This Object
Chapter 04: Solid Empathy

Disclaimer:
I do not own Eva, but someday I shall... And I'll make Asuka pay for calling my Rei-chan a doll... HAHAHAHAHAHA!
Remember, kids: every time you write an Asuka-Shinji lemon, Kaoru kills a kitten. Please, think of the kittens!

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A few weeks had passed since Rei had joined Tokyo-3 High School(0), and she no longer felt out of place. She had gotten used to the drama as summer had turned to fall(1) and the normally warm climate had gotten cooler. They blamed it on El Nino(2), stating that global warming and other environmental problems had caused a strange shift in wind patterns, making the normally mild Kanto(3) region become more like New England(4) on a bad year. It was the most major news to come into the strangely quiet city since she came, which was odd. Rei had always believed in the Hobbesian(5) idea that the bigger the city, the more would be wrong with it, but Tokyo-3 was the new capital and it had no crime to speak of, not to mention no news of major political movement (despite the fact that the government buildings were stationed quite close to the school; in fact, they were just on the other side of that forest). Not that it had become a wasteland, no. It had actually become more beautiful, with leaves changing color for the first time since the tree's ancestors had been brought here by whatever forces, natural or unnatural, had done so.

It was boring.

At first, she loved the calmness, the inherent lack of danger or major conflict. But now, as she sat on the school's roof, wind whipping her already mussed blue hair around, she wished for a change.

She felt something on her shoulders.

It was warm, and it wrapped around her like a fuzzy blanket of hope and amiability. She turned to see that hand she had become so familiar with, and found that it had just finished draping a black winter uniform around her unconciously shuddering shoulders. "Arigatou.()"

"It's no trouble." The boy smiled and his eyes laughed joyfully, his head tilted slightly to the side.

"Aren't you cold?" She began to unwrap the gift from her torso.

"No, I'm used to it. I've been on a few trips to Germany with Asuka to visit her family, and it's much colder there than it is here. I kind of like it, actually."

"Oh." Rei's heart sank at the mention of the red haired gaijin(), but she was determined not to show it.

"So, what are you doing on the roof all alone like this?" His eyes were wistful, not inquisitive, so it seemed that he was not so much asking for the answer as much as to hear her soft voice.

She shook off that notion and answered, though she herself fell into wistfulness, as was difficult to avoid given the beauty of the experience and the simple elegance of the exchange. "Thinking," she said, not expanding on that notion but leaving it to his imagination. "What about you?"

"Oh, well... I saw you out here, and I felt like keeping you company." His voice was soft and smooth, like burgundy silk sliding across ancient laquered mahogany.

"You are kind. Why do you think so much of others?" Her softly inquisitive tone stated that it was simply a question.

He glanced at her, taking a long slow sip of her beauty and aura, and answered candidly. "Because I give them presidence over myself." If he had exposed himself like that to Asuka, it would have been like he exposed his pumping, bleeding heart to a starving rabid mountain lion: he would have been attacked, torn to mince, flesh being ripped by razor canines, and eaten all but bones, the snow around them red with fresh blood. But She was different. She would never hurt him. She cared, it seemed, dispite their very distant relations(6).

They sat there for a blissful eternity, Rei taking in the scent that permeated the black wool coat, a sweet, distant lullaby of memes and memories rocking her into calm slumber. He was simply glad to be by her, and she knew that somehow, intuitively. As if he was a part of her, and she a part of him.

Shinji opened his heavy eyes, bathed and submerged in beauty, the deep oranges and pinks of a warm sunset just on the horizon. He started to try to get her attention. "Hey, look at th... Oh. You're asleep already." He stopped looking at the sunset to look at a more beautiful sight. He pulled the coat back onto her slumbering shoulder where it had fallen off, and she tumbled softly into his lap. He stroked her hair until the night was deep blackness, immersed in the practice of the forbidden pleasure. She stirred, and her mouth made soft movements in the cool night, but she was bathed in the warmth of his body heat. Ikari-kun. He was so submerged in the euphoria of his humming head that he hardly noticed the presence behind him.

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Author's notes:
This is a pretty short chapter (I think...), but it's very full of the feelings I was hoping to impart. I hope you all enjoyed it as well. I'll bet you're all wondering what this presence is... You'll just have to wait and see! (It's not an angel, if that's what you're thinking; I'm not that bad :P).

Translations:
Arigatou - (Japanese) "thank you". Normal form.
Gaijin - (Japanese) "foriegner". Has the implication of an outsider. (Don't worry, Rei isn't a xenophobe... It's more of a Japanese culture thing; in fact, a lot of Japanese people think gaijin are really neat, and so it's not usually a derrogatory term. After all, almost all anime/manga characters are gaijin anyway :-P)

Notes:
0 - I used the idea (borrowed from a number of other fics) that they are in high school instead of junior high; after all, by the end of the series they are all 15 (or most of them, at least), and I also thought that HS would be a more condusive setting for a romance.
1 - School in Japan starts in the spring, but I took the liberty of having Rei come in later on in the year (during the late summer, around the end of august maybe).
2 - El Nino (with the second 'n' having a tilde over it, in Spanish called an "enyay" (spelling, anyone?)) is a global weather pattern supposedly caused by environmental conditions like global warming, holes in the ozone layer, and deforestation. In the mid-90s it was fashionable to blame strange weather on El Nino, but lately is seems to have fallen out of style (perhaps the strangeness of the weather has become standard, and it no longer requires a reason?). Weather buffs will know what I'm talking about, even if I don't ;-).
3 - Kanto and Chuubu are the regions mentioned in the first episode of Eva, when they are listing off what regions are in a state of emergency because of the Angel. I just picked the first one, thinking it was likely the region that Tokyo-3 was in (although I can look it up, since I have it documented; I'm just too lazy).
4 - New England is the part of America first settled by the British, and stretches from Maine to New Jersey and from New York to Pennsylvania. It is also the area I am from (I'm a Connecticut man, can you tell?). It has historically been known for long, harsh winters, which is not true of all areas, but a Japanese person likely wouldn't know that.
5 - Refers to the works and dogma of Thomas Hobbes, a pre-rennaisance (or possibly early-rennaisance) british philosopher who believed that chains of causality were the ultimate force governing the world. He wrote a number of texts on the subject of the social group as an automaton, which was very quicky misinterpreted by almost everyone as saying that kings are necessary (which was not the point at all; he simply used a monarchy as an example) and that humans were inherently bad. Thus "Hobbesian" colloquially means relating to or agreeing with the idea that people are inherently bad. I think this is also the person that Hobbes from the 'Calvin and Hobbes' American syndicated comic strip was named after.
6 - No, I do not mean that they are genetically or familially related! (Not sexually either.) I'm saying that they are distant friends, except in prettier words.