Full Summary: Shinji Ikari was supposed to be a boy and was supposed to bring about Third Impact so Gendo could be with Yui again but it seems that nothing is everything, everything is anything, and anything never existed in the first place. As the world around Shinji begins going to hell in a finely crafted hand basket, things that should have remained buried come out into the open and the main instigation was one small act of love.
I should be writing for my other works but this has been on my computer for more than a year and I decided to have it out in the open now. The beginning excerpts are from Ride by Lana Del Rey, I just feel like it mixes well with this.
But let's start with the warning that when I mean it gets worse, I mean it. *Take a deep breath*
/
My mother told me I had a chameleon soul, no moral compass pointing due north, no fixed personality; just an inner indecisiveness that was as wide and as wavering as the ocean...
/
She doesn't remember too much other than the warmth of her mother as she hugs her and places a kiss on her forehead, "Be good and don't let anyone know you're a girl, okay darling?" she doesn't understand it either but she nods regardless watching as her mother walks further into the dim, cold room. She remembers thudding noises and the disgusting crunching noises before hearing the whir of a machine and something wet splattering on the ground.
She recalls rising and calling out for her mother feeling as if the shadows of the room were lengthening and snapping at her; trepidation aside she walks forward as footsteps were heard from the other side. She slips once landing in a strange tepid pool that smells a lot like pennies before she calls for her mother again. She hears another crunching noise and looks up; her mother's face is the last she sees before blood splatters onto her as the mechanical doors close with a final snap and shudder before everything goes white and the body of her mother emerges onto a red center with wings sprouting from her back.
Her throat is sore and it isn't until her father has wrapped his coat around her does she realize that she's been screaming until her voice had gone. She remembers being rushed away with her equally shocked father.
/
Shinji is four when her father abandons her only a year after her mother's death; the cold, hard look in his eyes that reminds her of the looks others give her and the dead tone he takes as if Shinji is a waste of his time.
He leaves her in the care of a 'sensei' and all Shinji remembers that day is calling out for him and trying to follow. He turns and glares at her causing her to flinch and step back; he walks away and leaves her alone. Shinji can remember someone taking photos as she stood, small waif of a child dressed in a short sleeved shirt and shorts on a cold winter morning.
She doesn't visibly cry, she only feels a pang of numbness before it spreads. When her sensei, a kind middle-aged man whose wife is sickly, gently picks her up and takes her to his home whispering soothing and comforting words that she doesn't hear; Shinji cries internally and bottles up her emotions.
That is the start of everything.
/
Her sensei is kind and his wife is as well; they treat Shinji like a son because she looks like a boy. They find her wishes odd, that she bathe by herself or that she be allowed only to buy boy clothes. They claim her silly and say 'Of course you're a boy Shinji, what else could you be?'
Shinji keeps quiet and does as she was told remembering, but not quite, the final words of her mother.
/
Shinji is five when her sensei brings home a small cello for her; she is curious, the wooden instrument beautifully crafted and strung together gleaming in the fluorescent lighting. It is almost like a song to her, whispering behind somber notes and strings. Her sensei places her in lessons; he didn't ask but Shinji doesn't dislike them. She is good at it, he says, and Shinji's fragile heart flutters in its gloomy, fusty little corroded cage. Good, she is good.
Even though her fingers are clumsy and the bow slightly too large and long for her still small frame Shinji continues working on performance. Because she is good; because it is something she is acknowledged for.
This year is also the same year her sensei's wife begins teaching her how to cook; she claims it is because it was a skill everyone needs to know. Shinji will one day be of age to start dating or living on her own and she'd need this skill. 'You can't live on take-out forever, it's bad for you.' So Shinji learns to cook and sensei's wife says that she is a natural, she is good. Her heart flutters again amongst tarnished, broken bars as her subconscious drinks in the compliment and clings to it desperately.
/
Shinji is six when she discovers that she doesn't like people; doesn't like the false smiles or the high pitched voices. Doesn't like the false personas they place on, doesn't like their need for breathing and eating. Their voices are too vulgar, unreasonably deep, overly shrill; so dead like his.
She doesn't like hearing their breathing; too gasping, excessively garish; so obnoxious, especially faltering; breathe deeper and relax. She doesn't like the way they chew or swallow; too brash, too nauseating; stop snorting. People tend to crowd, too many bodies, too much heat; clammy or scorching hands, the different smells, too many limbs. Shinji doesn't like people, she doesn't trust people. Cruel icy blue eyes haunt her dreams and cause her skin to crawl.
Her classmates whisper about her; the boy whose mother died but no one knew how while the teachers pretend that nothing is wrong. She'd gone home once, her arms black and blue, with one of her eyes beginning to swell shut; puffy eyed and red faced. Her sensei's wife takes one look at her and nearly flies from her skin; she begins to whisper to Shinji that things will be okay and begins teaching her to fight. 'The world is a cruel place and it only gets crueler, so you fight back, just as hard and just as dirty.'
Shinji doesn't understand, seeing the normally quiet yet sullen woman so incensed is discombobulating. But she takes her explanations to heart but her sensei has spoken with the school. No one bothers her anymore, not even the teachers. It's like she doesn't exist.
Shinji discovers that she likes it but distantly at the bottom of her heart, she hates it just as much.
/
Shinji is seven when her father orders to see her again, at her mother's grave. Shinji recalls her father destroying all the pictures of her mother, removing her clothes, and throwing out her things. Shinji snuck away only a photo, the pendant from her mothers' locket, a ribbon of cloth from her favorite shirt, and a bottle of her mother's favorite perfume.
She struggles not to quake under her father's intense stare, still cold and his body rigid; she says nothing instead placing flowers on her mother's grave, one of many among the barren wasteland filled with crosses; some graves are empty and some full of ash. Her father says nothing and instead stares at her mother's grave, unnerving his 'son' all the more. The sun is beginning to hide behind the mountains when Shinji finally gathers her courage to ask her father why he left her alone, why she can't live with him, why. So many why's without answers; but when she turns to him she finds that he is gone. Just a distant figure walking away.
She's been abandoned, again.
/
These terse meetings continue as Shinji grows, and she does, very slowly. She has few friends, only three and they aren't really friends; just bandmates that she attempts to bond with but ends up making her cringe. She's ten when she begins to bleed; she takes three baths a day not knowing what's happening but she's too afraid of the consequences of being found out after lying. She takes out the trash more often and ceases to wear white until the bleeding subsides; there's so much she's afraid that she's dying but she can't be found out.
She fears rejection and it's another thing she hates herself for.
Shinji is ten and she knows that she hates herself; hates the sound of her voice, hates the way she breathes, hates the way she moves, hates the way she looks save for the shape of her face and the shape of her eyes which look like her mothers. Shinji hates herself at ten and knows it'll only grow as she ages.
Sometimes she wonders if her mother is aware of it but she's dead and there's another mark in Shinji's damaged heart.
/
Shinji is eleven when she runs from her father; she's tired of dealing with the stoicism and the heavy silence that causes her spine twinge and her intestines to freeze. She's bleeding again and this time it hurts, there's more to it than that but she hates remembering what it is and ignores it. The pain grows and seems like its expanding.
Shinji's heart feels frail and like it's going to crumble into itself when her father stares at her. She says something; she voices something, she's unsure what it is now but she's vaguely aware of it being about her abandonment and wanting to know why he hates his own child. She runs, fearing the answer.
She runs as the voices whisper in her ear that she knows the answer, she's just afraid of him admitting to it.
Shinji is eleven and her father cuts off all contact with her but Shinji receives an SDAT from him a week later but Shinji is too much of a coward to read the letter left with it. Her mind justifies it as a reprimand and hauls it away for her subconscious to whisper about as she lays in the darkness of her room.
/
Shinji discovers the love of music and how it drowns out the voices in her mind and lets the heaviness of her heart lessen. Shinji begins to spend her allowance on tapes, she notices that it helps her bleeding; she doesn't focus on the pain anymore.
Her sensei says nothing when she remains home on the anniversary of her mother's death. His wife tries her best to understand but Shinji doesn't blame her; her mind whispers that she's an abominable daughter for not visiting her mother but Shinji tries valiantly not to listen as it's not her mother's final resting place. It's inside of whatever that was that day when she was three but Shinji doesn't remember that day and her mind claims it moot.
/
Shinji is twelve and she's binding her chest; it hurts and it feels unsettling. She knows that she won't be able to continue hiding her true gender. Thankfully she hears a classmate speak of binder shirts, ones that help bind the chest without the discomfort of actually doing so. Her sensei is confused when Shinji returns with those shirts but claims that they are for a classmate.
Her sensei says nothing other than an apology for said classmate when Shinji says that she doesn't need them anymore past the refund date. Shinji says it's fine and hates herself for lying.
She tries to even her tone of voice, attempting to make it sound more masculine. But finds that she doesn't need to, she doesn't talk much anyway.
/
Shinji is thirteen when she hears that this is the age where boys begin to notice girls; she hears the boys whistle and sees them strut about as if they are kings. Shinji struggles not to laugh at them when she realizes that she knows too much of their unwanted secrets in order to fall for them.
She sees the girls begin to worry about their looks; they worry for their hair and pick at non-existent fat, they bemoan their weight even though Shinji knows most of them are healthy even in the still potent conditions of Second Impact. They begin talking about make-up and dresses, about dates and men. Shinji still doesn't understand, she feels like an outsider looking in but she wonders if perhaps her hidden gender is a blessing or a curse.
Shinji wants to ask her mother but she'll never get an answer; she's been asking questions for ten years now, the dead don't give their reasons or secrets they just leave behind unanswered questions and half-truths.
So she hides again, she keeps the stolen items of her mother and plays her father's SDAT. She wishes but she knows those never come true otherwise Shinji would have her mother back and she'd have the answers to her questions. Shinji becomes trapped in what feels like an endless cycle, the numbness having taken over years ago.
Wake-up, make breakfast and lunch, eat, go to school, eat, go to cello practice, make dinner, eat, bathe, and sleep. Rinse, stack, repeat.
She loses herself in her tapes, hiding behind the mask of the boy she can never seem to get right to portray. She's too small, she's soft-spoken, and she's sort of pretty instead of handsome. Shinji has long since learned that she can never, and possibly never, will make sense of the world.
/
Shinji is fourteen when her father wants her back in his life; she's unsure of what to do but her sensei and wife encourage her. Her mind whispers that they want her gone too. Shinji internalizes this doubt and hurt just like she always has and instead agrees because they seem to approve of it.
She's a good son, her sensei says the day before she leaves. Once more her heart clings to those words and buries them inside of it; she wants some of their compliments to be untainted by herself.
Shinji has stopped cutting her hair instead finding ways to pin it, it looks like a messy boy hairstyle and what she can't fix she gels and molds. She doesn't like the look of her face when she has it down.
The day she leaves, Shinji goes to the station and is seen off by her sensei and his wife. His wife cries and holds him close, Shinji tries not to cringe and push her away. Her arms feel constricting and the smell of her perfume makes Shinji want to gag, Shinji knows that logically the arms aren't constricting and that her perfume is actually quite pleasant but Shinji hasn't been hugged since she was three. It's worse when her sensei joins in.
Shinji almost flings herself onto the train to get away from them both; she cares for them as they've taken care of her and helped her, they've raised her, but Shinji can't bring herself to love them. She can't bring herself to feel anything right now, so when she waves she feels that icy trepidation hit her again as anxiety causes her palms to sweat and her mouth to dry. They both wave although his wife waves a bit more desperately; Shinji wonders if she'll see them again or if she can write to them.
As the train moves Shinji keeps waving until they are nothing more than distant figures and she pauses and wonders if they've abandoned her or if she's abandoned them.
