The World We Couldn't Have

Chapter 1 - God's in his heaven...

The rest of the morning passed in a haze of heat and sweat, with no time for celebration. Asuka helped Kensuke pry the upper hatch free, their combined efforts boosted by the winch on his old car. Kensuke attempted to make conversation with the redhead, to get some idea as to what's happened, but the girl seemed to not want to talk about it, at least not yet. After what felt like hours, the metal finally gave way with a screech, leaving them both panting, sweat dripping from their brows. They stood back, hands on hips, gulping down water in long, greedy swigs.

It was just as Asuka was about to complain about the heat when a distant, thunderous boom rattled the air. They froze, eyes turning to the sky. One by one, fireballs streaked through the atmosphere—Wunder's escape pods, burning like comets as they plummeted toward Earth.

"Come on," Kensuke muttered, already scrambling up the watchtower beside his house. Asuka followed without thinking, the rickety structure swaying under their combined weight, wood creaking beneath their boots.

From their perch, they watched the pods rocket down, glowing hot as they decelerated. The air hummed with tension as orange plumes erupted from the bottoms of each pod, releasing landing legs with a low, mechanical growl.

Asuka barely heard the splash as the pods hit the water, spraying plumes of azure into the sky. For a moment, she just stood there, watching them settle in the bay around Village-3, her heart beating in rhythm with the distant echoes of the impacts.

She gripped the railing of the watchtower, her knuckles turning white as she squinted, hoping to make out Misato's purple hair or Midori's pink locks from among the distant figures. But it was useless—nothing more than a blur of movement against the beach. She let out a low "tch," frustration and dread twisting in her chest.

"Hmmmm," Kensuke uttered, holding his pair of binoculars, his mouth turned downward in a slight frown, "I can't make anything out... We're too far away."

Asuka looked at him, and scoffed, yanking the binoculars out of his hand, before putting them to her own eyes, focusing them with the dial in the center. "Of course you can't see anything with these things, four eyes!" she exclaimed, "You can't even see without those giant glasses of yours." Kensuke chuckled lightly at Asuka's remark, looking up at the clouds passing overhead. "Fair enough... fair enough..." He said, readjusting his glasses before running his hand through his hair.

As much as Asuka was silently pleading the binoculars to reveal something more than just a hazy smear of figures climbing up the beach and coming to rest on the beginnings of the grassy knolls lining the shore, the binoculars wouldn't oblige. "Stupid... shitty binoculars..." she said, handing the tool back to Kensuke, who gently grabbed it from her hand.

Goddamnit, why did they have to all be so far away? Her heart sank. If the Wunder was gone, there would certainly be casualties. Who got hurt? Who was dead? She'd resented every single one of them at times, but the idea of being completely alone in the world with no one who had even an inkling of what her pain was... that was terrifying. Even worse, they would have never gotten their chance at a happy ending.

"Well," he said, putting the lanyard of his binoculars back over his neck, his voice a little teasing, "if we can't see them from up here, we could certainly see them after a short drive to the beach." Kensuke glanced at Asuka, clearly gauging her reaction with a sly smile, but she was far too engrossed in the scene to notice. She took a deep breath, and without even looking at Kensuke, she walked towards the ladder.

"Fine. Let's go."

The first bit of the ride was eerily dead, with only the hum of the engine and the occasional errant rock striking the chassis as they followed the dirt road. Neither dared to speak. Both knew the implications of the Wunder being destroyed and the implications of the world returning to a pre-impact state, and both knew the conflicting feelings that brought. They had won–they had defeated NERV and ended instrumentality, but who got to see the end of it? Who didn't get to return home and see those deep blue oceans that Asuka and many others had only heard about? She thought to when she and the rest of the pilots visited that aquarium with Kaji, this tiny little slice of a world they had never seen before. Now, it's all here, everywhere she looked across the coast was that deep blue. Why did she get to experience it? Why not Shinji and Rei, who are certainly gone? She silently prayed Misato was still alive, just so she could see the world like it was before the impact stole it–and her family–from her.