Chapter Text
Alright.
... Okay, so I had a big long spiel planned for a foreword because I think it's super important for a story like this. Somehow, it's left me, so now I'm stuck here thinking.
This is... a different kind of story. Sort of.
I actually had no plan when I started off. I had no outline, no plot, no anything. The entire first scene was just a word vomit into NotePad that looked at me and said "wtfrudoin". I had been doing some binge reading of some Evangelion fanfiction, both new and old. I started at some old stomping grounds before moving back to fanfiction.net, then to a couple of new places that I hadn't cared about before, like this place and Sufficient Velocity. The entire time I was reading, I slowly begun to reform some fragmented memories I had.
See, I haven't so much as thought of Evangelion in, oh, about eight years. Yeah, that sounds about right. I'd left the fandom; I thought it was on the way out, anyway. There were a few stories I touched on, but to me the stories weren't from my fandom. They were epic, some were hilarious... but where was the darkness, the melancholy, the not-quite-crushing despair I was used to? Even in my time, stories with happy endings were few and far between and usually relegated to the WAFF category unless it was really good. Normally, stories ended the same way the series did: with Third Impact. Rei becomes God, gives Shinji the power of God, and everything goes to shit anyway. If there was an exception, it just altered the direction Third Impact took (I'm looking at you, Eva-R).
But there was one story in particular that brought me back entirely, because I saw a premise, which reminded me of older versions of the same premise, and I was like... yeah, okay, let's do this! That story was Once More With Feeling, you can find it on the Sufficient Velocity forums. It's great, you should read it. Like right now. At least keep it on hand. Remember, happiness is either a warm gun or an Eva WAFF story, depending on your tastes.
The premise of that story - X Character goes back in time - has been done for ages. I remember way back when the concept got codified in the Eva community with the excellent Higher Learning and popularized with The 2nd Try and later, RE-TAKE. But OMWF was different. It was fun. It was enjoyable. It... is a concept that by now has been done to death. But at least the author is good and competent!
So here's where I come in. I took a look at a lot of these Mental Time Travel stories and realized, hey, you know what? Rei's never been a central character. She might come along for the ride if there are multiples, but she never does it by herself. So I decided, let's make Rei the protagonist and send her back through time to give it a go.
Then you realize something.
Would Rei even notice or care that she's doing it all over again?
And that's how a word vomit became the grounds for this story.
With that out of the way, there are some things you need to understand about this story.
First: The Law of Narrative Causality stats that Rei can't just do canon NGE all over again. For one, boring. For two, she's already done that. She's done that 48 times.
Second: Things happen in this story. Happy things. Sad things. My tags are not wrong - life isn't just a happy paradise nor is it dark and brooding. Life has ups and downs. This isn't an appeal to "Oh this is so realistic", it just means that it's okay for this story to have ups, and to have downs. That's fine.
Third.
...Third.
Content Warning: I chose not to use archive warnings because none of them really apply. The tag does.
This story contains implied and referenced child abuse. Child sexual abuse. This isn't for shock value or grimdark. This is a serious exploration into what happens when a socially deficient individual has her trust broken into tiny little pieces by a man she assumed would never hurt her like this. This is her way of dealing with it, on top of trying to find a way to stop the main narrative of NGE happening all over again.
This story occasionally features bouts of suicide ideation and idolization. Even the seemingly most stoic of us can fall apart and sink to our lowest.
Further content warnings will be applied on a chapter by chapter basis.
So, without further to do.
Let's get this show on the road.
One last thing, actually.
As the story continues, check back to the foreword occasionally. Something may have changed. Occasionally I'll post musings or whatnot, usually justifications for characters and such.
Thank you for reading.
Really, I mean it.