Chapter Text

Part I

Requiem I - Rubble

Relieved from nightmares, the first boy who came back to Earth jolted awake, his thin blanket thrown aside involuntarily. They weren’t actually that bad last night. By comparison, anyway.

The first week on his own had been dreadful. He was either at that beach, a destroyed convenience store he could find snacks and bottled water in, or on a path he walked between. The second week offered no reprieve from his growing concerns about everything. That maybe he’d made the wrong decision once more, and that no one would wish to live anew as he chose.

Then, he found her.

And due to how strong his trepidations had grown, he failed her.

Again.

The rough nights only increased in turbulence after that.

He forced a series of blinks, adjusting to the light, and scraped the crust from his eyes. He scanned around the room. For the first time since she joined him, she wasn’t there when he woke up.

His heartbeat quickened.

Had she decided he wasn’t worth dealing with anymore? That she could get by on her own?

Those worries were harbored in the back of Shinji’s mind the entire time during their unacknowledged accord, and he really hadn’t wanted to consider them. The fact that she wasn’t under her blanket across the room, where she’d slept the last several nights, wrenched his guts.

His panic grew as he stood up to investigate.

Until the house’s front door swung open.

“Asuka!”

She looked at him, utterly confused. “What!?”

She was still equipped with the bandages she came back in. A patch on her left eye, and a wrap extending from her right shoulder all the way down to her hand.

The hand that had graced his cheek.

Aside from that, she had on a pair of pants and a plain t-shirt she’d found here in the house. He knew that her plugsuit was folded up in the bathtub down the hall, as he saw it in there after she’d initially found something to change into. Her bright red neural connectors kept her hair up in the normal style.

He sat back on the floor, clutching his shirt. “I thought… that…”

“That what? That I left? No, you idiot. I had to go to the bathroom.”

He watched as she stepped into the kitchen. “We need more water!” she yelled from around the wall. She came back into the living room that Shinji sat in. “There’s only a few cans of food left too.”

His breathing was still ramping down. The hysteria that her brief absence had caused was staggering. She seemed to pick up on some amount of his distress. “Hey, get up,” she said. “Did you really think that I’d leave?”

He clambered to his feet. “I… don’t know.”

She rolled her visible eye. “Calm down. If I left, you’d never make it. I can’t have that on my conscience.”

He nodded, working to compose himself.

He had abandoned her before. He reasoned that she didn’t want to do the same to him. Whether she actually cared about him, or if it really was just her conscience like she said… He wasn’t sure.

Each time he’d tried to ask her opinion about, well, anything from before—she’d asked him to stop. On a couple occasions, it had been more forceful than an ask, really. Like when he pondered on what was underneath her bandages.

All of their conversation so far had been focused on surviving. On boiling water, or what to eat from the pile of cans he’d managed to compile. He’d brought her here, probably a day or so after… she returned.

After his own return, the first place he’d trudged to when he chose to leave the beach area was Misato’s apartment building. He found it easier than he thought he might, following what he knew used to be the trainlines.

As was every other building nearby, it was completely leveled. He could’ve spent hours rummaging through the rubble just to find nothing. That had been a rough sight, to say the least, and he couldn’t stand it for long. So he headed back to the beach where he stayed for another night.

He had ventured to and fro about what was left of Tokyo-3, until he found the house where they currently pitched camp amongst a longer row of residences. A little bit less than an hour’s walk from the sand. These homes somehow hadn’t been affected by the blasts. Nearly everything else he’d come across in the city was.

It may have been because they were up a road that nestled them in between a valley in the hills. It didn’t really matter to Shinji. Any of them would work as a shelter, so he picked the first one he could get into without needing to break a window.

“Were you listening when I said we needed to get more food? Or were you in dreamland?”

“Yes, I heard you,” he replied.

“Alright. Get ready then. The sun’s already coming over the trees. If we’re gonna be gone most of the day, I don’t want to be out there when it turns dark.”

“Okay. Give me a few minutes.”

She huffed, and headed back outside. He saw her sit on the porch steps through the window.

Shinji went to the back bedroom of the house. He’d gathered a collection of shirts, pants, underwear, whatever he could possibly need from this house and the other ones he could get into easily along the street. He had explained this to Asuka her first morning here, then showed her which houses she could get into and do the same.

He felt disgusting taking other people’s belongings. There really weren’t words harsh enough to describe it. Every photo he’d found of the family who had lived in this home, he took down or found some way to turn around. They appeared to be a normal husband and wife. A son close to his age. Thankfully, he didn’t recognize the boy from school. It was all an awful shame that he couldn’t bear.

He had watched Asuka pick up one of those photos a few days ago. She’d set it back down in the exact position as she’d found it, then saw that he was looking at her. There was a terrible sadness in her unconcealed eye at that moment. One that he’d not really ever seen from her before. She’d wordlessly gone to sit in the yard for a while after that.

Due to the guilt that wearing some other teenager’s clothes brought, he wore the single school uniform that he’d returned in as much as possible. He had attempted to wash it, and himself, in a pond—somehow void of LCL—slightly further along the road.

He’d not washed himself since Asuka was around. She hadn’t either, in fairness. There was no running water anywhere he could test it, which she also seemed to have realized without needing to ask him.

Today, he threw on a fresh pair of underwear, his own uniform slacks, and a blue long sleeve shirt. He’d nicked his uncovered arms on debris a few times very early on. Maybe he’d finally learned his lesson.

Back down the hallway, he cornered into the kitchen, and scooped up a cup’s worth of water from one of the many pots some was stored in. At a firepit he’d made in the yard, he boiled a lot that he carried over from the pond in the day or two after finding this place. It wasn't like there was much else to do. Asuka was right, however. They’d need to refill them.

He took quick stock of their food supply as well. Enough for them to both go another few days with two meals per. Better to get more now instead of leaving it to the last minute.

He grabbed the camping bag he had found here at this house, and slung it on his back. They should look out for another one, so that Asuka could carry stuff too. Downtown basically didn’t exist any longer. There might be some smaller department stores still explorable on the outskirts, like near the beach.

He slipped into his shoes, opened the door onto the porch, and found her tapping a foot on the lowest step.

“That was at least five minutes. A few means no more than four. Daylight’s wasting, Third.”

He wasn’t sure how he felt about the Third nickname anymore. He was okay with it, maybe even liked it, back then. With the Evangelions now gone… He’d soured on it. But he didn’t want to cause an argument, so he bit his tongue.

“I’ll be quicker next time.”

“Good.”

The road they walked along was littered with cracks and broken pavement. They came to a fork, where Shinji knew the direction they could take to a spot he’d not even come close to fully looting yet.

“There’s lots of stuff left at a store we can get into easily this way,” he said.

“Let’s keep going then,” she replied.

They crested a small hill, and as they did, the sickly pale remains of that thing which looked like Rei came into view, alongside a smattering of white monoliths—what he gathered to have been the Mass Production Evas.

He still wasn’t entirely sure what the giant dead creature lying on its side was. Its sliced head was a frequent guest in his nightmares. As he pieced it together, it was Rei, in some form.

Some other form of her—a ghostly apparition, hovering over the LCL tainted water—had shown itself to him when he had laid next to Asuka on the beach. That was just before… he’d failed her again.

This was all more than Rei, though. An Angel. Maybe a god. He resigned to never really knowing with certainty.

Regardless, it had given him power. And there wasn’t a moment that passed where he didn’t regret what he did with it. For some reason, he was given another chance. A second try.

He felt an immense pull to visit the posts he’d put up near the beach. Each time he’d come close to this place, for as long as he lived, he knew he would desire to. Whether or not anyone else returned, like Asuka did. They’d not been back this way since he led her to his shelter.

He stopped walking to look back at her. “Asuka?”

“Yeah?”

“I want to stop by the beach. To sit with the graves I made.”

She briefly pondered. “Suit yourself.”

“You don’t want to?”

“No.”

“...Why not?”

“Don’t. I said no.”

He swallowed the urge to question further. This was how most of their interactions had gone so far. At least, the ones that didn’t involve a discussion on something like how long to cook canned corn for.

They started walking again. “Alright. That’s fine. You can take the bag when we get closer to the store, and I’ll go to the beach.”

“Mmhmm.”

The clearing he’d set this all up in wasn’t exactly on the sands of the beach itself. It was nearby, on slightly more solid ground. Wooden posts, each around a meter tall, had been twisted into the dirt.

With what he could scrounge up, he’d done his best to recreate the types of markers that lined the fields where his mother was memorialized.

He really hadn’t been sure if anyone else was going to come back. It had only been a week when he built them. But it was the only thing he could think to do. He’d felt so alone.

The sounds of waves hitting the sand helped to calm him from the sights that laid out in the bay. Closer to a few of the monoliths now, their crucified poses were not something he wanted to engage with for long. Rei—or whoever, whatever, it was—also loomed in the distance. A red haze would settle in over the LCL-water in the evenings. Light from the sun broke it up during the day.

Shinji surveyed the rows. He’d planted fourteen of them in the tough soil. Asuka had kicked the one he intended for her over when he showed her—after he explained what they were—saying something about how she wasn’t dead.

The rest of them remained unbroken. He supposed that if anyone else came back, they could knock theirs down too.

He walked among them, going through the list of those who he’d wanted to remember.

The three lieutenants. Shigeru Aoba, Makoto Hyuga, and Maya Ibuki. He hadn’t ever interacted face to face with them much, but he did see them more days than not, owing to the amount of time he spent at NERV HQ. They were always kind to him.

Ryoji Kaji. He was a strange man. Something about the way he spoke, the way he carried himself. It was often unbecoming, though he found it intriguing. He wished that he’d spoken with him more.

Ritsuko Akagi. NERV’s chief scientist. She was the first new person he’d met at HQ, on the day he piloted after Misato collected him. She seemed so… indifferent towards him and his fellow pilots. He found out why close to the end of, well, before.

Kozo Fuyutsuki. The vice commander. Shinji only spoke with him on a handful of occasions. Aside from the one time he could recall the older man getting upset—in a briefing after the first sortie against the 7th Angel—he’d kept to himself. Either that, or stood at his Father’s side.

That was why Shinji chose to place Fuyutsuki’s next to the one intended for his father. The only thing that Shinji ever wanted from Gendo Ikari was for him to actually be a father at all. He left the “primordial soup,” as Rei had called it in there, with the distinct feeling that his father would never return—that he was content where he’d ended up. Shinji didn’t know what to think about that, exactly.

He continued to the next row of three. His classmates. Kensuke Aida, Hikari Horaki, and Toji Suzuhara. Kensuke was usually giddy about something, often to do with the happenings at NERV. Hikari was their class rep, and she did her job well. They’d helped to provide some sort of normalcy in his day-to-day life.

And Toji… He was the classmate Shinji felt the absolute worst about. The manner in which he’d discovered that his friend had been selected to be a pilot… and he’d done nothing to try to save him from that Angel…

His actions, or lack thereof, were why he’d never visited him after that. He knew his friend was recovering as well as could be expected, due to a call he’d not even answered from Kensuke after Toji suffered his injuries. He hadn’t managed to say goodbye to any of them when they were made to evacuate the city after the 16th Angel’s attack.

Then, there was Kaworu Nagisa. The short length of time Shinji spent with NERV’s Fifth Child was fascinating, to say the least. Shinji had killed him, not because his duty as a pilot said he needed to, but because Kaworu asked him to. The fact that he’d been an Angel completely blindsided Shinji.

He saw him after that, however—somehow as part of the giant white creature when it came to him, and then again in the “soup.” He and Rei had helped him realize that life would be worth trying to live in reality, and not in that place that felt so wrong.

Rei herself was a mystery. Initially, she acted so… distant. As he became more familiar with her tendencies, he thought he understood her a bit better. Then she died. And was brought back, but she was different than before.

When he was shown what Rei was, he was horrified. He didn’t know what to do at all. So he bottled it up, like he always did. For some inexplicable reason, she still chose to come to him at the very end. His own choices led to where he was now.

The final pillar was Misato’s. Adorned with the cross she always wore, and had given to him the last time he saw her. He’d found it in his pocket after crawling upon the shore. There were so many things he wanted to say, to ask, about her final sendoff to him, when she tossed him in the elevator down to the cage. Now that Asuka was back, Shinji hoped that she would come back soon.

That was true of most everyone here, really—but she was his guardian. She’d allowed him into her apartment. When he didn’t know what was happening to his life, she had been more considerate of him than he could ever remember anyone being.

His former teacher had allowed Shinji to live in his house. As dysfunctional as it ended up turning into, Misato had given him something that felt like a home. A chance.

Shinji’s mother shared some words with him in the “soup.” It was the last thing he recollected. That if he was alive, he’d have a chance to achieve happiness. He wasn’t sure if he’d ever understand why his mother went about things in the manner she did.

He’d thought a lot about that in the past week, since Asuka returned. No answers came to him so far. Whether or not one would ever reveal itself, it didn’t matter. He would continue to try living. He didn’t want to be how he used to anymore. That was why… failing Asuka again hurt so much.

He circled back to Asuka’s torn down post. He positively yearned for her forgiveness. The only way he could ever hope to get it was by showing her that he had learned. It’d be difficult, and probably take a long time. He was okay with that.

A tiny part of him anguished at the fact that she might not ever afford her forgiveness. That would be incredibly painful, for reasons he couldn’t comprehend. He refused to allow more of himself to consider that yet. Not before they managed to truly talk.

He’d reminisced here longer than he intended. He needed to get back to Asuka now, to see if she found some more food, or anything else that’d be helpful.

Suddenly, his attention was pulled out across the sand.

The phantom he saw before, the ghostly form of Rei, hovered a few meters off the ground. As soon as he was able to perceive her, she vanished. The same as last time.

Chill coldness shot down his spine.

Was Rei haunting him?

It was the second time he’d seen her in this fashion. He found it hard to believe that if she was, that she was doing so malevolently. Their last interaction in the “soup” was beneficial.

He was aware of ghost stories and tales of other supernatural happenings. She’d only shown up when he was here, at the beach. It might have something to do with that. The next time he saw her, he would try to communicate.

Maybe it was stupid to think that he could, but as he looked back out at the giant dead thing in the water, and remembered everything else that he’d experienced in the last half year… Speaking to a ghost didn’t seem all that strange.

“This one.”

She held out a tin which Shinji immediately recognized as being filled with tuna.

“I thought you didn’t like fish?”

She shoved the tin into his hand. “I don’t. If we go through these first, that allows me to eat canned crap that’s not fish after.”

He couldn’t deny her logic. The lid was peeled back, and he scraped the contents out into the pan he’d been using from the house’s kitchen. There wasn’t much to try seasoning it with, though he made do with what he’d found in the cupboards. He then set it over the fire. The sizzling joined the odd cricket chirp.

He’d started noticing bugs and smaller animals around a week ago. A mouse scuttled across the road they’d walked earlier. He hadn’t seen any birds up in the sky yet, nor any fish in the close-by pond. He was glad to not have to hear the cicadas… but it would be a good thing if he did soon.

They sat on the grass next to the makeshift firepit. Asuka was just over a meter away from him, gazing into the low flickering flames.

“When did you learn to start a fire anyway?” she asked.

“Uh, Kensuke showed me. I camped with him one time, before you got to Japan.”

“You’re able to get one started that fast, after only going camping once?”

“Well, no. I’ve had some practice recently.” That was greatly underselling the situation. It took forever the first few days. He’d spent nearly an entire afternoon last week repeating the process. There really wasn’t much else to do.

“Hmm. You’re gonna have to teach me at some point.”

“Okay,” he said, as he stirred the tuna to make sure it wasn’t sticking to the pan. “How about tomorrow?” The sun was starting to set, and the red streak across the sky began to crest over the treeline. It rose with the moon each night now.

“Maybe.” She lifted a hand to brush her bangs aside, shifting the hair over top of her eyepatch, then continued. “I want to see Misato’s.”

His brow raised. “The remains of her building?” Why would she care to see that? He’d already told her that there was nothing left…

“Yes. We’re going in the morning.” Her tone was insistent.

“That’ll be a long walk. It’s on the other side of the city.”

“I don’t care. You hadn’t planned anything, did you?”

She had him there, so he shook his head. “We’ll go first thing, then. It really will take a while to—”

“I don’t care. I want to go, damn it.”

“So I’ll pack the bag tonight.”

“Why? What is there to pack?”

He sighed. “It’ll be a full day trip. Unless you want to walk around in the dark, we won’t be sleeping here tomorrow night.”

“Oh.”

The tuna was likely done by now, as it had been several minutes since it started cooking. He leaned forward to pull the pan away from the pit, setting it on the ground beside him. He used a spoon to scrape half of it back into the tin it came out of. Scooting closer to Asuka, he handed it and the utensil to her.

“Thanks,” she said. It was something that she’d mumbled out after almost every meal he’d cooked for her over the fire.

It was not something that she’d said often before. He could probably count on one hand the amount of times he recalled her doing so. It just wasn’t something she did. She had always eaten his meals though, which he took as appreciation anyway.

He hadn’t asked her about this—and didn’t plan to until they discussed some other items—but it was somewhat encouraging.

“How does it taste?” he asked.

She finished chewing down a small bite. “Like tuna, you idiot. What else would it taste like?”

The crackles of the fire and the chirps of the crickets were the loudest noises to come from the yard until Asuka announced she was headed inside a few minutes later.

As they got nearer to the location of Misato’s razed building, the streets became increasingly impassable. Sections of fallen structures were strewn over the roads. The sun sat high in the sky, and the bag on Shinji’s back felt particularly heavy—even if it wasn’t really heavier than it would be when full like this.

The temperature today was the hottest since returning, and there wasn’t much of a breeze to help mitigate that. He plodded along, despite the weight and the heat, leading Asuka to the place she wanted to see. She still hadn’t mentioned any sort of reason as to why.

Street after street of devastation. Walking amongst all of it was badly disorienting. They’d managed to not get lost thanks to Shinji’s navigating. They passed what used to be his favorite corner store near the train station, where he’d often stocked up on basic grocery items.

After a few more hops, skips, and jumps between ruined roads, they arrived. Nothing had changed since the previous time he was there, to no surprise. On the final day before, he hadn’t brought his SDAT with him to the Geofront. It, along with his cello, his clothes… everything was gone. Destroyed in whichever blast that had taken down the building.

Maybe they could find the bones of a music shop somewhere. He couldn’t replace his SDAT—or his cello, for that matter—but if he could track a new instrument down, he’d at least have something else to do.

He walked her over to the parking lot, and she stomped right up close to where the elevators would have been if the building still stood. She started climbing up the pile of rubble, to Shinji’s surprise. He rushed over to call out to her.

“Asuka! What are you doing!?”

“Climbing!”

The stone, metal, and whatever else the building had been constructed from looked like it rose several meters off the ground in certain spots. “Be careful, Asuka!”

She wasn’t listening to him, clearly, as she continued up along what she could grab. She reached the top of a concrete column, leaned against a spike of jagged rebar, and looked out at the sea of debris.

If she somehow slipped off, fell, and got injured, he didn’t know what he’d do. He had packed some band-aids and antibiotic ointment, collected from the house. That was it. Broken bones, or anything worse, were not something they could deal with.

Asuka reached down, grabbed a loose shard of something—maybe a small piece of brick—reared back, and chucked it across the expanse as far as Shinji thought she could.

The scream she let out upon doing so was ear piercing. It reminded him of before, when he’d not gotten up to Unit-01 in time to…

He didn’t want to think about that. Instead, he tried scaling the wreckage himself. It didn’t take long for her to notice that he was approaching.

“Get back on the ground, Third!”

“Asuka, please! Come down!”

“Let me do this!” she yelled, turning away from him. Another brick was flung from her hand. Another guttural scream. After this second one, she swiftly sank to her knees.

Shinji reached a solid footing himself, but had no idea what she was doing. “Asuka!?”

“What?”

He couldn’t see her face, just the back of her head. The sunlight glinted off of the neural connectors keeping her hair bunched up.

“Are you alright?” He lowered his volume to match hers.

She stood back to her feet, and started her descent. Shinji understood that she was headed down now, so he scrambled back himself. When she got to solid ground, she stared at him with her uncovered eye.

“Do I look alright?” She took a step towards him. “Does that answer your question, Shinji?”

He gulped down a heavy helping of air. His brain tried to formulate some sort of response. It was unable to do so.

She grunted, and marched past him. “We’re done here. Let’s go,” he heard her say.

He spun around to follow.

The large bag’s zipper whirred open, and Shinji pulled out all of its contents. The basic medical supplies he’d brought were at the bottom of the sack, of course. When he finally reached them, he pulled them out, set them on the floor next to him, and shoved everything else back in.

When climbing earlier, he’d gotten a scrape on his hand. It was small, so he hadn’t noticed it at the time, but he caught on to the stinging soon after they left and started walking again. Right when he felt it, he had asked if Asuka could check her hands for any cuts of her own. She had huffed, but did so, finding nothing.

They came across shelter for the night, in the form of an Angel attack bunker. Shinji was suspicious of the idea to head underground. He’d not thought that a bunker like this in the middle of the destroyed city would’ve held up very well. If the foundations were busted behind the walls, it could spell disaster and leave them trapped.

Asuka had protested his caution, and demanded that they at least investigate. Once inside, the spot appeared to be in decent shape. Floodlights poured over them from above, which he supposed were running off of some massive generators deeper into the structure.

They’d poked their heads around, and quickly found a room containing cots. Upon seeing them, Asuka had said she wanted to lie down, and they’d agreed to look around more after some rest.

The only time he’d ever been in one of these shelters was when he’d run away before the 14th Angel. The layout here was different than that one, though the types of signage and other instructions that lined the walls were alike.

NERV’s logo was plastered on a few different surfaces in both this one and the other. He hadn’t liked seeing it. He wasn’t sure if he ever had.

Shinji uncapped the antibiotic, and rubbed some of it into the scratch on his palm. He then layered a band-aid over top. He could not allow something like this to get infected. It was a tiny wound, and even still, he wished he’d noticed it sooner. Any complications could spiral dangerously.

The only thing left to do before trying to sleep himself was figure out why Asuka had acted the way she did today. He’d tried to think about it after they’d left Misato’s. He couldn’t focus on that while trying to not trip over broken streets, so he’d delayed his attempts to now.

She was just a few meters away from him, staring up at the ceiling from her horizontal position. The way she’d responded to his last question stunned him. It stifled him from wanting to try asking more.

But that was in direct conflict with how he wanted to be now. Her actions dug at his curiosity. He had to try.

“Hey… Asuka?”

She continued looking into the lights above, and exhaled heavily. An audible form of agitation. He decided to press forward.

“Do you… um… why did…”

Her head snapped upwards, finding his eyes. “Spit it out.”

That gave him just enough confidence. “At Misato’s old building earlier, why did you…” He’d run out of steam under the weight of her gaze.

“Throw bricks around? Scream at the top of my lungs?”

“Both?”

She scowled. “The bricks were for Kaji and the slob who lived with us. You made your… thing. I wanted to do something too.” She paused, laid back on the cot, and continued. “I screamed because I felt like it.”

He supposed that made some sense. He’d put up his memorial a week or so after returning, and it had been about the same amount of time since she had. He wished she hadn’t referred to Misato as a slob though. He opted not to press on that point.

After a few minutes of silence, Shinji’s stomach grumbled. Due to their expedition today, they hadn’t really eaten anything. He had packed a couple granola bars, so he fished one out of the bag’s front pocket.

“Are you hungry?” he asked.

“Not really,” was the reply offered, muffled by the blanket she’d pulled over her head.

He was sure that she was, so he grabbed another bar out, hopped off of his cot, and walked over to hers. “Here’s a granola bar. So you don’t have to get up later if you change your mind.”

She didn’t answer.

He set it next to her pillow anyway, then got back onto his side of the room.

Pulling the blanket over his head to block out the strong artificial lights, his legs thanked him for relief from standing again. He didn’t know how many kilometers they’d walked today. Whatever the number was would’ve been the most Asuka had put in during a single day since joining him.

The progress would be slow, trying to talk more with her. He hoped that if she started getting some things off of her own mind, like with the bricks today, that she’d be willing to sooner than later.