Chapter Text
"Gentlemen... I don't know what to say. ...It was quite a magnificent failure."
There were mutterings of agreement, weary sighs, and grim grunts from the participants.
"The question," a brisk voice said, "the question is - what are we going to do now?"
There was silence, embarrassed, contemplative, and expectant, for several minutes. And then a new voice spoke.
"I have not yet lost hope."
There were gasps and snorts, mutters and sounds of agreement and denial.
"Surely you don't mean that--"
"I have not. There may be a Fourth Impact - another chance..."
"Half the world is gone, again. It will take decades to rebuild to even a portion of what--"
"Much can be done in a short few years, enough at least, to..."
"What about the Angels? They are not coming back. As far as we're concerned they have left us to ourselves. There can be no Impact without Angels..."
"This is true. The Angels are not coming back. But we still have a few here."
Silence again filled the electrical space between the faceless communication links.
"He chose against our wishes the last time..."
"Because of the Third Child. It does not have to be that way this time. Even gods can be manipulated..."
"If it doesn't work... Another fruitless Impact would...!"
"And is this risk too high a price to pay... for immortality?"
And silence descended once more.
***
Shinji Ikari looked out of the still car's window, at the ruins of a city. He felt as if he had come full circle, and for a moment wondered if he had just fallen asleep and imagined the past year... imagined the Angels... that he was coming to this city for the first time, instead of leaving it. Coming to see his father.
Shinji covered his eyes with his hand for a moment. He had to clear his mind. The water that had engulfed the grounds then was gone. There were even fewer things upright here than there had been before... The buildings, the parks, all washed away by fire and violence and floods. It was an alien city. And his father was dead.
Shinji closed his eyes, as his mind wheeled in on itself, whirling circular motions around the emptiness, that one constant thing. All of last year - all of it - even the past month - was secondary to the huge, gaping nothingness in the place where his self was supposed to be... And for once, that felt like a comfort.
The car jumped as the faceless driver sat in it, having finished his conversation about Shinji's future with another faceless one. His cheerful comment was lost to the boy as he stared at the sunlight reflecting off the gleaming black metal of the car as it rumbled to life.
Asuka was gone, under observation in a military asylum. She would be fine - Shinji had known it from the look in her eyes when he had strangled her, his fingers burying into her neck, her body jerking slightly under his, almost as if in the throes of passion, as her air-supply diminished. He knew it from the disgust on her face when he let go, when he fell on her chest, sniffling and crying like the coward he was. She would be just fine.
And he...?
He didn't mind. Didn't mind what happened to him now. He could see his life stretching ahead of him... He didn't have his father's strength, or his mother's goodness - so pathetic... A boy who didn't even have the guts to be a bastard. His brows knit in a frown. Misato had tried to teach him how to be a man, and now Misato was dead, too. It didn't matter. He would never have learned, anyway... He would never have become what they needed him to be, what everyone wanted of him. He was too weak, too pathetic, too stupid. Just like Asuka had said.
He was a loser. And he always would be.
Wasn't that what everyone said? Wasn't that what...
The memory of a voice filled his head. 'You are fragile like glass, and that earns you my love...'
It all crashed down on him at once. He gasped, a violent tremble passing through, and his vision was quickly lost behind tears. Letting out an animalistic groan, ignoring the driver's worried question, he pulled his knees up and buried his face in his arms, rocking himself slowly from side to side as he cried. This pain went deep inside his guts like a parasite, wrenching out of his body through the convulsions and sobs. Everyone gone. Hate, pain, regret and guilt and Kaworu's face, Kaworu's face, looking at him, his eyes, looking up, looking up from where he held him, shoulders lost between the EVA's fingers, his eyes, Kaworu, Kaworu...
The crack and the pop as his head was wrenched from his body.
Shinji's sobs came open-mouthed, now, and he didn't even notice when the driver pulled the car up by the road and started talking to him anxiously, trying to make him stop, asking what was wrong. Why why why did I do it, why did I do it, he was the only one, he loved me, he loved me and I killed him!
Misato was dead. Shinji's father was dead. Asuka hated him. Rei was gone... Touji and Kensuke, gone... Blood on his hands, over and over again, the life he had crushed, Angel after Angel after Angel, all of them secret kin, all of them a mankind, each death a holocaust. And then the peace he had felt... After the pain and the suffering, when he had been like God, filled with liguid light, an equally God-like Rei astride his hips, their bodies joined together in the most primitive form of absolute unity, and around them, all of mankind feeling and thinking as one, as the divine one they had been first before they became many... And Misato's cross in his hand... Misato's... loved one's...
And so he had plunged himself back into the scornful, hurtful, base, disgusting thing that was human life... for love.
His sobs started calming down. He drew in a breath, shivering so bad he had to gasp for air. His eyes burned, but no more tears flowed. He rocked his body still as the convulsions came slowly under control. He noted, now, the relief in the man's voice. He closed puffy and sore eyes, and when he opened them again, the look in them was dead.
"I feel better now," he said in answer to something that was asked.
His solution was a simple one after all, he thought to himself as he fought the bitterness down to replace it with a comforting coldness.
Never love again.
***
Nagisa Kaworu could feel memories filling his head as he came slowly to, blinking at the wide white light of the hospital lamp above his bed.
The memories... Some of them shined above all the others, clinical-clean, clear as glass, almost artificial. Among these was the memory of the tanks filled with fluids tinged red by the blinking lights, the mindless living carcasses floating inside, his own face multiplied staring back at him with empty eyes moving in their sockets without any direction of will. He remembered wondering why his flesh, even stripped of soul, could not let memory recreate a mind, knowing his nature, knowing what the _other_ memory told him, the one beneath the artifice, the knowledge that ran in his blood. The song of the Angels. His true self.
'One of me must have died', he thought.
***
"What are we going to do about the pilot of 01?"
"He knows the full story. I think it would be safer to dispose of him--"
"He's just a child. I don't think we should--"
"A child! He cost us everything! If he'd just chosen what we--"
"It doesn't matter! We should not involve guilt in this!"
Silence.
"I refuse to let you kill him!"
"I will have no insubordination to the will of the majority in this meeting. I will not HAVE it! You, who spoke in the pilot's favour, are therefore now responsible for providing his death."
"But I--!"
"You will watch him and kill him without delay at the first sign of trouble. Do it discretely, of course. His death sentence is effective as of today, but I know we are all very busy... Therefore, take your time. But do not hesitate a moment if he exhibits signs of telling his story - if anyone gets even close to finding out what he knows..."
There was relief in the voice when it spoke. "I understand. Thank you, sir."
"Until next time, gentlemen."