Neon Genesis Evangelion Fan Fiction ❯ In the Dark Room ❯ The Final Negative ( Chapter 14 )

[ X - Adult: No readers under 18. Contains Graphic Adult Themes/Extreme violence. ]

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: The Final Negative

By Midnight_Cereal

(TWO) NEW MESSAGES

FIRST MESSAGE RECEIVED: SIX THIRTY-TWO P.M. MONDAY, APRIL TWENTY-THIRD. SIXTEEN SECONDS:

“SHIT. Asuka, it's Maya. Look, I don't have time to explain, but you need to get away from Mariko right now. Shinji too, if he's with you. If Mariko's there, make something up. I don't care what. Just…make it good and get away. Now. Someone's coming for you now. Just please be alright. Do it, Asuka.”

END OF FIRST MESSAGE

SECOND MESSAGE RECEIVED: SIX THIRTY-FOUR P.M. MONDAY, APRIL TWENTY-THIRD. TWENTY SECONDS:

“ASUKAAAAA! PICK UP YOUR DAMN PHONE! MARIKO'S A PYSCHO! SHE'S NOT NORMAL, ASUKA. SHE'S A NERV CLONE, SHE'S JUST LIKE KAWORU! SHE'S KILLED BEFORE AND SHE PROBABLY KILLED JIN TAKASHI AND SHE'LL KILL YOU TOO! OH GOD, WHY AREN'T YOU PICKING UP? PICK UP, YOU LITTLE BRAT, WHAT'S GOING ON? ANSWER THE PHONE, ASUKA, ANSWER THE FU-”

END OF SECOND MESSAGE

“Thanks for the advanced warning, guardian,” Asuka intoned, unable to find the strength to make her words sufficiently sarcastic. She cut the power to her numbing shoulder and the phone smacked her thigh as she dropped her heavy hand. She moved to the wall like a woman of seventy instead of seventeen. Contact between her back and the cool surface elicited a sharp cry, but she bore it in exchange for the privilege of resting her body…she was so tired.

Her eyes incessantly negotiated with her unconscious so that she found herself constantly staring at the back of their lids. Each time she opened them fiercely to look at Mariko, leaning against the opposite wall in the apartment's back hallway, and also bleeding to death.

“Who was that?” Mariko asked. Her hollow voice chilled Asuka's bones; either that or the onset of shock, beginning to wrack her body in subtle but growing spasms.

“Maya.” Duh. Asuka had said `guardian'…was Mariko really that slow? But then again, she was feeling slow, also.

“Oh…” the other bleeding young woman began. “Advanced warning.” Mariko slowly pushed the words out her mouth, past the gash in her cheek and her dirty lips. “They know.”

It wasn't a question. Asuka could only shrug awkwardly, painfully in a drawn-out motion that again made her aware of the slick slit in her side. “They probably would've found out sooner if the Second Branch hadn't vanished.”

“Second…do you mean Nerv-Nevada?”

“Mariko, there hasn't been any `Nerv-Nevada' in more than two years.”

“It…it just vanished?”

“Isn't that what I just said?” Asuka nearly spat, relieved she could still feel irritation. She shivered.

“How are you doing?” asked Mariko.

The red-head shrugged again. “Yukie was upset for some reason today, but she's moody like that and I didn't worry about it much. We got our history tests back, and I felt I did better than a ninety-two, but apparently the Moops didn't invade eight century Spain. The Moors did. I'm bleeding from three knife wounds. How are you doing?”

“My hair smells like coffee. I got a stinger in my elbow. My wrist is itchy.” Mariko looked down in the red slash below her paling palm. She frowned. “Should it take this long?”

“Quitter,” chastised Asuka.

“It's for the best, I think. If I live…they'll never let me out.” The Sixth Child kept her mouth open as if to speak, but paused…and then the look of realization flooded her face, implications dawning on her. “I don't want to die, but…”

Asuka stared balefully at the black, red, a brown blur she was fairly certain was Mariko Buick.

“I should hate you…so much, you know that? But…ah!” She peeled herself off of her support to totter forward until she could crawl on her hands and knees toward Mariko. She stooped at the American's side, Asuka's pale knees just outside of the pool below the other teenager's wrist. “But I can't choose my friends. I promised to help you, didn't I? And I always keep my…are you crying?”

Mariko was smiling, her weeping permeated with the unmistakable sound of laughter. “I just didn't know,” she managed shakily as Asuka began to loosen her belt. “I tried being nice to you, I tried understanding you. I didn't think I was getting through, Asuka. I thought that, that all you saw was those pictures. You saw the worst part of me. Everyone gets to keep their ugliness on the inside.” Asuka was silent as she noosed the belt around Mariko's think bicep. “You're friends with me.”

“Welcome to Nerv,” said Asuka, tightening the belt around the artery. “If you dig enough, you find out everyone here is ugly as sin. Raise your arm and keep it there.” Mariko obeyed, and Asuka dragged herself back to her side hallway.

“Asuka…I just wish knew that if I lived, whether or not I'd be able to get out again one day.”

“Did you ever consider that maybe you don't deserve to know?”

“Yeah. But the most selfish…you know the rest.” Mariko shivered. “Is it getting cold in here? Is it me?”

“It's you, it's me, it's hypovolemic shock.”

“You know everything, you know that?”

“I'd like to believe that, but I'm a long way from forty-two.”

“Of course, Asuka, you're only sevent…wait, was that a joke? That was a joke, wasn't it?”

“Yeah.”

“Well I…don't…get…iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii…” And Mariko's last word faded with the strength in her muscles and the light in her green eyes. Invisible strings above her snapped, no longer able to support the weight of consciousness, and she slumped sideways. Doubling over awkwardly, she painted a red wide arc on the wall behind her with a bloody cheek before finally coming to rest facedown against a baseboard.

“Someangerrrrl,” Asuka slurred to no one in particular. Something passed though her as she peered at the still form of Mariko Buick. It was probably annoyance, because she was the one that deserved to pass out…

And suddenly she was tearing her eyes open again. It was harder this time. She was warm when her eyes were closed. Mr. Hritsu's little boy was again stomping on the floor above them.

If Angels had done this to me, it would be so much easier to deal with.

What a crock of shit. If she knew it was going to end like this, she wouldn't have bothered to have changed the carpet which rushed up to meet her…

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I gotta pee. I can't do it here, though. Why, again? Oh. That's right. I'm not in a bathroom. I'm in a bed. In a hospital. Something smells like pee, though. Gott in Himmel, I didn't pee myself, did I? No…no, that's not it. Old, old flowers. What kind again? Only one way to know. Well, two. I could ask, too. But I want to know where the bathroom is. I could just ask that, too, but I still need to-

Asuka opened her eyes.

“Chamomile.”

“Oh, Asuka! You're up again?” said the sun-drenched Maya-sounding blob hovering over her.

“…again?” Asuka asked, her broken voice sounding parched and foreign.

The Maya blob became oddly tense. “What's wrong? What do you mean `again'? You don't remember?”

“Relax...relax, I'm…I'm just gathering my wits. You'd be forgetful too if you've been out for…what day is it?”

“Thursday. The Thursday after the Thursday of the week you were put in here. So ten days.”

“Well, no wonder I have to go to the bathroom.”

Suddenly the lines on her guardian's face came into focus, and they stenciled an embarrassed countenance on her young reddening skin. “Well, that wouldn't be the reason.” Redder. “You couldn't go yourself, so you've had help. The nurses-”

“-will be completely safe if you don't tell me who they are.”

“Don't be like that, please?”

“Okay.”

“You made that really easy, Asuka, thank you.”

“No, it's just…there are things…”

“Your wounds are going to heal up nice. That's what Dr. Marshall says, and if you believe him, you can believe he can minimize the scar tissue-”

“What's the point? Have you ever seen my stomach?”

“Yes.”

“Then you know that three more scars aren't going to hurt. I'm not worried about that.” The bedridden pilot's eyebrows arched as a memory touched her. “I asked you about Yukie and Mariko the last time I was up.”

“You'll have to ask Shinji about Yukie. But they moved Mariko as soon as she stabilized and they repaired the tendons in her wrist.”

“Where is she disappearing to?”

Maya's face reflected the sunlight streaming through the suite's windows. And hurt.

“Asuka, Mariko isn't…why would you think she's going to dis-”

“Because it's much better for Nerv if Mariko dies in an Eva-related accident in the line of duty, than letting it be known that they handed the keys to a super-powered bio-weapon over to a murdering psychopath.”

“Are you serious? You think that'll happen?”

“I wouldn't if I didn't know how things work around here. But I do. So it makes sense to get rid of her.”

Asuka glanced languidly up to her guardian to find Maya wearing something she thought the older woman never would; a full-blown scowl.

“That is not the way things work here now, okay? Not as long as I'm heading Project E. Not as long as Commander Ikari stays dead.” It was apparent that recognition suddenly found Maya Ibuki. “Hyuga's the only reason we ever recruited her. He recovered Gendo's old data logs, and that's how he found out about the Second Branch, how they were using Mariko as the basis for a dummy plug in parallel with their S-2 engine experiments.”

The young doctor wiped absently at some lint on a pants leg. Her scowl deepened. “The scientists in Nevada kept Mariko a secret. The Commander found out anyway, deemed it a danger to his scenario-”

“And ordered the clones destroyed. Mariko told me that part. She told me how she got away. How'd Hyuga find out? Foster home admittances?”

Maya nodded. “And she made the local news the day she was found.”

How was I supposed to know a child isn't supposed to make it that far in the desert?

“That was just the beginning. Hyuga tracked her,” Maya glanced out into the hallway. “Starting about two years ago. He noticed that wherever she went, people died. I don't even think he would've noticed had she not lived a lot of those years in rural areas, in America, in Japan. The years before Mariko moved to Takayama they averaged half a murder annually. Four people were killed the year she arrived. The next year she left for Nagoya, and the number dropped to one.”

“So he knew what she was doing?”

“He knew. Because of those things. Because he knew from Gendo's files on Mariko that she has Trisomy X syndrome. Having an extra X-chromosome usually wouldn't do anything to a girl except make her taller. But if you splice human and Angel DNA…that's just a whole new world.”

Something wasn't meshing. “How is it that Rei and Kaworu didn't have this problem?”

“Kaworu was a boy, so he didn't have an extra X-chromosome. How many scientists do you know of Dr. Akagi's caliber?”

Asuka rolled her eyes. Ouch! Couldn't she do anything that didn't involve her side flaring in pain? “I don't know any scientists, Maya.”

“Well I do. Dozens. And I still can't name anyone that was such a perfectionist. Commander Ikari, maybe. And maybe the person that Mariko was based on had Trisomy-X. I know for a fact Yui Ikari didn't. Did…Mariko tell you she wasn't the first?”

“No.”

“The first clone killed a top geneticist a minute after they removed her from the holding tank. She crushed Robert Quathme's head into a singularity with a localized A.T. Field and they destroyed her on the spot.”

“He did want her to kill Shinji.”

“Mariko Buick was the most stable. They thought that if they removed enough stimuli and provided her with a maternal figure, they would be able to control her. They did, until Gendo visited them.”

“So Hyuga gets all the blame, then,” Asuka observed, trying vainly to ignore her bladder. “We lucked out for the most part. Why don't I feel so lucky, then?”

“I can't answer that. I can tell you that Mariko's being kept about six kilometers from here, in a U.N.-run asylum. She'll be evaluated during the next few months to see if she's eligible for gene therapy treatment.”

“She's at the Damkohler Institute?”

Maya looked mildly surprised. “You've heard of it?”

“I almost ended up there…a while ago.”

Asuka's guardian sighed deeply, slowly, then, “You're going to visit her, aren't you?”

The bedridden teen hid her face from Maya, suddenly finding the far wall interHOW LONG HAD SHINJI BEEN SITTING IN THAT CHAIR? Asuka admirably composed herself. He was asleep, and it wasn't as if she had said anything hideously embarrassing.

“Yukie's going to hate me for doing it.”

“Yukie won't understand.” Maya leaned into whispering range. “We share fucked-up bonds, right?”

Asuka smiled for the first time. “You've been waiting for weeks to throw that one back, haven't you?”

Maya rolled her eyes. “…Yes,” she admitted with a huff, and without warning then leaned in all the way, brushing back Asuka's red bangs with a hand and kissing the side of her charge's forehead.

“Yeccch…Maya! Did you get that memo about the Japanese shunning public displays of affection?”

Maya shrugged it off as she pulled back and rose from her chair. “You're not Japanese. Besides, none of that really applies to me anymore. I'm retarded.”

“You don't need to tell me that.” Asuka wiped her forehead with a dry weak hand.

“She's been given designer drugs to inhibit her ability to project A.T. Fields. Surgeons had also implanted a chip in her neck that will temporarily paralyze her if she gets out of control. But be careful, anyway.”

“Alright, mom.”

“I mean it, Asuka.”

“You didn't mean it the first time?”

“You two are all I have.”

“I…” And before Asuka could reboot and fully digest Maya Ibuki's admission, she watched her back as she stalked briskly to and out the door of her Nerv infirmary suite.

Shinji muttered something unintelligible in the corner.

She lay still and tried to ignore her bladder. And something else…

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

A week passed. Asuka was discharged from Nerv Infirmary. Four more weeks passed.

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Kensuke cast a wary eye to the young woman sitting in his passenger seat. She was doing something.

“Hikari, don't open the glove compartment.”

Hikari opened the glove compartment. A thick glossy stack of paper spilled onto her lap.

“Don't look at those, you won't like it,” Touji Suzahara said somewhere behind Kensuke.

Hikari Horaki utilized the listening skills she had cultivated during her years as a class representative, doing the exact opposite of what her first love advised.

“Kensuke…” she began, furiously blinking. “These women are…not clothed.”

The sandy-haired teenager adjusted his glasses and gripped the steering wheel tighter. “Yeah. Um…the articles-”

“-of clothing are missing, I know.” She began to browse. “Jug-a-thon 2012?” Hikari slipped the top magazine to the bottom of the stack. “Ai Yuri Aoshi?” She flipped again. “Ai Love to Fu-KENSUKE!”

“Well she does!” he shot back. “I told you not to open the glove compartment!”

“And I told you not to look at them,” Touji said, glancing sideways at his sister, who flinched at the shouting in her sleep.

“All I wanted was a napkin, Aida, not a look into your…failings.”

“You'd think there'd be a napkin in there, somewhere.”

Hikari's shoulder length chestnut hair flared behind her as she craned her neck to look questioningly at the eldest (smiling) Suzahara sibling. “Why do you think he would still have napkins in…” And then she stopped talking. And turned back around.

“Does someone need napkins?” Mari groggily asked as she rubbed her eyes.

“No,” the other three passengers immediately answered.

“I still got some napkins from that place we stopped at.” Mari yawned. “How long ago was that?”

“We're almost there, sis…right, Ken?”

Kensuke groaned and said, “Do you have to pee again? God, Touji, you have the bladder of a mountain vole!”

“Drive, napkin boy,” Touji ordered. “Why the hell are you worried about what's coming outta my-”

“Touji,” Hikari warned.

“Who're you laughing at, little girl?” The black-haired boy asked his giggling sister.

“Heh heh heh…mountain vole,” said Mari, shaking a head of short dark hair.

Touji smiled darkly. “Mari…as soon as you fall back to sleep…I'm gonna fart right in your mouth-”

“TOUJI!”

“Hikari, I'm just kidding.”

“No he's not,” Mari said with a far away look.

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

When Dr. Frederick Chilton turned to look at Asuka once more, she promised herself that if he tried to look down her shirt again, she would make him realize the wrong pilot had been institutionalized.

“She's been as well as anyone that's walked or has been walked into Damkohler,” he answered her in clear but heavily accented Japanese. Fortunately (for him) his superior leer stayed afloat at eye level, and Asuka used the contact to imply vast cruelties with a narrowed glare. He merely smirked; this was a man who knew the limits of a person and how to tax that boundary without falling victim to recoil.

So Asuka turned her attention forward and continued to walk with him, down a white corridor, past an orderly and nurse scanning a clipboard. There was a door at the end of the antiseptic hallway, and if this visit was the same as the last four, Mariko was going to be at the end of it, outdoors.

“I do not have to remind you not to touch her, and to maintain a distance of four meters, Ms. Sohryu.”

“You just did.” You condescending prick.

“There will be two orderlies on standby at all times-”

“Haven't we gone through all this before? If you were as competent an administrator as you pretend to be, you'd know it doesn't really matter how many people you put out there. She can't make A.T. Fields, she's chipped, but she hasn't lost any strength and she's just as fast. If she snaps when you blink, I'm dead. She's only here because she knows she needs to be.”

Dr. Chilton chuckled artificially, but Asuka did well not to outwardly bristle.

“Ms. Sohryu, I don't doubt that she knows she belongs here, as I'm equally sure that she knew what it was she was doing to those people. What I know is that somebody cashed in the chips `Nerv' and `pilot' and now my hands are tied.” He eyed her again, this time with a newfound seriousness. “And if you were the genius everyone claims you were you'd realize the foolhardiness of putting your life in the hands of someone so…mentally deficient.”

“Well, I'm sure Mariko feels the same way,” Asuka sweetly salvoed.

Before she could realize the crisp image of her fist lodged in his smug face, they were pushing open the heavy door, taking them outside. A large black man to Asuka's left acknowledged them with a bearded grin, and perhaps because of the sleazy jerk to her right, the Second Child immediately liked him when they had first spoken three weeks ago.

“How's it going, Barney?” she asked in perfect English.

“Ms. Sohryu, I'm doing fine.” He paused a second with a slight nod, as he always did.

Carefully, smoothly, he pointed to a far edge of the expansive green yard. Beyond his finger was a manicured lawn scarred with concrete pathways, and further away a tree, one of many hugging the perimeter of the space. Beneath it was a sitting woman with short black hair, her slouched posture on the bench ruffling her power blue scrubs. She was looking away from the institute, the angle of her craned neck implying a gaze leveled at the crater rim far, far above.

“Should anything happen,” said Barney, “we are always closer than we look.”

She responded with a sincere nod, which served to kindly acknowledge the tall orderly and spite his snobbish superior already turning to reenter the building. She ignored Dr. Chilton and stepped forward onto the green.

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

Asuka quickly stepped around to the front of the bench and consciously sat well closer than four meters to Mariko, knowing full well Dr. Chilton was watching her right now.

Mariko's back immediately straightened as she turned to the young German. “Oh! Asuka, you scared me!” She ran a hand through her tousled dark hair, faintly smiling. “I didn't mean to move so fast. It's just…people weren't really able to sneak up on me before, you know?”

“I do know. I was rarely surprised when I was piloting.” Asuka discreetly looked the institutionalized teenager over. She was the same. Her hair had already been short, so she was allowed to keep it that way. Mariko was skinny, but she was always skinny, wasn't she? Even the muscle tone had been maintained; Damkohler had no rules prohibiting exercise. Asuka noticed that Mariko's right arm was finally out of the sling, but it was the left the American raised the chest level.

“I told you last time I can control my pinky and ring fingers now?” Mariko cheerfully asked.

“Nope.”

“I don't care how much credit they give to me being a fast healer. They did a really good job of fixing the nerve damage.” Her fingers danced like a Rockette line through the warm air, her artificial tendons pressing up on the scar tissue. “Why do you think they bothered fixing me up?”

Asuka shrugged. “Does it really matter?”

“How's Shinji?”

“He's a dork.”

“What'd he do?”

The red-head snorted. “He's Shinji.”

“How's…” Mariko closed her eyes for half a moment. “How's Yukie?”

“I don't know.”

Mariko looked at her, now frowning slightly. “But, I thought you said you've been talking to her.”

“I have. But she doesn't really tell me anything. Not yet. You know what I mean. She wants to tell me, but she's not ready. Not yet.”

She might today, Asuka thought, hoped. Everybody has to tell someone…but if Aki Ando was to be believed, Yukie hadn't mentioned Jin once since it happened. Today she was going to see Yukie. And Aki. And Hikari. And Maya. And Touji and Kensuke…unfortunately. And she was going to see them all right after she left this sad place on the fringes of this resurgent, resilient multifaceted city. Right after she left Mariko.

“I think…”

Those two words snapped Asuka from her reverie and back to the green-eyed girl now directing her gaze directly above her.

“I think…I could stay here, for a long time…I could get better here if I could just take pictures. They won't let me have a camera here.”

“You won't need one…not if someone takes pictures for you. You have a monitored account here, so I'll email them to you if I can't put them in your hands.”

Mariko's look was pained and she shook her head as if declining a billion-yen note. “Dr. Chilton, he won't let me see them. Everything passes through him.”

The expression on Asuka's darkening face was better suited on the cold grey bust of some ancient Valkyrie. “He wouldn't even be around to be a dick if it weren't for me. My scars own him.” She smiled. Mariko discreetly inched away. “If he doesn't let you see the photographs I take for you,” she intoned menacingly, “I'm going to pass through him.”

“There you are,” said Mariko unwaveringly, staring a little too intensely for Asuka's liking. “That's the real you.” Mariko rubbed the nape of her neck.

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The door to her apartment slid open, and Asuka stared back at the two faces staring out at her from the entry way. She frowned.

“Devil,” one of them curtly welcomed.

“Tweedle Dumb,” she said back, and looked to the other. “Dumber.”

And then despite her best efforts, she followed their lead and smiled brightly.

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With some thick-bassed tune thumping in the living room, Asuka walked into the kitchen to get another soda. So had Yukie.

“We already have one open on the counter,” Asuka pointed out.

The class rep pivoted and noticed her friend for the first time, then noticed the half-full container next to the sink. “Thanks, Asuka.”

“No problem.”

“This is my fourth cup of this stuff. Why haven't I heard of this before?”

“Be careful. You have ten of those you're going to go back in time.”

“Damn.” Yukie chuckled. She twisted the top off and poured.

“What?”

“Hikari…she's from Tokyo-3…has brown hair down to her shoulder…she's your class representative…one of your best friends…”

…she went out with a promising brash young athlete with a surprisingly kind heart…

Yukie stopped pouring. “So you saw her today, huh?”

Asuka tensed as she leaned against the wall -as Yukie took a sip- and prepared; this was it. She was certain the trembling came from the wall buzzing from low frequency vibration. “I saw her. Yeah.”

“How was she?” No eye contact yet. The pretty brunette softly swirled the carbonated liquid.

“She was…” Asuka internally cringed. “…good.”

Yukie shrugged. “Oh.” She shrugged again. “What a shame.”

Asuka could only stutter at her friend's barren tone. “Yukie, I …I can't-”

“Did you know?” Now Yukie was looking at her, her cool coal irises gently boring into Asuka as the rhythmic sounds and Mari's bright, innocent laughter fell to the perimeter of Asuka's world. Getting stabbed had felt better.

“Did you know what she was…because you can tell me. It's okay if you did. Because Mariko…we had this soccer game during phys-ed, and she was the striker and came down the field full speed-”

“No.”

“I got in her way and she went right through me like I was rice paper-”

“No.”

“-and she didn't even slow down.”

Asuka was certain Yukie didn't see her swallow. Then she stood away from the wall and lied for a third time. “I didn't know, Yukie.”

“Because,” Yukie put the cup down, “I'd forgive you if you did. Because what she did to you…she must've been scary as all hell. And we're equals. Right?”

“Right.”

“Asuka…did you know?'

“No.”

Why was Yukie still looking at her? Finally, the black eyes fell to her cup and her hand followed them. “One day, I'll forgive Mariko, y'know.” She drank while Asuka bit her tongue, afraid her words would give her away, would turn the friend standing before her into something else entirely.

“Jin would've forgiven her.” Yukie then paused, and percussion replaced her voice before it returned with a soft “Yeah.”

“So how are you? Holding up?” The Second Child was anxious to change the subject, however tangentially.

Yukie Utsumi bit her lip as her brow twitched. “Wednesday was bad. Thursday was better. Yesterday was bad.” She chuckled, and Asuka could only guess as to how it managed to hold a note of true mirth. “Man, am I glad you're having this party today.” Her laughter grew like a grease fire, but when Asuka did not join in Yukie extinguished it, left with the thin residue of a smile.

“God, Asuka…it kills me to admit this…but when I crumbled, she was right there. She held me and was saying she was sorry…and I know she meant it. I think she'd make a great mom…isn't that sick?”

“A little,” Asuka guiltily admitted…and then instantly regretted when she realized her answer sucked the remaining warmth out of Yukie's smile. “We're going to take a walk tomorrow.”

“Okay.”

“Just you and me. Turn on your damn phone and keep it on.”

“You need something, cutie?” Yukie was addressing someone over Asuka's shoulder.

“Um…” Kensuke looked very lost. “You mean me?”

“Yes, you.”

“Yukie, don't encourage him!”

“Aki -is that her name? - she wants to know if you're still trying to play her in Tekken Ten.”

Yukie put the cup down before muttering darkly, “No one beats my Heihachi Mishima.” She stalked towards the kitchen entrance. “No one.”

“That's a yes, then?” Kensuke ventured as Yukie passed him.

She rapped him on the head with a knuckle and a perky “Boop!” and then yelled something threatening at someone in the living room. Threatening sounded good to Asuka…

“Kensuke, don't touch her.”

“Why would I? Did you forget who you're talking to?”

“Nope. And yet, you touching her -hypothetically, at least- results in me breaking your back like a dry rice cracker. Hypothetically. Weird, huh?”

“Uh huh…can I have my gun back?”

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It was winding down. The food was consumed and the laughs were had at the expense of the young or old or the timid or the arrogant…

…or those woefully deficient at tenth-generation semi-immersive polygon fighters.

“Why do you suck so much at this, Shinji?” Mari loudly asked, waving her controller around like a magic wand. “You're like the Japanese Charlie Brown or, or something!”

“I like Charlie Brown,” he answered while sheepishly rubbing the back of his head.

Touji's voice boomed. “MARI! Will you stop beating that dead horse and get your stuff, already? It's gonna take us forty minutes to get to Aunt Taki's!”

“You might as well, Mari,” Shinji interjected. He looked down to the cell phone chiming in his pocket. “I have to take this call, anyway.”

Mari pouted. “I like beating horses…”

“Mari, is this your jacket?” her brother asked, picking up the light black windbreaker.

Asuka took her eyes off Shinji's retreating backsi…back…long enough to identify the jacket as Maya's. “Just leave it on the couch. I'll take it to her next time we go to Nerv.”

“I didn't take a jacket.”

“Well, why the hell not, Mari?”

“Because, it's hot, because, it's like, a hundred degrees outside all the time, everywhere. Because, I woke up sweating-”

“Shut up, because, I'm gonna pop you, because, before we left I asked you-”

Asuka blocked the fledgling argument out and nudged the young woman at her side. “Where's Aki?”

Yukie pointed outside. “She went to the car already, something about giving Kensuke directions to the A-24.” Asuka nodded as Shinji came back. Touji stopped fighting with Mari long enough to exchange an awkward, manly hug with the Third Child. “She's going somewhere early tomorrow, so she's in a bit of a rush, too.”

“She wouldn't mind waiting just one more minute, would she?” Then without waiting for an answer, “Shinji! Are you done playing grab-ass with your jock?”

“Heh heh heh…” Mari giggled. “Jock.”

“Our hug was manly,” Shinji grumbled. The Second Child grabbed him by the hand and dragged him towards her room. “Wait there, Yukie!” she yelled over her shoulder, the Suzaharas disappearing in the entry way with a final wave.

“Close the door.”

Shinji did as Asuka commanded. “What're you looking for?”

“Hold your horses.” She threw another wrinkled shirt to the wayside, and after another second found and grabbed a small white box.

“Here,” she said, shoving it into Shinji's empty hands.

He blinked. “These…these are-”

“I know, Shinji.”

“-White Day chocolates.”

“I know, Shinji.”

“But White Day was almost-”

“I know, Shinji.”

“-three months ago. And I'm supposed to give them to you-”

“They're for Yukie.”

He blinked.

“Shinji, what? Just…just give them to her, okay?”

“Are you sure she won't get the wrong idea? Is she going to start crying?”

“Give her some credit, Third.”

“What about…I thought you didn't want to share-”

“Give me some credit, okay?” And Asuka opened her door and pushed the confused young man out of it and back towards the living room. A final shove-off imparted enough momentum to propel the boy halfway to Yukie, who watched the two tumble into the hallway with a bemused expression. Then she looked at the box in his hands. Shinji started talking.

Across the room, Asuka practically felt the other girl's dark eyes on her; she would've probably seen them too had she not been looking away and intensely at the floor. Shinji wheezed from what was probably Yukie's bone-crushing hug, which Asuka was quite certain, even without looking, was anything but manly.

Sensing it was okay to look up, Asuka smiled back at her friend and waved goodbye to her…

…and sincerely hoped that Yukie Utsumi would never find out just how much she had contributed to the absolute worst moment in the brunette's entire life.

They were alone now.

“Thank you. I always felt bad about not being able to return Yukie's chocolates.”

“Shut up, I didn't do it for you,” she muttered, folding her arms over her chest. “She just needed to feel good about something…and you didn't have to enjoy it so much!” She kicked the carpet with a bare heel. “I saw you grab her ass.”

He gave a disbelieving laugh and shook his head. “What? Asuka, I …you were looking away the whole time-”

“I know what a grope sounds like!” She narrowed her eyes. “You had class rep pie on a window sill, and you couldn't wait to get a taste of that sweet filling, could you?”

“Are you chewing me out or selling strudel?”

“Don't joke about this. You've been drooling over her for years, and now that you…what's wrong?”

He was pointing at something. Behind her.

“Um…” Hikari espoused. “I had to use the restroom.” She was not looking at Shinji. “Where's my ride?”

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Now they were alone.

Asuka herself was alone, actually; Shinji was somewhere finishing his cleanup effort. She was already done, had left the vacuum in the middle of the hallway to peer out over the balcony, where she had an excellent view of the giant famous hole. It glowed from the busy night life at its center, the intensity fading to black at an invisible boundary. From there the stars took over.

Somewhere in between sat Asuka's tenuous state of mind. There was levity in thinking of the day's events, in the excruciating mundanity of it all. No…mundane was the wrong word. Normal was a better one. It felt normal confiding in Hikari and berating Shinji. It felt normal arguing with Touji and Kensuke and rolling her eyes whenever they drooled all over Misato…

Instantly the buoyancy of that nostalgia was counterbalanced by the persistent gravity derived from the knowledge that some form of trauma had found her and those around her once more. Asuka had locked eyes with Yukie Utsumi and felt judgment being passed every second, had locked eyes with Mariko to find equal parts limitless compassion, gratitude, and an intoxicating lethal sickness.

A voice, behind her. “What?”

“I said,” Shinji reiterated, “that I don't think we were the only ones that had a party. The trash bin outside is full.” He stepped out onto the elevated path, walking up to the railing a resting his elbows in a manner identical to Asuka's.

She looked at him. “I gotta say, I'm grateful for Aida lending me his piece and everything, but if he took one more damn picture I was going to put his ass in there, too. The only person more prolific than that guy is Mariko.” Asuka absently tugged at her short sleeve. “They'd make a great couple.”

Shinji wore an unusual expression; sly bemusement. “He said to me, `A tall attractive girl that treats you with respect and wants Asuka dead? What's the bad news?'”

Asuka stared. “He said that?”

Sly bemusement gave way to palpable anxiety. “Uh, yeah. Yeah.”

“I knew I should've kicked his ass on principle!”

Perhaps anticipating an ass-bruising, Shinji half-turned to face her and put his hands up. “Asuka, he…he was just joking. You weren't even supposed to hear that!”

It was her turn to put her hands up. “That's par for the course for a stooge. I know a joke when I hear one.”

“You're…not angry?” Slowly, slowly, the hands came back down.

The Second Child just gave an exaggerated huff. “Shinji, if he really hated me, do you think he would've loaned me that gun?” Her shoulders jumped. “Besides, getting mad over something like that…just seems stupid now.”

“Mari's gotten big, hasn't she?”

“I know!” she answered, nodding vigorously. “What's it been, three years? You can hardly tell anything's happened to her…uh, I mean…” And then she stopped, for many reasons, and ushered half-lidded eyes to the floor.

“Yukie's going to feel better one day.”

She smiled, but it was a timid thing, hidden by bangs of auburn hair. “You're finally making it a habit of saying the right thing, Shinji?”

“I said it because it's true.” His voice was closer now. “She has good friends, and she'll get better. We have to make her see that.”

“And Mariko?”

“Mariko's not Yukie.”

“Duh, Shinji.” She looked into his face, closer than it had been when she had last been looking up. “She's like Rei, way too much like her.”

“She's not, Asuka. I don't think she is.”

“You know how I meant that. Don't play dumb.” She scanned his face, and was at no other moment more grateful that Shinji's mother had left just enough of herself in her son to dilute Gendo Rokubungi. “There's just something that I hate about liking her. I just wish I could choose the people I like.”

“Oh…” was all he said. He looked away, smiling at something.

“What do you mean `Oh'? I don't mean you, dork!”

“So…you're staying here?” He was looking at her now.

“Guess, Shinji.” No, he was looking down to their hands, which had somehow become connected.

“Asuka, I was just at the trash.”

“So?”

“My hands are dirty.”

“My hands are dirty, too. What are you afraid of?”

“A lot of things.”

But apparently one of those things was not leaning into her, and pressing his lips to hers. No fireworks, no surge of warmth from within her. But as she pulled away, as his lips peeled from her own, she knew everything had changed again. Lost in him, she nearly started as his voice penetrated the thick pause that had fallen between them.

“Misato. She…I don't recall everything she said to me right before she died.” He swallowed, maintaining a visibly tenuous composure. “I remember…she was trying to get me to want to live.” His voice dropped to a whisper. “I remember how her lips tasted…how her blood tasted on my tongue and how it woke me…please don't hate me. That's what broke me, made me want to fight again. Don't hate me. Not for that. Please.”

The young woman in his arms could only stare and slowly shake her head no.

No. She didn't hate him, not for that. She put herself in Shinji's shoes, Kaji in Misato's, and she knew she was finally beyond that kind of jealousy.

“She shoved me into the elevator, to the cage, to fight. She left me, with her cross, and her blood, and her taste and smell. But somehow she smiled.” The memory of it caused his eyes to slowly shut, and now he shook his head. “I didn't know that normal people could smile like that, the way she did. It was filled with love for me. Unconditional. For me and for the people that I love, for my children. Kaworu smiled like that, and when I asked her to, so did Rei.”

She said nothing and silently crushed an obsolete animosity; save it for another day, a less important day.

“Asuka…I heard you say you had wanted to leave. Mariko almost took you away, and all I could think while I was waiting to hear if you'd live, was that I'd never see you smile like that. You were going to leave, just like Misato, and Kaworu and Rei, but I'd never see that look on you. Do you know how much that scared me?”

His hand gently ran through her hair as she finally spoke. “No,” she answered.

“Even if things don't work between us,” he said, “I want to see that smile. I know it's in you. I have to see it, and I think you need to realize that you're capable of it.”

She could only nod, and say, “Okay.”

“…I want to do the rest with you.”

“Okay.”

They breathed together outside and after a minute they had remained still long enough for Asuka to feel his heartbeat through her own breast. Now she was getting warm…and then he nearly ruined it all by talking.

“Asuka?”

She glanced up, into those cobalt blue irises. “Hm?”

“Tell me about your mom.”

Her face remained placid as she considered the request.

Everybody has to tell somebody.

She smiled.

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“Ms. Buick?”

The back of the teenager's head remained still. “Yeah, Barney?” she asked evenly, shifting only slightly in her seat on the bench as she looked to the sky.

“We have to put you back in, now,” he gently ordered, pausing as the girl's posture gradually improved. “You have a session at eight-thirty tomorrow with Dr. Chilton and Dr. Ueto. You can come back out after that.”

“I usually don't feel like going out after those.” She stood. “But thanks.” She turned to the brown-skinned man and smiled as she walked past him, in front of him. Beyond the landscape, at the door, stood another orderly, larger than Barney. He clutched a controller; it was small in his mitts, irrespective of its actual size. Mariko was calm as she walked toward him.

“Thank you,” she said.

“For what, Ms. Buick?” Barney asked, following four meters behind her.

“For letting Asuka get close…for trusting me enough. Even though I've only been here just for a few weeks.”

“I believe that has more to do with the Second Child's pull at Nerv than anything I did.”

“Still, you and Dr. Chilton run this place from what I understand, and if it was up to him he would've zapped me.” Her shoulders slouched slightly. “Again.” She turned back to glance with visible hesitation. “I don't forget kindness, Barney.”

“I don't doubt you, Ms. Buick. Everyone needs kindness.”

She took in his polite disposition, then quickly faced forward again. As they approached the entrance the other man stepped back, revealing a red chevron that he depressed with three thick fingers. The door soundlessly swung open, dusting the darkening lawn in a swath of light that flowed around their bodies as if they were rocks in a stream.

Mariko walked through. “Hi, Mr. Watanabe.” She beamed at the taller person.

“…Hi,” he gruffly muttered at length, visibly agitated at the girl's affability, visibly relaxing as she passed, and then locking eyes with Barney…

Mr. Watanabe followed the silent order, and calmed down. He discreetly took a breath and followed when the dark-skinned man had too passed him. They turned from the main corridor to a side hallway, black save for circular pools of white light equally spaced beneath their feet and extending well past the pool they stopped beneath.

In the darkness, beyond the one-way transparent door that slid open with a swipe of Barney's security card, sat a bed and a sink and a toilet. That was it. Mariko stepped into her home.

“The medication, it's at the sink?”

“Yes,” Barney immediately said in a soft baritone.

She gingerly stepped to the metal fixture and opened the small plastic container at its edge. Two pills, red. She dumped them into her palm and raised her arm to her mouth. She filled the paper cup at the side and put that to her mouth, too. After swallowing, Mariko looked straight at and walked up to Barney, opened her empty mouth, and then raised her tongue.

“Thank you, Mariko.”

At that the young woman snapped her mouth shut and smiled. “You called me by my first name.”

“There'll be a wake-up at seven-thirty tomorrow morning, okay?”

She nodded as she walked over to the bed. Then sat on it. Then sagged.

“Barney…thank you. Your attitude…you've made it easy for me. As easy as it can be. Even though I don't deserve easy, you know?”

“I know.” He paused and pointed at “The lights-”

“-will go off a minute after the door closes,” she finished. “Goodnight. Be safe driving home.”

He gave a nod, the motion itself exuding warmth. He walked out and the door closed. Its electromagnetic locks engaged in a series of distinct clicks. The image outside the door became lost to a growing opaqueness, spreading organically for the corners of the entry. After half a minute it had consumed the last of the transparency.

She was still sitting, watching the door. And now she was raising her thin arms and her hands before her face…

…and touching her forefingers to the thumbs of the opposite hand, forming a box in front of her one open green eye -even as every corner in her room went black- and then speaking…

“Smile, Barney.” She smiled herself.

Click. Click. Click. Click. Click. Click. Click. Click. Cli

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

When the light failing on the red horizon and the homes and trees, bushes, buses and hikers regained definition and ceased to blend into each other, he would be at home for the rest of his life.

Tanabe was a government-run maximum security facility straddled between Okaya and Shirojiri in Nagano Prefecture. It would take three hours for Agent Choi to drive him there. A half an hour passed and the large Korean had said nothing since he had been shackled, shuffled and stuffed into the backseat of the black Nerv cruiser. Silence was not a problem. He didn't expect Choi to hold a conversation with his captive, anyway, even though he had a right to complain to Choi, to someone.

He didn't belong here. He was being incarcerated for attempting to rectify an injustice, called a traitor, a criminal, a disgusting ungrateful murderer. Just like the old commander. But he knew the truth. There was another that should be in his place, instead of sitting in his living room, lamenting his past, feeling sorry for himself while friends, allies, dignitaries, thousands, millions who would never know his name lauded him, worshipped his supposed heroics as though he were a saint.

Seele and the JSDF couldn't kill the Third Child. He could not kill the Third Child. Mariko did not get the chance to kill the Third Child. The Third Child was fated to live. But just because the Third Child was fated to live did not mean he deserved to. That did not mean the Third Child was to be forgiven. Oh no…it was the Third Child that should be apologizing to him…and to her, not the other way around.

Back then, there was no one within Nerv that did not sacrifice for the greatest good. There was no one within Nerv that did not understand that sacrifice was absolutely required, and that when one failed to sacrifice, for any reason, someone else would pay.

That was how it was. The Third Child knew, knew and still did not care. And that was why she was dead. Just because the Third Child was fated to live did not mean others should sacrifice beyond what is required of them.

So Makoto Hyuga, former Operations Planning Manager, First Branch, would never apologize. Because he wasn't the one sitting beneath a stairwell and waiting for an end that he knew could not come to pass, the gravity of his fate pulling those in that did not have to die. If there was truly justice, the weight of Shinji Ikari's destiny should have crushohwhydidithappeniloveyoumisatoidn'tdeserveitandhekilledyoushould'vebee nhimor anyoneelseitwouldn'tmatterwhojustnotyouishould'veishould'vejustshothimandla ughedan dinasuka'sfacethere'dbenothingjustlikemed him…

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

Hyuga could not determine if the sky, the vehicles, the buildings and trees had pulled themselves apart as he peered out of the window into inky blackness, but he could tell they were no longer speeding by him. The engine was dead, and Choi was still facing forward. The reason for these things was an uncertainty. What was certain was the time and location; late, and not at Tanabe. He became aware of a third uncertainty as he unsuccessfully tried to control his arms and legs…why couldn't he?

“It is…amazing how many people hate them,” Choi said, turning his head ever so slightly. His mouth was a hard small line as he spoke, as thin and dark as the shades that hid his eyes.

“As an intelligence officer,” he continued, “you must have heard what I heard, everyday through our channels. They hate them. Completely. When the people learned what happened, it was enough. For not saving more, for not changing the world. All kinds of reasons. All of them pathetic. It did not matter that they were children. It's my responsibility to keep those people out, away from them. It is hard, when you have few men and even fewer men that understand why it is so important to keep them safe.

“Even if it is true, that the Angels are gone forever, it is imperative that they are safe. That is how I thank them.” Choi paused, looked down, and then up again. “You, Mr. Hyuga, make my job very difficult.”

Hyuga worked his mouth. “That was truly heartfelt.” Yes, he could talk. “And truly unbecoming for a truly dedicated upper level Section-Two officer such as yourself.”

“You don't know me.”

“I suppose not. But, how does driving me out into the middle of nowhere and sharing your bushido make your job any easier?”

One shot, two, and Hyuga jerked clumsily, somehow finding the control to bring a hand up to shield himself. The hand disappeared in a fine red mist, the wet thud of hot slugs exploding in flesh lost in the cacophonous reports of the third and fourth shots. The ravaged man jumped involuntarily with shot five, then slid into his seat as if trapped in invisible quicksand. Hyuga did not react at all to the sixth and seventh shots.

Eight.

Nine.

Ten.

“That's how,” answered Choi.

Eleven.

He wasted three seconds to glare at the pulpy corpse, slouched behind him like a salary man lush, before lowering his pistol and retrieving his cell phone from his pocket.

“Yes.” The calm voice was clear and crisp through the receiver.

Mr. Choi was succinct. “This is a secure line. The Captain will no longer be disappointing anyone.”

“Thank you.”

“Thanks will never be necessary.”

Choi disconnected, and ten seconds did not pass before headlights crested the hill on which his cruiser sat. It revealed itself to be nearly identical to his own vehicle, and when Agents Yamada and Tanaka rose from the front seats and approached, he knelt in his leather seat and popped the trunk. Crisp grass crunched beneath him as he walked to the back of the vehicle, pulled it open, and retrieved the fluoroantimonic acid.

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

A thought came to Asuka as Shinji held her. “Hey.”

“Yeah?”

“Who called you when everyone was getting up to leave?”

“Agent Choi. He was just making sure we're alright.”

She humphed, and then her chest expanded against his. “Who asked him to do that?”

“Maya did, I think.”

“After all we've done, he should be taking orders from us.”

He said nothing.

End of In the Dark Room

A/N: I want to thank all of my readers and all of my reviewers, even those who don't like the story…and if you didn't like it, how the hell are you reading the author's notes at the end of the final chapter?

Special thanks to WarpWizard…for pointing out every freakin' typo I've ever made…

Feigned annoyance aside, thanks WarpWizard, because in the end you've made my story better. Thank you. Hell, you'll probably notice a few in the first posting of this chapter. I thank everyone who has given me a kind word. May your cereal be crisp and your milk fresh.

So what do I need to work on? Dialogue, for one. In particular, I will one day come back to and rework the first chapter of ITDR…who the hell am I kidding? I need to work on everything. Even so, it feels good to have written a story that people have taken an interest in.

What's the next step, story wise? A humor piece. I'm probably a quarter of the way through and it looks like I'll be finished in the next two weeks. And when it comes out and you think it's not funny, don't worry…it's a oneshot.

After that, I don't know. I have quite a few ideas, and I plan on writing at least six fanfics before I hang it up. So, because I feel like listing them:

Post 3I story centered on Shinji.

Post 3I story centered on Mari Suzahara

Pre 3I story centered on Misato

AU centered on Asuka - Oneshot

Continuation centered on Rei

AU Samurai Epic

Star Wars Crossover

Xardion has written (is still writing, I believe) the extremely popular Neon Jedi Evangelion. So if I decide to write it, the Star Wars Crossover will most definitely be the furthest down the road.

I have not forgotten about the Battle Royale Crossover omake I am planning for ITDR. I'm going to write it. I promise…

Random A/N: There's a certain pride that fills me when I think that the largest anime convention on the east coast takes place in my hometown. Otakon, baby! Baltimore, August 19-21: I'll be there. Will you?

Thank you for reading and your criticism. Ja.

Next Chapter: Heaven or Hell: The ITDR AU Battle Royale Crossover

Next Story: Unnamed Humor Oneshot