End of Evangelion - Final: From Her Heart (Chapter 6!)

[Redleader34]

Great Fick, and I want to see more of the Angelic Days style interactions between Rei, Askua and Shiinji. It would be epic win if you could expand on that. The drunk Askua and Shinji was a nicely written scene, and Aoba's almost sexual assault of Sora is great
4.5 out of 5, only because Nothing gets perfect, NOTHING.

[Spanky The Dolphin]

Great Fick, and I want to see more of the Angelic Days style interactions between Rei, Askua and Shiinji. It would be epic win if you could expand on that.

Yeah, the Episode 26 Alternate Reality dream piece was something that just popped into my head while I was plotting the chapter, and ended up being quite fun to write. The Rei freestyle BMX thing is actually a reference to some illustrations and figurines of Rei with a trick bike, as I thought it would work to put in something from the large number of alternative "never was" artworks that Eva has into that world.

I'm not entirely sure if I would be able to revisit that alternative reality any time in the future of the story, since the dreams are intended as one-shots to communicate specific ideas or themes.

While writing the scene I considered that it might be interesting to do either a series of connected one-shot installments or an overall storyline in my own take of that Angelic Days world sometime in the future, though I would personally stick to the basic "junior high romantic comedy" concept rather than reintroduce the Evas and Angels, which was something that disappointed me about AD: they started something different only to go back to normal anyway.

The drunk Askua and Shinji was a nicely written scene, and Aoba's almost sexual assault of Sora is great

I appreciate that, since those are pretty much the focal point of the chapter. A "Shinji and Asuka get drunk, get cozy, get mad" scene was one of the first ideas I had when I initially conceived of doing the fanfic way back when, and I see getting past it as a pretty significant milestone.

Aoba and Sora's night of failed intimacy and the "morning after" scene was somewhat of a challenge since it was the first time I've ever written something of that nature, so I was a little nervous and wanted the primary scene to convey something specifically while going just as far as it needed to do so.

[Spanky The Dolphin]

Neon Genesis Evangelion
The End of Evangelion
Final: From Her Heart

Written by Spanky The Dolphin 30 July 2007 - 20 September 2007

Legal Disclaimer: Neon Genesis Evangelion Copyright GAiNAX / Project Eva. - TV Tokyo

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Chapter Six: Room of Emptiness

TOKYO-3 - 2016 AD

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Three individuals stepped out of the lift as its doors clattered open. Shigeru Aoba, Maya Ibuki, and Makoto Hyuga made their way down one of the numerous corridors within NERV Headquarters to an alcove of vending machines and benches, where they made selections for a quick lunch.

"Are you two coming to the wedding?" Maya asked her male companions as her sweetened tea tumbled down inside the machine in front of her.

Aoba was in the process of withdrawing a shrink-wrapped sandwich and turned to her. "What wedding?"

"Keiko's wedding," Maya answered, paying for and removing a sandwich of her own. "She's getting married in a couple of days."

"Another one already?" Hyuga was counting his change. "Didn't somebody on the MAGI staff just get married?"

"That was Kotoko, but everybody's been scheduling their weddings before the end of the year." The trio finished their purchases and walked further down the corridor until reaching a collective of tables arranged in front of a ceiling-high window that overlooked the terrain within the Geofront.

"So are either of you two coming?" Maya rephrased her initial question as they sat down at one of the tables.

"Who else is going?" Hyuga asked.

"Well," Maya began, taking a sip from her can of tea, "most of the Control Centre staff, some of the Cage maintenance crew, a lot of the R&D department received invitations, and I know Ritsuko-senpai and Major Katsuragi will be attending."

Hyuga looked up from his sushi pack as she finished her sentence. "I might go," he said after a second of consideration. His two coworkers briefly shared a knowing glance at each other.

"And you?" Maya said to Aoba.

He took a bite of his sandwich and hesitated until swallowing. "I don't think so."

"Why not?"

"I've gotten a little tired of weddings," he replied. "Attending for people you barely know marrying people you know even less, the ceremonies and receptions end up being almost identical, and there's never anybody to meet or hook up to because you already know most of them. Like you said, everybody's been planning them before the end of the year, making sure they're not the last one single. There are much better ways to spend a day off from work than the entire afternoon and evening at a wedding."

"It's just like you to consider a wedding in the most pessimistic way possible," she said in a low voice. "I think they're quite romantic."

"That's because weddings are specifically tailored to be appreciated by women."

Maya huffed a defeated sigh. "That reminds me--I have no idea what I'm going to wear." Her eyes narrowed with worry. "I really hope I don't have to buy a new dress; along with the gift I simply couldn't afford it."

"Why don't you wear the red one?" Hyuga chewed. "You look great in that."

"I just wore the red one to Kotoko's wedding!" she said, irritated. "I can't wear the same dress in less then a week!"

He swallowed hurriedly. "Sorry, I didn't mean--"

"Oh never mind," Maya cut him off apologetically. "I'll probably just wear my gray pinstripe anyway."

"If you were the one getting married," Aoba interjected, "you wouldn't have to worry over what colour to wear."

She snapped back in Aoba's direction and was about to open her mouth when Hyuga interrupted.

"You'd make a good bride, Maya-chan."

"Eh?" Maya turned to her bespectacled companion and thought for a momentary second before letting out a laugh tinged with nervousness as she smiled and raised her hand dismissively. "Oh no, I don't think I would. I'm not ready for that sort of thing." She quickly regained her normal composure and leaned forward toward Hyuga. "If we're going to get personal about it now, when is it going to be your turn?"

"Ah--" he stuttered while thinking of a response. "There--there are a few women here I've thought of asking out."

"You can't propose to a superior officer, you know," said Aoba.

Hyuga shot him an embarrassed look. "It's not that obvious, is it?"

Maya and Aoba simply looked at him, and he slumped down in his chair. "So what about you?" he asked his fellow man, picking up another roll with his chopsticks.

"What about me?" Aoba countered.

"How are things going between you and Sora?"

"Going between me and--what are you talking about? I'm not involved with anyone."

"You've been with Sora-san for almost a month," Maya said calmly.

"Sora . . . Tamaki?" Aoba's tone became confused. "She got married to that Kinjo guy from the Eva Cages this past summer, back before the Angels started showing up. Don't you guys remember, we were all at her wedding."

"It's been almost four weeks since you broke through to her on the shoreline," Maya replied, and Aoba felt a changing sense of awareness as his perspective transitioned into another frame of time.

"How could you possibly know about that? That all happened after--"

"You don't know it yet," said Hyuga, "but very soon she's going to really need you to be there for her, now that you two are emotionally invested in each other."

"What do you mean? What's going to happen to her?"

"Something you won't be able to do anything about," Maya said flatly, but with an odd tenderness, "and that feeling of weakness might be the hardest part." Aoba blinked as she spoke in mid-sentence, and within that fractional, infinitesimal blackness, an oddly grinning Ayanami had replaced Maya in her seat, dressed in her school uniform, almost luminescent.

He suddenly stood up and looked down at his two coworkers before him, the bang of his chair hitting the floor echoed through the open space of the cavernous room. His breath was hard in confusion and anger.

"What the hell's going on? Sora and I didn't know each other like that until long after Third Impact! You two have been dead for over a month!"

Hyuga and Maya looked up at him, their faces neutrally expressive as they drank from their respective beverages. A strange sensation washed over him, as if the seated pair had disappeared into nothingness although they still remained clearly in his view, mere images without the connection of physical presence.

**********

Aoba's eyes opened to blue-black darkness. Beside him on the full-size futon were the suggested lines of Sora's face and shoulder. He heard the soft, gradual breath of her slumber, and the hairs on his arm waved as the weak force of her exhales. There was little noise besides the breathing of the woman next to him, though he could hear the faint chattering of nocturnal insects in the distant countryside through the master bedroom's balcony door, opened partway for the nightly breeze.

<What the hell was that?> he asked himself and looked up at the ceiling--white in daylight but drowned in a nightly blue shade--unnerved by such a visitation of the recently deceased. <Why would I suddenly dream about Maya and Hyuga after all this time? Their names haven't even crossed my mind for weeks. Or maybe that could be why. And what was that about her? What the hell's going to happen to her?>

His attention returned its focus onto Sora's breathing. He reached out to the shape of her form and caressed his hand down her arm, soft skin gliding beneath his fingertips. She let out a receptive moan, still asleep, as she rolled over and nestled close in contact with his body. Aoba held her lightly around the waist, taking in the natural scent of her hair as he drifted back into a dreamless sleep.

----------

Sora stood and picked up the larger of the two towels from the chair next to her and quickly dried off, then wrapped it around herself, making sure that the corner was securely tucked in under her armpit. As she grabbed the smaller one from the chair and vigorously ran it over her freshly washed hair, she took notice that the sky was overcast by a great density of cloud cover, blanketing their side of the building in a shadow that was darker than it ordinarily was; usually only the direct light of the Sun was blocked.

The gray pallor cast by the shadow displeased her greatly; the way it muted the natural translucency and internal glow of her skin, rendering it sickly and lifeless. If given a long enough span of time, she questioned the possibility that she could slowly become increasingly pale, like some sort of shut-in or cave dweller. Picking up the little basket that contained her bathing supplies, another matter crossed Sora's mind: Could this lack of direct light be affecting her mood? To the best of her knowledge, she did not suffer from any sort of seasonal depression disorder, although as long as she could remember, she always loved spending as much time outdoors as she could in the summertime. What if it was affecting Aoba just as much? Given the recent and overall circumstances, neither of them could really afford for their well-being to be compromised or hampered by such a thing.

She decided to do something about it.

"I think we should move to the other side of the building," Sora said clearly as she stepped through the door into the living room.

Aoba halted just as he was beginning his breakfast and looked over at her from the short table. Another plate was prepared on the table across from him. "What'd you say?"

"We should move to the other side of the building, into the apartment next to the Asuka-chan and Shinji-kun." She remained standing in front of the still open balcony door, hand on her hip and the other at her side, clutching her bathing supplies.

"Why should we do that?" he asked, setting his fork down and with his full attention on her.

"Because it's just too dark on this side." She sat down on the opposite side of the table, readjusted the towel still wrapped around her body, and continued as she began to eat. "I know you chose this apartment in the first place because you wanted to give those two a greater amount of privacy and so it wasn't like you were watching over or supervising them all the time, but I don't think this is something that we should have to put ourselves through anymore. Just living without electricity is difficult enough, but on days like this I can barely even see in the kitchen or any other room without a window. And I'm tired of being nearly blinded and having to wait for my eyes to adjust to the intensity of sunlight every time we step outside the building. At the very least, we wouldn't have to use our candles and lamps that run on batteries for so much of the time as we already do."

"That's certainly a good point."

Sora gave him a quick nod. "There's something else I'm concerned about, too. Something that I hadn't considered at all until I finished bathing just now. What if a lack of exposure to light, even being in the shadow of the building outside on the balcony, could affect us emotionally?"

"You mean like seasonal depression?"

"Maybe something like that. I don't know, but it can't be a very positive environment to be in. It's as if we're living like a pair of homeless squatters in an abandoned building."

"Technically we are liv--" Aoba spoke before she cut him off.

"I know we technically are, but we don't need to think of it like that. And we don't need a constant reminder of it, either."

Aoba chewed slowly as he thought for a moment. "Alright," he finally said after swallowing.

"Really?"

"Sure, if you think it's that important, why not? Besides, we don't really have all that much stuff here, so it shouldn't take more then an hour or so to move all of it, especially if we get Shinji and Asuka to help. We could get it all done before Noon."

Sora smiled and the two of them continued to eat their breakfast. When she finished she took a brush from her bathing supplies and began running it through her hair.

"So what did you dream about last night?"

Aoba looked up from his plate and gave her a mildly embarrassed look. "You were awake?"

"You woke me up when you started talking in your sleep," she answered, "but I couldn't make out what you were saying. So what was it?"

"Nothing really." He tried to be as dismissive as possible. "Just some sort of silly half-memory before Third Impact."

"Oh come on, tell me," she prodded. "If I had a dream like that you'd know all about it. Was it anything personal?"

"No, nothing like that."

"So what's holding you back?"

He hesitated. "Fine, you win. Do you remember when Keiko on the MAGI crew got married?"

"That was right after Kotoko's, wasn't it?"

"Yeah. A few days before Maya, Hyuga, and I had lunch and it came up in conversation. She asked if we were going and--"

"Did you?"

"No, I went to a movie and dicked around in a record shop that day. Anyway, Maya's 'turn' at getting married came up, which she dodged; she and I mocked Hyuga for his crush on the Major. That was how it really happened: It deviated from there when they asked about my relationship with you."

"Our relationship? What did they ask about?"

"How things were going between us, and they said something was going to happen, so we need to continue providing emotional support for each other. It was weird. At first I thought they meant me and you back then, but suddenly within a second my mind . . . snapped forward several months to right now and I knew exactly what they were talking about."

Sora paused brushing her hair in mid-stroke. "That does sound strange."

"Have you had any dreams like that since you've been back?"

She thought. "No, I don't think so. Just ordinary dreams, maybe some based on things in the past, but that's it. Should we ask Shinji-kun and Asuka-chan about it?"

Aoba shook his head. "I don't think it's anything we should bother them with. It's probably just from stress or something."

"Hopefully you're right." She set her hairbrush back in its basket. "I'll get dressed. Why don't you go over and tell them about our plan to move, then I'll start getting things together."

"All right," replied Aoba as he got to his feet and picked up both of their empty plates. He entered the darkened kitchen and heard the door of the master bedroom slide shut behind Sora.

----------

Shinji huffed after setting the heavy cardboard box filled with sealed packets and cans down amongst several more against the bare wall of Aoba and Sora's new kitchen, and turned around with the intention of simply catching his breath for a moment. In front of him was a familiar table surrounded by four chairs, although the walls of the room had a degree of unfamiliarity. The layout of apartment 11-A-1 was an exact mirror of the former residence of Misato Katsuragi, as well as 11-A-8, from where the two adults were relocating. He recalled back when Aoba first chose that apartment on the other side of the building, finding the exact similarity odd. The feeling he had was similar to the one back then, although more like he had transitioned into a nearly identical parallel universe.

"What are you doing?"

He looked over as Asuka stepped in from the entryway leading from the foyer, carrying a small box of neatly arranged glass bottles.

"Ah--nothing," he stammered. "I was just thinking how strange it was that this apartment is the opposite of ours."

"You can't be serious," she exclaimed, walking across the room. She set the box on the table next to other various boxes and foodstuffs, and the bottles clinked against each other. "Of course they are, that's how apartments are usually arranged. How long have you been standing there?"

"Not very long," Shinji answered, defensive.

"Well hurry up," Asuka shot back. "We don't have time for you to be lazy and get out of work when you feel like it."

"Asuka-chan, don't boss him around like that." Sora walked in from the foyer, a heavy load of clothes in her arms.

"Stupid Shinji thinks it's amazing that the apartments in the building are arranged opposite of each other."

"That's not what I said," Shinji protested. "I didn't mean it like that."

"Then what did you mean?"

"Shinji-kun probably meant that it felt odd being in a place that is so similar but also so different than what's he's been used to," Sora replied. "There's nothing wrong with that; it just means that he's attached to his home." She stepped between the two teenagers on her way to the master bedroom. Shinji and Asuka's eyes met after she passed.

"You're so weird," she eventually dismissed and shook her head as she walked out, leaving Shinji alone momentarily before following her.

----------

Aoba pushed several strands of hair, still damp from bathing, out of his face as he waited for the water to get hot. While it was technically her day to prepare breakfast, he decided to let Sora sleep in and take care of it himself. The two of them had spent much of the previous afternoon unpacking, and they actually took the opportunity to become more organised: Previously they had kept most of everything in stacks and piles, along the walls and on countertops. Already he noticed that it had the effect of making the place seem more like a genuine home.

The door of the master bedroom slid open as he poured the heated water into their individual styrofoam cups of instant noodles. <The luxury of living,> Aoba thought to himself as he pressed the paper lids back down. <Better than eating out of cold cans, I guess.> He heard the sound of bare feet on the artificial wood floor and sensed Sora standing in the doorway behind him.

"Good morning," he greeted while getting their utensils together, and then turned around to face her. "I hope seafood curry flavour is alri--"

Sora had not gotten dressed, still in the off-white tank top and dark pair of boxers she had worn to bed the night before. They were wrinkled just as much as her hair was unkempt. Her face was pale and grimly blank in expression, and she looked away from him, keeping her stunned line of sight on the empty counter space next to him.

"Are you okay?" Aoba asked with surprised concern, and her wide eyes shifted their gaze upwards to his without blinking.

"I'm menstruating again," she replied in a vacant tone.

"I don't see why that's so distressing," he said. "Asuka had hers two weeks ago, so it's not like yours wasn't simply inevitable."

"It means I'm not pregnant."

"Well why would that matter unless-- Oh my God."

The gravity of her revelation brutally dawned on him and he approached her.

"How far along were you?"

"Only about two weeks at the most," she said, soft and slow. "Do you remember when I said Yoshiro and I were trying to have a baby? We started not very long after we got married, but the results were always negative. I was getting worried that we might have to go to a fertility clinic, because it would have been so expensive and we simply wouldn't have been able to afford it. Who thought getting pregnant on purpose could actually be difficult? But finally my period was late. I waited to make sure--because I could swear the test before was negative--and got a positive test result, which my doctor confirmed."

"Why didn't you tell me about this before?"

"I don't know," she answered weakly and broke eye contact with him. "I was scared."

"Scared of what? Of me? I wouldn't have denied you help just because you were pregnant, because you were 'spoken for.'"

"I know that, but . . ." Sora sighed. "I was going to tell you. Really. Maybe not right away at first--it was just so complicated back then--but when we got back from Matsumoto I decided that you should know: That you needed to know. I've been waiting for the best time to tell you." A sad grimace spread across her face and she held herself as if she if she were ill. Aoba made his way across the rest of the kitchen floor and took her into an embrace.

"We agreed to stay together and I intend on keeping that promise. If you were still pregnant, I'd be right here for you, and I will do everything I can to help get you through this."

She buried her tearful eyes into his shoulder, and her voice trembled before cracking into a heartbroken wail.

---------------
The End of Evangelion
Final: From Her Heart

Chapter 06: Fifth Man
---------------

It was strange not to hear the dull mechanical pounding of heavy equipment from the construction site, Shinji noted, as he opened the door of the stairwell and stepped out onto the external walkway, the third time he had come to visit the apartment building of Rei Ayanami. The only notable sound was the breeze as it swept through the concrete segments. He held the door open for Asuka immediately behind him, and once she had passed let it swing itself shut with a thudding click from the latch.

"Shigeru said she's been doing better than he expected," Asuka continued, her recovering breath in time with the tapping of her cane, "considering it's only been a couple of days."

"Do you think so?" Shinji asked.

"With what she's going through, yeah," she answered. "But she's not catatonic and suicidal like she was when she first got here."

He made a short sigh of agreement and glanced out to the surrounding landscape. Beyond the metal handrail, in some moderate distance away from the building, was a small park he had never taken notice of before, nor would have been able to see from the ground. The sight of it briefly triggered in his mind something that felt like a recalled memory, something that seemed as if the little area of concrete and landscaping had some sort of strong connection with Ayanami, but impossible for Shinji to pinpoint with absolute certainty.

"You said this was it, right? Hey!"

"What?" Shinji snapped out of his thoughts, and realised Asuka was standing next to one of the doors along the wall and that he nearly continued on walking past her.

"Number 402," Asuka impatiently replied. "You said this was her apartment, didn't you?"

"Yeah, it is." He saw the mail slot near the bottom of the door, still bulging with its crammed overflow of junk mail.

"What if it's locked?" Asuka asked. "We don't have any tools like the kind Shigeru and Sora usually take along with them."

"She wouldn't have locked it. I think she knew what was going to happen when she left."

"We'll see," she replied, gripping the handle tightly before giving it a quick turn. The latch clicked as the lock mechanism tumbled inside, releasing the door from its frame. Her narrowed eyes returned his satisfied expression before she pulled the door open and disappeared within the dark apartment.

"Egh, it's so stuffy in here," she exclaimed from the other side of the doorway.

As he stepped inside the small foyer Shinji noted how the air of the place was warmer than he would have expected. <Pardon the intrusion,> he thought in courtesy to the long vanished resident, and had stooped down in order to remove his shoes when it came to his attention that Asuka had not done so.

"What exactly do you expect to find here?" she called back to him, looking over the meager kitchenette space halfway down the hall.

"I wanted to see if Ayanami had anything personal that would be worth taking back with us," he replied, "so nothing stays here forgotten."

"Did you ever see her with anything you could describe as 'personal?'" Asuka shot back.

"I think it's worth finding out," Shinji said assertively as he opened the foyer cabinet, finding nothing but a slick folded raincoat and compact umbrella.

Asuka sighed, making her way down the remainder of the hall. "If you insist, but I don't think we're going to find--"

She entered the main room and her footsteps halted with her words. The Sun streamed in through one of the half-opened curtains, its light bending over the unmade bed and across the floor. A pair of pastel blue pajamas lay in a small crumpled heap next to a folding chair between the bed and the closet on the opposite wall. A circular rack for drying clothes hanging suspended near the bed bobbed in the new current of air introduced from opening the door, providing the only movement in an otherwise empty and unfeeling residence.

"Did she really live like this?" Asuka asked in disbelief, then remembered that nightmare she had before Aoba returned. <"I just sit around in my bare concrete room,"> she recalled tensely, brushing her hand over her neckline. <How could I have known back then?>

Shinji approached the doorway and surveyed the room over her shoulder. "It was like this when I came here by myself and with Toji. Ayanami spent so much time at school and NERV, I don't think she was here very much. I like to think that's what she did. At least she visited us at Misato-san's sometimes."

She did not acknowledge Shinji's last statement; in fact she had barely heard most of what he said as she moved further into the room. He remained standing in the doorway and watched her for a moment, before disappearing back down the dark hall to investigate the kitchenette and bathroom. Asuka set her cane against the wall as she slid the closet door open.

Suspended from simple wire hangers were four identical buttoned dress shirts, white in colour, followed by four familiar teal jumper skirts. Behind those was a long-sleeved solid black knee-length dress with a folded white collar and cuffs, striking her as something a girl would be made to wear for a funeral or church service. She pulled the door open further and saw in the deeper shadows several more similarly conservative dresses of various neutral colours, neatly creased and with their price tags still attached. <Never worn,> Asuka thought to herself, <maybe not even tried on.> Before pulling the door shut and moving onto the dresser by the window, she checked to see if anything was on the shelf above the clothing rod, but saw nothing. She took her cane and carried it over with her to the dresser.

Overlooking a small stack of textbooks, she felt discouraged as she looked through each drawer starting from the top: underwear, all white; black socks in the middle-left, the right empty. The last drawer was filled with pajamas identical to the pair on the floor, long-sleeved, short-sleeved, in various light pastel shades, all like something one would receive during a hospital stay. A comparatively vibrant line of colour caught her attention from the bottom of the middle stack, and she dug down for it.

What Asuka pulled out and unfolded was a small red dress, made for a very young girl, done in the style of a jumper with pink portions for the sleeves and neck, a large white collar, and a tied string bow with two little white puffs at the ends. She turned the dress over a few times and took notice that while it had been worn with frequency, it was still in sturdy condition. Despite finding it hard to imagine Rei Ayanami being a child and wearing such a thing, she thought it might be worth consideration, and so pushed the drawer shut and folded it back up. She tolerated the ache through her knees as she stood up, but a reflecting glint from a piece of glass next to her feet caught her attention: Surrounded by remnants of lens was a broken pair of glasses.

"Shinji come in here!" she called out while picking them up. Bits of loose glass fell out of the frames as she held them close to her face, peering out of focus through what little remained connected inside. The blur of Shinji poked his head through the doorway.

"What is it?" he asked, walking over to her.

"I didn't know Ayanami had glasses," Asuka replied, holding them out to him. "Did you ever see her wear these?"

Shinji did not answer her at first, recognising them immediately. "I don't think she did. I . . . found those when I was here the first time. The lenses were already cracked."

"They don't really look like something a girl would wear," she said, examining them again. "More like they belong to an older man."

"Do you think so?"

"I'm positive that any girl with fashion sense would never wear these," she answered. "So they could have been someone else's and meant something to her."

"They could have been my father's."

"Maybe. Do you know of anything your dad did for her?"

He thought for a couple of seconds. "He saved her life once, shortly before I came here, when Unit Zero went berserk."

"But then why would she break them?"

"Maybe she was angry."

"Do you think she'd really be the type to break things when angry?"

"Ah," Shinji replied dejectedly, then thought again. "She probably knew what was going to happen to her on that last day; maybe she broke them as a statement."

"A statement?"

"That everything for her was over."

Asuka considered the idea and nodded. "There's a case for them here on the dresser." She gently set the glasses inside and shut the case closed with a snap, but continued to look at it in her hands. Another memory entered her mind; one she knew was real and genuine.

"Shinji," she began, "do you remember once running into Ayanami at the train station above Headquarters, not long after you were . . . trapped in Unit One?"

"Yeah. I saw you there, too." As he answered she also recalled the momentary look he gave to her over his shoulder across the distance of the terminal, and stifled a return of the emotional reaction it provoked within her at that contemporary time.

"What'd you two talk about?"

There was a short delay before he answered. "We didn't say very much: She asked how I was feeling and said that it was good to see me ready to resume active duty."

Asuka looked down again to the case in her hand, then to the dress draped over her arm.

"This isn't right," she said distantly.

"What isn't?"

"All of this!" Her eyes shot back to him. "Our place is filled with things that are important or mean something to us; Misato's old room has barely been touched and you kept the cord from her necklace. Shigeru has stuff from his old apartment, even LPs and a guitar that doesn't work without electricity. But these are the only two things in Ayanami's apartment that don't serve some practical purpose. That's not right. Her life was totally empty.

"When I first met Ayanami," she continued, "I tried to make friends with her in my own conceited way. And when that didn't work, I decided it would have been a waste of my time to try any further. So instead I belittled and insulted her any chance I could; called her 'Wonder Girl' and accused her of being a spineless robot and a doll. When did you come here the first time?"

"Um, shortly before the Fifth Angel showed up and Operation Yashima."

"See? You found out all about this the same time you met her. I didn't know this was how she was living! Maybe if I learned about it when I got here. Maybe if I had to bring something to her for school like Suzuhara did. Maybe you should have told me. She didn't deserve this and she didn't deserve how I treated her!"

"Asuka, don't be so hard on yourself. You really can't do anything about it now."

"I know," she huffed, "she's dead. But I can't avoid feeling guilty about it. Did you find anything in the bathroom?"

"No," Shinji replied.

"Then let's go," she said quickly as she wrapped the little dress around the glasses case and picked up her cane, "and take these with us."

"Take those?" he asked.

"It's obvious that the glasses were important to her. And the dress, otherwise she wouldn't have kept it long after she outgrew it. At least let me take them back for my own sake, as a reminder that she wasn't just an emotionless doll: you were the one who said you didn't want anything to stay here forgotten."

Shinji nodded and they made their way across the room and down through the darkened hallway back to the front door. One of the envelopes was dislodged from the bulge of junk mail and landed on the unfinished floor. He looked down and thought momentarily before ripping the entire mass of paper out of the slot with both hands, and the cover plate flipped back down with a metallic snap. Carrying the flyers, letters, and magazines under his arm, Shinji and Asuka walked alongside each other in the direction of the stairwell.

----------

"Are you alright?" Shinji asked.

"I'm fine," Asuka replied and gave him a forced, downhearted smile as the pair walked along the length of a pedestrian overpass. The upper levels of the apartment building they called home peaked through the variable urban horizon. "It's just hard not to still feel a little guilty. Did you know that she never even dreamed? She said as much once."

"Nothing was your fault, Asuka. Ayanami was raised like that since she was born."

"You said she was a copy of your mother, didn't you? How can you be sure she was even born like us in the first place?"

"I can't," he said after a moment, "but Ritsuko-san showed Misato-san and I a room in Terminal Dogma where she said Ayanami was born and lived there for a while. It looked a lot like her place now, maybe a little worse."

"Do you know how long she lived in that room?"

"Ritsuko-san only said something like the first few years of her life. Toji and Kensuke told me that Ayanami transferred to school a year before we did, so maybe--"

"--she could have lived there for years," Asuka completed, "like some kind of science experiment."

Shinji voiced an affirmative and a silence elapsed, during which he felt like there was something he should or needed to say, but was interrupted by Asuka.

"Do you miss her?"

He looked over, and his gaze met with her gray left eye.

"I know from what you said," she elaborated, "there's no way she could have survived. But do you ever wish, if there was a way, that she could be here with us now?"

"Ayanami was so distant at first," Shinji said, "and hard to relate to. But over time she was easier to approach, I don't know if because I got used to her or the other way around. Later after she was killed and came back different, and I found out what her real purpose was, I was afraid of her. Even until that last day, I was afraid of her. But during Complementation she helped me see what going through with it would really mean. It's sad that she had to disappear, 'into our hearts' as she and Kaworu said. I would like to see her again."

"Do you think she'd forgive me?" Asuka asked. Shinji stopped in midstep and looked at her again.

"I think so."

She smiled as they stood at the end of the overpass. The serenity of the scene was broken by a distinct, shrill squawk behind them, to which they quickly turned around.

Standing at knee height in the middle of the walkway was a familiar warm-water penguin with a metal collar, looking up at them with unreadable green eyes.

"Pen Pen!" Shinji and Asuka cried out simultaneously, then knelt down closer to the animal's own eyeline.

"I never thought we'd see you again," Asuka said to the creature as she scratched the back of his neck, then turned to Shinji. "Misato gave him to Hikari when her family left the city, didn't she?"

"Misato-san thought it was getting too dangerous for him to stay. I don't know where they went."

"He could have come from anywhere on the main island!" Asuka scratched Pen Pen affectionately again, who glanced back and forth between the two teenagers in front of him. "That's amazing--traveling so far just to come back home. I hope he isn't starving. We should bring him back right away."

Shinji nodded. "Come on, Pen Pen, we're going home." The large bird squawked in response and took off, going straight between them. He walked ahead of Shinji and Asuka as if leading the way back to the building, claws rapidly clicking against the surface of the road.

----------

The reunited trio passed through the foyer of their apartment to the kitchen. Shinji picked a sealed tin of fish and, following an inconvenient amount of time searching through multiple cabinets, located Pen Pen's food dish. Pen Pen hooted with eagerness as the scent of fish drifted out from the can while Shinji opened it. Asuka held up the wrapped case in her hand.

"I'm going to put these away," she said as Shinji set the filled dish in front of Pen Pen, then walked through the other doorway and headed straight for the bedroom hallway. The penguin bent over and began to eat, tipping his head back as each fish went down his throat. Asuka returned and took a can of soda from a rack within the non-powered refrigerator before sitting down at the table and letting her legs stretch out across the wood floor underneath. She snapped the tab open while letting a tired sigh release from her lips, and drank the lukewarm beverage slowly as she and Shinji watched Pen Pen before a knock from the front door caught their attention.

"We heard you two coming back in," Aoba said as he and Sora entered the kitchen. "So how--"

"What is that thing?!" Sora gasped and pointed in Pen Pen's direction. The animal made a croaking sound as he broke away from his meal and turned his head in her direction. Blobs of sauce covered the bottom half of his beak, which he licked away with a couple swipes of his tongue.

"That's Pen Pen," Shinji answered. "He was Misato-san's pet."

"He's a warm-water penguin that she got from a genetics lab," Asuka continued. "Much smarter than a regular one."

Sora made several hesitant steps over to where Pen Pen stood and knelt down. She reached out her hand, fingers pulled cautiously inward, and he made a short croakish, gurgling sound in his throat, looking straight into her eyes. With some lingering reluctance, she completed her motion and rubbed Pen Pen's head, to which he closed his eyes and hummed a warm tone. A weak smile sweetly spread across her lips.

"I remember seeing him at that 'party' the one time," Aoba said. "How come we haven't seen him around?"

"Misato-san gave him away to our class representative after Ayanami self-destructed," Shinji said. "She didn't feel Pen Pen was safe, and Horaki really liked him, so she gave him to her before her family evacuated."

"And he made his way all the way back here?" Aoba asked to himself more than anyone else in the room. "That's remarkable. What does he eat?"

"Almost everything," said Asuka. "Misato used to feed him all kinds of stuff."

"He prefers fish," Shinji added, "but likes jerky a lot, too."

Aboa returned to his initial inquiry. "What did you find at Ayanami's place?"

"A dress she wore when she was little," Asuka answered, "and a broken pair of glasses we think probably belonged to Shinji's dad."

"Commander Ikari's old glasses?" Sora turned away from Pen Pen for a moment. "The ones he lost in the activation test when Unit Zero went berserk?"

Shinji nodded, surprised that his and Asuka's assessment had been correct.

"Those glasses were literally one of the only things in her whole apartment that she kept for sentimental value," Asuka said. "There was practically nothing else--almost like a prison cell."

"The First Children always seemed to be the most favoured by Commander Ikari," Sora said. "I always assumed her lodgings would have reflected that sentiment."

"The Commander considered Ayanami little more than a tool," Aoba replied. "If he thought anything else of her, it was probably just as a bitter reminder of his wife."

Pen Pen squawked as he finished his meal, then made his way to the refrigerated box in the corner of the kitchen. Extending a finger-like claw from his flipper, he reached out and pressed the topmost button next to the door. It depressed into the device's casing with a plastic click, but did nothing else. The penguin looked at the control panel for a second before pressing the button several times more in an attempt to open it. Shinji knelt down next to him.

"Sorry, we don't have electricity anymore, so your room doesn't work."

Pen Pen turned his head and blinked at him. His flipper dropped back down to his side, and he walked away, disappearing into the living room.

----------

Aoba and Sora walked side by side on the sidewalk, passing along the various empty buildings and storefronts, lacking the tools they typically carried on their persons whenever they ventured outside. It was Aoba's suggestion that the two of them go out on that late afternoon just for a casual walk, without their usual purpose of scavenging or exploration. She had accepted his offer without hesitation. The pair could easily have walked on the empty and deserted road itself, but taking the sidewalk helped to contribute an authentic feeling to the experience.

He attempted to engage her in conversation at several points during their light sojourn, always tiptoeing around the one major issue he knew was still on her mind. Therefore, a majority of the topics he brought up had a tendency to be trivial or irrelevant observations. Every time Sora would respond with a few short words or vocal affirmations, her voice evident of her attention being tuned in another direction.

They eventually came across a small and modest park, one that possessed an emphasis on urban over rural design ethics. A blank, modernist fountain, its tiered basins filled with stagnant algae-covered rainwater, dominated the centre. Pale bricks radiated outward in a rounded grid to an alternating circle of painted iron lampposts and benches. A border of grass and short trees closed the park. At Sora's suggestion, they sat down on one of the closer benches.

Aoba found the ensuing stretch of silence agonising. He looked over at Sora seated next to him, her hands held together in her lap, eyes downward and focusing on nothing in particular. Waiting a little longer, as much as he thought he could tolerate, he finally spoke.

"So how are you handling it?"

Sora looked back at him momentarily. "Better than I thought I would be," she sighed. "A few days ago I thought it'd be like when I first got here all over again. I'm not saying it isn't hard, but in consideration of everything else, it almost seems like just another part of a larger, overarching tragedy. But it's still particularly painful, because now I really have lost everything."

"Lost?"

"Our home was destroyed, my husband was killed, and I didn't even have the ring that merely a moment before had still been on my finger. After I returned to my senses, the knowledge that I was--that I believed I was pregnant gave me some hope. Hope that there was still a little bit of him that survived and would continue to exist. But I have nothing now except for the memories of what seems like a lifetime ago," she halted and breathed a short, sardonic laugh, "and who knows if those might be next to go."

"I really wish there was more I could do to help," Aoba said dejectedly.

"Don't," Sora replied. "You've done so much for me already. It's enough that you're here right now sitting next to me: I don't think I could get through this without you."

"From what you said--about the time you were trying to get pregnant--it sounded like you were really looking forward to being a mother."

"I was," she said, looking out toward the fountain and sky beyond it. "It was something I've always anticipated, since I was a girl. I'd never been happier then I was during that first week."

"Do you still want to have a baby?"

Sora hesitated with her answer, and still stared out in the direction of the inactive fountain.

"Yes." Solitary tears escaped from her down turned eyes.

"I can help you. When you're ready for it, I mean."

Sora turned to Aoba, initially in surprise, but soon smiling with gratitude.

"Thank you," she said softly, almost without breath, and reached her hand out to caress his own. Aoba smiled back as he slipped his hand around and gripped hers tightly, before they both moved in for a long kiss.

"Let's go home," Aoba said following their disconnect. Sora nodded and he assisted her to her feet. They held hands all the way back to the apartment, as the sky began a transition from blue to gold in conjunction with the lowering Sun.

----------

The Sun continued its approach to the horizon, bathing the urban landscape in shades of gold and red. Shinji observed the gradual spectacle from the edge of the balcony, drinking what remained in a can of fruit juice. Behind him Asuka reclined in the chaise lounge next to the table, watching the tinted and shaded clouds drift across the sky above. Pen Pen laid in her lap, asleep with his flippers crossed over his stomach, which moved synchronised to faint, vocal notes of breath. Asuka let out a long sigh and moved her eyes away from the sky, bringing them to a blurred focus onto the back of the boy in front of her.

"Today was my sister's birthday," she said suddenly.

"You have a sister?" Shinji asked startled, turning away from the sunset.

"STEP-sister," Asuka corrected him sternly, keeping her voice low for the sake of Pen Pen, but then shook her head. "No, really she was my half sister. Sabine. Papa and my stepmother had her a couple years before Mama died."

"How old is--ah, sorry--how old would she be?"

"She would have been twelve years old."

"The teacher I lived with didn't have any children of his own," Shinji said, "so I grew up alone. I sometimes wondered what it would have been like to have a sister or brother. Did you get along?"

"No, not really. When they first took me in, I was really young and Sabine was practically still a baby, but I didn't want anything to do with her: she was 'that woman's child,' I overheard Mama say a few times, and naturally I hated her almost immediately and was really mean to her. She would follow me all over the house and outside. I couldn't stand it so I would run to make her trip and fall, or just push her away. Sometimes I would hit her, for no reason. That stopped as we got older, and we simply avoided each other as much as possible."

Asuka coughed lightly, causing Pen Pen to stir before returning to sleep.

"As I got older and more involved with NERV and Eva, I naturally started to receive an increasing amount of attention from Papa, and even from her mother. Sabine only visited Third Branch a few times, on the rare occasion when there was no possibility of her staying home. She saw Unit Two in action a couple of times near the end, before it and I were shipped out to Japan. She said it was amazing and I was incredible, but you could tell under the surface that she was jealous, and why wouldn't she be? Compared to me she was nothing."

"I think there's a nicer way you could say that," Shinji interjected.

"Why shouldn't I say it like that?" Asuka shot back. "It's true isn't it? I was part of something everyone was convinced would save the world, while her biggest achievement was with her ballet classes. She was just a regular girl."

Shinji sat down in the chair on the other side of the table between them. "Do you regret how you treated her?"

Asuka did not answer immediately. "I don't know. Like I said, I hated her from the very beginning, even before we met, thanks to my mother. We hardly talked to each other, never even had a real conversation. Her compliment to me for piloting Unit Two was probably the longest exchange we had in a long time, and I haven't spoken to her since we said goodbye to each other when I left. I never really knew if she outright hated me back, but now it all seems so far away and petty. I only started thinking about all of this the other day; the whole thing with Ayanami made me remember her, so maybe it is regret."

"It shouldn't be so hard to admit you did something wrong," Shinji said.

"Unfortunately pride has always been one of the main differences between you and me."

The remaining sliver of the Sun disappeared behind the distant hills. Asuka put her arms around Pen Pen and closed her eyes in reflective thought as the bird continued to sleep.

----------

Thick treads of dirty combat boots scraped on the pavement with every heavy step, occasionally grinding against stray pebbles and dried clumps of rain-washed soil. The cuffs of black trousers, caked by mud and urban debris, were pulled down over the throat of each boot. An open flak jacket was worn over an untucked battledress shirt, both as black in colour as the trousers.

He swore that he heard a car driving not very far away from the intersection he had been standing at several minutes earlier. For all he knew, it could have just been a phantom manifestation from within his own mind, a hallucination provoked by the previous several hours of unending solitude. But after following in the general direction he assumed it had gone, it began to look like his conviction of its authenticity had been correct, as he began to trace what seemed like the sound of voices coming from a particular location in some proximity. The voices of other people. The first other voices he had heard for the entire day besides his own.

He came to an overpass, and on the opposite side was an apartment complex divided into three identical buildings, each more than ten stories in height. In front of the central building was the source of the voices: Two adults and two teenagers, all surrounding a car and removing books from it. From the sheer distance he could determine little else about them, other than the long red hair of one of the teenagers could mean she was a foreigner. His foot landed on the surface of the overpass as he made his first step to approach.

----------

If it weren't for taking a wayward glance back toward the road, Aoba would not have been the first to see the stranger step away from the overpass. As the new individual walked over, he maintained a stone expression despite his heart beating so forcibly within his chest. He thought back to his initial encounter with Sora following her own return, wishing again for the simple sake of security that his handgun was on his person rather than laying in a strongbox up in the apartment. Especially when his beating heart nearly skipped the moment he realised what he had initially assumed was dark clothing turned out to be most of the battledress of the Japan Strategic Self Defense Force.

"Shigeru-san, what are you looking--" Sora cut herself off as she turned her head to the direction Aoba faced. Shinji and Asuka, standing on the opposite side of the car, also looked over following Sora's interrupted remark.

The stranger stopped several paces in front of where Aoba and Sora stood next to the car, and he and Aoba appeared to stare each other down as a stretch of silence elapsed. He was tall, roughly matching Aoba's own height, but with a stockier frame, and his hair was cropped short. His face was round with blunt features that had an outwardly air of unfriendliness, with heavy brows over dark eyes. The stranger cleared his throat before opening his mouth.

"Are you four the only people here?" His voice was clear and a bit higher than Aoba's, with a gruffness from the Old Tokyo area.

"As best as we know," Aoba answered. "You're the first new person to come back in over a month."

"Then I better introduce myself: I'm Sergeant Kiyoshi Takishima."

"So you are SSDF."

"Yeah, that must mean you guys are NERV, aren't you?"

Aoba nodded. "I'm First Lieutenant Shigeru Aoba," he began. "This is Second Lieutenant Sora Kinjo, and these are--"

"--the Second and Third Children," Takishima completed, as Asuka and Shinji looked at him blanky in surprise, "pilots of Evangelion Unit Two and Unit One, respectively. You kids are lucky; we all had orders to kill both of you on sight." He suddenly pointed a finger to Asuka. "And it sounded like you put up a hell of a fight against us with the Red Unit."

"'Sounded like?'" Sora questioned.

"My squad got cut off and trapped in a corridor somewhere on Level Seven by that damn Bakelite crap you released everywhere," Takishima answered her. "Most teams made it through but mine wasn't so lucky: We were shortchanged in equipment and had to sit out the rest of the battle, listening to what was going on over the radio channels. That lasted a while until the second explosion after the Purple Unit activated. The radio went dead and it was a lot of nothing punctuated by the shocks of huge explosions until I finally blacked out all of a sudden--though I swear my second in command just disappeared out of her clothes at the same moment--and ended up at that beach down there with . . . I don't what the hell that thing is out there. I bet you know all about it, but I'm not really interested to hear right now."

He took a deep breath and looked specifically at Aoba. "You said I was the first person you've seen in over a month," Takishima said, "so how long has it been since the day of the assault? By the looks of things, I'm guessing a while."

"It's the second week of February," Aoba replied. "Forty-six days have passed since Third Impact."

"So it was true. NERV did go ahead and pulled off that event you and the UN kept saying you were trying to prevent."

"I'm afraid it's much more complicated than that, but like you said, you're not interested right now."

"You'd be right. Are you the one who set up all those markers that led to this part of town?"

"Yes, I did." Aoba recalled that just over a week ago, he and Sora had spent several long days working on that project.

"That was a good idea," said Takishima, "but they probably shouldn't have gone so close to that downed heavy fighter. Or you should have made sure you took this out." He reached around to his back pocket and held out a handgun, identical to the one Aoba had found in the same aircraft so long ago. At the same time Aoba noticed Takishima also had several magazines for the gun in his pockets, and he began to have some regret in the back of his mind for setting up the markers, feeling like his own gun was as far away from him as it could ever be.

"So now what?" Aoba asked.

"If you're expecting some kind of final showdown, forget it," Takishima replied bluntly. "This isn't the Twilight Zone. I took this for the same reason you probably took the other one; my own protection. Just letting you know that from a purely tactical point of view, you screwed up." He slipped the gun back into his pocket, and looked down to the street that ran parallel to the apartment complex, specifically at two additional cars that sat parked on the pavement. "Are those down there yours?"

"They are," Aoba answered. "I didn't own a car back when I lived here, but they're ones I've found since I came back, and there's a few more elsewhere. I've been collecting gasoline from cars around the city for the last couple weeks, storing it in a truck depot nearby, so fuel isn't too big of an issue. You can go ahead and take that two-door sedan. I don't need it anymore."

"Thanks," Takishima said, turning back. His eye traced the outline of Sora's figure before looking back to Aoba. "So is she yours too?"

"What?!"

"Yes, I'm his," said Sora curtly, gripping Aoba's arm.

The soldier cracked a smile. "Not bad."

"Look," Aoba said with frustration, "if you need someplace to stay, you're more than welcome to find an apartment here; the whole complex is almost entirely pre-furnished."

"It's worth consideration, but I think I'll go find a place of my own somewhere else."

Aoba was prepared to protest debate the matter, but a glance at Sora's expression convinced him to drop it. "Well at least let us give you something to eat, enough for a couple of days. We have more than enough so it wouldn't be a problem."

"Again, thanks," Takishima said, "but I saw a convenience store that hadn't been broken into yet not very far from here, so I should be fine."

He nearly voiced another protest, but was cut off by a subtle jab in his side from Sora. "If he wants to go off on his own then just let him!" she whispered harshly.

"Okay, fine!" he whispered back.

"Don't any of you worry about me, I'll do fine alone: I've had the right sort of training." Takishima made a flick of a gesture to Shinji and Asuka as he turned around. "See you later, kids."

The four of them watched in silent observance as their latest companion walked back in the direction from whence he came, when something suddenly sparked inside of Aoba's mind. He took a few running steps and called out.

"Hey! Takishima, one last thing! What did you see?"

Takishima stopped and looked back. "What did I see?"

"At the very end, before you came back. Did you see anything?"

Takishima was silent, and only stared at Aoba for several long seconds, seemingly in thought.

"I don't remember," he said finally, voice flat and emotionless.

And with that he continued walking back toward the overpass.

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-END OF CHAPTER SIX-