He didn't choose. He walked forward, pressed his young hand to his father's fused trigger-hand, and pressed his scarred hand to the photograph of Yui.
"Two truths," Kaworu whispered, leading him to a door that hadn't been there a second ago. "The Near-Third Impact you stopped as 1.0 . And the Near-Third Impact you caused as 3.0 . They're both real. And both are collapsing into each other." evangelion 1.0 3.0
Shinji looked down. His left hand was young, the skin soft from Misato's reheated meals. His right hand was scarred, knuckles thick with calluses from piloting a mangled Eva through a radioactive hellscape. He saw Rei Ayanami—no, two of them. One stood beside Asuka in a dusty plugsuit, her hair short and white. The other waved from the Wunder's bridge, her hair long and dark, wearing the same blank expression. He didn't choose
Shinji Ikari didn't remember the 14-year gap. To him, one moment he was pulling the Spear of Cassius from Unit-01's core, the next he was staring at a sky the color of old blood, standing beside a man named Kaworu Nagisa on the cracked deck of the Wunder . "The Near-Third Impact you stopped as 1
The sea was normal. Blue. Salty. No LCL.
Shinji laughed. It was a young laugh, rusty from disuse. It was an old laugh, tired from too much use.
He didn't know if this was 1.0 or 3.0 or 1.0+3.0 .