Title: I Love
You, Asuka (16)
Author: Yih
Written: May 2001
Dedication: To
catch22 (I'd suggest emailing him if you don't understand what is going on)
Disclaimer: All
rights are Gainax.
REVIEW!!! Next part will hopefully be posted in 2
weeks!
Part 16: The Angry and the Sick
"He is here," exclaimed a sharp voice, Asuka's familiar
voice. He had heard it often before:
screaming, cursing, and commanding him.
"Are you okay, Shinji?" asked a softer, kinder voice--though
it was still Asuka's. This was a tone
that had never found his eardrums before.
He was almost not sure if it was really Asuka. But his intuition pointed the voice to be hers, even though it
sounded unlike her.
He tried to open his eyes, but it distressed them to do so
in the vibrant light. It took him several
patient minutes of trying to adjust his eyes before he could force them to
open. He finally managed to focus his
eyes to look at the face of his beloved.
He reached to touch her; however, his hand fell short of actually
touching her. She took his hand and
rested it against her cheek, instead.
It was then that he saw the other Asuka several feet away from the pale
Asuka who held his hand.
"Who are you?" he asked hoarsely.
"I am Asuka; she is Asuka," answered the pale Asuka.
"She would like to believe she is me," muttered the bright
Asuka. "But if you can't see, we are as
different as we can be."
"Which is the real one?"
"We are both real," replied the pale Asuka.
"I am the real one.
She is too weak to be me," retorted the bright Asuka. "She wants to be me though. Who doesn't?"
"Is this a dream then?"
"You could say that, my Shinji. You could say that. You
are trapped somewhere that isn't reality nor is it fantasy," the pale one said
kindly.
"Why am I here?"
"Because you are a baka," the bright one said tersely. "It's all your fault we are here."
His eyes had finally adjusted into the ethereal light, and
he saw that there was nothing underneath him, over him, or around him. Instead it was just light and
nothingness. He focus his gaze to study
the two Asuka's that stood before him.
The bright one was beautiful, radiant, and confident. He knew her well. He had seen her before in the first dream that Asuka had appeared
in. Then she had been enraged at him
for some reason; he had recognized her as Asuka because she was the Asuka he
had always seen. That was the Asuka he
knew so well. But the pale one looked
like Asuka to a degree, but seemed weaker than what he had perceived Asuka to
be. She seemed to fragile to be the Asuka
he knew. He withdrew his hand from the
pale one's grasp, and squeezed her hand reassuringly. He shakily stood up as she watched him with careful eyes.
"He's not a baka," the pale one murmured.
"You would think so!" screamed the bright one. "You have awful tastes!"
"You know you feel the same as I do."
"I do not! He means
nothing to me! He's just there! He means nothing to me!"
"You said, 'he means nothing to me' twice. You're trying to convince yourself, but it
isn't working. We both know he means
something to us."
"I don't want him!
He's so weak and pathetic! He
needs me, but I don't want him! He's
nothing more than a boy that is infatuated by my beauty! But he doesn't seem to realize how much I
hate him!" cried out the bright one with passion in her voice. "He thinks that 'baka' is an
endearment! If that isn't stupidity and
obsession, what is? I don't need him; I
don't want him! I just want him to
leave me alone! He doesn't mean
anything to me!"
"We both know we've been denying what he means to us. Both of us for different reasons."
"I am not denying anything!
I hate him! He's the cause of
all my problems and my failures! If it
wasn't for him, I wouldn't feel as I do now!
I'm helpless here, trapped here because--because of him!"
"You know it was because of us."
"What did I do?" he asked.
The bright one shot him a look that could have burned the
ground beneath his feet if there had been anything to set aflame. "You were the one that caused my violent
emotions! You were the sole reason I
fell into such a state of failure! It
was all your fault! And you're asking
me, 'what did I do?' You ruined my
life, Shinji! You destroyed everything
that had meaning in my life!"
"She doesn't mean it," the pale one added. "We put to much emphasis on things that
weren't really all that meaningful. We
ignored the thing that was." She gave
him a telling look before turning away.
"I meant every word I said.
He ruined my life!" the bright one screamed.
"I'll admit he was part of it," the pale one finally
said.
"You see! Even she
agrees with me!"
"What did I do?" he repeated.
The bright one had burning eyes aim at him menacingly. The pale one answered, "you started getting
higher synch ratios than us."
I still remember the look on Asuka's face the first time
Ritsuko informed us that my ratio was higher than Asuka's. She smirked at me and told me that it must
have been a fluke, and that I caught her on a bad day. But when it started to get… consistent, she
began to become erratic. So was I
really the cause of all this? Was it my
fault that she's--she's in the hospital?
Hospital! What
hospital? Why does it hurt to think of
that word… I had a dream that Asuka was in the hospital, it seems almost
real. Why can't I distinguish my dreams
from reality? Why don't I know? It hurts to think back more than five days
ago. It must have started then, that's
why it's so painful to think farther than that. What happened five days ago?
"He's remembering," the pale one commented.
"It's about time he understood what he did to me," the
bright one replied curtly.
"Why does the hospital part of the dream keep coming back to
me?" he inquired.
The bright one's eyes widen with disbelief, and it wasn't
long before she snickered at him. That
scornful laugh turn into a full blast of amusement as tears began to stream
down her face at whatever was funny that he had just spoken. He was beyond confused at that point. He didn't know what was so hilarious, but
he'd like to find out why. He sent a
questioning look at the pale one, who was sighing with disappointment.
"You really don't know?" the pale one asked.
"No," he said miserably.
"Try to remember."
"It hurts to remember."
"Everything that is filled with sadness causes pain when the
person remembers," she murmured kindly.
"You're too nice to be Asuka," he commented.
"That's what I've been trying to tell you!" cried out the
bright one. "She's not me!"
The pale one glared at the bright one before moving all of
her attentions to Shinji. "I know it's
hard," she responded. "But if you
remember, everything will be all right in the end. Trust me."
He wanted to trust her.
But if even trying to remember was this painful, what happened when he
actually remembered everything? Would
it be more than he could bear? He
shuddered at the thought. He let her
soothing voice calm his nerves, and he listened to exactly what she told him to
do. Closing his eyes tightly, he
struggled to remember what had happened before five days ago.
Asuka's fighting Arael, and--and she's losing!
His heart was in his throat as he saw Asuka tried to get
away from Arael but couldn't. He didn't
know how much he loved her until he saw Rei free Asuka with the Lance of
Longius. He knew then what his feelings
for her truly were. Now, all he had to
do was try to confess them to her. He
knew it wasn't going to be easy. Nothing
ever was in the regards to the second children.
When she came out from the Arael attack… she wasn't the
Asuka Shinji knew so well and loved.
She was broken and defeated--and he still loved her. He just didn't know how to confront
her. So he stayed in the background and
watched the problem worsen. It wasn't
long before she ran away to her best friend, Hikari, and he barely saw
her. But he never stopped missing her
or loving her.
He didn't exactly know why, but somehow Misato had
shielded when from the information of how Asuka had managed to run away and
commit suicide. She fell just short of
the deed. Now, she laid comatose in the
best hospital there was--NERV's. She
laid in the hospital--comatose. She was
in the hospital, dying; and he was here, nowhere. He needed to get to her; he needed to tell her how he felt.
He remembered the moment only too well. He saw himself in the room so clearly as if
it were yesterday. He felt like he was
still in the room where he had watched the line on the heart monitor stop
zig-zagging to a straight line of eternity.
He could still hear the noise of the shuffling feet of the doctors and
nurses entering the room, shoving him out before he could summon up the courage
to tell Asuka how he truly felt. It was
the moment he regretted the most in his life.
The car ride home had seemed to take hours, and Misato's reassuring
had only made the realization that Asuka was going to die even more real. His mind closed on the feverish chant, "she
might be dead. She might be dead. She might be dead. And I never got to tell her… I love her. I love her.
I admit it. I don't only like
her. I don't only think she's
beautiful. I love her. Only her. For always."
Tears streamed down his face as he remembered that last
coherent thought that he felt a pain quite like he had never felt before
descend upon him with the fury of Nemesis.
He knew he had tried to deny reality, and there was no way to do
so. It would eventually come out, and
now that it had finally been released, he felt worse than he ever had
before. It was worse than any of
Asuka's rejections, even combined. He'd
rather have her alive, hating him than dead, loving him.
"He remembers," the bright one bitterly muttered. "He looks so heartbroken; and I'm the one in
the hospital. He hasn't been through
half the pain I've been through!"
"I know I haven't experience your pain. I'm still sorry," Shinji said as soon as he
was able to find his voice. "I'm so
sorry."
"There he goes with his apologizing, again! If there's one thing that really irritates
me is you groveling at my feet like a stupid dog!" she shouted.
"I'm sorry," he responded for the lack of something
better.
"Bye, Shinji," said the pale one sadly.
Bye? He
thought disappointedly. I want to
know her. Maybe then I would understand
her as well as she understands me. Its
like she knows me better than I know myself.
She knows what I need. She
doesn't act very much like the Asuka I knew.
She seems unsure of herself, kind of like me. It's strange that someone that looks like Asuka would act like
me. One thing that reminds me about
Asuka is that she seems weak, but not yet defeated. Sad, yet not overwhelmed by it… if only she was Asuka. But no matter what, I know I love her. I even love the volatile Asuka.
"I don't want to leave you," he cried out desperately.
"You have no choice," she told him.
"I love you."
She smiled then; and it was a smile that he would never
forget.
Author's Note:
If anything, I'd suggest going back and rereading the story from the
very beginning. Everything means
something and if anything… this story is packed with tiny details that become
very important in the end. If you can't
tell all that "has" happened the last 5 days is really a "dream sequence" and
Shinji's "dreams" were reality and his "dreams within dreams" was his conscious
trying to fight its way back to reality.
The two Asukas are symbols, if you can crack it you'll bring a smile on
my face. If not all will be revealed
when I release a "cheat sheet" of symbolism and foreshadowing when I finished
ILYA. Never thought this story would
turn out something so sinisterly English-like right? I can even explain why I suddenly went extremely OOC, but I'd
rather have you read the whole thing and TRY TO THINK, this story isn't about
enjoying it, it's about "provoking thought."
If you want a sit down good read, wait for the tantalizing "Indecision"
which I'm currently working, who knows?
It could be just as complex as ILYA (though this one is based on "in
schoolness")
As Touji declared (which is a very important
statement): "Not in this Universe." (ALL the way back in Chapter 7!!!)