The Mind of an Angel
Disclaimer: I do not own Evangelion.
Dedicated to 94saturn. Rest in peace my friend.
The world didn't open up to Shinji as much as blur into existence.
For once, he wasn't looking at the ceiling but instead at someone sitting on a chair in front of him. He wasn't lying down; he was propped up on the white bed, covered in white sheets, in a white room. There was a beeping, something akin to faint white noise as well. What looked like black snakes on his arms focused into wires attached to his body. The person on the chair, a man, was coming into view as well. Shinji took a breath and swallowed as he recognized him.
It was his father.
"Hello, son."
"F...father?" crawls out of Shinji's lips
"You're awake," he states.
Shinji allows his chest to inflate and deflate before continuing, "You...came to visit me."
"I requested that Dr. Akagi warn me when you would regain consciousness," a beep, "I have been here for the last hour."
"Thank you...for waiting."
Gendo's expression remains the same. Instead, he produces a folder Shinji hadn't noticed before. He opens it, but keeps his gaze on Shinji.
"What do you remember of your last engagement?"
Shinji can't understand the words at first, but then exhales sharply as he tries to adjust himself. His arms are dead weights, "With the 16th?"
"Correct."
"It attacked Asuka and..." he closes his eyes and lets his head fall back, "...Mana. Asuka and Mana. It disabled their Evas."
"Correct."
Shinji waits for a few beeps, then finds the courage, "Are they...?"
"Alive. What else do you recall?"
Shinji's chest loosens, he manages to raise hand up to his belly. The wires hurt.
"Then me and Rei attacked it. The angel..." he swallows, "it tried to infect Rei. And I couldn't..."
Shinji trails off, Gendo blinks, "You refused to engage the angel."
"If I hurt it, it hurt her..." Shinji finds himself looking at the ceiling again. The fan isn't on.
"What did Pilot Ayanami do?"
He closed his eyes, "She activated her Eva's self-destruct."
"Did she succeed?"
"No."
"Why?"
"I don't...the angel must have stopped it."
"Correct."
A moment passes. He gives himself a second.
Hello?
Nothing, just an echo of something that should be there. Shinji licks his lips and keeps going.
"Then I started attacking the angel again-"
"Why?"
Shinji looks at his father, "Wh-Why?"
"You refused to do so before. Why?"
Shinji looks at his hand and grips his sheets, "I remembered Touji."
Gendo's eyebrow twitches, "Pilot Suzuhara?"
"Yes..." Shinji sniffs, "He made me...I couldn't just do nothing again."
Gendo continues to look at his son, a gleam of something barely visible behind those cold frames of glass.
"Good."
Shinji nods. He knew it too.
"And then?"
"Then it started infecting me," Shinji scratches his stomach. It's sore.
"Did you fight it?" He asks, no judgement in his voice.
"For a bit...then I didn't."
"Why?"
Shinji stares at the sheets, "It felt like Rei."
"So you gave in."
Shinji doesn't answer. He can't look his father in the eye right now.
"Do you remember anything after that?"
He does. He remembers so much, a shame that begins coloring his cheeks red. He spares his father the details.
"I remember a roar," Shinji looks up, into the brown pupils behind those glasses, "I think I went berzerk. The rest is just..."
He doesn't bother to finish the sentence. His lungs feel like they've run a mile. Gendo glances down at the files and starts talking.
"We lost control of Unit 01, and it consumed the angel. Exactly like the 14th."
Shinji finds a taste in his mouth. He can't place it.
"At the time this happened, I had just authorized the use of an N2 mine to disable the angel. This was to be followed by a Hydrogen bomb."
"To kill it?" Shinji realizes he's interrupted, but his father is unmoved.
"A last resort. All five pilots, including yourself, would have been. The civilian deaths would also likely have been massive."
The sentence hangs over Shinji like an axe. He feels like saying or doing the wrong thing would cause it to fall.
"Thankfully," he grabs a paper from the folder and examines it. "It did not come to that."
Gendo stands, and slowly walks to the side of the bed. He places the paper above Shinji's chest, who reaches over to grab it. He starts reading it, but two words immediately pop out:
TYPE BLUE
It rings a bell.
"This is about an angel?"
"A blood test."
Shinji turns to his father, brow furrowed for a question, until his father points close to the top. Shinii reads and feels the wind knocked out of him.
"It's my blood..."
Shinji lets the paper drop to his stomach, but his father calmly picks it up.
"When Unit 01 consumed the 14th, it gained an S2 organ," Gendo puts the paper back in the folder, "When it consumed the 16th,-"
"I did."
He closes the folder, "Correct."
Shinji stares straight ahead, gripping the sheets. The beeping gets faster.
"Am-" he fights the invisible grip on his throat, "Am I an angel?"
A beep. Another. Another. He turns to his father, eyes pleading. Another beep. Gendo's lips part.
"No. You have not been classified as such."
Shinji sighs, his lungs no longer crushed, but his father continues.
"Were we not absolutely certain on the identity of the 17th, you may have been," Gendo walks back to the foot of the bed, "As of now, you are under observation."
Gendo lifts the chair and places it to the side, where it usually belongs. Shinji sits there, tears in his eyes for reasons he can't fathom, expecting his father to leave. Instead, he talks to the wall in front of him.
"You allowed a romantic relationship with another Pilot to hinder your duty."
Shinji's eyes go wide. He almost bolts out of the bed itself.
"Rei! Father, is she-"
"She is alive, and you are not to interact with her again."
Shinji freezes in place, as Gendo turns to face his son. He takes two steps towards the bed, and places immense weight to every word.
"Your feelings for each other were used against you," he pauses, "The result was the near death of humanity."
Shinji lays there, pinned by the words, as his father continues, "This, along with your recent complications, means you are unfit to pilot."
Gendo places his hands at the side of the bed, Shinji's hand inches away.
"You are not to see her again. Do you understand?"
Shinji looks at where the chair used to be, swallows, and answers truthfully.
"Yes..."
Gendo nods, stands up straight, and heads for the door. He opens it.
"Dr. Akagi will be here shortly."
He walks out. It closes.
Shinji can feel his muscles again, but he can't move them. He sits there, breathing out of his mouth, jaw quivering. The beeping continues as a tears refuse to fall. Words go out to no one in particular.
"What now?"
I do not know.
The answer doesn't help. It doesn't do anything at all.
- End... -
A note:
I stopped writing this story years ago, for a variety of reasons I won't really get into. I considered writing and reading fanfics something I'd left behind, but still I got the occasional alert and review. The fact that I left it unfinished, and that some people seemed to care about it, nagged at me for a long time. I won't finish this story as is, or rewrite it, because both of those would be lies. Instead, I've decided to add this small peek into what was the planned trajectory of the rest of the narrative. I never thought of the scene this way, but it felt fitting somehow. This is, however, for all intents and purposes, the last chapter I will write for this fanfic.
94saturn, a friend who helped me immeasurably to improve as a writer when I was young, died some years ago. He gave hours of his time to help me grow, and I felt I should honor his help with at least some type of closure. Thank you, and rest in peace.
I'm still writing, but they're my own projects now. Thank you all for being part of this ride, and good luck on yours.
-Atomic Squirrel