2010-05-25 - ...Stronger

SPACE BATTLESHIP EXELION

PLANT SPACE

SOME HOURS AFTER ZERUEL'S DEFEAT

GN Buster got mutilated. Completely savaged. Coach reprimanded her, while she lay in her hospital bed and the doctors put her arm in a cast, broken in the force of the GN Buster's final purging. You were careless, he told her. Your heart is your great strength, but you mustn't become so wrapped up in it that you are weakened, in turn. The heart is a blazing inferno, but burn it too hot, and you will destroy the fuel of your soul.

She hung her head, and said, Yes, coach, and he grunted. GN Buster, he informed her, is a much more modular design, using more stock parts than usual. It will be replaced within the week. Rest until then. And then he was gone.

Some hours after /that/, Noriko Takaya sighs, stepping out of the medical bay with her arm in a cast and her face visibly bruised, tired.

When Noriko exits the medical bay she will find someone waiting for her.

Unsurprisingly, that someone is about five feet tall and has blue hair and red eyes.

Rei is in uniform. She doesn't look like she has any outstanding physical defects -- there's a band-aid on her forehead from whacking it off of something during one of Unit-00X's most /unfortunate/ tumbles last night. No visibly broken bones, though. No black eyes or bruised cheeks like that one time. Rei still doesn't look well, though. Her face seems even paler than usual. She looks healthy and sickly all at once.

When Noriko emerges, though, Rei doesn't waste time doing things like 'talking.' She simply strides forward briskly and, taking care to avoid Noriko's injured arm, wraps her arms around her Coach's waist tightly and hugs her. There's no explanation, but maybe one isn't necessary. Still, Rei clings so tightly -- like a lost, scared child might.

Noriko blinks, a little dumbly, surprised as the door opens onto her protege. She'd half expected her to be brutalized - remembers the workings of the Eva, dimly. Remembers how it hurts her. Remembers its status before. What did that...? Was it true, did she--

"Rei," she says, with a little smile, trying to cheer through the gloom -- and then stares in total confusion when Rei just walks up to her and wraps her up in a hug. Clings to her, tightly.

Noriko's head spins, trying to parse this in terms of what she knows - keep her head on while still emotionally being there for someone who's hurting. Rei's being hurt. Apparently, a lot. That GN Eva, what's going on there...? Rei, suddenly changing to Japanese. Rei, babbling insanely. It's just....

"Hey," she murmurs, and uses her good arm to wrap around Rei's shoulder, holding her up closer. "What's..."

There's worry writ large on her face. "I'm...Rei, what's...wrong?"

Like something in the corner of her eye...

Rei's eyes are closed. Besides, her view would be... Noriko's bicep, anyway, or maybe part of her ribs. Either way, it seems more prudent to block out her vision at the moment, so that she can focus on other, more important things, like the feeling -- not just the physical sensation, but the emotional connection that drove her to do this.

There's a long silence where Rei doesn't answer the question. She just embraces her mentor and seems content to do nothing else, her arms occasionally shifting to reaffirm her grip. It's not painfully tight -- she's not holding on for dear life -- but it's tight enough that Noriko would probably have to do at least the bare minimum of actual work to extract herself from it.

The girl's breathing is steady, at least. And though she looks like she's seen better days -- everyone has, after Zeruel -- she's still fit and strong thanks to the lessons imparted by Noriko.

"I'm glad you're okay, Coach," Rei finally says -- in Japanese, of course. Rei adjusts her grip after saying that, nestling her head into the crook of Noriko's shoulder, more or less, caught between bicep and breast. "I thought you were hurt. I would have been sad if I didn't get to see you."

Noriko's pretty short. It could be her neck!

Noriko has a moment to notice just how much thicker Rei's gotten - no longer the wire-thin girl she met just a couple months ago. She's taken well to the training. If not for her worries about the girl's wellfare, she'd be proud.

But she is worried. Rei seems fine, physically. But Noriko knows perfectly well how easy it is to look alright, and /be/...other. She lets Rei hold her as long as she needs - holding her back with one arm, she's not able to give her the full weight in return, but she tries. "I'm good," she says. "I'm fine," she adds, with that Okinawan accent. Rei nestles into the embrace, and Noriko can't stop herself from smiling a little. It's nice, she thinks, when Rei lets her walls down. Except...

...except this isn't like the Rei from that place. This Rei, her Rei, the real Rei that she knows, only lets her walls down so rarely. God, it's hard. She wants to just trust. But she senses danger. Master would knock her stupid for just trusting now, here, where something strange is in the air. "I'm just fine," she repeats, with a warm voice. "Just a little banged up. For me, this is nothing."

...Her eyes drift down, as though looking for answers in the smaller girl's hair. "Unit-00 was messed up. But you look OK. I'm glad. I was...I was really worried."

Rei, again, is silent. "I... feel what Zerogouki feels when she's hurt." 'She's.' Not 'it's.' "But it doesn't... it doesn't transfer to my body. If Zerogouki's arm is ripped off... her arm is not my arm." Rei's fingers curl inward, feeling the scars on her hands. Things that shouldn't have happened. And, true, sometimes the violent psychic reactions and feedback cause her physical harm in a variety of ways, but... Rei doesn't want to talk about that stuff. She doesn't lie. She just leaves things out when telling details of the truth.

The comment that Noriko was worried, though...

Rei's grip briefly tightens into a tiny squeeze and for a few seconds, when she speaks, her voice sounds close to cracking, almost deviating from its lockstep monotone. It comes and goes, but its presence still stands out like tropical fruit in the desert.

"Coach..." Rei begins, and then fades out, into another long silence. It hangs there like a fog over the corridor. Corridors always seem to bring out the worst in Rei, when it comes to dealing with Noriko. Finally, though, she speaks, and her voice is even quieter, more hushed, as if she were sharing a secret. She pulls away, opening her eyes to stare into Noriko's. Her expression is mute and calm, but her eyes betray something, on some subtle, intuitive level. Sadness. Fear.

"Coach, I need help."

Noriko takes a second to catch 'she'. Spotting gender pronouns is harder in Japanese, where there are no gender pronouns.

"OK," she says. Rei abandons the conversation before telling the whole truth. Noriko's seen the scars; she's not a complete dope. But she doesn't know what it means. Doesn't know what any of it means. She wants to - the keys to helping Rei, /saving/ Rei, dangling just outside her reach...

That tightness is met with a little surprised gasp, but it doesn't really hurt - Noriko's made of tough stuff.

Rei tries to talk to her., Her voice is strange. It's like she's on the very quivering edge - like the last time Noriko saw her like this. A state Noriko associates with Rei's deepest pains.

"Take...all the time you need," she says, quietly, while Rei hesitates. "I've been so worried...I don't know what's going on, but..."

Rei pulls back, and Noriko's arm slips back to her side. Her head tilts, just so, thoughtful. Rei is afraid. Noriko is no newtype, but she doesn't have to be an /empath/ to be empathic. She takes a slow breath, reaching out to confidently clap a hand on Rei's shoulder, locking eyes.

"I want to help you," she says, finishing her earlier thought. She smiles, but it's a worried, cautious look. "Ask me anything."

Rei stares at Noriko. That sense of unease doesn't leave her eyes. Her breathing is a little more noticeable than it should be. Her shoulders gently quiver every so often. Her chin lifts a bit here and there, as if her head can't find a comfortable position on her neck. It's like she's trying to affect the posture usually associated with her -- trying so hard.

But not quite making it there.

"Coach... what if..." Rei swallows, but it's a subtle expression, and if one isn't looking for it, it'd be easy to miss. "What if... /your/ Coach... gave you a mission."

Rei knows what the bond of 'Coach' and 'pupil' means to Noriko, just as she knows what it's come to mean to her. She didn't speak up before, in the clothing store -- when Rei said that she was glad Excellen was her friend, and Noriko her coach, and Noriko commented that she hoped she was more than that -- Rei wanted to tell Noriko that that was a silly thing to say. There isn't much more she /can/ be.

But Rei tries not to get lost in these thoughts right now. "And you couldn't... tell anyone about it. Not... Miss Jung, or Miss Kazumi, or any of your friends, or any of your... anyone. No one." Rei breaks eye contact. "And the mission... you knew it was going to end soon. And when it ended, you were going to be sent on your next mission."

Rei's eyes close. "And you know that on that next mission... it means you'll never see any of those people you know ever again. It means you'll never see home again. Never see..." Rei wants to say 'anything.' But she catches herself. It's too much to tell. Noriko is better not knowing, she thinks. "But you can't say no. You don't have a choice."

Rei returns to the hug, seeking its closeness and comfort once more. Her voice shrinks to an atomic speck of a whisper: "What would you /do/?"

Rei is going to ask her a difficult question. She tries to clear her mind. This moment..this might be the break she's been looking for. Don't let your heart get in the way. A moment of weakness can cost more than one person their life...a lesson, perhaps better than any other, that Noriko knows.

And she does. Oh, God, does she. Noriko tries to read between the lines, but she doesn't know enough, even though as Rei speaks, Noriko's face visibly tightens, her breath quickening. Oh, God, oh God. Does she mean--or does she mean...!

Noriko is grateful when Rei slides her eyes close and she slides in for a proper hug, giving Noriko opportunity to stare past the girl and into the floor, hard.

"How about," she says quietly, slowly, "I tell you what I did do, instead?"

These are painful memories. She teases at them, trying not to think about them, but...but this promise, it's a part of her too. "When I was in the DC," she says, still one arm wrapped around Rei, murmuring past her into open air, "I was the student of Master Asia. And I loved him just as much as I love C.../my/ Coach. He was...so strong, and so brave, and so, so sad. And I trusted him all the way into Hell. Do you remember what Master Asia did?"

It's a stupid question. Any idiot who wasn't in a coma recalls the atrocities of the Devil Gundam, and his army led by Master Asia. Which is perhaps why after a second, she amends: "...I agreed with him. For just a while, I thought, I'd die for him. I thought, I couldn't be good for anything else. Jung and Kazumi are way better pilots than I am...I thought. Nobody will miss me." She says it, though her voice is wavering. She lets it all out in measured, tense tones. She doesn't want to say these things. She senses Rei...perhaps can use them. "...it's easy," she murmurs, trying to get her thoughts into order. "It's easy to say, that there's no choice. It's easy to look down the tunnel and see only one exit."

Rei quietly listens while her face stays buried in Noriko's shoulder. She doesn't really react to the story, possibly because she's almost stunned into a complete state of numbness by the realization that there is someone out there in the world who is like her -- who has been in the same position that she was. Or... one of her, anyway. The situation changed when this newest Rei came into play. Her relationship with Gendo is nothing like what Noriko describes feeling for Master Asia. But the similarities outweigh the differences, and Rei breathes heavily, rolling these thoughts around in her mind, like heavy stones.

"What if you knew what you knew now, Coach... what if you knew what he would do... and had the chance to..." Again, Rei only speaks after a long pause, in a tone so hushed that the only thing keeping it audible is the proximity of Rei's mouth to Noriko's ear. And again, she cuts herself off before she can reveal too much. She knows Noriko is smart. She knows that the connection will be easy to make. But by then, Rei will be gone. She knows it's coming. She can feel the skies going dark above her.

Rei knows that this is goodbye.

"What if that was the mission... what if the choice was made as soon as you accepted it?" Rei's grip on her Coach tightens for just a moment. She sounds pathetic. Her squeeze is suddenly very feeble.

"What would you do if it was too late...?"

Their pasts - their histories - are not so different, not really. Noriko doesn't know it, but even Coach...even he has used her, in his own way, even if both of them would say she was a better person for it. What would her life have been like, if he hadn't appeared? Maybe pulled into the One Year War. Maybe killed by Char Aznable on her first sortie. Or maybe she'd be cosplaying him down in Akihabara for chump change, with 2.5 kids and a lovely house.

Maybe. Maybe maybe maybe.

"...I don't know," Noriko murmurs. "I still...kinda think he was right, a little. Not...killing all those people was wrong. But, some of it...sometimes, people have to fight for what they know they have to do. And sometimes you have to do something crazy to get someone's attention. And sometimes, it's OK to fight, even to the death."

She holds Rei a little tighter. Her chest convulses, just briefly. "I promised him I wouldn't cry," she breathes, more like a reminder to herself than to Rei.

Rei is saying...it. The truth, isn't it? The final, irrevocable truth. In Rei's heart, if not the truth of the world. Noriko's not an idiot. She can hear...she can understand.

"I'd remember what I was taught," Noriko says, the constraint she puts on her swelling emotions more than obvious in this proximity. "And I'd fight, and I'd fight, and I'd fight. I'd do the memory of the people I love proud. And..."

She swallows, hard.

"Rei," she says, quietly, her voice halfway muttered into blue hair. Is this...the last thing she'll ever say to her? There's a sense like that in the air, and Rei's fatalistic question makes it feel like that's the case. Then... "Rei," she repeats. "Humans are...the stupidest creatures. We fight, because we want to help each other, and we...we hurt the ones, we love the most. But...that, that heart. That heart is the source of our power. I get the feeling...you're telling me something. Please listen." She's all shook up. Her words aren't coming out in the right oder and she doesn't care. "Humans are infinite creatures," she says. "Because...we love each other. Because we won't ever stop loving each other. Because if we let our hearts guide us, even the darkest path will be bright. Because...because..."

She's saying platitudes. She hopes to God she means them. She grabs Rei tighter, one-armed. "A Top Pilot carries everything she needs in her heart. Her memories - her love, and her strength. And I really believe that with all that...that infinite, burning fire...with that hard work and guts...even in the deepest darkness, a miracle is possible!"

Her body is shaking. She's not crying. That's a lie. "I would fight," she says. "And I would win."

Rei is quiet for a long time. She's not crying -- which is true. But her shoulders heave and twitch, and she refuses to lift her face away from her Coach, which is just as well, because Noriko has her squeezed so tightly that if she hadn't spent months building muscle, she'd be popped like a little blue-haired grape. Rei takes in a few loud, shuddering breaths. But that's it.

When she speaks, Rei sounds broken, as if someone has smashed a glass pane inside of her, as if she were suddenly somehow hollow inside. "I'm not a Top Pilot, Coach," Rei says, sadly, deliberately.

"I'm an Angel."

Not strictly one hundred percent true... but then, it's also not /untrue/, and Rei's modus operandi is well-known by now. She can't say anything after her revelation. Her arms come up and grip Noriko's upper back, as if trying to pull herself into the hug deeper than physics allows.

For a long time, again, Rei says nothing. What can she say?

But she tries anyway: "Imagine if you could end the world, Coach. Imagine if your choice was to be party to that... or to save everyone you care about, everyone you... love... to protect them. I want to protect everyone, Coach, but I want to protect them /from me/."

Rei is crying now. Wet sniffles punctuate her sentences as she tries to compose herself.

"I have to make the choice I've made... because otherwise, people will make choices for me. I can either hurt my friends by going away..." Rei's voice creaks, ready to snap, to shatter into a million pieces.

"...or I can kill them by staying."

Noriko almost, almost, manages to speak in time to cut her off - you can be, if you just---

Fails. Her mind feels like it's exploding. Noriko is hardly the sharpest knife in the drawer, but Rei just gave her the one clue that puts everything else in context. Why is she so unemotive, so neutral? She's not even human. Why does NERV treat her like trash? No better than a caged animal deserves, right? She's...

"My God," Noriko whispers. She staggers back from the revelation, stumbling away to clear space and clear her head, but her back hits the wall next to the door and she can't go any further. Her heart hammers in her ears. Her mouth is dry. "Rei, you're...not..." Not kidding. Oh, God. Rei doesn't let her escape - grabs onto her hard and clutches her too tight, with arms Noriko herself made strong.

This is Rei. This is her friend. This is her student. This is an Angel. This is her enemy. Ugh. "I," she whimpers. Her throat constricts around itself, and she shuts her eyes tight, the beading tears in the corners bursting in every direction.

Rei keeps talking. End the world. A choice like that...Noriko's head is bursting. What do I do, what do I--

Rei is crying. Don't you already know this?

Her free arm finally loosens from where it was locked before...

And she finally tightens it around Rei as hard as she can, holding her with all her strength. "My God, Rei," she croaks, and it's still a bewildered, pained note. "I..." She takes a slow, deep breath through her nose, out through her mouth, trying to ease her nerves.

"No wonder...you couldn't tell us..." she sighs, helplessly. "You've been hurting all this time..."

Rei's head turns, rolling against the body of her mentor. She continues to cry wordlessly while Noriko filters through the available data, setting everything she's known into this new framework. The last person Rei told this little fact to -- the only other person -- was someone who Rei trusted but felt nothing for. Now, saddling someone she cares about with the burden of the truth...

...Rei feels like she just stabbed Noriko in the belly. Her tears might as well be in mourning. Or maybe Rei's crying because she knows she has more to say, and she's looking for the strength. When Noriko's arm closes around her, crushing her as much as embracing her, she finds that reserve she needs.

"You can't... tell anyone," Rei whimpers. "Not yet. It would... it would jeopardize too much."

Rei swallows, attempting to compose herself and largely failing. She takes a few audible, gulping breaths -- noteworthy just because of how un-Rei they sound, in that they sound like anything at all. Rei wants to just curl into a ball, keep crying, keep clinging, keep being held... but she has to press onward, even when it's difficult. Like her Coach taught her to.

"I'm going to stop them," Rei whispers, her voice painfully small. "But... they can't know... They can't know until it's too late." Rei makes a noise like a wheeze catching in her throat and dying, and reaffirms her grip on Noriko's form. Even if she wasn't pinned in by Noriko's much stonger arm -- she wouldn't want to let go. She wouldn't want any space between them.

"I couldn't do it alone..."

Rei has to stop again for a second, letting that ominous chord sustain. Clearly, she means that--

"...but if Leo fails, Coach... you... I need you to finish what he's going to start..." Rei turns her face again, once more pressing it against Noriko's shoulder, where a wet spot in her clothing grows.

Noriko tries to understand. It's hard. She's not stupid but thinking in this place is not something that comes natural to her - see the problem, smash it to bits, not...not this, not this.

Can't tell anyone. ...god, she's right. Can Noriko even tell Coach? No, he'd...she's not sure what he'd do. Besides...it's not like he'd do anything. Noriko understands his standpoint better than she used to. This is her battle; Coach would not really have any place to get involved. She is his warrior, now, insofar as he even has one.

She sounds so unlike Rei. IS it Rei? The question lingers, but...no. Noriko has to trust that. Or else...or else she can't trust anything.

She holds Rei close, because that's all that she can think to do. She's going to stop them. But they can't know. Details. Yes, Noriko can understand that, as the shape of things starts to burst into her mind. Who's them? Noriko wants to ask. Things are reaching a point where there's things she wants to say. Just a few more pieces. "Rei..." she murmurs, but Rei's not /done/. Couldn't do it alone, is she going to--

"...Leo...?" Noriko wonders, and tries to fit this into her picture of the scenario. She asked him to...but when--

''"Coach, I..." Rei starts, quietly, voice partially muffled by Noriko's shoulder, bare but for the strap of the leotard. "I went to... see Leo, and..."

Leo keeps his fists up, but doesn't go on the offensive. "What makes you think she'd tell /ME?!/" he shouts. "She barely tells me anything! She just, just SHOWS UP!!"''

"...so...that's it," Noriko rasps, as another thing falls into place. Her head tips down. Everything finally makes sense. She expected...she never expected. That's it, isn't it? She never even dreamed...

"...who?" Noriko murmurs. "Who is it, Rei? Who...are we fighting?" She sees two options. One is the actual alien god monsters that want to kill all life. The other...seems almost /more/ likely.

And if it seems more likely, that's because it is. Rei's crying subsides somewhat. She's not quite quivering so harshly -- probably because of the hug. Noriko's strength stabilizes her, but it also soothes the blue-haired teen -- even if Noriko doesn't know what to do, the fact that she's not running away, not backing down... Rei thinks back to asking Noriko about that cartoon. How Noriko said she found it inspiring. Rei can now sympathize.

"Gendo," Rei says, whispering the name as quietly as if she were uttering a shameful curse word.

"He's... evil, Coach," Rei murmurs, struggling to express exactly what she wants to say -- her speech comes off as even more awkwardly mishandled than it usually does. "The Angels... they need to be stopped... but he does, too. He would have... he would have used me to end the world. But I won't let him." Determination creeps into Rei's voice. Her squeeze tightens.

"But either way..."

Rei loosens her grip. It takes a little bit of struggle, but she works herself free of Noriko's grasp, with all of the awkward squirming that it entails. She stares at her Coach's eyes -- her own are red in more than just the color of her irises. She looks... different, but the same -- emotion mars her features, but there's a stable core of... Rei-ness.

"But either way... to do that... I need to go away."

Rei's hands come out to take Noriko's, going for her uninjured arm so that she can give a strong -- for her -- squeeze. Rei's lips tremble. She may or may not be on the verge of breaking down. But no matter how close she gets, she just won't let herself.

"Coach... I... I'll never forget everything you've taught me. Never."

Noriko is doing what she can to be strong. This is the moment she'd been waiting for. And though the answer isn't what she ever dreamed it could be...now, she cannot hesitate. Even if she doesn't have a damn clue what she's doing.

"Gendo," Noriko says, quietly. She'd hoped, a little. One man. Not 'NERV'. Not Miss Katsuragi, whom Noriko still harbors some illusory affection for. "...I understand. Just tell me what I need to do," she murmurs. No hesitation. It could be Paptimus Scirocco. If Rei asked her she'd kill him in a heartbeat.

Noriko Takaya is a kind girl. But it's like she told Leo, once: Sometimes, there are people who simply must die.

Rei struggles to move away. After a second, Noriko sighs and releases her, good arm falling back to her side only long enough for Rei to find a chance to seize it. Noriko can see the agony in her face. She doesn't want to go on. Remove this cup from me...didn't she hear that from some of the Christian girls on the Exelion, once?

And Rei is trying to say goodbye. Really goodbye. Noriko looks at her, and her own face is deep with sadness. She feels hollow. Her eyes are wet, but she refuses to cry. She promised them.

Promised...

...promised.

...sorry, Smith.

"Rei," Noriko says, suddenly, squeezing back with strength. "Did I ever tell you...about Smith Toren?"

Rei has enough experience with being wounded to know that the best way to remove a band-aid is to just tear it off -- it hurts a bit, but then it fades. That's what she wanted to do. Say her piece to Noriko -- make her last requests -- and go.

As Noriko tries to draw it out, part of Rei, deep down, wants to deny her, to say goodbye, to move and keep moving and not stop.

But her feet don't move.

All Rei can do is quietly and gently shake her head 'no,' still staring down her friend with those infinitely troubled eyes.

Noriko probably would've headlocked her to get to do this. Just one thing. Just...one thing--

She pulls her arm out of Rei's grasp while she talks. "During the Exelion mission, I met him on the trains. We didn't really hit it off, I guess..." she laughs, weakly. "Until, during warp curfew, we both got dared to tie ribbons to the RX-7s...you know, to prove we were brave. We did it, but...Coach caught us, and had us scrubbing the laser cannon lenses the rest of the trip." The smile on her face is warm, and fond, and probably, to Rei, unmistakable. Noriko brings her arm up to the side of her head, over the knot to her headband. "Onee-sama...didn't think I was cut out to be a pilot, so she cut me loose, and so for the Battle at Leaf 64, our first big sortie, I teamed up with Smith." Her face darkens. She breaks eye contact. "I didn't see what happened to him. He just...went quiet."

"..." Her fingers dig into the knot, slowly, teasing it open. "When I was with the DC, I was trained...by Master Asia and Gentle Chapman. You probably remember - they both led the Devil Gundam forces. ...I killed Gentle Chapman with my own hands during the Finals. And I wasn't able to break away, to be with Master when he died, too."

She slowly unwraps it from her head. "...when I was a child...my father was the leader of the Luxion Expedition. He'd..." She smiles, laughing weakly. Where's she going with this? "...he'd come back, every year, for my birthday. ..." Her eyes are growing wetter with every story. She sniffles, but refuses to sob. "The Space Monsters killed him in the Pegasus Arm and nobody knows why. Only a few people survived. Coach was one of them."

She holds the unraveled headband up - it's a truly unnecessarily long strip of cloth, probably longer than Noriko is tall, a soft, sky blue. "I promised myself...when I decided to pilot Gunbuster. I promised myself that I wouldn't be the crybaby girl anymore. I promised myself that I'd fight for them. That I'd fight for the beautiful blue planet that they loved, that they'd lived and died for." She squeezes the headband tightly, and says, "I promised myself, on this ribbon. It's the one Smith took to the hangar on that day."

She holds it out - for Rei to take.

"I can't go with you," she says, and her eyes are deep with sorrow. "You are going to the one place I can't follow you. But I won't let you go alone." She takes a slow breath, as a tear streaks down her face, ignored. "Please take it."

Rei's hands shake a little when she reaches out to take the ribbon. When she does take it, it's with both hands, her fingers barely closing around it -- she holds it between thumb and palm, as if the slightest squeeze might cause it to disintegrate. Her eyes don't leave Noriko's for a long while.

All Rei can think to say is: "C-Coach..."

Eyes the color of blood turn downward, toward the blue strip of cloth that hangs from her hands. Rei stares at it as if it were whispering secrets to her. Her breathing grows more steady. Her tears stopped previously, but she no longer seems quite so in danger of a relapse. Noriko did more than give Rei a headband -- but then, that much is obvious.

Again, Rei's stare becomes both familiar and different. The Rei that looks back up into Noriko's eyes is close to the one that the Top met when NERV saddled her with a pale little noodle to make into something more. That sharpness, that solidarity of self -- but the distance has been closed. It's like opening a book in another language, understanding nothing... and then going back to the same text after becoming fluent.

It's as if Rei's emotional shell had become translucent -- so that all the cogs and wires underneath could be seen.

"Thank you," Rei finally says, after moments that feel like hours. "Coach... without you, I wouldn't have survived this long." Rei's hands close around the ribbon. She brings it up to her head... but she can't bring herself to tie it. She looks up again at Noriko: "Watch out for Leo," she says, calmly, quietly, but with a distinct tone of urgency hidden somewhere behind it all. "Make sure he treats Zerogouki well. Make sure he treats himself well. Be there for him if he needs it. Because... he will. And... make sure he and Latooni are happy together, if you can." Rei's voice almost falters on that last note, but doesn't.

The blue-haired girl brings the blue headband up again, and with only a minor bit of fiddling, ties it. It doesn't quite sit right. It needs a bit of adjustment. "Coach, I'm sorry for what will happen. One day... I hope you can forgive me." Rei's deepest wish was to be forgotten. She doesn't want that anymore.

Unsure of what else to say, Rei steps forward again. There's a small squeeze of Noriko's hand again -- but no hug. Rei seems hesitant. She doesn't know how to express what she wants to say -- only that words won't do it, and neither will arms. So Rei surrenders to what may or may not be impulse -- the gesture isn't romantic, but more like something between sisters, or between mother and child. Rei leans to one side of Noriko's face and presses a single kiss on her hero's cheek, along the path of the tear she's shed.

And then Rei Ayanami pulls back. She smiles, but it's a sad smile, because she knows what she's doing. "I'll miss you," Rei says. "Goodbye."

And she turns and begins to walk away.

It's the last physical link to him. It's her heart's link to /them/. But it's OK.

Rei needs their strength more than Noriko does. They would want this. They will understand. Noriko no longer needs the training wheels anyway.

A true Top Pilot...Noriko Takaya, has everything she needs in her heart.

Noriko releases the ribbon with no lingering. She can see Rei, now. She can understand the girl - what she looks like. Her face is that same, neutral expression, but...Noriko understands now. What she was then - what she is now, and what Noriko has done to create her.

She listens. Noriko tips her head a little, but doesn't encourage her to tie it or not tie it. That's...its own weight. She took it; Noriko will be satisfied with that. She cannot follow Rei into Hell. But some part of her will be able to give the girl strength. That's more than she's had before. It is, even knowing in her soul that Noriko will never see Rei alive again, a great relief.

"You changed everything," Noriko murmurs, with a sorrowful smile. "I won't forget it. I'll be there for him." She tips her head, her unbounded bangs hanging a little too low - the long hair in her back, now free to drift down past her shoulders. She looks more girlish, this way. It's so easy to forget she's so young. Latooni? ...well, it's her last request; she won't begrudge it with questions.

She is strong, standing and smiling even with a sickness growing in her gut as Rei and she exchange promises at the last moments of her life. She won't cry. She's promised them. In her heart, Rei's name has already been added to the slate. She smiles, thinly, while Rei ties the headband on. She moves to do it herself, but when her broken arm hits the end of its range of movement, she looks down at it, laughs sickly, and then sighs, leaning back. Rei...must be able to stand on her own. ...yes. Believe that.

She closes her eyes a little at Rei's words. What can she say, to a promise of coming doom? "We do what we have to - our lives, our selves, our souls and our bodies, to save the world. That's a true Top pilot. You were wrong, Rei. Angel or human..." She smiles, and another tear rolls down. "...you're a Top, by me."

Rei sweeps in, and Noriko seems surprised by Rei's peck to her cheek. Her eyes tear up again. Rei's gone before Noriko can do anything reciprocal - rest her head against the girl's, or something. So Noriko just has to smile at her, sick to her stomach with sorrow but strong, because Rei is strong, and Noriko can't be weak now.

"I won't forget you, Rei," Noriko says, nodding, doing her best to ignore her lungs' desperate need to convulse. "I'll miss you so much. I... ..." She closes her eyes, bursting tears apart and down her cheeks. "Good bye, Rei. Good...goodbye."

Rei turns to go. Noriko watches her, quietly, for a short distance, her throat swelling from her need, before finally Noriko steps away from the corridor, and off to her quarters.

She swore she wouldn't cry anymore. She promised them she would be strong.

But even strong people cry.

She makes it to her quarters, dims the light, and curls up next to the door, and only then allows herself to be overcome.