Phantom Pain

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Disclaimer: Neon Genesis Evangelion belongs to Studio Gainax and Hideaki Anno. So don't sue me.

For putting up with my random ideas, I thank my beta readers anime-freaksg & driftking18594.

"Leaning over you here
cold and catatonic,
I catch a brief reflection
of what you could and might have been -"
- "Passive", A Perfect Circle

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Toji Suzahara hears from the nurses that the medical facility has a resident ghost. It stalks the corridors at night and messes with the lights. But it seems most interested in the occupant in Room 142, his former classmate.

"That's what everyone's worried about? A ghost?" he asks. "When the world's falling apart?"

Many of the staff and patients at the facility come and go. Toji knows they get shuttled elsewhere to help with other more pressing needs in post-Third Impact Japan. He doesn't know any of them by name. But, somehow, all of them know about the ghost.

Nurses and doctors assigned to him read his progress sheet and dole out medications. Sometimes they remind him to meet his physiotherapist's appointments. Some tell him to press on so he can get back to doing sports.

Toji wishes they would shut up about his future. Right now all he wants is to get outside. But most days all he can do after therapy is move about in the main corridor in his crutches. Once there, he pauses at the threshold of Room 142, its occupant so vital to the security of the country that NERV could put her in a room all by herself.

Every day Toji takes his pills before breakfast. The nurses have a system where he takes them by colour. There're pills for his jaundice, others for recovery and painkillers for the pain in his missing limb. Then he goes for several hours of compulsory physiotherapy. He spends this time re-learning how to move with his prosthesis.

The sessions wear him out. He toils even with the most basic of movements. When the sessions are over, he goes outside, unable to be in a ward with the other patients. Sheathed in sweat from his exercises, he sits in the courtyard, his NERV-issued handphone a warmish lump in his palm. He waits for someone, anyone, to give him news on his family.

It's been almost six months since he crawled out onto the sand at Yugawara. Then, the beach had been filled with people wondering if they'd survived Third Impact. He remembers cleaning damp LCL and sand from his ears, and staring at the massive face of Ayanami halfway out to sea. The entire thing had already begun to list, the angular cut across its forehead like a middle finger raised to the sky.

He'd been disappointed Instrumentality didn't return his left leg. Things didn't work that way, as Shinji told him later.

Later, the remnants of NERV and the government found him, remembered their commitments and put him in one of their private hospitals. He'd been told his pension was guaranteed, his bills paid for and his treatment complimentary. Now his main mission as former Evangelion pilot and Fourth Child is to recover as soon as possible.

Now he wishes someone would call him to give him some good news that his father, sister, anyone related to him - has returned from the sea.

But there's no call - as there hasn't been since he checked in. Instead, Toji stares at a sky catacombed with clouds. There are no planes, no birds and no other sounds apart from the wind seeping through the trees. When it gets too late, he returns inside for dinner. He struggles with the steps at the entrance until the nurse on duty helps him.

At least three times a week, Toji gets visitors. A NERV representative with a face like a clenched fist comes to check on his progress. The serious mother from the family that took him in before he was relocated to the facility. Shinji comes in the afternoons. Of course, he prefers Shinji over his other guests. But that's because he brings him food.

Shinji brings a late lunch, sometimes with onigiri or a slab of cooked fish cut so thinly that Toji tastes more sauce than meat. Food is still expensive, Shinji says. They eat outside, away from the curious patients in the wards who recognise Shinji from the news. Due to frequent blackouts, it's cooler outside anyway.

During the meal Shinji tells him about the world beyond the building. Public transport returning to life. What the Chinese and Russians are doing. The plans to exhume the buried NERV HQ. On good days, Shinji checks off a list of people they know who've emerged from the sea.

But again there's none from the Suzahara family. Kensuke and Major Katsuragi are still missing too.

They talk until sunset turns the clouds a brilliant orange. Then Shinji helps him to his ward, and excuses himself for dinner with another resident of the facility.

"Go ahead," Toji says. Most of the time he can't resist adding, "And how's NERV's little red pilot?"

He sees Shinji flinch at the term, catches him glancing in the direction of Room 142.

"She lost an eye, you know," Shinji says. "She's still recovering from her injuries. And she's –"

"Still crazy."

"Got big mood swings. From the trauma."

Toji feels a flash of satisfaction – that there's actually someone worse off than him. But it evaporates upon seeing the sad heft of Shinji's shoulders.

"Are you supposed to be telling me this?"

"You didn't know?"

"She's got a room all to herself and everyone at her service."

"She went through a lot," Shinji says.

Toji wants to say something. But he doesn't. Instead, he rests his hands on the bed where his left leg would be. Shinji sighs, takes his hands out from his pocket and clears the empty lunch box.

"Thanks for the meal," Toji says.

"No problem," Shinji says. He stands still for a moment, as if he's forgotten something. Then he adds: "Please be nice to her when you see her."

When he emerged from the sea he wasn't sure if his body had changed fundamentally. No one knows either, and Toji understands these puzzles have sent the small, recovering medical community into a spin. All he knows is the pain on his left is worst just before bed and in the mornings.

It's like a permanent stitch, wedged where his left knee used to be. Sometimes it's so bad that he seizes up, forcing him to claw to walls en route to the gym.

There, he sits on a frayed seat and fits his feet into specially-designed box over the left. It's full of mirrors. It's old technology, but if he looks from an angle, it appears like his left leg is flexing and working.

The gym's still empty of patients when his physiotherapist arrives. Toji follows his instructions, cycling through the machines until he's sitting in a curtain of his own sweat on the sticky shiny floor.

"Making progress, Mr Suzuhara," the physiotherapist says. "You're on schedule to be fitted with your permanent limb."

He pats Toji on his shoulder. With permission, Toji spends the whole morning working out on the upper body machines.

Later, in the sweet afterburn of exercise, he passes a nurse rushing down the corridor from Room 142. At that moment, Shinji's request rings in his mind as he quickly checks that nobody's looking and enters the room.

He knocks twice. "Good morning, Soryu."

He expects a shout, or at least a piece of furniture to come flying at him. But instead he sees a bald patient hunched over the bed, head in her hands. He can see the slender pipe of her spine through her clothes. Tubes protrude from her arms like transparent hairs. Wads of bloody tissue paper lie on the nearest chair like miniature red clouds. She's so smothered in bandages Toji has a fleeting recollection of Ayanami during his school days.

Then, a low coarse voice, like heavy vehicle starting up:

"What the fuck do you want?"

"A nurse ran out of your room. So just checking if you're all right."

"After what, five months?"

"I've never seen you outside."

She laughs. Her tone gives him a brief flare of panic. He feels like he's talking to someone with a bomb between her teeth.

"Want to know why?"

She keeps a hand clapped to her left eye, but Toji can see she doesn't look anything like before. Her lips are translucent and peeling. Her cheekbones look like they were carved out with a knife. Where her bandages end, he sees only jigsaw pieces of scar tissue.

"You look like shit, Soryu."

"And you really know how to compliment a girl."

The nurse returns, with reinforcements this time. They shoo him out of the room and surround the girl on the bed. The last Toji sees of her, the nurses are stroking her forehead as they stab syringe after syringe into her arm.

Sometimes Toji receives the same dream. He dreams he's staring down at himself in the entry plug of Unit-03. His head has flopped to one side, and he's breathing slowly as the LCL gets drained. As the level of liquid decreases, it reveals his left leg, a coarse cornmeal mush between the tattered bottom-half of his plug-suit. Then somebody calls, "Suzahara."

He wakes to the sound of falling furniture.

"You saw that?" the man in the bed next to him shouts.

"What?"

"It was - !" The man shrinks from his bed towards the door. "It was at your window!"

Toji turns. The window beside his bed is open, a breeze flirting with the curtains. It's empty.

"I saw it! I saw it!" the man says. The other patients are waking to the commotion. "It was floating there. Staring at me!"

"Should we call the nurse?" another man asks, fingers poised over a red button by the wall.

Toji stares at the window again. He's half-hoping the ghost or whatever would just show up now that everyone's watching. Instead, he reaches out, shuts the window and draws the curtains.

"No nurses," Toji tells everyone. "Go back to sleep."

On the day Toji receives his permanent limb, a doctor he hasn't seen before greets him in the gym. When he asks about his previous physiotherapist, Toji learns he's been reassigned.

"There aren't a lot of us these days. Besides, there are other important patients here that need my expertise," the new doctor says. "So, Mr Suzahara, the focus will be less on you from now on."

He isn't sure if the doctor's joking. Has he actually been receiving preferential treatment?

The nurses help him fit on his new permanent limb. It's flesh-coloured, like a thick muscular thigh extending into the toes. They give him a second piece: an option to switch the lower part with a curved blade like he requested. He hopes, one day, he'll be able to run like he did in high school.

"Any questions?" the doctor asks.

"What about the pain?"

The doctor sighs. "Technically, there's no way to prevent that. You still taking painkillers?"

"Yeah."

"Then let the nurses know if you want a bigger dose."

The doctor has him performing symmetric movements, raising both limbs at once or standing with arms raised to balance his body weight. He gets pamphlets and visual aids for what he needs to do, and immediately after the doctor goes off with the nurses.

Later he sees them wheel Soryu into the gym. They bring her to a pair of rails and assist as she tries to walk. She stumbles after several steps, swearing. They change tactics, getting her to sit as they massage her bandage-sheathed limbs. The nurses encourage her as she stretches; she reaches out at them, moving all fingers and toes.

Like before, the doctor gives her pamphlets and visual aids and leaves her alone. It doesn't take long for Toji sees he's alone in the stuffy air of the gym with her.

They don't acknowledge each other, and he's fine with it. Once he's done with his repetitions he stands up, feeling his weight realign. He takes unsteady confident strides, wobbling a bit and eventually sits down without any problem. He can even shuffle his chair. He flexes his knees, relishes the satisfying clack in the joint on his new limb.

Across the gym, he sees her take a full minute to rise to her feet and attempts the rails without help. She stops after several halting steps, her shoulders shaking with effort.

Toji stares at himself in the wall-long mirror. Then, he gets up, goes to the kitchen and gets a bottle of ice-cold mineral water from the facility's kitchen. He returns to the gym, goes to her and holds out the bottle like a peace offering.

"You're tired," he tells her. "Have a drink."

Her face is damp with bright film of perspiration. She takes the bottle from him, and takes three, four deep gulps from it. For a moment, Toji watches as the sweaty triangle at her throat moves with each swallow.

When she's done, she chucks the bottle aside and resumes her walk. He watches, but she stares down, away from him.

"I'm only doing this because Shinji told me to," he tells her.

"They've offered me a job in defence."

Toji's on the treadmill, walking at the slowest pace, without support - a small, significant achievement for the week. Shinji's piece of news distracts him: he has to hold the side rail as he slows down. But he recovers and walks on.

"Man, that's great news," he says.

Shinji threads his fingers through his hair absently. "I guess so."

"Most qualified person for the job eh?"

"Until someone like Misato returns."

"Seriously," Toji leans on the side rail. "This is good. As you can see when you visit this place, NERV is too busy cleaning up its own mess."

"But it means I'll be visiting less," Shinji says. "Won't be able to see how you're both recovering so well."

Toji stops the treadmill, and stabilises himself on the side rail. He makes a small hop to the ground. It feels good when the impact of landing shudders up both his thighs to the rest of his body. He waves away Shinji's offer to help.

"I can walk now, you know," he says.

"Looking good."

"Any news about my sister or parents?"

Shinji stutters something inaudible. They both know the answer, and their talk lapses into silence. Toji changes the subject to keep them talking:

"You said 'both'. So Soryu's getting better?"

He sees Shinji's eyes brighten at the mention of her name. Hopeless, Toji thinks.

"She can walk a bit now. And her moods swings aren't that extreme," Shinji says. His eyes fall to the nearest clock. "Speaking of which…"

"What do you guys talk about in there anyway?"

"Not much. She does most of the talking. I just like to keep her company."

"Damn you sound like her husband," Toji says. He sees Shinji's face redden and he waves him away. "Joking. Tell her I said hello."

Toji's mornings return to a comfortable routine as he recovers. The doctor stays with him for fifteen minutes, giving advice on exercises and checking the range of his legs' movement. Then he has the gym all to himself for the next hour until Soryu and her team come in for her daily physiotherapy. He finishes just as breakfast ends. When the gym begins to fill with patients, he's already in one corner with the nurses, who give him his post-session massage and acupuncture if he wants.

He's on his way out one morning when she rides up to him in a wheelchair.

She doesn't say hello. She gets straight to point: "Can you bring me out for a walk?"

The ballad of conversation in the gym almost stops. He knows the other patients and nurses are waiting for his response.

"Let me rephrase that," she says, her voice loud and insistent. "Would you man up and take me for a walk?"

He relents. He can feel people watching as he takes the handles of her wheelchair and guides her out of the gym. Without thinking, he heads to the entrance. Single-handedly he fumbles with the doors. The nurse on duty doesn't offer any help. He isn't sure if it's because he's mostly recovered or their disdain for the person in the wheelchair.

"My feet hurt," she says.

Before bringing her out, he makes sure her feet are tucked in and not trailing. He has to get down on his good knee to do this. Cradling her birdlike feet, head lowered to the level of her lap, he's glad she can't see the heat creeping into his face.

He leads her through the doors, and manoeuvres through the steps that once stumped him. Once past this obstacle, he brings her around the facility via a paved trail. It's a not an easy walk. Grass and weeds have stormed the pavement. He soon realises the uneven trail is much harder to negotiate than the smooth surface of the gym floor.

The trail brings them behind a thin cut of woods, and the facility disappears from view. Here, at the perimeter of the property, they come to a rusted fence being pulled down by vines. It overlooks a small pond scummed with green mush. Beyond, trees naked of leaves flank a long black whip of road.

"Ah finally!" she says. She spreads her hands as if presenting the scenery to him. "Finally out of that madhouse!"

Everything else is perfectly silent. Toji doesn't know if things he once took for granted like birds and insects would return to a post-Third Impact world.

"Can't stand those nurses," she goes on. "If they tell me to think positive thoughts again, I'm going to throw up. Since when did thinking positive help anyone?"

He lets her continue. Hasn't changed a bit, he thinks. He's not sure how much she has said until she jerks the wheelchair over his right foot.

"Shit."

"You know, I'm only doing this for Shinji," she declares. "So can you stop acting like a statue?"

"You -" he grips the handles, but eases off slowly. "Fine."

"So when will they release you?"

"They didn't say. It's not as if there's anything outside the facility anyway."

Toji hopes he isn't right. But she doesn't continue. They just stare at the greying landscape, below a sky brushstroked with clouds.

"Has anyone you know returned?" she asks.

Toji doesn't like to talk about it. So he's brief with her: "No."

"No family?"

"You heard me, Soryu."

"Relax, I was just asking," she says. He hears her sigh. "This is a screwed up world yeah?"

"Well only you and your boyfriend will really know why it's like this."

"He is NOT my boyfriend."

"He's with you all the time."

"Because he's partly responsible for my condition," she points to her eye patch. "Anyway he actually listens to me."

"Yeah yeah. I wonder if he has a choice."

"You know, Suzuhara? You've become a real smartass. I think I'm influencing you for the better! Why don't you come over more often so I don't have to spend time being haunted by a phantom?"

"Uh huh."

"Even if Shinji isn't here, your wisecracking is better than seeing the ghost of our favourite wondergirl in her school uniform and red eyes."

He tenses. Wait, he thinks. Did she just describe -

"Soryu. What are you talking about?"

"Are you really that dense?"

Toji tries to replay everything he's heard about the facility's so-called resident ghost - the haunting of Room 142, the night sightings and the staff and patients' reactions. He tries to verbalise it:

"You mean the ghost takes the form of Ayanami?"

She stares at him as if he had grown an extra head.

"You mean Shinji didn't tell you?"

"Well, I thought you knew," Shinji says.

"Huh. I'll believe it when I see it."

Toji and Shinji are outside, at the end of the trail by the pond. They pass a box of snacks between them. Leaning against a dead tree, Toji tries to piece together his earlier conversation with Asuka.

"You believe her?" he asks.

"You know the nurses thought she was crazy at first. They kept sedating her."

"Yeah. They use an awful lot of syringes. I saw them."

"Then they started seeing things too. But Asuka still likes the drugs because she prefers to sleep soundly through the night without too many nightmares."

"Shinji. You didn't answer my question."

"She went through a lot."

Toji watches his friend absently stare out at the fence and the scenery, his cheeks angry from exposure to the sun. Toji wonders what's distracting him. And there, for one brief moment, he understands that Third Impact hasn't changed anything – that his friend has always been lost in thought.

"Any news of my sister?" Toji asks, bearing the question with the thinnest of hopes.

"I think you know the answer," Shinji says. Then he adds: "You think the birds will ever return?"

"What kind of a question is that?"

"Just something I was thinking about," he says. "Why don't you join us tomorrow for dinner?"

Toji wakes in the middle of the night, his leg a riot of pain. He smothers the stump of his left leg with a pillow like the doctors instructed. When it doesn't work, he tries to put on his prosthesis. When the pain continues to bloom, he lies face-up on his bed, fingernails burrowing into his palms, arms wrapped around his head. In the poor light, the shadows on his bed look a lot like bloodstains from an untidy cut.

In the cocoon of his pain-wracked mind, he hears one long, echoing scream.

"What was that?" his neighbour asks.

Toji shakes away the pain and tries to concentrate. Here comes the scream again. He'd recognise that voice from high school. The other patients move around and ask questions. Someone calls the nurses. He puts on his prosthetic limb and walks towards the door.

"Where are you going?" one of the other patients says.

"To get to the bottom of this."

"You're on your own, young man."

The door to his ward shuts behind him. In a bubble of darkness, he follows the wall to the main corridor. He sees the buttery gloss of old furniture, and the red lights of electronic devices blink like disembodied eyes. There's no nurse on duty, no one in the main corridor. He lets his eyes adjust to the darkness and slowly advances towards Room 142.

The door is ajar. There's no one in the room. There are signs that send a tendril of worry up his spine: scattered syringes, a torn blanket, soiled bed sheets. Her wheelchair is missing. He turns around the room and thinks: where are you, why are you screaming?

As his vision of the room slowly settles, he thinks of the one final place she would go.

But his muscles don't cooperate. In the corridor, his good leg cramps up. He stubs his left leg against a wall. By the time he reaches the gym, he has to pause and catch his breath. That's when he realises she's barricaded the door.

"Soryu?" he calls out. "What are you doing?"

It takes him three tries. He puts his full bodyweight into the charge, has to balance on his right foot. For the first two times his shoulder slides off the door. But on the third he manages to dislodge something behind, and the door opens enough for him to push his way in.

Everything in the gym seems to suck in light, leaving skeletal shapes of equipment against the loud colour of the mats. It takes him just a second before he sees her: a curled body by the walking rails. As he nears, he sees she's not crying or upset. Instead, she's bent over and has both her hands pressed into her missing eye.

"Why were you screaming?" he asks.

"Hurts like fuck," she says.

"I know."

"You don't. Shinji says you don't believe that I see things."

Not the time to bring up Shinji, he thinks. Still, he lowers himself till he's level with her. Even in the dark, he can see her lips edged into a grimace. If his left leg hurt like hell, he can't imagine how terrible it would feel to have lost an eye.

"It doesn't matter what I believe, ok?"

She offers no resistance: with a gentle tug she lifts her feet, and Toji's able to get her into her wheelchair. He clears the barricades she sets up and with a last look at the dark gym, steers her back to her room.

He feels her tense as soon as they enter the corridor. Her weight in the wheelchair shifts towards him, jamming the handles into his stomach. Stop being so troublesome, he wants to say aloud. But then he stops – he sees the movement at the end of the corridor, heading towards him.

She grips him so hard that he can feel her nails. But he can't move, can't think. All knows is that something has stopped right in front of them. It extends a hand to him, glowing like a pale star in the night. After the uncertainty of his recovery and the dark murk of the facility's corridors, he finally sees the light.

"Hello Suzuhara," it says.

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End

Edited: 31.09.2013

End Notes: The idea for this fic came about after I watched Rebuild 2.0. I was also thinking of my experience taking care of my grandfather when I was writing about this. Also, I wanted to make the post 3rd Impact world as bleak as possible - no resources, no nature etc - as a backdrop of Toji & Asuka's erratic recovery. Not sure if I was successful.

I left the ending ambiguous. I'd rather people reading this decide on what exactly happened.

Some questions: (a) Is this post-3I realistic or at least consistent with canon? and (b) is the friendship between Toji and Asuka plausible, given that it's a short story and I've fast-tracked things a bit.

Thanks for reading! Do check out my other fics :)