Neon Genesis Evangelion Fan Fiction ❯ Second Coming ❯ Jack and Jill ( Chapter 11 )

Chapter Eleven: Jack and Jill

 

I'd love to tell you that the next part of my life involved crawling through ventilation shafts, staring Angels in the face, and launching Evas by hand, but it wasn't in the cards for me. And it was all for a stupid, ridiculously idiotic reason, too.

I was out of school that day because Dr. Akagi needed a pilot for some tests she was doing. My memory of exactly what was going on is a little fuzzy, so forgive me. I'd spent the early part of the day playing video games and babysitting/feeding Pen2 (my punishment for the trick played a week or two before, as described above). Heading to NERV, I decided to take a shower before getting into my plugsuit, as the day was sweltering hot outside.

In the middle of the refreshing deluge of water, all the lights in the change room went out. The water continued running, at a reduced pressure, but started to turn cool.

"Aah! What the..?" I said aloud, and quickly rinsed my hair before the water became icy and I couldn't bear it any longer. Shutting off the shower took a couple of extra seconds, as I had to fumble around in near-total darkness to find the tap handle. (There're none of those battery powered emergency lamps in the shower room, of course, for obvious reasons; though there was one mounted over the exit door in the change room itself, affording a thin shaft of light.)

Carefully stepping forward, toward what I thought was the exit of the shower into the change room, my intent was to quickly get into my plugsuit, pry open whatever doors I needed to, and get to the Cage. It'd been a few minutes already, and power should have at least switched over to a backup circuit, if not been restored outright. Either something Ritsuko had done had royally screwed up, or we were under attack - and in both cases, it was my task to report for duty.

I hadn't accounted for slipping and falling in the dark, though. Before I knew what had happened, my feet were out from under me and my head hit the wet tile. A bright starburst of light flashed across my vision, and then I was out cold.

 

When I regained at least a sense of consciousness, darkness surrounded me. After a moment, I realized it not only did that, it enveloped me, too - a glance down gave no evidence that I was standing there. In other words, I couldn't see my own body.

I looked back up, and left, and right. There was nothing.

"H-hello?" I called out, surprisingly lucid for someone who'd just knocked herself silly.

No response. No echo from any walls - in the locker room or otherwise.

Oh great. Did I die again? I wondered, not at all amused by the absurdity of that query. Again I tried to look around for any point of reference, or even an apparition to show me my body, dead on the shower floor, blood streaming down the floor drain.

Nothing at all came to me.

"What's going on?" I asked, again sounding like I was surrounded in cotton, with no resonance to betray my location.

Was I in the entry plug? I felt around with my hands, or tried to - again, I couldn't see myself, so I did what I thought was moving my arms around - and was met with nothing to touch, and no sensation that I was moving around in LCL, phased or not.

Was I standing, sitting, lying down? Again, I couldn't tell.

"Okay, this isn't funny," I groused. Does the bus come through here? my mind quipped, and I told it to shut up.

Suddenly, or after an eternity - it was hard to tell - a question came to me. It was neither spoken, nor displayed before me as text - it was simply there, in my mind.

Who are you?

"Who am I?" I retorted. "Who the hell are you?"

Who are you?

"What the hell do you mean, who am I? I'm me."

Who are you?

Realization of what was up didn't even come close to approaching me. "Jill Thomson," I shot back.

Are you sure?

That stopped me in my tracks. What was going on? Who was asking these questions? Had I made contact with an Angel? Or the entity in my Eva? Neither made sense, as the last thing I remembered was going for a shower. I wasn't even in the entry plug yet. Was I?

Are you sure? the question came again.

"Who else would I be?" I said without thinking.

Suddenly, an image of Jack was in my mind, just standing there, hands in pockets, wearing jeans and Subaru World Rally Team jacket, as I'd been in my last day alive as him.

"Wh-what the fuck?!" I stammered, now truly afraid. Whatever this was that was conversing with me knew my secret; knew everything about me. A chill ran down my spine and stayed there, threatening to freeze me right to the core.

Who is this?

"M-me," I said nervously. "Th-that's me too."

The image abruptly switched to that of Jill, in a T-shirt and short skirt, walking along, heading to NERV as I had earlier that day.

Who is this?

"Me," I said emphatically. "They're both me!"

Who is this?

I was about to respond when I took another look at the next image. It was a young girl, with longer, red hair; wearing jeans and a T-shirt, and hiking boots, scaled down to fit her diminutive feet. She looked to be about 12 or 13 years old.

"I.." I said, following the girl as she walked around in the woods in my mind's eye. Something was vaguely familiar about her. "I'm not.."

As she turned, the 'camera' viewpoint remained above her right shoulder, and a campsite pivoted into view. A small tent was pitched, and a little blue car was parked at the other edge of the small clearing. A few chunks of wood were arranged as seats around a camp fire, and on two of them, a man and a woman sat, holding small foil trays of food in their laps.

"Oh! There she is," the woman - a tall lady with long brown hair - said, smiling broadly. "See, I told you she was just exploring."

"Your food's getting cold," the man with the dark, curly hair said, cracking a grin. "And there's no microwave to heat it up with, so eat up before you have to chip away the ice."

"Ha ha, Dad, very funny," the girl said in a voice I definitely recognized.

I would have been rooted to the spot in shock, had I been standing anywhere at all. "H-holy shit.. that's.. me? That's me.."

The revelation seemed to do something to me. Instead of watching the scene unfold as a spectator, my perspective shifted slightly.

 

I sat down and put the foil plate in my lap, stabbing at a sausage with the camp fork, having to give it two or three shots before it would stick and stay long enough so I could snatch it up.

"Find anything interesting, sweetheart?" Mom said.

"There's a big cliff down near the lake," I told them. "I wanna try to rappel it tomorrow."

"You don't know how to rappel," Dad smirked, taking a bite of his supper. "Plus, we--"

"Len," Mom said to him with disdain, cutting him off. The two of them stared one another down for a minute, making me wonder what I'd stumbled into.

"Um, and get this," I said, trying to change the subject. "I was sitting real still at one point with some sunflower seeds in my hand, and this chipmunk came right up and climbed up on my foot!"

"Wow," Mom enthused. "Did you take a picture?"

"Mom, I was trying to be a statue," I pointed out. "It's not like I could reach around and get my camera."

"Of course," she said, shaking her head and smiling. "My bad."

"You need to try that trick again in camp," Dad suggested. "Then one of us'll snap a photo for you."

"Okay," I grinned, and kept eating. I'd give it a shot after supper.

 

So I sat on the bumper of the car for close to an hour after supper, trying to be as still as possible, to invite some of the wildlife to venture into the campsite and sample the seeds I'd scattered about. Maybe it was the smells we were giving off, or something like that, but no one was taking the bait.

I was about to give up when I heard Mom and Dad talking quietly on the other side of the tent, packing up the food for the night.

"So when are we going to tell her?" Mom was asking.

"Let's wait until we're packing up camp tomorrow," Dad said. "Give her one last day of fun while we're still here. She doesn't need to be worrying about it right now."

"I just hope she understands," Mom said with a hopeful tone.

"I know she'll take it well if you're the one to say it, Allie," Dad said. "If I try to explain, I'll screw things up."

"That's because you get all technical and act like you're trying to mathematically prove the argument, rather than just set out the facts and let the conversation go where it may."

"It's in my nature, hon."

"I know. But it shouldn't be in your family, Len."

Dad sighed. "Okay. I still think you should be the one to break it to her."

"Yes, Dr. Thomson," Mom said with a giggle in her voice.

"Do you think she'll like Nevada?" Dad asked.

"No reason not to, I don't suppose," Mom replied. "She takes after you in that regard, with the fondness for warm weather and open spaces and all that." After a moment, she added, "And adventuring."

Dad sighed again. "You think I should let her try rappelling in the morning?"

"Why not? We've got some rope, and I trust you to judge just how big of a 'cliff' this is. She's 13, she's interested in doing new and unusual things. Just be happy her attention's to things like this and not boys, or jewelery, or--"

"All right," Dad cut Mom off. "Enough. I give."

Mom laughed. "Damn right, mister."

"That's Doctor," Dad shot back jokingly.

 

I didn't tell them that I'd overheard them; at least, not that night. I did like awake in my sleeping bag for a long time, though, dwelling on it.

'Do you think she'll like Nevada?'. So we were moving. And I didn't get a say in it. Sure, being closer to Dad's work might be fun and exciting, especially with all the high-tech stuff. But what about everything we had here?

Who was I kidding, though, really? I wasn't into the kind of stuff other girls in grade 8 were into. For that reason, most of my classmates ignored me or didn't bother involving me in anything. I had very few friends, and if I really thought about it, I'd be pretty much assured that I was going to lose them anyway at the end of the school year, since we'd all be going off to separate high schools. This just bumped it up about a half year.

But Mom had all her friends here, and her part-time job. Unless Dad was getting some kind of wicked pay raise, or the cost of living was a lot lower in the States, we'd still need Mom's income to get by.

You'll have plenty of chances to bring all this up tomorrow when they bring the whole mess up, I reminded myself, trying to drift off to sleep.

 

"I thought you said there was a cliff," Dad commented.

I put my hands on my hips. "It's twice my height easily!" I pointed out, calling up to him.

"A cliff is hundreds of feet, sweetie," he said, looking over the edge of the cl.. okay, the rock wall, or whatever you want to call it. "This is.. not."

"Well, if it's not a cliff, I guess you have no problem with me rappelling it," I said with a smartassed grin.

"Hang on," he said, disappearing back away from the edge once more. I walked around on the path to the point where I could get up top with him, and found him checking out trees a dozen or so feet away from the precipice.

"They're all sturdy," I told him. "I checked them yesterday."

"I'm sure you did," he agreed, but kept checking them out anyway. "I think I like this one. Let me tie it off first."

I stood and watched as he looped the rope around the tree a couple times and started tying some kind of Boy Scout knot into the loop. "We have to figure out how to harness you, too," he pointed out.

"I don't need a harness," I said, holding up my hands. "I'll just play out the rope. I've got gloves."

"This is becoming less and less of a rappel and more and more of just going over a ledge with a rope," Dad quipped. "Why'd you want to do this anyway?"

"Because it looks like fun, and I know I can do it," I said, shrugging.

He finished tying off the knot. "Fair enough," he said, uncoiling the rope and flinging the free end over the edge of the rock wall. "Let me test it first."

I stood and watched as he grabbed the rope a few feet from the tree and leaned backwards, toward the cliff, with all his might. The tree bent a little in his direction, but far from any amount that might endanger me.

"Good enough, I guess," he said. "But I want you to keep at least one hand on the rope at all times."

"One hand, gotcha," I nodded, taking up the rope in my hands and stepping close to the edge.

"I'm going to hold onto it up here. Otherwise it might scrape against the rocks and fray or break."

"Sure," I shrugged.

"Okay, sweetie. Ready when you are."

I nodded and leaned out backwards over the edge, then let out a little bit of rope. In a second, I was three feet below the height of the ledge.

"You okay?" Dad called out.

"Fine!" I said, trying to find purchase points for my boots. "I'm going again."

I let out a little more rope, and leaned back even further, to the point where my body was now parallel to the ground, my hair and the rope dangling below me. Now, even five feet down, with probably 10 more feet to go, it looked awfully high up.

"Still good?" Dad asked.

"Oh, no sweat," I said, walking my feet backwards down the rock face as I let out a little more rope. A few more hops brought me back to terra firma - or, at least, to the part of terra firma that was horizontal.

"Good for you!" Dad said, leaning over the edge. "Well done!"

"Thanks, Dad," I grinned. "It's pretty fun!"

"Okay, move aside and let me come down, then."

"You sure, Dad? You don't have gloves."

"I'll be okay," he said, and came over the edge, tackling it in half the time I did (and not getting rope burn, either, I might add). Standing up beside me, he 'dusted off' his hands and smiled. "That was fun. I understand why you wanted to do it now."

I smiled back, and followed him as he went back up around the path. "Speaking of understanding one another.."

"Yeah?" he said.

"If you guys think I didn't hear you last night, you're crazy," I began.

He stopped and turned around, coming back to face me. "This is something we need to talk about together, as a family," he said, instantly serious. "Can it wait until we're on our way home?"

I thought about it for a minute. "If we can stop at Kawartha Dairy for ice cream," I bargained.

"Deal, kiddo," he said, ruffling his hand through my hair. "Help me coil up the rope."

 

So, later that afternoon, we were off towards home, if it could still be called home, for as little as it was going to be that.

"You're going to like it," Dad said. "It's a beautiful place."

"If you like the desert," Mom contributed, but went on to add, "This is a good thing, Jillian."

"I guess," I shrugged. "But when you're leaving behind everything you've ever known.."

"I know, sweetie," Dad responded. "But you've got to trust me when I say this is for the best. I wouldn't do this unless I knew it was absolutely necessary. You know that, right?"

"Yeah," I said, chin on hand, looking out the back-seat window.

"Well, I can't begin to describe how vital what I do is," he said, repeating the same tired old line both Mom and I had heard for years. "And what's more, there's going to be a job for everyone, in time. Even you and your mom."

"What?" I asked, sitting up and looking at Mom.

"It's true, sweetheart," Mom said. "Your time will come soon enough, but I start work with your father as soon as we get there."

"Doing what?" I asked.

"Oh, tests, of sorts," Mom said, not elaborating.

"When does all this go down?" I finally asked.

Mom and Dad exchanged glances. "Next weekend," Dad said. "We wanted to give you one last weekend of fun up at the campground before we sprung this on you."

"Oh," I said, otherwise speechless. Within seven days, I'd be gone from my hometown, for good.

"Sweetheart, I'm going to need your help packing things up all week, okay?" Mom said. "You can start with your room - don't forget to keep out enough clothes for a week's drive, and anything you want to have with you in the car. But other than that, tomorrow morning, we have to start putting things away. All right?"

"All right," I said in a monotone. Part of me was upset that this was so abrupt, but part of me was excited to be having a change of scenery, plus the opportunity to work with my dad, at the place where he spent so much time but we knew so little about.

 

January 23rd, 2015, was a warm winter's day in the Toronto suburb of Scarborough. There was little for me to enjoy, however; everything in the world that my family owned was crammed into a U-Haul trailer that was hooked up to my mom's car. Our house had a "Sold" sign stuck in the front lawn, and my room - the bedroom I'd had since I was old enough to leave the crib - was absolutely empty. It felt eerie.

"Jill! Are you ready?" my mom's voice echoed through the house, reverberating off all the bare walls and bouncing to me.

"Almost, mom!" I said. I did one more check-over - not hard to do since anything left behind would stand out like a sore thumb - and found that all I needed was in my backpack. Everything else, except me, was already gone. And in a few minutes, I'd be gone too.

No way. No way am I walking out of here with no indication that I was ever in this place.

I would feel silly later for doing so, but at the moment, it was the most important thing in the world to me. I pulled a Sharpie marker out of my backpack and opened the closet door, writing on the inside of the door jamb, where the next occupant would be sure to see it:

 

Jillian Thomson was here - 09/11/01 to 01/23/15

 

Satisfied, I capped the pen, shoved it back in my pack, and picked it up, heading out to the car.

 

Darkness was already falling by the time we were well and truly on the road. Second Impact might have disrupted the seasons somewhat, but Canadian winters were still pathetically dark very early in the evening.

We were on the 401, the giant, multi-laned highway that cuts across the top of Lake Ontario and heads towards Windsor and Detroit. I think Dad's plan was to cross at Detroit and find a way through to Nevada from there. I don't know, and it becomes moot shortly.

I was working on a taco - we'd picked up fast food on our way out of town - and Mom and Dad were chatting in the front seats. We were almost to Mississauga - I remember passing the airport - when the car gave a sudden, severe shudder.

"What was that?" Mom asked.

"I don't know," Dad said. "The engine's misfiring."

We slowed down, and Mom snapped, "Don't - not here! Not on the left shoulder!"

"Well, I can't make it across eight lanes like this," Dad pointed out, pulling up close to the guardrail and flipping on the hazard lights. "Just sit tight."

"What's the matter?" I asked.

"I don't know, maybe some bad gas," Dad said. "Let me get out and take a look."

"For Christ's sake, be careful," Mom warned him. To me, she added, "Don't worry, sweetheart. Your dad'll take care of it."

The rest happened in such a sudden and violent way that I have trouble remembering it. Dad pulled on the door handle; the dome light came on; there was a horrendous smashing sound, and I was thrown so hard against Mom's seat back that I saw stars. I felt immeasurable pain up and down both legs, and yet could still feel them, my thighs somehow smashed against my chest, and my feet touching my rear end. I still had no idea what had happened, and realized we were somehow moving again. Flashes of light were going past, sparks thrown up from the car screeching along the guardrail, the metal on metal making a horrendous sound. Eventually, the car ground to a stop, and while the noise abated somewhat, it didn't totally stop.

Then I realized the shrieking sound was coming from me.

"L-len! Len! Are you all right?!" Mom was hollering. Dad wasn't answering, and I was too screwed up to look around and see why. All I could see was two big red-smeared white things in my field of vision, and a second's thought led me to decide that they were my kneecaps, the bones actually showing through my battered and broken legs. I kept on screaming.

"Jill! Jill, honey, talk to me!" Mom shouted.

"Mommy!" I screamed back at her. I couldn't budge. I couldn't tolerate the pain. I couldn't cope with the situation at all.

Things were a haze for a while. I eventually stopped screaming, but only because I was too tired to work my lungs any more. At one point, people started peering in through the places where there used to be windows.

"Oh shit," someone said. "This is bad."

"He never even slowed down!" another yelled. "Was he drunk?!"

"He's okay, he's still in his semi," someone else said. "I think he said he was reaching for his coffee."

"Sweetheart!" Mom called out weakly. "Grab my hand."

As I said earlier, I could barely move, but I somehow managed to reach forward with my left hand and touch my mom's left. First just the fingertips, then, at long last, both hands were clasped together.

"What happened??!" I cried at her.

"There's been an accident, honey," she sobbed. "Are you all right?"

"No!" I answered her. "My legs are really hurt bad."

"You'll be okay, sweetheart," she reassured me. "We're going to make it through this."

"Where's Dad? Why isn't he talking?" I panicked.

"Your dad's not in the car any more," she said, sobbing again. "I don't know where he is. Be strong, sweetheart. We'll get through this."

I heard sirens, and then, after a few minutes, a person with a two-way radio came up. I could still only see my gruesome injuries and the back of my mom's seat, with her bloodied hand grasping mine.

"Dispatch, Pump 941 Portable," the person just outside the car said. "One black, one red, one yel.. make that two red. That's one black, two red. Copy?"

There was someone talking on the guy's radio, and then he said, "Roger. Start Bandage One. We'll set up a landing zone for them."

Then his voice got louder - he must have leaned into my mom's window. "Ma'am. Ma'am, can you hear me?"

"I hear you," Mom said, sounding more distant than before. "We're trapped. Help my daughter!"

"We're going to help you both," the man said. "We need to do some work first before we can get you out, okay? Where are you hurt?"

"My back.. my neck.. stomach.. legs.." Mom said faintly.

"You're bleeding badly, ma'am. Just stay put and we're going to get you out." He stepped out long enough to yell, "Sam! I need medics here right now!!"

Then he was in front of my face. "Hi there," he said. "I'm a fireman. I'm Al. What's your name?"

"J-jill," I stammered.

"Okay, Jill, well, things are pretty tight in here, aren't they? We're going to get you out, though. Are you hurting anywhere besides your legs?"

"N-no," I cried.

"That's good, then. You just take some deep breaths and relax, and we're going to have you out of here in no time. Okay?"

"Where's my dad??!" I demanded.

There was just enough of a pause that I knew it was bad news. "Someone else is helping him," Firefighter Al told me. "For now, we need to focus on--"

"Don't lie to me!" I bawled, and my mom gripped my hand tighter, squeezing it and crying with me.

The firefighter looked me in the face for a long moment, probably trying to see if I could take it. "I'm sorry, honey. There's nothing we can do for him."

At that moment, the pain in my gut and my chest overtook the pain in my legs as the worst thing I'd ever felt in the world.

"Easy, sweetheart. Easy," Mom said, crying openly, squeezing my hand tighter and tighter. "It's going to be okay."

I wanted to scream at her that nothing would ever be okay again. I wanted to go back to earlier that day and never have written on the stupid door, so we'd have left 90 seconds earlier and never been in that place at that time, and thus never have been involved in a crash. I wanted to be back in Algonquin Park, trying to entice chipmunks to climb up onto my shoes and eat from my hand. But I couldn't do any of that, because I was drifting in and out of coherency. Between being inconsolable and in pain beyond anything I'd ever imagined, I was completely out of my mind.

I remember a sudden change in lighting and realizing they'd cut the roof off the car. Completely removed it! Mom and I could've stood up at that point, if Mom hadn't been crushed forward by the dash, and I hadn't had my legs nearly taken off.

Some girl in a blue jumpsuit type uniform was talking to us, doing a lot more talking to Mom than to me. They put hard collars on both of us and bandaged over my knees, and down below as well, something about my ankles. They spent a lot more time with Mom, with something called a suction unit, and an abdo pad, plus they put needles in both of us. The girl said she needed someone to call ahead for blood for the adult - I guess that meant Mom.

Through it all, Mom and I kept holding hands. Every now and then one of us would squeeze, and the other would squeeze back. Mom said a couple times that she was right there with me, and was never going to leave me. She'd always be with me.

Suddenly my right arm was freed. I felt a breeze on my right side and realized they were cutting the entire side off the car. Our car was a hatchback two-door, and now there was a big empty spot right beside my seat, as if there'd always been a door there. They peeled it back and took it off along with Mom's door, then started doing something about the dash.

The girl with us in the car said something about having to take Mom out first to make it easier to get to me. That made sense. When I got in and out of the car all the time, I did it by flipping her seat forward and wriggling in past the seat back. Even with the new hole in the side of the car, I'd still have to do that. I'd need lots of help, too, what with the injuries to my legs. Strangely enough, they didn't hurt any more. Either that, or I was used to the pain. Maybe they put something in the bag that was connected to the needle in my arm.

They slid in a big long board and put it under Mom, then started to unfold her and put her on it. At some point, I had to let go of her hand, though I didn't like it. I called out to her, and she grunted and replied with my name.

The girl beside me said to a guy dressed a lot like her, who was looking over my mother, "She's soooo close to a trauma code, it's not funny."

"I know," he answered. "Helicopter's down now. We're on the way."

"Good luck," the girl said. "I'm sticking with this one."

"You too," the male medic nodded, and he and Mom were gone.

The pain came back to me pretty soon after that. The firefighters brought their Jaws of Life in and took Mom's seat right out of the car. With nothing left to press against, my legs fell forward and dangled there. I screamed.

"Bilateral ankles and tib-fibs too," the girl with me said. "Get that board in here."

They put me on another spineboard and started strapping me down. They put something in between my legs and started to straighten them out, which hurt for a bit but then felt a lot more comfortable. My head was held down with Velcro straps, and my body was buckled down with what felt like seat belts.

"Hon, we're getting ready to go, here," the girl medic said. "Just a little bit of a ride on a stretcher, then we're going in an ambulance. Okay?"

"Are we going where my mom is?" I asked.

"Yeah, I think so," she nodded. "We'll go there."

"Not Sick Kids?" someone with her said.

She shook her head. "Nothing they can do with this," she told them, and then I was set, board and all, on a stretcher.

I wanted to see my dad before we left, but I didn't know which way to look, and even if I did, I was still strapped down quite firmly, with no chance of moving anything but my arms. The view I had was of two streetlights as we rolled under them to go to the ambulance, then the ceiling of the ambulance as I was wheeled into it.

"Okay," the girl said as she sat down in a chair beside my head. "Off we go. This might be a bit bumpy, so I'm going to give you some more Morphine for the pain, okay?"

"'Kay," I said, reflexively trying to nod, and being unable to because of the restraints.

"And let's get some oxygen on her," she said to someone else. I looked to my right and saw that a firefighter, in his yellow turnout pants and suspenders, but without his coat and helmet - just a blue uniform shirt - was in a seat on my right side, at about my waist. He nodded and started setting up a mask, which he put over my face.

Adrenaline was leaving me by this point, and all I wanted to do was stop. Period. I wanted to curl up into a ball and cry; I wanted to just go to sleep and leave it all behind. I could feel the drugs taking effect, as my legs weren't hurting anymore again, just throbbing.

On the edge of my perception, as I drifted through semi-consciousness, I heard the girl talking on a cell phone. "Sunnybrook, this is 83 Bravo, paramedic Yung," she said. "We're en route to your location with a 13 year old female, back seat passenger in an MVA with associated fatality, prolonged extrication time.."

 

"MOM!" I shrieked as I woke up suddenly, sitting bolt upright.

Instantly, pain ripped through the lower half of my body. I had enough time to see both of my legs were in casts and traction when suddenly someone burst into the room.

"Where's my mom?!" I demanded.

"Please!" the nurse said. "You have to lie down; you're going to hurt yourself."

A doctor joined us as I started really feeling the pain. I was screaming and clawing at the casts, as far as I remember; it was a really hazy few moments.

"She's asking about her mother, poor thing," the nurse told the doctor. "How much should we tell her?"

"Nothing. That doesn't matter. Put her out!" the doctor said tersely. "She's going to dislodge something in the surgical sites otherwise." He stomped over to the bedside and fiddled with my IV, putting a substance in via a syringe. In a moment, he had to support me as I fell back towards the bed, out like a light again.

 

The next time I was awake, I don't even know if I truly was awake or not - only bits and pieces came to me. I was unable to speak, with a tube in my throat. I had the sensation of being moved somewhere, rolling along in my hospital bed.

"You realize that she still has at least a month or two to go before she could even stand on her own," someone said.

"That's fine," came the reply. "We will wait for her. She has been selected; this is only a formality, now."

The way they said 'selected' sounded almost like it should have been capitalized, if you know what I mean. At the time, I couldn't understand it, partly because I didn't have the information I do now, and partly because I was so drugged up that I couldn't tell up from down.

 

Suddenly, I found myself in the darkness again.

Who is this?

I realized that I was now seeing Jill stirring in the hospital bed, as if I was watching from a security camera. In moments, she jerked awake and looked around, the tube down her throat preventing her from calling out. I was watching myself awaken for the first time in Jill's body.

"This is.. me," I said.

"Are you certain?"

I looked towards the source of the voice and found the younger Jill, the one I'd seen/assumed the identity of in the campground, standing before me.

"Sh-shouldn't I be?" I asked her.

"It is your choice to make," came another voice. To my other side, predictably, stood my old self, John.

"What does it matter?" I asked him.

"It obviously matters to you," Jill said. "Or else we would not be here."

"What?" I asked, turning back to her again. "What do you mean by that?"

"You've blocked out your earlier memories until now," Jill explained.

"What.. how I got hurt?" I said. "I didn't block them out, I just wasn't there for--"

"Naïve thinking," Jack interrupted. "If you were not Jill before you 'woke up', who was?"

"I don't know!" I shot back. "I guess I figured it was just some random.."

Jill took up the conversation after I trailed off in realization. "Only one soul can occupy a person," she said with a smile. "You have always been here."

"Since you were born?" I said, shocked. "I've been Jill all along? How can I have been in two places at once--"

"You weren't," Jill explained. "There is nothing that says May 25th, 2005 in one reality cannot precede September 11th, 2001 in another."

"You will be able to remember it all," Jack said, "if you choose to do so."

"But.." I swung back to face him. "Then I'll lose you.. won't I?"

He chuckled and shook his head. "That which you have already had, can never be taken from you."

I turned to face Jill again. "I'm not sure I can do this."

"You have been doing it, already, for some months."

"That's not what I mean!" I protested. "I.."

"What do you mean?" both of them stereoed.

"I don't know," I answered quickly. "It just doesn't make sense."

"Why not?" they said in unison again.

"Because I don't remember it happening like that!" I shot back.

"You don't remember because you have shut it out," Jill said.

Jack added, "You felt you were shielding yourself from a traumatic experience."

I pondered that for a moment. "So if I get this straight now.. you both are parts of my mind.. arguing with me. I'm not being probed by an Angel. I'm not going through Instrumentality or some bullshit like that."

"Correct," they said together, both smiling.

"So why am I tolerating this? Why am I letting you argue? Why isn't this a simple thing to solve?"

"Because you feared losing me," Jack said.

"And you feared knowing me," Jill added.

"But it doesn't have to be that way. You said so yourself."

"Correct," came the dual answer again.

"So why did this come up now?"

"You sustained a serious injury," Jill explained. "You instinctively regressed to the last time that happened."

"The shower.. the shower? Oh shit!" I blurted out. "Am I gonna be okay?"

"You are," came the answer; this time, I couldn't differentiate between the two. It could have been one, or the other, or both; it was impossible to tell.

"So are you saying I accepted myself remembering everything now?" I asked.

"You have," they responded.

"So what has this whole exchange been about, then? Why have I spent God knows how long talking with you?"

I got the sensation of a smile from the two, as my vision faded to nothingness again. The one voice said, "Would you expect anything less, given what you have experienced up to now?"

 

I blinked and opened my eyes to see the ceiling of the medical ward of the Geofront.

"Ow.." I whimpered, feeling a devastating headache washing over me. I curled up in a ball. "Holy shit.. oh, Jesus.. oh Christ.."

Part of that was from the pain I was feeling in my head. The other part was for the thoughts that were coursing through that same part of my body.

I remembered it all. The hallucinatory mind-trip, the crash, the camping trip.. if I thought hard enough, I could remember the rest of my youth. Yes, my youth. I'd been set straight; I knew who was Jill before me, and it was me.

The realization of all these things was a little overwhelming all at once for my conscious mind. It took about five minutes before I had enough cognitive horsepower to reach out and click the call button to get a nurse in for some painkillers.

"Good afternoon!" she said far too chipperly as she strode in. "How are we today?"

"I feel like my brain is trying to escape," I moaned, not in the mood for small talk. "I need something for the pain."

"Oh, yes, tch tch tch. We'll see about that right away." She didn't see to it right away, of course, instead choosing to go over my vital signs and noting a bunch of shit in my chart before heading out and actually doing anything about my headache.

An hour or two later, after the freight train in my skull had ebbed to a dull roar, and I'd sampled some of the worst hospital food since I left Toronto, a knock came on the door and three people came in without waiting for a response.

"Surprise!" Asuka sang out, leading Shinji and Rei in. "Good to have you back, Fourth!"

"Good to be back," I said with a determined grin, propping myself up. "How long was I out for?"

"Ten days! So your work is piling up, and you'd better get better fast before Hikari goes bonkers on you!"

"I'll give it a go when I get out," I smirked. Asuka nudged Shinji with a scowl, and I noticed he was holding something in his hands. He held it out.

"We, uh, brought you this," he said, holding a bouquet of flowers clearly from the gift shop.

"Oh! Thanks, guys," I said, taking them and inhaling deeply, enjoying the fragrant smells that cut through the dullness of the hospital. "I mean it. So.. did I miss anything?"

"Oh, only a power cut, an Angel, and a fight where we all collaborated together," Asuka crowed. "Nothing special."

"Ouch! Sounds like I got the short end of the stick," I grinned. "Tell me about it."

"Well, first of all, we had to crawl through ridiculous conditions to get to the Geofront," Asuka began, "but luckily, with my superior leadership skills, we managed to arrive just in time to fight the Angel.."

I listened, bits and pieces of the fight and the events surrounding it coming back to me as she told the stories. It occurred to me at that point that I was starting to forget the events of the anime series more and more. It wasn't some mystical force acting on me, though; it was no simpler than the fact I hadn't seen any episodes lately. I knew the basic gist of how things were going to go, but the details had been fading fast since the moment I woke up in the hospital in Toronto. That, plus the fact that my presence had altered things compared to the storyline I'd 'known', meant that I was going to have to start dealing in the now, and reacting as things happened.

That was just fine with me, as was the whole Jill/John ordeal. All things considered, I was quite happy to still be alive and kicking. I wouldn't have given anything to skip the experiences I'd already had, and would continue to have.

Eventually, as the painkillers started to wear off again, Shinji detected it first and suggested they give me some peace and quiet. Surprisingly enough, Asuka agreed with him, and began to usher the three of them out of the room. While Asuka was busy literally shoving Shinji out, Rei hung back and spoke with me.

"Pilot Thomson."

"Yeah, Rei?" I said, holding my head.

"I look forward to your return to active duty."

I looked up at her. Her expression was the same as it always had been.

"Yeah, Rei," I said, wincing with the pain. "Me too. Thanks for the concern."

She nodded, turned, and headed out of the room to rejoin the others.