Shinji opened his eyes and looked out at the red horizon, gazing with a glazed look in his eyes and the lost look nearly pasted onto his face.

'Hell...' Shinji thought as he looked around, facing the sea of LCL and the massive head of Rei...or at least, what used to be Rei. As he shifted his head to the right he saw her, red hair framing her head in a wash of LCL and face set in a serene, but content look, with bandages on her arm and face.

'Hell...and here I am, stuck with her of all people.'

He knew he was cracking, he knew that he was already passing the point of no return, but it just felt so damn good to let go, to break down, to finally be free from his reality and let himself be lost in the soft caresses of insanity.

Before he knew it, he was alreay straddling Asuka, crying and strangling her at the same time. Sifting through the hazy red grains of his mind, he tried to understand...trying and failing.

'Why...why am I doing this?...Is it because I hate this girl? Or is it for something she did?...IS it something I did?'

All of a sudden, his mind came to a screeching halt as memories cleared away the red haze and replaced it with crystal clear quality. He remebered, her hitting him, belittling him, slowly wasting away because of him and lying in a hospital where he...oh god he...

All of a sudden a warmth reached up to his face and moved to his cheek in an almost...affectionate way. It was something...new to him.

Finally looking down he saw Asuka, bandages and all looking at him with pity and understanding, almost as if she could see why he was doing this when even he couldn't.

Finally, not being able to take it anymore, he collapsed, crying and slowly drifting off to the sweet Asylum known as his mind hearing one, simple phrase before falling in to it's inky black depths.

"I feel sick."

-0-0-

Asuka looked down to the boy in front of her, asleep, but in a sense, never to be again. He would always have nightmares, a thing that would be more of a waking dream than ever truly being out of it. He would just re-live his moments of sin, of weakness, of indescision, of lonliness, and slowly drive him to the edge of a cliff, where he would happily jump to his own insanity, leaving behind the thing he he called his conscience and let it fall behind him in a wave of hate and suffering.

He would always remember the things he had done wrong, but never right, as she had always told him he had never done in the past. He would slowly become the thing he hated the most as it consumed him. His hate, his fear, his sadness, they would never leave him, just as they would never leave her. They will never be the same. After all, they were broken children, and once something is broken, it will never be the same. Never.

-0-0-

Gendo Ikari awoke.

Floating aimlessly in the sea of LCL, he looked to his left and to his right, seeing an expanse of orange to one and a long stretch of beach sand to the other.

"Gendo..."

Gendo whirled in the the strange orange liquid to look behind him, looking for the orogin of the strange, familiar voice he had just heard.

"Gendo"

Looking down, he saw a figure emerging from the orange liquid, something that also looked familiar to him.Hope began to to rise in his chest for the first time in over a decade and he felt tears begin to form in his eyes.

'Please let it be', thought the old man. 'Please let it be...her...'

"Gendo!"

Looking around, he faced a woman with startling green eyes and short cropped, brown hair.

Gendo felt his tears fall into the orange sea as he said a name to the person he had been waiting for all these years to say to.

"Yui...YUI!"

Gendo smiled, for the first time in more than a decade and was going to embrace her when something unexpected happened.

Yui slapped him across his face. Hard. And then with all her might, Kissed Gendo as passionately as she could, for she knew that he was a broken man, and after all, a broken man is never the same again. Never.

-0-0-

Kyoko Zeppelin Soryhu slowly walked out of the water, relishing the feeling of LCL washing off her body. After all, having your soul and mind being seperated from your physical body, being put in a bio-mechanical behemoth and then being cooped up for over a decade only to have your body remade in an artificial primordial soup is quite an experience.

Kyoko walked onto the beach, feeling the sand squish between her toes and the breeze play across her naked skin, relishing the way that the wind played across her skin and the smells carried by it. Finally living what she once took for granted, Kyoko turned as she heard a sound behind her and felt all the elation from before shatter into a million pieces as she saw what made the sound.

Kyoko gazed at the two broken children who didn't even aknowledge her presence and sighed, knowing that they were broken, and could never be the same. Never. Just like her.

-0-0-

Ritsuko Akagi jumped out of the LCL with a gasp, breathing raggedly and holding her chast where the bullet had entered, or at least, where it should have been but wasn't. Feeling around her chest in surprise, Rituko couldn't help but look in astonishment at herself and her surroundings. Around her was a sea of LCL, and surrounding her were people literally rising and forming from the orange sea and looking around in either confusion or astonishment.

"Ritsu..."

Ritsuko's heart nearly stopped there as she heard that voice.

'It...It couldn't be...could it?"

"Ritsuko...turn around would you?"

Ritsuko, slowly but surely, and with wide eyes, turned around to see the best sight her sore and tired eyes had seen in years.

There she was, Ritsuko's mother, Naoko Akagi, smiling happily and holding her arms out to receive her daughter in a welcoming hug. She didn't have to wait long.

Ritsuko hugged her mother andd now both Mother and Daughter cried as they embraced, slowly healing the cracks of their souls and feeling more whole than they could have thought possible.

And so, two who were finally broken were healing, though they both knew they would never be the same. They didn't care though, because for right now, all that mattered was that they were healing, and that was good enough for them.