take a promenade

[redheadcarrier]

Asuka hates everything.

The curse of the Eva. What a joke. Maybe if she'd known about it, she'd have never climbed into the stupid thing (that's a lie). It's been fourteen years. Fourteen long years and haflway through, she realized that she wasn't just a late bloomer. She wasn't going to get any taller. She wasn't going to change. She was stuck. A gangly, half-grown young woman with the eclectic cocktail of puberty stuck in her brain. She was never going to be an "adult". No one was ever going to look at her and see anything other than a snot-nosed brat. It doesn't matter that she's one of the defenders of humanity, it doesn't matter that she's spent her life getting smarter, getting better. She looks like a fourteen-year old and people still ask her if she's lost or if she should be in school. They still ask for her ID every time she drives (she has to scoot the seat forward so she can reach the pedals). It's a miracle they let her live alone.

At least she doesn't have to share an apartment with Misato anymore. She spent four miserable years living with her and putting up with her fake cheerfulness and her sloppy messes and her blatant favoritism. When she turned eighteen (not that she'd changed) she left. She'd had one last screaming match for good measure and then dragged her boxes and boxes of stuff out with her. Not that she even wanted half of it, but she wasn't going to leave it behind.

The next morning she'd stared at Misato across the table in the briefing room, a mug of coffee in front of her as if to say, "Look, I'm one of you now." They didn't talk much outside of work now. "Work". Saving the world was her day job. What a goddamn mess.

Not that she had (or kept) many friends. Just Hikari, but Asuka could see the discomfort in her eyes from time to time when they went out. Especially now that Hikari is almost old enough to look like Asuka might be her daughter or a younger cousin or something. By now Asuka avoids most social functions. Of course, NERV has one of their stupid semi-corporate get-togethers. She despises Japanese work-culture, but if she doesn't show up, she's going to get a lot of grief because why wouldn't the star pilot not want to be there?

She forces a smile on her face through the first hour or two of the night, acting the part of the social butterfly, trying to ignore the double-takes that the newbies give her. By hour three, she takes up a permanent position at the bar (it's all on the UN's tab, why not enjoy), official ID slapped down on the smooth wood before the bartender can say anything smart about a Shirley Temple.

By hour four, she's buzzed and on her way towards being completely smashed as she asks for another drink. She doesn't care what, she just wants the alcohol.

Fuck all of you, she's over twenty-one.

Comments

[wille]

Misato doesn't drink much anymore. Alcohol was the grease she used to navigate the world, a way to dilute herself and her pain to make them more palatable for others, for herself. It helped her sleep, blurred the edges of last night's terrors. A crutch by any other name. She lost her need for a crutch once she learned to sprint on broken legs, bones calcified.

It was never supposed to go on for this long. A part of her had always thought that she wouldn't see past her thirtieth birthday. But here they are, having turned a war into a day job.

Where Asuka's much too young, Misato feels distinctly prehistoric in this club filled with people who never knew a life without constant emergency drills, who only learned about the Second Impact and the horrors that followed as distant history, who scoff at their parents when told how lucky they are. She's forty-three now and each achingly long day at work reminds her of that fact every time.

The dim lighting may be forgiving on the fine wrinkles around her eyes, the deep-set lines around her lips, marking a permanent grimace, but she carries herself like an authority, like a police inspecting a speakeasy, covered from neck to toe in a loose turtleneck and belted trousers tucked into well-worn boots. Like a protest against all the skin being shown in this club. She leans against the bar beside Asuka's form, easily catching the bartender's attention despite the quiet way she speaks her order.

"Whiskey on the rocks. And tonic water."

[redheadcarrier]

Asuka's nursing her latest drink, glaring at the room full of people who get to live lives. Who get to grow and change and become something else, where she's trapped in a moment in time. Eternally a child. Even if she has rank pips on her collar and even if she's still the best pilot they have, they still see a child when they look at her. She's been denied entry into the world of adulthood and it rankles. It tugs at her attention. Maybe Asuka could've tried to force it and turned to sex, but the idea of letting a man touch her like that makes her sick in the pit of her stomach. It's never happened. She glances up and blinks, peering at Misato through the haze of alcohol that she's drugged herself up with.

When was the last time she spoke more than one or two sentences to Misato? They went their separate ways for the most part. She tolerates her presence during briefings (because she has to), but otherwise avoids her. There's no love lost between them as far as she's concerned. Misato was never even a pale imitation of a mother figure to her. Why complicate things? She takes a long sip, still staring at Misato, and then leans toward her, sloppily braced against the bar.

"You're late, Commander," she says in that sing-song tone of hers that she's never really lost. It's just sharpened.

"Didn't want to mix with the rest of the mortals?"

Mortals. That word has a bitter taste to it under the mockery. Is she even mortal anymore? Or will she just last while everything around her crumbles away into dust?

Time to change the subject.

"Whiskey and tonic? Come on, we're supposed to celebrate or whatever. Live a little. You used to drink beer like water, y'know."

A sharp reminder that even if 99% of the room doesn't remember Misato when she was younger, Asuka sure does.

[wille]

That sing-song voice used to be hers. Her tool to goad and tease others, like the Third, like Asuka. There's an almost-wince that follows the uncomfortable recognition, and even now, she dislikes reminders of herself seen in others even as the pendulum has swung the other way. It is the soft, the fake cheerfulness, the pitiful attempt at normalcy that disgusts her now where before it was the coldness she sees in herself, the penchant for emotional distance, the hard heart it takes to always pull the trigger for the sake of survival.

To her credit, she doesn't flinch even when the girl, no woman, leans closer. Unlike the late Ikari senior, she needs no glasses to serve as a mask. Her own face does just as well, impassive and determined with the constant undercurrent of irritation.

"What's there to celebrate?"

The question posed as a challenge. Two can play this game. Goaded and goading. If she has to mix in with the mortals and the not-quite-mortals, she will go in having shed her gloves. Her drink arrives just then, gingerly placed in front of her by the bartender that casts a glance between both of them (mother and daughter?) before leaving to gossip with his colleagues. She begins mixing the water into her whiskey with mild disinterest.

"Besides, you know I didn't drink beer for celebration."

If Asuka's intent on bringing up the past, it's up to Misato to up the ante. She wants to talk about old dirty laundry, well, here's where it all stems from. She drank beer like water because sleeping was a challenge, her nightmares troubled her as her snoring and tossing and turning bothered Asuka back then. She knows she knows she knows. Shame dies when exposed to sunlight, see? She means to render Asuka's jabs impotent, turning the camera back to her and the time when they shared a home with each other's wounds in full view of the others. I'll see your five and raise you ten.

[redheadcarrier]

Asuka hasn't stayed closed with Misato. Since they stopped living together, she's only ever seen her at 'work'. Even then, she's maintained a distance. She's preferred to be on her own, trying to prove that she doesn't need anyone. Not a support structure, not a mother, not a father, certainly not Ikari, definitely not Misato. It hasn't made her happy. Of course, nothing has really made her happy in a long, long time. She's had bursts of levity, little bright spots and that fade out almost instantly. Most of her life is simply a slog, desperately trying to reach something that's just out of reach no matter how hard she strains.

She's put-off by the stern facade and she leans back with a frown, covering her discomfort with another drink, "You tell me. I didn't organize this thing. If it was up to me, I wouldn't even be here."

Got to show the flag. Be the perfect little star for NERV. She dislikes it intensely. But she's got nowhere else to go or call home, even if she hates the tiny apartment she goes home to every night. Empty and spartan, now that she's actually discarded her childhood. She's started to dread going home at night, almost as much as she dreads getting up in the mornings. Why do adults do this? Why does she do this? Is this the world she so desperately wanted to reach?

Apparently.

Her gaze narrows and she glances away, shoulders suddenly feeling tight despite the languid loose relaxation that comes with the alcohol. It helps fuel her words, though. At least there's that.

"Yeah, I know that. You drank because you didn't have anything else to do," she slurs in response, "Better than being sober. At least this way you can laugh, right?"

Christ, when did she start understanding her? Is this what happens as you get older?

"I fucking hated listening to you, you know."

They both know that. She's just saying it out loud, drawling the words because she's a bit too far gone and doesn't care enough to try and act like she isn't drunk. She settles her head on her hands, staring at Misato and the flint in her eyes.

"But you never really cared about what I thought, so who gives a shit?"