Note: Previously posted in the 'Teardrops' collection on my profile. I decided to put it separately because it's not for Inuyasha as are all the others in that drabble group.
A/N: Written for The Engine Driver (horses-and-men on LiveJournal) because she is one of the loveliest people I know.
Title: Virtuoso
Series: Neon Genesis Evangelion
Character: Kaworu (implied platonic Kaworu/Shinji)
Rating: K+
Summary: From outside the walls of time, Kaworu remembers.
XoxoxoxoxoxoX
Virtuoso
Thy magic reunites those
Whom stern custom has parted;
All men will become brothers
Under thy gentle wing.
When I came to this broken, beaten world, the absolute last thing I expected was the first thing I found.
Hope.
The others told me before my farewell that Earth had nothing left to give, that it was reduced to sending its children into battle for it. The others did not, of course, mention how soundly said children had defeated them. The children of Earth are fearsome indeed, and none more so than Ikari Shinji.
I knew this before I went, because the others aren't really 'other' at all, just different faces of the same thing that I am part of. We are one, and so I knew everything they knew without them having to say it out loud. A warning would still have been courteous, for all the good it would have done.
Have you met Shinji? If you have, I'm sure you didn't like him. Very few people did. It's very difficult to like someone who hates himself so passionately. If you tried, you probably felt like he resented your goodwill. His self-hatred was spectacular, an art-form, and any intrusion on it was repelled almost as soon as he noticed it. He craved your liking, your love, your acceptance and respect, but in order to let it in he would have had to give up his beautiful negative passion. I, who know him better than anyone, know that it would have taken great pressure to make him do that.
How could I not love something so lovely?
I came down that day (what is a day? what is time? I can't remember, oh, Shinji) and found him on a bloodstained beach, the violently dying sun splattering shining gore all over the water and his beautiful face. It was an ordinary sunset, but the look on his face made everything around him a vision of agony incarnate.
I sat on a rock nearby and sang to him. 'Ode to Joy,' perhaps you know it? Beethoven was a true genius. I often suspect he was one of us, a forerunner. It is very seldom true humans create such transcendental things as Beethoven's symphonies.
Shinji sounded like Satie's 'Gymnopedie' to me. If you haven't listened to it, you should. It's remarkable how much those lone notes on the piano can sound like the way loneliness feels.
So, I sang him 'Ode to Joy' and loved him with everything I had. That's what I'm good at, you know. Loving. This world is full of things that tear my love out of me without conscious effort on my part.
Bloody sunsets.
Broken roses.
The way buildings are made of almost-perfect right angles, but still look skewed if you tilt your head ten degrees to the left.
The way declarations of love spoken in Sanskrit caress the ears and fly through the veins like blood is just so much sweetly scented air.
Ikari Shinji and his stunning, almost sacred hate for himself, which was also a form of love and worship for the world around him. He saw such beauty in his surroundings, he could not help but think himself unworthy of them. Ah, Shinji. You were a rare creature indeed. I still miss you and your splintered little world, here outside of time.
Here, so far outside of time that it's forever sunset and forever dawn and forever bath-time and bed-time and death-time.
Remember?
Yes, even if he calls but one soul
His own in all the world.
But he who has failed in this
Must steal away alone and in tears.
XoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoX
A/N: Geep, I love Kaworu. And you, Mai!