(After)Life: The (Re)Education of Gendo Ikari

by TakerFoxx

For all of his work, his sacrifices, and his foresight, the carefully laid plans of Gendo Ikari have gone awry. Now, as he lays bleeding out in the heart of his petty domain, betrayed and abandoned by everyone, he finds himself finally wrestling with regret over how he mistreated his son. But death is never the end. What waits for him is only the beginning of a long journey.

Life After Death

I am not a man given to regrets.

Regrets betray a lack of conviction. A lack of conviction is indicative of a weak mind. Great men never concern themselves with regrets. They choose their path and see it to the end, and if at any point they need to alter course, they simply make the necessary changes and continue on.

I had set my course long ago. I knew from the start that there would be those who lacked the vision and fortitude to see what lay at the end. Peace. Enlightenment. Unity. Millenia of pain and suffering caused by humanity's short-sighted pettiness, simply washed away. The final stage of evolution for our species, all accomplished in a single moment.

Yui.

Those same short-sighted fools would brand me a callous monster. That was fine. I was more than willing to accept the moral judgments of those who lacked morals. After all, when one is weak in heart and spirt, what worth is their judgment? I would carry my cross and do it gladly, confident in the righteousness of my path.

However, even I am still human, and despite the assuredness with which I have walked my path, I will admit to two singular regrets that have hounded my steps.

The first is allowing Yui, my wife and only good person I have ever found in this wretched world, to give herself to the vile abomination of meat and metal that is Evangelion Unit 01, turning that monster into her coffin. That was a mistake. I let myself be beguiled by her talk of the self-sacrifice and the greater good, only to realize all too late what nonsense such talk was. How could the greater good even exist if the one good thing removes itself from the world? How was I expected to lead all of mankind down this righteous path when the one who made it righteous is no longer there to show me the way?

The second I realize only just now, as I lay bleeding deep within Terminal Dogma, the blood from my severed hand seeping into the LCL pool that had been bled from Lilith. It is not the first human blood to foul those divine waters. The body of that weak-hearted woman, Ritsuko, also had also fallen into that same pool, her own blood mingling with that of her progenitor. Like so many other women, her frailty caused her to divert from the path and attempt to betray me out of pure selfish desire. Fortunately, her mother knew where her loyalties lay.

However, I did not anticipate the betrayal of Rei.

Rei, my creation. My guiding light. The key to my salvation. And ultimately, my Judas.

I should not have made her a woman. As perverse as it might be to place the soul of humanity's mother into that of a man, at least then he would not have succumbed to a woman's weakness. But on that I blame my own weakness. I wanted to see Yui's face again, by any means necessary.

But that is not my second regret. My second regret is the coldness with which I treated my son. Our son. The one thing that Yui and I created together. The reason that she allowed herself to be destroyed.

She wanted me to raise him up to be humanity's new leader, its Messiah. But I couldn't do it. I couldn't look at him without thinking of what he cost me. I couldn't look at him without resenting him for driving Yui away. And in him, I saw the seed of wickedness growing, a seed that I planted myself.

I am not a good man. In fact, I am quite wicked myself. Selfish. Resentful. Spiteful. Strong, yes. Resolute, absolutely. Intelligent, clear-minded, morally certain, all of this true. But not good. And I couldn't allow myself to corrupt the one thing Yui had left behind. It was for his own good that I separate myself from him, that I drive him away to keep him from looking to me for guidance.

At least, that is the lie that I told myself. And now, as Unit 01 looms over me, the murderer of my wife and now instrument of her revenge, I find myself with nothing but regrets.

"Shinji. Forgive me."

Perhaps if I had spoken those words at literally any other time, things would be different. But now there is no time. Now it is too late.

Unit 01's claws wrap around my dying body, as cold and hard as the shackles that bind my heart. Its slavering jaws open to receive me, the portal to my judgment.

…

I am not dead.

I should be dead. I felt those steel teeth bite into my flesh, severing the legs from the rest of my body. I felt myself be devoured, my mangled body ground and masticated into so much dead meat.

And yet I find myself returning to consciousness. I am slow to wake, and the process is unpleasant. Part of me notes with amusement the similarity to my younger days, and the many times I would wake up sore from the hangover pounding in my head and the bruises left from whatever drunken fight I had gotten myself into the night before.

I try to move, only to wince as sharp pain lances through my head. My eyes feel crusted over, while my throat is rough and dry, as if some sadist had taken a strip of sandpaper to it.

Coughing, I slowly straighten up, gingerly rubbing the grit from my eyes. Then I open them.

What I see makes no sense at all.

For a moment I think that I must have been somehow blinded. Pure white assaults my vision, not bright, but so omnipresent that it still feels bright. However, after blinking my eyes several times to try to focus my vision, I am able to make out distinct shapes, shades, and other tones, enough for me to recognize where I am.

I am in Central Dogma, the command center of NERV, sitting at my customary chair overlooking the whole of the tiered room. Directly in front of me are the massive screens that in time of crisis would project second-by-second information critical to our success. Below me in the other tiers are the workstations of my team, all of them abandoned.

I frown. Yes, it is definitely the shape of Central Dogma. The platforms, the controls, the screens, the pipes, the wiring, the computers, all of it where it ought to be. However, what is different is the color. Or rather, the lack of it. Everything looked as if it was bleached white. All the color is gone.

"Wh-Where…" I stammer out. "Who…"

"You are where your paths have led you, Gendo Rokubungi."

I just about fall out of my seat as the screen fills with the face of a monster.

In shape, it is the face of the one who I desire to see the most. Yui's face, albeit several years younger. However, everything about it is wrong. The skin is pale as marble, lacking even the faint blush of coloring that the original girl had possessed, while its eyes are as scarlet as freshly spilled blood. Framing the face is a short bob of pale blue hair.

"Rei," I whisper.

Rei Ayanami, my creation, the homunculus born to lead me to the true Yui, but who would ultimately betray me and leave me to die. Perhaps I am dead, and this is my Hell.

The enormous face of Rei Ayanami coolly regards me. "The one that bears that name is part of us, but that is no longer all that we are. We have returned to what we were meant to be, and have become more."

Every single muscle in my body goes stiff. On the table, my hands begin to tremble as I come to realize exactly who I am dealing with. "Lilith."

"Indeed." Lilith tilts her head to one side, her crimson eyes never blinking. "We suppose that we must thank you. Though our body was imprisoned and exploited, and though our soul was abused, both were still preserved and protected, allowing them to reunite, allowing us to become whole."

It is a scenario that I took grain pains to prevent. Keeping the mother of all terrestrial life imprisoned while harvesting her divine body for its resources was a terrible risk. I felt that having her soul contained within a human body groomed to be utterly subservient to me would mitigate that risk, but it seems that I was mistaken.

Before I can say anything, the platform on which I sit suddenly thrusts upward at breakneck speed. I tumble out of my chair to land flat on my back, my body pinned down by the mountain of G-forces. Above me, the ceiling of Central Dogma simply melts away, and I find myself being lifted high into a scarlet sky filled with wispy grey clouds.

Up and up I go, unable to move, helpless to do anything to stop my ascent. Where am I being carried? To face my final judgment? To some new level of Hell? One would think that doing so would mean descending, but I suppose I am thinking too literal.

Then, so suddenly that my body continues to lift into the air for a few seconds before painfully flopping back down, the thing that carries me comes to a sudden stop.

As I lay panting with my head spinning and my heart racing, I become aware that the surface on which I'm lying is curiously soft and warm, and not the hard metal platform that I ought to be on. I frown. Perhaps my wits are still too scattered to accurately judge my surroundings, but it does feel as if I am lying upon an expanse of flesh.

I look around, and the truth becomes apparent to me.

I am lying in the middle of an enormous hand of pale white skin. The palm alone is as wide as the whole of Central Dogma itself, while the fingers curve up around me as towering monoliths.

But if the hand alone is this gargantuan, how then must be the rest of the figure that holds me?

Though I fear what I might see, I force myself to look up.

The face of Rei blots out the sky. She is bigger than any Evangelion, bigger than any Angel, a towering giantess who stares dispassionately down at me, little more than a flea in her hand.

"If it were not for your actions," Lilith says, her calm, demure voice booming from all around, "then we would have been forever trapped within the Black Egg. Though it was not your intention, you have restored to us our autonomy."

Despite my precarious position, I feel hot indignation bubbling up within me. This is not right. All my years of careful planning, all of my preparations, all of my sacrifices, all for naught. The selfishness of Rei ruined everything. I gave that girl life, raised and nurtured her, gifted her with her purpose, and when it mattered the most, she turned her back on me in favor of my son, a boy she knew for only a few short months.

Rei betrayed me. I gave her everything she had, made her everything she was, and she betrayed me.

How dare she?

Then I hear a new voice speak, that of a young man, one that is calm, almost friendly. "I would advise against continuing down that line of thought. I understand that you're upset, but you are coming close to committing actual blasphemy."

I know that voice. "You!" I whirl around to find myself face-to-face with a young boy. He seems to be in his mid-teens, with a thin and lanky body, skin as white as Rei's, ashen-gray hair, and piercing crimson eyes. He wears the boy's uniform of Tokyo-3's high school, the same that Shinji often wears, and his smile is almost mockingly serene.

Of course I recognize him immediately. "SEELE's puppet, I see," I say, the chill emanating off of every word. "Kaworu Nagisa, is it?"

"Briefly."

My eyes narrow. "Maybe I should just call you Tabris, then?"

The scenario described in the Dead Sea Scrolls was never as clear as I would have liked, but the information regarding the Angels and the order in which they would appear was telling enough.

Tabris, the seventeenth and final Angel. Tabris, the Arisen One. Tabris, the Herald of Free Will.

Tabris, SEELE's hatchet man.

Tabris's small smile lifts ever so slightly. "Not anymore. Your son saw to that." Sticking his hands into his pockets, he rocks back and forth on his heels. "And it's not Kaworu Nagisa either, by the by. Both names served their purpose, but when one purpose ends, another begins. I am Adam."

I look down at my restored hand, where once the embryonic body of Adam once rested. I suspected that such might be the case, that SEELE would use the notes regarding Rei's creation to construct a homunculus of their own using Adam's soul. How else could he have torn his way into Terminal Dogma with such ease?

But his words also reminded me of exactly who I was speaking to. As Lilith told me, this was not Rei Ayanami or Kaworu Nagisa or even Tabris. These were Lilith and Adam, the progenitors of life and death.

I feared that something like this might happen. After the destruction of Unit 00 and the death of Rei's second body, I admit to fearing for the future of the Scenario. Yes, we managed to safely retrieve the soul of Lilith after that foolish woman Naoko murdered Rei's body in a fit of womanly jealousy, but there was no guarantee that it would happen a second time.

Fortunately, I need not have feared, as Ritsuko soon confirmed for me that the retrieval process was a success, bringing back not only the fragment housed within Rei, but also all of the essence that we stored within the core of Unit 00. All of Lilith was still within our grasp.

However, Ritsuko also warned against resurrecting Rei for a second time. Without another Evangelion, we were forced to pour all of Lilith's soul into the third body, as we needed the whole thing on hand for when the appointed time came. I dismissed Ritsuko at the time as speaking from the same jealousy that had taken her mother, but in the end, she was proven correct.

"Indeed," Lilith says, again reading my thoughts. "The restoration of my soul also brought to me new insight. I was able to finally comprehend the depths of your depravity, and how much you had wronged me."

I can't help but jump. The voice of Lilith does not boom from all around as before, but now speaking in more normal tones, indistinguishable from Rei's. I am no longer held high in the air by Lilith's enormous hand. Instead, I am back in Terminal Dogma, standing in front of the LCL pool, the same place where I died. Before me looms the cross on which Lilith was restrained, but she is no longer crucified on that structure. Instead, it is Evangelion Unit 01 itself that has its hands nailed to those beams.

As for Lilith herself, she is once again the same size that Rei was, wearing the same school uniform that Rei did, and is standing right next to Adam, her crimson eyes regarding me with barely concealed contempt.

I have not felt the chill of winter ever since Second Impact did away with it entirely, and yet the cold sweeps down my spine because of her words is eerily reminiscent. This is not Lilith speaking. This is Rei.

I slowly breathe out. "So, this is it, then?" I speak in a harsh whisper. "You will take your revenge upon me?"

"Our revenge?" Adam seems amused by the question. Then again, he seems amused by just about everything. "Weren't you listening? Despite all of your selfish ambitions, despite all of the ways you tried to exploit us, your actions ultimately served our purposes. We are both whole again, free to carry out our directive."

"Your directive?" I am not a man who often laughs, but that gets a chuckle out of me. "I've read the Dead Sea Scrolls. Your directive failed. Lilith took your place by accident, didn't she? Your children have all been killed. By us!"

Unphased by my words, Adam merely shrugs. "And yet, Earth was populated with life. The Grand Design remains intact."

"There is no competition between us," Lilith adds. "No animosity. Our children fought one another for the right to seed this world with their offspring, as all life does. It is regrettable that I never made it to the world set aside for me, but things happen."

"Things happen," Adam agrees.

Despite being in the presence of two primordial gods, I find myself annoyed by their cavalier attitude. "And now?" I demand.

Taking Lilith's hand in his own, Adam says, "We judged both you and the SEEELE Council's motivations in enacting the Human Instrumentality Project and found them lacking. Instead, we gave the choice to one more deserving. Your son."

I blink.

Then I choke.

"My…my son?"

This is madness. Yes, I was to blame for Shinji's weakness in spirit. That is my burden to bear. But regardless of whose fault it is, it cannot be denied that that boy couldn't even be trusted to make decisions regarding his own life, much less the fate of all humanity!

"Indeed," Adam said, unperturbed by my outburst. "He is precious to us both. If we were to choose one of the Lilim to decide their kind's course, then it was to be him."

My indignation comes bubbling back. Precious? Shinji? Why? How? What has that boy ever done to earn the admiration of these two ancient beings?

"Shinji…Are you mad?" I bark. "Shinji hates everyone, including himself! He's a selfish, spoiled brat entirely obsessed with his own self-loathing! If you give him the chance, he'll end the world in a heartbeat!"

"Just as you set out to do?" Adam counters.

"And is he not as you shaped him?" Lilith adds. "It is curious that you condemn him for traits that you yourself exhibit, and at a much higher level."

My fury and shame both choke me. She is not wrong. I am no better. That is why I foolishly sought to separate myself from him, in hopes that distance would prevent him from becoming like me.

But even so, it still happened. I have seen my own worst traits reflected in my son.

"Regardless, you are not wrong," Adam says, as if he were casually describing the events of a dull morning rather than the extermination of all human life. "He did indeed wish for the end of humanity as we know it. Third Impact has been enacted. Instrumentality is now complete."

"Where there were once billions, there is now one," Lilith continues. "One mind, one soul, containing multitudes."

My shoulder sag in defeat. "Then SEELE won," I mumble in a hollow voice. "You handed them their victory."

"Perhaps." Lilith seems unconcerned by the prospect. "The future is still uncertain. At this moment, each and every one of my children is learning the truth. The truth about each other. The truth about themselves. All secrets are now laid bare. This includes your son."

Something about the way that she says that catches my ear. I perk up, frowning in confusion.

"Shinji is currently confronting the damage you have inflicted upon him," Adam says. "We are confident that he will prevail, and when he does, he will lead the rest of humanity into a brighter tomorrow. Mankind will emerge again, I feel. Better and stronger than before."

Shinji. A leader. I would laugh again if it wasn't for the heavy weight on my heart. "You have doomed us all."

"They may also be truth," Lilith concedes. "Shinji's fate is still undecided. However, that decision rests with him and him alone. You have your own journey ahead of you, Gendo Rokubungi."

I hiss at the sound of that name. "Don't call me that," I growl.

"Why not? It's your name, isn't it?"

I shake my head. "My name is Gendo Ikari. I rejected the name of Rokubungi long ago."

"And the name of Ikari has rejected you," Adam says in turn. "It belongs rightly to your son and your wife. And both have turned away from you."

The heaviness in my heart becomes solid lead. It is as I feared. "Yui," I whisper. "She…"

My voice trails off. Ever since Unit-01 began to reject the Dummy Plug, I began to fear that Yui has become aware of my aims, and now stands to oppose them. But how could she? Everything I did, everything I built was all for her. Surely she had to understand that!

But Rei also rejected me. As did Naoko. As did Ritsuko. Shinji rejected me a long time ago.

Everyone always rejects me. I should have seen this coming.

"We bear a message from her," Lilith says, still infuriatingly wearing the younger face of my wife. "It reads as follows."

"You arrogant, selfish bastard," Adam recites, his tone and inflection as mild as ever. "Did you honestly think that I wouldn't know what you did to our son? How you cast him aside? Forced him to fight in your stead? The cruel way that you treated him?"

Every spoken word of condemnation feels like getting punched in the gut. It is worse than I thought. I knew that Yui was probably angry, but to hear it laid out so coldly and maliciously…

"You were supposed nurture him," Lilith says. Those words coming out from Yui's face using her voice make each condemnation hit harder. "Guide him. Teach him love. Compassion. Empathy. Make him ready to lead mankind into their next evolutionary state. But what did you do? You made him more like you!"

"Selfish," says Adam.

"Bitter," says Lilith.

"Resentful."

"Isolated."

"Self-loathing."

"Needy."

"Hateful."

"Entitled." Lilith's scarlet eyes bore into my own. "For what you did to our boy, you will burn in Hell, Gendo. Burn in Hell, you bastard."

I cannot take it anymore. The strength goes out from me, and I sink down to my knees. The weight of my damnation bows my shoulders, and I bury my face in my hands.

Nothing. It was all for nothing. It didn't even matter if Rei followed her directive or not. Yui would have rejected me all the same.

Tears well up, and I cry.

"Fortunately, your son is not beyond saving," Adam says as I weep. "There is still a kindness to his soul, a beauty that shines even after your attempts to snuff it out. He will unlearn all of the lessons that you taught him, and find the ability to love once again."

I bitterly shake his head. "And then…and then what?" I draw myself back up to my feet. "What good will it do? He'll still be stuck here in this Hell, the same as everyone."

"His journey is his own, and its ultimate destination is his to find," Lilith says. "You have your own journey ahead of you."

Something about the way that she said that triggers my sharply honed instincts. "What does that mean?" I growl.

"You must be reeducated," Adam answers. The boy still wears that infuriatingly serene smile. I hate it. It's like he's mocking me. "A personal request by Yui Ikari. She wishes for you to be made to understand."

Yui? Reeducated? What? "Understand what?" I say. "What did-"

The lights go out.

I am not a man given to panic, and yet I feel that franticness welling up within me. Is this to be my fate? To be left alone in eternal darkness for all eternity? I suppose it is better than the Flames of Perdition, but-

And then a single light suddenly turns on from overhead, shining down on me, revealing to me that I am now face-to-face with a monster.

Crying out, I stumble back, only to stop myself in the nick of time to keep from slipping off of the edge of the platform that I am on. It is then that I recognize where I am.

I am in the Evangelion loading cage, standing on the catwalk that crosses in front of Unit 01. The hulking monstrosity stands submerged up to its bulky shoulders in LCL, so that I am practically eye-level with the monster.

But what am I doing here? What possible game are those two arrogant, insufferable-

Then a voice speaks.

"If for once in your life, you're willing to do something of actual worth, get in the damn Evangelion, Gendo! Otherwise, stop wasting my time and get out!"

That voice brings all of my confusion to a sudden halt, only to overwhelm it all with a flood of piping hot rage and indignation.

Jun Rokubungi, my pathetic, worthless excuse for a father. Jun Rokubungi, whose name I had rejected the moment that I could justify it. Jun Rokubungi, who never did a decent thing in his life, and yet had the audacity to look down on me.

He's literally doing it right now. I see him behind the glass of the observation deck, high above my head. My hands start shaking.

How dare that bastard? How dare he? He neglects me for practically all of my life, sends me away when I need him the most, and when he finally decides to include me in his life, it's only so he can stuff me into this…this monster so I can fight his battles for him? What kind of father does that?

"You can't run away now, Gendo! Not from your problems, and not from your father!"

It's the strange woman that brought me here, that my worthless father sent to bring me here. It figures that for all of her pretenses at kindness and sympathy, when the chips were down she would turn on me as well.

"Be a big boy, Gendo!"

Fuck her.

"No!" I shout back. "I'm telling you; I can't do it!"

Cold silence greets my outburst, and that is somehow even worse than if he had cursed me right back.

And then I hear the squeaking of a gurney's wheels.

Two hospital orderlies enter the catwalk, pushing a hospital gurney with them. Surprised, I crane my head, trying to see who they've brought with them.

It's a girl. A girl about my age. A girl with a soft, elfin face. A girl with short brown hair that doesn't look like it had seen a comb in quite some time. A girl with a look of resigned determination on her face, as if whatever awaited her would be horrible but unavoidable, making any sort of resistance pointless.

A girl wearing a strange, skintight white outfit of hard plastic and latex. A girl covered with bandages from some horrific injury.

In a flash, I understand. This is who will have to pilot that horrible giant robot if I do not agree. Or to be specific, this is who my bastard father is using to blackmail me into piloting that horrible giant robot.

See what was done to her, he is telling me. If you do not do as I say, she will suffer even more.

The orderlies push the gurney past me up to the robot. The girl struggles to get up, but she is obviously in great pain. I extend my hand as I try to stop her, try to tell her not to listen to my father, that she doesn't have to do this.

Then something very large explodes nearby, quaking the room.

The gurney topples over and the girl falls to the ground with a cry of pain. I rush over to her. She's shaking as I cradle her body in my arms.

Who is this girl? She seems so frail. What did my father do to her?

Whatever it was, it will happen to me to if I give into my father's demands. And yet, how can I stand aside and let her get hurt again? He's got me, and he knows it.

With a look of pure, venomous hate, I glower up at the observation deck, where the silhouette of the cruelest bastard I had ever known silently looks down upon us.

"Fine!" I snap. "I'll do it! I'll pilot the robot!"

Then the lights go out. The cage is gone. The robot-

Evangelion Unit 01

-is gone. The girl-

Yui!

-is gone. And my father…

Wait.

My father is dead. He died years ago, and good riddance! The last time I spoke to him had been shortly before my enrollment in Kyoto University, when I finally explained to him in full, unbiased details exactly how he had failed as a father and a human being. His death happened not long after my and Yui's wedding. I think the cause was suicide? Or maybe the bastard had drunk himself to death. I don't really remember. My focus was elsewhere, and he didn't have much of worth, so I left the cleanup to the police and had him cremated.

But why show me him? I recognize the scene, of course. It was a reversal of when Shinji first arrived at NERV headquarters, though with me standing as Shinji, and my father…

…oh.

My anger boils over once again. "You're wrong!" I shout at the void. "I'm nothing like him! Everything I did, right or wrong, had purpose!"

There came no answer from my jailors, no retort. Merely silence.

"How dare you! Yes, I made mistakes! Yes, I have my own wickedness. But I at least had his best interests at heart! Who are you to judge me, you-"

And then the screens flicker to life in front of me.

With a gasp, I almost fall forward. I'm now sitting in a strange sort of cockpit, the one belonging to that…that…what was it again? Evangelist? Evolution? That big robot! That's right. I agreed to pilot that robot instead of that girl, and now…

The screens show me the damaged cityscape of Tokyo-3.

And before me is the monster.

It is enormous! As big as the robot that I was forced to pilot, if not bigger. A misshapen black body, one with long, spindly legs and a torso that bulges out from a relatively small waist into hulking shoulders. Its face resembles that of a bird's skull, and it has bonelike protrusions sticking out all over its body.

I feel fear grip me. This is what they expect me to fight? How? I don't know what's going on! I didn't have any training! I didn't even know that any of this existed until a short time ago!

This is insanity! My father, who abandoned me, suddenly summons me out of the blue, no apology, no explanation, no acknowledgement of what he did to me, and when I arrive, he expects me to just jump into this horrible robot and fight some kind of invincible alien monster, the same one that an N2 Mine could barely slow down? What was wrong with him? What was wrong with all of them?

Then the monster stops lurching around. It turns toward me. It sees me.

Then it bends forward, ready to charge.

Oh no.

…

Well. This should be interesting.

Unlike past and most future (After)Life installments, which are quick one-shots or more traditional chaptered stories, this one will update in a more unorthodox manner. Since (After)Life is intended to be nonlinear, and since Gendo's experiences will stretch over its entire length, this story will update next when I feel that enough material has been released and I feel the time has come to reveal the next step of his journey in being reeducated. Where this will lead him and how he will react to things will be uncovered in time. Needless to say, he has a lot of literal soul-searching to do.

Until next time, everyone!