All too familiar ceilings

The next time Asuka opens her eyes, her arms are empty and Shinji appears to be half asleep in the chair next to the hospital bed she's in.

"Where's Rei?" I can see Shinji. I can't see Rei. Rei isn't missing. Just not here.

"Isolation. They won't let me see her."

"You let them stop you?" despite her exhaustion, Asuka manages to be angry. Stupid Shinji. You're supposed to look after Rei.

"They have armed guards on her wing, what am I supposed to do?"

"Her wing?" Why does Rei have her own wing of the hospital? Why don't I know about this? Why does it need guards? What's wrong with Rei?

Shinji points downwards, "Two floors down, past the door that says 'Authorised Personnel Only', then the one that says 'Biosecurity Isolation, Do Not Enter'" How do you know that? If there's guards you're not authorised personnel. What have you been doing?

"I tried to get her for you," it's almost a whine, but mostly it's defeat and resignation. Giving up is what you've been doing. Baka Shinji. Where's that spine you show everyone except me?

She closes her eyes again, she's too tired to deal with a useless idiot right now.

The next time Asuka wakes, there is dried blood under her fingernails.

She turns her hand over, resting it on the tattered remains of Shinji's shirt. She isn't sure whose blood it is.

The bed is her own. She doesn't remember how she got home.

She stares at her hand. She doesn't close her eyes. She sees her mother's dead ones anyway.

He sits next to her on the bed. He takes her hand gently. The water is cold on her hand. It is soothing. Unlike the sight of blisters on his arm as he reaches for her other hand.

She opens her eyes. She knows where she is of course, although for some unknown reason her bed has been moved half a centimetre to her relative left. The others appear to have been released and returned home. Hopefully this is a good thing. She has not. It is unlikely to be favourable.

"How are you feeling?" She is the only person in the room. There is no need for her name to be used. She is fairly certain her name is Rei.

"Warm. Has the room temperature been increased?"

"No. Your environment is maintained as it always is. What part of you feels warm?"

"The phenomenon affects my entire skin," she pauses and opens her mouth wider, "but not my mouth or nostrils. You are correct. It does not seem to be a difference in the air temperature. Did I sustain damage during the experiment?"

"Not that we were able to detect. If the sensation increases please hit the alarm. Otherwise I will be back in an hour, assuming nothing else goes wrong."

"Very well Doctor. You may die now."

"What did you just say?!"

"Goodbye. I will await your return."

He wants to run. Not run away. Not this time. Just run. Not that he enjoys physical exercise, he only swims because Asuka demands it - and now she even knows if he's been in the pool even when she isn't there - but maybe it would be enough to exhaust him, or perhaps catch up with his own racing thoughts.

Instead, he is pacing uncomfortably.

He's uncomfortable because his legs are too short, his hips too narrow, he keeps stumbling because his brain can't make up its mind what shape he's supposed to be. He can't sleep, not even Asuka can drag him into unconsciousness. He can't use his SDAT to disconnect from himself and the world because what if Asuka needs him? He can't leave her alone again. He can't lie next to her, his fidgeting wakes her, and at least she's actually asleep again now. It's not as if she can avoid knowing he's there. He had even tried playing, Asuka had enjoyed that the day before and unlike with the SDAT he could still hear her. His hands felt like they were the wrong shape to hold the bow and he needed to cut her nails to be able to hold the strings down correctly.

Maybe this would be easier if they were all girls. At least the mismatch in their shapes wouldn't be as much, and maybe he wouldn't be as forced to be aware of his own body - he'd made that much worse, but this wasn't a new problem. Certainly Rei didn't seem to have the problem he was having, but maybe it was different when the pair of them were in sync. It wasn't as if they knew what was going on. Except Rei was barely any different in height, so she'd still have the legs issue. Would breast size be a problem too? Not that he'd ever talk to either of them about it ever again, but fat and glands had mass and even if Asuka's didn't weigh enough to affect her balance, Rei's posture was different and he didn't feel her muscles the way he did with Asuka so he had no idea if they felt differently from the inside.

Not that it really mattered, he was a boy and that wasn't going to change. Even if it might make Asuka like him more. Even if he enjoyed doing things others thought of as "women's work" - although at least Toji had stopped teasing him about it once Hikari pointed out where the recipe for what he was eating came from. He liked cooking, he liked the way Rei enjoyed it and the way Asuka refused to admit she did. He didn't exactly enjoy all the cleaning but he liked the results and having things clean and tidy was necessary for his peace of mind, and it gave him something to do that was actually useful. Being quiet and unobtrusive meant bothering fewer people. He'd rather be the sort of boy who could be the person Asuka would trust to hold her, than the sort of man Toji tried to be or Asuka's favorite Kaji-san was. The least said about his father, the better, he never wanted to be anything like that.

At least Asuka had been able to change and wash herself. He wasn't sure what he'd have done if he'd had to be the one peeling her plugsuit off her. It was distressing enough feeling her doing it. Plugsuits were supposed to just slide off, especially with the way LCL seeped into them, but this deep into sync it wasn't just the way it felt on her skin, or even the shift as it no longer supported her breasts, but the way the material had tugged at her pubic hair as it pulled away. She was going to hate him even more than he hated himself when she finally woke up. Unless he could somehow find a way to undo whatever it was he had done. He couldn't even go and have breakfast with Rei. The "spend time with Rei so he doesn't feel Asuka shower" option couldn't work with Rei trapped in isolation. Trapped. He needed to get her out somehow.

At least she hadn't been swallowed by the Eva the way he had been. He couldn't have coped with that. If she'd started dissolving the way he had, the way he watched his mother do, even the thought of it had given him nightmares and he hadn't managed to sleep yet. Except it hadn't been like that. He'd felt cared for, somehow. Utterly mortified to discover he was naked, but even Asuka had seemed to care for him in that brief moment. Rei had looked terrified as Asuka had helped her out of the plug. Terrified for a normal person. He didn't dare think what that meant for Rei. Of course he couldn't help, and was ashamed he felt relief at seeing her when she was in such a state, but at least he'd been able to see her before they took her away. Even though their eyes had met, he wasn't entirely sure she had seen him however.

Eventually his pacing is blocked by a penguin.

"I'm sorry," he patted the penguin awkwardly. He did his best to care for PenPen too, but there was no doubt he wasn't an adequate substitute for Misato.

Rei is lying in her bed to all appearances and sensors completely calm but not actually asleep.

Even the pattern of her brainwaves did not provide an indication of the underlying conflict.

Her purpose remained unchanged. It was quite literally built into her. She had stopped wanting it but she could not avoid it. At one point she had thought that she could die, as her predecessor had. At least she would not be the one at the center of the end. For some definition of her. Then she had realised how unexpectedly intertwined she had become with her friends. A gradual change she had not consciously noticed until it was far too late. Now the only thing holding back the contagion of Kyoko's death wish was the feeling of Shinji's arms around her|Asuka. A sensation she should not able able to have while her body was alone if things were as they were supposed to be. From that sense of comfort she could appreciate the irony - that the thing she shared with Asuka was that she was like her mother - a thing neither of them would ever be - a broken soul whose only way to be complete was to die. At least for Kyoko, the only world that had ended was Asuka's.

The next time Asuka wakes, she checks his breathing.

She knows he is there. There's no aching abyss where he should be. There's no hole in the universe where Rei should be.

She can only see one of them. She doesn't entirely trust her senses.

His fingers are tangled in her hair in his sleep. His arm around her is not enough.

I am Rei. Whatever else I am. I am Rei. I am not the gentle thoughts of Shinji soothing the raw edges of my soul to deny Kyoko her foothold. I am Rei. I am not the strong arms of Asuka pulling me away from the edge. I am Rei.

Eventually Rei was actually as calm as the machines claimed she was.

Her future may not be long, but she was going to enjoy as much of it as she could. She needed to arrange more cuddling. And kissing. Especially the kissing. There definitely needed to be more of that. She wondered if her friends would mind if she watched. They were often strange about how they showed their affection for each other around others. She was far more other than they knew.