Chapter 4: Home Again

A hand dragged through her hair.

Misato's head jerked from the crook of her elbow. She realized the hand was hers – numb from having been slept on. Pin-pricks trickled up her skin. Her lips smacked, tasting air again, and she checked the watch hanging from her other wrist. Another fitful three hours of sleep.

She yawned – stretched – feeling the tight bundles of tension in her neck, while an outstretched fist thwacked her computer monitor. Stifling a yelp, she shoved the thing, wishing it to fall from her desk and smash to pieces. It crashed atop her office phone instead, which clattered off the receiver and began to chirp.

Beneath it were a scattering of Shinji's daily logs by Section 2. Anything from his school commute to his sessions with Okinoshima. Every aspect of his life lay in front of her, waiting to be dissected and absorbed into relevant data.

The howling of the off-hook tone overwhelmed the place. It gave out a contented click when she set it back in the receiver. Her shoulders shook when the phone began to ring. Giving it a hard stare, she balanced on the cusp of not answering. With a sigh, she leaned forward and brought the piece to her ear.

"Katsuragi," she said.

"Fall asleep in your office again?" Ritsuko asked. Misato wanted to beat the smugness out of her voice.

"Hm, yeah – what's up?" Her hand dragged over her scalp and she recoiled at the feeling.

"Well, Director of Operations, my unit has been waiting on those personnel transfers from Section four and five for a week now. Are you planning on getting to those anytime soon?"

Misato's eyes slipped in the direction of her IN-files, scattered and perhaps in varying degrees of completion.

"Isn't that Section six's job anyway?"

"You still need to sign off."

Fingers pressed into her forehead. "Why did you actually call?

"Grouchy, aren't we?" She said, as though Misato were being ungrateful. Another sigh tried to escape before she bit it back. Beneath her elbows stretched her desk. A desk far too long, the glaring white of the walls stinging amid its black surface.

"I wouldn't call over something so trivial as that," Ritsuko went on. "Work appears to be the only way to engage you now. I've had to resort to taking Kaji out as my drinking partner."

"I could care less who you drink with."

"Oh, I'm sure," she said and Misato gave more consideration to hanging up. "Drinking or no, I'm sure you realize you're neglecting your duties as Shinji's guardian."

"All of his records are up to date and he isn't starving."

Ritsuko didn't seem to hear her. "What's the matter? Motherhood too difficult for you?"

Heat rose in her chest. "Well, I haven't killed myself yet."

Even as she spoke, she knew it was wrong. The silence over the line didn't make her feel any better and she was left to stew in her victory over a terse vacuum.

"I suppose that makes Shinji rather lucky, all things considered," Ritsuko said.

Misato muttered an apology.

"What will you do?"

"I dunno, I..." several thoughts tagged to the end of that sentence, none of which she was brave enough to say out loud. A fake plant, some palm or another, sat in the left corner watching in mute apathy. The door to her office stood at attention next to it, and across from her a mirror that managed to encompass the whole room. Misato stared at herself, long hair matted and glossy with a new layer of grease, bitter wrinkles stretching from her eyes, the hollows beneath red and black.

She looked away. "It doesn't matter, I guess." Her throat ached for the warm tingle of liquor. The bottle of sake she kept in her left-hand drawer, the only piece of home she ever brought with her to this place, had been empty for some time. "He'll either buck up or he'll wash out."

The words didn't sound like hers. Chilled air hummed from the vents and she shivered. A red jacket lay draped over the backrest of her chair, though she made no move to grab it.

"Hm. As simple as that is it?"

Ritsuko kept talking, but by then Misato had stopped listening – because a blue, unmarked thumb drive was sitting beside the barrel of her sidearm on the right corner of the table. One that had not been there when she fell asleep. A blister of color in her ordered, plain world.

She reached out, the surface smooth and making her fingers tingle. All about the room, there seemed to be eyes on her.

"Hey, can I swing by real quick?"

"Lieutenant General Hanzo Toyotomi," Misato said, scrolling further through the dossier. Reading came in small doses, since it was all she could do to stay awake, even with the pleasant crawl of coffee from the mug in her other hand. That and the leather couch beneath her was proving far too inviting.

"Commander of the..." Ritsuko leaned forward, squinting, "Northern Army?" She made a bemused face and hummed, withdrawing to her terminal. Opposed to Misato's office, the place was a home away from home. Notes, files, and reports were scattered between several terminals and a pair of printers while pictures, baubles and other adornments decorated the tops of monitors and CPUs. It looked like more of a home than Ritsuko's apartment, which she had visited on perhaps three or four occasions.

Misato shifted and blinked, straining her eyes to keep them from drooping. "It was a pretty big air-raid to mobilize on such short notice," she mumbled.

Ritsuko sighed through her nose, but played along, clacking away at some report or another. "So, how did he?"

"He didn't," she said, jabbing her mug of coffee out. Scalding heat spilled over her fingers. "Fuck." Setting the mug down, she cursed some more while Ritsuko handed her napkins. Misato settled and picked up the laptop.

"You were saying?"

"He didn't mobilize it with his own strings. Toyotomi and General Yoshinari are old friends."

The doctor watched her now, head propped up on a hand. "As I recall, he has about as much disdain for us as the Minister of Defense."

"NERV is a UN paramilitary organization – foreign soldiers and financial backers with military autonomy on home soil doesn't sit well with home-brewed troops. It doesn't fit their doctrine."

Ritsuko studied her a moment. "You have a hypothesis?"

There was a coyness to her tone that told Misato her friend had already caught on to the vague line of thought she was stumbling through in her sleep deprived stupor. "Isn't it a little reckless to dump tens of thousands of gallons of chemicals banned by the Valentines Treaty? Stockpiles that no one was supposed to know we still had? He'd have to be an idiot to ignore the political ramifications."

"He would have to be."

"Not reckless then. Intentional."

Ritsuko sipped from her own mug. "You think so?"

"The Ministry of Defense released an official statement yesterday saying that the phosphorous was used in order to provide the Evangelions with a smoke screen. Anyone on the Security Council with half a brain knows that's absurd, but it's enough for them to try and claim they were acting in accordance with the Valentines Treaty." Misato took a large gulp of coffee, reveling in the sharp heat. "Still, some of it was within a civilian populated zone, even if it was evacuated."

"The UN knows that too. They're mustering an official inquiry, from what I hear."

She shook her head. "That'll just make the JSSDF's gripes about foreign policing all the more legitimate – and the Prime Minister is just going to let it happen?"

Ritsuko spun around to her terminal, tantamount to a shrug. "He's no fan of the JSSDF upper echelons. I expect he thinks this public shaming will teach them a lesson."

Would it? It couldn't be as simple as that. When it came to the military and their proxy wars, nothing ever was. Everything about this was a tidal wave, massive and overwhelming. There were too many threads to pick at, too many ideas that didn't make sense.

What was she looking at anyway? It couldn't be bigger than the Angels, not now. That was her priority. Everything else was just noise. It was a familiar sensation, one she had thought she left behind in Lichtenburg.

"What a waste of time," she said, just under her breath.

"Why the sudden interest?"

"I don't know. It's just been bugging me."

Really, it hadn't been more than a minor annoyance. The JSSDF made a spectacle of their inability to deal with the Angels every time one showed up. Her fingers brushed the blue thumb-drive. Hanzo's dossier was the only file on it. Whoever had given this to her had been thorough. Nothing on the security cams, and no activity reports from Section 2. If it was Ritsuko, then she wasn't telling.

"Hm."

"What?"

"Have you seen him yet?"

A wall of emotions slammed into her.

"I haven't slept at home for a week."

"Afraid to go back, are we?"

"Butt out."

The Doctor's lips quirked and she crossed her legs, removing her glasses to wipe the lenses. Her sharp features softened and became pensive. "Sympathy is something the human species craves. The child eagerly displays their injury; or even inflicts a cut or bruise in order to reap abundant sympathy. For the same purpose adults show their bruises. 'Self-pity' for misfortunes real or imaginary is a universal practice."

Misato stared into the laptop without seeing it, fingers frozen over the shallow keys as the clicks of her computers engulfed them.

"Some friend you are."

They were falling behind, and Asuka had to pause yet again, tapping her foot. When Shinji took notice, he started to walk slower. Zero matched his pace, but as with everything else, didn't appear to know why.

"Would you hurry up?!"

His head rolled with his eyes, but he picked up the pace. "Come on, Asuka, where are we going?"

"I already told you – you have to wait! Geez, I don't even know why I brought you." She rounded the corner, looking for the sputtering red lights of a convenience store. The street became narrow, falling on an incline. A man on a bicycle wove down the opposite walk, but there was little to no traffic, and further on was the wall of concrete and fencing from her battle almost several weeks ago. They were in the right place.

"A one-hundred-yen store?" Shinji asked, catching her stare.

"No, dummy." She led them down, passing by the two men having their conversation about nothing while Tatsuro still sang over the speakers. She stepped over the warning labels on the street and into a tunnel lit in dim yellow, their footsteps echoing. Asuka glanced back to make sure they were following, finding Shinji eyeing the red markings spray painted beneath their feet.

"Are... we supposed to be down here?" He asked.

"Probably not," she said, reaching out to touch the wall and smirking. "Why, you scared?"

He scoffed.

As the path slanted into a trench, they turned left down an open maintenance way that Asuka couldn't recall walking through before. Cool cement, lit with a delicate glow, told her they were still in the right place. Pipelines guided them to a drainage joint, a massive hollow cylinder that radiated with far off light from somewhere above. Their shoes splashed through puddles as Asuka started at a run through the open maw of a tunnel. Expanding before them was the city's maze of flood corridors and their concrete forest. Sound became muted, save for the twittering of birds who'd taken roost from the drainage gaps above, which pooled beams of sunlight into the expanse. A low, hollow drone enclosed them, cold and in a way comforting as they descended steel stairs to the ground floor.

Shinji let out a gasp. "This is awesome."

Asuka turned to watch, hands knit behind her back. She let loose a howl, laughing when Shinji did the same. Their cries could have echoed for miles. It wasn't until they were dizzy from lack of air that they realized Rei had wandered off, the blue of her hair a pale speck in the orange light of the overheads.

"Rei?" Shinji moved to follow as the girl pattered through shallow pools of water towards a beacon of sunlight, near the water way run-off. Asuka smiled. Perfect. She ran to catch up as Rei halted on the gangway leading outside.

Corpse-rot choked the air, a bloated mass lying on the grated platforms. The wolfdog's fur had thinned as its skin swelled to bursting and turned red. Meaty holes where the eyes had popped gaped at nothing, home to skittering nests of flies that had begun to burrow and lay eggs.

Asuka's face twisted and she tried to hide it by pinching her nose, while Shinji covered the lower half of his face with the rim of his shirt. Next to them, Rei looked unphased, though a hand had come up to her mouth. The rays from the sun were too hot, and Asuka was disgusted with how it felt, as if oozing over her bare skin. Her day felt wasted now because of that girl – not even a shriek.

"We should bury it," Shinji said, muffled through his shirt.

"What? Ew, no – I'm not touching that thing!"

He was already bending, searching where best to grasp it from. "Rei, get the other end."

The girl didn't move at first. Then she nodded, once and just so. She kneeled and tried to place her grip near the head, cupping the matted fur so that she had to touch it as little as possible. Flies buzzed around her head and she stilled, face scrunching.

"Ugh, here, let me!" Asuka shoved Rei away and took one half of the corpse in her arms, shuddering as the rough flesh brushed against her. Clenching her teeth to stifle whimpers, they lifted on the count of three. Liquid spurted from the beast's jowls, spattering Rei's blouse with dark red bile. She jumped at the sudden impact, frozen in place as the thick substance dribbled down her shirt and over her skirt. She stared at it, arms held out as if by strings. Helpless.

Asuka stifled a giggle, biting down on it when Shinji glared back. They set the dog down, though she more or less dropped it, the sight of him fumbling with the thing soothing her some. The jerk.

"Well, now you've done it."

He shot her another look and she had a mind to throw him over the gangway. "It's not my fault."

"You're the one who wanted to bury it, Stupid."

"We shouldn't just leave it here."

"Why not? It's dead anyway."

Rei's arms settled, but otherwise she remained still, as though moving would make it worse. "I do not have a change of clothes."

The first and nearest shop was a men's clothing store – a small, stuffy outlet that appeared to have been a bar at some point. They decided it would be best if one of them went to get Zero clothes, but really it was Asuka that decided. So she grabbed several small shirts, at least small in men's sizes, and couldn't figure out what the hell to buy for pants. At least not until she found some denim overalls. It seemed a practical purchase if they were going to be playing with corpses in sewers all day, but mostly because she wanted to see the look on Zero's face when she was made to wear it. Asuka sped back to the underground overflow.

"You could have picked anything else," Shinji complained as he rifled through her purchase. Rei hadn't moved from her spot and the bile had dried a mustard yellow.

"It was all they had," she said, shoving the bag into his hands, "and I didn't have to get anything – you're the one who should've gone since this was your idea. Take responsibility like a real man."

He shook his head. "Whatever."

Shinji handed her the bag and Rei began to unclasp her blouse.

"Change over there where we can't see you, mein gott." Asuka shoved her in the direction they'd come. She leaned against the railing of the gangway, watching Zero move out of sight. Poisonous fantasies entered her mind. Her focus shifted to Shinji – fixed after the direction of Rei. "You're gross," she hissed, and shame reddened his cheeks, stare dipping to the concrete. She only felt a little sorry.

The corpse stared off into the lake with its hollowed eyes.

Rei looked uncomfortable when she returned, garbed in a white shirt that was too big and overalls, but didn't seem to care either way. Asuka folded her arms and delivered a smirk. Still nothing.

"Where are we even going to take this thing?" She demanded.

Shinji squinted, pointing to the lakeside. "Down there."

They went on a second time about burying the corpse. It had become a mission now, and even Zero seemed determined to follow through. They climbed their way down the concrete façade, some of it having collapsed due to neglect and careless construction.

Shinji and Rei hauled the body down while Asuka supervised, until they reached a small clearing on the shore of the lake. A pool of sweltering heat sat there, so humid their skin began to ooze with sweat. Nipa and pindo palms stretched along the edge of the water, while bundles of tall, thin trees battled for sun across the shore. Over the lake were the mountains, lit with glittering trams passing through the pines.

They stripped one of the palms, the ends of the branches that hugged the trunk cupping to make somewhat of a shovel. None of them had ever buried a corpse before so couldn't have said where or how deep was right. They decided on a small clearing at the edge of the lakeshore where the earth was still sandy enough to dig in but at least thick enough that the bones wouldn't slip into the lake for a decade. Or so they guessed. Rei helped Shinji dig three feet with their makeshift shovel, aiming for six. It was back-aching work. Many broke, and she could see his arms trembling from the strain, though he didn't complain. He only stopped when a tenth snapped and cut splinters into his hand. She and Rei finished off the edges.

Deciding four feet was deep enough, they took a break while Shinji plucked shards of wood from his hand. Asuka sat next to him, pinching some of the deeper bits free when she thought he was being too cautious about it. Rei was on the other side of the grave, her legs dangling in.

When the smell of the corpse began to drift back to them, they each took a limb in hand and dragged it across the sand. Shinji hauled it in the rest of the way, just about tumbling in himself.

Their shovels broken, they each set to pushing and tossing handfuls of sand to fill the grave. Stains smeared the seams of their skin and caked their fingernails with grit. Asuka brushed off what was left on her jean shorts and Shinji rinsed his hands in the lake, fetching a small twig with which to scrape the dirt from his nails.

"Why are you even bothering? Your hands are still going to get dirty. We have to find something to use as a grave marker now."

Shinji turned to consider the burial, his expression sinking. He tossed his stick into the lake and stood. "Okay, well, what can we use?"

Asuka rolled her eyes and pushed to her feet. Approaching the nearest tree, she snagged one of the dry, rough vines trying to cord its way around the trunk. She tugged, ripping its snaring fingers free.

"Zero-" the word caught in her throat when Shinji's face flattened. She boiled. "Rei. Pull on this."

The girl tugged, standing when she realized she'd need more leverage. She planted her feet and gave it several sharp tugs before something snapped and she tumbled to her rump. The vine fell with its bundle of dry-rot branches. Shinji and her huddled near and watched as Asuka took two pieces to make a cross and knotted them together with the vine.

"There," she said, shoving it into the sand, "that should do it."

"How'd you even find this place?"

"After my first battle. I was wandering around the city because I was mad at you."

Shinji grunted, his interest waning. She watched him shrink into himself as he squatted near the grave. Grimacing, she sat too, and Rei remained where she had fallen pulling the vines.

"Should we say something?" Asuka asked, so soft she hoped no one had heard.

Shinji looked up. "For a dog?"

She felt the muscles in her face run taut and he flinched. Her heart could have been beating a thousand miles a minute, hammering away in her chest while she stared. Shinji's shoulders fell, his eyes offering understanding as he stood. She only hated him a little less. A drowsy wind passed, upsetting her hair and rattling the trees.

"What was it Luitpold used to say?" he asked.

Asuka didn't answer.

Knitting his hands together, he closed his eyes and bowed his head. Asuka shifted to her knees and did the same. His brow became knit with concentration and he spoke slow as each word was pulled from memory. "Thy punishment he shall... endure?" he repeated the word in German several times, then nodded. "Endure, by coming in the... flesh, to... to a reproachful life and a cursed death... announcing? Uh, proclaiming, life to all who... who... who shall believe in his redemption."

Shinji blew out a sigh. "Amen," he said after a long breath, and Asuka mouthed the same, easing back before he noticed she'd moved at all.

"What is that for?" Rei asked, and Shinji shrugged.

"It's just something you say for dead people. Or dogs, I guess."

Asuka used the tip of her shoe to flick dirt in his direction. The rest of her leg kicked out, heel disturbing the dirt of the fresh grave. Shinji sat on the haunches of his feet, making a meek attempt at tossing the dirt back. It never reached her. Her heel pushed at the earth a few more times, making a neat row of shallow trenches.

She shifted and her hands moved next, palming more piles to the center. Shinji borrowed mounds of it from his end, while Rei watched – until she found a suitably fat stick to bulldoze the soil into position with. As her and Shinji began to give the mound shape, the girl couldn't resist touching the cool, gritty earth with her hands any longer, retrieving the stick again only to flatten the sides evenly.

When it was done, the three of them stood around it for what could have been a year too long, until Shinji quietly prodded them to leave. Asuka allowed him this – keeping her place at the head of the pack through the concrete forest, a small pyramid left atop the wolfdog's grave.

School was perhaps the one place he had no cell service. Even in the GeoFront there was a hub to connect with, and often less polluted than anything in Tokyo-3 proper. Yet here, of all places, outgoing messages failed to send and he rarely received any until he left the grounds, too late.

Not that Shinji had a great many people to talk to. Not like most of the other students, with their sleek top of the line phones and unlimited data plans.

Out of the handful of numbers he possessed – Misato, some of the bridge crew, Rei, Ritsuko, even one of the pit mechanics, his Section 2 handler, and now Asuka – out of them all only one was missing a name. A series of random numbers – making his father akin to some unsolvable equation.

He stared at it some mornings, the school moving around him. It would be easy to hit the call button, but there was no telling if the connection would make it through. Besides, a mere pilot calling the Commander of NERV seemed impudent to him. Even if that Commander was supposed to be his father.

Shinji made his mandatory visits to Okinoshima's office, talking about his childhood friend between her questions, along with whatever else came to mind. She did not appear the least bit interested nor gave any indication she was listening, sometimes cutting him off when they were done and it was time for him to go.

On some of those days Rei would find him, as she had a way of doing, and they would wander down to one of the food courts in Central. If Asuka happened to hound their location via text, she would prop herself between them and fill the space with talk of her Eva and the futility of testing someone already so superior.

When at school, Shinji occupied one of the desks beside Asuka's so they could work on her Kanji between lessons. Many of the seats were empty anyway since so many students had moved after the battles. Their studying sessions devolved into a discussion of music, the city, sometimes their Evas, and TV shows Asuka kept up with religiously. They spoke in German, not even realizing they'd made the switch until classmates began to direct glares their way.

"It was your fault," she'd whisper, still in her native tongue out of spite.

"You wouldn't switch so much if your Japanese didn't sound like a gagging fox."

"You're one to talk. At least mine doesn't sound like word-vomit."

And so it went, the jibes turning into insults that wounded the other to make them inconsolable for a time, forgotten like a dream when they were drawn together again. An excuse invented here; a lie told there. They both knew the game. All the while Shinji was wrapped in the dark reaches of his last sortie. They grabbed him while he sat on the roof staring at clouds, in the night when his bed became an oven, or lurking in the deep waters of the Testing Chambers.

Misato started sleeping at home again, her array of shoes sitting by the front door, keys hanging and clusters of empty beer cans growing across surfaces. They never stayed for long, ending up in the trash one way or another.

He woke before the sun rose, when she would still be sleeping, and waited under the yellow hum of a bus stop as deep blue night turned to pale morning and the cricket chirps faded. In the evenings, he arrived home as the cicadas wailed and a dark wash came to take the sky back. Misato would either already be at one of her night shifts, or would have retired to the small comforts of her room, not to emerge 'till morning. Shinji would go to bed with a meal of sliced cucumbers and peanut butter, jamming a stick between his door and the wall to keep it locked whenever he caught sounds of her in the apartment.

Sometimes the slap of a fridge roller, or the wood of her door frame, or padding footsteps on carpet. At times he fell asleep next to the door, revisiting the desiccated ruins of his garden home – the great wolf's shadow lurking outside.

Rei's life was not an unpleasant one.

It was not a thing she could compare or measure, but more of a sense. Something passed along in her time with Shinji, the boy who was a pilot like her. A feeling of pressure she could not place, not unlike sitting in her Eva while it hummed at her presence.

The train blared as it set off again, a rush of hot air billowing with its departure. Few others disembarked to the streets below, scuffing down narrow stairs into the urban sprawl of Tokyo-3, where the houses were packed tight and the electric wires that kept the life blood of the city flowing crisscrossed so dense in places, it was hard to make out any sky. Plants overflowed from balcony gardens and cherry trees lined some of the crooked paths.

Even from here, Rei could make out the cluster of Tokyo-3's towers, specks of black that must've been birds barely visible against their pale faces. They looked as though they did not belong in the caldera.

It crept upon her, again that feeling that emanated deep from the plug-depth and followed her to her apartment, resting there in the shadows and moonlight. She didn't have a name for it, only that it had been a looming companion all her life, driven away only in the presence of the Commander.

Without intention, Rei came to one of the ramen shops they frequented, entertaining that Shinji might appear even though she had nothing to suggest he would. Onion broth and garlic swelled in her lungs, the warmth of the noodles soothing even amid the stagnant heat that wet her skin.

From her school bag she pulled one of several books that made up her entourage when she was unaccompanied, the edges rough and the spines creased. Pale Fire was the only gift she had ever received from another person, at least for a birthday, which no one else within her small sphere of connection seemed to celebrate. She owned many more books now, bought from a bookshop buried deep in the overlooked bustle of Tokyo-3. A private place that the snakes were fond of, watching her depart with musty tomes from their thin, spiraling tree at the entrance.

She missed the smell of it and the slow, predictable movements of the shopkeep. Her fingers brushed the coarse paper as she opened to a random page. She tried to read but could not understand a word of it. The world seemed to be pulsating around her. Her mind wandered to the bloated wolfdog and the tomb they'd made for it. A pyramid of sand. She could still feel the scraping grit between her fingers.

Rei wiped her hands on her skirt.

Other customers arrived and placed their orders. She made an effort for several more minutes to understand the book in her hands, but gave it up and left her bowl half-eaten. The smell of burning meats had begun to dredge at her stomach.

The day was falling to sunset, enclosed by roaring traffic punctuated with the laughter of crows. A mother and child passed over the train tracks on their bikes, wheels clicking. Rei followed the road they'd come down, a long rack lined with white bikes greeting her beneath a cherry tree.

Rei paid the fee and stood there with it, a trembling in her gut.

She spent several minutes struggling for balance, and with every moment she achieved it, the bike swayed and taught her again she hadn't. It was impossible to simply sit on the thing and balance. She would have to move forward.

Rei pushed off, arms taut with the pressure of keeping the front wheel straight. Her arms twitched with micro-movements. The bike lurched.

One side of her smashed into a tree – hard. Then there was the concrete, rough, and spinning. Pain came in swelling tidal waves, pinpointing each scrape and cut and seeping bruise. Rei pushed on the ground, her wrist protesting. Streaks of red spilled over her arms, a hand hovering over her mouth as her stomach lurched.

There were few people about for the time of day, and those that were passed her with a curious glance or two. Save for a pair she recognized, shadows that had become more vivid in the last year.

Suzahara stopped across the street, arming his companion Aida and pointing in her direction. Embarrassed, he looked around, snarled something at Aida, who locked eyes with her before averting them. Suzahara stared and raised a hand to wave, his arm unsure. They crossed the street after a handful of cars.

"Hey, you okay Ayanami?"

Rei blinked. "Yes," she said, managing to get herself up from the ground, though her legs were still trapped with the bike.

Aida flinched. "Uh, you're bleeding."

"I am used to pain," Rei said, wincing as she slipped her aching legs free. A lie. She was never used to pain. It was always new and raw and torturous. Becoming used to something was not the same as expecting it. She had said it because it seemed like something she was supposed to say.

They moved as if to help, though the action faltered, Aida going as far as to reach for her before pulling back. Rei stood, bleeding, elbows and half her face smeared with sidewalk grit.

"Should we call somebody?" Suzahara asked.

With slow, painful intention, she picked up the bike to march it back to the rental rack. "I am fine."

"You sure?" Aida called, the two boys standing as if frozen in place. A limp accompanied her right leg.

Through the vending machines, parking meters and trees, the rental rack was a speck of color. She had traveled farther than she thought. The chain clicked, followed by the scuff of heels behind her, birds whistling over her head. Cars hummed by, children trying to catch the ever-buzzing cicada bugs. The bike rack was far.

"Was that your first time riding a bike?"

"Yes."

Their silence made her feel lost.

"You think it strange."

Aida shrugged. "A little. We won't tell anybody, though."

Once the bike was returned, Rei saw that Aida had abandoned them. Yet he emerged from the door of a steam cleaning service nearby, handing her a soaked rag.

When she took it without comment, he motioned to one of her cuts. "So they don't get infected."

Rei took in the wounds, where the skin had been sheared off more than cut. Her stomach rolled again, so she sat. Damp and warm, she swiped the cloth over her scrapes, flinching at the sharp bite of contact. The boys shifted and averted their eyes, as though this were something private. Perhaps it was and she was acting out of etiquette, as Shinji often did.

That was it, the tug she felt in her shoulders, something unfamiliar. In her year of knowing these faces, always she had been with Shinji when they walked to and from school. Never had she been in their company without him. It was a feeling of sinking, just as her first synchronization tests had felt – falling in a well without a bottom.

"You headin' home?" Suzahara asked.

Rei could not answer. She was looking to the bike rack, one pristine white frame marred with a smudge of red. Pain tingled through her as her mind recalled the tumble, to warn her away from such things again. Home was quiet and cold and dark. Sheltered. A tremor ran through her. She could not leave, not yet. They had not left the rotting dog. Not when it would have been most reasonable to. Not when they had nothing to dig with, and cut their hands and legs, their seeping sweat stinging the cuts. Not when they stained themselves in filth to bury it.

"Ayanami?" Aida asked. "You're not mad, are you?"

Her jaw unclenched when he said it, and the hardness that had come to her features withdrew.

"Hey, where ya going?" The two hurried to follow as she set a path to the bike rentals. She paid the fee once more.

"You're gonna ride it again? Idiot!"

Sunset had deepened, lighting the caldera like a fire pit. Rei steadied herself atop the bike, both boys taking several steps back, one fuming, the other baffled.

A wild sensation climbed up her spine, like when she was in combat. Her palms beaded.

With a sharp breath, she gripped tight to the handles and pushed off.

Each yellow and purple bruise was a splash of color on her pale legs, disrupted by patches of band aids and gauze.

"Rei. What happened?" Shinji dropped his bag, taking one of her arms. A wince tugged her face, but she didn't pull away.

"She fell off her bike," Aida said, hanging over his seat. Suzahara eased back, saying nothing. Something quivered under Shinji's skin.

"What are you doing?" Asuka leaned against his desk, a foot nudging him in the rear. "You can't just go touching people like that."

Frowning, he reached out and flicked one of her earlobes, his middle finger whacking an orange sapphire. She yelped and cursed, flying into a tirade. Their classmates – embarrassed enough for the both of them – averted their attention, despite not being able to understand a word that was said. After a few more flicks and jabs, the two managed to sit down, and Shinji was able to turn back to Rei.

At least until the class rep stepped up. "Uh, Ikari, Soryu? could you please keep your conversations in Japanese? It's a little rude to..."

"Sure, Horaki," Shinji said, barring his full attention – Rei's bruises were of all colors, some purple, a few blue, and many yellow.

"I'll talk to Shinji in whatever language I want." Asuka said. She was popular here, just as she was anywhere else, but apparently not enough to get away with being inconveniently foreign.

The girl before them deflated. "Just please try to be more considerate towards your classmates."

"Fine."

A hushed curse left Suzahara's lips.

Shinji didn't remember standing, or balling his hands into fists. Suzahara was half out of his chair, one hand on the table, the other closed at his side.

When he looked around, they released, and the eyes of the class were wide.

It took what felt like a long time for Shinji to sit down. The room was still. Not even Asuka moved. He didn't want to look at her. A pressure started to crowd in, crushing and inescapable like the entry plug – he felt his breathing become sharp, his temple hot.

"Dir gut?" Her lips whispered.

He took a calming breath.

Lessons began in short order. He was called upon several times for answers by Nebukawa. The old bastard seemed determined to make an example of him today. Meanwhile he could feel eyes, Asuka's eyes, hanging onto the back of his head. Waiting for something.

Always, he found his focus pulled as if attached by strings to Rei's bruises. Jitters poured through his hands and buzzed in his knees, his mind imagining some awful trauma she was hiding from him.

Break came, at last. Dozens of voices echoed in the halls, shoes squeaking on the linoleum. Asuka pinched some of his hair and tugged. "Where are you going?"

He shrugged and shouldered his schoolbag, heading the opposite way.

A shoe slapped the floor. "Shinji Ikari!"

One of his hands waved at the air as he turned, answered by little more than a growl – a look telling him he was in deep, resentful waters.

After several flights of stairs, Shinji stepped out onto the roof. Tidal waves of summer air washed over him, drawing sweat from his skin before he'd taken more than a handful of steps. She was standing there, leaning on the railing. A small, blue silhouette against the gray of Tokyo-3.

"Rei. You tried riding a bike yesterday?"

He came alongside her, though she didn't answer – as it sometimes was with Rei. So he hummed, trying to fix the point she was hooked to out on the skyline. "With Suzahara and Aida?"

She shook her head. "On my own. They were simply there."

A breeze brushed them, and Shinji tried to piece it together. In a year of knowing Rei, she was as distant to him as the Kloster was half a world away.

"It is familiar."

He blinked. "Huh?"

She thumbed the frayed edge of a band-aid, fingers gliding over a nebula pattern of purple and yellow.

Shinji nodded, folding his arms over the railing. That, at least, he was sure they were not so distant on. "Are you going to try again?"

For that, she was present, giving the idea some thought. "Yes."

"You'll just fall, and get more bruises, or worse."

"That is very likely."

The idea made his stomach twist. She could have told him, maybe then she wouldn't have gotten so hurt. Or maybe he wouldn't have made any difference at all. His right foot tapped the grit of the roof, making noise in the face of a city that seemed all too callous now. Beyond the skyline were the mountains of the caldera. Each had a name, and each had a spirit – a Kami like Asuka had told him about when they were kids. All of the names escaped him, but he'd been to some of the shrines.

"The prayer," Rei said, looking at him now, "for the dog. What is it from?"

Shinji shrugged and shook his head. "The Bible. It's full of stuff like that. Every Wednesday we went to the church to worship. That one was just Father Luitpold's favorite."

That was when the thought struck him, and he had to ask, "have you ever prayed Rei? To anybody?"

She inclined her head slightly. This could mean either yes or no.

"That's right… my father doesn't believe in anything either, does he?"

"He believes in the Evas, I think."

"I wonder why. Because they'll save us? From the Angels?"

Rei shook her head. "Because he helped create them."

"So... they're like a part of him?"

Her eyes dipped and she leaned over the railing. She stayed that way for a while, and he chewed on her words.

Lunch came to an end with neither eating a bite. Arriving at their class room with Rei in tow revealed an Asuka that was barred from him for the day. He muttered a greeting, and was rebuffed with her arm coming up like a wall for her head to lean on. By the end of the day, she was at least walking home with him, forgiven, until he had to board the line that took them separate ways.

Tokyo-3's sprawl enclosed him, and he expected to hear sirens at any moment, or perhaps was desperate to.

"Shinji. A word – in my office." Misato pushed off the wall she'd been leaning against. He stopped at threshold of the locker rooms, the material of his suit creaking as he stood straight – a stranger in front of her again.

"I've already told Ritsuko to reschedule your test," she said, starting off down the corridor. A beat later his footsteps followed.

The walk to her office felt longer than it had in months. He set himself in front of the mirror when they entered, facing her as she sat. Rigid, eyes locked on the wall behind her, limbs tight at attention. It wasn't unlike the way she had stood before the Commander for her after action reports, her gut trembling the whole way through.

"At ease."

Shinji parted his feet shoulder length and clasped his hands behind his back.

Misato opened a folder and took up a pen, leafing through mundane paperwork that was of no particular importance right then and there, but made her look busy.

"How has school been?"

A strangled pause.

"Don't you have the reports?"

Her hand stopped and she looked up.

"Sometimes I don't read them."

Shinji's shoulders shifted, all of the oxygen in the room stifled.

"It's been fine, I guess."

Misato nodded, licking a thumb and sliding on to the next review of her staff officers. She let the seconds tick. It only made the atmosphere less habitable, and a song from Yamashita began to play in her head. She stopped herself from humming along.

"The apartment looks nice," she said.

Attached to the file of one officer was a transfer request. Misato opened her ink pad and stabbed her seal into it. The smell of it stung her nose.

"Asuka helped me clean."

Her hanko thumped the left corner, blotted in red.

"Mm, good."

Yamashita's song still played. She couldn't remember the name. She snatched another form requiring her perusal and approval.

Her hanko met the ink pad again.

"I saw your Section 2 detail lost eyes on you for a few hours the other day."

There was silence. Except silence might have been better. Instead she could hear the rustle of her jacket as she stamped her hanko. The scratching of her pen, or the thud of her seal, accompanied by the muted murmur of the base behind its walls.

Misato's fingers pressed hard against her pen and the paper tore beneath it.

"Goddammit-" she tossed it across her desk. "Shinji, I'm just trying to talk to you."

His eyes became vacant.

"Will that be all, ma'am?"

How nice it would have been to walk up and ring the insolence out of him. Instead, she swallowed her hurt and let the ache fall through her. She leaned back, arms folded tight over her chest.

"I suppose that's fair, isn't it?" She said, and despised how bitter it sounded. It was hard to look at him, at least as she was feeling then, being crushed under the weight of his eyes.

They made her wonder, as she had in the past few months, just who this pilot-boy was. There were many things attached to the name Shinji in her mind, yet none of them seemed to encompass him, or give her understanding, or offer her solutions. They were simply him. All the same, she was learning everyday she didn't know who that was. Perhaps she hadn't cared until now, when it affected the nexus of her life.

A surge of guilt knocked the wind from her.

"You scared me, you know?" She nudged her head, hair sliding away from her face.

He'd let his hands fall, unsure now of where he was standing.

"What do you mean?"

When you were trapped in your Eva. She heard herself say, except her lips never moved. When all I could do was stand in the command center and watch. When I had to –

Even in the privacy of her thoughts, she could not come to terms with the idea of him not being there.

She remembered being trapped in a pod, crying for her father in the dark. It was disarming, being on the other side. She didn't want to have that helplessness again, but knew that she would. Knew that it was inevitable, so long as this boy occupied her home, her work, and her thoughts. It was just the way things were.

Misato stood and made it to the other side of her desk, leaning her rear against the edge.

"C'mere."

The boy obeyed and she reached out a hand to plunge into his hair and ruffle it up some. He ducked away and her weary expression tried for a smirk, a shallow giggle from her lips. So she hooked him under an elbow, roughing her knuckles over his head, and she was allowed this much.

Misato let go and draped her arm over his shoulders, coaxing him to lean against the table with her. His stare gravitated to the floor, as it often did when he was uncertain.

In the mirror across the way sat their reflection, a lanky boy tucked under her arm. It caught her how much he had grown in the last two years. A tension wound its way through her core. He was as tall as her shoulders now, even slouched and with his head bowed. She looked to his chin, losing its childish curve, and how elegant his neck was, budding with the hint of his adam's apple.

"Hey," she said, squeezing. He looked up and found them in the mirror. His eyes filled again.

Shinji didn't need a mother, he was already grown up. Not that she would make a very good one anyway, even as a stand in. That was something she could never be. It wasn't her place in his life. He was staring at their reflection, and she knew he still wanted a mother, even though he was almost a young man.

A buzzer roared to life and they were doused in red light.

"Pattern Blue detected. All hands to battle stations, level one."

A/N: This update wasn't supposed to take almost a year to release, but that's just the way it be sometimes. Fingers crossed the next one doesn't take as long. Got a kid on the way, so we'll see. There's still a lot left, and I want to finish this so I can write books dammit.