The method Kaworu and Shinji wanted to use to restore the world safely in Q wouldn't work here.
While Kaworu's body contains Adam's soul in this ficverse his real identity is Tabris, and he's not even derived from Adam – entirely different planet of origin, since this 'verse's AU was devised before I read the translated game stuff about how the FAR did their thing fairly recently, to the point that some Seeds were still in transit to their intended planet, as opposed to the terraforming of new worlds having gone on for untold planetary generations, with angels branching out through the universes.
The ritual in the movie involved a spear calibrated for Adam and Adam's willing cooperation. The Spear of Cassius isn't calibrated for Tabris, and if the person it is calibrated for did wake up… Yeah, no, Adam in this 'verse would wake up far too maddened to listen to reason regarding his. Goddamn. Planet.
The really creepy thing in that game's ending, by the way, was an explanation for why Rei/Lilith and Kaworu/Adam don't remember anything about why they were made and the First Ancestral Race. The S2 engines apparently sap memory/thought/identity. That means that if Yui Ikari did achieve her goal of becoming a god with an S2 engine and all human knowledge, acquired by destroying all of humanity, all that knowledge and her memory/identity as Yui Ikari would be wiped by the very power she craved.
The more I think about it, the better engineering it is. Given how it turns out in mythology, you do not want ambitious entities with godlike power when other people don't have equivalent power. Think about how Rei's default is obedience to Gendo Ikari. In the end, all that happens is that instead of going and offering her power to Gendo, she just offers it to Shinji instead. When Kaworu just offered his life up for Shinji's sake.
Kaworu looked up at Rei in his death scene and was clearly trying to inspire her to make her own choices instead of following along with Gendo's plans, the way he refused to go along with SEELE's. He wanted her to follow in his footsteps and choose Lilim survival over her own instincts. He wasn't successful: Rei rejected Gendo and chose, sure, but what she chose was to trigger Third Impact.
All mainline (manga/anime/Rebuild) versions of Kaworu: phenomenal cosmic power, cannot manage people. Take Rebuild's. Who knows how many timelines of experience, still doesn't realize that of course Gendo Ikari will work to screw over anything that would actually help the world. He should have known by now that the whole thing had to be a trap.
Except he genuinely didn't seem to get that Gendo Ikari would do something as dickish as ruin humanity's chance to get its planet back in order to assassinate the only person left capable of blocking Yui's path to godhood. He just really does not get, after all this time, that some people are selfish and evil. If Kaworu doesn't get that by now, after getting hit in the face with it dozens, perhaps even hundreds of times, when he's based on human DNA himself, that's pretty close to proof that someone made sure that he'd never be able to get it. Because in order to anticipate someone's moves you have to be able to think like them, and a being with godlike power thinking like Gendo Ikari? Good Cannot Comprehend Evil if someone made sure good was programmed that way.
This world, bleeding and battered, yet clinging to life so strongly, surviving with such ferocity!
Pain, so much pain, almost every broadcast that slipped past anyone's shields a silent scream, too much to hold back. To keep inside. Crying for help, a cry that would have been answered on any other world since one person's misery quickly became everyone else's problem, but here, where humanity still cowered in fear of the angels? And now in fear of each other, because anyone who opened their ears to hear would be hit with the agony of a world of survivors?
A world of survivor's guilt? A world missing their loved ones, a world pulled to join them, a world…
He shouldn't. He mustn't. He knew he mustn't. Not because of SEELE's false hope, but because this was not his world, it was theirs.
But they cried out for aid, for something, anything, that would either let them survive or grant them sweet death, blessed relief, and he could not shield his heart from those cries. He did not have that power, no more than a planetary human could shield themselves from a meteor strike. Simply decide that they didn't feel like being hit by bullets today, thank you.
And this world was in one of the early stages of terraforming. Earth was already a beautiful world, beautiful enough for angels to fight over, and like this? Just begging for him to run his fingers through her seas, coax forth green and blue and gold.
When that would replace her dying screams with a baby's wails.
He shouldn't even be doing this much. Once he'd done this much, once he'd started? He was already doing something wrong. Already encroaching on a world that was not his, no matter what the reason, and the temptation was there to just give in, to find an excuse to do a little more, and a little more…
Until he was entirely consumed by instinct and forgot minor details like the fact that there were people on this planet that were not his. There was biomass on this world that people were using, and even if the Lilim AT field protected them from mental assaults, from the absorption of souls and personalities SEELE envisioned, it wouldn't protect them from a purely physical attack. Like having every cell in their bodies reduced down to LCL.
The makers of angels had based them on humans, and thus their reproduction on how humanity reproduced.
Kaworu was beginning to have the worrying feeling that terraforming Earth 'just a little' was not the equivalent of holding hands or even getting to first base. More like being 'a little bit' pregnant.
The humans who still had hope were praying that the area would expand, that their seas would become blue again, and hearing something, anything, that wasn't pain? Hearing that some of Lilith's children still had hope? Still wanted to live, still thought that good things might happen, that this world might be saved? Might even save itself, for their sake?
Build, create, support: it was supposed to be that simple. He wished it were that simple.
There was a way it could be, but Shinji's reaction to the idea of letting Kaworu give in and start terraforming, then killing him before the debugging phrase started (where already-formatted matter that didn't match generated blueprints would be returned to LCL and reformatted) and letting Rei fix any remaining problems was the same as his reaction to the idea of letting Rei just get killed when he could have saved her, no matter what the cost.
Shinji's "Fuck no!" was rather touching, really. Shinji had been raised better than to take the act of sex in vain.
In theory, Kaworu could train another Lilim to do what was necessary. In practice, Shinji didn't have all that much to do right now but keep an eye on Kaworu, and it wasn't as though Kaworu could keep Shinji out of his head. He was on de facto suicide watch, but at least that gave Shinji something to do. A distraction from cursing himself and his parents for what had happened. From cursing his own powerlessness, how he should have used a mental attack on Zeruel even though that would have left people wondering why Zeruel just keeled over and died when Shinji was already on probation for what happened when Bardiel attacked. After Bardiel merged with Asuka and Zeruel took Rei, Shinji couldn't use the more deadly mental attacks on either of them without killing his friends.
Bardiel should not have been able to do that, even given Lilim ignorance of mental combat. The other angel was absolutely insane at the time and that meant he might have come up with something insane and unanticipated, but it would have had to kill Asuka before Asuka got lucky and killed Bardiel. Yet Asuka's sanity was still intact, and she seemed to have the same mind and memories. Asuka was a very combative person. Without razing her mind to the ground, without destroying all of her awareness, all of her reasons for fighting and will to fight, Bardiel shouldn't have been able to pacify her.
Shinji seemed to think that "It's Asuka," was explanation enough, and Earth… was an exception to just about every rule of angel-planetary human relations, and yet…
Better yet, why on earth was he looking a gift horse in the mouth? He should be glad that one of Shinji's friends had survived all of this intact. It would have been nice if she annihilated Bardiel as soon as Bardiel tried to invade her mind, true, since Shinji trying to focus on kicking Bardiel out had given his father an excuse to test the dummy plug in actual combat, forcing Shinji to have to focus on defending his mind from his mother and the plug, both of which were hooked into his nervous system thanks to the Eva itself and thus in a position to use physical systems to bypass his mental shields.
Pointless to think of this now, but at least it was a distraction from the great cloud of dark thoughts. From being on earth, in range of more of SEELE's supporters. His worshippers. He'd hoped that NERV would mostly be free of such people, but it seemed as though the old men were trying to get as many of their loyal agents into Gendo's domain as possible given the opportunity, which was only sensible of them. Gendo didn't care enough about those who grew his food to have their backgrounds checked, and it made it easier for SEELE to cover up that Kaworu was the real reason NERV could still grow food nourished by the earth.
Even the gardeners who weren't in on the secret had picked up the reverence their fellows had for him.
…At least being worshipped as a life-giving deity, a god of crops and harvests, was better than being worshipped as a bringer of death? For at least some Lilim to pray to live, instead of for the release of death?
Still embarrassing. Still a strain. Still so hard not to grant their wishes, not to make of this world a cradle for humanity once again, even though that would kill those who had vested their hopes in him and his 'green thumb.'
When he lived on the moon, he could focus on what he experienced with Shinji, that second life. Now his life was Shinji's second life.
Kind of you to give me this illusion of mental privacy, he thought, smiling to himself as his fingers caressed the keys.
A birthday gift.
Oh, it was at least half an offering: his guess was that the gardening maintenance staff had chipped in together to buy it and many of them were in the know.
But the one who asked when his birthday was, when he'd been down here a year and a half and no party? The one who was shocked to find out that he'd never had a birthday party, because who would celebrate the official day of his birth?
The day of Second Impact?
Several months later, he was honestly surprised. Really honestly. He'd sensed the conspiratorial air, but the gardening staff was always hiding something from someone. Orders were to stockpile everything for NERV and UN use, but humanitarian and financial interests aligned when it came to creative mislaying of produce. Kaworu was officially on the NERV/SEELE proper payroll, so he was in the category of people who, well, what they didn't officially know wouldn't hurt them.
It wasn't as though they'd impoverished themselves to buy him this. Someone might even have traded it for food outright.
This piano represented Lilim who weren't starving, because of his labor and the labor he made possible. This piano represented the art created by the Lilim, the achievements of their culture. The songs they could only perform if they went on living. If there were people left to hear those songs.
People like those who sat around him now, even as his mind wandered, even as he hoped Shinji was paying more attention to the music than to Kaworu's momentary dark thoughts. He'd worked to cheer Shinji up, make him happy since he was very small, and now Shinji had appointed himself Kaworu's keeper. It seemed less like fair repayment and more like vengeance somehow? When Kaworu didn't want anyone to talk him out of sacrificing his life.
"Tough."
So much for mental privacy: nothing an angel could do to keep a Lilim out. Yet it brought a smile to his lips, and he was glad that Shinji was someone who cared for his loved ones.
So much better than his father.
Someone like this deserved to survive. No matter what it took.
He didn't need psychic abilities to tell who had just walked in, not when half his audience started to sidle towards the nearest exit. Kaji might not be uptight about the black market, and he might have set up quite a few contacts, but he was still a UN Inspector and since obviously he'd lose his job if he was found to be responsible for tons of missing produce, the people who knew he was on their side hadn't spread that around the entire department. For those not in the know, his entrance was a cue to skedaddle and generally act like they hadn't spent the last hour or so hanging around watching 'Peter Pan' play piano while they were on the clock.
Kaworu was grateful for Kaji's arrival because it was probably the only reason he wasn't getting another lecture from Shinji now about not dying. Kaworu was family, and Shinji didn't care what his reason was, because Kaworu was not going to abandon him the way his father and mother had.
Even if he was rarely in two places having two separate conversations these days, Kaworu was still perfectly capable of talking to Kaji and listening to Shinji. Shinji wasn't as good at it, and this was something he wanted to hear.
The piano shifted, just a little (thankfully not a creak) as Kaji leaned against it, nonchalant as ever. He shifted around a little as Kaworu continued to play, but said nothing. Not until Kaworu finished his current song. Holtz's The Planets consisted of seven songs which had to be performed one after another. There was a version by the original composer for two pianos, or at least two players, but without Shinji or any other accompaniment Kaworu was forced to improvise quite a lot. Kaji finally moved when the clapping started, as Kaworu shook off Jupiter's joy and steeled himself for Saturn's song of death.
The pat on his shoulder wasn't a brush-pass: no scrap of paper bearing a message was slipped under his shirt.
Angelic hearing had already picked up Kaji placing his message inside the piano.
"SEELE's boy," was how Misato Katsuragi addressed him.
"My name is Kaworu Nagisa," he said to be polite and introduce himself, even though everyone on this world surely knew his name, considered him the hero when the credit should go to Shinji. "Thank you for arranging this meeting, Misato Katsuragi." Even though Kaworu's control over technology made it easy to sneak out of NERV, he'd still needed transportation to WILLE, or for them to come to him. Technically he didn't need a ride, since he could fly and teleport, but for them to sense an AT field headed towards them would certainly start this off on the wrong foot.
The two and a half years since he (and Shinji) last saw her had not been especially kind. There was a darkness to her, in her eyes and lurking behind her shields.
It was miraculous that someone, anyone, could endure what she had and still carry on. SEELE had locked her away from all human contact until she forgot language, one of the only things the Lilim could use to reach out to others at all. She'd suppressed those memories in order to carry on, and now that she must be trying to remember the truth of Second Impact, anything her captors might have let slip while she was little more than a dumb animal, anything she could use to get vengeance for her father, her world and herself?
It was his intention to be completely honest with her. On a planet where it was so hard to verify that someone was trustworthy, the only way to earn trust was to be trustworthy. How could he ask Misato to help him, them, unless he extended trust to her, treated her like a rational adult, someone worthy of trust and respect herself?
The person who stood in front of him was not rational. Not sane, he might have said, except Lilim defined 'sane' as 'functional' and Misato was able to function well enough to take care of not just herself but an entire organization.
It would be a more accurate (and more fair) assessment to say that when it came to certain things, it would be unfair to expect her to be rational.
If he revealed his true nature to her, he was not walking out of here alive. Since dying here and now would accomplish nothing, he could only hope that Kaji didn't volunteer the information during this conversation. It was clear he hadn't told Misato already: hopefully he'd realize that Kaworu had changed his mind and wait until later to ask why.
Lilim ability to read others without telepathy was very impressive when it worked at all instead of causing them to make completely unfounded and inaccurate assumptions about each other. More of the latter type than the former happened at places with an international staff whose members 'spoke' different body languages, like NERV's gardening staff. Still, Kaji was an advanced practitioner of the art, and he was the one to emphasize the importance of breaking this to Misato properly.
Misato did need to know, but Kaworu was going to have to ask Kaji to be the one to tell her.
Preferably while WILLE was on the other side of the planet from NERV.
Surprised that Shinji wasn't commenting, Kaworu's heart fell even further when he realized that Shinji must blame himself for Misato's condition. He might even have… Yes, he had withdrawn from Kaworu's mind.
…There might not be a better chance to discuss certain things, things Shinji wouldn't allow him to say or even think if he was watching over his foster father.
"It was Kaji who did the arranging," Misato said, leaning against the wall with the lamp with the hidden camera. The watchers were… Dr. Akagi, Maya Ibuki and Suzuhara's little sister. He was glad to sense her alive and well: the world's computer records were no longer as comprehensive as they once were, and it wasn't as though he could ask about the whereabouts of someone he shouldn't know existed. The Suzuharas and other children from Shinji's school were long gone by the time Kaworu Nagisa could wander the ruins of Tokyo-3's outer city.
"I hope you like the watermelon," he said while he tried to think of what else to say, how to phrase it to avoid dying now. Shinji was already upset by what happened to Misato: if he looked for Kaworu again and found him dead? If he thought he was responsible for Misato killing him, thought he'd turned her into a murderer?
Perhaps he should wait, for Shinji's sake, and yet even now there were so many Lilim other than Shinji, so many who deserved to live, just as he did.
Her only response to that conversational gambit was an unimpressed look: get on with it.
"How much," has Dr. Akagi told you about – No. "How much do you know about the Ayanami Series?"
"Enough to guess that you were also made in a lab."
He nodded: that was fairly obvious. Surely she could guess more than that, but after considering why she hadn't said anything more, he supposed that it made sense for her not to give away what she knew? What Kaji and Ritsuko might have told her, in case he was loyal to SEELE after all? "Both of us were intended to serve as secondary defenses," second AT fields, "and power sources," S2 engines, "for the Evas. But both Gendo Ikari and SEELE had what they thought were greater purposes for our creation."
Black and slick, a teardrop shape: he could have sprouted the seeds inside the watermelon they'd brought with them, but that might have ruined it as they sent their roots throughout the fruit's flesh. "I would rather serve this purpose," he said, showing them the seed in his palm.
This watermelon sprout's roots curled around his hand, dug into his flesh: it took merely a twist of will to turn his blood to LCL and thence to food for the plant. The primordial soup, the building blocks of life.
Maya gasped, but Misato didn't: her eyes just narrowed, looking at him and glancing at Kaji. Did he really think someone with clearly inhuman powers was trustworthy?
Since no one actually said anything, Kaworu continued, saying "I could repair the area around Tokyo-3's ruins safely, but any more than that, and I might…No, I will lose control before it's complete. I would like to try, but I will need help. And someone to kill me at the proper moment. It would have to be after I've lost control, but before anyone is hurt." It occurred to him that using the word 'hurt' to describe being turned to LCL without one's mental data transcribed or soul stored was a disingenuous understatement. That was killed, not hurt. "The person who made this world one that would support you is Lilith: her soul dwells within Rei. The Rei you knew. If she's recovered safely, I think she might be able to finish whatever I can't, without harming anyone." Once she was trained, but Shinji was using what he found in Kaworu's memories to teach her.
Bonding with his sister helped keep him… not distracted, but give him something to do besides looking down at the ruined world and seeing the people responsible (other than himself) through Kaworu's eyes.
Out of the corners of those eyes, Kaworu could see Misato glancing at Ritsuko. For what? To see if WILLE's equipment was detecting an AT field? It wouldn't now when Kaworu was using so little power, and most of it on his own body and something right outside of it. If their equipment detected any time anyone used the light of the soul, having Lilim inside WILLE would set it off constantly. Even if this world's humans used their souls for very little, the fact they weren't trained meant their use was unconscious and uncontrolled, while Kaworu was trying to do this quietly, without giving off too much power.
Since this world's angel-related technology was not only early but deliberately crippled by SEELE and NERV? Of course, Dr. Akagi was one of those doing the crippling: what might she have devised now that she no longer cared about how it was in Gendo Ikari's best interests for angels in human form to go undetected?
From the way Ritsuko was looking back at Misato, Ritsuko knew what he was (that he was an angel, at least), and knew Misato knew, and wanted to know what her friend was looking at her for.
Misato frowned a little, before nodding to acknowledge Ritsuko's point. "You're not hu-Lilim," she reminded herself, "but if we were killing people just for that, we'd have to start with Asuka."
"Asuka?" Kaworu asked, startled, and even though he should be taking advantage of this opportunity he still reached out mentally and grabbed Shinji by the scruff of the neck, because this was something he would want to know.
Shinji had set off Third Impact, even with the best of reasons, Rei had been revived and killed by Gendo twice now since then, trying to destroy her personality and capacity to be someone other than Yui (fortunately Shinji and Kaworu were both storing backup data for her) and now Asuka?
What next, would Misato…
Misato had been tortured by locking her away from all positive contact with other humans for years. The same thing that had inadvertently driven the other angels insane.
There was no one among Shinji's small circle at NERV who hadn't suffered because of him, was there? No one on this broken world.