

Rei's already tenuous grip on Amuro's hand gives up, loosening completely. "...I must negate myself. There is no separation. There mustn't /be/ any separation."

"I told you that I know right and wrong, Amuro," Rei whispers, her head hanging slightly, although her eyes roll up to continue meeting his.

"I am wrong."

When Rei's grip slips, Amuro swiftly grabs her wrist. His grip, by contrast, is just a little too strong, uncomfortably so. Not that Rei will notice or care. The White Devil shakes his head ruefully, either disappointed or resigned. It's not clear in whom or what.

"I don't approve, but I understand," he replies, voice regaining some of the heat it has been lacking in recent times. "I know what it's like. And I understand what's at stake. And I understand you."

There is another moment of silence, then: "So, I'm coming with you."

It's not like a request or anything.

Rei does notice, but does not seem to care. Her head lifts, and she lets out a hiss of breath when Amuro squeezes too tightly. Beyond that, though, her reaction is minimal. But then, Rei is free-floating in space right now, and airing out a lot of complicated feelings that she herself is not sure she's able to properly articulate. So even for Rei Ayanami, the present situation is one in which it's easy to feel vulnerable.

Amuro's declaration lingers in the deathly silence that surrounds the pair. Rei has no response. She certainly doesn't protest -- why would she? After all, it's Amuro's choice to make.

She does, however, tug her hand free when the extended staredown ends. "Acknowledged," Rei says, trying to bury any hint of feeling or emotion or humanity in a redoubled greyness of her voice. "I will transmit various necessary clearance codes to your Lion. Memorize them."

Rei begins to drift away, directing herself back and down, toward the hatch of the Galbaldy. When she's within reach, she grasps out onto the hull of the unit, pressing her feet against it in an effort to claim some sense of terra firma. She stops before entering, and turns again, staring over at-- "Amuro."

This stare is different. If Amuro showed her the eyes of a madman, then these are the eyes of a madwoman. These are the eyes of someone who saw the devil himself at Solomon, rising from the broken bodies of mobile suits filling with the blood of their pilots.

"Don't get in my way."

And then Rei slips into the hatch and disappears.

Amuro releases Rei's arm at the sharp tug, still not entirely recovered from his recent illness. It's so hard to gauge his own strength when 'he' is such a complicated concept right now. He is disturbed by what he sees in her eyes... but that's all the more reason to follow her.

She needs help, even if she doesn't know it.

He drifts backwards to the cockpit of the Lion, gripping the hatch and reaching in, grabbing Haro from the seat. It flaps its ears at him, bleeping merrily about Bright's communications. Amuro grunts, before his attention is brought back to Rei.

"Don't worry," he responds, reaching up and turning his helmet's visor opaque. "I won't."

The play of the stars in the void reflects on his helmet, on the mirrored space where his face would normally be seen.

The particular alignment of the stars reflected there looks just like seven burning eyes.

The Lion pulls away, silently pursuing the Galbaldy. In the darkness of space, Haro floats slowly back towards the Argama, burdened with a message of its own.