Rei cradled Asuka in her lap in a perfect Pietà. Nude without inhibition, the two were clothed only in a warm and glowing presence. A permeating liquid sensation that Asuka could feel caressing her all around aside from where their bodies touched skin to skin. The intimacy of it all was unlike anything Asuka had ever known until recently. She felt safe.

Far above them was the surface boundary between Instrumentality and the quiet Earth they had left behind. The sun was just about to set in the west. The moon had not yet risen. Through and around and below them teemed the new life.

Rei looked into Asuka's eyes, then slightly down her body, then back up.

My heart? Okay.

Rei reached through Asuka's breast. Her hand passed inside effortlessly and their skin wove together into a single fabric. Her fingers surrounded Asuka's heart to cup it without touching.

"There is a wall around your heart."

Rei gently closed her fingers just enough to graze the surface. Asuka felt Rei tense underneath her then inhale sharply.

"Oh! Ohhhhh...!" Rei cried out. She threw her head back and wailed.

"A- A- Asuka...!"

Then Rei dropped her head forward over Asuka. Her face was twisted in grief. Her eyes were dark and sunken and full of tears, but still she managed to meet Asuka's eyes. Coursing up Rei's arm, grey-black under her skin, flowed a dark corruption. Asuka traced it down to its source within her chest, and it pulsed with every beat of her heart.

"It goes down... so far... It's everywhere..."

I know.

Rei trembled and choked on a sob, knocking loose a shower of tears, but she didn't withdraw. Asuka saw a determination behind those vivid red eyes to see something through to the end. Asuka herself felt an eerie detachment. She reached up to caress Rei's cheek as confirmation that she was indeed crying.

"Rei, you're crying. You can cry? For me?"

Now far beyond all modesty, Asuka brought a tear damp finger to her lips. Senses became feelings. What from her eyes ran bitter and cold was warm and dripping with a cloying sweetness from Rei's. Rei, her face still knotted in agony, managed a half smile. Asuka smiled back. Everything was hazy except Rei's moonlike face which showed through clear and bright.

You're so beautiful, Rei. I didn't know. Please don't cry for me. I don't deserve it.

"My tears are for you and by you. The sweetness of your own soul reflected back to wash away its hatred. Complementation of the self. Forgiveness. I love you."

Asuka's heart thumped at the words, pumping even more of the vileness out. She blinked her eyes, expecting her own tears to come. Instead she felt a numbing bliss emanating from Rei's hand within her.

Wait.

I feel empty.

Stop.

Asuka grasped Rei's forearm. Her grip secure, she slowly drew Rei's hand out of her chest. The corruption slithered back down and in. She felt it pass under her fingers where they touched Rei's skin. It was beyond unsettling, but it didn't faze her. She had always known that it was there under the surface. From Rei's fingertips fell a few more black drops. They splashed onto Asuka's flesh, then sank back inside. She was whole once more.

Asuka shook her head. "It's all I have. For now. Without it I feel empty. I can't go around empty inside without anything to put in its place. Or else I made all that space for nothing."

The pain on Rei's face had softened into a look of serenity.

"I understand, that is why your home is elsewhere. You have decided."

Asuka nodded. She tasted her lips again, but the sweetness had left. An impulse to give anything to shed those tears again crossed her heart. No. I've cried enough for myself. Let somebody else weep for me.

"But first? Rei? Why are you being so nice to me?"

Rei shifted Asuka so that she could hold her closer.

"When we existed in the world, I was less than a person. I was a tool. An object of no worth to anyone outside my designed purpose. I existed in a state of living death until one person reached out to acknowledge my humanity and to share his own with me. Now, here, in this place, I can reach out to everyone. To a oneness without end. A heart to hold us all."

Asuka felt small compared to what Rei described. On the other hand, Rei was here with her, just her, among the myriad, which meant something big.

"I cannot say who you will meet out in the world, but I know there is the possibility of meeting the person I did. There are always possibilities. It is my hope that all your possibilities lead to happiness."

They were floating towards the surface of the warm, red sea. Asuka felt physicality returning to her form. And, inevitably, the weight.

"I didn't ask for a promise, I know you can't. And wait, one more thing? I just need a moment alone. Is it okay for me to be here a little longer?"

Rei nodded. She drew Asuka into an embrace which Asuka returned without hesitation. Asuka rested her chin on Rei's shoulder. She frowned at her memories of the First, particularly the part she played in them, and took up an enormous burden of guilt for what she had done. Rei turned her head into Asuka's, though, and Asuka could feel Rei smiling into her hair. As if to confirm Asuka's hunch, Rei squeezed ever so slightly. Feeling chastened but pardoned, Asuka closed her eyes.

She opened them to see one final hospital room. Asuka approached a slight and battered figure propped up on a stretcher in the center of the room. It was a young girl of fourteen with fiery red hair. She wore a worn red plug suit that had seen a lot of recent fighting. Her right arm was bandaged up to the shoulder. Her left eye was blocked up by thick gauze pads. Her whole eye was closed. The girl was dreaming.

"You look terrible."

Asuka leaned on the side of the stretcher. She laid her hand over the girl's bandaged one.

"Look at what they did to you."

She looked up to the girl's hollow face and bony flesh.

"I wasn't so kind to you, either. But it's time to go. You can't stay here. So get up. Only when you're ready, though. Rei said we could stay a little longer. I don't know why she's being so nice considering how you acted!"

Asuka thought back to the embrace they had just shared. She became aware of a tiny hollow within her that hadn't been there before. Rei had let all the darkness flow back into Asuka, but some of it had been dissolved by the hug, and her smiling face pressed into Asuka's hair, and her squeeze at the end. Asuka quickly placed the memory of Rei in the empty space. She looked back at the girl.

"You didn't know. It's okay. She forgave you, didn't she? The things you've done, it's not too late."

She disengaged the brakes and wheeled the stretcher out the door and down a long corridor that terminated at an elevator. There was so much she wanted to say to the girl. Asuka had a feeling that the girl knew most of it.

Asuka paused for a moment. Though the girl's eye was closed, it was hard to look her in the face. Asuka frowned at the ceiling.

"You don't have to love him, but you do have to find a way to live with him. You two need each other to survive. He's an idiot, I know, but it'll kill you both for good if you don't get along. I don't know if he's going to understand that on his own. Show him. You'll figure it out."

Asuka smirked to herself. "He's got nowhere to run to now."

She looked back down at the young girl's face.

"The same goes for you, too. Just live with yourself as long as you can, okay? I'm going to try really hard to be there for you this time. I swear it. On Mama."

The rest of the trip down the hall passed in silence.

When the pair reached the elevator, the doors slid open to reveal Rei on the other side. Asuka smiled at her fellow ex-pilot. Rei nodded, then stepped aside to let the stretcher through, but Asuka paused again. Her mouth felt wet with coppery vileness once more. She swallowed and closed her eyes tight. Next came the hardest part of all. The very worst.

"I love you," Asuka told the dreamer. It didn't sound bad despite her lack of practice. She almost believed it herself. She hoped the girl bought it, at least. Asuka gave the stretcher a final push and let go.

Can you ever love me?

When Asuka tried to open her eyes again, only one responded. The other was shut up behind a bandage. She was propped up in a stretcher facing the closed door of a moving elevator. Rei stood by her side.

I will.

The elevator floor indicator tick-tick-ticked downwards. Asuka shuffled off of the stretcher. Every bump to her bandaged arm made her suck in a breath and see stars.

"Be careful with your bandages," said Rei, assisting Asuka as much as she'd allow. "You are still healing."

So this is me, really me.

Now on her own two feet, Asuka pawed at her midsection, then looked down. Her plug suit had no damage down there despite that savage final attack.

"But..."

"I had extricated you before the Eva Series inflicted catastrophic damage. Your sync rate was sufficiently low enough to avoid further injuries at that point."

Asuka vividly flashed back to her final moments on Earth. Her plug was dim as systems failed but she saw a human form swim towards her smiling placidly. It was Rei, which wasn't how she remembered it.

"That was you? But it wasn't... It was..." Asuka's voice caught in her throat. She felt like she was admitting to a crime. "I saw Shinji."

It had been Shinji, hadn't it? Maybe he had looked like Rei in the murk, and Asuka reflected how weird it was that they resembled each other so much, but the hands that reached out and the lips that kissed her definitely belonged to Shinji. Stupid Shinji, you actually came! she had thought before something popped.

"You saw who you needed to see," Rei said. Asuka's cheeks burned.

They could almost be sister and brother. Was that how he saw her? Did he know?

Asuka glanced at the floor indicator. It was nearly in the single digits now. Almost at the bottom. She stood tall and stiffened, bracing herself for impact.

"Hey, uh, Rei? What were those spooky questions you asked me before all this?"

Rei recited them with identical intonation.

"Do you think it is possible to sacrifice less of oneself than the whole of oneself? Do you think it is possible to feel love without it ending in death? Do you think need precedes love?"

Asuka glowed with the ready wisdom of epiphany.

"No, because it's not a true sacrifice otherwise. But first, for it to matter, you have to be worth something and know it."

"Yes, because to love myself I have to keep living."

She frowned, thinking hard.

"As for the third question, I really don't know. I don't know if I even know what I wish the answer was. I won't find it here in this place."

Rei appeared to be satisfied with Asuka's answers, or at least they appeared to give her something to think about. Asuka wasn't entirely sure about any of the answers herself. She did just come up with all of that off the cuff. But if she was wrong, she would figure it out later. Rei, she suspected, would get several billion more answers to her questions. Asuka wondered if it would bring Rei any closer to a truth she sought, and found herself hoping that it would.

"I swear it's not too late."

"Hey Rei? I know you can't promise me who I'm going to meet out in the world. But what was the last line of that song you and your creepy loser friend were singing? Remind me?"

"It goes: A time for peace, I swear it's not too late."

Asuka grinned. "Good. I'm going to hold you to that, you know."

Rei cocked her eyebrow. "To what?"

"Too late, Wondergirl!" Asuka said with a cackle. "You swore it!"

Asuka was laughing now despite the very real pain radiating across her increasingly real body.

"I got you, Rei Ayanami! The honor student's a buffoon! You owe me now! For life!"

She looked into Rei's bewildered face and for the first and final time saw somebody akin to a friend. A passing wave of loss washed over her and she wished so very much to embrace and hold the blue-haired weirdo again. She felt very sorry for slapping her, but all was forgiven.

tick-tick-DING

A warm sea breeze rustled Asuka's hair. She felt something wet on her toes and recoiled. Making a sudden movement shook her into a higher level of awareness so she rolled herself into a half erect position. The sea was lapping at her feet. She remembered everything except how she got there.

She opened her eyes and gasped. An Eva Series was already leaping out of the water close to shore, its arms outstretched, reaching for her.

They were waiting?! I don't want to die I don't want to die I don't want to DIE!

Asuka's stomach sank. She was completely defenseless and froze. The monster seemed frozen, too, even in mid motion.

No, something's not... huh?

The Eva Series unit wasn't in motion. It was fossilized in cruciform shape. No blood poured from the wounds she, and not without a rush of pride, remembered inflicting. Instead it was bleached white and petrified. She noticed that it even teetered to one side. Asuka sneered at the dead and broken thing and stuck out her tongue. Relieved, she rolled herself over to get a better look at her surroundings.

"AHHHH!"

A manic, moon-sized visage stared at Asuka over the water. Asuka pushed herself back a few clumsy paces which ignited pains up and down her body, particularly in her injured arm.

"UGHH!"

SCHEISSE!

REI!

It was a chalky colossus of Rei, also petrified. The one eye, for half of the face had apparently fallen away, looked over the world with an unseeing madness. The curious, blissful curl to what remained of its lips would have almost looked reassuring had they not been on the scale of a canyon.

Asuka collapsed flat for a moment, taking deep breaths and waiting for the stinging pains to ebb away. When they did, she finally let herself chuckle.

"Shinji? If this is the world you made, your aesthetic sense sucks ass."

Asuka hobbled along the shore until she came across an unnatural little forest. Thirteen uneven wooden poles were sunk into the ground with intention. She had seen monuments like these before. In Japan, where space was at a premium, they had used thin markers when burying the millions dead since Second Impact. These clumsy imitations had been erected not very long ago. This graveyard was the first sign of life on Earth.

Asuka sank to her knees by a marker with a small white cross nailed to it. She closed her eyes.

I don't know what to say. We left things pretty badly. You would have taken me in if I came back, right? That counts for something. Thank you.

She decided that the pole nearest Misato's belonged to Kaji.

"Is that you?"

Still kneeling, she shuffled over to his marker and bowed her head.

Without you, my heart would have gone completely cold. Nothing was enough but every bit you gave meant the world. I really did love you. Could you tell? I'm sorry.

She leaned forward and kissed the memorial. She had made space for two more in her heart.

Asuka got back to her feet using Kaji as a crutch. There was one pole roughly at the center of everything. So casually it took its position in such a place of prominence that it carelessly leaned to one side. Its insolence disgusted her.

It's mine.

She hobbled over to the pole and crooked both wrists against her hips.

"What the hell were you thinking, idiot?!"

Asuka kicked the pole around its midpoint. The fact that she could still perform a feat of violent athleticism filled her with a delirious resolve.

"You thought that you finished me off in there? Me?! Are you stupid?!"

She kicked again.

"Maybe I look it..."

She kicked again.

"...but I'm not dead yet!"

She gave it one more kick. The wood was rotten all the way through so the pole splintered and snapped almost cleanly in half. She had kicked the top so hard that it flipped over and dug itself into the sand.

"Woah, uhh, ahh...!"

Asuka's vision blurred and all her strength left her. She stumbled sideways into one of the other posts and grasped it so she wouldn't fall over. She felt like a spell had been broken, but more likely it was the exertion catching up to her.

"You are still healing."

"Oh shut up, Rei..." Asuka said, waving dismissively at the looming head.

The dizziness and weakness passed. Asuka stood back up on her own two feet. She pushed herself off the monument that was her impromptu support.

"Thanks, Hikari. You've looked better, to be frank, and I say that as a friend."

The wind whistled through the posts, which shook and rattled. She wondered if he had planted one for Rei, but, looking back into that ecstatic eye staring out across the sea, decided there wasn't a point.

"And you! Showoff. Mein Gott you make me so mad!" Asuka raved though her heart wasn't in it. She even forgot to suppress her smile.

Asuka wondered how long the graveyard would stay standing. She wondered how long she'd stay standing, too, and resolved to keep moving while she still could. Misato's cross caught her eye one more time.

The full moon shone over a long stretch of beach. Asuka plodded forward. She was light so the sand didn't give way under her feet. It was warm enough outside to stay out all night, but eventually she'd need to find water, food, and shelter. She tried to move her injured arm again, but a sharp pain discouraged any further tests.

She climbed up a dune to get a better lay of the land. First she scanned the buildings along the shore. Something terrible had happened here.

Obviously, Asuka.

Everything that was human made had been blown flat by a titanic explosion that must have radiated outwards from the red sea. She scanned for lights or any sign of life in the rubble but there was none.

No more Sega...

She looked back out to sea. More human debris poked out of the water. There were the dead Eva Series and Rei's half head that seemed to be at the center of it all. And a small girl in a blue and white school uniform hovering just above the waves.

"Rei?"

Rei looked up at Asuka. Even across the distance, Asuka could feel Rei's red eyes meet her own and she waved with her good hand. Rei didn't return the gesture. She simply looked down at the beach. Asuka followed Rei's gaze to a boy laying on his back by the water. She blinked and Rei was gone. The boy remained. He was real.

Asuka dropped gracelessly onto her behind. An overwhelming wave of cold remembrances from her real life threatened to submerge what she had made of herself in Instrumentality. The memories were of real hurt, the weight of consequence without insight. Her skin prickled and itched underneath her ruined plug suit but, having nothing else to wear, she was reluctant to shed it.

Though the boy didn't stir, Asuka knew he wasn't dead. Fleetingly, she wished he was, then that she was, then she felt ashamed. She tried to hate him, and she could. She tried to hate herself, and she could do that, too. Things felt normal despite the cataclysmic destruction around her.

"It's like I never left," she muttered.

That's not true.

Asuka looked down at her bandaged, broken arm. She laid it in her lap and held her own hand. The fingers on her right hand, while stiff, curled up slightly to grip her left. Hating herself became a lot harder then, more of a labor than habit. She allowed herself a private smile.

Asuka lumbered to her feet and skidded down the dune to meet Shinji.

She approached Shinji in a winding loop that she slowly curved closer. He stared straight up without seeing. He didn't move, but she could see his chest rise and fall. Asuka was tempted to wave a hand, or foot, over his face, then thought against it.

He might snap and do something crazy. Who knows how long he's been here? How long have I been gone?

She circled Shinji a little more before deciding to approach him from the left so she could keep her good eye on him. Pausing at about an arm's length from him, she dropped to her knees and stared. Shinji made no reaction. Increasingly self-conscious over his complete ambivalence to her existence, she laid down by his side and stared up, too.

The full moon shone through a red gash in the sky. Asuka had a lot of questions, but most could wait. Leaving the red aside, she had never seen a night sky quite like it. All the stars were out. She felt vulnerable without the sun. Her Third Branch trainers had impressed upon her the advantage of attacking from the sun's direction. As though such tactical trivia meant anything against angels that could bore into a child's mind with rays of light. Still, Asuka had taken the advice to heart. She liked the idea that the sun, the strongest star, had her back. With the moon she had no prior relationship.

This was the sky before fire or electric lights. What the first people saw. Would they have given all of that up if they knew what their children would do?

She had her back to the Earth. Philosophizing into space gave her an acute attack of vertigo.

I could fall up forever and never hit the bottom.

The thought made her feel lonely, though she wasn't alone. Back on Earth, Shinji was there next to her, inert, unmoving.

She sensed that she had perhaps already overcommitted herself. Although she wasn't resolved to forgive Shinji no matter what, she had already decided to give him a chance at forgiveness without precondition or deadline. He would always have that chance because Asuka wouldn't let him go too far again. A part of her wondered if her formulation was tantamount to forgiving him for no reason at all.

No, it's not. If he's wasting his chance, I'll show him, but I can't make him take it. It's still on him. No matter what.

Another part of her, the fatalist, considered what would happen if he didn't take up her unspoken offer.

So what? Then nothing has changed. I'll still be alone.

Something had changed. She had herself and held others in her heart.

Asuka was tempted to slide her hand over to his, but decided against it.

He has to know I'm here. Let him come. Let him welcome me to this world of his.

In her fourteen years of life, she could count two days when she wanted most to live. She wondered if dawn would break over a third.

Guess it depends on the Third.

She played through their final confrontation a few times in her head.

I really laid it out for him, huh? I actually said the things I wanted to say. I should be proud of myself. That's where the new me began. So... how does he figure into it?

There was a roaring in her ears.

It's just the ocean.

No, it's not.

What puts forgiveness in my power? She should have asked what I could bear.

Her stomach heaved. She would find out soon. She heard Shinji shifting in the sand.

Asuka saw Shinji rise on the periphery of her vision but she continued to stare straight up towards the sky. Her journey to the spot beside him hadn't been easy and she wasn't about to make it easier on him. Her stomach knotted, her heart pounded, but she kept taking in measured breaths.

Shinji mounted Asuka. She had not expected that. Asuka felt Shinji's hands around her neck. That was much more familiar. His weight pushed her deeper in the sand.

Is that where you hold girls, idiot?

He squeezed with shaking hands. Asuka didn't flinch or struggle. To move would be to cede him everything.

Fuck you.

You think you can test me?

You fucking dare?

She kept her eye on the stars.

Shinji must have found a new wellspring of hatred because he jammed his thumbs down on her throat. Asuka's lips parted involuntarily. She truly could not breathe now. Still, she did not budge. If she tried to fight him off, suicide would give way to murder.

I'll never be your victim again.

I forgave myself.

I... I would have loved myself.

Can you?

I don't know what I could possibly need from you so keep going.

Asuka's lungs were burning. She was seeing stars, but not the ones in the sky. Then, like a shooting star, a final intuition.

Can't you tell me why?

I just need to know why.

From there, worlds of possibilities unfolded in her air-starved mind. Some ended in violence and rejection, some ended in acceptance without affection, some ended with what Asuka had perhaps briefly hoped was the answer to Rei's third question.

Maybe what came between us before wouldn't matter anymore?

Maybe we'd be free?

If you told me why...

She needed to ask why but couldn't say anything.

Show him.

Asuka tried her right hand by tensing her fingers. It hurt. Nevertheless, she raised her arm. She reached out and sought his face by dead reckoning because she steadfastly refused to look at him. Her fingers touched hair. She slid her hand down to caress his cheek. His face was knotted all over with tension.

Do you feel me here with you?

Don't send me away...

...after I came so far.

Please...

This is all I can do for you right now...

I...

...need...

...

Shinji released his grip. Asuka didn't gasp or pant. She pushed out the bad air and pulled in a fresh breath. She distinctly felt that she had won the first battle on the new Earth.

He can't hurt me ever again.

She held him until she felt hot tears falling onto her cheek, the first penance he had ever done for her. Shinji slouched down and began to cry in gasping sobs that shook them both. The sand under her back and legs was packed hard from the force.

Asuka listened to his sobs as long as she could bear so afraid she was to see what need looked like. Eventually she gave in and looked down with her good eye. She saw Shinji Ikari and he was somebody she hardly recognized. She thought back to all their old beginnings. First meeting, first battle, first dance, first kiss.

Where'd that girl go? Who are you now?

He was nothing more than a frightened boy who sought out humanity in others to feel less alone. Who, in her caress, found what he had denied her and wept. He hadn't known what being held meant to her. Now he understood what he himself was missing. She had shown him where to find it. Shinji's tears ran down her cheek.

The wall around her heart cracked.

I need you.

That admission weighed on her heavier than Shinji's shuddering body. She felt herself switching places with the Earth. Now she was the one underneath and the force of a planet pressed her towards an inescapable conclusion: She was no longer alone and would never be again. Every day she would have to forgive herself for making the choice to be here in the world.

Every day. With him.

With the sobbing boy who had not yet learned to love himself and had not yet earned her forgiveness. In fact, he had set himself back on the latter journey quite a bit. He had a long way to go. Pinned though she was between Shinji and the ground, she felt cast adrift on a rolling sea. Nothing felt certain. Her powers of creation didn't extend over this world or him. Instead, like a shipwrecked sailor, she clung to the nearest salvation at hand.

Who that was and what that meant about herself nauseated her so she told Shinji how she felt.

Well my story has ended, but theirs isn't over yet. Thank you to everyone who read it, especially those of you who left comments/reviews/kudos/etc. because you've all been so encouraging. I wrote this so I could come to my own personal understanding of Asuka and feel at peace with End of Evangelion. I truly didn't expect for it to resonate as it has with some.

Yuko Miyamura, her Japanese voice actor, described Asuka as having "a wall in [her] heart" which I think is an apt description. So much so that I used it, slightly tweaked, myself. She deserves credit for that reference.

By the fourth chapter I think I accidentally discovered the story I really wanted to tell was Asuka's personal redemption. An anonymous reader wrote this: "I'm speechless. I dont even know where you're coming from but I feel like it's what I've been missing. Maybe I can forgive myself too." You've described my feelings on my own story better than I ever could! And please forgive yourself, I swear it's not too late.