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Neon Genesis Evangelion

The characters and concepts of Gainax are used without
permission. Other original characters are copyright of Alexander
Gray

This story maybe freely distributed as long as this section is also
referenced and the author is quoted.

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AUTHOR'S NOTE(S): This story is set about 60 years after the events of
the events documented in the second Evangelion movie - "The End of
Evangelion", and probably makes just as much sense as the movie did. I
thought I might try and go one better and write something that made
even less sense than the movie. But if you have read any of the
Contemplations series then you probably expect something that is out
to lunch anyway ^_^.

Well, enough my babbling and on with the show...

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Contemplations V of VI - Questions
----------------------

    The young man sighed and running his hands through his long dark
hair stared out over the unimaginable expanse of the great red ocean
stretching out into the horizon before him. There had been a time when
that great expanse of water had been a lovely greeny blue, when the
sky overhead had been blue and full of clouds... But that had been
along time ago, and apart from one other person, he was the only one
who still remembered that such things had ever existed.

    The cool evening wind blew in from the blood red sea and the young
man closed his eyes and let its moist laden caress wash over him. The
past was the past, dwelling on it was not going to change anything.
The young man took a deep breath, and slowly expelling it let the wind
wash away the gloomy memories.

    "Father..." a respectful voice hesitantly called. "Are you ready?"

    The sound of the voice returned the young man to the present and
he slowly turned around to look at the older looking man standing a
respectful distance away from him. The young man stared intently at
the redheaded man for a moment and then gave a curt shake of his head.
"No, Moru, I am not," he replied in a faintly irritated voice. "I told
you I would need time to make my decision and I meant it."

    The older man tensed nervously at the young man's irritation and
bowed his head in apology. "I am sorry, Father. I did not mean to
pressure you, but the council has been waiting for two days now
and..."

    "And they can wait another two days, or even another week if I
think it is necessary," the young man snapped back as his irritation
flared to anger. "This is MY decision, not theirs! I will make it when
_I_ am ready!"

    At the younger man's anger the redheaded man's face paled and he
took a few steps back. "Please forgive me, Father," he stumbled out
bowing deep in apology. "I did not mean to..."

    "Oh, Moru..." the young man's anger dissolved into a faint feeling
of shame and he put a kind smile onto his face. "I am sorry. I did not
mean to snap at you, but you must understand that this decision will
take me time, and I do not take kindly to people telling me what I
must do. You of all people must know that."

    The redheaded man straightened up and nodded in understanding.
"Mother said virtually the same thing to me before I came to find you.
She told me that you would need time, but the others thought..." He
stopped and then gave the younger man an apologetic grin. "I should
have listened to her, shouldn't I?"

    The young man said nothing, but let the expression in his eyes say
it for him. Long moments of silence dragged by before the young man
turned his head back to stare at the great ocean. "Give me until the
morning, Moru. Come back then, and I promise that I will have a
decision for you by now."

    The older man smiled gratefully, "Thank you, Father."

    The younger man waved his hand dismissively. "Go now, Moru. I need
to think, and I need to do that alone."

    "Of course," the older man bowed his head. "Good night, Father."
And with that, he turned and walked away.

    The young man listened for a moment to the fading crunch of the
older man's footsteps in the shingle before turning back to
contemplate the past. It had been nearly sixty years now, sixty years
since the death of the world he had known and the birth of this...
replacement. Sixty years in which he had lived a life that had been
completely different from the one he had originally known. In fact,
sometimes he had difficulty accepting that the world he had lived in
for a mere fourteen years of his life had ever existed. It was only
the presence of his memory, and that of a certain redheaded young
woman that confirmed to him that that past life had been more than
just a simple passing dream.

    "Sixty years..." Shinji Ikari whispered to himself looking up at
the clear night sky overhead. "It's been over sixty years..." He
bought his hand up and brushed his long loose hair away from his face.
Sixty years it may have been, but the time had passed quickly enough.
At least, for everyone else it had. For himself and his young
redheaded wife, time had passed very slowly indeed. In fact, time had
virtually slowed to a stop for both of them. Only the birth of their
children and the maturing of those same children into adulthood, and
then middle age had shown that any time had passed at all. Why him and
his wife had been spared from the ravages of time he had no idea.
Perhaps, it was something to do with the world from which they had
come from, or perhaps it was the fact of what they had been through
together. Shinji did not know, and personally he did not really care.
What was, was. He had accepted it, that was after all, all he could
do.

    Dismissing the thoughts of the past from his mind once more he
returned to the matter in hand. He regretted the anger that he had
shown to his son, but the decision that the council was pressing him
to make was not a simple one, and it was one that would affect all
their futures for many years to come. Shinji did not appreciate being
forced to make choices. That was a characteristic he had picked up
over the years from his fiery tempered wife. She had done a lot over
the time that they had been together to reforge his character into one
of strength. It had not been difficult for her. The experience of
seeing the death of the world that they had both known had changed
both of them in ways...

    "Hello, Ikari-kun."

    The soft girl's voice broke through Shinji's musing and he looked
up in surprise. The fact that someone had approached him without him
notice...

    The sight of the attractive slender blue-gray haired girl standing
a few feet away from him made Shinji almost jump out of his skin. His
mouth dropped open and hung loosely as his mind tried to process what
his eyes were telling him. He stumbled back a few steps as his eyes
widened and locked incredulously on the face of the white faced girl
smiling up at him. Finally, his brain began to get over his shock and
make some connections with the muscles in his mouth.

    "Re... Rei... I... Ayanami-chan..."

    The grayed haired girl laughed softly at the young man's
stumbling, and there was a simply joy to the sound that Shinji's faded
memories never remembered hearing before.

    "It's good to see you again, Ikari-kun," the girl said with a
warm, relaxed smile as she took a few steps closer to the young man.

    Shinji garbled out a few more words and then drawing on the
resolve that he had first had burned into him when he had faced the
reality of the death of everything he had ever known, he spoke
coherent English. "Aya... Ayanami-chan... It's... It's... you..."

    The girl laughed gently once more and the scintillating sound of
it sent shivers up and down Shinji's spine. The girl raised her hand
and pushing her short loose hair behind one of her ears she fixed her
warm red eyes on Shinji's brown ones.

    "My name is different now, Ikari-kun," the girl said tilting her
head to one side.

    "Huh?" was Shinji's intelligent reply.

    "Call me Amilee, Ikari-kun," the blue haired girl said leaning
forward to touch the startled young man's nose before giving a giggle
and skipping back a few paces. "That's my name now."

    Shinji blinked and wondered briefly if he was going mad. Not only
was he looking at someone who he had thought long death, but that
someone was acting like a _happy_ fourteen year old child. "Rei..."

    "Amilee, Ikari-kun," the girl correctly wagging her finger in
front of his face. "The girl you knew as 'Ayanami Rei' is as dead as
that fool of a father of your's and has been for quite a while now."

    Now Shinji was convinced he was mad. Not only was Ayanami happy,
but she had also just called his fool of a father a fool. This had to
be some kind of mad dream! He...

    Two soft, moist lips suddenly pressed themselves firmly against
his mouth and a strange spicy like musk filled his nose. His knees
quivered and seemed abruptly to go all weak and wobbly as a hot
sensation filled his entire body, originating from the mouth pressed
enthusiastically against his.

    The girl who called herself Amilee jumped back and giggled in gay
abandonment. "And is that a dream, Ikari-kun?" she smiled wickedly as
the young man swayed under the rush of hormone induced sensations the
girl's sudden passionate kiss had invoked in him.

    "Guess not," she laughed and put her hands behind her back while
she waited for the aroused young man to come back down to earth.

    "What... What..." was about the best that Shinji could eventually
manage and Amilee impish grin grew bigger as the young man blushed a
deep red.

    "So, how have you been, Ikari-kun?" she asked with that same
impish grin on her face. "Been keeping busy?"

    Shinji mentally took a grip on himself and gave himself a rigorous
shake. His mind could still not rationally accept what it was his eyes
were telling him, but the soft sensation of Ayanami's moist lips on
his and the feelings that it had invoked proved more than anything
that she _was_ here. The question of how, or why did not matter - she
was here.

    "How... How have you been, Ayanami-san?" he said in an amazingly
calm voice. "I... I had thought that after the..." His voice faded
away in both discomfort and embarrassment as he recalled the rather
intimate nature of their last encounter, when the Human
Instrumentality project had been fulfilled.

    "That was not _me_, Ikari-kun," the wide smile that had been on
the girl's face slowly changed to be replaced by something more cold.
"That was _not_ me at all."

    Once again a shiver passed down Shinji's back, but this time it
had nothing to do with the touch of Ayanami's lips. There was
something about the look that had abruptly appeared on the girl's face
that for some reason alarmed him. Without realizing what he was doing,
he took a small step backwards and his throat went dry.

    The cold evening wind began to pick up, and the salty smell of the
sea blew over the two silent figures. The girl's short blue-gray hair
escaped from the confines of her ear and streamed across her face.
Automatically the girl raised her slender white hand to brush the hair
away from her eyes. The familiarity of her movement invoked in Shinji
memories that he had all but forgotten. Memories of the little things,
not the great events that he had been forced to endure, but the simple
things. The look of loneliness that he had seen on Ayanami's face in
the unguarded moments he had watched her. Her first attempt at a
smile... The way she had wrung the washing rag at school...

    Shinji's eyes misted over as the weight of the memories of the
past suddenly overwhelmed him. The faces of friends that had long been
pushed out of his mind by the every day reality of the life he now led
reasserted themselves with avengeance.

    Misato... Toji... Kensuke...

    The anger and sorrow that had once raged within him at the
uselessness of their deaths once more rekindled to life as memory upon
memory, face upon face, passed in front of his mind's eye...

    Hikari... Maya... Kaji...

    The sight of tears running down Ikari-kun's face made Amilee's
heart ache with a sad weight that she had not felt in a long time. The
cold anger that Ikari-kun's words had inadvertently caused her
softened and was slowly replaced by a feeling of deep sorrow. Sam had
warned her long ago that her 'change' would cost her more than just
her mortally, and the truth of that statement was now staring at her
right in the face. It had been so easy to forget that her's was not
the only pain, that Ikari-kun had also suffered as a result of Games
Played with this world. She felt a deep shame rushing through her as
she realized that she had been treating the young man in front of her,
the young man who had been her _friend_, as little more than a Pawn...

    Amilee raised her head and looked up at the dark star-filled sky
overhead. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. So much had
happened, so much had changed. The gulf that was now between her and
her old friend was far more than she had ever imagined. Slowly
expelling the air from her lungs she opened her eyes and turned back
to look at Ikari-kun once more. The young man's face was white and the
tracks of the tears that were still running down his face were clearly
visible to Amilee's eyes. She felt a surge of protective warmness for
this mortal who had once been her friend flood through her and she
took a small step forward.

    "Ikari-kun..." she said in a cautious voice. "Please... Don't
cry... I did not mean to be angry with you... You're my friend..."

    At the sound of her words the young man looked up and met the
worried red eyes of the person who had been perhaps his first real
friend. Shinji was slightly surprised to see the depth of concern that
was showing of Ayanami's face. This was so unlike the girl that he had
once known. The different was almost impossible to believe. Where once
Ayanami had shown little or not genuine feeling towards anyone, the
girl was now so open that it seemed as if she were an entirely
different person altogether.

    "Does that really surprise you, Ikari-kun?" the girl suddenly said
in a quiet voice, almost as if she had heard his very thoughts. "Of
course I've changed, I've had too, just as you have had too. We are no
longer the children that we once were. Time has moved on, and so have
we. We've changed, Ikari-kun, we've had to change in order to survive.
Don't mourn over what had to be."

    Shinji frowned slightly. He was not exactly sure what it was that
Ayanami was talking about. From the expression on the girl's face he
was sure that the sentiment behind her words meant something
important, but he was not entirely sure what.

    "Are you happy, Ikari-kun?"

    The girl's words took Shinji by surprise for a moment.

    "Does she make you happy?" the girl asked again, and this time
Shinji understood immediately what she was talking about.

    "She is my life," Shinji answered simply as the sad memories of
the past were pushed aside by the joy of that plain statement. As the
words slipped out of his mouth, he wondered if that was the right
thing to say to Ayanami. After all, the two of them had been very
close in their own unique way, and...

    The girl's face lit up with a bright smile that made Shinji feel
like bursting into a smile himself. "You're in love," she said simply
and then oddly her face reddened and she looked down almost as if she
were embarrassed by something.

    "Ayanami?" Shinji queried, taking a step forward in concern. "Are
you all right?"

    The girl looked up and Shinji was slightly shocked to see that the
girl he remembered as being so stoic in nature was actually blushing
profusely.

    "Me too," the girl whispered almost shyly, and Shinji stopped
dead. A myriad of whirling thoughts passed through his mind, each
screaming for his attention. Ayanami in love? What did she mean by
that? Is that why she had seemingly appeared out of nowhere, for him?
But...

    "Oh, just thinking about her makes me go all giggly inside..."

    Shinji stopped dead for the second time in as many minutes. Her?

    The girl giggled again and looked up at him. Her eyes were
sparkling in a way that left Shinji with very little doubt to what the
girl was thinking. He had seen the same look reflected in Asuka's eyes
often enough. Shinji took a moment and then queried in a tight voice.
"Her?"

    The girl blushed even deeper and with a goofy smile on her face
nodded. "Sam..." she said in a dreamy voice.

    Shinji decided that in this case he did not need to know anymore
than that, so he tried to change the subject. "Where... Where have you
been all these years, Ayanami-san? Have you..."

    "With Sam..." the girl replied in the same tone of voice and her
face now looked as red as the sea next to which they were standing.
"Oh... Ikari-kun... She's..." The rest of her sentence was lost as she
looked up and closed her eyes, lost in her own private world.

    Shinji felt his own face begin to redden and he shifted nervously
about on the spot, until the girl came back from the private world
into which she seemed to have disappeared.

    "Oh... Sorry, Ikari-kun..." she said looking even more
embarrassed. "I... Well..." She coughed and seemed to focus back her
attention on Shinji, and the boy could tell that the time for
pleasantries was passed. Whatever the girl had returned here to do,
now was that time.

    "Ikari-kun, I'm happy to see you, of course, but I'm afraid I did
not just come here to discuss our past or to just remake your
acquaintance. I'm actually here to... well... give you an answer I
suppose would be the best way to put it." The girl's face looked
thoughtful almost as if she were struggling to find a way to express a
concept in a fashion that could be understood.

    Shinji frowned and as the girl's silence continued he began to
feel a bit odd. Finally, he clearer his throat. "Ayanami-san?"

    "She always likes for me to do the impossible, doesn't she..." the
girl commented with sigh and then turned her attention back to Shinji.
"This may sound a bit strange, Ikari-kun, 'cause I'm not certain how
it is that I can best express what it is I've been asked to tell you.
It does not really translate that well down to your level..."

    My level? Shinji blinked. What the heck did that mean?

    "...I'm afraid," the girl continued. "But I will try my best,
because this is something which is very important for you and your
heirs to remember. It may not mean much to you know, but there will
come a time in the future when this will be extremely important, so
please, don't just dismiss it out of hand, no matter how silly it may
sound." The girl's face looked earnestly at him and something about
her look made Shinji feel tense, almost as if this was a matter of the
uttermost seriousness.

    "What do you mean, Ayanami-san?" Shinji asked, stepping towards
the girl. "Who has asked you?"

    The girl smiled and then knelt down and picked up a small rock
laying on the sandy beach. Standing up, she held it up in her hand and
showed it to Shinji. "What do you see, Ikari-kun?" she asked.

    "Uh, a rock?" Shinji replied, already confused.

    The girl sighed and held it closer. "What do you see, Ikari-kun?"
she tried again.

    "Ummm, a stone?" Shinji said and the girl rolled her eyes and
lowered her hand dropping the rock to the ground.

    "I knew this would not work..." she muttered to herself looking
down at her feet. "But does she ever listen to me? No. And this..."

    "Ah, Ayanami..." Shinji hesitantly tried to interrupt.

    The girl raised her eyes to look at his and started to chew her
lip. Shinji was getting more and more lost and was about to say
something when the girl gave yet another loud sigh.

    "I'm sorry, Ikari-kun," she apologized. "I just can't think of a
simpler way of trying to explain this, so I'll just have to tell it to
you straight and hope that someone will be able to understand it when
the right time comes around." She fixed her piercing red eyes on
Shinji's and spoke very slowly, almost as if she were trying to
explain something to a very small child. "That rock, like everything
else, is not real. It does not exist. It is only a result of the
choices that you have personally made. That rock is defined by the
answers that you have chosen to the questions that you have decided to
ask. If you chose to ask a different set of questions, then - that
rock does _not_ exist." She finished with a special emphasis on the
word 'not' and looked at the young man expectantly.

    Shinji blinked.

    "Yip..." the girl said as if she had gotten exactly the same
result as she had expected.

    "I don't..."

    "...understand," the girl finished for him with a nod of her head.
"I know."

    "But..." Shinji looked at her in blank confusion and stooping down
picked up a rock similar to the one Ayanami had used. "It's a rock,"
he said holding it out. "See? It _is_ a rock. How can you say it does
not exist. It..." His voice died away as he shook his head.

    "No, it isn't," the girl contradicted him. "It's only a rock,
because you chose to see it as a rock. You see the reflection of a
rock, but it does not actually exist. Look," she reached out and took
the rock from him and held it up in front of her. "It does _not_
exist."

    And abruptly the rock did _not_ exist.

    Shinji gasped and stumbled backwards, almost falling over. The
rock that Ayanami had been holding suddenly was no longer there! He
turned his incredulous eyes to stare at her. "How... What..."

    The girl smirked at his reaction. "It does _not_ exist," she said
emphatically. "I chose to use a different set of questions. Do you
understand yet?"

    Shinji just continued to shake his head in disbelief staring at
the place where the rock _had_ been.

    "Oh, Ikari-kun..." Amilee sighed despondently to herself and
turned around. She had done what she had come here to do, and now it
was time to get back before her presence here was detected by the
Others. She had delivered the message that Sam had wanted her to, and
the rest of the Game would be left up to the choices that Ikari-kun's
descendants chose to make. There was nothing else for her to do.

    Shinji was still staring the place where the rock _had_ been when
he suddenly heard a steady crunching sound and looked up in surprise.
Ayanami was leaving! Shaking himself mentally Shinji started to run
after her. "Ayanami! Where are you..."

    And abruptly Ayanami did _not_ exist.

    Shinji gasped and stumbled backwards, this time falling over to
land on his bottom. He double blinked and rubbed his eyes to try and
see what was _not_ there.

    Ayanami had just vanished. One moment there and the next...

    Just like the rock.

    Shinji raised his hands and looked down at them. His face pulled
back in grin and he started to laugh. Staring down at his hands he
laughed so hard that tears started to stream from his eyes. He
continued to laugh until finally he ran out of strength and subsided
into a faint wheezing like sound. Finally, after Heaven knows how
long, he stopped and slowly got to his feet. He reached down and
slowly brushed the sand off from his backside and as he did so chided
himself for the way he had reacted. He should be used to this sort of
madness in his life by now. What was one extra piece of insanity,
especially after all he had been through...

    He turned his eyes to look down at the footprints on the sand
where Ayanami had stood. Already the waters of the blood red high tide
were fast approaching where he was standing, and in only a matter of
an hour or so all evidence that Ayanami had ever stood there.

    Shinji looked at the encroaching waters blankly for a second and
then shrugged and turned away. What did it matter anyway? He had
problems enough to worry about without borrowing any others. Whatever
Ayanami had now become was her business, not his. Shinji sighed and
looked back at the blood red sea. He still had a lot to think about
and it was long until morning when his son returned with the others
for his decision.

    And the blood red sea continued to roll on in, erasing the
evidence of the Noble's presence in this world that had once given
spawn to her.

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