Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Tick tock. Tick tock.

Waking up has never been more painful.

Deep breaths, trying to calm himself.

And redo.

*

After the tenth cycle, Kaworu begins to wonder why. After the fiftieth, he thinks what is the point. After the hundredth, his past selves begin to blur into each other, and he wakes up each morning a little less certain than the previous.

This futility, this pointlessness, this ever repeating cycle – he finds no meaning, nothing gained, only his love remaining constant.

And the wind down of the clock until his time is up.

In This World And The Next, or Moments That Repeat.

Why.

Why.

Kaworu wants to rail at the stars, wants to know what keeps sending him back, forcing him to start again. And again. And again. He never finds an answer. In this world, or the next. There is only the faint, sinking sensation of disappointment. Failure. 

Why am I doing this? What was I sent to achieve?

This time, he is born in a glass womb of LCL. The doctors of SEELE wait nervously; and why would they not? A monster floats before them, a monster that can never die, can never cease. He opens his eyes curiously, even as the sight before him registers familiarly in his mind.

He knows this beginning. He remembers the sucking feeling of LCL draining away, he remembers being brought outside, wetly naked, he remembers the questions: Tabris. Do you know why you are here?

So. What is different?

Kaworu plays a game with himself now, every time he returns. It is the source of his secret smiles and soft laughs, to look into the world as if through a distorted lens or a freakish mirror, and play spot the difference.

He allows himself to be moved, hot water rinsing away orange liquid. It’s strange, but – no matter how many times he comes back, Kaworu never fails to appreciate the small things. Hot showers and baths, warming the body and the soul. Music, Lilim’s finest achievement. Even a breath of fresh air, whipping at his clothes and hair. It is the one comfort that keeps him whole, stops him from unravelling into a stream of Kaworus, never ending Tabrises.

The day he stops appreciating blue sky and blue stars and blue smiles, Kaworu thinks, will be the day that he loses himself.

There is something familiar about this cycle. Kaworu feels something strange, instinctual. He is reminded of a time when a hand held him in its grasp, when he looked into inhuman, armoured eyes, and smiled.

A sudden bout of dizziness overtakes him. Kaworu stumbles, a lance of brief agony up his shoulder as he collides with the wall. In a flash, doctors are surrounding him, helping him up, babbling at each other over his head, but far away, far, far away.

That past is like a blow against his head. Kaworu struggles to his feet, shaking off concerned, grabby hands, lowering his head and launching into a fast stride.

No. That is one timeline that he will not repeat. He cannot, because he...

Divergence is what separates his realities.

A split, a pebble creating ripples in the water. That is what makes every life he lives unique.

Coming into the world earlier. Not having the foresight to understand.

Adam and Lilith never being born. No Angels, hence he was an anomaly. He couldn’t live.

Coming into the world later. Finding his love too late.

And Kaworu remembers.

More important than hot showers and baths, more important than music, more important than air.

A boy with dark hair and darker eyes, but not because of their colour. Kaworu is convinced that Ikari Shinji is the reason he returns every time, but for what reason he doesn’t know. All he understands is the gnawing in the pit of his stomach, the anxiousness, the butterflies before he meets the other boy, the helpless knowledge that he must do something – but what? – before the clock winds down.

And Kaworu doesn’t know what he is meant to do, but he tries anyway, aching behind his eyes every time he dies but putting on a brave smile for Shinji’s sake.

He is doomed. A helpless Angel who doesn’t know anything.

*

Kaworu is sent to New Tokyo-3 almost immediately. It’s expected, and he goes without a word of complaint, smiling his vague smile, letting discomfort stir through the minds of his keepers.

One thought only reverberates through his mind during the plane trip, and it is the only thought that matters.

I am going to see him again.

I am going to see him again.

Elation.

*

Kaworu thinks that, if he hadn’t been an Angel, then Shinji would have seemed to him to be one. Alone on the beach, a breeze stirring lazily at his hair, Shinji sits, unaware of the world around him. Clouds hang over him and Kaworu so desperately wants to reach out, comfort him in some way.

Funny, isn’t it, how some things can change beyond recognition, yet Kaworu can’t stop the slight quickening of his pulse, the light-headedness as he lays eyes on a boy who doesn’t know him. Yet.

He hops up onto a rock, knowing that can’t let Shinji continue thinking his dark thoughts for much longer.

Because Shinji is delicate, always is and has been, in This World and the Next, and if there is one thing Kaworu can do, it is drain the poison from him, place the shards of fractured glass together again, and love him when Shinji doesn’t have the strength to love himself.

Kaworu hums, old tunes coming back to him easily. Beethoven’s ninth, the melody rising past him like a soaring cloud. Shinji starts, head buried between legs rising sharply. Dark rings circle his eyes, eyes which are slightly rimmed with red. Kaworu wants nothing to do but swoop down and whisper sweet nothings into his ear, brush away fear and sadness and bring him happiness.

He does none of these things, and instead smiles down at Shinji. “Music is great,” he says, times and times of saying the words muddling them in his head. “Don’t you think so? Music is Lilim’s finest achievement.”

Shinji blinks up owlishly at him, confusion apparent, yet somehow sensing the warmth behind Kaworu’s words. “I suppose,” he says, soft, hesitating. Kaworu wants to draw him out of his shell.

He jumps down, landing cat-like on his feet. Shinji watches him with hawk eyes.

“Do you play an instrument?” Kaworu asks, biting off the Shinji-kun before he accidentally spits it out.

“Yes, cello.” Shinji looks out to sea, gaze distant. “I played – played – cello.” There are so many things left unsaid in that gaze, and Kaworu doesn’t know the entire story. It worries him.

So he sits down beside Shinji, white shoes scuffling in grainy sand. “I play piano,” he says lightly, smiling with his eyes. “We should play together sometime.”

Shinji squints at him, uncertainty in his expression. “I…um…” he stammers, and against the sand the fingers of his right hand twist agitatedly. “Who…who are you?”

“Kaworu. Nagisa Kaworu. I am the Fifth Child.” This is familiar. This never changes.

There is a hint of surprise, but it is gone a second later, accepted. “Thank you, Nagisa-san,” Shinji murmurs quietly. “I’d like to do that sometime.”

Then, after a moment: “I’m Shinji, by the way, Ikari Shinji.”

Laughing, Kaworu says, “I know, Ikari Shinji-kun. Call me Kaworu.”

“Only if you call me Shinji.” A slight lowering of the head. A barely noticeable blush. Warmth, spreading wildly in his chest.

*

Kaworu tries to recall snippets of past memory, through the blur of hundreds of Worlds and times gone by, by. In a world similar to this one, he tries to recall what he did wrong, how he can atone for his sin, and how he can change things.

Dismay. Horror. Free will. Love. A hand tightly embracing his body, shaking, squeezing.

He slams a balled fist into the ground, shaking.

He is the Angel of free will, so why can’t he do this one thing?

*

Kaworu is tired and angry and confused and running late the next day, so when it is time for the synch tests he purposefully lowers his synch rate, plunging past Shinji, just because he can. The technicians rewrite the Eva’s core for him, and he sits back, tightly controlled, gazing into the monitors around him.

Shinji’s face is pinched, a sickly pale cast to it that fills Kaworu with a foreboding sense of dread. He looks dead tired, and his brow is furrowed in a way that looks permanent. His breathing is shallow, and unconsciously Kaworu breathes for him, chest constricting tightly in sympathetic hurt.

He is the first one out of his plug, almost hopping from foot to foot in his impatience. Ayanami Rei exits second, and after a pause Shinji staggers down, slinking away quietly and without a backwards glance. Kaworu feels his throat tightening, and when he looks at Ayanami she stares after him too, a strange expression in her eyes.

“Ayanami Rei,” he calls softly, because it feels right. “We are the same.”

“No,” she replies. “We are not.”

Kaworu can’t shake off the feeling that something is wrong, hideously wrong and he doesn’t know what it is but it sits heavy in his stomach and he feels sick just thinking about it. Something tells him that something has happened, something that has never happened before. Something is wrong.

There are things that Kaworu can sense, a strange gift of his condition, if that is what it is. But he doesn’t need to be an Angel to register grim faces, stiff postures, forced smiles. The tension is hot butter, and he fears that he is to be the knife to cut it.

With Ayanami detached and unresponsive, and Shinji nowhere to be seen, Kaworu approaches the Major.

“What is wrong?” he breathes, and his stomach twists as Katsuragi looks up at him, death in her eyes. They are in a cold corridor, and Kaworu can feel the chill seeping into his bones.

“See for yourself,” she says lowly, and points down the corridor with a shaking hand.

He never thought he would succumb to a human emotion such as fear, not in This World or the Next.

But his breaths quicken, his strides become longer, and when he throws open the door –

Feet. Pale, dull flesh.

Curled in a rictus, centimetres off the ground. A wooden chair tilted to the side, sprawled to hard tiles.

Red hair already losing its lustre.

Kaworu can’t speak, can’t move.

Never, never, never, never!

Never, in any timeline, has he ever seen Soryu Asuka Langley die. He has seen her alive. He has seen her comatose. But never dead.

Kaworu’s thoughts race.

...Shinji!

He squeezes his eyes shut, pained. Shinji is already broken in so many ways, already hurting more than a mortal should. It’s – not – fair. It’s not.

Kaworu tears himself away from the sickening sight and flees down the hallway.

*

He finds Shinji curled up in the changing rooms, still as stone but wide awake, white fingers clutching painfully at his knees. Kaworu kneels down and pulls at them. Shinji flinches, but tension ebbs away as Kaworu lays his palms over his knuckles, soothing brushes of his thumbs leaving warm imprints on Shinji’s skin.

He’s still rigid though, and Kaworu swallows quietly. “Stay at my apartment tonight,” he says, suddenly assailed by past memories. Tufts of black hair sticking up over blankets, a thrown magazine. He shakes them away, just in time to see the barely noticeable nod.

*

“Come on, it’s time for dinner.”

Silence.

“Shinji-kun, you have to eat.”

“Not hungry.”

Kaworu takes in the sight before him. Shinji’s clothes are rumpled, his hair messy, his skin pasty white and his eyes sunken into black. He looks so tired that he might drop to the ground at any second, but more than that...Kaworu sees thinness.

Not Shinji’s natural slenderness. Has he been eating? Kaworu guides him to the dinner table and sits him down, pushing a plate in front of him. His cooking isn’t wonderful – he could never match Shinji, no matter how hard he tried – but it is passable, at least.

“I will not leave until you eat something.”

Shinji stares sullenly at the chopsticks.

“Please?”

The word sighs from his throat, almost cracking. Shinji finally – finally! – raises his head, looking a little startled. “Why do you care?” he whispers, and his eyes dart away again.

“Because you deserve my empathy,” Kaworu says readily. The words are well used, but no less sincere than the first time he spoke them.

Shinji says nothing, only the hint of red on his cheeks bringing hope to Kaworu. He presses on. “You are delicate, like glass. Your heart is so fragile. You are afraid to make connections, for fear of hurting your heart.”

He pauses, smiles wistfully. “But that is worth earning my regard.”  

“Regard?”

Kaworu picks up Shinji’s chopsticks, his bowl, and raises them to the other boy’s mouth. “In other words, I love you,” he says softly.

Shinji opens his mouth. Small victories, Kaworu thinks, and delivers the rice.

*

Later, they retire for the night. Kaworu’s bed is big enough for the two of them, and he ushers Shinji in, underneath the blankets.

He can tell Shinji isn’t sleeping, or even making an attempt at sleeping. His breaths are uneven and fast, and he holds himself rigidly.

With a sigh, Kaworu rolls over, onto the edge of Shinji’s pillow. The arch of his nose presses against Shinji’s shoulder. “Not going to sleep?” he murmurs.

He almost expects Shinji to tense up at the proximity, but all he feels is a shrug of the shoulders, slight enough not to jab at his face. “I can’t sleep.”

Kaworu sits up. “Can’t sleep or won’t sleep?” he asks neutrally.

This, Shinji tenses at, one shoulder coming up defensively. “I don’t want to dream,” he mutters, and Kaworu feels his heart ache in empathy.

“Your spirit is safe,” Kaworu says, the only thing he can think of. “I will guard you while you sleep.”

Shinji smiles but scoffs, his expression a grimace. Kaworu thinks it’s the scoff of world-weariness.

They are silent for a few moments, just listening to each other’s breathing. Kaworu settles back down. Then, Shinji speaks again, out loud yet almost to himself.

“Touji. Rei. Asuka.”

Kaworu shifts his head, strands of hair against Shinji’s bare arm, to show that he is listening.

Shinji closes his eyes. “I killed Touji. I couldn’t save Rei. I might as well as killed her. I couldn’t save Asuka.”

“It is not your fault.”

It’s the wrong thing to say, because suddenly Shinji is sitting up, the sheets flung off, anger in his eyes. “Is it? Isn’t it?” he hisses, the words loud and harsh. “I can’t sleep. Do you know why? I already see Touji. I already see Rei.”

He twists away, a hand pressing against his eyes. Kaworu feels an answering hotness in his own.

“I’m – I’m so afraid to dream.” A choked, rattling gasp. Through the slits of light through the window, Kaworu sees glimmers of tears. “I – I promised Touji that everything would be okay. I promised him. Then I killed him!”

Shinji’s fists are tightly clenched. “I was making friends with Rei. I was – we were friends. But I – I couldn’t save her. I couldn’t protect her. She protected me.”

Kaworu rises, tries to speak, but Shinji merely turns to him and pushes him down, roughly. His eyes are wide. “So tell me. How can I live, knowing that I’ve killed the people I care about? How can I live with this guilt? How can I be so fucking useless, how could I let everyone die?”

He seizes Kaworu by the shoulders, fingers digging in painfully. “Tell me, Kaworu!”

Kaworu can’t say anything, doesn’t know any words of comfort for this broken boy. He realises, suddenly, that poison cannot be drained without a cure. Broken pieces of glass can never be whole again, and his love will mean nothing if Shinji can’t love himself. No words of comfort. He can only raise his arms, wrap fingers around too-thin wrists, begging.

Shinji swallows thickly, sitting back again. “I thought so,” he whispers, and lets go.

He closes his eyes, sinking back against the headboard, and tilts his head upwards.

“Kill me, Kaworu,” Shinji says softly, hoarsely. “I want to die.”  

Chapter Text

There’s a ringing noise in his ears and his vision is tinged red, but there’s no outside thing, no outside force that can compare to the terrible lurch in Shinji’s gut, rising bile bitter in his mouth, his throat. Wildly, disconnectedly, he wonders what would happen if he vomited into LCL, and lets out a bout of hysterical giggles that push down rising sick.

Short, shallow breaths. Shinji’s eyelids are drawn back, his mouth hanging open, and his hands are bound to the controls, wrists chafing at the restraints with every increasingly desperate pull.

Breathe.

“TOUJI!”

The plug, oh god the plug, the plug, it’s in his hand – no, the Eva’s hand, God, purple armour has never looked so alien – no no NO –

He screams, but the sound is muted to his own ears and bubbles are curling up past his nose and cheeks, languid in a way that makes Shinji want to cry and kick and howl until his throat is bloody.

Kill him. Kill Father for killing –

Veins rising on his hand, his wrist, and Shinji can feel his skin boiling and he thinks maybe he’s going insane but he hears a voice laughing, chuckling, ghostly burbles and snatches of mad tunes.

Breathe.

There’s suddenly heat on his skin, heat all over – then Shinji looks – no, he’s not burning, his Eva is. Unit-00 is a fireball, a raging inferno as it explodes. A golden shower hits him and he’s writhing, lifting up huge, armoured arms, covering his face – although to protect from what, he doesn’t know.

Shinji feels empty.

Gone. Gone.

White, unblemished walls. Shinji has been here before; it’s a place that’s familiar to him now. The faint smell of cool detachment is heavy in this corridor, almost as strong as chemical disinfectant.

One left. Please, be okay.

He opens the door carefully.

Feet.

Pale, dull flesh.

Breathe.

Curled in a rictus, centimetres off the ground. A wooden ch –

Shinji’s skull splits open when he screams, and he thinks he’s going insane because he can hear another roar inside him, primal and wounded and bleeding. There’s a ringing noise in his ears and his vision is tinged red, and he’s going lightheaded because he’s run out of breath but he’s still trying to scream, jaws stretched open wide, drool unthreading from the cave of his mouth and falling to the floor. His knees sear white hot as he crumbles to unforgiving tiles, and his hands slap and scrabble futilely against the floor. It’s some kind of strange parody, an unholy caricature of prostration, and Asuka is his flaming, dull haired idol.

Breathe.

“Kill me, Kaworu.”

“I want to die.”

*

They stare at each other for ten long seconds, and Shinji bites back a sudden fit of laughter, sure that if he does it now he’ll never stop. Never stop until he chokes on a lack of air and dies.

Woozily, he thinks, isn’t that what you wanted anyway?

Worse, this time. Shinji’s mouth twitches, and with that small movement he can’t bear to face Kaworu, his calmness, his ability to weather everything.

He flings himself backwards and looks away.

“I can’t do that.”

Can’t do what? Shinji thinks, the conversation already lost, floating somewhere in the ether beyond his present, jumbled thoughts.

“I won’t kill you.”

Oh.

 The stillness of the night suddenly crashes back to him, and Shinji feels the ice cold slap of reality against his cheek. He snatches away the loose threads of madness and sits up again, shivering.

“I’m...so wrong,” Shinji whispers, clutching at his head. “So fucked up. So fucked up.”

He flinches as arms draw around him, tightening briefly before moving up, smoothing out his hands. Kaworu’s voice is low and gentle in his ear, but Shinji can’t help but shiver again at the proximity.

“Let us talk, Shinji-kun.”

Shinji shakes his head mutely, feeling ice settle around him. No, he can’t do that. He’s not good at talking. He can’t, couldn’t, even if he wanted to.

I can’t do anything, actually, he thinks in bitter introspection.

“Please, Shinji-kun. Try.”

No. No. He can’t, couldn’t, even if he wanted to. Even if Kaworu begged sweetly.

“Please, try for me. Please.”

He can’t –

“Shinji-kun.”

– couldn’t –

“ – please?”

– even if he wanted to –

“Try.”

– even if Kaworu –

“I love you.”

Shinji swallows as arms move downwards again, clasping around his waist, silver, feathery hair settling on his shoulder. He’s not used to this – not this close, not this warm, and he feels an unexpected swell, something like hurt affection stir inside him.

“You – you don’t understand,” Shinji chokes out, and he’s all elbows and knees, not knowing where to put his limbs. “I...I can’t, you know? It’s all here, but I can’t – I can’t say it. I don’t know how.”

A mad torrent of emotion, three childrens’ faces melded into one, hot and accusing: “You killed me!”

Kaworu brushes it away with a brief movement, head tilting up and a flash of warm, red eyes.

“If you cannot speak, perhaps you will humour me?” he asks, and it’s in that tone that Shinji dreads and loves, the one that seems to elevate him far above anything that he could be.

He nods, slowly, and Kaworu smiles a damnable smile and pushes slightly, encouraging Shinji to lay down on the pillow again.

Kaworu stares off into the distance, and Shinji gazes up, arms still locked in a tangle of limbs and he’s not sure whose is whose, only that Kaworu is still touching him, and wherever he is in contact with the other boy is a warm trail, comfortable. Unconsciously, he curls a little, towards the warmth.

“Lilim are always so alone in this world,” Kaworu says. “Hearts so fragile, always reaching out to connect yet fearing the connections they make.”

Shinji listens, breathing quietly, puzzling out this enigma in silver hair. He doesn’t really understand – Kaworu seems to enjoy talking of lofty things, things so high up in the air that Shinji never even thinks of them – but he listens anyway, because Kaworu begged him so sweetly to try and no one’s ever –

“Some are especially fragile, with hearts that can easily be broken and shattered.”

Me. He means me.

“But it is these hearts that have the greatest capacity to love, to yearn, and to grieve. And for that, Lilim truly eclipses itself in its paradoxical limitations, to give so much passion yet lock it away with a collar.”

Kaworu raises a hand, and Shinji briefly has time to mourn the loss of warmth at his side before it descends again, palm against his cheek. Shinji’s eyes are wide, and he’s holding his breath, wanting so damn much to just lean into it, but at the same time holding himself back, afraid to give in.

Kaworu’s thumb strokes gentle circles around his cheek.

“You, Shinji-kun, have felt much loss in your life,” he breathes, and lowers himself, resting his chin on Shinji’s chest.

Shinji knows that he needs to breathe again, but Kaworu’s so close and he’s afraid that if he lets out his breath it’ll all disappear, Kaworu will cease to exist, and then he’ll be alone alone alone –

“And you have suffered greatly.” Both hands, now, cupping his cheeks, warm with life.

“But, Shinji-kun, please remember...”

Kaworu is moving again, sliding up Shinji’s chest, past his collarbone, and oh god, he’s centimetres away from him and he looks like he’s going to –

Shinji releases his breath with a shocked pant, soft lips velvety smooth against his own, pressing lightly but firmly. Long-fingered hands thread through his hair, stroking it out of his eyes. Kaworu kisses him thoughtfully, almost experimentally, and Shinji can do nothing but lie there, all thoughts banished from his mind, cast into a void of warm lips and gentle hands.

It’s over before he knows it, and as he flutters open eyes that he didn’t know he had closed, Kaworu is lifting his head again, something sparkling in his red gaze.

“...remember, that there are others who are waiting.”

Shinji cracks open suddenly dry lips, and his voice is rough. “Waiting for what?”

Kaworu sends him a blinding smile, and for a moment Shinji is arrested by that look, unable to move. He feels heat, and not from Kaworu’s palms, moving to his cheeks.

“Waiting to make connections with you.”

 Shinji closes his eyes.

*

Daylight filters in quietly through the window, collecting in a pool on floorboards turned cherry coloured. There is light heat where it streaks across Shinji’s shoulder, and it dips across the curve of his arm, further across, turning silver hair white.

Shinji feels a little tingling in his stomach, rising and spreading to his fingertips, as he looks down at the still-sleeping Kaworu, something akin to nervousness threading through him. He remembers his panicky breathing, last night’s murmuring conversation, oh god, then he remembers the feeling of warm breath tickling his ear, then light on his mouth –

Shinji’s cheeks warm with embarrassment but his heart beats fondly, shy appreciation liquid in his veins. He hesitates, and then raises a hand, brushing at locks of silver hair. It’s soft against his fingers, like spun gold – spun silver – and without realising it, Shinji’s fingers are winding through, pushing loose strands away from Kaworu’s face, and red eyes are gazing at him, slightly lidded with sleep but no less intense in their stare.

“I – ah, uh – sorry – !” Shinji stutters and tries to pull away, but is inexplicably captured around the wrists by a gentle grasp, stilling his hand.

“Good morning, Shinji-kun,” Kaworu yawns, and he blinks away sleep. “Did you sleep well?”

“Yes…” Shinji doesn’t mention that it was Kaworu, with his warm body chasing away the chill, who finally warded away the dreams, was the guardian to his sleeping spirit.

“That is good to hear.”

Kaworu returns Shinji’s hand to his lap and slips off the bed, stretching. His pyjamas pull across his muscles, pooling and folding at the back, and Shinji looks away quickly before he can catch himself staring. Damnit, he was still bothered by last night.

Looking down at himself, Shinji remembers Kaworu vaguely pulling clothes out of a wardrobe somewhere, throwing them over his shoulder at him with a kind of careless grace that he envied.

Shrugging on his uniform again, Shinji allows himself to be led into the kitchen and sat down at the table, a bowl placed in front of him.

He stares out at the skyline of New Tokyo-3 as he eats cereal, glad of the understanding silence that the other boy gives him, never pressing so hard that he doesn’t know which way to move, which way is out.

As Shinji finishes his breakfast, he thinks that maybe, maybe he could almost trust Kaworu, to listen and understand, to talk and smile, to not hurt.

Shinji hasn’t trusted since he was a little boy.

*

The cello is slightly dusty and Shinji has to shake cobwebs away from the bridge, but it’s serviceable, only needing tuning and a fresh application of rosin. It’s not Shinji’s cello – he’s still too much of a coward to collect it from Misato’s apartment, but he found it in the back storage area of the music rooms, packed away in the furthest corner.

It’s always like that, Shinji muses, wiping at his hand with a cloth. Violins, those bright, sweeping instruments, have always belonged to those passionate people, the stars burning furiously in the night sky. Violas; rich, murmuring, played by those with a quiet passion, gentle and full of dark fire.

Then, the cello. Understated, quiet, the unobtrusive harmony. Shinji smiles, running his hands across pliant wood. He might hate his father, but he doesn’t doubt that Gendo chose a well suited instrument for him.

Kaworu runs his fingers up and down the piano in a quick scale, metres away from him, and then presses down on a single key. Shinji looks up, meeting his smile, and he starts tuning, drawing long, mourning sighs from the cello that brighten and firm as they become more accurate in pitch.

He hasn’t touched a cello in a long time, not since Asuka – oh, Asuka – saw him practicing. He doesn’t know what made him pick up a bow again, but he thinks that maybe Kaworu has something to do with it.

Something to do with red eyes shining earnestly, lips curved upwards – solemn excitement.

“What shall we play?” Shinji inquires, lowering his bow. The fingers of his left hand dart across the strings, lightly touching. He doesn’t think he knows any cello and piano duets.

“Let’s make something up, Shinji-kun,” Kaworu replies, and Shinji feels a sliver of doubt that is chased away when Kaworu turns to face him again, smiling. His fingers sketch out a melody on the keyboard, and after a few bars he stops, inclining his head.

“Come,” Kaworu says, and when he plays again they are in unison, bow flying in time to the rise and fall of relaxed wrists, playing something thrilling, lyrical at times and sometimes glancing into dissonance, but always pulling back together, like a needle through fabric, the thread behind it tying together all loose ends. Red. A red string. The red string of fate.

Seconds pass, minutes pass, but Shinji doesn’t remember any of it: he’s thinking in four-four, six-eight, rhythms and melody trailing behind him into timeless dust. He doesn’t know what he’s playing and he’s not sure if Kaworu knows either, only that he’s daring to pull tricks that he’s never before, and the cello is vibrating in his hands, music soaring away from his bow in rich colours, red, yellow, blue.

Kaworu’s fingers flash in the afternoon sun, each note struck with surety, each teasing run played dangerously on the edge, and Shinji is there catching him, buoying him up with a succession of low-pitched, supporting double stops, a sequence here, catching up to Kaworu and leading the melody for a short while.

They finish with a flourish, Kaworu sinking his fingers deep into the final cadence, Shinji flicking his bow upwards, leaping off the strings as Kaworu lets go of the keyboard. The last note hovers tremulously in the air between them for a moment, and then slowly dissipates into the air, leaving the room saturated in the heavy feel of music.

“Very good, Shinji-kun,” Kaworu says breathlessly, once the moment has passed, and Shinji lowers his bow, his breathing a little laboured.

Something bubbles up inside Shinji, feeling curiously like elation. “You, too, Kaworu-kun,” he murmurs back, and there’s a scuffling sound near the door and when he looks up again, half the class is standing there, glances flickering between him and Kaworu, awe on their faces.

Shinji shrinks back but Kaworu laughs and stands and bows, and pulls him up to do the same.

He stands tall.

*

“The Fifth Child has made contact with the Third.”

It’s the silence of a great chamber, the hum of generators whining in the background. Holographic slabs of stone face each other in a circle, each image emanating a glow breaking through the darkness.

“He knows his orders. He will not betray us.” A second voice in the gloom, pitched low.

“But what if he does?” Now a third voice, high and whining. “Ikari is already teetering on the edge of mutiny. If this plot, this child fails, surely he will truly turn his back against us once and for all.”

The first voice booms again, drowning out any other protests. “Tabris will reach Lilith. There is no pilot who can match him. Ikari is playing with fire.”

“Are you sure he believes us? We have not located Adam’s body yet.”

“Damn Ikari, keeping secrets from SEELE – !”

“He will be punished for his malfeasance. NERV will not cross SEELE. We will take it back before the promised day.”

The monoliths slowly fade into darkness, accompanied by the hum of generators powering down. One remains, formerly in the centre of the circle, poised.

“The Final Angel...you will be the herald of our awakening.”

*

“Run an analysis on him.”

“Katsuragi-san, we can’t just run a pattern analysis on a human. It’s – it’s unconstitutional!”

Hyuga nervously pushes up his glasses and smooths his fingers over the keyboard. “Look, I know. He could be an Angel. Look. I...I don’t even want to think about it.”

“The Commander needs to know,” Misato says, and even though her voice is steely, beads of sweat drip from her brow. “I need to know, too.”

She bites her lip. The Fifth Child has been with Shinji for two whole days already. If he’s an Angel –

Her hands tremble. I hope. I hope. God, I hope not. One hand curls up and clutches at her crucifix.

Hyuga expels a breath. “He needs to be in headquarters at least for any readings to make sense.” He clenches his fingers into a fist, resting it on the table top. “I mean, firstly, he doesn’t look like an Angel – hell, he underwent physical tests when he got to NERV. You oversaw them yourself.”

He propels himself forward, fingers now in his hair, staring at the computer screen. “He’s a flesh-and-blood human, alright,” Hyuga mutters. “Where did the Commander even get that idea? It’s stupid, I swear.”

Misato presses her lips together. The man is just trying to comfort himself, she knows, but she opens her mouth anyway. “Hack into SEELE’s files. We need all the information we can get on Nagisa Kaworu.” She frowns, turning to the side. “There are too many question marks in his file.”

Hyuga swallows. “I’ll do what I can,” he promises, and reaches for the keyboard.

“Thanks, Makoto,” she replies, and is out of the door. Seconds later, Misato clasps a phone against her ear.

“Yes. Bring him in.”

And if he is an Angel...

...what is SEELE planning?

*

Shinji’s fingers hover cautiously, apprehensively, over white keys. Kaworu is sitting next to him, pressed close because of the limited space on the tiny piano stool, and he feels the tiniest bit embarrassed by the line of contact passing from shoulder to hips to thighs.

He’s hesitating, he knows. Despite technically knowing how a piano works, Shinji’s never played one before, not even to bop nonsensically at the low or high ends of the keyboard, not even running his fingernails around in a glissando that the inexperienced are wont to do.

“I’ll teach you,” Kaworu had promised, but all he’s doing now is watching Shinji patiently, the edges of his eyes crinkled, mouth curved upward.

“I thought you were going to teach me,” Shinji says, half exasperated, but even that vanishes as Kaworu chuckles and takes his wrist, lowering it onto the keys.

“Before I teach you, you must show me what you know.”

Shinji rolls his eyes. “I don’t know anything,” he replies, and wonders if Kaworu will let go of his wrist.

“Shall I encourage you to speak truthfully?” Kaworu inquires, and Shinji notes his playful expression with a sinking feeling. Before he can move, silver hair is nestled against his neck, and a mouth darts to his cheek, cool against the red that suddenly burns through them.

“Kaworu!”

Kaworu laughs and then almost falls off the seat as Shinji pushes at him, grabbing his hands at the last minute to pull him back up.

Then, he really does fall as Shinji’s hands curl around his and he lunges forward, returning the same favour. They tumble together to the floor, the piano behind them and Shinji awkwardly suspending himself above Kaworu, not wanting to rest his entire weight on the body below him.

“Ouch,” Kaworu says, and Shinji is alarmed before he takes in the other boy’s relaxed posture, arms already reaching behind his head.

Flushed with embarrassment at the position they’re in, Shinji rolls off. He’s about to sit up, but Kaworu’s fingers snag at his shirt and Shinji falls back down unceremoniously.

For a minute they just stare at each other, Shinji wavering but still maintaining eye contact, Kaworu’s red eyes knowing.

Finally, Shinji sighs. “Fine,” he says, and stands up as Kaworu lets go of him, swinging his legs over the piano stool again. “Fine. I know how to play a C major scale. I think.”

Kaworu stands behind him, almost close enough to touch, and when Shinji twists his head back he’s smiling proudly, as if Shinji had already played a masterpiece.

Pride, he muses to himself as he raises his right hand again, thumb angled towards middle C. I don’t think anyone else has ever looked at me with pride before.

The door crashes open behind them before Shinji can hit the keys, and they both whip around in unison.

Four uniformed, masked men march in, and even if they’re not pointed at them Shinji can tell that the guns they’re carrying aren’t just for show –

He notices that they all have the NERV logo embossed on their breast, and his brows knit together. He throws a look at Kaworu, who has his hands out of his pockets, hanging loosely by his side.

“Nagisa Kaworu,” one of the men says, and through their helmets Shinji can’t tell which one it is. “Please come with us to headquarters.”   

Chapter Text

What does it mean, to be the Angel of free will?

Over and over and over again, Kaworu has sacrificed himself to save humanity. He has betrayed his brethren with their cold starlight in return for warm hands wrapped lovingly around him. He has seen anger and hurt and at times, some happiness. But nothing he does seems to change anything. No ripple to stir the water, only the sense of failure and he just can’t understand what is sending him back, why he’s here again, when it will all end.

But if all he can do is put on a quiet smile, isn’t that what he will do in the end?

Even if he wishes he could die and stay dead, doesn’t he fight back anyway to save him?

Shinji.

Kaworu can’t remember what first drew him to the other boy. He didn’t fully understand him during the first life. He was clumsy then, still becoming accustomed to the roots of humanity residing within him. But Shinji grew in his mind as he grew, and before Kaworu knew it he was there, weak and strong and imperfect but perfect, filled with humanity’s flaws but with so much humanity that Kaworu couldn’t help but fall in love with him.

Isn’t that a paradox?

Kaworu blinks open wide red eyes, bathing luxuriously under safe covers. He appreciates many things, but every day he thanks this human body for warmth and comfort, the sensation of heat wrapped lightly, tightly around him.

The more human you become, the less sanity you retain.

His memories are fragmented now, starting to slip into the nether as he reaches for them. Only precious few remain, burning hotly, and Kaworu fears losing them, too.

Shinji arouses these memories, even the ones that are breaking away, and the closer Kaworu is to him the more emotion he feels, he feels...more whole.

He breathes out and shifts, rolling closer to Shinji. The other boy is still fast asleep, his breathing a relaxed contrast to the night before, and Kaworu feels absolutely no guilt as he snuggles closer, intoxicated by the simple heat that Shinji gives off.

Kaworu lives every day with Shinji as fully as he can, whether it takes him fourteen years or fourteen days to get there, knowing that their meeting can only bring about inevitable disaster.

Closer still. Kaworu remembers snippets of past conversations, memories echoing through the air. Shinji’s shirt is hanging off a shoulder, and a prominent collarbone peeks out. He resists the urge to be drawn in, a physical touch that Shinji hasn’t authorised. He thinks that perhaps, in another world he wouldn’t have had that restraint, he might have moved closer.

But for now, Kaworu is content just to lay there until Shinji wakes, basking in their combined body heat, smiling a silly little smile as he recalls the night before.

*

He wonders what NERV is planning as he is pushed roughly into a car, painted dull tones and with tinted windows. It’s a surprise, to see them act so overtly, and even more of a surprise, because Kaworu doesn’t remember an act like this.

Shinji settles down next to him, and Kaworu smiles briefly. It seems that Shinji has an attachment already – and he enjoys this thought with a stab of guilt – and is unwilling to let him go without a fight. Strangely enough, he is warmed by the gesture of loyalty, and when he raises fingers to his cheeks, he’s almost sure they would come away stained pink.

The platoon of black armoured guards surround them suffocatingly as they near NERV territory, and Kaworu feels the vague sensations of unease creep into his human heart, settling like cold air. He turns to Shinji, something like impulse guiding him. “Believe in me,” he says, and Shinji stares for a second before nodding slowly back.

Shinji’s voice is hesitant – why wouldn’t it be? Kaworu’s words are nothing if not foreboding, and he feels a little humbled by the trust that the other boy is showing him. He tries to assuage Shinji’s doubts with an easy smile, before one of the men pushes him back into formation, facing frontwards. The sweeping cast of unease only doubles when they pass through the thick, multilayered steel entrance.

“Where are we going?”

“NERV headquarters.”

“Where, exactly?”

No answer.

It’s strange, muses Kaworu, how a changed a changed perspective can skew one’s imagination. The hallways, although objectively bright-lit and sterile, seem almost dank to him, an unsettling air in the corridors. They take a route that Kaworu is not familiar with, and he walks purposefully closer to Shinji, as close as he dares and then closer, their hands brushing against each other, once, twice.

They enter an elevator, and Kaworu watches closely as one of the men punches in a button.

“Commander Ikari requested to see me, didn’t he?” he says flatly, something forming in the pit of his stomach that is more than the floor shuddering and dropping beneath him.

*

Hyuga’s laptop is hooked up to the mainframe, and the only thing that is on its small screen is a graph, flickering with unidentifiable signals, with bold words under it: BLOOD TYPE.

“He’s almost here,” Misato says, softly, urgently, and Hyuga turns away from the monitors to tap a few things on the keyboard.

“Shinji’s with him.” He jerks his head towards the screens, and Misato curses underneath her breath. This would be a lot less painful...a lot less traumatic if he hadn’t come.

Don’t jump the gun, Katsuragi, she tells herself, shaking her head. We don’t know anything yet.

Her fingers clench around her cross and she peers over Hyuga’s shoulder. Oh, Shinji...

“They’re in.”

Hyuga’s fingers fly across the keyboard, and the monitor flashes a few more times before stabilising. He jabs a few more commands. “Katsuragi-san, it’s Blood Type Orange.”

The flickering has come to a stop. The display now reads BLOOD TYPE ORANGE, and Misato’s fingers grip the back of Hyuga’s chair with a frightening intensity.

“That’s not good,” she says. But it’s not bad either.

“We might get a better reading if they come closer,” Hyuga says thoughtfully. “Although – wait.”

He moves from one monitor to another, tracing Nagisa’s path through the security cameras. “Are they...headed towards Commander Ikari’s office?”

The security feed cuts off.

Misato jerks as if physically hit, and snaps her head towards Hyuga. “What the hell just happened?” she demands, worry creeping into her tone as the normally stoic man taps on the keyboard frantically, trying to bring the cameras back up. “Why aren’t they working?!”

Her gaze snaps back to the laptop. No change.

“It looks like the Commander’s manually shut off all cameras in that area!”

Hyuga’s brows are furrowed in incredulity. “It’s not a power failure, the cameras have been literally switched off!”

Misato swipes an angry hand through her hair. “What? Why on earth would –“

“Look!”

She spins on her heel, but dread has already taken over by the time she sets eyes on the laptop again.    

BLOOD TYPE BLUE.

*

Kaworu sees Shinji’s hands clench the moment the words are out of his mouth, and takes a second to berate himself ruefully. He’s been making more and more mistakes, and he wonders if he’s destined to always make Shinji this unhappy.

Probably so, he thinks as the elevator doors open again and he is nudged forward. All too soon, the door to the Commander’s office is in front of them, and Kaworu reaches down, clasping Shinji’s hand. “Believe in me,” he says again, quieter, in case things go horribly wrong and he’s not fast enough to apologise at the end.

The room is expansive, an example of excessive waste, with one lone table perched in the middle. Ikari Gendo sits there, and beside him, Ayanami Rei is standing.

A jolt passes through Kaworu, but he presses firmly down on the feeling, curious despite himself to know more about Shinji’s father.

Kaworu has never really met Gendo. Their paths have never crossed; he has never had a reason to speak in person with the man. It is curious, now, that he has been summoned, and Kaworu supposes that the knocking of his heart against his chest indicates the trepidation of finally meeting the Commander.

Another jolt, and Kaworu finds himself strangely fixated on Gendo, his vision slightly blurring. Shinji looks at him, concerned, but it’s on the periphery of his thoughts. He senses, rather than sees the soldiers around them melt away, forming a rearguard.

“Nagisa Kaworu.” The words are dark in tone, clipped as one used to speaking briskly and being obeyed.

“Commander Ikari,” Kaworu replies, returning the acknowledgement. Something is beginning to sear behind his eyes, and he blinks rapidly. What...what is this?

“You have failed.”

Shinji shifts angrily next to him, but all Kaworu feels is that building sense of wrongness, a beating of a drum that is starting to pound against his head.

What...?

Gendo raises his right hand and strips off the glove. Adam’s red eye stares back at him, and Kaworu feels shards entering his brain, cutting off all senses, only

I must return I must return I must return

Feeling returns to him and Kaworu spasms, lurching forward, only the sickening intent of reuniting with Adam’s body present in his hazy, feverish mind. Shinji’s shouts from behind him seem to echo like a call from beneath a bridge, faraway, and Kaworu can only see Adam, Adam in Gendo’s hand, Adam – AT field –

Kaworu is thrown violently backwards as the orange field explodes outward, almost pulsing with energy. His mind clears slightly, and he looks up to see Gendo’s hand drift back to his side, the field dissipating.

“Choose your actions carefully,” Gendo says coldly, and when Kaworu looks backward his heart stutters two beats because one of the soldiers has a gun pressed against Shinji’s temple –

“Kaworu,” Shinji says faintly, and Kaworu is crushed with shame, guilt thick in his throat because he knows Shinji is scared, knows that – it’s his fault, and he said those false words, he’s not even worthy of –

“Consider your choice of actions now.”

Gendo is speaking again, but Kaworu looks past him to Ayanami, feeling disgust curling in his belly, for being culpable, for helping this monster of a man.

“SEELE attempted to use you to achieve Instrumentality.” Gendo’s hand is still bare, and although the haze has lifted from Kaworu’s mind he still feels the instinct within him, demanding him to move, to unite again. “By tricking you into believing that the Seed of Life within Terminal Dogma is Adam.”

Clearly not. Kaworu attacks viciously at his Angel instincts, asserting his right of free will. He had known that Lilith resided in Terminal Dogma for a long time now.

He hadn’t known where Adam was.

“Isn’t that what you want?” Kaworu says roughly, shaking away his dizziness.

Oh.

No.

Gendo knows, he thinks, insides freezing. He knows I’m an Angel. Soon...Shinji will know as well.

He can feel it coming, the despair, the feeling of deep hurt and betrayal, and he flinches back from it now. No...not again...!

“You will become a tool for my Instrumentality,” Gendo intones, and Kaworu shakes his head, denial. “With your death, I will hold both Adam and Lilith’s souls and bodies, with the means to control the Impact with a Lilith-dominated union.”

Then, his left arm raises, and Kaworu notes with a vaguely sinking sensation that it holds a gun, shiny and polished, reflecting in the too-bright harsh lighting.

“Kaworu!”

Kaworu flinches at the voice, half turning to face Shinji even as Gendo raises his arm.

“Kaworu, I don’t understand, what is he talking about, why...why...?” Shinji is struggling against the grip of the helmeted soldier, seemingly oblivious – or ignoring – the gun pressed to his head.

“I congratulate you for choosing to bring my son,” Gendo says, and Kaworu feels real human emotion, a new one – hatefulness – for this man, for being so cruel to his own son. “You ensured your own obedience in this plan.” He takes aim.

Shinji sucks in a breath, ready to shout, but Kaworu cuts across him with a sad smile, feeling betrayal in his heart. “Believe in me, Shinji-kun,” he says softly, praying that Shinji won’t hate him, and raises his AT field as Gendo fires.

*

In all of the lives Kaworu’s lived, he has never seen so much despair, or suffering, in one single soul.

He supposes it’s what keeps drawing him to Shinji time and time again, unable – or unwilling – to let him go, wanting every life to be that one life where his pain is eased. Every attempt is fruitless, time and time again, with Shinji’s anguished face branded into his mind’s eye with every death, the knowledge of the hurt of his betrayal sinking deeper and deeper into him.

Kaworu feels dirty compared to pure Shinji, unknowing of how many times he has been betrayed by an Angel, a human Angel, unknowing of how many times Kaworu has failed.

In Past Worlds, in This World, in the Next, Kaworu’s purpose remains constant and unwavering. He wonders sometimes if it’s a mistake – if he really is meant to reunite with Adam and destroy the Lilim.

If that’s his real purpose, then Kaworu resigns himself to an infinity of lifetimes repeating and repeating, because there is one ultimate betrayal of Shinji that he will never dare, never even dare of thinking of, and if it’s a choice between disappointment forever and destroying Shinji, then Kaworu would gladly be disappointed. And again. And again. And again.

He watches the AT field in slow motion, the room around him, and feels cornered.

What should he do?

*

The door crashes open, and another gun enters the fray, followed by Hyuga, wide eyed and clutching at a laptop.

Misato freezes when she surveys the situation in front of her – Shinji, held at gunpoint by one of NERV’s own men; Rei, standing tonelessly on the sidelines; Gendo, one hand revoltingly deformed, the other pointing a gun; and Kaworu, in the centre, unarmed and unharmed.

“Everyone stay away,” she says, in her most authoritative voice, barrel trained on Kaworu. “He’s an Angel. He’s the Seventeenth Angel.”

Kaworu sees Shinji slump, the information finally sinking in, and he feels sick inside, wanting nothing more than to swoop over and reassure him, lift his face up into a smile.

“Lower your AT field,” Gendo orders, ignoring Misato. “Your rebellion is pointless while you have a vulnerable point.” With the gun, he gestures to Shinji, whose eyes are lowered, frame bent, almost being fully supported by the soldier behind him.

“Is that what Shinji-kun is to you?” Kaworu asks bitterly. If there is one person who could rise above his own hatred of himself, it is Ikari Gendo, with his unforgivable act of being cruel to Shinji. “My vulnerable point. My weakness. Not your son.”

“A distraction.”

Fury boils white-hot inside Kaworu and gleams faintly in his red eyes.

“Give me Adam’s soul and there needn’t be any bloodshed.”

“There is no Adam’s soul,” Kaworu says softly. “There has not been one for a long time. I am Tabris’ soul.”

Gendo stares back at him unblinkingly. “Enough wordplay. You were originally born with Adam’s soul, and you will now surrender it.” The threat is left unsaid.

Kaworu bows his head. “I will speak with Shinji first,” he says finally, challengingly. “You will have my acceptance only then.”

Gendo looks as if he is about to refuse, but strangely, surprisingly, Ayanami – the clone who looks like Ayanami – steps forward, placing a hand on his gun arm. “Let him speak,” she says quietly, and Gendo’s gaze softens as he looks at her. His arm relaxes.

When he looks back at Kaworu, none of the softness is there. “You have two minutes,” he says coldly.

Kaworu is immediately by Shinji’s side, looking past the soldier as if he doesn’t exist. “Shinji-kun,” he murmurs, haltingly.

Shinji doesn’t meet his eyes. “You’re an Angel,” he says hoarsely, and even without meeting his eyes Kaworu knows the look of betrayal is there, the pain lurking beneath the surfaces of dark blue eyes he can’t see. He pictures it, though, and the picture is a truth of a thousand times passed by.

He can’t blame Shinji, of course, he can never blame Shinji. Everyone has betrayed him in some way, but perhaps Kaworu’s is the worst, the final nail in the coffin. “I’m sorry,” he replies, and it’s true. Countless times, he has wished that he wasn’t an Angel, that forces of nature didn’t contrive to drive them apart, that Shinji wasn’t faced with an inevitable betrayal every time he met Kaworu.

Then, Shinji raises his eyes to meet Kaworu’s, and there is no accusation in his gaze.

Kaworu almost staggers back from the weight in that look. There is pain there, yes – confusion, wretched sadness, hurt – but the look of betrayal, the pained glare of almost hate isn’t there, and Kaworu has lived with it so long that he doesn’t know what to think now that it’s gone.

“I don’t care,” Shinji says, and makes an abortive motion to reach out. “I don’t care that you’re an Angel.”

Kaworu stares.

“Just – just don’t die. Don’t die, alright?”

Kaworu’s heart feels heavy and he can see glimmers of fear and liquid in Shinji’s eyes. He says nothing, and the silence speaks for him.

“Please, don’t. Don’t die,” Shinji begs, and Kaworu feels, with a sense of tearing agony, that this is an even worse betrayal than being an enemy, this is worse than surrendering himself to be killed by Shinji, this is wrong wrong wrong but he can’t do anything about it –

– because he won’t ever, willingly be the cause of harm to Shinji.

“Don’t die, don’t die, please don’t die,” he hears Shinji whispering brokenly as he stands, feeling stiff and wooden.

At least this way he won’t feel pain after Instrumentality, Kaworu tries to think optimistically to himself, and fails miserably, feeling like a prisoner condemned to either death by hanging or death by electric chair.

Wetness. Kaworu feels wetness on the sides of his cheeks, and his fingers brush away faint tear tracks, escaping from his eyes and cold on his face.

He closes his eyes, feeling the unique feeling of Lilim tears squeezing down his face, and drops his AT field.      

Chapter Text

Shinji’s screaming is raw and bloody, crawling from his throat and tearing out of his mouth, battering at his ears until it’s all he knows, all he can accept, all he can do.

He doesn’t feel cold metal against his head but he sees it flashing in front of him, and in that sickening moment, he –

– no, he has to drown it out. He squeezes his eyes tight, chokes in a dying man’s gasp, tries to scream again but it catches in his throat, whistles out empty air, and Shinji is forced to wake to blurry vision, a crumpled form, and red everywhere.

Why did you drop your AT field?

The coherent thought bursts through, and Shinji tears at it, tears it to pieces, but the damage is already done – his vision is already clearing, tears dropping and clearing away from his eyes. He looks, but to the left, skirting around the edges, numb and cold and denying.

Then, he steels himself, and settles his gaze fully, squarely.

Kaworu is sprawled gracelessly on the hard ground, his lips parted and his eyes open, open, but the red there gleams the same as the red all around, it trickles out of his brain and down his cheeks in rivulets, pools onto the ground in languid viscousness. Shinji’s eyes sting and they blur anew, and he rips himself from the soldier’s grasp and flies to the floor.

Kaworu’s features are upside down but Shinji still clasps his cheeks in trembling hands, cradles his head tenderly with shaking arms, curls down low and swallows thickly and presses faltering kisses to Kaworu’s unresponsive lips, the coppery tang bitter in his mouth. The wetness on his cheeks mixes with the blood on Kaworu’s.

“I believed,” he tries to say, but the words rattle meaninglessly in his chest and fall apart before he can speak them, and the only thing he can do is press closer, tighter, colder – all the heat is gone, and that’s what he fears, but it’s in him now, freezing his bones, locking his joints.

I loved you.

“Move, Shinji,” he hears from far above him, and if he wasn’t so cold he’d let burning anger take over to rip the gun from his father’s grasp, fire into him until he was broken and riddled and bursting with red...

You betrayed me, Kaworu. You betrayed my feelings!

But he’s cold and frozen, and the only thing he can do is press closer, tighter, until someone pulls him away – he sees dark, purplish hair but fights anyway, his ribs too tight for his chest, and he screams and screams to block out everything else.

*

Misato can’t help but feel the cold crawling of ice up her spine as she looks down at the body being raised onto a stretcher, limbs loose and sprawling sickeningly, having to be piled back onto the surface again and again.

Was this your plan all along? she thinks, and she knows she fears the man in front of her, staring down at Nagisa Kaworu with burning intensity.

She doesn’t feel anything for the boy. No – not the boy, the Angel. She can’t help but think of him as anything but an Angel, and disgust filters through her because she thinks this way – but mostly, because she feels like she’s betraying Shinji by thinking this way.

Whatever he is, he obviously meant something to Shinji, something more than her awkward, fumbling attempt at motherhood ever could. She’s seen him broken, cold, and withdrawn, screaming, tearful, and she’s afraid this will push him over the edge – into what? – and she doesn’t know what to do or how to help – and all she does is stand there, following numbly as a team of white-clad technicians, doctors burst in and wheel him away.

Ritsuko joins the procession as they move towards the hospital – to a different ward, because Misato doesn’t think she can take seeing, being reminded of another child, another corpse.

Child? she murmurs humourlessly to herself, and something hits her when she next looks at the Angel’s body, broken and empty and pale. Almost unconsciously, she drifts closer, struck by how human he is – of course he is, he’s a flesh-and-blood human, alright...

Misato straightens his body on the bed, uncreasing the crooked spine and looking away from blood-spattered silver hair. She turns to Ritsuko, standing quietly in the corner, pulling on gloves.

“What happens now?” she asks quietly, and a team of scientists file in, scalpels in their hands.

“Now, we salvage Adam’s soul from the Angel’s body,” Ritsuko replies, and Misato’s vision flickers.

“And then?”

“And then everything will be over.”

Ritsuko steps past her, and Misato’s hand shoots out, grabbing at her elbow.

“Not ‘the Angel’,” she says, out of loyalty and guilt. “Nagisa Kaworu.”

A pause, and then Ritsuko shrugs a shoulder carelessly, the shoulders and the curve of her back suddenly a stranger. “An Angel,” she repeats, and suddenly she is at Nagisa’s side, the scalpel falling and splitting skin at the chest.

Pale flesh breaks apart smoothly, and it’s an unholy sight that has Misato moving before she can see red, dead blood, bleached white of a ribcage – it’s disgusting and she feels bile rising and before she knows it she’s holding Ritsuko’s elbow, fingers digging in tight, whispering harshly in her ear: “What the fuck are you doing?!”

She feels like she’s surrounded by white-clothed aliens – they’re the ones who aren’t human – and she’s the only one sane, because everyone is giving her blank stares – and Nagisa Kaworu’s chest is split open, blood seeping slowly over the clean edges of broken skin. There’s no beating, the blood sits stagnant and glacial, and Misato’s overtaken by a paralysing, empty fear, her own chest and stomach burning in sympathy.

The old scar’s acting up and it’s pressure on Misato’s chest, but Ritsuko’s calmly prying away her fingers.

“If you’re not ready to see some blood, then you have no place in this room,” she says, and the scalpel’s back, carving away – there’s a sickening crunch as she carelessly slips past the ribcage – and Misato knows she’s just aiming for the heart –

“What are you doing?” she whispers as the blade stops, and she hates her weakness for not intervening, not trying to save this body from being butchered.

“Adam’s soul is contained within the Angel’s core,” Ritsuko says, and digs out Nagisa’s heart. It bleeds weakly in her hand, wet but so very human, undeniably human. “In his heart. It’s the most logical response, after all.”

Misato feels her insides clenching as Ritsuko calls for a tray, turning away from the still body with a hole carved in its chest, skin pulled taut to the sides, and she thinks she might just vomit when the scalpel descends, gently shredding at stringy muscle, tearing easily, greedily searching.

“And what after that?” Misato says, sounding faint.

“You’ll see. We’ll all get our happy ending.”

Misato flinches as the blade plunges straight through, and almost misses the brief terror and shock that flashes across Ritsuko’s face.

“Where...where is the core?” she stammers, and the butchered mound of muscle before her slowly oozes, hanged and drawn and quartered, but unyielding. “He’s an Angel! Where is his core?”

Ritsuko whirls around, her face contorted, her hands bloody and flashing silver with metal, and Misato takes a step back.

“Where is the core?!” she hisses again, and by the time Misato blinks, she’s already out of the door, fleeing back to Ikari Gendo, her mouth already open, flapping in anxiety and fear and confusion.

*

There’s a fine spray of red on Shinji’s clothes, and he’s not sure how it got there, but taking them off or washing them is the last thing on his mind – it’s the only thing he has of Kaworu now, after everything, it’s the only thing that’s physical. He had thrown himself at the stretcher but was repelled.

No one stopped him when he walked out of headquarters. Everyone was busy, the soldiers, the flurry of serious looking scientists, his father cleaning his gun, Ayanami standing there...

He squeezes his eyes shut, resting his forehead against the lid of the piano, and there’s the vague wondering of why no one stopped him on the street, with the blood on his clothes and the dazed, dead look in his eyes, but it becomes clear as he slumps, elbows crashing into the black and white keys of the piano and sending lances of hot pain through his arms.

No one cares.

No body cares.

Haha.

His cheeks aren’t wet with tears anymore, but his eyes are dull and aching, the skin around them tight and tender to touch. Every time Shinji closes his eyes they burn, and he relishes in it, squeezing his eyelids shut and feeling the stab of heat tearing at his retinas.

The piano lies cold and silent beneath him, and Shinji wants to rip away that silence but he doesn’t know how, Kaworu was the one who knew how to play, how to bring the dark beast to life, and it’s unfair – he doesn’t know why he’s returned here, to the music room, dotted red with reddened eyes, his hands might as well be painted red for all they guided Kaworu to his doom...

The cello is gone, probably once again sequestered in the storage room, and Shinji snaps out a shrill laugh, cracking through the empty room like a badly tuned instrument. It’s not right, it’s not right, the piano should be the one gone, the piano is for Kaworu, the cello is for Shinji. The laugh rings again, and he hates that noise, hates its insane edge, hates the way that it cracks at the corners and threatens to spill into hiccupping snivelling. His eyes burn.

The world flings itself back into focus, and Shinji’s fingers trace ivory keys. He hadn’t been lying. He knows how to play a C major scale, but the ability is torn from him now, another silence that adds to the growing pile halting noise and aborted gestures.

His fingers slip from the keys. There’s no warm hand to guide them, no comforting presence at his back to soothe him.

There’s a knock on the door, not harsh, but light and almost ethereal, as if the hand knocking couldn’t be human at all. Shinji sits up straight, a brief, wild twisting in his heart, and turns slowly. His chest is full – one breath contained in it, filled.

The door opens, and Ayanami Rei walks in.

Shinji crumples a little, curling on the piano stool, expels air, sucks it in again. Shakily.

“What are you doing here?” he croaks out, and he can’t find it in himself to be polite, not when he’s on the brink of falling to pieces, not when everything that’s good has been snatched away and dashed to pieces, not when Ayanami doesn’t seem to recognise him or remember anything or feel remorse that she stood by and did nothing, nothing while Kaworu –

“What do you want?” Ayanami says, and she’s looking through him as if he’s glass.

Shinji’s jaw clenches, sudden anger sending pinpricks of heat into the back of his eyes. “Leave me alone,” he spits, and his fingers are curled tightly, fists shaking.

“What do you want?” Ayanami repeats, and takes a step closer. Shinji rockets up, the stool toppling beneath him, and he backs into piano keys, trembling all over. There’s an ugly, dissonant sound.

His rage boils. “Leave me alone!” he screams, and the tears are there, and Shinji swipes at them feverishly. “Why didn’t you do anything? Why did you just stand there? Why did you...”

Shinji staggers backwards into the piano, and more harsh chords sound, ringing shrilly in the cramped space. Ayanami stares at him steadily, although her hands are linked tightly together, and the cant of her head is stiff.

“Do you want pain?”

“Do you want love?”

“Do you want suffering?”

“Do you want comfort?”

“Do you want yourself?”

“Do you want others?”

Shinji’s tears are more sad than angry, now, and he shakes his head at everything, closing his eyes and letting them fall freely.

“I want Kaworu,” he says hoarsely, and Ayanami regards him quietly, the door behind her opening like a grimace.

*

Nagisa Kaworu is a cold cadaver lying upon stained sheets, slabs of his flesh gaping open, his ribs torn, and his guts cool in the air-conditioning. Rei looks at skin that is made up the same way as hers, pale and bloodless, still and deathly. It’s the body of a butchered animal, but Rei doesn’t see him that way.

She’s missing something, she knows. All of the Children are. Shinji is missing vitality, drowning in sorrow. Nagisa is missing his life. If Rei thinks hard enough, she thinks she sees someone else: a girl with fiery eyes and red hair, but the image is gone before she can make sense of it, and she shifts back, defeated.

Rei doesn’t know, she doesn’t know. She does things without knowing why, she says things before thinking them but they come naturally and no one stares overmuch. It’s the same instinct that has her saying Shinji instead of Ikari, and she doesn’t know where it comes from.

It gnaws at her, that the only thing she feels is the Commander, a constant, and the constant tug of loyalty towards his son instead.

“I am Ayanami Rei,” Rei says, and the words rebound of Nagisa Kaworu’s corpse, unanswered. “I am, am I?”

She feels that she should be loyal to the Commander, who helped her, healed her, protected her.

The same Commander who shot a boy in front of Shinji’s eyes and tore something out from inside him.

There’s an odd pang inside Rei whenever she sees the Commander’s son, and a flash: peeling plugsuit gloves, an outstretched hand, a wavering smile, encouraging her own. She sees the emotions on his face plainly and feels almost obligated to protect them.

Do you want yourself?

Rei steps forward, padding effortlessly towards Nagisa, and raises a hand above his neck, fingers gentle but outstretched.

“I am Ayanami Rei,” she whispers to herself, and there’s an odd sort of glow from within his throat, warm and red. “I am myself...and I am doing this for... –”

“What are you doing?”

The words are sharp, cutting, unexpected, and Rei stiffens, snatching her arm back. Dark, purple hair emerges from the shadows, and her expression blanks. She turns to face Misato, soldier-like.

“Don’t you know no one’s allowed here?” she continues, but her voice is soft. “They’re still trying to find a way to salvage Adam’s soul without a core.”

Rei blinks.

“You shouldn’t be here, Rei. I shouldn’t be here. This...this is twisted. It’s disgusting.”

Rei comes to a realisation, and then shakes her head slowly. “What will you do for Shinji?” she asks, her voice neutral.

Misato stares.

“I want to protect him,” she says after a long while, and her brows furrow, her face contorting. “But I can’t even do that, can I? With what he’s seen, he’s...he’ll probably hate all of us.”

Soundlessly, Rei turns back to Nagisa, her hand stretching out again. The glow around his throat appears again, shining through the thin membrane of skin. Misato draws closer, face still twisted with grief, but open, open with curiosity and confusion.

The red glow surges upwards, gliding under Nagisa’s chin and into his jaw line. It rises further and further until it is nestled in his mouth, and it is then that Rei reaches forward with her other hand, two fingers propping his mouth open.

The glow emanates from within, and rises out, until it’s no longer a glow but a solid red ball, gleaming like diamond and only a little larger than a marble. Misato recoils in shock, her eyes widening.

“Is that – is that – ?” she splutters, and Rei takes the ball in her fingers, closing them firmly around it.

“Yes, that is Tabris’ core,” she says simply.

“Tabris’ core – that’s...Adam’s...Adam’s soul,” Misato stammers, and she knows that the tiny little ball in Rei’s hand is what Ritsuko and her scientists have been trying to find for hours.

“Not in...not in the Angel’s heart like they thought,” she whispers, and it’s almost hysterically funny.

“No,” Rei agrees, and there is a tiny smile on the corner of her lips. “In the Adam’s apple.”

*

Kaworu feels pain, pain all over, and he would say it was almost physical pain if not for the fact that he didn’t have a physical body.

He is drifting, drifting in the red cloud of almost-nothingness, barely holding onto the strings of sanity, trying to reach up to his head to feel the bullet hole but passing right through because he has no head...

When Kaworu remembers himself, he screams.

He screams until his screams are raw and bloody, until they tear from his mouth and batter at his ears, and he thinks, I’m sorry, Shinji. His rage doubles and triples at Ikari Gendo, for forcing his hand, for causing anguish to the one he swore to make happy, for tearing him from his hope, for tearing Shinji from his.

Tick tock. Tick tock.

Even without a body, Kaworu feels sorrow, guilt, the self-hatred and the hazy blurring of vision as imagined tears roll down his cheeks. The feelings aren’t new to him but they are no less sharp, piercing the fabric of his being with their jagged edges, and he relives the horror of Shinji begging him not to die, accepting him – accepting him – and begging him not to die.

He’s betrayed Shinji, worse than any other betrayal, and he feels sick.

Kaworu falls silent, his thoughts in disarray but no longer furiously spinning. The guilt is thick as ever, no, thicker, and the clock has inevitably run down – it is time to reset. There is no longer This World, the lonely and pained Shinji that he has come to know again, who has come to know him, and there is only the Next, the Next which Kaworu wishes he could hate but can’t.

Because in the Next, Shinji is waiting for him, and he couldn’t refuse Shinji, ever. Kaworu might never find answers to why he lives eternally, fails eternally, but he embraces that ignorance for the pained bliss of giving Shinji temporary refuge.

Temporary.

Everything is so fleeting.

Everything except for him.

Kaworu shakes his metaphorical head, looks up, expecting to see the moon or the stars, or another LCL filled tube with doctors scurrying this way and that. Expecting to see his body reforming.

The red mist presses around him, thick and impenetrable.

Kaworu feels his insides freeze, something akin to horror surging up within. No...no...

He should be somewhere now. He should be waking up. He should be in SEELE, in his coffin, with Shinji, on earth. This...this is nothingness, it’s limbo, it’s hell. He’s trapped.

Kaworu has never felt claustrophobic in any life, but he feels hot air pressing against him from all sides and he takes a shuddering gasp, squeezing himself into the smallest being possible.

He inhales red fog.

*

Rei finds Shinji sitting on a dilapidated swing, lonely and rusted, his feet scuffing at cold sand. He doesn’t look up when she arrives, not even when she’s standing less than a metre away in front of him.

Go away, he thinks, but his voice has been stolen.

“Come with me,” Rei says, hand outstretched, and it feels bizarrely familiar to her, as if Shinji had once said a similar thing to her, with a similar gesture. Her hand remains stubbornly in his field of view, and he takes it, allowing himself to be pulled off the swing and led after her.

Shinji barely notices where they’re going, only blinking tiredly when they stop in front of a door. The slit in the centre is stuffed with letters, unopened and abandoned, and Shinji knows that the buzzer is broken and the door is unlocked.

Rei leads him in, waiting patiently while he removes his shoes, then taking him into the small living room.

“You can stay here,” she tells him, and it’s only when Shinji looks up that he understands. You can stay here. You can sleep here.

“For how long?” he says through cracked lips and parched tongue, and his voice is rough.

“As long as it takes,” Rei says, and then almost looks like she’s hesitating. A moment later, she holds a hand out, loosely curled into a fist. She lifts Shinji’s hand, then places her clenched fist in it. When she raises it again, there’s something warm and red in his palm, only a little larger than a marble.

“What is this?” Shinji says, his voice cracking, but he already thinks he knows what it is.

“Nagisa Kaworu,” Rei answers, and curls Shinji’s fingers over the core.

 

 

Chapter Text

Everyone around me dies.

Or rather, everyone he wants to stay alive dies.

He’s back in the sandpit. The day is hot, but no warmer than usual. As long as Shinji’s remembered, it’s been a season called ‘summer’, and he finds it weird that there would be a name given to something that always is.

Tiny, child’s fingers pat at the sand pyramid, packing particles more closely together, but mainly just putting those digits to use.

What are your hands for?

He smiles as other high voices filter in around him. If he thinks hard enough, he can pretend that he’s a part of them, and if he pretends hard enough, then he might forget that he’s kneeling in damp but warm sand, far away, far, far away...

The pyramid falls.

The red sunset momentarily blinds Shinji’s eyes, flickering every few seconds with the whizzing by of a telegraph pole as the train steams down its track.

Two figures sit opposite him, and the sunlight casts a pale yellow tint to both of their heads, paints their hair orange. Shinji feels his chest contract sharply.

“Kaworu?” he croaks out, but he can’t move, can’t reach forward.

“He is not wholly here yet,” the other figure says, and Shinji slumps at her voice. “His soul cannot be reached.”

Kaworu, at a second, closer inspection, is sitting strangely, his head tilted low and bobbing with every shudder of the carriage underneath them. His arms lie loosely at his sides, and his knees bend without any strength, rolling and jumping with every movement.

“Then what good is it to me?” Shinji whispers, and the train falls away beneath him.

The mattress squeaks under him as Shinji raises his head slowly, regarding the core on the bedside table quietly. It’s something that he’s stabbed at, shot at many times before, and yet, there it stands, innocent and red and warm.

He picks it up and rolls it between his fingers, and then holds it against his chest. Tears prick against his eyes but he clenches his teeth and forces them away again, burying his face in the pillow and cradling Kaworu’s core tenderly in his palms.

Then what good is it to me? he had said, but he still can’t bring himself to let go.

With a sigh, Shinji turns over until he is facing the ceiling, he knees tucked up and his hands crossed over his chest, and the core resting just above his heartbeat, its warmth slowly seeping through his undershirt.

His white school shirt lies rumpled and tangled on the floor some few metres away, looking as if it was discarded in a hurry.

That’s a lie. It was very carefully tucked away inside-out so that the bloodstains wouldn’t show.

Shinji’s eyes are half closed, but they open again and his head tilts to the side when he hears a faint rustling from the kitchen, and shortly after, soft footsteps.

“Here.”

Rei sets down a tray, pours tea into a mug, and hands it to him. She kneels down next to the bed and he sits up to accept it, his hand closing around the handle of the mug, then glances down to hers.

“You burned your fingers,” Shinji says dully, and Rei blinks, looking at her red and raw fingers as if in a new light.

“Yes.”

Shinji’s first sip of the tea sends a path of heat from his throat to his belly, despite the slightly bitter taste. There are too many tea leaves, and water had soaked in them for too long. “Why?”

“I was making tea.”

He laughs softly, because he’s too tired to cry, now. Of course.

After the first taste, the tea is easy to swallow. Shinji gulps it down and drowns in it to avoid the bitterness, and is pleased at the warmth spreading in his chest. The aftertaste is as bad as he expects, but he takes it without complaint, and folds himself back together onto the bed. Liquid sloshes around inside his stomach.

“So it’s over now,” Shinji says quietly, after a moment’s pause. Rei still clutches her mug in her hands, and stares calmly into its depths, and he doesn’t know if she’s heard him or not because her red eyes – so much like Kaworu’s – don’t flicker, don’t make any sign of acknowledgement.

Shinji wants to hate her, because she stood by while his father murdered Kaworu, she didn’t lift a finger or say anything – and he would have listened, he would have, he loved Rei, more than he would ever love Shinji – but she is also the one who brought him away from NERV and away from everything, and gave him back what little there was left of a silver haired Angel.

No, a silver haired angel. There’s a difference, and he’s both.

And Rei’s done all the thinking, she’s taken charge in away Shinji never thought was possible, and after everything, the only feeling he can drum up is a faint sense of relief. He doesn’t know when Ayanami became Rei, but he supposes it’s come with his sudden lethargy, his dull aching. He’s fading in the background and he doesn’t have to move, doesn’t have to act or think or hurt himself any more than he already has, because Kaworu’s there, right at his side. In his hands.  

Why does he still feel the jagged claws of hurt tearing at him, then?

Why does he feel so bitterly bereft?   

“It’s not.”

Shinji squeezes his eyes shut and holds the core closer to his chest. Don’t make me move again, he thinks. Don’t make me hurt.

“It’s not.”

*

Rei holds a music box in relaxed palms, and through the muted clockwork ticking, a soft tune plays, spinning and looping slowly, slowing down with each repetition until it comes to a stop. She gazes at it through half lidded eyes as the last of the tinkling tune plays out. The streets are not quite empty, and a few people send curious glances in her direction as she walks by, music trickling through her fingers.

It comes to a stop, and so does she.

“Do you start anew or do you go back to the beginning?” Rei asks aloud, but it’s quiet, and goes unnoticed amongst the daily routine of the outside world.

She shifts the box in her palm, lifts a hand, and starts to twirl at the mechanism, winding it up again with a few deft turns. It sits taut between her fingers, ready to flicker into life again, as soon as she lets go.

The soft chimes of the music box fill the air again as Rei continues down the street, hands curled firmly close to her heart.

Don’t you get tired? Don’t you ever hasten towards the end because you know it’s inevitable?

Rei stops again as she reaches her destination – the foot of a tall building. She gazes up, up to the top floor, and then stows away the music box into her carry bag, stepping inside and moving up the stairwell. Sun glances off the windows of the building, leaving impressions behind her eyelids when she blinks.

Or do you slow down to make your last moments count?

Misato answers the door the second time Rei buzzes, and the door slides open to reveal a mess of dark hair, wide but bleary eyes, and the faintly stomach-turning scent of alcohol.

“Rei?” Misato says, blinking wearily at her. She rubs at her eyes and waves her in, lurching unsteadily after. “What’s the occasion?”

Rei sweeps through the living room, stepping lightly over empty beer cans, and crosses down the corridor to Shinji’s room. She glances briefly at the childish placard over the door, then slides the panel open, flipping the light switch on.

“Shinji’s not home,” Misato says from behind her, pressing the heel of her palm to her forehead. There’s a dry, bitter sort of chuckle, and she thuds dully against the wall, bracing as if suddenly overtaken by dizziness. “He hasn’t been back for a few days.”

“I know.”

Ignoring the way Misato’s head turns and swivels at her simple statement, Rei steps inside, looking around, hands folded together in front of her. She glances this way and that, peering into the corners of the room. There’s nothing she needs to step over here – Shinji keeps his room almost absurdly neat, with spare clothes tucked away neatly into drawers and clutter kept to a minimum. If it wasn’t for the few personal items – a picture frame, a phone, a jar of rosin atop a shelf – the room would look bare, uninhabited.

Rei turns her head over her shoulder. “Where is Shinji-kun’s cello?” she asks softly.

Misato drags herself through the doorway. “Underneath the bed,” she replies slowly, and watches as Rei kneels, pushing up the covers and sliding the case out. She hauls it upwards by its handle and pulls with a strength contradictory to her slight frame.  

“Are you taking that to Shinji?”

Rei hoists the case tighter, adjusts her bag, and reaches the doorway again. The light switch is flicked off. “Yes.”

Misato sees her to the door, a low, quiet chuckle burbling up as she reaches the threshold. Rei pauses and looks back, a faint question in her eyes.

“Isn’t it funny?” Misato says. “I ultimately fail everyone in the end. I’ve done what I could as a captain, a major, a mother. And I still fail in the end.”    

Rei says nothing.

“Have I been too afraid? Should I have reached out more, or should I have been colder?”

Rei sees her blink rapidly, pressing knuckles against her eyes.

“That’s all I’ve ever known,” Misato whispers. “Being cold.”

She steps forward, reaches out, lays a cool hand on Rei’s bare forearm. Her fingers shake a little but firm in the end, tightening. “Take care of Shinji for me,” Misato says, and closes her eyes. “Help him...help him be happy again.”

Rei carefully sets the cello case against the door, and places her hand atop Misato’s.

“Your wishes are with me,” she says, picks up the cello again, and leaves the apartment.

*

Kaworu doesn’t know how long he sits squeezed into a tight a ball as possible, but it feels like it’s been an eternity. His body has started to form again, pale white fingers flexing and glowing with the dull red cast upon it by the thick mist. He’s glad to see himself again, to know that he’s real, but the pressure against his body, his skull, his back, his legs – it’s unbearable, and he’s clenched up and in pain with no one to hear him, and he doesn’t know what’s happening.

Then, there’s a click.

The fog writhes and screams around him and abruptly loosens, shrinking away. Kaworu cracks open his eyes and unwinds his limbs. Those eyes widen as he sees a ghostly outline of himself rise up, out of his body, stretching and yawning and sighing and collapsing on all fours to the ground.

The figure slowly turns, and Kaworu sees flinty red eyes and a wide curving smile, silver hair brushing the bridge of his nose.

“Adam?” he says, uncertainly, around a painful lump in his throat.

“Tabris,” Adam greets, and his mouth stretches into a sharp grin.

They’re mirror images of each other, and Kaworu doesn’t know why, why, why now? His throat burns and he is a separate entity and he isn’t sure if Adam is a figment of his imagination or not, or if the fog has already crushed him into oblivion – he welcomes it, if it’s true, because he’s failed again and he’s left Shinji behind.

Again.

“Are you ready?” Adam asks, and Kaworu shakes his head, hunches back down again. He’s never ready and he’s never been ready, and with each consecutive turn of the windup key he’s been losing it, losing all the ground he’s gained and wondering if it’s possible to be an insane Angel.

But surely he’s doing something right if Shinji still lets him in?

Kaworu looks at Adam with tears in his eyes and clenches his jaw and pinches his nose. No, he says wordlessly. Let me stay. Don’t make me face him again. Don’t let me live with my guilt and his innocence. I’m selfish and I can’t. I can’t do it again. I can’t. I can’t.

*

Smudges of sleeplessness and sadness stain the underside of Shinji’s eyes like smeared dirt, bags of shadows, plainly visible in the morning light. He tears away his vision from the mirror and spits out frothy toothpaste and water and saliva into the sink, rinsing out his mouth and pretending that the clenched hands around the rim of the bowl don’t shake horribly.

He spits his mouth dry and then presses his forehead to the mirror, taking cold breaths through his lips. His hands unclench with some difficulty, and he uses one of them to dive into his pocket, curling around something rectangular and firm.

Next. Click.

Shinji pulls himself up with a monumental effort when nothing plays, shifting his centre of gravity from his head to his shoulder blades as he leans back against the wall, pulling the SDAT out of his pocket. He gazes blankly at it for a few seconds, uncomprehendingly taking in the scene, then shakes his head and looks at the readout.

Track 26.

Rewind. Click. Buzz.

Shinji honestly doesn’t know if he can bear to sleep anymore. He remembers the last full, good sleep he had, curled up against a solid, gentle pillar of strength, love, compassion, and compares it to the sleep he had just woken from.

Unsettling, jagged, fragmented. Asuka and Touji had leered at him through distorted glass, and he had seen Rei looking at him silently, veins creeping up her arms and choking her as they passed through her airway, settled smugly on her face –

And then he had felt the fine blood splatter on his clothes, the light flick of liquid that almost felt like being sprayed gently with water.

Shinji grips his head and shakes it, fingers scrabbling desperately through his hair, trying to push it away. Away. Out of sight, out of mind. Before he knows it, he’s bent over double, dry heaving, his stomach twisting but nothing coming up, just hot, sour air passing through his throat. He chokes on his own saliva.

Sliding bonelessly to the floor, Shinji presses trembling lips together, a hand reaching up to clutch over his mouth. He rests his forehead on the cool tiles and makes a small sound in the back of his throat as wetness drips through his eyelashes and lands on the ground in a tiny little puddle. His hands have no strength, and even as he imagines Kaworu before him, he slips through Shinji’s fingers again, plunges to the ground again, and disappears, gone in the cloud of memory.

Shinji swallows down the strangled cry forming in his throat and staggers to his feet, hugging the wall for support and lurching shakily out of the bathroom.

In Rei’s bedroom, Shinji collapses next to his cello case and a music box standing at its side, squeezing his eyes shut against the plastic and scraping his fingers over its grainy surface.

The two had been left there sometime in the morning, sometime between the night, Shinji’s restless sleeping, and the morning. They had been there, in the middle of the room, along with a freshly laundered white shirt, free of bloodstains.

He’s been ignoring them all morning, but now he sits against his case, pulling the back of his hands across his eyes, bringing his breathing under control again.

He picks up the music box, wondering where Rei got it from, and slowly winds it up. Before letting it go, he plucks the earphones from his ears and sets his SDAT aside, trading one piece of music for another.

Shinji lets go, holding the box in his lap carefully, and listens as the clockwork starts ticking. The first bar of music plays, and he holds his breath, his face lighting up in recognition. He looks down at the music box, a sort-of wavering smile tugging at his lips.

Pachelbel’s Canon.

He remembers playing it once, in grade school, on the cello. It had been the most boring part, the most simple part – just four crotchets, repeated over and over and over again, and he’d gotten fed up with it, sick of the piece.

Until his aunt had suggested that he do something different, something new. To take on the melody instead of repeating the same bar ad infinitum, to turn the piece into something with meaning.

The next time he practised with his ensemble, Shinji had played the melody in canon with the first violin, ditching the rest of the cellos and soaring high.

The conductor had scolded him afterwards, but Shinji had smiled for the rest of the day.

He sets the music box on the ground, still tinkling away, and stretches out flat on his back, wriggling until his hand touches the leg of a chair. Struggling a little, Shinji pulls it towards him and sits up again, now leaning forward to undo the clasps on his cello case.

He hasn’t played his cello in an age, and it tells when he flicks a finger across the strings. With a small intake of breath, Shinji lifts the cello up and sinks down onto the chair, securing the endpin. He applies rosin to his bow quickly, and then relaxes into a languid tuning process, the feel of vibrating wood beneath his fingers sinking deeply into him and giving him...stability? Comfort?

Shinji can’t tell but he doesn’t mind, his brow smoothing itself out as the four strings hum contentedly beneath his bow, singing in tune once more. On the floor, the music box slowly peters out, the last refrains of the canon dying away with barely a whisper. Shinji raises his bow and sits up straight, his knees tilted apart, and continues where the box left off, the melody gliding underneath his fingers, rich with the low sounds of the long stringed instrument.

He loses himself in it for an endless expanse of time, the push and drag along the strings and the dancing of his fingers across the fingerboard coming naturally, flowing through him with the easy grace of a learned musician. His eyes flutter shut as the music swells, as he carries all four parts of the canon with him, in his bow, in his fingers, in his mind.

The last note stretches forever and Shinji’s finger shakes with fatigue on the vibrato, but he’s smiling as he lets go of the note, sinking further into the chair with a soft sigh, his nerves singing, and it’s only when he opens his eyes again that he realises he’s also crying, his cheeks damp with escaped tears.

He had been wondering if Kaworu played the violin.

*

Kaworu hadn’t realised that he had fallen asleep, and when he wakes, it’s to orange bubbles floating past his face, caressing his hair, his chin, his cheeks. His eyes snap wide open in that instance, and he whips sluggishly from side to side, staring out into the gloom, trying to see.

No.

He lifts his hands, pressing them flat against the clear glass tube surrounding him, pushing, slapping, scraping his nails across the surface. Bubbles explode from his mouth as he lets out a choked off noise, half a snarl and half a whimper.

No.

He is born in a glass womb of LCL. The doctors of SEELE wait nervously before an angelic monster, one that never dies, never ceases, only returns, again and again and again and again to a world he wants to hate but can’t, he can’t –

NO.

His eyes dart about furiously and he writhes in his glass container, the thrashing sending beads of air and froth swirling around, obscuring his vision, painting everything orange.

Kaworu’s mouth opens wide, and even as LCL rushes in he expels it, gurgling furiously, desperately, a harsh, high scream tearing from his throat. The doctors of SEELE clutch at their ears and fall to the ground.

“NO!”

The glass shatters and explodes and crumples on itself, flinging outwards as the pressurised LCL bursts forth, a roaring torrent that crashes against the floor and washes gently against the feet of cowering humans. Kaworu steps off the raised pedestal, naked and trembling like a leaf, his breath coming in short, almost hyperventilating pants. He glances around again, looking at the world around him through clear vision and unmarred eyes, and clenches a shaking hand to his chest.

No longer In This World –

– but the Next.  

Kaworu falls to his knees and opens his mouth and howls again, his throat raw and aching and his eyes burning with the hot trail of tears and his hands beating on the ground, turning red as they are sliced open by glass shards. He screams again and again and again, not stopping until each breath is drawn to its last shuddering gasp, each cry torn and broken and turned into a whispery moan by the end. He shakes and sobs on the ground, damning himself with each wretched intake of breath and coughs out an exhale, saliva dripping past his mouth and pooling on the floor together with his tears and the LCL.

It’s gone.

Every moment, every damned second all counts to nothing, all disappears into the empty gullet of time, space, whatever keeps him going and going no matter how many times he fails. Everything is useless. Everything.

Kaworu struggles to look up, past drenched locks of silver hair. His fingers close around a large shard and he drags it towards himself, raising it in the air, cutting himself around it, aiming it towards his heart.

At the last second he stops, a fresh wave of pain and despair washing over him, and he limply lets the shard fall through his fingers, splashing back onto the ground.

He sucks in another ragged breath and lets out a choked, high pitched sob, falling back to the ground.

I’d just be reborn again, Kaworu laughs, and laughs and laughs, and doesn’t stop laughing until he chokes and coughs and heaves, pushing air back into his lungs.

I’m over. I‘m over the edge. I’m over. I told you I couldn’t live like this for much longer. I’m losing myself.  I’m insane.

Tears leak from his eyes as Kaworu pushes himself painstakingly off the ground, lending red to the whites of his eyes, making his vision blurry. He crawls back onto his knees and back onto his feet, his arms swinging loosely in front of him, and bares his teeth in a pained mockery of a smile.

“Take me to New Tokyo-3,” he whispers softly, roughly, to the silent room. “Take me...to Shinji, again. Let me see him...again.”

His heart breaks for the boy who doesn’t know him yet, and his heart breaks further for the boy he’s just been parted from.

*

“Shinji,” Rei says, and puts down her bento. “Your pocket is glowing.”

Shinji blinks and closes the case on his cello before looking down at his chest pocket. A faint hum of red peeks through the material, and he fishes it out hurriedly, moving across the floor to Rei. He holds Kaworu’s core out in the palm of his hand, and the two of them watch it.

The little ball is glowing a bright red, brighter than any core Shinji’s ever seen glow, and brighter still, seemingly turning white. He winces and shields his vision from the view, and it’s only when it dies down after a minute that he can look again.

He wishes he hadn’t.

Kaworu’s core is a lifeless, dull red, a desaturated, almost burgundy colour, and there’s no warm pulse, no heat that Shinji had only just gotten used to. He rolls it on his palm, fighting down a rising panic, then lifts it in his fingers, shaking.

“Rei,” he says, and his voice is uneven, cracking. “What does that mean?”

Rei bows her head, and Shinji only has to look at her frame to know the answer.

“He’s gone, Shinji,” she says very, very quietly.