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Well, I've definitely caught a bug of some kind. I just could not leave this chapter alone until it was done. Damn I'm tired.

Even If it's the Last Thing I Do

by Jungian Excuse

- Chapter One -

- Hedgehogs -

Hey, Shinji. Wanna kiss me?"

Lounging on the floor against the frame of Misato's kitchen doorway, Shinji's eyes popped. He turned towards Asuka, sitting at the kitchen table, her head on her arm, looking at him. He could not possibly have heard that right. He pulled the headphones from his ears and sputtered, "W-what?!"

"Kissing. Have you ever done it before?"

Nonplussed, he shook his head. "Uh, n-no."

She sat suddenly upright and said, "Let's do it, then."

"Let's- what? Why?"

"I'm bored," she shrugged.

"You're bored? That's a reason to kiss someone?"

"Aw, what's the matter?" she cooed, half-teasing, half-mocking. "Are you afraid to kiss a girl on the day your mommy died? Are you worried she's watching you from heaven?"

"Don't be silly. That's not..."

"Ooh, so you're scared, then?"

"I'm not scared of a little kiss!, he declared defiantly. He leapt to his feet and faced her. "Let's do it!"

"Right! You did brush your teeth, didn't you?"

"Yeah?"

"Well, then, here I come!" she declared. She marched up to him, and suddenly they were nose-to-nose. Shinji had never been this close to her before. He'd never been so close to anyone. Unsure of what to do, he closed his eyes and waited. When nothing happened for a long moment he opened them again. Asuka was glaring at him. She snapped, "Don't breathe on me; it tickles!" and pinched his nose shut. Before he could take a breath through his mouth, she pressed her lips to his.

Though Shinji could now no longer breathe, it wasn't terribly important just then. He couldn't believe what was happening. Her lips were soft - the softest thing Shinji had ever felt. Having no idea what was expected of him, he did his best to mirror whatever she did. As her tongue clumsily probed his, he suddenly realized that, for all the show she made of being mature and worldly, Asuka had no idea what she was doing either. "This must be her first time, too," he thought in amazement. Not that it made what was happening any less enjoyable.

Air was becoming a problem, though. The sensible thing would have been to take her fingers off his nose, but he was afraid that might make her angry, and she'd never want to do this again. So he did his best to tough it out, but the seconds were ticking by, and she showed no sign of breaking their clinch. Finally, the burning in his chest became unbearable, and he pulled away violently with a gasp that was almost a roar as he sucked in desperately needed oxygen. He slumped against the door frame, clutching his chest as he gulped in lungfuls of life-giving air.

For a moment, Asuka stood frozen in shock. Then an angry red flush spread from her neck to her forehead as she glared at him with a look of absolute humiliation.

"UGH!" She shrieked and fled from the room, her cries of disgust echoing after her.

When the phone rang at precisely 8 a.m. on a Monday morning, Shinji was busy out in the garden as usual. Asuka had been on her way out the front door. She changed course abruptly and darted to where the phone hung on the wall over the kitchen counter, catching it on the fourth ring.

"Hello?"

"Guten Morgen. Ist das die Ikari-Residenz?" a man's voice asked.

"Ja, das ist es," she replied.

"Gut. Kann ich bitte mit Mrs. Ikari sprechen?"

"Speaking."

"Mrs. Ikari, I am pleased to inform you that your application to the Federal Navy of Germany as an aviator has been accepted. What is more, I am authorized to state on behalf of the German armed services that we would be honored to have you."

The officious male voice went on to inform her that her previous position in NERV and her history as an Eva pilot entitled her to move directly into the rank of captain, also hinting at no end of other privileges and considerations. She wouldn't even have to go through officer school; she could enroll directly into flight training.

It was everything Asuka wanted and more. The offer of a lifetime. She told him she'd think about it.

"As you wish, Mrs. Ikari. Please, take your time. There are precisely four weeks from tomorrow before the next flight school begins. If you wish to be enrolled in time for the first module, then you must report to administration no less than three days in advance of that date. Auf Wiedersehen."

"Danke. Goodbye."

Asuka shoved the receiver back into the cradle a little harder than she needed to and glared at it, feeling vaguely angry at she didn't know what. With a frustrated huff, she stepped into the kitchen and looked out the window toward the sea and at the hunched-over form moving against the skyline.

Shinji was on his knees, digging and scraping at a stubborn knotweed root, and almost didn't hear Asuka coming until her shadow fell over him, her silhouette shrouded with a faint yellow haze of the morning sun filtering through her old yellow sundress. The dress she'd worn on their wedding day. He stood slowly and turned to face her. He brushed the dirt from his hands as they stared at each other.

Asuka broke the silence first. "Germany just called."

Shinji only nodded and wiped his hands on his tattered old jeans. "You've been accepted?"

"Yeah." She searched his eyes and his face for a reaction, but his countenance remained neutral and stony. He wasn't going to give her anything. "Training starts in a few weeks."

He dropped his gaze. "You're leaving, then." It was a statement rather than a question.

Asuka shrugged and said flatly, "I told them I'd think about it. They seemed really keen to have me, though." She recounted briefly what the man on the phone had told her.

Shinji nodded again, lifted his head, and looked her squarely in the eye. "It sounds like a really great opportunity. I think you should take it."

"You think? What about what you want?"

He shrugged and looked away. "It doesn't matter what I want. It's about what's best for you."

Asuka's eyes flashed. Her face flushed, and she gritted her teeth as anger welled up in her - the same frustrated anger she used to feel over Shinji's constant apologizing back in their NERV days. "Fine, then," she bit out, feeling suddenly on the verge of tears and fighting hard to keep the tremor from her voice. Feeling totally unable to look at him a moment longer without losing her composure, she turned on her heel and stalked away.

Shinji wanted to call out to her, to ask her to come back, but he couldn't make himself form the words. So he just stood and watched her go, her dress billowing in the cool morning breeze.

Two weeks later, they stood facing each other again, this time on the deck of a US aircraft carrier docked at Fukuoka. On the asphalt behind her, a US Navy LJ45 had been fueled up to take Asuka to Chengdu. From there, she would catch a civilian flight to Kabul, where a German Army transport plane waited at a military airport to take her the rest of the way to the Wilhelmshaven naval base in Germany and out of Shinji's life. There was no sundress this time. Asuka instead wore a plain, dark blue two-piece travel suit. The dress, along with the entirety of what she was taking into her new life, was packed into the two suitcases at her feet. The bags looked innocuous, almost ridiculous, when Shinji thought of how she'd once almost filled Misato's small apartment with her belongings. Times changed, and people along with them, he knew. But just how much?

It was a brief farewell, as there wasn't much left to say at that point. Shinji felt numb as Asuka stepped forward and put her arms around him. He returned the embrace mechanically. She raised her chin and kissed him, her lips just barely touching his. "This isn't goodbye, Shinji," she said, sounding quite convinced of it. "I'll call, and I'll write. And when I find out who I really am, then we'll..." She seemed unable to finish the thought, which was cut off anyway by a booming voice over the PA system calling her to the flight deck.

"Goodbye, Asuka. Good luck, and be safe. I'll be right here waiting for you." The words sounded hollow even to him. Shinji truly wished he shared her apparent conviction that this would all turn out for the best somehow. From where he stood, the future looked dark and empty.

Looking almost mournful now, Asuka gave him one last kiss, a chaste peck on the cheek. They released each other, and she picked up her bags and walked towards her plane. Before she reached the tarmac, she stopped and turned to him again. "You should figure out who you are too, Shinji," she called back to him. "You can't run away forever, Third Child!" With that, she turned away for the final time and strode quickly to the waiting aircraft. She passed her bags up to the co-pilot and swiftly got in after them. The pilot had finished his pre-flight check, and almost the moment the door was secured, the air was filled with the whine of twin jet engines winding up. Shinji was too far away from the plane to make out much detail, but he waved at the flash of orange that appeared in one of the windows.

The whine of the engines became a deafening roar as the plane slowly started to move, picking up speed rapidly until it was hurtling down the runway. At almost the last moment, when it seemed that it would plunge off the edge and into the ocean, the Learjet lifted gracefully into the air. Shinji stood and watched as it banked towards the setting sun and followed it with his eyes until the glare obscured it from view.

At 20 years of age, Shinji Ikari was no stranger to darkness. He had been born twice and died once. As an infant, he lost his mother and was abandoned by his father. He had fought bloody battles against alien monsters in a living weapon that was just as eldritch and horrifying. He had lived through the death and rebirth of the human race, for which he was at least partly responsible. He had seen death - friends, family, strangers. He had, he felt sure, experienced all of the worst kinds of darkness a cold and bizarre world could throw at him. But as it turned out, none of it had done anything to prepare him for the breakdown of his marriage and losing the love of his life.

While Shinji's routine didn't change dramatically now that he was alone, he had to shoulder the responsibilities that had been Asuka's. At first, he was so busy taking care of himself and the house, working the garden, and taking produce into town to sell and trade that he had very little time for reflection and regrets. But little by little, the wound he had received and the severity of it became apparent. He fell deeper and deeper into a black pit. His daily life became mechanical, and he trudged from task to task, feeling as though he were moving underwater, looking forward only to the blissful oblivion of sleep.

But soon even that was no escape; he became haunted by terrible and vivid nightmares as he moved from emptiness to despair. Sadness sat like a heavy stone on his chest to plague his waking hours, and he carried it everywhere. When the crushing weight was at its worst, Shinji was sure that he would die and that he wanted to die. He would stand at the top of the cliff behind the once-happy home, staring at the water raging below, wondering what would happen if only he would take that last step. Would he cease to exist? Would he go to heaven? Or would he maybe rejoin the LCL? Anything would have been a relief.

From numbness to sadness to depression, eventually one feeling started to override them all, and over the weeks and months, it pushed itself to the forefront of Shinji's psyche:

He missed Asuka desperately.

Apart from a brief phone message stating that she had arrived safely in Wilhelmshaven and that her flight training would start soon, he hadn't heard from her in almost six months. Then one night he was heading upstairs after an evening on the cliff when he spotted a big pile of mail he'd left on the counter that afternoon. The mail only came once a month in their area, so there was usually a lot of it, and Shinji didn't see the point in going to the trouble of sorting it when he might not come back. But he had come back, and now he had to deal with it instead of going to bed like he wanted because there was no way his fastidiousness would allow him to leave the pile on the counter overnight. "Should've jumped," he grumbled to himself as he walked over and started sifting through the heap. It was mostly advertising material, with the occasional bill mixed in as usual when his eye fell on a small, hand-addressed envelope. His breath caught in his throat. The postmark was German.

With his heart in his mouth, he carried the envelope over to the sofa at arms length, like it was dangerous, and opened it with trembling hands. It was from Asuka. It wasn't long, not much more than a half-dozen lines handwritten in Asuka's neat print, letting him know that she was in good health and her training was going well. Better than well, in fact. Everyone from the top brass to her instructors was head-over-heels impressed with her aptitude, she told him. It seems her years of training and experience piloting an Eva had paid off big in a way she'd never anticipated. She was on track to earn her wings in a little under twelve months - an achievement unsurpassed by any naval aviator in known history. If it hadn't been for the absolute minimum number of flight hours the brass demanded to get her instrument rating, they'd have graduated her in under eleven.

Shinji read the letter through five more times before refolding it carefully and slipping it gently back in its envelope. He slept with it under his pillow that night. His sleep was restful and free from nightmares for the first time in weeks.

While it had taken six months to get that first letter, he didn't have to wait another six for the next one. As though a dam had been broken, letters started coming every two weeks, then once every week, then twice a week, and eventually a phone call every Thursday morning as well.

Shinji would never forget that first call. He was nervous in a way he hadn't been since he'd asked Asuka to marry him. She only had a few minutes to talk, and they didn't talk about much beyond exchanging whatever they considered relevant news. But there was something in her voice that planted a grain of hope in Shinji's heart, and when he hung up the phone, he was smiling for the first time in he didn't know how long. He started planning his life around those Thursday morning phone calls.

The increased contact put his mind at ease in another way, too; almost from the moment Asuka was out of his sight, Shinji was plagued by suspicions that she was seeing somebody else. He was painfully aware of how out of his league she was and how she attracted male attention like Lilith attracted Angels. It had to be nothing short of a cosmic fluke that she'd ended up with him. Even when they were at their most distant from each other, the thought of Asuka with another man made Shinji feel helpless, weak, and angry, as he was certain he wouldn't have the courage to fight for her or even feel that he had the right. It was definitely his biggest insecurity.

But not only was there absolutely no sign of any such thing in any of Asuka's correspondence or her manner on the phone, but as time went on, she started dropping subtle hints that she was missing her home, missing her cottage by the sea, and – dare he hope? - missing her husband. The hints were so subtle at first that Shinji couldn't be sure he wasn't imagining them. But before long, they were so blatant and so frequent that even the densest of Shinjis couldn't have mistaken them for anything else. Finally, after months of suggestion, innuendo, and dancing around the topic, it all came to a head.

It was Christmas day, four weeks and three days from Asuka's graduation. A ferocious winter storm had taken the cell towers out of commission, so Asuka had to use the landline in the mess hall to call Japan, which was enormously irritating because the mess was full of rowdy sailors. While she was long used to their leers and catcalls and barely noticed them anymore, the thought of them eavesdropping on her call to Shinji galled her to no end.

The call was barely into its second ring when the connection crackled to life. Asuka couldn't hold back a giggle at the thought of Shinji hovering over the receiver, ready to pounce.

"Asuka!" his breathless voice exclaimed in her ear.

"Hi, Shinji, it's good to hear you," she said happily. Schiesse, what was this? Was she tearing up?

"You too, Asuka. Two phone calls in one week? You're spoiling me."

Something like a hiccup escaped Asuka's throat. She ignored it and asked after the chickens.

"They're doing well, though we did lose one of the hens on Saturday. It was a fox, I think, or a badger. Fortunately, the rooster loves his job, and we gained another three."

She laughed out loud then, shooting death glares at the sailors who turned to look at her, grinning. She went on to ask how the cottage and the property were and if there was any local news worth sharing. He gave appropriate answers, and in turn, made similar inquiries of her. Eventually their conversation became more personal, as it often did once the small talk dwindled.

"So, when do you graduate?" It was a simple question casually asked, but it was loaded with portent and Asuka thought she knew why.

She answered, "in a little under two months, but the brass require a minimum of six months of active duty before I get my full accreditation."

She'd tried to come across as casual, but there was a long silence on the other end. When he spoke again, Shinji's voice was full of worry. "Active duty?"

"It's not as bad as it sounds," she hastened to assure him. "Yes, it'll be in the Disputed Zone, but way up in the north, where there's no fighting. It's basically glorified guard duty. I'm more likely to get taken down by my own stupidity than by enemy action."

Shinji sounded anything but assured. "I don't want you to get taken down at all," he said unhappily. "Asuka, I..."

"Yeah?" She held her breath, just a little.

"I... I miss you. I need you."

Yeah, she was tearing up, alright. A dam was threatening to burst, and she was going to be swept away.

"Asuka, I love you."

The tears were flowing freely now, and she didn't give a damn who saw. She watched as they splashed off her shoes and dotted the floor at her feet. She thought about where she was and why she was here. What had seemed at first like a new beginning and a grand adventure started to feel more and more like a mistake. She choked back a sob. "Shinji?" she said in a small voice.

"I'm here, Asuka."

"I want to come home," she whimpered softly.

On the other side of the world, perched on the kitchen counter in their cottage by the sea, Shinji was very glad that his friend Toji Suzahara wasn't there to see the decidedly unmanly tears trickling down his face as he listened to his beloved wife sob quietly into a mess hall phone in a naval base in Germany. His chest ached. He longed desperately - oh, how desperately - to hold her, to wipe away her tears, and to be her shield against the world. To be at her side, whether they lived for a thousand years or didn't survive until morning.

Author's note: Well damn I'm glad I accidently deleted the original draft and had to re-write this; it turned out way better, if I may say so ever-so-modestly. As always, feedback of any and all kinds will be welcomed with open arms and a sharp knife.