Scar Tissue

by deathbringer374

After Third Impact fic. The world goes to some semblance of normality. Shinji Ikari lays in bed, unmoving, tubes and wires all over, machines beeping away. Asuka stares, horrified, at the result of her violence. Maybe revenge tasted...bitter. AXS. Revised version has been uploaded! R&R

16. Chapter 16

AN: No, your eyes do not deceive you. This is indeed another chapter, a slightly shorter one, so take your time, maybe read it in parts along with the next one i'll be publishing later, something like that! It was actually written and thought out to be a single, huge chapter along with chap 15, but it got a little too big on me so I had to cut it in half, and then cut it in half again, sort of, and still it ended up being this dual monstrosity before you. If you're here for the angst alone, well… feel free to jump to the second half. Also, as the saying goes, beware of what you wish for. Enjoy!

Warning. Fluff and angst ahead. You have been warned. Please, proceed.

Scar Tissue

Chapter Sixteen. Act Fifteen, Part One: Soul to Squeeze

December the Fourth, 2016. NERV Dining Area. 9.47am

The tempura ingredients and rice were simmering nicely; plus, he had managed to get the perfect pan to cook the few bratwursts he had been able to secretly procure and hide from the cooking staff. The chocolate and other ingredients had arrived just as Ritsuko had told him; he had been working almost non-stop since the day before and was loving every second of it. For a long time cooking had been just about his only escape from the terrible reality he had lived in, providing a safe place for his mind and body for a few precious hours each day. Lately, however, since his relationship with Misato, Rei, and especially a certain fiery redhead had begun blossoming in ways he was yet to understand, cooking was now a pleasure instead of an escape.

Shinji checked the time, turning in the oven's direction to make sure the cake hadn't sunk in or burned. Everything had to be perfect. He felt the small package in his pocket out of habit; he had been checking and clutching it through the fabric of his pants all day long, as though the small gift would develop a mind of its own and disappear at the last moment. Rei had helped him procure the small gift after a great deal of pleading and plenty of food bribes, even going so far as advising him on what exactly he should get. He only hoped the gift was to Asuka's liking; he already had a piece of jewelry he had no idea what to do with.

Shinji turned his attention back to the task at hand; remembering that if he did not mix the frosting properly it would lose its fluffiness and go to waste. Asuka had approved of his version of German cuisine with the exception of sauerkraut; he had learned that not only did she not like it, but Misato and Rei didn't either. He had concocted a green salad with wafu dressing instead, along with Rei's spicy bean sprout salad, thanking the few crew members who had facilitated the fresh ingredients for him that morning. On top of the greens, he was brewing some miso, had a beef stew on the stove which was starting to give off a delicious scent, and there were some more bean buns in a separate oven along with a freshly-baked loaf of bread.

Baking was, for him at least, very complicated and vastly different from his usual way of cooking. While he was always careful with portions and tried not to stray from the recipe, ever since Third Impact he'd started measuring spices and other ingredients by hand or feel, tasting instead of measuring, for there was precious little to go around to begin with. Baking required following the instructions with military accuracy, if one did not wish to have a disaster or a foul-tasting end result. Shinji's first attempt had been the buns he had brought Asuka upon her admittance to the medical ward which had, thank goodness, not burned to a black crisp like his first go with the bean buns.

Asuka's second synch test had gone wonderfully, even after they had forced both youngsters out of bed before six in the morning and she had explained to them where, precisely, they could shove their time schedule. He recalled the way she had squealed in delight upon knowing her synch rate had gone up to 157% during her third simulation though; even from his spot by the cage he had been almost deafened by the speakers.

She had successfully beaten Zeruel's digital version four times already and had apparently become quite proficient at it, and had trashed both Israfel and Matarael by herself in less than ten minutes. He had not witnessed it directly of course, since his spot during her synch test was at the cage's left wing, but Misato had been only too eager to tell him everything in excruciating detail.

This time she had been in the entry plug for almost three hours, doing harmonics and simulations and a bunch of other things he did not care to consider, and in the end she had come out of the shower smiling and happy, making Shinji's heart swell up in his chest. He was proud; an emotion he had seldom, if ever, sincerely felt for anything. He was proud of the way she held herself, and of the fact that even though she was a pilot once again, the best there ever had been, Asuka still acted the same way towards him. Instead of shutting out and dismissing him like he'd feared, she had instead opened her heart a bit more and began sharing things with him he had never expected or thought he deserved to hear. For that reason and many others he would only ever tell her, Shinji had become almost obsessed with every detail of his small celebration.

So lost in thought was Shinji that he almost chopped off a piece of thumb while cutting the vegetables he was using for Rei's vegetarian lasagna. Behind him, so absorbed in his work that he didn't notice, the cooking staff observed with a mixture of awe and raw, unbidden annoyance. The boy had not only showed them up once more, the people who had been serving NERV's employees for years, but he was also offering them small samples of his varied, exquisite dishes and asking for pointers and second opinions on the recipes he wasn't familiar with.

One of the head chef's eyes twitched when he brought the stew's broth to his lips. How the hell can he do this with water, beef, potatoes and spices? he wondered, almost breaking the small, innocent plate caught in between his fingers. The nerve of this brat, showing me up. ME, the great Matsuhiro Tanaka, decorated military chef of the Third Hokkaido Battalion, proud chef of NERV Japan, tolerating this sh-

"Matsuhiro-san!" the boy called from his spot on the counter, halting the man's train of thought.

"What?!" he bit out. It was getting harder and harder to be pissed off at the brat when he was always so nice and respectful to them all.

"Do you think this needs some more soy sauce?" The brat collected some of the dressing in a spoon and gave it to the seasoned chef to taste, making Matsuhiro's eye twitch again.

"It's fine," he muttered. It's more than fine and you know it, his mind provided. "A bit of salt, just a tang, and it's done."

Shinji smiled at him, looking like a fifteen-year-old for the first time since he'd seen the boy. "Thank you!"

Matsuhiro grumbled under his breath and returned to his seat by the stove, where his own employees were chortling on his behalf.

Shinji, for his part, was too engrossed in creating a wonderful and varied menu for his small family to so much as notice the growing audience behind him. Hikari and the boys were bound to arrive at noon; Misato had promised to join them at lunch along with Rei but told him she needed to get some things done after 3pm, and Asuka herself had told him she wanted to get some training done before lunch. So, all things considered, he still had some time.

After another hour or so of running from one place to the other in the large kitchen and trying not to bother the rest of the staff, Shinji was finally down to the banquet's final elements, mainly trying to frost the Black Forest cake without messing it up. He was so completely lost in the process of making elegant lines along the cake with his improvised pastry bags that he did not even realize Asuka had joined the crowd watching him work, and was thoroughly enjoying the way the head chef tried not to explode in a maelstrom of curses whenever he glanced at every dish's end result. The man was so obviously out-classed it wasn't even funny anymore, but Asuka snickered anyways.

Once the 'Herzlischen Glückwunsch zum Geburstag, Asuka' had been successfully created in yellow frosting, Shinji took a step back to admire his handiwork, and promptly fell back on a chair with a deep, tired and quite loud groan. The cake was big, even by his standards, so he hoped once everyone had taken their piece and he stored a bit for Asuka, there would be some pieces left to give to Ishikawa, a few selected members of the cooking staff, Colonel Aishida and maybe even a leftover piece for himself.

"Okay," he said as he panted and wiped the sweat off his forehead, and completely forgot the last batch of tempura he'd thrown in the pan. "I'm done."

A roar of applause exploded behind him, surprising Shinji enough to make him jump from the chair. The cooking staff was clapping along with some members of the security detail, whistling and shaking their fists in the air like he had just played a rock concert for them. Shinji gaped at them, eyes wide; until he caught sight of a red mop of hair he'd recognize anywhere clapping along with everybody else.

"Aww, come on!" he groaned while trying to hide the cake from view. "Asuka, you're not supposed to see the cake until the end! It was a surprise, damnit!"

The small crowd erupted in laughter next, some even going as far as doubling over in glee at his discomfort. All his hard work, even going to the blonde bitch's office for ingredients... all of it turned to ash. A vein started to pulse on Shinji's forehead when the laughter did not diminish.

"All right," he said, trying to raise his voice and failing. "Who did this?! I told all of you not to let Asuka in until I was done!" More laughter was his only answer. "Hey! I've been busting my butt for hours now, who did this?!"

"Well," the head chef offered, finally cracking a smile at Shinji. "You did say you were done, so… it's really all your fault. Besides, I don't think any of us is too fond of the idea of blocking the lady's way, especially today."

Shinji started to grumble incoherently under his breath, but then hung his head in defeat and stopped trying to hide the enormous monstrosity of a cake behind him. "You all suck, you know…"

The crowd roared in laughter one final time before it began dispersing; some of the workers even had the nerve to pat him on the back as they left in a congratulatory manner, forcing more grumbling out of the former Third Child. He went back to his chair and sprawled on it, looking gloomily at the ground until only he and Asuka remained.

"Aw, come on Baka, don't be like that," said Asuka while she tried to hold back her own laughter. "I'm sure I would've been shocked to silence by your… what is it exactly?"

"Black Forest cake, or my take on it anyway," he mumbled, eyes on his feet. "It was supposed to be a surprise…"

"I don't like surprises," Asuka retorted, placing a reassuring hand on his shoulder and taking a chance to gaze at the sweet treat in awe.

"Yeah, you do," Shinji countered. "I worked so hard too; I even had the perfect thing to hide it under."

Giggling to herself, Asuka tried to be hypnotized by the orchestra of scents coming out of the stove. Upon closer inspection, she noticed just how hard Shinji had worked on the cake. The lines were uneven in some places, but otherwise extended beautifully along the cake's outside and circled here and there, flowing in elegance. The poor boy had even found a way to make four different pastry and frosting bags with varied girth, and had used the slimmest ones to paint a small chocolate tree in between the top border and the side trim. The central decorations were neatly-made mounds of whipped cream crowned by a line of cut cherries all over the top border. On the outside, Shinji had somehow managed to not only find and prepare finely-grated chocolate all over, but also managed to convert the bigger pieces into flowers with the frosting. And on top of it all, in bright yellow letters, was her name.

"Wow," she said, taken aback. "You really worked hard on this, huh?"

Shinji grumbled from his seat, apparently still unwilling to forgive the slight against his secretive planning. "I guess you could say that…"

"Chin up, Baka!" Asuka retorted. She took advantage of Shinji's gaze being directed at the floor and stole a bit of frosting with her forefinger. When the taste hit her tongue, she had to try hard not to moan in absolute bliss. "Is this…" she began, stealing another bit. "Is this actual home-made chocolate frosting? How the hell did you even manage to do that?"

"One cup of granulated sugar, six tablespoons of butter, half a cup of cocoa powder, tablespoon of…vanilla…" Shinji listed off robotically, before trailing off; he finally lifted his head and saw Asuka steal a third taste of the frosting with her finger. "Hey! Come on! That's supposed to be dessert; you'll spoil your appetite!"

Asuka rolled her eyes at him. "Ugh, yes mom!" She stuck out her tongue, managing to steal one last scoop of frosting. "You can be such a grouch sometimes, Baka."

"Aww, come on!" Defeated, tired, and increasingly hungry himself, Shinji relented and stood, walking over her side. "So," he began, suddenly nervous. "Do you, umm… do you like it?"

Asuka stared at him like he was crazy. It was probably the best-tasting frosting she'd ever had, and she wasfrom Germany, so that was saying something about the quality. She hadn't even tried the food and already knew it to be exquisite from the scent alone, never mind the cake itself which looked big enough to feed a platoon... or just fill Misato's belly depending on the case. She was about to tell Shinji as much when she noticed the way he had somehow lost height all of a sudden; his head was bowed, eyes uncertain, as if waiting for her to reject everything and throw it to the ground.

A needle pressed painfully against her chest. Shit, I get it. He's… shit. Shame and guilt started melting away her joy, a product of her new synch record, leaving her with nothing more than the painful memories. He's waiting for me to take this cake and smash it on the ground. He's waiting for me to tell him it all sucks and hit him and then insult him and hit him some more. He's waiting for me to… shit. Shit.

Swallowing down her guilt and fully aware that manifesting it would only make Shinji gloomier, she tried to summon a reassuring smile and pushed his chin up with her fingers. He flinched, as he usually did with unannounced physical contact, and stared questioningly at her with a growing blush on his face.

"It's beyond anything I could've expected," said Asuka. She leaned in and kissed his cheek, letting her arms snake around his neck. "Thanks."

She literally felt Shinji exhale in relief, letting the joy return to her heart when he hugged her back. "Congratulations on your new record," he said quietly. "And happy birthday."

Another giggle escaped her parted lips, this one far too juvenile for Asuka to produce around anyone but Shinji. She curled tighter against him, and was about to draw away to steal another kiss from him when the smell assaulted her.

"Is something burning?" She asked, genuinely curious.

Shinji's eyes widened. His arms stiffened and then fell away like jelly. He practically shoved Asuka away from him as he ran to the stove.

"Shit, SHIT! My last batch of tempura! Shit!"

Perhaps it was listening to Shinji curse so loudly for once without him actually being angry, perhaps because he ran and panicked like the world was about to explode, perhaps because as he was retrieving the barely burned tempura pieces, one fell on the ground and he cursed again... whatever the reason, Asuka laughed so hard she doubled over and almost fell to the floor.

She hadn't laughed so hard in more than ten years.

0

"I hate you all from the bottom of my heart. You are aware of that, right?"

Two hours later, and having been forced to wear a ridiculous red cap on her head, Asuka wasn't laughing anymore.

The small group around her table burst out laughing at her expense, bringing about more of the redhead's ire. She crossed her arms and started grumbling under her breath until the jock-monkey tried to snatch away a piece of her Bratwürstchen that Shinji had slaved over for hours.

"Hey!" she shouted, pointing at the impossibly idiotic Stooge. "Don't you dare, Monkey-Stooge, that is my bratwurst!"

"Gimme a break, Sohryu," Touji retaliated, popping the piece of sausage into his mouth. "Thefs a tray fuf offem," he managed between bites. "Wow, Shin-man, these are awesome!"

Shinji's eyebrows twitched while distastefully watching Touji speak with his mouth full. "Yeah, thanks," he answered dryly, turning his attention to the blue-haired girl. "How's your lasagna, Rei?"

Rei had been too overly engrossed in devouring the delicious mix of vegetables, white sauce, goat and Parmesan cheeses and crispy mozzarella on top. "It is-" she said, swallowing a bite, "-quite exquisite."

"Hey hey, Rei can I have a piece?" Misato asked from her spot at the table, demanding her plate be filled a third time. "I saw the way you were chugging it down just now."

For the table's occupants it seemed like Rei almost growled at the idea of parting from yet another piece of her lasagna, having already been forced to surrender one to the birthday girl. "If I am ordered to I will," she said crossly and stared at Shinji for confirmation.

Shinji's own head was starting to hurt from all the places his attention was being driven at once. "Shin-chan, tell Rei to please give a piece of lasagna, pretty pleeaaaaase," Misato said, giving him her cutest look.

"Ah, umm, well Misato-san, that's Rei's lasagna so if she doesn't want to sh-"

"Hey Shin-man, lookie here!" Kensuke exclaimed, catching the boy by surprise and successfully blinding him with the flash of his camera. "Perfect!"

"Baka, how long do I have to wear this stupid hat?" Asuka demanded as she tugged at his shirt.

"Shinji-kun, this is incredible! How did you make this dressing?" Hikari asked, lifting the salad plate so he could see what she was talking about.

"Umm, well, it's really easy, Hikari-chan. You just mix a bit of wabu sauce with eg-"

"Hey, Shin-man!" Touji yelled from his end of the table. "Can you pass me the sausages, they're incredible!"

"I told you, Stooge!" Asuka yelled, crossing her arms again once she had pried the tray out of the boy's demanding hands. "Mine!"

"Sub-Commander, please remove your fingers from my plate." Rei growled between bites.

"Aww, Rei, that is so not fair! You're the only one who got a veggie dish, I wanna! I'm hungry for veggie lasagna!"

While Rei was unfamiliar with the metallic utensils; she took the fork in her left hand and stabbed the piece of lasagna to pull it away from Misato's grasp. "You will starve." Her tone of voice brooked no argument.

"Baka, stop talking about the damn dressing and get this idiot to stop taking pictures of me! This hat looks so stupid!" Trying to block Kensuke's attempts to photography with her hand was getting her nowhere, so Asuka started tugging harder on Shinji's shirt. "Look at him; he's making me look stupid in the pictures!"

"Shinji-kun, how'd you managed to get the sausages so crisp?"

"Shin-chaaaan, I wanna try the veggie lasagna!"

"Hey, hey Shin-man, how about we get a sparring session, you and me after lunch? I want to test out your new skills!"

"Shin-man, look!" Flash. Momentary blindness and the beginning of a pounding headache. "Excellent! Now, for the whole group, come on huddle up, I want a picture of all of you!"

"Sit down, four eyes, and stop blinding Shinji with your stupid flash! Baka, pass me the stew and rice, please. I want a refill."

"Wark!" said the penguin sitting next to Misato.

"Hai, hai, Pen Pen. Here's your tuna fish. Kensuke; at the very least stop using the flash, please. It's just a matter of timing, Hikari-chan. Touji, it's not healthy to exercise after you've eaten so much. Misato-san, stop trying to steal lasagna please. There you go, Asuka."

The muscles and tendons around Shinji's neck were starting to complain from the constant tugging and moving his head left to right, he hadn't had a single minute to sit down and enjoy some food himself since he was technically both the cook and host, and it was starting to seriously annoy him. Just as he was about to sit down next to Asuka and plunge a spoonful of his now cold stew into his mouth, Misato caught a glimpse of the cake.

"Ohh," she exclaimed, eyes shining like a child's while she pointed at the sweet treat. "When do we get to try that one, Shin-chan?"

"Oh no, oh no, no no no no. Nobody touches the cake until Asuka says so! Misato-san, hands off! Touji, damnit stop trying to steal the frosting, do you have any idea how hard that is to make?!"

Two more hours later, after his friends, sister and Misato had finally left and about half of the huge cake had been consumed, Shinji lay sprawled on his and Asuka's bed, exhausted. The cooking staff, and surprisingly to everyone Asuka herself, had volunteered to take care of the pile of dirty dishes in the kitchen, which had allowed him to finally escape and have some time to relax.

His stomach growled, loudly.

Oh yeah, Shinji thought as he watched the now familiar ceiling. I forgot to eat. All I had was that one little serving of stew, and now I'm hungry and there's no more food. Great. He sighed in annoyance, but remembering Asuka's smile after she had been allowed to not only ditch, but also destroy the offending party hat with her bare hands made his hunger seem inconsequential. She had been happy, both due to her successful synch test and his preparations, and Shinji found that all the exhaustion, time, and having to face his father had all been worth seeing that carefree expression on her face he was starting to love so much. It was vastly preferable to her snarling, angry face and more than preferable to her quiet, sullen moments of depression; if he was able to make her smile and give her a birthday with good memories, than everything was right with the world.

Misato had given Asuka a bottle of Jägermeister with explicit instructions not to open it until she turned eighteen; Hikari had given her a brand new dress, Kensuke had coughed up his small, portable camera after much debate, and Touji had seemingly out-classed them both with a pair of clip-on silver earrings, the origin of which he refused to share. Even Rei had offered Asuka a pair of red, fingerless fighting gloves, a mouth piece and hand-bandages, stating she had a pair of her own and would help Asuka blow off steam whenever she needed it.

All gifts were accounted for and neatly placed on Asuka's side of the room, as per her instructions, with the obvious exception of the small box in his pocket.

Shinji was tired enough to start drifting off, lulled by the sound of the wind as it entered through the open window, but just as he was beginning to lose consciousness the phone rang, making him jump slightly. He yawned, staring tiredly at the offending object. In the time he had spent inside this room, the phone only rang to either inform one of them he had visitors, or to let them know they had a session or physical scheduled. Shinji had, however, cleared out all appointments with the exception of Asuka's synch test that day; even Ishikawa had taken pity on him and given him a day off training.

Growing increasingly suspicious, Shinji stood up and picked up the receiver. "Hello?"

"Hi…" he pulled the phone away from his ear, surprised. The voice behind it sounded almost mechanical, deep and muffled; as if the person on the line's other side was using some sort of voice-alteration device. There was a thick accent about it, as well.

"Hello?" he tried again, more forcefully. "Who is this, how did you get this number?"

"Hmm, your voice is a lot more feminine than I expected," the voice commented, ignoring his question. "So! Tell me, Shinji," His eyes widened upon hearing his name. "How was Asuka's birthday? I hope her liver's not giving her any trouble."

Shinji's hand began to shake. "Who is this?!" he demanded, angry and nervous. "How do you know my name? How do you know her name?!"

"Aw, come on, kid! So many questions!" the voice snapped. "Who doesn't know who you are nowadays? You, the great hero of the world? I've got to say, it is quite the honor to be finally able to talk to you."

"Who the hell are you?!" he screamed at the phone. Sweat was staring to make its way to his forehead, and it had nothing to do with how tired he was.

"Me?" He could hear muffled chuckles on the line. "I'm just an artist, Shinji. Like you, you know. I've heard you cook wonderfully, you can play wonderful music too, and…" This time he clearly heard laughter come off the other end. "And you can bring about wonderful destruction and violence when you climb in an Evangelion, can't you?"

"What do you want?" Shinji growled. "And who the fuck are you? What do you want with us?!"

"Oh, you don't have to be so rude!" the voice answered mockingly. "Here I was, worried sick that I'd left you crippled or worse, I decide to check in on you and your girlfriend, and you give me this kind of attitude? Not very paragon of you, Shinji. I'm starting to regret not splitting you in half with that last bullet."

Shinji's body stopped shaking when it dawned on him. "You… you're the-"

"How is dear little Asuka, anyway? You know, wounds to the liver tend to be so painful sometimes, and those hollow-points are really nasty buggers. Then again, I'm glad I didn't hit the baby maker, now that would've been a shame, huh?"

The phone started to crack under the pressure of Shinji's grip. "You," he bit out. "You're the one who shot us, aren't you?"

He had to jerk the phone away from his ear when whoever was on the line burst out laughing, like it was all a big joke to him. "You are a sharp one, aren't ya? Well yes, if you must know, I may or may not have been directly involved with the bullet shard in your leg, and the one in your girl's liver. Nothing personal, kid. Just following orders."

"What do you want from me?" asked Shinji quietly, barely able to hold onto his anger. This was the one who had almost taken Asuka away from him. The gun underneath his bed jumped to the forefront of his mind and the Beast began growling inside the Void. "Tell me who and where you are so I can go over there and return the favor, you son of a bitch."

"Oh, that sounds like fun! But let's not get too far ahead of ourselves, shall we? Tell me, you kiss your mother with that dirty mouth? Oh wait, she's dead, right? Well no, dead's not totally accurate, more like fossilized forever in your Unit 01, huh? Such a shame too, I would've killed for a chance to fight you one on one with that purple tin can of yours."

"What," Shinji growled. The phone was just about to give under his shaking fist. "Do you want? Cut the crap, you sick bastard. Tell me what you want."

More laughter, stronger this time, followed by a whistle. "Well, since you ask so nicely, I'll give you the courtesy. I was raised to destroy, Shinji, so I enjoy very little other than death or battle. Nothing fulfills me more than… fighting monsters like me. And right now, the only one left is you, kid."

Crack. The phone's plastic finally broke. "So you want to fight me, is that it?!"

"It's not so simple. You see; if I fought you one on one you wouldn't last three seconds. No, no, no. No. That simply will not do. Tell you what, when the time comes and I'm knocking at your door, climb into that red EVA you've got in that cute little pyramid and fight me. If you do that, I give you my word nobody else will get hurt whether you win or lose. Refuse to comply with my wishes Shinji, and I'll kill every person you hold dear, slowly, painfully, and leave you for last. Do I make myself clear?"

"Fuck you," Shinji whispered venomously, words jumping out of his mouth without thinking. "Asuka will crush you with her eyes closed if you so much as get close to us."

The voice laughed once more, sounding darker. "That reminds me," it told him as it got quieter. "If you send out your girlfriend to fight me, I'll make what the EVA Series did to her look like a walk in the park …" The voice's tone lowered to a whisper. "I'll paint the pyramid's walls red and blue with her blood."

"Threaten her again and I'll paint the walls of my room with your blood," Shinji retorted. "Do I make myself clear, Mr. Artist?"

"Crystal," said the voice, obviously pleased. "That's the spirit! I'll leave you alone for the time being, kid. You've got moxie, and I respect that. Nobody will bother you until we meet, that's a promise."

"And why should I believe anything you say?!" Shinji snapped back.

"Oh, Shinji, my dear Shinji, you'll come to understand… sooner or later anyway… that I'm a man of my word."

"So am I," said Shinji, the Beast furiously rattling against him. "If you come anywhere near any of my friends or family, if you touch her, I'll kill you."

"I wouldn't expect anything less from the Almighty Third Child, the savior of mankind, Ikari Shinji!"

Shinji frowned distastefully at the phone. "You're insane," he told the voice.

"Oh, I am, but then again so are you, aren't you? Mr. 'Everyone can go and die'. Mr. Sit on His Ass While His Girlfriend Dies. Mr. Strangler? We're very much alike, my dear boy; and insanity as you know, is a lot like... gravity. All it takes is a little… push."

The line went dead.

Shinji stared at the cracked plastic in his palm for a long time, minutes ticked away while he stood there, mulling over the conversation he'd just had with the person who had tried to kill them, and was apparently planning to try again. In his mind, Shinji knew he should have been scared, terrified even. There was someone who not had easily hacked NERV's security and managed to call him within the pyramid, but also knew intimate details about him, Asuka, and their current situation. Logic dictated he be scared; his former self, the fourteen-year old who had annihilated humanity in a hissy fit, demanded he be scared.

All he could think about, though, was the image of a black Evangelion Misato had showed him a few weeks ago, and how much he suddenly wanted to dismember said Evangelion limb by limb.

The Beast bashed its fists against the Void's walls again. I'll kill him! I'll fucking disembowel that little shit, let me out! Let me have him, I'll destroy him!

Shinji's hands clenched in rage once he put the broken phone down; he was shaking. Anger was shaking him; the Beast's screams were shaking him. Fear, though, was strangely absent. No, he told the Beast, taking a deep breath to calm his nerves. Asuka was bound to arrive anytime soon, and he was not going to ruin her birthday with whatever had just transpired. We'll destroy him, together.

He stood by the side table quietly, clenched fists at his sides until the anger became too great and he was unable to hold it in. Blinded by rage and a strange feeling of uselessness, Shinji threw his left fist at the pillow once, twice, three times, and would have done so a fourth and a fifth, yet as he was aiming to punch the soft material again Ishikawa's words flashed through his head. If he did not harness the rabid dog that was his anger he would snap at Asuka again. So, with every ounce of self-restraint he had, that same self-restraint which had helped him tolerate Asuka's abuse for months, Shinji sat heavily on the mattress. It took a few seconds for him to unclench his hands, and once he did he just sat there, glaring at the circles on his palms and trying to forget what had just transpired.

This is Asuka's day, he told himself over and over. Don't ruin it. You promised you'd give her one day, one good day with nice memories that would make her smile in the future. He remembered the small package still resting comfortably in his pocket. You're so close, don't give up. Don't let this crazy bastard get into your head; that's what he wants.

"Ba-kaaa!" came a voice from the door, stunning Shinji out of his reverie. "Help me out a bit, will you?" Shinji shook his head in an effort to clear it of the previous events, noticing Asuka carried a large tray in her hands, barely being able to balance all the items on it.

Effectively distracted and astounded, he jumped out of bed and took the heavy burden from her. "What's all this?" he wondered aloud, noticing the many different plates covered by plastic wrappers on said tray.

"What are you, stupid?" Asuka snapped and grabbed the juice bottle from the tray, taking a long drink as she crashed on the bed. "It's food, dummy. You think I didn't notice?" she asked him, raising a skeptical eyebrow. "You barely ate anything at lunch with everybody else bugging the hell out of you. So..." She pointed to the food. "Eat!"

Forgetting all about the anger and whoever this 'artist' was turned out to be easier than Shinji had thought. He glanced at the tray in his hands and noticed there was a bit of everything on it; some bratwurst, a bit of both of the salads he had prepared, some stew with rice on the side, even a small piece of lasagna had somehow survived, along with two very large servings of her cake. They rested in his hands, warm and ready to be devoured.

Shinji felt a surge of warmth in his chest. Asuka rarely concerned herself with putting away food, much less bringing food to the room, but she had stored a bit away just for him knowing he had been too busy keeping everyone's hands in their own plate.

"Will you stop staring at me like I'm an alien or something?" Asuka said from the bed. A blush was beginning to color her cheeks and nose, she was obviously uncomfortable with the intensity of his gaze. "It's not that big of a deal, you know. I just… put some food away for you, that's all. Now come on," she said, patting the spot beside her. "Dig in."

"Thanks," said Shinji, placing the tray on the small nightstand next to their bed. "But there's something I have to do first." He sat next to her, gulped loudly and plunged his hand deep in his pocket. It's now or never. In a quick move, quick enough to surprise Asuka, he produced the small, crimson-wrapped box and shoved it in her face. "Happy birthday!"

Asuka blinked in surprise when the neatly-packaged box appeared a few inches away from her nose, and sighed dejectedly. "You really are an idiot, you know?" She took the box from Shinji's outstretched hand and began unwrapping it with the utmost care. "You go through all that trouble to make food and still do something… like… this…"

Inside the small rectangular box rested a golden chain; thin yet elegant and, it pained her to admit, of very good taste. In the middle was a small heart-shaped pendant with a tiny red ruby shining in the center. Asuka gingerly removed the chain from its box, examining the finely-worked material up close. Upon closer inspection, she discovered Shinji had somehow found a way to have her name stylishly carved behind the heart-shaped pendant. The chain itself was not ostentatious; it was delicately made to look like a single string of fine gold. Recognition dawned on her.

"Is this…" she began, noticing the '18c' mark on the chain's clasp. "Is this… filigree?"

"H-Hai!" Shinji answered. He blushed and stared at anything but her in embarrassment. "Rei helped me pick the right one, I… I wasn't sure if you'd like it or not so… I asked for a second opinion."

"How… did you get something like this? We're not even allowed to leave the Geofront. How did you…?" Asuka asked in awe, not even paying attention to him anymore; she was too absorbed in analyzing the chain's every detail. "It… it's Italian gold."

Shinji blushed a deeper shade of crimson. "Hai! I… well... I asked around the staff, you know, to find out if anyone knew where I could get some jewelry, something nice, and this lady from the dining area told me she had a relative who worked with Italians and… umm-"

"How did you afford this?" she interrupted, still unable to comprehend how in the world Shinji had gotten such a fine piece of jewelry.

Shinji started fidgeting. "I… you're not supposed to say how much a gift costs…" he mumbled. He wasn't about to tell her he had traded two of the three pistols he had hidden away in a small box under their bed in exchange for the gold chain. Nowadays money was not as important as a firearm to keep looters away, after all.

"Fine, be that way," Asuka retorted with a bit of annoyance.

"D-Do you like it?" Shinji asked hopefully. In his head, every pair of fingers he had was crossed. Please say you like please say you like please say you like it please say you like it please say y-

"It's… " Asuka began. It's too much. I don't deserve something like this, not from you. Not after everything I've done. She looked up to his hopeful eyes.

"L-Look, I know you don't like to feel things around your neck, so if you don't like it, you can just throw it away, okay? It's no big d-"

"Help me put it on," she interrupted, standing up. She opened the clasp and gave the chain to Shinji, then turned around and pulled her hair away to expose the back of her neck to him.

Shinji nodded stiffly behind her. "O-Okay!" In his nervousness he almost dropped the chain, so he took a breath to calm his shaking hands, gently placing the golden object around Asuka's neck, marveling in the softness of her skin. He tried and failed twice to tie the clasp, and at the third finally succeeded. "There."

A cascade of red hair flew past his face when Asuka disappeared behind the bathroom door. For a few crazy seconds Shinji thought she was just going to flush the chain down the drain and be done with it, so once she emerged from the bathroom with a smile on her face he felt his whole body deflate.

"It's beautiful," she said. The sunny smile that made his knees weak was in place, making Shinji feel dizzy. He felt even dizzier when Asuka closed the distance between them, placed her right hand on his face and leaned in to kiss his cheek. Her lips remained on his skin for a few seconds, so Shinji assumed she felt it when his body temperature escalated enough to make him feel his face burn. "Thank you, Shinji," she whispered after an eternity or two, hand still cupping his cheek.

"I…" Shinji gulped, trying to force his brain to focus on something other than the feel of her skin on his. "I'm… glad you like it," he managed at last.

"I love it!" Asuka beamed before disappearing once again, only this time she started looking through some of the boxes on the far side of their room, the one's they'd been too lazy to unpack yet. "It's a good thing I came prepared."

"Prepared?" Shinji asked. "What do you mean?"

"Well, I kinda suspected you'd do something stupid like this. Well, I wasn't expecting this, but I made some preparations myself." Having now left Shinji totally dumbfounded, she produced a small box of her own after rummaging through her things. "Ha! I knew it was here somewhere."

She pushed the thing into Shinji's hands and smiled at him. "Here."

"But," Shinji dumbly answered, taking the wrapped present from her. "But it's your birthday."

"I know." Her tone turned sheepish and a bit sad. "But I ruined your last birthday, remember? It's been in my drawer for about seven months, and I… I've wanted to give it to you for a while now…"

Shinji opened the box with as much care as Asuka had shown when opening his present, which made her squirm with uncertainty. Underneath the blue, penguin-filled wrapping paper was a portable music player, a digital and much more modern version of his old SDAT, complete with a rechargeable battery, brand new ear-buds and about twenty gigabytes of space. To top it all off it even resembled his old device a lot; it was square and black, only instead of SDAT it read SONY on the top cover. His old, worn-out music player had given out at some point during his stay in the hospital; the play button had cracked on him one day and ceased all functions in the device without an explanation, as if exhausted of being his escape route. He still kept it, useless as it was, but hadn't been able to listen to a single song in a while. Asuka cleared her throat, blushing even deeper.

"I know how you love listening to music and you haven't had your SDAT thingy for months now, so… I found that in a store we ended up in and, umm… I put some of the songs you like on it…"

Unable to control himself, Shinji placed the gift on the bed's surface and hugged her tightly, producing a small squeal of surprise from the girl. "Thanks," he said, burying his face in her hair. It smelled like freshly cut fruit and cinnamon. "I'll cherish it."

Asuka hugged him back after the initial shock wore off. "So will I, Baka-Shinji." She was content with letting Shinji hold her completely until the tray containing the still steaming food jumped to her attention. "Now get some food in you, will ya? I don't want you passing out from lack of sustenance tomorrow."

Together, the gleaming red jewel shining in the fading sunlight as it hung from Asuka's neck, they sat on the mattress while Shinji hungrily stuffed his face with every dish she had brought and spoke amiably with each other until the sun hid behind the crater. Afterwards, both teens huddled on the bed, cold yet very warm at the same time, sharing the cake Asuka had procured without a care in the world. At night, Pen Pen paid them a visit and dozed off happily on Shinji's stomach while Asuka's head rested on his chest.

Shinji did not know who this 'artist' was, but he was certain that if said person tried to so much as breathe on one of Asuka's auburn strands, he would rip out the bastard's lungs with his bare hands. He had finally found something to protect, something he cherished far more than any approval from his estranged father, far more than any comfortable little hole where he could hide from reality.

And he would rip, cut, bite, claw or shoot whatever hand that tried to pry away the treasures he had found.

Within the Void, the Beast smirked. More than the boy himself, it was aware of how easily one could stumble away from the path, how easily joy could turn to ash and be washed away by the wind. So instead of either agreeing or denying Shinji's new resolution, it simply bode its time and smirked.

---

December 8th, 2016. Eva Holding Cage 3. NERV. Fourth Activation Test

Misato tried not to cringe each time she was forced to see the entry plug disappear into the EVA's neck. Each time she could swear something would go wrong and then she would relive what had occurred after Zeruel had attacked, when the plug had opened and all that liquid had spilled out along with Shinji's clothes. Moreover, she genuinely felt like the red Beast they had caged and were experimenting on was a happy little puppy; a child getting their favorite toy to play with.

And she worried about Asuka. Misato was aware that at best, Asuka held an uneasy trust in her born merely out of their shared traumatic experiences, but at the end of the day the young girl considered her as nothing more than a well known acquaintance and a superior officer. She held none of the tenderness apparently reserved only for Shinji when dealing with her legal guardian and barely, if ever, showed any affection towards her. There were still grudges there, very deep ones, born out of Misato's constant negligence.

She faintly heard Maya mutter something about the EVA being activated and nodded; boy, she was particularly gone that day. Her eyes stole a quick glance at Asuka's smiling face to make sure she hadn't dissolved, and faded back into the depth of her own tired mind.

She had been sleeping an average of four to six hours for the past few weeks, and that was not counting the days she woke up in a pool of sweat and ran her fingers over her belly to confirm there was no bleeding hole there. Or the nights she sprang out of bed and spied on the teen's room to make sure the screams and cries she had heard were in her head.

She was aware Asuka hated people who abandoned her, who pretended to care for her to gain something and leave her afterwards. The girl's own mother had never been anything particularly affectionate towards her if the files were right, and after the incident she had tried to strangle both her daughter and the doll she believed to be Asuka. Her father had fobbed her off onto NERV Germany far too eagerly, bent on beginning a new life with his new wife. And she, Katsuragi Misato, had preoccupied herself with making sure people were not killing or eating each other for food on the streets, and left the two children she called her own to suffer in their own little slice of hell for eight months.

Before that, she had not provided the support that the children needed; she didn't know how, she had been broken and fucked up and unstable years before she had met either of them, drinking her rage and fear away. After Third Impact she had loaded herself down with work so she wouldn't have to think about the alcohol, or about Shinji's bruises or the dead look in his eyes, or Asuka's fits and screams that left her hoarse and her knuckles bloody.

"Sync rate holding steady at 160.42%, Commander."

"Excellent. Asuka, how do you feel?"

"The same as I've been telling you for a week, awesome. I can go deeper, you know."

"I know, I know. Let's keep it stable though. Let's ask the Sub-Commander what she thinks."

Misato jerked her head in Ritsuko's direction at the mention of her station. "Huh? What is it? Is something wrong?!"

Ritsuko gave her an annoyed glare. "No, nothing's wrong yet, Sub-Commander. We simply wanted your opinion on whether Asuka should try to raise her synch rate more."

Frowning slightly, Misato marched over to Maya's station. "Why? What's wrong with a synch rate of… 162%?! Damn! Asuka, you did it, I mean, this is better than anyone in history I think, right? Why would you want to go deeper?"

Asuka scoffed, eyes closed. "Pfft, because I can. Come on, Misato, you won't even let me take it out for a trial run, all I'm doing here is sitting around and going through simulations like they're video games. I'm getting kinda bored!"

The staff chuckled at the girl's words, but Misato's frown only deepened in worry. "I don't know… what do you think, Commander?"

Ritsuko eyed the numbers on Maya's screen and popped a piece of gum in her mouth. "If what you fear is a sudden Berserker episode then I think that with a synch rate holding steady like this, it would've happened already. But I'm with Misato on this; Asuka, it's best if you just stay like this for the time being."

"You are all a bunch of sissies," Asuka informed them dryly. "But fine! I'll sit here and simmer in this yellow goo while you guys play Galaga on your computers, just don't blame me if I fall asleep."

More giggles from the staff; even Maya had the audacity to chortle when the word 'sissies' left Asuka's mouth, forcing Ritsuko's brow to twitch in distaste. "Yes, yes, try to stay awake, though. Twenty more minutes and we'll be done."

Yawning at them from the entry plug, Asuka nodded absently and closed her eyes.

Misato's finger kept tapping her forearm, her frown deepened. She had a bad feeling; everything was too well, too smoothly for her not to feel suspicious. Her eyes traveled from Ikari, who held that strange remote in his hand and was glaring at it as if it had insulted him, to the crew members who seemed calm enough, then to the video feed of Shinji standing by the cage's left wing with his hands on the rail, and lastly to Asuka's face. She seemed content enough, relaxed and happy, yet it did not quell her concern.

Whether Asuka cared for it or not, Misato considered her as a member of her family; she loved the girl just as much as she loved Shinji, even knowing Asuka did not feel the same. Asuka had every reason not to; it had been Misato herself in the end who had considered it best to put Asuka in her EVA during the JSSDF's attack, resulting in the girl's brutal death. But neither Asuka's coldness nor her actions towards Shinji made Misato stop loving her.

They were kids, traumatized, destroyed, having just experienced death, Instrumentality and trauma beyond imagining; and still they had been the firsts to crawl out of that Ocean and survive in the deserted ruins of Tokyo. They had been scavenging for a week until she, Misato the great failure of a guardian, had found it in herself to abandon a false heaven and reconstitute her sense of self. She had then left them to fend for themselves in the worst possible moment, regardless of whatever cataclysmic event had occurred, so there was nothing but self-blaming left for her.

"Synch rate holding steady, pilot's vitals are normal," came a voice from somewhere, but Misato didn't listen.

If something happens, if she… God help me, if she dies, Shinji will never forgive me. The bad feeling blossomed in her gut, constricting her chest and turning her stomach into ice. If something happens, I will never forgive me.

0

Asuka blew out a mouthful of LCL in absolute boredom. Sure her synch rate was at an all time high, she could feel the strength of her EVA in every cell of her body, like her whole self was vibrating with power, but she was bored. She couldn't really move around, and even though she hated to agree with the blonde bitch, her reasoning about the population of Tokyo not wanting to see a giant walking robot prancing through the fields around their fun little crater was sadly correct. The last thing she wanted was to make the poor bastards believe the Angels had returned and were attacking them once more. That only left her all the more bored, though.

Almost out of habit her hand twitched and rose to her collarbone, where the pendant would be if she hadn't been forced to take it off every time she had a synch test. Her quiet smile widened upon remembering the way Shinji had fidgeted before giving the small chain to her, and how they had fallen asleep listening to whatever classical stuff he happened to have playing on his new music player.

The entry plug was comfortable, warm, like what she supposed a mother's womb would feel. And on that note, she thought, expanding her awareness deeper into the EVA's core. Mama? Are you still there? It felt like there was something in there, something big and warm and inviting, but it wasn't her mother. Still, she stubbornly held onto every last shred of hope. Mama? Nothing, just like the last twenty seven times she had tried it.

Okay, then. I guess I'll sit here like an idiot until the blonde bitch is done with her stupid experiment. While synch tests had been boring and draining most of the time, Asuka realized she no longer felt as excited for them as before. She was the only one who could do it, the only one her EVA wanted, but what difference did it make? Because of her ability to pilot she was now being hunted by the organization guilty of bringing about Third Impact.

I blamed Shinji for months, Asuka thought bitterly. I told him he was a monster and a murderer, a rapist and a wimp. I blamed him for something he couldn't have possibly stopped even if he wanted to, and then he did stop it. Her mind drifted over to the image of Shinji's father, the man she was beginning to despise more than her own absent parent. He wouldn't go along with SEELE's plans; he wanted godhood for himself, so SEELE sent the military to massacre us. He served me to them ever so calmly on a silver platter so Shinji would lose his mind at just the right time.

Asuka's fist clenched at the memory, making the frozen Bakelite around the EVA's arm crack like cheap glass. Regardless of whether it had been Ikari Gendou or SEELE, she had been the one to blame it all on Shinji; and yet there she sat waiting to be dismissed in order to recover the pendant, a gift he had given her, from its place by the upper locker and put it back where it belonged around her neck. Even before her birthday the physical gap between them had been closing at an alarming pace. She was certainly hugging him more than usual, and for whatever reason she couldn't find the energy to care if anyone saw or commented on it or not.

What did they know, anyhow? They hadn't been the ones to get disemboweled while alive, impaled, dismembered and then strangled. They hadn't been the ones manipulated their entire lives by a psychotic father who only wanted his dead wife back. They hadn't been the ones to suffer first and foremost while scrabbling through the rubble, dirt, blood, and abandoned clothes, trying to find something remotely edible in the LCL-infested atmosphere.

They hadn't been the ones to abandon her while she died, and they hadn't been the ones to take her rage and vengeance for the following eight months.

Deep down, very deep down, Asuka knew why Shinji didn't snap at her, but since emerging from Instrumentality was keen on exploding on anyone else. He was afraid he would kill her, and so was she. There was anger there, towards her as well, and no matter how much Shinji tried to hide that anger she was aware of it, and aware it was more than well-deserved. Yet even through all that anger and pain Shinji still stayed, still tried to care for her even when he was barely able to care for himself. She had told him he couldn't love anyone because he didn't even love himself, and yet he had stayed.

The poor Baka … deep down he's loyal. Deep down he's brave, and selfless, and strong. He has that potential, always had it. That's why he can hate this world and everyone in it, but still reject some fake reality where everyone loves him, still reject godhood, because it wouldn't be real. He'd rather have pain and happiness than no pain or no happiness.

It seemed so strange; Shinji had still chosen to share his soul with Asuka despite everything that she had done in what she had told herself was revenge at the time but truly had only been pent up rage and trauma. So what authority did anyone on this earth have to tell him otherwise? Besides, it wasn't as if she hadn't learned; the idea of him no longer being there was scary nowadays, it had been scary for some time already.

Luckily, the reinstated Second Child didn't need to worry too much about such a scenario. She was tired of hurting him, and tired of him hurting her; the alternative was much better. She could instead accept that yes, she liked him and cared for him and didn't want to see him hurt, and that she loved it when he held her, when he made her feel cared for. All of that was just so comfortable and inviting. She wanted to cherish it instead, that new trust he instilled in her, the way he slowly lost his fear of contact by her side, instead of her taking what she wanted and leaving; she wanted to protect it, make it blossom.

And now I have my Unit 02 to protect it…

Asuka drifted off to sleep thinking back on the way Shinji would smile whenever he caught her looking at her brand new piece of jewelry. Sleep came to her easily; the entry plug seemed to get more and more comfortable as time went by, so soon enough she was lost in her own dreams.

Physics had always been a favorite subject of hers; it all seemed simple in her brain, apply this formula for this problem and be done with it. If you get the wrong result, you did something wrong along the procedure and needed to correct it. Physics helped her see the world in a colder, more detached manner than a person her age should, but then again she was a college genius; it was logical she would understand things more easily. Sadly, physics was much more orderly and neat in her head. Trying to come up with a functional distiller out of the junk the bastard had been able to procure was a far messier affair than she'd expected, and much more time consuming than she cared to admit.

On top of having to suffer the miserable conditions of the dirty tents they had been calling home for a week, the stench of LCL, of liquid people, as it rained down on them at night, she was still feeling nauseated from whatever fever she had just survived. And oh, goody, did God decide to let her be the one person in the entire fucking place who had even an idea of how to build a water pump or water distillers just as the city's barely functional infrastructure had decided to give out on them. There was no tap water anymore; reparations were at an all time low with so few people around, most of whom spent their days trying to find anything still edible in what remained of the buildings. The amount of bottled water the UN had so graciously bestowed upon them along with the disgusting stinking nylon tents they had wasn't cutting it for even half of the growing population.

A wave of nausea almost made her drop her tools again, so Asuka took a long gulp of water and ignored the growling of her stomach. She was starving, but for the last few days everything that made its way to her mouth ended being coughed back up not two hours later, so she was fine for the time being. Besides, eating meant seeing Shinji's face, seeing the bruised lip and swollen cheekbone and the hollow eyes; she was better off alone working on her third fucking water distiller. To top it all off she hadn't slept more than about ten hours in the past three days, and never for more than two hours straight. The nightmares had been horribly vivid during her fever and she was overly tired. But still, she refused to stop; if she stopped the nightmares would come back.

The scars were bothering her again. Sometimes they itched, sometimes they hurt, and sometimes the agony was acute enough to make her wake up screaming. The claw and bite marks were a vibrant red and pink all over her belly, some even curved their way along her breasts, while the Lances had left those white circular brands all over her stomach, back and legs. Not to mention the scar on her eyelid and forehead or the long, diagonal line that went all the way up to her elbow.

This time the arm was bothering her, and on top of that the nausea was beginning to make her dizzy. It upset her how easily she could see it if she tried just a little; her arm being split in half like a piece of fruit and turning the LCL around her crimson. Asuka shook her head, scratching at the offending arm through her long-sleeved shirt, pulled the tubes in for testing and grabbed a wrench to tighten the bolts. Her stomach growled again in protest, but she ignored it.

Then the idiot showed up.

She was just finishing the last bolt when the sound of the tent's zipper distracted her. Just as suspected, there he was, head bowed, ragged clothes even dirtier than she had seen them in a while, and his right hand holding a piece of wood where he had placed what she assumed was some sort of stew and a packet of crackers on the side with a piece of fruit. Asuka craned her neck to glare at him from her seat at the tent's right corner.

"A-Asuka, I brought you some l-"

"Fuck off, Shinji. I don't want to see you today," she interrupted. The fucking arm was starting to really itch, and her eye was beginning to hurt. Apparently the idiot's very presence made her wither in pain.

"That's okay…" the bastard said from his spot by the entrance. "But, please eat something. I know it's been a tough couple of days, so-"

"Fuck off." The scratches on her belly were itching now. The feeling of cold, dead fingers and hungry jaws grasping at her intestines made her almost throw up the water she had just swallowed.

"I'll go, I promise," he uttered, just pathetically enough for her to feel even sicker. "But please, will you eat?"

"If I tell you to leave it on the floor will you fuck off?" she bit out. Her jaw was starting to hurt again. The knuckles on her right hand tingled. The sensation of the seven other Lances in her body was beginning to burn.

"Okay…" She heard the brat come a bit closer to where she was working and deposit the wooden whatever-it-was next to her stool. "There you go, if you feel hungrier just let me know, okay?"

"Fuck off." She watched him nod from the corner of her eye. For some reason it upset her and made her brow twitch; he looked thinner, only a little bit, but she noticed the hollow space in his cheeks, the way his eyes looked sunken with the many sleepless nights, the way he was slower when he walked. Asuka convinced herself it wasn't any of her concern, and lived better for it. Or at least she told herself as much.

Just as his footsteps indicated he was about to exit the tent Shinji stopped, making Asuka's teeth grind together. The feel of his fingers digging into her neck made her grip on the wrench tighten.

"Please eat," said the idiot from his spot by the tent entrance. "I just… I want you to be okay."

Something snapped inside her. The itching became actual agony; she felt the jaws open her belly and pull out her innards.

"Oh?" she said, slowly getting up. The anger always took away the nausea, the itching and the pain, leaving her with nothing more than the desire for retaliation. "So now you give a damn if I'm okay or not, now you want me to be okay. I bet when I was in that bed you were perfectly fine with me being not okay."

When she turned in his direction the bastard already had the little outraged look of his, the look where he opened his eyes all wide and sad, like he was trying to make her feel guilty or something. She noticed he wasn't moving his left arm at all; it was even shaking a bit so she felt safer for the fact that he wouldn't be able to strangle her this time. That arm of his had been apparently sore and useless since the first day she started feeling better, whatever had happened to him, anyways?

"I'm betting you never even wanted me to wake up, huh? You were just fine with me being a vegetable so long as you got to jerk off at your leisure. Right, you little hypocrite?"

He flinched like he'd just been slapped, the pathetic little brat. "Asuka…" he muttered, looking at the ground. "I didn't… I wanted you to wake up… I never-"

"Oh, shut up already, will you?" She was getting dangerously close to him, and the wrench was still in her hand. "All you ever do is mumble and blurt out this bullshit, like it wasn't you who was choking me when I woke up." Standing eye to eye next to him, she noticed just how swollen Shinji's eye was. It was a purple mess, almost swollen shut, but it did not deter her rage. "You've always done that, batting those big blue eyes like you're a lost puppy so everyone can forget how much of a monster you really are."

She kicked him in the leg, just like that time he had choked her, only this time she didn't stop at one; she kept kicking him until the strength behind them was enough to swipe the idiot's legs from under him. She stood looking down at him with a heated glare on her face, almost unable to hold in the need to hit him in the face with the wrench.

"And now you want me to believe you suddenly started giving a shit, huh?" He didn't even raise his arms to avoid the kick to the jaw, making her instantly regret using her legs when he fell on the dirty ground and coughed out a glob of reddish spit. Still, her rage would not be sated.

"I…" Shinji said from the ground, wiping his face and the blood from the newly opened scab on his lip. "I… just want you to be okay."

"Oh, shut up!" She stomped on his foot, forcing a yelp of pain out of him. "Where was all this bravado, all this wanting me to be okay, when I was being torn to pieces, huh?!"

The wimpy bastard had the nerve to start crawling away from her in what seemed to be fear. His cowardly attitude only managed to upset her even more, but the images of the white EVAs smirking at her were starting to return and make her dizzy again. Asuka shook her head and let the poison curse through her.

"You really think I'll believe you?" she demanded, losing control of the volume of her voice. "You think I'll believe you, the Almighty Third Child, give a rat's ass about anyone else but yourself?!"

She kicked him in the leg this time, not wanting to make him bleed anymore for whatever reason. The anger didn't let her think; there was so much she wanted to yell at him, so much she wanted him to feel accountable for, that she couldn't manage to order her own thoughts well enough to spew it all at once.

The memory of her mother's presence inside the entry plug flashed through her. "When I was all alone…" she began, fists shaking. "When I was the most miserable person in this world…" Her hands clenched around her long-sleeved shirt. "When I had finally found Mama again, when all I wanted was to be happy, just for a little while longer…" She began removing the garment, watching in sick pleasure as Shinji's eyes widened and his gaze turned horrified. "When I needed you, for once…"

The shirt fell on the floor, leaving her with nothing but the bra to cover her chest. Let him see them, let him see the freak, the scarred freak. Let him hurt because of them. Let him acknowledge what his cowardice and inaction had left her with.

"When I was being butchered alive, you wouldn't come help me." She crouched over him, trapping Shinji's hips between her thighs. The first punch was completely unconscious; she kept telling herself to stop, to not hit him, to leave him be because it wouldn't solve anything, but she couldn't shake off the feeling of his hands against her throat. The second punch was conscious, but dropping the wrench on the ground next to him was not.

"When they were killing me-" Punch. "When they were ripping me apart-" Punch. "You just sat there and let me die!" Three, four, five punches to his face and still the idiot would not raise his arms to block, he wouldn't even look at her, he just clenched and unclenched his stupid hands over and over again. "So how does it feel, huh?!" The sixth punch reopened the gash on his cheekbone and sprinkled warm blood on her forearm. "How does it feel, Shinji?! You think you want me to be okay now?! Huh?! Huh?!"

In a fit of rage her hand curled around the wrench and brought it up, ready to smash it across Shinji's head and end it once and for all.

"P-please…" The blow stopped in mid air. "Please eat."

The metal object fell out of her grasp and dropped on the ground with a clatter. Tears were falling from the idiot's eyes, mixing with the blood that kept coming out of the gash on his cheekbone. His face was beginning to swell up again. He stared at her with his one good eye, pleading.

"I don't… care if you kill me," he said between gasps. Speaking was painful to him because of how much she had bruised his jaw this time around. "I don't care if you… want to hit me every day from now on…" His bloodied lip trembled pathetically, but for the life of her she couldn't force another blow. "Just… please eat something… please don't… don't die… don't leave…"

He was openly crying now. Pathetic. The anger crawled back bit by bit; she saw his neck, the one part of his upper body without a single bruise, and before she knew it her hands had wrapped around it and were trying to crush his windpipe in between her fingers.

"Fuck you," she whispered, feeling her own arms shake and tears leak from her eyes. "Let's see how you like it, huh?!" She started hitting his head against the ground, pushing her fingers deeper into his throat. She was killing him. And he was letting her do it. "How do you like it?! Not so pleasant when someone's choking you, right?! How do you like it?!"

His eyes were starting to go red; his struggling and useless flailing was starting to lessen. She would have kept going, would have killed him without actually meaning to had it not been for the way his hand rose up, that shaky left hand with bloodied knuckles, the hand he'd been holding close to his body for days like it was broken, and cupped her cheek more lovingly than anything she'd ever felt from another human being.

When Asuka realized what she was doing, she jumped off Shinji like he was on fire, falling on her own butt from the shock. The idiot started coughing hoarsely, trying to bring some air back into his lungs. His face was red and bleeding and horrible, and it was all because of her. She had almost killed him; almost ended his life in a fit of rage.

Asuka shakily got back to her feet. "Get out. Leave me alone, and don't come near me, Shinji." After a second or two she added quietly. "Please, just go."

Standing on his own wobbly legs, Shinji nodded. "Will y-" harsh coughs momentarily cut off his words, "-will... you eat?"

It made her feel like a low-life piece of scum, the way he was still worried about her eating something after she had beaten and almost killed him. "Yeah, now get out."

Everything stopped. Asuka recovered her senses, blinking in surprise when she noticed her state of undress and the place she found herself in. It was a memory, something that had occurred months ago during their stay in the UN shacks, something she was better off not remembering anymore. Shinji was frozen in mid step, getting up and wiping the blood off his lip; even the way the tent's entrance shook by the wind was frozen in place. Asuka looked around, left and right, feeling increasingly nervous. Wasn't she supposed to be in the entry plug?

"Wow, I have to say… you really did get revenge on the Baka for us, huh?"

She spun around, shocked when a figure that looked just like her appeared out of thin air and began inspecting the distiller she'd been working on in her memory. She was dressed in her old Plug suit, right arm bandaged along with the patch on her eye. "Who…" Asuka managed to say, shocked.

"Don't get me wrong; it's been a nice start, what you've been doing for the past few months, but it's just the start, right? I've been inspecting your memories, and I have to say, I'm impressed."

"Who are you?" Asuka demanded. There was a feeling in the back of her neck, some coldness, as though some foul thing was breathing down on her. She wasn't warm anymore. "What are you?"

The figure laughed lightly with her voice, brushing its hair away. "Well, well," it said, kicking the frozen figure of Shinji in the face. "So this is the idiot, huh? It's just like you've always said, he really is pathetic." It planted its foot on Shinji's form once, twice. "I can't believe he survived, the little shit. I love how you used him like a sex toy; the bastard had it coming after what he did to you in that hospital."

"Cut the bullshit," Asuka snarled, fists clenching. "And don't you dare insult him. Who are you?"

The figure ignored her completely. "Why didn't you kill him, though?" It sounded genuinely curious, and so much like her it was beginning to really freak her out. It spoke of killing Shinji like one would speak of buying an orange in the store. "I mean, it'd be easy, right? You guys have had guns since Third Impact, right? For protection or whatever. Why didn't you just blow his head off months ago? It's not like he would've fought back."

"What is this place?!" Asuka demanded. She was slowly starting to lose sensation in her own body; some strange numbness was paralyzing her. "And what are you?"

The figure blinked at her with her very own eye, scratching at its arm through the bandages. "Huh? Oh, right, I guess this is not a proper place for introductions, all dirty and…" It kicked Shinji's frozen body one last time, making Asuka's brow twitch in anger. "…disgusting." It snapped the fingers of its left hand, and the shacks disappeared in a flash of light.

They were suddenly standing in an open area surrounded by large pine trees and mountains. The air was fresh and crisp, the scent around her musky and refreshing. She remembered the location, it was the Schwarzwald, the Black Forest, where she had gone with her mother the last time the woman had hugged her or shown any trace of affection towards her.

The figure was standing in front of her with a sheepish smile on its face, on her face. Asuka's frown deepened even more. She tried flexing her hands, and while to her eyes it looked like she was flexing them, she couldn't feel it. "How do you know about this place?!" she demanded crossly, losing her limited patience. "Tell me what we're doing here right now, and tell me just what the hell you are!"

The figure pouted at her. It was then that Asuka noticed the red tinge in its eye. If she remembered correctly, her own eyes had been tinted crimson during her first two days back, as it normally happened to people who returned from the Ocean, but had long since gone back to their normal coloration. The eye of whatever was in front of her, however, shined crimson still.

"Okay, okay!" it answered, raising its hands in something akin to embarrassment. "You don't need to get angry, not here. You're safe here, with me."

Asuka seethed. "Who or what the fuck are you?!"

Once again it had the audacity to look sheepish. "Oh, me? Well, there's a lot of ways to put it, really. You could say I'm the end result of evolution, or you could say I'm the consciousness inside Unit 02's core. You could say I'm the end result of mixing your soul with mine during our final moments, or you could say I'm a sentient hybrid born out of the unholy union of Adam and Lilith."

The Asuka doppelganger began walking towards her, motioning at the forest around them with its hands. "You could say I'm a fully awakened Evangelion, you could say I'm… God, if you want me to be. Do you want to become God with me? It'll be easy!"

Asuka's eyed widened. "W-What? You're God?!"

The figure shrugged, smiling that sheepish smile like everything was right and there was nothing strange about their current situation. "If you want me to be, sure!" It beamed at her, extending its hand.

"But if you really, really want to know who I am, I'll tell you and only you, okay? Just to show you how much I love you." For as hard as she tried, as hard as she pinched herself and shook her head and slapped her own face, Asuka couldn't feel her body anymore. The cold feeling on her neck had extended through her every limb, leaving her numb and motionless.

Whatever it was that looked like her put its bandaged hand on its hip, the way she did it, and smirked, hand still extended to shake hers. "The name's Sohryu Asuka Langley. Charmed, huh?"

---

"Oh, crap."

Maya rarely, if ever cursed at all, so the moment the word left her mouth Ritsuko's neck craned painfully in her direction. There was a very bad feeling beginning to settle in her chest. They were two minutes away from finishing the test, everything had gone according to plan and then Maya cursed and the world went to hell faster than anyone could've predicted.

"What? What?!" Misato demanded, sounding panicked. Asuka's video feed began to show interference.

"She," Shigeru began, sweat rolling off his forehead. "She fell asleep. Asuka's asleep!"

Misato felt like someone had shaken the floor under her. Ritsuko's eyes widened beyond anything they'd seen after Third Impact. Ikari began to angrily push whatever digital button existed in his little device, frowning deeper when apparently nothing happened.

Ritsuko ran to Maya's station. "What's the pilot's synch rate?!"

Maya's face lost all color upon reading the numbers on her screen. "Synch rate… synch rate at 193% and rising…"

"That's impossible!" the Commander screamed out, turning her increasingly desperate eyes to Gendou. "She's asleep! She can't possibly be synching like that while asleep! Gendou, shock her, shock her now!"

Misato's hand sprang up and painfully curled around the Commander's shoulder. "What do you mean shock her?!" she demanded.

Tearing the offending hand off her lab coat, Ritsuko snarled in Misato's direction. "There's a shock system in the plug suit's wrists, it's made to shock the pilot in case she goes too deeply, it's supposed to stop the EVA from breaking through her ego bord-"

"It's not working," Gendou interrupted, now openly glaring at the device in his hand. "I have been trying for a minute but the signal is being blocked. I cannot access the plug suit."

"Shit!" Ritsuko exclaimed. Asuka's video feed was cut off completely, leaving nothing but the image of the four shining green eyes of Unit 02. The mecha began to move, slowly, patiently, breaking the Bakelite around its whole body without any apparent effort. "Shit! Maya, enter the emergency algorithm now! Eject the plug!"

"B-But Commander!" Maya's hands trembled on top of the dashboard. "If we eject the Plug with a synch rate like this…"

"It's better than letting her dissolve into the core!" Ritsuko shouted, desperate. "Do it now! Eject the plug!"

The crew tech's hands stilled as she began scribbling as fast as possible. The formerly amiable environment of the command center permeated with panic within seconds. "Pilot's heart rate accelerating!" Makoto reported from his station. "It's… it's racing! We have to get her out of there!"

Maya pressed enter in a flash. "Eject algorithm inserted! Plug ejection initiated!"

The screens all around them turned red.

ERROR. ERROR. ERROR.

The heart of every person in the command center sank and then jumped at their throat in utter fear when the cage's alarms went off. The EVA began rattling against the restraints, twisting the metal that trapped its arms with relative ease. It did not even look concerned with busting out of its enclosure quickly; it looked sluggish, as if waking from a long dream.

"The algorithm is being rejected!" Maya shouted, naked panic evident in her voice. "It's… it's coming from the core! The core's blocking the MAGI completely! We can't access the plug!"

"Activate the manual override!" Ritsuko shouted just as loud. The floor underneath them began to shake. "Do it now, eject that plug whatever it takes!"

"We can't!" Makoto answered, typing furiously. "It… it's in the system! The core's hacking the MAGI! It's blocking us completely; we can't even access the cage!"

"AT-Field detected!" Shigeru yelled. "It's… holy shit! It's the strongest AT-Field we've ever measured!"

"Shit!" This time, it was Misato who yelled. Her arms were shaking, her teeth chattering. She looked over to Shinji's video feed. Shinji was screaming at the mecha, screaming at the top of his lungs and running towards the door. "Shit! God damnit!" Misato closed her eyes, hating herself for what she was about to say. "Arm the N2 bombs! Assume defense stations, evacuate the pyramid's perimeter! Now!"

"Roger!" rang the unison choir from the crew.

Ritsuko was about to belay the order when it happened. Unit 02 jerked its body free offboth the restraints and the Bakelite covering it all the way to its neck. A gigantic hand squashed the rail and pushed the mecha's body out of the broken red material. The sound of the facial mask cracking and breaking off almost left her ears ringing; the behemoth tore open its maw as it rose from the cage, growling low and deep. Its hand took a hold of the wall to the left and ripped it off as if it were made of sand paper instead of titanium alloy.

Misato's heart stopped in her chest. Ritsuko's brain ground to a complete halt. The device fell from Gendou's hand. The wall the EVA had just ripped off was directly next to the observation window where Shinji had been standing.

Unit 02 punched the concrete underneath the metallic wall, breaking through it with the utmost ease, and roared.

"The AT-Field! It's expanding! It's gonna fire against the wall!"

The EVA's green eyes started shining the way an Angel's would when it was about to make something explode in a cross-shaped inferno. The window protecting Shinji broke when Unit 02 roared a second time. The entire Geofront shook.

---

"What do you mean you're Asuka?! I'm Asuka! You're not me!" No matter how she tried, she couldn't shake off the feeling of coldness from her body. She couldn't focus enough on her own self, couldn't distinguish where her flesh ended and the EVA's armor began.

"I am!" the doppelganger replied stubbornly. "I'm just like you, see?" To try and convince her, it changed its attire in a flash, now dressed in her current plug suit. "When Mama created me, I was nothing more than a dog with an operating system in my brain. I could only move if you told me to, but now that you gave me your memories, now that you shared your soul with me I'm so much more! I can move by myself, I can think, I can choose!"

Seemingly happy beyond her understanding, her copy spun around in glee, giggling like some school girl. It pointed its finger at her with a determined look in its eye. "We can be together again at last! Just like you wanted, just like Mama wanted; don't you want to become one with me?"

Has she still possessed any sensation in her body, Asuka knew she'd be sweating in worry and panic. What was this thing claiming it was her, telling her to become one with it? And why, why oh why, was she beginning to consider it?

"Where's Mama?" she managed to ask, trying to maintain some level of rational thought. "What happened to her? Where is she?"

The figure smiled sweetly at her. "Mama's free! She ran away when the EVA Series pierced the core, flew away to Heaven! I can bring her back if you want me to, though. You just have to become God with me and I can bring them all back!"

"I'd never become one with anything, much less something like you!" Asuka spat back. Out of nowhere, an acute pain sprang out of her eye. It felt like something was pushing a hot knife all the way through her skull, scorching away her retina. Recognition dawned on her just as the thing spoke.

"Don't you remember how they hurt us?" it asked. It sounded sad, regretful even. Asuka screamed in pain when the feeling of having the Lance pierce her eye washed over. "Don't you remember how he just sat there and let us die? Don't you remember how they killed us?"

Asuka screamed long and loud when she felt her belly being torn open with cold fingers and hot, rancid teeth. Her scream turned into a whimper when the sensation of having her arm split in two rendered her blind with pain.

"I can make it all go away," it told her, crouching next to where she was withering in agony. "I can take away the nightmares, the pain, the memories. I can give you new memories if you want, and erase everything painful so it won't ever bother you again." When it placed its hand on her shoulder, Asuka felt like she was being touched by a corpse. "I can make a new reality for you, just for you, with everything you've ever wanted. I'll bring Mama back, and Papa, and everyone else if you need me to."

The seven other Lances followed, but she did not wake up like it happened with her nightmares. The pain continued to get more unbearable; soon she was feeling the jaws come down on her again and start ripping off her limbs one by one. Why wasn't she dying? Why wasn't she waking up? Why did it hurt so bad?

"Don't you want to become one with me and make it all go away? I'm offering you the chance to be God, you know. You can rebuild the world however you choose if you join with me. We can do whatever we want; we can fly, swim, kill, destroy, recreate, over and over again until we get bored!"

Its hand pressed harder against her shoulder. The feeling became something far too disgusting for Asuka to stomach; she felt the thing's arm enter her, dissolve into something liquid and join with her body, with her sense of self. She would have vomited then and there, but she couldn't feel her own stomach anymore. The pain became blinding, so intense that it forced Asuka to the ground. She withered on the grass, unable to process the extreme torture running all over her body.

"Sh…" she whispered, beginning to lose consciousness. "Shin…ji… help…"

She felt the thing's hand remove itself from her. It felt disgusting, like she was being raped and could do nothing to defend herself. "Why are you calling out to him?!" it screamed at her, suddenly enraged. "He won't do anything! He won't even hold you! Why do you call out to him?!"

She became vaguely aware of her hair being yanked as the thing forced her head up. Asuka stared at the red pupil, and saw the insanity nestling in there. The pain. The rage. Those were not her eyes.

The doppelganger screamed in anger like a spoiled child. "I'm offering you godhood! Why would you call onto him of all people?! Join with me, become one with me! I'll bring him back after we kill him, I swear! I'll make him better, stronger, and unable to ever hurt us again! I'll make him stay if he's so fucking precious to you! But you have to become one with me!"

The pain returned with a vengeance, forcing another scream out of her. If she joined in with the thing, if they became one, she wondered, would the pain stop?

"Shinji…" she mumbled with great difficulty. Her lungs were constricted, she couldn't breathe. "Shinji… help me… help… me…"

---

The EVA's punch destroyed everything to his right, and when it peeled off the wall's metal the railing leading to the exit was crushed under a piece of concrete. The railing he was standing on was barely able to hold his weight, with nothing connecting to it anymore. The glass had shattered with the behemoth's second roar, leaving him completely unprotected. Not that Shinji realized or cared for any of it. There was nothing separating him from the cage anymore, so Asuka had to hear him.

"Asuka!" he screamed at the top of his lungs. "Asuka! Snap out of it! ASUKA!"

The EVA promptly ignored him; drawing its arm for another punch and making its eyes shine bright yellow. A strange, miniature AT-Field that looked like a halo was starting to form above its head. Shinji began to panic; the only way he could get close enough was to walk out on the piece of rail still remaining, it would take him a few feet away from the mecha's head, so he ran as fast as his legs could carry him, uncaring of how the walkway swayed and threatened to give under his weight.

He stood on the broken piece of rail at jumping distance from the EVA's head. Shinji filled his chest with air, ignoring the complaining of the still-recovering ribs, and howled until his neck was sore.

"ASUKA!"

The punch stopped mid-way. The eyes ceased their shining yellow and glowed bright green instead. Beneath the mask, Unit 02's eyes narrowed in recognition. Before he could jump out of the way, before he could jump over its head, the fist unclenched and grabbed him along with the broken metal structure he stood on in one fluid motion. It brought him close to its face, letting him see the deranged pupils underneath the mask.

And then it dawned on Shinji. This was not Asuka. The EVA was trying to do what it had done to her mother, to him. It was trying to devour her soul.

In the command center, chaos erupted.

"Fill the cage with Bakelite!" Misato ordered in desperation. She was trying to forget that Shinji was still there, in the thing's hand, about to be squished like a bug. If they filled the cage, perhaps there was a chance they could save him, and maybe even Asuka as well. Maybe there wouldn't be a need to blow up the pyramid and whoever happened to be close to it in order to keep the EVA from bringing about another Impact.

"Belay that!" Ritsuko roared and glared at Misato. "If we fill the cage Shinji will be smothered by the Bakelite!"

"Are you fucking blind?!" Misato raged. "It's got him in the palm of its hand, Ritsuko! It's gonna squash him!"

"If we drop the Bakelite he's dead meat anyway, wait!" Gendou was typing furiously on Maya's station, having pushed the girl away the moment the fist had collided with the wall.

"The pilot's synch rate is stabilizing!" he barked from the station. "Holding steady at 257%!"

"Vitals are unreadable!" Makoto yelled. "It's still blocking us; we can't eject the entry plug!"

"Shit!" Misato cursed. Hot tears were running down her cheeks. "Fuck! Fuck, fuck fuck fuck fuuuuuck!" She started to bang her fist against the closest thing available, which just so happened to be the wall. "Shit! God damn you, you fucking monster!" The last punch left a bloody stain on the metallic surface. "Activate the N2 bombs! If it leaves the pyramid humanity's doomed! Blow it up!"

"No!" Ritsuko countered. She pushed past the hysterical Sub-Commander and removed Shigeru's hand from the activation button. "Wait!"

The EVA had stopped moving. It was still holding Shinji in its hand, but the eyes had stopped emitting the yellow light, and the AT-Field had stopped expanding and pushing through the walls. It was watching Shinji, observing him with faint interest. The halo on its head shined with a reddish glow. Not a person dared to draw breath.

Through the command center, they could hear Shinji's furious screaming.

"Asuka! Wake up! Snap out of it, you can do this! Asuka! ASUKA! ASUKA!"

The hand holding Shinji started to shake, as if Unit 02 wanted to close it and squash him, but could not. It even brought its other hand and encircled both around him, managing to apply pressure on its hold with great difficulty.

Shinji kept screaming and ignored the growing pain from his side, along with the inability to breathe properly. "Asuka! ASUKA! ASUKAAAAAA!" Neck burning, ribs pushing in agony, Shinji started to cough. It was getting harder and harder to breathe.

"ASUKA! ASU-" He was barely able to say her name anymore as his body began to be wracked by intense coughing. "-ASUKA! ASUKA!"

He closed his eyes and pushed every ounce of air out of his lungs.

"ASUKAAAAAAAAAAA!"

---

"Please make it stop… make it stop… aaargh!"

The arm was back on her shoulder, fusing into her, the corpse-like grip reaching into her very soul. Her arms, her legs, she could feel them being ripped off by hungry jaws.

"I told you, I can make it all go away. I took revenge on them for you, just like you took revenge on Shinji for me. I ate them, Asuka-chan. They can't hurt you anymore, nobody can hurt us anymore." It kept digging its arm deeper into her, forcing Asuka to feel the cold grip close around her heart.

"Shinji…" she mumbled, holding onto the memory of the golden chain he'd given her. "Shinji… Shin… ji…"

"Stop!" it screamed and constricted her heart. The pain was unbearable. "Stop calling out for him! He won't help you, I will! I'll make it all disappear, just become one with me and let's be God together!"

The surge of power coming from the figure coursed through her. The agony was enough to make her consider agreeing with whatever that thing was; she simply couldn't hold herself together anymore. It felt like cold hands were ripping her soul to pieces, trying to break it and devour the remains one by one.

"Stop…" she managed to choke out. Her vision swam. "I'll… do it. I'll… be one with… you… just… make it stop…" The Lance slashed her arm in two again. "Make it stop!"

The doppelganger smiled happily at her. "Oh, you will? Yay!" From one second to the next, the pain which had been driving her into insanity vanished in its entirety, leaving her panting on the warm grass. When her eyes managed to focus again and looked in the figure's direction, she saw it holding out its hand again with a satisfied smile on its face.

"Now all you have to do is take my hand, and I'll make us God," it said eagerly, almost glowing with apparent happiness and childish glee. "I'll make all the pain go away, Asuka-chan. I'll give you a world where there's no pain, no sorrow, only happiness and only for you." The extended arm twitched suddenly. The figure's left hand was shaking as well; it looked as though it were holding something unbelievably heavy. "Just take my hand and let me heal you, let me make you happy."

Shakily getting to her feet, soul heavy and distorted, vision still blurry and phantom pain running all through her, Asuka extended her own hand, and was about to shake the doppelganger's outstretched arm when the faint sound reached her ears.

A cough. Muffled and distant; it seemed to come from far away. Asuka's hand stopped mid-way. "What…?" she began, still not fully conscious. "What was that?"

"It's nothing!" the thing said quickly, motioning to her hand. "Just take my hand, come on! Please! Then we can make a new world together."

The sound got a bit louder. Asuka's ability to use logic and reason came back in droplets, strengthening each time she squinted and attempted to focus on the faint noise. Aside from the strangely familiar cough, there was now a whisper behind it, something calling out to her, but Asukacould barely comprehend what it said.

She glared at the thing using her image. "What is that? What are you doing right now?! What's going on outside?!"

The thing began to look worried and angry. "It doesn't matter what it is," it said, frowning. "If you take my hand we'll be together. Forever. We can do whatever we want, see Mama again, make a better Shinji, a better Misato, make them all better. All you have to do is become one with me!"

She was growing increasingly suspicious. The feel of her body began to return little by little; from the Bakelite around her feet to the metal restraints on her arms, and… and something small and warm on her left palm. The noise became clearer.

"-uka! Asuka! Snap… it! ...-uka!" A cough. "ASUKAA!"

Her eyes widened. She knew that cough, she knew the voice behind it. Shinji. And Shinji had not coughed in weeks.

The outstretched hand flew past the figure's arm, shooting up to close in on its neck before it even had time to blink, and began to squeeze violently. All signs of its former power over her dissolved along with any ideas of joining or having anything to do with it; the coldness went away in a flash. Asuka pulled the figure to her face so she could stare at it square in its red eye. "God damn you…" she whispered. "Did you touch him?" Her grip on the thing's neck tightened. "Did you touch my Shinji?!"

She had seen naked panic in Shinji's eyes before, so she recognized it when it shined in the thing's red eye. "Just let me kill him!" it screamed at her, spittle hitting her face. "I'll kill him and then we'll make a new Shinji! A strong Shinji, a Shinji who doesn't run away! Don't you want that?! If he's so precious to you I'll give you a better one and erase all the painful memories about him, I'll give you five Shinjis if that's what you want!"

Each word the thing spoke only managed to kindle the flame of Asuka's anger. "I don't want five Shinjis…" she whispered venomously. "I don't want a better Shinji, I don't want a stronger Shinji." Her forehead collided painfully with the figure's when she drew it even closer and snarled at its face. "I want my Shinji, and if you've hurt him, if you've touched him…" The thing started struggling against her grip. It felt weak to her, weak and pathetic. "If you've touched him… then I'll blow us both straight down to hell, you cheap stupid doll."

The sensation of her body returned completely. The Black Forest disappeared along with the figure. As she drew a lungful of LCL, Asuka realized she was back in the entry plug, and the LCL was boiling around her. It was so hot it felt as though the liquid would melt her plug suit away, but Asuka forced herself to ignore the phantom pain still coursing through her, the sensation of drifting and fading into the core, and focused on the screen before her.

Her EVA's left hand was wrapped around Shinji's body, her right extended like she was choking somebody. She could feel him struggle in her grip, felt his body warmth through the layers of armor.

And above all, she felt the thing refusing to relinquish control over said left arm, her left arm. Forgetting completely about the control yokes, Asuka forced her right arm to move and curl around her left wrist. Unnatural strength ran all through her body. "You stupid doll," she spat. The pressure around her wrist increased when it dawned; the fucking thing had been trying to squash Shinji like a bug. Rage burned through her, extinguishing all trace of the thing's cold caress. "Don't you touch him!"

SNAP

Inside the command center, the eyes of every person present widened. Unit 02 had stopped in its tracks a minute before; its right arm had shot up like it wanted to strangle something, or someone, and then it had suddenly closed in on its left wrist with a deadly grip. The halo over its head fizzled and disappeared.

Ritsuko tried not to cringe when the EVA's left wrist exploded in a shower of bluish blood, pieces of armor and shards of bone. The screens around them stopped their assault of ERROR, ERROR, ERROR and went back to normal. The alarm was shut off, and the MAGI's operating system went back online in less than a second.

"We have access to the cage!" Makoto yelled from his station.

"Pilot's vitals are back online!" Shigeru added. "She's… God… her pulse is over 200! Asuka's… her left wrist… it's broken!"

"What?!" Misato spat in desperation. "How is that possible?!"

"The synch rate," said Ritsuko, eyes wide in disbelief. "What's Asuka's synch rate right now?!"

Gendou scowled at the screen. "273%."

If possible, Ritsuko's orbs widened more. "That… it… it can't be! Nobody has ever synched so deep without being absorbed!"

"The pilot's left hand!" Shigeru interjected. "It's… it's healing! It's healing itself!"

Naked disbelief washed over the crew when their eyes focused on the video feed. The EVA's recently broken wrist was pulsing, flesh fizzing from underneath the broken bone and healing at an alarming rate.

Inside the entry plug, Asuka barely felt it when she pulverized the bones of her own left wrist. There was too much adrenaline coursing through her bloodstream to focus on pain, but not enough to make her lose her senses again. Just like she wanted, the hand opened once she broke the wrist and pushed the sinews deep into the bone, allowing her to catch Shinji before he fell. She gingerly brought him closer in her outstretched palm; worry was corroding her stomach, she feared she'd see a big red stain on his shirt or somewhere around him, but aside from him holding onto his side and the bluish sprinkles on his face and arms, he didn't look to be badly injured.

Asuka activated the speakers, ignoring the way the LCL bubbled and boiled around her wrist. "Shinji?" The voice rang all the way through the half-destroyed cage, making the boy look up. "Shinji?! Are you okay?!"

From his spot on her palm, Shinji's eyes widened in surprise and unbidden joy, The hand holding his side clenched in happiness. "Asuka!" he screamed back, unafraid of the four blazing eyes in front of him. "Asuka, are you there?!"

"I'm here, Baka," came the answer from Unit 02. "Are you okay? Are you hurt anywhere?!"

Shinji blinked and padded around his body in search for any injuries. His side was hurting a bit and his voice was hoarse, but that was obviously from all the screaming. He lifted a thumb in the EVA's direction. "I'm fine! I'm not hurt! Are you okay?!"

The gigantic head nodded and turned to inspect their surroundings. The cage was in shambles; the walls were cracked and falling apart, the Bakelite had been broken and spilled all over the broken rail, the metal wall was ripped off and bent like it had been made of paper, the lights were blinking on and off, and smoke was starting to rise.

"Did..." came the voice from the EVA's speakers. "Did I do this?"

Inside the entry plug, Asuka's eyes widened in horror. What if she had killed someone? What if there were dead people right now, underneath her feet, because she had lost control? Her already racing heart felt as though it were about to burst.

"Did I hurt anyone?!" she demanded in panic. "Answer me, damn it! Did I hurt anyone?!"

"No."

From within the command center, every person in it took a deep, calming breath when Asuka's video feed came back online. A collective gasp of relief evaporated the terror and helplessness which had permeated the room not seconds before.

If Ritsuko had some in her pocket, she would have lit a cigarette right on the spot. She fell back on Maya's chair, right on her lap, making the girl jump and squeal in shock. I swear to God, she thought, relishing in the warm body underneath her. I'm getting too old for this shit.

Asuka's voice shook her out of her momentary paradise when it sprang from the speakers and made everyone jump in surprise. "Did I hurt anyone?! Answer me damn it! Did I hurt anyone?!"

"No," Ritsuko said dryly. I would kill for a cigarette, I would literally fucking kill someone for a cigarette right now. "Everybody's fine, Asuka. The cage was cleared out before the test, like most of the pyramid. You didn't hurt anyone. Do you think you can put the EVA back in the cage? We'll send a team to pick you and Shinji up, all right?"

"Yeah, I can do that," Asuka answered dismissively. "Is the Baka really okay?"

"He's fine, Asuka." This time, it was Misato who answered. She was crying, but for a reason completely alien to the fact that seconds ago, she had almost vaporized the entire pyramid. Her body was still shaking bit, and her mind was mush. "Are you okay?"

From the video feed, the crew watched as Asuka raised her bubbling left hand, which not moments before had been all but a mangled mass of flesh and bone, and flexed her fingers with ease. "Yeah," she answered, sounding distracted. "I'm fine. I'll put this doll back in its package, okay? Get someone here to take Shinji somewhere safe."

"Already on it," Makoto replied.

Knees shaking, Misato fell back on her butt and forcefully wiped the tears away. "Ritsu," she said, barely strong enough for the blonde to hear. "Did we just witness what I think we just witnessed?"

"Indeed," came the response. It was not Ritsuko, however, who answered. Ikari Gendou was staring straight at the video feed; it showed as the EVA gently lowered its hand around the nearest untouched gate and deposited Shinji on the ground with the utmost care. A cold smirk drew itself over his face when he pushed his yellow glasses back into place.

"Asuka has just domesticated a sentient Evangelion," he addressed the crew, and stared straight at Misato when the next words left his mouth. "Asuka just averted a Fourth Impact."

0

As soon as the doctors finished their stupid fondling of his body, washed and scrubbed off any and all traces of the blue blood on his face, hair and feet, and blood-tested him twice, Shinji was finally released. He put on a blue shirt and some pants someone had brought in while he had been trapped in the Med Bay along with his old sneakers, and ran all the way to the changing rooms in search of Asuka.

The doctors had told him she had an unnatural amount of adrenaline coursing through her system at the moment, but was otherwise perfectly fine. The wrist she had crushed had healed just as the EVA was depositing him on the ground, but the tall blonde doctor had told him it was best to steer clear of her for the time being, until the adrenaline left her bloodstream.

To hell with that, Shinji though while he marched to the changing rooms. I know how that feels, I know it very well, and I know I can't leave her alone in a time like this. His fists clenched, he started striding faster and faster. I was alone, and it didn't go well. I don't care if she tries to hit me or kill me. The Beast screamed from within the Void, announcing its agreement with great enthusiasm. I can stop her now, without hurting her. I can do this.

Even after he repeated the same thing over and over inside his head, Shinji was still very afraid, and said fear started to truly make itself known when he reached the changing room area. He didn't want to hurt her, and he certainly was not looking forward to being attacked by her again after all they had gone through since the last time, but what if there wasn't any choice? The blonde doctor had mentioned she'd attacked the team sent to retrieve her, screaming at the top of her lungs that if anyone touched her, she would break all the bones in their bodies. Along with Mayumi, they had both pleaded with him to remain in the clinic for a while longer. Shinji scoffed, catching his breath once he reached the changing room's door. Yeah, right. They were asking him to sit on his ass and do nothing. To hell with that.

Shinji took a deep breath, considered the possibility that Asuka was naked on the other side of the door, and threw all reservations out the window once he pushed his way in. Whatever he was about to say died in Shinji's throat when he entered the spacious area. Asuka had already showered, for the whole room smelled like soap and fruit, and had dressed in a white sleeveless T-shirt and a pair of shorts with no footwear, letting her long, dripping hair dampen the back of said shirt with water. It was not, however, her choice of attire what stopped him in his tracks, or the fact that she hadn't bothered to dry her hair, as usual. She was staring fixated at the mirror with a glare on her face, staring at her own reflection in silence; she was not even blinking.

Shinji gulped, drawing another deep breath. This had never been his forte; it was probably the thing in the world he sucked at the worst, having to address Asuka when she was extremely upset. Most of the time she would scream at him to leave her along with a few selected insults, and probably a couple smacks around his head for good measure, only to be approachable days afterwards. Lately he had been a bit more successful in his attempts, true, but it did not stop the fear from crawling its way down his spine, nor did it stop the Beast from whispering maliciously in his ear that he'd just return to be her toy instead of her… whatever he was at the moment.

He walked over to where he stood at a slow pace, unwilling to surprise or shock the clearly upset girl. Once he was in touching distance of Asuka, Shinji walked over to her right side and placed a hand on her shoulder, making her flinch. Her skin was cold to the touch, which was a rare occurrence itself.

"Asuka," he whispered. "Are you okay? You've been staring at the mirror for a while."

She did not react except for the initial flinch, so actual fear and worry started to eat out Shinji's stomach. What if she fell into another coma then and there? It had already happened once; he had seen that glassy look in her eyes before, when the Fifteenth had destroyed her. His grip on Asuka's shoulder tightened.

"Asuka?" He tried a bit louder, gently shaking her. "Asuka, are you all right? Are you there?"

A few months ago he would have never seen the elbow coming at his face; he would have just stayed there like an idiot and received the blunt force in his eye socket, but he had been training with a military instructor for a while. Shinji almost mechanically dodged her left elbow, letting go of her almost instantaneously, and gained a bit of distance. When Asuka turned to face him with that same nasty snarl on her pretty face, Shinji realized she was not there at all; she was fighting something in her head, something that wasn't him.

"Asuka!" he screamed at her. "Snap out of it! You made it, you beat it!"

She did not hear him. Even after all the showers, after all the shampoo and soap and hot water she could still feel the stench of LCL, the cold thing's fingers, the scars. She could still feel the touch on her shoulder, the touch of that cold dead thing that had attempted to tear her soul to pieces, rip it from her body and eat it, promising to give her godhood. It wanted her to bring about Instrumentality 2.0, the deranged doll. Asuka had been glaring at her own face, expecting to see the bandaged thing appear out of thin air when something warm had landed on the same shoulder the doppelganger had pressed its whole arm into. She was still looking for it, waiting for the agonizing pain to return with a vengeance and render her blind once more. Her mind was in attack mode; her heart was still pounding violently against her rib cage; her eyes were unfocused, waiting, waiting for the white vultures or the dead thing.

She saw a shadow out the corner of her eye and threw an elbow but it moved away, making a deep growl ebb from her throat. Asuka snarled at it, showing teeth, and tried to tackle it to the ground.

When she threw herself at him, Shinji moved to her left and avoided her flailing arms, but boy was she quick. Even with her eyes unfocused as they were, Asuka spun around and used the bench to propel herself and throw a superman punch at him, which he almost managed to cleanly dodgey; he earned a scratch on his eyebrow as it flew past him. He crouched just in time to avoid her back elbow, and rolled on the ground like he'd practiced with Ishikawa to escape her back kick. A sprawl jump and he was back on his feet with flexed knees and shoulders, his left hand in front and right hand by the left shoulder with open hands; the Wing Chun stance his teacher had drilled into him since they had met. He only needed one opening, one kick she sent his way and he could try to immobilize her.

Asuka growled in utter frustration when her kick hit nothing but air. The adrenaline was beginning to lessen, she was starting to recognize the surroundings of the changing room but the shadow kept moving away and gaining distance, and now it was facing her directly with something that looked like an open palm in its front. She charged and kicked with her right, aiming at what she assumed was the thing's left side.

Shinji saw Asuka's right foot move just in the nick of time. Just like she had repeatedly told him, he lifted his own leg and moved his left elbow to the hip. The leg impacted stronger than what he expected and sprouted a stab of pain from his healing side. Shinji's eyes narrowed; his chance had arrived, Asuka had lowered her arms. His left arm curled around her leg, his right leg made her trip and fall back against the locker; his right arm blocked the incoming left punch and shoved Asuka's shoulder. He straddled her, trying not to use too much brute force to bruise the girl or worse.

"Asuka," he said evenly right at her face. "It's Shinji. This is the changing room. You're okay, and nothing can hurt you here, okay?"

The sound of his voice so close to her, strong and steady for once although far rougher than normal, finally managed to draw the shadows away from Asuka's eyes. She blinked heavily, trying to grasp the cloudy figure that had somehow trapped her against a cold surface. Shinji's face cleared up sooner than she expected, and her unfocused eyes widened in surprise and shock.

"Shinji?" Her voice sounded hoarse to her own ears, her tongue felt heavy. The adrenaline was still making her heart race and her head dizzy. "What did I… were you the shadow!?" Her eyes widened even more upon realizing Shinji was holding her against the lockers with most of his own body weight. "Was I attacking you?!"

Against anything she had expected, the idiot's serious gaze vanished the second she opened her mouth. Shinji smiled widely at her, looking relieved, and loosened his hold on her. "Sorry," he sheepishly said, holding her at arm's length. "They told me you might be a bit… aggressive? Something about the adrenaline in your blood or whatever." His gaze turned serious. "Are you okay?"

"What are you, stupid or something?!" she exploded before managing to stop herself. "I was just almost eaten by my fucking EVA, Baka! I swear to God, I thought it was you…I… Damn it Shinji!" She punched him in the chest, but there was no force behind it whatsoever. Her hand impulsively a fistful of his shirt and she glared at him through teary eyes. "Did… did I hurt you?!"

The way his eyes softened just worked to annoy her all the more. "I'm fine," he answered playfully. "Your eyes were pretty unfocused, so you were swinging blindly, really." He rubbed her shoulders in an attempt to tell her that everything was okay, but Asuka had already caught a glimpse of the scratch on his temple.

"You're an idiot," she told him with all the seriousness she could muster. "And you're hoarse." The way his hands tightened around her shoulders, the way his eyes softened made her want to cry, but there was still too much anger inside, and she needed to vent it out or it would break her.

"I was screaming a lot," answered the idiot. "I'm glad you heard me."

"Kinda hard not to when you're being so loud," she mumbled back, sticking out her lip. "It tried to hurt you, so I hurt it back."

Shinji squeezed her shoulders again, managing to lower her heartbeat at least a bit for the time being. "Thanks for that, you were awesome."

Asuka huffed and finally managed to untangle her hand from his shirt. "I almost blew us all to hell, Baka…"

"No."

Both sets of shocked blue eyes turned to stare at Ayanami Rei, who stood by the door with a serious look on her face. She was dressed in a long sleeved white shirt and a pair of comfortable-looking black pants, arms at her sides and staring at them with some sort of detached interest, as if asserting whether or not she should get involved and start bashing Asuka's skull in.

"Ah, Rei!" said Shinji, smiling at her. "It's okay, Asuka was just a bit… full of energy, I guess."

Rei's eyes narrowed upon noticing the reddish mark on Shinji brow. "I see," she answered, and turned her eyes to Asuka. "Sohryu, are you well?"

"I feel sick," Asuka answered, still in Shinji's grip. It pained her to do what she was about to do, knowing it would only make the idiot worry all the more for her, but she needed an outlet and Rei had just offered her the perfect one with that cold glare. "Ayanami, get your gloves on. I need to blow off some steam."

Ignoring Shinji's shocked and outraged expression was apparently harder for her than it was for Rei, who simply nodded curtly, muttered an "Understood" under her breath and marched off the locker room's entrance. She, on the other hand, remained trapped between the lockers and Shinji's body; his grip on her shoulders was beginning to hurt a bit, so Asuka counted the seconds in her head, knowing what was to come next.

"What?! Asuka, what do you mean 'get your gloves on'? Are you two gonna fight right now? Even after all that just happened?!" He was almost shaking her, his hoarse voice rising enough to create a small echo in the empty showers behind them both.

As gently as she could considering the huge dose of adrenaline that was beginning to give her a headache, Asuka untangled his hands from her shoulders and attempted to give Shinji the closest thing to a reassuring smile she knew how to produce. "It's okay, Baka," she said. "I'll just blow off some steam and then hit the showers again. I'm not gonna hurt your precious little sister. Too much, anyway."

Shinji shook his head in disbelief, hands in the air as though he were trying to smack some sense into the thin air. "B-But," he sputtered, looking increasingly distressed. "I mean, you just stopped that thing! You ought to be tired! You should be resting, not getting in a ring with Rei-chan and fighting!"

Asuka patted his cheek, knowing she was very close to losing her flimsy grip on the anger threatening to consume her. She needed someone to hit her in the face, to draw some blood from her so she could be certain that she was standing on her own two feet, in reality, and had not accepted the thing's offer. Deep down Asuka was terrified and outraged beyond anything she'd felt in over eight months; she felt violated and helpless, embarrassed due to almost having accepted the so-called godhood offered to her. She was furious at herself for having considered the offer in the first place, guilty she had attacked Shinji and most certainly tried to kick him on his injured side, and angry at the fact that she wasn't so sure she ever wanted to pilot anymore.

"I'll be fine," she said from the door, leaving Shinji standing alone in the changing room. "Wait for me, okay?"

---

As it turned out, Shinji would not have to wait too much.

A great deal of the adrenaline had worn off a long time ago, leaving Asuka weak and wobbly with her steps. She was tired, exhausted even, but the feeling of cold fingers running down her body, her soul, and the numb sensation around her body were still in the back of her mind. Every time she took a punch to the face or a kick on her thighs, she felt alive. It felt like her body, like actual pain, actual aggression and true blood running down the cut in her own brow, hot and blinding, instead of cold LCL.

She wanted Wondergirl to keep hitting her, to keep attacking until she either passed out or was knocked out, for once not fighting to win. If she stopped fighting, if she stopped walking straight into Rei's fists then nothing would stop the tears from coming, nothing would stop the memories of the Lances and of being torn apart piece by piece over and over again.

A push kick to her stomach took all the air out of her lungs, and the other girl's right hook rattled her brain, even with the head gear to protect her from the blunt impact. Asuka crouched on her right knee, trying to bring some needed oxygen back into her system.

"This is foolish," commented the voice from above her. She glared up at Wondergirl, panting and sneering at her at once. "You are not even raising to block. You are walking straight into my attacks."

"And… what difference does it… make, huh?!" Asuka gasped from the floor, shaking off the exhaustion. The blood coming off her brow was starting to make her eye sting, and the sweat rolling down her face wasn't helping either. "Just keep at it, damn you! Isn't… isn't that what you wanted? To hit me?!"

"No." Rei answered flatly. "You are not fighting. You are punishing yourself; so why should I waste my time helping you beat yourself over some nonexistent grudge?"

"Because I hit Shinji!" Asuka snapped, finally managing to stagger back to her feet. "I hit him, I hit him in the face when all he was doing was worry about me! So cut the bullshit and hit me!" She swung a blind left hook, a sloppy uppercut and a slow frontal knee, all of which Rei easily dodged.

Rei danced around Asuka's left side and swiped her leg out from under her, forcing her opponent to stumble. An open-handed push to the girl's shoulders and she was back on the ground. Rei lost all interest in the fight once she saw the other girl start hitting the mat in frustration.

"Damn it! Damn it damn it damn it damn it! Stop playing around and fucking hit me already!" Asuka demanded from the mat. She ripped off her facial protector and began banging her fists against the ground with whatever few droplets of rage still left. The adrenaline, and now the anger as well, were all but gone from her body, leaving Asuka shaken and unable to move from her crouched position.

"Nii-san was warned not to approach you," Rei answered as she began untying the gloves from her hands. "He went to you against the doctor's advice, and was aware you could react violently. Moreover..." She glared down at Asuka while she spat out the mouth-piece. "He was not injured and managed to immobilize you. I will not aid you in bringing about self-harm. If you wish to feel pain, I advise you to bang your forehead against the wall or use the punching bag." She began walking away. "We are done here."

The sound of Shinji's sister walking away drew a pang of annoyance through the pilot's mind; the nerve of her! There she was giving her the perfect chance of retaliation and Wonder-Bitch had chosen to leave her alone. She was still weakened enough to not even begin considering getting up or hitting the showers. Sweat dripped from her every pore; nausea was beginning to crawl in her stomach from her severe dehydration, her vision was a bit blurry, and the hollowness inside her chest kept attempting to consume her.

Dropping to her knees, Asuka raised her eyes to glare at the few gym's attendants who were watching here with something akin to fear in their eyes. It almost looked like the way Shinji would flinch back when she would hit him, forcing a kindle of the raging flame which had been her anger to ignite in her chest.

"What the hell are you all looking at?!" Asuka roared, and relished in the way the small crowd flinched at once. "Enjoying the show, huh?! What are you looking at?!"

Just as the group was beginning to disperse, a coarse voice sprang up from behind her. "You heard her," Shinji barked. "What the hell are you looking at?!" Having witnessed one of Shinji's fits of rage already, the small group of patients and crew members had no intention of bringing about any of his ire, and thus abandoned the Gymnasium as quietly as possible.

Asuka was sitting in the center of the training ring, holding her knees close to her chest in the same way he had seen her do it after the Fifteenth had attacked her mind. Any trace of doubt left Shinji as the flashback ran through his mind. She had screamed at him to leave her alone, only to then fall down a spiral of self-destruction and self-negligence that had left her in a coma. Like hell I'm letting that happen again, he thought while he strode in her direction. Not while I can do something, not ever again.

Asuka fully ignored Shinji's presence until he was crouching next to her, a bottle of water in his hand and a first aid kit in the other. He poured a bit of water into a small plastic container, the origin of which she was not aware, offered the rest of the cold, refreshing liquid to Asuka and occupied himself with pulling out gauze, disinfectant and apposite from the kit next to him. She snatched the offered bottle with every bit of attitude left in her system, pouting at Shinji once she had quenched her unreasonable thirst and emptied the offered bottle in four large gulps.

"I tried to hit you again," she muttered. Shinji ignored her, as he usually did when he was cleaning her wounds, and dabbed a piece of gauze in the water to try and clean the cut on her temple, but she kept jerking her head away. "I tried to hit you," she repeated, annoyed.

"I noticed," he answered distractedly, finally managing to catch her chin and keep her head in place. "Now stay still please, so I can clean up that cut."

The sting of the fresh water against the damaged skin made her flinch, but Asuka otherwise relented and allowed him to wipe the blood off her brow and begin cleaning the scratches Rei's gloves had left on her face. She was still unwilling to meet his eyes, not wanting to see the scratch on his temple, so Asuka contented herself with pouting at the mat and trying not to break down in tears.

Knowing she was more than upset, Shinji did not try to coax her into talking to him or getting up; he assumed she'd do it of her own free will when she felt ready, and would only rage at him if he pushed the matter. Plus, she had stopped struggling, meaning he had limited precious time to clean up her small bruises before she marched over to the showers and locked herself in there for about ten more minutes.

When Shinji was done cleaning her face, Asuka noticed out of the corner of her eye he produced the small red box where she kept the gold chain. He opened it, treating the small trinket like a precious treasure, and clasped it around her neck without so much as asking for permission. The feel of his body heat against her relaxed Asuka on levels she couldn't fully grasp; the tickle of his breath as he came close and clasped the golden strand around her was heavenly.

Contrary to the sensation of warm, deadly hands pressing against her windpipe, as the cold metal touched her skin Asuka felt nothing more than unnatural relief. If the chain was in place and dangling on her neck, with the tiny ruby blinking crimson, than she had truly not accepted the thing's offer and was truly sitting in the gym's mat. This was not just a lie from Instrumentality; it was not a fake reality she had concocted so as to feel safe. She was in the real world, with the real Shinji, her Shinji, sitting in front of her and giving her sincere smiles of relief.

Asuka's lower lip began to tremble. "Shinji?" she uttered, barely above a whisper. The cute little heart on her chain moved along with her every breath.

She felt his hand caress her shoulder, driving away the sensation of the thing's cold touch once and for all. "Yeah?"

"I…" she started. The task of organizing her thoughts to say what she wanted to say was far more difficult that she'd imagined. Her stupid lower lip wouldn't stop moving, making her feel vulnerable. "I… I don't think I want to be an EVA pilot anymore…"

Hot tears began to trail down her cheeks without her allowing it. Her own body was betraying her, breaking under the weight of her admission and doubling over in agony. She raised the teary eyes to Shinji's calm gaze. There was no rejection there, not a single care in the world if she piloted or not, only concern for her. For Asuka, not the Second Child.

"I think… I think EVA brings out the worst in me…"

Shinji gave her what she had been unable to produce in the locker room, a reassuring smile. "That's okay," he answered, taking her hand in his. "You have very able hands," she felt a faint pressure around the lump where she had broken her knuckles months ago, the knuckles he had reset. "They're able to beat people to a pulp, cook, clean, make fires, build water distillers, hack computers…" he stopped, blushing and gulping down his insecurity. "…give happiness."

Shinji's other hand fell from her shoulder and squeezed their joined ones. "I don't think your hands were made only to pilot EVA." He smiled at her then, in that juvenile way of his that made him look like an actual fifteen-year-old teen. "I think your hands can do anything, I think you can do anything you set your mind into. You don't need EVA, you've never needed it." The hold around her hand tightened. "You're just that awesome all on your own."

The dam broke. A strangled cry filled with anger and grief and shame and guilt ripped through her throat. The tears blinded her; the grief consumed everything but the sensation of Shinji's arms as he curled around her and let her head bump against his shoulder. Soon enough his shirt started to get damp from the sweat, the tears and everything else that refused to stop leaking from her body. Not once did Shinji scoff at her weakness, not once did he push her away like she had done so many times, which only made Asuka cry harder on his chest.

"Y…" she muttered against his shirt, overwhelmed. "You're a real idiot, y-you know? Worrying over someone like me…" The funny way Shinji's chest moved when he laughed lulled Asuka's head. She felt his hands run over her tangled locks, releasing the knots with care not to pull her hair.

"You've told me that since we met," he whispered back and placed a gentle kiss on her temple. How could he ignore the sweat that covered her whole skin? She probably stank, regardless of how long she had showered after leaving the entry plug, and yet he seemed completely unaffected by the way his fresh-smelling shirt was now stained with tears and snot and God knew what else. "If it takes being an idiot to care about you, then I guess I'll be the biggest idiot in this world."

She pinched him lightly on the chest, the way she did whenever he said something that annoyed her, and allowed her instincts to take over, encircling Shinji's waist with her arms and letting him hold her fully against the matted floor. The tears did not stop coming for a while, but Shinji couldn't care less. The Asuka he was holding onto was his Asuka, the girl he had left to die, tried to kill and then tried to protect. She was not the Second Child he feared and raged against, so if his Asuka wanted to cry for a whole hour in the abandoned gymnasium then he'd sit there with her for as long as it took to make her feel better.

A few hours later, after Asuka had grudgingly acquiesced to going back to the changing rooms and showering again, and after Shinji had coaxed her into eating whatever steamy fish broth he had prepared prior to her synch test, both teens lay on the large mattress in silence, listening to one of the pop classics he loved so much through the shared ear-buds. Misato had come in earlier and stayed with them for about an hour, telling Asuka again and again that the incident had in no way been her fault, arguing that nobody had forced her to jump in the entry plug and yet she had bravely volunteered to something most considered a suicide mission.

Misato had also confessed in between tears how she had almost activated the N2 Bombs in a fit of panic, and how she had almost ordered Bakelite to be dropped on both Shinji and her EVA in an attempt to stop it. Shinji had grumbled under his breath and glared resentfully at her, but had then conceded and told her he knew how hard screaming that order had been for her. He had scraped her bloodied knuckles clean and fed her some fish stew as well, telling her he wasn't mad.

Asuka had been a whole different story; she had virtually not spoken to Misato at all since the woman had entered the room, and once all her guardian's teary confessions had been over, Asuka had told her, right in her face at that, how irresponsible she had been for letting Shinji stand so close to the cages, and how dramatic she was being for screaming out an order when it was her job to ensure the survival of Tokyo.

Only after their guardian had left along with the waddling penguin who had come to demand his dinner and a can of beer, only after they had been alone for about twenty minutes and Shinji had grown cold and tired of watching Asuka fiddle with her hair on a chair looking dejected, did she agree to crawl into bed next to him. Before she succumbed to his pleading, however, she had tiredly told him that perhaps it was better if she slept on a different room from then on, arguing about how she had tried to elbow him in the face without actually meaning to.

Shinji did not particularly enjoy using her own words against her, but even his considerable patience had its limits and his constant worrying had left him just as exhausted as her, wanting nothing more than to sleep and put the day behind him. "Will you please stop being so freaking dramatic?" he had told her, promptly earning an undignified huff and the trademark puffy cheeks she sent his way whenever he was being 'a jerk'. Luckily for him at least, she had relented and climbed under the covers, letting him smell the fruity scent and feminine musk he had gotten so accustomed to for the past few months.

Once they had settled into what was quickly turning into their favorite sleeping position, with Shinji flat on his back and Asuka curled against him, and the random pop or classical song was lulling both their overtired brains, Asuka finally found it in herself to speak to him.

"I never asked you," she mumbled against the fabric of his fresh white shirt. "I never even went to see you when you were trapped in Unit 01." Shinji felt a light tapping against his chest, where Asuka's arm was snuggled against him for warmth. Ever since Third Impact, her right arm had been very susceptible to cold; she had told him that sometimes all it took was a gust of wind for her to feel the phantom pain of the Lance slicing through it. "How did it feel?"

"Hmm…" Shinji wracked his brain looking for a way to explain the strange incident with the Fourteenth, where the EVA had absorbed him and kept him as goo for over a month. "It was weird," he admitted after a few seconds. "Like I was there but at the same time I wasn't. I knew my body was in there, I just couldn't feel it. For the first few days it felt just like being asleep, you know, dreaming and stuff, but after a while Mother reached out to me and then it felt… kind of… warm? I don't really know how to describe it."

"Like a mother's womb?" Asuka wondered, letting her anxiousness reduce with Shinji's heartbeat under her palm. "All warm and comfortable and stuff?"

"Yeah," he agreed, nodding. "Like a mother's womb."

"So why'd you come back?" It had always eluded her, just like the true reason behind his rejection of Instrumentality; though she was beginning to understand the reason behind the latter.

"I guess Mother… pushed me out?" He did not sound certain even to his own ears; his recollection of the event was filled with fog, pieces of memories or images he wasn't too sure belonged to his mind or that of his mother. "I heard Misato crying that day they tried to salvage me or whatever. I didn't want to make her sad…" Shinji blinked when the realization dawned on him. "I think it was hearing Misato what really made me… I don't know…"

"Reconstitute your sense of self?" Asuka suggested, smiling lightly against him. "Sounds like something your sister dearest would say."

"I guess she'd be right then," He pondered over the next words for a bit. "Had Mother not been there, though, I think it would've felt really cold, freezing cold, or really warm, I'm really not sure, and maybe I would've stayed there."

"I know the feeling," whispered the redhead tucked under his arm. When she was sad, and she allowed him to get close enough to see it, Shinji couldn't help but realize how small she seemed in those rare moments of vulnerability. Ever since meeting her, Asuka had been some sort of unattainable goal; she always walked in front of him, making her way through pain and sorrow without so much as a sliver of doubt, always standing over him with that confident smirk of hers. Yet when Asuka allowed herself to be sad, and allowed him to be around her when sad, she seemed like a real teenage girl with real problems, problems he could help with. While he had fallen in love with her fire, he adored the exposed side of her just as much.

"And," Asuka muttered, derailing Shinji's train of thought. "When you… I mean… when you were God?"

The low chest rumble she was starting to really adore coursed through her cheek. "I don't think I was ever God, Asuka," he answered, somehow amused that she would think so. "Rei was the one who merged with Lilith and Adam and turned into that huge giant of light. I just…" Everyone can just go… and die; I just did that, huh? Just ran away because it was easier. "I just went along with whatever was going on after… after the thing in the kitchen…"

Shinji jumped when he felt warm fingers pinch his skin. "Don't be an idiot," Asuka chastised. "You were God, for a second or whatever but you were and…" The last thoughts she'd had before running into Unit 02's consciousness flashed through her. "And if you hadn't rejected Instrumentality, we would all still be swimming around in yellow primordial soup."

"You're making it sound a lot more… heroic than what it was, you know?" he commented, amused. In all honesty it was the first time Asuka spoke about Third Impact without pointing a finger at his face and yelling about how it had all been his fault. It was a pleasant change, to say the least. "I just didn't want to be in that place. I hated it; I'd rather feel pain and be left alone to suffer than to not feel anything at all."

Electric blue eyes stared up at him in wonder. "What do you mean? You know, I've wanted to ask you that for months. Why did you reject it?"

Because I ran away, came the whisper from his mind. I made a choice and regretted it, then I ran away when I found out it was all lies. "Because it was a lie," Shinji answered instead. "All those worlds, all those lives I could create in there, they weren't the real thing. I couldn't believe it even if I wanted to, because there was no pain, no sorrow, and… no real happiness either."

"I don't get that," she tapped her finger against his chest. "What do you mean when you say no pain and no happiness?"

"I think you do get it," he said, gently poking her belly with a finger. "I heard this thing the other day: no pain no gain... something like that. Imagine if I had just accepted Instrumentality and stayed there, how would I ever really know if I was happy?"

"Huh?" Asuka mumbled, bewildered. "You just lost me there, Baka."

Shinji scratched his head in an attempt to formulate a more articulate way of explaining the reason behind his choice. "Let me put it this way. Umm... if you just live in a bubble of happiness where everything goes your way and you never, ever feel pain, then how do you know if you're really happy to begin with? You'd never have a choice to know if you're actually feeling happy or not, so how could you tell the difference?"

He nudged her shoulder playfully, before sobering up. "Like during Instrumentality and everything that happened in between… at first I was just relieved. Relieved I didn't have to feel pain anymore, relieved that there was someone telling me they'd take all the pain away if I just did what they wanted." Asuka's eyes widened; those had been the same words the thing had used to try and convince her. "But then Mother and Rei found me and talked to me, I think you were there too, telling me something like 'if I can't have you all to myself'-"

"'Then I don't want you at all'," Asuka finished for him, shuffling a bit. She remembered the scene on that train with excruciating detail. "I've been a real bitch to you, haven't I?"

"Don't say things like that." Shinji poked her in the belly again for emphasis; he didn't like it when she spoke so sourly about herself. "But I guess so." Pinch. "Ow!"

"Ba-ka."

Shinji laughed lightly, making the little heart-shaped pendant move around his shirt. "Anyway," he continued. "I think I understood something then, about life. You can't half-ass it, you know? If you want to be happy you have to fight for it and push through the pain when it comes. If happiness is just given to you then you won't really appreciate it."

His eyes traveled over the ceiling above them, lost in thought. "It's like a beautiful sadness," he whispered.

"What do you mean?"

Shinji offered a weary smile. "Take me for example; if I hadn't… if we hadn't gone through everything we went through to get here," he pressed her tighter against him in an effort to clarify what he meant, "I don't think I'd feel as happy as I do now, I don't think I could really cherish it for what it is."

What is it? Asuka's mind wondered, already knowing the answer. "Are you happy?" she asked instead, intrigued.

"Yeah," Shinji answered without a second thought. "For the first time in my life, I know what it feels like."

"Me too," she called back, frowning. "Or at least I was until my EVA tried to convince me to become God and kill everybody again."

Shinji's eyes widened in utter shock; he unconsciously brought the girl closer to him in fear she would disappear. "It… it wanted you to-"

"It just kept going and going about becoming one with me or whatever," Asuka interrupted, wanting nothing more than to escape Shinji's embrace and comfortably hide herself in a cloud of anger. Only... all her anger had already been used up and there was nothing left for her to call upon; all that remained was for her to be sincere. "Then it started… torturing me…"

The hand on her shoulder clenched strong enough to make her yelp in pain. "It... what?!" Shinji snapped. He was angry; lately he could get angry just as fast as she could. "What did it do to you?!" His voice was uneven; it sounded sort of unsure whether to sound enraged or concerned.

"It made me relieve the pain from when I fought the EVA Series," she answered, placing her hand flat on Shinji's chest in attempt to calm him. "Over and over again, and it kept telling me it'd take away all the pain and make me happy forever or some crap along those lines."

"I told that thing that if it hurt you I'd make it regret ever coming back, if I could," Shinji admitted quietly. "If Unit 01 was still here I'd get in without a moment's hesitation, and let that thing know exactly what I think about it making you relive anything." He sighed in dejection a second afterwards. "And now that I want to I can't… see what I was talking about? A beautiful sadness."

At last, he managed to bring about a brief giggle from Asuka. She sobered up quick enough, reminding him just how bad she was feeling at the moment. She had looked so serious before as well, when she was telling him it was for the best if they stopped sharing a bed, that it had left Shinji feeling more than a bit unbalanced. Thankfully, she had relented and now had her right hand where it belonged, and she was speaking to him about the trauma she had just experienced.

"It wanted me to merge with it so bad," Asuka said, drawing his attention back to her. "It was desperate, afraid, I think. It just wanted me to become God with it, nothing more. It kept going on and on about how we'd be so happy together, yada yada…" She visibly flinched when she remembered the sensation of having that thing's arm push its way into her body. "It felt disgusting, cold. Like a corpse."

Shinji tried not to flinch alongside her when he remembered Lilith's touch. "Like a cold, rotting corpse that makes its way into your body," Asuka was shocked silent by his words; she craned her neck to stare at him, wide-eyed, while he pensively stared at the ceiling. "Like death, and life, all at once, like all the power of the world is in your hand and the same time it's not. Like you don't have any sensation in your body, but you can feel it peeling back your soul and…"

"… and touching it." Asuka finished for him, still shocked. "How… how did you-"

"That's what it felt like," he distractedly answered. His eyes had that faraway gaze about them, the one that appeared when he was recalling something deeply painful for him. "Being there with that giant thing that looked like Rei, that's what it felt it was doing before… before I opened my eyes and was suddenly in our apartment. We argued… when I asked you to help me, I could feel it there, watching. I could feel my soul… dissolving into Unit 01 and into Lilith. I was asking you to acknowledge my existence, to help even knowing I didn't deserve to be helped by you…"

"And I wouldn't help you," Asuka said, frowning. "I wouldn't help you because I didn't want to be a crutch for whatever pieces of yourself you were dragging along. I didn't want to see you, but I was seeing everything… all of it, your soul, your anger, your fear. I could see that you hated yourself… you hated me, and everything else too, so I thought you couldn't help me enough, and I let you die."

"Just like I let you die…" Shinji answered, scowling at the ceiling. "Then it all started, and since I didn't have anything left anymore, I'd thought it'd be best if just died along with everyone else."

"But…" Asuka mumbled, feeling the heartbeat under her palm quicken. "But you still came back, and gave us a chance to do the same…" She placed a small kiss on his neck and relished in the way his heart raced again, this time for completely different reasons.

Shinji gulped; trying to keep his hormones under control was growing increasingly difficult when Asuka was so close, and her lips felt so warm against his skin. Even so, Shinji felt his own arm stiffen against her body for a second, only to relax afterwards when Asuka settled back on his chest.

"You know," he told her, threading his hand trough her locks. "This is the first time we've talked about this stuff without arguing, or fighting, or being angry."

Asuka snickered tiredly against him. "It's because I'm all out of anger today, Baka. You got lu-" A jaw-cracking yawn interrupted her. "...Lucky." She was beginning to drift off; the exhaustion was starting to assault her senses with a vengeance. Every muscle in her body felt tired and her face still stung from the barricade of punches Rei had offered, something she herself had wanted. The pain had felt reassuring, like an old friend who welcomed her with opened arms, reassuring and real. She wanted to tell Shinji how she had almost gone through with it, how she had almost taken the thing's hand because the pain simply had been too great and all she'd wanted to do at that moment was run away, but she did not.

Instead, she relished in the comfort he so selflessly provided with his mere presence and gave in to sleep, feeling a bit less disgusted with herself due to Shinji's declaration of being sincerely happy for the first time in his life.

The one thing certain about happiness, ironically enough, was that it was fleeting and momentary; a mere sprinkle of sugar in an otherwise salty ocean.

That was the last good night the teens had for more than a week.

---

December 15th, 2016. NERV Dining Area. 12.24pm

The vegetables were nothing remotely compared to the quality he had received for Asuka's birthday. As he cut through the celery, Shinji tried not to cringe every time he was forced to throw a piece away because it was rotted, or starting to grow mold. Apparently the growing cold had not been particularly beneficial for the crops growing around them, and since reparations were slow and paused, as they had been for months, there were not many warehouses available to use as greenhouses.

Shinji yawned, and in the process almost cut off his index finger for the third time that day. He hadn't been getting much sleep since Unit 02 had tried to bring about another Armageddon, and neither had Asuka. In fact, they barely managed a few hours per night before one of them woke up thrashing or screaming. In his case, he was beginning to have really bad nightmares where Asuka went along with whatever was in the EVA's core and abandoned him just as he had abandoned her, dissolving everyone into LCL and turning herself into a red-haired giant of light.

And those were the good nights.

The Beast hadn't come back to bother him, strangely enough, it had become somewhat more akin to a presence in his head lately, and it bothered Shinji how the rancid thing which had tortured his psyche for months seemed to be the voice of reason nowadays.

On the bad nights, Shinji dreamed of all he had lived through with Asuka after Third Impact, of the painful events that had transpired in between, and how she reverted back into the person who liked to make him hurt and insult him on every passing chance. The night before, he had dreamed she ripped off the necklace he'd given her in a feat of rage and threw it in his face, yelling about how much she hated him and how pathetic he had been for believing her façade. Oh, those dreams were troublesome as well.

Ever since admitting to himself how he felt about her, Shinji was tortured by the idea that somehow she would one day laugh in his face in that cold manner he hated, and tell him it had all been a farce. She had never forgiven him, she had never liked him, she had only lied to lure him into a false sense of security and then crush him completely in the ultimate scheme to destroy his mind and heart. It terrified him to think about what he would do if that came to pass and he wondered if, even with all his training, he would resist the urge to crush her windpipe under his fingers.

Chop, chop, chop, chop. He finished with the celery and mechanically moved over to the onions, not before scratching his eyes in an attempt to heal the itching behind his head. It felt as though the back side of his brain was itching and he could not manage to get rid of it; no matter how hard he shook his head the itch would not go away. It was something Shinji knew only too well, the feeling of exhaustion which came along with constant lack of sleep, a feeling he thought he'd never have to suffer through again.

The onions were making his eyes tear up as well, and for the life of him Shinji could not understand why it suddenly made him so angry. He dropped the offending slices in the oil and carried on with the meat. The chicken was stale, not even remotely fresh, so he'd have to boil it and attempt to improve its flavor with whatever he was able to find. It only worked to make him angrier; he shook his head again and berated himself for being upset with the food he had, knowing well there were many who would've appreciated the stale chicken. Still, the anger persisted just as much as the tiredness and heaviness of his body. Ishikawa had been berating them both these past few days, telling them that whatever grudge was between them both needed to be solved at once, or all their progress would go to hell.

Not that it didn't go to hell already, Shinji thought sourly, remembering Asuka's erratic behavior as of late.

Sure, his nightmares were troublesome; he woke up every few hours and thrashed about, but he did not wake up screaming. Four months had passed, give or take a few days, since the last time he had heard such agonizing, mind curling screams come out of Asuka while she slept, and they served to both terrify and shame him at the same time; he knew exactly what she was dreaming about and why.

She had told him of the thing inside Unit 02, of how it had felt like a corpse trying to steal her soul and how it had made her relieve her defeat over and over again. Now she was stuck having nightmares about it as well, making Shinji feel more useless than ever. He could do nothing short of holding her down while she slept, letting her cry on his shoulder as he attempted to comfort her and calm her racing nerves when she woke up covered in sweat, eyes frantic. Aside from asking him if she had pushed or hurt him during her shuffling around, however, Asuka was barely speaking to him anymore. She had stopped placing her hand on his chest as well, hugging herself instead and only placing her head on his chest, something that simply made Shinji angry for no reason whatsoever.

Why won't you tell me what's wrong? Why won't you let me help? Without meaning to, he drew the knife all the way through the chicken's breast and split the bone in half.

"Damn it…" he muttered lowly, scowling at the offending meat. It was not just him that Asuka wasn't talking to, she refused to speak to anyone; even Ishikawa could not manage to coax a rational response that did not end in an insult. After her breakdown in the gym, Asuka had apparently retreated into herself, and as much as Shinji wanted to respect her space he could not bring himself to stand idly by and do nothing while he saw her eyes grow increasingly hollow. Even the alternative of having those eyes filled with rage was preferable to them being empty.

She was still wearing his chain, which in itself was a relief, and still sleeping next to him at night, but the more frequent hugs and other types physical contact they once shared had long since ceased. When eating, she did not compliment or even comment about his food and instead devoured whatever was served with a distracted look in her tired eyes. For as much as he wanted to help, and for as much as he tried not to pry, Shinji was beginning to lose his patience.

He practically threw the chicken pieces into the boiling water with something close to satisfaction. The rage was stirring in his chest, so he'd have to schedule a session with his teacher for that afternoon if he wanted to address his situation with Asuka possessing some level of rational thinking. It felt unfair; he had been doing well for once, having managed to give her a good, happy day without worries and filled with happiness, and then all of it was sucked away by the big, red fucking elephant in the room called Unit 02. Not even the so-called artist bothered him anymore; if anything, it was the least of his concerns. What was one crazy person going to do against the red demi-god stored under their pyramid, anyway?

Chop, chop, chop, chop. He wanted to drive the knife deep into something, into someone. He wanted to jump into Unit 01 and just go on a rampage until Asuka chose to tell him what the fuck he had done to upset her.

Asuka was angry at him. That fact was at the very least clear to Shinji; she was angry at him for some reason and would not tell him why. Whenever he asked, she would bark that she was not, in fact, angry at all, and if there was anything that bothered her it was his constant asking of whether she was angry or not in the first place. He stabbed the potato on his chopping board with viciousness, almost wanting to squash it with his fist. It was so frustrating, and he was stuck being useless, because if Asuka was mad at him then the only thing he could do was either go back to being her punching bag to allow her to vent whatever grudge she had then and there, or leave her to brood alone when it was so clear to him that she was suffering.

He slashed the last potato on his tray with so much violence that the knife's blade embedded itself in the board's wood. For a second all he wanted was to keep chopping at it until the board broke in half or the blade dented beyond repair. Why could she not simply tell him what was wrong, what he had done wrong, so he could try and make it better? Why did it suddenly feel as if they were fighting the Angels and everything was falling apart again? Why had it all gone to hell so quickly? Why could he not do anything to stop it? Did that mean all the suffering had been for nothing?

The questions burned in his mind, corroded his brain until the itching in the back of his head became almost unbearable. The shadow of a headache was crawling on his forehead, making it difficult for Shinji to concentrate on the simple task of chopping the stupid vegetables properly. He kept trying to blink away the exhaustion, to drive the image of Asuka's tired form, slumped at one of the dining area's tables, eating absently with not so much as a facial expression on her face, away from his mind's eye.

Nothing worked. No matter how many times he tried to ignore it, the worry corroded and simmered inside his chest and the image of her detached attitude and cold eyes did not go away. Shinji tried to immerse himself in his selected method of running away ever since Third Impact had taken his SDAT: he attempted to concentrate on the food and nothing but the food, even going as far as putting the ear-buds in and blasting his classics at full volume; it did not derail his mind, did not make him forget Asuka's tired face.

He was so submerged in the memory of her being quiet, sullen and completely not herself that Shinji barely felt the cold edge of the blade pierce the skin of his thumb. He stopped more out of instinct than shock and lifted the finger for inspection; the cut wasn't deep, merely a scratch that could have been much worse had he not stopped at the moment he had. Yet when it bled, Shinji felt unnaturally cross against the small cut, as if wanting it to be bigger and bleed out more.

He watched the red droplets fall to the chopping board with a glare. Drip, drip, drip, dripping away and into nothingness, just like his life recently; down went the life-blood until the wound started clotting. Why could he not just have cut a piece of finger off completely, so he'd bleed out a bit more and just fucking die already? He did not bother to wash or disinfect it; in fact, he kept working and ignored how the blood stained his apron, fell on the freshly-washed vegetable and dribbled down his hand.

The food that day was bland, barely tasting of anything at all, and he was the first to notice.

Misato said nothing, except she looked at her plate in surprise and took two more bites to confirm her taste buds were not deceiving her. Rei stared questioningly at her own dish for a good twenty seconds, so even if she had wanted to conceal it Shinji would have noticed. Even Pen-Pen squawked at him, apparently insulted for the poor quality of his sardines, but it was Asuka's lack of any reaction whatsoever what truly made it all unbearable for him. She did not complain, did not even see what was being served on her plate, and simply took her utensils and ate without so much as tasting her food. He felt like hitting his head against the table until he lost consciousness.

That same night Asuka quietly announced to him, just as he was about to ask her to please sit so they could talk about what had been going on, that she was moving to a room of her own, the one two doors to his right, for a few nights. It took all of his self-control to not explode at her when she gingerly gathered her pillow and one of his old school shirts and marched out of the room, their room, disappearing behind another door without so much as an explanation. His fists clenched violently when he looked over the bed, their bed, and suddenly felt it was too big for him.

Unsure of whether he wanted to scream out in frustration or roll on the ground and cry, Shinji turned to glare at the digital clock by the nightstand. 8.57pm. Ishikawa would not be available at such a time, but the punching bags had no schedule, and neither did the gymnasium. He was shaking; all of his body was shaking with rage and helplessness. He started hating the red mecha more than he had ever hated his own Evangelion.

The headache which had begun bothering him during his preparation of the bland lunch had long since blossomed; it drove a needle through Shinji's temples every time he shook his head a little, while the back side of his head throbbed along with his every step. Shinji ignored it all, ignored the pain, the headache, the sting of the cut on his thumb, the way the nursed stared worriedly at him when he marched over to the gym's entrance with an unnatural scowl on his face.

The flash of the florescent lights as he entered only worked to worsen both Shinji's headache and his already foul mood. He quickly located the place where the equipment were kept and retrieved his practice gloves, the big boxing ones that weighed him down enough to make him half as fast. He needed weight, needed to blow off steam, like Asuka had done when she had exited the entry plug the last time, only he did not have the luxury of an opponent who fought back. He only had the big, blue bag hanging around the gym at the disturbing images his brain so easily seemed to provide him with.

The anguish and concern were nestling comfortably in his stomach, weighing him down more than any glove or body gear ever could. The exhaustion and lack of sleep were making his body feel itchy and his muscles sore, but he refused to listen to the instincts screaming at him to go to whatever room Asuka was sleeping in and just sit on the floor until she told him what was wrong, regardless of how many days it took. He was too angry and too tired of reaching out only to have his hand bitten.

The first punch felt good when it landed on the bag, yet he was tired enough to throw it wrong and it sent a small jolt of pain through his wrist. It simply fed more wood onto the fire, forcing a snarl out of Shinji's throat when he threw the second. The second one felt really good, and the third felt heavenly. He kept at it until his arms and legs started to hurt, until it was hard to lift them to his face and he was sweating so much he felt as though he'd pass out at any moment. He wanted the punching bag to be his problems; he wanted it to be his father, to be Unit 02, to be… Asuka, so he'd vent out his anger on the true culprits instead of a container filled with sand and cloth. While he sank his fists deep in the material and ignored the stab of pain from his wrist, he sadistically wondered if this was how Asuka had felt as she beat him to a bloody pulp on a weekly basis.

After he showered, Shinji crashed on the large mattress, trying to catch whatever remained of Asuka's scent on the sheets and drifted into a dreamless slumber caused by his fatigue more than anything else. It lasted four hours. At about two or three in the morning he woke with a gasp and once again covered in a layer of cold sweat, making his skin feel clammy and disgusting. The same nightmare of Asuka sneering in his face and telling him it all had been a lie washed over Shinji once more, and no matter how many times he turned or what position he tried on the large bed, he knew there would be no more rest that day, not for him.

When he heard Asuka's scream, muffled and almost imperceptible as it was, Shinji sprang out of bed and ran all the way to her door, but could not find it in himself to enter. His hand stilled at the last second over the button, frozen in mid-air.

He was not scared, for once; he was angry. Angry at Asuka, angry at her for simply walking off without so much as a by-your-leave, an explanation or a word, and leaving him alone and in misery, knowing she was in misery as well. He was angry enough to not walk in while he heard Asuka run to the bathroom and vomit, but he wasn't nearly angry enough to simply walk away.

Resigned to his own cowardice and spite, Shinji sat on the cold ground of NERV's medical ward, hugging his knees to his chest in a futile effort to keep warm, and stood silent guard over Asuka's door, unwilling to enter even when he could hear her cry through the door, yet unwilling to leave her completely alone. The reasoning sounded pathetic and weak to Shinji's own ears, and within the Void the Beast laughed and howled at his cowardice, at his hypocrisy and demanded he be a man and march in there to care for her properly, yet the spite kept him rooted to the floor.

He sat there in misery listening to the muffled cries, unable to swallow down the irritation at her leaving, the faint feeling of betrayal and the sensation that if he did not do something to correct whatever funk they had fallen into, everything they had suffered together would be for naught.

Maybe she just wants her little boy-toy back, the Beast whispered, enjoying his uncertainty and despair. From behind the door, he could hear Asuka shuffling back to her bed, still sniffing from whatever nightmare had just assaulted her senses. Maybe you're just being a dog again, sitting on your ass like a good little boy and waiting for her to put a leash on you again, huh? Shut up. Why won't you do anything? Shut up, you stupid thing. Coward, nothing but a fucking coward in the end. Shinji started biting the inside of his cheek in an attempt to drown out the noise in his head.

Asuka was still moving around in her bed, and if her nightmares were anything like his, there would probably be no more sleep for her that night. Shut up, he whispered into the Void, putting his ear against the door. Make me, it sneered back. I bet if you ask for pity sex you might even get it now, huh? Shut up! Come on, I bet you want to, how many nights now has she slept in your bed? Shit, I bet if you wait a while you could even walk in, jerk off and leave! Just like the good old days!

Shinji tasted blood when he next bit down on the offending cheek, but the Beast seemed to quiet down at last. The dim lights illuminating the hallway just worked to worsen the headache he thought he had managed to get rid of during training, the floor was cold under him. The sting of the cut on his thumb was throbbing, his wrist hurt whenever he moved the left hand in any direction, his head was nothing but a mist of pain and sleeplessness, and yet however much he reasoned with himself, Shinji could not order his body to stop behaving so pathetically and move to comfort the sleeping girl.

All he heard as an answer was his own meek, scared voice, telling him that whatever he had done, he would only make it worse by meddling even more in Asuka's business. He was supposed to give her space and respect her wishes to be left alone, but until when? Until she decided he wasn't worth her time after all, threw his gift in the trashcan and just walked away? When she started hitting him again? When she started using him again?

Or maybe when she falls into another catatonic state, hmm? Inside the Void, the Beast laughed and laughed, the screams and the pain of three billion humans, the legacy of having been God for a mere second, stirred and washed over him, but before they could overcome his own sense of reality, Shinji slapped himself in the face and shook his head for good measure, ignoring the needles pressing against his skull again. If she falls into another coma, will you just sit there and watch like last time? You want us to take it a step further, perhaps? Maybe you want some revenge, am I right? Is that why you won't lift your sorry ass to help her, because of all she did to you in the past? Shut the hell up already! So that's it. You want your payback, you'd rather let her suffer than go back to being her punching bag and stress relief, right? Poetic justice, I believe. Tell me; once she falls into a coma, are you going to rape her? This time, Shinji hit the floor with his bruised hand, letting the jolt of agony be his answer to the smirking Beast in his mind. Don't you even dare say that word again. More laughter reverberated through his head.

Oh, you poor, stupid little wimp. You still don't get it, do you? I am you, you idiot. If I'm thinking this, it means you are, you just don't have enough balls to admit it. You're scared that your precious little redhead is drawing away from you after all the pain she caused you, and you didn't even get a chance to retaliate. For a moment, only a moment, Shinji was able to smell the rancid breath of rotting corpses and feel the Beast's fingers curl around his neck. Either help her, or let me out and let me kill her. The choice is yours, Shinji.

Shut up, Shinji answered hatefully. You'll never put your hands on her, you won't ever hurt her, you understand me? Oh, but you can? You are doing that right now, you know. Hurting her, letting her hurt alone. So what's the difference? My way is faster, just a few seconds of silent struggle and then it's all over. I'll even be a dear and shoot us in the head afterwards, wouldn't you like that? Shut up. You'd like that, wouldn't you? You wouldn't have to do a damn thing, just like during Third Impact.

The same hand hit the steel floor again, silencing the Beast with a sharp burst of pain exploding from his bruised wrist. The sun was beginning to lift the dark cover of night and gloom over the deserted hallways, signaling the beginning of yet another day filled with sadness, worry and misery for him. Asuka could not even say good morning anymore, wouldn't take his hand, wouldn't so much as hint at a reason behind her anger and grief, and he was too tired, too exhausted of always being the one to reach out and be the one to carry the brunt of her rage. Sooner than he thought, considering the pain all around his body, the headache and the stinging sensation on his hand, fatigue began to pull Shinji back into unconsciousness.

"Damn it… damn it, Asuka…"

The morning found Shinji there, head lulled on Asuka's door in a dreamless slumber, ear pressed against the cold metal.

To Be Continued….

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An: Hell Yeah! Another update! And just you wait, gimme a couple of days and I'll give ya another one! Inspiration music and rambles will be enclosed within the next chappie. For ironic reasons, the best reasons, I had to split this boy in half too, got a little too big on me. Still revising, still writing!

A special thank you to the hero who took the time to purge errors and make this chapter more readable. MisterHalt, you legend! Thank you!

Now! Just bear with me a bit more, and maybe part two will magically show up today too!

PEACE.