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KYOKO ZEPPELIN SOHRYU
July 7th, 1974 - September 13th, 2012
Loving mother and wife. A scientist to all.
September 17th, 2012
And Asuka smacks her, a sharp slap that echoes off of the tiled walls of the elevator, rattles against Rei’s skull.
“I hate you,” she seethes, still clothed in her polka-dotted black dress. It had been an awful funeral. “I hate you!”
Rei brings a hand to her cheek if only to examine the rising welt with her fingers. She is so young. Too young.
She looks up at Asuka, something vulnerable hiding behind her glass-like stare. “Are you sure,” she says flatly. It's not a question. Asuka’s chubby face turns a virulent red.
“Positive,” she spits out. “Stay away from me, you freak.”
2,205 Days Later
October 1st, 2018
Asuka comes to her in the dead of night, when the moon has reached its zenith in the sky. She raps on the window to Rei’s room; so painfully teen-angst that it makes Rei’s teeth click, makes her want to claw at the Band-Aids littering Asuka’s shins. She’s gut-wrenchingly sharp behind the glass. Like a museum exhibit that’s aged in all the wrong ways.
Still, Rei opens the window.
She slips in slowly from tree branch to floor, soft as a shadow. Dips her feet in the honey-gold light emanating from Rei’s desk lamp, gaze fixed on the ground. Rei can feel the words in her throat, mold her mouth to form the shape of their vowels-- Why are you here? Why did you leave?-- but they get stuck somewhere on the journey up her palate. Asuka still won’t look at her, too focused on whatever grit has ingrained itself within the wooden slats that make up the floor. The quiet between them swells.
Eventually, Asuka speaks.
“Hey,” she whispers.
Rei inhales. Exhales.
“Hi.”
And just like that, it pops like a balloon.
They lie in Rei’s bed that night, tangled up like it’s first grade and Rei’s father is drinking again. It’s weird, like experiencing a long exposure shot in real-time; Asuka’s baby fat juxtaposed against her post-pubescent angles, miles and miles of freckled skin being the only remaining constant. Rei supposes she’s changed too, but she’s not exactly sure how.
“You alright?” Asuka mumbles through a faceful of blanket.
“Yeah.” Rei shifts. “Just thinking.”
Asuka reaches up and flicks Rei on the forehead.
“Then stop.”
Rei rubs her forehead, wincing.
“Sorry.”
A moment, and then Asuka’s face is right in front of hers, breath warm, bright eyes searching. They scan Rei’s face, once, twice, before dropping back down to the cushions of her bed.
“You’re just the same,” she whispers, sounding oddly defeated-- Oddly triumphant, too. Something about her tone causes the questions to come surging back up all at once, and this time, Rei can’t stop them from spilling out of her gullet.
“Why are you back?” she asks into the silence.
Asuka doesn’t answer. Instead, she huddles closer to Rei, pressing her nose against her shoulder. She hasn’t been this close in years. Somewhere in the back of Rei’s mind, a lightbulb goes off.
Well, Rei thinks, That answers my question.
They fall asleep in each other’s arms.
Asuka starts coming over after that, never before 10 and never after 1. Rei goes to school with bags under her eyes; Shinji surveys her with a judging stare, but it’s not like he can say much. She’s seen Kaworu scaling their trellis too many times for him to actually do anything about it.
“Are you sure it’s a good idea?” he asks one night. Rei pauses in front of her English assignment, cursor blinking in and out of existence. In. Out. In. Out.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Shinji laughs then, a dry, humorless thing.
“Glad to see you getting out, sis,” he deadpans. “Tell Asuka hi for me, will ya?” And with that, he disappears into his room.
Of course, they don’t always stay in Rei’s room. Asuka’s new hangout spot is this decrepit junkyard at the edge of town, complete with a row of shipping containers that echo loudly as you try to climb up them. At least it’s a good spot to smoke weed; not that Rei would ever do something like that.
“You want?” Asuka mumbles one night, voice thick with smoke. She offers the semi-burnt joint to Rei, eyes half-lidded, nearly empty, sparkling only with that abnormal sort of ruthlessness that tends to characterize girls like her. It pulls Rei in, makes her want to lean in close and pull that fire out of her, just to observe its shape, feel the weight of it in her hands.
“No,” she says instead, leaning back. Asuka sighs exaggeratedly.
“So boring...”
“Sorry,” she shrugs.
Asuka just rolls her eyes affectionately and continues smoking the thing, letting its stench permeate the air around them. It’s been a while since they hung out like this, Rei thinks, too long a time.
Of course, it’s different from what it was back then; they’ve both filled out at the edges, too old and too grown for this kind of stuff. Asuka is bonier than she used to be, lanky, almost, skin wrapped tight around a frame that outgrew it long ago. Her freckles still remain, though, everpresent, racing up and down her body in tiny little clusters. A grin tugs at the corners of Rei’s mouth.
“Something funny?”
Rei hurries to recompose her face.
“No.”
Asuka gets up in her space, joint dangling loosely off of her lips. Her gaze burns bright.
“Liar,” she decides, jabbing a finger into Rei’s chest. “You’re ly-ing…”
Rei struggles to bite back a chuckle.
“I’m not.”
Asuka throws her hands up, exhausted from her interrogation, and flops back onto the metal container with a dull thud. The hollow sound echoes for miles around.
“You are,” she insists weakly, “I hate it when you do that.”
Rei has nothing to say to that, so she doesn’t say anything. Instead, she tilts her head upwards and examines the stars-- or lack thereof. Asuka follows her eyeline.
“Always so damn polluted…” she murmurs. “Hate this stupid fucking town.” Her eyes are sparkling like glitter, like glass, vengeful and angry and alive, and Rei’s lungs are going to spill out of her chest.
I think I love you, she wants to say. I really think I do.
The realization is terrifying for all the wrong reasons, so Rei does the obvious; she gets up, dusts herself off, and makes her way out of the junkyard. Asuka, for whatever reason, doesn’t try to stop her.
Shinji finds her-- later, though, after she’s climbed in through her window and thrown herself down, spread-eagled across her bed. The sheets are rumpled but freshly washed; she inhales the scent of laundry detergent and the incoming stink of his Axe body spray. He’s sitting down on her mattress now, springs whining in abject protest. Then: complete silence, interrupted only by the faint sound of rhythmic cricket chirps. He shifts.
“You’re home early tonight.”
Rei glances at the digital clock on her night stand. 11:31 PM.
She turns away from Shinji.
“Didn’t feel well.”
He hums.
“You know,” he says after a moment, “Dad’s gonna figure out you’re sneaking out one of these days.”
Rei snorts.
“I doubt it,” she says, and is that a hint of vitriol in her voice? (Surely not; Rei Ayanami loves her father, despite all he’s put her through, because she has to; he’s her father). “He’s too messed up.”
Shinji just hums again, some obscure classical tune that he probably picked up from his boyfriend. Rei can’t help but feel slightly fond.
“Have you talked to Kaworu recently?” she asks, in a cheap attempt to change the subject. Shinji turns to her, raises his eyebrows.
“I see him every day,” he says dryly. “How is Asuka?”
Fuck. No escape now. Rei avoids his discerning stare, looks up at the paint-chipped ceiling.
“Scary,” she affirms. It feels just a little too clunky to be the truth, but it fits better between her lips than any other word would. Shinji sighs and props himself up on his elbows, chasing Rei’s gaze.
“I’m not saying she’s not scary,” he admits with a huff, his cheeks coloring, (He and Asuka had dated, however briefly, in middle school. It did not last long.) “I’m just saying that she’s never actively tried to scare you.” He hesitates; makes eye contact before saying; “Whatever you’re afraid of… I think it’s coming from you. Not her.”
Rei keeps her face motionless, impassive.
She does not feel. She’s never felt anything in her life. Her skin is cold and hard to the touch; it cannot be pierced. She’s a robot girl in a semi-real world, and she hasn’t decided yet if her insides constitute flesh and blood. Doesn’t know if she wants them to, really.
Above her, Shinji lets out a slow exhale.
“Kaworu’s picking me up at 7 tomorrow. He just got his license,” he says, politely ignoring the way he’s just ripped out her insides and left her entrails scattered across the floor, “You can come if you want.”
Rei nods imperceptibly, and the floorboards creak as Shinji makes his way across the room.
There’s a brief pause.
“Oh, and Rei?” Shinji asks, head reappearing above her.
She glares up at him. What more do you want.
Shinji only smiles sadly, muted and tired and maybe just a little bit hopeful.
“Let me know when you’ve decided whether you’re going to let yourself be human or not,” he whispers, voice so quiet it’s nearly lost to the crickets, “I know you’re ambivalent about it, but this whole thing is getting kind of tiring.”
Rei closes her eyes and pretends not to hear him.
She stays home sick the next day. She’s not proud of it-- never proud of it, when she has to stay home sick-- but her ability to even get out of bed has been absolutely annihilated by the past night’s events. Shinji doesn’t press the issue, just brings her some toast and makes her promise to drink water. Her father definitely doesn’t press the issue, too busy doing… whatever the hell he’s doing in his study.
All in all, it’s a pretty peaceful day. Rei slips in and out of consciousness-- a handful of Benadryl and a couple of melatonin gummies will do that to you-- lightly dozing for most of the morning and into the afternoon.
It’s only when she gets up to use the bathroom that she’s alerted to a slightly worrisome matter; the presence of her father, not in his study as she expected, but draped over their living room couch, reeking of alcohol.
He doesn’t look like the father from her memories. Not anymore. The once-fine lines of his face have deepened into thick furrows that carve into his skin, reaching down towards his neck with small spiderwebbed hands. Age spots pimple the corners of his flabby jawline. His hair is lighter, too, speckled with flecks of white and gray-- no longer the shaggy mop of brown she remembers from her childhood. During the day, he doesn’t look like her father at all; just a sad old man who’s still waiting to die.
Rei peers down at him, close enough to count each aging eyelash rimming his weary eyes. He stinks of beer and cheap perfume. She leans over and presses her lips to his temple.
“I hate you,” she whispers to his receding hairline, a secret and a confession all in one. “I hate you.”
By the time her father wakes up, she’s already back in her room.
They go out to a party that night, her and Rei. It’s a blur of bodies and body odor and really shitty alcohol. By the end of it, the two are staggering out of some random classmate’s family mansion under the cold light of the moon, her pale face turned down at them in judgment.
Rei’s leaning heavily on Asuka’s shoulder, pale hair ruffling against her chin with every step. She’s lighter than a sack of potatoes, but little more than a deadweight; her frame is lithe and bony, threatening to fall over if so much as a breath of wind blows her the wrong way. She stumbles, just a bit, so Asuka heaves her up, hands grasped against the other girl’s bird-bone wrists.
“You’re gone, aren’t you,” she murmurs. Rei giggles softly at that, turning her face up to meet Asuka’s. Her red eyes glint, star-like.
“I’m right here… silly…” she sing-songs, and yeah, she’s definitely gone. Her shapes are vague and ill-defined at night, composed mostly of blurry blobs of moonlight that seem to come off of her body in wisps… but that could just be the weed (or the vodka, or the fireball) talking. Asuka’s not exactly the picture of sobriety either at the moment.
She’s reminded of this as she sits down at the edge of the sidewalk, taking care to make sure Rei is comfortable before relaxing. The world is spinning, streetlights cartwheeling and carving out strange loop-de-loops at the corners of her vision.
Somewhere beside her, Rei giggles tipsily, turning her face into the crook of Asuka’s neck. She breathes hotly against Asuka’s skin, short, sweet gasps, and Asuka stays completely silent, inundated with Rei and the faint traces of her vaguely citrus-y shampoo.
A peculiar feeling claws its way into Asuka’s ribcage. It swipes at her diaphragm before grabbing at her heart and squeezing, squeezing so hard that she can barely breathe; can barely move; so she stays; rooted to the spot; struggling for air.
It’s painful, she realizes; painful, the way Rei’s hair curls at the edges of her jaw; painful, the way she can pick out every individual pore on the other girl’s face. Cruel and unusual punishment. There’s a small silver scar at the fringes of Rei’s forehead from when she ran into the wall as a little kid, and Asuka wants, she wants so badly she could almost burn up with it. It makes her want to die, makes her want to live, makes her want to run away to the top of some mountain and scream. Of course, that’s when Rei chooses to flutter her eyes open, red against white, chooses to look up at Asuka, all sad and vulnerable, and ask;
“Are you still going to kill yourself?”
And the world bottoms out.
They don’t talk about it. It’s not like there’s much to talk about-- Rei knows, she knows, knows in that bizarre and slightly discomforting way in which she understands everything. Can read Asuka like the back of her hand, even if it’s been years since their last real interaction. What words can Asuka use to defend herself, if Rei’s already seen them course through her mind, dissected them for their various grammar and spelling issues?
So they don’t talk about it.
They don’t talk about it!
…Until they do.
“How did you know?” Asuka asks, in spite of herself, hand outstretched to block the incoming sun. The two are hanging out at the park this time, backs to the grass and chests to the sky. Rei turns towards her.
“You came to me,” she responds simply. She doesn’t even have to ask what Asuka is talking about.
The redhead frowns.
“That doesn’t explain anything.”
Rei stays silent for a few moments before speaking.
“I could tell,” she says carefully, “That you regretted it. Back then, after your mom died…” (A flash, a smack. The stinging sensation emanating from her palm.) “…But you’re proud. Too proud. You wouldn’t sacrifice your pride, unless…”
“Unless?”
Rei bites her lip, her red eyes searching Asuka’s blue.
“...Unless you had nothing left to lose.”
A beat.
Asuka exhales, ribcage falling open on the ground. She licks her lips and looks to Rei, a wry grin crumpled against her cheeks.
“You’re not wrong,” she admits, “Still, that’s a pretty harsh character analysis.”
“Sorry.”
“Don’t be. You’re right. About everything.”
The corners of Rei’s mouth quirk up. “I know.”
Asuka shoves her shoulder, and the two roll over each other, giggling, grass poking at their sides. It’s a little hysterical, how caught up they are in one another, Asuka thinks-- just two broken girls and their genuinely obscene amount of issues. She closes her eyes, tips her head onto Rei’s chest, listening to the steady thump-thump-thump of her heartbeat. Inhales deeply.
“I’m not going to kill myself,” she confesses. “Not anymore.” Rei tucks her chin over the red fluff of Asuka’s hair, eyebrows drawn in thought.
“Why?” Rei asks. The question echoes in Asuka’s silence.
“...Because I have you.”
Rei pushes Asuka away, fear painted across her face. Her shoulders are tense, taut.
“Don’t say that,” she hisses lowly, “Don’t ever say that, please.”
“Why not?” Asuka asks, lost.
“Because,” Rei says, “I don’t want you to resent me.”
“I could never--” Asuka starts to say, but Rei is already shaking her head, placing a cool finger over her lips.
“Promise me,” she says, eyes drilling holes into Asuka’s skull, “Promise me that you won’t live for me.” Agitation flares up along Asuka’s back like the spine of a cat’s.
“Who else am I supposed to live for?”
“Yourself,” Rei says, like it’s common knowledge, like it’s obvious, “You’re worth everything to me, Asuka. You must know that.”
“But why?” Asuka insists. She can feel tears start to well up in her eyes, for whatever stupid reason. “I’m useless. All I do is lay around and make things harder for everybody. I know I deserve to die, I do, but you--” She chokes back a sob. Her face is wet, she knows this, can feel the tears streaming down her cheekbones. Her watery gaze falls on the space just below Rei’s face, a little above the tops of the other girl’s scraped knees. “I want to live for you. Please.”
“Asuka,” Rei pleads. She sounds like she’s crying, which is ridiculous, because Rei Ayanami doesn’t cry. “Look at me.”
When Asuka doesn’t budge, Rei takes a gentle hand and tilts her chin upwards.
She is crying. Her eyes are white and red and bloodshot, sclera quivering with the glassy tears coalescing along her jawline.
“I love you,” Rei says, voice thick and gentle. “You know I do.” A shiver goes through Asuka’s body-- darts through her like a lightning bolt-- and before she really knows what she’s doing, she’s shaking her head, red hair flying everywhere, miserable and panicked and unequivocally enraged all at once.
“I don’t,” she whispers, “I don’t understand.”
“You don’t have to,” Rei insists, stare still firmly fixed on Asuka’s face, a beacon in the night, “But I need you to trust me. Just until you start see it for yourself. Please.”
Asuka looks up. Blinks wetly. “Okay,” she mumbles. Her throat is scraped raw. “I’ll try.”
October 1st, 2019
Asuka comes to her at the crack of dawn, when the moon has just ducked under the jacaranda trees lining their street and the sun is peeking its head up above the horizon. She goes through their front door-- uses the keys Rei gave her last summer-- up the stairs and into Rei’s room, throwing herself onto the bed before the other girl even has the chance to wake up.
The mattress springs groan despairingly (not that Asuka cares).
“Hey there,” she whispers.
Rei’s eyes slowly blink open, hazy from sleep. A small smile graces her face when she sees the redhead collapsed onto the pillow beside her.
“G’morning,” she whispers back, leaning forward and brushing their lips together. Asuka leans into the kiss before pulling back, peppering a few more open-mouthed kisses along Rei’s jawline. The other girl’s eyelashes flutter.
“You have terrible morning breath,” Asuka murmurs into Rei’s skin, making her snicker.
“You still kissed me,” she shoots back.
Asuka grins.
“That I did,” she admits. “That I did.”