A week ago (Dec 3rd, 2017) on Sufficient Velocity, this conversation took place:

.

.

Alan Kelson: I've always wanted a story where it turned that it would've been better to have never loved than to have loved and lost.

.

Akrasiel23: I can think of an Eva fic that could fulfill that: In his first sortie, Shinji's mind briefly connected to that of his mother's, learning all related to the Eva project and her plans to fight SEELE, having drawn the spots from seeing Rei later, the boy eventually deduced his father's plan as well. It's then, feeling the weight of the sins of his parents, that Shinji Ikari makes a choice, to right the wrongs they have done, and might do, to the world, to prevent SEELE's plans from coming into fruition and to ensure that no one else would have to die in the war to come, and for that, he must avoid that which made his father falter and fall into evil.

He must be alone, never to love nor to receive love, only then, without the ties that blinded his father, can he be able to succeed where he failed and save this broken yet beautiful world.

Man, I think the very concept of the story would make Stryp angry, it's like anti-WAFF.

.

Panther2G: While I still prefer WAFF, of course, I can see how this concept could still be done to make a very poignant, bittersweet fic about the sacrifices needed for a greater victory... or a very dark one, especially if it backfires, and things go worse than canon due to Shinji sealing himself off... just like his father. In trying to be unlike him, Shinji becomes identical. He'd end up like Ritsuko when she realized she'd turned into her mother.

Hm... assuming the more positive one, there's even space for a post-war fic where Shinji finally lets himself relax, now that they've won, and start trying to make it up to all the people he wanted to care about but could not. Asuka and the others could be steep mountains to climb in that quest, since Asuka in particular might have been deeply hurt by the way Shinji more actively shut her down than in canon. But the world has been saved, and there's now all the time in their lives to apologize.

.

.

That gave me an idea, and combined with a desire to do a fic for Asuka's birthday on Decmber 4th, led to this.

.

.

Birthday Candles

1 of 4

.

.

I thought I knew everything. I was also 14. So this means I really knew just enough to be #1) an insufferable jerk, #2) a tormented, overwrought emo jerk, and #3) and hurtful idiot.

And a jerk. Of course.

In my defense, I was trying to save the world.

Everyone knows the public story, of course. The parts that were released after the ICJ Tribunal on Third Impact, the UN Trials, the separate national investigations, etc. I, Shinji Ikari, son of Supreme Commander of NERV Gendo Ikari, was summoned to Tokyo-3 on short notice to pilot Evangelion Unit-01 against what would eventually be admitted was the Third Angel, Sachiel. And somehow I won a spectacular victory.

What the public official version mostly leaves out was that was mostly my mother doing the smashing and winning. Sure, I turned out to have an annoying amount of talent for a job I mostly hated, but that first battle was 90% mother. I mostly just held on and tried not to throw up.

It wasn't just the physical side, being thrown around in a wildly charging Evangelion. It was the other side, the part that I haven't really told anyone outside the Tribunals about until now. When mother and I were deeply synched like that, the bond between us wide open in the Eva, I could hear her, communicate with her.

And she told me everything. SEELE, their plans, Second Impact, Instrumentality, everything.

I have to admit, I more or less freaked the Hell out. It wasn't just shock from the end of the battle that made me pass out at the end, and wake up later in the hospital. It was learning my whole family was insane and bent on ending the world and humanity as I knew it in the name of trying to be gods.

Hell of a thing to drop on a 14 year old boy who hadn't precisely had a great childhood to begin with.

So... I kind of went a little nuts. In retrospect, and a pile of therapy, it's easy to say 'Holy shit, that was not healthy and a miracle it didn't leave everyone dead or insane!', but again, I was 14, traumatized, and had a shitty upbringing. So in the face of learning all this, and accepting mother's charge that I had to stop this, I... shut down, sort of.

I wanted to tell everyone, someone, some adult. Misato, or someone. Not me, not 14 year old Shinji Ikari, who was by no measure fit to save the world from a conspiracy that would make the Elders of Zion look like a bad parody. But mother warned me that SEELE would not hesitate a bit to kill anyone who showed signs of knowing too much, so I couldn't.

So I shut out everything that wasn't... mission critical. Mother and I figured out pretty fast that father had... not taken her loss well, and was on his own plan. So, in order not to end up like him, I shut out the idea of getting attached. To anyone. I would be the rock and the island that humanity needed to save the world. I could have a breakdown later.

And I did. Oh God, did I.

And so did Asuka, Touji, Misato...

I am truly sorry, all of you. You know exactly how much, since despite my efforts, SEELE and my father still managed to trigger Instrumentality after... after Kaworu. And so you all got to see inside me, and see my intentions, just as I saw inside you. But you all took that knowledge, and stood with me as we faced down my father, and shut Instrumentality down before it went too far, and we saved the world anyhow.

I'm sorry I wasn't strong enough alone.

I'm sorry to Asuka most of all. Seeing into her heart, seeing how she'd been trying to reach out to me in her way, and how deeply I hurt her by shutting her out cold in my quest to be... unattached... I have yet to forgive myself for that. Even saving the world was almost too much, when it cut her like that.

I have every right to do that with my own heart, my own soul. But I never asked permission for hers. It was not mine to spend like that, and I don't know if I ever can forgive myself for how I hurt her. I knew some of it at the time, too. Hard to miss the muffled weeping coming from her room some nights. I wouldn't let myself... do anything. But what carried me through was the promise I kept making to myself was that once we had beaten SEELE, I'd make up for it, even if it took the rest of my life.

Some nights that promise was all that let me sleep.

So there we were, SEELE smashed, every member of the conspiracy that we managed to capture before they could cheat the hangman in jail forever, the disruption of Instrumentality settled, everything right with the world. Great, right? They gave us therapists, stipends, and public congratulations, and then stuffed Asuka, Misato, and myself right back in that apartment, to be left alone by the reformed UN, the Japanese Government, and the media. At our own request, yes.

And no, I have no idea how Tokyo-3 was put back as it was, empty Geofront and all. Blame it on Rei Ayanami.

You might have thought 'Oh, great! We're still living together, all bills taken care of, perfect opportunity to make things up to Asuka and Misato!' Rei too, if she'd ever come back from Instrumentality.

You'd have been wrong.

Turns out, while Asuka got a good look inside my heart during all that, and saw why I'd shut her out, she also saw that I was far more aware of her attraction and flirting with me than I let on at the time, and my own awareness that I was hurting her by rejection. Which she... took badly.

Things on that front came to a head December 4th, 2016. Yes, her 15th birthday. Yes, it was my fault. Of course. I had made up a pretty, authentic-calligraphy-and-all letter apologizing to her and promising to never again hurt her, to always be there when she wanted or needed me. I'd explained everything to her already, over the months we'd all been living together, but it felt proper to have it all written down and in a nice formal form to give her as a present.

I'm not a complete idiot. It was hardly the only present I'd gotten her. Plus the full course meal I'd spent the day cooking up.

Ok, fine, I was a complete idiot. Yes, I was doing all this out of pathetic hope that I wouldn't somehow permanently drive away the gorgeous, vibrant, and utterly fascinating girl I'd fallen for.

Yes, I loved her. Yes, through the war itself and my stupid promise to put saving the world above everything else. That promise was a lot easier to make before I met her. It was hard enough when I met Rei. I sort of loved her too. But I was 14 and afraid and desperate about SEELE and my father's plans, so it was easier to shut all that out and tell myself it was necessary to save the world.

I did mention I was an idiot.

I mentioned my promise to make things up after the war, and this felt like a way to both apologize and assure her I meant everything I'd told her over the months since Instrumentality. But of course, I hadn't really let myself face thinking about her pain over events, or the timing. So when I handed Asuka that envelope with my letter at the end of her birthday dinner, I probably should have expected what happened. Asuka read the letter, her face going blank, and then gave me a look that I'm surprised didn't burn the shirt off my chest and the skin off my face. It felt like it was Ramiel all over again.

"You... you fucking ass!" she screamed.

I blinked. I had no idea.

"You.. you give me this, this... NOW?! You give me this NOW?! Where were you when I was being violated by the 15th?! Where were you when I was alone in this apartment a year ago today?! Where were you when I was lying in that bathtub waiting to DIE?! NOW? Now because it's convenient to you?!" she roared. "Fuck off and DIE!"

"Asuka, I-"

The wadded up letter hit me in the face. By the time I blinked my eyes open again, she was around the corner and down the hall. I heard her bedroom door slam shut.

We didn't talk for a week.

And that's the story of how I ruined Asuka Langley Soryu's 14th and 15th birthdays.

.

.

Author's Note: For background, in this AU neither Rei nor Kaworu returned from Instrumentality, and Shinji shut out everyone pretty hard all the way up to Instrumentality, deeply hurting Asuka and Misato.