Chapter 3: A lost mother's lost love for her lost and alone child.

Yui Ikari POV

Death would be a more comforting state than this indescribable torturous prison of my own making.
To call the insides of Evangelion unit 1 purgatory would be to do it a grand and complimentary service that it was not worth, for if the holy books I studied intently in my youth in Sunday school had any grain of truth then purgatory was escapable when one realized one's sin and the exact reasoning behind its wrongness whereupon the merciful maker would grant the reformed sinner respite and reward in the form of the bespoken utopia "heaven".

In other words, you could eventually leave when your penance was considered done, and you repented.

There was no such conclusion awaiting me nor my sole soulmate (heh, soulmate) over the ages Kyoko as at the end of our patience once again, we mourned the passing of an indeterminate eon of time whose amount we could only ballpark from the occasional opportunities our children came to merge with us or rather the half living, half machine war machines we had doomed ourselves to spend eternity within knowing full well the day we made our grave decision that there'd be no end in sight and not even the destruction of the Evangelions we occupied could free us.

Were the Evangelion to be sawed, drilled and hammered into a million miniscule scraps and then its remains in their entirety placed into the hottest blast furnace the most advanced of technology could muster, it would do no good.

I would feel every last bit of the damage the machine sustained, feel as if I was being burned alive and suffocated a million times over. The agony would rival that of a thousand childbirths but even that would be insufficient to end my ability of feeling in its entirety for as shocking as it would sound, my soul would still inhabit the microscopic particles of dust that would inevitably still be left after all the destruction was finished even as they were scattered to the winds never to be found again.

For the first rule we Scientists learned in biochemistry 101, was that matter both living and inorganic could neither be created nor destroyed.

Through the merging of my essence with EVA unit 1, I had reached the greatly coveted goal that the ranks of mankind both selfish and selfless were all but willing to kill for out of their primal yet justified fear of the final moment before the Grim reaper tapped their shoulder to send them ready or not into the great unknown of no return.

But this was my choice. The first one I ever made of my own free will since leaving behind my domineering and narcissistic parents who cared only that I make them look good in front of others, never how it hurt me.

I was forced to attend a university and a course I hated every moment of, because according to my family and their deep respect and envy for the luxury and excess of the rapidly expanding NERV, the money was in the sciences and in the words of my father whose name I've forgotten and to be quite frank cant be bothered to try and remember.

"We've got to have… MONEY!"

And to take the most commonly used quote from my almost equally frightful mother (whose name I also don't remember and perhaps for the better).

"Money is such a beautiful word."

I was born to one of Tokyo 3's wealthiest couples, my father a prosecutor with a perfect streak of never losing a case in the entirety of her thirty years in the supreme court of Japan who abided by his lifelong adage "if you pay, I might not sue you today".

My mother, a powerful congresswoman who'd not been voted from power in the forty two years she'd begun her career.
On a relaxing summer night when the sky was dark but no less serene in the living room of a large and luxurious mansion atop a hill, the young Yui Ikari, I came into being.

The abode I was born in would go on to spend the majority of my youth within was one filled so full to the brim with expensive furnishings of all kinds that there was hardly enough room to walk in it.
It took real skill to put a foot down without stepping on and breaking one of the countless possessions my parents had amassed.

And to put things further into perspective, this mansion alone had thirty rooms each at least the size of an average Tokyo 3 apartment suite.
And this was just one of the uncountable numbers of these grand living spaces they owned across the globe.

It's common knowledge that for most parents, the most important three things to teach their children can best be represent in the three R's.
Reading.
Riting
And Rithmetic.

But for lack of better terminology, my parents seemingly preferred the three S's.
Sit down.
Shut up.
And stop driving us crazy.

The first lesson I was taught in childhood was not how to say my first word (usually mama or dada for most infants). But rather the rule: "Speak only when spoken too" which tied neatly into their life motto which they took great pain to ram down my throat at every opportunity whether directly or indirectly that "Children should be seen. NEVER heard."

Apart from money, the second favourite word of my mum and dad in the dictionary was the imperious and imposing term. "Discipline".
They took every opportunity available to show their fierce devotion to this word in the most creative and ingenious ways most lesser fans of it would most likely never think up.

This included once strapping me to the back of their expensive limousine with tape and driving up the entirety of Tokyo 3's highways three times over for coming only third in Maths in primary school. Once for every place from the top I failed to make up with my "complete laziness and irresponsibility" in spending the one night before the exam catching up on sleep because I was too weak to stay awake and keep revising like I had done the previous thirteen nights from when the test was announced in spite of my absolute best efforts.

The tape actually broke during the final part of the long and frightful ride so that the journey concluded with a hard fall face first into the asphalt on the front yard of the house.

My stammering mention that I was still invited to the honours night and would be taking home at least the bronze certificate if not the gold one while receiving the same applause as those students who came first and second, got me a forceful slap to the face for daring to talk back to my superiors and failing to repent adequately for my unforgivable sins.

And when I wasn't in school, I would be worked to the bone making my school days ironically more restful than my holidays.
I would be worked so hard that I'd have to spend at least 3 weeks in hospital recovering before I could go back to school. Because of this, my fellow students got the impression that I was a very sickly girl not worth their attention and decided perhaps wisely to keep their full distance from me.
And to make matters worse, my high grades not only failed most of the time to avert another strict beating from my incredibly stern parents but failed also to endear me to the majority of my schoolmates who also believed that I was a stick in the mud who'd be no fun to play with at all.

I could be punished at a moment's notice in my childhood and well into my adolescent years.
When I laughed, I could be spanked in the butt for not being composed and rational like a mature and composed roll model for the family should be.
When I cried, I could be smacked for being weak and wimpy and immature. For not appreciating all the hard work my parents put into raising and disciplining me to be the hard working and illustrious lady whose role it was to take care of them in their twilight years when they themselves could work no more.

And when I neither laughed nor cried, dad would cane me till my back was red since a person with no emotion was not normal and they wanted only a normal child.

I was to provide them with the best retirement money could buy, even if it meant starving myself of every bit of human pleasure imaginable.
It was to them, the role a good daughter should play.

Most families got cross when their children spent so long playing video games or watching TV that they failed their exams and fell out with all their friends.
If my mum so much as caught me taking one peek at the screen at any page that wasn't an essay for school, it was bath time.

And not the good and comfortable kind. I meant that the bath was filled up and I was held against my will underwater pleading with each second of precious air in my lungs that they'd relent and at least have the common courtesy not to commit infanticide.

Often by the time I was pulled out, I had whited out.
Dr Naoko Akagi, head scientist of NERV would point out years later that these constant asphyxiation attacks had damaged my brain permanently partly explaining why my perception of reality was so skewed and out of touch with most.

I wondered how many laws my father broke in his years as my moral guardian. He himself stated multiple times as he quoted from his big thick book of laws at the dinner table, he loved to quote that assault, neglect and child-abuse were three of the most serious crimes any law-abiding citizen could commit, punishable with several years in cold hard solitary confinement and more importantly, a massive attorneys fee that was certain to be their ruin and his prosperity.

It was from these observations that I slowly despite my introversion and uncontrollable self-hatred formulated my own moral in life.
Nothing flashy or poetic unlike the slew of great thinkers, philosophers and world leaders of the past whose genius made society the wonder it was today in spite of these dark times of Angels.

"Practice what you preach. Please at least do that. At least since you're a lawyer and all, try to actually respect some of the laws you uphold" I whispered under my breath from time to time as another fist came smashing into my face one evening my father came home fuming having finally lost his first case to his new sworn enemy, a certain Mr Wright who finally had a defendant acquitted despite his best attempts to push blame in the innocent man's direction.

"It's your fault" he bellowed in between blows. "You cost me precious money. You cost me valuable attention. You made me lose out on that massive attorney fee I could have had if not for your selfish little ass getting in the way of my success. You're a disgrace to this family. A disgrace to everything this household stands for."

I don't know how I was still able to walk with a slight limp without needing a wheelchair by the time I graduated and went to college.
I had long assumed a verbal tic which I could not help but use day to day even when I was on my own. "Why can't I do anything right." I would frequently weep to myself over the tiniest mistakes when I got only 99 out of 100 marks in the entry exam.

"Why am I such an idiot" I would moan when I locked myself out of my dorm room, followed by several blows to my skull in which I managed despite my frail, skinny composure to cause a splitting headache that would not heal for several days.
My parents had failed to teach me the joy of being an successful lawyer who won every case nor the pleasure in having an entire country at your fingertips like holding a toy globe in your palm.

They had instead taught me the lesson of self hatred. And self harm.

While most college students coped with the stresses of their course in the more traditional ways of seeking help or letting go over the course of two beers and a bowl of ramen, I took my frustrations out upon myself.

I wailed and began to hit my head against the wall before my class when I once didn't have a sheet of coursework which I had finished and checked repeatedly ten times but simply left back in my room.
By the time I had realized this and begged my tutor for an extension, my voice had become hoarse from my shouting and my eyes had practically cracked from dryness.
My knuckles had also become as black as coal from the hits to my cheeks that I had ended my self inflicted beatdown with.

My report defined my most notable characteristic not by my consistent straight A stars I was able to push myself to achieve (more out of fear of my parents anger than anything since I hated my course but could pick nothing extra).
It instead elaborated greatly on how the one best word that could sum Yui Ikari, honour student of the Biochemistry department was "Submissive".

As easily squashed and stepped over as a tiny insect and quick to shrink into her shell at the slightest hint of disapproval.

Many bullies took note of these findings and took great advantage of them by demanding I fork over all of the little money my parents deigned to send me for my basic living needs to them.
The one thing I could say the majority of my university found endearing about me was that I made an excellent jester when my self-loathing attitude compelled me to bestow upon myself another bout of blows.

I guess I now know where my poor son Shinji got this exact same problem from, and I'm not proud of this realization. Not one little bit. I'd hit myself again now if I could but its kind of hard to do that when you're an immaterial spirit trapped in an immaterial void where virtually nothing makes sense or stays consistent.

That was when I met the man who I now wished not only that I hadn't, but that he'd never existed in the first place.
But alas, in an advanced era of scientific revolution where the Giant death robot from my favourite video game Civilization became a reality, there still existed no time machine and no way to turn back time. Damn.

Gendo Ikari was a handsome young bachelor whose voice could part crowds at the most rocking of gatherings and parties.
He loved to party hard in vice, excess and debauchery with the immense savings his far more sympathetic parents than mine provided him unlimited access toward.
His grades were a lot like whales in the sea however in comparison to mine.

They rarely rose above C level.

He found me one winters evening as I was scribbling away hard and fast to perfect my latest report on a biological theorem on how Angels and humans could be so in opposition to each other despite the closeness of their genetic makeup.

A cheap can of Corona beer from him and a few craftily worded invitations later and I found myself at the disco part of the campus that I carefully kept my distance from on a regular basis and we were dancing like it was the last night of our life parting the dance floor like Moses by the red sea.

Of course being so into the thrill of the moment, I had not the mental fortitude nor my usual sensibility to refuse a few further glasses of alcohol this time in the form of cocktails from my newfound companion.

All this of course led to our first night in his much more luxuriously furnished room which reminded me of my family's mansions which soon led me on a downward spiral into many, many more.

And on the other side of a downward spiral. His "love" for me went viral for he could not resist the opportunity to brag about every little highlight of himself on the social platforms he was practically king over. Facebook, Instagram, Twitter… All of them had him on their front pages. He broke the internet with his vast influence and took it by storm with his popularity.

And soon all of a sudden, the bullies and other haters who looked upon me with scorn began quickly to change their attitude towards me to envy.
Their faces turned green as they greeted me with feigned tones of false respect that I knew were fake but could not help but appreciate anyhow. After so long of being invisible in society and being looked down upon by everyone this felt so good.

I thought for certain that I'd made it in life and that a good life awaited me at long last independent from my domineering parents.

So when teenage Gendo did the cliched motions of lifting the pearl ring out of the box and holding it before me, I at once bowed so far I felt my spine would snap under the pressure.

We were married and I went from a miss to a Mrs.
Oh how naïve I was. And how appropriate too.

I was named Yui by two diehard fans of a great Anime program I could not help but also enjoy during the rare times they were humane or apathetic enough to sit alongside them to enjoy the same show they ended their evenings with.

A wonderful cartoon where the main character, a master swordsman could do anything he wanted and be unstoppable by anyone. Where he had absolute freedom to meet the woman of his dreams who loved him for everything he stood for, and whose skills in Kendo and computerisation none of the other players in his virtual reality world could match him for.

Even his cousin, his own first cousin fell head over heels for him despite the strict dogma of their affluent and restrictive household which was enough to make even mine look lenient in comparison in some ways.

But I was not named after the great and undefeatable black swordsman whom the bards would sing off for ages to come. Nor after the ass-kicking woman whose battle skills were held in almost equal regard to his own and to top it off, had a smile that could melt even the stoniest heart to make even me swoon giddily over her attractiveness in every motion she made.

I was named after the sentient AI the black swordsman took in as his own, in reality simply used so that he could develop his prowess further as her predictive foresight ability to foresee the moves of his opponents could be utilized for his and his beloved's own gain. An unpaid assistant present only to be used for the personal advancement of others and to receive none of the attention nor reward.

A tool that lived beside ordinary people but would never be given the full rights of one.
Yui…

I was certainly as brain dead as a computer when I chose Gendo to be the first man I trusted.
What was I thinking? I wasn't.

And dear, darling Shinji paid the price for my mistake. My grave and unforgivable mistake which more than justified this sentence I was now doing in this mind-numbing prison of my own device.

It's not necessary to prolong a narrative which has already long run its course by reiterating the horrific position of powerlessness the faux-affable Gendo was easily able to force me into through his faux pas that any sane person should have seen through at a glance.

The one event I will add which I believe further earned me my just desserts of eternal suffering would be that sometime before our marriage, the uninterested and uncaring student who cared not a whit about his grades asked me as the genius I was to teach him some of my knowledge on biochemistry.

Eager for the first time in my life to say that one of my talents had some purpose and I hadn't wasted all my years doing this dead end degree I despised for nothing, I immediately agreed to teach him all I knew on his condition that we start from the section in the textbook regarding neurotoxins and lethal chemicals known to be highly lethal to the delicate human body and yet hard to detect in any chemical test even by the most devoted and well equipped of chemists.

"Teach me that part and nothing else" he ordered to which I was graciously glad to acquiesce.

Gendo had already begun a career in NERV even back then and was rapidly moving through the ranks despite having little to no knowledge of anything related to the organisation's purpose.

My parents, for the first time in my life glad that I'd made something of myself and loving the sheer amount of fame and wealth my significant other possessed bequeathed their entire inheritance to him and him alone. I was told plain and simple that I'd not get a penny of their life's hard work (earned mostly by my dad according to his boasts, continuing to incriminate defendants even when he knew them to be wholly clean and guiltless) and that it'd all go to that wonderful chap who was kind enough to take me in in spite of my inadequacies and the time and attention of theirs I had wasted.

Some years later, the exact date my fuzzy memory no longer serves to remember; a mysterious incident occurred in NERV where the already extremely unpopular previous head of operations and the entirety of those considered to be his loyalists with negative views of the organization's up and rising star Gendo Ikari were found dead in a single meeting room in which they had all gathered in.

it was later found that the cause of the bizarre massacre was a nerve agent that was colourless and odourless and apparently sent through the very vent leading to that room's air duct so that it targeted that area and nowhere else in the building.

Not long after, Gendo's overwhelming support among those NERV members who remained won him an almost unanimous vote to be cast as NERV's new leader in light of his charisma and fabulously eye-catching wife he was such a good husband towards.
It turned out my appearance had won not only the heart of my beloved but a cult following in NERV too that had only grown with time and the incident which was forgotten about surprisingly quickly.

And just a few weeks of the killing at the second most secure complex in the known world (second to SEELE's HQ), the much loved and respected parents of the new commander of NERV's wife were found dead in their holiday home near the bay of Osaka.

The same gas was later discovered to have been their cause of death but their killer, never found.
And with police funding being cut soon after to further fund NERV's greater expenses mostly in the form of improved furnishings in the Commander and senior officer offices, the investigation into these two cases was soon ceased completely.

Knowing what I know now but can no longer tell the world, I can but implore that no one ever look at any event however trivial as a coincidence. There are no coincidences.

"Years of academy training wasted" I grumble to myself, wishing I still had hands and a head so that I could sate my disapproval for my past-self's mistakes even if they were made with no ill intent at least none that I'd like to think was deliberate. "Years of hard learning, of studying to be used in the barbaric murder of so many…"

"It's not your fault Yui. You could not have known this could possibly have been our future and you only did what you thought was right. No one can fault you for that. At the very least I don't."
Kyoko Zeppelin Soryu relays to me through a telepathic message sent from her imprisoning EVA assigned to her daughter Asuka, EVA unit 2.

"Thank you Kyoko" I can not help but gratefully reply, wondering how much of a flood I would be causing right now with my tears if I could cry. "I'm glad you're here with me. Even if these are strange circumstances that have brought us together. And once again, I truly apologize that I could do nothing to spare you of this sad fate."

"I chose to be here like you Yui" the part German woman insists, her native country still highly audible in spite of the fluency of her Japanese. "Like you. I also died so that others could live. Your example inspired me Yui. So don't you dare pity me because right here is right where I want to be."

"Please believe me when I tell you, I'm not in the slightest proud of my spoiled daughter's awful actions towards your son." She concludes our conversation by saying before she drifts away, all her energy for today used up.

"I believe you Kyoko. Of course I believe you" I manage to belatedly relay in the nick of time as the connection severs and I'm left on my own once more.

Knowing that it will be a long time before my son returns to this EVA so that I can gain a brief insight once more through his neural link to me, I decide to do the one thing that has always gained me hope even in the bleakest of times.
An act I performed secretly in the shower, in the shadowy corner of the silent study area where no one ever goes, in my room with the doors and windows firmly shut to give me cover from any prying eyes and ears that might try to judge me.

I begin to sing as best I can. The least destructive way I know of to properly rationalized and unleash my thoughts.

Don't know what I was thinking.
Leaving my child behind.
Now I suffer the curse and now I am blind.

With all this anger, guilt and sadness going to haunt me forever.
I can't wait for the cliff at the end of the river.

Is this revenge I am seeking?
Or seeking someone to avenge me?
Stuck in my own paradox, I want to set myself free.
Maybe I should try to chase and find
Before they try to stop it
It won't be long before I become a puppet.

I wish I lived in the present
With the gift of my past mistakes
But the future keeps luring in like a bag of snakes
Your sweet little eyes your little smile is all I remember
Those fuzzy memories mess with my temper

Justification is killing me
But killing isn't justified
What happened to my son, I'm terrified
It lingers in my mind and the thought keeps on getting bigger
I'm sorry my sweet baby, I should have been there

It's been so long
Since last I've seen my son lost to the monster
To the man behind the slaughter
Since I've been gone, I've been singing this stupid song so I can ponder
The sanity of your mother

"There truly was no other way to save the world Shinji. This really was the only way" I try to reassure myself by insisting only for another emotional stab to almost rip me in two still remembering vividly his sense of complete and utter loneliness and loss of trust in all existence the last time he synced with Unit 1 my EVA.
"Please stay alive and soon you'll realize that the EVA has one amazing gift for those who are worthy. I want you to receive it and reap its full benefits. And this time, not even your evil father will be able to deny you of what is rightfully yours."

"Rei. If you have any appreciation however slight that my passing allowed you to be given flesh. Please repay me by saving Shinji. Save him as only you know how.
Mari. If any single of the interventions I was able to grant you saving you from the homeland you were unfairly persecuted within, regard my innocent little angel in the same high esteem as I regarded you. Its up to the two of you now. The two Nami's who can restore true justice to the world government's lies and deceits. Go and do what you must, the two of you. And know that you have my blessing and that I will watch over you and Shinji eternally even if we must be apart."

Thank you once again for being epic people and reading.
So Yui's not completely gone from existence after all.
Please review if you like this and wish to support me.
I really do hope that you are entertained by this story that I put all my effort into constructing for your amusement and I hope to see you next time.
Until then thank you sincerely and bye.