[AN] Since the summary space given is so small, before I begin this story I would like to expand on the summary to fully express what this will be about.
[ Regret. It is a word, a concept often used in conjunction with the equally as human concept of death. A word that encompasses so many feelings - guilt, frustration, hope, sorrow - and rolls them into one. With death often comes the regret of not saying all you should have said, not doing all you should have done, and the sorrow, the guilt, the frustration comes along with it as you watch all the chances to rectify all the 'should have' drip out from the cracks in your fingertips. But along with it also comes the hope that, perhaps, in another life, in another reality, the 'should haves' become 'did haves'. The idealisations and dreams become reality.
After Asuka is surely to have met her match in her fatal defeat by the Eva series, maybe death and the reality in which we are absolved of all regrets are more interlaced than one may think. ]
This will take place during Human Instrumentality/Third Impact, and it basically details all the 'what ifs' in Asuka's life once she arrives in Japan, including the 'what if Asuka had just accepted her feelings for Shinji in the first place?' Thus, it is an AU almost retelling of the series that will slightly deviate from canon as the story progresses, as it will follow Asuka and Shinji in another reality, where they prevailed.
[Edit] Due to some suggestions from a very helpful and kind reviewee, Merchant of Blue Death, I have made some minor verb tense edits along with major punctuation and orthographic corrections. Feel free to offer anything else you may find will improve the comprehension and the flow of this story.
CHAPTER I: Weltschmerz
[German]
[noun] a depressive state caused by an idealised vision of the world compared with the world's actual state
I don't want to die…
Asuka was sure another voice greeted hers in a harmony that soothed her desperation. She was sure that the voice, though nothing louder than a whisper and nothing softer than silk, met her own, somehow perfectly accompanying her trembling, weak whimpers. Its familiarity washed over Asuka's frail form until any remnants remaining in her system were substituted with warmth – pure warmth. Its familiarity wrapped around Asuka. Its familiarity was a blanket, using which she could shield herself from the coldness of the world. It was everything she didn't know she needed.
Or maybe just everything she had never wanted to admit she needed.
You're still alive… you mustn't die yet…
Unit-02's entry plug had always felt like home to Asuka. When she would tease Shinji about its resemblance to mommy's womb, she could never tell who she was trying to fool – herself, or him. In the seat of the Eva, her Eva, it felt moulded to her shape, a refuge to which only she could escape, she could belong. And it always felt warm, comforting, even if chaos reigned outside. It felt like something Asuka thought she recognised, but every time the memory began to come into focus it would slip away again. Until now. In this moment, a desperate one where she was begging no one but the oxygen and LCL around her to keep her alive, Asuka finally pieced together what the feeling that rushed over her every time she sat in her rightful designated pilot seat was – it was like being enveloped in her mother's embrace, within arms that hadn't held her for ten years.
Asuka had been so wrong, so very wrong, for those ten years. She had assumed her mother had left her, abandoned her, all traces ceasing to exist just like her life. But she had assumed wrong, and Asuka didn't like to be wrong. This was perhaps the only time she felt relief, no matter how vague, at being wrong. Her mother had never left. She was always there.
It was her voice Asuka was sure she heard. It felt so tangible, so real, so her mother that Asuka was certain that, though disembodied, it was more than just a hallucination. Her mother was truly speaking to her. And for a second, Asuka was three years old again, before her mother took her life, before her vow to never cry again, before her piloting potential was recognised, before life was tough. The voice spoke to her in her native tongue, German, any harshness of the words softened by whispers and comfort only a mother knew how to implement into their tone.
I won't let you die… you must keep living…
I don't want to die…
You're alive!
I don't want… to DIE!
Her throat burned as the mantra she had been repeating helplessly into herself escaped as a shrill yell, a battle cry. Asuka had only convinced herself of her words to the halfway point; the destination was reached with her mother's help. It was the first time crediting someone else felt comfortable with Asuka.
And with the same, ferocious certainty Asuka had felt about the tangibility of her mother's voice, Asuka was sure she felt every fibre of her mother's velvet skin, the tight clasping after two hands met truly adding weight to Asuka's own palm, even through the skin-tight material of her plug suit.
She was fearless again, she was invincible again. She was Asuka again. And Asuka didn't go down without a fight.
Pain, searing pain, pain, pain, pain, oh God the pain…
Asuka's left eye throbbed in its socket, even though the intense pain shaking through the nerves in her body made it seem like her eye was no longer there at all. Her back arched and she moaned in pain, a hand covering her left eye no matter how futile it was to dull the pain. Before now, a high sync rate with the Eva was suggested to be a good thing. It was supposed to be the pinnacle to which she was encouraged to reach. Only now did Asuka realise that nothing good was without its dangers.
It was pain that was more intense than any other pain Asuka had ever experienced, pain that surpassed any minor graze and injury Asuka had ever experienced before. All her past pain was pain, sure, but this exceeded what Asuka ever thought a human could physically endure without shutting down and succumbing; it was more than just the trauma of when an Angel violated her mind, and it was worlds, galaxies, more than the sharp ache of the abdominal muscles tightening to cope with an upset stomach or even the dull, centred ache of a period.
Asuka wasn't sure if the fact it was just a simulation of the pain that made it feel so insufferable was an advantage or not. Though she could look down with her uncovered eye and see, in a blurry haze, the pieces composing her abdomen and all inside it were perfectly intact, every pull of the inactive Eva Unit's grotesquely realistic intestines by the Eva Series felt like Asuka's own entrails were being ripped apart. They were vultures, circling around Unit-02's corpse before diving and swooping in to rip more of its insides apart until all that remained was nothing more than a stripped back, fleshless human caricature.
Asuka didn't want to admit it was over. The thought didn't even cross her mind – at least, she didn't notice if it did; if it had, it must have appeared in a flash lasting no more than a second. Nobody defeated Asuka Langley Soryu. Nobody tore her and her Eva apart, not her Eva-02. Not her… mother…
The single remaining part of her pride not shredded and torn from her by the Eva series compelled Asuka to raise her arm towards the sun, the Eva series circling her like hungry predators all she could focus on through the monitor. Her hand curled as if cupping them, grasping them, showing them exactly what she thought of them. The other hand still clasped over her eye, the desire to destroy the ugly creatures swarming around her throbbing through her core with more intensity than the pain throbbing in her eye, and through grit teeth, Asuka snarled,
I'll kill you… I'll kill you… I'll kill you…
Saying the words aloud, her breathing laboured and her tone firm despite the obvious trembling, convinced Asuka more, spurring her on, her hand rising higher until she was convinced by what she was saying enough to feel her body thriving. She had never been more alive. She was even sure her girl, her Eva-02, was returning to life and trying to activate as well. If her breath weren't so focused on promising the Eva series of their certain deaths by her hands, she would have smiled, maybe laughed, as the thought, 'That's Soryu women for you; stubborn' briefly crossed her mind.
But then, blankness. Blackness. Darkness. Nothing crossed her mind anymore.
Asuka was gone before she could even process her arm, her actual arm and not that of her Eva, had sliced in two. Separated in half. Asuka was gone before a countless amount of Lances impaled her Eva, as if they had not been satisfied with her just yet.
There exists a common phrase, a common idea surrounding the elusive albeit inevitable phase of death that suggests before death, all moments in your life exist simultaneously, concurrently, rather than consecutively or chronologically in the way to which the concept of time conforms. The idea that before death, or before a brush with death, events in life 'flash' before their very eyes, as if recalling a movie, milestones in their lives becoming nothing more than mere snapshots and footage that condense years, decades into seconds.
Asuka was aware of this phenomenon, though the cliché did not exist in the German language and thus she never heard it often, at least not when she resided in New Berlin. She had only been exposed to it maybe once, maybe twice; yet, it was exactly what she was starting to experience.
After all her thoughts, senses, and systems stopped functioning, Asuka slowly opened her eyes.
Was this death? It was a dark space, like the inside vacuum of a black hole. Asuka wasn't usually claustrophobic, not before, but she was now. The question resonated in her mind like an echo in a hollow hallway:
Was this death?
Accompanied by,
Am I dead?
She wasn't sure how much time had passed since… since she lost to the Eva Series. Maybe time didn't exist in this realm, wherever this realm was. Though all the pain had ebbed away, Asuka's body felt heavy and stone cold beneath her, like it wasn't attached to her head anymore. Curiously, she moved her right hand; as her fingers cracked open, pain shot down her arm like electricity. It was a cruel reminder of the fate it had suffered. So she wasn't completely healed. Maybe death hadn't taken her just yet.
For a while, there had been nothing, her mind as black as the space around her. When her thoughts returned to her, it was as if Asuka were watching her life in a movie, fourteen years abridged and sliced into just a few minutes, if not a few seconds. It was like having her mind defiled again, only she felt even less in control of her mind now.
She relived the first time she ever heard the words 'I love you' fall from her mother's mouth, and she relived the last time; she relived the first time her mother said her name, and she relived the last time; she relived the first time her mother held her tight in an embrace, and she remembered how quickly her mother's hands moved up… moved up to her neck, her fingers disappearing in Asuka's flesh as her mother whispered through harsh breaths, 'Die with me… die with me…'
She remembered the way her mother hung from the ceiling, the way her father was so quick to move on and present Asuka with a new mother, the way she learnt at the age of just four that people were replaceable items that could easily be discarded. The way she promised herself, at four, that she would never cry again, that she would be the best possible pilot the world had ever seen, because then… because then…
Maybe she wouldn't be replaced, if everybody was worse than her. Why would they swap the greatest with something mediocre? Who would… replace her… replace her… Shinji.
Shinji was the last person Asuka wanted on her mind. She was cold, trapped in an unfamiliar place that see-sawed between life and death. Shinji hadn't even been there. He was never there. He had let her get hurt, he had let her get killed – she was sure she wasn't alive anymore. He had done nothing, nothing to save her. He was nothing to Asuka, he deserved nothing from Asuka…
So why was he creeping into her thoughts, when all she wanted was to curl up and just allow death to run its course?
Asuka didn't realise she was crying until the tears landed on her knees, and she hadn't realised her knees were even pressed up to her face in the first place. How long had she been there? Asuka was so unsure.
If this were death, then Asuka decided pretty quickly she didn't enjoy it at all. It was cold, empty, dark, and, most of all, lonely. All Asuka wanted was to go back and return to before the Eva series, before the mental contamination, before Japan, before piloting the Eva, before…
Before…
Shinji…
Asuka placed her head in her hands, ignoring the slight ache in her right one as she shook her head, hot tears beading and running down her cheeks before dripping off her chin and landing in the perfect cusp of her hands. She let the tears continue as she tried to shriek,
"Why? Why are you here?"
When she wanted the words to come out strong and defiant in a scream akin to a battle cry, they instead cracked out, breathy and pathetic, no louder than a whisper. She truly was alone. She had never been so alone…
"Why do I want you here?"
That one never made it past her mind. She never wanted to say it aloud. Her throat started to isolate itself as the tears poured out in a stream down her face, preventing her from saying anything aloud. Her body trembled as she sobbed and hiccuped, her breathing short and strained.
If this were death… the thought wouldn't leave Asuka's mind. The more she thought it, the more truthful it started to seem. This had to be death – nothing in life felt comparable to this. And if she were still living, then she wouldn't have felt something wash over her, a feeling, a feeling that took longer than normal to realise.
It was regret.
She regretted never holding Shinji. She regretted never kissing him again. Most of all, she regretted never setting aside her pride for just one damn second to vocalise all her thoughts. I need you please don't leave me please don't replace me don't go don't go you can't go I want you here why aren't you here please come back and
And…
The tears must have robbed her of all the breath in her lungs, as Asuka soon fell unconscious again.