The darkness held priority over all. All thought was eradicated within it's invisible palm, every possible outcome that man could direct itself towards was doused like the flame, so long ago forsaken for electricity. In the wake of this tide of a mournful abyss, nothing could be processed, only primordial instinct was allowed to exist, though drifting about with nothing but emptiness to interact with was worse than an eternity in hell. Of course, nothing was never just as simple as nothing, there was always some factor that was long forgotten, something that was only noticed when everything was at it's worst, everything was a spiraling symphony of austere dejection. Then…Reality was bound to reassemble. For better or for worse was completely subjective.
With a flash of blinding light, a torrent of LCL poured into the cockpit, with it an upwelling wall of light. Flexing his fingers slowly over the controls to his side, and breathing in the liquid-oxygen supplement slowly and tenaciously, the boy stared, melancholy, out of a translucent wall to his right. Through it, he could see the content face of Misato Katsuragi, her face a hardened example of the pain the darkness had inflicted upon all of them. Although still smooth and tan, dark bags lay underneath her eyes, which were sore and red, worn down from a stream of tears that always seemed to occupy it these days. Sighing, he turned again to face what lay outside of his peripheral vision, eyes stinging from the blank sight that lay before him. Nothing at all…nothing save an endless sea of that primordial ooze, that blood which surged from Adam himself. He could only stare into the LCL for so long before, again, the warm water began to bunch at his eyes and topple downward, and no matter how hard he clawed at them, nothing could stop the tears and the sobbing now.
"Asuka…Toji…Kensuke…Rei…Oh, Rei, it smells like…blood. Like your blood." Shinji Ikari whispered, his voice as barren and as lifeless as his mind.