Relapse:∣▍
Chapter 2: "…pulling the puzzles apart…"
Gendo Ikari was a patient man.
Gendo Ikari was a methodical man.
Gendo Ikari was a rational man.
Gendo Ikari was not ready for this situation.
"Are you going to look at your son's body?"
Kōzō Fuyutsuki was a cool-headed, pragmatic man, after all, he was the right hand of the commander of NERV, but even he had a breaking point when it came to his boss' emotional distance.
Gendo said nothing, only looking forward from his desk, fingers intertwined in front of his face.
"He. Was. Your. Son." Kōzō said deliberately trying to get his man to feel something.
"He. Was. Yui's. Son." He almost cringed as he used her name, it felt like such a low blow against the man.
Those glasses shifted in the light; the bearded man's head tilted up.
He could tell it affected him… good. After six hours of him staring into the distance in this office, it was the only thing that had affected him.
"Are you just going to sit there and pretend that Yui's boy isn't currently occupying a spot in our morgue?"
Gendo didn't turn his head, but Kōzō knew he was starting to wear away that impregnable wall.
Walking around the desk so he was not in front of his superior, the older man placed his hands on the overly large desk.
"I remember the first time she showed me him, she handed him to me without hesitation and…" he stopped, words catching in his throat, dammit. He didn't know the boy, but he knew Yui and what she had been willing to do for him.
Now… that last true reminiscence of her was gone. That flame extinguished from this world, leaving it that that much darker, that much colder.
The seated man looked up at him, his eyes were blank, empty, but in more pain, than Fuyutsuki ever thought he had seen them in, somehow he doubted it was due to the current status of Unit-01's pilot.
"Quarantine is…"
"DAMN THE QUARANTINE!" the gray-haired professor yelled as he slammed his fist down on the desk of his superior. "You owe it to Yui." The elderly man pointed to Gendo.
Those cold distant eyes lit up at those words. Finally, Fuyutsuki knew he'd gotten to him.
Slowly rising from his seat, Gendo placed his hands on the desk, mirroring the old professor.
"Listen to me…"
Whatever retort Gendo was about to delve into was eviscerated into oblivion with the crashing of doors and hurried footsteps rapidly approaching the two men.
A random nurse rushed across the long office, unannounced, and was now sucking down more air than a turbofan at cruising speed.
"Not. Now." The commander growled.
"Sir,"
"Not. NOW." He snarled again, lacking any of his characteristic coolness.
Before he could chastise the nurse anymore she blurted out her message.
"The Third Child is alive!"
Time seemed to freeze at that moment for the old man, six hours since having him declared dead, six hours since his heart wouldn't start, six hours since no brainwaves or any vital signs could be found.
Six hours on ice in a morgue, and the boy was alive.
Yui's boy was alive.
That tiny flame had survived somehow, pushing away that darkness again.
"Leave us." the younger of the two commanded, causing the nurse to scurry back towards the door, only her footsteps on the smooth floor signaling she was still there before the crash of the door announced her exit.
They stood there for a long while, it seemed like each was daring the other to speak.
Kōzō only could recall a few times this had happened, each one a more unpleasant event than the last, but here they were doing it at perhaps the one event they should be celebrating.
"Thoughts?" the professor asked calmly, his voice a stark contrast to the tension between them only moments before.
Slowly Gendo sat back down into his seat, his eyes no longer fixed on the older man in front of him.
"I want you to investigate, see that this isn't some form of contamination, report to me exactly what you find."
No shouts of joy, no professions of faith, not even a smile. Kōzō couldn't remember the last time he saw that man smile, with the idea he couldn't even smile at the thought of his son seemingly being resurrected to their plane of existence, well…
Perhaps he would never see that man smile.
ʡʘʢ
Misato couldn't really explain how she had ended up holding the boy, it just happened.
There in the GeoFront, they both sat on the bench where they had found him, with her almost absorbing Shinji with her embrace.
Perhaps it was some sort of motherly instincts, after all this boy was the closest thing she had to a son, even if it was a bit strange, maybe it was herself acting like an older sister, emphasis on older.
Either way she was gripping him in her arms like he would melt away like this was some sort of dream-state that could collapse at any moment and she would wake back up at her desk. Only she would be filling out paperwork caused by his death.
She tried to ask him about it, but he didn't know anything, or at least that's what he told her. She wasn't blind and it wasn't too surprising that someone like Shinji would hide things, he hid things from her before all this.
But even though she sensed he wasn't telling her everything she was too caught up in the happiness of him being alive to even question him.
She just kept imagining this cold, pale corpse in the morgue the entire time she spent putting off to go see it and the whole time she took to go see that lifeless boy, now he was here in her arms, alive, warm, with color and a heartbeat.
She checked from time to time, just to be sure.
The only thing that really seemed wrong apart from his apparent lack of memory was his hoarse voice, no doubt from screaming in pain.
Shinji could remember the journey to get to NERV, the N2 blast that nearly killed them, even his amazement at the GeoFront he remembered.
After the decision to pilot Unit-01 and him reaching the surface, that was when his memories got… scattered.
So, she told him, she explained to him how he had defeated the Fourth Angel and how he had moved in with her. How he had gone to school and made friends and how he killed the Fifth with those same boys in the entry plug.
Then she had to work herself up to tell him what happened.
"We sent you up to fight the Sixth Angel, but it must have known…" she stopped herself, steadying her voice.
"It cooked the EVA with you inside. You flat-lined before we even got the entry plug open and nothing could get you back…" she couldn't meet his eyes, the shame of her hesitation forcing her to look away.
She stopped, closing her eyes she could only think about that screaming, how it echoed in her ears painfully, and how it had drowned out every noise in the command station…
And then it just stopped, replaced by warnings about pilot vitals.
"I'm sorry." She whispered.
"Why?"
"I failed you."
She looked at the boy, trying to find some sign of forgiveness in those eyes. She needed to say that to ask for forgiveness.
"I failed you as a commander…"
The boy in her arms just blinked, confusion contorting his face.
"Did you know the Angel would do that?" he said in a surprisingly calm voice.
"No," she replied half-heartily, looking out at the GeoFront, "but that doesn't excuse my lack of action, I hesitated, and you died."
.
.
.
"You don't need to apologize…" he started, pausing to make sure she was looking back at him "but if it makes you feel better..."
"It's alright," he said with a small smile.
She felt a massive weight pull off her shoulder, but at the same time she also felt a massive sense of guilt crashing down on her, how could he forgive her so easily, it wasn't fair.
He should be screaming at her, demanding answers, belittling her for her incompetence.
At the same time, a part of her clung to that acceptance, a guilty part of her and she found herself gripping the child even tighter.
"I guess you have a plan for that thing?" Shinji asked softly changing the subject.
She was a bit unnerved by his nonchalant way of changing the subject, even more at his apparent desire to get back out there.
"Yeah, but are you sure you want to go back out there?."
Shinji slowly nodded "Imagine you woke up in a morgue just to find out you died and lost two months of your memory..."
"I bet you think it's easy for us down here, under so many plates of armor..."
"A bit." He replied with more than a hint of annoyance in his voice.
"Then let me show you why you're going up there."
ʡʘʢ
Shinji had never been taken by Misato to the lowest parts of the Central Dogma.
Instead, he typically had to 'learn' about it the hard way.
This time she practically dragged him, hand in hand, down to the lowest depths of the base, places he could only remember being when a crisis necessitated it.
It was a bit of a surreal experience, these unfamiliar corridors with the only sounds apart from the humming of machines being their shoes on the floor.
Misato pulled out her key card to enter into a secure room, the green NERV logo indicating her clearance was high enough.
Shinji's face showed very real surprise at the sight of the white humanoid, arms pinned, and lifeless eyes staring.
Lilith hung there; an entanglement of white legs protruded from the lower half of its' torso. Shinji stared at it, wide at the Spear of Longinus protruding from the humanoid and how it had already been brought back to NERV HQ.
If Misato knows about Lilith…
Does she know about the Human Instrumentality Project as well? Is she working towards the Third Impact here?
"What you're seeing is the origin of all life on this planet, as well as the key to its end. The Second Ange… Lilith."
"It's the trigger that will set off the Third Impact, we have to protect Lilith…" she explained.
Shinji eyed the woman, she seemed to stare a second too long at the massive humanoid before continuing.
Turning to him she knelt down to his level "That's what the EVAs are for, that's why NERV exists."
If only she knew the irony of that statement…
"It's not fair Shinji," she said, her eyes falling to the floor "it's not fair that we have to ask you to pilot the EVAs, but if one of the Angels were able to breach the GeoFront and get down here to central dogma..."
"So why me, why..." Shinji asked, not only to mask his knowledge but to see if she knew his importance.
"There is no why that destiny happened to be yours', that's all." Misato's lips curled into a sad smile.
Shinji looked at the woman, either she was a good liar, or she had no clue about Rei's true purpose and his mother's fate. Either way, he learned more than he had hoped, and it wasn't like he was about to say no.
After all, he had a promise to keep.
"Alright, I'll do it."
"You don't have to do it alone Shinji, you'll have us." She leaned in and wrapped him in a hug, "You'll have me the whole time…"
"What about Rei?"
"She'll be there right next to you."