It's been a long time, for which I apologise, but here is Chapter Two.
Anyway, I hope that you enjoy it, and I'll do my best to get the later chapters out at a faster pace.
Neon Genesis Evangelion
The End of Evangelion
Final: From Her Heart
Written by Spanky The Dolphin 26 July 2003 - 16 January 2004
Legal Disclaimer: Neon Genesis Evangelion Copyright GAiNAX / Project Eva. - TV Tokyo
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Chapter Two: The Morning After
TOKYO-3 - 2015 AD
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Shinji quietly shut the door to apartment 402 behind him as he stepped into the residence of Rei Ayanami, the First Children. "Excuse me," he said aloud to announce his arrival, "it's Ikari." He hesitated to step further into the apartment, but when there was no immediate reply he began to take off his shoes and stepped into the hallway that ran through the middle of the residence. "I'm coming in, Ayanami," he called out. Again he was met with total silence, the only sound being the regular mechanical pounding from a construction project nearby. Misato's words from the night before echoed in his mind as he walked down the hallway.
<"Well, you've got an official excuse to go to Rei's place now. This is your chance, isn't it?">
The stark and barren appearance of the main room surprised him. Shinji glanced around for anything obvious that would indicate that the room's occupant was a girl: clothes scattered on the floor; magazines; posters; dolls or childhood toys. But he found none of those. The few items that actually were in the room weren't very indicative of any sort of lifestyle, but just meager existence. <Is this how Ayanami lives?> he asked himself in disbelief. He also noticed several odd items: unraveled bandages near her bed; a bloodstained pillow and a box full of bloody bandages. For some reason, Shinji's attention centered on a pair of glasses that were resting on a end table at the other side of the room. He walked across the room and picked them up to inspect them closer. The first thing he noticed was that the lenses were cracked and the bows were slightly warped, as if subjected to an intense heat source. "Are these hers?" he asked aloud, thinking that they didn't seem like a style a girl would wear. Then for no particular reason, Shinji decided to put the glasses on.
He was surprised when the relative silence was suddenly interrupted by the sound of a door sliding shut in the hallway, and Shinji slowly turned around to look in the direction of its source. He gasped when he saw Ayanami standing on the opposite side of the room through cracked glass, but only because of the fact that other than a towel around her shoulders, she was completely nude. She was looking directly at him, with a blank but surprised expression on her face. Shinji nervously swallowed and tired to state why he was in her apartment, but "Ah, well . . ." was all he could stutter out. Ayanami let the towel slip around her shoulders, covering herself like a vest. As she began to walk towards Shinji, her expression suddenly changed: she narrowed her eyes and her mouth turned downward into a small frown of displeasure. The boy began to mentally panic. Was she going to slap him? Punch him? Yell at him? He didn't know, and while the girl approached closer, he tried to excuse his actions and behavior. He managed to exclaim, "Uh, I didn't mean . . ." before she reached up to his face and began to pull the glasses off of him.
Startled by her gesture and not fully aware of what she was doing, Shinji panicked and began to struggle against the girl as she tried to remove the offending accessory. He took a step backwards but slipped, grabbing onto Ayanami in an attempt to stop the motion of his body, before crashing directly into her dresser. Ayanami lost her footing trying to simultaneously get the boy off of her and finish taking the glasses off of his face. Both Children spun around as they tumbled over each other, and Ayanami's towel fluttered in the air with her body's downward motion, while Shinji closed his eyes in anticipation of the rapidly approaching impact. The clatter of the glasses hitting the floor was drowned out by Shinji's own body slamming against the cold surface. Shinji opened his eyes to see Ayanami looking directly into his while she held herself up: her hands on either side of her heads and her knees straddling around his waist. Her towel was damply hanging from around her neck and spread out over his shoulders. Shinji's heart began to beat with such force that he thought it would burst at any moment as he stared up at Ayanami's face, while she looked down onto his with her usual expressionless gaze.
They stayed frozen in those positions for several seconds, although for Shinji it could have been an hour. Suddenly Ayanami began to slowly lower herself, and he could feel her body gradually make contact with his own. With her face just centimetres away from the boy's, Ayanami shut her eyes and brought her lips to his in a long, gentle kiss. Shinji remained motionless, his brain running a blank thought while she kissed him so softly that he could barely feel it. Ayanami was soon kissing him repeatedly, each being more intense than the one that preceded it. By the time she moved her hands behind his head to cradle it, Shinji was beginning to become less tense, and gradually started to kiss her back. This prompted Ayanami to kiss Shinji more passionately, and she moaned softly while slipping her tongue into his mouth.
"Oh, Ikari-kun . . ." Ayanami sighed. She shifted her body and released the back of Shinji's head, and broke away from their kissing for a moment. "What is it that you wish for?" she whispered in his ear. Shinji thought he saw a brief grin appear on her face before she returned her lips to his.
**********
Shinji suddenly found himself back on the floor of Misato's living room, his body curled in a fetal position. He remained still: momentarily confused while his consciousness drifted back into reality, partially trapped in the region of the mind between slumber and alertness. When the feeling of disorientation passed, he rolled over onto his back and looked up above his head. At first all he could see were varying levels of blurry light, but soon his tired eyes were able to regain their focus and an image of the dim ceiling with the projected forms of balcony windows cut out by natural sunlight became clear to him.
"Ah, just a dream." He took a deep breath and let his body relax. <Of course it was just a dream,> he thought. <It didn't happen at all like that. Besides, Ayanami wouldn't . . .> Shinji's attention focused back onto the dream, and he became aware that his arousal was still present as he thought of Rei. Those thoughts were pushed away as he suddenly began to feel a dry, bitter lump in his throat. His arousal lingered, but he no longer felt comfortable with his thoughts. He felt like a deviant.
When the feeling of uneasiness finally subsided, Shinji sat up and turned around to the direction of the balcony. His joints still felt sore from having to carry Asuka through the ruins all last night, but he was relieved that they no longer burned from exhaustion. Surveying the dim sunlit room surrounding him, he took notice of how quite and lifeless everything was. For one of the first times in his life, it was truly silent. There was no hum of appliances, no buzzing from electric lights, no air conditioner, no sounds of traffic, no cicadas shrilly chirping, no one else.
The light shining through the curtains caught his interest, so he slowly stood up and walked over to the balcony entrance. Shinji pulled one of the curtains open to look outside, and at first the light was so bright to him that he had to shut his eyes before they could adjust. He blinked as the world gradually darkened and came into focus, and his heart sank when he quickly recognised the dream world of last night sprawled out below, now illuminated by the bright sun. By the position of the sun in the sky and of the shadows below, Shinji could guess that it was sometime around Noon, meaning that he probably got the equivalent of an entire night's sleep.
While he looked up he could still faintly see the ring of blood in the sky, and in the distance was the giant half-head of Lilith in the sea of LCL, although Shinji gave it no more than a fleeting glance. Closer was the gaping crater left by the absent Geofront, and the remains of Tokyo-3 around it. Under the light of the sun, this alien landscape somehow became more familiar to the boy, and he could feel slightly more comfortable.
Shinji released the curtain and turned his head to the right. He could see the dark entrance of the hallway in the corner of his eye, and his thoughts quickly switched their focus onto Asuka. Shinji initially felt hesitant to check on her, afraid of running the risk of catching her temper, but finally decided to take it. <Angry or not,> he thought as he walked across the room and down the shaded hallway, <I have to see how she's doing. For her own good.>
When he reached the door to his room he lifted a trembling hand and lightly knocked three times. There was no response from inside so he knocked on the door another three times. After a second extended period of silence he tried to call out her name, but his voice cracked before he reached the second syllable and the rest tumbled into inaudibility. His fingers reached out and gripped the door handle tightly as he whispered more to himself than to her that he was going to open the door, and then slowly slid it open just enough so that he could look inside.
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Shinji's room was illuminated by indirect sunlight that flowed through the closed curtains, casting everything in a darkly pale light. Peeking through the crack, Shinji was only able to see part of Asuka's head due to his limited field of vision, so he slid the door open further to lean his body through the doorframe, which granted him a far superior view of the room and its contents. He first noticed Asuka's discarded Plug Suit lying in a wrinkled pile on the floor in front of his bed, and then looked upon the girl herself as she lay on top of the covers. Shinji was unable to see her face from his position, but noticed that the bandages around her head and arm had not come undone during the night, and he felt relief as her chest slowly rose and fell in a steady rhythm accompanied by the soft sound of her breath. He watched her for more than a minute as she breathed before actually noticing any detail, and mentally gasped in surprise at what he saw.
The entirety of Asuka's body, from the base of her neck down to her toes, was covered with numerous injuries. Bruises of varying shapes and sizes dotted her skin in multiple ill-coloured shades of brown, blue, and purple. Heavy scratches appeared lit up against the background flesh like jagged lines of neon tubes. An endless number of cuts and scrapes coated her like a scabbed-over road map. Dominating this terrible work were seven enormous bruises, each the size of a fist and nearly black in colour, scattered from her chest to her knees. Shinji realised that he had been staring at her for a long time, and finally took a breath before he withdrew from the door and slowly slid it shut behind him.
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Shinji walked into the dining room with a tired gait in his step, as if he had to pull his feet along behind him to move forward. He looked around and noticed that on a superficial sense, the room looked much like it did back when he had first come to live with Misato, with the table's surface mostly clear except for a few empty bottles, cans, and assorted wrappers. The clutter carried over to the counter against the wall, but overall the room wasn't what he would describe as messy: more that it needed some tidying up. On his left was Pen Pen's refrigerated room, which unpowered stood silently like a monument to the past. Shinji recalled briefly that Misato sent the penguin to live with Hikari Horaki, Class II-A's representative, and knew it wasn't likely that either one was still alive. He turned and looked into the kitchen area of the room, specifically at the counter space next to the sink where most meals were prepared. <At this time,> he thought to himself, <if it were any other day, we'd probably be cleaning up after lunch.> He let out a sigh as he walked into the kitchen. <But not anymore.>
He decided to take a quick survey on the amount of food in the apartment and started to look through the kitchen cabinets. After a short time he discovered that while a few things would have to be thrown away, there were enough dry noodle packets, instant meals, and even emergency rations to last the two of them several weeks: at least until they could get more from the local convenience store. He took notice that Misato's supply of beer had remained relatively well supplied, but more importantly that the apartment only had enough water to last the two of them until the end of the week. Shinji realised that they would have to get more as soon as possible. <I hope Asuka is well enough by then to help,> he thought, <but that's probably not very realistic . . .>
Shinji closed the refrigerator door and sat down at the table in the dining room, taking a deep breath. He leaned back and closed his eyes, slowly flexing his hand open and close while he thought.
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When she first heard it, the string of sounds was muffled and distant, and she thought it might have been something like a car horn. The second time she heard it, the sound was clearer and more abrasive, and she thought it might have been some kind of alarm. But by the third time she heard it, she was finally awake enough to recognise what it was. The caw of a crow.
Asuka slowly opened her eyes and saw the ceiling above her, faintly lit from outside. She turned her head and tried to focus her eyes on Shinji's alarm clock, but gave up when she realised it was dead. Whatever time it was, Asuka was no longer tired enough to sleep. She sat herself up and let her legs hang down over the edge of the bed, groaning heavily as the aches in her joints gradually faded. Several strands of hair fell into her field of vision, and she raised her hand to brush them away, but stopped when she noticed it was wrapped with a white bandage. She pulled her hand away from her face to get a better look and saw that the bandage actually covered her entire arm, all the way to her shoulder.
<Why the hell is this here?> Asuka thought in groggy bewilderment. <I don't remember getting a-->
She cut off her train of thought when she became aware of the bandage over her eye, as everything suddenly came back to her. The Eva Series and her defeat. Shinji strangling her. Shinji carrying her. Shinji dropping her. Shinji bringing her home. Shinji giving her his room. For what seemed like hours Asuka remained completely still, not letting a single part of her move the slightest as the events of the recent past began to settle, her mind reluctantly accepting them. She finally let her head drop down between her shoulders in a gesture of futility, and the rest of her injuries revealed themselves to her as she set her feet on the floor and stood up.
If it were not for her state of shock, Asuka probably would have immediately become devastated upon discovering what she looked like. But as she was, it was little more than nothing; a trivial insult after the already horrible dream that reality had become. <Now I've lost everything,> she thought. <Everything beautiful about me is gone.> Shutting her eyes, she brushed her hands over the skin of her stomach, and slowly rubbed the wrist of her bandaged arm.
She sighed and realised that standing naked in the middle of Shinji's room while smothering herself with despair probably wasn't the best manner she could preoccupy her time, never mind that she felt as if she hadn't eaten for days. Asuka shifted her weight and took a few steps to look around the room, when she noticed her Plug Suit lying in a crumpled pile in front of the bed. The Suit was no longer in any condition to wear properly, which didn't even enter the girl's mind as she kicked it away from her. <I don't want to see another Plug Suit ever again,> she thought to herself as it flopped and tumbled on the floor halfway across the room.
Asuka began to search around among Shinji's clothes for anything she could wear that would fit her within reason. Eventually she was able to find a red t-shirt and a pair of navy blue shorts. She slipped the shorts on but even after pulling the waist cords out as much as she could and tying them together they were still quite a loose fit and hung down around her hips. Fortunately, as she saw it, the t-shirt was large enough that it would still cover her up. She pulled over her head and pushed her arms through the sleeves, groaning as her bandaged arm ached. Asuka sucked air through clenched teeth when her shoulder suddenly popped as she brought her arms down, but the sharp pain soon ebbed away. A large bruise above her knee was still visible, but as long as the rest of her body was covered up, she didn't care. As more of an afterthought to her appearance, Asuka ran her fingers through her hair before she opened the door and stepped into the hallway, sliding it shut behind her.
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Shinji was lying down in the middle of the living room when he heard the door to his room open and close. He ended the train of thought that he had been following for some time and sat himself up. At the far end of the dimly lit hallway he saw Asuka, wearing some of his clothes. Their eyes met and stayed locked onto each other for several seconds until Asuka's broke off and began to slowly walk down the hallway. Shinji stood up and began to move towards the Second Children.
"Good morning, Asuka," he said. He knew that given their situation, it was actually quite a stupid thing to say, but he didn't have any idea what else he could have said to her. Asuka only gave him a brief glance before jutting her view back to directly in front of her feet.
"Hrm . . . Gntrn Mrgrn . . ." she murmured in response. Shinji stepped well within arm's length of her, and without warning Asuka's hand suddenly shot out and slapped him so hard across the face that he was knocked to the side and tumbled to the floor. His cheek burned as if it was literally on fire, but soon started to throb intensely in pain while his eyes watered. Asuka stepped over his legs and continued walking across the living room.
We're even now," she said with a neutrally icy tone, without looking back at him as she approached the dining room. "Get up." Shinji got to his feet just as Asuka disappeared from his view behind the doorway, holding his wounded cheek. He followed her path and found her seated at the side closest to the doorway, and sat himself down at the opposite end facing toward her. Asuka was in a slumped position, looking down at the table surface in front of her and had her hands folded in her lap.
"How are you feeling?" Shinji asked her.
"Alright, I think," she answered. "I'm still really sore all over. How long was I asleep?"
"More than two days. It's mid-morning of the third day." She exhaled a long breath and Shinji waited a moment before speaking again. "Do you want something to eat or drink? I'm afraid that we don't have very much."
Asuka turned her head slightly and looked at him up through her bangs. "Water's fine now. I'll eat more later." Shinji got out of his chair and walked over to the kitchen, removing the cap from a water bottle that was about a third empty. He took a glass out of a cupboard and filled it with water, further emptying the bottle to the halfway level. Asuka adjusted her position so that she was seated more upright, gently resting her bandaged arm on the table as Shinji returned and set the glass down in front of her before sitting back down on his side. She picked up the glass with her unbandaged arm and took a long sip. The water wasn't cold. It was at room temperature, but that didn't matter at all to her. It was just to help make sure that she didn't die. She took a few more sips and then set the glass back down on the table, resting her hand near its base. Shinji focused his attention onto Asuka's glass for no particular reason, and neither spoke for what seemed like a very long time.
"How did Ayanami die?" Asuka finally broke their silence.
Slightly startled, Shinji broke his concentration away from her glass and looked up at her. "What?"
"Yester--I mean, that night you said that Ayanami was dead. I want to know how she died." She drank more from her glass and gradually swallowed.
He took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. Shinji was able to use the past several days to think over what he could remember from his experience during Third Impact, and while there were still many things that he did not understand, he had been able to figure out a number of issues as best he could. He had to think of the best way to explain things as he understood them to Asuka, considering that she knew a lot less than he did. "Well," he began, pausing for a moment to clear his throat, "Ayanami died because she was involved in Third Impact."
"Involved?" Asuka asked with a tired edge to her voice. "What does that mean? How?"
"Involved like I was," he replied. "Like Unit One and I were. We were acting like some kind of a medium for everything, but Ayanami's role was . . . different from mine."
"How different?"
"It was like she was guiding everything, directing it all into Unit One and me. I look at it now, and it's strange, because I could feel her; almost hear her whispering from inside me."
Asuka seemed to be paying greater attention to what Shinji was saying. "What was so important about Wonder Girl for her to be involved like that? Why her?"
Shinji waited a moment before answering her. "Well, it was actually Lilith--I think that's what Kaworu called her--not Ayanami. Ayanami was just a container for Lilith's spirit.
"Wait, what's Lilith?"
"Lilith is what we originally came from, like how the Angels came from Adam. They're the same type of thing, and Lilith was the Second Angel behind Heaven's Door in Terminal Dogma, but that was just her body." He paused to see if Asuka understood, although he himself wasn't perfectly sure of where he was going was correct.
"I see," she replied, "so what does this Lilith have to do with Ayanami?"
"From what I understand, Kaworu was like a container for Adam's spirit, so it could be kept somewhere safely until it had to be used. I think Ayanami was the same way with Lilith's spirit. She wasn't real like you or me."
"So she was like a robot or android, something like that?" Asuka asked with some puzzlement.
"No, she was real in the sense that she was flesh and blood, but she was a copy. A series of clones that NERV used to recycle the same spirit inside. Ayanami was a copy of my mother, made after she died having her soul put in Unit One." Asuka looked down at her glass and didn't say anything, so he waited before he said anything else.
"Did this all happen after my--my fight with the Eva Series?" she asked.
"Yes. I think that's actually when it started. When I saw what the Evas did to you; what they were doing to Unit Two, I just couldn't handle it, and I snapped."
She looked up at him as she took another sip from her glass. "I know that's kind of a lot to take in right now," Shinji continued, "and I'd rather not say any more until I'm more sure of what went on, so let's end here for today."
"Fine," Asuka replied, moving her eyes from his face to the table space in front of him. Another awkward period of silence occurred.
"You're wearing my clothes?" Shinji asked despite knowing what the obvious answer was, in an attempt to maintain some manner of conversation with her.
Asuka nodded. "I didn't really have a choice. I tried to pick some stuff that I didn't remember you wearing recently, but I guess it really doesn't matter."
"Later we can unpack the boxes in your room, Asuka, so you can wear your own and don't have to sleep in my room. We could easily get that finished before sunset."
"Thanks."
"How do your arm and eye feel?"
"My arm hurts every time I move it, like every joint's been pulled. My eye still hurts a lot, too."
"It might be a good idea to change the bandage. Do you mind if I take a look at it?"
She shook her head and Shinji got up and moved his chair over to her side next to her. Asuka sat up straight and closed her eyes as the bandage was gently removed. The underside of the gauze had soaked in enough blood that most of it was nearly black in colour, and Asuka's eyelids were covered and surrounded with dried blood nearly as dark as that captured by the bandage.
"How does it look?" she asked.
"There's a lot of blood that has dried up," Shinji said as he moved closer. "It looks like you've bled a lot out of your eye, but right now it doesn't seem to be infected. See if you can open it."
Asuka nodded and her right eye opened with ease while her left one remained shut. Her eyelids had been fused together as the surface of blood covering them gradually dried up as she slept. Asuka tried again more forcibly, and succeeded in weakening the layer so that it cracked and flaked off around her lashes. More pieces fell away as she increased her effort, and finally her lashes came loose and her eye snapped open, and what revealed itself to Shinji startled him.
Her left eye was completely bloodshot; the white filled with so much redness that it might as well had always been that colour. Her pupil was so extremely dilated and left virtually no space remaining for her corona, which was visible only as a thin blue line around the edge. A small trickle of blood ran ran down her cheek. Shinji's brief moment of morbid fascination was quickly interrupted by Asuka's terrified scream, which almost made him throw himself out of his chair.
"Asuka, what's wrong?!" he exclaimed.
"Ah! Shin--! I--!" she was breathing heavily, and her rapid breaths interrupted her as she tried to speak. "Oh--! Shinj--! I--! I--!" She coughed as tears welled up in her eyes before finally shouting out "oh God, Shinji, I can't see!!"
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The End of Evangelion
Final: From Her Heart
Chapter 02: Yesterday she cried for what she used to be. Today she cries for what she is.
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Asuka continued to panic. She was wailing hysterically as tears poured from her eyes and hyperventilating, having given up attempts at rational speech and reduced to random vocal noises of fear. At first Shinji was frozen in place next to her, having no idea how to react to such a spectacle. But then it was like an instinct took over and he reached out his hand to her shoulder and began to call out her name. She continued unresponsively, and Shinji finally grabbed her roughly by both shoulders.
"ASUKA!!" he screamed in her face while giving her a hard shake. Asuka stopped suddenly in the middle of a wail. She was trembling and tears still ran down from her eyes, while her lips quivered as she began to breath normally between coughs and chokes. Shinji slowly let go of her when it was clear that she was calm again, although she nearly looked like she was going to vomit.
"I . . . I'm sorry," she stammered," I'm al--I'm alright now." Asuka sniffled cleared her throat with a cough.
I'm sorry, too," Shinji replied. "Can you see anything at all out of your left eye?"
Asuka took a moment to look around the room. "Nothing. Just a dark grey everywhere." She then turned around to look into the living room. "It lightens up a little when I look at the window, but that's it. I can't make anything out."
"It looks like it's suffered a lot of trauma," Shinji said, knowing how much of an understatement it was, "But it might be a good sign that you can at least see something out of it." Asuka nodded nervously, remaining partially skeptical while at the same time accepting Shinji's suggestion. He stood up and walked over to the kitchen area. "It would probably be a good idea to clean it up and put a fresh bandage on it." Shinji looked around inside a few drawers and returned to the table with a wet cloth and a small first-aid kit.
"What was Third Impact like?" Asuka asked when he had finished washing the blood from her eye.
"You mean like how did it feel?" he asked. She nodded affirmatively and Shinji thought as he trimmed the gauze strip. "Most of what I can remember was painful and terrifying. I saw things I didn't want to see, heard things I didn't want to hear; remembered things that happened and things that couldn't have. But near the end I felt calm and relieved."
"I don't remember anything," Asuka said as he began to tape the bandage over her eye. "After I blacked out, all I can recall is feeling a warm sensation briefly, like for just a second I was having the best moment of my life. Then it stopped and I woke up next to you on the shore."
Shinji was done applying the bandage over Asuka's eye and began to put the first-aid items back in the kit. "We should change that every few days, but the one on your arm should probably stay on for a while longer." Asuka pushed her chair back and picked up her glass.
"I'll be out on the balcony for a while." She stood up and walked through the doorway into the living room. "I want to be left alone." Shinji heard the door to the balcony slide open and close behind her. He sighed and began to drum his fingers on the light blue container of the first-aid kit in front of him, then looked down at it. The raised, short-armed red cross stared back up at him, and he pushed the kit over to the other side of the table, where it teetered on the edge, then loudly clattered to the floor.
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Asuka sipped at her glass as she looked over the cityscape that stretched out below her. The buildings on the hill were still mostly intact, but they grew progressively more damaged closer into the valley, until there was nothing but ruins and rubble surrounding the Geofront hole. At the horizon she could barely see a portion of that thin red ring from that night, and in the distance the half-head of that giant white woman. What was left of the face seemed familiar but she had trouble placing it before she finally realised why: she had never seen Rei show such an expression. <So that's what Shinji called Lilith,> she thought to herself. <Lilith . . . Rei . . . Shinji's mom . . . All the same.> Asuka found herself becoming uncomfortable seeing it, so she turned away and emptied her glass with a final sip as she looked back at the valley.
She lifted the glass up and concentrated at how the its surfaces caught the sunlight as she turned it around, then held it straight out in front of her over the balcony's railing and released her grip. The glass sparkled as it tumbled down before exploding into shatters thirty metres below. Her battle with the Eva Series played out again in her head. She studied over what she did and how she reacted, trying to see if there was anything she could have done to prevent her defeat. Other than failing to notice the Eva which threw that Lance of Longinus, she realised that she would have been defeated anyway, as Unit Two would have run out of power and she still would have been just as helpless when they came back to life. <I guess it was just inevitable,> she thought. <I already failed twice before. That was just my "last ride;" my last chance to shine before burning out forever . . .>
She heard the door behind her slide open and turned her head to see Shinji standing halfway through the doorway, doing what he always did when felt he had to apologise and explain himself.
"Um . . ." he stammered, "I know you said that you didn't want to be bothered out here, but I was wondering what you wanted to be done with your Plug Suit."
Asuka looked back out to the world. "I don't care what happens to it now," she replied, "Just throw it out. I'm not that person anymore."
"Alright. Sorry that I bothered you." Shinji began to go back into the apartment when Asuka turned around to face him.
"Stay out here for a minute," she said, "I want to ask you something." Shinji was surprised but did what she asked, resting his arms on the railing. "Do you remember what our reasons for piloting Eva were?"
"I think so," he said. "For Ayanami it was because she was ordered to, and you did it so you could prove that you were better at than anyone else."
"And you did it because you couldn't do anything else," she finished for him and Shinji nodded. "I've lost my reason to live, Shinji."
"Because you can't pilot Eva?" Shinji asked.
"I spent nearly my entire life with Eva. I wasn't really alive unless I was inside it. That's where I lived, where I could express myself, through Eva. When I lost all of that the first time, it was devastating, because there were still others who could do what I no longer could. So I gave up on living, and had to be hospitalised.
"Then they put me in the Entry Plug for the first time in what seemed like ages, not because they wanted me to perform but because they didn't want me to die. So I waited, terrified for my life as explosions went off around Eva. And then I heard her and felt her, all around me inside Eva. There Mama was with me, watching over me.
"Eva finally moved for me, and I was finally alive again, but it didn't last." She pointed out to the Geofront hole as she continued. "Out there was the second time I died, the final time as the Second Children . . . in defeat." She lowered her arm and crossed them over the railing. "So now I've been reborn, and with the Eva Series gone I don't need to live anymore."
"Asuka, you sh--" Shinji began to say.
"I should what?" she interrupted him, "I should think more positively? I should look on the bright side? Should be glad that I'm still alive? Get over myself?" She grew more agitated with each question. "Why the Hell did I come back, anyway?"
"I don't know," Shinji said cautiously. "There's a chance that you only went unconscious when the Eva Series destroyed Unit Two, and your refusal to accept your loss is what separated you."
"What?" Asuka gave Shinji a puzzled glance.
"Uh--never mind, it's complicated."
"Whatever! It's not like it really matters in a Hell hole like this. Everybody's gone and nothing's left; it's just us. She raised up her hand and made a mock regal pose and began sarcastically, "the Invincible Shinji and the Former Second Children: rulers of Hell on Earth! Oh, what an honour it is!" She finished by giving Shinji a curtsy and spat over the edge.
"Don't be--"
"Nothing personal, Shinji," Asuka interrupted him again, "but you're not exactly my first choice for last man on Earth."
"We might not be the last people alive," Shinji said. "Some could come back."
"You mentioned something about that the other night. Do you know how?"
"Near the end, I heard my mother say something about people seeing the walls of their hearts. I guess people that do can come back, but I don't know."
A group of crows suddenly took off from the roof above them and flew out over the city until only their caws could be heard. "When did the birds come back?" Asuka asked.
"Yesterday afternoon," Shinji answered. "They must have been scared off by Third Impact, but so far only the crows have come back." He began to absent-mindedly feel around the inside of his pocket, and pulled out a leather cord.
Asuka noticed his movement and looked over at the item in Shinji's hand. "That's part of Misato's necklace, isn't it?"
"Yeah," Shinji said, "Misato-san gave it to me before she died."
"How did it happen?" Asuka asked.
"On our way to the emergency lift, soldiers fired at us and she got hit. When we reached it, I didn't want to go any further, and she explained to me why I had to pilot Eva. She gave me her cross and . . . and kissed me. She called it a 'grown-up kiss,' and that we'd do the rest later, but she was probably just trying to give me some extra motivation or joking.
"Then she pushed me into the lift, it started going down, and that's the last time I saw her. In the lift I wiped some blood from my mouth, and felt sick. When I heard the explosion from above, I knew Misato-san was dead." Shinji tightened his grip around the leather cord.
"Do you miss her?" Asuka asked.
Shinji nodded. "My mother died when I was really young, so I don't really have any memories of her. Misato-san was the closest person in my life that I could consider as a mother."
"I didn't know she meant so much to you."
"I really didn't either until now." Shinji gave a long sigh and rested his hands on the railing. He was startled when he felt the soft touch of Asuka's hand on top of his left, which still held the leather cord. He looked over at her.
"I understand how you feel, Shinji," she said as she squeezed his hand lightly. "I didn't have such a strong bond with her as you did, but I miss her, too."
"Thank you, Asuka," Shinji replied, turning his hand over and squeezing hers back.
Asuka relaxed her grip and shot him a glare that wasn't fully serious. "Watch it, Shinji. We may be the last couple alive, but let's not get in a hurry . . ."
Shinji quickly withdrew his hand from under hers and blushed. "Ah--! I--I'm sorry!"
"Don't apologise so much, Shinji," Asuka replied with a falsely condescending tone in her voice, "you know how much I hate it when you do that." She turned around and patted him on the shoulder as she opened the balcony door and stepped back into the apartment. "Let's take care of my room now."
"Okay," Shinji replied. He remained on the balcony and looked out at the world for a short while, then walked back into the apartment, sliding the door shut behind him.
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-END OF CHAPTER TWO-
