UNKNOWN PLACE,

UNKNOWN TIME

Asuka Soryuu Langley usually loved heights. She was always the best at rope-climbing in classes, and naturally preferred the vantage point of being higher up than everyone else. You could see much more from above than your normal perspective, she thought. Being higher up was equal to being simply better.

She had a problem now, though.

After stumbling in the...the void... for what seemed like days, she'd come across a cliff that almost could be described as sheer-faced. Nearly straight-up and with few perceptible handholds, she still decided to climb it, if only because she thought she might be able to see a way out of whatever place she was currently in. After all, she'd climbed many mountains before; in Austria and the other places her guardians took her to around the world.

But, wherever she was, she was a long way off from any of these other places.

"I think I'm stuck," she said to herself. She looked down at her feet, still clad in her red plug suit, dangling. Although she could still see around her as clearly as though it was midday, the foot of the cliff lay in a distant haze. "Crap."

She swung from a single handhold on an outcropping, and, from her perspective, could see no way to advance, or retreat, or even go around sideways. Asuka squinted as tiny pebbles came loose from her grip; sooner or later the rock would give way, she knew.

"This is not good," she chided herself, searching frantically across the too-smooth rock face.

"No, it's not," said an unfamiliar but recognizable voice. Asuka whipped her head around, and found herself staring at the same five-year-old girl she'd met before. She was dressed in the same yellow sundress, with pigtails in her hair and her stuffed monkey clutched tightly to her chest. "It's not good, but you could make it a lot worse. Or better, if you so chose."

She stood, simply, on the underside of the outcropping by Asuka's hand, unconcerned by the older girl's predicament or even by gravity itself.

"Is that a threat?" Asuka filled her voice with forced haughtiness, trying to ignore her increasingly sweaty palms. "I remember you. You're that girl, from before." Asuka stared at the child with a frown. "I'd been thinking about you, actually, in these last couple of hours- days- whatever. You remind me someone."

"Of you?"

"No," she said slowly. "You said you weren't me, though I'm not convinced of that; not completely, anyway. Maybe you remind me of Shinji-kun. But definitely of Ayanami. You remind me more of her."

"Is that a terrible thing?"

"No, not really. But it is annoying. And it's especially inconvenient, considering the fact that you're in my body." Asuka ground her teeth as she tried to switch hands from her precipice, but failed. She exhaled, exasperated and tired.

The younger girl tilted her head. "But I'm not in your body."

"Right, right." Asuka nodded, as though the girl was spouting nonsense. "You're not me. We'd established that earlier. But you look like me."

"That's not what I meant," the child said, and remained silent.

Asuka quirked an eyebrow as she weighed the little girl in her eyes. "Reaaaaaally inconvenient," she said again, rolling her eyes.

"To receive help, you should first help yourself." The girl took a few steps, crouched upside-down by Asuka's hand. "Do you know where we are yet? Do you realize the things you-we-are capable of, here?

"I'm surprised you hadn't figured it out yet," the girl spoke again, after Asuka stared at her in silence for a moment.

"Do you mean to say I'm dead?"

The younger girl shook her head. "Not dead, yet, not alive. We're in the Middle-place, now. Here, you are the Concept of You. You are what you think you are. Recognize this, and the world will amplify and react to the faintest impulses of your soul. Reach out."

After a long pause, Asuka raised her other arm and reached for the cool, flat stone, but the little girl swatted it away. "Not like that. You reach like a person, but the person is dead. Or almost. Reach with your soul."

Asuka clenched her eyes as her fingers trembled, outstretched, brushing the rock face. She gasped and struggled for what seemed like hours, but only shrieked as her handhold cracked and began to crumble. She pictured herself reaching forward, fusing her fingertips to the stone, and from there finding purchase once more. Her head spun, and she wanted to vomit, but She saw herself pushing herself up with her hands, dusting herself off as she straightened, upright on her feet, and then...

Asuka was.

Asuka gulped in huge mouthfuls of air, still terrified. "I can't believe I just did that!" She could still recognize the outcrop she clung to just moments before, although it was hard to believe they were the same. Standing on it, like the girl was-is, she saw the dozens of other possible handholds she could have chosen but were hidden by her position.

"Here, in the Middle-place, you can do anything you think. Reality is shaped by human will; by your will, if you want. Reality is subjective." For the first time, the girl smiled up at her, but again, Asuka saw her own face looking back at her.

"I'm dead, aren't I?" Asuka asked again.

The girl reached out and held Asuka's fingertips in her too-small hand. "You don't seem happy to see me."

"I'm just not sure whether I believe in you. Whether you're real." Asuka pulled her hand back, let the girl's hand go. "I saw you, after I saw my mother," she said. "They say that, when you die, you relive your life through your eyes."

The child nodded. "That is what they say."

"I was shot. Several times, in fact, and I remember that, even though it seems so long ago. I lost consciousness and died," Asuka continued. "And I- everything I saw... Shinji, Maya, Aoba and sensei... and my mother... All were just the hallucinations of my still-dying human mind. My brain's just trying to cope with the unimaginable horror of death.

"You," Asuka said, firmly, "are simply an artifact concocted by my dying brain."

"And yet I persist," the girl said. She started to fade and grow translucent, disappear against the rocky backdrop of the cliff. "Assuming all you've said is true... how can you relive your life, as you say, if I am from your future?

"Think on that, mother," the little girl said with a grin, and disappeared once more.