She was eating Misato's lunch when the phone rang. Well, technically not Misato's lunch as there was, of course, still no sign of her, but given the remaining choices, the food baka had bought for her required the least effort to turn into something edible. No one sensible would be travelling in this weather, and while Misato and her driving would not qualify as sensible to anyone with half a brain, having her precious little car washed away is probably something she wouldn't risk. So her continued absence was not a surprise.
"Hi. Misato?"
"No Asuka, it's Ibuki."
"Oh. What do you want? I didn't hear an alarm."
"No, nothing like that. We're sending a Section 2 car for you. Sempai's had everything set up for hours, and it sounds like the rain is light enough up there for them to bring you in for the test". Ibuki sounded tired, which was not at all that surprising if she'd been stuck in the GeoFront by the storm and had to deal with an irritated Akagi whose plans had been delayed by the weather.
"They'll have to take the long way around, some of the roads are still flooded, so you have time for lunch if you haven't eaten yet."
Asuka looked outside. The rain had apparently slackened off from "deluge" to "heavy".
"Alright. I'll be ready when they arrive."
By the time Section 2 arrived it had technically stopped raining. However, the heat was back with a vengeance, and the evaporating water made the air so thick that any cooler spots experienced random rain squalls until the humidity dropped back down below 100%.
The high-mounted vehicles did let them navigate the pools of water in every dip in the road, but they also caught the remaining gusts of wind in a most alarming way. The swerving around puddles and feeling of being about to be blown off the road did not help Asuka's mood in the slightest. That the car's air-conditioning was barely making a dent in the humidity was just one more irritation on top of everything else.
Being met in an elevator by Rei should have lifted her mood. Being met in an elevator by Rei and a smiling Shinji after they'd spent the night together had the opposite effect. She caught her automatic reaction to Rei's "May I?" mid gesture and, placing her hands on her hips rather than open for Rei to slip into, shook her head.
The ride down to the changing rooms felt even longer than the time the power went out, but no one challenged Asuka's scowl by breaking the silence.
Having suffered the aggravatingly slow descent with a silent Wondergirl, a sulking baka and the confused and confusing mix of unrecognisable emotions and emotions that she did recognise but refused to admit to experiencing, she was absolutely not in the mood for being naked in front of anyone. Even turning her back to Wondergirl was too uncomfortable.
So she'd crossed to the privacy screens to change in whatever degree of peace she could manage. It wasn't until she dropped her bra on top of her folded shirt that she realised she'd neglected to pick up the freshly packed plugsuit.
Pacing in frustration while waiting to hear Wondergirl leave the changing rooms, she was startled to see a red plugsuit emerge from behind the privacy wall attached to a white clad arm with no visible support. She snatched the plugsuit package and the arm withdrew. After a moment she heard the door close and sat down with a thump. She was angry about forgetting the plugsuit. She was angry that Wondergirl had helped without asking. She was angry that Wondergirl could have seen her. She was angry that Rei didn't look. She was angry that Wondergirl had stopped to get dressed before bringing her the plugsuit. She was angry that Rei hadn't come to her while undressed and held her. She was ... thinking absurd things again.
She stripped off her remaining underwear and roughly pulled on the plugsuit, feeling it brush across her skin as it contracted around her. The normally comforting pressure against her skin somehow did not help.
"As a reminder for those of you whose brains were washed away by the monsoon that so rudely interrupted us, this afternoon's schedule is as follows.."
Asuka tuned out Akagi's rundown. She knew the schedule. Paired tests, complete power down of the uninvolved Evas, utter boredom unless something exploded. She wasn't even involved in the first one, just the lovebirds. Having the Evas off when they weren't part of the test meant she couldn't even go and sit in hers for some peace while she waited. They could have picked her up later, but no, apparently she needed to be here to listen to Akagi telling her things she already knew.
So given the option of sitting around in the control room being bored out of her mind and sitting down with her Eva making sure the technicians hadn't messed something up again, she had gone down to the cages to ensure she wasn't sitting around even longer than necessary while they fixed something.
Which meant she was sitting in a very familiar spot when Rei climbed down out of her plug after a record-breaking 15% sync rate improvement. Maybe sex was good for your sync rate or something. Anyone would be happy with that sort of achievement. Should be happy. Because Wondergirl looked absolutely miserable when she walked by, completely ignoring Asuka as if she wasn't even there.
Shinji had been as surprised at Rei's improved synchronisation score as everyone else. Rei's scores had been consistently lower than the other two pilots, enough to activate and control the Eva but not enough for the fine motor control, and the corresponding risk of pain pass-through, that came with higher rates.
It didn't seem to bother her, and he knew she'd had some bad experiences trying to sync - he'd met her just not long after one such experience had left her seriously injured. So he could understand her reluctance to get in an Eva at all. For him, and from what he understood, Asuka as well, the higher the rate the more comfortable the Eva was outside of actual combat. So Rei's reaction to a higher sync rate made no sense to him. She was upset. Not that most people would probably be able to tell, but the slight flattening of her tone and way her movements were more precise and less fluid were obvious to him.
He was certain what happened next was somehow his fault. How, he had absolutely no idea. He watched in dismay as Rei walked past Asuka as if she hadn't seen her. There was no way that was the case. Rei noticed many things he didn't, there was no way she'd missed Asuka.
Perhaps it had something to do with the way Asuka aborted her greeting hug with Rei as soon as she saw him. But that must be about something he had done. Even with Asuka doing her "I'm not talking to annoying people" thing that would explain if Asuka had ignored Rei, but Asuka had looked up at Rei as if about to say something. It was Rei who ignored Asuka.
There was no point in trying to apologise to Asuka for whatever it was he'd done until he worked out what it was. She'd thrown that one in his face often enough. 'I know you're sorry, you're always sorry, but what about?' Then if he didn't have a good enough reason to satisfy her, she'd switch to insulting him in German 'because Japanese is too polite'.
Why they had to shut everything down and start over, Asuka didn't know. Whatever the reason, she was sitting in her Unit 02 waiting for baka-Shinji to resynchronise, only half listening to the usual start-up process as it didn't involve her and she had more important things to not be thinking about.
Half a second after reaching synchronisation Shinji started screaming.
Asuka knew that expression. She'd held him through that nightmare. She'd had that nightmare. Now he was having them while awake.
"Drop his LCL temperature, now!" she shouted to be heard.
"The temperature is nominal".
"I know that! You know that! He DOESN'T. Now drop his temperature at least 10 degrees NOW before I come and make you".
Sitting in a massive robot did tend to make your threats more convincing. It didn't matter that the Eva she was sitting in wasn't fully powered up - if she had to, she'd do an emergency start-up, force synchronise and be through the fucking wall sooner than she'd even hit the floor if she had to go in person. Anyone hearing her knew just how much damage she could do.
She didn't have time for this bullshit. The bridge bunnies weren't reacting fast enough. It didn't matter how mad she was at him. It mattered that she couldn't reach him when he needed her. Baka-Shinji, why couldn't he have his flashbacks somewhere she could get to him?
"Once he comes out of it, return the temperature to normal slowly. He'll warm back up fast enough," she directed at Ibuki, who seemed to be the only sane person in the command centre right now. For once she missed Misato. Misato wouldn't have hesitated, she understood nightmares.
Then she changed her focus and started yelling at her baka in German.
His screaming stopped as the temperature dropped, but she didn't stop cursing him until his eyes opened. Sighing tiredly, she leaned back, hoping the heat in her hands was from how tightly she had been gripping the controls, and half closed her eyes, leaving the rest to Ibuki.
"Hi, Shinji, you back with us?"
"Yes. I'm sorry about that. I didn't mean to."
Asuka bit her tongue, literally holding it between her teeth to prevent herself saying anything. Now he was back, baka needed Maya's calm voice rather than her yelling at him for apologising for something outside his control.
"I'm going to warm the LCL back up for you now. Let me know if it starts to be a problem again and we'll pause, alright?"
"Yes. I'm sorry".
"Are you ready to resume the test, or do we need to halt for the day?" Ibuki sounded concerned.
"I'm sorry. I'm fine. We can keep going".
Fortunately the rest of the test went smoothly and with no more excitement, just an increasing amount of boredom. Neither of them said more than necessary to respond to questions. Asuka didn't even grumble when her sync rate was a few points lower than even Shinji's poor score.
Before the Evas shut down to the low power state between tests, Asuka opened a direct comm window to Unit 01. She didn't care if she was overheard, she just needed to make sure he didn't do anything stupid.
"Baka, once you get out you're going to sit down where I can see you and you're not going to move until I come and get you. No going home without me. No going home with Rei. You'll wait. Got it?"
She waited until she got a faint nod before looking back at the external feed to watch him climb down and walk over to sit against the wall opposite her Eva. At least with his legs drawn up and his face buried against his knees she knew he wasn't going anywhere.
"If you're quite done with your lover's tiff Asuka, we'll be bringing Unit 00 online in a few moments," Akagi said impatiently.
"The only lovers around here are those in Misato's perverted imagination. Oh wait, she's not even here."
"Whatever you say, 'sugar muffin'."
Asuka replied with something that was definitely not the angriest sounding part of a recipe but did imply something about Akagi's ancestry that would require a time machine.
Aoba announces into the ensuing silence, "Unit 00 is online, tests nominal, ready for synchronisation".
"Ok, let's get this over with."
"Pilot Soryu resynchronising. Activation threshold reached."
"Focus Asuka, you're barely at 40%. Not even Ayanami was that low earlier."
Asuka growled at Akagi but didn't say anything.
"Synchronisation at 61% and stabilising."
"Ok. That's good enough. Ayanami are you ready?"
"Hai", she responded in a monotone that may have sounded normal to the bridge crew but was flat, almost curt to those who knew her well.
"Pilot Ayanami synchronising. Activation threshold reached. Synchronisation at 58% and stabilising."
Asuka glanced down at the comm screen. She had felt Rei looking at her. But she was still staring straight ahead at the Command Centre, looking every bit the emotionless doll.
"Sempai, there's... no there's not. Sorry I thought I saw something, but there's nothing in the data trace either. It must have been my imagination."
"Alright, give it another thirty minutes and see if anything really does happen."
Thirty minutes of nothing happening but Asuka ignoring Wondergirl and Rei not appearing to be paying attention to anything not strictly necessary for the test follow. Rei and Asuka exit their Evas at the same time on opposite ends of the cage room. They climb down, dropping to hit the deck at the same instant. They stride down their gangways at the same pace. Asuka stops by Shinji. It takes another minute before Rei reaches them.
"Hey, baka, you alright now?"
Shinji nods, "'I'm fine. I'm sorry to have bothered you."
Asuka rolls her eyes and resists the urge to complain about him apologising. Instead she extends her right hand to him to help him back on his feet. Rei extends her left and grasps his at the same time. Together they pull him upright.
"Go get cleaned up. Wait for me when you're done."
Rei says nothing.
After leaving Asuka enough time to shower and change, Rei follows her into the changing rooms to do the same.
Asuka commandeered a Section 2 car to take them home. They could have taken the train, or even walked, but she didn't trust Shinji's 'I'm fine' as far as she could throw Unit 02 barehanded.
They made dinner together. She would have done it herself, but Shinji had insisted that he was going to make food and rather than argue, or say anything at all, she had just picked up the knife and started cutting up the things that needed cutting.
When they were done she took her dinner to her room, not trusting herself to eat in silence, not trusting anything that might come out of her mouth. Tonight was going to be bad enough as it was without her making it worse.
Once she heard Shinji go to his room through the gap she'd left open, she got up and went to the kitchen. After refilling the trays, she poured the remaining ice into a bowl of water and sunk her hands into it. Eventually her hands felt cool and she put the bowl in the freezer on top of one of Misato's frozen things. Having prepared for the inevitable next time this happened, she went to lie down in a vain hope that eventually she would sleep and that her nightmares might be no worse than her waking thoughts.
Shinji was awake again. Asuka's nightmares were especially bad and they were waking frequently.
He wished there was something he could do, but she had made it abundantly clear that she did not want his help, or to tell him what he'd done wrong, or be around him at all if she could help it. So there was no way he could do what she needed, the only thing that helped the nightmares.
It wasn't that he missed the high-risk activity that was sleeping with Asuka. He missed that it was something he could do that was useful. He missed her warmth. He missed the occasions she'd actually talk to him. He missed having a night without his own nightmares. He missed sleep. He missed feeling her stretch in the morning. He missed the contented little smile she had when she woke up in the brief moment before she remembered he was there. He even missed waking up with her knee on his bladder, because that meant she'd slept through the night. He missed the pain of the contact checks that determined where they started out on the bed, at least that was from trying to connect.
This angry distant Asuka was still Asuka. He just wished she'd be strange-Asuka long enough to let him help.
Asuka dragged him back down into nightmares once more.