Neon Genesis Evangelion Fan Fiction ❯ In the Dark Room ❯ All She Ever Needed... ( Chapter 11 )

Disclaimer: Neon Genesis Evangelion is a Studio Gainax production, its characters created by Hideaki Anno. They say the word, and this story ceases to exist.

 

 

In the Dark Room: All She Ever Needed…

 

By Midnight_Cereal

 

 

“Aida Residence.”

 

“Guten Morgen, soldier boy. How's life in your parent's basement?”

 

“Who's this?”

 

“I'll give you a clue, stooge. It's Asuka, but you knew that already, didn't you?”

 

“How'd you get this number?”

 

“Oh please. One of the many things you're not is a secret agent. Believe me, I know. Hikari told me your number. Or did you forget about her, too?”

 

“Did you want something more than to just harass me?”

 

“Why the hell are you in such a rush? We haven't talked in ages. Your voice has gotten deeper.”

 

“We never talked back then, either. What do you want?”

 

“Oh...I see now…does daddy know you have a girl over?”

 

“Why are you calling me?”

 

“Is she cute?”

 

“Go practice your insufferable cock technique on someone else, alright? Why don't you go bother Hikari?”

 

“How long did it take you to blow her up?”

 

“Goodbye.”

 

“Huh? W-wait! Kensuke, wait.”

 

“This better be good.”

 

“This better be…when the hell did you get so serious?”

 

“I'm not at all serious; I just wasn't expecting to hear from you, that's all.”

 

“Well, I wasn't expecting to talk to you, either, but circumstance is a green-eyed bitch. God, you sound like Shinji.”

 

“You say that like it's a bad thing.”

 

“Isn't it? He hasn't bothered to talk to you in years. Why are you defending him?”

 

“Why shouldn't I, Asuka? No one else did.”

 

“That's not true, and you know it.”

 

“It is true, and you know it.”

 

“Well…it's not anymore. And I don't give a damn if you believe me or not.”

 

“Fine, Asuka.”

 

“I need something from you.”

 

----------------------------------------------------------------- -------------------------------------------

 

On Friday morning, the fifth day with a house guess sleeping down the hall, Maya lowered herself into her chair and blinked at the food sitting before her at her table. “You made pancakes?”

 

Shinji nodded as he turned from the stove to his seat, a syrupy stack piled on the plate in his hand. “I learned how to make them from scratch because that's how Asuka likes them.” He just smirked and nodded in response to Maya's arched eyebrow.

 

She shrugged and started on her breakfast. “Well, at least it's not waffles you're making from scratch.”

 

“Why waffles?”

 

As she pulled the fork from her lips and chewed she shrugged again ineffectually, the buttoned-down night top bunching around her shoulders as she waited to swallow.

 

“When I was about fourteen, I took a trip to Australia to see a friend of mine, and her dad made waffles for us for a solid week. I didn't have any real breakfast food growing up, besides cereal, I mean. I just decided then, right there, that waffles were the Ultimate Bitch Food.”

 

Shinji stopped divvying up his pancakes and made what can only be described as…a face. “Huh?” His knife went into motion, and when he was finished he took a sip of his orange juice. Or tried to, at least. “I'm sorry…what would prompt you to say or think that?”

 

“It was just the effort he put into making the food,” she said, punctuating every other word by chopping the table with the blade of her hand. “It requires a waffle iron, its own special equipment -that you have to plug in- directions, and you need to watch it constantly so it doesn't burn.”

 

She leaned back, oddly confident she had sufficiently validated her Alpha Breakfast Bitch Food Theory. Shinji ate, and when he avoided eye contact with the mad scientist, Maya laughed.

 

“I'm just joking, Shinji.”

 

She wasn't.

 

“I think what you do for Asuka isn't bad at all. It's sweet. I think she appreciates it.”

 

The smile that he wore was weighted, and when she saw it Maya's good mood immediately dissolved. She failed at hiding it as she dipped her head and resumed eating.

 

“Maya?” She kept eating. “You know it's not your fault at all? That I don't blame you?”

 

“These are really good, Shinji.”

 

He dropped the subject when he realized no response to his consolation was forthcoming, much to Maya's relief. After they finished eating they prepared to leave her house.

 

“The past three days, how long did it take to drive you to school?”

 

“Maybe ten minutes,” he answered, tying his shoes with his satchel slung over a hunched shoulder. “If it's trouble, I could just catch a bus from now on-”

 

“No, it's no trouble,” she interrupted as she raised a hand. “I'm just running a little late for something at Nerv.” She grabbed a handful of papers from a ledge near the door, and reached for the knob. “Just don't forget anything because we won't have time to go back.”

 

“Don't you forget anything, either.” He rattled something behind her. Turning, she held out her hand. Shinji placed the small plastic container in her palm, its contents slightly jostling as her fingers closed around it and she shoved it in her pocket.

 

“One before lunch…that's what Dr. Ueto said. Right?”

 

She nodded, both to answer his question and perhaps shake the embarrassment that presently consumed her. “It's just a trial. If I feel better I'll continue taking them, and if not…I'll deal with it the way I've dealt with it all this time.”

 

“It's a start,” he said, a smile gracing his maturing face. She returned it and pivoted back to the door, opening it and walking into the morning light.

 

“Shinji, don't take this the wrong way, but I should've been talking about all this with Asuka.”

 

----------------------------------------------------------------- -------------------------------------------

 

Yukie wasn't buying it.

 

“I'm not buying it, Asuka. You haven't looked at, or spoken to, or yelled at, or hit the guy in four straight days. Are you seriously trying to tell me that you two aren't having any problems? Whatsoever?”

 

“Yup,” Asuka maintained with a conviction she almost felt. Almost. “Shouldn't the fact that I'm not yelling at him imply that things are okay?”

 

The class 3-B representative just threw her hands up with abandon, her loud groan carrying across the schoolyard as the two began to make their ways home.

 

“Look…I may not have graduated from…from Munchin Lunchin or wherever the hell it is you got your college degree, but I'm not stupid. Yelling at and punching Shinji is your way of showing you care. Should I even bother to bring up the fact that you aren't walking home with him, that your hot guardian just picked him up to stay yet another night at her place?”

 

“You just did. And no you shouldn't,” Asuka replied, no longer surprised that Yukie would know things about Shinji's affairs. As they neared the front gate, the brunette was starting to look truly upset. “Why can't you just tell me, Asuka? What's the problem? Are you still mad I didn't tell you me and Shinji are friends?”

 

“No, Yukie. And I wasn't mad in the first place.”

 

“We're friends, now…aren't we?”

 

“Wha…yeah. Yeah. Of course we are!” Asuka made sure to finish forcefully, cursing herself for stammering. The hurt on the other girl's face remained, solidified, even.

 

“Why are you shutting me out, then? Don't shut me out. If I was having problems with my boyfriend, I'd want to be able to talk to you.”

 

“That…boy…is not my boyfriend.”

 

The class rep stomped her foot and then said, “Fine! He's not your boyfriend! And I miss the Angels. And getting pregnant is high on my list of priorities before I graduate. And it's not royally pissing me off that you won't talk to me when something is obviously bothering you! But if I was having problems with `guy I live with and share food with and fall asleep on the couch with and jealously lord over but is not my boyfriend', I'd still want to talk to you.”

 

She waved off the German's lame apology before it even left the red head's tongue. “Forget it, Asuka. I should've expected this.” Yukie gave a defeated sigh as she looked down at her left foot, right, left, slowly leading her away from New Hakone High School. “Is Mariko…that person to you?”

 

“No.”

 

That was lie. And it was disgusting.

 

Asuka knew what shadows lurked behind the light of Mariko's perfect kindness, and knowing that darkness tinged every moment of interaction with an unbearable anxiety. Asuka knew and felt these things. And yet, somehow, Mariko Buick had become the person she could confide in. She could talk to the Sixth Child about Shinji -as she had all week- on a level that she did not feel comfortable breaching with Yukie. She couldn't talk to Yukie at all about Kaji. It had to be Mariko, because she was the only one that knew.

 

A murdering, unstable, physically intimidating psychotic time bomb, and Asuka…liked her.

 

What the hell does that say about me?

 

“She's just…sometimes she's convenient, Yukie-”

 

I love you.

 

“And that's only because I can never seem to get away from her.”

 

Yukie was nonplussed. “Uh-huh. And where's she now?”

 

Almost never. “Probably on her way to a basketball court somewhere to embarrass some poor slob.”

 

Yukie finally looked up. “Well, I'm not as convenient as your roommate, but I'm here now. I just…” And here, the pretty brunette inhaled. Her look was that of a hiker who was deciding whether or not to jump across a ravine. She leapt. “Have I ever told you how much I look up to you?”

 

“No, you haven't.” Because Asuka would remember someone praising her. Nevertheless, the Second Child's curiosity was piqued by the other student's admission.

 

“I…I wasn't always vocal.” Yukie hesitantly began. “I was never bossy as a little girl, if you can believe that.”

 

“No, I can't.”

 

“Shut up and let me talk!” Yukie squawked. “Even in junior high, I was so…shy I hated myself. I couldn't do anything that involved me being outspoken, but when I saw you…when I saw how you acted back then, you spoke for me. When I saw how easy it was for you to stand up, I got motivated, I even felt stronger.”

 

She cast a sideways glance at the red head, who tread silently beside her. “Isn't that great? How just…knowing you was enough to make me stronger? I had this idea in my head, how I was going to walk up to you, and stand in front of you…” Yukie Utsumi paused as she sped up and interposed herself in Asuka's path, bringing the German to a halt. “…and look you in the eye. As an equal. I wanted your respect. You see what I mean, Asuka? So…how about it?”

 

“I do respect you,” Asuka said while wondering what the other girl would think if she knew how much the Second Child was struggling to match Yukie's intensity.

 

“Then trust me enough to help you. You're the reason I have lots of friends, why I went out for track, why I'm class rep. We're both leaders. I wouldn't be leaching off of you like some sick puppy. I'm an equal. So treat me as one.”

 

“I will, Yukie. Just…just not right now.” The Second Child stepped around her friend and started towards the tram station. “Respect that, alright? And trust me when I say I'll tell you.”

 

“When,” demanded the other young woman, returning to Asuka's side with quick long strides.

 

“Sometime when we go out this weekend. I'll call you-”

 

“Nuh-uh, that ship has sailed, red! You're not getting the opportunity to PMS your way out of this. I'm calling you, so you better have something good planned for us. You're going, you're going to invite Mariko and she's going, and I'm getting Aki and we're all going to have fun pouring out of our asses, goddammit!”

 

Trying mightily to delete the image of what…fun would look like pouring from a certain orifice, Asuka just blinked for a moment before speaking. “I have to tell you, you do Asuka better than I've done Asuka in the past few weeks.”

 

They stopped walking as Yukie put her hands on her hips and dipped her head sagely. “And I'm telling you, I don't see how you can keep this up. It makes you tense all over.” She looked Asuka in the eyes. “I need to get laid.” She leaned in closer to the speechless, wide-eyed red head. “And so do you.” Yukie pulled back and quickly spun to start in the opposite direction. “You'll hear from me soon, pervert.”

 

Asuka watched the back of Yukie Utsumi shrink as the class representative rapidly put distance between them. “And you call me a pervert,” she heard herself finally mutter.

 

“No I don't.”

 

Kensuke Aida's entire bifocaled field of vision was immediately filled with Asuka's trembling fist, hovering a centimeter from his nose.

 

“I missed you too, you hateful gaijin shrew.”

 

“You smell of urine, and burlap,” Asuka informed him, lowering her instrument of grievous bodily harm. “Why the hell are you here? Didn't I say not to come here? I did say wait for me to call you, remember?”

 

“We're not gonna do it right here, Asuka, calm down. What're you so afraid of, anyway?”

 

“Never mind. Just be glad no one else is here.” She grabbed him by his bag strap and pulled him towards the location she had scouted a few days ago. “Let's just get this over with.”

 

----------------------------------------------------------------- -------------------------------------------

 

“That Yukie girl reminds me of Asuka a little bit,” Maya said loudly, changing into home attire as she stood in her bedroom. Her audience said nothing at first, and the only indication she was not alone in her house was the slight commotion in the hallway.

 

“Ummm….she wasn't always like that,” Shinji finally answered, his voice carrying over his seemingly random shuffling. “Back in ninth grade she was in the homeroom down the hall, class 2-C, I think. From what I saw of her, she was almost as quiet as Rei.”

 

“Wow,” was all Maya could say before she pulled her faded tee down over her short brown hair. “That is saying a lot.”

 

“A lot more than she ever said. I don't know what happened to her, but it was like she grew a spine overnight.”

 

A knowing smirk tinged the pitch of Maya's voice when she countered with, “Sounds like a certain Eva pilot I know.”

 

“You can't be talking about me. But apparently Yukie thought I was worth something.”

 

Maya suppressed a sigh. “Shinji, can't you just feel good about yourself for ten seconds? What do you mean Yukie thought you were worth something?”

 

“She gave me chocolates on Valentine's Day.”

 

“She what? Wait, giro-choco or honmei-choco?”

 

“Honmei-choco.”

 

“She was serious, Shinji. This wasn't this year, was it?”

 

“Not this year. Last year, when we were freshmen, just before she started seeing this new guy. Asuka had probably been out of the hospital for about a month and a half by then.” Maya heard him chuckle. “Even though Asuka never did find out I still thought it was pretty brave.”

 

“What's funny?” Maya pondered aloud.

 

“I don't think she did it because she liked me. I'm not getting down on myself. I just think that's the honest truth.”

 

“Why do you think she did it, then?”

 

“I think she was testing herself. She knew I was…spoken for but she did it anyway to build up her confidence. She knew there was no way I could've given her anything on White Day.”

 

“That almost makes sense.”

 

“It makes more sense that she did it to get Asuka's attention, like she was hoping Asuka would see I got something and then seek her out.”

 

The young doctor shook her head to no one in particular, her toes curling on the soft carpet beneath her. “I don't know, Shinji. Yukie struck me as a smart, smart girl. And besides, if she really did have a death wish, she could've just given you the chocolates in full view of Asuka.”

 

“Small doses, Maya. When you're as quiet as she was, you enjoy small victories. I know. It doesn't matter how little sense they make to the other people.”

 

Something pierced the air with synthetic noise, and a moment passed before Maya reached the phone in her room and picked it up. “Hello…” Her smile did not vanish, but it did become more compact as she listened. “Shinji, pick up out there. It's for you.”

 

“Who is it?”

 

“It's for you.”

 

----------------------------------------------------------------- -------------------------------------------

 

“Hello-”

 

“I don't think you're worse than you're father. In fact, I don't think you're like him at all. I shouldn't have said that, but I hadn't been that angry in a long, long time. But it wasn't because of the waiting. I don't mind waiting. I've been doing it for two years, and I could do it forever.

 

“What I do mind, is sharing. Sharing you. With anyone. Ever. I didn't want Mana sharing you with me. I didn't like sharing with Misato, or Rei. Especially Rei. I didn't like sharing you with Yukie when she gave you chocolates on Valentine's Day, yes, I knew about that. I don't like you getting close to Mariko by sharing information about me, things I can barely tell you. I don't like the fact that you're at Maya's place right now because, admit it, she's a little hottie and a little lonely and a little crazy. I don't mind the waiting, at all, because you saved us, and we have forever now.

 

“But. If I can't have you, if I can't have all of you…come home soon.”

 

Click.

 

----------------------------------------------------------------- -------------------------------------------

 

With tentative footsteps, Maya Ibuki slowly crept into her living space, carefully eyeing the Third Child as he gently replaced the phone in its cradle.

 

“Shinji? Is everything alright?” She began wringing her dry hands. “What did she say?”

 

He looked at her. “I think I'm going to make waffles for dinner.”

 

Then he smiled.

 

----------------------------------------------------------------- -------------------------------------------

 

“All they're asking for is a student-t distribution.”

 

“I see…so…why doesn't the problem tell you what the population is?”

 

“Mariko, I just said why. It's a student-t distribution. You only need a sample.”

 

“I…I see…”

 

“No you don't. You're not even paying attention to what I'm saying.”

 

“Mmph…mrrrmbfghrhg…”

 

“What the hell did you just say?”

 

“I said,” Mariko reiterated, pulling her head from her forearms resting on the (new) coffee table, and looking across at Asuka. “I can't stop thinking…or maybe I'm not thinking at all. One or the other, but I can't really tell. I didn't mean to ignore you. I'm drawing a blank, you know?”

 

The Second Child rolled her eyes. “I wish you would've told me that like two hours ago, it's ten past seven now!”

 

The American laid her head back down, her short messy hair framing her profile in a black halo. “Sorry,” she whispered, eyes half-lidded. “I'm not feeling too good right now.”

 

“Are you sick?” Asuka asked as she cautiously watched the melancholy teenager.

 

“No. I don't think so.”

 

“You're just down?”

 

Mariko fully closed her eyes. “Yeah.”

 

“Didn't think you could get down.”

 

“Why, Asuka? I'm normal. I'm just like anyone else.”

 

The German native closed her textbook, her pencil fluttering between her delicate fingers with practiced dexterity. “Let me see some of your pictures.”

 

Mariko's eyes flew open, and her head craned upward so she could look at, and then through her roommate. “Asuka…I don't think that's a good idea.”

 

“What's the worst that can happen?” asked the red head, raising a questioning eyebrow. “I'll find out you're a murdering sociopath?”

 

The American looked suddenly as if she had been struck in the gut. “Asuka…how could you-”

 

“How could I what? Tell the truth? You take oodles of pictures every time you go out. Just show me some good ones. I'm not expecting you to hand me some smoking gun.”

 

Mariko became relaxed again as she looked away. In one swift motion she rose and stalked towards her room, returning in short order with a photo book which, to Asuka's eternal relief, was not red.

 

“Scoot over,” said the American, plopping down next to the other girl as she placed and opened the album on the short table.

 

“That's you.” Asuka was eyeing the small child smiling from an exposure in the far left corner.

 

“Yeah. I was probably eight then. My first foster home was this Vietnamese family in Seattle. See that there? That's where the Space Needle was.” Mariko traced her old portrait with a finger before withdrawing it. “They had a son who was about three years older than me…” A ghost of her old smile drew the side of her mouth upward. “I had the biggest crush on him.”

 

Mariko's audience traced the Sixth Child's smile with a long glance. “That's why you didn't stay with them?”

 

“No.”

 

“Why didn't you stay with them?”

 

“Because…I don't know. But I ended up in Tennessee after that.”

 

“Why am I in here, next to these old pictures?”

 

“Oh…I don't really put them in chronological order. I just like it that way, so every time I look it's a surprise, you know? Kinda like a digital mosaic.”

 

Asuka leaned back. “Ewww…that's just…that's gross, Mariko!”

 

The taller girl, smiling still, shot a thoroughly confused look at Asuka. “Why is it gross that I don't put them in order?”

 

The German raised a finger and then lowered it, opened her mouth and then closed it, and then simply said, “It's not. Forget I even said anything.”

 

“Is there something I'm not getting?”

 

“Yes.”

 

“What?”

 

“Forget it.”

 

“Why?”

 

“Forget it.”

 

“Why?”

 

“Forget it!”

 

“Why?”

 

“Because if I tell you, you're gonna tell me why you killed her.”

 

Mariko's smile was to Asuka's question what a snow cone is to hell.

 

“Killed? Killed, killed who?”

 

“Her.”

 

Mariko's green, cautious eyes followed Asuka's extended digit to an older photograph, or more specifically the person in it. Mariko was in the foreground, her bob cut jostled from behind, her shoulders supporting the thin arms of-

 

“Jackie.”

 

“Jackie? That was her name?”

 

“Anybody but her.”

 

“Why not her? I think the reason she's dead is the same reason everyone else is.”

 

“What else do you think, Asuka?” Though Mariko was blinking, those irises remained on Asuka's extended finger, on the old photograph, diving into it. She was somewhere else now, and Asuka wasn't entirely sure she wanted to follow. But it was too late, now.

 

“I think…I think you take a picture of your new buddy.” Asuka paused as she leafed over once. Yukie smiled at her over her shoulder. “I think you chat, and get comfy.” She flipped again and Jin scowled unconvincingly, his mouth full of ice cream sandwich. Asuka flipped forward, and then back, paused and leafed forward once. “They get comfy, too. You tell them some things, and they feel like they can tell you anything.”

 

There's Maya. Danny and Aki.

 

“And then they do…”

 

There's Shinji.

 

“And then you snap. And when it's all over you take another picture.”

 

When Mariko would not meet her inquisitive look, the Second knew she was right.

 

“Asuka…I-I wouldn't want to-”

 

“I believe you,” the veteran pilot calmly intoned. “You wouldn't want to. I believe that. But I need to know, you need to start telling me.”

 

“I can't…just…I don't know how-”

 

“Start talking. About anything. Just…the slightest, teensy weensy baby step. The littlest, most insignificant thing. You're always talking about how I have to open up, how I need to start accepting things. You said you're selfish. Fine. Are you a hypocrite, too?”

 

“I'm scared, Asuka,” in a naked, hollow whisper. “You don't know what I would do.”

 

“I have a pretty good idea. But you knew it would come to this, right? You're telling me to trust you? This is the first step. You want me to sit with you and watch Denpa Shonen without judging the distance between me and the door every five seconds? You give me something. You know if you can't tell me, it could get a whole lot worse. Right?”

 

“You don't have to tell me that.”

 

“How am I going to trust you if you're not even trying?”

 

The resulting static hush bled into seconds, into a minute, before, “The answer, Mariko, is that I don't. I may be stuck with you, but that doesn't mean that I have to trust you.” Asuka Langley Sorhyu removed her index finger from the Sixth Child's memories and rose. “I have to go get clean, now.” With that, she pivoted to make her way to the bathroom.

 

A hand clamped onto her wrist.

 

“My first memory,” Mariko began, “was…a face. A man's face.”

 

Asuka slid down so softly that at first she didn't realize she was being pulled back to her seat. “Who was it?” she asked.

 

“I don't know. I don't want to know who it was…because it wasn't the face of a nice person. He was looking at me. He was staring down at me. He wasn't a young man, but he wasn't very old, either. But he had enough lines in his face to enhance what was already there.”

 

“What was already there?”

 

Mariko paused and winced painfully as she inhaled. “Contempt. I maybe did something to him. Maybe. How could I, though? I couldn't have been any older than three, you know?”

 

Mariko scooted away from the coffee table, leaning on the couch as she pulled her knees to her chest. “It was just him. Hating me, in a room that was…just solid black. I couldn't tell you where the light was coming from, how he stood out, his name, if anyone else was there. He didn't say anything. He didn't have to, `cause his look spoke all his words.”

 

Asuka thought for a second she viewed a tremble on Mariko's lip; she was as uncertain of that as she was of how Mariko had closed the distance between them without her noticing. Mariko's shoulder rubbed against her as the taller girl shrugged slightly. “You know what it said?”

 

“Only if you tell me.”

 

Suddenly, her green irises were inches away from Asuka's own. “`You don't belong here.'” Mariko pulled back. “I realized that, even then. He laughed for some reason...”

 

And then, as if they were long-lost childhood friends, sisters…Mariko Buick rested her head on Asuka's shoulder. The German did not have time to raise a protest or even sufficiently tense before Mariko finished recounting her terrible first memory.

 

“…and then his head exploded.”

 

The weight on Asuka's right seemed to sink further into her shoulder as she spent the following moment trying to purge the image from her mind's eye; a face splitting across its hemisphere from a grin it wasn't designed to facilitate, the smile growing like a crack in the fatigued metal fuselage of a jetliner…and then tearing across the malevolent carapace rupturing with sudden, catastrophic violence…

 

Asuka tried harder. “So…” she chanced, “is that why you-”

 

“No,” was the answer, “but…it's a start. Isn't it? I've only told one other person about that. Jackie took that story with her.” Asuka looked her in the face as best she could and was rewarded with emerald eyes welling with tears. “Telling you that…was hard.”

 

“If the reason the way you are now is the reason Shinji and I have to have someone like Maya as our guardian, then I…”

 

That's it.

 

“I…understand.”

 

That's it, isn't it?

 

“You don't give a damn about your father…do you, Mariko? I bet you didn't even know him.”

 

Mariko did not release the emotion in her wet eyes in an avalanche of repressed agony, but in a slow soft weeping bordering on manic laughter. Interspersed, somewhere, was the unmistakable air of…joy.

 

“You got it, Asuka. You figured it out.” The laughter grew stronger even as she cried. Mariko Buick buried her flushed, wet face into the shoulder of her…

 

“Thank you. I…I didn't even have to hurt you.”

 

…friend.

 

----------------------------------------------------------------- -------------------------------------------

 

Yukie did not call on Friday night. Yukie did not call all of Saturday, and when she did not call by noon that Sunday, Asuka was scrounging through the pockets in her pants to salvage the class rep's phone number. It did not matter that she found it in a pair of sweat pants crumpled in the bottom drawer of her dresser; Yukie's phone wasn't even turned on.

 

“Mariko?”

 

“…Yeah?”

 

“I…wait, are you still mopey?”

 

“Don't worry about it.”

 

“I just want to know if you have Yukie's phone number.”

 

“I have her cell phone number-”

 

“Her home phone number. You know I've been calling her cell phone all day.”

 

“No. Sorry. I don't have that.”

 

“How about Aki?”

 

“No. Sorry. I don't have that.”

 

“Damn.”

 

“Shinji might have Yukie's home number.”

 

Asuka did not get to talk to Yukie that Sunday, which meant she was going to have a lot to say to her at school on Monday. That morning the German teen slung her satchel over her shoulder, biting into a piece of toast she had managed to utterly char. She stomped to the end of the hallway, blanching at the taste of pyrolyzed bread and swallowing as though it were fine saw dust. Her growing empathy for the girl was genuine, certainly, but at the moment…

 

“Mariko! Get out of there! I have somebody to flay at school and I'm not waiting until lunch! You have two minutes!”

 

With no answer forthcoming, Asuka knocked on the thin shoji as forcefully as she could without breaking it. “Get a grip, woman! You don't even want to know what my first memories are. Do you hear me, Yankee? Don't make me come in th-”

 

A disturbance behind the frail door gave Asuka pause. Lowering her raised fist to her hip, she leaned to put her ear next to the shoji…and made out a muffled, constant weeping. Then, “You shouldn't say things like that! Why?”

 

She stepped away. Her auburn locks whirled behind her from turning in the direction from which she came, and they bounced across her back as she swiftly furthered herself from the word that followed her, that was now being repeated by the young woman behind that door.

 

“Why?”

 

Further.

 

“Why? WHY?”

 

When the voice behind that door collapsed once more with a wretched choking sob, Asuka knew she had to get yet further away.

 

Unfortunately, further never seemed to be far enough for Asuka, who heard that word even as she stepped alone into the Monday morning sunlight, onto the tram at the rail station, and as she stepped off three blocks away from New Hakone. For the sweetest moment, she blocked it out when her eye caught Yukie Utsumi sitting at her homeroom desk, robotically preparing for the day's lesson. Then Asuka remembered the reason she wanted to talk to class 3-B's student representative in the first place.

 

Why didn't the brunette call this weekend?

 

“Hey! Oprah!” Asuka started on her, pushing past Chisa and Anita (who were also in Mariko's picture book).

 

“Oh…Asuka…” said Yukie, the girl's voice barely audible to the Second Child as she arrived in front of the class rep's desk.

 

“I'm so flattered that you remembered.” Asuka let sarcasm mingle with righteous indignation, but the concoction did nothing to quell the beginnings of disquiet from her friend's uncharacteristically morose disposition. “Oh, you're going to have a good reason for standing me up this weekend. I can tell.”

 

“Oh…that's right,” Yukie admitted in a sullen whispered drawl, raising her head from her desk kiosk only so high as to glance at her friend, who was becoming more and more perturbed by Yukie's melancholy by the second. “I was supposed to call you.”

 

Asuka smacked Yukie's desk with both palms and leaned over the brunette's terminal. “I don't believe this!” she exclaimed as she managed to keep the worry out of her hushed voice. “All that crap you gave me about being equals and not pussin' out and having fun, and you didn't even bother to remember! What were you doing that whole time, your boyfriend?”

 

Yukie looked up.

 

Asuka could no longer maintain the weak front masking her concern, because she knew that look, and had seen it on enough faces to know exactly what it meant. Hikari had worn it the night Asuka had -much to the great displeasure of Major Misato Katsuragi-

visited the middle Horaki sister to tell her exactly why it was that Touji would not be having lunch with her anytime soon…

 

“What happened to him?”

 

“I just…I have a really good reason not to have…” And then Yukie Utsumi clutched her stomach and mouth, bolting from her desk and shoving past Shinji as she hastily floundered into the hallway.

 

The entirety of class 3-B's attention was drawn to the doubled-over teen fleeing her post, and then to Asuka, who remained frozen and staring at Yukie's toppled plastic seat just for a second. In the next second she whirled, and when her eyes met Shinji's, the dam staying the panic rampantly circulating through her broke.

 

“YUKIE!”

 

Why was this happening?

 

End of All She Ever Needed…

 

A/N: N/A

 

Random A/N:

 

Acknowledgement: The origin of the Alpha Breakfast Bitch Food Theory, to my knowledge, is found in the story Role Playing, written by notable fanfiction authors Lara Bartram and Ammadeau. The story can still be found in Lara Bartram's fanfic archive located on her website. This woman's work is awesome.

 

Endgame begins next week, people. Thank you for reading and your criticism. Ja.

 

Next Chapter: Third Exposure