31_days fic: Now with song-references and in-jokes
I've had this idea for quite some time and the prompt for the day fit it very well.
Title: "Little Boy Blue and the Man in the Moon"
Day/Theme: Oct 24. Ask tearfully, truly
Series: Neon Genesis Evangelion (post End of Evangelion, part of an on-going project)
Character/Pairing: Kozou Fuyutsuki, Shinji Ikari
Rating: PG
Author's Note: Title shamelessly stolen from Harry Chapin's "The Cat's in the Cradle", which I have to confess makes me think a bit of the (at best) strained relationship between the elder and younger Ikaris (You know you're obsessed with Evangelion when the oddest songs make you think of Eva characters...). There's also a bit of an in-joke in using said title, since this fic involves a conversation between Shinji -- whose temperment is certainly "blue" -- and Fuyutsuki, who has the moon ("tsuki") in his last name... Takes place probably about halfway through "Under the Winter Moon", the second part of "Neon Enoch Evangelion", aka the ambitious NGE project
The logpile had started to diminish, and considering that Asuka's and Gendo's injuries still needed time to heal, they could not yet be moved from the makeshift infirmary near the fireplace in the hotel parlor. Earlier, Sabia and Shinji had dragged in a number of long, but not too unwieldy branches from the forest, or where the forest had stood before the anti-AT Field from the Shekinah had obliterated any standing trees, leaving only broken branches and fallen trees behind. Later in the evening, after the sun had gone down, Fuyutsuki had taken on the task of cutting the branches into shorter sections by the light of a few lanterns, a task which kept his hands busy but gave him time to think without being bothered.
Or at least not until Shinji emerged from the kitchen entrance into the side-yard where they had set up a chopping block made of a section of a fallen tree-trunk.
"Fuyutsuki-sama, um, I hate to bother you while you're working, but I, uh, have an important question I really need to ask," the boy said.
Fuyutsuki cut the last section of the branch he had started and looked up. "A question about, what, might I ask?"
"Kajii once told me that you were the closest to my father," Shinji said. "If you've got a moment, I thought maybe you could tell me what he's really like. That is, unless you're too busy. I know the wood has to be cut, since the logpile inside is getting pretty small."
Fuyutsuki wedged the tip of the hatchet blade into a chink in the surface of the chopping block. "Kajii was giving you an optimistic angle on the relationship. I'm afraid I'm the wrong person to ask, since your father and I have merely worked together all these years. We're hardly what any observant person would call friends."
The boy's face fell, but some hope lingered in his eyes. "But there must be a reason why you worked with him for this long."
"There are a few reasons, to be precise. I know things about your father and the organization which he and your mother were working for, and things about Second Impact which the UN covered up, information I had threatened to reveal to the public. Your father informed me that if I did, that SEELE, the parent organization of what would become NERV, could and would see to it that I would pay for my zeal."
"He'd have put in jail?" Shinji asked, his eyes widening and his brow furrowing.
"SEELE would have seen that I disappeared, and I don't think I have to tell you how they defined that," Fuyutsuki replied. He pulled the hatchet out of the chopping block and finding another long branch, set to work chopping it into small sections. Wishing you had Ikari's neck under the axe? he thought, accusingly.
"That sounds like something he would do. He uses people, like he used me and Misato and Ayanami. I'll bet he used my mother, too," Shinji said, clenching his hands at his sides.
"There were a number of people, myself among them, who felt that he did," Fuyutsuki said, wedging the hatchet into the edge of the chopping block. "Some said he married her only because he wanted admission into SEELE; I was one of those, though now, looking through the eyes of hindsight, I can't help but wonder if there was more to it."
"You mean... if he really loved her?" Shinji asked. "Is he even capable of loving anyone but himself?"
"And that is why I'm not exactly the right person to talk to about your father, especially in regards to your mother. Mine aren't the most unclouded eyes," Fuyutsuki replied. You may as well tell the boy, it's the most you can give him, he thought.
"The truth of the matter is, I was ...very fond of your mother. I would go so far as to say I was in love with her, though it was something I didn't admit even to myself back then. She was my student and assistant about the same time she met your father. If I might use a cliche, she only had eyes for him, but what she saw in him, I couldn't discern, not even after years of working alongside him. I could only see the man who found a way in between her and me. We drifted apart, she and I...
"Then Second Impact happened and... well, considering the casualties that resulted from the tsunami that struck, world-wide, I counted her and your father among the lost; perhaps it was just my way of trying to let go and minimize the pain of wondering what had happened to her. The reality, when I learned the truth, was a glass needle to my heart. An official from the UN tracked me down, informing me that I had had a reccommendation to join an investigative team heading to the Antarctic, to determine what really caused Second Impact. Once I arrived there, I discovered your parents had had a hand in that reccommendation, but I also discovered that your father, then Gendo Rokubungi, had married your mother and that your mother was pregnant with you. Looking back, I don't know what angered me more: the cover-ups your father was involved in, or the fact that he had married your mother; no doubt I used the anger of the latter to feed the anger of the former."
"But you still worked with them, you said there was another reason, besides my father threatening you," Shinji said.
"I'm getting to that, don't mind an old man's wandering thoughts," Fuyutsuki said, with a smile. "When your mother vanished into Unit 01, I couldn't count her as lost, even though, officially, she was considered dead. But we at GEHIRN, the previous incarnation of NERV, knew there was more to it. Your father went into hiding for over a week: he didn't even attend your mother's funeral, which left me to deliver her eulogy. In my heart, I condemned him for it, and perhaps there was good reason for him to avoid being seen. Some thought he had killed her and used the failed contact experiment to cover it up, others thought he had somehow sabotaged the experiment. I will admit, I was one of those.
"I stayed on at GEHIRN, partly because of the sword hanging over my head, but for most part because I did not want to see your mother's work come to naught. Once your father came out of seclusion, he redoubled his efforts, but he was different after that. He wasn't the most hospitable man, to begin with, but after your mother was lost, he closed off even more. Sometimes, when I'm feeling more charitable, I wonder if, in some ways, she was the only person in the world who could see past that wall of thorns he put up between himself and the rest of the world. Once she was gone, he withdrew behind that wall; he kept up the work she intended, but he did so for his own reasons. He saw in the Human Instrumentality Project a way to reunite with her, but I could see that it would likely end in the destruction of the human race, a scenario which SEELE had in mind from the first. I don't know how aware your mother was of SEELE's plan or if she was shutting her mind off to it, but I continued her work for her sake, to keep her dreams and her legacy alive."
"But why did he abandon me the way he did?" Shinji asked. "Did he love my mother more than he loved me?" The boy's voice wavered with frustration; tears showed in his large blue eyes.
Fuyutsuki turned to face the young man. "You'd have to ask him, I'm afraid. But I have overheard things, late at night, when I passed by the door to your father's apartment on the way to my rooms. I've heard him sobbing alone in the dark, which, in my better moods, lead me to wonder if perhaps, he was too afraid or too hurt to care for you as he should have."
"If you think I'm going to ask him the answer to that, then you have another thought coming. I'm not going to speak to him, so maybe you'd better ask him that for me," Shinji snapped.
"Ikari-kun, sooner or later, you are going to have to face your father. His injuries will heal and he'll be up and about. Considering the barren state which the world is in, we're all going to have to work together to rebuild," Fuyutsuki said, looking Shinji in the eye and holding the boy with his gaze and his words. "It would be in everyone's interest, especially your own, if you first made the effort to rebuild the relationship with your father."
"I hope you've told him that as well. I've had it with carrying the burdens of the world. I'm just a kid," Shinji said.
"Ikari-kun, you still have a lot of growing and maturing to do, but in some ways, you're more of an adult than some people twice and three times your age: you've seen and experienced and survived horrors and strife which few people have the strength to bear," Fuyutsuki said.
Shinji took this in silence, pondering the words. The anger drained from his face and he set about collecting the small logs scattered on the ground.
A moment later, as he straightened up with an armful, the youth started to turn toward the kitchen to bring the logs inside, but he paused, an odd look on his face.
"Fuyutsuki-sama... there's something I need to ask," Shinji asked.
Fuyutsuki paused in knocking the twigs off another branch. "Oh?"
"You said you and my mother were very close and that you loved her... How close... I mean, did you and she... Did she ever...? How intimate were you and... um..." The boy faltered, rubbing the back of his head nervously with his free hands.
"How intimate was I with your mother?" Fuyutsuki asked, divining the boy's awkward question. "If you're wondering if there's any remote possibility that Gendo Ikari isn't your biological father, then the answer is no; your mother and I were merely friends and colleagues. If she and I had shared a physical connection on that most intimate level, it would have been harder for me to let her go as circumstances required. The desire was there, at my end, but I was waiting for her to make a move in my direction, if she so desired it."
"Oh, I just needed to be sure," Shinji replied, still awkward, and ducking his head, clearly mortified at his own boldness, went inside, bringing the logs with him.
Fuyutsuki looked to the sky, to the bright violet speck where Unit 01 hovered in the night sky. "Yui, your boy has a long way to go if he is to find the pathway to his father's heart. I only hope he takes that first step." The speck of light seemed to twinkle in response, as if she had winked at him, but it could have been a refraction from a loose eyelash.
Title: "Little Boy Blue and the Man in the Moon"
Day/Theme: Oct 24. Ask tearfully, truly
Series: Neon Genesis Evangelion (post End of Evangelion, part of an on-going project)
Character/Pairing: Kozou Fuyutsuki, Shinji Ikari
Rating: PG
Author's Note: Title shamelessly stolen from Harry Chapin's "The Cat's in the Cradle", which I have to confess makes me think a bit of the (at best) strained relationship between the elder and younger Ikaris (You know you're obsessed with Evangelion when the oddest songs make you think of Eva characters...). There's also a bit of an in-joke in using said title, since this fic involves a conversation between Shinji -- whose temperment is certainly "blue" -- and Fuyutsuki, who has the moon ("tsuki") in his last name... Takes place probably about halfway through "Under the Winter Moon", the second part of "Neon Enoch Evangelion", aka the ambitious NGE project
The logpile had started to diminish, and considering that Asuka's and Gendo's injuries still needed time to heal, they could not yet be moved from the makeshift infirmary near the fireplace in the hotel parlor. Earlier, Sabia and Shinji had dragged in a number of long, but not too unwieldy branches from the forest, or where the forest had stood before the anti-AT Field from the Shekinah had obliterated any standing trees, leaving only broken branches and fallen trees behind. Later in the evening, after the sun had gone down, Fuyutsuki had taken on the task of cutting the branches into shorter sections by the light of a few lanterns, a task which kept his hands busy but gave him time to think without being bothered.
Or at least not until Shinji emerged from the kitchen entrance into the side-yard where they had set up a chopping block made of a section of a fallen tree-trunk.
"Fuyutsuki-sama, um, I hate to bother you while you're working, but I, uh, have an important question I really need to ask," the boy said.
Fuyutsuki cut the last section of the branch he had started and looked up. "A question about, what, might I ask?"
"Kajii once told me that you were the closest to my father," Shinji said. "If you've got a moment, I thought maybe you could tell me what he's really like. That is, unless you're too busy. I know the wood has to be cut, since the logpile inside is getting pretty small."
Fuyutsuki wedged the tip of the hatchet blade into a chink in the surface of the chopping block. "Kajii was giving you an optimistic angle on the relationship. I'm afraid I'm the wrong person to ask, since your father and I have merely worked together all these years. We're hardly what any observant person would call friends."
The boy's face fell, but some hope lingered in his eyes. "But there must be a reason why you worked with him for this long."
"There are a few reasons, to be precise. I know things about your father and the organization which he and your mother were working for, and things about Second Impact which the UN covered up, information I had threatened to reveal to the public. Your father informed me that if I did, that SEELE, the parent organization of what would become NERV, could and would see to it that I would pay for my zeal."
"He'd have put in jail?" Shinji asked, his eyes widening and his brow furrowing.
"SEELE would have seen that I disappeared, and I don't think I have to tell you how they defined that," Fuyutsuki replied. He pulled the hatchet out of the chopping block and finding another long branch, set to work chopping it into small sections. Wishing you had Ikari's neck under the axe? he thought, accusingly.
"That sounds like something he would do. He uses people, like he used me and Misato and Ayanami. I'll bet he used my mother, too," Shinji said, clenching his hands at his sides.
"There were a number of people, myself among them, who felt that he did," Fuyutsuki said, wedging the hatchet into the edge of the chopping block. "Some said he married her only because he wanted admission into SEELE; I was one of those, though now, looking through the eyes of hindsight, I can't help but wonder if there was more to it."
"You mean... if he really loved her?" Shinji asked. "Is he even capable of loving anyone but himself?"
"And that is why I'm not exactly the right person to talk to about your father, especially in regards to your mother. Mine aren't the most unclouded eyes," Fuyutsuki replied. You may as well tell the boy, it's the most you can give him, he thought.
"The truth of the matter is, I was ...very fond of your mother. I would go so far as to say I was in love with her, though it was something I didn't admit even to myself back then. She was my student and assistant about the same time she met your father. If I might use a cliche, she only had eyes for him, but what she saw in him, I couldn't discern, not even after years of working alongside him. I could only see the man who found a way in between her and me. We drifted apart, she and I...
"Then Second Impact happened and... well, considering the casualties that resulted from the tsunami that struck, world-wide, I counted her and your father among the lost; perhaps it was just my way of trying to let go and minimize the pain of wondering what had happened to her. The reality, when I learned the truth, was a glass needle to my heart. An official from the UN tracked me down, informing me that I had had a reccommendation to join an investigative team heading to the Antarctic, to determine what really caused Second Impact. Once I arrived there, I discovered your parents had had a hand in that reccommendation, but I also discovered that your father, then Gendo Rokubungi, had married your mother and that your mother was pregnant with you. Looking back, I don't know what angered me more: the cover-ups your father was involved in, or the fact that he had married your mother; no doubt I used the anger of the latter to feed the anger of the former."
"But you still worked with them, you said there was another reason, besides my father threatening you," Shinji said.
"I'm getting to that, don't mind an old man's wandering thoughts," Fuyutsuki said, with a smile. "When your mother vanished into Unit 01, I couldn't count her as lost, even though, officially, she was considered dead. But we at GEHIRN, the previous incarnation of NERV, knew there was more to it. Your father went into hiding for over a week: he didn't even attend your mother's funeral, which left me to deliver her eulogy. In my heart, I condemned him for it, and perhaps there was good reason for him to avoid being seen. Some thought he had killed her and used the failed contact experiment to cover it up, others thought he had somehow sabotaged the experiment. I will admit, I was one of those.
"I stayed on at GEHIRN, partly because of the sword hanging over my head, but for most part because I did not want to see your mother's work come to naught. Once your father came out of seclusion, he redoubled his efforts, but he was different after that. He wasn't the most hospitable man, to begin with, but after your mother was lost, he closed off even more. Sometimes, when I'm feeling more charitable, I wonder if, in some ways, she was the only person in the world who could see past that wall of thorns he put up between himself and the rest of the world. Once she was gone, he withdrew behind that wall; he kept up the work she intended, but he did so for his own reasons. He saw in the Human Instrumentality Project a way to reunite with her, but I could see that it would likely end in the destruction of the human race, a scenario which SEELE had in mind from the first. I don't know how aware your mother was of SEELE's plan or if she was shutting her mind off to it, but I continued her work for her sake, to keep her dreams and her legacy alive."
"But why did he abandon me the way he did?" Shinji asked. "Did he love my mother more than he loved me?" The boy's voice wavered with frustration; tears showed in his large blue eyes.
Fuyutsuki turned to face the young man. "You'd have to ask him, I'm afraid. But I have overheard things, late at night, when I passed by the door to your father's apartment on the way to my rooms. I've heard him sobbing alone in the dark, which, in my better moods, lead me to wonder if perhaps, he was too afraid or too hurt to care for you as he should have."
"If you think I'm going to ask him the answer to that, then you have another thought coming. I'm not going to speak to him, so maybe you'd better ask him that for me," Shinji snapped.
"Ikari-kun, sooner or later, you are going to have to face your father. His injuries will heal and he'll be up and about. Considering the barren state which the world is in, we're all going to have to work together to rebuild," Fuyutsuki said, looking Shinji in the eye and holding the boy with his gaze and his words. "It would be in everyone's interest, especially your own, if you first made the effort to rebuild the relationship with your father."
"I hope you've told him that as well. I've had it with carrying the burdens of the world. I'm just a kid," Shinji said.
"Ikari-kun, you still have a lot of growing and maturing to do, but in some ways, you're more of an adult than some people twice and three times your age: you've seen and experienced and survived horrors and strife which few people have the strength to bear," Fuyutsuki said.
Shinji took this in silence, pondering the words. The anger drained from his face and he set about collecting the small logs scattered on the ground.
A moment later, as he straightened up with an armful, the youth started to turn toward the kitchen to bring the logs inside, but he paused, an odd look on his face.
"Fuyutsuki-sama... there's something I need to ask," Shinji asked.
Fuyutsuki paused in knocking the twigs off another branch. "Oh?"
"You said you and my mother were very close and that you loved her... How close... I mean, did you and she... Did she ever...? How intimate were you and... um..." The boy faltered, rubbing the back of his head nervously with his free hands.
"How intimate was I with your mother?" Fuyutsuki asked, divining the boy's awkward question. "If you're wondering if there's any remote possibility that Gendo Ikari isn't your biological father, then the answer is no; your mother and I were merely friends and colleagues. If she and I had shared a physical connection on that most intimate level, it would have been harder for me to let her go as circumstances required. The desire was there, at my end, but I was waiting for her to make a move in my direction, if she so desired it."
"Oh, I just needed to be sure," Shinji replied, still awkward, and ducking his head, clearly mortified at his own boldness, went inside, bringing the logs with him.
Fuyutsuki looked to the sky, to the bright violet speck where Unit 01 hovered in the night sky. "Yui, your boy has a long way to go if he is to find the pathway to his father's heart. I only hope he takes that first step." The speck of light seemed to twinkle in response, as if she had winked at him, but it could have been a refraction from a loose eyelash.