Shinji had been tagging along with Misato as they watched the reports from the scouts of the Evangelion's visit to Nerv and subsequent disappearance. But now, as she busied herself with starting the decommissioning of the Wunder, and with everyone else ignoring him while they worked, he wandered off to find somewhere quiet to sit.

"What can I do now?" he thought. "There's nothing I can help with; I have no purpose any more." His eyes moistened. "I'm useless here, I just want to go home." A tear ran down his cheek. "But I have nowhere to go; and now my parents are gone as well. I'm just an orphan..." He put his head in his hands, and his shoulders began to shake.

"Hey, stupid!" came a familiar voice, "What are you doing resting in the corner? I heard that you already spent the entire length of the battle sleeping!" Asuka planted herself in front of him with her hands on her hips as Shinji looked up at her, his cheeks stained with tears. "At least", Asuka continued, "that meant you weren't able to spoil things at the end this time!"

"Don't mind her, Puppy Boy", he heard the cheery voice of Mari say. "She loves you really, you know she does! And I suppose I can't be calling you 'Puppy Boy' any more, can I? Not now you appear to be growing up."

"What she means", said Asuka, looking more serious, "is that this time you seem to have made the right decision on your own for once."

Shinji looked back and forth at the two of them. This was all too much for him to cope with right now; no longer able to contain his tears he jumped up and dashed out into the corridor, where he ran full-tilt into Misato.

Seeing his tears, and seeing Asuka and Mari appearing behind him, Misato waved them away. She took him in her arms until his sobs subsided. Then he looked up at her, wiping his eyes, and said: "Misato, I want to go home." He snivelled, and went on: "But I don't even have a home...".

As his face started to pucker again, Misato took him back to the quiet corner and sat him down again. "Wait here", she said. "I'll send someone along to take you back to the camp - back home. You can recover there."

He sat waiting, with his eyes closed and his head down. After a while he heard footsteps, and then someone sat down next to him. He opened his eyes, wiped them clumsily with the back of his hand, and looked round.

"Mr K-Kaji?" he exclaimed. "Is that really you? I didn't even know if you were alive - no one's said anything about you, and you're not mentioned anywhere in the records I've been looking at!"

"Yes Shinji, it's me" Kaji replied. "Misato's asked me to take you back to the camp. I think she wants me out of the way! Come on - I'll explain as we go."

During the journey, Kaji kept talking, hoping, as Misato had suggested, to keep Shinji's mind away from his maudlin thoughts.

"You see, I've spent my life acting as, let's say, a knowledge broker. Don't look so puzzled - I'm a spy. Misato formed Wille on the basis of information I was able to get for her; but then I stayed in the background, continuing to feed her information all the while about Seele, and about Nerv when I could, though that became harder as time passed. That's why you won't have read anything about me - what I was doing had to remain secret and unrecorded, obviously. But now there will be no more secrets, so I've come out of the woodwork, and here I am. Still, Misato's going to be busy for a while, so she'd rather I wasn't under her feet; she's contrived this by giving me the honour of escorting you back home!"

From the moment he had arrived at the Wunder, Shinji had known, somehow, that it would end with Unit-01 leaving, with the departure of his mother and Rei. He had realised he would be sad about it, but had not anticipated the force with which it would hit him. So now that he was back at the camp, he had thrown himself into more study of the records archive to take his mind off his loss, and with the idea of finding out yet more about why all this had happened. It seemed to be helping.

Ayanami was sitting across the library, studiously reading a book that Shinji had picked out for her. Occasionally she would ask for clarification of something she found difficult. From time to time Shinji glanced up at her; but now a thought came to him, and he walked round the desk to stand in front of her.

"Ayanami", he said, "I would like..., I mean, would you mind..., er", he paused in confusion, and then blurted out: "Ayanami, can I call you Rei?"

She looked up at him. "It is my name", she said. But then she continued: "You told me that you didn't want to call me Rei before because that is the name of my original that you knew before."

Shinji was flustered, but he hastened to explain: "Did you know that when you fetched me from the Wunder to Nerv, I had just come out from Evangelion Unit-01, where I had been absorbed for fourteen years."

"Yes", she replied, "I was told that much, but no more."

"Well", Shinji went on, "Vice-commander Fuyutsuski told me that my mother and Rei - your original, as you call her - were also in Unit-01 and that they have remained there. I thought it was unfair that I have returned and not them, but now I think it was their choice. It seems from what I've read recently that my mother chose to enter the Eva of her own free will, for a purpose I haven't yet discovered. Rei must have been absorbed at the same time as I was, when I thought I was rescuing her. But now I think that my mother and Rei wish to remain in the Eva together for whatever purpose my mother had, and that somehow they prevented me staying, so that I could come back to lead my life here."

He paused for a moment, but Ayanami simply watched him expectantly. So he continued:

"When I was on the Wunder a few days ago, I talked to them. That's to say, I talked to Unit-01, in the hope that they heard me. The Eva helped us win the battle, so I think they did. Afterwards, I spoke to them again, told them they could leave, and said my goodbyes."

"Will you miss them now they have gone?" Ayanami asked.

"Yes", he answered. "However, they may have left me, but", at this point he tapped the side of his head: "I have them with me in here. I have my memories, and those I will never lose. And even though I have no real memories of my mother, I know that she helped me at earlier times when I needed it, and in the end when I asked her to."

"Is that enough for you?"

"It has to be; I will learn to live with it. But anyway, now they are gone, I'd like to call you Rei, not because you are like her, or as a substitute for her, but because it is your name, and because you are different - so I can't confuse you with her in my mind any more."

Before Ayanami - Rei - could respond, the door was thrown open, and Touji put his head round it, saying: "Shinji, there are some visitors for y'. I wanted to ask if y' were ready to see them, but they wouldn't let me."

If Touji said any more it was lost under a torrent of words from behind him: "Stupid! Did you think you could run away and hide again." "Can you guess how much the Princess has been missing you?" "Shut up, you!" "You'll frighten him off if you go on like this, you know." "What are you doing with this other pilot?!"

Shinji waited for a pause, and then said: "Hello Asuka; hello Mari! And don't call her 'this other pilot' - her name's Rei."

There was a big party. Misato had found, no, made the time to come with the pilots, and Sakura was there too.

Afterwards, as they were preparing to leave again, Misato took Shinji to one side and spoke to him quietly: "What do you want to do now?" she asked him. "Kaji's talking to various authorities about setting up a new body - we're calling it 'Hoffnung' - to oversee whatever can be done to restore the world to a better state. We would like you to find a role in it if you're willing."

"I'm not sure", Shinji replied. "Although it seems that what's happened wasn't entirely my fault, I still find that hard to understand properly; and considering how deeply I was involved in it in any case, I wouldn't be comfortable working alongside the people trying to undo it all."

"All right", said Misato, "I can see why you might feel like that. But what would you like to do now?"

Shinji thought for only a moment before responding: "I'd like to stay here and carry on with what I'm doing now. If I study the records enough, I may be able to understand what's happened, and come to accept my part in it. Perhaps then I could write an account of the whole business, so that the history is preserved in an accessible form."

Misato just nodded thoughtfully, as Shinji continued: "And if Rei can stay here, I can continue helping her to learn; I'd like to do that."

"That can all be arranged", she said. "And Sakura can help. You know she's transferring here? She wants to be with her family again; at least that's her excuse - but I think she also wants to come back to be near you." Then she took him in her arms and hugged him, saying quietly: "But now I have to say goodbye, for now. And thank you; thank you for surviving..."

Suddenly there was a commotion, as Asuka and Mari came in giggling together. "Hey, Misato", said Asuka, rather drunkenly, "Do we really have to go back now?"

"Yes", Misato replied. "You know how much work we have to get done decommissioning the Wunder and preparing for whatever our new place in the world will be. I've finished here with Shinji, so please pull yourselves together and get ready to go!"

"Don't we even get to say farewell to Puppy Boy here first?" said Mari. "You'll always be Puppy Boy to me, Shinji, whatever you do with yourself!"

Asuka went over to him and like Misato gave him a tight hug. "Goodbye for now, Stupid; at least you managed to make a good decision once in your life. You should try doing that again - it suits you..."

And then, as the three of them were leaving to return to their transport, Asuka turned back and called out to Shinji: "Auf Wiedersehen, Schätzchen!"