Chapter Warnings: Detailed suicide attempt, self-harm
**This is the most gruesome chapter. Steel yourselves, friends**
Things got better after he gave in.
He had reached the point where he could succeed in most of the tests. He had no trouble holding himself aloft when the ground disappeared beneath him, he could manipulate electronics as easily as blinking and the slew of ammunition volleyed at him may as well have been pillows.
Japanese came easily to him, and for this, he thanked the fact that he had always been a quick study. His teacher had not been forgiving of mistakes, so few mistakes were made.
He did as he was told without any sign of resistance.
And for that, he was rewarded much like how a prisoner is rewarded for good behaviour.
On his eleventh birthday, he was given free time to do as he pleased to an extent, one hour a day, and he was given access to the small collection of books that were deemed suitable, many of which were classic plays and sonnets and texts.
On his twelfth, he was asked if he wanted a gift. What he responded with was a request for a piano and a book or two of sheet music. The piano was out of tune with chipped keys and the books were worn and scribbled on, but, all the same, his wishes were granted.
On his thirteenth, the chains that he wore while in his room were removed, his wrists and ankles feeling bizarrely light in their absence.
But to say his circumstances were enjoyable was laughable. There was still tests. There was still pain. It seemed never-ending. The only difference was that he was getting used to them and that he had given himself over to the fact that he had no way of stopping what was happening to him.
He still wished for a way to stop it.
And he found that way in a check-up room a handful of weeks after he became fourteen. The nurse attending to him left for a moment to ask something of another member of personnel passing by and he had seen his chance. He had experimented in the past with manipulating the cameras that watched his every move. The moment the nurse had turned her back, he shot his eyes up to the camera in the corner of the ceiling and concentrated, freezing the feed on the camera, the blinking red light holding, for those few seconds it took him to step forward slightly, reach a hand out, and grab a scalpel out of the right hand drawer of the desk where he had caught a glimpse of it earlier. He grasped the blade of it between his right thumb and forefinger and yanked on it, pulling the handle in the opposite direction. It didn't come off. He swore quietly under his breath. He could hear the faintest sounds of the nurse's steps down the hall growing steadily louder. He pulled again and it move a few millimeters. Yes, there we go, just a little more.
The footsteps grew louder.
The blade moved a few millimeters more.
The nurse stepped into the room to find Kaworu sitting where she had left him, the light on the security camera blinking as usual.
Kaworu went through the rest of the check up doing his best to not cut himself open on the blade hidden in his mouth.
Kaworu's breathing was fast and laboured. He sat on the bed in his small claustrophobic room, the scalpel he'd taken earlier gripped tightly in his shaking hand and that little red light on the room's security camera holding. Blood was running in slow droplets from gaping wounds in his wrist and thighs, but it wasn't enough. His mind was racing with thoughts he'd been restraining for the past four years, not allowing them to the forefront of his mind, aware that they would destroy him. Now he left them free. Now they were fuel.
He felt trapped, constricted in his own body. He wanted to escape, to release his soul somehow. He wasn't sure he wanted to die. He just knew he didn't want to live.
His gaze fell to the slight left of his chest, memories flooding his mind as he remembered his father hovering over him, the surgeons scrapping away and peeling back flesh so many times in that precise area, the agony of sharp metal crushing into his flesh and bones. The smooth skin seemed to laugh at him, all physical memory long gone as if trying to convince him it had all been a nightmare. He wouldn't make the same mistakes his father had. He wouldn't fail.
He raised the blade to his skin and pressed down harshly, hissing at the sharp stinging sensation as the metal sunk in. With his breath caught in his throat, a moan of pain caught with it, he dragged the blade downwards. He remembered the incisions he'd received when he was five and he emulated them, digging the blade in far enough that he felt it scrapping against the hardness of bone.
His consciousness wavered slightly. His own mind was trying to stop him, get him to pass out and drop the scalpel which he was already having some trouble holding due to the slick blood now coating his hands. For the first time, he was glad that pain didn't seem to make him lose consciousness. It wavered, yes, but while that had happened in times previous, he had never stopped being awake during any of it. He needed to finish this so that there was no chance of waking up again. Grabbing at the thin blanket which had never offered much in the way of warmth, he used it to wipe at the blood obscuring his view of the finished border of red. Wiping his hands and the small portion of the scalpel blade he could hold properly, he then reaffirmed his grip and, with his left hand, dug his nails into the cut, yanking at it. The blade was then slipped under those fingers and he began a sawing motion, carving and peeling away the flesh. The pain that shot through him in waves was blinding, but he steeled himself and forced himself to continue. He was used to pain. He had had similar magnitudes of it numerous times. He could handle this.
Once he'd gotten half of the skin away, he had a decent view of the pulsating glowing sphere resonating from where his heart should have been. He had heard his surgeons commenting on it mid dissection, had imagined it from their descriptions, but this was the first time he had ever gotten a proper look at it himself. He wanted to cut it out, to purge his body of it. Then he could die with nothing in him that wasn't human. He could die a human death. But his damned ribs were in the way and the scalpel was barely damaging them. He should have found something better, something with a serrated edge.
Again, he wiped his hands and the blade on the blanket, then he grabbed the small, sharp object with as much of his fingers as he could and positioned the blade so that it was aimed at a spot between the ribs. He may not be able to get his core out, but he could sure as hell break it if he tried hard enough. He lowered his AT Field as much as he could and readied himself.
And then there was a knock on the door and the sound of the lock being unlatched. A nurse stepped in. He froze, his eyes wide with fear as she raised her own from the clipboard she'd been looking at and her gaze fell on him. Both of them were still for what felt like a year, her standing stock still in the doorway, a look of terror on her face, and him sitting naked on his blood-soaked bed, knife in hand and pointed at his own carved out chest.
She screamed.
She backed up and, still screaming, turned and ran.
He didn't have much time.
He took a quick, deep breath and slammed his hands down against his chest, a metallic scrapping sound accompanying his ragged breathes as the scalpel glanced off his core, paying no mind to the end of the blade also slicing into his finger. He repeated the action, but it barely seemed to leave scratches. Tears started welling in his eyes. He only had maybe a few seconds left. He had to do this. He had to do this. He quickened the motion, stabbing over and over, but still the damage was pitiful. Why couldn't he do this?! Why couldn't he just die already?! He heard loud, rushed footsteps coming down the hall.
A doctor accompanied by several guards burst through the doorway just in time to hear a loud crack and see the boy slump off the bed and fall to the floor, the scalpel tumbling to ground.
"The core has been damaged!"
"What about the S² engine?"
"Unable to confirm yet, though it seems to still be running!"
"The copies having been perfected yet! What will we do if it breaks?"
"Get him on the operating table! Now!"
"He created a crack in the front hemisphere!"
"It's small! We should be able to fix it!"
"S² engine is functioning normally!"
"All vitals are normal!"
"Help me patch him up! He's going to be alright!"
Why did he have to wake up again?
His entire body ached, throbbing in time with the beating he could feel droning on in his chest from that thing that wasn't a heart. Just the process of breathing hurt like hell, every intake of air pulling at the staples they had punched into his chest.
He pushed himself up in bed only to find himself greeted by the jingling of cold metal. The chains had returned and were shorter than ever, no longer letting him even leave the bed to pick up one of the books he had left just a few feet away.
It was as if he was back to the beginning; back to being a ten year old in an unfamiliar place where every face seems as though it was laughing at him, just waiting for the chance to put him through further agony.
He was scared again.
"Do you not understand after all this time?" spoke the grand monolith floating before him. "Your life is not your own. Your actions are not your own. You belong to us."
Kaworu sat cuffed in the center of a darkened room in an uncomfortable, heavy metal chair bolted to the ground. On all sides of him were his masters: the members of Seele. It wasn't their physical forms that graced him. Huge holographic stones with their glowing red numbers and letters were the most he had ever seen of them, their presence saved solely for conversations they deemed to be of high importance. Evidently, this was one of those.
"What you did yesterday was to try to steal from up something of high importance."
Important. Even if it was just to these faceless voices who seemed more like demons than humans. Even if it was just them, there was someone he was important to.
He was important to someone.
He repeated that word in his head over and over until it stopped seeming like a word, and even then he continued, turning it into a mantra.
"You will be punished for what you did."
His head snapped up.
The sense of dread that he had been floating in swallowed him, that short phrase dragging him beneath the surface.
The next thing he knew, electricity was coursing through his body and his mouth was opened in a silent scream.
And then, as quickly as it had begun, it was over.
His head fell forward, hanging limply, his eyes blown wide and saliva dripping from his mouth as he panted from the sudden onslaught of unfamiliar pain. He had gone through many, many excruciating things in his time here, but never before had he experienced being electrocuted.
"Take this as a warning. We will not be so kind next time. The Dead Sea Scrolls foretell that the Third Angel will arrive in less than a week's time. We will call you then. Until that time, you are to do as you are told and nothing else. Do you understand?"
The Third Angel. Another like him. Had they grown up in a situation like his? Had they gone through the same kinds of tests and experiments as him? If he was the Seventeeth, did that mean he had to watch fourteen people just like him be killed before he himself entered the battlefield to likely do the same?
"You are dismissed."
A/N: Apparently I lied at the end of the last chapter with my statement that this one would be out in a couple days. You can blame that on me being too lazy to edit it so it's been sitting almost completed for several days now.
Next chapter starts Part 3 where Shinji will finally come into play!