(A/N:Thanks so much for the reviews! As promised, here's the next chappie. I hope you like it.
Oh, and I hope you'll still reveiw even though I'm no longer coercing you into it.)
Chapter Two
Sleeping on the cold ground under the empty red sky was bad enough without dreams.
Asuka woke up with her heart beating fast, her mouth dry. She had dreamt Shinji tried to strangle her. She couldn't know that a yard or two away from her, Shinji was having the same nightmare.
Asuka studied his sleeping form. She hadn't noticed before, in the red light, that he was bleeding. His hands, folded to his chest and twitching, were covered in blackish blood.
No, she must have noticed before, because in her dream, his hands around her neck were sticky and bloody. Involuntarily, she put her own hand to her throat. There was something growing in the back of her mind. Something she didn't want to face. But the knowledge became too big for her to ignore, and in one moment she realized- it had been real. He had tried to kill her, back on the beach, before she really woke up. Shinji had wanted to kill her.
Asuka doubled over. "Don't kill me," she said aloud, involuntarily. Then, more quietly, "I'm not your doll!"
Shinji opened his eyes, and listened to her weeping. He didn't feel anything.
* * *
It must have been at least a day more of walking that the air suddenly changed. Asuka stopped in her tracks, and knew without knowing how she knew and without really beleiving, that she was now in a different world altogether. She looked back. Shinji, though only a yard behind her, seemed so far away that she involuntarily stretched out a hand towards him in desperation. Quickly, she drew it back, and he luckily didn't notice. In a few moments, he reached the same spot, and looked around him in surprise as he felt the same change she had. neither said anything.
* * *
Asuka had taken the fact that neither of them had died of thirst as more evidence that they were already dead and this was some kind of private Hell constructed specifically for the two of them. Shinji hadn't even noticed how long they'd been wandering. He was too busy being lost inside his own head.
Asuka kept her eyes on the horizon, and eventually a form began to take shape there- it was big and black and ran along the earth like a city.
When they got closer, they could see it wasn't a city at all, but a forest. As soon as Asuka identified it, she felt a bubble of hope in her stomach- a forest in the middle of the desert? There had to be water and food nearby.
* * *