Chapter 60

The Second Child sat curled in a ball inside her entry-plug, her feet up on the console in front and her head behind her knees. She had thought that perhaps she should check on the bridge, ask for an update on the battle raging above, but she never did. There was no point—at any moment she expected the technicians to come back to get her, when it was all over. Rei or Shinji would be the hero, and she would be left to seethe alone.

Then the lights in the plug were switched on, swirling around her in a spinning kaleidoscope of color before resolving into a clear canopy, and she realized for the first time that Unit-02 had been activated.

Asuka raised her head and looked outside, where the cage walls gleamed with silvery steel. She didn't understand.

Why would they activated Unit-02? It could not be used to fight. Misato and the others knew that. They knew she was a failure. So why bother?

Her hand reached over towards the communication switch on her control yoke, but before she could open a channel she remembered that Unit-02 was still the third-string regardless of whether it was able to fight or not. Activation, therefore, could only mean that both Rei and Shinji had been defeated.

That thought made Asuka feel as if a cold vice had been wrapped around her heart. Shinji was probably dead by now. The anger she felt at her pitiful condition boiled over to self-loathing in a flash, like water meeting the fuel rods of a nuclear reactor. She wrinkled her face, clenched her teeth until they hurt, and curled even tighter.

Stupid, she chided herself, on the edge of tears. Stupid, stupid, stupid little girl.

And then the sky came crashing down.

It was as if the entire Geo-Front had collapsed on top of her. The ceiling of the main cage gave way with a thunder-like groan as the metal and concreted were crushed under some immense weight. Every inch of the enclosed space shook. Metal gantries snapped and fell. The walls seemed to bend outwards like rubber, the forces that were suddenly unleashed threatening to shatter the space's structural integrity. There was dust and debris everywhere, rising in solid billowing clouds so thickly that the lights all but vanished.

Asuka acted instinctively, clutching her head and shielding it behind her knees, and imagined she was going to die. But it wasn't death itself that scared her; it was the fact that she didn't want it to be like this. She had always wanted to die as a warrior, brave, with a weapon in her hand. Not like the helpless animal she had become.

The Angel, she thought, it's here. It made it all this way.

The noise and mayhem continued for a few seconds, but eventually everything settled in huge piles of debris on every side, and in the wake of the original uproar there followed a grave silence.

Carefully lifting her head, Asuka looked out of the canopy-like layout of her entry-plug, knowing that at any moment some nightmarish monster could jump at her and it would be over. As the cloud of heavy concrete dust, which now eclipsed most of the exterior lights, slowly settled, the Second Child could see shapes moving around in the cage, between Unit-02 and the opposing wall. She caught her first glimpse of the Angel's grotesquely deformed head, like a mass of rotting flesh with part of a blade emerging from the weeping ulcerous folds.

Then the thing reached down into another pile of debris, and pulled Unit-01 out of it.

Asuka gasped, clasping her gloved hands over her mouth, and stared in muted horror as the Angel smashed Unit-01 against the nearest wall. She noticed that the Angel was only fighting with one arm—the second one was simply torn to shreds. Unit-01 answered by shoving an elbow into the thing's head and raking it against the launch ramps located on the opposite side of the cage.

The two creatures fought each other with an uncanny ferocity right in front of her eyes, but after a few minutes the Angel managed to pin Unit-01 against the cage's far wall, making it bulge outwards with all that gargantuan weight.

As the Angel wrapped its hands around Unit-01's throat, Asuka became enraged at herself. Shinji was done for. He had come all this way, but he was beaten. Judging by the damage she saw on the Angel it must have been quite a fight.

"Asuka?" Misato voice came to her as a desperate plea over the radio. "Help Shinji."

Asuka did not reply. All she could do was watch.

"Help him, please!"

Asuka shook her head in a combination of anger and despair, as a feeling of utter helplessness began to sink in. "I…can't," she whimpered in a voice that she never knew she had. "I can't do it. I can't do anything."

"Help him!"

"I can't!" Asuka screamed and then, as if all her strength had been consumed by that action, she sank into her seat cushions. Tears of helpless rage began to flow. She sobbed, bringing up her knees and covering her face with her hand, quietly repeating that same thing to herself over and over. "I can't … I can't do anything…"

"Asuka, please, do something," Misato said, her voice beginning to break down. She was losing it. "Help him."

Asuka curled up as tightly as she could, wrapped her arms around her legs and let her head sink dejectedly between her knees. She wanted to disappear, to hide behind her controls and be swallowed by the Angel if that would finally bring an end to the self-loathing and shame she felt.

I can't do anything, she repeated, while the battle raged. I can't. I can't. I …

Then she heard a voice in the back of her mind.

And she wasn't in her entry-plug anymore.

The sky above her head was a rich crimson, cloudless, sunless and moonless. In fact, there was no visible light source whatsoever; the color was just there, vivid and unnatural. Below this crimson sky stretched a vast, featureless ocean of LCL, or something that resembled LCL. It seemed to be miles deep, but only reached up to Asuka's thighs. Even through the insulating inner layer of her plugsuit she could feel it was bitterly cold. She could not tell what she was actually standing on. Her feet must have been on a platform of some kind. No shore could be seen anywhere.

Then something moved.

Asuka looked behind her, making the LCL ripple silently. She saw there was a dead tree emerging from the endless sea, seven branches reaching into the sky like bony and twisted fingers. The tree, like her, appeared to rise out of nowhere.

Something, she couldn't tell what, drew her attention downwards, towards the LCL. The ripples crawled across her reflection. It wasn't right. Her image in the LCL was standing straight whereas she had her head down and shoulders slumped.

"Why have you forsaken your feelings to yourself?" a voice said, but not one she recognized.

No—it wasn't a voice. No words were spoken. They were in her head.

"Where am I?" Asuka asked herself, relieved that at least she could hear herself. For what it was worth, she took that as a sign that she hadn't gone entirely crazy. She noticed the lips on her reflection did not move. She also noticed an expression different than that on her own face.

"This is you," the voice said again, still in her head. "The place that exists between the conflicting realities of who you are. Somewhere caught between your heart and your mind."

At that moment the voice changed. It became disturbingly like her own, younger, shriller. A voice she hadn't heard in a long time.

"Mama! Mama, I've been chosen! I'm special!"

Asuka felt a chill, remembering the memory that those words were attached to—her mother and the doll hanging from the ceiling, the reek of the hospital room, the tears welling up in her eyes. A second before, she had been so happy, and then all happiness died within her.

Unlike before, when the Angel had showed this to her as it broke into her mind, Asuka wasn't forced to relive it. She remembered willingly. But why was she remembering?

"She has abandoned you," the first voice said. "But I am here."

Asuka frowned, her fists clenching. A sudden tightness came over her.

"Who the hell are you?" she whispered.

"She doesn't love you anymore. I do. I am alone, just like you. She doesn't love you. She never did."

"Don't hate me!" Asuka's younger voice said, and even she was surprised by how high-pitched it was. It was grating, too. She wondered if that was really how she sounded at that age.

"I don't hate you. I will not abandon you."

"Answer me!" the redhead demanded. "Who are you?"

"The end of your loneliness," the disembodied voice said. The tone was almost comforting. "The end of everything you hate."

Asuka felt something touch her leg, inside her plugsuit right above her knee. It was warmer than the LCL around it, and it moved upwards, gently stroking her skin like fingers.

"What happened to you, Asuka? Why do you hurt so much? How long can one heart endure such pain?"

She said nothing. The fingers continued to work their way up her legs until they reached the glassy surface and then stopped. Normally, she would not permit anyone to touch her like this, but there wasn't anyone actually touching her, was there?

"The memories?" the voice whispered, almost seeming to read her mind like a book, if not her heart. "Why do they hurt you?"

"I hate them!" Asuka yelled before she could stop herself.

"What about him?" The image of Shinji Ikari appeared in her mind. "Do you hate him, too?"

There was a long silence after that. Asuka stared into her reflection, as if asking it what she should say, hoping to see the answer appear on that face. The crystal blue eyes stared back at her, showing an inquisitive glimmer. And finally she said, "No."

"Why do you hurt him?" the voice did not sound accusing, or condescending, or any of the other things Asuka thought should follow the kind of statement she'd just made. In her own heart, to admit that she didn't hate Shinji was like admitting to some lewd love affair that was best kept hidden.

"I ..." Asuka hesitated, "I don't know. I want to hate him. Like I hate Wonder Girl. Like I hate myself. But I just …"

"Do you want to save him?"

Asuka shook her head, her voice breaking under the weight of all those repressed and unwanted emotions. "I can't."

"I can help him."

"How?" Asuka demanded. "You are just a stupid voice."

"I have power. Do you want my power to save him?"

"Yes," she said instantly.

"Very well. Let's do it together."

Her reflection moved below the surface, slowly bringing up its right hand and reaching it out towards Asuka. The fingertips did not breach the surface however; rather, they pressed against it as if it were made out of thin glass, like a barrier it could not get past.

Asuka understood what it wanted on such a primal level that not even whispered words in her head were necessary. She looked at her own hand, suddenly captivated by the slender, elegant fingers wrapped in black and red, the bumps of her knuckles. It seemed all she ever did with her hands was to make fists—weapons to hurt others, and hurt herself.

She reached out, towards the surface of the LCL. It rippled as she touched it. Her fingertips sank barely a centimeter, and then she felt something warm.

Asuka opened her eyes with a gasp, as if she were doing it for the first time in her whole life. Feeling a familiar tingling sensation, she leaned forward in her plug's command seat.

And Unit-02 pitched forward, restraining bolts groaning.

"It's working!" Asuka called out, smiling, neither understanding now caring to understand what had just happened.

A light had been shined in her soul; suddenly all the things that had made her miserable for so many months disappeared. All the problems in her life, the darkness that perpetually threatened to consume her, went away. They were replaced by a new feeling, one she had longed for and desired. Her smile widened.

"It's working!" the Second Child repeated, grabbing the controls with both hands, her fingers quick and strong. She brought up a dozen different screens and checked them all in a flash. Everything was green. "Unit-02 is running nominal and ready!"

"Asuka, help Shinji!" Misato yelled.

"Understood!"

The next time Asuka moved, Unit-02 ripped off the bindings that kept it locked to the launch ramp and lunged into action.