Author's note: Well, this little story idea has been chewing away at my brain for the better part of a decade and a half. So as my therapist often says, "if your card declines one more time, they will never find your body."
Even If it's the Last Thing I Do
by Jungian Excuse
- In the Beginning -
The middle-eastern market street was a buzzing hive of human activity. It was lined with narrow, tightly-grouped stalls with gaudy awnings, interspersed with small, squat residences. A sea of humanity dressed in a brightly colored variety of Western and Eastern clothing crowded in front of them and surged around the wheeled carts that dotted the sidewalks and the edges of the road, baking in the mid-afternoon sun.
One building near the northern end of the road sat much further out than the others, separated from them by several empty stalls and a few vacant lots. It was an ugly brown structure, taller than the others but featureless apart from a dull black steel door and an equally dull brown awning that stretched almost to the street. There were no windows to be seen.
A dozen or so bearded men milled about under the awning, looking watchful and dangerous. They exchanged conspiratorial whispers, and occasionally one would pass in or out through the heavy-looking black door. Under loose-fitting robes and shawls, they wore an eclectic mixture of khakis and fatigues. And they were armed - some with a carelessly concealed Kalashnikov rifle with a shortened barrel and folding stock carried on a sling, others with a pistol in a hip holster or chest pouch. As busy as the market street was, they were unmistakable.
Watchful as they were, none of them noticed the tan 4WD as it slid out of a side street about 150 meters to their right, turned away from them, and pulled up to the side of the road. Its single occupant, the driver, was tall and of an average build, but his features were otherwise obscured by a loosely wrapped black shemagh and a pair of dark glasses. He angled the car's rear mirror to command a view of the brown building and the men in front of it and waited.
Time passed. One hour, then two. The men in front of the brown building began to grow visibly irritated, with much angry chatter and exaggerated checking of watches. They held their post nonetheless. The man in the tan 4WD hadn't moved. At a casual glance, he seemed to be sleeping, but his eyes never left the mirror. Finally, just as the setting sun was touching the horizon and the market crowd had all but dispersed, there was a distant roar of engines that quickly grew louder and filled the narrow street.
The man in the tan 4WD didn't move a muscle as a dust-caked black BMW sedan, flanked by two equally dust-caked SUVs, rumbled past him in single file towards the northern end of the road. The men in his mirror became highly animated, rushing to take their positions - two barring the footpath on either side of the building, the rest lined up along the street. The convoy came to a stop next to them, brake discs shrieking from the desert dust.
Weapons were pushed through car windows and returned promptly to the men who emerged from all four doors of both SUVs and two from the street side of the sedan. Much better dressed than the men who waited for them, they were clad in matching tan cargo pants, OD green t-shirts and dogstooth neck scarves, and dark glasses against the glare of the sunset. They carried identical black submachine guns and pistols in black underarm holsters. The men lining the street drew back as the newcomers took up positions around their vehicles, weapons readied, scanning for threats. One of them, with a few sharp words to the rest, stooped to open the curbside passenger door of the sedan. After a brief exchange with the man holding his door, the passenger stepped out into the street.
To say that he stood out was an understatement. Half a head shorter than the shortest man there, he was squat and stocky, almost to the point of being obese, and was dressed in an immaculate white thawb with a matching keffiyeh under a tailored, western-style dress jacket. Rather than a bushy full-face beard, he sported a carefully manicured stubble, about three days' growth. His fingers, his wrists, and his neckline sparkled with gold, platinum, and gemstones, capped off with a pair of delicate gold prescription sunglasses. To the man in the tan 4WD, he may as well have had 'VIP' tattooed on his forehead. He got one good look at the shorter man before the others closed ranks around him and hustled him into the building. Two of the VIP's security detail who had stayed outside each got back into an SUV, and, at a wave from the driver of the sedan, the convoy pulled out, continued up the road, and disappeared around a corner.
Once they were well out of sight and he was certain that they weren't coming back, the man in the tan 4WD pulled the heavy scarf away from his face, sighing with appreciation as the cool evening air caressed his skin. While it was getting dark and the chances of being identified were slight, he kept the glasses on. Caution was his watchword. It had to be. He was playing a dangerous game.
With that in mind, he looked down at the broad-sheet newspaper on the passenger seat beside him and lifted it carefully, just high enough to reveal the heavy, black USP pistol with its long, bulky suppressor. His eyes flicked from the gun to the mirror, and its view of the street in front of the brown building, now deserted. He contemplated each in turn for a long moment, nothing in his face betraying his thoughts. Finally, he let the paper fall back onto the seat and, with one last glance at the building he'd been casing, dropped the car into gear and pulled quickly away.
Five years after the end of the world, the oceans teemed with life. Animal and the shrinking remains of what had once been human.
Once the first few souls who had decided that the peak of human evolution wasn't to their liking re-materialized and crawled from the LCL sea, others followed rapidly. Within twelve months after the Third Impact, around a billion humans once again claimed Terra firma as their home. Within another six months, it was two billion, with more returning sporadically, though less frequently. As the number of human souls it contained dwindled, so too did the LCL. Patches of familiar blue ocean began to appear as if by magic in the blood-red liquid, as though the LCL were simply a shroud or an optic trick and the real ocean had been there all along. As time passed, the patches grew larger and ran together until all that remained of the LCL was a series of narrow bands a few dozen meters wide and three or four meters deep at their deepest points in mid-ocean. They ran from shore to shore across the world's seas and oceans, never moving from their relative positions, only rolling with the waves and shrinking and expanding with the tides. By the time the global population had crawled past three billion, restored souls appeared very rarely, with less and less each passing year.
On a grassy dune above a broad beach of brilliant white sand, Shinji Ikari, the soul who had made that return possible, sat and watched the sea. At this time of year, it sparkled a brilliant blue in all directions, broken only by the familiar streak of red that stretched from the shore to the horizon and beyond. Close to where the LCL met the shore, above the high tide mark, a long, narrow, single-story concrete building had been constructed on pillars sunk deeply into the sand. One of many similar structures around the globe, it contained basic clothing and some other essentials and had been set up to assist what were sometimes informally referred to as 'Returned;' that is, anyone who might emerge from the LCL. It had, as far as Shinji knew, never been required and was currently not staffed. Asuka and Shinji would often go to that spot together in the early days, before the facility was built. Before they were married. They'd talk about those still missing, friend and foe, and speculate on whether they were simply gone or part of what had been colloquially dubbed 'the Collective,' and if they might come back some day.
It depended on who you believed, really; some scientists, intellectuals, and religious types reasoned that only those caught up in Third Impact or who had died during or immediately prior would have been 'raptured' so to speak and could return if they chose. Others argued that even people years dead who had left any tangible bodily remains would have joined the Collective and therefore could also return. And still others claimed that anyone who had ever lived and died through all of human history was out there somewhere. At that point, things usually devolved into a religious debate or, for the more secular-minded, an argument about what was classified as "human" in the long chain of Man's evolution. A chain that had suddenly acquired a few serious kinks and tangles, not to mention numerous new gaps.
At the closest estimate, those slashes of red that crisscrossed the world's oceans contained between 2.5 and 12 billion souls.
Shinji wasn't sure exactly what he believed, but it didn't seem fair to him that someone like Ryoji Kaji – while a schemer and a killer with few true loyalties, was a dedicated truth-seeker with a warm heart and a strong sense of honor and justice – wouldn't be able to return. While someone like his own father, Gendo – ruthless, unscrupulous, duplicitous, murderous, and literally responsible for the end of the human race – could. And in fact, he had. What made it more perplexing still was the fact that Gendo appeared to have been repaid for his villainy with what he desired most in the world - the object of it all – the return of his beloved wife and Shinji's mother, Yui. Who, while Shinji still loved her deeply, had, in her turn, also played a part in what had happened. Shinji defied anyone – doctorate, sage, or holy man – to make sense of that one. His parents were at that very moment, the last he knew, living a contented retirement somewhere in coastal China.
Shinji knew, even if he'd never admitted so consciously, that each and every person at NERV bore a measure of responsibility for what had happened, from his father at the top all the way down to the lowliest custodian. And, of course, Shinji himself. Especially Shinji. The way things had turned out, while he probably wasn't the most culpable person in the entire affair after Gendo, he was definitely in the top ten. Maybe even the top five.
So to Shinji, the idea that Kaji couldn't come back seemed monstrously unfair. Or maybe he could and simply didn't want to? It was possible. Many had not and likely never would. With that said, Shinji couldn't imagine him not coming back for Misato, not wanting to be with her again. Seriously, what guy wouldn't? Shinji wouldn't have thought twice if he were in Kaji's place. An idiotic smile crept over his face when he remembered his friends Kensuke and Toji and their unashamedly vocal lust for the beautiful raven-haired tactician. Shinji may not have been as crudely expressive as they were, but his comely guardian had been the subject of more than one guilty teenage fantasy. If he'd been a few years older...
Who are you trying to fool, Third Child? You wouldn't have done anything, you coward. Shinji could almost hear the voice in his ear.
His... other roommate also featured heavily in his dreams, waking and otherwise. Though never when she was close enough to read his mind. Shinji was often depressed in those days, but he wasn't suicidal.
If he had understood then what he knew now, it might have been a very different story. Reality itself, in fact, might have been something else entirely.
In that difficult first year, as humanity struggled to rediscover its place in the corporeal world and people returned instinctively to what they knew, Asuka and Shinji stuck together purely out of necessity. People huddled in the ruins of cities, mostly at a loss as to what to do next. There was a lot of hunger in those days, and worse, clean drinking water was always in short supply. Systems considered necessary to survival had to be restored, or rebuilt, and, in some cases, rediscovered. As the two Eva pilots fought together once again, for survival this time, the penny finally, finally dropped for Shinji, and most of Asuka's past actions toward him took on an entirely new meaning. The realization led him to change his own demeanor in turn, and even without a word spoken, their relationship grew, and grew closer.
Then one summer evening, during a particularly bad month when it looked like humanity might go extinct all over again, they'd found themselves caught by a sudden and violent storm while out foraging and had taken shelter in what had once been a furniture showroom, one of the few buildings in the area that still had glass in some of the windows. There, as they waited out the tempest on the ruins of an antique futon, Shinji finally found something like a spine and confessed all. How much he loved Asuka and how long he had yearned to be closer to her. How he wanted nothing more than to be by her side, whether they lived a thousand years or didn't survive until morning. When he had finished, he sat and waited doggedly for her response, whatever it might be.
It wasn't long in coming. She slid under his arm, pulled herself tightly against him, planted a firm, lingering kiss on his cheek, and buried her face in his neck with a happy sigh.
In his memory, Shinji seemed to be transported straight from that moldy old couch to a windswept field of grass on a sunny hill. Another year had passed and Asuka clung to him still as they stared blissfully at a two-story cottage, hardly able to believe it was theirs. Situated on an acre plot at the top of a coastal cliff, the ocean sparkled behind them, and they were surrounded by waves of green. They would have a garden, Asuka was telling him dreamily, and chickens, and eventually a few sheep or a cow, maybe even a small vineyard. Absolutely anything seemed possible in those days. Mankind was probably the closest to utopia it had ever been. Existence had returned to something like what it had been in the old world, but better. Resources were abundant. People, with memories of terrible struggle still fresh, pulled together more often than not. There were people enough that life was never lonely or boring, but the population was sparse enough that land was simply available for the taking, often with homes still standing, in various stages of repair, available for the price of a little hard work.
And work they did, making their home. The cottage was in amazingly good condition and was soon restored to its former glory. In the end, there were two gardens; a flower garden in the front of the house – that was Asuka's – and a much larger fruit and vegetable garden at the back of the property, which was their main source of food. That was Shinji's domain, and he took to the work like a duck to water. Asuka would help out from time to time when he needed it, but mostly it was Shinji out there toiling happily away for hours on end, digging, tilling, and planting. Before the year was out, they even managed Asuka's chickens, though they proved amazingly difficult to source in that part of the country.
Every day was like a dream, and not long after they'd established themselves at the cottage, they married in a simple ceremony. There was nobody to officiate, and as of yet, no marriage registry existed as far as they knew, so they stood together on the cliff above the ocean, exchanged rings and vows, and said a few quiet prayers for themselves and for others. In particular, those who had never returned. In her yellow sundress, with a wreath of home-grown sunflowers holding back her lustrous orange hair and her alabaster skin almost glowing in the light that reflected off the ocean, Asuka looked as ethereal as anything corporeal possibly could. She was beautiful in a way beyond anything in his wildest dreams, and Shinji told her so. That was nearly the end of them, as the sudden tangle of arms, legs, and kisses that they became almost went straight over the edge.
Dreams come in many forms, lucid and surreal. But they all have one thing in common: a rude awakening.
After another year or so of wedded bliss, the ugliness of reality began to encroach on the borders of their fairytale. It started when they found out that Asuka was having trouble conceiving. She asserted that it was "fine" and declared that she "didn't want kids anyway" and that being with Shinji was more than enough for her. It became obvious very quickly, however, that it affected her deeply, and every denial of it on her part seemed to make the wound deeper. Shinji had never been good at dealing with other people's trauma, and Asuka had always detested being pitied, so his awkwardly offered sympathy only made her resentful. That, in turn, led him to shut her out. Running away, it seemed, was still very much Shinji Ikari's forte.
As it turned out, with the first blush of new romance and the excitement of building a life past, Shinji and Asuka were still two very broken former child soldiers who found it difficult to love and to be loved in return, and so they grew apart. Asuka, now that the dream had shattered, quickly became restless. She still possessed a hunger for action and excitement that Shinji did not share. Before long, she began disappearing for hours at a time after their day's work was done. She would roam the countryside - the cliffs, beaches, hills, and meadows that surrounded their estate. More and more frequently, she would walk or cycle the few miles into the city, often staying out very late, sometimes until the early hours of the morning. Shinji, for his part, would spend his days in the gardens, front and back, now, since Asuka had abandoned her sunflowers. Or when he wanted to be completely undisturbed, he would make the walk to the familiar beach with its confluence of the ocean and LCL, where they'd both emerged that day - the new Adam and Eve.
And the new, it appeared, would go the way of the old. At just under three years of marriage, it seemed separation of some kind was inevitable; it was just a question of which one of them was going to pull the trigger, so to speak. As it turned out, it was Asuka. Before she left the house one morning, she'd informed Shinji that she'd submitted an application to the German Navy as a fighter pilot.
Shinji sat on the dunes overlooking the ocean with its slash of brilliant red and mulled over this latest news. She'd also said something to the effect that she just needed to get her head straight, that she would keep in touch, that this wasn't the end, and so on. It was nice of her to say. Shinji had politely pretended to believe her.
The setting afternoon sun had turned the LCL an angry red, and Shinji wondered vaguely if the souls it contained could see it. Or maybe there were no souls left in that spot. Though he knew from local news reports and archives that people did occasionally emerge on that stretch of beach, in all the time he had spent there with Asuka and alone, he never saw one. Not Kaji, Ritsuko, or anyone else.
Suddenly, the beach no longer held any allure for Shinji. As a matter of fact, the very sight of it repulsed him and made him feel angry and sick. He stood, and, after one last long look, he walked away and never came back.
Author's note: I had planned to upload this prologue and Chapter 1 together. Alas, after an unfortunate I.D. 10-T error, Chapter 1 will have to be re-written. Not to worry, I wrote the main story beats down on a napkin, I just need to remember which bar I left it at. As always, feedback of any kind is welcomed with open arms. Threatening a loved one or a pet seems to be quite popular.