Work Text:
Late morning sun shone overhead, broken up before it could reach the ground by leafy, crawling vines that grew across trestles over the path that you were walking along through the garden. The shadows cast by the greenery above left dappled patterns of darkness on the ground and you, though your eye still caught glimmers of golden sunlight caught in your hair, gathered into a pony tail and trailing down your front over your left shoulder, from where the sun was not interrupted by the canopy. You stopped at one of the neatly cultivated garden beds and ran an inspecting gaze over the plants within.
It was a farce, of course. You knew almost nothing about any of the green things growing anywhere in the garden. Still, you knelt down and set about your task. You at least knew enough to be able to differentiate what was being cultivated purposefully from what was a weed, and that was what you did. Find the weeds and pull them out. Making sure—as you had annoyingly been instructed—to remove the roots, lest the weeds simply return.
It was the kind of work which you would have scoffed at, at an earlier time in your life. Not because it was hard, or messy, or, as you winced at the feeling of a thorn piercing through your glove to prick your thumb while you pulled up a weed, painful. You didn’t get to where you were in life by avoiding hard, messy, or painful work. It was just not the type of task that suited the Great Asuka Langley Soryu.
It was menial. Banal. Domestic. And you were anything but any of those things. From a young age you had known you were destined for greatness—piloting, a university degree at thirteen, saving the world, neurosurgery. Awe inspiring achievements for a girl who was determined to inspire awe. Gardening was not something that fit into any of that. You wiped the sweat from your forehead with the back of one gloved hand, feeling the smudged trail of dirt the action left, and huffed in annoyance. Mucking about in the dirt and the weeds and the bugs had not been something you were going to waste time doing.
You stood from where you were kneeling at the garden bed and scooped up your wicker basket of weeds by the handle. One patch thoroughly weeded, you headed to the next one. This one had thin wooden frames the plants were growing on—some sort of bean, maybe. It could have been a melon for all you knew. You had no idea. You just knew the supports made getting at the weeds more difficult. You had to work around the frames and carefully ensure you did not disturb them. It was, of course, an easy task for someone with your skills.
Trained by years of piloting and surgery, your hands weaved through the frames and pinched at the base of the unwanted invaders, and you pulled them up smoothly, deftly maneuvering around the structures without disturbing them. It took a bit more work, more concentration, than the more open bed of the previous plot. You were leaning forward, closer to the earth, in order to better see what you were doing. The smell of the soil permeated everything from where you were situated. The rich, dark, loamy smell. So different from anything you would encounter in your life.
Sterile antiseptic, coppery LCL, and the carefully maintained neutral smell of NERV facilities had been the constant scents in your life. The professional part of it, anyway. And that had been all you cared about. Or so you had told yourself. Not for you was the life spent nurturing or caring. Your life had a purpose, it was planned. Every step along the path was accounted for and not one of them was put down roots or raise plants. It was what led you to be who you were today. Someone you were proud of. Who had accomplished more than most people would in their entire lives—and you still had plenty of years left to accomplish even more.
You stood from the plot with the frames and moved to the next one. The sun had been crawling across the sky as you worked. It was still shining bright, heating you even in the cover provided by the overhead plants. It wasn’t that the labor, or the heat, or the filth, or the exertion, or anything about the process was too difficult to overcome. It was simply not something you had had the time for. Nor an interest in.
The basket rustled onto the ground at the garden bed that was your next objective. You rustled onto the ground next to it as you kneeled down to find the intruding weeds. Caring for a living thing—a garden, was constant work. It required continual maintenance and vigilance, constant warfare between woman and nature. But that still wasn’t why you had never wanted to do it. Your entire life, from the day you were chosen as a pilot—the day you had found your mother’s hanging body—had been constant battles. Against your courses, where you fought to outperform all none of your peers. Against your instructors, to outdo whatever expectations they had for you. Against Angels, and even your fellow pilots and Misato, to be the best.
You had realized that you were only ever fighting yourself. That every battle you fought was simply one in a long stream of them that made up the war that you were waging against Asuka Langley Soryu. So, whenever the idea of settling down or growing came up, you could just dismiss it out of hand. Who were you, to nurture or raise? You were meant for the fight. You could pull up weeds, but anything beyond that was beyond you. No, it wasn’t the constant fighting that made you stay away from gardening.
Leaning back on your haunches, you stretched your arms up and tilted your head about to work the kinks out of your neck. After a satisfying cascade of cracks and pops, you returned to your work.
You had gravitated toward another leisurely pursuit—painting. It suited you much better. Not that you had ever consciously made any comparison between them before this moment. With painting, you started from a blank canvass and enforced your will upon it. Whatever you were inspired to create was what would appear. You were in total control. Any deficiencies in the product or process were strictly your own problem.
It was impossible to screw it up in any serious way. And it was inherently selfish. You painted what you wanted, and you painted it to express your own self, and you painted for you. No one else ever even saw your work.
Except, that wasn’t true, was it? You stood again, another plot free of weeds. Your basket was full, and the sun was at its zenith, strands of hair that had worked their way free of your ponytail were sticking to your neck and face with sweat, your clothes were covered in dirt, and you were hungry. The rest of the garden plots could wait, you were going to go back inside.
For a while, now—how long had it been? Years, and the time seemed to both fly and crawl at the same time—you were not the only one to see your paintings. You still remember the first time Ryuka had seen a finished piece sitting out. It had been the one depicting your grandmother’s house, perched like a lonely sentinel on the edge of a vast, dark forest. She had asked you who the woman in the black dress standing on the porch was, and you had been at a loss for an answer.
You had dodged the question, giving some non-committal answer to satisfy the girl’s curiosity and maintain your air of aloofness. That moment had just been more proof that you weren’t the nurturing type. Not in that way, at least. You were damn proud of the woman that Ryuka had grown to be, and you know how much work you had done to help push her there. You smiled, pride for her tugging at the corners of your lips as you emptied your basket into a compost bin.
You didn’t know how to be gentle, or nurturing, or motherly. But you knew what it meant to want to succeed. To chase after recognition. You had told Ryuka, years ago, when you had first taken an interest in her education, that she had promise, and that was the only reason you had stepped in to make sure she had everything she needed to succeed. Because you weren’t gentle, or nurturing, or motherly, or a gardener, you didn’t have the courage to tell her that she reminded you of him. You had never even told her about Shinji.
You peeled off your gloves and tossed them on the bench near the back door as you walked inside. The cool breeze of the air conditioning chilled your skin, still beaded with perspiration as you walked to the sink to wash the garden off your hands and face.
Of course, she had reminded you of yourself, too. There was no avoiding the similarities between the two of you. But it was Ryuka’s innate Shinjiness that you had zeroed in on. Seeing the woman she had grown into, it had made you wonder what kind of man Shinji would have become. In a world where he had never been put through more than anyone should have, where none of them had been. Where he had had just one person in his life who was working for his success. No one had been that person for Shinji, or for you, or for Ayanami. But you could be that person for Ryuka.
You shut off the faucet just as the front door banged open. You heard a sharp, high pitched squealing and the clipclopclipclop of little hooved feet rapidly beating across the floor, and the scrabbling of paws racing after it.
“We’re home!”
“Welcome home,” you called back as you hurriedly replaced the towel you were using to dry your hands and face and snatched open the back door—just in time for Oskar to bound into the backyard, Chi Chi hot on his tail.
Shinji walked into the kitchen carrying takeout boxes of food and set them on the counter. You were already walking towards them—there was no mistaking that logo, those were pancakes from your favorite restaurant.
“I see you’re hungry.”
“Shut up,” you told him good naturedly, basking in the heavenly aroma of fruit, syrup, cream, and pancake as you picked up and opened the topmost box. “Where’s Ryuka and Renji?”
Shinji was already getting plates and other necessary materials set up on the table, but the prospect of delaying your pancakes because the other participants of the meal were lollygagging was unacceptable to you.
“Renji wanted to show Ryuka something in his bedroom,” he answered knowingly. He pouted his lips and pantomimed exaggerated kissing motions, and you had to stifle a laugh at the absurd sight.
“They better hurry up,” you said once you had stopped giggling. Shinji finished setting the table and you began helping him plate the food. “I’m starving.”
“I’m sure they’ll be along soon. Things weren’t too boring here by yourself?”
You paused briefly, thinking of the time you had spent in Shinji’s garden. Thinking of what your mind hand wandered over while you worked. You finished plating the last of the food and plopped into a chair at the table.
“No. I did some weeding in the garden.”
“Oh! Uhm, thanks! You didn’t have to do that.” He took the seat directly across the table from you. Both of you were looking around the kitchen, at the food, anywhere but at each other. Even months after coming back into each other’s lives, some things were still awkward.
“No, but I wanted to.” You looked directly into his eyes. “I think I’m getting the hang of this gardening thing.”