Ignis Aurum Probat [Neon Genesis Evangelion]

[shadenight123]

Chapter Thirty-Eight: "a caelo usque ad centrum"

It wasn't that Shinji had never shared an apartment with someone. He had gone to University after all, and shared the rooms offered to the students with other classmates, and more than once found something horrible going on in the kitchen sink that pleaded death, more so with his biology classmates than not. He had memories of fungi, fungi growing where no fungi should ever grow, but since they were fungi, they didn't care about the common perception that no, the dish rag was not the appropriate place for them to grow.

He had seen sponges return to their animal-like carnivorous selves worthy of a prehistoric environment, and had battled the dirt and the grime that could infest only the corners of rooms that had never seen the light of a cleaning for a whole year. He had survived. He had grown strong. He had written more than a couple of thesis on new species of fungi.

Even so, sharing an apartment with a trio of females wasn't doing wonders for his sanity.

He'd survive though, even if finding a moment for himself was starting to get harder and harder with each passing day. The next Angel attack hadn't yet been detected by the Magi, and thus the days followed one after the other in a routine made of training, acknowledging of limits and hard-fought battles against empty beer bottles and penguins.

Pen-Pen squawked indignantly as he flapped his penguin wings, gazing up at Shinji. The professor of biology looked down at him, and then sighed. "What happened, Pen-Pen?" why was he talking to the penguin? Ah, yes, because the penguin was one of the few people in Shinji's life that made some sort of sense out of everyone around him.

Pen-Pen pointed his wing at the fridge, and opened it up to reveal the absence of any form of canned sardines. Shinji sighed, and brought out his bloc notes. "I'll add them to the shopping list." Pen-Pen nodded, happily warking as he hopped off with a beer held by his two penguin arms while Shinji scribbled down the rest of the stuff he had to buy.

"You'd be a fine house-husband," Rei said offhandedly, arms crossed in front of her chest as her back was against the kitchen's wall.

"I'd be a horrible house-husband," Shinji replied. "About..." he said nervously, "My father and I, we had a talk and...I don't know. I think you're your own person, Rei," he said in the end. "That's...not really the big speech I had planned on self-determination and finding out one's true self but..." he awkwardly coughed, "I just wanted you to know that nothing has to change between us."

Rei raised an eyebrow. "So the fact that my face is a perfect replica of your mother would not impede the realization of every single Oedipus-suffering man's dream of sleeping with their mother?"

Shinji choked on his spit, "That's—I don't plan on sleeping with you! N—Not that you're not someone I wouldn't sleep with if I wanted to, but I don't want to, because—well, regulations! I'm sure there are regulations about it." He gasped for air, his face red and his hands grasping at invisible straws in front of him.

"Yes, of course," Rei said. "Perhaps you should have a night out at a bar," she continued. "I would have to be present, but I am sure you could find a one night stand if you applied yourself."

Shinji did not immediately answer, and in the end, decided not to answer to begin with. As he pocketed his shopping list and made to leave, his cellphone and that of Rei both rang as the door of their apartment opened up to reveal section two agents ready to escort them down to the high speed train that would lead them directly into Nerv's hangar bays. Shinji had barely the time to flip his phone open and push his ear against it before he was roughly escorted out, the voice over the phone that of Misato explaining the situation.

"We have a problem," she spoke through the phone as Shinji ended up sitting on one of the train's seats, two pairs of belts crossed over his chest. He had an inkling that he wouldn't like the speed at which the train was going, nor Misato's next words, but he didn't need to ponder about it for long.

The train accelerated at a speed more similar to a rail-gun firing a bullet than a train actually increasing in speed, and just as quickly as it had begun, it abruptly ended in turn. His cellphone flew in the air, his grip on it slipping, and shattered against the floor in a hundred pieces. He belatedly managed to pry himself out of the seat belts and stumble through the open doors, Rei following him quickly and silently.

"The Magi are detecting a fast-descending object that pings the pattern Blue," Misato spoke from the train platform, giving a curt nod to two agents by her side. "We have two minutes."

"Wait. Two minutes for—" Shinji didn't even get to finish his sentence, because he was hastily stripped -more like, his clothes were ripped out from him as he was slammed on a trolley and pushed up the ramp to the Evangelion's entrance cockpit. "W—Wait!" he shrieked. "What is going on!? What—What's happening!?" his screams weren't met with answers, but as he was literally dunked into the entry plug, he gasped at the LCL already half-filling the seats. By the time he actually understood what was going on, his Evangelion had been hastily ejected out of the ramp and onto the still chaotic streets of Tokyo Three. Even though the buildings had begun to collapse, it was clear that the casualties would be high, even without an Angel's appearance.

Shinji could see the tiny shapes of humans running away, and while he couldn't hear their screams, he was sure that this sudden, abrupt ejection of the Evangelion had crashed a couple of buildings along the way. Whatever was going on, they were pressed for time.

"One minute and fifteen seconds! Rush North-West on the double, forget the battery life and everything on your path!" Misato yelled, "Hurry, or we're all going to die!" to that order, it wasn't like Shinji could stop and think, and so he rushed forward. He nimbly jumped, trying his hardest to keep himself from crushing the people down below, some too scared to even move.

There was no time, but even he had no idea what they were running up against. "Misato-there's nothing in that direction!" Shinji yelled as he ended up by the outskirts of the city, his eyes wide. "There's nothing around us!"

"Major, there is nothing here," Rei said too, Shinji's eyes doing their hardest not to look at her image in the video feed. While it cut off before reaching any unsavory bit, it was still a bit too much to look at, especially when they were currently busy trying to understand what was going on.

"It should be there!" Misato snapped, "The Magi are showing us—send them the satellite video feed, Ibuki!"

"Yes ma'am," Maya said crisply through the audio feed, and suddenly a bird view of the world appeared in front of Shinji's screen, revealing a descending mass of light and brilliant orange colors and flames, twisting as hexagon-shaped AT-Fields seemed to encompass its being, increasing its speed.

"You need to find that Angel and stop him using your combined AT-Field! And you need to be quick about it, because it's coming down—"

"But there's nothing out here," Shinji stressed, looking around. "An object at that speed-"

"Thirty seconds to impact!" Misato barked, "Find it, now!"

His eyes moved to the ground, and then around it. His eyes widened. "It's not North West! It's South East!" he yelled as he suddenly lunged in that direction, the clouds having parted away abruptly, even though nothing appeared in Shinji's visor. "The feeds are all wrong!" he roared, "They're all wrong!"

"What? Shinji—" the Major began to say, only for Rei's voice to cut in.

"Shinji is right, I'm looking at the Angel right now," she added, her appearance in the video feed of her entry plug empty.

"Rei, get back into your entry plug!" Misato's voice didn't reach Shinji's ears as he pumped everything he had into his legs, screaming hoarsely as he suddenly slid against the ground and thrust his arms upwards, a shrill scream leaving his lips as what felt like a miniature sun, with all of its mass and not just its heat, abruptly materialized over his crackling video sensors. The giant eye of the Angel stared deep into Shinji's own crying ones. The LCL evaporated as the impact shattered and pulverized Shinji's—the Eva's arms, the AT-Field collapsing like a castle of folded cards, the pressure so great it sent the Eva to plummet down below.

Twin robotic feet slammed home into the side of the miniature sun just at the right time. A second too late, and the Angel would have continued down its path, shattering the Evangelion's core and the entry plug. Instead it diverted its course just that tiny amount that it took away the lower body of the Eva, making Shinji's body convulse from the sudden sensation of having his lower legs ripped out from him by what fell like a road roller.

Waves of heat vaporized the grass, the landscape turning into a molten mixture of slag and glass which shattered thoroughly as the Angel abruptly flapped its twin-eyed wings of flesh and twisted into non-Euclidean geometries, reappearing as if by magic a few hundred kilometers over their heads.

"It..." Rei whispered, "It folded space."

"The Magi are not responding—" Misato said, only for static to take over her video feed, static which was soon replaced by a strange creature without a head, in shape similar to a human torso with dark red blotches over its skin and wires emerging from both its upper and lower parts.

"No..." Rei said, her eyes wide as her breathing hitched. She grabbed on to Shinji's half-torn Evangelion, hoisting the Eva up with her arms. There were two Angels, not one, and one had managed to infiltrate deep within the Geofront to the point of interfacing with the Magi system. One was high in the sky, the other deep below ground and-and she had to deal with them, because if she didn't, then...

Then Shinji would die.

In the right corner of her video feed, the clock of her battery life kept ticking.

Only, abruptly, rather than tick down from one minute to fifty-nine seconds...

...it began to tick upwards.

 

[shadenight123]

Chapter Thirty-Nine: "Bella detesta matribus"

There was silence inside Rei's head. There was no anger in her mind, no deafening scream left her throat. The Evangelion that was the home of a soul like hers, and yet so different from hers cried in her stead.

She was the clone of a failure. She wasn't the original Rei, had never been an original person, and perhaps would never be an original human.

Yet, did it matter if she was a fake or not?

Perhaps it was the instincts of a mother shielding her son, or of a friend protecting another. Perhaps it was something else. She didn't know. She knew that as the Angel looked down upon her with its lonely eye, she felt its judgment. The creature was waiting. It looked at her, and it waited for the battery life to drop down, or so it thought. Unfortunately for him, it wasn't going down. No, it was rising like the tempo of her heartbeat as she gingerly propped down Shinji's Evangelion on the ground, placing herself atop it.

"You won't hurt him any more!" she cried, her voice an echo that rippled through the air. "Do you hear me!?"

Sahaquiel perhaps heard. Perhaps it did not. Its giant eye had cracks over it, proof that Shinji's sacrifice hadn't been in vain. Yet blood burst out from the cracks, drenching the land in a crimson rain as the flesh split apart into countless glittering strands of floating silk-like ribbons around a burning core. The ribbons spun in the air following no discernible pattern, forcing Rei to lunge forth in one direction in an effort to pin one of the ribbons down with a progressive knife freed from one of her shoulder pylons.

The ribbon didn't shatter, as much as twist out of the way as the sharp weapon sliced apart her midriff neatly in half, a gasp of sheer agony leaving her mouth as blood dripped copiously down from the cut. The flesh of her Evangelion burst in bubbles of gangrenous growth, preventing the two sides from separating as Rei's eyes closed, her teeth gritted to the point where she could hear them nearly break from the pressure of holding the whole thing together.

Her fingers dug into the offending appendage of the Evangelion, and even as they were cut and she screamed, she still kept pushing, bringing down the Angel from the skies where it now rested, uncaring and unwilling to abandon its vantage point. The ribbons cut into her body, not just her Evangelion, but also her physical body. She knew pain, but she did not stop. The ribbons diced her flesh, but where her own failed, that of the Evangelion held on, and where her body refused to continue, her other body instead kept soldiering on.

This wasn't the pain of birth. This was just a passing agony. She had felt it, true pain, and it had been a long time before. It was a memory that belonged, and yet didn't belong, to her. Her Evangelion was howling, screaming and leaking tears of blood as she saw her fingers float in the LCL in front of her, in the leaking capsule that was a mixture of broken metal and growing flesh.

If this was how she died, once more, then she accepted it.

The final pull brought the dazzling core of the Angel within range of her other arm, which twitched, but didn't respond. She howled as she felt it break, shatter and reform. In an instant, her fingers melted against the pulsing supernova within the Angel's center. AT-Field spread from her fingers, the LCL thickened with her blood, her vision swam in darkness, and yet the glowing orb that could have been the Sun itself from how hot it was didn't explode.

It disappeared.

Rei stumbled as her Evangelion fell forward, only for a massive pressure to settle on her back and slam her on the ground, cracking it. Her eyes widened as she felt her spine, and that of the Evangelion who were one and the same, bend.

Sahaquiel showed no mercy in pushing its frame downwards, the crater in which Rei's Evangelion was sinking growing bigger by the second. Held beneath her, protected and yet crushed at the same time, was Shinji's own Evangelion. What kind of failure was she?

She had failed thirteen years ago.

She was going to fail again.

She was going back into the deep, dark and cold place of a tomb in all but name.

She didn't want to go back in the dark.

She didn't that.

No. No, she didn't want that.

She didn't want that at all!

It was her Evangelion's core which briefly pulsed as it touched that of Shinji's own Evangelion. It was a brief flash, a brief moment of instantaneous clarity. The electricity, the spark, that which danced across the orbs from one Evangelion's chest to another, it had a mind of its own, a soul of its own, a desire of its own.

Her mind burned for perhaps the first time. Her heart soared to levels she had never believed it would reach. She screamed with what little strength was left in her burning frame, in her twitching and broken limbs, and as she screamed, her Evangelion answered with a pulse of light, octagons of orange energy forming and spreading from her back like a tightly knit chain-mail which grew to encompass her entire being.

And slowly, but surely, with the determination of someone who would not bend, she stood back up on broken legs that burst and healed properly, the armor that composed her Evangelion melting off, the shackles and chains that bound the future of mankind breaking off as power was needed to prevent the extinction of its ancestor.

It was the pain of birth once more. Though this time, a new creature would be born. Perhaps. Perhaps it would be a stillborn.

It was beyond Rei's ability to ponder.

Right there and then, as she looked at the mass of cutting ribbons that seemed to coalesce back upon itself, that seemed to alter its form back to that of the cracked eye, only to reveal a bird-like form beyond it, one with spiraling arms and dark, foreboding eyes, Rei didn't care about what ifs and what would be.

"My name is Yui Ikari," she hissed through a voice that wasn't her own. "You hurt my son. Prepare to die."

Her right fist cocked back, and then extended forward.

A pillar of blinding, explosive light burst through the flesh and the body of the Angel, which screamed shrilly as more cross-shaped explosions ripped its body asunder. The Angel's AT-Field exploded, the buildings and the cracked molten slag rupturing wherever the caustic blood touched. Shivering, twirling spirals of energy tried to lash out in ribbon-like shapes for one final strike, one last moment of defiance.

The AT-Field from Rei's Evangelion blocked them, an impenetrable wall of force and power that refused to yield to anything, and anyone.

And then, with a final, sordid pop, the Angel was gone.

This time for good.

Rei's Evangelion sank down on its knees, its hands resting down on Shinji's own. Carefully, as if afraid to wake him up, she gingerly cradled the hulking behemoth with her own arms.

"Great work Ritsuko! Connection re-established—we dealt with the Angel on our end! What's the situation on yours, Rei?" Misato asked, her voice cutting through a buzzing feedback that was clearing up. "Judging by the silence and the lack of explosions...the Angel's gone? Sitrep, Rei, on the double!"

There was no reply.

Rei's cockpit was, after all, utterly empty.

AN: Blame @Strypgia

 

[Strypgia]

Once upon a time, Shade dropped in on A&T to provide some Dark Omake. I was compelled to write a WAFF response, and talked about doing the same in reverse with him here. I let myself forget about that for a while, but then a scene idea wouldn't leave me alone, so when a break in chapters in A&T came up, it seemed like the time had come for some sadness here. (And maybe it will get Shade back to writing this! )


Time Cannot Erase

+++

The glass of the tumblers clinked gently as Asuka set them down on the polished stone surface. She put the bottle of Shinji's favorite whiskey next to the two glasses. Well, in fairness, it was more her favorite whiskey, but he'd grown to at least tolerate it when they drank together, until it was more or less 'their drink' they had together, which suited Asuka just fine.

"Well, this isn't the best weather for us to sit and drink together, my love," Asuka said musingly, looking up at the threatening gray clouds overhead, "but I suppose we can't have everything." She sighed. "It's nice to sit down after a long day and talk to you anyhow." She dropped a couple of ice cubes into each tumbler and poured three fingers of whiskey into each.

She sipped half of hers in the first toast. "Ahhh... sweet little burn. See why I like this one, Shinji? 'Smooth, but firey inside, and a nice little kick at the end', isn't that what you said about it once? Then blushed so amusingly when I asked if you meant the whiskey or me?" She laughed, and refilled her drink.

The conversation went on for a while. Asuka told him about her day, warmth and relaxed intimacy at being with her husband filling every word. Shinji didn't say anything. Asuka was used to this, and wasn't upset by it.

The whiskey in the bottle had dipped towards half-empty before anything interrupted.

"This is not healthy, Soryu."

Asuka's hand tightened around her glass until her hand shook and her knuckles were white. "How about you fuck right off, First? I'm having a nice quiet drink with my husband. You were not invited."

"Soryu, you should not be-"

"Shut UP, First! I don't want to hear you or your snotty little-"

"He's been dead for over 200 years, Asuka..." Rei said gently.

The only sound in the graveyard was the distant rustle of dead leaves flung around by the wind.

Slowly, Asuka carefully put the now empty tumbler down beside it's mate on the gravestone. She left the half-empty bottle there, along with the untouched second drink she had poured at the beginning. She brushed a couple of leaves off the polished black marble of the gravestone that read Shinji Ikari Soryu, 2001-2028, Beloved Husband & Hero of Tokyo-3. She stood up smoothly, no sign in her motion or face that she'd drunk half a bottle of whiskey on an empty stomach, in a body that was forever not even 16.

She gave Ayanami a tired, hate-filled glare. "Go fuck yourself, First. Didn't you have anything better you could do than come harass me? Today, of all days? Our fucking anniversary? You couldn't leave me even that?" she said tiredly. She pulled her long, dark trenchcoat around her thin form a little tighter. The rising wind whipped her long red hair around her face, obscuring her features.

Rei just stared back at her, a bleak expression on her pale face. The wind ruffled the fur collar of her dark brown leather bomber jacket. She shook her head sadly. "I am aware of what day it is, Soryu. That is in fact why I came. I knew you would be here, doing something like this. I w-"

"I don't care if you think 'this isn't healthy'!" Asuka snarled at her. She balled her hands into fists that shook at her sides. "One hundred days! One hundred fucking days! That's all we had together! One hundred days from the happiest day of our lives until I was a God damned widow!" Asuka dropped to her knees for a second to pick up a small stone. She rose again to fling it at Rei, striking her in the chest. "How dare you tell me I can't spend a little time talking to my husband, like I should be doing right now! Like I should have been able to do every day for the last 223 years!" Tears slicked her cheeks now.

Rei didn't react to the stone. "I'm sorry."

"Like Hell you are! He chose me! Me! He said yes and married me and we were happy and then that fucking Angel came..." Asuka stopped, swallowing hard.

"You think I would ever forget, Soryu?" Rei replied quietly. "He died saving us both. And yes, I was envious. I loved him too. But he chose you, and all of NERV could see how happy you both were."

"So why are you here, First? Is your only happiness seeing how miserable I am without him? If you are just here to play ficken Ghul, you can piss right off and leave me alone with him."

"Because I know he would not want you to do what I know you are here to do. Because I know what you have in your pocket," Rei said without inflection.

Asuka's shoulders slumped. "You fucking busybody," she said tiredly. "You can't even let me have that?"

"Soryu-"

"It never fucking stops hurting, First. Never. Not for one goddam second in 223 years. He said yes, he loved me, and we had eternity together ahead of us. I even promised him I'd stop being a bitch to you and be good, since we all had years on years ahead with each other." She put her hand on the top of the headstone and leaned heavily against it. "I'm just so damn tired..."

"You are not alone, Soryu. Myself, the others at NERV-" Rei began.

"What 'others', First?! Shinji's dead! Misato's dead! Gendo and Ritsuko and everyone we fought with are dead! Their kids are all dead! Their grandkids are all dead! There is no one left in this world but you and me that remember his face or his voice or anyone else back then. Just you and me, the immortal ghosts at the feast, forever reminding people that see us that a secret cabal of lunatics once tried to play god! And I am sick and tired of it!"

Thunder grumbled in the distance and the wind kicked up another notch. "I know you doing this would make him sad, Soryu. Please do not."

Asuka looked away from her, at the approaching storm. "You're just afraid of being truly alone. And I just want to see my husband again." She pulled the small black handgun out of her pocket. She cradled it loosely in her hand, pointing it at the ground beside the grave.

"There has to be another way."

Asuka shook her head slowly. "You don't think I've tried, First? I spent 24 years getting a PhD and pushing at the edges of physics in the desperate hope I could somehow invent a time machine, in the hope I could go back and save him."

"A time machine?" Rei said, raising an eyebrow.

Asuka frowned at her. "I told you, I tried everything. It even worked. It was just useless."

"What?"

She looked back at the storm. "I ended up building two, actually. The first one can't go any further back in time than the moment it was completed, so it's kind of useless unless I really wanted to revisit spring of 2147 again. Which I don't. And the second one... all the math works, but there's the slight problem that the wormhole isn't stable unless I can channel at least five percent of the Sun's annual output worth of energy into it, so fat lot of good that is." Asuka looked back at Rei. "So yes, First, I looked for other ways. While you were sitting on your ass. So unless you've got a working time machine of your own in your back pocket or something, I'm again going to kindly ask you to fuck off and let me take the only way out our stupid, ageless bodies will allow me."

"I am not here to stop you because I fear being alone, Soryu."

"So why, then? It can't be because we're such close friends," Asuka said bitterly. "Get to the point. My husband is waiting for me, and I've missed him for too long."

Rei cocked her head. "Do you think I've been idle? I told you, I loved him too. He may have chosen you, but I would... I want to see him again too."

Asuka glowered at her. "What, you've got a working time machine in your back pocket?"

When Rei did not say anything after a moment, Asuka's frown deepened. She raised the pistol and aimed at Rei. "I swear to fucking Gott, First, if you are fucking with me I will shoot you first. This is not a topic to jerk me around on."

Rei didn't even flinch. If anything, the look she gave Asuka was almost annoyed. "Come on, Soryu. Have you forgotten I am more than I appear? As if mere bullets can threaten me?" A momentary flicker of a transparent orange octagon flashed in between them.

"Get to the damn point, bitch." Asuka still lowered the gun.

"I have been... exploring what my greater body can do. I have told no one, not even the R&D staff at NERV or the caretakers that are even permitted near Lilith's chamber. But... there are certain... facets of quantum mechanics that AT-Fields at high strength can affect. I have... achieved repeatable, stable feeds of unprecedented levels of negative energy and reverse causality. I have made only limited progress, but if you truly have a fully mathematically worked out wormhole process..."

"I do."

"Then we may have something worth exploring."

Asuka did not look very convinced. "What's the point? My research on the first time machine kind of confirmed that the past is an unalterable quantum monoblock. Unless we create a stable time loop, there's no point. And you and I both remember him dying. I held his body!"

"The systems once employed to record my mind and copy it for the Dummy Plugs and my clones have advanced considerably since those versions. A portable, rapid model is available for emergency medical use on the dying. We have Shinji's DNA still on record. And as Lilith, I can salvage and hold his soul. If your wormhole work combines with my negative energy studies effectively, we may be able to... save enough of him to resurrect him here on our return. We just stay unobserved and the past is as we remember it. We will still have the past two centuries of pain to withstand, but..."

"We'd have him back. Mind, body, and soul. My Shinji," Asuka breathed. She clamped her eyes shut, but a steady flow of tears escaped anyway. "I swear on his grave, First, if you are lying to me one bit, I will kill you slowly."

"Have I lied to you even once since his death?"

"No. Which is why you're not bleeding from a dozen gunshot wounds already." Asuka put the gun away back in her pocket. "Alright, I'm in. There is nothing I won't try to be able to see him again... Rei."

Rei smiled very faintly. "Nor I. You are not the only one who misses him. You never have been."

Asuka lovingly brushed her hand across the tombstone one more time, then walked towards Rei. "He's still mine," she said, walking past the blue-haired clone.

Rei fell in step next to her. "I stop you from putting a bullet through your head, offer you a chance at saving him, and you still say I can't even lay a finger on him?"

Asuka snorted. "Rei, if this works, I'll even let you have a full damn night with him. But he's still my one and only husband, and I'm keeping him. Now let's go break spacetime and save him."

"It will not be that simple. This could take years to get the process to work," Rei cautioned.

"All we've got is time, Blue. I don't care if this takes decades if it means I'll get to feel him in my arms again at the end."

"Then let us begin."

Thunder grumbled again as the two ageless ex-Pilots walked out of the graveyard overlooking the city of Tokyo-3 and the valley lake below. It was softer now. The storm had diverted east, and rain no longer threatened.

+++

Well... that got a little longer than I expected. Not bad for 4 hours.

 

[shadenight123]

Chapter Forty: "Astra inclinant, sed non obligant"

Shinji was pretty sure he was always put in the same room. It was either that, or the hospital had perfectly identical rooms. Since it was a hospital, that option was to be taken into consideration too, he reckoned. His body didn't hurt. It was surprising that whenever he woke up, he wouldn't hurt. Normally he'd be in a world of pain; however now that he took the time to think about it, he wasn't even drugged.

Perhaps some kind of synthetic drug designed to dull nerve response but not cause drowsiness had been invented, and kept quiet by Nerv? Was there a cure for cancer hidden somewhere inside the Magi system? Was he really a cloned entity of Shinji as Rei...

His vision blurred slightly at the thought. His head took that as the cue to hurt. Gritting his teeth, hissing softly against the back of his right hand, he tried to piece together the last moment of the battle against the Angels. He remembered...

He remembered trying to catch a sun, and fail at that. He remembered walking on the surface of the sun for a brief instant, into the core of a newborn star, and then the pitch-black darkness of unconsciousness had claimed him firmly, leaving no other memories for him to grasp.

"Rei must have dealt with the Angel herself," he muttered.

"You shouldn't move yet," a polite voice spoke from the side of his bed. Shinji's eyes glanced to the humanoid figure, a coat-wearing doctor with a bald head and a small honest smile. "You've suffered intense neurological damage." He gestured at a glass filled with pills by the side of his bed. How had he not seen those before? "You should take some. The term 'frayed nerves' isn't something I'd consider literally, but in your circumstances, Mister Ikari, it applies to a surprising degree."

"I...I didn't see you come in," Shinji muttered.

The doctor simply nodded. "I suppose I always forget how you creatures of Lilith do not possess the ability to fold space." The doctor was now sitting on a chair. Whether it was because the chair had appeared, or because he had called for it in existence, a sense of dread filled Shinji's soul. "Please, do not be alarmed," the doctor spoke. "If I had wanted you dead, you would have already ceased existing."

"I..." Shinji swallowed. "What...what happened? You're...you're an Angel?"

The doctor inclined its head to the side. "We are emissaries of a higher will, if that is your definition." He looked down at his hands.

Shinji eyed the doctor warily, no, the Angel. "If...if you could communicate like this...why didn't you do this before?"

"Would you be able to communicate with monkeys, Professor Shinji?" the Angel spoke. "Would you be capable of talking of philosophy, history, or abstract events with living beings who believe throwing their own biological refuse to be something fun?"

"Then...are you using sign language right now?" Shinji asked, his mind reeling from the thought.

"The crudest version of it," the Angel nodded. "And we are talking to the likes of you because you are one of the few who would be able to understand us. The others...the first one broke when we tried, spoke too hard perhaps, shattered her...the second disappeared, subsumed into an entity of wrath...the third is puzzling to understand. You, the fourth, survived. We hope you may see reason."

The unsettling depths of his stomach seemed to churn out enough gastric juices to give off the sensation of being burned alive from the inside out. This kind of thing...he was the one initiating a first Contact of sorts with the enemy Angels. What did they do in movies? 'I'll have to bring it up with the President'? What was he supposed to say? What did they expect him to do?

"Why send the others to kill us?" Shinji asked. "Why attack Earth?"

"You are mistaken," the Angel spoke. "We do not attack. We do not kill. We cleanse and prepare. The Higher Will requires it of us; we obey."

"The...Higher Will?" Shinji furrowed his brows. "What are you even talking about?"

The Angel exhaled, his eyes closing for a brief moment. "It is...difficult to explain myself in small words meant for the likes of you," he opened his eyes again, stripes of black and white in place of his irises. "My identity is Leliel. I shall craft a firmament of darkness for the Higher Will to rest peacefully beneath. All shall fall in slumber, all shall rest. When they wake, they shall act as they see fit. This world...should rest."

"You're not making any sense," Shinji winced, pain lashing through his brain. "Look...you're just a soldier then? This...Higher Will...he's the one ordering you around?"

"The order has already been given. The tool obeys," the Angel, Leliel, spoke in a quiet whisper, which felt like the murmur of a river, the midsummer's pleasant night breeze, the smell of fresh grass. "All shall slumber. All shall rest. Once my task is completed, I will let the next tool awaken. The World must be prepared. The drop must fall; wisdom or foolishness, strength or weakness...the drop must fall, and what it produces is the Higher Will's order and desire."

"I...I don't understand," Shinji mumbled, the headache he was feeling growing tenfold by the second.

The Angel in front of him simply smiled. It was a sad smile. It was a pitying smile. It was a smile that meant sadness and grief. "Rest for now," the Angel said. "Let the pain go. Let the weary find succor. You have done enough. Close your eyes." The right hand of the doctor neared, the pain which was burning hot pokers through his brain now becoming something so all-encompassing that even screaming wouldn't suffice.

There the pain was. Through his entire body. Through his brain. Through his head. Through his skull. Through his bones. Through everything that composed him there was nothing but pain and agony. His beating heart pained him. His lungs burned him. His lips cracked. His tongue tasted blood.


Shinji Ikari woke up.

The dream he had disappeared from his mind.

Around him, the yellow liquid of the LCL stood visible. The cockpit of the Eva was like his, but also different. This was another cockpit. This was another's EVA. The memories flew, but he couldn't understand them. He was too hurt to understand them. There was a beeping noise. There was a silent reminder of something, something which he couldn't understand.

His brain was fuzzy. His tiredness encompassing all of his aching muscles. A hum, a drum, a buzz...strange sounds echoed through his ears like an alien lullaby that made him tired. Why didn't he just close his eyes? Why didn't he just fall asleep there and then, never to wake up?

What kept him awake? Why not wake up rested at a later date?

The Angel.

There was an Angel. He was inside an Eva he didn't recognize and there was an Angel to fight.

He...

Pilot Ayanami was lost in the line of duty.

It was a thought. It was a memory.

Your Evangelion hasn't been fully repaired.

It was a dark reality he didn't wish to remember. Dreams would help him forget. They would keep him happy. If only he rested in the arms of the Angel, he would never again need to suffer. He would know no pain, no agony, no despair; he needed but to sleep, to close himself off, to lock the doors and turn the windows down. To stay in the darkness, forever; to never again walk outside under the sun.

He didn't need the sun. He needed his dreams.

He needed...

Mister Ikari, do you like cream pies?

...The hell are you talking about!?

Sorry, sorry, this always makes my patients crack a joke when I say that line. Still, you like pies?

I...I guess?

Uhm...too weak of a reaction. Then, do you like hot chocolate? Cream? Ice-cream? Ramen?

I...I don't understand.

Well, my dear boy, what do you like? Answer me as honestly as you can. What do you like? What do you find entertaining? What are the things you can't help but want?

I...I don't know.

Then this won't do. It won't do at all. We're going to have to hit some restaurants along the way, won't we? Up you go and off we go.

B-But...aren't you supposed to be a therapist?

Yes, and? We are doing therapy right now, are we not? Humans are by nature social creatures, but when they get hurt by the people around them, they decide to close themselves inside their heads and houses because they're afraid of getting hurt again. They start to think that the world hates them, that they have no worth, that nobody loves them...and I say that the first step to change one's way of thinking such bad thoughts is to eat a good old hot pie. Some dessert, some sugary treat, some fried chicken nuggets or a Happy Meal even! Come on, Mister Ikari...you don't want to be miserable, or you wouldn't have come here. You want to be happy. You want to walk in the sun together with everyone else; you want to laugh, make friends, hang out, enjoy the weather...but you need a hand getting there, and I'm here to help you.

I'm...I'm scared. What if...what if I get hurt again?

Then you will get hurt again, but...the warmth of human contact is well worth all kinds of pain, isn't it? Humans are, as always...interesting creatures, are they not?

Shinji didn't know why he remembered the first meeting with his therapist, Doctor Schopenhauer. He didn't know why the darkness in the cockpit had grown. He didn't know why there was no air. Why the LCL began to cool, or felt like molasses to his throat.

He knew he was going to sleep.

Sleep would make everything...

Ah...Asuka is going to cry if she's left alone again, isn't she?

Sleep was good.

Who was going to feed Pen-Pen if not him?

Rest was important.

Rei died just like his mother did. Father might need someone to speak with.

He didn't need to leave.

I mustn't run away. I mustn't run away.

It's not I must not, Shinji. It's I Will Not.

Shinji's right hand moved. No, not Shinji's, but his Evangelion's did. The fingers pressed against a taut surface. The nails dug through. The liquid he was submerged in opposed his desire to leave, and so he grew angry. He growled. He roared. He slammed his aching body against the surface until it gave way, cracking apart as he landed on the ground on knees that weren't his, on giant palms that weren't his, on a surface of pitch-black darkness which bled like a living being.

The shadow that was Leliel collapsed. It shuddered and wailed, it cried and sang. It died.

It died in a shower of blood and thoughts, and as it did, it died smiling.

The Angel could rest.

The next one would soon come.

Before it did, though, Shinji had one important thing to do.

He had to grieve.

And then...then he had to move on.

 

[shadenight123]

Chapter Forty-One: "Caput inter nubila condit"

The pain was real. It was a dull throb. It echoed across his heart, stretched from his chest to the tip of his fingers. He felt cold, his eyes were distant. The corridors and halls of NERV seemed to have lost their light. The colors were faded insults to the memory of brightness they once held within his mind.

Death was an ever present facet of biology. Every dissected frog, every cut open plant that would dry up under the sun and die spoke of it. Filaments of DNA analyzed within miniature glass panels held the unspoken desire to live, but would inevitably die by the time the mixture they were in dried.

So insignificant were the humans to the Angels' will, that it was the same. Every frog killed for a laboratory exam, every leaf plucked and pruned from a hedge-those were human lives. How could the humans claim a high ground of morality, when they did the same? Yet, how could a human live, without necessarily taking from life itself?

The Angels were tools. Leliel called himself such; it did not act because it wanted to, but because it had to. There was a difference, a greater sense of self at work. It wanted the world prepared. Prepared for someone's arrival.

Or, considering the Angel's terms, something from outer space that clearly sought to make Earth its own.

Even so, his mind could not properly latch on to those thoughts. He was tired. He felt tired even after he slept in the same hospital room as his nightmares, even after he woke up in his bed within the apartment that while not empty, felt like it was missing one of its important people, and he could not understand.

His chest was in turmoil because his brain was in pain; Rei wasn't his mother, but he grieved her loss. Yet, at the same time, it felt bitterer to see another pale and blue-haired young woman emerge from the confines of Nerv.

It was Rei, but it also wasn't.

"Quatre," she said, simply enough. "You can call me that, professor Ikari."

She had no blame. She had not asked to come into the world as a clone of someone he considered a friend, and she had not demanded to be born from the same genetic material of his mother. She had asked for none of that, and she had no sins.

"The Unit Zero Zero's synchronization rate is stable," Doctor Akagi would later remark, "But Unit Zero One's core is unresponsive."

The Eva itself was alive, but soulless. This meant one thing only for Gendo Ikari. It meant one resolution for Shinji Ikari.

In one fell swoop, he had lost his father's interest. He had lost his place in the world. He had been kicked to the bottom, and ruthlessly, the boot had stomped harder still against his spine. There was nothing left of him that was useful.

He had nothing to grasp on to; he had no more value. His father handed him a plane ticket to return to his university in Germany. He did not belittle him. They had spoken, and opened up more than ever, but with his utility over, he wasn't needed anymore at Nerv.

He called ahead to notify his psychiatrist, and his voice must have broken through, because he did not remember how he got to the point where he ended up receiving a pep talk, but he distinctively remembered its end.

"Now, Shinji, that is a lie. Of course you have value!" Doctor Schopenhauer clicked his tongue against his teeth, "Look at all the successes you have achieved in your life; all the hard work you've done. It's not meaningless, it meant something. You are being pushed down by your surroundings, by your circumstances, but this does not mean you have to crawl on the ground and collapse."

Shinji breathed, but he did not feel like fighting anymore.

He was so tired. Incredibly tired.

Maybe Leliel had the right of it. Maybe, he should just sleep. Fall into an eternal slumber, to never wake up again, to let the Angels do as they wish and prepare this world for whatever future it held in the name of the Higher Will of theirs.

How did the Germans say it?

Lebensmüde, to be tired of life. To not want to keep on going. To surrender, quietly and softly, to silence.*

"I'm not getting through, am I?" his psychiatrist' voice was gentle, "You need to rest then, clear your mind. When you're more at ease, then we can talk again. Don't do anything you can't take back, kid. Take care of yourself."

It was in the silence after the phone call that Shinji closed his eyes. He closed them, and wept. Even adults shed tears for the misery of their human conditions. To be miserable was to be human; but that was not all that humanity was. He understood that when a wrecking ball the size of a young teenager with bright red hair slammed through his room's door, a construction safety helmet on her head and a heavy hammer on her shoulders.

"Listen up, Shinji!" she said, sharply and with firm determination in her eyes. "Come with me if you want to be happy!" she extended a hand towards him, but there was no second purpose in her gaze. This wasn't a shark, preying on someone bleeding in the ocean of their emotions. This wasn't some cruel attempt at one-upping a dead woman.

This was an act of unquestionable kindness.

"He said he didn't need me anymore!" Shinji yelled, the hammer slamming into the wall. Bits of paint flew in all directions, the wooden surface cracking and splintering. His arms were sore, and tired. His voice hoarse. He did not understand when he had begun to scream, only that he was screaming, and there was no stopping it now.

The pouring of the emotions shattered through the fog that clutched his mind. The burning heat of his anger suffused his limbs, the painful sting in his heart and chest didn't abate, but it burned now, it burned with a different feeling.

For he had fallen, and he had been ruthlessly stomped down further, but he was not defeated. He was not amidst the dead. He owed it to those who had died that their sacrifice would not be forgotten; he owed it to his own soul, to his own feelings and to his own heart. The old Shinji Ikari had died years before, the new one had forged his own path ahead, devoid of care for his own father's intentions or hopes.

The only dreams he cared about realizing would be his own.

"So," Asuka said with a smile, "Ready to leave for Germany together with me? I upgraded your ticket to first class, and got my own by your side."

He exhaled, sweat fell down his brows and his arms. "Thank you, Asuka, but I'm not leaving just yet."

Asuka stared at him, bright yellow safety helmet pushed to the side and heavy hammer on the ground. "You can't pilot anymore now, can you?"

"I can't pilot Unit Zero One," Shinji admitted. "But I am sure there is another Unit that I can drive."

"What is it with that bearded mother-daughter walking fetish that has everybody's desires twisted around his gloved fingers?" Asuka muttered.

Shinji shook his head, "No," he said. "I'm not staying because of him. I don't want to fight because I need his approval."

"Oh?" Asuka arched an eyebrow. "If not for that, then why?" it was her voice that was unsure now.

"For myself," Shinji said. "I-I want to save the world. I think...I think that it would be cool if I did."

Asuka blinked at that peculiarly childish sentiment, and then a fit of giggling left her throat. She laughed, vicariously, at that. "Because it would be cool!?" she cried out, "Oh, yes, because that will be enough to get you back inside Nerv-"

Shinji chuckled nervously at that, "I know, but-I am sure something can be found."

Surprisingly, something was found.

A new Eva Unit, Unit Zero-Three, would hopefully be pilotable with the latest modifications by anyone capable enough with the commands.

What Shinji wouldn't know, was that Asuka herself had decided to attempt synchronization with it, but had most valiantly opted to step back, and let him have that one. He'd never know this; she might snicker at the sudden luck he had, but why would she need to flaunt herself further?

How pitiful that, in the end, Asuka might be the one to count herself lucky instead.

Bardiel would suffer humiliation no longer...

...for the Beast of God woken at last, would cast the world into a haze of death and wrath.

AN: *in the original first draft, this word was the 666th. Talk about coincidences.

As always, blame @Strypgia .

 

[shadenight123]

Chapter Forty-Two: "Natura non constristatur."

The fog spread. It was a thick, rolling bank of white. It consumed and engulfed the scenery. A cargo helicopter carrying a humanoid figure passed through it, and the fog was cut. A soft, puerile giggle echoed.

Then all was silence, and the fog dispersed. A tiny, blueish mushroom sprouted beneath the pilot's seat, and a breath was drawn.

In Nerv, Shinji was confident. The breaking of walls of the days before had actually put him in a good mood, and he smiled while waving to Asuka's figure, who was standing down below with a look that seemed equal part happy and also pained.

He knew he had to make it up to her. He didn't know how, but he might find a way through an internet search, or maybe he'd ask Toji or Kensuke. A sudden chill ran across his spine at the thought. He'd ask Toji. The man seemed like he had his head on his shoulders.

The EVA model looked like the old one, but this had been created with some manner of system that substituted for the soul of the deceased -technology could really reach into places humanity perhaps had no right to cross into- and seemed to actually power up and function.

The liquid he was surrounded in felt different. It wasn't as warm as the one in Unit Zero-One to begin with, it had a colder, more septic quality to it. The machine responded, but it didn't feel alive.

"Doctor Ikari," Shinji called out, offhandedly referring to Ritsuko, "Is there a way to change the hue of the monitors? I was used to orange, this...blue color, it's different."

Meanwhile, on a nearby ejection pod, the Unit Zero-Zero was at the ready, Quatre within.

From the opposite end, standing in the main control room as the EVAs readied itself for launch, Doctor Ritsuko frowned, a datapad in hand as she quickly skimmed through the Eva Unit Zero-Three's specifics.

"There's no mention of that," she said. "I'll have words with the technicians to tweak the hues later, but for now, are you ready for ejection?"

"Yes," Shinji said.

Ritsuko nodded, and the rocket-mechanism proceeded to push Unit Zero-One out. The testing would take place-

The Eva's arms slammed against the ejection mechanism's hole. There was a tremor, and then the Magi's alert for the presence of an angel blared. The Unit Zero-One's eyes shone of a pale blue light, and its mouth opened with a guttural snarl.

"Angel signal detected from Unit Zero-Three!" Maya yelled, the command tower's armored sections coming down as Unit Zero-Zero slammed without being ordered to into the newest Evangelion-turned-angel. "Codename-Bardiel!"

"Activate emergency pilot ejection," Quatre's voice came through clearly, "I will handle the Angel."

"What's going on!?" Asuka asked, even as around her a flurry of activity took place. The Evangelion she had been meant to pilot, which she had graciously left to Shinji to try, was now an Angel? And Shinji was inside it?

Her eyes were wide as she stared at the camera feed, at the Unit piloted by the wonder-doll's twin sister slamming its armored knee into the other Eva, and she winced. She knew that the feedback would be felt. She knew it, and yet she wondered why Shinji wasn't saying anything.

"Shinji!" Misato's voice echoed, "Shinji can you hear us!? What's going on in there!?"

Giggling came through first.

"H-Hello!"

The voice was childish. "Hello!" the voice repeated. "Hello!"

"Shinji?" Misato asked.

"We are-We are-We are we. We are Apostle." The voice was light, breezy. It was a child, singing a happy tune. It was a friendly voice, seeking to play catch in a field with other children.

It was innocent. It was naive.

The Unit Zero-One slammed one of its elbows into the guts of Unit Zero-Zero, forcing Quatre back as a prog-knife emerged from one of its shoulder pylons. Quatre's own knife came out, and both crossed blades in front of each other.

"Release mechanism is blocked!" someone bellowed in the command center. "We can't get him out!"

"Progenitor," the Angel-Child spoke. "Give us. us. Us. Progenitor. We return. Child. Of Lilith."

A brief silence followed as words were connected to meanings, and the end result became clear.

The Angel was holding Shinji hostage.

"There is no choice," Gendo Ikari's voice spoke with little doubt, and little hesitation. "We refuse."

The giggle erupted again. "Refuse? He will die. Son of Lilith. He will die."

"The Magi are detecting an air-born pathogen spreading in the air!" Maya's voice came through clearly from her console, "It's-similar to fungal spores! They're headed for the Geofront! Sir, we're being breached!"

"Quatre," Gendo spoke, and his voice held a tone that meant one thing alone. "Kill it. Now."

"No!" Asuka yelled, her voice cracking like a shriek of an adolescent, "there's your son in there, you monster!"

"Commander-" even Misato was against such an order. Ritsuko looked away; silence settled. It didn't last. In front of them, the knife-fighting was reaching its end. Quatre's skills were better than the Angel's own, and as it dug deeply into the mechanized thigh of its foe, a bellowing scream of pain echoed. Yet, a punch slammed against the Unit Zero-Zero's face, sending it to crash against the opposite wall.

A third arm had grown out of the Evangelion's back, and a fourth soon joined it.

"Why, why-why must you deny-" the giggling was fiercer still, a background noise. "Sons of Lilith. Unwanted. Undesired. Pests. Vermin to our Paradise. Return our Progenitor. Return him. Return Adam."

"We cannot waste any more time," Gendo said, flatly. "The life of the pilot is secondary to that of humanity. Get Unit Zero-Two out there-"

"What?" Asuka muttered, "My-You kept her?"

"The Dummy-Plug system will have to make do," Gendo finished.

"Understood," Ritsuko said. It was as she was tapping away on her Datapad that Asuka saw it, for the first time in a decade. The Eva she had piloted. The Eva that had been her pride, her joy, her downfall and her spiraling into a world of loneliness.

The EVA that had taken away her chance at love; her chance to grow, to let go of her past. The greatest of her life's failure was in its crimson splendor still standing on its own legs, still looking ahead as if the hatred within the system hadn't been there. It was whispering to her mind. It was being settled on the loading bay.

It would soon be freed from its restraints, and allowed to subjugate Shinji's Eva. They would kill it. They would kill him. He'd die.

And she'd be left alone again.

She'd be left alone, with no one else who'd ever be able to understand her.

No. She wouldn't allow that to happen. She had built the tunnel that connected the apartment to the Geofront. She had prepared the passages that led to the EVA loading bay for the pilots. She knew that under lockdown, she wouldn't be able to leave.

It was good that during her time as a wild party girl, she had learned how to steal keys from someone else's pockets. And how different was it, to take a security badge from the slovenly Major Katsuragi, who was tense and hurriedly looking at the screen, and then override the door's mechanisms with the woman's personal passcode?

Outside, there might have been spores of Angel origin. But it didn't matter to her; she was dead inside already. If they wished to feed on her still moving corpse, then she'd allow it.

As the door opened, she heard the screams of alert from within, but by then it was too late.

She was running on the metallic walkway, throwing caution to the wind as with a bellowing scream she roared to the very figure of the EVA standing ahead of her, with the gut-wrenching cry of someone who did not wish to be left alone ever again.

"You took everything from me, don't take him too! I need him! Do you hear me, mother!? Please!"

Her cries went unheard as the massive behemoth broke free from its restraints, the Dummy Plug doing its work as the crimson giant lunged forward, fist raised. With four arms to defend itself, but two enemy Evangelions attacking, the Angel had little hope.

Yet, with a mighty push, the crimson EVA ended up thrown back, straight against the walkway on which Asuka still stood. The orange-haired girl fell, a screaming leaving her lips as she plummeted into the void and the ground below.

"Mama!" Asuka screamed, "Mama!"

A giant hand grabbed hold of her. It was the hand of the EVA. It was the hand of her mother. The Evangelion Unit Zero-Two looked down at her. "M-mom?" Asuka whispered. "Please. I need your help. Please-" she sobbed, raucously. She thought she had outgrown the pain, the misery, the turmoil.

She had not.

The Evangelion's hand moved to its back, and as the dummy plug system violently ejected itself, Asuka stared at the LCL-filled container that she had spent years away from. She did not hesitate to jump in, the commands as familiar to her as the nightmare she had held.

"I'm sure-" Asuka whispered, "That your son-in-law is going to love us saving him."

"Langley!" the buzzing voice in the cockpit was from the Major, which sounded honestly angered by what she had done. "What you did-"

"I DON'T CARE!" Asuka snarled back. "I'm saving Shinji!"

"He might be dead already!" was the reply, "We've lost vitals-we've lost everything!"

"THEN I'LL GO TO HELL AND GET HIM BACK!" Asuka screamed louder still, her mother's fist rising up in a fist as she lunged forward. She had taken some self-defense classes in a variety of martial arts. To defend herself, and to ogle the men there. Also the women. She didn't judge. She didn't care.

It was a capoeira roundhouse kick which slammed into Bardiel's already wounded kick, and a Krav Maga hold which slammed its body face down on the ground. Her fingers slammed into the EVA's back, and as she pried the core off, ripping it with a squelching noise, she noticed how covered in a blue moss it was.

The moss seemed to breathe of a life of its own, and its filaments spread, violently so, towards her hand.

Her screen started to hue blue, and as Quatre's own Evangelion closed the distance, prog-knife in hand, Asuka realized she couldn't move.

She couldn't move as the prog knife impaled through her hand with a deadly sting of absolute pain, and shattered the container where Shinji was meant to be, safe from harm.

There was a loud, unsettling scream.

It was equal parts hers, and it also belonged to the Angel itself. Its last, spiteful heart-wrenching laughter which had nothing human left into it, but was wrong, utterly wrong. It was obscene in its madness, grating like nails dragging across chalkboards. It was a laughter that was a foreboding message of things to come, and which would not come lightly.

All that you cherish, I will take.
Not all is lost. Wake.
All that you are, I will unmake.
Not all is lost. Up.
Hateful Lilin. Monstrous Lilin. Deformed Lilin.
Not all is lost. Wake.
We shall reunite. You shall not.
Not all is lost. Up.
Weep then, Lilin. Suffer then, Lilin.
Not all is lost. Wake Up.
For we do not care about your tears. But I do. Wake up, Shinji.