Post-Arael : I Need You
Not a romantic fic, just our two main characters finding what they've been needing all along.
"Hey Asuka! Wait up please!" Shinji panted, trying to catch up to the girl who was walking at quite a rapid pace.
The girl in question stopped at the mention of her name and looked over her shoulder. She hadn't even managed to come up with her usual 'Reserved for Shinji' retort before her vision was completely filled by a 100% pure uncut teenage male.
Shinji tripped over his words for a second before uttering, "I-I wanted to give you this!"
He held up a beautiful flower.
Asuka's look of confusion prompted him to elaborate.
"I'm sorry -" Shinji took a moment to compose himself "-that I wasn't there to help you back there." He observed her face, desperately looking for her reaction.
To his delight, her gaze softened in a rare display of vulnerability. However, her face Immediately contorted in anger.
It was as if she had realized something he hadn't.
"Do you really think I'm that pathetic?" She practically spat.
Shinji's face morphed into his usual sorry-guilty expression that she was sick of. The damn boy would apologize for anything, even if he didn't know what he was apologizing for.
She scoffed. "Oh Shinji my saviour, thank you for gracing poor ol' me with your presence!" Her voice was laced with venomous sarcasm.
"I'm sorry. I didn't mean to-"
"Oh of course you didn't! You didn't mean to just rub salt all over my gaping wounds." She took a gander at Shinji's perplexed look, and she could feel her anger boiling up. "See? You don't even know what you're sorry for! But it's always the same with you, isn't it? Do you even care about how I feel? Or are you just apologizing because it's easy?"
Asuka started to feel tears well up in her eyes, and turned away from Shinji.
"Sometimes I even doubt you're actually sorry for anything," She stated coldly.
And just like that she walked away, with a small dab of hurt settling into her heart.
Had she turned around, she would've seen that she wasn't the only one crying.
"What did I do?"
The same question had been repeating itself in Shinji's head for a few hours. He felt a slight jab in his gut remembering what Asuka had said only hours prior. 'Do you even care about how I feel?'
He did. A lot, actually.
Just about everyone at NERV had noticed how different Asuka seemed as of late. She had been doing quite poorly during sync tests recently, to the point where Misato had even thought that there was something wrong with the software.
He pondered over just how much she had changed recently. He noticed the slight changes in her behaviour that no one else did. He noticed how melancholic she looked at times. How empty her normally vibrant eyes seemed whenever she talked.
He dearly wished he could do something to help. He wanted nothing more than to just hug her tightly and never let go. He wished he could just tell her how much she meant to him and how comforting her presence was to him – even if her words hurt him occasionally.
He just wanted to stop hurting her.
'Do you really?'
Asuka's voice startled Shinji, who immediately turned his head towards her room.
He saw her standing in front of her door looking absolutely ready to verbally dissect him.
'Do you really care about me?' Her voice rang out louder than before, taunting Shinji.
'I do! I know we've had our rough moments, but I want us to be happy,' he responded.
'Us happy? Or just yourself?'
'What are you talking about?'
Asuka scoffed, 'You're so ignorant to everyone else's problems, Third! How dare you say that you want to make us happy when you've done nothing but hurt me, and you don't even know it!'
I'm sorry. I didn't know.' Shinji felt tears well up in his eyes.
'Of course you didn't, because it's never been about me isn't it? It's always been about the great Shinji Ikari.' Malice creeped into her anguished voice.
'No Asuka, please I-'
'You see me as nothing more than an object, don't you? You think I exist purely for your own need to be loved. I exist purely for your own self-actualization, because if you think you can learn to love me, it means you can learn to love yourself, right?' She accused.
She stopped her tirade for a moment, before finally delivering the nail in the coffin, 'You've learned absolutely nothing about me, you never even tried to.'
Shinji's frustration grew exponentially at those final words. 'Of course I know nothing about you! You won't tell me a single thing! You know why I never asked? Because I was scared! In fact, I think I still am! You say I bring you nothing but hurt? Well you do the exact same thing to me!'
'Is that why you're only talking to me in your head right now?'
'Yes,' Shinji responded to the imaginary Asuka.
'I don't think I can apologize for what I did, you'd have to consult the real me,' The imaginary Asuka said solemnly.
'I know.'
'Good, do you think you can do that?'
'Yes.'
Shinji knocked at her door, and went in. Asuka responded with neither hostility nor warmth. In fact, she didn't seem to respond to his presence in her room at all. She didn't seem to be sleeping either, as he could still hear her sniffles.
Shinji carefully sat down on her bed, shaking her shoulder.
Asuka turned to face him, glaring.
Shinji said nothing, and just held her hand lovingly, with a warm smile on his face.
"I'm here for you now, Asuka."
Asuka's sobs turned into tears of joy as she smiled, sincerely for once.
Their relationship hadn't exactly been healthy, but now they were finally ready to destroy their own Walls of Jericho.
FIN.
A/N: Was gonna call this "Hey Jude" but it didn't really make any sense to me, so...