A long, dark walk through the night pt 2

Shinji rose before the sun did. He crept out his room, tiptoeing into the kitchen, desperate not to wake Misato or Asuka. The door to the closet was silent as it swung open, a blessed affordance.

"You should be getting some rest," Keter-Or said. "As I recall, the twelfth Angel will be emerging tomorrow."

"I couldn't sleep," Shinji said truthfully.

"That is understandable," Keter-Or said, gesturing for Shinji to sit down. Slowly, he followed. He was still not fully comfortable with the idea of conversing with the strange, goat-like creature in the closet, but he didn't have a better idea at the moment.

"You said there were five of us, right?" Shinji said. "Rei and Kaworu, they came back too. Right?"

"That is correct. There are five of you."

That was some comfort. Shinji shuddered to think what it would be like if Asuka was the only other one with knowledge of what had happened. Although, it did make things more complex. Rei had previously become a god, Kaworu was still an Angel, and there was an entirely new person he had never met…

He shook his head. He could worry about that later. For now, focus on the morning.

"This is where we can start to change things, right?" Shinji asked. "Tomorrow, when that Angel comes… this is really where it starts?"

The creature locked eyes with him – still so disorienting, it just had so many - and said: "Every action you take spirals on to a new path. Nothing you do or say is without significance. But as you understand it – yes, this is the first turning point."

"So, what do I do?"

"What do you think you should do?"

The words hung in the air like poison. Why couldn't it just tell him what to do? Why did everything always have to be so hard?

"I- I don't know what to do," Shinji said. "You're the one who knows everything, right? Why can't you just tell me what to do?"

"That depends," Keter-Or said, its voice measured. Flat as a brick wall, just as it always was.

"On what?" Shinji ventured.

"How much pain are you willing to suffer?"

The faceless woman held up two fingers, and the ground on which the Rei stood was suddenly liquid shadow. She sunk past her knees in seconds, thin tendrils grasping her legs and pulling her down. A shout from the side confirmed that Asuka had faced the same fate.

"Gah! What the hell?" Asuka gasped.

"I cannot allow you to interfere," the woman said. "I understand you may be emotional, but please keep any outbursts to a minimum. I need to focus."

She turned back to the screen-window, waving her hands like a conductor. The tendrils on the outside responded to her movements, slamming into Unit-01's AT field until it cracked. Rei felt bile rise in her throat as she watched Shinji attempt helplessly to fight them off. His efforts were swatted away easily, and within seconds he was impaled on half a dozen black spears.

"I am unsure as to why he keeps resisting," the woman said, her voice cold and robotic.

Asuka struggled in her restraints, trying with all her might to break free and reach the woman. It was to no avail.

"Just what the hell do you think you're doing to him? I'll kill you!"

The faceless woman raised her arm again, and two more black spears slammed into Unit-01, skewering its midsection. It let out a cry of pain, weaker than before. The light in its eyes was fading.

That awful feeling in Rei was back. Shinji was dying in front of her, and she was powerless to stop it. If she could only get her Eva to detonate its bomb, she could destroy the Angel from within, and he would be safe. It was a shame that the Second Child would have to die as well, but she could see no other way.

Rei knew in her head that she was still inside her unit, that if she just moved her hands in the right order the bomb would detonate. She just couldn't feel it.

"His tenacity is surprising. I was told he was the type to roll over and die quite easily," the woman said. Asuka redoubled her efforts, snarling at the woman.

"Look, I don't know who the hell you think you are, but you're messing with the wrong people! You better stop right now, or I swear to God, I will tear you limb from limb!"

The woman tilted her head towards her, finally acknowledging her presence. "The Ikari child is no longer required for our scenario. I see no reason not to dispatch him."

She rotated her arm, and the tendrils spun. The Evangelion contorted, the tendrils inside pulling its limbs in different directions. It let out a low groan of pain as it was twisted, to weak already to even scream.

"Second Child," Rei said, almost a whisper. "Despite how it feels, we are still inside our Evangelions. If we can get them to activate, we may escape."

Asuka's eyes flicked over to her, her rage instantly tempering into steel. "You're serious? I'm still in Unit-02?"

Rei nodded. "I believe so. I can feel Unit-0, I am just unable to properly synchronize."

Asuka sighed and closed her eyes. "You're useless, Wondergirl. Let me do it."

Rei stretched out her mind, desperately trying to synchronize with the Eva she knew she was still inside. She took her mind to the same place she did during regular synchronisation, disappearing into a half-remembered dream. The feeling of floating unabated in LCL. She imagined herself drifting, dissolving, disappearing, her physical body being subsumed by what is around her…

It was no use. Ever since she discovered that she was a clone, her thought exercise had taken on a new meaning. No longer a dream, now a memory. She had most likely spent fourteen years unconscious in a vat of LCL. The thought did not offend her, per say, but it did distract her, ground her. The feeling of the Eva around her remained vague and allusive, the thick shadow around her legs real and present. She could feel her Eva – just – but not nearly well enough to move any of her Unit's limbs.

She felt the tiny spark of a connection, the smallest hint of life. It was not nearly enough to activate her Eva in any useful capacity. The weapons, the mine, uselessly frozen. However, there was one thing she could reach.

Rei focused all her energy and flicked on her Unit's communication system.

To be perfectly honest, Shinji had expected his reunion with Misato to go somewhat differently.

Shinji had not seen his guardian since before Instrumentality, when she was gunned down in the hallway deep in the bowels of NERV headquarters. The pillar of strength he had grown to rely on, slowly crumbling since Kaji's death, had been snatched away, leaving him in freefall. Now she was back, as if nothing had ever happened. After all, it hadn't.

To Misato, the last time she had seen Shinji was yesterday, probably cooking breakfast and arguing with Asuka, or maybe she had dropped him off at school.

The last time Shinji saw Misato, she had kissed him. That had been weird.

"Did something happen between you and Asuka? Normally she'd be chomping at the bit at the opportunity to show you up," Misato was asking him.

They were in the Evangelion's launch bay, on the bridge in front of Unit-01 where Shinji had first seen Rei. The twelfth Angel was already registered – sortie was imminent.

Shinji shuffled his feet, looking down. There was no way to begin to explain everything that had happened and what lay between them. Even if he could, he didn't think he should.

"She's… she's not really speaking to me at the moment."

Misato put her hand on his shoulder, her voice soft. "I know how difficult she can be, Shinji. I'll speak to her. For no, just focus on piloting the Eva."

Shinji shook his head, unable to meet Misato's eye. "No, please don't. She's right, it… it's my fault."

Misato's features hardened a little, but she decided not to pry. She gave his shoulder one last squeeze and pushed him forwards.

"Whatever's going on, we can work it out after we beat this Angel. You got that, Shinji? Focus on the task at hand."

Shinji looked up at her. The last he had seen of her; she was bleeding out in a corridor. Now, she was in front of him again, that same comforting presence that had reassured him through some of his most painful days.

He was so glad to have her back.

Instinctively, he reached forwards and wrapped his arms tightly around her. She seemed shocked by the sudden movement, but quickly reciprocated, one hand stroking his hair.

"You okay, kiddo?"

He could only nod slowly, and cling tightly to her.

Somewhere up above, Asuka watched the pair and scoffed.

There were shadows snaking through his veins.

Long wires of shadows pushed into him – through him – eating away at him. They raked their cold fingers over his Evangelion's core, enveloping it from every angle. Each prick of them against the surface of the core sent terrible shiver down his spine, like someone walking on his grave. It was almost worse than the pain.

No, nothing was worse than the pain.

He had felt pain before – plenty of it, inside the Eva. His very first night he had nearly died, the Third Angel pinning him down and ramming its jet-engine arm against Unit-01's core over and over. He had been torn into, blasted with fire, consumed, strangled - every time he set foot in the Eva, it was just more pain. He had thought that maybe this time it would be different. Wasn't that why he had been set back?

No such luck. This pain was worse than any he had felt before. Not in its sheer quantity, but in its duration. There was no relief, no escape. He had been stabbed more times than he could count, twisted and contorted into unnatural poses like a demented puppet. He was stuck impaled on the black spears, unable to fight back as they slowly spread through the inner workings of his Evangelion. He was being eaten alive.

Desperately, he pulled at his Eva's control unit, hoping for any response at all. He got nothing but the tiniest twitches. The shadow tendrils had long since severed his power cable and spilled the guts of the battery system, to say nothing of how they had sliced up its muscles and tendons. No matter how he tried, he couldn't get it to move. It seemed the synchronisation was only useful for transferring him pain.

He could feel the fingers of shadow creeping up the insides of his Eva, heading towards the entry plug. Once it reached him in there, it would be over.

Then, his useless Eva's communications unit crackled on.

"Pilot Ikari?"

"Pilot Ikari!"

Shinji's voice fluttered weakly over the comms. "R-Rei? Is that you?"

Rei started forwards. She had managed to breach the veil – if only with her voice. It seemed she was not completely helpless after all. She closed her eyes once more. Her connection with her Eva remained tenuous, fragile. If she wanted to keep talking to him, she would need all her focus.

"Pilot Ikari. Yes, it is me. Asuka and I are inside the Angel. We are unharmed, but we cannot activate our Evas."

"Rei… I can't move…" Shinji replied, his voice weak. He was fading.

Rei kept her eyes closed. Was this her purpose? Was this why she was sent back? Her Evangelion felt like lead around her, nothing but a cage. Her only connection with the outside world was the fluttering radio line between her and Shinji. Was this why she was here, to guide Shinji, to unlock his potential? Was this what had been missing the first time?

Beside her, the faceless woman turned towards her, her hands claws. Rei thought she heard a slight sense of emotion creep into her voice.

"Resistance is pointless," the woman said. "You must understand, this is not a battle. This is an execution."

The tendrils impaling Unit-01 grew taught, pulling its limbs in different directions. Rei could see it struggling under the immense tension as the woman attempted to pull it apart.

Rei fought to keep the wave of nausea down. It was a foreign feeling to this body still, worrying for the safety of another. She racked her brain, trying to ascertain how she could get through to him. All she could give him was a voice, and it needed to be one of strength. He needed someone to tell him what to do in no uncertain terms, to cut through his pain and fear with raw authority. Rei only knew one person who could do that.

She steeled herself and tried to make her voice sound like Commander Ikari's.

"Pilot Ikari. Our abilities to pilot our Evas have been compromised. The only hope we have of winning is if you enter your Eva into a berserk state."

"I… I can't Rei," Shinji said. "I need help…"

"Pilot Ikari. If you do not do this, we will all die."

Shinji's voice was a strangled gurgle. "I want to Rei, I just can't!"

What would the Commander say?

Rei spoke into the comms again, almost shouting. "Pilot Ikari! Do not say that you can't do it. Your Evangelion will respond to you, no matter what. You are capable of more than you know, Pilot Ikari. You are not helpless, you are not useless. I- I believe in you, Shinji."

Probably not that.

She saw Unit-01's neck stretching and fraying, threatening at any moment to come right off. Her voice cracked, her throat burning. Her attempt at emulating the Commander was abandoned.

"I need you, Shinji!"

On the screen above her, she saw something flicker in Unit-01's eye. A tiny red spark, an ember not nearly bright enough to catch. As quickly as it appeared, it was gone, the Eva's eye dark again.

Then, Asuka's voice joined her down the communications line.

"God damn it, Shinji, get the fuck in here and help us!"

Then slowly, miraculously, Unit-01 shuddered to life.

He could feel himself dying.

A dozen tendrils had pierced Unit-01, each one feeling just as if a knife had been driven in to him. His head was swimming, his vision blurring, his breathing laboured. Moving was increasingly difficult, not just his Eva, but his body itself. He felt his joints popping as the spears pulled him in each direction, his ligaments under immense pressure. He knew he wouldn't be able to hold out much longer.

Sounds over the comms were garbled – he wasn't sure whether that was his unit failing or his ears. Misato's voice was drowned out by someone screaming at the top of their lungs. Was it him? Was it Uni-01? He couldn't tell.

He could feel himself dying, and he refused to accept it.

There was a fire in his gut, one he didn't know he had. With each struggled tug of his hands on the Eva's control sticks, it grew hotter and hotter, until his skin pricked and his eyes burned. He needed to move. He needed to move.

He needed to get them out.

Finally, something in the Evangelion responded. He felt it activate once more around him, the lights flickering back on, the control panel returning to life. He felt the warmth of the Eva envelop him, a presence that soothed his burning skin and screaming muscles. There was something deep within the Eva, a dormant spectre now reawakened.

His mother?

He felt that feeling, the same embrace as he had during Instrumentality. His mother's soul had come to life, pushing the Eva beyond its limits. Unit-01 let out a guttural roar, every fibre shaking. Impossibly, it's arms moved, tearing out the tendrils that had impaled it in place. The spears crucifying him shattered, the Eva ejected them in fragments as it stitched its wounds back together. Pieces of broken shadow filled the air around him, dissipating quickly into black mist.

Unit-01 drifted slowly to the ground. A dozen new tendrils stuck at it and bounced uselessly off its hide. The Eva screamed, and plunged one arm into the shadow, reaching further and further down. One desire remained in Shinji - rescue Asuka and Rei.

They needed him.

He felt his body growing hotter and hotter, steam rising in his head. No, it wasn't just him - his Eva was actually heating up around him. The liquid shadow was boiling away at his touch, dissolving into black steam. Unit-01 began to glow a bright white as it heated up. The Angel made a noise halfway between a sizzle and a squeal as it boiled, a sound like dropping a live pig into a vat of oil. The shadow parted at his touch, spilling aside in waves, and he fell downwards.

The shadows surrounded him but could not touch him. He tore a path through the Angel, his burning Eva nestled in a bubble of screams and black steam. He forged further down, towards the centre of the Angel. Towards them.

His hand brushed against something hard, some kind of inner shell. It felt remarkably thin. He shattered it, his open had pushing through and finding empty space.

The sky was torn asunder, a rip in what was once a solid barrier. A huge hand descended, fingers outstretched, grasping at the people within. A hand, glowing white-hot so intense it shed little particles of itself into the air around it. Evangelion Unit-01's hand.

The faceless woman looked up at it, as unreadable as ever.

"So, it is like this again."

The glowing hot hand descended on the woman like God's judgment. She ignited, burning away into ash in a split second. What was left of her was crushed as the hand hit the ground a split-second later.

The sky split fully open, and the now white Unit-01 was there. It stretched its arms towards the pilots in a terrible embrace. Its arms encircled them, and Rei was suddenly aware of her Eva around her. The orange realm was gone, destroyed, replaced with a boiling darkness. Unit-01 wrapped its arms around her and pulled, her Eva swimming up the endless dark. Her head swam from the motion of it all. She flicked on the comms system one last time.

"Shinji… thank you."

Then she saw what was happening on the outside.

Shinji's blood was on fire, his hair was standing up, his skin was made of lightning.

Unit-01 ejected the last remnants of the shadow that had infected it, the feeling like a hot air balloon jettisoning its ballast. Shinji felt a weight off not just his shoulders but every part of his body. His Unit regenerate its wounds, holy light filling where there was just a gap. The same light flooded into Shinji, his pain dissipating. His body was reacting in strange ways. He was dully aware of something great and terrible happening outside.

The boundaries between him and his Eva were rapidly disappearing.

Mother, is this what you wanted?

He could taste colours. He could see smells. He was hyperaware of the feeling of his hand tightly grasping Rei's. His desire consumed all, one singular purpose. The more he concentrated, the more he felt Unit-01 responding.

Leilel had become a sphere once more, and just like before, Shinji burst through it in a shower of blood and gore. Profane rebirth. He gave an almighty yank and pulled Rei's Unit-00 from the rapidly deflating sack of the Angel behind him. Clinging tightly to her other hand, a red devil followed. Unit-02. Asuka.

Rei said something to him. He couldn't hear it.

Everything he saw was upside down, back the front, and the wrong colour. It was a kaleidoscope, shattered strands of colours staining his vision. Purple, blue and red. He was turned inside out and outside in. His Eva was burning the air.

Whatever was happening, whatever he had done, it wasn't going to stop.

"Let me rephrase the question," Keter-Or said. "Are you going to keep running away?"

"That's not rephrasing the question," Shinji said.

"Yes, it is," Keter-Or said. "You want to run from the pain. That is understandable. But the path you now walk on will require suffering. If you are faced with pain tomorrow, will you run? Or will you stand?"

"I… I don't know."

The creature looked at him for a long moment.

"I respect your honesty, Shinji. But now is not the time for "I don't know." You will have to make a decision, now or later."

Shinji was silent. He was unsure of how to answer the creature, unsure if he even could. It continued to stare at him, before speaking once more.

"Or perhaps you should look at it like this. What are you willing to suffer pain for? What, or who?"

Unit-01 surged, its armour flaking off like steam. It was a being of pure, seething white light, any resemblance to the human form rapidly disappearing. Pieces of rubble and fragments of what had once been the Angel Leilel tornadoed around it, caught up in its whirlwind.

With a high-pitched scream, the Eva jettisoned waves of light upwards, jets that scorched the sky. The light separated and formed into distinct shapes - a halo above the Evangelion's head, and two huge wings that stretched from horizon to horizon. The halo expanded, pushing forwards with it a wall of compressed air, instantly vaporizing every building it touched into fine dust particles. In its wake, the sky was turned blood-red, and soon all anyone could see was the red light of the dying world.

Half of the Geofront was torn to pieces. Enormous chunks of rubble flew upwards, past the now hovering Unit-01, as if gravity had been reversed. With the roof gone, NERV's commanding officers were free to observe the birth of the physical god happening above them in all its glory.

"Yui!" Gendo cried. "What are you doing?"

"What's going on?" Misato shouted, desperately trying to be heard over the howling wind. "Shinji! Are you alright?"

"He's becoming a god," Ritsuko muttered next to her, shaky hands lighting up a cigarette. "The union between human and Angel is causing the Evangelion to evolve to the next stage of being. The price, it seems, is the obliteration of all prior life forms.

"The world is ending."

The last person to talk to him, before the steel jaws closed him off forever, was his brother. He said: There is a pain that is yet to be cured. I know my purpose. Do you know yours?

He did, he thought. He just couldn't put it into words.

That was when all of the dreamers spoke their final miseries, and he pretended he was listening. That was when the king of limbs threw his sticks at them, and he watched as they bounced uselessly off their immortal hides.

Then he left, and the white beast enveloped him, and he knew he should prepare for the million-year sleep. But as they rose, he knew they were all watching. Standing at the windows, just as he was.

He saw the other six come up, leaving the scope of their globe forever. He wished, for just a second, that he could speak with them one last time. He just didn't know what he'd say.

Then they went in seven separate directions, and he was alone. The other vessels winked out, their different colours winking out one by one. It happened shockingly quickly.

Someone had left him a letter. He thought he knew who it was from, so he set it aside. A million years was a long time, there was no need to rush.

Then he looked out the window once more, and beheld what the universe had to present to him.

An ocean of black ice as far as the eye could see.

There was a quiet whistling sound, a crack in the distance as something broke the sound barrier. A red streak through the sky, descending upon the earth like a bolt of lightning from heaven.

Impact.

There was a sound like a bell being struck, high and clear, as the spear impaled Unit-01 through the chest. There was a moment of complete silence, then a huge whooshing sound. The wings dissipated, the halo retracted, the sky returning to its natural colour as it did. Air rushed in to fill the void, causing the dust of the annihilated city to swirl in tornadoes around the form of the struck Evangelion. Its terrible glow faded, returning to its natural purple hue as it deactivated.

From the sky, a deep blue Evangelion descended, suspended in a single moonbeam. It held one hand in front of its face and one outstretched above it, drifting slowly downwards with the grace of an archangel making contact with the earth.

Inside the cockpit, Kaworu Nagisa smiled.

"This time, Shinji, I'll show you true happiness."