Ikari Gendo's funeral was a somber affair.

Shinji sat on a pew in the back of the chapel, an intimate space paid for by NERV and currently occupied by those same people. He had vague memories of his father's religiosity as a child, but he could have never imagined he'd been so pious as to want a church memorial service; if the thick stench of sin and prayer and rot weighed as heavy on his back as it had on his father, the occasion had to have been someone else's idea.

Ayanami stood still in a black dress next to the sealed coffin, eyes red with tears and what appeared to be genuine emotion over the loss of Gendo, all too befitting the role of the mourning widow; those who came with polite, empty condolences went to her first, before turning to look for Commander Ikari's real son and not spotting him at first glance. A few people did come his way; Dr. Katsuragi had, as had Aida and old Vice-Commander Fuyutsuki; Soryu had sent a letter from Berlin expressing her heartfelt condolences; none of that mattered to him, not when Ayanami was there, eternally stealing the spotlight away from him.

He'd never loved being the center of attention much, and neither had Ayanami, as the tension in her body revealed when someone came to her to lament the loss of Ikari; and yet, his every merit seemed to pale in comparison to Ayanami, silent, still, porcelain perfect Ayanami: a bespoke copy of his own mother, twisted to his own father's liking. Shinji had run away, the only thing he was good for, and he had been content with not seeing Ayanami or his father ever again; that was, until the pains of withdrawal from his father's approval had drawn him back into his orbit. In university he'd met Soryu, on her graduate degree already, who had joined him in Gehirn and been taken under Akagi's wing before she'd jumped to her death from her own creation; she'd left for Berlin then, escaped the loss of her mentor like Shinji had escaped that of his mother as a child.

Even in Gehirn, Ayanami had been there, his father's presence looming large over them both from the moment he'd walked into the office. Shinji wasn't blind; he'd grown to realize the purpose she'd been created for, his mother's lookalike built after his mother's death, and seeing how she and Gendo carried themselves around each other was only the confirmation to his hypothesis. His stomach churned at the thought, so he ran away from it, drowned himself in his field of work and never came back up to breathe; anything to avoid facing the pit of resentment and pity that bubbled in his chest, that in his darkest moments made him wish he'd been born a girl so he could have been loved by his father the way she was, that had him look at Ayanami and see not her body but a macabre collage of all his mother's and his father's mistakes alongside his own, that screamed at everyone around him to look at me, please notice me, please tell me you're satisfied with me, make me worthy of your approval.

Soryu had matched him well for that; they'd never been together for more than a month or two at a time, but she always had a way of making him feel whole, or rather forget his emptiness; in her bed, tangled up in their own egotism, they made each other feel like the only other person in the world aside from them. It helped that she had little tolerance to spare for Commander Ikari and none at all for Ayanami, an annoyance she'd drunkenly confessed to him stemmed from some buried, twisted attraction; the thought of being second best to her even in love had quickly burrowed into his brain, though Asuka had hurriedly reassured him she felt nothing of sorts for Ikari's pet doll on a leash, and soon after they'd broken up again.

He felt his body stand up from where he was seated and approach his father's coffin, the stare of Ayanami searing into his flesh as he looked down at the smooth grain of the wood that held his father's corpse inside it. He was tempted to call it his father, but he was not that anymore now, was he? Flesh and bone, his brilliant brain forever silenced – unless they'd managed to implant it somewhere that mattered, fuel for his godly delusions; that would have been more like him. A father, forever lost: no more approval to give or withhold, no more hopes to crush or entertain, no more children to harm or protect, no more bloodstains to wash from his hands. Rokubungi Ikari Gendo, his full name: Ikari had been Yui's surname, the more prestigious of the pair. His mother had died, his father had died: where did he come from now, what family did he have left, who was he without the pain that came of his blood?

"Ikari-kun," Ayanami called to him in a whisper. The children had gone outside with Dr. Katsuragi, and the guests had begun to say the last of their goodbyes and empty the chapel. He turned his head to her; she still wore her hair the same way she had as a child, when Gendo would cut it for her. They were the same age his mother was when she had died, her visage reflected in Shinji's face and Ayanami's own meticulously sculpted traits; no doubt this was what his father had been used to seeing under him in his wife, and what he'd near-perfectly succeeded in replicating in Ayanami, if in a more uncanny light. He had few memories of his mother, and all that was left of her now was Ayanami's likeness and his own surname.

She held his gaze, steady against his shifting eyes even with tears welled up in them. "We should get going, before they start clearing up the space; NERV assured us that they will take care of the body disposition as soon as the service is over." He thought of taking her by the shoulders and shaking her back to reality, making her feel the wrath spilling over inside himself, forcing her seemingly placid mind to take in the truth, to face that his father was gone for good, the man they'd both spent their entire lives trying to please. Shinji at least had been born of a man and a woman; Ayanami had been a purposeful creation, crafted to the exact liking of Gendo and made to serve him. What was she supposed to be, now that her master wasn't there to control her?

"Very well, we can get going then," he heard himself reply. Ayanami took her belongings from where she'd left them on a pew and began making her way out, her hands tightly clasped around the leather of her handbag; he was left alone, standing in a chapel with his back turned to the exit, the corpse of his father locked in a wood cage the only thing that mattered in the world.

"Ayanami", he called to her, not knowing if she'd left already or not. Her light footsteps came to a halt, and Shinji saw the scene as if outside himself, the scorned rivals in a duel facing away from each other moments before turning around and shooting. He dropped the gun.

"I'm sorry." He lowered his head, focused his gaze on the dark stain of the coffin lid, and he imagined Ayanami doing the same, counting the tiles in the flooring to avoid concentrating on the words he'd just said.

"I'm sorry too," she replied, her whispered voice echoing within the chapel. "I wish neither of us had had to undergo what we did." She'd expected him to reply; when he was silent, she hurried outside, left Shinji alone with his father's corpse. What did Ayanami know about what he'd been through, what gave her the right to think that she did? Her own life hadn't been easy, he could not deny that, but what did she know of his desperate search for his father's approval, she who had always had it? How much happier he'd have been in her place, a machine built to please and whose owner was pleased by it. He hated himself for thinking that, though he knew it to be true; their only want in life had been his father's approval, and she'd achieved it when he could not.

He walked away from the coffin when a few men came in and started dismantling the decorations, tossing away the flowers, removing the photographs; nobody asked him if he wanted to keep any, nor did he want to keep the photos of the man who'd gotten rid of all his mother's own.

The illusion unravelled in on itself, the funereal paraments came undone to show the bleak truth of Ikari Gendo: a man who'd aimed for the sun and drowned in a sea of his own mediocrity, a squalid memorial held for nonplussed colleagues by the children he'd spent his every waking hour bending to his will.

His life would go on, as would Ayanami's; they'd get up in the morning, go to work, steer clear of each other as much as possible, and go back home for a long time still; some 40 years they still had left of running through the motions of living. But his father was dead, buried and done for: the praise he'd strived to achieve would never come now. He wished he could have been there at least to see the life leak out of his body, but of course it was Ayanami that the honour had gone to, always the favourite, even in their father's last moment– his father. Gendo had to have been his father alone, or the horror of his actions would have washed away all that could be saved.

His footsteps echoed on the marble floor, heavier than Ayanami's, lighter than his father's had been; there still stood a coffin inside the chapel, which would soon be taken to burn up in flames, and he had turned his back to it and walked away, let him turn to ash with the woodworks one final time.