Iokaste Enamored

Too many late nights.

Misato Katsuragi sits back, rubs stinging eyes clear and sights the clock hanging on the far wall. Quarter after nine.

The desk is littered with the usual suspects: steadily multiplying beer cans; ballpoint pen in dire need of refill; sheaves of paper, official NERV letterhead, flabby with monthly reports; the snake-necked desk lamp looks on in typical bored fascination. Misplaced order invades the overturned trashcan that is her room. She can practically hear her Dad's chiding, those old eyes always judging.

'You know, Mi-Mi...'

Not right now, dad.

She leans back, pops her spine. The sound startles father out of the room and back into his dark corners. Still she can feel his eyes on her and the disappointment therein, ineffable and immense as it had been in life. She misses it in a perverse way. There is time later, though, for harsh self-recrimination.

All is dim. The blinds backlit by the streetlights, tinted yellow and slatted like a furnace door, and outside lies heavy fog, a billowing aftermath of three days rain. She loves nights like this; they draw her in to something so completely other. When the lights reveals misting rain, when the streets marble with pools of light countering the sharp punchhole darkness, she feels an odd nostalgia, a strange peace. Like something out of a Watanabe piece.

These are nights she wants to be out in anonymous crowds, not plying the unwholesome side of her job. Misato Katsuragi, embittered child welfare officer, at your service.

Dad always wanted grandchildren...

The words scrawled there on paper commanded attention, to be read and remembered with the urgency sensitive information always required. The notes, the case files, her small stack of personal journals with spirals of words crammed in the margins; the manila folder sent along with Ryouji from Germany detailing Asuka's full psychological profile. Thick as a phonebook. The weight of it shocks her always.

Pages flow like water. So many months of observation and for what? To stroke her own private conceits at being observant, it seems. The wild thought comes to mind as always: take these reports, show the kids, see what may come. Hey, guys, look at your lives under clinical lenses! How does that make you feel? I can add that in too! No? That's okay. Transparency has no place in NERV on any level, the saying goes. Endless examples lay before Misato here in tight script. The cramped top line in her report on the Second Children's third page is but one:

—knee-jerk aggressive/defensive in regard aforementioned lower Synch scores. In line with recorded responses as before. Combative behavior more than norm toward Third Children. Suggest fewer actual Synch tests and morekinesthetic batteries in Prototype Bodies along with indoctrination, tactics, any—

Typical recommendations which will certainly be summarily ignored. The budget has no concerns for their mental health beyond 'can they still pilot'? No compunction, no concern. If it got worse, Ritsuko would lift an eyebrow in concern, maybe.

Asuka's reports are single note drums; unchanging and drifting more and more into the background as meaningless noise. The girl needs something beyond NERV in her life. Anything but the ourobouros of Synch and Competition which always found fertile ground to grow within her narrowed mind. Misato understands the determination there; it came before everything else. She lives as a strange mirrored simulacrum at times, and knows what the costs of putting nothing but The Job before everything else.

There is seemingly nothing else to Asuka. Redaction in her service jacket told as much. Not much on her parents besides names and the echoes therein. Mothers and fathers hold too much sway over NERV personnel, she thinks. More's the pity. Her fingers sweep at the page as if to brush the ink away.

Reclining, Misato stares at neutral space between her and the wall, blind to the world before a prickling thought lit through her limbs. They must be on the Commander's desk by Monday. The duplicates need to be in front of the Ritsuko and Section Two by Tuesday.

She picks up Shinji's manifest and peruses the first few lines again and again, warding off sleep best she could, and glared darkly. Another drink would stave hunger off. Fire to ward off the wolf. A growl of a decidedly human sort rattled inside her, she hadn't eaten since the early afternoon.

"Later," she says, deciding. Retrieving the Second's report, she set to it with a will she rarely felt these days. Minutes of careful thought, a scribbled pair of sentences, then postulation, then suggestion. Even a bit of theory as she drew out an old, sticky-note-forested copy of Myers' Psychology. It is ludicrous. It is necessary.

Another hour gone.

Later, she rests cramping hands, watches shadow-ladders from the blinds play on her stomach, along the heavy metal of her cross.

Sleep, that cunning thing, sneaks up and will not banish itself from her heavy eyelids, from the now ocean-swimming aspect of her vision. A gradual whisper of rain picks her up, wards off sleep, and she peeks through blinds expecting the runny sheets warping the world's image without. Nothing. Confusion knit tight knots of her eyebrows. Misted and foggy, to be sure, but no rain to account for the sound.

Then comes needling understanding. The shower is running yet again. The dull rain-spatter droned through the apartment, easily battering through the flimsy wood of the bedroom door. There is no accounting for it. A thought crosses her mind and she looks back at the books and paperwork nesting on her desk, see now: Irritation.

A list sprawled itself before her mind's eye: Asuka is gallivanting in nameless malls or alleyway arcades in Gotenba with Freckles. Pen-Pen was nursing a beer, pouting in his fridge all because Misato wouldn't drink with him (she'd make it up later). That leaves the usual suspect of past weeks. Her eyes flicked to the Third Child 's report as she glides back to the detritus of work. Peels back the covers.

The first line stitches itself across every vague worry her mind can conjure like flashbulb shadows.

Third Children exhibits strange OCD-like habits in past three weeks.

Unbidden images swarm up, at first unremarkable — grave-quiet Shinji listening to his SDAT on the couch and wending away lonely hours. Not quite the norm. Normally, he closed up on himself like a clenched fist, became the hedgehog and raced to the solitude of his eight by eight glass box down the hall.

A thought, a page turns. The center of page six,

Far more withdrawn, yet visible and out in the open instead of voluntary seclusion.

The increasing avoidance of closed spaces. Claustrophobia isn't part of Shinji's psychological makeup. Ritsuko even broached a simple answer: Post-Traumatic Stress. Elegant, distressingly obvious with a ring of truth. But it still doesn't hold water. She didn't want it to. Frankly, it disturbs Misato more than she'll ever dare admit.

How quiet he can be, wooden and totally absorbed into himself, spiraling the same few tracks of music hour after hour. The same tinkling little notes secreting from earbuds, trying to whisper to the world before fading out. The same tracks day in, day out. Never once has he changed out the tapes. And what lies in it? That little thing. What does he like? That bothered her, still bothers her; who didn't know what sort of music their kid listened to?

Even Asuka gave up the ghost. Nothing cops. And a cold, darkling chill runs down her spine.

He's not my boy. None of this matters to him.

The shower, though, mattered. The exigency of NERV life didn't seem to matter anymore. Only being clean did. The ritual especially.

At first, he'd walk out of the shower, tugging at his clothing, sniffing it, skin pink as pork, alive and itching from furious scrubbing.

At first, it invoked laughter, a new pastime for teasing, a little pick-me-up. "Our preening Shinji, trying to smell sweet for his ladies." She said that three weeks ago after a second shower in as many hours. He'd wave it off, laugh, and dive back into his headphones. Nice seeing you, I'll send a letter. The usual.

"It's fine, Misato. Really! Just...I dunno. I smell like...blood." And that was fine, she knows how rank the stuff is when it dries. But then his habits curdled, soured to something unwholesome. Little things at first. Furtive sniffs at his arms in the car, a look of weary confusion overtaking his walk from the shower to his room as if he'd awoken walking. Lacking recognition of his sense of place. Harmless things, she told herself.

Before the sleep deprivation began.

Before waking one night to find he sleepwalked to the balcony, staring out at nothing.

Before he took to avoiding his room wholesale, going in only for clothes or his bookbag and only when necessary with the door jammed wide open.

Before Depth Test No. 25 when said deprivation relaxed him into deep sleep and his teeth bit open the inside of his cheek during sudden nightmares of drowning.

Before he tried to exfoliate his flesh daily, turning himself into a raw, walking sore.

Before these harmless things became pathological.

"Shinji!" she cries."I'd like to take a shower with hot water for once! Come on, we've not even had dinner yet!"

Like God's Own Voice, the valves shut off. Damp silence. Suddenly, a tinkling of a metal latch. The sound of the shoji opening. The half heard sound of steam hisses in the cooler air. The clap of the hamper shutting. Normal things. Harmless things.

"Thank you," she says, stares at the sliver of blackness beyond her cracked door. Soft padding footsteps down the hall. A sigh. Another. She pictures his back, sharp and thin as ever. Shoulder blades clap under lobster-red flesh. The tension in his neck. Streamers of red scratch marks twining on his arms. The hairs of his legs looking like a Brillo-pad for all the scrubbing.

She checks the desk calendar and notes the date one week hence:

17 June

APPT: DR. SATO FOR SHINJI, 8:45 A.M.

Ritsuko had recommended it though she wouldn't personally step in. "It's not my place," she had said. "I'm not a psychologist."

But she has plenty of friends who are at NERV Central Health. All of it made Misato feel in some odd way like she let Shinji down. All of it. This is beyond her kenning. Grasps her stomach and feebly rubs at the cold pit growing there. She watches the tremor start up in her right hand. With a clinical eye, she watches it veritably leap to her left and catch hold. The thumbs pop oddly.

You're panicking, Misato. Breathe.

She did. Deep, lake-breeze breaths.

The lake. She wonders at the filmy yellow shadows of rain slapping against her windows and remembers the lake from days long gone by. The yearly trip to Inaba resting on the banks of the Samegawa River. She remembers the picnics under black and white oaks. The red rubber mat they sat on; obento resplendent and steaming due to her mother's picky nature; preternatural calm of the lake settling over them; the cormorants swooping low and soundless over the waters. How everything would come crashing down because a snide comment from her father crumpled her mother's face like a silken rag.

Pointless thoughts for pointless things. Harmless things.

The soft thump of Shinji's door shutting kills shakes.

The metal latch slides home with a click.

Shinji feels as if he's parading around in an ill-fitted soggy mansuit. Skin pruned and humming raw. The reason being, he'll later admit to Misato, he sat in the shower for fifteen straight minutes scrubbing his skin with a washcloth; it had come away spotted with little red flowers. The skin rubbed shiny purple and cracked in some spots, beading with blood like a treetrunk scraped of bark.

He still feels and smells disgusting. It won't go away.

The room is womb-dark. Lit only by a shaft of soft yellow light from the window, dancing with particles of dust. Illuminating the banality of panicked evacuation. Drawers ajar, evacuated of clothing. Freshly washed clothes left orphaned in the wicker basket by the door. All of it as he remembers, though, barren of personality. And yet there's no emotion. Normally the thought privately devastates him. Now nothing.

Breath stinging cold when he breathes deeply. The remnants of bronchitis.

I'm still sick.

Nasty red welts blossom all up and down his forearms. The towel slackens around the bowl of his hips. See the fleshy suit draped on a coat rack of lean meat and bone.

Shinji doesn't know why he's here standing just inside the doorway. His face slack with anxiety. Everything reeks of moldering blood. He can hardly breathe for the odd running hitch in his throat, vomit waiting in the shadows of any deep breath. All day and night he feels nauseous as if a finger gently runs up and down his trachea.

Days spent in a haze most disorienting. He wakes from stretches of fitful sleep confused and exhausted. Wakes to the room spinning. Wakes after sleepwalking. Wakes and reels to not trip over his feet and spill the floor with bile. Wakes to whispers half-dreamt.

However, the room is the same. Crumpled flowers of paper overflowing the wastebasket. Fat stacks of handouts and chaff from school he'd barely touched. No time for study. No time for the beating his thoughts into rote recollections. This room. It breathes with him, falls apart with him. Music. Music will fix all of this.

He stands still as trees.

"I don't want to be in here," he says, lifting his eyes to the ceiling and trying to shut out the world. He can't panic. Not again. Dancing shadows in the corners of the room go ignored. He moves finally, sits dripping on the corner of the futon. Towel sops wet and slackens down mid-thigh and the air cools him to the point of shivering. Wraps him in sheets of gooseflesh. He likes it, feels the sheets soak him in, smells the water cooling on his skin.

"Yeah." he says, jumping at the sound. So exquisitely cavernous in the still air. The alien reflex starts in his left hand again, clenching and releasing over and over and over. Jackhammering tendons stutter beneath the skin like the muscles of a nervous thoroughbred. It's concrete now, factual in movement. His hand lays across his knee, fish-white and pruned. His fingers bloom like flower petals every few heartbeats

He feels distant from his own mind. His own motor impulses. Out of reach. Nothing moves those fingers but the boy himself. And Shinji watches, awed by the simplicity of it. Is he doing this? Or is it some stranger's hand? This iss the way all things start. Impulse from the self guided by no power other than the switchbox up top and relaying with electric blood, is it not? The stranger's hand clutches his thighs, tries to stop. Clutches so hard he knows it must hurt, but there's nothing. The stranger won't let up.

He sits there a long time. Watches a soft shadow play in the light under the door. Hollow sounds of shuffling feet.

Misato.

She's listening at nothing and worried, he thought. He doesn't make a sound. Silence is sacred. Sleep, what he'll give for sleep. There aren't enough promises in the world, no coin of his worth taking to make it so.

Time passes. He stinks. He raises his hips, whips the towel away, rubs furiously at his arms to invite life back into them, sniffs his shoulders after a time in an odd doll-like bob of the chin. Cotton feels like sandpaper now. The sheets underneath are damp and inviting only because of that. They scratch less that way.

"God." A hiss of pain. His arms and face prick with sudden sweat. Eyes clamp tighter than bulkheads and he lies there, naked and weary, breathing through his mouth to get rid of the smell, churning and menstrual.

Some days later, Misato found him kneeling on the gantry like some Christian penitent just inside the bulkhead of the flooded Unit-01 hangar. Subtle, burnt scent of hardened resin clung to everything like something alive. She watches his shoulders tense at the sharp, echoless click of her boots. He looks better in-suit, healthier. She stares at the pale rim of flesh peeking from his collar, pink and painful looking. His right ear inflamed and infected.

He ignores her.

She remembers this extravagant darkness. The theatricality of it used a thousand years ago to overawe him. Cajole him. Appeal to his humanity because of the dangers in the city. She did this, coaxed him into this bullshit life with that stupid beach picture and his father's letter. Everything they do here is to goad these kids. See how far they can press and play them. It reminds her of nothing more than illegal dog fights. Keep them in cages, beat them, scream at them, twist them into something savage.

He stares out into the darkling hangar. At It.

Cold burning stars, side-by-side, floated there. Looks down at them. The beast's face, she imagines, isn't so different from a burn victim's, bandaged and bloodied. Lips burnt away, sits there and gives everyone a winning smile despite the alien calculation alight behind those deadened eyes. Somewhere in the dark overhead, a new cowl awaits the patient, dangles on ten-ton support cranes. Then, she tells herself, it won't be like we're watched.

A wet, bowel-freezing sound. Like a giant swallowing a calf backed out of the dark.

"Scary to look at it, isn't it?" she offers.

"...a bit." he replies.

"How long have you been here?"

"Long enough to consult." He throws a look over his shoulder, oddly startled at her stare. "W-What? Did I say something?" His face dry, peeling. She got a better look at his ear, swollen moist like a mushroom. He looks away quickly as kneejerk disgust moved the geography of her face.

"Feeling okay?" The steel tomb speaks her words back from a dozen bleak angles. They sound so desperate. Shinji doesn't move, stares still at the matte silhouette of his Evangelion against cavelike dark.

She walks past him a few yards onto the promenade, stands there before Evangelion. Baleful eyes lock upon her and cup her in Its senses. Its shape immense and hazily sketched against nothing. She hears bakelite pouring into the chamber from hidden flues. A light snaps on, spotlighting her in a deepening circle of black. The flues silence. Idle dripping in the deep. What does it think about? Does it know what they are?

It knows me.

The sudden scent of stinging ozone. She remembers. She knows It, too. Ice cracks. Teeth snap. Daddy bleeds. Bleeds on his little girl she just wanted to be a part of his life for once please daddy please -

She places a hand over the pit in her stomach and tries not to hurl her guts over the railing. For a terrific moment, she sees those wings again, bursting from the back of the Evangelion, shattering the chamber. Reaching. Golden, electric against sky and beyond. Reaching. And then, a teeth-snapping scream erupts from those fleshless lips, soundless, a sacred note only she can hear. She deflates, the pit fades.

All is well. All is well.

She props her hands on the safety bar, stiffens her arms, and bows her head. She stands there a long time listening for nothing. The old, dull ache flares right beneath her breastbone. Great absences. Scar tissue flares in the cool air piping in and complains the only way it knows how. Obedient pain.

"Misato?"

She turns to him with a weary smile. When did he got so close? Shinji's patch-peeled features schooled up. The look in his eyes was knowing. Wary. Canny. Those two wet stones liquidated all other emotion. He knows her too. Perhaps better than most. She swallows the pang from the back of her throat.

The metallic scent of blood perfumed off of him in waves that nearly gagged her. She spits over the rail, breaks the perfect peace of the bakelite.

"Good luck today," she manages, face feeling as tight as any falsity can. He has the good grace to return her damaged sympathies. Heavy. Why a child's face could make her feel like lead, she'll never know, but it was something that ached right through the heart. Leaden and unmerciful in persistence. The heaviness of choice always demanded its price paid. A few more pounds heaped on with that look in his eyes, waiting, hoping.

"Thank you," is all he said.

"What...happened to your ear, Shinji?"

His hand slowly cupped the right, eyes horror-round as if realizing they existed for the first time. His whole face reddens as he draws two fingers across the swollen flesh. The lobe badly peels under them and coralline scabs fell from the inside of it. "N-Nothing." The wet-black sheen of blood on his fingertips.

"Tell me what this is."

"Do you think I know?"

"Unless you're using all the shower time to jerk it and someone else is flaying you, I'd say you know. I don't think you've pissed Asuka off enough for her to practice field dressing yet. Shinji. Look at me."

He will not.

"Shinji, look at me."

He will not. Cow-dull and listing.

"Shinji. Look at me."

Stock still.

"Shinji. Look. At. Me."

Still he will not look at her.

"You run from me on this, there's no help to be had. You're not fucking five." And yet I'm talking to him like he is.

A deep, shuddering sigh from Third Children. "I can't get the smell out. I can't stop trying to get it out -"

"You're about to go into a Plug, Shinji. Full up of same said smell."

"I'm...I know...that's...that's okay."

"What."

He makes no effort to explain and ages pass before her breathing returns to normal. He leaves without saying much else. The darkness breathes with her, sucks in great mouthfuls of cold air. Mist appears in the light above every few minutes. The patient is mute, watchful, focused solely on her as she leaves. A thick red scent in the air.

She carries that weight well. Like always.

H-Hour. The kids will be lined up in their machines to test and here they are, sitting alone in a break room.

Cream colored walls, drink machines lined up like slot machines, tasteful rugs with geometric patterns of interlocked ovals, the ashtrays made of uniform heavy ceramic and piled with a dragon-tailed mountain of ash and dead soldiers. The smoke fragrant. Silence calms. One and one beside the other.

Noise blisters from the TV sequestered in the wall opposite them. Sent overtures of carefully weighed commercialism to this lonesome pair.

Talking heads brought the full three ring circus of political scandal rocking Parliament (third window jumper in as many months); the schizophrenic static of variety show pageantry (PSYCHICS BORN OUT OF SECOND IMPACT! HEAR WHAT GACKT HAS TO SAY!); kinetic batteries of infomercials whoring out Red Sea Pills (for all your aches and pains! Watch your body flush of poisons!); endless commercials, a vile advertisement for something called Neko Juice; mounds of exquisitely kawaii Sanrio; Beat Takeshi's TV Tackle roundtable on the mysterious NERV in Old Hakone (Special guest UN Ambassador Kiyoshi Asano!); the verit-

Ritsuko kills it with a gusty relieved sigh. "Finally. Someone hid the damned remote."

"Christ, thank you." Misato exhales, cages her eyes against the harsh light.

The next Depth Test is all she could think about. Even with current issues, the Commander hasn't felt the need to suspend further tests. Unsurprising, but a bitter pill to swallow nonetheless. The fluorescents overhead burned her retinas. Her skull feels wedged in the maw of a six-inch machinist's vise.

"You sure you're all right?" Ritsuko asks. Misato is in no mood to talk. She does something dismissive with her fingers and Ritusko shrugs. "So be it."

"I've just got a headache is all."

"Burning the midnight oil?"

"A tanker's worth. He actually went into his room a few nights ago."

"That's...good, right?"

Misato shakes her head, slumps. "I don't rightly know. I listened at his door. He mumbled to himself a few times, talking at shadows. He didn't go to sleep for over an hour. When I opened the door he was...was just passed out on the corner of his futon, naked as the day he was born." The absurdity of the memory makes her chuckle, cut short by something approaching shame. "I don't know what to do. There he was lying down in the light.

"Have you seen his ear?"

Ritsuko hums, shakes her head, pulling out a fresh pack of 520s, tapping it against the palm of her hand. "I still think he's settling into a severe case of PTSD. I mean, look what he's been through. What we've all been through. Look what he came back from. Who the hell knows what he experienced disembodied for thirty days."

"I know." Misato says.

"No, we don't. That's what bothers me. Who has any kind of data on this? The first attempt wasn't exactly a winner. Sato is going to have a field day with Shinji if he can get him to open up even a little. Piloting capability aside, we have no idea what this has done to his Ego or anything. His mind. Is he still showering four times a day?"

"Like the patron saint of hypochondriacs. His shins look like someone took a cheese grater too them. He's scrubbing them that hard." Her eyes feel suddenly hot. Moist. "I'm half ready to tell someone to put him in a straight jacket. He can't keep doing this. I can't watch it. Please don't give me that fucking pity look. Just don't." She bites at her thumbnail to stop the watery feeling in her lips. That sneaking quiver.

"I'm sorry. Really. This is so beyond us. Beyond me. Give me the MAGI, give me problems with the Evangelions, give me Angels, I can work with that. These kids...beyond those Entry Plugs, I've got nothing, Misato.

"My mother gave me no pointers for kids." Ritsuko says. Bitterness.

"Yeah, neither did my dad." Misato admits. "What a happy couple our parents would make. All he ever did was lockup in a lab, too. Suppose they could ignore one another there?"

Their insouciant smiles vindicate each the other. Ritsuko sits down, heavy as a burlap sack of bones, sighing, lighting a fresh cigarette.

"I'm dreaming a lot lately." Misato says, sips at tepid coffee.

"Oh?"

"Yeah," she laughs. "I dream I'm sleeping over in dad's townhouse. The one that used to be in Chofu. Remember Jikei University?"

"The medschool? He lived near there?"

"Yeah, not five blocks from the campus. Anyway, I dream I'm lying there in my bed. Room's pitch black and so frigging barren because I always refused to bring my things over there. Just an empty little sandalwood dresser recessed into the wall, this diamond-shaped mirror sitting above it, empty closet, and my stupid Hello Kitty - you start laughing, I will hit you - my stupid little Hello Kitty Gameboy. Pile of clothes in one corner...all of it's there."

"Sanrio fetish much? You should talk with Maya sometime."

"I mean, that never leaves this room. We've seen what Maya's fetishes turn into. What? You know I'm right."

Ritsuko glares darkly, "I know." And let go of her laughter. "Maya's special. Go on."

Misato watches her lazy smoke rings. "I'm there in the dark, hand draped over the edge of the bed, and I just feel something tugging at my hand. These fingers.' - she holds up her index and ring fingers - 'I'm awake. And the door slowly slides open and the tugging gets worse. Like it's trying to jerk my shoulder out of its socket. Take me somewhere, I dunno. And I'm just lying there like it's no big thing." She sips at her coffee.

"That's weird, yeah. Doesn't seem to be all that bad, though."

"You can't really extenuate the circumstances of what always comes next," and explained the rest of the dream.

"Ah." Ritsuko says, staring at Misato, taking a long drag of the slim. They sit silently a long time. "I dunno what to tell you. Nightmares."

"Yeah, nightmares."

"How do you feel, Shinji?" Misato's face is bright and wide, encompassing the central holographic display. Her eyes crisp with sharp resolution, he feels as though he could count the little flecks of green there. Harsh amber light defines the plug. Everything else appears in absence of that light. A soft world of shadows.

"Okay, I guess." He says. When did he step into the plug? There is a blank spot in his memory there. Recollection escapes. Like a soothing balm the LCL quells all the pain and irritation racking his body. A static charge lights his limbs, prickles skin, and sets him on edge. Something is off, though what he cannot say.

"Good, good." Misato yawns in crisp 1080p. "How do you feel?"

"Better. Always feels better in water." He says, trying to make the jitters stop. "I-I'm a little nervous."

She notices his discomfort. "Is it because of the closed-in space?" There is truth there, but only from her point of view. All those little reports. The very papers of subjective objectivity. Heh, the thought makes his head hurt for a minute. But there's a point there. He knows how blind Misato can be to things. She is never in his room when he's in there...other things make him jump and skittish in the dark, too.

"Because of the closed-in space, yeah." he lies. He can feel It; one can always tell when someone is watching.

"Okay. Just breathe. Normal test, right? You'll be out soon enough, okay?"

"Yeah. Yeah, that works." The plug hums alive. The LCL energized by turns boiling prismatic, spouting gunmetal chutes, then becoming clear. It thickens, pushes wholly into his lungs, chews a mouthful of iron filings. The odd sensation of being filled. Atavistic fear of choking in one's sleep screams upward only to falter as he remembers - chants - 'I can breathe, I can breathe'. Little clouds whirl around him, sucked away into filters somewhere behind him.

So tired. A pleasant weight settles on his chest, seeps inside him, under his eyelids, and the seat became unbearably comfortable. "Dammit," he curses, jerking, favoring his right ear. Lowers his chin to his left shoulder, tries to focus. Everything is an inevitable toll. Ledgers remain open somewhere beyond the walls of this plug, and his debts are great. So tired. A great bearlike yawn dumps into a blackout. He shifts and struggles for proper placement. Soon, a deep shroud overcomes him.

He dreams.

Dreams of delicate hands wringing out a dishrag over a steaming sink. Of the sandcastle he built on the beach when the world was still young.

Dull sonic beeps wake him. The suit's inlaid timer, implacable amber numbers toll the hour on his wrist. Sluggish, heavy. His eyes flutter once, twice, desperate to open all the way. Blankness is what eventually rips his eyes open. The screens are dead. Static pulses within the LCL made his skin crawl. Flashes of light and needling pain with each movement. Something taps the hull of the plug.

In that hazy waking moment with the world finite and transparent to the eye, he witnesses something move just below the screens. Sinuous and rabbit-like, almost shy. Just a shadow of movement, black against the orange LCL. Little cigarette burn eyes, that shift chameleon-like to green, then a brilliant blue. It moves.

Closer. Into the light. Like a hollowed out shape of a person cast from filmy soapscum. Shaped itself like clay before him to be softer now, curved, womanly. Clotted tendrils of transparent hair grow. Its face strangely smooth and without feature. Something familiar about it itched in the root of his teeth. Gracile hands reach out for him.

Tap, tap, tap on the hull.

More curious than alarmed, he sat still and stared back at the two little sapphire points shining there in nothing.

Closer. River-rapid hands caress his abraded skin and he knows bliss.

A/N: Sideris uses Massive Revision! It's mostly effective! Many thanks to Mashadar giving this a once over and to you, the readers, when you guys get a chance to read this.