Unravel

by Homer's Disciple

Shinji rejected Instrumentality, but he made so many mistakes. He has one last chance to set things right, to unravel everything and save what matters. A retelling or altering of the series, an altered version of Shinji with an altered past. Life takes a different path, but do all paths lead to the same destination? Is Shinji doomed to never know happiness?

55. Ayanami IV

Hey guys, I'm back. Hell of a wait, huh?
I apologize for that. It took me a while to get the chapter how I wanted it.

This is a very dialogue-heavy chapter. And there are a lot of scenes where I really wish I could animate or illustrate this. Because it's very visual-heavy in nature. But here we are. There is some modified lore, so sorry to the purists out there in advance.

Chapter 55: "Ayanami IV"

---

"You're running away. Don't wall yourself off. It doesn't help."

"The world is cruel. It is cold and indifferent. Why should I be any different?"

"Because the girl that I knew was kind. She knew what they were doing was wrong. She cared about her friends. You tried to warn me. You wanted to stop him, even if you didn't know how."

"And I died for that. Twice."

"… I'm sorry. I never meant- I failed you. Please, I-"

"The girl that you knew. Who was that? Was that me? Or someone else?"

"… I don't understand."

"Four lives. Four iterations of Rei Ayanami. And who is Rei Ayanami? Is it me? Or was it those who came before? Are they one and the same? I don't know."

"You're you. Your life is still your own."

"Nothing is mine, Shinji. Not my memories, they belonged to the previous Rei(s). Not even my face. All of it was stolen. I was designed not born. I was ripped from the Second Angel and sculpted into the image of a dead woman. I was a doll to be used and thrown away. That is what the world did to me."

- Shinji Ikari speaking with Rei Ayanami.

---

Present Day.
The Dream World.

"Lilith made this for me. But… What are you doing here?"

Rei said the words distantly, offhandedly. She sat by the edge of the shore with all her painting gear propped up before her, speaking with a coloring pencil in hand.

It was only then that he noticed the others. Paintings. Dozens and dozens of them. A neat little stack off to the side. Beautiful drawings that were patiently crafted by the lone girl in her isolation. They were illustrations of the reality all around them. The waters, the shore, the symbols littered across the grounds, and the enormous tree that dwarfed them all in the distance.

Shinji wondered how long she had been here. All their battles against SEELE, all of it, Misato's injuries, his capture and rescue, Mari's death, Asuka saving him from himself, his recovery after Keel's downfall, and Rei had been here painting the whole time. How long must that have been for her?

The two of them stood in a slice of instrumentality. They stood on the shores of an alien world. A dream. A recreation of a memory long since passed. A memory that did not belong to Rei. One of Lilith's memories. Why? Why here of all places?

Shinji shivered as ice-cold winds blew by. It felt so real. The breeze rushed against the fabric of his plugsuit. The ripple in the school uniform that Rei wore. The tide of the light-filled water all around him. The bustle of the enormous tree and its branches in the distance. The night sky with its alien and unfamiliar stars shining overhead.

Even the air. The air smelled different here. He didn't have words for it. Something truly foreign and not found on Earth.

"I… I came to save you," Shinji said, finding his voice again. He needed to be strong. The Dream World didn't matter, he had come to find his friend. And now he had. All he had to do was get her out.

He had a promise to keep. He would get her the life she deserved. Finally free of Gendo Ikari. Together they could leave all this horror behind.

"Save me? I don't need saving," Rei said.

She tilted her head at him. Then she turned her back to him.

He stood there not sure what to say. The silence carried for only a moment, only to be replaced by the scribbles of the coloring pencils once again.

Shinji frowned. He knew that his friend wasn't right. She hadn't been right ever since he'd left her apartment on that fateful day. When next he had seen her, she had been troubled and unstable, with her memories erased. She had been a broken shell of the girl he'd known. He had managed to get her back in the bottom-most level of Nerv. But now?

Now he didn't know what to do. She paid him no mind as he stood there. She kept painting and breathed softly into the wind on this foreign memory that wasn't even hers.

Hesitantly, he moved to join her. He sat beside her giving the girl her space and watched the scene with her. They made an odd sight. A girl in a school uniform painting by an alien sea, with an Eva pilot in full gear beside her.

"Rei-"

"Do you like it here?"

"… what?"

"Do you like it here?" Rei parroted.

She still wouldn't face him. She kept her gaze on her painting. He could see the world around them taking shape on the paper before her. It was amazing to witness. The detail, the colors, the precision, the swift and smooth movement of her hands. Rei had had a lot of practice. She drew like an artist in the prime of her career and she was only a teenager.

"… it's nice. It is. But-" He began.

"I could teach you." She told him suddenly.

Rei turned to him once again. He saw a flicker of the girl he had known before. She held his gaze and didn't blink. She gave him her full undivided attention. At that moment, he was the only thing in her world. A quiet intensity that he had glimpsed only a few times.

"It is easier than it looks. And we have all the time in the world," she told him.

Before Shinji could answer, she held out her free hand and a coloring pencil emerged into existence. Then a stack of papers materialized at his feet, neatly stacked, and looking brand new.

He stared at what had happened. There had been no sound. No warning of any kind. The items had come into being in an instant and seemingly at her beck and call.

She held the coloring pencil for him to take and glanced at the blank papers at his feet.

"You can stay here too."

"… No. Rei… I'm sorry but I can't."

"Yes, you can."

"Lilith only-"

"She will let you." Rei interrupted.

Shinji stared at her. She still hadn't blinked. She sat there looking at him with that quiet intensity and he wondered again how long she had been here. How much time had passed for her in the dream world?

"If I ask her too. Then she will. Lilith will let you stay here with me," Rei told him.

Shinji breathed a heavy sigh. He reached up and tried to take her hand in his, their fingers brushing against each other. She pulled back almost violently, sudden, and sharp. Then she was on her feet stumbling backward. The coloring pencil fell to the ground with a soft thud.

"Don't," Rei snapped, her voice low. She looked away; her head lowered; hands balled into fists.

"Hey?! What is it? I'm sor-"

The girl breathed, inhaling and exhaling, and slowly her fists uncurled. The palms of her hand were red from how tightly she had squeezed. Her fingers twitched slightly as she began to recover.

"It is fine. I… do not touch me," Rei told him.

He watched as she shivered and raised a hand to the back of her head. She ran a hand through her hair as if feeling for something. The ghost of a wound.

He rose to his feet and wanted to hug her. He thought better of it. He stayed where he was a few feet away and somberly nodded his head. "Okay," he said.

Gendo… that… that fucking monster… what did he do to you? Rei! What did he do?!

"Thank you," Rei whispered to him. She shivered in the cold of the night air. How strange. She hadn't seemed to notice it before.

As if in response to her plight, the world shifted. Reality around them changed. The night vanished and in its place stood a deep multi-colored sky, blue with orange and red bleeding through, with twin suns shining overhead. The cold air was replaced by a warm comforting breeze.

Shinji blinked having to fight back a gasp. It all happened so fast. Reality changed in an instant.

With the rise of the twin suns above, the world beyond was revealed. He saw strange structures in distant landmasses. The outline of cities and foreign construction stretched as far as the eye could see beyond the enormous tree in the water.

Rei wheezed taking in the fresh air. Her shivering didn't stop. She breathed and breathed, holding herself carefully, seemingly untouched by the warm air and the heat of the two suns above.

The world shifted again, the twin stars above seeming to move across the sky. It was like watching a time-lapse played forward, hours passing by in seconds, watching the time-of-day change in a fraction of its normal speed. The world grew warmer, and the sky changed color, beautiful in its own way, moving from a warm morning to a hot summer day.

It's her. The world changes for her. She shivered as if she was cold, so it changed from night to day. Shinji realized awe-struck.

But it didn't work. Rei was unmoved by the changes.

"Okay. Okay. Uh. Here, let me try," Shinji said slowly.

He reached down and picked up the fallen coloring pencil. Rei watched him. She kept her distance, wanting space between them now since he had tried to take her hand.

He sat down on the shore where she had once sat. He treated all of this as if it was another day at school. As if they were on lunch break and sitting outside as they had done in another life.

"… I used to do this; you know. Back at the ward. I used to draw all the time," Shinji said, trying to keep his voice steady.

He scooped up a blank sheet of thick paper and put the coloring pencil to it. He didn't have a plan he just drew. He started simple. He started outlining the shore where they stood.

"They made me draw my dreams. And other times…" he said, his voice growing distant.

He breathed in forcing his way past the words. He kept his voice calm and easy, talking to Rei as if they were still just at school.

"Other times, I used to draw with Mari."

He felt Rei's gaze on him. The world didn't shift again. The reality around them stayed constant.

"Those times were different. We drew for fun."

He found himself letting out a sad little laugh. Painful memories with their authenticity of an ambiguous nature.

"… what did you draw?" Rei asked quietly.

"Everything and anything. Places that we wanted to go to. Places that didn't exist. We liked to play a game where we would try to guess what was outside the ward. We'd make up places and people for the bits of the city we could see. One time, we covered the walls of my room in them," he said unable to stop the croak in his voice.

He had to stop for a moment to catch his breath. The memory almost overwhelmed him. The ghost of a little girl that had breathed life into his sad and lonely existence in the ward.

He cleared his throat putting the memories aside. He had just finished a rough outline of the shore.

"Uh. I need more colors," Shinji said.

He held out his hand, but nothing came. The dream world did not respond to him.

"Here," Rei said, her voice low but steady. She had stopped shivering.

Again, with no sound at all, no warning of any kind, the world changed. Coloring pencils materialized at his feet. Far more than he needed.

"Thank you," Shinji said, reaching down to grab a few.

He continued painting and felt his friend's eyes on him. Slowly, she came to join him, and they sat together like before. She watched him paint and seemed to have calmed down, lost in the painting before her.

"You are too rough. You put too much pressure in the strokes," Rei told him quietly.

"Oh," Shinji said.

He paused and noticed that a lot of his drawings were harsh and crude where they didn't need to be. That was how he had always drawn. Always in a rush. Always hurrying to finish so that Dr. Page would let him move on. It had seldom been a source of joy for him. Only Mari had… and even then, those had been the frantic and energetic scramblings of pent-up kids escaping their world.

"Don't press so hard. And don't rush. Take your time." Rei told him.

He glanced at her paintings off to the side. And noticed the difference between hers and his. Rei's paintings were beautiful, painstakingly created, precise and delicate, detailed and concrete in their depiction. His were crude, jumbled, and more abstract.

"Like this," Rei said.

She moved closer and he didn't dare move. He gave her space as she leaned towards his painting. A coloring pencil appeared in her hands as she added her own details to his painting. She took her time, moving to add form to his crude outline of a shore and beginnings of the sea.

Rei mixed her style with his. Evening out his mistakes and adding to them, creating detail where they had been only uniform colors.

"You try," she told him, leaning back.

And so, he did. He took up the coloring pencil and tried to copy what she had done. He wasn't very good. It took multiple examples, but by the end, he had made progress. Rei sat beside him guiding him through, but always with a gap between them, a space that she dared not cross, and he made sure to maintain.

She seemed to get lost in this. Painting. She had calmed herself with this act and he thought it brought her peace to create something with her own hands.

"It's not very good," he said, managing a laugh.

Rei frowned at him.

"It is… a good attempt. You will get better. I will teach you," Rei told him.

"You've had lots of practice," he said slowly.

"I have," Rei said simply.

"… I… you've been here a long time. Haven't you?" Shinji said slowly and carefully.

"Yes," Rei told him simply.

He wanted to ask more but he felt that she didn't want to consider it. There was a very real possibility that even she didn't know how long she had been here. He struggled to imagine it. How long from her perspective had she been alone? Days? A month? A year? Longer?

The idea gave him chills.

It's hard to tell. Time moves differently here than on the outside, he thought.

"It's been a month or so in the outside. Since… since what happened," Shinji said carefully. He didn't want to lose her again, not when he had just got her back.

Rei tilted her head at him.

"Okay," she said flatly.

He opened his mouth to say more.

She turned back to his painting, dismissing the topic. "You will get better. There is a lot of things to practice with," she said.

"Is this all you've been doing all this time? Painting?" Shinji asked. He tried to picture her in her isolation, painting by the sea for however long she had been here. There had to be more.

"No," Rei said simply.

She rose to her feet, and he did the same.

"Sometimes I sleep," Rei said, and the world changed. Reality around them shifted and they were somewhere else.

---

The woods.

Gone was the shore and the water that surrounded it. Gone was the enormous tree, dwarfing even the Evangelions in size, with roots that ran deep into the ocean. Gone were the distant landmass and cities on the horizon.

In its place were a familiar sky and tall trees that surrounded them. This was Earth. They were standing in the middle of the woods. In a clearing. Blankets littered the grounds in makeshift beds. Three of them. A campfire was crackling, a cozy and warm thing.

Shinji gasped, unable to stop himself.

This place…

He knew what this was. Another memory that he had seen before. It was the camp… the camp the Broken Man had lived in on the road to Haven. Where an older Shinji Ikari had spent months living in the woods with his Asuka and his Rei, before being forced to move on by the onslaught of winter.

That shouldn't have been possible. This… this was one of the Broken Man's memories. How could Rei or even Lilith know about this?

No. Not the Broken Man's memory. Rei… Rei Ikari's memory. It's wrong though. Shinji realized slowly.

There were no people here. No recreations of the Broken Man, or the Original Asuka and Original Rei.

The dream world could recreate places. It could recreate memories as entire worlds to be explored. But it could not create people. It could not bring life where there was none to be had.

"They lived here for a time. The Others," Rei said suddenly.

He turned to find her watching him intently.

"… you know…" he whispered.

Rei stared at him unblinkingly.

"You have been here before. In this memory," she said.

"… yes," he admitted.

Rei nodded and turned to look at a pair of blankets on one side of the campfire. A makeshift bed wide enough for two.

Rei knelt and placed a hand on the left side of the blankets.

"She slept here."

Rei moved her hand to the right side of the blankets.

"And he slept there."

Rei rose to her feet again. Shinji only stood there not knowing what to say.

He turned to the lone blanket on the other side of the campfire. Close and familiar, but distant enough to give the other side its privacy.

Asuka… she slept over there. She wanted to give the couple their space.

He opened his mouth not entirely sure what he would say when Rei spoke again.

"And I also explore," she told him simply.

"… explore?" he asked.

Rei raised a hand and the world shifted once more. Reality around them changed. Shinji was ready for it this time, half-expecting it now that he had witnessed it twice.

...

The memory of Rei Ikari was gone. The woods and the camp within vanished around them. And in its place stood a platform with a sea of structures all around them.

Together, the two of them stood in a wide square with buildings surrounding them as far as the eye could see. A city. They were standing in a city square. In the beating heart of a civilization that had long since passed. The ruins of a people dead and gone.

Buildings stood tall as skyscrapers, pale things that reached into the heaven above. Smaller structures that ranged from 1 to 4 stories tall. Paths that led underground. Most of it was in different shades of white. And standing in front of them was an enormous wall with a colored mural engraved upon it. Symbols and figures depicted a scene of a group of beings standing together before a tree that towered over them.

The mural showed people gathered before a tree, each with a handful of seeds in their hands.

He felt a chill run down his spine again. That feeling of being lost in something so foreign and strange, so alien to anything that he had ever known. The people in the mural were humanoid, with two arms and two legs. But different. They were taller, thinner, with faces that didn't quite match those of a human.

Rei spoke up surprising him.

"Trees," she said.

"Wha- what?" he said, finding his mouth had gone dry.

"In their art. Trees. Gardens. Seeds. They depict them over and over again. Life. They revered life. I think it was part of their religion," Rei said, staring ahead unblinkingly.

He took a second to examine the scene before him. And found that she was right. The mural depicted a garden. A garden that was carefully maintained and expanded by the white figures.

"These people designed the Angels. They created Adam and Lilith. They had pale white skin, silver hair, and red eyes…" Rei said, her voice distant.

She walked up to the scene engraved before them, and raised a hand, comparing her pale skin to the people in the mural. They matched. Her skin was like the people depicted in the garden.

"… The First Ancestral Race…" Shinji said slowly.

Rei paused at that.

"That's what Lilith called them too. These are her memories. Her memory of her parents. What was left of them," the girl said, speaking softly.

Reality around them shifted again. They were no longer standing in the city.

...

They were somewhere else. Inside a building with more murals. More symbols engraved into walls. A Spear of Longinus was hanging above them, enormous and immaculate, freshly forged and hovering off the ground. Then that too was replaced.

They stood in the wilds with another tree towering over them, taller than the largest skyscrapers from before. An ancient tree that had been cultivated for who knows how many human lifetimes.

On and on it went. Different places. Different memories of Lilith taking hold and the dream world bringing them back to life. Echoes of what once was.

It was nauseating. Even now, after everything that Shinji had been through, all that time he had spent forced to re-live the memories of the Broken Man, and he still fell to his feet. He almost threw up as reality shifted again and again. Too many scenes, too many sensations taking hold, too much of everything.

"There's so much of it. So much to see and explore. I can't go any further back. These are the earliest memories that Lilith had. And- Shinji?"

Rei turned to him. She frowned as he fell to his knees shaking, and shivered.

He gasped not knowing what was wrong with him. His head was hurting him like never before. He tried to breathe but found that he couldn't. He flickered. The universe around him blacked out before coming out.

The sounds crackled, disappearing before reappearing.

Rei was kneeling beside him. Worried red eyes peered down at him, and she reached for him but never quite touched him. She wavered, torn between her concern for him and her aversion to physical touch.

"Here," she said at last. She raised a hand and reality shifted back to before.

---

They were back in the woods. In the middle of camp with blankets for beds.

Shinji gasped finding that he could breathe. He was solid again. He was constant. His mind returned to him.

The Broken Man… he had to bring me slowly to see what he wanted. He couldn't drop me into the memory of the Unraveling. He had to ease me across the dream… Shinji thought. He never truly understood the explanation until now.

"Is that better?" Rei asked him, her voice low and worried.

"… yeah. Thanks," he wheezed.

Rei breathed a sigh of relief. She stepped back and took a seat on the pair of blankets beside the campfire, waiting for him to recover.

Shinji caught his breath again, and then he moved to sit on the ground. A blanket materialized underneath him and he flinched at the sudden softness.

Rei tilted her head at him. She was only trying to help.

"I moved too quickly. I've been exploring for so long now that I forgot what it was like in the beginning," she told him.

"It's okay," Shinji said slowly.

"We can go back to the shore if that is easier," Rei said. She began to raise her hand again.

"No. Just… just hold on. Let's- let's stay here for now," Shinji said, nearly jolting out his seat at the prospect of moving again.

Rei lowered her hand wordlessly.

"You will get used to it. I can teach you how. There is still so much I haven't seen," Rei said.

"Rei. This… exploring. It doesn't matter. All this… the history of the Angels and their parents, it's not important," Shinji said softly.

She frowned at him.

"It is something to do. But we can go back to painting then. I paint all the time. At the shore. Here in the woods. And even out there in those cities," Rei said.

As she spoke, more paper and coloring pencils appeared, and Shinji saw that she had already painted several scenes of the woods and the camp before. And more, she had drawn scenes from Rei Ikari's memory. She had drawn the original Rei sitting at camp with the Broken Man beside her.

"No. We can't just-"

"You promised to teach me how to cook. We never did that, did we?" she interrupted him.

Shinji hesitated and Rei continued.

"Now you can. If you're tired of painting," Rei said.

The world shifted and Shinji flinched as he expected everything to change again. It didn't. The scene around them stayed. Instead of being wiped away and replaced, more were brought into the world. Adding instead of replacing.

It made no logical sense at all. A kitchen emerged just a few feet from the camp, fully stocked, with every appliance powered and in working order. The dream world didn't play by the same rules as the outside.

Misato… this is Misato's kitchen.

Shinji flinched as he realized it. The appliances, the messy clutter that had been his guardian's mark on the kitchen, interwoven with the order he had tried to weave in that space. A perfect recreation of Misato's kitchen standing in the middle of the woods.

"… listen. I need to tell you what's happening outside. There's-" he began.

Rei lowered her head saying, "you are tired."

"I-" he began.

"I pushed too hard earlier. Lie down. Rest. I will come back later and then we can do whatever we want. Paint. Cook. Explore," she said.

An open doorway appeared behind her. No warning, no transition of any kind. It was there in less than the blink of an eye. A path that broke all logic. The door led back to the shore and the tree, a bridge between different sections of the dream world.

Rei rose to her feet and headed for the shore. The portal opened for her, and he noticed that the doorknob vanished after she used it. And he knew. He knew that he wouldn't be able to follow her.

"Wait," Shinji nearly shouted. He broke into a run as Rei stepped through and began closing the door.

He wrenched his hand through the doorway and was about to grab her wrist when it happened.

BOOM.

An unseen force slammed into him. Like a gust of hurricane wind.

He cried out and was sent flying back. All the wind was knocked out of him, and he gasped as he felt his bones buckle. He gagged from the blow and would have landed on his back. In that moment of realization, that single second before he hit the ground hard, he felt something soft break his fall.

Shinji was on his back and blinked in surprise to find a mattress underneath him. He wheezed and ran his hands across the material underneath him. It was brand new, having materialized just before he fell.

He heard soft footsteps and looked up to see Rei walking back into the camp. The doorway and its portal back to shore lingered in the background.

Rei wouldn't meet his gaze. She stood there with her head lowered saying, "please. Do not touch me."

Shinji nodded slowly. He rose to his feet again and noticed Rei glance him over checking to see if he was okay.

"Sorry. I won't- I won't do that again. Thanks. For catching me," he said.

"I should not have done that," Rei whispered, her head lowered.

"Hey. I'm okay-" he began.

"I would never hurt you. I overreacted," Rei interrupted, her voice low and quiet, still unable to meet his gaze after her outburst.

He saw a single tear run down her cheek. A little thing that shined in the light.

"I know you didn't mean it. And the mattress helped," he said, patting the bed underneath him.

She stood there wordlessly, and he fought the urge to comfort her. He'd learned his lesson and she had asked him twice now not to touch her. Finally, she looked up at him. She smiled, a little sad thing, relieved that he wasn't angry.

"… I am happy you are here," she said.

Rei looked around the camp saying, "rest. I will leave the door open for you. When you're ready, we can finish those cooking lessons. Or we can paint again if you'd rather not explore."

Asuka is still out there. Ritsuko, Kaji, Misato, my Other, every single person caught up in the Angel war, he thought.

He felt every bone in his body jumping, lurching at him, every instinct telling him that he couldn't keep doing this.

He had no way of knowing how much time was passing in the real world. Adam and Lilith clashed even as he stood in the dream world with Rei. The Woman in the Dark had come back to help the Lilith of this timeline face her brother, giving him as much time as they could.

He felt that weight. The weight of so many souls, everyone who had suffered due to Gendo Ikari and Keel Lorenz, and finally the weight of all of mankind. Adam would spare no one.

Instead of jumping into action as he had done before, he stayed calm and shook his head. He called out to her even as she turned to leave.

"Did you need something else? I can bring almost anything here," Rei asked him, tilting her head. She stood mere feet from the portal back to the shore.

Shinji took a deep breath, he needed to make her understand. He needed to save her and everyone else.

"There's no time for this. There's a war waging in the outside," he began gently.

"We have all the time in the world. Don't worry about the outside," Rei snapped at him. Her eyes grew cold, narrowed, and she stared at him as if expecting him to back down.

Shinji shook his head.

"It's Adam and Lilith. Asuka and I fought them. We're fighting them right now. They were going to recreate the Second Impact on a larger scale. They were going to kill everyone. It's all happening right now," he said.

He didn't push but he didn't back down either. He needed her to understand. He pleaded with her to listen.

"I don't want to talk about the outside. This world, this is real. It's the only thing that matters," Rei told him coldly.

"I know it's hard. I know I failed to save you. That Gendo… that…"

He closed his eyes and steeled himself up for what came next. He opened his eyes and spoke.

"Gendo hurt you. He hurt you twice. I know that can't be easy, but we can't stay here. This place… it's only a dream. I promised that I'd find you, and I did. Gendo is gone. He can't hurt anyone else again. And we can leave all the pain behind. We can live the lives we were meant to."

"I already have left it all behind," Rei said, her voice blank and expressionless.

It broke his heart to see her like that. To see her reclaim the mask she had worn when they'd first met, that shield that she had forged to protect herself from the world, the barrier she had devised for a world that she didn't understand.

This isn't you. I know you. The real you. Rei…

"If you like the outside so much. Then you can go back to it," Rei said coldly.

"I'm not leaving here without you. Please, I want you to see the world. The real world. The life we can all have outside the Angel War."

Rei turned from his gaze as if dismissing him.

"Go," she whispered.

An open door appeared behind him. A sea of endless white lay on the other side. An exit from the slice of instrumentality, a way out of the dream world created and maintain by Adam and Lilith.

When Shinji didn't move Rei raised her voice. Cold and harsh, a cruel mockery of the quiet girl he had known.

"Leave! Leave me behind all over again. Abandon me like all the others," she said.

Her eyes betrayed her. There were tears welling up inside, disruptions amid deep red irises. She was pretending to be something she wasn't. For him or for her? He couldn't say.

"I never abandoned you," he said.

Rei raised a hand and an unseen force wrapped around him. An invisible hand grabbed him by his entire body. It shoved him back trying to force him into the exit.

Shinji winced and pushed back. He didn't know how but he did. The unseen force buckled and though he slid back inch by inch he resisted. Even now, as she dragged him away, she was doing everything she could not to hurt him. She still cared and that gave him hope.

"… don't do this. Don't run away. It doesn't help," he pleaded.

"Go back to Mari. Go back to all the others who left-" Rei began to say, her voice low and bitter.

"Mari is dead," he said. Tears found their way into his eyes even as he struggled against the unseen force.

Rei blinked in surprise. The invisible grip around him vanished as quickly as it had appeared. He stumbled and Rei opened her mouth in horror. She shook and blinked again and again at a loss for words.

Shinji panted, catching his breath while he could.

He wiped the tears from his eyes. Remembering his girlfriend was painful, and he thought it always would be, but she was gone, and nothing could bring her back. He could still save Rei. That was what he could do, save one more life, and with it, maybe the world entire.

Rei only stared at him.

"… I never wanted to hurt her. Gendo ordered me to… I… she was my Eva partner… she saved my life… I… I know what she means to you… I never meant- it's my fault. I- I killed her? Did I kill your girlfriend? I… did not… I… I tried to visit her in the hospital… I…" she stammered.

Her voice came in low and then high in rapid succession. Uneven and unstable. Breaking down.

"It wasn't you. It was never you, even then. It was always Gendo. Gendo and Keel," Shinji said.

"… I pulled the trigger. It was my hand on the spear. I… " Rei said. She raised her hands and found that they were shaking.

"It's not your fault. Mari… she died saving me… it was the war," Shinji said, his voice uneven. He had to fight to get the words out. After all this time, the words themselves were still a wound.

"How?" Rei asked him after a moment.

He lowered his eyes. "After… after Lilith escaped. I was captured by SEELE. They took Asuka too. My Other… humph… I think you know what he is. My Other and Mari rescued me. And… she didn't make it."

He winced as he remembered the look in Mari's eyes as she died.

"She was working for them. For SEELE," he continued. He failed to keep the emotions from his voice, he hiccupped as the words left his mouth.

"… she was a traitor…" Rei whispered.

"She was. She was working for Keel all this time. But she chose me. She turned against him. She gave her life to save me. To stop SEELE."

Rei frowned at him. She didn't know what to say. He understood. He hadn't known what to say at first either. Too many emotions playing out all at once.

"It's been really hard. Out there. Misato was shot. I was tortured. They made Asuka hurt people. And the war never ended. It just changed players," he said.

He felt a weariness in his bones as he told her everything that had happened. This had aged him. The Angel War had aged all of them before their time.

"… why do you want to go back? Stay here. Stay here with me and no one can hurt us again," Rei told him. She gestured to the camp that surrounded them, the woods that stretched on and on, this recreation of Rei Ikari's memory.

He shook his head.

"Because they're all still out there. Fighting. Asuka. Ritsuko. Misato… Kaji. Maya, Toji, Hikari… Every single person caught up in this insanity. Every soul that Adam would wipe from the face of the earth."

Rei looked away, gazing up at the false sky above. She seemed lost in thought and the silence dragged on for so long that he started to step forward.

Then Rei spoke again, slowly but firmly.

"Asuka was kind to me. I think Lilith will let her in too. If I ask, then Asuka can join us," the pale girl said suddenly.

Shinji shook his head in disbelief.

"And what about everyone else? All the innocent people the Angels would wipe out. Billions of people, Rei. Billions. It's so many that I can't picture it all. What happens to them?" he said.

Rei met his gaze. "Everyone else is not my concern."

She said the words flatly and blankly. A fact. A coolness that surpassed indifference into sheer apathy.

He nearly fell over, flinching as if he'd been struck in the chest. That… that was not the girl he had known. That was not his friend.

"… this isn't you," he said.

"Yes, it is. I am only living my life. I am only painting and exploring. I do not control what Adam or Lilith do."

"Rei. They're going to kill-"

"Gendo wanted me to control them too. To make Adam and Lilith submit," Rei said suddenly.

Her voice was so low and dangerous that it sent shivers down his spine. He physically recoiled at the sound of her voice.

"He was doomed from the start. They are so strong. They are the only true Angels we have ever seen. They are only at a fraction of their full strength, and I cannot stop them even if I wanted to. They will do what they do," Rei said.

No. You don't get to do that… you don't get to wash your hands clean of this…

"You're wrong," Shinji pleaded, almost shouting, his voice breaking.

Rei tilted her head at him. "The world is not my responsibility."

"Rei-" he stammered.

"It is not your responsibility either."

Shinji fumed, breathing in hard. How many days had he thought the same thing? How many childish outbursts had he had? Bitter at the unfairness of it all. Bitter at being dragged into the Eva Programs. Bitter at being made to fight, at being brought into his Other's plans. At being forced into the adults' world of schemes, lies, and betrayals.

He calmed himself, at peace with the choice he had made so long ago.

"I chose this. I chose to help. To save my friends. All of them and everyone else," he said.

"I am safe. You are the one in danger," Rei countered simply.

"Please. You can stop this. Lilith will listen to you. She built this world to keep you safe, but it doesn't have to be this way. Nerv and SEELE are finished. We can walk away. No more fighting-"

"I do not owe the world anything. It is not my place to save them or judge them. Their fate is their own," Rei said, with a finality that bordered on indifference.

Shinji trembled from where he stood. He just couldn't believe it. His friend didn't care. She truly didn't care. He remembered standing on the rooftop when his Other had told him that all those little lives out there mattered. That they all mattered. Innocent souls caught up in a war they didn't choose any more than he had chosen his parents.

The Rei he had known had cared. She had cared about her friends. She had cared about people. She had fought to save him and their fellow pilots again and again.

Rei's face softened. The mask loosened and he saw the fragile and so very lonely girl underneath again, a face that she only showed to him.

"Stay with me. We can bring Asuka here too. We can all be safe here. This world can hold the three of us. I'm sure of it," she told him.

When he didn't answer, too stunned by what he'd seen, she spoke up again. Pleadingly.

"Save yourself. Save Asuka. I don't want you to go."

"What happened to you?" Shinji asked quietly.

"… I was freed. I am free now," Rei told him after a moment.

Shinji shook his head. "No. You're not."

Rei blinked at him wordlessly.

"You're not okay. You're hurt."

"I am fine."

"… stop lying to yourself. You can't stand touch anymore. I remember a girl who held a nervous boy's hand. A girl who smiled."

Again, Rei said nothing. She stared straight through him without blinking. The mask was taking hold of her again, but the eyes always gave her away. Eyes are the window to the soul. He saw the truth there. The fear and pain. Suffering that he was all too familiar with.

But her? It was more. More than he'd ever experienced.

The wind blew across the campgrounds and the trees amid the woods shook with it. The recreation of Rei Ikari's memories playing onward.

"What did he do?" Shinji said on the verge of tears.

Rei winced slightly. The mask of cold indifference was shaken to the core. The pale girl stumbled back on shaky legs. She reached a hand to the back of her head, feeling for blood that was not there.

"… he killed me…" Rei whimpered.

Shinji flinched as if struck himself.

Rei hiccupped as tears slid down her face. The mask broke. Her hands slid down to her throat, shaking the whole time.

"He broke my neck. He tried to make me forget…"

"… I'm so sorry-" he began.

"They made me forget but it all came back… it all came back. My life… my death…" Rei stammered.

"… he'll rot in prison for the rest of his life-" Shinji said weakly, sounding hollow and unconvincing even to himself. As if that somehow made it better.

"You promised that it wouldn't end that day. Why? Why did you leave me? Why did you let him… I believed you… I trusted you… I rejected him… and he replaced me… I… her… us… he killed me twice…"

Each word hit him like a punch to the gut. He was shaking as he remembered the night that it happened. When Lilith's rage had burned so bright that it traveled through the Angel network. When he had woken from his bed and known that something terrible had happened. That he had failed. The monstrous legacy of Gendo Ikari haunted them both.

"…. I tried to save you. I-" he stammered, feeling useless even as he did.

"I don't want to remember this. Make it stop," Rei said between tears. The girl fell to her knees, clutching her head. She screamed. She screamed a blood-curdling scream that made his ears bleed. Anguish, sorrow, and rage all rolled into one exertion of the lungs.

"MAKE IT STOP!"

The dream world screamed with her.

Reality around them shook and the ground itself cracked. Trees fell from their roots, the sky above bled creating a kaleidoscope of colors as Instrumentality wavered. Other memories peaked through the wounds in the sky.

Misato's kitchen, itself another abnormal, shattered turning to ashes. The false reality around them cracked and cracked, coming apart by the seams. Scenes, other recreations of memories, Lilith's and Rei Ikari's, moved all around them bleeding into where they stood in the dream world.

He shouted out to her as the ground parted between them.

It all came apart. The dream world shattered into a million pieces taking them with it.

Shinji fell.

The ground shattered beneath him along with everything else. Rei disappeared as she was swallowed by the chaos of the dream world collapsing in on itself. Falling into the depths of things he couldn't even imagine.

There was no sound. There was no light. A darkness deeper than he'd ever known. As if he were peering into a universe where the stars had never been born.

Death… this is death… a memory of death, he thought. His mind raced as he fell and fell into nothingness.

He flailed as he descended into the dark with no sense of the passing of time.

---

The dream world moved around him shifting once again. It was reassembling itself. Order trying to reform out of the chaos. Something, anything, to replace the nothingness that surrounded him.

He blinked and found himself standing on the shore again. He gasped as he found solid ground underneath his feet. He fell over onto his knees and nearly vomited. He wheezed, slowly getting to his feet again.

The sight that met his eyes broke all logical consistency.

What stood before him was not a recreation of one memory. It was a recreation of all the memories. A universe of miniature worlds bleeding into each other. It was one barely coherent mass of recreated scenes.

He stood on the shore but only feet away lay the gate to his old school. The water disappeared at the entrance and the school continued past. To his side, the grounds of the shore vanished and led further away into what looked like a section of Nerv.

On and on it continued this way. Recreated memories bleeding into each other. The dream world had been hurriedly put back together as one single landmass comprising everything.

Rei… where are you…

He had to find her.

He stepped onward and gulped as he entered the school grounds. He walked across the recreated school and found it empty. A ghost town. Only an incomplete recreation of memory.

He found himself outside the main building where he had often met Rei for lunch. He found the table where he had sat with her, and then later with Toji and Kensuke. It was empty. All of it was.

She won't be here. Her memories are painful, he thought.

He walked onward slipping out of one recreated memory and into another.

---

...

He was walking down familiar hallways of Nerv. In the underground levels.

A voice sounded off and he jumped back, flinching at the surprise.

"… it can't be done. There's not enough DNA. The samples are too small… too old… there's just not enough information," a voice called.

Shinji found a door to his side and slowly stepped in. He found himself in one of the secret labs that Nerv had been so fond of. The scene that met him surprised him.

Gendo Ikari and Kozo Fuyutsuki stood together in their lab coats.

The two men were hunched over a series of lab equipment and a computer screen displaying pages and pages of information. An observation window took the place of a wall and revealed an imprisoned and crucified Lilith beyond.

"Not Rei's memory. Lilith's," Shinji whispered.

Gendo and Kozo paid him no mind as he walked forward. They weren't completely solid. They were incorporeal and incomplete, shadows, mere recreations of a dream. A memory playing along with or without him.

This place could not create people, only their echoes. Only shadows of what once was.

"I refuse to accept that-" Gendo began to say.

"Refuse to accept reality?! This is madness. IT CANNOT BE DONE. You don't have enough of Yui's DNA. There isn't enough genetic information!" Kozo countered.

"…. Angel DNA is similar to human DNA. I can modify it. I can shape it and mold it-"

"Similar does not mean copy! You cannot mix your samples and mold them together! You will have to reshape the Angel DNA from the ground up! This thing you are creating will not be Yui. Not her clone. Not her daughter. It will not have a single cell of her inside it. It won't even be human," Kozo said, his voice raw from shouting.

"No, not human. But we can recreate her likeness. Not a clone. A model with a face of my design. A doll. One that I will use to find her," Gendo said, speaking softly and quickly, his mind racing.

"Why? Why does Yui have to be the reference? Why not someone else?" Kozo asked, running a hand through his aging hair.

"Because Yui was the best of us. She understood the Angels better than either of us. Her work will make them submit."

Kozo scoffed saying, "and so you would engineer a new lifeform in her image? The Evangelions were one thing, this is another. A vessel of the Second Angel with the face of your wife? Madness."

"You agreed to help. We have come too far to turn back now."

"I know. I know… what I do, I do for her. What do we call it? This artificial Angel with a face modeled after Yui?"

Gendo thought it over, glancing up at the wounded and bound Lilith towering over them.

"… Rei. We will call it Rei Ayanami."

Shinji stared at the ghost of his father. Monster, he thought.

He felt his hands ball into fists at the sight of his father's echo. A litany of words came to his mind when he considered everything this man had done. Creep. Pervert. Failure of a parent.

He calmed himself. He was here for Rei.

He glanced over to the imprisoned Lilith. Another recreation of the dream world, an echo of the real thing. The Second Angel was weak but conscious, fully aware as the machines ripped into her flesh and extracted their samples.

A wave of sympathy for the Angel flooded him. Her weakened body was cut open and although she healed, Nerv kept cutting. The madmen would have a never-ending supply of samples.

The Second Angel was watching Nerv's leaders below as they planned their monstrous experiments and played God with her DNA.

"I'm sorry for what they did to you," Shinji whispered to the memory of Lilith.

He turned away.

Shinji left the ghosts to their bickering.

...

He wandered further and further, literally stepping through memories. He was stepping through time itself or so it appeared. Events that had already transpired played back as full environments.

He got chills as he walked through different memories of the labs.

He watched as his father failed multiple times to create a vessel for Lilith. He shuddered at the sight of the corpses. The beings that predated Rei. His utter disgust for his father grew with each memory he passed.

The sights were too much. He closed his eyes and pushed past them, not wanting to witness the madness that Gendo had undertaken. Nerv had created life by reshaping Lilith's DNA from the ground up, reshaping it into the closest they could get to a human.

Rei. Her name was Rei. She's a person, not your doll, he thought bitterly.

He escaped the horrid memories of Nerv and its labs. He stepped through the dream world and found himself somewhere else. He panted as he emerged in Tokyo-03. This memory was more whole than many of the others had been.

It was still wrong. Faceless ghosts echoed all around. Little more than humanoid shadows, the faceless people moved about their lives in an eerie parody of what the real world was.

Shinji turned and turned not knowing where to go. He was lost. He was stranded in these scattered memories that the dream world had recreated with seemingly little rhyme or reason.

"Please!" he shouted.

He shouted into the heavens above hoping that Lilith would hear him. That the Woman in the Dark would hear him. His Other. Anyone.

"She wanted me to stay! You promised that I could talk to her!"

Nothing happened. The dream world continued with its faceless echoes of the real world following forward like a film played back. A lifeless cage filled with faceless puppets pulled along by lives already lived.

"Please! Help me! Help me find her!"

Lilith… please…

It happened suddenly and without warning. The dream world shifted. Reality around him distorting. Memories shifting. The dream world began to rearrange itself.

He held his ground on shaky legs as the city around him changed. The faceless ghosts around him disappeared. A building nearby vanished and was replaced by an alley leading to a series of small restaurants.

He felt it rippling. The change. Lilith was moving the dream world for him, creating a path for him to follow.

The boy continued onward following in the steps that Lilith had laid out for him.

...

I know this place…

He stepped through the alley and realized that he had been to the restaurant at the end. A little shop with a bar stand, and a series of stools for a handful of customers.

Misato had taken the Eva pilots here to celebrate once. He had sat there eating ramen with Asuka, Rei, Mari, and Misato. They had all been together in a rare moment of something approaching normal.

This was one of the only memories belonging to Rei. Not one of Lilith's. Not one of Rei Ikari's, but his Rei. There were so few of her memories in the dream world. So few memories that did not bring her pain.

He stepped inside the restaurant and found another logical inconsistency. An open door to a hallway lay inside past where the cook would be preparing orders. He passed the bar stools where he and his fellow pilots had once sat, and then pressed onward into the hallway.

It was a familiar building. He was walking through an apartment complex.

He knew that it wouldn't be Rei's. Her apartment had never been a home for her. By the time he reached the end, he was proven right.

Misato's apartment lay at the end. He opened the door and gasped at the sight that met him.

More ghosts. More echoes of people created by the dream world. Shadowy figures that took the silhouetted form of himself, Asuka, Misato, and even Mari. There were others as well, Hikari, Toji, and even Ken.

It was a rare moment where they had all been at Misato's at the same time. All of them were gathered at the breakfast table.

The ghost of Misato was opening a box of pizza for them all.

Shinji hiccupped at the sight of them all.

Toji and Ken, his old school friends that he felt so little in common with these days. Ken whose parents had moved away as the war worsened. Toji, the friend he had drifted away from, his own life consumed by his work against SEELE and his father.

The ghost of Asuka, untouched by the horrors of the Nightmare, and the trauma of the JSSDF invasion.

The ghost of Misato. Cheerful, uninjured, and doing her best to give a sense of normalcy for the Eva pilots.

He put a hand to his mouth as he turned to find his own ghost and Mari. Mari… her ghost was at his side. Echoes of a boy and his girlfriend, arm in arm.

She looked so different then. So full of life. And he had been so happy to be there with her. He'd been a young boy still uncorrupted by the betrayal.

He forced himself to look away. He wrenched his gaze away and spotted the ghost of Rei herself sitting on the other side of the table.

All of them, the recreations of this memory, moved along. His ghost gave Rei a slice of pizza as laughter filled the room.

This was one of her brighter memories. She had been happy somehow, in this little thing. Happy to be invited and brought along. She sat across from Mari and him, and she still considered it a fond memory. Even after everything that had happened.

He knew that his friend was still in there. She cared about people, about her friends. She wouldn't let everyone die.

Lilith took me here for a reason. But Rei's not here. Have to keep going, he thought.

Painfully, wistfully, he walked past the ghosts of himself and the others.

He left Misato's kitchen and continued onward to the balcony. Only to find that the balcony was no balcony at all. On the other side of the door was rough natural terrain. A mountain pass.

Shinji stepped through leaving the memory of Misato's apartment behind.

He walked through the rough terrain following the path laid out before him. He felt tingles travel his body as he recognized where the mountain path led to.

Shinji remembered the place almost instantly. The end of the road Lilith had paved for him, a golden path through the maze of the dream world, guiding him to where Rei had taken refuge.

The recreated memory, a phantom, of a village lying in the flatlands between a series of mountains. A series of small homes spread out among the fields of crops and limited livestock.

Distant shadowy figures milled about in the distance. More incomplete recreations of the community that Rei Ikari had lived in with her family.

And then he knew where his Rei would be.

---

The Recreated Haven.

Shinji walked the fields of Haven. He followed a trail leading up to the house the Broken Man had built. He pulled open the door and stepped inside the home that Rei Ikari had dutifully kept clean.

He walked through the little house and felt the phantoms within. The ghosts not rendered by the dream world, the Original Asuka, Rei, and Shinji, and the life they had carved for themselves after the Third Impact.

Glancing to the breakfast table, a simple little thing that had taken days to craft, he saw another stack of paintings. Images that Rei, his Rei, had drawn. Slices of what little memories of her Other that she had.

Shinji moved on stepping into the backyard. The place where the Broken Man had liked to lie down with his wife and stargaze at night.

That was where he found her.

Rei was sitting alone in the backyard of the recreated house. His Rei. A series of various paintings littered the grounds creating a trail leading to the pale girl. He found her cradling herself under the night sky.

He moved to join her glancing at the scattered paintings as he did so.

The drawings were scenes from Rei Ikari's life depicted in painstaking detail. Images of a trio of teenagers, the last people in the whole world at the time, playing in the snow. Images of the same trio, older now, fleeing a burning city. Images of a couple holding hands in the house that they had built.

The escapism that had failed his friend this day. The drawings had been discarded in a haste, unable to stop the girl's pain.

Shinji sat beside her, joining her underneath the recreated night sky.

"Hey," he said softly.

"… hello," she answered simply. Her head was lowered, her face hidden from the world, with her arms wrapped around herself.

"I was worried about you. I still am," Shinji told her.

"I am safe here," Rei said, almost as if on instinct. Defensively.

He shook his head.

"This place is not paradise."

Rei wouldn't meet his gaze.

"You're alone here. You're alone. You're running away. Walling yourself off. That doesn't help. I don't know your pain. But I know what that's like."

"… I don't have to be alone. You could stay," she whispered.

"I can't. I'm sorry but I can't," he said.

Rei retreated further into herself, hugging herself tightly, hurt by his words.

Shinji lowered his head wishing he was better at this. He wished he could give her more. More than just the pitiful world she had had. A life so harsh that even here in the dream world, she shunned it. She escaped it, her old life, her memories, in favor of Lilith and her Other.

"I should have known that you'd come here," Shinji said gently. His eyes traveled over the recreated Haven.

He let out a laugh, a sad little thing. "Our lives were hard. So hard that this must have felt better," he said softly.

"They had a life here. The Others," Rei whispered.

"The Originals. They were first," Shinji corrected gently. He was guilty of making that same mistake.

"They were married. They made a life for themselves here in the village," Rei said.

"We're not them. They lived out their lives. We're something new. A second try," Shinji said calmly.

Rei hiccupped slowly raising her head.

"They were happy. Their life was better than ours," Rei whispered, her voice a wheeze in the night. Her face was still hidden from the world.

Shinji shook his head.

"Rei Ikari died young. Too young-"

"She lived longer than I did. She was happier. Him too," Rei breathed, interrupting.

Shinji frowned, taking a deep breath before he continued. Her memories of the Original Timeline were incomplete, she only had Rei Ikari's side of the story. He had the other half.

"They loved and lost. He lived longer. Much longer. And he lost everything. He had to come back and undo his choice. A choice that was no choice at all."

Rei peeked up at him, surprised at that.

"… what happened to their daughter?" she asked him, breathless.

Shinji closed his eyes surprised at the pain he felt as his own.

"Her name was Akane. She died in her father's arms," he said.

Rei blinked back tears. "How?"

Shinji shifted beside her.

"The war didn't end with the Third Impact. It was only put on pause. Adam came back. The First Angel came back and slaughtered everyone. The Original Shinji survived. His Lilith found him, and together they decided to unravel it all. To go back and fix it."

Rei only stared not knowing what to say. The missing pieces of the story.

The girl lowered her gaze whispering as she did so, "we never get a happy ending. Do we?"

"They didn't. That's what all of this was for. A chance to have something better."

"It does not feel that way to me," Rei whispered.

"I know. We failed you. Both of us," Shinji said turning to face her.

"… you were my only friend. The first I ever had. I trusted you. You made me feel safe. Like it could be different. I believed you. And… and…"

"And Gendo did what he did," Shinji said, finishing the words so that she didn't have to.

He remembered leaving her apartment that night thinking that everyone was set in motion. That the Broken Man and he would foil Gendo and Keel's plans. How wrong they had been.

She flinched. She ran her hands along her throat, wincing at the phantom of a wound that had killed her once before.

"Why didn't you help sooner? Why did you wait so long? You knew. You knew what was happening. What Gendo was planning?" Rei asked him.

Why did you let me die? Why did you let them erase my memory? Why did you let them replace me?

The words went unsaid and were heard all the same.

"It was complicated," he sighed.

"How?" Rei snapped at him, hurt by his words.

"There were other players. He was leading the charge, trying to stop all of them. SEELE, Nerv, and the Angels. It was so hard for him. Everyday. To see you suffering. To wait for the right moment so that he could beat them all."

"… he chose them over me."

"That's not true. He wanted to save you for so long. But he had to make sure that it would end for good. It's not fair to him… he had to weigh the world and everyone in it against the memory of his wife. He did his best… and it wasn't good enough."

Rei sat in silence for a time.

"It's not fair," Rei said at last.

"No. It's not," he agreed.

"I asked them to stop," Rei said suddenly.

His eyes went wide. He opened his mouth to speak but Rei spoke first.

"And they wouldn't," she hiccupped, unable to stop the tremors in her voice.

"I-"

"I begged and begged them. I told them to stop. I told them to leave. To abandon it all and go our separate ways. No more death. No more killings. But they won't. Adam won't. And he's so strong," Rei said, the words coming out quickly. Rushed. As if every word hurt.

Shinji felt his face harden. The First Angel was a monster through and through. The true enemy of mankind in both timelines.

"Lilith… she can barely hold him back. She can't stop him and maintain the dream world at the same time. And if Adam goes… the dream goes too. It won't come back. I… I don't understand… why can't they just stop?" Rei said, tears sliding down her face.

She was a child with the fate of the world on her shoulders. It wasn't right. No one, let alone her of all people, should have to carry that burden.

"You're the lynchpin. You're the reason they didn't merge all the way. And you're also the only thing holding them together. If you leave then they fall apart," Shinji said softly.

Rei wobbled at the truth of those words. He wanted to comfort her, to find something to do. To hug her, to take her hand, but he knew that he couldn't. Her trauma wouldn't allow that. So, he sat with her, that was what he could do. He could be there for her.

"I never asked for this," Rei whispered.

"None of us did," Shinji replied gently.

The two of them sat there in the shadow of those who had come before. In the recreation of memories that did not belong to them. Two unloved children. Two lost souls caught in the crossfire of a war that neither started.

"I don't even know what I am. I am not human," the pale girl said lost in thought.

She raised her hand looking at her white skin.

"You saw the murals. Pale skin, red eyes, and silver hair. I look like they did, the First Ancestral Race. But I'm not one of them either. Human? Angel? F.A.R? None… none of them…" Rei said slowly, utterly lost.

"… I do know one thing. You're my friend. The same girl that I met in the hangar," Shinji said slowly.

Rei hiccupped and turned to face him. Red eyes meeting red eyes.

"How do you know?"

"I just do," he said.

"I don't. I died… or was that someone else? The girl that you knew. Who was that? Was that me? Or another person entirely?" Rei asked him, speaking the words she had been afraid to utter for so long now.

"… Rei-" he began, wishing he knew what to say.

"Rei Ayanami. Four iterations. Four lives. And who is Rei Ayanami? Is it me? Or was it those who came before? Are they one and the same? I don't know," the girl told him, thinking aloud. Her voice was low and uncertain. Lost.

"You're you. Your life is still your own."

"Nothing is mine, Shinji. Not my memories, they belonged to the previous Rei(s). Not even my face. All of it was stolen. I was designed not born. I was ripped from the Second Angel and sculpted into the image of a dead woman. I was a doll to be used and thrown away. That is what the world did to me."

Rei hugged herself tighter. So many questions without answers. So much pain and suffering. So much that the world had done to her. So much to run away from.

Shinji lowered his head feeling her pain as if it were his own. Her life had been even harder than his. Cruel.

"I don't want to go back," Rei said at last, with nothing left to add. No more rationalizations. Just the facts.

"I wish I had more to give you. That I could answer those questions. But I know how cold and cruel the world can be. I know what it's like to be used and thrown away," he said slowly.

Rei shook her head. She didn't believe him, and he didn't blame her.

"My parents didn't love me," he said. The words left his mouth easily. It was a fact that he had had months to live with now.

"My mother planned my birth. She needed an Eva Pilot compatible with her. She needed a pawn to make her moves. All so she could cheat death. She threw me away. And my father… my father rejected me. He planned my death. He had me raised like a pig for slaughter. Waiting for me to die at the proper moment," Shinji continued.

Rei glanced at him silently at those words. Another surprise.

"He is an evil man. Selfish. He would burn the world to get what he wanted…"

Shinji scoffed at the thought of his parents.

"They were monsters," he said bitterly. He felt a lump in his throat.

A part of him was still sad. It was a lingering wound, a small part of him still wished they could have loved him. Wished that things could have been different, that they could have been better people, and not the twisted figures they had become.

He felt them even now. These ghosts that haunted him and even her, dark phantoms that loomed over their lives. Gendo and Yui, a pair of selfish fanatics whose legacy was only pain and suffering.

Shinji breathed deeply. He pushed them aside, the memory of who his parents had been.

He smiled sadly at Rei. That was their common ground. Both of them were pawns to be used and then tossed aside. Both had been raised by monsters. Thrown into the cold and indifferent world of the adults and their schemes.

"They're my blood but they're not my family. And for how cruel the world is… it's also kind. I've seen that. Glimmers in the dark. Moments that made everything worth it. For all the bad, there was good," he said. His voice wavered as he spoke, surprised at the raw emotion that came with those words.

"… not for me," Rei whispered to him.

"I don't believe that. We were friends. All of us. Asuka, Mari, and the two of us. You smiled. For all the Angels, for all the injuries, there were times when we were happy," he said.

Rei mulled that over. And he thought of all those times they were together, bonded by the hardship and triumphs of Eva Piloting. He remembered all the times they had been almost like a group of normal teenagers. Remembered the simple times when they all shared a meal with Misato watching over them.

He remembered Rei. His first friend in Tokyo-03. The lonely girl who had found somewhere to be beside the prison of her home, Nerv and its experiments, and the isolating monotony of school. How she shared in the ambiance of life despite struggling with it.

How she had spoken more and more. How they had argued, how he had hurt her by having his girlfriend, and how he had reconciled with her. How she had understood what Mari meant to him. How much it meant to her when he promised to save her. When he'd promised to find her.

They were not perfect times, for they never are. But they were a kind of life too. Good and bad.

Rei wrenched her face in pain. Struggling with it all. The memories of all the times. The good and the bad. The horror and the joy.

"… no. The bad outweighs the good," she told him.

"It doesn't have to. Not anymore. They can't ever hurt you again. We can be free. We can move past this," he pleaded.

"How do you know? What if the world is worse? How can you know that life is better outside? Maybe we're better off alone?" Rei asked him.

"Life is meant to be lived. It's meant to be shared. Asuka and Mari taught me that. And you're right, I can't know for certain that it will be better," Shinji said.

Rei blinked at him wordlessly.

"But I know it's important to try. Even if it means failing. It's hard, it's the hardest thing we can do. We have to keep moving forward or we'll never really live."

As he spoke, memories flashed before his mind's eye. He remembered Mari playing with him in the ward, he remembered how he had found his voice with her help. He remembered the pain of losing her as a child. The joy from reuniting with her again in Tokyo-03. Remembered their first kiss in the rain, their adventures in the city, their fight, her betrayal, and her sacrifice.

He remembered Asuka and their long journey. How they had forged a bond that had brought them closer and closer. How he had saved her and how she had saved him. How she had come to him in his darkest hour and brought him back. How she had put him back together after being broken. And how she had taken the weight of the world off his shoulders.

He remembered Rei. His first friend in years, and his first piloting partner. How they had faced the Angels together as Eva Team Zero. How they had leaned on each other. How he had walked with her to school every day. How he had visited her in the hospital, and how she had done the same. How she had smiled at him.

He remembered how Misato had never judged him for his illness. How she had defended him and stuck with him through everything. How she had tried, however flawed, to be the mother that he never had.

The stars shined overhead in the night sky of the Dream World. They sat there in the recreated Haven together in the silence that followed. And slowly, she raised her hand for him to take.

He took her hand in his and she let him. She whimpered at the touch but did not pull away. He was patient with her. He let her take her time.

"I'm scared. I'm scared of the outside. I'm afraid that it'll be the same as before, or worse. I don't know what the future brings," she told him, shaking the entire time.

"No one does," he told her softly.

She blinked at him, and he saw the curve of her lips. The shadow of a smile.

"That does not sound reassuring," she said at the morbidity of it all.

Shinji laughed at how harsh the truth was. A short little chuckle in the face of the world and its facts.

"Whatever happens. You won't have to do it alone. I'm right here. I'm with you," he said, finding resolve in those words.

Rei smiled at him. A real smile. A thing seldom seen.

The dream world shifted again. An open door emerged into existence in front of them. A pathway leading outside of the dream and back into the real world.

Together, they stood. Arm in arm they stepped forward. Rei trembled as she did so, and he gently squeezed her hand. He didn't force her. The choice was hers to make and he couldn't do this for her.

Rei walked through the door. She made the leap. She left the dream behind to face the outside and whatever future lay beyond.

Shinji walked with her.

In their wake, the dream world froze. It was like a film put on pause. A simulated reality was brought to a halt. The slice of instrumentality shook all over.

Lights flashed as reconstructed memories began to disappear. Small sections of this false reality blinked out of existence bit by bit. A white void ate the simulation and consumed it in its entirety. The dream world unraveled into nothing.

Two souls were freed from the cage.

And in the wake of that action, an ocean of souls was forced to part. Two hemispheres of a greater whole split once more into distinct entities. The incomplete union of Adam and Lilith was unraveled.

---

The Real World.
Geofront.

Eva Unit 02 stood with the broken remains of the Spear of Longinus raised. The red titan was damaged all over, with broken bones and mangled limbs, but still in the fight.

Asuka breathed heavily, trying to calm herself. Her mind raced with concern for Shinji and how he had vanished in the tangle of Angel flesh that was the Hybrid.

Adam and Lilith lay before them as a nightmarish tangle of half-shaped limbs. With flesh that had turned to liquid dripping down. An incoherent blob of pale metallic substance that rippled like standing water.

Then it came undone. Asuka's eyes widened as she saw it happen.

The Hybrid dissolved. The nigh-invulnerable matter burned away leaving only a flood of LCL behind. The blood-like substance washed over the grounds of the Geofront.

Asuka stumbled back as her Eva nearly fell. She steadied herself with her mother's help. Gasping at the sight of it all. The LCL spread and spread, covering the grounds painting it red.

"What happened? Asuka? Asuka?!" Ritsuko was calling into the comm.

Kaji spoke into the comm as well. Followed by the JSSDF acting general. Adult voices flooded the comm unit begging for answers in the face of the unknown.

Asuka barely heard them.

"… it's done. The Hybrid is no more," Asuka said, still in shock.

"How?! What happened-" someone was saying on the comm.

She saw movement below and the sheer rush of joy overwhelmed her.

"I see them! They're back! Both!" Asuka shouted into the comm.

She disengaged the comm unit before more questions came. She had made her report and that was enough for now. She ran her hands across the controls in a hurry.

Unit 02 knelt and craned its neck. The Entry Plug was released.

…

Blinding light filled his vision. So bright that he couldn't see.

He coughed and found that he was wet all over. Whatever it was, it wasn't water. It was too thick. And it smelled. LCL. He was laying in LCL.

That was the first thing he realized. The next was that he wasn't alone. Someone lay beside him with their hand in his.

Rei… he thought. He wept at the realization. He squeezed her hand and she squeezed back. They had made it. They were back. They were free.

Then it hit him. Pain.

He cried out and felt the dry blood staining his face. His vision darkened and brightened again in rapid succession.

His eyes… his eyes were burning him. They felt like they were on fire.

"Ahhhh!" he screamed.

He shot up to a sitting position closing his eyes so tight that they hurt. He ran his hands over his face and felt his own blood. It was old and dried, leaving marks that slid down from where his eyes were.

And more. His head was throbbing with pain. A pain he hadn't felt in so long now. As if blades were running loose underneath his skull, cutting through his brain tissue. He felt it, the pain from underneath his skull.

"… Shinji," a voice croaked.

I… I can't see! I can't see! He thought in panic. More than the pain, that was what terrified him.

He was afraid. He was afraid to blink. He was surrounded in darkness too afraid to open his eyes. It was like someone had lit a fire underneath his eyes and burned him from the inside. The pain in his head he could deal with, this was something else entirely.

Do not fear. Open your eyes… our last gift… open them…

The voice came and went. The Woman in the Dark, her voice distant and low, a lonely rasp.

And he knew. He knew that this was it. She wouldn't come back. The pain in his head died out, fading away, and he knew that it would never return.

Shinji breathed in and out, panting heavily, as his eyes burned. He reached out with his Angel senses and found them missing. Gone.

Rei was sitting beside him. Her hand in his.

"Shinji. What is it? What happened?" she asked him, concerned.

He opened his eyes. The light made him flinch, but he accepted the pain and blinked, slowly opening, and then closing his eyes.

Rei's face was the first thing he saw. The first thing to take shape. She was frowning, red eyes alight with worry. And she was okay. She was dressed in plain white clothes, the same she had been wearing at the bottom-most level of Nerv. A single bullet-sized hole, a tear in the fabric, was visible in her shirt where her heart would be.

"We made it…" he rasped. He beamed up at her.

She beamed back at him, her red eyes alight with a nervous and hesitant joy. She stared at his eyes, and he knew.

His red eyes were gone. The eyes he had emerged with after having witnessed the Broken Man's memories. His original eyes had been returned to him.

Old man. Hey.

There was no answer.

Hey… old man?

The connection was severed. His Angel senses were gone. He was just a plain old human again.

He felt something like relief flood his body. A sense of calm. He was normal. Normal for the first time in years.

Rei wiped his face clean of the dried blood. She understood. She breathed a sigh of relief and leaned over to embrace him slowly. He returned the embrace. It was hard for her, she shivered at his touch, but she didn't pull away. She would have a long road ahead, but this was the start.

"… we're covered in LCL…" Shinji said, glancing down and realizing where they were.

The two of them were sitting on the grounds of the Geofront. Grounds that were covered in LCL for miles in every direction. It was clinging to their clothes, their hands, their feet, and even their hair.

Rei pulled back, blinking in surprise as she noticed the same thing. She was surprised that she had her clothes as well. Shinji as well. Both of them were quite glad to have emerged from the dream world this way.

"What happens now?" Rei asked him.

Shinji opened his mouth to speak, but the pounding sounds of feet slamming into liquid surprised him.

They turned to find Asuka running for them, running the LCL-flooded grounds in her red plugsuit.

Rei tilted her head at the sight of the German girl. Shinji only raised a hand and waved weakly. He felt exhausted and he wasn't entirely sure why.

Asuka slammed into him, wrapping him into a hug so tightly that they both collapsed onto the floor.

"Gah!" Shinji shouted in surprise.

Rei flinched, taken aback. She sat there awkwardly observing the two.

"You idiot!" was all Asuka said, laughing and crying as she held him.

"Hey!" Shinji said as he felt the breath squeezed out of him.

Rei blinked slowly saying, "hello Asuka."

Asuka let him go. She grinned up at Rei.

The German girl reached over hesitantly to embrace Rei as well. Rei shook her head, raising her hand, shaking as she did so. She smiled weakly, touched by the thought.

Asuka frowned.

"She's been through a lot. She needs time," Shinji said.

Asuka looked between the two and just smiled at the sight of them both.

Then Asuka turned and slapped Shinji on the arm so hard that he flinched. "Agh! Hey! What was that for?" he shouted.

"You had me so worried! Oh my god! How could you do that to me! I had no idea if you had lived or died! I… you… you… ass…" Asuka stammered.

Rei blinked, looking between the two of them.

"Your eyes! They're normal! What happened?" Asuka said, staring at his face in disbelief.

"The Angel powers are gone. We made it back. All of us," Shinji said. He put a hand to Asuka's shoulder and squeezed reassuringly. The war was finally over. And they were together at the end of it.

His face fell slightly. He only wished that there had been one more as well. That all four of the Eva Pilots could have made it to the end.

Asuka panted and breathed a heavy sigh of relief almost in tears herself.

"We are fine. Shinji is not an ass," Rei said suddenly.

Asuka and Shinji both turned to her. She stared straight ahead at them. The silence carried for a single long second. And then he and Asuka broke into laughter. They couldn't stop themselves, they laughed and laughed.

Rei tilted her head and her lips curled. She laughed quietly, joining them.

Once they could breathe again, Asuka spoke to Rei saying, "welcome back, we were worried about you."

Rei shifted, moved by the words. "Thank you. Both of you," she said.

All three of them paused as they heard movement nearby. Asuka whirled, getting to her feet in less than a second, her hand pressed to the comm unit and ready to request backup. She started heading for Unit 02.

Rei grew still, sitting calmly and patiently at the sight ahead of them.

Shinji rose and grabbed Asuka by the hand. He shook his head at her. "Don't. They need this," he told the German girl.

Asuka stared at him, but slowly lowered her hand from the comm unit.

Just feet away from the three of them, another figure emerge. She materialized, taking shape and form from the sea of LCL all around them. Coming into existence, she crawled out from the LCL itself. Pale white flesh.

A humanoid form with two arms and two legs. Distinctly feminine. The being bore a faceplate in lieu of normal human features. Dark featherless wings formed from her back.

Lilith emerged from the LCL. She took the form of a six-foot-tall almost human figure. In her hands was a bundle of Angel flesh. A tiny little thing. An Angel the size of a human baby.

Adam squirmed in the hands of his sister. He was a wretched thing stripped of his might, near formless, weak, and wounded.

They spoke to each other. A dialogue wherein one second could stretch into a thousand. The First and Second Angels held an entire conversation in the language of their parents. Shinji watched and found that he couldn't hear them anymore. Their words were as much a mystery to him as everyone else.

Lilith lowered her head in sorrow, as if in mourning. She stood still as a statue as shadows emerged from the palms of her hand like a living thing. Then the Second Angel pressed her fingers into her brother's flesh and ripped him apart.

The true death. She gave Adam the true death, Shinji realized with wide eyes.

Adam faded away. The First Angel turned to dust and scattered in the wind. Light flickered as the soul of the most powerful Angel was erased.

Asuka gasped, and Shinji held her hand.

Lilith came forward, the shadows in her hands disappearing. The Last Angel in the universe walked calmly and purposely to where Rei was waiting for her.

Shinji stepped aside, dragging Asuka with him, as they gave the two their space.

Lilith knelt in front of Rei and spoke. The Second Angel spoke aloud for mortals to hear. Vocals emerged from an unseen mouth behind the faceplate.

"Child."

"Lilith," Rei said, meeting the Second Angel's gaze. Deep red eyes meeting deep red eyes. An Angel and her vessel.

"Is this what you want? To live in this world even after all they have done?"

Rei nodded.

"You saved me. You protected me. I wouldn't have survived without you. But no more war. No more killing. Let the violence end," Rei breathed, almost brought to tears.

Lilith tilted her head at that.

"I want to live in this world. I want to try. I want… " Rei said slowly, struggling with the words.

Lilith waited patiently for her to finish.

"I want to live. I want to see what the future can bring," Rei finished.

The Second Angel placed a hand gently atop Rei's face, cupping her cheek. A mother comforting a daughter. Rei did not shy away from it.

"I do not completely understand. But I will respect your choice. If you can forgive, then I will too."

Rei nodded.

"Do not fear, my child. Your friend was right. You are you. You are the same Rei Ayanami that has always been."

Rei gasped.

Lilith wiped the faded tears from the pale girl's face.

"Nerv never understood what they made. You are like me, only a billion times less complex. They suspected but could not confirm. That is the reason they never had two of you conscious at the same time.

You were one soul spread across many bodies. This body will be your last. You will be as a human from here on out." Lilith told Rei.

Rei shook from the revelation. She breathed deeply finally having gotten her answer. The answer to a question she had been afraid to ask for so long.

"Your existence has been difficult because of me. Because of our bond. No more. You will be separate now. Live well. Choose your future. Should you have need of me again, I will find you. This, I promise," Lilith said, lowering her hand.

"Thank you," the pale girl wheezed, grateful beyond words.

Lilith rose and turned her gaze to Shinji and Asuka.

The two teenagers froze. An Angel stood before them. No Evangelion Units. No fighting. Just another form of life standing across from them.

Lilith spoke to Asuka saying, "you were kind to her. Even when you did not have to be. For that, I am grateful."

Asuka blinked still in shock at an Angel speaking to her. She managed to hold her ground, not sure what to say but nodded.

Lilith turned to Shinji and spoke.

"I was wrong about you, young man. You saved her. For that, I do not have the words to express. This world does not deserve you."

Lilith bowed low. An Angel bowed her respect to a teenage boy.

Shinji shifted, uncomfortable and never quite knowing what to say or do.

Lilith rose and turned her attention to something in the distance. To the utter wasteland that still surrounded them from their battle against the Hybrid.

"Call your medics. He will need help."

Shinji frowned.

"Who?-" Asuka began, even as Rei got to her feet carefully amid the LCL flooded grounds.

The Old Man?! Where is he? Shinji thought, his mind racing.

"Is he hurt?" Shinji asked, concern filling every fiber of his being. How could he have been so stupid? He had been so caught up in getting Rei back, in finally ending the war, that he'd lost sight of his Other.

"Yes," Lilith said.

Before any of them could say more, the Second Angel seemed to vanish in a flicker of shadows. She moved so fast that they only saw the ripples of LCL in her wake. There and gone in the blink of an eye.

Lilith reappeared more than a mile away, standing amid the wreckage of the fallen Eva Unit 00. The white Evangelion had been beheaded, and its Entry Plug was a pile of scrap metal lying off to the side.

With a wave of her hand, Lilith called her telekinesis forth. Tons and tons of steel were lifted into the air and stood floating above as the cockpit was untangled.

---

Farewell, my love…

That was the last thing he heard before he awoke again. The Woman in the Dark's last words to him.

He had drifted off into the black nothingness that he was so familiar with. He faced death and had let it take him. And now he was called back.

He blinked and rasped weakly as if waking from a long coma.

His entire body ached and burned.

His vision was gone from one eye. Blind.

His bones felt weak and hollow. Even his skin felt lighter. Pieces of him were missing, muscle, skin, and bone.

Why? He thought on the verge of tears. Dried blood stained his face and the old man lay there too weak to even stand.

There was a flurry of movement and sound. Metal shrieked in a deafening roar and the wreckage of the Entry Plug surrounding him was untangled. The scrap was ripped aside, and he was freed from his steel prison.

Lilith stood outside with a hand raised.

The Second Angel stepped inside to what little remained of the cockpit and knelt before him. She was humanoid, tall, with pale skin and a face that was no face at all. Not the Woman in the Dark. She was the Lilith of this timeline.

Deep red intelligent eyes peered up at him through a white faceplate.

"… I shouldn't be here," the Broken Man said weakly.

Lilith tilted her head at him.

A single tear slid down his face.

"I was supposed to die. She said it would be the end of me…" he croaked.

Lilith did not answer him.

"Why? Why did she lie to me? Why… it was going to be over…" he wheezed, finding blood in his mouth.

He was a cripple too weak to move. Barely able to talk. His body had been burned from the inside. There was nothing Angel left in him anymore. The pieces of the Original Adam and Lilith had been used up. Burned away.

He was nothing more than an old man now. Blind in one eye. Human at the end.

"You… you stopped it. You saved me…" the Broken Man whispered, looking straight into the eyes of the Angel across from him.

"Yes," Lilith told him.

"Why?! I never asked you to do that… I was ready… I was ready. I wanted it…" he gasped, anger flaring up only to die down in the end.

"Because your wife asked me to," Lilith answered.

The Broken Man flinched as if struck. He shook from where he lay. Lost and confused. It wasn't supposed to end like this.

Lilith reached into the ruined cockpit and carefully took him into her arms. She lifted him as if he were no more than a child. She looked down at him, her expression unreadable behind the faceplate.

"She sacrificed so much for you. At first, I did not understand my sister. I did not understand what she saw in the man named Shinji Ikari. But now, I believe I do."

The Broken Man almost laughed. A cold bitter thing.

"Your body will need time. I will do what I can, but your recovery will not be easy."

Lilith stepped out of the wreckage. She carried him and once they were clear, the metal scraps floating above came crashing back down. He didn't even flinch. It didn't matter.

Shadows wrapped themselves around his broken and crippled body. They enveloped him and the pain stopped. He was left numb, with only the barest hint of sensation left. Lilith had taken his pain away and was starting to heal him. Repairing the damage done to his wreck of a body after losing the Angel DNA.

He felt the power move over his hand and press into the stumps where his missing fingers would have been.

"Don't," he grunted.

Lilith paused and then left the stumps untouched. His missing fingers would remain missing.

"… you should have let me burn," he rasped. He didn't care about the pain or its absence.

Lilith carried him, taking him back to the other Eva Pilots. She looked at him after he spoke.

"Why do you want to die?" Lilith asked him, her voice low and curious.

The Broken Man closed his eyes. Those words… always those words. That same question. The question his teacher, the Woman in the Dark, had asked him again and again.

But his savior wasn't his wife. This entity that carried him was not his teacher. The Woman in the Dark was gone for good. And he had no answer for this stranger in the here and now.

Lilith accepted his silence and did not question him further.

…

The Broken Man's thoughts are scattered in the moments that follow. Life moves around him as if in a dream.

He was brought back from the very edge of death. His body was repaired to such a degree that it could be declared a divine miracle. Vision restored to the blinded eye, missing flesh regrown for him, muscle returned to him, bones reset, and smaller scars undone.

It still wasn't enough. The rest will be in human hands. His body will need therapy if he is to regain his full movement. But he will live.

He is awake when he is reunited with the boy and the other Eva Pilots. They gathered around him. Shinji, Asuka, and… and Rei.

The boy is concerned for him, and he feels the youth grab his arm telling him that, "everything's going to be okay."

Asuka is speaking on the comm unit asking for transport and medical support. She bosses the adults around as if born to it, bringing a sense of order to the chaos and unknown of recent events.

The Broken Man feels Rei's eyes on him but does not meet her gaze.

Lilith sets him down in a sitting position. The boy is at his side, worried for him. "Hold on, help is on the way," Shinji tells the Broken Man.

The Broken Man grunts in acknowledgment. He is wounded and weak but alive.

"What will you do now?"

Her voice surprises him. The Broken Man manages to look and sees Rei speaking with Lilith one last time.

The Last Angel in the universe regards her vessel with warmth and compassion. A guardian speaking with their charge.

"I will linger for a time. Then, I will depart. I will travel the stars as my parents intended. There is a mission, a philosophy, that has been neglected far too long," Lilith tells Rei.

"Life," Rei says in awe.

"Yes. This war has waged longer than you know. A disagreement between squabbling children over their parents' legacy. Brother vs Sister. You have ended that war."

"The murals. Your memories. I understand," Rei responds.

"Goodbye, child. Remember my promise."

"If I need you then you will find me," Rei says slowly, but confidently.

Lilith floats above and drifts like a leaf in the wind. The act surprises Shinji and Asuka as the Second Angel leaves them behind.

All four of them watch as Lilith departs. She glides through the air putting distance between them for their safety, and then she shoots off into the heavens breaking the sound barrier. A sonic boom erupts, and Lilith is gone.

The JSSDF arrive minutes later. The aircraft appear overhead. Shinji and Asuka run forward and wave their hands flagging them down. Help has arrived in the aftermath of the war's end.

Rei stays with him, concerned for him and his injuries. He feels her gaze on him and finally, he turns to face her.

Their eyes meet. Rei is staring at him uncertainly.

"It's you. Her husband," she says, her voice low and sorrowful.

He nods weakly.

"I am sorry for your loss. I'm sorry… that I'm not your wife," she tells him. He knows that she means it. The situation is not one he cares to explore. His wife is gone and there is nothing more to add.

"Don't be. You're alive. You're free. That's enough," he tells her. And he means it.

He is too weak to speak any further. He turns away as the JSSDF lands nearby and men and women come rushing out. First responders come and load them into the planes.

---

…

The Broken Man is taken alone, rushed ahead in a smaller helicopter for treatment. He lies in a stretcher being airlifted away, and not knowing what happens next. He never planned to live this long. He had been ready to die, to make the sacrifice willingly and gladly. And yet here he was.

He isn't sure what to feel. Hope? Happiness? Relief? Old? Young?

All he knows is that he did what he set out to do. A world free of SEELE and Nerv. Free of his parents. Free of the Angels.

The war is over. She's free… free… he thinks before sleep takes him.

---

And there we have it. The war is over.

What did you think of Shinji and Rei in the dream world? Of their bond? Something I always found interesting was how both their lives were shaped by Gendo and Yui Ikari. By SEELE and Nerv.

What do you think of the Broken Man's reaction? What will he do now?

There's one chapter left. The finale of Unravel, maybe more of an epilogue.
Coming soon, when it's ready, the final chapter: "The Days That Followed."

Thanks for Reading and please Review!