Chapter Text
Looking out from Unit 01’s eyes, he saw it–the 10th Angel. Ayanami… no, Rei, was trapped in there. He was briefly informed on what would happen if he tried to save her. The end of the world…
Third Impact.
He stood frozen, completely still. He understood what would happen to a vague extent if he tried to save Rei. He was warned about it over comms, and in truth… it was hard to even listen to them in the moment. But his moment of derealization was over, and he looked at the world around him. Looked at the trees, the sun, the city beneath him, imagined Misato and Asuka and Kensuke and Toji, and…
Ayanami.
And he knew what he had to do.
Unit 01 walked forward, feet marching towards the inevitable. He raises an arm, and the angel attempts some sort of attack. A pure beam of light misses him, but he barely moves out of the way. He does the absolute bare minimum to miss, and plunges Unit 01’s hand deep inside of the angel’s exterior. He continues digging, feeling burning searing pain–probably from the angel’s attacks. Or maybe its blood was acidic, did angels bleed?
He didn’t care, he realizes. He’s not even there.
It didn’t take long to find it, with a military precision he grabs onto something hard and *crushes* it.
Shinji didn’t remember passing out.
“Ikari…”
“Thank you.”
Shinji woke up, unable to see out of his left eye. To his gratification he still *had* it, but it felt like being punched in he face–which he did have some experience in feeling. Actually, his entire left side hurt like hell. He strained to get up, but couldn’t handle his body weight with his left arm.
He collapses back down, now looking at the hospital light above him.
“This ceiling’s familiar…”
From the corner of the room, Dr. Ritsuko Agaki writes something down.
“Please don’t strain yourself, it’s a miracle you aren’t disabled right now.” Said a voice in-between a smoke, and Shinji could just barely see her with how limited his vision is.
“Did I… do it?”
Ritsuko looks down. Shinji can’t see her face, but he can see the smoke stopping for a second. She was thinking, unsure of what to say. Or was she just trying to think of the best way to manipulate him at the moment? He can never tell with NERV.
“As far as saving the world goes, that’s a tentative yes. Thank you for making the… responsible decision, Shinji.”
Shinji swallows nothing in particular. His mouth is too dry for that, but it’s a reflex.
“Did I…?”
Agaki cuts him off. “No.”
“Ah.”
Shinji stares. The topmost light of the hospital was very interesting this time of year.
Asuka’s hospital room was particularly cold. All NERV hospital rooms were cold, almost uncomfortably so–but Asuka’s specifically was set at a lower temperature than normal. Because of the effects of exposure to an angel, Dr. Agaki had noted. He isn’t sure how that correlates, but it wasn’t relevant. Asuka was in bed, barely wrapped in cheap hospital blankets.
Shinji sat down.
“Hi, Asuka.”
No response.
“I… we lost Rei today.”
The air stayed still.
“…we lost Rei today, Asuka. I feel horrible.”
“I think I had a choice. I know it’s silly, but in the moment I feel like I could have chosen her, or the world. Dr. Agaki briefed me on what happened, apparently I… prevented Third Impact. So that’s nice.”
“…”
“I think I’m–no, I’m done running away.”
Shinji stops averting his gaze and looks at Asuka in the face. She’s not conscious, but her one good eye is open, gazing off into nothing. He gets out of his seat and takes a step, tripping and falling on the bed. He slides off, kneeling onto the ground and crying. He struggles to pull himself up, only able to do so with his right arm–which already felt weak. He forces all of his will into his left arm, throwing it onto the side of the bed with an intense shock running up his nervous system.
He clasps Asuka’s hand, kneeling much like one would kneel to a god.
“Asuka,” He starts.
“I’m so, so sorry. So sorry that I couldn’t do anything before, that I was… useless. But I won’t be again. I won’t run away, ever again. I promise.”
Asuka stays silent, but Shinji steels his resolve–clasping on her hand like it’s his saving grace.
“I’ll be strong for you too.” He says, his left hand burning in agony as he grips hers. He doesn’t care, his pain doesn’t matter right now.
After what feels like hours, he unfurls his hands around hers and his arms drop to his sides–much like a doll with its strings cut. He looks at his left hand, his bad hand, and sees tears dropping down from his face. His palm is soaked with tears, and he doesn’t think to wipe it off as he smudges his face–trying to wipe away the wetness and failing.
Shinji sits down in the tiny hospital chair offered by NERV and pulls it up to the bedside. He cries himself to sleep, like a hawk watching their game. He wasn’t prepared to lose someone else, and in that moment promised himself that he never would again.
It had been two days since he had visited Asuka in the hospital. After staying in the hospital room for 48 hours–not eating and barely sleeping, Shinji was forced to leave by NERV staff. Misato watched him be dragged out, the boy kicking and screaming with what little fight he had left in him. In truth his body was giving out after being in there so long, and it wasn’t very hard to make him leave. Still, she watched the boy be dragged by his shoulders, shoes dragging across linoleum as he gave out from exhaustion.
Eventually he was thrown–thrown, not sat down, in a metal chair just outside of Dr. Ritsuko Agaki’s office. He tilts his head up, barely able to look at her through through white light reflecting off her glasses. Misato pushes through the guards that just carried Shinji and grabs Ritsuko by the collar.
“What are you doing?!” She says, “He’s way too weak right now, you can’t be roughing him up like that!”
Ritsuko clicks her tongue against the roof of her mouth, some sort of acknowledgement that was hard for Shinji to pick up on. “They’re soldiers, Misato–not babysitters. I can’t help if they’re too rough. Besides, he needs to eat.”
Misato fumes, but Ritsuko’s expression is cold–unreadable beneath her reflective lenses. She pulls out a nutrition bar from her lab coat and tosses it in Shinji’s lap. “Go on, you’ve been in there for 48 hours. If you don’t eat now you’re going to seriously hurt yourself.”
Shinji looks at the nutrition bar in his lap and picks it up with his left arm. It hurts, burns. All he can think about is the feeling of his hands tearing into Asuka as Unit 01 was out of his control. His Unit 01, something he was supposed to be in control of, his hands tearing into the flesh of his best friend.
“Really?” Ritsuko says, “Eat it. You’re running low, if you don’t eat now I’ll be forced to hook you up to an IV.”
Shinji looks down at his hands, they’re trembling. He imagines himself for a second–not able to do anything, frozen in shock. He remembers the promise he gave to Asuka and weakly lifts the nutrition bar with his left hand, opening the package with his right. He forces it into his mouth, clenching his jaw shut and biting down on the bar of proteins and carbohydrates.
The ride home was silent. Misato held his hand on the way out of the building, and when they got in her car he laid in the back. Misato could see Shinji in the rear view mirror, his face hidden in his hands but clearly still soaked in tears. She gripped her steering wheel, almost afraid to leave indents. Ritsuko was always clinical, but that was just cruel. Misato knows they’re at war, she knows! She’s had to be the one to send those kids, her kids, out to die every day. It’s everything else that bothered her, the casual cruelty, the simple non-regard for human life.
Tears rolled down her own face, she wondered if she even recognized Ritsuko anymore.
Once they were home, Misato shut the door behind them. Shinji immediately started moving, ready to go back to his room–but Misato grabbed his wrist, not able to leave him alone just yet.
“Wait.” she started. Shinji stopped, turned around and looked at her with dull eyes. Misato hated how much of herself she saw in him sometimes. Sometimes, if she squinted, she could see herself at that age again.
“Please, don’t go yet.” She spits out, and Shinji starts crying. It’s hard to call it a breakdown, a breakdown would imply you haven’t hit rock bottom yet. Instead Shinji falls into her arms, sobbing quietly. She doesn’t know what to say–she’s no mother, but she leans into him too, trying not to cry herself as her ward lets out everything on her shoulder.
“I’m here.” She says, which is the only true thing she could say. She wanted to say *It’s okay,* but it’s not. It’s not okay, nothing about this is okay.
Instead she tightens the embrace, not ready to let him be alone right now.
Late at night, Shinji got up from bed. He struggled to sleep, mostly just staring at the roof anyway. His room was a wreck, he didn’t have the energy to clean after everything that happened. Empty water bottles lay by his bedside, as well as pretty much every school uniform he had. Homework and papers from class fell off his desk at some point, scattered on the floor along with whatever garbage had accumulated. He ignores it all, taking a step forward towards the mirror.
This had been a nightly ritual for him, going up to his bedroom mirror and observing how he looked in the moonlight. It softened his features, dark light making the sharp edges of puberty seem indistinct and insignificant. His hair had grown out slightly–never truly able to muster the energy to get a haircut during the past few weeks.
He reached out with his left hand, struggling to pull it up but eventually resting his fingers on his cheek. At night he almost looked feminine in the moonlight, longer hair falling behind his shoulders with a slight wave. It ended in a curve, with sharp ends that mimicked the look of his bangs normally.
He had this kind of hair once, when he was a kid. His teacher had told him to cut it, and at the time he refused. It was one of the only acts of refusal to his teacher that he ever did, and was one of the last. Shinji doesn’t like to think back on that day.
But his teacher wasn’t here now, was he? It was Misato who was looking after him–the woman who took him in, the woman who held him earlier in the night.
His feelings towards Misato were complicated, how did he view her? A sister? A commander? An object of affection? A mother?
Shinji stopped at that last one. *A mother.* He didn’t know his own mother, but he had vague impressions on what a mother should be like. A mother should cook for their child, right? But Shinji did that. A mother should teach her child what they don’t know about the world, but her advice felt meaningless sometimes. The only thing he had truly internalized from Misato was when he almost ran away, and she gave him a hard talking to. In a way it was the most seen he’d ever felt from an adult, her speech as serious and clumsy as something Shinji himself might have made.
It hurt, but despite the pain he felt like she was on his level. Was a mother on their child’s level? Hopefully not, a mother should be above that. But Misato did comfort him, did give him a place to go back to, somewhere to not feel alone. Maybe in that sense Misato was like a mother to him.
He felt stinging pain in his left hand as tears rolled down his cheek. He didn’t care, he almost enjoyed the feeling. His mind was twisting, feeling something like a hurricane deep in the waters of his subconscious. He let the thought linger–if Misato was his mother, wouldn’t that make him her child? He squints, almost trying to find a resemblance in the darkness. It felt good in a way, it was something to get his mind off everything. For just a second his heart felt light.
He tried brushing his hair back, mimicking the way she kept hers tucked behind her ears. His hair color looked indistinct, almost black with the exception of the parts which were in direct moonlight. He tried smiling, but his smile looked off. Too gentle, nothing like his Major’s. Instead he tried more of a grin–it came off crooked, not practiced enough, but for a second he almost saw something that looked like resemblance.
A deep warmth grew in his chest. He’d been doing this for weeks now, getting up and looking at himself in the mirror. He’d feel good about his body for once, not feeling the constant disgust and awkwardness that immediately prevailed him upon waking up the next morning. Like clockwork though he’d always come down from his high, remembering that his brief glimpse into another interpretation of himself was only that.
This time he just kept looking, his crooked grin smoothing out into something more natural as it melted into a smile. It felt wrong, it wasn’t his smile, but he almost liked that. The feeling of looking like someone else, the feeling of being someone else. He saw an empty Yebisu can that must have rolled into his room at some point and felt a warmth bloom in his chest. For a second it looked like Misato’s kind of mess, which made him feel better than he had any understanding of why.
For a second he could imagine another interpretation of himself, one where he was Misato’s daughter instead of Gendo’s son.
His smile faded instantly, and tears came crawling back in realization.
That morning Shinji looked over the skyline. The 10th Angel was still there, forced into some sort of hibernative state. He didn’t entirely remember what the briefing had told him, just vague impressions of things Dr. Agaki had said. It reformed into something vaguely spherical, dancing rainbow colors across its surface reminding him of a soap bubble. All he really remembered was that it wasn’t moving, something about what Shinji had did didn’t truly kill it but left it too weak to attack.
They were safe for now, and Shinji gripped the edge of the railing. He hated it, truly despised it. There was a part of him that once wanted to show sympathy for the Angels–after all, they were alive too, weren’t they? But Shinji held no such love in his heart after what happened. He lost Rei because of the angels, and he almost lost Asuka because of them too. Though truly it was because of his father that he’d almost lost her, but in Shinji’s mind he was less than human too.
Later in the day Shinji showed up to school. He wasn’t wearing a unform, wanted to make it known that he was a guest and wasn’t going to be dragged into class today. Instead he threw on a jacket over his plugsuit–not having the energy to change after the fight with the 10th Angel. It felt comforting in a way, his plugsuit was a reminder of his time in EVA. It almost felt like he was still in it, like he still had that kind of godly power at his disposal.
He walked into the counselor’s office, and the door shut behind him. About an hour later he walked out with a pamphlet in his hands, still crying from the exchange that went down. He takes the train home, and as he enters the apartment Misato pulls him into a bone-crushing hug.
“Where were you?!” She yells, still crushing Shinji. “I was so worried I had Section 2 looking for you, when they said you were at school I drove over immediately–but then you had left! I was so worried you’d…” She trails off, eyes glazing over for a second.
“…you know kiddo, you smell awful. You really need to get out of that plugsuit.” She states as she breaks the hug. Shinji smiles slightly, not able to break into a true grin.
“And what’s that?” Misato says, pointing at the pamphlet in his hands. His smile loosens, and he hands it over to his guardian. She breaths out a huff from her mouth, clearly overwhelmed at its contents. “That’s, uh… I guess this is what you came to school for?” She said, trying to keep herself collected as she realizes what’s going on.
“Yeah” he said, still smiling weakly. Misato pulls him into a hug and sets the pamphlet down on the coffee table.
“Alright, kiddo. Let’s go talk about this.”
For a second Shinji looks scared, but Misato’s gentle smile eases his worries. He hugs her, and after what feels like forever lets himself go.
“I’d like that,” he says. The two go to the kitchen to talk about Shinji’s future, and the pamphlet titled *Gender Dysphoria for Youths* is left alone on the living room table.
Gendo Ikari and Kōzō Fuyutsuki stood on a catwalk deep under the Geofront. A cold, blue light emitted from the tank in front of them, illuminating nary but their faces. Fuyutsuki looked to his left, unable to read his commander’s true intentions from expression alone. Sometimes Kōzō likened him to the masks performers would wear during stageplay–his face a stoic mask that faced the world outwardly. Nobody truly knew what was under Gendo Ikari’s outward self, except for possibly the sub-commander. Even in narration however, he would rather not air out Gendo’s dirty laundry.
“Do you really think this will work? What if Unit 01 rejects it?” Fuyutsuki started.
“Then we will try again.” Said his superior, unmoving. Fuyutsuki was doubtful, Shinji was almost special because he *wasn’t* a clone. He was the only one of his kind, something that couldn’t be said of Shikinami or Ayanami. In truth, he doubted the floating collection of stem cells in front of him could sync with EVA at all.
“What is its name?” Kōzō started. Gendo let out something that to a normal person would sound something like an annoyed grunt–to Fuyutsuki, it meant that the commander was thinking.
Something imperceptible tugs at the muscles of Gendo’s lips, almost approaching the smirk a human would give and not something wearing one’s skin.
“They do not have names,” He said, “…nor does it need a true classification, it exists as an individual.”
“Does it truly?” Said Kōzō, palming his hands at this act of autonomy.
“Hmm.” Said Ikari. "If it absolutely needs a classification separate from my child, then it will be a series of one. The Rokubungi series."
Fuyutsuki nodded as he looked back at the harbinger of Third Impact floating within a tube, this conversation was clearly over.