I actually had a halfway decent outline before I started writing this time. But once I started, it just got to the point where it was a mess of crossed out ideas and random lines that it became useless. So here's another free-written chapter.

I Just Don't Know What to Do With Myself, By sven roc petrov I

Chapter Three: Hypnotize.

Shinji woke up to the comforting thought of his mental encounter with the lovely Ayanami Rei. He was drowsy, which was surely influential in his next decision: he walked to the kitchen, and began to dial Rei's number.

"Baka-Shinji, make me something for breakfast," Asuka demanded as she slowly took her seat at the table, wearily wiping her eyes. She looked up at him as he put the phone to his ear. "Well?"

"I'm going out today." He looked at her. "I don't feel like cooking. It should be Misato's turn for breakfast anyway."

Asuka hadn't expected him to stand up for himself, not now, anyway. She paused for a moment, almost expecting him to apologize or, or… apologizing was the only thing she had expected him to do, actually. "Where, then, will you be going?" She didn't really show her anger, but it was there.

"Anywhere." Shinji looked like he wasn't just tired from recently waking, but rather tired of dealing with her, and he wasn't disguising it.

She wasn't only disappointed that he wasn't going to make breakfast, but she was more troubled about his mysterious plans to go out somewhere, with… "Who're you going with?"

Shinji put down the phone and walked out, out of the room, out of Misato's apartment, and off to Rei's.

**

She had known this for some time. The full extent of her own worthlessness hadn't quite reached her, not until that day. She heard the man say it aloud; she was a substitute for another woman. He was referring to Ritsuko's selection for interrogation. She was to be only a stand in for Rei. There was going to be a time for her vengeance…

And now it was time. There could be no one else. If she wasn't to have even his attention for a brief time when it should have been honest, and undivided, then there certainly wasn't going to be an infinite amount of replacement little dolls he could play with to get back the person he was thinking about. Ritsuko gasped as she simultaneously found her card key fail to work and feel the unmistakable prodding of a gun to the back of her head.

"It won't work without my code," Misato warned her, as she cocked her gun.

"And what is it that you want to see, Major Katsuragi?" Ritsuko wasn't asking her directly, she was warning her; Misato wouldn't see something she wanted to really know about.

"Everything. Show me what's back there."

"Fine, but there are some things that you'll see, that…" she trailed off.

"Very well, now let's see it." Misato wasn't quite sure what 'it' was, but there was definitely some kind of answer to her questions about just what an Eva was in there. Misato followed the doctor through a series of hallways, arriving at a huge room, with the dangling skeletal remains of failed experiments.

"They're Evas. The first ones," Ritsuko said. You may not have known, but Shinji… He witnessed his mother disappear in this very place. He was with his father, and my…"

"Ritsuko, stop. I came for answers, not your half-assed monologues." Misato still held her gun pointed to the doctor's head as she followed her.

"This way." She led her into an elevator and pressed a button for a low, basement level. Once the elevator stopped, the two of them got out, and continued to follow Ritsuko down another dark hallway. She turned, and opened a door to a musty, dark little room, with bandages, medicine, and trash strewn about, with a single wavering light source, a window to nothing.

"What is this? It looks like whoever was living here is long gone…" Misato was unsure what she was looking at, and she couldn't figure out why Ritsuko was showing her this, this mess of medical supplies and waste.

"It is Ayanami's room. She was born here," Ritsuko said. "The light and water here, they define the depths of her mind."

"This isn't what I came here for, and you know that," Misato said.

"I know." Her expression changed to be very serious and almost worried, though it was too dark to see it. They both walked out of the dreary, dark room. "It's the last door on the left, here." She opened the door, waited for Misato to enter behind her, and turned on the dim, orange light.

**

"Hello? Ayanami?" Shinji asked in her intercom. The door opened suddenly.

"Yes?" Rei was wearing her uniform still, even though there wasn't class that day. "Would you like to come in, Ikari?"

Surprised slightly by her invitation, he stuttered, "Y-yeah." He stepped forward in the doorway and Rei moved back out of his way. He stepped out of his shoes. "I thought we could talk…" He paused. Shinji wasn't sure how to say what it was he wanted to talk about. He could still feel her against him, her arms pulling him into the secure, peaceful feeling that was so evasive in his life-- and it was like being teased all day; he never really felt it, he remembered it, but never experienced…

"Is there a specific subject you wished to talk about?" Rei was able to guess what had brought him to her apartment, and she had been thinking about the same things. Did he really come to see her for that? It seemed strange, though it was something she had wanted to address, since the day that her Eva had gone berserk.

"Y- I guess there is, maybe." He was having trouble making eye contact. Now that he was fully awake, he wished he hadn't come here at all.

"Well, I have something that I'd like to discuss, then Ikari."

He was used to Rei being more passive, not doing anything that wasn't asked of her, and there was a hint of excitement in his surprised, "Really?"

"I don't see why I would say that it if were otherwise." She noticed that he was almost constantly looking at the floor. "Are you uncomfortable around me, Shinji? I wouldn't want you to be, or I suppose, I don't think I feel that with you."

Shinji looked up to meet her eyes, striking in appearance really; they were almost difficult to focus on, almost intimidating. "I…no, I don't want to feel uncomfortable around you--"

"But you do, then?"

"No, well, I," Shinji began. He knew that his stuttering was never going to help now; he needed to respond. "I don't think I would have come here if I thought I didn't want to be with you!" he said. "I feel like, I, I need you to exist. The rest of the world, the people, my father, they don't like me, and they…as long as they have their pilot for 01, they'll… but you! I found one place where I can forget about the death, the pain, and the blood that's been all around me and--" He stopped when saw that there were now two pairs of feet in his view of the floor, Rei had stepped very close to him. She was looking directly into his eyes, tears welling in hers.

**

"What… Ayanami, Rei?" Misato gasped as she saw the floating, smiling Rei's come into view. "What is this?!"

"Nothing I can't fix, Misato…" If she said anything between that and pressing a button on her palm device, no one heard it. Misato looked on in horror as the girls' bodies began to literally fall apart, their appendages dropping loosely away, crumbling into messy piles of flesh at the bottom of the tank of LCL.

"Do you know what you're doing?! For your sake, I hope you do, Ritsu--"

"They weren't human, just empty shells. They were merely empty, soulless voids, body with no real inner person." Misato put her gun back at her side as Ritsuko lowered to the floor. She was breaking down. "They were replacement parts, nothing more than that…"

"You can be so cold." Misato had somewhat understood that there could be a cloning project that produced soulless containers; she had been briefed on some of that for the rescue attempt for Shinji when he disappeared in his entry plug after his Eva had achieved a 400% sync ratio, but this was disgusting, the sounds of the snapping tendons and periodic thuds of body parts hitting the bottom, this couldn't be humane, not the least.

"Replacement parts, dolls. No one cares about the replacements, anyway, so it never matters when they die, because they were always expendable…" Dr. Akagi broke down and cried. Misato couldn't decide what she had more trouble looking at in the room, either the disintegrating Rei's or the equally broken Ritsuko.

**

There was a long period of awkward silence, or at least awkward to Shinji, where they simply stood directly in front of each other. He didn't know at all what had just transpired.

Rei studied the slightly trembling boy in front of her just as she studied herself, though the latter was proving harder. He needed all of his courage to tell her that, and he still hadn't run away, even though he was still struggling. But what was it that she had became aware of in these past few days? He needed her. This was becoming apparent; not only as a fellow pilot, but also without her he had nothing, no one who could bring him real peace. These tears? She had them once before, when she awoke from her…incident. Perhaps she did have an overwhelming emotional attachment to him. She needed him. How had he been necessary for her to live? He didn't save her when she was in her molten Eva after she had shielded him from the fifth angel's particle beam, but he did give her something, show her something. He cared about her, not because she was instrumental in reaching his goals, but rather he wanted her to be happy, he wanted to see her smile.

Shinji was shocked and relieved when he saw her near blank stare turn to a warm smile. "Rei, I don't know wha--"

Rei took the last remaining step forward and leaned into him, bringing her arms around him lightly. Shinji gently held her. "If you had run away, I would have not believed you, Shinji."

Shinji looked at her. "Why?"

"Because it would mean that there'd be a more peaceful place for you."

________________________________________________________________________

Crazy. You never would've guessed it'd be so stupid in the end.

I Fought Piranhas, next in the series.