Gavotte

See disclaimer in the prelude

The NERV labs were most definitely not Shinji's favorite place to be.

They were always cold, even in summer; the hard seats of the metal chairs in the waiting atrium were uncomfortable. There was nothing to play with but a set of old, worn blocks, nothing to really do. But both of Shinji's parents worked here, so sometimes he had to come too—especially when his usual babysitter, Misato, couldn't spare the time to take care of him.

Both Yui and Gendo Ikari were top-ranking officials at NERV, and Gendo was already so busy with work that he and Shinji rarely saw each other. Yui, who enjoyed being a mother, stayed with Shinji as much as she could, but even she had a deep devotion to her work, and so Shinji ended up in the dank and sterile waiting room more than he enjoyed.

Perhaps out of her shame at not being able to stay with her son as much as she needed, Yui had provided him with a companion.

Shinji glanced to the side, clutching the hems of his shorts awkwardly. Rei was sitting two chairs away from him, balancing a huge book in her lap and ignoring the world around her. She looked almost ridiculous like that—such a very little girl, and such a big Shakespeare anthology—but if she cared what other people thought about the image, Rei Ayanami certainly did not show it. About the same age as Shinji—though Shinji didn't know for sure even when Rei's birthday was, though the two of them had lived together with Shinji's parents for almost a year now—she had soft sky-blue hair that fell around her face in a rough, short cut that was just long enough for her to hide behind if she so chose. Instead of bangs, she had a shorter line of hair that followed her part and fell to her eyebrows on either side of her forehead. Her stark red eyes looked mostly closed, and were flicking back and forth over the text of the book in her lap. She was wearing a bright red jumper that Shinji's mother had picked out, a delicate pink short-sleeved shirt beneath it, frilly white socks, and black patent leather Mary Janes. There was a thin ribbon tied around the collar of her shirt, and from the long loose strands dangled a pair of fluffy, plush-looking pompoms. She was kicking her feet absently as she read, turning a page or two every five minutes or so.

Rei had to be the quietest kid Shinji had ever met, even quieter than he was. Introverted and shy himself, the seven-year-old boy was still not above dodging behind his mother's skirts in uncomfortable situations, but he at least talked to people—Rei didn't, and when she had to, she gave one-word responses, speaking in a soft monotone barely more than a mumble.

"Awkward" was probably the best word for how things were between them, even after living together since kindergarten.

Rei's silences never seemed to bother Yui one bit, though. Shinji's mother always made sure that both her son and her strange adoptee were included in whatever interesting games she could come up with at the moment. Shinji completely adored his mother—she was perfect in his eyes, and she did her best to make life fun and happy for him… even in places like this.

Usually when Shinji was here in the labs, he was here alone—for whatever reason, Rei had been picked as one of the test subjects in NERV's latest experiment. But today, she was out here with him, and that was one of the reasons Shinji didn't quite know what to do with himself, even more than he normally did around her. They'd been sitting here for almost an hour, and neither one of them had spoken.

This would be easier if she would just talk… Shinji thought, fidgeting. Even if she was mad…

Rei turned another page. Shinji opened his mouth to speak, then closed it, not knowing what to say to get her talking. If there was one thing that Shinji knew Rei didn't like, it was making conversation. And it would be just his luck to finally get her to speak at the cost of her hating him.

Instead, he sighed and hunkered down in the seat, feeling miserable.

He wasn't used to having Rei sitting here with him in the waiting room. Even if he didn't know much else about her, he did know that she was one of the test subjects in the experiment his parents were working on, and so she was almost always inside with them here at NERV. But today was different, and that was one of the things that Shinji wished he had the courage to ask her about. Was her part of the testing done for good, or were his parents just taking a break?

The door that led to the labs opened, and both Shinji and Rei looked up. Maybe Shinji's unspoken question would get answered, after all.

"Shinji? Rei-chan?" Yui was standing there in the doorframe, smiling at both of them, and Shinji smiled back at her. His mother was pretty even in a white lab coat, with bright chestnut hair in a wolf cut a little bit longer than Rei's hair and kind green eyes. "Thank you for waiting for me. There's someone special here to meet you."

That was when Shinji realized that his mother was holding someone by the hand.

"Come on, don't be shy," Yui coaxed whoever it was with a smile. "That's not like you."

A small child about Rei and Shinji's age peeked around the door towards them, staring at both of them out of wide red eyes that held a mixture of nervousness and intense curiosity.

"This is Kaworu Nagisa," Yui told them. "Kaworu, I've already told you about my son Shinji and Rei, whom you'll be working with in our latest project."

"Nice to meet you," Kaworu said with a very slight bow, all that nervousness instantly gone.

"How do you do." In Rei's quiet monotone, it was a statement rather than a question.

"Um… hi," Shinji said falteringly. There was something weird about this kid.

Kaworu's gaze was somehow too curious, his posture and his stare both too direct. Otherwise, Shinji couldn't place his feeling that there was something not quite right about him. He looked more or less normal… he seemed as if he was a little bit taller than Shinji, and was dressed in a pair of khaki shorts that looked a little big on him and a black T-shirt that had a white music note on its small breast pocket. His complexion was a little pale, but then so was Rei's; his hair was almost pure white, and would've been in a wolf cut slightly shorter than Yui's if it hadn't been fluffing out in all directions. He had an unusually angular face for a Japanese kid, despite the lingering bit of baby fat in his cheeks; his nose was a little bit too pointed and his chin too sharp, and his smile looked almost too big for his face. Aside from that, there wasn't anything truly weird about his appearance. But Shinji still had that feeling, and he didn't like it.

Kaworu Nagisa was trouble. And Shinji made a point to avoid trouble.

"Rei-chan, it's your turn to come in," Yui said with a smile, breaking the silence as the three children studied each other. "Kaworu, you wait out here with Shinji, alright?"

As Rei laboriously dogeared the page of her book and slid off her chair with the huge thing in her arms, Shinji froze, giving his mother a desperate look. Oh, please, no.

"Have fun, alright?" Yui took Rei by the hand in Kaworu's place and led her back into the lab, with the door swinging shut behind them. Kaworu, meanwhile, ambled over to Shinji and sat in the empty chair next to him, despite the other boy's distinctly unenthused countenance.

As Yui and Rei headed back through the halls towards the Instrumentality chamber, the two of them were accosted by one of the younger scientists, a particularly intelligent blonde girl named Ritsuko.

"Doctor, are you sure it's all right to leave them out there?" she said uncomfortably, gesturing towards the waiting room. "After all, this is Tabris' first time associating with another child his age."

"He'll be alright," Yui replied with assurance. "Shinji won't bite. He's been doing fine with Rei this past year, and I have no reason to believe he'll treat Kaworu discourteously."

Ritsuko sighed. "But, Doctor, that may just be because Lilith has always kept to herself. Tabris tends to be a little more… intrusive, and I'm not sure how either he or your son will handle this kind of contact."

"Rei and Kaworu, please," Yui insisted kindly but firmly. "They've entered human society, and they need to be called by their human names. 'Lilith' and 'Tabris' are just things to the scientists here, but Rei and Kaworu are also people, human or not. They should be treated like people, too."

"…I apologize, Doctor," Ritsuko said somewhat stiffly.

If Yui noticed, she didn't comment. Instead, she smiled. "And about your concerns… Kaworu is going to have to learn some propriety one way or another. Whether his interactions with Shinji are supervised or not, being with my son will teach him how to act more normally." She looked down at the child she was still trailing, and her smile grew. "Don't you think so, Rei-chan?"

Rei looked up at Yui out of wide crimson eyes, but didn't respond.

---

It had only been fifteen minutes since Rei and his mother had left, but Shinji was already contemplating beating his head against the wall.

Kaworu didn't just carry a weird feeling with him, he acted pretty weird, too.

And he asked way too many questions.

"What's it like to live with a mother?" Kaworu asked him, sitting with his hands on his knees almost in emulation of Shinji's own defensive posture. Like Rei had been, he was kicking his feet as he talked, but more vigorously, so that the shoelaces on his left sneaker had already come undone without Kaworu's noticing. "Is yours nice?"

Shinji gave Kaworu a look. "What kind of question is that?" he asked flatly. "YOU have one, don't you? Stop asking me all this weird stuff!"

Kaworu just blinked and gave him a blank look. "No, I don't."

"Huh?"

"I don't have a mother." Kaworu shrugged, his voice and expression matter-of-fact.

Shinji stared at him. "You don't have a mother," he repeated as the two of them looked at each other. "Well, then, don't you have a father?"

Kaworu shook his head to the same rhythm of his feet, causing his fluffy hair to flounce. "No. I don't have any parents."

"That's stupid," Shinji replied, scornful. "Everybody has parents. All babies come from a mom and a dad, everyone knows that. So you have to have had parents sometime."

"No." Kaworu was still giving him that slightly blank look. "I just don't have any. I don't think I ever have."

This kid is even weirder than I thought, Shinji thought, and edged away a little bit before continuing. "Then how did you get born, if you don't have a mom and dad?"

Kaworu shrugged, nonplussed. "I don't know. I was born here, at the lab. I've always been here."

Shinji goggled at him, dumbfounded. "Always?" he asked at last. "You've never been out?"

Kaworu shook his head again, even more vigorously, and stopped kicking his feet in the air, instead itching at the sole of his left shoe with the toe of his right. "Nope."

There was a long silence. Shinji fidgeted awkwardly. He's even worse than Rei. At least she doesn't act so weird all the time. There is definitely something wrong with him.

"So what's it like to live with a mother?" Kaworu asked again.

Shinji just looked at him. "How am I supposed to tell you that? There must be somebody who takes care of you here, right? Who makes you food and helps you go to bed at night? Somebody like that?"

"Just the scientists, and they don't do much of that. I sleep when I'm tired. I know where the food is if I get hungry." Kaworu shrugged, looking at Shinji with a similar expression to the one the young boy wore himself, but more curious, less on edge.

Shinji shook his head at Kaworu, disbelieving. This boy was just too strange.

Luckily, more time seemed to have passed than Shinji thought, what with all of Kaworu's incessant questioning. The door slid open again, and by some miracle, Yui and Rei were there—Yui with the same smile, and Rei still holding onto her big book, though Shinji noticed that there was a band-aid on her upper arm.

"Okay, Rei-chan, that's all for today." Yui gently propelled the small girl into the waiting room. "Kaworu, you need your shot, and then you should eat something. Try not to get in anyone's way, okay?"

"Okay." Kaworu jumped down from the seat and went over to her, pausing to smile at Shinji. "I'll see you later." With that, he vanished back inside the labs, going by quickly enough that Yui barely had time to tousle his hair before he was gone.

For once, Shinji welcomed Rei's silence. At least that strange boy was finally gone, and he could go home, where things would be normal again.

:TBC: