Okay, this is a revision of sorts, with a little more added on. Is this better, worse, or just the
same????? Sorry, minna!!!!!!!!

Kon'wa! Okay, I have something to admit: I'm a total traitor to the cause. This isn't yaoi… I
must be losing it ^_^ Oh well, enjoy it while it lasts, ok? (it's only like.... two paragraphs, it
won't be THAT much suffering) I KNOW I suck, okays? But please be kind, and review, and
whatnot….

S+R

~++++++++++~ (reiz POV)

I waited, and He never noticed. I don't care. It doesn't matter. But when He waited for His
angel, the traitor noticed. He never really did. I'll sit in the hallways and watch Him slouch on
past.

-Shinji. I'll sit and wait for You. And You'll never know.-

That's ok.

I don't care.

-I don't feel bad. But it wouldn't matter if You saw anyway. I don't think I'd care then, either.-

I don't care. Really.

Slumping downward, I watch as my pale palms turn up towards the cracked roof of the
hospital, pleading for answers. They tremble in the wan light of the neglected fluorescent
lights.

He trembles like that, too.

Broken open for all the world to see, He has shown his true colors. Blue veins of ice-fear run
through that useful body. Blue things are always useful, I guess. I'm blue. I'm useful, too.

But nobody notices. Especially not Him.

Slowly, I remove the blood-soaked bandage from my forehead. My eye has finally reformed. I
discard the now useless cloth onto the scratched tiles of the floor for some janitor to find.

I wonder if he'll think about it.

I wonder if he'll even notice it.

I don't care.

~++++++++++~
Shards of Ikari's glasses dig into my palms.

Plink.

Something has dropped from some hole within me and fallen from my eyes onto the clear
surface, and I peer curiously and this oddity.

What are these things? Tears.

No.

Something.

Maybe.

But I do not cry, and so these are not tears.

Carefully, I put down the ruined eyewear on one of the plain furnishings of my room, right
next to an old waterglass, half full. Dust has begun to settle on the surface of the water,
turning it a sullen, murkey-grey color.

I don't care.

When the strange things escaped from my tear ducts, it felt familiar.

I still really, really don't care.

I wonder what Shinji would say. Nothing, probably.

Nobody talks to a doll.

~++++++++++~

Soft, flannel sheets surround me. This is not my bed. Wondering whose it was would be
pointless. I'm always waking up without memories, or limbs and such. That's just how it is.

I still don't care.

Dully, I glance over at the monitors. Green lines blitz up and down excitedly with each beat of
my artificial heart. Soon, the orders will come, and I will rise. Until then…

I exist.

Someone is in the room, now. Perhaps she isn't supposed to be, from the look on her face. Or
maybe my passiveness alarms her. Her uniform is the usual – white and overstiff, but it lacks
the Nerve badge.

"Ikari wants you to take this." Trembling, she hands me a dixiecup full of tapwater, and a
small, orange pill, 'tz20' engraved in miniature letters.

Does he? Is this woman to be trusted?

Shrugging, I place the medicine in the back of my mouth, gulping it down. The water tastes of
chlorine and rust. The pill may have tasted as well, but I swallowed it before I had a chance to
explore it.

I don't really care what it tasted like.

The unidentifiable female has left the premises of this room. Within my abdomen, I feel an
odd, lukewarm release from whatever was within the capsule. My stomach is threatening to
reject it along with all the enhanced food that I was doubtlessly fed while asleep.

Belatedly, I notice the twin tubes reaching into my nostrils. There is a smell in them not unlike
swimming pools, and I'm not sure that this is the oxygen I was breathing a moment ago.

I'm pretty sure the last thought I had was this:

If I die, they'll have to take the time and retrieve another.

~++++++++++~

AN: Okay, the pill is probably going to be tezawariX20, which is something I made
up a long time ago, so if there actually IS a pill like that… well that's just creepy,
ok? ^_~