Creation began on 02-10-16

Creation ended on 02-21-16

Neon Genesis Evangelion

Modern Day Legend of a Rage-filled Anchor: Deviation, Part Seven/Love's Parting

A/N: To those that don't understand, the Asuka of the Ceres universe will get a proper parting from the Shinji of that same universe with aid from the Shinji of the Eva universe.

Asuka Soryu-Ayanami couldn't remember what had happened the last time she was conscious, but the sight of a sleeping Shinji beside her in his bed made it hard for her to remember anything. Was she talking to Yui about a woman named Frenzia, who know about another woman named Ceres? Wasn't Shinji dead and had been for a year? That couldn't be right, he was right beside her in his bed. She was even sure that they had made love because she felt exhausted.

Raising her right hand to caress his sleeping face, she smiled at him.

"Asuka…" She heard a voice call out to her. "Asuka…Asuka…"

"Huh?!" The red-eyed redhead gasped, now finding herself in a hospital hallway with Yui. "What?"

"I was just saying that you should go get some sleep," Yui told her. "You were unresponsive for a moment there."

"Oh… I'm sorry, I guess I…slipped into a daydream," the girl told her. I thought it was all real. It felt real. I touched his face.

"What was it about?"

"Flying in the moonlight."

"Precious."

Asuka then left her to retire to the hospital's waiting room where they had futons for people to crash and burn for a few hours (or days, depending on how much time you had to spend with people hospitalized at Magatama Memorial Hospital). She couldn't really share with Yui that her daydream was really about her intimacy with Shinji, like his suicide was never a fact, that it was just an illusion. Her heart had left her feeling deceived…but only because she still loved him. And then, there was this outsider Shinji that was similar in appearance to her dead lover, but was different in both past and soul.

This is torture enough without having a boy from another world, she thought.

Entering the room, she found everyone else she'd seen today on some of the futons, some trying to sleep while the others were still awake.

"I take it some of us won't be sleeping well tonight," she told them.

"You'd be right," Aya responded.

"Still…your brother is alright, so that must count for something…even if it's small."

"Yeah… But with the return of Aki, I fear things are going to get worse than before."

Asuka took an empty futon near Aya and Toya, and uttered, "How can things be worse than before?"

"If the Progenitor's gone, the rest of Mikage International, meaning Kagami, will be after Ceres with greater interest." Toya explained.

"I mean you no disrespect, Ms. Mikage, but I think with after what happened today, I'd be less interested in Ceres and more interested in Shinji and Frenzia. Whoever this Kagami is, he can obsess over Ceres all he wants to, but she's got nothing compared to the Tennyo of the Ikari family."

"No disrespect taken. Frenzia was more forthcoming than Ceres has been."

-x-

"…You want to use my body in order to say good-bye to Asuka?" Shinji responded to his deceased counterpart of this world in the dream world.

"I only told her that I loved her before I died," the dead Shinji told him. "It wasn't exactly saying good-bye. There's not much hope at all for a suicide, but I want to at least let her know from me that she's still the most important person to me, in life and in death."

Shinji recalled the last time his deceased self ever saw his girlfriend alive. It was after they had made love when the Rage-filled Anchor took over him…and he had hurt her against his will. And that's why he killed himself.

"And she deserves to hear it from the man she loves himself," he told him.

"Five minutes to say good-bye to her is all I ask."

"Do what you need to do."

-x-

Kagami was getting concerned now. He hadn't heard from the men charged with keeping watch over the Progenitor and helping to bring in Shinji and Aya. If anything were to happen to the Progenitor, then he'd be unable to ascertain where he had hidden Ceres' hagoromo and use it for the C-Genome project.

-x-

The next day, upon waking up to the smell of coffee, Asuka, after eating the available breakfast, decided that today was another day she would forget about school and make an excuse to why she skipped again.

"Um, Asuka," went Aya to her, "the Ikari ladies were with Shinji earlier, and explained to me that he needed to see you soon."

"Why?" She asked her.

"They wouldn't say, but Shinji made it seem like something important to you."

And with that, Asuka went down to the psyche ward where Shinji was confined.

Yui and Anzu were standing in front of the cell he was in, and Asuka greeted them.

"I was told that Shinji needed to see me?" She asked them.

"Yeah," Yui expressed. "It's complicated, but you should be able to converse with him in private."

Why would I need to speak with him in private? She wondered to herself.

She entered the cell and found Shinji sitting against one side of the padded wall. For some strange reason, he looked different than he did last night. He looked less…timid or insecure, more assertive or capable of doing something.

"Hey, Asuka," he greeted her, and she recognized his tone as one she hadn't heard in a year. "I only have five minutes, so I need every second to speak with you."

"Shinji?" She spoke. "You're speaking through Shinji?"

"It's temporary. It turns out that Shinji from another world isn't a tough guy. He is a softer soul than anything I could've been."

And somehow, Asuka could see the other Shinji keeping a man that was covered in scars similar to those that Aya's brother once had, showing an unhappy expression and seeming unsure of just how to deal with Ceres' corrupted spouse.

"I asked to use his body to do something I didn't say before I died," he told her. "I needed to say good-bye to you, Asuka."

She felt saddened by this discovery.

"I don't know what will become of me after this, but I'll probably reside within Shinji's soul until I move on. Beyond that, I stay to help him for as long as I can with keeping Ceres' spouse in check so that he can't harm anyone. So, I will say all that I need to say to you right now."

Asuka reached out and held his hands. They looked like his hands, even though they were really the other Shinji's, just looking like his for a while.

"I am sorry that I hurt you that day. I never meant to leave you like that when I decided to end my life to save yours from being ended. I still love you, and your love helps me get through my agony."

Sometimes, his words can be all jumbled when he tries to say what he means, she thought, and let go of his hands and just held him in her arms. If I could've, I would've joined him wherever he went. But he wouldn't let me do that. He didn't want either of us going out like Romeo and Juliet. But I couldn't move on after he died. He was my first and only.

"Asuka, I don't want you to feel bound by me," Shinji told her, unable to hold her because of the cuffs keeping his hands in check.

"What?" She asked him.

"I want you to enjoy your life, and you can't do that with me weighing you down."

"How can I enjoy life…without you in it?"

"You simply look elsewhere…and…there's no harm or shame in being with someone else."

She let go of him and looked him in the eye.

"I'd be cheating on you if I ever did that," she told him. "You were my first, and who'd want to be with me…like that?"

Shinji gave her a stern look and it broke with a small chuckle; there were times when he tried to show that he was capable of being tough on his own accord, but it was useless around her.

"You're more than a pretty face, you know," he told her. "If I asked him to, he'd probably go out on a date with you."

"Not who you're suggesting. What would he see in someone like me?"

"We both know that he sees you differently from the way he saw her. You're not her…and you'll never be her."

"She would always yell at him, like everything he did was wrong. And…he doesn't look at me that way. It's like, he sees me as being off-limits."

"That's only because he's lived one life where he knows you as a completely different person. He's seen my memories, my past, and sees you as someone different from the other one. He sees you, he sees kindness and someone that won't hide their feelings. He saw her…and saw someone that used aggression as a means to interact with those around her."

"That's like a femme fatale. And…she hadn't done anything but demean him more than half the time when she wasn't hitting him. But…why would you want me to be with him like that? I mean, I don't even… Could he ever…with someone like me?"

"If you let him, if you allow for him to decide on his own."

-x-

"…I will find Ceres and make her mine again! Do you hear me, boy?!" The Progenitor shouted at Shinji as he sat beside the rock with him.

But Shinji ignored him to the best of his ability and pondered on how the power Ceres gave him had corrupted him to such depths.

"Excuse, Mikagi," he then heard the voice of Frenzia, and saw him beside the rock, in front of the Progenitor. "Why are you shouting at a young man that changed fate by saving the life of another young man you were going to destroy with your obsession? You need to let go and move on. If you persist in your obsession, there will be no hope for you to move on."

"Never! Ceres is mine! I will never let her go!"

Frenzia looked over at Shinji and sighed.

"I do apologize for you having to put up with watching him," she told him.

"It's okay, I'm used to it," he responded to her.

"Is there anything you're not used to?"

"Release me from my bindings, woman!" The Progenitor demanded of Frenzia.

"I hope you can forgive me for my transgression, Shinji," she uttered to the boy, and then kicked the Progenitor in his face.

"Ugh," Shinji shuddered as the guy was knocked out.

"Sorry about that," she apologized again.

"You're starting to remind me of myself," he told her. "Asuka… I mean, the one I knew back in the other world, she would always say that I'm always doing that."

"I've explored your past and seen your interactions with this Asuka Langley Soryu. That's merely how you cope with your life. You're introverted, the opposite of people like this girl, who is extroverted. You're an internal soul and she's an external soul. It wouldn't be uncommon for any two people to ever attempt to understand one another."

"So I don't like conflicts. I wouldn't have minded if she could've understood that."

"She represses her problems by invading the personal spaces of those around her. She has a desperate need to be seen and heard, hoping that by doing anything to get noticed by others will throw her own pain away. But you cannot undo one's pain by trying to run from it. There are simply some demons you can't outrun, no matter how hard you try."

"So…what would likely become of her, then?"

"If she can't face her past and accept it for what it is, in all of its aspects associated with her? A brutal retribution is all that will await her at the end of her road."

"Brutal retribution?"

"Unending agony…and endless suffering."

Shinji was unsure if he could even picture the Asuka he knew suffering like that. He just hated seeing anyone suffer.

"But people can change if they allow themselves to," Frenzia informed. "You can't force someone to change for you. They have to change on their own accord. To force them is to admit that you refuse to understand them or yourself at all."

"Which would make you no different from a puppet master," he added.

"I was expecting you to say that you're no different from a tyrant, but that works, too."

She then sat in front of him; that way, she could watch the Progenitor in case he tried to come to.

"Were you able to figure out where he hid Ceres' hagoromo?" Shinji asked her, hoping to change the subject to one where he could help Aya further and free her from the bane of her family's history.

"Even with Mikagi here, he's a stubborn man," she expressed, referring to the Progenitor.

"Mikagi? As in Mikage? Aya's family?"

"That's right. His presence within your soul doesn't change his ability to keep secrets from either of us. But one memory relating to the hagoromo stands out every time I try to pierce through the veil of his damaged consciousness. He's on a boat surrounded by water…and I see him disposing of what must be Ceres' hagoromo into the water."

"So, it's possible that he threw her robe out into the sea?"

"Robe?"

"That's what the hagoromo is."

Frenzia then realized something even more severe than what Ceres had done to Mikagi.

"Ceres, you'll be the death of everyone," she uttered.

"Huh?"

"Shinji, there's a lot about celestial hagoromo that none of you were made aware of by Ceres. While they may appear as robes of a sort of garment in your myths and legends, when separated from their owners, they don't take the appearance of any garment. They appear as this."

She held out her hands, and something appeared above them.

Shinji covered his eyes for a moment, but the light that formed in front of the two faded, revealing something that he had never seen before. It looked like…some sort of crystal, but it pulsated like it was a heart beating. There were these strange, vein-like surroundings and a glow all around it.

"This, Shinji, is what a celestial hagoromo is supposed to look like when separated from its celestial owner," she told him. "This is the form a hagoromo takes when separated from its owner. It is referred to as mana when in this form, and when worn by its owner or someone associated to the original owner, it changes form. It can either appear as something like this (her very clothing changed in front of Shinji, turning into something similar to what he had seen Ceres wearing in his perceptions of the future, only not as revealing as the one he saw)…or even something like this, depending on the wearer (her form changed again, appearing as a feathery dress with jewels and her skin covered in strange markings). I can't believe that Ceres didn't tell any of you, and she's the one that wants her hagoromo back to depart from this world."

Shinji couldn't believe this, either.

"Thank you for clarifying this, Frenzia," he praised her. "Something I shall inform Aya and the others of when I see them later. Although, this will make trying to find it even more difficult."

"Maybe not, Shinji," she told him. "As I said before, there's a lot about mana that you don't know about. In addition to being worn by the Tennyo, they're as organic as we are. They can think for themselves, following a basic series of drives to survive. Depending on how good their ability that is to adapt to their surroundings, a hagoromo will assume forms adjusted to mobility, even taking it upon themselves to become something entirely unlike what it used to be in order to carry out its greatest urge, which is to return to its owner. If Mikagi did throw Ceres' hagoromo into the sea, it was a long time ago, and I can guarantee you that you won't find it in the sea, no matter how hard you look…because it's not there, anymore."

"But…if it's not there, anymore…then where could it be?"

"It's just a theory, but have you or anyone else, for that matter, encountered any creatures or people that have done things that shouldn't be possible? A creature that shouldn't be capable of flight suddenly flying? A creature that shouldn't survive underwater capable of doing so?"

"Nothing I've ever seen since I got here."

"Maybe not you, but what of Ms. Mikage or her brother and friends?"

-x-

"…I know this is my being selfish right now," went Asuka, shortly after taking a risk and kissing the man she loved dearly on his lips, "but, please, don't leave me alone so soon."

"I am sorry, Asuka," Shinji told her, never realizing that it would hurt her this much to part with her again. "But I'll always be near. You'll always find me in your heart…and in him."

Knowing that they were down to their final seconds, Asuka embraced him, crying as he was going to leave again.

"Good-bye, Shinji," she sobbed.

"Good-bye, Asuka," he responded, his voice fading away.

And then, she knew she wasn't hugging her Shinji, anymore. She was just holding onto another Shinji that she barely knew from experience…but had seen from a window of his past.

"Asuka?" She heard him speak up.

"Please," she begged him, "don't speak right now. Please…just let me weep for a while."

Shinji might've felt uncomfortable by this, but because Asuka pleaded to him not to speak up, he obliged and allowed her to grieve over her parting with her dead lover on him. He felt the tears from her left eye falling onto his neck and back. The scent of her hair being a lingering sadness that had been mixed with a feeling of solace. He could even feel her heart beating under her dress.

"Thank you for letting me see him one last time," she praised him.

"You're welcome," he responded, and he felt her let go of him, allowing him to see her face, stained with tears and sadness.

-x-

"…He loves her," went Fuyutsuki, as he had seen the scene between the two Shinjis and the other world's Asuka replay itself in the mirror, "and he can't be with her, knowing that his life has ended long ago. So he tells her to move on."

"But she doesn't want to cheat on him, and he suggests that she try to care about him," said Asuka, touched by the other world's incarnation of her not wanting to betray her lover, even after he wanted her to feel love with someone new.

The mirror showed the red-eyed Asuka with a saddened face, and then showing her letting go of a restrained Shinji as she got up to leave the cell they were in.

"Asuka," they heard Shinji say to her. "I… I hope that this…doesn't change anything between us. I mean, I… I want to be on good terms with you…if you'll let me."

She turned to face him, and gave him a small smile and nodded in the positive.

"Yeah, Shinji," she responded to him. "We're on good terms."

"She loved him," said Misato, "but she doesn't love…him."

"She might love him…if she chooses to," went Rei.

-x-

"…Did you say good-bye to him, too?" Asuka asked Yui and Anzu in the bathroom, wiping her face with tissue.

"We did," Anzu answered her. "I didn't know it would be so hard, even though he was already dead."

"Even though his soul wanders within this other Shinji, he is really gone now," went Yui, unable to keep from crying again. "I feel so broken!"

Asuka knew what she meant by that. She felt it herself. She had felt this pain ever since her lover died in front of her, and now she felt it on a grander level because she had to part with him again, even though the parting wasn't as torturing for her now. It just made her love him more.

"Yui? What do you think of…this Shinji that's helping Aya and her friends?" She asked her.

To be continued…

A/N: I think it was quite a saddening scene where the red-eyed Asuka and Shinji have to part and know that, while his soul is still lingering, they can never be together, but Shinji tells her to move and not be bound to him forever. What did any of you think about it?