You don't want him in your life, but he wants me in his

by Traitor of All Traitors

With hints of a very popular franchise, this explores how far one's existence is defined when you're dealing with one or few that are less than what you view others as. Mostly Shinji/Yui, both not in a sick way. No romance, just family.

1. New Beginnings

Creation began on 07-21-13

Creation ended on 08-01-13

Neon Genesis Evangelion

You don't want him in your life, but he wants me in his

A/N: What would you sacrifice, what would you give up, how much blood are you willing to shed…to have someone, or something that passes for someone, involved in your life?

In his little study house, away from the rest of the world that, more or less, shunned him for who his father was, little Shinji got set on what he hoped was not what was the only thing people had ever given him in his life: Desperation. It was desperation that led him to this night. It was desperation that drove him to attempt what he was aiming to commit. It was the only understandable concept that drove people to do things not fully understood by others that didn't know of it.

He engraved the runes around the floor, set the large petri dish in the center, filled with everything required for the outer layer of his goal, and then took a sharp knife to his left hand. Slit! The feeling of his flesh being cut into wasn't a sensation he was looking forward to, but, in desperation, he was willing to put up with it to achieve the impossible. Several droplets of his blood fell into the dish, onto the amalgamation that looked like a pile of dirt or mud, and then he bandaged his bleeding hand.

Please, he pleaded, now on his knees on the outside of the large array of runes, please, let this work.

He placed his palms on the floor…and deep into the night, no one could hear the screaming that followed the sound of a storm from within a small shack.

-x-

"…He looked like he was being mutilated," a doctor said to a couple, two days after the hospital got a new patient. "Whoever did this certainly took their time with him. Most of the skin on his left arm and both legs looked as though they were being peeled away. Can you imagine the will it would take…to try and skin an eight-year-old boy?"

"…The inside of his shack looked like a nightmare," a police officer expressed. "There were bloody hand prints on the floor and walls. My guess would be that he was trying to move and get help."

"…And none of you have any idea on who could've done this to him? Is there anybody you can think of that would have a motive to try and kill this boy?" Another cop asked.

"No," answered a woman. "He doesn't have any friends."

"He's got nobody," her husband added. "Has he said anything?"

"He's been sedated to keep him from reacting to pain," the doctor explained. "He's gonna be out of it for a while."

In a small room, recuperating from his lack of success, the unconscious Shinji was a sad sight to behold: Bandages wrapped around his legs and left arm, an IV line feeding him nutrients through his right arm, and his eyes half-glazed as he stared at the ceiling above him. If anyone could speak up for him without lying, it would be that he was in too much agony, physically and emotionally, to even think about anything other than failure.

All I wanted, his mind was saying in a maze of hurt, all I really wanted…was release from heartache.

"…When he comes to, we'll question him on what happened," the police informed the couple.

"You think he'll talk?" The woman asked.

"He's the only one that knows what really happened that night," one of them explained.

"He's not much of a conversationalist," the man told them.

-x-

"…Hey, did you hear?"

"That Ikari boy's in the hospital."

"Word is he was nearly skinned to death."

"Poor baby." Dozens of gossiping people said on the streets; they'd say anything to be seen and heard.

"Probably a serial pedophile or child molester."

"It could've been the boy's aunt and uncle, trying to get rid of him and make it look like an accident."

"I heard he'd been abandoned by his father after his wife was killed in an experiment."

"Maybe he was doing an experiment."

"Like father, like son."

If only they knew the harsh truth. If only they judged the boy differently.

-x-

"WHAT?!" Motoko Ikari shouted, having come back to the hospital where her nephew was staying, a week after he was brought in. "What do you mean, he was checked out?!"

"A woman came and got him," a female nurse explained. "It was during an administration frenzy. Several children from a school bus incident were being admitted, and at the same time, a woman showed up to get the boy. She said she was a friend of his mother, that you sent for her to get him."

"I didn't send anybody to come get him. Did she leave a name? Did you see her face?"

"No, but we're likely to have her on camera. That boy, though, he seemed happy to see her."

The nurse showed her the video…and Motoko was left disturbed by the woman the nurse identified as the one that came and got Shinji.

"Are you sure that was her?" She asked again, needing to be certain.

"Yes. She's the only one that escorted him out in a wheelchair," the nurse answered.

"That can't be her."

"What do you mean?"

"That woman should be dead."

The woman escorting Shinji out into the hall during the wild administration period looked like she was in her late-twenties, dressed in blue jeans, a green blouse and a blue windbreaker, with a pageboy hairstyle and an angular face. If anything to Motoko, the woman taking Shinji could've passed herself off a replica of her dead sister, here to claim someone she could've passed off as her child.

-x-

Even with the aid of the police force looking throughout the town, there was very little doubt that they'd ever find Shinji and his would-be kidnapper. There were several reports earlier that week about some break-ins and burglaries. Nothing of importance was stolen from any of the houses or apartments burglarized, just some hand-me-down clothes and medicinal items from first aid kits, nothing of value to most people. The cops were wondering if these thefts were, if at all, related to the kidnapping of the injured boy. But now that they had her picture in their database, they could limit the search by eliminating all other women. The question that was most puzzling was why the woman wanted the Ikari boy? What made him so special?

-x-

The night air was chilly, but for a mending Shinji, it didn't matter since he had a happy moment with his mother, carrying him up a large hill toward a place where identity wouldn't be much of a problem for either of them. His legs still hurt from not having any skin on them, but he had enough morphine in him to dull it out a little. At first, he thought, while in the hospital, his attempt at bringing his mother, Yui Ikari, back from the realm of the dead by using alchemy to create a new body for her (as he had no idea what she previously looked like, and his memories were all but reliable), was a failure and he suffered because of his desperation. But then she came for him and said they were leaving the town and all the people that hurt him over the years…and that she would never leave him again. Although, for some strange reason, there was something about his mother that seemed…lacking, like she was missing some of herself, but he couldn't place his finger on what it might've been. But he decided not to question it; all he really cared about was that she was back in his life.

-x-

If there was anyone most displeased with the disappearance of Shinji Ikari, it was Gendo Ikari, who was not going to take the absence of his son's whereabouts sitting down. The boy was about eight years old, soon to be nine in another month from today, marking three weeks since he went missing in the would-be kidnapping. He needed his son when he turned fourteen in another five years. The sooner he had his son found and sent back to his guardians, the less time he could spend wondering on how to handle the kidnapper.

With his position of authority, he had access to the videos and photos of the hospital his son had been admitted to, and was curious as to who would or could disguise themselves as his late wife. And he could see that whoever this person was, the boy seemed pleased to be leaving with her. This, however, wasn't going to do for him; having no love or any form of affection for his son, Gendo needed him to be an emotional wreck, manipulable and expendable. If the woman was found, then the boy would be found, too, and then the questioning could begin.

He knew that there was no way this woman was his wife; Unit-01 had been completed shortly after he had sent Shinji away, with the armor and restraints covering up the artificial muscles and nerves and core itself, and there had been no signs of change from the Eva in the last five years since the Contact Experiment failed. Every photograph of Yui had also been discarded to ensure Shinji wouldn't be able to form any emotional attachments to her. And based on the report from the hospital, the boy had both his legs and left arm skinned, so there was no way he'd be walking any time soon, even with medical attention, and there weren't many physicians or anyone with a license to practice medicine doing research on major skin regeneration. There was no way this woman would get very far with the boy, no matter what she tried.

-x-

Shinji couldn't remember the last time he woke up to the sight of a blue sky within a small room, or the sweet smell of apple and cinnamon. In fact, he couldn't even remember the last time he woke up without feeling intense pain. He looked at his left arm, which was now in a sling…and almost healed up, with skin covering his fingers that moved a little.

"Good morning, Shinji," he turned to his left and saw her, sitting beside the bed, looking like she had watched over him during the whole time he'd been asleep. "Did you sleep well?"

"Yes, I did," he answered her. "Where are we?"

"We're…here," she kept her response simple; it wasn't really home…but it was better than where he was when she came back for him. "I'll go see if I can find us something to eat."

She got up and walked toward the door, but he stopped her from leaving out by saying, "But…I should really help you."

"You got hurt badly when you got me," she reminded him. "You still need to recover. I have to make sure you don't get hurt again. And…I need to make up for lost time. I want to get to know you better and everything."

Shinji couldn't place a finger on why she seemed so different now than she didn't back when he was younger, but he decided not to question it. She just seemed saddened by the fact that he got hurt.

Leaving out the room, out onto the dusty streets of an empty neighborhood that looked as though much good could be done with it if people were living in it like before, the would-be woman that resembled Yui sighed at the recollection of memories that poured into her mind after she opened her eyes at the sight of Shinji the night she drew the breath of new life. The sight of him on the floor, bleeding almost to death because he had no skin on three of his limbs, crying in agony and looking over at her when she was…not quite right. She had never seen him so afraid, of both her and that he failed in more ways than one. Then, her vision of him shifted from the eight-year-old he is to the three-year-old he once was, watching her Contact Experiment at her request; the worst choice she ever made when it came to child rearing, second to marrying the worst man she had ever met who abandoned him after her displacement in the failed experiment.

So she fled before the cops came, but promised, or rather, she tried to speak out her promise, that she would come back for him when she was proper. When the cops came and took him to the hospital, she returned to his little shack where he was often always alone, and soaked up the blood he left on the floor. She felt greater strength pouring into her imperfect form, refining her limbs, stretching out her flesh to cover her muscles and nerves, and the correcting of her basic functions, such as speech and mobility. Unfortunately, even when she was no longer hideous to the world of perception, she wasn't presentable; nobody naked was looked upon with proper smiles and frowned at like a disgrace or love idol, so she did the only thing she could do with her intellect and no modern-day resources: She stole. She made sure the homes she took from were from the lower-middle class and were thus, less protected, and took only second-rate clothing, hand-me-downs of insignificant value, along with a few medical items from first aid kits lying around. Once she was proper, she went to the hospital and got him away before he could be questioned for what happened.

The alarms of her past fresh in her mind, echoing with the sight of a terrified Shinji looking at her deformed state. Oh, how she regretted what she did, leaving him alone when he was three, and then hurting him at the age of eight. She would've done anything, anything to make things right between them, to undo his desperation, to take back everything she did to hurt him. She could recall what felt like hours, locked away in a cold, dark place, with no sense of sight, sound, taste, smell or sensation, isolated from the world. The Eva, her grand design, her prison. There was no way she was going back to that pit of eternity; she had someone that needed her in his life.

"Everything happens as it must," she told herself, finding an abandoned store that had some items that were edible and still full of some preservatives. "Damn me for believing in that. Things change and people change. I've changed. I'm not the woman I once was…and I will not go back to being that woman, who was going to trade her son away…for eternity as a testament of mankind's existence."

She found a box and filled it with the useful items and took it back to where Shinji was mending. It would be a while before he could walk again, but she was willing to carry him across Hell if she had to, even if it meant so on her bare hands.

-x-

"…I heard he had a birthday yesterday," said Sub-Commander Fuyutsuki to Gendo Ikari, five years later. "He should be fourteen now…and nobody's seen him since he was filed as a missing person…and then the search parties were called off."

"Not all of them, sensei," Gendo informed him, his hands crossed in front of his face, and then he separated them to pick up a folder and slid it across the table. "This came in earlier this afternoon."

The elder looked at the folder and opened its contents, revealing a bunch of photos showing a boy about the age of a young teen…and a woman identical to the one that was in the media five years ago as the woman that kidnapped a boy from out a hospital and disappeared without a trace. There was no doubt the boy was Shinji Ikari, and the woman still resembled Yui Ikari, but dressed in manners that weren't those of a scientist; a woman dressed in jeans, grade school skirts, turtlenecks, shawls and bandannas made her look like a woman that had other interests in mind instead of scientific discovery, like a community activist or gardener.

"When were these taken?" He asked Gendo.

"Last week," he answered. "They were found in a small town built on the ruins of the Fukuoka Prefecture. What better place to hide…then in one of the places people don't live in due to the lack of available resources? Less than a thousand people live there, and they live off whatever they can find."

"Have the police been sent to retrieve the boy and arrest the woman?"

"They should be there now."

-x-

"Shinji Ikari?" An elderly woman tending to a little girl responded, being questioned by three cops. "I only know one Shinji, and he didn't seem like he'd been a kidnapped child. Always a good boy, never getting in fights, always trying to make his mother proud of him."

"Do you know where we can find him?" One of the police, a woman, asked her.

"You can try the ruins of the baseball stadium where most of the people live…or the subway stations where the kids like to wander around with their parents every now and then."

Much of Fukuoka's capital city was beyond horrid, yet people managed to survive here. The police found the former sports dome a network of walls, tents and old oil drums used for containing fire. There were children running around, playing games, or simply returning to what was home. The police felt that their search for the boy and his kidnapper was going to be like finding a needle in a haystack, until luck started working for them.

"See you later, Shinji!" A girl shouted out, and they saw a young girl running off from a young boy, matching the description of who they were looking for.

In five years, Shinji had changed from who he used to be. Instead of a lonely boy, he seemed like an ordinary fellow without a care in the world.

"Shinji Ikari?" One of the male policemen asked him, which made him freeze up as he looked at them.

His expression became that of woe and fright, and he ran off, disappearing into the tents. He didn't know what they wanted, as he had done nothing wrong, unless, of course, scavenging for new cookware items was a crime in this place where law and order weren't in much service, but he didn't want any trouble with the police. Besides, his mother told him never to talk to strangers. He ran into the room that served as his residence and locked the door, panting.

"Shinji, are you home already?" Yui, who was holding a potted sunflower, came out from behind another door and asked him.

"Hey, Mother," he collected himself and greeted her. "We have a problem."

"Oh?"

"Yes. Police. Out there right now. They asked for me."

Yui feared this day would come; in the eyes of the public at large, she was her son's kidnapper, and they had been in hiding ever since they left the hospital. She decided to play along for now.

"Okay, Shinji," she told her son. "Let's see what they want. What they really want."

Shinji sighed and nodded, opening the door and poking his head out, seeing the cops in the hall.

"Ohh," he groaned as they see him.

Yui came from behind him and greeted the police with, "Is there something I can help you with?"

"Yes, is he Shinji Ikari?" The lady cop asked her.

"Yes," she answered back. "Just what is this about?"

"Kidnapping," one of the male cops explained, holding up a pair of cuffs.

"You can't arrest my mother," Shinji told them, which made them confused; according to the boy's file, his mother died more than ten years ago.

In less than five minutes, both Shinji and Yui were being taken out of the dome and away from the ruins, despite the protests of several angry people that lived in the ruins of the once great prefecture. Yui had instructed Shinji not to tell them anything until they saw each other later, as they were separated from each other against their will.

-x-

"…Understood," went Gendo, hanging up the phone on his desk.

"I assume they have the boy and the kidnapper?" Fuyutsuki asked him.

"The boy's not answering any questions they give him; he'd been told not to by his kidnapper. She thinks she's his mother, and he thinks she is."

"They've been together since they left the hospital and he has probably become attached to her."

"This…will pose a problem."

-x-

"…Come on, Shinji," the female interrogator sighed, looking at the boy across the table from her, "this will go a lot easier if you just tell us why she kidnapped you and kept you against your will for all these years."

"Who says I was kept against my will?" He retorted, being sarcastic; he wasn't saying any beneficial information in response to any question he was asked.

"You say she's your mother, but your mother died when you were little in an experimental lab accident. She can't really be your mother if your mother's dead."

Shinji stared at the table and simply responded, "She's not dead. She was…but she's not, anymore."

Meanwhile, in another interrogation room, Yui, or a woman whom they suspected of masquerading as Yui, was refusing to say anything to the police until after she saw her son.

"You can't deny me my rights to see my son," she told the three men interrogating her. "I've done nothing wrong. We've done nothing wrong."

"You certainly have a lot of influence over the boy," one them told her. "So…how'd you do it? You threaten him? Got him on drugs? Molested him?"

"You're sick," Yui told him.

"Well, most women these days are crushed by their inability to have children after Second Impact," the second interrogator expressed, trying to find out why she kidnapped the boy. "Is that why you took him? You wanted a child of your own and you couldn't adopt?"

"If only you knew why most women can't have children in this day and age. Why don't you check my DNA if you doubt my maternity to my own son?"

Back in the room Shinji was in, said boy was being pressured by the interrogators, but he wouldn't bend for them. He'd seen the films and television shows that featured cops arresting people; anything he might've told them, they'd use against his mother if not against him. The worse that could happen was them finding out things he wanted to leave buried, as there were certain memories, certain events that transpired that he was involved in…that weren't meant to be heard by those that could or would misinterpret select information. Sometimes, he still got the phantom pain of what happened years ago.

"Aaaaurgh!" His screaming from that night echoed in his mind. "Aaaaurgh! Aaah, aaaaaurgh! Aah!"

"…Tell me, has this woman ever attempted to hurt you?" He was asked, but he ignored the question.

-x-

"…They're running a DNA test right now on the woman," Fuyutsuki informed Gendo. "In a few hours, we'll know who she is. By that time, the boy will have been brought over to Tokyo-2."

"And what is to become of the woman once the test results come in?" Gendo questioned.

"Unknown. For now, she's being detained. The boy's being transferred out right now. Do you honestly expect him to cooperate?"

Gendo didn't answer; ever since his son went missing, he half-expected the boy would be put through greater misery and left a lost cause to any that placed interest in him, but now he found out that his mental development was the complete opposite. Instead, Shinji was unwavering, stubborn and attached to a woman that looked like his mother and probably had a great deal of influence over him; he would probably do whatever she told him to. Somehow, he had to break him, undo the confidence his son had and make him controllable for his plans. His very future depended upon it.

-x-

The only satisfaction Shinji got out of today was spitting in some cop's face after being forced into a helicopter and being taken to Tokyo-2. He'd been informed that his father wanted to see him; he doubt that very much after being abandoned by him after he had turned four and had no contact from him for over ten years. Having been separated from his mother, he worried that she was not being treated right…and that she probably needed his help right about now…or later on. He looked out the side of the helicopter at the ground below, unable to see any peace in the beautiful scenery; up high, you couldn't see most of the damage down to the lands of the nation…and up high, you couldn't see the cruelty that had been inflicted upon the innocent for no other reason than wanting what was better left alone for the rest of eternity.

"…You don't look like you'd been skinned a long time ago," he turned to one of his police escorts, who'd been looking at him. "Your last medical report said you were skinned on both legs and your left arm, yet you look well enough to stand on your feet."

"All it usually takes to recover from such injuries," Shinji uttered, being sarcastic again, "is a mother's love and care."

-x-

"…This can't be right," said one of the cops, going over the results of the DNA test while the others looked at the woman behind bars.

"We went over it time and again," said a woman that had performed the tests. "We double-checked and rechecked, but got the same results. This woman's Yui Ikari. Even the mitochondria matched the boy's. She's his mother."

"But she's dead. She died years ago. She was buried in a cemetery outside Tokyo-3."

"No. There's a tombstone with her name, DOB and DOD written on it in a cemetery outside Tokyo-3; her body was never recovered."

Sitting in a cell, Yui felt her patience dwindling away; it normally didn't take this long to get a DNA test result, and she had just heard that her son had been taken to see his father, the very man she wouldn't regret harming for his role in the pain her child had before she came back. The cops would continue to question her, but her sole concern at the moment was getting back to Shinji; they needed each other more than others could possibly imagine, the price they paid to stay together being an inconvenient one that hindered both of them. She needed to go to this Tokyo-3 they heard about that certain other people were stated to be transferring to…and she needed to do so now.

"…So how did you do it?" The female cop that had come to Fukuoka looking for them asked her, entering the cell.

"What are you talking about?" She retorted.

"How'd you fake your own death?"

"I didn't fake my death. Who declared I was dead, anyway?"

"Your husband did."

"Well, he's obviously mistaken."

Suddenly, the female cop noticed something different about the Ikari woman: She was dressed in black and green clothing with red trimmings and lines. It looked almost like body armor. Form fitting body armor, with a reptilian theme because the armor had a scaly pattern on the shoulders, torso and thighs, and she had on a pair of oversized gauntlets and thigh-high boots. The red lines all extended from one spot on her arms and legs and connected to a tattoo on her exposed sternum flesh; it was shaped like a winged dragon enclosed within a horizontal, unicursal hexagram.

"What the…" She gasped, but then everything went straight to black the second the armored woman stood up and raised her right hand.

-x-

Shinji missed being in Fukuoka, and that was a fact. The sight of Tokyo-2 was pathetic, and he could only imagine how awful Tokyo-3 would be when he got there. Just what did his father want with him after all these years? He could only go on what his mother told him, as she kept no secrets from him after having a heart-to-heart talk about everything that happened before and after he was born, and when she told him everything she knew, she told him everything, right down to what she spent the majority of her time working on when he was little.

Just tell him 'no', he thought, continuously being escorted by the police to his destination against his will. Just tell him 'no' and be on your way.

He was hoping that when all was said and done, he'd be back in Fukuoka with his mother; the sooner he was away from here, the better. He also had an upcoming date soon. The ride across the highway toward Tokyo-3 was a quiet one. And Shinji hated this type of silence; being watched by people, being expected to do something was the opposite of the silence of being with your own privacy and no need to do anything until much later.

-x-

"…I don't understand why they picked me to meet him," an irritated Misato Katsuragi muttered under her breath, going over a small folder that contained limited information on Shinji Ikari, as she waited by the front door of NERV HQ. "I'm not exactly good with kids, and this one's been missing for half a decade?"

The limited information on the boy was sparse, for lack of a better word; the lack of activity from the past five years being a huge contribution to the lack of information, with the last known details being that he went missing from a hospital and was being treated for injuries that included the lack of skin on both legs and left arm. Misato was disgusted by the last bit of information; she had never heard of an eight-year-old being found partially skinned, like something out of a horror film of the supernatural genre or murder mysteries. And then, there was the details of a woman that resembled the commander's late wife, whom she had never met or even heard of; she had never even met the commander's son.

Suddenly, the door to the main entrance to the building opened up and revealed several police with the boy, and for some reason, said boy was handcuffed.

"Gentlemen," she greeted them.

"Captain Katsuragi?" One of the cops asked.

"Yes," she answered. "Why is he handcuffed?"

"He tried to get away from us," they explained.

-x-

"…Fuyutsuki, take care of things here," Gendo instructed the elder man, as he left the command bridge of Central Dogma.

"His first reunion with his son in over six years," Fuyutsuki sighed; there were times where he wanted to question Gendo's very sanity…and other times where he just wanted to play judge and jury, trial him, give him his sentence, and then lock him up and throw away the key.

Deep in the bowels of NERV HQ, Shinji was introduced to Ritsuko Akagi by Misato Katsuragi, both of whom found the boy nothing like his father in any way, whatsoever: Shinji made his independence well known to the women when he told them that whatever reason his old man wanted to see him for, it wasn't going to end with him bending over. They found his behavior, Ritsuko, especially, unpredictable and nothing expected of a boy that was severely hurt more than five years ago. The faux-blond even suspected that the child had made a full recovery, judging from the sight of skin on his left arm, complete with tactile sensation intact. It was only Ritsuko's belief, but the boy's mental development was absolutely nothing of what Gendo Ikari desired of him.

They led him toward a large, dark room with a narrow bridge.

"Oh, just give up, why don't you?" Shinji demanded of them. "I'm not interested in NERV, my father's work, or the Eva."

As soon as the lights came on, revealing the large monstrosity that was Unit-01, both women were surprised to hear the word "Eva" come out Shinji's mouth; neither had said anything to reveal the nature of the reason he was here. Shinji looked up at the Eva and sighed as he shook his head in the negative; his mother had revealed to him everything she knew about the Eva, what it was designed for and what was to be done with it.

"I'm more than aware that that bastard wants me to pilot this thing," he expressed. "No way in Hell am I going to do such a thing."

"I guess it's really been a while," Shinji looked up at a large window and saw Gendo staring down at him, like he were mocking one of the gods.

"If I have to spell it out for you, I will," Shinji continued in his refusal. "The answer is 'no'. Call me a coward all you want, but I will not do anything for you. Even Mother says I don't have to."

This was a creepy, unforeseen outcome in their situation. The boy was aware of things he wasn't supposed to be aware of, and his independence would cause them problems if he couldn't be handled. Though Gendo was confident that his son could be…persuaded in due time. It would be a week before before he was truly needed.

-x-

The world around her shrank as she ran across the land. Yui, in the following years since her…resurrection, found herself endowed with enhanced abilities that could very well be defined as supernatural. Strength, speed, endurance, regeneration and so on were heightened beyond the average standings of people. At first, Shinji had wondered how and why this was so, but then later gave up wondering on the 'how' and 'why' and accepted his mother as she was. But she had her own theories and suspected that they were a long-term side-effect that came with her new body, comprised of materials her son had found all around him.

How Shinji was able to pull it off was truly beyond her, as he didn't demonstrate any degree of interest in science. Not that she blamed him, of course; Shinji's interests resided more in music, cooking and the path of least resistance where he believed in victories being battles left unperformed. And after being given her new lease on life, she had renounced her faith in science; she had given it up after seeing how it really hurt those that were as innocent as those whose lives were taken because of Second Impact, instead trying to find interests elsewhere after Shinji and she relocated to Fukuoka, eventually finding release in agriculture.

Tokyo-3, she thought, making leaps across blurry fields, that's the only place they would take him, where my…former life ended…and where my former work traumatized him.

Stopping, she found herself standing outside of a highway leading out of Tokyo-3, and resumed her run toward her destination. If things hadn't changed too much since she'd been gone, then one of GEHIRN's backdoor entrances should still be around…and her hidden access codes weren't found and erased from the security system.

-x-

"…You can't expect to sway him by locking him in solitaire, Ikari," Fuyutsuki expressed toward Gendo, now beginning to doubt that the boy could be persuaded to pilot the Eva, which surprised him that he was informed about (and he had doubt the boy had any memory of seeing it).

"He will come around," Gendo told him, unconcerned about Shinji's continued refusal to pilot Unit-01. "He'll soon realize that."

RING-RING! A phone in his desk began ringing, and he answered it.

"Yes? What? Seal off every corridor."

Fuyutsuki became curious; whatever happened was probably enough to cause all of NERV HQ to become closed off from the outside world. When Gendo hung up, he asked what was the problem.

"Someone has entered the base," he answered cryptically; nobody saw who got in.

-x-

Shinji hated the dark. There was no question about it. No light, no hope, and the sounds of his own breathing was enough to make him shudder. The worst part of it was that it made him think back to the night he experienced pain of the highest degree he ever knew existed, making his left hand flex its fingers as if to remind him that he still had sensation in them. And then, there was the tense feeling he got in his legs, made greater when they had lost their skin that awful night.

"Aaaaaaaaurgh!" The echoes of his painful howls came in his mind. Mother…where are you?

CLASH! He looked up at the door to his cell and at the limited amount of light coming from underneath it, seeing small shadows moving across the hall outside.

"Hey!" Voices were raised.

"Stop right there!"

"Shoot her!"

BANG, BANG, BANG! Gunshots were heard by Shinji, and he got worried; it was probably a ploy by his father to get him to pilot the Eva by threatening to have him killed, it was definitely extreme.

SLASH!

"Aaaaurgh!"

"No!"

The raised voices soon ceased, and a shadow stopped right outside Shinji's cell door, blocking the light.

"Shinji?" The voice of his mother asked. "Are you in there?"

"Yes," he answered, hopeful that it was her.

A large claw ripped through the door and pulled it open, revealing Yui to him, dressed in her armor, which Shinji not only saw as another facet of his mother that had been hidden away, but saw as a symbol of her status as a resurrected member of society's outcasts. The large claw belonged to her right hand, which had grown in size and was reduced to three talons, and then it turned back to normal. Another trait that sparked unwanted curiosity within the boy was that, when he was led out his cell, several guards were down and nursing large cuts on their limbs, with large amounts of blood on the floor and walls, but not on his mother's armor, and he was certain that she had dealt pain to these men.

"Let's get outta here," he told her, not wanting to be reminded any further of the past by the current state of the present.

Yui took him by his right hand and led the way.

-x-

"Flood half the corridors with three feet of bakelite," ordered Misato to the bridge crew. "Just enough to slow them down."

They did as instructed and soon the corridors that the intruder and would-be escapee were filled up to three feet in bakelite, which halted getting away.

-x-

Yui could break free easily, but Shinji would have to be carried out of the facility; her armored guise would enable her greater protection against the bakelite, but ordinary flesh… Ordinary flesh, even when regenerated, had its limits. She broke free of the quick-hardening resin, and shattered the hindering plastic around Shinji's legs, causing him some discomfort because she was punching the ground so close to him. Oh, how she soon learned to develop a hatred toward those that pervert a once-desired dream she had that her eyes were pulled wide opened to the horror of its potential outcome…and still sought to make it a reality.

"Sorry," she apologized to him.

"I forgive you," he responded, and then was picked up by her.

"Oh, how I hate being aggressive."

"Tell me about it."

SMASH! Yui busted through the steel door and ran across the hall with her passenger.

-x-

"Nothing's working!" One of the technicians informed the higher ups. "We've tried all but tear gas on this woman."

Gendo then got up out of his chair and left Fuyutsuki in charge; this was something he felt he had to deal with himself. But Fuyutsuki was convinced of one thing wrong with this picture right now: Whoever this woman was that was trying to take the Third Child away didn't seem to be interested in exploiting the boy in any fashion similar to Gendo's…and the boy himself seemed unwilling to be convinced that she wasn't his mother, even though she had the looks of Yui. There was just something about what was going on that didn't add up…and it was something he had to see for himself.

"Captain Katsuragi," he uttered toward the purple-haired woman, "you're in charge."

He then left to follow Gendo, who was, without a doubt, heading for the woman trying to take the boy.

-x-

"…I see the door now," Yui told her son. "We're home free."

But then…a man in a black jumper and coat showed up and forced the woman to stop, seeing his face after years of absence, seeing the darkness that had been there ever since she met him years before Second Impact. Oh, how she damned herself a little for disregarding the "unnecessary" and "ill" opinions of her peers that knew of him. Oh, how she never considered that her husband would turn out to be such a…loser in the eyes of others…and a bastard, something he might've been, literally, since she didn't know much about his family background; he had always asked her about hers.

"Damn," she uttered, setting her son down on his feet. "Gendo Rokubungi, you look like a pack of wolves hunted you for years without quit."

"Identify yourself," Gendo responded to her, wanting confirmation from her.

"Yui Ikari," she revealed.

"Wrong answer," he countered, raising a gun at her head. "She's dead. She died over ten years ago."

"Like she doesn't know that?" Shinji spoke up. "Like I don't know that?"

"Who are you?" Gendo asked again.

"I've already told you," Yui answered.

"Wrong," he responded, and shot her in the right eye.

Shinji watched in horror as blood splattered onto his face as his mother fell to the floor with a hole in her head. He had lost her at the age of three, got her back at the age of eight, and just lost her again at the age of fourteen. It was awful to him.

"You monster!" He called his father. "You killed my mother!"

"She's nobody's mother," Gendo defended his actions, unchanged by his son's reaction to the murder.

"She was mine."

"Get over it."

"You have no right to speak to him like that, you insensitive prick," they both heard the supposedly-dead woman say, rising back up, revealing, to Gendo's fright, her head regenerating from the shot, looking like new. "I can't believe you shot me in my head! Is this really how you treat the woman with whom you used to share your bed?"

At first, Gendo wanted to say that this woman was some type of Angel, which could explain her regenerative ability, but something in him made him think a little differently. Her face and voice were uncanny from his wife. So much so that now it couldn't be a coincidence.

SLASH! He didn't feel it happening so quick, but then he felt the stinging sensation of his gun-toting right hand dropping said gun and spilling blood from off a large, inhuman claw…and this woman that resembled his wife right in front of him, inches away instead of several feet. She had moved with such lightning speed and slashed the nerves of his wrist, disabling the electrical signals his brain sent to the appendage. Never had anybody managed to cause this sort of harm toward him before.

"Be grateful," she uttered, just as he fell to the floor, "that I don't believe in an eye for an eye, even though you shot me in the eye. One of my greatest mistakes that day…was getting into the Eva and making Shinji and you watch the experiment take place. But I told you, in the likely event that nothing happens the way we wanted them to, that if anything happens to me, to take care of Shinji…and look at what you did. You abandoned him. You always abandon him. And then you expect him to listen to you and get into the very thing that ripped me to pieces and left behind nothing. That's very hurtful, more so than nearly anything else you've done. It's over and done with, Gendo. Eva is synonymous with 'damnation' and 'retribution', and I've given it up, along with all the hope I had invested in its grand design. There's nothing left to say about it."

"Ikari?" She and Shinji looked up ahead and saw Fuyutsuki, who was, rather than frightened by what he saw, left wondering how it was possible that this woman that looked so much like a student of his was still standing in front of him.

"Fuyutsuki-Sensei," Yui uttered to him, "turn away from the goal. It's not worth any effort put into it."

"You're… But this is impossible," the elder expressed. "You died that day."

Yui walked over Gendo and raised her left hand toward Fuyutsuki's face.

"It's a long, saddening story," she told him. "Turn away from it all. Give up on the Eva. Throw away my poisonous intentions. They've already hurt more people than I can ever count, and my absence hurt my son more than words can express."

The elder bowed his head to her and stepped aside. It was Yui, but it was not Yui. There was something missing from her; the passion of a scientist had been washed away from her consciousness, along with probably everything else associated to what she had once sought to achieve before and after her son was born. This wasn't the same woman he once met, but she was speaking with a greater clarity in her voice, and a greater pain the heart could ever speak of. Whatever happened to cause her return, she was a changed woman…and would probably never go back to being who she once was, even if she wanted to, not without some measure of guilt on her part.

"You should leave now before anyone else shows up," he told them.

"Thank you, old friend," Yui praised him, and ran out with Shinji.

"Thank you, sir!" He shouted as they left.

Fuyutsuki knew there would be Hell to pay for his allowing them to go free, but he didn't care much for the repercussions. He knew why Yui was the way she was now. He knew what she had become. He knew the moment he saw that foggy darkness in her eyes, the kind that show you lack a soul, but had something that made up for it.

To be continued…

A/N: Well, I'll let nature take its course for this right here until I finish my other works. This is just an experimental story, something to see if readers will be left wanting more. Like how Shinji recovered from something that left without skin on his left arm and both legs, or how Yui is able to do what she can do. So, read and review and tell me what you think. Peace out!