Truth
She was dead. Her long, auburn hair, so vibrant in life, now lay in thin, lanky strands around her slumped frame. Her eyes, mercifully, were closed; they had seen too much pain before, and now, like the sharp features of her face, looked strangely peaceful in repose that they now enjoyed. The flesh of her body was already beginning to whiten as well, the heat fading fast into the cold air.
He knew he would join her soon. How, he didn't know, but the fact remained that he would. Slowly, he reached out with one hand and brushed away the few remaining hairs on her forehead, noting the chill he felt as he made contact with the pale skin. Dead for a few hours now. He sighed once and turned his gaze to the crimson sea that spread out before him as he sat on the parched ground of the Earth.
He would have wondered what life was for if he hadn't countless times already.
The Third Impact had come and gone. Now was the true beginning of the end, the wait for the last two humans on the planet to perish. The wind soughed once, a rare occurrence, and blew minute particles of red earth into the air; he reached out with his hand and caught some, regarding them quietly as he listened to the barely audible sounds of the waves on shore. They told him he would be dead. It seemed everything told him he would be dead, and soon; it was better that way.
Everyone would be better off dead, he recalled someone saying? Him? No. Not him. Never him. No. He mustn't run away. And then he couldn't remember - the the words suddenly seemed unreal, echoes of a forgotten past, and a stood futilely for a few moments more as the shreds of half-meanings they still had slipped away from him. Pure emptiness ruled this shattered, barren earth now.
They didn't need food. No, neither did they need water. Slowly, after the first few days of panic, they'd settled down to a meaningless, listless existence, not speaking more than a few words to each other for days on end. They couldn't control it; maybe they didn't even want to, then…because even at that time, recollections of anything past waking up on the beach had been hazy, as if someone or something wanted them to forget. Occasionally, there were flashes of memory, but though were always sad; Asuka (was that her name?) screaming as she was jolted out of sleep by a nightmare, him crying. He wondered why he did, and why he was now remembering all this. But it was the same, in the end, always the same - he didn't know and didn't want to. Because it didn't matter. None of it did.
Again, another sigh from the wind, more red dust into the air, and the overwhelming silence. That and not knowing, a sense of what could almost be dread - and nothingness.
Then there was Evangelion Unit-01. That, at least, he remembered, with astounding clarity at times. The yellow eyes that stared down at him from their vantage point high on the craggy expanse of its face, the startingly familiarity, even kinship, he felt.. But all this was immaterial, wasn'the it? He was going to die anyway.
It was better that way. Then he wouldn't hurt anyone anymore. He could almost hear someone speak as he mouthed the meaningless words. But that was in the past. It was going to be over, and he smiled.
He looked around the desolate land that was once Earth. Now, it was wholly devoid of life; nothing but a red sea that stretched towards the horizon and two bodies near a hulking relic of a civilization dead and gone. Finality hissed in the crash of waves on shore, echoed in the empty wind that sighed over them, permeated the very air and atmosphere around them. It would end soon.
Who was he? Why was he here? Eternal questions with no answer. It didn't matter. I mustn't run away.
Why not now, he wondered. He stood, suddenly feeling very old, and walked slowly over to the massive giant that crouched by the sea. One hand reached out, and almost against his will, he traced a finger over the cold metal, feeling, taking comfort from the unyielding rigidity of it.
And fell dead it its feet.
Days passed, the sea, the unchanging, eternal red sea continuing its incessant motion over the land, the crimson sun baking the already parched earth as time passed. Death, now, was what the wind sang of as it howled across the dead planet, death and the sheer non-existence that now reigned above all other things. EVA-01 remained, though, looking at the waves with sightless eyes, standing silent vigil over the two silent forms of what were once the last two humans on Earth.
And then slowly, it began. It took years, millenia, eons even, but there was no one left to whom it mattered or cared. So it was that Evangelion Unit-01 came to slow, silent life once more, and screamed with the voiceless fury of being as it took to the skies, rising up to the heavens to grasp in its two hands the Spear of Longinus, casting it towards the Earth.
The metamorphosis took years, uncountable millenia. But when it was complete, a new entity had come into existence high above the branches of the great tree that lay, branches sprawled over the mass of fused continents, in the world below.
And then there was light.
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