Shinji knocked on Rei's door. He noticed that the mail slot that used to be stuffed full of unread junk was empty: she must have taken all of it to give the kittens something to play with. Well, shred. Same thing.

After checking to make sure it was Shinji and she didn't need to hide the kittens, Rei opened the door and both of them came in, Kaworu carrying both bags of things they'd found to show the kittens. After the kittens ran around both of them because people, and not just people but people with new scents on their shoes, all of the kittens but one who dug her claws into Shinji's left sneaker and decided to see how long she could ride on top of it without falling off gathered around Kaworu because presents.

Shinji cleared his throat. "Rei?"

"Yes?"

"I hope this isn't more trouble, I mean… but, so…" Shinji got a hold of himself. "I brought you a present."

"More presents?"

"Well, those were really for the kittens. This is for you, well, and the kittens too. I still owe you more birthday presents, and…" Shinji decided to sort out the mechanics later and reached into his bag. "Would you mind closing your eyes and holding out your hands?"

She did as instructed, and a warm, soft weight she had become very familiar with today was placed into her hands. "Happy late first birthday," Shinji said. "You can open your eyes now."

She looked down to see a kitten, as she had suspected. A black kitten, an ordinary one, not a clone. Her angel senses let her know that the little thing was too thin, and it had been very hungry and starting to starve to death until Kaworu made it better. The kitten was still weak and needed a mother to look after it, but it was a kitten.

Kittens were her favorite things in the world except Shinjis, she had decided, and now Shinji had given her a kitten.

She didn't notice the burning in the corners of her eyes as Shinji explained, "I found it while we were looking after Mr. Kaji's garden, and it didn't look so good. Kaworu said it hadn't eaten in days, and I couldn't just leave it there or it would have died. I hope you don't mind, because you already have eleven to look after and this one makes a dozen, so you're probably too busy to look after it. I can see if anyone at school can adopt it, but all the animal shelters in Tokyo-3 are full because people are moving out and a lot of them abandoned their pets or gave them to the shelter, so even a kitten doesn't have much chance of being adopted now. He'll probably be put down if I give him to the shelter, and I couldn't let that happen. If you don't want it, I can feed him and then Tabby can teach him how to hunt once he's strong enough," since even if Tabris didn't like to kill, he could at least catch things and give them to the kitten to playhunt with, "so…"

Rei gulped. "I want him." Of course she did. It was a little thing that needed her, was looking up at her with weak but hopeful eyes and she should start warming more milk. "Thank you, big brother. He's, he's the best present I've ever gotten." Something that she would definitely like instead of gifts from Gendo that were really for Yui, things she must have liked and Rei often couldn't identify.

"Are you alright, Rei?" Shinji asked her worriedly, peering at her face.

"These, these are tears," she said. "I'm crying because I'm happy again." She hoped it didn't bother Shinji, but she was really very happy, she thought as she rubbed at her face.

Kaworu knelt on the floor, forming the weeds into a nest and putting some of the kittens into it to show them the concept, although they quickly pulled it apart to nose at the different plant smells. They had enough angel instinct to be fascinated by growing things, and their external AT fields would let them scan and study them, peer at the insides instead of just the outsides. He mentally reached out to pull at the ones that noticed Mommy's distress and started to head towards her, because this was a private moment. Just because Rei was a mommy didn't mean she wasn't still a little sister, didn't mean there wasn't a void in her that needed parents or at least family to guide her and approve of her. Experiencing what it was to have a big brother look after her would give her a role model for how to look after children other then Gendo and Ritsuko, so this was the best thing for the kittens too.

It had been very depressing to read all those psychology books to try to understand more about planetary human psychology, but when Tabris first met Shinji it was very obvious how much Gendo's abandonment and losing Yui hurt him, and he knew he needed to find out why and how that hurt Shinji so badly in order to try to see if he could fix it.

It was so difficult for humans to fix their planet when they didn't understand the true nature of LCL, the technology behind angels… He shook his head and helpfully pushed weeds over one of the kittens that had decided to burrow into them. Shinji clearly understood what happened to himself back then, and knowing what Rei was going through, what she needed was helping him help her.

Shinji was holding her now, so Kaworu thought the best thing for him to do for Rei was give her happy kittens to look at, so that she could see that her own children weren't injured like she was at all. Because of her, and she had the power to keep them that way. The power to create a world of happiness where they felt the same security she felt now, in her brother's arms, looking up at him to see how worried he was for her, how concerned. How much he cared.

The redhead angrily opened the door when they got home, "It's about time you got back. Dinner's late!" she told him, and stormed off.

Shinji cleared his throat, following her inside. Kaworu went into their room since this was something he should stay out of, aside from wishing Shinji luck. It really wasn't something he could help with at all.

Not to mention that it wouldn't really help Shinji's confidence to feel that Kaworu thought this was absolutely adorable. Shinji was finally growing up and initiating courtship rituals! No, Shinji would be amazingly embarrassed if Kaworu tried to encourage him, and the thought of talking to Asuka was already making him feel embarrassed. "Ah, Asuka?"

"What?" she demanded, hands on her hips, leaning up into his space, not very far away from his face at all.

"I don't really know…" Well, I statements? He knew those. "You keep insulting me and demanding things from me, and I feel unappreciated when you take my cooking for granted. I cook because it's something I can do that people like, so…" Well, no, Asuka wasn't interested in learning about him or sharing. Actually, from the way she pried sometimes she was, but right now he was volunteering so she would be dismissive of it, right?

"What, am I supposed to tell you how great it is or you'll cry? At least you have one thing you're not bad at, though, unlike piloting. Maybe Misato will let you stay around as her maid when they realize I'm the only pilot they need around here."

Shinji realized that he had guessed what Asuka would do correctly, when he thought about this in terms of being aggressive and trying to provoke a confrontation. "I think you're picking a fight with me, Asuka, like you won't treat me the way everyone deserves to be treated until I fight back. I want to show you that I'm not a wimp, that you can trust me not to get you hurt when we fight angels. But I don't like insulting people," so that was out, "and I don't really know how to argue the way you do. I'm not used to fighting with words, so I don't know how to respond and I'm worried that I might say something that you'd take personally and would really hurt you."

"Like I'd listen to anything you'd say!" she declared angrily.

Shinji winced, because while he guessed that if they were fighting he was supposed to say things that made her insulted and angry, the way she made him feel, it just made him worried that he'd really offended her or made her hurt, made him want to back down and apologize, and that wasn't the right thing to do at all. It would just make her even angrier that he wasn't doing his best, make her think that he didn't respect her, either. "I don't want to hurt you, Asuka, so I'm sorry I don't really know how to fight back without worrying. I guess we could try physically fighting?" Asuka didn't seem to mind it, since she'd tried to slap him a few times. "Or would you get insulted that I was going easy on you?"

"Going easy on me? You'd better not even think about going easy on me!" Because if he acted like he didn't think she was worthy of his best? "I don't know what you're talking about, you idiot, but you're really pissing me off!" she said, and swung.

Shinji grabbed her arm, kicking the table out of the way so they had some clear space and she didn't end up getting knocked into it. "Aargh!" she yelled, frustrated, knowing what it meant that he'd intercepted her strike and pulled her off balance.

Asuka was the one with more training, but while her aggressive attacks kept pushing Shinji back, Shinji was mostly able to dodge and redirect until he realized that doing so just made her even angrier and clearly wasn't the right thing to do. Wasn't that what he'd been doing by just saying, 'Yes, Asuka,' and 'No, Asuka,' and taking her insults?

After Gendo abandoned him so thoughtlessly, Shinji hated people who didn't think of the feelings of others. It was hard to stop thinking that he might hurt her, and he didn't want to hurt her even though she kept trying to hurt (or provoke) him with her words, but if this was what Asuka wanted, since it was what she kept trying to make him do… He had to think about what she thought about this too, he told himself, and punched her in the stomach. Shinji didn't like letting his anger show, but wasn't he hiding himself if he didn't show it? Lying to her by not showing his true feelings, how he really felt when she insulted him?

Pulling back to catch her breath, Asuka glared at him, but maybe there was a bit of relief there too, that he was finally on the offensive, that he was finally following a script she understood. "You're going down!" she declared, tackling him.

Ten minutes later, Kaworu came out of Shinji's room. Deliberately ignoring the two raised voices, he carefully edged around the area of the floor where both of them had discarded trained moves that would actually hurt in favor of childish things like slapping, hair-pulling, wrestling moves that were far more showy than effective and rolling around a lot. It was utterly alien to Kaworu, but despite the young Lilim angry words about how she didn't have any right to call him an idiot, it was clear to anyone who could read his AT field that Shinji was having fun, that it was a relief to both of them to get to express themselves, even if the ones truly responsible for the anger inside them weren't each other. So perhaps this was a cooperative activity despite appearances, Shinji getting to let his anger at Gendo out at another target and Asuka her frustrations? Perhaps?

Despite Kaworu's efforts to understand Shinji, involving himself with so alien a situation until they calmed down was clearly the wrong thing to do, as was congratulating Shinji or saying aloud how the two of them were acting like kittens and it was as adorable as it was incomprehensible, but one thing Kaworu could do to help was take care of dinner. He wasn't sure, but hopefully having something tasty after a fight that was clearly a different sort of hunt would be soothing to them, make them feel like they had made progress and begin to feel more comfortable with each other?

The trouble was that all the things he knew how to make were recipes Shinji knew, and someone who had never cooked before suddenly copying Shinji's recipes without having to be taught how to cook would be odd indeed. The advantage to this was that having the cookbook open gave him something to focus on and an excuse to be ignoring the grappling children in the other room, since privacy was so important to Lilim.

It was a pity the clothing was almost certainly going to stay on this time, but at least Shinji had figured out how to lower one of the barriers between himself and Asuka. Physical contact and potential children aside, Kaworu knew enough about hunting to know that it was important for members of hunting parties to understand each other, so they knew what the others would do and what they had to do in order to keep each other safe and bring down the prey. So for Shinji, Asuka, Rei and this world's sake, he hoped Shinji and Asuka kept figuring out how to become closer and understand each other better. Because angels were also human, and Earth wasn't the only planet to realize that humans were the most dangerous game to hunt.