10: [Home at last]


You don't really wanna stay

But you don't really wanna go

-Katy Perry, 'Hot 'n Cold'


"You do know that the Third Child will be leaving Neo-Tokyo-3 today, right?"

"This is why we have to reconfigure Unit One for Rei as soon as possible." Ikari replied matter-of-factly. His voice sounded astonishingly nonchalant considering that this was his own son they were talking about, but Dr. Akagi had known him long enough to notice that his posture seemed marginally stiffer and more tense than usual.

The two of them were traversing one of NERVs many escalators, accompanied by Rei herself, who was still tightly wrapped in bandages.

"But…-"

"Regardless of what happened with Unit Zero last time, we need to continue with Unit One right away."

Dr. Akagi snuck a glance at the girl in question. She still looked battered, but in spite of the fact that her future was being decided right in front of her, there was not a single muscle moving in her face.

"The Second Child is still in Germany, and according to the last report from the Marduk-Institute, the Fourth Child has yet to be found."

That was one big, fat lie – The institute did not exist and the Fourth Child was already stationed in Bethany Base – But thanks to the situation with the Third Angel, she would have to stay there for now, at least until he found a convenient opportunity to sabotage the projects that were being carried out there.

Even if her information was incorrect, Dr. Akagi's conclusion was still very valid: "And that means that we currently don't have a replacement for the Third Child. And that's not our only worry. The escaped test subject was briefly caught, but it escaped on the way here… At least we can now be certain that it was indeed acting as the 'serial killer'… and it was wearing clothes. That's a human concept. How it could possibly understand that baffles me. I've come to think that something must have… taken over the clone and modified it for its own purpose…"

"That would explain why shooting it didn't work. But it raises much more questions than it answers."

"I'm working on it. But what should we do about that woman? If she saw this, then…"

"Then she has probably already alerted the old men, yes. But they won't take action until they have solid evidence. If we can dispose of the problem before they can snoop around any further, this should be of little consequence."

"If she is going to snoop around, wouldn't it be better to eliminate her?"

"She knows that she can't fool us with hair dye and colored lenses, and the old men know that they can only provoke us so much. They probably have another spy. That woman is only a decoy."

"Another spy, you say…?"


The Third Child himself was already sitting in the car that was supposed to take him to the train station and waited for the security personnel to finish pulling his security card through the shredder.

His fingers were clawed into the fabric of his trousers.

He had firmly decided that he was going to leave.

This time for real. He would go back to his old teacher's place where there would be no more horrifying battles and no more torturous agony. So why did he feel this uncertainty raising through his being?

Somehow, he felt like he was about to miss or to lose something, as if he were wasting a chance…

He would never see any of them ever again… Touji, Kensuke, his Father, Dr. Akagi, Ayanami, Misato… oh, Misato.

He knew that she had no reason to come and see him now that he had decided to leave, but the way she had just left had upset him enough to prevent him from finding any rest during the last night, though having to spend it in a bullpen did not help.

He just didn't want them to… part on bad terms.

Yesterday he felt that she was being unfair to her, but now that he had time to think about what it meant to never see her again, he couldn't help but remember that she did try to offer him something like a home.

It was his fault that it hadn't worked out. Because he simply wasn't the strong-willed, heroic kind of person that was suited for such things.

He was the useless piece of dirt that had fled with his tail between his legs, and he was about to do it again, even after he had decided that he wouldn't run away ever again…

Damn. Why was he beginning to feel bad for leaving now? He shouldn't have to, right? He had been forced to be here, and now, they were finally letting him go…

Maybe because useless people like him deserved to feel bad.

It wasn't like he was good enough to stay here, anyway.

He would be unable to bear it one way or another.

The card was shredded, the one who had shredded it boarded the car, and they departed.

The noise from the car wasn't enough to drown out the doubts germinating in his head.

To shut them up, he allowed himself one more question, one last step backwards: "…Where is Misato-san? I would… like to say goodbye…"

"You are no longer a member of NERV, so we can't tell you anything."

He did not protest any further. Yes, there was this sense of disappointment, but he probably deserved it. It was him who had chosen to leave this all behind him.

His journey continued, and soon, they reached the train station.

Shinji recognized it, the power pole, the roofing, everything: It was the same train station he had arrived at, that fateful day when his father sent him that letter.

His father… He probably wasn't going to see him ever again.

Their work at NERV had been the only thing they'd had in common.

The car was parked, and one of the security workers opened the door for him.

But then, something that he wouldn't have expected in a thousand years took place right there and then:

"Ikari, here's all the stuff you forgot at school!"

The bag that was thrown at him from the side was precisely aimed, but Shinji still only barely managed to catch it.

Once he had it firm in his hands, he followed its trajectory with his eyes and saw the impossible.

Touji and Kensuke.

For a few moments, Shinji just stood there, completely speechless.

After he'd caused those two so much hardship, they had actually taken the trouble to come all the way here, solely to bid him farewell?

They had come… because of him?

He didn't think that anyone would as much as notice his departure, much less that he was in any way worth being missed, but here they were.

In flesh, blood and three dimensions.

"Uh, could I please have a moment to say goodbye?" Shinji asked quietly, hoping that the answer would be 'Yes'. He wouldn't like to walk right past them after they had bothered to come all the way.

One of the men in black nodded.

Tentatively, Shinji brought himself to walk over to them, no knowing what to say. The bag, right, the bag! He should probably thank them for the bag.

"Uh… thank you…" he managed.

Again, it was silent save for the constant chirping in the background.

The tall, tracksuit-wearing boy, however, had begun to tense up a little.

But fortunately, he had Kensuke with him: "Come on, say it!" he urged, giving his friend the little push he couldn't give himself – in the most literal form of a small nudge.

Touji stood up straight and looked Shinji in the eye, his expression suddenly serious.

"Ikari, I'm sorry for beating you up. As compensation, I want you to punch me now."

"B-but I can't do such a thing…" Shinji replied, notably uncertain.

He was pretty much overwhelmed by all this.

"I insist on it. I won't be satisfied otherwise."

"Come on, just punch him already so he shuts up." Kensuke added, his smile confirming that doing this would be okay.

"B-but…"

"Hurry up!" Touji demanded, ostensibly serious about what he just said. "You don't have all day!"

As a matter of fact, the men in black were already checking their watches.

"A-Alright, but only once…" Shinji finally yielded.

"Then come on! Do it already!"

Now sufficiently convinced to somehow go through with this, Shinji put down his bag and aimed his blow.

"WAIT! Don't you dare hold back!"

All right, if he… kept saying it like that… After all that had already happened between them, Shinji didn't want to disappoint him any further, and so, he moved to strike him, this time for real.

OUCH.

That scrawny little Ikari boy was a lot stronger than he looked.

Even Shinji himself seemed a little nonplussed about the effect of his punch.

"Ouch, that hit home." Kensuke commented.

Both of them smiled at Shinji once more.

And then, that silence was back.

Things to talk about, things to talk about…

"Uh, how did you know…"

"What train station you would be departing from?" Kensuke offered. "It was a hunch. We've seen dozens of classmates of lately…"

That did leave an affected expression on Shinji's face.

"Since you're leaving, the two of us will also have to leave this city someday." Touji stated, his voice void of the anger or disappointment that Shinji had been expecting ever since the word 'evacuation' had been mentioned. But it was his next sentence that turned all of Shinji's expectations on their heads, shocking him to his very core: "…but we don't have the right to judge you for that. We saw you suffering inside the EVA… And if anyone blames you, I'll kick their ass!" Touji announced, brandishing his fist.

Shinji felt his hands trembling.

This… this was wrong.

It was just wrong, as a matter of principle!

Touji's little sister had been injured because of his incompetence…

Those two would probably be forced to part with each other and have to watch as their friends scattered across the map…

They shouldn't be …nice to him, or talk about not having the right to judge him or anything…

They weren't supposed to have come at all, not for someone as worthless as him…

This… just wasn't right…

"Don't make such a face." Touji suggested.

"Yeah, cheer up!" Kensuke agreed. "And hang in there."

Shinji was just about to break down in tears.

He didn't deserve this, not any of it, not at all.

"I…"

"Time's up." The security worker behind him declared, grabbing him by the shoulder to lead him to the train.

Away from here, away from these two, away from his duties…

The injustice of it all reverberated in his head, it just wouldn't stop, growing louder and louder, the certainty that he did not deserve this.

He lowered his head and grabbed his bag.

Wrong, wrong, wrong, all of it, wrong…

The two even followed after him to observe as the men in black lead him to the train platform…

It was just plain wrong!

"I'm the one who deserves to be punched!" he called out to the two of them, straining against the hold of the security personnel, squeezing himself back through to face his now former classmates.

His tears had finally refused to be held back any longer.

"I'm a coward! A shirker! Dishonest… and weak…"

And then, he let himself be dragged away, leaving two visible shocked boys.

They hadn't expected… hadn't known just how deeply all of this had troubled their newest friend…


Meanwhile, back in NERV headquarters, Eva 01 was currently being reconfigured.

Misato and Dr. Akagi once again stood on that one bridge where they once tried to persuade Shinji to board the violet titan for the first time.

"He left." was Dr. Akagi's laconic summary of the most recent developments. "Do you still think that this is for the best?"

"You said it yourself…" Misato stated with an unmistakable tinge of sadness to her voice. "The closer we come to each other, the more we hurt each other… like two hedgehogs."

Yes, beyond the whole ethical question and the boy's age, the boy had simply grown on her and she felt compelled to be there for him and to help him. She had suffered a neglectful father herself and wanted to provide him the support she never had.

But she was not the kind of support that he needed.

So far, she had only succeeded in making everything worse.

So, it was probably for the best to let him go.

Him, that boy who just said yes to everything and allowed himself to be subjected to just about anything, who just clung to what others told him no matter how bitterly unhappy that made him.

It was just beyond him – He was flat out incapable to say what he really wanted or what he really wished for. He probably didn't even know what he wanted or wished for.

But it was always much easier to recognize a problem than to solve it, it was much easier to say what you didn't want than to figure out what you want, it was simpler to cease doing something than to start with it.

This complete refusal… was probably the only way in which a boy who could not bring himself to make an honest complaint to make others aware of the pain in his heart, the only way in which he could rebel like any other kid his age.

Yes.

"…but on the other hand, I've realized… that he can't express his feelings in any other way…"


So there it was.

The train.

It came to a halt and opened its doors, the one last threshold Shinji would have to cross for all of this to be over.

He stood right before it, with his head lowered and his bag held in front of his body.

All he needed to do was to make one single step forward.

One single step through this doorframe and everything would go back to the way it was.

Just one single step, and he would be rid of them forever, the fear, the battles, the pain…

One single step, and he would never see them again... Misato… Touji… Kensuke… Dr. Akagi… Ayanami Rei… his father…

Just one single step, and he would finally have escaped this nightmarish place…

Except… not everything had been painful…

("Hang in there.")

On this side of the threshold, there were a thousand and one sources of pain and suffering waiting for him, and on the other, not a single source of happiness.


Even after she had squeezed the last bit of juice out of her accelerator, in spite of all the red traffic lights she ignored, even if she only barely avoided smashing her car into two certain boys in her attempts to park it as far as possible, by the time Misato arrived at the train station, the train that her young ward was supposed to board was long gone.

She was too late.

And to be honest, she should have saved herself the trouble of coming all the way here to begin with – In the end, all she could have accomplished was to force him into yet another situation he did not want to be in.

Giving up entirely, Misato let out a deep, resigned sigh and gave the air molecules in front of her face a depressed look.

Most likely, it just hadn't been meant to be to begin with…

She was already turning to leave when she noticed something out of the corner of her eye – a solitary figure standing on the platform.

She couldn't believe it.

She wouldn't have expected this from him – unjustly, as she was now forced to concede.

He stood there with his eyes downcast, perhaps dejected or disappointed with himself for his inability to go through with his decision and make that one last step.

But when he noticed her, his eyes grew wide.

She… she had come.

Even though she wasn't supposed to have anything to do with him anymore, now that she was no longer his superior.

She had come, just how he had secretly hoped somewhere deep inside.

The train was gone and she was here.

For half an eternity, the two of them stared each other in the eyes, struggling to believe what their own eyes showed then because it broke multiple laws of their inner universes.

She looked at him, who had stayed even though he didn't have to, and he looked at her, who had come here without having any reason to do so.

Or rather, there was exactly one reason why Misato could have come here:

Because of him.

Just because of him.

Because of him as a person.

All this time.

All this time, they had tried to get closer to each other by giving the other minute hints, to defy one another in the futile hope that the other would be able to deduce the contents of their own heart just from that, when they could simply have shown their true feelings to each other all along.

Shinji still didn't believe that he had what it takes to save the world, or that anything about him was worthy of love. But if he had managed to leave a mark on the hearts of just one or two people, if Misato and him really were more than just coworkers, and if Touji and Kensuke were interested in just a little bit more than his position as an EVA pilot…

If they had really come because of him alone…

Then he may just begin to allow himself a little bit more hope than he did the day before.

Yes, they exist, these small moments where we stop lying to ourselves.

Most of the time, they ended just as quickly as they came, but they were sweeter then honey.

And so, it was Shinji of all people whose expression of bewilderment first melted into a smile as he found just the right words for the first time in his life: "…Here I am…"

"Welcome home."


"The Third Child's poor condition could, first and foremost, be attributed to his mental and physical exhaustion. He was given a few days of leave and has since made a complete recovery. There are no further problems."

Misato held her sigh back until she had turned the voice recorder off and put it down, opening the uppermost drawer in her desk in the meantime, which she soon made the device disappear into, resisting the urge to throw it against a wall or at least to stuff it in the already cramped trash bin – she always kept imagining just how he would react if he ever found any of this, and she could picture it rather well now that the most recent events had provided her with an ample supply of inspiration. Penning these surveillance reports always felt like a breach of trust to her, and she had little doubt that he would see it the same way, frequently catching herself being deliberately half-hearted in her documentation of his state and his activities, as if to diminish her sin.

Nonetheless, the regulations made their demands – what she tried to convince herself of was: This was a condition she had to meet to be able to help him at all, a job that would be done by someone else, someone less benevolent, if she didn't take it upon herself.

But to find this, to see this, and to think what he would inevitably think if he ever found this was the last thing he needed right now.

Thus, she would have to produce satisfying reports, and she would have to make sure he never found out. The lie justified itself through good intentions…

If these words were at least sufficient to say everything, to do it justice, if the superiors that were going to read them would even give as much of a rat's ass about everything

That everything appeared to have worked out in the end was true, but so was the first part of her laconic little report – The very fact that he had been physically affected at all was in itself the most obvious sign of how much that battle had wrecked this boy – she tried to remember their first meeting. Even back then, it hadn't taken her long to notice that he was carrying some serious baggage with him, but he had unusually been pretty fast to complain about her "borrowed" car batteries and even got a little cheeky – but what did she even know about what was "usual" for him?

No, the truth was that she had to way to measure just how much damage, permanent damage had already accumulated, just from the two very first battles. It didn't seem unreasonable to guess that he would never be the same again…

And so far, she wasn't convinced that she had done anything to mitigate that in any significant way.

There was no way she could not have noticed – Soon after the immediate tension of the moment had dissolved into relief, the resulting sensation of warmth began to dissipate with the passage of time, giving way to the more practical, physical concerns of their reality, and part of that was that he had not been taking care of himself lately – Not just in the three days and three nights in which he had been wandering the streets of Tokyo-3, but also in the time before that, when he had shut himself in his room at first.

The ugly truth stung her as early as when she had lead him to her car to take him home, in the form of a slight but noticeable limp – It wasn't as bad as it could have been, the explanation was tame enough, and she could deduce it herself: Since he had been retrieved without shoes for some reason, the soles of his feet had been covered in scrapes, and those hadn't healed in a single night. But the occasional grazes he had accumulated here and there were the least of the problems.

One of the first things she tried was to try and convince him to wash himself – that was very much overdue, but it would have to wait, for the very first thing he did as soon as they arrived at her, no, their apartment, was to let himself sink into his bed, where he instantly fell into a deep slumber from which he didn't wake until the next day's evening.

Gently, and careful not to sound too demanding, she finally made him discard the uniform he hadn't changed out for God knows how long (The pant legs, in particular, were covered in mud – She didn't even bother to take any of it to the dry cleaner's, and instead threw everything he had been wearing at that moment straight into the garbage chute – Even if there had still been any hope for that thing, she just didn't want to see it ever again, and she would lose all hope for him if he didn't share that sentiment.) and finally got him to go and wash himself – She couldn't convince him to take a bath and she didn't think it would be too productive to insist on it as long as he agreed to any contact with hot water at all, everything else could wait. An extensive shower would have to be enough.

If any of his less material burdens had followed the layers of dirt into the drain, his expression didn't reveal it.

Getting him to eat something was a little trickier – he didn't even answer when she asked him what he wanted. Misato proceeded to search her collection of canned soups for whatever seemed to have the most vitamins in it (by the standards of her kitchen, that is) and claimed that she would leave it in his room just in case he felt like trying it. At first, it seemed like he wasn't going to touch it, but next time she returned to check on him, she found the bowl neatly emptied out – She could picture him listlessly trying a spoonful at first, mostly so she wouldn't be disappointed, only to realize just how long it had been since his last proper meal.

In the meantime, he had put a new battery into his cassette player and immersed himself in his music – Misato did not know whether to count this as a positive sign or not, but he did remove his earplugs when he saw her coming.

She did not immediately realize that he wanted to ask her something, it was more through coincidence than through attentiveness that she caught one more glimpse of him when she bent forward to pick up the bowl, when he hadn't expected her to look at him and thus made less of an effort to hide that he was observing her, scrutinizing every minute detail, every ever so tiny gesture or nonverbal cue, sucking it with empty eyes like black holes, and last few residual doubts in his heart – By then, Misato was already aware that she was being tested: In other words, if he opened his mouth now, what would she do to him? How would she react? Would she scold him, but still grudgingly give him what he wanted, more out of a sense of duty than anything else, or just so he would shut up and leave her alone?

Was he an annoyance? Was he unwanted? Was he a burden?

That what he was he was cautiously trying to probe her about, glance after glance, second after second, as if he were warily treading on thin ice – Her presence on that train station had made it conceivable for him that the answer could indeed be "No", that he may actually have found a place of warmth and refuge, but his scarred heart was far too accustomed to disappointment to believe it this easily.

That he might want seconds was just a lucky guess, but as minimal as it may have been, she did not fail to notice his nod, and the long silhouette that, according to his experience so far, should have disappeared back into the light emanating from the doorway stayed with him, even after she had brought him the second bowl.

She playfully warned him not to choke on it, but she may have rejoiced to soon – despite his initial enthusiasm, he only ate half of it (It may have been too much at once, after several days of only vending machine snacks) and then asked to be left alone.

Less than two hours after he'd woken up, he was back in the arms of Morpheus, still wearing his earphones – She removed them, turned off his cassette player and put it on his nightstand, lest he damage the cable tangle by turning around in his sleep.

It was about noon when he first left his room the next day, and by then, it had become apparent that he must've caught some nasty bug in the cold of these rainy nights, and when she saw him lying there, weakened and afflicted, it became increasingly clear to her that this was serious, that this entire piloting business could really be the end of him, one way or another, and for one short instant, she cursed him for having stayed – Perhaps Dr. Akagi had been right with her cynical assessment that it was less a question of whether he would recover, and more one of how long he could hold out.

Even now, she stayed at his side, brought her paperwork with her and made herself comfortable at the edge of his bed, abusing an old folder as a blotter pad, taking a little reading lamp with her and even some drinks and snacks, giving him a half-joking warning to stay away from her beer whenever she absolutely couldn't avoid leaving the room.

She had even taken her phone with her , although its first bout of clamant ringing forced her to admit, rather sheepishly, that it might have been a lot more productive if she had set it to vibrate right away. "Yes? Hyuuga-kun? No, I can't come today, you'll just have to do it without me."

Since there was neither a battle nor any mayor experiment taking place right now, she had resolved to stay here to look after Shinji and do today's paperwork at home.

That the boy was very relevant to her superiors was, at very least, a pretty good excuse. She did not envy all the single mothers who did not have this privilege.

But now that she thought about it, she wondered who had stayed at his side whenever he was sick before he had come here, especially when he was younger… who had consoled him whenever he had unpleasant dreams, who had been there for him in all those little moments of weakness that were part of life, growing up and its different stages and anyway-

"…Please… stay with me…"

"Uh, I'm… right here."

"Please don't… leave me all alone… I don't wanna… be alone, not now…"

"I'm not going anywhere."

"…please, someone… anyone… stay with me…"

With comprehending disillusionment, Misato was forced to conclude that these words of despair hadn't been addressed at her in the first place – He was muttering to himself, in his sleep. Must be the fever. They could really do without that, too. It shouldn't surprise her.

"I… I'm right here." She whispered to him regardless of that, hoping that her words would still trickle through somehow and change that dream in so far that it would deviate from whatever bitter memory it was probably based on, most notably through the retroactive insertion of a source of warmth and comfort – If Ritsuko were here, she would probably explain in detail why that didn't work like this, but Misato didn't care.

His mumbling was no longer intelligible, but there was still an understated stirring, and then a sudden, unpredictable movement, he just turned around and the next moment, his head was on her lap, leaving her no chance to keep doing her paperwork or removing herself from this place without waking him.

That, however, did the trick, her presence, her warmth, her smell or all of it together: From then onwards, he remained as he was, silent and calm, like a peaceful little baroque putto.

Sure, Misato could understand why he'd like this, but she herself could only comment this awkward situation with a notably self-ironic grin.

Nonetheless, she did tentatively pat his head.

"It's okay, I'm right here, and I'm not going anywhere…"

Later that day (The leader of the operations division had eventually escaped the unscheduled cuddling session) there was a knock on the front door, and once again, Misato was met with the faces of two particular boys – The two who had been in the entry plug, Aida and Suzuhara, carrying yet another pile of printouts with them.

Of course, she had to tell them that the Third Child was in no shape to see them, but this time at least, she would make sure that he was well aware of their visit.

The next time she found him mostly awake, she demonstratively pulled the door wide open and ceremonially dumped the papers on his desk, not caring whether she had gone overboard with the enthusiasm in her voice or not. She wanted to communicate this to him, and if this required the subtlety of a cartoonish anvil hitting him on the head, then so be it! Extreme situations required extreme measures, and this included talking in a silly singsong: "Oh, Shin-chaaaan, here are your printouts for schoool! Aida-kun and Suzuhaaaaara-kun just dropped by to bring them to you!"

Misato could hardly believe his expression when he heard that.

He was happy.

Boy, what was he happy, blissful even, in a tired and bittersweet manner, like a dying man's last smile.

It seemed like too much, almost morbid to feel such joy about such a relatively small thing – She guessed that he, too, wouldn't have been able to explain himself if she had asked him why he was smiling like this, and why it was followed by a sudden, final liberations of both pent-up tears and something else that he had held back for a long, long time, the greatest lump having been there ever since the battle, but there were also older, deeper things coming loose, sediments and crusts of emotions, nourished over a long time by a constant suffering like some sort of gallstone.

It was the sort of smile that came with a certain finality, that formed when nothing else would do the situation justice.

It was now when she saw the healing process set it, pullulating from beneath like something wild and foreign, raw and soft, almost a little unpleasant in the way it broke through layers of hardened scabs, that she really understood that he must have lost something irreplaceable here, somewhere over the course of his stay here in Tokyo-3.

The person who arrived in this city roughly a month ago would never leave it, and she wondered if he was aware of that, or if he only saw his current self that was silently smiling before her, defined only through that arcane source from which his very thoughts sprang forth through unfathomable processes, new as the day, fleeting like the moment.

When she looked at the person lying in that bed right now, she saw someone battle scarred.

It was apparent that he felt the pain of it, but he was too young to understand what it truly meant to have his innocence ripped from him like that – But she knew it all the better, and the next thing she knew, she found her hand unconsciously sliding over her chest, where she had once been marked – He didn't have such an obvious, telltale mark on him, whatever the EVA and the angel had done with his nerves and his soul, the cruel hands of fate had passed through the upper layers of his skin like ghosts, leaving them untouched in appearance, and because he could not yet understand nor cry for this loss, she would do it for him and feel it for them both.

Maybe the knowledge that these two had come to see him was all it took, there were all sorts of stories about placebo effect, the psychological components of recovery and little miracles – or it might just be a coincidence, Misato didn't really care.

Either way, by the next morning, the fever was gone and he sat up, asking her to open the windows, pull aside the drapes and let in some daylight and fresh air.

After she'd brought him his breakfast, he already seemed to feel like engaging in proper activities other than lying in his bed and staring at the ceiling.

"So what would you like to do?" she asked, noticing that his cassette player was still untouched on his nightstand.

"I… I don't really know, I just want to… do something again, just something…"

Because he could not think of anything else, he just grabbed his blanket, made himself comfortable on the couch and turned the TV on.

She didn't know what to think of his way of absorbing the various TV shows without expression, only to listlessly switch from one channel to the next after a seemingly arbitrary amount of time had passed, as if he were some sort of stranger only peripherally related to the many facets of humanity displayed on these screens.

Still, she had work to do.

After a while, PenPen, who had gloriously slept in today waddled into the living room, and spontaneously decided that he also felt like situating himself on the couch in front of the good old goggle box, and as Shinji made room for the bird, he already seemed capable to comment this with a thin smile, and since he hadn't bothered to put on his socks, Misato could see that those scrapes on his feet had mostly already vanished by then.

On this day, she decided to go back to work, since the Third Child appeared to be doing better – After all, she couldn't leave all her duties to the poor Hyuuga-kun, if she was honest with herself, she probably took advantage of him far too often. She had been intending to make it up to him for what felt like an eternity, but she already knew that something would always end up getting in the way, that those little favors she owed him would accumulate until she gave up on her plans – Leaving Shinji on his own this soon also tugged a little on her conscience, but as soon as she had gone back to work and inspected the many piles of paper that had accumulated on her desk, her routine took over and before long, there was a moment where she ceased to have the thought that she had a "situation" to take care of constantly present in her head – As soon as her level of worry fell below a certain threshold that made it an urgent, acute thing that required immediate attention, her laziness seemed to overturn all of her resolutions… How did this happen?

When she came home, she halfheartedly tried to keep Shinji from doing any housework, telling him to wait until he had properly recovered, but she couldn't make herself sound all too convincing – Over the past few weeks, she had learned to appreciate the advantages of a clean home where she didn't have to spend twenty minutes searching for her things, and at the end of the day, it was him who carried a nicely decorated tablet into her room and put it on her desk as she typed away on her laptop – If she was honest, she hadn't even turned around to face him, and just casually mumbled a few short words of thanks – Some guardian she was…

She had planned to eat breakfast with him, too, at very least the next day, if not for anything else then to strengthen that newly blooming, developing feeling of belonging, or at least of being home so that it might tie him to this place, even if she could not quite agree with herself whether that was a gesture of care or a cheap psychological trick used on a helpless victim – either way, her inner conflict was rendered moot by a disadvantageous combination of her vespertine beer dosage and staying up way past bed time.

By the time she woke up she found her apartment flooded with sunlight, her breakfast lovingly prepared and ready to be eaten, complete with a can of beer waiting right next to her plate, and, once again, absolutely no trace of the Third Child.

It did sting, the situation and how it stirred her memories of the last time he had disappeared from this house – but this time, it took no detective work to figure out where he had gone – His school bag was missing from his room, and so was the school uniform he had prepared a long time ago, not knowing what the next day would hold for him, leaving only an unused hanger.


"And…? How is your flat mate?"

"Well enough, I think. I guess the entire event has knitted us together a little… and not just us. He's been going to school again and ever since, he's been inseparable from that chaos duo from the incident. They phone him, they invite him to spend their free time together… Even if I still don't always grasp what exactly he is thinking…"

"I'd think that you'd have him figured out by now, after all, it's not like it's your first time living together with a man."

"This isn't really comparable to eight years ago. There's no romance involved…"

"I wouldn't be sure of that. If you ask me, Shinji-kun probably stayed because of you."

"No, you're wrong… the real reason… is his father. I think he'd do just about anything for a few words of praise or a pat on the shoulder from him…

He's just lonely and longing for affection…"

"…that he won't be getting from his father. You're very alike…"

"I just wonder why commander Ikari acts so cold towards his own son. He's a lot friendlier around Rei. That doesn't seem fair at all…"

"That's just what men are like, egoistic and uncaring… Believe me, I'm speaking from experience…"

"It's tough to be a woman nowadays, isn't it?"

"Anyway, it's time. We need to go back."

"Always the worker bee, hm? Oh, by the way, would you like to stop by for dinner tomorrow?"

"I'll pass. I've still got a few 'fond' memories of your culinary 'skills'…"

"Aw, come on!"

"Alright, but there are important experiments scheduled for tomorrow… what about the day after?"

"Deal."


"Your son's behavior is exactly as we predicted it…"

"Yeah. Next, we'll have to bring him and Rei closer together. Everything is going according to plan."

"After a plan that was crafted 14 years ago, a plan that predetermines the entire lives of mere teenagers… It's a cruel plan."


(1) I assumed that Gendo & co were not yet aware of Kaworu's existence at this point. Mari was classified as Fourth Child by principle of exclusion/because that's the number between three and five, but I think a recently translated bit of CR confirmed her as such. This does not mean that Touji can't get another designation. Har Har.

(2) …so, will we be finding out something about that mysterious blue haired girl that has been lurking in Shinji's vicinity until now? Of course we will! Team blue, rejoice! Look forward to chapter 11: [The Commander's Smile]