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?

28. The Return

Hey guys, I'm back :D
Why so long? I finished my exams and was on vacation. Went to a wedding. Partied with the family.

Yes, this arc is just about to finish. I know it is long and I thank each and every reader who has stuck around this long. I promise that THIS ARC is important. It matters, it all matters. The Original Shinji is a main character alongside the new younger Shinji.

I had trouble writing this chapter. A lot happens, on-screen and off, and things were cut out to save space.

Here's chapter 28 "The Return".

---

"My parents and SEELE tried to manipulate powers that they did not understand.

The whole world paid the price for their actions. SEELE took everything from us, their madness failed and I was left holding the mess they made. It all fell to me. I was 14 years old when I held the fate of the world in my hands... I grew up in that world I made. I lived there and I died there. There was nothing left in that life, nothing but a barren lifeless rock of a planet. It was doomed from the beginning. A slow death for anyone who came back.

So I decided to change it. To fix everything.

I've seen death, and I am not afraid of it. Not anymore. Death is easy, it is living that is hard. My mission is all I have left, and it was only thanks to her.

Thanks to Lilith. She had the last remnants of my wife buried within her. Rei, the newest drop in an ocean of consciousness, but the most important. It was Rei who saved me in the end, even after she died she never stopped loving me. That was what changed Lilith.

Lilith became my teacher."

- The Broken Man.

---

Part 1: Lazarus

The Other Timeline
Memories of the Original Shinji.
Hours after his death.

Death is not pleasant.

The void that lies beyond. It is, by its very nature, empty. You are only aware of it after you've experienced it. After you've left it. It is the coldest feeling you will ever know.

For you are alone here. No one can help you and it is a journey that is yours and yours alone.

Shinji found himself opening his eyes to the dark. Like a separate universe where the stars had never been born. Where no light had existed at all.

What is this place? - the Broken Man thought.

He was drifting in some dark abyss... some nothingness. Yet he was aware of it. Dimly, as if waking from a long dream.

I... what is my name? I can't remember... I am 14 years old... no... that's not right... I'm not 14 anymore. I had a wife... her name... her name was... R- something with an 'R'. I can't... I can't see her face anymore... the thoughts of the undying.

It was so cold here. Empty.

He could feel the sorrow in his heart at that. When did he get a heart? This pain... a forgotten dream that refused to return.

His wife. What was her name? What was her name?! How... how could he forget?! What was her face? What did she look like? Why was it all gone?!

If he could have, the Broken Man would have sobbed. Would have cried. Would have wailed at the ghost of a memory. At the blanks in his mind. Pieces of him that had been stripped away. Taken.

But here, there was nothing.

Re- Ri- I can't remember her name. There was more. My wife and I... we had... we had a daughter... I had a daughter... Akan- her name... what was her name... my daughter had her mother's eyes... why am I crying? When did I get eyes? The Broken Man thought.

A lost soul out in the dark. The pain of having lost his own name...

Then, the Broken Man gasped as if being grabbed.

"Your name is Shinji Ikari." A voice called out to him. Soft yet powerful. Female, and eerie. Inhumanly beautiful.

He screamed. His voice hoarse and raw. Her voice hurt him. Stung him with its sheer power, like the Sun itself was speaking to him. Like a hurricane was breathing down his neck. Like a tsunami had grabbed him. Raw and powerful, a force of nature.

"Do not fret, beloved. You are Shinji Ikari. And you will remember." Lilith called again. A promise.

The Broken Man couldn't see her. He couldn't see anything. Whom was talking to him?

Something or someone clung to him in the dark and pulled. Dragging him out... it hurt.

Like emerging from a well deep in the void. Beyond cold, the absence of warmth. The Broken Man found himself dragged out.

Forced into the light. And the Woman in the Dark had been right. He remembered. His life and his death. It all came flooding back to him. The pieces of his mind being stitched back together. Woven into their place, restored and held together by invisible threads. His soul brought back to his body.

My name... my name is Shinji Ikari. I am almost 50 years old. I remember everything... and it hurts the mangled thoughts of a corpse brought back from the abyss.

---

Shinji screamed. His voice low and rough. A hole in his throat was sealing itself, the flesh closing around the wound that had killed him... yes... he had died.

That didn't make sense.

He had been stabbed. Shinji remembered bleeding out on the pavement. He remembered dying.

Cool hands were pressed to his face. The sunlight bared down above him, it blinded him save for the shadow of a 'figure' kneeling beside him. A woman.

A Woman in the Dark smiled down at him. The stark contrast of the blinding sun and her shadow hid her face from him, the light overhead overwhelmed his revived eyes.

She leaned in pressing her lips to his, a chaste kiss that was there and gone, and he saw it... red eyes... pale skin and silver-white hair.

Rei... oh Rei... Shinji thought. Tears formed in his eyes... before the pain was too much and he fell unconscious. His wife. His love... knelt beside him in the blinding sun.

Yet he never realized that he was both right and wrong at that moment.

Death is not a pleasant experience. Returning from its grasp takes a toll.

...

Lilith sat beside him. Naked and untouched by the world, unweathered, unbroken, above the trials and torments of the world. She wore the body of a 26-year-old Rei Ikari, the age that woman had been when she died. Lilith took this form and found it... pleasing.

The Second Angel stood over Shinji Ikari as he healed. The wounds closed, regrown flesh forming around the injuries, scars emerging onto his body. The wounds of the mind woven and stitched together once more, scars of the soul that would take their toll on him. Far more painful than anything physical.

Lilith stood.

Shinji Ikari lay on the ground where he had been killed. Resting, for the journey back to the land of the living had not been easy.

The old man breathed softly, alive but unconscious. The Last of the Eva pilots.

Lilith stretched her arms and dark featherless wings formed around her. Thin things that protruded from her bare back, constructs of the dark. This form was not easy for her, but she found it to be one that her beloved would have appreciated.

"Goodbye for now. Rest, my husband." The Angel said to him. Her words carrying across the air.

Then she rose, drifting through the landscape, flying away. A leaf in the wind. Her figure disappearing into the sky.

There and gone, just like that.

…

Later

Shinji awoke to find himself covered in old blood. His blood.

His eyes opened slowly. Groggily. Damaged.

"He's alive!" a voice called out.

There was the sound of footsteps as Shinji lay breathing softly. The world was a distorted mess, his eyes still readjusting to the change in light. Adjusting... to having been brought back.

"Does anyone have any water? Get him some water!" a voice called.

"He's covered in blood! Grab some blankets and we can-" another voice began.

A flurry of sensory awareness that was only barely catching up with him. His brain processing everything his senses told him. That he was not alone.

That a group of people were surrounding him.

Dressed in rags, just like everyone else in the wastelands. Yes... that's right. Shinji had been stabbed by a gang. Or had they been a gang? He remembered some of them shouting to stop, to 'leave the old man alone' before he had been killed.

"Ahhhh" Old Man Shinji groaned, sitting up slowly. Dry blood stained his ragged and dirty clothes. The substance clung to him even now.

"Holy!" a voice called.

And the people surrounding him stepped back, taking a collective gasp as Old Man Shinji rose. Shock and awe, fear and confusion, painting their faces as he moved.

He raised a trembling and battered hand, feeling the fresh scar on his neck. His throat where he'd been stabbed.

Blood is still there... but the hole is gone. Healed, new flesh covering up the gap, closing the wound, and it left a scar. That's impossible. I- I saw her, Shinji thought.

"Rei..." he whispered.

The people were watching him with wide eyes. To them, they had seen a blood-covered old man lying beside an abandoned bridge, only to witness him sit up like it was nothing.

"Hey mister... are you alright?" one of the ragged men asked.

Shinji ignored him.

Ignored all these people, these strangers that stumbled across his corpse... no... that wasn't right. They hadn't been there when he died, they had found him after. When he'd come back...

… how is this possible? How could I come back? Why? Why me?! Why not Rei?! Why not Akane?! Why not Asuka?! Old Man Shinji thought. He seethed under his breath as he panted.

"Hey-"

Old Man Shinji grabbed the hand that reached for him and rose, dragging the man with him.

"I don't want trouble. I got nothing you want" Shinji said coldly. His voice raw and rusty, his throat dry and rough.

"NO. No... we're not bandits. We only wanted to help," the ragged man was saying. The group that had found Shinji raised their hands, the universal symbol for 'calm', and backed away slowly. Calling for him to 'take it easy'.

These people were uneasy around him. Something about his eyes unnerved them, the light that had long faded. That weathered look that told him he didn't care about his life anymore.

Shinji only barely listened to them. His mind reeling from everything.

"It can't be... Shinji? Shinji Ikari?" a familiar voice called out suddenly.

Shinji let go of the man he'd been holding, and the group parted as another stepped forward. Unwinding a series of rags he'd wrapped over his lower face for warmth.

A familiar man. A young boy that Shinji had known in Haven, a boy that he'd seen grow into an adult, and had played with his daughter Akane years and years ago.

Ichiro Inoue, the son of Haven's doctor Makio. The son that had traveled with Shinji and his family on the road to Haven, just a boy at the time. Ichiro had lived in Haven with his parents for years, befriending little Akane after she was born.

Only Ichiro wasn't a kid anymore. He was almost 40. It made Shinji feel old to see him.

"Shinji? I'd heard that you left Haven. Just... just walked away one day after we reclaimed our homes from winter," Ichiro said staring at the older man in disbelief.

"... I did... I left... " Shinji whispered. Feeling like he was a hundred years old.

The group of travelers that had found him settled down, everyone calming and taking a moment to breathe.

Ichiro shook his head saying, "what happened to you? Is that your blood?"

He looked down at his ragged clothes, once again taking in the fading blood stains that covered his shirt. His eyes lost, confused and broken.

"... I think so," Shinji answered in barely a whisper.

…

"How are you so calm about this?"

Ichiro looked Shinji up and down, the friend of his father's. Confused and bewildered at how little Shinji cared about the blood on his face.

Shinji wiped it away. The water soaked rags, lent to him, cleaning the old blood off. He held an old rusted knife to use as a mirror.

"It's only blood," Shinji murmured. He turned his head sideways, the faded red leaving his face. The stains on his clothes couldn't be washed out, but Ichiro had given him an extra layer of rags for warmth.

"So you've been out here all this time? Since Haven?" Ichiro asked.

The two men stood off to the side from the travelers' camp. The others were uneasy at his presence. Shinji didn't blame them.

The group of travelers sat camped out further along the roads, further down from the abandoned bridge that had been Shinji's grave.

"All this time? I- don't know. I stopped counting the days," Shinji whispered distantly.

He wasn't all 'there'. He was still lost. It showed in Shinji's eyes. He'd been pieced back together by the Woman in the Dark. Whom had that been? Rei? No... it wasn't right... someone or something else.

Ichiro raised his eyebrows at Shinji's words. Mouthing the words to himself, 'you stopped counting the days?' Eying this broken man that wore the face of Shinji Ikari.

"... you've been out here for over a year. How? How could you not know that?" Ichiro asked in disbelief, shaking his head at this... this walking corpse of a man before him.

I tried not to think. I did not want to. So I didn't, Shinji thought. He gave no answer and Ichiro gave up in the end. The man could not believe he found Shinji after all this time.

"Why are you here, Ichiro? Haven is far off." Shinji said lowering the rusted knife. He turned to face the man, the child that Shinji had known on his road to Haven.

Ichiro shook his head, eyes darkening, and sighed.

"Haven is gone"

Shinji looked up. He almost felt something at that. A phantom pain in his chest for his old home, but more than anything he was confused.

"What?" Old Shinji asked in disbelief, his voice low and hard.

"Just... just fell apart. About a month after you left, we got raided. Survivors from that freaking winter, that nightmare, out there starving and they came for our food. Only... we were weak. From 200 of us down to 74. The mayor dead.

Kay did his best but he's only one man. And Mari... well she got worse. My mom tried to treat her but she was just... just broken.

Our home is gone.

It just went to hell. We tried to defend ourselves, but we were farmers, not soldiers. We managed to hold our own... lasted a few months.

But then it came. And we had to leave," Ichiro said gravely.

Kay... Mari... I'm sorry. Are you still out there? Are you alive? Shinji thought darkly. Distantly, he felt another piece of him being torn.

Even in death he had let people down. How fitting.

'It came'... what? What destroyed Haven? Shinji thought bitterly.

Ichiro shook his head. The man was horrified, grave worry planted on his face that seemed to age him another twenty years.

"What was it?" Shinji whispered, eyes shifting at the question. A part of the old man knew the answer, but he didn't know how he could have known it. A feeling, an instinct, deep down in his bones.

My dreams... I saw it before. The monster. The Giant of Light... Shinji thought.

"The Angel came," Ichiro said.

---

Fall of Haven
63 days after Shinji Ikari abandoned his former home

The village was a shadow of its former self. The community had lost more than half of its population during the winter that had come and gone.

Bandit raids, militia defense, and a recovering food supply had stripped the village of its privileges.

The old soldier, Kay, patrolled the houses, rifle in hand. Ichiro and a handful of what was left of the village men keeping pace.

Ichiro watched his mother, Kioko, in the distance checking on her patient.

Mari sat on the porch, empty eyes, glum expression planted on her face. Kioko had taken her deceased husband's role as town doctor, listening to Mari's heartbeat. The woman tried to make small talk, but Mari had stopped speaking the day Shinji had left.

Ichiro paused, watching his mother comfort the woman that Shinji had lived with but had never married.

Why did you leave Shinji? How could you do that? He thought.

BANG

BANG

BANG

Gunshots echoed across the distance. Kay didn't flinch, didn't even bat an eye, the old soldier simply turned towards the sound as the rest of the militia did the same. Ichiro reached for his rifle, that forest like terrain along the edge of the mountains and flatlands, that was where the shots had come from.

"Everyone! Get inside!" Kay was shouting.

Ichiro spotted them. The bandits, they always hid in the woods before creeping down to raid, the men and woman were running... running as they emerged from the tree line. Just specs in the distance. The group ran and fired shots behind them.

BANG

BANG

The bandits' gunfire echoed across the air, as a lone figure began to emerge far above the running crowd of men and women. The bandits weren't raiding... they were running away from something.

A massive fist planted itself on a mountainous top, a thunderous clap of rock being crushed ripping through the land, and a Giant of Light emerged from the wilderness...

Adam towered over the forests and mountainous terrain. Looming over the village in the flatlands below. The size of an Evangelion.

The First Angel was missing half his face. No eyes at all, but deep empty sockets and the crude lining of its mouth. Left arm almost whole, exposed muscle visible amid the glowing white of its skin. A pale stump where its right hand should have been.

Adam turned its deformed face down to the humans below, like puny ants they fled, foolish Lilin firing their weapons at him. Small scraps of metal propelled by combustion, bullets, collided with his ever recovering flesh.

Does an Elephant feel an ant bite? Does a god feel pain?

The First Angel raised a hand, tearing a tree from its root, ripping it straight from the grounds, and flung it at the ever running humans, the bandits that raided Haven in the days following winter. Adam paid them almost no mind.

THUD

In a flash of upturned gravel the former bandits were gone... just disappeared underneath the collision of wood on flesh and dirt. Smudges of red oozing out from underneath the thrown tree...

Kay stared wide-eyed at the Angel. At Adam striding his way through the terrain, crushing trees and leaving deep craters in the ground in his wake, the bandits were just gone.

The entire mountain shifted under the First Angel's movement. The titan moved through the land and all trembled in his wake.

Ichiro stood unable to move. Breathless and in shock at the sight before them.

An Angel... a living breathing Angel was coming for their town.

The townsfolk were leaving the homes to see what had happened, to see what had made such thunderous and unearthly noise, only to stand frozen along the countless others. In fear of the vengeful Angel looming over them.

"Don't waste your bullets! We need to evacuate!" Kay called to the others.

Another tree came flying through the air, landing atop the mayor's old house. The old wood broke under the strain as the tree tore through its roof.

THUD

The house collapsed upon itself. The earth shook, and dirt was sent up in a shower of pulverized soil.

"Ah!"

"Angel!"

"Run!"

The voices of the villagers in Haven. Trees flew through the air, raining down on what buildings they had managed to repair in the aftermath of winter, weeks of work undone in seconds, their homes destroyed for no reason at all. The whims of a Cruel Angel.

Mari rose ever so slowly, stumbling back as Adam towered over them all.

"We can't stay here!" Kioko sobbed. The town doctor grabbed Mari by the wrist dragging her along, running.

CRUNCH

Adam's foot came crashing down on the town pen, the entire shack was torn apart as the chickens let out a single panicked cry before they were killed. Their herd, so painstakingly cared for, destroyed in an instant.

The First Angel strode through the village. Panicked militia fired uselessly at the Giant of Light, most gave up and ran.

Mari stood frozen in fear, unable to process the reality around her, the Angel looming over them all. Kioko grabbing her by the wrist again, tears running down her face, and dragged Mari with her as she ran.

That... this is what Shinji fought, Mari thought with hollow dead eyes, forced to run alongside Kioko.

"Mom! Mom! Hurry!" Ichiro shouted, calling for the two women to hurry up, to join him and the others as they ran.

That was the last time Ichiro would ever see Mari or his mother again.

Adam raised a fist, clenching his hand tight, and the air itself withered. Like all the warmth was being sucked out, stolen.

The grounds of Haven iced over, frost materialized and cracked stone. The cold seemed to bite at the villagers, their very skin seething from the Angel's wrath.

It was as if the First Angel had brought Winter with him. Yet somehow less than before... contained... a miniaturized version that he could control. Smaller than before, but just as deadly. As if the Angel was saving his strength.

The wind blew and snow began to emerge, frozen particles in the air materialized and whipped across the village. Ice dropped from up on high, crashing down onto the grounds below. The sun disappeared, hiding its face as the unnatural weather took hold. Entire groups of people disappeared underneath the contained Winter. The artificial blizzard.

Homes were crushed and broken. The village was a sea of pulverized shacks, frozen fields, and dead soil. The unnatural cold had washed away most of it, and Adam had taken what was left.

The wrath of the First Angel.

Bodies littered about the ruins. So little had survived, so little had managed to run, for Adam had never cared about them at all. The titan had only been smiting down that which stood in his way. The First Angel gazed into the heavens looking for something, for someone, but arriving too late. Only tracing a lead.

Haven was no more. Shattered and barren.

A world with Angels but no Evas.

---

Old Man Shinji stood there, tilting his head slowly, as Ichiro finished his tale. The Fall of Haven.

"Mari?" he asked in a low pitched whisper.

Ichiro shook his head, his eyes crazed and fearful.

"Never saw her again. Kay, my mom... all of them are gone. We don't know what happened to them. My group and I have been on the run for months," Ichiro said.

Shinji turned to look at the camp of travelers. The people that had found him after he'd been brought back to life. The Survivors of Haven.

On the run for that long... the Angel hasn't been chasing them then. Why did it even show up? Why Haven? Why now? Shinji thought.

"Shinji... I- my father told me stories about you. He said you were an Eva pilot. That you fought those things before. Is there any hope that we can-"

"No. Just run. It took N2 mines or an Evangelion to stop the Angels," was all Shinji said. Not even looking at Ichiro anymore.

He could hear Ichiro breathing harshly at his words. Still, Shinji watched the survivors of Haven. Men and women who had lived through hell on earth. They had actually stopped to help him. They were different than those that had killed him.

Old Man Shinji closed his eyes. His death feeling less and less important the more he learned. He wasn't some hero with a sacrifice, he was just a man who had died like any other.

…

"You don't have to leave, Shinji."

"I would only slow you down. I'm old, and my hand hurts," Shinji said simply, his voice a dry croak. He glanced down at his bad hand, three fingers where there should have been five. His speech was low and rough, like gravel.

Ichiro groaned. He was a good man, just like his father Makio had been, trying to do the right thing.

"Come with us. Maybe we can find a new home. We could get a boat and leave this nightmare behind. We have to try," Ichiro was saying.

Leaving Japan... I don't know if they could make it. The red sea seems to stretch on forever. Maybe they could find a home out there, here or somewhere else. An island or a shore? But not with me. Everything I ever touch falls apart, Shinji thought.

"Good luck, Ichiro. Thank you... for stopping to help me," Shinji said.

Ichiro shook his head at this madman. It was like Shinji wanted to die out there, with a freaking Angel on the loose somewhere. Roaming around the wastelands for reasons of its own.

They're good people... please... let them make it. Let them find a home. Shinji thought.

They said their goodbyes, the last remnants of Haven leaving without him. Ichiro and the others, men and women, even a teenager here and there, walking off into the distance. He knew their faces, if not their names, and wished them well.

Old Man Shinji stood in the wastelands, alone again.

---

Part 2: The Woman in the Dark

Why didn't you go with them?

That was how it first started. Just a simple sentence. A word here and there from inside his head. A foreign voice that echoed across his mind. Female, soft as silk yet with an undertone of power.

He froze mid-step. Turning to find only the desolate roads and the wastes, there was no one behind him. Yet he heard a voice.

You should have gone with them, the voice called.

He flinched in surprise. A twinge of pain streaked by his head, and he winced bringing the wrinkles on his face to life.

What? He thought. A voice in Old Man Shinji's head.

He ran a hand along the scar on his neck, the wound that had killed him, he turned looking with hollow empty eyes but found nothing. Was he going insane? Had he ever really died at all. No, he had. He remembered it. Remembered forgetting his own name. Shinji shook it off, walking onward.

...

Night

The campfire was a meager thing.

Night had fallen, and in the days since his 'resurrection' Shinji had wandered looking for… looking for what? Truth was that he didn't know what he was doing. Why him? Why had he been brought back and no one else?

He sat on the broken down countryside, the ruins of a highway visible in the distance. His beard and long dark unwashed hair kept him warm. He sat dressed in the rags Ichiro had given him, resting by his camp.

How can there be an Angel out here? That's impossible... he thought. In his mind's eye, he could picture it, the Giant of Light destroying Haven.

Shinji looked up at the night sky. Just as he'd done countless times since the Third Impact.

He looked for his Eva, his mother, Yui Ikari. It was somewhere out there... drifting out in the expanse of the stars above.

Mom… I still feel like everything is my fault. The world… everyone who died… the fall of Tokyo-03, the fall of Haven… and then I died. Only the universe decided to punish me even more. It brought me back to this. AGAIN... he thought bitterly.

"Was never fair. I was a kid. I was just a goddamned kid... to leave that up to me... me? How could they have been so cruel? Why me? Why not someone stronger? Why not Asuka? Why not Misato?" Old Man Shinji said into the empty night. His voice was tired and on edge, tittering towards a breakdown, dry as gravel.

14 and I had to choose the fate of mankind?! In what world is that fair! And I was wrong! All these years and the world went to shit. Then an Angel came back anyway! It killed Haven! Mari... oh Mari. And where were you, eh mom?! He thought bitterly.

Old Man Shinji rose, staring into the night sky, his heart hanging on by a thread, on the edge of breaking again. His lips shook.

"Why did you leave me?! Why would you do this to me? Why! You had a choice! Did you ever really love me at all! Did you ever even care?!" he shouted through his sobs. Shouting into the night, the campfire casting his shadow behind him.

A man reduced to a child crying for his mother in the darkest of days.

The moon hovered over him with a streak of red crossing its surface and the night sky around it. A scar on the moon itself, so large that it was visible from his camp. Another scar from the end of the world.

Shinji was given no answer. No reply even as he shouted into the evening. Of course, why would Yui Ikari answer him now? She'd never answered him since the day she left him behind.

He waited and waited but the silence was his answer. He stood there alone in the dark and the cold, in the dirt and the ruin. He was tired, so very tired.

I died. Isn't that enough? he thought.

"There is no hope here... nothing... nothing but this," Shinji said sinking to his knees.

He clutched his hand and traced the mark on his ring finger, the wedding ring he had cherished for years. The ring was long gone, left at his wife's grave. Yet he still felt for it, longing for it. So he'd been brought back from the dead, so what? It didn't change anything.

Why do you want to die? The voice inside Old Man Shinji's head called.

Ahhh. This… this 'thing' in my head. Trying to sound like my wife… no… just no. Why won't it leave me alone? He thought, gritting his teeth.

Why do you want to die? The voice repeated.

"I don't know if I was ever really happy at all..." Shinji whispered into the dark, giving an answer to the voice.

He paused, lost in his own thoughts. His eyes wide and in the memories of better days.

"But if I was... it was with them... with her," Shinji whispered.

He could imagine his wife, with Akane and Asuka by his side. A better world where they had all lived. A world his daughter could have known her mother. Where he could have grown old with Rei, walking hand in hand through the house they had built together, and not like this. Not this existential nightmare, not this crushing reality that never ended.

Rei's smile, reserved only for him, how he loved her even now. Didn't matter that she was dead and gone.

THUD

THUD

THUD

The sound boomed across the terrain. Like the earth was shaking.

Run the feminine voice in his head called.

Shinji opened his eyes and rose.

Run. He is coming, the voice called to him.

Shinji stood there in the dark, hollow dead eyes facing the road ahead.

If you stay… you will die.

THUD

THUD

A Giant of Light emerged onto the scene. The dark fading away as the Angel stepped into to view, brushing pass and breaking through the abandoned highway.

BOOM

The highway broke along the center, Adam simply walked through the structure. The twisted steel and concrete fell to the ground with a harsh thud. Clouds of dust rose as the chunks of concrete fell.

Old Man Shinji didn't even flinch.

The wind blew across his face, and dust splattered his ragged clothes, ripples from the First Angel's appearance in the night.

Adam had seemed to appear where he stood, his heavy steps audible even from a distance. The light from the titan's skin illuminated the land. How the hell could that be stealthy?

"... You're an Angel," Old Man Shinji said eying up the Giant. Hollow eyes meeting the monster with no fear.

Adam was missing half his face. A single eye was growing deep within a socket, the other was still gone. A deep gash where its right eye should have been. It was still missing one arm, the skin ending before the elbow with a stump. Recovering, but not fully healed.

"Over 30 years without an Angel... and you show up. Why now? For me? Or were you always there in the shadows? Waiting? Waiting for what?! To come here and wreck our homes?! To destroy us even now?! Do you really hate us humans so much?" Old Man Shinji shouted.

His dark and narrowed eyes met the near God-like being looming over him. Adam stood the size of an Evangelion.

Run. He will kill you if you stay, the voice told him.

Maybe I deserve to die. Whoever said I deserved to live? Who am I to be alive? To be happy? I failed everyone! Shinji thought back.

Adam scanned the horizon, searching the sky for something unseen. On the hunt... for what?

Finding nothing, the First Angel turned to its massive head to Shinji.

THUD

THUD

Adam glared down at the lone human, a single eye visible amid the deformed flesh that was the First Angel. In the process of repairing itself, not yet whole, but getting stronger with each day.

Shinji breathed out heavily. Why the hell was this taking so long?

"What are you waiting for? Do it." Shinji hissed to the First Angel.

Adam glared down at him, searching for something. Their eyes met, old foes that had never truly met face to face before.

"Do it!" Shinji shouted glaring up at the Giant.

Adam's torso shook. The Giant of Light shuddering oddly in the moonlight. A strange booming sound rippled through his ears.

The First Angel was laughing at him.

Adam raised a hand.. and Shinji stood there. Waiting. He didn't even close his eyes as death came for him again.

The First Angel slapped him.

Those words did not properly convey what happened. Adam's hand came down, its fingers striking Shinji across his torso, and Shinji flew through the air.

Bones cracked, muscle was torn, his leg bent backward breaking as it twisted, and the wind was knocked out of him. Hit by the force of a moving train...

All the while, Shinji kept his eyes open, watched as he had been hit. Watched as he flew through the air and the pain began to overwhelm him. Every nerve in his body screamed at him, internal bleeding, crushed bones, and he knew it would be over soon.

It was like this moment was moving in 100th the normal time, slow, his brain hyper-focusing on his last moments.

Then he was stopped. His body came to a halt mid-air... and a Woman in the Dark materialized in the open. She hovered as she caught him. Shinji turned and saw her again, the woman who had brought him back to life. She wore his wife's face... she wore Rei's 26-year-old body. Yet she was different, inhumanly beautiful, her skin perfect and unmarked by the world. Ageless and unweathered. Silver white hair and red eyes, naked, and with strange featherless wings protruding from her back.

Lilith held the mangled and broken body that was Shinji Ikari. Her arms wrapped around him mid-air, and Shinji blinked seeing red. Lilith ran a pale hand across his bleeding face, holding him close as a mother holds a child. As a lover holds her partner.

You're not her... not... Rei... Shinji thought even as he coughed blood.

Adam roared, massive fist reaching out for Lilith and Shinji... only to find both of them gone. Lilith flew away in a flash, carrying Shinji with her.

The First Angel had found his target at long last.

The Giant of Light seethed, turning with a speed that rivaled Lilith herself. Finding Lilith even as she flew onward, dark pale wings moving her and Shinji through the night.

Adam raised his fist, and the air hissed. The ground started to freeze over and particles in the air began to still, an unnatural winter as if all the warmth was being sucked out. Stolen.

Lilith raised a hand back to Adam... and Adam flinched. Struck by some unseen force. The cold dying down before Adam, as Lilith made her escape.

The First Angel abandoned his winter, instead, Adam reached for them again. His massive fist coming to encircle them, and again Lilith dodged. Looping past Adam even as the First Angel started to hover off the ground. Wings of Light emerged on Adam's back, a stark contrast to Lilith's.

The First Angel hunted the Second.

And Shinji died there. Died in Lilith's arms. His eyes had never closed.

The two Angels soared through the heavens, the Giant of Light and the Woman in the Dark moving through the expanse of the night sky. Like two Gods in the ancient paintings of man.

Adam was bigger and stronger, but Lilith was smaller and faster.

---

A day later
Hideout

Shinji lay there, resting on the grounds of a cave. His torn and ragged clothes clung to his body like some murky second skin, complete with old blood staining his rags for the second time. His eyes were gaunt and watery as he blinked in the dimly lit cavern.

Rest, I have not repaired all the damage yet. The voice in Old Man Shinji's head whispered.

"Ahhh," he moaned through gritted teeth. He slowly rose to a sitting position, and his bones screamed at him. His ribs shouted at him to stop, his arms clenching as he forced himself to move.

17 of your bones are still fractured.

"Go away," Shinji whispered. Breathing harshly as he forced himself to sit up.

'She' brought me back... again. The Woman in the Dark. Isn't dying once enough? He thought bitterly.

"... Why do you want to die?" the voice called, a feminine voice. Not in his head, but from behind him. In person, no longer telepathic.

His eyes stilled and he caught his breath as he felt someone sitting behind him. Hands wrapped themselves around him, hugging him from behind as she nestled up against his back. She must have laid beside him the whole time.

Lilith trailed her hands down his chest gently. Her bare breast pressed softly against his back as she leaned her head onto his shoulder. And his pain went away, his nerves were made numb and his bones quieted their aches.

"Stop. Why are you doing this to me?" Shinji shuddered, flinching at the sensation. His voice shook as the woman held him.

Lilith's hands, the movements, the... the love that carried over with her touch. It reminded him of Rei. It brought back memories of his wife. So many nights where Rei had rested her head on his shoulder.

"I didn't ask for this. I'm tired... so very tired," Shinji whispered, wincing as Lilith clung to him.

"Oh, sweet Shinji. I am doing this because I love you. I do."

Lilith held him so gently, basking in him despite how cold he was. The woman brought her lips to his injured neck and kissed him softly. No desire, no lust, no primal urge, but love. So pure and unconditional, so warm.

"I love you with all my heart," Lilith whispered in his ear. She clung to him as if they were one, flesh upon flesh, warmth upon cold.

"Stop," he pleaded again.

"I do not want you to die," she whispered to him.

And at that moment, Shinji heard it... the echo of his wife. Rei's voice inlaid with the woman clinging to him. Like somewhere in this stranger... the love of his life was buried within.

"Gah" Shinji shouted, prying Lilith's arms off of him. Breaking her embrace and rising to his feet as he stumbled inside the cave.

He almost fell the moment he got up. His leg wasn't right. It bent oddly, and bone was sticking out. Pale white visible along his thigh. More damage from where Adam had stuck him.

Lilith was there in the blink of an eye. Moving so fast he couldn't follow her. She seemed to appear in front of him wearing his wife's smile... the one Rei had reserved only for him.

"I have not finished healing you. You are quite stubborn, I find it amusing." Lilith said steadying him with a hand on his shoulder.

She was thin, slim and lean, but with just a single hand she lifted him off the ground and placed him back down. As if his weight was nothing, a feather.

Old Man Shinji gasped at her strength and he saw it.

Lilith's shadow was big. The Second Angel's real form was much larger than this human appearance she took. Like she could be the size of an Evangelion if she wanted to be.

The hell is wrong with you... put some clothes on... He thought bitterly.

No. I find them uncomfortable, Lilith answered his mind and Shinji flinched again.

She tilted her head at him as he watched her in surprise. Amused at his reaction if nothing else. Curious more than anything. She could see inside his mind. Reading his thoughts and even answer them with her own.

Was this how all Angels spoke? Was that why they never appeared to communicate? Maybe the Angel's language was a telepathic one. Not vocal.

"I know what you are. I saw you the day the world ended. You're Lilith. Not my wife, stop wearing her face," Shinji said in-between pants.

He was surprised at how angry he felt seeing this... this Angel using a mirror image of Rei's body for her own. Being in the presence of Lilith was strange. He could feel the power that radiated off her body, and the raw force of what she was. Like standing before the heart of a storm, like being comforted by a newborn star.

"You say that as if it is an insult? You wound me, husband." Lilith said, the shadows seeming to dance around her as she wished them too.

"I'm not your husband!" Shinji shouted harshly.

"No? Should I call you my wife instead?" Lilith called to him... with Rei's voice.

Shinji stumbled back, his ribs aching, and Lilith tilted her head at him. The Second Angel smiled sadly at him. It was incredible how human she had become since returning.

That joke... how does she know that joke?! That- that was between me and Rei! He thought. Remembering a better time. When his wife had been pregnant with Akane and when she had teased him about his apron. About their marriage and the joy it gave them.

"I had grown to enjoy Rei's sense of humor. A perk she developed once she was free of your father, and allowed to live. She learned it all on her own, and with you, it blossomed. It is delightful. Warm.

Even now, I can still feel it.

But I see Rei's voice only hurts you. I will not use it anymore, beloved." Lilith told him.

Lilith's voice was different than his wife's. Rei had been quiet and calm, and by the end warm and compassionate. This thing in front of him was older, with an inhumanly perfect voice, hardened by an alien wisdom.

The Second Angel didn't appear to breathe. It was unnatural, the way she spoke clearly and concisely without error or breath.

Shinji sat there panting, watching as Lilith stood over him unblinkingly. She tilted her head at him, a loving look planted on her face. It unnerved him, the way she devoted her entire attention to him. It reminded him of his wife...

"How did you find me?" Shinji asked slowly.

"I never lost you. Our bond was never broken, Instrumentality, and so I watched you all this time." Lilith answered sweetly.

"You tried to make me go with Ichiro and the other Haven survivors... why?"

"I believed they would help you. I had hoped that by keeping a distance, Adam would not have found you. But, I was wrong. No matter. We are together." Lilith said, almost smiling at the end.

Slowly, he reached up to the scar on his neck. The memory of his first death still fresh in his mind.

"If you really do love me... if there really is a part of Rei in you... can you bring someone else back? Not twice. Just once," Shinji said looking away. Eyes falling as he breathed slowly.

"I cannot bring Akane back to life. Only you, no one else."

Lucky me... always me... he thought, a bitter taste in his mouth. Shinji closed his eyes tight in a grimace, the sorrow in his heart cutting far deeper than anything physical. For one beautiful moment, he thought he could have changed things. Could have given Akane another life. Hope for the future.

Only to see it dashed away just like everything else in his life. It seemed he was doomed to walk this broken earth forever. With the return of the Angels. Of Adam and Lilith.

"Instrumentality may have been rejected, but it did not go away completely. You are still connected to us, to me, and to your Eva. So long as Unit 01 survives, I can bring you back. The Gift of the Eva," Lilith said to him softly.

As if she thought that would make him happy. As if that would somehow make things better.

No. Not a gift but a curse. The Curse of the Eva. Shinji thought, hissing under his breath.

Nerv and SEELE never understood what they built. They did not know I could bring you back using that bond. You call it a curse, fine. I will not argue. But for me, it is a gift. What wife does not long for her beloved husband?

Lilith stepped to him, slowly and deliberately, her movements swift and precise yet soft and gentle, a grace that no human could match. She ran her fingers across his face, they were soft and unbattered, and she leaned in whispering, "to feel his touch?"

Old Man Shinji stumbled back on injured legs, rejecting Lilith's touch.

She studied him, forlorn red eyes peering into his very soul behind her silvery hair. The Second Angel lowered her hand, giving him his space.

He panted as if out of breath, bits of anger in him flared, what was this 'Lilith' playing at? Why was she doing this? And this... this 'gift' of hers. He didn't want it. None of this mattered... there was nothing here for him. Not anymore.

"What father doesn't love their children? What kind of gift lets them live on while their daughter lies in the dirt?!" Shinji spat.

How strange. Talking back to an Angel, his younger self would have never believed it. Then again, he wasn't that little kid anymore.

Lilith tilted her head at him again.

"I mourn your daughter as you do. You say that I am not your wife, yet Rei is inside me. She was my vessel and through her, I have been reborn. I have learned and developed just as she did. The lessons you taught her are ones that I have taken as well.

I did not know Akane, but you did. I watched you from a distance, watched as you raised her and loved her. A part of me grew very fond of you for that. Not only the part that was once Rei.

Rei is not me, but it is incorrect to say that I am not her. She was a piece of a larger whole. A piece that was allowed to live on her own, in ways that I never could. Through you she found love, and through her, I experienced emotions for the first time.

I can still feel her soul, the latest addition to my consciousness. Her love for you lingers. And I have come to care for you as well, Shinji Ikari.

For you are unlike any man left in all the world. I have seen your life from Third Impact until this very moment, and I have not seen anyone like you at all. 'A good man' as Rei would have called it." Lilith said.

The Second Angel beamed down at him. The dark seeming to radiate off her pale skin, her eyes never leaving him as if she really did love him.

Humph. If I was really 'a good man' then I wouldn't have hurt Mari. What did my mother say 'as long as you are alive you will always have the chance to be happy' what bullshit. Not if you hurt people when you only wanted to help. Not when everything goes to shit and life won't even let it end, Shinji thought bitterly.

His hands clenched into fists. This was just too much to take in. He had died twice and been brought back twice, he was face to face with an Angel after over thirty years, one that wore his wife's face. The Angel that literally had his wife's soul inside her. And for what? What was the point of all this?!

"Ah" Shinji coughed suddenly. He felt something in his mouth and gagged as blood began to slip out.

He tried to catch it, to stop it, but he started coughing up more blood again. He looked at his hand in confusion as the blood poured down his fingers.

Lilith was beside him in an instant. Moving with an inhuman speed. Seeming to flicker in the dark.

"Your internal bleeding cannot wait anymore. I need to finish healing you," was all Lilith said.

Before Shinji could protest, the Second Angel reached a hand to him and tore his shirt open.

He tried to stop her and pull away, but Lilith was much faster and stronger than him. She patted away his attempts to rebuff him, then placed her hand atop his chest... and he could feel her sorcery working on him. Her Angel powers reaching inside him, touching his organs, his cells, and repairing them.

The sensation made him gasp. Like he could actually feel his wounds healing in real-time. Lilith was repairing his internal bleeding but he was still in pain. He wanted to shout but he lacked the strength.

Then Shinji passed out.

---

For what seemed like an eternity later, he slept.

Only to wake to Lilith shaking him. The Woman in the Dark knelt beside him, cool hands pressed against his shoulders.

"Ahhhh. What did you-" he began.

"I healed you. We are under attack and must leave," Lilith answered immediately.

Under attack? From what- he thought. He wanted to protest, to demand answers and get away.

Before he could so much as speak, Lilith lifted him as if he were a child. He gasped as she pulled him to his feet yanking him off the ground as she hovered several feet into the air. The shadows danced around the both of them, engulfing Shinji and Lilith as they moved. A cloud of shadows that surrounded the two of them.

They were flying. Actually flying.

Lilith's strange power floating them up and allowing her to maneuver the both of them. Shinji held on weakly, still hazy from being woken after what must have been days of sleep. Lilith found no trouble lifting him.

She's as thin as Rei was... but a thousand times stronger, the old man thought dazed and confused.

Upon leaving the cave, both of them soaring out, Shinji winced as Lilith flew higher and higher... they were met with a scene out of his nightmares.

The Giant of Light was outside.

Adam loomed over the surface, single eye scanning the skies, clenched fist bringing the call of Winter with him.

Shinji glared at the First Angel, seemingly invisible to him, as Lilith flew them away. Down below, the grounds began to frost over. The air itself seemed to hiss as particles froze, and harsh winds that ate at his skin emerged onto the scene.

The dark... those shadows that radiate off of Lilith... they're stealth. The Woman in the Dark... it's all to hide from Adam's gaze. Shinji realized. The First Angel could not see them.

Adam searched for them, seeming to know they were there despite Lilith's sorcery.

BANG

BANG

The sound of gunshots echoed below. Shinji looked and saw a crowd of fleeing humans running for their lives. A single man, a foolish idiot who thought he could kill an Angel with a gun, fired with trembling hands.

Adam brought a hand down on the human, brandishing his arms and slicing into the ground in a wide arc. The blow left a deep crater in the ground... killing dozens of people in his wake. They literally disappeared in an upheaval of frozen earth. And the worst part was that Adam didn't have to... the humans could not have hurt him yet he killed them anyway.

"Stop. You have to help them." Shinji called weakly.

He wasn't sure if Lilith could hear him. The wind blew by as she flew the two of them to safety.

"I cannot. Adam is stronger than me." Lilith answered, flying off into the distance even as Shinji struggled to break her grasp.

The Second Angel held on tight, and Shinji gave up. She was stronger and faster than him, there was no point in resisting this way.

He watched helplessly at the scene below, at the ever-shrinking image of the First Angel destroying yet another settlement after the end of the world. Witnessed Adam slaughter what poor ragged survivors who had lived through Third Impact and last Winter.

Ragged and beaten down, the people had seen tough times, only to see it all end like this. Surviving for thirty years only to be slaughtered by a cruel Angel's wrath.

All of it gone... destroyed... just like Haven.

---

Part 3: Change

Two days later
Thousands of kilometers away

Traveling for days, Shinji lay limp in the Second Angel's grasp. He wondered how all this had happened. Adam... the return of the Angels.

Lilith set them down softly on the outskirts of some abandoned city. They landed with a soft thud, the dark mirage that clouded over them faded, her power that let her hide from Adam disappearing for the moment.

Shinji stood there panting softly. Barely believing it. In two days so much had happened.

Those people... they all died, he thought.

"We should be safe here. For a time. The humans who tried to settle here failed and left years ago. Adam is persistent." Lilith said, seemingly not bothered at all by the deaths they had witnessed.

What does he even want? I thought the other Angels were trying to rescue him? Shinji thought darkly.

He is taking his revenge. Even if it were not the case, he would not tolerate mankind's existence. He comes for us, but I will protect you. Lilith answered in his mind. A small smile on her lips.

Shinji shuddered at the sensation, at Lilith speaking directly into his mind. It was not pleasant.

"Why are you doing this?" Shinji asked for a second time. His eyes distant and lost, feeling his strength come back, but withered and old.

True to her word, Lilith had healed him. His internal bleeding was gone, his bones had been reset, pushed back into his flesh and leaving grizzly scars. But he was still broken on the inside. No amount of mending could change that.

Lilith turned to him, tilting her head in confusion.

"I told you. I do not want you to die." Lilith said, smiling up at him.

She approached him, her arms held out, hands reaching to cup his face, but Shinji stepped back rejecting her touch.

"I love you. Why do you want to die so badly?" Lilith asked, honestly confused by his rejection.

Maybe I don't deserve a life anymore. It doesn't matter. People are getting hurt out there... good people. Mari... Ichiro and his mother... what hope do they have with Adam on the loose? What hope does anyone have in a world this broken? Why do I even care anymore... don't know. I think Asuka would have cared. She would have tried to fight Adam. Me? I just ran... Shinji thought.

Why can't you just be happy? You are alive. I brought you back, Shinji. I took this form because I thought it would please you. Lilith's voice told him from inside his head. She spoke to him telepathically.

Shinji winced.

Ahhhh. Still not used to that. If you really can hear my thoughts, Lilith, then why didn't you help us earlier. When my daughter was dying where WERE you? Shinji thought. Cold broken eyes meeting ageless red ones.

Lilith tilted her head at him.

"As I said, I kept my distance to protect you. Adam had risen at long last. You saw it in your dreams, your visions. He brought the worst winter you had ever seen. The winter that almost destroyed Haven, that took Akane from you, Adam did that." she told him blankly.

The words hit Shinji like a bombshell. A low punch to his gut. The fact that his worst nightmares had been right. He had seen Adam bring forth winter in his dreams, he had seen it the night before the snow had started falling.

He felt his knees go weak. His lips shudder and his eyes tremble.

Akane... I'm sorry. If I had known... there's nothing I could have done. I'm just an old man now. I don't have my Eva. I haven't had it for thirty years, Shinji thought glumly.

He let out a slow heavy breath.

Lilith waited calmly for him to speak, unblinking red eyes never leaving him.

"I saw him. The scars of Instrumentality... that's why I can see those things. Why I had visions... years of them... I was seeing your memories. And more... I saw Adam repairing himself under the ocean. A figure surrounded in darkness, incomplete somehow. So many years I never realized what it was. What he was doing," Shinji panted out with horrified eyes.

If Shinji had known... what could he have done? Gone looking for the First Angel below the red sea? Gone hunting for him in his weakened state? No... surviving in the Post Impact World had been a challenge on its own.

"You really want to help me? Go kill Adam. That monster destroyed my old home... killed so many people. Do you Angels hates us that much?" Shinji said bitterly. He looked up at Lilith almost pleadingly.

He wasn't sure how he still cared anymore. But just this once, he felt a flicker of something inside him. A part of him that had allowed him to be an Eva pilot. A part that had let him fight the Angels to save mankind.

"I cannot kill Adam. He is stronger than me."

Shinji rolled his eyes, feeling like he was a hundred years old. Arguing with Lilith was like arguing with a machine that had learned to talk. In some ways harder to talk to than Rei had been in the beginning.

"Leave me alone. I'd never asked any of this," Shinji said in barely a whisper.

Lilith opened her mouth to speak, more confused than anything, as Shinji rose to his feet. He walked off in the distance, drifting and not caring where he ended up.

Odd, he'd never confused an Angel before.

Lilith trailed after him. Perfect pale white skin standing in stark contrast to his battered and weathered face, her form ageless and untouched, but he stopped her.

"Stop following me," Shinji said, his voice empty.

She blinked at him. Almost sad. And in a small dark part of his mind, Shinji had a flash from his memories. Of walking away from Mari, of leaving her behind.

He never looked back.

In a flicker of movement, so fast his eyes couldn't keep up, Lilith was in front of him. Red eyes inches from his own and he stopped in his tracks.

"You will die out there," Lilith said, eyes wide and concerned.

Just like Mari... he thought. Reliving the moment he had abandoned that poor girl, left her behind, the image of her screaming at him as he walked away.

"You shouldn't have brought me back," Shinji said unblinkingly.

Lilith opened her mouth to speak but found no words. It was like he had hurt her. Like he had actually wounded an Angel without an Eva. As if those words had broken her heart.

A cold breeze came upon them. Light, as if from afar. Small particles of snow fell from the sky. Remnants from Adam'a wrath, even this far away. Shinji and Lilith stood there in the early snow, unmoving as they came to terms with reality.

"What can I do? What will make you happy? I do not want you to die. Husband-"

"I'm not your husband. And there's nothing you can do. The Angels walk the earth again and it's too late for this world. It always was, we just didn't know it," Shinji said somberly.

If Shinji had been a younger man, he would have been in awe, an Angel crying. Lilith shed tears silently. His younger self would have never thought that possible.

Lilith stood, her lips trembling, as strange LCL like fluid trailed down her face. Tears falling from her face silently.

Humph. I even hurt an Angel in the end. Is there nothing that I don't ruin? He thought.

Shinji walked passed her. It really was too late. He was old and tired.

"What if you could fix things? What if you could stop all this from happening?"

Shinji stopped in his tracks.

He froze, before turning slowly to face the Angel that wore his wife's face. She was crying into the night, watching him with almost human eyes.

"I can't. You told me that you couldn't kill Adam. And even then, it wouldn't bring my daughter back. It wouldn't bring anyone back." Shinji spat.

"What if you could? What if... what if you could go back and change things. Unravel all this. The failed Instrumentality, Third Impact, this world you made, even Adam and I. What if you could travel back and stop it all."

Lilith seemed to shrink visibly as she spoke. Slanting off-balance as if the very idea of such a thing scared her. And anything that scared an Angel was a feat in of itself.

"... what are you talking about? Go back? Fix everything... how? I- stop everything that happened? Third Impact and-" Shinji stammered.

"Time travel."

Lilith answered him hesitantly, her lips almost refusing to say the words. As if discussing such things physical pained her.

Shinji stood there watching Lilith for a moment. The light snow breezing by and lashing at their faces, another winter was coming. Adam's wrath.

A moment of silence passing between them. A Man and an Angel standing in the cold. A flicker of something, less than a ghost of... of hope stirring in the old man.

"Is that a power you have?" Shinji whispered slowly. His heart beat softly at his words. His lips trembled slightly as he spoke. Going back... could she really do that. Send him back in time?

Lilith shook her head.

"Not by myself. I do not have that power. It is complicated. Something that is forbidden."

"Forbidden? Forbidden by what? You're a freaking Angel!" Shinji said almost shouting, his voice harsh and raw.

Lilith looked away from him. Eyes examining the grounds around them. Desolate and cold.

"Forbidden by the ones who made me. My creators," Lilith answered.

Shinji blinked. Not understanding.

"Did you think that we were divine, Shinji? Did you never wonder what the Angels actually were? We are not gods, we are not divine. Adam and I were not born, we were built. Designed and assembled for a purpose. A purpose that Adam no longer follows." Lilith said. Her words seeming to echo through his mind. Empty and hollow just like he was. The pains and sorrow of an Angel.

"What the hell could make Angels?" Shinji asked confused. In his time at Nerv, he had never gotten an answer to how the Angels came to be. Not ever.

"They were called the First Ancestral Race. It no longer matters. They are gone. What matters is that we could send you back," Lilith said, turning away from such memories.

"How? You said you could give me a second chance. Tell me," Shinji said nearly panting in the cold. Something inside him stirring at this possibility. A drive to see it through.

"It would take both Adam and I. Both our powers. Through a loophole in you and you alone. I would have to change you to do it. You would no longer be Lilin, not truly, not human anymore." Lilith said avoiding his gaze. Staring at her feet.

"You would turn me into an Angel?" Shinji asked eyes wide.

Then slowly, ever so slowly, she raised her head to face him. Her eyes showing mixed emotion, a kaleidoscope of conflicting thoughts in her eyes. Awe, boldness, curiosity, sorrow, pity, guilt, pleading, and love. Truly, he could see it. Lilith loved him.

It's Mari all over again. I don't love you, Lilith. I'm sorry, but I don't. I've learned that lesson already. Just... help me, Shinji thought darkly.

"No. Not an Angel. Not human either. You would be something new. Something my creators would have not have anticipated." Lilith said.

She glanced down at her hands, mirroring Shinji's own movements when he inspected his bad hand, and Shinji saw it. Strange arcs of light emerged from her fingers, crossing over the palm of her hand before disappearing.

"If I did this, it would be the hardest thing you have ever done. In the end, you would go where I could not follow. And the future does not override the past, that fact is why my creators forbid it. Once you returned... there would be two of you."

"Two of me? I- there would be a younger version of myself. Then- it wouldn't be me. I wouldn't get to live with them... he would... the other me... I- I don't care. If I could change things I would. Whatever it takes. I could go back and stop all of this. Rei, Asuka, Akane... I could save them all. They could live in a better world. Not whatever nightmares this is." Shinji said hands curling into fists.

His heart flickered back into existence at long last.

Even now he could see them. He could close his eyes and see the ghosts that haunted him. Misato, Kaji, Ritsuko, Asuka... Rei and Akane. Countless others. The world. Everyone and everything he had lost.

"There would be two Shinji Ikari(s). It would be dangerous. Every day would hurt you. And there is no guarantee that it would work. To do it... you would need to kill Adam. We need his power too, mine is not enough."

"But you said- you said Adam was stronger than you. That you couldn't kill him." Shinji said, swallowing hard, this was a lot to take in.

Not by myself. Together, we might stand a chance. But first I need to start the process. I need to change you. Then... then we'd have a chance against the First Angel," Lilith told him.

Shinji took in her words slowly. Carefully. Lilith was offering him a second chance, one that she admitted she could not follow him with. She would be left behind without him. And she did it all because she loved him.

Lilith could hear his thoughts. His feelings of anxiousness and something almost like hope, but more bitter, welling up inside him.

I do. Not only the piece of Rei inside me. But the whole. I would do this for you. To make you happy. Is this what you want? Is this what I can give you? Lilith said speaking directly into his mind.

Shinji winced at the sensation. He wasn't used to having a voice in his head.

"Please... do it." Shinji pleaded.

Lilith walked to him, slowly, her soft footsteps leaving a small trail in the snow. Yet the white powder never clung to her, truly a creature above such things. Untouched by the trials of the world.

Shinji stumbled back as his shirt was ripped open by forces unseen. The rags that had covered his torso pulled themselves apart as Lilith raised her hands.

"What are you-"

"I need to rewrite your DNA. This is the only way. It will be painful. Oh my husband, forgive me," Lilith whispered to him.

Then the Second Angel plunged her hand inside Shinji's chest. Her fingers and palm slipping inside and through his flesh, his chest seemed to fold around the Angel's hand as Lilith worked her magic on him.

Her wrist protruded out of his chest. Sorcery that he couldn't begin to understand moved throughout his body and Lilith began to change him.

Shinji gasped out harshly. Unable to even speak.

He could feel every cell, every nerve, muscle, bone, and vein responding to Lilith's hand. Her control of his DNA down to a genetic level. Able to edit it, to modify it, to change it as a programmer changes lines of code. Removing and adding.

Entire blocks of his genetic code were altered.

Shinji's veins turned black. His heart rate accelerated and he felt blood in his eyes. Lilith had been right, this was the hardest thing he'd ever done. Like being wide awake during surgery, like being aware as his flesh was being ripped apart and put back together again.

He screamed and Lilith comforted him. She guided him to his knees, her hand in his chest, changing him even as he lost consciousness and knew no more. The last sensations he could remember being the feelings of pale lips atop his forehead. And tears landing on his cheek, not his but hers.

---

"Lilith killed me. And then she brought back for a third time.

I ended up dying more than once after that. Each time she brought back. My soul was patched back into my corpse, Lilith stitching my mind back together, healing any wounds during the process...

It was the only way to do what she needed to do. The process of making me part Angel was not easy. She modified and rewrote my DNA while I was awake. There was no medicine to put me to sleep, no entry plug to reduce me to an LCL like form, no... this was painful.

And it took multiple sessions.

But I bared it. Because I knew that this world was doomed. There was nothing here, and not even the Second Angel could change that. She couldn't make me 'happy' just by bringing me back to life. She couldn't fix the world once it was this far gone.

So she offered me a second chance, and I took it. I could make a world where my children could have lived, could have grown without all this mess. Where they could have never known the pain I have lived through.

Lilith told me that I would never be the same, and I could feel it, the skin that was not my own.

That was only the first step. Lilith put pieces of herself inside me. Her power flowed through my veins.

Lilith became my teacher." - the broken man.

---

One month later.

The First Angel hunted them.

Adam seemed to know that he and Lilith were planning something. Adam came for them and they ran.

The First Angel crushed woods and forests, abandoned cities and hideouts, bringing his wrath wherever he came. Lilith flew the two of them further and further away each time.

Adam brought winter to the already harsh and brutal wastelands. Killing humans again and again. A cruel Angel that would have his vengeance.

It all blurred for Shinji. Becoming part Angel taking its toll on him.

…

The Angel and the hybrid lay on the grounds of a barren frozen land. The ruins of a farm someone had tried to run, before dying or else being driven away, nearby. Dark skies loomed over them.

The Broken Man opened his eyes slowly. As if reluctantly breaking free of a faded dream, neither good nor bad... it just was.

His bones ached, the blood in his veins felt foreign, wrong somehow. Not his anymore. His skin was not his own, it had aged him again. He could feel the cracks and wrinkles of the elderly creeping onto his torso, could feel his body showing the signs of falling apart. The symptoms of age and something more. It healed, it always did, but not without leaving a mark.

Lilith was watching him.

The Angelic entity stood over him, tilting her head at him, a soft yet cold smile on her lips as Shinji Ikari returned from the void of death yet again. She often watched over him until he woke from the void. Never leaving his side until he did.

"Uhhhhh," Shinji half groaned half-whispered, his voice rough and hard.

Slowly, he rose to a sitting position and pulled his aching legs up. He rose like a corpse being forced to move again, like a dead man whose soul refused to leave its body.

There are days I feel so old, he thought.

His beard was growing more unkempt with each passing day. He would have to remember to shave it before they were done.

Weakly, he turned to Lilith.

"You are cold?" Lilith said, concern underlining her voice... and something more. The power in her voice sent him on edge at times. Lilith wasn't only changing him, she was changing herself as well. She lost bits of herself every time she added more to him.

Like speaking with a God. Like conversing with a force of nature itself, sitting at the beating heart of a storm. A man witnessing something much more than a mortal.

He nodded.

In a flash, a blur of movement, the firewood that had been haphazardly left out was re-arranged into a pile and it sparked to life. The fire emerged onto the scene just as the dawn came over the barren wasteland that was the post-impact world. This empty place where life was fleeting and the cold came and went as Adam willed it.

Lilith was gone.

She moved so fast that Shinji's eyes couldn't keep up. He vaguely wondered where she had gone to when he felt a small weight on his shoulder.

Lilith was sitting beside him, laying her head on his shoulder. She did that from time to time, she enjoyed her time with him even if it was temporary.

"What happened?" the Broken Man whispered softly. Hollow emptied out eyes staring at the dancing flames before him and his only companion, barely feeling the warmth at all. Like his body was refusing to grant him even that small luxury.

Last he remembered, he'd been crying out as Lilith worked her sorcery on him. This thing that science couldn't explain, altering him down to the genetic level. Ripping him open down to his cells and changing him, mixing foreign DNA into his own and pushing his brain to its limits as she gave him the gifts of Instrumentality. The gift of memory.

"You died," Lilith said, a hint of fear working its way into her voice. She had a habit of clinging to him once he'd been brought back.

Shinji paused feeling a faded chill go down his spine. He felt himself oddly numb to the whole thing, barely flinching at the answer anymore.

Of course. Another breakdown. Shinji thought. He flexed the three fingers on his bad hand wondering if he'd feel anything anymore. Even death seemed to be losing its grip on him.

So he'd died again. His body breaking into massive organ failure and he'd had a seizure as his brain was overloaded with the gifts of Lilith again. She'd told him that it would happen. The human brain had limits were the Angel's did not.

"Sweet Shinji, you're almost done. Your body lasted much longer this time." Lilith whispered to him.

The Angel nuzzled closer to him, her enormous shadow dancing in the campfire. Shinji hardly felt it anymore, only a distant truth.

"How many times have I died now?" he asked softly.

"Six," Lilith answered. Her voice echoing in his mind as she spoke, being in this form was difficult for her at times.

He closed his eyes as he took that in.

Six deaths. Six rebirths. Is this what Rei felt when she was brought back? This emptiness inside... this darkness that won't fade? He thought.

"No Shinji. Your father transferred the remnants of a soul into another body. The new body had its own soul, however, an incomplete artificial one, but a soul none the less. Rei was a collective being. Like me in many ways, but far less complex." Lilith answered.

She did that from time to time, reading his thoughts without asking for permission. Peering into his mind as easily as breathing.

"Gendo and Nerv never truly understood what they made when they created Rei."

Rei was Rei. She was a person and- he thought.

"Yes, Rei was Lilin. Human in the end. She watched you despite your father's orders, and she learned. Throughout all her incarnations she grew attached to you. She loved you." Lilith said softly.

Shinji opened his eyes weakly, his chest growing heavy with sorrow. Rei... he couldn't save her in the end. And Lilith was... spending so much time with her was unnerving at times. The shadow of his wife in the Angel that was helping him.

"Did she suffer as I do? Did she feel this pain?" he whispered, his lips trembling as he dreaded the answer.

She felt the sorrow of memories without context. You are different. Never a soul transferred across vessels, you are the one who has faced death and returned. You are much more than Rei or Kaworu ever were. You will be beyond anything the humans were able to build Lilith's voice echoed across his mind. Her answer to his question.

The Angel's words were of no comfort. Instead, Shinji merely nodded staring into the fire and wishing he could feel warm. Wishing he could feel anything.

No... Lilith is wrong. Not more but less. Neither Man nor Angel, I will be less than both. Less than a man, I already feel it. The loss... he pondered.

"It hurts... coming back," Shinji whispered suddenly.

Lilith tilted her head at him curiously.

"Dying is easy. But returning... it's like being born all over again, only I can feel everything in that one moment between life and death. Like every muscle is screaming as it comes back to life, my heart aching as it starts to beat again. And I... I" Shinji said.

He struggled with the words, his throat harsh and raw. His voice coming out in low feverish bits, like a man carved from the inside out and put back together again.

"And?"

He raised his hands up, looking at the faded scars littered across them over his years as a farmer in Haven. Lilith had offered to heal them, but Shinji had refused. The scars helped him remember.

"Every time I come back. I'm a bit less. Pieces of me get chipped away," he said, his voice broken and shrill.

He shuddered, shaking his head, feeling the ice cold blood running through his veins. Angel blood that ran along his body now. And his eye... his eye was starting to change.

Bits of red bled into the brown of his right eye. Angel DNA mixed into his own.

"It takes a moment to remember my name, in that space everything is hollow. I don't know who I am and I can't remember anything from before. Then it all comes flooding back. My memories, and the ones you gave me, but something's missing. Always missing." he said, shaking his head as his lips trembled.

"When you bring me back... I slip more and more. I think the old me is fading with each death. It gets harder and harder, more painful every time. I'm still here and at the same time I'm not." he whispered.

The sheer cold that lingered after he'd died for the sixth time and been brought back. This emptiness inside that cut into his soul with each rebirth. He was used to it, he'd been broken since his daughter had died.

"I warned you that it would be painful, Shinji. There is no other way. A human could not use my powers, could not hold this information in their brain." Lilith said, her voice seeming to echo in his mind as well as his ears. She ran her hands across his chest gently, her fingers radiating the power underneath the form she took even now. Before it had unsettled him... now he was numb to it.

"I know," he said wearily.

Lilith frowned in concern at him.

"No mere man could take the powers of the Angels and bend them to their will. I told you that you would have to be something more than human. And that once we began there would be no going back. Yet, you are tired. We need not go any further. Shall we stop? I have no qualms about sharing this life with you."

"Adam is still out there," he said blankly.

"I can protect you. Always. He comes for me, not you. No matter, with me you will be ageless from here on out. You would be cared for," Lilith said nuzzling up against him. Her voice stern, a rare feat for Lilith, and strong. She rested her head on his shoulder, basking in him despite how cold he felt.

Shinji blinked with tired eyes, feeling ancient and so weak that part of him wanted to stop. Wanted to let Lilith care for him here in the empty earth.

This Angel who had learned how to be almost human, almost Rei, soothing him of all things. Loving him in a way he didn't fully understand, in a way that he could never return. She was willing to do this all for him. Willing to change him or else to stop and live here with him for an eternity.

And he had no doubt about it. Lilith had brought him back to life six times now, he was sure she could and would keep doing it. Running from Adam and surviving. He could live out in this wasteland, waiting for the brief months of summer year after year, all with only Lilith for company. Not his Rei anymore, but Lilith.

More than that, with Lilith to heal him and sustain him... he would live so long as she did. And he had never known an Angel to die of old age.

"No," he said, his voice raw with emotion that came flooding back to him. He shook his head blinking rapidly.

He squeezed his hands into fists so tightly that his nails started to bleed. The blood ran down his hands and he forced himself to feel it. To come back. Fighting the emptiness inside him.

"I have a job to do and I'm gonna see through. Whatever it takes. I'm used to pain and if I die again and again, then I die." Shinji said. Gritting his teeth as he spoke.

It hurt but it was good. Good to feel once more.

He closed his eyes, using the gifts of Lilith. Accessing the memories inside his mind with full clarity, perfect memory.

…

He saw images of his daughter. Teaching her to walk whilst Asuka watched him, a small pleasant smile on her face as she watched him play with his kid.

Rei as she had been before her death, sleeping beside him and nuzzling close.

Using this power meant more than just seeing things that had came to pass, it was like reliving it all together. Every emotion, every touch, every pain, and every joy, he felt them all once again.

If he chose to, he could even 'walk' among the memory and interact with it to some degree. Able to observe things with a perfect clarity that he would not have remembered when he was human.

He felt his daughter's hands in his as if she was right there with him, he could remember his wife's smile as if she was standing in front of him, could remember burying her as if he was plunging the shovel into the earth all over again.

Shinji didn't know if he had ever been happy at all, no victories but a constant stream of giving and taking in his life. But if he had been happy, it would have been with them. The old man clung to those memories, clung to his humanity amid the darkness that tore at him after each death.

A purpose that kept him going. Creating a world where they could have lived.

…

"It's not about me. It never was." The Broken Man said opening his eyes.

Lilith had moved again. Seeming to disappear and reappear as she did so.

She knelt down in front of him, taking his hands in hers and watching him unblinkingly with those dark unnaturally red eyes of hers.

Morality was a foreign concept to an Angel. Something 'new' that she had observed from him as he'd lived on past the Third Impact, always watching him and learning. Lilith had truly grown to love him, in her own way, and he saw it in her eyes.

There was nothing he could hide from her, so he didn't. She saw his pains and his rage, his willingness to do anything for his family and all the people he had failed. The burden he carried for a choice he made as a 14-year-old child. The Angel witnessed him go against the natural call for self-preservation. Saw him break his own 'programming' as she would say. Willing to die over and over again just for the chance to set things right.

You are beautiful... Shinji Ikari. Lilith's voice rang inside his head. Almost sad, as if she wished he would not do this. Yet knowing that he would always make this choice.

Lilith ran her hands along his, and he felt the sensation of his wounds closing along them. Healing as Lilith used her power on him again.

You couldn't shake hands with a hurricane. You could not befriend a tsunami. But being healed by Lilith, having his hands in hers, felt like that anyway.

"Rest. I will watch over you, husband. Always."

---

Part 4: Angel

"It is done. This is as far as I can take you. For the rest, we will need Adam's power. He will not give it willingly."

Shinji rose from the bundle of blankets Lilith had wrapped over him, better to let him sleep whenever he could. Lilith herself never slept, she had no need of such things. But she often lay beside him whilst he rested.

He walked out of the cave they'd been hiding in, Adam having chased after them barely a week ago. Shinji stopped at the barren remains of a pond nearby. Looking at his reflection in the murky almost dead water.

Shinji's eyes gave him away now. One of them was Angel red and the other was brown.

So... this is what I become? He thought, taking in the cool air. He raised his hands to look at them again. His torso was different, pale white skin woven along what remained of his normal flesh.

His skin was no longer his own. He was different now. Something new. Half-Human, Half-Angel.

Lilith stood beside him. Flickering in and out of existence, only this time Shinji could follow her movements. His eyes were able to keep up with her vast speed, if only just.

He glanced down at his hand, noticing a small bruise from the last time he and Lilith had had to run. Flying off into the distance before Adam could catch them.

Lilith had left that there for him.

"Try it," Lilith whispered.

Shinji ran his fingers along the bruise. Calling upon the powers of Lilith running through his veins, the Angel part of him, and the bruise vanished. Healing itself, working with his own flesh, repairing the damage.

The Gift of Healing.

"It's a start," Shinji whispered. That was never easy. He doubted if he would ever be as good as Lilith, but he could start healing minor injuries now. On himself and others.

He could also look through his own memories with perfect clarity now. And more. Could access memories that Lilith had given him. Important details that he needed to know. To understand. Far more than a human brain could have held.

"Adam knows what you've done to me," Shinji said slowly. He took deep slow breaths and let the air fill his foreign lungs, reaching out with his Angel senses.

"You can feel him? All the Angels are linked. Adam and I, and even his children. Our creators made us so." Lilith said tilting her head at him.

...

In his mind's eye, Shinji felt it, he saw a flickering image of a Giant of Light walking the earth with thunderous footsteps. The First Angel left craters in his wake, searching for Lilith and him, hunting them. Killing humans along the way, denying them warmth or summer, an eternity of winter approaching as Adam's strength returned.

Then a voice, low and powerful, an undertone of rage along its pitch, hissed outward for Shinji to hear. All within his mind's eye. A booming voice.

"YOU DARE WATCH ME? ABOMINATION. LILIN THAT IS NOT LILIN." Adam hissed.

Shinji had learned the language of the Angels.

Adam turned, the Giant of Light reaching out menacingly, aware that Shinji was watching him through the link all Angels shared. The First Angel's mind reached out to attack Shinji's.

Only the connection was cut.
...

Lilith had a hand on Shinji's shoulder, and he opened his eyes, leaving that mental space where the Angels were linked. Lilith had pulled him out before Adam found their location. Before Adam attacked them mentally.

"Be careful. Now and in the past, the Angels will sense you. They will know you are something different. Something they will not be able to understand. They will call you, an Abomination." Lilith warned him.

Abomination? What does that even mean to them? What am I now? Man or Angel? He thought.

"You are you. The Angels will fear you. You will be a threat to them unlike any other."

Shinji nodded slowly.

"I'm still getting used to this," he muttered. The last thing they needed was for Adam to come crashing down on them before they were ready.

Lilith looked at him worriedly. She had been putting this off for days now, but the time was coming sooner or later.

The Broken Man flexed his hands, opening them and closing them, his fingers curling as he did so. An old habit from his human days.

Adam is so strong. I could feel it when I watched him. He could sense me too. He knew what I was... terrifying. We need our weapons. He thought matter-of-factly.

He glanced up at the faded sky, and at the stars hidden above them. Looking to the far reaches of space.

"I'm ready. What do I need to to do?" he asked, his voice hoarse and dry.

---

Higher ground
Atop a mountain.

"Call it. It won't listen to me. Not anymore, but it will for you," Lilith told him.

Shinji nodded.

He strode forward. Watching from atop the mountain the two of them stood perched on. Better to get to the high ground. The ruins of the broken world lay below.

A world destroyed by Third Impact, and later Adam's wrath.

Shinji raised his hands up, closing his eyes as if in prayer.

The Abomination reached out with his Angel senses. Using the network that connected all Angels and creations of the First Ancestral Race. Reaching out for the one thing that could stop Adam.

The thing SEELE had unknowingly given to him. Those foolish old men had made him the vessel of Instrumentality, had bound the Spear of Longinus to him when he was only 14 years old. Even now, out among the far reaches of space... that bond had never been severed.

As a man, a human, he lacked the strength to call it. His brain had struggled with his connections forged by Instrumentality, the visions he had suffered for over thirty years, but now he could take it. Could process it.

"Mother," Shinji whispered.

…

Space
Outside the solar system.

Evangelion Unit 01 drifted further and further away. The Spear of Longinus within its grasp. Over three decades since it had left earth and it remained undamaged. More alive then machine. The Last of the Eva Units.

Yui Ikari stirred, confused at the Spear.

"What?" the woman stammered.

Her soul lived on within the Evangelion. Immortal within her new body. Having left Earth so long ago.

The Spear shook in her hand. The red metal shuddering in stark contrast to the Eva's plate armor. As if the Spear was coming alive.

"How- What is this? … Shinji" Yui whispered.

The Spear shot out, trying to break free of her hands, but Yui held on. Eva Unit 01 struggled to keep the Spear in its grasp, refusing to let it go.

…

Shinji kept his hand raised. He opened his eyes slowly, coming to terms with what had happened.

"She's fighting me. My mother- she doesn't want to come back," Shinji whispered, crestfallen. Heartbroken at his own mother's rejection. His hand still raised.

The Spear responded to his call despite the immeasurable distance between them. The distance between Earth and out into the deeper expanse of the stars. Outside of the solar system.

"There is a reason she ran, Shinji. A reason she took the Spear with her when she left." Lilith said somberly.

The Second Angel did not like to see him like that. She never liked to see him in pain, physical or otherwise, but she knew he had to face the truth. Come to terms with it once and for all.

"My mother knew this would happen. She knew that Adam and you would come back." Shinji said darkly, glancing back at Lilith.

He took a deep breath, turning his attention back to the skies above, to the Spear of Longinus and his mother. Shinji narrowed his eyes.

You just left... he thought.

He closed his hand into a clenched fist.

…

"Ahhh!" Yui cried out.

The Spear of Longinus turned against her. The Spear stabbed itself inside the Eva's chest. The weapon pierced all the way through the plate armor and extruding out through Unit 01's back.

Yui Ikari gaped at the Spear through the eyes of Eva Unit 01. Her immortal body was held within the Spear's grasp.

What is this? It's impossible. How could the Spear turn against me? How?- Yui thought before they started moving.

The Spear dragged the Eva, and the soul of Yui Ikari with it, along through the vast depths of space.

Space itself began to fold, time itself bending to its master's call, as the Spear of Longinus traveled. The stars became streaks of light from Yui's perspective, hurling towards the Sol System. The Spear returning to the one who had called it.

Shinji Ikari.

…

Earth

Shinji lowered his hand, breathing harshly.

Hardly believing it. His own mother had tried to resist the call... had tried to keep the Spear for herself.

"How long will it take to come back?" Shinji asked turning to face Lilith.

The Second Angel tilted her head at him.

"You called the Spear. You are the one who knows."

Shinji reached out with his Angel senses for the second time. Reaching out to the Spear, the thing was almost alive, able to communicate information if asked. A deterrent built by the First Ancestral Race, the people that had created the Angels.

The day of Third Impact, his mother had revealed herself as the soul within Eva Unit 01. Yui Ikari revealing herself to her son at long last. Then, as Shinji had rejected Instrumentality, Yui had left earth. She had left him behind as she flew off into space with the Eva and the Spear.

Ever since, she had been traveling further and further away. Three decades of travel that would need to be undone. The Spear was fast, but not instantaneous.

"Ten years. It will take ten years... " Shinji said his voice turning hollow and dry. His hands clenched into fists at the realization. All this work, dying and coming back, becoming something not 'human', and he had to wait. Such was his life, always.

"Then we wait."

Shinji looked up with hollow bitter eyes, facing Lilith once again. She reached her hands up and placed them on his chest lovingly, reassuringly, breathing softly at the contact. And just this once... he let her. He allowed himself to be soothed by the remnants of his wife.

"What happens now? We... run and hide? Survive Adam's wrath until the Spear comes back?" Shinji asked disheartened.

"We wait. And now, I train you. I will teach you what it means to be an Angel. To use the powers that I have given you. You will need them in the new timeline, beloved," Lilith whispered to him. Her hands cool to the touch.

---

Part 5: Reunion

10 years later
40 years after Third Impact

The Earth was a pale shadow of its former self. After Third Impact, it had been scarred, filled with barren wastelands with slices of life eking out an existence along the ruins. Small settlements and glimmers of society shinning out amid the brutal roads and gangs of bandits.

After the Angels had returned, when Adam had risen after thirty years of slumber and regeneration, what glimmers remained were no more.

The First Angel had brought death wherever he went, truly putting an end to the human race at long last. Nothing and no one survived the frozen lifeless planet anymore.

None, save for two others. Lilith and Shinji Ikari... until now.

The Evangelion Unit came crashing down like a comet. A star burning up in the night sky propelled along by the Spear of Longinus. The Spear immobilized Yui even as it brought her back to earth. The titan of human engerineering flashed across the expanse as it re-entered the atmopshere, shining bright with a kaleidoscope of colors.

It was with an earth-shattering thud, an explosion of dirt and debris that rocked entire mountains to their core, that the Evangelion crashed landed. Causing miniature earthquakes in its wake.

Two figures emerged from the cloud of debris. The dust clouds fading as the two emerged onto the scene, they came upon a crater the size of an Evangelion. The Spear of Longinus still impaled across the Eva's torso, holding it in place.

...

Yui Ikari weakly turned the Eva's eyes. And inwardly, she gasped at the sight of an old broken man in rags walking alongside a woman in the dark.

Shinji Ikari stopped just at the edge of the crater. Slowly, he put a hand to the rusted armor plating of Eva Unit 01.

"Hello... mother."

He ran his hands along the metal, his eyes closed as if lost in memory. Decades now, and he could still remember all the old bumps and brusies on the Eva. The machine he had piloted as just a boy, fighting monsters alongside his 'then' family.

Lilith rose, hovering up into the air, before flying above. The Second Angel soared over the Spear of Longinus impaled upon the Eva, and settled herself at the back of the massive machine's neck.

Shinji watched as Lilith plunged her hands, both of them, into Eva Unit 01. Not inside the plate armor, but the strange flesh underneath it, Lilith working her sorcery on the Eva. The clone of herself built by Nerv and SEELE.

With a whirl of twisted metal, of rusted hinges and weathered mechanical gears, the entry plug was released and opened out. A hiss of long compressed air rushing out as the plug was left out in the open. The long cylindrical tube landed with a heavy thud.

Lilith had forced Yui to release the entry plug.

Shinji strode into the cockpit. Stepping inside, he took a seat. He ran his hands over the old controls, remembering all the times he had sat here, piloting the Eva, fighting Angels, Misato in his ear via the comm. Ritsuko adding input from the control room. Asuka and Rei at his side... it seemed like a lifetime ago. Some different person than the old man sitting here now amid this horror.

Lilith closed the entry plug, forcing it back into Eva Unit 01 even as Shinji gestured with his hand, reaching out with his Angel senses, and the Spear began to move.

Yui groaned from within the Eva, the Spear of Longinus slowly rose free. The strange object pulled itself out of the Evangelion at Shinji's command. Then it hovered above patiently.

"Sync ratio at 53%," Shinji whispered as he booted up the Unit's long-dormant computer systems. 01 came back to life at his call, almost like an old friend saying hello in the darkest of days.

Before, it had taken a pool of Nerv's LCL to pilot, but not anymore. Not since Lilith had changed him.

He closed his eyes, reaching out with his Angel senses and found the soul of Yui Ikari living inside his old Eva. They needed to talk.

---

The Other Place
The void where souls could communicate

When Shinji opened his eyes he found himself standing in an empty white void that stretched on forever.

Yui Ikari stood watching him in awe. She hadn't aged a day since her 'accident' in the contact experiment when he was seven. The day she had faked her death to put her soul inside the Eva. She looked exactly the same as when she had left earth, the day of the Third Impact.

40 years and at long last... Mother and Son. Together again.

"Mom. It's been a while. I've had a rough time as of late," Shinji rasped slowly, hesitantly.

Yui brought a hand to her mouth in shock.

"Shinji..." Yui breathed.

It was as if all the air had been sucked out of her lungs in shock. The realization that this broken shell of a man, tall with mixed colored eyes, one red and the other brown, dressed in rags... this abomination of Angel and Human standing before her... was her son.

"Yes mother, it's me. I'm not that little boy anymore. But look at you. Humph, you haven't aged a day. Living on with my Eva for a body. Immortal. Ageless." Shinji said his eyes wandering as his voice drifted. Somber and quiet.

Yui opened her mouth to speak, still in shock at the walking corpse of a man before her, but Shinji interrupted. This wasn't that sweet little kid she'd left behind so long ago, his eyes were different, not only the color... but the light was gone. Cold, bittersweet. Empty.

"You won. You got your Immortality. Got the Eva. I hope it was worth it," Shinji said harshly, soft and quiet. Old pains coming through his voice.

A child abandoned by their parent.

"Shinji, I had to leave. I couldn't stay-"

"I don't care about that right now. Doesn't matter. You left me behind, but what's done is done. You know why I brought the Spear back," Shinji cut in.

Yui reached forward, bringing her hands to Shinji's face... and he closed his eyes at her touch. Her son had grown into something twisted, broken and mangled, and aged far beyond his time. It broke her heart to see him like this.

Fingers shaking the entire time, Shinji brushed his mother's hands off. He rejected her touch and gently pushing her away from him.

"Shinji?" Yui whispered, frowning up at him.

He was taller than her now.

"We don't have time for this. Mom, the Angels walk the Earth again... what's left of it." Shinji said in a tone harsher than he had meant.

Yui flinched at his tone, wincing back with sad crestfallen eyes.

"What's left?" she asked.

Shinji shook his head.

"The human race is dead. There's no one else. First thirty years were pretty bad, everything fell apart. Then the Angels came back. For ten years... Adam has been killing what's left of us. Wiping us out a settlement at a time. Bringing winter with him, controlling the weather itself. They never stood a chance out there," Shinji said unblinkingly. Eyes hollow and dead.

Another failure he would have to live with. Another sin to add to the list, both personal and impersonal, his failures as an Eva pilot, a protector of the human race, and his failures as a parent. A man whom could not save his daughter.

He sighed taking a deep hoarse breath, before speaking the truth, the thing he had tried to deny for months now.

"I am the last human," Shinji said.

He let the words fall as they may. Cold hard facts, once again he was the sole survivor of mankind. Always the last it seemed. Fated to end up here at the very end.

Lilith stirred at his speech in the outside world. Something that she had watched him struggle with for months now. Even now, Shinji could feel Lilith reaching out to him. Trying to comfort him the way that Rei would have. The ghost of a hand on his shoulder.

Yui's eyes fell, growing cold and distant yet not unloving as she spoke.

"Adam has risen. It must have taken him years to regenerate. To come back from whatever was left him after the Impact. He is... very hard to kill. The First and Second Angels share that quality, they're the originals. The Progenitors." Yui said slowly.

So she had been right. Adam and Lilith had returned, and if her math was right then it had taken them both roughly thirty years to recover from the failed Instrumentality that SEELE had created. To recover from the Third Impact.

Shinji looked up at her, red and brown eyes meeting hers, and Yui saw it again. That coldness that almost reminded her of Gendo. Yet it was different, Shinji was not Gendo, he never had been and never would be.

"We have a plan. I'm gonna go back, gonna fix all this mess they left me. Unravel the past to save the future," Shinji said never looking away, not once. Determined eyes with an undercut of strength staring unblinkingly into hers.

"Time travel? It's impossible, Shinji. And Lilith? What is she doing with you? She is the one who did... this to you. Changed you. Made you into something not human." Yui said, looking him up and down a second time.

"I did what I needed to do. Isn't that what you did? Using everyone around you to take the Eva in the end?" Shinji countered softly.

Yui shook her head saying "no. I'm not like you. Shinji... you can't trust Lilith. She's not human. She doesn't care about-"

"I trust Lilith with my life and my death. She's given everything for me. Which is more than I can say for you. You left a 14-year-old emotionally traumatized boy... in a post-apocalyptic world. Alone. With the only the hope that others would come back." Shinji cut in flatly.

Yui stared at him in shock. Her mouth agape. Hurt by his words. At the brutal truth at the core of them, the fact that she had left him behind the day of the Impact.

"Shinji you don't understand-"

"I told you. It doesn't matter, mom. Not anymore. But this is my chance, our chance, to set things right. To stop this nightmare of a future from happening." Shinji said pleading with her. Breaking his detached mask that isolated him from his feelings, letting his mother see him for whom he had become.

"Lilith can't do it alone. We need the power of Adam, too. And he won't give it willingly, he never would. I need your help mom," Shinji pleaded.

"Are you serious? You want to kill the First Angel? Steal his powers and use them for yourself? It's madness," Yui said pleading with Shinji to stop.

"I have to try. It's all I have left." Shinji countered sternly.

His fingers traced the faded lines where his wedding ring had once been. His mother noticed the gesture, noticed the mark along his good hand. And she knew, knew that her son had been married. Had had a wife. A wife that had died.

I'm sorry... son... She thought, the barest hint of tears in her eyes.

Yui looked away.

"You can't beat him. Adam is the most powerful Angel you have ever faced. Stronger than Zeruel. Stronger than Lilith. He was the First." Yui said somberly, unable to meet her son's eyes.

She is afraid. Your mother left earth for a reason, Shinji. She took the Spear for a reason. I have seen her heart and her soul. Even if you refuse too. You KNOW what you need to do. Lilith whispered into his mind.

Yui shifted, unable to hear the Second Angel.

I know, Lilith... I had thought... I had thought she would have helped me. That 'I' would have been enough for her. But I was wrong. Shinji thought bitterly. Fighting back the tears of an abandoned child. There was no time for such things.

So many times throughout the years, he had looked up in the night sky trying to find her, to find his Eva and wonder if she was looking down at him. All for nothing.

The truth is the only way. But to frame like this... I never thought I would have to. Did you only ever care about yourself, eh mom? he thought with a bittersweet taste running down his mouth.

"Adam knows that you're here, mother. He's been hunting us ever since he came back. Using me to get to Lilith. He would absorb her back into himself, devour her soul. He wants more power, needs it to make more Angels. And after Lilith, he will come for you too. But you already knew that, right mom?

Eva Unit 01 is a clone of Lilith. All those battles, fighting the Angels, and I never knew that I was piloting an artificial one.

Adam will come for you. This 'new body' of yours is fuel for him. But we can stop him.

I need the Eva, and I need the Spear.

Please... I need your help." Shinji said, eyes growing hollow and cold once again.

Nothing he had said had a been a lie. He suspected that Yui had known all of it already. But to hear it made it concrete. And if he had to frame the situation as a matter of survival, then he'd cast his own feelings aside and do it. He needed her help.

Yui stood there, her soul ageless and immortal from within the Eva, from within the Other Place, and she slowly raised her head to face him.

"Fine," his mother told him softly, distant and uncertain, but working with him.

…

"Sync ratio: 91%" Shinji called out from the Entry Plug.

Outside Lilith yanked her hands free, pulling them from the Evangelion's flesh underneath the plate armor. The Woman in the Dark perched herself on 01's shoulder. She would need to save her strength for the battle to come. It had been years since she had used her 'true' form.

Eva Unit 01 rose, Shinji piloting for the first time in decades. They loomed over the bitter remains of what had once been trees, and the Eva marched forward Spear of Longinus in hand.

…

Elsewhere, the First Angel rose to his feet.

Adam stood tall over the ruins of a mountain. The hill was long gone, blown to ashes in one of his earlier calamities. He could feel that the Spear of Longinus had returned. Lilith and her pet human had brought back the weapon that had stopped him the first time.

Completely healed now, the Giant of Light raised its massive head in anticipation. Power radiated from his body like the beating heart of a dying star.

A challenge that would at long last be answered.

…

Lilith, Old Man Shinji, and Yui Ikari vs Adam.

---

Next chapter will be the FINAL part of this arc. We will RETURN to the Current Timeline next. THANK YOU for your patience.

Bit of a jarring chapter I know. Shinji's first death marks the end of his human journey, and the return of the Angels into the story. His human problems are still there, but now the bigger and more fantastical elements are at play. I didn't want him to simply 'get powers', instead I wanted him to pay a price for them and he did. He is still paying that price in the Current Timeline.

Lilith is very hard to write, she has Rei's soul inside her, her memories and more. But she's not human. She's an Angel that has learned what it means to be human through Rei and Shinji, by watching them. Rei is ultimately the reason why Lilith loved and helped Shinji, her husband in that sense.

The return of Yui Ikari has been a long time coming. She's interesting to write about, and I think most people let her off way too easily. She abandoned Shinji twice. But now, they're together again. One last mission. We'll see more about them next. Remember where the Original Shinji is in the Current Timeline?

Coming Soon: Chapter 29 'Unraveled'
Thanks for Reading and please Review!