"It is not Atlas who carries the world on his shoulders, but woman; and sometimes she plays with it as with a ball."

-Henryk Sienkjewicz

Interlude I

2004: 4 Years Post Second Impact

I'm peering down at the dividing cells of a fragment of the Adam embryo through an electron microscope, perplexed by the way in which these lifeforms undergo binary fission. With bacteria that employ binary fission, the DNA is replicated before the process of division so that it creates an identical copied mass, but what I'm seeing is entirely different. No DNA is duplicated and the cells do not slowly peel away from each other, instead they are cut immediately in half while a faint orange flicker erupts like lightning in grey clouds. It's there for a split second and then it's gone.

The organism afterwards seems to simply "fill in the gaps" of what was missing, microbial fibers and structural proteins twisting and building the rest of the new DNA from nothingness. I'm appalled, as these lifeforms do not obey the natural law of conservation of matter, seemingly making new genetic material from nowhere. It has to do with the AT field-the etching on the cave wall we know so little about. I know it uses the AT field… I know it… but I can't figure it out… I can't-

A hand presses on my back and I look up from my microscope. Kozo Fuyutsuki, my mentor and former professor, is standing with a stern expression on his face. He always looks this way.

"You need to rest," he says, shifting his gaze from me to the petri dish being displayed on a computer screen, "Go. I'll take it from here."

I sigh and lean back into the black office chair, staring at the ceiling, "We're close. I can feel it."

"Good. Then you can rest."

I rub my temples, "We need to finish soon, but god…. I wish we had more time."

"You truly are becoming a scientist," he chuckles softly, "We're always thinking like that."

I force a laugh and get up, my heels clicking against the white lab floor. There's a garden outside with a fountain that spurts water out of the mouths of three fish. Their hollow eyes stare at me as I pass by. I remember that I have to pick up Shinji from nursery so I get in my car near the east wing parking lot and drive.

Driving is a wonderful thing for a scientist. It gives me time to ponder, time to think up new hypotheses and experiments while I watch the scenic route go by. The trees mesh into a green blur and the faint traces of glistening water of the river behind them reflect rays of sun through the gaps in the leafy boughs. As I drive I still cannot understand how this Adam embryo works. Every time I look down at it, it mocks me more, challenging me with secrets I cannot unlock.

I get to the nursery and the kids are outside on the playground. There's two orange triangles that jut out of the ground littered with wood chips. Attached to the overhead bars kids sway in swings pushing each other and shouting gleefully in their ignorant, youthful voices. I see Shinji on the far right playing alone in the sandbox.

I sit down next to a mother I've seen a few times, Chitose. Her daughter is Aiko, a girl with pretty black hair that flows like silk. Under the blistering heat of the sun and the buzzing of cicadas we sit in silence staring at our children.

Chitose is the one to finally break the silence, "How are you, Yui?"

She's wearing a big sun hat that covers her bangs, smiling at me with crossed legs.

I turn my gaze back to the playground, "Tired. Lots of work at the lab."

"I'm sorry to hear that," she responds, "Must be hard being a mother and doing that. Still, Shinji seems like a nice young boy. I'd say you're doing a pretty good job."

I nod in agreement. The open air grazing my cheeks and brushing my hair back reminds me of home, before Gehirn and NERV.

Growing up in an isolated environment on my father's estate and spending my time mostly with my nose in books, I never really understood people. I mean I understand people, but people are odd, I find. I can't always read them. Sometimes I think they're thinking one thing, but then they're onto something entirely different. Unlike a book, a paper, a specimen - things that are quantified, set in stone, ingrained in my mind to only obey things one way. Restricted to the laws of physics and by extension, nature.

I met Gendo while studying with Professor Fuyutsuki. Despite having these troubles with people, something about him was so transparent like staring through a crystal just the right way so that the image was clear on the other side. He is a coarse, brutal, and hard man, but he's a man nonetheless, and buried beneath the dirt of his outer shell he has a heart. We worked together for a few years and then we became close. I wasn't oblivious to Fuyutuski's advances as well, but I never viewed the professor that way, despite his brilliant mind. After Second Impact we married and began our work on the Eva project. My child.

And as we worked and worked I felt that something was still missing. Yes, I am a scientist and I owe the world a future, but why? I never understood. I am not Gaea. I did not nurture the Earth, did not raise its mountains or fill its seas. It began to make sense with Shinji. My other child.

I stare at him, in the sandbox, patting the coarse material into a small castle that looks like a rook on a chessboard. My son. The thing I've nurtured and grown. He's so young and innocent, he doesn't know anything. The blissful ignorance of childhood shields him from the world, from his father, from the future, even from me. He doesn't understand why his father is distant and he doesn't understand why I cry, but he plays in that same sandbox almost everyday when I pick him up, creating childish constructions. I fear that one day he'll grow up and hate me, but I guess it doesn't really matter.

Because now both he and the world are mine to save, but I have no clue if it can be done. Where once there was only lack of understanding there is now fear because I have something to lose.

Shinji buries a small red plastic shovel in the sand and I say, "Sometimes I feel like everything is closing in around me. Sometimes I fear I'm not a good mother."

Chitose gives me a queer look, "I don't understand, Yui."

I sigh, "You wouldn't. I don't think anyone would. The scientists don't even seem to understand."

I turn to look at Chitose and, as I inspect her soft, motherly features, I feel the world rushing in around me. It's threatening to crush me with its pressure like water spewing through cracks in a ship deep beneath the sea. I feel my breath quickening and I stabilize myself on the cast iron arm rest of the bench. Chitose is still smiling strangely at me, as if she doesn't know who I am.

I wonder if this is a face that will be obliterated in the years to come, under the hellfire of an angel attack. I wonder if her child will grow up motherless, crying out for her as they sob into their pillow. I wonder why I wonder about these things and I wonder why I'm on the verge of tears.

I get up and move to Shinji. I tell him we have to go home and we leave. When I get home, the apartment is empty. We moved here ever since Gehirn formed, and the drab tan walls of the complex fill me with dread. It's all much different than life back on the estate, the open fields and air. There's very little room here. I feel suffocated as I'm packed like sardines in a tin can with everyone else.

Later that night, after Shinji has fallen asleep, I sit in bed alone. I'm crying and I don't know why, but I'm crying. Beneath the comfortable silk sheets I shudder and I feel completely alone. There's the sound of a door opening and closing outside my bedroom and keys clattering against the marble countertop. A few moments later the bedroom door slides open and I sniffle as I turn to the hallway light that bleeds in, seeing the silhouette of a tall man with ovoid glasses. I know the light is on my face and I know he can see my dried tears.

"Yui…" he whispers, and crawls into bed with me. Sometimes, after long days at the lab, we would make love, but today is not one of those days. I just want to find sleep, but my mind won't let me. I want to run away and stop existing. I want time to stop, I want to never look down a microscope again and part of me wants to never see Shinji again. I begin crying harder and his arms wrap around me. Sleep engulfs me as well as his warmth.

Three months later I'm in my white lab coat, staring through a pribnow box at the newly constructed Unit 01. We used part of Lilith's body to synthesize the rest of the Evangelion's body. The cells acted similar to Adam's, allowing us to bioform the material with relative ease.

I'm putting on the special contact suit, a one size orange piece with a visor, when Gendo walks through the door.

"Don't do this. We don't know what could go wrong," he says, pacing around nervously.

I pull the glove over my hand and lie, "Everything will be fine."

He grabs my shoulder, "What if it fails? What if-"

"It won't. Now stop, you're distracting me."

"What about Shinji?"

"He'll be fine. You two can watch from the observatory."

I move past him for the last time in my life and the door hisses shut behind me.

Down on the bridge I see the other technicians in their orange suits scuttering around like ants in a colony. Two are carrying a power cable, some are on a lift taking scans and others are welding metal for armor plates. There's a countdown as the others clear around me.

I'm standing ten feet away from the thrumming core.

I'm thinking about the day that I talked to Chitose. How we sat on that bench, two mothers, contemplating the things that matter in our lives. But her mind was a million miles away. She was ignorant. She didn't understand me. She was a mother, but she was only a mother. Maybe she had a job, a quiet life in the suburbs, but not every person is the same. She doesn't know the burden I carry.

My hand is inching towards the core. It's thrumming louder now. I can feel the pulse rattling the floor beneath me. There's a commotion in the pribnow box.

I still don't understand everything. I don't understand Gendo entirely, even though he is my husband and the father to my son. I don't understand how those dividing cells of the Adam embryo can pass their parental DNA to their offspring when the DNA is not even there to begin with- nothing to grow it.

My hand is centimeters from the core.

The last thought that appears in my mind is a memory. There's a beautiful blue river. Fuyutsuki is standing a few feet away and I'm sitting on a bench, breastfeeding Shinji. I remember the feeling of the world stopping when I looked down at his face. Fuyutsuki is saying something and I'm absently answering, but my eyes never leave my child. I brush a lock of hair out of Shinji's face.

The core consumes my hand and I'm pulled into darkness.

Author's Note: As I struggle on my endeavor to get the next chapter of the story out, I thought I would leave you all with this. I always wanted to write about the other characters so this may be one of a few interludes that I write. I find Yui to be fascinating, someone who is not simply just summed up to have a "god-complex" or be a cold, apathetic person. I think, like all Eva characters, there's something more to her. Anyway I'm interested to see what you guys think, this was pretty experimental for me as I delved into the first person POV present tense. See you in the next chapter.