She hates letting go.

For her letting go means accepting defeat, rolling on your back and giving up without a fight.

She will never do that; she is prideful, and she is full of herself; she is brash and inconsiderate; she holds onto the things that she likes and never let's go because for her, letting go has never been an option.

Which doesn't mean to say she hasn't done it before; she has let go more than once.

"No!!"

Her mother; she will never forget how she felt her presence slipping away slowly, washing away, thinning away just with the passage of time, the same way paint slowly ships away to show the moldy, crusty underside, black and filthy and forgotten.

"NO!! Get out of my head!!"

Kaji; she thinks if it's possible to let go of something you never really had; Kaji was like a stray cat on all accounts; he chose her as much as she accepted him, but he was never hers, he was Misato's. Still, she held onto him for as long as she could, until he too slipped away.

"DON'T RAPE MY MIND" "I DON'T WANT TO REMEMBER!!!!"

So she fights today, she fights will all her passion and all her heart and as she sees the white light approaching, she has fear in her heart and does not want to let go because letting go means giving up and she does not want to give up.

"GET OUT OF MY HEAD!!!"

Because the last piece of her personality present before it slowly slips away with the bright light from the angel is the hidden, whispering feelings she has for Shinji.

And the shame and the failure she faces whenever she wishes to make him understand.

"DON'T MAKE ME REMEMBER!!!!"

And that one hurts letting go of the most.

----- -----

She loves her Neural clips.

Before they became a symbol of who she was, they were a symbol of who she had been.

"Let me give you something." She said, as she picked a box from her room, and took out a pair of red horn-like things and clipped them on her hair.

Her mother had come with the device and the design, and she had been the first one to use those red A-10 Neural clips, she had worked countless hours over them; every painstakingly detail considered by her brilliant mind. She had been the first one to wear them to verify their functionality; their weight, how comfortable they were and it's maximum range. ("All right Schatz, tell Mamma if you can hear her inside your head.")

"What's that Schatz? A picture of Mamma?" She said smiling, picking the crude drawing from the eager hand of the small redheaded imp with blue eyes.

It was all she had left of her mother, and the first time she wore them she could still "hear" the residual echo of her mother's Last thoughts; it was like hearing some one speak thru a thick glass window, she could make the sounds, but not the words.

"Is that mamma? She looks like a devil." She said smiling, as the small girl simply nodded, giggling at that.

Later, they became a part of her, almost like her very self; the defined her for who she was, not her actions, not her words; those small plastic berets were her real identity, her ideal self; they were what moved the Eva, what made her the pilot, what set her apart from the rest of the world. ("Look Mama!! I've been chosen! I'm going to be an elite pilot!")

She knew it was supposed to be her because of the bright red colored hair, and the deep red horns on top of her head. Smiling as she looked at her daughter's reflection on the mirror.

And then, they also became the symbol of herself; during instrumentality an infinite number of worlds were created, all of them different, all unique. They all have one single unifying rule. She was always wearing them.

"Do you like them?" she asked the child who simply nodded.

She also always ended up with him.

"Go on and play with Kotomi, Mai." Asuka said as Misato's daughter came barging in, looking almost like a miniature version of her mom, down to the mauve hair.

And now, for her, she will gladly give a piece of herself to make her complete.

----- -----

AN: The love part was meant as a homage to Him0nky2012's "Neural Clips" (Beautiful story, really), with the hijacking of Mai Ikari and Kotomi Katsuragi (for those who have no clue, it's from the Happy end of Eva doujinshi by Pengel; the names from last chapter are Terri from Axel Terrizaki's "The child of Love" and Kami from Studio Kimigabuchi's "Re-Take After")