Chapter 1

On the shore a boy awoke, and stared up at the night sky.

A bloodied smear cut through the air and intersected the moon, almost as if someone had swiped a red paintbrush across a piece of art on a wall. He lay there on the beach, unmoving, unblinking. The rise and fall of his chest would be barely noticeable to anyone watching him, but there was nobody left to observe.

The guardian that had become his surrogate mother for almost a year had been shot while rescuing him, dying as he cried alone in an elevator.

The red-headed girl he might possibly have been in love with had been savagely murdered, the remains presented to him as a gruesome trophy.

Even when travelling through a strange world inside his own mind, the boy could not find a single person that wanted him. The boy was then given a choice.

He felt it would be better if everyone on Earth, including himself, simply perished.

Shinji Ikari ended the world. In a moment of weakness brought on by a decade of pain, he made the decision. Nobody on Earth cared about about a useless person like him, so why should he care about them?

The horrendous event that was Third Impact commenced. Man, woman, and child, none were spared. The borders between each person, the barrier known in science as an 'AT-Field', eroded and broke down. With nothing holding them together and separate from one another, humanity as a whole became merged into one single, 'perfect' being.

Three billion lives became an immense orange sea of LCL, the primordial soup of life.

Within this strange ocean, Shinji came face to face with the power behind Third Impact. A blue-haired, red-eyed girl that had once been his fellow pilot, Rei Ayanami. She was now Lilith, the Second Angel and mother of humanity. Shinji decided that humanity should not live like this, and so Lilith offered him a choice again. In a rare moment of strength, Shinji Ikari decided that even if the world would offer him nothing but pain, it did not deserve to live like this.

The boy eventually found himself lying on a shore, staring upwards at the sky. The full weight of his terrible decision came crashing down, and it petrified him. He had just committed the largest genocide the world had ever known. Three billion human lives snuffed out like a candle, and it was all his fault. Shinji Ikari opened his mouth and screamed to the heavens. Uncaring, the heavens ignored him.

Time passed. Shinji's throat was still raw as he awoke. It was now night time and the chill breeze cut through his thin clothing. Hugging himself to try and stay warm, he sat up and look around. A shocking sight met his gaze, and he recoiled in fear as he realised what it was. A massive face... no... half a face lay on the ground some distance away, looking almost exactly like the First Child, Rei Ayanami. Shinji tore his eyes away from the gruesome scene as his stomach heaved, only to meet another terrifying vision.

The petrified remains of the Mass Production Evangelions poked out of the red water all around him, each one with their arms outstretched and missing a head. His own head drooped and he relaxed slightly, realising that they were deactivated... dead.

The moonlight reflected off of something shiny hanging from his neck, and a shaky hand brought the item up to his eyes. A beautiful but bloodstained silver cross that had belonged to his guardian, Misato Katsuragi, before she had thrust it into his hands and shoved him into an elevator. With her last breath, his purple-haired guardian had saved his life as she sat on the floor, bleeding from a gunshot wound in her gut but still forcing him onward to his Evangelion.

Tears spattered on the ground in front of him, and his body was wracked by sobs as Shinji found himself reliving that moment in the elevator, staring at Misato's blood on his hands as he learned what his inaction had resulted in. He had been unwilling to do anything except sit in a corner and wait for death, but Misato had dragged his worthless carcass across half of NERV in order to get him into Unit-01 and out to the Geofront to protect everyone. It was his fault that she had died, purely because he had been selfish and hiding in a corner, waiting to perish.

'If only I had actually done something, Misato wouldn't have been shot!' he thought, punching the ground with the fist holding her cross. 'She was forced to almost carry me the entire way, and died because of it!'

As he had ascended in the elevator he made the decision to pilot Unit-01 to help his fellow pilot, the Second Child known as Asuka Langley-Soryu. She was already up in the Geofront, fighting alone against the nine white beasts that were the Mass Production Evangelions. The sight that greeted his eyes as the elevator doors opened, however, put a stop to that thought.

As Asuka berated him over the comm for his absence, he could do nothing but stare at Unit-01. Bakelite, that odd red substance that was like quick-dry cement, completely covered the purple machine. There was nothing he could have done from outside Unit-01 to break it, and as he sank to the floor and hugged his knees to his chest, all he could do was listen as the enemy Evangelions reactivated after their false defeat and tore Unit-02 apart.

As Maya Ibuki had cried over the comm that Asuka was dead, the cage had violently shaken around him. Unit-01 broke out of the Bakelite as if it wasn't even there. Why could it have not done that before? Why did it wait until it was too late to help before reaching out with a massive purple fist to its pilot?

He knew the answer. The soul inside Unit-01, his own mother, obviously did not care about him either. She wanted his heart shattered and his mind destroyed, in order to fulfil her plan of godhood

A massive blast destroyed the NERV pyramid in the Geofront, and Shinji ascended from the remains of NERV Headquarters inside Unit-01, not even remembering entering the plug. The last piece of reality he saw was the remains of Unit-02, held aloft by the white harpies circling the Geofront. The last thing he heard was his own insane scream as his tortured mind finally fractured.

Wiping his eyes on his shirt sleeves, Shinji's weeping eventually stopped, and he leaned back against a piece of debris as the memories finally faded for the time being. A persistent rumbling noise from his stomach drew his attention, and Shinji idly wondered how long it had been since he had last eaten. There was no way to determine how long he had been lying on this shore awake, screaming, then unconscious. The moon had shifted, lower in the sky and no longer perfectly aligned with the red streak of blood that had spurted from the neck of the giant body of Lilith.

Eventually deciding that it must have been at least a whole day, Shinji got to his feet, hung the cross back around his neck, and walked away from the shore in the direction of the ruined city of Tokyo-3.

Many buildings were destroyed, and those that were left standing did not look like they would remain that way for very long. As Shinji ambled down the street, he looked around in wonder. 'What happened here? It looks like this entire city was bombed.' Searching the festering pit that was his memory, he managed to sidestep most of the horrible past that attempted to assault him and came up with the answer. The JSSDF had dropped a massive N2 mine on the city in order to open up the Geofront for the Mass Production Evangelions, as Asuka in Unit-02 had been decimating their ground forces. Tanks, infantry and VTOLs were no match for an Evangelion and a pissed off German redhead.

Shinji felt a glimmer of pride flicker as he recalled hearing Asuka crow over the destruction she wrought on the JSSDF. Standing in the middle of a broken road, Shinji closed his eyes and surrendered himself to the memory of Asuka's exultant voice as tanks were flattened and aircraft were swatted out of the sky, before his cobalt eyes shot open and he grabbed his head in pain as the memory of what happened next attempted to make itself known.

Shaking his head and banishing those thoughts as best as he could, Shinji continued unsteadily through the city, searching for... what? Food? Water? A place to rest? No, the boy who ended life on Earth surely didn't deserve anything. But Shinji's stomach, disgruntled at the idea that it would not be filled, rumbled loudly. He tried to ignore it, but eventually he clutched his stomach and fell to his knees as the pangs of starvation started to hit him. The thought of the destroyer of humanity, brought to heel by their own stomach, would have brought a chuckle to his lips, if it hadn't been so damn morbid.

Five minutes later, the sound of tinkling echoed down the street as Shinji dragged a piece of concrete debris around the edges of a window, removing the jagged fragments so he could safely enter the store. Stepping gingerly through, a pungent odour of rotting food wafted into his nostrils, and he almost gagged at the stench. Pulling his shirt over his nose to try and block out the smell, Shinji carefully walked towards the back of the dimly lit convenience store to where the fridges for cold snacks and drinks sat. He opened the door and felt a faint cool breeze.

'Can't have been gone too long then, if these fridges are still cold,' Shinji mused, grabbing a bottle of water. He drank the entire bottle in seconds, not realising how thirsty he truly was. Another bottle was emptied before Shinji felt sated, and he picked up four more bottles. Placing these into a shopping bag he found behind the store counter, he half-heartedly acquiesced to his grumbling belly and picked up several bags of snacks as well as some tins of fruit. He absently wondered what to get for Asuka, before freezing as his hand automatically reached for what he knew to be her favourite chip flavour, when he was struck by the realisation.

The bag fell to the ground as fresh tears flowed down his face, and for several seconds the young boy's shook as he tried to remain upright. Losing the battle, he collapsed roughly to the floor next to the bag, sobbing Asuka's name in between apologies.

It took an hour for the tortured teenager to get back to his feet. As he listlessly picked up the bag and made to exit the store, Shinji caught his reflection in a metal shelf by the exit. Grief-stricken blue eyes tinged with red stared back at him under dishevelled, dusty brown hair. His white button-down shirt and black pants were also streaked with dirt, and as he exited the store, he idly attempted to brush some of it off before giving up as he bumped into a street sign. Looking up at the words imprinted on it, a thoughtful look crossed Shinji's face as he figured out where he was.

The convenience store he had just looted was the same one where he had found Asuka after the redhead stormed out of their synch training. Knowing where he was now, he turned and slowly headed for Misato's apartment, lost in memories once again as that simultaneously horrible and wonderful week replayed itself in his head.

The sun had just begun peeking over the horizon when the apartment complex came into Shinji's view. Several damaged cars sat in the parking lot, one half-crushed under a large piece of masonry, but the building itself was miraculously still standing. Looking behind him, Shinji noticed that a large building standing between the apartment and where he believed the bomb had dropped was just barely upright. The building before that, however, was mostly rubble.

As he turned and walked towards the apartment's lobby entrance, a sigh of relief escaped his mouth as Shinji silently gave thanks that he wouldn't have to find somewhere else to sleep. It wouldn't feel right sleeping in someone else's house. He barely felt like he deserved to sleep in Misato's house after everything that had happened, but he was too tired to find an alternative. Climbing the stairs alone almost made him collapse from fatigue.

Reaching their apartment, Shinji stopped and stared at the door blocking his entrance. With no power in the city, the electronically operated door would not open by itself. It took several minutes of effort to force the door to slide even partially open, and he immediately collapsed in the door frame, his body almost completely drained. Shinji was barely able to even stand up, and he crawled on his hands and knees through the apartment to his bedroom before passing out from exhaustion in front of the bed.

Fifteen hours later Shinji got up...and immediately fell back down as his head impacted the bottom of the bed. He winced and rubbed the sore spot as he more carefully got up, still tired from the events of the last couple days, and now his body was aching from the hard floor. It felt like he hadn't slept at all, but at least he could now stand. Walking back to the front door where the bag of food and water still laid, he paused for a moment as he passed the doorway to Asuka's room and saw the state the German pilot had left it in. His legs started moving before he realised, and suddenly Shinji was in Asuka's room.

Torn magazines littered the ground amidst stuffing from a shredded pillow. A hair brush was almost completely embedded in the wall, and broken mirror shards crunched underfoot as Shinji slowly walked towards Asuka's bed. He was unsure what had caused Asuka to do this to her own bedroom, but whatever it was must have been monumental. Even after all this time, he could still feel Asuka's pain and grief emanating from the walls.

A still-intact magazine was picked up in shaky hands, and placed on the dresser. Moving as if on autopilot, Shinji spent the next two hours tidying the room up, eyes distant as he once again relived the past. Garbage bags were retrieved from under the kitchen sink, and anything broken was tossed in them. The bed was made with fresh bedclothes and a new pillow retrieved from the linen cupboard, and a window was opened to allow fresh air into the stale room. It was only when his stomach started growling again that Shinji finally stopped.

The room now looked immaculate once more, except for the hole in the wall, but Shinji knew there was nothing he could do about that. Heading for the front door, he retrieved the food and water, depositing them on the kitchen table. A chocolate bar vanished down his throat in seconds, and a bag of chips and a bottle of water followed shortly after. He briefly considered storing the rest in the fridge, but as there was no power, it had probably lost its cooling ability for a while now.

A small smile made its way onto his face as Shinji imagined the reaction of his guardian taking one of her massive gulps of a now-warm beer before spraying it all over the kitchen in disgust. She would not be doing her usual breakfast cheer then. Perhaps the entire floor would be rudely awoken by her screaming. The smile soured and the happy thought dissolved when he remembered that there was nobody for her to awaken. There was not even a Major to spit the beer out. There was only him. Shinji Ikari. The boy who ended the world and stuck around.

Shinji's head gently banged against his arm on the kitchen table as he remembered that because of his second choice, Rei -or was it still Lilith?- had told him that humanity would return. But there was no Misato. No Toji or Kensuke, no Pen-Pen, no... no Asuka either. No longer would Asuka call him an idiot, or tell him to stop apologising, or even just glare at him with those beautiful sapphires eyes.

For the third time in as many days, Shinji cried.

'Asuka's not here... Rei... Lilith... did she lie to me? Nobody's going to want to come back while I'm here. Who would want to be on the same planet as me? I'm the one that sent them all to hell. It's because of me that they're all in that ocean. Maybe it was dumb of me to return, but I don't deserve to be with them. Maybe it's better in there. Huh, this must be my penance. To live alone in the ruins of humanity while they all have perfect lives. Misato and Asuka must be having a ball, without me around to ruin everything for them.'

Shinji eventually got up from the table, and cleaned the rest of the apartment. The menial task helped to keep his mind occupied with simple thoughts. While the blast had not severely damaged the building, there were still broken dishes and knocked over furniture to clear up. The balcony windows were slightly cracked, but they held together as Shinji opened the sliding door and stepped out to tidy up.

The moon with its red streak hung almost directly above, and Shinji realised that it was nearly midnight already. Placing the garbage bags outside the front door, he retired to his bedroom and the comfort of an actual bed, instead of the hard ground like the last two nights. Shinji closed his eyes, and waited for sleep to take him.

Three hours later, Shinji found himself hunched over in the bathroom, purging the meagre contents of his stomach into the toilet bowl. He had awoken just seconds before, sweat pouring off of him and soaking his white shirt so much it was almost transparent, rushing to the toilet and only just making it. The nightmarish screams still echoed in his mind, and his stomach heaved again. After around fifteen minutes, Shinji's guts stopped trying to force their way out of him as he stood up and absently hit the flush button on the toilet.

He was mildly surprised when the toilet actually flushed. There was no power in the city, yet the plumbing still worked. How long would that last though? At least that meant he could wash his mouth out with the tap instead of bottled water. Spitting the foul water out, Shinji raised his head to the mirror and was only somewhat shocked by his reflection. His hair looked even worse, his eyes were bloodshot, and his shirt had a small spattering of vomit near the collar. This was tossed into the laundry basket and a clean white shirt was fetched from his small closet. He didn't bother buttoning it up as he collapsed onto the bed, too tired to care about how he looked. After all, who was there to see him?

He was back in the bathroom two hours later, the image of a mutilated red cyborg fresh in his mind.

Blood dripped onto the hard linoleum floor. Blank blue eyes stared at the red stain on the ground for a moment before Shinji remembered what he was supposed to do. The small blade in his right hand came up over his left, before rapidly descending. It stabbed hard, breaking through the plastic and allowing Shinji to finally rip it open and retrieve the bandages from within. Slowly and carefully, he poured half a water bottle over his thigh, before drying it and wrapping the white gauze around where he had cut himself climbing through the pharmacy window.

After two more sleepless nights, constantly plagued by screams and visions of Asuka's Evangelion whenever he nodded off, Shinji had decided to see if there was something he could take to stop the nightmares. The only easy source of alcohol was Misato's beer, which was warm and disgusting. The rest of the can was immediately tipped out in the sink

He had once overheard in class that a fellow student had stopped his bad dreams by pinching a couple of his father's sleeping pills, so he looked for those behind the counter. He could not even begin to pronounce some of the drug names, so he simply looked for labels that mentioned sleeping and drowsiness. A bottle of pills was eventually found and shoved into a bag, and as an afterthought, some more bandages and other medical supplies went in after them.

Stopping at home to drop off the bag in his room, Shinji left the apartment again to procure more food. The gas stove still functioned, for now, but even his culinary skills couldn't do anything for the instant meals Misato seemed to live off of. After two attempts to make them taste anything but awful, he had given up. The rest of the meals had gone straight into the garbage bags and out the door, and now Shinji was once again looting the convenience store. Several bags of rice were placed in a basket along with more water and assorted tins of preserved food. And then he spotted something impressive in the candy aisle.

"Whoa."

An incredibly large block of chocolate, bigger than his own head, was sitting on the shelf amidst chocolate gift boxes. It was picked up and reverentially laid atop the food in the basket. Armed with as much foodstuff as he could carry, Shinji strolled home.

He unpacked everything in the kitchen, but the chocolate was carefully placed aside. Shinji noticed that he was starting to run out of space, and so a terrible, fateful decision was made. Garbage bags were pulled out again, the fridge was opened, and every single can of beer was emptied into the sink and thrown in a bag while a gloomy look crossed his face. Misato was no longer around to drink the beer, even if she could power through the awful taste of warm booze, and Shinji had no use for it. Two more bags joined those by the door, and Shinji made a note to take them all down to the dumpster the next day before they started to smell.

The weather had been strangely cool lately, so Shinji saw no eventual problem with his actions as he almost reverentially knelt down besides Asuka's bed and placed the large chocolate bar under the pillow. Any sunlight that made it in would be blocked by the pillows anyway. Standing up and closing his eyes, against the tears that threatened to come forth, Shinji made a promise to himself: he would not eat this chocolate, even on pain of death by starvation. The chocolate, under the pillow in this room, would serve as a constant reminder of what inaction had cost him. If he had only 'been a man' and reached out to her sooner, perhaps none of this would have happened.

Perhaps she wouldn't have rejected him, when he found himself somewhere in that strange orange world, yet still in this apartment, arguing with her in the kitchen. Shinji was starting to lose his identity, barely able to tell himself apart from anyone else. He had begged Asuka to help him, to not leave him. Asuka replied with only one word. The word he had been praying not to hear: 'No'.

That was when his heart, already in pieces, disintegrated as his hands closed around the redhead's throat and strangled her. She had offered no resistance, simply staring coldly at him as her life faded. It was shortly after that moment, as Asuka's eyes rolled up into her head, that Shinji made his first decision. If the world didn't care about him and offered nothing but pain, then everybody could simply die.

Shinji's head jerked up as the screams started once again, suddenly silenced as the immaculate room came back into focus. He had nodded off while remembering. Stumbling into the kitchen, he grabbed one of the sleeping pill bottles and opened it, tipping a couple of tablets into his hand. The boy stared at the pills for a long time, trying to decide if they would even work. Finally deciding that in his current state he didn't have much else to lose, he brought his hand to his mouth, tilted his head back and swallowed the pills dry.

"I wonder... will anyone ever return?" Shinji mused out loud, staring up at the somewhat familiar ceiling in his bedroom as he waited for the pills to take effect. "Maybe Lilith didn't really lie... and people just aren't ready to return yet. But why aren't they ready? Is it because I'm here, that they won't return? My decision to come back, it must have been a mistake. But... there's nothing I can do about it now... is there?" The ceiling had no answers for him, so he rolled onto his side, facing the windowless wall, and eventually drifted off to sleep.

Shinji awoke feeling, if not refreshed, then at least a bit better. For the last few nights he had taken the pills before going to bed. They seemed to be working, as far as he could tell. He had an inkling that the nightmares had not disappeared, but he merely didn't remember them, which was good enough for him.

The pharmacy had been looted again, a backpack stuffed full of pills and hidden under Shinji's bed, away from any prying eyes that may eventually turn up. Now he just had to take the pills every night until he died. Even with the dozen bottles he had taken from the pharmacy, eventually he would run out. Perhaps humanity would have returned by then. How could he then justify needing sleeping pills to anyone who got suspicious? Shinji had a feeling that saying "I destroyed humanity and now I suffer for it every night" would not get him medication, but rather a one-way trip to either prison or a mental hospital. Or an execution. None of them sounded like a good idea, especially being locked up and mentally tortured.

Now if only there were something he could do about the involuntary daydreams.

Since there was no electricity Shinji had relied on his old SDAT and a stockpile of batteries, as well as some rather thick novels pinched from a local library, to while away the hours. No power meant no television, and there were no stations broadcasting to watch anyway. However, Shinji quickly grew bored with the reading material, which meant his mind would start drifting like a leaf on the wind. And whenever it landed, the boy would usually find himself weeping into the couch, and occasionally running to the bathroom to vomit.

Eventually, the cross still hanging around his neck gave him an idea. Perhaps what he needed to soothe his mind was a memorial to those whose lives he had stolen. It would be paltry, as he couldn't exactly build a statue, but surely it was the thought that counted, right?

"Where could I build it though?" Shinji asked himself. "Should I do it on the roof of this building? The middle of a park? No, it needs to be somewhere the whole world could see it, somewhere like..." His eyes widened as the plan formed. "The sea of LCL. All of humanity is in there. If they ever came back, perhaps the first thing they'd see would be the memorial." A wistful smile grew on his face at the thought.

Now that he had the plan formed, he set out. The apartment was closed up to prevent the weather and any possible vermin from getting in. It had rained all last night, and the watery scent filled his lungs as Shinji stepped out onto the pavement.

The best way to get back to the beach was to retrace his steps, so his first stop was the convenience store, where more food was picked up for the relatively long trip. He did not notice, or did not care, that most of the food he picked was things that Asuka enjoyed. It all went into another backpack he had liberated from a department store the day before. Shinji wasn't sure if he'd be able to get back to the apartment by nightfall, and decided not to take any chances. He hoped that it wouldn't rain again while he was setting up the memorial.

The beach was eerily quiet. Setting the backpack down out of the way, Shinji set about gathering wood for his memorial. The only thing he could think of that was in his meagre ability to create was a set of crosses for each of the important people in his life. Those who, while probably not really caring about him, still at least made the effort to acknowledge his presence.

Misato and Kaji, Toji and Kensuke, Hikari, Rei, Kaworu... Asuka...

Tears left tracks on his face, but Shinji continued on. A long piece of wood was stabbed deep into the soft sand, and a horizontal piece was attached with some old nails and a good-sized chunk of concrete used as a hammer.

Several hours passed. Eight crosses were made, all standing next to each other. A larger nail was turned into a crude chisel, and eight names were scratched into the wood. Shinji slowly removed the shining silver cross from around his neck and hung it on the nail in Misato's memorial, completing the picture he had formed in his mind. He sat back on his haunches and wiped his eyes clear, solidifying the image in his mind.

'I'll have to come back in a few days, just to make sure they're still standing. Perhaps I should come here once a week, like some sort of pilgrimage.'

Looking up, he saw that the moon was peeking over the ruined buildings, and yawned as he felt the fatigue of a long day spent walking and working. Shinji picked up the backpack and sat down in front of the memorial, staring out across the ocean. Something seemed odd with the picture however, and it took him a moment to notice that the Mass Production Evangelions were... sinking? The last time he had seen them, over a week ago, he could have sworn they were standing perfectly upright. Now they were listing to one side, and the... liquid was up to their thighs.

"Huh, maybe the sea is attempting to claim them, drag them down to a watery grave," Shinji muttered to himself. A chocolate bar and a bottle of water were consumed as a very late, and very meagre, dinner. His hand rummaged through his backpack, and then froze. Shinji's eyes widened as he frantically turned the bag upside down, tipped everything out and began searching through the pile of food. He covered his face with his hands, as if trying to block out the sight. Rubbing his eyes, he searched again.

The pills he had relied on for so long were still absent.

The backpack was hurled into the ocean as Shinji realised that in his haste to come to the beach and set up the memorial, he had neglected to pack the most important thing he needed: his respite from the demons that haunted his sleep.

The nightmares returned with a vengeance as soon as Shinji's eyes shut, no longer able to keep them open. The harpies circled the Geofront once again, their horrific faces leering at the boy. Asuka's shattered and dismembered Evangelion stared accusingly at him as its pilot lay dead inside its massive cooling corpse. All overlaid by the screams of the dying, and accompanied by Asuka's words in his own head as she refused to help him, to stop him fading away. While his mind was being tortured once more, Shinji's body twisted and writhed on the beach, as if trying to escape from something that wasn't there.

On the shore a boy awoke, and stared up at the night sky.

The gentle lapping of waves filled his ears as the demons retreated into the back of his mind once more. The sound of something plopping into water eventually caught his attention. Slowly craning his head to the left, Shinji saw Rei Ayanami, or possibly Lilith, hovering above the water. Hollow blue eyes locked onto red, and the two simply stared at each other. Shinji could swear that he did not even blink, but just as suddenly as she appeared, Rei/Lilith vanished.

He slowly sat up, scanning the space where the blue-haired girl had disappeared, but she remained absent. A flash of red caught his eye, and Shinji looked down to see a red-haired girl in a matching red plugsuit. Her right arm was bandaged all the way up to the shoulder, and her left eye was also covered. The right eye, however, stared blankly up at the sky, unblinking.

'Asuka...? Could it be... no... this is a trick. Asuka's dead! My own mind is playing tricks on me! The real Asuka wouldn't just lay there, she'd be up and bossing me around. This... thing is a fake, a... a doll placed here to torment me!'

Suddenly, Shinji found himself straddling Asuka, his trembling hands wrapped around her slim neck, slowly choking her. Asuka had the same look in her remaining eye Shinji had worn for the past week.

'She's just a doll... she's just a doll... she's just a doll... she's just-'

The feeling of a warm hand on his cheek broke Shinji out of his litany. Asuka's bandaged arm had lifted off the sand, and her hand was slowly caressing his face.

'What... this isn't... she's real?! Asuka... could it really be her? My mind isn't tormenting me again?'

Shinji's hands slowly unclenched around Asuka's neck, allowing her to breathe once more. Tears fell from his eyes and landed softly on the girl's face as the revelation set in. He slumped over on top of the girl, sobbing softly.

'It's her, it has to be! Asuka came back! Lilith didn't lie to me after all! And... oh god, I was... strangling her... again! I... I'll apologise. Yeah, I'll tell her I'm sorry, she'll call me an idiot... we'll both get up, go home and wait for the others to arrive. Everything will be back to nor-'

"Disgusting..." The quietly spoken words derailed Shinji's train of thought. That one word, and the tone in Asuka's voice, formed a ball of ice in Shinji's gut as his sobs halted and he stared in horror at the plugsuit filling his vision.

'She... she knows... Asuka knows what happened! What I did to her in the hospital! No... nonono... she can't forgive that. I practically raped her! She won't want to be around the freak who did that to her! I should have never returned!'

The fading sound of running feet was the last thing Asuka heard before she slipped into unconsciousness.