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You Just Wait And See (How Things Are Gonna Be)

Chapter One: What's The Matter With Your Mind And All Your Sighing?

Peter Quill's eyes flew open.

Which was weird, because he had literally just gone to sleep.

"Wha..." he muttered, feeling his stubbled jaw. "How did...what..."

He trailed off as he realised he was lying on wet tarmac in the middle of a street.

"Oh, god-dammit!" he swore, eyes widening in disbelief. "Seriously?"

Pushing up off of the road, Peter stood up, and instantly squirmed as he realised he was barefoot.

Ravagers were, as a habit, disinterested in the concept of pyjamas, and Peter only slept naked if someone else was accompanying him for it, so apart from his jacket, shoes, and socks, he was basically in his regular clothes. The other Guardians questioned this when they first moved in with him, but Peter was not to be dissuaded from the habit of a lifetime, no matter what concerned variation of 'I am Groot' he heard. It was honestly stupid that they'd complain about him happily mixing day-clothes and night-clothes. The new Milano even had a washing machine, as opposed to Peter's old method of 'mix detergent with shower'.

Gingerly stepping over to the nearest pavement with squelching feet, Peter glanced around to get his bearings, scanning the skies for spaceships. This couldn't have been a practical joke on Rocket's part, because the furry weapons expert would have been following close by and helplessly snickering if that were the case. Groot was too nice to randomly drop Peter somewhere like this, and he doubted Gamora or Drax had done it. If he'd pissed either of them off, they would have demanded something up-front like a duel. They were honourable that way.

"Hell with this," Peter said, carefully watching where he put his feet, wary of broken glass and other garbage.

As he carefully walked towards the end of the street, however, Peter realised that there wasn't any refuse. The tarmac he walked on was strangely clear of garbage or people, or even the signs of spaceships landing. The dozens and dozens of grey, squarish buildings that surrounded him seemed oddly familiar, too.

Peter squinted as he came to the end of the street. There were huge letters on the side of distant building's wall, letters that Peter couldn't immediately understand but that looked weirdly familiar.

Memories of Peter's youth flooded back to him. Before his mother had fully succumbed to her deadly illness, he often skipped school to visit her, or just to be alone for a while. For an eight-year old boy in 1988, there were only two kinds of places to hang out that weren't soul-crushingly boring: dollar theatres, and arcades.

And what Peter saw before him, across the street, currently closed but still wondrous in its appearance, was a fully-furnished arcade with hundreds of machines, glorious prizes, and an enormous sign sprawled across the shopfront. The sign was written in a language that Peter didn't really speak, but would, thanks to hours upon hours of quarter-fuelled gaming, forever recognise.

Japan. Peter was in Japan.

He was on Earth.

He was home.

But where the hell was everyone else?

Sticking his hands in his pockets, Peter walked out into the next street over, where a few cars and pedestrians were travelling through the city. Most of the people he saw were in smart business suits, as expected, and Peter adopted his usual confident strut, hoping that it would cover up the fact that he was a strange American wandering the middle of a city without shoes. Yet nobody seemed to notice him no matter how many times he gave a cheerful 'Konnichi-wa', which might have been for the best, as that was almost all the Japanese he knew.

"Shit," Peter said, folding his arms.

His translator implant had no files for Japanese, so everything around was a mystery to him. The city sprawled like a rat's maze, made worse because of its massive size. It seemed unnecessary, really. Huge crosswalks served only a few people, there weren't all that many cars on the road, and some of the buildings looked near-empty to Peter's eyes. Didn't Japan have serious space problems? There were millions and millions of people living in a few tiny islands. Had something gone badly wrong since he'd left, twenty-seven years ago?

Twenty-seven years. He'd spent less than a quarter of his life living on Earth, and now he was back with no explanation at all. What had happened to the Milano? Was this something to do with the Infinity Stone, or his long-lost father being an unknown species? And were his friends looking for him right now?

Shaking his head to clear it of such unanswerable questions, Peter walked a block towards the south, guiding himself by the rising sun to his left. He looked around for a phone booth and finally spotted one, breaking into a run to get to it before someone else could-

"Oh, come on!" Peter complained as a teenage boy wearing a white shirt and big squarish glasses entered the booth, dialling quickly and with great excitement on his face.

The boy ignored him and quickly began rambling in Japanese, although whoever he was calling cut him off every few seconds to respond. Peter tapped his shoeless foot, huffing, and reached into his pockets to find absolutely nothing. At first, he grimaced in frustration, but then upon reflection, remembered that the phone wouldn't accept Units anyway.

Putting his hands on his hips, Peter was about to ask the boy if he could borrow a yen when he felt a familiar squarish bulk attached to the side of his pants.

With triumphant glee, Peter looked down to see his beloved Walkman and headphones, attached to the side of his belt like always. When Peter was a kid, one of the Ravagers had tried to steal the Walkman once - once - and Peter had never taken chances with his mother's last gift since then. The other Guardians hadn't really questioned why he slept with it, as he often played his tapes at low volume when he drifted off to sleep.

"Well," he said, shrugging. "None'a you seem to care anyway."

He plugged the headphones into the Walkman, pressed play, and strutted off down the street in search of an American consulate and a shoe shop, in that order.

XxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxX

Shinji Ikari sat alone in his room, headphones around his ears, listening to his SDAT tape player.

It had been a restless night's sleep. He had stared up at the ceiling for most of the night, but it was still unfamiliar, as was the city he lived in and the people he knew. He'd left everything behind to be here in search of a very simple hope.

It had rapidly turned into a nightmare.

The music in Shinji's ears suddenly stopped, and he picked up the SDAT player to find out why. The screen was blank, so the batteries had worn out.

Shinji sat up from his futon, sighing. He'd already gone out for supplies at five in the morning, incapable of lying awake for a second more. He had carefully placed them around the kitchen outside; some in the cupboards, some in the fridge. Going out again would mean that people might see him. People might recognise him from the news, remember who he was, and question what the hell he'd been doing yesterday.

Pulling the headphones off, Shinji calmed himself by remembering that that was a stupid thing to think. Nobody noticed him back home, and nobody would notice him here. He could move undetected through the city, because he honestly wasn't that important.

Except, unfortunately, when it really, really counted.

Maybe the attacks would end. Maybe everyone would forget him, and he would just meld into a sea of faces once more, blissfully unnoticed.

It was a shame that he'd have to go without the SDAT for the walk to the convenience store, though. The music in there was his world, like sensory deprivation. He was an island when the SDAT played, and everyone else was perfectly distant.

Then, Shinji heard singing. A man's voice, not out-of-key but clearly amateur, was coming from outside, belting out a song with some enthusiasm. Shinji listened carefully, but caught little more than the gist of it. It was about a spirit in the sky.

Shinji pulled his legs up close to him in a fetal position, and then went into a crouch on his futon. He shifted to face his window, and peeked over the sill to the street outside.

The man singing was a foreigner, perhaps European or American, with light brown hair and a wide jaw. He looked like he was roughly Misato's age, and was handsome in a slightly rough way. As he sang, he walked down the street in a travelling dance that seemed to be a long series of well-timed moves strung together through nothing but feeling. Shinji had never seen anyone dance so well, or care so little about what anyone else might think of them.

The man turned his head and saw that Shinji was watching him, and Shinji considered ducking under the windowsill, embarrassed. But the man simply kept dancing for a few seconds more before neatly sliding his hand to the tape player on his belt and pushing it, all in an action so fluid that Shinji could barely believe it was really happening.

Then the man pulled off his headphones, and called out to Shinji.

"Hey!" Peter yelled, looking up at the boy ahead of him, through the apartment's back window.

The boy slowly and reluctantly stood up, pushing the window up as he did so. He seemed to be a teenager, his dark hair short and his arms long and thin. He was clad in a white shirt, and he had deep blue eyes. That confused Peter (didn't Japanese people only have brown eyes?), but the boy seemed to actually admit that he was there, which was more than Peter could say for anyone else he'd seen in this city. (Maybe he was wearing contacts, or something.)

"...h-hello," Shinji said quietly.

The man apparently hadn't heard him.

"What?" the man yelled back.

"Hello," Shinji said again, a little louder.

Peter rejoiced at his luck, finally finding someone who didn't ignore him and spoke English.

"Hey, I need to come up and use your phone," Peter said. "It's okay, I'll dial reverse."

The boy considered this for some time.

"Alright," Shinji finally said. "It's apartment 43."

"Thanks, see you in a minute!" the foreigner shouted, and he quickly disappeared from Shinji's sight to run up the stairs.

Shinji took a deep breath and opened his room's door, thankful for the sound-cushioning effect of his socks as he walked towards the apartment's front door. Pulling back the locks, Shinji opened the door to see the foreigner again.

"Hey," the man said.

"Hello," Shinji said. "Please take off your-..."

He did a small double-take as when he noticed the foreigner's bare feet.

"Long story," Peter said.

Shinji slowly nodded, holding the door open, and the man stepped inside Misato's apartment, stamping his feet to get the water out of them. As he dried his feet, Peter glanced at the shoes in the opening alcove. Small sneakers sat next to high heels. Either the kid was a cross-dresser, or he lived with a woman, probably older.

"Please," Shinji said, stepping back, and Peter entered the apartment proper.

The boy continued to move backwards until they came to a kitchen and dining area, with a veranda off in the distance to Peter's right. Peter kept his distance, well aware that letting random people into your house wasn't considered a great idea, but the boy didn't seem that bothered about it.

"So," Peter said. "...you have a name?"

"Sh-shinji," Shinji replied, still looking down. "Shinji...Ikari."

He looked up from the floor to see if the foreigner would react to his family name, but there was obviously no recognition in the man's eyes.

"I'm Peter Quill," the man said, with an obvious and assured confidence. "People call me Star-Lord."

"Really?" Shinji said, innocently but with a touch of disbelief.

The man's brows furrowed a little.

"Yeah," he said, mildly annoyed.

He looked around the apartment, considered the beer cans, trays of half-eaten food, and complete lack of anything approaching organisation or hygiene, and immediately felt right at home.

"Where am I, anyway?" he asked.

"...Tokyo-3," said Shinji.

Peter looked confused.

"They made two more?" he asked.

Shinji had no idea how the foreigner could have forgotten that Tokyo-3 existed, particularly when he was in it that very second. Somehow, the stranger could speak perfect Japanese, yet he wasn't aware that the original Tokyo had long since been destroyed.

Shinji wondered if he was dangerous. Normal people didn't go without shoes, or wander the streets dancing, after all. That was strange.

But Shinji had been experiencing high amounts of 'strange' lately, and he couldn't help but wonder if this was just another instalment of the Night Parade Of One Hundred Things To Disturb Shinji.

"Your...Japanese is good," Shinji said.

Peter stared at him.

"I...thankyou?" he said.

He slowly reached up to the implant in his ear, and found it wasn't gently buzzing like it usually did when it translated for him.

"Are you with NERV?" Shinji asked.

Lowering his hand, Peter surreptitiously glanced out of the veranda, and noticed a pair of trucks driving past outside, both painted black, and both with large red logos on them. A red leaf with four letters - N, E, R, V - was painted on the sides of both of them, along with some more letters Peter couldn't make out at this distance.

His gaze shifted back to Shinji, who was watching him expectantly.

"...yes," Peter said. "Yes I am."

"So your code name is Star-Lord?" Shinji asked.

"It's an outlaw name," Peter corrected him out of habit.

Realising that there weren't exactly many outlaws on Earth anymore, Peter added:

"'Cause...I'm usually freelance, but NERV hired me to do NERV things."

"Oh," said Shinji. "Okay."

Peter usually considered himself an accomplished rearranger of the truth, but he knew that that was the worst lying he'd ever done, even including the time when he'd tried to convince a Makluan scoutship that he was a Ravager fleet. (Not that the Milano was a fleet - that he, by himself, was a fleet. Although that had worked, thanks to the timely intervention of a Z'nox, who Peter owed money to.) Either Shinji was the most gullible person in history, or he completely, utterly didn't care.

Judging by the nervous, melancholy expression on the boy's face, Peter was going to go with the second option.

"How 'bout you?" Peter asked, trying to sound friendly, hoping the boy would at least attempt to smile out of politeness. "Do your parents work for NERV?"

Shinji's expression darkened.

"My father does," said Shinji, in a low tone. "And my mother."

The boy blinked.

"W-well, she did," he added.

Peter's face fell.

That was it. That was more than enough to drag somebody down. And by the way he said 'my father', Peter guessed that there was something wrong there, too.

Peter's mother had always been there for him. Even as she lay dying, even as her heart slowly gave out entirely, killed by the poison that was supposed to kill the cancer first. He'd run away, into a strange and frightening world, kept sane only by memories and the gifts she'd given him. And if this kid's dad wasn't around, or worked too hard, or just plain sucked as a parent, Peter could completely understand what was up with Shinji.

But stranger still was the unfamiliar liquid running down from the edges of Shinji's straight black hair, staining his white shirt with drops of orange.

"What's with your hair?" Peter asked, his eyes thinning.

"I-it's LCL," said Shinji.

With some regret, he added:

"I thought I washed it out."

The boy's tone bothered Peter something fierce, and he resolved to learn why.

"Listen," he said to Shinji, "I just got transferred to Tokyo-3 from the..."

His eyes flicked away to think of a cover.

"...Alderaan NERV base," he eventually continued, "so can you fill me in on what's been going on lately?"

He wondered if even Shinji would see through such an obvious lie, but the boy simply stammered out:

"Y-you want me to tell you?"

"No-one else," said Peter.

"There's Misato," Shinji said, casting a look to his left, towards a closed door leading to a room across from the kitchen. "But she's asleep."

He gave Peter a cautious look.

"I'm...not gonna get into trouble?" he asked.

Peter's jaw set in his mouth.

"No," he said.

Shinji laid it out. At first with considerable pauses, repeatedly asking Peter to assure him that he wouldn't suffer consequences for talking. Peter replied that he was not allowed to punish Shinji by any means whatsoever, and eventually Shinji got on with the story.

The boy told Peter about how long he'd been alone, without either of his parents. One dead, the other distant and never visiting. He didn't mention any friends, or even of a close relationship with the man who raised him, skipping over almost his entire life within the space of a few sentences.

But then he spoke of coming to Tokyo-3, and he told Peter what happened with increasing pace and exceptionally close detail. A sudden enormous beast threatening the city, leaving him alone and vulnerable, unevacuated. The hopeless attack of the Japanese army, deflected by the monster without a second thought. The N2 mine, some kind of non-nuclear bomb that filled the air with a surge of fire, yet did nothing at all to the approaching monster. A near-unstoppable threat that he had been forced to fight, trapped inside a monster of his own, given no reason or training, only constant demands to win victory, or let the whole city die in the wake of his failure. The strange orange liquid that filled his lungs and burned him, still clinging to him now despite intense scrubbing, only called 'LCL'. The terrifying screams of the being they called an 'Angel'.

And the people who'd brought him there.

Misato, or Captain Katsuragi, a friendly woman was also his superior officer in the field.

Dr Akagi, a cold yet brilliant scientist, her stern eyes intimidating Shinji whenever she looked at him.

Rei Ayanami, a quiet and mysterious girl, horribly injured from piloting and pushed to the brink of death, enough that even Shinji chose to fight rather than letting her do it again.

Commander Ikari, Shinji's father. A man he'd barely spoken to since his mother died, always distant, and barely interested in Shinji's existence. He ran the program of building, containing and directing the monster that Shinji had been forced to pilot.

A synthetic humanoid lifeform known as an Evangelion. NERV's only defence against the Angels that planned to destroy Tokyo-3, slaughter every human being on the planet, and rule Earth as their own.

And right now, Shinji Ikari was the only person in Japan capable of piloting one.

Peter took some time to process this. His eyes were still, but not as stoic as he hoped, for he could feel them watering, and blinked quickly to push tears away. He had been raised by some of the toughest men in the galaxy, and they scorned crying.

But what got to him most was Shinji's face throughout the ordeal of relaying what had happened. The boy's expression had barely changed from when he'd first greeted Peter and let him into the apartment. This horror had stuck with him, and would stick with him, just as surely as the LCL clung to his skin.

Shinji's mother was long gone, and his father was worse than useless.

But Peter was there.

Peter reached down and, finding his Walkman, quickly rewound it to the right spot, expertly pushing 'stop' just as it hit the correct time. This done, he pulled his orange headphones from his neck, and held them out to Shinji.

The boy stared back at him.

"Take them," Peter said quietly.

Shinji reached out for them, and his thin pale fingers wrapped around their band, taking them from Peter, who carefully let go.

"Put 'em on," Peter said.

"Do I have to sing?" Shinji asked.

Peter smiled a little.

"Whatever you want, man," he said.

Shinji put the headphones around his own ears, and Peter pressed play.

The smooth and slow sounds of a song began to play through the Walkman. It was a song that had carried Peter more than any other on the tape his mother made for him. She had enjoyed it when she was young - she had enjoyed all of them - and she had made the mix as her gift to Peter, her way of making sure he could carry on.

It had worked.

And Peter hoped to whatever god was listening, or existed, that it would work for Shinji, too.

Slowly, over a long time, his breaths synchronising to the beat of the song, Shinji's eyes became distant, and he was no longer with Peter, or in the room, or even on Earth anymore. Music had taken him beyond space and time, and for those few minutes, Shinji Ikari forgot the wall he held up against the world. Tears fell from his eyes, and he shifted his weight on his feet in regular time, gently swaying to the sounds he heard.

The song began to fade out, familiar to Peter even without wearing the headphones, and he pushed the stop button on his tape player. Shinji became still again, and he slowly, almost robotically raised his hand to take the headphones off. He handed them to Peter, who gingerly took them from the boy.

"What was that?" Shinji asked.

"I'm Not In Love, 10CC," Peter said. "You like it?"

"I've...never heard anything like it before," Shinji replied.

He sniffed and gave a double-take, as if he'd only just realised how much he'd been crying, and quickly reached inside his pocket for tissues.

"I-I'm sorry," he said, after wiping his eyes.

"No," said Peter.

"...what?" asked Shinji.

"Anyone who says you should be sorry for crying has no idea what you had to do," said Peter. "And I..."

He looked away.

"I can't say I've done what you've done," he said. "Not the same. But I lost my mom, same as you. And not a day goes by I don't regret running."

"...running," Shinji murmured.

"Yeah," said Peter.

He looked back at Shinji, and slowly looped his thumbs around his waist, nodding.

"'Cause the guys who raised me after her wanted to eat me," he said, matter-of-factly.

Shinji stared at him in shock.

"...what?!" the boy said.

"I know!" said Peter. "Every day, 'hey Peter, maybe we'll eat you'. 'Sleep well, pleasant dreams, might wake up in a pot'. Like that's a normal thing to tell a kid!"

Shinji's shoulders shook, the corners of his mouth turned, and he laughed, at first barely held back by his firmly-shut mouth, and then genuinely and completely.

"I'm sorry," he said, despite his giggling.

"Don't be," said Peter, grinning, glad of the change. "You haven't tried to eat me yet."

Shinji chuckled more until Peter spoke again.

"But there's more than that," Peter said. "I'm not alone now. I've got friends. Friends who helped me kill a guy with enough power to wipe out a planet."

Shinji's eyes widened, and Peter stretched his arms up over head, which he swivelled around, cracking his neck.

"Soooo," he said, "if I can make some calls, borrow whichever shuttle's closest to here, get to a star-way...I'm sure we can lick this Angel problem real fast, and send you off wherever."

Shinji considered this.

"You're not from NERV, are you?" the boy asked.

Peter considered whether to tell him, and then decided hey, what the hell.

"I'm from space," he replied.

"...okay," said Shinji, shrugging.

Peter wondered whether Shinji accepted this immediately because he was too meek to argue with much of anything, or because he'd recently seen shit so weird, a guy from space was nothing.

His train of thought was cut off when the creaking sound of a door opening got his attention, and he heard a woman say:

"Good morning, Shinji!"

Peter and Shinji turned to look at the woman who had just left the far bedroom. She looked to be in her late twenties, with long dark purple hair (dyed?) and a cute, delicate face. She was wearing a wrinkled t-shirt and short denim shorts, like a bedraggled Japanese Daisy Duke, and despite her just-got-out-of-bed demeanour, or perhaps because of it, Peter was suddenly very, very interested.

"...hi," said Peter, summoning all of his not-inconsiderable charm.

The woman smiled towards the pair of them, but said nothing in response.

Peter reached his hand over his shoulder, elbow pointing in the air, partly to scratch his back and partly because doing this made his t-shirt ride up, which he knew for a fact drove women wild with excitement.

"Are you his older sister?" he asked the rapidly-approaching woman. "Cause-"

The woman in question walked straight through him.

Peter froze in abject bewilderment as the woman continued on with walking over to Shinji as if she hadn't just phased through Peter like he was nothing but air.

"Uh..." Shinji said.

His smile having disappeared, the boy stared at Peter in a mix of horror and deep confusion.

Peter, for his part, could only stare back.

"Breakfast?" the woman suggested.

"Alright, Misato," Shinji said.

"Misato?" said Peter, pointing to the woman. "Captain Misato Katsuragi? She's your-"

Peter broke off, and turned to Misato.

"...you're his commanding officer?" he asked, in a louder voice than he normally spoke with.

Shinji waited for Misato to answer Peter, but she simply stared at Shinji, still smiling.

"Shinji?" she said.

"Y-yes," Shinji said. "Breakfast."

His eyes repeatedly flicked from Peter to Misato nervously, and he mumbled:

"Breakfast. Breakfast, breakfast. Breakfast. Breakfa-"

"Quit saying that!" Peter said.

"I'm sorry!" Shinji replied.

Misato frowned, and turned back to see what exactly Shinji was looking at over her shoulder.

She stared right into Peter's eyes, and saw nothing.

"...that's okay, Shinji," she said, turning back to him. "You're probably a bit beat up after fighting that Angel. I can make-"

"No, it's fine!" said Shinji quickly. "I'd like to cook, really!"

Peter stared at Misato, and experimentally poked at her, his finger phasing right through her every time. She quickly left, and Peter stepped out of the way as Shinji busied himself with washing his hands in the kitchen sink, gathering pots and pans, and taking eggs and milk out of the fridge.

Shinji was grabbing a small white bowl and opening the egg carton when he felt Peter experimentally poke at his shoulder.

"...what are you doing?" he whispered out of the side of his mouth, as a few metres behind him, the sound of Misato opening the day's first beer from the comfort of the couch rang out.

"She can't hear me," Peter said. "Or see me. Doesn't even know I'm here, can't even touch me."

"Yes," whispered Shinji, cracking an egg on the side of the bowl and carefully dropping its contents inside.

"Outside, same thing," said Peter. "I don't remember going through anybody, but no-one noticed I was there."

"Hmm," said Shinji, cracking another egg on the side of the bowl.

Peter waved a hand past the kitchen tabletop, and it passed straight through that as well.

"Nothin' else, either," Peter said. "No-one can see me, no-one can hear me, can't touch anything except floors, the ground and you."

"Hm," said Shinji, taking another egg from the carton.

He did feel an astonishing connection with a floor, or the ground. Something that everyone else built on, and just expected to be there.

He raised his hands, the egg held carefully between his fingers, only to have his left arm's rise cut short by Peter grabbing it. Shinji flinched, worried that he'd done something wrong, but Peter's expression was one of curiosity and potential, not anger.

"Crack it with one hand," Peter said.

Shinji frowned.

"...that's impossible," he said.

"What?" Misato called.

Shinji gave Peter a pained and frustrated look, and called out to Misato:

"Nothing."

"It's not impossible," said Peter. "It's cracking an egg. Chefs do it all the time."

"I'm not a chef," Shinji whispered.

"Then why are you cooking?" asked Peter.

"B-because Misato isn't very good at it," said Shinji.

"Then how come you're doing cooked breakfast?" asked Peter. "If you weren't a chef, you'd be doing something basic, like...uh..."

He trailed off.

"We eat rice in the morning," Shinji whispered helpfully.

"Thankyou!" said Peter. "Rice, yeah. I'm an American."

"I guessed," muttered Shinji.

"But you can totally crack an egg in one hand," said Peter. "Tap the bowl, pull it apart. You can do it."

"N-no," Shinji said. "No, I can't."

Peter considered this.

He then let go of Shinji's arm, made a great show of shrugging, and stepped away from Shinji, turning his back on him entirely.

"Is she single?" he asked, looking over at Misato.

"She doesn't even know you exist," Shinji murmured.

"That's no reason to give up," Peter said.

Shinji turned away from the bowl, its third egg still uncracked and in his hand, and stared at Peter. Everything he said and did made the opposite of sense, and it wasn't just the fact that he seemed to be a Shinji-only ghost. People didn't break habits of breaking eggs; there was no point. Omelettes were made one way.

...right?

"How do you break it one-handed?" Shinji asked, quietly.

"Hold it with your fingers," Peter instructed, not looking back.

"Right."

"Put your thumb on the middle part," said Peter. "It's weakest there."

Shinji moved the egg around in his right hand, his thumb feeling its cool outer shell.

"Uh-huh," he said.

"Tap it on the bowl, then open the egg up with your pointer and middle fingers," said Peter. "If you do it even, shouldn't be much shell inside."

"I don't think that's possible," Shinji said.

Peter still did not turn. It was a tactic he usually used for negotiation, when he was fairly sure the person he was talking to wouldn't shoot him in the back.

Shinji shut his eyes and concentrated.

"Down on the bowl, open it up," he whispered. "Down on the bowl, open it up. Down on the bowl, open it up. Down on the bowl, open it-"

He winced and gave an upset yelp as he felt the egg explode into a gooey mess in his hand, shards of the shell mixing in with the yolk and white, now utterly indistinguishable.

"What is it?" Misato called out from the sofa.

"...I broke an egg," Shinji said.

"It's okay," said Misato. "Just throw it out and use another one."

Shinji let the remnants of his latest failure fall into the garbage can, and then slowly washed his hands in the kitchen sink, scrubbing them with the nearby soap. He had bought it, the eggs and milk from the convenience store earlier that morning, when a nightmare of the Angel attacking again had made it impossible to get back to sleep. Besides, judging by the pre-made junk Misato had considered a 'feast' for dinner, he figured she wouldn't do much different for breakfast.

As he finished cleaning his hands, he noticed that Peter was looking at him again.

"It's okay," the older man said. "You just have to practice."

Shinji shook his head.

"I'm not wasting food for something there's no point in doing," he said, resentment creeping into his low whisper. "I'll just do it how I've always done it."

Peter stared at him.

"You're...literally not willing to break a few eggs to make an omelette?" he asked.

Shinji said nothing to him.

That silent treatment continued as Shinji cooked the omelettes in a square frying pan, resulting in eggy cubes that clearly delighted Misato as her charge served them up to her. Peter noted with some interest that Shinji wouldn't let Misato eat on the couch, insisting that she come to the kitchen table for food. Evidently, even the incredibly shy boy had some sense of pride, and the ghost of a smile that appeared on Shinji's face when Misato enthusiastically wolfed down her serving of omelettes only served as further evidence. They smelled pretty good to Peter as well, although attempting to grab the breakfast snacks proved just as useless as trying to touch anything else.

"But she's your commander?" said Peter, as Misato left to go take a shower, leaving Shinji to stack the apartment's dishwasher.

Shinji's blue eyes flicked to the back of the retreating Misato, then put the egg-mix bowl down into the dishwasher, and nodded tersely.

"And you guys live together?"

Shinji nodded again.

"You can talk," said Peter. "She's gone for now."

"She's only a few metres away," Shinji whispered to Peter, putting the plates between plastic spikes. "If she hears me talking to you, she'll think I'm crazy."

"They're stickin' you in a giant robot to fight Sigmund Freud's sex dreams, and she'd think you're crazy?" Peter asked incredulously.

Shinji shook his head.

"I'm the only one," he said. "It has to be me, until Rei gets better."

He closed the dishwasher, and walked through the kitchen and to the right to another door, Peter following.

"I have to get changed," Shinji said, sliding open the door to what was obviously his bedroom. "There's more training I have to do."

Peter looked pained at this, but slowly nodded. He then unhooked his Walkman from his pants, and held it and its headphones out to Shinji.

"I know you can touch these," he said. "Keep them somewhere in your room. Safe."

"Why?" Shinji asked.

"You really think that after everything you just told me, I'm gonna let you go in there alone?" Peter asked, hands on his hips.

"I'm not alone," said Shinji. "Misato's there with me."

"She's NERV," said Peter. "I'm not. And you're not, either."

Shinji disagreed, but he couldn't bring himself to argue with Peter given the man's determined expression.

"...alright," Shinji finally said.

He took the Walkman and its headphones from Peter, and looked down at both of them in his hands, turning the tape player around.

"...'Awesome Mix Volume One'?" he read.

"Yeah," said Peter. "My mother...she made it, and gave me that Walkman. Before she died."

Shinji gave a sad smile of recognition.

"I'm glad you have something from her," he said.

He stepped into his room, and slid the door closed behind him.

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