Gendo watched the blurry speck on the horizon transform into the more recognizable Nerv-03 compound. It was technically a GeoFront, but he refused to call it such. Some of the same science was at play, but it was a raised structure. There was no geographical basis for it.

"A cheap imitation." His eyes narrowed as it came further into focus. It was massive, he'd give them that.

"We're nearly there, Commander," Katsuragi chirped from her seat opposite him. They were the only inhabitants of the VTOL.

"I can see that, Captain," he answered coolly. She stiffened in response.

"I-I must say, sir… I know this isn't really my place, but… I'm still confused why Dr. Akagi isn't here with you. To my understanding, this isn't any kind of tactical sortie, so…"

"It isn't a diagnostics test, either." He turned his gaze to her as he spoke. He made it clear with his eyes and his tone that she was wasting his time. "I am here for a meeting. No more, no less."

"Yes, sir." The response was instant, mechanical, and she met his eyes only long enough to nod before averting her eyes to the window. Gendo looked back out of his own.

He hated her kiss-ass demeanor. But then again, he supposed that insurrection would just get her fired. He knew himself well enough for that.

"Sir, just… just one more question." He glanced at her. Maybe she did want to get herself fired.

"I've known for a while now that… this is my last day here in Berlin. I'm going back to Tokyo-3 to work under you, effective tomorrow morning."

"Right."

"And Commander Langley also informed me that I will, uh, be in charge of the Third Child there." She paused. "Because, you know, I've worked with the Second here. So there will be similar responsibilities…"

"Right."

She seemed frustrated. He didn't care. The faster she got to the point, the better.

"And… I'm also aware that the Third is… your son."

"Whoever told you that breached protocol. But, yes."

She winced, and he wondered if she had found it out herself. Maybe she really, really wanted to be fired. But in a flash she had refocused herself and leaned in slightly, elbows on her shoulders.

"Well, if it's not too much trouble, what is he like?"

Silence.

"…I'm sorry if I've overstepped my bounds. I just want to be able to do the best job I can." Her voice had a frantic, defensive edge, but Gendo had lost his stomach for punishment. He clasped his hands.

"He's polite. Quiet. Unremarkable." He stared crossly at her. "Don't expect any miracles. Ideally, he's a last resort."

With that, the conversation died. Gendo turned his eyes back to the ever-growing shape of Nerv-03 and resolved not to answer any more questions. But she also stayed silent.

He felt her eyes on the back of his head. He hoped she was not deducing the honest answer to her question: "I don't know."

This was not where he had planned to be by now, but he would comply for now. The design of this version of "Central Dogma" was essentially a carbon copy of the one he knew. White technicians filled seats at the consoles spread around each tier of flooring, babbling data to each other in German; there were quite a few more than seemed appropriate. Gendo frowned. He preferred to work small.

"There's a sync test in progress," Katsuragi whispered to him. She had an irritating habit of informing him of the obvious. He tightened his grip on his own folded arms.

"Where is the commander?" He looked around openly. In the seat in front of them on the top tier sat only a middle-aged fat man with a jet-black combover and pug-like eyes. He had offered only the most cursory, "coneech-iwa," when they entered and had stayed with his eyes glued on the main screen ever since. He was trying to forget Gendo was there.

Gendo scowled.

"It looks like the Second's scores are very good today," Katsuragi said brightly. She left his side to talk with the pug man, apparently the Sub-Commander. He noticed the Second's face on the main screen, calm, still, clear with youth, framed by orange hair. She seemed competent. And he needed competence badly, more than empty drones like the two baboons chatting in front of him could possibly understand.

"Commander!" The booming American voice was unmistakable. He turned his head to see Scott Langley approaching from the door behind him. He clapped his palm with two of his own in an overbearing handshake.

"How are you? How the hell are you?" He had said hello twice in just such a way each time they had met. Gendo inclined his head.

"Langley. I see you're well."

He grinned and his face reddened. He had a flat crop of orange hair on the top of his head, surrounded by shaven back and sides. He had a handsome and narrow face, broad shoulders, a primped and ironed uniform. He towered over him by several inches.

Gendo glanced back, imperceptibly, at the screen. He was not sure where Kyoko Soryu's genes swam around in the girl.

"Right on time. Always punctual." He had a habit of speaking in clipped phrases, probably due to poor Japanese. Gendo would not bother learning his languages. This was the way the relationship worked.

The Sub-Commander barreled up, blustering something in German, and Langley dismissed him with a warm sentence or two. Katsuragi also came back to his side.

"I think I'll say hello to the Second," she whispered, stating it as a phrase but well-aware it was a question.

"Do," he replied.

"Let's we go too," Langley butted in. "You need to see her! See my little warrior!" Gendo eyed him icily for eavesdropping, but he looked unaffected. A man without shame, at least in public.

Asuka looked dumbstruck as she exited the plug to see three adults towering over her in the cage. The shock from her face was rapidly wiped and replaced with a crisp smile.

"Father! Misato! And this is…"

"Commander Ikari," Langley interjected, clapping him on the shoulder. "You've met him before. He leads NERV in Japan. He's a very important man!"

"More important than you," Gendo thought, but restrained such open contempt.

"Hello, Commander!" She walked a little closer and bowed mildly. "Welcome to Germany!" He gave no greeting in return, aside from blinking a little slower.

Langley walked out from in between them and planted himself next to Asuka. He placed an arm around her and grinned. "Asuka is the elite of the elite! A true ace pilot! She's ready for all the responsibility of the fight!"

Asuka reinforced her smile, putting a hand on her hip. "Glad to be of service!"

Katsuragi laughed, while Gendo just stared. They looked like two robots, with pasty reddish skin poured on top of exoskeletons and carrot shreddings delicately pinned into their skulls.

Yet, there was something more to them, beneath the surface. The father's hand, hovering two centimeters above the daughter's shoulder. Asuka's smile, big and toothy and formal and about to give out. The little tremor that entered Langley's body the second he got near her.

"They must be close," Gendo thought sagely.

"Ikari, you have to understand my position here…" Langley looked old and weak, far past 37, as he stretched himself across the desk. It was only he and Gendo now. The rest of this German plant's inferior facsimiles of his own staff had filed out moments before.

"I understand that you are headstrong and foolish."

Langley scoffed, shook his head vigorously. "You tell me these big stories about Dead Sea Scrolls and Seele, and Third Impact; visions of the future; so vague, so tight-lipped… and you expect me to give up my country's defense? Our last defense?"

"You believed that there was a reason to construct that defense in the first place," Gendo said critically. "So why do you doubt that the reason will not be coming here?"

Langley's mouth hung open like a scared ape. The edges of his shining white teeth glittered on Gendo's glasses.

"I… that is different. It is… it is reasonable to think that… the Second Impact was not the end. That is reasonable." He cleared his throat and unbuttoned his jacket's collar. "NOT reasonable… that is, it is not reasonable to say it will only come to Japan."

"The Second Impact was only in Antarctica."

"Then why don't they go to Antarctica?!" Langley roared, rearing up out of his seat. Gendo remained still. Rage seared hot on his face for a few seconds before rapidly subsiding, shrinking, and quite soon being replaced wholly by the visage of the weary little man that it had just erupted from. He sunk back into his chair.

"Why should I believe you? Why should I believe?" He rested his head on one of his hands, groaning, "Maybe I did, maybe I did waste my life, waste my daughter's life… Maybe the damned things won't come at all…"

"Angels."

"The damned ANGELS… you're a real sonuvabitch you know that?" He glared at him with open hostility. Gendo recognized the American turn of phrase. He'd heard it in immigrant bars.

"I don't care what you believe. I care what you will do." He inclined his head as if he were speaking deferentially. "If you will resign so someone more intelligent can take your post, that would be agreeable."

"Real, real, real sonuvabitch." He had his eyes fixed on him with the ugliest frown. Gendo was getting impatient. He knew that Scott Langley's force of will was not even half of what his own was. He knew he had a million different methods of getting him to send Unit-02 to him. But he wanted something simple, something unchallenging, because his son's shrieking little face had been lingering around the corners of his thoughts for the last few hours and he did not have it in him to exert the effort to make Scott Langley see reason.

"We need to loosen up." He stood up. "Do you know a good bar?"

"Bufahahaha!" Langley laughed bitterly over his mug, but the bitterness was not directed at Gendo. Not anymore. Gendo watched him steadily, a glass of sparkling water held in front of his lips.

A military bar. A place where important men went to let their guard down. Guns at hips, gums flapping hideously, the loudest and most raucous conversations in the country. And above all, the understanding that none of it was to be overheard. Nothing repeated. The powers that be must protect themselves.

"So the bitch was looking at me like a puppy, right?" He did his best simulation of a puppy's eyes, and apparently thought it so funny that he burst out into laughter once again, at his own impression. "And she starts—she starts inching up her skirt juuuust a little, just enough to let me know that she's REALLY down to f—"

"Don't be vulgar." Gendo's hands gripped his glass a little tighter, fingers slipping against condensation. Langley blew air out of his mouth and looked him over with lidded eyes.

"Excuse me, Father Ikari." He giggled nefariously. "Made you clutch your pearls?"

Gendo sipped his water while Langley spurted down more beer.

"Please, don't use a word like that…" she shuddered. His face hardened as she stroked it, and he nodded shamefully.

"Sh-shoulda known, you invited me here, and you won't even DRINK like a MAN…" The laughs were coming out in hisses now, like a hybrid of a hyena and a snake. "You're a little jap PUSSY…"

Gendo clinked his glass down and looked far past Langley, eyes clouding on the sight of the wall over his shoulder.

"I don't like you when you're drunk." She said it resolutely, but with tears threatening to break the sentence. He walked to the cabinet and took five bottles out to be dumped down the drain.

"Sorry, not… not poLITically corRECT…" He was shaking with the laughter still, but no sound was coming out. "Your dumb ass cracked open the planet like an EGGshell but I can't call you what I fucking WANT…"

Langley leaned back and bellowed to the counter, "WAITEEEER!"

"Any place can be heaven, as long as you think it so." She wrapped her arms around him, her baby bump pressing his back outward. He interlaced their fingers and felt his breath grow deep and easy.

Langley's mug was being refilled. The laughter was gone, and he stared into the murky liquid with an empty smile.

"Tell me more about this lady friend," Gendo cut in. Langley looked up at him like a lost child discovered in the supermarket.

"KYOKOOOOO!" the crumpled heap of a man at Gendo's feet screamed. He clutched the bars separating the walkway from the abyss of LCL that Unit-02 was submerged in. Gendo stood a few feet back, unable to take his eyes off of Scott Langley.

"Ohh… I ruined you… I ruined you…"

His speech before they came here had become incomprehensible, a random multi-cultural stew of English, German, and Japanese. Now it was so simple that it could be deciphered.

"My fault… my fault…" he croaked. Gendo stepped forward and tapped him with his foot.

"Get up. You are making a fool of yourself."

"All my fault… all my fault…"

Gendo crouched down next to him, grabbed his collar, and yanked him up so that his ear hung right next to his mouth. "Let me make one thing clear. Never, ever address this unit by the name of your wife. Even when the compound is empty, even when you're alone, even when you get yourself in the mode of an actual two-way conversation, don't say a name. Act like a withered old fool who is just talking nonsense to a machine. Never give anyone who could be in the vicinity the slightest hint of what is really going on."

He dropped him and remained crouching. Langley's breathing had slowed, but it still came out in rattles.

"So… so Unit-01…"

"Yes. I tell you because you are too useless to tell anyone that will believe it."

Langley looked up at him. His eyes were bloodshot, stained with tears, and unbelievably trusting. The eyes were so desperate and honest that Gendo shuddered at the thought that this pathetic oaf was viewing him as his best friend in the world; no, maybe his only friend.

"Do you hate me?"

"No." He shook his head once. "I have a use for you." He swooped a hand upward at Evangelion Unit-02. It stared down blankly on the pair of them with four divining eyes.

"Langley. Send her to me."

Langley first took the command with revulsion, horror playing out on his face in a great drama. He skidded up to his knees and his teeth, yellowing in the midnight air, bared as his lips stretched outward. But just as it seemed he was preparing to shout, his face fell stagnant at the calm in Gendo's figure. The outstretched, almost welcoming arms, the cold and all-seeing eyes behind the veil of light orange.

"No one will ever understand your failure like me."

Langley gawked for a moment, and Gendo wondered if he would run away, but instead he stumbled to his feet and fell forward into him. He was trying to embrace him. Gendo held him away stiffly, gripping his shoulders.

"You take it," he slurred, licking his lips incessantly. "Take her. Take it. Take it all. And take Ahs-kuh too."

Gendo hated Langley. Hopefully, this would be their final meeting. But he still recognized their one connection and the uncomfortable bond it created. How he was one broken habit away from slobbering and shrieking at the feet of Unit-01. How they were both broken old men behaving like old-world warlords, scheming in the back room over the trade of their women, using them like pawns in a war game.

"I'll take them," he said softly, with almost a purr in the back of his throat. "Your responsibility is gone."

Langley was briefly unsettled, his eyes widening even further, but in a second's time they drooped in relief. A wide smile soon stretched his face out, creating two channels alongside his cheeks for the tears to run down.

"I don't… I don't want…" He was heaving with laughter, or sobbing, or an unpleasant mixture. He craned his neck down and howled.

Langley would have been a warlord, Gendo thought. Drinking himself to death from memories of rape and pillage.

"But I would not be," he assured himself. "I would not be." A twisted smile spread on his face.

AUTHOR:

Getting hyped for Eva's Netflix release got me in the mood to write about my favorite show, haha. I have a multi-chapter story I'm working on too, but this is one I first had the idea for a couple years ago. I hope someone out there appreciates the fact that it stayed in my head to be written now! Thanks for reading :)