"Asuka, we're taking you out now," a familiar voice says. Instinctively, Asuka's eyes dart from side to side, trying to identify the source. There's a shift in the fuzziness of the darkness around her as her eyes vainly adjust themselves in hopes of seeing something. Asuka knows she won't find anything. She's been in this darkness for so long, the only reason she's sure she isn't dead is because of the voices from outside. They've yelled, over her and to her, and not once have they sounded like Kyoko, or- or Rei.
A seam of light unravels itself around where Asuka lays, her first glimpse into the outside world in weeks. As it expands, she lifts her hands into the newfound space above her, shielding her eyes from the brightness. The back of one of her hands scrapes something pliant, yet too rough to be a bandage. She turns her hand around, reaching for it, and from out of the nebulous surrounding light comes another hand, gripping her wrist gently.
"Don't touch that," the voice snaps, and now Asuka remembers. That tone could only come from Misato, only more strained than Asuka ever remembers it being. There's movement at the growing boundary of Asuka's vision, shapeless figures in white, and the unmistakable scent of sanitizers hits Asuka's nose, overpowering after so long in isolation. Asuka twists herself away from where she thinks Misato is, trying to free herself, only to find Misato's grasp firm.
"Let go of me," Asuka hisses, tugging her wrist towards herself. Misato bothers to spare Asuka a glance, and that's the first thing she really sees: the shadows of sleeplessness beneath Misato's eyes; the firm line that her squared jaw makes; the strands of hair that escape her ponytail, which looks like it hasn't been redone since Misato tied it up so long ago. "The hell's happened?" breathes Asuka. "You look like shit."
"We'll explain when we have time. There's too much going on to catch you up right now." Misato waves her other hand in the direction of one of the nurses, who vanishes into the blurry mist at the edge of Asuka's vision. Asuka turns her head, surveying the rest of the room. It's filled with machines, whose lights sear her eyes, and lab coat-clad staff. A pink figure, still too indistinguishable to make out, stands motionless by what Asuka assumes is the door.
"Here," Misato says, shoving something into Asuka's hand. A mirror, she realizes, but the image it shows her couldn't possibly be…
Asuka raises her hand again, and Misato shakes her head. "Get used to it," she says, gesturing to the black fabric covering Asuka's left eye. "You'll have to keep it on at all times. It's waterproof, so you don't have to worry about taking it off."
"Why?"
"It's too difficult to explain now, and you won't like it. For now, just know if you take it off, you'll have to go back into this."
Misato's hand settles on the surface where Asuka is sitting. Asuka follows it with her eyes, blinking rapidly as she tries to adjust to the glossy black underneath her, too similar in color to the darkness from before. "What is it?" she says.
"Containment unit. We call it the coffin. I bet it feels like one. Unless you want to get cozy with it, don't take your eyepatch off."
"Containment for what?"
"Angel contamination."
Misato plucks the mirror from Asuka and hands it off to someone else, making another gesture. The pink blur from before- a girl, Asuka now sees, about her age- starts heading towards them.
"This is Mari Makinami," Misato says. "She's a pilot from the European division, like you."
"I've never heard of her before."
"Different jurisdiction. She'll take you to the locker rooms to get your clothes and brief you on what we know about the current situation."
"What situation?" Asuka mumbles, shaking her head. Of course it'd be up to this Mari to give her answers, but what reason would she have to trust Mari's answers if she'd never spoken to her before, nor known of her existence? "And why her? Couldn't you have gotten someone else on short notice? The Third?"
"Like I said. She'll catch you up."
Misato bites the ends of her words off with bared teeth, and it's enough for Asuka to know there won't be any progress to be made here. She urges herself off the edge of the containment unit, and suddenly she's rushing towards the floor. Her legs falter the moment they touch the ground, and Asuka finds herself in the grasp of a pair of strong, obnoxiously pink arms.
"Easy there," Mari- the other pilot- says. "You've been out of it for a few weeks. Don't expect your legs to work all at once."
"I don't need your help." Asuka brushes Mari's touch away with a rough swipe of her arm, staggering towards where she remembers the door to be. The room is coming into sharper detail around her, but Asuka doesn't trust any of it: things look closer or further than they really are, and she finds this out the hard way when she clips her thigh against the corner of a table.
"Well, aren't you just a princess?" she hears Mari say behind her. "Don't you want to hear about what's happened?"
"Not from you," snaps Asuka. "I'll go find someone decent to waste my time."
"Like who?"
"Anyone who can pilot an EVA and isn't you!"
Asuka thrusts her hand towards the door, only she's misjudged the distance. She tumbles out of the room and into the hall of the medical wing, clinging to the door handle, Mari persistently trailing after her.
"You're not gonna find anyone, Princess. They're all-"
"I said I don't need to hear it from you! And I can find my way to the goddamn locker rooms on my own!"
"Without falling down?"
Asuka levels her glare at Mari- at least she can still do that well enough- and releases the door, catching herself against the wall. She advances down the path she knows will lead to the locker rooms, aware of the pattering of Mari's footfalls behind her. She'd snap at Mari to leave her alone, but that won't get her anywhere: she's just got to shake Mari off before she gets to the locker rooms, then. It'll be a cold day in hell before Asuka allows anyone to see her change other than-
There's a bathroom within a reasonable distance. It's not the most efficient way to the locker rooms, but Asuka takes the turn anyway. If she can't stand on her own two feet by the time she makes it there, she'll have more to worry about than just a persistent and unexpected new pilot. Mari follows complacently- she must not know the facility, Asuka thinks- and she's surprisingly silent as they enter the bathroom, Asuka groping her way over to the closest sink and Mari wandering aimlessly around.
"Feel sick, princess?" Mari asks, peering into the individual stalls while Asuka bends over the sink she's grabbed, staring herself down in the mirror. "No one else is in here. If you need to hurl I promise I'll give you some privacy."
"Go fuck yourself," mumbles Asuka. She can see the entire bathroom in the mirror; good. Her vision is mostly back, so now it'll just be a game of balance. Turning her head to the side with her good eye, she notices the pallor that's taken hold on her skin: she's almost as pale as- "What're you doing here, anyway?"
"I got sent here on an errand," Mari says. She's finished her circuit of the bathroom. Now she stands at the far end, taking an inexplicable interest in the paper towel dispenser. "Happened to be in town when an Angel attacked. You were sleeping in that coffin so I took your Unit-02 out for a spin."
A crack shoots through the rim of the sink Asuka is holding. "And what about the others?" she asks, her voice level. "Don't tell me that you couldn't manage to kill an Angel without me around."
"Oh, we got it," Mari says. "Or at least, the Third got it, mostly. Although-"
"I don't need to hear how wonderful Shinji saved the day again, thanks."
"You asked."
"Yeah, and now I wish I didn't."
Asuka tilts her head to the other side, inspecting the eyepatch. Her fingers touch the surface, and beneath it, there's movement. She jerks her hand back, drawing away from the mirror, the sudden motion of her body drawing Mari's attention.
"You okay there, Princess?" she asks.
"I'm fine. Lost my balance."
"Right, right. Well, try to hurry up, will you?" Mari spins around in a slow circle, eyes scanning the upper portions of the wall, where a row of white tiles interrupts the otherwise monotonous flow of teal. "Misato's probably going to want us back as soon as she's done down there."
"Whatever."
Asuka leans closer to the mirror again, staring intently at her face. There has to be an eye under that patch, she thinks. Closing her good eye, she sees nothing but darkness- but that'd be expected, right? She shoots a sidelong glance at Mari, still fascinated with the bathroom's strange choice in decor. Just a quick look, then: enough to see if there's really an eye under there, or just a gaping void that Asuka's mind refuses to believe is there.
Her finger slips beneath the edge of the eyepatch, lifting it, and the mirror shatters.
She hears Mari shouting something, but it's lost in the shrieking that fills the bathroom, cracking the tiles, the sinks; one of the taps pops off, spraying water across the room. Mari is on top of her, hands covering Asuka's eye, trying to wrest the eyepatch back into place, and around her there's blue light everywhere.
The door bursts open, and the light is replaced with hands. They're strong, covered in black protective gloves, and they haul Asuka to her feet. She's pulled from the bathroom; as she's dragged away, the metal hinges of the door sing to her.
Her journey back to the containment room is told in the passage of the hallway lights. They glow blue as she passes beneath them, and red, and her ears fill with a mix of a hum that vibrates every bone in her body and the Blood Type Blue klaxons she's grown to recognize. Through the haze that's clouded her mind, she realizes: that's me.
The hands lift her easily. She remembers, now: she's a pilot, but she's still a child. They set her inside the black case from before, position the lid above her. Asuka doesn't even try to reach up and stop them as they set it over her: the blue light encompasses everything she looks at now, painful to behold. She swears she hears someone trying to speak to her; a light voice tickles the highest register of her hearing, but before she can make sense of it, it's drowned out by a closer, drier voice.
"Of course you wouldn't listen," she hears Misato saying from outside the chamber. And then- "She has that in common with you."
Whatever Mari says in reply, Asuka doesn't hear it. The chamber hisses shut around her, sealing her off. The light goes with it, too, and there's only the silent dark. Too late, she recalls who that voice might have belonged to, but not what it says; there's no room for her to reach up and try to strike the lid, but the hammering of her heartbeat, roaring in her ears, echoes louder than her fists ever could.
Now that she's awake, the passage of time inside the containment chamber is painful to behold. It might be days that have gone by, or minutes: there aren't any voices outside like before, just a droning that Asuka thinks might be the containment chamber at work.
It's occurred to her in here, more than once, that if an Angel were to attack while she was trapped, there might be no one left to come and set her free. But she hadn't died during those weeks sealed away, so- was there anything to make of that, she wondered. Or maybe, if after long enough the power to the facility was cut, she'd be able to free herself from an inert chamber.
The space around Asuka shudders, a lance of light piercing through as the lid is shifted away. Again, Asuka shields her eyes on instinct, and this time no one stops her.
"Have fun in there?"
Asuka turns slightly, and Misato's there, lingering at the edge of her one eye's periphery.
"It's at least 48 hours in there every time there's a Blood Type Blue alert," she says. "You're lucky you were close to us. We got it under control before anything could really kick off."
"You could have told me there was an actual Angel in my goddamn eye," Asuka snarls. The dryness in her throat strangles her voice, and it comes out oddly breathless. "Not some contamination bullshit."
"And you wouldn't have listened to me either way, so now you know."
"Good to know you've got so much faith in me." Asuka pushes herself upright, watching Misato walk a circle around the containment unit. "Where's that other girl?" she asks. "Mari?"
"Not on duty today."
"What, didn't want her pissing me off?" Asuka laughs, easing herself onto the floor. This time she keeps herself balanced against the containment unit until she's certain she's ready to take her first steps. "I guess you don't need anything from me either, right?"
"Not today. There's still things I have to take care of."
"I'm still staying at your apartment, right?"
Misato nods, still not bothering to spare Asuka a glance. Asuka scoffs and wanders slowly towards the door, pushing it aside and stumbling out into the hall.
At first she thinks it must be night with how dark the hallway is, but the dimness of her surroundings is just that, caused by a series of faulty lights. Rows of cracked bulbs stretch for as far as Asuka can see, and the few that work do so with the occasional flicker, as if they too are on their last legs.
Further down, a stretch of yellow caution tape cordons off a segment of the hall. Asuka feels the hair on the back of her neck stand on end before she even gets there, and beneath the eyepatch, her eye throbs painfully.
She hesitates as she passes the place where she'd stopped with Mari the day before, frozen in mid-step. Her one eye, opening wider, takes in the fragments of tile embedded in the floor and ceiling; where the wallpaper has peeled off and the bare wall beneath it is scorched black. She wouldn't want to imagine what the inside of the bathroom must look like: all shattered glass and tangled steel, she thinks. As she finds her stride, carrying herself further towards the elevator, another thought flares to life: maybe there's a reason Mari was the only pilot willing to be in that containment room; maybe this is it.
A blind swing of her arm puts another crack into the wall as wide as her fist. Asuka stares at it in disbelief, her stoic expression wavering for just a second. It registers now: she'd put that there; she shouldn't have been able to; she couldn't have before.
She runs.
The elevator can't bear Asuka to the surface fast enough. She paces circles around it, trying hard not to think about the last time she'd been here. If only she closed her eyes, she knows she'd be able to recall that last encounter in detail: the unexpected softness of Rei's hand as she caught Asuka's, the intent glimmer in her eyes that made Asuka realize that it wasn't her, wouldn't ever be her, that Rei would smile for.
The sudden, lurching stop throws Asuka off her feet and out the opening doors. Her eyes, adjusting to the first sunlight they've seen in weeks, zero in on a dark patch on the opposite wall, above which sunshine spills in from a gaping hole in the ceiling. The gashes on the floor beside it tell Asuka all there is to know: a fallen helicopter; a fire; this must have happened in the same battle that Mari was talking about. But to think that NERV, in the heart of the city, had sustained damage-
Asuka lumbers out the doors, shoving her way through, and the afternoon sun washes over her. The damage here isn't as bad as she'd thought it would be, but the sky is stained with far-off columns of billowing gray smoke, and the city itself is quieter than she's ever seen it before.
The next breath Asuka tries to take forces her to confront the tightness in her chest. Stumbling over to the nearest wall, she leans heavily upon it, trying to catch her breath. She didn't do this, she tells herself- she's been out for far too long; the Angel that came after her is the reason for it all- if only she'd been there to fight it with the others, they might have won- and she wouldn't be harboring an Angel in her eye.
Her head throbs, ears ringing painfully. What she thinks at first is a siren is a scream: agonized, seemingly unending. With her eyes closed, she doesn't notice the pebbles that tumble over themselves to escape, a conical wave of motion headed away from her. Her cry, resonating towards the hills, tapers off, and Asuka is running again.
She veers onto the sidewalk, cutting blindly across empty intersections, directing herself towards the outskirts of the city. There's no way she'd be able to get out; no doubt Section 2 would be watching the roads, but no one would tell if she flung herself into the nearby mountains and lost herself in them, unless she chose to uncover her eye again and hope it would be Rei that came for her this time.
Block after block goes by, all the same: boarded windows and cracked glass; Asuka tries to avoid the shards that litter the road at first, but settles at last for running over them. They dig against her plugsuit, but fail to puncture it. Then Asuka's past them, navigating a road that must've last been paved before she was born, so uneven that it affects her stride like the glass could not. She lowers her eyes to the ground, slowing down to keep her footing, and when she looks back up there's a shadow in the road that wasn't there before.
NERV's official records have Rei's address listed as somewhere around here, but Asuka never thought to believe them until now. It's impossible that any pilot, let alone the First Child, would be housed in a district slated for destruction, but here she is: standing in the middle of a cracked asphalt road, as if she'd been waiting here for Asuka this whole time.
"First?" Asuka goes to say. Her voice falters, becoming a whisper that Rei couldn't possibly have heard, and yet she starts towards Asuka anyway. She's within arm's reach before it occurs to Asuka that she could just turn around, and no sooner has she thought that than she knows she could never do it.
"What are you doing, Shikinami?" Rei asks. She stops just in front of Asuka, as if she's daring Asuka to touch her, closer than she'd been when they were in the elevator.
"I…"
Asuka looks back towards the city, at the black plumes she'd forced herself to ignore as she ran by them, and shakes her head. "I'm getting away from here," she says. "I can't stand to be- why am I even explaining myself to you?"
"Why are you?" says Rei. Asuka levels a pitiful glare at her, mouth clamped firmly shut. Her one eye tracks Rei's every movement as she shifts her stance, settling her weight on her heels as she turns towards the mountains. "Where were you going, Shikinami?"
"Does it matter to you?" Asuka snaps. She shouldn't have to put up with this, a part of herself whispers to her. Surely the Asuka that could dent walls should be able to push past the wisp of a girl in front of her, but the will to do it eludes her. She's left to stare blankly while Rei steps to the side, her gaze fixated on Asuka.
"I will accompany you," Rei says, and before Asuka can protest, she adds, "You are not fully recovered. I will not allow you to go alone."
"And you'd stop me?" Asuka bares her teeth at Rei, the closest she can get to a grin for now. It fades all too soon beneath Rei's glacial silence: where had this come from, Asuka wonders. Before, all she'd wanted to do was see her smile even once. "Fine," she mumbles, starting forward again. "You can come with me, but keep up."
Rei falls in line beside Asuka, oddly quiet. Had she always been that quiet? Asuka thinks, and finds herself lacking an answer. Neither of them say another word, Rei following Asuka towards the base of the hills, where the paved road ends, overtaken by densely packed gravel and weeds that lean over in the whispering wind to scrape at their shin. It's here where Asuka begins to falter: as fierce as she likes to think herself, the weeks of laying comatose in the containment unit have taken the strength out of her legs. She pushes onward up the grassy rise, forcing herself to keep going, determined that Rei will have to be the one to stop first.
To their backs, Tokyo-3 vanishes beneath the rows of waving grass and the layer of smoke that, like fog, hangs trapped over the valley. Asuka trudges on, the dragging of her feet flattening a path that Rei, her tread light, walks along. At any moment, she could stop and end the ache that's built itself up in the soles of her feet, climbing her legs steadily. But stopping would mean, somehow, that Rei's won, and that's an idea Asuka refuses to entertain until the moment when her feet give out from under her. She topples sideways, stretching out her hand to try and cushion her fall, and then there's an arm around her waist, holding her steady.
Rei weathers Asuka's glare with a seeming indifference that earns her a huff and Asuka's arm pushing against her, trying to drive her away. Rei lowers them both onto the ground, her grasp on Asuka firm, until they've both settled against the soft grass. "I don't need to stop," Asuka protests. She goes to draw her hand back, and Rei lets it slide out from under her fingers. Her touch skates gently along the underside of Asuka's palm: a reminder that she could, if she wanted, reach out and just as easily pull Asuka back down.
"Coming here was a stupid idea." Asuka exhales the words into the air in front of her, angrily driving them from her mouth.
"Why?" Rei says, and Asuka nearly turns upon her there: what's the point of showing interest now?, she wants to scream, but can't bring herself to do it.
"Look at all of it." Asuka flings her hand blindly in a half circle, sweeping around from the city to the hillside. "Why isn't all this on fire, too? Why does it have to be just down there?" She looks at Rei like she's demanding an answer, and Rei doesn't have it in her to tell Asuka that below the surface, there's a sight much worse than this to be seen in the Geofront.
"I don't know why anyone would stay here if the Angels keep coming," Asuka continues, kicking the heels of her feet into the ground. "That's where everyone's gone, right? They've finally ditched this stupid place." Now, another glance at Rei: she's tilted her head upwards, staring into the clouds, more interested in them than Asuka. "Well?" says Asuka, daring Rei to keep her silence.
"Why are you so angry with yourself?" Rei whispers to her. Asuka reels, for a moment wondering if she hadn't just imagined those words, plucked from her thoughts, in Rei's voice. Rei watches her expectantly; for once her full attention is devoted to Asuka, and Asuka finds she both loves it for what it is, and hates it for why it's being given.
"I'm not." Asuka's eyes dart between Rei and the hillside, and she says it again, louder: "I'm not angry with myself. I don't know what you think you're talking about."
"You are." Rei leans towards Asuka, ready to stop her should she try to get away. "You're angry that you volunteered for the Unit-03 activation test. You're angry that you could not be there to fight against the Angel." She draws in another breath, hesitates; the world around Asuka spins, momentarily unreal- what had happened to make the First Child so unsure of herself? "You could not have done anything," she says at last, drawing back into herself. "You were… fortunate to be away from that."
"Stop bullshitting me!" Asuka lunges past the invisible boundary she's enforced between herself and Rei since they began their trek together, pushing into her space. "What do you know about me that makes you think you can say that?"
Rei opens her mouth, lips barely moving, and Asuka trembles before she's even said it: "It's obvious." The red of her eyes flashes in the sun as she tilts her head, regarding Asuka with something she thinks looks dangerously close to pity. "You have been angry since we spoke in the elevator."
And Asuka has nothing to say in reply. Rei is still staring at her, and with the peculiar glint of her eyes, Asuka could believe that Rei is gazing into her, prying her apart. "Even if you had been there, you would only have hurt yourself more." Rei murmurs, finally looking away.
"Do you really believe that?" Asuka spits through gritted teeth. "Did they tell you what happened to me?" She points at her eye, which has begun to throb with a subtle, building pain; if it were emitting light now, it wouldn't surprise her. She lifts her head, feverishly, and finds Rei studying her with the strangest expression on her face. Concern is not a look that seems like it would belong on the First Child, but here she is, and her fingers are so tantalizingly close to Asuka's cheek that it feels she might burn up just from their proximity, and not the Angel in her eye.
"I know," whispers Rei, and somehow those two words lance through Asuka more fiercely than anything the Angel has made her feel. Her hand, close enough that Asuka can feel the warmth from it- and it's nothing like what she'd imagined; it's every bit as human as the heat that flares in own cheeks- hovers over her eyepatch, unnervingly close.
"Don't touch it!" In an instant, the hint of vulnerability that might've been peeking at Rei, begging to be noticed, is dragged back into hiding. Still, Asuka can't bring herself to move away. Rei's hand hasn't moved from where it was, and the idea- what would scare her more, the thought of being touched at last, or that Rei would be doing it? What if it wasn't what she'd expected; what if it was more?
"Asuka?" Rei says to her. The world feels frozen in that moment. She might be imagining the fear in Rei's voice, or it might be there. And if it was- well, it's not like Asuka could blame her, not with an Angel in her eye; she quakes where she sits, the only motion she finds herself capable of. It's either this, staying still and letting Rei decide what will happen next, or the unthinkable choice of admitting to herself that the Angel has confirmed the doubt that's nagged at her all these years, that she was meant to stay alone.
Another minute, impossibly long, passes them both by. Rei's arm, at least, starts to inch forward again. Petrified, Asuka watches: her temples throb; her head feels like it might split, and it's a wonder she isn't dyeing the hillside blue-
Finally, Rei settles her fingertips against Asuka's eyepatch, so lightly that Asuka almost believes it hasn't happened yet and this is only her mind tricking her. Rei releases a quiet sigh, her breath tickling Asuka's face, and the pain coming from her eye dissipates as quickly as it had come. Asuka's other eye flits lazily, almost of its own accord, to settle its focus on Rei's face. She takes it all in: the intent furrow of her brows, the near-indistinguishable pursing of her lips that, if Asuka didn't know Rei, she might have mistaken for remorse.
She's so lost in the reflection of the sun in Rei's eyes, little portals leading to a world all their own, that she doesn't notice when Rei's hand pulls back. It registers as a shadow at the edge of her vision, and by then the moment's already passed; Rei is facing the city once more, looking unperturbed, as if she hadn't just had an Angel- and god knows she would have had all of Asuka, too- at her fingertips.
A shift in the breeze draws Asuka's hair in front of her face, mercifully hiding it from Rei. She pushes the back of her hand along her cheek, brushing off the uncertainty she knows had just been there. "So," Asuka says, trying to take back control of their conversation. "Were you waiting for me?" No, that doesn't sound right- it's too uncertain, not at all knowing, like Asuka imagines herself to be. "Why?" And there, that's too short of a question, but Asuka can't muster up anything more. She hates it, that Rei can bring her to such a raw state with nothing but a few words and a single touch, and knows too that she could never bring herself to hate Rei.
Rei's mouth quavers, and Asuka can hear her voice already, asking her again: hadn't it been obvious? She waits for Rei to speak the words that don't come, replaced instead with a soft, "Because I owe you."
"What?" Asuka says, stumbling over this unforeseen change. "You don't," she insists, thrusting her hand onto the ground between herself and Rei. "What're you going on about?"
"The party."
"It didn't work, did it?" Asuka struggles to keep in a laugh, not quite successful in stifling it all. She knows a bit of that manic grin slipped out, and that Rei must have seen it. Might as go all the way in taking the blame, then, but only because it's Rei. "I messed it up. Right before it was time, too, so instead of dinner you got to fight an Angel. How do you owe me for any of that, again?"
"It might have been one of us."
"No." Asuka shakes her head, and now it's her who ducks her head away. She chooses to shield her face behind her arms, refusing to let Rei catch a glimpse of her. How is it that Rei always turns things upon her, she wonders, fingers gripping her knees. "You've done enough. You don't have to stay here. You shouldn't."
"I will," Rei says. Her answer is so immediate, so close, that Asuka feels there's no other choice but to peer out from behind one of her elbows. Rei's there, right beside her, but Asuka hadn't heard her move; they could almost be touching shoulders.
Asuka vanishes back into the dark pocket made by her arms and legs, extinguishing the image of Rei. In here, where the only audible thing is the rushing of the wind, Asuka thinks she'd be content to spend the rest of her days. There's no stifling darkness like the one in the containment unit, just one of her own creation, where she could wait out the rest of time-
Or, as she discovers several seconds later, until Rei breaks through it with such ease that it's nearly shameful. "Asuka?" that gentle voice is asking her. "Do you regret anything?"
"Where's this coming from? No. I don't." Asuka manages to get the words out, surprised that she's done it all before her throat closed up.
"I see." Two words, and Asuka's self-made shell cracks and falls away like that. She finds herself back on the hillside, under Rei's scrutinizing gaze, and asks herself if Rei might have meant those words literally. Rei doesn't press the matter, simply smiling at Asuka, whose chest seizes with a sudden pang. "I do."
But what would there be to regret, Asuka nearly finds herself saying. Now, she's grateful that Rei's struck her speechless; there, close enough to touch, is a look of such stricken loss that Asuka can't help but look back to see if Tokyo-3 is still there, or if all that's left to see would be smoke.
"Asuka."
The suddenness of Rei's voice shocks Asuka into stillness, freezing her with her covered eye pointed towards the city. Her gaze, tilted back towards Rei, wanders slightly. Now she knows the city must be gone, that she must be in a dream- how else would Rei's hand be resting so lightly upon hers that she hadn't noticed it until now; there is no reality that Asuka knows of where Rei would allow this to happen.
Asuka turns her hand over, fingers scraping the underside of Rei's wrist, where she's certain the flash of Rei's pulse had beat against the thin layer of her skin. Her fingers find a resting place between Rei's knuckles: it all seems so familiar, though they've never done this before. A flicker of motion catches her attention, and now she's left to wonder if in this dream she'd be able to convince herself that Rei might smile because of her, or if she'd just imagined it.
"Rei?" Asuka hears herself say. The name works itself reverently from her lips, hanging between them. Rei tilts her face towards Asuka, and the perfect image captured in Asuka's eye begins to blur. "I- The fight I missed," she stammers, blinking quickly. The tears that have abruptly come to her eye, now struggling for freedom in plain sight of Rei, blur Rei against the bright blue sky behind her. "Were you hurt?" she manages at last.
The coagulated blots that make up Rei shift to one side, contemplative. "No," Rei says, her voice low. "I am alright." In the pause that follows, Asuka wills the tears away at last, only to find the smile she'd hoped to see hasn't materialized on Rei's face at all. She replies only with a dip of her head and a murmured, "This concern is unlike you."
"Are you always going to be like that?" Asuka says, her cheeks growing cold. This might not be a dream after all, then. The Rei in those dreams that she calls pleasant doesn't give her roundabout answers like this, when she does deign to answer at all. "If you are, there's no point in me ever asking you anything. Is that what you're trying to get me to do?"
Rei blinks, once. Asuka doesn't think she moved her head, didn't see it. But Rei must have, or else the sun couldn't possibly be coming from behind her, blazing orange around her head and shining crimson in her eyes. "No," she says, still quiet like the wind, though Asuka vibrates with the tremors of trumpets that must resonate, hidden, somewhere under that soft voice. Her eyes keep Asuka steady, prying her apart for the answer to her next question: "Asuka? Why did you decide to volunteer to pilot Unit-03?"
"Isn't it obvious? I'm the best pilot out of all of us, aren't I?" Asuka leans forward into the golden light. She expects it to wash over her, to warm her, but it doesn't feel like anything. If anything, it stirs the fragments of what she can recall from Unit-03's entry plug: orange liquid, blinding light, and a voice that bored deep into her skull and rattled her teeth with its words. She shivers at the memory, and knows Rei must have seen; and knows that Rei must know, too.
"Asuka," Rei says again. "Is that really why you did it?" Something pushes down on Asuka's hand, and now she remembers: Rei's fingers burn against the back of her hand, and her head, of its own accord, shakes from side to side.
"I- Look, I-" Asuka stammers, all at once wishing to tell the truth this one time and finding the words beyond her grasp. Here, under Rei's watchful eyes, she should be able to do it. If even now she couldn't find the words, with the near ending of the world below them and sunlight cascading like silk around them, Asuka knows she'd never be able to say it. "I've just wanted you to be happy," she says, almost pleading with Rei. "Ever since we talked in the elevator, that's all I wanted. Couldn't you-" Asuka squeezes back down on Rei's hand, and it tells her what only the smallest part of her heart had acknowledged as true. "Rei!" she begs, squeezing her eye shut. "Don't tell me you- After all this…" In the darkness she'd grown to know so intimately, Asuka's voice finally surges forth: "Are you really so blind that you don't know why I'd do all that for you?"
The sun's glare against her closed eyelid diminishes, creeping slowly away. Rei's hand is slipping away too, enough of an answer for Asuka; to have thought that she might win Rei's favor with such a small gesture was laughable, not when that one attempt had gone so wrong. Asuka's next breath slides out slowly between her teeth, tense and drawn out. Something brushes her shoulder, pushing at it. Asuka opens her eye in time to see Rei's arm softly bumping into hers.
"The hell are you doing?" Asuka mumbles. Rei's fingers curl into her hair, brittle from her long isolation, and Asuka tries to shake her away. It's too much for her, this delusion. Rei couldn't possibly want to touch her now, not with an Angel in her eye and anger that simmers too close to the surface, eager to lash out at anyone, even Rei. It can't be Rei who slowly lowers her against the ground; it is, and the idea is incomprehensible to Asuka.
Her head settles deliberately against the fabric of Rei's skirt. Rei lays her hand atop Asuka's forehead with an expression on her face that looks suspiciously like the smile Asuka refuses to believe would be there. She turns the other way, sullen, at last bringing the city back into sight.
Tokyo-3 is still there, of course. It's a surprise to Asuka that she'd convinced herself there was a chance it might not be. "You must be tired from coming this far," Rei says above her. "Just rest."
"I'm not tired." The words crawl from Asuka's throat in a solemn procession and scatter before Rei's knowing look.
"It's okay. I'll watch over you until it's time to go back."
Maybe that's what Rei thinks would be comforting for Asuka to hear. It is, in its own strange way; it's a promise that she won't leave, even if only for a short period of time. Now, that smile begins to look more real.
"You'd better," whispers Asuka, a suggestion of resentment flitting halfheartedly along those words. Even that dissipates when Rei runs her fingers along Asuka's bangs, brushing them back, and lifts her gaze to watch the black pillars wafting heavenward from the city.
Asuka doesn't close her eye immediately, not wanting to go so willingly back into that darkness just yet. She watches Rei instead, and the light dancing above her. With her face half cast in shadow, it's easy to mistake the thin line of her lips for contentment. Rei's hand glides to a stop at the top of her head, and stays there. It takes only a small shift of Asuka's arm for it to come back down, taking Asuka's fingers against the warm cradle of her palm. And from there, it's easier for Asuka to think that Rei's smile is genuine, that it's directed at her, that the brief seconds where Rei's eyes move back down to check on Asuka aren't just tricks of the light. It'd all be 'very nice' if it were fake, but if it were real- if Rei would only bend her head and touch the warmth of her lips to Asuka's body- well, then she'd be torn between whether to dismiss it all, or to finally accept what she's believed was a false hope all this time.
More blood surges to Asuka's face the longer she lies there in thought, her cheeks growing hotter still. When she closes her eye, she thinks she feels a second pulse fluttering against her own- one, two, three- there for such a short time that Asuka strains to try and feel it again, to see if it might have been her own blood, surging out of control. But nothing else comes, only the incomprehensible patterns swimming around in the darkness; only the wind, beating at the grass and Asuka's skin; only Rei's hand, firm in hers, anchoring her as she finds herself falling into the chaotic void of her own thoughts.
A passing whisper of the wind wakes Asuka from her sleep, shattering her dreams with a sensation like cold fingers against the back of her neck. The grass clenched in her fingers shines with dew that reflects the sun to her back, still freshly damp. As she relinquishes it, it springs upright, standing tall over its surroundings: the rest of the grass around it lays flat even in places where Asuka hadn't lain, also wet. Asuka pushes herself up on shaky arms; beads of water trickle down them, collecting at the bend of her wrists.
Below, Tokyo-3 smolders still. The smoke that wafts away from the mountains, bourne away by the breeze, is a mild grey, nearly lost to the eye. Asuka gathers her legs under her, rising above the wavering grass, and looks around.
The hillside, once silent, ripples with motion. A cloud of cicadas departs from a nearby cluster of grass, calling plaintively as they fly. Asuka tracks their departure until they're too far away to see, and then it's back to the quiet from before: the sea of grass, undisturbed, the path that she and Rei had taken reclaimed by patiently waiting undergrowth and transformed back into unfamiliar ground.
Asuka takes a step in the direction she thinks is supposed to take her back. The yielding of the brush before her startles her, seeding panic deep in her chest, its roots lancing deep into her heart. She takes off at a run, tearing through the grass: it surprises her that it parts for her, that she leaves such an obvious trail of bruised leaves and broken branches behind her. She'd expected to pass through it, somehow, like Rei must have- must have, when she'd gone ahead-
Rei's name tears from her lips, drowning out the distant cicadas' droning, going equally unanswered. The vastness of the hills swallows any echo that may have come. What resonates instead is the building feeling of loneliness, forcing Asuka to move her legs faster. There's no chance that she can outrun it, but she doesn't know it, or believe it: not when Rei was there, so close. Asuka hurls herself clear of the tall grass, ignoring the shallow scratches on her legs, and onto the gravel road leading back down towards the city. Now she knows where she is; the oval indents of their shoes on the path are clear enough that she knows they're there, and that Rei must have come back this way. It was just an emergency, only that. That's why Rei had to go back, she tells herself. If only she can find Rei, everything will be alright-
Asuka's feet snag on each other, tangling, crashing against the rocks. Jagged edges dig into her knees and the soft flesh of her palms, oozing red around patches of scraped skin. Asuka hauls herself back up, only bothering to remove the dirt on her hands. The ones in her legs are shaken loose as she runs, then replaced; removed, and replaced; by the time she's back where safer sidewalk can be found, there's blood and dirt coating her legs instead of morning dew.
If you'd asked Asuka where Rei might be found the day before, she would have given a shrug for an answer. This morning, she knows- the picture of it rings clear in her mind, and there's only one place so desolate that it's unmistakable. Of course Rei would have to live there; it makes sense now, the way she'd gripped Asuka's hand. The loneliness from living on the edges of a city is the same, even if that distance is physical rather than emotional.
Asuka tears around a corner, ragged palms sliding along the walls of the buildings that obstruct her path, helping her turn faster. She's almost there. Moving at a full sprint for so long hurts more than she'd remembered it ever hurting, even more than the burning of her injured eye, by now only a distant memory. Down the straight stretch of buildings, Rei's apartment complex finally comes into sight. Asuka pushes herself forward in spite of the trembling beneath her, the source of which could be anything but herself: the shifting of the earth, the rumbling of distant construction machinery, anything that isn't her. She's strong, in this moment. She finds her way to the cracked glass doors and shoves her way in, locating the stairwell and gripping the rusted rail.
The strength leaves her just as suddenly, like the iron railing has sucked everything from her: her breath, and whatever dreams were dormant in her mind. Asuka pulls herself up the first stair, stumbling over each raised step. There's no more running blood now, only dried flakes that crumble off in infinitesimal amounts to litter the already decrepit stairwell. What more is blood amidst stagnant puddles and crumbling walls? To think that Rei had lived- lives here…
Mari had been brought over. Asuka lifts her head and grits her teeth, reaching the second story landing. Shinji had mentioned something about delivering papers to Rei before. The number 402 burns like a sickness in her mind. Asuka relinquishes the rail, arms pumping to deliver her to the top of the next set of steps. There had been heavy damage to Unit-02, hadn't there, but no news of Unit-00 or Unit-01. She'd assumed they were still functional, but-
At the next landing, Asuka collapses. Her shoulder pitches hard into the wall, and there's not enough air for her to breathe. She claws at her throat, tasting iron, and her breath comes out hoarse. She hadn't heard anything about Shinji either, but Rei- if she'd been around, why hadn't it been her there instead of Mari? Because… why would Misato trust a new transfer over the First Child?
The answer is on the next floor, but Asuka feels it settling in her chest already. She might be wrong, though. She's been wrong about a lot of things recently, like thinking that piloting Unit-03 might be a good idea; that she might be able to ever change Rei's heart, and then again: that Rei's heart might not ever be diverted once its course was set. So maybe she'll be wrong again, and she prays for it fervently with breath that she doesn't have to give.
At last- 402. There's a paper taped to the number plaque over the place where a name plate would be, and it's damp, too. The door, already ajar, squeaks violently when Asuka nudges it aside.
The darkness sets upon Asuka with an abruptness that even she couldn't hope to ever be used to. Her eye takes a moment to adjust, struggling to choose between the ambient shadows and the light that cleaves through them from behind her. As she shifts to the side, the sun's rays fall upon the interior, reflecting off the thick layer of sickly grey dust that's settled over everything from the table to the bedsheets. It glimmers in the seconds before Asuka's shadow obscures it all again, sparkling with the red of Rei's eyes and the silver of her voice, and then blue: blue that cracks the walls to shake the dust from them too; a blue so violent that it could only be Asuka's, hers.