IX. Please, Think of Those Who Live On

Asuka had been transferred to a hospital room with a window, one less equipped for handling emergency situations. Asuka considered it a good sign; it meant she would soon be away from the hospital's sterile, over-bright halls for good.

The window afforded her a view of the gigantic crater given birth by Unit 00 in its defeat of the sixteenth Angel. She spent much time staring at it, contemplating both the crater and the mysterious girl who had created it.

The room was very quiet; Asuka was only occasionally disturbed by the tapping of feet on the metal floor outside. A nurse only came by regularly once or twice a day, and otherwise if she called. In the end Asuka found it both a blessing and a curse—it meant fewer people she needed to deal with, but also less chance to do anything, left instead to her thoughts.

Asuka was gazing out the window, half at the crater and half at her own reflection in the glass, when she heard soft footfalls approaching her room. Too early for the nurse, she thought lazily, not bothering to consider who it might be instead.

Ikari Shinji walked into the room, silent and withdrawn. Asuka watched him in the glass, neither of them saying a word.

The Third Child arrived at her bedside and sat down in a folding metal chair, apparently unperturbed by the fact that she was now awake.

"Kaworu is dead," Shinji said quietly, miserably. Asuka felt a tremor run through her body, somehow shaken that the mild-mannered, smiling boy Nagisa had been such a terrible creature in disguise.

"I killed him."

Again Asuka shuddered involuntarily. She and her comrades were now accustomed to killing Angels, to destroying other creatures. And yet this creature had looked liked them. She looked at Shinji's reflection in the giant window, played over the man-made lake like a slide show.

"He's dead because of me…" Shinji began to cry softly, his shoulders jerking with his sobs. Finally Asuka turned and looked at him directly, pity and sorrow in her eyes.

"He's dead because of your duty," Asuka said gently, trying clumsily to comfort the boy. "You had to do what you did."

"No I didn't!" Shinji nearly shouted, startling Asuka with the force of his reply. "I could have let him go! Could have let him live!"

"For what!?" she demanded, almost as angrily. "The destruction of all humanity!? He would have done it without a second thought!"

Spontaneously, the emotion left them both.

"You can't worry about what you've already done," Asuka said, looking down at the bed. "You can't worry about winning or losing or succeeding or failing, if you've already won or lost or succeeded or failed. It just…doesn't help."

"But…But another human being is dead because of me," Shinji said, his voice nearly cracking.

"He wasn't human, he was an Angel."

"Don't say that! He loved me, and…and I loved him. So he was human. So I was human."

"Shinji," Asuka said quietly, looking at him intently. "Come here."

Reluctantly, Shinji stood from his chair and walked the few feet to Asuka's bed, where he sat again, facing away from the girl.

With some effort, Asuka sat up, and shifted so she was nearly leaning on Shinji. She inclined her head so her mouth was next to his ear.

"You are strong," she whispered.

He started slightly at the words, or perhaps at the tickle of her breath on his skin. Slowly he turned until he was looking at her, his eyes large and faintly confused.

"That's why you defeated seventeen Angels. That's why Kaworu let himself die, because you had the will to go on living and he surrendered to that will. That's why you'll keep living, even now that all the Angels are gone."

He looked at her, slowly comprehending her words.

"Will you…will you live, with me?"

She smiled, one of the first genuine smiles she could remember giving, to him or to anyone.

"Yes. Always." She leaned forward slightly, embracing Shinji as best she knew how. She felt him shake with sobs, but held him tightly, refusing to release him as he cried.

Asuka could feel Shinji's warmth against her own thin frame, and the tremors of his sorrow.

She held him close, long after his tears had dried.

~