Ray wrote:I'd like to see an Omake with Shinji and Sakura just talking to each other. (maybe taking place between 3.0 and Final) Sakura coming to terms with the person who apparently killed her brother with N3I, albeit unintentionally. I'd really like to see someone build upon her character. Is her smile fake for the sake of professionalism, or does she genuinely feel sorry for him?
I wrote this fic in response to this comment above, which was posted in Story Ideas thread.
So here it is. With additional setting and context thrown in. Posting it here because I'm experimenting with 2nd Person and that POV is banned on FF.net.
Comments and feedback definitely welcome. Thanks :)
Break all the way down SPOILER: Show
Break all the way down
From above, the earth below looks a deeper shade of red, like a busted lip. From the window of the VTOL, you see the scattered crescents of ruins, the dried-out tongue of what was once a river. Then, the pilot points it out, the proof of life: a thin scarf of smoke curling up from under the shadow of the river’s bluffs.
You tell the pilot to make another circuit and then land nearby. In the time taken to secure a site, a team’s been assembled. As the din from the engines die away, you tell them what Captain Katsuragi told you. Bring all three pilots back, preferably alive. But you omit a final clause: by all means necessary.
It takes half-an-hour to reach the site you saw from above. On the ground, you trek past the waterless irrigation ditches, and up a shattered road, its fragments dissolving into the red earth. The bluffs flank the road, which squirms its way through the hills beyond. Bleached white trees litter the landscape, looking like the leftover bones of monsters.
At the nearest turn of the road lies a huddled crowd of buildings, the remains of a farming town.
The first sign of something wrong is that no one has come out to greet your team. The plume of smoke has faded away. The buildings look deserted.
“Shall we proceed, Second Lieutenant?”
No. Instead, you retreat back down the road, to the windbreak of dead bent trees, just out of view of the houses. You station your second-in-command, Sergeant Yuko, further afield, with a burnt-out shell of a car for cover.
“What readings do we have?” you ask.
“There are three heat signatures,” the team reports. “All seem to be alive.”
“That’s good.”
“Could they have missed our VTOL?”
“Impossible. We circled back.”
“Suzuhara,” Sergeant Yuko calls. “You might want to see this.”
You move out to the car. There, you follow the line of Sergeant Yuko’s finger to a moving speck flushed into view by the gunmetal grey of the buildings.
“What’s that?”
You peer through Sergeant Yuko’s binoculars, and you see him. There’s Shinji Ikari standing in the doorway of one of the houses.
Magnified a hundred times to clarity, the words he mouths are obvious: I want to see Sakura Suzuhara alone.
#
So you comply. It takes a quick word with your team before everything’s settled: a glance back to indicate that first contact is not threatening, and a raised arm to ask for assistance. Before you go forth, you leave your sidearm with Sergeant Yuko, and wind a white piece of fabric around your arm, a tourniquet of peace.
You count the steps as you walk. In the exposed zone of possibility between Sergeant Yuko’s position and the crumbling houses, the wind hits you like a punch to the chest. It threatens to wring your hair loose.
When you reach one hundred and fifteen steps, Shinji starts to advance, hands in his pockets. He meets you three-quarters of the way, conveniently at a bench calcified by LCL into a hard stump of shiny wood.
“Hello Shinji,” you say.
He sits. You decide to stand. His eyes are rimmed with exhaustion. He reeks of that sweet, overripe-fruity odour of LCL. Some of it has crusted along the edges of his chin. His hands show through a tear in his plugsuit, pink from cold or bruising.
“Hello –” a stammer. “Suzuhara.”
You turn back, give a visible nod. To proceed, you decide to go easy.
“How are you?”
“I’m ok.”
“How are the others?”
“They’re ok.”
“Pilot Shikinami? And the other pilot?” You dig the name from the Captain’s notes. “Ayanami?”
“I said they’re ok.”
“That’s good. So why don’t you ask them to come out? We’ll take you all back to the Wunder.”
His next statement hits you like a missile: “We’re not going.”
You sit, turning your body towards him. You know what needs to be done, but his resolute refusal seems worth playing along to – for now.
“Why not?”
“We’re not following you back,” he repeats.
“You’ve got friends there who want to see you safe.”
Shinji lets out a sarcastic bark, so unnaturally loud that it echoes in the quiet landscape.
“Friends.”
“Yes. Captain Katsuragi and –”
“No friend would put a detonator around my throat.”
He turns, giving you the sheer cliffs of his shoulders. But he doesn’t get up and walk away. You try a different approach:
“Can I speak to Pilot Shikinami?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Ayanami’s taking care of her.”
He slouches, places his hands on his knees. That line of conversation is over. You’re not sure what to make of this latest statement, but you try to read his body language. In the interval of silence, you look ahead at the black mound of the car, and the screen of dead trees behind. You imagine how you must look to the others: like a young girl and a young man, side-by-side, on the same bench, the apocalypse all around.
You decide it’s time to be direct. So you inch closer and lay your hand over his. He startles. You hold steady, his hand providing a splinter of warmth.
“Shinji, listen.” You tap lightly on his palm. “There’s nothing here. If you stay, you’ll die of starvation, thirst or exposure. Come back with us. Please.”
He meets your eyes for the first time. They’re shiny with water, but when he opens his mouth, he makes a strangled plea.
“No more, please.”
“Shinji?”
“No more. I don’t want to hurt anymore. I don’t want to pilot anymore.”
“It’s ok.”
“It’s not ok!” In a second, he’s on his feet, facing you, his eyes intense and his breathing so fast he’s hyperventilating. “It’s not ok!”
You’re about to raise your arm when he says it.
“How can it be ok when I keep screwing up?” He swings around, hands on his head. “How can it be ok when I keep hurting all my friends? Kaworu! Your brother Toji!”
It takes several seconds for you to understand. In those moments, you connect Shinji’s claims with your brother. You’re not sure why he’s bringing this up now. After all these years –
“It doesn’t matter, Shinji.”
And immediately you regret that half-hearted reply when it comes out of your mouth.
“What? How?” he says. “How can you say that when I’m the cause of everything?”
When he looks at you again, you’re staring into the reflected pools of his eyes.
Against your will, you remember your brother’s eyes the last time you saw him: frightened, uncertain, lost. You remember his twitchy silhouette against the crimson background of the near-Third Impact. Most of all, though, you recall his face: a boyish bloom of red, and eyes the colour of stirred silt.
This was before he left and said he would find out what the hell was going on and never came back. Why he had to go, you never know.
But these things belong to you and you alone. So you stare back at Shinji, and you want to ask: why bring them up now?
“I can’t go back when all I do is screw up and hurt everyone.”
You wait. You’re not sure if he’s really in so much in pain or just trying to justify himself.
“Why Toji?” you ask.
He shutters his eyes. He grips the bench. He looks away.
“They gave me his shirt.”
“What?”
“They – my father – gave me his shirt. It had his name on it.”
You feel your hands collapsing into fists, nails biting skin, knuckles clenching. Reflexively, you begin to think of your brother again – but no – you have a job to do.
“It – it doesn’t matter, Shinji. Let’s just go.”
Shinji looks like you’ve slapped him. “How can you say that after all I’ve done to you?”
You have a deep urge to do something with your fists. To use your hands to damage when all you’ve done has been to help, comfort and mend. You’re close enough. In front of you, the person who has suddenly and casually brought up every tragedy in your life has begun to break down and cry. As he slices his arm across his eyes, his tears land across your arms.
You wipe them off.
You’re not going to think of your brother. Or your parents. Or the near-end of the world that caused all this madness. And no, you’re not going to think of your brother. Or his pseudo-macho courage that made him walk out that door, out of your life. Because you are a second-lieutenant of WILLE, and you have a mission to save the world.
“I’m so sorry,” Shinji says.
It’s your turn to close your eyes. His sniffing fills the dark void. And you’re not going to think of your brother and the wall of his triceps wrapped like a defensive cocoon around your head when the near-Third Impact began -
“I’m sorry, Sakura.”
You take a deep breath and open your eyes. You’re not going to think of Toji. Because you have a mission to fulfil - a mission that involves getting the confused young man before you into the VTOL and back to the Wunder.
“I’m sorry for all I’ve done,” Shinji says. “All I do is hurt people.”
“The world doesn’t revolve around you,” you say.
Standing, you move in front of Shinji and face him.
“I don’t care what you did and why you did it. All I know is that the Captain is waiting. Will you come with me or not?”
The mere allusion to Captain Katsuragi seems alter his mood. Still, he shakes, as if more tears are coming. Then, he stands.
“I’m sorry.”
He walks back to the house. You watch as he moves away, and then you decide to return too. There’s nothing more for you to do – now.
Walking back to the rest of the team, you see Sergeant Yuko gesture to something behind you. Instinctively, you turn, and you see someone watching you from one of the windows. It’s the first time you’re seeing her, but you know the person in the window is Rei Ayanami.
You pause in your tracks and stare at her. She stares back, her face framed by the wings of her dirty blue hair. After all that’s happened with Shinji, you finally understand in that short moment that the two of you are, in some ways, alike. You feel an odd affinity with her: the girl who, like you, was also the object of a young man’s protective fantasy.
#
You make the decision to storm the building as the burnt orange of the sun begins to dip below the hills. Despite Shinji’s resistance and Pilot Shikinami’s curious absence, the mission needs to go on. You have an order to follow, and you follow protocol not to break radio silence to inform the Wunder of any of these new developments, lest NERV get wind of your presence here.
The team assembles all non-lethal weaponry: batons, Tasers, stun grenades, flares, restraining devices. Everyone in the team leaves their guns behind. Only Sergeant Yuko has a loaded firearm. When your team requests you carry one too, you decline: you don’t need to be protected.
You instruct the pilot to prepare the VTOL. There are ten of your team to three malnourished, tired pilots. Barring any mishaps, this will all be over in fifteen minutes.
The sunset has separated into a stratum of wounded purple over a sinking red when you move out. Sergeant Yuko’s team waits by the car, while you lead another in the shadows towards the house where you last saw Ayanami.
In the poor light, the house glows. Dried-up vines swarm its walls like veined claws. At your signal Sergeant Yuko moves to the bench. At your signal, your men chuck a stun grenade through the open mouth of the doorway.
In the aftermath of the entry, your team spreads out to all available buildings. You move through the alley that separates the homes to head off any escape from behind. The chime of broken glass, a volley of shouts, another stun grenade erupting.
“We have Pilot Shikinami!” one of your men yells.
One down, two to go. You hurtle through a doorway, up a flight of stairs to the shouts. In a room with smashed-in window, Pilot Shikinami’s propped up on the wall, eyes closed. You shove away your men to get to her.
There’s a pulse. It’s faint. You notice a rash of red around her neck.
Then, gunfire. Stripes of tracers light up the night.
Without waiting, you sprint out back, run free from the cover of the houses.
Sergeant Yuko lets loose another round. The tracers fly in the direction of the bluffs. You follow.
Past the bony fingers of dead trees, the gradient rises steeply. Ahead someone struggles to manage the climb. Armed with a light, you lower your head and charge up the slope.
The dark whip of the river channel comes into view. Above it the moon hangs like smashed white skull. A smack of wind on your cheek tells you the slope has been cleared. As your torch cuts a swath through the dark, a retreating figure speeds away.
“Stop running away!”
In just three strides you reach the figure, grab it by the shoulder to spin it around. You catch a glimpse of Ayanami’s face before she swings an arm at you. But there’s no strength in it - so you seize it in midair and within moments, you have the arm in a lock. When she struggles, you apply pressure. Her knees buckle. Your previous empathy is gone. You make sure her face is on the ground before she can say anything.
Sergeant Yuko and your men reach the summit, and you leave her with them to continue your pursuit of Shinji.
Two down, one left. You traverse the bluffs, dislodging loose rock. You follow the difficult passage across the narrow ridge of the summit. Abruptly the land begins to rise again, and your breaths start to come in short bursts, warm air tusking from your mouth. The only consolation to all this is Shinji must be tired out already.
Your team launches a flare that ruptures into a flower of light. It illuminates Shinji for a second, coughing and clutching his chest, nestled just a stone’s throw from you. As she starts to move, his long shadow distorts and sweeps the ground you’re on.
“Shinji!” you call. “We’ve got the others! There’s no point in running!”
He stumbles. His dog-like yelp of pain makes you hurry, and when you see how badly bent his leg is, it’s clear he’s twisted an ankle. In final steps to him are tricky: your feet disturb unstable sheets of rock that clatter down both sides of the shrinking ridge.
“Give me your hand!”
His clammy palm connects with yours. Braced with an arm across your shoulder he’s on his feet, trying to find a less painful way to stand. Sweat slides off his face and plugsuit in waves, as he takes in deep, grating gasps of air.
Then he says, “I’m sorry, Sakura.”
And: “I’m not going back.”
His arms drape themselves over your head like curtains, and his feet shuffle, trying to escape. You lose your footing and fall to your knees. They scrape on the rocks, pain lighting up your senses.
Your head swims, Shinji’s arms cutting off your senses. You remember this sensation – being in your brother’s grip – But no, you’re not going to think of that now. No more letting any of these guys dictate your life.
Kneeling, with Shinji’s weight straining your back, you push his grip off your head. When his heavy body comes off he makes one wrong step and the ridge crumbles. Shinji screams.
The ground drops from beneath your feet. You throw out your hand. You're not sure now, in this moment when you lose your balance, who's saving whom now.
Shinji seizes your hand. You pull him to your arms.
And the two of you fall together.
End
