Creation began on 07-11-15

Creation ended on 07-13-15

Neon Genesis Evangelion

Reversal of Misfortune

A/N: The power to obtain forgiveness through redemption isn't for everyone.

"Yui… Yui…" A voice uttered in the vast darkness. "Yui…wake up."

A pair of eyes opened and revealed a woman that appeared to be in her late-twenties, dressed in a pink blouse and dark skirt with a white lab coat.

"Huh? Wha… Who' there?" She asked.

Another woman, dressed in robes of green and red silk, an armored bodice and possessing large wings like that of an actual angel from religious myths stood in front of Yui, with long, jade hair and golden eyes.

"Who…who are you?" Yui questioned.

"I…am the Maiden of Time and Alternatives," said the other woman to her.

"The Maiden of Time and Alternatives?"

"Also, I am the only survivor of Heaven, which is no more because of you and your family, all for the wrong reasons."

"What? The wrong reasons? But what was wrong about what we did?"

"You and your husband exploited your son, manipulated his actions and brought about the end of the world of mortals and destroyed the heavens and its angelic messengers and guardians. You took from me the child I was tasked with watching over when you drove Shinji to cast aside all of existence, thinking that happiness didn't exist in the world. And now look at what's become of the Earth! Oceans as red as blood! Entire land masses deprived of vegetation and wildlife! Skies wrapped in permanent darkness! And the child I was watching over, suddenly ripped away from her father by countless fiends that resemble your façade, only younger and warped. She screamed for her father to protect her from them, as I couldn't, no matter how hard I tried. I failed her because of you and your family. I failed in my duty as a guardian angel to the child I was charged with protecting, and it's your fault."

"It wasn't supposed to be like this."

"But it turned out like this."

"I just wanted to give Shinji a brighter future, free of suffering."

"And yet, you did so at the expense of everything and everyone else in existence, and left a world in which nothing and nobody can survive in."

The angel showed her the planet she had left to rot at an accelerated rate, true to her words, and left with just two people alive. One was her son, and the other was German redhead that had been constantly abusive to him. They were looking out at the dead world they were left in, alone in a Hell on Earth.

"Shinji," Yui called out to her son, but he didn't respond. "Shinji?"

"Don't waste your breath," the angel said. "They can't hear you. Remember, you chose to remain within the abomination you created to exist as an eternal testament of mankind's existence, outlasting everything that exists right now. Right now, that's where you reside, in the abyss of space, probably somewhere between Saturn and Uranus."

"You should've just left us where we were, idiot Shinji," the redhead said to the boy.

"I didn't want this," the boy responded.

In front of them was half of a large, severed head resembling Yui's, but with a twisted smile that was also half of its actual expression.

"Did I do this?" Yui questioned.

"This is what happens when you exploit the will of a child that doesn't have a good conscience or lived a good life…because the people that should have been there for him left him alone, and he couldn't function without the necessary support that a child needs to survive. He can be manipulated into making choices that don't fix a damn thing, just make them worse than before. And even before then, the choices he was left with weren't even the right ones to make. A father that won't even say that he loves his son, not even hold him. A mother that says she's there when she's not, not even able to hold her child and has other intentions. That's not being parents, that's being pathetic, demented madmen that want for themselves and not for their children."

Yui wanted to defend her and Gendo's actions and decisions on what they did, but the mere sight of her emotionally-crippled son and the maimed, lifeless Earth only enforced what the angel had told her.

"I didn't mean for any of this," she told her. "It was just…we were supposed to have Shinji, and he was supposed to be the one to save the world."

"Not everyone wants to save the world. Some of us don't even want to save the world, or a species, a city or a neighborhood, even. Maybe one people that matters to you, but to save the world in a fashion that causes nothing but pain and death is not the way to save anything or anyone. Look at this child! He's no hero, he's not even a god of heroes. He's just a kid that was forced into a war filled with lies and deception. People betrayed him, betrayed his feelings, and consumed all that he could've had in his future, leaving him with nothing more than scraps that wouldn't even get him through a year. What did you have planned for him after your goal had been fulfilled, hmm? Did you even have anything planned for him later? Was he ever meant to finish school, go to his prom, find a girlfriend, have a family of his own or even grow old with his friends? Right now, I can't see him having any of that, not even with this girl that's abusive towards him."

"But…surely, people will return in due time, and society will rebuild…"

"No, Yui, they won't return…and they won't rebuild. They're scattered beyond the capacity to return, lost in the abyss of nothingness and unable to seek the way back to life. These two…are all that's left…and soon, they'll be gone because there's nothing for them to survive in this damaged world. No food or water, no shelter to protect them from the elements, no means to generate electricity or heat. They'll be lifeless within a matter of…"

"Stop!" Yui cried out to her. "Please! Please, just stop!"

The angel ceased her speech and looked at her, seeing the tears escaping from her eyes.

"What did you expect?" She asked Yui.

"I'm sorry. I'm sorry. None of this was supposed to happen! Nobody was supposed to suffer this way! I'd do anything to take this all back if I could!"

"Really?"

"Yes."

"Well, I'm not called the Maiden of Time and Alternatives for nothing."

The angel then reached into her robes and pulled something out. It looked like a jeweled bracelet, adorned with a trio of precious stones (to Yui, they looked like ruby, sapphire, and pearl).

"Time is often believed to be an illusion," the angel expressed, "but that's not entirely true. Time is beyond the full potential of human beings to grasp without the aid of those beyond themselves. It is elastic, malleable, flexible…even reversible. To manipulate time is to create alternatives to an existence where none were available."

She then threw the bracelet at Yui, who caught it.

"This bracelet can control time?" She asked.

"Not control it, per se, but allows one to travel back in time to places or events they had been in…and permit them to deviate from a path initially taken before. Change the history of the past by returning to it and turning it into the present." The angel explained. "But to do so comes with a price to any mortal that decides to take this journey. There's the loss of many memories that were created in the original timeline, and anyone that existed in that time will be returned to the well of existence if the traveler goes back to before they came to be. It would be as though whatever they went through never happened. No being exploited, no being left alone, no being forced to do anything that endangers them or others."

Yui held the bracelet in her right hand and pondered what to do on where in time to go back to. If she chose to go back to before the contact experiment with Unit-01, she might've been able to prevent the psychological damage inflicted upon Shinji, maybe even prevent him from piloting the Eva. But if she went further back in time, to before she ever met Gendo, that would mean that Shinji wouldn't exist, anymore; he'd be unborn and returned to the well of existence. It would also mean that Second Impact wouldn't have occurred yet. And she wouldn't have many of her memories of either her husband or son.

"Every choice made affects the choices by others," the angel told her. "Nobody can reach for the closest piece of treasure in the chest without influencing the course of the farthest ship on a destination. Whichever choice you make, make sure it's the right choice. Not logical, moral or easy. Just right."

Yui looked at Shinji and the redhead, deciding where she needed to go back in time, right then and there.

"Shinji," she uttered, more to herself than to her son, who wouldn't hear her voice, even if she tried to communicate with him. "I hope that we meet again someday, and that things will be different than they are right now. And…I hope that you will find it in your heart to forgive me."

-x-

"…Yui," went Kozo Fuyutsuki to the young woman, who suddenly just collapsed in front of him after he spoke of her thought-provoking paper. "Yui, are you alright?"

Being helped into a chair, Yui felt like something struck her in her brain and she looked around the room. Then she looked down at her right hand, seeing a bracelet she was certain she didn't have before she came to see the professor.

"I…I don't know," she expressed. "Professor, do you ever experience those feelings where you think something big just happened to you or someone you know, only you don't know what it was, exactly?"

"No, never," the elder answered her. "Maybe you should go home and rest."

"Yeah, that's a good idea. I'll see you at another time."

-x-

"…So, you're going on a date with that Gendo Rokubungi guy?" Yui's sister asked her as she prepared to go see her date.

Yui examined herself in the mirror and then looked at her sister.

"I wouldn't call it a date. I just asked him out, nothing more." She explained.

"Still, he's the source of some rather-shady rumors, sis. What do you see in him?"

Before she could answer her sister's question, Yui felt like her brain ran out of thoughts to use and became clouded with a vision that didn't make any sense to her. In it, she saw an older Gendo…and he had been devoured by a giant creature with a horn, like a demon.

"Yui?"

"Hmm?"

"Are you okay?"

"Yeah, I'm fine."

-x-

"…Well, enjoy your date, sweetie," Yui's father told his daughter, but the young woman, after being dropped off by her father at the restaurant that Gendo suggested, started to have second thoughts.

"Maybe now's not the right time for a date," she spoke up.

"What do you mean, Yui?" Her father asked her.

"Ever since I left college that day after my conversation with Professor Fuyutsuki, I've just felt like something has been off with my choices," she explained. "I'll call Gendo and tell him we'll go on a date at another time."

"Are you sure, dear?"

"Yeah, Daddy. We have plenty of time."

And her father drove off with her back home.

-x-

High above the oceans of the undamaged Earth, the Maiden of Time and Alternatives had seen Yui making the choice to not see Gendo that night of their date.

"Don't waste this second chance you've been given, Yui Ikari," she uttered, and took flight back to the restored heavens that awaited her…until she was assigned a new child to watch over.

Fin…for now

A/N: And here's where it'll be stopped for a while, letting you decide what you think will happen from here on out. It's just something that has been attempted in one form or another: What if someone in Evangelion was granted the once-in-a-lifetime chance to go back in time and change their future?