Neon Genesis Evangelion
Pilot's Table
By D.A.
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Title: Loss
Prompt: Set 1 / Prompt 50 (Writer's Choice)
Word Count: 1700+
Rating: T
Summary: Asuka recalls the loss of one of the Children with Hikari.
Disclaimer: I do not own Neon Genesis Evangelion or anything connected to it.
Notes: Part one of the "Returned" story arc.
Minor edits.
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"I used to drink a lot more often than once a year…"
Hikari, sitting next to her old friend at the otherwise empty bar counter, turned and looked at the fiery-tempered red-head. Asuka turned the glass back and forth in her hand, staring into the amber liquid as if looking for a lost friend. It seemed sadly appropriate that everyone else in the bar was at the tables around the small stage watching a local rock band play, leaving her and Asuka alone.
"I started right after I got back to Nerv-Berlin." Asuka tipped the glass to her lips, taking a slow drink, "If you know where to look, you can find bars that will serve anyone who can see and reach over the counter."
Hikari kept her silence, waiting for her long-time friend to continue. Asuka didn't talk about back then very often. None of them really did, it hurt too much even now.
"I figured, if it worked for Misato, why not me." she shrugged, again staring into the glass, "She would find me an hour or so later, roaring drunk, screaming in some random park I had wandered into on my drunken way home. She never told me what I was screaming about, but I could guess…"
"Shinji…" Hikari guessed, breathing the name. Shinji's name had been taboo to mention around the red-head since back then, Misato telling her and Asuka's friends not to mention the lost Pilot around the girl.
"Yeah…" Asuka cut herself off, taking a shaky breath, "I had nightmares for awhile, I'd see those things…"
Asuka threw back the rest of the beer and pushed away from the counter. Hikari drank the last of her soda and followed the red-head out and to the car. It was cold this time of year in Tokyo-3, especially this late at night, the seasons having begun to be noticeable again after nearly forty years since Second Impact.
Looking up, Hikari could just make out the edge of the Geofront. After civilization had returned to the area, it was determined that the blast that opened it up to the sky had removed to much surface area to ever again enclose the Geofront. So now, every evening on her way home from work at her restaurant, Hikari would look at the stars through the circle of open sky.
Hearing Asuka gasp, she jerked head gaze down to her friend. Asuka was staring in shock, eyes filling with tears, at the car. Following her gaze, Hikari found it wasn't the car, but the young man standing beside it.
No, she thought in shock, it can't be…
Shinji, hazy and ethereal, seemed to float an inch or two off the ground beside Asuka's borrowed Renault Alpine. His mouth moved, but Hikari couldn't hear what was said.
"I miss you… Shinji…" Asuka whispered, her voice shaky, when he seemed to stop for a moment, "Every single day, idiot."
Shinji seemed to smile. A sad smile that showed both happiness and regret. Asuka shakily returned the smile.
And then he was gone, drawing another gasp from Asuka, jerking it from her almost violently.
Both young women gazed unblinking at the spot the boy's ghost had stood. Slowly, like feather, Asuka sank to her knees as she continued to stare into the distance, back to another time and place.
Hikari carefully walked over to her best friend, kneeling beside her. Asuka took a shaky breath and wrapped her arms around her middle as her eyes glistened.
"We… I'd just told him, demanding and self-confident as ever, that I would grace him with being his date at the dance that Friday. He… he'd stuttered and blushed like normal, and damn if I didn't let myself admit it made him cute. Then he stood up from his homework and told me, calm as he could be at least around me, that I would sit down."
Hikari smiled, she remembered Touji- and here her own heart clinched painfully in her chest -tell her that Shinji was going with Asuka to the dance, so would she like to go with him and make it a double date.
"Well, he got up and walked over to me, blushing like mad. After a second he asked if he could go to the dance with me. He didn't stutter or pause, or anything." Asuka smiled, "The next two days were the best I'd ever had…"
"And then… It all fell apart." tears started silently falling from her eyes as she turned to look at Hikari, "Hikari, do you trust me? I need to tell you, you're my friend, but I've NEVER been able to talk about that day… I still can't get the words out..."
"Of course I trust you!" Hikari insisted, unsure what Asuka meant by telling her if she could say the words.
"Ok, just… don't run away." Asuka turn to fully face Hikari, and a faint orange glow wrapped around her hands as she slowly reached for Hikari's. Hikari froze, watching as Asuka's glowing hands took hold of her own. After a moment, Hikari thought she could hear Asuka crying, but it was in her head. Then everything blacked out.
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When her vision cleared, Hikari had no control over what she did, and somehow realized she was seeing things the way Asuka had.
It was Asuka's memory of that horrid day.
The Entry-plug lit-up, the soft, orange tint vanishing as power flowed through circuits and energy surged through the Eva's limbs. Voices screamed or yelled through the radio as she swung the beast's arms up and stepped forward, shearing the cage restraints off her chariot's armor. She had no time to waste, Shinji was alone on the surface and needed her, the Great Asuka Langley Sohryu, to get up there and kick some butt.
Reaching one of the catapults to the Geofront surface, Asuka used her Eva's remote overrides to activate it and send her racing for the surface. Reaching the top she gained a quick glimpse of the area: Shinji in Unit-01 was grappling with a white, eyeless Evangelion and winning, bodies of several others scattered about, but there were still three awaiting their turn. When she arrived, two turned to face her, the slug-like heads splitting in a disgusting mockery of a grin as she charged them.
Violence sang its song in her ears as she drew her Eva's combat knife, the two-story handle extending an equally long blade as she swung it down through the shoulder of the closer of the two white cyborgs, slicing it's arm clean off in a spray of red blood which coated her Eva from right shoulder to right foot.
Dropping and rolling to avoid the second MP-Eva's clumsy grapple attempt, she slammed into something she hadn't noticed a moment ago: a wide, flat blade as tall as her Eva, with a two-handed grip in the middle and slightly off to one side. Perfect, she thought as she dropped her knife and gripped the blade by the handle.
Swinging the blade around as she stood, she slammed it into and through the other beast's legs, chopping them off, the blood pouring from the wounds mixing with the blood from the Eva with the missing arm.
Grinning, Asuka continued the spin and brought the blade around and into MP-Armless's side, not quite managing to cut it in half as the blade crushed and cut into the creature.
Hikari felt sick at the bloodshed, though Asuka had not at the time, but what came next chilled her to the core: a scream. A blood curdling scream of pain, rage, and defeat.
In Asuka's memory she had dropped the Blade and spun to face Unit-01. She saw it pinned to the pyramid there in the center of the Geofront with what looked like a two-pronged spear, Lance of Longinus, and the last standing white Eva leering at him with its disgusting maw, the circle of sky that was once the Geofront roof open above them.
Asuka charged, praying it wasn't to late, but knew she was too late when Unit-01 went limp and the radio became silent.
No, no, No, No, NO, NO, NO! Rang through Asuka's memory, both in her mind and out her mouth. She raged, tearing at the white monster that turned to her. Her vision, and thus her memory, was red.
When her sight cleared, she found pieces of white Eva covering her hands and the ground. Ignoring it, at least for a little while, Asuka knelt her Eva next to Shinji's pierced chariot. Ejecting the 'Plug, she scrambled as quickly as she could over to Shinji's already ejected plug. Climbing in through the wreckage in the side of the pyramid and over to the side of the plug, Asuka grabbed the handle of the emergency hatch, and with strength born of terror and rage, spun the handle and slammed the hatch open.
Empty.
No, not empty. Shinji's blood-stained plugsuit lay in the chair. But no sign of Shinji.
While Hikari was puzzled, Asuka simply began to scream at the purple cyborg. She raged at it for taking Shinji again. Hikari didn't know it had taken him before, and that was when a hint of memory of the Fourteenth Angel and its aftermath floated by.
Before Hikari could begin to view that memory, she suddenly found herself staring at her friend, back in the real world, and Asuka's tears now flowed freely down her face.
"That was how I lost him…" Asuka said, her voice breaking, her mask of strength finally slipping completely, and she began to sob. "But… but he isn't really g-gone… sometimes… sometimes, l-like just now… I see him, Hikari. Like he's really standing there!"
When Asuka had started talking Hikari had gathered her into a hug, and at her friends revelation that this had not been the first time an apparition of the Third Children had visited her, Hikari held her tighter.
She was going to have a talk with that purple monster, if she had to go through every single member of what was left of Nerv to do it. She'd lost her boyfriend to the wars that followed the aborted Third Impact, and she'd be damned if she didn't at least try to get her friend the love of her life back.