ㅤ

And the road, she'd roll
round the side of the mountain
With nowhere to go
But the heart, we know
When it's a-loving it's a-leaning toward
being alone

-Gregory and the Hawk

scene 2

hydrangeas

.

A triplet of messy notes.

Sunlight was fierce. The oppression of her glare, tyrannical pupils which instilled his mental parliament with singeing anxiety. Paper lips, smothered with heart, a vintage reminder of a former present. Paragon flesh, with an oceanborne eye. An enveloping warmth, the spot of verglas marking her distant from the backdrop of red.

Pretty as a picture.

He imagined, vividly, some sort of future where sunlight could belong to freedom. Away from Earth. Away from him. She would probably be happier, having a universe to roam for millennia, no need to share an orbit with the scum of the Earth.

A desolate planet, of which only he would roam.

Home.

"I'm home, Asuka."

Sunlight owned a vessel which the eighteenth angel had no right to witness; his stygian sins feasted upon concepts of touch. Connection. The sempiternal trace of his black on her akoya skin, softly quivering against the bumps of her breasts, the glow of her belly, and the potency of ash his flesh would bear. Eyes to lips, and with instinct, so much more. A hazed focus on his painting of her, a constant stimulus.

Paper lips crumple, however. Her body couldn't conform to the role of his fireplace. It didn't deserve a fate that rime.

But there. That place, and that time. When the nemesis of red leashed the neck of sin. Where his spine burst into religion, crosses which bore his identity.

The locus where he felt his hair flash black. The season where daffodils began to wilt.

As such, they really did crumple. An abrupt alarm of all gifts and agonies which lips and bodies were birthed with.

Vocals, words. No matter what form, they always caused him pain. Words shouldn't have belonged to her. No human ever deserved the wrath, the pressure, the cornucopia of ruin which those paper lips could bring.

But he did.

A triplet of messy notes:

"Welcome home, monster."

A dying fireplace.

Time was more fluid than first assumed, it seemed; her portrait disillusioned his already delicate mind. A momentary balance of stare to glare, evening the hitch of his breaths, the pearl of sweat running down his cheek, the cacophony of his heartbeat. Something from her to him, though be it a gift that never actually gave anything. Maybe it did try, though. Just maybe.

An atmosphere of attention, all belonging to the pinnacle of them. Fear, heat, a cumbersome silence.

Words.

But connections break, of course, her grappling eye delaying itself to the beat of her body's dance. Adept in her work, just like always. Except this time, the assignment was tearing his mind to shreds. No doubt, an objective she would take her time with, flame dimming out over the precipitous burn of walkway lights.

From body to iron lines, his eyes followed the tracks in which she had sauntered. The one line acting as a gate from the tauntingly familiar colour inspiring his breath and skin, a barrier from their quarters. A line that used to distress him, until now. It was difficult at first, memory flushing him, with a new environment overtaking the greenery of which he was accustomed to. A garden of lessons, fruitful with life, and devoid of contact. A memory of haven. From wind to warmth, this apartment laid ingrained into his being.

If there was a single factor he would have taken away from this place, it was that warmth was fragile. So, promptly numb, he braved a step inside.

Pianissimo.

A muted hum of lustres kissed the stillness of a home he once associated with volume. Fronting, an oak-built getabako, misshapen with age and neglect. Time may have been fluid for them, but their burden hadn't seemed to have been shared across the acres of reality they thrived behind. The lights, ghastly painted dahlia, probably decayed from their disregard. As was everything. The fridge must have been an ugly sight. Or not, considering the only remains would be the solitary platforms of alcohol that their guardian would have left behind.

And now, like a raid against his security, she arrived back into his mind. A vicious salt in the gaping gash of his structure, sempiternal in unwanted agonies. An explosion. A cross, more even to the others surrounding their burnt soil. Her poppy lipstick, an attempt to attract. Her efforts to galvanise him, ending only sexual.

"We'll do the rest when you get back."

Grotesque. Eyes aimed sinistrally, he escaped through movement.

Through the dwindle of ancient gleams, a few dozen swarms of memoric frequencies his mind couldn't help but relapse to, he planted firmly at the ingress to his partner's whereabouts. A door of salvation, the guide to a house where only monsters roam. Or, perhaps, oblivion. Sunlight held ferocity far greater than any impact could usher onto their Earth.

Oblivion hath no fury as sunlight scorned.

An open gateway. A collapsing lung.

His body, acting as a vanguard to a distraught screech of crimson floors, hitching. Dextral, a neurosis of hydrangea laid bare with twilight. A gloom aimed to another rose-kissed board, a belonging agreeing to a clash of images.

A spillage of freshly fixed caffeine. Also, a spillage of his guts.

A complex of words, apologies, infected with the burning bile upheaving itself from his body's depths. More swarms, more, more and more; a teacher scraping their chalk asunder from the education of a blackboard, an elder trauma ripping through the confines of a recollection of a home as well as the fleshy restraint of his oesophagus. Liquid seething through eyelids of hateful youth, his senseless ache made recognised and dreaded, nevermind comparable.

Blubbering spouts of violence created only through the philanthropic instrument of his throat, unbidden in volume. A greed-green nose, eyes shifting rearwards, defying his body's nature.

"Wake up, monster."

A stake in his heart's bloodied dance. A blinded man, with a blink, now awoken with a sore mind. A few more blinks, in fact, and his veins hadn't felt nearly as frayed. A visitation of eyes, a sacred stone to an ocean.

Another lengthy visit, a frenzied trauma twisting his head to peak, from visionaries to umber coffee.

It was gone.

No drug had spilt. No wood thrown, no tantrums for need. Stone met ocean one last time, an overbearing zeal forcing hope into his lungs. Hope for confusion, a confirmation that the concept of mutual strangulation was not shared in full. Sunlight, warmth, without her- what was he going to do? In the aquatic glow of hydrangea, an inkling of concern could surely arise.

But her eye never shared such confirmations. Only one thing lingered on her body, from her ferocious waves down to the scarred pavement patterns engraved into her soles.

A forthright indifference.

Once more, his heart and hair flashed black. His warmth shattered, her vessel trapping him in his mind's labyrinth. Vision chiselled into place, he could only manage the audio of those torn feet marching into the comfort of the apartment washroom.

His fingers rose to trace his lips, a new tension dispersing around his face. Then, another audio.

A traumatised smirk, amidst a perverted chuckle.

Blink, and reality released in a waterfall against his system. He didn't deserve only a drip. An influx of uneven breaths released against the coated atmosphere the room drowned him with, his vomit swallowed as to not disturb the undressing of his other. After this, he couldn't face her. What he wanted, and all he needed, was the comfort of a duvet against bare skin, clothes still, unfortunately, bearing the unwanted mark of soul-strewn stew. A ruined comfort.

First, for any comfort at all, he would have to move. It seemed his statue had no intention of doing so.

A rasped gasp for adrenaline fuelled his paralysed body onward, eyes now replacing the shape of her body with a rosy cotton floor; his crumbled ego attempted to bar his body from movement. His mind feared her results. If she arrived as he would escape, resonating in her reaction of abuse-

Who did he even think she was? Of course, there would be no such abuse as before. No devastating sentences, no attempts to fight.

All there would be was indifference, a black heart, a red skyline-

And a monster.

The scarlet glow of their keep radiated through the bare defence of his curtains, a wearied body of a fatigued boy collapsing onto his objective. Tan flesh bare, all clothing crumpled and tossed leisurely into a corner of the room in which he belonged. Upon contact, the soothing nature in which cotton kissed his flesh stemmed an abundance of comfortable sighs, something rare to be found in this form of Tokyo-3. Mindfulness returning, his visage twisted into satisfaction, a groan releasing into the sheets of his bedding.

He had found a fairly simple method to avoid the anxiety his ego had accumulated. Surely unhealthy, but at least a temporary fix against the pressure this Earth had set into his guts.

He merely had to abandon it. If only he had managed the will to perform such a feat during the ceremony of the third tribulation, maybe they wouldn't have been in this situation. Misato, a halved corpse. NERV as a whole, quartered and thrashed, a ruined company against the cataclysm of the third impact. Asuka, a mauve, gutted sun.

Asuka.

With reality comes emotion. With emotion, remorse. A heart careening towards loneliness. This formless ode between them, existing invisible yet potent before them. Is this truly what was best? Is this what he wanted? A cursed apartment, on a blood-grown planet, with a slither of a chance that human willpower could overwhelm a need to stay as one. Individuality, instrumentality, the enemy of all he had come to recognise and adore.

A new cross stabbed through his soul. Another religious torture, halving down to wings for unsound lies. To put an end to togetherness, or eliminate any wonders of another's thoughts and heartful intentions.

Which result would make him more of a monster?

Stone rolled over to a fronting desk. Another comfort found in metal, human creativity and musical joys. An owned portable transporter of all those noises which pleased him, from the awful procession of sampled beats to the intricate, detailed method in which musicians could slide their hands across a guitar. A former lover, in essence, and another fuel which used to invigorate him. Or, perhaps, a most terrifying escapism.

A vascular fist swept sheets into an agony-born hold. Confirmation of place, a texture preventing another descent. Insecurity plagued his breath. One more cross and his ego would vanish, not merely be replaced.

Warmth, please come.

And, almost on cue, a most peculiar event occurred. A shadow basked in the kingdom hum, illuminating a projection onto his naked comfort. Not exactly an invasion, yet not inviting either. Peculiar, because juxtaposing his account of her emotions, it seemed the sun had answered his request with blaring approval.

Fatigue no longer an influence, his eyes brushed over the newly found radiance shining over him.

A brush to a stare. His body took the shock of her sight bluntly, and as such, reacted awestruck.

Freshly dressed into a familiar overgrown lemon shirt, a newly unveiled body lay bleeding in front of him. Her scars, the remnant of the lance, and the failed attempt to reach out and avenge, had sown themselves back into a garden of fleshy wounds. An opponent to the dominance of red, teal dripped from each of her losses. A fluorescent atmosphere, with an angelical hum almost calm enough to send him to rest.

But then, another waterfall. A sinking heart, a betrayal against his heart's dance forming itself as realisation set into his diaphragm.

A line of hydrangea, blooming across her wounds. A glue preventing her arm's separation, and a return into red. Gasps relented against the disconcert spiking his mind into action, a new bout of trauma ready to strangle and swarm him into endless submission. He blinked. Then, he blinked again. A new analysis, and the same answer.

The sun owned a garden, and the cost was her body.

In his fourteen years of existence, and through the beautiful garden surrounding his rotted wooden home, he had come to recognise a superfluity of mesmerising shapes, sizes, poisons and blessings. Flowers.

"They're the most beautiful form of life, aren't they?"

A numb rambling, which his childish nature never allowed him to properly digest. Nevertheless, he persisted, listening to words that would allow him comprehension. His teacher continued, hands cradling his own, softly positioning them over the root of a simple burst of sea. "The hydrangea," his underdeveloped mind didn't seem to deter them, "a symbol of heart. Frigid, yet eternally bold, truly a spectacle among all the flowers here."

A young stone met the maturity of another's vision. Forgotten, yet now unearthed, his face twisted to one of wonder, excitement, an illicit reaction to the bountiful colours belonging to his home. His caretaker's visage devised a smile. One that seemed somewhat sad, taking a breath to address some new fact for him to enjoy.

"You see these blues?"

A nod.

"These, child, are signs of death. A true symbol of pathos, respected in Japan as a most delicate life. You respect these, and virtue may bless you."

For his child, the fantastical nature of the garden filled him only with dreams of an Earth kissed with such blessings. Greenery, humanity, life-

Everything they now lacked. Returning to his present, these flowers gored his mind, as well as her body. Respect, the one thing he remembered a need for, was nowhere to be found in his system.

Formerly her eye socket, one of the hydrangea escaped the lance's punishment, with each deformation containing a luminous combination of prussian blues and lavender edges. They pulsed in the same dance as her heart, the hum only increasing in volume and magnitude with each heated drop of brilliance. A tranquillity unmatched, the compression of red overwhelmed by its beauty.

For him, although perhaps harrowing, it was absolutely mesmerising. The sway of her body as she braved a further step towards him, and then another, the musical hum calming and settling along with her movements. And then him, a statue. Closer, and he had never realised angels could hold such a lovely nature. Even closer, and each drip of oceanic essence now connected with the bare flesh of his forearm. A body of hushed elegance hung before him, mythical in concept in consideration of the identity of who was enticing him.

Identity.

"Kaworu?"

Corrosion.

Another swarm. A grim reminder of severed skulls, the most angelic of gore designed for a coward's anguish. Tears, acceptance of hope. The hope to say "I love you", a forthcoming advent descending before two could become one.

Their becoming of love. The most heavenly way to die.

An enveloping need embraced him and manipulated his nature completely. A need for warmth. Comfort. Help. For now, he was unaware. Unaware of words. Unaware of identity. Love was destructive.

"I was right. Anyone would do for you."

Femininity leaked through, and sunlight unveiled herself once more.

A final blink.

His body turned horizontal. Sunlight's vessel nuzzled against his own naked back, hand tracing the glow of his belly, lips softly planting themselves over his nape, and hands of hydrangea placed just barely over his adam's apple. An unnatural warmth, somehow more forthright than his concepts of her ever managed to be.

"Monster,"

Paper lips shifted.

"What do you prefer to say? Anything and everything, or everything and anything?"

Words without pain. For him, a rare occasion.

"Everything and anything, I think."

A thoughtless answer.

"Oh. You're boring."

A lovely giggle.

Another silence. Another tightening grip.

"Goodnight, Asuka."

Warmth.

A few more messy notes:

"Goodnight, monster."

A crumbling home.

AN: a calm before the storm. thank you all so much for all the reviews, writing this has been extremely fun so far! sorry for the long wait, life has been pretty busy and will be for another month, but I'll get to work on scene 3 as fast as I possibly can!

here's a sneak peak as for the title of the next scene. take it as you will.

scene 3
sainfoins