Chapter Text
"To see a World in a Grain of Sand
And a Heaven in a Wild Flower
Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand
And Eternity in an hour."
William Blake, Auguries of Innocence
At first, he fell.
Far and deep, the chasm, ripping him as he went
Seemingly without end.
Those rebels who had joined him in the pursuit of unholy power fell also.
He didn't care for them though.
The impious war he had waged was for one and one alone.
And she was no more, devoured by the beast he had made for her.
A gift – pearls for two, sapphires for five. For their union something other, something wrong.
He watched in flight, his last seconds above the clouds, as she split the horizon, gone.
Down he plummeted from the ethereal sky, to the depths below.
Like a star falling, his burning desire extinguished in the arc.
His sole ambition crushed, he had nothing left with which to rage.
He would stay this way now, inert, no more to scheme the mysteries of that world.
Before long he landed softly in a lake and at first it was still.
But then assuredly, as night and day passed alike here, it became aflame,
The thoughts, dreams, hopes, fears, loves, desires of others clawed at him.
Was this to be his prison? His punishment for making war against heaven's emissaries?
And soon that unconquerable will began to gather
It mingled with his pride, steadfast hate and the will to revenge
Who were they to cast him down?
And believe themselves now safe from the might of his immortal spirit.
Slowly but surely he strained the sinews of his consciousness.
Pulling together to occupy space once again.
And the rise began.
Amid pulsing lightning and raging strife
A skeleton, a circulatory system that screamed and then dissipated.
Finally a body complete, rising, breathing in the fire of the lake.
Contact with the air once more.
A sputtering heap upon a beach of charred ash
And ground remains of a world put to the torch.
Grasping at the grains he weezed, clasped at his fresh throat.
Rage and the spectre of vengeance pushed him on.
He saw himself, or someone like him, armoured in Obsidian, cursed blade in hand
Gutting the very gods who had put him here
Leaving their blood splattered upon their thrones as the Golem climbed the steps
To what he didn't know.
As his lungs filled with air
And his consciousness began to desert him
'Yes' he thought. That was what he would have.
'Blood'
--
Kouzou Fuyutsuki shifted in the small metal chair. Sweat gathered at his collar, ran down between his shoulder blades. The visiting room was stifling. He'd eventually adapted to the perpetual summer that settled after Second Impact, but what followed the third was a reminder of the scars his work had left on the world to which he had returned.
The former deputy commander of NERV observed the thickness of the bulletproof glass in front of him. It recalled to mind the inches of reinforced screens through which he and Ikari had once observed the Evangelions. He supposed that it was as necessary now as it was then, no doubt countless millions who had lost loved ones might wish to kill one of the men responsible for nearly ending of the world.
He understood the hatred, a desire to assuage some of that pain was why he had returned. Things behind glass that hate you – he thought of Rei, and then of course of Yui.
His revere was interrupted as the door on the other side opened to reveal a woman in her mid 40's wearing a smart, military-style uniform. Fuyutsuki drew his gaze into focus and immediately recognised her, even with her eyes heavily concealed by her perfectly straight military cap.
"Captain Katsuragi," he said, almost instinctively.
“Commander” She corrected.
She strode purposefully across the small room and sat across from him. “Hello Professor, It's been a long time.”
She did not look her years, her appearance retained the same youthful glow that had always characterised the woman who had risen up the ranks faster than any other officer at NERV. Her eyes though seemed to betray the look of one who had lived a thousand lifetimes since they were last together.
“Of course…I'm sorry.” He said. “I..I didn't expect to see you. Not before the trial at least.”
"This isn't a personal visit." She folded her hands on the table between them. "We need your expertise. I can arrange your release into HERZ custody if you agree."
The old man's eyebrows lifted. A bead of sweat began to form on his brow in the stifling heat.
“I came back to face punishment for my crimes. The world has to see it done Katsuragi.”
'Commander' she corrected. Harder.
'Commander. Tokyo-4 is an incredible achievement given what we…what I did, what you've had to build back from. But I don't even think there's much I can offer you – the Magi masterminded the vast majority of the civilian building we undertook. The weapons - the Evas were – were my work. And that work is done.”
Misato looked ahead unflinching.
"Tokyo-4 isn't the project. I wouldn't be here if your participation wasn't critical to humanity's continued survival."
The phrasing made him shudder. The absolutism reminded him of things he had heard many times before, yet from someone so very different.
"And if I refuse? You must know the entire reason I came back was to face the consequences of my actions, to give those people justice.”
"Then you stay. Face the courts. Spend your remaining years in a cell, or—" She paused. "Or take your own life, as Gendo Ikari did. Either way, your inaction brings ruin this time."
She stood and began to stride toward the door
“Your participation in this work is the only way you can atone for what you did, it's the only way for any of us to do that.”
She stopped at the door and pressed the button for a guard to buzz her out of the room.
“There’s a world out there now, despite everything we did. It's on those of us who nearly destroyed it all to protect that, whatever the cost.”
"Make your choice quickly, Deputy Commander." She placed her hand on the door. "Time isn't a luxury we have."
“Commander wait!” He paused, looking as if whole world weighed upon his mind at that moment. “Does this involve the Children?”
Her shoulders tensed and she looked at him sternly. “I've told you all I can until you agree to transfer into HERZ custody.”
Fuyutsuki hesitated, he had no desire to return to a world of schemes and secrets, even it were for a noble cause. However, he felt that he owed Misato Katsuragi something personally. He had set out to discover the truth about the expedition which had killed her father, that had marked her forever. Yet he had ended up working with Gendo Ikari to build world-shattering weapons from the ashes of that incident. She had been a loyal soldier in their war and they had left her, and everyone else to their fates, while they pursued their ultimate goal.
He had watched her die.
"All right," he said quietly. "Take me."
"Good." She opened the door. "Operatives will come tonight. They'll arrange the transfer to Black Moon Lake base. I'll meet you there."
The door closed.
Another bead of sweat fell. Splashed on the floor like blood from a fresh wound.
"The moon," he whispered to the empty room. His stomach turned. "Not again."
--
Asuka Langley Soryu stood at the roof's edge, the wind pulling at hair that now fell just past her shoulders. She'd finished the paper an hour ago—thirty pages on energy extraction from biological LCL interaction—and couldn't stand another minute in the apartment she shared with Shinji Ikari. It had seemed almost unthinkable to her once that she would ever willingly share a home with 'idiot Shinji', but in the years since the Third Impact they had developed an unspoken bond where each seemed to fix the other in place. When she awoke from the nightmares he would sit with her quietly and hold her hand, when he began to withdraw from the world she would yank him back to it, if a little too violently at times.
She fished a cigarette from her pocket. An old habit. One Shinji pretended not to notice as long as she made the barest effort at concealment.
The city sprawled below in amber half-light of the late summer sunset. Construction drones hummed somewhere in the distance, that constant rhythm of building, always building. Tokyo-4 changed every month. New towers where last year there'd been rubble. Streets rerouted around the shells of buildings too structurally compromised to salvage. She found it comforting in a way she couldn't articulate—the visible proof that forward motion was possible.
Now Lighting the cigarette, she took a drag and leaned her head against the cool of the shaded doorway. It had been a long journey for both of them, they'd spent time in treatment apart and she had torn away completely for a while, but in truth she only really felt at ease when they were close. They each bore the scars where they had once wounded one another, but scars did mean healing all the same.
Even in the midst of this sprawling metropolis she could still spot remnants of the past. Some old buildings remained little more than shells, juxtaposed against the gleaming modern structures that now dominated the city. The world was not the same, it was damaged – research by herself and others had yet to say exactly to what extent it was recoverable, but she was determinded that it would be recovered.
She took another drag. The prosthetic in her left eye tracked movement below automatically, a slight mechanical whir she'd long since stopped noticing. Physical therapy, surgery, months of calibration. She'd insisted on doing the research herself, understanding every component before they installed it. Control through knowledge. It was how she operated now.
Below, she could just make out the preserved section of Old Tokyo-3—a memorial district they'd glassed over rather than demolished. Sometimes people left flowers at the barrier. She didn't go there.
Her wrist comm buzzed.
‘Held up a little at the centre sorry! Takeaway tonight? X’
Upon reading the message her thoughts began mounting one on top of the other – well now her plans for the evening had been thrown out, he could have planned his work schedule better, did it mean more to him to be there than looking after her?
Her fist closed around the cigarette end. Tighter. She felt the filter crumple, hot ash against her palm.
Who the hell did he think—
She stopped. Forced her hand open.
The cigarette fell to the concrete, bent and broken.
Her palm was smudged black. She stared at it.
Breathe.
Years of therapy. Thousands of hours of work. And it still took effort every single time to pull back from that edge, to recognise the old circuitry firing and choose—choose—not to follow it down.
She wanted him to assert himself, even just a little. She did. Even when it pissed her off. Even when every instinct screamed at her to tear into him for it.
She wasn't going to tell *him* that though, she thought as she plunged her hands back into the pockets of her lounge pants. She'd let him sweat on it a bit, and allow her own emotions to settle fully, before gracing him with a reply.
She allowed herself a small, contented smile – she was more ok than she had any right to be, but it had been hard earned and there was no going back now.
---
The gyrocopter shook. Wind screamed against the hull. Through the small porthole beside Fuyutsuki's seat, darkness gave way to a shimmer of orange light bleeding up from below, staining the clouds.
He'd been sitting in silence for twenty minutes, hands folded in his lap. The HERZ operatives across from him were faceless behind tactical visors, their bodies swaying in unison with the aircraft's movements like a single organism. They'd come for him in the night—efficient, wordless, professional. Led him from his cell while others remained behind to stage whatever story the public would receive. He didn't ask what they were crafting. Didn't want the weight of that particular lie added to all the others.
The craft banked. Through the porthole, the source of that orange glow resolved into clarity.
A lake. Vast. Stretching to the horizon in every direction. But not water—something else. Something that caught the dying sunlight and held it in ways that made his eyes ache. The surface sparked with energy, little forks of lightning dancing between swells.
They touched down on a helipad attached to a large bunker built into a clifface. The smell was what struck him first – 'LCL' he said to no one in particular. That familiar metallic tang mixed with something organic, something that recalled amniotic fluid and the inside of living things. The scent of it brought back memories he'd buried—entry plugs and synchronisation tests, the Children floating in orange suspension while they piloted gods made flesh.
The operatives gestured. He stepped out onto the helipad. Hard summer rain drove into his face, warm and angry. It ran down his collar, soaked through his thin prison shirt within seconds. Below, the lake churned. Above, storm clouds gathered with flashes of vivid colour against the oppressive grey.
They descended a metal stairway bolted to the cliff face. The wind tugged at him. His legs were unsteady after weeks in a cell. Behind him, the gyrocopter's engines began to wind down, their scream fading to a whine and then to nothing, replaced by the sound of rain on metal and the deeper, stranger sound of the lake itself—a kind of low susurration that might have been waves or might have been voices.
The bunker's entrance loomed. Blast doors painted with the HERZ logo.
Fuyutsuki stopped, rain streaming down his face, and studied it properly for the first time. Similar in composition to NERV's old emblem—that half-leaf design, that suggestion of the fig that had covered humanity's first shame. But different. An acorn replaced the leaf at the center. Growth from destruction. Potential from ruin.
And beneath it, words in clean sans-serif:
I have loved the stars too fiercely, to be fearful of the night.
He recognised the line from an old poem, "The Old Astronomer to His Pupil." He allowed himself a moment to ponder the significance of the words and the message they conveyed. He thought again about Yui, and wondered where amongst those stars she was now, as he descended back into another world entirely.
He was hustled by the team of operatives through the blast doors and into a facility holding what could only be described as extremely large futuristic bathysphere. As they entered the craft and the door was closed for launch it became obvious to Fuyutsuki where they were going. Black Moon Lake was named for the crater which existed on the site where the Black Moon, or geo-front, had once sat. And at the base of the geo-front had once resided NERV HQ.
Once the screens within indicated that it was fully pressurised the sphere detached and shot off down a track which saw it plummet into the orange depths below. Through the reinforced porthole he watched the descent. The light from above faded quickly. The orange thickened, became opaque, then began to pulse with its own energy. Things moved in it. Or seemed to move. Shadows that might have been debris or might have been something else. Shapes that formed and dissolved at the edge of visibility.
A sea of souls.
The thought came unbidden. Unwelcome. All those people who'd dissolved during Third Impact, who'd merged into the collective and never found their way back out. Suspended here in LCL, in this lake that shouldn't exist, in a state between death and something else entirely.
The sphere descended deeper. Pressure sensors ticked upward. His ears popped. The porthole showed nothing now but orange murk and the occasional flash of something moving too quickly to identify.
Then—structure.
At first just geometric shadows in the haze. Angular. Familiar. As they drew closer, floodlights mounted on the sphere's exterior kicked in, and he saw it properly.
The pyramid.
NERV headquarters. Or what remained. Half-crumbled, its peak sheared away, massive cracks running through the armored flanks. But around it—wound through it like vines reclaiming a ruin—new construction. Glass and steel. Modern materials grafted onto ancient megastructure. Corridors that glowed with artificial light. Observation windows. Gantries and walkways connecting sections that had once been separate.
The sphere banked, following a guide rail. Up close, the fusion of old and new was even more striking. Some sections of NERV were pristine, preserved as if the years hadn't touched them. Others were gutted, their interiors visible through shattered walls, now housing equipment and personnel in clean-room suits. It was archaeological and functional at once. A corpse being puppeted by some cybernetic skeleton.
The sphere docked in an airlock and number of small checks were completed the door opened to reveal the waiting Misato Katusragi.
He stepped out onto the platform, water still dripping from his prison clothes. "Commander Katsuragi. You've certainly made the best of what we left behind."
"We've had time to adapt." She turned, began walking. He followed. "Fourteen years to salvage what we could, repurpose the rest. Your work on the original structures made it possible—the pyramid's core architecture was sound. We just had to build around the damage."
"And the lake?" he asked.
She was quiet for a moment. "A consequence. When Terminal Dogma collapsed during Third Impact, when everything came apart—this is what remained. The LCL from the impact flooded the crater.
They walked in silence. The corridor curved into a wide windowed walkway. On either side, the LCL sea pressed close. Orange and lambent. Here and there, swirls of darker color moved through it like currents or thoughts.
In the distance, rising from the depths—the great shaft that had once led down to Terminal Dogma. To Lilith. To the place where gods and men had warred and both had lost.
"The Second Child," he said carefully. "Dr. Langley. I understand she's been instrumental in the reconstruction. In prison I read about her work on S2 engine adaptation—"
"Asuka knows nothing about this project."
He stopped walking. "Nothing?"
Misato kept her eyes forward. "She's been working on civilian applications. Energy systems for Tokyo-4. Useful work. Important work. But not this."
"And Shinji?"
"The same. They have lives now. They've built something. I don't want to take that away sooner than I have to, but very soon we will be able to go no further without Shinji."
Fuyutsuki studied her profile. The set of her jaw. The way her hands stayed carefully at her sides rather than clenching.She didn't flinch under his gaze, but the quiet hum of tension between them felt suddenly more acute.
"So you'll send for him, when you have use for him," he said quietly.
Misato knew the implication of the words, she'd been there on that platform 15 years before when they'd first plucked the boy from his life.
"It's not the same."
"In what manner?"
She didn't answer.
The corridor opened onto an observation deck. Massive. The glass here was thicker, reinforced to withstand the crushing pressure outside. And beyond it—
NERV's central column. The spine of the old headquarters, now ringed with new construction. Technicians moved through illuminated sections like cells through a body. Equipment traveled on automated tracks. Warning lights pulsed in regular rhythm.
At the far end of the chamber, barely visible through the murk—blast doors. Enormous. Sealed.
"They have lives," Misato said quietly, not looking at him. "Real ones. Small and ordinary and theirs. I wanted to give them as much time as possible before..."
"Before you take it away."
"Yes."
Fuyutsuki turned to her. In the orange light filtering through the windows, her face looked younger. More uncertain. Nothing like the woman who'd commanded NERV's tactical operations with such ruthless efficiency.
"For what it's worth," he said, "I believe you're trying to do it differently this time."
"But?"
"But the weight of necessity has its own gravity. It pulls us toward familiar patterns whether we will it or not."
She was quiet for a moment. Then she gestured toward the far end of the observation deck.
"Still," he said, following her. "You've created something different here. Something better than what we had before."
"Haven't I," she said softly.
He didn't answer, and she didn't explain. At the far end of the walkway, an elevator awaited, doors already open.
---
The office that had once belonged to Gendo Ikari no longer resembled itself.
Fuyutsuki sat in the chair opposite the desk, taking in the transformation while Misato pulled up files on the holographic display behind him. Her back to him. The soft chime of data sorting.
Tall glass panels lined the walls where Gendo's books and artifacts had once stood. Behind them—bioluminescent jellyfish. Dozens of them, tendrils drifting in slow ballet through pale liquid. Their light pulsed in gentle rhythm, casting blues and purples across the ceiling. The effect was hypnotic.
Gendo's office had been a cave. Dark wood, controlled light, every surface chosen to project distance. This space breathed. Whatever Misato had become, she wasn't inhabiting his shadow.
On the corner of her desk, two framed photos. One: younger Misato with Kaji, both laughing. The other: Misato with the Three Children. Shinji staring at his feet. Asuka's chin raised. Rei gazing at the camera with that unsettling stillness.
He looked at Rei too long. So much like Yui. He made himself look away.
Fuyutsuki dealt with his discomfort by standing and approaching the nearest panel. Up close he could see delicate filaments connecting the jellyfish to nodes in the tank structure. The nodes sparked with regular pulses.
"These creatures, are they another one of Herz's experiments?"
"In a way. They're a species of bioluminescent jellyfish. We've studied them for their unique ability to interact with LCL." She closed her display, turned to him. "They 'filter' the LCL that runs through the facility, the energy they derive from it is drawn into our batteries and it powers this entire base.”
" Fascinating! We'd never considered the possibility of bio-physical interaction between LCL and another organism. We were never able to identify any energy signatures within it.”
"Not in synthesised LCL, no. not like the stuff we used to pump into the entry plugs."
She joined him at the glass, her presence almost gentle. "This is different."
“Hmmm?” He was transfixed and barely registered her arrival at his side.
"It's from the lake," she said. "From the sea above us."
The comment dropped as if it were 10lb sledgehammer and immediately brought Fuyutusuki back to the power of the forces they were dealing with
"Human souls."
"Yes."
The jellyfish drifted, unconcerned. He stepped back from the glass, chastened by the gravity of it all.
"I see."
"Please. Sit."
She activated the holographic display. Light bloomed above the desk—data streams, stellar maps, code that twisted and reassembled.
"Eight years ago, when we secured this facility, we found something in the MAGI data banks. A transmission."
She manipulated the display. The data contracted, pulsed.
"It had no stable form. Kept changing. Different languages, mathematics, sometimes just patterns. We've been extracting what we can."
"Its origin?"
She pulled up a fragment. Text flickered between scripts. He caught phrases: Deviation. Correction required. Enforcement initiated.
"The First Ancestors," he said quietly.
"Yes."
The weight of it settled over him. All those years studying the Dead Sea Scrolls with Gendo, piecing together what they could from fragmentary texts and archaeological mysteries. The Scrolls had given them some understanding of the scenario—the Angels, the Seeds, the intended cycle. But the First Ancestral Race itself had remained largely unknown.
"It was similar in the old days," he said. "Piecing it together from scraps of information was the real challenge."
She looked up at him.
"Some knew more than others," she said. The words carried an edge.
A flash of personal animus, which he'd prepared himself for. The woman had much to resent about what had happened, after all.
"Yes," Fuyutsuki acknowledged. "The Dead Sea Scrolls gave us some wider understanding of the scenario we didn't share. I never really felt I had a grasp on it though. I was most at home working on the counter-measures—it was Ikari who held the deepest understanding about the true nature of the Angels."
"What did you know about them?" Misato asked. "From the Scrolls?"
"Very little," Fuyutsuki admitted. "We understood they had sent Adam and Lilith into the universe. But we didn't understand to what end. We assumed they had gone extinct. That the Seeds were the last gasp of a dying race, looking to leave something of itself behind."
"Unfortunately not." Misato's voice was grim. "Our best evidence now suggests the Seeds were an experiment. A high-stakes one. They created a cycle—but never intended for it to be broken as Shinji did."
She stood, walked slowly to a control panel and brought the holographic map to fuller life above the table. An orbiting web of trajectories, all converging on Earth.
"The transmission wasn't just a warning," she said. "It was an activation signal. These entities started moving across space from wherever the First Ancestors reside. We believe they observed the events of Third Impact. Saw it as an anomaly to be corrected."
Fuyutsuki studied the paths. Some moved in sweeping gravitational arcs. One moved erratically, veering as if guided by will rather than physics.
"These energy patterns..." He leaned forward, studying the readings. "They're unbelievable. Each one dwarfs any of the Angels that came in the lead-up to Third Impact."
Misato nodded grimly. "We believe they're even more precise. More ruthless. Angels sought reunification. These Horsemen seek extermination. The gods created the ultimate eradicators, Professor. And they're heading directly for us."
Fuyutsuki looked at the photos on her desk. The Children. Shinji's downcast eyes.
"What do you need from me?" he asked “Whatever it is I’ll do what I can.”
She stood. Pressed a button. An elevator pod appeared at the wall.
"Come."
They stepped inside. Through the glass the facility spread below—technicians, equipment, the distant sealed glow of something vast.
The elevator descended.
“So you feel most at home with the counter measures is that right?” She said
The old man nodded.
"In the old days," Fuyutsuki said, "Ikari theorised. Designed. I was always more comfortable with the practical work. The knife. The cannon. The Evas themselves."
"The execution," Misato said.
"Yes."
A massive chamber came into view below. Blast doors. Pressure locks pulsing with light. Warning markers in red and yellow.
Misato turned him by the shoulder to face it.
"Project Omega," she said. "Our weapon. Your chance to execute.”
The chamber waited in the dark. Silent. Sealed.
"Welcome home, Professor."--
---
The sun did not rise in the same way it once had. It meandered through the sky —diffuse and tired but unbowed – creating hot, languid days that seemed to stretch into forever. In the east, where the mountains had once stood, you could observe the redness and scars of ash that covered most of the world now. Tokyo-4 crawled skyward all the same, its half-formed towers veiled in scaffold, like lances piercing the bleakness of the world outside.
The Kaji Centre stood apart, low-rise and nestled in the green cradle of what had once been farmland. The earth was good here. Or good enough at least. With the care and a lot of science things grew, however tentatively.
Inside the greenhouse wing, amid rows of gnarled vines and recycled hydro systems, Shinji Ikari knelt in the dirt, inspecting the curve of a near-ripe melon. His face was older now. He was still slight, but the softness of boyhood had receded and wiry muscle was visible under his crisp white t-shirt.
He touched the fruit gently, thumb just skimming the surface. He had learned how to check for ripeness some years ago—not by firmness, but by scent. A trick taught to him by Kaji, and one among a few things he held dear from his life in the past. A slow wind ruffled the leaves, lifting the scent of warm chlorophyll and wet metal. Somewhere overhead, the irrigation system clicked.
Shinji stood; the melons would need longer but there was a dream of spring visible in their ripening. He wandered along the hot house as the damp heat swirled around him – he felt good here, as if he was making a difference in some way.
His mind was troubled though by a sight he'd caught on his bike ride in. A mural, obscured by overgrowth, on the wall of a pre-impact apartment building.
EVA-01, roughly rendered, spread its arms like a crucified colossus. A gold disc floated above its head—sun or halo, it was unclear. Beneath it, a dozen smaller figures knelt in adoration. Some bore extra limbs. Others were featureless. One clutched a red orb in its chest. At the base, barely legible: "He Woke the World." Someone had added new graffiti below in delicate script: We await the Second Bloom.
Shinji's jaw tightened as he pictured it. He knew there were those who believed him some kind of messiah, rumours of shadowy cults came from time to time.
He reached for a tomato from the trellis in front of him. It gave easily—but his grip faltered. The fruit burst in his palm, warm pulp leaking between his fingers. It looked like blood.
He stood still. A tremor ran the length of his spine. For a moment, the greenhouse shifted—sound dropped out, light warped. The mural loomed in his peripheral vision. The red ran down his wrist, dripping to the floor with a soft pat.
Then the irrigation system restarted overhead, and the world returned. He wiped his hand on his trousers. The stain spread, faint but present. The fragility of what they were forging writ in front of him.
--
The corridors of the Kaji Centre, named so by Misato Katsuragi herself and one of HERZ many rebuilding projects, were lined with soft white laminate and faux-wood flooring—cheap, durable but somehow comforting. It had once been a school, before the ground nearly liquefied beneath it during the first tremors of Third Impact. Now it was a sanctuary.
Outside the children's recovery classroom, he slowed. Here was the place where they looked after that most delicate of things – children who had returned from instrumentality but whose parents had not. Many found it impossible to comprehend that any parent could have chosen to stay enmeshed in LCL while their children struggled alone in the world, alas Shinji understood it all too well.
Through the one-way glass, kids were drawing. Most were between six and twelve. Some worked intently. Others looked lost, the crayons limp in their hands. The walls were covered in art.
A hand reaching from the sea.
A mouth that covered the sky.
A thousand eyes blinking in unison.
None of them depicted him. But they didn't need to, they showed the fruit of his failure he thought.
In the far corner, a boy sat motionless at his desk. Blank paper. Crayon untouched. He stared down at it like it might strike him. A therapist crouched beside him, whispering. The boy didn't flinch.
Then, slowly, he turned, and his eyes locked with Shinji's through the glass. The boy smiled, and Shinji felt a sudden pang inside himself—tender, fragile, unsettlingly familiar. For a second, he couldn't breathe.
The therapist glanced toward the window, following the boy's gaze. Shinji saw her mouth open slightly, about to say something, perhaps gently divert the boy's attention—but she stopped when she noticed him. Recognition and hesitation flickered in her eyes, followed by a nod—quiet permission, quietly given.
Shinji felt the gentle vibration of the reminder at his wrist. The shuttle home would leave soon; Asuka would be waiting in their small, cluttered apartment, the one place they'd managed to carve out a semblance of normality. The quiet hum of domesticity suddenly felt impossibly distant.
But the boy hadn't looked away. He hadn't moved, his paper still untouched. Shinji understood the blankness, the paralysis—understood it far too well. The paper was vast, empty, waiting for marks that could never quite capture the enormity of all they'd seen.
Shinji lifted his wrist slowly, hesitated for a moment, then typed out a quick message. A simple one. A quiet reassurance, the kind Asuka would read with mild annoyance and quiet understanding. It would be enough.
He stepped softly to the classroom door and pushed it open gently. Inside, the air felt different—warm, humid, touched by childish concentration and barely-held grief. He crossed the room quietly, pulling out a chair beside the boy without a word.
Shinji picked up a crayon from the desk, rolling it lightly between his fingers before setting it gently down. He didn't say anything; he didn't try to prompt or encourage. He simply sat—present, patient, there.
The boy stared at the crayon for a long, quiet moment. Then he lifted his own hand, slowly, hesitantly, and reached for it.
Shinji sat back quietly, feeling his heartbeat steadying. There was nowhere else he needed to be right now.
----
Asuka looked up at the red and roiling mass of the sky above. It was a ruptured wound—raw and bleeding crimson, torn open by lightning. Beneath it, she lay helpless, pinned against the cold, barren ground, unable to move, unable even to scream.
Above her, the Mass Production Evangelions circled like vultures, white and grinning, their grotesque smiles eternally frozen. She could see their twisted mouths, the saliva dripping, hungry and waiting.
Then they descended, one by one, as they always did, wings stretching wide, blotting out the fractured sky. She felt their teeth tearing into her, felt the metal and flesh stripped away with merciless efficiency. The agony bloomed outward in waves, relentless and pure.
But suddenly, a beam of blinding white light pierced the darkness from above, melting through the nightmare like holy fire. She turned her gaze upward, fighting through the haze of pain and fear.
Eva Unit-01 floated regally down, god-like wings aflame, wrapped in a halo of radiant light. The horrific beasts were seared by it, cried out, and began to evaporate. Unit-01 descended toward her, arm outstretched, though she was broken and could do nothing to take it. No matter how many times she experienced this mirage, she was helpless but to feel somehow saved by it.
It—he—scooped up the pieces of her, cradled them. She looked up and saw the face—half the monstrousness of Unit-01, half Shinji. His face was calm, but his eyes were distant. They looked through her. The armoured hand traced the hair from her face that lay over her mutilated eye. She knew this part too well. She steeled herself.
The hands moved. The pieces of her fell like petals from the trees in Hokkaido in spring. Fingers snaked around her throat. She couldn't cry out. She tried to reach for Shinji inside the beast—but the face shifted. Eyes pale and still. Rei Ayanami now. Expressionless. Cruel.
One hand reached over and tore away her remaining arm. The other gripped tighter. Blood welled on her cheek.
"You're nothing," the beast whispered.
Her neck snapped.
...
Asuka awoke on the wooden floor of their hallway, drenched in sweat. Her back arched against the wall. Shinji was crouched over her, holding the hand of her "severed" arm tight in his own.
Her eyes darted. She swung instinctively. Her knuckles connected with the soft tissue of his jaw. Shinji staggered back, shocked.
"WHY DID YOU—"
Her voice was raw—guttural. She heaved half a sob.
Shinji pressed a hand to his face, blinking. His eyes were glassy.
"You abused me," she panted. "You tried to kill me..."
She crawled toward him, shaking. He flinched, scrambled back—then held still. Met her gaze.
"You left me."
A whisper. Broken.
She collapsed against him. He wrapped his arms around her, pulling her close.
They stayed there, just the two of them.
They sat like that for some time, who knows how long, in a world of their own making. With a heavy sigh, she pushed herself upright. Shinji's hands fell away.
"I'm fine," she said, more to herself.
"You don't have to be," he replied, ever so gently.
Asuka exhaled through her nose, tilting her head back against the wall. It was a familiar ritual between them—this exchange, this quiet battle over who would admit weakness first.
But he was there. Always would be.
She was forming a reply when the lights went out.
Complete darkness, cut only by the ambient city glow through the windows.
"Power's out," Shinji said quietly.
"I can see that, idiot."
The hum of the building had a rhythm. Neighbors moving above. Traffic below. The refrigerator cycling. The heater. In this moment it was absent.
This silence was wrong.
A sound in the hallway. Soft. Deliberate. Equipment shifting. Multiple footsteps trying for quiet but making the floorboards speak anyway.
"Asuka—"
"I hear it."
Asuka began to stand, legs still unsteady from the nightmare. He helped her to her feet.
Her mind was already moving, calculating their escape routes. They were few. Kitchen had knives. Bathroom had nothing.
Her heart was pounding as she wrapped an arm around his and moved them toward the kitchen. Bare feet silent on the wooden floor. Found the counter in the dark. Her fingers brushed the knife block.
More sounds. Multiple contacts. Right outside the door.
Emergency lights kicked in. Red. Bathing everything in crimson.
Just like the nightmare sky. The sense of something terrible descending.
Asuka's breath caught. For a second she couldn't separate them—dream and waking. The red light. Something descending.
"Asuka, we need to—"
The door exploded inward.
Not opened. Destroyed. The frame splintered with a crack like gunfire. Wood and metal shrieking. Bright white light flooded in, blinding after the red darkness. Armed figures poured through—tactical gear, rifles raised, red laser sights cutting through the smoke and dust.
Asuka's body moved by instinct. She shoved Shinji behind her, knife rising, but there were already too many. They fanned out with mechanical precision. Every angle covered. Every exit blocked. She counted: eight, maybe nine. Professional spacing. Suppressed weapons.
One figure stepped forward. Tall. Visor obscuring his face. Voice absolutely calm.
"Asuka Langley Soryu. Shinji Ikari. You're coming with us."
Time seemed to stand still as she took in the scene.
The photos on the wall—Okinawa, the orchard, Hikari's wedding. The coffee maker Shinji had saved for. The blanket her mother's friend had sent from Germany. The spot where she'd been reading earlier that evening. The book still open, spine up, page marked.
The violation of it crashed over her. The sheer rage at having this taken. At being made powerless in the only place she'd ever felt she had power.
Muscles coiled. Knuckles went white around the blade. She moved.
Athletic and trained, in one swift movement she darted for the man in front of her. By the time his hands found her she had already snaked beneath his guard and pressed the cold steel to his neck just above the Kevlar. He was stronger, sure, but the faintest leverage was all she would need to sever his jugular vein.
Every red dot in the room alighted upon Asuka's slender frame. Safeties unlatched in unison. Tranqs, she suspected. But she didn't much care in the moment.
Shinji remained rooted to the spot next to the counter, blood thundering in his ears, unable to fully take in what was happening in front of him.
The officer froze beneath her blade. She could feel his pulse against the steel.
"You have exactly ten seconds..." he began, voice tight.
"Stand down."
A different voice. Firm but steady. From behind the wall of soldiers.
Lt. Commander Hyuga stepped into the light. His eyes met hers over the hostage's shoulder. His expression was tense. Not threatening. Almost pleading.
"Asuka. Please. No one needs to get hurt."
She held her gaze into the visor of the man before her. The blade didn't waver. Every rifle in the room trained on her.
And then what? They'd take Shinji anyway while she was under.
"I'm sorry," Hyuga continued quietly. "But you need to come with us. The Commander will explain."
The Commander.
"Misato," Asuka said. Her voice was flat. Dead.
The recognition hit like cold water. NERV would always own them. The realization settled like lead. It would never truly let them go.
She exhaled sharply through her nose. Let the tension drain from her coiled muscles. The blade lowered—not dropped, but no longer lethal.
The officer beneath her didn't move.
"We'll explain at HERZ," Hyuga said. "But there's no time to—"
"No time." She barked a laugh. Bitter and sharp. "You broke into our home in the middle of the fucking night like we're fugitives and you're telling me there's no time?"
She stepped back from the officer. He moved away carefully, hand to his neck, checking for blood.
Shinji moved then, finally unfrozen. Crossed to her. His hands found her arms from behind, fingers gentle on her biceps. Less than an inch between them.
Shinji's breathing was too fast. Shallow. She could feel him starting to spiral. The soldiers had their focus on him now—the primary target. She could see it in their positioning. They'd come for him. She was just in the way.
"And if we say no?" she asked.
Hyuga didn't flinch. "You won't."
She could feel Shinji behind her. His breathing. His terror.
Asuka closed her eyes. Exhaled through her nose.
"Scheiße," she whispered.
Then louder, through gritted teeth: "Fine."
She turned to Shinji. Saw it in his face. The terrible recognition. The thing they'd both been pretending couldn't happen.
This was always going to happen.
He nodded slowly.
She let the knife slip from her grasp. It fell, lodging itself in the floor with a thunk.
The soldiers moved forward. Not rough. But firm. Hands on arms, guiding them toward the broken doorway.
Asuka looked back once. At their life. What had been their life.
She stepped through the shattered frame and didn't look back again.
--
The bathysphere had all the warmth of a mortuary drawer and twice the soundproofing. Under a slimed carapace of white polycarbonate, three concentric benches ringed the interior. Shinji and Asuka shared the middle ring; Hyuga and two commandos filled the rest of the cramped space. The two Children were a study in contrast. Asuka pressed herself into the rough padding, thumbs hooked tight under the over-shoulder harness, jaw set so hard she could have cracked a molar. She was a sprinter in the blocks, ready to detonate into motion. Shinji seemed to be sinking into himself, head bowed toward his knees, studiously ignoring the sparking orange void visible through the port hole.
Hyuga busied himself with a handheld, the glow washing his face in pallid blue. It looked like work and was also a shield; fewer chances to catch Asuka's eye. The soldiers kept their gazes forward behind tactical masks, unreadable.
An instrument on the bulkhead pinged. Hyuga glanced up and cleared his throat. "Five minutes to dock," he said, for the log and for himself, then slipped back into the little rectangle of light in his hands. The air inside the sphere was still and stifling. Condensation crawled down the walls in slow beads and pooled on the floor grating.
"Oh, thanks," Asuka said, dripping with sarcasm. "Can't wait to be out of this tin can and back in the last place on the planet I ever want to see again. Does Misato keep it nice? Or is she still drinking herself to sleep every night?”
Hyuga recognized the angle of attack and let it pass. "The Commander has made a lot of changes," he said. "It's hardly recognisable compared to our days at NERV."
"I hope those changes go a lot further than the stupid pyramid. The last Commander didn't have a great track record of keeping the team alive."
"They do," Hyuga said, trying for steady and landing closer to meek. "You'll see."
He risked a look toward Shinji then, remembering belatedly who the real problem might be. Shinji was staring at his shoes, perspiration gathering at his hairline. The moment Hyuga's eyes found him, Shinji's gaze jumped away further, chin tucking, shoulders tightening, as if the porthole had become a thing you had to keep at the edge of sight to keep your shape. He knew what lay suspended in that orange depth. Try as he might to avoid the view of the roiling sea, it was calling to him he felt, reaching into the centre of his very being. All of it was his creation, his fault.
Asuka clocked it. Her first impulse—to jab him until he rose to meet her—got as far as her tongue and stopped. She turned from Hyuga and dropped her voice. "Let me do the talking when we get down there. Misato will come at you with all that 'duty' crap and we both know that gets you every time."
He didn't lift his head. "Uh-huh." The word was small and dry. He was breathing carefully now, in through the nose, out through the mouth, as if the air might splinter. Hands gripping his knees, knuckles nearly turning white as he tried to steady himself.
"Oh no," she thought, this was going to require a level of emotional maturity of which she was certainly now capable but still not well practiced in. On she went though, as was her nature. She shot a hand across and set it on his, light but present. "Hey. Stay with me, Third. We're not going to let them make us do anything we don't want to. Those days are over. I'll break every nose in this bucket if I have to."
Across the aisle, the commandos shared a quick glance. In the right circumstances, it seemed entirely plausible.
Her hand worked like an anchor. The cords in his knuckles eased; the breath evened. He looked up at her and managed a half-smile that didn't quite reach his eyes.
"Yeah," he said. "You're right."
"Of course I am, idiot. You should know that by now."
The craft shivered as it cleared another pressure band. Somewhere in the shell a relay clicked. Outside, the orange gave way to a deeper, almost oily dark, the porthole now a coin of moving black lit only by the thin forks of energy that ran through the currents. The hum changed key. Locks began their slow sequence, one after another, counting down the last seconds of quiet.
---
The corridor to Operations hummed like a live wire. Through the triple-layered hexaglass on Misato's left, the LCL pressed close, orange dimness cut by floodlight ladders. To her right followed Professor Fuyutsuki, inscrutably walking a half step behind with his hands clasped at the small of his back.
"They're five minutes out," she said, with a tension running through her voice.
Fuyutsuki gave the faintest nod. She'd been tracking the descent by the minute. It was the first time since their re-introduction that he had seen her nervous.
'You're sure you want to meet them on the command deck?' he said
"Yes. He deserves to be looked in the eye and told the truth before we show him this thing and tell him to climb in" she replied
Her mind flicked instinctively toward the sealed blast doors that ringed 'the Cradle' - the sealed chamber in which Unit Omega had been forged. It had been built like a sarcophagus, multiple layers deep, armored and pressurized not just to contain what sat at its heart but to keep the rest of the base from feeling it. Even through all that plexi-steel and mini S2 latice designed to dampen its AT field, there were days you swore it hummed, a kind of weight in the air.
"You know his father calculated that confronting him with the Eva and putting him in a stress situation was what was most likely to make him agree to pilot it? Bringing the girl in in that state was no accident. Without that same impetus he may refuse."
"I know" she said bitterly and tinged with shame "I've read all the logs since but I knew then that we were manipulating him into getting in that plug."
"We were at war, the future of humanity was at stake. What was one child's free will in the face of all that?"
"What it always is" she replied "Nothing, and everything."
They took the bend toward the lift. Far below, a gantry swung under a crane with a lazy pendulum drift, sparking as a torch kissed plate. A coolant pump rumbled up through the floor and settled. Misato tapped the call. The doors opened on stifling air.
"Professor" she said turning to face him before they stepped in, "I don't want to lie to them. I want to tell them as much as we can"
"You'll do your best " he replied "That's all you can offer them, and more than they were given by any of us last time'.
She turned into the lift, he followed and the doors began to shut. "Then hold me to it."
They watched the mechanical level counter tick through the numbers, a plaque conspicuously screwed in below it bearing the HERZ logo. the elevators in some sections were largely unchanged remnants from NERV that they used to connect the warren of old and new that comprised the base.
"Do you think he would have ever let Shinji walk away? If all the calculations had failed and he'd just said no."
Fuyutsuki thought for a second.
"No. Ikari was obsessed with his mission and the boy was the key to it. One way or another he was always going to pilot."
The doors parted onto the primary observation deck. Space opened in front of them like a held breath. The 'Cradle' comprised the far side of the vast chamber, a sweep of composite panels, pressure locks and blast doors cocooning the being which they had created. Light pooled on the deck in clean circles. The air smelled faintly of ozone and warm insulation.
Misato passed the boardroom-like table went straight to the glass. The glass gave the room a quiet. It turned the noise into a weather of clanks and short calls and the whine of lift motors. Down on the floor a pallet slid past, wrapped in white. The hazard striping below it pulsed as if to a heartbeat.
"You've built something incredible here you know," Fuyutsuki said, taking a seat just to her right.
"None of it matters if we don't stop them. Everything from the day we first came here as NERV to this moment rests on what happens in the next few minutes."
Fuyutusuki nodded, he allowed the silence to lengthen as he sensed she wished to fill it but was toying with whether to do so.
"Do you think he'll come?" she asked quietly. "All the way?"
"He will," he said. "It's what he does. What he's asked to."
That's what I'm afraid of," she said. Then, softer: "I don't want to break him again."
Fuyutsuki turned to her. "You didn't break him last time."
She gave him a look. "Come on."
"You were the only one who gave him some humanity and a place to be himself, to realise what life could be. Without you we wouldn't have had a choice."
She didn't answer that. Just breathed out and tapped the intercom.
"Status?"
"Omega ready for inspection." Came the voice "Bathysphere docking imminently"
He chose his next words carefully as he was a little unsure of them but he knew he had to test her resolve.
"They, she more than him, may hate you for this you know. For waiting. For asking."
"I'm used to it" she replied cooly "And I deserve it"
This he was even less sure about but now was not the time to fence with her. "Well that's something else that we have in common Commander."
This raised a wry smile and poked just a miniscule hole in the tension of it all.
The com crackled into life "Sphere docked. Subjects on their way. ETA 2 minutes at your location"
Misato straightened her uniform, put a stray hair in place and squared her shoulders.
"Ready," she said.
"As we can be," the old man replied.
---
They had been talking for some time.
Misato stood by the reinforced glass with her arms folded tight across her ribs. Fuyutsuki lingered behind her, a quiet silhouette, adding sage authority to her steely presence.
Shinji and Asuka faced them across the polished onyx of the table that split the room. Watching as projections and charts burst forth above smooth surface, detailing the dread which had brought them all there.
As the briefing came to an end the silence in the room was all consuming. No alarms. No humming readouts. Just the thrum of pressure beneath the ocean and the question hanging unspoken in the air.
"I always told myself," Misato said at last, eyes fixed on the cradle beyond, "that I wouldn't do it this way. That I'd never put either of you in a room like this again."
"But here we are," Asuka said. Her voice was flat. "All this seems pretty familiar from where I'm sitting 'Commander'". There was real venom in the final word.
Misato didn't look at her. "It's not the same."
"No, it's worse," Asuka replied. "Back then we were given our orders and sent out to die. This time you want us to absolve you by giving us a fake choice."
Shinji said nothing. His hands hung loosely at his sides, but the way he sat — very still, weight slightly forward — suggested he was listening to something no one else could hear.
Even through metres of reinforced shielding, it was like something inside was watching him. Not quite calling out to him in words but binding him with a malevolent gravity, daring him to search it out. It was familiar and entirely alien, the way Unit-01 had once been, but different somehow, hungrier.
Fuyutsuki spoke gently. "No one's being forced. That matters."
"I'm not sure it does," Asuka said, glancing at Shinji. "His silence has always been enough for you, like his father. A blank stare, a nod, and you'll march him right back into hell"
That earned a flicker from Misato. "Asuka—"
"What?" she snapped, rounding on the older woman. "You put this whole thing together without my knowledge. Without once asking for help, which you clearly needed by the way. But then you blow the fucking door open and drag us down here because you knew it would make him an easy target."
The whole world seem to stand still as the space between the two woman practically crackled with the static of the confrontation. "I suppose thats what it took when you couldn't stoop to sending him slutty pictures to get what you wanted."
The space between the two women crackled. Misato's knuckles went white against her folded arms.
"I've tried to protect you both from this for a long as I could, but we're running out of time."
"That's tough," Asuka said. "We're not agreeing to anything tonight."
Shinji finally spoke. Quietly.
"I'll do it."
The room stopped.
Misato turned, brows pulling inward. "You don't have to decide now."
"I have." He looked up from the table and met her gaze squarely, a rare moment of mutual recognition passing between them. Suddenly transported to the cage where those eyes had met before as she bled out and the world began to fall around them, the first time perhaps since that moment that the two had truly recognised one another.
Asuka turned to him. Pain and fury splashed across her delicate features in equal measure. "You…you've barely said a word. And now—what, you're just going to give them what they want"
Shinji's voice was soft, but there was a finality to it that cut through the room far more sharply than any outburst.
"I'm sorry, Asuka."
He looked up at her, and as the words hung in the air he thought of everything he had ever wanted bound up in the messy little life they shared in that tiny apartment back in the real world, of how we was detonating that with his sentences one by one. But he could not escape the feeling in his they very fibre of his being that drove him toward it all the same.
"It's what I have to do, I owe them all."
She blinked. "You seriously think this will fix everything don’t you?"
"Nothing can fix it." His voice was flat as the poured concrete beneath their feet. "But I will end this cycle, I don't care if I have to tear myself apart to do it."
Asuka slammed her palms against the table, the crack echoing like a gunshot. "You pathetic, selfish COWARD!" Her voice shredded at the edges, raw with fury that barely masked her terror.
She jabbed a finger toward the skylight where amber LCL currents writhed with trapped souls against the glass, bathing them all in sickly light. "They're GONE, Shinji. And you're just looking for the quickest way to join them because you can’t' stand having to live in the real world!"
Shinji's face faltered a little, his eyes darting away before returning to meet hers with a terrible resolve that seemed to pain him physically. "I'm going to do this. It's the only way"
Asuka stared into his eyes, breathing anger coursed through her, so powerful it threatened to explode into panic, or—worse—tears. She wouldn't let that happen though. Not in front of them. Not in front of him. She clenched her jaw until it ached, snapped her gaze away from the table and folded her arms so tightly her knuckles went white.
Misato stepped closer, measured. "If we do this," she said carefully, "we do it with caution. With planning. You'll both be part of every decision."
Shinji nodded again. Asuka didn't move a muscle.
Shinji's eyes were fixed on the glass now.
The cradle was sealed. No light. No noise. And yet… it pulled. Not like a voice, but like something terminal — inevitable and heavy, already inside his bones.
He took a step closer. As he approached, a faint smell of electricity and ozone filled the air. The Cradle seemed charged with some eldritch force. As he laid a hand on the glass he could feel faint vibration, the pull of something ancient calling to him from beyond the cool surface.
"Now" he said purposefully, with something approaching hunger rising in his chest. "Show it to me."