Neon Genesis Evangelion Fan Fiction ❯ Interregnum ❯ What You Feel When You're Alone ( Chapter 2 )

Interregnum

By TheLastWaltz

Rating: T

Notes:          Neon Genesis Evangelion is the property of Hideaki Anno, King Records, Starchild, Studio Khara, et al. This a fan created work, and I do not intend to make any money from it. Should the involved parties request that I take it down, I will do so.

Chapter Two:        What You Feel When You’re Alone

          Shinji exhaled softly as he stepped into the entrance room of the shelter he was living in. In one of his hands was a mop, and the other, a bucket. Shinji’s gait was reduced to a modest limp thanks to the purplish bruise on his left hip. As he walked forward, the screams and cries that echoed in his mind when he’d first arrived returned with a vengeance, the air thickening in his throat and chest, determined to suffocate him entirely, causing Shinji to cough and heave in his chest as he struggled to keep moving forward. Sweat beaded on his brow as he set the bucket on the floor. Thankfully this time, the lights were on, and he could see his surroundings, so the effects weren’t quite as severe as when he entered the room the first time. Looking down at the multiple LCL stains on the floor, Shinji shuddered as he dipped the mop into the bucket and wrung it out before dropping the mop head on the first of the LCL stains. He scrubbed it clean, dipping the mop back into the bucket to leach out the orange-red fluid before wringing it out again. Much to Shinji’s dismay, it seemed that the voices were growing louder in his mind, as he moved to the next stain. The air was reducing in thickness, and it was growing easier for him to breathe, but the pounding of his heart and in his head was only increasing in magnitude.

          “I’m sorry...I’m sorry…I’m sorry...” Shinji began to whisper repeatedly as he continued to clean the floor. His nose began to drip blood, and tears leaked from his eyes as he tried to shut out the mental assault, to little avail. The pain continued to increase as Shinji moved from one point on the floor to the other. He cast a small glance into a corner of the room, where Shinji had unceremoniously moved the clothes his ‘victims’ had been wearing when their bodies had dissolved into LCL. Just touching the clothes had given Shinji a mental shock, causing him to hurl them into the corner with a scream. Shinji finished with the floor thirty minutes later, dipping the mop into the bucket one final time before wringing it out. By then, Shinji was at his limits as he wheeled the bucket to the elevator, pressing the button to take him to the surface. He leaned against the wall of the elevator, dripping with sweat and panting heavily from the toll the work had taken on his mind. He had stopped whispering now, and now just looked exhausted, his eyes glassy as the doors opened onto the alley opposite the one Shinji used to enter the shelter. He wheeled the bucket ahead of him as he walked out of the elevator into the blackened night, his eyes briefly drawn upwards to see what he had dubbed the ‘Red Scar’. His heart clenched, and his eyes fell back down to the street. There was a warm breeze, which gave Shinji a brief resurgence of happiness, the fresh air blowing some of the chill off of Shinji’s body. Yet, his nose wrinkled at the mild scent of blood mixed with the ocean’s natural smell.

          The soles of his shoes crunched over broken glass as he walked, the moonlight thankfully bright enough to see by, as he crouched over a storm drain, pouring the mix of LCL and formerly hot water down the drain. Shinji had never really been one for religion, but as he poured, he prayed that whoever these people were, all the people who had been reduced to the shapeless void in the Sea, his victims; he prayed that they’d find a way to return to themselves, or that they’d be at peace. Raising himself with a shudder, Shinji trudged back to the elevator, mentally and physically spent. Still, Shinji knew he had at least one more task ahead of him. Descending back to the elevator in the shelter, he entered one of the shelter’s storerooms, picking up a large paper bag and a pair of heavy rubber gloves, which he hoped would insulate him from the mental shock. Thus armed, he returned to the entrance and walked to the corner. Crouching down, he hesitantly reached out, biting his lower lip as he touched the clothes. His eyes squeezed shut as he lifted the clothes. Unlike before, the barrage of mental input was far more vague, like a badly tuned radio at a low volume. Letting out a slow exhale, he placed the clothes into the paper bag and carried them out of the room. However, instead of taking them outside, Shinji took them into the shelter’s basement, to the incinerator room. Repeating his prayer from outside, he opened the incinerator’s chute and slid the belongings down its throat, closing the chute once the items had disappeared. Sighing softly, Shinji walked away from the incinerator, taking the stairs up to main level. He moved towards the living quarters and into the men’s showers. This shelter truly had everything necessary for long-term living, including wastewater recycling and air filtration.

          Shinji stripped off his clothes, and started the shower, sighing as the hot water soothed his aching muscles. He grabbed a bottle of shampoo/body wash that he had found in the storeroom and scrubbed himself clean, his nose stinging at the heavily antiseptic smell of it. His body was leaner now, which was saying something considering his already skinny physique. Shinji turned the water off and exited the shower, drying himself as he walked to his modest room with his shoes in one hand. Shinji’s thinly-carpeted room comprised of a small desk, a narrow two-person closet, a narrow two-person dresser, and a bunk bed. He paused to look in the mirror mounted on his wall above his dresser and grimaced at the reflection. His face was pale, pinched, and haggard. There were dark circles under his eyes and blotches on his lower lip from where he was constantly biting it. Turning away from his reflection, Shinji stepped back from the mirror and slid the top drawer open, withdrawing a pair of underwear and slipping them on under his towel. He then opened the second drawer and put on a new set of coveralls, followed by his socks and shoes. Rising back to his feet, he left his room and walked to the storeroom, retrieving a small tool belt before heading back to the entrance, steeling himself and taking a deep breath, bracing for yet another mental assault as he passed through the room. Nothing.

          He ascended the stairs slowly, pressing the button to open the door. He stepped outside, the moon still high in the sky as he walked towards the beach. One of the changes in Shinji’s habits since Third Impact is that he’d grown strangely nocturnal, preferring to work mainly at night, rather than in the day. He slipped the flashlight out of his belt and snapped it on, shining it around as he picked up debris to use for a small project he had begun about a week ago. An hour later, Shinji had assembled the materials he needed for the work he was doing. He hefted the wooden poles under his arm and carried them to the beach. Sitting on the edge of the brick wall that surrounded the beach, Shinji fished a utility knife from his belt and whittled away one of the ends of each pole until they were sharp. He looked around, considering where they might go. Unsatisfied with his current location, Shinji roamed the beach, his shoes lightly squelching the damp sand beneath them, providing a fair measure of resistance as he walked. Eventually, Shinji came to a spot where there were several small dunes that afforded each pole the opportunity to be seen. He gave a mellow smile of satisfaction as he set the poles down, save for one. He took the first one and plunged the sharp end into the earth, before pulling a hammer from his belt and pounding the stake further into the ground until it could firmly stand on its own. He then took the utility knife again and crouched in front of the pole, delicately carving out a series of kanji on the wooden stake.

          “Horaki Hikari...” Shinji whispered as he rose to his feet before walking over to the next dune to set the next pole. “Aida Kensuke.” he whispered. A new pole, a new name, repeated throughout the next seven stakes he embedded in the ground, finishing with “Aoba Shigeru...”. Letting out a long, slow breath, Shinji rose to his feet, looking over to his right, where nearest to the surf, two stakes stood. One for his guardian, Misato Katsuragi. Even from this distance, he could see the moonlight reflecting off of Misato’s cross, secured to the post with an old, rusty nail he’d happened across. The one next to hers was for his fellow pilot, Asuka. He closed his eyes and let a few tears fall as his heart squeezed in his chest. After a moment’s pause, he opened his eyes again and walked over to where Asuka’s marker was. He dropped to the ground, sitting next to it, and gazing out over the vast red ocean, where the petrified MP Evas kept their vigil, their eyes cast ever upwards at the sky.

          Behind Shinji, an odd crunching sound came, breaking the silence of the moonlit tableau. He turned to look, and his jaw dropped. Walking towards him was none other than the Second Child, Asuka Langley Soryu, still clad in her red and black plugsuit. Her red hair was as vivid as always, half of it now dangling in front of the right half of her face. She cradled her right arm with her left as she dropped down unceremoniously next to him with a grunt.

          She turned to look at him with a raised eyebrow, as Shinji merely sat there staring at her, too in shock to react.

          “Well, Third? You going to say anything or are you just going to sit there staring at me like that stupid doll Ayanami?” she asked sharply, her brows narrowing as she waited for a response. Shinji’s mouth worked as he struggled to come up with something coherent.

          “I-uh-you-wha-how?” was the best he got before Asuka snorted and turned away, shaking her head.

          “Always the stellar conversationalist, Baka Shinji.” she retorted, causing Shinji to clamp his mouth shut. She sighed as she stared at the sea dispassionately before speaking again. “Shinji, why in the absolute fuck do you even come out here?” she asked, continuing to look at the LCL ocean, waiting for Shinji’s response. He blinked and returned his gaze to the reddish waves that lapped against the shore.

          “Because I’m waiting...” he replied simply, compelling Asuka to turn back to him, her visible and vibrantly blue eye staring at him critically.

          “For what?” she responded, keeping her gaze fixed on him, the intensity of her stare causing him to fidget slightly as he sat next to her.

          “Someone to come back.” he answered briefly before continuing. “I’ve been here every night for the past three weeks.” he finished, looking back towards her. She raised her eyebrow and turned away, looking back to the water.

          “Such dedication...It’s a shame you couldn’t show the same to me when I was getting eaten alive…” she commented, her voice venomous. Shinji’s head lowered slowly. “I know we were never close enough to be considered friends...but I certainly thought I was worth more to you than a cheap jack-off before leaving me to die...” she whispered. “Or maybe comatose girls are what gets you off?” she snarled. Shinji’s head sank even further.

          “I-I’m sorry...” he whispered, but even to him it sounded hollow as Asuka turned away from him again.

          “You’re sorry?!? You violated me and left me to die, and you’re fucking ‘sorry’?!” she screamed at him. Shinji nodded dismally, tears leaking from his eyes and his breath hitching as he looked up at Asuka, who continued to hurl questions at him with ferocity. “Why didn’t you come for me when I needed you?! Why were you never there when I needed you?!?!” Shinji jumped to his feet this time, ready to fire back.

          “I tried to be there! Every time! You always pushed me away!” he shouted, as Asuka got to her feet as well, right in Shinji’s face.

          “Bullshit!” she screamed, shoving him backwards, her right hand leaving a bloody handprint on Shinji’s coveralls. “You wanted to be there, but you never showed. Any fucking time I showed even the slightest amount of resistance you backed away. You never had the balls to stick around!”

          “And you never had the balls to open up!” Shinji shouted back in response. “I may have sucked at trying to be nice, but at least I fucking tried!” he roared. “What did you do besides tease me, hate me, envy me, and break my fucking heart?!” Asuka scowled at him.

          “I broke your heart…?” Asuka said quietly, trailing off. In a way, this new silence was far more damning to Shinji than Asuka’s outright screaming. “If you’re referring to that fucked up kiss, then, yeah, I suppose that was cruel...” she said, pausing before looking up into Shinji’s darker blue eyes. Suddenly, her left hand shot out with ferocious speed, clamping around his thin neck and squeezing tightly. His throat worked as he struggled for air, his hands squeezing at Asuka’s wrist, trying to pry her hand loose with no success. “I trusted you too, Baka Shinji. Not entirely, but enough to at least have believed you wouldn’t do something as sick as violate my body and betray what little trust I had in you.” she said quietly.

          Shinji’s body thrashed violently in her grip as Asuka reached up with her right hand to brush her hair back from the hidden half of her face, revealing a void where her right eye would usually be. As she pushed her hair back, a bright seam of red began to appear, starting at the tips of her fingers and descending along the length of her arm, up from her elbow until it reached her shoulder. She reached out to caress Shinji’s face, but just before she touched him, the arm split open lengthwise and Shinji used the last remaining air in his lungs to scream for just a moment before the world turned black.

          Shinji sat bolt upright on the beach with a loud scream, his hand grasping at his throat, his eyes darting around wildly as he gasped for air. Slowly, Shinji began to come back to reality, his eyes scanning the beach, still wide with fear and shock. ‘Just a nightmare...’ Shinji thought to himself as he rose to his feet shakily, his eyes seeing no one and nothing out of the ordinary as he turned his body around to look at the beach from all sides. As he observed his surroundings, his gaze once again fell on Rei’s dismembered head, easily the tallest object for miles around. The full height of Eva Unit 01 would barely reach Rei’s lower lip in this situation. Rather than risk being tempted to look into her eyes again, Shinji wrenched himself away and walked back up the beach towards the street, brushing sand off his coveralls as he went. He turned one last time to look back at the beach, and saw nothing. As he walked, he heard Asuka’s voice again, this time in his head.

          “You’ll be back tomorrow, Baka Shinji, because you and I both know you’re not waiting for me, or Misato. What you’re waiting for is the truth.”

          “What truth?” Shinji responded, though he already knew the answer.

          “You want to know whether or not the world saw as much into your mind as you saw into theirs. You want to know, if they know, that you ended the world. You’re not waiting for people. You’re waiting for judgment...” Shinji’s hand paused as he reached for the shelter door, listening to Asuka continue. “And now you’re going to park yourself in the radio room for the rest of the night, calling out, and waiting for a response that might never come. How boring.” the Asuka in his head sighed. Shinji pulled the door open and walked downstairs into the shelter, returning his tool belt to the storeroom. Shinji then headed back in the direction of the living quarters, stopping once he reached the fork in the hallway that would either take him to his room, or to the communication center. He looked in both directions, before heading to the radio room. His gut churned as he walked, Asuka echoing inside his head again. “Called it.” she riffed as Shinji entered the PIN number, which he’d found in a binder in the security office ten days ago. He walked into the room, turning on the light and taking a seat at the large console. He slipped on a pair of bulky headphones and pulled the mic towards him, pressing the large red button on the console’s panel. A flashing red light in front of him informed Shinji that he was now transmitting. Asuka offered one last parting shot before vanishing into the recesses of Shinji’s mind. “I can’t tell if you’re stupid, stupidly noble, a masochist, or if this is your attempt at third-party suicide...Maybe it’s all of the above.” she whispered, her voice fading away.

          “Shut up.” Shinji uttered aloud, shaking his head briefly to clear it before leaning forward and speaking into the mic. “This is emergency shelter three-zero-five-five, broadcasting a general distress call to anyone in the area. This shelter is located in the city of Kamakura, twelve miles northeast of Tokyo-3. If anyone can hear this...this city is dead, and I am all that remains…” Shinji swallowed the thick lump in his throat before continuing. “My name is Ikari Shinji, and...I am...” Shinji paused as he considered who he was. Son of Gendo and Yui Ikari, middle-school student, Eva pilot, rapist, murderer, pawn, and accidental God. All those were true, but, none of those were what mattered right now. Exhaling slowly, Shinji resumed speaking. “I am the last survivor of Tokyo-3, and I am alone..” he uttered, his voice sent out into the void in the form of electromagnetic waves. He reached out and flicked the switch once more, waiting to receive any response that might come. Instead, there was nothing. Not even static greeted Shinji. Just dead air.