Asuka stood in the doorway of Mama's home office, and didn't cry.
She clenched the fold of scribbled-apology notepaper in her hand as the clock ticked past eleven a.m., and didn't cry.
She heard the noise of Kaworu running around the apartment, juggling bags as he packed them with props and costumes, and did. Not. Cry.
Asuka Langley Soryu was the star in the lead role, whether or not her Mama was there to see.
...But she promised.
"Asuka, everything is packed." Kaworu appeared at her side. "Is Aunt Kyoko...?"
Asuka sniffed and wiped her eyes furiously, and didn't cry. "H-how many times," she hiccuped, "do I have t-to tell you? She's busy!"
She gathered herself to turn away. A moment later, she was surprised to realise that she hadn't moved.
C'mon, Asuka, enough!
Then Kaworu was in front of her, and his arms were around her shoulders and hands on her back. The side of his head nestled against hers.
"...What're you doing?"
"A 'hug'. A thing people do when someone they care for is upset or hurting."
She couldn't quite manage to roll her eyes, for some reason. "I know what a hug is."
His voice became hesitant. "Am I doing it … wrongly?"
"Huh? N-no, I … just..." She faltered. "Have – you never been … hugged before?"
Silence.
...Geez.
Asuka's arms curled around Kaworu's ribs. Her voice was gruff in her own ears. "You gotta squeeze a bit." She demonstrated.
"Ah, I see," and he returned the embrace.
"Much better."
They stayed for a long moment, Asuka's chin on Kaworu's shoulder. When she demonstrated light comfortable patting he copied her obediently, and a different pang ran through her.
At last, her eyes dry and jaw unclenched, she took a deep breath (that barely shook at all), and drew back. Kaworu released her, and she met his hopeful enquiring smile with a resolute one of her own.
"C'mon," she said. "Let's go knock 'em dead. —Not literally," she cut him off when he opened his mouth.
At the front door Asuka did a final, not-at-all-paranoid check of their gear, then they loaded up and set off for the premiere performance of The Atheniad.
Outside the school hall, Hikari met them with a nervous smile. Her freckles stood out in pale cheeks and her fingers twitched on the handles of her own prop bags.
"I can't believe it's finally the big day!" she said.
Asuka shifted all her stuff to one arm so she could half-hug her friend. "The bigger the day, the harder we rock. We got this!"
"I hope so!"
"I know so."
They hurried backstage, and within a minute the dressing room looked like a bomb had hit. Everywhere was togas and swords; everywhere else was sandals and laurel wreaths. Hikari zipped back and forth to the stage wings, arranging cardboard columns, balsa wood rocks, and plastic olive trees in the precise sequence required by the scene locations. Kaworu laid out a table with paper-mache prosthetics in corresponding order.
It seemed like only seconds later when there was a knock on the stage door, and Asuka was jolted out of über-focus mode. She cast a frantic glance at the clock.
Shit! "Twenty minutes to curtain!" She yelled at the door, "Who's there?"
But Kaworu was already opening it. "Oh! Shinji, Miss Rei."
Asuka whirled – in the doorway stood her neighbours, though Rei was almost obscured by the bouquet of flowers a smiling Shinji was holding out to Kaworu.
"Here – hoped they might brighten up the room a bit?"
"Human visual perception is limited to the supra-infrared and sub-ultraviolet," said Kaworu, "so not all the flowers' colours will contribute to 'brightness'."
Shinji flushed. "Uh. Right. Um, we were just wanting to say good lu—"
Rei cut him off before Asuka could. "Break a leg," she corrected. "It is the customary form of well-wishes for a stage performance."
"Oh – sorry!" Shinji blurted. He looked so awkward that Asuka almost pitied him.
"It's fine," Hikari reassured him. "Thank you both."
Kaworu accepted the flowers, and he and Shinji probably smiled at each other sappily and said something nauseating, but Asuka barely noticed them.
Rei had stepped out into full view, and Asuka could now see that she was holding a familiar red four-eyed plush frog.
"Tutu," said Asuka dumbly.
Rei nodded, her face ever-so-slightly pink. "I thought … her presence might … be supportive." Her weight shifted from foot to foot.
Asuka had been holding something. She dropped it. She had been on the other side of the room. She crossed it. Tutu was large and awkward in Rei's arms. She passed it, and her arms were around Rei and her heart yelling in her ears and fingertips.
I love you I love you I love you.
"S-Soryu?" Rei stammered.
"Rei," Asuka whispered. "Rei, I need to talk to you. After the show. Please?"
"Of course."
A long way away, Kaworu was saying, "Tutu can sit in Aunt Kyoko's seat." His voice was distant and gluggy like underwater.
"Oh no, she isn't coming?" said Shinji, and Asuka was reminded, but Rei was hugging her, and had brought her Tutu, and this time she actually, for-real, didn't cry at all.
"Brava!"
"Bravo!"
"Encore!"
"Whoo!"
"Brava!"
"Fuck yeah!" (Suzuhara, supportive but no-mannered boyfriend...)
The whole audience was on their feet, row upon row upon – well, actually just the two rows, and like ten people in each. But technically it was a full-house standing ovation.
After their curtain call, Asuka and her support act broke tradition to go straight down to the seats and mingle. (Asuka had considered insisting that the audience go round to the stage door, but then Kaworu was already hopping off the apron, and Hikari was following via the stairs, so – whatever!)
As well as Rei and Shinji, there were Suzuhara and Aida, plus Hikari's older sisters, and a gaggle of random students from their year. Several of them had bunches of flowers. Asuka wasn't surprised when the girls collectively presented a bouquet and wreath to Kaworu (poor deluded fools), and graciously refrained from violence when the boys offered her the same (creepy sad pervs). The fact that the boys scarpered from the hall once their delivery was made was no responsibility of hers.
Besides, she had more important people to entertain.
Once the rabble had cleared out, and Hikari had gathered all her scenery and stored it for their next and final performance, Asuka found Rei waiting in the wings, hands linked at the front of her skirt.
"Soryu, you said you need to talk to me?"
Asuka drew a calming breath. "Um. Yeah. Yep."
Rei met her gaze steadily, waiting.
Asuka gulped. "Right. So. Thing is."
"...Is?"
"Hah. The thing is." She stepped closer, arm's length. "I've been – been thinking. And I. I r-realised."
God, why was she doing this? Rei didn't even—
"Soryu? What did you realise?"
Asuka blinked. Rei had ninja'd closer to her again (how? I'm facing her!), and stood patiently, in that neutral-looking posture that never changed, whether she was paying attention, or completely off with the fairies. (Asuka was reasonably confident she was paying attention now, at least.)
Then Rei's eyes widened, her mouth formed an 'o', her hands and shoulders rose in recoil. Asuka's stomach lurched – she knows, and she's freaked out – but then something soft and fuzzy brushed her cheek.
She flinched, tried to brush it away; it didn't move.
Now her stomach lurched all the way up in her throat.
"Soryu!" gasped Rei, and as Asuka turned in horror Rei grabbed her arm to drag her away from the biggest spider Asuka had ever seen in her life holy SHIT.
"Eeeaaahhh!"
The two girls bolted from the wings to the middle of the stage, clutching each other.
"Oh god oh god oh god oh god oh god," Asuka babbled. Rei, almost hyperventilating, hung onto her with desperate claws.
They stared back at the shadowed panel-crowded wings. Where was it? Did it follow them?
"I can't see—" Asuka whimpered.
"What's that?" breathed Rei, pointing.
On the floor of the aisle they'd just left, an orange puddle was spreading. In the half-light, curls of steam rose into the air above it.
A fuzzy leg emerged from behind the panel above the puddle. Asuka 'meep'ed; Rei made a strangled screech.
Then the body crept into view – a dark grey hemisphere the height of a dachshund, with four stubby legs (only four?). Rows of triangle patches circled its body, each containing a wide-staring eye.
When the eyes lined up Asuka and Rei, the 'spider' jumped and scurried back behind the wing panel.
Asuka managed, with a struggle, to move her gaping jaw. "It's … scared? Of us?"
Rei's grip on her biceps relaxed and released. "The orange puddle could be a panic response."
Asuka briefly scrunched her eyes shut, trying to make it make sense. "Did I just make. That thing pee itself?"
"It must be an Angel," said Rei. Her face had reverted from chalk-white to its usual off-chalk.
Fear, it turned out, transformed very easily into anger. "Then this is all Kaworu's fault!"
Rei nodded. "We should bring the Angel to him."
"You can if you want, I'm not touching the creepy thing. Ugh! Bugs are so gross!" A thought occurred to her. "And Kaworu can mop up that puddle, too."
Rei was approaching the stage wings, and the shivering not-actually-a-spider tried to hide behind a panel that didn't even touch the floor, leaving its feet and belly visible.
She reached out a hand. "We are sorry for frightening you."
"I'm not," Asuka muttered. "Shouldn't sneak up on people."
The not-spider hesitantly put a foot onto Rei's palm. Finding it steady and safe, it slowly crawled up her forearms and settled in to be carried.
Asuka shuddered. Fuzzy prickly hair and icky pad-feet...
"I saw Nagisa go in the direction of the dressing room earlier," Rei said, and Asuka trailed after her down the hall. "I don't know why he didn't respond when you screamed."
"I wasn't that loud," Asuka protested.
She found her hands shaking, and clenched them until they behaved. That was not how I was expecting that confession to go...
In Rei's hold, the spiderish-Angel's many eyes were closed, and a sequence of soft clicking noises somehow gave Asuka the crazy idea that it was … well, whatever the cryptid-freak version of purring was.
She sighed. It was probably a good thing that it had interrupted. There was no actual point telling Rei how she felt about her, anyway. Not when she doesn't feel the same.
The dressing room door was mostly closed. Keeping an eye behind on the Angel in case it tried touching her again (ugh!), Asuka went in first and held the door for Rei.
Which is why she didn't see what was happening inside until it was too late.
"Shinji," Rei hissed, and Asuka whipped around just as he and Kaworu, interrupted, broke their kiss.
—Oops.
The Angel collided with Shinji's face.
"Ow!"
"Shinji!" cried Kaworu, "—Matriel?"
"I trusted you!" Rei spat. She followed up her projectile assault with a charge and shove that sent her brother slamming into a table. "You were supposed – I counted on you – how could you?"
"Rei, stop!" he cried, cowering. As she stood over him, fists clenched, Kaworu swooped in and gathered Shinji back into his arms.
"Miss Rei, please stop—"
She ignored him to snap at Shinji. "You were supposed to keep caring for Soryu!"
There was a ringing silence. Kaworu's face fell.
Rei's shoulders shook. "You have to look after Soryu," she bit out. "Shinji always – always does the right thing. Does what has to be done. I can always rely on Shinji to look after what's important. You have to make Soryu happy, not – not this! It isn't right. You're supposed to take care of Soryu!"
For the first time, Asuka hated the vivid red of Rei's eyes.
Her mouth moved on its own, her voice a hollow husk. "So that's all I am to you, huh?"
Rei froze.
"A chore to assign? Just another tiresome thing for you to get your brother to do, a task to offload?"
Rei's face creased. "What? No – that's not what I meant..."
"It's what you said," Asuka snapped. Tunnel vision seemed to bring Rei so close and so far away at the same time. "'Supposed to', 'rely on', 'look after'. Right, got it, message received loud and clear. So sorry to have been such a burden on your precious attention!"
She jerked around. "Well, you don't have to worry about designating me any more."
And stormed from the dressing room, and didn't—
—and didn't cr—
—and didn't cry.
...Until she did.