The glow of the hangar floods the space with pale industrial light, casting long shadows across the motionless Evas. Steam still hisses softly from the cooling units, the remnants of battle slowly dissipating into silence. It's quiet now. The kind of silence that hums in your ears after adrenaline fades but your body’s still catching up.

She’s standing a few feet in front of you, her back exposed slightly through the half-zipped plug suit, her shoulders rising and falling in the rhythm of slowed breath. The fight is over, but the war in her eyes never ends.

You step behind her.

Your hands find her waist like muscle memory, the motion smooth, familiar, instinctual. Her body tenses for the briefest second—not in rejection, but in recognition. She knows it’s you. She always knows it’s you.

Rei doesn’t speak. Not at first.

The subtle press of your chest to her back, the heat of your skin where her plug suit thins, the steady thump of your heart — it all settles around her like gravity. One of your hands moves slowly, brushing her abdomen, resting just beneath her navel, fingers splayed, claiming a space no one else is allowed to touch.

"I can feel your heartbeat," she says softly, her voice a ghost of thought. Still distant, still too careful.

Her hand comes up — slow, deliberate — and settles over yours. Her fingers are colder than yours, but not unfeeling. They tighten, lacing with yours, anchoring to something she doesn’t fully understand but refuses to let go of.

“I don’t… comprehend this fully,” she murmurs, and though her body is still, her voice carries weight. “But I do not wish for you to stop.”

You don’t. You hold her tighter.

There’s something fragile in the way she leans back into you, the press of her back aligning perfectly against your chest. Her head tilts slightly to the side, baring her neck unconsciously, like her body is beginning to trust you before her mind catches up.

Your lips brush the skin just below her ear. You feel the way her breath hitches—her first real, instinctive response. No programming. No purpose. Just Rei, and a want she doesn’t know how to name yet.

She speaks again, lower this time.

“When you touch me… I feel like I exist in ways I never did before.”