Credits

Neon Genesis Evangelion (Shinseiki Evangelion) is copyright © 1996 to 2003 Studio Gainax. Everything here is theirs, even most of the story. Of course, since everyone over there at Gainax knows what it means to be a starving, down-on-his-luck artist, I'm sure they wouldn't even think about suing a loyal fan like me…right?

A Spoiler Warning! This story covers episodes 22 through 24 of the series and contains major spoilers for the end of the series. If you haven't seen those episodes, and you want to see them without the slightest idea what happens, then go see them and then come back. Please come back.

Special thanks goes to Estara, who helped me very willingly and, uhm, helpfully with the German in this story. Danke, ich spreche nicht die Deutsche!

An Important Note: Somewhat surprisingly, a few people have asked me to continue this fic in their reviews. Unfortunately, Blue Eyes is finished, BUT those looking for more should go check out my newly-debuted piece Piano Solo. It's a continuation fic for both the series and Blue Eyes; the only reason I didn't simply extend this piece was that I wanted to start it as a separate story. I'm very glad to see people are enjoying my work, and I do (sporadically _ ) update. Thanks!

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Blue Eyes in a Little Girl

I. Echoes

Katsuragi Misato savored a brief moment of silence at NERV headquarters, relaxing in the staff quarters. A steaming mug of coffee sat on the endtable next to her, though she wished very much that she could make the thick brown liquid transmogrify into some form of alcohol.

Briefly the Major contemplated sneaking vodka into the base so she could spike the coffee, but quickly dismissed the idea. That's pathetic, she scolded herself. You may be a bum, but you're not a lowlife. She nearly smiled at her own reprimand, yet something stole her attention.

It was the sound of the room—silence. No one else seemed to be present. She checked her watch hurriedly, assuring herself that she was not supposed to be back on duty yet, then looked around again. No one else in the room.

Misato sighed inwardly. On any other day, Kaji Ryoji would have been leaning against the wall next to her, trying playfully to reignite their college romance. She would have been shooting him down, of course, but she realized now—now that he was gone—that Kaji was one of the few sources of true life in the NERV base.

If I ever see you again, I'm going to say those words I couldn't say eight years ago.

Bye.

Those were the last words she ever heard from him. She hadn't even heard them from him, only from the grainy answering-machine tape that still sat, unrewound and unerased, in her living room.

"Damn you," she whispered to the air. "You self-centered bastard. Why'd you have to go and die…?" She could feel the tears beginning to well at the edges of her eyes again, a sensation she hated above all others.

Suddenly, without thinking, she clutched the mug of coffee in a death-grip, in one jerking motion pulling it to her lips, reclining both mug and neck and nearly throwing the burning liquid down her throat. She was still fighting tears and choked on the stuff, coughing violently. The coffee that had spilled from the mug was now spattered across her face and neck, throbbing and staining her shirt and vest in progressive shades of brown.

When the coughing fit finally subsided Misato set the mug back on the end table, now all but devoid of its former contents. There was still no one in the room. Her heart still ached, but she had succeeded in her goal—she no longer felt like crying.

****
Ayanami Rei was absent at school that day.

****

"Rei?"

"Yes."

"We're going to check your physical integrity again today."

"Yes."

"This will only hurt a little."

The girl did not so much as wince as Dr. Akagi drew blood. She did, though, sense that Ritsuko was feeling pensive, and not only about concentrating on her work. That was alright with her. Rei was used to making people feel awkward. It seemed to be a side-effect of her very existence, if one that did not appear in any of the good doctor's tests and examinations.

Ritsuko poked and prodded the girl with an array of other instruments, and finally stood still.

"Alright, Rei. It looks like you're still intact."

Rei nodded silently and stood up. She said a quiet word of thanks as she left the room, leaving Ritsuko behind.

As she walked through the corridor back to the main control area, Rei noticed Ibuki Maya coming toward her. "Hello Rei," the woman said as she passed. Rei nodded a greeting and then the two were no longer in sight of each other.

Rei considered Dr. Ibuki as the gap widened. The young woman always seemed to regard the First Child with a mix of fascination and trepidation, simultaneously attracted and repelled.

Ikari-kun is like that, too, Rei thought. But she corrected herself. No. He is not. His attraction is something else. A purer motive. But one which I do not understand.

She felt no need to ponder the issue further, and the hallway was filled with the sound of her steps echoing hollow off the walls.

****

Ritsuko gathered up her tools and instruments without a word, putting them back on shelves and in sleeves.

We call them Children, she mused, but they never will be.

A clack as she tried to replace a stethoscope, in her absent-mindedness ramming it against the cupboard instead of putting it inside. Unfazed and now more aware, she put the tool back in its proper place.

Sighing, she sat down on the now-empty examination table. She reached into her pocket out of habit before she remembered she had surrendered all of her cigarettes before entering the sterile hospital area.

So, she said to herself, what if one day I do my tests and have to tell her…that she's not still intact?

Smiling sardonically, she answered her own question.

We'll get a new one.

"There are plenty more where that came from," she muttered to the air. "Thanks to you, Commander Ikari. You've created a monster. And she doesn't even know she's a monster. A soulless beast."

But they do have a soul, another voice told her. It was her mother's voice, come as ever to argue a point of logic.

Maybe, Ritsuko replied. But just one soul. Just one, and so many of them. All the others are just bodies. Carcasses.

Things.

She waited, but there was no reply.

****

Misato arrived in the control room to prepare for the synch tests that evening. She had learned long ago that for her this meant mostly shuffling papers around on her personal desk, but at least this way she could create a veneer of productivity.

The techs gave their reports in turn, all variations on "systems normal", and Misato departed for the testing room. Ritsuko and Maya were already there, adjusting graphs and toying with buttons so numerous that Misato could barely one from another.

"Everything's about ready," Ritsuko told her. "All we need now are the pilots."

"School doesn't let out for another few hours."

Ritsuko nodded wordlessly and pressed a series of keys. The display switched outputs several times and finally settled on a graph displaying three colored lines. All flat at the moment, without anything to read. Misato looked out into the giant testing bay and realized the plugs had not even been set adrift in the LCL yet.

"Something wrong, Major?"

Misato looked up, surprised to hear Ritsuko address her with a formal title. "No, why?" she said as casually as she could manage.

"You seem awfully quiet today."

"Nothing. It's nothing."

"Would this have to do with a certain ex-boyfriend?"

Misato bristled. "No! I don't care about him anymore!"

"Hmm." Ritsuko half-smiled and looked back at the computer readouts.

Misato headed for the door. "Call me if anything comes up," she said tersely.

"Will do, Major."

Had the door not been controlled by a machine, Misato would have slammed it shut behind her.

****

Sohryu Asuka Langley strode through the streets of Tokyo-3, Ikari Shinji trailing not far behind. Rei had not been in school that day, again. Asuka had long ago stopped wondering what she did on these days off, deciding she would never know the answer and that a girl like Rei wasn't worrying about in the first place.

The day was eminently clear and blue-skied, but the two children were headed to the enclosed corridors of the NERV base.

They're always testing us, Asuka thought angrily. If it wasn't a physical examination it was a synch test or a psychological screening. There seemed to be no end to the number of times they could perform the exact same procedures and be dissatisfied with the results.

They had kept Shinji for a particularly long time after his battle with the fourteenth angel and ensuing entrapment inside Unit-01. Asuka had not been allowed access to much information regarding the event or anything surrounding it, but she gathered that the Third Child had been subjected to an almost nonstop battery of tests and evaluations for nearly a week afterward.

They were synch testing again that evening. It was a standard procedure, one she had undergone countless times since becoming a pilot, but Asuka had her doubts. They had intensified since the days before Liriel's attack, when Shinji had outperformed both of the other Children, though from what Asuka could tell it hadn't done him much good in the actual battle.

And now she stood in doubt of even her prospective scores tonight. Something had been nagging at her mind for almost three days, and she was at a loss to tell what it was. She could not force it to revelation, as she might have with a physical opponent; she could not connive or manipulate it into whispering in her ear what it was. And perhaps worst of all, she could not ignore it.

Before she realized how far she had come, the giant pyramid of NERV headquarters rose before her, dwarfing the young children by many times. A nameless technician was crouched by the door, tinkering none too delicately with a panel open on the side of the building.

"Door's not working," he said around a mouthful of wrench, not looking up from his task.

At least they're trying to fix it, Asuka thought. She gestured angrily at Shinji, who shuffled forward and began to turn the manual-operation crank. Finally, after much huffing and heaving, the door was open enough that the two of them could bend down slightly and fit through.

They entered into a dim hallway which was merely a preface to the main base; a security precaution. From behind them they heard a loud crash and an even louder curse as something went wrong for the technician. Asuka mentally shrugged and carded open the door to the base itself.

These corridors were considerably brighter and less dingy; NERV seemed to take great pride in appearances. The halls of the base were also spacious, although traffic was so light in any given corridor that Asuka suspected it was one of the Commander's occasional excesses.

Asuka stopped at the women's changing room, Shinji stopping automatically behind her. Asuka walked toward the entrance, then turned and fixed him with a severe gaze.

"What, are you going to watch or something? The men's changing room is that way." She pointed down the hallway.

"Huh? Er…oh yeah."

That moron, Asuka thought, entering the changing room. Can't do anything without somebody telling him. Like some kind of doll.

Rei was already in the changing room, pulling on her plug suit.

"Well speak of the devil," Asuka muttered under her breath. The other girl did not look up at the words.

"I saw you weren't at school today," Asuka said, speaking more directly to Rei.

"Dr. Akagi had need of me."

"They say you're not supposed to participate in after-school activities unless you've attended."

"Do they?"

Asuka snorted. "Scheisse. Humor is lost on the humorless."

"It was not humor," Rei said, inflectionless. "It was a deliberate attempt to provoke me."

"Yeah, well, it's all the same rule," Asuka said, climbing into her red raiments. "Emotion is lost on the emotionless."

"Mm." Rei sealed her plug suit and walked out of the changing room, toward the test bay.

Asuka fitted her own suit and sat down heavily on the bench in the middle of the room. She seemed to cease holding herself up, pouring all her weight down into the faux wood. The tickle in her mind had become a raging itch, begging to be discovered and yet concealing itself.

Asuka put her head in her hands and resisted the urge to sob openly. Synch test. Have to do the synch test…the test…have to succeed this time…damn Shinji and his test scores…it doesn't mean anything…damn tests scores…it doesn't mean anything…

In a sudden feat of sheer will Asuka pulled herself to her feet and strode out of the room, doing her best to appear confident. The test scores didn't mean anything, and she would prove it.

****

Ikari Gendo sat behind an indulgently large desk, face half-hidden behind steepled fingers. He faced his sub-commander, Fuyutsuki, without seeming to blink.

"Have we received the test scores yet, Professor?"

"They're just about to begin."

"Ah. How convenient. Inform me the moment the scores arrive."

"Of course. But if I might ask—"

"SEELE. They seem inordinately interested in sending us a fifth Child, but we have no Eva units free for him to pilot. I think it's time for a little act of deus ex machina, don't you?"

Turning before he left the room, Fuyutsuki smiled for a moment. "Of course, Commander. Although…SEELE, NERV. It is often difficult to tell who is the god and who is the machine."

Even Ikari allowed himself a brief half-smile. "It doesn't matter. The principle is the same."

****

Three pilots floated in the silent, inky blackness of their respective plugs, as Ritsuko, Misato, and a crew of others watched through cameras from far away. All three had closed their eyes, for within the plug there was nothing to be seen.

Numbers flashed incessantly, overlaid on the children's portraits. Very few of them held meaning for Misato, but the scientists seemed to understand every one. "Asuka's synch rate is dropping," Ritsuko muttered. Misato watched a graph, mapping itself in real time, trace a slow but steady downward arc.

"What's it mean?" she asked the scientist.

"It means there's some kind of psychological disturbance in the pilot."

"Are you sure it's psychological?" Misato asked. "I think it's 'that time' for her. Could that be causing it?"

"No," Ritsuko said confidently, shaking her head. "Physiological disruptions wouldn't affect the synch rate this much. Maybe a bit of a decline due to lack of concentration, but nothing as noticeable as this."

Misato pondered her response. She was at a loss to tell what might be causing such a "disturbance", although she was painfully aware that she was not privy to every detail of Asuka's life.

Ritsuko motioned to one of her assistants, who scrawled something on a sheet of paper and handed it to someone behind him.

"Alright," Ritsuko said into the mic. "The synch test is over. All pilots please disembark the plugs now."

The last Misato saw of the Children's faces was all three of them opening their eyes, before the screen faded to black.

****

Asuka pressed several buttons and heard an hydraulic hiss as the egress hatch of her plug opened. The light from the test bay was piercing after so long in utter blackness. From the room outside she heard the other plugs opening and their pilots emerging. She had a dark feeling that she had not scored surpassingly well on the synch test.

Combating the sick feeling in her stomach, Asuka pulled herself out of her plug and sat atop it, her knees pulled up to her chin, waiting for the techs to approach and retrieve her.

When the boat arrived she climbed silently into the platform that was raised up to her, saying nothing to the man piloting the craft. He seemed to be none the worse for lacking conversation with her, and she was glad for it. They docked at the edge of the plug bay and Asuka stepped back onto dry land.

She was glad to have been the last pilot retrieved; she did not want to meet up with the other Children. Without a word to her escort Asuka opened the door and walked out into the hallway, taking a sharp turn to the hallway that would eventually lead to the changing rooms.

When she arrived she found the room empty. Almost soundlessly she sloughed off her plug suit and donned the school uniform she had been wearing when she came. She folded her plug suit more neatly than usual and set it back into her locker.

She waited some time then, staring at the red garments piled against the military green of the surrounding metal. She thought nothing, made no sound.

Finally, before she thought of what she was doing, she closed the locker, a firm sound of metal colliding on metal echoing throughout the room. She turned and walked out of the changing room, content with the silence. The hall was empty, and vast, yet Asuka felt focused only on herself.

As she made a turn past the control room, she saw a familiar figure emerge through the metal door.

"Ah, Miss Sohryu."

Dr. Akagi turned toward her, holding a clip board. Asuka tensed; nothing good ever came of being addressed by your surname.

"I'd like a word with you about your synch scores."

****

Dropped eight points? Asuka thought to herself as she left Ritsuko's office. How…

She walked out of the NERV base, maintaining the grave expression she had worn all day, refusing to let her distress show on her face. It was approaching darkness as she left the building and started for the apartment she shared with Misato and Shinji.

The worst part is that he won't say anything, she seethed. He'll just act all normal and humble. It'd be so much easier to take if he'd gloat.

Before she wanted to she had arrived at the apartment complex, and she walked in and took the elevator to her floor. She considered riding the elevator as far up as it would go, and then taking it all the way back down, over and over, until the world ended.

But when she arrived at her floor she stepped off and stood for a long moment, at length willing herself to walk to the door of their apartment and open it. From within she could hear the deep notes of Shinji's cello; Bach's Minuet in C.

Without even a muttered rude remark about the noise she shut the door and tossed her school bag to the floor. In even strides Asuka walked to her room, sliding the door shut and wishing—as she had done so many times she had lost count—that the flimsy thing had a lock on it.

She pulled off her school uniform, bothering to fold it only because she did not want to have to iron it some other time.

In the brief moment of transit between one skin and another, Asuka let her entire guard collapse. Her mouth crumpled from a taut line in a slight sigh, and her eyes filled with the sum total of the emotion she had kept from them all day. She pulled from her hair the red bows which held it in place during the day, subconsciously relishing the sensation of the soft strands as they cascaded down her back.

She shook her head once, scattering the hair from one side to the other before it settled back onto her skin.

Silently Asuka walked to her dresser and pulled out a pair of slightly oversized, fraying pink pajamas, and slipped into them. The sleeves hung loosely on her arms, but she was happy for the slight mobility it granted, and the coolness of the air that came in through the wrists.

Asuka crouched in the corner of her room, holding her knees to her chest. Now that she was once again aware of the world outside her room she could hear the cello still playing, although the song had changed. Now the dark, slow notes of Barber's Adagio underscored her thoughts, seeming to penetrate throughout the apartment.

She heard the door open.

"I'm home!" Misato announced.

"Welcome home," Asuka murmured, knowing it was impossible for Misato to hear. She caught the padding footfalls of PenPen coming to greet his master, and Misato bending to pick him up.

"I'll get dinner ready," Misato said. Asuka turned her face downward into her knees, struggling to staunch the tears she knew were trying to escape.

Misato's footsteps moved to the kitchen, and the girl could detect faintly the sounds of the older woman rummaging through pots and pans to get at some desired tool.

From another room, the sounds of the cello played on.