Evangelion 1.0 3.0 -

"Both of me were wrong," Shinji said. "And both of me were trying. That's not a contradiction. That's just being alive."

"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

"You took your time," she said. "Asuka's cooking. Rei's trying to help. And Kaworu's tuning the piano." "Both of me were wrong," Shinji said

He took a step forward anyway.

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. That's just being alive

At the center of the collapsing worlds, Shinji found the true Instrumentality: not the merger of souls, but the separation of timelines . Gendo had been holding them together with sheer will, terrified that if the two versions of his son met, one would forgive him and the other would hate him—and he couldn't bear either.

The battle that followed wasn't against Angels or EVAs. It was against memory. Shinji dodged a lance of light that was actually the first sunset he'd ever watched with Toji and Kensuke. He parried a blast that tasted like Misato's coffee, lukewarm and kind. Asuka fought beside him—both Asukas: one screaming in German, the other silent, her eyepatch weeping tears of LCL.