For the first time ever since awakening on the Beach, the world around Shinji had become dead silent.

The wind howls had died down to a gentle gust, the cold, salty moist beach air was replaced by soft wisps of warm air gently swaying his hair bangs, tickling his forehead a bit. The usual splashing of the LCL Sea couldn't be heard either by the EVA Pilot. The only thing Shinji could hear was the thundering of his own heartbeat, as if it reverberated through his ears.

He felt his breathing stop abruptly, his mouth gaped in shock, but no noise came out of it. His eyes remained wide open, too shocked to even move a bit.

Not only had the environment around him gone silent but so had his mind too.

All the raging, conflicting thoughts brewing within his mind from moments prior had vanished as if they were never there in the first place, instead having been replaced with only sheer disbelief.

Disbelief at the sight before his eyes.

After what felt like minutes, there was only one thought that Shinji's mind could manage to rationalize in response to what was in front of him.

"What?" A soft, barely audible whisper escaped his lips.

The first obvious, quite literally glaring abnormality he had noticed to be different from the normal sight he had been accustomed to was the absence of the pale, melancholic light of the Moon and the night sky.

They had been replaced with the light of something brighter, livelier. Something warm and soothing, a light that painted the blue sky in soft hues of orange and pink that felt so familiar, yet alien to him.

A light that belonged solely to the Sun.

'The Sun.'

Shinji's body remained unmoving, but he could feel his tear-stricken eyes widening with every passing moment.

'The Sun.'

A strange sensation coursed over his body, accompanied by an involuntary shivering. It was a feeling he had yet to fully comprehend. It felt like a mixture of sheer relief engulfing his body but intertwined amongst it there laid the unsettling dread of something he could not understand, of something unknown.

It was a paradoxical feeling that he had never felt before. It felt like he'd finally found answers to long-standing questions, yet these answers only led to more questions, leaving him back at the starting point.

It felt like the epitome of what a fever dream was composed of; something that made no sense, something one would struggle to imagine, and yet one would still dream it and experience it in times of illness.

But one thing that he did fully understand was the object which he couldn't understand. And that was a simple, yet unanswerable question to the teen.

'The Sun is back?'

And similar to the metaphorical answer he sought, that question would develop into more questions.

'How?'

'What happened?'

'Am I still alive?'

A gentle chirping sound briefly interrupted the tumultuous storm of thoughts racing through Shinji's mind. His eyes swiftly turned toward the source of the interruption. Despite its proximity, he had nearly forgotten about the small bird perched on his cheek, which now gazed at him with keen curiosity. The bird's feathers displayed an unusual blend of grey and white, and its tiny, beady eyes regarded Shinji with an intrigued look as if it had never seen a human before.

For what felt like an eternity, time seemed to stand still as Shinji found himself captivated by the small creature before him. His mind went momentarily blank before the confusion that had pervaded his thoughts returned.

Amidst the chaos, a singular thought emerged, compelling him to break free from the frozen stupor that had enveloped him since he first opened his eyes to this bewildering new reality. Shinji's arm lifted from the warm ground, trembling as he reached out toward the small bird. His intent was to touch it, to feel the texture of its feathers, and reassure himself that what he perceived was not a product of his imagination or a sign of his sanity slipping away.

So when the bird didn't move an inch as he slowly slid his hand down its back, feeling its soft feathers, he let out a choked sound of confusion.

'How can…it-' He tried to form a cohesive thought but couldn't even do that.

This time, the noise he made seemed to have startled the bird, as it spread its wings and flew away, into the sky. Shinji could only watch as he saw the slowly turn into a small dot out in the distance towards his left side. He wanted to turn his head around to follow where it went, but something didn't allow him to do it. It wasn't fatigue nor any physical injury, but rather something in his mind.

A part of him didn't want to turn his head around. It was like an instinctual fear, somewhat akin to a primordial fear that a toddler had to loud noises and heights. A part of him was still terrified that if he were to turn his head sideways, he would be met with the same sight as always, and that nothing changed, despite the visible changes in the environment.

His main fear didn't originate from the horrendous sight that he would see, but rather, his fear stemmed from the disappointment of seeing the same sight of always. That the Sun and the bird were just a profound hallucination he was experiencing in his last moments. An apprehension clung to him, an unsettling fear that what he'd find wouldn't differ from the same view he'd gazed upon for days; that the small bits of hope emanating from his heart would be crushed again mercilessly. He contemplated the consequences of such a simple act.

Part of him half-expected to see the EVA Units, the Mass-Production Evangelions, still standing in the same positions he saw them the last time, their grotesque, featureless heads bearing the same eerie grin of always. He anticipated the blood-red ocean, the dark silhouettes of submerged structures, and the distant mountains far away. It framed a type of surreal, liminal space, something that felt peaceful, yet wrong, almost as if it were a pale imitation of the real world. He felt as though he could hardly bear any further disappointment from the world around him.

Minutes felt like hours to the EVA Pilot as he battled with himself, torn between the desire lurking within him, the desire to see something had changed, and the safety of simply sparing himself the pain of disappointment from hurting him again.

Finally, with a deep breath, he mustered the courage to shift his head, although he did not fully conquer his underlying fears; instead, he attempted to suppress them, forcing them to the recesses of his mind. Gradually, he turned his head to the side and gazed upon the scene before him, his breathing becoming visibly louder as well as his heartbeat.

He wasn't too sure what he had been expecting to see, but he felt his heart skip a beat as his eyesight adjusted to the new light atmosphere that was the complete opposite of the dark empty beach Shinji had been lying on minutes prior.

Before him laid only sand dunes. They seemed to stretch out into infinity, as far as the eye could discern. The sand, kissed by the light of day, shimmered like a sea of sparkling diamonds, glistening in the subtle warmth of the sun. The first thing that struck Shinji was the golden hue of the dunes, illuminated by the gentle rays of the sun, a stark contrast to the pale sand illuminated by the Moon from where he had been originally.

The dunes, sculpted by the unrelenting forces of nature, had an undulating quality, like a vast sea frozen in time. The individual dunes varied in size, some rising only a few feet above the surrounding terrain, while others reached towering heights, resembling immense, shifting mountains of sand. Their curves and ridges formed an intricate tapestry that was smooth, shaped by the gentle gusts of wind that swept across the warm landscape. The silence was profound in Shinji's ears, broken only by the soft whisper of the wind as it caressed the dunes.

Shinji was confused.

None of it made sense.

He found himself in an arid desert landscape, an anomaly that by all means, is supposed to only exist in history textbooks, as a relic of the past. This was thanks to the cataclysmic event that happened in the year 2000, the occurrence of the Second Impact. This event not only unleashed unprecedented global flooding and record-breaking tsunamis as a result of the rapid melting of the polar ice caps due to the sudden increase in global temperature but also caused a drastic alteration in Earth's weather patterns, reshaping the planet's environment completely.

Among the most striking transformations were the deserts, regions that had once been synonymous with desolation. These arid areas underwent a drastic change, evolving from inhospitable wastelands into grassy fields. This transformation defied the natural course of the Earth, achieving in less than a decade what would otherwise have taken centuries, if not millennia, to occur naturally.

With Shinji finally realizing that he was now in a desert, something that shouldn't exist, he now had two questions piercing through his mind.

'Where am I?'

'How is this possible?'

Letting out a grunt, Shinji attempted to rise up, driven by a sudden urge to see his current whereabouts around him, an urge that was intertwined with his mounting anxiety. However, even the act of assuming an upright position proved to be a taxing endeavor for the young pilot, in part due to the severe debilitation and malnutrition his body had endured for who knows how long.

A sudden nauseous feeling traveled across his body as a consequence of his sudden movement. His eyes widened as he felt the familiar burning sensation travel up his throat once again. He clasped his hand over his mouth as he turned to his side and dry-heaved, tasting the acidic bile in his mouth.

He could feel his body squeezing from within, constricting his lungs to the point where he couldn't even breathe a bit, only being able to let out short exasperated gasps of air. For a moment he thought he was going to black out, but after what felt like an eternity, the tightening sensation in his chest faded away, and Shinji slumped back onto the ground face down, even more tired than before.

Short, shaky sighs came from the pilot's mouth as he weakly flipped himself around, his face caked with sand. He stared at the Sun once more.

'I need to get up.'

'I have to get up.'

'...'

'But why?'

'What would I even do now?'

'The world is gone, nothing is left.'

'Everything is gone.'

Shinji pondered these thoughts within his mind as he felt the Sun's warmth heat his skin which was all dry and cracked from the coldness of the eternal night he had found himself in prior.

'I learned to appreciate myself, to see my own self-worth in this world. I realized that I didn't have to tie my own self-worth to the views that other people had on me. I didn't have to tie it to praise or attention from others.'

'I believed that no one should have to do that. That was why I wished for everyone to come back and retake their lives as independent beings. I thought we were all better off being ourselves, our own independent selves. That within the pain of never truly being able to connect with someone else, one could find their own self-worth. But it seemed I was wrong. No one ever returned.'

'I tried to believe that amongst the chaos one could find their own self-worth, one they could create themselves.'

'I now wonder if perhaps I'm the one in the wrong, the odd one out since no one ever came back. What if Instrumentality was the best thing for everyone?'

'What if everyone prefers Instrumentality compared to the real world?'

Shinji stopped contemplating these thoughts for a couple of moments.

A part of him anxiously desired to figure out just where in the world was he and how he ended up here, and to try and figure out why everything changed around him. He thought that all living lifeforms in the world were wiped out in the Third Impact and that he was the last living being in the now-barren world, but that bird defied that entire belief by just existing.

And the bird also defied his belief that humanity was gone forever.

It birthed a small, fragile flame of hope within his heart. A flame that Shinji desired to keep aflame for as long as possible.

A part of him desired to keep the flame afloat by not doing anything. That part of him still feared what he would find would disappoint him. He feared that even though the world around him changed, he would be met with the same realization. It would have the same meaning but with a different appearance, like a wolf taking on another sheep's skin to appear different yet still be fundamentally the same.

And he was afraid that the flame would be purged forever if this happened to him.

All these thoughts eventually culminated in becoming two separate paths that Shinji could take. He could stay there in the desert unmoving, keeping the flame of hope safe from getting hurt by the world around him. Shinji knew that if he chose this path, he would cease to be rather than face the fear of the unknown.

But Shinji didn't want to die. He originally just wanted to end everything because he legitimately believed that there was nothing left to do. But now, there was a chance, a chance that something changed. Shinji now had something he could live for. A hope.

So Shinji chose to take the other path.

He chose to force himself to sit up once more, this time ignoring the stomach pains, using a newfound determination within him that he hadn't known the existence of, eventually accomplishing that small but difficult task after a couple of exhausting seconds.

He chose to stand up, ignoring the shakiness on his legs, trembling as if they would collapse on him at any moment. He accomplished that second task with some more difficulty.

From where he stood, he observed his surroundings. Everywhere around him was only covered in sand dunes that went for as far as he could see, except for one direction, where a massive natural jutting of stone stood in the distance, extending on both sides for as far as he could see, almost as if it were a barrier separating the desert from whatever was on the other side of the jutting. In between the stone, he could see what appeared to be a narrow crevice splitting it in half, a canyon.

He stared at it, contemplating what to do next.

There was one last task for him to complete. It would be the hardest, not physically but rather mentally this time. Shinji turned his head back behind him to observe the spot he had been lying in a minute prior. After staring at it for a few moments with a worried look, he closed his eyes, took a deep breath, which soothed his scrunched facial features, and turned his head back around to face what was in front of him, which was the canyon.

The final task would be to take the first step forward, both literally and figuratively. To strive on towards the unknown, in search of a hope that may or may not be there.

After a minute of silence, he took a step.

I'm back, sorry for the delay, had to sort out some stuff out. I really wanted to hammer down on the fact that Shinji was depressed not because of his lack of self-worth, but rather, from the hopelessness around him. He didn't go through all that character development for nothing after all.

I got inspiration for the whole 'flame of hope' thing was from Gendo's story and how he distanced himself from everyone, fearing he would be let down once more, akin to Shinji not wanting to strive out into the unknown in fear of his 'flame of hope' being extinguished once more. Basically, Shinji chose to take the opposite path that his Father took in his life.

Thanks for the reviews, everyone! I appreciate some constructive criticism. Until next time.