Author's Note: To all of you following DoaA: thanks. I needed a good fan following again. The formatting debacle has been cleared up (thanks to your diligent watch) and I'm finally getting a chance to move in an independent direction with the story. And yes, I know the time sequence in relation to the series is out of order. That was intentional, and one step farther in my departure from the original. Now sit back, relax, and enjoy your flight.
--Omega
Narration: Omega doubted the viewers' interest.
Thought: 'Do I really believe they're reading this?'
Speech: "Hey! Thanks for reading my intro."
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Dreaming of an Angel
Chapter Three
Time passes slowly when you're waiting. So learned Shinji Ikari during the days following "the incident". That's what NERV's crew had taken to calling the disaster involving a berserk Unit Zero. No one really wanted to admit to themselves that it was any more than some minimal problem, a mere bump in the road. After all, no one every really wants to remember something terrible like that. Not like what happened to Rei.
She lay there, in another sterile white hospital bed. They were all the same. Perhaps it was to lend some sense of familiarity to the room. Of course, if it succeeded, the patient had been there too long anyway. All these thoughts crept along the corridors of Shinji's mind as he sat and kept watch over Rei. 'Why am I doing this? Do I expect something in return for my time? That's the kind of person I am...I always want something more for me. I'm terrible. But I did save her...save her? All you did was run to her once all the damage had been done! You didn't do anything! ...But I couldn't do anything. How was I supposed to stop that thing? It was huge!' He sighed. 'Excuses again. Pitiful.'
Shinji's thoughts were cut off by the deafening rustling of Rei's bedsheets. She shifted to her right side, her face directed at him. Despite all the hope in the world, her eyes remained closed. Then all was silence again. Shinji sunk back into his chair and sighed. "Always in the empty silence."
She heard him. He was thinking about her. Even here, in her weak, pathetic state, he kept watch. 'Shinji? Is that you?' Yet she knew full well that it was. Why he was here, however, was still a bit of a mystery. 'Shinji...why have you come with me? It does you no good to be here. Your presence cannot help my condition. Still,' she thought, 'it is a pleasant feeling to have someone waiting for you. Someone who needs you. And yet strange...people have always used me, but never have they really needed me. I am expendable. So I was always taught. I am a pilot and nothing more. But if that is true, if I exist only to pilot Unit Zero, then why do I feel the way I do?'
Through the blurry vision of dreams, she sensed his head droop. It jerked upward, as if resisting, but slowly descended again. 'Soon he arrives. So soon...'
Shinji couldn't take it. 'It's too quiet in here,' he thought. Looking up to the wall clock, he noticed that visiting hours were nearly over. 'Am I relieved to be free of this place? Or sad, if it means leaving her here?' He yawned. 'I'll take a quick nap...it can't hurt anything.' He relaxed into the padded seat of the chair and closed his eyes. Once again, she was there.
"Shinji..."
His eyes flicked open to a dark room. "Rei? You're awake."
Rei's open eyes gazed into his. "No. But neither are you."
"This is just one of my stupid dreams, then..."
"No. This is our dream." Golden light filtered through the windows behind Shinji and across Rei's prone form. "We are dreaming together."
His face remained in a trance-like state of neutrality. "But how? That can't happen."
"Anything can happen within your mind." Rei's sheets lifted from the hospital bed, gently carried by some unseen force. They billowed gracefully several feet above her. Shinji felt his body grow light and lift away from the chair; he effortlessly glided over her. Leveling himself with her in midair, he hung suspended directly above her elegant form. They stared into each other's eyes, drinking in their very essence. An eternity passed, and still they remained in silence; the sheets wafted lazily between and around them. The distance between the two began to close. Lost in the moment, Shinji leaned down to kiss her. Rei's eyes closed in a surrender to emotion, her lips brushed against his...
"Shinji?"
His body snapped up to a sitting position and he nurse's hand slid off his shoulder. Still dazed, Shinji quickly surveyed the room. There was no warm glow of sunset. There were no billowing sheets. There was only Shinji and the attendant waking him to leave Rei's room. "Shinji Ikari?"
"Yeah..." He stumbled to his feet and padded softly across the room, past her bed, to the door. Once there he turned and gave Rei one last long glance before plodding out into the night.
Shinji walked out of the hospital doors and into the frigid night. The moon shone brightly between passes of clouds. As he made his way through the nearly empty parking lot, his mind wandered again. 'Could that have been real? Stuff like that never happens to people like me. Of course it wasn't real. I've just been spending too much time thinking about her and I dreamed about something that could never happen. She wasn't dreaming. I don't even know if she dreams at all. Besides, I'd have no way to prove whether that really was her or not, not yet. Maybe when she wakes up I'll ask her.' A dry laugh of contempt escaped his mouth. 'Me, ask her. Yeah, that'll happen. I can barely talk to her at all, let alone ask her about things like this.' He imagined himself trying. '"Hey, Rei, I was just wondering, did you by chance happen to have a dream where I flew over to your bed and kissed you?" I don't know what kind of person she is, but no matter what I'd catch a swift smack to the face for that. Eh, still...I shouldn't say it can't happen,' he thought sarcastically. 'You know what they say...tis better to have had a weird, unlikely dream about being in love and lost it than to never have had those delusions of grandeur at all.'
Loud honking brought his thoughts back to where they should have been: staying out of the road. He dived out of the way as the oncoming car swerved to the opposite side of the street. The speeding car's driver hurled some hasty insults at the "stupid teenage punk" and zoomed on to wherever he was going in such a hurry. Picking himself off the ground and wiping the dirt from his clothes, Shinji scurried across the street. It was only a few blocks from his destination. 'Even I should be able to avoid becoming roadkill for that distance.'
Misato was there to greet him when Shinji arrived back at his 'home'. His eyes, staring at what only he could see and remember, never looked up to return her gaze. "Shinji? Are you okay?" She spoke a bit more, but he heard none of it. It all ran together, just as the world always did when his thoughts turned to Rei. The door to his room slid shut behind him and he fell into bed. Unlike most nights, Shinji fell asleep quickly.
It was cold. He burrowed unconsciously under his blankets. Shivering, he tried even as he left the world he knew to block out the icy night.
It was cold. Ayanami could sense that from within her medication-induced slumber with no difficulty. She wanted to hide, to get some sort of warmth from the sheets only partially covering her still body. Searching her thoughts for something to comfort her, the first thought to appear in her mind was none other than Shinji Ikari.
'Shinji...can you hear me?'
Back in Shinji's room, the temperature suddenly rose. He felt a depression in the mattress and rolled toward it. His eyes flew open as his hand came to rest upon the unmistakably present bare abdomen of his fellow pilot. Every muscle tensed; he couldn't move, he couldn't think. He didn't have to.
"Shinji." She rose to sit there, barely inches away. Her eyes gazed into his and for a time, neither moved.
"How..." he whispered.
"A dream," she replied, "as was the time before, at the hospital." One pale hand brushed against his cheek. "You're cold."
"And you." Shinji reached up to hold her hand. "Will you be alright?"
Rei leaned into a slow embrace, half-covering him with her body. "I...maybe. You...perhaps. But us..."
Overwhelmed, Shinji took hold of her and entered into a passionate kiss. A million thoughts flashed through his mind, and she felt them too. For a moment, nothing mattered except this. This moment, this feeling. They were together. They were as one.
Minutes later they fell 'asleep' in each others arms. The remainder of the night was by no means cold.
