You Seek It Without Knowing Why

Moscow can't be called anything but a grand city. Rows of monotone gray extend as far as he can see, the painted horizon filled up with buildings that seem to have nothing more than the idea of efficiency to act as a soul. How could a building look dead?

Shinji doesn't quite understand and he doesn't care, either. The soul of a prison is, after all, not something that gets much thought put into. The hotel room provided to him comes in bundle with a balcony and a view people would kill for - a perfect show of the urban landscape of Russia's capital. He hates it.

There's an impatient knock on the door. The guard so graciously provided to him calls out for him to hurry up. He hates him.

((0))

"Understand, Mr. Ikari, that we are not your enemy," The UN agent says, deadpan. "If you were to cooperate with us, you could be back home in a blink."

The aforementioned Mr. Ikari stares at the man, matching his lack of expression robotically. He does not speak. The agent sighs. The people on the other side of the window watching over them write something down tiredly. The sterile white walls of the interrogation room sear at his eyes.

"Let's try this again." The agent's single moment of reaction is flown away in a blink. "What was your relationship with Misato Katsuragi?"

Shinji blinks. He does not speak.

The agent looks away from him and at the window on the sidewall, a conversation drifting off between himself and the women on the other side of it. A decision seems to be made. That much is new.

"Mr. Ikari." The man turns back to him. His eyes grow sharper than they'd ever been before. "Your testimony could very well be the only thing that saves Commander Katsuragi from death."

Shinji blinks. He looks up at the man seated in front of him for the first time. His eyes show the distrust front and center and yet, below it, newfound fear. Could it? Could they? Misato, dead?

The agent finds the emotion in his eyes, even as he tries to bury and hide it. He almost smiles. It's more of a grimace. He hates it.

"Let's try this again, Mr. Ikari." He says. "What was your relationship with Misato Katsuragi?"

Shinji bites his tongue. Should he? If he didn't, Misato could die. Should he? It was clearly a lie. His testimony wasn't the least bit useful against international court. But what if it turned out to be? He would have saved her. A war is fought inside his mind.

"I was..." He starts, finally. His voice is coarse. "Her ward."

The women on the other side of the window scribble down something, their pen strokes almost looking happy in comparison to the tensed, stiff ones of just a minute ago.

"Yes, that is known." The agent pushes. "But was there something more? Deeper? Did she confide in you her plans? Did you know them? Participate willingly?"

Shinji blinks. Her plans? Her plan had been to get the three of them as far away from the UN as possible. Did they mean NERV's cobbled-together revival? That hadn't been part of the plan.

Shinji blinks again. The dumb thoughts are dispersed. It's obvious. They see something different than what he does.

"No," He breathes out. It's a whisper. "I did not know."

The women write something down again. He stops wandering over to them. His focus is dead set on the man in front of him.

"Did you feel safe with her?"

"Yes."

The agent hums and nods. It's a little solemn, almost unnoticeable, more than what he'd ever expect to come out of the stoic man he was stuck with. It looks like he lost something with his answer. Charges against Misato, maybe?

"Did she ever at any point try to integrate you into NERV's roster again?"

It's a very dumb question. He would not have been useful for anything anyway. They could barely get the government to cough up a reconstruction of Tokyo-3, and that was with a fair bit of military threat and a dozen N2-mines on their side. What purpose would he serve inside NERV without the Evangelions?

"No."

He finds he hasn't told them anything remotely useful to avoid them killing her. He knows that what he says doesn't really matter. The matter of evading death by order of international court is up to the testimonies of the lieutenants and Misato herself.

"Thank you for your cooperation, Mr Ikari," They dispose of him. "You may leave. Your security attache will escort you to your lodgings."

((0))

The familiar feeling of being useless gnaws his stomach. For once, it is not born of self-loathing or anything of the sort. It is a simple truth that yet is hard to swallow. Could they really kill her? They could. The entire hearings could easily be nothing more than a sham to justify her death. He finds it revolting. He can't do anything about it. He sighs.

The frigid breezes of Moscow's night air hit him as he stares out into nothing. He's out of the balcony in a second, dressing to go out. He does not know where. He just wants to walk. To get out. The walls of his hotel room seem to close around him.

He does not spend a second longer than he needs inside the cage. The guards all around the building barely acknowledge him as he walks out. He knows some of them will follow him anyway. It isn't important. It's not like he's hiding anything.

It is snowing.

He distantly remembers he never quite saw snow back in Japan. He had longed for it some months ago when the world had been silent, and it had evaded him. Yet, when he had all but forgotten, it decided to grace him with its presence.

He does not care for the snow.

He rounds a corner onto a street that houses a German restaurant. He takes a glance at the russian rubles on his pockets and finds it is enough for a meal. He wonders why he has so much money stuffed onto clothes he doesn't use and then decides to not look too hard into it.

He gets inside quickly, setting off the bell at the door as he enters. A woman greets him. He greets back in Japanese before switching to German in the middle of the sentence. His cheeks burn in embarrassment. The woman giggles gently. He pats off some residue snow on the red hoodie he had absent mindedly put on, walking over to one of the tables out on the corner of the small establishment and sitting down.

The restaurant is mostly empty, probably in thanks to the certainly niche premise of it, and also because nobody is dining in a restaurant on a wednesday night if they have some semblance of sanity left in their minds. A waiter greets him as he hands over the menu. He greets back only in German this time.

He makes a show of pondering over the choices of the menu. In truth, he doesn't care, because anything German is good to him. Slap German over something and he'd gorge it down like a man stranded on a desert. He loves German. He needs Germans.

He stops that train before it derails. The waiter comes back sooner than later to take his order. He takes the first thing he sees that is not over his price range.

He doesn't really know why exactly the German restaurants attract him. Well, that's a lie - he does, but he can't understand it. They don't remind him of her, exactly, or even remind him of anything at all. It is an infatuation simply because she was German. It does not help him at all. And, yet, here he is.

He knows she's in Moscow, somewhere. Nondescript people on the street sometimes stop him before he can wander off into a certain section of the city. He knows the perimeter by heart, now. So close, yet so far away. Separated by a non-existent wall and international agents.

He almost smiles at the thought. What can you do to find the one you need when she is on the other side of a wall manned by the UN and the Russian intelligence agency? As if the world had decided it couldn't stand to see them close.

That is sad.

His food arrives. He absently thanks the waiter, barely glancing down at it. It's too hot to eat anyway. He'll let it sit for a while.

His mind wanders out onto his actions some hours ago. He'd said everything they seemed to need to get out of him. Would they get rid of him? Would they decide to just let him rot away alone back in Japan? Would they keep him anyway in a gilded cage just to keep him close to them?

It seems dumb. He's useless to the UN by now. He finds the idea more than a bit relieving. They didn't know about what he'd done. At least, they didn't seem to. He has never allowed himself to wonder about it, but there is a first time for anything as he thinks about Third Impact.

Instrumentality had meant everybody didn't exist. They as a concept didn't exist. It was simple, the gestalt of humanity, perfectly perfect. A flaw could not exist. A misunderstanding could not exist. Nothing could exist but perfection itself. Merged into one.

But that then meant they knew everything they could ever know about each other. The raw feelings, the deepest thoughts, the most disgusting of actions and the realest of emotions, every single thing that had happened to them since their mind had ever bothered to keep track. That had carried over into the real world for him, and it seemed so for Asuka as well.

But only for some. He didn't know what the waiter that had received him lived through, and neither did he about the agent that interrogated him. But he remembered everything that needed to be remembered about Asuka, and Misato and that was it. Why them? It seemed arbitrary and also not. It had an easy meaning that managed to also be difficult to understand.

Asuka only seemed to know about him. Misato didn't even seem to remember anything but herself. It seemed that was true for everyone else in the world but for the two of them. So special. He frowns.

If humanity had remembered everything, what would have happened? When individuality itself is broken and reconstructed and yet everyone remembers everything from the way a couple loves each other to the deepest of secrets long hidden by the UN. What would have happened? He shudders at the thought.

If they remembered that he was the one who had broken individuality, what would have become of him?

He stops wondering after that, stuffing a portion of his still far too hot food into his mouth and finding distraction in the way it burns his tongue and the roof of his mouth.

The pain burns and disposes of his thoughts, his mind turned into a blank slate as the thousand what-ifs dematerialize into nothingness itself. He is grateful. He is back in the present, sitting on an empty establishment, so close yet so far away.

There is no fiery girl at his side talking about the authenticity of the food. There is no fiery girl at his side pestering him, telling him come back to reality, dumb Shinji! There is a gaping hole in his reality in the form of Asuka Langley Soryu, ripped away from him after they had agreed to never leave each other.

He knows that just some kilometers from him, she ponders about the same thing. They are separated by nothing and everything, the tips of their fingers almost touching and yet seemingly a continent away. He feels far-off warmth that disappears as if dragged away forcefully.

He looks down at his food to find the plate empty and his mouth in scorching pain. Before he even motions the waiter is right there, handing him the bill as he digs out the rubles and pays, silently.

What had been the purpose of going out? He had achieved nothing but immerse himself in all that he couldn't do a single thing to change. He could've done that just as easily inside his prison, and yet.

He does not understand. He thought he understood everything about himself, and yet found himself failing as his wax wings melted under the rays of reality. Perhaps, he thinks, one could never hope to completely understand oneself. Was that it that made you human?

Who knows.

Moscow welcomes him back into her streets in a flurry of snow. The grandest of prisons stretches for kilometers as he walks back to his cage without haste.

((0))

"We already have Ikari's testimony," She hears in hushed whispers that she wasn't supposed to hear. "And they're not useful anyway. Why are we keeping her?"

There is no answer because the man is talking to himself. She doesn't care. She's latched onto the information she has been unwittingly given. Ikari's testimony. The name rolls into her mind shrouded in emotions she still can't quite bring herself to understand. It was not love and yet it was not hate. It was not quite longing and also was. The name didn't elicit warmth and yet made her slightly less cold. What was it? She didn't know.

The far too white walls of a sterile room sear at her eyes. For but a blink they are replaced by grains of sands of even more colorless shade, and suddenly she's sitting on them and watching over a broken horizon, her plugsuit-covered soles being washed over by the blood of a progenitor. A starry sky looms over them, divided in half by a red rainbow that defiles the perfection of it and splatters sickeningly onto the Moon.

And then it's over. The far too white walls of a sterile room sear at her eyes. She takes it like a challenge.

The agent in front of her sighs tiredly. He's more expressive than what she expected an UN professional interrogator to ever be allowed to be.

"You may take your leave, Ms. Soryu," He says at last. It feels like a until never. She isn't cooperating and they don't need her. So, they dispose of her. "Your security attache will escort you back for your safety."

In another time her reaction would have been much more alive. It had been. The fire had died out quickly. As it is, she only scoffs before taking her exit.

((0))

She's out of her hotel room the second she can. A haphazardly thrown together outfit protects her body from the snowstorm attacking Moscow. Her red hair stands in defiant contrast against the white that tries to snuff color out of the city.

She feels cold and yet it is not the frigid air which makes her so.

The world is white, white, white around her. She finds that there is nothing more in this world that she hates more than white. The white of an interrogation room. The white of a beach at the end and start of the world. The white of vultures that shine with the sun as they circle over her, in a carcass that has run out of power. White is the last thing she sees as her body is torn open and ripped apart with the fiercity of an animal and the teeth of a human. They are neither.

Her musings are broken as she almost trips head first into the snow. There's a panic that envelops her, of falling onto the sidewalk and falling onto a world where she can only see white. She barely manages to avoid any of those fates as she regains her footing and keeps walking.

There is no destination in mind and yet she knows exactly where she'll end up. Her feet drag her with purpose and also lack it, her mind taken over by memories of brown hair and blue eyes. There is something that envelops her, trying to feel like warmth and failing, and yet keeping her the slightest bit less cold.

She stops abruptly as she reaches the street where her journey will end. It is a straight line into the center of the city, the place where the sounds of a metropolis are born. It is a simple walk that is completely out of her reach. When she looks some businessmen completely out of place will approach her and drive her away, as is what happens every time she gets close to the perimeter they have marked as her prison.

She looks up, prepared to stand face to face with a broad chest encased in a black suit, to hear a gruff voice not even really trying to keep a facade shooing her away into a place where she won't run off into the masses of a giant city. The world stops.

There is no such thing. She is met with white instead of black, with air instead of an obstacle. It taunts her to try, to get closer than she'd ever gotten and pass over the invisible line keeping her hostage. Her movements are slow and disbelieving. Any moment now somebody will come out and break her out of the fairytale she has found herself in. They'll stop her, as they always have.

It doesn't happen. Nothing stops her as she walks. Her prison is blown wide open and, suddenly, freedom is in her grasp. A walk turns into a sprint and then into a full-blown run, her movements sluggish as she makes sure to not fall over and yet faster than they'd ever been.

She knows what she is searching for and yet knows it is a pipe dream. The grandest city in the world mocks her to try and find her missing piece as it stretches over dozens of kilometers. There is hope in her mind that, somehow, she will.

And yet she starts to slow as the scope of Russia's capital finally clicks in her mind. A city of wonders looms around her, giant in scope. She remembers those times inside the Evangelion where she towered over city buildings like a divine, where if there had been anybody left on Tokyo-3 they would've been completely under her whims as she piloted an aberration that hid itself under the guise of a robot but could only be really be called a god.

But she is not there anymore. She feels small, standing on her own body instead of the far more powerful one she'd so often borrowed. Buildings loom over her. She finds herself at the whim of urban constructs.

She powers through the feeling and keeps walking. She'll find him. She'll find him. Whatever it takes, she'll find him. And then maybe she won't feel so cold.

Everything around her mocks her and her charade. From the buildings to the profaned moon to the white that falls from the sky, they all seem to point and laugh at the hopeless dream of a broken child. She keeps moving. She'll find him.

And yet the questions she had not asked herself before appear to bring doubt to her mind like parasites. How could you ever expect to find him? What will you do when you do? What'll happen to the both of you after your high is over? You don't even love him. He doesn't love you. Why do you look for him as if he did?

I need you appears in her mind, in her voice and also in a voice that is not hers. A promise unspoken repeats like a mantra as she keeps looking. She would be there night and day if it meant she would find him eventually. As long as it took. A chance was given. She would not squalor it.

She rounds a corner to find a street that houses a German restaurant. There's a red blemish on the white-dominated landscape far away at the other end of it, the first someone she had ever seen in all she had been walking. She wonders how long that has been.

Her pace slows as she tries to calm herself. She walks as naturally as she can, taking in all the features of the person in front of her while trying to tell if it's some random guy. A red hoodie far too big for their body draws her attention. Their brown hair fights against the breeze and loses, flying wildly. They look dumb even from behind. She wonders if that is how she looks too. She probably already looks dumb, running around Moscow as it is. There's nobody out to see her anyway. Who cares?

She takes a far too loud step by accident, snapping the person back into reality as her boot meets the snow-covered sidewalk with a thump. His head snaps to look in her direction.

Grayish blue meets sapphire. His eyes widen at the sight of her, his mouth opening slightly as if he had tried to have a vocal reaction and had decided against it before he could even begin. The world falls silent, and suddenly only they exist.

The shards of a broken promise glue themselves back together. The world restarts and Shinji's arms wrap themselves around her, keeping her as close as he can manage as if he's scared she'll drift away with the snow if he so much as relaxes. His head rests on her shoulder. She realizes distantly that their height difference is bigger, now. She's grown. He still hasn't hit a spurt.

Her arms wrap around him with much of the same force his have around her. They anchor to each other. He speaks, mumbles, really, into her neck. His frigid breath tickles.

"Don't leave again."

She lays her head gently, resting her cheek on his hair. Brown strands defiantly contrast the white around them. Her eyes never leave the haven they've found. A promise is finally spoken.

"Only if you don't, either."

((0))

probablemente deberia subir esto a fanfic net o archives of our own en vez de wattpad pero honestamente mientras no este acumulando polvo en mis google docs es lo que sea

tecnicamente todo lo que he escrito esta conectado ? no conectan muy bien y no muestran mucho porque son todos momentos felices (si esto fuera una historia completa y no mil one shots hechos porque me sale de los huevos probablemente habria hecho algo mas 'realista' pero no lo es asi que alli me cae) 

entonces en todo caso no estoy orgulloso exactamente de estos oneshots porque no muestran una caracterizacion buena post-EoE pero igualmente el punto era complacerme asi que L !!! a quien le importa ???  soy el mejor y todo eso blablablbal