LEGAL STUFF: Neon Genesis Evangelion, Evangelion: Death and Rebirth, End of Evangelion, and all persons and events depicted therein are ©1995 by Hideaki Anno and Studio Gainax. All other persons and events referenced herein are sole intellectual property of their respective creators. This work is a parody of and tribute (of a sort) to the aforementioned materials, and no profit--monetary or otherwise--has been derived from its creation. For the above reasons, this work constitutes Fair Use of copyrighted materials under the United States Copyright Act of 1976.

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Chapter One: After the End

"How disgusting…"

The words were like a light tap on Shinji Ikari's shoulder, rousing him from his stupor. He blinked once, twice--his eyes refused to clear. He raised a hand to wipe the tears from his face, and it came away sticky. Looking down at his hand, he saw it was streaked with blood. Weird--I'm not bleeding, am I?

Shinji began feeling around his head for a wound--and as his hand left his field of vision, he realized he was looking down at a face. It was an unusually pale face, framed by a disheveled mane of red-gold hair. One brilliant blue eye (the phrase 'sapphire orb' slid through his mind for some reason) stared blankly at him, utterly devoid of emotion--the other was concealed beneath a carefully wound bandage. His own eyes traveled, uncomprehending, down past a sharp chin, over a delicate neck marked with several small bruises--then snapped up as memory flooded back.

Bruises…red… "Asuka?" It was as clear as day now. EVA… Third Impact… SEELE… He had failed, just as he had been meant to--humanity was gone, their individual egos dissolved and their bodies subsumed by the primordial sea that was the 18th Angel. He was here only because he had asked to stay behind… but what was the Second Child doing here?

"What?"

It was Asuka speaking; it must have been her before, too. Come to think of it, the last thing he recalled with any clarity was Asuka as well--her screams echoing over the comm unit, and her dismembered Evangelion being dropped like gnawed bones by those white, whale-headed EVAs. After that, it was a blur of color and sound, of pain and pleasure and not really caring just why he was screaming as his psyche was laid bare and his naked Self displayed to all mankind… well, perhaps it was best that he didn't remember too much.

"Shinji."

He blinked, nudged once more into the real world by Asuka's voice. "I… Asuka, I'm… You're…" Words wouldn't come. He steeled himself, cleared his throat, opened his mouth to say something along the lines of Where are we? Why are you here? or maybe just I'm sorry about all this, emitted a long, shuddering sob, and collapsed, blubbering, on top of his fellow pilot.

"What a wimp."

Shinji felt an arm wrap around his waist. Looking up, he saw through a fresh haze of tears that Asuka was crying as well. But for the first time in recent memory, she was also smiling--smiling at him. She drew him into a tight embrace, and Shinji found that his head fit snugly between her breasts--it felt good, but not in the way he'd expected it to.

They didn't gaze lovingly into each other's eyes. They didn't kiss or cuddle. And they certainly didn't have sex. They simply lay there--neither of them knew or cared how long--in each other's arms, quietly murmuring to each other that it was all right, and really, everything was going to be fine, each trying to keep from bursting into tears long enough to comfort the other, and each failing miserably.