4. Burial.
Putting the 'fun' in funeral – and fundamentalism.

A/N: The cameo in this chapter is extrapolated from the character's backstory – their university recollections are canon, all else is made up.

There was no eulogy at Gendo Ikari's funeral, if it could even be called one. With no body to honour or cremate, much of the ritual in Shinto or Buddhist tradition was impossible, and the scale of the Third Impact disaster meant that officiants and holy workers were busy around-the-clock, with no time for prolonged ceremonies. But truly, it was difficult to say whether the brevity was due to practical causes, or a reflection of the Commander's personal conduct.

I kept such uncharitable thoughts to myself, however – though could not entirely suppress my curiosity regarding the particular behaviours exhibited by different Lilim in a specialised cultural setting, including the subtle (and sometimes not-so-subtle) differences between those of their daily lives and in the context of a public social ritual.

Misato had never shown particular esteem, let alone affection, for the Commander – but at several moments I noticed her quietly wipe away a tear. It came to me, after some time, that of course her grief was for Shinji's sake, not his father's.

Dr Akagi, customarily vibrant with the drive and determination fuelling her formidable accomplishments, stood listless, gaze vacant, looking as though a gentle breeze could topple her. The consummate problem-solver had at last met her match, in death.

And Shinji, normally the first to provide for others, to cater and host, stepped into the few remaining traditional tasks of the eldest son with no satisfaction or relief, when normally he found such structure to be reassuring, and an opportunity for self-validation.

It was a brief ritual and a dry one; we assembled at the memorial marker for Yui Ikari, witnessed her husband's urn lowered into the earth, and listened as a junior priest recited a short prayer to usher the Commander's spirit into the afterlife. He asked the assembly whether any mourner wished to speak; one or two of the guests seemed to briefly gather themselves to do so before settling back, and ultimately it appeared we all preferred to keep our thoughts to ourselves.

There was no wake held afterwards; the priest departed, and each guest waited in line to present their condolences (and gifts of food) to the Commander's family – Shinji and Rei, as biological and adopted children, were the foci of the procession, though with Misato's firm support.

When I stepped up in my turn Shinji was dry-eyed but visibly drained.

"Please remember what I said to you the other day," I told him quietly. "The gap in expectation and response may be disconcerting, but you are not condemned by it."

"Thank you," he said, and in spite of the customary reticence of the Japanese in public, when I offered my arms he sank into them without hesitation. I tried to put all my comfort and strength into the embrace; when at length he drew back, his expression was no longer bloodless.

"Can I call you later?" he asked.

"Of course. Whatever you need, I will be there." When I smiled, his return was small but unwavering.

I stepped aside to allow the next attendee to address him, and turned towards Rei, who stood by the gravestone, looking more reflective than anything else. She had only nodded acknowledgement to most of the other guests, though I did hear her soft voice respond to Commander Fuyutsuki, currently taking his leave of her.

His arm was bound in a sling, and I found my eyes drawn to it inexplicably. Something unsettling, a feeling strange yet familiar, slowed my steps and held my gaze.

"Nagisa?" he said, noticing my attention.

I stumbled, breaking the fixation, but managed to catch myself before falling, with a hand on … a gravestone. Oops.

Quickly I snatched it back. "Commander," I responded with forced casualness. "Um, lovely weather, isn't it?"

He raised an eyebrow. "Indeed. As it has been for the last fifteen years, following Second Impact."

You should have seen the weather after the first one, I thought. Out loud I said, "What happened to your arm, if I may ask?"

He cast a glance at the sling. "Oh, old bones aren't what they used to be. These days even a light bump can have dramatic results."

"I'm sorry to hear that," I said, and resisted the impulse to probe his thoughts for the truth; the funeral of my best friend's father was hardly the occasion for psychic espionage. "I hope it heals well and you have a speedy recovery."

"Very kind of you," he said. "If you'll excuse me…"

I bowed politely as he moved away, but had to drag my eyes away from his arm; after a moment I was able to return my attention to Rei, only to find that she was occupied.

Dr Akagi approached her, and I was forced to wait. With a degree of subtlety I managed to eavesdrop from a distance too far for a human's ear, lingering beside the table repository of gifts.

"Rei…"

"Dr Akagi."

"My condolences on your loss."

"Thank you. And the same to you, Doctor." A moment's pause. "Was that the correct thing to say?"

"Yes, it was fine." The slightest smile stirred the grief in Dr Akagi's face. "Did Shinji teach you some responses to what people say at occasions like this?"

Rei nodded.

"Of course. He's a good kid." She rummaged in her purse, and withdrew a small tissue-paper parcel. "Here. I already left a tray with Misato, but this is for you."

"Oh." Rei blinked as she, seemingly on autopilot, accepted the proffered gift. "…It is shaped like a cat."

"That was the only baking tray in the cupboard," admitted Dr Akagi, and I had to smother a grin.

"Thank you, Doctor."

She took a deep breath. "Rei … I owe you an apology. I haven't treated you well, and I'm sorry for that. Since losing … him…" She sniffed; her voice began to quaver. "Since then I've realised, or allowed myself to realise, some things about the way I was living my life, the way I was treating people. I hope you'll forgive me."

There was silence for a moment; Rei seemed lost for words, and did not respond as Dr Akagi collected herself.

Dr Akagi straightened and cleared her throat, but her voice dropped and I had to listen intently to catch her words. "Rei, I understand Commander Fuyutsuki has taken over your guardianship?"

"Yes." Rei seemed relieved to at last know how to answer.

"I thought he might. Listen, he and Commander Ikari were close, as you know, and they had many … values in common. A shared agenda, if you understand my meaning."

Her voice lowered further. "I want you to think about your own values and agenda, too. After all, you didn't come through Third Impact by anyone else's grace, but the strength of your own will. Remember that, won't you, Rei?"

Rei was staring at her, eyes wide. "Dr Akagi…"

"Just bear it in mind. Grief can be … clarifying." Her voice shook towards the end, and without waiting for an answer she turned and hurried away, hand over her mouth and heels thudding dully on the lawn.

Rei stared after her, visibly bemused, before shaking her head slightly, as though filing away for later the strange interaction.

As I approached she caught sight of me, and a fractional relaxation in her posture spoke of relief at my presence. Seeing this, I decided not to enquire about Dr Akagi's words unless Rei brought it up herself – in any case, they were less important than my friend's bereavement, and so it was on this I spoke.

"How are you feeling, Rei?" I asked, "if you would like to share."

She gave a miniscule sigh. "There is a gap in my heart. I don't know if it will ever close – he was my guardian and my guide. But…" and her hands clenched; I saw that within them she held a pair of eyeglasses. Had they belonged to the Commander? Did she recall his attempted violence to her during Third Impact? "…But the gap is not the centre of me, and even if it feels possible, I will not fall in."

I put my arm around her shoulder and leant our heads together. "You will navigate it," I agreed, "and one day it will be past. And on that journey, as long as it takes, you will always deserve any comfort you wish for – your strength does not deny your right to the care of others. Please remember that there are people who care for you – especially Shinji. You and he can understand each other in this, I believe."

"Thank you, Nagisa," she said quietly. "You told me once that the heart can be slow to change, and does not conform to the wishes of its bearer. I will keep this in my thoughts, along with your kindness."

Gently I pressed a kiss to her hair. "The heart feels pain so easily, but to be gentle and open in a world of bruises is far from weakness or fault – it is deeply estimable."

Misato's voice intruded, but softly. "Rei? If you're ready, we're heading back now."

Rei nodded, and when I released her she crouched down and placed the glasses in the pit on top of the urn. She then turned and joined Misato, who smiled sadly at me.

"Thanks for all your support, Kaworu."

I bowed. "Not at all. Thank you for looking after Shinji and Rei – it eases my mind to know they are in your care."

"And the same to you." With a wave, she turned and walked with them back to her car.

I made my own way from the cemetery, nodding acknowledgement to the other NERV employees, and out towards the bus station.

It was a bright clear day, as Fuyutsuki had attributed to the perpetual summer inflicted by Second Impact's climate catastrophe, and I slung my jacket over one arm and pocketed my hands to amble comfortably along in the shade of footpath-verging trees.

I became aware that a car had slowed down as it drew alongside me, and now matched my walking pace, shadowing with obvious intent. I glanced at it from the corner of my eye, and the passenger window descended.

"I'm warning you," I called, "my roommate is a mass-murdering psychopath."

"Very funny," said Kaji from the driver's seat, and braked. "Get in, you slanderer."

I joined him in the car and buckled my seatbelt, though not soon enough to avoid being thrown by his acceleration. "I did not hear you disputing my assertion."

"I'll see you in court," he threatened idly, before addressing the topic of the day. "So about this place you asked me to look into…"

"Keel's customary residence during his stays in Tokyo, yes."

"What exactly are you expecting to find, again?" His eyes were on the road, but his attention shared to me, and I wondered whether he was testing to see how much I would tell him.

"I'm not sure," I admitted. "I last visited as a small child, so my memory may be patchy – existing through time in this form has its limitations."

He gave a crooked smile. "This form, huh? I'd love to hear about the alternative."

I shrugged. "It is … difficult to describe what came before my incarnation in human shape. Time, or at least my passage through it, was less strictly linear or unidirectional, and much of it spent in dormancy anyway. Though I do remember sometimes waking and seeing this world, from our exile on the White Moon. The shapes of it used to be different."

"Shapes?"

"You call them continents."

Kaji was very still for a moment, and only at the last second seemed to return to himself to avoid running off the road when it curved. "…Huh."

I added, "I think it must have been a long time between awakenings, for that change to be apparent."

"Continental drift happens over hundreds of millions of years," Kaji confirmed. "You're officially the ultimate champion of napping."

"Snooze buttons are the highest achievement of the Lilim culture," I stated, and he laughed.

We drove onwards, and I reflected on the efficacy of deploying information regarding my Angelic existence to deflect inquiries regarding my human one – Kaji's curiosity couldn't help but get the better of him, and distract him from any line of questioning, through the overriding intrigue of another lifeform.

It occurred to me the strangeness of trusting any human with details of my life, but I had become so accustomed to Kaji being in my confidence that I recognised it would take a significant change for him to again present a danger to me. Not to mention, I held the threat of his own exposure in reserve.

But really, I understood my comfort with Kaji to be the product of friendship and affection, and could only hope that he felt the same way.

We eventually reached our destination – a grand modern Western-style mansion set incongruously amidst traditional Japanese gardens. Both house and grounds were already showing signs of neglect, and I wondered if the property had been abandoned even before Third Impact, as the ruction between SEELE and NERV's agendas had prompted Keel to distance himself from the Tokyo-3 cohort.

Kaji had parked some distance away, and we wore non-descript clothing – I changed my formal jacket from the funeral for a tradesman-like waterproof coat and a cap, while Kaji donned a reflective vest and gloves and carried a clipboard. It was only a casual deflection, but we had backup information and false credentials if confronted.

I had prepared lockpicks and a jammer for the front gate security system, but as it turned out a generic passcode was enough to grant us entry, and even through the front door. Kaji cast for visual surveillance, which once found was easy enough to run a looped feed through, and we proceeded into the entrance hall.

It was smaller than my vague memory – the ceilings didn't leap to their arches, the floors were not vast expanses to be crossed in a journey – but the musty hospital-like smell grabbed me as it always had. Between Keel's failing health, with its prosthetic accoutrements, and my own sometimes-precarious physical habitation, medical attention had been a necessity at any residence.

"Is that you?" Kaji asked, startling me from recollection.

I followed his pointing finger to a cabinet on which were strewn several printed photographs. The one on top depicted Lorenz Keel and a blurry figure in a lab coat and glasses, each holding the hand of a small child with shaggy grey hair and blood-red eyes. Even in the faded image, there was a distinct luminescence to the diminutive central figure.

"Ah, yes. I don't remember that photo being taken – but it must have been before I learnt to dampen my glow."

"Your 'glow'?" Kaji repeated, as he picked up the photo and examined it.

"What you Lilim call the AT field – the light of my soul." A sunbeam fell through a high window and I basked in it a moment. "The wall that encloses each mind in existence, and which may be manifested externally as a physical barrier – or to support the biological housing of a sentient being."

Kaji folded the photo and tucked it in an inner pocket of his vest. "And that's what separates Angels and Evas from humans, and why no other weapon constructed can match them."

"Oh, I wouldn't say no weapon," I mused. "The positron rifle was able to kill Leliel, even though their AT field was at the time still defensively active." I shuddered as I recalled the pain of that experience, transmitted by my sibling in their moment of death.

"And really," I regathered myself to continue, "nothing is as powerful as the human drive for survival – the strength found in creativity, and the potential granted to you by your gift of evolutionary adaptation. Even Iruel's self-rewriting was by comparison a brute-force imposition on their physical form, still more characteristic of the Tree of Life than that of Knowledge. You Lilim evolve more subtly – more patiently – and through nurturing your offspring; you grow in collaboration with one another, and with the future, and this is how you earn your place amongst the stars."

"Flatterer." Kaji bumped my shoulder with his own and we shared a smile.

We passed through the living quarters of the house and came to a connected wing, which yielded a conference room and a small medical clinic. This second room held my attention a moment – though it had been years, and faded with disuse, I still detected and recalled the mingled scents of blood and bleach.

"This doesn't look like a fun place," said Kaji at my side. He caught sight of my preoccupied expression. "Bad memories?"

I waved him off. "It's all right. There is no reason to dwell on these experiences, after all – they are in the past, and I have no more need of the … interventions … to support this physical form." Unlike Rei, I thought. My counterpart still relied on the regular treatment of NERV's medical facilities to sustain her constructed body's health, and as such was dependent on Dr Akagi in particular – a situation I found more disquieting than memories of my own experiences, whatever might result from the doctor's strange declaration to her patient earlier.

Besides, my attending physician had been far more congenial than Rei's.

Kaji was checking the room over, opening cupboards and rummaging through cabinets. A pile of paper records grew on the examining table as he did so, and I flicked through them idly.

"Anything incriminating?"

"Of SEELE, or myself?"

"Either or. SEELE stopped being my main target a while back, but I'll take whatever I can get. Can't have too much truth where these bastards are concerned." Satisfied with his unearthing, he turned his attentions to the computer at the desk.

"Even though most, if not all, of the people involved are dead?"

"Third Impact didn't bring my family back, so yeah."

My stillness caught his attention, and he gave a grimace.

"Don't get the wrong idea, Kaworu. I'm not a good guy, or a hero – I don't have any kind of noble agenda, like to save humankind or anything like that. If I had, I should've given you up to NERV as soon as I found out what you are."

I flinched, and he put his hand on my shoulder gently. "But my enemy was never the Angels. It was the ones who caused Second Impact – who put the world, and everyone in it, through hell. I survived, at the cost of my brother's life, and my friends, and the only way I could think to try and atone for that was to expose the truth. The reason it all happened."

"Adam." To my own ears, my voice sounded as though it came from a long way off. "My family."

"The humans who made contact with Adam."

"Is there a difference?"

"All the difference in the world." His hand under my chin lifted my eyes to his. "You didn't choose to be born to Adam – he didn't choose to be interfered with. There were people, humans, who knew what could happen, and they chose to sacrifice half the planet. Those who suffer deserve to know why."

The ghost of a smile crept onto my face. "That sounds like a moderately noble agenda to me."

He huffed a fractional laugh. "There's no convincing you, is there." But his posture eased as he returned to his task, and I did the same.

"There is not much here," I concluded after some time, "and only referring to the anonymised 'Patient T'. It seems that everything was transferred to the main lab in Hamburg." I gathered the papers in a bundle – no point leaving them lying around.

"And this thing's been hard-wiped and cold-cut." He flicked the computer casing with a finger. "At least that's sorted. Let's see what we can do from there…"

We returned to the conference room, and while Kaji took boards off the walls to expose the central server, I booted up the main workstation at the head of the table. Damage to several pressure points and keys in the interface told me Keel had used this one exclusively – he had had much the same gentleness and elegance with technology as he had with his fellow humans.

The generic passcodes from previously were no use here, but with a combination of my (still-active) clearance and Kaji's own subversive skills – together with some direct rewiring overrides – we were able to find what remained of the recorded communicae from the conference room. I set up a keyword search for anything concerning me directly, copying all to my own portable storage, and while that ran itself out readied a seek-and-destroy virus to hunt down any transmitted copies of the data I was taking. Meanwhile, Kaji established the environmental controls we would use to physically cover our tracks, both here and remotely.

There was a steady-traffic connection from this room to the lab facility in Hamburg where I had spent much of my 'childhood' (the ageing of this humanoid vessel was not exactly in accordance with Lilim norms, but neither was it entirely dissimilar), and it was to this that I turned my attention. The German MAGI were off-limits, of course, but the highly sensitive nature of my existence, when even most of NERV believed Misato Katsuragi to be the only survivor of her father's expedition, had kept Keel and the Committee from sharing that information with nearly all of their colleagues and subordinates.

No, there had been only a select few people and places to which the physical embodiment of Tabris was known, and most of them I knew to be destroyed.

Most of them…

I almost missed it – a tiny nuance in the formatting of some genomic data that would have been indistinguishable to human eyesight, but on the display of an electronic monitor generated an aura perceptible to Angelic vision – in the shape of … a pair of glasses?

I combed back over the readout, and knew I was being signalled to. Someone was calling me, and I suspected I knew whom.

The visual surveillance systems of the lab we were remotely accessing were on a closed circuit, access limited by physical proximity – without being in Hamburg itself, within a few hundred metres of the address, we could not reach them.

Unless we were invited to a local relay point, and the invitation written in invisible ink – with an Angel's 'glow' as the lamp.

"What are you doing?" Kaji asked in alarm, as I shoved past him to connect that wire with this wire. "Are those even compatible?"

"As compatible as car batteries and bicycle headlights," I said, and his eyebrows jumped to his hairline.

"You like making friends, don't you."

"Of course. The Lilim yearning for completion to their loneliness is not the only reason to interact with others." At Keel's workstation, a new window lit up the monitor and I dashed over to it, but kept out of line of sight.

"No? What else you got?"

"Entertainment."

There was a scramble of noise off-screen from the video link, before a face filled the view. "Tabris? Tabris, is that you?"

She looked much the same as I remembered her – a whimsical woman in her early thirties with bright eyes and dark hair, still gathered into girlish twin tails. Her glasses had changed from cats-eye to horn-rim, though still red like blood. She wore a lab coat, but the unevenly rolled sleeves and askew collar showed it had been donned in haste over a casual check-printed dress.

"Are you there, kid? It's just me here, nobody else in the room – whole building, actually – and you can see the full connection array, this is a private channel. So say hi, already! It's been days since Third Impact, and I've been worried!"

I stepped into view of the camera. "Hello, Doctor Makinami."

Her face lit up. "Well if it isn't my favourite biology project! And come on, call me 'Sis', like you used to."

"I'm glad to see you well, Sis," I smiled. Across the room, Kaji's mouth hung open in shock.

"Right back atcha! Look at you, so tall now – must be up to here!" With a flat hand she measured an estimate of my height above her own head. "Last time I saw you in person you were this tiny…" as the hand levelled at her bust; "…and the first time, of course, you were just a baby – well, baby-shaped, anyway." And she cradled an imagined infant with her arms, adding a theatrical sniffle and mimed dab at her eyes. "How it escapes, irretrievable time…"

"Tempus fugit," I agreed.

"And so do Angels, apparently. Can't believe you got away with all that and the NERVlings didn't even clock you! They're really dropping their game, huh?"

"In their defence, their memories were a little … wiped."

"How convenient." She rested her chin on her hand. "So is this the part where you erase all evidence of your existence and hack the environmental controls to destroy my lab here in ol' Hamburg? With all my hard work, and me inside?"

Kaji managed to re-hinge his jaw, and his eyes narrowed. He readied a dialogue screen to commit exactly that, but I gestured for him to wait.

"Something like that." My smile was bitter now. "It would have been easier for me if you had joined the oblivion of Third Impact – then I would not have to consider you a security risk."

"Oh, but I did!" She nodded earnestly. "I'd been curious about it for so long, I just couldn't help myself, y'know? Plus, merging with all those other minds – you've heard the saying, 'everyone has a novel inside them', right? I got to read every book in the world, even the ones that haven't been written yet!" She gave a happy sigh.

"I can see how that would appeal to you. But how did you have time to do so? Instrumentality was over so quickly – the Doors of Guf re-opened, and released all souls to their fates, after only minutes of closure."

"Time dilation," she said promptly. "That's my theory – beyond the Doors is a metaphysical event horizon, and while externally no time proceeds, within them the possibilities and capacity of consciousness are unbound from conventional temporal parameters. I also had a really good nap," she added, and I laughed.

"Truly the most valid utilisation of an apocalypse."

"Of course. And thanks to the Key of Instrumentality – whoever that was – when I decided to come back to the real world, I still had the chance to. –I guess a lot of people did something similar," she mused, "and that's why the mortality rate was comparatively low."

"Your gratitude is due to one Shinji Ikari. –Though I claim some participatory credit," I said graciously, and she clapped her hands.

"Ah-hah, so you were involved! I thought I felt your presence, but everything was so blurry. And did you say Ikari? As in Yui Ikari?"

I blinked. "…He is her son. You know of her?"

She giggled. "Of course! She was kind of a big deal in our circles, also an old crush of mine from university." Dr Makinami's expression softened. "I never got to say a proper goodbye to her in real life – we'd gone separate ways – but in the soul-merge I was able to reach what was left of her, just for a moment. It was … good. I think she must have helped me remember what happened, when otherwise I would've forgotten like everyone else. I got to keep it – our last memory."

"I'm happy for you," I said quietly. I tried not to dwell on the thought that Shinji, occupied with his place as Key, had not had such a chance to commune with his mother.

Dr Makinami mused, "The bonds we humans form might seem futile, or petty, but that doesn't make them meaningless. I'll always be glad to have known the people I've known – including you, little harbinger."

For the first time since I had known her, there was an overcast of sadness in her blue-green eyes.

"All the other Angels are gone now, so I guess it feels more real than it ever did, that our fates are opposed. I'd managed to not really accept that there would be a last time we'd see each other – or that we'd have to say goodbye, and now today suddenly here you are. It's more than I thought I'd get, but it seems I'm greedier than I realised."

"Your kind is prone to such," I observed, not unkindly, and a grin returned to her face.

"Greed is an appropriate response to this gift of a reality. There's always something to do, somewhere to go – a whole world out there, ready to be explored and learned." She met my eyes candidly. "I don't know what your plans are, and I figure you wouldn't tell me even if you could, but I hope at least you can find something satisfying for your time here. However long that ends up being."

But before she could descend again into reverie, Dr Makinami shook herself. "So! You have an agenda, Tabris of Free Will, and I don't think I'm getting back any of those books I lent you."

"My apologies, Sis. I have been busy." Still, I hesitated.

"Understandable. Hey, make sure you read Purgatorio and Paradiso after Inferno, okay? Don't just stop at the big one!"

I met Kaji's eye, and indicated for him to proceed. "You know, it will take a few minutes for the structural damage to take effect. And the Bakelite inundation is not exactly instantaneous."

She laughed lightly. "Wow, you're giving me time to escape? How humane of you! Don't worry, I don't have copies of any of this data – can't get it past the firewalls – and you guys block-boxed us when you linked in just now – good job! I'll be moving on to a new project anyway. No more biology, I'm shifting to library science!" She struck a dramatic pose, one hand on her hip, the other adjusting her glasses.

"Wonderful!" My grin was irrepressible. "Hopefully you will behave more professionally in your new occupation."

Her jaw dropped in offense. "Excuse me?"

"You developed an emotional attachment to the experimental subject under your purview," I accused, still smiling. "I did not recognise it at the time, let alone understand, and so could not appreciate it. But I do now."

Her eyes shone. "You have been learning human things, haven't you. I'm proud – and, yeah, emotionally attached, guilty as charged."

There was a rumble in the background of her connection. "Oop, time to shake a leg. Great talking to you, Tabris! I'll miss you – you always smelled so nice, like LCL."

"Like blood," I clarified, and she smiled blissfully.

"My favourite in the world. Well, take care of yourself, since that's not my job anymore!" She backed away from the monitor.

"Stay safe, Doctor Makinami," I called.

"'Sis'!" she scolded, but was grinning as she turned to leave. "Don't be a stranger – you're already strange enough, hah!" And with that she ducked from the room, and the walls began to cave in behind her.

The video link lasted only seconds more, but Kaji had pulled up local seismological and sonar readings for the lab's location, and we watched indirectly as the facility crumbled into the earth, upper floors cascading into the basement, and all was flooded with thermoplastic that promptly hardened to impermeability after air contact. Even if SEELE still had the resources to excavate the ruins – and they did not – nothing but chaos remained.

Depicted on the other screens, the virus did its work, hunting down and erasing any copies that had been made of the incriminating data, until the only information that could identify me as the Seventeenth Angel existed on my own computer, and in the minds of myself, my friends in Tokyo-3 … and Dr Makinami.

Kaji waited until we had left Keel's residence behind us – a slow-release combustible gas filling the building, with ignition timed for one hour hence – before speaking.

"So, 'Sis'? Not another one of your birth siblings, I take it?"

"No." I chuckled. "When I was younger, Doctor Makinami was my medical caretaker in SEELE's custody, but also a kind of babysitter – on the occasions I was permitted to visit the outside world, she accompanied me. She would tell people I was her younger brother, and pretend to be outraged if they mistook her for my mother."

"Seems like a character," said Kaji, then explained, "An interesting person with a distinctive personality," when I showed puzzlement at the specific usage of the term.

"Oh – yes, I would say so. She always had a book to hand, or to lend, whether fiction or non, so I think she would appreciate being described as such."

We had reached the parking place of Kaji's car, and he folded his arms on the roof, drumming his fingers. "Are you sure we can let her go? She knows your secret, after all."

"It would have been safer to silence her," I agreed, "but I could say the same for you, or Shinji and Rei." I shrugged self-deprecatingly. "Sentimentality is not a weakness exclusive to the Lilim, it would seem."

He snorted laughter. "Right. You know your kindness could come back to bite you, right?"

At that moment, my phone vibrated – Shinji was calling me. I smiled at Kaji. "It already cost me my life, and I got away with it. Even if my luck runs out, I have heard it said that a life half-lived is no life at all – and that it is better to have loved and lost, than never to have loved at all."

I ducked into the car to answer Shinji's call, and though I could not see Kaji rolling his eyes, his own kindness sang clearly to me from his heart. He was far from unsentimental himself, after all.