Disclaimer: Evangelion is owned by some smart folks.
Author's Note: Yes, it's been edited. I threw in a few scenes just to smooth things out for the long run. I realized that it wasn't finished by the time I wrote chapter 3, so I had to go back two chapters and rewrite a few sequences, edit in a few more. Oh well. Here's the finished chapter 1.
To Begin:
Somewhere onshore, a siren pierced the stagnant air. A breeze blew a power cable back and forth, scattering the pigeons that grappled it in their small feet. Civilian power shut down. A train stopped three stations short of its intended destination. The loudspeaker blared quiet monotone directions that faded easily into the bright sunlight of the June day.
A public pay phone was being used.
An ordinary-looking boy spied an ordinary-looking girl from across the street, but she disappeared in a gust of wind.
---
Months later, he would have to make a choice, and people would die.
---
Fifteen years prior, Antarctica would become but a memory in the minds of flood survivors and professors. Lots of people died.
One man would make it his mission to know what really happened.
One man would make it his mission to do it again.
And a bunch of people decided that they knew what was best for humanity.
---
Two millennia before Antarctica became a memory, a man died after being nailed to a plank of wood for suggesting that people try to be reasonable for once.
And a bunch of people decided that they knew what was best for humanity.
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CHAPTER i : AND HE WENT FORWARD TO GO NOWHERE
The sound of a cello permeated the still air. It was easily identified as being from an amateur; misplaced staccatos and uneven slurs, combined with the every-so-often problem with intonation, and a relative lack of overall phrasing and dynamics made for a relatively mediocre performance at best. Granted, Bach would probably be pounding his head on the table he wrote the piece on if he had had the chance to listen the performance when it was first composed, but seeing as how the music had survived four centuries—and for this particular manuscript, a worldwide catastrophe—Bach would probably adjust his attitude to that of reasonably smug self-satisfaction.
The music abruptly stopped. It was followed by a quiet curse. The sound of the drizzle outside was now audible, unrestricted by the occupied frequencies of the cello's harmonics.
"Ah, damn."
And there were the chords again. His instructor had never gotten that far with him—he understood the basic mechanics of chords and triads, but actually performing them on the cello turned out to be a different matter all together. It required the precise knowledge of where the fingers went—oftentimes each finger pinching a different string, in seemingly impossible positions.
Freakin' Bach.
He leaned back in the metal folding chair, after he placed his bow on the stand in front of him. He cracked his neck, then decided to lay the instrument down on the floor of his room—his left wrist was aching again. It was time to stop.
Pablo Casals, he was not. Yo Yo Ma, he most certainly was not.
Shoddy? Struggling? Reasonably distraught? He'd settle for those.
It wasn't that it was something that came natural to him. He had to struggle with each pitch every step of the way, often missing notes and rhythms entirely. And it was never because he didn't understand it, either. He was always able to understand how to do it—so well, in fact, that he sometimes wondered whether his instructor was really worth listening to at all. Understanding it was the easy part.
Shinji sighed. Some would call the memory a reminiscence of the good old days, but… the days weren't good back then. The days were never good. Not anymore, not ever. They were simply days waiting to end.
His gaze rested back upon the sheet music.
He didn't play. He didn't even try.
After a little while of nothing, he stood up and placed the cello back into its case in the corner, wiping the strings of the rosin before he settled it into place and hung the bow next to it. With everything solidly secured, he clasped the case shut, and examined the rest of his room. He pondered what the next course of action should be.
Rather, the next course of inaction.
His shoulders slumped in the defeat at the hands of some unknown force. As he collapsed into his bed, his arm fell across his face. What was the point of doing anything anymore? The only reason he was still kept around was because of Eva, and even if they told him to leave, he'd probably stay where he was. He literally had no other place to be. It sure didn't feel like home, but… it had grown on him.
After awhile, he sighed and turned out his light, sinking into a hazy, indistinguishable dream.
---
Oblique shadows of people he knew moved at odd angles across the wall. There were few that he could name.
—the retreating one, whose saunter echoed back and forth across the wall and floor tiles, retreating; shadow hands tucked tight into their shadow pockets, the shadows of shoulders hunched over. Broken. Dejected. Guilty.
Father.
—a breast, long slender legs; an unkempt mop of hair that tossed its way onto her head. The shadow didn't move. It stayed close to the wall, the half-circle of its nose pointed in his vague direction, the slender neck and still chest not even showing any outward signs of breathing. But it stared. He could tell how it stared. The eyes never blinked. And behind it, seemingly engulfing it, stood a larger more threatening shadow—a giant, a behemoth, with two unblinking eyes, covered in blood.
…Eva.
—a different breast, smaller, a shorter face with a tuft of hair that organized itself into kempt unruliness. Shorter. From the opposite direction. At first it didn't move, but then, slowly, it approached him, a shadowy hand reaching out steadily, tentatively, toward him. But it stopped midway. It stopped. It didn't move. He reached his hand out, equally slow, equally tentative, shaking slightly, feeling the Eva's gaze on his back, the jealously of the Eva's gaze on his back, until the palm of his hand met the wall.
He felt the shadow's hand beneath his own. He lightly grasped the demure fingertips, and gently hoisted—pulling, freeing the shadow. The shadow dissolved. Out of the wall, his hand grasping hers—
Ayanami.
—fall down. Backwards this time. He's naked instead of her. No more walls. No shadows. Just her apartment; he's on his naked back, she's got her uniform on, groping his chest, staring at him, and he's—she's—
She's leaning in. Her hand is touching his face. Leaning in. His eyes are closing, hers too, and she's still leaning in. Her face is so close.
So… close…
---
"You decided to get up early."
Misato greeted him at the table. A can of lukewarm beer was in the hand that stretched lazily over the back of the chair, a half-empty mug of solid-looking coffee abandoned in front of her. Her hair was soaked. She probably just got out of the shower.
Shinji looked at her, puzzled. "What?"
"I was being facetious." She blinked and looked over at the clock. So did he.
11:38
"What time did you get to bed last night?" She took a sip of beer and held the can in front of her face as she spoke. The words rattled around inside the tin like pebbles in a drum.
"I'm not sure. There isn't a clock in my room yet." He rubbed his neck. His wrist hurt again. "It doesn't matter though, does it? I mean, the weekend and all…" He looked around, trying to find something for his eyes to rest on that wasn't Misato. "Where's Asuka? Isn't she up yet?"
She scrunched her brow in confusion. "Shinji, she lives across town. How would I know?"
He looked at her again.
"Oh," He said. "Oh, that's right." He closed his eyes and shook his head, pushing his left hand up through his forehead. "Yeah, right. Yeah." He scratched his scalp and headed for the refrigerator.
She set her can down. "Must've had some pretty crazy dreams about her, eh?"
"It's not like that!" His reply was quick. "It's just—she—I thought—" A sigh. "Sorry."
"Shinji?" Subdued alarm laced through her voice.
"No, nothing. My head's all whack from a rough night."
"Maybe a shower will help clear it."
"Maybe."
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LIFETIMES AGO
Water. Blue. Ennui.
Required nourishment of body.
Listless. Directionless.
Rain. Grey. Life.
Release of vapor and chaos.
Interrupts a silence. Staccato.
Cloud. Dark. Sleep.
Brings rain, reprieve from humidity.
Blots out the Sun.
Brings shade.
Sun. Red. Death.
Predictable, thoughtless;
Shines light only to spawn shadows.
Oppressive. Stagnation breeds under its watchful eye.
Shadows. Black. Hibernation.
Intangible wisps of light's tricks.
As close to nothingness as is approachable.
"I was created out of nothing. Return me to nothing. This is my only wish."
But the mirror only repeated her words back to her. Taunting. Mocking.
The glasses never held a response. Secretive. Barricaded.
Was she just a mirror, herself? When he looked in the mirror, what did he see? When he looked in her mirror, did he see her reflection, or the reflection of his wife? When he looked at her, did he see a placeholder? A reflection of a dead person? Was she just a reflection of a dead person?
Did he see a doll, when he looked at her?
"I am the third." The reflection's lips moved, but she did not remember moving them.
She hardened her face. "But I am not a doll."
And the glasses broke.
And the door swung shut a final time.
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minus ten years. (-10)
Cyan.
Nothingness.
Peace.
No.
A red ocean.
—vanished in a flash of light.
"Can you hear us?"
---
"Excellent, it seems that she is in perfect, working order."
"…"
"Be sure that she stays on the medications that I have already gone over with you, and this one should last you quite a while. Cellular degeneration is highly improbable—especially with the advancements and all—but it is something to be concerned about."
"…"
"Rei? Rei, can you hear me? Little one?"
"…Rei?"
"My, quite a soft voice, isn't it? Yes, dear. That is your name."
"…My… name."
"Yes. What we call you. You remember now?"
"…"
"Give her a minute, the artificial memory implant gums up the brain. It takes a little while for the consciousness to fully grasp all of the information it already has—needs to process seven years of experience that it doesn't quite know happened."
"…I… understand, now."
"Do you? Good, Rei. Now, this man is…"
And everything started happening again—at least for awhile.
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The second stared off into an infinity of temporal existence. It ticked along, pace after pace, revolving infinitely around the infinite clock of unimaginable continuity; a round blob of time so immensely huge that it took the power of a circle to present it in the reality of the third dimension.
It had no intention of stopping any time soon.
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THE SECOND watched calmly as the clock's hands moved themselves around the blank surface of the featureless device. This one had no long hand. Just minutes and hours. In its own words: "Who needs precision nowadays?"
The rain had been coming and going for weeks now. When it came tomorrow, the temperature would be approximately seventy-five degrees Fahrenheit at two o'clock in the afternoon. An inch of rain would have already fallen. One more would still be pending.
Today, the predicted high was fifty-six degrees, said to be reached sometime midmorning. The sky was clear, save for the giant yellow dot that stretched the shadows of buildings to engulf the streets and storefronts below.
There would be no clouds until sometime around six o'clock, P.M.; sunset. At that time, the sky would be soaked in a dripping crimson, the red pooling in the streets and dripping down the sides of buildings until the sun finally slumped below the horizon.
It was currently two o'clock P.M. The current outdoor temperature was approximately sixty-one degrees Fahrenheit.
Nevertheless, the air conditioner was on a schedule. The air moved through the otherwise vacant hallway, but was surprisingly noiseless—the repairmen fixed the bugs in the system last week. Only the dull hum of the overhead fluorescent bulb reminded the world of sound.
She waited for the elevator. The nearest stairwell was being repainted, and was therefore off limits.
The gears inside the clock shifted. A door opened. Some footsteps disrupted the silence. A boy cleared his throat. The elevator arrived. A door closed. The hum of the fluorescent bulb continued to remind the world of its sound.
"Hello, Ayanami."
"Good afternoon, Ikari."
"I take it you're on your way to the quartet practice this afternoon?"
"Yes."
They entered the elevator. The doors hissed shut. A button was pressed. A tone sounded. The box rattled down the shaft. The box stopped. A tone sounded. The doors hissed open. They exited.
"Could you please let Asuka and Kaoru know that I'll be a little late today? I've got a few errands I need to run for my mom before three. Fish market and such—you know."
"Alright."
"See you later."
"Ikari,"
"Yeah?"
"Do not forget about our scheduled sync appointment with Doctor Akagi tomorrow."
"What? Who's Doctor Akagi?"
The second made its way around the clock for awhile. Outside, a bird chirped. Inside, the dull hum of a fluorescent light bulb prevented the silence from getting too awkward.
"I… have not gotten enough sleep today. I apologize."
"Oh. Alright… Well, see you at rehearsal."
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"The Second Child is coming in from Germany, today."
---
"So I heard you're the one who synched with Unit-01 with no prior training." She pointed an accusatory finger at the Third Child.
"Um, yes. Th-That's me." His reply was weak. So was his slouch.
She frowned, deeply. "Come with me, Third Child. There's something I need to show you."
---
How long ago was that?
She hopped down on the tracks of the station, skipping across the beams. She hummed quietly to herself. There was no one else in the whole station—and the stairs across the way went nowhere, just like both sets of tracks.
But she wasn't waiting for the way out.
A screech echoed down the hallway. She jerked her head to the left—lights.
She watched the train streak by, safe from her vantage point on the platform.
And she smirked to herself.
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NOSTALGIA:
Rain.
Violet.
"You smell funny."
"We've been in bed for a week. What'd you expect?"
"Not a week! We've eaten, haven't we?"
"We still haven't left the apartment."
"We went out on the patio, didn't we?"
"Well… except for those times."
"What you did out there gave me a funny mark over here."
"Mhmm, so I see."
"…"
"…"
"You know, you still smell funny."
"…"
"And you—hh—ah—I…a—ah"
"…you were saying?"
"Don't stop!"
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plus nine years (+9)
The ponytail stared out the window of his quaint apartment. The rain in the air was heavy with melancholy and recollection. Oh, how it brought back so many memories.
He smirked to himself.
There was only one word on his lips, one name. It was the only thing that mattered right now, lost in the reverie of reminiscence.
"Katsuragi."
He stared out of the window, idly gazing at the grey sky, remembering the good times gone by, watching the raindrops, the people, waiting.
And then, the phone rang.