Chapter Text
My guide and I entered that hidden road
To make our way back up to the bright world.
We never thought of resting while we climbed.
We climbed, he first and I behind, until,
Through a small round opening ahead of us
I saw the lovely things the heavens hold,
And we came out to see once more the stars.
-Dante, The Inferno, Canto XXXIV
In the vast hush of the resurrected world, the only sound was the low, soothing drone of the red tide that washed over his bare feet.
It was so gorgeously clear this evening. Without mankind's fires to scrape away at the night's edges, the heavens shone in their full magnificence. The Milky Way carved a winding white path in one direction, and the Earth's new crimson halo of blood met it crosswise near the beaming full moon. Only a few wisps of clouds, lit by the natural brilliance, lingered on the far horizon.
He breathed deeply of the pure air of the healing Earth enveloping him, and looked back. A serpentine line of footprints stretching out of sight behind him were the only marks on the perfect, bleach-white sand of this strange, silent shore. The tide would eventually rise and smooth it all away, as it had for the remains of…of the giant that had worn Rei's face. The waves would continue to lap in musical whisper, and the stars would revolve in ceaseless dance until even they were extinguished.
"Opportunities for happiness are everywhere. As long as there's the Sun, and the Moon, and the Earth…it will all work out."
Constellations blazed out above, each in its proper place. Entranced by their play and with little else to do, he had snagged a few astronomy books some time ago, which not only gave the names the arrangements of stars had in various cultures, but their stories and meanings. It was so odd to be…without EVA, without expectations, with little direction in the spare hours but what his curiosity suggested. He could at least try to understand what remained of this empty world, its history, its meaning.
Since time out of mind, people had looked up at the changeless stars and tried to find patterns and meanings. They even told stories where heroes were given eternal life by being set in the sky as new constellations.
Some said that the wandering ones, the planets, determined fate. Others tried to predict and explain the heavens, and in time ascended to new heights of knowledge and mastery. Eventually, mankind kindled its great fires, and city lights drowned the stars out. The immortal heroes were forgotten.
Perhaps one of the ever-so-slowly straying lights up there was Mother.
"Even if that person were the only one…It would be very lonely, but if that person survived…"
"...Proof that humanity once lived will remain forever."
Lost in the moment, he reached a hand up toward the sky. A mighty wave broke on the shore, surged ahead, and began to fill in his trail.
Purgatorio
Prologue: The Shore
How long had it been now? It was difficult to say. Many of his little campsites dotted the sweeping boundary where immaculate sand and bloody water met the ruins of humanity's fortress. He had built them on instinct. He had done many things to survive without quite knowing how. It was as if there were someone else scaling debris, breaking windows, scavenging and foraging, or tying knots, borrowing his own hands. Since they were the only hands in the world, it seemed fair. Better than spilling blood or…or hurting his loved ones in other ways.
He stared out at the horizon from within one of his pilfered canvas tents. The growing light among the ashen clouds quietly heralded the new day. Great waves rolled in and crashed against stricken, sunken buildings. A gentle, cool mist was falling on this gray morning. Far in the distance, the occasional cries of seagulls were haunting and forlorn.
Just outside the tent, a crackling campfire had a little rig over it. A pot of boiling freshwater hung from it. He crept off his bedroll to go pour in some rice and put a couple tins of fish near the fire to warm up. A thousand voices chided him to get hot food whenever he could manage it. A distinctively human, civilized desire.
"You're hungry right?"
"Yeah…Do you do this a lot?"
"I guess."
"Is it training for guerilla warfare?"
"What good would toys like this do? I'm just having fun."
Taking a white stone from one of the pockets of his baggy cargo pants, he strode over to an enormous black boulder half-sunk into the sand and scratched a new tally mark on its hulking mass.
Combined with the numerous other sets scrawled on the surface, that made one hundred and fifty marks today. But his count had begun perhaps weeks after his revival. Or had it been only a few days? All he knew for sure was that the clothes he'd worn when he emerged from the sea were too small on him now.
He had started tracking the days to keep himself sane more than anything else. Otherwise he would be unmoored, lost trying to put his mind back together. It had been very, very bad at first; he would sometimes blank out, find himself in another place and time of day altogether, and wonder what he had been up to. The first…whenever…had been like a long, weary dream. Only with time and with little practices like this did he manage to cobble together a coherent sense of self. Back to the basics: day one, two, three…
But without anyone else around to share time with, what really distinguished one day from another?
Nobody else…
He looked at the crucified giants in the bay and shivered.
He had reached the arbitrary limit he'd set for himself. It had originally been one hundred, but that day came and his heart quaked at the thought of setting off, and he'd delayed it another fifty. This scarred land had been the only place he had ever felt…meaningful. Needed. Alive. Even if only for a little while. Despite all the painful memories, there was nostalgia too, longing for the people he cared about. It would be a shame to leave even these ruins behind. But it was time to go searching. For what, exactly?
He had vacillated between hope and despair so many times in his days of waiting. The promise that those with the willpower could manifest themselves again. The reality that it had not yet happened. In there it was empty without a distinct 'I' and 'You'. Out here, he was solid and substantial, but sad without the Other. Sad. Because there should have been an Other. He knew that she at least would have the will to return. So captivating, overwhelming, alive. Where, where, where? There-not-here? Or elsewhere, perhaps.
"Opportunities for happiness are everywhere."
He couldn't just spend his life wasting away on the shore. He had accepted that there would be pain and loneliness, had learned how to choose and live at least a little. He had come back because he wanted to understand, and there was still so much waiting. A change of scenery might help.
Hence the gear.
He hefted his carefully arranged rucksack, stuffed with all kinds of spare clothes, kits, provisions, and little tools. The waist strap cinched snugly. He hadn't made the packing list. As in many other instances, he had reached out for it and just found it there in his head. Well, numerous variations, really; but the essential parts overlapped. He did not learn such things. He un-forgot them.
In the campsite nearest to where he recalled emerging, he left one last note carefully wrapped in many layers of plastic, in case someone else ever did return. It was a meager trace of his existence, but the best he could manage.
It was time to go.
A walking stick was in his hand now, clicking along the hardening ground. Good to have a 'third point of contact', someone-something had murmured in his mind. His heavy boots, chosen with an appraising eye not quite his own, crunched over the gravel and rough rocks scattered all over the borderland where the derelict city tumbled down onto the beach. Ahead, reeds and tall grasses sprouted from cracked asphalt. Flowering vines had begun to creep up and claim the bent and broken power lines and telephone poles. The blackened earth was gradually, tentatively turning green with new life. Day by day, the dismal devastation was becoming…dishevelled, in a lovely, dryad way.
As he was about to venture into the dead streets and burnt-out buildings and leave the shore behind for…for however long, he looked back.
The ghost was there again, hovering over the water. He could not see her eyes, as usual. She had haunted him from the very beginning. All had revolved around her. Was it really her that he was seeing, or a projection, a trick of his imagination? The line often blurred. Just a dream, yes. Well, what wasn't?
He blinked, and there was only empty beach and flat, calm ocean. Slowly, he turned back to his course.
He was breathing heavily by the time he had crested the ridge which the ruined road ran along. It was arduous work, getting up into the foothills. The streets and highways were practically impassable even on foot, utterly broken and overrun with weeds. He couldn't be angry or frustrated though; it was beautiful in its own lonely way.
This curve, this cliffside, that railing…He knew this place. Shinji did.
On the other side of the valley, the sun was about to fall below the mountains. It set the whole sky ablaze with orange and vermillion, deepening to purple near the horizon. Down below, the light dazzled on the…the Ashi Inlet? The Bay of Tokyo-3? Under the sunset's touch, the crimson cove glowed like molten metal.
He glanced off to the side, to the darkening evening sky. Its loveliness still never failed to catch his eye, even after all these nights with little else to do but gaze up at it. Some stars were already shining. There was a tight circle of four in the north that he couldn't recognize at all in the books. Something about them attracted him from the first time he noticed them. He had decided to follow them as he went.
But before he set off…he couldn't help it. He looked back over the railing, out toward the bay, and let the burning memories wash over him one last time.
"This is Tokyo-3. This is our city. And…it's the city that you protected."
"There are some things we must never forget. That's an important lesson Yui taught me."
"Aren't songs great? They enrich the heart. They're the crowning achievement of Lilin culture."
…
"No matter what it takes, I'm gonna get back at Rei and Misato! They're gonna…pay for wounding my pride! With interest!"
Was this penance for failing everyone so badly, for the ugliness deep in him that Instrumentality had uncovered? Then it was fair. He accepted. He had experienced their pain from their own eyes, the pain he'd thought he was the sole victim of, but turned out to be a perpetrator of in his own way.
Shinji's heart swelled with an indescribable, bittersweet ache. Love for people who weren't there constricted his trembling chest. How would he ever express it? I just want to see them all again. A lifetime ago, he had come here with absolutely nothing. Even now, he had more than that.
He didn't understand Mother's words about enduring forever. He didn't know enough about 'humanity' to ever be its monument. But he remembered those he'd known…
The stars were the campfires of the gods, and they had no concern for mortals down below. That's what the books said. In comparison, he was an unnoticeable, transient little spark. It burned and hurt to carry even what little he had, and sometimes the regrets almost consumed him. But he had made a promise. He would figure out his life, even if he just kept arriving at the same answer every time, even if it ached, even if there was nobody to explain it to.
He looked at his road. It was very steep; but he felt ready now.
The spirits fled toward the cliffs, as those do who go without
Knowing where they will arrive;
Nor was our own departure less sudden.
Down at the beach, the sun rose and set again and again, its light always washing over the white sand kept clean and smooth by the ebbing and flowing tide. The heavens kept everlasting watch over the shore of rebirth.
There came a day when the water wiped footprints away again.
It had taken forever to get herself back together, and only barely. The bandages were itchy. After her first few stumbling steps, she fell down to her knees and heaved up a bunch of that…water, LCL? It was a gruesome stain on the pure beach. That and the sight of the First's ghost were her only lame welcome to this broken world.
"How disgusting," she grumbled out under her breath. She scratched at her re-knit arm.
She had felt incomplete down there. Something or someone had gone missing. Naturally, she had come to track it down. Remembering that determination sent new strength into her rubbery, clumsy limbs, and she stumbled forward again and again.
Inside an abandoned tent close to where she'd come up, she found a bundle of papers packaged up inside a few layers of plastic bags and weatherproofing. The little note atop the stack was a bit hard to read with her bad depth perception, but the handwriting was neat and orderly.
To anyone who finds this:
I'm sorry for everything that's happened. I'm going away for a little while to see if people are returning somewhere else. I've made a map of different stashes of supplies and campsites. I'll try to make my way back here eventually to check in; if I'm not around, please hang in there.
After that, the paper had a few false starts and scratched-out symbols until the author finally settled on a last line:
I'm so sorry.
-I.S.
The tone was a dead giveaway if nothing else. So he'd run off, had he?
…That just wouldn't do. They had a thing or two to talk about. She hadn't reconstituted her individuality and crawled out of that water just to rot on this shore and not see him again.
As soon as she felt strong enough, Asuka was going to track down that damn idiot if it was the last thing she ever did. She wasn't quite sure what she'd do when she did find him…but she could figure that out later. For now, there was no way she was staying on this godforsaken shore.