A very belated giftfic for dearlyanonymous and shlliterarygirl of tumblr. I had a couple different ideas for a fic based on this particular manga: one of them was a cracky twisted fairy tale, the other was an explanation of what the heck was going on. This ended up being a more serious take on what I'd intended to use for the cracky twisted fairy tale premise.

The Angelic Days manga is loosely based on one of the Eva spinoff/AU video games: there are six volumes, all published in English.

The best way to describe it is that the manga's author vehemently hates Shinji/Asuka, and thinks that they are completely wrong for each other. The way they make this known is by having Shinji be Strangled By The Red String with someone who is completely unlike canon!Asuka in every way. 'This person is Shinji's type!' 'Shinji is meant to be with' … someone who bears no resemblance to Asuka. Clearly, in their mind, Shinji's type is the complete opposite of Asuka. Just to make this even more clear to the reader, Rei, Kaworu and Kensuke are all used to restate that the author's preferred pairing of Shinji/absolutelynot!Asuka is absolutely inevitable and there's no way for anyone with an actual personality, eg. the real Asuka, to possibly compete with it.

One of the other ways the manga differs from the videogame is that it spends a heck of a lot of time establishing that there's something very weird going on with Kaworu, and never explains any of it. After reading the manga, I thought 'well, this is based on a videogame, so presumably the author never got around to explaining what the heck was going on because they assumed readers would know from playing the videogame,' but nope. The videogame doesn't have anything similar at all. The author made all that up and didn't explain it because that would have used up pagecount that could have gone to the shipping.

Kaworu is connected to Adam somehow, and is cursed to be forgotten. He's not happy about it, so it's clearly not something he's doing on purpose. Records of him exist, but once people start forgetting about him, they'll stop noticing those records.

He's the one who warned Gendo and Yui to prepare for the threat of the angels. Haruhi Suzumiya seems to be an influence: Adam's power will let people destroy this world and create a new one the way they want it. Probably the angels are trying to reach Adam to create their new world and replace that of the Lilim, like in the series.

Since Gendo, of all people, is given the opportunity to choose whether or not to wipe the world clean and start over, Kaworu's actions in volume 5 mostly boil down to trying to arrange a reason for Gendo to think that the world doesn't suck and he shouldn't let seven billion people die. The reason Gendo will do anything is, of course, Yui, so since Angelic Days is a spinoff more focused on romance, the only way for Kaworu to save the world is to set those two up. Yeah.

Of course, this is like the one 'verse where Gendo is not actually a jerk to anyone whose name is not Yui. Shinji resents him because Gendo doesn't spend a lot of time with him, but that's because this Gendo actually cares whether Shinji lives or dies (what a weird AU this is...).

Once upon a time, there were two young geniuses (not that they had realized yet that this was what they were) who were rather confused over what exactly had just happened.

Yui could remember something about the color white, a white void, if she poked at where the absent memories should be, but she wasn't entirely sure that wasn't some sort of metaphor for the void itself. Something, had taken an eraser to extremely important parts of the last week, and all she could really remember was white, and urgency, and the determination to hold on to Gendo.

Gendo knew absolutely that he wanted to protect Yui. That her existence made this world worthwhile. He also knew that before this last week, he'd thought the world was absolutely worthless, and that someone had made him realize that Yui was such a wonderful person. Someone had made Yui find him, reach out to him, let him realize how precious she was: someone had made the world change from an empty, worthless void to the place with Yui in it, the place that had brought forth Yui. Someone had made him realize that this world was worth protecting.

And left them a message that the world needed protecting. Directions to a shrine in the forest behind the town, to a great cave where they found…

A week ago, he wouldn't have had any interest at all in trying to become some kind of hero that would save the world or anything ridiculous like that. He wouldn't have cared about what they found, about the legends he'd dug up in the town's archives (Yui was the one who was polite enough to get them in, he was the one who was good enough at interpreting poetry to try to make sense of any of it) about giants that could only be fought by children.

He was holding Yui's hand. She was letting him hold her hand, and that was why his grip was white-knuckled, why he was glad that he'd got in all those stupid fights, because now he had someone he couldn't bear to lose.

Someone who was gripping his hand just as tightly, here in the little town museum's dimly-lit back room.

He should be looking at the book spread out on the table, because there were paragraphs, entire pages that his mind slid away from the way he couldn't remember who it was that sat in that seat. The way neither he nor Yui could read that note anymore. No, they could read it, they just couldn't notice anything about it, couldn't capture it in their memories, and he dreaded the moment it would start to look like a blank piece of paper, when they wouldn't have any clues, any clues at all, to how to find the person who arranged all of this.

Who warned Gendo that Yui was important, that he couldn't lose her, that there was someone who would make life worth living. Who warned them that he needed to protect her, and he knew that if he said that, she'd be just as determined to protect him, the way her eyes met his right now, and he had to look down at his hand again (his hand with hers in it!), because it was so strange and embarrassing that she was looking so determined for him, so he knew that she wouldn't abandon him, that she wasn't afraid, being strong for him because he was afraid that he'd lose her, that he wouldn't be good enough. That he'd never see her again, just like his mom, not because she'd abandoned him but because she wouldn't, because she'd want to help him, she'd never abandon him, and she'd get hurt.

The way the class had left her to do all the weeding by herself, because she'd associated with him?

He was gripping her hand too tightly. Desperately. It hurt, a little, but Yui just put her other hand on top of his, because she didn't like to see Gendo so worried, so afraid, and she didn't want to see the kind of self-loathing that would try to swallow him up if he realized he was hurting her, just wanting to know he wasn't alone. "Do you think they were the town's god?" she wondered.

"What even is a God?" Gendo muttered. "How does whatever it is know to warn people?"

"You don't really think…"

"You've too naïve," Gendo said, ducking his eyes down again. They were narrow with the reflexive suspicion of someone that had been betrayed by the world too many times.

Still, "You don't really mean that," she knew.

"I owe them," Gendo said, after glancing up at her and then away again, embarrassed. "Maybe they were a god."

"Because it would take divine intervention for…" For me to like you? "I liked you before this happened. I just didn't… I wouldn't have worked up the courage. Not just you," she told him, before he assumed that she was just afraid of him, that he'd thought he would hurt her. "The class, and my parents… You're not the only one who knows that… I have someone I want to protect too, now."

Gendo's cheeks were as red as anything, and he really didn't know how to deal with someone liking him, did he? She wanted to help him learn, it hurt to see how unprepared he was for this and think about how lonely he was for so long.

Running. Running through the town, forcing herself through some wall separating her and Gendo, and "They weren't trying to stop me from reaching you. They wanted you to watch me come for you," she told him. "I don't think that anyone who wanted you to know that someone liked you," loved him, she almost said, but now she was the embarrassed one, the one who found herself a little overwhelmed by just how much she li-loved him. "Could possibly be a bad person."

"It was probably just so that I had someone to fight for," Gendo said, taking refuge in belligerence and suspicion again. "This is more important than me finding true love or something."

"We're looking at legends," Yui reminded him, "and you're refusing to believe that maybe someone wanted you to be happy? If they could have been the town god, then why not a fairy godmother?" Both of them were stories.

"There's always a price," Gendo said. "What?" he asked, a little alarmed when she suddenly looked depressed. What had he said this time?! Was he going to keep hurting her?

"Is it really so strange for people to just want you to be happy?" Yui wondered. "You don't think that I only want to be with you because of some other reason that isn't you, do you? You don't think that you have to protect me…"

"Of course I have to protect you!" Gendo winced at his outburst. "I mean," he said, looking away again, worried that he'd scared her. "You're different. I don't want a world without you. But, I guess… this is the world where I met you, so it's not all bad. And they're the reason I could really meet you." Not just an annoying classmate, but Yui. Not just another girl who didn't understand anything and wouldn't want to, but his…

"So," he said hurriedly. "I guess you're right, that they can't be all bad, but having to kill monsters makes sense." Even if it was possible for someone who wasn't special at all to deserve Yui, it would have to be after doing something heroic. Rescuing the princess.

She'd already rescued him, hadn't she? And she'd do it again. So if he rescued her, he had to do at least that much to make them even. How could he possibly do anything great enough to deserve her? No, how could he possibly thank someone enough for this? His soul couldn't possibly be worth this much, and why else would spirits help someone like him?

Maybe Yui was the future hero, he realized. Maybe rescuing him was practice for her, maybe he was supposed to be her reward, but he hated the idea. Not because he didn't think that Yui could be a hero, he could see it all too easily, but he was the one who should be in danger, not her. He was the one who had something to prove. If he was destined to be her princess, her trophy, then she deserved a much better prize than a stupid punk like him.

"You didn't promise them anything, did you?" he asked her, suddenly nervous, because even if he was no prize, Yui was.

She tilted her head to the side, thinking for a moment. "I know I promised to stay by your side, but I made that promise to you more than them, I think. I don't remember promising that, but I know I've made that promise," somewhere in what she couldn't clearly recall.

"We could have said anything and we wouldn't remember," Gendo knew. "I could have promised them my firstborn if they'd make you like me." Abandoned his future child the way his mother had abandoned him, so that the man she wanted would take her.

"You wouldn't," Yui said, because she had faith in him and thought he was being silly instead of serious.

"I wouldn't give your child away, but maybe if I didn't really take it seriously…" He wouldn't want Yui to be sad, but he hadn't really thought about it until now, that if Yui let him marry her that meant children and he'd mess up and not be the father Yui's children deserved, he just knew it.

He wasn't good enough for Yui, so why would she possibly… Just because she was a good person who wanted to help people and thought that he was someone who needed someone to be nice to them? He would have been annoyed by the pity, he thought he had been annoyed, in there somewhere, but if he got Yui out of it, then he could only be grateful.

Wait. "I can't remember their name," he realized. "They were…" an empty seat, and he wondered how long he'd be able to remember that the person was in their class, even that they'd looked human enough to blend in among students, or at least were able to make people think they looked like a child even though they couldn't possibly be one. "There's a story like that, where someone pretends to be able to do something useful, so it looks like they're worthy to marry royalty, but someone else does all the work, and they have to surrender their firstborn if they can't remember that person's name."

"I won't let them take your child," Yui told him, squeezing his hand. "I didn't let them take you."

He should have trusted her, should have relaxed at that, but it wasn't his child, it was Yui's child, and she'd be sad if she never saw that child again, unlike his mother, and he couldn't risk it. He didn't just have to defend Yui against the giants, but her child against something that no one could quite remember, so how could he defend against it, figure out how to fight it, if he couldn't think if what it was, what powers it might have, what weaknesses it might have?

How was he supposed to fight giants, for that matter? The remains of the living suits of enchanted armor in that cave, the ones that would only protect children: how were they supposed to repair any of them? How were they supposed to make adults listen to them about strange things like that, instead of taking them to some lab or taking Yui to some lab, because the two of them had contact with a spirit or an alien or who knew what?

And if this god or spirit was so powerful, and knew how wonderful Yui was, then why hadn't they wanted Yui for themselves?

...He hadn't really seriously thought that anyone would want his firstborn, just like no one (until Yui) had wanted his mother's. Children were a burden. But… if it was Yui's child, then they might take after Yui.

Someone had appeared, and faded away like a dream, just like their memories of that person, and what if… what if Yui wanting to do things with him, to be with him, to let him protect her was too closely tied to those memories? What if they'd lose it too? Unless he made other memories somehow, ones that weren't tied to that person, ones they could remember. Like exploring under the shrine, the moment when his flashlight stopped working because it had probably been years since his grandmother changed the batteries and he had to hold Yui's hand the rest of the way so they could both use hers to check the ground in front of them so they didn't fall down into any holes in the old tunnels.

So they didn't get separated. So he didn't wind up alone in the darkness.

At least in that white expanse, he hadn't been alone. Even before she came. As strange as that place was, he thought he might have stayed there. If it weren't for Yui... He wanted to protect Yui. He had to prepare for the attack of the angels.

What if whatever was tampering with their minds to make them forget, was trying to make them forget to prepare?