The Light is Gone
The first thing he noticed about the landscape was how barren it was. The ground was mostly dry dirt and only a few tufts of water parched grass. There were a couple of trees in his line of sight, but they were mostly stunted and had few leaves. The entire scene looked like an old painting left too long where the sun had leeched the colors from it.
The sky was the only place which held any color at all. Shinji had never seen a sky with such an unusual color. It was a deep red, but with an edge of dark purple near the horizon. Usually the sight of such colors during a sunrise or sunset would have an uplifting effect on him, but this sky just made him uneasy. He gazed upward as he tried to discover the source of the color and was disconcerted to find he could see neither moon, nor sun, nor stars.
After studying his surroundings he anxiously shifted from one foot to the other as he tried to remember what he was doing here. Was he looking for something? Someone? He surveyed the bleak landscape again as he tried to put his thoughts in order. Why would he come to a place like this to look for something? He slowly turned around in a full circle, but still saw nothing. The strange color of the sky was still making him nervous and he decided to start walking both to ease his nerves and maybe to find what he was looking for.
He chose a random direction and started walking. Even with his slow pace, his footfalls kicked up small clouds of dust from the dry ground. With nothing interesting to look at except the eerie sky, Shinji's mind started to turn inward.
Rei. He didn't understand her. She seemed to get along well with his father, but not with anyone else. Or rather she did not respond to anyone else. Her brief smiles after they successfully completed a mission were as rare as her words. She seemed like a nice person, but her statuesque exterior was completely unrevealing. Nevertheless Shinji was still drawn to her and found her intriguing. There was something familiar about her which he could never manage to put his finger on.
Still moving slowly across the dry ground, he was startled to see the faintest beginnings of a path. He squatted down to examine it. The shallow depression which marked the path was surprisingly smooth. Shinji could see no evidence of what had made the trail or that anyone had used it. Another odd feature of the path was the small branches coming off of it, almost like the roots of a tree. Although he was puzzled by these things Shinji still decided to follow it. A path was a path and it had to lead somewhere.
He stepped onto the path and returned to his thoughts. Asuka. He understood her even less than Rei. Sometimes it seemed like she wanted to be around him and other times she acted as if he was the most disgusting thing she had ever seen. His easy agreeableness and willingness to go along with what others wanted him to do seemed to greatly irritate her. If he remained silent when she got angry at him, she would only get angrier. If he argued back at her she would argue louder. He frowned and the red sky darkened slightly. It seemed like nothing he did could meet her approval. Maybe she was right. Maybe it was always his fault.
He stuffed his hands in his pockets as his mind veered away from Asuka. What about Misato? She seemed happy with him most of the time and praised him when he did well, but it was her cold disappointment which burned brightest in his memory. He acted indifferent when she chastised him, but it affected him more than he let show. The sky darkened again and Shinji took no notice of it.
He stopped walking and turned his focus outward to see if the landscape had changed at all. The immediate surroundings seemed unchanged to him and he raised his gaze to the far away horizon. In the distance he could discern something which looked like a shapeless blob the same color as the ground. He squinted, but the shape did not resolve itself into anything familiar. At least it was something different.
He started walking faster than he had before as he made his way towards the shapeless object. As he hurried along the path, he noticed it was being joined smaller paths. In addition to this, the path he was on was becoming deeper and wider. He put these observations in the back of his mind and continued onward.
After a short period of time had passed he noticed that the distant object did not seem to be getting any larger. He paused uncertainly. He could turn back. Would that do him any good? Between the unknown and a visible goal, he chose the visible goal. He sighed and started and started walking again.
His father. Just like the destination he was trying to reach, the harder he strived the more distant his father seemed. What had he done to be so unlikable? Why did his father consistently ignore him? When he did interact with his father why was it so difficult?
Was it his fault? Was Shinji himself to blame?
He slowed down as unpleasant thoughts overtook him. His father. Rei. Asuka. Misato. His classmates. The technicians who worked on EVA. Always observing him. Watching him make the wrong decisions, the wrong choices, and the wrong actions. Why did he pilot EVA? To please people? To save people? To save people who hated him? What was the point? Why was he even alive?
He tripped and fell close by a rock which he had not noticed before. Without brushing the dust off of himself, he dragged his body onto the rock and put his head in his hands. Words no longer entered his thoughts as his negative emotions took over. Fear. Anger. Hate. Sadness. Despair. One final thought clawed its way through his tangled emotions.
I wish I didn't exist.
With that thought, the rock Shinji was sitting on shattered. He let out a scream and started to fall. Instead of falling downward as he had expected, he started to fall upward into the sky which had become an unpleasant black red. As he fell upward, the tiny part of his mind which still contained rational thought noted that the paths which he had been following looked like the blood vessels in a human body. The rock which had just shattered was at the place where the heart would have been located. He continued to fall upward, but eventually fainted as terror overcame him. He embraced the pleasant darkness which unconsciousness brought with it.
When he woke up in the morning he could remember nothing of his dream.
