I don't own Evangelion, but I did acquire the rights to one of the characters!...SEELE 05. Damn it. I always get the worst luck. Well, anyways, I believe I've already made it quite clear that where I take this story is wherever it strikes me as interesting to take it, so there you go. I won't say don't complain, because that'd be no fun.

"Listen up little bitchlings, I'm running another test on you!" Dr. Akagi roared through her mike. "We're stuffing your whiney asses in the Evas this time, and we'll be experimenting with an entirely different LCL circulation method."

"Is that so? Please, call me when an Angel attacks, it's so much less dire and I simply can't take the stress!" Asuka retorted, bored with the procedure and still mightily miffed over the day's previous happenings.

"Why the hell would I call you if an Angel attacked? What'll you do, yell at it till it slit its wrists? You certainly wouldn't be able to kill it!"

"Shut up! Why don't you go home and play with your lil' pet puss? That is unless she's working late today."

It was well known that Ritsuko had quit smoking a few days earlier, so no one really paid the proceedings much heed. Shinji could see Asuka's temper reaching critical levels, and he was far from thrilled.

Ritsuko continued, a little out of breath. "Just so you know, Frau Skankenheimer, this LCL circulation could change the entire way that your mind connects to the Eva's. This might even be more important than the new fabric we put in your plug suits. Who knows, it might be dangerous. Which, bye the way, is why Rei won't be doing this."

"Well thank goodness," Shinji replied. "I'd hate to see Rei get hurt, but if she's not here I guess we can go on."

Eva armor hides the eyebrows completely, so no one really noticed the nervous tick that Asuka started flashing. She caught Shinji entirely by surprise with the bloody roar that emanated from her comm-channel…and Eva.

"YOU WORTHLESS IDIOT!" she screamed, before losing all self-restraint. Screaming across the sky, Unit 02's colossal foot careened with world-crushing force into the purple crotch that Shinji's mind, body and soul had attached itself to.

...

...

.

That sure was one hell of a day. I'd been having such a nice dream, but it went downhill from there until Asuka kicked me in the nads while we were in the Evas. Then I had another strange trip in Unit 01, those were always crazy. All in all though, it was really just another unremarkable day from before. Boring for the most part, seasoned with plenty of me being punished for her being a horrible human being.

I've been thinking about the past a lot lately. The better times, the worse. But they aren't real to me anymore, they're like a tv show that I once saw. It's not like there's much else to do though, or anything else to think about. It makes me feel a little better if I think about how horrible she was. She was terrible. I'm scum; she was a bitch, she was my punishment, there's no other explanation. That's why she was here. The only one here, besides me. Why she can't go away even when I go back or go ahead.

I'm so damn confused. Everything had just gone mad, and then I went away…I was finally full, but so much so that I couldn't even know why…so I was empty again.

I didn't want to be there, like that. I wanted the real world; you can imagine my disappointment waking up in Hell.

I don't know how else to describe it here. There's no ungodly darkness, no flames, but there are demons. What I do see around me is Infinite. I can see everything before me, and everything behind, all the world and all of me, all of it here by the sea in the place that God has left me. I hate it.

I was hoping for Earth. My Earth, that lived. Misato's apartment, school, NERV, Tokyo-3, all that. I wouldn't have really minded waking up in Unit 01; I don't like it, and I knew that I wouldn't necessarily like what was to come, but at least that would've made sense. Instead I've got what was left over from mankind's only dream.

I'd really been all over for awhile, you have to understand. I'd seen things that just aren't supposed to be, and now I'm here. I think it's over, but it could be a dream that you wake up from only to discover that it hasn't let go of you yet, that waking up was just one more part of it.

It seems like a dream, because it can't be true. I'm now willing to accept a sky of blood, and the head of my Maker looming dead on the horizon, but I simply can't believe that Asuka would be here with me.

Look out over the water, for just a moment I think I see Rei. But I still don't know if it is real, so there has to be a test. Before when I had been gone from the world, I'd strangled her. I took her beautiful, delicate neck between my claws and clenched, wanting to destroy her. I squeezed, I crushed. She had just stared.

So I crawl over to her. I kneel down on top of her, bowing down for my final prayer to reality. So again I loom over her and sin. I wrap my hands around her throat and press down. I tighten my grip, I press. And she's reaching up and touching me. She's touching me, her hand is caressing my cheek. She's not just staring; in fact she's not even looking at me. So I think I should cry. I can't really say that I'm crying because of what she's doing, or what I'm doing. At that point, I'm just crying.

"…How disgusting."

She's right.

Nothing has changed. Not around me: the sky, the water, the land, the world is static. Not her. I'd just been thinking about…things, and now I've come to my senses and realized what was going on. I had finally shown God that Man wasn't going to make it, and for my sacrifice He had, in his infinite mercy, brought them to Heaven with Him. But sacrifices don't get the rewards; if they did, they wouldn't mean anything. There had to be a scapegoat, someone to blame for Man's weakness, someone to suffer the punishment of giving up. I got to pick my damnation, and in my foolishness I picked this one. Jokes about choosing that sort of thing were a lot funnier when the Devil gives a little tour of Hell and the guy ends up giving a blow job or swimming in shit for eternity. Or I guess they were really funnier because they weren't happening to me.

Asuka told me to find some wood for a fire, but the wood wouldn't burn. She told me that I'm worthless, and now she's crying. Now here's a quandary. How about I put my arm around her. Might as well try something new, it's not like it matters anymore.

"Get away from me."

I guess not. Looks like I was right all along, she really doesn't want me.

She really knows how to get to me. Not Asuka-of course, she does; there are no days here, but we've been here for far more moments than I can fathom and we aren't getting along-that's not who I'm talking about. I mean my warden. My judge, my executioner, whatever she is to me. Rei, the one who must have delivered me here. When I saw her, I don't know if she was leaving me here, or if I was just catching her watching me. Like Misato said, it hurts me more when I hurt others, though it still hurts when they hurt me. That's why Asuka is included. So I can hurt her by her being here, and so that she can hurt me. I chose pain, and Rei is giving it to me.

Now what I'm not totally sure about is if there's a way out. I know that if I start walking down the beach, or swimming into the…stuff…or going inland, I'd still be here. And this will probably last for eternity. Time is sort of different when you're alone: I said that I can see all before me, and it's kind of like that. I can feel the future, the past, because it all runs together and back again when it has nothing to distinguish it, and when it's all me alone. Asuka is real, but she's just another part of that which isn't me now. That's what I chose.

But that could just be if I accept this. Before I had been given the option to accept or decline; in NERV, in Unit 01, in the Womb. Maybe I could again. This is my destiny, what God has allotted for me, but fuck it. Blasphemy is in my blood, after all.

I approached her. "Asuka!"

She looked up at me. Aside from when we had fought a few times, we weren't usually very loud, because there was no reason.

"What do you want?"

I answered her with my hands. For the third time in what is not my life, I put them around her neck and throttled her. Not out of anger, not out of desperation, but finally for something real. This time I really hated her. I couldn't be with her anymore, because I wasn't going to accept her as my curse. She was everything that was pain for me, so much that even looking at her made my heart hurt. I can say with unwavering faith that I truly hate Asuka Langely Sohryu.

And for the first time, she reacts with something real. This time she was scared, she was angry, and she was grasping for life. I guess we'd finally come to an understanding.

That was her weakness though. She fought for her life, while I knew that such a thing was worthless. I was fighting for so much more. She was able to wrest my hands from her neck, but I wasn't done. She kicked and scratched and hit and bit, but it all amounted to nothing. We rolled in the sand fighting, and some of those blows she gave me really, really hurt, but it didn't matter. I knew I was doing the same to her. I had rammed my knee into her stomach and she was entirely without breath, so I stood up and grabbed her by her hair. Long, lovely red hair, but it was matted and tangled by then. I drug her through the sand to the sea's edge and flung her in. She tried to regain her footing, but I lunged at her and pushed her back down. I took hold of her arm to keep her under me, and the stood on her, one foot pressing her face down into the sand under the water, another planted on her back. She struggled, but she was already out of breath and her gasping only filled her lungs with the stuff. Eventually her movements started to slow, and finally they stopped altogether as I felt her life disappear from beneath my heel.

But then something unexpected happened. Her body kind of dissolved. I guess that's what happened to everybody before. It turned into LCL and further polluted the water. Interestingly enough, the part of her arm that I held remained intact from where it was in contact with the water.

And that was it for her.

Before I had Asuka as the only feature of the beach. I figured that once I'd gotten rid of her it'd be better. I would at least have Hell to myself. It isn't. Her arm is really all I've got now. It's more quiet, but I admit that it's lonelier. I didn't know how much bad company was still company. Privacy is overrated.

I've been here for a long time.