My Heart is for You
The Prologue
Authored by: Ai No Senshi FC

Disclaimer: All characters within are property of Gainax. I'm a college student, so if you really want to sue me for some reason, you won't get much.
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2025

It always seemed to her that the snooze button on her alarm clock was stuck down. The clock always managed to go off at the right time; however the blue backlight was always on whenever she looked at it. This was almost like a bastion of what once was – she never thought of time as a concept of what was to come since he left for good, and had come to think that maybe she never would.

The clock read four in the morning – a time at which she never seemed to miss due to sleep. At night she'd be looking towards the sky, searching for a reason why her life was thrown such a curve-ball while she was still young enough to retry and maybe even try to relive such a fleeting time in her life. Either this or she would be looking at her clock in a drunken haze as she lost control of her inhibition against remembering the good times she has shared with him. This happened to be one of her nights and she couldn't ever get a grip on herself – a time in which she would eventually cry so hard as to not have any tears fall at all.

She could still taste the tar and nicotine on her tongue. In her current state she thought that she had just kissed the lips of the first man she fell in love with, making her mental state all the weaker. Neglecting the fact that she had taken up smoking herself – she missed the smell in the air and all the good feelings that were soon to come as the faint smell of menthol carried through the air as his hands removed her jacket after a long days work.

Ten years has passed. Shinji and Asuka both graduated secondary school, and eventually college. The message he left on her phone was soon lost after several bouts of depression and alcoholism, which crushed her slightly every time she thought about what he had said to her. How much so could never be gauged by the closest people to her at the time – she tried in her state to be the best surrogate mother to both of them while they were slowly and steadily coming into their own. However, how much can someone feel successes fostered by their hand, or further turmoil, when her soul died long before anyone ever noticed?

She rolled over to look out the window. The apartment was too quiet for her tastes but she had become used to the silence Shinji and Asuka had left when they moved out a few months ago. While they were certainly a bright shining light in what was a dark place, the light disappeared along with the slamming of the front door. She tried recalling whether or not Shinji said he was going be engaged soon. She didn't remember whom to, or if he had told her that to earn her permission. Truth was, she didn't want him to get married, to anyone else anyway. She always had wanted for him to stay with her, and while the marriage word still scares her to this day, she could have lived without being Mrs. Ikari.

Thinking about that made her remember: she was thirty-nine, and without a beau worth speaking of for years. While there have been dates and relationships and one-night stands, nothing really was grand or something she wanted to remember. It made her toss and turn about before she finally decided on standing up and walking out to the patio. The air outside was cold and crisp with a bit of snow falling without the aid of the wind. While her tank top and cutoff jeans weren't exactly right for the weather at hand, the cold air against her flesh had a slight comforting, sobering effect. Standing outside for a long time made the haze nearly disappear from her mind, well enough that she started to fumble around in her pockets for her lighter and cigarettes. She found them both, took out a cigarette and lit it up, flicking the lighter open and closed in her hand as she leaned back against the glass, staring out on Tokyo-3.

She wanted to forget, and in her position, could anyone really blame her? The orange glow lit up brilliantly in the dim light as she took a long drag, held it for a moment, and then exhaled slowly. Still being under the influence definitely didn't help her feel better by pulling back long and hard on that cigarette, and she coughed a little as she fought back the dual notion of trying to get air in and keep the contents of her stomach in as well.

Finally, after flicking the blunt away and starting up one more, she looked to the sky and remembered the best she could as to what happened earlier that night.

-

"You know, if you cut back on your drinking just a bit you might not be under internal investigation by NERV." Doctor Akagi said before taking a drink of her martini. "I couldn't imagine how you would keep your rank, much less, your position, if you were to come into work with a hangover yet again."

"Nonsense Ritsuko, you know this is a very important night for me to toast to." Misato replied, cracking open another beer and letting the foam run over the rim to spill down her fingers and land on the table.

"I know, how could I forget that you don't give one damn about what the Commander thinks of you."

"Well, think about it, do you really either?"

Ritsuko laughed. "I see your sense of humor still remains even when you can't see straight.

"It's pathetic, really. I remember when you used to be such an asset to NERV that we couldn't possibly afford to lose your leadership skills, and now you've let the death of one more person ruin your psyche possibly for life."

Misato was finishing her beer and preparing to begin on another when Ritsuko said those words. She slammed the can back down on the table causing the condiments between the women to jump slightly in the air.

"Take that back." Misato simply demanded.

"Even if I said I did, you should still have enough sense about yourself that I can't take back the truth."

"You can't possibly imagine what losing Kaji has done to me – I loved him and just one day he decides to up and get himself killed needlessly!" Misato was on her feet now, not neglecting her beer however which she took long drinks from in spite.

"Yeah, you're right." Ritsuko stood up and prepared to leave. "But I let go of him a long time ago. It's been ten years now but yet you are still hung up on him, and how I don't know." She put her coat on as Misato crushed her now-empty can in her fist, ready to start throwing fists even if she was all ready feeling light-headed. "I'm tired of holding your hand every time you get drunk thinking about him. From now on if you want a ride home I won't be it. Find someone else to be your ride or cut back on the drinking, but I know which one will be more likely to happen first."

"Go to Hell, Ritsuko" was all Misato said before she resigned herself back into her stool and prepared another beer to be savagely drank, watching as the successful doctor – who had a husband and kids and international career going for her – walked through that bar door for what could be potentially the last time.

Misato stayed for quite some time, losing count of how many she had and closing the place down all by her lonesome. Finding it hard to fumble around her pockets for her cigarettes and lighter, it took her all of five minutes just to light one. The smell of burning tobacco had an adverse effect than what her clouded mind had hoped, so she ran – stumbled more appropriately – to the bathroom where all that money she had just spent to forget for ten minutes came back out into the porcelain bowl.

The bartender, having noticed her broken jaunt through his establishment and not another customer to serve at the moment cracked the bathroom door. "Ma'am, I think it's time for you to go home."

Misato didn't say anything, nor really felt like it either. She silently cleaned herself up to the best of her ability, collected her things from her table and walked out into the city. The chill in the air had no effect on her as she still had that warm and fuzzy feeling fostered by the amount of alcohol she just had. She flagged down a cab, fell into the back seat and rambled off her home address and stared at the floor as the cab rolled down the street, for looking outside as signs, people, and other things on the sidewalks made her feel nauseated. The ride back seemed like forever. Having nothing to look at to judge her distance from home, she could've been dropped off anywhere and be none the wiser. Finally it seemed to her the cab rolled up into the parking lot of her apartment, paid the cab driver more than she should have, and before she had the opportunity to get her change she was all ready trying to walk up the stairs to her room. Stopping at the wrong door several times, it took her much too long to figure out on several occasions as to why her key wouldn't open the door, but finally she tried her keys in the right door and she got inside.

She didn't take the time to notice nobody responded to her coming back to the apartment, a point that always pricked her heart whenever she came back sober. Simply taking her jacket and hanging it very precariously on the hanger, she made a trail of clothing to her bathroom, she slowly put on what she thought was clean enough to wear to bed, washed what little was left over from her sickness in the bar, and fell down in bed, staring for hours at the indiglo clock that was always stuck on.

-

The Misato of ten years' past would have even agreed that something had to give, something needed to change, but she was too far along to care about the future or what she could make of it. As far as she was currently concerned, her life was flooded by work only to come home to an empty shell.

"I'm glad you're not here to see me now father," she said, staring at the sky, " – I wouldn't want you to feel disappointed in me."

As she lit up another cigarette, she sighed, thinking about what she had, and how she had let it all go.