.hack/EVA: Catharsis: Mirror of Erised
Disclaimer: In this universe in the quantum foam, I do not own or in any way shape or form hold a claim to the .hack series or Neon Genesis Evangelion.
" " denotes speech
'italics' denotes thought
'bold' denotes location names
'bold italics' denotes skill use
Undisclosed Location
'I feel sick…' was the only thought that a certain redhead had had in a rather long time, as the Second Child Asuka Langley Soryu opened her eyes for the first time in what seemed like years. Her mind was slow and heavy, aching as if someone had literally reached into her head and ripped out a piece of her soul. 'What…what happened to me?'
Somehow, when she opened her eyes, she found herself on the shore of an amber sea, with the absolute absence of sound deafening to her senses. The heavens bled a ghastly red, and in the sky were suspended the twisted forms of winged dolls, vultures run clean through with twisted double helix spears, as a blank half-face stared out at her, causing her to recoil in horror and disgust.
'What? What is that verdammen doll doing here?! Wait…where…where am I?' wondered she, as she looked out upon the alien land, unable to clearly remember what had transpired to bring her here, wherever "here" was. 'This isn't The World, and this isn't Tokyo-3, so where am I?'
It was not a landscape she was familiar with, an expansive oblivious land that by all appearances was the graveyard of civilization, as the barren wastes about her were dotted with small white crosses and ruined buildings, the earth around her scorched beyond recognition by some incredible discharge of power.
'Mien Gott…Götterdämmerung came and went…'
Indeed, this was an empty world, a desert of sand and wind, with no life to be seen anywhere in the entirety of creation. For all its familiarity, it might as well have been the sea of chaos, the primal waters of a time before history—or the field of bones at time's end, when all would return once again to inevitability even all the toil and ingenuity of man would one day crumble, as fate was a law unto itself, a power that could be resisted but never bested, fought, but never triumphed over.
'Did…did an Angel do this…?' she muttered weakly, throat barely able to make out the words. The latter part of her thought she kept silent about, as it was a disturbing notion to her. 'Did the so-called Invincible Shinji finally fail and cause the end of the world because of his stupidity and arrogance?'
Not that Asuka was in any shape to do something about the world, as her physical condition was just as bad as the scorched earth, her clothes were tattered and torn, seared nearly into non-existence, with her body aching in every place she could imagine—and then some, as if she had been on the receiving end of a storm of blades.
'Blades…I remember a crowd, cheering throngs, a terrible light…and then nothing…'
Still, try as she might, she could not recall the circumstances surrounding what had happened, nor much of what had transpired these last few months, ever since she had first encountered the black and silver clad Siarl of the Seven Eyes in The World and seized from him the power of Al Fadel. In a way, it was almost as if she had been possessed, though as the extremely rational college graduate she was, Asuka Langley Soryu dismissed the possibility of possession as impossible. Spirits, after all, did not exist (though whether this makes sense or not in a world where man is under attack by Angels is a different story entirely).
'Could it be that I…lost? That someone beat me…? But…this cannot be!'
Her role as the best had been her identity, as she had slowly become the mask she wore, a being of shadow and flame who lived for fame and accolades, the fierce angel of destruction wielding her pride as both her sword and shield, as she stood unparalleled even amongst her peers.
But none of this mattered, as scarred, battered, and bruised, she lay on the rocky dirt, naked and alone, without anyone to look at her, to acknowledge her, to affirm her existence. Descartes may have said that "I think, therefore I am", but to the red haired girl, even this was not enough. What she needed, craved, though she would never admit it aloud, was recognition by others."
'Look at me! Look at me!' Asuka had raged, fury seething under her thin veneer of civility as she pushed herself to the limits of acceptability, shedding her childhood in an attempt to get people to notice her as exceptional. University graduate, Evangelion Pilot, Chaotic PK...the Second Child had been all of these and more, and yet, she had always come in second best to someone, was never the focus of attention. 'Don't look at the baka, don't look at the doll, look at me! See only me!'
They hadn't looked at her though, had in fact looked at everyone else but her, at all those who had not tried nearly so hard, or suffered nearly so much. It was the average ones who were noticed, or the ones who let their weakness show, the ones who naively trusted, clung to their insecurities and flaunted them, instead of becoming strong.
'And what did strong ever get me…?'
"Good question. What did it ever get you, baka?" snarked an eerily familiar voice, a long shadow falling over her supine form. Apparently, as Asuka had lain on the packed grit in pain, wallowing in self-pity, she had failed to notice that she was not alone. "After all, you were only ever second best, only ever 'that girl' that no one wanted, no one cared about."
Standing by her head was a little redhead girl in a yellow sundress, probably no more than 5 years old, with a length of rope coiled around her neck, from which hung what seemed like a voodoo doll.
'That's…that's the doll that mama thought was me…that she committed suicide with…' the Second Child realized, her eyes growing wide with terror and pain as this unwanted being from the past intruded upon the world. 'Does that means…that little girl is…me?! Am I so far gone that I'm hallucinating now?'
"So I'm a hallucination am I?" the younger girl said archly, proceeding to dangling the hated doll over Asuka's face as if to torture the EVA pilot. "Would a hallucination know just who you are, Asuka Langley Soryu? Would it know how much you hate dolls? How much you hate yourself because you are a doll?"
Naturally, having knowledge of basic psych, the Second was not convinced, since if this girl was a hallucination, a figment of her imagination, it was only reasonable that she would know what made her angry, and how she could be hurt.
"Dummkopf! Of course you would, little girl," the proud teenager choked out, suppressing the urge to wince as fire shot through her side. "After all…you're a figment of my imagination, so you would know my thoughts as if they were your own."
But the little girl just threw back her head and laughed, beginning with a fiendish giggle and building to hysterical peals of mirth that echoed in the empty world.
"Figment of your imagination?" she repeated, as if it were the punch line for the greatest joke in the world. "Figment of your imagination? Hahahahahaha…I never thought you would be so stupid, especially here! Hahaha…"
Now, Asuka may have been many things, but tolerant of those who insulted her was not one of them. So using the rage inside of her to give her strength, she ignored her body's imminent warnings of failure to haul herself to a sitting position, from where she could at least meet the little girl eye to eye—and slap her across her face.
"Then explain yourself, baka, if you know so much," the Second Child spat at her younger counterpart, every inch of her blazing pained defiance. "If you're not a figment of my imagination, then who are you, and where the HELL are we?"
But Asuka was ignored, dismissed as if she were nothing, as the little girl ignored her, continuing to laugh, a hollow mocking laughter that shook her to her core. When that disturbing sound finally ceased, fading to a knowing smirk, the little girl just raised an eyebrow, pushing the teenager back onto the ground with one finger.
"I would have thought for sure that with a University graduate such as yourself would have figured it out by now, you poor pathetic fool," the young girl replied, making the doll she carried dance about as if a puppet. "You see, you are me…the me who people see and hate, the me who went on to become the mask she wore, who froze your heart and told yourself you didn't need others. And in the end, you are a failure, shamelessly used and tossed away. How…weak, of the great and mighty Second Child, the oh so wonderful Asuka Langley Soryu. You deserve every bit of this torment because…its all your fault."
"No! That's impossible!" the Second Child sputtered, pushing herself to her feet with every ounce of strength remaining in her body, so that she now towered unsteadily over her self-proclaimed "self." There was no empirical that this girl was who she claimed to be, so why—
"It's futile to deny it," another voice broke in from behind her, as a twisted figure wielding a deadly broadsword strode past into her field of view. "Because you too are just a mask, as I was and am…you were just never aware of it."
This new arrival stood about 5'8", with fiery red hair in a ponytail falling to the small of her back and piercing blue eyes, her lithe form scantily clad in black leather armor that barely covered the essentials. She had the sigil of fire on her armor and held in her hands the deadly Heine's Shadow, the broadsword that she had carried up until her defeat at the hands of the Dark Evangel.
'This is…this is…'
"I see you recall who I am, at the very least," this new arrival noted, licking the edge of her blade out of a sense of twisted bloodlust. "The Chaotic PK known as Eris, Bringer of Strife, the mask that consumed you from within, showing you just how truly weak you were. You with your lust for Kaji, the man who looked after you. You who rejected the company of others, only to seek their respect and approval even in hatred. You who feel victim to Siarl's manipulations—and by extension Kaworu's…who used the power you gained to plunge the world into darkness. I hate you, Asuka Langley Soryu."
The Second Child paled as she looked at the Chaotic PK, taking an involuntary step backward at the sight of the one who so closely mirrored herself.
"Impossible…" breathed the designated pilot of EVA-02. "How…how can you be here? How can you stand here, real? Are you just another hallucination?"
"Oh, that's rich, coming from someone who is also just a mask," Eris said lazily, cagily looking over the Second's form as if not sure whether to kiss or kill her. Then she extended a long, slender finger to point at the little girl who resembled a younger version of them both. "Because you should really stop running away from the truth—the truth that you are just another mask of this weak little self inside you, that you, like me, are a fake."
"No!" Asuka protested, facing down this version of herself, "I am not fake! I am not a mask, or whatever you think I am! I don't care who you say, I am myself! You are the doll!"
"There is nothing so profound as a human's capacity for self-deception," the little girl interjected quietly, holding up the doll to her eyes and swishing it back and forth. "Believing yourself to be real, clinging to the lie of your existence as an adult, when in reality you are nothing more than a child, having built up walls around yourself that no one can breach, not even reason, not even maturity. You may be the false mirage that is shown to the world, but sear this into your eyes…I am the truth of Asuka Langley Soryu."
Eris, the Bringer of Strife, mask of the mask, added her own two cents to the battering of the Second's emotional bulwark.
"Yes, this is so, Second Child," the PK whispered insidiously, a sadistic smile plastered across her face. "We are in her mind now, since you have shown yourself to be a worthless piece of trash who was weak enough to be manipulated and destroyed. And all it took were a few words from a puppetmaster who treated you as nothing more than a doll."
But if nothing else, Asuka had always been stubborn, refusing to fall to the verbal attacks of what she still considered figments of her imagination.
"Stop with your lies!" she commanded arrogantly, nose in the air as she tried to ignore the two others around her. "Who do you think you are to address me?"
Eris only smiled, as a pale faced, zombie like version of Asuka shambled into view, clad only in a hospital gown and kept alive by machines.
"You mean…this you?" the Bringer of Strife asked, a predatory smile on her face as she regarded the self that had spawned her, her blade tracing idle patterns in the air. "The you that lies in a coma, just like your so-called best friend Reimeiki?"
"Wha—"
"It was with this blade that you took her life," the PK continued, licking the sword in question almost lustily, a display that disturbed even the Second Child's eyes. "That you attacked one of the few people who cared about you, stabbing this weapon through her breast and destroying her with the false power of Al Fadel, that which you valued above all else. How naïve you were, my dear Second Child…and how cruel, to think that by killing off someone who looked like a doll, you could run from the truth that you yourself were but a puppet."
"No…it can't—"
"You cannot hide from the truth," rasped the pale girl connected to the machines. "That you have always been a tool for people, that your attempt to be strong was only ever a show of futile resistance, that I am what you have become…no, what you have always been. A doll, and nothing but a doll…"
Confronted by this trio of unwanted voices and mirages whose words sliced deep into her defenses and would not let go, Asuka took a step backwards, then another, turning and running away despite the protests of her weary body, running towards the horizon, where in the distance loomed the demonically giant head of the First Child, a head that was…speaking.
"You cannot run away, Second Child," the voice of the First echoed, the sound sending tremors all through this mental world. "Even if you were strong, you cannot flee from your fate. You cannot flee from yourself."
A blur of motion could be seen above her, as Eris, Bringer of Strife, somersaulted through the air to land before the form of Asuka Langley Soryu, blade drawn and whirring, thirsty for blood.
"How weak…but then, that was all I ever expected," the Chaotic PK said, the tip of her sword kissing the air around the Second Child's face. "I suppose, this…is goodbye."
A maniacal grin twisting her features, the sword of shadow swung up, pointing to the heavens, then slammed downward with the sickening squelch of metal carving flesh.
"NOOOOOOOOOOOOO—!"
A howl of pain rent the air, and then cut off, as three selves stood around a whimpering fourth, who struggled in her death throes for a time, and then at last, fell silent.
"That was the truth you have been searching for, flawed mirage of nothingness."
