Apart.
The same place. The same argument.
'He hurt me.'
"Anymore than you did him?" A soft alternative to her bitter scathing,
'He left me here.'
"He came for you specifically." Blunt and solid, a counterpart to her weaselly reply,
'He abandoned me BEFORE all of this.'
"You saw as well as he did, he could not reach you." Far firmer, touching on irritation now, this inflamed her own,
'HE DIDN'T TRY ANYTHING! HE SAW IT AND GAVE UP!'
"What would you have him do?" The irritation was gone, genuine curiosity,
'Try.'
"Try what?"
'TRY ANYTHING?'
"Like you would? If your positions were reversed?" There was no accusation in her voice, but she recoiled as if there were,
'I would have come for him, the Idiot.'
"No, you would have come for a fight. You would not have come for Shinji…"
And it would never progress past there.
There was no time in this place, so she had no way of knowing how long she had been doing this. So, she had no way of knowing how many times she had let herself lose this argument.
She returned to this place between her dreams, between attempts to allow the world to fill in her missing pieces. Always retreating to this place, and this fight, when Instrumentality didn't fix her problems.
She'd first tried returning to piloting.
Only briefly.
The instant she took that first 'breath' of LCL, they were back…
Teeth, clawing hands and long grey spears; her arm peeling apart as she reached to the sky, blood pouring down her face. Simultaneously knowing her guts weren't strewn across the grass but every nerve in her body screaming to the contrary, writhing in agony all the same.
Through her brief parade through his memories, she had seen how they displayed her and her EVA; circling him with her desecrated remains in their mouths and hands. Were she still capable of a physical reaction to the repulsive sight, she'd likely still be retching.
She could never pilot an EVA again.
Sedate. Mundane. Peaceful. A million miles away from anything remotely related to Angels and NERV; Asuka decided on a 'normal' life for her next dream.
Thus, her next attempt had her returning to Germany. An orange haired girl throwing herself into the arms of a woman who finally remembered her name and face. The frizzy haired doll nowhere in sight and lost to the older woman's memory.
This dream lasted longer, but not by much. As, even with it gone, Asuka's memory of it poisoned every lingering touch and each loving smile. A visceral terror hummed under her skin like a current, making it so Asuka couldn't bear to leave the room.
She would never not be that little girl.
Running to the door of her hospital room, unaware of what she would fine. Every time her mother left her line of sight, she worried she would once again find her hanging from the ceiling.
And it always felt wrong. Wrong to replace the loving embrace she felt in her final battle, replacing the knowledge that her mother had been with her for every battle in Unit 02, to replace her real mother with this facsimile.
So, her next attempt had her returning to the glittering spires of Tokyo-3. Warm golden rays flickering off calm cerulean waves; Asuka breathing in the salty air and luxuriating in the knowledge that nothing would come floating in from beyond the horizon to kill them all.
This time it was back to being a schoolgirl, the friendly face of Misato filling in as her parental figure. Still the affable drunk, Asuka feeling nothing when she slinked off from her presence to lay in Kaji's arms,
'Out of sight, out of mind? I… I don't think I know why it doesn't bother me anymore?'
Her attention remained on the school, the place where she maintained popularity for something other than the red 'robot' she once risked her life piloting. Slotting into a routine of breezing through class and playing with the boys, a much easier dream to relax in as it lacked the baggage of her previous ones.
Or so she would think. Yet, every time she got comfortable, her attention would drift back to his desk.
Sometimes she let Shinji exist in the dream.
Most times she excluded him.
His absence was like a wound; seeing him (happy or sniveling) hurt more but the feeling was bittersweet. She couldn't look at him without feeling the pain in her eye or the warm splatter against her chest, yet her eyes were always drawn to the area he should be sitting when he wasn't there.
No matter if he was here or not, silent or outspoken, happy or miserable; Idiot-Shinji couldn't help himself from hurting her further.
These fantasies, collectively, lasted the longest. Weeks to months of playing house in Misato's apartment and batting eyelashes at her imaginary schoolmates. They all suffered from the niggling knowledge that the entire experience was fake, particularly the ones with him in them.
So, she ended up here. To that home of theirs. Never to look around or play out a dream, but to be close to the last place the real Shinji had been…
A broken girl with red hand marks on her throat, lying on the ground next to a pile of broken chairs and an overturned table. That was what Asuka Langley Sohryu always returned to, the place he had long since vacated.
She had no hidden hopes of seeing him again, she knew that (this time) she'd pushed him away so resolutely that he was no longer in this state of being with her. THAT knowledge was what brought her back; despite his proclamations he had, once again, abandoned her. And a part of her felt vindicated at reminding her.
This was no dream; this was a room with an exit she could easily reach. Leaving was not waking up; less than a thought and she was gone. In truth, she had been ready to leave as soon as she had arrived.
But re-entering the living world didn't just mean seeing him again, it meant accepting she had (at least for a time) given up.
That she had wallowed.
The doll would only visit her here. Whenever she drifted back to this place, the blue haired girl watched her like a ruby eyed bird of prey.
'Vulture' an angry glare given in the direction of the uniformed Wundergirl, HER eyes never leaving Asuka. They would argue, she would have the last laugh, and she would curse her before departing for her next fantasy.
The cruel doll, who had finagled Shinji's attention from her time and time again… she had made it clear that Shinji had spoken to her and left them both behind. Had she not known Ayanami Rei as one to gloat, she would have immediately written off the girl's admission of him leaving as a barb to further her misery. A weapon that worked oh so well.
Shinji had left her. She had pushed him away and he had rejected this entire scenario. He wasn't galivanting through dreams like she was, he wasn't drowning in a sea where the borders between people did not exist. Crybaby Idiot-Shinji had manned up and returned to the real world, all whilst she was down here, playing make believe,
"There is no shame in leaving or staying." Rei's gentle voice the furthest thing from the soothing balm it was for Shinji, "Many have even chosen to leave and have then returned. It is merely a way of life."
'It's fake. All of this is fake.'
"It is as real as you allow it to be."
'NO! IT'S FAKE, IT'S A LIE, IT'S RUNNING AWAY FROM REALITY! ALL OF THIS IS EXACTLY WHAT IDIOT-SHINJI ALWAYS DOES!'
"Then why are you still here whilst he is not?"
Pain. Both pilots had different ways of hurting her, Rei's was to ask her questions she did not want to answer. Shinji hurt her in so many ways, but Rei would only ever take shots at her pride,
'…I'm not being seen as second fiddle to HIM.'
"But he has returned, and you have not. If anyone were to think of you as lesser, wouldn't they be doing so already?"
Asuka flew to her feet, but she didn't find herself in the kitchen. Asuka was alone on the balcony. The scent of the sea in her nose and Tokyo-3 stretched out before her,
'Fake!' Her hands gripping a bar she knew wasn't there,
"The real one will never be down here." Disembodied and all around her, Asuka's real body would have ached with how hard she spun about her head and neck, "You must either accept this for what it is or leave if you wish to be happy. You cannot find peace by existing in a reality that you are continually rejecting."
There was no pity. It was her usual bluntness packaged with a soft smattering of sympathy. All the while, Asuka's mind was force feeding her images of the gentler looks and softer tones the red eyed girl offered to him, reminding her that (to some degree) her disdain for Ayanami was a mutual thing,
"I do not… dislike you, Pilot Sohryu." Asuka scowled, entirely over letting anyone (let alone HER) hear her thoughts, "Then this place is one you should leave. You are not happy here and will not be if you do not allow yourself to be."
She was in front of her again, stood in the air too far from to reached out to and touched. The wind whipped at her deep blue skirt and tugged the dangling strands of her bow, Asuka almost worried that a gust any stronger would whisk her off into the ether.
She watched the girls stoic mask morph into a gentle smile, the softening of the girl's features twisting at her insides and a nasty invective settled on her tongue just as quickly as the feeling commenced.
Then it was gone.
There was a fatigue in her now, a feeling of listlessness. Asuka's white knuckled grip loosened, and she rested her forearms on the guardrail and looked past Rei to the sea. There were no squawking birds, and even in this dream she could not hear the rush of the water lapping at the sand or the cars and trains that bustled through her city. The only noise was that cutting wind she couldn't really feel.
It felt like she was looking at a painting, surrounded by things that just weren't real enough anymore.
Asuka looked back. The apartment was still in disarray. Shinji wasn't there making them food, Misato wasn't screaming her joy at the first chug of beer. Asuka even missed the silent comfort of Pen-Pen waddling through the apartment on his own whim. None of this was right, it never would be,
'I want to see the real thing again.' A whine, a reluctant argument that held even more water than usual. Her mind was made up, but the sickening feeling to run away was still strong. Rei's knowing expression, for the first time, helped her with this, 'Idiot-Shinji did this so long ago.'
"You are not second to Ikari Shinji. You are Asuka." The girl intoned with a firm inflection, "You haven't run away, you can still move forward."
'I am Asuka.' Firm.
"You have the right to be happy, Pilo- you have the right to be happy, Asuka."
"I am Asuka." Aloud.
"And you should not be afraid of what others may think of you whilst you seek it."
"I AM ASUKA!" Shouted at the bright blue sky, as she lay on a beach of bone white sand. Water lapping at her feet and people bustling around her.
Nearing two years after the world was dissolved into a sea of orange liquid, Asuka Langley Sohryu returned to reality.