Chapter 7
While Asuka was easily able to bear the weight of an unconscious boy on her back on the way home, having to climb seven flights of stairs with said burden was what left her exhausted by the time they reached Misato's apartment. Even so, Asuka refused to put him down, leaving Misato to struggle alone with the electronically operated door.
Misato didn't seem to mind the lack of assistance, and it only took her a minute to shove the door open far enough to admit all three of them. She turned around to call Asuka over, only to see her frowning while staring at Shinji's face. The call died on her lips, and Misato instead walked over to to the girl and patted her on the back to get her attention.
"Come on, let's get him into his room," she quietly said.
They both entered the apartment, Asuka walking sideways so as not to hit the boy's head on the wall in the narrow corridor leading to the kitchen and dining room. She was still so focused on Shinji that she didn't notice her guardian halt next to the dining table, and almost bumped into her.
"Well, I guess you were kind of right, Asuka. Shinji was certainly here at one point," Misato dryly remarked. "This place is much too clean for the apocalypse. I'd probably go so far as to say it's cleaner than it's ever been."
Indeed, the apartment was almost immaculate. The only time it had ever looked like this, even after Shinji's arrival, was when Misato had first stepped through the door. Even now, after however long it had been since Shinji cleaned the place, the air still faintly smelled like lemons.
Tiring of being stuck behind her, Asuka eventually nudged Misato with Shinji's foot. The major quickly turned around and apologised before getting out of her way. Asuka just sighed and shook her head as she continued through the apartment, pointedly not looking into her own room when she reached the doorway to Shinji's bedroom.
Shinji was gently placed on his bed, and Asuka stood up, closing her eyes and stretching to ease the aches in her body. Her hand bumped something and she opened her eyes.
'Mein Gott,' she thought as she looked around the room. 'I never noticed just how tiny this room is.'
Just by stretching her arms out to either side of her, Asuka could almost touch two opposing walls in the closet that had become Shinji's bedroom after her arrival in Japan. The shelves hadn't been moved out when he had moved in, and those combined with the bed took up the majority of the improvised bedroom. Eventually she turned back to look at Shinji's sleeping form.
'And he didn't even put up a fight when I kicked him out of his old room. There's not even a freaking window in here!'
Her temper flared slightly as the memory of the Third Child's passivity surfaced, but she quashed it simply by focusing on the unconscious boy's troubled-looking face. It was almost impossible to be truly angry at him now. Whenever she did that expression would come to mind, the one that so often appeared in her dreams as of late. The look of a boy who had been pushed down so many times he stopped trying to get back up. The look of a dog that had been kicked time and time again and didn't know what it was being punished for. The look of-
The sound of someone clearing their throat turned Asuka's head to the doorway, where Misato was leaning against the frame. She had spent the last minute or so watching the girl, noticing how her fist had clenched before slowly unfurling.
"We should both get to bed too, Asuka," Misato said. "It's been a long day and we both could do with a good night's sleep."
Asuka nodded and made to leave the room, but a hand in the way from Misato stopped her.
"You should know that I left your room exactly as you left it. It's your job to clean it up." The woman was not looking at Asuka, her eyes focused on the boy on the bed. Asuka merely pushed the hand out of her way and stepped into her room. She knew exactly what she had done before she had run away, and she was certainly not expecting help with it.
Asuka was so sure that it took several seconds for the state of her room to sink in.
"Was zum Teufel?!" she yelled, bringing in Misato.
"I told you I... left it..." Misato tried to repeat, before petering out as she took in the scene.
The room was as pristine as the rest of the house. Perhaps more so. Only a small hole in a wall detracted from the perfection of Asuka's bedroom. The two females stared at each other before, as one, turning to look at Shinji's bedroom.
"He wouldn't have... would he?" Asuka finally asked.
"Why not? He cleaned the rest of the house." Misato replied.
"Yeah, but... I told him plenty of times never to go into my room!"
"You also made him do your laundry. He had to put it somewhere, didn't he?"
Asuka palmed her face in frustration at the major's logic.
"Look at it this way," Misato continued sarcastically. "Now you don't have to deal with the consequences of your actions."
The girl slowly pulled her hand down her face, staring daggers into Misato's back as the woman walked back down the hall after firing her shot. She had been planning on cleaning the room herself, as a sort of self-punishment, but once again her plan had been ruined by a certain brown-haired boy. Asuka didn't know whether to hit him or thank him.
A shriek from outside her bedroom stole her attention. She hurried into the kitchen to find Misato gibbering in front of the open fridge. She pushed past her stunned guardian and stared into the fridge. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary to her, no rotting stench or anything, so she looked back at Misato who was now almost forming actual words.
"M-m-my-m-my b-b-b-b..."
It took Asuka a moment to understand what Misato meant, and she chuckled slightly as she figured out what was missing from the fridge. She raised an arm and lightly slapped Misato across the cheek, knocking her out of her daze. Misato rubbed her jaw where she had been hit, wincing slightly at the heat on her face.
"Ow. Okay, there's no beer," she finally said. "I know I had plenty in there before, so where's it all gone? Do you think Shinji drank it?"
"Somehow I doubt Shinji would drink an entire fridge of beer and still tidy the house up this much," Asuka replied. "He probably just threw it out to make room for all that other stuff. Can't say I blame him, nothing holds a candle to German beer."
Misato slumped into a dining chair and put her head in her hands as she sighed. Her usual plan of a nightcap was now shot. She would now have to face the horrible fate of going to sleep without several beers in her.
"Look at it this way, Misato. Now's a good time to quit drinking."
Just like Asuka, Misato clearly didn't know whether to hit Shinji or thank him. She settled for slowly rising out of her chair and stumbling off to her bedroom.
Asuka watched her leave with a smirk, before going to her own bedroom. Changing into her sleeping clothes, which had miraculously survived her rampage through the room, she got into bed and thudded her head down onto her pillow.
A crinkling sound and the feel of something solid under her pillow brought confusion to the girl's face. She sat back up and pursed her lips, shoving a hand under her pillow as she tried to remember what she had that would feel like... a block of chocolate?
The offending item was brought out, and in the dim light of the moon streaming through her window, Asuka sat and beheld the incredible find.
"Grundgütiger!" she exclaimed, holding the chocolate up to her face. The last time she had seen a bar of chocolate this big was back in Germany when she was much younger. That one had been fairly impressive, but this glorious vision blew it out of the water. Asuka was about to start wondering where it had come from when the obvious answer came to mind.
Shinji. Who else?
Deciding to worry about it in the morning, Asuka placed the block on her bedside table and laid back down. More crinkling brought her head back up again.
'What did he do, stuff money under my pillow too? Are you trying to bribe me, Third Child?'
What her hand pulled out this time was definitely paper, but not currency. Asuka got out of bed, walking to the window and unfolding it. The light was bad, and so was her ability to read kanji, but she quickly understood what was written on the piece of paper. Especially when she saw her own name.
"I'm sorry, Asuka..."
It came as a bit of a surprise to Misato when she was the first one up the next morning. The last time she had fallen asleep without the aid of alcohol was unknown, and she had completely forgotten what it was like to wake up without a horrible taste in her mouth.
Since the power grid was damaged, the electric kettle was a useless lump of plastic. Misato started rummaging through the cupboards, and soon discovered what she was looking for: an old teapot she could use on the stove. She quickly set about getting some water boiling, mentally thanking the heavens that the gas still worked, and soon had a piping hot cup of coffee ready to shake the last vestiges of sleep from her mind.
The whistling of the teapot had apparently awoken the German girl, as Asuka soon made her stumbling way past the dining table into the bathroom, looking like she had barely slept at all and clutching something in her hand. When she came out of the bathroom a few minutes later and plopped down on a chair, a mug of coffee was wordlessly placed in front of her. Asuka mumbled something that may have been "thank you" and took a mouthful of the black liquid.
And almost spat it back out.
"Blech! This is horrible!" Asuka exclaimed, pulling a face. "Do you take your own coffee like this?!"
"Nope. No power, so there's no milk." Misato grinned. "But it still worked, you're wide awake now."
The redhead elected not to comment further, and the two of them drank their coffee in companionable silence. Asuka winced slightly at every acrid mouthful, too proud to get up and add sugar, but still finished her cup well before Misato.
"What's that you're holding?" Misato suddenly asked. Asuka jolted, and looked at the hand holding the piece of paper she had found last night. She unfolded the note and stared at it for a while, before slowly handing it to Misato. The woman took the paper and read it slowly, before handing it back.
"Is this why you looked so tired?" she asked.
Asuka nodded and related how she had discovered the note under her pillow. She had spent several hours last night sitting on the floor staring at the words in the moonlight after figuring out what the rest of the note said. That one word, 'sorry', repeated several times on the note, had always infuriated her when Shinji had said it in the past, but now she wanted to hear anything from the boy, even an apology. Misato nodded sympathetically, also wishing that her surrogate son would awaken.
For reasons unknown even to Asuka, she decided not to mention the chocolate. After she had been awoken by the whistling kettle, the girl had hidden the chocolate in her wardrobe before leaving her bedroom.
But not before eating a larger piece of it than she had intended.
The morning passed slowly into the afternoon. Asuka and Misato occupied that time by checking the other apartments for anything useful. Since the building had been used to house both the major and two of the pilots, there had not been many rooms occupied by civilians. Most of the apartments in the building were empty, especially around the sixth, seventh, and eighth floors as a security buffer. The ones that had been lived in were used by their Section Two detail.
In one of these rooms on their floor, Misato procured a pair of NERV-issue two-way radios and a stash of batteries for them.
"Brilliant," Asuka said when Misato showed them to her. "Now we can split up and cover more ground once we need to scavenge away from the apartment."
"Well, that's close to what I had in mind," Misato replied. "One of us needs to stay at the apartment to keep an eye on Shinji. I don't want to leave him alone for too long in case something happens."
Asuka nodded grimly as she realised she hadn't thought of the fact that Shinji had been alone in the apartment all day. She resolved to check on him when they were done.
Apart from the radios, there was depressingly little in the Section Two apartments. It was mostly surveillance equipment, uncomfortable looking cots, small arms, and instant meals. Fortunately for Asuka they were not the nuclear curry ones Misato favoured, and so she grabbed several of them.
Misato found a pistol and holster to replace the one she had lost in the Geofront, and even found another handgun for Asuka. The Children went through firearms training and safety courses as part of their pilot training, so she knew the German girl was perfectly capable with the weapon. Even so, she still demanded that the weapons remained unloaded while in the house and to only use them in a dire emergency.
They returned to their apartment. While Misato busied herself putting away the few items they had acquired, Asuka picked up a torch and hurried down the hall to Shinji's room.
Shinji was shivering despite the bedsheets he was curled up under. Asuka rushed to his side and touched his forehead near the bandage, discovering it to be rather warm. She was checking under the dressings on his head and hand, revealing nothing wrong, when a memory stirred.
Shinji, frozen in fear while climbing through a window. An off-white cloth wrapped around the leg in mid air. Asuka almost tore the sheets off the bed in her haste to check the bandage both she and Misato had failed to notice the day before.
The old cloth stuck to the skin as Asuka slowly peeled it away, revealing a cut halfway down Shinji's thigh. The skin around the injury was red and swollen, while the cut itself was slowly oozing pus. Asuka swore loudly and called for Misato. The woman let out a curse as well when she came into the room and saw the infected wound. The two of them carefully lifted Shinji out of bed and brought him to the living room, where the afternoon sun would provide better light for them.
"Damnit, we don't have any antibiotics," Misato groaned as she rummaged through their medical supplies. Asuka stared at the ground in dismay before suddenly jumping to her feet and running to the kitchen. She returned a moment later with a jar of honey.
"Asuka... what are you planning?" Misato nervously asked, eyeing the jar.
"Honey's a traditional treatment for infected wounds," Asuka replied. "Preferably manuka, which is what I have here thanks to Shinji."
The pair worked quickly to clean the infection as best as they could and apply a honey-coated dressing, before applying fresh bandages as well as replacing the ones from yesterday at the same time. Asuka had to almost yank the jar away from Misato when they were done, as the major had started eating the honey. Shinji's sheets were brought out from his room and the boy was wrapped up snugly in them as the sun began to set.
They ate an early dinner while they watched Shinji and waited. Eventually, his shivering began to subside, and a check on his temperature revealed that it was slowly returning to normal.
"Looks like we're going to have to thank Shinji for catering to your every whim, Asuka," Misato smirked. "Then again, he's also going to have to thank you for that great idea."
"Heh, yeah," Asuka rubbed the back of her head. "I don't know where he got it, but I never thought my demands for some non-Japanese food would actually help someone like this."
"What's next, are you going to prevent a heart attack with sauerkraut?"
Asuka groaned as she palmed her face while Misato cackled softly to herself. Shinji was returned to his own bed when Asuka and Misato turned in. The doors to the Children's rooms were left open, and Asuka fell asleep clutching the note while looking through the walls towards where Shinji lay.
After some insisting from Misato the next day, Asuka went out and got some antibiotics to properly treat Shinji's infection. The next couple of days would see a rapid improvement in the boy's condition, but he would still not awaken. Misato was starting to worry that his body would start wasting away, as they had no way of feeding him. He was already showing signs of malnourishment, but it was too dangerous to simply try and force sustenance into him while unconscious.
On a suggestion from Asuka, the major procured a small truck and went to a supermarket warehouse, coming back with an entire pallet's worth of canned food, and another of water. What couldn't fit in their apartment was stored next door. It took them an entire day to move the contents of both pallets up seven flights of stairs, and several times Asuka wondered out loud if it would be worth the time to move their lodgings to a lower floor as she stomped up and down the stairwell.
During one of Asuka's days out scavenging, she came back with a bag full of books. Since Asuka had mostly read magazines or played video games, and Misato was either busy at NERV, watching television or asleep, there was very little reading material in the house and the young girl had quickly blown through all of it. The extra books didn't do much for Asuka's boredom, however. She sorely wanted to play her video games, but the internal battery on her handheld console was long dead.
Finally, after much begging and cajoling for something to do, Misato gave Asuka some earplugs and took her up to the roof with their pistols, and they spent the afternoon shooting at the empty cans and bottles that had been piling up. It was the most fun Asuka had in weeks, even if her ability to aim something not the size of a building was rusty.
Misato's aim, however, was perfect. Every round found its mark directly in the target's centre, sending it spiralling off the apartment building to the road down below. After a while Asuka noticed her guardian's expression twisting into one of anger, and upon emptying her current magazine suggested that they call it a day.
"Is everything okay, Misato?" Asuka asked as she passed Misato a cup of coffee after their return to their apartment "You were starting to look like you wished you had a flamethrower or something."
The shattering of the coffee cup as it slipped from Misato's grasp was impossibly loud in Asuka's ears, and she was quickly regretting taking her shoes off as the hot liquid splashed around her feet. She hopped from one foot to the other as she yanked her coffee-soaked socks off.
Misato seemed to not notice any of this, however. She was leaning heavily on the table, eyes scrunched closed and shaking slightly.
"Misa-"
"Asuka... please, just... leave me alone," Misato interrupted. "I don't mean to be rude but just... go check on Shinji or something."
Asuka nodded wordlessly and stepped into the bathroom to take a quick shower. When she came out, she saw Misato sitting at the table now, head in her hands.
'Whatever happened,' Asuka thought as she moved down the hallway, 'it must have been terrible to cause this reaction in her. I should probably apologise later when she's settled down.'
She stepped through the doorway into Shinji's room, and realised there were more important matters to deal with at the moment.
The bed was empty.
It was hard to see anything in the darkness, so she quickly grabbed a torch and returned. The sheets were half hanging off of the bed, and there was no sign of Shinji in the corners of the room. Panic began to set in, but just as Asuka was about to yell for Misato, a soft noise from under the bed caught her attention.
Asuka quietly moved over to the bed, kneeling down beside it and pulling the sheets up. The torch shone onto the face of a terrified and shivering Shinji, who flinched and tried to move further away as the beam hit his face.
It slightly surprised the girl that Shinji was capable of wedging himself under the bed as far as he had, considering how low to the ground it was. She set the torch aside and lay down on the floor, putting her at eye level with the boy.
"Come on, Shinji." She held a hand out to him and tried to coax him out, softly speaking to him as she would a frightened animal. The only response she got was an increase in the boy's trembling. Asuka sighed in frustration, but kept gently calling the boy. Eventually, the shaking subsided and Shinji turned back to face her.
Asuka didn't need direct light to see the fear in his eyes. Even in the shadows cast by the torch, she could see Shinji's cobalt orbs staring right through her, looking at something only he could see. Asuka quickly glanced behind her just in case there was something there. She had been rescued by a ghost a week ago after all. This time however, the room was empty bar the two teenagers.
Finally, after several minutes of eye contact, Shinji ever so slowly reached a hand out to Asuka's. His hand swiftly retreated when the two made contact, as if afraid that she would latch on and violently rip him out of his hiding spot. Asuka's hand simply remained stationary, waiting for him once more. His hand reached out again, slightly faster this time, and slowly wrapped around the girl's hand.
Asuka tried not to think about how warm the boy's hand was in hers, and instead concentrated on holding still. This seemed to boost Shinji's nerve as his shivering body began to settle.
As her body began to get sore from its awkward position on the floor, Asuka very gently tugged on his hand. The boy slowly started to crawl towards her, seemingly drawing strength from their physical contact as the distance between them decreased.
It took a couple of long and tense minutes before Shinji was fully out from under the bed. Now that he was in close proximity to Asuka, and could make out her face, his shaking intensified once more. It got so bad that when Asuka placed her hands on his shoulders to try and calm him, she felt her arms vibrate slightly.
"Shinji, It's okay! I'm not going to hurt you," she quietly tried to reassure him. The sound of her voice didn't seem to help matters though. Shinji was now trying to back away towards the bed, and only Asuka's grip was preventing him from moving. His body's weakened state was taking its toll on the boy now. He gave up trying to escape, and merely closed his eyes and turned his head as if expecting to be attacked despite the girl's words.
Asuka was having none of this, however. She released her grip on one shoulder and twisted his head back to face her, demanding that he open his eyes. When he finally did, sapphire locked onto cobalt once more, and Asuka saw eyes that did not belong on a boy the same age as her. He had the same stare Asuka had seen back in Germany on soldiers that had been through the Impact Wars. His dark blue eyes were rapidly moving as if witnessing something traumatic and tears were beginning to form in the corners.
'He must be hallucinating.' Asuka thought. 'Oh Scheiße, the gunshots. He was unconscious when we found him. All of a sudden he finds himself back home after whatever knocked him out and people are shooting nearby.'
Without warning, Shinji suddenly redoubled his efforts to escape her clutches. Caught off guard, Asuka lost her grip on him as the boy fell to the ground. As he attempted to crawl back under the bed, the girl recovered and threw an arm around him, pulling him back towards her and placing her other hand on the back of his head. She tried and failed not to think of the fact that she was essentially hugging him as Shinji squirmed for a few seconds, his face buried in her shoulder, but the burst of strength a moment earlier had clearly sapped whatever remained of his energy as he began to slow.
Asuka unconsciously started stroking his hair and Shinji finally fell asleep in her arms, but something stopped Asuka from simply letting go of him. She blushed heavily as she realised the position they were both in. She was in a dark room cradling a sleeping boy in her arms, someone that she had flung numerous insults at in the past while trying to push them away. Somehow though, Shinji had withstood the barrage despite his own problems and fears, and constantly attempted to make peace with Asuka.
As Shinji's warmth slowly suffused her body, Asuka thought back to something her mother had said before she left the sea. "Perhaps a kind word at an earlier point in time, or even something as simple as one of you holding the other that night."
Asuka closed her eyes and sighed deeply. What was happening now was close to what she had wanted back when she had made Shinji kiss her. One of them holding the other. Just that one simple act would have stopped her from trying not to cry as she pretended to wash her mouth out after nearly suffocating Shinji.
The sound of footsteps nearby caused Asuka to open her eyes again and look up. Misato was standing in the doorway, staring at the pair with a gentle look on her face.
"Everything okay in here?" she asked. "I heard something a moment ago, and I come in to find you hugging him."
"Um, yeah, we're fine," Asuka replied, blushing again at the mention of that word before informing Misato of what had just happened. "I think our shooting practice scared him or something."
The woman cursed under her breath. "We should have gone somewhere further away..."
Asuka finally stood up, still holding Shinji, and once more laid him in his bed. She rearranged the sheets over his sleeping body before turning and walking out of the room with Misato on her heels. "Forget about it, nothing we can do now. Let's just have dinner. The idiot's actually asleep now, hopefully tomorrow he'll be okay."
"You keep using that word. Do you still think he's dumb, or has it become an affectionate nickname?"
"M-Misato!"
Before she could be teased further, a sound that hadn't been heard for a long time echoed through the apartment.
Knocking. Someone was knocking at their front door.
They stared at each other in shock, before heading towards the apartment entrance. Perhaps out of paranoia, Misato grabbed her borrowed handgun and covered Asuka as the girl worked to get the door open.
What greeted them made their jaws drop.
"Um, hello," Maya Ibuki nervously said, looking almost as surprised as they did, with a tired-looking blonde woman leaning heavily on her. "May we please come in?"
