DISCLAIMER: This is a work of fan fiction incorporating characters and situations from the Gainax manga/anime series Neon Genesis Evangelion and its related feature film releases. Gainax and its various media distributors hold sole exclusive rights to their use. The author is in no way affiliated with Gainax or its distributors, nor has this story been submitted for any commercial purpose.

Godchild
by Ikarus Onesun

Chapter Two: The New Normal

Asuka Langley Souryu slid aside the door to her bedroom and frowned sullenly. It was morning and she was preparing to leave for school, which meant that this was normally a time of chaos within the apartment she shared with Misato and Shinji. On a normal morning, Shinji would be the first one awake, preparing breakfast while Asuka showered and changed. Misato would shuffle into the kitchen, sleepy-eyed and mumbling as she reached for the first of the day's many beers, and then they would all sit down and eat together. Asuka would undoubtedly find something to complain about, like some new ingredient that Shinji had added to the soup that morning, Misato would quickly feel the kick from her beer breakfast and begin good-naturedly ribbing both of the Children about school, sync tests, and anything else that she thought might get a rise out of them, tempers would flare and arguments would start – and then, it would be time to leave, and Shinji and Asuka would walk to school together, usually bickering the whole way.

That was a normal morning.

Things hadn't been normal for a very long time.

Asuka looked across to Misato's bedroom door. She had spent almost every minute of the past two days in her room, coming out only to use the bathroom, or to collect yet another armload of beers from the refrigerator and take them back into her bedroom. Asuka had never actually seen the back of the fridge since she had moved in, as Misato had always been careful to keep it full of her beverage of choice at all times, but for the last two days she had been consuming her stockpile at a rapid rate, and the fridge was now nearly empty.

She really needs to go back to work, Asuka thought. She needs to do something to take her mind off of all this.

Misato was on a temporary leave of absence from NERV, ever since two nights ago when she had come home following the failed operation to recover Shinji from Unit 01. The redhead turned her thoughts back to that night, remembering how she had answered the door when the bell rang, to find Misato and a Section Two agent waiting outside. Misato had been unable to find her keys, so the agent had rung the doorbell. At first, Asuka had thought she was drunk, but her guardian's bleary eyes and dazed expression were not caused by alcohol, but by grief and sorrow. Then, as she stepped aside to allow the agent to help Misato into the apartment, realization hit Asuka like cold water in the face as the reason for Misato's condition became clear to her.

Shinji wasn't coming home tonight.

Maybe not ever.

Asuka remembered lying in her bed later that night, hearing the soft sobbing coming from the master bedroom across the hall. She had wondered if maybe she should do something, even just to knock on her door and ask if she was all right, if there was anything she needed. But she had held back, unsure of what to say or do, and remained in her room instead. Asuka had faced death numerous times, had defeated mighty foes with a determination and confidence that rivalled most adults, but in this situation, faced only with the quiet suffering of another, she had never felt more like a child. What could she do?

After a couple of hours, the sobs had died away, leaving only silence. And that was how things had remained.

It had been a tough four weeks since the last Angel attack. Misato had been working overtime almost every night, overseeing the refit of Unit 01 after the berserk Evangelion had somehow shattered most of its own armor following the battle, and consulting with Dr. Akagi on the operation to free Shinji from the EVA. The few times she had seen Misato during that period, she had been tired and irritable, and few words had passed between them. Asuka had found herself alone in the apartment for much of the past month, left to prepare her own meals or to order in something to eat, to clean up after herself, to do her own dishes and laundry, and she did not like it one bit.

This is all that idiot Shinji's fault! Asuka thought, for perhaps the thousandth time since everything had begun.

He had to come running in to save the day, just like always, and look where it got him!

And now EVERYBODY'S paying for his stupidity this time!

Just the thought of that last battle caused her shoulders to ache, as she recalled the agonizing feedback that had jolted through her body when the fourteenth Angel had shot its razor-edged limbs toward Unit 02, dismembering the EVA in the blink of an eye. The shock and pain had galvanized the redhead's rage, recklessly launching her unit into a kamikaze run toward the Angel. Thinking back, Asuka had to admit it was probably not the brightest of moves on her part. She was secretly thankful that Misato had ordered her neural link cut before the Angel had lashed out again, this time cleanly decapitating her EVA. The pain that had shot through her arms that day was nothing compared to the bitter agony of her defeat, and it still smarted a month later.

Things would have been different if all three EVAs had been deployed in the battle, Asuka knew. With Unit 01 by her side, and if necessary, the damaged but still operational Unit 00 as well, the Angel would have been quickly put down. To her consternation and embarrassment, Asuka had been unable to take the Angel solo, and the one time she actually needed Shinji, he had not been there for her. He had abandoned his fellow pilots, and she hated him for that. But he had come back, when all seemed lost, and once more the Invincible Shinji had prevailed – and Asuka hated him for that even more.

However, it seemed that Shinji had paid a terrible price for his victory, and not even Asuka considered it fair punishment for the thunder he had stolen from her.

Now, after the operation to retrieve him from Unit 01 had failed, it seemed that he may have paid the ultimate price, and Asuka could only wonder what that meant for the future.

What if the next Angel attack goes the same way as the last one? she thought, a small chill running the length of her spine.

What if… what if I can't beat it again?

That stupid doll Wondergirl can't pilot Unit 01, and the dummy plug won't work either.

Without Shinji, Unit 01 is useless.

Asuka quickly purged the thought from her mind, hating Shinji for making her doubt her own abilities.

I'll just HAVE to win next time, she resolved.

Failure is not an option.

Still, as much as she tried to block it out, that last thought nagged at her as she packed her briefcase and prepared to leave. Without Shinji, Unit 01 was indeed useless, and Asuka knew that there was no way that the Commander would tolerate this. So somehow, she reasoned, they had to get Shinji back, if they wanted Unit 01 back in action.

After the way the last battle went, the redhead was certain that NERV would want Unit 01 back in action pretty desperately.

They must have another plan, Asuka thought. They… we… need Unit 01.

She hated Shinji for making her admit that fact. She hated him for so many things at that moment.

She was growing so tired of hating him.

She hoped and prayed that she would have the chance to tell him how much she hated him.

As she clicked her briefcase shut, Asuka glanced into the kitchen and grimaced at the sight of the dirty dishes piled high in the sink, and of the overflowing trash bin.

They'd better bring him home soon, she thought. This place looks like a disaster, and if I have to eat takeout much longer…

"Misato? I'm leaving," Asuka called out.

She waited for a reply for long moments, but there was only silence from behind Misato's door.

With a sigh, the redhead stepped through the front door of the apartment and started out on her way to school… alone.

-----

Life in classroom 2-A had been very quiet for the past four weeks. A pall had descended over the usual chatter and chaos that accompanied most normal days in the classroom. Suzuhara was gone, still in serious condition in the hospital after what must have been a terrible accident. Nobody knew exactly what had happened to him – all that was known for sure was that he had somehow been in the vicinity of the thirteenth Angel's attack, and must have been caught in the battle with the EVAs. The class representative, Horaki, had gone to see him in the hospital almost every day, but other than telling the others how he was feeling, she wasn't saying much about what happened. If she knew anything, she wasn't telling – almost as if for some reason she wasn't allowed to.

Now Ikari hadn't been seen in weeks either, and the students sensed that something serious must have happened to him too. It was well known that Shinji Ikari was the pilot of the famous Evangelion Unit 01, and he was often absent from school for short periods when he was needed to defend Tokyo-3 against the Angels, to attend training sessions to hone his piloting skills, or when his perilous duties had landed him in the infirmary, but he had never been gone this long before. The students were curious, and worried, and wanted desperately to know what was going on. The few who were brave enough to approach Souryu about Ikari's absence were rewarded with a caustic stream of verbal abuse and highly descriptive threats of physical violence from the redhead, which were taken at their word by pretty much everybody. There was only one other person in the class who would definitely know something about Ikari, but as scary as Souryu could be, nobody had the courage to go up to that particular girl and ask.

Rei Ayanami sat at her desk, her chin in her palm, as she stared out the window at a small bunch of dried leaves that were caught in a dust devil spinning lazily on the basketball court below. The leaves swirled around and around, rising and falling, as if performing for their solitary audience watching from above. Rei understood the principles of thermal convection very well, having covered it the previous semester in science period. The phenomenon occurring before her was common and unremarkable, the mere result of the sun-warmed asphalt on the court generating an upward current in the slightly cooler air above. Yet her attention was strangely drawn to the cavorting leaves, and her ruby eyes followed each rise and fall of their carefree dance with interest.

They almost seem alive, she thought, as the leaves did a quick pirouette, settled to the asphalt, and then rose again, twisting merrily in the heat. Although I know that they are not.

Like so many things, they are not as they appear to be.

A tiny frown appeared at the corners of her delicate mouth, as she contemplated the chaos, spinning just like the leaves below, in her normally ordered thoughts.

For the last month, I have done nothing out of the ordinary, she thought. I have attended school, participated in synchronization tests, fulfilled all of my duties as normal.

So why does everything feel different?

Her ivory brow crinkled beneath her light blue bangs, as an image of the brown-haired boy formed in her mind, and she whispered his name in her thoughts once more.

Ikari.

Of course, Rei knew very well why everything felt different to her. She was just having a difficult time coming to grips with the realization that, for reasons that she could not explain, she had become used to Ikari's presence in her life. The fact that he was not here should not have had any effect on the performance of her duties, and in fact she had managed to maintain her synchronization ratio and her grades to the satisfaction of the Commander and Dr. Akagi during this period. She was behaving just as if she had never known Ikari, was carrying on as if nothing at all was wrong – and for some reason, this troubled the ruby-eyed girl.

The difference was that in Ikari's absence, she was now going about her tasks in a detached, dull, mechanical manner. To others, this would seem to be extremely normal for Rei Ayanami, who did everything from completing her school reports, to running through her EVA's system startup tasks, to eating her lunch with quiet, orderly precision. She seemed to be acting exactly like the cold, emotionless doll that Pilot Souryu always accused her of being. But to Rei, there was a significant difference. She had recognized that the Commander's son had somehow become an accepted part of her daily routine, almost without her knowledge.

A typical day in Rei's life consisted of her rising in the morning, showering, and preparing a meagre breakfast for herself before leaving her apartment to either go to school to attend class, or to NERV to undergo synchronization tests with the EVAs or to work on the dummy plug system with the Commander and Dr. Akagi. If it was a school day, she would make her way to class on her own, slipping quietly into the classroom and silently taking her seat. She would ignore the other students, and the curious stares and often unkind whispers that they directed her way, but unknown to them, she noticed every look and overheard all that was spoken about her. She would sit quietly during lectures, taking notes if she needed them, or would simply stare out the window while her teacher droned away in the background. She never raised a hand to ask a question, never spoke to anyone, and no one ever spoke to her. This is how things were for as long as she could remember.

When Ikari came, things changed radically, as far as her experience went anyway. Their first interactions were intense, and awkward – she recalled falling from the wheeled gurney when she had been taken to the EVA cages to pilot Unit 01 into battle against the third Angel, even though only days before, she had been seriously wounded in an activation test with Unit 00. She remembered the awful pain searing her insides, the pounding in her head and behind her injured eye, the cold steel mesh of the catwalk biting into her back as she lay helpless – and then, the comforting sensation of someone gently cradling her in their arms, and of a warm wetness splashing on her cheek, the tears of the boy holding her in his protective embrace.

Rei's eyelids lowered as she replayed the scene in her mind.

He refused to pilot Unit 01 – until he saw me, she thought.

He did it because he did not want me to have to go into battle.

He did it... to protect me.

Then there was the time he had come to her apartment, to deliver her new identity card. Fresh out of the shower, she had surprised him while he tried on the broken, melted glasses she had left on her dresser – the ones that had belonged to the Commander. Unsure of his intentions, she had bolted forward with no regard at all to her nudity, and snatched the glasses off of his face. They had become entangled in each other, and had crashed to the floor in a heap. For long moments, they had lain on the floor, Ikari holding himself over her naked form as their gazes locked, his blue-gray eyes fixed on her ruby ones. She recalled the kaleidoscope of expressions that had played across Ikari's face in those seemingly endless seconds – fear, shame, embarrassment, wonder, longing – and the warmth of his breath on her face and his hand on her breast, before he had been overwhelmed by the moment and had recoiled away from her, apologizing profusely.

Judging by his obvious discomfort, she had expected him to run from the room, and he had done exactly that. What she had not expected him to do though was to wait for her outside, and to accompany her to NERV, making sure that she had the new card that he had forgotten to give her in his haste to leave her apartment. He had even made a valiant attempt to strike up a conversation with her, which had abruptly ended when she had physically struck him for disrespecting the Commander – an action she had since come to regret.

Rei did not understand people in general, and teenage boys in particular, but she did appreciate that it must have taken a tremendous amount of courage for Ikari to have faced her again, and more so to even try to speak to her, so soon after that embarrassing incident. Her classmates, whom she had known for much longer, still could not so much as say hello to her.

The Commander called him a coward, Rei recalled. I practically accused him as being such as he lay in the hospital, before we sortied against the fifth Angel together.

But he was not as he appeared to be then, and he fought – and we won.

He could have run away again, this last time, but instead he came back and fought – and won.

Now, he might never come back.

A small part of Rei wished that Ikari had run when he had the chance, instead of returning to fight. It was an irrational thought, and she had no idea why such a nonsensical idea had occurred to her. If Ikari had stayed away, the Angel would have prevailed, and everyone on Earth might now be dead. But the thought lingered – they still might have found a way to defeat the Angel without him, and Ikari would be alive and well today, instead of trapped deep within the body of Evangelion Unit 01, perhaps forever.

She found herself thinking about all that was different about her life since Ikari had come to Tokyo-3. Now, when she entered the classroom in the morning, it was not to stares and whispers, but to the sight of Ikari's small, shy smile, and the sound of his quiet, tentative "Hello, Ayanami, how… how are you today?" Her answer was generally the same every time he asked, but he always seemed to brighten at her words, as if she had related some piece of information that was of vital importance to him.

During class, while the teacher droned on, she would occasionally glance up from her laptop screen to catch Ikari quickly looking away from her. She had thought the first few times that it might merely be coincidence, but as time went on, this seemed to continue to happen with regularity.

On the days that they would have to go to NERV for sync tests, before Souryu had moved in with the Major and Ikari, he had often met up with her along the way, and they would walk together. Rei knew that the location of Major Katsuragi's apartment in relation to NERV meant that their paths should not have crossed at any point. It was only after several days that she realized that Ikari was going out of his way in order to walk with her, and that he somehow knew exactly when she would reach the intersection where they normally met.

Once in awhile, he would walk her home from school as well, even though her apartment was further out of his way than NERV was. Whenever she asked him why he wished to accompany her, he would just look away and mumble something about it being a nice day for a walk, even though some days it was cloudy, and occasionally it rained.

Unlike the Commander, who only ever seemed to be interested in talking about work with her, Ikari would ask her about all sorts of different things – what kind of music she liked and if she played an instrument, her favorite foods, books she had read or movies that she might have seen, even if she was planning on trying out for the school's swim team (he had noticed that she was an exceptional swimmer, apparently). They did not seem like terribly important questions, but he was eager to know the answers. Rei would try to answer his questions as accurately and succinctly as she could, and for some reason he often seemed frustrated by her replies, but nevertheless, he never stopped asking. He had once even asked her for advice about how to talk to his father – even though Rei herself had no idea how to speak to the Commander about anything that didn't involve EVA, the dummy system, or Instrumentality.

At first, this unusual attention seemed very odd to her, but after a time, she had grown accustomed to their walks together, to their brief, hesitant conversations, to listening to the rise and fall of his voice as he nervously chattered away to her, to watching his face and noting how easily his expressions would change as he spoke.

Now Ikari was gone, and once again, she walked to and from school alone, went to work alone and came home alone, and spoke to no one unless spoken to first.

Things were, for Rei, back to normal.

Normal.

Why did she suddenly find the word so… distasteful?

Is this how it feels to "miss" someone? she wondered.

Do I… miss Ikari?

Rei felt a sudden warmth spreading across her pale cheeks. She raised a hand and touched her face absently, turning back to the window to see her pink, flushed reflection in the glass – as well as the reflection of the scowling, red-headed girl who was now standing directly behind her.

"Feeling all right, Wondergirl?" Asuka asked snidely. "You don't look well – that colour in your face makes you seem almost alive."

Rei turned in her seat and regarded the Second Child with a flat stare. "I am quite fine, Souryu." she replied calmly. Though she did not display any outward hint of her internal mood, the ruby-eyed girl was in no frame of mind to deal with Souryu at that moment.

The redhead sniffed. "Well, that's good to hear. At the rate we're losing pilots these days, we can't afford for you to get sick and die on us now, can we? I guess you've heard about what happened last Friday?"

Rei glanced around the classroom, and noticed that it was empty. The clock on the wall was just coming up on 4:15. School has been over for forty-five minutes, she thought.

"Yes, Dr. Akagi informed me on Saturday morning. I assume you learned the news from Major Katsuragi?"

Asuka rolled her eyes. "Yeah, she told me just before she locked herself in her room and proceeded to drink herself unconscious. She spent the whole weekend in bed, and I'm sure she'll still be there when I get home. Some guardian she turned out to be – if I was her real kid, I'd be in foster care by now."

Rei lowered her eyes. "Major Katsuragi cares very much for Ikari," she murmured. "She must… miss him terribly."

The redhead tossed a stray lock of hair out of her face. "Yeah… well, I'm sure she wouldn't be carrying on like this if I got stuck in Unit 02, not that it would ever happen since I'm not a total dummkopf like Shinji. Anyway, while you were daydreaming, we got an e-mail from NERV that says we have another sync test tomorrow morning. I already told Hikari we wouldn't be in class. I don't know why they're calling us in again so soon though, we just had one on Thursday and my scores were the best ever, so what's the point of doing another test?"

It was true. Since Shinji had been absorbed into Unit 01, the Second Child's sync scores had jumped significantly. Dr. Akagi believed that Asuka had been so humiliated by her defeat against the fourteenth Angel, she was now applying herself in training much more aggressively that she had previously done. In actual fact though, Asuka wasn't really doing anything differently at all, but her scores had still climbed rapidly back to the level she had been at before Shinji had taken over the number one spot, and had since even exceeded that threshold.

Asuka's insulting remarks and boastful tone managed to draw an uncharacteristic reaction out of Rei. Her crimson eyes narrowed almost imperceptibly as she fixed her gaze on the Second Child.

"I wonder, Souryu – are you glad Ikari is gone?" she whispered.

There was just enough edge in her tone that it sounded – almost – like a hiss.

The redhead's blue eyes flashed with a quick anger. 'Just… just what the HELL do you mean by that, First?" she flared.

Rei rose out of her seat so that she and Asuka were eye to eye. "As you say, your sync scores have improved since Ikari was lost," she said cooly. "When Ikari's scores overtook yours, your sync score started to drop. He was competition for you, and you seem to believe that you must be first in all things, or else you are worthless. Once Ikari achieved the highest score, you began to lose confidence in your ability to pilot, and your scores started to decline as a result. Now that Ikari is gone, and my sync scores have never approached your levels, you are once again the number one pilot. The confidence you have gained from no longer having any competition for the top spot has been reflected in your improved sync ratios. Therefore, you must be pleased that Ikari is no longer present to challenge you."

Asuka was beside herself with rage. She drew back a hand to strike the First Child, but Rei just stared back at her without flinching. Her impassive expression betrayed nothing, but it seemed like her ruby eyes were almost daring the redhead to strike her. Suddenly uncertain, Asuka dropped her arm back to her side, but she leaned into Rei until the two Children were nearly nose to nose with each other.

"Listen to me, First Child, and listen good," Asuka spat, her tone pure menace, "I AM the best pilot, always have been, always will be! No matter what scores that idiot Shinji ever managed to get, okay? If he was so wonderful and amazing and fantastic, he wouldn't be stuck in his own EVA right now, would he? How many times now have we had to save his sorry ass from his own stupidity? What the hell has Shinji ever done to prove what an awesome pilot he is, other than get lucky on a sync test?

Rei's answer was immediate. "He has the highest number of kills of any pilot. More to the point, even though he was absorbed into his unit, he still succeeded in defeating the fourteenth Angel by himself – something that you yourself failed to do."

Asuka couldn't believe her ears. For long moments, she could only stare at Rei in stunned silence. Was the First Child actually… taunting her?

"Shut the HELL up, you STUPID DOLL!" she finally sputtered, "I wish… I wish that YOU'D been sucked into your EVA instead!"

The redhead whirled and stormed out of the classroom, leaving Rei staring blankly at the floor.

So do I, Souryu, she thought.

She shifted her gaze back out the window. The dust devil had long since dissipated, and her dancing leaves lay scattered and motionless across the basketball court, their performance now over.

Once again, they were exactly as they appeared to be – dry, dead, useless.

Rei suddenly felt very tired. She sat back in her desk and slowly began to gather the books and notes she would need to study later that night. As she went about yet another mundane task in her mundane life, she wished that Ikari was there to walk home with her.

-----

Misato's head throbbed. She hadn't gone on a bender like this in quite some time, and the way she felt, she doubted she'd be doing it again anytime soon. She struggled to sit upright in bed, groaned as the pounding in her skull intensified with the effort, and sank back down into her duvet, burying her face in her pillow. Beer cans rolled off of the bed, clinking onto the bedroom floor as she writhed under the covers, trying to find a way to lay down that didn't hurt her head so much.

God, this is ridiculous, she thought morosely.

Pull yourself together, soldier.

She recalled how her father used to say that to her when she was a child, whenever she had cried over a bumped head or a skinned knee. He had heard the line in an old movie or something, and thought it was cute to use it on his little daughter. Little Misato had never liked being called "soldier," but the line had always managed to make her stop crying. When she got mad at her father, she would forget all about why she had started crying in the first place. It was many years before Misato had realized that this had been his intention all along, far too late to be able to enjoy a laugh with her father over it.

And now I really am a soldier, Misato thought, not appreciating the irony. And a pretty crappy one at that.

She gritted her teeth and sat herself upright, swinging her legs over and gingerly setting her feet on the floor. Immediately a wave of nausea washed over her, and she swallowed hard to rid her mouth of the saliva that had begun to well in the back of her throat. She sat on the edge of the mattress, clutching her head as she fought the urge to vomit for several minutes. Finally, Misato decided to give in to her body's demand to rid itself of the poison that she had subjected it to over the last forty-eight hours as she frantically bolted to the bathroom and hunched over the toilet, retching loudly.

After emptying the bilious contents of her stomach, Misato wiped her mouth and stared at herself in the bathroom mirror. She looked ten years older – her face was drawn and haggard, with dark circles under her bloodshot eyes, and her normally luxurious hair was now a thick, greasy tangle.

If only Kaji could see you now, you sexy thing, she thought to herself.

She opened the medicine cabinet, took out a bottle of aspirin and shook four tablets into her hand, and washed them down with water from the sink faucet, cupping her hands under the tap as she drank. Another wave of nausea hit her, but she fought it down. Wearily, she shuffled over to the shower, casting off her clothes as she turned on the water as hot as she could stand it. She stepped into the cascading water and sunk to the floor of the stall, letting the water wash over her as she dozed underneath the soothing deluge.

After an hour of this, the pounding in her head subsided somewhat, and she shut off the water and reached for a towel. Drying herself, she wrapped the towel around her body and stepped out into the apartment, her eyes bugging out as she surveyed the squalid state of her normally tidy kitchen.

Normal? she thought. This IS normal – for me.

It was Shinji who always kept the place so clean.

Her eyes landed on the yellowed sheet of paper that was still taped to the refrigerator door. When Shinji had first moved in, Misato had suggested that they split the house chores between them by playing rock-paper-scissors for each day of the month, with the loser taking the chores for that day. What Misato hadn't banked on was that Shinji was quite possibly the worst rock-paper-scissors player in the history of the game, and he had ended up with an overwhelming share of the housework. The teen had refused to renegotiate the schedule though, gamely sticking to the bargain he had made with his guardian.

As it turned out, Shinji actually enjoyed doing the menial tasks, which served to help him keep his mind off of the many larger troubles in his life, and Misato was overjoyed to learn that Shinji was a natural talent in the kitchen. He had even agreed after awhile to relieve Misato of the few days that she had been scheduled to cook, and had practically taken over the kitchen at that point. This had raised no argument with either her or Asuka, who had eaten Misato's cooking just once since she moved in, and had steadfastly refused to do so ever again.

She walked across the grimy floor to the fridge, tore the schedule off of the door and crumpled it into a ball, and tossed it toward the trash bin. It bounced off of the pile of garbage that was already spilling over the bin's sides, and rolled to a halt at Misato's feet.

Tears welled in her chestnut eyes as she stared down at the little ball of paper on the floor.

He's gone, she thought.

Shinji… I'm so sorry…

A loud "WARK!" startled her, and she spun around to see a VERY irate warm-water erect-crested penguin glaring up at her.

"Pen-Pen? Oh my God, sweetie, it must have been days since I've fed you, poor thing!" Misato wiped at her eyes, sniffling, as she quickly opened the freezer door and peered inside. At her feet, Pen-Pen's hungry black eyes followed her every move expectantly.

No fish, she sighed to herself as she scanned the freezer's contents. He's going to be really pissed.

Frantically she searched through the cupboards, and found an unopened bag of beef jerky. Oh good, he likes this stuff, she thought. She pulled it open, grabbed a handful of the dried strips of meat, and knelt on the floor in front of the angry waterfowl.

"Here you go, baby. Mommy has to go to the store for more fish, so I hope this is okay for now." She smiled weakly as she held out the handful of jerky to the penguin.

With another, exasperated "WARK," Pen-Pen ignored the offered strips, instead snatching the entire bag of jerky out of Misato's other hand and retreating back to his icebox, slamming the door behind him.

Misato could not remember when she had ever felt more inadequate than she did at that moment.

I can't even look after my pet bird anymore, she thought to herself.

Asuka won't so much as look me in the eye these days, she's so disgusted with me.

Kaji hasn't called in weeks. I don't know if he's alive or dead. I might never know.

And Shinji… is gone.

My Shinji's gone…

She sniffed at the jerky in her hand, suddenly famished, and decided to risk a bite. Immediately, her stomach began to churn, and she quickly spat the half-chewed beef into her hand as several dry heaves wracked her body.

After a few minutes, once her insides had settled down, she made her way over to the kitchen sink, opened the cabinet underneath, and pulled out a large green garbage bag. She dropped the jerky into the bag and began slowly sweeping through the apartment, half-heartedly attempting to clean up over a month's worth of trash and clutter.

She had forgotten how much she hated cleaning. She hated it even more now, since she had not had to do it in a long time.

It was just something else that Shinji always took care of.

I was supposed to be his guardian, she thought sadly.

But somehow, he ended up being mine, too.

He's gone.

Misato collapsed on the living room couch, the grief overwhelming her again, and she began to cry as she sat surrounded by empty beer cans and greasy, mouldering takeout boxes.

She had no idea how long she had sat there, sobbing, when the telephone rang. She fought the urge to just let the answering machine pick it up, to just shut out the world and wallow in her sorrow, but then she thought about how ashamed Shinji would have been to see her like this. She wiped the tears from her face and reached out a trembling hand, picking up the receiver and bringing it slowly to her ear.

"Katsuragi… oh, hi Ritsu… yeah… no… well, I don't know if I'm okay really, I just… I just can't believe that he's…"

Misato tried as hard as she could to fight back the tears that threatened to burst from her again at any moment, but she still couldn't manage to hide the quiver in her faltering voice.

God, I'm so pathetic, she thought.

She just wasn't ready to talk about this yet.

He's gone.

Nothing could have prepared her for what Ritsuko had to say next.

Misato's chestnut eyes suddenly opened wide, as confusion and disbelief flashed across her features.

"You… you're going to what…?"

Continued…

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Author's notes: My original aim was to keep each chapter in the vicinity of 3000 words, just for the sake of keeping the story moving along. That plan promptly went out the window with the second chapter! It looks like each instalment will be as long as it needs to be to cover that part of the story, and apparently there's nothing I can do about it. :) I tried very hard to keep the three characters in this chapter true to their personalities, even though Rei came off as unusually feisty in this instalment. I took my cue for her sudden outspokenness from Episode 16 of the anime, and felt that I needed to show just how Shinji's extended absence might have affected her, since it had a more profoundly visible effect on Misato and Asuka. Hope you bought it…

Thanks again to lachryiadhron for yeoman service and some excellent suggestions on the preread.

Please feel free to leave a review, or drop me a line at ikarusonesun(at-sign)gmail(dot)com.

Cheers,
IO