Asuka stood alone in the balcony doorway looking out.
'Does it ever rain in Tokyo 3? What a stupid question. I'd have taken Hikari's word for it. I didn't need a gottdamm demonstration'.
The wind was blowing hard against the other side of the building, so it was relatively safe to be standing with the door open letting the slightly cooler air in while the rain lashed down a few feet away.
'Though I'm not sure this counts as rain. It's more like someone is dropping a river on us. If it weren't for the total absence of an alarm, it might as well be the Angel of Excessive Amounts of Water or some such bullshit'.
From where she's standing it looks like even the downpour is avoiding her.
Normally a couple of hours sitting in her Eva would have been comforting. But Akagi had decided that she was only going to let one pilot in the GeoFront at a time to eliminate all possible variables. So she hadn't seen Shinji since this morning and she hadn't seen Rei at all. Being the last by virtue of Eva order rather than pilot designation had meant that by the time she was washing the LCL out of her hair after having achieved one of the lowest sync rates ever, Shinji and Rei had been at Rei's place eating.
Her idiot was supposed to have come home afterwards and brought her something to eat. Except the trains had been shut down an hour ago and if the rain kept up they'd need amphibious vehicles to get to Nerv if there was an actual attack.
So she was stuck here alone with not even a penguin for company - PenPen had taken one look at her foul mood, stolen one of Misato's beers from the fridge and disappeared back into his freezer - leaving her with only her thoughts. She'd have actually preferred the oppressive heat that made it hard to think, or sleep, than sleeping alone with her nightmares for the first time in a week while baka-Shinji stayed with Rei in her one-bedroom apartment. Which presumably only had one bed - Shinji had described it in terms that made it seem spartan at best.
Eventually she'd go in and make something to eat. In the meantime, she'd watch the rain and assume that the gnawing feeling in her stomach was hunger.
One of the many thoughts Asuka was wishing she wasn't having was about what Rei was wearing. Once she had discovered that the only items of clothing Rei owned were identical sets of school uniforms and swimsuits, she had insisted that Mistao take them shopping. Which meant, among other things, attempting and failing to explain the concept of lingerie to Rei. Much to Mistato's excessive amusement. Hopefully Rei was going to be wearing the other set of sleepwear tonight. Asuka wasn't sure which was worse - imagining Rei in the sleepwear she'd declared 'surprisingly comfortable' or imagining baka-Shinji sharing a bed with her wearing it. She didn't want to be having either of those thoughts.
They had fallen into a routine in only a few short days. They would wake up together, Shinji would use the bathroom (thankfully slightly less embarrassing now that he'd learned to always sit down) then make breakfast while she stayed in bed attempting to get a little more rest while her fingers moved in chopping motions. Then she would get up and eat breakfast with Shinji. She'd wash the dishes while he showered and got ready. He'd head over to Rei's while she had her own shower. Rei would hug him for the same precise five minutes when he got there. They would be back just in time for her to meet them outside, giving Asuka plenty of time to brush out her hair. Rei would hug her for two minutes and then they would walk the remaining distance to school.
At lunch they would sit together mostly in a group. Hikari would ask Shinji's opinion on what she'd made that day. Toji would eat anything that was left over. There rarely was anything, much to his repeated disappointment. Kensuke had thankfully stopped incessantly and obliviously asking questions about Evas and piloting and started showing off photographs to get his friends' opinions. After the honestly remarkable pictures she'd gotten from him of Hikari and Toji not realising how they were looking at each other, he'd started taking requests for couples pictures. He even had one of Chihiro and Megumi that they could keep with plausible deniability. There had even only been one picture she'd had to threaten him into deleting all evidence of, and that had only been compromising to anyone who would have noticed the significance of the fact that she, Rei and Shinji were looking at each other with a somewhat creepily identical smile.
In the evening the reverse would happen - they would drop Asuka off at home. Shinji would cook Rei a vegetarian dinner after the requisite five-minute hug, then return and make dinner for them both. And most of the time they were both sleeping in her bed.
Obviously that wasn't happening tonight.
An errant gust of wind through icy water in her face. Perhaps making dinner would give her something else to think about. She closed the balcony door to keep the rain out, leaving just enough of a gap to let the cooler air replace the stifling heat of the apartment.
She'd told Hikari there was no discernable pattern for when the synchronisation occurred, but with the new routine, there was.
By the time they walked home, she and Shinji were walking in perfect step, adjusting their stride length to compensate for the slight difference in the length of their legs just enough that they didn't outpace one another. He waited until she was inside before continuing on with Rei, despite not being in line of sight. She knew exactly how long they hugged for once they got inside Rei's apartment - it always felt not quite right - apparently the few centimetres height difference made the hug different enough to feel uncomfortable to her. Maybe Rei really had found the perfect hug position for each of them. Then, sometime in the next thirty minutes, the sync would fade while he was cooking.
They were always synchronised when they woke up in the same bed.
Outside of that, still no pattern she could see.
It turned out that making herself dinner didn't help much as a distraction. Obviously no one was going to break the first non-Angel-caused state of emergency to risk being washed away bringing her food, no matter how big a tip she offered. Anyway, she had all the ingredients Shinji had bought and she was perfectly capable of making the planned meal all by herself. Just not feeling him next to her while she chopped vegetables felt empty.
After eating what was otherwise an adequate meal, she was certain she'd missed something Shinji would have put in it. Why did everything end up revolving around the Invincible baka-Shinji? She was the Great Asuka Langley-Soryu, she didn't need anyone, let alone the idiot. "I need him. Rei needs him. He's mine and you don't get to keep him." her own scream at Unit 01 came back to her unprompted. She'd meant every word. She just didn't know what she meant by every word. Or if they were true. Rei needed him. Rei had him. It was Rei he was sleeping with tonight.
She watched her plate arc into the kitchen and smash against the counter with a satisfying crash.
Then she sighed and got up to follow it. The last thing she needed right now was to spend the evening pulling fragments of crockery out of PenPen's flippers. Even if it would have been a distraction.
Asuka was standing at the balcony window again. The remaining dishes were clean. The floor was carefully swept. A plate of fish was left out as an apology for the penguin. She was watching the rain and the occasional lightning and cursing how good her imagination was.
She'd spent several days not thinking about falling asleep lying on top of Shinji after having somehow broken the synchronisation pain when she'd pushed him. She'd hated that she'd panicked but, even in retrospect, it seemed a perfectly reasonable reaction to saying each other's thoughts. It hadn't happened again, and thankfully they couldn't actually hear each other thinking, but it was a frightening change. So she was trying not to think of how she felt about it, or how it had felt. So her imagination had decided to give her a guided tour of Shinji in the same position with Rei. Except instead of staring at each other in shock they were kissing and caressing each other. She knew how the touch would feel, Shinji had stroked her skin once by accident and she could imagine Rei's small happy smile. Watching them kiss in her imagination only brought back the pain of her one and only kiss and her first encounter of synchronisation shock. Rei wouldn't have that problem though, so they could be kissing and touching each other without fear. She didn't want to be the one kissing Shinji, but it wasn't fair. He was her's. He shouldn't be kissing his girlfriend.
An appropriately timed flash of lightning and rolling thunder gave her a momentary break from being tortured by her own nonsensical thoughts.
She couldn't feel whatever it was they were actually doing. The sense of Shinji had faded after Rei had finished hugging himher as always. Why? It wasn't distance or time apart. Was it something about spending time around Rei that broke the synchronisation? Was Rei simply just taking him away from her? If that were the case why was one of times she had felt him the strongest when she had fallen into sync with Rei just before getting him back? How did she sync with Rei that one time? What was different about synchronising with Rei and with baka-Shinji?
She swore at her imagination again, she was trying to think analytically about the nature of their synchronisation, not imagining Rei and Shinji doing things together that she didn't want, didn't need, and would never be enough anyway. What would it take to be enough? Certainly baka-Shinji wasn't up to the task, whatever it was, but he was the only one who'd come close. The only one who'd even made her aware of the desire in the first place. The non-sexual, non-romantic desire, but desire was the closest word she could think of for what she felt. As she didn't need anything from anyone.
She tried thinking about how she would explain that Shinji had essentially moved into her room to Misato when she got back. That failed against the train wreck of the sentence that was 'He has to sleep in my room so I don't have the nightmare that involves being in complete sensory synchronisation with him while he has sex with Rei'.
Shinji hadn't seemed at all worried about either Misato's absence or her return. Had it not even occurred to him to be concerned? That would be just like the idiot. But she'd seen food in the fridge when she'd got things out to cook that Misato preferred. So did he know she'd be back soon? If so why hadn't he told her? Or was he just being prepared in case she came home and he had to cook something on short notice?
Where the hell was Misato anyway? Sure she wasn't the most responsible of guardians. But there was irresponsible and there was disappearing for a week right after the baka got back! Abandoning him to whatever Nerv had done that left such a mess she had to take care of him. Even if Misato'd spent the last week screwing Kaji's remaining brain cell out, one of them should have returned her calls or come back to check on the pair of teenagers they'd left alone.
At least worrying about Misato was an alternative to worrying about baka-Shinji or Wondergirl or why her last synchronisation test scores were so low.
She watched the rain.
The rain was still falling when she finally felt tired enough to risk going to bed alone.
Her dreams were broken fragments she kept waking from and not feeling Shinji wrapped around her.
Unit 01 hauling her up far enough to wrap support cables around her arm before plummeting past her into the heat of the volcano silently, not even a goodbye.
The snick as an entry plug was slid back into storage, only not empty this time.
The flare of an N2 mine wrapped in Unit 00s arm, leaving nothing of Rei behind but dust falling through a sunbeam.
The dirac sea swallowing Unit 01 and feeling her sense of Shinji's existence slowly fading until even she gave up hope of his return.
Shinji not even having time to cry out as he was crushed by the falling angel exceeding any plausible terminal velocity.
In desperation, she had wrapped one of Shinji's shirts around her pillow. It didn't help much, but it did help. She hated that it did.