Lies
DISCLAIMER: Don't own Neon Genesis Evangelion; just borrowing Shinji and Kaworu for a while. (Mmm, don't you just love canon yaoi?) Don't sue me, that's impolite.
NOTE: I'm kinda going more off the manga's version of events than the anime's, because I think it was a better idea for Kaworu to show up earlier to allow his personality to develop more. Don't mind my mixing media… just thought I'd warn you, in case you'd be confused otherwise…
He'd never known that the Lilim could be so warm.
SEELE and its laboratories had been cold; the LCL enveloping his body sickening, permeated with the scent of blood. To his masters, the NERV officials, and even the humans around his own age, his emotions had remained at a dull and slightly suspicious distaste. They were never a thing that he had cared about, or had been instructed to care about.
The soft heat where Shinji Ikari's bare back was pressed against his body was alluring, intoxicating. The humanlike shell that encased his angel's soul was inexorably drawn to it, like a firefly to a lamp. He'd never once dreamed that close contact with one of these fleeting mortals could be even half so pleasant.
Tabris—or Kaworu Nagisa, as he had become known among NERV personnel—had been sent to observe the unruly former disciples of his creators only two weeks ago. He was supposed to be watching, reporting, piloting EVA unit-02, and (of course) searching for the First Angel, Adam. He was most definitely not supposed to be languishing in the small, heated bath in his tiny quarters with the First Child, stark naked and riding off the euphoric exhaustion of vigorous lovemaking.
Evidently SEELE wasn't as tightly in charge of its precious "scenario" as it liked to think it was.
One of Kaworu's main tasks was the observation of Shinji Ikari, the Third Child and son of NERV's director, Gendo Ikari. Their relationship had been somewhat strained at first; Kaworu was not experienced at acting like the Lilim and had managed to offend Shinji a few times during their first days together. But as events came to pass, Shinji had become cut off from all those he trusted—he was too afraid to face his school friends after the death of the Fourth Child, Toji Suzuhara; in battle with an Angel, the Second Child, Asuka Langley Soryu, had experienced a mental breakdown and was now in a catatonic state; and in the most recent Angel battle, the First Child—Rei Ayanami—had died, then been inexplicably replaced by another girl who might look like her at first glance, but was most definitely not Rei Ayanami as Kaworu had known her. Estranged and finding himself unable to confide in his caretaker, Misato Katsuragi, Shinji had ended up turning to Kaworu out of desperation and loneliness.
And Kaworu had discovered things about Shinji that he had never thought to know about anyone.
He was such a very delicate creature, naïve and pained and so fragile it seemed as though he were made of glass. He didn't know anything about what his father and SEELE were really up to, or the nature of the machine he kept climbing into to defend his race and unwittingly bring Instrumentality even closer to being executed.
The odd attachment Kaworu had always felt around Shinji had blossomed into something far, far stronger—and all the more perturbing.
The boy had no idea of what was really going on, of course. He just lay against Kaworu with hopelessly ignorant look of bliss on his face. Shinji's needs were simple ones: Love, acknowledgement, the not-so-occasional struggle of entwining bodies between the sheets of Kaworu's bed—or anywhere else convenient for the insistence of passion's play.
So, of course, he had completely overlooked any hints that the one thing Kaworu had promised him had been nothing but a sweet lie.
Kaworu was tired of lying to the Lilim. He'd done his best not to lie to Shinji. But when Shinji whispered the plea—as he so often did—for Kaworu to stay with him forever, the silver-haired angel could never say that what existed between them could never be allowed to continue.
The "forever" he so insistently repeated with his words, his kisses, and his body was nothing but a dream, despite the fact that the love it was coupled with was real. For Shinji, love and eternity had to go hand in hand. That wasn't something that Kaworu could give.
But he would never actually say it, until it was too late for words and duty won out over the surprising traces of humanity in his angel's heart.
"Kaworu?" Shinji whispered dreamily.
"Mm?" He glanced down at his fellow pilot… his lover… and his enemy.
"Come with me…"
Very slowly, the Third Child sat up, then got out of the water, not bothering to dry off as he headed into the bedroom.
Kaworu felt the very human pulse of need flicker through his blood. God forgive him, but he wanted this Lilim boy so badly—Shinji's struggles when Kaworu pinned his wrists together against the mattress, his soft cries not for mercy but for torture, and the screams he stifled in the sheets when he climaxed were irresistible to the angel. They'd waited long enough that if Shinji wanted to make love, Kaworu was more than ready—
But instead, Shinji had already curled up in the covers, to all appearances asleep already—in the futon placed on the floor for when the two of them didn't feel like romance.
Kaworu sighed, mildly disappointed. Oh, well. There was always next time. Realizing as he got into the bed that Shinji was still half-watching him out of nearly-closed eyes, Kaworu paused for a moment, then said softly, "I think I should sleep on the floor."
Shinji turned to face him, smiling. "I don't mind. Besides, it's your house…"
Kaworu's heart warmed, as it always did when Shinji made his accustomed sacrifices for his well-being. Smiling back, he glanced down at his lover and said softly, "I think I was born just to meet you, Shinji Ikari."
Which wasn't exactly a lie. In some ways, he had been.
But the love that Kaworu felt was wrestling with an equally powerful guilt; a guilt at the knowledge that all of this was going to end sooner or later. It was something that he would never be able to escape.
It wasn't fair, he wanted to tell SEELE. They had created him just to be their tool, but in ordering him to do his duty they had allowed him to see the kind of life that, as an angel, he could never have. Never. All he was doing was like trying to hold on to thoughts with his bare hands, or pouring sand into a sieve and trying to fill it—it would never be enough. He was doomed to either destroy humanity as it was or be destroyed himself.
And Kaworu was fairly sure which of the two outcomes it would be.
He didn't know how he could apologize to Shinji for being what he had been born to be. The past fifteen years had only been a study of how futile his too-human existence truly was; and as of yet, he didn't know the words.
Nor did he want to destroy this before he had to.
So he would continue to lie to Shinji in the worst way he possibly could, selfishly holding on to the only true good he had ever experienced.
-owari-