A Butterfly on the Wheel
Prologue:
Echoes of Light and Water
A life with light but no purpose is one I find difficult to acclimatise myself to.
This, I feel, is not ingratitude. Nor do I wish for anything other. Perhaps I am merely unused to living…
The Second Child… Asuka, as she would have me address her, finds my feelings on this matter an offense to her highly developed sense of rightness. I, for myself, cannot argue that she is wrong. Though I do attempt to explain as best as I can that I hold no misplaced nostalgia for NERV nor indeed for things as they once were.
But… I was created for a purpose. I was a tool, a commodity… a doll, if you will. What is the meaning of existence for a tool that no longer has a use? What purpose does the hammer serve if the nail is lost? It troubles me still, even if Asuka does roll her eyes and groan to the heavens on the rare occasions that I would bring the subject up.
Shinji, naturally, is more sympathetic. He better understands, perhaps, my difficulty with self-expression. I truly do feel myself fortunate for the freedom that my life affords me, but when a bird has only known the confines of its cage, should it not also view the expanse of the unbounded firmament with apprehension and distrust?
But again my communication skills fall short of my intentions. In this world, difficult and strife-torn as it is, I have truly known happiness. An emotion once so foreign to me and yet so powerful that my first experiences of it left me breathless and overwhelmed. That such an emotion should exist, and be experienced by… one such as myself… is something of an astonishment to me even still.
For it was not always so.
Truly I once did know purpose. And with it I also knew darkness.
My life was one of use. I had use, therefore I existed. I filled a need, albeit as a surrogate for another, so I yielded myself to the touch of a monster.
That which I had been conditioned to hold the most dear was also that which held my heart in bonds of iron that had weighed me down for so long I mistook them for the embrace of a father.
Even to this day I can feel the stain on my soul which that embrace has left behind.
It haunts me still, even though I, a transgression against Humanity, have found redemption in the simple kindness of those I would now call my family.
Family… A concept that I still struggle to understand. I suppose that is still a part of my journey. A journey that began with an act of unlooked-for kindness to a small and broken tool, lost in the darkness.
That is my story. Though I am not the one to tell it.
End Prologue