Creation began on 07-26-16
Creation ended on 08-24-16
Neon Genesis Evangelion
Different from You: Scars that run deeper than deep
Sometimes, Shinji considered the world of alcoholism, just to see what a can of beer would taste like. But then, he'd be setting a terrible example for his daughter. He didn't even touch a drop of wine because he had read what any form of liquor could do to one's way of thinking. A sober mind, clear of any thoughts, unintended or depraved, was a mind set in steel that couldn't be remade.
So he stuck with tea…and its many varieties. Ginseng, ginger and jasmine were among his choice of tastes. They had the effect of calming his mind when people he didn't like or trust caused him undue stress; this was often from people like his father and the in-laws.
"Daddy?" He heard his daughter's voice, and was reminded that he was inside a tea shop with Shado in Tokyo-3; it had been blind luck that he just saw the small shop and saw that they had a variety of flavors to choose from.
"Yes, sweetie?" He asked her, looking at her cup of ginseng tea.
"You seemed absent-minded," she told him. "Are you alright?"
"I'm fine," he assured her, and finished his cup of jasmine tea.
-x-
"…What's this right here?" Misato asked Ritsuko, noticing a folder on the desk in the latter's office. "Another load of information about the Third Child?"
"Actually, it's about his daughter," the faux-blond explained as the purple-haired woman picked the folder up and looked at the pictures taken of the girl. "Commander Ikari requested that he'd be updated about the Third Child's child."
"Rits, it's only been two days since we learned that the girl really was sick with the flu. Shinji really was taking care of her during the whole time. He definitely prefers her company over anyone else's."
"Unfortunately, this behavior can hinder his service."
"Personally, I think the person that may hinder him the most is his father. Those two certainly don't… Who is this?"
"Who is what?" Ritsuko asked her.
"This girl with Shinji at the park," Misato answered her, showing her a picture of a teenage girl around the boy's age, looking as though they were engaged in conversation.
"I'm still using the MAGI to find out who she is," Ritsuko explained. "She seems to be someone the boy appears to take to."
But when Misato flipped the photo over to look at the next picture that was a clear violation of the boy and his daughter's rights to privacy, she had a feeling that there was something more…when she saw Shado in a swing set with a boy around her age…and Shinji and the teen girl were with them.
-x-
They went to the pack again the next day after Shinji was through with synchronization testing. And they saw them there again. It was the first time in a long time that Shado had someone her own age to play with that wasn't afraid of her or looked down upon her…and it was the first time in a long time that her father had someone he could relate to that was of the same or similar boat of trauma and disgrace as he was.
"We should make this a habit of ours that we see each other around here," the teenage girl said to Shinji, as they leaned against a small fence as the two children ran around the jungle gym.
"It's been, what, about a year-and-a-half since you two up and left?" Shinji asked her.
"Close to it," she answered. "It wasn't easy for either of us, but I couldn't take it, anymore. I couldn't take her abuse, her put-downs. Even when she knew it was their fault, she continued to blame me. I knew it was only a matter of time before she decided to…put an end to it all."
Shinji looked away from her and at the boy running up to the slide in front of his daughter.
"You really think she would've done that to you?" He asked her.
"If I wasn't reported missing or kidnapped along with Toya, then she clearly wasn't concerned with our absence. I had to do what I had to do for the both of us, even if it meant leaving a young man I dared to call a friend."
"Truth be told, I had forgotten about you. Shado wondered why you both just up and left. I found it hard just to make up a reason for why good people leave. Because you are good people. Why do good people leave? Because of problems from where they live? Because of people they can no longer tolerate, but can't deal with legally? Because of fear? Or all of the above? There are many reasons why good people leave, whatever they are, and they're likely to be understandable than any excuse a bad person gives for why they leave."
The girl looked at him, and then looked at the boy, at Toya, despite many features he had that she didn't care for, but cared about him because he was hers.
"So…what brought you here to Tokyo-3?" She asked Shinji.
"Family that isn't family…and may never be family, ever again," he spoke in riddles. "Why are you here when it's nothing more than a pit of shallow graves?"
"I almost ended up doing something that was just as worse as what people that used to be my family did to me…until I met up with an elderly man that took pity upon Toya and I. The tea house we were in when you came, he owns and runs it. I help around the shop for four hours a day for four days a week. I get minimum wage, plus room and board for my son and I. Plus…it's the only place I've ever felt safe from the people that hurt me…that want to hurt me or Toya."
"What about… Is there a… Do you have anyone…besides Toya?"
"I don't have anyone except Toya. If there should come a day when I do, I want them to accept that I've been hurt in unforgivable ways and that I can't pretend that what I went through never truly happened. They would have to accept that I've been a victim and earn my trust…to earn my devotion and admiration. What about you? Is there anyone besides your daughter, Shado?"
"Nobody I can really stand to be around, no. Sorry."
"What about Shado? You seem to be the only one in her life. Where's her… Where's the lady that has the right to call herself her mother, not the one that was partially responsible for her being here?"
Shinji sighed and answered as simply as he could.
"Shado doesn't have a mother," he said it simply. "And the lady that was partially responsible for her being here is… She's long gone. Didn't have any time for her, anyway."
"Oh? My heart goes out to your daughter. At least she has you." She expressed her sympathies.
"Thank you. What about Toya's… The guy that gave you your son, but doesn't have the right to call himself a father? Where's he at a time like this?"
"Where are THEY at a time like this?" She corrected him, indicating that she had a much deeper trauma that ran deeper than the abuse of one person. "One's in the DOC, still waiting for the needle to end him… And the other one, he was…has been denied parole again because he wouldn't answer for why he did what he did. He won't even apologize for his crime. Neither one even cares for Toya, just like how she never tried to, either. I'm the only family he has… The only blood family that would bleed for him from out the heart."
"You're a strong woman for trying to be enough family for him," he praised her.
"What about you? Your aunt? Your uncle? Cousin?"
"Haven't seen them since Shado and I got here. Don't want to see them, ever again. I'm trying to be all the family I can be for Shado. The only one that doesn't want to hurt her by leaving her alone against their will or saying awful things to her like she doesn't matter when she does."
"Now, that's what I call a responsible father."
"Thank you."
On the jungle gym, Shado and Toya sat on the slide and peeked at their respective parents as they continued to converse.
"What do you suppose they're talking about?" Toya asked Shado.
"Probably about us," she suggested. "Or each other."
"Mommy hasn't made any friends with a similar past as hers. Maybe your daddy is the only one she can call a friend."
"Daddy hasn't had anyone else to speak with except me that hasn't been a complete fiend."
"You look out for your daddy?"
"Someone has to. His daddy is not a nice person. Everyone he has to see at this place under the city is not very nice, either. Even his aunt and uncle and their son weren't good people. If anything, Daddy's entire list of relations are just unfriendly people that hate him and don't explain why."
"Mommy's mommy hates her and myself. She wouldn't say why, either."
"You look out for her?"
"Like you with your daddy, someone has to look out for my mommy. She's all I have in my life. If anything happened to her… I'd have no one left."
"Me, too…but with Daddy."
Then, they noticed how their young parents seemed to laughing at something funny; Toya suspected that his mother had told Shado's father a joke she knew.
-x-
"…Finally found a name to go with that girl he's been seen with," Ritsuko informed Gendo in his office. "Rumiko Gaidoku. Age fourteen. Nothing in accordance with the Murduk Institute. Mother and father are Nikki and Shinoda Gaidoku, respectively. Known sibling is an elder brother named Yukito Gaidoku. The boy with her is her son, Toya."
"She's not a pilot candidate?" Gendo questioned.
"No, sir. Apparently, she's like the Third Child; neither attends the public school system…and both are teenage parents as a result of rape. Her case, however, was just as extreme as the boy's had been."
"Elaborate."
"From her medical records, the girl was a rape and incest victim at the hands of her father and elder brother. The police found out when the girl collapsed during a school field trip and was revealed to be pregnant. Her mother blamed her for the arrest and incarceration of her husband and son. The father's on death row and the brother was recently denied parole again for his role in the incest for refusing to divulge why he harmed his sister. There's no telling which one fathered her son because no DNA testing was performed on the boy, before or after his birth. The girl once requested an abortion, but her mother told her no. There were rumors of ongoing abuse, and then the girl and her son weren't seen for over a year. Apparently, the Third Child knew her personally."
-x-
"…So…will we see you later this month?" Rumiko asked Shinji as they and their children returned to the tea house.
As Shado yawned in exhaustion on her young father's back, Shinji responded, "It will kinda depend on my own schedule…and whether or not fate will be kind to us both like it was the previous few days."
"Good night, Shinji."
"Good night, Rumiko."
The two teen parents parted ways as the father took his tired daughter back to their apartment while the mother took her sleeping son into the tea house.
-x-
"…Maybe that's the reason they get along well," went Misato to Ritsuko, who had been informed by the faux-blond about the teenage girl that Shinji was seen with at the park. "They don't have anyone but their children after being disgraced by their families and live for them more than anyone else. Now that I think about it, there's been no mention of the boy having any number of friends since before he was left in his aunt and uncle's care."
"The going belief is that if you're the child of Commander Ikari, you're pretty much an omen," Ritsuko explained, "even if he claims to be nothing like his father."
"Well, he certainly proves that in the way he handles his own life and taking care of his daughter."
"But what about any emotional similarities?"
"I don't see any."
"Oh, subject change. The Second Child and Unit-02 will be here tomorrow."
"You think Shinji will be able to get along with Asuka?"
"With him, it's anyone's guess. Personally, however, I suspect that Shinji would rather be with this Rumiko Gaidoku than either Rei Ayanami or Asuka Langley Soryu."
"Clash between personalities that don't sync?"
"A complete lack of compatibility."
-x-
The next day came…and the unfortunate and disliked aspects of Shinji's schedule that clashed with personal interests were the need for NERV to have him undergo synchronization testing again for a few, short hours.
We didn't even exchange numbers, he thought as he carried his daughter on his back with the backpack containing their lunch, referring to Rumiko and he never getting each other's contact number so as to keep in touch.
"Oh, come on!" He and Shado heard a female voice ranting, and then saw a girl around Shinji's age kicking at a door that wouldn't open up for her. "I swiped my card in there! Open up!"
She was slightly taller than Shinji, had a fairer complexion than he did, and stood out more because of her long, red hair.
Shinji sighed and walked towards the access door several feet away from the redhead; he would rather not have anything to do with someone that seemed…unnecessarily rough. Plus, he had his child's safety to consider around people like that. He swiped his card across the panel reader and waited for the door to open up, which it did after two seconds.
"Hey, you!" The redhead made herself heard to him, but he ignored her, as she could've been talking to anyone other than him or Shado. "You! With the girl on your back!"
He stopped and turned to face her.
"Yes?" He responded.
"How do you get these dumb readers to work?" She asked him. "I swiped my card in seven times, and nothing happened!"
He set his daughter and the bag down and slowly approached the redhead.
"Show me the card, please," he requested.
She gave it to him and he examined it. There was nothing wrong with the card and the reader was working properly. So Shinji swiped the card for her, and the door opened; the difference between their swiping was that Shinji swiped slowly, whereas the girl swiped too fast.
"You need to swipe slowly so the reader can read the bar code properly," he informed her, and then left to get Shado and enter the facility.
Shado looked up at the redhead and then decided that she didn't like her as much as she did with Toya's mother when they met. There was just something wrong with her that put her in the same boat as the blue-haired girl.
"Daddy," she spoke to Shinji, "I didn't like that girl."
"Me, neither, sweetie," he expressed.
As they walked down the hall separate from the one the redhead went down and down an escalator, the little girl noticed the blue-haired girl from before.
"Daddy," she quickly informed her father, alerting him to the First Child behind them on the escalator. "The other girl."
Shinji noticed Rei and immediately picked his daughter up and walked further down the escalator, wanting to get as far from the albino as possible.
-x-
"…Hey, there, Katsuragi," greeted a man with an unshaven face, dressed in a suit without the coat and tie, on the bridge in Central Dogma. "Long time, no see."
"Of all the… You have some nerve being here." Misato expressed, irritated by his presence.
"Oh, I'm here on assignment. Currently on the combat roster for the duration of my time here."
"In case you haven't been informed, we do have enough problems with the Angels."
"Oh, I hear they're not the only problem you have around here."
Misato got the feeling that Ryoji Kaji was referring to the Third Child and his own predicament with the agency.
"It's hardly a problem if there's nothing being said that interferes with the situation," she told him.
"Yet, I hear the rumors about there being a little girl related to Commander Ikari," Kaji explained.
"Then you should check with your sources."
Suddenly, Shinji and Shado entered Central Dogma, followed by Rei and Asuka. The boy had an unhappy expression and the girl on his back had a concerned expression.
"I take it you two have already met Asuka?" Misato asked the young father and daughter.
"If you mean, the redhead," went Shado in response to the question, "then we have."
"Unfortunately," Shinji added; first they were followed by the albino girl, and then they had to put up with the redhead's presence when it turned out they were all going to the same location within the facility. "How long is the test today?"
Ritsuko, who was present, explained that the synchronization test for today was for three hours.
"What?!" Asuka responded, looking at Shinji and Shado. "Who the heck are these two?!"
"Ah, you must be Shinji Ikari," Kaji greeted the young father, extending his right hand. "I've heard a lot about you."
Unfortunately, Shinji, even if only one of his hands was needed to support his daughter on his back, didn't accept the unshaven man's hand.
"You'll forgive me for my antisocial behavior," he told the man.
"Right," Kaji responded. "And who might this lady be? Your sister? Cousin?"
Shinji didn't like this man asking him so many questions, and responded, "She's none of your business and off limits."
Shado tightened her grip around around her father's neck as she gave a fearful look.
"He's very protective of her," went Misato to Kaji, and looked to Asuka. "He's the Third Child and pilot of Evangelion Unit-01."
"No way!" Asuka gasped, disbelieving that Shinji was a pilot, simply because he was a boy. "Him?!"
"Only because Commander Ikari requested that he be here to pilot the Eva," went Rei, but Shinji acted like the girl didn't exist.
"Your father," Asuka said, not really questioning him.
"Unfortunately," he said simply.
Asuka looked at Shado, and then noticed how the girl bore a slight resemblance to the Third Child (and to a lesser extent, the First Child).
"You're both not big on talking, are you?" She asked the pair.
Shado didn't say anything.
"Not around here," Shinji said bluntly, "and not with them."
The boy then carried his child out of the room and left the people there.
"What was his story?" Asuka asked them. "And who was the little girl with him? What, his sister?"
"Afraid not," went Ritsuko. "His mother died when he was little."
"Stepsister, then?"
"Some people wish. His father never remarried."
"That was Shado Ikari," went Misato to Asuka. "Believe it or not, she's his daughter."
"What?!" She gasped, which Kaji also found disturbing, as none of his sources had anything about the Third Child having a daughter.
"If that's his daughter, then where's his wife?" He tried to make a joke of his question.
Both Misato and Ritsuko didn't answer him. It was something that was not very…worth a migraine because of how the daughter's origins were.
"It's complicated," Misato said instead.
"I'd hate to be the poor girl he got pregnant," Asuka expressed.
If only you knew the so-called girl, Asuka, thought Misato.
"Believe me," went Ritsuko to her, "you wouldn't want to know anything about her."
-x-
Within the plug, Shinji thought about the three people that really mattered to him in his life right now. While his daughter was his primary concern and anchor to whatever sanity he had left in this insane world, he was glad to see Rumiko and her son after what felt like a long time. There wasn't any other way he could explain his feelings toward a young woman with a child of her own that suffered in a similar situation as he had suffered; the only differences between the two were that he was a boy that was kidnapped and held for ransom, suffered from being scarred on his chest by his kidnappers and later raped by a woman old enough to be his mother and later had his child in prison before dying…and Rumiko was a girl that was never kidnapped, never held against her will for a ransom, but violated by two men she was related to and later abused by her mother that wanted to deny that her husband and only son were rapists and that there was a chance that her only grandson was also her stepson if he was fathered by her husband. Still, they were both parents to bastard children that needed them involved in their lives (and were as innocent as their parents weren't, anymore).
Out in the room that contained the testing plugs, Shado, sitting in a chair out of the way of the adults working, watching her father and the other girls on the monitors.
"Would it be wrong to say that every time his daughter's around, I'm tempted just to insist that she's left elsewhere?" Shigeru asked his co-workers.
Maya looked over at the girl and then at her father on the screen.
"I'd rather not risk keeping the girl away from her father," she told him. "I'd rather face an Angel than face a father that wants his daughter to stay close."
"Well, Rei's sync scores are improving after her recovery," Ritsuko told them, "but still below acceptable parameters. The Second and Third Children, on the other hand, are almost at the same level. Only the boy's a tad bit higher."
"Don't tell Asuka that," went Misato to her. "She'd hate him more than she dislikes him already."
Shado heard them, but paid them no mind as she focused more on her father than the other people present around her.
-x-
"…I wanna know how this is possible, Katsuragi," went Kaji to Misato on the bridge back in Central Dogma, referring to the Third Child and his underage parenthood. "He's only fourteen years old and the girl has got to be at least three."
"Four, actually," she told him. "It's not something that is easy to understand or accept. The girl's father is very broken and never got the help he needed back when he was younger…and just seems to make up for his damaged state by taking care of his daughter."
"Yet there's nothing about anything in his background that I have been able to discover that speaks about him having a daughter."
"That's because NERV doesn't have every bit of information on Shinji's past. It's like nobody wants to know anything about him, whether he's a regular school student or a kidnap victim that his relatives didn't want to pay a ransom for."
"So…what's with him and the girl?"
Misato sighed and explained, "Shinji was kidnapped by three people roughly five years ago and held for ransom, which his aunt and uncle had absolutely no intention of paying, and was found by the police a few days later. Unfortunately, the police were too late to save him from his physical and emotional scarring. He had a lot of skin carved from his chest in the shape of a star and was raped by the woman that was involved in the kidnapping."
"And somehow, he got her pregnant?"
"He didn't have a choice in the matter. The woman had his daughter in prison and died later. She was relocated to live with Shinji because he and the Ikaris were her only relatives that were neither dead or in jail, but it seems that her father was the only family that ever cared about her. He hasn't been back to school ever since he was informed of his fatherhood, so I have no idea of what his GPA is, but he doesn't strike me as being dumb. Not with his behavior and concerns for the girl."
"Some people self-educate or make things up as they go along through life."
"But with Shinji, it's different. After he fought against the Third Angel, he was dead-set on leaving, but Sub-Commander Fuyutsuki convinced him to stay awhile so long as we got the message that his primary concern was his daughter, not any of us, and she's off-limits to anyone here."
"Sounds like he perceives everyone as a potential threat to either himself or his daughter."
"I couldn't say for sure. He certainly doesn't give the Angels a second thought or the time of day. He beat the Fourth Angel senseless until its core shattered. And the day the Fifth Angel appeared, his daughter had the decency to install a sense of preparation in her father because even we didn't know what it was capable of, and she was unwilling to risk his safety. He sniped the Angel, but he wanted to know if we were done after that. There was absolutely no concern that the Angel might try to get back up and finish what it started. All I can say is that he's not what I expected when I met him and Shado the day the Third Angel attacked. I didn't expect NERV to recruit a rape victim and a preteen parent."
"Expect the unexpected, Katsuragi."
"We can expect this from him if anything happens to his little girl. I'd rather have with us against the Angels than to up and leave should she get hurt and die."
"Why not just leave her in a shelter during attacks or with a babysitter?"
"If it were easy for him to trust people older than himself, but he doesn't trust anyone here."
"How damaged would you rate his psyche?"
"On a scale from one to ten? Eight. Not too damaged to care for someone."
Kaji now wasn't too sure if even extended conversations with the boy were worth trying to get to understand someone that suffered from the harshness of adults and may have wanted nothing to do with any relationship with adults.
-x-
As she waited outside of the men's locker room for her father, Shado was calmly coloring away in a book. Something in her heart, a feeling or perhaps a premonition (not that she believed in such things, as they were unlikely) told her that the people here at NERV were only going to cause her father more pain than she knew him to be in already (he was good at hiding his pain, but she knew him to suffer from being in one of these giant monsters).
"…So you're really the Third Child's daughter?" She looked up and saw the redhead standing in front of her. "You're not his sister or cousin?"
She was bothered by her and simply returned her attention to the coloring book, hoping that the redhead would just go away.
"Excuse me?" Asuka continued. "I'm talking to you. Speak up! You're a girl, aren't you?!"
Shado didn't see how her being a girl had anything to do with speaking or not speaking. She really just didn't want to speak to her.
"She doesn't know you," she heard her father's voice and looked past the girl, seeing him looking unhappy about the redhead being near his daughter and bothering her. "And she knows better than to speak to strangers."
Asuka turned to face him and saw that he wasn't happy to see someone he didn't know or trust trying to engage in conversation with his child.
"Real hard to believe that she's yours," she told him.
"That's your problem," he responded, and walked around her to pick up Shado. "Let's go home, dear."
"Yay," Shado cheered as her father carried her out of the hall.
"Hey!" Asuka shouted at them. "They're foolish if they think they still need you to pilot the Eva, boy!"
If there was anything Shinji wanted to say to her in response to what she said, he certainly didn't say it out loud to anyone at the moment.
-x-
"…My God," Kaji gasped, being shown the scar on Shinji's chest when he was removed from the plug after the Third Angel self-destructed. "This is sick. He probably doesn't like anyone looking at his chest and asking him about it."
"As far as I know, the only people that have seen his scar are the doctors, Ritsuko, you now, myself and anyone that has seen the pictures. I can't say for sure if his daughter's seen his scar, but I wouldn't be surprised if she knew about how he got it."
"Maybe we should consider relieving the boy of his duties as an Eva pilot and letting him and his daughter leave the city."
"I would if I had command authority to do so, but Commander Ikari has the final say. Plus, I'm not completely sure, but Shinji may have met someone in the city that he can hang with without a problem and provide his daughter with a playmate."
"Oh, really?"
"It's only through the power of surveillance cameras dotted throughout the city. For about three days, he and his daughter have been spending time with a girl around his age with a little boy around her age. Going through some old files, it seems that Shinji actually knew the girl over a year ago."
"Girlfriend, perhaps?"
Misato looked at Kaji like he had spoken the wrong choice of words.
"I doubt that, and for obvious reasons," she uttered.
-x-
Putting his daughter to sleep for the night, Shinji, sitting at the table in the kitchen, looked down at his cup of ginger tea. He was wondering how Rumiko and her son were this evening. Wanting to guess how they were was better than the dozens of thoughts of other people he could care less for, especially the redhead he met today. He put her in the same category of people as he put the albino girl, which was comprised of women, young and old, that he wanted absolutely nothing to do with.
It didn't even matter if they knew more about whatever these Angels were and why they were attacking people than he didn't, or even if they had in their possession a type of beauty you wouldn't find elsewhere (not that he cared much about looks as he would care about personality and trust). If they rubbed him or Shado the wrong way, they were a problem that they didn't need to be bothered with. And add their category to the category for the men of similar degrees of problems, you get a third category that was people that were likely going to be the end of you or the only family you had that tied you down to the bits of clarity you had left, leaving either unstable…or beyond the touch of hope.
"I heard the worst scars one can have," he recalled Rumiko say to him at the park, "are the ones that run deeper than the boundaries of the flesh."
If that's true, then I have those scars that run deeper than my body, he thought in agreement with her.
To be continued…
A/N: How about that? Shinji can associate with someone that suffered a similar case as he did.