I this is the second half. I think I need to remember 'one idea per oneshot.' Sometimes I'm thinking 'so what happens now?' and another shiny idea occurs to me, and I go 'let's go with that.'

Well, random stuff happens: such is life. It would be nice if there was a 'one inconvenient thing per day' limit IRL, but never going to happen.

The Dr. Sohryu thing happened because Kaworu and Asuka both have anonymous male (human) genetic doners - the closest thing we have to an ID for either of them is that Asuka's was supposed to be from a sperm bank. Shinji's parents were on the Antarctic expedition - they left just before it went boom. So, why not have the other Eva creator in on it? And if she was going for an ideal child, I doubt SEELE would have used non-optimum DNA for their designer angel, so...

Also, since Shinji and Rei, Kaworu and Asuka are the other two pilots, so it would be interesting for them to mirror the others in that respect. Also, Asuka getting in on Shinji's 'yeah, your parents were actually totally evil and plotted to fuck you over' bit of drama/connection to the truth of what the hell is really going on.

Because Asuka finding out that actually, her mother really loved her all along is as... unusual in the story of Eva as someone showing up and sympathizing with Shinji's pain, much less liking him. You just know that massive ow has to ensue. In the ending movies, it's that the power of love gets curb-stomped by the power of mad science using mindless clones that contain the soul of someone who died in order to avoid causing the end of the human race, so yeah.

Also, Asuka's kind of fun when pissed off.

"Where is my piano?" Kaworu asked, even though it had never technically been his piano to begin with. He couldn't even say 'finders keepers' because he'd never heard that argument, even though SEELE had made it very clear that their possession of him was every point of the law.

Prying up all the mossy rocks was one thing, he knew biohazard containment procedures since he was more than capable of becoming extremely hazardous if he wanted to, but why take his piano? That was just mean.

Oh, right. Lilim.

He could just grow the moss back, he thought, raising a hand to cover his mouth as he yawned, but he had no idea how to grow a piano. It was probably possible to order one online, but he'd have to wait until there was more of a signal web around here for him to hack into.

Until then, sleep, he thought, stretching up towards the sun.

The third Rei looked at him. Ah, so that was how they were going to sleep here in the absence of bedding. Stripped of almost all knowledge of Lilim existence by her recent death, it didn't occur to her that there was anything unusual about turning into a tree, so she just did what he did.

"Those look like pomegranates, but the tree looks more like an acacia." Black-barked and thorny, too, the polar opposite of the fake fig tree. That one had bark as pale and soft-looking as a birch's, just not shaggy. Smooth and unblemished as a fair maiden's skin.

The girl had kind of… melted towards him when she changed, so now the two trees were, well, not wrapped around each other exactly but in each other's personal space, canopies occupying the same space and making it look like it was a miracle none of their branches had run into each other and gotten warped while they were growing. Tufts of pale and dark green leaves mixed together, but no one was familiar enough with foreign folksongs to quote, "And from her heart grew a red, red rose, and from his heart a briar."

Now that all the Evas were destroyed, no one in the UN's command wanted to provoke the angels until their own house was in order. It wasn't exactly very bright to take potshots at something without any idea what the hell they were actually going to do if the angels responded. Instead, they dug in a minimum safe distance away and settled in to keep an eye on the two of them, even knowing that if the angels did make a move, there really wasn't anything they could do but drop a lot of N2 mines and hope NERV Germany's data on 'Tabris' AT Field was wrong and it worked. If his passive AT field could block subatomic particles?

Their data was wrong about one thing: that AT field wasn't going down. It was weak compared to the amounts of power the angel had been giving off in combat, but even after five days of observation it still hadn't shut off for even an instant. Perhaps it was that SEELE's angel wasn't in a human body anymore with a human brain that started doing different things in its sleep. Before, the angel had been dead to the world enough in tree form that it hadn't noticed that it was in the middle of a full-scale invading army until it was run over by a tank.

"Remember the embryo in the volcano?" Ritsuko theorized. "Lilith and Adam were there for billions of years, and we only have SEELE and their prophecies to say that Adam and the angels would have woken up on their own. Maybe the two of them won't ever wake up."

In Misato's opinion, Ritsuko looked way too happy about that idea, although she was just glad the LCL had kept her friend alive long enough for Misato's team to get down there and call for NERV's paramedics.

She'd gone down there to kill Gendo and save the world: that was Ritsuko's story and she was sticking to it. As long as they were certain she was providing all the information she had on Rei and the Evas, she might even be able to get away with all of it. Turning over all of Kaji's evidence and proof of her own investigations had put Misato in a much more secure position and left her able to testify that no, Gendo Ikari hadn't told anyone squat, let alone sounded them out about joining him in this.

"That's not an option." Tabris had mimicked an old-style nuclear explosion, and it hadn't even tired him out enough to keep him from running around violating the conservation of matter and energy by conjuring up fruit that was actually a delivery vector for an amazingly simple… Did it really qualify as a retrovirus when all it did was tell the body to activate one set of genes and switch off another set? The genes that made that regeneration possible had been there all along, but there was something called 'epigenetics' that governed what genes the cells read and obeyed, among other things. So that was how angels could be genetically identical to humans and yet have such different capabilities.

Either way, they had living nuclear and biological weapons on Japanese soil and currently the two of them were practically unknowns. They'd decided not to destroy the world, and Tabris had seemed concerned for human life, but beyond that no one had any idea what they'd do.

Staying trees was fine, although preferably the angels would hold still while they dig up the trees and put them in some sort of hermetically sealed biodome greenhouse just in case, but if they couldn't count on them staying trees instead of waking up one day and deciding now was the time to destroy the world?

The first peep they heard out of any of the angels was Kaworu turning back from a tree one morning and stomping over to one of the foxholes to lean over and glare at the soldier in there. "Stop scaring away the birds. First you take my piano, and now every time I hear something nice there's that awful horn cutting it off a second later? Don't even think about playing digital recordings, there's no way I could sleep through that. You Lilim only leave in the frequencies that you can hear, and it just sounds freaky with half the song missing."

"The birds…" You could be using them to spread contaminants or possibly a plague, "This is for their protection, too." When the obvious alternative was shooting them down after they'd fed, in order to collect samples of altered animal tissue.

"I'm not going to poison them, I like birds. They sing, and I like music. Since I'm not anyone's prisoner anymore, if I want to feed birds then I'm going to feed birds. Isn't that something even prisoners are allowed to do? Anyway," he said, folding his arms and definitely looking like a teenager, "If you won't let me have music here then I'll go somewhere I can have music. And scaring them like that is just mean to the birds too, isn't it?" From his disgusted expression, he thought that was typical of them, or that a moral argument wasn't going to sway them. "It's not that I like being watched all the time, I'm sick of not having any privacy because of you Lilim. I haven't left because it's too much trouble to find another place when I just want to sleep, not because I want to stay where you can keep an eye on me. I know you wouldn't appreciate it anyway, even if I do want to make sure my own mess gets cleaned up," the radioactivity, "and you haven't killed the Second or Third Children." Even so, there was no point in giving them concessions, not when they'd just take and take. "But the least you can do is stop ruining it for me here, and if you can't even have the decency to do that then I'm leaving."

That said, he returned to the side of the black tree, gracefully growing around it, branches between branches so from beneath the canopy it looked like a latticework of thin wood and rustling leaf.

"I am relieved the Third Child is safe. He, Shinji, was so happy to see 'me' alive. Even if he is that man's son, I think part of me, yes, part of me is disappointed he has not come here."

"Mmm. I don't think he's very practiced with the piano, but that didn't detract from it." Made it more genuine, the sound of someone trying to pick out their way amidst confusion, striving to create something beautiful despite fear, if the fear it would be snatched from him was mixed with fear of inadequacy. "We could just go get him," he realized. "Even if they have all the data the old men and your Akagis had, the things they invented to subdue us presume that our bodies are merely their best."

"Like the difference between an Eva with only a battery and a cord that can be destroyed, and an Eva with a core."

"You're remembering more of your battles?" Kaworu's question was nothing more than polite interest. If he'd been more awake, the knowledge that it might have been possible for him to come back to himself if he'd been trapped in a replacement vessel would have been reassuring, but for now the sound of the wind in both their branches and the Lilim's pathetically encrypted chatter in response to his expressed wishes were music enough.

"Thinking of battle is calling them up. I think… I know I should save Shinji, if he needs it." Rei's voice was as even as it had ever been, her heart as calm as it was when it was standing, stagnant water even though now that calm was because the sun shone on her, because she recalled a Lilim holding out his hand to her and meaning it, protecting her only for her own sake.

She felt how thoughtful that memory made Kaworu. She knew liked it: that was why she'd shared it. The feeling was like being dipped in honey must feel like, everything warm and golden, like sunlight, but also sticky in a good way, the way it would be good if Shinji's hand had stayed stuck to hers. She couldn't remember what happened next, why she'd let him go. So curious, but she'd thought more like a Lilim after spending years as one, so maybe that had something to do with it. Or maybe the other Ikari hadn't allowed her to keep him?

Thinking of keeping him, "…I don't think Lilim are meant to be trees." For some reason Kaworu really didn't think so, even though being a tree was easily one of the best things ever, up there with music. Oh, right. "They do like climbing on them, though." That he could personally attest to, between Shinji and Asuka. "You evolved them up through monkeys instead of directly spawning them like Adam's children, so they have to, right?"

"I believe so? I do not recall being Lilith at all. Since the vast majority of those memories would consist of slumber, I doubt I will ever recall creating the Lilim or any of the events that would have defined the identity of Lilith."

"…Sorry."

"It is alright." It wasn't as though he was blaming her for Lilith's actions.

"Even so… Oh, that reminds me." Since he'd already been woken up by that damn air horn they used to scare off the birds, he should take care of this now.

"It's Kaworu, Ka-wo-ru," he told the same Lilim, since they were an officer and hadn't cringed back or done anything else annoying. "So tell the rest of them to stop calling me Tabris. First off, that name was in SEELE's damn idiotic prophecies and second, do you even know what it means? Angel of free will! And choices! They called me that and then they kept insisting that I didn't have any choice but to come here and trigger Third Impact, even though that would have destroyed my identity along with all of yours. I hated that, it pisses me off more every time I hear it. It's not like Kaworu Nagisa is much better, since it's just letter substitution and character reading code for Owari and Messenger, the Final Angel, but at least it could be someone's name, so it's better than Tabris. Damn Keel…"

The Lilim cleared his throat. "I was given additional orders to ask if you would be willing to…"

"Let you interrogate me under the pretense of using it to charge those old men with the crimes they committed. I won't answer anything that isn't relevant, and I want to testify when they go to trial." Not just be 'Exhibit A,' proof they were consorting with angels. "And if what they did to me isn't on the charge sheet somewhere, then you can forget it. I'm human too, you know." What happened to him was a crime by the Lilim's own laws, and they'd better acknowledge that.

"If you want to be treated like a human and a citizen of the UN, that means being bound by our laws, including those against hacking military communications," the Lilim was brave enough to say to his face.

Kaworu grinned: Lilim were so slow. "You still haven't repealed my security clearance, although that's probably because you didn't know it existed until now." That record was hidden along with the rest of 'Kaworu Nagisa's' records, even his official ones. "Good luck getting the guy who issued it to own up to it." He wasn't one of the old men, just deep in their pocket. "It's not like I have anything better to listen to, and you are talking about me." They wanted him to let them talk about him behind his back? "You could have come here and just said all that stuff to my face. While I'm at it, don't call me Adam. He's dead. My father died when SEELE had him raped and blown up. Yes, I have the same soul as him, but you have the same soul as your father, Lilim, and your mother, too. It doesn't make you the same person. Saying that I'm nothing but his vessel, that having my own identity doesn't matter, that I'm nothing but a placeholder they can use to steal the power of Adam even after they murdered him in his sleep, those damn selfish old bastards…" He gripped the top of the wooden barricade just to have something to clench his fist around, to feel something break.

Anger was a familiar feeling, even if he still wasn't sure what exactly Rei's golden-flowy feeling was. It made his chest feel tight, like anger, but it had also made him hungry, now that he was in human form, anyway. Or maybe it wasn't hunger, exactly? He took a deep breath, getting himself back under control before the Lilim backed away in order to avoid a confrontation when Kaworu had just remembered something else. "Rei would like to see Shinji again. And you can have these." He pulled two of Rei's fruits from her tree with a flicker of his soul and put them on the ground in front of the barrier. "Since you've only got bits of a soul, fruit of the Black Seed will block your ability to access your own AT fields again. Just don't use all of the seeds for research, they're for people who I… if they don't want to be…" Kaworu blushed, ashamed. "I didn't mean to do that. The radiation and the EMP. But that was my doing, so I'll take responsibility for it. I've already cleaned up the radiation, but I wish… I chose death, years ago. I thought it would be my only liberation, the only way to stay myself. I didn't, I couldn't realize how horrible a choice that was to make until I figured out that I could hide like this and realized that I had another choice. I never wanted to be the reason other people had to make that choice."

Instead of walking back to Rei's tree he almost fled into light, zipping back there to manifest in that form again, cringing inside.

It was Rei's branches that moved to wrap around him, thorns turning aside so they didn't slice through the delicate bark of a being never meant to have to endure direct, physical assaults. Nor such mental ones, not when they both contained souls not designed to strive and battle for individual survival, like the Lilim, but to grant life without thought of themselves. They shouldn't have needed to think for themselves, not ever, but Kaworu had been faced with an alternative he could not tamely swallow and Rei had tasted the pleasures of individual existence. Such small bites, but that only made her want more, want to ask Shinji if he would hold her hand again, even knowing now what she was.

Made her slip each taste she managed to fish out of the abyss of lost memory past Kaworu's lips, into his mind, because she did want more. Only part of it was that he was her friend: most of it was that she was afraid to try all by herself. Wanted someone to hold her hand through it, even if Kaworu knew even less of how to manage this than she did, even if she had to pull him alone in order to ensure that hand would be there.

But this feeling that might be love tasted like sunlight, like a new world full of promise. It might have made Kaworu's toes curl if he had toes.

"You could have toes, if you like. I'll grow the moss again, and make sure you turn back before you get sick," he told her.

"What about you?"

In answer, she felt him focus on his body, roots extending deep into the earth, hidden away in the dark and gaining strength from it. Branches reaching up for the sun, leaves spread to catch that warmth that tasted like her feelings for Shinji, like longed-for liberation. That light, full of frequencies artificial lights didn't provide, was proof he was uncaged. "…Maybe if there's music, but this body loves music as well."

Rei thought the Lilim must be relieved she was just curling up at the base of the tree instead of going over to yell at them as well. The moss that appeared under her feet was soft, and she gave a small smile when a root came up out of the ground to arch over her, holding her in place not tightly but just to be sure she was there, before going back into the earth. She simply pillowed her head on her folded arms and went back to drowsing.

Maybe now that she looked like herself, Shinji would realize that she still was the same person, even if so many memories might remain lost, and come see her? She hoped she was enough of the same person that he would still like her, anyway.

She was well aware that the only reason Kaworu had invited her instead of leaving her like Shinji and Asuka was that she was not a Lilim. That, and he was lonely too, so anyone would have done. He was just afraid of Lilim still, no matter how brave he had acted with the soldier and no matter how much he enjoyed showing her the memory of provoking Asuka. He had taunted her because he could and because he had enjoyed the rush of fear, enjoyed taking that risk and surviving it.

Kaworu was considerate and pleasant company, but she wished Shinji was here she thought as she shifted so she could wrap her arm around Kaworu's trunk for the sake of having something to hold.

Via theft from one of SEELE's secret accounts that the UN hadn't found and closed down yet, placing an order online for delivery to a relatively close location and 'thinking with portals,' Kaworu managed to get his hands on a replacement piano a few weeks later, but still a couple days before the Lilim finally gave in to Rei, who had started going over and looking cutely down at her hands in front of the guards every so often, and Shinji showed up.

"Can you get… off me?" Shinji said slowly when he was pushed down onto the piano bench only a handful of seconds after greeting Rei. It wasn't that he had an angel draped on his back that bothered him, it was that it was the wrong angel. "I was talking to Rei."

"You can talk while you play," Kaworu pointed out, still attached to his musician's back, arms around him.

"Not really all that well," Shinji confessed. "I'm better at the cello."

"I'd order one, but I had to give them the account information or else it would have been theft. Once they loosen up and I can start making money, I'm going to hire musicians to play for me around the clock." Students would be relatively cheap, and if he rooted in a college town or one with an active nightlife having music in the moonlight wouldn't be much of a problem. They might request those hours. Not that he would need to worry about money, if they paid him fairly. Not when some of the things he could do with his AT field currently cost millions of dollars for Lilim to do them with the means at their disposal. "Do you want a job?"

"I would like to hear you play, Shinji?" Rei said, sitting on the piano bench next to him.

Shinji was supposed to get information from them, but instead he ended up sitting there trying to play with Rei leaning on his shoulder and the other angel, Kaworu's head on his lap. Rei was getting in the way of his arm a little, but he didn't say that, not when that might have meant that she would move.

"So he's the musician I heard the first time?" he ended up asking Rei, half to find something to talk about and half because he'd thought Rei didn't like him anymore, and now she was with this guy, but she still wanted to lean against Shinji and hold his hand.

He felt Kaworu's nod; Damn, Shinji'd thought from the quiet breathing that the other guy was asleep. "If you hadn't come then and made me think that I wanted to stay here, with the sun and the piano, then I might not have changed. I didn't know I could. Then you played for me." Kaworu smiled up at him. "I liked that omen much better than their damn prophecies. Then you came again, escaping your destiny if only for a single night. I wish I could have kept the Katsuragi woman from taking you back there, but I couldn't be too suspicious."

"Did you hit her with that fig on purpose?" Misato was already pretty sure that was the case.

"She was an agent of one of the old men, forcing you to go fight and get killed on their behalf. You were like me, so I should have done more, but I wasn't really awake," dropping the fruit on her was more lashing out in annoyance than anything, "and I didn't want to ruin my chance at being forgotten here instead of forced to comply with my destiny. It was selfish of me, just to think of my destiny and not anyone else's." Asuka was broken by Arael on the very day he was supposed to arrive at NERV, then Rei sacrificed herself fighting Armisael rather than being forced to merge (just like he would have…)? Being there probably wouldn't have made any difference, not when those were things the old men must have wanted to happen and he would have had to pretend to be an almost-powerless Lilim, but still… He'd thought his death was inevitable, and look at him now.

"Why did you trick me into eating that and starting to turn into an angel?"

Kaworu pouted. "I didn't trick you, you took it yourself. I only let you because you played the piano for me. Don't Lilim normally want immortality? The old men were afraid of dying before they became one and got my immortality, even though that would have killed them either way."

Shinji frowned down at the other boy, who was much more of a creepy albino than Rei, even if they did look a lot alike somehow. "If I'd known…"

At much of a surprise as it was to have Rei lean against him, it was even more of a shock to Shinji to have her wrap her arms around him. She had asked to hold his hand that one time, but was she copying the other angel? Was that why she was so… With the soldiers and Misato watching them from a distance, too! It made Shinji blush but even though he'd wanted the other angel to get off, he hoped Rei wouldn't move again.

His annoyance with the world suddenly forgotten, and knowing that Rei wouldn't want them to fight, Shinji asked, "You grew them for that cat, didn't you? The one that was following me."

"It was hungry, and I could, so I did." Kaworu shrugged. "You were hungry, too."

Experience as a cook made Shinji say, "Thanks," because he knew how annoying it was to make something for someone and then have them take it for granted or even more annoyingly, respond to him doing them a favor by finding ridiculous things to criticize him about (coughAsukacough). "I guess." He had been a guest, it seemed, so he shouldn't act like a jerk. Not in front of Rei, anyway. And it wasn't like Kaworu had meant to trick or hurt him, even if how touchy he was was just wrong, for a guy. It was like he was the opposite of how Rei used to be, smiling and open.

It might be nice if more of it rubbed off, if Rei kept being close to him instead of moving away from him on the escalators. He still kept an eye on Kaworu, not so much because he was an angel but because he was Asuka's half-brother and Shinji was pretty sure he'd bitten the guy during that whole thing, so on some level he was wondering when he was going to be punched and called a pervert.

When all Kaworu did was fall asleep (again?) with his head still in Shinji's lap, he asked Rei, "Is he sure he's related to Asuka?"

"I am wondering that myself," Rei said, patting Kaworu on the head. "But it explains Asuka's fear of not being the best, her need to prove herself, if many of the people around her there secretly considered her weak." Merely a sideshow, a pawn to sacrifice to defeat the other angels, a tool to use for the Final Messenger's training.

"I guess that's true." Had Shinji gotten caught up in someone else's sibling rivalry? Asuka's desperate need to live up to the standard set by a brother she'd never met? "And you're my half-sister."

"I can alter my genetic code," Rei said shortly. "I do not want to live in the shadow of Yui Ikari any longer. I am not her daughter." Therefore Shinji was not her half-brother. Period.

Shinji's shoulders slumped a little. "It might have been nice."

"I do not want to be your sister, Shinji." Her fellow pilot looked even more depressed and rejected, so she repeated herself with the proper emphasis. "I do not want to be your sister, Shinji."

"What?"

He looked startled and uncomprehending, so Rei explained herself, red-orange eyes meeting brown. "I appreciate that your heart has room for others, that you continued to reach out to me despite my coldness to you. I sympathize with your feelings of rejection by Gendo Ikari, and I want to hold your hand again."

"What she's saying is that she likes you," Kaworu translated without opening his eyes. "I think I like you too. From the way you play the piano. The pain and uncertainty there, trying to find a way. You have my sympathies as well, which is why I wanted you to live." He pushed himself up, sitting on the other side of Shinji from Rei. "They aren't mistreating you, are they?"

He shook his head. "They're doing a lot of tests, but Misato's watching out for me." And honestly, it was a relief to know exactly what was up with his body. Piloting the Evas: weird stuff had happened to him even before he ate the fruit.

Both Rei and Kaworu's faces darkened when he said tests. "They're not hurting me, really," Shinji said hurriedly. Even though it was nice that Rei wanted to protect him. He'd still rather he was strong enough to protect her. "Oh, and Asuka's fine too. She wants them to let her visit you, but…" Shinji didn't think that was a very good idea. Rei pissed Asuka off: he was grimly certain that Kaworu would drive her berserk again just by existing.

"I did promise her a rematch, or a proper match. I just couldn't permit the existence of those Evas." Kaworu scowled, then climbed on top of the piano so he could feel the notes as Shinji played them, the vibrations of the strings resonating in these fragile bones. "You should stay here. We'll protect you from them and their tests, and I'll get you more instruments. I need to get more for Rei and myself, but I wanted the piano first, because if I hadn't played the piano and almost met you, I'd be dead now. So it's lucky." So was Shinji. "You can sleep with us, and we'll wake up and play with you when you get bored. You won't have to be alone despite the barrier around your self."

"S-Sleep with…"

Rei nodded. "Even if you don't want to become a tree, the moss is comfortable. Didn't you sleep here with Kaworu before?"

"Oh, you meant like that." Thank goodness. "I need to go back, or Misato will be worried." Or Misato would come over here and make them hand him over. Which did make him a little happy to think about, despite how nice it was to have Rei put her hands on his arm, leaning against him as Kaworu came back down to lean against him other side, catching him between them.

"You saved my life," Kaworu told him seriously. "Even if it was by chance, I value my life, so that means something to me. I think I would like to be friends, but I've never had one so I'm not very sure of how to go about this."

"You and Rei aren't friends?" So what were they, then?

The two of them leaned in front of Shinji to look at each other. "I am not certain," Rei said, frowning. "He is like me."

"Both of us have the souls of seeds, but the capacity for loneliness. Perhaps that's just because we've been awake long enough to get lonely," Kaworu thought. "It's nice to have someone who feels the same way about things, to have someone to enjoy being a tree with. Is wanting to share pleasant things with another part of liking someone?"

"I believe so. I enjoyed sharing my memories of Shinji with you." Feeling the happiness they gave him reminded her of her own happiness. "I like touching you as well as Shinji, but it isn't quite the same." There was triumph in being able to touch Shinji, as well as fear that he would go away or reject her. Kaworu enjoyed contact too much to ever turn her away, not unless she did something truly evil. She didn't think Asuka was an obstacle to being with Kaworu, either. Kaworu liked what he liked, unlike Shinji whose feelings were confused. Perhaps the very clarity was why she was unclear on what exactly she thought of him, because there had never been any particular need to think of it. No need to crave what she already had by her side. Now that she was thinking about it…

Shinji would like to blame it on Kaworu, but he wasn't sure which of them started it. If they both leaned in at the same time that just made it worse, because it meant that they were of one accord, that they really were the same, that Rei was connected to someone that wasn't him. That someone could understand Rei when he'd struggled so hard and still couldn't really. If it was because they were both angels, then he'd never go back, he swore to himself. He'd use the change Kaworu was responsible for to take Rei from Kaworu.

Yet even so they were beautiful together like this, reaching for each other, Kaworu's hands cupping Rei's face, the kiss slow and tender until they broke apart with a little laugh from Kaworu. For a moment Shinji hoped that he was laughing at the idea of the two of them liking each other like that, but then he leaned forward again, just a bit, to press his lips to Rei's cheek with sweet affection that seemed more like a girl or a child than a guy.

Their lips didn't move, but Shinji felt whispers at the edge of his hearing as they looked into each other's eyes, and then he found himself being kissed.

He flailed, almost falling off the piano bench, eyes closed in shock when he felt warm breath on both his cheeks, and he hoped it was Rei that licked at his lips. He wanted to say no or something, but what exactly did he say? He didn't want Rei to think he didn't want her to kiss him, but "Guys, guys don't kiss guys!"

"Hmm? Alright, then," Shinji heard Kaworu say as the two of them picked him up and flew over a bit to lie on the moss together.

It was a relief that the person who climbed half on top of him to kiss him next had breasts, Shinji could feel them pressing against his chest, so that must be Kaworu stroking his hair and leaning against his other side… but that hum was definitely Rei's voice… Shinji opened his eyes as Kaworu pulled back a little to look at Shinji with a pleased expression, letting Shinji get a look at the white uniform shirt, how tight it was across the chest, strained by some things the boys uniform wasn't really designed to fit.

"This is nice," Rei said, cuddling up to the two of them, and Shinji really, really wished he could forget about the fact there were people watching them.

It was a relief when instead of kissing him again, Kaworu poked his shoulder and asked, "Do you play anything besides the piano and cello?"

The other angel wrapped her arms around Shinji again and nodded. "We should all play together once we have enough instruments." She glanced at the piano, and Kaworu seemed to take this as a request.

"You've played for me three times now, and you've only heard me once, so I'll play for you now, Shinji," the white-haired angel said, sitting down at the piano with an offhand grace that didn't seem very feminine but didn't seem especially masculine, either. Well, according to Ritsuko there were male and female trees in some species, but…

"You and Rei are the same… kind of angel, right? And the other angels were trying to get at your bodies, I mean Adam and Lilith's bodies?"

Rei nodded. "Yes, the other angels including the Lilim."

So even though it was weird for someone to turn from a guy into a girl, somehow much more weird than it was for them to turn into a tree, being attracted to them was perfectly normal, right? Or something? Shinji tried to tell himself that, anyway, as Rei sighed. "I wish I had something to feed you. Shinji, would you teach me how to cook?"

"I guess?" Did she want to make him a lunch? No one had ever made him a lunch before. It made him blush. "We'd need ingredients, and a kitchen, though. I don't think they want Kaworu to keep just getting stuff for you guys, at least not without asking first. Maybe I can borrow something?" He knew how to cook at a campfire, so… He carefully didn't say, 'If they let me come back,' because he didn't want Rei to 'threaten not to let him go,' or that was how Misato would hear it. She hadn't wanted him to risk this in the first place, and she had to be really upset by now, Shinji knew as Kaworu continued to play.

Rite of Spring was easy to identify, and it was appropriate, since flowers and trees and new beginnings. Kaworu was good: Shinji'd thought so from what he heard as he approached. A lot better than Shinji, not that the piano was one of his main instruments.

"It's nice to have music, isn't it? I think I would like to swim, though," Rei mused.

"Musicians, birds, a kitchen, plenty of sun and a lake or a beach," Kaworu said, voice only the slightest bit higher. "Perhaps other trees, too." She smiled softly. "It will be nice to have a home, a place where people care for us and want us to live." Surely that would let everyone there be happy. "Maybe I'll learn to garden, although that might be too much like the story."

"The story?" Shinji wondered.

"Once there was a garden, and in it stood two trees, a tree of knowledge and a tree of life." Kaworu slammed her hands down on the keyboard, a discordant full stop. "But that story has nothing to do with anything, and even if it did, the places both of us were kept were terrible places. Only idiots like those old men would want to go back to any garden to live according to anyone else's scenario. It's nothing but a cage, and having a purpose in life is no different from death, because any story has to end with death, so planning out someone's fate is the same thing as deciding how they die. None of us are condemned to death now, none of us have to tamely accept that fate. I won't, and I won't let them to do that to either of you. Not when it's possible to be alive and free. Not when I am finally dreaming."

She smiled, the smile and her short hair making her look wild and fey, unfettered and all the more dangerous for it, even though those cast-off chains had tried to bind her to end the world of the Lilim. "So many possibilities. Rei and I wonder: what would it be like, to be loved by something like you?"

As for why Rei is more Lilith than Kaworu is Adam, identity is a function of memory and personality formed by that memory. While Adam's soul was rather viciously disconnected from his body, Lilith's body remains mostly intact (and in only two bits). Even if Rei's soul isn't in it, it's easily possible to think of that body acting as a 'long-term memory' storage. Without Kaworu there, for him to subconsciously wish that the other person would be like her, carry on her wishes and memories (since joint action, friendship and help counter loneliness, and Rei's awareness of loneliness was key to that scene), instead she would have wished that it carried on somehow. Rei III still has enough awareness that Shinji is important to her to ditch Gendo for him at the last possible second even after spending eps/chapters ignoring his existence quite rudely.

A lot of her memories here are therefore things that she wanted to remember, and she doesn't want to remember the embarrassing stuff, like a certain tsundere moment in the manga where she made it clear she didn't want to be handholdy or familiar with Shinji because he made the mistake of talking with her about how much he wanted Asuka back after spending time at Asuka's bedside and such. And of course Shinji is clueless…