Shinji opened his eyes with a start as something pounced on him. "Wake up, Baka! We're going to be late to school!" Shinji flinched away as Asuka shook him awake with the gentleness of a cat shaking a mouse.
"Wha... where?"
"Get up! School! Now!"
"Um, can I have some privacy" Shinji clutched the school uniform that Asuka had thrown at him.
"Oh, right." The door slammed. Shinji took a moment to look around. It was his bedroom, piled with his usual junk – school books, laptop, cello - and a couple of posters of far away places that he wouldn't mind visiting some day. It was all very familiar.
Shinji got dressed and staggered out of the room to the bathroom and then to the kitchen, where Asuka was chatting with his mother (his father was obscured by a newspaper, as usual).
"Here, dear, take some toast – you overslept again."
"Come on!" Asuka grabbed his free hand and pulled as soon as Shinji's fingers had made contact with the toast.
"Don't forget your book bag!" Yui called out. As the door slammed behind the teens, she turned to Gendo, "Shinji is lucky to have a friend like Asuka."
Shinji almost flew as Asuka propelled him down the stairs. "Come on, we have a math test first period!" She danced around him in her exuberance.
Shinji rolled his eyes "We're not going to be late. You're always like this on test days."
As they walked and chatted, saying hello to Kensuke as they passed the otaku, everything felt very normal, but at the same time, it wasn't right.
They got to class in time, and after Hikari instructed them in the daily ritual of 'Stand. Bow. Sit', the teacher introduced them to a new exchange student who would be joining their class – a blond Russian girl, by the name of Ina Shestina.
It was at this point that the sense of unreality deepened into a wide gulf. Shinji knew that that wasn't Inia. Not his Inia. "No!" He stood up, drawing surprised looks from his classmates. "This is not right. This is not real!" He struggled to the one thing that he trusted to be real – his telepathic connection with Inia. He wasn't certain what he was doing, but the classroom began to swim and dissolve before his eyes.
/\ PoC /\
"Why do you pilot?" the voice resounded in the empty plain.
Shinji looked around. He wasn't certain where he was. Everything was white. "To protect the others."
"What others?"
"People." This was what he had learned from Inia. First from her example, and then from the realization that he would do anything to keep her safe.
"Do you wish to join with people?"
"Yes," Shinji replied, before pausing and adding, "with Inia."
"You can become one with everybody. There will be no more pain, just the joy of being."
Shinji frowned, "the joy of being ? That doesn't sounds like... anything. Where would everybody else be? How would we interact?"
"You would be one," reiterated the voice.
"That's bull. If we are all melded together, then nothing changes. If all you feel is this joy of being, then that's the same as not feeling anything at all." Shinji was an expert on not feeling anything. That is how he had spent nine and a half years, before Inia. "I want to be with Inia, but in a normal fashion, as two regular people."
/\ PoC /\
Shinji opened his eyes. He was laying on a beach, with an ocean of LCL softly lapping at the shore.
The first thing that struck him was the silence – here was no city sounds of automobiles rushing by, nor even the susurration of the ever present cicadas. The next was the giant stone statues of Asuka jutting out of the ocean like misshapen cliff faces.
He got up and started walking down the beach. He didn't feel too bad, given what he had gone through. Actually, he didn't feel much of anything – he felt disconnected. The reddish light, the empty beach, the unnatural landscape. It all felt so alien.
"Hello? Is there anybody here?" He called out, but there was no response. Not even an echo.
He jogged up to a rise in the beach. From there, he saw something (someone?) in the distance. He slid down the dune and jogged over.
It was Inia.
He crouched down over her bandaged form and placed a hand over her face – she was breathing!
"Inia?" there was no response.
It was silent. Not just silent, but there was no sensation, no feeling from anything. He tried reaching to to Inia telepathically, but he couldn't feel anything there either.
He grabbed Inia and started shaking her. "This is wrong! This isn't the way its supposed to be!"
Finally, there was a slight contact, a foreign sensation in his mind.
One word.
"Why?"
"Because this is not the world I as fighting for. I want the normal world." Shinji began to sob, "I want normal."
/\ PoC /\
Shinji slowly struggled to consciousness. He was laying in a hospital bed, and on his left was a bank of machinery that was attached to his arm and chest by a series of thin wires. It beeped periodically. On his right was Inia, half curled up on the hospital bed, an abandoned chair with a magazine on it behind her.
He gently reached down to stroke her hair, so as not to wake her up. He wasn't certain how long she had been sitting with him, but it must have been a while, as her injury was healed.
She looked up muzzily, "welcome back, Shinji."
Shinji smiled down at the girl. "Where am I? What happened?"
"You managed to defeat the last angel. The UN forces came and took over. Everything has become normal."
Shinji nodded. He wasn't certain if this was the real world or not, but it was normal. And that was good enough.
"I'm glad you're here." He reached out to Inia.
END
Yes, it is a Gainex ending
But it's Evangelion, so what do you expect?
]:)