And willing to sit on one post for a while? Right, if you are, take a read of this, and tell me what you think...Oh, wait, new forum, better explain what the hell I'm doing. Righto...one of my big hobbies is fanfiction. Unfortunately (one two counts here), I can often never find people who understand/give decent feedback on what I write, and I have that chronic disease known as Writer's Block. So anyway...
ANY comments would be appreiciated, thankyou.
This piece of fiction takes place the night after Kaworu dies. It's leading to be set along a timeline four years after the end of ep. 24. I'm maybe a third of the way through the time. Feel free to flame me for messing with the characters cemented phychological nature...I have a
bad habit of doing stuff like that.
Enough blather, let's just get on with it...
------------Shinji staggered out of his room, his eyes sore from adjusting to the light from the kitchen and peering through a bloodshot rim left by his tears. His head hurt, but that wasn’t what was bothering him: the pain that was truly troubling him was his heart. Misato had tried to comfort him, but he had refused to listen and she had not dared to talk more. She had her loss to deal with too, so Shinji’s grief from the death of the one who said he loved him was obviously unimportant to her.
Shinji took the pen Misato used to mark in the weekly chores and picked up the pad of paper Misato used to write down notes from the telephone and placed it on the table. He sat down, his eyes now adjusted to the light but not adjusted to his dried tears, and began to write. His hand quickly slashed strokes of kanji across the page before it trembled, and finally refused to write any longer under a barrage of fresh tears.
_Misato, I’m writing this so you don’t worry when you see I’m missing in the morning. I’m fine. Please don’t follow me. Please don’t try to find me. I can’t stay here any more. Please tell Asuka I said goodbye. – Shinji._
He read over the last line, and watched in morbid fascination as droplets of water fell on to the text, sitting on top of them for a moment, and then sinking into the cheap writing paper and blurring the ink.
‘Where does this line end?’
‘You sure you want to go that far, kid?’
‘Yes...I’ve got the money. Please, where will this take me?’
‘That’ll get you to the end of the north line. You want a return ticket?’
‘No. I’m not coming back here.’
Gendo Ikari sat at his desk, looking over a report that said Shinji Ikari, his son, had gone missing. Part of him wanted to search for him to bring him back. Part of him wanted to search for him to congratulate him. Ikari though the latter part was wanting stronger.
A circular logo caught Gendo’s eye on one of the reports, and an old quote that he couldn’t place spoke up in his mind: _life is a wheel...one which no man can stand upon for long._
‘Commander, the Committee want to talk to you about...this,’ Sub-Commander Fuyutsuki said from over Gendo’s shoulder, and gestured towards the papers on his desk.
‘Very well.’ Ikari stood, and handed a folder to Fuyutsuki. ‘Send this to as many people as you can. And then leave the Geofront.’
As Ikari walked away, Fuyutsuki looked at the documents inside the plain folder with Nerv’s logo embossed on the front. Instead of what he suspected was inside, papers giving a description of the Commander’s son to be put up around the city, he saw all the documentation for Nerv’s budget over the past six months. Through it all, there was one name that stood out among all the figures: Lorenz Keel.
‘I hope you know what you’re doing, Ikari,’ Fuyutsuki said to himself.
‘Ikari, the Third Child is the key to the Human Completion Project.’
‘Yes, he must be recovered immediately.’
‘You will order a city-wide search for Shinji Ikari.’
Gendo’s eye cast itself across all the holographic representations of the twelve Seele members before he gave his answer.
‘No.’
‘You will not defy us, Ikari.’
‘The Third Impact will not be halted by an individual such as yourself.’
‘Your desire for power stops here. Life is a wheel, and you may no longer stand atop it, Keel,’ Gendo said, his voice as calm and even as always. His hands left their stationary position hovering in front of his face, and reached down to his third desk drawer. Inside was only one object: a Second Sector issue handgun. Gendo took it and placed it on his desk.
‘Ikari...’
‘Forgive my sins, my son.’ Gendo raised the gun to his temple.
‘Ikari!’
‘I will see you in Heaven, Yui...’
Gendo’s right index finger tightened on the trigger, and a deafening sound ripped through his right ear. He felt his whole body gain weight and become lead, and by the time his blood hit his desk, Shinji Ikari’s father knew no more.
The rain fell down from Rei’s damp hair in small droplets on to her nose, running down her face and falling to the ground. Rei ignored it. After climbing the last flight of stairs, Rei walked along the narrow balcony, her footfalls not making noise audible over the rain. She knew that the Commander was gone, the Evas were gone, the school was gone: the only thing that remained was her apartment. She would go there to escape the rain. And then...she did not know.
Her hand touched to the doorknob and twisted. The knob stuck. She hardened her grip and tried again. The knob stuck. Rei placed her other hand and put more of her bodyweight into trying to move it. The knob stuck.
Rei suddenly felt an unfamiliar emotion work it’s way inside of her. She came to the realisation that she could not reach the things she had left in her apartment...the Commander’s glasses. Rationality began to seep out of her mind, and her right hand clenched into a tight fist. Rei then reacted completely in impulse to the emotion that was now a part of her: she slammed her fist into the apartment door.
Instantly the emotion left her, and she realised the futility of trying to knock down her door with her hand, and that the glasses her still trapped, regardless...and that a sharp red pain was pricking across her fingers. She brought her hand up to look at it, fascinated by the redness on her own pale had, amazed that she could have done this to herself...
She stood outside what once had been the door to her apartment for several minutes before realising that she had no place to sleep tonight.
A knocking on the door made Misato bring her head up from resting on the kitchen table. She was tempted to ignore it, until it came again, this time louder. Disobeying her urge, Misato rose from her chair and walked down the hallway to her apartment’s front door, sliding it open. Standing at her doorstep was the blue haired ex-Eva pilot.
‘Rei? What are you doing here?’ Rei was one of the last people Misato had expected to show up in the early hours of the morning.
‘I have nowhere to stay,’ she said softly, barely audible over the drumming rainfall.
Misato looked at her for a long time, thinking of Asuka in the hospital, thinking of Toji’s missing arm and leg, thinking of Shinji’s note, before saying in a voice that wanted to break, ‘Come in.’
The twisting flames of the incinerator beckoned Shinji, wrapping their fiery hands around the bags of garbage he had placed in their grasp. The garbage would be soon reduced to nothing but carbon ashes, unrecognisable from its previous form, one with all the other bags of garbage that had been consumed by the flames before it. Shinji regarded the concept with a rather morbid respect.
From his pocket he took out a small rectangle of laminated paper. He stared at it. His Nerv photo ID stared back. He took one last look at it, and then threw it into the flames, where it sat for a moment before curling and blackening around the edges. Let it become one with the carbon ash, he thought, because it too is now no more than garbage.
Rei opened the door of Misato’s apartment to reveal a man dressed in military uniform.
‘Is there a Major Misato Katsuragi at this residence?’ he inquired.
‘Yes.’
A slight pause, then: ‘Can I speak to her?’
‘Yes.’
Rei turned and walked back into Misato’s apartment. Puzzled slightly by the girl who met him at the door, he followed her inside.
‘There is someone here to see you, Misato,’ Rei said as she entered the lounge room of the apartment, where Misato sat, idly watching the television.
‘Oh?’ She then saw what the profession of her visitor was as he entered the room behind Rei. ‘Oh...could you clean up in the kitchen a bit, Rei? I might be a while here,’ Misato said, instantly falling into a more formal tone than what she would normally use to ask anyone to clean up her kitchen.
‘I don’t expect this to take too much time,’ the man in the uniform said, but by the time he finished, Rei had already left.
‘I’ll try and make this a brief as possible...’
‘Take all the time you want,’ Misato said, her voice adopting a chill note to it. The man dismissed it.
‘For several months you were involved directly with the super-weapon known as “Evangelion”. During this time you were responsible for the command of several operations to counter-strike the offences being made by the beings termed “Angels”. Am I correct so far?’
Misato nodded.
‘As you know, the Evangelion units One and Two have fallen into the custody of the Japanese Military. However, we are somewhat at a loss as to how they work.’
Surprise crossed Misato’s face. ‘You...you don’t know?’
‘No. None of our pilots have been successful in being able to move the machines while they’re active.’
_They’re more than machines...did you know that?_
‘So why am I being told this?’
‘We need you to assume command over the Evangelion units once again. You are the highest ranking individual that has access to the information we need.’
‘But...the Commander...’
‘Commander Gendo Ikari is deceased. His replacement, Kouzou Fuyutsuki, cannot be found. You, as Nerv’s strategist, are the next in command,’ the man in the uniform said, as if the information was well-rehearsed in his mind.
‘So...let me see if I understand you. You want me to tell you how to activate a weapon that was condemned by almost the entire human race when it was the entire human race that it was protecting, a weapon that can’t be controlled and can’t be destroyed, is that right?’
‘Well...’
‘I think you know my answer. Get out.’
The man in the uniform lingered for a second, and then met Misato’s gaze, and quietly left the room. In the silence that followed, Misato could clearly hear the footfalls, her door opening, and her door closing.
‘Tokyo-3 Rebuilding Approved...interesting...’ Fuyutsuki muttered to himself, as the clatter of metal wheels over metal tracks repeated in the background over the low hum of noise in the train carriage. A sharp hiss then overtook the metallic sounds for a second, and they slowly softened. Professor Fuyutsuki looked up from his paper, to see his the name of his station near the university he now taught at on an LCD display in the interior of the train carriage. He stood, folding his paper as he did so, and exited through the sliding doors. By the time he began lecturing to his first class, the news of Tokyo-3 was forgotten.
As the newscaster spoke, the maple leaf half and its dogmatic quote that was familiar to Major Misato Katsuragi appeared behind his head. ‘And in other news, Senator Lorenz Keel has been allegedly linked with the funding and control of the Nerv organisation, now known to have been responsible for the super-weapons termed “Evangelions”, which are now under control of the Japanese Military.’ The view now changed to Keel, flanked by two men in black suits and surrounded by reporters.
‘Mister Keel, what was your connection to the underground military establishment, Nerv?’
‘Absolutely none. These documents that talk about funding to Nerv are totally false.’
‘Sir, do you feel this will affect you at this crucial point in your career?’
‘Absolutely not. In two weeks time this will all be revealed as a hoax, and we of Tokyo-3 can all focus on the rebuilding of our city.’
‘Lying bastard,’ Misato said to nobody in particular in the confines of her apartment.
‘Mister Keel, any comment on the Seele organisation?’
Keel’s face faltered for a second caught by few and dismissed by most, but Misato could see he was clearly distressed over that last remark.
‘No more questions.’ The sound of the video footage stopped, but for the handful of seconds that ran afterwards, it showed Keel place his hand over the microphone closed to him and turn to bark something quietly at one of the Second Sector agent by his side. The camera was returned again to the newscaster.
‘Other key figures rumoured to be associated with Seele and Nerv could not be found for interview. And now, for tomorrow’s weather...’
The picture flashed white, and then faded into a small white dot in the centre of the television set in Misato’s living room. Misato left out a single, solitary, contemptuous laugh.
‘It’s not that they couldn’t find anyone willing to talk,’ she remarked to the same nobody from before, as she glanced as a letter that had come, bearing the logo of the news station she had been watching and the words “Re: NERV” on the front. She contemplated it for a second, and then balled up her hand and crushed it.
‘It’s that we don’t want to be found.’
‘Shut it off’ was the order given. Words that Misato had been waiting for hear for over two months.
The various machines that had been supplying Asuka with sedatives deactivated themselves, uncasting their mechanical glow from the hospital room. After a few tense moments for Misato, Asuka’s eyes slid open. Misato then walked into the room, ready to welcome Asuka back to the world.
‘Mi...Misato?’ Asuka asked?
She nodded. _Good,_ she thought, _What they said about amnesia didn’t happen._
‘Misato...wh-where am I?’
‘You’re coming with me. You’re going home.’
Shinji stared at his face in the mirror, confirming that it was still the same face that had been staring back at him from the confines of mirrors for almost fifteen years. He turned his head to the side slightly, while still keeping his eyes locked with that of his doppelganger. He ran the back of his hand along the side of his face, hoping to confirm that he was still him, he was still Shinji Ikari...
However, just like always, it was never confirmed.
His hands touched that of a course beard, grown obviously by one beyond his years, but that was only natural, as Shinji was no longer Shinji. His hand touched something hard: it only took a second to register that it was the arm of a pair of glasses. His hand traced the arm around to the front of his face, obscuring his vision of himself in the mirror. He lowered his hand, knowing he was going to fear what he saw but still feeling compelled to do so. The face that looked back at him was no longer Shinji Ikari. The face that gazed back was that of Gendo Ikari. Shinji had become his father.
The sound of rushing blood was then the only thing Shinji could hear in the darkness, waking from his recurring nightmare. His blood pumped fast, his pores sweated heavy, and his mind raced at lightning speed. As he always did after the dream, he touched his hand to his face again, this time in the comfort of a fully conscious mind, and made sure he was himself again. Shinji took one last deep breath, and lay back down to wait for sleep to find him again. That night, as it did on all the other nights when he dreamed, sleep took its time finding him.
Kensuke sat at his desk in the rebuilt classroom of the rebuilt school, watching the slow trickle of students come into the room. Some he recognised, some he did not. He watched as Hikari Horaki walked in, with a mixed expression of joy and sadness on her face: the one that gave away she had been to visit Toji in the hospital just before school started. Watching that face, Kensuke could see part of the love she felt for his good friend. It transformed her normal and plain freckled-covered face into something that Kensuke thought was perhaps pure love, with almost ethereal beauty and radiance...
‘Asuka! You’re back!’
Kensuke snapped quickly out of his thoughts, and watched as Asuka Langley Sohryu, the original Red-Haired Terror, walk into the classroom with a semi-vacant expression on her face, one that didn’t even change when Hikari greeted her with a hug. She uttered a very soft hello to Hikari, walked past Kensuke without making any remarks, and sat down next to Rei Ayanami. Kensuke instantly though Asuka was possessed.
‘Hey, Class Rep...’ he said, calling Hikari over.
‘Yes?’
‘What’s with Asuka? She seems a little...different...to say the least.’
Hikari leant close to Kensuke and lowered her voice. ‘Asuka’s had a tough time recently, so if you could just be nice to her until she’s a little better.’
‘Oh...okay. Hey, Hikari...’
Hikari pausing in pulling away from Kensuke’s desk and returning to hers. ‘Yes?’
‘Do you know when Toji’s getting out of the hospital?’
That face Kensuke was admiring a moment ago flashed across Hikari’s face of a second.
‘Soon...soon.’
‘Asuka? Are you alright?’
‘Go away,’ came the response to Hikari’s words to the bundled up student in the corner.
‘Asuka...I’m only here to try and help.’
‘I don’t need any help.’ Her tone suggested otherwise.
Hikari, who had spent the most time with Asuka between the time after the Fifteenth Angel and before she had been relegated to the hospital, thought she might have some idea what Asuka wanted to hear.
‘Asuka...it’s okay to cry. It’s okay toe be hurt. It’s okay to be...human. That’s what we all are. There’s no need to keep yourself hidden any more.’
Hikari put a hand on Asuka’s shoulder to comfort her.
‘And no matter what, I’ll always think you’re a good person, Asuka.’
Asuka’s chest heaved and shook, and Hikari could hear the soft sounds of Asuka letting herself cry in the comfort of a friend.
‘Misato?’
‘What is it, Asuka?’
‘Do you think I’m a good person?’
Misato turned to face the girl with the hollow expression on her face in the silence of her living room. ‘Yes. I do.’
‘Even if I can’t pilot my Eva?’ she asked without taking her eyes off the window that led to the balcony.
_My Eva...she’s calling it her Eva again,_ Misato thought absently.
‘The Eva didn’t make you any more or less of a person, Asuka. No matter what you do, you’ll always be a
_daughter_
good person to me.’
After a long pause, Asuka finally asked again: ‘Misato?’
‘Yes?’
‘Could you hold me?’
Misato stood, not saying a word, and sat next to Asuka to put her arms around her shoulders, cradling her close like a mother would to a child who had just woken from a bad dream. She felt Asuka tremble slightly in her embrace, and at about the same time she realised Asuka was crying, she felt the moistness on her own cheeks, and knew she was crying too.
Hikari paused in the final corridor of the hospital she had to travel through to see Toji every morning as a nurse with an empty wheelchair passed her by.
‘Um, excuse me...’ she started.
‘Hmm? Yes?’ the nurse asked, sounding a little puzzled at why his routine had been disrupted by the girl in the school uniform.
‘Could you tell me...is that wheelchair for the occupant in...that room up there?’ Hikari asked, pointing.
‘That’s where it’s going,’ he replied, in the perfunctory way of someone being distracted while concentrating.
‘Please...could I take it in?’
‘Look, I...’ the nurse began, and then he looked up from the chair and into Hikari’s gaze. A sigh, then a smile crossed him. ‘Alright. Just don’t tell anyone I let you.’
‘Thankyou so much!’ she exclaimed, giving the nurse a quick and fierce hug before almost running the rest of the way up the final corridor.
The morning light had barely begun to break into Toji’s room when he heard a knock on the door.
_Strange,_ he thought, _The nurse’s hardly ever knock._
He took his eyes away from the blank television screen that hung above his bed and led them to the doorway, where he was greeted with the sight of a very familiar face, followed by the sound of a very familiar voice.
‘I’ve got a surprise for you, Toji...’
Rei Ayanami stared at herself in the bathroom mirror. Rei Ayanami stared back at her. However, she wasn’t sure if the Rei that was looking at her was the same one that had told the former Head of Operations at Nerv she had no place to stay while the rain came down around her. She could almost feel herself changing, growing, becoming, with each passing day. It was a very alien and terrifying experience, yet also it was something she anticipated each day. Almost all of the memories that had clouded her mind before - a barren room, a giant of steel, a man with glasses and his frightened son - had faded out, and were being replaced with newer, more recent, more correct ones: school, Misato Katsuragi, Asuka Langley Sohryu. Every so often, Rei would think of these people she knew in a different way, and quickly it would dance out of her mind’s grasp and be forgotten as déjà vu, a term that Rei did not know of yet but would have no doubt been fascinated with: the idea of seeing an action already performed, perhaps by one’s soul in a past existence.
The apartment was silent. Asuka would be at her therapy sessions until night fell, and Misato would be there with her. Asuka also had a support group she participated in, which was for young girls who had been raped. It had been recommended for her when she had still been at the hospital, as what she had experienced was very similar...no, almost identical to rape: the only difference being that she was raped of the mind, not the body.
_Ridiculous,_ Rei thought into the mirror. _How can one be raped of the mind?_
But her mind insisted that is was the most apt description, and so she adhered to it.
This was also something that Rei was experiencing new: that of questioning herself and her surroundings. She did not know that she had never done this, only that the concept seemed unfamiliar, stilted. At Nerv, a place that only came to her now in dreams, she had had little contact with the outside world. She lived alone. She knew of only Eva and the Commander. School was irrelevant to her, for it did not matter what actions she took there, as they would have no consequence. But now, in what her mind was beginning to accept as what had always been, she lived with Misato (_Major Katsuragi_) and Asuka (_The Second Child_). Her essence was feeding itself on every experience that she had in her new environment, making her grow, changing her being. Now, if she spoke in the classroom, somebody would respond. If she cooked a meal well, she would be praised. If she stayed silent, Misato would be concerned.
_Nobody has ever been concerned for me before...it is...nice. I feel protected here. I feel...at home here._
Rei continued to stare at herself until the droning of the crickets ceased as darkness fell across Tokyo-3.
-A year passes-
Rei looked at her reflection in the mirror, amazed at what she saw before her. Her hair had been dampened slightly and combed back, with only slight wisps of her normally-overbearing fringe remaining. Her lips had been covered in pale lipstick, which now stood out from the rest of her face. Her shoulders were bare except for the thin straps that supported the midnight blue dress Asuka had let her borrow. Her feet were propped up on high-heeled shoes.
‘So...what to you think?’ Asuka asked from behind her.
‘I don’t recognise myself,’ Rei said, stunned, and Asuka couldn’t help smiling.
‘I only wish...’ Rei said softly.
‘What?’ Asuka asked, mishearing.
‘Hmm?’ The memory of a face seeped out of Rei’s mind, a phantom image that was quickly forgotten.
‘You said something...didn’t you?’
‘Oh...do I have to wear these shoes?’
Rei leant in close to Hikari from across the table as Toji and Satoshi left and whispered sharply to her, ‘Do you think he likes me?’
Hikari smiled. ‘Yes.’
‘Really?’
‘Yes.’
‘I’m not...doing anything wrong...am I?’
‘No...but you might want to let him put his arm around you when he comes back to the table.’
Rei smiled, and then sat back into her chair.
‘What’re you going to do on the team now?’ Satoshi asked Toji. Toji grinned at him.
‘I’ll be the team mascot.’ Satoshi and Toji shared a short laugh, but he quickly sobered. ‘No, as soon as my prosthetics some in, I’ll be back on the court.’ He looked up at Satoshi and grinned again. ‘And ready to kick your sorry butt any time, anywhere.’
‘Always so sure of yourself, huh? I guess that’s what Hikari sees in you, ‘cause I certainly can’t figure out why she hangs around a big dumb lunk like you.’
A grin crossed Toji’s face again, and glanced back at the table where Hikari and Rei were sitting. ‘So...what do you think of Rei?’
Satoshi now looked where Toji’s gaze was, and said, ‘She’s nice. A little quiet, but nice. And _very_ pretty in that dress.’
A few moments were spent in silence until Toji said, ‘C’mon...let’s return to our lovely ladies.’
‘I had a great time tonight, Rei.’
‘Me too,’ she said, smiling as she looked up at Satoshi.
‘Well...I guess this is goodnight,’ he said as they reached the door of Misato’s apartment.
‘...Goodnight,’ Rei said, noticing that they were both hesitant to separate.
Satoshi bent down a little to give Rei a goodnight kiss, a first-date kiss, her first kiss. Their lips brushed for a moment...then pressed together for a moment...and another...and another...
Rei felt Satoshi’s hands draw in to hold her close, and she responded by clasping her hands around the back of his neck. She was warmed by the heat radiating out of his body on the cold night as he held her closer to his chest. The door to Misato’s apartment pressed against Rei’s back as both she and Satoshi found their balance resting against the structure. Their kiss broke, and as Satoshi’s lips touched the skin of Rei’s neck, she dug her fingers into his back in a sudden burst of lust that had replaced the love created inside of her a moment ago. The kiss outside the door by the glow of the moon had awakened a raging beast of an emotion from inside heart, one that had gained the taste of blood and craved and hungered for more...
‘Rei? Is that you? I thought I heard something out here...’ came the voice from inside the apartment as the door slid open. Rei instantly began to grab at the door frame for balance, but faltered as Satoshi was pulled down on her by the tangle their feet made, and finally both fell on each other.
Misato, caught in a rare situation, was lost for words. Asuka, who had come into the hallway to see what had made the noise, saw Satoshi lying on top of Rei, both with a bright red colouring creeping across their faces, and began screaming in mock-horror, ‘Perverts! You haven’t even finished your first date and you’re already on top of each other!’ Her furious expression held for a second, and then was ruined by Asuka collapsing into the hallway, laughing and adding to the red flush on Rei and Satoshi’s faces.
------------
ZzzzZzzzZzzz...huh? What? You're still here? So...love it? Hate it? Want to lynch me? (it has happened) Want to build me a shrine? (that, however, hasn't...yet
) What do you think?
Located in Australia, please.
