Disclaimer: I don't own Neon Genesis Evangelion or anything associated with it. Gainax created this world, I just play in it.
Transposed
Chapter 4
Inside Unit 01
Misato sat within the core in utter disbelief. She hadn't been able to make much sense of all of the thoughts and images she had acquired from Yui. There was simply too much there and it was moving through her mind at a speed she couldn't handle and she was only able to get a vague outline of things. Heck, it was all she could manage to not collapse into a twitching heap until her own mind could sort itself out.
But the little bit that she had been able to deduce from it all was that Second Impact hadn't been an accident and that there were those who wanted a Third Impact, but of their doing and not the Angels. It had something to do with a belief that man had reached an evolutionary dead end, or something like that. And it seemed that the Commander had some plans of his own. She wasn't sure if her deductions were correct but it was the best she could do at the moment with her mind in the state it was in.
Besides the memory overload, she was just plain scared. Almost as scared as she was upon witnessing Second Impact. She was trapped inside the unpredictable, berserker prone Unit 01, which for all she knew might be an Angel itself, although under NERV's control. Barely. The fact that it had a core like the Angels and that it had regenerated its own freaking arm out of a piece of the Fourteenth, before it started to eat the damn thing, had made her start wondering again just what the hell the Evangelion really was. It was a question that no one had been willing or able to give her an answer to thus far.
She was also still very worried about Shinji. For a month she had worried herself sick about him and now she was still no closer to knowing if he was alright than she was before. She hoped that both he and his mother had made it out alright and were none the worse for the experience. It had put her in a hell of a predicament, but if it meant that Shinji could have his mother back and have even a remote chance of a normal life and being happy, providing they managed to defeat the Angels of course, then she supposed it was worth it. Even if she was now isolated, alone, afraid, and didn't know if she would survive in here, let alone see the outside world again.
She remembered Shinji telling her once that for some strange reason, despite the pain he often had to endure while piloting, he seemed to feel safe and comfortable in the entry plug within Unit 01. She now understood why. It was because his mother was looking after him when he was synced. When Unit 01 moved on its own or went berserk, it was Yui protecting her son. Yui had also protected him from the raw consciousness of the Eva itself. From what Ritsuko had told her while Unit 01 was chowing down on the Fourteenth Angel, and with what little she had been able to pick out about it from Yui's memories, she knew that the Eva was essentially alive and had a certain amount of awareness. How much, she was unclear about, but she was pretty sure that she wasn't going to be able to just take over the beast she now was trapped in without a confrontation of some sort.
She knew that her encounter with that consciousness would be coming soon, instinctively she could all but feel it lurking all around her like a dark shadow, slowly closing in. Had Yui Ikari been able to overcome it because it had somehow seemed to understand her basic, instinctive desire to protect her child? If that were the case then she didn't like her chances. She wasn't a mother and even though she had tried, she knew she had failed miserably at acting anything like a parental figure to Shinji. She wasn't his mother. She cared about him, hell, she did love him in her own way and she would give her life if necessary to protect him. She wondered though if that desire to protect him would be enough.
As she felt the consciousness getting closer she tried to swallow her fear and her doubts and tried to prepare to do what she did best when backed into a corner. Fight. It wasn't that she didn't have confidence in Rei and Asuka, but if she wasn't accepted by Unit 01 then their chances of defeating the Angels was going to be in deep trouble. Not to mention that it might mean the end of her own, tortured existence.
As screwed up as she was, she really wasn't ready to die just quite yet.
NERV Medical
Yui Ikari had awakened very early, roused from her sleep by nightmares of things she knew and things she could only guess at. Ever since she had spoken to Professor Fuyutsuki she had been running down in her head all of the tidbits of information she knew about what was really going on at NERV. Thankfully, the ability of her scientist's brain to process large and complicated streams of information, and her synchronizations with Shinji as well as Rei and Asuka during cross synchronization tests, had given her plenty of practice at processing the memories of others into coherent information.
Her prior knowledge, along with what she had gained from her contact with Misato and the others had given her a good picture of the situation, but she knew that she didn't have all of the answers yet. Or at least not the confirmation she was seeking to what she knew. If she could do so, she would like to talk to everyone she could at NERV and find out as much as she could before confronting Gendo and hearing his version of things, but she knew that wasn't possible.
She had taken a long, hot shower, enjoying it immensely, before roaming the hallways near the room she shared with her son. Using her own body again was taking a little getting used to and it felt good to stretch her legs. As she slowly walked up and down the halls her mind returned to the unpleasantness of her dreams. There was still much that she didn't know, but she knew more than enough to realize that she had made two very large errors in her life.
The first one was letting herself be absorbed into the Eva. If she had known that Gendo would abandon Shinji afterwards, she never would have done it. If someone had told her at the time that Gendo would have done what he did she wouldn't have believed them. She knew of his past behaviour and of his emotional inadequacies but she never would have thought in a million years that he could have or would have abandoned his own flesh and blood like he had. The other mistake, in retrospect, was marrying Gendo in the first place. Though, she could live with that one because she had Shinji, apparently the only good thing to come of their relationship.
The mere thought, let alone the cold hard fact that Gendo could do something as cold and as heartless as turning his back and walking away from his own son made her furious. She had always thought that when the day came for Shinji to be introduced to the Evangelion and become its pilot, she would see that her son had become a healthy, happy, well adjusted young man. She had missed him terribly and even though her resolve had remained strong while she waited for that day, it had saddened her that she wasn't able to be there to guide him and look after him. To watch him grow and become the fine young man she always hoped he would be.
It had broken her heart that day to see the nervous, timid, and clearly scared to death young boy that had been brought in front of her. She could almost feel the sadness, the loneliness, and the anxiety radiating off of him in waves as he was brought lower and lower by his father's words. Then, after he had torn the boy down as far as he dared at that moment, Gendo had the audacity to have Rei wheeled in, the poor girl half dead, bleeding and in pain, and he used her to play on Shinji's gentle and fragile nature to make him pilot the Eva. Yui came to understand as the weeks went on that every single action Gendo took towards his own son was premeditated and deliberate, designed to place the boy in the fragile frame of mind he wanted him in and keep him there.
When Gendo had used the dummy plug to make Unit 01 destroy the possessed Unit 03 she very nearly went berserk and attacked the manipulative bastard, squashing him like the cockroach he was. She would have if the dummy plug system hadn't somehow interfered with her ability to take over. She learned from it and was able to reject it when he tried to activate it for the battle against the Fourteenth.
She stopped at a bank of windows that looked out over the Geo-front and took some deep breaths to calm herself. She was not someone who was prone to fits of anger, far from it actually, but she was finding that just the mere thought of Gendo now made her angry and sick to her stomach at the same time. There were a lot of things she could imagine forgiving him for but abandoning their son wasn't one of them. Not only had he abandoned Shinji, he had manipulated him like he had done to so many other people. He didn't care who he hurt, or how badly he hurt them, so long as he got what he wanted. One thing she knew for sure was that she wouldn't let him hurt Shinji again.
She should save some of that anger for herself however, since she also knew in all of this that she was a horrible hypocrite. What had she done if not abandon Shinji when she let herself be taken by Unit 01? How stupid, naive, and shortsighted had she been to ever think that the concept of Instrumentality was going to give him a better future, even if the last ten years of Shinji's life had played out the way she hoped and expected?
She'd been plagued throughout her life by a streak of naivete. It had shown itself in her belief that she could be the remedy for what ailed Gendo and it carried on through her belief in the Instrumentality Project and that stupid naivete had all but ruined her son. Why couldn't she see it back then? She was going to make sure Gendo never hurt him again and she'd be just as well served to include herself in that statement. She was just as guilty as Gendo was.
Unbeknownst to Yui, a certain blue haired, red eyed girl was watching her as she walked the hallway. Rei had stayed at the hospital for several hours after Shinji and his mother had been recovered, her emotional state rendering her almost immobile. It was early in the evening when she was finally able to get to her feet and make her way home. She was emotionally exhausted and didn't quite remember the trip.
When she got to her rundown apartment she had shuffled towards her cramped and rust stained shower, leaving a trail of her clothes across the cracked and stained linoleum as she went. Like usual, the hot water was sporadic but she spent well over an hour just standing under the often cold spray anyway, trying not to think about or feel anything. She enjoyed little success in that regard.
She had not been allowed into the isolation ward to see Shinji and no one would speak to her, not even when she asked about his condition. No one had given her a second glance while she sat in the hall and cried from the depths of her soul, alone and afraid. The Commander had not yet contacted her in regards to her future now that his plans were seemingly no longer necessary. She was useless to him now and apparently he didn't even think enough of her to tell her so.
She had exited the shower, covered in goose bumps and shivering and went to her bed. She didn't sleep, but instead she spent the night backed into the corner at the head of her bed, naked and staring sightlessly across the confines of her decrepit home, almost afraid to close her eyes. At some point the tears came again, but along the way she resolved to go back to the hospital in the morning and see not only Shinji, but his mother as well. She felt a great need to speak to her. She needed to know if the woman who's soul she had been tasked to reunite with her maker during Instrumentality despised her as well, or if she could forgive her for being the pale imitation of a life and the mere tool that she was.
She had been watching Yui for several minutes, trying to harden her wavering resolve to talk to the woman. She had never been good at talking to people, let alone initiating the conversation. It was another of the aspects of life that had been deemed unnecessary for her to experience. It was easy to control someone when they had no outside influences to sway their opinions and behaviour and knew only what their master allowed them to know.
But there was more than her programming by the Commander that was keeping Rei from walking up to her. She was genuinely afraid. Afraid of what Yui Ikari would think of her, though she wasn't sure why because fear was not something she normally felt and she didn't generally give too much thought to what others thought of her. She was afraid of what the woman's return might mean for her future. She was also afraid that her origins would now become known and she would lose her only friend in Shinji.
She felt her resolve leave her completely and she felt more alone now than she ever had before. As the tears threatened to overcome her yet again she turned and silently walked away. Perhaps Soryu was right after all. She really was a doll, unable to do anything without being ordered to do so. Like a marionette, without someone pulling her stings she was unable to function. She had no purpose.
The Commander had given her a purpose, to die on cue like an actor on a stage. Her life was a life without hope. That was something else that had been considered unnecessary because unlike the rest of mankind she knew the purpose for which she had been created and hope, she had been told, was irrelevant. She had believed in the Commander, she had thought that he cared for her but it had become obvious to her that the puppeteer cared little for his puppet. She was just a tool after all and her usefulness was nearing its end.
Rei didn't know it, but Yui had seen her as she turned to walk away and she had seen the downcast look on her face before she disappeared around the corner.
Asuka was in a daze as she wandered through the maze of corridors that was NERV headquarters. She had spent almost two hours sitting in front of Unit 02, desperate for a sign that her mother was really there. She had begged and pleaded for a sign, for some form of acknowledgement that her mother was there and could hear her. She never got that sign, but somehow she knew that she was in there. She had to be. Now that the idea was in her head that it was a possibility, she couldn't accept anything else as the truth.
Like the bursting of a dam, the words and the emotions had flowed out of her in a torrent. She began to speak about her life. She said all of the things she had wanted to say to her mother, telling her how much she loved her and how badly she missed her. She talked about what she had done in the years since the day she found her hanging from the ceiling, the good and the bad. She laid herself bare and as her emotions continued to flow unabated, she found that she couldn't stop them. She simply couldn't contain them and hold them back anymore. She told her mother her true feelings. She was lonely and she was scared.
And through all of it, Asuka Langley Soryu had cried. More accurately, she had wailed, shedding all of the tears she had refused to let go of since her mother died. The last day and a half had served to break her down completely and the voice in her head kept telling her that it was alright to cry. But she couldn't allow herself to completely drop the armour that she had spent so long building up. She cursed the voice to no end, battering it back into submission, her head throbbing painfully as she fought with herself. She had vowed to never cry again after her mother died and that vow had just been shot all to hell. Instead of being a release, the tears only served to cause her more pain. She felt humiliated and weak and she despised that feeling.
Violent urges welled up inside of her, her temper seething and boiling over. She wanted to hit someone, to make them feel pain like she was feeling. She wanted to pound Shinji for showing her up, she wanted to pound Misato for stealing Kaji away. She should have pounded Dr. Akagi when she had the chance, she was sick of her superior attitude and her acidic rebukes when her sync ratio was down.
She stopped and leaned against the wall, her hands pressed tightly to her head. A groan escaped through her clenched teeth as she fought the blinding wave of pain that lanced through her head. As it slowly began to subside she caught a glimpse of something out of the corner of her eye and turned to see someone who she despised above all others.
Ayanami.
The blue haired bitch was exiting a stairwell that provided access to the medical wing. She had probably been sitting like a statue beside her Ikari-kun's bed. She would be so happy that her little friend, her only friend, was back. She began to move towards her, the voice in her head screaming at her, trying to stop her from what she was going to do. But she was beyond arguing with it now, the searing pain in her head was pushing her beyond all sense of reason or rationality. She ignored the voice as it screamed and begged for her to stop, to just turn and walk away.
She had just found her outlet.
Commander Ikari's Office
Self reflection was a rare practice for Gendo Ikari. He preferred not to look back on his life too often because it tended to promote the formation of a conscience and that was something he had grown to have little use or need for. It tended to get in the way and distract one from their purpose. Self reflection, coupled with an in depth discussion with a rather large bottle of sake, was something even more rare for him. It was something that he hadn't done in many years, as his aching head could attest to.
It was through that self reflection that he had seen just how absurdly far he had gone and how far he had been willing to go in order to be reunited with Yui. It didn't matter that the reunification may have only resulted in nothing more than the briefest contact between their souls before all became one and not the more eternal result he wished for. He needed it, and just like a junkie that need had consumed and driven him to do things that should never have even considered.
The idea that she wouldn't forgive him for the things he had done had certainly occurred to him just as all other possibilities had. He hadn't attained the position or the power he had today without thinking through every possible angle to everything he did and that applied to Yui as well. However, he had never thought that she would return alive and in the flesh, it had been too much to hope for and that made the whole idea of forgiveness for his actions a very real one and he hadn't considered that.
But now he had to face the hard cold reality of that possibility. He had known about Fuyutsuki's visit and had heard his conversation with Yui. He had known about the loop the old professor had installed into the monitoring program. The nagging little voice of fear in the back of his mind had been right. She wasn't going to forgive him. He had pushed that painful bit of knowledge aside and gone about his day like nothing was wrong. After talking to Dr. Akagi and Chairman Kiel, he had set about devising new plans for the immediate future. When he returned home late in the evening he began his meeting with the sake bottle.
Alcohol had a way of making you reflect on things even if you were drinking in an effort to forget about them. Gendo wasn't drinking to forget, it had just seemed like the logical thing to do once he began to truly realize the full weight of the things he had done. The problem was, he wasn't entirely sure that he still wouldn't go through with the Human Instrumentality Project. It had always been his aim to do so, having hitched his wagon to SEELE long ago.
He still had Adam attached to his right hand. It was probably the worst decision he could make but he had decided, at least for now, to leave the Angel where it was. All options were needed no matter what he ultimately decided to do. Now that Yui was back could he still carry out such a plan just to save himself from the misery he was now feeling because he knew she wouldn't forgive him? That was the problem, he just might do it. He just might run away from the pain by ending human existence itself. What a lowly coward he had become, the same sort of human wreck he had been purposely turning his own son into.
When he first came to know Yui Ikari he had desired to get close to her because of her existing connection to SEELE, the funding they put forth for her research, and the power they wielded. It didn't take long however for him to see her for the wonderful woman she was, a woman who loved him despite his unruly behaviour and personal insecurities. She was a kind and warm person who seemed to have a wisdom beyond her years. He had never thought of himself as worthy of being loved by anyone, a trait he had sadly passed on to his son, but Yui had indeed loved him.
Gendo knew that at his core he was a weak man and like all weak men with a measure of power, he was a bully. He was a ruthlessly efficient bully but still a bully none the less. When Yui had been absorbed into Unit 01 his world had disappeared with her and it changed him into something worse than he had ever been. He had become virtually inhuman, not caring who he hurt or how badly he hurt them. He used people until there was nothing left to use and then he threw them away without a thought. He realized too late now that he had been doing the same thing to both Yui's imprisoned soul and the son that was so precious to her.
Then there was Rei. It was bad enough that he had created a life in the laboratory after abandoning his own flesh and blood, but the things he had done to her. The isolated engineering of her personality to ensure her loyalty. The long hours she was made to endure in the process to download her experiences into the dummy plug system. The scorn that she experienced from others because of the way she looked and the way she had been made to act. Of them all, she had suffered the most because that was why she had been created. She was not to know joy or love or happiness or freedom because it had no part in her role within his scenario. She was nothing more than a tool he had manufactured and honed to his own specifications.
And he had felt absolutely no remorse what so ever for doing it.
SEELE's Human Instrumentality Project had given him the perfect opportunity to reunite with Yui. Except for the end result their goals and his were the same, so all he had to do was follow along and make sure the sanctimonious old fools didn't get wind of his plans and thus far they hadn't. They didn't trust him and they most certainly suspected he that he was up to something, but that was irrelevant so long as they thought they were still getting what they wanted out of him. He would gladly continue to use them and in the end he would make sure that Kiel and the others got what they so richly deserved. Even if he ultimately gave in to his own weaknesses and continued with the scenario, he was determined to make sure the old men didn't get things their way. And it was time to plan for that contingency as well as a couple of others.
Picking up his phone, he punched in the extension number he desired. It was answered on the second ring. "Agent Kaji," he spoke coldly. "Drop whatever you are doing and come to my office immediately. I have a job for you."
Without waiting for a response, he hung up the phone. Unlocking the central drawer of his desk, he pulled out a large calibre automatic pistol and laid it on the desk. He was going to make the spy an offer that he couldn't possibly refuse.
One way or another.
AN: In the manga, we see Yui as being a full on believer int he concept of Instrumentality, seeing it as a way to make a better world for Shinji. Not exactly sure how that logic works considering what was going to happen, but there it is. In the anime we get a less clear picture of her thoughts and commitment and are left to formulate our own thoughts on it.
I am trying to use a blend of the two here. From both media we also get the impression that Yui is also a bit naive. She strikes me as a truly good and kind woman and not the type would go for the 'bad boy', but she ends up with Gendo. And despite her obvious intelligence her belief in Instrumentality being beneficial for Shinji and his future screams naivete. She isn't a mad scientist type but her adherence to what she's working to accomplish has a similar flavour. Without the evil component of the mad scientist, you get a naive individual who thinks they are doing the greatest thing for mankind that they can possibly do.
Poor Shinji. He wanted her back so badly and now he has her and he wants so badly not to hold her responsible for her actions. It's so much easier to blame Gendo...he is and always was a bastard so he is the easy fall guy and he deserves to be. Even before he lost Yui he used people and was not well regarded. He's always been a bastard.
We always suspect that deep inside Shinji must have a very deep well of anger hidden away and we often speculate how much of the berserker state of Unit 01 is influenced by it. Will Shinji show any actual anger in regards to his mother at some point in this story? It might be addressed at some point and in some way before the end. Just don't expect an outright scream fest. That's as close to any kind of a spoiler as I will ever give.
With that said, please leave a review if you would be so kind.
And while you're here, check out my other stories.