She didn't feel any more rested when Shinji woke up in Rei's arms.

She was however wide awake when she realised it was Rei's arms and not Shinji's she felt around her. Baka-Shinji had not come home through the storm last night, but she was somehow synchronised with him anyway.

They got up, used the bathroom and made breakfast.

By the time she'd finished eating the synchronisation was fading. Thankfully there had been no hints of a morning make-out session, or worse, sex. Just Rei's familiar softness and Shinji's awkward movements - of course they didn't have the same synchronised movements in the morning. He was synchronised with her not Wondergirl. She briefly wondered about how Rei felt about her boyfriend being synchronised with another girl, but it was Rei, if it bothered her she'd have said something about it. All Rei had done when she screamed "MINE" was to somehow synchronise with her and help get the baka back.

She looked out at the rain. If it were any lighter than yesterday she couldn't tell. Which meant it was likely that today's Eva synchronisation tests were cancelled. So she might not see either Rei or Shinji today. Another day left alone with a penguin and her own thoughts. What a thrilling prospect.

At least with the air cooler and the place to herself, she could take a long hot shower without worrying. About using all the hot water or being interrupted that was. Maybe she could relax and her brain would shut up for a while.

Maybe that was why baka carried his stupid ancient SDAT everywhere. If it shut down the intrusive thoughts it would be like being able to hold Rei on demand. Maybe if they were ever able to talk she could ask him. He clearly had experience with both, so he could even say which worked better for him. How it could be other than Rei, she didn't know, but who knew what was going on in the baka's head.

The shower helped, feeling her own hands on her own skin, the familiar scent of soap and her imported shampoo.

She lasted until she was brushing her hair before the intrusive thoughts returned. If they were synchronised without fear of contact, baka-Shinji could be the one brushing out her hair. He could easily do it in ways she had to stretch to do, but without the risk of pulling hair painfully that anyone else would have. Then she could curl up in his lap and he could run his fingers through it. That last thought wasn't a new one. Her subconscious kept prompting her with it. Stupid girls, I'm no one's pet.

At least it was a pleasant thought, unlike so many others. She just didn't want it to be.

Attempts to distract herself with bizarre Japanese TV shows or playing games didn't work.

TV was either too nonsensical for her brain to deal with - and her brain was coming up with some utter nonsense as it was - or incomprehensible love triangles in Spanish for some equally inexplicable reason. Spanish didn't seem to have a word for what she was feeling either. German was good with coming up with words by smashing other words together into things only other Germans could pronounce, but the problem there was that she'd have to come up with the words to smash first.

Playing games was just frustrating, she'd long since learned how to deal with the brain-dead computer opponents even with their glitches and cheats. She needed a real opponent, at least baka-Shinji was unpredictable even if it almost always made him even easier to beat. Other than Rei the only person who could come close was Kensuke, and obviously neither were coming over to play against her - although for different reasons - if the rain ever stopped.

So she was stuck with the same subjects hanging out in the back of her mind vying for attention as to which would be the most annoying to think about next.

Some things needed others to provide information, information she was sure she wasn't going to get. 'Why did no one at Nerv seem to care how we got the Invincible Idiot back?' She certainly didn't know. Akagi should have been crawling the walls looking for the answers. Admittedly she'd killed the video feed from the plug - well it had been her thought - but that wouldn't have cut off the rest of the telemetry. Maybe you needed two other pilots already in sync with each other. Maybe you needed people who actually cared - but she and Rei had been there for most of the month and Mistato had been openly weeping. Maybe it was whatever Rei's final plea had been. Perhaps the Magi were still analysing? It wasn't as if they could repeat the experiment to answer her questions, but they didn't seem to be even asking them.

Other subjects possibly were answerable, but she was almost certain she didn't want to go through what would be necessary to answer them. Like why she never felt Rei kissing Shinji. Did they wait until any synchronisation had faded? That wouldn't be reliable. While it always seemed to fade after he was there for a while, that was one of the few consistent things. They didn't seem to need to be even close to each other anymore for it to return - at least most of the time it didn't cause any major problems, even if Hikari asking why she was writing the wrong answers to maths problems on her desk had been embarrassing. She'd made the idiot clean it off of course, after explaining to her why he was getting basic maths wrong.

Obviously she wasn't going to ask Wondergirl and baka-Shinji to engage in more kissing for study purposes. That almost certainly wouldn't help anyway unless they found a situation where she could feel it. And that wasn't happening. Anything else would require equipment only Nerv had and their reasons for not talking to Akagi hadn't changed. At some point they'd slip and have to deal with whatever the fallout was. They probably had some room there - apparently no one noticed her synchronising with Rei, and Misato just thought it funny when she saw her doing the same thing as baka-Shinji.

'Misato is something I might actually get an answer about. Whatever 'special mission' she is on has to end eventually. Her abandoning me is one thing. Her abandoning her precious Shinji is another. So unless her special mission actually involves fucking Kaji she should be back soon.' Asuka cursed her imagination in some very colourful terms that her imagination helpfully supplied. Sex was disgusting. The thought of Misato and Kaji having sex was more disgusting. The thought of Misato's special mission being to have Kaji's baby and bring it back in nine months was utterly horrifying.

Carefully putting that image aside and locking it in a mental box she buried below the one labelled 'nightmares', she wondered why Misato abandoning her Precious Shinji was more aggravating than the thought of her Kaji having sex with the purple haired wench who occasionally pretended to be their guardian. Leaving her responsible for the idiot was obviously part of it... Asuka backtracked her thought process. 'Her Kaji'? She hadn't thought of him as her's in ... a time which would require far too much digging through memories she didn't want to think about. She hadn't even tried to get his attention the last time she'd seen him. She still had it of course, but she hadn't even minded when he'd called her 'kiddo' and patted her head.

Even the unwanted thought of baka-Shinji stroking her hair was more desirable than actual head-pats from Kaji. Rei's hugs were better than his. Certainly much better than her childhood daydreams of what sex with Kaji would be like now she was almost an adult. Even the disturbing thought of sex with the baka was better than that. What the hell had happened to her?

Thinking of Wondergirl - and violently suppressing the small part of her brain that was wondering if somehow sex with her actually might not be disgusting - why did she trust her so much? She was clearly still the Commander's Doll, but she was also the Rei who demanded hugs, saw something interesting in the baka and had either a subtle sense of humour or an impeccable sense of timing. For a moment a horrifying thought crossed her mind - Wondergirl becoming good friends with Hikari and learning how to prank! No one would be safe!

She'd told Hikari she trusted what Rei said, but did she really?

'The sky is blue. I am not a doll. I am replaceable. He is not my boyfriend'.

The Ayanami who followed the Commander's orders and kept secrets still seemed like a doll. But she was also the Rei who smiled, the Rei who optimised for the best possible hug, the Rei who would talk for hours if you asked the wrong question. She was also the Rei who thought she was replaceable, that seemed to consider herself so disposable that she was passively suicidal. Or actively - she'd meant it when she'd told Hikari part of why they hadn't talked was that she was on a suicide watch - obviously you can't drown in LCL, but on more than one occasion she'd been certain Wondergirl was calculating if there was enough height for an 'accidental' fall from the gangway to be fatal. Rei didn't make that kind of mistake, but she could make it look like she had.

Which is what made the last thing Wondergirl frequently said the least believable. No one got that suicidal over someone they weren't in love with did they? She'd effectively lost both her parents, and while she still had nightmares that didn't make her want to die. Rei never even mentioned her parents, so maybe she really did only have baka-Shinji now. That was a depressing thought - Asuka obviously didn't need anyone herself, but needing someone and it being baka-Shinji ...

Asuka decided that it was lunchtime, whatever the clock happened to say, and started digging through the fridge for something to make. The freezer was half full of Misato's terrible food so simply heating something up wasn't an option, so she'd have to make something from whatever the baka had bought.

Making food was only half a distraction from her thoughts. That she was making it herself, alone, was an annoying reminder that the idiot wasn't there.

Talking to Misato about what she did and didn't feel about said Idiot obviously wouldn't help. Everything was sex and innuendo with her. That she had no interest in sex with the idiot, or anyone else, would not be something that could penetrate Misato's excuse for a brain.

She took her food over to the balcony window.

'I don't need something as unpleasant as sex to show I care about anyone. Rei knows I care. Baka-Shinji knows I care. Right?'

She watched the rain.