'Am I dying… is this was death feels like?'
"Is that what you want?"
Shinji had been close to death before on a number of occasions and fought it off each time. Each time had brought a new experience for him, ghosts from his past appeared to him providing him with new monsters to confront.
This experience was peaceful, as if he was floating through a serene ocean. It wasn't what he wanted though and he told himself that.
'I cannot be here, I have to go back'
"Is that what you want?" The voice from before repeated itself, he couldn't make out who it belonged to. It sounded like his mother but it couldn't have been. She was no longer of this Earth, Evangelion Unit 01 had left.
'Who are you?'
"I am a voice, chosen from many to aid you. I am a manifestation of your mind. So tell me again what you want."
'I want to go back to her, I want to help her.'
Shinji felt the calmness in the air dissipate slightly. It felt as if the ocean around him was heating up as the voice changed to another.
"Help me? What if you can't Shinji, what if you try to hurt me again? How can I trust you?"
The voice belonged to Asuka, but it wasn't her and Shinji knew that.
'I don't have the answer to that, but I have to try.'
"Didn't you try before, look where that got you! You're weak and pathetic, you're better off dead."
'No! That… that isn't true. I'm trying!'
The voice changed again, returning to the one from before and with it the calming feeling also returned, "That voice represents your fears. Another manifestation, you have to answer it Shinji."
'I… know I hurt her, I know I tried to hurt her but you're wrong. I'm not better off dead, I chose to live and that's what I'm going to do.'
A ripple went through the water as he finished, the air got colder as another voice spoke, this time it belonged to his father. It was cold and emotionless.
"Where will you both go? There are only so many resources in Tokyo-3 and you're probably out-numbered by the beasts that attacked you. Do you really think you can survive? You're better off dead."
Shinji already had the answer, he was alive now which meant they had beaten the beast. No matter what these voices in his mind wanted him to think. Someone had saved them and that was the key.
'You're wrong, someone helped us. We can survive this, let me go back!'
Warmth returned but it wasn't the voice of his mother returned, it was the voice of Misato, "Do you still hate yourself Shinji?"
'I don't know what I feel about myself right now… but I'm learning… isn't that enough?'
"We all wanted to help you but you rejected us."
'I know I did, and you did help me but I wasn't ready to help myself. You all needed my help too but I wasn't able to help you. Send me back please!'
Another rippled was sent through the water, the voices around him spoke all at once.
"You're better off dead."
"You hate yourself."
"You can't survive this!"
"Do you hate me Shinji?"
"How can you protect anyone?"
Shinji could feel himself struggling with it all, desperately fighting back inside his own mind, repeating to himself, to the manifestations of his guilt and his fears to let him go back.
'Let me go back, please let me go, I don't want to be here, let me go!'
The voices were gone, replaced by deathly silence. The sensation of floating had gone and he felt himself lying face up on something solid. He could hear a voice echo in the distance, it was not like the others. This one was not an apparition brought on by his mind but something real, something tangible. It echoed again getting louder and louder, he latched onto it and tried to focus until finally it thundered all around him.
"I NEED YOU!"
Suddenly his eyes flickered open, revealing a hospital ceiling and Asukas pale and tear streaked face staring down at him.
Asuka didn't know what to do as she sat staring at the sleeping form in front of her. It had almost been twenty four hours since they had been attacked and subsequently saved and picked up. She had barely slept and ate, all of her thoughts instead on the person lying in that hospital bed in front of her.
'Why does he affect me so much? It'd be so much easier for me to just go back to how I used to be, to shut away the feelings, pretend I didn't care but… there is no going back. I promised mama that, and I promised myself that.'
She daren't think about how she must look right now. Her eyes stung and her eye-patch was still damp from where she had been crying. Asuka was not going to leave the room until he had woken up, no matter how much anyone else told her she must.
'I don't care what Misato, Gendo or the Doctors say! I'm not leaving him, no matter how long it takes.'
The doctors and nurses on board the carrier had tried to get her to move but she was stubborn more so than all of them. Even when it came to them giving her a medical check-up she had insisted it was done in this room. Misato had made special arrangements for her, and came by every few hours to see if all was alright. She hadn't seen anything of Gendo since the initial encounter in Tokyo-3.
Asuka heard a noise from Shinji's direction, it was a whimper and she noticed him twitch. Slowly she rose to her feet and went over to his bedside.
"Hey idiot… I'm… I'm not really very good at this alright."
She laughed at herself, "See Shinji, there is something I'm not very good at. I know you used to come and visit me when I was in the hospital before Third Impact. I know you used to talk to me, I heard it all even…"
She brushed aside the memory, "…even that incident. I hope that maybe you can hear this. The doctors and nurses, they said you're fine physically and they don't know when you'll wake up or why you haven't already. I know why though, you're fighting again aren't you?"
"I want you to listen to this though, don't you dare think about abandoning me, don't think about leaving me alone here. If you do… I will never forgive you Shinji. So please just wake up, wake up and apologize for something stupid like you always do. Wake up and avert your gaze from me because you think I caught you staring I don't care what you do just wake up."
She swallowed and realized that she was crying as she spoke, "I can't do this by myself Shinji, I thought I could. I thought I could do everything alone, that I didn't need people there but I did. I thought I could defeat the Angels alone, but you were always there to help me."
'What am I doing revealing all this to him, he probably can't hear me.'
Despite these thoughts she continued, "Remember the angels we beat, how good I wa… how good we were. I… I need you Shinji."
She noticed his body twitch as she spoke and she leaned in closer. Taking her one good arm and cradling it around his head, "Shinji… open your eyes please… I need you…"
Asuka didn't notice her voice had raised significantly as she said it, "I need you… so wake up… I need you! I NEED YOU!"
The boys' eyes suddenly opened, his mouth agape and his expression blank but Shinji Ikari had finally woke up. Without thinking Asuka let go of his head and stepped back stunned into silence. Shinji spoke, his voice registering barely above a whisper.
"A-Asuka?"
Misato felt useless as she sat in the ships canteen nursing her coffee and thoughts. It had been twenty-four hours since the rescue craft had shown up on the Tokyo-3 Shoreline, since that time she had been given a medical exam, released and left to her own devices as the routine of everyday life on the NERV Air Carrier carried on around her. No one had brought her forward yet to discuss what had happened in Tokyo-3 instead they had quickly taken Gendo Ikari in for that part. Shinji was still unconscious in the sickbay and Asuka was by his side.
They had arrived just in time to help Shinji and Asuka against that monster that had attacked them. That had been carted away by the NERV Team that rescued them with no further word on it. She was without answers and without a friend on this carrier. Just what was the situation in Tokyo-3 right now, what had happened to the rest of the world?
'Third impact happened… it should have destroyed everything but it barely seemed to leave a dent here. Everything seems to have been isolated to Tokyo 3 but how is that possible? I saw it all go up, we watched the world through his eyes. Every living thing, every soul was a part of it.'
From her seat she observed what she could, there were a young couple making plans for when they finished their shifts. A slightly older man was berating a younger one for making a mistake during a training exercise. Two women walked past discussing test results from one of the experiments on board. Misato couldn't hear what the exact details were nor did she care, all she wanted was for everything to make sense again.
She mumbled to herself, "Beer wouldn't hurt either…"
"Excuse me, Miss Katsuragi?"
Misato looked up at the source of the voice, it was a young female officer. Couldn't have been much older than twenty and sporting medium length black hair and glasses. Misato looked at the rank on the officers' uniform, First Lieutenant.
'Must be my time for questioning…'
Misato put on her best smile, "Yes, how can I help?"
"I've been sent from the medical bay, it's Pilot Ikari. He has finally woken up and wishes to see you."
Misato's eyes widened and she felt a wave of happiness wash through her, "Shinji is awake?"
"Shinji you've hardly eaten anything."
Asuka was glaring at him from the other side of the room as he set the food tray to one side. He was tempted to mention that she too hadn't made much of a dent in her meal but quickly thought better of it. He didn't intend to extend his stay in this room.
It wasn't that Shinji didn't want to eat, or that he wasn't hungry. It was more the fact that he hadn't eaten anything properly for the past week so his body wasn't quite sure what to do with real food.
"I know… I just don't feel that great."
"You want me to get the nurse?"
"No… I'll be fine. I just need to get used to this again."
Asuka smiled and went back to poking at her own meal. Now that Shinji was awake she had finally allowed the Nurses to change her bandages and eyepatch. They had also seemed optimistic that she would make a full recovery, the damage had been bad at first but was recovering at a fairly rapid pace. Another couple of weeks and she'd have full usage of her arm again and might have full vision in her eye.
Shinji was hoping he would be allowed to get out of here sooner rather than later. He had spent far too much of the previous year in hospital beds, he hated everything about it from the smell of them, to the sounds and the layouts of the rooms themselves. It was always the same layout, the same bed placement, same potted plant placement and visitors' seat placement. The only difference in this room was that the seating had been made into a makeshift bed for Asuka due to her insistence on staying with him.
His stomach growled at him and he tried eating some of the food again. There was a silence in the room as both he and Asuka ate. He realized he actually had no idea where he was. All he remembered was the attack, losing consciousness and when he woke up being told they had been rescued by Misato and brought here. Where 'here' was he hadn't been told.
"Asuka, where exactly are we?"
Asuka looked up, "Huh? Did I not tell you?
Shinji had a mouthful of food so opted for shaking his head.
"Oh, well… shortly after you lost consciousness and Misato saved us we went back to the beach where we woke up. Oh just so you know, I was right, you seeing Ayanami did mean people came back."
She smiled and continued, "About an hour after that a transport helicopter arrived saying they were from the German NERV branch, apparently Misato had been in contact with them. We were brought to this air carrier. No one really told me anything else, Misato was taken away and we were brought here."
"The German NERV branch?"
She nodded, "Yup, you did know that we had headquarters around the world right?"
"Of course I knew that it's just… how are they still functioning? I thought the UN or SEELE shut NERV down before the impact. That's why we were targeted?"
Asuka shrugged, "No one is telling me anything, it might explain why Misato was taken away so quickly."
Shinji was about to ask another question when the door suddenly burst open. Asuka barely had time to register the figure that dashed past her straight to Shinjis side. Shinji barely had time to react before he felt himself being embraced tightly by Misato.
"Shinji, I'm so happy you're alright!"
Shinji didn't have anything to say to her, he was just happy to see her and know that she was alive.
"I'm so sorry for everything Shinji"
As Misato spoke he felt the hug get tighter, to a point where it started to become a bit uncomfortable. He tried to let her know but was unable to get his words out, fortunately Asuka had noticed.
"Misato!"
Misato didn't register at first so Asuka tried again.
"Misato! He can't breathe."
Misato looked down at the boy and realized she might have gone a little bit over the top with the hug.
"Oh! Uh sorry about that Shinji… Asuka I'm glad you're alright too."
'Not so pleased to see me huh?' Asuka forced the thought away, there was no use being bitter over it. Misato was Shinji's guardian before Asuka arrived in Tokyo-3 and had a different relationship than she and Misato did. Besides it was Shinji she cared about, he needed the attention right now.
"That's fine Misato jus-"
Asuka didn't get a chance to finish her sentence as she felt herself being pulled into an embrace by Misato too. It was tight, pain went up her arm but it was also comforting. It was something she had wanted for so long, to be hugged by another person.
"Misato…"
Misato turned to face Shinji, "Yes."
"When you… saved me out there, I thought I saw was another person. Who was it?"
"Ikari…"
Gendo stood facing the Vice Commander of NERV Germany. He had been careful in his actions since arriving on the carrier, been careful to present himself as the Gendo from before the incident. The guarded Gendo, the man in charge of everything.
"You realize having you here, having Major Katsuragi and those two pilots here presents an enormous risk to us?"
"I understand that, but you realize that the JSSDF attacked us needlessly. That the UN was fed false information about us and that those pilots are the ones who stopped the incident from going any further."
The Vice Commander sighed, she was slightly older than Gendo and had been in NERV for around the same time. Since joining she had heard a lot of rumours about Gendo and Project EVA. She had heard significantly more rumours since the UN orders a couple of days ago.
"So you've told me, and Major Katsuragi has backed up your story as well. It is for those reasons, and because I have the daughter of Kyoko on board this carrier that we are in lock-down right now and that I haven't reported this to my superiors."
He nodded.
"So tell me Commander, who started Third Impact, and why didn't it destroy the world as it should have done? Why is Tokyo-3 the only affected area, and what the hell was that monster you brought on my ship?"
Gendo Ikari, for once did not have any answers.
