Author's notes: Just a small writing exercise. Dunno what came over me when I wrote it. Don't think about it too much.
Disclaimer: Standard disclaimer applies.
Feet shuffle through the traitorous sand. They move slowly, heavily, as if their owner is weighted down by a great burden. They stumble, suddenly, on a small stone buried by the yellow sand, but the boy regains his balance with great trouble. On his back, another figure is strapped in a rag harness, dressed in a ragged red suit of some kind. The right arm is bandaged heavily and hangs in a sling. The face is invisible behind a cover of red hair. The boy who carries the girl (for it is obviously a girl, even if the face is not visible) is dressed in dirty rags that were once a white shirt and black trousers, but now the clothes are ripped for bandages and muddied. His feet are naked. He struggles on, shifting his passenger's weight a little and gripping the girl's legs more comfortably, then sets his face and marches forwards, his destination unclear.
The girl's hair shifts, revealing more bandages. Her left eye is invisible, covered in once-white gauze.
"How long?" she croaks, voice hoarse. The boy doesn't stop, moving on, but deigns her with an answer.
"Three days."
Again, all is silent. The dirty red mane obscures the girl's face once more.
"I'm thirsty."
The city is in ruin, the once high skyscrapers now only black needles, husks devoided of life within. They crumble, slowly, unable to support their own weight, but it isn't their time, yet. They still stand tall. The boy doesn't notice. His goal is just ahead. A small, half-ruined building spotting a scorched sign of a department store. There they can probably find food. Or water.
The boy stops heavily just in front of it, stumbling. He squats down, struggling out of his harness, depositing his burden onto the crumbling sidewalk.
"I'll be right back," he says to the redheaded girl, but she isn't awake. He frowns slightly, then pulls out a bottle of murky yellow liquid from the girl's backpack. LCL. He unscrews the cap and lifts the girl's head a bit, opening her mouth and pouring the liquid in, slowly, almost drop by drop. She swallows heavily, now awake, and finds the strength to grimace. No matter how long one boils the LCL-infested water, it still tastes awful. Still, it has all the minimum on minerals, proteins and carbohydrates necessary for survival, the boy chooses not to remind her on. He stands up again, leaving the half-empty plastic bottle beside the girl. He pulls out a flashlight from the rucksack and proceeds into the ruined store, careful not to disturb the shaky structure, afraid that it might cave in, burying him. The inside is jumbled up, but most things are still intact, even if on the floor. The organic food is spoiled for so long it doesn't even smell anymore, just black husks of fruits along the shelves. The boy finds a fridge with warm bottles inside. He carefully unscrews one and takes a long drink, gulping the liquid down slowly, savoring the taste. Once the bottle is empty, he selects another four bottles and carries them outside, setting them down in front of the girl. He leaves again, even as the redhead reaches out with her healthy hand, taking one of the bottles and trying to rip the cap off with her teeth.
There is more to salvage.
A small park becomes their shelter for the night. None of the buildings are stable enough to sleep in, as the boy explains to his sulking companion. But, they have a tent, so it will be warm enough. A small fire is made out of debris. A camping pot is set onto it, with water inside. Today, they would have a proper meal. But not yet. While waiting for the water to boil, the boy uncoils the bandages. The eye is healing nicely. There will be a scar, but whatever power treated it first, within Instrumentality, did a good job. The stitches are absorbed by the healing tissue, and the eye apple is undamaged. The girl says that she can see out of it, which makes the boy smile. The hand is another matter. The bone is healing as well, but it will take longer. Much longer. At least, there is no infection and the flesh already healed over, forming a long scar up to the girl's elbow. The girl moves her fingers on his request, answering that she feels his prodding. The boy pulls out their first aid kit, sparsely smearing the antiseptic and iodine over the healing wound, just to be sure. The bandages are boiling in the clear water, in hopes to clean them.
The girl is asleep once more, and the boy leaves her be for a while. It had been a long week.
Two sets of footprints trail along another beach, quickly being washed over by a red sea. The girl can walk on her own now, for which the boy is infinitely grateful. He doesn't tell her, thought. She is not strong enough to throw a temper tantrum, yet she would try anyways and just exhaust herself needlessly. They walk on, in silence. Their goal, Tokyo 3, is two days' walk away. The girl had insisted. The boy didn't care where to go. He had just shouldered the backpack.
Tokyo-3 welcomes them back with dead buildings, stares at them through the destroyed windows, hinders their progress with blasted apart roads and gaping holes that lead so deep down neither of them dares to imagine.
They had fled from here as fast as they could upon their awakening, two years ago, noticing nothing around them, and now they can only stare at the black forgotten fortress under the red night-sky.
Most of the city is a gaping crater, where the bombardment punched through the armor plating, but the outskirts remain, surrounding the hole to what once was the Geo-front in a ring, so from afar the city still looks whole. The illusion is disconcerting.
They had donned their shoes as soon as they hit the crumbling asphalt and the boy even managed to procure a change of clothes, a rare find, even if the fabric is thin with age. The boy's rags and the girl's red rubber suit are currently carefully packed away in their backpacks. They are important.
The girl had once theorized that a lot of time had passed between the impact and their return, which is why everything men had built is so old, so they operate under this theory, thought deep down, the boy disagrees.
The girl kicks a piece of rubble aside and grimaces in pain. Her leg still gives her trouble from time to time. The boy ignores the clatter and just stands there, gazing at the gutted city. It takes the girl's hand slipping into his to shake him out of his contemplation.
They stride slowly through the streets, making detours here and there to avoid the fallen buildings, towards their destination.
They make a stop for the rest of the night near one of the sagging buildings, far enough that they'd be safe, should it choose this night to fall down, but close enough to hide them from the angry wind that howls through the ruins of the mega-polis.
They make a fire and eat little, since their provisions are meager: the girl still can't carry much. They look at the smoldering embers until the sky changes from red to angry, blinding orange that is impossible to look at, then crawl into the tent, huddling together, and talk quietly about their plans.
Tomorrow, they decide after a brief argument, they will split up and scout around the crater's perimeter, checking if they can find one of the access routes that is still intact enough for them to use. The girl is uneasy at the prospect of being alone, but she relents to the boy's hesitant logic.
The boy falls asleep first, a habit he developed long ago so he didn't have to listen to the girl cry: she didn't like it when he saw her like that. Now she doesn't cry so much anymore, but the habit remains. The girl soon follows him into sleep, clutching him tightly.
The boy throws a handful of strange, bluish leaves into the bonfire and steps as far away as he can, watching the flames dance, taller than him. The smoke rises high into the sky, and not ten minutes later, is joined by another trail on the other side of the huge crater.
The boy smiles, then shuffles tiredly to his sleeping sack and lies down onto it. It has been a week since they separated, but at least he knows that the girl is alright. He had left her the tent, and most of the provisions, as much as she could carry, really, but he still worries.
It takes them almost two weeks to meet up again. They had determined that all the access shafts are unusable, but the girl had found one of the weapon shafts that's mostly intact. They can climb down the service ladders, she says. The boy scolds her, since she had went looking at it during the day: she could have gone blind from the poison-orange sun. She slaps him and huffs. He just smiles.
They stay in the tent for most of the night and the whole next day.
The descent goes smoothly so far, even if the service ladders and walkways aren't in the condition the girl had first assumed. Still, there are enough crevices in the walls, leading into the ruined and collapsed corridors, so they can rest during their climb down.
The girl's hand bothers her greatly, the boy notices during one of the stops, but she remains silent, just rubs it discreetly. He complains loudly about how tired he is and begs for a longer rest. She agrees, after letting loose a couple of comments about his lacking constitution. Still, they remain in the caved in side shaft for two whole hours before moving on.
The metallic floor echoes with their footsteps. The boy carries their dynamo-powered flashlight, winding it up from time to time so it doesn't go out, but keeps it pointed on the ceiling, so that the thin cone of light doesn't illuminate the blood splashes on the walls and floor, as well as yellow stains. At least, there are no bodies.
Most of the geo-front is still intact, only the higher levels and the surface with the artificial lake have suffered damage. The girl says she doesn't want to go through the Eva cages yet, so they avoid them, seeking out alternate paths.
The offices are full of crumbling paper with useless text on it, but it turns to dust at their first touch. Still, they manage to find a map, framed into metal, with a cracked glass cover, and follow it to the power plants.
The girl got one of the huge generator beasts working, so now they have light, even if it's red. The boy still marvels at her ingenuity. The fuel is sparse, but should be enough for their needs. They are now in the command center, studying the dimly lit screens. The empty rags that were once beige uniforms, are burning brightly in a garbage bin in the corner, near their sleeping sacks.
The Magi have been off too long, the girl says. She doubts she can get them working. Besides, they don't have the proper access codes. They'll need another way to open the way to the terminal dogma. The boy nods, than tosses the black cloth that had once been one his father's suits into the fire.
The boy is calm, which can't be said for the girl, as they gaze upon the cavern before them. The huge skeleton of a never born Evangelion leers at them from the ground below. It can't be done, the girl whispers, she was stupid to think that they could do it.
The boy disagrees and she slaps him, but he isn't bothered in the slightest. He tells her to find a crane that works.
They consume the meager food and get back to work, her at the computers, him in the cage. The skeleton they spent most of the month getting here is leering at them, but at least it stands upright now, almost touching the ceiling and the never-decaying half-angelic flesh that they had scavenged from the bottom of the doctor's grotesque aquarium, has taken. Even now, it grows around the yellow bones with surprising speed, thought not fast enough to be seen by the naked eye. The boy plays with the piece of grey metal in his pocket and wonders.
The creature on the other side of the glass is breathing, thought it's far from complete. Still, the girl says, it has to be enough; the fuel supplies for the reactor are dwindling. The boy only nods, then pulls out his talisman, a palm-long piece of grey amalgam he had managed to snap off of one of the floating white giants' lances so long ago. It sits on his hand innocently while the girl glares at it with hatred. His gaze shifts towards the window where the abomination they had grown scales its teeth at him from behind half-grown flesh. His mind is filled with doubt. Will it work?
They have tied the lance-shard to one of the cranes and had driven it into the creature that was more angel then Eva almost an hour ago. There is no reaction, so they sit gloomily at the table, staring at their failed creation through the glass. It's still alive even now, despite the crane's arm sticking out of its chest, but it's useless now. The Shard wasn't close enough to the original. Or maybe the girl's original theory was wrong. Or maybe they lacked something or didn't know enough. Whatever the reason, they had failed, having spent over a year at the geo-front on this pointless quest. The boy starts to cry quietly and the girl puts her arm around him.
The fire burns inside the cage, wiping out their work in an inferno hot enough to melt the walls slightly. Both of them don't look at it, they merely enjoy their sparse meal in silence. Tomorrow, they will go to the power plants and silence the base once more, and then climb back up to continue their pointless existence.
The girl drags the boy up, cursing loudly: the final ladder collapsed under him, so they had lost his rucksack, but for now she has to make sure she doesn't lose him as well, so she pulls at his arm with all her might until he can grasp the edge with his other hand, then his leg, until finally he rolls onto the surface completely, jagged asphalt and rubble digging into his back, but he is howling with laugher, and so is she, even as she falls on her knees near him, panting with effort. His laugh is an honest laugh of one who had survived certain death. Hers has a note of hysteria in it, but she hugs him tightly as soon as she can move her arms again, and he hugs her back. The loss of their possessions doesn't appear relevant.
They traverse the dead city a week later, going back the way they came, until the boy stops suddenly, having just passed one of the still standing buildings that had obscured their sight till now. She looks at him in surprise, then stares as well.
There is smoke in the distance.
The mane of purple hair stands out even at the hundred meter distance, and they sprint as fast as they can towards it, and towards the others surrounding the huge campfire. There are quite a few of them, and the crude huts made of debris house even more, and both of them cry openly, both at the same time, for once, and the girl doesn't care, and they try running even faster, to cover the distance even more quickly, until the boy crashes into the surprised woman, followed a second later by the girl, both crying and laughing simultaneously, while people gather around them, most shocked at their sudden appearance, and at their age, and at their tanned, sun-bleached complexions. Neither of the two cares.
They had succeeded.
"Hey, Shinji?"
"Hmm?"
"They stabbed Adam with the Lance and caused the Second Impact, right?"
"Well, yes, I think so. Why?"
"What would stabbing Lilith with the Lance do? Isn't she, like, Adam's opposite?"