Soliloquy for Two: Bloody Hands
By Fool's Gold
Disclaimer: Neon Genesis Evangelion and all associated characters are the property of Studio Gainax. The fic, however, is mine.
The sky has never looked so beautiful. It is an unadulterated vision of majesty, untainted by man-made lights and the trappings of civilisation. The stars are jewelled pins against the dark fabric of the night, holding it up until the dawn should break. And a red sash is banded across the heavens, the incandescence of men's souls blazing like a brilliant ribbon.
The moon casts an ethereal light upon the land, bathing the cliffs below a pristine white against the orange sea. And there is peace. All is right with the world, for once.
A pity, then, that there is no-one to see it. For this is one man's vision, a world purged and purified of sin. And all that is left of humanity is this man's son, left behind to reap the bitter fruits of what has been sown...
And he despairs.
It's cold.
I sit atop the cliff, gazing at the sea of LCL that stretches as far as the eye can see. It is the primordial soup, the essence that all life came from.
And in the end, all life returned to it.
This was not what I wanted. Or was it?
"You wished for a closed world that was comfortable for you."
"You wished for it in order to protect you from your weakness."
"Your wish ejected things you disliked and created an isolated and lonely world, filled with nothing."
"This is an ending you brought upon yourself. You chose this fate."
And I didn't want it. I couldn't live in a world where nothing existed. It just wasn't right.
So, I chose to return to the real world, and the only reality I knew was pain and loneliness. And it turned out that there was no difference between what I was running from and what I was running to. There was only the barren land and the empty sea, a desolate wilderness devoid of life.
Ironic, isn't it? I can't run from my destiny. No matter where I go, whether I hide in my own mind or expose myself to harsh reality, I always end up alone. And so, I must return to the chapel of my memories to serve my penance.
I have created this prison of darkness within my mind, a terrible void of solitude from which there is no respite. Here, I have spent countless moments with none save that cruel, mocking voice; I am tormented and torn to pieces by my memory. I have been condemned to this living hell, a barren world devoid of hope. There is no one around to hear my anguished cries, no living soul to judge me.
Murder, treason, rape, genocide... all these charges are etched on my conscience with deep strokes, leaving gashes that will never heal. And now the cycle of hate and regret begins afresh. The old scars are torn open mercilessly by the ghosts of the past, and the salt of my tears is rubbed into raw wounds, searing my flesh with the agony of times past.
And I remember.
I can hear the crashing of the waves far below me, the oceans of blood crashing on the barren shores. It is a terrible sound, a sound of finality, death, and pain, and I can hear a boy's song rising above the sound of the tides, no longer the refrain of joy and hope that it had been, but a grotesque parody of a friendship stillborn.
The boy is lonely.
It is the curse of Eva: the sad loneliness that must consume all those who choose to dabble in the affairs of gods and angels. All his friends have left him; his nearest and dearest – if there is even such a thing remaining in his world of desolation – have been transformed into soulless automatons by their own tragedies. None realise that solitude is the greatest tragedy of all.
Yet in the middle of the darkness comes a bright soul. A boy reaches out for companionship, a drowning man grasping at straws, and instead finds an unlikely rescuer: a beautiful youth with hair of snow and eyes of scarlet. A stranger who approaches the lost child with an intimacy that he has never known before, his frank manner and kind smile pierce through even the hedgehog's armour around the Third Child's heart.
And he says, "Call me..."
"...Kaworu."
He was the only one who cared. Through him, I learnt how to love others and to love myself. He was kind, understanding, and I loved him for it. He was more than a friend to me.
He was an Angel. And for that, I killed him. Now, his face leers at me from the void, his memory corrupted into an instrument of torture. From his mouth, the darkness tosses Kaworu's words back at me, the pure, innocent words twisted into a derisive whine.
"My life was meaningful, thanks to you."
"He'd be proud of you now, wouldn't he? His task was to destroy humanity, yet he gave it up in order for you to survive. And now you've decided to return the favour by finishing the job for him."
I would answer, if only I could find the words to fight with. But deep down, I know that the voice speaks all too true. How many have lost their lives on account of my father's dream?
I stare into the darkness, and gradually, a host of faces form from the cruel night, a nameless, faceless multitude. These are the ghosts of the human race, a proud and ambitious people who attempted to raise a god, who fought and defeated angels... and were brought down by one of their own, a mere mortal. Their voices are merciless talons, tearing at my mind; their dying breaths curse my name even as I fight to retain my sanity.
There are familiar faces here. I see the technical officers as they make their last stand; I see Lieutenants Ibuki, Aoba and Hyuga fighting for their lives, utter desperation and terror on their faces as the enemy cuts a path of blood and fire into the heart of Headquarters. My friends, Touji, Hikari and Kensuke are here, their last moments a conflux of confusion and horror as their lives end abruptly. I hear the bitterness in Ritsuko's voice as she curses my father's name and her mother's fickleness with her dying breath, and I feel the calm fatalism of Kaji and Vice-commander Fuyutsuki, the betrayer and the betrayed, each facing their own ends in an expression of coolness that chills me to the bone.
But more than anything, I can still hear the ghosts of Instrumentality calling for a reckoning, the multitude baying for my blood like starving hellhounds. They want an answer, a reason for the mass slaughter of the innocents. Many of them were staff of NERV, trapped in the sack of Headquarters and gunned down without mercy. But there were even more of them caught unexpectedly by the purging tides of LCL, the flood that was summoned by SEELE to rid the world of its wickedness. And I have no answer that will placate them.
I scream in terror, but no sound escapes from my lips as the ravenous ghosts surround me, consuming my mind and feeding on my terror. I am dragged down into the maelstrom of despair and consumed, until nothing remains and darkness fills my senses...
"Stop."
And as the ghosts fade back into the darkness, three shades remain, gazing at me with eyes of terrible sadness. Three women, sisters of fate, ready to draw out the end of the thread of life.
The first is a woman of burnished steel, with violet eyes brimming with pain and despair. All her hopes and dreams and expectations were pinned on the one boy who could defeat the angels, the one who could avenge the loss of her father, of her innocence, of her love. In him, she had seen hope for her redemption, a way out of the abyss of shame and lust that she had driven herself into.
But every time she tried to get out, every time she needed help, he ran. And now, I bow my head in agony, not daring to look her in the eye. For I have failed her, just as I have always done.
"Misato."
The taste of despair lingers on his lips long after the kiss has ended.
He slumps in the elevator, with tears and regrets, clutching desperately onto the one thing that he has left to remind him of his mission: her cross-shaped necklace, red stains marring the pristine silver.
She told him to pilot the Eva, to find the answers and reasons for his existence. And she made him promise to return to her, a promise sealed with a kiss and signed in blood.
But kisses can betray.
If it wasn't for my indecision, perhaps she might not have been killed. If I had been more active, more brave... but I wasn't. I was dragged through the halls, whining like a spoilt child, while she desperately fought to buy time for my survival. And as she died, she told me to find my own answers before returning to her.
"Have you found your answers yet, Shinji?"
Her cross is too heavy for me to bear. And there are no answers left for her, only futile apologies that she will never get a chance to hear.
There is a soft sigh, and she disappears before my eyes, her shining form replaced by the cruel night.
The second is a maiden of frost, and as I look to her, her form wavers and shifts from one shape to another. Now she is the goddess, cold and terrifying, claiming all who live to herself; now she is the mother, her hands filled with warmth and compassion; and even as I gaze, no longer understanding, she is the friend I found and lost amidst the chaos of this wretched life.
She knew she was expendable, merely my father's tool. He taught her nothing – nothing of what it meant to be human, what it meant to care.
The girl feels a sensation that she has never felt before, a bitterness that transcends even the pain that eats her body and mind away.
"Is this pain?"
"No. It is different."
"It is loneliness."
Her soul suddenly yearns for company. And for her, there can be only one choice: she wishes to be one with the boy who cared for her, who she would gladly trade her worthless life for. She wants to be with the one who told her to smile, and taught her what it meant to shed tears.
Yet, she knows that to do so would be death and terror for the one she loves. She cannot allow it, and she knows that she must stop the angel, even if she must face death once again. And as she prepares to go out in a blaze of glory, she only sees the face of the man she adored, and in it, the boy who gave her short life meaning.
And her tears turn to vapour in the flames of a sacrificial pyre.
She traded her life for our survival. And what was consumed in the fire of her Eva was not her body, so easily replaced, nor her immortal soul, transcending the boundaries of the mortal flesh.
It was the love, the human emotion that died that day. And from then on, she was just a tool once again, a distant parody of the ones who cared for me.
Yet, as I look at her for a last time, I can see a solitary tear of ice form, sliding down her cheek. A pang of sadness strikes me as I realise, all too late, that I owed her my life. In her, there was a reason to live on, to keep on fighting, to pilot Eva.
And I can no longer repay her.
"Goodbye, Ikari."
The icy teardrop hits the non-existent ground, and she melts into the darkness.
And the last is a flaming vision, a crackling inferno that burns and consumes all it touches. She doesn't belong here. Her place is among the living, not with those who are dead.
My fevered mind is flooded with a fresh wave of agony as I reach for her, only to be burnt by a burst of flame. And out from the fire, her voice cries out for revenge.
"You abandoned me."
I tried to help her. I could see how she was hurting, even though she refused to admit her pain and loneliness. And I was a fool to take her words at face value when she drove me away.
All this I know, and yet even as she speaks, I can feel a familiar sense of frustration wash over me. It is the feeling of holding your friend's broken body in the hand of your Eva, the agony of watching your closest acquaintances destroy themselves, the torment of sitting in a dead machine and waiting for the angels to bring down the judgement of God upon your head.
It is futility, the purest of pain. And in desperate impertinence, I speak, unable to keep silent at this last vision. For if she leaves, the darkness will return, and I will fall.
"Don't leave me..."
It all plays out like a dream. It has happened a million times before in my mind, and it happens again. I will beg for mercy, for her aid, and all I will get is the cruel truth.
"Don't come near me. All you ever do is hurt me."
The flames lash out once again, and I am seared by the tongues of fire even as I reach for her again. But I can no longer feel the pain. The sting in her words has hit home, and my heart is numbed by the venom of rejection. There is nothing left for me, and all I have left is the empty despair that floods my senses.
I lunge for her throat in a violent spasm, as I have done before, and I disregard even the violent flames issuing from her form. My mind no longer registers the screams of my tortured morality. All I want is silence, an end to the torment that springs from my conscience and her mouth.
And she is snuffed out as easily as the light of a candle, and all that remains is the crushing weight of my sins, obliterating my senses in a flood of terror.
"What do you fear?"
I begin the agonising crawl back to my feet, the pressure within my mind threatening to overwhelm me. As I rise, I see only a solitary figure before me, features obscured by the night, and yet this lone figure scares me more than any of the previous apparitions. Around us, the winds scream in unison with his quiet, sinister words, a shrill mockery of my despised condition.
"Tell me, Shinji Ikari... what is it that you fear the most?"
For a moment, I stare at the dark silhouette, trying to discern the vague features before me. But there is nothing to see: the darkness hides everything. I dare not reply.
"Very well, I shall show you the truth."
And as I continue to stare into the dark horizon, the shadows recede before the dawn. The terrible night gives way to a cruel sun, casting its rays upon a barren world, upon a land where there is no one to see the sunrise. Everything is painted in hues of crimson and orange, as though the darkness within could be purged by nature's faltering light.
And the face before me is my own, a bloody and grinning mask staring greedily back at me.
"No."
I flinch momentarily; the cursed vision causes my gut to churn like never before, and the demon presses his attack.
"This is what you fear, Shinji. You fear the side of you that everyone has seen: your dark thoughts and evil desires. You're afraid that everyone will see how depraved and twisted you have become, aren't you?"
I do not dare to utter a single word. If I speak, I am condemned by the very words from my mouth. But if I stay silent...
The voice echoes on, and the cruel words continue to slam into my psyche like a fist into soft flesh.
"You're no innocent, Shinji. Look at yourself. You've been reduced to nothing but a wreck – you can't even control your own primal urges!"
"You lie..."
"Are you sure? Look at your hands!"
I cannot control myself; I look down –
The boy stares at the naked form lying before him, his mind locked in a terrible cycle of guilt and doubt. He is desperate for companionship; he needs something to hold on to... he seeks release.
And so he pleasures himself like a mindless zombie, unconscious of his own vile actions.
Perhaps, in his mind, he is dreaming that the girl cares for him. Or perhaps he hides away in his fantasies, trying to escape from the horrors of the real world. But when the ecstasy fades, only the heartache and pain will remain, and he is consumed once again by the loathing that he has known all his life.
– my hands –
She is at his mercy again. The girl, once a restless inferno, now lies as cold as the ashes of a fire long dead. She has lost everything once more. Her pride, her will to live, her dignity, her mother; everything that mattered to her has been taken away. And her body is wracked by the pain of being torn apart, the same way that her mind is tortured by the emptiness of her loss. She has been eviscerated, and all that remains is her hollow shell, lying like a limp rag doll on the shore.
The boy has fared no better, though his body remains intact. His mind has been brutalised by the memories of countless people, crushed by the unwanted emotional baggage of the multitude. And he is reduced to his most helpless state; his mind is no longer his own, tainted as it has been by his dirty past.
It is this past that continues to haunt him as he stares at the broken body before his numbed eyes. And there is only one course of action that remains.
Slowly, he reaches for her slender throat, and begins to squeeze...
– my hands are stained. And suddenly, the cruel words gush from the fiend's mouth like blood from a mortal wound, and I am overcome by a pain far greater than that of a thousand blows. I raise my voice in feeble defiance of the torrent, but a terrible blast of wind strikes me down, and I cower on the ground like a frightened child seeking shelter from the storm.
But there is no hiding from the words that ring through my head.
"Why did you kill her?"
"I didn't."
"But you wanted to, didn't you?"
"No! I wanted to spare her the pain, the agony of living in this hell. She doesn't belong here. No one does."
"Liar. It's just another of your sick fantasies about her, isn't it?"
"No..."
"You hated the way she kept leading you on, didn't you? She kept playing with you like a puppet on a string, tossing your pathetic heart between lust and hate. You were like a dog on a leash, dragged about without ever knowing why. And so, when she was completely helpless, you violated her."
"I didn't mean to! I couldn't control myself!"
"And then, when you realised what you had done, you couldn't face yourself, could you? You couldn't live with the guilt that plagued you while she was still alive. So, you tried to cover up your shameful deed."
"And you let her die while you cowered away."
"Shut up!"
"Once wasn't enough for you, was it? Did you bring her back from the dead only to kill her again, to satisfy your twisted desire for pain? You were ready to kill her, weren't you?"
"Somebody help me, please..."
"To you, she's just another doll, your personal toy to play around with the way she played around with you. And once you tire of her, you'll just discard her like trash, the same way you've done with everyone else around you."
"The same way you've destroyed your world."
"NO!"
"Of course. That's why you wanted to kill her, didn't you? You wanted a solitary existence by yourself so that you could cover your traces; so that you could hide all the sins and stupid mistakes of your past. So long as she remained, you could never have lived with yourself."
And suddenly, the demon moves in for the kill, his poisoned fangs going straight for the heart.
"You're just like your father."
Instantly, every single fibre in my body screams against this outrage. The one man whom I loath more than anything in the world, the one who used me as nothing but a mere tool to further his own twisted goals... and I am like him?
"Do you know why he sent you away, Shinji? You should know – you've seen his memories. The same reason he destroyed all your mother's pictures... you remember his words."
The double's words have become strangely muted now, a wheedling voice enticing me into a trap. And like a drunken man, I blindly follow. I can hear my father's voice echoing once again in my head, his brusque tone raising memories of a faceless grave...
"Burying memories is man's way of surviving."
The realisation strikes: My father was referring to himself.
All the cover-ups, the lies and the silence, and even my cruel treatment and abandonment at his hands... all these were his way of burying his failure, his helplessness as he watched Mother vanish before his very eyes.
So he spent his life running away from the shadows of the past, hiding behind a veneer of terror and cold-heartedness, when he was already broken inside. He considered himself incapable of love, and so he turned his back upon the world before it could reject him. And in the end, he embarked on this path of self-destruction, a grand design of madness and despair that consumed all who touched it.
I can still hear Father's last confession, a haunting reflection of my own words. And for a fleeting moment, I almost feel sympathy for the man whose blood runs through my veins.
"When I'm with Shinji, I only hurt him."
"I don't believe that I can be loved by others... I'm not worthy of love."
And I hear the final plea of a broken man, scrabbling for the shards of his neglected humanity in the dust of his death. There is a strange sadness in his voice, an emotion that I have never witnessed, not even when he stood at my mother's grave.
"So, this is my retribution. Forgive me, Shinji."
Am I any different? All my life, I have been running away from nameless, faceless demons, trying desperately to convince myself that I was loved and needed. And now, finally, the demon has revealed itself.
And the demon smiles.
"Your father thought he could escape. But there was always this one thing that he could never escape from, the one thing that haunted his nightmares and stole his peace. And neither shall you."
"It's you, isn't it?"
"How perceptive of you. As long as the one who is watched exists, there will always be a watcher."
I climb to my feet shakily against the howling winds in an act of futile defiance, even as my alter-ego stands grinning in my face with triumph. He mocks my every movement, my painful attempts to recover, knowing full well that there can be no escape from the pit which I have fallen into.
My mind remains uncomprehending, yet my lips move. I hear my voice – my own voice, not the voice of the monster – reply, in a broken whimper, like a whipped dog.
"I hate myself. I'm nothing but the lowest of the low, the scum of the earth."
It's useless. I am less than a worm, the vilest of the vile. I have taken the lives of countless people and turned this world into a blighted land. The people I knew and loved are dead now, dead by my hand, and there is no hope, no deliverance from the desolation of this life.
"Go on. You know there's only one way to end your torment."
Yes. As long as I exist, so will my tormentor. And all of a sudden, the edge of the precipice looms before me. It would be so easy to end it all here and now, with a plunge into the ocean of blood. One step closer, and...
...and I cannot do it. The howls of the gale increase in a deafening crescendo, but there is a foreboding stillness where we stand, in the very eye of the storm.
"So, you can't do it, can you? You're pathetic, Shinji."
"Very well. Every waking moment will be filled with your memories. Your nightmares will be haunted by the deeds you have done, by the ghosts of your past and the blood on your head."
"And I'll be following you every step of the way, Shinji, until the day your fragile mind snaps and your heart is torn to shreds. And I'll mark your grave for you, with a fitting message that no one will see."
"And this shall be your epitaph; that you were too vile to live, yet too craven to die."
The demon vanishes, his words lingering for a moment longer before they fade away. But he will be back. For I am my own worst enemy, and there can be no running away from myself.
I cry out to the winds around me, but there is no reply. The air is still; even the winds have abandoned me.
And I am alone.
An eternity has passed on the hard outcropping above the sea. Before me lies the edge of infinity, the siren song of an easy way out calling even stronger than ever, tempting me with its promise of an end to the suffering and torment. Behind me lies the uncertainty of a future of blood and tears, of promises unfulfilled and guilt unforgiven. It is an easy choice, and yet, I cannot make it.
"...you're not getting away that easily, Third Child."
That voice...
Go on, finish the job. End the tormented existence of a coward and fool. To die at your hands will be a fitting punishment and an unwarranted mercy, for one who knew no better than to stain his hands with the blood of those he loved. Do you not see your blood there, too?
Come, sweet Death.
Author's notes: This piece of fanfiction is my albatross, in a sense, considering that the first two pre-readers who received this draft mysteriously vanished from the local forums. And it has sat on my computer for three months, waiting for a pre-reader courageous enough to do his/her duty. So here's a great word of thanks to Akodo Tim, for succeeding where others have failed: you actually survived the fic. (And, of course, thanks for services rendered in the area of checking for plot and language errors, and acquitting yourself brilliantly there.) Evil laughter And to my other two pre-readers: if you're still out there, let us know.