It feels really great to finish this. I've worked on it for months, it's been with me through a number of life changes, and I'm glad I was able to get it out there for a people to read after feeling, for so long, like I wasn't going to finish anything ever again. And of course I appreciate everyone who has read it as I posted it (and those who might stumble upon it now that it's over). As much as I love writing for writing's sake, it's you -the readers - who make this worth it. So, without further ado -
Enjoy~
"I couldn't bear to have in the house a woman who has the right to be kind to me, to comfort me when things go wrong."
- Johannes Brahms, in a letter
Part 13
This is the second time she has woken up beside her roommate. The light of the morning is harsh, slanting in the bright valley between the bottom of the blinds and the top of the sill. Her head is pounding; it feels like it must've been doing so even as she slept. Like she received unconscious notifications of pain that popped up unceasingly upon waking. She is still curled up, hugging her doll to her chest, and as she returns to the waking world she's grows aware of Rei behind her. Of knees pushed into her thighs, breasts pressed against her back, a face buried in the hair falling over the nape of her neck. Warmth, human warmth like she's never felt it before. She lies there, unsure if this is a horrible nightmare or the birth of some brand new dream. She practices moving her body, stretches her arms high, flexes her digits, extends her legs. She doesn't exactly care if Rei is woken by her movements, but refuses a cathartic moan anyway. Still, she watches one of Rei's bright red eyes opens a crack.
"Let's get this over with." Asuka says. Rei gazes at her unquestioningly.
"I'll go and tell Kaji you're back."
"I'm going too. You'll only be sent back here to get me anyway."
One meeting with the police, one long, thorough exam by the school nurse, and a grueling discussion with her government case worker later, Asuka is guided to her final talk by one of the headmaster's aides, a young man with shorn hair named Hyuga. She's sick of speaking. Tired of all of the interrogations. She thought that being at this school was punishment enough, but if she has to be lectured at one more time she will poke holes in her own eardrums. Her body might as well weigh a ton; she is all but dragging herself through the halls following Hyuga. Rei is a silent soldier beside her.
It's awful to admit how much she needs that.
Rei had been at her side all day, filling in the time between the failure of the search-and-rescue team and the missing spaces in Asuaka's memory about when she was found. Celebrated as a savior, the compliments and praises bounce off of Rei's purposeful bluntness. What a difference it was, having someone to support her, someone in her corner. Asuka's chest spent the day buzzing and vibrating, her heart beating harder whenever Rei answered something, or gave her a meaningful glance in the midst of these questionings. She wouldn't accept the obvious reason for this. Even after the previous night...it was too empty of a world if the only person she could trust didn't think of herself as a person in the first place.
They follow Hyuga into a small office with a sign reading counselor on a plaque beside the door. It's a messy room, especially considering that it's a professional office, and Asuka scoffs as she walks in.
"What a sty," she rolls her eyes.
The desk is strewn with odds and ends, the floor dotted with any number of tissues and paper balls that avoided their fate ending in the trashcan. Hanging on the coat rack were shorts and pants layered like tree boughs. There's a miasma so thick it is almost visible, a familiar scent, some perfume or fragrance someone sprayed out of a hose rather than spritzed, and then topped with cigarette smoke. She wrinkles her nose. There doesn't seem to be anyone in the office, though Asuka can't be sure that there isn't someone hiding behind that coat hanger, or between the messy stacks by the bookshelf.
Hyuga scratches his head, the look of an exasperated parent aging him in spite of his apparent youth. "Geeze, always late, isn't she? I'll go find her. You two wait here."
With little better to do, Asuka plops down in the uncomfortable plastic chair in front of the desk; Rei follows suit, a three-dimensional shadow whose coordination is slowed in the viscous flow of time. More uncomfortable than the chairs is the silence stretched out between them.
"I can't wait for this to be over." Asuka grumbles, crossing her arms over her chest. It's said at, and not necessarily to, Rei, but the other girl answers.
"Have you decided what you're going to do now?"
"That's a good question." the voice comes from behind them - young, laced with the remnants of a dying yawn. "Exactly what I was going to ask."
Asuka turns to the voice to see a woman with long, dark purple hair standing in the doorway. She's wearing a black cocktail dress beneath a shortened red leather jacket, neither article all that appropriate in a school. There's something familiar about her face and hair, that particular shade of purple, and when Rei offers the woman a small nod, it all clicks into place.
"You! You were at Tokyo-3 too." Whatever weakness had stuck around from the day before burns away in the flames of her exasperation and outrage. Everyone - it seems like everyone has been in on the joke that has been her life ever since she'd auditioned for a spot at the Tokyo-3 Conservatory.
"Oh, you remembered! Misato Katsuragi, that's me! Yeah, they - uh let me go. Conductor Ikari isn't the easiest guy to work with." Misato shrugs her shoulder at Rei with a light grimace. "No offense."
"None taken."
"Anyway, Ryoji wanted me to talk with you about what happened."
At the mention of Kaji the familiar scent, that heavy perfume, thick with lavender and cloyingly sweet, is made more clear - on more than one occasion Kaji had smelled like that, clearly not his actual choice of a fragrance, and though she had no hard evidence, Asuka was sure that the two adults had something going on between them. Another joke. She's getting sick of it now, of conspiracies and secrets, of the hidden threads of some unseen net pulling everything around her into a mass of amalgamated bodies.
"You all saw what happened."
"Why is the question. Not what."
"It's not a secret." she scowls, "I'm the best musician in this place, but I'm being forced - tricked - into giving up the thing that makes me better. And look at what it's done! I'm making mistakes! I can't even play right anymore! I might as well just be some nobody out on the street."
She'd stood up somewhere in the midst of her tirade, fists shaking at her sides, but she doesn't notice until Rei's hand - cool and calm and sturdy - is wrapped around her wrist. She stops speaking, glares at the hand like it's a creature she only just discovered, and is unsure about whether or not it's dangerous. She doesn't shake it off.
Asuka continues, "I want out. If I can't play the way I want, then there's no point. I'll make it on my own."
The hand on her wrist goes slack and falls away like cut rope, heavy and useless. Asuka draws in a quick breath. It's surprising how a heart can so suddenly feel pricked and barbed from the smallest actions. It's like the world is made of razor wind and pointed rocks. Asuka steels herself. She can't feel bad; she can't feel anything towards the girl beside her, not if it comes at the cost of her future.
Misato quirks an eyebrow, clearly unimpressed by the impassioned speech. "So that's it? You're just going to quit? Run away?"
"It's not - it's not running away! It's setting off on my own, it's - "
"It's being weak, Asuka." Misato cuts in. The suddenly hard edge to her voice doesn't sound like it belongs there, like she's putting it on, but then, Asuka doesn't actually know this woman. She feels trapped, and it's only a fear of just how much better she actually is compared to how she feels that stops her from turning and running right out of the room.
And if she did, she would have run into Kaji. The man grunts, leaning on the door frame in that overly casual way of his, arms crossed, stubble still at a too-perfect level. Asuka glares at him too - she's had enough of trying to be good, of trying to get on his good side. She's sure it's already too late anyway.
"I wonder," he begins, scratching at his chin, "if you aren't just afraid that if you take our advice on how you play, you might find that you really can play better. Wouldn't that mean that, up til now, you haven't been playing your best?"
The words hurt like being pelted with ice, cold and bruising, clear enough to see that they are what they are. She glares at the messy floor. Not a word comes to her tongue, not a sound flutters up her throat. Those words weren't the truth when she could write them off as her own delusions. Ignore them, the way she ignores other genuine emotions to undercut them instead with manufactured anger and discontent. But hearing them out loud, seeing that she, in fact, could hide nothing from these people - that she was little more than an actress among them, rather than a musician - it silences Asuka. Removes any trace of confidence or the chance of escaping from this awful situation gracefully.
"Thank you, but I think I have this handled." Misato points at Kaji, who shrugs.
"I'm just here for moral support." He quips. He takes a cigarette out of the pack in the pocket of his shirt before sighing, remembering where he is. "Rei," he says, placing the thing back in the box. "What do you think of all this?"
Rei folds her hands in her lap, seems to contemplate their folds and faults. Her lack of an answer creates a vacuum in the room, drawing attention into the void of wordlessness. Asuka's heart beats against her ribcage like a prisoner slamming his hand on plate glass. She wants to know the answer. In that moment she has never wanted anything more.
"I believe that Asuka ought to do what she thinks is best for herself."
"You're an idiot, Ayanami. " Asuka shakes her head. She doesn't know what she was hoping for, but immediately knows that that wasn't it. Maybe she was hoping for direction. Maybe she was hoping to be saved.
"I'm leaving. I don't need this place. I'll make it on my own." she glares at each of the other people in turn unflinchingly, then leaves the room and tries to leave her feelings behind too.
Asuka knows her own scent now. Normally it is one of those particular parts of your own chemistry that is unknowable, except in those times when you return to old, familiar places - places that were once yours - homes and cars, bedrooms - when what hits you, before nostalgia and homesickness, is the particular scent you carry around. An identifier. An aspect of yourself. A secret.
But she knows it now, because it is the lingering scent beneath what she knows to be Rei's. That almost sterile, aquatic thing of lavender and silver water and the pale light of the moon. And Rei is there, all over Asuka's pillow, under her blanket, coating the thin sheets she's rolling up into a ball to throw into that box at the foot of her bed, the one she never finished unpacking as if she knew the whole time that she'd leave, that this school would be a temporary place. The scent is in her own hair, it's all over her own clothing. She didn't want to find out her own this way. She didn't want to remember Rei through any of this.
Asuka leaves her school uniforms lying on her bed like starch-white snake skins. The teal skirts are unflattering and wide. She wouldn't need them anymore, never liked them in the first place. She feels more like herself as she steps into a pair of tight navy-dark jeans and dons a cherry-red track jacket. Shedding this cursed place with every action. Shedding herself, the self stained by the walls and the mildew scent and the stares. Shedding Rei.
Rei hadn't moved after Asuka declared her plan. She is likely still sitting in that chair now, staring dumbly at her own hands as if they ever had the power to do anything at all. Asuka bets that Misato and Kaji are laughing, glad to be rid of her. Well, whatever. She's taking her genius with her.
Asuka packs her doll last. Places it at the top of the pile in the box, and she watches the light reflected from the window fade away out of those black button eyes as she closes the box's flap and seals it with tape.
"Asuka."
Rei's voice come from the doorway, that same-old soft pitch without its steadiness, wavering like tassels. A twitch in Asuka's stomach wants her to answer. She doesn't. She checks the wardrobe that had once separated their halves of the room for anything she might have left.
"Asuka."
The voice is closer now. Not directly behind her - Rei has always had the good sense not to get too close when Asuka is angry, the proper instinct that Asuka's an animal with a biting maw and ready talons. She's closer, though. Asuka can feel her presence, the one that, not so long before, she didn't even think existed. She still does not answer. Slams the wardrobe doors shut, flicks her hair out and knocks against Rei's shoulder on her way to leave the room.
"Asuka Langley Soryu. Please, answer me."
"What?! What, Rei? What do you want?"
"I want you to stay."
It wasn't what Asuka had been asking, but she's tossed nonetheless, like a battering ram impacted her ribcage. The sound of Rei's footsteps, the flat slap against the floor, are all she can hear before the soft pressure of Rei's hand settles itself on her shoulder.
"You don't mean that. You don't want anything. You're nobody, Rei, You said it yourself."
Rei's face twists up in hurt more openly than ever before. Her hand falters on Asuka's shoulder. It falters, but only for a moment. She adds her other hand to Asuka's other shoulder, pulls Asuka in closer. That scent is back now, overwhelming. She sees herself reflected back in the facets of Rei's ruby eyes. There's desperation there. She's unsure if it's hers or Rei's.
"I was nobody. Maybe I still am. But you have helped me to discover what I want, Asuka. And what I need."
"No one needs me! Not my mother, not my father, not Tokyo-3, not this school - no one. So don't you lie to me, Rei"
The tears come now, without her control and without her desire. She's burning up, gripping Rei's shoulders in the same way that Rei's gripping hers. Curls her fingers into the muscle and skin until she sees Rei flinch. She wants to show Rei all the pain that's been stuffed into her body. She wants to give it to Rei, to give it all away and find the her that lies beneath it, a stranger even to herself.
"I am the only thing I need." Asuka growls.
"I want you to need me too." Rei answers. She seems to be giving up, her arms losing their strength, and Asuka feels it, fears it, because if this is all some lie, some trick... But Rei pulls her in close, presses her forehead against Asuka's, like a child leaning against a window to watch the snow.
There has always been a hole in Asuka's heart. She feels it in those moments when anger and discontent recedes, when the ocean of her own sadness escapes this hole. She feels it now pouring out at the edges, washing her voice down into the nothingness at her center where everything real in her lies.
"You're an awful liar, Rei."
"I am correcting a lie right now. Do not do what you think you ought to. Do what I want you to do."
Tremors run through Asuka's body like they're racing to her heart. She grips the side of Rei's face. Smashes her lips against Rei's, repeating a mistake she swore never to make again. And this time, Rei is not so passive. Her lips move against Asuka's with a desire that seemed impossible in Rei, and one that doesn't lie. Rei is delicious. She's never thought that about a person before but it's all she thinks now - the girl's lips are chapped and unevenly wet, and she's an amateur at this, but she tastes - she tastes like Rei ought to taste.
They pull apart. Asuka, on instinct, licks her lips.
She drops her backpack to the floor.
She drops herself to the floor.
"Will you stay, Asuka?"
Rei kneels down in front of the girl. Leaves breeze-light kisses on her forehead, on her cheeks, her ears, her nose. Her hands - the backs and the palms, her fingers, the fingertips each one at a time. They burn. Everywhere that Rei touches burns. Bright white, blinding, eating away at every inch of her. She can't think. She doesn't want to feel anymore. Her breathing is shallow, sharp. Sweet.
"Will you?"
Part 14
Tokyo-3, the grand jewel of Japan, offers every one of its avenues to Asuka to plunder as she sees fit. It's not a futuristic city, but a strikingly modern one utilizing the the very best of mankind's engineering to be the safest, most customizable city mankind has ever seen. A necessary change, a growth after old Tokyo disappeared overnight in an apocalyptic natural disaster. Old Tokyo didn't have skyscrapers that could respond to tsunami and typhoons by disappearing beneath the ground, or fully collapsible, modifiable lanes and highways to weather the worst of an earthquake. She feels safe here, at least physically. All of the glass and steel - fragile and brittle though they seem, gives Asuka a taste of progress that Hakone lacks.
It's the summer and Asuka is free. She strides through the streets of the city with a sense direction and confidence few around her match. She's not running through the crowds, chased by the clock or some social nervousness. Her shoulders are straight, her back strong, her chin held high.
A cloudless blue sky has made the entire world an infinite expanse in her eyes, though it also allows the sun to beat down like a pile driver of heat. She's glad that the yellow sundress and hay-white straw hat give freedom and airiness in equal measure. A water bottle sweats in her hand. She checks her phone for the time. There's a good hour left, long enough to pop into the coffee shop on the corner for something sweet and cold and altogether too expensive.
She steps out of the heat and into the artificial arctic air of the cafe. It's busy, but she squeezes her way past loiterers and customers waiting at the service counter to get their orders. The coffee shop's decor is insecurely chic, confused if it is pushing the limit with its sleek table sets, all lightweight aluminum and new age wood veneers, or setting a classic mood in the corners where timeless, comfortable leather recliners wait to engulf customers with upholstered softness.
She reaches the front of the line with her order at the tip of her tongue when she is hit with a wave of familiarity as her eyes meet the barrista's. Behind her, people in the line shuffle in place awaiting their turn. A child cries somewhere in the dining area. A man on a bicycle flashes past the large windows.
"I know you." Asuka says. The girl behind the counter looks at her questioningly before something of a practiced smile spreads across her face.
"Oh!" she exclaims, "How have you been? It's...hmm, it's Asuka, right?"
Asuka doesn't even pretend to know the girl's name. Thankfully, she wears a name tag.
"Hikari," she nods. "We auditioned on the same day."
"How's the Tokyo-3 Conservatory? How are you? Did you - "
"Hey! Get a move on!" a voice calls from the line. Asuka glares at the man, but Hikari bows in apology, a serious expression to match.
"My apologies, sir. Asuka, why don't I take your order and then I'll go on break in a few minutes and I'll meet you?"
Asuka sits on one of the sleek, uncomfortable chairs and questions her decisions as she does so. She doesn't want to see this Hikari girl, barely recognized her, but in the past few months she's been attempting to, if not calm down, at least be a little kinder. A little more controlled. She slurps the frozen drink. Ignores the stares from the people at the nearest tables.
"Sorry I took so long," Hikari casually unties the green apron she's wearing, then drapes it atop the chair she takes a seat on. Her freckles are dark and dotted against her wide, smiling cheeks.
"Anyway, how are you?"
"I'm fine. Better than fine." she answers, never one to keep from bragging. Even unintentionally. "You?"
"Oh, I'm alright, I - "
"Did you get into Tokyo-3 Conservatory after you auditioned?" the question slips through Asuka's teeth. It's the one tenuous connection she has to this girl, painful or not.
Confusion, and then a kind of pleasant recognition, show themselves on Hikari's face.
"Oh, no," she laughs. "That one judge was so frightening! The big man. I'm sure you know the one. I tried my best, but I suppose it wasn't meant to be." She says, smiling down at her hands. "I'm in a general high school now. but I joined the band anyway. I can't really get away from music, you know? And now I can still help my family out at home."
"How are you working here anyway? Neither of us are working ag - "
"Shh, shhh!" Hikari covers Asuka's mouth with her hand. "I might have fudged the numbers a bit, but we really need the extra income, so..." Hikari looks around the room to see if any of her coworkers have heard, but calm downs when she sees the rest of them aren't paying attention to her. "As a bribe," she giggles, "I'll give you a discount. I'm sure you come here often, seeing as how the Tokyo-3 Conservatory is so close by."
Asuka almost lies. She considers it, sees the situation play out in her head in real time as if she's living it there and then. The praise she'd receive. The hidden envy. But she's trying to be good about this too, lying less. Being more truthful to herself and others. "I didn't get into Tokyo-3."
"Wait, really?" Hikari asks, genuine surprise in her voice. "You know, I looked you up online after that audition. You just seemed so confident, and you mentioned something about Germany...I watched a video of you playing there, in Germany. You really are something special. It's surprising that you weren't accepted."
"Let's just say that the option was never there in the first place." Asuka says through gritted teeth. She squeezes the drink in her hand and only realizes what she's doing when some of the icy liquid spills over the lip of the covered cup and all over her hand. She takes a deep breath, wipes her fingers off with a napkin, sucks off the rest. "But I don't need that place to be great. Watch - you'll see me in five years headlining a world tour."
Most of Asuka actually believes this and whatever in her doubts it. is, like a dangerous bacteria, being fought each moment of each day by her mental immune system.
Some days are better. Some are worse.
"I believe it," Hikari nods. She checks her phone, gives a little wink of apology. "Sorry, I don't have a lot of time. What school accepted you, then?"
"Hakone School of the Arts," she rolls her eyes. Over at the pick-up counter, a man grabs for his coffee but knocks it over. Hot coffee, a whole black river of it, pours down the lip of the counter and slaps on the floor in a waterfall.
"I think I ought to help them clean up. I have to be a star employee, like I'm a great class rep!" Hikari stands up, slings her apron back on as if it's a superhero's cape. "It was nice seeing you again, Asuka. Stop by sometime if you're in the area."
"Yeah," she takes a sip, gets up from the table too. "I'll see you around."
Hikari returns to the real world. Asuka leaves for one where she makes the rules.
She checks her phone again and curses under her breath at the few minutes she has left to make it. She pushes her way through the crowded streets, catches a flash of blue she knows instinctively now, but it's only the sky, peeking through the tinniest space of a down-hill alley between buildings. It's an unforgettable blue, tied so closely with Rei in her head that she has no control over how her heart skips in response. It's stupid. Unnecessary. Distracting.
She walks faster.
Like a shining beacon, the stairway leading to the pedestrian overpass crossing before the Tokyo-3 Conservatory building and its curved waves of steel and glass comes into view. They seem to lead up to the sky itself, the blue flat against the height of the landing. Asuka jogs the steps two at a time. She wipes the sweat from her forehead at the top, takes a sip of the remains of her water bottle.
"You're late."
Sitting on a bench, flipping through a book, Rei tilts her head up at the sound of Asuka's steps. The light seems to bend around her. To flicker and fade, highlighting the blue of her hair and the red of her eyes and the moon-pale skin until, even doing something as simple as reading a book, she appears sylph-like - sifting into the sunlight itself. Asuka's swallows thickly.
"I'm not late. You guys can't start without me. I'm the leader here, after all."
The way her heart beats when Rei smiles should be criminal it breaks so many speeding records. She marches forward to the girl, a woman on a mission. Places one leg on the bench and leans forward into Rei's space. Grasps the book in her hand.
"Put the book down when I show up, Rei."
"Will you make me?"
Rei smirks - she actually smirks, and Asuka can't help but to pull the girl in firmly by the chin and kiss her hard. Deep. This is a taste she hadn't yet grown bored of, hoped that she never would. It hadn't happened in the months since she decided to stay. Since she and Rei had begun opening up to one another until there was nothing left unknown between them. Unspoken, perhaps. But not unknown. This smirk is just one consequence of Rei's growth from muted tones to vibrancy, just as Asuka's attempts at kindness and self control are.
When she pulls away - her fingers trailing the soft skin of Rei's face before her hand drops - she asks, "Where are the boys?"
"A little ways down, closer to the Conservatory. They're setting things up now."
"And you got away without helping?"
"As did you. My job was waiting for your arrival."
"I had to see my case worker," Asuka flicks her hair, "Actual work. Boring. That guy is so stuffy."
Rei stands up and holds her book against her side, face expectant and softly smiling. For the majority of the time Asuka has known her, Rei's default expression has been little more than a flat, reserved blankness, Asuka finds that she gets a thrill seeing any new expression at all on Rei's face. There's a library there, pages and pages, covers and covers, waiting to be explored and discovered, treasured and categorized: happy Rei, her smile wide and bright; sorrowful Rei, with glassy eyes and trembling lips; lustful Rei, burning red and pouting sensually. Asuka takes pride in knowing that she is the only person to see Rei make that last face. There, in the twin beds they pushed together, lying among a nest of blankets and pillows, aglow in the soft light of a lamp covered with a thin red t-shirt that throws the room into the color of a beating heart. Willing. Accepting. Hers.
But those aren't thoughts she should be thinking right now, and they aren't feelings she wants Rei to catch onto. Gotta keep up the hard exterior she's forged, at least out here under the sun.
"Come on, we should help those idiots." Asuka says. Rei nods. Without words, without even conscious thought, they each reach out to grasp the others' hand. The heat and humidity clearly make this a bad idea in less than a few moments, but she's not going to drop Rei's hand, not now. The girl accepts her. Maybe she was the first person to ever do that - her skills, her attitude, her issues - Rei didn't look away from any of it and Asuka wasn't about to let her.
Shinji and Kaworu are awash in the bright sunlight reflecting off of the railings of the overpass, of the curved glass of the Conservatory building before them, of the powdered black music stands and beige folding chairs they're setting up. In a way, they too seem unreal, like their continued existence has only been a figment of Asuka's psyche, brought to bear whenever she needs subjects she can roll her eyes at. They are real, though. She isn't sure she wants to be the one to invent a coward like Shinji. The boy waves to both of them, though, and even offers his sister a direct and joyful smile. Little steps paving a path to better relations. Maybe he isn't a complete coward.
It helps that Rei hasn't spoken to Gendo in months.
"How'd your meeting go, Asuka?" Shinji asks.
"It's none of your business, is it?" then she shrugs, feeling the side-eye Rei throws her way. The silent pressure of it, the welcome weight of expectation. "Fine, I guess. I can return to Hakone with the rest of you when the semester starts. Apparently I'm not a 'flight-risk' any more."
"I never thought I'd hear you be happy about being at Hakone." Kaworu, flipping through sheet music, looks at Asuka without even hiding his smirk.
"If I left Hakone, there wouldn't be a single worthwhile talent in the place."
"I see. I'm always so impressed by your confidence, Asuka. Truly astounding to me. I almost wish dear Shinji here had even a tenth of that."
"H-hey!"
Beside her, Rei giggles and the sound brings out Asuka's own snort of a laugh. It feels right. More than she ever could have imagined, it feels right to be here among these people. Friends, even if she won't call them that to their faces. She's glad she stayed. Glad she was convinced to stay with kisses as bribes. She's certainly paid them all back in full.
Asuka hadn't anywhere to go back to in the winter between their first and second semesters, cornered by her own fractal psyche and the lack of a place to belong, It was not charity she wanted to accept, but she could hardly turn down Misato when she offered to let her stay there until the dorms reopened. Rei, too, stayed with Misato, abandoned by and personally abandoning Gendo following the catastrophic music show. And despite her greatest fears - of boredom and anxiety, antsy skin and disrespectful glares - , things went well. Domesticity calmed Asuka in a way that the high-profile life she lived with her globe-trotting, emotionally frustrating mother never did. The effect was so great her caseworker let her stay at the school with the express concession that Misato took guardianship of the girl. She did so gladly.
"Alright, conductor Kaji wants us to film the entire time we play here. Our choice of doing it in front of the Conservatory is, I anticipate, going to give us a bit of an edge on the live-recital films the other chamber groups in class will have, so let's make sure everyone is in their right place in the frame." Kaworu says after he stops laughing. He leans down into a black duffel bag to pick up a tripod and from a canvas bag slung across his body he pulls a small video camera.
"Let's get this out of the way. There's no point to summer homework for students like us." Asuka rolls her eyes. "We're good enough not to need it."
"We haven't had much of a chance to see each other since the summer began. This is a nice opportunity for that, I believe." Rei offers.
"I see you every day, Rei."
"I was talking about the entire group."
"I don't care about the entire group."
"I can tell when you are lying. You know that well, don't you?"
The heat blazing her cheeks has little to do with the weather. Asuka stomps over to where the boys have carefully placed their instruments - Kaworu using a plastic keyboard - and finds her violin. The cherrywood color almost matches her burnished hair. The tang of the red-orange is the same. She knows - has known for a while that she can't lie to Rei.
She's immensely happy about it.
It was Asuka's idea to play here in a place where all of the students and faculty of the Tokyo-3 Conservatory could hear it all, could see the four of them underneath the bright sun, elevated high above the road. A last insult. A final send-off to a place that shunned her and hurt Rei, that crushed Shinji and abandoned Kaworu. A place they didn't need. A place she no longer wanted.
"Alright, a little to the left, Asuka. Rei, make sure you stand straighter. Shinji?" Kaworu pokes his head out from the camera's viewfinder, winks. "Perfect, as always."
"Kaworu!"
Close as it is to the building, the overpass is still too far to see inside the windows from where they stand; the glass making up the walls is wine-dark and reflective. Asuka likes to think she can feel Gendo behind the glass, stern-faced. Pissed. She hopes he is. She lifts her bow, clears her voice.
"Are you all ready? On my count. 1, 2, 3 - "
She brings the bow across the strings. Holds back the innate fire in her heart and plays the piece in the pace it demands, rather than the one her body begs for. She's been practicing for months now. It's still difficult. Still impossible to hold the fire in her hands. But she tries anyway; failure is only a stone on the path to perfection.
A crowd begins to form - first around them, on the overpass, and then below them, pouring out from the Conservatory building. Students look up at them, heads tilted, ears open. The pressure mounts in her muscles as the desire to just go all out, to explode in movement and brightness, is all she can feel. But she doesn't. She won't. Bizet's Piano Quartet No. 1 Op 15 deserves better. She, Rei, the listeners - everyone deserves better.
Her finger slips on one of the strings and the wrong note tumbles off the violin. Time stands still like it's waiting for Asuka to react, as if it has taken a backseat in the ride of reality. She is thrown off for a second at the mercy of her runaway heart. A panic builds, but she breaths deeply and glances side-eyed at Rei. Rei looks back, smiles softly. Another deep breath. She will not give up. She will not run away.
Asuka is trying. It's more than she can say about what she did before.
She listens for Rei beneath all the music. Hears her own notes curling around Rei's. Leading the sound, leading the group. They play on into the shining blue day with true joy There will be bigger stages in the future. But this might be a good starting point, she thinks.
It will be a good starting point, she knows, on her way to Perfection. And she's glad - maddeningly glad - to take Rei along into that glowing beyond.
I've learned my lesson - I won't claim to be writing anything specific for any specific series/fandom - but I definitely won't quit. And hey, maybe I'll finish some of the stories from last spring/summer that I felt I just couldn't now that this is over.
Thanks for reading!
Reviews, criticisms, and responses are all welcome!