Blood Resolve
I do not own Neon Genesis Evangelion or the rights to anything associated with it. Gainax created this world, I just play in it.
I do however own any and all original characters that appear within this story.
Third and final chapter. Please read, enjoy, and review.
Chapter Three
Shinji had heard the gunshots that faintly echoed through the empty halls of the school. When it had started his captor went down the hall to monitor the battle, leaving the classroom door open. He had heard what he thought was a woman screaming at one point, but it was hard to tell, it was too far away. A few minutes later his captor returned, shutting the door and walking up to him.
"It seems that your rescuer is quite determined," he had said. "They should be here soon. Be a good boy and don't tip them off that I'm here." For good measure, the guy smashed him across the head with his pistol, knocking him out.
When he regained consciousness, his head was throbbing and he felt sick. He could feel something warm and wet trickling down the right side of his face. His vision was blurry and he had a hard time getting his eyes to focus. In the dim light from the single fixture that had been left intact at the front of the room, he could just make out a shape slowly coming through the door to his makeshift cell.
He closed his eyes tightly, then blinked rapidly several times, even that small effort making his head swim. His vision cleared but what he saw made his eyes go as wide as saucers and filled him with worry. Gingerly making her way towards him, a pistol in her hand and leading the way, was Misato. And she wasn't looking very healthy at the moment. The conversation he had heard earlier in the day rang through his mind.
'We're being well paid to do this job and it isn't about the kid anyway, so stop complaining. He's just the bait. A convenient tool to lure a target and nothing more.'
Out of the corner of his eye he saw his captor emerge from cover and aim his gun at her. Oddly, he didn't panic. He didn't even think about what he was doing, he simply acted as if on some long dormant instinct. All other considerations were absent from his mind, his usual stream of thoughts about his percieved worthlessness and cowardice didn't come forth to cloud his mind like they always did. All he knew was that his captor wanted to kill Misato and he couldn't let it happen. Though he had never let anyone know it, she meant a great deal to him and he would gladly trade his life for hers if that's what it took.
He was gagged, his hands were tied together behind the back of the chair, and his ankles were loosely tied to the chair's front legs. He couldn't move very much, so he did the only thing he could. He threw his weight forward and pushed off with his feet, launching himself towards her. Hopefully he could knock her out of the way. He didn't hear the gun go off and he barely felt the bullet slam into him.
Misato was surprised by Shinji's sudden lunge, but grateful for it nonetheless since it saved her life. The blows she had taken to the head were making her dizzy and she was having trouble keeping her focus and concentration. Her overwhelming determination to save Shinji was the only thing that was keeping her from collapsing to the floor. It had been a slow and painful trip to the room on the third floor. At least it was easy to find since it was the only one with a light on. She had cautiously peered in through the small window in the door and she was relieved to see Shinji there, even if he did look like he was out of it. He was moving so he was alive.
She was sure there had to be someone else in the room and since she had no idea what the layout of the room was, she was going in completely blind. She had no choice but to go in and take the hand she was dealt. She just hoped that she could take out the enemy before they got her or did anything to Shinji.
Several things happened all at once. She had just caught the enemy out of the corner of her eye when Shinji bumped her. Pain exploded across her already damaged ribs and she fell backwards. She heard the kidnapper's weapon fire twice in rapid succession. She heard the sound of a bullet striking flesh and a grunt of pain from Shinji, and she heard the zip of the second bullet going by her right ear.
She got a shot off that missed, but at least it made the guy duck. She also got a look at him and realized that she knew him. His name was Toshino Takemura and he was the leader of Commander Ikari's personal protection team. It was rumoured that when the Commander needed someone to disappear, Takemura was the man he turned to for results. She was beginning to understand now what this was all about and it made her blood boil.
As she painfully hit the floor she let out a scream of pure rage. The second she caught a glimpse of Takemura stepping towards her and ready to fire, she began shooting. He got off one hasty shot a split second before she did that tore through her jacket and tugged at her shirt, but miraculously missed flesh. With her aim wobbly due to the fact that the damage to her ribs made it hard for her to raise her arm, and the blows to the head making her move like she was drunk, she just started blasting, trying to keep the pistol on target and hoping to get him before he got her.
Her first shot took a chunk out of his side just above his left hip. Her aim drifted to the right as he stumbled over to her left. She overcorrected and put a shot off the wall before coming back on target and putting one through his gut that sent him stumbling backwards into the pile of desks he had previously been using for cover. She fired two shots that went high and to her right before dropping her aim back down and putting one into the upper right side of his chest.
Her follow up shot went over his head and clanged off of one of the desks as he slid to a sitting position on the floor, getting off a shot as he did that went over her head and took a chunk out of the black board. They fired again at the same time, his shot just missing her head to the right, hers smashing through his nose, on through his brain, and out the back of his head. For good measure she emptied the rest of the USP's magazine into his corpse, just to make sure.
She laid back on the floor and let the pain calm down a bit. "Shinji?" she called out. When she got no response she raised her head and looked at him. He was on his left side, still tied to the chair and with his back to her. She was going to call out to him again when she saw the blood staining his white shirt.
"Shinji!" She crawled over to him and was horrified to see that he had taken Takemura's first shot in the right side of the chest. "Oh my God, Shinji!" She gave him a shake and he moaned.
She pulled her knife and cut the ropes holding him to the chair. Doing the best she could with only one good hand, she cut pieces out of the blanket from his makeshift bed to make a rough field dressing which she pressed against the wound. It wasn't much, but it was all she could do for the moment.
She pulled out her cell phone and called for a NERV medical team to come and get them. Shinji's bastard father may have set this whole thing up, but she doubted that Shinji getting shot was part of the plan. She didn't trust anyone from NERV at the moment, but it was the only logical choice for assistance since they had the best doctors and would get someone here long before the civilian authorities would.
"Don't you go dying on me Shinji-kun," she said to him after making the call. "Don't you dare break my heart and leave me all alone." Tears began to roll down her cheeks as she took his hand in hers. "You can't die anyway, you're invincible, remember?"
Once she had Shinji in the care of the doctors and she knew he would be all right, she was going to pay the Commander a visit and confirm her suspicions about what this entire thing had been all about. One thing she knew for sure was that she was going to make the bastard pay, one way or another.
She never had liked Commander Ikari's office. It was so large and empty and the way he kept the lights dimmed for the scary bastard effect creeped her out. Currently, she was standing in the middle of the enormous room while the Commander was standing over by the windows, watching the artificial sky of the GeoFront begin to brighten as dawn arrived.
"So you managed to survive to see the light of another day," he observed, finally turning around to acknowledge her presence.
"Thanks to Shinji," she said. "You bastard, you couldn't even come at me straight up, could you? You just had to hatch this plot and throw your own son in the middle of it."
"Knowledge is power Major Katsuragi," he began. "But knowledge in the wrong hands can be problematic to those with the power. You were getting too close to things that I did not wish for you to know. Disposing of you in the same manner that SEELE disposed of your lover was not an option. No one would ever believe that you would just simply disappear, never to be seen again."
She had known that Kaji was likely dead, but getting confirmation didn't make it any easier to take. "One of your ex-Section 2 hired goons said that my death was supposed to look like a heroic, failed rescue attempt."
"Indeed," the Commander agreed. "You enjoy a certain amount of popularity among your coworkers Major, and considering your personality, no one would ever take a simple disappearance at face value. It would raise too much suspicion and people would get far too curious about it and start asking questions. Something more noble and potentially heroic was in order to prevent that. Something that would be more in keeping with your personality. Everyone knows that you have a deep attachment to the Third Child. They know that you would not abandon him and that if someone were to try and harm him, you would not stand idly by and let it happen."
"I would give my life to save his without hesitation," she admitted.
"Precisely," he smiled. It reminded her of a shark somehow. "Life and death situations don't seem to frighten you very much. You did after all witness and survive Second Impact, and when the Fourteenth Angel broke into the command centre, you stood your ground and stared it in the face until Shinji arrived to fight it."
"Save the flattering comments," she growled. "It means nothing coming from you."
"I don't believe in flattery Major," he assured her. "I'm simply stating a fact. Another fact is that you were supposed to die the night of the kidnapping. When you heard the scuffle outside your door, or better yet, when Shinji called for you to help him, you were supposed to rush to his aid, only to be gunned down by the so called 'Soldiers of Adam' for your trouble. The Section 2 detail would then arrive and take down the kidnappers and report your heroic demise. You would have been given a hero's funeral."
"Glad I missed it," she said. "But instead of being cooperative, I got shit-faced and passed out."
"Even though it was a set up, you still proved to be a miserable failure where his safety was concerned," he reminded her. "And your timing was not appreciated. But I had planned for all contingencies, including the possibility that you would fail to hear the kidnapping take place. Predictably, you got drunk and spoiled the operation. Although, the extra time that Takemura had to hold Shinji captive allowed him to determine that you had not told him about any of the things you had found out."
"So you brought me here, humiliated me, and let me go and stew in my own juices for a while," she said tightly.
"And you did," he retorted. "But you didn't fold under the strain. The emotional mess you became only made you more determined to find out what was going on and do something about it. I must admit, you raised quite a stink as you bulldozed your way through the city looking for information. And you succeeded in gaining the only information that I allowed to be available. I was impressed by your tenacity, that is one of the reasons I hired you on to be the Operations Director in the first place."
"Coming from you that means so very much to me," she spat.
He ignored her sarcasm. "Takemura hired his ex-Section 2 comrades Kamio and Shimedzu to oversee the meat of the operation for him, knowing they would be eager to get a shot at you. They in turn hired the other men to do the dirty work and act as cannon fodder. You weren't supposed to get past Kamio and Shimedzu, but you not only did that, you got to Takemura and managed to kill him as well."
"He's dead because Shinji took a bullet for me," she told him coldly. "Regardless of what you think of him, your son is not a coward."
"I never truly thought that he was," the Commander admitted, surprising her. "A true coward would have run away and never came back. He kept getting back into the Evangelion and fighting and defeating the Angels, even though it was taking a toll on him both mentally and physically. I may have manoeuvred him into the machine and did what I had to in order to keep him there, but even when he tried to quit or run, I knew that he would always come back to it. He cares too much for other people. He would rather fight and die than see others have to do the same thing. His life means nothing to him, but evidently yours is something that is very dear to him."
"His life doesn't mean much to you either," she accused. "First you abandon him after he just lost his mother, then you bring him here just so you can use him."
A feral smile came to his lips. "And what about you Major? Aren't you using him as well? You command him in the fight against the Angels. He is the instrument that you use to get revenge for your father's death, for the horror of Second Impact that still plagues you to this day."
"And I will have to live with that for the rest of my life," she shot back. "At least I have the decency to be ashamed of myself for it."
"Decency is not a word that fits you Major," he continued. "You took him into your home because you were lonely, again, using him for your purpose. You use him to take care of you and your home. You flaunt yourself in front of him regularly and tease him with innuendo. What other purposes have you used him for I wonder? Have you taken him into your bed as well?"
She was seething with anger, but she realized that his words were just meant to provoke her. Truth be told though, she had thought about taking Shinji into her bed a couple of times. And on those occasions she had promptly drank herself stupid to drown those thoughts and wash them from her mind.
She smirked at the Commander. "If I had taken him into my bed he would have known that someone loved him. And I have no doubt that I would have gotten the better Ikari. Shinji would never use me and throw me away like you did with Ritsuko. I feel sorry for her, she must have been truly desperate to want you."
"She was merely a tool, just as you were," he responded. "My relationship with her was nothing more than a method by which to bind her to my will. She was not unaware of that even if it did take her a long time to realize it. She is still useful to this organization, that is why I allow her to continue to live even if it is now under close surveillance instead of in a jail cell. If the Seventeenth Angel ever does arrive, myself or Fuyutsuki can run the operation. With your snooping around you have made yourself expendable."
"God, you're such a disgusting asshole. So who else knew about this little plan of yours?" she asked. "Did the Sub Commander know what was going on?"
"I kept him in the dark on this. He had strong feelings for Shinji's mother and would not have approved of her son being used like this, despite all of the other things he was party to," he answered. "In those cases he kept his personal reservations to himself."
"Yeah, that's what he told me when I confronted him outside the operating room," she told him. "We had a very long and productive discussion before I came here."
The sudden, although brief look of shock on the Commander's face was priceless. "What are you talking about?" he demanded.
"While you were busy sleeping and dreaming of who to fuck over next instead of being concerned about the well being of your own son, I had a couple of concerned visitors while I was waiting for Shinji to come out of surgery," she told him. "I stuck my gun under the Sub Commander's nose and demanded answers. I was ready to kill him before he convinced me that he knew nothing about it."
The problem this possibly presented worried Gendo. He still needed Fuyutsuki and he couldn't afford to lose his allegiance. He had a bad feeling about this and it only got worse.
"You're right about his feelings for Shinji's mother," she continued. "He admitted that he loved her and using Shinji to set me up was the last straw for him. He's been fighting with his conscience for a long time now and this forced him to finally make a decision. He has turned against you Commander and he gave me the short version about your plans for Instrumentality. He told me about the souls in the Eva's, about Lilith being the one crucified in Terminal Dogma and about Adam being grafted to your hand. He even told me that it was Kaji who brought it to you." Learning that not so insignificant fact had hurt her badly.
"I see," he said, trying to maintain his composure. "Who was your other visitor?"
"You already know the answer to that," she smirked.
"Rei," he said quietly.
She nodded. "They told me all about her too. She's turned against you too and won't do as you wish anymore. She made that decision shortly after her third self was activated. She began to regain the memories of her former selves and she started to think for herself and think about what she wants. She wants to live and have a life of her own and you can thank Shinji's influence on her for that. I don't really know how I feel about her now that I know what she has become, but I'm willing to trust her for now. If I'm still alive after this I might even consider taking her in as well. Someone needs to show her how to live."
"That will not happen," he said darkly. "I created her and she will do what I command. She always has and she always will."
Her smile was predatory. "You can't pull her strings now, she isn't your doll anymore. And there is nothing left for you to command. Sub Commander Fuyutsuki should have already pried Ritsuko out from under your surveillance net and instructed her to package up all of the information she can to expose you to the UN and the government. Rei is watching over Shinji for me to make sure you and your private thugs leave him alone. It's the end of the line and you're done for you filthy fucking bastard. All of your plans and schemes are dead. You've got nothing left. You're finished."
"I plan for every contingency Major," he sneered. "So long as I am alive I can still succeed with my plans, no matter how long it takes." He didn't try to hide his movements as he slipped his right hand into the pocket of his uniform jacket and pulled out his gun.
"That will depend on what happens in the next few minutes," she said as she reached behind her back and drew her USP and held it ready at her side. It was cocked and ready to fire. "You have no choice now. If you want me dead you'll have to show some balls. You'll have to look me in the eye and do it yourself."
"I have no problem with that."
Adrenaline could overcome a lot, and for Misato it overcame the effects of her injuries and her fatigue. She was dizzy, in pain, and exhausted, but her self imposed mission wasn't quite done yet. She might die here but she had no intention of going quietly. A spilt second after she saw the Commander's gun start to come up, hers did the same. Her youth and her training meant her reflexes were better than his, and even in her current condition there was no way she would let Gendo beat her to the draw, even if he did move first. She barely noticed the pounding in her head and the pain in her ribs as she brought her weapon to bear. Both weapons fired at the same time and both targets were hit.
Gendo Ikari fell back against the windows of his office in a spray of blood and brains and slowly slid to the floor in a boneless sprawl, his broken orange glasses hanging crookedly on his face. A .40 calibre S&W round passed through his left eye, through the temporal and occipital lobes of his brain, and out the back of his head where it struck the bullet proof glass with a dull thunk.
Misato sucked in a shuddering, pain wracked breath. The bullet had hit her high, right around the middle of her left collarbone, breaking it and sending bullet fragments into her shoulder. Breathing was painful as the expansion and contraction of her chest pulled at the wound. She could feel blood running out of the wound and trickling over her shoulder to the floor. God, it hurt so much. She was barely aware of the sound of hurried footsteps slapping the floor and people yelling. Her vision began to dim and the last thing she saw was the depiction of the Tree of Life on the ceiling of Commander Ikari's office.
Shinji awoke from his latest nap and looked to his left after a brief contemplation of what was now an all too familiar ceiling. In another bed a few feet away was Misato, still unconscious since her arrival in the room two days earlier. The doctors had told him that they would both be alright and that they should have no permanent or significant impairments from their injuries.
Still, he was worried about her. Even though the doctors had said she would be okay, seeing her lying in that bed bruised and bandaged for the last two days still frightened him. It reminded him how close he had come to losing her and that was something he knew he never would have been able to bear.
Getting shot had also made him realize a few things about himself. His instinctive, spur of the moment decision to knock Misato out of his captor's line of fire had made him realize that perhaps his ambivalence about his life was misplaced. He found that he had a reason to live that had nothing to do with the Eva or NERV. That reason was Misato. She had risked her life to come and get him and he couldn't take that lightly, no matter what he thought of himself.
Even so, he would have felt guilty if she had died because it would have been in an attempt to save him and he didn't feel like his life was worth that kind of sacrifice. Hell, he felt guilty now, but if she had died it would have devastated him. He also felt a sense of guilt about the whole situation being a plot by his father. Sub Commander Fuyutsuki had stopped by earlier in the day and told him what his father had done and told him what had happened in his office. He found that he felt rather unaffected by his father's death, the bastard had done too much harm and hurt too many people for him to show any sadness at his passing now. Perhaps he would feel something about it later, but right now he just couldn't. Not when he could see the results of his father's last scheme lying unconscious in the bed beside his.
He could do little else, so he contented himself with just laying there and watching Misato sleep. He was far too shy to admit it, not to mention afraid, but he had a huge crush on his friend and guardian. He couldn't use the word love, because it was an emotion he always felt he was unworthy of. Once he had gotten used to how she lived, he actually began to feel comfortable around her. Or, at least as comfortable as a timid fourteen year old boy could feel when he was living with a gorgeous woman who drank too much, liked to tease him, and often wandered around the apartment wearing a minimum of clothing.
Shortly, Misato finally began to stir, slowly waking up from her long sleep. Shinji couldn't help but chuckle at some of the faces she made as she slowly returned to consciousness.
"Shinji…" she muttered thickly.
"I'm right here Misato."
She rolled her head to the right and opened her eyes. She smiled. "You okay Shinji?"
"The doctor said I'd be fine," he told her. He could see the relief on her face. "He said you'd be okay too, but they still have to operate on your hand and your knee." She didn't respond and he saw that she had started to cry. "Misato?"
"I'm sorry Shinji," she sniffled. "I wasn't there when you needed me. When you called for me to help you I was passed out drunk on the floor." All it took was for her to see him in that hospital bed to make her shame and self recrimination rise back to the surface. "If I had been sober they wouldn't have taken you. You wouldn't have ended up getting shot."
"But you would have," he said. "Sub Commander Fuyutsuki was here this morning and told me what happened. If you had come to the door, they would have killed you."
"That doesn't absolve me from blame Shinji. I'm your guardian, I'm supposed to look after you and be there when you need me." Her voice got quiet and he had to strain to hear her. "But I never am. I'm at work, or I'm out getting plastered somewhere. Even when I'm home, I'm not really there. Not anymore."
"Misato…" he was at a loss, he really didn't know what to say or do.
"You should hate me Shinji."
That hit him like a brick to the head. "What?"
"You should hate me," she repeated. "I'm immature and irresponsible and I use you. I took you into my home to ease my loneliness. When we divided the chores I cheated so that you got most of them. You cook and do all the chores and you clean up after me. You look after me when I should be looking after you. I send you to fight in the Eva, to get revenge for my father's death and for what Second Impact did to me. You come back from those battles bruised and broken, inside and out, and again I send you out there because I can't rest until the Angels are dead. When you need me, I'm not there or I'm drunk, leaving you abandoned again. I'm no better than your father was."
"No!" he yelled. His eyes were ablaze with furious emotion and the tone of his voice shocked her. "You're nothing like my father! You're not like him so don't you ever say that! I don't hate you Misato, I could never hate you! I love you!"
Those last three words sprang from his mouth before he could stop them. It froze him, his eyes went wide in realization and shock at what he had just said and his heart hammered away in his chest. Those three simple little words carried so much weight for him. His mother would have been the last and only person to hear those words come from his mouth, and she would have been the last and only person to say them back to him.
His love of Misato was not based on one single facet, it was everything. Yes, she was gorgeous, and his hormones reminded him of that every time he looked at her. But his depression and introverted manner had served to make him seem oblivious and indifferent to the beauty before him. She had taken him in and shown him care and affection, not so much like a mother, but more like a fun, goofy big sister or a concerned friend. She tried to get him to confide in her and open himself up to the world and for a short time it had been working. She worried about him and was protective of him.
As messed up as Misato was, she was the one and only thing in his life he knew he could count on in any sort of a positive way. He liked being around her and he wanted to remain near her, no matter what shape their futures took and no matter what type of relationship they had. However, with Shinji being Shinji, he could not put those feelings and thoughts into words.
As for Misato, she was dumfounded. She had just given him every reason there was for him to hate her, or at the very least, be angry and disappointed with her. Instead, he had said the three words to her that would either swell or break her heart.
"Do you mean that Shinji?" she asked, her voice now hard and serious. "Because you never say those words to me unless you mean it."
Shinji knew he couldn't run from this even if he was able to. This was Misato, and he knew he had just dropped a bomb. He truly wanted to find some happiness in his life and he wanted it to be with her. He wanted to see her happy too. She was his family. So, for one of the few times in his life, he faced up to a situation and stood his ground.
"I…I mean it Misato," he stuttered nervously. "I can't say that to someone and not mean it. Especially not to you." He forced his eyes to meet hers. "You're the only one who cares. You're my family and I love you."
"You love me, but can you forgive me?" she asked. "And don't tell me there's nothing to forgive me for. The fact that you're in that hospital bed says differently." She knew how fragile Shinji could be and that perhaps she wasn't being fair by pushing him like this, but she had to know, one way or the other.
He decided that arguing with her about it would be pointless because, even though it wasn't part of his thought process at the time, he had in effect forgiven her when he had knocked her out of the line of fire. The look in her eyes was almost pleading and he knew he had to stand his ground again and give her an answer.
"I forgive you Misato."
She smiled and closed her eyes, tears silently rolled down her cheeks. "Thank you Shinji. And I love you too."
Epilogue:
The UN took control of NERV and launched an investigation into the activities of all branches of the organization and those of the late Gendo Ikari in particular. Sub Commander Fuyutsuki and Dr. Akagi gave their full cooperation to the investigators in order to stay out of jail. SEELE itself was also investigated and with the help of Dr. Akagi and the MAGI, their computer records were decrypted and analyzed and the nature of the Seventeenth Angel was discovered, causing no small amount of panic in the process. There was no sign of it however, or the members of the Instrumentality Committee and speculation was rampant as to why that was. However, with Adam and Lilith having been disposed of the day the Commander was killed, there should be no enticement for the Seventeenth to make itself known, if it ever intended to.
The UN decided to make use of the expensive resources that had gone into NERV and turn the organization into one dedicated to scientific research. Each facility had state of the art equipment and was staffed by some of the best scientific minds in the world. It would be criminal to waste it. For the Tokyo 3 branch, Fuyutsuki would be the administrative head, while Ritsuko would remain as the chief scientist. Both of them would be under intense scrutiny from the UN.
Misato was offered a position overseeing the security of the facilities and its staff, which she only took after some serious negotiations. She wanted guardianship of Rei. Someone needed to look after her and give her a chance for a normal life, and she wasn't about to let the UN treat her like a prisoner or a lab specimen. Rei agreed to have her S2 organ removed if it meant that she could be left alone to live her life. With Ritsuko and Fuyutsuki's help, Misato got her way and Rei got what she wanted. A chance to have a normal life as her own person.
Asuka was taken back to Germany by her father and didn't break out of her catatonic state until six months later. It was two years before she could be left without supervision for fear that she would kill herself. With continuing therapy, something all of the pilots and top end staff of the Tokyo 3 branch engaged in to varying degrees, she was able to return to a relatively normal life. She went back to university and gained another degree before going to work for NERV in Germany. It would be a long time before she could bring herself to go back to Japan.
After the shock of finding out what NERV had been all about had worn off, Shinji found himself gaining a level of happiness that he had never known in his young life. With the help of Misato, and the thrice weekly psychotherapy sessions they all had, he slowly began to lose the crippling shyness, depression, and low self esteem that had been the bane of his existence. He began to enjoy his new instant family and he found that he liked helping Rei learn how to live and he really enjoyed living with Misato. After the stresses caused by the constant threat of annihilation at the hands of the Angels, the normal stresses of everyday life just didn't seem all that heavy anymore.
He wore the bullet that had been removed from his chest on a leather thong around his neck. He treated it as a reminder to himself. It was a reminder that someone cared enough about him to risk their life for him and it reminded him of the day that changed his life.
When he knocked Misato out of Takemura's line of fire, he didn't do so because it was expected of him or because he was the only one who could, like his piloting of the Eva had been. He didn't do it because he wanted to be seen as a hero who selflessly gave themselves up for the benefit of another. He did it without thinking about his own mortality and he did it because someone he cared deeply about was in danger.
That day started him on a different path. Their near death experience made him stand his ground and tell Misato how he felt about her, and her reciprocation of those feelings ensured that he wouldn't go back to the way he was before. She made it her mission to make sure he never became the old Shinji again.
The bond between himself and Misato was now sealed with blood and it would never break. Neither of them would know what it was like to be lonely again.
So I like happy endings...sue me.
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