Third Impact. The end of everything and the beginning of the new genesis. It was safe to say, it wasn't quite what Asuka would have expected. For a start, it would have been a lot more believable if things hadn't returned to how they had been before the arrival of the angels quite so quickly. Not her life, obviously, that had been fundamentally and irrevocably changed during the cataclysmic events linked to the coming of the angels and to the process of instrumentality itself. Dark memories from dark times. When she closed her eyes, she could still see the giant limbs and the blank face and eyes of the being that had been Rei (one of so many different Rei's it seemed) but had been reduced to monolithic human parts bathed in a red sea straight out of the book of revelations.
Not the other's lives either: Gendo, Ritsuko and Kaji were still dead. Misato, while miraculously alive (something for which Asuka believed Shinji was responsible), had yet to come to terms with the death of her love, let alone her own resurrection. Shinji himself was a wreck even now, his mind still recovering from experiences no human should have to go through and Asuka thought that he would never be quite the same again.
No, what was surprising was how the red seas had receded, how the gargantuan remains had faded away, how quickly greenery had returned and the cities had been rebuilt. The world returned and so did the countless masses of ordinary people, each wanting to return to their day to day lives.
Again, Asuka was vaguely aware that Shinji was responsible for this somehow, but she was unable to work out why that should be. It didn't help that her former comrade in arms (if never quite her companion in life) had taken it upon himself to go into a period of extended exile and had seemingly disappeared off the face of the earth, telling her no more than 'he would be safe' before he did so. Asuka found she didn't mind him taking a sabbatical; there had been a time when she had wanted to be with the troubled young man, even if she hadn't been quite able to admit it to herself at the time, but those feelings had been lost amidst the horrors she had encountered before and after her death (and for some reason, still remembered). Perhaps one day they could be reignited, though this time hopefully in a less destructive form and when Shinji was better equipped to receive them, but until that time might come around, what she really felt now was numb.
The
terrible truth about her life post apocalypse was that she was lost.
Not in the way she had been, when she had been torn apart beneath her
tough veneer by the pain of her past and of her mother's suicide, this
was an entirely new form of lost. She was alone, not as she had been
before, surrounded by people who didn't understand her, by people she
abused and blocked out, but now alone in the true meaning of the word.
The hell of it, as it seemed to her, was that the rest of the world seemed to be healing just fine. Sitting in a café filled with smiling, grateful people, she reflected on how these humans were so different from the ones that had inhabited the lands before. Times were still hard, but the collective knowledge of what they had all been through seemed to have changed humanity into a more caring and collective kind of people, less ready to lash out and more ready to tolerate hardship in order to help others as well as themselves. The old flaws and negative personality traits still existed, of course, mankind hadn't been transformed into smiling robots. More, they were caught amid the still swelling feelings of relief that they had been tested and had come through. That mankind had been close to the brink of self wrought annihilation, and yet, contrary to all expectations, had turned away and been saved.
Not that this held much comfort for Asuka. Every part of her life had been stripped away by those events. Her friends and colleagues had all but disappeared, her feelings of love – for Shinji, for Kaji – had vanished. Even the conflict within her, surrounding her mother, had been quelled; her mother had been damaged, she knew that now, partly by Asuka's father leaving her and partly by her own hand. Asuka may have been caught in the turbulent wake of that event, but she had finally realised that her mother had indeed loved her, in her own way. So, what she was left with was emptiness and solitude.
Still, life had to go on. And go on it did, quite impressively so. The new city which had sprung up near to the ruins of Tokyo 3 (and which had fittingly been named Kaibyaku) already had several tall buildings and plenty of small businesses. In fact, Kaibyaku was already comparatively bustling, considering its construction so far had only taken a year and a half. Asuka had taken to going to cafés as a means of escaping her small and silent apartment, and it was in one of these cafés that she now sat, reflecting absently on her life. After Third Impact, she had found that she couldn't face making new acquaintances, a big change from the formally brash and outgoing girl she had once been. This was just another thing that disturbed her about her new life. In one of the cafés she had been going to, the owner had become familiar with her and on a couple of occasions had attempted conversation. She stopped going there and, after that, attempted to avoid frequenting any cafés or bars or even shops and public places, preferring to move around the city and keep herself to herself. The cafe she was sitting in right now was quite a way from the tenements that had been assigned to her by the new 'people's council' that served as government for this city during the period of change everyone was going through, but that was fine, because there was no one here who might recognise her.
No, that was a lie. Everyone recognised her, at least on some level. They all had varying degrees of recollection of the events Asuka had a hand in shaping and so she was often the recipient of double takes and mistaken greetings. They knew her, because Shinji knew her. Asuka didn't know how that was possible, but she felt strongly that it was the case. What was different here was that nobody had any real relation to her, so she was rarely bothered by them. And that was fine.
Technically she wasn't entirely alone, of course. Maya (whom she had previously known solely as Lieutenant Ibuki) was also somewhere in the city and had even offered company should Asuka require it. However, Maya didn't seem to have taken her own resurrection quite so calmly as Asuka had; she couldn't understand or accept her own life, when others – in particular Doctor Ritsuko – were not similarly blessed. The former administrator and technician had taken to drinking a little more heavily than was healthy and, although she was making more progress at rebuilding her life than Asuka had so far managed, her 'company' complete with drunken rants and fits of weeping, was often more painful than comforting.
And so she had begun avoiding meeting with Maya. Hikari moved away, as did Touji (though she had never really been friends with him, or Kensuke who hadn't returned at all). And of course Shinji had disappeared, and shortly after, Misato had followed him. Most likely in the literal sense of the word. Asuka got the impression that feelings for the cowardly and yet courageous boy had stirred within Misato shortly before the events of Third Impact, and what with Kaji's status remaining firmly in the deceased column post apocalypse, she had decided that these feelings weren't necessarily things to be discouraged.
Asuka sipped the sweet black coffee that had gone cold a while ago without her noticing and stared, unseeing, at the wooden table top before her. Again, there had been a time when knowing these things would have ignited passionate responses towards the Major, but those times seemed long gone. Now she was alone. Now she was empty, surrounded by happy, relieved people and feeling none of it. What she needed, she decided without even really thinking about it, was some kind of shock. Something to shake her up and make her feel like she was a part of this world again and not just some ghostly interloper upon a place that reminded her of home.
The
thought was there and gone so quickly she never even remembered having
it afterwards. This, of course, was in part because almost immediately
after having this thought, she actually did receive a shock that very
nearly had the desired effect, in itself.
Asuka heard the door to the café open and was aware of a sudden dip in the chatter that flew about the room. Looking up to discover the reason for the hush, she was faced with a sight that she at once knew was utterly impossible. But then, the impossible very often became possible around those that had once worked for Nerv, as was being proved here once again.
Standing in the doorway, still and quiet and staring directly at her, was a vision straight out of her nightmares; the figure of Rei Ayanami, the first child, the aloof and emotionless girl that had so frustrated and enraged the fiery redhead during their time at Nerv. She was alive. She was standing before her, looking as blank as ever and yet, piercing Asuka with her vermillion gaze.
Asuka's
eyes widened in horror. Her throat closed up, the lights around her
suddenly became too bright and the world seemed to white out, the sounds
of the hushed café drowned by electric silence ringing in her ears.
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