DISCLAIMER: The characters, story, universe, etc. of Neon Genesis Evangelion
belongs to Gainax. They're not mine, and I make no claim to them.
Before the dim light by YF-21
"" denotes speech
denotes emphasis
"YES! With the new AB-system 2000 plus, you can also lose weight in two-".
Bullshit.
An interference. In a matter of a second, the screen roared back to life again, full of color and movement.
"Oh, Beatriz. I can barely endure this pain. To merely think that when this ordeal is finally over we will have to take different paths tears my heart apart-".
Cheesy Mexican soap-opera.
In what would be the nth time that night, Misato Katsuragi pressed the remote. It turned out to be that satellite television wasn´t the marvel the promoter made it seem. Five hundred channels all transmiting the same station: crap.
"...and that my friends, might be the future that lies ahead of us. Next time, in Geopolitical Concerns for Our Tomorrow, we will discuss the famine in Zaire and how it affects the UN budget in-".
God, turn it off!.
She pressed the remote again. The screen went black, a small red dot glittering in the darkness. The moon. The stars. Tokyo-3. Save for the pale light coming from the window, pretty much the entire room would be engulfed in it.
Now the snorting begins.
The woman stretched out a bit in the couch, careful enough to not awake her roommates from their sleep. The boy and the bird weren´t such night creatures after all. Misato´s eyes turned to the feathery head over her leg. The penguin had its share of moments, though.
Her brown eyes now turned to the fourteen year-old right next to her. Shinji Ikari, the pilot of Unit 01 and savior of mankind had his head resting over his hand, probably the only thing keeping him from a rough wake up. As tired as he was, his chest rose and fall softly. The lullaby of his breathing filled the room.
He should be. Almost everyday, the boy prepared her breakfast and her dinner. He also did most of the weekly chores: Shinji did all the shopping, took care of all the washing, cleaned the floors, etc. Instead of a roomie, it was like Misato had a maid.
Hey!I won fair and square!.
And it had turned out for the best. Before Shinji´s arrival, her place had been a dump, even if she had no problem with it.
That blue shirt. Her gaze fixed in his clothes. Did he always wear the same shirt?.It wasn´t like she could stay all day here to see him wear something else. Depending on the schedule, she barely had time to see him at breakfast if they had dinner together at all, as she sometimes had to spend entire nights at the headquarters. Luckily, the boy didn´t seem to mind the loneliness much. Pen-Pen would keep him company in her absence.
Liar...
That was not truth. If Shinji wouldn´t have minded the loneliness, he would have never returned.
Misato sighed. What could she do about it?. It wasn´t her fault that things were the way they were. It wasn´t her fault that bizarre things tried to bring forth the apocalypse, again. It wasn´t her fault that such boy was one of the few that could stand up to those things. It wasn´t her fault that his father was a heartless bastard.
It´s not his fault either.
She sighed again, strongly this time. Her gaze now fixed in his calm face, his features.
He could have left...
The introvert kid. His shy demeanour. Before, whether because of self-pity or simply indifference, he forced himself to pilot the purple colossus. No one else would do it for him. No one could. He didn´t want to, yet he did.
It was difficult for him. To open up, to come out from the shell. He didn´t want to cause pain, nor being hurt. By hiding from others, he would be safe. Closing his heart, he managed to survive this long.
I never meant to hurt him.
The notes. The surveillance notes. Shinji wasn´t supposed to find them, but being as careless and untidy as she was, it became only a matter of time before he did.
Did he felt betrayed?... No.
During the fourth´s assault, he deliberately ignored her order to retreat and continued the attack. The anger. The rage. In a reckless abandon, Unit 01 charged against the angel and despite the odds, defeated it.
He felt used.
The runaway child. Past sensations rushed into her head. The worry. The disappointment.
Guilt. Was it her fault?. Did she feel guilty for what had happened?.
...
Was she supposed to?. It was her duty. She was asked to make those reports. Misato would have still done them, even if he lived somewhere else. It just happened to be that they were easier to make, now that he lived with her.
Was that it?. Was Shinji right?. Did she just used him, after all?.
No.
Why then?. Why was he here, if not to make her job easier?.
Because I thought it would be nice to have a family.
Someone to talk to. Someone to live with. The warmth within. Not because of work or sympathy. Something more important. Something else.
With him here, I don´t have to feel alone.
Her.
The emptiness. The void inside. Something that would not be filled with flirting or casual sex. A feeling that would never go away.
It´s always about you, isn´t it?.
The lavander-haired woman shook her head in disgust. She didn´t like where her train of thought had headed to. Now, Misato had enough of thinking for the night.
You are disgusting.
Reaching with her hand to the floor, her fingers tripped once and again with the scattered cans over it. Finding the last one of the six-pack, she opened the Yebisu and took a big sip of it.
It was bitter.
She liked the taste, the cold stream flowing through her throat, towards her stomach. It felt good. Really good.
She guessed she was fortunate. It could taste like shit, yet she would drink it. Yebisu, Asahi, Boa. They were all the same. As long as it gets the job done, it made no difference.
Misato took another sip of the can. And another. In all these years, she learned the only thing useful about beer. When you are dead drunk, you don´t dream.
She no longer wanted to dream. To remember the day. To see that, again.
The shriek. The chilling shriek.
Shinji didn´t hear it. He wouldn´t. Nobody else did, just her.
The sacrifice. The blood. The pain. Wings of light, stretching out to the skies.
The only one who saw it. The only one alive to.
Powerless to stop them, the images crept into her mind, like many times before. The painful memories that would live forever inside of her.
The silence.
Ignoring the protests of the penguin, the woman curled up as she could into a fetal position. With her eyes wide open and despite the dim light coming through the windows, Misato Katsuragi found herself trapped in the darkness.
Fin.