Neon Genesis Evangelion Fan Fiction ❯ The Second Child / Promises To Keep ❯ Ascension / Don't Leave Me ( Chapter 1 )

[ P - Pre-Teen ]

Neo Genesis Evangelion: Apocrypha
The Second Child - Promises To Keep

/***
NOTE: This story runs in parallel with End of Evangelion, so it
is NOT recommended that you read this fic without having seen the
movie. This story describes the Third Impact as experienced by the
Second Child
***/

Part 1 - Ascension / Don't Leave Me

A voice in the void. Rei Ayanami speaks.

"This is the climax of Evangelion's grand Blasphemy. To end the
circle. To contravene existence."

"Where Lucifer failed in an age long ago forgotten, Lorenz intended
to succeed in an age of science. SEELE sought Instrumentality through
the cessation of Otherness. In the beginning of the world there was
a man, a woman, and a promise, from whom sprung human history; thus,
at the end of the world SEELE sought to sunder the man, the woman,
and the promise, from each Other."

"And so it came to pass that the burden of the fate of the world
would fall on three grieving, alienated, lost children."

Silence. Darkness.

In the midst of the disintegration, the depths of LCL, of dissolved
existences, stray insubstantial strings of fragmenting memories float
in the abyss, breaking up into nothingness...

Here drifts a strand of a memory of Shinji's voice, crying in the
void...

"Help me.. Help me, Asuka. Hey.. wake up. Wake up.
Wake up. Hey.. Hey.. Asuka.. Asuka.. ASUKA!
Help me. Help me.
Help me. Help me!
Call me a fool, like you always do! Just please wake up!"

The memory of his crying floats into an echoing memory of Maya's
hysterical screaming...

"Shinji! Where are you? Asuka, she's.. Asuka, she's...!"

What's left is a whisper of the memory of his last sane word...

"Asuka...?"

The memories, and the voices, continue their disintegration,
fade into the void...

"ASUKA!!"

Asuka opens her eyes with a gasp, as if from the stranglehold of
a nightmare, and finds herself standing in front of a familiar
elevator at NERV. She looks around, panting, disoriented; she is
alone in the hot, dimly-lit corridor. It is deathly quiet, here
among the grim shadows; the only sound she hears is of her own
heavy breathing - tired, gasping, adrenaline-heavy breathing.
Her heart beating quickly, as if fleeing something terrible.
The blouse of her school uniform is drenched with cold sweat.
She cannot remember how she got here, or where she has just
come from.

The familiar dial indicating the elevator's floor level stares
dully back at her, cold and unmindful of her confusion.

The corridor is so dark she can hardly make out the lumps on
the floor toward the end of the hallway; they look almost like
corpses.

The doors open with a jarring ring, a ray of light, and a swoosh
of air, and Asuka hurriedly steps in. But as soon as she sees
the passenger inside she turns white, and as the doors close
behind her, her blue eyes narrow in remembered, barely repressed
anger. She has to contain an urge to lunge at the figure in front
of her, to tear her hair and choke her neck. Like a doll.

"You're late, Asuka."

"What are you doing here, First Child?"

The impassive, blue-haired figure in the school uniform remains
standing with her back to Asuka.

"I should ask you that question, Second Child."

"Don't get smart on me, you..."

The redhead abruptly grabs Rei's wrist and pulls, forcing Rei to
face her, and just as suddenly Rei's expression transforms as she
violently shakes off Asuka's hand. For a fraction of a second the
two women glare angrily at each other. Asuka raises her right arm
to slap her when Rei beats her to it, delivering a blow that sends
the Second Child staggering back.

"A doll, am I?" the First Child whispers, in a gentle breaking
voice, scarlet eyes blazing and fists clenched and shaking at her
sides, as she edges closer to the Second Child, who backs away in
shock at Rei's uncharacteristic aggressiveness. "No. I chose to
do this. I died to protect him. I died to protect him..."

The Second Child falls on her back as she withdraws, and continues
to back off. She feels a ringing in her ears, a roaring in her
head. Her mind reeling from the powerful whiplash in Rei's barely
audible voice, a surprising hint of outrage and anger, of
frightening, unimaginable power, in a voice so small. Lillith!
Ghostly white light flashing in her eyes. A flash of understanding
as Asuka nearly blacks out. Lillith! Images, overpowering in their
vividness, suddenly flutter in swarms through Asuka's mind.
Remembered images of the white-winged Eva series tearing her
red Eva-02 to shreds, of predators circling the sky for the kill, of
a spear slicing her upraised arm in half, and of spears impaling
her red Eva again and again, incredible pain, screams, dying...

"I died to protect you." Not Rei's voice. Kyoko's. "I died to
protect you."

"Momma!"

Her breath catches in her throat. She is back in the elevator,
looking up at someone who is suddenly a stranger to her.

She was dead, she realizes. Or is she? But what is she doing here?

The redhead's stunned face reflected in Rei's scarlet eye. A
moistness collecting in its edge. The reflected image of a
frigtened girl covers her face in her hands. The eye blinks. Rei
speaks.

"Why are you here, Asuka? Why do you live? Why do you die?"

Asuka's memory flashes mercilessly. Around her, LCL turning blood
red. Searing pain shooting down her right arm and blinding her left eye.
Screaming. A ghostly image of Rei appearing over her. Eyes the color
of blood looking down on her, expressionless, waiting... waiting.
She feels herself fading... into insubstantial nothingness...

"No!! I won't give up!!" she had screamed at her.

Spears impaling the red Eva, again and again, as she blacks out...

"Asuka?"

"Momma..."

Rei stops, and her eyes go wide like a doused fire, fists unclench,
as she stares down at the figure now huddled in the corner of the
elevator, her face hidden in her arms, crying disconsolately.

"Momma... I didn't want to die..."

Minutes pass. The dial over the elevator doors moves, slowly, almost
imperceptibly. As if time has slowed to a crawl, waiting for the
sobbing to subside. Hours seem to pass, inside the private world
of their elevator.

"Rei... whatever they did to you, you're in my head now, aren't
you?"

"I broke free from Ikari's father...," replies Rei, her voice in
a whispered monotone. "I broke free from his delusion... only partly
because of what you said, partly for Shinji, but also because I
wanted to..."

"I'm sorry, Rei... you were right... about the Eva..."

"... She's all right now, Asuka... her soul fled when the Eva died."

"But she's left me again..."

"You fought well. And she died protecting you to the last moment."

"I failed her."

The Second Child falls silent, her face still hidden in her hands.
The First Child calmly stares on, hesitating, weighing the words
on her lips.

"No, Asuka... you're not finished here yet, you haven't died...
your mission isn't done..."

"Just who are you, Rei? Why am I here? What role are we playing
now...?"

"There's a choice you need to make... with the Third Child..."

"Shinji? ... What are you talking about...?"

"He's been calling you."

Rei pauses, pensive, and turns her back to Asuka once more.
She appears to stare at something through the doors. Ayanami's
calm voice is but a whisper.

"Listen... can't you hear him? ...."

Light streams in through the suddenly translucent walls, which
seem to shimmer and go faint, then disappear. The two female
pilots, now clad in their plugsuits, seem suspended high up in
the clouds, storm winds howling violently all around them.

"Can you hear him?"

Asuka strains her ears, trying to filter out the wind, when to
her surprise she clearly hears, in her head, a familiar voice
whispering, anxiously calling her name. As if his thoughts had
reached out to brush hers. It is a touch with a strange yearning
urgency, and a desperate fear, she had never heard, or sensed,
before.

"I had to bring you here because I heard him calling out. You
are free to respond as you wish."

She suddenly sees the purple figure of Unit-01 hovering in the
distance. She nearly breaks into a smile at the sight, then frowns,
remembering that Rei is watching her. "You're too late, stupid,"
she starts to think, hurt and angry. But she gasps as the Eva
unfurls huge wings, bat-like and glowing like a vengeful demon's.
She knows only one other type of Eva that could unfurl wings.
Then abruptly her heart sinks as a single horrified thought
pierces through her mind...

"No! They're too many... they're going to kill him too..."

Just then one of the white Evas flies overhead, casting a huge
shadow over the two female pilots. The white Eva carries the bloody,
severed head of a red Eva, its eye sockets dangling like butchered
entrails, and heads for Shinji. Other white Evas, like vultures
dragging pieces of red carrion, follow.

Asuka screams her horror, but this is cut short, as her senses are
overcome by the heart-rending, despairing scream
of the male Eva pilot. The winds blow even more violently as Asuka
and Rei bend over, covering their ears from the blood-curdling
onslaught.

Yet Asuka can still clearly hear Rei whisper sadly, as if speaking
directly inside Asuka's mind.

"He knows he's lost you."

Something bright flies past them. A familiar, frightening shape.
A Lance of Longinus headed straight for Unit-01. Another remembered
image flickers through Asuka's mind, and her left eye suddenly
blazes with searing pain.

"No! Not him, too!"

The Evas surround him as the Lance seems to find its mark.
He screams again. And in the middle of his screams he calls her name
once more.

"Asuka!! AAAAHH!"

"Shinji! No!"

With renewed, mindless fury, and fighting back tears, she rises and
runs frantically in Shinji's direction.

She does not hear Rei's whisper, as the First Child watches her run
to him.

"It's your choice if you want to leave... or stay..."

A blinding light from Eva-01 engulfs all of them. Rei can feel
Lillith reawakening below, with her inside it. They feel the
Earth itself shudder.

"May God have mercy on us all."

The beginning of Third Impact.

Silence. Darkness.

A voice in the void. Rei Ayanami speaks...

(To be continued.)