Prove It

Asuka was wounded, and had been for much of the day. She'd banged her shin into the side of her bed so hard it had actually raised a welt – an angry black and blue lump that pained to the touch. The occasional reminder of her injury had fouled her mood throughout the day that followed. It's amazing how many things hit your leg when you had a painful shock every time something touched your skin.

It made her feel stupid and clumsy to boot, which were two things she was most deceisively not proud to be considered. Shinji hadn't done much but muck things up further during the day. When he'd offered her a bento at lunch, Asuka had snapped at him. "Why don't you eat both of them," she spat, "then maybe you'll grow some muscle mass like an actual fucking man."

It had been meant to be a joke when she started, but it came out far harsher than she had intended. Shinji had sulked the rest of the school day, only speaking to her so she could let Misato know he'd be home a little later than usual. Asuka wasn't sure why Misato would particularly care about this bit of anecdotal information – she was a notoriously lax guardian.

It's not as if everyone didn't know where the idiot would be anyway. She watched Shinji walk towards Mai at the classroom exit, and her hand touched his arm as the door closed. Get a room, she thought darkly, and her leg twitched in pain once more even though nothing was touching it at all.

The walk home was quiet and strangely cold.

Upon arrival back at the flat, she fell onto her bed face-first, and with a massive sigh. Asuka smothered her face into the pillows and tried to decide what to do with her afternoon. There were books still in boxes from Germany – all the novels she told herself she should read at some point. You know. For culture. It was a shame that all the classics were so bloody dull. She stared through twenty some-odd pages of Dickens before she realized it was her father's birthday.

Asuka stood as she waited for him to pick up. Seven hours time difference there. Her father wasn't exactly an early riser anymore. The phone clicked.

"...what is it?" Dammit, she'd woken him.

"Sorry dad, I thought you'd be up," Asuka tried to sound chipper. "Happy fiftieth." There was a sound of exasperation from half a world away, and Asuka's face fell. Of course he was annoyed. What had she been expecting? 'Thank you for waking me up to remind me I'm entering the latter half of a century. That's my daughter.' Asuka cleared her throat awkwardly.

"I'm doing really well over here," she offered, trying to sound like an adult. "You should see my sync scores, dad. I'm beating Shinji by a mile."

"Who?"

"He's... another pilot. Shinji Ikari."

"Your friend?"

There was a beat before Asuka answered. "Yeah, he's one of my best friends."

"I see." There was a rustling as he turned over in his bed. Asuka heard the muffled voice of her stepmother asking who was on the other line. Her face felt hot.

A key fingered the lock to the front door of the apartment, and Asuka's stomach fell. The last person she wanted to talk to walked into the foyer. She put on her fakest smile and laughed airily.

"Well, dad, I'm sure you're busy. I just figured I'd call."

"Mmn. Thank you," he yawned. The phone clicked before she could finish saying goodbye.

Once, when she was very small, a bird had killed itself on their back window. Mama, her real mama, had said it would only be right if they gave it a proper burial, and they put it in the ground as a family. Asuka had asked if she could put the bird's body in the shoebox and the shoebox in the hole and they'd let her. That's what placing the phone back into the cradle felt like: burying a dead bird from a thousand years ago.

She felt Shinji staring at her from across the kitchen. He wanted to say something, but he hadn't found the words yet. Shinji did that: he gathered before speaking.

"That was really unfair, what you said earlier," he finally mumbled. "It was mean."

"I know."

Shinji waited for her to continue, but she didn't. He sighed, "Just... from now on, if you're not going to eat your lunch, please tell me in the morning before I–"

"Did you know there are places where they don't say 'I love you'?"

Shinji blinked, completely thrown off. Asuka's hand was still on the phone.

"W-what?"

"In languages, I mean. Entire countries. Vietnam doesn't. There aren't any personal pronouns in Vietnamese," she chuckled to herself. "Isn't that weird? I read that somewhere. It's stupid though, isn't it? How dumb do you have to be if you can't even say 'I love you'? That feels so basic, you know? Like you're broken if you can't..."

Shinji didn't know what to say.

There was a long time before she took her hand off the phone and turned around.

"Jeez, I'm sorry. I don't know where that came from," she smiled and he could tell she was pretending. She always did this when she was sad, and he hated it. Shinji's fist clenched at his side.

"I think it's stupid, too," tumbled out of his mouth before he could second guess it. "If you like someone, you should just say something." Asuka's eyebrows arched.

"Oh yeah?" she stepped towards him. "Easier said than done, don't you think?"

"W-well, yeah," he stammered. "It's not easy, but I feel like it's something you have to do. If you really care for someone, you know?" Asuka stopped when they were face to face. Shinji could smell her hair and feel her heat on his arms.

"Oh yeah?" Asuka smirked, already knowing no move would be made. "Well, why don't you just–"

And, very much to her surprise, he did. There was a soft push, and a hand in the small of her back and then arms around her shoulders. Shinji embraced her and suddenly Asuka realized she didn't remember the last time she'd been hugged. It couldn't have been in Germany, could it? She didn't remember and it didn't matter and when had she started crying? What a baby, she thought, What a pathetic little girl, and then he held her tighter and she didn't think any of that at all.

Asuka hugged him back and buried her face in his shoulder and didn't think one bit about her leg anymore, which had stopped hurting when he walked in the kitchen.