Chapter 10 – Beyond Leliel's Shore
Blackness melted into a dark blue, which faded into a light pastel somewhere down past vision. Smattering of stars visible overhead became invisible as dawn awoke over the barren landscape. Night fell, bringing fear, then the dawn came back. The fear remained, however. Pandora's box was open, and would not be shut. Night would come again, suddenly, without warning, and there was nothing that she could do about it.
She. I. I'm a she. This knowledge pushed back against the fear, which now seemed a small and dying thing. Armed with this new self knowledge, she held a light against the fear, watching it dwindle almost to nothingness. Then night fell again, and fear grew into terror that became nearly physical in its strength. Dawn came back, along with pain in her temples, a deep headache that settled into a dull pain behind her eyes.
She blinked again, feeling the darkness that arose until she opened her eyes again. Blinking slowly, she summoned the night with each close of her eyes, and summoned the dawn with each opening. The fear receded slowly, steadily. The darkness was now under her control. Her eyes took in the white beach, and the reddish water stretching into the distance as she took stock of her body, and its feelings.
Something hard and metallic was in her hands. She felt it, sensing the hard angular lines, the compact deadliness. A gun. People with guns were after her. She scrabbled to a crouching position, lifted the weapon, looking all around, her breathing ragged and uncontrolled as she shifted her eyes and the gun first one way, then the other. Shadows danced, settled around her. Her questing eyes found no one visible, but that didn't mean anything. The crouching buildings, collapsed all over the landscape could have hidden anyone. Or no one.
Her breathing slowed, and she dropped the gun into the sand, collapsing forward, head in her arms as she shuddered and cried. Memories of her friends, her fellow NERV associates, those from the nightshift, the dayshift, now all dead. Most of them dead. How many had survived the slaughter instituted by the JSSDF? She had no idea, no idea how many survived, no idea how she had gotten to where she was.
"Makoto..." Her voice was harsh, a guttural whisper. She cleared her throat and spoke the name again, but no one answered. "Hyuga!" She called for the others she knew, the others she had seen only moments ago, when she had been huddled with them down in Central Dogma, hoping to survive another minute. She yelled until her voice was hoarse, but no one answered. Pain flared in her mind as she tried to grasp what had just happened. She closed her eyes as scenes danced before her.
Huddled in Central Dogma, waiting for the soldiers with guns to find her and kill her.
Sitting in Central Dogma, watching as Shinji was swallowed by a giant black shadow.
Listening to the gunshots and screams as her fellow scientists died.
Listening to Shinji's unbelieving voice, and Misato's yell as Shinji disappeared.
These had to be two different scenes, two different times, yet she remembered each of them as if they were only a moment ago. Another scene pushed its way through her confused thoughts.
Shinji in his Unit, Asuka in hers, and Rei in Unit-00. They were all deployed, approaching the floating shadow. Shinji moved ahead, fired his weapon, and was swallowed before the other two could reach his position.
But that didn't make any sense. In one memory, Shinji had been alone, walking his Eva through molten slag towards ground zero, and the Angel had suddenly appeared, swallowing him, while in the other memory, the rest of the Evas were with him. She gripped her head, squeezing her eyelids, trying to sort out her fractured existence.
Full blown sensorial nastiness roiled through her midsection, leaving Asuka with nothing but the horrible feeling of evacuating what was left in her stomach onto the broken road-side. The waves of nausea finally receded, letting her focus on her body again. She was kneeling on her hands and knees on the side of the cracked pavement of the road alongside which she had been traveling. She coughed, unable to keep the spasms from wracking her body until she had expelled what had been in her mouth. Spitting one last time, she sat down heavily, more than aware of her physical weakness from lack of food and water.
She was aware of Shinji's hands holding her hair out of her face, and suppressed the momentary urge to drive him away. He had already seen her at her worst, and there was no erasing that. There was also no erasing the probability that this time her pregnancy was real. She wanted to blame him completely, but there was no way to do that without completely distorting what she remembered. Yes, he had taken advantage of her, but she had accepted it. When they had both awoken, she had wanted physical comfort just the same as he had. And now she had to live with the consequences.
But why was he still hanging around? The question wound its way through her consciousness not out of spite, but out of resignation. She glanced at him momentarily as she got up and they continued walking down the broken pavement. Behind them were the sheer cliffs caused by the upheaval when the Black Moon returned from its trip into the stratosphere. They had already traversed the beach upon which they had awoken, made their way down the jagged cliffs, and were now walking towards what was left of Tokyo-3. The remains of the city existing on the outer shell of the Black Moon were still somewhat intact, and only the promise of sustenance somewhere amidst the rubble drew them onward.
He's with me because there isn't anyone else around. She tasted this argument, feeling its truths and untruths. Everyone felt a need for companionship, as far as she knew. Even so, he was the kind that was alone anyway. When he wasn't with the two other stooges, he had almost always been alone.
He's with me out of some sense of duty, because of what we did. This statement meant he had good points, but she was done trying to pretend he didn't have any. The very fact that he still stayed by her and did his best to help and protect her, even after how she treated him said something. Still, duty only went so far.
He's with me because he cares about me. That she even allowed this possibility to cross her mind was something. Why does he care? She had treated him badly during the Angel War. She saw that, looking back. Even though her intent had been to try to get him to change, to stand up for himself, to become someone she could respect, the fact remained that her actions had been harsh, her words cold.
But I only did all that because I care! If I didn't care about him, I wouldn't have tried to help him...! I would have ignored him. But the question was, whether he had wanted her help. Whether he had needed her help.
Why did I care about him? She didn't enjoy needing anyone else, didn't enjoy the vulnerability such feelings of need brought her. A boy would grow up to be a man, like the man who had abandoned her, and her mother. Even so, Shinji was an Eva pilot, and thus he was the only candidate she would ever consider. Except that he had been so darned weak. He cared about everyone and everything, which meant everyone and everything could hurt him. He was weak, and yet he won all the time. She was strong, but she always needed help, always lost.
Shinji wanted to be with others, but didn't need them. He was always alone, and strong. Whereas she wanted to be alone, but couldn't be. She needed people like Hikari, people that recognized her. Shinji was strong when he was alone. She was only strong when she was with others.
I care about him, because he has what I always wanted, but couldn't get. She could always ask him, 'why do you do so well alone?' and she knew he would spout some rubbish about how he really did need others, about how he wanted companionship as much as the next guy. But he'd be wrong. All his victories had been gotten by himself. Everything she had done had been with someone else.
I see his strength, and I respect it. Why couldn't he ever see my strength? Because she didn't have any. He cared about everyone. His weakness was his strength. She didn't want to need anyone. Her appearance of strength only covered over her true weakness. The realization staggered her as she walked, but it didn't help. A simple realization wouldn't open her up, and make her strong. It had taken her fourteen years to close herself off as much as she had, and that wouldn't be fixed in a day. Even now she saw her mind still fighting against her realization. It went against all logic to think that opening yourself up to hurt would make you stronger. Maybe that wasn't it, maybe there was more to it. All she could do at this point was to watch him, and try to see what made him who he was.
Maya trudged down the broken road, her mind like molasses, and at the same time flitting this way and that at every little noise. The service automatic was a lead weight against the small of her back where she had put it. She chuckled darkly.
I know I've been watching too many movies. They always tuck their guns back there, as if it's natural. She took comfort in the humor, letting it draw her attention away from the terrible reality she found herself in, and the fractured memories that had led her there. She still had not made much sense out the strange duality of her thoughts. How could someone remember two different lives? It appeared that the first one was the real one, judging by her present location. The memory of her other life ended with Shinji being swallowed by Leliel.
She looked up at the horizon, and saw movement. Glumly she reached for her pistol. She had already had to drive away two people so far. One of them had simply been shell-shocked, and was making too much noise for the now-security-conscious Maya. She had been unable to console the girl, so there had been no other choice. Maya had problems of her own to deal with, without having to try to help someone else through theirs. She knew how heartless it seemed, but she still remembered her training from when she had been a lifeguard in college.
Always make sure of your own safety before trying to save someone else. The truism could be applied across the board. The only other person she had met had been a gaunt and scared-looking man. His eyes had lit up in a very unwholesome way when he had seen Maya, and she was only thankful she hadn't had to shoot him. She had forced him away from her at gunpoint, not even knowing if the weapon would even work, or even if the safety was on. Try as she might, she couldn't remember Hyuga's instructions from before they had all... what? Died?
In the distance, she made out the features of a man, and raised the gun warningly. She hated the sexism, but was not going to take any chances. As he came closer, recognition came into his eyes, and he called out.
"Lieutenant Ibuki!" He broke into a run, finally stopping a few dozen yards away as Maya and her gun wavered, trying to flail her brain into operation. Finally she noticed his stained white uniform, same as hers.
"Hiroshi? From night-shift...?" The gun lowered, and his expression lost its worry. They came together and hugged, shaking and finally crying, heedless of how they looked to each other.
"Have you seen Makoto, or any of the others?" she sniffled, when they finally pulled away from each other.
"No," he said grimly. "You're the first person I've seen so far, and you're a damn good sight." His voice held relief even as she tried to brush off the compliment, well aware of how dirty and rank she was. "I thought I was alone out here," his voice was nearly ragged with emotion.
"You're lucky then," she said wryly. "We're not the only ones, and it looks like the bad have come back with the good." She eyed her gun uneasily. "I remember you don't like guns either, do you." It wasn't really a question.
"Yeah," he chuckled. "I'd rather you held onto that."
After a moment of simply drinking in the presence of another, thankful for the company, they shifted a bit uneasily.
"I wonder who else made it through," she murmured, looking up into the night sky.
Asuka opened her eyes, staring blankly at the far wall as her mind came to wakefulness, and remembered. It had been early morning when she and Shinji had come into sight of wherever it was he was taking her. They had trekked by countless destroyed buildings, holes, rents in the ground, collapsed places and other damage.
As they had finally come into view of their destination, or at least she assumed so by the look of relief in Shinji's eyes, her own feelings had been mixed. The line of inner-city apartment buildings stretched into the distance like dominoes, one after another. In this case, some were collapsed, as if an errant finger had tapped one of them, sending one into another. Many were crumbling ruins, but most were intact, a testament of the high engineering and construction standards demanded by NERV. To survive the overpressure of an N2 munition, the Geofront's ascent into the sky, and its eventual descent spoke to how armored and supported the structures were.
Shinji seemed to pick a building at random, and then they had gone in and collapsed with fatigue. After far too short a sleep, she had awoke to find food before her, and Shinji eating. He had probably found it in one of the other apartments. Full, they had laid down for a more restful sleep, which led her to where she was now.
Shinji was gone. She could feel it, even without looking. Probably out scavenging or something. She noted that her hands and her front were still warm. Which meant he had just left, and that sometime in the night she must have rolled over and leaned against him. In that past this would have brought anger, but not now. So she needed him. She already knew that, already accepted it, at least on the surface.
I need him, so this thing between us, whatever it is, I need to protect it. Which meant, not snap at him. Not rail at him, punch at him for simply being there when she unconsciously rolled over towards him. What does it mean to protect this thing between us? It meant treating him with respect. Even if he cared about everything, he undoubtedly had his limits, just like everyone. Respect.
I respect his strength. I respect how he always wins in spite of how weak he seems. Respect wouldn't be that hard.
Other than the spiderweb cracks in the hardened sidewalk, and the collapsed buildings, he might have been walking home from school. No, not home, because this was real. In the real world he had only walked this path twice. Once to take Rei her new NERV card, and the other to take her the school papers for the days of class she had missed. Every other time he had met Rei they had been elsewhere.
The times they had ridden the train together in silence, or sometimes not-silence. The happy times they had spent following his return from the month-long repose in his Unit. But this wasn't the apartment he remembered. Or rather, it was.
He climbed the stairs, sadness and memories haunting his steps. Walking down the dingy hallway, he pulled open the door, bracing himself unconsciously as he looked around. The Geofront's trip into the stratosphere had not helped Rei's old living habits. There was more trash and crumpled up papers in place of the ones he had cleaned before, and everything was in disarray.
The apartment he remembered had been cleaned, redecorated, made into home. A true home, one he felt comfortable in. This was just a shell.
Methodically, he began cleaning up. The trash, thrown away. The bedsheets, full of dust and plaster, shaken out. The scattered underwear and clothes, dresser drawers flung everywhere, refrigerator on its side, open, all of it shaken up during the physical trauma of Instrumentality. All this he fixed as best he could.
Even after all this, it still didn't feel right. Going through the other currently uninhabited apartments, he managed to find a folding table, and two chairs. He set them up as he remembered. Yet even at the end, with the apartment so nearly like he remembered in the dream-world, he began to feel a sense of hopelessness. No matter what he did, no matter how close he brought the apartment to what he remembered, it wouldn't bring back Rei. Fretfully, nearing the edge of hysteria, he left Rei's abode.
Wandering from apartment to apartment, he searched almost mindlessly. He knew that no matter what he found, even if he somehow returned every item and molecule to the way he remembered, it wouldn't matter. No thing, no object, no collection of objects could bring back the girl he had loved. Still loved.
Wandering over the threshold before him, he knew this was the last room in his journey. He didn't want to go any farther. He would go back to Rei's apartment, look it over a final time, and that would be it. There was simply nothing more to do. Sleeping there, trying to remember a dream that no longer was, it would only bring more pain, covering over the happiness he had shared with her.
He looked down at his hands, wondering at reality, and himself. Who was he? Who was she? What had made him happy with her? Perhaps if he knew that, he could bring it back, even if only in memory. Or perhaps he could find it again. Idly he noted the refrigerator in this apartment. It was on its side, the front bent, as if it had rolled over on top of something hard, then rolled on its side. With a pull, it came open, surprising him. He had expected it to be jammed.
His eyes roved over the contents listlessly. He turned to leave, then stopped abruptly as his eyes found something quite improbable. Dropping to his knees, he reached out trembling hands to a very familiar package. His fingers caught the remains of coolness, held inside the insulated refrigerator even after the power had failed. Turning the package over in his hands, he didn't even have to read the label. Cinnamon toast.
His vision shimmered as he pondered the possibilities, that there had been someone else in the same apartment building with his taste in such things. He knew the trouble it took the get this foreign delicacy. He knew the steps to the sweet-shop, knew every one of them, having traversed them so often.
The trip back to Rei's apartment was a blur, but he came to a stop in the doorway of the kitchen, pain, sorrow, and love working their way around and through his heart as he pondered this one part of his life with the enigmatic girl. Walking over, he placed the package of toast on the card-table, between the two plates, then he stepped back, looking over the place that was so familiar, the place where he had shared a happy dream with his fellow pilot.
Being together, doing things together, sharing was what made it special. Closeness, not just physically, but emotionally and psychologically as well. Closeness of spirit, inward sameness. Some part of him was sure that even if he searched the entire world he would never find someone that was as compatible with him as Rei had been.
He sat, eating the somewhat-cool toast. It had not yet spoiled. Across the table, Rei's plate sat, along with a single piece of toast. Emotion welled in his throat, making it hard to swallow the bite. He sighed, leaning back in his chair.
I miss you.
This time he couldn't say the words to the ethereal figure across from him. He couldn't remember the wave of her hair, her thankful eyes as she bit into the toast, the simple happiness they always shared in the morning. He said it anyway.
"I miss you."
Why?
But he knew the rest.
I'll always be with you.
He knew the rest, and this time it wasn't a dream. He wasn't inside Leliel, he wasn't inside Lilith's massive form, he wasn't inside Unit-01, dreaming.
Always, always in your heart.
Laying his head in his arms on the table, he cried. The tears ran down his face, pooling on the table, and he let the sorrow go with them. After a while the tears stopped. Some time later, he slept.
When he awoke, the pain of sorrow was diminished, at least until he heard a soft crunch opposite him. Someone chewing, eating. Hope and impossibility warred within him, and he froze, then lifted his head in a quick motion. The girl opposite him lifted the toast again, taking another bite. It was impossible for him to hide his expression as his face fell.
"This isn't all that bad," Asuka said quietly. Her words, her feelings, were all veiled, as if she were restraining them. As if she knew how delicate things were. She dropped the piece of bread with a dull thump. Her eyes took his, trapping them from escape. "For a minute," she said slowly, articulately, "you thought I was her."
The accusation hung there, and he wondered what would come next. Their sorrows were different, their troubles separate, yet inexplicable tied together. Each had the power to sever the odd relationship, to abandon the other to an existence alone, and each knew this. Each was also determined not to be the one to do that. The other. The other would be the one to destroy the bond. It would be the other's fault. Neither was willing to hurt the other, and that was what kept them together.
I can live with myself, Shinji thought. As long,
...as long as he's the one at fault, Asuka thought. As long as it's him that makes the first break.
They stared each other down, past the point where eyes watered madly. Past the point where they dried out. He blinked, suddenly, painfully. Then she blinked. His expression faltered, and she waited expectantly for him to put the dagger in their weird relationship, so she could twist it viciously. After all, if he abandoned her, everything she had assumed about him would be wrong.
He made an odd noise. Something in her twitched, as he snickered again. She tried to hold back the sudden illogical giggle. She apparently failed, because his expression broke, and he was overtaken by uncontrollable laughter. Then she realized she was laughing too.
The stupidity of their actions seemed to dawn on them both at the same time, and they both laughed until tears ran down their cheeks. As the mirth died down, she noticed his sense of calm, and how relieved he looked as he wiped the wetness from his face, chuckling. She reached over, grabbing his shirt and pulling him towards her.
"We are NOT having a 'moment' here...!" she screamed desperately
"What..." He tried to compose his face, knowing how dangerous she could be. "Whatever you say, As-Asuka..." but something about her desperate expression sent him back over the edge, and he broke down into another fit of laughter. That weird bubble of giddiness again tried to take her over as she held the collar of the giggling boy, and as she pondered on whether or not to let it win, the fight was over. Helpless to stop herself, she joined him.
As their laughter died down, Shinji found himself watching Asuka, because he had never seen her truly laugh like that. Actually it was the first time he had laughed so freely. She noticed his attention, and he wondered how she would react. He waited, but she didn't hit him, didn't berate him. The longer he waited, watching her watch him, the more trepidation he felt. She had always been an unknown to him, someone who defied all logic.
All my logic anyway, he thought glumly. But then what did he know? Rei. When he first met her she had been injured. She had been someone he needed to protect, someone weak. He found out just how wrong that first impression had been. Asuka. When he first met her, she had been strong, full of energy. Someone he hoped he could look to for protection, for friendship. He'd been wrong about that too. Rei had been the strong one, and Asuka... He didn't want to say she was weak. He wanted to say she was misunderstood, or maybe just unlucky, especially during battle. But what other explanation was there? She had trained for years, while he had simply gotten into his machine for the first time and-
He nearly jumped at her touch, as she put her hand on his. For a moment she just rested it there, then wrapped her hand around his, squeezing gently, playing with his fingers. He wondered how long it would last, when she would realize what she was doing, and snap. She didn't though, and bit by bit he relaxed, feeling her hand in his own. Her skin was soft, and the physical contact was comforting.
She laid her head on the table using her other arm as a pillow, never taking her hand from his. For a moment he wondered what to do, knowing he couldn't turn loose. That much, he knew, would be exactly the wrong thing to do. Finally he mirrored her action, put his head down, his mind whirling.
What's she doing? What's she thinking?To ask would probably be suicide. If he went by his past knowledge of her actions. But the past and the present weren't matching. She was reaching out to him, and he didn't know how to respond.
What are you, an idiot? He smiled at Asuka's remembered voice. He would just be himself. It was all he could do.
Blankness.
Slowly, like the ponderous sliding of a glacier, Rei became aware. At first it was just a point of knowing, and slowly it expanded until she was fully conscious, a bubble of thought hanging in the void.
Blackness surrounded her, enveloping her growing awareness in a soothing calmness. Perhaps this was what the Commander had promised. This thought wound its way through her mind, the first since she had awakened. At least he had kept his word in that one thing. Her spirit seemed to lift, and with no sensory awareness to draw her attention, she watched the growing contentment as it built on itself like a fire that had just caught and was blazing up.
Contentment was something foreign to her, as foreign as the smile she wore so infrequently. Loneliness had always been a constant in her life. Now she was not-life, she was nothingness.
The contradictory nature of that statement should have brought her down, should have made her wonder, but it did not. If I am a nothing, then who is thinking? A bubble of humor grew, adding fuel to the contentment she felt. Whether she was nothingness or not, it didn't matter. She was free.
Something not-black showed itself to her awareness. A kind of light, or whiteness hung before her, growing brighter as she watched it. The contentment she felt ceased to grow as fast, now that her attention was split between it and this new phenomenon. She watched the whiteness as it grew brighter, brighter. Still brighter. She could see subtle dark pocks, marring the features of the bright circle before her.
The combination of her blissful feeling and the familiarness of the bright white circle caused her to gasp, bring her awareness of a body. Her body. She felt it, every joint, muscle, and sinew, every inch of skin, and she reveled in the sensation.
The moon, silent and bright in all its glory, held her eyes prisoner. She could see nothing in her peripheral vision, felt no ground beneath her, nothing. She closed her eyes, concentrating on the rising feelings of pleasure within. The moonlight washed over her, through her, as if cleansing her of all hurt, of all hurtful memory.
She felt full, complete, and if she was allowed to stay here, floating under the light of the moon for the rest of time, she would be happy.
Happiness.
For the first time since awakening, she thought of Shinji.