Returning

Credit goes to the EVA MLer who inspired this a while back. I've always
wanted to do a Yui fic.

*****

	She was floating. Floating in blackness. All around, the total absence of
light, an abyss whose depths stretched farther than she could perceive.
Oblivion. Darkness. 

	That was nothing new, really. She had grown accustomed to the different
experiences she'd had to face since the...change. The rational scientist
part of her delighted in this. So what if she never got back? Here was new
ground, new territory that no one had ever explored, probably would never
explore. And she was here. 

	Here, not there. That was the other problem.

	But there was other parts of her, their calls equally strong. What about
the ones you love, they cried. Will you leave them behind? What of them,
what of their fates? It hurt her to think like this. She did so want to
return, sometimes. Needed to. At those times the blackness seemed to
constrict her, bind her even more fully.

	Then the other feelings. The strange, alien emotions that came and went,
primal urges that summoned half-formed images out of the ether, appearing
yet not fully existing in the void, in this space null-space, this oblivion
between worlds. They spoke strangely, their words full of portents and
double meanings, sometimes appearing as humans, and yet at others as alien
apparitions. She understood but parts of what they said, and even then it
was unclear. An apocalypse, they whispered to her, amidst lilting, ethereal
cries. Destruction. Salvation.

	But the blackness it was, most of the time. That and herself.

Between worlds.  There was another presence. One, familiar, yet distanced
from herself by a great rift. She had tried to stretch out her limited
consciousness towards it, in fact, felt a need to, but all she encountered
was an expanse of sadness, of a bond broken. That most of all, the sensation
of loss, so strong that she herself was swept up in it, and hope. But a worn
and tired hope it was. 

	The blackness swirled anew at times like this, and the voices spoke again.
She did not heed them : she was too busy weeping for her son.

	And there was yet another part, submerged within the strangely liquid
consciousness she was suspended in. Bestial, feral. It seemed (why did
everything seem? Why was nothing concrete?) to snap at the faint inquiring
brushes her mind sent out to it, and growled and paced, angry in the cage it
was imprisoned in. She could do nothing with it; it rejected all her
overtures at communication. And after a while she began to doubt whether it
was sentient. Or whether she still was.

	Her husband. Strange that she did not think of him often. Was it the fact
that she was here because of him? Or something else? Maybe the feelings that
accompanied the shattered bond, the ones that spoke of hate, bewilderment
and most of all, of love. Still love amidst all else. But those were not
her. She did not even know who "her" was, now. Everything here was liquid,
malleable, filled with emotion, of sensations that seemed to sing out to her
very soul. Things felt, or simply were. That was why, perhaps. He had always
disliked any show of feeling, anything not rooted in fact.

	And then the darkness, still and calm, yet somehow restless as well. 

*****

	One day. What was time here? One day, two, three...no way of knowing. A
year might have passed. More.

	Yet one day it changed.

	It began with a slight ripple, a shudder, sending faint tremors through the
fluid darkness. Then it turned red. The world became a bright crimson, light
seeming to bleed through the shifting sky down onto her. She screamed, or
she did not; she had not way of knowing. 

	The bond, merging, changing, reaching out to her, needing her. She
responded instinctively but a howl of primal exultation broke through her
consciousness just then. She stopped, the feelings rushing through her,
crashing against each other like high breakwaters, each counterpointing the
other. Only then did she notice the sky. Light, for the first time in ages,
shone down.

	Blood poured down as well.

	Adrift in a sea of thought, she cast out desperately for an anchor of some
sort. She found one.

	"Yui...my name is Ikari Yui."

	It was then she could put name to the pain that surged through her. Her
son. He needed her. Why and how, she did not try to understand, did not, as
she stretched out her hand towards him. The broken ends and shards met, and
the wounds began to heal, a new bond forming. Joy washed through them both,
their bodies singing with the gladness of it...

	And the world turned upside down.

*****

	She awoke. There was no blackness now. Reaching out one hand, she felt for
something, and met hard, unyielding, metal.

	Wait. She had other senses. Slowly, ever so slowly, like a newborn child,
she cracked open one eyelid, then the other. The same red liquid. Her ears
noted a steady pulse in the background, her tongue a slight stuffiness.
Where was she? Drawing the outstretched hand down, she caught a handle.

	A handle...voices. She heard, faintly, voices.

	Coming to a decision, she yanked down. Once. Hard. Light spilled it, and
she lurched out of what she now knew to be the cockpit of Evangelion Unit 1,
into...

	A new world...

*****

Author's Note :

	There, nice and short. I have no plans at present to continue this, having
two more stories currently breathing down my neck ^_^. If you like what I
wrote, mail me with ideas\C&C and we'll see what happens with this.

Zhou Tai An (kain@pacific.net.sg) "There is no one simple truth." - Rune Walsh

"Who is this? This is I. Who is I? What is I?		   - Rei Ayanami
I am myself. This object is I. The figure that forms me."

When someone stands in the light but does not give it out, a shadow is created.

The ways of nature and of life are strange and deep. They are not to be
understood. In the midst of angers and of wars love's secret work goes on,
and binds us all by blood, and this, whether love is denied or bestowed. -
Pearl S. Buck