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NEON GENESIS EVANGELION
Shattered Reflections, Part 2:

Katsuragi, Hyuuga, Akagi


AKAGI

What is the beauty of suicide? Do silly girls really believe 
that killing themselves will make a misbehaving man say, "Oh, 
I really am a horrible, horrible person. What will I ever do 
to make it up to her?" 

Not bloody likely. Instead they'll just continue with their lives, 
working hard, marrying someone, having children, maybe sparing 
a brief thought to the girl that left life behind for them. How
can they do it? I don't know. Who can understand the mind of a 
man?

Nobody ever changes. Nobody can change. Too bad I didn't realize 
it until too late. 

I guess I am just a silly girl after all. 

My mother would sympathize, I suppose. Of course, we both were
fool enough to take Gendo at his word. Fool enough think we could
show him that Yui wasn't the only woman in the world. Fool enough 
to think we understood him. Fool enough to think we understood 
ourselves.

That's what it all comes down to, isn't it? We don't understand
ourselves, so of course we can't understand each other. We hide
from our own feelings, warped by society into inherently defective
beings, so is it any wonder that we can't truly ever trust another 
of the defective beings surrounding us?

Ah, for an end to separation!

It was how he spoke that seduced both of us, I think. When he 
wanted to, he could make an audience dance on his strings; he 
could make stones weep; he could move men to hate and women to 
love. I first heard him speak at a SEELE subcommittee meeting
not long after my mother's death. It was my first meeting with
such important people, and I must admit that I was nervous, but
Gendo... smiled at me, and... I felt better.

Isn't that so trite? "Gosh, the guy smiled, and the world seemed
to slow down just so I could enjoy it." One would think that I'd 
strayed into a fairy tale. 

One of the kind where pixies would drive you mad if you were fool 
enough to stray onto the moors after sunset and the gnomes would
demand your firstborn son in exchange for their... 'help'.

But it was with that smile that something started to grow inside
me, where there had only been rocky soil before...

Obsession is such a difficult behavior to examine rationally. 
>From the outside, the tendency is to simply believe that the 
person has no actual need for the object, that if you were 
to remove the object the person would revert to a more normal 
mode of behavior. But from the inside, things are... different.

I think the first hints were when Rei began to mature. I felt
the icy wind of jealousy within what was left of my soul, for
I knew - _knew!_ - what she was, who she had been, and what 
the first's fate had been. And I began to wonder what Gendo
did when he was alone in that chamber, so far below the ground.

And I began to wonder if mother had felt that it was worth 
dying to have that perfect pale throat in her hands, crushing 
it as she could never have crushed his love for a ghost. 

Is it any wonder Gendo rejected Shinji? He couldn't help but hurt
the boy, to see so much of his wife, soft, supple velvet hiding
steel, and yet to see so little of the maturity that had shaped
the steel underneath... maybe if Shinji had been born a woman, 
all this would never have happened. No ghoulish attempt to 
resurrect his wife (an attempt which had only by happy accident 
resulted in a viable pilot), no pushing away of his only child, 
no...

But what-ifs are perilous terrain, their danger only exceeded
by their inviting, innocent-seeming landscapes. All I know for
sure is that I'll not let him finish this as he wants to. He's 
done far too much to my honor for me to let it slide.

I love him, but he doesn't love me. He loves cold steel, cold
flesh, cold prophecy.

In the end, passion has almost, but not quite, destroyed my 
vaunted reason. Heh. I wonder if my mother would be jealous, 
to know that I will have his full, undivided attention for the 
few brief seconds I leave him before I destroy his dream, his 
love, as he has denied mine?

For I still love him, still need him, and for once, I'll know
that he needs me.



KATSURAGI

Someone once joked with me that love was an accident, a fae 
creature that jumps on your back, holds its hands over your 
eyes, and yells "Suprise!" when you least expect it. 

He compared it to a butterfly, one that you know will fly away 
someday, no matter how hard you try to keep it. 

He told me that when loves chooses to alight in one's soul, 
the best thing that one could do was breathe gently and try, 
_try_ not to scare it away; attempting to catch and hold it 
will only make love flee that much faster.

It's too bad I didn't believe a word of what he said, because 
I knew he was a liar. If I had believed him, maybe I would 
have been more ready. 

Or then again, maybe not. I doubt that anyone knows how to 
deal with love, not even those _in_ love, simply because love 
just... happens. 

I never meant to love anyone; not my father, not Ritsuko,
certainly not Kaji, not Shinji, not Asuka, and not myself.
Finding out that I loved myself, despite everything that I've
done (especially in the past few weeks), was the biggest
surprise of my life.

After all, don't you have to love something in order to hate
it? 

God knows I hate myself right now, and I have every right, 
now that everything I love's gone away... man, am I starting
to sound like a country-rock song gone platinum or what? Can 
you imagine it? "I got the EVA blues sooo bad... waa waa waa.." 

It's true, though. Too true for the fragments of my sanity.

Shinji... my last words to him were a lie. Par for the course. 
I wish I could fulfill my promise to him - maybe loving him 
while I had the chance would make up for not loving Ryouji 
when I could have - but the pain tells me that I'll never be 
able to. This cold steel, this warm blood, is penance due. 

Ryouji... I didn't even know... I didn't even wait for him 
to finish speaking... why? Why didn't I wait?! Even for a 
single sentence? Was I that afraid of what he would say?

Yes. Yes, I was. 

Finally, all my luck of fifteen years ago has caught up to me 
with a vengeance. At last, all that I've done, all the things 
that Commander Ikari has ordered me to do, has jumped on my 
back. My luck's just run out.

Ain't kharma a bitch? 

I'd laugh at that, but I know that the pain won't let me do 
anything but weep silently, each sob sending a new lance of 
agony through my body. 

I hope for an end; I hope for a new beginning; and yet, 
knowing that all hopes are hopeless, I still hope, I still 
wish, that I could change it all. 




HYUUGA

Well, this is certainly a surprising development. Who'da
thought?

Aoba, who's still looking over my left shoulder, lets out
a sigh that seems to contain equal parts shock and relief.
"Well, at least we _know_ what it's all about now."

Maya, who's looking over my other shoulder, doesn't say
anything, and my glance at her tells me that she's known,
or at least has feared that she's known, this all along.

I've never really cared about how the AT Field did its job,
only that it did, and that when it failed, we could figure 
out which wire had shorted, which fuse had blown, and fix 
it. But, knowing this...

"How can we ever look at those poor kids the same again?"

Neither one of them answers my question, which suits me
just fine. Because the truth is, we'll never be able to
look at them the same, and the only honorable deed would
be leaving NERV forever. 

None of us would ever, _could_ ever, do that. What we've 
done here yesterday, what we do tomorrow, is far more 
important than any person's honor.

And thus are we all drawn into the downward spiral...

Shaking off the sudden wave of utter despair, I read a 
bit further. 

It's deceptively simple, really. The EVA interface 
amplifies the pilot's commands, in turn amplifies its
own sensations, and the twain meeting renders the 
machine controllable. Even I'd known at least that
much of it.

An 'inadvertant side-effect' of this interface was the 
additional amping of emotions, not only from the human 
but from the EVA itself. A cryptic side note says that 
the real 'synch ratio' we measure comes not from how 
well or badly the pilot's controlling the machine, but 
how well the emotions felt by both the pilot and EVA 
match.

But all that was considered unwanted... until the 
Commander's wife disappeared in an early experiment.

He turned his efforts to deducing why and how she'd 
vanished, and eventually reasoned that the emotions of 
his wife and the EVA had heterodyned, driving both of them 
further and further into synchrocity until there was no 
difference between man and machine. So why have two 
bodies... when there was only one mind?

He explored further down this path to find the source of 
the field that had literally torn apart EVA-01's holding 
pen, trying to figure out how the emotions both the EVA
and his wife could have been strong enough to induce such
an effect, and found the answer in psychiatry. 

Aoba snorts. "I didn't know Fuyutsuki was a headshrinker."

Maya shushes him.

The texts he found detailed the 'AT field' theory. In short,
all humans have a certain 'barrier' around them, a 'barrier'
that, no matter how open or nice or friendly they are, holds
the things that they will never be willing to share. The 
ordinary person's 'barrier' only has a few things inside,
but as for a madman's... or woman's...

It could hold everything that a madman was, cutting him off
from the world around him with a force that could not be 
breached... without breaking the mind within, of course.

And it had been his wife's 'barrier' that had been amplified
through the EVA.

After much experimenting, the Commander found that a normal,
well-adjusted person's 'barrier' wasn't powerful enough to
be amplified through the EVA's interface, and so he turned 
to madmen. Who were, by definition, uncontrollable, which
didn't suit his... other needs at all. 

The next logical step was, of course, creating his own 
madmen, and madwomen, who had a strong enough 'barrier' 
between themselves and the rest of humanity to be picked up 
by the EVA, but were controllable enough to suit his...
other needs. 

Which is where the children came in. 

Adults were far too strong in their own sense of self to be
bent in the necessary ways without breaking them entirely,
but children were flexible enough that, with just a word
here, a shove there, an insensitive adult over here, they
could be molded into just what Gendo needed. Controllable,
isolated in their own minds, just wanting _someone_ to reach 
out...

And he'd started with his own son...

Maya screams suddenly, and I stand up and put an arm around
her even as Aoba did the same on the other side. We glare
at each other (typical alpha male behavior over a female) 
but didn't do anything about it (typical omega male 
cowardice.) "What's wrong?"

She stops screaming, but only because the tears are choking 
her too thickly. "Everything I've ever believed in... is 
SICK!" She pauses for a moment, then moans, "sempai... why 
didn't you tell me?" 

Not consciously meaning to do so, not meaning any mockery,
both Aoba and I say somberly, "I guess ignorance _is_ 
bliss..."

AUTHOR'S NOTES

Right, I have a bit of a misnomer to correct. Last time, I 
wrote that I was explaining what Evangelion means. While 
such a statement _is_ within the limits of my typical 
arrogance, that is not what I actually meant. 

Y'see, I see people wondering about the mundane aspects of
the series, while failing to appreciate the huge picture. 
I dunno how people can ask piddly little questions and say
"I didn't really like the show because they didn't explain
[fancy widget, awkward situation, or character motivation]."

Or maybe I just wanted to see with the first three how much
I could shake up your perceptions of the characters, then
with the second three explain some things, then with the
next three...

Erm, I'm not quite sure where I'm going with this author note,
other than rambling incoherently, so I'm just gonna skip
straight to the end and say, "See ya next time!"

Watch this space for my Sailor Moon/Shadowrun crossover,
coming soon! NO, it does NOT anyone saying "Moon Healing 
Activation" (aside from the occasional sarcastic remark...)

Aaron Bergman
iamfanboy@hotmail.com
"There are two mantras in life: Yuck and yum.
 Mine is yum."
  -Tom Robbins, _Still Life With Woodpecker_

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