A Glass of Wine (Chapter Seven)
Misato Katsuragi shielded her face with her hand against the grit kicking off landing platform A02. Hyuga stood next to her. His mouth flapped but she couldn't hear him over the deafening whine of the VTOL's downdraft. Moreover she didn't care. Whatever he had to say—first wave after action damage assessment, public relations complaints, unit recovery progress—didn't matter. Nothing else mattered until she saw that her soldiers were home safe.
The first of the VTOLs landed, briefly. Its doors flew open and disgorged a wad of technicians, security personnel, and one pilot. He looked alone amid them, his eyes on the decking, his plugsuit slick with oily LCL. Misato walked into the downdraft to meet him, smiling.
"Good work out there," she said instead. She had to shout to be heard, and she felt stupid for saying it immediately after, when she saw no change in his face. He needed her comfort, not praise that wasn't hers to give. Good work out there. What a piss-poor substitute for a hug.
She set her hand on his shoulder, tried to make it reassuring. He smiled at her, a slight thing that was entirely for her benefit.
"Wait with Lieutenant Hyuga," she said. "We have to clear the pad for the next one."
((()))
The corridors of Nerv were nearly empty. What personnel Shinji saw were in a hurry, moving past the open door to the break room at top speed. The battle was over but Nerv's work was far from finished. Shinji sometimes forgot that part of the process—the cleanup and damage control, the crews scrubbing down whole buildings to get the blood and oil off the sides, and the smell of death that pervaded the city for weeks afterward.
He sat forward on the bench and toweled his hair. The LCL in his scalp squeaked, the towel only making it harder. He groaned and leaned back against the wall. "Asuka—" he started.
"Do you have your card on you?"
Shinji looked over at her, where she stood by the iced coffee machine. Aside from the two pilots, the break room was empty. "You want a coffee right now?" he asked.
"Yeah."
"Hyuga said we were supposed to go to the command center."
"And you always do what you're told. Perfect stooge that you are."
"Am not," Shinji muttered. In truth, he was thankful for the reprieve. Going to the command center meant reporting to his father, and that prospect made him anxious. He would never avoid the meeting of his own accord, but now he could always blame it on Asuka. After all, she was the one who dragged him off to the break room.
"Do you have a card or don't you?" she asked.
"Huh? No."
Asuka frowned at him. "Well, guess this is your fault."
Shinji had been about to ask what she meant when Asuka shoved her padded elbow through the machine's glass display. The impact sent slivers raining across the tile.
"Asuka!" Shinji shouted.
"You want decaf or regular?"
"You can't do that!"
"Calm down. The security camera has been unplugged for days."
"That doesn't make it okay!"
"Whatever." The Second Child shrugged, pulling two cans from the shattered machine. She sat down next to him and passed him one. They drank in silence, staring ahead.
Shinji felt movement in his legs and arms even though they were completely still, a sensation not dissimilar from the after effects of being on a boat too long but amplified fourfold. Coming down off a synchronization was disorienting and it lingered for hours. One moment he had been a giant with the senses and strength of a giant. Then the circuits cut out and he was a boy again. It was jarring—a dead stop at the end of a skyscraper suicide.
"Did you feel it?" she asked. "The Angel. When I killed it."
Shinji nodded. "Yeah."
Asuka sipped her coffee, folded a leg under her body. "I can hear it, like it's screaming in the back of my eyelids. I've never had that before."
Shinji didn't know what to say, so he spoke from the heart. "That's what they don't understand. Misato, Ritsuko, my father. They don't know what it's like."
"They couldn't do it if they wanted to." Asuka shook her head. She hoped the spite would warm her, but she still tucked her body into the folds of her arms. "They ask us to save the world and still want us to pay for coffee."
Shinji sat there in silence. He wondered if now was one of those times when he could put an arm around her and not get murdered. It had happened once before, and he figured his luck would hold. Then he saw that she was staring at him. He looked away instantly, his face turning red. Her voice was right in his ear.
"Look at me, Shinji."
"Why?"
"Just do it. I want to ask you something important," she said.
Shinji took a breath and looked at her. She was close. Her eyes filled his vision, two blue orbs that stabbed into him. She looked intense, and for a moment he could smell her. It was that same scent she'd had weeks before, his nose in her hair, but mixed with the blood-hot tang of LCL. He shuddered and tried to hide it.
Look cool, idiot. Don't screw this up. His thoughts stopped the shuddering but did nothing to halt his erection.
This girl was about to say something important. He knew that. He could almost taste it and see it in her gaze.
Then her eyes softened and she backed away. "How's my Japanese?" she asked.
Shinji blinked. "Huh?"
"My Japanese, stupid. How is it?" She frowned. "And be honest. Everyone at school says it's great, and I think they're lying to me."
Shinji considered doing the same. Lying to Asuka was sometimes easier than telling the truth. She was accustomed to lies. She dished them out and she expected them in return. Shinji suspected she didn't really care about her Japanese. This whole conversation, which had started out very serious, was a lot of nonsense.
"It's okay."
"That bad, huh?"
"I can still understand you most of the time."
"Most of the time. Wonderful."
"I'm sorry."
"Don't apologize. I asked for the truth. It's on me." Asuka waved her hand, trying to play it off like the whole thing was a spur of the moment topic. Shinji watched her, waiting for the other shoe to drop, waiting to see what the hell she was driving at.
She sipped her coffee, milking the moment. "Hey," she said. "We have to make this fair."
"Fair?"
"I got to ask you a question with a truthful answer. Now you get one for me." She crossed her arms and looked at him. "C'mon, Third. Fire away."
She had in her head an expectation, which invited disappointment. She assumed she had him backed into a corner where he would be the one to confess to liking her. With any luck, he would ask her if she really liked him, because he was unsure, and then she could answer truthfully without becoming weaker. Then he could kiss her, or hold her, or be her boyfriend. And then their relationship could be a tangible thing built on a foundation of deception and mind games, and they could move forward from there.
That was Asuka's expectation. The disappointment followed.
"We should go to the bridge." Shinji stood up and threw his coffee in the trash, half-drank and leaking. He left the room and started down the corridor. Asuka followed him.
"Now wait a second," she said. "Where the hell are you going?"
Shinji kept silent and kept walking. He ran the towel through his hair, scrubbing at the dried liquid. Something about that made her angrier. He was completely ignoring her!
"Hey!" She picked up the pace and grabbed him by the arm. "Answer me!"
He grabbed her hand and shoved it away. "You never say anything!"
"What?"
"You want me to figure out what's wrong with you or what you want out of me but you never say anything! I don't know what you want from me!"
Asuka watched his face, saw the tears beginning to well at the corners of his eyes. He didn't look away this time.
"You talk around things and yell at me and call me stupid but you like me, too. What do you want from me?" Shinji backed away. "You're the only friend I have and I barely know who you are."
"But you like me."
"Yes. I told you that before."
"Why?" Asuka shoved him and he fell back against the wall. "Why?"
"I don't know."
"'I don't know'. You don't know anything, idiot."
"That's not true."
"You're just afraid. You're afraid of your father, you're afraid of the Eva, and you're afraid of me. You don't know what you want and you don't know how to get it. You're the worst kind of coward, Shinji."
"I'm a coward." Shinji stared at her. "What happened to your mother, Asuka?"
He anticipated her fist from the way her face tightened and the sudden shift of her weight, little details he had learned to notice during that week of living side-by-side to synchronize, as close to within one another's skin as was possible. What he did not know of Asuka's mind was made up for in knowledge of her body, a thing he had observed, trained alongside, and that he fantasized about in selfish, shameful moments. He ducked and her fist connected with the wall.
He backed away, hands held up, realizing his mistake. "Asuka—"
"Shut up!" She lunged forward, another punch headed for his face. He ducked back and she missed, but he tripped and fell and she was on top of him. She grabbed the towel around his neck and raised his head off the tile. "Apologize."
Perhaps it was the pain of his head smacking the floor, or the adrenaline flooding his combat-frayed nerves. Whatever the reason, Shinji Ikari was beyond apologies.
"No."
Her knuckles collided with his nose and he tasted blood in his mouth.
"Apologize, idiot."
There were tears in her eyes that streamed down to her grim lips, but she was still beautiful. She was always beautiful. She shook him, screamed again. He wished the hallways weren't so deserted. Then he felt her fingers move from the towel to his neck.
The Second Child strangled the Third, and likely would have killed him if he hadn't touched her cheek. His touch was the cold polymer print of a plugsuit's fingertips, but it was warm nonetheless. She leaned into it, so that his fingers ran through her hair even as her grip tightened around his throat. She looked at him and for what felt like the first time in their shared history the two pilots made eye contact.
His hand held still for as long as it took for her to release her grip—for her to process what his unconditional touch meant, and to forgive him for needing it and herself for needing him. Then his hand fell away and he inhaled a ragged breath.
"I'm sorry," Shinji said.
"Shut up already."
She leaned down and kissed him. It felt nothing like their kiss from before, that little tipsy peck on the veranda. That had been a joke, the kiss of a child. This felt altogether more terrifying and adult. The hard tile beneath them, the heat of his mouth, the blood running from his nose to mix with the streaking tears on her cheeks. She grabbed him by the hair and tightened her legs, clenching his waist between her thighs. She wanted to melt into him and she hated herself for it. This was a need that she did not want and it hurt, but not as much as the pain of his not reciprocating.
His hands reached up and wrapped around her waist and pulled her down. With their chests pressed together she could feel him shiver as he kissed her back. His tongue was in her mouth and his hands were on her back and in her hair, and for the first time in an hour the phantom wounds, lingering Angel death screams, and the machinations and expectations of an incomprehensible, adult world all died away in the face of two teenagers making out.
((()))
The communication window snapped open with a wink of holographic interference before stabilizing. The profile was sound only but Major Katsuragi snapped to attention nevertheless. The Sub-Commander's voice was curt and tired. "Report, Major."
"Commander, I take full responsibility for the collateral damage caused during the operation. Units 01 and 02 suffered severe damage, and Unit 00 suffered minimal damage."
"That's alright. It could have been much worse."
Misato exhaled a breath she had been holding since the operation began. Despite the threat to herself, her pilots, and the future of all mankind, there was always room for fear of a superior officer's displeasure.
The comm. window blinked, its profile changing to that of the Commander himself. "Major, is the pilot of Unit 01 there?"
That was unexpected. Misato shared a look with Dr. Akagi, and then checked behind her. Where there should have been three children there stood only one. Rei Ayanami looked back at her, unblinking.
"Um. No, sir. Not at the moment."
There was a pause, and Misato tried not to acknowledge the sideways glances of every technician within earshot. The Commander was enigmatic at the best of times, and his distant attitude toward his own son was a mainstay product of break room rumor mills.
"Very well," the Commander said at last. "Carry on, Major."
"Yes, sir."
The window winked off and the command personnel went back to their business, none of them aware of the impact the Commander's words—or lack thereof—had on the blue-haired pilot behind them.
((()))
Author's Note: "It's been a while…"
Nothing much to say here. I think this chapter was okay. I realized I'm going way darker than 94Saturn went with his original, but I guess that's part of maintaining those series-true characterizations I promised. After the blood-and-tear-stained attempted strangulation and make-out session from this chapter, I think I'll shoot for something more light-hearted in the next installment.
Anyway, sorry it took so long, and I hope you liked it. Feedback is appreciated!
