Disclaimer: I don't own Neon Genesis Evangelion or anything associated with it. Gainax created this world, I just play in it.

Better late than never I guess. Here's my latest attempt, I hope you like it. I'm looking forward to your reviews.

A Soul's Burden

A young man dressed simply in jeans, a grey t-shirt, and a black leather jacket parked his motorcycle along the curb and dismounted. He removed his helmet and nervously ran a hand through his longish, dark brown hair. Setting the helmet down on the seat, he turned and looked at the entrance to his destination and let out a long, slow breath. It had taken him a long time to work up the courage, but he was finally here and he wasn't going to back out now. He couldn't.

Slipping out of the backpack he wore and letting it dangle from his left hand, he walked into the sprawling cemetery in search of a particular grave. The marker that distinguished it was a simple one, a mass produced piece of concrete, greyish white in colour, finished to look like natural stone. The cemetery had many of them, arranged row upon row, dully reflecting the warm, late afternoon sun. Every one of them bore the same date.

January 1, 2016.

To call them grave markers was a bit of a misnomer, since there were no bodies interred beneath them. Each and every one of the hundreds of silent memorials had been placed here in memory of people who had not returned from the sea of LCL.

Even now, six years after Third Impact, you could find a work crew in the cemetery removing one of the markers because the person whose name was inscribed upon it had finally returned. It wasn't a common sight anymore, but that didn't deter those who cared about the ones who had not yet returned from visiting the memorials. They still maintained hope that their friends and loved ones would someday come back to them.

The marker he sought was sitting by itself, a pair of open spaces on either side of it where other markers had been removed. It was a sad thing that even in memoriam she was as she had been for far too much of her life.

Alone.

It didn't help that he hadn't been here since the day they put the marker up almost four years earlier. It wasn't something he was proud of but he hadn't been able to deal with it at the time. It had made him feel like she would never be coming back and he hadn't been prepared to believe that. He still wasn't really. She meant far too much to him for him to let himself consider such a thing.

She had deep scars, just like they all did, but she had still tried to live life with a smile and a laugh. Killing the Angels, her need for revenge, had been what drove her and it had been so very hard on her to send children out to do what she wished she could have done in their place. He knew that she would have saved them the pain and responsibility if she could have, piloting one of the great biomechanical constructs herself. As much as he had wished that someone else could have taken that pain and responsibility from him, he wouldn't have wished it upon anyone. Especially not on her.

Shinji Ikari reached out and traced the name inscribed on the marker, Katsuragi Misato, and let his hand linger there a moment as he closed his eyes and offered up a silent prayer of sorts. He wasn't especially religious, so he simply wished that her soul was at peace.

He sat down in front of the marker and opened the backpack he had been carrying, pulling out a can of Yebisu, which he opened and set down at the markers base. Next came a convenience store microwave meal package which he also opened and set down next to the beer. He shook his head and chuckled. Fried octopus dumplings and chili sausage. He had no idea how she had survived by spending half of her life eating stuff like this.

He retrieved another can of Yebisu from the pack, opened it, and guzzled it down, producing a victory yell and a belch that would have made her proud, before slamming the can down on the ground beside him. Going to the pack for another one, he opened it but only stared at it for a few minutes while he collected his thoughts.

"I'm sorry," he said, with heartfelt sincerity.

He hated those two words with a passion. He'd spent most of his life hiding behind them in the mistaken belief that he was such a terrible and useless human being, that he needed to apologize for every transgression, real or imagined, that he must have inflicted upon mankind. These days he only apologized for things that genuinely required the use of those two words and it had taken him a long time to reach that point. Even so, they still left a bitter taste in his mouth.

"I'm sorry that I haven't been here before this," he continued. "At first it was because I couldn't bring myself to come here and stare at a gravestone with your name on it. Then it was a matter of life keeping me too busy." He snorted in disgust. "Then I finally realized that I was running and hiding, just like I always used to." He took a sip of his beer and wrestled with his thoughts for a moment.

"The real reason I couldn't bring myself to come here is because for the longest time I wasn't able to deal with the guilt I feel for what happened to you," he admitted. "Every time I tried to make myself come here I couldn't do it because all I could think about was seeing you standing there as you pushed me into the elevator, so weak from blood loss that you could hardly stand up."

He stopped as that painful flash of memory came to him again. Flashbacks weren't something that plagued him often anymore, but emotional situations like this could still trigger them. He reached into the neck of his shirt and pulled out her silver cross that she had given him that day, and held it tightly until the memory passed. The necklace was his talisman, a source of strength that had given him great comfort even though it was a constant reminder of the demise of the one who gave it to him.

"I've still got your cross," he said with a slight smile. "I never take it off and it has seen me through some pretty tough times. It reminds me of the things you said to me that day and it gives me the resolve to carry on and find my way. I don't know if I've found my way yet, but I'm alive and I'm trying and I don't hate myself anymore."

He quietly took another swallow of his beer, ignoring the disapproving look of a middle aged woman who was making her way past him to leave the cemetery. She was about to say something to him until she caught a glimpse of the 'Ikari Stare', which prompted her to close her mouth and hurry on her way.

"I've got to stop doing that," he muttered.

Sure, it had become humorous to see annoying people scurry away when he gave them that look, but it really wasn't very nice and he had no desire to start acting like his father. But, he had to admit that there were times when it had come in rather handy.

"We all really miss you Misato," he continued. "Asuka and I found shelter near the spot on the shore of the LCL sea where we woke up so that we could watch and wait for you to come back. We stayed there as long as we could. Even when better shelters and accommodations were available, we stayed there hoping that you would return.

I don't know how many weeks went by, we kind of lost track. Food was scarce and people were fighting over it. We got pretty weak and eventually we couldn't even go out looking for any, or make it to the shore to wait for you. I think it was two months after we came back when people who had been in the government and police and military started to restore order. That was about the time that a small group of people who had been out scavenging found us lying half dead in our shelter."

He snorted in disgust. "Assholes were a bunch of cowards just looking for someone to blame. They treated us like shit. They didn't care that we didn't know what had really been going on, only that we were from NERV and that we were convenient targets for their outrage. I guess it's human nature to look for someone to blame when something happens that you can't comprehend."

He drained his beer and angrily threw the can away. He closed his eyes and took several deep breaths before retrieving another Yebisu from his pack and cracking it open. The memories of that time weren't pleasant.

"I guess it never occurred to them that we suffered too, just so that they could have a chance to live. They gave us nothing to eat and very little to drink, screamed accusations at us and showed us that they knew how to use their fists and their boots against people who were too weak to fight back. We were their sport I guess." He smiled crookedly. "I did the best that I could to protect Asuka and took as much of the abuse for her as I could. She'd been through enough and at that point she didn't even have enough strength left to call me a baka for letting them beat the crap out of me.

I think they were about to kill us when we got a last minute reprieve. The UN had sent an investigative team to Tokyo 3 to find out exactly what had happened and one of their patrol teams found us. Their leader was a woman and I was so out of it that I thought it was you. And like the baka that I am, I glomped her pretty good." He let out the first genuine laugh since he entered the cemetery. "Lt. Lake didn't quite know what to do with me clinging to her like that and it gave her unit lots of ammunition to tease her with back at their base when they hit the bar.

Her name's Melissa, but everyone calls her Mel, and she was really good to us. She still checks on us now and then. The people in her unit say that in the field she's a real hardass, and she's really good at her job. They'd follow her anywhere, and from what I hear, they have. She's really pretty too, and really tall. She has dark hair and these dark blue eyes that are so intense you would swear they're trying to burn their way right through your soul. In private, she's a lot like you. She's a slob, she can't cook, and she drinks too much beer." He laughed again. "You'd like her.

I'm not good with foreign accents, but she's American, from Texas I think. Her Japanese is pretty good, but she's like Asuka, she has trouble reading Kanji so I kind of became her unofficial interpreter for a while. I feel a sense of loyalty to her because she took good care of us when she could have just let it be someone else's responsibility. Actually, I think her specific job was to go out and find us. She made sure we got medical attention and plenty of food and a decent place to live.

The UN investigators had to question us of course about everything that happened, but she looked out for us and made sure it didn't go too far. She also made sure we got psychological counselling too. Kami knows we needed it after everything that happened to us in our lives. I guess that's why all of us in key positions at NERV were picked for our jobs in the first place. We were all screwed up in the head and fit my father's needs perfectly."

Mentioning his father made him pause for a moment, it was still a sore point for him. Despite the admissions his father made during Instrumentality and the far too late attempt at an apology, Shinji couldn't forgive him for what he had done. But, he couldn't condemn him entirely either and he had a much better understanding now of what had motivated him to do all of the things he had done.

Did he still think of him as a right bastard? Hell yes, who wouldn't considering all of the things he had done. He treated people as chess pieces to be used and sacrificed as needed. But he also had no doubt that Gendo really had loved his mother and her loss had taken from him what humanity he had left.

"Asuka and I are a lot different now," he continued. "She's changed a lot and she's actually a little on the quiet side now, but she's getting better. She's finally been able to deal with how she lost her mother. She realizes what she had been doing to her life and how much it was costing her to drive everyone away. She really regrets the way she totally bypassed her childhood and she feels the impact now of how much it cost her.

She really feels ashamed of how she treated people before, but she's a little bit better about letting people into her life. She doesn't get hostile and angry with them anymore, but she's a little hesitant and cautious. When she does get angry now though she tends to break down a bit because she doesn't want to be that way anymore. We've become really good friends now and we rely on each other a lot to stay on track.

I wanted her to come with me today but she isn't ready for this yet. She misses you pretty badly Misato. I know the two of you argued a lot towards the end and I know she regrets many of the things that she said, and she's kind of afraid that she's the reason that you haven't come back. Even when she was at her worst, you were one of the few people who she couldn't drive away from her no matter what she did. You always stood by her and she's trying really hard to straighten her life out. She hopes that you would be proud of her. I know you would be and I just wish she would believe it."

He took a deep pull on his beer. "As for me, except for some initial and serious difficulties," he wasn't going to mention that he almost strangled Asuka when they awoke on the beach, "I came back from Instrumentality in a lot better shape than I went into it. Rei, or Lilith, or whoever she was at that point, talked to me for a long time and explained a lot of things to me. I began to see how wrong I had been about so many things in my life. I wanted everything to just go away and end all of my pain, but she made me see things as they really were and the things she said to me went a long way to convincing me that life was worth living."

He smiled. "And I got to see my mom too. Losing her was like an open wound on my soul and seeing her again finally let that wound start to heal. She had been there in the Eva all along, protecting me. She had never really left me after all. The things she said to me, the things Rei said to me, and the things you said to me, helped me survive when I came back. When things got tough I would remember what all of you told me and I could get through. It gave me the strength and the will to keep living and to look after Asuka even when she would get difficult and didn't think she could go any further and wanted to give up."

He began to choke up, something he had hoped that he wouldn't do. "I have days where things get really tough and I start getting down on myself, but I've learned to work my way through it. You told me that you made tons of mistakes in your life, but you learned from them and you kept on living, and that's what I've been trying to do."

He stopped and took a deep breath, trying to calm himself. "Every morning when I wake up, I look in the mirror and I see your cross hanging around my neck and it reminds me of what you gave up for me. It reminds me of the life I took from you because I wasn't strong enough…"

His voice trailed off and he broke down completely then. His hands began to shake and the can of beer slipped from his trembling fingers to hit the ground with a tinny, wet plunk. He buried his head in his hands and sobbed loudly, his anguished cries echoing among the lonely memorials.

"How do I atone for costing you your life Misato?!" he cried. "How do I live with that? How do I live with your blood on my hands?" His voice dropped to little more than a ragged whisper. "I loved you and I got you killed. How can I ever make amends for that? How do I ask you to forgive me?"

And that was the crux of what had really kept him away from this place. He felt responsible. No, he was responsible for what happened to her. It haunted him and it left him feeling like he was cloaked in a shroud of shame. He felt like he had destroyed something special. It didn't matter how many people tried to tell him otherwise, or how many psychiatrists tried to convince him that the state of mind he had been in at the time was practically unavoidable, considering all of the things he had been through. He knew that her death was his fault and he was sure that he was the reason she hadn't come back.

He had given up and wanted to die. He had been willing to sacrifice the entire human race to gain that blissful release as he huddled under the stairs and waited for that bullet to core through his head and paint the wall behind him with his blood and his brains. He just wanted the pain and his sense of worthlessness to come to an end. It wasn't like anyone would miss him right?

Then Misato came charging down the hall, firing on the run, trying to save his worthless life and he still wouldn't move. He couldn't feel the danger that humanity was facing. He couldn't even feel the danger that he was putting her in by forcing her to come after him. All he felt was his own pain and misery.

Even seeing her get shot hadn't shaken him out of his self absorbed despair. It wasn't until she slammed him up against the elevator cage and began yelling at him that her words began to truly cut through the emotional fog that surrounded his mind. He finally started to hear what she was saying to him and it slowly began to seep into his brain.

And then she kissed him. He knew it wasn't intended to be a romantic kiss, but it still spoke volumes to him about Misato and the place she occupied in his life and in his heart, and where he was in her life and her heart. He had never been kissed like that before and he doubted he ever would be again. It had been a kiss of genuine love and desperation. It was the act of a person who knew she was about to die.

As she gave him her cross and pushed him into the elevator, the reality of her situation began to dawn upon him. He found just enough resolve within himself to go and do as she had asked. To go and fight and find his place.

And none of it had mattered a damn. He couldn't get out in time to help Asuka fight and he had nothing left after seeing her Eva eviscerated on the battle scarred ruins of the Geo-Front. He failed, and Misato had died for nothing.

He was finally able to find his voice again, shaky as it was. "In one of my recurring nightmares I see you standing there in front of me. I hear a gunshot and suddenly you're laying on the ground in a pool of blood and I'm holding a gun in my hand. It might as well have been me that shot you.

I've been told that it's not rational, but I feel responsible for what happened to you. I wanted to give up and it killed you. I killed you, the only person in my life who was ever there for me and who truly cared. I don't know how I'm supposed to live my life with your blood staining my soul, but I'm trying. To do anything else would be an insult to you."

It took him several minutes to pull himself together again and he gripped her cross tightly the whole time, drawing strength and comfort from her final gift as he always had. And, just as it always had, it helped him to pull himself out of the emotional hole he had fallen into.

His shrink had told him that Misato's cross was a crutch, that as long as he kept it he would never be able to deal with her death, that he needed to give it up or else he would never be able to stand on his own. That was the last time he had seen his shrink. As he walked out of her office that day she had a very shocked look on her face because he had just told her, explicitly and precisely, which orifice she could shove her theory into.

"I know, I'm still pretty pathetic sometimes," he sniffled. "And I swore I wasn't going to fall apart like this, but here I am in pieces."

He picked up his now half empty can of beer and drained the remainder of it. "I didn't quite know what to think of you at first you know," he began, his voice still shaky. "I mean, you did send what was essentially a boob shot to a fourteen year old boy and you did act kind of immature most of the time. And your apartment was such a dump. Not to mention that I got stuck with almost all of the chores. I know you cheated at rock, paper, scissors, I just don't know how you did it though."

He chuckled lightly, trying to drag himself out of the impending bout of depression he seemed to be headed for. He knew that if he didn't it would be weeks before he was right again. He had been down that road too many times and he didn't want to go there again. He wiped away his slowing tears with the back of his hand.

"And you could have warned me about PenPen, who, by the way, is alive and well and living at my apartment. It was pretty embarrassing to suddenly realize that I was standing there in front of you as naked as the day I was born. At least you didn't laugh, for which you have my undying gratitude. And if I recall you did return the favour a time or two, although I still don't know if you did it on purpose or not.

I know that you really tried to get me to open up and be more like a normal teenager should have been, and I know that I wasn't very cooperative about it. I spent way too much time feeling sorry for myself and quite frankly I was embarrassed by a lot of the things you did and how you lived. Oddly enough it was Toji and Kensuke who made me realize I was really the only person who you showed that side of yourself to. Eva aside, I started to feel a little like maybe I was in a good place after all and that my life could become something more than the lonely, painful thing it had been so far, and it was all because of you.

The JetAlone incident woke me up a little too. I didn't know that I could feel that concerned about another human being. I was so scared that you were going to die but I also realized that you were brave and that you had the strength to do whatever it took to get the job done. I think some of that strength was beginning to rub off on me." He smiled. "And so did some of your bad habits. My apartment's a mess, there are clothes, beer cans, and books lying all over the place, and I chug a beer now every morning when I get up."

His tone turned a little more serious again. "Even if I couldn't see it, you kept showing me that you cared. You worried about me, you cried for me when I was hurt or when I disappeared inside an Angel or my Eva. You really did care about me Misato. From the time you took me into your home you cared. No one else had since my mom died and I will never forget that. I just wish you were here to see how Asuka and I have turned out.

We're both going to college now, even though we don't need to. The UN found a bunch of SEELE's assets and decided to give some of it to the survivors of the Tokyo 3 branch of NERV. We could do whatever we want now, but we decided that trying to live a normal life was what we really wanted to do. The money's nice, but a normal life means more to us than that. It's what we want to do with our lives."

He hesitated for a moment, seriously thinking about what he was going to say next and whether or not he should say it. It was something that had been on his mind for a long time now and it was one of the things that made him finally find it within himself to come and visit her memorial.

"I'll probably make an ass out of myself saying this, but I love you Misato, and you can take that in whatever way you want. I loved you as a friend and I loved you as my guardian, and yes, I even loved you as on object of desire. I may not have shown it, but I had the same feelings and wants and desires as any other teenager. I also loved you simply because you were you and I wish I could have been someone you could have fallen in love with too. I wish I had been older and had my shit together, maybe then I could have been something more to you. Maybe then I could have filled that lonely place in your heart and made you happy.

I still love you, and if you were here I'd do my best to try and convince you how serious I am about that. Now that I'm an adult I think more and more about it because it would be a possibility now. At least, I'd like to think so. Then again, maybe I'm just being selfish and delusional. No matter how you feel about me, even if you hate me, it doesn't matter. I just want you back."

He laughed. "And remember, after that adult kiss you gave me you said we'd do the rest later. You sure are going to great length's to avoid it, aren't you? Well, I wouldn't hold you to that, I respect you too much to use that to my advantage, but I sure as hell would at least demand a date as compensation. You could do a lot worse than me you know.

Hell, I decided to buy my motorcycle because I had a daydream while I was looking it over that I was riding down the highway with you sitting behind me with your arms wrapped around me. If that doesn't say that I've got it bad for you, I don't know what does. Then again, maybe Asuka was right all along and I really am just a pervert. You have to admit though, you would look damn good in a set of bike leathers."

He rose to his knees, brought the first two fingers of his right hand to his lips, then touched them to the marker bearing her name. He spoke softly.

"If there's any way possible that you can hear any of what I've said Misato, and if you can forgive me, please, come back to us. Come back to me. You are loved and you are missed. Life just isn't the same without you around."

Feeling emotionally drained, he slowly rose to his feet and picked up his pack. "I have to go now, I'm meeting Asuka, Hikari, Toji and Kensuke at a bar a few blocks from here. We'll have a toast in your honour and I'll toss back a few for you. I'm glad I finally came here and I promise I'll come by a lot more often. I hope I'll get to see you again some day."

He let his hand linger on the stone a few moments longer before slinging his pack over his shoulder and quietly walking out of the cemetery.

Twelve kilometres away, along the shoreline of the LCL sea, was a zone of land reclaimed from the rubble of the battle against the Angels. It had been cleaned up and landscaped, and a monitoring centre and medical aid station had been built. The shoreline was watched by cameras and motion detectors and patrolled by people trained in emergency first response procedures, riding four wheeled utility vehicles stocked with first aid supplies.

About a kilometre to the west of the monitoring centre was a section of the shoreline that was marked on the response maps as Area One. It was the same area where Asuka Langley Sohryu and Shinji Ikari, the first two people to emerge from the LCL sea, came back to the physical world.

Several metres out in the LCL sea, the naked figure of a woman burst from the blood scented liquid, gasping for air as she expelled the fluid from her lungs. She stumbled and struggled to the shore, determined to make it out of the sickly orange-red fluid, her slim, buxom body finally making it to land and hitting the sand with a wet thud. She lay motionless on the shore, breathing heavily, her long, purple, LCL saturated hair plastered to her face, neck and shoulders.

She had become aware of a familiar voice and had followed it, letting it lead her back to the world she should have returned to long ago. Just before exhaustion overtook her and her gentle brown eyes closed, her lips curled into the slightest and most genuine of smiles as she uttered four words that even her own ears would have been hard pressed to hear.

"I forgive you Shinji."

Authors Notes: Took me longer than I expected to do this one, I hope I doesn't suck.

For now at least, this story is complete, but as I did with Letters, there is a possibilty that I could revisit it at a later date. That will depend, at least in part, to the review and PM responses I get. If you have some ideas, feel free to let me know. If I use it, you will get credit for it.

The character of Lt. Lake is from a story that I had started, but put on hold. It was beginning to look like my ACC's were going to dominate the story too much, so I set it aside and may do something with it later.

I hope you liked this and I am looking forward to your comments.

While you're here, why not check out my other work. You know how to find it.