Chapter 45:
John Becket
We get what we deserve. Through action or inaction, everything always comes back to us in the end, and there were no exceptions. My pain was my penance, my solitude was my reward, for a time. Maybe the other shoe hadn't dropped yet, maybe this reconciliation was for moments, and then another fifteen years of pain. I could endure it, if nothing else killed me first I imagined I might endure that fifteen years fifteen times over.
At least, it felt that way.
But if I had killed the world, John Becket had saved it. For all the wrong I did to all the people I'd done it to, he sacrificed himself to save me. When the chips were down, and I was the last one standing, the last one between an Angel and the end of the world.
Maybe I'd flinched, or maybe I should have. Maybe I should never have run, but if I killed the world, John Becket saved every single soul that survived it.
If he was coming here, now, there had to be a reason for it. Was he given a second chance, like I had? Was this a blessing, or was it a curse? If we got what we deserved, what was it that he had earned? Why was he here?
I raised my hand to block some of the down-wash from the helicopter as is settled towards the pad. Of course, a group of heavily armed men awaited around the slowly descending UH-1H, just in case. I couldn't imagine they were necessary.
And if it was John, and if they did try to shoot... Well, even if it wasn't the same man, there were at least four people who wouldn't stand for it. If Victoria wasn't armed I'd be shocked, and if she engaged than Rae, who had at least two guns on her person that I knew of, would back her up.
At that point Miller would either throw down or call out. Cylon Flight would no longer obey WILLE orders in either case.
Question: Had the unity of the group always been so tenuous?
For my part, I had a snub nosed magnum tucked into my boot and a hold-out pistol against the small of my back. AT field in a pinch.
High stress situations and itchy trigger fingers being what they were, I couldn't absolve myself of responsibility for instigating the tense atmosphere with the shit I'd pulled over the gulf.
Of course, that didn't mean I had any regrets. At least none about the last thirty six hours.
I found myself smiling as the skids touched down on the pad. He'd died for me once, returning the favor was the least I could do.
"I'll go first." I heard myself say without even thinking it over. My feet were moving before the engines had even started to spin down. The soldiers behind me shifted their attention to me, but Misato raised a hand to my side and they held back.
Truth be told they probably didn't mind having someone else play canary.
Clearly he wasn't in
that much of a hurry. The rotor wash kept blowing down and messing up my hair as I approached. The engine was winding down, surely enough, but he still hadn't come out of the cockpit. If my luck held out I'd be there to open it for him before he finished the shutdown checklist.
He was certainly more disciplined than I was.
By the time I reached the cockpit door the down-wash had reduced to a soft gale. I was about to open the door when I thought better of it; if for some insane reason he
did remember me, I might not want to give him too much of a startle before I knew if he had a gun and a panicky temperament.
I opted to lean my back against the side of the fuselage aft of the latch and knocked on the glass with the back of my hand. Three taps, nothing fancy. Just enough to let him know someone was outside waiting for him. Someone
maybe not pointing a gun at him.
He'd had to have seen all of us on approach; I would think less of him if he hadn't. He'd have seen all of us, and he'd have seen the armed men. If I could finish the day without the taste of burnt powder in my nose I'd be alright, better than average anyway.
I felt a smirk creep onto my face and I glanced over at Miller. If Becket
did remember me, I
had to fuck with him, just a little.
I heard the door crack open and I licked my bottom lip, "
yōkoso! O-namae wa nan desu ka? Ikari Rei desu!"
His hesitation was almost palpable, but a moment later the door popped the rest of the way open and a very confused looking man stepped out onto the helipad. A man who looked exactly like the last time I'd seen him, over fifteen years ago.
He turned to me and I gave a wave and a smirk,
"o hisashiburi desu ne."
When he locked eyes with me his expression shifted and he looked like he'd been struck, or perhaps that he'd seen a ghost. The latter wouldn't be far off the mark for either of us.
His mouth worked up and down in confusion for a few moments before he tried to string something together in stilted Japanese.
"Uh... e
igo... wa... dekimasu ka?"
I nodded, "Absolutely, but that's not as fun. So you here about that Eagle we dropped in the drink or is it something else? I have on good authority that he survived the journey if you're concerned."
The conversational whiplash had gotten to him, or at least it looked like it. His face went through a range of emotions before settling on unhappy confusion. "Yes, no, sort of. Glad he's alright, not why I'm here but a good excuse. And you... You're real, and that means Katsuragi
is real, and that means I'm not losing my mind."
I nodded, "Yeah, that's always a good feeling. I guess this means you remember. How much do you remember?"
He looked out at the assembled WILLE personnel, those with and without rifles and then back to me. "I feel like this isn't the best venue for that kind of a conversation. It's been kind of a fucked up day and I don't know how I feel about spilling my guts around a bunch of guys with guns pointed at me."
"Yeah, you're not wrong. I'll see if Misato can set up a conference room or something. There are more than a couple of people who will want to see you, but I'm not sure how many of them you'll remember. And..." I trailed off, looking over at the armed men.
He'd died for me, I could return the favor if I had to.
"And what?" he asked, noticing my hesitation.
"And, since I owe you... well a version of you, more than I could ever repay. If it comes down to it there's a four shot three-fifty-seven holdout pistol under my jacket at the small of my back. It draws to my right side." I answered under my breath, loud enough for him to hear me, quiet enough that nobody else would.
His eyebrows rose a bit and he nodded, "I bet there's a really good story behind that."
"I've had kind of a fucked up day too."
"I'll keep that in mind."
xxx
The round table we found ourselves seated at was much more elaborate than the simple room I'd been questioned in previously, and I supposed that was the difference between Becket and I. In him people saw a much more respectable hero, though around this table I certainly found friends of my own.
Clark, Denisovich, Miller, Misato, Gypsy Rose, and even Akagi were present, among many people whom I didn't readily recognize. Age had left its mark on each of them, everyone but me, everyone but Becket.
But then he'd never had to live those intervening years like everyone else had. Eyes were not on
me, however, but this meeting wasn't about me.
It was about Becket.
"This meeting will be a little informal, as this is probably coming as a surprise to all of you. I know it was a surprise to
me." Clark announced with a laugh. "That having been said, this is some pretty unfamiliar territory, which given the last fifteen years or so is really saying a lot."
It was funny, Clark didn't sound British, he was an American by birth as far as I knew, but that level of understatement could only come from an Englishman. Of course, WILLE was multinational in origin so he probably had plenty of time to learn it.
I wondered if that was a check
I had written for them to cash when I asked for help.
Kitty Hawk battle group backed Nerv in my final fight, but then ended up alongside WILLE. So, WILLE must not have been involved in the attack on headquarters. Coincidence or intel leak?
I wished I knew what happened after I was trapped in Unit One. Had Clark's fleet joined up because of the cause or because they had no other ports in which to weather the storm?
"Then maybe I should start," Becket said suddenly as he stood up. "I'm not going to pretend that I understand or am okay with most of this, but for the last twelve months I've felt like I was going insane. I kept seeing fantastic,
amazing things. My head was filled with the names and the faces of people I'd never met... people who are around this table right now."
The room was hushed, it was not the hero's return that they had expected it to be. He was familiar enough with me though, was there a reason behind that? I wondered if a part of him remembered why he chose to die for me.
I found myself standing and clearing my throat. "And you came looking for answers. I don't know if I can alleviate your confusion or give purpose to what you've seen but..." I trailed off, looking for the words. I caught Miller out of the corner of my eye. I shook my head and took a breath.
The room was looking at me now, not all of them with pleasant expressions. Maybe it wasn't my place to speak, but maybe I didn't care. "Without being too poetic about it, you're wearing the face of a man who, in no uncertain terms, I owe my continued existence to. Maybe that doesn't hold true for everyone here, but the shock and glee everyone is feeling, that
I am feeling is because it feels like our friend just came back from the dead and returned to us. I've missed you,
we have missed you."
Misato stood abruptly, Rose a second later. Akagi joined, then Dennisovich, Miller, and Clark. The meeting hadn't been for intelligence gathering. Whatever it
had been for, it didn't live up to it, instead it seemed to be solidarity.
And maybe, for a moment, I let myself stop feeling so guilty about his death. Faced with him standing in front of me I understood why Rae was so quick to accept Gypsy Rose as the same woman she'd lost; it was easy to lose yourself in a familiar face and believe it was the same person.
Rae could justify it, I could even justify it for her: Gypsy Rose remembered the life they had together, had the face to match, too. Becket looked the same,
felt the same, but his memory was shadows.
Did he remember picking up a drunk, bitterly depressed girl up on the side of the road and taking her to get some food to put on top of the alcohol? Did he remember giving me my callsign?
To my side, Becket looked like he might run or pass out, fight or fall down. Did he remember the gun tucked against the small of my back? I wondered how that might go, wondered if I'd said the wrong thing, that I'd to drive him to it.
I knew
that bastard was responsible for it. Was this his idea of a gift, a punishment, or some third option where he wasn't yet done fucking around with our lives?
My left hand spasmed and clenched into a fist so tight I felt the blood pooling in my palm. Had that
bastard thrown Becket in front of the missile in the first place?
"You can stay here as long as you need to, use any of our resources to find the answers you're looking for. Rei explained it as well as any of us could have. If you're half the man we remember then you're worth the effort."
Victoria had said the words, the emotion behind them was true and from the heart. I did not envy her the emotional burden she must have been going through, though I did share in some of it. The wife that was never really hers back in her life, and the brother who, in this world, had never been her brother at all.
I felt his hand at the small of my back, still on top of my jacket, open palm against me. My right hand opened and I prepared myself to drop if that's what it came to. It would be a mess, Misato in the crossfire--
The hand slid up my back instead and gripped my shoulder. "If it's all the same," he started, "I need to borrow Iris. She might help me understand some things."
Victoria looked like she might object, her mouth opened about half way before an overly loud dropping of a notebook onto the table drew our attention. Miller was at the other end of that noise and he was giving her a look that could melt steel.
Clark cleared his throat and shrugged, "I imagine that will be just fine. She is not currently bound by any other duties, after all. We will revisit this in two days and see how everything is going then, shall we? Excellent. Meeting adjourned."
He waved his hand towards the door and shook his head. It had gotten away from him, but it had gotten away from everyone else too.
"Yes, that is acceptable. Stay on the ground, though, if you don't mind," Victoria finally said. She didn't look as happy about it as I would have liked. I couldn't imagine she was pleased with me overall, and perhaps she was upset he'd picked me over her.
But then, she should have remembered what path
she had chosen all those years ago.
xxx
The sunset and the salt air were a good companion to the cool Corona warming up in my right hand. Hard concrete and steel grid was a poor substitute for warm beach sand between my toes but the rhythmic crashing of the waves hundreds of feet below me had a way of making up for the loss.
Any excuse to wear a bathing suit was a welcome one, even if there wasn't a snowball's chance of my snow-white skin picking up a tan. It was a far cry from Victoria, who had a darker flesh tone than I'd
ever had. Still, we did have our similarities and our taste in swim wear was the same: black and two piece.
"So," I started with a casual side-glance at Becket, or was it John now? Some people were always going to be known by their last names, I wondered if he'd be one of them.
"So," he answered back with a nod and a long drag on his bottle. The not-quite yellow liquid sloshed and sudded in the bottle as he tipped it back. It wasn't his first or his fifth, and I wasn't far behind him. He didn't have the biological advantages that
I had but he was still holding on better than I was.
Not to say I was doing
badly.
"So, I didn't think this was what you had in mind when you said you needed my help figuring things out."
He tossed his bottle off the edge of the platform and leaned back, laying down against the deck with his legs dangling off. "Most of the dreams, or I guess they are actually memories... Most of them are about you. Could have explained almost anything away, but that P-38 stands out too much; it doesn't make any sense... but there you are."
I nodded and tossed the rest of my mostly finished drink off the edge as well. "Chance came together in a weird way, for sure. Maybe I could have done it differently, maybe you didn't have to die."
He was silent for what felt like hours, just staring up into the sky, as I was, until the sun was all the way down. The stars came out and were little pinpricks of brilliance against the darkness. The view was amazing, more than anything I'd ever seen in Tokyo-3, or even before that. Out on the platform, with the lights off, we could see the
galaxy.
"That was Alan Miller at the table wasn't it. Older, but that
was him."
"Yep."
"Huh."
More delay, more stargazing. I could do it all night if I had to, even if it did start to get cold.
"That was you who flew the raid in Canton wasn't it?" He finally asked me. His voice was quieter, no hint of anger but no hint of intoxication either.
Canton, when we'd pulled Kaworu out. I didn't know how many died, didn't want to think about it so I'd gone out of my way not to find out.
Ayanami probably knew.
"Not a whole lot of Lightning's flying around these days." I answered without answering. Those were Americans I'd killed,
his brothers in arms. His countrymen.
"I'm trying to figure it out. I wanted to get to know you outside of my memories. I wanted to try to reconcile you being worth dying for with you raiding that convoy. Men died." He sounded calm, but hurt, there was an edge under it.
"They had my friend captive. He'd done nothing wrong, but he's special. He's special like
me. He can pilot Evangelion and... other things. It doesn't really matter, nobody was going to negotiate for him, nobody was going to trade for him.
I had to get him out."
I started to sit up but I stopped, sighed, and slumped back onto the cooling deck plate. "I could tell you that I was trying to save the world or something else like that, and maybe we found some important intel about the Mark Nine... The truth is I couldn't leave him behind. Everyone in that convoy knew what their cargo was, they were all responsible for his situation."
He sat up and pulled his legs back onto the deck. I glanced over to see him looking down into the water. Part of me wondered if he wanted to toss me into it.
"If you were worth dying for, I suppose you'd be worth taking at your word." He shook his head and stood up, held his hand down to me. "Would you do it again?"
I took his hand and he pulled me up to my feet. I wobbled for a moment and then steadied myself. Maybe that alcohol had a bit more kick than I gave it credit for. "If I had to, I would. I've lost enough, I won't lose anymore. Would you do it again?" I asked him in return. I wasn't going to try to convince him I was worth it, either he'd see it or he wouldn't. I wouldn't be a different girl than the one he remembered. It would have to be good enough.
He turned away from me and started walking away, back towards the ladder leading down towards the main deck of the platform. His shoes clinked against the deck with each step and then stopped. He turned back towards me and walked the same number of steps back until he was next to me again.
"If it was worth it."