A/N: My aim with this 'fic is to convey details. One thing I love about Eva is its attention to detail. Things many anime considers to be unimportant are included in Eva, most of which falling into the symbolic category. I'm hardly a scholar at symbolism, so I focused instead on environment and perceptual detail. The goal of this 'fic is to make the insignificant somewhat significant. I hope I captured that!
A/N: By the way, I have a sick obsession with LCL. I find it absolutely fascinating. I am weird. I know this. LCL inspired the fanfic. Thank you, and goodnight.
DISCLAIMER: I do not own, nor claim to own any of the Evangelion characters or any other such material associated with GAINAX's masterpiece. I bow down to the god that is Hideaki Anno and though I'd love to steal his talent and skill, I choose to worship it in the art form that is fanfiction. Thank you. I own nothing.
Title: The Scent of Blood
Author: Kumoneko
Pairing: ?
The water was hot. So very, very hot. The redhead's pale skin was soon turning pink beneath the surface of the bath water. Asuka Langley Sohryu bit her lip and air hissed as she exhaled through her teeth. The water was so much hotter in Japan than it was in Germany. The bath stung, but she hoped it would serve a better purpose than leaving her nipples terribly scalded.
Her eyebrows knitted together and she sank lower into the tub, the fierce water lapping at her collarbone. "This sucks.." she muttered, sucking air in sharply as she fought to breath in the steam-laden air.
The smell of blood was so very oppressive. She reeked of it. She smelled like death, like freshly killed carcasses. Suzuhara had once joked that she smelled like a deli, but there was nothing that said cold cuts about the scent. No. Not scent. Odor. Odor was such a sharp, unpleasant sounding word. It perfectly described the scent of blood. Regardless of how eager to fight she was, she didn't fight to make her enemies bleed. If anything, she loathed the sight of blood.
The girl's reddened hands broke the surface ever so slowly, water streaming down over her fingers and coursing rapidly down her arm to rejoin the greater pool. Those long, slender fingers knotted themselves in her hair, the nails digging painfully into her scalp. She let loose the faintest of whimpers, a sound that betrayed her childish fear that lay behind her seemingly bulletproof façade. The close proximity of her hands to her face only intensified the smell, and she found herself scrambling over the edge of the tub. She scraped her lean stomach on the edge, and droplets of the cursed substance floated in lazy swirls in the still hot water. Asuka's hands reached frantically for a bar of soap she'd left on the stool she'd cleansed herself on, and once securing it in her grasp drew it back into the molten depths with her.
She'd broken a long observed Japanese custom in her haste, bringing soap into the soaking tub. But the hot water alone wasn't going to remove the stench from her pale skin. She would have to claw and scratch and scrub the smell out. The soap stung her heat-shocked pores, which had expanded so much that they were plainly visible on her arms and legs. If Asuka had the mind to notice such a detail she might've laughed as the memories of the volcano dive and Angel Sandalphon resurfaced. Thermal expansion, indeed.
"Asuka," called a shaky voice from beyond the bathroom door. "Are you almost finished?"
Shinji. Ah, the Third Child. For the longest time Asuka resented him. He made her look bad, always sent in at the last minute by Katsuragi to swoop in and save the day. She was still waiting for the day he would be on point and she'd get to come in and save his skinny ass. She smirked momentarily, before an almost inaudible knock preceded the repeated call of her name.
"I'm almost done, okay? Don't get your panties in a wad!" she shrieked, her voice coming forth much more angry than she thought she was. At this point her skin was rivaling the colour of her hair in scarlet intensity. Asuka gave up the fight against the smell, which permeated the steam as soon as she let the soap sink to the bottom of the tub. Clumps of frothy bubbles floated on the surface of the water, and Asuka knew that Shinji and Misato wouldn't be pleased. They'd likely drain the water and start anew, which Misato would probably consider wasteful. She had a refrigerator full of beer and yet she was frugal with the necessities.
Asuka rose from the bathtub, water streaming down her lithe form. She crinkled her nose up in disgust, face contorting unpleasantly. She toweled herself dry and wrung out her hair, clipping the familiar red neural interfaces back into her hair and pulling it up and away from her face. She dressed quickly and tore the door open rapidly, only to find Shinji two inches from her face, his fist poised to knock yet again.
The scent of blood formed a wall between them, and Asuka flinched slightly. She could feel the bile rising in her throat as she gagged. That odor coated him too and followed him around like a shadow. Asuka suspected it was the reason few boys hit on her. No guy wants to do it with a girl that smells so very .. morbid.
Shinji's throat was obviously dry, as she noticed his lip licking and frequent swallowing. He cotton-mouthed whenever she got close to him. The little wuss. Asuka side stepped around him and waved him off dismissively.
"It's all yours, Princess," she said, her statement masking dangerous sensations. Misato glanced up from some magazine she'd had her face buried in for the last hour and smiled, but Asuka didn't return the gesture. The purple-haired woman shrugged and giggled at some joke scrawled on the page, something that Asuka would probably not understand. There were so many kanji she just didn't recognize. She hated this country. She felt so stupid and alone in it.
Fatigue tugged at the girl's eyes, and she staggered over to her futon and collapsed onto the stiff mattress. It was new, and not properly broken in yet. Her face was buried in soft, imported goose down pillows however, the scents of bloodless German craftsmanship allowing her a smile – a rare occurrence these days. Her alarm clock ticked ominously in the silence of the room, sounding surprisingly loud despite the fact that the TV was blaring just outside and her door was cracked enough to allow a line of light to trickle in and bisect the room. She laid there, studying the patterns on the darkened carpet and assigning the ticking clock different rhythms to its emotionless click-click-click. She hated the clock. She hated the sun for rising and the world for spinning. She hated Time, and how it seemed to pass so quickly at night. She hated the fact she'd be immersed in blood again in only a matter of hours.
The LCL awaited..
I suspect I'll be tempted into turning this into something multichaptered. I'm still trying to decide where this would fall within the series. Obviously after the Magma Diver episode, probably around after the Fourteenth Angel shows up. We'll see. Read and review, please!
-- Kumoneko