Fic: Decades
Title: Decades
Author: timeywimeyball
Fandom: Neon Genesis Evangelion
Genre/s: Darkfic
Characters/Pairing: Shinji, Asuka, Toji (speaking roles), various mentioned. Shinji/Asuka, subtext of Shinji/Rei
Rating: Rated Mature for Fan Disservice, Mood Whiplash, and Squick.
Spoilers: You’ve watched End of Evangelion, haven’t you? Good…okay, I’ll give you a moment to recover from the flashbacks, and then we’ll proceed, shall we?
Summary: Decades ago, the Second and Third Impacts wrecked the world. The survivors did their best to fix it. Shinji is one of the last remaining survivors and now, he will be tempted.
Disclaimer: If I owned the characters, I’d be too busy having therapy to write fanfic. As I don’t, you get fanfic you lucky, lucky people.
A/N: This is what happens when I read a lot of Eva fanfics. Especially epic, multi-chapter ones involving knowledge of the events of the story, either thanks to time travel or meta-knowledge.
Of course, this is but a one shot story, so my apologies for that…and for potholing you straight to TVtropes. I’ll try and make up for it by writing more.
“Fly me to the moon
And let me play amongst the stars
Let me see what spring is like on
Jupi-SLAM”
Hitting the off switch of the alarm a little too hard, Shinji groaned slightly as he pushed himself upright, rubbing at his hand slightly. He kept on hitting in the wrong place for that alarm, catching himself on the metal.
Why had he agreed to getting that new design of alarm clock, anyway?
Well, that was as obvious as the still sleeping form next to him, which was still hogging the sheets. She was the cause of it, wanting a clock that didn’t ‘look like it had been spat straight out of Satan’s maw, and into a peaceful home’.
And who was he to argue with that assessment, Shinji thought as he headed for the kitchen, and started making breakfast, going through the routine with only the barest of thought, his mind half on the day ahead, half on the scenery visible from the windows.
Of course it had good views- it was one of the pleasures he enjoyed in life. He’d done enough to earn that much, surely? Even after the end, when he could have just let everyone…
Huh. There was someone outside the house.
Looking closer, he guessed it was someone young. In a school uniform of some kind…the daughter of someone who lived nearby? He couldn’t make out details, but he thought the uniform looked old fashioned. He shouldn’t have left his glasses back in the bedroom, then he wouldn’t be-
“What’re you gawping at t’day? Y’ look like a class one idiot unlimited when you do that.”
Glancing away from the window, Shinji saw Asuka taking a seat, still looking half rumpled and sporting fierce looking bed hair. Not that he’d say so to her, of course- he’d long learnt not to pick that fight.
“Just some kid.” He said, looking back, to see that she was gone. Shrugging slightly, Shinji returned to finishing breakfast. “Must have read up about us in her history books, and put two and two together.”
“Yeah, because teenagers don’t ever get eight when they do that.”
“Be fair, Asuka.” Shinji said, as he laid the dishes and sat down as well. “One of us might just have to talk to her, if she lives nearby.”
“Aah, don’t curse me, idiot.” Asuka grumbled. “You know I hate having to deal with star struck kids. Have done since forever.”
“Mm hmm.” Shinji said diplomatically.
“It’s true.” Asuka insisted, only barely pausing in her consumption of breakfast, “It’s why I was so happy when the parliament put the recruitment age back up to nineteen. At that age, they’re easier to teach at the Academy.”
“Then why did you teach them before they increased the age? For, what was it now…” Shinji said, pretending to think, “A decade at least? More, if you include the time when you were only a guest lecturer…”
“Bah, details.”
“Speaking of details…” Shinji said, standing up to retrieve a pre-placed envelope, before handing it to Asuka. “Happy birthday. This isn’t much of a gift, but by now, well-”
“Oh, so last night wasn’t my birthday gift?”
“I, ah, don’t think you can mention that in public.”
“Maybe I should just mention it to the kids. Watch them squirm at the thought of old people sex.”
“Asuka-!”
--
There was an event to go to, of course. All the great and good were there, most to engage in mutual self congratulation, rather than the ostentious reason that was the birthday of Asuka Langley Sorhyu-Ikari.
So of course, Shinji spent his time quietly circulating. He spoke to a Councilman or two, to the activists and representatives who got themselves in. He introduced a couple of people, and waved off conversations about what he had done post-Impact, and questions about what he was going to do now.
At least there was a string quartet from the Aoba Musical Institute, playing a mixture of pre-, inter-, and post-Impact pieces. Shinji actually enjoyed talking to them for a while, before he made his escape from what was plainly a reporter- even if no one else could tell- to the balcony that overlooked the city.
There was a chill in the air, and Shinji thought for a moment to get a better coat, but decided to stick it out, instead looking out across the city. Even by inter-Impact standards, it’d be considered small, but that’s what humanity had to work with, ever since the landmasses had changed decades ago, and the moon had turned red.
And not an hour’s drive away was the beach where he’d-
There was a thud as something hit his back, and a voice that was still rough and uncultured.
“Oy, star gazing again?”
“Not quite.” Shinji said, wincing slightly. Toji didn’t hit as hard as he used to, but Shinji wasn’t as young as he used to be. But at least he’d hadn’t used his artificial hand this time. “Just needed to get away.”
“Hounded for a quote, boss man?”
“Something like that.” Shinji said, suppressing a remark or a shudder of distaste at being called ‘boss man’. He’d avoided high titles, even casual ones. But Toji didn’t mean anything by it- hell, he probably hadn’t even thought much when he said it.
“Want me to corner ‘em? Tale out my teeth and ramble on, then go nap in their car?” Toji said, actually taking out his false teeth to make his statement.
“Don’t do that.” Shinji said, looking with faint displeasure at the teeth as Toji waved them around.
Toji laughed, and said something unintelligible.
“If I wanted to talk to an imbecile, I’d talk to my grandson.”
Toji grinned, his mouth half full of teeth, before he put the rest back in.
“Thank you.”
“Welcome.” Toji said, his face still split by a grin. “And don’t be so harsh on your kid- he’s not even, what? Four? Five?”
“Something like that.”
“Don’t know how you managed to raise kids. Sometimes wonder how you managed, when you got an attitude like that.”
“I don’t. Wonder, that is.”
“Oh? That so? You got the secret all sorted?”
“Perhaps.” Shinji said, glancing back inside. Toji followed his gaze for a moment, and then laughed.
“You crediting Asuka? Don’t think anyone else will want to get with her…or survive the attempt.”
“Oh, she’s…mellowed.”
“Mellowed in old age? Yeah, and I’m from the court of Imperial America. And I got a bridge to sell to you, too.”
Shinji smiled, looking back inside, scanning the crowd. Asuka was talking to a man in the uniform of the Pacific Defence Force, who sported a suitably awe struck look. Aida was talking someone to death- did one of his assistants drag him out of the company labs?- about something or other. The young string quartet were half huddled together, looking wide eyed at the crowd around them.
They all seemed so young. Of course, nearly everyone seemed young to him now. He knew they must be in their late teens or early twenties, but still…they were young. In their innocence, they were younger than he had been at fourteen.
There was someone younger than them at the party, even- an apprentice, or something of the sort?- who was near them, right by the window looking out onto the balcony. Young girl, teenager. Old fashioned uniform…
“Toji, does the AMI-”
She was looking right at him.
“-take young students? I mean, teenagers- below the age of majority.”
He couldn’t see her features clearly. But Shinji was sure she wasn’t young, in anything other than body. She’d seen things. There were still people that happened to, despite everything he had done to change that.
“I guess so- prodigies or something like that, yeah?”
“Something like that, yes.”
There were still parts of the world where things were uncontrolled. Even in the territory of the nation he’d done his small part forming.
“Don’t see why not. Why, you getting freaked out by some teenager?”
“No, not really.” Shinji said, shifting his gaze to Toji. “It’s just there’s-”
He stopped mid-sentence as he looked back, frowning slightly. The girl wasn’t there. How the hell had she managed that?
“She run off, has she? Seen the creepy old men looking at her, decided to get out of here?” Toji said with a grin.
“Must have been the toothless old man.”
“In your senile dreams.” Toji retorted loudly, as another person came out onto the balcony. A young man, smartly if overly self-consciously dressed that way, hurried to Shinji.
“Ah, sir? Your wife has…asked me,” The young man said, drawing an amused snort from Toji, “to get you to come inside before the guests mutiny. And before she, ah…performs any number of vile threats on me.”
“She didn’t threaten Shinji?” Toji asked in suitably outlandish astonishment. “Damn. It’s true. And here I thought I’d never thought I’d see the day when the hell bitch mellowed.”
“That happened at least thirty years ago, Toji.” Shinji replied and, while Toji called him a liar and deceiver of men, he said to the young man, “Go tell her I’ll be inside in a minute.”
The man nodded, clearly nervous at the prospect of talking to Asuka again, but doing so regardless. Toji was clearly amused by the whole spectacle, as they made their way back inside.
“Do your aides get younger every year, or do they get meeker every year?”
“Oh, he’s just new. Give him a month or two, and I’m sure he’ll be fine.”
“He couldn’t have got an easy job first? Like, say, fighting rabid dogs bare handed?”
“Learning on the job is the best way, you should know that. Besides, that rabid dog comment is hardly fair on Asuka.” Shinji said as he reached for the door handle. “She’s far more like an angry bear.”
“Hey, not my fault you-” Toji said, stopping mid sentence. “Wait. Did you just-?”
Shinji smiled slightly, as he walked inside. Toji laughed loudly, congratulating Shinji on finally growing a pair, as they re-entered the gathering of the great and good, along with the rich and the obnoxious.
Outside, their watcher went unobserved once again.
--
“If you don’t stop doing paperwork, I’m going to set fire to your desk.”
“Heard that one before.” Shinji said, as he read over the proposed tour one of his foundations was going to give a visiting Ambassador.
“Then I’ll make you sleep on the couch.”
“Like in the long summer of twenty thirty two?”
Asuka fumed silently for a few minutes, as Shinji signed his approval. The publicity it would give would certainly help funding here and in the Ambassador’s home country- maybe enough for them to start up another war orphan recovery branch. It would also soften up the Ambassador for when he talked to the representatives from the Ministry of Trade, something the Minister for Trade would appreciate…
“If you don’t stop working then I shall speak to young Misato on the phone.”
“Oh, the grandkids this time, is it?”
“And I will tell her…that her grandma is sad. And when she asks why, I’ll tell her it’s because her granddad made her grandma cry.”
“Cruel and cunning…” Shinji said, setting down his pen. Asuka smirked triumphantly at that sight, but then Shinji continued speaking, “Young Misato is a weak spot of mine. She’s very like me, and knows I like her…but, she is only eight.”
“Everyone was eight once.”
“Yes, but I have her favourite sweets. Even some of that American candy she likes.”
“That’s cheating.”
“I know.”
“I’ll get you for this, you know.”
“I don’t doubt it.”
--
It was closing in on midnight, when Shinji finally set down his pen for the night. Asuka had loudly announced that she was going to bed- she’d been using that tactic for decades, and it still worked half the time- something like an hour ago, but he couldn’t bear leaving the paperwork undone.
At least, this night he couldn’t.
Maybe it was just an excuse for insomnia, Shinji thought as he made his way to the kitchen. Or a way to work himself to exhaustion, so that he could sleep better. Maybe a bad habit, all the way back from when he was a conscript in a war he didn’t understand.
Whatever the reason, Shinji knew that he was something of a workaholic. He had to be, he mused as he made a cup of tea. Green tea in the evenings, black tea during the day. Coffee an unheard of luxury, even for someone of his station.
At least there was tea, from India more so than China, for workaholics like himself these days. The Indian Prime Minister was due for a state visit, Shinji recalled as he took a first, much appreciated, sip. The government had asked him to make an appearance. Hardly surprised, given that one of the first things he’d done as-
He froze, cup to his lips, as he saw the face by his window.
The girl in the old fashioned uniform, with the gait he had recognised instantly by his instinct, but not picked up by his forebrain.
Cup in hand, he stepped outside, the girl turning to face him.
“It’s been a while, Rei. Would you care for some tea?”
“No, thank you.”
“Suit yourself.” Shinji said, moving to sit on one of the bench’s scattered throughout the garden.
Rei stayed on her feet.
Looking at her, Shinji felt his age. She hadn’t changed in the slightest. Not in the sense that she had aged well, but that she looked exactly the same as she had the last time he had seen her, decades ago.
Her face was unlined. Her hair hadn’t turned to grey, nor were her hands calloused by the hard task of living in the world after the Third Impact. Her expression was neutral, as it had been when she had known nothing else but duty, not because of hard won experience. She didn’t look like she had borne the weight of the world on her shoulders, like everyone else of their generation had.
“Why are you here?”
Shinji almost felt like he should have been speaking like he was fourteen again, unsure and terrified and angry. A young boy who didn’t know why this was all happening to him.
“I am here to see you.”
He wasn’t the callow young boy he was. Physically, it was obvious- his face was lined, his hair white and sparse, his body long since grown, pushed to its limits, and now held together by carefully measured exercise and medicine- but it was his experience that made the difference. It was the life he had led that allowed him to speak calmly.
“That’s obvious, Rei. But why now? It’s been a long time since Third Impact. Why now, of all time?”
“The time is right. Now is when the universe is aligned. Now is the time I can speak to you.”
“Convenient- I’m an old man, Rei. It wouldn’t do for you to be seen with me, I’m afraid.”
“…you have changed greatly, Pilot Ikari.”
“Obviously.” Shinji responded, failing to match Rei’s level of deadpan. “For one, I haven’t been a pilot in a long time.”
“That is true. It has been fifty nine years since you last piloted an Evangelion.”
“I was referring to my spectacular career as a stunt pilot.”
“…pardon?”
Shinji couldn’t help it- he smirked. Whether it was Rei or something that merely looked like her, he had confused her.
“You remind me of your father.”
“In what way?” Shinji asked, his smile dropping.
“You are cunning. Intelligent. Manipulative.”
“I didn’t abandon my children.”
“No, you didn’t. You worked all the hours of the day to keep them safe. To keep all the children safe. You built a nation from the ruins of a dozen. You gave hope to people you would never meet.”
“Someone had to do it.”
“Yes. Which is why you took the office of President.”
“You know that, you’ll know I left that office thirty years ago.”
“Thirty two years a private citizen.”
“It was an estimate, not a number for a biography.”
“You kept the peace, as head of state.”
“Because I was going to let marauders have free reign?”
“You also ordered the deaths of your enemies. Chiba Kimio. He had children.”
“One, who I adopted.”
“Yes. You took everything from him. His cause. His life. His lineage.”
“Have you gone into the biography business, Rei? You’d write a truly vicious biography of me.”
“No. That is not the reason for me coming here.”
“Then why?” Shinji hissed, getting to his feet, slower than he would have liked. “To tell me I wasn’t the best father I could have been? To ask if I regret the wars I started but didn’t fight in? I’m surprised you haven’t called me a shadow advisor.”
“That is not my reason.”
“Then why. Tell me.”
“Two reasons. The first, to tell you it is time. The second, to give you an offer.”
Shinji stared at her, a corner of his face twitching, before he turned and walked back inside, ignoring Rei with a studied determination.
Rei turned her head from where she was sitting at the table, to fix him with a steady gaze.
“It’s like that, is it?” Shinji asked with a frustrated sigh.
Rei didn’t answer.
“‘It’s time’ is nonsense. Unless I’m having a stroke, which is causing the worst flashback I’ve had in years…”
“This is no flashback.”
“Of course you’d say that.” Shinji said, feeling out of place in the kitchen. Something was off about the kitchen that he couldn’t quite name. The sizing was off, the colours seemed subtly wrong, almost as if they were under studio lighting…
“You did great things. But you had to. The world demanded no less.”
He didn’t answer, instead reaching out to grip one of the chairs, trying to tell himself this was real. This wasn’t a nightmare. He’d had enough of them to know the difference, to know the quality of what was happening, to know why he could taste blood at the back of his mouth.
“You can change things.”
“How?” Shinji asked, looking up at Rei, somehow surprised to see that she was still in her school uniform. He’d expected to see her in-
“You can go back.”
“I doubt the young me will listen to a crazy old man.” Shinji replied, trying to seize back control of the conversation.
“You wont have to.” Rei responded, moving to gesture with one hand. “Look. See yourself.”
Shinji glanced down, feeling his heart rate shoot up as he did so. No.
“You don’t have to convince the you who was.”
He was in a plug suit. He was still an old man, as the stray strands of hair in front of his eyes proved to him. He almost laughed- he’d long thought that the plug suits were half fetish gear, designed by someone with far too great an interest in teenagers. They’d more than likely have an aneurysm at the sight of an old man in one.
“You will be him.”
Looking up, he saw Rei as she had been the first time, in her abbreviated plug suit, bandaged heavily, but standing on her own on the metal walkway, the head of Unit 01 looking on at them, the overturned gurney and soiled bedding.
Joy. And this memory was one of his favourite nightmares, too.
“Oh yes. That will work wonderfully, Rei.”
“You will be able to stop Third Impact.” Rei said, walking towards him. “You will save countless lives. All you have to do…is be your father’s son.”
“I don’t think so, Rei.”
“You have done so already.”
“Did becoming a…god, or whatever you are now…make you a moron, Rei?”
“Whatever do you mean?”
“I would be in no position to take over, like you think I could. Vice Commander Fuyutsuki, desert one Ikari for another? Major Katsuragi, take orders from a boy? Asuka, listen to the idiot Third Child?” Shinji retorted, turning to walk away, to try again to leave this dream reality he had been pulled into.
Finding a hatchway, he worked the handle, grunting and complaining as it at first didn’t open, and then it did, swinging inward and taking him with it.
With a curse, he made to push himself off the floor, his hand coming into contact with something soft and-
He opened his eyes, and looked into Rei’s.
“The First Child would follow you, soon enough.”
Pushing himself off of a naked Rei, Shinji ignored the twinge in his mind which insisted he was an old but still healthy male, and she was a young and fertile female. It was a good thing his body wasn’t as able to respond to such things, he thought.
Besides, Rei was very young, he thought with a repressed shudder as he ignored the construct of Rei’s home back in Tokyo-3, instead headed for the door. He was going to leave this reality, no matter what Rei said or tempted him with.
Still, he wasn’t surprised when he wasn’t greeted by the sight of one of the slums of Tokyo-3, but a lab of some kind, dimly lit by all manner of outdated instruments and devices that he couldn’t identity.
He was standing before a large glass tank, his clothing settled on him properly now. It was better than the plugsuit, better than the school uniform. Had he taken his clothes with him, this time?
As his eyes became used to the light, he looked down at himself, trying to identify the clothing he was wearing. Some kind of uniform, it seemed- not quite his clothing, especially not the gloves-
Looking up with dawning horror, he saw Rei floating in the tank, a stream of bubbles escaping her mouth as she hung motionless, thoughtless; yet alive.
He heard the hissing of machines moving, of LCL draining from the tank, before it opened and a silent, sopping wet Rei emerged, who paused to hack up LCL before speaking.
“You never saw this. You never saw what happened to me. You had always wondered why I never returned from the sea of LCL, when you knew I could have.”
Shinji turned, but he didn’t have the chance to reach the door before he found himself in a service tunnel, a weight in one hand, gunpowder fumes in the air, and a body before him.
“I know you liked him. He was…different. A chance at a father figure.”
Rei was kneeling by the body, once again in her school uniform. Her skirt was slowly being stained by the blood pooling around the ruin that was Rjouji Kaji’s head.
“He guided you. He made Misato happy.” Rei said, pushing herself to her feet, bloodying her hands in the process. “He had so much potential.”
“I will not let you-”
“Guilt you?” Rei asked, standing now by the body of Misato Katsuragi. The Pilot was naked, her feet caked with blood, her arms coated in blood and gore, her hair disarrayed and her face streaked with blood.
“I would never do that, Pilot Ikari.”
She stepped awkwardly around the body as if not knowing it was there, bumping into it.
“Then stop this.”
“When you could have changed everything?” Rei asked, reaching a hand up to caress Shinji’s cheek.
“You can save them.”
“From SEELE? From my father? Their plans were buried deep. I don’t know what-”
“You would do nothing, then? Let billions die? Let your friends die, all so you can struggle and sacrifice?”
“No. I will…honour them…by living.” Shinji said, turning away.
“You will run away, then?”
Shinji froze, halfway down the corridor when Rei spoke softly.
He didn’t answer for several minutes, before he turned his head and replied, just as quietly, just as audibly.
“Yes.”
Before he could keep on walking, Rei spoke again.
“Then…a choice. Clear. Obvious.” Rei said, and Shinji tried to tell himself he couldn’t hear emotion in her voice. He’d gotten good at detecting that, when they were Pilots- the tiniest hint of emotion. Muted, but there. He was decades out of practice.
He wasn’t hearing it now. He wasn’t.
“You can either walk to that door. You will wake. You will not have long, before you die. Or…come with me. And let it all change.”
Shinji kept still. Frozen in place. Deciding.
--
They took the body away in the morning.
In the afternoon, she comforted her children and grandchildren, saying little but dry-eyed.
In the evening, they told her they couldn’t find a medical reason for his death. They spoke of undetected causes, but she knew when doctor’s really meant that something simply wasn’t there anymore.
That night, she recalled a time, a lifetime ago, when it had happened to those Asuka Langley Sorhyu-Ikari had loved before. She would be damned if she would accept the result again.
Author: timeywimeyball
Fandom: Neon Genesis Evangelion
Genre/s: Darkfic
Characters/Pairing: Shinji, Asuka, Toji (speaking roles), various mentioned. Shinji/Asuka, subtext of Shinji/Rei
Rating: Rated Mature for Fan Disservice, Mood Whiplash, and Squick.
Spoilers: You’ve watched End of Evangelion, haven’t you? Good…okay, I’ll give you a moment to recover from the flashbacks, and then we’ll proceed, shall we?
Summary: Decades ago, the Second and Third Impacts wrecked the world. The survivors did their best to fix it. Shinji is one of the last remaining survivors and now, he will be tempted.
Disclaimer: If I owned the characters, I’d be too busy having therapy to write fanfic. As I don’t, you get fanfic you lucky, lucky people.
A/N: This is what happens when I read a lot of Eva fanfics. Especially epic, multi-chapter ones involving knowledge of the events of the story, either thanks to time travel or meta-knowledge.
Of course, this is but a one shot story, so my apologies for that…and for potholing you straight to TVtropes. I’ll try and make up for it by writing more.
“Fly me to the moon
And let me play amongst the stars
Let me see what spring is like on
Jupi-SLAM”
Hitting the off switch of the alarm a little too hard, Shinji groaned slightly as he pushed himself upright, rubbing at his hand slightly. He kept on hitting in the wrong place for that alarm, catching himself on the metal.
Why had he agreed to getting that new design of alarm clock, anyway?
Well, that was as obvious as the still sleeping form next to him, which was still hogging the sheets. She was the cause of it, wanting a clock that didn’t ‘look like it had been spat straight out of Satan’s maw, and into a peaceful home’.
And who was he to argue with that assessment, Shinji thought as he headed for the kitchen, and started making breakfast, going through the routine with only the barest of thought, his mind half on the day ahead, half on the scenery visible from the windows.
Of course it had good views- it was one of the pleasures he enjoyed in life. He’d done enough to earn that much, surely? Even after the end, when he could have just let everyone…
Huh. There was someone outside the house.
Looking closer, he guessed it was someone young. In a school uniform of some kind…the daughter of someone who lived nearby? He couldn’t make out details, but he thought the uniform looked old fashioned. He shouldn’t have left his glasses back in the bedroom, then he wouldn’t be-
“What’re you gawping at t’day? Y’ look like a class one idiot unlimited when you do that.”
Glancing away from the window, Shinji saw Asuka taking a seat, still looking half rumpled and sporting fierce looking bed hair. Not that he’d say so to her, of course- he’d long learnt not to pick that fight.
“Just some kid.” He said, looking back, to see that she was gone. Shrugging slightly, Shinji returned to finishing breakfast. “Must have read up about us in her history books, and put two and two together.”
“Yeah, because teenagers don’t ever get eight when they do that.”
“Be fair, Asuka.” Shinji said, as he laid the dishes and sat down as well. “One of us might just have to talk to her, if she lives nearby.”
“Aah, don’t curse me, idiot.” Asuka grumbled. “You know I hate having to deal with star struck kids. Have done since forever.”
“Mm hmm.” Shinji said diplomatically.
“It’s true.” Asuka insisted, only barely pausing in her consumption of breakfast, “It’s why I was so happy when the parliament put the recruitment age back up to nineteen. At that age, they’re easier to teach at the Academy.”
“Then why did you teach them before they increased the age? For, what was it now…” Shinji said, pretending to think, “A decade at least? More, if you include the time when you were only a guest lecturer…”
“Bah, details.”
“Speaking of details…” Shinji said, standing up to retrieve a pre-placed envelope, before handing it to Asuka. “Happy birthday. This isn’t much of a gift, but by now, well-”
“Oh, so last night wasn’t my birthday gift?”
“I, ah, don’t think you can mention that in public.”
“Maybe I should just mention it to the kids. Watch them squirm at the thought of old people sex.”
“Asuka-!”
--
There was an event to go to, of course. All the great and good were there, most to engage in mutual self congratulation, rather than the ostentious reason that was the birthday of Asuka Langley Sorhyu-Ikari.
So of course, Shinji spent his time quietly circulating. He spoke to a Councilman or two, to the activists and representatives who got themselves in. He introduced a couple of people, and waved off conversations about what he had done post-Impact, and questions about what he was going to do now.
At least there was a string quartet from the Aoba Musical Institute, playing a mixture of pre-, inter-, and post-Impact pieces. Shinji actually enjoyed talking to them for a while, before he made his escape from what was plainly a reporter- even if no one else could tell- to the balcony that overlooked the city.
There was a chill in the air, and Shinji thought for a moment to get a better coat, but decided to stick it out, instead looking out across the city. Even by inter-Impact standards, it’d be considered small, but that’s what humanity had to work with, ever since the landmasses had changed decades ago, and the moon had turned red.
And not an hour’s drive away was the beach where he’d-
There was a thud as something hit his back, and a voice that was still rough and uncultured.
“Oy, star gazing again?”
“Not quite.” Shinji said, wincing slightly. Toji didn’t hit as hard as he used to, but Shinji wasn’t as young as he used to be. But at least he’d hadn’t used his artificial hand this time. “Just needed to get away.”
“Hounded for a quote, boss man?”
“Something like that.” Shinji said, suppressing a remark or a shudder of distaste at being called ‘boss man’. He’d avoided high titles, even casual ones. But Toji didn’t mean anything by it- hell, he probably hadn’t even thought much when he said it.
“Want me to corner ‘em? Tale out my teeth and ramble on, then go nap in their car?” Toji said, actually taking out his false teeth to make his statement.
“Don’t do that.” Shinji said, looking with faint displeasure at the teeth as Toji waved them around.
Toji laughed, and said something unintelligible.
“If I wanted to talk to an imbecile, I’d talk to my grandson.”
Toji grinned, his mouth half full of teeth, before he put the rest back in.
“Thank you.”
“Welcome.” Toji said, his face still split by a grin. “And don’t be so harsh on your kid- he’s not even, what? Four? Five?”
“Something like that.”
“Don’t know how you managed to raise kids. Sometimes wonder how you managed, when you got an attitude like that.”
“I don’t. Wonder, that is.”
“Oh? That so? You got the secret all sorted?”
“Perhaps.” Shinji said, glancing back inside. Toji followed his gaze for a moment, and then laughed.
“You crediting Asuka? Don’t think anyone else will want to get with her…or survive the attempt.”
“Oh, she’s…mellowed.”
“Mellowed in old age? Yeah, and I’m from the court of Imperial America. And I got a bridge to sell to you, too.”
Shinji smiled, looking back inside, scanning the crowd. Asuka was talking to a man in the uniform of the Pacific Defence Force, who sported a suitably awe struck look. Aida was talking someone to death- did one of his assistants drag him out of the company labs?- about something or other. The young string quartet were half huddled together, looking wide eyed at the crowd around them.
They all seemed so young. Of course, nearly everyone seemed young to him now. He knew they must be in their late teens or early twenties, but still…they were young. In their innocence, they were younger than he had been at fourteen.
There was someone younger than them at the party, even- an apprentice, or something of the sort?- who was near them, right by the window looking out onto the balcony. Young girl, teenager. Old fashioned uniform…
“Toji, does the AMI-”
She was looking right at him.
“-take young students? I mean, teenagers- below the age of majority.”
He couldn’t see her features clearly. But Shinji was sure she wasn’t young, in anything other than body. She’d seen things. There were still people that happened to, despite everything he had done to change that.
“I guess so- prodigies or something like that, yeah?”
“Something like that, yes.”
There were still parts of the world where things were uncontrolled. Even in the territory of the nation he’d done his small part forming.
“Don’t see why not. Why, you getting freaked out by some teenager?”
“No, not really.” Shinji said, shifting his gaze to Toji. “It’s just there’s-”
He stopped mid-sentence as he looked back, frowning slightly. The girl wasn’t there. How the hell had she managed that?
“She run off, has she? Seen the creepy old men looking at her, decided to get out of here?” Toji said with a grin.
“Must have been the toothless old man.”
“In your senile dreams.” Toji retorted loudly, as another person came out onto the balcony. A young man, smartly if overly self-consciously dressed that way, hurried to Shinji.
“Ah, sir? Your wife has…asked me,” The young man said, drawing an amused snort from Toji, “to get you to come inside before the guests mutiny. And before she, ah…performs any number of vile threats on me.”
“She didn’t threaten Shinji?” Toji asked in suitably outlandish astonishment. “Damn. It’s true. And here I thought I’d never thought I’d see the day when the hell bitch mellowed.”
“That happened at least thirty years ago, Toji.” Shinji replied and, while Toji called him a liar and deceiver of men, he said to the young man, “Go tell her I’ll be inside in a minute.”
The man nodded, clearly nervous at the prospect of talking to Asuka again, but doing so regardless. Toji was clearly amused by the whole spectacle, as they made their way back inside.
“Do your aides get younger every year, or do they get meeker every year?”
“Oh, he’s just new. Give him a month or two, and I’m sure he’ll be fine.”
“He couldn’t have got an easy job first? Like, say, fighting rabid dogs bare handed?”
“Learning on the job is the best way, you should know that. Besides, that rabid dog comment is hardly fair on Asuka.” Shinji said as he reached for the door handle. “She’s far more like an angry bear.”
“Hey, not my fault you-” Toji said, stopping mid sentence. “Wait. Did you just-?”
Shinji smiled slightly, as he walked inside. Toji laughed loudly, congratulating Shinji on finally growing a pair, as they re-entered the gathering of the great and good, along with the rich and the obnoxious.
Outside, their watcher went unobserved once again.
--
“If you don’t stop doing paperwork, I’m going to set fire to your desk.”
“Heard that one before.” Shinji said, as he read over the proposed tour one of his foundations was going to give a visiting Ambassador.
“Then I’ll make you sleep on the couch.”
“Like in the long summer of twenty thirty two?”
Asuka fumed silently for a few minutes, as Shinji signed his approval. The publicity it would give would certainly help funding here and in the Ambassador’s home country- maybe enough for them to start up another war orphan recovery branch. It would also soften up the Ambassador for when he talked to the representatives from the Ministry of Trade, something the Minister for Trade would appreciate…
“If you don’t stop working then I shall speak to young Misato on the phone.”
“Oh, the grandkids this time, is it?”
“And I will tell her…that her grandma is sad. And when she asks why, I’ll tell her it’s because her granddad made her grandma cry.”
“Cruel and cunning…” Shinji said, setting down his pen. Asuka smirked triumphantly at that sight, but then Shinji continued speaking, “Young Misato is a weak spot of mine. She’s very like me, and knows I like her…but, she is only eight.”
“Everyone was eight once.”
“Yes, but I have her favourite sweets. Even some of that American candy she likes.”
“That’s cheating.”
“I know.”
“I’ll get you for this, you know.”
“I don’t doubt it.”
--
It was closing in on midnight, when Shinji finally set down his pen for the night. Asuka had loudly announced that she was going to bed- she’d been using that tactic for decades, and it still worked half the time- something like an hour ago, but he couldn’t bear leaving the paperwork undone.
At least, this night he couldn’t.
Maybe it was just an excuse for insomnia, Shinji thought as he made his way to the kitchen. Or a way to work himself to exhaustion, so that he could sleep better. Maybe a bad habit, all the way back from when he was a conscript in a war he didn’t understand.
Whatever the reason, Shinji knew that he was something of a workaholic. He had to be, he mused as he made a cup of tea. Green tea in the evenings, black tea during the day. Coffee an unheard of luxury, even for someone of his station.
At least there was tea, from India more so than China, for workaholics like himself these days. The Indian Prime Minister was due for a state visit, Shinji recalled as he took a first, much appreciated, sip. The government had asked him to make an appearance. Hardly surprised, given that one of the first things he’d done as-
He froze, cup to his lips, as he saw the face by his window.
The girl in the old fashioned uniform, with the gait he had recognised instantly by his instinct, but not picked up by his forebrain.
Cup in hand, he stepped outside, the girl turning to face him.
“It’s been a while, Rei. Would you care for some tea?”
“No, thank you.”
“Suit yourself.” Shinji said, moving to sit on one of the bench’s scattered throughout the garden.
Rei stayed on her feet.
Looking at her, Shinji felt his age. She hadn’t changed in the slightest. Not in the sense that she had aged well, but that she looked exactly the same as she had the last time he had seen her, decades ago.
Her face was unlined. Her hair hadn’t turned to grey, nor were her hands calloused by the hard task of living in the world after the Third Impact. Her expression was neutral, as it had been when she had known nothing else but duty, not because of hard won experience. She didn’t look like she had borne the weight of the world on her shoulders, like everyone else of their generation had.
“Why are you here?”
Shinji almost felt like he should have been speaking like he was fourteen again, unsure and terrified and angry. A young boy who didn’t know why this was all happening to him.
“I am here to see you.”
He wasn’t the callow young boy he was. Physically, it was obvious- his face was lined, his hair white and sparse, his body long since grown, pushed to its limits, and now held together by carefully measured exercise and medicine- but it was his experience that made the difference. It was the life he had led that allowed him to speak calmly.
“That’s obvious, Rei. But why now? It’s been a long time since Third Impact. Why now, of all time?”
“The time is right. Now is when the universe is aligned. Now is the time I can speak to you.”
“Convenient- I’m an old man, Rei. It wouldn’t do for you to be seen with me, I’m afraid.”
“…you have changed greatly, Pilot Ikari.”
“Obviously.” Shinji responded, failing to match Rei’s level of deadpan. “For one, I haven’t been a pilot in a long time.”
“That is true. It has been fifty nine years since you last piloted an Evangelion.”
“I was referring to my spectacular career as a stunt pilot.”
“…pardon?”
Shinji couldn’t help it- he smirked. Whether it was Rei or something that merely looked like her, he had confused her.
“You remind me of your father.”
“In what way?” Shinji asked, his smile dropping.
“You are cunning. Intelligent. Manipulative.”
“I didn’t abandon my children.”
“No, you didn’t. You worked all the hours of the day to keep them safe. To keep all the children safe. You built a nation from the ruins of a dozen. You gave hope to people you would never meet.”
“Someone had to do it.”
“Yes. Which is why you took the office of President.”
“You know that, you’ll know I left that office thirty years ago.”
“Thirty two years a private citizen.”
“It was an estimate, not a number for a biography.”
“You kept the peace, as head of state.”
“Because I was going to let marauders have free reign?”
“You also ordered the deaths of your enemies. Chiba Kimio. He had children.”
“One, who I adopted.”
“Yes. You took everything from him. His cause. His life. His lineage.”
“Have you gone into the biography business, Rei? You’d write a truly vicious biography of me.”
“No. That is not the reason for me coming here.”
“Then why?” Shinji hissed, getting to his feet, slower than he would have liked. “To tell me I wasn’t the best father I could have been? To ask if I regret the wars I started but didn’t fight in? I’m surprised you haven’t called me a shadow advisor.”
“That is not my reason.”
“Then why. Tell me.”
“Two reasons. The first, to tell you it is time. The second, to give you an offer.”
Shinji stared at her, a corner of his face twitching, before he turned and walked back inside, ignoring Rei with a studied determination.
Rei turned her head from where she was sitting at the table, to fix him with a steady gaze.
“It’s like that, is it?” Shinji asked with a frustrated sigh.
Rei didn’t answer.
“‘It’s time’ is nonsense. Unless I’m having a stroke, which is causing the worst flashback I’ve had in years…”
“This is no flashback.”
“Of course you’d say that.” Shinji said, feeling out of place in the kitchen. Something was off about the kitchen that he couldn’t quite name. The sizing was off, the colours seemed subtly wrong, almost as if they were under studio lighting…
“You did great things. But you had to. The world demanded no less.”
He didn’t answer, instead reaching out to grip one of the chairs, trying to tell himself this was real. This wasn’t a nightmare. He’d had enough of them to know the difference, to know the quality of what was happening, to know why he could taste blood at the back of his mouth.
“You can change things.”
“How?” Shinji asked, looking up at Rei, somehow surprised to see that she was still in her school uniform. He’d expected to see her in-
“You can go back.”
“I doubt the young me will listen to a crazy old man.” Shinji replied, trying to seize back control of the conversation.
“You wont have to.” Rei responded, moving to gesture with one hand. “Look. See yourself.”
Shinji glanced down, feeling his heart rate shoot up as he did so. No.
“You don’t have to convince the you who was.”
He was in a plug suit. He was still an old man, as the stray strands of hair in front of his eyes proved to him. He almost laughed- he’d long thought that the plug suits were half fetish gear, designed by someone with far too great an interest in teenagers. They’d more than likely have an aneurysm at the sight of an old man in one.
“You will be him.”
Looking up, he saw Rei as she had been the first time, in her abbreviated plug suit, bandaged heavily, but standing on her own on the metal walkway, the head of Unit 01 looking on at them, the overturned gurney and soiled bedding.
Joy. And this memory was one of his favourite nightmares, too.
“Oh yes. That will work wonderfully, Rei.”
“You will be able to stop Third Impact.” Rei said, walking towards him. “You will save countless lives. All you have to do…is be your father’s son.”
“I don’t think so, Rei.”
“You have done so already.”
“Did becoming a…god, or whatever you are now…make you a moron, Rei?”
“Whatever do you mean?”
“I would be in no position to take over, like you think I could. Vice Commander Fuyutsuki, desert one Ikari for another? Major Katsuragi, take orders from a boy? Asuka, listen to the idiot Third Child?” Shinji retorted, turning to walk away, to try again to leave this dream reality he had been pulled into.
Finding a hatchway, he worked the handle, grunting and complaining as it at first didn’t open, and then it did, swinging inward and taking him with it.
With a curse, he made to push himself off the floor, his hand coming into contact with something soft and-
He opened his eyes, and looked into Rei’s.
“The First Child would follow you, soon enough.”
Pushing himself off of a naked Rei, Shinji ignored the twinge in his mind which insisted he was an old but still healthy male, and she was a young and fertile female. It was a good thing his body wasn’t as able to respond to such things, he thought.
Besides, Rei was very young, he thought with a repressed shudder as he ignored the construct of Rei’s home back in Tokyo-3, instead headed for the door. He was going to leave this reality, no matter what Rei said or tempted him with.
Still, he wasn’t surprised when he wasn’t greeted by the sight of one of the slums of Tokyo-3, but a lab of some kind, dimly lit by all manner of outdated instruments and devices that he couldn’t identity.
He was standing before a large glass tank, his clothing settled on him properly now. It was better than the plugsuit, better than the school uniform. Had he taken his clothes with him, this time?
As his eyes became used to the light, he looked down at himself, trying to identify the clothing he was wearing. Some kind of uniform, it seemed- not quite his clothing, especially not the gloves-
Looking up with dawning horror, he saw Rei floating in the tank, a stream of bubbles escaping her mouth as she hung motionless, thoughtless; yet alive.
He heard the hissing of machines moving, of LCL draining from the tank, before it opened and a silent, sopping wet Rei emerged, who paused to hack up LCL before speaking.
“You never saw this. You never saw what happened to me. You had always wondered why I never returned from the sea of LCL, when you knew I could have.”
Shinji turned, but he didn’t have the chance to reach the door before he found himself in a service tunnel, a weight in one hand, gunpowder fumes in the air, and a body before him.
“I know you liked him. He was…different. A chance at a father figure.”
Rei was kneeling by the body, once again in her school uniform. Her skirt was slowly being stained by the blood pooling around the ruin that was Rjouji Kaji’s head.
“He guided you. He made Misato happy.” Rei said, pushing herself to her feet, bloodying her hands in the process. “He had so much potential.”
“I will not let you-”
“Guilt you?” Rei asked, standing now by the body of Misato Katsuragi. The Pilot was naked, her feet caked with blood, her arms coated in blood and gore, her hair disarrayed and her face streaked with blood.
“I would never do that, Pilot Ikari.”
She stepped awkwardly around the body as if not knowing it was there, bumping into it.
“Then stop this.”
“When you could have changed everything?” Rei asked, reaching a hand up to caress Shinji’s cheek.
“You can save them.”
“From SEELE? From my father? Their plans were buried deep. I don’t know what-”
“You would do nothing, then? Let billions die? Let your friends die, all so you can struggle and sacrifice?”
“No. I will…honour them…by living.” Shinji said, turning away.
“You will run away, then?”
Shinji froze, halfway down the corridor when Rei spoke softly.
He didn’t answer for several minutes, before he turned his head and replied, just as quietly, just as audibly.
“Yes.”
Before he could keep on walking, Rei spoke again.
“Then…a choice. Clear. Obvious.” Rei said, and Shinji tried to tell himself he couldn’t hear emotion in her voice. He’d gotten good at detecting that, when they were Pilots- the tiniest hint of emotion. Muted, but there. He was decades out of practice.
He wasn’t hearing it now. He wasn’t.
“You can either walk to that door. You will wake. You will not have long, before you die. Or…come with me. And let it all change.”
Shinji kept still. Frozen in place. Deciding.
--
They took the body away in the morning.
In the afternoon, she comforted her children and grandchildren, saying little but dry-eyed.
In the evening, they told her they couldn’t find a medical reason for his death. They spoke of undetected causes, but she knew when doctor’s really meant that something simply wasn’t there anymore.
That night, she recalled a time, a lifetime ago, when it had happened to those Asuka Langley Sorhyu-Ikari had loved before. She would be damned if she would accept the result again.