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Let's go home together!
It always seemed so simple for Asuka to say things like that, Hikari thought.
No matter how much time had passed since they'd last talked, or sometimes even just seen each other, there she was. Hands on hips, that quirk of a grin that managed to be a charming mix of condescending and coy, and the assumption that no one would say no.
(sometimes, on darker, resentful, days, hikari wondered if anyone had ever refused asuka, for her to turn out so superficially spoiled.
in those times, when she was able to catch herself mid-spiral, she would remind herself of the longing, contemplative expression she'd sometimes seen on asuka when she stared at the sky while they ate lunch on the roof. arms braced in a wide spread over the railing, red hair billowing behind her in the wind, as if one day the wind would decide it was finally ready to bear her up, up, beyond where the common man could reach.
it haunted her, that image.)
Hikari just smiled through her worries about Tohji being absent and distracted all day, and agreed. Maybe the company would help.
They'd stopped off once to grab an ice lolly, it being an unusually hot day, and then again when Asuka had been captivated by the burning orange of the sunset between the skyscrapers and had insisted on finding the perfect place to watch it while they ate.
Having nothing better to do, Hikari let her drag her along. It was a pretty sunset, after all, it would be a shame to miss it just because Tohji had been acting off.
(tohji, tohji, tohji-)
Now the sun had dipped far enough down that the sky was tinged with crimson bleeding paler and paler as it curved up and over their heads until it sunk darker and darker into blue-almost-black behind them. The first star - Polaris, The Northern Guide - had long faded into view, the shimmering disc of the moon not long from joining it, judging by the barely-there shape already visible.
It was here, resting on a grassy hill with fingers sticky from the remnants of ice lollies, that Asuka asked her the first question that Hikari didn't truly know how to answer.
"Why do you even like him?" She was standing, hands on hips, facing the sunset. On anyone else the pose would have been petulant but strangely on her it seemed a challenge. "Suzuhara, I mean. He's so stupid!"
Hikari would have been deeply offended by this a few months ago, but she'd since gotten used to Asuka's abrasive way of speaking to and about those around her. She had a feeling that if Asuka genuinely believed Tohji was as stupid as she always claimed, she wouldn't even have entertained the question.
"Why do I like him?"
"That's what I said!" She gesticulated wildly. "He's one of the members of the Idiot Trio, is somehow falling behind even in these dumb classes, and he has a crush! On Misato. Blech."
Despite herself, Hikari found herself smiling.
Those things were true, she couldn't deny it. But, well.
"He's gentle," she said softly. Letting herself fall back into the grass, she ignored the tickle and itch of it against her skin and instead watched the stars blink down at her. "Kind. Don't you think?"
"Gentle?" It was almost comical how offended Asuka sounded by even the concept. "What on earth would you want someone gentle for? Don't you want some excitement, some adventure? It's love, isn't it?"
"Hmm." Hikari considered. "I think love like that could be fun for a little while, but then what happens after? It can't be exciting forever, can it?"
Asuka whirled around, her face as outraged as her voice had sounded. With the light behind her she was almost in silhouette.
"Of course it can! It's love, dummy." She flicked her hair over her shoulder. "True love lasts forever."
Hikari wondered if it was that easy.
Asuka had said the words as if she'd repeated them time and time again, a playground rhyme or the closing line of a favourite fairy tale, and things didn't just become true if you said them enough times. Did they?
(tohji is fine, there's nothing wrong with him. tohji is fine, nothing is wrong with him. tohji is-)
"Is that why you like Kaji-san, then?" She asked instead.
"Hmph." Asuka span around again, red glinting behind her hair. "How could you not like Kaji-san? He's so experienced and mysterious, don't you know?" She sighed, swaying slightly in place. "So dreamy."
Watching the stars, Hikari thought about it.
She'd never actually seen this Kaji-san, just heard stories about him from Asuka and Ikari-kun.
From what she could gather, he definitely worked at Nerv but no one seemed to know exactly what he did since he seemed to have no restrictions on where he could go but was never actually working. He was older, too.
Just knowing those things, she could hardly make a proper opinion about whatever Asuka and this Kaji-san had or didn't have. She knew what her feelings for Tohji were (-cotton pillows soft as clouds, a chain of daisies looping from pinky to pinky, feet splashing in a cool brook on a summer's day-) and who was she to decide what Asuka's feelings were like?
(if she burned in love as fiercely as she burned in rage then she would render all love hikari held in her palms as naught but cinders and ash. but what wondrous flames she would make, and what beautiful, terrible destruction she would leave in her wake. all they said about candles lit at both ends, it could never apply to her, not in love. not in the eternal mark she would leave.)
"I think," Hikari began, rolling the words around in her mouth as she considered what to say, "that falling in love is like, well, making a home somewhere outside ourselves. Somewhere safe. And if all you have is chasing excitement and adventure, where do you go home to?"
Asuka was silent. Still.
Propping herself up on her elbows, Hikari watched.
"Asuka-chan," she said softly. "What are you chasing?"
For a long, long moment, Asuka did nothing. Didn't speak, barely even seemed to breathe.
Finally, she half-turned to face her again, the dimming glare of the sun casting her into profile. Whatever her expression was, Hikari couldn't see it.
"I'm bored." Her voice was completely flat and emotionless, so unlike the Asuka that she knew that she was taken aback. It was as if a switch had suddenly flipped. "Let's go home."
Then, with barely a glance over her shoulder, Asuka snatched her bag up off the ground, flicked it over her shoulder, and marched primly down the grassy bank to the path below.
Hikari - wondering if what she was feeling right now was heartbreak, disappointment, or some measure of both - scrambled to follow, abandoning the stick from her ice lolly in the grass in her rush to catch up.
Knowing Asuka wouldn't talk to her now, at least until tomorrow, she found her eyes wandering skyward again.
The moon was now fully aglow in the night sky, a perfect half-moon. Not far from it, to her eye at least, Polaris was still blinking proudly, bright enough that even as she traced the constellations around it she always found herself wandering back to it.
What did Asuka see, when she looked up there?
(what was asuka chasing?)
"You coming?"
Hikari startled, surprised both to hear Asuka's voice and that she had at some point stopped walking in favour of stargazing.
At the end of the path, where it curved to join the main road, Asuka was standing there with one hand clutching her bag over her shoulder and the other hanging loosely at her side.
(with the sun now set she looked less like a being with too much fire to contain in the tiny body she had been assigned and more like a simple human. small, ordinary. lonely, really.)
"I don't like waiting," Asuka complained, more subdued than normal.
Though Hikari could be irritated at this, she knew otherwise. That this was a peace offering, as much of an apology that someone as proud as Asuka could give to someone who had knocked on a door she wasn't yet ready to open.
"I’m coming!" Hikari called after her, and jogged to catch up.
For whatever reason, Hikari didn't dream often.
It wasn't something that bothered her, as such, it was just the way things were; others dreamed, she did not. Whenever she did dream, then, it usually stuck with her a lot longer and acted more as a true memory in her mind rather than some ephemeral fantasy.
This dream though, this dream was different.
In the beginning it seemed completely normal. Mundane, even.
She was standing alone on the school roof, leaning against the railing and watching the wispy clouds sail through powder blue skies. There was the distant hubbub of life continuing below and around her, but she felt completely detached from it, as if she were fifty floors up rather than what was in reality five.
Everything had that overly vibrant fuzzy-edged quality that always came with dreams. The apparently important was in sharper focus than it felt like she could comprehend, while everything else was allowed to fade into inconsequential static.
A cool breeze brushed against her cheeks, tugging a few strands of hair free from her pigtails.
What was she doing? Was she waiting for something?
Yes, that sounded right. But what?
She got her answer moments later in the form of four birds soaring up from beneath her in a flurry of cries and loose feathers.
Instinctively, she shielded her face, though she still felt one stray feather snag somewhere in her hair.
When she could feel no more feathers, she peeked out from behind her arms to watch the birds go.
Two of them - both startlingly white doves - had already flown high into the sky, looping and dancing around one another in a lazy yet playful pattern as they went. They were missing a few feathers, of course, but they seemed peaceful and happy enough despite this.
The third, a lone magpie, had only joined the others briefly before wheeling to one side and swooping low out of sight. Its tail feathers fluttered loose behind it as it went.
Seeing it go, and the feathers with it, Hikari was filled with a sudden, deep sense of loss and longing that she couldn't explain, but then the magpie was gone and the feeling with it.
The final bird, a crow, was barely flying smoothly at all, unlike the others.
Even as the doves climbed higher and higher and the magpie peeled away, the crow continued to struggle upwards with each flap of its wings being a monumental effort. No matter how it cawed and screeched in frustration, its progress was slow at best.
Hikari found herself wishing that she could cradle it in her hands, grow and grow until she was tall and broad enough that she could hold it and give it a moment it catch its breath before it continued its journey into the sky.
But this wasn't that kind of dream. She knew that.
All at once, a great light seared itself across the sky in a blindingly white flash.
Hikari could do nothing but shield her eyes, crying out slightly in surprise and pain. Even with her eyes tightly shut the light still burned through, merely the impression against her eyelids being enough to inspire awe and fear.
She didn't know how long it was, when the impression faded and she felt safe enough to open her eyes again. Minutes? Hours?
All she knew was that she wasn't expecting what she saw.
The light was still burning but now it had coalesced into a shape; one perfectly vertical beam lancing up from the ground, intersected by another, shorter, beam about a third of the way down in a strange glittering copy of the simple wooden cross hung on the dining room wall in Hikari's old house.
Hikari knew this light, this shape. She'd heard stories of the damage the Angels had wrought upon her home town, had seen the pictures and video that Aida-kun had brought back from his brief time on the surface during an attack.
It terrified her.
But through the fear she had a sudden thought - the crow! It would have been caught in the blast! She urgently scanned the sky for any sign of it.
There!
Almost suspended in the air, wings at a strange angle and head bent back in what must be agony, it was caught in the glare of the cross dominating the skyline.
Hikari couldn't help stretching forward in some vain attempt to reach it, miles away as it must be. The sight of it made her heart ache.
Even as she watched, the crow writhed in the eye of the Angel and its feathers all at once shed off its body, leaving a new snowy white coat underneath. Somehow, perhaps because this was a dream, Hikari knew that the white wasn't the same unblemished colour as the doves had been, but ashy and stained with the remnants of its previous black feathers.
She cried out in pain for a body that wasn't hers, an itch against her scalp telling her whose feather had settled itself there, hand reaching and reaching and reaching forward-
She awoke as if surfacing from a deep, deep lake.
Lying on her back, her hand outstretched towards the ceiling, chest heaving, she tried to think through the static racing through her head and to remind herself what being human felt like.
Gradually, one by one, her senses came back to her.
That familiar low buzzing sound was the rotation of the ceiling fan and the AC unit in the corner of her room. The ceiling itself was a white and dull as it had always been. Sweat clung to her skin and, she realised when she brought her arm back down, had soaked the sheets. The drops on her cheeks though, those were tears.
In a daze, she brushed the tears from her cheeks and tried to calm her whirling mind.
Though there was much of the night that had not yet passed, and she had school the next morning, Hikari didn't fall asleep again.
She couldn't.
Asuka hadn't been home in a week. At least.
Nothing she did - no video game she played, no responsibility she ignored - seemed to stave off the dark emotional funk she had fallen into over the past few days.
Hikari knew that she should have sent her home after that first night. She knew.
Yet.
There Asuka still was, sitting on the floor of her bedroom with game controller in hand, after a week of much the same.
Surreptitiously, Hikari had been texting as many people as she could to work out what had happened to send her normally vivacious friend into such deep apathetic despair, but either they didn't know or they didn't want to tell her.
(she suspected it was the latter. no one ever wanted to tell her anything. why would they? she was normal, outside of their world-saving bubble.)
(no, that was unfair.)
(was it?)
As such, she was stuck. Wondering if she'd made a stupid mistake somewhere.
(knowing that this great gaping void that surrounded Asuka was more than her tiny, uncalloused hands could even begin to claw their way through. knowing that this world of evas and their too-young pilots was far more violent than she could even begin to imagine, and what could she do against such an unknowable, untouchable foe?)
"Hikari?"
Asuka's voice startled her out of her thoughts.
"Hm?"
GAME OVER was flashing on the screen in bold, angry letters. Hikari couldn't see, but she was sure that Asuka's hands were hanging loose around the controller in her lap.
"Let's go to bed."
Hikari felt the words bubble up behind her tongue (-how can i help, what words can be enough to break through this, there must be something, anything, please-) but bit them back.
(and wasn't that what she always did?)
"Okay," she said instead.
Asuka gave a barely there sigh, then flicked off the screen.
It was only lying awake in bed, hours later when neither of them could sleep, that Asuka spoke again.
"Sorry for imposing like this," she mumbled.
Though they were facing away from each other, curled up on their sides, Hikari heard her clear as day. She rolled onto her back and stared into the ceiling.
"It's okay," she said. "I don't mind."
This was true. Saying no to a friend in need wasn't something she could do and keep an easy conscience.
(when asuka had knocked on her door that night a week earlier, dully shining hair hanging limp around her head in a mockery of its former self, hikari would be lying if she said her stomach hadn't sunk, just a little. mainly because it was a pitiful sight to see, someone so bright and vibrant eclipsed by some greater darker thing, but part of her...part of her resented that asuka had come to her door that night.
one night of peace, just one night. hadn't she earned that much? asuka had been radio silent for days, weeks, and now here she was demanding to stay for god knows how long? what right did she have? were there no other friends she could go bother this time?
that was the thought that finally cut through her irritated gloom. in all the time hikari had known her, asuka had never once mentioned any other friends.
wasn't this who she was? the maiden waiting at the window, the door, waiting for the warriors to come home? with plates full of warm food covering the table and more besides for whoever happened to walk through her door?
wasn't this where she found her peace?
with barely a word, hikari had stepped aside to let her in.)
Asuka laughed bitterly. "It's all anyone does, isn't it. Help me. I hate it."
The contrast made Hikari frown. First she'd apologised, and now she hated it?
"I hate them all," she continued. "Shinji, Misato-san, Kaji-san, all of them. I hate them, I hate them, I hate them!" Somewhere between one breath and the next, she was crying. "I hate being this pitiful fucking thing, I fucking hate being me!"
She slammed her hand down onto the mattress with a soft thump sound. By now, she was sobbing into her pillowcase, great heaving ugly things that choked their way up and out of her chest in ways that almost seemed to make her retch.
Lying beside her, Hikari dug her nails into the sheets to avoid reaching over and dragging Asuka into her chest and wrapping her arms around her in a feeble cocoon from the world around them; Asuka hated people in her personal space, especially when she was feeling vulnerable.
(had she ever been more vulnerable than this? is this how she always was, but with no one around in her company? the thought dug a trench on the underside of hikari's ribcage, and how deep a wound it was! one that could never truly heal.)
The white ceiling, fan currently still, above began to swim and blur as tears welled up in Hikari's own eyes, but she blinked them back. Not yet, she wouldn't cry yet.
After what felt like far too long to Hikari for her to be lying there doing nothing, Asuka's wrenching sobs subsided into barely more than the occasional sniff.
Making sure she could be heard, Hikari rolled over to face towards her, leaving one hand - palm up - out slightly.
"Asuka-chan," she whispered. There was no response but she knew (she hoped-) she was being listened to. "I don't hate you."
"Tch." The sound was all too bitter and mature-sounding for it to have come out of Asuka’s mouth. "Why not?"
"Because- (-because when i look at you i see the sun, because i fell into your orbit and don't know how to want to leave, because you took the time to befriend me in a way no one else ever has and probably ever will, because i-) I love you, Asuka-chan."
(-and what difference does it make, now or before or in whatever future they would be handed? would simply saying i love you, once, twice, a thousand times, ever be enough? hikari didn't know, and pretended the thought of it not being enough didn't rip her heart in two.)
"How?" It was the most broken word Hikari had ever heard. "I’m nothing without my Eva. And I don’t even have that anymore!"
Humming, Hikari shook her head. Considered how to word what she was thinking.
"Soryu Asuka Langley existed before her Eva," she started slowly, "and she'll exist long after it, I think. We just have to find that Asuka again, right?"
It was slow, but Asuka rolled over to look at her, hands tucked in close to her chest. Her summer sky-blue eyes were bright with tears, pretty in a melancholy sort of way, with red blotches high on her cheeks and a scar-like crease where the pillowcase must have been pressing into her skin.
Almost all emotional walls down, Hikari noticed that she finally seemed to look her age. Younger, even.
"Asuka-chan," Hikari pressed, as gently as she could, when she didn't seem ready to speak, "what are you chasing?"
A confused glare.
"What do you want?"
(and wasn't that a loaded question, filled with time and space and desire and dreams. was it empty space ready to be filled or a barren void? couldn't it ever be both? wasn't there life in every ashen plain, if you knew where to look?)
A few more tears slipped down Asuka's cheeks and vanished into the pillows as she seemed to realise what Hikari was asking. Or maybe she didn't, and the answer was still the same regardless.
"I don't know." It was a whisper, nothing more. She curled even further into herself. "I don't know."
Hikari patted her hand against the mattress in something like an invitation. Perhaps a reminder.
"That's okay," she soothed, praying it didn't come off as condescending or pitying. "I don't think I do either. But I'm here, and I think together we can work it out, can't we? Maybe not now, or tomorrow, but we'll get there." A single tear slipped free of the hold she had on them.
Asuka saw, because of course she did. "What are you crying for, dummy?"
Hikari laughed a little bit. Cried some too.
"You're sad," she said simply. "It's less lonely when someone cries with you, don't you think?"
Asuka made a strange face, one too complex to truly parse through. Whatever she was thinking about, Hikari couldn't make sense of it.
"I don't know," Asuka eventually said, cautious, guarded.
Then, with little fanfare but great trepidation, she inched her now-trembling hand down from her hair, down, down until it brushed lightly against Hikari's palm. All at once she grasped it in a grip that was far too tight, a child who didn't know her own strength in unfamiliar places, and didn't seem to have any intentions of letting go.
Her eyes refused to look anywhere close to Hikari's face, darting around from joined palms to the sheets to somewhere just over Hikari's elbow and back again. All the while, her palm became sweatier and sweatier, despite the cool temperature of the room.
It was clammy and uncomfortable and her shoulder had started aching ages ago yet-
Hikari couldn't help but smile.
"Tomorrow," she whispered, squeezing Asuka's hand.
Between her eyes darting between the sheets and their hands, Asuka found space to make eye contact. Her cheeks bloomed red.
"Tomorrow," she mumbled back.
Feeling comfortable enough, Hikari finally closed her eyes and let exhaustion creep up on her once again.
"Sleep, Asuka-chan."
A short pause.
"Okay."
Just as she slipped through the strange limbo between wakefulness and dreams, Hikari thought she felt the pressure against her palm lighten into something more like a squeeze. Barely there, yet surprisingly tender.
But then she fell into sleep, and the moment was gone, scattered like feathers in a breeze.
When Hikari awoke, it was to the muffled rumble of traffic and the soft sensation of morning sun behind her eyelids. In all the strangeness of the night before she must have forgotten to pull the curtains closed.
Asuka's palm was still heavy in her own, too. It had become no more comfortable as the hours of sleep had passed, to judge by the dull ache in her shoulder and the stiffness in her fingers for being in the same position for so long, but it was a good discomfort.
(it felt like love, in a way. pain, yet connection. connection, yet pain.)
She opened her eyes and was surprised to see Asuka already awake. Squinting into the morning sun, she seemed to be warily watching Hikari sleep as if waiting for some other previously unseen shoe to drop.
Smiling sleepily, Hikari squeezed her palm.
(it's okay.)
Asuka didn't smile back. It had been a long, long night, and it would take a braver woman than her to smile as she once did so soon, and there were few who would call her cowardly.
Even so, eyes a shy kind of unsure, she very lightly squeezed Hikari's hand back.
(we made it.)
"Breakfast?" Hikari whispered.
Asuka hesitated then nodded, awkwardly thanks to the position.
"Yeah, okay."
(it's okay.)
Hikari-chan, what do you want?
They were on the roof.
For the first time in what felt like months, the six of them were finally all together (and whole enough) to be able to have lunch together. Not that it had been planned that way.
Initially, all Hikari had wanted was to give Tohji the bento she'd prepared for him that morning. Hand over the bento, make some pleasant small talk if she could, and then go about her day. Simple.
(this left out all the time she would spend agonising over everything she’d said to him, of course. but that was nothing new.)
Then Shinji, being Shinji, had invited her to join them and though she'd been tempted to refuse, extra time with Tohji was just too rare these days to pass up. The Idiot Trio - as Asuka had so eloquently termed them - wouldn't be complete without Kensuke, and where there was Shinji there was also Rei, bringing their total up to five.
Once Asuka had finally arrived, she ranted and raved about how she was being abandoned for 'boring, yucky boys' – ‘Ayanami doesn’t count!’ - and insisted on coming along too, even before Hikari got the chance to invite her herself. Shinji seemed pre-emptively exasperated by this but didn't argue it.
Instead they all traipsed up to the roof, loud ragtag bunch that they were, and clumped together near the railing.
It was awkward at first, in the way that unfamiliar things always were, but they soon fell into a rhythm of sorts. They were friends after all, and three of them even worked together!
It was fun, once they got into it.
Well, until Kensuke opened his mouth anyway.
"What's it like? Being an Eva pilot." He was leaning over the railing, camera trained on some distant thing.
(no matter how often he asked this question, he never seemed to grow bored of it. as if somehow some miracle answer would appear and satisfy whatever mental thirst he was trying to quench.
it frustrated hikari.)
Shinji scratched his head. "Well...tiring?"
"Come on!" He rounded on him. "You're in a giant mech, doing battle against literal gods! And the best you can come up with is tiring??"
"I think it sucks," Asuka chimed in, uncharacteristically flatly.
Rei nodded once in agreement. "It is rather violent and takes an unpleasant toll on our bodies."
Though everyone around him seemed to be being completely sincere, Kensuke was apparently unable to accept anything other than the exact answer he was fishing for. He glanced around the group, disbelief growing with each face he passed over.
"Is that it?"
Later, Hikari wouldn't be able to accurately tell anyone exactly what it was about this time, as opposed to all the many others that had come before, that got to her.
(people were always searching for one simple answer to a question like that, why we do the things we do, she'd found, and that was never the case. not for her. how could she explain the depth of her rage when it lived in so many things?
it was in the tired, tired slump of shinji's shoulders as he gazed listlessly into the middle distance.
it was in the sad oddness and odd sadness that seemed to follow rei around like a lingering cloud, one that she would never fully break free of despite the subtle change that had come over her in the past few weeks.
it was in tohji's new crutches, propped up beside him for one when his bad leg ached too much for him to comfortably walk on.
perhaps most of all, it was in asuka, in her gaunt cheeks and tight-with-tension shoulders, in the way she seemed to get lost in her own head more than she used to, staring at the sky less like a dream and more like a final - terminal - destination.
so no, she couldn't say what about this time was different; all of these things had been true for days, weeks, months now.
this was just the one time that she couldn't bear it anymore.)
Yet, almost without her telling it to, her body was marching towards Kensuke with nothing but cold, burningly cold, rage resonating from toe to scalp.
Only when the sting in her palm cut through her myopia did she realise that she'd slapped him.
There was a collective intake of breath.
"Wha-" He clutched at his cheek which Hikari pleasingly noted was turning a vibrant cherry red. "The fuck, class prez?"
"You-" Her own cheeks felt like they were burning equally red from the blood boiling there, but she held back the cooling tears threatening to fall. Where they hung at her side her hands were trembling. "You- how do you still know nothing about what they go through? Our friends?"
More than anything, Kensuke seemed confused at her reaction.
"...what?" Again, he glanced around at the group of them, at the way none of them were making eye contact with him.
Tohji, rubbing his bad knee. Asuka picking listlessly at her nails. Rei gravitating as if to comfort towards a very uncomfortable looking Shinji. If some onlooker were to happen upon them, they might think it a wake for some unnamed dead.
"I don't understand." Curled around his camera, his fingers were white at the edges with how tightly they were pressing into the casing. "What- I don't- I don't get it!"
As he spoke his voice became louder and louder, until he flung his camera out of his grip - the only thing saving it from the destruction of a long fall being the cord around his neck - and gestured in wild frustration and confusion.
“I don’t understand! It’s fucking amazing what you do! Yeah, sometimes you get hurt-“ This was accompanied by a gesture at Tohji. “-but we’re at war! It’s not supposed to be easy.”
(the painful irony of it being kensuke who said this - kensuke who had only ever played with guns and never even fought at school, never mind in an actual battle against beings so strange and powerful and Other that the human mind could barely comprehend them – was not lost on hikari.
they were all children here, but did any of them still retain that innocence and naiveté that came with youth? kensuke was at one end of the spectrum, but where were the rest of them? huddled together in fear in the middle? or spread out among cynicism and apathy?
hikari wondered where she fell.)
“If none of you want to fight, then- then-” His freckles were standing out even more than usual on his flushed cheeks. “I will!”
Asuka made a short sound somewhere between a snort and a hysterical laugh.
"Kensuke." This was Tohji, who was now easing himself to his feet. "C’mon. Let’s go for a walk."
Without even really waiting for a response, Tohji grabbed him and started pulling him towards the door to the stairwell. His limp was more pronounced than usual but not enough to qualify as a hindrance yet.
(even through her fury, hikari found herself wanting to follow. to be the arm at his elbow, to carry his crutches and bag when he didn't need them, anything to ease some of the pain that should never have been his.)
Upon passing Hikari, however, he paused.
"The bento," he said, haltingly, "was good. Thanks."
Awkwardly knocking a knuckle against her upper arm - as if he wanted to thank her in the usual shove he gave to his male friends but had never done it to a girl before - he moved on, pulling a now somewhat cowed Kensuke after him.
(at any other time she would have pity. maybe even guilt, for wasn't she the cause of what would become a sudden, violent revelation? but not now.
not with him.)
The door slammed shut behind them.
"Um." Shinji raised a hand, like he was still in class and about to ask to go to the toilet. "We'll, um, go help Tohji. Okay?"
Though no one spoke, he seemed to take it as agreement and made for the stairs, tugging Rei behind him by the hand. They'd probably get teased about that, in other circumstances.
Hikari barely noticed them all leaving, Tohji aside.
She was too caught in her own head, too busy trying to untangle her thoughts from the thunderous static now rushing between her ears, too deep in gathering her rage and packing it down, down, down where she could control it.
(where it could never come back. this vengeful thing wasn't her, was it?)
To her credit, Asuka waited until Hikari seemed to have herself more under control before speaking to her.
"Hikari-chan."
"I-" She inhaled, exhaled. Felt the panic rush in all at once. ", I'm so sorry, I shouldn't have-"
"What?" She laughed, not unkindly. "Someone had to. I mean, even now? After what happened to Suzuhara of all people? Ugh. Insensitive prick."
Wincing, Hikari pressed a hand to her chest and willed her heart to stop thumping quite so hard against her ribs.
"Still, I- I- I was out of line." It should have been one of you.
"It's okay to be angry, you know." Asuka toed at the ground. "Didn't know you were so fired up about this stuff, though."
Hikari stared incredulously at her. "Of course I am! You could die, at any time! A horrible, violent death, and for what?" She threw her hands in the air. "We're just kids! And- and- and-"
All of a sudden, she realised she was crying. The tears were streaming down her cheeks and dripping off her chin, staining her shirt and creating little damp spots on the concrete of the roof.
She slumped into the railing and slid down until she was sitting in a strange heap on the ground, one leg splayed out while the other was tucked under her.
"I'm terrified," she choked out. "Mad, so mad, but terrified. That one day you're all going to- you’re all gonna-" She couldn't finish it.
Burying her head in her hands, she wept.
(it was odd, really, that she could mention the potential death of a dear friend so casually in one breath and be unable to say it in the next. that potential hadn't changed between those breaths, not by any significant amount. but sometimes, with our greatest fears, we speak them aloud before we have even registered what it is we fear, so when that realisation comes, it hits us all the harder.
a brush with death is just that; a brush. it takes time to understand it for what it is.)
Vaguely, she heard Asuka make some kind of noise - surprise? concern? (god, disgust even?) - and the clack of her shoes on the concrete but she couldn’t really register the significance of the sounds, beyond that they existed. Not while caught in a spiral of dread and grief.
Every fearful moment she'd buried over the past couple of months, every concern, every emotion pushed aside for the sake of whoever needed her in that moment, all of it was now pouring out of her in one great tide, quivering through her whole body.
(it scared her, a little, how much heartbreak she held inside her. what room did it leave for everything else?)
Eventually though, the tears had to stop.
Hikari sniffed and started wiping at her eyes and nose with the back of her arm.
"Don't be stupid," Asuka's voice cut in, so sudden it made her flinch. A sigh. "Here, use this."
She peered up from where her face was buried in her arm and was greeted with the sight of Asuka, cross-legged but with one knee propped up as a rest for her elbow, holding out what seemed to be a large handkerchief with her other hand. Where she would have gotten it Hikari had no idea.
Still, she took it gratefully.
"Thanks," she whispered, only to cough at the dry scratchiness of her throat. Dragging her bag over she dug through it for her water bottle and took a swig, then another when the first didn't feel like enough. "Thanks," she repeated, steadier this time.
"How long you been sitting on that?" Asuka asked, once she'd had a chance to clean up a bit.
Hikari laughed breathily, more out of habit than actual humour. "Who knows?"
Asuka shook her head and swapped which leg she was propping her elbow up on.
"Why's this bother you so much?"
It wasn't framed as a rude question, though it could be. More that she was just genuinely curious for the answer.
(as if she didn't or couldn't understand why someone would care about the deaths of her and her children in arms.)
(later that night, when hikari couldn't sleep, that thought would resurface to keep her in miserable company.)
"Because I love you," she said, voice cracking and echoing words from weeks earlier.
(because i don't know what a world without you looks like anymore. because no one should go through a death like that, least of all you. because i can't be here for people to come home to if there's no one to come home.)
Asuka hummed. Shifted around again so that she was sitting fully cross-legged, with her hands out palm-up just outside of the circle of her lap.
Though it wasn't a common expression on her, she was clearly deep in thought.
Hikari was content to let her think; exhaustion from her breakdown was setting in and she couldn't be the thinking one of the two of them right now.
"Hikari-chan," Asuka eventually said, tone careful and contemplative, "what do you want?"
(oh, how strange and wonderful to have her words echoed back at her! to feel the meaningful lines they carved into asuka's mind, and themselves carving into her own!)
Hikari smiled, and it felt genuine. Watery, but genuine.
"For you to come home," she croaked. To be here when you do.
"Silly." It was the most tender Hikari had ever seen her, smiling confident and small all at once. "'Course we'll come home. We've got you to see, haven't we?"
(and wasn't that a cruel, cruel promise to make. how cruel of it to be said, and crueller for it to be working.)
Hikari laughed and wiped away the few tears that came with it.
"Don't promise me that." She wiped away a few more with shaking hands. "Don't-"
That tender smile shifted into something softer, more melancholy. Like she knew it was fragile too.
She tilted her head back to look at the sky, at the billowing clouds drifting there and the summer-blue behind.
"That ice-cream place should be open about now," she said, apropos of nothing. "What d'ya think?"
It was only the middle of the day. They still had classes left, and maybe the pilots had training after too, not to mention classroom duty.
But.
(they were kids, weren't they? couldn't they be kids, just this once? eat ice-cream and laugh and joke and pretend that the world wasn't ending around them?)
But.
Hikari tilted her head back too. Tried tracing shapes in the clouds until her eyes ached with the brightness of it all.
"Ice-cream sounds good." If her voice cracked, neither of them commented on it.
"Fuck yeah." Asuka hopped to her feet and stretched out her tired muscles. Cracked her neck and held out a hand for Hikari to take. "You coming?"
(for half a second, hikari let herself stare. at this fireball of a sun that had rocketed into her life and irrevocably altered it, for better or worse; at the clearest blue of her eyes, a copy of the sky unfolding behind her; at the shattered, tired edges of her smile that were only just beginning to heal.
for half a second, she let herself wonder how someone as bright and bold as this could have fallen into orbit with her, plain and simple as she was; how lucky and unlucky she could be all at once.
for half a second, she let herself believe that asuka could see her the same way she could see asuka.
then, her thoughts melted away, and the world began to turn again.)
Hikari reached out and took the hand.
"Yeah, I'm coming."