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fanfic_mausoleum_n_grill) wrote2009-07-10 07:07 pm
C O N T R O L | its not yours
C O N T R O L
its not yours
its not yours
It burned, like a badly skinned palm. There was no pain, just that incessant burn that ached enough to be irritating. Gendo studied the angel now placed expertly under the flesh of his right hand.
It was grotesque, bulging like a pus-filled wound, irritating all the skin around it and turning it an angry red. The flesh over the thing itself was thick, but hardly appeared to be human at all. It was unnaturally translucent, and revealed Adam in all its embryonic glory.
Gendo flexed his hand, the burning feeling slowly becoming familiar so that he could tuck it away in the back of his mind to forget it. His hand would not close to make a proper fist, the angel in his palm fighting against the joints of his fingers. Concentrating, he forced his hand closed further, the burning giving way to full-fledged pain that ate through the effects of the drugs they had given him. Still further, and his entire hand turned red, until finally, his skin gave way.
It burst down the middle of the implanted angel, sending a horrific gush of blood mingled with some clear fluid that might have been pus or something else entirely. He wasn't sure, but the surprise it gave him caused him to open his hand immediately. He didn't allow any reaction to show as he watched the thing stir very slightly. A single breath caught in his throat, and the most fleeting thought that he might have underestimated this passed through his mind.
But Adam did not stir again. It was silent and still and grotesque in his hand; away he filed the fact that the torn skin was now healed once again, though paler than before if that were at all possible.
Turning his hand over, he was pleased to see the strange alterations to his skin had not made it through to the back. It was confined to his palm. For now.
The fist again, though this time he did not attempt to force it. The tendons moved as he opened and closed his hand, the faint track of veins were hidden and revealed, and again he noted they seemed... odd. Or not odd, just... off. Other than that, everything appeared as normal. With effort, he slipped a glove on over his abnormal hand.
That sensation in itself was beyond him. It was like putting a glove on as anyone might experience, but he could also feel it... outside himself. Someone else was touching his hand, or he was touching someone else's hand, or... or...
Gendo shut his eyes tightly and tried to ignore the spinning feeling. Even in the darkness behind his eyelids, the room felt like it was turning, moving around him, expanding, contracting, breathing like a--
He snapped his eyes open, and things were immediately back to normal. Maybe he had underestimated this, but the Project was all that mattered in the end. There was no room for this sort of foolish imagination. It was obviously an effect the drugs were having on him. Perhaps a few minutes more rest, and then returning to routine would cure him of such things. Events were approaching a critical point, and he could not be lax in his duty.
He stared very intently at the main screen, his hands folded in front of face. It was a necessity now to keep his hand from visibly shaking.
There were moments of pain, but they weren't confined to his hand now. An hour after the procedure, after his initial inspection of the result, the burning remained, however distant, but short, stabbing pains occurred infrequently in his arm. First they were in his forearm, which he ignored, then it rooted in his elbow, and for an hour he couldn't move it in the least; the joint had frozen up completely.
The danger of holding the fate of the world in his very human hands and knowing it: he waited until that pain passed and put it out of his mind.
Today, his leg hurt.
Gendo put it out of his mind.
The 16th angel this time. It had been just a few days since Adam had been... added to himself, as he had known something would soon be approaching. Something. After the 15th, he had known the 16th would be stronger still, and what he was seeing was not proving him incorrect.
One hand closed tightly around the other where they were situated in front of his face again. Only he could hear the sound of the individual bones popping, snapping like brittle twigs. Pain flared, then faded as the right hand clenched tightly around the left.
Unit-00, Rei, the angel... an explosion. He stood abruptly, his hands falling to his sides, the bones mending as if they'd never been damaged in an instant.
Rei.
Without a word, he left the command center to see to... to the disposal of the dead.
It was dark in the room; not even the lights of the tank were on. Only a spare few consoles had a green or red indicator on them, but those were not bright enough to give out any sort of details of this place. This unholy place, as he had heard Fuyutsuki refer to it once.
The refuse had been taken care of. A spare had been activated. There was no reason for him to be here. Yet, in his office, he had felt the urge to explore Terminal Dogma, to see Rei, to open the tank. Coming to this room had been, he felt, the safest of those options. All the safety precautions, safety and security, on it would prevent any sort of accidental release, however odd his state of mind might be.
So he stood there in the dark, not wanting to tempt himself with the lights, with being able to see them in there, because he thought he understood, now, what was happening. "In time," he said quietly, his voice echoing around the empty room.
Yes, in time, things would happen, the goal would be accomplished, but some parts of this plan did not want to wait until that time. With a strange light-headed feeling about him, Gendo walked forward until he could feel the cooler air the tank gave off washing over his face. No light though, just as long as it remained dark, all would be fine; he would remain perfectly in control.
His hand rose and settled on the cool exterior. It was vibrating ever so gently. And then he began to push.
The muscles in his arm bunched as all of his strength was exerted through his arm, into his hand, against the tank. Fighting against common sense, he placed his left hand atop his right and pushed with both. Little was accomplished outside of pushing himself back, so he braced himself, leaned forward, and continued.
Nothing would happen though. He certainly couldn't penetrate the walls of the tank with just his two hands. That was why he did it, continued to do it, and didn't stop.
Then it happened, and his mind jerked him back to reality. His hand had actually started to sink through the glass. It had been melted or displaced, and his hand had actually started to pass through. If he hadn't been even as vaguely alert, it would have been too late. Everything would have been ruined.
With his left hand, he felt the spot where it had happened, expecting to feel the distortion in the tank. There was nothing though. It was still smooth, as if he hadn't even been touching it. His right hand formed a fist so tight, he could feel the strain in the tendons and the pressure in the palm, trying to push through the back.
It was getting more difficult to ignore it. The pain had abated, but had then given way to these moments of uncontrollability. And not just of his hand. Why had he come down here? Certainly not because he had any need to.
He, Gendo, had no need to. It was disturbing to know, as sure as he knew the 17th would arrive, that something else did have a need, and it was growing stronger. Or was he growing weaker? Sometimes it felt like he was being subsumed by...
Even though he forced it from his mind, he couldn't deny what the truth was. He was being subsumed, and he had willfully surrendered to it the moment he had requested the procedure be performed. If he had known then the consequences, he would have altered his timeline to include this. The longer he had to live with it in his hand, in him, the more difficult it became.
Gendo started back to his office slowly, avoiding getting anywhere the path to Terminal Dogma. One minute he'd be in the hallway, he knew, and the next he'd be there in front of Lilith. If it went that far, there was no telling if he'd be able to hold it back, or if the call would simply be that powerful.
No, he had to get to his office and lock himself in it. That seemed to help him regain control, though the length of time was growing shorter with each occurrence. Each day, his time was growing shorter, and when it was up, it would be the end.
The end of everything.
It had happened again. Time had ceased to exist the moment he had stepped into his office and the dull red glow from the Sephirotic table had engulfed him.
And now he was standing in front of his desk, his pistol held firmly in his right hand. He looked down the barrel right at Fuyutsuki's forehead.
Calling him in here, yes, he sort of recalled doing so. For...? Something now lost. And then the old man had... Done what? Entered the office as was typical and found this. Instead of the man perfectly in control at all times, a shivering wreck? Maybe he appeared as normal until suddenly pulling the gun out. Or even possibly the reflexes and instincts of a beast combined with the knowledge of a man, and he had reacted like a surprised beast.
The exact stillness of his arm was no reaction of a frightened animal, or even a frightened person.
A bead of sweat rolled down from Fuyutsuki's forehead to his nose as his eyes stared intently at the gun. His normally slightly pale skin was now blotchy, color high in his cheeks, his mouth hanging open like a cow ready for slaughter.
Ready for slaughter, just like all the rest of them, the ones that did this to him.
"Ikari..." The first time he had ever heard the professor sound genuinely scared.
Ikari. No one did anything to him. Yes, that was it. Ikari. Like Yui. Gendo. Not Adam.
His finger twitched on the trigger, but did not exert enough pressure. But... another millisecond, would he have fired? Would he have killed the old professor?
He knew the old man would have said yes in an instant, and maybe he would have, but not like this. His hand trembled. Not like this. There was a slight squealing, crunching noise as his hand closed tighter on the grip of the weapon. Not like this, not without reason. His hand trembled more violently, and then with a loud gasp, he hurled the gun across the office.
It hit the floor with a loud clatter and skidded along until it came to rest at the far wall.
"Take care of that," Gendo said just loudly enough for Fuyutsuki to hear him. He slumped against the desk, staring down at his hand.
Fuyutsuki's exit went completely unnoticed, though he was grateful when the door closed and left him in relative darkness once again.
He could no longer entrust others with what needed to be done; he couldn't be sure they wouldn't end up dead before they served their purpose.
The 17th came and went, and he was barely even aware of it. He'd blink and hours would pass from the time his eyes closed to when they opened again. The state of the Project was always in flux; he couldn't keep track it, or of anything else.
Faces swam in and out of his consciousness, but if they were one after another, together in a group, or days apart, it was impossible to tell. The only thing that helped at all, and even it was scarcely worth calling help, was to keep his goal firmly in his mind. When it was indeed his.
Yui. Have to see Yui. Must save Yui. Need Yui.
Her face floated in his mind, and sometimes he saw other people wearing it. Those times, he wasn't sure whether that was a good or bad thing. It probably kept him anchored, however tenuously, to reality, but so many times he had been on the very brink of collapse because of it as well.
This time, the face was there, on someone he couldn't quite remember the name of, and there was so much noise all around. A voice, his voice, spoke from his mouth: "I'm leaving you in control."
His body stood and went to the lift. The reason why was unknown, but he was in so much danger, the plan was.
Yui.
The 17th... Yes, it had been defeated, leaving only the 18th and the UN invasion forces. It hadn't been a shock at all; he had expected it.
"Say hello to Yui for me."
He didn't react to the words as the lift began to lower him from sight. He had heard them, but they didn't hold any meaning, like something spoken in a foreign language. Words didn't matter to him; Yui mattered.
As the lift came to a halt, he stepped off and strode away with a firm purpose in his mind. Finally it was time. At his side, his hand flexed, opening and closing, as if taking breaths. Or perhaps it was merely anticipating the moment when it would finally get what it had been waiting for.
From a hallway ahead that intersected his path to the elevator, he heard noises. Not loud noises; very faint, distant noises, like the scurrying of mice, or of bat wings beating the air. So insignificant, they didn't concern him.
When they showed themselves, threatened him, and in turn threatened the Project and Yui and Adam, his indifference fell away like old skin being sloughed off.
"Take--" the nearest one said just before something orange and translucent the size of a man's arm pierced his face and threw his brains all over the men behind him. There was a chatter of panicked gunfire, but none of the rounds reached him. What hadn't been there a moment before was there now, a vibrant shield of orange energy that made the metal walls around them vibrate.
Some of the men, having more of a head on their shoulders, attempted to take him by force, but if bullets could not pierce the AT field, then surely mere mortals would be held at bay. They were, but he was unsatisfied with this.
These ants, bootlickers, scrounging mongrels dared to try and stop him from reaching his goal. Eleven years of bottled human frustration, and a millennia of gathered unearthly energy were released with devastating results. He grabbed an arm that was attempting to hold him back and just squeezed.
A small spurt of pulp from between his fingers and he was no longer grasping an arm, and there was one less insect bothering him. Everything worked automatically for him, so much that he didn't even know what was happening, except that when he walked away, the hallway was painted with the gore and the pulverized insides of ten men.
They would not see the Project stopped. They would not stop him from being reunited with Yui.
Yui. Have to see Yui. Must save Yui. Need Yui.
Clean, not a drop of blood visible on him, Gendo stepped through the gigantic doors that sealed Lilith off from the world. He shivered violently seeing her form on the cross, released from the hold of the Lance. He feared it, the Lance; it was the only thing that could truly hurt him. Hurt Adam.
Gendo shook his head, trying to clear his thoughts, and looked around. How long had it been? There was a vague memory of the command center and Fuyutsuki saying something to him, then a hallway... He couldn't recall anything clearly from the previous few days, if that's all it had been.
Of course, the last thing he did remember was finding a gun in his hand that was leveled at Fuyutsuki's face. Maybe it was better that he didn't remember, just as long as he remembered one thing: Yui.
His heart clenched, and at this point in time, he couldn't be sure why. The cause was obvious, but not the reason.
She was there, waiting for him, gazing up at Lilith as well. His hand started to reach out for her, but he regained control and held it to his side. Not yet. "Rei." To his own ears, his voice had a strange, unearthly timber to it, but whether Rei noticed or cared, she did not show it; her eyes were fixed firmly on the white giant. "It's time."
A thrill raced through him at these words, and he knew that the reaction was not exactly his own. It didn't matter though. It was time. Time to finally see Yui again.