Gavotte

DISCLAIMER: I don't presume to own Neon Genesis Evangelion or anything related to it—I'm just an overobsessed little fangirl who's been watching too much anime these days… if there's even such a thing as too much anime… well, anyway, this fanfic's existence probably has a lot more to do with the fact that the tenth volume of the EVA manga is due to come out this October than anything else. (OHGODOHGODCAN'TWAIT.) But anyway, I don't own, so you don't sue—you know the drill…

Gavotte n F, fr. MF, fr. OProv gavato 1: a dance of French peasant origin marked by the raising rather than sliding of the feet 2: a tune for the gavotte in moderately quick 4/4 time—gavotte vi

Prelude

"I have to go to practice now… sorry, guys. I'll see you tomorrow."

Kensuke shrugged. "It's no problem," he said, adjusting his glasses, which had been slipping down his freckled nose again for the millionth time that day. "There's a show on the History Channel that I wanna watch, anyway. Have fun, and don't let Asuka run you into the ground, okay?"

Toji snorted. "He always lets Asuka run him into the ground. That's the one thing that never changes. At least he'll have his darling boyfriend there to protect him now—isn't that right, Shinji?"

Huffing, Hikari grabbed the sleeve of Toji's uniform and gave him an irritated shake. "Stop picking on Shinji already! We have to clean up the classroom before either of us do anything!"

"Awww, comeon—do we haveta?" Toji whined.

Knowing that Toji and Hikari would happily spend the rest of the day arguing with or without him there to watch, Shinji Ikari gave his friends a wave and headed towards the auditorium, one arm tightly around his cello's black case. Kensuke waved back, then turned to laugh at the escalating argument between the class rep and the unofficial class stooge.

When he got there, the others were already assembled in a circle in the metallic fold-up chairs that the district had been kind enough to supply their school's music department with. They were uncomfortable but better than nothing, though Shinji sometimes wished he could bring the black stand he had at home to use instead of the flimsy little wire things that the orchestra teacher had stocked up on. It wasn't like First Municipal High School was poor, but the district only had so much to spend on a music department that seemed to get smaller every year. Tokyo-3's education system tended to stress math and science over the fine arts, and so kids never really seemed into playing instruments. Girls thought it was uncool, and boys tended to think that playing stringed instruments other than guitars was an automatic marker of being either a sissy or a fag.

Though its existence was tenuous, the music department still existed now, and Shinji and his friends were going to enjoy it while it lasted.

Asuka gave him a jaundiced glare as he knelt down to take his cello out. "You're late again," she snapped, her icy blue eyes flashing in irritation. "Why don't you ever look at that stupid watch you're wearing? Jeez! I was stuck here with Wondergirl and pretty boy again, and nobody to talk to!"

"Nobody to talk to or nobody to make fun of?" Shinji asked himself under his breath, but didn't say it loud enough for Asuka to hear him—she'd probably kick him or something, and risk hitting his precious instrument.

As he set the cello's endpin in his rockstop, Shinji plucked at its strings, frowning as he realized that they were out of tune again. He sighed, aggravated. After the road trip he and his friends had just gone on in order to perform in Matsushiro, his A, D, and C strings had all broken, and since they were new, they still got out of tune pretty easily.

The bright, heartbreakingly sweet sound of a violin's A, played in position on the D string with perfect vibrato, startled Shinji out of his sulk and made him look up. Kaworu, across from him, smiled warmly as he changed bowstrokes.

"Show-off," Asuka grumbled, but Shinji smiled back and reached around to his fine-tuners.

When he got to the C string, Rei dog-eared her thick volume of Tolstoy, then played hers for him. While Kaworu could have given Shinji one at a much higher octave, Rei's viola was lower and would help Shinji tune more accurately.

Once Shinji was finished, Asuka glowered at all of them as if they'd insulted her, then flipped through her sheet music. "Alright, we need to practice this without the metronome today or else we're never going to be ready for the next performance. We can't exactly have one onstage, now can we?" She lifted her violin to her shoulder and jabbed her bow in Shinji's direction. "You need to get your loser ass moving on those sixteenth notes—there won't be any other cellos to bail you out with just the four of us."

Shinji sighed and headslumped. "Yes, ma'am."

Asuka gave a little "hmph" and turned to Rei. "You need to play out. I'm sitting right next to you and I can't hear you at all." Without waiting for a response, she whirled to fix Kaworu with an evil stare. "And you keep going too slow. If you can't manage to play at tempo, then maybe we should switch parts."

Kaworu smiled at her. "Asuka, I believe that if you listen to the tapes we've made, you'll find that you've actually been rushing quite a bit. And even if we were to change the marked tempo to the one you prefer, neither Rei nor Shinji could possibly keep up with us. What you see as my playing too slowly is an attempt to hold you back. Rei and Shinji are simply too polite to oppose you directly."

"What!" Asuka demanded, getting red in the face. "I am not!"

Kaworu just laughed, which made Asuka even angrier.

"I'm playing it perfectly! None of you can measure up to my level, that's all!"

"If that's so, then why does Kaworu have the first violin part?" Rei asked softly, propping her viola on her knee.

Asuka went a particularly lovely shade of pink, blushing straight up to her ears as she rounded fiercely on Rei. "You just shut up!"

Rei did not respond, picking up her pencil to mark something in her music almost as if she hadn't heard Asuka at all.

As Asuka opened her mouth again to start yelling, Shinji cleared his throat awkwardly. "Come on, guys," he ventured as all three of his friends turned to look at him. "We need to get some practice done, at least."

Asuka pouted; Kaworu laughed again, and Rei gave Shinji a small smile. Still, the three of them readied their instruments, setting their bows to the strings.

Kaworu counted off, and they began to play.

As Shinji watched his music, he let his mind wander; keeping himself in the state of half-concentration he performed best in. Letting the notes flow from his bow and his fingers, he stole glances at his friends when the music allowed him to.

Rei was staring at her music with her eyes half-closed, a soft and distant smile on her face as she played. She hadn't started playing the viola until music had become a curricular option for students in the elementary school they had attended, but she was a fairly good musician even if she needed a little prodding to take initiative. It was true that she had trouble getting more volume than the occasional forte out of her viola, but then, Shinji was always enraptured by the soft, breathy, romantic style of her bowing. Asuka complained that Rei didn't use enough weight when she played, but while she faded into the background during their quartets, she was a beautiful soloist. Rei was just quiet all the time—it seeped into her playing too, but she couldn't help that.

Asuka was giving the book of quartets in front of her an evil glare. Probably because of the bad mood she was already in, her bowing was a little more staccato than necessary, and her gesticulations while she played were sharp, stilted, and angry. She was playing too loudly and Shinji could tell that she was already starting to rush—but then, that was Asuka for you; she always had to turn everything into a competition. No wonder she complained that Rei's viola part was too soft—she herself kept drowning it out! Having played the violin since she was in the third grade (she said—Shinji hadn't known her until she and her mother had come to Japan from Germany in the fifth grade), Asuka had definite skill but the stylistic elements of her playing were somewhat lacking. Usually, her enthusiasm made up for her shortcomings, though, and she had a drive for perfection that Shinji had to admire.

And Kaworu? Shinji observed with a smile that the silver-haired young man was already totally absorbed in the music. When not down at the NERV lab for testing or out somewhere with Shinji, Kaworu lived and breathed music. He played his violin with bold, stylized movements, speeding up or slowing down according to what he felt as he made his way down the measures of whatever piece he'd picked for the day. Shinji had gotten pretty good at following him, though Rei tended to stick to the marked tempo and Asuka, though always second violin, still suffered from the delusion that quartets always had to be about her. Music was Kaworu's passion, and he'd already been nearing mastery of his violin when he and Shinji had first met, all the way back in the first grade.

It's amazing that we've all lasted this long, Shinji acknowledged. Back when Rei started living with us, she had trouble even stringing two words together… Asuka was a terrible bully… and Kaworu was too different for me to feel good about associating with him.

But here we are, all these years later… sitting around the auditorium, playing a gavotte.

It's funny sometimes, the way that life works. Sometimes, it'll drop a windfall on your door that acts so much like a kick in the shins that you don't recognize it for what it really is for years…

:TBC: