bardo (noun): the intermediate or astral state of the soul after death and before rebirth (Merriam-Webster Dictionary)

Asuka Langley Soryu was utterly defeated and humiliated during the final hours of her too short life. Then, in those chaotic moments of raw intimacy before Third Impact, she rejected Shinji Ikari once and for all. In the end, though, she chose to be in a world with him. What did she leave behind and what did she take with her? This is a story of her experience within Instrumentality.

This will be a partial revision/rewrite of a fic of the same name that I originally posted in 2021.

"I don't want to die."

She says the words over and over because they are true, she doesn't want to die. That wasn't what she had meant by laying down in that bombed out ruin days before, staring blankly up at the sky through shattered ceilings. She hadn't wanted to die, she just wanted her reason to live back. And now, having found it within the Evangelion at the bottom of the lake, she bursts out of the water feeling immortal.

Minutes later, she's pinned down by the spear, looking up at the sky again. He hadn't come to her. No help at all had come, but they did, the nine white-winged croaking figures circling above her. She can hardly make them out for all the blood fouling up her entry plug.

"I'll kill you."

Pain. Stabbing, slicing pain, the cold burn of a clean cut. Pain beyond all senses and without relief. Then a dim presence beside her, a popping release, and the pain ends along with the world. The reality of her final experiences ends, but the memory of the pain remains, a relentless now that persists in happening.

Her mind retreats from its myopic focus on the bloody task she had failed to conclude. She sees the new plane of existence to be a barren, narrow world. A world of his own creation. She senses his presence as she's pulled down by a force as irresistible as gravity. He's insistent, pleading, and far, far too late. He bears her backwards into his own memories, again and again, bringing little to offer and demanding much of her.

"All you ever do is hurt me."

He begs for a different answer each time, and when he doesn't get it he begins the scene from the top. It's the point where he knows something went wrong in his own life, when he failed to pull a lever that might have moved the Earth onto a different course. What those moments meant to her never crossed his mind, not even now.

"Pathetic."

She hates him for calling out for anybody to help him. He gives up so easily. She wonders if he even realizes that she's there with him at all, or if he imagines himself playing out a private game of self-pity.

"No."

It doesn't hurt. His hands aren't real and she can't truly feel them around her neck. She knows that the two of them are dead so his violence fails to achieve anything just as his words failed. By words or by actions, he says the same as he always has. She waits to return again to the beginning. Denying him feels good. If this is their fate, if this is their future, so be it, she will deny him over and over, she will stand in opposition to him and everybody else for all time. She will remain forever, one and alone, Asuka Langley Soryu.

His thoughts grow madder and his attention turns elsewhere. She is alone, she drifts away on a cresting wave of new voices, surprised and screaming. The noise is unbearable so she lets herself sink down into the depths. Imprisoned in the tomb of disquieted souls, their thoughts pushing into her and pulling her apart, she recalls a lullaby Mama used to sing.

"Die Gedanken sind frei... wer kann sie erraten..."

つづく

Notes:

I decided to revisit this fic that I wrote a couple of years ago after seeing the recent theatrical screening of The End of Evangelion. Twice! It was a great experience to see it on a big screen, and it felt just as fresh—and as astounding—as it was when I watched it the first time around. Once again, I was drawn into the tragedy of Asuka's journey and moved by her choice to return from the sea. I found myself asking why all over again.

Although I am pleased with how it originally turned out, there were always some things I wish I had gone back to revise or had planned out better, particularly the earlier parts where I wasn't sure where I was going with the story. I guess there's no time like the present to give this a shot. We'll see how it goes.