Creation began on 05-04-20
Creation ended on 05-04-20
Neon Genesis Evangelion
I don't need you, anymore
A/N: When you're left with heartache, depression, sorrow and loneliness for what can feel like an eternity, how can you be around people that have abandoned you?
He had lost so much in such a long time that he had lost much clarity in the way of sight. But he could still see. And yet…Shinji Ikari…had lost many of what he tried to hold onto as meaningful memories. Faces…and bonds…severed and lost, and there was no getting them back, no matter what he did, no matter how long he waited.
Misato Katsuragi.
Ritsuko Akagi.
Hikari Horaki.
Kensuke Aida.
Toji Suzuhara.
Kozo Fuyutsuki.
Maya Ibuki.
Shigeru Aoba.
Pen-Pen.
Who were any of these people to Shinji Ikari? Friends? Family? Memories?
No, they were reduced to echoes in a ruined state of existence that had no purpose. There were no words of comfort, or of encouragement, not even love or friendship. There was nothing for Shinji Ikari but bitterness and agony he sought to escape…with every breath that lingered in his hopeless and empty state. Even in the cold of this empty void, sitting on his throne of twisted bones and metal, his face covered in lines of premature aging, he didn't give any indication of desiring to be around others.
Even though he had allies from other lifetimes, his latest ally being a little girl that was related to another version of himself in a fractured multiverse, driven to kill herself because her grandfather was just as cold to her as he had been to her father, the only friendly person she ever knew in her life, now dead and elsewhere, probably longing for his child to be returned to him, this Shinji Ikari barely showed any measure of longing. And then his eyes looked to his right, seeing someone he hadn't seen in what felt like a long time.
A mop of light blue hair, chalk-white skin, eyes as red as blood, and a school uniform that was so out of place that there was no way to even talk about it.
"Always standing there at a distance," he uttered, "but never meaning anything beyond a haunting façade. Why are you even here? There's nothing you can do to help me that's been failed by others…not that you can help me at all."
His captive, a version of Yui Ikari from a universe where the woman never settled down and had a family, looked at him in her large cage and wondered who he was talking to…until he saw the girl that looked like a younger, albino version of herself, who seemed more like a ghost than an actual person in this vast realm of emptiness that they occupied.
"Who is that girl?" She asked.
"She's nobody," he responded. "She's not even a person, anymore. Not that she ever was a person, just a…a perversion. Someone's little inside joke of people. A cheaply-made imitation of some other person's life that should end as soon as she's found and restrained."
"But who is she?"
"Someone I thought I knew…but there's no point in dwelling because I can no longer recall her name. I don't know who she is, anymore…or what she meant to me…if she meant anything."
The girl continued to stand there in front of Shinji, never saying anything, never moving an inch.
"They never came back," he told the girl. "None of you returned, no matter how long I waited, no matter how many times I went back to that dead Earth that has no place for me anywhere. You all left me. You left me, and you didn't care. That was your choice. Your choice…not mine. I wanted to see you all again…but there was nobody waiting for anyone. No more places to call home, no more places to belong to. No families or friends. So why are you even here? You can't give me what I want, the last shred of freedom that was taken from me, can you?"
Still, the girl didn't speak a word to Shinji.
"You're a lifetime too late to be of any help to me," he told her. "Go haunt someone else. I don't need you, anymore. I don't need any of you, anymore."
Then…the girl was gone.
I don't know whether to fear him, thought the imprisoned Yui doppelganger that served only to remind the boy of who he was looking for, or pity him? People can't survive in loneliness…and he's constantly alone.
"I'm tired," she heard him say. "I'm tired and I just want this nightmare I can't wake up from to end forever. To end…I must get rid of her. The sooner I find her and end her, the sooner this can end. And I'll be free. Free to sleep. Free to move on. To fade away into the blissful oblivion I long for."
I pity him, the Yui doppelganger thought. He's to be pitied if he wants what he's been denied for such a long time.
She turned away from him and lied back down on her futon, wondering just how long this nightmare they were trapped in was to go on. In a way, they were all victims in a terrible nightmare because they couldn't wake up, but for Shinji, his nightmare had a way to escape…but there was no awakening for him. How could his escape be the same as the end?
He needed you…but you abandoned him…and now he no longer needs you…
A/N: I probably got inspired partially due to a phone call about a missing item found that the caller wouldn't let up about due to miscommunication. Again, I needed to have the original Shinji show more deterioration in his state of mind; the longer he's been forced to go in his eternity, the heavier his ability to recall the people he waited for that had left him alone. But whether or not he actually remembered Rei Ayanami is something I'll leave up to you. Maybe he did remember, but chose not to speak her name because her absence had damaged him. Or maybe he forgot about everything except his lingering hatred for what she was and would never be. You review and decide.