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In the end of the world there was only ever rain and rain and more rain, pouring down in torrents until you could barely see your hand even if you stretched it out in front of you. Asuka escaped the facility just in time before anyone could find her and drag her back into her EVA to die a pointless death. Well, any death now is a pointless death, she supposes—but at least it was a death decided by her own hands. Nobody else is going to decide for her now; not even mommy, or whatever shabby, plastic version of it that Misato is. She is not going to be a tool to use her entire shitty life.
Someone else just happens to think the same way, when she got to the edge of the field where the forest begins. Either that, or such a coward that she’s decided to run away now, while already in her suit (Asuka’s running away in a heroic manner, thank you very much, she’s not going to die in that skin-tight suit). But Ayanami’s baby blue hair wavers against the neon orange sea, and when she turns around to look at her, her pupils are full-blown red against dark. Something akin to fear strikes Asuka’s throat as she stares back. It was the wrong colour. Everything is the wrong colour, everything is wrong. Everything. It hurts to think when the siren begins to blare all around the city, in the distance, watching the buildings start to sink into the ground like falling jenga pieces.
“You running away?” Asuka scoffs, instead, like she isn’t doing the same thing. Like she isn’t as much of a coward as her or even little-bitch Shinji, in the end. Like they weren’t all the same, her and that doll Ayanami. They were all the same.
Ayanami’s voice is ever as quiet, as empty as it always had been.
“I’m not their doll.”
Asuka breathes in a strangled breath, at that. It hurts to even breathe, in this thick weather. Everything is heating and cloying up and falling apart, condensing together into what the universe used to be before it was something. It was the end of the world.
Asuka nods.
Ayanami turns around to face the mouth of the forest, still in all its evergreen glory, and says, “Come. I know a place.”
She takes her to an old train wreck half-buried in dirt by the side of a running creek, its water still clear, unspoilt by all of humanity’s sins turning everything the wrong colour, everything wrong. The sky is still a shade of orange that hurts her eyes whenever she tries to look up, tries to find the last Angel that’s supposed to come down and annihilate them all, so Asuka hurriedly follows Ayanami to climb inside the carriage.
It was damp inside. Bits of whatever remaining light of the sun, or its impostor that’s tainting everything red, peeks through the rust and dirt that blinds the windows, and it was still raining; raining so hard, wind shaking the frames, thumping against the metal roof until Asuka can barely hear herself think. They were dripping and dirty and it was no way a dignified death, but still, Asuka was glad it would be inside some secret hiding spot instead of that pilot seat. And she was, strangely, glad that it was a certain blue-haired girl sitting in the seat across from her, with its foam gnawed-off and spilling out from its leather.
“How’d you know this place?” Asuka asks.
“I like to be here alone some days.”
Asuka looks around, trying to not seem like she’s judging someone’s home, but she sort of is. She can’t help it. “You do anything fun around here?”
“Not really, no.”
Classic. Asuka scoffs out a laugh, but it lacks the heat that it used to have. “And you’re not a doll?”
“Are you?” Ayanami stares. Asuka hates how she’s always staring, always speaking in that dull voice. Always empty. Such a doll. Her mother would have loved her.
“No,” Asuka spat. “That’s why I left.”
Ayanami hums and nods along, slowly, as if digesting. They stayed quiet like that for a long while, averting each other’s gaze; Asuka looking away, Rei tilting her head to stare at the spilled-out foam on the edge of her seat.
“I killed Ikari.”
The abrupt confession drops like a dead weight in the air. For a long moment Asuka chokes on her breath and tries to grasp at whatever sanity she has left, along with the holler of sirens and the faraway gunshots and the now-red skies, and the Angels as they descend one final time—and then, just abruptly as it came, she bursts out laughing. In hysterics, wheezing until she doubles over and tears up, her chest constricting with every punched-out breath, she keeps on laughing. She doesn’t even care.
Between the commotion of the end of the world, softly, Rei starts laughing too.
Some time later, the siren is still wailing, and the rain still pours down and hits its needles against the roof. On the very edge of the carriage is what remains of the head of the train; a steering wheel, a telephone, and a stick throttle frozen in place by rust. Asuka grabs on it and rotates it back and forth like a little kid playing pretend. Maybe in some other life she would have boarded the train and gotten far, far away from here. Maybe in some other life she’d drive one through the rolling green hills, in a uniform not sillier than the skin-tight suit they made her wear as a pilot. She’d travel to quaint small towns and visit their shrines, eat the colourful treats on the side of the road until her teeth hurt. Maybe Ayanami will be there, too. Maybe she’d call her Rei then. Maybe.
“Is it starting?” Rei asks, tilting her head to try to look at the sky. They couldn’t see much of the outside world from here, through the dirt and the treetops. No Angels, nothing at all. Maybe it was for the better.
Asuka closes her eyes and listens to the siren wailing on, and on, and on. “Sounds like it’s starting.”
They looked at each other and stood by their tiptoes against the table, craning their necks to stare up curiously, like little kids.
When the world stopped ending, Rei led her down the mouth of a tunnel, mud and dirt and all, splashing their waterlogged shoes through to the light on the other side. Asuka would climb out first, because Rei would need someone to haul her up and she’s the strongest of them both, of course she is. She likes that. When she sees the faint thankful smile on the corner of her mouth as she helps her stand with both of their hands gripping each other, Asuka feels like she’d been birthed all over again.
Were they reborn? Everything looks so… normal. Like the world is supposed to be in the history books about the Before. All lush greens, and birds singing on the treetops. The water running clear, cold to the touch. The sky the colour of Ayanami’s hair. Rei’s hair, fluttering in the light breeze. Were they?
“Were we reborn?”
Rei answers, as softly as she’s always spoken, “I don’t think that happened.”
Asuka couldn’t stop staring at the green above. The light is blinding, and the sky is vibrant and grand and real, this is the real thing. She’s craning her neck to keep looking up until it hurt, hurts so very good, spinning around with her arms stretched out until the colours blend together. She’s acting like a little kid, feels giddy like a little kid, feels like something she never had been. Looks at Rei the way she has never looked at her, feels the things for her she has never felt.
“We weren’t?”
“We weren’t,” she says. “I still feel the same.” and then, Rei turns around to face her, and smiles.
Asuka smiles back until the ends of her mouth stretches apart. She jumps and spins around and yells into the sky, yells until her throat hurts, hurts the way it’s supposed to. Hurts so sweet, hurts so very good. Everything.